It has started!!!
The Gloves are off
Fox News anchor taken off air after Obama 'terrorist fist jab' gaffe
Fox News anchor ED Hill has lost her show a week after suggesting Barack Obama and his wife Michelle's on-stage victory gesture could be seen as a "terrorist fist jab".
Hill, the anchor of Fox News show America's Pulse, made the comment last Friday after Obama and his wife affectionately bumped fists before his victory speech on becoming the Democratic candidate for president.
"A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently," said Hill in her show. "We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says."
According to US media reports Hill, who has been with Fox News Channel since 1998, has now lost her show although she is to stay with the network in an as yet undetermined capacity.
To read more http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/13/television.barackobama
I see a lot of "Terrorist fist jabs" in the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA, WNBA, LPGA, & many other sport too...Whitey
Friday, June 13, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Ann Arbor Hash Bash 08
This picture made it in the A2 News paper
Yep this is me at Hash Bash 2008
I felt like a rock star! So many people wanted to take my picture 
Friday, May 2, 2008
A Quote From A Brother
“Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to it’s people & illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue, & honor of it’s solders on the ground. Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send solders to die for illegal invasion they started. Somehow torture is tolerated. Somehow lying is tolerated. Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, & nonsense. Somehow nobody is accountable for this.”
Kevin Tillman
Brother of Pat Tillman
Kevin Tillman
Brother of Pat Tillman
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Gas Price May Soar To $10.00
Gas Price May Soar to Between $7 and $10 a Gallon
By DAN DORFMAN
Special to the SunApril 28, 2008
Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.
That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.
Gasoline nationally is in an accelerated upswing, having jumped to $3.58 a gallon from $3.50 in just the past week. In some parts of the country, including New York City and the West Coast, gas is already sporting a price tag above $4 a gallon. There was a pray-in at a Chevron station in San Francisco on Friday led by a minister asking God for cheaper gas, and an Arco gas station in San Mateo, Calif., has already raised its price to a sky-high $4.62.
In Manhattan, at a Mobil gas station at York Avenue and East 61st Street, premium gas is now $4.03 a gallon. Two days ago, it was $3.96. Why such a high price? "Blame the people at STOPEC (he meant OPEC) and the oil companies," an attendant there told me.
These increases are taking place before the all-important summer driving season, signaling even higher prices ahead.
That's also the outlook of the Automobile Association of America. "As long as the price of crude oil stays above $100 a barrel, drivers will be forced to pay more and more at the gas pump," a AAA spokesman, Troy Green, said.
Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.
The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.
Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.
While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).
Canadians are also being hit with rising gas prices. They are paying the American-dollar equivalent of $4.92 a gallon, and they're being told to brace themselves for prices above $5.65 a gallon this summer.
Early last year, with a barrel of oil trading in the low $50s and gasoline nationally selling in a range of $2.30 to $2.50 a gallon, Mr. Gaines — in an impressive display of crystal ball gazing — accurately predicted oil was $100-bound and that gasoline would follow suit by reaching $4 a gallon.
His latest prediction of $200 oil is open to question, since it would undoubtedly create considerable global economic distress. Further, just about every energy expert I talk to cautions me to expect a sizable pullback in oil prices, maybe to between $50 and $70 a barrel, especially if there's a global economic slowdown.
While Mr. Gaines thinks there could be a temporary decline in the oil price, he's convinced an overall uptrend is unstoppable. In fact, he thinks his $200 forecast could be conservative, and that perhaps $250 could be reached. His reasoning: a combination of shrinking supply and increasing demand, especially from China, India, and America.
Mr. Brodrick's $200 oil forecast is largely predicated on a combination of pretty flat supply and rip-roaring demand. Other key catalysts include surging demand in China and India, where auto sales are booming, and major supply disruptions in Nigeria and also in Mexico, our second-largest source of oil imports, where oil production has fallen off a cliff.
More factors include the ever-present danger of additional supply disruptions from volatile countries in the Middle East that are not our allies, and the unwillingness of SUV-loving Americans to trim their unquenchable thirst for foreign oil. Likewise, for the first time, emerging markets this year will use more oil than America.
To Mr. Brodrick, it all adds up to an ongoing energy bull market. His favorite plays are the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund ; United States Natural Gas Fund LP; Apache Corp.; Occidental Petroleum; Anadarko Petroleum, and Schlumberger.
Dandordan@aol.com
Gas was a buck 49 before Bush!!!
Thanx King George II
By DAN DORFMAN
Special to the SunApril 28, 2008
Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.
That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.
Gasoline nationally is in an accelerated upswing, having jumped to $3.58 a gallon from $3.50 in just the past week. In some parts of the country, including New York City and the West Coast, gas is already sporting a price tag above $4 a gallon. There was a pray-in at a Chevron station in San Francisco on Friday led by a minister asking God for cheaper gas, and an Arco gas station in San Mateo, Calif., has already raised its price to a sky-high $4.62.
In Manhattan, at a Mobil gas station at York Avenue and East 61st Street, premium gas is now $4.03 a gallon. Two days ago, it was $3.96. Why such a high price? "Blame the people at STOPEC (he meant OPEC) and the oil companies," an attendant there told me.
These increases are taking place before the all-important summer driving season, signaling even higher prices ahead.
That's also the outlook of the Automobile Association of America. "As long as the price of crude oil stays above $100 a barrel, drivers will be forced to pay more and more at the gas pump," a AAA spokesman, Troy Green, said.
Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.
The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.
Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.
While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).
Canadians are also being hit with rising gas prices. They are paying the American-dollar equivalent of $4.92 a gallon, and they're being told to brace themselves for prices above $5.65 a gallon this summer.
Early last year, with a barrel of oil trading in the low $50s and gasoline nationally selling in a range of $2.30 to $2.50 a gallon, Mr. Gaines — in an impressive display of crystal ball gazing — accurately predicted oil was $100-bound and that gasoline would follow suit by reaching $4 a gallon.
His latest prediction of $200 oil is open to question, since it would undoubtedly create considerable global economic distress. Further, just about every energy expert I talk to cautions me to expect a sizable pullback in oil prices, maybe to between $50 and $70 a barrel, especially if there's a global economic slowdown.
While Mr. Gaines thinks there could be a temporary decline in the oil price, he's convinced an overall uptrend is unstoppable. In fact, he thinks his $200 forecast could be conservative, and that perhaps $250 could be reached. His reasoning: a combination of shrinking supply and increasing demand, especially from China, India, and America.
Mr. Brodrick's $200 oil forecast is largely predicated on a combination of pretty flat supply and rip-roaring demand. Other key catalysts include surging demand in China and India, where auto sales are booming, and major supply disruptions in Nigeria and also in Mexico, our second-largest source of oil imports, where oil production has fallen off a cliff.
More factors include the ever-present danger of additional supply disruptions from volatile countries in the Middle East that are not our allies, and the unwillingness of SUV-loving Americans to trim their unquenchable thirst for foreign oil. Likewise, for the first time, emerging markets this year will use more oil than America.
To Mr. Brodrick, it all adds up to an ongoing energy bull market. His favorite plays are the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund ; United States Natural Gas Fund LP; Apache Corp.; Occidental Petroleum; Anadarko Petroleum, and Schlumberger.
Dandordan@aol.com
Gas was a buck 49 before Bush!!!
Thanx King George II
Friday, April 11, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Lucky Larry wants $12.3 billion more for 9/11
Lucky Larry wants $12.3 billion more for 9/11
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Like the proverbial bad penny, Lucky Larry Silverstein keeps popping up. He’s back and he’s bad again. Not content with the nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments he received to cover his losses at the World Trade Center, he is now seeking $12.3 billion in damages from the airlines and airport security companies for the 9/11 attack in a suit filed in 2004.
Not tainted enough by the fact that Silverstein & Partners took out a lease for 99 years in July of 2001 on the WTC, two months before the attack . . . not content Larry & Partners upped the insurance at that time to $3.5 billion and (presciently) to cover potential hits by airliners flown by “terrorist hijackers” . . .
Not content that Silverstein & Partners subsequently sued the insurers for $7 billion, considering the attack a double strike because separate liners hit Towers One and Two. Not content that Larry spent the next six years in litigation with the insurance companies, only to have the deal fortunately settled, brokered by then Governor Spitzer in 2007, yielding $4.55 to Lucky Larry and Partners . . .
Not content either that his personal stake in the lease was only some $14 million, the balance supplied by his partners. Not content that he made another $500 million on the destruction of his Tower 7, which he owned and quickly rebuilt bigger and better. Not content that no liner hit Tower 7 and that the fires were out, he announced at 3:30 p.m. on 9/11 that there had been so much pain and suffering that he and the NYFD decided to “pull it” -- Tower 7 . . .
Not content that in fact at 5 p,m,, not even two hours later . . . Tower 7 went down at the freefall speed of gravity in a matter of seconds neatly into its own footprint, a classic “internal demolition.” Not content that you can’t set up an internal demolition on a 47-story steel-framed building in less than two hours or two days, or even two weeks. Not content that his “smoking gun” has attracted the attention of every 9/11 critic around the world . . .
Not content that the BBC made an incredible gaffe as a TV journo of theirs, supposedly in New York, reported that Tower 7 had fallen, that is, 26 minutes before it actually fell and with a News24 “time stamp” video to prove it. Not content that even Google had to pull the video . . . Larry Silverstein, the Oliver Twist of 9/11 disaster, is back, asking for more, sir, more please. Incredible! What colossal chutzpah!
But hey, Larry’s got reasons; boy, does he have reasons. His lawyers aired them in the United States Southeastern District Court in Manhattan, the same court in which the 9/11 victims families have been plaintiffs for cases to sue the airlines and security companies, and by the way, where 90 families have been turned down for lawsuits and only two remain who haven’t taken the money and shut up, and where Ellen Mariani has been consistently turned down and continues to be . . .
Yet,Larry’s lawyers have come to ask the wonderful Judge Hellerstein for more, the same Hellerstein who asked all the families to take the money and “move on” and told them that “money was the universal lubricant . . ." What goes around comes around.
By the way, the total claims involved come to about $23 billion. Silverstein’s chunk could endanger claims from other businesses and property owners, defense lawyers say. Why, Donald Migliori himself, the lawyer for the victims’ families, said he was confident “that their claims would not be affected because they would take priority over the property claims,” as reported by the New York Times. So they won’t be taking food from widows’ and children’s mouths to feed Larry, not this week at least.
Nevertheless, Desmond Barry, a lawyer for the airlines, said that if Lucky Larry won his claims, “He could push the total claims beyond the amount of insurance that the airlines and security companies have available. 'There ain’t that much insurance,' Mr. Barry said."
Silverstein’s laundry list for the $12.3 billion goes like this, “$8.4 billion for the replacement of destroyed buildings and $3.9 billion in ‘other costs,’ including $100 million a year in rent to the Port authority and $300 million a year in lost rental income, as well as the cost of marketing and leasing the new buildings.”
Mr. Barry, the Times tells us, reminded Silverstein’s folks that he “had been more than compensated by the nearly $4.6 billion insurance settlement, reached after almost six years of litigation. He argued that Mr. S. was entitled to the market value of the property, which he said had been established by the $3.2 billion.”
Judge Hellerstein was skeptical about Mr. Silverstein’s claim, and asked why he hadn’t sucked up his losses by just “walking away.” Hellerstein asked, “What’s the nature of your recovery,” to which Larry’s lawyer, Mr. Williamson, answered, “For damages suffered by the events of 9/11, not value. Damages.” He claimed the lease required Silverstein to rebuild and keep on paying rent.
Hellerstein retorted, “And so I’m putting to you if you walked away from the lease, you would lose the value of the lease . . . Would you have a further obligation to pay money?” Williamson answered, “You have to examine that question . . . But to me that’s not the test of what are our damages.”
When Hellerstein pressed for a dollar figure on damages, not the “precise amount,” i.e., “some order of magnitude would be appropriate,” Williamson balked. Barry said, “I think their claim is $12.3 billion.” Williamson added, “Plus prejudgment interest,” To which Hellerstein “tartly replied, 'We shouldn’t forget that.'” They won’t let you, Alvin.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers added that even after many settlements, there are seven wrongful death and two injury cases remaining from the more than 90 filed. Migliori, the victims’ survivors’ lawyer, felt that the claims with property damage, including Lucky Larry and some insurance company looking to recoup payments, should allow the death and injury cases priority of payment of damages. Fair enough.
Judge Hellerstein passed on setting a trial date. He said that would be “fictitious,” yet set a deadline for fact-finding for Silverstein to offer more documentation of his claim -- or risk losing it. Any trials, by the way, seem to be more than a year away.
The real caveat here is that to win a case of that size for damages, Silverstein would have to go to court for discovery. Meaning his lawyers could bring in every fireman who heard a blast, Silverstein himself for his “pull” remark, and even Hizzoner Rudy Giuliani for saying that morning, at 9:15 to ABC’s Peter Jennings, on the street that someone told him the towers were coming down. In short, you could grill ass like the devil until you found out what really happened.
Bottom line, Larry could get a billion dollar bone thrown at him, a take-the-money and-shut-up bone. Or Larry could end up in cement shoes, for real or legally. After all, Larry knew, going into the lease purchase that the Towers were asbestos-laden bombs, the first 60 floors sprayed with the building material when built from 1968 to '72. And they were supposed to be taken down eventually, according to a 1971 New York Council ban on asbestos.
Obviously, the buildings couldn’t be legally taken down by explosion or implosion. They would have to be taken down piece by piece. The cost would be in the billions by today’s standards. But there was another way to take them down, wasn’t there?
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3135.shtml
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Like the proverbial bad penny, Lucky Larry Silverstein keeps popping up. He’s back and he’s bad again. Not content with the nearly $4.6 billion in insurance payments he received to cover his losses at the World Trade Center, he is now seeking $12.3 billion in damages from the airlines and airport security companies for the 9/11 attack in a suit filed in 2004.
Not tainted enough by the fact that Silverstein & Partners took out a lease for 99 years in July of 2001 on the WTC, two months before the attack . . . not content Larry & Partners upped the insurance at that time to $3.5 billion and (presciently) to cover potential hits by airliners flown by “terrorist hijackers” . . .
Not content that Silverstein & Partners subsequently sued the insurers for $7 billion, considering the attack a double strike because separate liners hit Towers One and Two. Not content that Larry spent the next six years in litigation with the insurance companies, only to have the deal fortunately settled, brokered by then Governor Spitzer in 2007, yielding $4.55 to Lucky Larry and Partners . . .
Not content either that his personal stake in the lease was only some $14 million, the balance supplied by his partners. Not content that he made another $500 million on the destruction of his Tower 7, which he owned and quickly rebuilt bigger and better. Not content that no liner hit Tower 7 and that the fires were out, he announced at 3:30 p.m. on 9/11 that there had been so much pain and suffering that he and the NYFD decided to “pull it” -- Tower 7 . . .
Not content that in fact at 5 p,m,, not even two hours later . . . Tower 7 went down at the freefall speed of gravity in a matter of seconds neatly into its own footprint, a classic “internal demolition.” Not content that you can’t set up an internal demolition on a 47-story steel-framed building in less than two hours or two days, or even two weeks. Not content that his “smoking gun” has attracted the attention of every 9/11 critic around the world . . .
Not content that the BBC made an incredible gaffe as a TV journo of theirs, supposedly in New York, reported that Tower 7 had fallen, that is, 26 minutes before it actually fell and with a News24 “time stamp” video to prove it. Not content that even Google had to pull the video . . . Larry Silverstein, the Oliver Twist of 9/11 disaster, is back, asking for more, sir, more please. Incredible! What colossal chutzpah!
But hey, Larry’s got reasons; boy, does he have reasons. His lawyers aired them in the United States Southeastern District Court in Manhattan, the same court in which the 9/11 victims families have been plaintiffs for cases to sue the airlines and security companies, and by the way, where 90 families have been turned down for lawsuits and only two remain who haven’t taken the money and shut up, and where Ellen Mariani has been consistently turned down and continues to be . . .
Yet,Larry’s lawyers have come to ask the wonderful Judge Hellerstein for more, the same Hellerstein who asked all the families to take the money and “move on” and told them that “money was the universal lubricant . . ." What goes around comes around.
By the way, the total claims involved come to about $23 billion. Silverstein’s chunk could endanger claims from other businesses and property owners, defense lawyers say. Why, Donald Migliori himself, the lawyer for the victims’ families, said he was confident “that their claims would not be affected because they would take priority over the property claims,” as reported by the New York Times. So they won’t be taking food from widows’ and children’s mouths to feed Larry, not this week at least.
Nevertheless, Desmond Barry, a lawyer for the airlines, said that if Lucky Larry won his claims, “He could push the total claims beyond the amount of insurance that the airlines and security companies have available. 'There ain’t that much insurance,' Mr. Barry said."
Silverstein’s laundry list for the $12.3 billion goes like this, “$8.4 billion for the replacement of destroyed buildings and $3.9 billion in ‘other costs,’ including $100 million a year in rent to the Port authority and $300 million a year in lost rental income, as well as the cost of marketing and leasing the new buildings.”
Mr. Barry, the Times tells us, reminded Silverstein’s folks that he “had been more than compensated by the nearly $4.6 billion insurance settlement, reached after almost six years of litigation. He argued that Mr. S. was entitled to the market value of the property, which he said had been established by the $3.2 billion.”
Judge Hellerstein was skeptical about Mr. Silverstein’s claim, and asked why he hadn’t sucked up his losses by just “walking away.” Hellerstein asked, “What’s the nature of your recovery,” to which Larry’s lawyer, Mr. Williamson, answered, “For damages suffered by the events of 9/11, not value. Damages.” He claimed the lease required Silverstein to rebuild and keep on paying rent.
Hellerstein retorted, “And so I’m putting to you if you walked away from the lease, you would lose the value of the lease . . . Would you have a further obligation to pay money?” Williamson answered, “You have to examine that question . . . But to me that’s not the test of what are our damages.”
When Hellerstein pressed for a dollar figure on damages, not the “precise amount,” i.e., “some order of magnitude would be appropriate,” Williamson balked. Barry said, “I think their claim is $12.3 billion.” Williamson added, “Plus prejudgment interest,” To which Hellerstein “tartly replied, 'We shouldn’t forget that.'” They won’t let you, Alvin.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers added that even after many settlements, there are seven wrongful death and two injury cases remaining from the more than 90 filed. Migliori, the victims’ survivors’ lawyer, felt that the claims with property damage, including Lucky Larry and some insurance company looking to recoup payments, should allow the death and injury cases priority of payment of damages. Fair enough.
Judge Hellerstein passed on setting a trial date. He said that would be “fictitious,” yet set a deadline for fact-finding for Silverstein to offer more documentation of his claim -- or risk losing it. Any trials, by the way, seem to be more than a year away.
The real caveat here is that to win a case of that size for damages, Silverstein would have to go to court for discovery. Meaning his lawyers could bring in every fireman who heard a blast, Silverstein himself for his “pull” remark, and even Hizzoner Rudy Giuliani for saying that morning, at 9:15 to ABC’s Peter Jennings, on the street that someone told him the towers were coming down. In short, you could grill ass like the devil until you found out what really happened.
Bottom line, Larry could get a billion dollar bone thrown at him, a take-the-money and-shut-up bone. Or Larry could end up in cement shoes, for real or legally. After all, Larry knew, going into the lease purchase that the Towers were asbestos-laden bombs, the first 60 floors sprayed with the building material when built from 1968 to '72. And they were supposed to be taken down eventually, according to a 1971 New York Council ban on asbestos.
Obviously, the buildings couldn’t be legally taken down by explosion or implosion. They would have to be taken down piece by piece. The cost would be in the billions by today’s standards. But there was another way to take them down, wasn’t there?
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3135.shtml
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