Adam Gadahn, pictured with Pizza Hut table cloth on his head, was arrested in Pakistan

Adam Gadahn, an American spokesman for al Qaeda, has been arrested in Pakistan, a senior Pakistani government official source told CNN.

The official said Gadahn was arrested Sunday in Karachi.

Several U.S. officials told CNN that they have no indication that Gadahn has been captured.

News of the arrest came hours after Islamist Web sites posted video of Gadahn praising a November shooting rampage at the U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas. On the video, Gadahn said the Army major charged with gunning down 13 people “lit a path” for other Muslim service members to follow.

Gadahn has routinely posted lengthy videos on Islamist online forums.

In 2006, he was indicted on charges of treason and providing material support to terrorists. The U.S. government has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.

Gadahn grew up on a California farm, and was home-schooled until age 17. A year later he moved in with his paternal grandparents, who were secular Jews. He converted to Islam at the Islamic Society of Orange County, California, but was banned from the mosque two years later after hitting its chairman, Haitham Bundjaki.

In 1997 Gadahn began working for a California charity suspected of having ties to al Qaeda. He moved to Pakistan in 1998.

His family has said they last heard from him in 2002. In 2004, the FBI identified him as part of an al Qaeda cell that was planning attacks aimed at disrupting that year’s presidential election in the United States.

In October 2004, he began appearing in disguise in al Qaeda videos. Gadahn dropped the disguise in 2006.

In 2008, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and destroyed his passport in another al Qaeda video.

In his video message posted online Sunday, Gadahn says Muslims should emulate the alleged Fort Hood shooter.

“I believe that defiant Brother Nidal is the ideal role model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes,” Adam Gadahn says in English in the video.

Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and a U.S.-born citizen, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the November 5 killings. Hasan is also facing 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder and is eligible for the death penalty.

“The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims.”

Gadahn also cites in Sunday’s video the U.S. and allied buildup in Afghanistan, where the United States is in the process of adding about 30,000 troops.

“It is rapidly becoming clear that this already hot global battle is about to get even hotter,” he says. “This is a war which knows no international borders and no single battleground, and that’s why I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance in general and America, Britain and Israel in particular to prepare to play his due role in responding to and repelling the aggression of the enemies of Islam.”

In December, Gadahn released a video message in English offering condolences to “unintended Muslim victims” killed in attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. It was a rare example of al Qaeda offering condolences to the families of those killed in the group’s own attacks.

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When Jennifer Paviglianiti, 29, of Centereach, N.Y., discovered she was pregnant, she hoped to wait until the three-month mark to tell her boss, John Doxey. But workplace gossip got to him first.
Seven women make claims against Wal-Mart in sex discrimination lawsuit.

Once Doxey heard the news, Paviglianiti says, he immediately showed he had doubts about her work status.

Now, Paviglianiti says, she has been unfairly let go from her bartending job at the Cafe Royale gentlemen’s club. She has filed charges of discrimination with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The charges, which were received by the EEOC on February 2, say the “cause of discrimination” is based on “sex, retaliation, perceived disability, and pregnancy.” In the charges, Paviglianiti says she “encountered continual blatant discrimination,” and that Doxey told her customers are “not coming in to see sexy bartenders that are pregnant and bulging out.”

“I had a bad feeling from the beginning,” Paviglianiti tells ABC News, “I know John and once you’re on his bad side, you’re on his bad side. Two weeks before they took away my shifts he said, ‘I don’t see you making it through Thanksgiving.’”

Paviglianiti says she knew her pregnancy would put her on Doxey’s bad side. She says Doxey was making her job increasingly incompatible with pregnancy, forcing her to clean the bar with ammonia instead of cleaning fluids that are considered safer for expectant mothers.

“He also put an extra bartender on the shift, severely cutting back what I would bring home at the end of the night. He was doing everything he could to try to make me leave.”

Paviglianiti looked up pregnancy discrimination lawyers and began keeping a tape recorder in her purse at work.

“I researched online how hard it is to prove discrimination,” Paviglianiti says, “I knew if anything were to happen I would at least have a tape. And I caught him saying things out loud so he couldn’t deny it. I made sure he said that I wasn’t in trouble and my registers aren’t short.”

“A pregnant woman behind the bar, in a topless bar, I’m beginning to think that it’s hurting the registers and you’re incapable of fulfilling all of your job duties.” Doxey says on the tape released to ABC News.

“I’m not saying that you’re not trying, OK, but number one, I don’t want nothing to happen to you…they’re not coming in to see sexy bartenders that are pregnant that are bulging out, I’m sorry…”

On the tape, Paviglianiti argues with Doxey to let her stay on the job, saying she is the highest-grossing bartender at the club. Doxey agrees she is doing well but says, “Each week you’re getting bigger and bigger, and uh, more unsexy, unsexy, OK….I’m not saying that you’re not ringing the register, I just said there’s all different things and aspects, customers don’t wanna come in and see a pregnant woman behind the bar. Why can’t you get that through your head, you’re not getting it.”

Paviglianiti says once she got Doxey on tape, she knew she had enough evidence to bring a case. “I went online and typed ‘women’s rights,’” she says.

That search is how Paviglianiti found attorney Jack Tuckner.

Tuckner says Paviglianiti’s decision to tape-record Doxey was both prudent and prescient.

“This kind of thing happens all the time,” Tuckner tells ABC News, “It’s usually difficult to prove. But here we have a smoking gun. It was blatant.”

Recording a conversation, as Jennifer did, is completely legal in the state of New York, falling under the one-party consent statute which simply means that one party to the conversation must have knowledge and give consent to the recording.

After the Audio

Although Paviglianiti was prepared to be pushed out, she did not believe she would be let go until October 28, when she taped their conversation.

“My jaw hit the table,” Paviglianiti says, “I didn’t think he was going to put me in that position.”

After seeking counsel and confronting Doxey with her claim, Paviglianiti was hired back at the club, but this time as a cashier, making less than half of what she made at the bar. She is a certified New York State teacher, but she has been unable to find a teaching job. When she became pregnant, she needed income more than ever.

“I need to work,” Paviglianiti says, “I need a job. And some money is better than no money.” Paviglianiti says after her daughter is born next month, she hopes to find work at a day care or nursery school. But today, she continues to work the overnight cashier shifts.

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I posted this here because Wordpress was giving me fits. I lost my RSS feeds, ATOM feeds and my post time was being set to UTC-0, which for anyone that knows anything about how the internet works, means that all of my posts were happening in the future.

In other words, lets say I post an article about the Chilean Earthquake at 8:00 am. Well my Wordpress was putting the post time at 4:00 pm, eight hours before it happened.

This wreaks havoc with the Google sitemap and causes Google and all the other search engines to create “unreachable” reports to my articles until 4:00 pm when it can then see that the time stamp on the article has actually passed.

A real pain in my ass I must say. Anyway, I posted the work around below if any of you reading this are having the same problem. To all of my non geek readers, disregard this article. JD AKA Smartass

I ran into a problem that I have not seen mentioned anywhere online. When I initially upgraded to WP 2.9.1 and 2.9.2, I lost my server time synchronization. This also caused my RSS feeds to crash. I noticed that when updating my posts, I would check my XML Sitemaps Generator to make sure that the sitemap was updated and Google and the like were notified.

The time stamp was eight hours ahead to GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time. I live in Los Angeles California, and my servers are located in Spokane Washington. We are in the Pacific Time Zone of the United States, which is UTC-8.

I notified my webmaster of the issue and he assured me that the servers were set to the right time. After a day or so of picking about my site through an FTP client, I stumbled upon a file called WP-Settings.php.

In this file I found the following line,

if ( function_exists(‘date_default_timezone_set’) )
date_default_timezone_set(‘UTC’);

I immediately saw the problem. Although I had set the UTC time to “Los Angeles” in my “General Settings” located in the Wordpress Dashboard, it was being disregarded because of the WP-Setting file was setting the time to straight UTC.

To remedy this problem, I changed the line to read as follows,

if ( function_exists(‘date_default_timezone_set’) )
date_default_timezone_set(‘UTC-8′);

The change being the addition of the “-8″ to the UTC parameter to suggest to Wordpress to put my server time to PST.

I may be a dullard, but I have seen no mention of this anywhere on the internet with the exception of people like me Googling around looking for possible reasons as to why they had suddenly lost server time.

I hope this will help anyone like me struggling to understand all of this.

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Long before most people alive today were an itch in their daddy’s ball sack, there were men like my father that fought for the freedoms that we now enjoy today. Most of the idiots on the internet learn their U.S. history from CNN.com and TMZ.com, but there is more to this country than cheese burgers, I-Phones and porno. Perhaps today would be a good time to stop and remember those that died so you could watch porno. Bob

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Iwo Jima flag raising is one of the nation’s most recognizable statues.

Sixty-five years ago the Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions were able to push inland, but the Japanese fought back hard. After four days of bitter fighting, the American troops reached the top of the mountain and raised the flag.

While the victory was iconic during World War II, for thousands of United States servicemen, Feb. 19, 1945 was the start of a deadly journey to the island of Iwo Jima.

Lloyd Grady doesn’t get around like he used to. He may not have as much hair, but his memory is still sharp when asked about his days as a Navy shipman in 1945.

“That island was a death trap,” he said.

Grady served two tours in the Navy, the second on a 10,000 ton ship, carrying tanks, trucks and troops toward the Japanese island of Iwo Jima.

Looking through his suitcase filled with memories such as dog tags, service medals and pictures of how it was during the war, Grady remembers a night on the ship when he was on watch duty. A flare went off and within minutes nearly a hundred young American men were dead, taken by surprise as they waited for daylight to board the vessel.

“Then I heard all kinds of screaming, cussing, fighting and hollering,” he said. “A group of Japanese swam up in the ocean and got behind the lines and got into a group of Marines with no ammo. Ninety-five were supposed to come on our vessel. We were going to raise them up at 9 in the morning and all 95 were killed.”

More than 25,000 Americans were killed or hurt on the eight-mile island.

Grady and his wife are celebrating their 60th anniversary this year.

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A 4.3 earthquake hits Chicago? Are you kidding me? We don’t even get out of bed for a 4.3 out here in Los Angeles. We just roll over and go back to sleep, that is if it wakes us up at all. Things can’t get much worse for the people of Chicago. Buried in snow and having earthquakes. It’s all Obama’s fault. Ed.

A small earthquake in northern Illinois set off car alarms, knocked books off the shelves and jolted scores of people awake at 4 a.m. Wednesday, but otherwise caused no serious damage, officials said.

The United States Geological Survey reported that the earthquake, which had an estimated magnitude of 4.3, was centered near Virgil, about 50 miles northwest of Chicago, at a depth of about three miles. There were no immediate reports of aftershocks.

Sarah Evans, 29, of the northwest Chicago suburb of Elgin, said she was awakened at about 4 a.m. when her house started trembling.

“I popped out of bed,” she said. “I felt extreme shaking. I shook my husband, and said, ‘Oh my God, I think it was an earthquake.’” She said the dogs didn’t bark but it seemed as if everything in her 100-year-old single-family home was shaking, as if a train was roaring by.

Ms. Evans, who is the owner of Sevans Strategy, a public relations strategy firm that guides companies on how to use Twitter and other social media, said she then reached for her iPhone and posted a message on Twitter. “Seriously weird,” she wrote. “Something that felt like a minor quake just woke us up. Can anyone else in the CHI area/burbs confirm?”

Soon, she said, many people were trading information about the quake through the forum.

Pat Gengler, a spokesman for the Kane County sheriff, said the switchboards had been lighting up with calls, but he said there were no immediate reports of any damage.

“Right now the only reports we were getting were some people a little startled at 4 in the morning when their house started shaking,” he said. “We got a lot of snow out here and we had a little earthquake, so it’s been an interesting 12 hours.”

Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the agency, said that the tremor was only the second notable earthquake in more than 30 years to rattle the area. Even though the quake was relatively small, it was felt by residents as far away as southern Wisconsin, according to news reports.

“This is not a very seismically active area,” Ms. Vaughan said. “We don’t know what fault system this is, but there are faults everywhere throughout the world that can slip at any given time.”

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As a resident of San Dimas, I am sort of wondering what is wrong with the old city hall. Why does it need to be renovated? I have been bringing my children there for summer activities since they were infants. With the exception of needing new floors and paint, I can’t seem to find anything wrong with the existing structure. JD

City officials think they can save $1 million in loan costs on the $13 million City Hall renovation project.

All five city councilmen and city staff met last week to discuss the final details of the project, including a temporary City Hall move and the type of loan used to pay for the project.

“I am against the rebuilding of City Hall,” Councilman Denis Bertone said. “But the financing mechanism that the city is going to use is probably good.”

The project includes three portions: a City Hall renovation and expansion estimated at $9.2 million, an expansion of the Plummer Building near City Hall at $2.6 million and a revamp of the plaza at $1.1 million.

The projects together are estimated to cost slightly more than $13 million, City Manager Blaine Michaelis said.

The current City Hall has been in use since 1969.

The City Council voted 4 to 1 in favor of the renovation, with Bertone the dissenting vote.

“I understand where Denis is coming from. There are lots of things we could do with the money we are spending,” Councilman John Bonier said. “However, the City Hall is over 40 years old, and while it is not an ancient building, it is outdated in a lot of respects.”

The city plans to borrow $7.5 million for the project and pay an additional $5.5 million from its general fund. The city has about $17 million in its reserves.

Final approval on project bids will be Feb. 23, when the council
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can approve either the City Hall renovation or all three projects, Michaelis said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, a majority of the council appeared to agree on a leasing option through the League of California Cities for 15 years that put the estimated full cost of the loan at $11,126,087, after interest rates are assessed.

Alternative options included 20-year loans costing $12.2 million, $12.8 million and $14.3 million respectively.

The more popular choice now on the table saves the city more than $1 million over the long term versus other options presented Tuesday, but the city will have to make payments of $741,739 a year to pay down the debt.

That total is $100,000 more than two other options considered for approval.

“It saves money in the long run,” Bertone said. “We can afford to do the higher payments.”

Mayor Curt Morris requested to see how the lease would play out if variable interest rates were used instead of a fixed rate, but he was still in favor of the 15-year loan until he saw something that swayed him, he said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Management and construction of the project have been awarded to Griffin Structures Inc., but bidding for various subcontracts – including plumbing and 34 others – begins Thursday.

If bids come under budget, the city would spend less from the general fund but still borrow the $7.5 million, Michaelis said.

Now the city must prepare to move its operation to the old Levity Building while construction begins at City Hall.

City Hall will move to the temporary site at 130 Village Court on March 5, and the move will cost the city about $300,000, officials said.

The temporary offices will be fully operational, and at 48,000 square feet will house every employee and still have room for storage space, officials said.

City officials hope City Hall is only closed to the public for that Friday due to the move, Assistant City Manager Ken Duran said.

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At the end of a rough couple of weeks, some good news for the Obama administration: falling unemployment

I had to get this article from The Guardian UK because the American media doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge the fact that Obama is clearly in over his head. Ed.

It might not sound like much, but a surprise dip in the US unemployment rate is the best piece of news the White House and Democrats have had for a long time. With official figures showing the headline rate of unemployment falling below the 10% mark to 9.7%, the economy is no longer just supplying bad headlines.

Amidst all the talk about tea parties and a Republican resurgence, the economy and the jobs market remain the most pressing issues in the minds of voters, even more than terrorism, healthcare or even the government budget deficit. Until the economy turns around, the political fate of both Obama and the Democrats remains dangerously uncertain.

Obama had bad luck in one sense. While the weakening economy and collapsing housing market undoubtedly helped Obama win the 2008 presidential election, because of the time lags involved the rise in unemployment continued throughout his first year in office – identifying his administration with a grim job market.

So a fall in the headline rate, especially getting it below the eye-catching 10% level, is the sort of news Obama and the Democrats need if they want to convince voters that things are improving and the economy is back on track. If the past is any guide, it will take several months of continuing falls for that idea of recovery to seep through into the American consciousness, and there might still be time for that to happen before the 2010 midterm elections in November. Time is running out.

Away from the headline figure the jobs statistics aren’t all that great – in fact, the number of jobs in the economy actually fell by a fraction (that’s still 20,000 jobs, given the size of the US market), thanks to a different measurement, hence the fall in the unemployment rate despite the fall in actual jobs.

This sort of news will have to keep coming to help the Democrats. There has been other good news, with the fourth quarter of 2009 showing robust growth and even manufacturing is looking perky. The Economist, for one, isn’t convinced, calling this a “jobless recovery” and pointing out that 15 million Americans remain out of work. There’s a long way left to go, especially in housing and construction. Whether a full-blown recovery will happen in time to save the Democrats in November is unlikely but not impossible.

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Get a load of this CNN headline. As if all Obama has to do is say “You will bow and meet with me” and after a year of being ignored by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Obama, the republicans will just line up like sheep and meet with him.

This will probably backfire on the democrats. People do not want Obama’s health care reform. So when they realize in November that the rightards were responsible for stopping health care reform, they will vote republican. JD.

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What else would we expect from Barack O’Blunder? The man can barely form a cognitive sentence without reading it first from a teleprompter. Obama snubbing other world leaders is no big deal. Its probably for the best. Had Obama Showed up, he would have bowed to them, further embarrassing the United States. Ed.

PARIS (AP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel brushed off President Barack Obama’s decision not to attend an annual summit with European leaders while stressing Thursday the importance of Russia as a European partner.

A U.S. State Department deputy briefing reporters made the announcement Monday that Obama would miss the EU-U.S. summit in May that will take place in Spain, which now holds the rotating EU presidency.

Since then, European media have been awash with commentary wondering what the White House’s snub means for Europe as it struggles to find a united voice in foreign affairs following the creation of the new posts of EU president and foreign minister.

“With the United States, I don’t understand the debate,” Sarkozy told a news conference with Merkel after a joint meeting of the entire French and German governments in Paris.

“Where is the drama? Is that our only problem in the world today?” he continued.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also expressed understanding Thursday for Obama’s decision, telling a meeting of the Atlantic Council in Washington that European leaders “do not think he has lost interest in the EU.”

Obama already had miffed Merkel by skipping the ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, and she was more taciturn. She said that along with Sarkozy and other EU leaders, she would discuss the issue at an informal summit in Brussels next week.

Sarkozy indicated that Obama might choose to meet with European leaders in the fall when the U.S. president would be expected to attend the annual NATO leaders summit which this year is in Portugal—a combined solution the French leader said was a “rather good idea.”

“If the summit is in November instead of May, it truly doesn’t matter. My feeling is that there are too many summits. There are too many trips. There is too much time lost,” Sarkozy said.

Zapatero, who spoke briefly with Obama earlier Thursday echoed that idea, indicating the timing of the next summit would be based on “content” and not a specific date.

“We will be holding an EU-U.S. summit when the agenda so allows,” Zapatero said. “By that I do not mean dates, I mean the content.”

The U.S. leader traveled to Europe half a dozen times last year and met European leaders at other international venues, including at the United Nations.

Sarkozy and Merkel stressed the importance of their relationship with Russia. Both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are scheduled to visit France in coming months.

The French leader said that he wanted France and Germany to be in total harmony regarding relations with Russia, while Merkel said Russia’s relationship with Europe was a “central question.”

“We have to end the Cold War,” she said.

Sarkozy and Merkel were meeting for the first time with their entire governments since the German leader’s re-election. They outlined a roadmap for bilateral relations until 2020, aiming to strengthen their joint leadership role in Europe.

Most of the proposals concerned economy, education, climate change, civil affairs and immigration. The two countries pledged greater cooperation on Afghanistan, fighting nuclear proliferation and transatlantic security.

Concerning the biggest issue of the day, however, the fate of the financing of the A400M military transport plane that is over budget and behind schedule, both leaders said only that a solution would be found.

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A man was killed by sharks in a rare fatal attack this afternoon in the waters off Stuart, authorities said.

Stephen Howard Schafer, 38, of Stuart was kite surfing south of Stuart Beach about 4:15 p.m. when the sharks attacked him, according to Bureau Chief Doug Killane of Martin County Fire-Rescue and Martin County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Rhonda Irons.

A lifeguard through his binoculars spotted the man floating about a quarter-mile offshore in an unguarded stretch of ocean, Irons said. The lifeguard paddled to him on a rescue board, pulled the man away from the sharks and carried him back to shore.

Rescue workers gave the man CPR before paramedics brought him to Martin Memorial Hospital, where he died.

The Martin County Sheriff’s Office was investigating the death, said sheriff’s Capt. Mark McKinley.

“I’ve been here 25 years,” McKinley said. “To my knowledge, this is the first shark-related fatality we’ve seen.”

In fact, Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties have all escaped fatal shark attacks until now, according to the International Shark Attack File compiled at the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History

Schafer’s friends told TCPalm.com they are shocked by his death.

“I’ve never heard of multiple sharks in this area surrounding someone and fatally wounding him,” said the victim’s childhood friend, Teague Taylor, 36. “He was the nicest person ever.”

On Tuesday, the day before the fatal attack, Taylor told TCPalm.com he was surfing near where his friend was attacked and he saw several sharks.

“You always think in the back of your mind that they (sharks) are out there,” he said.

Jordan Schwartz, who has known Schafer for five years, told TCPalm.com that Schafer was a very experienced kiteboard surfer.

“He was a super nice guy. Always mellow. I don’t think he had any enemies,” he said.

Sharks have been gathering along Palm Beach County beaches recently in their annual chase of baitfish, Palm Beach County Ocean Rescue Lt. Don May said last week when a hammerhead shark was caught off Ocean Reef Park.

Lemon, bull and hammerhead sharks often are seen off area beaches this time of year, Palm Beach County Ocean Rescue Lt. Don May said.

It was unknown whether Stuart Beach would be open Thursday.

According to the International Shark Attack File compiled at the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History, Martin County had never had a fatal shark attack before. A person was killed in Indian River County in 1998.

The last shark-bite fatality in Florida was in 2005, according to the file, in Walton County in the Panhandle.

However, in 2008, Florida had the most unprovoked attacks in the United States — the total of 32 attacks was equal to the 32 reported in 2007. Surfers/windsurfers were at highest risk, with nearly 57 percent of the reported attacks in the report’s compilation.

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Rham Emanuel continued to put his foot in his mouth by calling people retarded. The clearly retarded Emanuel, thinks that because he is retarded that its okay to call retards, well, retards.

For the record, back when I was a kid, mentally handicapped people were called retarded by the state, the federal government and the schools I attended. Ed.

The Special Olympics is disputing the White House claim that its chairman, Tim Shriver, accepted Rahm Emanuel’s apology for calling liberals “retarded.”

Seeking to damp down the controversy over Rahm Emanuel’s reported, months-old use of the word, a White House official yesterday told me and other reporters that Emanuel had called Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver to apologize.

“The apology was accepted,” the official said yesterday.

The vice president for communications at the Special Olympics, Kirsten Seckler, told me that this account of the conversation is “inaccurate.”

“Tim didn’t accept his apology,” she said. “Tim can’t do that. He can’t accept an apology on behalf of all people with disabilities.”

Shriver had simply said, she said, that he was willing to continue the conversation with the chief of staff.

UPDATE: Emanuel met Wednesday with six disability advocates. He “sincerely apologized,” again, for using the word, promising to sign an online pledge to end the use of the word, the advocates said in a joint statement.

Emanuel also promised to “examine” Congressional legislation that would remove the word from federal law.

“We are thankful to Mr. Emanuel for meeting with us today and hearing our concerns,” said the joint statement from the six advocates whom he met, led by Shriver.

“Our community has earned the right to be respected instead of ridiculed. We have suffered injustice for generations and we are demanding that it end,” the said in the statement. “This is another small step on the road to a country that accepts the gifts of all.”

UPDATE: Seckler says that, today, the leaders did accept Emanuel’s apology: “All six of the advocates, including Tim Shriver, accepted Rahm Emanuel’s apology on their own behalf and on behalf of the organizations they represent.”

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Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown on Wednesday demanded to be seated immediately, saying that while he is scheduled to be sworn in Feb. 11, “there are a number of votes scheduled prior to that date.”

In a letter from his lawyers to Gov. Deval Patrick and Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, Mr. Brown argues that the results of the special election in Massachusetts on Jan. 19 are not in doubt and he should be able to take the seat right away.

“We represent Senator-elect Scott Brown. We understand that the election returns from Massachusetts cities and towns were transmitted this morning to the State Secretary’s Office and by the State Secretary to the Governor’s Office. While Senator-elect Brown had tentyatively planned to be sworn into office February 11, he has been advised that there are a number of votes scheduled prior to that date, For that reason, he wants certification to occur immediately. As he is the duly elected United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he is entitled to be seated now.

“Accordingly, on behalf of Senator-elect Brown, we request that the results of the special election January 19, 2010, be certified without delay and that a duplicate be provided me in hand no later than 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 4, 2010, so we may deliver the original by hand to the Secretary of the United States Senate in time to allow Senator-elect Brown to be administered the oath of office by the Vice President tomorrow afternoon,” wrote lawyer Daniel B. Winslow.

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Actually the thought of taxing fast food and snack food industry is nothing new.   The federal government has been itching to leech more money out of the U.S. taxpayer by any means possible,  but it has been met with fierce resistance from the fast food industry.

Movies like “Fast Food Nation“  and articles like “Fed up with fat and saying something about it” published February 1, 2010 in the Los Angeles Times, which prompted me to write this article, always seem to site the need to tax all of us with a “sin tax” even though not all of us are morbidly obese.

There are some interesting points in the article that I thought I would point out here that leave a person wondering why no one is allowed to say anything about people that have clearly mismanaged their weight.

The first is this quote from the “Fed up with Fat” article is something that I have been writing about here for years.

“Frequent media reports of the toll obesity is taking on our nation’s health fan the fury. A report by Emory University researchers projected last November that by 2018 the United States could expect to spend $344 billion on healthcare costs attributable to obesity. Obesity-related costs would account for 21% of healthcare spending, up from 9.1% today, said the report, sponsored in part by the United Health Foundation and the American Public Health Assn.”

Understanding the amazing cost of health care for fat people,  and also understanding that fat people out number smokers by estimated numbers of 15 to 1,  why then is it okay to vilify smokers,  but not say a word about fat people?

I am not talking about the average person that carries an extra thirty pounds.  I’m talking about the fat ass riding the go kart around the supermarket buying more of what put them in the go kart in the first place.

I quit smoking more than 16 years ago,  but once while taking in a Dodger game at Dodger Stadium,  I sparked up a cigarette.  I was sitting in a section down the third base line in the middle level.  The closest person to me was about fifty feet away.   As soon as I lit the cigarette,  a man that was about 100 feet away started screaming at me to put it out because it was making him sick.

I tried to ignore him,  and I was watching as my smoke was wafting up into the air and being blown toward the outfield,  nowhere near the man and his family.  He screamed again and this time,  I turned to see who he was.

It was this incredibly overweight man and his incredibly overweight family,  complete with nachos, beers,  sodas, Cracker Jack,  peanuts and ice cream.  It was the most embarrassing sight I had seen in many years.

Again,  I tried to ignore him, and even noticed some others around me smoking,  but I was to be his victim because I was there with only my girlfriend while the other smokers were there with friends,  mostly male friends.  What was one guy going to do to him.

After a while I lit another cigarette,  and I heard him screaming again,  only this time he was closer.  I turned and there he was in the isle,  carrying yet another  load of  junk food for the cattle that was his family.

It was right about then that I had had enough,  and I turned to him and said in an obnoxiously loud voice,  “I’ll tell you what.  I’ll stop smoking when you stop eating.”

This brought about a laugh from all of the surrounding people,  but what struck me as even funnier was what a woman sitting behind four or five rows and to the left of me said next.  She said ” I don’t like cigarettes,  but I don’t like fat people either.”

My point is this.  What if the roles were reversed?  What it society accepted cigarette smoking but did not accept fat people?

What if when we see a fat person, we started screaming “Lose some weight fatso! “  What is we all started making elephant noises and screaming “Wide load!”

The argument has always been that fat people are not a direct threat to our health like cigarette smokers are,  but I would beg to differ.  Have you seen a fat person driving a car?  How many car accidents are caused by fat people?  I couldn’t find any statistics on Google,  but I would like to know,  because here in the greater Los Angeles area,   I see fat people driving down the freeway shoveling in In n Out Burgers while paying little or no attention to the road.

How many people of normal size are denied a hospital bed because of fat people?  Another statistic I would love to see.

The irony of the obesity problem is that like smokers,  fat people are trying to blame their problem on the fast food and snack food industries,  claiming that no one told them that they would get fat if they ate the stuff.

Lawyers are chomping at the bit,  looking for more senseless litigation against the fast food industry to get rich on,  not once mentioning those dirty words, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

All the while people like me get out of bed every day,  go for a run,  go to the gym,  eat sensibly.

Of course there are other obvious questions that never seem to be asked.   Are these people fat because they over eat,  or are they fat because they over eat and are too lazy to exercise? I would bet money that most fat people are first lazy, then become fat because of their laziness.

I see fat people wander into the gym all the time.   Most come in two or three times,  and you never see them again.  But once in awhile,  you see the man or woman that toughs it out and loses the weight.  You can see that they are happier and healthier.

For whatever reason we as a society are simply expected to accept the morbidly obese as just another part of life that we have no control over. But there is a solution that does not involve raising taxes on the masses because of the actions of a few.

Its actually really quite simple. The federal government takes over the fast food, restaurant and junk food industries. They go to all the fast food restaurants, regular restaurants, liquor stores and 7/11’s and put in a specially designed scale that measures not only weight, but height.

This scale is digitally linked to the cash register and positioned in the floor right in front of each register. It is also digitally linked to Washington DC, where a new task force is assembled and called “Fatsos and Rotund Taskforce, or F.A.R.T. for short.

As the customer comes up to the counter to purchase their groceries, the SKU numbers of the snack and junk foods contains a unique code to tell the register if it is indeed junk food or not.

If the food is junk and the person is more than say, fifty pounds over the average weight of a persons height, then the register simply denies that person the right to purchase the junk food.

This denial is instantaneously relayed to F.A.R.T. and the task force shows up and takes the morbidly obese person to a fat farm where they are forced to diet and exercise until they are within government guidelines for body mass.

At restaurants, as the customers enter, a computer does a full body scan for size as they walk over a scale in the floor. If the customer is over a given height to weight ratio, they are given a fat free menu by the waiter.

Another great idea is these electric scooters that we all see advertised on TV every day. Have the federal government take over that industry as well. F.A.R.T. representatives would then show up at the unsuspecting scooter purchasers house to “measure” them for their new scooter.

When the chair is delivered by F.A.R.T. agents, its actually a TREADMILL! The F.A.R.T. agents then place a shock collar around the neck of the fat person, and will begin shocking the fat person until that person does at least an hour a day on the treadmill.

I know it sounds crazy, but it can happen. After all, are we not trying to let the federal government take over health care? What makes any of us think that if they control our health care, they control us? JD

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