• Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 30, 2012

    These are my links for May 29th through May 30th:

    • Polish Premier Demands U.S. Response to Obama Death Camp Remark– Poland demanded a “strong and clear response” from the U.S. after President Barack Obama’s mention of a “Polish death camp” while honoring a Pole who told the world about the Holocaust.“We can’t accept such words in Poland, even if they are spoken by a leader of an allied country,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told journalists in Warsaw today. “Saying Polish concentration camps is as if there was no German responsibility, no Hitler.”

      Since, 2004 Poland has sought clarifications from several news outlets for the use of a phrase “Polish concentration camps” that were run by the Nazis during the country’s occupation in the World War II, according to the Foreign Ministry’s website. The government has convinced publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle to stop using the phrase.

      The U.S. administration regrets “this misstatement,” the Wall Street Journal’s website cited Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman, as saying. The text of Obama’s remarks on the White House website hasn’t been corrected as of today.

      “The White House will apologize for this outrageous mistake,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on his Twitter Inc. account. “It’s a shame that such a momentous ceremony has been overshadowed by ignorance and incompetence.”

    • Obama Nazi death camp gaffe ‘hurt all Poles’: PM– US President Barack Obama’s description of a Nazi German Holocaust site as a “Polish death camp” shocked Poland, whose leaders insist the record be set straight 67 years after World War II.Obama on Tuesday labeled the Nazi facility used to process Jews for extermination as a “Polish death camp.” The White House later said the president “misspoke” and expressed “regret”.

      The linguistic faux pas overshadowed Obama’s posthumous award of the highest US civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Jan Karski, a former Polish underground officer who provided early eyewitness accounts of Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews.

      Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday Obama’s words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just “regret”.

      “I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman — a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

      “Today, this is a problem for the reputation of the United States,” the prime minister said.

    • Bush’s tax cuts didn’t get us in this mess– With the presidential campaign gathering steam, the voters are going to be fed a lot of baloney before Election Day. One of the biggest humdingers now coming your way: The Bush tax cuts are responsible for the mess the country is in.A recurring theme in President Barack Obama’s attacks on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his tax policies is: “We can’t go back to the same policies that got us into this mess.”

      President George W. Bush’s tax cuts did not cause the fiscal crisis of 2008. Our economic calamity came in a housing meltdown —the result of years of administrations of both parties encouraging variable-interest, no-interest, little or no down payment, and no-document or liar loans that flooded people into homes they couldn’t afford under traditional mortgage lending practices.

      To its credit, the Bush administration twice advanced reforms to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, major players in pushing bad loans. Each time it was blocked by powerful Democrats, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Frank famously said he wanted the two quasi-governmental agencies “to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidizing housing.” Even after the home-ownership explosion was starting to be revealed to be a house of cards, Dodd declared, “These two institutions are fundamentally, fundamentally strong

    • Obama Awards Medal of Freedom to Democratic Socialists of America Chair– President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union.Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

      DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

      Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela. Some of her more radical comments were captured in this audio clip:

    • IBD At Kimberlin Hearing: Walker Handcuffed, 1st Amendment Muzzled– With all of the attention surrounding Brett Kimberlin, I attended Tuesday’s hearing in his “peace order” vs. Aaron Walker in the District Court of Maryland for Montgomery County. In the end, the judge granted Kimberlin’s peace order, and Walker ended up leaving in handcuffs. (If you want to know why Kimberlin is a story, go here.)This was the second peace order that Kimberlin has filed against Walker, demanding that Walker cease any contact with Kimberlin. In it, Kimberlin claims that Walker has “continually harassed” him with “alarming posts, tweets, alerts that arrive in my email box, which I consider threats to me personally and to my business.” Kimberlin came to court with pages upon pages of threatening emails and tweets that he claimed had resulted from Walker’s blog posts about him. None of them, though, were sent by Walker.
    • President Obama Causes Outrage with Reference to ‘Polish Death Camp’– Poles and Polish-Americans expressed outrage today at President Obama’s reference earlier to “a Polish death camp” – as opposed to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.”The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.”

      The president had been trying to honor a famous Pole, awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter who sneaked behind enemy lines to bear witness to the atrocities being committed against Jews. President Obama referred to him being smuggled “into the Warsaw ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself.”

    • Texas GOP Senate primary heads to runoff– A boiling primary battle in Texas headed to a runoff early Wednesday as two Republicans running for U.S. Senate failed to reach the 50% threshold to clinch the GOP nomination.Though Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst led the crowded field of candidates, he narrowly failed to cross the 50% mark required to secure the nomination and avoid a July 31 runoff.

      Dewhurst’s challenger in the runoff will be tea party favorite Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general with strong support from national groups and high-profile conservative leaders.

      With 99.6% of precincts counted, Dewhurst held 48% of the vote to 30% for Cruz.

    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-30 – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-05-30
    • Magnitude 4.0 – CHANNEL ISLANDS REGION, CALIFORNIA – RT @BreakingNews: An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.0 has struck near Malibu – USGS
    • California-Nevada Fault Maps – Yes, there was earthquake here felt in Thousand Oaks.
    • Judge orders Manson Family tapes turned over to police
      | Reuters
      – RT @Reuters: Judge orders Manson Family tapes turned over to police
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » CA-26 Linda Parks Moans About Democrat and Julia Brownley Attacks – CA-26 Linda Parks Moans About Democrat and Julia Brownley Attacks
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » New Evidence in Charles Manson Unsolved Murders? – New Evidence in Charles Manson Unsolved Murders?
    • The PJ Tatler » If Donald Trump is a Problem, Why Isn’t Bill Maher? – RT @AmeliaChasse: Good question==> If Donald Trump is a Problem, Why Isn’t Bill Maher? #tcot
    • Homes Prices Drop 2% to Post-Crisis Lows: Case-Shiller – US Business News – CNBC – Homes Prices Drop 2% to Post-Crisis Lows #tcot
    • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog » The Morning Flap: May 29, 2012 – The Morning Flap: May 29, 2012
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: May 29, 2012 – The Morning Drill: May 29, 2012
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: May 29, 2012

    These are my links for May 25th through May 29th: