[Photo by SYNDPROD] WASHINGTON POST: NEW DELHI – Police in India suspect that David Coleman Headley, a man with Philadelphia ties recently arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges, conducted scouting missions of the targets in last November’s attacks in Mumbai, including the city’s main train station, the popular Leopold Cafe, and the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi Trident hotels. Hotel records show that Headley stayed in both hotels in 2007, authorities said. He also allegedly posed as a Jew to visit one of the other eventual targets, Chabad House, home to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish center, said a […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Four Year Wait For Health Care Reform To Kick In Is Political Suicide
INQUIRER: His biggest concern is with the timetables of the two bills. Most of the House version does not go into effect until 2013. In a move meant to reduce costs, the Senate bill waits until 2014. “To me, this is a huge mistake,” Starr said. While some important provisions that would affect coverage for young adults and people who cannot buy insurance because of health problems take effect earlier, “most of the uninsured will not get coverage from the Senate bill for more than four years.” That leaves Democrats with a political problem — few results to show voters […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Private equity firms buy undervalued or under-appreciated companies, impose short-term improvements and sell them for a fast profit. Some of the companies they’ve bought include Hertz, La Quinta, Dunkin Donuts, and Toys R Us. Josh Kosman, a private equity expert, says that the way the firms have been able to buy these businesses — through leveraged buyouts — means the majority of the money for the buyout has come from loans that the firms dump on the company they’re supposedly fixing. Now burdened with debt, many of those companies owned by private equity firms are in danger of […]
WEEK IN REVIEW: Scrapple TV News
All the news that shits. With your host, A.P. Ticker.
WHY WE LOVE ABE: The $60,000 Letter Lincoln Sent To Kid’s School Teacher Who Accused Kid Of Lying About Having Met The Commander & Chief
BBC: A letter written by former US President Abraham Lincoln to a schoolboy nearly 150 years ago is to go on sale for $60,000 (£36,000) in Philadelphia. George Patten was with his journalist father when both met the commander-in-chief. The American Civil War leader wrote after the eight-year-old was mocked by his disbelieving classmates. The handwritten signed note confirms the pair met and was sent two weeks after the president’s inauguration. The letter reads: “Whom it may concern, I did see and talk with master George Evans Patten, last May, at Springfield, Illinois. Respectfully, A Lincoln.” Lincoln put pen to […]
BIG BROTHERLY LOVE: Philly Admin. Of Indymedia Bucks Spooky Fed Fishing Expedition, Lives To Tell
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY On January 30th, 2009 Kristina Clair — a Linux administrator living in Philadelphia, who just happens to share server space with Indymedia.us, a left-leaning online news aggregator — received a subpoena from a federal prosecutor in Indiana demanding the web site’s visitor logs in conjunction with an undisclosed grand jury investigation. Specifically, the visitor log for June 25th, 2008. The subpoena did not just ask for specific names or IP addresses; instead it demanded the names and IP addresses of all 10,000-plus people who visited the site on that day, where they came […]
INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT: Timothy Geithner Held The Door While Wall Street Robbed The Store
[Artwork by STEVE BRODNER] HUFFINGTON POST: A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs. The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way. Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring […]
EXPERTS AGREE: The Chamber Of Commerce Is Undeniably A Pimple On The Ass Of Progress
HUFFINGTON POST: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is soliciting funds to pay an economist $50,000 to study health care reform legislation and issue (what the lobby presumes) will be a negative review, providing ammunition to shoot down health care reform in the Senate, according to The Washington Post. The Newspaper obtained an e-mail from James P. Gelfand, the senior manager of health policy at the Chamber of Commerce detailing how the plan would work: “The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will […]
ALL FALL DOWN: Perzel + 9 Statehouse GOPers Indicted 4 Theft, Conspiracy & Obstruction Of Justice
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The charges of theft, conspiracy, conflict of interest and obstruction of justice, and an elaborately detailed grand jury report, were released one day before the defendants were scheduled to turn themselves in at a Dauphin County district judge’s office. The most prominent defendant is state Rep. John M. Perzel, R-Philadelphia, who served as speaker for about four years and as majority leader for nearly a decade before that. Corbett described Perzel as “aggressive in the acquisition and retention of power” and accused him of punishing fellow Republicans who voted against him on legislation with “dirty tricks” that included […]
20 YEARS AGO: The More Fiends Vs. The Berlin Wall
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Philly punk band More Fiends was founded by Allen and Elizabeth Fiend (host of BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living) . BY ELIZABETH FIEND It was November 9th 1989 and More Fiends had been on tour already for a grueling seven weeks. I was lying on an old mattress on the floor of a narrow bedroom watching Happy Days which had turned incredibly funny because in the German dubbed version The Fonz had a whiney, high pitched voice. Plus, come on, Fonzie was speaking German. The program was interrupted by what seemed like some sort of special news […]
Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity With Pants On Fire
MEDIA MATTERS: Citing no evidence, Sean Hannity twice stated that 20,000 people gathered to protest health care reform at a GOP rally on Capitol Hill — a claim he later walked back drastically — while MSNBC reported that Capitol police estimated the crowd at only 4,000; prior to the rally, Hannity said crowds at the event — which he and other Fox News figures heavily promoted — would be “massive.” Conservative media previously inflated crowd estimates for the 9-12 March on Washington. MORE
NOBAMA: Top Afghanistan Envoy Cables White House That None Of The Plans On The Table Are Workable
WASHINGTON POST: Karl W. Eikenberry’s memos, sent as President Obama enters the final stages of his deliberations over a new Afghanistan strategy, illustrated both the difficulty of the decision and the deepening divisions within the administration’s national security team. After a top-level meeting on the issue Wednesday afternoon — Obama’s eighth since early last month — the White House issued a statement that appeared to reflect Eikenberry’s concerns. “The President believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan government that our commitment is not open-ended,” the statement said. “After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance […]
WEEK IN REVIEW: Scrapple TV News
All the news that shits. With your host, A.P. Ticker.