FLR

What you are supposed to believe, according to George Soros - multi-billionaire and ruthless evil genius.

Obama asks Congress for debt limit hike

President Obama formally notified Congress on Thursday of his intent to raise the nation's debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, two weeks after he had postponed the request to give lawmakers more time to consider the action.

Congress will have had 15 days to say no before the nation's debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.

FLR - What value are we receiving for our money? The larger the federal is the poorer this nation becomes. Time is ripe for massive cuts and removal of harmful departments.

41 Facts About The History Of Central Banks In The United States That Our Children Are No Longer Taught In School

The truth is that it is a privately-owned financial institution that is designed to ensnare the U.S. government in an endlessly expanding spiral of debt from which there is no escape. The Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression and the Federal Reserve is at the core of our current economic crisis. None of these things is taught to students in America's schools today.

Johnny Depp-Gate: What Did the Mainstream Media Know and When Did They Know It?

The story goes a little something like this. Over Halloween in 2009, during the depths of the Great Recession, the White House threw a lavish party for children from all walks of life, including local DC kids, military families, and friends of the President's two young daughters, Malia and Sasha. The theme was "Alice In Wonderland" and director Tim Burton, whose film based on the classic story was about to be released in theatres, attended, as did his star, Johnny Depp, who reportedly greeted guests in character and costume as the Mad Hatter.

FLR - You've got to see this freaky picture.

Tony Blankley, former editorial page editor of The Times, dies at 63

FLR - Tony Blankley was an insightful commentator and lived a remarkable life. He made frequent appearances on television political discussions, was a Reagan speechwriter and a childhood actor.

I was pleasantly surprised once when he personally responded to email comments I had made to him about one of his articles.

R.I.P. Tony, you were a good man.

Obama defies Congress with "recess" picks
Nominations could provoke constitutional fight

Pushing the limits of his recess appointment powers, President Obama on Wednesday bypassed the Senate to install three members of the National Labor Relations Board and a director for the controversial new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - moves Republicans said amounted to unconstitutional power grabs.

Mr. Obama said the appointments, which he previewed during a campaign-style speech in Ohio, were necessary because Senate Republicans have blocked him at every turn. But in making the move, he rejected three precedents, including two in which he played a part, that would have blocked the appointments.

"I refuse to take 'no' for an answer," Mr. Obama said in Shaker Heights, drawing applause from his audience. "When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them."

FLR - Apparently there is no need to respect opposing opinion in our government. Mr Obama seems to believe he should prevail in all situations even if it violates ethics, tradition or law.

Drunken Santas Terrorized Lower Manhattan During SantaCon, Locals Say

Thousands of drunken Santas terrorized Lower Manhattan when they flooded into the neighborhood for SantaCon earlier this month, openly flouting public drinking and urination laws, locals say.

Angry residents attended Community Board 1's Monday night meeting to complain about the latest incarnation of the annual pub crawl, whose participants have been allowed to grow more rowdy every year, they say.

"There was public urination, people vomiting all over the place, open containers and no police," said John Fratta, chairman of the Seaport/Civic Center Committee which plans to send an angry missive to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the 1st Precinct complaining about the lack of enforcement during SantaCon.

The committee said that the NYPD devoted more resources to Occupy Wall Street than to SantaCon, and asked police for a better response at the neighborhood's next expected pub-crawl on St. Patrick's Day.

"The mayor put so much power on Occupy Wall Street, he had Downtown under lock and key - but he forgot about Santa," said Ann DeFalco, a member of Community Board 1's Seaport/Civic Center Committee, at a meeting Monday night.

Residents said they saw unruly Santas buying six-packs of bottled beer on Fulton Street, then standing in the middle of the street drinking them and shattering the empty glass bottles on the ground.

The mayor's office referred questions Tuesday morning to the NYPD. The NYPD did not return requests for comment.

//- Merry Christmas...

Alarm as Dutch lab creates highly contagious killer flu

A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists - who now want to publish full details of how they did it.

The discovery has prompted fears within the US Government that the knowledge will fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to use it as a bio-weapon of mass destruction.

Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility.

The US Government is now taking advice on whether the information is too dangerous to be published.

"The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive," a senior scientific adviser to the US Government told The Independent, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The worst-case scenario here is worse than anything you can imagine."

For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact.

Dutch scientists carried out the controversial research to discover how easy it was to genetically mutate H5N1 into a highly infectious "airborne" strain of human flu. They believe that the knowledge gained will be vital for the development of new vaccines and drugs.

But critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory - as well as opening a Pandora's box for fanatical terrorists wishing to make a bio-weapon.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed hundreds of millions of birds since it first appeared in 1996, but has so far infected only about 600 people who came into direct contact with infected poultry.

What makes H5N1 so dangerous, though, is that it has killed about 60 per cent of those it has infected, making it one of the most lethal known forms of influenza in modern history - a deadliness moderated only by its inability (so far) to spread easily through airborne water droplets.

Scientists are in little doubt that the newly created strain of H5N1 - resulting from just five mutations in two key genes - has the potential to cause a devastating human pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.

Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantanamo Bay.

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."