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POPSEven Lawyers are getting laid off
NEW YORK: You know things are bad when even lawyers are getting laid off. In downturns of years past, law firms exploited corporate failures and bitter, protracted lawsuits to keep busy and keep billing. But in this still-unfolding crisis, the embittered and the bankrupt have been relatively slow to appear, at least in court. American law firms in turn are feeling the strain. Thelen and Heller Ehrman, two firms whose deep San Francisco roots extend back decades, have collapsed outright, in part because of the business slowdown. Each firm left several hundred lawyers out in the cold. Many others, including Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal and Katten Muchin Rosenman, two Chicago firms ranked among the nation's 100 most profitable by American Lawyer magazine, and an international giant, Clifford Chance, have jettisoned dozens of associates. Still others, like Powell Goldstein, a firm based in Atlanta with more than 200 lawyers, are merging with larger rivals in deals that may be bid
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POPSObama's Pick for Chief of Staff. . . . . . 
. . . . . .Tops Recipients of Wall Street Money . . . . . Emanuel, who is currently the No. 4 Democrat in the House, has also collected $136,640 from the lobbying industry during his career, making K Street his 13th most generous industry. Since being elected to the House six years ago, he has collected $1.5 million from the investment industry , with lawyers and law firms and the entertainment industry coming in at a distant second and third place ($682,900 and $376,100). As a member of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee--which has jurisdiction over tax legislation, Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs--Emanuel is a popular industry target. Private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners has given Emanuel more than any other contributor over his career at $93,600. Emanuel and Obama have more than just Chicago in common; investment bank UBS, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are among both men's lists of top donors .
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POPSThe Long and Winding Road Geographically, the United States of America ends here at the tip of Florida. Politically, the long Bush night of the soul also ends here - in slightly over 70 days. Historically, led by a cool black man with a weapon of mass seduction - his unlimited soft power - this passage of time has the potential to be the prelude to a new day dawning. It's up to engaged, tirelessly mobilized US civil society - and for the whole world for that matter - to turn hope into reality, and help this man "change America, and change the world". Obambopaloobop Obambamboom :lol: .You'll have to make do with the title of this clip as the obvious inspiration for the clip song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COMsKPeWAsw But here's a obamabeepbopalooping song, if you like that better. .:D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlkMc0ZaJmY
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POPSEconomic Justice, Income Redistribution, Reparations! it is good for everyone. — A bombshell was released this weekend when a copy of an interview by Obama on WBEZ-FM, Chicago Public Radio, from 2001 was found (bold italics added): "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society ... and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. ... I think that you can craft legal theoretical justifications for it legally, any three of us here could come up with a rational for bringing about economic change through the courts."
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POPS Saving America From Obama of the US Communist Party, unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorists, and a minister who preaches anti-Americanism. The head of the Black Muslim movement, Louis Farrakhan, recently declared him to be the “messiah.” We have learned too of his association with the Association of Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) initially as a “community organizer”, but ACORN is now revealed to have profited greatly from the Democrat programs that required banks and mortgage firms to make loans to the poor. It has led to the present financial crisis. ACORN is being investigated for massive voter registration abuses. Obama was closely associated with Antoine “Tony” Rezko, a convicted Chicago real estate developer who was a major political contributor. One would think that what we already know about Obama would be sufficient to dismiss him as a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States, but I am just as concerned about what we don’t know.
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POPSSomething Scary This Way Comes On the weeks leading up to Halloween something evil has been unearthed. Hidden away for 7 years it finally came to light here on the week before the election. This is enough to make your skin crawl. The above commentary was intended tongue in cheek for all those liberals out there who lack a sense of humor.
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POPSPushing yourselves over the edge The team did not beat around the bush anymore though and went into business, they talked about the law that got shelved that would have put a new surroundingon the neck of the self employed because they no longer going to have stated loans and what that means is that if you don’t have a W2 but you have a 401K you would not be able to utilize a stated income loan.
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POPSWho is Obama? A radical? A centrist? A reconciler? This is an interesting take and I would recommend the whole article.
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POPSMore Acorn Widespread Voting Fraud - The Hand of Obama During der Furher's tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for "staging, sound, lighting." It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote. Der Furher was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties. The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law -- on the taxpayer's dime. These Acorn thugs are reminiscent of nazi brown shirts as Hitler campaigned for office.
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POPS Have You Ever Wondered, Or Is It Just Me.....? I hope that you can be sufficiently open-minded as to read this. The following article is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT because it provides an explanation for the above, as well as why Obama has been deceptive about his 10+ years' association with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers. Please take a couple of minutes to read the article. Lastly, the reason I find credible the point made by the author, Jack Cashill, that Obama did not write his two celebrated memoirs (which were most probably ghostwritten by Ayers), is because I am a published writer. I know how hard writing is. I also know that writing is a craft that must be honed: one does not SUDDENLY overnight become a good writer, especially if one has never written before. Peace, Maria Chang, Ph.D. Professor Emerita
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POPSMcCain Goes After Michelle ... This is just too much to be believed. I have nothing more to say. Just read the clip and weep or laugh. The choice is yours. Personally, I am weeping.
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POPSThe Reality of Ayers There is a quote from a movie and book whose title escapes me "The past is like a foreign country. People do things differently there." To people who grew up in the 60s and 70s although people who did what Ayers did were wrong and on the fringes, we understand the anger. Think of people's anger today at terrorism and remember that many were that angry at the US government. Think of parents who wouldn't let there children watch the news because of the death and destruction that came every day. Think of riots at political conventions and in the streets of cities across America. Think of the fear of nuclear attack from a volatile and powerful Russia. What Ayers did was wrong and should, by all rights have been punished. It was not, however, today.
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POPSPlanting Seeds of Disaster In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN, Organizing Urban America, Rutgers University political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group, so dear to Barack Obama, as “oppositional outlaws.” ACORN’s Inside Strategy Yet ACORN’s entirely deserved reputation for militance is balanced by its less-well-known “inside strategy.” The untold story of ACORN’s central role in the financial meltdown is about the one-two punch to the banking system administered by this outside/inside strategy. Critics of the notion that CRA had a major impact on the subprime crisis ask how a law passed in 1977 could have caused a crisis in 2008? The answer has a lot to do with ACORN — and the critical years of 1990-1995. Banks merger or expansion plans were rarely held up under CRA until the late 1980s, when ACORN perfected its technique of filing CRA complaints in tandem with the sort of intimidation tactics perfected by that original “community organizer” ,Saul Alinsky.
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POPSSherriff Stops Evictions in Home Foreclosures
Although this may almost sound like "non-news," to some, it is incredibly dramatic, not so dramatic as parts of the French Army joining the rebels in the French Revolution nor so dramatid as the Russian Army joining the revolutionaries against the Czar during WWI --- but it is an "officer of the law," saying he's not going to obey the law to evict people from their homes -- during this economic crisis where now home foreclosures have tripled from just two years ago. The rather dramatic headline, though, is misleading (even though I like dramatic headlines like this myself.) In fact, while the sheriff's actions are not so dramatic (in a way)...but his real actions are far more clever: He is Slowing Down Evictions. This way, #1, he won't get fired. #2 his extra demands for documentation and total paperwork requirements could give folks at least a half-a-year before police would actually show up at their door. Smart. And protects true innocents: renters of homes being forclos
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POPSfightthesmears.com “In 1993, Obama was named by Crain’s Chicago Business as one of “40 under 40” outstanding young leaders in the city of Chicago. He is the recipient of the 1995 Legal Eagle Award from IVI-IPO for his work in bringing Illinois into compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (Motor-Voter).
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POPSChicago-area protest of raid on immigrant community It's sad that in Chicago area that they have seemingly gotten over past fears of Irish, Italian, Polish, Chinese, etc. legal and illegal immigrants - that our fears of immigrants from Spanish speaking countries still causes so much fear. What happened to Chicago with the "Big Shoulders?"
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POPSObama: "That's what we're protecting!" Writer says: "This is what first drew me to Obama: his ability to speak fearlessly and unapologetically on behalf of truth and of the principles that make this country a place worth living in."
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POPSSenator Barack Obama's Qualifications for the Office of the President of the United States Let’s also not diminish another strong point of Barack Obama’s qualifications for President; he is a scholar of U. S. Constitutional law. On January 20, 2009 the person we elect will solemnly swear to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. With respect to the two major canidates for President, it could be said that Barack Obama’s resume shows him to be intellectually more qualified to execute that oath.
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POPSDon't "Give A Give A Give A Garmin" (h/t Indiana Law Blog) I'm a lover of all things that are gadgets, and GPS toys are a favorite of mine, but this article discusses the use of GPS data from a defendant's Garmin device. Eric Hanson had evidence introduced by prosecutors in his murder trial was used to pinpoint his location on the morning of the crime. Score one for the prosecutors on this front. I suspect we will begin to see more of this sooner rather than later. GPS chips are installed on all new cell phones now. My new phone I recently picked up has builtin GPS navigation software which is brilliant, but knowing that the boys at the NSA's Fort Meade, MD SIGINT farm can pinpoint my location anytime they want is kind of scary.
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POPSBarack Obama: Leap of Faith but because they're confused about the roots of his politics. Sen. Obama accumulated his victorious lead early with a liberal coalition willing to vote for him mainly for reasons of faith – upper-middle-class whites, black voters and young idealists -- all attempting to complete the civil-rights promise, answer the post-partisan appeal, or vote against the war and George Bush. His coalition's limitations hit the wall in Ohio. Here Sen. Clinton discovered her Rosie-the-Riveter persona, and it worked. I watched her sell bread-and-butter policy before blue-collar crowds in Youngstown, Akron and Cleveland. She was tremendously good at it. He just wasn't. The Sunday before the Ohio vote, Sen. Obama abandoned Ohio. The way Hillary won in these crucial November swing states may have fatally damaged his candidacy. His problem is that there is nothing in it (biography) to suggest he has spent any significant time thinking about these people other than as a political abstraction.
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POPSInvesting in Obama
Last Friday’s Washington Post offered more information on Blackwell, a former partner in his father’s consulting firm, Blackwell Consulting. The brief Post piece, “Contracts Went to Longtime Donor,” mentions that the firm won contracts totaling nearly $650,000 from the University of Chicago Medical Center. It happened because of a minority-owned business outreach program started by the newly promoted Michelle Obama. The elder Blackwell says that without that program, “ hey might not have ever thought to include Blackwell Consulting.” It also didn’t hurt that the younger Blackwell had been underwriting Obama’s political and personal life. In early 2003, after one of the Killerspin ping-pong tournaments he had helped taxpayers subsidize, Obama was interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times on the subject of the younger Blackwell’s entrepreneurship. “I would never bet against Robert on one of his ideas,” Obama said. “He’s extremely good at coming up with moneymaking ideas and implementing
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POPSWal-Mart Against Union and Democrats For 100 years and with much success, American Corporations have killed any kind of Union Movement. Democracies without Independent Working Representation are no real democracies at all. They are than dependent on politicians and the judicial system. Every man and woman for themselves and the corporations against all. Unfair, to say the least.
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