The stock market has shown a little improvement over the past couple of days, but the "Bull" is still somewhere out in the pasture, he has not been seen for several months. We are still in a bored "Bear" market, but soon we will see the stimulus packages having a positive effect. Right.

(Extracted from API 3/11/2009 9:12 p.m.)
The big news on this date is that President Obama has signed the operating budget for the last half of this fiscal year. No fanfare, no press, no questions, and behind closed doors. This was the bill that was postponed by the Democrat controlled Congress until after the election. By the time the earmarks or "pork" had been attached to the spending bill the total cost was 410 billion dollars.

This was also one of those bills that President Obama campaigned against in that he would go line by line and eliminate any and all "pork". In this particular spending bill, he missed some of the lines. Like all of them, which is perhaps the reason he signed it behind closed doors. Our great State of Alaska did quite well in the "earmark" department being ranked as number one on the list of states.. On a per capita basis, the State of Alaska was awarded $209.71 per capita for special projects. The State of Arizona, home state of Senator McCain came in at the bottom of the list. At number 50, their share of special projects was $8.41 per capita.

The State of Kennedy, I mean the State of Massachusetts did quite well at the trough. One out of every five dollars going to the State of Massachusetts is for "Kennedy Projects". The bill includes 5.8 million dollars for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The construction costs will come later. The bill also includes 22 million dollars to expand the facilities at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. An additional 5 million dollars was allocated for a new gateway to the Boston Harbor Islands on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a park system in downtown Boston named after Kennedy's mother. A total of 32.8 million dollars to ensure the legacy of the Kennedy family.

Those members in the Presidents Cabinet, that were previously in Congress prior to their election or appointment also did quite well on their "special project" list. The group of six amassed a total of 155.9 million dollars with Vice President Biden taking top honors by locking up 52.1 million dollars of "pork". You can be the judge of character in this process of spending our tax dollars.


Retired auto worker John Demjanjuk of Cleveland, Ohio has a slight legal problem. Demjanjuk was charged on Wednesday with 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder. The 88 year old man worked as a guard at a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland during World War II. He was assigned as a guard at Sobibor from March to September 1943.

The U.S. Justice Department says that Demjanjuk was a Nazi guard and can be deported for falsifying information on his entry and citizenship applications in the 1950's. The U.S. Supreme Court chose last year not to consider Demjanjuk's appeal against deportation, clearing the way for his removal. The case that led to Wednesday's arrest warrant is based partly on recently obtained transport lists of Jewish prisoners who arrived by train at Sobibor during Demjanjuk's tenure as a guard.

He emigrated to the United States in 1952 and gained citizenship in 1958 but was extradited to Israel in 1986 after the Justice Department said it believed he was a sadistic Nazi guard at the Treblinka death camp and known as Ivan the Terrible. He spent seven years in custody before the Israeli high court received evidence that the Nazi guard was in fact another Ukrainian and freed him. His citizenship in the United States was restored in 1998. Munich prosecutors said Demjanjuk will be formally charged in front of a judge once he is extradited to Germany.