Pat Buchanan Praises Putin NYT Op-ed: 'Outstanding Piece'

At least one Republican liked Russian President Vladimir Putin's New York Times op-ed urging the United States not to attack Syria: Pat Buchanan.

"Candidly, it was an outstanding piece," Buchanan told Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren. Buchanan said Putin made a better case against U.S. strikes in Syria than President Barack Obama made in favor of them a night earlier.

Putin laid out a danger of having Syria's chemical weapons fall into the hands, Buchanan said: jihadists and al-Qaida who have infiltrated some of the rebel groups in Syria.

Putin actually wrote in his piece that he believes it was rebels, and not the Syrian government, who used poison gas on civilians last month.

"I don't think Assad is any threat to use chemical weapons against the United States or Israel," Buchanan said. "As for some of the people in the rebel community, I think they are a real threat to use them."

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Baywater Animal Rescue Invites Community

4930 Bucktown Rd. Cambridge, MD 21613

Baywater Animal Rescue Invites CommunityTo Participate in Development and

Design of Proposed Adoption Center

For more information, contact Suzette Stitely at 410-228-3090.

sstitely@baywteranimalrescue.org 

(Cambridge, MD) -- Baywater Animal Rescue, the Mid-Shore’s premiere No Kill animal rescue and adoption agency, announced the first phase of a multi-year plan todesign, finance, and construct a revolutionary pet adoption center and community park inCambridge, Maryland. Featuring best practices in sustainable design and pet sheltering, the proposed center will be developed with input from community leaders, educators, electedofficials, animal lovers and adoptive ‘pet parents’ participating in a series of workshops and professionally facilitated focus groups beginning September 28 and culminating November 2.

Baywater’s Board Chair, Jerilyn Gibbs led the Board in developing this novel approach after theonce high kill animal shelter was transformed into the serene, No Kill adoption and advocacyorganization it is today. “We envision a progressive, peaceful and park-like place with space for people, pets and prospective ‘adoptees’ to connect, play and experience the tremendous benefitsof pet ownership” Gibbs said, adding, “such benefits include unconditional love, a sense of responsibility, exercise, and social development.”

Beginning today, the public is invited to visit Baywater Animal Rescue’s website or Facebook page and recommend activities that they would like to see take place at the new center. Facilitated focus groups to solicit program ideas from those involved with children and seniorswill be held Saturday, September 28 at the offices of the Dorchester County Chamber of Commerce. “There are thousands of animal lovers and advocates in Dorchester County,” Gibbssaid, “We want to include their vision for a new center and obtain specific suggestions for activities that will enhance not only the animal adoption process but create pet-centriccommunity programs that benefit people. To contribute your ideas, visit www.baywateranimalrescue.org and click on “Contact Us”. For information on Baywater Animal Rescue and to learn about opportunities for joining the organization’s volunteer leadership, contact Jerilyn Gibbs at 410-901-1368.

Texas Governor Jolts Maryland’s Anti-Business Politicians

Maryland Lt. Governor candidate and state delegate Jeannie Haddaway said Texas Governor Rick Perry’s media onslaught of the state’s business climate and job growth potential is well-deserved as the David Craig campaign for Governor released today a comparison of the two states’ business climates according to third-party sources.

Maryland’s average ranking is 32 compared to Texas’s 4 when compared to other states.  Preventing Maryland’s free fall to the bottom quintile overall in the national business climate comparisons are factors including quality of life, education attainment levels and proximity to research and development facilities such as universities and federal government installations.

“Texas Governor Rick Perry understands something that the O'Malley-Brown Administration is in denial about -states compete with one another for jobs and economic development,” said Haddaway.  “Raising taxes, fees and tolls 40 times that will remove an additional $9.5 billion out of the private sector economy by 2014 sends a loud message to other governors who are concerned about job growth that Maryland is easy pickings.”  

The O’Malley – Brown Administration frequently cite narrow metrics in categories other than tax burdens in order to avoid responsibility for the damage they have caused in driving away small businesses at rates that are among the highest in the region and have left the state with just three Fortune 500 companies.  These other metrics are largely based on benefits derived from world-class universities and a high concentration of research and development activity stemming from the post-World War II expansion of the federal government.

“Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown have absolutely nothing to do with the number of PHD’s living in Maryland nor the federal government and university-sector involvement in medical research, cyber-security and information technology that has been going on for years. Yet they take credit for it every day as if they created Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health and Fort Meade,” said Haddaway.  “I am very concerned that as the federal government downsizes due to record debt, that ever-increasing numbers of working Marylanders are going to be left behind.”

Financial service firms, business media outlets, think tanks and site selection consultants routinely rank states’ economic development potential according to a variety of factors.  The Craig campaign released the most recent annual business climate studies from Chief Executive Magazine, CNBC, Forbes, Moody’s and the Tax Foundation. Averaged together, Maryland falls 28 notches below Texas.  

In some cases a comparison is not even possible, since Maryland is not included in top-performing states in two reports issued this summer.  According to corporate relocation industry media outlets Area Development Online and Site Selection magazine, Texas ranks number one in the country.

Harford County Executive David Craig said the Lt. Governor will have a meaningful role in his Administration with economic development being a much-needed focus.
 
“Governor Perry’s visit to Maryland is a wake-up call to every anti-business politician in the state,” said Craig. “The rain tax alone has become a national embarrassment and one of the most blatant anti-business policies Marylanders have ever seen. My Administration will review, reduce or repeal any tax, fee and toll that impede job growth."

‘I’M GOING TO CUT YOU OFF RIGHT THERE’: CNN ANCHOR CALLS OUT OUSTED COLORADO DEMOCRAT FOR BLAMING RECALL ON ‘VOTER SUPPRESSION’

Refusing to accept her defeat gracefully, recalled Colorado state Sen. Angela Giron appeared on CNN Thursday to blame her embarrassing ouster on “voter suppression.” Earlier this week, Colorado residents voted to recall Giron and Democratic Senate President John Morse over a number of gun control laws they helped pushed through the Legislature.

“We know what really happened here. Yes, we had the strong NRA and you have a person like Mr. Head, but what this story is really about, it’s about voter suppression,” Giron said.

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Crime Numbers Continue Decline, But Weapons Spike Sustains

Resort crime numbers for August continue to show a decrease in police activity and demand for service, with a few upward trends in certain areas that the Ocean City Police Department says it will investigate as the season winds to a close.

Service calls for August were up 1.8 percent over August of 2012, with 12,383 calls versus 12,757 last year, according to OCPD numbers released at this week’s Police Commission meeting.

However, if routine operations, such as traffic stops and business assistance requests, are pulled from the statistics, service calls actually drop to 8,400 versus 8,644 last August, a 2.8 percent decrease.
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Troopers Make Prostitution Arrest At Claymont Massage Parlor

Location: Body Work Health Spa, 3501 Philadelphia Pike, Claymont, DE

Date of Occurrence: Thursday, September 12, 2013

Defendant, Charges, and Bail Information:
Fuzi Zhang, 49, of Claymont, DE (photo attached)
Prostitution
Released after receiving a criminal summons.

Resume:
Claymont – Troopers charged a Claymont woman with prostitution yesterday after completing an investigation into the Body Work Health Spa, 3501 Philadelphia Pike.

The investigation began Wednesday morning when an undercover detective arrived at the center for a massage. While performing the massage the masseuse, Fuzi Zhang, 49, offered to perform a sex act in exchange for cash. The detective refused and left the business.

The next day Troopers executed a search warrant at the business, recovering protection paraphernalia, and took Zhang into custody. She was issued a criminal summons for prostitution and released.

LEGENDARY ROCK STAR EVISCERATES MEDIA IN BOLD DEFENSE OF TIM TEBOW: ‘THEY’RE A**HOLES’

Gene Simmons, the legendary rock star and frontman of KISS, came to Tim Tebow’s defense, saying the press has treated him unfairly because of his religious beliefs.

“He’s got a religious passion, as well he should, we’re in America,” Simmons told Radio.com this week. “He’s proud to be a Christian, what’s wrong with that? And yet, with sports media and pop culture media, they make fun of his religion. Really? In America? If he was wearing a burqa, they wouldn’t dare say anything. But if you’re a Christian, you get to be picked on? What the hell?”
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Eric Holder, IRS Officials Coached Tax-Exempt Black Ministers On How To Engage In Political Activity

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status.

Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event.

“We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS,” said then-CBC chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri. “In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there. We’re going to have Attorney General Eric Holder there…the ACLU.”

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The Not-Quite-Free State: Maryland Dragged Its Feet On Emancipation During Civil War

Maryland calls itself the Free State, but it was in no hurry to give up slavery during the Civil War.

Elsewhere in the country, antislavery measures progressed rapidly. Congress freed the slaves in the District in 1862, compensating their owners. The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in the states that had seceded, went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863. But Maryland didn’t act until 1864, when it held a referendum — and even then, the outcome wasn’t at all certain.
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Students Hear Muslim Poem Instead Of Pledge Of Allegiance On 9/11

On Wednesday, the 12th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the principal at Concord-Carlisle High School in the suburbs of Boston read a Muslim poem to the entire school instead of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Principal Peter Badalament has since apologized for the oversight. “We had the well-being of students at the forefront of our thinking when we chose to acknowledge 9/11 by reading a poem that focused on cross-cultural understanding rather than unsettling words and images associated with the event,” the principal’s apology explained.

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Assateague Cleanup Planned For Sept. 21

BERLIN — The Assateague Island Coastal Cleanup will be held on Saturday, Sept. 21, at Assateague Island National Seashore and Assateague State Park.

The event begins at 9 a.m. at the North Beach Parking Lot on Assateague Island National Seashore, and usually ends by 11 a.m. This event is part of the worldwide cleanup hosted by the Ocean Conservancy.

Free T-shirts will be provided to volunteers (while supplies last) by Delmarva Power. Bring your gloves, bug spray, sunscreen and water. Trash bags will be provided and volunteers will be assigned to a cleanup location and provide a tally sheet for tracking what has been collected.
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NSA Disguised Itself As Google To Spy, Say Reports

If a recently leaked document is any indication, the US National Security Agency -- or its UK counterpart -- appears to have put on a Google suit to gather intelligence.

Here's one of the latest tidbits on the NSA surveillance scandal (which seems to be generating nearly as many blog items as there are phone numbers in the spy agency's data banks).

Earlier this week, Techdirt picked up on a passing mention in a Brazilian news story and a Slate article to point out that the US National Security Agency had apparently impersonated Google on at least one occasion to gather data on people. (Mother Jones subsequently pointed outTechdirt's point-out.)

Brazilian site Fantastico obtained and published a document leaked by Edward Snowden, which diagrams how a "man in the middle attack" involving Google was apparently carried out.

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O’Malley Slow To Commute Death Sentences

ANNAPOLIS — Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, an outspoken death penalty opponent considering a 2016 presidential run, has yet to commute the sentences of the state’s five death row inmates despite his role in pushing a repeal of capital punishment that takes effect next month.

The Democrat tried for years to push a repeal through the Legislature but struggled to rally votes in the divided Senate, where the chamber’s president is a death penalty supporter. Now that it’s passed, O’Malley — who signed the measure in May — has said only that he would consider commuting the five inmates’ sentences to life in prison on a case-by-case basis once a request is made. So far, none of the death-row inmates has made one.
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Senate Demands Answers On EPA’s Armed Raid Of Alaskan Gold Mine

Republican senators are demanding answers from the Environmental Protection Agency after agency officials participated in an armed raid of gold mines near Chicken, Alaska.

According to reports, in late August agents of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force swarmed the mine in groups of four to eight and even went so far as to wear body armor and carry guns while investigating a supposed violation of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. No arrests were made in the raid and no citations were issued.

“Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say POLICE emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. “Dick” Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch.

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Md. Claimed $20.6M In Unallowable Medicaid Costs

ANNAPOLIS — Maryland claimed at least $20.6 million in unallowable Medicaid costs and should pay the money back, a federal audit report released Friday says.

The report by the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found Maryland’s health department did not comply with federal and state requirements when it claimed costs for residential habilitation services under its Community Pathways waiver program. Residential habilitation services help people with disabilities live in a community setting. The waiver provides home and community-based services to people with developmental disabilities in group homes, alternative living units or individual family care homes.
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NEW EMAILS RAISE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT DISGRACED IRS OFFICIAL: THE TEA PARTY ISSUE IS ‘VERY DANGEROUS’

Newly-released emails between disgraced Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and her staff may contradict earlier claims that the agency’s harsh treatment of conservative groups was not politically motivated.

One email shows Lerner, then the director of the tax-exempt organizations division, advising her staff in February 2011 that a Tea Party matter is “very dangerous,” and is something “Counsel and [Lerner adviser] Judy Kindell need to be in on.”

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Berlin Wind Turbine Back On Track

BERLIN — A few technical setbacks have delayed the construction of Berlin’s first wind turbine but all bugs have been eliminated and blades should be spinning this November.
The snag came this summer while testing materials that would be used in the turbine, according to Doug Richard, owner of DDU Magnetics. However, there was a silver lining as a probe into the malfunctions led to new discoveries.

“We were developing the wind turbine by doing reliability testing in Chicago and we had some failures of some of the components, and we’ve worked those issues out and the result of our research resulted in another US patent,” he told the Town Council Monday.
All “technical setbacks” have since been resolved, added Richard. Luckily, they were caught pretty early which is why component testing is done before any construction begins, he said, since it can be much more difficult to address problems once the 50kw turbine is built.
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STATE DEPT. SUGGESTS BENGHAZI SURVIVORS DON'T WANT TO TESTIFY, *UPDATE* ISSA'S COMMITTEE RESPONDS

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki did not directly deny to reporters Wednesday that Benghazi survivors were being withheld from testifying before Congress, suggesting instead that House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is mistaken to assume any of the survivors do want to testify.

Psaki went on the defensive Wednesday when Associated Press reporter Matt Lee asserted that she was giving contradictory statements concerning the Benghazi survivors. Psaki said these survivors were still involved in the criminal investigation surrounding the attacks which happened a year ago Wednesday, and it would endanger the lives of the survivors and their families to reveal their identities.

Psaki started off by saying that the State Department is "not preventing... any employees who wish to tell their story from doing so."

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NPR Offering Buyouts To Cut Staff By 10 Percent

NPR said Friday that it was offering across-the-board buyouts in hopes of cutting its staff by 10 percent and eliminating its deficit.

The buyouts, which are to be offered across the entire public radio organization, were approved by NPR's board of directors to help with a projected operating deficit of $6.1 million.

NPR, formerly known as National Public Radio, also announced Friday that Paul Haaga Jr., a board member since 2011, will take over as acting president and CEO effective Sept. 30. A search committee has been appointed to find a permanent replacement.
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Big Business Pushes Congress For More Foreign Workers While Laying Off Americans

The Big Business lobby stepped up its game earlier this week when human resource officers from more than 100 large corporationssent a letter to House Leadership pushing for an immigration bill that would grant a blanket amnesty and provide dramatic increases in the number of work permits given to new foreign workers each year. It coincided with a "Day of Action" organized by FWD.us - the organization co-founded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

A few of the companies that signed the letter included: General Electric, Disney, Marri ott, Hilton, McDonalds, Wendy's, Coca-Cola, Cheesecake Factory, Cisco, and Verizon.

Last week's monthly unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics depicted a declining situation for American workers. More than half a million working-aged Americans left the labor force, raising the total number to more than 90 million. Plus, a slightly better report from July was revised to show that only 104,000 new jobs were created that month compared to the 162,000 jobs first thought. In June, BLS reported that 195,000 jobs had been created, but last week's report revised the number down to 172,000.

Compare those new job numbers with the125,000 new work permits issued each month to foreign workers.

Looking at just the sampling of companies that signed onto this week's letter, many fall into service occupations, including retail, food service, and hospitality. And yet, according the August jobs report, the unemployment rate for Americans who consider themselves in the service industry is 8.4% - more than a full percentage point above the national rate. In production and transportation (an industry Coca-Cola might fall into), the unemployment rate is at 8.5%.

As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) pointed out this week in an op-ed published for The Hill, there's a huge disconnect between business and the labor market. He wonders why so many in Congress are so eager to pass a bill that puts the interests of the business community, illegal aliens, and millions of foreign citizens ahead of the American people. Read more on this op-edhere.

Byron York, a political columnist for theWashington Examiner, also noted that many of the businesses that signed onto the letter have laid off thousands of workers in recent years. He notes that Hewlett-Packard laid off 29,000 employees just last year. Now they want more foreign workers. Cisco has already laid off 8,000 employees and announced plans to lay off 4,000 more. They want more foreign workers. Marriott has announced that they're laying off "thousands" of workers. They, too, want more foreign workers.

Why many in Congress choose to ignore these facts is unknown, but with your help, we'll help them see the full picture. We've posted new faxes on your Action Board to send to your Three Members of Congress. These faxes tell your Members about Byron York's article and attaches a copy of the article to the fax. Please visit your Action Board today and send these faxes!