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Obama tells
banks and corporation
how it's gonna be.
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The Filming Of RedTails |
This
is a great video.
It shows the three aircraft orbiting over the Statue of Liberty during
the Air Farce One incident.
(The money shot is near the end)
The "Red Tail F-16" is clearly a
prop.
If the George Lucas' film "Red Tails" has, as is likely, a 3D IMAX
version, and this sequence were to be used as an epilogue, the camera plane would likely have an external camera mount to
attach an IMAX camera. Publicity stills would have been
photographed by an air combat photographer during the flight.
According to this Wall Street Journal
article, the camera plane was also an F-16, with a combat
photographer on board. While the F-16s were flown by guard pilots,
the photographs were taken by Master Sgt.
Andrew N. Dunaway, a specially trained Air Force photographer based
with a combat camera squadron at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C.
Could that "special training" have been in the operation of an
IMAX
camera?
Check out
Dunaway's work. This guy is definitely a "pro
from Dover."
And
here is a photo of Lucas,
lady-friend Mellody Hobson, Michelle Obama, "Red Tails" cast-member
Sidney Poitier, Barack Obama, and Ford Theater's Paul Tetreault.
George Lucas
contributed $33,100 to the Obama Victory Fund, an
additional $28,500 to the DNC Services Corp (D), and another $4,600
to Obama, Barack (D) -- that's a total of $66,200. Just friends
helping friends, no doubt.
Lucas was
quoted as saying, "We have a hero in the making back in the United
States today because we have a new candidate for president of the United
States, Barack Obama," when asked who his childhood heroes were.
Obama, "for all of us that have dreams and hope, is a hero," Lucas
said.
Just another
coincidence --
an old name and a famous paint scheme is returning to the skies above
central Alabama. The commanding general of the Air Force is
reactivating the 100th Fighter Squadron as part of Montgomery's 187th
Air National Guard Wing.
Tip of the
hat to FReeper Plutarch |
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Obama Budget Cuts Target Pentagon |
Obama has
targeted the Department of Defense to absorb more than 80 percent of the
cuts he has proposed in next year's budget for discretionary programs.
In its "Terminations, Reductions and Savings" booklet, which the
administration released Thursday, the White House highlighted the
results of the president's line-by-line scrubbing of the federal budget.
The administration identified $11.5 billion in discretionary
program terminations and reductions for next year. The Defense
Department will take a $9.4 billion hit, constituting 82 percent of the
cuts.
"We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits do not
matter and waste is not our problem," Obama said.
(giggle!)
While defense spending accounts for 19 percent of the federal budget, it
would absorb 55 percent of $17 billion in total cuts.
The
defense cuts send "a very clear signal that this administration is not
going to be as forceful on national security issues as the previous
administration. I think that's pretty clear," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss,
Georgia Republican.
Obama's
just doing what he said he would do during the campaign. (video)
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Obama Threatens California |
Obama is
threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money
if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage
cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part
of the budget.
Schwarzenegger's office was advised this week by
federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save
California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it
takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus
money, according to state officials.
The news
comes as state lawmakers are already facing a severe cash crisis, with
the state at risk of running out of money in July.
The wages at
issue involve workers who care for some 440,000 low-income disabled and
elderly Californians. The workers, who collectively contribute millions
of dollars in dues each month to the influential Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) and the United Domestic Workers, will see the
state's contribution to their wages cut from a maximum of $12.10 per
hour to a maximum of $10.10.
The SEIU said in a statement that
it had asked the Obama administration for the ruling.
Of course
this has nothing to do with the
fact that SEIU PAC Spent $27
million supporting Obama’s election.
(Source:
FEC Filing) |
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Obama Flunks World War II History |
Obama is a history buff. When
he makes a political point he instinctively reaches for the historical
parallel: the Lincolnesque "team of rivals" making up his cabinet,
Winston Churchill's attitude to torture or his own family's experience
of World War II.
The only
problem is that he sometimes gets
history wrong. His plan to visit Buchenwald is in part a tribute to his
great-uncle, Charlie Payne, who participated in the liberation of Ohrdruf, a satellite camp. Last May, however, Obama said that his
uncle "was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz."
Republicans pointed out that it was the Soviets who liberated Auschwitz.
"Unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there's no way
Obama's statement can be true," a Republican spokesman said. The
Democratic candidate issued a correction, but critical historians have
found earlier examples of Obama's elastic approach to the facts. In
2002 he cited the wartime experiences of his grandfather, Stanley
Dunham. "My grandfather...heard the stories of fellow troops who first
entered Auschwitz and Treblinka."
Treblinka, like Auschwitz, is
in Poland, and was also liberated by Soviet troops. Last week Obama
extrapolated from another historical example -- the prohibition of
torture in wartime Britain -- to conclude: "Churchill said 'We don't
torture' when ... all of the British people were being subjected to
unimaginable risk and threat." Historians pounced again, pointing out
there was no record of Churchill explicitly banning torture.
In
fact, a November 2005 story in the Guardian
details torture by British soldiers between 1940 and 1948, at the
Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre -- known as the "London
Cage" -- run by MI19, responsible for interrogating enemy prisoners of
war.
The Guardian concluded that the London Cage "was used
partly as a torture centre," where 3,573 German officers and soldiers
were brutally interrogated. SS Captain Fritz Knoechlein, taken to
the Cage in October 1946, alleged he was starved, beaten and kept awake
for four days straight. |
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Obama Saves The Salamander |
The Obama
administration has
reversed a Bush administration decision and is proposing to restrict
development on 74,000 acres in Sonoma County that is habitat for the
endangered California tiger salamander.
The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service settled a lawsuit this week by an environmental group
challenging its decision in 2005, under President George W. Bush, to
withdraw the designation of land on the Santa Rosa Plain as critical
habitat for the rare amphibian.
The area covers farmland, housing and open space
from Windsor in the north to Skillman Road northwest of Petaluma.
Under the agency's proposal, any development that might harm the
salamander or its habitat would have to be cleared with the Fish and
Wildlife Service. Federal officials could require developers to take
protective measures or make offsetting investments in nearby land set
aside to protect the species.
"The California tiger salamander
will finally receive the protection it needs to survive," said Noah
Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Salamanders used to get in my house in Florida. They're pests. |
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©
Copyright Beckwith 2009
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