Two people were stabbed outside a midtown subway station Wednesday when they were attacked by two high school students, cops said.

Devon Baldwin, 18, of the Bronx, was stabbed twice in the torso, and Kalimah Tresdale, 20, was slashed in the hand in the 3p.m. incident in the underground walkway of the Columbus Circle subway station, cops said.

Both victims were taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell, where Baldwin was in stable condition.

Tresdale was treated and released.

Nathaniel Flores, 17, and Rafael Anderson, 17, both students at Independence High School on 10th Ave. at 56th St., were arrested in the stabbing.

Police sources said the victims know the suspects and that the fight apparently stemmed from an earlier incident at Independence High.

It was not immediately clear if Baldwin and Tresdale are also students at Independence High.

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Lancaster CA- First of all, for those of you that don’t know it, Lancaster is the new Compton of Southern California. Its a desert community in Los Angeles County, and it has a rather large criminal element that moved from south central Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots.

What I want to know is why a person would bring a meat thermometer to a movie theater in the first place.

The woman who was talking on a cell phone during a movie didn’t take to kindly to being ’shushed’ by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn’t.

In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen, the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the ’shusher’ in the neck. With a meat thermometer.

According to KTLA:

The stabbing occurred last Saturday at the Cinemark 22 theater at 2600 West Avenue I in Lancaster, according to Detective Richard Cartmill of the Lancaster sheriff’s station.

Deputies say that while the movie was playing, a woman was talking on her phone and the victim asked her to turn it off.

The victim was attacked by the woman’s boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.

The stabbing victim is expected to survive and is recovering at a local hospital. Two others who tried to help the victim were also injured, according to KTLA.

According to Sheriff’s officials, the suspects were described as black males. One man was wearing an orange hat with an orange jersey and the other man was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt.

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KURT GORMAN had no idea that his Texas girlfriend of four years was on the Internet calling herself JihadJane.

Colleen R. LaRose, whom he met in Ennis, Texas, left the couple’s Montgomery County apartment Aug. 23, the day after his father’s funeral, without telling him, he said.

“I came home and she’s gone. She packed up and left. Didn’t see it coming, didn’t know,” Gorman told the Daily News last night. “I was upset, worried. Maybe something happened to her. You don’t know.”

Yesterday, Gorman, of Pennsburg, 48 miles northwest of Philadelphia, said he finally found out – by reading about her on the Internet.

A federal grand jury indicted LaRose, who also called herself Fatima Rose, allegedly for providing material support for terrorists and for plotting with others to kill a Swedish artist who had depicted the pro-phet Muhammad as a dog.

“I don’t know the details. I don’t want to know them,” said Gorman, who appears to be an easygoing guy with a mustache and beard. Interviewed at his office in Quaker-town, he was dressed in a green and black plaid shirt, black jeans and work boots, and was holding a half-smoked cigarette.

“She never talked about international events, about Muslims, anything,” he said. “It’s very strange. I still can’t believe it.

“The whole thing is crazy.”

A few weeks after LaRose, 5-foot-2 with dirty-blond hair, disappeared, taking most of her clothes, two FBI agents visited him. He said they questioned him, including what she did during the day and whether she used the computer. Nothing to tip him off, he added.

In November or December, Gorman said, he was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to testify. He said he had been asked about his passport, whether he had given it to her. He said he told the jury no. She was charged with stealing the passport in the indictment.

Prosecutors and agents told him that they were in the middle of an investigation and could not share the details.

He said he figured: “Let them do their job. I don’t want anything to do with it.

“She seemed normal to me. She got mad about some things and happy about others,” he said. Asked what she would get mad about, he replied: “If I was not home when I was supposed to be, that I don’t spend enough time with her, that I work too much.”

As owner of a company that manufactures custom parts for radio towers, he said, “I work until the job gets done.”

The couple lived with his father in a second-floor apartment in a four-unit building on Main Street in Pennsburg. “She was a good person, taking care of my Dad, taking him to the doctor.”

His father sat in a lawn chair on the balcony, said neighbors. “He asked me to go for a cup of coffee,” said Joan Noon, 66, a next-door neighbor.

LaRose didn’t work, and had not graduated from college, but, he said, she was fun to be with.

“I wouldn’t have stayed with her if she was not nice,” he added.

“That’s why when I came home and she was gone, it was a shock to the system.”

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First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.

Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

It was just the beginning of a busy weekend for Penn. When asked on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” about those who question his motives for his humanitarian work in Haiti, he said:

“Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on it.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst, said the same constitutional protection that applies to journalists also applies to Penn, who can say pretty much anything he wants in the “political arena” — aside from an immediate incitement of violence.

“What he is saying is protected, as wacky and weird as it is,” Napolitano told FoxNews.com. “But the substance of what he’s saying would be absolutely contrary to the First Amendment, which fully protects all political opinions. So if a journalist says Dick Cheney should go to jail, the journalist is privileged to say that.”

“Mr. Penn is calling for a communist-like regime in which journalists who criticize the government are sent to jail because of that criticism,” Napolitano added. “That is utterly un-American and hasn’t happened here since the Civil War.”

Lis Wiehl, a former federal prosecutor and Fox News legal analyst, echoed Napolitano’s comments, saying Penn’s statement is “completely counter” to First Amendment protections.

“Unless you’re yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, i.e. stirring up immediate violence, you have the right as an American to voice your opinion, even if others (including Penn) disagree,” she wrote FoxNews.com. “And, yes, Penn has the right to voice his opinion as well — that’s the beauty of the First Amendment. And, don’t forget, truth is an absolute defense to any defamation or slander lawsuit.”

According to a study by the Business and Media Institute, news coverage pertaining to Chavez from 1998 to 2006 found the Venezuelan president’s human rights record was mentioned in only 10 percent of stories, and he was described as a leftist in 12 percent of stories.

Napolitano, meanwhile, said Penn apparently prefers “thuggery” to democracy.

“In light of his ignorance of freedom of speech, his wishing rectal cancer on his detractors, and his embracing tyrants, Mr. Penn obviously prefers thuggery to democracy,” he continued. “Were he free to do so, he’d be a tyrant. Now we’ll see if he can get me jailed for saying that!”

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.

Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president’s chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”

That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks.

The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 — congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric.

So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama’s presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president — disappearing jobs.

Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system.

There is a huge economic element to health care as people struggle to pay premiums or keep their insurance. Yet to many, the astounding loss of jobs is a singular issue that demands constant, bold attention.

It is just this competition — the economy versus health care — that helped define Obama’s grueling first year in office and prompted howls within his own party for a recalibrated jobs-first agenda.

Obama responded with a State of the Union speech on Jan. 27 that was remarkably focused on the economy, dwarfing all other issues. “Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010,” Obama emphasized the next day at a stop in Tampa, Florida.

Yet it was always the reality that Obama would consolidate his attention on health care again, at least for one last blitz. Beyond all the policy implications, Obama has spent a year on it and never intended to let that effort go to waste.

The White House’s political calculation is that the next few weeks are their last chance to push through an overhaul of health coverage. But aides also know it cannot drag on, as every day focused on process overshadows their message.

There is no expectation within the West Wing that voters’ moods will change until they see their lives improving. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the plan is to keep plugging away on an agenda to shore up the economy for the long haul.

“We’re going to still be out there on jobs,” Axelrod said, dismissing any worry that the economy-first message will be obscured. “We’re going to be focused on health care for the next few weeks, but we’re still going to be doing jobs.”

To get votes, Obama is lobbying lawmakers, many of whom are teetering in this election year. He’s calling on his 2008 campaign supporters to push Congress for a vote. He’s staging health care events in Philadelphia and St. Louis this coming week.

“They are looking at the election in November, and they need to have one big victory that they can claim,” said Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “This is not the victory they would have chosen, because even if it does help the economy, it won’t help most people for years to come. The problem is, there just doesn’t seem to be the ability to do anything significant about jobs this year.”

The House and Senate have passed versions of a $35 billion bill that offers a tax break to companies that hire workers and extends federal highway programs, but even supporters doubt it will create many jobs. By comparison, the economic stimulus bill enacted last year — and not nearly spent out yet — was an $862 billion measure.

Lawmakers plan more steps this year. But there is less political will to keep spending on big jolts to the economy.

Obama has always argued that overhauling health care is not just about health, but also an economic imperative for families who will suffer “if we let this opportunity pass for another year or another decade or another generation” — a message he conveyed Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Part of Obama’s final argument to Democratic lawmakers is that getting health care done will give them momentum on other issues. It’s possible that the opposite is true, and a defeat now could undermine him on other fronts.

Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley said Obama understands that the rising costs of health care are hurting U.S. economic interests long term. Still, he urged Obama to finish up this priority and pivot back to a heavier jobs message.

“If we wrap this up, if we get this passed, it will become clear that health care was always about jobs,” he said.

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So let me get this straight. John Albert Gardner got six years for molesting a 13 year old girl, but a guy steals a block of cheese from a 7/11, and he gets 7 years and eleven months. Only in California is this kind of judicial convolution accepted. JD

Woodland CA- A Yolo County judge on Monday sentenced a man who walked out of a store with a package of cheese in his trousers to seven years and eight months in prison.

Prosecutors had originally sought a life sentence for Robert Ferguson under the state’s “three strikes” law. They dropped that bid last month, saying a psychological report had convinced them that a life sentence wasn’t warranted.

At Monday’s hearing, Deputy District Attorney Clinton Parish urged Judge Thomas Warriner to consider at least one of Ferguson’s prior strikes – one for burglary and another for assault with a deadly weapon – and to sentence him to a lengthy term.

Parish said Ferguson was a career criminal who wouldn’t change. He had 13 prior convictions and had spent 22 of the past 27 years behind bars, yet still would not obey the law, the prosecutor said.

In 1994, Ferguson had escaped a three-strikes sentence, “Yet here we are again,” Parish said.

Defense lawyer Monica Brushia told the judge that Ferguson’s six prior burglary convictions occurred 30 years ago. His misdemeanor assault conviction was for throwing a soda can at one of his siblings when he was a teen, she said.

No weapons or injuries were associated with his crimes, Brushia told the judge.

She argued a psychologist’s report had concluded Ferguson was bipolar and had trouble controlling impulses to steal during manic phases.

His latest crimes were so petty that they hardly merited a prison sentence, she argued. “We’re talking about a pack of cheese,” she said.

On Jan. 6, jurors convicted Ferguson of two counts of petty theft for snatching a woman’s wallet from the counter of a 7-Eleven store and for stuffing a bag of Tillamook shredded cheese worth $3.99 into his pants at Woodland’s Nugget Market.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office charged the thefts as felonies.

When it came time to sentence Ferguson on Monday, Judge Warriner chose a middle ground. He accepted a probation department recommendation to disregard the prior strikes and to sentence Ferguson to the upper term for petty theft with priors.

The judge gave Ferguson 825 days of credit for his time in jail awaiting trial and said Ferguson would be required to serve half his sentence in prison. He will be eligible for parole in less than three years.

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Yet another senseless murder that can be directly blamed on the liberal justice system of the state of California. John Gardner should still be in jail for his prior convictions. Take a good look at this beautiful young lady. She will never be held in the loving arms of her parents again. She will never grow up to have her own children and experience life.

John Gardner will likely get the death penalty, where he will spend the next 25 years appealing his conviction before getting what he deserves . . . DEATH! JD

San Diego County investigators continued their search Monday for a missing 17-year-old girl after a man was arrested in connection with her disappearance.

John Albert Gardner III, 30, was arrested Sunday afternoon outside a business in Escondido after investigators uncovered evidence linking the registered sex offender to the disappearance of Chelsea King from the Lake Hodges area, authorities said in a statement.

“During the search the last three days we have obtained numerous pieces of physical evidence in the search scene,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said Monday in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “One of those pieces of evidence we were able to tie to John Gardner.”

Gardner, of Lake Elsinore, was convicted in a previous incident of one count of lewd acts with a child under 14, according to state records.

King disappeared Thursday after failing to return from an afternoon run near Lake Hodges, investigators said. Helicopters scoured the area and volunteers waded chest-deep in the murky water looking for signs of the Poway High School senior.

Friends set up a Facebook page and website to help the search effort. The case is being handled by homicide investigators.

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Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan Chase, has warned American investors should be more worried about the risk of default of the state of California than of Greece’s current debt woes.

Everyone knows that California is a greater risk financially than Greece. The socialist machine in Sacramento will simply take any monies from any source and spend it on welfare and illegal immigrants. J.P. Morgan Chase understands this.

California is broken. Its one of the reasons I named this site BrokenCountry.Com. Its been broken for more than 25 years, since the hippies from the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco decided to run for office.

These socialist assholes have ruined California and turned the state into a mecca for degenerates and low lives from every corner of the planet. Now the state is bankrupt because these same socialist spend every penny sent to Sacramento on their unions, which run the state, and their social programs that they create to ensure that they are re-elected. JD

Mr Dimon told investors at the Wall Street bank’s annual meeting that “there could be contagion” if a state the size of California, the biggest of the United States, had problems making debt repayments. “Greece itself would not be an issue for this company, nor would any other country,” said Mr Dimon. “We don’t really foresee the European Union coming apart.” The senior banker said that JP Morgan Chase and other US rivals are largely immune from the European debt crisis, as the risks have largely been hedged.

California however poses more of a risk, given the state’s $20bn (£13.1bn) budget deficit, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is desperately trying to reduce.

Earlier this week, the state’s legislature passed bills that will cut the deficit by $2.8bn through budget cuts and other measures. However the former Hollywood film star turned politician is looking for $8.9bn of cuts over the next 16 months, and is also hoping for as much as $7bn of handouts from the federal government.

Earlier this week, John Chiang, the state’s controller, said that if a workable plan to reduce the deficit and increase cash levels is not reached soon, he will have to return to issuing IOU’s, forcing state workers to take additional unpaid leave and potentially freezing spending.

Last summer, California issued $3bn of IOU’s to creditors including residents owed tax refunds as a way of staving off a cash crisis.

“I can’t write checks without money; that’s against the law. My main goal is to keep the state afloat, but I won’t be able to do it without the help of new legislation,” said Mr Chiang.

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WASHINGTON- In yet another stunning show of disdain for American voters, President Obama had his left wing radicals all over the Sunday morning news shows trying desperately to keep health care reform alive.

Obama has demanded what the White House calls “a simple up or down” vote on the massive spending bill designed to nationalize the U.S. health care system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and compared passing health care reform to selling pie. Pelosi said “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”

We are still trying to figure out what selling pie has to do with health care reform, especially in light of the fact that the legislation contains a special tax on pie to help fund it.

In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama’s intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.

Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama’s only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.

“We’re not talking about changing any rules here,” DeParle said. “All the president’s talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?”

DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation’s advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.

“I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes,” predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. “I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring.”

In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”

Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, “and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”

It’s unclear whether Pelosi’s remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmaker unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.

Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.

Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall—maybe a lot. They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.

“Time is up,” she said. “We really have to go forth.”

Her comments somewhat echoed those of President Barack Obama, who said at the end of last week’s bipartisan health care summit that Congress should act on the issue and let voters render their verdicts. “That’s what elections are for,” he said.

The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.

As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.

Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, “is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party’s demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.

“There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn’t want it through this kind of device,” McConnell said.

Pelosi said that “in a matter of days” Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.

“When we have a bill,” she said, “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”

Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” DeParle was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Menendez appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and McConnell spoke on CNN.

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he’s ready to compromise with Republicans if they’re serious about it but that his health care overhaul must go forward.

Obama’s comments in his weekly Internet and radio address, two days after an all-day bipartisan summit across from the White House, were the latest sign that Democrats are girding to try to plow sweeping health care legislation through Congress with no Republicans on board.

Success will require colossal efforts on the part of Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to round up votes after a year of corrosive debate and a Senate special-election upset that threw the overhaul effort into limbo last month. But Obama and the Democrats reject the piecemeal approach sought by Republicans and have no intention of scrapping their 10-year, $1 trillion bill and starting over as the GOP demands.

“I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge,” Obama said.

“The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.

“It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done.”
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Obama’s legislation would insure some 30 million more Americans over 10 years with a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry insurance and would end insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans generally oppose mandates that make everyone get insurance, and although they want people with pre-existing conditions to be able to buy insurance, they would try to address the problem without new requirements on insurance companies.

Obama plans to unveil an updated proposal this coming week, likely on Wednesday, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs suggested it would include concepts put forward by Republicans at the summit. One Republican who was there, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was contacted Friday by the White House and asked to submit details of suggestions he made on rooting out waste and fraud from the medical system, Coburn’s spokesman said.

Spokesman John Hart said that Coburn views Obama’s legislation as a government takeover and would not be able to support it even if it’s changed to include some of his proposals.

Adding Republican ideas is not likely to win Republican votes because the GOP insists Democrats should start from scratch. But Obama would be able to say that he’d listened to Republicans and attempted to meet them part way, and that could give Democrats political cover to move forward on their own. Doing so would require use of controversial Senate rules that would let Democrats pass legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote supermajority they no longer command.

The approach infuriates Republicans and is opposed by some Democratic moderates because of its partisan nature.

Coburn, the GOP’s weekly address, argued against a Democrats-only bill.

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Its an interesting time in politics. Americans, frustrated with the current Jimmy Carter like malaise in Washington, are lashing out like never before against the political tyranny of the Obama administration and the seemingly deaf ear that the democrats are turning toward the very people that put them in office.

All across America, the people are showing their frustration with the democrats and Obama by voting for republicans in an attempt to slow the spread of Obamunism.

Meanwhile, Obama and Nancy Pelosi continue to push health care reform, even though it is incredibly unpopular with the people. The people have been against this from the start, but the media, desperate to prop up their golden boy, kept trying to convince the people that socialized medicine was a good idea and good for Americans.

It was during the summer break in Congress when the congressmen had to go face their constituents, that the truth was learned. The people came out in droves to town hall meetings to tell their elected officials what they thought about health care reform.

The media again tried to keep Obamacare alive by first ignoring the town hall meeting melees, then ridiculing the “Tea Party” protesters by calling them “Tea Baggers” a sexual reference, claiming that these people were in the minority and their protests were “racially motivated.” Oh how quickly we forget.

Only after all of this did the American people turn out to show the democrats how angry they really were by voting out any incumbent or democrat they could.

Still, with all of the resistance from the people, Obama and Pelosi are still trying to push health care reform. As early as this morning, Obama showed his disdain of the people by saying, “We are going to move forward with or without republican support and pass this thing.”

Obama continued “If the people don’t like it, (pause for stuttering) well that’s what elections are for.” The level of arrogance displayed by Obama is what really pisses the American voter off. The guy just doesn’t get it.

This is not the Obama the people voted for. If you subtract the blacks who voted for Obama simply because he is half black, it was largely white America that elected Obama. They did so because Obama seemed like a regular Joe. Like a real person interested in the people of America.

Instead what they got the day after the election was an arrogant, pompous asshole hell bent on turning America into France.

Today as I type this, Obama and the left wing of the democratic party are planing to subjugate the American people and make an end run around the U.S. Constitution by using reconciliation to ram health care reform through the senate.

This is the same reconciliation process that the democrats in Washington today derided when the republicans under G.W. Bush were going to use it to pass their legislation back in 2005.

The hypocrisy continues to drive the democrats further into the political cellar. I am sure there is more to come. JD

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So this is one of the pressing, important issues that faces California today. Whether or not people are cussing. Geez Louise, the state is bankrupt, but the Mamalukes that run the state of California are worried about people cussing.

We have good reason to cuss Damn it. Mostly because you idiots in Sacramento have ruined the state of California with your socialist policy that has turned the state into a mecca for lazy ass people and illegal aliens to come glom off of the welfare system and all the other built in freebies you assholes have created.

Feeling a little salty? Better get it out of your system while you can.

Amid the ongoing — and occasionally tense — debate over how to clean up California’s budget mess, lawmakers have taken time out to tidy something else almost as unmanageable: our language. This morning, the Assembly approved a ceremonial resolution turning the first week of March into “Cuss Free Week.”

Once the Senate follows suit, say good-bye to four-letter words, a few choice compound words and probably certain gestures, too. Not that police officers will be waiting with soap. That’s isn’t the point.

According to sponsors of the measure — inspired by a Southern California teen whose creation of a “no cussing” school club sparked an international movement — it’s more about minding the delicate sensibilities of those around you. Like your grandmother.

“When we’re at our grandmother’s house,” said Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada/Flintridge, “we have respect and decorum.”

Are there more important things on government’s agenda right now? Sure, Portantino concedes. But maybe a little civility is just the prescription to help “break through that log jam.”

To keep folks honest, Portantino is handing out no-cuss jars to all 120 legislative offices in the Capitol — and to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Every time a naughty word slips out, a few coins get dropped in.

How’s that for a deficit-reduction strategy?

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The Anaheim Police Department is seeking the public’s help to identify other potential victims of a 33-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl he met on social networking site MySpace.

Matthew Casteneda was arrested Friday and booked on lewd and lascivious behavior with a child under the age of 14. His alleged victim was found at an Anaheim hotel, just outside Disneyland, about two and a half hours after being reported missing in Santa Ana on Wednesday.

Investigators say the girl told officers she had been sexually assaulted by a man she met through MySpace, according to KTLA News.

“They met at South Coast Plaza and took a bus up to Anaheim, where he took her to a hotel and sexually assaulted her,” Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna told KTLA News.

According to police, Casteneda is missing a front tooth, has a pierced left ear and has multiple tattoos: a “13” on his stomach, “CF” behind his left ear, “Calle Flores” on his right arm and back, “Romona” on his right shoulder and “MC” on his left shoulder. Anyone with more information is asked to call Anaheim police at (714) 497-6608 or (714) 765-1958.

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Jeanette and Michael Tristani stand outside their home in Hazelton, N.D., on Friday, Jan. 22 , 2010. The couple and their two childern moved from Florida to Hazelton four years ago. Now they are moving back.

HAZELTON, N.D. – A tiny North Dakota town’s promise of cash and free land lured only one family from out of state. Now, Michael and Jeanette Tristani and their 12-year-old twins are trying to move from the town without a traffic light back to Miami.

Tired of crime, traffic, hurricanes and the high cost of living in Florida, the Tristanis moved four years ago to Hazelton, a dwindling town of about 240 that has attempted to attract young families to stay on the map.

Michael Tristani, 42, said at the time the 1,800-mile move was “an answer to our prayers.”

“We don’t have to look over our shoulder to see who’s going to rob us, or jump out of the bushes to attack us,” Tristani said. “Taxes are low, the cost of living is low and the kids enjoy school.”

But the family also found a cliquey community that treated them like outsiders. “For my wife, it’s been a culture shock,” he said.

Rural communities across the Great Plains, fighting a decades-long population decline, are trying a variety of ways to attract outsiders. But the Tristanis show how the efforts can fail even at a time when many people are desperate.

“It’s been quite an experience, 50-50 at best,” Tristani said. “It hasn’t been easy. No one really wants new people here.”

The Hazelton Development Corp., formed by a determined group of citizens, began running ads in 2005 offering families up to two free lots and up to $20,000 toward home purchases. Businesses were offered free lots and up to $50,000 for setting up shop in the town.

Besides cash and free land, Hazelton had little else to offer except elbow room. Surrounded by flat farm land and livestock, the century-old town boasts three churches, a bank, a grain elevator and a bar.

Like many small towns across rural America, the once thriving farming community began shrinking as residents moved on or passed away.

Tom Weiser, one of the city leaders behind the project to lure new residents, said Hazelton had hundreds of inquiries from around the world when the community’s proposal made headlines across the country. Several families from other states visited the town but only the Tristanis made the commitment to move.

“Not everybody fits in in a small town,” said Weiser, who works as a baker at Wal-Mart in Bismarck, about 45 miles away.

Hay bales, a gas station and a graveyard greet visitors as they roll into Hazelton off the state highway.

Michael Tristani came from his native Florida wearing gold necklaces and a Rolex and driving a Lexus. He proved as foreign as a flamingo in a place where pickups, farm caps and flannel shirts are de rigueur.

“People thought I was a drug dealer,” he said.

Tristani said he was prepared for Hazelton’s bitter winters — when wind chills can reach 50-degrees below zero and snow drifts are measured in feet — but not the small-town drama.

“People prejudge you without getting to know you,” Jeanette Tristani said.

The couple bought a house built by students at an American Indian college in Bismarck. The home was moved to town and put on two lots donated by the city. The Tristanis bought a third lot and were later given $15,000.

Tristani, a former grocery worker, and his wife, a former real estate agent, opened a bistro and coffee shop. But within weeks of moving to the city, the couple petitioned for a restraining order against the owners of another coffee shop. The Tristanis allege one of the owners drove by their house yelling obscenities and threatened to damage the family’s new home.

“He appears to be out of control,” The Tristanis wrote in court papers. “At times, it’s difficult to understand the rest of the words he’s using on my family due to his uproar.”

Both businesses are now shuttered.

After his bistro failed, Michael Tristani said he began buying old houses in Bismarck, fixing them up and reselling them to earn money. Jeanette, 44, lost her job last year at a call center in nearby Linton when the business failed.

The Tristanis say the family enjoys spending time together and has little to do with the locals. They relish trips to a Wal-Mart in Bismarck.

The couple’s home in Hazelton has been on the market since August, though the for-sale sign has been covered with snow for weeks.

School Superintendent Brandt Dick said losing the Tristani twins, a boy and a girl in the seventh grade, would be a blow to the shrinking enrollment.

Dick said there are 72 students enrolled at the local high school, and that the number is expected to fall to 31 in four years.

“We are declining in numbers and will continue to decline unless something changes,” he said.

Bev Voller, a member of the nonprofit development group, said the incentives were funded largely through private money, much of it from “an anonymous donor.”

But, she says, “the cash thing is over now.”

Kim Preston, a spokeswoman for the rural advocacy group Center for Rural Affairs, based in Lyons, Neb., said the offer of free land to lure new residents to wilting towns is a phenomenon that started in the past decade.

But the small communities that have had success are near larger communities, she said.

“For it to work, it needs to be no more than a 30-minute commute,” she said.

It’s a 45-minute drive from Hazelton to Bismarck — in good weather. And the weather is often bad.

Jeanette said the main reason she wants to move back to the Miami area is to care for her elderly parents. Michael said he couldn’t convince his wife’s parents to join them in Hazelton.

“The cold weather has them freaked,” he said.

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So let me get this straight. Police Chief Russ Leach was at a Super Bowl Party, left the party and crashed his car into a light pole, and Leach wants us to believe that it was caused by his prescription medication? Right. More beer is consumed on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year. I suppose that Chief Leach was drinking sodas all day, right? Exactly what kind of official business was being conducted at this Super Bowl party to make it necessary for Chief Leach to drive a city vehicle to the party? This thing stinks to high heaven. JD

Riverside Police Department Chief Russ Leach retired today amid an investigation into a crash involving a city-owned vehicle he was driving, possibly while under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

The Riverside City Manager’s Office released a statement this afternoon saying Leach, 61, was retiring for medical reasons, effective immediately.

Leach, who was hired in 2000, had been on medical leave since Monday.

On Tuesday, city officials said Leach was involved in a single-vehicle crash around 3 a.m. Monday at the intersection of Central and Hillside avenues.

The black Chrysler 300 apparently jumped the curb and hit a fire hydrant and light pole, destroying both tires on the vehicle’s left side, which sustained major front-end damage.

Leach drove another three miles before being pulled over by a Riverside police patrol unit, The Press-Enterprise reported.

A six-page collision report filed by the officers who conducted the traffic stop indicated that Leach had been drinking, according to the paper.

Leach told The Press-Enterprise that prescription medication he was taking contributed to the accident.

“I don’t have a full memory of this,” Leach told The Press-Enterprise. “But I take absolute full responsibility for what happened.”

Leach would not say whether he had been drinking, or disclose what medication he is taking, which is connected to a back injury and other ailments, according to the newspaper.

The California Highway Patrol was asked by Assistant Riverside Police Chief John De La Rosa to investigate Monday’s crash.

A final report is expected to be issued next week, according to CHP Lt. David Lane of the agency’s Inland Division.

Lane said a CHP accident investigation team was trying to locate witnesses and verify details of what occurred, without relying solely on information provided by the Riverside Police Department.

“We’re investigating this as we would any other collision, starting from square one,” Lane told City News Service.

“This is an independent investigation. Therefore, we’re not going to take reports from another agency
and say, ‘OK, that’s what happened.’”

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