POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

It’s Burkha Barbie!!! Now with Voodoo Sex!!!

Slap-Action Khalid sold separately. Just picked the name out of the air.

Related:

A college dropout and Muslim convert who threatened the creators of the “South Park” cartoon series and then tried to join an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Zachary A. Chesser, 21, of Fairfax County, Va., pleaded guilty last year to supporting the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia and posting online threats against the “South Park” creators for an episode he perceived as insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. He was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

More related:

Italian police on Friday arrested six Moroccan men suspected of inciting hatred against Pope Benedict XVI for converting a Muslim journalist in Italy to Catholicism.

Stefano Fonsi, head of Brescia police's anti-terrorism squad in northern Italy, said the suspects allegedly banded together and met privately with the goal of stirring up religious hatred against non-Muslims, including the pope.

Investigators say they found literature exhorting Muslim immigrants against integrating into Italian society and saying the pope should be punished for having baptized the journalist during an Easter vigil ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica.

In memoriam Fabrizio Quattrocchi.

Hey, but you know who's hateful? Pamela Geller. Every time some Islamist nutball is in the news, SPLC needs to remind us of that.

Mind you, she's "anti-Islamic." Says so there in the headline. But a Muslim who calls Jews the progeny of pigs and dogs isn't anti-Semitic. No. He's anti-Zionist.

"One need not go beyond the name of this hate group, Stop the Islamization of America, to recognize the validity of the Southern Poverty Law Center's designation," said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

That would be the organization that is an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation. But whatever.

Hey, I'm tolerant of religious differences:

A voodoo ceremony that was supposed to bring good luck ended in death after a weekend sex romp in Brooklyn, sources said Friday.

A woman paid a voodoo priest $300 to perform a ritual that promised to change her life. She came to his fourth-floor apartment in Flatbush on Feb. 19, winding up in a bedroom, the sources said.

After the ritual, the woman and the priest - he's believed to be in his 60s - stripped off their clothes and started having sex. Flames from a series of candles the priest had placed around the bed ignited the sheets. And the clothes they recently shed also went up in flames.

To make matters worse, the man conducting the ceremony didn't immediately call 911. Instead, he used water from the bathroom sink to try to put out the fire.

A man sources said was the voodoo priest's roommate was ironing his pants when the fire started. He opened a window and a door leading to the building's hallway, creating wind gusts that "shot the flames back inside, creating a blowtorch effect," fire officials said.

That turned a manageable fire into an inferno.

It's just kind of too bad about whatsername:

Mary Feagin, a 64-year-old retired teacher, died in the five-alarm blaze. The medical examiner hasn't determined her cause of death. Twenty firefighters and 11 residents were injured and 47 families were left homeless.

"Hey, whatever happened to Ms. Feagin?"

"She died."

"Geez. How?"

"Well . . . "

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Walker: In 2009, Democratic Wisconsin state senators “rammed through a billion-dollar tax hike in 24 hours with no public input.”

PolitiFact:

Walker’s statement has three major points:

Who was involved

Walker is correct in saying "many of the same senators" who retreated to Illinois voted for Doyle’s 2009 budget-repair bill. Indeed, 12 of the 14 did; the only two who didn’t, Tim Cullen of Janesville and Chris Larson of Milwaukee, weren’t elected until November 2010.

What the bill involved

Was the Doyle bill "a billion-dollar tax hike"?

We found in a previous PolitiFact Wisconsin item that assessed the bill and how it was adopted that taxes, per se, would only be raised by an estimated $290 million.

However, if a new fee on hospital revenue was included -- and news reports often referred to the fee as a tax -- the take would be an estimated $1.2 billion over three years. Doyle and Democrats argued the change was welcomed by hospitals and allowed the hospitals to bring in a greater amount in federal money. But it was real money filling a real hole.

So, Walker’s claim of a billion-dollar tax hike is essentially accurate.

How it was adopted

Was Doyle’s bill "rammed through" in "24 hours with no public input"?

Again, Walker is essentially correct. No public hearing was held on Doyle’s bill, which was approved by the Legislature the day after it was introduced.

As Walker suggested, the Senate vote was strictly along party lines, with all Democrats voting for the bill and all Republicans voting against it.

(In the Assembly, all but two Democrats voted yes and all Republicans voted no.)

This is one budget-repair bill debate we can bring swiftly to a close.

Accused by Senate Democrats of rushing a vote on his repair bill, Walker fired back with his own charge. He said that two years earlier, many of those senators had rammed through a billion-dollar tax hike contained in a Democratic repair bill -- in 24 hours and without public input. The record is clear.

We rate Walker’s statement True.

So, it's not democracy when the other side does it. Only in point of fact, the Republicans have permitted more debate (61 hours in the Assembly).

Previously on POWIP:

Wisconsin Teacher Salaries in Context
Some Historical Context
Some More Historical Context
Delayed Day of Reckoning

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Man, Am I Dumb, Plus Rule 5 Action

I'm a messy guy. Even the desktop to my computer is generally a mess. Such a mess that I had trouble finding an outboard hard drive when I was trying to back up my system.

I was sick of it, so you know what I did? I made a folder for jpegs and other image files, for starters, because that was maybe 40% of what was on my desktop. And then, because I figured I'd collect everything in that folder and then move the other sorts of files out, I selected all. But I needed to unselect the new folder, so you know what I did?

DO YOU KNOW WHAT I DID?

I double clicked on the folder!

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT DID? DO YA? HUH?

It opened every file on my desktop!

[Insert long string of choice cursing here]

Anyway, I cleaned my friggin' desktop.

What? Oh, yeah. 12 gifs of Shakira and a shout out to Donal Douglas.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Are You Threatening Me?

In case you haven't subscribed to your morning dose of snark and analysis from The Daily Caller's DC Morning, here's a sample of why you should.

Q: What does Gabrielle Giffords have to do with the Wisconsin budget debate? -- A: Absolutely nothing! Nevertheless, last night marked the second time in a week that Giffords' name was dropped for emphasis. The scene was Wisconsin's lower house, where Assembly Republicans decided to hold a late-night vote on the budget repair bill that's currently stalled in the Wisconsin Senate. Assembly Democrats attempted to block the vote with "a motion to remove Republican Rep. Bill Kramer as speaker pro tem," reports Dave Weigel, but the motion failed. Democratic Rep. Gordon Hintz then suggested that if the budget repair bill passed, protesters might get violent. "Never underestimate the will of someone when their back is against the wall," he said. Democratic Rep. Terese Berceau took the threat a step further, "I think tonight we had a Gabrielle Giffords moment. I don't know if you heard that outside, but it shook me up." The Washington Post's Chuck Lane started the Giffords' name-dropping trend when he wrote, "If the brave Gabrielle Giffords could speak normally, what would she say about these events? I hope she would agree with me: This is a sad moment for liberalism, for the Democratic Party, and, really, for the whole country." Keep it classy, folks!

And, as I mentioned yesterday, the SPLC is doing all they can to keep that Loughner was a Teabagger meme alive.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Charlie Sheen Heals Himself With His Brain

Charlie went on the Alex Jones show yesterday, and demonstrated what a nut he is, provoking a couple of Ace posts and the mothballing of Two and a Half Men for the rest of the season. Which, as Andy Levy pointed out on Twitter yesterday, is probably a little bit of a drag for the cast and crew and their families.

Here's a link to the almost indecipherable gibberish that he spewed, in case you're interested. And, if you're a psychologist, you probably should be.

Meanwhile, Randy and Evi Quaid have received asylum in Canada from the Star Whackers. Whereas Ayaan Hirsi Ali did not, from a threat that exists, actually. But perhaps they'll repay Canadian kindness by providing local color.

I think Charlie needs to go stay with the Quaids until he gets his sh*t straightened out.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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A Gallery of Goons and Gimps

From Michelle Malkin, NSFW:

At AFSCME’s “solidarity” rally in Providence, Rhode Island on Tuesday, a cameraman was accosted by a fuming pro-union protester. The cameraman had his back to the goon, who appears to accost him unprovoked. The goon screams:

“I’ll f**k you in the ass, you faggot!”

Goonfrontation begins at 7:32

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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FDIC IndyMac Charges Tip of the Iceberg

Tossing out a couple of sacrificial malefactors and whitewashing the scope of the fraud.

You see I witnessed the FDIC, while in-charge of facilitating the sale of IndyMac in 2009, force a whistleblower to resign when they found out this person was leaking news to me. Reports I first broke at the New York Post (2008) detailed what the FBI investigation was focusing on, how the bank’s regulator (the Office of Thrift Supervision) missed red flags and fraud Perry allegedly executed with his family in IndyMac’s construction lending business. The whistleblower shared detailed emails sent to IndyMac’s executive team warning about mortgage putback risk, lax due diligence process in RMBS securitizations, losses that would affect capital levels and more.

While I watched most of my peers in the main street media react in surprised shock to the news, I knew this charge was long time coming. In fact, the SEC charge only details a portion of the fraud insiders at IndyMac detailed for me in 2008.

What I am troubled by is the role the FDIC played in removing an internal whistleblower to stop the information flow to the media. They muscled this person with threats of an internal investigation if they didn’t resign and give up their severance. In fact I watched Evan Wagner, IndyMac’s press man who continued to work for the FDIC when they took over, brag to a Southern California journalist that they’d just ousted their internal leak. Wagner is now at Union Bank.

This is an event that’s bothered me for some time, but for fear of drawing up more controversy for the whistleblower and my duty to protect their identity I didn’t speak out. If the Dodd-Frank whistleblower laws were in place in 08 they could have sought refuge and reward for their truth seeking efforts, but this person wasn’t motivated by financial rewards. I find it troubling the FDIC didn’t keep them on staff to sort out who was lying and destroying evidence inside the failed bank. Based on what I saw, the evidence should have led to more charges against the executives of IndyMac.

I hope Issa can hunt down all these whores.

These kinds of whistleblowers, and folks like J. Christian Adams and Gerald Walpin deserve our continued support. In fact, let's try to get a few of them elected to public office.

Related:

Government-controlled mortgage buyer Fannie Mae has posted a narrower loss of $2.1 billion for the October-December quarter of last year, and asked for an additional $2.6 billion in federal aid.

The new request is slightly more than the $2.5 billion it sought in the July-September quarter. The mortgage buyer also reported a $21.7 billion loss for all of 2010.

The government rescued Fannie Mae and sibling company Freddie Mac in September 2008 to cover their losses on soured mortgage loans. It estimates the bailouts will cost taxpayers as much as $259 billion.

Fannie Mae's October-December loss attributable to common stockholders works out to 37 cents a share. It takes into account $2.2 billion in dividend payments to the government. It compares with a loss of $16.3 billion, or $2.87 a share, in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Washington-based Fannie Mae and McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac own or guarantee about half of all mortgages in the U.S., or nearly 31 million home loans worth more than $5 trillion. Along with other federal agencies, they played some part in almost 90 percent of new mortgages over the past year.

Fannie and Freddie buy home loans from banks and other lenders, package them into bonds with a guarantee against default and sell them to investors around the world.

The government's $259 billion estimated final cost of bailing out the mortgage giants far exceeds the $133.7 billion they have received from taxpayers so far. That would make theirs the costliest bailout of the financial crisis.

Remember that the government has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in legal fees protecting the folks who most benefitted and are most responsible for these insane losses. And the Enron-style accounting doesn't end there.

Governor Walker's Budget Repair Bill passes, Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery:

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Gaddafi Asks for Help

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Letter from New Zealand

Trevor Loudon, who's given so much to the US, writes about the devastation in his home country:

Notes From a Disaster Zone

I sit here typing this as helicopters continually fly overhead. It feels a little like a Vietnam War movie. Copter after copter, some loaded with monsoon buckets - when I could go for for days and not see one. There are continual aftershocks. Huge jolting shakes - many over 5.0 on the Richter scale.

40% of our city of 400,000 is without power. 80% without running water or toilets.

There is real fear of water borne disease as sewer and water pipes are ruptured all over the city.

People are being asked to dig holes in their back gardens for toilets.

The family is currently boling water and filling bottles for friends who have no water.

There are massive queues in supermarkets, petrol stations and at emergency water stations. Farmers are bringing tanker trucks full of water to specified points in the city.

The central city looks like it has been bombed. Buildings are down everywhere. The City's tallest building, The Grand Chancellor Hotel is leaning against a neighboring building and could collapse at any time. Nobody knows how many more buildings the "domino effect' could take down.

The eastern suburbs are now a network of flooded buckled roads. The whole east side of Christchuch is built on swamp and water and sand is bubbling through everywhere as the quake and continual aftershocks have turned the ground to jelly. Many people in the East live week to week and they are suffering without power and water as food supplies run low.

Please read the whole thing and do what you can.

via IOTW

No Pasaron! on those Greek riots Frances Fox Piven would like to see emulated here.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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