Rep. Mark Kirk: I'm Not Gay

Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk has publicly denied being gay in response to attacks from a conservative challenger.

"No, it's not true," Rep. Kirk (R-Ill.) said at the Union League Club of Chicago on Thursday.

Andy Martin, a conservative dirty trickster running for the same Illinois Senate seat as Kirk, released an ad on local radio in which he pushed a "solid rumor" that Kirk "is a homosexual."

"I helped expose many of Barack Obama's lies in 2008," the ad goes. "Today, I am fighting for the facts about Mark Kirk. Illinois Republican leader Jack Roeser says there is a 'solid rumor that Kirk is a homosexual.' Roeser suggests that Kirk is part of a Republican Party homosexual club. Lake County Illinois Republican leader Ray True says Kirk has surrounded himself with homosexuals." In another ad, Martin called Kirk a "de facto pedophile."

Martin is well-known for pushing rumors that President Obama is a Muslim during the 2008 campaign.

Maybe Kirk's denial will satisfy Fox News contributor Sandy Rios, who went on a rant against Kirk Tuesday on Townhall.com. "American voters have a right to know if candidates are gay," she wrote, criticizing both Kirk and the press for ignoring the rumors. "So, where is the reporting? Where are the cameras? The gleaning of records? The follow up on accusations?"

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HERE @ truelovesway

Naked Jogger Caught At White House

Authorities say a man who took off his clothes and began jogging in near-freezing temperatures near the White House has been taken into custody and hospitalized for a mental evaluation.

The man was seen stripping Wednesday around 5 p.m. He left his clothes near the northeast corner of the Ellipse, the green space south of the White House.

Secret Service spokesman Darrin Blackford says the run lasted less than a minute before the man was apprehended. The president was at the White House at the time. But Blackford says the man, who left his clothing in a duffel bag, didn't make any threats. His bag was declared suspicious, but its contents were found to be harmless.

Temperatures were around 35 degrees.

It wasn't clear if the jogger would face criminal charges.

Palin Tea Party Speech Netting Her $100,000?

How much would you pay to get Sarah Palin to speak at your next event? How does $100,000 sound?

Washington Independent's David Weigel has the latest on Sarah Palin's booking fee for the upcoming National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Palin, who twice turned down offers to speak at the yearly Conservative Political Action Conference before agreeing to appear at the Tea Party assembly, will join WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah on the roster.

The ex-governor's choice to snub a spot on a $175-a-ticket CPAC program that, according to director Lisa de Pasquale, would not "pay honorarium, travel or hotel expenses for any speakers," in favor of the Tea Party event has had many people suspecting that Palin's decision was financially driven. Tickets to her speech are running a pricey $349, while tickets to the entire convention cost $549.

Eric Odom, executive director of the American Liberty Alliance, provided an estimate of the kind of money the former vice-presidential candidate might be seeing: "I'd speculate that Palin's making at least $35,000 or $50,000, with $50,000 being more likely," he said. "I mean, Glenn Beck charges $60,000, $70,000 and a private jet."

According to Conservative blogger Dan Riehl, that would be peanuts for Palin. "I'm hearing through sources Sarah Palin is getting $75k to speak," Riehl reports, though he has apparently also heard talks of a $100,000 booking fee as well.

Palin's decision to speak at the National Tea Party Convention makes sense. It's no secret that she has emerged as a darling of conservatives, and her appearance there will undoubtedly be highly anticipated. Moreover, a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll ranked a generic "Tea Party" as more popular than either Democrats or Republicans. That said, it doesn't take a genius to see that even the lowest estimate of $35,000 is a lot of money, especially when the other offer is nothing.

hello, you wealth of helpful and resourceful bakers, you.
i just started a job (i really mean like just a few days ago) as a baker for an all natural cafe. the owner is a nutritionist so her part of the job is to tell me what she wants and i'm to figure out how to do it. we're going to be baking to accommodate some food allergies, vegans, diabetics, and i'm starting out with gluten free muffins and using spelt flour. i have never ever baked with any gluten free flour! and though it's a lovely environment where they understand that and let me experiment, i could use a little help. are there any tips or crucial knowledge that i should have about making gluten free baked goods?
a little more importantly, and separately, does anyone have any tips on baking with spelt flour? in addition to the gf baking, we're also making muffins with spelt flour instead of regular wheat flour. i am not trying to make gluten free food with spelt, to clear up some confusion (sorry). in my experience so far (which is three batches of unsatisfactory muffins), spelt hates to be baked with! i know it has an imbalance of gliadine and glutanine, and the lack of glutanine means the muffins do not hold their shape. i've never baked with spelt either, and my attempts to alter the recipes i've been given haven't been super productive. all my muffins have looked like this:



they spread on the sides, cave in the center, and become crust-like on the tops. the recipes i'm using have a lot of oil in them (which i'm working on tweaking) and that makes me think it might be part of the problem, but i do know the spreading and caving is the work of little glutanine. but i don't know how to fix it yet. i'm not sure my boss' stance of mixing spelt with whole wheat flour but i've read that helps. does anybody have any other suggestions?

thanks so much, bakebakebakers! honestly any knowledge thrown my way is super helpful and super appreciated.
<3

In November 2008, I stood in a bar in Kenya watching Barack Obama give his victory speech. From the wild cheering of the crowd on TV, and his repeated appeals to them personally—"You said," "You heard," "You called"—I felt as if the people of America knew this man far better than I, even though we shared the same father. If there was a leading light in the Obama clan, he was it; and if there was a shadowed place that no one liked to talk about, then that, I guess, was me.

( Read More ) 
source

UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld deserves statue on Wall Street, not prison sentence

Barack Obama, who entered the White House promising all this change, should be hailing Bradley Birkenfeld as a modern-day hero.

He should erect a statue on Wall Street for this former banker for Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax-evasion scheme in U.S. history.

Instead of rewarding Birkenfeld, Obama's Justice Department is sending him to prison. He begins serving a 40-month federal sentence Friday for conspiracy and bank fraud.

What about his former bosses and fellow bankers at UBS and thousands of rich American clients who for decades stashed billions of dollars in secret UBS accounts to evade paying federal taxes?

Well, the government let them buy their way out of jail.

UBS pleaded guilty and paid a $780 million fine in February, while thousands of Americans with unreported offshore accounts have been allowed to belatedly disclose them and pay civil penalties.

Only Birkenfeld, the 44-year-old whistleblower, ends up in jail - the No. 1 example of injustice and hypocrisy in the age of Obama.

Who can forget that priceless photo of the President playing golf on Aug. 24 during his Martha's Vineyard summer vacation with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Americas?

Wolf and his employees donated $540,000 to Obama's presidential run. That made UBS the 12th largest source of his campaign funds.

Of all the people in America to choose for a golf partner, Obama chose Wolf.

The outing was only three days after Birkenfeld's harsh sentencing, and less than a week after UBS agreed to turn over the names of 4,450 of its American clients to the Justice Department. That's just a portion of 19,000 American accounts the bank has admitted keeping secret from U.S. tax officials.

So why is Birkenfeld, who gave hundreds of those names to prosecutors, going to jail?

"Without Mr. Birkenfeld ... I doubt ... this massive fraud scheme would have been discovered," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Downing conceded at the Aug. 21 sentencing hearing.

Prosecutors also claimed in that hearing and in a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night that Birkenfeld withheld information on how he had helped his biggest U.S. client, California billionaire Igor Olenicoff, hide hundreds of millions in assets. So when Birkenfeld flew here from Switzerland in early 2008, they arrested and charged him.

Birkenfeld's lawyer Stephen Kohn denies those allegations. He says the government is sending a terrible signal to future whistleblowers.

Kohn filed a formal complaint yesterday with the U.S. attorney general's office of professional responsibility, claiming the "main allegations used to secure [Birkenfeld's] indictment and imprisonment were not based on accurate or truthful information."

Birkenfeld offered to provide every name he knew of secret account holders at UBS, Kohn said, but he first wanted a formal subpoena because he was then a resident of Switzerland. Under Swiss law it is illegal to disclose client information.

The Justice Department refused to issue the subpoena, so Birkenfeld then went to the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Senate during the summer of 2007 offering the information to them.

The Senate's permanent investigations subcommittee agreed to subpoena him. He gave the committee a detailed deposition on Oct. 11, 2007 about UBS fraud scheme with lots of names, including that of Olenicoff. E-mails Kohn provided back up that claim.

Birkenfeld gave the same information to the IRS and the SEC.

Several weeks later, Olenicoff was indicted. He pleaded guilty and paid a $53 million fine.

Kohn has asked Attorney General Eric Holder for a formal investigation of the actions of Justice Department prosecutors.

Holder has his own UBS headache. Last year, the attorney general recused himself from the case because he once served as a lawyer for the Swiss bank.

The Birkenfeld case has exposed a lot more than hidden bank accounts.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/01/06/2010-01-06_unveils_bank_fraud_gets_jail.html#ixzz0bxMOp6QG

On Tuesday, January 12, members of the California Assembly will hold a historic vote on statewide marijuana policy. Members of the Public Safety Committee will decide on Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which seeks to regulate and control the production, distribution, and personal use of marijuana for adults age 21 and older.

Tuesday’s vote will mark the first time since 1913, when California became one of the first states in the nation to enact cannabis prohibition, that lawmakers have reassessed this failed policy.

Read more at the source. Further reading here and here.

Steele Lashes Out: Critics Should 'Get a Life,' 'Shut Up'

Michael Steele has a message for Republicans criticizing his leadership: Shut up.

"I tell them to get a life," he told ABC News Radio on Thursday. "If you don't want me in the job, fire me. But until then, shut up. Get with the program or get out of the way."

The Republican National Committee chairman is under fire for saying that the GOP can't take back the House in 2010 -- and that the party isn't even ready to lead. And donors are upset with Steele for giving paid speeches and promoting a book while leading the party.

Could there be a more gay-friendly show with an entirely straight cast than The Golden Girls? A favorite of the LGBT crowd, not to mention those with weekend hangovers that love the ten-hour marathons on the Hallmark channel, The Golden Girls is proving relevant once again, if not for a 60-second lesson on the issue of marriage equality.

It's pretty funny thinking that a show from the 1980s could have been so far ahead of its time that it took on the issue of gay marriage, almost two decades before it became a reality (and at that, only in a few states). But Blanche, Sofia, Dorothy and Rose hit the gay rights issues pretty hard. Which might be why the show created a generation of homosexuals, at least according to some witty folks.

Here's the Girls' take on marriage equality. Blanche (Rue McClanahan) has a gay brother who wants to get married, and she can't understand why. She can accept him being gay, but why does he have to (in the immortal words of Beyonce) "put a ring on it."

 

( Read more... )

Tea Party Leader: 'We Are Turning Our Guns On' Moderate Republicans

Dale Robertson doesn't mince words. The tea party spokesperson and head of Teaparty.org in Houston issued a strong statement this week warning state GOP leaders that if they didn't support strongly conservative candidates, their jobs were at risk.

"We are turning our guns on anyone who doesn't support constitutional conservative candidates," Robertson said. "If they don't get that, and their party chairmen don't get that, they are going to be ostracized."

Jim Greer, Florida's GOP Chairman, was forced to resign earlier this week under similar pressure from far-right activists following his endorsement of Charlie Crist, a "big-tent" Republican who has been criticized by some conservative factions for being too moderate. Tea Party activists have backed Crist's opponent, Marco Rubio, in the upcoming Republican open primary.

Crist has notably broken from the Republican party on a few key issues. He's supported green initiatives such as cap-and-trade legislation, and potential offshore drilling. Perhaps most markedly, Crist was a strong proponent of the stimulus bill, going as far as to hug President Obama while introducing him at a rally in Ft. Meyers.

"I think it's just all-around frustration with some in our party who have a very pure philosophy of how you should govern," Greer told the New York Times Magazine. "People want a common-sense approach to governing. And approaching it with purity won't get anything done."

Jenny Beth Martin, the national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, explains the Tea Party's latest offensive. "People in America are very tired of the irresponsible taxing and spending that has happened in Washington. They want a return to fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., got himself some press -- and some power -- with his stance on healthcare reform. But it doesn't seem like he got himself the love of his constituents.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, is out with the results of a survey in which it asked Connecticut voters about Lieberman. What they found was fairly stunning: Only 25 percent of respondents said they approve of the job he's been doing. 67 percent disapprove. Much of that comes from Democrats, who disapprove of him 81-14. But even independents and Republicans have turned against the senator. His disapproval with independents is at 61 percent, compared to 32 percent approval, and a plurality of Republicans -- 48 percent -- said he's doing a bad job, compared to 39 percent who said they approve.

Respondents were basically split on the Democrats' healthcare proposals -- 47 percent support them, 43 percent are opposed, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. Even so, Lieberman's stance manage to alienate a strong majority, 68 percent; only 19 percent said they agreed with how he handled the issue. Presumably the difference in the two answers is due to a damned-if-you-do situation; those who support reform are angry with him for being a roadblock, while those who oppose it are upset he eventually decided to vote in favor.

Source.

Honduras military chiefs charged over Zelaya's removal


Honduran prosecutors have charged three military chiefs with abuse of power in connection with the ousting and exile of President Manuel Zelaya last June.

The Supreme Court will now decide whether to start a case against them.

Mr Zelaya was removed from office amid a row with the courts, Congress and the military over his plans to look at rewriting the constitution.

He was flown out of the country but returned in secret last September and remains holed up in Brazil's embassy.

The attorney general's office has issued charges against the military high command - the armed forces chief of staff, General Romeo Vasquez, and five others.

( Read more... )

SOURCE

It's amazing how hard it is to sympathize with any of these people.

A NORWEGIAN professor has claimed today that feeding a baby breast milk does not make them healthier than those fed formula.

Professor Sven Carlsen found while breastfed infants are slightly healthier than bottle fed babies it is not the milk that is responsible.

Carslen claims a baby's overall health is determined prior to birth and dependent on hormone levels in the mother's womb.

"The answer is simple. If a mother is able to breastfeed, and does so, this ability is essentially proof that the baby has already had an optimal life inside the womb," the professor said.

When a woman has high levels of male hormones in the womb the flow of nutrients to the baby is affected, the report went on. The hormones also affect her ability to breastfeed, making her offspring more likely to be bottle fed.

( Continued... )

source

President Ronald Reagan's 31-year-old grandson was arrested at his parent's home this morning in L.A. -- after someone pushed a panic button inside the house.


We're told when LAPD officers arrived at the home, Cameron Reagan -- son of political radio host Michael Reagan -- was screaming profanities at the cops.

Reagan was ultimately taken into custody at 12:20 AM. He was later booked at a Van Nuys jail on the misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest at 5:49 AM.

He's still in police custody.

It's not Cameron's first run-in with the law -- back in 1999 he was sentenced to six months in jail on charges of receiving stolen property for his role in two car burglaries.

TMZ

By David Plotz
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010, at 3:29 PM ET
Today, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., announced he would not run for re-election. Just a few hours later, the state's attorney general, Democrat Richard Blumenthal, announced his candidacy for the seat. David Plotz assessed Blumenthal in 2000; the article is reprinted below.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal—catalyst of state lawsuits against Microsoft, Big Tobacco, and now HMOs—is inspiring an emotion that he surely has never inspired before: sympathy. Blumenthal, after all, is the perennial golden boy of New England politics. He's smart, handsome, and rich. He has a great job suing the bejesus out of nefarious corporations. He's nicknamed "Mr. Perfect." Why would anyone feel sorry for him?
( Jesus, this guy is the biggest overachiever ever. )Well, it looks like he finally has his chance. I wonder if he'll actually be that busy in the Senate?

A sweet way to enforce Law and Order 

Boris, in Morocco, finds the police ready to shake hands and embrace a road-rager:  “First the cop spoke kindly to the taxi driver, and then leant forward closely and kissed him on the crown of the head. Then the 19-yr-old road rager made a short speech to the taxi driver, bowed and kissed him on the cheek. Then there was general shaking of hands and embracing by everyone except possibly the road-rager’s female passenger. And that – believe me – was it.”

Uh-oh, I thought, this is where it all goes wrong. The car in front of us screeched to a halt and the driver door slammed. Towards us he stalked, face pale, eyes blazing like coals, hands twitching from the sleeves of his Dolce and Gabbana blouson.
His oiled black hair stood up in shark teeth tufts from his trembling head. With his beaked nose and sulky mouth he had the air of a young medieval sultan who had just discovered a Frankish knight in bed with his wife.
As he flung wide our car door I half expected him to jerk some jewelled dagger from his white designer jeans. In the instant before he physically attacked our driver I remembered the cheery predictions of the guide book. ( Long essay from the Torygraph is long. )

I love this, but one of the commenters on Boris's blog does point out that UK officers, and no doubt US officers, diffuse violence every day without resorting to the court system or kissing. Also, the Torygraph is painfully slow to load today for some reason, so this is just the bit from the blog.

Tea Party Email Warns Members: Beware Liberal Trolls Like Rachel Maddow

Tea partiers beware: "You can and will be banned for being a liberal."

Organizers behind the upcoming Tea Party Nation convention we wrote about this morning told members today that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow tried to join the group and "we banned her 7 minutes after she joined."

TPMDC, which also has signed up for the TPN mailing list, received an email to all members warning them that as the convention nears "we will in all likelihood be invaded by liberal trolls looking to disrupt the site." The subject line was "Liberal Troll Alert!"

"Tea Party Nation reserves the right to ban anyone for any reason we feel necessary to ensure the well being of the site and our members," the group writes in the email, which you can read in full after the jump.

( I can't tell if this is laughable or pitiful... )

EDIT: Maddow says it wasn't her:

We asked MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for a response to the Tea Party Nation banning her from their site, and she suggests the idea is so ridiculous they made it up as a publicity stunt.

"I used to be an activist, too, so I understand the strategy of using the name of a well-known person to try to get publicity," Maddow told TPMDC in an email.

"Of course, this idea of me trying to join their listserv is completely made up, but still -- I'm flattered the Tea Party folks think I'm well known enough to help their cause," Maddow wrote. "I wish them all best luck with their conference."


Sauce 1.
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To sum up my reaction:

Can the world’s fastest supercomputer combat health care waste?

Energy computer scientist proposes using Oak Ridge's Jaguar for real-time analysis of claims

• By William Jackson
• Jan 06, 2010

A computer scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the facilities behind the Manhattan Project and now the home of the world’s fastest supercomputer, has proposed putting those resources to use for government health care reform.

 

Combining and analyzing health care data in real time could save as much as $50 billion a year by eliminating waste and preventing fraud in government-run health care programs, and also could improve the quality of medical care, said Andrew Loebl, a senior researcher in the lab’s Computational Science and Engineering Division.

 

“We have never put all of this data together,” Loebl said. “My idea is to use the storage capacity of the supercomputers at Oak Ridge to analyze the data.”

 

 

( rest is under the cut )

 

Source

Now, I find this to be a very interesting idea.