A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit 35 miles off Christchurch in New Zealand today (Saturday for New Zealanders). A smaller 5.7 aftershock hit 20 minutes later. Because the earthquake struck in the early morning hours there are currently no reports of casualties though there has been property damage to both insides and outsides of buildings.

No, it's not a replay of the BP oil spill of April, this is a new oil well explosion. It's totally within probability, but at least interesting that this happens 1 day after a judge turns down Obama's second try at a off-shore drilling moratorium and the very day BP was suppose to remove the temporary cap on their well.

This explosion is reported west of the BP rig and there are no reported deaths. Thirteen crew members were rescued in the water.

The platform is in about 340 feet of water and about 100 miles south of Vermilion Bay on the central Louisiana coast. It's location is considered shallow water, much less than the approximately 5,000 feet where BP's well spewed oil and gas for three months after an April rig explosion.

Mariner Energy, Inc. owns the platform which another company, Apache Corp., had announced plans to buy in April.

In the wake of BP's gulf oil spill, the Obama administration tried to use the situation to declare a deep water drilling moratorium. However some projects, like other BP projects, were exempt from the moratorium.

In June 2010 a Louisiana US District Judge blocked implementation of Obama's deep water oil drilling moratorium. Obama's response was to withdraw the first moratorium and slap down a second!

Today U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman also blocked implementation of this second moratorium citing that there was no substantial difference between it and the first one and that while Obama could withdraw one and put forth a second moratorium, he needed the Court's permission to do so.

Any guesses on whether this will stop Obama and his team of henchmen?

To the left is Barack Hussein Obama's monthly approval rating. See any notable trends?

Buyers' remorse can be a hell of a thing when what you purchased is expensive and isn't anything like the promotions for it. Even Maureen Dowd is having buyers' remorse though she can't quit snarking about Bush. Poor Maureen is still stuck on the 2000 hanging chad election and contending against common knowledge, that Gore won.

Dowd gets that Obama's numerous posh vacations between rounds of golf and his sheer arrogance isn't setting well with Americans - apparently even her. Dowd remembers Obama's words:

"There are times where you can afford to redecorate your house, and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding the foundation."

Apparently even she's a little aghast that right before the November election, Barack Hussein Obama reveals his newly decorated "man cave" in the face of 10% unemployment, horrible economic numbers and a debt beyond what any American has ever seen.

Well Maureen, I recognize your buyers' remorse, but it's not like no one mentioned to you and other Obama supporters that the man lied, had a hidden record and what little that was known - showed Barack Hussein Obama was at best extremely inexperienced and at worse a person willing to sit for 20 years in a pew listening to hateful speech about America.

Two committees have now been appointed to study the the problem of getting an umbrella through the gate. In the meantime, all gates will be banned. Congressional hearings start next week.

Perhaps it's the birth certificate thing (which of course really has NOTHING to do with being a Muslim)like Barack Hussein Obama claimed to Brian Lick Your Boots Williams - or perhaps it's this type of action. Those looking for jobs, trying to feed their family and the remaining taxpayers will be happy to hear that we paid $250,000 for an ad campaign by Palestinians!

Did you ever dream that a president of any country would turn his country into the UN human rights commission?

Barack Hussein Obama used Arizona as an example of human rights violations in a report to the UN! God forbid that a country actually have a state carry out the law regarding illegals! Someone needs to ask the WON just how requiring non-citizens to carry documents proving their legal entry and stay in the country is a human rights violation. This is not only the law in the USA but in many countries, including Mexico!

So Kathleen Sebelius plans a re-education of the public on ObamaCare. Apparently we just aren't in love with ObamaCare even after we screamed, yelled, faxed, phone, hollered and demonstrated. So now the government will spend some more taxpayers (the few left with a job) to re-educate us because after all they told us we were suppose to love it.

Ignore that we've been lied to about keeping our doctors. Ignore that seniors are getting the shaft and that anyone with a job will not have enough time to wait and wait and wait for their "free" health care; the butt sitters sucking off the taxpayers' teat will see this as a new type of socialization and day care - take the brood to the doctor!

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson from Dallas, TX awarded Congressional Black Caucus money to 4 relatives and 2 children of her aide.

Johnson awarded nine to 11 scholarships a year from 2005 to 2008, the most recent years for which information was available. Each of those years, three or four winners were related to her or her district director, Rod Givens.

Scholarships have gone to two of the congresswoman's grandsons, Kirk and David Johnson; to two of her great-nephews, Gregory and Preston Moore; and to Givens' son and daughter.

Her defense is pleading ignorance of the anti-nepotism rules.

From USA Today

WASHINGTON  Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

The article goes on to say that 40 million Americans (we hope) receive food stamps at a cost of $70 billion and almost 10 million are unemployed. Unemployment benefits have been extended to 99 weeks, putting the cost on the few taxpayers left at $160 billion! 4.4 million people are on welfare. Change you can believe in!