links for 2009-05-07

Our site is dedicated to building a collective voice of consensus in drafting and supporting Rudy Giuliani for New York Governor in 2010!

At a time when both our Country and State are at an unprecedented economic crisis, failing policies and incompetent leadership is unacceptable.

The State of New York is in dire need of accountability and fiscal responsibility within its government.

We need a Governor who will streamline government, cut taxes and create jobs.

We need a Governor who understands that growing the size of the government will not grow the economy.

We need a Governor who will fight crime and clean up the streets, so that our children live in a safe and peaceful State.

A week after Arlen Specter switched parties with the expectation that he would maintain his Senate seniority, Democratic leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that it would be up to Democrats to decide whether the former Republican could reclaim his standing in the next Congress.

Reid was making it clear to disgruntled members of his caucus that an agreement he forged with Specter would be subject to a vote by Senate Democrats.

“Always Sen. Specter and his chief of staff — we thought — understood that his subcommittees wouldn’t be changed, the chairmen wouldn’t be changed, his overall standing in the Senate would be protected. But the only people who are capable of determining status in a caucus is the caucus,” Reid, the Senate’s majority leader, said Wednesday.

Media companies have had a hard time getting consumers to pay for content online, but Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is attempting to leverage its worldwide news-gathering operation to get them to do just that.

In one of the most ambitious online undertakings by a media outfit, News Corp. has assembled a team of executives to devise a system to charge for content on the Web.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday reiterated his call for newspapers to charge for online content, saying that his company's experience with The Wall Street Journal has proven that it can be done successfully. "We're now in the midst of a debate over the value of content, and it's clear that at many newspapers the current model is malfunctioning." He also vowed that News Corp. would not feed its content rights to Amazon's (AMZN:
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AMZN 81.99, +0.09, +0.1%) Kindle. "We will control the prices for our content and we will control the relationship with our customers," he said on a conference call. End of Story

President Obama was noticeably silent last month when the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

But the days when the president can keep quiet on an issue that gays view as central to their civil rights may soon be coming to an end, the NY TIMES is set to Page One on Thursday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE.

"Just four weeks after the Iowa ruling, Obama — who opposes gay marriage but campaigned as a self-described 'fierce advocate' of gay rights — is under increasing pressure to engage on a variety of gay issues that are coming to the fore amid a dizzying pace of social, political and legislative change,' reports the paper's Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

A majority of Americans — by a healthy 57-to-42 percent margin — oppose a Congressional investigation into Bush-era torture allegations, according to a new CNN/ORD poll of 2,000 adults (+/- 2 percent).

The break-out questions are even more telling:

People were downright hostile to investigations of military/intelligence officials who used "enhanced' techniques (65-to-34 percent against.

But they were more receptive to punishing the suits. When respondents were asked if "Bush administration officials who authorized" the tactics should be investigated the approval number rose to 42 percent, with 55 percent opposed.

All told, Americans seem a little schizophrenic on the topic of torture. Sixty percent of those interviewed think the U.S. used "torture" — but they approved of such procedures against terrorists by a 50-to-46 percent margin.

President Barack Obama's Defense Department plans to create 20,000 new jobs to manage a revamp of the way the United States buys billions of dollars of weapons each year, the Pentagon's No. 2 official told Congress.

The Pentagon also plans to tie more contract fee structures to performance and will make sure that multiyear contracts are awarded only when "real, substantial" savings result to taxpayers, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

The Pentagon's top suppliers by prime contract value, in order, are Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics Corp, BAE Systems Plc and Raytheon Co.

Arnold Schwarzenegger says "I don't like to use scare tactics," but he's doing exactly that by threatening to sharply reduce firefighters and close fire stations as the wildfire season begins unless voters approve a series of budget-related ballot measures this month.

This week, the Schwarzenegger-led campaign rolled out a television ad in which Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Chris Judd declared, "Sacramento's budget mess has already forced departments to lay off firefighters and paramedics. And it could get even worse. Without Props 1A and 1B, we have $16 billion in new cuts coming. Could lose another 24,000 firefighters and police. And you know who that hurts? The people who depend on us."

Dr. Frank Luntz, a top Republican consultant on the language of politics, is warning the GOP that the American people want health-care reform and that lawmakers need to try to avoid directly opposing President Barack Obama.

“You simply MUST be vocally and passionately on the side of REFORM,” Luntz advises in a confidential 26-page report obtained from Capitol Hill Republicans. “The status quo is no longer acceptable. If the dynamic becomes ‘President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it,’ then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless.

“Republicans must be for the right kind of reform that protects the quality of healthcare for all Americans. And you must establish your support of reform early in your presentation.”

A foreclosed tract of partially completed homes was demolished after the bank that owns the project deemed it a hazard and calculated that finishing and selling the dwellings would be a money-losing proposition, a bank official said Tuesday.

The planned 16-unit tract on the fringes of a suburb about 65 miles northeast of Los Angeles included four finished homes with granite countertops, whirlpool bathtubs and dual-pane windows.

"The current economic environment requires difficult decisions be made by the government, by banks and by individuals," said John Wessman, a spokesman for Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas. "We made the difficult decision to return the site to a safe, clean and undeveloped state keeping in mind the best interests of the community and our shareholders."