I.R.S. Liens Governator's Properties to the Tune of $79K - Did Ahnawld Piss Someone off Perhaps?

The L.A. Times is reporting that the I.R.S. has attached a lean against all of Governator's assets:

Read the whole rather odd story here:

IRS files $79,000 tax lien against Schwarzenegger

One might wonder why Timmy (ooops I forgot to pay my taxes) Geithner's collection division would be so aggressive toward a quite friendly and symbiotic RINO? Well, just maybe it all relates back to Gerald Walpin's investigation into Barackophile and good buddy Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's alleged misuse of federal AmeriCorp funds. It appears Walpin's initial inquiries into Johnson's possible misappropriational conduct may well have been triggered at Arnie's request that the FEDS investigate allegations of Johnson's separate misuse of young female staffers.

Did Arnie step on some very sensitive toes to himself trigger the retributive reflex of the Obama Treasury Department's enforcers?

To refresh your recollection on this story, here's a link to my June 27, 2009 post Walpin's Kevin Johnson Investigation Initiated at Request of Governator ????

It certainly makes for interesting speculation...

NORWEGIAN GOVT "SHOCKED," JUST SHOCKED, BY IRAN GOVT'S SEIZURE OF IRANIAN CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER'S NPP MEDAL

Norwegian government ministers have announced that they are shocked at news that the Iranian government has seized the Nobel Peace medal of laureate Shirin Ebadi, demonstrating for all the world to see the true depth of the Norwegian capacity to remain completely oblivious to reality as they traverse the perpetual hallucination that is their socialist utopia.

Yes, that's right Norwegians, Iran has a very naughty government that doesn't play nicely in the sandbox of nations.

GET A FLIPPING GRIP YOU DOPES !!!!

Iran seizes rights lawyer's Nobel Peace medal
Nov 26, 8:23 PM (ET)
By NASSER KARIMI and IAN MacDOUGALL

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian authorities have confiscated Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi's medal, the human rights lawyer said Thursday, in a sign of the increasingly drastic steps Tehran is taking against any dissent.

In Norway, where the peace prize is awarded, the government said the confiscation of the gold medal was a shocking first in the history of the 108-year-old prize.

Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts in promoting democracy. She has long faced harassment from Iranian authorities for her activities - including threats against her relatives and a raid on her office last year in which files were confiscated.

The seizure of her prize is an expression of the Iranian government's harsh approach to anyone it considers an opponent - particularly since the massive street protests triggered by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 re-election.

Acting on orders from Tehran's Revolutionary Court, authorities took the peace prize medal about three weeks ago from a safe-deposit box in Iran, Ebadi said in a phone interview from London. They also seized her Legion of Honor and a ring awarded to her by a German association of journalists, she said.

Authorities froze the bank accounts of her and her husband and demanded $410,000 in taxes that they claimed were owed on the $1.3 million she was awarded. Ebadi said, however, that such prizes are exempt from tax under Iranian law. She said the government also appears intent on trying to confiscate her home.

Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to be awarded the peace prize and the first female judge in Iran, said she would not be intimidated and that her absence from the country since June did not mean she felt exiled.

"Nobody is able to send me to exile from my home country," she said. "I have received many threatening messages. ... They said they would detain me if I returned, or that they would make the environment unsafe for me wherever I am.

"But my activities are legal and nobody can ban me from my legal activities."

Ebadi has criticized the Iranian government's crackdown on demonstrations by those claiming the June vote was stolen from a pro-reform candidate through massive fraud.

Ebadi left the country a day before the vote to attend a conference in Spain and has not returned since. In the days after the vote, she urged the international community to reject the outcome and called for a new election monitored by the United Nations.

During the past months, hundreds of pro-reform activists have been arrested, and a mass trial has sentenced dozens to prison terms. Authorities also went after Ebadi's human rights center in Iran.

"After the election all my colleagues in the center were either detained or banned from traveling abroad," Ebadi said.

Calls to Iranian judiciary officials were not returned Thursday.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called the move "shocking" and said it was "the first time a Nobel Peace Prize has been confiscated by national authorities."

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry summoned Iran's charge d'affaires in Norway Wednesday to protest the confiscation, spokeswoman Ragnhild Imerslund said.

The Foreign Ministry also "expressed grave concern" about Ebadi's husband, who it said was arrested in Tehran and "severely beaten" earlier this fall, after which his pension and bank account were frozen.

Ebadi said her husband, Javad Tavassolian, and her brother and sister have been threatened many times by authorities pushing them to persuade her to end her human rights campaigning.

Ebadi has represented opponents of Iran's regime before but not in the mass trial that started in August of more than 100 prominent pro-reform figures and activists. They are accused of plotting to overthrow the cleric-led regime during the postelection turmoil.

The Iranian Embassy in Norway refrained from giving a comment.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee's permanent secretary, Geir Lundestad, said the move was "unheard of" and "unacceptable." He told The Associated Press that the committee was planning to send a letter of protest to Iranian authorities before the end of the week.

Ebadi said she planned to return to Iran when the time is right.

"I will return whenever it is useful for my country," she said. "Right now I am busy with my activities against violations of human rights in Iran and my international jobs."

Dodd's Approval Ratings in Graveyard Spiral as Connecticut Voters Disapprove of his Performance 54/40 %

According to poll numbers released by Quinnipiac University's Polling Institute on November 12th, Chris Dodd is in deep doodoo here in Connecticut:

Former Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons has an early lead in the Republican primary race for the 2010 U.S. Senate contest and runs better than any other challenger against Sen. Christopher Dodd, topping the Democratic incumbent 49 - 38 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon gets 43 percent to Sen. Dodd's 41 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Even potential Republican contenders with almost no name recognition and almost no Republican primary voter support give Dodd a run for his money

Simmons leads a Republican primary matchup with 28 percent, followed by McMahon with 17 percent. No other contender tops 9 percent and 36 percent are undecided.

Connecticut voters disapprove 54 - 40 percent of the job Dodd is doing, compared to a 49 - 43 percent disapproval September 17, and say 53 - 39 percent that he does not deserve reelection.

"After inching up in the polls for months, Sen. Christopher Dodd is sliding back down again on job approval. He continues to struggle with independent voters as 60 percent disapprove of the way he is handling his job. President Barack Obama is still popular with independents, but voters say that his support of Dodd won't affect their Senate vote," said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, PhD. To see the rest of this poll's interpretation, go here

HEY CHRIS!!! GOODBYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE, YOU VENAL SKUNK!

Astrologycat coughs up fur ball of Obama Voter Statistics

From AstologyCat come these gnarly few statistics:

Friday, November 6, 2009

We the people don't count

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota points out some interesting facts concerning last November's Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million
Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republicans won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years. If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

WSJ: 1 in 7 Mortgaged Homeowners in default or foreclosure; 1 in 10 last year at the same time.

As Obama's team of allegedly brilliant economic wizards go back to school for Master degrees in Fiddling While Rome Burns (apparently a must have credential in this administration), it turns out that all those Billions of TARP dollars that the Shrub and Congress shoved down our collective throats last fall have done ABSOLUTELY FLIPPING NOTHING to stem the tide of mortgage defaults and foreclosures. Hat tip goes to my friend Chris Fountain.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

More Homeowners Falling Behind on Mortgages

JAMES R. HAGERTY

About one in seven American households with mortgages is behind on payments or in foreclosure, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is up from about one in 10 a year ago.

The trade group reported Thursday that 14.4% of first-lien mortgages on one- to four-family homes in the third quarter were 30 days or more overdue or in the foreclosure process. That is the highest since the MBA began reporting such data in 1972 and works out to about 7.5 million households at risk of losing their homes. The percentage is up from 10% a year earlier and 7.3% two years ago.

Loan defaults have been rising swiftly for more than three years. At first, the problem largely reflected loose lending practices during the housing boom that allowed millions of people to buy homes they couldn't afford. Now the problem is compounded by rising unemployment, which hit 10.2% in October, the highest since 1982.

Unemployment may start gradually declining in next year's first half, said Jay Brinkmann, the MBA's chief economist. If so, he said, the percentage of loans that are delinquent could start to decline by mid-2010. But he said the number of loans in foreclosure is likely to remain elevated longer as banks struggle to figure out which borrowers might be able to stay in their homes if payments are lowered.

Largely because of efforts to sort through mounds of paperwork and figure out which borrowers qualify for lower payments, there has been a jump in the number of people far behind on payments but not yet in foreclosure. About 4.4% of the loans were 90 days or more past due but not in foreclosure in the latest quarter, up from 2.2% a year earlier. The states with an above-average rate of such "seriously delinquent" loans are Nevada (7.8%), Florida (6.1%), Arizona (6%), Michigan (5.9%), California (5.9%), Mississippi (5.5%), Georgia (5.1%) Indiana (5.1%), Illinois (4.8%) and Rhode Island (4.5%).

The states with the highest rate of home loans in foreclosure are Florida (12.7%), Nevada (9.4%), Arizona (6.2%), California (5.8%), New Jersey (5.5%), Illinois (5.3%) and Ohio (4.6%). North Dakota had the lowest rate at 1.1%.

For the rest of this piece on sorry state of affairs our economy is in, click here

It appears that 62% of likely voters have a far better understanding of how economies prosper than do the pointy headed HAHVAHD grads and Goldman Sachs alumni that Obama has polluted his economics team with.

With a Hat Tip to James Yanke who writes The Reaganite Republican, From today's Rasmussen Report:

To Create Jobs, Voters Say Cut Taxes and Stop Spending

As the policy debate has unfolded in Washington this year, voters have consistently believed that tax cuts would do more than increased government spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now that the nation’s unemployment rate has reached 10.2%, voters continue to hold that view.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 62% believe tax cuts are a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21% believe that additional stimulus spending is a more effective tool. Earlier this year, as the first stimulus package was being debated in Congress, 62% of voters wanted the plan to have more tax cuts and less spending.

Given a different choice today, 51% believe canceling the rest of the stimulus money would create more jobs while 32% say spending the money would be the better approach to job creation. These findings are consistent with earlier polling. Most Americans say that, generally speaking, increased government spending is bad for the economy. Earlier this year, before the unemployment rate had reached its current highs, 45% wanted to cancel the rest of the stimulus spending while just 36% disagreed.

While voters believe that tax cuts and stopping spending is the path to job creation, the Political Class disagrees. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of those in the Political Class say that spending the stimulus money would create more jobs than canceling the remaining stimulus spending. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the Political Class believes that new spending will create more jobs than tax cuts. Only 13% believe the tax cutting would do more (see more on the Political Class).

On both questions, there is also a substantial partisan divide. Democrats are fairly evenly divided on both questions while Republicans overwhelmingly believe that canceling the rest of the stimulus money and cutting taxes are better job creation tools than additional stimulus spending.

As for those not affiliated with either major party, just over 50% say that stopping spending and cutting taxes is the best way to create jobs.

The survey also found that most voters are skeptical about claims of government job creation. Most (58%) say it’s unlikely that the stimulus plan has saved or created more than 600,000 jobs.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters are opposed to a second stimulus package.

Yes Barack, notwithstanding Larry Summer's hallucinations to the contrary, tax cuts ALWAYS trump government spending as a driving force in job creation.

Human error... Yeah, THAT'S THE TICKET: "HUMAN ERROR"

Below, from ABC News comes a story on more bogus job figures on Recovery.gov. This time "saved and created" jobs are being attributed to non-existent congressional districts. The mistakes, of course, are being attributed to "human error." There's an old saying in data collection. "Garbage in, garbage out." One might reasonably wonder if the FIRED ACORN WORKERS of a few months back have been newly employed in "created" jobs at Recovery.gov.

Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist

Human Error Blamed for Crediting New Stimulus Jobs to Nonexistent Places

By JONATHAN KARL

Nov. 16, 2009—

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.

"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.

"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.

To read the rest of it. go here

Oh, by the way Mr. Pound, human beings have every so often also been known to lie, mislead, dissemble, cook books and generally obfuscate to make themselves or their BOZ look better when the REAL data tells a very different story from the picture they want the world to see. On the other hand, you might be right on this one, in as much as this administration is showing itself to be peopled almost entirely by woeful incompetents.

From ..."In a handbasket": Obama Not Watching

More than a bit busy today, so here is a great post from the very talented Miss. T.C. Shore writing "...In A Handbasket" who reflects on the W.H.'s official position that BOTUS isn't paying attention to yesterday's election returns.

Yeah! uh-huh! So Axelrod, where's that bridge you have for sale? Brooklyn?

OBAMA NOT WATCHING

After spending many days and millions of tax-payer dollars campaigning in Virginia and New Jersey, it's clear that Obama has no coat-tails.

One year ago, Obama handily won Virginia and New Jersey, and now his star-power has dimmed to a twinkle as both Virginia and New Jersey elected Republican candidates into high office.

Apparently the White House spin machine was not ready to explain the results. It was a nice touch not having to listen to Obama lecture us about how wonderful and bright he is and how he inherited every problem under the sun from the previous administration. The White House issued a statement after the GOP win saying the president was "not watching election returns and would not be making any remarks on the results." Bet me.

The key question now is: how are the Blue Dog Democrats going to view this big new political news? This was the first real poll of public sentiment about big government, big tax and spend, and the Obama-Pelosi-Reid drive to socialize America as fast as possible.

To be clear, these elections were not purely a referendum on Obama. Each candidate and each state has its own unique nuances. However, enough voters expressed that the Obama presidency played a role in their decision to affect the outcome. Clearly, independent voters, the ones who actually decide elections, are unhappy with the direction Obama is taking us.

Rule 5 Sunday - Carla Bruni | No Doubt the Hottest Political Spouse

Carla Bruni | First Lady of France
and No Doubt the Hottest Political Spouse in Recent History
(Perhaps Ever...)

NICK, you lucky HORN-DAWG !!!!