THIS IS GREAT OR WHAT?

Water way to spend a honeymoon: The ultimate newlyweds suite is a romantic take on the phrase 'sleeping with the fishes'

When it comes to honeymoon destinations, most newlyweds have set aside a nice little bundle for their ultimate getaway.
But a unique suite in the Maldives - while offering unbeatable views of the local marine life - is likely to eat up the entire average wedding budget, let alone the honeymoon accommodation costs.

Conrad hotels are offering a breathtaking suite at their Maldives Rangali Islands resort, which has to be seen to be believed.

Newlywet: The 'Ithaa' suite of Conrad Maldives Rangali Islands hotel, being offered as a honeymoon suite to mark the hotel's fifth anniversary. Usually the hotel's underwater restaurant, the suite can bee see here by day, above, and by night, below

Stunning: Subtle lights make the room even more atmospheric

Normally the hotel's 'Ithaa' restaurant, the domed 'reverse aquarium' is being converted into a special submerged bedroom in honour of the hotel's fifth anniversary.
A night below the surface of the Indian Ocean would have to rank as the number one night to remember, and the romantic experience comes with a complimentary champagne breakfast the following morning.
Of course the aquatic entertainment - provided by the likes of blue-striped snapper, sting rays, parrot fish and moray eels - is also (quite literally) on the house.

Island paradise: The Conrad Maldives Rangali Islands resort, off the coast of India, is offering a once-in-a-lifetime experience - for the lucky couples who can afford it

Unsurprisingly, however, the hotel is keeping a 'price on application' policy - the Ithaa wedding experience is not listed on the Conrad hotels website, and potential guests are advised to personally request the room at least 14 days in advance.
A King Deluxe Water Villa - until now the top-of-the-range accommodation at the Maldives Rangali Islands resort - is a tidy £1,156 a night... and it's above water.
It's safe to say that this experience is not for the budget-minded.

$568 MILLON DOLLAR BOONDOGGLE

LA Unveils $568 Million School

2010 August 23

This is something Justrand mentioned yesterday, but it deserves greater attention. California is in debt. Los Angeles is in debt. The LosAngeles school district is in debt. Yet, somehow the district found $586 million for a state of the art school for 4,200 disadvantaged students.
About 30 years ago educators decided that public schools needed to resemble palaces with atriums, towers, orchestra pits, turf fields and more. My local school district has a special trick is used several times. It left a single wall remaining and constructed a new school around that wall and termed it a renovation – three times.
The theory was that student performance would improve if they were in ultra-modern state-of-the-art facilities. Based on testing results, that hasn’t happened.
Meanwhile, Catholic, Lutheran and Christian schools operate out of simple, no-frill facilities. My daughter attends a Catholic high school in a 45 year old building. There is no air conditioning although school starts next week. They simply open windows and use fans. There is no swimming pool, tennis courts or auditorium. They rent pool time before school from the public schools and use the city’s facilities for tennis. Twice a year they rent the public school auditorium for their plays. Teachers are paid subatantially less than their public school counterparts. Yet, they outperform public schools on tests and virtually every graduate goes on to college.
The same is true of colleges and universities. There was a real need for additional facilities in the 1960s and early 1970s because of the “baby boom” … but they keep adding state of the art facilities even though enrollment has leveled off or declines. Professors spend 6-9 hours of class time a week, while instructors handle the dirty work. Many full professors make six-figure salaries and have great benefits.
Education is but one area of many where government has wasted taxpayer dollars. When are we going to start holding “public servants” accountable?

THE LIBERALS LOVE TO SPEND MONEY AS LONG IT IS NOT THEIRS

The U.S. government spent itself deeper into the red last month, paying nearly $20 billion in interest on debt and an additional $9.8 billion to help unemployed Americans.
Federal spending eclipsed revenue for the 22nd straight time, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. The $165.04 billion deficit, while a bit smaller than the $169.5 billion shortfall expected by economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires, was the second highest for the month on record. The highest was $180.68 billion in July 2009.
The government usually runs a deficit during July, which is the 10th month of the fiscal year. So far in fiscal 2010, the government spent $1.169 trillion more than it made. That figure is about $98 billion lower than during the comparable period a year earlier.
For all of fiscal 2009, the U.S. ran a record $1.42 trillion deficit. Fiscal 2010 might run a little higher—the Obama administration sees $1.47 trillion.
Wednesday's monthly Treasury statement said U.S. government revenues in July totaled $155.55 billion, compared with $151.48 billion in July 2009.
Spending was higher, totaling $320.59 billion. July 2009 spending amounted to $332.16 billion.
Year-to-date revenues were $1.75 trillion, compared with $1.74 trillion in the first 10 months of fiscal 2009. Spending so far in this fiscal year is $2.92 trillion, versus $3.01 trillion in the prior period.
Spending for benefits for the unemployed year to date totaled $121.4 billion; for July, the tab was $9.8 billion, the Treasury statement said.
Years of deficit spending by Washington have led to a mounting national debt. Interest payments so far in fiscal 2010 amount to $185.25 billion; by contrast, corporate taxes collected by the government during the same 10 months were $139.71 billion. Interest payments in July alone were $19.9 billion.

KING AND QUEEN OBAMA; AMERICA'S BLACK ROYAL COUPLE

The last time I checked, the United States of America was a constitutional republic with three co-equal branches of government. Obviously, the president and his wife missed civics class and believe we are living in a monarchy. What else can explain their outrageous behavior? They think they are the King and Queen of America, to hell with the U.S. Constitution.
During his tenure as president, the First Couple has enjoyed lavish parties, state dinners, luxurious vacations, concerts, golfing trips and expensive Broadway dates. It has been one non-stop party at our expense. Over the last 19 months, the First Couple has been living as monarchs instead of public servants. This opulent lifestyle has not been earned, but is being financed by suffering American taxpayers.
The latest outrage occurred last week in Spain, where Michelle Obama vacationed with her daughter and forty of her closest friends. The trip included use of Air Force Two and a security team of Secret Service agents and featured lavish five star hotel accommodations.
As this country deals with the long term ramifications of Obama’s policies, Mrs. Obama was dining with the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and Princess Letizia. On the resort island of Mallorca, the First Lady munched on gazpacho, turbot, veal escalopes, rice, a vegetable ratatouille and fruit with ice cream. How nice to dine with royalty as millions of average Americans are looking for a job and trying to provide food for their families.
This five-day jaunt cost taxpayers a scandalous amount of money. While the exact cost will never be revealed, it will surely exceed one million dollars. What an outrage, just the latest example of a tone deaf administration. In good economic times, this type of outlandish travel is inappropriate, but especially in this horrible economy, it sends the wrong message.
If Mrs. Herbert Hoover took a trip on the Queen Elizabeth luxury liner with dozens of her friends and charged the taxpayers of this country, the media of the early 1930’s would have vigorously complained. Today, the only criticism of this trip has come from the new media world of the Internet and talk radio. The lap dog lame stream media thinks it is just great for the First Couple to act like royalty.
Average Americans think much differently from the lame stream media. Among the media elite, Barack and Michelle Obama are still very popular; however, in real America, the popularity of Obama style politics is plummeting.  While the media constantly bombards us with stories of his accomplishments or her great fashion, the American public is not listening. In fact, as the media reports the president playing basketball with NBA stars or Mrs. Obama lunching with monarchs, the American people are becoming angrier.
Ironically, the media is making it worse for their heroes by exposing their exploits. At this point, the only thing that will help Obama reverse his poor standing is a turnaround in the economy and his policies are preventing a true recovery from ever starting.


In the meantime, there is an ongoing political disconnect with the American people.  The Obamas continue playing the role of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” while Americans live paycheck to paycheck, if they can even find a job. As Americans suffer financially, they know that the bad economy has been made worse by the president’s policies.
If the First Couple were truly concerned about the plight of their constituents, they would be more mindful of their actions. In contrast, the Obamas don’t consider the American public their bosses, but really their subjects.
They rule over us with their feel good liberalism, espousing unworkable pie-in-the-sky policies for a variety of problems. Unfortunately, none of the Obama agenda is working as the stimulus package was a dismal failure and the health care bill is incredibly unpopular in this country.
It seems the administration is purposely pursuing an agenda that is at odds with the wishes of the American public. When media cheerleaders show the president playing basketball or his wife jet setting across the globe, the popularity of the Obama administration only declines more.
The American people have had enough of this presidential partying. The Obamas should understand what they are creating, a climate for the type of political revolution that has not been seen in this country for many years. Of course a revolution is the last thing any real or phony monarch wants to see from his loyal subjects. It certainly did not help the career of King George III.

THE DEMOCRATS: TOTAL FAILURE

Time to admit Obamanomics has failed

It's no coincidence that Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, announced her retirement the day before Friday's brutal unemployment report. With 131,000 more jobs lost in July, and downward revisions of 97,000 for the previous two months, it's easy to see why she would start looking for the exits.

Romer is best known for drafting the February 2009 report "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan," which the White House used as an ammunition belt in the fight to gain passage of its $862 billion economic stimulus bill (the actual cost of which exceeds $1 trillion when interest is included). Romer predicted that following passage of the stimulus bill, unemployment would plateau below 8 percent last fall and by this month register at 7 percent. That's not close enough for government work, as unemployment stands at 9.5 percent today. It would be higher except that hundreds of thousands of frustrated job seekers have given up looking for new jobs and dropped out of the labor force.

Predictably, the stimulus bill has proven to be an extraordinary waste of borrowed money that has failed to create jobs, generate economic growth or do much of anything other than line the pockets of White House political allies. That and give $308 million in subsidies to BP before the Gulf oil spill disaster, and subsidize a study on what happens when monkeys snort coke.

As Romer fades back to her teaching post at Berkeley, Obama is adding to the economic misery by creating an environment of regulatory uncertainty. The Wall Street reform law Obama recently signed potentially requires 533 new regulations, 60 studies and 93 reports, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has 29 active rulemakings, and there are 100 new rules on the Labor Department's agenda and 26 at the Transportation Department.

Add Obama's determination to raise everybody's taxes by allowing the Bush cuts from 2001 and 2003 to expire Jan. 1, 2011, and it's easy to see why banks, businesses and consumers are hoarding trillions of dollars that could otherwise spur economic growth. And we haven't even addressed the destructive effect on economic growth of Obama's nationalization of major portions of the economy, including the banks, health care and the auto industry.

The economy is stalling, unemployment seems stuck at European levels of idleness, the federal deficit and the national debt are at historic highs, public confidence in Congress is at its lowest-ever level and big majorities of Mainstream Americans say Obama has the country on the wrong path. Obamanomics has failed miserably and it's time for everybody in this town to admit it so we can move on.

OBAMA'S PANIC ATTACK

A Democratic Panic Attack?

By: Larry Kudlow
With the disappointingly soft jobs report for July, and a faltering recovery overall, is Team Obama getting ready for some sort of new, liberal-left, Keynesian, big-bang stimulus package? Will they be desperate to “do something”?

Already there are rumors of an August surprise (to use the phrase of business columnist Jimmy Pethokoukis) where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forgive underwater mortgages held by millions of Americans. And with state and local government jobs having fallen 169,000 year-to-date, perhaps the Democratic Congress and the White House will seek an even bigger spending plan for teachers and Medicaid workers — on top of the $26 billion plan that just passed the Senate.

Or maybe the Democrats will come up with a new infrastructure-spending bill, perhaps for green technologies and whatnot. Or maybe they’ll extend unemployment benefits even more. My liberal friend Robert Reich is even talking up the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), where the government employed millions during the 1930s.

With the announcement this week that Council of Economic Advisers chair Christy Romer will leave the White House to go back to teach at Berkeley, it looks like the center of economic gravity will shift leftward inside the West Wing.

Meanwhile, over at the Fed, it seems ever more likely that the FOMC meeting next week will produce a much more dovish policy statement, one that will lengthen the “extended period” near-zero-interest-rate language and hint at new cash purchases of Treasury and mortgage bonds to increase the central bank’s balance sheet and expand the basic money supply. Already, in recent weeks, the dollar has been plunging.

Of course, Republicans will push harder to keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy — as they should. But Democrats are now trapped by Treasury man Tim Geithner’s statements that extending low tax rates for successful earners, investors, and small businesses would actually imperil economic recovery. This is his war against investment and capital formation.

Maybe the Democratic revolt in favor of keeping all the Bush tax cuts will gather steam. But Democrats are more likely to push for greater spending than investment tax incentives. They’d rather take your money than let you keep it.

The GOP also should call for lower corporate tax rates, including full cash expensing for businesses. But so far they haven’t made much noise on this, despite the fact that cash-rich businesses are mostly avoiding new hires in the face of the Obamacare regulatory threats and the uncertainty about future tax burdens.

The bottom line? Panic over this stalled economy may be setting in.

The unemployment rate is hanging stubbornly at 9.5 percent and economic growth looks to be slipping to only 2 to 3 percent. In order to get unemployment down significantly, the economy has to grow by at least 4 percent.

Inside July’s jobs report, small-business household employment dropped by 159,000 jobs — a very bad sign. In the three months to April, this survey produced 417,000 new jobs. In the three months to July, it fell by 151,000.

At the same time, private payrolls in the corporate survey rose by only 71,000 in July, compared with an expected gain of 100,000. In the three months to April, payrolls gained by 154,000. Over the past three months, payrolls have increased only 51,000. They need to grow at a better-than 200,000 monthly pace in order to reduce joblessness.

So just like the overall economy, the jobs recovery is faltering. It isn’t a double-dip recession. But the story is moving in the wrong direction. And if the Democrats in power push for a big-bang summer surprise that seeks even more failed stimulus spending, they will do much more harm than good.

The Intrade pay-to-play investment parlor already shows a 60 percent likelihood of a GOP House takeover this November. That’s the ultimate silver lining in this story.

IS CAIR IS A TERRORIST FUNDED ORGAINIZATION? HERE IS THE SCOOP OF THE LEADER OF CAIR

• Spokesman and co-founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations
• Wants “government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future”
• Downplays threat of Islamic extremism and declined to condemn Islamic terrorist groups

Ibrahim Hooper (formerly Doug Hooper) is a white American convert to Islam and one of the founders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). At present, he serves as a spokesman and “Director of Strategic Communications” for that organization. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in journalism & mass communication.

Hooper has candidly stated that while he does not endorse the violent tactics of Islamic radicals, he does share their desire to impose Islam on all of America. "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a 1993 interview. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."

Ten years later, in 2003, Hooper stated that if Muslims were ever to become a numerical majority in the U.S., they would likely seek to replace the Constitution with Islamic law (Sharia), which they view as divinely inspired and thus superior to all other legal systems.

In 1998 Hooper and CAIR denied Osama bin Laden's culpability for that year's bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Despite the demonstrable links between the al Qaeda leader and the bombings, Hooper asserted that "a great deal of what happened is ... due to misunderstandings on both sides." Three years later, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Hooper again hedged on whether he thought bin Laden was responsible: "If Osama bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him by name." (Emphasis added)

Hooper attended an October 28, 2000 rally in Washington, DC, where Abdurahman Alamoudi, then-President of the American Muslim Federation, shouted to a cheering crowd: "We are all supporters of Hamas." In the event's aftermath, neither CAIR nor Hooper publicly criticized Alamoudi's comment.

On March 17, 2001, Hooper spoke at a “Conference on Palestine” held at the University of Michigan. The event was co-sponsored by a number of organizations, including the Global Relief Foundation, the International Action Center, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and CAIR. Also speaking at the event was Stephen Sosebee, head of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. The conference began with the screening of a video titled The New Uprising, a reference to the Second Palestinian Intifada against Israel.

In June 2001, Hooper helped organize a “sit-in” where a dozen leaders of various American Muslim groups demonstrated outside the U.S. State Department. American Muslim Council Director Ali Ramadan Abu Zakouk used the occasion to declare that suicide-bombing attacks on civilian targets were a “God-given right” for Muslims. When Hooper later was asked whether Zakouk's assertion could be interpreted as a defense of terrorism, he claimed that he “did not hear” the statement. Videotape footage chronicling the event, however, clearly showed Hooper standing only a few feet away from Zakouk as he made the comments.

As the public voice of CAIR, Hooper has routinely characterized the U.S. government's counterterrorism initiatives as threats to the civil rights of American Muslims. For example, when the Justice Department asked visa holders from Middle Eastern countries to voluntarily submit to interviews by American authorities in the wake of 9/11, Hooper complained that the request sent "a chill through the community" by unjustly perpetuating "racial and religious profiling of American Muslims and Arab-Americans."

When the Washington Post in November 2001 asked Hooper if he would disavow the terrorist activities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he responded, "It's not our job to go around denouncing." He reprised the same theme in a 2002 interview with the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, refusing to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah because "we're not in the business of condemning." (By contrast, Hooper and CAIR have commonly condemned Israeli military strikes against Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.)

When onetime Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian was indicted by the U.S. government in 2003, Hooper appeared on the cable television program Buchanan and Press to defend Al-Arian's right to support "Islamic causes and the struggle of the Palestinian people to be free of Israeli occupation." He portrayed Al-Arian as the blameless victim of an organized conspiracy by "attack dogs of the pro-Israel lobby" seeking to bring about the "Israelization of American policy and procedures."

In 2004 Hooper said that after two decades of attending services at U.S. mosques, "I've never heard violence preached [therein]; I've never heard anti-Semitism or anti-Americanism preached." On other occasions, however, he has contradicted that assertion to some degree, arguing that the extremism found in mosques, while real, is less dangerous than the threat posed by critics of radical Islam, especially those on conservative talk radio. "There is a difference with hate speech at your local mosque and talk radio that reaches millions," says Hooper.

In a similar vein, Hooper equates conservative Christian televangelists such as Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and the late Jerry Falwell with Islamic terrorists -- claiming that if given the opportunity, such individuals would commit mass murder against Muslims.

During Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah (in Lebanon), Hooper said: “Our [American] government must end its support for Israel's campaign of terror in Lebanon and join an international effort to protect and bring humanitarian aid to the civilian population of that devastated nation.”

In September 2006 Hooper stated publicly that CAIR did not “take money from the government of Saudi Arabia.” Contrary to that claim, however, CAIR’s ideological and financial connections to the Saudi Wahhabi establishment are numerous and well documented.

In late November 2006, shortly after airport police in Minneapolis had forcibly removed six Muslim imams from a U.S. Airways plane because of their bizarre behavior just before takeoff, Hooper said: "Unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it's one that we've been addressing for some time.” It was later learned that one of the imams was affiliated with a Hamas-linked organization and had developed a connection to Osama bin Laden during the 1990s.

In the aftermath of the U.S. Airways incident, CAIR filed a lawsuit against both the airline and the passengers who had complained about the six imams' suspicious behavior. In response to the suit, Republican congressmen Peter King and Steven Pearce crafted an amendment (which ultimately was passed by the House of Representatives) granting legal immunity to citizens who, in good faith, report suspicious behavior to authorities. Hooper nonetheless defended the CAIR lawsuit and suggested that the passengers in question had exhibited "malicious intent" by demanding that the imams be deplaned.

In December 2007, CAIR produced a media guide to “disabuse journalists of misinformation” about Islam. According to Hooper, his organization had developed this publication because the negative portrayal of Islam and Muslims in the media was “one of the hot-button issues for American Muslims and Muslims worldwide.”