Very telling commentary from the Canadian Free Press:
Obama’s White House is Falling Down
By Daniel Greenfield Thursday, June 11, 2009
In the sixth month of his presidency, Obama has turned an economic downturn into an economic disaster, taking over and trashing entire companies, and driving the nation deep into deficit spending expected to pass 10 trillion dollars.
Abroad, Obama seems to have no other mode except to continue on with his endless campaign, confusing speechmaking with diplomacy. It is natural enough that Obama, who built his entire campaign on high profile public speeches reported on by an adoring press, understands how to do nothing else but that.
While the press is still chewing over Obama’s Cairo speech, this celebrity style coverage ignores the fact that Obama’s endless world tour is not actually accomplishing anything. Instead his combination of ego driven photo op appearances and clueless treatment of foreign dignitaries have alienated many of America’s traditional allies. Those who aren’t being quietly angry at Obama, like Brown, Merkel or Netanyahu, instead think of him as as absurdly lightweight, as Sarkozy, King Abdullah or Putin do.
While his officials carry out their dirty economic deeds, Obama responds to any and every crisis as if it were a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical, with a cry of, “Let’s put on a show.” Thus far Obama has put on “shows” across America, Europe and the Middle East. And what the adoring media coverage neglects to cover, is that Obama’s shows have solved absolutely nothing. They have served only as high profile entertainment.
Neither alienating America’s traditional allies, through a combination of arrogant bullying and ignorance, nor appeasing America’s enemies, has yielded any actual results. Nor does it seem likely to. Islamic terrorism is not going anywhere, neither are the nuclear threats fromNorth Korea and Iran. While Obama keeps smiling, the global situation keeps growing more grim.
At home, if Obama was elected as depression era entertainment, the charm of his smiles and his constant appearances on magazine covers appear to be wearing thin on the American public. Despite the shrill attacks on Rush Limbaugh or the Republican Enemy of the Weak -- the Democratic party of 2009, is polling a lot like the Republican party of 2008. The Democrats have suddenly become the incumbents, and the only accomplishment they can point to is lavish deficit spending, often on behalf of the very same corporations and causes they once postured against.
The European Union Parliament’s swing to the right cannot be credited to Obama, though doubtlessly some European voters seeing socialist economic crisis management on display in the world’s richest country decided they wanted none of it, but it is part of a general turning against federalism. And Obama’s entire program is dependent on heavily entrenching federalism at the expense of individual and state’s rights. Yet that is precisely his achilles heel with independent voters who are polling against more taxes and expanded government. And no amount of speeches by Obama can wish away his 18 czars or the national debt he has foisted on generation after generation of the American people.
That leaves Obama with a choice between socialism and the independent voter. And thus far he has chosen socialism.
Obama’s tactic of hijacking Bush Administration era policies on the economy and the War on Terror, and exploiting them as trojan horses to promote his own agenda, have left him coping with a backlash from his own party, as well as general Republican opposition.
His Czars are meant to function as the bones in an executive infrastructure accountable to no one, but a lack of accountability isn’t just another word for tyranny, but for incompetence. A functional chain of command is accountable at multiple levels if it is to function effectively. Obama’s White House by contrast is in a state of over-organized chaos, the sort of organized disorganization that undisciplined egotistical leftists naturally create for themselves, complete with multiple overlapping levels of authority and no one in charge but the man at the top, who’s too busy doing other things to actually be in charge.
Dennis Blair as National Intelligence, who collaborated with the Muslim genocide of Christians in East Timor, trying to muscle out the CIA to create his own intelligence network, is typical of the kind of chaos being spawned by every chief in an expanding government bureaucracy working to make sure that all the Indians to him. Similarly the National Security Council wrestling with the State Department, highlighted by Samantha Power getting her own specially created NSC position to butt heads with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, illustrates the state of conflict and chaos in American foreign affairs. A state of chaos so pervasive that incompetence has now become commonplace, and no one can even be found to double check the spelling of a Russian word that is meant to be the theme of American’s diplomatic reconstruction with Russia, or to pick out a gift for the visiting British Prime Minister.
Meanwhile on the economy, Obama exploited the ongoing bailouts, transforming them from bailouts into takeovers meant to shift the balance of power in what had been a democracy and socially engineer not only corporations, but the lives of ordinary Americans. But the public’s patience with corporate bailouts is at an end, most Americans were never happy with them to begin with, and want them to end. The death of Chrysler at the hands of Fiat and the UAW might look like a victory in the union ranks, but it doesn’t play too well outside Detroit. And tacking on CAFE standards that will kill the pickup truck and the SUV will badly erode Obama in the swing states, if exploited properly in 2010 and 2012. Despite the constant media barrage, orchestrated out of the White House, the public is growing disenchanted with the performance of Obama and the Democrats.
With unemployment booming and the economy dropping, the jobs aren’t there and the spending is out of control. Republicans today are polling better on ethics and the economy, than the Democrats are. That shows a trend which is likely to register in the mid-term elections in 2010, in the same way that the EU parliamentary elections served as a shock to the system.
In the opposition, Republicans are free to embrace the rhetoric of change, to champion reform and push libertarian ideas about the size and scope of government. In turn all Obama has is his celebrity fueled media spectacle world tour. A charade now serving as a parallel to the depression era entertainment that functioned as escapism in a dour time. But before long, it may be Obama that the American public will want to escape from.
Obama has tried to play Lincoln, Reagan, JFK and FDR -- but in the end he can only play himself, a shallow, manipulative and egotistical amateur who is in over his head, and trying to drag the country down with him. Obama’s White House is falling down and while the flashbulbs are still glittering and the parties are going on in D.C. and around the world, Obama and the Democratic Congress may be headed for a recession of their own.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
More bad news on the job front
Of course, this is nothing new. It's been long reported (although not by the state-run media, of course) that all these "stimulus" jobs not only weren't going to be permanent, but that the many "green" jobs among them were going to come at a higher cost in terms of job losses.
So let's see ... Cap & Trade policies = higher energy costs for EVERYONE and fewer jobs for ANYONE. Oh yeah, and let's hurry and open those borders while we're at it, shall we? Maybe we can break The Great Depression's unemployment record in Obama's first term!
Now, that's change you can believe in.
From CNSNews.com:
Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.
President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama's economic stimulus package, which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.
But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:
"Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.
Obama repeatedly has said that the United States should look to Spain as an example of a country that has successfully applied federal money to green initiatives in order to stimulate its economy.
“Think of what’s happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they’re making real investments in renewable energy,” said Obama while lobbying Congress, in January to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “They’re surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new industries.”
“Their governments have harnessed their people’s hard work and ingenuity with bold investments — investments that are paying off in good, high-wage jobs — jobs they won’t lose to other countries,” said Obama. “There is no reason we can’t do the same thing right here in America. … In the process, we’ll put nearly half a million people to work building wind turbines and solar panels; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to new jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.”
Included in the stimulus package, for example, was $4.5 billion to convert government buildings into high-performance green buildings.
According to the Calzada’s study, Spain is a strong example of the government spending money on green ideas to stimulate its economy.
“No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources,” says the report. “The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s ‘green jobs’ schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs.”
But in the study’s introduction Calzada argues that the renewable jobs program hindered, rather than helped, Spain’s attempts to emerge from its recession.
“The study’s results show how such ‘green jobs’ policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil,” says Calzada. “This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made."
Pat Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a free market group, told CNSNews.com that the study’s conclusions do not surprise him. He added that the United States should expect similar results with the stimulus money it spends on green initiatives.
“There is no reason to think things will be any different here,” Michaels said. “In the short run you have to ask who is doing the hiring, and in the long run how efficient is it to have people serving technology such as windmills. We are creating inefficiencies.”
Michaels also said he was not surprised by the study’s finding that only one out of 10 jobs were permanent.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Michaels. “When we see how imperfect wind energy is and how expensive it is to maintain -- I think many of those jobs will become impermanent here in the U.S. as well.”
Inquiries for comment to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for American Progress were not answered before this story went to press.
(Imported from April 14, 2009)
So let's see ... Cap & Trade policies = higher energy costs for EVERYONE and fewer jobs for ANYONE. Oh yeah, and let's hurry and open those borders while we're at it, shall we? Maybe we can break The Great Depression's unemployment record in Obama's first term!
Now, that's change you can believe in.
From CNSNews.com:
Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.
President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama's economic stimulus package, which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.
But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:
"Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.
Obama repeatedly has said that the United States should look to Spain as an example of a country that has successfully applied federal money to green initiatives in order to stimulate its economy.
“Think of what’s happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they’re making real investments in renewable energy,” said Obama while lobbying Congress, in January to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “They’re surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new industries.”
“Their governments have harnessed their people’s hard work and ingenuity with bold investments — investments that are paying off in good, high-wage jobs — jobs they won’t lose to other countries,” said Obama. “There is no reason we can’t do the same thing right here in America. … In the process, we’ll put nearly half a million people to work building wind turbines and solar panels; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to new jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.”
Included in the stimulus package, for example, was $4.5 billion to convert government buildings into high-performance green buildings.
According to the Calzada’s study, Spain is a strong example of the government spending money on green ideas to stimulate its economy.
“No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources,” says the report. “The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s ‘green jobs’ schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs.”
But in the study’s introduction Calzada argues that the renewable jobs program hindered, rather than helped, Spain’s attempts to emerge from its recession.
“The study’s results show how such ‘green jobs’ policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil,” says Calzada. “This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made."
Pat Michaels, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a free market group, told CNSNews.com that the study’s conclusions do not surprise him. He added that the United States should expect similar results with the stimulus money it spends on green initiatives.
“There is no reason to think things will be any different here,” Michaels said. “In the short run you have to ask who is doing the hiring, and in the long run how efficient is it to have people serving technology such as windmills. We are creating inefficiencies.”
Michaels also said he was not surprised by the study’s finding that only one out of 10 jobs were permanent.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Michaels. “When we see how imperfect wind energy is and how expensive it is to maintain -- I think many of those jobs will become impermanent here in the U.S. as well.”
Inquiries for comment to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for American Progress were not answered before this story went to press.
(Imported from April 14, 2009)
Will the "great listener" actually listen?
My money is overwhelmingly on "no, he won't." There is simply no amount of evidence or no level of opposition that will sway Obama or the liberals running this country. They've completely sold out to the Al Gore Church of Global Warming nutcases and cannot reverse course.
Even though evidence has and will continue to mount daily to refute their silly notions.
From Newsmax:
Over 100 prominent scientists from more than a dozen countries — including a Nobel Prize winner — have signed a letter to President Barack Obama charging that his views on climate change are “simply incorrect.”
The letter — sponsored by the Cato Institute — cites a statement Obama made in November: “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.”
Under the headline, “With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true,” the scientists state:
“We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now…
“The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”
The 115 signatories include Ivar Giaever, Ph.D., who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for his work with superconductors at General Electric; John Blaylock, formerly with the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and William Gray, Ph.D., the respected hurricane expert at Colorado State University.
The signers include scientists at Princeton University , U.S. Naval Academy, University of Kansas , University of Oklahoma , University of Colorado , and University of Missouri .
Among the countries represented by the signers are Britain, Canada, Italy, Norway, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina and South Africa.
A number of the scientists are current or former reviewers with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with climate change crusader Al Gore — and have since reversed their views on man-made global warming.
(Imported from April 6, 2009)
Even though evidence has and will continue to mount daily to refute their silly notions.
From Newsmax:
Over 100 prominent scientists from more than a dozen countries — including a Nobel Prize winner — have signed a letter to President Barack Obama charging that his views on climate change are “simply incorrect.”
The letter — sponsored by the Cato Institute — cites a statement Obama made in November: “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.”
Under the headline, “With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true,” the scientists state:
“We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now…
“The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”
The 115 signatories include Ivar Giaever, Ph.D., who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for his work with superconductors at General Electric; John Blaylock, formerly with the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and William Gray, Ph.D., the respected hurricane expert at Colorado State University.
The signers include scientists at Princeton University , U.S. Naval Academy, University of Kansas , University of Oklahoma , University of Colorado , and University of Missouri .
Among the countries represented by the signers are Britain, Canada, Italy, Norway, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina and South Africa.
A number of the scientists are current or former reviewers with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with climate change crusader Al Gore — and have since reversed their views on man-made global warming.
(Imported from April 6, 2009)
Social Security goes POOF
Chalk up another hit to the country's financial health courtesy of the mind-numbing liberals. The Social Security surplus, expected by most estimates to only last until 2017, has suddenly disappeared (STORY HERE) thanks to Wall Street's plunge.
While blame for the current state of the stock market can certainly be debated (although what continues to happen to it in the coming months and years unequivocally rests at Barack Obama's, Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's feet), the fact that so many of us have been forced to continue to rely on Social Security for a big part of our future retirement income is 100 percent the Democrats' doing.
Just as George Bush sounded warning sirens about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during his first term, only to be rebuffed by Democrats who lied to protect their own, he also made a major bid to reform our dependence on a Social Security system that was headed for the cliff's edge.
He and others saw the coming flood of Boomers retiring and the drain that would put on the system ... hence the estimates that Social Security would go belly-up before many of us reach retirement.
But "noooooooooo" cried the Democrats. They used scare tactics on retirees, telling them that Bush was stealing their money, when his measures specifically excluded them and applied ONLY to younger people. They blocked any kind of legislation from ever having a chance.
Well, now Social Security will only survive month to month. And when that flood of Boomers hits the magic age?
Hope they have a lot of money stuffed in their mattresses.
And a little further down the line are many of us, who nevertheless will have to continue paying into a system that we have NO hope of ever drawing a dime from.
Our money. Flushed away. Our future. Tenuous at best.
Seems to be a pattern with liberals nowadays, doesn't it?
(Imported from April 1, 2009)
While blame for the current state of the stock market can certainly be debated (although what continues to happen to it in the coming months and years unequivocally rests at Barack Obama's, Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's feet), the fact that so many of us have been forced to continue to rely on Social Security for a big part of our future retirement income is 100 percent the Democrats' doing.
Just as George Bush sounded warning sirens about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during his first term, only to be rebuffed by Democrats who lied to protect their own, he also made a major bid to reform our dependence on a Social Security system that was headed for the cliff's edge.
He and others saw the coming flood of Boomers retiring and the drain that would put on the system ... hence the estimates that Social Security would go belly-up before many of us reach retirement.
But "noooooooooo" cried the Democrats. They used scare tactics on retirees, telling them that Bush was stealing their money, when his measures specifically excluded them and applied ONLY to younger people. They blocked any kind of legislation from ever having a chance.
Well, now Social Security will only survive month to month. And when that flood of Boomers hits the magic age?
Hope they have a lot of money stuffed in their mattresses.
And a little further down the line are many of us, who nevertheless will have to continue paying into a system that we have NO hope of ever drawing a dime from.
Our money. Flushed away. Our future. Tenuous at best.
Seems to be a pattern with liberals nowadays, doesn't it?
(Imported from April 1, 2009)
This and that
Ford Motor Company wants another bailout. Only they don't want the government to give them money. They want YOU to give the government money.
Ford CEO Alan Mulally is asking Washington to raise the federal gas tax to make the price per gallon $4 AT THE LOWEST, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ford, you see, has a boatload of these crappy little green cars that it can't unload at any price, largely because the price of gas has fallen about 150 percent since last summer and people are back to buying SUVs and mid-size cars.
This tax increase idea already has been floated on Capitol Hill by a number of libs looking for all the ways they can to pay for their pork. So don't be surprised if by June, we're not well on our way to being right back where we were last summer.
So air up those tires and get a tuneup, eh.
(If you don't recognize the tire/tuneup line, you're probably not alone. That's what Obama said we should all do last summer when gas eclipsed $4. The media, naturally, didn't hold him in anything resembling contempt for saying, essentially, tough sh*t America.)
*****
From Politico:
The eye-popping national debt surpassed $11 trillion Monday, the largest in U.S. history.
The new Treasury Department figures on the national debt were released as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to project that the annual budget deficit will be higher than previously estimated by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The debt, which refers to the cumulative amount of money the government owes, hit $10.9 trillion on Friday.
The whopping number has major ramifications for President Barack Obama, who is trying to push through a raft of big-ticket bills on health care, energy, education and climate change — while also attempting to stabilize the swooning economy.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Budget Committee, said Tuesday that the numbers could force Congress to make "adjustments" to Obama's $3.6 trillion budget plan.
Count on making some adjustments yourself. When all this hits the fan down the road, you, Jack & Jill taxpayer, will bend over to a degree you've never ever imagined.
*****
While everyone's roasting AIG execs, wonder if anyone will ask whether Barack Obama plans to return the $101,332 bonus last year from AIG in the form of political contributions? (according to Opensecrets.org. and reported Tuesday by CNN)
Just like the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac political contribution list, the biggest recipients from AIG were Senate banking chairman Chris Dodd (a Democrat, if you're wondering) and Barack Obama.
*****
Say what you will about George W. Bush's politics, but unlike his opponents, Bush puts the country first. He showed that during his eight years in office, and he's showing that now:
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) - Former President George W. Bush says he won't criticize President Barack Obama because Obama "deserves my silence," and says he plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office. Bush's speech Tuesday at a luncheon in Calgary, Alberta was his first since leaving office.
He declined to comment about the Obama administration like former Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney said Sunday that Obama's decisions are threatening the nation's safety.
Bush says he doesn't know what he'll do in the long term but says he'll write a book that will let people determine what they would have done if their most important job was to protect the country.
If this were Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, concerned first and foremost with their living legacies, they'd be in front of microphones every day getting in their digs on the current administration ... as the Clintons and Gore and Carter did to Bush every chance they got starting in January of 2001.
Not only has Bush NOT been visible, he refrains from taking shots when given the chance. Lord knows he easily could when what has happened in Washington the last two months is the antithesis of everything he believes in.
(Imported from March 18, 2009)
Ford CEO Alan Mulally is asking Washington to raise the federal gas tax to make the price per gallon $4 AT THE LOWEST, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ford, you see, has a boatload of these crappy little green cars that it can't unload at any price, largely because the price of gas has fallen about 150 percent since last summer and people are back to buying SUVs and mid-size cars.
This tax increase idea already has been floated on Capitol Hill by a number of libs looking for all the ways they can to pay for their pork. So don't be surprised if by June, we're not well on our way to being right back where we were last summer.
So air up those tires and get a tuneup, eh.
(If you don't recognize the tire/tuneup line, you're probably not alone. That's what Obama said we should all do last summer when gas eclipsed $4. The media, naturally, didn't hold him in anything resembling contempt for saying, essentially, tough sh*t America.)
*****
From Politico:
The eye-popping national debt surpassed $11 trillion Monday, the largest in U.S. history.
The new Treasury Department figures on the national debt were released as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to project that the annual budget deficit will be higher than previously estimated by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The debt, which refers to the cumulative amount of money the government owes, hit $10.9 trillion on Friday.
The whopping number has major ramifications for President Barack Obama, who is trying to push through a raft of big-ticket bills on health care, energy, education and climate change — while also attempting to stabilize the swooning economy.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Budget Committee, said Tuesday that the numbers could force Congress to make "adjustments" to Obama's $3.6 trillion budget plan.
Count on making some adjustments yourself. When all this hits the fan down the road, you, Jack & Jill taxpayer, will bend over to a degree you've never ever imagined.
*****
While everyone's roasting AIG execs, wonder if anyone will ask whether Barack Obama plans to return the $101,332 bonus last year from AIG in the form of political contributions? (according to Opensecrets.org. and reported Tuesday by CNN)
Just like the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac political contribution list, the biggest recipients from AIG were Senate banking chairman Chris Dodd (a Democrat, if you're wondering) and Barack Obama.
*****
Say what you will about George W. Bush's politics, but unlike his opponents, Bush puts the country first. He showed that during his eight years in office, and he's showing that now:
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) - Former President George W. Bush says he won't criticize President Barack Obama because Obama "deserves my silence," and says he plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office. Bush's speech Tuesday at a luncheon in Calgary, Alberta was his first since leaving office.
He declined to comment about the Obama administration like former Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney said Sunday that Obama's decisions are threatening the nation's safety.
Bush says he doesn't know what he'll do in the long term but says he'll write a book that will let people determine what they would have done if their most important job was to protect the country.
If this were Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, concerned first and foremost with their living legacies, they'd be in front of microphones every day getting in their digs on the current administration ... as the Clintons and Gore and Carter did to Bush every chance they got starting in January of 2001.
Not only has Bush NOT been visible, he refrains from taking shots when given the chance. Lord knows he easily could when what has happened in Washington the last two months is the antithesis of everything he believes in.
(Imported from March 18, 2009)
Her true intentions
It's said that liberals have never met a tax they didn't like. Well, folks, they're running out of ways to tax us.
Now, Nancy Pelosi wants a windfall tax on retirement income. And wait til you see why.
First of all, adding a tax to your retirement is simply another way of saying to the American people, "you're so darn stupid that we're going to keep doing this until we drain every cent from you." Because this isn't "taxing the rich" or whatever their misleading line is this week.
Pelosi wants to put a windfall tax on all stock market profits from your 401k ... or what's left of it ... not only to again help people who won't get off their butts and work for the life they want but ALSO THE MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
This is her DIRECT QUOTE:
"We need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long way to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as Americans.
Ummm, first of all, these people ARE NOT AMERICANS. They are in violation of the law being here in the first place! The drain they impose on social services is a HUGE reason cities and states across this country are facing budget crisis after budget crisis and continue to have to raise taxes and fees.
And now Pelosi and the Democrats want to give them EVEN MORE of what we earn?
All I can do is shake my head at what's going on in this country. Not in Washington, mind you, because these people's agenda has long been apparent. It's in black and white for anyone who's paying attention to see.
What amazes me is the number of people out there who refuse to open their eyes and see it ... AND continue to put these people in power.
And yes, I realize that 300 million or so didn't vote for Pelosi herself. But the liberals they DID vote for gave her -- and her party -- the ability to destroy this country.
And they're well on their way.
(Imported from March 4, 2009)
Now, Nancy Pelosi wants a windfall tax on retirement income. And wait til you see why.
First of all, adding a tax to your retirement is simply another way of saying to the American people, "you're so darn stupid that we're going to keep doing this until we drain every cent from you." Because this isn't "taxing the rich" or whatever their misleading line is this week.
Pelosi wants to put a windfall tax on all stock market profits from your 401k ... or what's left of it ... not only to again help people who won't get off their butts and work for the life they want but ALSO THE MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
This is her DIRECT QUOTE:
"We need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long way to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as Americans.
Ummm, first of all, these people ARE NOT AMERICANS. They are in violation of the law being here in the first place! The drain they impose on social services is a HUGE reason cities and states across this country are facing budget crisis after budget crisis and continue to have to raise taxes and fees.
And now Pelosi and the Democrats want to give them EVEN MORE of what we earn?
All I can do is shake my head at what's going on in this country. Not in Washington, mind you, because these people's agenda has long been apparent. It's in black and white for anyone who's paying attention to see.
What amazes me is the number of people out there who refuse to open their eyes and see it ... AND continue to put these people in power.
And yes, I realize that 300 million or so didn't vote for Pelosi herself. But the liberals they DID vote for gave her -- and her party -- the ability to destroy this country.
And they're well on their way.
(Imported from March 4, 2009)
They just don't get it
Remember last summer, when gas hit $4 a gallon, and Barack Obama actually had the gaul to suggest we could save all the extra money we were paying for gas by getting tune-ups and inflating our tires?
Now, his Treasury secretary, Timothy "Tax Cheat" Geithner, steps in it while talking about Obama's Cap & Trade plan.
From the AP story today on the new law:
But the Treasury secretary acknowledged that consumers could face higher electric bills because Obama would impose fees on greenhouse gas producers, including power plants that burn fossil fuels, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The goal is to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming while raising a projected $646 billion over 10 years.
"Now, if people don't change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy," Geithner said.
Change how we use energy? What? Like stop using electricity?
Now, his Treasury secretary, Timothy "Tax Cheat" Geithner, steps in it while talking about Obama's Cap & Trade plan.
From the AP story today on the new law:
But the Treasury secretary acknowledged that consumers could face higher electric bills because Obama would impose fees on greenhouse gas producers, including power plants that burn fossil fuels, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The goal is to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming while raising a projected $646 billion over 10 years.
"Now, if people don't change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy," Geithner said.
Change how we use energy? What? Like stop using electricity?
It's raining taxes
The increased gas tax talk is back. AND the per-mile-you-drive tax. Yes, Barack Obama said he's against raising/instituting taxes in a recession.
Prediction: He'll next say he's still against it, but he has no choice. Here's the story on that.
That's just the tip of the iceberg this week, though.
The president's budget proposal yesterday includes something I've been writing about for more than a year and what we all knew was coming.
Cap & Trade. Think your utility bills are high now?
Under this system, the government's going to set "pollution levels" (the CAP) for, among other people, producers of electricity on whatever amount they go over that level. Since coal comprises 49 percent of electricity generation in this country, they'll go over by A LOT.
The electric providers then have to buy "carbon off-sets" (the TRADE) from shell companies people like Al Gore set up to reap the benefits.
We know who benefits: The Al Gores who are running this scam.
More pertinent to most people, though, is the question of who loses. If you said the electric companies, guess again. That cost, my friends, will be passed on to Joe Consumer. Just like any other cost to businesses.
In other parts of the world where this was done a year and two years ago, like Australia, utility bills doubled and tripled, depending on the cap levels.
This, of course, came up during a press briefing at the White House yesterday. Know how they defended it?
Our increased cost will be off-set by the payroll tax cut we're getting. Wait and see if $13 covers it. And that tax cut is temporary. Cap & Trade isn't.
Besides, I thought that was supposed to be part of the "stimulus" bill that would pull our economy out of the toilet? Appears from where I'm sitting that the only thing being stimulated are the bank accounts of people like Al Gore who are perpetrating this whole Global Warming scam upon this planet.
Now, I know a lot of you who toe the Democrat Party line will say, "Oh, but Dan, a lot of this money is going toward development of wind and solar power, which will replace coal and all the bad, nasty carbon dioxide-producing ways we do it now!"
I seriously want anyone who EVEN THINKS that to spend some time doing some honest research into how long even the most rosey estimates say that will take. I'm not talking about what you're spoon-fed by the Al Gores, his liberal enablers and other environazis, that's it's right around the corner.
I think you'll find that you'll be paying MUCH higher utility bills for some time to come.
Enjoy your change, America.
(Imported from Feb. 27, 2009)
Prediction: He'll next say he's still against it, but he has no choice. Here's the story on that.
That's just the tip of the iceberg this week, though.
The president's budget proposal yesterday includes something I've been writing about for more than a year and what we all knew was coming.
Cap & Trade. Think your utility bills are high now?
Under this system, the government's going to set "pollution levels" (the CAP) for, among other people, producers of electricity on whatever amount they go over that level. Since coal comprises 49 percent of electricity generation in this country, they'll go over by A LOT.
The electric providers then have to buy "carbon off-sets" (the TRADE) from shell companies people like Al Gore set up to reap the benefits.
We know who benefits: The Al Gores who are running this scam.
More pertinent to most people, though, is the question of who loses. If you said the electric companies, guess again. That cost, my friends, will be passed on to Joe Consumer. Just like any other cost to businesses.
In other parts of the world where this was done a year and two years ago, like Australia, utility bills doubled and tripled, depending on the cap levels.
This, of course, came up during a press briefing at the White House yesterday. Know how they defended it?
Our increased cost will be off-set by the payroll tax cut we're getting. Wait and see if $13 covers it. And that tax cut is temporary. Cap & Trade isn't.
Besides, I thought that was supposed to be part of the "stimulus" bill that would pull our economy out of the toilet? Appears from where I'm sitting that the only thing being stimulated are the bank accounts of people like Al Gore who are perpetrating this whole Global Warming scam upon this planet.
Now, I know a lot of you who toe the Democrat Party line will say, "Oh, but Dan, a lot of this money is going toward development of wind and solar power, which will replace coal and all the bad, nasty carbon dioxide-producing ways we do it now!"
I seriously want anyone who EVEN THINKS that to spend some time doing some honest research into how long even the most rosey estimates say that will take. I'm not talking about what you're spoon-fed by the Al Gores, his liberal enablers and other environazis, that's it's right around the corner.
I think you'll find that you'll be paying MUCH higher utility bills for some time to come.
Enjoy your change, America.
(Imported from Feb. 27, 2009)
The lie continues
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. Treasury on Saturday to implement tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans, fulfilling a campaign pledge he hopes will help jolt the economy out of recession.
The tax cuts are part of a $787 billion economic recovery plan passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress over Republican opposition. The aim is to put more money in the pockets of Americans and stimulate the economy by increasing consumer spending.
"I'm pleased to announce that this morning the Treasury Department began directing employers to reduce the amount of taxes withheld from paychecks, meaning that by April 1st, a typical family will begin taking home at least $65 more every month," Obama said in his weekly radio address.
"Never before in our history has a tax cut taken effect faster or gone to so many hard-working Americans," he said.
I guess someone needs to explain basic math to Barack Obama. He clearly doesn't get it.
This is taking something that already was going to be yours and giving it to you under the pretense of doing you a favor. It's a con, pure and simple.
It's NOT a tax cut.
When President Bush instituted tax rebates, the government simply gave back, in the form of one-time payments, money that middle- and lower-class people had already paid. This isn't even that.
When Bush gave tax CUTS, he eliminated, for example, the marriage penalty tax. Whereas married couples previously had only been able to claim one $2,100 exemption, Bush changed that rule and allowed two. That meant an additional $2,100 reduction in the amount you were taxed. He also raised the exemption amount.
What Obama is doing is reducing by $13 per week (or whatever amount it ends up being) your withholding. That's great. That's an extra $13 per week you can spend now. But at the end of the year when you do your taxes, that will be $13 per week LESS that you'll get as a refund. And for those on the bubble or those paying the IRS, you'll pay $13 per week more. Or $676.
We've heard now for several years Democrats demonizing "predatory lenders" for sucking supposedly unwitting people into adjustable rate mortgages, giving them what seemed like a great deal now but something that after a certain amount of time would bite them in the butt.
This is no different. They're not telling anyone that by doing this, they're going to owe more later.
If Democrats truly were interested in helping the middle class and upper lower class (those who actually pay taxes), they'd reduce the rate at which our earnings are taxed from 25 percent to 15 percent, as a number of Republicans have suggested. That, coupled with a withholdings decrease, would put more money (that's already OURS, by the way) back in our pockets now AND later. And that would truly be stimulative.
But Democrats have never been about tax cuts. And they're lying through their teeth telling you that's what this is.
(Imported from Feb. 21, 2009)
The tax cuts are part of a $787 billion economic recovery plan passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress over Republican opposition. The aim is to put more money in the pockets of Americans and stimulate the economy by increasing consumer spending.
"I'm pleased to announce that this morning the Treasury Department began directing employers to reduce the amount of taxes withheld from paychecks, meaning that by April 1st, a typical family will begin taking home at least $65 more every month," Obama said in his weekly radio address.
"Never before in our history has a tax cut taken effect faster or gone to so many hard-working Americans," he said.
I guess someone needs to explain basic math to Barack Obama. He clearly doesn't get it.
This is taking something that already was going to be yours and giving it to you under the pretense of doing you a favor. It's a con, pure and simple.
It's NOT a tax cut.
When President Bush instituted tax rebates, the government simply gave back, in the form of one-time payments, money that middle- and lower-class people had already paid. This isn't even that.
When Bush gave tax CUTS, he eliminated, for example, the marriage penalty tax. Whereas married couples previously had only been able to claim one $2,100 exemption, Bush changed that rule and allowed two. That meant an additional $2,100 reduction in the amount you were taxed. He also raised the exemption amount.
What Obama is doing is reducing by $13 per week (or whatever amount it ends up being) your withholding. That's great. That's an extra $13 per week you can spend now. But at the end of the year when you do your taxes, that will be $13 per week LESS that you'll get as a refund. And for those on the bubble or those paying the IRS, you'll pay $13 per week more. Or $676.
We've heard now for several years Democrats demonizing "predatory lenders" for sucking supposedly unwitting people into adjustable rate mortgages, giving them what seemed like a great deal now but something that after a certain amount of time would bite them in the butt.
This is no different. They're not telling anyone that by doing this, they're going to owe more later.
If Democrats truly were interested in helping the middle class and upper lower class (those who actually pay taxes), they'd reduce the rate at which our earnings are taxed from 25 percent to 15 percent, as a number of Republicans have suggested. That, coupled with a withholdings decrease, would put more money (that's already OURS, by the way) back in our pockets now AND later. And that would truly be stimulative.
But Democrats have never been about tax cuts. And they're lying through their teeth telling you that's what this is.
(Imported from Feb. 21, 2009)
Want to talk solutions?
So as not to simply criticize, call people horrible names and predict the end of the world (as Democrats did from 2000 to 2008), allow me to offer, in simple terms, alternatives to the massive spending that's being attempted in Washington.
This is from American Solutions. See if it doesn't make sense. And if not, at least consider the fact that these measures in one form or another are tested and have worked whenever they've been tried. The opposite is true for what our government is doing now.
This is how Reagan put it in his first inaugural address:
“Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”
In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, 12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity puts its faith in the people, not the government.
Our plan isn’t more money for more government, more power for politicians and more make-work for bureaucrats.
It’s a clear and decisive alternative that creates jobs, rewards work and encourages savings and investment.
12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity
1. Payroll Tax Stimulus. With a temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax, every small business would have more money, and all Americans would take home more of what they earn.
2. Real Middle-Income Tax Relief. Reduce the marginal tax rate of 25% down to 15%, in effect establishing a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 9 out of 10 American workers.
3. Reduce the Business Tax Rate. Match Ireland’s rate of 12.5% to keep more jobs in America.
4. Homeowner’s Assistance. Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.
5. Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget. This begins with eliminating congressional earmarks and wasteful pork-barrel spending.
6. No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud. Require state governments to adopt anti-fraud and anti-theft policies before giving them more money.
7. More American Energy Now. Explore for more American oil and gas and invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.
8. Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains. Match China, Singapore and many other competitors. More investment in America means more jobs in America.
9. Protect the Rights of American Workers. We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union, and the worker’s right to freely negotiate. Forced unionism will kill jobs in America at a time when we can’t afford to lose them.
10. Replace Sarbanes-Oxley. This failed law is crippling entrepreneurial startups. Replace it with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.
11. Abolish the Death Tax. Americans should work for their families, not for Washington.
12. Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure. This includes a new, expanded electric power grid and a 21st Century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel and save passengers, employees and airlines billions of dollars per year.
(Imported from Feb. 17, 2009)
This is from American Solutions. See if it doesn't make sense. And if not, at least consider the fact that these measures in one form or another are tested and have worked whenever they've been tried. The opposite is true for what our government is doing now.
This is how Reagan put it in his first inaugural address:
“Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”
In the spirit of Ronald Reagan, 12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity puts its faith in the people, not the government.
Our plan isn’t more money for more government, more power for politicians and more make-work for bureaucrats.
It’s a clear and decisive alternative that creates jobs, rewards work and encourages savings and investment.
12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity
1. Payroll Tax Stimulus. With a temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax, every small business would have more money, and all Americans would take home more of what they earn.
2. Real Middle-Income Tax Relief. Reduce the marginal tax rate of 25% down to 15%, in effect establishing a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 9 out of 10 American workers.
3. Reduce the Business Tax Rate. Match Ireland’s rate of 12.5% to keep more jobs in America.
4. Homeowner’s Assistance. Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.
5. Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget. This begins with eliminating congressional earmarks and wasteful pork-barrel spending.
6. No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud. Require state governments to adopt anti-fraud and anti-theft policies before giving them more money.
7. More American Energy Now. Explore for more American oil and gas and invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.
8. Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains. Match China, Singapore and many other competitors. More investment in America means more jobs in America.
9. Protect the Rights of American Workers. We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union, and the worker’s right to freely negotiate. Forced unionism will kill jobs in America at a time when we can’t afford to lose them.
10. Replace Sarbanes-Oxley. This failed law is crippling entrepreneurial startups. Replace it with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.
11. Abolish the Death Tax. Americans should work for their families, not for Washington.
12. Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure. This includes a new, expanded electric power grid and a 21st Century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel and save passengers, employees and airlines billions of dollars per year.
(Imported from Feb. 17, 2009)
Hey big spender
Read it and weep folks.
God Help America and future Generations that will pay this "STICKITTOTHEM" Bill.
A partial list of things, as Obama said, "our economy desperately needs."
-- $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
-- $380 million for the Women, Infants & Children welfare program
-- $300 million in grants to combat violence against women
-- $1.2 billion to provide "youth" with summer jobs
-- $2.4 billion for "neighborhood stabilization" activities (a.k.a. ACORN)
-- $650 million for digital TV coupons
-- $150 million for the Smithsonian
-- $34 million to renovate the Dept. of Commerce headquarters
-- $500 million for improvements to the National Institute of Health facility
-- $44 million for repairs to the Dept. of Agriculture's headquarters
-- $350 million for agriculture department computers
-- $88 million to move (that's right, move) the Public Health Service into a new building.
-- $1 billion for the Census Bureau
-- $300 million for wetlands preservation in San Francisco (Piggy Pelosi's frogs)
-- $89 billion for Medicaid
-- $30 billion for COBRA extensions
-- $36 billion for expanded unemployment
-- $20 billion for food stamps
-- $850 million for Amtrak
-- $87 million for a "polar ice breaking ship" (What about ice caps melting due to global warming?)
-- $1.7 million for the National Park Service
-- $55 million for the Historic Preservation Fund
-- $7.6 million for the Rural Advancement Program
-- $150 million for "agricultural commodity purchases"
-- $150 million for producers of livestock, farm-raised fish and honey bees
-- $160 million for paid volunteers (what is a "paid volunteer"?) at the Corporation for National and Community Service
Mind you, this is only a partial list of what I've been able to find. But the above totals $184.4 BILLION that has ZIP, ZERO, NADA to do with the economy. And that's not even one-quarter of the bill!
Are we really to believe Obama that we would not have been able to reverse our country's slide if he and Congress were prevented from ramming all this pork down our throats?
And, by the way, what happened to Obama's pledge to end pork barrel spending? In fact, at his "press conference" he bristled when asked about pork, saying there's none in this bill.
Also, what happened to his promise for "more transparent government" and the pledge that NO bill would be voted on in Congress until the public had FIVE DAYS to view it in its entirety? This bill did not even have FIVE HOURS in the public eye.
Another interesting fact: Obama said that one of the reasons Congress must pass the stimulus bill and must pass it NOW, is to end our dependence on foreign oil. What is astonishing is that he made this proclamation about energy independence less than 24 hours after his new interior secretary canceled the oil & gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land.
We are only three weeks into this guy's term and already he and his party are out of control.
(Imported from Feb. 16, 2009)
God Help America and future Generations that will pay this "STICKITTOTHEM" Bill.
A partial list of things, as Obama said, "our economy desperately needs."
-- $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
-- $380 million for the Women, Infants & Children welfare program
-- $300 million in grants to combat violence against women
-- $1.2 billion to provide "youth" with summer jobs
-- $2.4 billion for "neighborhood stabilization" activities (a.k.a. ACORN)
-- $650 million for digital TV coupons
-- $150 million for the Smithsonian
-- $34 million to renovate the Dept. of Commerce headquarters
-- $500 million for improvements to the National Institute of Health facility
-- $44 million for repairs to the Dept. of Agriculture's headquarters
-- $350 million for agriculture department computers
-- $88 million to move (that's right, move) the Public Health Service into a new building.
-- $1 billion for the Census Bureau
-- $300 million for wetlands preservation in San Francisco (Piggy Pelosi's frogs)
-- $89 billion for Medicaid
-- $30 billion for COBRA extensions
-- $36 billion for expanded unemployment
-- $20 billion for food stamps
-- $850 million for Amtrak
-- $87 million for a "polar ice breaking ship" (What about ice caps melting due to global warming?)
-- $1.7 million for the National Park Service
-- $55 million for the Historic Preservation Fund
-- $7.6 million for the Rural Advancement Program
-- $150 million for "agricultural commodity purchases"
-- $150 million for producers of livestock, farm-raised fish and honey bees
-- $160 million for paid volunteers (what is a "paid volunteer"?) at the Corporation for National and Community Service
Mind you, this is only a partial list of what I've been able to find. But the above totals $184.4 BILLION that has ZIP, ZERO, NADA to do with the economy. And that's not even one-quarter of the bill!
Are we really to believe Obama that we would not have been able to reverse our country's slide if he and Congress were prevented from ramming all this pork down our throats?
And, by the way, what happened to Obama's pledge to end pork barrel spending? In fact, at his "press conference" he bristled when asked about pork, saying there's none in this bill.
Also, what happened to his promise for "more transparent government" and the pledge that NO bill would be voted on in Congress until the public had FIVE DAYS to view it in its entirety? This bill did not even have FIVE HOURS in the public eye.
Another interesting fact: Obama said that one of the reasons Congress must pass the stimulus bill and must pass it NOW, is to end our dependence on foreign oil. What is astonishing is that he made this proclamation about energy independence less than 24 hours after his new interior secretary canceled the oil & gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land.
We are only three weeks into this guy's term and already he and his party are out of control.
(Imported from Feb. 16, 2009)
Strength in numbers
I know a lot of you are familiar with NumbersUSA and its tireless work on immigration issues. For those of you who are not, I urge you to become familiar with them.
This is especially important now on two fronts. We've witnessed the Democrats' state of oblivion to public sentiment on a number of fronts in the last few weeks, and this is just the beginning. That they stripped E-verify from the "stimulus" bill wasn't surprising ... but it clearly signals what they intend to do with regard to immigration reform.
It should be infuriating to each and every one of you that Liberals refuse to protect jobs when American citizens are losing theirs at ever-increasing rates. At the very least, there should be widespread concern about the already horrendous drain on our tax base because of our continued failure to enforce immigration laws that already exist. That's only the tip of the iceberg, because when they start shoving amnesty legislation down our throats and opening our borders completely, that drain will become overwhelming and permanent.
NumbersUSA and its members played a tremendous role in stopping amnesty legislation twice in 2006, because it gave millions of citizens the ability to quickly send faxes to and provided direct phone numbers to our elected representatives, who "got the message" that the American people would not stand for the stealth legislation Congress was attempting to pass in the dead of night.
NumbersUSA stays on top of everything Washington does. And very soon, it's going to add individual state legislatures and the ability for us to quickly contact those people, which will help greatly in convincing states to enforce and/or adopt measures in the fight against open borders.
It costs nothing to join NumbersUSA. They supply very timely alerts to Washington's antics. And it takes less than five minutes to send urgent faxes to every one of your elected representatives.
The media certainly is not going to tell the people of this country what politicians are doing under cover in Washington. And you can bet your last dime that those politicians aren't forthcoming about their actions.
But you can rest assured they listen when voters speak, especially when they do so in great numbers.
I urge any and all who have not signed on with NumbersUSA to do so and to recruit friends elsewhere to do so. It's one of the few remaining avenues available to us to have a say in what our government is doing.
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/
(Imported from Feb. 13, 2009)
This is especially important now on two fronts. We've witnessed the Democrats' state of oblivion to public sentiment on a number of fronts in the last few weeks, and this is just the beginning. That they stripped E-verify from the "stimulus" bill wasn't surprising ... but it clearly signals what they intend to do with regard to immigration reform.
It should be infuriating to each and every one of you that Liberals refuse to protect jobs when American citizens are losing theirs at ever-increasing rates. At the very least, there should be widespread concern about the already horrendous drain on our tax base because of our continued failure to enforce immigration laws that already exist. That's only the tip of the iceberg, because when they start shoving amnesty legislation down our throats and opening our borders completely, that drain will become overwhelming and permanent.
NumbersUSA and its members played a tremendous role in stopping amnesty legislation twice in 2006, because it gave millions of citizens the ability to quickly send faxes to and provided direct phone numbers to our elected representatives, who "got the message" that the American people would not stand for the stealth legislation Congress was attempting to pass in the dead of night.
NumbersUSA stays on top of everything Washington does. And very soon, it's going to add individual state legislatures and the ability for us to quickly contact those people, which will help greatly in convincing states to enforce and/or adopt measures in the fight against open borders.
It costs nothing to join NumbersUSA. They supply very timely alerts to Washington's antics. And it takes less than five minutes to send urgent faxes to every one of your elected representatives.
The media certainly is not going to tell the people of this country what politicians are doing under cover in Washington. And you can bet your last dime that those politicians aren't forthcoming about their actions.
But you can rest assured they listen when voters speak, especially when they do so in great numbers.
I urge any and all who have not signed on with NumbersUSA to do so and to recruit friends elsewhere to do so. It's one of the few remaining avenues available to us to have a say in what our government is doing.
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/
(Imported from Feb. 13, 2009)
Just who have we elected?
Shoved under the carpet of stimulus package debate is the fact that two weeks ago, President Barack Obama signed an executive order allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to resettle in the United States.
We're talking hundreds of thousands of people who have been, as Mark Steyn described, "marinated" in a "sick death cult," who voted for Hamas, and 55% of whom support suicide bombings who now are being invited to live here at the taxpayers' expense.
Obama ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in migration assistance to the Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.
The "presidential determination" which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States was signed on Jan. 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on Feb. 4.
President Obama's decision, according to the Register, was necessitated by "the urgent refugee and migration needs" of the "victims."
Few on Capitol Hill took note that the order provides a free ticket here and then housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election there in January 2006.
There's a pretty disturbing pattern evolving with Obama's actions since he was inaugurated:
* His first call to any head of state as president was to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah party in the Palestinian territory.
* His first one-on-one interview with any news organization was with Al Arabia television.
* He ordered Guantanamo Bay closed and all military trials of detainees halted.
* He ordered all overseas CIA interrogation centers closed.
* He withdrew all charges against the masterminds behind the USS Cole bombing and 9/11.
* And he is allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refuges to move to and live in the U.S .at American taxpayer expense.
"Disturbing" might actually be an understatement.
(Imported from Feb. 12, 2009)
We're talking hundreds of thousands of people who have been, as Mark Steyn described, "marinated" in a "sick death cult," who voted for Hamas, and 55% of whom support suicide bombings who now are being invited to live here at the taxpayers' expense.
Obama ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in migration assistance to the Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.
The "presidential determination" which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States was signed on Jan. 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on Feb. 4.
President Obama's decision, according to the Register, was necessitated by "the urgent refugee and migration needs" of the "victims."
Few on Capitol Hill took note that the order provides a free ticket here and then housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election there in January 2006.
There's a pretty disturbing pattern evolving with Obama's actions since he was inaugurated:
* His first call to any head of state as president was to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah party in the Palestinian territory.
* His first one-on-one interview with any news organization was with Al Arabia television.
* He ordered Guantanamo Bay closed and all military trials of detainees halted.
* He ordered all overseas CIA interrogation centers closed.
* He withdrew all charges against the masterminds behind the USS Cole bombing and 9/11.
* And he is allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refuges to move to and live in the U.S .at American taxpayer expense.
"Disturbing" might actually be an understatement.
(Imported from Feb. 12, 2009)
Now you see it, now you don't
A lot of people in this country were looking forward to even the miniscule tax "cut" they originally were going to receive out of this $800 billion "stimulus" bill. Remember the $500 (single) and $1,000 (married) tax rebate checks the government was going to mail out as soon as this bill was signed into law?
Well, not only did those figures drop to $400 and $800 in the final bill, but guess what? There aren't going to be any checks.
What the Libs decided to do (yes, the Libs, because Republicans were not involved in crafting the final bill that will be sent to the White House) is spread out that money over the course of a year in the form of a reduction in the taxes that are taken out of your paycheck.
The figure I've seen everywhere refers to this equaling $13 more per week in your paycheck ... although that math doesn't exactly add up. But let's just go with that, shall we?
Now, I'm sure a lot of folks will say, "well, that's better than nothing."
Except that it is nothing.
Here's the scam the Democrats are perpetrating:
Your withholding tax rate is going to be altered so that you have $13 less taken out of your pay each week. Over the course of a year, that equals $676. Follow me? Sounds good, right?
But at the end of the year, when you do your tax return (unlike certain members of Obama's administration), you get to the end and have to go to the Tax Table to figure out what you owe on what you made the previous year.
Let's say in 2008, after all your deductions, you made $50,000. If you're single, your tax on that amount would be $8,850. You balance that against all the withholding tax that had been taken out all year. Let's say that is $9,676. Your refund for the year then would be $826.
But what the government now is going to do is give you a tax "break" in the form of lower withholding. We're back to the $13 per week. So at the end of the year, after deductions, you still have made $50,000. Your tax is still $8,850. Only now, your withholding for the year is $9,000.
And your refund drops to $150.
So class, let's review:
Before this "stimulus" bill that we so desperately need with its "tax cut for hard-working lower- and middle-class Americans", we received an $826 refund on our taxes at the end of the year.
Now, with the "stimulus" bill that we so desperately need with its "tax cut for hard-working lower- and middle-class Americans", we're going to get to keep $13 per week more in our paychecks, which at the end of the year equals $676.
BUT, our refund from the IRS when we do our taxes (unlike certain members of Obama's administration) is going to be $150 instead of $826 ... or $676 less.
They giveth. And then they taketh away.
Your net gain in this $800 billion "stimulus" bill that we so desperately need?
ZERO.
(Imported from Feb. 12, 2009)
Well, not only did those figures drop to $400 and $800 in the final bill, but guess what? There aren't going to be any checks.
What the Libs decided to do (yes, the Libs, because Republicans were not involved in crafting the final bill that will be sent to the White House) is spread out that money over the course of a year in the form of a reduction in the taxes that are taken out of your paycheck.
The figure I've seen everywhere refers to this equaling $13 more per week in your paycheck ... although that math doesn't exactly add up. But let's just go with that, shall we?
Now, I'm sure a lot of folks will say, "well, that's better than nothing."
Except that it is nothing.
Here's the scam the Democrats are perpetrating:
Your withholding tax rate is going to be altered so that you have $13 less taken out of your pay each week. Over the course of a year, that equals $676. Follow me? Sounds good, right?
But at the end of the year, when you do your tax return (unlike certain members of Obama's administration), you get to the end and have to go to the Tax Table to figure out what you owe on what you made the previous year.
Let's say in 2008, after all your deductions, you made $50,000. If you're single, your tax on that amount would be $8,850. You balance that against all the withholding tax that had been taken out all year. Let's say that is $9,676. Your refund for the year then would be $826.
But what the government now is going to do is give you a tax "break" in the form of lower withholding. We're back to the $13 per week. So at the end of the year, after deductions, you still have made $50,000. Your tax is still $8,850. Only now, your withholding for the year is $9,000.
And your refund drops to $150.
So class, let's review:
Before this "stimulus" bill that we so desperately need with its "tax cut for hard-working lower- and middle-class Americans", we received an $826 refund on our taxes at the end of the year.
Now, with the "stimulus" bill that we so desperately need with its "tax cut for hard-working lower- and middle-class Americans", we're going to get to keep $13 per week more in our paychecks, which at the end of the year equals $676.
BUT, our refund from the IRS when we do our taxes (unlike certain members of Obama's administration) is going to be $150 instead of $826 ... or $676 less.
They giveth. And then they taketh away.
Your net gain in this $800 billion "stimulus" bill that we so desperately need?
ZERO.
(Imported from Feb. 12, 2009)
As expected
The final version of the House/Senate Porkulus Bill that will be sent for Barack Obama's signature was stripped, by Democrats in their Republican-less overnight meeting to craft a "compromise" package, of any language that would prevent the few jobs this bill will create from going to illegal aliens.
I guess we should have asked whose economy we were stimulating, huh?
So to all those out-of-work AMERICANS, and the hundreds of thousands who will follow in the coming months, here's a big, $800 billion "F YOU" from Obama, Pelosi, Reid and all the other Democrats this country's sheep continue to vote for.
(Imported from Feb. 12, 2009)
I guess we should have asked whose economy we were stimulating, huh?
So to all those out-of-work AMERICANS, and the hundreds of thousands who will follow in the coming months, here's a big, $800 billion "F YOU" from Obama, Pelosi, Reid and all the other Democrats this country's sheep continue to vote for.
(Imported from Feb. 12, 2009)
PORK: Not just for Americans anymore
The Senate just conducted a cloture vote, the result of which was 61-36. And all the wrangling done by "bipartisan" Republicans "acting in the country's best interests" last week? For naught, of course. The final Senate bill, after being pared down to under $800 billion, now will go to a floor vote at $19 billion MORE than the House version, which I believe was in the $850 billion range. That means the Libs tossed close to $70 billion more pork into the package ... for God knows what.
What's even more infuriating ... and what needs to be told to EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN is that in the House version, at least, an amendment was added to ensure e-verify would be required for any entity receiving this stimulus ... er, pork, I mean ... so that AMERICANS and ONLY AMERICANS would benefit. It passed the House, 407-2.
But in the Senate? Senate Majority Leader DEMOCRAT Harry Reid blocked the amendment, even though it had wide support from both sides of the aisle. So the Senate version of this pork-laden piece of cow manure won't even ensure that only American citizens benefit, even though only American citizens are paying for it.
At a time when the country is hemorrhaging jobs and unemployment is jumping at least a full point every month, when members of Congress and Barry The Great himself is bemoaning how bailout money is being spent in the private sector, this DEMOCRAT refuses to even allow a vote to ensure that OUR MONEY won't turn into state benefits and jobs for illegal aliens.
And I'll take any and all bets that the legislation signed into law by our joke of a president won't have that provision, either.
(Imported from Feb. 9, 2009)
What's even more infuriating ... and what needs to be told to EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN is that in the House version, at least, an amendment was added to ensure e-verify would be required for any entity receiving this stimulus ... er, pork, I mean ... so that AMERICANS and ONLY AMERICANS would benefit. It passed the House, 407-2.
But in the Senate? Senate Majority Leader DEMOCRAT Harry Reid blocked the amendment, even though it had wide support from both sides of the aisle. So the Senate version of this pork-laden piece of cow manure won't even ensure that only American citizens benefit, even though only American citizens are paying for it.
At a time when the country is hemorrhaging jobs and unemployment is jumping at least a full point every month, when members of Congress and Barry The Great himself is bemoaning how bailout money is being spent in the private sector, this DEMOCRAT refuses to even allow a vote to ensure that OUR MONEY won't turn into state benefits and jobs for illegal aliens.
And I'll take any and all bets that the legislation signed into law by our joke of a president won't have that provision, either.
(Imported from Feb. 9, 2009)
The politics of fear
A doctor was eating at a fancy restaurant one night when, during his meal, a wealthy man sitting at the table next to him began to choke. The doctor sprang into action and dislodged a shard of bone from the dying man's throat. Relieved, the man gasped, "You saved my life! How can I ever repay you? I'll tell you what, let me buy your dinner!" The doctor thought for a second and replied, "Better yet, give me half of what you'd be willing to pay if that shard of bone were still lodged in your throat."
Barack Obama campaigned on a series of promises. Remember? He was bringing CHANGE to Washington.
And HOPE.
And what he's giving us, barely one month into office, is fear.
Yesterday, Obama played on the nation's sense of fear by telling us that "the time for talk is over; the time for action is now" on this record-shattering, pork-laden bill erroneously dubbed a "stimulus" package.
If we don't get this thing passed, NOW, he warned, we'll be plunged into an irreversible recession.
He's got Nancy Pelosi out there repeatedly saying that we're "losing 500 million jobs every month" that this doesn't get done.
I'm happy to note that at least one mainstream media reporter cited the fact that there are only about 300 million people living in the United States.
My point is, the willingness and extent to which one will agree to something lies in direct proportion to one's need. Obama knows this. He also knows there is a great deal of fear in this country about the economy. This, subsequently, is the optimal time to strike.
The only "hope" that can be attached to any of this was the Democrats' hope that they'd be able to shove this gargantuan turd through without anyone seeing it for what it was.
Doubt me? There's a reason why the House passed this bill so quickly. As the Democrats have done since taking control in 2006, the bill was written in committee ... a committee comprised entirely of Democrats ... then rushed to a floor vote without giving anyone time to read it or debate it.
As this 600-plus page piece of legislation moved to the Senate, more and more people began looking beyond Page 2. And they began seeing page after page after page after page of spending, spending, spending and more spending on every Democrat special interest that ever was.
Short of several hundred thousand construction and engineering jobs for "green" initiatives and roads and bridges, there isn't anything that will stimulate jobs. In fact, when one looks at the jobs that ARE being lost every week, the new jobs that will be created (years down the road, by the way) will be outnumbered in mere weeks because of what this bill WON'T stimulate.
The billions in tax cuts and incentives that could actually stimulate anything? Instead of real tax incentives that would breathe life into the economy and grow business and create jobs, we have tax rebates for people who don't pay taxes in the first place, including illegal aliens, and incentives for people who buy cars and houses.
While that might "stimulate" the housing market and help automakers in less volatile times, I'm not sure that while we're hemorrhaging jobs in the tens of thousands per week, people are rushing out to make major purchases.
That's like telling a man with no legs, "Buy this suit, and we'll give you a pair of shoes for half price!"
So the more scrutiny this bill got, the less anyone liked it. In the span on one week, public sentiment plunged to approval numbers in the 30s. The San Francisco Examiner... IN LIBERAL MECCA, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! ... ran an editorial denouncing the bill for what it was.
Which is why Obama and the Democrats want this thing passed NOW.
We were told back in late summer/early fall that we desperately needed a $750 billion bailout bill for banks and financial institutions. So that got shoved through without anyone explaining exactly HOW it would work. And voila! It hasn't.
Now they want $900 billion MORE?
The funny thing is, Democrats have control of both houses of Congress and the White House. They could pass this thing entirely on their own, as they did in the House, where not one Republican voted for it.
Why in the Senate, where Democrats have the clear majority, won't they just put the thing to a vote? So what if a handful of moderate Democrats say no? They still have numbers.
It's because they want ONE Republican signature. That way, they can absolve themselves of future blame by saying it was a "bipartisan" bill when, a year or two from now, we see that it did nothing but plunge the country into deeper debt, which in turn will drag up inflation and make money ... and jobs ... even more scarce.
There's an undercurrent of moderate Republican ... the RINO faction ... trimming going on. They're attempting to cut a hundred billion or two. So what? A 700-pound bag of cow manure being dumped on your head is better than having it be 900 pounds?
The real change to this bill that would make it more effective won't happen. Why? Because, as Obama says, he won the election. He gets to do what he wants, when he wants.
So much for the Great Uniter and A New Tone In Washington crapola that he also campaigned on, huh?
Well, I say let him have it his way. But let it be completely, 100 percent a Democrat undertaking. I urge everyone and anyone who has five minutes to email or call Republican senators, especially the Olympia Snow and Susan Collins types, and say NO to this massive slab of pork in ANY form.
It's easy and not very time-consuming. And it's critical. Here's a link that will provide everything you need:
If the Democrats want this so much, let it be on their heads and their heads alone.
(Imported from Feb. 6, 2009)
Barack Obama campaigned on a series of promises. Remember? He was bringing CHANGE to Washington.
And HOPE.
And what he's giving us, barely one month into office, is fear.
Yesterday, Obama played on the nation's sense of fear by telling us that "the time for talk is over; the time for action is now" on this record-shattering, pork-laden bill erroneously dubbed a "stimulus" package.
If we don't get this thing passed, NOW, he warned, we'll be plunged into an irreversible recession.
He's got Nancy Pelosi out there repeatedly saying that we're "losing 500 million jobs every month" that this doesn't get done.
I'm happy to note that at least one mainstream media reporter cited the fact that there are only about 300 million people living in the United States.
My point is, the willingness and extent to which one will agree to something lies in direct proportion to one's need. Obama knows this. He also knows there is a great deal of fear in this country about the economy. This, subsequently, is the optimal time to strike.
The only "hope" that can be attached to any of this was the Democrats' hope that they'd be able to shove this gargantuan turd through without anyone seeing it for what it was.
Doubt me? There's a reason why the House passed this bill so quickly. As the Democrats have done since taking control in 2006, the bill was written in committee ... a committee comprised entirely of Democrats ... then rushed to a floor vote without giving anyone time to read it or debate it.
As this 600-plus page piece of legislation moved to the Senate, more and more people began looking beyond Page 2. And they began seeing page after page after page after page of spending, spending, spending and more spending on every Democrat special interest that ever was.
Short of several hundred thousand construction and engineering jobs for "green" initiatives and roads and bridges, there isn't anything that will stimulate jobs. In fact, when one looks at the jobs that ARE being lost every week, the new jobs that will be created (years down the road, by the way) will be outnumbered in mere weeks because of what this bill WON'T stimulate.
The billions in tax cuts and incentives that could actually stimulate anything? Instead of real tax incentives that would breathe life into the economy and grow business and create jobs, we have tax rebates for people who don't pay taxes in the first place, including illegal aliens, and incentives for people who buy cars and houses.
While that might "stimulate" the housing market and help automakers in less volatile times, I'm not sure that while we're hemorrhaging jobs in the tens of thousands per week, people are rushing out to make major purchases.
That's like telling a man with no legs, "Buy this suit, and we'll give you a pair of shoes for half price!"
So the more scrutiny this bill got, the less anyone liked it. In the span on one week, public sentiment plunged to approval numbers in the 30s. The San Francisco Examiner... IN LIBERAL MECCA, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! ... ran an editorial denouncing the bill for what it was.
Which is why Obama and the Democrats want this thing passed NOW.
We were told back in late summer/early fall that we desperately needed a $750 billion bailout bill for banks and financial institutions. So that got shoved through without anyone explaining exactly HOW it would work. And voila! It hasn't.
Now they want $900 billion MORE?
The funny thing is, Democrats have control of both houses of Congress and the White House. They could pass this thing entirely on their own, as they did in the House, where not one Republican voted for it.
Why in the Senate, where Democrats have the clear majority, won't they just put the thing to a vote? So what if a handful of moderate Democrats say no? They still have numbers.
It's because they want ONE Republican signature. That way, they can absolve themselves of future blame by saying it was a "bipartisan" bill when, a year or two from now, we see that it did nothing but plunge the country into deeper debt, which in turn will drag up inflation and make money ... and jobs ... even more scarce.
There's an undercurrent of moderate Republican ... the RINO faction ... trimming going on. They're attempting to cut a hundred billion or two. So what? A 700-pound bag of cow manure being dumped on your head is better than having it be 900 pounds?
The real change to this bill that would make it more effective won't happen. Why? Because, as Obama says, he won the election. He gets to do what he wants, when he wants.
So much for the Great Uniter and A New Tone In Washington crapola that he also campaigned on, huh?
Well, I say let him have it his way. But let it be completely, 100 percent a Democrat undertaking. I urge everyone and anyone who has five minutes to email or call Republican senators, especially the Olympia Snow and Susan Collins types, and say NO to this massive slab of pork in ANY form.
It's easy and not very time-consuming. And it's critical. Here's a link that will provide everything you need:
If the Democrats want this so much, let it be on their heads and their heads alone.
(Imported from Feb. 6, 2009)
It's even darker underneath
While much attention has been focused on Barack Obama's cabinet nominees, there's been relatively little said about the second and third layers of people filling important posts in Washington.
Case in point: It's been fairly well documented (outside the mainstream media, of course) that Eric Holder, the attorney general nominee, played a major role in the Clinton Era pardons of federal fugitive Marc Rich, as well certain FALN terrorists responsible for multiple murders (in which they beheaded victims, al-Qaeda style) and seven-figure bank robberies.
Not much has been said anywhere, though, about Obama's choice of David Ogden as deputy attorney general.
A simple scratch of the surface reveals some really disturbing stuff about a guy who will essentially run the day-to-day operation in our Department of Justice.
Put mildly, Ogden has been a great friend to the porn and abortion industries.
That he has represented Playboy and Penthouse in a number of cases is the least of what should raise quite a few eyebrows.
In one case, though, he argued against a child pornography law that required publishers of all kinds to verify and document the age of their "models" to ensure they were at least 18 years of age. He referred to the law as "mind-boggling" and "terrifying."
That Ogden thinks it overly restrictive to stop adult-entertainment publishers and movie-makers from exploiting 15- and 16-year olds might be disturbing in itself, but it's part of a pattern.
He also fought against the Children's Internet Protection Act, which ordered libraries and schools that receive funding for the Internet to restrict access to obscene Web sites. His argument was that it would be unconstitutional to force librarians to do so.
Ogden also has been a champion of abortion groups, fighting against the "right" for parents of girls under the age of 15 to be notified before an abortion is performed.
Thanks to his efforts there, when my daughters are in junior high, a school counselor can, without my or their mother's knowledge, take them to a clinic and have an abortion performed. (And in a twist of hideous irony, the same school will suspend her for a week if she's caught with one Tylenol capsule without a litany of paperwork and signatures.)
I realize there are a ton of attorney-types at various levels of government. And not all of them have championed, 100 percent, causes or people that everyone deems worthy.
But there are choices in life even for attorneys. And someone who champions child pornography, the right to have porn in our public schools and libraries and then abortion on demand for 14-year-olds shouldn't be running the DOJ, no matter how "qualified" he is.
(Imported from Feb. 5, 2009)
Case in point: It's been fairly well documented (outside the mainstream media, of course) that Eric Holder, the attorney general nominee, played a major role in the Clinton Era pardons of federal fugitive Marc Rich, as well certain FALN terrorists responsible for multiple murders (in which they beheaded victims, al-Qaeda style) and seven-figure bank robberies.
Not much has been said anywhere, though, about Obama's choice of David Ogden as deputy attorney general.
A simple scratch of the surface reveals some really disturbing stuff about a guy who will essentially run the day-to-day operation in our Department of Justice.
Put mildly, Ogden has been a great friend to the porn and abortion industries.
That he has represented Playboy and Penthouse in a number of cases is the least of what should raise quite a few eyebrows.
In one case, though, he argued against a child pornography law that required publishers of all kinds to verify and document the age of their "models" to ensure they were at least 18 years of age. He referred to the law as "mind-boggling" and "terrifying."
That Ogden thinks it overly restrictive to stop adult-entertainment publishers and movie-makers from exploiting 15- and 16-year olds might be disturbing in itself, but it's part of a pattern.
He also fought against the Children's Internet Protection Act, which ordered libraries and schools that receive funding for the Internet to restrict access to obscene Web sites. His argument was that it would be unconstitutional to force librarians to do so.
Ogden also has been a champion of abortion groups, fighting against the "right" for parents of girls under the age of 15 to be notified before an abortion is performed.
Thanks to his efforts there, when my daughters are in junior high, a school counselor can, without my or their mother's knowledge, take them to a clinic and have an abortion performed. (And in a twist of hideous irony, the same school will suspend her for a week if she's caught with one Tylenol capsule without a litany of paperwork and signatures.)
I realize there are a ton of attorney-types at various levels of government. And not all of them have championed, 100 percent, causes or people that everyone deems worthy.
But there are choices in life even for attorneys. And someone who champions child pornography, the right to have porn in our public schools and libraries and then abortion on demand for 14-year-olds shouldn't be running the DOJ, no matter how "qualified" he is.
(Imported from Feb. 5, 2009)
Turn them off!
If you didn't already have enough reasons to turn off network "news" and leave it off ...
News Tuesday that Tom Daschle withdrew as Health and Human Services Secretary nominee genuinely crushed the network anchors. Obama PR agents Katie Couric and Brian Williams, along with MSNBC's Liberal mouthpiece Andrea Mitchell, were beside themselves over Daschle's tax evasion problems serving as an obstacle to his joining Obama's cabinet.
Couric (in a question to Obama): "You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics as usual culture here. Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?"
Williams: "You lost two nominees, two appointments today. Did that make you angry, I imagine? How do you prevent the lesson from being that, no matter how lofty the goals of the new guy coming in, Washington wins, in the end?"
Mitchell, in an interview with Republican Senator Jim DeMint, chided him by saying "I
just got off the phone with Tom Daschle. And it was an emotional conversation. He was clearly, it sounded as though he were tearful, overwrought. This reads to the public as though the Republicans went after this man, someone that the President very much wanted, and brought him down."
So here's the message the media is delivering to the public: Those mean, nasty, vindictive Republicans are resorting to the lowest of lows to stop our beloved president from doing what this country needs!
Instead of: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
C'mon people! I realize many consider Couric a bad joke and wouldn't trust Williams to give them the time of day, but do you realize how many people in this country have their opinions shaped by what they see and hear on the networks every evening?
Daschle was just one in a stream of Obama nominees and appointees who has been cheating on their taxes. In a number of ways. To the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of them, Timothy Geithner, managed to become confirmed and now heads the IRS as Secretary of the Treasury.
Could there be a more twisted irony?
The tingly-leg media that drools at the mere thought of Obama doesn't see it that way, though. Their message is and always has been that Democrats can do no wrong. Everybody cheats on their taxes, right? Daschle and Obama are victims, casualties of dirty tactics perpetrated by mean 0l' Republicans.
This, of course, is nothing new. The mainstream media's fawning over everything Obama for the last 18 months has been deafening in its bias.
The sad thing is, an awful lot of Americans either can't or won't see it for what it is.
(Imported from Feb. 4, 2009)
News Tuesday that Tom Daschle withdrew as Health and Human Services Secretary nominee genuinely crushed the network anchors. Obama PR agents Katie Couric and Brian Williams, along with MSNBC's Liberal mouthpiece Andrea Mitchell, were beside themselves over Daschle's tax evasion problems serving as an obstacle to his joining Obama's cabinet.
Couric (in a question to Obama): "You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics as usual culture here. Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?"
Williams: "You lost two nominees, two appointments today. Did that make you angry, I imagine? How do you prevent the lesson from being that, no matter how lofty the goals of the new guy coming in, Washington wins, in the end?"
Mitchell, in an interview with Republican Senator Jim DeMint, chided him by saying "I
just got off the phone with Tom Daschle. And it was an emotional conversation. He was clearly, it sounded as though he were tearful, overwrought. This reads to the public as though the Republicans went after this man, someone that the President very much wanted, and brought him down."
So here's the message the media is delivering to the public: Those mean, nasty, vindictive Republicans are resorting to the lowest of lows to stop our beloved president from doing what this country needs!
Instead of: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
C'mon people! I realize many consider Couric a bad joke and wouldn't trust Williams to give them the time of day, but do you realize how many people in this country have their opinions shaped by what they see and hear on the networks every evening?
Daschle was just one in a stream of Obama nominees and appointees who has been cheating on their taxes. In a number of ways. To the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of them, Timothy Geithner, managed to become confirmed and now heads the IRS as Secretary of the Treasury.
Could there be a more twisted irony?
The tingly-leg media that drools at the mere thought of Obama doesn't see it that way, though. Their message is and always has been that Democrats can do no wrong. Everybody cheats on their taxes, right? Daschle and Obama are victims, casualties of dirty tactics perpetrated by mean 0l' Republicans.
This, of course, is nothing new. The mainstream media's fawning over everything Obama for the last 18 months has been deafening in its bias.
The sad thing is, an awful lot of Americans either can't or won't see it for what it is.
(Imported from Feb. 4, 2009)
A plea for help
I'm being serious here. No sarcasm. This is a legitimate question that I'd LOVE for anyone and everyone to weigh in on, because honestly, I want to understand.
Criticism of Wall Street and corporate bonuses, which I'm not taking a position on for the purpose of this blog, has reached a crescendo. Everywhere you turn these days, someone ... from the general public to the media to Democrats ... are demonizing any CEO or any company that pays millions (or billions) in bonuses.
Heck, one executive recently was raked over the coals for more than a week over his extravagantly remodeled office.
That's fine and great. If someone ... or everyone ... wants to hold these people to certain standards in these tough economic times, particularly when they're receiving taxpayer-funded government bailouts, more power to them.
More power to the media, too, for expressing its collective outrage.
What I'd like to understand is why then are few in the general public, even fewer in the media, and no one at all on the Left side of the political aisle, expressing similar outrage over some of Barack Obama's Cabinet appointments?
I'd suggest there's a serious double-standard, dare I say a heaping portion of hypocrisy, in what's going on in Washington D.C. when:
A man (Tim Geithner) who failed to pay two years' worth of taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars can become Secretary of the Treasury ... in other words, the head of the IRS, the person who will oversee you and I paying exorbitant penalties, possibly losing our homes and/or businesses or even going to jail for doing the same thing.
Another man (Tom Daschle), another acknowledged tax cheater (only because he got caught), is nominated as Health Secretary ... a man who has spent his political career bemoaning the "tax gap" in America, in which those who pay the most taxes anyway are allowed tax incentives or tax breaks that prevent them from paying even more ... or criticizing corporations for operating or moving overseas to escape the world's second-largest corporate tax rate.
A woman (Hillary Clinton), who along with her husband, have received hundreds of millions THAT WE KNOW ABOUT from foreign governments in a plethora of dealings ... and many others whose details remain hidden despite Obama's claim of "more transparency in government" ... can become Secretary of State, a job in which she'll play a major role in shaping foreign policy.
A man (Eric Holder), who as deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, not only played a major role in the pardon of federal fugitive Marc Rich (a huge Democrat donor, by the way), but also the pardons of FALN terrorists despite the objections of the FBI and Justice Department, not to mention pleadings from surviving family members an associates of those murdered by those terrorists, can become Attorney General.
The list goes on and on. And what about all the lobbyist ties these and others in the new administration have, when Obama SPECIFICALLY claimed he'd put an end to such practices, let alone the appointment of such people to his "team"?
I asked earlier "where's the outrage" ... heck, where are the QUESTIONS? Why is no one even talking about this stuff? Why is the media giving this guy a complete pass on EVERYTHING, and, more important, why are WE giving the MEDIA a pass on not doing its job?
If you have any input, I'd truly like to be enlightened.
(Imported from Feb. 2, 2009)
Criticism of Wall Street and corporate bonuses, which I'm not taking a position on for the purpose of this blog, has reached a crescendo. Everywhere you turn these days, someone ... from the general public to the media to Democrats ... are demonizing any CEO or any company that pays millions (or billions) in bonuses.
Heck, one executive recently was raked over the coals for more than a week over his extravagantly remodeled office.
That's fine and great. If someone ... or everyone ... wants to hold these people to certain standards in these tough economic times, particularly when they're receiving taxpayer-funded government bailouts, more power to them.
More power to the media, too, for expressing its collective outrage.
What I'd like to understand is why then are few in the general public, even fewer in the media, and no one at all on the Left side of the political aisle, expressing similar outrage over some of Barack Obama's Cabinet appointments?
I'd suggest there's a serious double-standard, dare I say a heaping portion of hypocrisy, in what's going on in Washington D.C. when:
A man (Tim Geithner) who failed to pay two years' worth of taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars can become Secretary of the Treasury ... in other words, the head of the IRS, the person who will oversee you and I paying exorbitant penalties, possibly losing our homes and/or businesses or even going to jail for doing the same thing.
Another man (Tom Daschle), another acknowledged tax cheater (only because he got caught), is nominated as Health Secretary ... a man who has spent his political career bemoaning the "tax gap" in America, in which those who pay the most taxes anyway are allowed tax incentives or tax breaks that prevent them from paying even more ... or criticizing corporations for operating or moving overseas to escape the world's second-largest corporate tax rate.
A woman (Hillary Clinton), who along with her husband, have received hundreds of millions THAT WE KNOW ABOUT from foreign governments in a plethora of dealings ... and many others whose details remain hidden despite Obama's claim of "more transparency in government" ... can become Secretary of State, a job in which she'll play a major role in shaping foreign policy.
A man (Eric Holder), who as deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, not only played a major role in the pardon of federal fugitive Marc Rich (a huge Democrat donor, by the way), but also the pardons of FALN terrorists despite the objections of the FBI and Justice Department, not to mention pleadings from surviving family members an associates of those murdered by those terrorists, can become Attorney General.
The list goes on and on. And what about all the lobbyist ties these and others in the new administration have, when Obama SPECIFICALLY claimed he'd put an end to such practices, let alone the appointment of such people to his "team"?
I asked earlier "where's the outrage" ... heck, where are the QUESTIONS? Why is no one even talking about this stuff? Why is the media giving this guy a complete pass on EVERYTHING, and, more important, why are WE giving the MEDIA a pass on not doing its job?
If you have any input, I'd truly like to be enlightened.
(Imported from Feb. 2, 2009)
In the cradle of ignorance
Many of us have sat back this decade and marveled at the lunacy in certain corners of the world where the fraud that is man-made global warming is concerned.
We've shaken our collective heads as governments signed on to Cap & Trade systems that are nothing more than a massive tax on every citizen who drives a car or uses electricity or consumes products not deemed "environmentally friendly."
We've wondered and cursed privately that the Al Gores of the world escape indictment for not only perpetrating this fraud but also enriching themselves personally as "ghost partners" in obscure, worldwide corporations that sell these carbon "off-sets" that Joe Citizen must buy in the form of a tax for exceeding his monthly gasoline allotment or kilowatt hour limit.
And we've offered up a mental thank you to George W. Bush for refusing to sign on to Kyoto early in his first term and not only placing that kind of financial burden on every American but also destroying American industry and, in the process, driving our economy even closer to doom.
A like number of environmentalist kooks have cursed Bush for doing so. They live on every lying, manipulative word uttered by the Al Gores. They use half-truths as ammunition and wild claims of impending doom. They condemn the voices of sanity and reason and logic and, yes, even science, which have grown in great numbers the last five or six years.
The majority of us, however, don't know what to think or simply don't care. Many reading this, even, have no time to concern themselves with issues outside the realms of their daily lives. They and millions of others have dozed throughout a lifetime of complacency. Simply put, they're comfortable. They've largely lived lives seemingly unaffected by the goings-on in Washington, let alone far corners of the globe.
To those, I say you better wake up, and you better do so quickly.
Those on the opposite ends of this global warming spectrum know what's coming. The majority in the middle, though, have little sense of what they've signed on for in helping (whether through action or inaction) put in power those who now run this country.
Initiatives already are underway that will change the fabric of how we live our lives. Laws are coming. So are treaties, which are most frightening because those are not policies that, when proven bad, can be changed by the next Congress. Once signed, they're irreversible.
A high-ranking kook in Britain is even talking seriously about laws concerning population control. You can read the story here if interested.
If you're not or if you think that will never happen here or even if you think maybe there really is something to all this hoopla because you haven't bothered to look past the doctored polar bear pictures or the constant manipulation of data by certain "scientists" or the media or left-wing politicians, I again say:
Wake the hell up. "Change" is most definitely coming. And I guaran-damn-tee you that you're not going to like it.
(Imported from Feb. 1, 2009)
We've shaken our collective heads as governments signed on to Cap & Trade systems that are nothing more than a massive tax on every citizen who drives a car or uses electricity or consumes products not deemed "environmentally friendly."
We've wondered and cursed privately that the Al Gores of the world escape indictment for not only perpetrating this fraud but also enriching themselves personally as "ghost partners" in obscure, worldwide corporations that sell these carbon "off-sets" that Joe Citizen must buy in the form of a tax for exceeding his monthly gasoline allotment or kilowatt hour limit.
And we've offered up a mental thank you to George W. Bush for refusing to sign on to Kyoto early in his first term and not only placing that kind of financial burden on every American but also destroying American industry and, in the process, driving our economy even closer to doom.
A like number of environmentalist kooks have cursed Bush for doing so. They live on every lying, manipulative word uttered by the Al Gores. They use half-truths as ammunition and wild claims of impending doom. They condemn the voices of sanity and reason and logic and, yes, even science, which have grown in great numbers the last five or six years.
The majority of us, however, don't know what to think or simply don't care. Many reading this, even, have no time to concern themselves with issues outside the realms of their daily lives. They and millions of others have dozed throughout a lifetime of complacency. Simply put, they're comfortable. They've largely lived lives seemingly unaffected by the goings-on in Washington, let alone far corners of the globe.
To those, I say you better wake up, and you better do so quickly.
Those on the opposite ends of this global warming spectrum know what's coming. The majority in the middle, though, have little sense of what they've signed on for in helping (whether through action or inaction) put in power those who now run this country.
Initiatives already are underway that will change the fabric of how we live our lives. Laws are coming. So are treaties, which are most frightening because those are not policies that, when proven bad, can be changed by the next Congress. Once signed, they're irreversible.
A high-ranking kook in Britain is even talking seriously about laws concerning population control. You can read the story here if interested.
If you're not or if you think that will never happen here or even if you think maybe there really is something to all this hoopla because you haven't bothered to look past the doctored polar bear pictures or the constant manipulation of data by certain "scientists" or the media or left-wing politicians, I again say:
Wake the hell up. "Change" is most definitely coming. And I guaran-damn-tee you that you're not going to like it.
(Imported from Feb. 1, 2009)
The times, they are a changin'
I'm going to vomit the next time I hear a Lib (politician or otherwise) talking about how it's time for bipartisanship ... time to work together for the good of the country.
In the last quarter-century, Democrats' desire to "work together" amounts to nothing more than a Republican capitulation away from conservative ideals to a far left socialist agenda. You'll never hear a Democrat talking bipartisanship when a Republican president (and a moderate one at that) is attempting to tackle a problem or issue or when Republican-sponsored legislation is on the table (on the few times such legislation is actually allowed to see the light of day, that is).
A died-in-the-wool socialist colleague at work was ranting the other day about Republicans balking at an Obama agenda item or cabinet nominee or something, bemoaning "the state of our economy" and how "we need to get things done for the good of the country."
I'll grant you that the economy is circling the drain (although ratcheting up the socialist policies that contributed mightily to its current state seems an awful lot to me like pouring gasoline on a fire in an attempt to extinguish said fire).
But since when are Libs concerned with "the good of the country"? I mean, if there ever is a time to "come together" or to work in unison, wouldn't A TIME OF WAR occupy the top of the list? When fanatical jihadists will stop at nothing to kill Americans?
Try as I might, I cannot recall EVEN ONE DEMOCRAT who, during the last seven or eight years, has NOT pushed this country and its men and women in uniform under the bus with everything from tired rhetoric to outright lies where foreign policy and a War On Terror being fought on two fronts is concerned.
And let's not even talk about the constant disclosure of secret information about how we're fighting that war, from ways in which we've attacked terrorists financially to militarily ... disclosures that, at any other point in this nation's history likely would have resulted in charges of treason.
So please, let's not go there any more on "for the good of the country."
*****
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pumped about having a new Secretary of the Treasury (who will be in charge of the IRS) who is an acknowledged tax cheat.
That's right. Obama's nominee, Timothy Geitner, apparently "forgot" to pay federal income taxes for a couple of years a little while back. ANY federal income taxes. On hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Of course, when this bit of information was revealed after the nomination, Libs passed it off as "a simple oversight." (Much like Sandy Berger was merely "sloppy" after being caught stuffing Clinton Administration documents in the National Archives vital to the 9-11 Commission investigation into his pants and socks.)
A simple oversight? Geitner also made "a simple mistake" in trying to write off summer camps for his kids as "Daycare Expenses."
OK, my Liberal Apologist Friends. When filing your taxes this year, report your income a mere $1,000 less than what it actually was. Sign and date your return. And when audited at some point down the road, tell the IRS agent assigned to your case (who will be a Geitner employee) that you made a "simple mistake."
See if Mr. or Mrs. IRS Agent will simply smile, pat you on the head and request that you be more careful next time.
*****
I noticed a story on Drudge last week that I didn't hear mentioned in the mainstream media about a sudden outbreak of Bubonic Plague in a terrorist training camp somewhere in Africa that killed 40-some jihadists.
That the media has no apparent interest in dead terrorists isn't unusual. (Unless, of course, they somehow can tie in a "controversial" Bush policy or also report that a number of "civilians" in the school or mosque where said terrorists were operating were also killed.)
I just hope that in its zeal to release captured terrorists or to eliminate means that for seven-plus years have kept this country safe, SOMEONE in the Obama Administration is asking whether this was an traditional, rat-generated strain of Bubonic Plague or whether some careless jihadist dropped a test tube while fashioning a crude biological weapon out in the desert.
Oh wait. Silly me. I went and forgot that it's the Liberal position that we wait and PROSECUTE Mohammad AFTER he visits a plague upon one of our cities.
*****
Speaking of shutting down prisons, you had to love the "press briefing" last week when it was announced that Obama had signed the Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay's prison.
Reporter: "What are you going to do with the prisoners there?"
Press secretary: "We still have to talk about that."
I do believe this qualifies, 100 percent, as an example of The Cart Before The Horse.
A couple of days later, some Very Smart Lib offered that the Very Bad Terrorists held at Gitmo (as opposed to the Only Slightly As Bad Terrorists, who we will release so that they can exercise their rights to rejoin the effort to kill Very Evil Americans) could be sent to a maximum security facility near Denver, where they would be kept in isolation (until, of course, ACLU attorneys can win their freedom so that they, too, can exercise their rights to rejoin the effort to kill Very Evil Americans).
Prediction: If such a transfer does occur, it will be less than a month before the New York Times or Washington Post begins reporting on the terrible conditions the Very Bad Terrorists are having to endure in solitary confinement at a prison not equipped to bestow upon them the many "rights" offered at Gitmo.
That or there will be riots among all the other inmates over the preferential treatment given the Very Bad Terrorists.
*****
Another Drudge headline I saw last night fell immediately into the category of I HAVE To Read This!
"Pelosi says birth control will help economy"
I had heard reports that hundreds of millions in the Libs' trillion-dollar economic stimulus plan was earmarked for condoms. My hunch then was right on that those hundreds of millions would go to Lib friends in Planned Parenthood. The Abortion On Demand crowd, after all, helps elect Democrats every two years.
Pelosi told some Sunday Morning "News" Show Talking Head: "Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
Libs often scoff (angrily, I might add) when I and other conservatives utter the word "Socialist".
But I'll point out that China (which is a communist country for those not much into politics or world affairs) also has such a program because of a dire need to "reduce costs" to The State.
Theirs features a government-imposed limit on the size of families. They, too, teach Condoms 101 in an effort to "help" couples avoid exceeding the limit. Of course, there are many who just can't seem to get with the program. And so, Abortion On Demand has become Abortion Required.
I'd suggest to Madam Speaker that we could save a TON of money with simple surgical procedures on every woman immediately following the birth of her second child. You know. As part of our national health care. It would be free!
Now THAT would be Change You Can Believe In.
(Imported from Jan. 26, 2008)
In the last quarter-century, Democrats' desire to "work together" amounts to nothing more than a Republican capitulation away from conservative ideals to a far left socialist agenda. You'll never hear a Democrat talking bipartisanship when a Republican president (and a moderate one at that) is attempting to tackle a problem or issue or when Republican-sponsored legislation is on the table (on the few times such legislation is actually allowed to see the light of day, that is).
A died-in-the-wool socialist colleague at work was ranting the other day about Republicans balking at an Obama agenda item or cabinet nominee or something, bemoaning "the state of our economy" and how "we need to get things done for the good of the country."
I'll grant you that the economy is circling the drain (although ratcheting up the socialist policies that contributed mightily to its current state seems an awful lot to me like pouring gasoline on a fire in an attempt to extinguish said fire).
But since when are Libs concerned with "the good of the country"? I mean, if there ever is a time to "come together" or to work in unison, wouldn't A TIME OF WAR occupy the top of the list? When fanatical jihadists will stop at nothing to kill Americans?
Try as I might, I cannot recall EVEN ONE DEMOCRAT who, during the last seven or eight years, has NOT pushed this country and its men and women in uniform under the bus with everything from tired rhetoric to outright lies where foreign policy and a War On Terror being fought on two fronts is concerned.
And let's not even talk about the constant disclosure of secret information about how we're fighting that war, from ways in which we've attacked terrorists financially to militarily ... disclosures that, at any other point in this nation's history likely would have resulted in charges of treason.
So please, let's not go there any more on "for the good of the country."
*****
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pumped about having a new Secretary of the Treasury (who will be in charge of the IRS) who is an acknowledged tax cheat.
That's right. Obama's nominee, Timothy Geitner, apparently "forgot" to pay federal income taxes for a couple of years a little while back. ANY federal income taxes. On hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Of course, when this bit of information was revealed after the nomination, Libs passed it off as "a simple oversight." (Much like Sandy Berger was merely "sloppy" after being caught stuffing Clinton Administration documents in the National Archives vital to the 9-11 Commission investigation into his pants and socks.)
A simple oversight? Geitner also made "a simple mistake" in trying to write off summer camps for his kids as "Daycare Expenses."
OK, my Liberal Apologist Friends. When filing your taxes this year, report your income a mere $1,000 less than what it actually was. Sign and date your return. And when audited at some point down the road, tell the IRS agent assigned to your case (who will be a Geitner employee) that you made a "simple mistake."
See if Mr. or Mrs. IRS Agent will simply smile, pat you on the head and request that you be more careful next time.
*****
I noticed a story on Drudge last week that I didn't hear mentioned in the mainstream media about a sudden outbreak of Bubonic Plague in a terrorist training camp somewhere in Africa that killed 40-some jihadists.
That the media has no apparent interest in dead terrorists isn't unusual. (Unless, of course, they somehow can tie in a "controversial" Bush policy or also report that a number of "civilians" in the school or mosque where said terrorists were operating were also killed.)
I just hope that in its zeal to release captured terrorists or to eliminate means that for seven-plus years have kept this country safe, SOMEONE in the Obama Administration is asking whether this was an traditional, rat-generated strain of Bubonic Plague or whether some careless jihadist dropped a test tube while fashioning a crude biological weapon out in the desert.
Oh wait. Silly me. I went and forgot that it's the Liberal position that we wait and PROSECUTE Mohammad AFTER he visits a plague upon one of our cities.
*****
Speaking of shutting down prisons, you had to love the "press briefing" last week when it was announced that Obama had signed the Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay's prison.
Reporter: "What are you going to do with the prisoners there?"
Press secretary: "We still have to talk about that."
I do believe this qualifies, 100 percent, as an example of The Cart Before The Horse.
A couple of days later, some Very Smart Lib offered that the Very Bad Terrorists held at Gitmo (as opposed to the Only Slightly As Bad Terrorists, who we will release so that they can exercise their rights to rejoin the effort to kill Very Evil Americans) could be sent to a maximum security facility near Denver, where they would be kept in isolation (until, of course, ACLU attorneys can win their freedom so that they, too, can exercise their rights to rejoin the effort to kill Very Evil Americans).
Prediction: If such a transfer does occur, it will be less than a month before the New York Times or Washington Post begins reporting on the terrible conditions the Very Bad Terrorists are having to endure in solitary confinement at a prison not equipped to bestow upon them the many "rights" offered at Gitmo.
That or there will be riots among all the other inmates over the preferential treatment given the Very Bad Terrorists.
*****
Another Drudge headline I saw last night fell immediately into the category of I HAVE To Read This!
"Pelosi says birth control will help economy"
I had heard reports that hundreds of millions in the Libs' trillion-dollar economic stimulus plan was earmarked for condoms. My hunch then was right on that those hundreds of millions would go to Lib friends in Planned Parenthood. The Abortion On Demand crowd, after all, helps elect Democrats every two years.
Pelosi told some Sunday Morning "News" Show Talking Head: "Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
Libs often scoff (angrily, I might add) when I and other conservatives utter the word "Socialist".
But I'll point out that China (which is a communist country for those not much into politics or world affairs) also has such a program because of a dire need to "reduce costs" to The State.
Theirs features a government-imposed limit on the size of families. They, too, teach Condoms 101 in an effort to "help" couples avoid exceeding the limit. Of course, there are many who just can't seem to get with the program. And so, Abortion On Demand has become Abortion Required.
I'd suggest to Madam Speaker that we could save a TON of money with simple surgical procedures on every woman immediately following the birth of her second child. You know. As part of our national health care. It would be free!
Now THAT would be Change You Can Believe In.
(Imported from Jan. 26, 2008)
Four-dollar gas
Seven months ago, when gasoline rocketed up past $4 per gallon, we were treated to vitriol from Liberals and the mainstream media (yes, redundant, I know) about the "Greedy Oil Companies" and how much the price of oil was adversely affecting our everyday lives.
Very shortly, we'll be headed back in that direction. And as a precursor, we're now seeing and hearing how $1.50 gas is adversely affecting the economy.
You see, the Libs are suggesting, we really need $4 per gallon gas. It's for the Good Of The Country! As vice president-elect Joe Biden would say, "it's time to chip in ... time to do your part ... time to be patriotic."
This time, however, it won't be the price of oil that will send those gas pump wheels spinning up past $50 each time you fill your tank.
This time, and every time going forward, it will be the federal tax you pay for each gallon.
Here's how it's going to happen:
The Big Three automakers, as most know, have been struggling ... largely because their union workers need wages and benefits at a scale far beyond what most Americans manage to live on. As more and more of us put our feet down last month and demanded NO BAILOUT, the union capitulated and said it, along with the companies, would do its part to help the failing businesses.
Of course, faster than Hamas can break a cease-fire agreement and revert to its terrorist ways, the union reversed itself and said it would make NO concessions the minute the bailout checks were written.
So the quandary in Detroit continues. The automakers now say (surprise, surprise!) those however many billions simply will not help enough. It seems that since we will never make a substantive move toward energy independence under Liberal rule, The Big Three doesn't know what kind of cars to make.
Voila! The government to the rescue!
The Libs are telling the automakers to move forward with their line of little green cars. In exchange for doing so, Washington will open the financial spigots. Of course, seeing how we're already $85 kajillion in debt from all this bailout nonsense (and much more to come), the government has to find a source for all those billions of dollars that will be flowing to Ford, GM and Chrysler.
Are you catching on here?
Yes, dear taxpayer, "it's time for you to do your part ... time to chip in ... time to be patriotic."
The idea, hatched in Liberal back rooms of Congress and without an iota of debate, is fixing the price of gas. Right now, the idea is $3.50. No matter the price of oil, the price of gas will be $3.50. That means if prices remain as they are now, $1.50, that extra $2 will go to Detroit via Washington.
Of course, as the price of oil rises again, the flow of money to Detroit will weaken, and it shouldn't be long after that that Washington decides $3.50 just isn't cutting it.
But wait! The Libs will sell this turd by introducing all kinds of savings to Jack and Jill American. Expect the promise of tax credits if you buy one of these little green cars.
"Yes! If you buy one of these little green cars, your benevolent government will give you a $2,500 tax credit!"
Yippee!
I can't wait to go spend $8,000 or so more for a car that runs on bird pee (and performs LIKE it runs on bird pee) and, at the end of the year, write off $2,500 that will result in my taxes being lowered $500 or so.
Of course, my taxes will already be higher, anyway. Oh yes. In case you missed it, those tax DECREASES that were pledged several months ago?
Well, the economy ... tough times ... "trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see," as The Messiah recently asserted ... you know. Can't really go forward with that now, can we?
Welcome to CHANGE, America.
(Imported from Jan. 17, 2009)
Very shortly, we'll be headed back in that direction. And as a precursor, we're now seeing and hearing how $1.50 gas is adversely affecting the economy.
You see, the Libs are suggesting, we really need $4 per gallon gas. It's for the Good Of The Country! As vice president-elect Joe Biden would say, "it's time to chip in ... time to do your part ... time to be patriotic."
This time, however, it won't be the price of oil that will send those gas pump wheels spinning up past $50 each time you fill your tank.
This time, and every time going forward, it will be the federal tax you pay for each gallon.
Here's how it's going to happen:
The Big Three automakers, as most know, have been struggling ... largely because their union workers need wages and benefits at a scale far beyond what most Americans manage to live on. As more and more of us put our feet down last month and demanded NO BAILOUT, the union capitulated and said it, along with the companies, would do its part to help the failing businesses.
Of course, faster than Hamas can break a cease-fire agreement and revert to its terrorist ways, the union reversed itself and said it would make NO concessions the minute the bailout checks were written.
So the quandary in Detroit continues. The automakers now say (surprise, surprise!) those however many billions simply will not help enough. It seems that since we will never make a substantive move toward energy independence under Liberal rule, The Big Three doesn't know what kind of cars to make.
Voila! The government to the rescue!
The Libs are telling the automakers to move forward with their line of little green cars. In exchange for doing so, Washington will open the financial spigots. Of course, seeing how we're already $85 kajillion in debt from all this bailout nonsense (and much more to come), the government has to find a source for all those billions of dollars that will be flowing to Ford, GM and Chrysler.
Are you catching on here?
Yes, dear taxpayer, "it's time for you to do your part ... time to chip in ... time to be patriotic."
The idea, hatched in Liberal back rooms of Congress and without an iota of debate, is fixing the price of gas. Right now, the idea is $3.50. No matter the price of oil, the price of gas will be $3.50. That means if prices remain as they are now, $1.50, that extra $2 will go to Detroit via Washington.
Of course, as the price of oil rises again, the flow of money to Detroit will weaken, and it shouldn't be long after that that Washington decides $3.50 just isn't cutting it.
But wait! The Libs will sell this turd by introducing all kinds of savings to Jack and Jill American. Expect the promise of tax credits if you buy one of these little green cars.
"Yes! If you buy one of these little green cars, your benevolent government will give you a $2,500 tax credit!"
Yippee!
I can't wait to go spend $8,000 or so more for a car that runs on bird pee (and performs LIKE it runs on bird pee) and, at the end of the year, write off $2,500 that will result in my taxes being lowered $500 or so.
Of course, my taxes will already be higher, anyway. Oh yes. In case you missed it, those tax DECREASES that were pledged several months ago?
Well, the economy ... tough times ... "trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see," as The Messiah recently asserted ... you know. Can't really go forward with that now, can we?
Welcome to CHANGE, America.
(Imported from Jan. 17, 2009)
Not just no, but hell no
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" -- Ronald Reagan
Well, the government is "here to help" once again. This time, the government wants to "help" the Big Three, a.k.a. Ford, Chrysler and GM, to the tune of $25 billion.
Why not? The spigot, after all, was turned all the way on when we (that's you and me, dear taxpayer) heaped a $700 billion free-for-all onto the banking and credit industry and, thanks to Congress, placed responsibility for spending that money onto one person. One government person. Without so much as a single eye of oversight, too.
Oh, Libs like Barney Frank now are screaming bloody murder, saying they had NO IDEA what they had signed on for. If memory serves, these same Libs said the same thing about the authorization they granted the President back in 2002 to take action against Iraq -- not once, but TWICE!
I don't know how any of you feel, but isn't it time our elected officials start making the effort to actually read and understand something before passing it into law? I realize that would cut into the time they need to glob millions in earmarks onto everything they pass, but the "I had no idea!" excuse is wearing kinda thin.
What has the Libs posturing (and certain Republicans who opposed the bailout from Day 1, such as Jeff Sessions, saying "I told you so") is that instead of using that money to buy "distressed loans" from these banking institutions and, ultimately, saving Joe Citizen from foreclosure, the government instead has used it to buy equity in the banking industry.
That's right. Your federal government, instead of helping struggling homeowners by purchasing all those bad loans as was promised, instead now owns an even bigger chunk of what used to be a private entity.
That alone is Reason One that Republicans and the President are right to say "No way in hell" to this proposed $25 billion "bailout" of the auto industry.
As I've been saying since the first day I put fingers to keyboard in this little window, the government has NO BUSINESS meddling in our business. Not only does it not have the business doing so, it lacks the capability. Period. End of story.
But Reason Two for shooting down this particular Christmas present is that it would represent just that to the unions Democrats are so beholden to. That's right. Libs love to bash Big Business. Except, that is, when a particular Big Business is run by the UAW. (Or, in the case of Big Universities, liberal brainwashing is practiced.)
For one thing, GM made such hideous investments with money set aside for pensions in the 1980s that since the late 1990s, it's been losing more than $1 billion PER MONTH. And given Wall Street's recent meltdown, there's no telling how high those losses have climbed.
So what's $25 billion going to do? Sustain them for another year or so?
Further, when I read about the economy's hit to the auto industry, I don't read that sales are only down at Ford, Chrysler and GM. They're down industry-wide. So why isn't the U.S. division of Toyota crying for a bailout?
Well, for one thing, figures from 2006 show the average Big Three union worker made in excess of $70 per hour in wages and benefits. By comparison, non-union workers at Toyota here in the U.S. made an average of $47 per hour in wages and benefits.
Bottom line here is that there's no chance the union is going to accept wage freezes, let alone wage cuts. The UAW, as it has done in mutiple auto industry offshoots, has shown a perfect willingness to let struggling businesses go under and employees join the ranks of the unemployed than accept any kind of cut.
Democrats, naturally, are all for giving unions what they want, which is why they're pushing so hard for this bailout.
You tell me (and seriously, TELL ME!). Those of you making making around $20 or $30 per hour ... should YOUR tax dollars go to bail out a company and save workers who are making in excess of $70 per hour?
I'm no math wizard, but we're told there are 3 million auto workers in Michigan alone who could be out of work unless WE SAVE THEM.
Well, let's say those 3 million take a $10 cut in their wage/benefit hourly rate. (They'd still be making more than twice the average American worker.) That comes to $30 million PER HOUR in savings.
It would take 1000 hours to reach $30 billion. That's 25 work weeks.
I seem to remember Joe Biden recently saying "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
I say tell that to Ford, Chrysler and GM ... and most of all, the UAW.
I say hell no to any more bailouts, ESPECIALLY this one.
(Imported from Nov. 20, 2008)
Well, the government is "here to help" once again. This time, the government wants to "help" the Big Three, a.k.a. Ford, Chrysler and GM, to the tune of $25 billion.
Why not? The spigot, after all, was turned all the way on when we (that's you and me, dear taxpayer) heaped a $700 billion free-for-all onto the banking and credit industry and, thanks to Congress, placed responsibility for spending that money onto one person. One government person. Without so much as a single eye of oversight, too.
Oh, Libs like Barney Frank now are screaming bloody murder, saying they had NO IDEA what they had signed on for. If memory serves, these same Libs said the same thing about the authorization they granted the President back in 2002 to take action against Iraq -- not once, but TWICE!
I don't know how any of you feel, but isn't it time our elected officials start making the effort to actually read and understand something before passing it into law? I realize that would cut into the time they need to glob millions in earmarks onto everything they pass, but the "I had no idea!" excuse is wearing kinda thin.
What has the Libs posturing (and certain Republicans who opposed the bailout from Day 1, such as Jeff Sessions, saying "I told you so") is that instead of using that money to buy "distressed loans" from these banking institutions and, ultimately, saving Joe Citizen from foreclosure, the government instead has used it to buy equity in the banking industry.
That's right. Your federal government, instead of helping struggling homeowners by purchasing all those bad loans as was promised, instead now owns an even bigger chunk of what used to be a private entity.
That alone is Reason One that Republicans and the President are right to say "No way in hell" to this proposed $25 billion "bailout" of the auto industry.
As I've been saying since the first day I put fingers to keyboard in this little window, the government has NO BUSINESS meddling in our business. Not only does it not have the business doing so, it lacks the capability. Period. End of story.
But Reason Two for shooting down this particular Christmas present is that it would represent just that to the unions Democrats are so beholden to. That's right. Libs love to bash Big Business. Except, that is, when a particular Big Business is run by the UAW. (Or, in the case of Big Universities, liberal brainwashing is practiced.)
For one thing, GM made such hideous investments with money set aside for pensions in the 1980s that since the late 1990s, it's been losing more than $1 billion PER MONTH. And given Wall Street's recent meltdown, there's no telling how high those losses have climbed.
So what's $25 billion going to do? Sustain them for another year or so?
Further, when I read about the economy's hit to the auto industry, I don't read that sales are only down at Ford, Chrysler and GM. They're down industry-wide. So why isn't the U.S. division of Toyota crying for a bailout?
Well, for one thing, figures from 2006 show the average Big Three union worker made in excess of $70 per hour in wages and benefits. By comparison, non-union workers at Toyota here in the U.S. made an average of $47 per hour in wages and benefits.
Bottom line here is that there's no chance the union is going to accept wage freezes, let alone wage cuts. The UAW, as it has done in mutiple auto industry offshoots, has shown a perfect willingness to let struggling businesses go under and employees join the ranks of the unemployed than accept any kind of cut.
Democrats, naturally, are all for giving unions what they want, which is why they're pushing so hard for this bailout.
You tell me (and seriously, TELL ME!). Those of you making making around $20 or $30 per hour ... should YOUR tax dollars go to bail out a company and save workers who are making in excess of $70 per hour?
I'm no math wizard, but we're told there are 3 million auto workers in Michigan alone who could be out of work unless WE SAVE THEM.
Well, let's say those 3 million take a $10 cut in their wage/benefit hourly rate. (They'd still be making more than twice the average American worker.) That comes to $30 million PER HOUR in savings.
It would take 1000 hours to reach $30 billion. That's 25 work weeks.
I seem to remember Joe Biden recently saying "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
I say tell that to Ford, Chrysler and GM ... and most of all, the UAW.
I say hell no to any more bailouts, ESPECIALLY this one.
(Imported from Nov. 20, 2008)
Self-destruct mode
It shouldn't surprise that a trickle of stories continues to drip from fawning Obamedia mouths about Sarah Palin and what a blight she was on the McCain campaign and that the fact she now is the face of the Republican Party signals the further demise of conservatism.
What really chaps me, though, is that just as much negativity now is coming from within the McCain campaign itself. The back-biting, the finger-pointing, the CYA ... it makes me want to hurl almost as much as hearing the Squeaker of the House's voice.
I've been saying (screaming) for three years that the only thing that will defeat conservatism is when conservatives stop being conservative. We've had our rearends handed to us in two straight national elections because of that more than anything else. Too many wearing the "R" next to their names have compromised, with Liberals specifically and against conservative principles generally.
I admire and respect John McCain's honor and service to this country. I backed him, contributed to his campaign and voted for him because I back the party. But at the risk of offending anyone, the man is not a conservative. As I've written and said since January, his most notable "achievements" this decade have been cloaked in compromise and have cut at the core of conservatism.
He became the Republican nominee, in large part, with the help of Democrats and so-called "moderates" in early primary states. He was the Leftist media's candidate of choice throughout the primaries. And now, according to every Liberal voice out there (because they did not gain a supermajority), he again will be the "bridge" Democrats expect to use in the Senate to advance their agenda.
Think about it. Of what other possible Republican nominee not named Chuck Hagel would that be said?
Compromise? When was the last time Democrats compromised? Besides, that is, when public opinion so vastly swayed them after 9/11 and this summer, when oil flirted with $150 per barrel and the nation screamed "Drill Here!"
They haven't. They've only moved further Left. And Republicans have, to a large degree, followed. They've wanted to be liked. They've wanted to get along. They've wanted to compromise.
And now, all this garbage continues to flow about Sarah Palin, and the worst of it is coming from the mouths of those inside the McCain campaign. Those who, like Liberals, don't hesitate to throw about the term "neo-con" and believe that "values" change with the times and, because they believe that, they gladly advance the notion that Reagan Conservatism is dead.
I say that notion is a load of what falls from a cow's behind. Reagan's success came not because he compromised conservative principles and moved to the center but because he drew the center to him.
I realize fully that speculation's worth generally is squat, but I will maintain to the grave that without Sarah Palin, this election would have resulted in ugliness of Dukakis and McGovern proportion. She was the only true conservative in this race. She stands for conservative principles. She doesn't compromise them.
Will she be a viable national candidate again? Who knows?
But I know one thing. If Republicans want to become viable again, rather than slipping even closer to the edge of irrelevancy, they better grow a spine and come back together under the banner of conservatism and fight for those principles.
For compromise with an unyielding adversary breeds capitulation.
(Imported from Nov. 7, 2008)
What really chaps me, though, is that just as much negativity now is coming from within the McCain campaign itself. The back-biting, the finger-pointing, the CYA ... it makes me want to hurl almost as much as hearing the Squeaker of the House's voice.
I've been saying (screaming) for three years that the only thing that will defeat conservatism is when conservatives stop being conservative. We've had our rearends handed to us in two straight national elections because of that more than anything else. Too many wearing the "R" next to their names have compromised, with Liberals specifically and against conservative principles generally.
I admire and respect John McCain's honor and service to this country. I backed him, contributed to his campaign and voted for him because I back the party. But at the risk of offending anyone, the man is not a conservative. As I've written and said since January, his most notable "achievements" this decade have been cloaked in compromise and have cut at the core of conservatism.
He became the Republican nominee, in large part, with the help of Democrats and so-called "moderates" in early primary states. He was the Leftist media's candidate of choice throughout the primaries. And now, according to every Liberal voice out there (because they did not gain a supermajority), he again will be the "bridge" Democrats expect to use in the Senate to advance their agenda.
Think about it. Of what other possible Republican nominee not named Chuck Hagel would that be said?
Compromise? When was the last time Democrats compromised? Besides, that is, when public opinion so vastly swayed them after 9/11 and this summer, when oil flirted with $150 per barrel and the nation screamed "Drill Here!"
They haven't. They've only moved further Left. And Republicans have, to a large degree, followed. They've wanted to be liked. They've wanted to get along. They've wanted to compromise.
And now, all this garbage continues to flow about Sarah Palin, and the worst of it is coming from the mouths of those inside the McCain campaign. Those who, like Liberals, don't hesitate to throw about the term "neo-con" and believe that "values" change with the times and, because they believe that, they gladly advance the notion that Reagan Conservatism is dead.
I say that notion is a load of what falls from a cow's behind. Reagan's success came not because he compromised conservative principles and moved to the center but because he drew the center to him.
I realize fully that speculation's worth generally is squat, but I will maintain to the grave that without Sarah Palin, this election would have resulted in ugliness of Dukakis and McGovern proportion. She was the only true conservative in this race. She stands for conservative principles. She doesn't compromise them.
Will she be a viable national candidate again? Who knows?
But I know one thing. If Republicans want to become viable again, rather than slipping even closer to the edge of irrelevancy, they better grow a spine and come back together under the banner of conservatism and fight for those principles.
For compromise with an unyielding adversary breeds capitulation.
(Imported from Nov. 7, 2008)
GOP must get to work
If nothing else good comes from this election (and I can't at the moment imagine what could), let's hope it serves as a long overdue wakeup call for conservatives.
NO offense to John McCain, because I admire and respect the degree to which he has served this country. Nor do I intend offense toward any of the centrists/moderates out there.
But this is what "compromise" has wrought. Republicans have lost their way because for too long, they have failed at virtually every turn to stand up and fight for their party's principles and values. And when one compromises what is at one's core, there is nothing left worthy of support or admiration.
The GOP's "to-do" list is a long one. But at the top must be regrowing a enough of a backbone to stand up and fight for conservative beliefs.
And as a subset of that priority, I say never again can conservatives allow Democrats and independents to have a say in who runs atop the Republlican ticket. McCain was our nominee this year largely because the majority of early primary states allowed Democrats and independents to participate. They and the media chose the Republican candidate.
Tradition be damned. Notice must be served to state party officials that the primary/caucus lineup will be shuffled, if need be, to ensure that Republicans, and Republicans ONLY, have a say in who our party's nominee will be.
(Imported from Nov. 5, 2008)
NO offense to John McCain, because I admire and respect the degree to which he has served this country. Nor do I intend offense toward any of the centrists/moderates out there.
But this is what "compromise" has wrought. Republicans have lost their way because for too long, they have failed at virtually every turn to stand up and fight for their party's principles and values. And when one compromises what is at one's core, there is nothing left worthy of support or admiration.
The GOP's "to-do" list is a long one. But at the top must be regrowing a enough of a backbone to stand up and fight for conservative beliefs.
And as a subset of that priority, I say never again can conservatives allow Democrats and independents to have a say in who runs atop the Republlican ticket. McCain was our nominee this year largely because the majority of early primary states allowed Democrats and independents to participate. They and the media chose the Republican candidate.
Tradition be damned. Notice must be served to state party officials that the primary/caucus lineup will be shuffled, if need be, to ensure that Republicans, and Republicans ONLY, have a say in who our party's nominee will be.
(Imported from Nov. 5, 2008)
Doesn't get more assinine than this
Democrat senator John Conyers is apparently upset that someone "leaked" information about Barack Obama's aunt, the one wallowing in Boston public housing who's in this country illegally.
Conyers, from Michigan, is so upset, in fact, he's calling for an INVESTIGAAAAAAATION into who leaked what information.
Obama's aunt isn't only an illegal immigrant. She was ordered deported four years ago after her request for asylum was denied, so she is what the government considers a "fugitive alien."
So this Looney Lib is calling for a government investigation into information given about a fugitive?
Strikes me that if a fugitive is a U.S. citizen, his or her picture would just be slapped on a post office wall or printed in newspapers. And there'd be nobody anywhere bitching about the terrible breach of his or her privacy rights.
(Imported from Nov. 2, 2008)
Conyers, from Michigan, is so upset, in fact, he's calling for an INVESTIGAAAAAAATION into who leaked what information.
Obama's aunt isn't only an illegal immigrant. She was ordered deported four years ago after her request for asylum was denied, so she is what the government considers a "fugitive alien."
So this Looney Lib is calling for a government investigation into information given about a fugitive?
Strikes me that if a fugitive is a U.S. citizen, his or her picture would just be slapped on a post office wall or printed in newspapers. And there'd be nobody anywhere bitching about the terrible breach of his or her privacy rights.
(Imported from Nov. 2, 2008)
Shutting up the opposition, Obama-style
Dunno if anyone read the stories today, but my newspaper was one of three (along with the New York Post and the Washington Times) booted off Obama's campaign plane effective today. The excuse was that their seating was cut back because Michelle and her entourage was joining the campaign for the last few days. I've seen reports, too, that writers from Ebony and Jet are being added to do documentary-type stuff.
No matter. These are three major daily newspapers from three of the nation's largest cities. One other thing they have in common is that they officially endorsed John McCain in the last week.
This on the heels of Orlando TV reporter Barbara West's and her station's access to the Obama campaign being cut off completely after she asked "tough questions" of Joe Biden last week. Same thing happened to a Philadelphia TV station after more "tough questions" for Biden.
Obama's thugs, we know, have illegally accessed with government computers everything about Joe The Plummer, trying to find dirt. We saw what they did in Alaska, armed with fistfulls of cash for anyone with a story to tell (true or not) about Sarah Palin. They're also now going after West's husband, a Republican who once did consulting work for the GOP.
We also know that Obama and his socialist coherts (Pelosi, Reid, et al) plan immediately to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine to stifle opposing viewpoints. It, of course, will apply only to talk radio. Not CNN. Not the New York Times. Not the networks. Why? Because that's the only area that conservatives have an honest voice, besides Fox News.
After that, their target will be the Internet.
I guess there's a ray of light still shining. The socialist thugs who are about to run our government, our lives, haven't to anyone's knowledge begun plans to clear prison space for "dissenters."
Not yet anyway.
(Imported from Oct. 31, 2008)
No matter. These are three major daily newspapers from three of the nation's largest cities. One other thing they have in common is that they officially endorsed John McCain in the last week.
This on the heels of Orlando TV reporter Barbara West's and her station's access to the Obama campaign being cut off completely after she asked "tough questions" of Joe Biden last week. Same thing happened to a Philadelphia TV station after more "tough questions" for Biden.
Obama's thugs, we know, have illegally accessed with government computers everything about Joe The Plummer, trying to find dirt. We saw what they did in Alaska, armed with fistfulls of cash for anyone with a story to tell (true or not) about Sarah Palin. They're also now going after West's husband, a Republican who once did consulting work for the GOP.
We also know that Obama and his socialist coherts (Pelosi, Reid, et al) plan immediately to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine to stifle opposing viewpoints. It, of course, will apply only to talk radio. Not CNN. Not the New York Times. Not the networks. Why? Because that's the only area that conservatives have an honest voice, besides Fox News.
After that, their target will be the Internet.
I guess there's a ray of light still shining. The socialist thugs who are about to run our government, our lives, haven't to anyone's knowledge begun plans to clear prison space for "dissenters."
Not yet anyway.
(Imported from Oct. 31, 2008)
Going mad
On my way to work one day this week, I caught a caller on a regular afternoon radio talk show. He was English, in the U.S. on vacation as he said is his habit, and, after taking in a week’s worth of the political scene, asked a very basic question.
“What’s wrong with this country? Have you all gone mad?”
The caller’s opinion, contrary to what the media and the Left (sorry, redundant) has been telling us for quite some time, is that America has a helluva lot more going for it than against it. And has for a long, long time. No matter the extent that someone wants to run down this country, from within or from the outside, the fact is that many, many more people would live here in a heartbeat than anywhere else.
And that was the essence of the caller’s point.
“This man,” the caller said in reference to Barack Obama, “wants to give you something that does not work. It is socialism. It is attractive in theory; I understand that. But it has never worked. Look at Europe. It has taken some of us 30 years to understand that it does not work, and it will take us longer to fix the damage that has been done.”
Therein lays the madness.
We have the models to see. Many of them. There’s the Russian version of socialism, the Eastern Europe version. There’s the Western Europe version. Right off our southeastern shore is the Cuban version; farther to the south, the Venezuelan version. To our north, there is the Canadian version.
IT DOES NOT WORK. IT HAS NEVER WORKED. IT WILL NEVER WORK.
But here we are, a few days away from possibly following Obama off the very same cliff. Why? Because it’s packaged nice and neat and marketed in such a slick manner? That’s been done, too. Promises on top of promises have been made all around the world by Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists. They all claimed to represent the poor.
They all promised change. And they all delivered change.
Anyone need a refresher course on how that change worked out in any of those countries?
Communism, as everyone knows, crumbled in Russia and Eastern Europe two decades ago. There, as in Cuba and Venezuela, living conditions were and are deplorable.
In Western Europe, Italians early this year swept the Communists completely out of their Senate and Chamber of Deputies for the first time since World War II, and drove the socialists to the brink of no power. France and Germany have conservative governments after years of liberal rule. England, polls there show, is about to boot its liberal Labor Party out of office after a decade of rule.
And conservatives in Canada have made huge gains the last three years after a long stretch of virtually unchecked liberalism.
Seems few in those countries are big fans of high unemployment, spiraling inflation, crumbling infrastructures and ever-rising taxes. (Not to mention flailing government health care programs, open-border immigration stances and the slew of burdensome policies in the name of Global Warming, other issues we can't seem to see and learn from either, but those are topics for another time.)
Yet here we are.
It’s hardly surprising we can’t learn from the lessons taught elsewhere in the world. We can’t even learn from our own.
Our 10 most impoverished cities (I provided the list in another blog) have remained so under decades of Democrat policy-makers. What makes those people continue to empower liberals?
For those who experienced the late 1970s as adults, what exactly was the attraction to double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation and 21-percent interest rates?
For those who didn’t experience that time as adults and might need a history lesson, our president then was Jimmy Carter. It also was the last time Democrats had a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate.
To say we’re headed in that same direction would, in large part, be misleading, because our present-day Democrat party has moved even further to the left than Carter and his bunch ever dreamed of being.
We have, for a century, had a Communist Party in this country. People who preached Marxism. People who hated America and everything it stood for. People who not only promoted class envy, but class warfare.
They never seriously threatened to gain power. Until now.
They are who run today's Democrat Party. To call Obama a socialist is not hate-speech. It’s not fear-mongering or anything else. It’s fact. The man quotes Karl Marx, for God’s sake. In his own words, he “sought out the most radical elements and Marxist professors” early in his adult life. He has surrounded himself with the same type people ever since, from William Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to Louis Farrakhan.
His policies are socialist. “Growing the economy from the bottom up,” as he promises to do, is socialist. A massive federal government that takes everything so that it can provide everything (or claim to) … it couldn’t be any more socialist if Vladimir Lenin himself were on stage regurgitating the same speeches.
(And don't even go there on Obama's tax cut promises, which have as much a chance of happening as folks on the Equator have of seeing snow on Christmas Day.)
Democrats have harped this entire decade about how bad the economy is, even when by every comparative measure, it was as good or better than anything we’d seen in our lifetimes.
Yes, it’s gotten worse these last months, the result of a housing and credit crash that's coated with liberal fingerprints from as far back as the Carter years. I’ve covered that topic in previous blogs, as well, and will skip the details this time around.
Point is, you think the economy is bad now? We’re standing at the precipice of something much, much worse.
Why? Because we refuse to learn the painful lessons of others, as well as our own.
Have we gone mad? Oh yes. Very much so indeed.
(Imported from Oct. 31, 2008)
“What’s wrong with this country? Have you all gone mad?”
The caller’s opinion, contrary to what the media and the Left (sorry, redundant) has been telling us for quite some time, is that America has a helluva lot more going for it than against it. And has for a long, long time. No matter the extent that someone wants to run down this country, from within or from the outside, the fact is that many, many more people would live here in a heartbeat than anywhere else.
And that was the essence of the caller’s point.
“This man,” the caller said in reference to Barack Obama, “wants to give you something that does not work. It is socialism. It is attractive in theory; I understand that. But it has never worked. Look at Europe. It has taken some of us 30 years to understand that it does not work, and it will take us longer to fix the damage that has been done.”
Therein lays the madness.
We have the models to see. Many of them. There’s the Russian version of socialism, the Eastern Europe version. There’s the Western Europe version. Right off our southeastern shore is the Cuban version; farther to the south, the Venezuelan version. To our north, there is the Canadian version.
IT DOES NOT WORK. IT HAS NEVER WORKED. IT WILL NEVER WORK.
But here we are, a few days away from possibly following Obama off the very same cliff. Why? Because it’s packaged nice and neat and marketed in such a slick manner? That’s been done, too. Promises on top of promises have been made all around the world by Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists. They all claimed to represent the poor.
They all promised change. And they all delivered change.
Anyone need a refresher course on how that change worked out in any of those countries?
Communism, as everyone knows, crumbled in Russia and Eastern Europe two decades ago. There, as in Cuba and Venezuela, living conditions were and are deplorable.
In Western Europe, Italians early this year swept the Communists completely out of their Senate and Chamber of Deputies for the first time since World War II, and drove the socialists to the brink of no power. France and Germany have conservative governments after years of liberal rule. England, polls there show, is about to boot its liberal Labor Party out of office after a decade of rule.
And conservatives in Canada have made huge gains the last three years after a long stretch of virtually unchecked liberalism.
Seems few in those countries are big fans of high unemployment, spiraling inflation, crumbling infrastructures and ever-rising taxes. (Not to mention flailing government health care programs, open-border immigration stances and the slew of burdensome policies in the name of Global Warming, other issues we can't seem to see and learn from either, but those are topics for another time.)
Yet here we are.
It’s hardly surprising we can’t learn from the lessons taught elsewhere in the world. We can’t even learn from our own.
Our 10 most impoverished cities (I provided the list in another blog) have remained so under decades of Democrat policy-makers. What makes those people continue to empower liberals?
For those who experienced the late 1970s as adults, what exactly was the attraction to double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation and 21-percent interest rates?
For those who didn’t experience that time as adults and might need a history lesson, our president then was Jimmy Carter. It also was the last time Democrats had a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate.
To say we’re headed in that same direction would, in large part, be misleading, because our present-day Democrat party has moved even further to the left than Carter and his bunch ever dreamed of being.
We have, for a century, had a Communist Party in this country. People who preached Marxism. People who hated America and everything it stood for. People who not only promoted class envy, but class warfare.
They never seriously threatened to gain power. Until now.
They are who run today's Democrat Party. To call Obama a socialist is not hate-speech. It’s not fear-mongering or anything else. It’s fact. The man quotes Karl Marx, for God’s sake. In his own words, he “sought out the most radical elements and Marxist professors” early in his adult life. He has surrounded himself with the same type people ever since, from William Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to Louis Farrakhan.
His policies are socialist. “Growing the economy from the bottom up,” as he promises to do, is socialist. A massive federal government that takes everything so that it can provide everything (or claim to) … it couldn’t be any more socialist if Vladimir Lenin himself were on stage regurgitating the same speeches.
(And don't even go there on Obama's tax cut promises, which have as much a chance of happening as folks on the Equator have of seeing snow on Christmas Day.)
Democrats have harped this entire decade about how bad the economy is, even when by every comparative measure, it was as good or better than anything we’d seen in our lifetimes.
Yes, it’s gotten worse these last months, the result of a housing and credit crash that's coated with liberal fingerprints from as far back as the Carter years. I’ve covered that topic in previous blogs, as well, and will skip the details this time around.
Point is, you think the economy is bad now? We’re standing at the precipice of something much, much worse.
Why? Because we refuse to learn the painful lessons of others, as well as our own.
Have we gone mad? Oh yes. Very much so indeed.
(Imported from Oct. 31, 2008)
OMG! This is the BIG one!
The Left ... er, media, I mean ... has unearthed yet another biggee on Sarah Palin! The scandal to beat all scandals! This could mean the end of the world, folks!
Palin's campaign "wardrobe", the media has found, has a pricetag around $150,000! So she obviously, they reason, is no "Regular Joe" hockey mom who cares about the little people!
I guess they expect her to be outfitted at Walmart.
Oh, and speaking of those intrepid reporters ... remember Katie Couric's "gotcha" interview with Sarah Palin. Remember the brow-beating, ask-the-question 18 times B.S.?
Did you catch her fawning interview with The Annointed One? What investigational reporting! What hard-hitting questions!
"When was the last time you cried?"
Un-freaking-believable. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.
(Imported from Oct. 23, 2008)
Palin's campaign "wardrobe", the media has found, has a pricetag around $150,000! So she obviously, they reason, is no "Regular Joe" hockey mom who cares about the little people!
I guess they expect her to be outfitted at Walmart.
Oh, and speaking of those intrepid reporters ... remember Katie Couric's "gotcha" interview with Sarah Palin. Remember the brow-beating, ask-the-question 18 times B.S.?
Did you catch her fawning interview with The Annointed One? What investigational reporting! What hard-hitting questions!
"When was the last time you cried?"
Un-freaking-believable. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.
(Imported from Oct. 23, 2008)
Smears? Or the truth?
People are often decrying "negative campaigning" or "smear politics" these days, but we're not electing a class president. Shouldn't the truth be known about someone aspiring to the presidency of this country?
And if that person lies every other time he opens his mouth, should the truth not be told?
Newsmax reviewed 10 random claims made against Barack Obama and related rebuttals posted on Obama’s ever-changing FightTheSmears. com to gauge their veracity.
Here’s what they found:
Claim No. 1: Obama's campaign is funded by the rich, big corporations and foreigners.
“Barack Obama was the only major presidential candidate this year to completely reject contributions from The Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs that have dominated our politics for years,” the Obama site says of the persistent online criticisms of its fundraising.
“Instead, this campaign has been owned by the more than 3.1 million everyday Americans who have donated in small amounts.”
Not so, according to campaign finance records. Nearly half of the $600 million raised by Obama to date has come from wealthy donors and special interests. Obama's allies months ago dropped their ad linking Republican rival “Exxon John” McCain to Big Oil after it came to light that Obama had taken far more money from Exxon-Mobil than McCain.
“The Obama campaign has complied fully with federal election law,” claims the Obama site, “including donor eligibility and contribution disclosure requirements.”
However, one giant loophole the politicians wrote into the law allows contributions in amounts of $200 or less with no donor identification. Obama claims that $300 million in campaign funds was given by these small donors, and he won’t release their names and addresses.
McCain has released his whole donor database, including those who have contributed less than $200.
Critics argue that the other half of Obama’s campaign haul — the part not raised from big corporate donors and special interests — came in a small flood of anonymous donations that might be foreign or corrupt, or both.
Claim No. 2: Obama has had a close, ongoing relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
The Obama site acknowledges that its candidate and Ayers ”served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990s,” but maintains most stories about the links between Obama and Ayers are phony or exaggerated.
It does not mention that Obama and Ayers worked together on the board distributing millions of dollars with the aim of radicalizing Chicago schoolchildren.
Nor does the site acknowledge that Obama kicked off his first political campaign in the living room of Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader. (Obama is currently saying it was not the first event. There is no dispute that one of Obama’s first political events in his first run for public office was held in Ayers’ home.)
There is also no dispute the Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon the Capitol, the home of a New York Supreme Court justice, and a police station, among other targets. FBI agent Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the group, has recounted Ayers teaching him how to make bombs and saying, “In the revolution, some innocent people need to die.”
“Smear groups and now a desperate McCain campaign are trying to connect Barack to William Ayers using age-old guilt by association techniques . . .” says the Obama Web site.
Actually, McCain and Obama critics are questioning why Obama would continue to associate with a man who, as recently as 2001, said he did not do enough and wished he had bombed more.
Conservatives also note that if Ayers had bombed abortion clinics, the liberal media would brand him a pariah forever.
What does it tell us about the liberal media’s and Obama’s judgment and values that they see nothing wrong with embracing unrepentant terrorist Ayers today?
Claim No. 3: Obama takes advice from executives of troubled mortgage backer Fannie Mae.
“John McCain started smearing Obama about non-existent ties to Fannie Mae in some of his deceptive attack ads,” says FightTheSmears. com. The site downplays connections between Obama and two former heads of the giant mortgage-backing institution — James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines — whose corruption played a key role in the current financial crisis.
But an editorial in the Aug. 27, 2008, Washington Post described Johnson and Raines, as “members of Mr. Obama’s political circle.”
Raines advised the Obama campaign on housing matters. Obama chose Johnson to select his vice presidential running mate. But because neither are advising Obama today, this Web site’s present-tense claim that he “doesn’t [not didn’t] take advice from Fannie Mae execs” is technically, if deceptively, true.
Johnson also reportedly helped raise as much as $500,000 for Obama’s campaign.
And despite Obama’s lack of seniority in the U.S. Senate, he pocketed more than $105,000 in political contributions, the third-highest amount given to any lawmaker, directly from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama’s Web site leaves all this unmentioned.
Claim No. 4: Obama has close ties with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group suspected of massive voter registration fraud.
Obama’s site says the candidate was never an ACORN employee and that ACORN “was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive [Obama] ran in 1992.”
In defending Obama, the site resorts to smearing former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell — calling him a “discredited Republican voter-suppression guru” — for daring to fight the vote fraud so often associated with operatives of ACORN, among the largest radical groups in the United States.
As Newsmax has documented in ["Clever Obama Tries To Bury ACORN Past,"] Obama’s Web site is attempting to deceive when it says Obama was never “hired” to work as a trainer for ACORN’s leaders. In fact, he did the work for free from at least 1993 until 2003.
ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg acknowledges in the Oct. 11, 2008, New York Times that Obama trained ACORN leaders. And Obama worked as a lawyer for ACORN.
As to heading up Project Vote in Illinois, Obama said during a speech to ACORN leaders last November, "[When] I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack-dab in the middle of it.”
Veteran journalist Karen Tumulty described Project Vote in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of Time magazine as “a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” after interviewing its national director.
The co-founder of ACORN, former Students for a Democratic Society official Wade Rathke, described Project Vote as one of ACORN’s “family of organizations.”
Over the years, ACORN and its front groups, like the one Obama ran in Illinois, have registered more than 4 million voters. When authorities in Virginia checked ACORN registrations, it found that 83 percent were fraudulent or had problems. This, in theory, could mean ACORN may have created the opportunity for stealing more than 3.3 million votes in this November’s election, a margin far wider than that by which Obama is likely to win.
Claim No. 5: Obama has shown only wavering support for individual gun-ownership rights.
“During Barack’s career in the Illinois and United States Senates, he proudly stood to defend the rights of hunters and sportsmen,” says Obama’s Web site, “while doing everything he could to protect children — including his own two daughters — from illegal gun violence.”
But the National Rifle Association, it continues, “is distributing a dishonest and cowardly flyer that makes confrontational accusations and runs away from verifying them.”
Actually, the NRA does a meticulous job of laying out documentation, as Newsmax reported in September ["NRA to Fight Obama Over Gun Rights Flip-Flops,"] to show that Obama has supported handgun confiscation; the handgun ban in Washington, D.C.; a virtual ban on high-powered rifle ammunition; and many other draconian restrictions on Second Amendment rights.
If elected, wrote the NRA, Obama “would be the most anti-gun president in American history.”
Claim No. 6: A fervent supporter of abortion rights, Obama supports late-term and partial-birth abortions.
The Obama Web site dismisses such criticism as the work of “radical anti-abortion ideologues running ads against Barack.”
But as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted repeatedly against legislation to protect infants who, during a late-term abortion, were “born alive.” Such protection, he has argued, already exists in Illinois; it does, but is subject to the abortionist’s decision whether such an infant has a good likelihood of survival.
Nurses have reported instances in which surviving aborted babies were left by abortionists to die without water, food, or warmth.
Obama’s Web site notes that even the Republican author of one of these bills, former state Sen. Rick Winkel, has written that “none of those who voted against [his bill] favored infanticide.”
True, but Obama’s site does not quote the rest of Winkel’s statement: “[T]heir zeal for pro-choice dogma was clearly the overriding force behind their negative votes rather than concern that my bill would protect babies who are born alive.”
Obama has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record according to NARAL Pro-Choice America; his rating from the National Right to Life Committee is zero.
How extreme is Obama on this issue? In the U.S. Senate, he has voted against bills that would prohibit minors from crossing state lines for abortion without parental notification.
"Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” Obama has said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."
Claim No. 7: Obama showed little interest or support for American combat troops during his overseas visits.
Doubts about Obama’s true support for the military cropped up during a campaign trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Europe.
A widely circulated e-mail, penned by Army Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, described Obama's visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan: “As the Soldiers lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off . . . He again shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service . . . I swear we got more thanks from the NBA basketball players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from [Obama].”
Porter later recanted, sending a follow-up e-mail that said, in part: “After checking my sources, information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong.” He did not specify which information was wrong, leading Obama skeptics to suspect that this officer has been disciplined by his superiors.
Heading home, Obama touched down in Germany, where he “was scheduled to visit the American hospitals at Ramstein and Landstuhl.” But as The Washington Post reported, Obama “canceled the trips after being told by Pentagon officials that he could only visit in his official capacity as a senator, not as a candidate” and could not have his visits with hospitalized soldiers videotaped by the media.
Prominent liberal mainstream media reporters such as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell rushed to defend Obama, saying that the press had never planned to cover his visits to military sickbeds. But Obama canceled both visits and used his free time instead to shoot hoops, with the media recording his best shots.
Claim No. 8: Barack Obama is a Muslim.
FightTheSmears. com states bluntly that Obama is a Christian, not a follower of Islam.
In fact, Barack Hussein Obama’s Kenyan father was raised Muslim, though he reportedly was not religious.
His mother divorced and remarried another man, a Muslim from Indonesia. As a youngster in Indonesia, Barack Obama attended two schools and was registered at both as a Muslim. He received religious instruction in both schools as a Muslim, including studying the Quran. According to a childhood friend, Obama occasionally attended services at a local mosque.
Obama’s Muslim upbringing has been detailed in a 2007 Los Angeles Times report (reprinted in The Baltimore Sun) headlined "Islam an Unknown Factor in Obama Bid." Middle East expert Daniel Pipes has studied the question of Obama’s Muslim faith and says he is “lying” when he says he was never a Muslim.
It’s important to note that Obama’s Web site does not say he was never a Muslim. But in the past, Obama’s site and FightTheSmears. com did make the claim Obama was never a Muslim. Since that claim is obviously false, it is no longer used.
Obama says he became a Christian in his late 20s. He now describes himself as Christian. Until recently, he spent two decades as a member of a Chicago United Church of Christ congregation that embraces Black Liberation theology. Somewhat like the Roman Catholic liberation theology of Latin America, the Chicago UCC church preaches elements of neo-Marxist class warfare. It combines these radical socialist elements with black racialism.
Claim No. 9: As president, Obama would raise taxes dramatically for most Americans.
Millions of Americans recognize that Obama is likely to raise taxes. But like a good conjurer, who tricks you into watching his right hand while doing things with his left, the Obama Web site assures readers with a red herring.
The Illinois senator will not tax your water, as claimed in some fringe e-mails, FightTheSmears. com maintains.
What Obama will do, however, is tax businesses and capital gains more heavily, even though America already has the world’s second-highest business taxes.
“Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases” said former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson at the 2008 Republican National Convention. “They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No, they’re just going to tax businesses! So unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline . . . or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small business, don’t worry. It’s not going to affect you.”
During his campaign, Obama has promised to raise various taxes that will fall on most economic classes, including the dividend tax, the FICA tax cap, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, and new taxes on gasoline.
He also called for the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, which will automatically raise taxes on most Americans. By letting the Bush cuts expire, Obama would produce a $2 trillion tax increase that some economists predict will rumble through the already weakened economy like an earthquake.
Claim No. 10: Obama was born outside the United States and is ineligible for the presidency.
The Obama Web site dismisses the claim that the candidate was born anywhere but in the United States as “completely false” and “groundless.”
As proof, the Obama’s campaign has produced a “certificate of live birth” from Hawaii indicating that Barack Hussein Obama II was born Aug. 4, 1961. Critics, however say the document could have easily been forged and is not a substitute for a certified birth certificate.
No reporter has been allowed to see the original certificate of live birth or its certificate number, which is blacked out on copies of it on the Obama site.
Skeptics note that Obama’s “Father’s Race” is identified on this document as “African,” a geographic and modern politically correct term rather than a 1961 racial designation. The standard term used on American birth certificates until the U.S. Census changed it in 1980 would have been “Negro.”
Former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, Philip J. Berg, a Democrat with mixed credibility (he has supported conspiracy theories involving 9/11), has filed a lawsuit to force Obama to produce a certified copy of his birth certificate. According to Berg, Obama’s paternal grandmother has said she was present at his birth in Kenya, after which his mother promptly returned with her baby to the United States.
If that is true, Obama could be constitutionally ineligible to be president.
(Imported from Oct. 23, 2008)
And if that person lies every other time he opens his mouth, should the truth not be told?
Newsmax reviewed 10 random claims made against Barack Obama and related rebuttals posted on Obama’s ever-changing FightTheSmears. com to gauge their veracity.
Here’s what they found:
Claim No. 1: Obama's campaign is funded by the rich, big corporations and foreigners.
“Barack Obama was the only major presidential candidate this year to completely reject contributions from The Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs that have dominated our politics for years,” the Obama site says of the persistent online criticisms of its fundraising.
“Instead, this campaign has been owned by the more than 3.1 million everyday Americans who have donated in small amounts.”
Not so, according to campaign finance records. Nearly half of the $600 million raised by Obama to date has come from wealthy donors and special interests. Obama's allies months ago dropped their ad linking Republican rival “Exxon John” McCain to Big Oil after it came to light that Obama had taken far more money from Exxon-Mobil than McCain.
“The Obama campaign has complied fully with federal election law,” claims the Obama site, “including donor eligibility and contribution disclosure requirements.”
However, one giant loophole the politicians wrote into the law allows contributions in amounts of $200 or less with no donor identification. Obama claims that $300 million in campaign funds was given by these small donors, and he won’t release their names and addresses.
McCain has released his whole donor database, including those who have contributed less than $200.
Critics argue that the other half of Obama’s campaign haul — the part not raised from big corporate donors and special interests — came in a small flood of anonymous donations that might be foreign or corrupt, or both.
Claim No. 2: Obama has had a close, ongoing relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
The Obama site acknowledges that its candidate and Ayers ”served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990s,” but maintains most stories about the links between Obama and Ayers are phony or exaggerated.
It does not mention that Obama and Ayers worked together on the board distributing millions of dollars with the aim of radicalizing Chicago schoolchildren.
Nor does the site acknowledge that Obama kicked off his first political campaign in the living room of Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader. (Obama is currently saying it was not the first event. There is no dispute that one of Obama’s first political events in his first run for public office was held in Ayers’ home.)
There is also no dispute the Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon the Capitol, the home of a New York Supreme Court justice, and a police station, among other targets. FBI agent Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the group, has recounted Ayers teaching him how to make bombs and saying, “In the revolution, some innocent people need to die.”
“Smear groups and now a desperate McCain campaign are trying to connect Barack to William Ayers using age-old guilt by association techniques . . .” says the Obama Web site.
Actually, McCain and Obama critics are questioning why Obama would continue to associate with a man who, as recently as 2001, said he did not do enough and wished he had bombed more.
Conservatives also note that if Ayers had bombed abortion clinics, the liberal media would brand him a pariah forever.
What does it tell us about the liberal media’s and Obama’s judgment and values that they see nothing wrong with embracing unrepentant terrorist Ayers today?
Claim No. 3: Obama takes advice from executives of troubled mortgage backer Fannie Mae.
“John McCain started smearing Obama about non-existent ties to Fannie Mae in some of his deceptive attack ads,” says FightTheSmears. com. The site downplays connections between Obama and two former heads of the giant mortgage-backing institution — James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines — whose corruption played a key role in the current financial crisis.
But an editorial in the Aug. 27, 2008, Washington Post described Johnson and Raines, as “members of Mr. Obama’s political circle.”
Raines advised the Obama campaign on housing matters. Obama chose Johnson to select his vice presidential running mate. But because neither are advising Obama today, this Web site’s present-tense claim that he “doesn’t [not didn’t] take advice from Fannie Mae execs” is technically, if deceptively, true.
Johnson also reportedly helped raise as much as $500,000 for Obama’s campaign.
And despite Obama’s lack of seniority in the U.S. Senate, he pocketed more than $105,000 in political contributions, the third-highest amount given to any lawmaker, directly from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama’s Web site leaves all this unmentioned.
Claim No. 4: Obama has close ties with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group suspected of massive voter registration fraud.
Obama’s site says the candidate was never an ACORN employee and that ACORN “was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive [Obama] ran in 1992.”
In defending Obama, the site resorts to smearing former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell — calling him a “discredited Republican voter-suppression guru” — for daring to fight the vote fraud so often associated with operatives of ACORN, among the largest radical groups in the United States.
As Newsmax has documented in ["Clever Obama Tries To Bury ACORN Past,"] Obama’s Web site is attempting to deceive when it says Obama was never “hired” to work as a trainer for ACORN’s leaders. In fact, he did the work for free from at least 1993 until 2003.
ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg acknowledges in the Oct. 11, 2008, New York Times that Obama trained ACORN leaders. And Obama worked as a lawyer for ACORN.
As to heading up Project Vote in Illinois, Obama said during a speech to ACORN leaders last November, "[When] I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack-dab in the middle of it.”
Veteran journalist Karen Tumulty described Project Vote in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of Time magazine as “a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” after interviewing its national director.
The co-founder of ACORN, former Students for a Democratic Society official Wade Rathke, described Project Vote as one of ACORN’s “family of organizations.”
Over the years, ACORN and its front groups, like the one Obama ran in Illinois, have registered more than 4 million voters. When authorities in Virginia checked ACORN registrations, it found that 83 percent were fraudulent or had problems. This, in theory, could mean ACORN may have created the opportunity for stealing more than 3.3 million votes in this November’s election, a margin far wider than that by which Obama is likely to win.
Claim No. 5: Obama has shown only wavering support for individual gun-ownership rights.
“During Barack’s career in the Illinois and United States Senates, he proudly stood to defend the rights of hunters and sportsmen,” says Obama’s Web site, “while doing everything he could to protect children — including his own two daughters — from illegal gun violence.”
But the National Rifle Association, it continues, “is distributing a dishonest and cowardly flyer that makes confrontational accusations and runs away from verifying them.”
Actually, the NRA does a meticulous job of laying out documentation, as Newsmax reported in September ["NRA to Fight Obama Over Gun Rights Flip-Flops,"] to show that Obama has supported handgun confiscation; the handgun ban in Washington, D.C.; a virtual ban on high-powered rifle ammunition; and many other draconian restrictions on Second Amendment rights.
If elected, wrote the NRA, Obama “would be the most anti-gun president in American history.”
Claim No. 6: A fervent supporter of abortion rights, Obama supports late-term and partial-birth abortions.
The Obama Web site dismisses such criticism as the work of “radical anti-abortion ideologues running ads against Barack.”
But as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted repeatedly against legislation to protect infants who, during a late-term abortion, were “born alive.” Such protection, he has argued, already exists in Illinois; it does, but is subject to the abortionist’s decision whether such an infant has a good likelihood of survival.
Nurses have reported instances in which surviving aborted babies were left by abortionists to die without water, food, or warmth.
Obama’s Web site notes that even the Republican author of one of these bills, former state Sen. Rick Winkel, has written that “none of those who voted against [his bill] favored infanticide.”
True, but Obama’s site does not quote the rest of Winkel’s statement: “[T]heir zeal for pro-choice dogma was clearly the overriding force behind their negative votes rather than concern that my bill would protect babies who are born alive.”
Obama has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record according to NARAL Pro-Choice America; his rating from the National Right to Life Committee is zero.
How extreme is Obama on this issue? In the U.S. Senate, he has voted against bills that would prohibit minors from crossing state lines for abortion without parental notification.
"Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” Obama has said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."
Claim No. 7: Obama showed little interest or support for American combat troops during his overseas visits.
Doubts about Obama’s true support for the military cropped up during a campaign trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Europe.
A widely circulated e-mail, penned by Army Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, described Obama's visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan: “As the Soldiers lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off . . . He again shunned the opportunity to talk to soldiers to thank them for their service . . . I swear we got more thanks from the NBA basketball players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from [Obama].”
Porter later recanted, sending a follow-up e-mail that said, in part: “After checking my sources, information that was put out in my e-mail was wrong.” He did not specify which information was wrong, leading Obama skeptics to suspect that this officer has been disciplined by his superiors.
Heading home, Obama touched down in Germany, where he “was scheduled to visit the American hospitals at Ramstein and Landstuhl.” But as The Washington Post reported, Obama “canceled the trips after being told by Pentagon officials that he could only visit in his official capacity as a senator, not as a candidate” and could not have his visits with hospitalized soldiers videotaped by the media.
Prominent liberal mainstream media reporters such as NBC’s Andrea Mitchell rushed to defend Obama, saying that the press had never planned to cover his visits to military sickbeds. But Obama canceled both visits and used his free time instead to shoot hoops, with the media recording his best shots.
Claim No. 8: Barack Obama is a Muslim.
FightTheSmears. com states bluntly that Obama is a Christian, not a follower of Islam.
In fact, Barack Hussein Obama’s Kenyan father was raised Muslim, though he reportedly was not religious.
His mother divorced and remarried another man, a Muslim from Indonesia. As a youngster in Indonesia, Barack Obama attended two schools and was registered at both as a Muslim. He received religious instruction in both schools as a Muslim, including studying the Quran. According to a childhood friend, Obama occasionally attended services at a local mosque.
Obama’s Muslim upbringing has been detailed in a 2007 Los Angeles Times report (reprinted in The Baltimore Sun) headlined "Islam an Unknown Factor in Obama Bid." Middle East expert Daniel Pipes has studied the question of Obama’s Muslim faith and says he is “lying” when he says he was never a Muslim.
It’s important to note that Obama’s Web site does not say he was never a Muslim. But in the past, Obama’s site and FightTheSmears. com did make the claim Obama was never a Muslim. Since that claim is obviously false, it is no longer used.
Obama says he became a Christian in his late 20s. He now describes himself as Christian. Until recently, he spent two decades as a member of a Chicago United Church of Christ congregation that embraces Black Liberation theology. Somewhat like the Roman Catholic liberation theology of Latin America, the Chicago UCC church preaches elements of neo-Marxist class warfare. It combines these radical socialist elements with black racialism.
Claim No. 9: As president, Obama would raise taxes dramatically for most Americans.
Millions of Americans recognize that Obama is likely to raise taxes. But like a good conjurer, who tricks you into watching his right hand while doing things with his left, the Obama Web site assures readers with a red herring.
The Illinois senator will not tax your water, as claimed in some fringe e-mails, FightTheSmears. com maintains.
What Obama will do, however, is tax businesses and capital gains more heavily, even though America already has the world’s second-highest business taxes.
“Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases” said former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson at the 2008 Republican National Convention. “They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No, they’re just going to tax businesses! So unless you buy something from a business, like groceries or clothes or gasoline . . . or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small business, don’t worry. It’s not going to affect you.”
During his campaign, Obama has promised to raise various taxes that will fall on most economic classes, including the dividend tax, the FICA tax cap, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, and new taxes on gasoline.
He also called for the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, which will automatically raise taxes on most Americans. By letting the Bush cuts expire, Obama would produce a $2 trillion tax increase that some economists predict will rumble through the already weakened economy like an earthquake.
Claim No. 10: Obama was born outside the United States and is ineligible for the presidency.
The Obama Web site dismisses the claim that the candidate was born anywhere but in the United States as “completely false” and “groundless.”
As proof, the Obama’s campaign has produced a “certificate of live birth” from Hawaii indicating that Barack Hussein Obama II was born Aug. 4, 1961. Critics, however say the document could have easily been forged and is not a substitute for a certified birth certificate.
No reporter has been allowed to see the original certificate of live birth or its certificate number, which is blacked out on copies of it on the Obama site.
Skeptics note that Obama’s “Father’s Race” is identified on this document as “African,” a geographic and modern politically correct term rather than a 1961 racial designation. The standard term used on American birth certificates until the U.S. Census changed it in 1980 would have been “Negro.”
Former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, Philip J. Berg, a Democrat with mixed credibility (he has supported conspiracy theories involving 9/11), has filed a lawsuit to force Obama to produce a certified copy of his birth certificate. According to Berg, Obama’s paternal grandmother has said she was present at his birth in Kenya, after which his mother promptly returned with her baby to the United States.
If that is true, Obama could be constitutionally ineligible to be president.
(Imported from Oct. 23, 2008)
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