Profile for Rebecca Tan
Nationality: Singaporean
Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Brown
Date of Birth: 1981
Place of Birth: Melbourne, Australia
Height: 5#39;8″ ; 173cm
Measurements: (US) 33.5-24-33.5 ; (EU) 85-61-85
Dress Size: (US) 6 ; (EU) 36
Shoe Size: (US) 8.5 ; (EU) 39 ; (UK) 6
Advertisements:
HL Milk, Lee Hwa Jewellery (TV commercial), MAC, Pond#39;s,
Magazine Covers:
Singapore: #39;Her World#39; - May 2002; #39;Elle#39; - August 2002; #39;New Woman#39; - Decemb
The Conservative Paper
The News Without The Left’s Bias
18
Jul
It’s not a stretch to believe that the folks at the Associated Press would rather not report bad news from that communist workers’ paradise known as Cuba.
Just look at how the wire service has dealt with clearly significant news about the island nation’s economy. Though the news, carried originally at the Miami Herald, is three months old, the AP as best I can tell finally got around to writing a story about it late Friday, the beginning of a summer weekend when few are following the news closely. How convenient.
Here is some of what the Herald’s Juan O. Tamay reported on April 19:
Raúl Castro admits that Cuba has one million excess jobs
The figures on unproductive workers in the government and its enterprises surprised even some Cuban economists.The stunning figure was revealed by Cuban leader Raúl Castro himself: The Cuban government and its enterprises might have more than one million excess workers on their payrolls.
That’s more than one million unproductive workers, out of what official Cuban figures show is a total of 4.9 million people working in formal jobs in a country of 11.2 million people.
And that’s part of the explanation, several economists said, for a calamitously over-centralized and unproductive economy that, for example, forces a tropical island to import an estimated 60 percent of the food its people consume. The Cuban government has historically insisted on keeping people officially employed, even in unproductive jobs. Unemployment was last reported at 1.6 percent by the National Statistics Office (ONE).
About 95 percent of the jobs in Cuba’s formal sector are with the government — ministries, their agencies and enterprises — though salaries are so low, averaging about $20 a month, nationwide, that many Cubans also have off-the-books work to make ends meet.
But the figures on excess jobs in the government and its enterprises mentioned by Raúl Castro surprised even some Cuban economists.
"We know there’s an excess of hundreds of thousands of workers in the budgeted and enterprise sectors (and) some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs is more than one million," he said Sunday in a speech to the Cuban Communist Youth.
There are "inflated payrolls, very inflated payrolls, terribly inflated payrolls," Castro said before adding a reassurance: "The revolution will not forsake anyone. I will fight to create the conditions so that all Cubans have honorable jobs."
… "All will remain in their jobs, but depending on the possibilities many will be reassigned to useful and productive jobs,” the newspaper noted. "Cuba will never resort to the easy and inhumane formulas of neoliberalism, based on massive dismissals."
Yeah, making people hang around doing almost nothing all day and paying them $20 a month is far more "humane." Zheesh.
Even though the news of Raul Castro’s acknowledgment of the size and scope of "overemployment" is is about three months old, the AP either hasn’t covered this story, or it has done so extremely quietly. Various Google News Archive searches covering April through June of this year failed to return any results relating to that one million excess jobs pronouncement (there may be such a story behind the AP’s or other newspapers’ subscription walls, but it seems very unlikely).
Here is some of Ann-Marie Garcia’s July 16 report (bolds after title are mine):
Jobless in Cuba? Communism faces the unthinkable
President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant.
… Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."
Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.
Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself.
"We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba’s work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.
In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries.
"Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said.
April is "lately" when it’s mid-July? Who knew?
Now the AP can say, "See, see, we covered the story" — even though it appears that its real intent is to keep the news as invisible as possible.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
18
Jul
Obama deception censored
Published in The Conservative Paper
“Obama Deception Censored” is at the time of writing the most popular search term on Google, hinting that there may be some interest in the censorship story.
According to reports, the video had recently “gone viral” and was gaining some media attention before YouTube deleted it.
YouTube has been accused of censoring a movie attacking US President Barack Obama, in a move the maker is calling illegal.
The movie “The Obama Deception” claims (among other things) that “the Obama phenomenon is a ho
18
Jul
Do You Want Fries With That?
Published in The Conservative PaperBut relax. The White House has no interest in expanding the federal government.
Or so they say.
18
Jul
Since neither of the likely Democrat nominees for the Senate from Florida appear to have a chance in hell of winning the general election, Newsweek has thrown its obvious support behind the conservative Republican in the race.
Just kidding!
The likelihood of that happening ranks right around zero which is why Newsweek is promoting Florida governor Charlie Crist, running in that race as an independent, as the best person to defeat conservative Republican Marco Rubio. In fact, Newsweek is plugging Crist to the extent that they have conveniently neglected to mention how he broke his promise not to run as an independent as well as his pledge to return campaign contributions by Republicans. Here are some tidbits from the Newsweek puff piece disguised as a news story:
Crist’s resurgence also stems in part from his shift back to where he’s always seemed most comfortable: the political center. That’s where he’s largely governed as the state’s chief executive—pursuing a Republican agenda of low taxes and limited government, but also collaborating with Democrats on environmental issues and judicial appointments. The approach made him one of the most popular governors in the country.
Along with this blatant promotion of Crist is the Newsweek effort to paint Marco Rubio as the evil conservative anti-Crist:
While Crist has incurred the wrath of the far right—particularly the Tea Partiers—such opposition could work in his favor in some ways. Conservatives are galvanized and may well turn out in force. But the way they’ve commandeered the GOP has also yielded a candidate—Rubio—who may appear too far from the center for mainstream voters. (He backs a flat tax, questions whether climate change is man-made, and supports legislation requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds before administering abortions.) “Now that [Rubio] has painted himself into that conservative corner, he’s having difficulty getting out,” says Smith. Given Rubio’s need to keep the right wing riled up, he has so far avoided tacking toward the middle in preparation for the general election. Perhaps as a result, his candidacy appears to be provoking and solidifying an anyone-but-Rubio vote behind Crist—one that could grow if Meek fails to win his primary or never becomes a serious contender.
Of course, the "hard-right" term is invoked by Newsweek to describe Rubio and other conservative candidates as somehow being dangerous extremists:
Senate candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Ken Buck in Colorado are mounting hard-right challenges, fueled by Tea Party fervor. Yet, like Rubio, they risk alienating middle-of-the-road voters and imperiling what should be dependable GOP gains in an election cycle that favors the opposition party.
Another thing missing in the Newsweek story is any mention of Crist’s most notorious supporter and campaign contributor, Scott Rothstein. However, it might be hard to get a direct quote from Rothstein since he is currently serving a 50 year stretch in the federal pen for his mini-Madoff Ponzi scheme.
p.s. Didn’t Newsweek also describe Ronald Reagan in 1980 as too "hard-right" to win the general election?
18
Jul
George Will on Sunday challenged Vice President Joe Biden and the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page about the as yet unproven allegation that a Tea Party member called a black Congressman the N-word earlier this year.
During the Roundtable segment of ABC’s "This Week," host Jake Tapper asked Page about the recent resolution by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People condemning alleged racism in the Tea Party.
Page replied, "We can debate over whether or not Congressmen really were called the N-word or not. It’s a he said/he said dispute."
Will was having none of this, and immediately addressed the fallacy of this matter (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JAKE TAPPER, Host: Clarence, why did the NAACP spend so much time or at least get so much attention for condemning the Tea Party movement? Is this an important priority for them?
CLARENCE PAGE, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Rightly or wrongly, they are voicing the sentiments that a lot of African-Americans feel and the liberal establishment, if you will. And we can debate over whether or not congressmen really were called the N-word or not. It’s a he said/he said dispute.
But what’s more fundamentally important, Jake, is a year ago we were talking about, is the NAACP still relevant when you’ve got a black president? Now the NAACP is on page one leading the domestic discussion this week. This is probably the most talked-about issue of the week.
And they are diametrically opposed to the Tea Party in virtually every way, demographically, philosophically, et cetera. It makes sense that they would be in dispute. But this is all being played out on talk shows like this one, and I think we’re doing a very good job of it.
GEORGE WILL, ABC: Precisely. There’s nothing like name-calling and a kind of left-wing McCarthyism to enable the NAACP to make a desperate lunge for its vanished relevance. You say that this episode that he’s talking about and the vice president made an oblique reference to it is he said/he said, whether or not the N-word was used. It’s a he said and four television cameras monitoring that event say it didn’t happen.
PAGE: A lot of noise. People were yelling things of all kinds, so…
WILL: A talk radio host in this country has offered $100,000 to anyone who can produce a shred of evidence that it happened.
PAGE: Right.
WILL: A hundred thousand dollars still on the table.
Will was obviously talking about internet publisher Andrew Breitbart, and was quite right about nobody collecting the award yet.
As such, regardless of what folks on the left continue to say about this matter - including those in the media - nobody has yet proven that any black Congressman was called the N-word that day.
But Will wasn’t done. At the end of this segment, Tapper asked a great question:
TAPPER: George, we only have 30 seconds, but — but do the — the Tea Party leaders that I just read their op-ed, do they have a point in that we demand the conservatives to condemn isms in their side, but not liberals?
WILL: Well, what — during the many protests against George W. Bush and the pictures of him with a Hitler moustache and the swastikas associated with him, I don’t recall — I may be wrong — but I don’t recall a clamor of denunciation from the Bush’s critics.
TAPPER: All right. Now, one thing…
PAGE: I agree with that.
As do I, although I’ll take it a step further: not only didn’t media condemn such behavior under Bush like they are now, but instead they encouraged and applauded it.
Once again, what a difference a "D" makes.
18
Jul
While liberals like Randi Rhodes are nastily comparing Rush Limbaugh to Rev. Fred Phelps of “God Hates Fags” infamy, as if Rush would picket a military funeral, the liberal media are standing side by side with Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church in a demonstration of First Amendment fundamentalism. They’ve filed a “friend of the court” brief in favor of the right to infuriate families of the fallen with those vicious funeral protests.
The list includes the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the E.W. Scripps Company, the Hearst Corporation, NPR, The New York Times, and the Tribune Company (parent of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times). Jeff Schogol of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported these companies joined other free-press advocates in supporting these hateful incitements:
ARLINGTON, Va. — Twenty-two media organizations have sided with a radical church against the father of a fallen Marine who is trying to sue it for picketing his son’s funeral.
The media organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Wednesday with the Supreme Court in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, which protests near servicemembers’ funerals because it believes that troops’ deaths and other national tragedies are divine revenge for America’s tolerance of gays and lesbians.
The father of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq in 2006, sued the church for picketing near his son’s funeral with signs that said “God hates you,” “You’re in hell” and “Semper Fi fags.” They also distributed a flier with Snyder’s picture on it that read “Burial of an Ass.”
Snyder’s father, Al, won at trial, but he lost an appeal and was ordered to pay more than $16,000 in court costs. The case will be heard by the Supreme Court in the fall.
While not defending the Westboro Baptist Church’s actions, the 22 media organizations argued that the church is protected by the First Amendment. They also contend that the case could have a chilling effect on news gathering if Al Snyder prevails.
In the brief, the media groups argue that speech cannot be deemed too offensive too be protected by the First Amendment.
“Listeners’ emotional reactions to speech, however, cannot serve as a justification for censorship,” the brief said. “This Court has made clear that citizens ‘must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide “adequate breathing space” to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.’ ”
The media groups also argue that the Supreme Court ruled there can be no standard to determine which speech is too “outrageous” to be protected in the case of the Rev. Jerry Falwell against Hustler Magazine, which ran a parody advertisement about Falwell’s mother.
Skimming the free-speech amicus brief reveals that the lawyers who drafted it sound like secularists, implying that religious folks are the ones most likely to say outrageous things. Historical references including not only Falwell’s Hustler suit, but Pat Robertson’s and Falwell’s statements after 9/11 and William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Monkey Trial. It does conclude on the opposite point, that H. L. Mencken’s nasty words upon Bryan’s death are analogous to the Fred Phelps fanatics.
18
Jul
Through August 23, visitors to the Neutrogena Facebook page can take a quiz to see which cause they’d like to support, which will help determine where funding eventually goes.
“Often people want to participate, but they don’t know how so the fact Neutrogena is opening the door and kids are getting to be a part of something and help the world is an amazing thing to be a part of,” says Panettiere. Hudgens seconds the feeling, telling us that “It’s so cool that Neutrogena is letting the fans go t