Occupy Oakland protestors burn an American flag found inside Oakland City Hall during an Occupy Oakland protest on the steps of City Hall, Saturday, January 28, 2012, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Beck Diefenbach)
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Mass arrests outside YMCA
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‘Kill the Police’: Cops Arrest Hundreds of Occupy Oakland Protestors After Street Clashes
Occupy D.C.'s kitchen was shut down this week over complaints of rats at the camp. (Image source: WAMU)
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Occupy D.C. Kitchen Shut Down Amid Rat Infestation
Even though he finished a distant forth in the latest Des Moines Register poll released Saturday , the same poll he topped only one month ago , Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich still believes the race in Iowa is far from over despite the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses set to kick-off in only two days. While fileding questions from reporters after Sunday mass, the former Speaker of the House took a jab at poll leader Mitt Romney. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on Gingrich’s sharp words about the Romney campaign: “’You figure out between 2007 and 2008 and 2011 and 2012 how many dollars per vote Romney has spent and it will rival [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg,’ Gingrich told reporters after attending a service at Saint Ambrose Cathedral. Bloomberg, Gingrich added, ‘did buy an election. Romney would buy the election if he could.’” While Romney has had a good deal more money to spend than Gingrich, POLITICO’s Alexander Burns notes that Romney has actually not spent as much this cycle when compared to his 2008 campaign, and there is no indication that he self-funded in the first three quarters of the year. In the final poll before the Iowa caucuses released Saturday night by the Register, Romney came in first with 24 percent support with Gingrich finishing fourth with 12 percent. The former Speaker of House seemed unfazed by the poll which accurately predicted the state’s 2008 caucus winners . “The most accurate part of the poll is that 41 percent could change their opinion, and I think that is an understatement,” Gingrich said Sunday. “This is wide open. I think the next 2 ½ days are going to be fascinating.”
(AP) Fire tore through a house in Stamford early Sunday, killing five people, making it among the worst Christmases in the city’s history, the mayor said. Officials said the fire, which was reported shortly before 5 a.m., killed two adults and three children. Two others escaped. Their names have not been released. “It is a terrible, terrible day for the city of Stamford,” Mayor Michael Pavia told reporters at a news briefing at the scene of the fire. “There probably has not been a worse Christmas day in the city of Stamford.” Acting Fire Chief Antonio Conte said attempts by firefighters to rescue the house’s occupants were pushed back by intense flames and heat. He said fire officials do not yet know the cause of the blaze and will not likely get clues for a few days until fire marshals can enter the house “and figure out what happened.” Conte said he did not know the conditions of the two survivors. “We had our hands full from the moment we arrived on the scene,” he said. A neighbor, Sam Cingari Jr., said he was awakened by the sound of screaming and that the house was entirely engulfed by flames. “We heard this screaming at 5 in the morning,” he said. “The whole house was ablaze and I mean ablaze.” Cingari says he does not know his neighbors, who he said bought the house last year and were renovating it. Power also was out in the neighborhood, he said. The neighborhood in Stamford, a city of 117,000 residents about 25 miles northeast of New York City, juts into Long Island Sound.
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Tragic: Five Killed in Christmas Morning House Fire in Stamford, Conn.
Michelle Obama’s Unsavory School Lunch Flop by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2011 The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama’s Nanny State intentions. Don’t take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief’s healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing. According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city’s “trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop.” In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama’s federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the menu for “beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads.” Sounds delectable in theory. But in practice, the initiative has been what L.A. Unified’s food services director Dennis Barrett plainly concludes is a “disaster.” While the Obama administration has showered the nation’s second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market — stoked not just by students, but also by teachers — is now thriving. Moreover, “(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away.” This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional improvements — from $2 million to $20 million alone in the last five years on fresh produce. This despite a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and 3,000 layoffs earlier this year. Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school lunch program “sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat.” The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students’ reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat and hard rice, one wonders how much of the “free” food will go down the hatch — or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging our children to eat healthier, of course. There’s nothing wrong with well-run, locally based and parent-driven efforts. But as I’ve noted before, the federal foodie cops care much less about students’ waistlines than they do about boosting government and public union payrolls. In a little-noticed announcement several months ago, Obama health officials declared their intention to use school lunch applications to boost government health care rolls. Never mind the privacy concerns of parents. Big Government programs “for the children” are never about the children. If they were, you wouldn’t see Chicago public school officials banning students from bringing home-packed meals made by their own parents. In April, The Chicago Tribune reported that “unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.” The bottom line? Banning homemade lunches means a fatter payday for the school and its food provider. Remember: The unwritten mantra driving Mrs. Obama’s federal school lunch meddling and expansion is: “Cede the children, feed the state.” And the biggest beneficiaries of her efforts over the past three years have been her husband’s deep-pocketed pals at the Service Employees International Union. There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more at all costs. In L.A., the district’s cafeteria fund is $20 million in the hole thanks to political finagling by SEIU Local 99. The union’s left-wing allies on the school board and in the mayor’s office pressured the district to adopt reckless fiscal policies awarding gold-plated health benefits to part-time cafeteria workers in the name of “social justice.” As one school board member who opposed the budget-busting entitlements said: “Everyone in this country deserves health benefits. But it was a very expensive proposal. And it wasn’t done at the bargaining table, which is where health benefits are usually negotiated. And no one had any idea where the money was going to come from.” Early next year, Mrs. Obama will use the “success” of her child nutrition campaign to hawk a new tome and lobby for more money and power in concert with her husband’s re-election campaign. It’s a recipe for more half-baked progressivism served with a side order of bitter arugula.
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Michelle Obama’s Unsavory School Lunch Flop
Today’s Morning Jolt has more about things going “boom” in Iran, Mayor Bloomberg boasting that he has an army, and… more Newt. Before I begin, that noted RINO Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt last night : Keep reading this post . . .
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If Newt Criticism Makes One a RINO, I Guess Steyn Is, Too
At IBD , ” An Occupy Movement Based On 99% Lies “: As cities rousted Occupiers, liberals claimed the movement has already succeeded by calling attention to income inequality. But all it’s really done is give the left an excuse to recycle bogus class-warfare claims. Soon after Mayor Bloomberg cleared the Occupiers out of New York’s Zuccotti Park, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein reassured his fellow liberals. “The movement has already scored some big wins,” he wrote, because it has “changed the national conversation.” The evidence? The press has written lots of stories about income inequality lately. Of course, counting news stories proves nothing. The liberal media love the Occupy crowd and what it stands for, and so it generously flooded the zone with adoring coverage, while carefully covering up the movement’s violence, depravity and anti-American radicalism. But then again, almost nothing that’s been written or said about the Occupy movement and its main issue has been true. Continue reading .
Current Mayor of Chicago and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is set to stump for his old boss this Saturday night. In what will be his first national speech since being elected to Mayor this past February, excerpts of Emanuel’s speech for the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner have been released in advance, showing the Mayor’s headstrong defense of the President whose first term policies Emanuel was largely behind implementing. Several excerpts from Emanuel’s speech: “The President did not make choices based on politics. He made them because of his principles. He did not make choices for the next election, he made them for the next generation.” “President Obama never tailored what he believed to the moment.” “In the next four years there will be more challenges and more crises that will determine the economic vitality of the middle class and the economic future of this country. Whose character, whose judgment, do you want in that office?” “Over the next four years, there will be a series of choices. It won’t be clear what the outcome will be. We will need leadership; we will need values as guideposts.” “To create true middle class security, we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. We must out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the world.” “President Obama believes in an America where hard work pays off, where responsibility is rewarded. He believes in an America where everyone, from Main Street to Wall Street, does their fair share. He believes in an America where we don’t have two rule books, one for those at the top, and another set for everyone else. President Obama believes in the idea that our country prospers when we’re all in it together.” The Jefferson-Jackson Dinner is the premier pre-caucus fundraiser for the Iowa Democratic Party. Rahm will be just be across town in Des Moines from six Republican challengers to Obama, speaking to social conservatives at the Family Leader Forum. Speaking on “an America where hard work pays off,” and Wall Street contributing their “fair share,” Emanuel appears to be harping on a populist message pushed by Obama in recent weeks to rally activist Democrats. The Chicago Tribune notes that Emanuel’s comments come after the Mayor has recently expressed frustration with Washington inaction and has repeatedly faced off in Chicago with unions that form the backbone of Democratic political activism. “I had the good fortune of being the president’s chief of staff, watching him up close, watching him exert the leadership that was necessary to stabilize a country that was spinning toward far-worse economic conditions than the ones he inherited if that wasn’t stopped and abated,” Emanuel told the Tribune before the speech. “And I think that’s a testament to character and I will address that from the unique role of having been both the chief of staff and now a chief executive.” Obama’s win in the 2008 Iowa Democratic Caucus legitimized his primary campaign and set him on course for the White House, as the Illinois Senator went on to carry the swing state in the general election. There has been a recent staff shake-up in the White House touching Emanuel’s new job, and old job. Bill Daley, son and brother to past Chicago Mayors, was demoted earlier this month from Emanuel’s former position as White House chief of staff. (H/T: Burns & Halberman POLITICO )
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Rahm Sticks Up for Barack: ‘President Obama Never Tailored What He Believed to the Moment’
AP – Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched an ardent defense of President Barack Obama in Iowa on Saturday, telling local Democrats that in order to create security for the middle class, “we just can’t cut our way to prosperity.”
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Chicago mayor rallies Obama support in Iowa
(AP)
