The mafia were in the business of keeping people scared to speak out or question their actions. Those places were Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston, Cleveland and large cities all over the country. I don’t know if this is what changed these people to go along to get along with Obama and became liberals. I don’t know if not speaking out against the mafia made them afraid to speak out against Obama – clearly bad politics for the country we have known and loved. If that is so, it is very sad and takes away some hope for the country’s future. Unless and until they wake up, they are placing the country in jeopardy each and every day. They should realize this will harm their children, grandchildren, and future generations. The reporting on this by Fox News apparently made the White House mad, the White House striking out at Fox, at insurance companies, the Chamber of Commerce, and anyone who had the audacity to question their actions.
Joe Wilson called Obama a liar and he had plenty of actions by Obama before and after his election to verify this. Anyone who says Obama’s actions are not lies is living in a dream world. Obama says no abortions are to be funded in the health reform bill… a lie; Obama says illegals will not get benefits from the bill…. he lies; Obama said every bill would be posted for five days for everyone to read… another lie; Obama said his administration would be non-partisan – no Republicans were even allowed in the room where this health care reform bill was being negotiated… he LIED.
Obama has an agenda and it is not the same agenda freedom loving citizens in this country have. His appearing at the place where fallen heroes are returned to their country for burial, for a PR action, and not sending the troops the General in Afghanistan asked for is placing those already there in greater danger. Woudn’t it follow that Obama would praise Alan Grayson, especially with his evil, slimy mouth? I think I have figured out why Grayson has this problem… there is no doubt that the children in grade school taunted him and called him “PIGGY”. By the time he entered high school, most of those students had read Lord of the Flies and shunned him completely. That is the reason he craves being noticed so. Just take one look at his photo, think of a pig, and you will see what I mean.
Cash for Clunkers – reminds me of this administration. We now have a clunker White House and a clunker Democratic Congress.
The Obama administration says that the stimulus made or saved 660,000 jobs… take that figure with a grain of salt! This country should be more like the Little Red Hen and save and do away with the deficit and make more bread, not giving the bread away to the happy little grasshoppers, or I should say the me generation – gimme, gimme, gimme – people like the lady who said “When Obama is elected, I won’t have to pay my house payment anymore!” and other things she said that Obama was going to give her. I must say he is trying, at a detriment to the country.
For all of you old folk who love to live – the death panel remains in the health reform bill – and they call Palin CRAZY for pointing it out. There are two articles following for all of your patriots:
Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
Posted By Capitol Confidential On October 30, 2009 @ 12:17 pm In Congress, Healthcare |
The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):
Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.
So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today! (continue reading…)
Only liberals would want their children in these hands!
Obama and his administration are very slow in sending additional troops to Afghanistan, as his appointed Military Commander asked for. He knew right away what he wanted to do on health care, but doesn’t have the time to decide on helping the young troops over ‘there’ and keep more of ‘them’ alive – choices too hard to make. He has no problem with wrecking the country with his health care reform by adding a massive deficit to be paid for by our children, grand children and their children. He is not the only one shorting the troops. Both the Democrats and Republicans shorted the troops when they took $2.1 billion out of the defense budget for their own little earmarks, to get themselves re-elected.
Originally published 04:45 a.m., October 15, 2009, updated 09:02 a.m., October 15, 2009
U.S. troop funds diverted to pet projects
Shaun Waterman THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.
Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.
While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance “a disgrace.”
“The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines,” he said in a statement.
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Mr. Wheeler, who conducted the study, compared the Obama administration’s requests for funds with the $636 billion spending bill that the Senate passed. He discovered that senators added $2.6 billion in pet projects while spending $4 billion less than the administration requested for fiscal 2010, which began Oct. 1.
Mr. Wheeler said that senators took most of the cash for the projects from the “operations and maintenance” or O&M accounts.
“These are the accounts that pay for troop training, repairs, spares and supplies for vehicles, weapons, ships and planes, food and fuel,” Mr. Wheeler said.
Raiding those accounts to fund big-ticket projects the military does not want, but that benefit senators’ home states or campaign contributors, amounts to “rancid gluttony,” he said.
The administration’s budget requested $156 billion for the regular O&M account and $81 billion for O&M for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill passed by the Senate cut $2.4 billion from the regular account and $655 million from the war O&M fund.
Senate appropriators insisted that the O&M accounts, despite the cuts, do not shortchange the troops.
“The operation and maintenance title is fully funded,” Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, said during the debate on the bill. “There is no shortage. … The committee is deeply concerned that the critical operational needs of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are met with the finest equipment available.”
Money for the Kennedy Institute was inserted by Mr. Inouye and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, and Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, sought the funding for the World War II museum.
Whitney Smith, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said the earmark was “a worthy investment.”
“Sen. Kennedy served on the Armed Services Committee for 27 years, where he fought to deliver top-of-the-line body armor and armored Humvees to protect our troops and save lives. Educating Americans about these battles is a core mission for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, which showcases one senator’s ability to make a difference,” Mr. Smith wrote in an e-mail. “This funding will help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute become one the nation’s pre-eminent civic educational institutions, and Sen. Kerry is proud to have worked with Chairman Inouye to make it possible.”
Mrs. Landrieu said she was “proud to fight” for money for the World War II museum, which is not just a “monument to the brave men and women who served during World War II,” but also “a constant reminder to future generations about the tremendous sacrifice of millions of Americans.” She added that the earmarked funds “will help to increase tourism to New Orleans.”
Beyond those two earmarks, the largest in the Senate bill are:
- $20 million for Humvee maintenance at an Army National Guard installation in Maine, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, Maine Republicans. The senators said cuts in the maintenance program proposed by the administration would result in the “layoff of 175 employees in a region already suffering” from the recession.
- $20 million for the Maui Space Surveillance System in Hawaii, requested by Mr. Inouye.
- $25 million inserted by Mr. Inouye for the Hawaii Federal Health Care Network. Mr. Inouye’s Web site says the health care program “supports applied research, development and deployment of technology to improve access and the quality of care to service members, military families and impacted communities.”
Laura Peterson, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan spending watchdog, told The Washington Times, “Earmarks like these take money away from other defense programs that the Defense Department actually wants. While military health care is certainly a worthwhile venture, it’s hard to see how a program located in Hawaii that openly favors Hawaii-based industries guarantees [the Department of Defense] the best value for such an exorbitant price tag.”
Mr. Inouye had a total of 35 earmarks worth more than $206 million in the final bill, and the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, sponsored 48 worth $216 million.
Mr. Cochran defended earmarking as part of Congress’ responsibility to direct government spending.
“I am not ready to cede the power of the purse to any administration,” he told The Times in an e-mail. “It is vested by the Constitution in the Congress.” He added that appropriators had “reviewed the budget request very carefully, conducted public hearings and reported the appropriation bills that the committee thinks will serve the public interest.”
In addition to the $2.6 billion in earmarks, the bill includes $2.5 billion for 10 Boeing C-17 cargo planes that the military says it does not need, and $1.7 billion for an extra DDG-51 destroyer not requested in the Pentagon’s budget proposal.
Mr. Coburn mounted a rear-guard action on the Senate floor to try to restore some of the money to its original purpose. One proposed amendment restored $100 million to the accounts by correcting the economic projections used in the bill to estimate future costs. That passed, but other amendments to prevent the use of O&M money to fund earmarks were soundly defeated.
Mr. Wheeler said senators had raided O&M accounts to pay for narrowly targeted projects in every budget since 2002, with dire results for troops on the front lines.
“Air Force and Navy combat pilots training to deploy are getting about half of the flying hours they got at the end of the Vietnam War,” he wrote in his analysis. “Army tank crews get less in tank training today than they did during the low-readiness Clinton years.”
Mr. Wheeler told The Times that the figures were drawn from the Pentagon’s budget justification.
Mr. Coburn said in May that the Navy had been forced to curtail at-sea training and flying because of a shortfall in 2009 O&M funds.
The White House Office of Management and Budget has called on lawmakers to reverse the cuts.
“These reductions would hurt force readiness and increase stress on military people and equipment,” the agency said.
The House approved its version of the bill in July. Ms. Peterson said that lawmakers still could restore the funding in the conference that reconciles the two versions of the bill.
The conference “presents a final opportunity for Congress to take their hands out of the cookie jar and put some dough where it’s really needed – protecting our fighting men and women,” she said.
This Congress is really the pits. They gave themselves a raise and raised their budgets to help with their partying and flitting around to desirable locales. They really put themselves out, seeing to it that the seniors didn’t get the cost of living adjustment. I don’t know where they get this cost of living figure. They must not go into grocery or drug stores. But why would they when they can pay someone else to do it for them?
When Obama appoints Kevin Jennings to be in charge of safe schools, what does that say about Obama? Remember when Obama had the charter schools stopped in D.C. so his daughters wouldn’t have to possibly brush up against the non-elites? What a dad! At least there is a group in Congress asking for the removal of Kevin Jennings. If you don’t know his history, look it up:
53 Republicans demand firing of ‘safe schools czar’ Kevin Jennings
By Michael O’Brien – 10/15/09 12:11 PM ET
Fifty-three House Republicans have written President Barack Obama asking him to remove “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings from that position.
The lawmakers accused Jennings of “pushing a pro-homosexual agenda” and said that Jennings’s past writings exhibit a record that makes him unfit for the position.
“We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your Administration,” the Republicans wrote. “It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity.”
Jennings has come under scrutiny from conservative personalities like talk show host Sean Hannity for his handling of an alleged incident involving underage sex, as well as Jennings’s own reported personal history with drugs and alcohol — charges the GOP members echoed.
The letter was primarily assembled by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), and was joined by 52 Republican colleagues, including two members of leadership: House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) and House Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).
Jennings, who founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teacher Network (GLISTeN), was appointed by Obama to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, a position Jennings assumed in July.
“Kevin Jennings cannot gain the approval of parents who want their children safe and their schools drug free,” the Republican congressmen said. “You should replace him with someone who has a record of educating children in a safe and moral environment.”
The Jennings controversy follows the Sept. 6 resignation of Green Jobs Czar Van Jones and the long-blocked nomination of Cass Sunstein as regulatory czar.
Find the entire letter, with signatories, below:
October 15, 2009
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President,
We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your Administration. It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity.
As the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Mr. Jennings has played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America’s schools—an agenda that runs counter to the values that many parents desire to instill in their children. As evidence of this, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling. Throughout his career, Mr. Jennings has made it his mission to establish special protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students to the exclusion of all other students. The totality of Mr. Jennings’ career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality. There is more to safe and drug free schools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years, almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.
Equally troubling is Mr. Jennings’ self-described history of ignoring the sexual abuse of a child. In his book, One Teacher in Ten, Mr. Jennings recounts a 15-year old student confiding in him that he had a sexual relationship with a much older man. Mr. Jennings’ only response was to ask if the underage boy used a condom. As a mandatory reporter, Mr. Jennings was required by law to report child abuse, including sex crimes. Mr. Jennings cannot serve as the “safe schools” czar when his record demonstrates a willingness to overlook the sexual abuse of a child.
As the “safe schools” czar, Mr. Jennings is also charged with ensuring our schools and students are drug free. It is clear that Mr. Jennings is unfit to serve in this capacity, as well. His own history of unrepentant drug and alcohol abuse indicates that he is of the opinion that getting drunk and high as a young person is acceptable. In his memoir, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son, Mr. Jennings describes his use of illegal drugs, without expressing regret or acknowledging the devastating effects illegal drug use can have on a person’s life.
Everyone that deals with the education of the most vulnerable must be a positive role model. Our children are not blessed with the wisdom to discern and reject. Children presume the adults who educate them are approved by the larger society and their parents. Kevin Jennings cannot gain the approval of parents who want their children safe and their schools drug free. You should replace him with someone who has a record of educating children in a safe and moral environment.
Given these very serious issues with Mr. Jennings’ record, we urge you to remove him immediately.
Sincerely,
KING
Alexander
Aderholt
Akin
Austria
Bachmann
Bachus
Bartlett
Barton
Boozman
Broun
Brown, H.
Carter
Chaffetz
Coffman
Cole
Conaway
Davis, Geoff
Fallin
Fleming
Foxx
Franks
Garrett
Gingrey
Gohmert
Hunter
Issa
Jordan
Lamborn
Latta
LuetkemeyerMarchant
McClintock
McHenry
McKeon
McMorris
Mica
Miller, J.
Myrick
Neugebauer
Olson, P.
Pence
Pitts
Posey
Rogers (AL)
Rooney
Ryan, Paul
Shuster
Smith, C
Smith, L.
Wamp
Westmoreland
Jones, Walter
When you see the czars Obama appoints, don’t it make you wonder?
This administration talks about the fact that the leader of Afghanistan was elected by fraudulent voting… HEY, WHAT’S NEW? Did ACORN fraudulently vote in Obama? Could be. With ACORN’s fraud and those voters who voted in Obama because of their desire to break the color bar, which was good intent, look what it brought us. Who’s sorry now? Anyone who thinks that Obama has ever stopped campaigning and planting questions in the audience, check today in New Orleans. Has he gone to any state that he didn’t win since the election? Does it make you wonder why he wants the leader that was removed in Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya, to be returned to power even though he tried to overturn their constitution to retain power? Their supreme court threw him out. Does Obama have a similar desire for power and would he go against OUR Constitution?
We know there is no transparency, as he promised. He has lied and denied since being in Office. He went on the Letterman show – could they be of the same stripe? Look at the czars he appointed. Is Code Pink keeping Obama from sending troops to Afghanistan? Wonder why Obama never stopped by Mississippi to see THEIR Katrina damage. Could it be he didn’t carry Mississippi in the election?
Isn’t it nice that the Boston Tea Party people were not afraid to act against the British forces that wished to deny us freedom? We cannot allow Obama’s union goons and ACORN from depriving us also. I had three brothers and many nephews, cousins, and uncles who fought for our country during World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars. These were all foreign wars. I am 77 years young and will gladly go into service to fight the union goons, ACORN, and people Obama has assigned to take our freedoms away in our country. This cannot be allowed, even if THEY wished.
This is all about the “gimme generation”.
As a Christian, I believe that it is every Christian’s duty to live complete lives as given to them by God. They have no right to end it for economics. Our country has only ONE chance – a new two party system calling for term limits.
Remember the Soviet Union insisting that its citizens rat out their relatives and friends? Where is the Soviet Union today? Cuba forced citizens to rat on parents, friends, and relatives… where is their economy now? Is Obama’s rant against rumor and false information a similar program, set up to destroy dissent and crush our our rights to privacy and freedom of speech?
I sure hope the DNC comes out with more of their great commercials to divide the American people. It shows their true character, absence of principal, lack of integrity, and their hate for the First Amendment and their fellow countrymen. They call their fellow Americans Nazis for using their free speech rights. This is the best hope for the Republican party to regain the majority in Congress. KEEP ON TALKING!
Hitler also decided who lived and who died. The Jews went first, then the mentally ill, criminals, people who espoused free speech and any enemy of the state. Obama’s health plan decides who lives and who dies – the Obama five year program.
Monday, August 10, 2009
EDITORIAL: Look for the union label
Politics is getting increasingly violent as Democrats desperately try to salvage their health care bill. Rep. Brian Baird, Washington Democrat, said last week that public protest against the government health care plan “is close to Brown Shirt tactics.” For Mr. Baird to characterize his constituents as Nazi storm troops is distasteful, to say the least. Yet it is fully in line with the tone set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who misleadingly decried protesters “carrying swastikas.” Closer examination revealed that in every case, the symbol was being used as a warning against the arrogance of power of which Mrs. Pelosi has become emblematic.
Democratic talking points characterize the spontaneous grass-roots opposition to the planned government takeover of the health care system as being organized by a shadowy cabal of lobbyists and insurance companies. However, the real storm troops are being deployed openly by organized labor in an attempt to squelch dissent. On Aug. 6, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney sent marching orders to his members to confront concerned citizens at town-hall forums. In St. Louis, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reportedly attacked and beat Kenneth Gladney, who was passing out yellow flags outside a forum held by Rep. Russ Carnahan, Missouri Democrat. SEIU President Andy Stern has summed up his philosophy as, “We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power.”
We expect to see his grim-faced “purple shirts” using intimidation at other events during the congressional recess. This effort is fully consistent with the general contempt that the Democratic majority has shown for those who oppose its radical agenda. The promised era of bipartisanship is long gone. The government’s new slogan is “sit down and shut up.” In an appearance in McLean last week, President Obama advised opponents of his plan to “get out of the way” and said he didn’t want them “to do a lot of talking.” The Obama White House made history when it set up an e-mail snitch line for people to report on the “fishy” ideas of their fellow citizens. The Democrats would do better to try to understand the root causes of this unprecedented spontaneous outpouring of public concern and frustration than to resort to intimidation tactics.
There are many serious questions about the growth of government and the planned takeover of health care that need to be answered, not beaten down. Deploying thugs will only lead to violence, which serves no one’s interest. If the people are shouting, it is because the politicians have stopped listening.
Another article:
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Angry rich liberals
Victor Davis Hanson
Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists. Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former Vice President Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions — or face planetary destruction. Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Mr. Gore hops on a private jet – and purchases “carbon offsets” penances for the privilege. His mansion not long ago consumed more energy in a month than the average American home does in a year. Mr. Friedman lives on a sprawling estate reminiscent of those of the grandees of the 18th-century English countryside.
The rest of us would find these environmental scolds more convincing if they chose to live modestly in average tract homes. That way, they could limit their energy consumption and provide living proof to us of how smaller is better for an endangered planet Earth. Critics in the business of racial grievance offer the same contradictions. Recently, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. got into a spat with a white policeman who arrested him in his own home for disorderly conduct. Mr. Gates immediately cried racism. He argued that his plight was emblematic of the burdens the black underclass endures daily from a racist white America. However, Mr. Gates is one of the highest-paid humanities professors in the United States. And Mr. Gates – not the middle-class Cambridge, Mass., white cop — engaged in shouting and brought up race.
Within hours, the black mayor of Cambridge, the black governor of Massachusetts and the black president of the United States all rallied to their chum’s side. Yet this well-connected, well-paid man apparently wants us to believe in melodramatic fashion that he is living in something like the United States of decades ago. Indeed, citing racial grievance at times proves a valuable asset for wealthy celebrities. Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson posed as victims of various racial oppressions when they found themselves in their own self-created legal problems. Race-baiter the Rev. Jeremiah Wright simply retreats to his three-story mansion on a golf course after his day job of denouncing whites as exploiters.
We have more of the rich on the barricades railing about the economic inequality of America. Former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina preached about “two Americas,” one poor and abandoned, one wealthy and connected. Mr. Edwards should know because he built himself a gargantuan multimillion-dollar mansion in which he might better contemplate the underprivileged outside his compound. Sen. Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, sermonizes about corporate greed and credit card companies’ near-extortion. Nonetheless, Mr. Dodd managed to squeeze out of the corporate world a low-interest loan, a sweetheart deal for a vacation home in Ireland, and thousands in campaign donations.
Former senator and Cabinet nominee Tom Daschle of South Dakota was a big proponent of raising taxes to nationalize our health care system. The problem was that the populist Mr. Daschle both hated paying taxes and loved limousines — and so avoided the former but welcomed the latter. In the old days, critics of what we called the “system” were at least for the most part blue-collar workers, underpaid teachers or grass-roots politicians whose rather modest lives matched their angry populist rhetoric. Now the most vehement critics of America’s purported sins are among the upper classes. These critics’ parlor game has confused Americans about why they are being called polluters, racists and exploiters by those who have fared best in America.
Do the wealthy and the powerful lecture us about our wrongs because they know their own insider status ensures that they are exempt from the harsh medicine they advocate for others? Mr. Gore, a millionaire, is not much affected by higher taxes for his cap-and-trade crusade. Or does the hypocrisy grow out of a sort of class snobbery? Do elites hector the crass middle class because its members lack their own taste, rare insight and privileged style? Judging from the police report, Mr. Gates seemed flabbergasted that the white Cambridge cop did not know who he was “messing” with. Or is the new hypocrisy an eerie sort of psychological compensation at work?
Perhaps the more Mr. Gore rails about carbon emissions, the more he can without guilt enjoy what emits them. The more Mr. Gates can cite racism, the more he himself is paid to spot it. And the more Tom Daschle wants to tax and spend for health care, the less bad he feels about his own chauffeur and tax avoidance. Here’s a little advice for all of America’s wealthy critics: a little less hypocrisy, a little more appreciation of your good lives — and then maybe the rest of us will listen to you a little more.
And another…
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
PRUDEN: Recycling the contempt
OPINION/ANALYSIS: Recycling is so popular that even our congressmen, unaccustomed as they are to practicing what they preach, do it. They’re reaching back into the dark past to recycle contempt. Never waste a crisis, even if you have to manufacture the crisis. Democrats from the cosseted life in the House and Senate, accustomed to getting the deference at home so often denied in Washington, are suddenly having to deal with inconvenient old folks at home. President Obama insists that the War on Terror is over, ended by his ultimate weapon, the Apology Bomb. But to listen to delicate congressmen whose feelings are hurt, al Qaeda has merely moved terror operations to their congressional districts.
Angry lynch mobs (to hear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her sidekick Steny Hoyer tell it) of elderly gents on walking sticks and little blue-haired ladies in their 80s have descended on congressmen at town meetings across the country – in California, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, Georgia and other places. They’re taking out their anger and frustration at the Obama health care “reform” in the robust American way, but Mrs. Pelosi professes to see “reform” adrift on a turbulent sea of Nazi swastikas. Rep. Brian Baird of Washington sees a blur of Brown Shirts. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas calls the dissenters “un-American.” She later remembered where she was and said she didn’t mean to call them that. Her contempt for Arkansas folks just popped out. In Georgia, Rep. David Scott tried to calm a town meeting with a plea to “calm down and take a deep breath,” then took a deep breath and scolded everyone with a hysterical screed about the “hijacking” of his meeting.
Rep. Steve Cohen treated his Memphis constituents with similar contempt: “Take two aspirin and come back in the morning.” Rep. Russ Carnahan told livid St. Louis constituents, naive yokels in his view, that they had been “mobilized [by] special interests in Washington.” The frightened Democratic reaction to robust debate – “the conversation” that “progressives” are so eager to have with those who disagree with them – recycles the insults and epithets last heard in confrontations over civil rights and the war in Vietnam. The protests are “organized,” the work of “outside agitators.” Martin Luther King, by Democratic reckoning, was an outside agitator. The marches against the Vietnam war were marvels of organization, true, but … umm, well … that was different. Mr. Obama should recognize outside agitation when he sees it, given his career in outside agitation in Chicago. He was taught by Saul Alinsky, “the father of American radicalism,” that the left-wing strategy for achieving an unpopular goal is to “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” We’re almost there.
The Democrats are trying to impose rationed government health care (the target) quickly, before the public wakes up from entertaining distractions (the freeze), making villains of all who oppose (personalizing it) and creating a chaotic controversy (polarizing it) that can be effectively exploited. Mr. Obama once taught Saul Alinsky workshops in Chicago, so he was ready when he thought he heard opportunity knocking. But the president and his congressional accomplices forgot that timing is everything. The public-opinion polls show that bare majorities think there’s a health care crisis, but bigger majorities are satisfied with their own coverage.
The majority can smell government medicine and the confiscatory taxes on the way. The president further miscalculated when he agreed to the insertion of a scheme, hidden in the thousand pages of the House legislation, to “offer” counseling to the aged about how they want to die. Nothing there about the “how” and “when.” That comes later. When he confronts mortality, a man is suspicious of boodlers with smooth tongues. Roger Fakes, 70, a retired businessman, showed up at the Memphis “town hall” in neither Brown Shirt nor swastika (he’s actually a Presbyterian elder). His congressman’s insistence that Obamacare would not disturb his private insurance moved him to his feet with polite but pointed questions and observations: “There are some of us old gray-haired folks who don’t want the government involved in any of our business.” And not just the gray-haired folks. Congressmen are learning the hard way they sometimes have to listen, like it or not.
More great reading:
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Palin got it right
Rep. Don Young
On July 24, Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts took to The Washington Post to attack former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax legislation and her overall energy philosophy.
Mrs. Palin correctly criticized the scheme presented in the legislation sponsored by Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. By only citing a report from the left-of-liberal Center for American Progress, Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Boxer naively underestimate the effects the legislation will have on the American economy. Other, more mainstream organizations, such as the Brookings Institution and the Black Chamber of Commerce, disagree.
Waxman-Markey artificially creates competition between cheap, abundant energy and unreliable, expensive renewable forms, compelling utilities to use heavily subsidized, politically correct “renewable energy” while thousands who work producing traditional energy lose their jobs.
All the while, American industry will flee to other countries where they can power their assembly lines with cheaper energy. Because nearly four decades of obscene subsidies for wind and solar power haven’t worked, Waxman-Markey ups the ante and engages in societal re-engineering and fundamental restructuring of America’s energy supply.
According to the Energy Information Administration, wind and solar receive 55 times more in subsidies than coal and 100 times more than oil and natural gas. Yet today, wind and solar barely make up 1.5 percent of America’s electricity supply and 0.5 percent of the total U.S. energy supply, while 85 percent of the U.S. energy supply originates from fossil fuels. These figures make clear to what extent the Waxman-Markey bill must give a leg up to wind and solar to force their success. The simple fact is that these so-called industries would not survive without mandates and subsidies.
Mrs. Boxer and Mr. Kerry seem ignorant of the fact that wind and solar fail to power America’s trucks, planes, trains and ships. In reality, wind and solar will not displace the energy necessary for moving people and products around the country.
Nevertheless, while mocking Mrs. Palin’s good sense, they choose to advocate legislation and policies that will drive U.S. dependence on foreign oil through the roof. The senators seem oblivious to the fact that nearly one-fourth of every barrel of oil goes to producing the asphalt on which their electric cars drive, the lubricants that enable the blades on their windmills to spin and the plastics that are used in the medical supplies, fabrics and raw materials Americans cannot live without.
In 1995, Congress passed legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas development. In fact, legislation to open ANWR has passed the House 10 times and the Senate once. Unfortunately, President Clinton vetoed that attempt, and today, Americans fail to enjoy the hundreds of millions of barrels a year that would be flowing had the bill become law.
Now, for the first time since 1982, we have the ability to develop our offshore resources. In 2008, President George W. Bush let the Executive Moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf Development expire, and Congress did not renew the legislative moratorium. However, the Obama administration and the radical environmentalists have other plans, and a de facto moratorium remains.
American energy marvels such as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) are the real drivers of the American economy. TAPS didn’t require a government mandate; it required the federal government to get out of the way. This pipeline would never be built today. TAPS was successful only because of the oil embargo and, more significantly, because the legislation curtailed the ability of environmentalists to file lawsuits to block the project — an effort in which, unfortunately, they have become well versed. This summer, as TAPS prepares to send its 16 billionth barrel to the consumer, I am reminded that Sarah Palin is correct and Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Boxer are again on the wrong side of energy issues.
Healthy markets succeed when the federal government steps back, not when it picks winners and losers. If history has demonstrated anything, it’s that economies cannot be centrally planned by legislative bodies or bureaucrats — even though some in the majority party seemingly disagree. The market, coupled with the ingenuity and enduring spirit of hardworking Americans, always wins.
Cheap energy means a strong economy. This is something we’ve learned firsthand in Alaska. In our villages, where gasoline or heating oil can top $7 a gallon, jobs are hard to come by.
The senators write that climate legislation will “ensure that the United States — not China or India — will be the leading economic power in this century.” But the truth is, they already are.
The United States was the dynamic economic power in the 20th century without cap-and-trade. I know Mrs. Palin and I are both committed to ensuring that America’s economic dominance continues into the 21st century rather than embarking blindly down the road to serfdom offered in Waxman-Markey and by the aforementioned senators from Massachusetts and California.
My previous article made an inference that Obama was like a Punch and Judy character when you watched him speak with the tv sound muted. This brings to mind the fact that Punch and Judy require someone behind the curtain doing the thinking and talking. We don’t know who writes the words on his teleprompter. Could it be David Axelrod – surely not Biden with his history of plagiarism. In any event, he seems to be unable to speak without the use of his teleprompter. You never see the teleprompters in the pictures supplied by the media. Reminds me of how they never showed FDR in a wheelchair or on crutches. I guess Obama’s use of teleprompters is the same as crutches. What I would dearly love to see is some sort of glitch that shuts down his teleprompter in the middle of a speech. It would be like a Punch and Judy show in progress would be if its handler all at once shut up. Who is really behind the curtain?
Obama’s lyrical promises don’t ring true.
The stock market this week had a slight correction and many liberals were in newspapers, radio, and tv touting how Obama was turning around the economy. How droll. I hope this week is a trend and the stock market and people’s 401k continue to improve, however… I have doubts. During the election and during the first two months Obama played down the economy and now he is saying how everything is going to be fine. But who can count on anything he says? His promises were not made to keep.
Obama racks up list of broken promises Just 2 months into term, president abandons numerous commitments
After only two months in office, President Obama may have fallen short on a number of his campaign promises.
As a candidate, he promised to allow public comment before signing bills, eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, provide tax credits to businesses for hiring new employees, allow Americans to withdraw funds from 401(k) and retirement accounts without penalties, ban lobbyists from serving in his , reform earmarks, bring all combat troops home from Iraq in 16 months, sign the “Freedom of Choice Act,” give Americans $4,000 in credits for college and run a “transparent” administration.
However, after giving his word to the American people on so many issues, Obama has yet to fulfill many commitments.
WND has compiled the following extensive list of those abandoned promises:
Broken promise No. 1: ‘Sunlight Before Signing’
When Obama campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in Manchester, N.H., on June 22, 2007, he announced his “Sunlight Before Signing” promise.
“When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as the president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it,” he said.
He repeated that promise on :
“Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White website for five days.”
However, Obama signed his first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, on Jan. 20 – only two days after its passage.
He signed a second bill expanding the State Children’s Insurance Program just three hours after Congress passed it.
Again, on Feb. 17, Obama signed his 1,000-page $787 billion stimulus aimed at jolting the declining U.S. economy. He did so only one day after it passed through Congress – without allowing for five days of public comment.
Broken promise No. 2: Capital gains tax elimination
According to his , Obama promised to “eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses.”
Just weeks prior to the election, Obama advisers Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman told the Wall Street Journal that Obama planned tax cuts that included “the elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups.”
People who invest in small businesses have only been allowed to exclude 50 percent of that gain from capital gains taxes. While Obama’s $787 billion economic-stimulus package reduces that tax liability – raising the exclusion to 75 percent – it does not eliminate it.
Broken promise No. 3: New American jobs tax credit
During his transition, Obama’s promised to provide a $3,000 refundable tax credit to existing businesses for every additional full-time U.S. employee hired in 2009 and 2010.
“If a company that currently has 10 U.S. employees increases its domestic full time employment to 20 employees, this company would get a $30,000 tax credit – enough to offset the entire added payroll tax costs to the company for the first $50,000 of income for the new employees,” the . “The tax credit will benefit all companies creating net new jobs, even those struggling to make a profit.”
Obama’s promise was never included in the stimulus package.
Broken promise No. 4: Hiatus on 401(k) penalties
Many unemployed and financially strapped Americans have considered early withdrawals on 401(k) and retirement accounts to survive the current recession. However, the IRS imposes strict penalties of up to 10 percent plus federal, state and local income taxes on such advances.
Workers who have taken $10,000 in early withdrawals from retirement plans have lost as much as 40 percent to taxes and penalties, depending upon tax brackets.
In October 2008, Obama released his “Rescue Plan for the Middle-Class” in which he promised to allow financially distressed Americans to withdraw up to $10,000 from their 401(k) accounts and retirement savings without having to pay penalties. They would only pay income taxes on the amount.
“Since so many Americans will be struggling to pay the bills over the next year, I propose that we allow every family to withdraw up to 15% from their IRA or 401(k) – up to a maximum of $10,000 – without any fine or penalty throughout 2009,” . “This will help families get through this crisis without being forced to make painful choices like selling their homes or not sending their kids to college.”
However, Obama’s promise was never included in his recent stimulus package.
Broken promise No. 5: ‘No jobs for lobbyists’
William J. Lynn III
Obama promised America he would loosen the grip of lobbyists on Washington.
In his Nov. 10, 2007, speech in Des Moines, Iowa, Obama declared:
I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.
During his campaign, Obama also said, “I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race. I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House.”
However, Obama’s campaign fundraising team included 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million in 2007 to lobby the federal government.
William Corr
“Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million” for Obama’s campaign, the report states. “Employees of their firms have given Obama’s campaign $2.26 million.”
It wasn’t long before he allowed and broke his promise.
Obama’s own ethic rules barred officials of his administration from lobbying their former colleagues “for as long as I am president.” He also said former lobbyists would be prohibited from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past two years. President Obama later waived his rules for at least two of his nominees – William J. Lynn III, undersecretary at the Department of Defense and recent lobbyist for Raytheon, and William Corr, deputy secretary for the and Human Services and anti-tobacco lobbyist for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Broken promise No. 6: Earmark reform
As WND reports, at the ., Obama declared, “[W]e need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”
However, in February, Obama passed his $787 billion stimulus aimed at jolting the declining U.S. economy. Before a joint session of Congress, Obama declared: “Now, I’m proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks.”
Some chuckled in amusement when he claimed the bill contained no pork.
“There was just a roar of laughter – because there were earmarks,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told CNN.
found at least eight earmarks in his stimulus bill.
Obama also signed a $410 billion omnibus bill for 2009. More than total an estimated $7.7 billion.
Even though the Democrat-controlled Congress crafted the bill after Obama’s election, the administration claims the added pork is just “unfinished business” from last year.
The states, “Obama and Biden will slash earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public.” However, watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense reports that the omnibus pork alone already totals $7.7 billion – just less than the total of $7.8 billion in earmarks in 1994 – and the figure does not include $6.6 billion in earmarks contained in three previous spending bills Congress passed amid the bailout crisis last year.
During his three years in the Senate, , according to the group. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has 16 earmarks – worth approximately $8.5 million – in the bill.
Broken promise No. 7: Bring troops home in 16 months
On his campaign website, Obama promised he would “remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”
His commitment to bring combat troops home by May 20, 2010, and end the war gave him an edge among Democrats over candidate Hillary Clinton.
However, on Feb. 27, Obama declared, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”
If Obama adheres to his plan, combat troops will return home months later than originally promised. , Obama will withdraw only two of the 14 brigades before December.
As part of a “new era of American leadership,” he also said he would leave behind a residual force of 35,000 to 50,000 troops and remove all U.S. soldiers from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011 – the same deadline the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqi government last year in its Status of Forces Agreement.
Additionally, some combat units would remain in Iraq beyond Obama’s declared August 2010 withdrawal. Rather than returning home, they would simply face reassignment as “advisory training brigades.”
Even as combat troops are brought home, Pentagon officials have said fresh units will continue deploying to Iraq.
Broken promise No. 8: Sign ‘Freedom of Choice Act’
On July 17, 2007, Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, “The first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.”
Obama expressed his support for the sweeping plan that would repeal all national and state of abortion passed over the last 35 years.
His is posted on the White House website. It states, Obama “has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Administration.”
Obama chose radical pro-abortion Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to serve as the Health secretary, moved to void job protections for health workers who oppose abortion and repealed a ban on U.S. taxpayer funding of foreign abortions. While many pro-life advocates consider it a blessing that Obama has no fulfilled his promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, he has made no mention of the legislation since he took office.
Broken promise No. 9: $4,000 college credit
Obama pledged to make college “affordable for all Americans” when he announced his American Opportunity Tax Credit.
His read: “This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or
and make college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.”
While the American Opportunity Tax Credit was included in the recent stimulus bill, it offers a credit of only $2,500 for up to two years and requires no commitment to community service.
Broken promise No. 10: Transparency
, the Obama administration claims it will be “the most open and transparent in history.
The administration released a memo on Jan. 21, stating:
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. …
However, Congress and the administration hurried the $787 billion, 1,027-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to a vote after allowing lawmakers just a few hours to read the bill. It was also available online in a form that could not be keyword searched.
While former administrations immediately posted transcripts of presidential speeches – including some remarks before delivery – the White House website often waits until days or even weeks after an event to release transcripts.
Also, some say recent reports of tax evasion by Obama nominees is evidence that the administration is not as transparent as promised.
Timothy Geithner
Just before Obama named Timothy Geithner to be his treasury secretary, the president of the New Federal Reserve Bank quietly paid $26,000 in back taxes and interest due since 2001 and 2002.
Obama characterized the eight-year tax evasion as “an innocent mistake.”
But as many as five of his picks defaulted on taxes, including former nominee for health and human services secretary, Tom Daschle; former nominee for chief performance officer, Nancy Killefer; U.S. trade representative nominee Ron Kirk and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
Furthermore, while the president posted his own weekly “fireside chats” on YouTube during the campaign, many journalists report that he has a history of being less than welcoming to the Fourth Estate.
noted Obama’s treatment of the press: “During the campaign, reporters’ access to Obama was severely limited. On-the-record conversations with the candidate were even more so. Indeed, Obama’s overall treatment of the press – not just in his general rejection of the day-to-day news cycle, but also in his tendency to shun his national traveling press corps … created the impression that its members were, to him, a buzzing nuisance. Instead of the voice of the people.”
WND’s correspondent at the White House, Les Kinsolving, that most of the reporters recognized for questions in the briefing room were among the same handful over and over again. Some of them had been given four or even five opportunities for questions while other reporters were not recognized at all.
Kinsolving, a senior journalist in the White House press corps, was not allowed to voice his questions on issues on which millions of WND readers have expressed an interest. There were also complaints about the time of the November election that not only did Obama rely on a few key reporters for questions, those reporters were chosen ahead of time.
And, finally, The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
Obama’s alleged Certification of Live Birth is not his original 1961 birth certificate
However, Obama has refused repeated calls to publicly release his Hawaiian birth certificate, which would include the actual hospital that performed the delivery. His campaign posted an alleged “Certification of Live Birth” online, but it is not the same as a Hawaii birth certificate. COLBs have been issued by Hawaii to parents whose children are not born in the state.
Instead of providing the documentation to end the lawsuits, a series of law firms have been hired on Obama’s behalf around the nation to prevent any public access to his birth certificate, passport records, college records and other documents. – even after demanding that he live up to his promise of transparency by releasing the certificate to the public.
Nonetheless, during his campaign and after he took office, Obama maintained that his administration would have an unyielding commitment to transparency.
“The American people want to trust in our government again – we just need a government that will trust in us,” he said in a campaign speech. “And making government accountable to the people isn’t just a cause of this campaign – it’s been a cause of my life for two decades.”
The White House declined to respond to WND’s request for comment on Obama’s promises.
Obama does have his cheerleaders and proponents of anything he does or says. They are the “Promote Obama” PR firm of Chris Matthews, Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, Jay Leno, Keith Olbermann, and David Letterman – assisted by ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, NPR, CNN, and PBS. Detractors have the whole firm giving them hell and taking them to task similar to anyone, even scientists saying global warming caused by humans doesn’t exist. They are soundly and quickly trounced. Even Bush and McCain were taken in with this propaganda war.
As far as I am concerned, the greatest threats to this country are Al Gore, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. I dread their actions against this country more than I do al-Qaeda. The carbon tax pushed by Al Gore and being one of Obama’s aims will lead to more outsourcing than this country has ever known. There will no longer be any steel production in this country, electricity will be limited, at times, as in Iraq. The cost of gas for average Americans that have to commute will destroy them, and the country will be more of a class divided country and poorer than it ever was in its history – by poor I mean in spirit, outlook, and drive towards the future. I really don’t want this to happen to my country.
Isn’t it nice that Obama’s children will not have to go to school with those poor children? Obama saw to that.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, although they deny this, are the Hatfields and McCoys of Congress.
Knowing who would follow Obama in the Presidency if he were to be unable to perform that duty scares the hell out of me!
Summers and Volcker have sold their principals and character to ride the Obama express to financial ruin for the country, but at least they paid their taxes.
Obama may hate Churchill but FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and JFK thought he was a man of heroic stature.
Make Wednesday, party day for Obama, become your “Check on your 401K day“!
Workers who have taken $10,000 in early withdrawals from retirement plans have lost as much as 40 percent to taxes and penalties, depending upon tax brackets.
Some chuckled in amusement when he claimed the bill contained no pork.
