Tea Party candidate elect Allen West is already butting heads before he is even sworn in.

It should come to no surprise to anyone who knows Tea Party elect Republican Rep. Allen West of florida that he is not afraid to speak his mind. Allen West was first brought to national attention in 2003 during the Iraq war. Allen West is a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. army. In 2003 while in Iraq lets say he got a little over zealous during a interrogation. West thought an Iraqi police officer was with holding information and allegedly shot a few rounds with his .45 next to the police officers head. Lets just say the Iraqi police officer began to sing a like a canary. It was never proven whether the information West obtained through his tactics were factual but West said he would do it again to keep his men safe. Allen West was court marshaled and allowed to retire with full military benefits.

In more recent history Allen West has been accused of being too closely associated with a shady biker gang named the "Out laws Motorcycle Club". He has been photoed at rallies that the Out Laws were sponsoring. Emails were also obtained where it seems West is defending his association with the Out Laws.

Who is Allen West butting heads with now? Come January House Majority leader Eric Cantor of all people. Probably not the best way to make new friends in congress or maybe that West's point. West wrote a letter to Cantor complaining that in the entire month of January their is only 10 days of scheduled work. In the entire year only 123 days of congressional sessions. In the letter West asked Cantor how any progress could be made with all the large looming problems are country faces with only 10 days of Congressional sessions. "As we know, Congress needs to work to create jobs, reduce the deficit, strengthen our economy, limit the size of government and contend with a plethora of national security issues," West wrote in a statement to Cantor. "How are we to do that when, among other things, we start off being in session only ten days the entire month of January?" In response to that Eric Cantors spokesman Brad Dayspring said that more time in Washington does not necessarily mean more work will be accomplished.

I agree with Allen West here, I think are politicians should be setting a new tone in Washington. These are not ordinary times we are in and anything different and positive can help. Who do you agree with Eric Cantor or Allen West.

Huffington Post - Allen West sends letter to Eric Cantor

Tax cut deal: What to expect in your paycheck

Tax cut deal: What to expect in your paycheck

With all this debate back and forth about tax cuts and extensions this is what it all boils down to. Check out the link and see how you will benefit or not. Are you happy about the compromise President Obama made in order to extend the Bush era tax cuts?

Top 5 Notorious Celebrities of 2010

Celebrity gossip is one of those strange phenomena that just sort of seeks you out, whether you care about it or not. Perhaps you glimpsed a headline of a magazine in the checkout line, heard a snippet of the news as you were changing channels, or caught wind of it on your friend’s Facebook page. Somehow our heads are filled with all these useless details, these fixations on other people’s unfortunate breakdowns. With 2010 wrapping up, let’s take a look back at some of the most outrageous and notorious celebrity moments of 2010…

1. Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen is one of those misogynist creeps you really can’t hear enough about. He snorts cocaine, he binge drinks, he parties with hookers, he skips paying the bill on said hookers, he threatens to kill them, he trashes hotel rooms, he yells slurs at the cops – all while playing the role of “Father and Husband.” Oh Charlie, what can’t you do?

This year was a doozy for Mr. Sheen. He spent much of it in rehab for drugs and alcohol, but still managed to make headlines with his wild nights out on the town. The debacle began with a few $5,000 bottles of champagne and some blow at Daniels Restaurant in New York. Then his porn star concubine Capri Anderson refused to have sex with him in the restaurant bathroom because he still owed her $12,000. His assistant found him naked on the toilet with cocaine covering his face.

Later, Sheen had trouble finding his wallet back at his Plaza Hotel room, which caused him to fly into a violent $7,000-hotel-damages-bill sort of rage and lock his naked hooker pal in the closet. This was while he was in town to see his children, with ex-wife Denise Richards staying another room over, mind you. The best way out? Have a spokesperson say you had an allergic reaction to a medication and go to the hospital, post haste.

2. Lady Gaga

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Lady Gaga is a world-class weirdo. Yet, to her fans, it’s precisely this oddball fetish that draws them to her. They love her lavish Marie Antoinette hairstyles and meat dresses. They love her bright red lipstick and her topless crowd surfing at Lollapalooza.

Jerry Seinfeld and Mets fans were not impressed when Lady Gaga got real drunk and flipped everyone off continuously, while wearing a leather jacket and a bathing suit. Later, she caused an even bigger stir when she watched the Mets vs. Yankees game at Yankee Stadium with her bra hanging out of a half-buttoned Yankees jersey. She guzzled her whiskey and sauntered into the locker room like she owned the place, groping herself and seeing if there were any takers. (There weren’t.) Hal Steinbrunner banned her from the clubhouse indefinitely.

3. Mel Gibson

We all like to think of Mel Gibson as heroic Benjamin Martin from “The Patriot” or Scottish rebel William Wallace from “Braveheart.” Maybe you even think he’s a bit romantic, given his roles in “What Women Want” or “Forever Young.” Well, he’s come a long way, baby.

In 2010, his most notorious moment involves his contempt for breast implants. The highly publicized call with Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his lovechild, began with Mel ripping into her for breast feeding with “fake t*ts.” She, of course, denies it and he launches into quite a rant. He told her they look like “a Vegas whore,” that she looks like a “bitch in heat.”

The real contention comes when he told her, “If you get raped by a pack of ni**ers, it will be your fault, alright? Because you provoked it.” Yikes. It’s bad enough that Joan Rivers and Winona Ryder say Mel is a “horrible anti-semite,” but now he had to pull the race card and add another monkey to his back… way to go…

4. Lindsay Lohan

If you were looking forward to seeing Lindsay Lohan cast as Linda Lovelace from "Deep Throat," then you can think Lohan’s penchant for cocaine and boozing for dashing your dreams. Producers find her capricious, unpredictable, up-all-night partying ways to be “100% uninsurable.”

It seemed Miss Lohan just couldn’t stay out of jail and/or rehab this year. It was as if she just couldn’t wait to get out, get busted again, and see what she could get away with this time.

She served 14 days of a 90-day sentence the first time. She stayed at her rehab treatment facility for 23 days out of 90.

She then served a few hours and paid $300,000 bail to get out of a 30-day sentence for violating her probation.

At one of her court hearings, she reportedly had the words "F**k U" painted on her nails, which led many to believe she's not very serious about her recovery.

On October 22nd, she was ordered to remain in rehab at the Betty Ford Center until January 3, 2011. Despite all her weepy theatrics, do you think she’s “trying the best she could?”

5. Alec Baldwin

Of all the characters in the Top 5 of 2010 notorious celebrity list, Alec Baldwin seems the most unlikely to land here. Yet, his firebrand daughter is really pushing him to the brink of insanity. This year, a 2007 voicemail was released where he called Kim Basinger “a thoughtless pain the ass” and his 11-year-old daughter Ireland “a rude thoughtless little pig.” He threatens to hop on a plane to “straighten her ass out,” which doesn’t really sound like father-daughter bonding time.

Three years later, he apologized for his embarrassingly public speech. Yet, in another phone conversation, he told Ireland, “I'm tired of this… I'm going to take some pills… I'm going to end this," prompting her to make a frantic call to 911. He was checked into a hospital to make sure he was in no danger of harming himself and you’d better believe the Paparazzi were waiting for him outside the hospital. When reporters were still dogging him after he got out of work that day, he flew off the handle, paranoid that Kim Basinger had put his daughter up to calling 911, and attacked NY Post photographer Tim Wiencis. Is Baldwin a man pushed to the edge by circumstance, or is this just the beginning of his mid-life crisis?

Voyager 1 Spacecraft Headed for the Edge of our Solar System

In this very moment, 10.8 billion miles from the sun, nuclear-powered Voyager 1 is hurtling towards the edge of our solar system at a rapid 38,000mph. In 1998 Voyager 1 bypassed Pioneer 10 and claimed the honor of being the farthest reaching human-made object in space. This mighty journey that launched in 1977 has brought to the scientific community an incredible amount of excitement and accomplishment for the past 33 years. The constant trickle of information that this unmanned probe reveals to us about our vast, incredibly unknown universe (or, at least for now, our galaxy), is invaluable to our exploration of space and helps us begin to understand it and the wonders it hides. Voyager 1 has been exploring a particular region of space where the solar winds (a 1 million mile per hour stream of charged particles gushing from the sun) eventually slows and converges with thin gasses between stars. As the outward speed of the solar winds drops to zero, scientists are finally seeing the indication they were expecting, telling them that the probe is approaching the edge of the solar system. This area is known as the heliopause. Though it will take an additional four years from now for Voyager 1 to exit our solar system, the wealth of information that we will receive once it reaches interstellar space (as well as the information obtained along the way) will continue to inspire and help the scientific community. Space exploration is coming to an extremely exciting age and is just now able to reach places we could only dream of in earlier decades.

If the thought of interstellar space exploration isn’t enough for you, here’s another bit of fun information that makes the Voyager 1 even more of a catch. Carl Sagan, a well known and loved physicist, along with his associates at Cornell University, assembled a spectacular greeting for intelligent extraterrestrial life (or future humans) should they be encountered. This 12-inch, gold plated phonograph record made for NASA contains a compilation of what Dr. Sagan believed to be a fine representation of the wide diversity found in human civilization. The disk contains a total of 155 images and sounds that are in an assortment of languages and covers many different eras. This compilation encompasses human culture in a nutshell so wonderfully that it would be a shame for intelligent life not to find it. Until extraterrestrial contact is made, however, we’ll just have to be content with the continuing excitement that the Voyager 1’s journey brings those wgi are entrapped by the many mysteries of space.

Is Republican Rep. John A. Boehner a cry baby?

Rep. John A. Boehner from Ohio the newly elected Republican Speaker of the House seems to be a very emotional man . In two recent notable examples he has been over come by his emotions. Even out going House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that Rep. Boehner has cried before while debating hard fought bills on the House floor.

His two latest crying incidents have come when he won re election in November and as recently as last weekend during a interview with Lesley Stahl on " 60 minutes ". In both incidents he was brought to tears by explaining how hard he worked to achieve the American Dream and how hard it is for school children to succeed today. Rep. Boehner is well known for crying at retirement speeches, victory speeches and when it comes to children and education according to his friend Rep. Tom Latham a Republican from Ohio.

I am glad that Rep Boehner is comfortable expressing his emotions but I wonder what people would say if Nancy Pelosi was crying all the time? Rep. Boehner worked at his family owned Pub in Cincinnati Ohio named "Andy's Cafe". I would assume his family was making enough money to employ him, plus it might be easier working for a family business. That in no way to takes away from their success but Rep Boehners rise to the top might not be the struggle one might think when you see him crying all the time. I think he's always crying because he knows that he is a lucky man and those are tears of joy. All of us work hard and try to do are best but we don't whined being Speaker of the House.

The Washington Post - For Boehner, there's crying in politics - and other times, too

Los Angeles Times - A crying Shame

Rep. Boehner Crying at his victory speech.




Cbs "60 Minutes" Interview video with Lesly Stahl and John A. Boehner

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Federal Reserve?

Ben Bernanke's watery, sleepless doe eyes stared placidly at Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes. He spoke softly, but he did not carry a big stick. His face twitched nervously and his lip curled unnaturally. His body language told me to be afraid... be very, very afraid. This was the man trusted with chairing the Federal Reserve and overseeing the economy... you know, the economy that's tanking. It was under his watch that all these regrettable subprime mortgage scams prevailed, banks dried up and stopped lending, the biggest bail-out in history was passed, and 8.5 million jobs were lost.

That's all old news, of course... but what worries me is that Bernanke is openly unhinged about two aspects of the economy -- the unemployment that he says will "likely take five to six years to recover," and worse yet, the possibility that our low inflation will lead to declining prices, falling wages, and a downward spiral much like the Great Depression. To be optimistic, Bernanke tells us that the housing market can't get any weaker: it's already at rock bottom. That's hardly a vote of confidence.

Predictably, this master of financial voodoo is still trying to convince us that the best course of action for the economy is more from the Federal Reserve. The only thing propping us up right now, Bernanke tells us, is the Fed's buying up of Treasury securities to keep interest rates low. He wants to clean up the tax code, close loopholes, lower rates across the board. He wants more regulatory power and oversight of financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and AIG. He believes better education will close the gap between rich and poor.

But as hopeful as Bernanke tries to be in his description of possible solutions, his demeanor tells us he's freaked out. His last words in the interview was, " I think that in the longer term the United States will retain its leading position in the world. But again, we gotta get there. And we have some very difficult challenges over the next few years." Yet, in Bernanke's worst nightmare, the entire budget will go toward Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest, leaving the country with no defense budget -- completely disarmed and helpless.

Perhaps a new type of nightmare is coming to the Federal Reserve, however. In 2011, Ron Paul will head the House Subcommittee on Monetary Policy. This rogue Libertarian will be in charge of the oversight of Bernanke and cronies. Ron Paul's contempt for the Federal Reserve is not very secret. This week, CNBC asked him, "So you've written a book titled 'End the Fed'. Do you still want to eliminate the Federal Reserve?" His response was, "Oh sure, but I think the Fed will end itself before I'm able to do it."

One can only wonder what sort of wild ride is ahead -- both for Bernanke, with his dreams of heightened power, and for the fragile economy that's propped up by cooked books and crooks.