Political Truth and Fact

Monday's Web

The day’s top political news:

All Eyes Focus On Sotomayor

Senate Hearings Begin Today.

Democrats have enough votes to confirm Sotomayor – or any other nominee for the Supreme Court Obama may propose. Period.

The hearings and “approval” process will be nothing but political theater.  Liberals dominate the Senate and can run wild through the process while Republicans have to sit to the side and endure the show.

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_5/news/36710-1.html

The energy bill's ticking time bomb

The Holy Grail for climate change advocates is creation of a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon dioxide and other harmful gas emissions.

But to secure that coveted prize, proponents must answer two questions: Will consumers suffer from the costs, and is the system doable? In the end, these claims are as phony as Al Gore’s sullied efforts to sell Global Warming is man-made. 

Make no mistake, this bill is nothing other than a Democrat scam through which to hide the fact they are selling the biggest tax raise in history.  Who will pay?  Look in the mirror and at your family.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24845.html#ixzz0L8WWPLQh&D

CIA Had Secret Plan To destroy Al Qaeda

Initiative at the heart of this spat with Congress actually examined ways to seize or kill Radical Islamic terror chiefs

The debate should focus entirely on whether or not, if employed, it would it have made Americans safer by dooming Islamic terrorist efforts that threaten the nation and its people.

We can expect Democrats to work overtime to give Speaker Pelosi cover for her claims the CIA lies to Congress.  Democrats deal with our enemies with a consistent strategy of cut, run, and surrender to our enemies.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124736381913627661.html

Opinion:
Let there be no iota of doubt: in today’s politics, it’s a matter of partisan efforts. 

Stopping the liberal rampage can only be achieved by replacing enough Democrats with Republicans to provide normal America a safety net.

There are voices abroad in the land these days that call for a bi-partisan approach to solving the nation’s problems.  There are volumes of comments decrying the actions of the Republican Party.  These are positions of people with no grasp of real politics and what is crucially needed to preserve this nation’s values and even its freedom.

The Republican Party in recent years has been less than steadfast on many issues – particularly on its once stern position on government spending.  Radical Islam openly declared war on civilization with their attacks on 9/11.

Actually, Radical Islam had been attacking the US and its allied nations for several years prior to 9/11 – but those attacks went mostly unnoticed because Bill Clinton, Democrats, and the mainstream media that has chosen to make itself an arm of liberal politics, chose to ignore the attacks – as if they thought a refusal to react would somehow defuse the bomb waiting to explode.

Party differences are crucial to defining how this war is being fought.  Both Bushes responded to Islamic aggression with military action.  The elder Bush turned back Saddam’s annexation of Kuwait with a devastating response that should have ended the threat long anchored in Iraq.  Saddam was a major sponsor of world wide terror and continued or expanded that support even after his defeat in the first Gulf war.

Liberal Democrats despise the military, and all who serve.  They eschew military responses to terror and view those confrontations as legal matters, demanding responses conforming to the rules of law and even giving enemy prisoners the same rights as US citizens can expect when charged with a crime.

Radical Islamic terror and those actions that give terror aid and comfort are NOT matters for legal response – they are war, plain and simple.  Those who don’t understand that reality threaten the lives of innocent people.  To accord terrorist POWs rights to attorneys, and access to our legal system is beyond outrageous – it’s a matter of absolute stupidity.  It is a response to terror that is irresponsible and indefensible.

Responsible response to terror, and response that is irresponsible is one issue on which party lines are clearly drawn.  Republicans follow a course of action that meets force with force and seeks as its primary goal a result that destroys our enemy’s ability to wage war.

Democrats disagree.  They demand safeguards for terrorists that should be reserved for citizens of this country.

Other issues are likewise divisible by party line positions:

“Cap and Trade” is headed for the Senate.  Democrats claim the bill deals with energy.  Republicans point out the bill is a ruse through which Democrats will impose the largest tax increase in history – and impose that tax on every American family in direct violation of Obama’s pledge that those making less than $250,000 will not see a dime in increased taxes.

Healthcare is another pending issue in which party lines are clearly drawn.  Liberal Democrats want government involvement in running our healthcare system.  Republicans disagree.  In truth, no matter Democrat claims, government involvement as they propose will result in government domination of our healthcare system – socialized medicine.
To simplify the debate, it’s a choice between quality care, or Obama’s “healthcare on the cheap”.  That’s the bottom line, and it’s a party line matter.

Illegal immigration is an issue in which actions by some Republicans have meshed with those of liberal Democrats.  The amnesty bill a couple of years ago, was a bi-partisan scheme backed by John McCain and none other than Teddy Kennedy.  Fortunately for this nation, that amnesty bill was shouted down by a grass root uprising.

But the illegal immigration issue is about to surface again.  Expect a party line confrontation.  A Republican House passed an effective response to the invasion by illegal aliens (the Sensenbrenner Bill) but (who else?) Teddy Kennedy blocked Senate consideration of the House bill.

In fact, not a single Democrat has voiced opposition to illegal immigration.  Quite the opposite.  Democrats even encourage illegal immigration, fully anticipating their efforts through organizations such as Obama’s own ACORN, will get these illegal immigrants registered as voters (whether they qualify or not) and make them another Democrat voting bloc.  ACORN, of course, is being prosecuted in more than a dozen states on charges of illegal and fraudulent voter registration efforts.

In today’s Washington, liberal Democrats dominate and dominate to a degree sufficient to render Republican opposition no more than an irritant.

America and its people cannot long endure such domination.  Opposition must arise – effective opposition.  This means urging every American who cares, to take actions that support Republicans in office, and do all that is possible to remove Democrats.  At this moment in history, the number of “R”s versus the number of “D”s.  Unless we can trim Democrat numbers in the House and in the Senate, the liberal juggernaut of extremism will continue to roll.  It will roll over each and every one of us.

Everyone has an obligation to act.  No one can claim they were not warned.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124743988386729701.html

Mandating Unemployment
Congress prepares to kill more jobs.

Here's some economic logic to ponder. The unemployment rate in June for American teenagers was 24%, for black teens it was 38%, and even White House economists are predicting more job losses. So how about raising the cost of that teenage labor?

Sorry to say, but that's precisely what will happen on July 24, when the minimum wage will increase to $7.25 an hour from $6.55. The national wage floor will have increased 41% since the three-step hike was approved by the Democratic Congress in May 2007. Then the economy was humming, with an overall jobless rate of 4.5% and many entry-level jobs paying more than the minimum. That's a hard case to make now, with a 9.5% national jobless rate and thousands of employers facing razor-thin profit margins.

(NOTE: Increases in the minimum wage have a predictable result: higher costs for everything.  When business is forced to pay its low-level employees a higher rate, they will either end those job openings, or they will pass the higher costs they suffer, to their customers.  Democrat raising minimum wages, has even destroyed entire fields of employment and cost millions their jobs.)

There's been a long and spirited debate among economists about who gets hurt and who benefits when the minimum wage rises. But in a 2006 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, economists David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Bank reviewed the voluminous literature over the past 30 years and came to two almost universally acknowledged conclusions.

First, "a sizable majority of the studies give a relatively consistent (though not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects."

Second, "studies that focus on the least-skilled groups [i.e., teens, and welfare moms] provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects."

Proponents argue that millions of workers will benefit from the bigger paychecks. But about two of every three full-time minimum-wage workers get a pay raise anyway within a year on the job.

Meanwhile, those who lose their jobs or who never get a job in the first place get a minimum wage of $0.

Mr. Neumark calculates that the 70-cent per-hour minimum wage hike this month would kill "about 300,000 jobs for those between the ages of 16-24." Single working mothers would also be among those most hurt.

Keep in mind the Earned Income Tax Credit already exists to help low-wage workers and has been greatly expanded in recent years. The EITC also spreads the cost of the wage supplement to all Americans, not merely to employers, so it doesn't raise the cost of hiring low-wage workers.

For example, consider a single mom with two kids who earns the current $6.55 minimum at a full-time, year-round job. In 2009 she receives a $5,028 EITC cash payment from Uncle Sam -- or about an extra $2.50 per hour worked. Other federal income supplements, such as the refundable child tax credit, add another $1,900 or so. Thus at a wage of $6.55 an hour, her actual pay becomes $10.02 an hour -- more than a 50% increase from the current minimum. (See nearby table.)

But that single mom can't collect those checks if she doesn't have a job, and the tragedy of a higher minimum wage is that it will prevent thousands of working moms striving to pull their families out of poverty from being hired in the first place.

If Congress were wise and compassionate, it would at least suspend the wage hike for one or two years until the job market recovers. We know this Congress won't do that, but someone has to speak up for the poorest, least skilled Americans.

2.

House Committee Considers TARP Reinvestment
DIANA GOLOBAY

The House Finance Services Committee today heard testimony on HR 3068, the TARP for Main Street Act of 2009.

The bill, by the committee’s chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., reinvests $6.5bn of Troubled Asset Relief Funds to housing and homeownership efforts.

It allocates $1bn to build affordable housing, $1.5bn for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to distribute to state and local government for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes, $2bn in “emergency mortgage relief,” and $2bn to HUD to stabilize multi-family properties that are in default or foreclosure or have recently been foreclosed, to help tenants stay in multi-family dwellings.

The funds would come from funds generated by TARP investments. The US Treasury Department disbursed $399bn of the total $700bn TARP funds as of June 30, according to prepared remarks by Gary Engel, director of financial management and assurance at the US Government Accountability Office. Engel noted the Treasury has received approximately $6.7bn in dividend payments on preferred stock acquired through the Capital Purchase Program. It also received back $70.1bn from 32 institutions that repurchased stock.

Proponents of HR 3068 see these funds as an opportunity to invest in housing across the US.
William Apgar, senior advisor for mortgage finance to HUD secretary Shaun Donovan, voiced his support for the bill in prepared remarks. In particular, HUD supports the funds the bill puts in the hands of state and local governments to rehabilitate foreclosed properties through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

“Communities in every corner of the US are suffering from the impact of high rates of foreclosure and abandoned property,” Apgar said. “Many homeowners are facing foreclosure because they can no longer afford the payments on their homes either because their monthly payments have increased dramatically or they have lost employment.”

But the bill is drawing criticism from across the aisle.

Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., in a statement on the bill, criticizes the $1.5bn that would go toward the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which he says could be accessed by the community group ACORN. Bachus, ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, said the group is “notorious” for its efforts to commit voter fraud and more funds available to the group would undermine the administration’s efforts for ransparency and flexibility o the Treasury Department to strengthen the financial system.

(NOTE: ACORN is an active conspiracy against normal America.  It is facing prosecution in over a dozen states, and is notorious for its involvement in schemes and scams designed to encourage or implement plots for election fraud and theft.   The shady financial dealings of ACORN raise serious doubts about organizational integrity.  However, it’s not just “ACORN” – it’s “Obama’s own ACORN”.  Thus it enjoys protection at the highest levels – therefore at lower levels, it must be opposed and opposed vigorously.)

“One of the best things we can do to stabilize the credit markets and promote long-term economic growth is to restore fiscal discipline and stop the reckless government spending,” he said. “As institutions begin to pay back their TARP assistance, we need to end the bailouts and return that money to the taxpayers thereby reducing the deficit.”

3.

Cass Sunstein's despicable ideas on regulating the internet
Ed Lasky

In the past, we have seen Barack Obama and his supporters attempt to chill any sort of scrutiny or criticism of him. Many of his records - whether they are transcripts from Occidental or Columbia - have not been released. He lost his senior thesis (on Soviet nuclear disarmament)  from Columbia University (how likely was that to happen, given that he felt his own life was important enough to write an autobiography in his young 20s), and his records from his time in the Illinois state senate were "lost".

Having records "disappeared" (as well as ditching embarrassing people from his past under the bus) was just  one aspect of attempts to avoid scrutiny. Another manifestation of this dynamic, was the constant use during the campaign of the "race card" to brand any critics as racists or smear artists (even Sean Wilent of the liberal The New Republic noticed this strategy).

One more manifestation of this phenomenon was his campaign's use of supporters to bombard radio hosts with calls to jam lines when critics of Barack Obama appeared on radio call in shows. The "authoritarian tactics being employed by the Obama campaign to stifle and intimidate its critics" were on full display. Of course, the specter of the Fairness Doctrine being passed by Congress is also another card in the deck meant to chill criticism of Barack Obama and his fellow travelers.

Now comes a more insidious form of thought control a la 1984, courtesy of long-time friend and probable new regulatory czar Cass Sunstein (who recently married another long-time confidant of Barack Obama's, foreign policy guru Samantha Power).  Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post about one aspect of Sunstein's ideology:

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a "chilling effect" on speech that might hurt someone's feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.

Advance copies of Sunstein's new book, "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done," have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the prominence with which Sunstein is about to be endowed, his worrying views are fair game now. Sunstein is President Obama's choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It's the bland titles that should scare you the most.

In "On Rumors," Sunstein reviews how views get cemented in one camp even when people are presented with persuasive evidence to the contrary. He worries that we are headed for a future in which "people's beliefs are a product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire." That future, though, is already here, according to Sunstein. "We hardly need to imagine a world, however, in which people and institutions are being harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet," he writes. "We live in that world. What might be done to reduce the harm?"

(NOTE: Seeing any presidential appointee with such an attitude, should terrify every American – regardless of philosophy – of the potential damage Sunstein may cause this nation.  His musings and his book, suggest he has no problem with opposing the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, free expression, and unfettered political debate. Such attitudes cannot be ignored.  Instead, those admitting they old such thoughts, and those who indicate they would support such thinking, should be opposed with all the force normal America can bring to the process.  America – a free America – cannot accommodate people such as Sunstein and the radical extremism his philosophy offers.)

Sunstein's book is a blueprint for online censorship as he wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading "rumors."

Smith notes that bloggers and others would be forced to remove such criticism unless they could be "proven". The litigation expense would be daunting; the time necessary to defend a posting (or an article) would work to the benefit of the public figure being criticized since the delay would probably allow the figure to win an election before the truth "won out". The mere threat of retaliatory actions would be enough to dissuade many commentators from daring to issue a word of criticism or skepticism.

Often bloggers raise issues to encourage others (perhaps with more resources) to further investigate issues. Skepticism about candidates often begin on the web or talk radio-these steps (so vital to a democracy) would be chilled should Sunstein's ideas be put into practice. One should not dismiss that prospect: this is the most ideologically driven administration in many years. A Democratic Congress willing to do Barack Obama's bidding will not serve as a check on Sunstein (or Obama). Democrats know that criticism over their conduct often emerges from the web and talk radio since traditional media is so reliably in their corner. Sunstein did not join the administration for a title or to be close to his wife. He joined, as have other ideologues throughout history, to put his ideas into practice.

We should note that another step is being taken by Congress that might chill free speech on the internet. Representative Linda Sanchez from California is behind the Megan Meier Cyber Bullying Prevention Act, an effort to impose regulations on the internet. Eugene Volokh, the brilliant law professor who founded Volokh Conspiracy (one of the leading, and most stimulating, blogs) noted the overly broad language of the bill. and how it can be used by a politician to stifle criticism.

Federal Felony To Use Blogs, the Web, Etc. To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through "Severe, Repeated, and Hostile" Speech?

That's what a House of Representatives bill, proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others, would do. Here's the relevant text:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both....

["Communication"] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; ...

["Electronic means"] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.

He questions the motives of the lawmakers supporting such a constitutionally vague bill which would make just about any criticism made by blogs subject to fines or imprisonment.

As we should question the motives not just of them but of Barack Obama and his close friend, Cass Sunstein.
 

 

Sunday's Web

The Day’s Top Political News

Attorney General Eric Holder may probe Bush-era “torture”.

Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence.

"You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation's laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort," Holder says. "But the reality of being A.G. is that I'm also part of the president's team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values."

Unfortunately, Holder has already been found wanting on that area – especially displaying a bias regarding real or imagined incidents of racism and discrimination.  One think Holder is not is non-political.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/206300

Palin plans to stay in politics

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she plans to jump immediately back into the national political fray — stumping for conservative issues and even Democrats — after she prematurely vacates her elected post at month's end.

The former Republican vice-presidential nominee and heroine to much of the GOP's base said in an interview she views the electorate as embattled and fatigued by nonstop partisanship, and she is eager to campaign for Republicans, independents and even Democrats who share her values on limited government, strong defense and "energy independence."

Given the reality of today’s Washington and the political crisis – even suggesting considering campaigning for Democrats will hurt Palin’s credibility.  Finding a conservative Democrat today is a more than daunting task.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/12/palin-stump-conservative-democrats/

Sotomayor confirmation no done deal, GOP warns

The Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican cautioned Friday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation "is not a foregone conclusion" amid what he said was growing concern on both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, who will lead the committee's Republicans in questioning Judge Sotomayor at confirmation hearings that begin Monday, told The Washington Times that her new-age judicial philosophy - unless she recants - threatens to disqualify her for the bench.

The Alabama Republican stressed that her ascent to the top court is not a done deal, and several Democrats have expressed reservations with her stance on the Second Amendment, potentially shattering the chances Democrats could use their supermajority to ram through her confirmation.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/11/sotomayor-confirmation-no-done-deal-gop-warns/

Opinion:
Free Speech – something liberals cannot stand, something with which they cannot compete.

Liberals have never been able to produce a talk radio program that can survive in the marketplace.  Listeners just don’t buy it and refuse to tune in.  PBS survives, but only by ripping off America tax payers who have no voice in granting the millions of dollars PBS uses to try promoting the liberal party line.

If you have been a subscriber of AOL – you are likely very familiar with their Terms of Service operation (TOS) through which subscribers can have their accounts cancelled through the arbitrary caprice of the AOL “powers that be”.  I have been victimized many times.  Once I was kicked off for observing “Dan Rather is a liar”.  Other TOS violations have been claimed against me that are just as frivolous and politically partisan.  There is no appeal, the judgment is universally slanted to the liberal side of things.  Conservatives get cited, liberals don’t.

We are about to see AOL TOS in steroids, only now, the threat lies in seeing such a thing imposed on the entire Internet.  Freedom of Speech is once again under attack from liberals who cant hold their own in debate.

An otherwise unknown Harvard Law professor, Cass Sunstein, has must been named by Obama to a post deceptively labeled White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  The Sunstein post will hand him powers that will terrify normal Americans. He specifically supports using the courts to impose a “chilling effect” on speech that might hurt someone’s feelings.  Sunstein claims bloggers on the Internet have been “rampaging out of control” and new laws are needed to reign in such free speech.  We can be certain the speech to be targeted will be from conservatives.
Sunstein even has a new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread”.

Conservatives have been worried the liberal domination of Capitol Hill might result in a reimposition of the “Fairness Doctrine” so-called – a liberal plot designed specifically to take out talk radio.  Since liberals cannot compete in honest debate, they are seeking to end it.

Given the extremist views of Obama’s new White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs chief, a legislative bludgeon will replace fair competition, free speech, and the First Amendment in general.

How long will it take Obama’s “Thought Czar” to consider commentaries against atheism or pro religion to be legitimate subjects for repression? That cant be determined now, of course, but count on its coming unless this extremist version of the thought police can be brought to heel.

Reality is not reassuring.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has alredy dug in her spiked heels and refuses to allow debate and discussion of “The Broadcaster Freedom Amendment” – a Republican measure that would insure First Amendment rights will be protected in over the air programming.  That Pelosi so fears this legislation that she will not allow an honest vote, reveals just how truly terrified liberals such as Pelosi are of honest debate.  “Fact and Truth” are to liberals what crosses and garlic are to the legendary vampires.

YOUR rights are very much at stake in all this, and it is a strictly partisan question.  So many of the crises facing our country and its people today are.

Buddy

The Day’s top blogs:

1.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124726489588925407.html

Why We Don't Want a Nuclear-Free World

The former defense secretary on the U.S. deterrent and the terrorist threat.
MELANIE KIRKPATRICK
Maclean, Va.

'Nuclear weapons are used every day." So says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, speaking last month at his office in a wooded enclave of Maclean, Va. It's a serene setting for Doomsday talk, and Mr. Schlesinger's matter-of-fact tone belies the enormity of the concepts he's explaining -- concepts that were seemingly ignored in this week's Moscow summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev.

We use nuclear weapons every day, Mr. Schlesinger goes on to explain, "to deter our potential foes and provide reassurance to the allies to whom we offer protection."

(NOTE: Nuclear weapons saved the world from the threat of WWIII.  I was a B-47 pilot in SAC (The Strategic Air Command) and knew full well our ability to deliver a devastating blow on the Soviet Union should the Communists really threaten the world, was the best means of keeping the Communists in check.  Of course, Communist aggression continued in Vietnam, Central America, and elsewhere – but on a far more muted form.  The principle of “Assured Mutual Destruction” worked and worked well.  No bombers flew, missiles remained in silos, and the world slept soundly.)

Mr. Obama likes to talk about his vision of a nuclear-free world, and in Moscow he and Mr. Medvedev signed an agreement setting targets for sweeping reductions in the world's largest nuclear arsenals.

Reflecting on the hour I spent with Mr. Schlesinger, I can't help but think: Do we really want to do this?
For nuclear strategists, Mr. Schlesinger is Yoda, the master of their universe. In addition to being a former defense secretary (Nixon and Ford), he is a former energy secretary (Carter) and former director of central intelligence (Nixon). He has been studying the U.S. nuclear posture since the early 1960s, when he was at the RAND Corporation, a California think tank that often does research for the U.S. government. He's the expert whom Defense Secretary Robert Gates called on last year to lead an investigation into the Air Force's mishandling of nuclear weapons after nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly flown across the country on a B-52 and nuclear fuses were accidently shipped to Taiwan. Most recently, he's vice chairman of a bipartisan congressional commission that in May issued an urgent warning about the need to maintain a strong U.S. deterrent.

But above all, Mr. Schlesinger is a nuclear realist. Are we heading toward a nuclear-free world anytime soon? He shoots back a one-word answer: "No." I keep silent, hoping he will go on. "We will need a strong deterrent," he finally says, "and that is measured at least in decades -- in my judgment, in fact, more or less in perpetuity. The notion that we can abolish nuclear weapons reflects on a combination of American utopianism and American parochialism. . . . It's like the [1929] Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy . . . . It's not based upon an understanding of reality."

In other words: Go ahead and wish for a nuclear-free world, but pray that you don't get what you wish for. A world without nukes would be even more dangerous than a world with them, Mr. Schlesinger argues.

"If, by some miracle, we were able to eliminate nuclear weapons," he says, "what we would have is a number of countries sitting around with breakout capabilities or rumors of breakout capabilities -- for intimidation purposes. . . . and finally, probably, a number of small clandestine stockpiles." This would make the U.S. more vulnerable.

Mr. Schlesinger makes the case for a strong U.S. deterrent. Yes, the Cold War has ended and, yes, while "we worry about Russia's nuclear posture to some degree, it is not just as prominent as it once was." The U.S. still needs to deter Russia, which has the largest nuclear capability of any potential adversary, and the Chinese, who have a modest (and growing) capability. The U.S. nuclear deterrent has no influence on North Korea or Iran, he says, or on nonstate actors. "They're not going to be deterred by the possibility of a nuclear response to actions that they might take," he says.

Mr. Schlesinger refers to the unanimous conclusion of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which he co-led with Chairman William Perry. The commission "strongly" recommended that further discussions with the Russians on arms control are "desirable," he says, and that "we should proceed with negotiations on an extension of the START Treaty." That's what Mr. Obama set in motion in Moscow this week. The pact -- whose full name is the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty -- expires in December. But what's the hurry? Mr. Schlesinger warns about rushing to agree on cuts. "The treaty . . . can be extended for five years. And, if need be, I would extend it for five years."

There's another compelling reason for a strong U.S. deterrent: the U.S. nuclear umbrella, which protects more than 30 allies world-wide. "If we were only protecting the North American continent," he says, "we could do so with far fewer weapons than we have at present in the stockpile." But a principal aim of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is "to provide the necessary reassurance to our allies, both in Asia and in Europe." That includes "our new NATO allies such as Poland and the Baltic States," which, he notes dryly, continue to be concerned about their Russian neighbor. "Indeed, they inform us regularly that they understand the Russians far better than do we."

The congressional commission warned of a coming "tipping point" in proliferation, when more nations might decide to go nuclear if they were to lose confidence in the U.S. deterrent, or in Washington's will to use it. If U.S. allies lose confidence in Washington's ability to protect them, they'll kick off a new nuclear arms race.

That's a reason Mr. Schlesinger wants to bring Japan into the nuclear conversation. "One of the recommendations of the commission is that we start to have a dialogue with the Japanese about strategic capabilities in order both to help enlighten them and to provide reassurance that they will be protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. In the past, that has not been the case. Japan never was seriously threatened by Soviet capabilities and that the Soviets looked westward largely is a threat against Western Europe. But now that the Chinese forces have been growing into the many hundreds of weapons, we think that it's necessary to talk to the Japanese in the same way that we have talked to the Europeans over the years."

He reminds me of the comment of Japanese political leader Ichiro Ozawa, who said in 2002 that it would be "easy" for Japan to make nuclear warheads and that it had enough plutonium to make several thousand weapons. "When one contemplates a number like that," Mr. Schlesinger says, "one sees that a substantial role in nonproliferation has been the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Without that, some and perhaps a fair number of our allies would feel the necessity of having their own nuclear capabilities."

He worries about "contagion" in the Middle East, whereby countries will decide to go nuclear if Iran does. "We've long talked about Iran as a tipping point," he says, "in that it might induce Turkey, which has long been protected under NATO, Egypt [and] Saudi Arabia to respond in kind . . . There has been talk about extending the nuclear umbrella to the Middle East in the event that the Iranians are successful in developing that capacity."

Mr. Schlesinger expresses concerns, too, about the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons, all of which are more than 20 years old. "I am worried about the reliability of the weapons . . . as time passes. Not this year, not next year, but as time passes and the stockpile ages." There is a worry, too, about the "intellectual infrastructure," he says, as Americans who know how to make nuclear weapons either retire or die. And he notes that the "physical infrastructure" is now "well over 60 years" old. Some of it "comes out of the Manhattan Project."

The U.S. is the only major nuclear power that is not modernizing its weapons. "The Russians have a shelf life for their weapons of about 10 years so they are continually replacing" them. The British and the French "stay up to date." And the Chinese and the Indians "continue to add to their stockpiles." But in the U.S., Congress won't even so much as fund R&D for the Reliable Replacement Warhead. "The RRW has become a toxic term on Capitol Hill," Mr. Schlesinger says. Give it a new name, he seems to be suggesting, and try again to get Congress to fund it. "We need to be much more vigorous about life-extension programs" for the weapons.

Finally, we chat about Mr. Schlesinger's nearly half-century as a nuclear strategist. Are we living in a world where the use of nuclear weapons is more likely than it was back then? "The likelihood of a nuclear exchange has substantially gone away," he says. That's the good news. "However, the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States" is greater.

During his RAND years, in the 1960s, Mr. Schlesinger recalls that "we were working on mitigating the possible effects [of a nuclear attack] through civil defense, which, may I say parenthetically, we should be working on now with respect, certainly, to the possibility of a terrorist weapon used against the United States. . . . We should have a much more rapid response capability. . . . We're not as well organized as we should be to respond."

Mr. Schlesinger sees another difference between now and when he started in this business: "Public interest in our strategic posture has faded over the decades," he says. "In the Cold War, it was a most prominent subject. Now, much of the public is barely interested in it. And that has been true of the Congress as well," creating what he delicately refers to as "something of a stalemate in expenditures."

He's raising the alarm. Congress, the administration and Americans ignore it at their peril.

Ms. Kirkpatrick is a deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.

2.
.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Put-nothing-in-writing-Browner-told-auto-execs-on-secret-White-House-CAFE-talks-50260677.html

'Put nothing in writing,' Browner told auto execs on secret White House CAFE talks; Sensenbrenner wants investigation
MARK TAPSCOTT
Editorial Page Editor

Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

(NOTE: The stringent CAFÉ standards will seriously impact our economy as well as the quality of our automobiles.  The only way such standards as those imposed can be reached is by making cars lighter – using lighter metals and substituting other materials.  Such modifications will make our cars less safe.  Thus Browner’s dictatorial hand will lead to higher death and injury figures.  Reduced speed and other modifications will impede commercial traffic.)

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards."

Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act.

Waxman is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Sensenbrenner is the ranking Republican member of the panel.

Browner's informal directive was previously reported by The New York Times. Sensebrenner's letter is being made public tomorrow. A copy was made available to The Examiner by an official with knowledge of the controversy.

Sensenbrenner also wants a congressional investigation of why a global warming study by Alan Carlin, an EPA economist who is a career civil servant,  was suppressed by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other senior agency officials. The study warned of seriously damaging economic consequences for small businesses if the agency moved to regulate CO2 gases as illegal emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The CO2 gases, which are also produced by humans and other air-breathing creatures when they exhale, are viewed by global warming activists as contributing to the trapping of heat in the atmosphere when carbon-based fuels like oil and coal are burned. Carlin's situation was previously detailed here by The Examiner.

When the study author requested that it be included in official EPA materials on the issue of whether the agency should adopt an "endangerment rule" to allow regulation of CO2, senior agency officials denied it. Al McGartland, director of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, told Carlin that his study was rejected because "your comments do not help the legal or policy case" for EPA's decision to enact the endangerment rule.

In other words, according to Sensenbrenner, EPA officials purposely ignored the study simply because it did not advance their political policy agenda. Both President Obama and EPA's Jackson have repeatedly promised not to make policy decisions on the basis of political or ideological considerations.
The full text of Sensenbrenner's letter follows:

July 8, 2009
 
The Honorable Edward Markey
Chairman, House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
 
Dear Chairman Markey:
 
During her confirmation hearing, Administrator Jackson promised “overwhelming
transparency.” She said, “[a]s Administrator, I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the
environmental rises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: Science-based policies and
programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.” Notwithstanding this
promise, EPA has conducted itself under an unprecedented veil of secrecy.
 
I initially raised these concerns in a letter to you and Congressman Towns dated June 9,
2009.1 In that letter I cited two incidents. First, Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air
Resources Board (CARB), revealed that the White House had held a series of secret meetings as
they were crafting the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Nichols
admitted that there was a deliberate “vow of silence” surrounding the negotiations with the
White House on vehicle fuel standards.2 According to Nichols, “[Carol] Browner [Assistant to
the President for Energy and Climate Change] quietly orchestrated private discussions from the
White House with auto industry officials.” Negotiators were instructed to “put nothing in
writing, ever.” Clearly, Browner’s actions were intended to leave little to no documentation of
the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards.
 
The second issue raised in the previous letter related to EPA’s proposed endangerment
finding. An official from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) warned EPA in an
interagency memo that “[m]aking a decision to regulate CO2 under the CAA for the first time is
likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S.
economy, including small businesses and small communities.”3 According to Administration
sources, these warning were dismissed, in part, because they originated from “a Bush
Holdover.”4 In fact, the “holdover” was a career civil servant hired by the Clinton
Administration.
 
1 Letter from the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner and Darrel Issa to the Honorable Edolphus Towns and
Edward Markey (June 9, 2009).
2 Colin Sullivan, Vow of Silence Key to White House-California Fuel Economy Talks, New York Times,
May 20, 2009.
3 Ian Talley, OMB Memo: Serious Impact Likely from EPA CO2 Rules, Dow Jones Newswire, May 11,
2009, available at http://www.djnewsplus.com/article_ss/SB124206897993062889.html?param=gn&
4 Ian Talley, EPA Chief Says CO2 Finding May Not ‘Mean Regulation,’ Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2009.
I am again raising concerns regarding the transparency of EPA’s process in light of new
evidence of suppression at EPA. In a series of emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, the Director of
EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) expressly refused to include
relevant scientific evidence in the official record because, in his view, the administration had
already reached its conclusion regarding the endangerment finding.
On March 16, a senior analyst with EPA wrote to his office director to request that his
comments be included in EPA’s record. The analyst wrote:
 
I believe my comments are valid, significant, and contain references to significant new
research since the cut-off for IPCC and CCSP inputs. They are significant because they
present information critical to the justification (or lack thereof) for the proposed
endangerment finding. They are valid because they explain much of the observational data
that have been collected which cannot be explained by the IPCC models.
 
In response, the director refused to forward the analyst’s comments, not because he questioned
their scientific merits, but because “[t]he administrator and administration has decided to move
forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this
decision.”5
 
The director then sent a follow-up email, forbidding the analyst from continuing his
work: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and
subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no
research etc.”
 
As it did with the OMB memo, EPA attacked the analyst’s credibility. In response to
publication of the above emails, EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy reiterated EPA’s now empty
pledge of transparency and said, “[i]n this instance, certain opinions were expressed by an
individual who is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue.”6
 
In fact, the analyst is a 38-year EPA employee with a scientific background, but
regardless, EPA’s response ignores the ultimate problem. NCEE’s director did not dismiss the
analyst’s opinions because of his scientific background or because of the merits of his study, the
director expressly refused to forward his opinion because they did not support the conclusions
that EPA had already reached.
 
This past December, President Obama said, “[p]romoting science isn’t just about
providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts
and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what
our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient.”
 
5 Email from Office Director of EPA’s NCEE to Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE (March 17,
2009).
6 Robin Bravender, House GOP Accuses Admin of Suppressing EPA Staff on ‘endangerment' finding,’
E&ENews (June 25, 2009).
 
The email exchange documents a second instance in which EPA refused to consider
alternative internal opinions and delineates an agency culture set in a predetermined course. It
therefore raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed.
EPA has become an agency determined to silence inconvenient perspectives, but as
policymakers we must openly and honestly consider all reliable evidence.
 
I therefore respectfully request that we hold a hearing to investigate the lack of transparency at EPA. I am prepared to assist in any way necessary to help prepare for such a hearing.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.
Ranking Member
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming

3.

Democrats Admit That Their Cap and Trade Bill Is a Job Killer
Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

In her remarks bringing the debate over the climate bill to a close, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California urged her colleagues to vote in favor of the cap and trade bill, saying the measure was about four things: "jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs."

She was right—the House-passed version of cap and trade is all about jobs: jobs lost, jobs never created, jobs sent overseas, and, unbelievably, jobs people will be paid for doing long after they cease to exist.

According to Friday's Washington Times, the legislation includes language that provides, should it become law, that people who lose their jobs because of it "could get a weekly paycheck for up to three years, subsidies to find new work and other generous benefits—courtesy of Uncle Sam."

(NOTE: Make no mistake about it – the Democrat “Cap and Trade” legislation is nothing but a Democrat imposition of another tax – one of the largest Democrat tax ever levided.  It will mean each and every American family will be required to pay a tax running into the thousands for a federal program liberals claim will only support Al Gore’s man made “Global Warming” scam.)

How generous are these benefits? Well, according to the Times, "Adversely affected employees in oil, coal and other fossil-fuel sector jobs would qualify for a weekly check worth 70 percent of their current salary for up to three years. In addition, they would get $1,500 for job-search assistance and $1,500 for moving expenses from the bill's 'climate change worker adjustment assistance' program, which is expected to cost $4.2 billion from 2011 to 2019."

Instead of being a the source of millions of new jobs of "green jobs"—as House Democrats are fond of saying over and over again—the provision is a hidden admission that their effort is a job killer, not just a massive new tax on energy.

Building a safety net into the legislation is probably the responsible thing to do. The government is going to be directly responsible for the destruction of millions of jobs if the bill passed by the House becomes law—anywhere from a net loss of .5 percent of total jobs over the first 10 years, according to the liberal Brookings Institution, to 3 million by the year 2030, according to the industry-backed Coalition for Affordable American Energy. But wouldn't it be better to leave the jobs alone in the first place? It would certainly be cheaper.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/poll_stimulus_opposition/2009/07/07/232783.html

 

Saturday's Web

The Day’s Top Political News:

Sotomayor backers urge reporters to probe New Haven firefighter

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling. A case of racism compounded by actions by her supporters.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci.

On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.  “People for the American Way” is an extreme left wing group created by liberal TV producer, Norman Lear.  Sotomayou will be confirmed -- not because of qualificatioins, but because Democrats have the votes.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/71660.html

Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About 'Global Governance'

Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”  Thus suggesting his man-made “Global Warming” scam – offers other threats to Americans.

Gore's call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac's call in 2000. Chirac said during a speech at The Hague that the UN's Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance."  World Government without the camoflage.

The concept is a direct assault on the sovereignty of nations – a move touting One World Government – hardly one supported by normal Americans who understand the issue.
 
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1893/Gore-US-Climate-Bill-Will-Help-Bring-About-Global-Governance

Even Liberal colleagues attack Sen. Al Franken – saying he has already sold out his beliefs in exchange for Beltway-style good 'ol boys acceptance.

A clear case of liberals attacking liberals.  Franken as Senator is a joke after all – or should be considered one.

As one left wing cohort says of Franken: “The irony of this is unbelievable! For of all people, to be number 60, a guy who has been torn apart by the righties! Beaten up by O'Reilly! Trashed by Hannity! Ripped apart by Limbaugh! Made fun of (makes mocking voice), Air America this, Air America that, dut da dut da dut, and what does Al do? (with heavy sarcasm) He's ready to reach across the aisle (sigh)...”

Many political observers predict Franken’s actions in the Senate will raise tons of dollars for Republicans.

http://radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2009/07/al-frankens-former-talk-radio.html

Opinion:
It’s not just about socialism anymore, now the left seeks to destroy religion.  Understand the real issues we face.

America is a nation built on a solid foundation – one that includes a strong moral base.  The first amendment guarantees Americans a freedom of religion.  Now, such anti American groups as the insidious ACLU are embarking on a visible effort to deny Americans religions rights and freedom.

In Santa Rosa County – in the Florida Panhandle – a school board has been intimidated by the ACLU into accepting a ban on religious activity of its teachers and employees – even off duty.

Here is the report:

The School District attempted to settle the suit by joining with the ACLU and presenting the court with a Consent Order, which essentially bans all employees from engaging in prayer or religious activities, whether before, during, or after school hours. 

Of course, the School District demonstrated cowardice in caving to the ACLU, but then public education today is undermined by the extremist views of the NEA teacher’s union – which is an organic arm of the Democrat party.

The ACLU attack is nothing new.  ACLU extremists have worked for years to impose atheism as a national religion – a conspiratorial act in direct violation of the First Amendment.

Now we see devout employees of Santa Rosa, Florida’s school district, being denied their personal freedoms and rights regarding their religious activity EVEN AFTER SCHOOL HOURS.

About two hundred miles to the north, there is another eruption of in-your-face atheist assault on normal Americans.

Here is the news story:

“The simple message that John Lennon once sang, "Imagine No Religion," has become the slogan on a controversial billboard that recently went up along Interstate 20 on the way from Birmingham to Talladega.
“The billboard was placed there, near the Riverside exit, by the Alabama Freethought Association, part of a national campaign by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation in Madison, Wis., said the billboard was put up the week before the Alabama Freethought Association's annual Fourth of July weekend celebration. It will be up for a month, she said”

Of course, even atheists have a right to have their free speech protected. Banning the billboard legislatively, would be wrong.

(Fortunately, Lamar Advertising, a private corporation, rejected the billboard – as a private firm, Lamar has that right)

It is no accident that these two incidents – open attacks on normal American values by atheists, happed where they do – in the Florida Panhandle, and in central Alabama.  These are areas in which Christian values specifically, and religious respect in general, flourish.  The atheists are staging these attacks to generate outrage, action, and debate.  They will use those actions to increase their fund raising (a means through which support can be provided the atheist scheme, without being public), and to generate debate in more favorable areas of the country such as Wisconsin and California.  Atheists are counting on there being a well spring of support across the country that will be energized by the publicity these two stunts generate in the media.

In political campaign academia, the tactic Is dubbed “causative attack” – a tactical assault on opponents for the sole purpose of generating actions by the opponent resulting in self-inflicted wounds.

At first blush, we might presume the atheists have been “too clever by half”. That suggests the atheists may have outsmarted themselves.  But consider another matter:

The current president is not a religious person either.  He did attend a church in Chicago – but it was a hate filled theology that preached a litany of racial hatred and anti Americanism…and did so openly as we have all heard.

After all, Obama’s mother was an avowed atheist so he was denied spiritual or moral training and guidance as he grew up.  Some of his education came in  schools with religious views that are much in dispute.

Thus has Obama required crosses and other religious symbols covered when he speaks, and, unlike our other presidents, eschewed open observation of the national Day of Prayer.

We are seeing the first open assault on American values by those who conspire to support such atheistic views as those of the ACLU.  In the mid 60s, normal, decent, patriotic Americans rose up and ended the old KKK.  It’s time we do the same with the ACLU.

THEY have framed a debate – the outrageous actions in Santa Rosa County, Florida, and through the billboard in Taladeega Alabama.  Atheists have a right to make their case – normal America has the right – indeed an obligation – to strike back and strike down those who would deprive us of religious freedom.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

Breaking: Senate postpones cap-and-trade
Ed Morrissey

The Washington Post reports that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold off on consideration of the House cap-and-trade bill until September at the earliest:

President Barack Obama’s push for quick action by Congress on climate change legislation suffered a setback on Thursday when the U.S. Senate committee leading the drive delayed work on the bill until September.

(NOTE: The delay can be counted a victory for those who oppose this new Democrat tax scheme and scam.  The original plan was to steam roll the measure through the Senate as was done in the House.  Passage in the House came as a result of eight Republicans turning their backs on their people and voting for the tax.  A number of “Blue Dog” Democrats joined in supporting the tax.  There have been serious reactions by taxpayers in some of the districts in which the Congressman voted for the new tax.)

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer said her self-imposed deadline of early August for finishing writing a bill to combat global warming has been put off until after Congress returns from a recess that ends in early September.

“We’ll do it as soon as we get back” from that break, Boxer told reporters. Asked if this delay jeopardizes chances the Senate will pass a bill this year, Boxer said, “Not a bit … we’ll be in (session) until Christmas, so I’m not worried about it.”

But Boxer did not guarantee Congress will be able to finish a bill and deliver it to Obama by December, when he plans to attend an international summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

Two weeks ago, when the House barely pushed this through a vote, Barack Obama’s poll numbers still looked good enough to imply that there may not be consequences for hobbling the economy with ludicrous taxes, fees, and penalties for energy production.  With his poll numbers eroding quickly and the electorate losing patience with high unemployment and Porkulus’ failure, that doesn’t seem like a safe bet any more.  As the economy continues to drag, cap-and-trade will look more like a disaster than the mythical one it purports to avoid.

The Democrats simply don’t have the votes now on cap-and-trade, and unless the economy suddenly lurches back to life, the political situation will be worse in September.  That doesn’t mean we can let up on the pressure, as Michelle says.  Keep calling your Senators to tell them that a vote for cap-and-trade means adding to the unemployment lines — starting with themselves.

Update: This might have had something to do with it, too:

“I cannot support the House bill in its present form,” Byrd said in a statement. “I continue to believe that clean coal can be a ‘green’ energy. Those of us who understand coal’s great potential in our quest for energy independence must continue to work diligently in shaping a climate bill that will ensure access to affordable energy for West Virginians.” …

Senator Byrd’s was one of the two sponsors of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which the senate unanimously passed, 95–0, in 1997. Byrd-Hagel stated the sense of the Senate that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing nations as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.” Byrd-Hagel prevented Clinton from even trying to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which like the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” climate change legislation, would have put the U.S. economy at an economic disadvantage to China and India.

2.

ACORN whistleblower MonCrief now identifies with
KEVIN MOONEY
Commentary Staff Writer

Although she was indoctrinated into liberal thinking at a young age and has been a life-long Democrat, Anita MonCrief said in an interview that she now identifies with economic and social reforms that are championed by conservatives.

MonCrief is a former employee of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and its Project Vote affiliate who offered testimony last year in Harrisburg, Pa. as part of an election law suit filed against the organization. MonCrief discussed Project Vote’s voter registration activities and ACORN’s relationship with the Obama presidential campaign as part of her testimony.

“I’ve always been an outsider in my party because I ask a lot of questions and I didn’t like some of the answers I’ve been getting,” she said. “The problem I have with Democrats is that they promise you the world but then they don’t deliver. I identify now with conservative ideas because the answer is not social welfare. The answer instead comes from being less dependent on the government and keeping families together.”

(NOTE: ACORN is a liberal conspiracy designed to register voters likely or almost certain to vote Democrat – then get those voters to the polls on election day.   However, ACORN often is seen as going further and generating vote fraud and theft.)

MonCrief now plans to drop her party registration as a Democrat but is not quite ready to embrace Republicans. Instead she is more inclined to be an independent, unaffiliated voter. However, MonCrief does see an opportunity for Republicans to connect better with African-American voters who actually share the party’s convictions on key issues. This can happen if Republicans adopt a better communications strategy, she added.

MonCrief also said she very supportive of the ACORN 8 whistleblower group that came together last year in response to an embezzlement scandal involving the national organization’s top officials. But she is not part of ACORN 8 and prefers to chart her own path.

“While we are fighting the same cause, my beliefs and viewpoints have changed and I have moved more to the right in my thinking,” MonCrief said. “I am an ex-liberal trying to find my way.”

By contrast, ACORN 8 members have said that they remain committed to ACORN’s stated mission and would prefer to reform the organization from within by calling for greater transparency and accountability.

“They’re working their way, and I’m working mine,” MonCrief said. “I’ve come to believe that social programs do not work and are actually quite destructive to the black family.”

Food stamp and housing assistance programs, for instance, do not provide people with an incentive to get married and to keep husbands and wives together, she said.

MonCrief who is Catholic is now engaged to a Baptist and looks forward to providing her daughter with a stable family home.

“You might think there would be some push, pull as far as religion for our daughter is concerned,” she said. “But we have common interests, common values and common goals. I’ve also been able to connect with people across the country from areas like the Midwest. We’ve been able to get beyond media stereotypes of what Republicans are and I find that we have a lot in common, even though I have a different set of experiences being a black woman from Alabama.”

Unfortunately, Republicans still allow their opponents to define the national debate too much and to hide behind the specter of racism.

“If you want to shut a Republican up just call him a racist,” she said. “They just don’t know how to respond to these accusations. But historically Republicans have been favorable to blacks, while the Democrats have actually pushed policies that were quite harmful.”

MonCrief is also an ardent supporter of   Second Amendment rights.

“Even when I was a liberal I always thought Charlton Heston was a firecracker and I loved him to death,” she said. “He stood up for the Constitution and did a good job of explaining why these rights were important. I’ve noticed that whenever there is movement to take away gun rights it’s usually in African-American community like Washington D.C.”

This is yet another area where Republicans and African-Americans can find common ground, she said.

3.

Bachus Statement During Derivatives Hearing

WASHINGTON – Congressman Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, made the following statement today during the hearing on derivatives.

“Mr. Chairman, derivatives serve an important function in the market. They allow companies to hedge against risk, deploy capital effectively, lower cost and offer protection against fluctuating prices. However, derivatives are also about shifting risk. We do not want a system that shifts that risk on to the taxpayer and I am concerned that the Administration’s proposal will do just that. As we learned from Fannie and Freddie fiasco, government regulators are not in the best position to effectively evaluate these risks.

“In addition I am concerned that the Administration’s proposal will adversely affect the thousands of companies across America that use derivatives to manage interest rate, exchange rate, commodity, credit default, and other risks. 

“For example, the Administration supports moving over-the-counter products into venues like clearinghouses and exchanges that will require the terms of the contracts to become standardized. Because accounting rules require derivative hedges to have a close and consistent relationship with the underlying asset or liability that is being hedged, standardization could make it more difficult, if not impossible, for American companies to manage their risk exposures with the customized derivatives they require for hedge accounting.

(NOTE: If some of these issues seem confusing, count on one thing: Republican leadership such as that of Congressman Bachus, will point the way toward a result that benefits normal America.  The path promoted by such liberal Demomcrats as Barney Frank, will point in an opposite directioin.)

“In addition, mandatory clearing would require some companies to divert hundreds of millions of dollars of capital away from business investment for use as cash collateral. It seems counterintuitive during a recession to leave companies exposed to greater risk, raise their cost of capital, and make economic recovery more difficult to achieve.

“I also want to take this opportunity to address the larger issues surrounding regulatory reform.  Republicans are not saying no to reform—we are saying no to bail outs.  The Administration plan does nothing to stop the endless cycle of costly taxpayer bailouts and in fact sets up a new framework to perpetuate the bailouts. The Republican plan provides for an enhanced bankruptcy process in which financial firms and their creditors – not the American taxpayer –bear the costs of failure, as an alternative to continuing the bailouts.
     
“Republicans also take a different approach on consumer protection. The Administration’s plan, which is reflected in your bill, Mr. Chairman, will make it harder for families to get the credit they need to make ends meet, and will undermine the economic recovery. 

“Creation of this redundant agency will also weaken our community banks which will incur higher fees for deposit insurance, higher compliance costs to meet the new mandates, and considerable assessment burden to fund this massive new agency.  This will place community banks at a competitive disadvantage to mega-banks; restrict credit availability and consumer choice; and lead to more consolidation in the financial services industry.

“The Republican plan would do a better job of protecting consumers. Consolidating the consumer protection functions of the Federal Reserve, OCC, OTS, NCUA and FDIC in a new functional regulator for all depository institutions will ensure consistency in enforcement and eliminate the consumer confusion created by the current system. We would streamline the complaint process.  And we would strengthen anti-fraud enforcement, give regulators more investigative and enforcement tools, and increase restitution for victims.

“Republicans also question the wisdom of anointing the Federal Reserve as a super regulator. The Republican plan would refocus the Fed on its core mission of conducting the nation’s monetary policy and eliminate entirely its authority to conduct AIG-style bailouts of individual companies at taxpayer expense.

“As you can see, Mr. Chairman, we are very concerned that the regulatory reform proposals put forth by the Administration will continue the same regulatory policies that created the financial and credit market crisis, and exacerbate the credit contraction that is hindering the economic recovery.”
Congressman Spencet Bachus, Ranking Republican member of the Financial Services Committee.

 

Friday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Joe Biden update: No 'private meetings,' just meetings closed to the press

Possibly a very important policy change has quietly emerged in the daily schedule of Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden's innumerable  "private meetings" are closed to the press.

On one recent long weekend the man who became a Delaware senator when his future boss, Barack Obama, was an inexperienced fundraiser of only 11, devoted an entire Monday to "private meetings" press in his Delaware home -- meetings that are closed.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/07/joe-biden-update-1.html

US State Department under cyberattack for fourth day 

The US State Department said Thursday its website came under cyberattack for a fourth day running as it tried to prevent further attacks.

According to computer security experts, a dozen US government websites, including those of the White House, Pentagon and State Department, were targeted in a coordinated cyberattack which also struck sites in South Korea.

South Korean lawmakers were quoted as saying Wednesday that South Korea's intelligence service believes North Korea or its sympathizers may have staged the attack.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.a6c27e3843e8f645f9e395649a3a85e5.c51&show_article=1

Rupert Murdoch: Mainstream Media still supports Obama

News Corp. honcho predicts opinion swing by year's end

The world's most powerful media moguls are "very bearish" on the economy, but they don't seem to be blaming President Obama for the tough times, Rupert Murdoch says. Apart from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by News Corp., the media "remains very supportive of him, perhaps not of all of his policies," Murdoch told Stuart Varney of Fox Business Network.

Murdoch said he was "shocked" at the sour mood media executives are in regarding their own businesses and the economy in general. Some, he said, are predicting "five years at least" before seeing real economic growth return.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i3c6dccc0e0549069a2c7f244259ae82a

Opinion:
For Americans 49 and older, voting Democrat is opting for seriously rationed healthcare

A decade or two back, liberal Democrat Dick Lamm – a former governor of Colorado – shocked us with a call for senior citizens “to die and get out of the way” – in fact Lamm said dying off is an obligation of the elderly.

Now, we see Lamm’s extremist ideas becoming official government policy if Obama’s “healthcare” program gets accepted.  In Great Britain, elderly citizens are being denied stents and by passes for heart conditions.  The irresponsible insanity of such a healthcare system is coming to a hospital near you in the form of “Obama-care”.

Understand – the debate over healthcare is one presenting choices between quality healthcare and Obama’s healthcare on the cheap.  All Americans will get cheated and forced to accept healthcare of inferior quality.

Government cannot produce anything of quality.  Socialized medicine is medicine that is inferior by definition.  Even poor quality care can be rationed and made worse.

As Dick Morris notes in a recent blog:

“Obama's health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it.  The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.    Indeed, the principal impact of the Obama health care program will be to reduce sharply the medical services the elderly can use.  No longer will their every medical need be met, their every medication prescribed, their every need to improve their quality of life answered.”

A vote for any Democrat is a vote that empowers Obama’s healthcare scam and conspiracy.  Those voters who are elderly or who are on the cusp of being elderly, should understand what is really at stake for themselves.  It boils down to a simple but absolute fact: voting Democrat supports Obama’s “healthcare on the cheap” and threatens quality care – or the availability of care at all.

I’m sure liberals in some ivied environment developed this concept of age discrimination. The debated, reasoned, and came forth with a plan that condemns senior citizens.  The idea was not formed by pragmatic people with common sense approaches to life – especially to politics.

If Obama’s conspiracy against the elderly becomes fully understood and intellectually grasped -- there will be (or should be) a massive uprising.  One even larger than the current tea party protest movement.  After all, it’s hard to get people being condemned to poor healthcare to vote for their own condemnation – but that is exactly what liberal Democrats are attempting to pull off.

The objective, therefore, is doing all that is possible to communicate what this Obama effort actually means.  It’s a challenge similar in nature to the current one of making sure as many as possible understand the “Cap and Trade” debate is one of whether Americans are willing to vote themselves higher costs and taxation.

When intellectual snobs discuss concepts such as healthcare – they do so in a manner divorced from reality or personal concern.  It’s all theoretical.  For those of us who have scaled the walls of endeavor and who now find themselves in advanced ages, the healthcare debate become very personal.

I’m not fearful of dying as a result of actual aging – that’s part of life itself.  But I am resentful of political efforts of liberals to make whatever time may remain less comfortable than it  can be, and shortened – not by fate or fortune, but as a result of another liberal conspiracy. 

Only a fool would think otherwise.  Dick Lamm and other liberal extremists make the healthcare debate very personal for a multitude of Americans…not only the elderly who would suffer directly, but even younger Americans concerned about their elderly friends, relatives, and parents.

Politicians who conspire against the lives and well being of people, sooner or later fail and fail big time – the planners and plotters of Nazi Germany saw that for themselves.

I’ll go when my time is up – but not when a liberal politician decrees it.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

Regulating the Federal Reserve – a controversy over who is watching one of the most important agencies of our financial system

Cong Spencer Bachus – the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee – issued his statement on the issue during Subcommittee Hearings on The Fed and on Systemic Risk

WASHINGTON – Congressman Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, made the following statement today during the Capital Markets Subcommittee hearing entitled “Regulatory Restructuring: Balancing the Independence of the Federal Reserve in Monetary Policy with Systemic Risk Regulation”

“Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening this hearing on one of the central questions that this Committee will need to answer as it considers reforms to our financial regulatory system: whether regulatory power should be centralized in the Federal Reserve at a time when our country is facing unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy challenges. We have as witnesses some of the foremost experts on the subject of the Federal Reserve and I am certain we will all benefit from hearing their views.

“During the past two years, we have watched as the Federal Reserve responded to dislocations in financial markets with far-reaching interventions in virtually every corner of our economy. To confront the crisis, the Fed used its emergency authority to bail out failing institutions, provided loans and loan guarantees to revive credit markets, lowered the target federal funds rate almost to zero, and more than doubled its balance sheet.  Regardless of how one views these extraordinary Fed actions, I think we can all agree that, as we go forward, we need a more transparent institution with a more clearly defined role.”

(NOTE: When bailouts and take overs become government policy through which a crisis is met, the stability, honesty, and operational competence become issues all Americans should follow closely.  Unfortunately, doing so adequately is beyond the capabilities or potential for most Americans.  We must, therefore, depend on experts – or people who profess to be experts.)

“Republicans believe that the Fed’s core mission -- the conduct of monetary policy -- may be seriously undermined if its supervisory responsibilities are dramatically expanded, as proposed in the Obama administration’s regulatory reform ‘white paper.’ Indeed, the proper role of the Fed represents a critical difference between the administration’s proposal and the regulatory reform plan that House Republicans have put forward. The Administration would reward past regulatory and monetary policy mistakes by giving the Fed the preeminent role in regulating the financial system and determining which U.S. financial institutions are ‘too big to fail.’  This both stretches Fed resources and complicates its ability to carry out its monetary policy function. 

“Mr. Chairman, according to the minority staff on the Senate Committee on Budget, the federal government has pledged more than $9.7 trillion to address our economic credit crisis. The existing national debt is $10.9 trillion and an it is estimated the 2009 budget deficit of $1.8 trillion. Today, soaring deficits are the biggest threat to financial stability, economic recovery and job growth. The Republican plan would therefore relieve the Federal Reserve of its current regulatory responsibilities and allow it to focus on its core monetary policy mission. This will ensure that the central bank, which sets the interest rates that greatly affect both individuals and businesses of all sizes, sets those rates with a single goal in mind: sound monetary policy. 

“Most importantly, we need to end the bailouts that the Fed has been instrumental in carrying out over the past 18 months. The most effective way to minimize systemic risk is not by empowering Federal bureaucracies that failed the American people during the  recent crisis, but by ensuring that those institutions best able to measure, monitor and assess risk have the right incentives to do so. This means strengthening market discipline so that the costs of failure will be borne by a failing institution’s creditors and counterparties, not the American public.”

2.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709502661214861.html

Obama Can't Be Trusted With Numbers

So why should we trust him with health care?
KARL ROVE

In February, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill while making lavish promises about the results. He pledged that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America." He also said the stimulus would "save or create up to four million jobs." Vice President Joe Biden said the massive federal spending plan would "drop-kick" the economy out of the recession.

But the unemployment rate today is 9.5% -- nearly 20% higher than the Obama White House said it would be with the stimulus in place. Keith Hennessey, who worked at the Bush White House on economic policy, has noted that unemployment is now higher than the administration said it would be if nothing was done to revive the economy. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than Mr. Obama promised.

The economy takes unexpected turns on every president. But what is striking about this president is how quickly he turns away from his promises. He rushed the stimulus through Congress saying we couldn't afford to wait. Now his administration is waiting to spend the money. Of the $279 billion allocated to federal agencies, only $56 billion has been paid out.

Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration "misread" the economy. But he explained that away on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday by saying the administration had used "the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there" to draw up its stimulus plan.
That's not true.

(NOTE:  Vice President Biden often is confronted with claims he has made that are at odds with reality.  In fact, Biden has become the butt of a long string of jokes and a subject of extended ridicule.  Given the total inexperience of Obama himself, the demonstrated incompetence of  his Vice President is particularly troubling.  Being unable to read real statistics in dealing with a financial crisis, is far more troubling than whether or not a VP can spell potato correctly.  But don’t expect the media to notice.)

The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts. In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%. Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.

Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren't previously able to push through Congress. Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy. More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.

On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that "no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money."

This fits a pattern. The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with it because the media haven't asked pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.

The Obama administration wants a government takeover of health care. To get it, it is promising to wring massive savings out of the health-care industry. And it has already started to make cost-savings promises.

For example, the administration strong-armed health-care providers into promising $2 trillion in health savings. It got pharmaceutical companies to promise to lower drug prices for seniors by $80 billion over 10 years. The administration also trotted out hospital executives to say that they would voluntarily save the government $150 billion over 10 years.

None of this comes near to being true. On the promised $2 trillion, everyone admits that the number isn't built on anything specific -- it's an aspirational goal.

On drug prices, a White House spokesman admitted that "These savings have not been identified at the moment." It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.

None of this will stop the administration from arguing that its "savings" will pay for Mr. Obama's $1.5 trillion health-care plans. By the time the real price tag emerges, it will be too late to do much more than raise taxes and curtail spending on urgent priorities, such as the military.

The stimulus package is a clear example of how Mr. Obama operates. He is attempting to employ the same tactics of bait-and-switch when it comes to health care, only on a much larger scale.

Mr. Obama has already created a river of red ink. His health-care plans will only force that river over its banks.

We are at the cusp of a crucial political debate, and Mr. Obama's words on fiscal matters are untrustworthy. His promised savings are a mirage. His proposals to reshape the economy are alarming. And his unwillingness to be forthright with his numbers reveals that he knows his plans would terrify many Americans.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

3.

www.jewishworldreview.com:80/0709/emerson070909.php3
 
Top Obama aide invites head of terrorist-linked org to join administration.....
 
Group's ‘mainstream’ Islamist convention last weekend featured hate speech and Hezbollah Defense
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |

A top aide to President Barack Obama provided a keynote address at last weekend's 46th Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) national convention, a gathering that attracted thousands of people and also featured anti-Semitic, homophobic rhetoric and defense of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

In her remarks, Senior Advisor for Public Engagement and International Affairs Valerie Jarrett noted she was the first White House official to address ISNA. She spoke in general terms about interfaith dialogue and cooperation. She praised her hosts for "the diversity of American organizations, and ideas that are represented and will be debated" at the convention.

And she openly invited ISNA President Ingrid Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls that Jarrett leads.

ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-support conspiracy and maintains significant leadership ties to its foundation 28 years ago by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. A more pointed statement by Jarret would have stood as a powerful retort to extremist sentiments offered in other segments of the conference.

While many panels at the convention featured criticism of U.S. policy and law enforcement, one stood out for its hate-filled rhetoric, and ISNA officials should have seen it coming a mile away. During a "meet the authors" session, Imam Warith Deen Umar, former head of the New York state prison chaplain program managed to:

    • Argue that key Obama aides are "Israeli," proving Jews "have control of the world." 
    • Malign the motives of Jews active in the Civil Rights movement. 
    • Portray the Holocaust as punishment of Jews for being "serially disobedient to Allah." 
    • Insinuate that Hurricane Katrina was a result of tolerance for homosexuality.

Umar's radicalism is no secret. He previously hailed the 9/11 hijackers as martyrs who were secretly admired by Muslims. He has called for violent jihad. In a January 2004 speech, he urged people:

"Rise up and fight. And fight them until turmoil is no more and strike terror into their hearts." You think there is no terror in Quran? It's called [word unclear] read it in the 56th Surah of the Quran.

There's no lack of translation, there's no mistranslation There's not one Sheikh says one thing, no, it's very clear. 'When you fight, you strike terror into the heart of the disbeliever.'"

He has a website promoting a past book, Judaiology, which features an excerpt describing "the inordinacy of Jewish power." Jews, he wrote, are "an amazing people who can steal you blind as you watch. If you discover the theft, they can put you to sleep. If you wake up to them, they can put you back to sleep with mind games, tricks of fancy, smoke screens, and magic. Henry Ford almost uncovered them."

(NOTE: All Americans should be troubled by the interaction between the Obama administration and Islamic interests.  Bringing Hamas refugees to this country at taxpayer expense is just one example.  Gone are the days of Middle East policies that held off Islamic radicalism and its threats.  Radical Islam declared war on the US and civilization itself in its 9/11 attacks.  Obama’s embrace raises  questions and may ultimately intrude on confidence in the Obama Middle East policy and strategy.)

Umar's ISNA appearance Sunday afternoon promoted his latest book, Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace. In discussing it, Umar first thanked ISNA for inviting him to speak.

He then described a distinction between "holy Jews," who are devout, apolitical and poor, and "unholy Jews" who are greedy, conniving and all powerful. He looked to the White House for an example:

"You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli - Rahm Emanuel - his number one man. His number two man - [David] Axelrod - another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world? You need to go back into your history and find out about France and Germany and England and America got together and offered the Israelites, who became the Israelites, they offered them Ghana, the plains of Ghana. Why don't you take Ghana since we beat you down so badly? That's what the Holocaust was all about. You need to read my chapter on the Holocaust and the anti-Holocaust movement.

There's some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah."

ISNA described the author's panel as "an interactive session which provides a wonderful platform to learn, share ideas, and provide literary contributions to society." Remarkably, ISNA included Umar in that platform despite a very public record of anti-Semitism, advocacy for jihad, and praise for the 9/11 hijackers.

Umar shared the microphone with another author who did not spew out bigotry, but who did cast Hezbollah as an innocent player subject to incessant Israeli onslaught. Cathy Sultan described her book, Tragedy in South Lebanon: The Israeli/Hezbollah War of 2006, as a history of "the tragedy of the repeated incursions and wars in South Lebanon, the complexities of the Lebanese politics."

She made no mention of Iranian funding for Hezbollah or Syrian meddling in Lebanese politics or its suspected involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Instead, she lumps Hariri among a list of "docile Arab rulers willing to acquiesce to the West and to Israelis' demands … provided they eliminate or at least contain and disarm Hamas and Hezbollah."

Nor did Sultan describe indiscriminate Hezbollah rocket fire toward Israeli civilian communities, or the cross-border attack on an Israeli army base by Hezbollah that left three soldiers dead and two others kidnapped.

In response to a question, Sultan said "Hezbollah still serves a role. I think that Lebanon is still under constant threat from its southern neighbor. And I see nothing wrong, as long as Hezbollah abides by certain rules and regulations; I see no reason why Hezbollah should not remained armed."

The United States considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist group, and some experts consider it a bigger potential threat to the United States than Al-Qaeda.

The panel did not feature anyone with contrasting viewpoints to challenge Sultan or Umar. The program drew about 50 people, who sat passively during most of the remarks.

Umar's books were available for purchase at the convention. Government agencies were represented with booths of their own, including the departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, Commerce, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Before the convention started, ISNA posted a statement for vendors which said "Any literature (fundraising or otherwise) is restricted to the assigned booth and must be pre-approved in writing by ISNA, in ISNA's sole and absolute discretion. Book selling vendors must complete enclosed form providing inventory of the literature to be sold at ISNA."

Judaiology devotes a chapter to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," allegedly the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders at the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, in which they plotted to take over the world. Researchers have definitively proved that the Protocols were in fact forged in Paris sometime between 1895 and 1899 by an agent of the Russian secret police. This has not kept anti-Semitic groups from believing the validity of this forgery. For example, the Charter of Hamas states:

"For Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there."

To Umar, however, the Protocols "remain a mystery:"

"Jewish leaders have denied [the Protocols] and called them a forgery, a pact [sic] of lies, absurd and counterintuitive. No Jew, they say, would ever resort to writing down such self-defeating words and plans. However their denials appear ineffective because the Protocols actually explain and reveal what others observe about the real activities and results of Jewish diplomatic, industrial, business, and political involvement among the peoples of the world… What is revealed and clarified is so shocking and stunningly in accord with the behavior and results of world events that involve Jews that it gives credence and importance, relevance and standing to what otherwise would simply be a biased and discredited documents."

A woman in the audience reminded Umar that Jews marched with Black people during the Civil Rights movement. But, Umar said, that was not motivated by a genuine desire for justice:

"The Jews in America used the black community to advance the Jewish community. In many instances in history, they gained much of what they gained by putting the African Americans out front to get things that were necessary to get through the politics of this country and of the social setting of this country."

Umar also managed to stray into a reference about same-sex marriage, which he said would prompt G-d's wrath:

"It's against the laws of Allah and against the laws of the Bible for homosexuality. And if you think the Quran talks about harsh punishment from Allah, you should read what the Bible says. I don't have the time to go into it, but it's in my book. The Bible is very hard on, he says, Allah says that the land itself is doomed. You wonder why things are happening in America are going to happen? You think that Katrina was just a blow of wind?"

This is the man responsible for the Muslim chaplain program in New York prisons for 20 years. He was forced out of that job after his praise for the 9/11 hijackers became known. This is who ISNA chose to showcase in a "meet the authors" panel and provide an unchallenged platform.

"My conclusion is that there should be more jihad," he said. "But people don't want to hear that. They're scared."

In Cairo, the President said:

"Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong" and a hindrance to peace.

But somehow, partnering with a group that invites the same thing is okay?

4.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103457
 
Ginsburg: I thought Roe was to rid undesirables
Justice discusses 'growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of'

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

In an astonishing admission, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she was under the impression that legalizing abortion with the 1973 Roe. v. Wade case would eliminate undesirable members of the populace, or as she put it "populations that we don't want to have too many of."
Her remarks, set to be published in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday but viewable online now, came in an in-depth interview with Emily Bazelon titled, "The Place of Women on the Court."

(NOTE: Ginsberg is a former official of the ACLU – a group that conspires to impose atheism as a national religion in direct violation of the First Amendments and the rights it provides and protects.  Given the extremism of the ACLU, it could be argued that those with serious connections with that organization should be rendered ineligible for judicial positions – especially a position on the nation’s highest court.)

The 16-year veteran of the high court was asked if she were a lawyer again, what would she "want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda."

Ginsburg responded:

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don't know why this hasn't been said more often.

Question: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae – in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

When pressed to explain what she meant by reproductive rights needing to be straightened out, Ginsburg said, "The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman."

Asked if that meant getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion such as a waiting period, the justice said she was "not a big fan of these tests."
I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman's decision. It's entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn't mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours.

I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they're fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change. Three years ago, Ginsburg received some embarrassing national attention when she napped on the bench during a court hearing.

"Justices David Souter and Samuel Alito, who flank the 72-year-old, looked at her but did not give her a nudge," reported Gina Holland of the Associated Press.

The incident caught the attention of Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who said:

"At first, she appeared to be reading something in her lap. But after a while, it became clear: Ginsburg was napping on the bench. By Bloomberg News's reckoning – not denied by a court spokeswoman – Ginsburg's snooze lasted a quarter of an hour.

"It's lucky for Ginsburg that the Supreme Court has so far refused to allow television in the courtroom, for her visit to the land of nod would have found its way onto late-night shows."
 

Thursday's Web

The day’s top Political News:

Billions in aid go to areas that backed Obama in '08

Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election.

That aid — about $17 billion — is the first piece of the administration's massive stimulus package that can be tracked locally. Much of it has followed a well-worn path to places that regularly collect a bigger share of federal grants and contracts, guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation.

Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-08-redblue_N.htm

Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress

Democrats scramble to give Pelosi cover for her outrageous attacks on the CIA

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

Panetta is a former liberal Democrat Congressman – one with no experience with intelligence, and someone who is a political appointee of Obama.  Someone obligated to toeing the party line.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/us/politics/09intel.html?_r=1&hp

Democrats "sweating the small stuff"

This summer’s agenda is historic: health care, climate change, financial regulatory reform. So why can’t the White House — with a 60-vote majority in the Senate — win a simple fight over a $12 million bus security program targeted for termination?

The picture’s no better in the House, where the Democratic leadership didn’t even allow a floor vote last month on cutting the F-22 — Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s No. 1 target in revamping the Pentagon’s budget. And with the highway trust fund running on fumes, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and House committee chairmen are at loggerheads with the money due to tap out Aug. 21.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel likes to say that each legislative victory builds muscle for the next battle. But Democrats look like a team that could use a few more basic-training pushups before taking on huge sectors of the economy.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24723.html

Opinion:
New Web site, New Mission: Stopping ACORN’s theft of elections

Back in the old days, the RNC sent me into just over a dozen special Congressioinal elections. I never lost a one of those, despite the fact we were often going into the campaigns with only 40% or so in support.

In those days, we made good use of telephone banks as a means of turning out our vote on election day.  That process was simple, but it was also very successful…no matter where we used it – among the isolationists on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to the icy realms of Morehead, Minnesota – the process worked and we won.

I developed great confidence that if we had 40% or more of the vote based on polling, we could probably win the election.  Time and time again, that process was successful.  It also worked in Virginia as the party’s Executive Director of the day, Kenny Klinge, and I set in motion a plan focusing turnout efforts on carefully targeted areas.  Klinge’s post election analysis proved our method provided the margin of victory for Republicans in the Old Dominion.

BTW – you can see the opening web site at www.tellwashingtonno.com. 

The plan is simple, but its also crucial.  We intend to identify our votes by finding email contacts in targeted areas and working together to find Republican voters.  It means people on our email list can have access to taking part in actually winning elections.

We are in the process of developing a list of targeted campaigns now. (We cannot win ALL elections, we must concentrate on a small number in which we can have an impact).

These campaigns will be listed within the next several weeks.  We will begin, of course, with efforts close at hand – especially Allen Boyd, the Blue Dog Democrat who betrayed his people by voting for the Democrat “Cap and Trade” scam which is really a new tax that will cost all tax payers a few thousand dollars a year.  We are also targeting the efforts of Bill Russell against Democrat slime ball John Murtha.  (Stories of Mutha corruption are growing almost daily)

Other targets will be developed – taking geography into consideration.  We will have two goals: defeating Democrats and defending vulnerable Republicans.  We are assessing campaigns right now in Georgia and Alabama specifically.

Once we have selected a couple of dozen targets, we will begin raising money with which to take on Democrat efforts through cable TV commercials and commercials over the Internet with video emails.  We will defend Republicans and take on with a view to taking out Democrats – especially those who ran claiming to be conservative.  NO Democrat in Congress can legitimately claim to be conservative.  After all, their first vote was to make Pelosi Speaker.

We will begin identifying activists in the targeted districts willing to work with us.  We will work together to expand our email reach, as a means of identifying among whom and where we find support.  We can also utilize survey research and demographic profiling in this process.

On election day, we will use emails to remind our voters, and to make sure they cast their ballots and remind others to do the same.

Current polling shows 40% of Americans consider themselves conservative.  Of course in many districts, that number is higher – good.  Plus we hope negative campaign commercials can increase that number.

On election  day, we hope our turnout efforts can make a difference sufficient to win the race.  We’ll see, and use experience in primary elections to reform and refine our efforts.

We MUST stop Obama’s ACORN – its been proven to have been involved in crooked voter registration and political efforts in the past – given access to the census process and other help from the Obama team – they depend on ACORN for re election plans – ACORN efforts and theft can be expected to expand and increase.

Join us in this effort.  We need you and your help – so does America and its future – you can do it without leaving your computer – and by writing a check or two.

Stand up for America.

Buddy
 
 The day’s top blogs:

1.

If You Don't Hate the Cap and Trade Bill, Let Me Show You Section 304.  —  I bet you thought that if you bought a house, you actually own it and can, with reasonable exceptions, do with it what you want.  You probably think that if you want to live in a log cabin, with wood stoves that belch smoke …

If You Don't Hate the Cap and Trade Bill, Let Me Show You Section 304.

I bet you thought that if you bought a house, you actually own it and can, with reasonable exceptions, do with it what you want. You probably think that if you want to live in a log cabin, with wood stoves that belch smoke into the air for heat, and an old washer and dryer that don't have those little EnergyStar stickers on them you can because it's your life and your property. You paid for it with money you earned with the sweat of your brow and what the heck is America anyhow if a body can't live in the home they want furnished with the appliances they want?

Ah, silly you. You didn't reckon on the Democratic Party's desire to control every miniscule aspect of your life.

(NOTE: Injecting government into such personal things as your homesite is only one effort by Democrats designed to take over the lives of all Americans.  A new “hate crime” bill – one named for Megan Meier – contains provisions that could inhibit free speech on the Internet and elsewhere.)

Let me introduce you to a little section of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill called the "Building Energy Performance Labeling Program". It's section 304 of the bill and it says, basically, that your house belongs to the state. See, the Federal Government really wants a country full of energy-efficient homes, so much so that the bill mandates that new homes be 30 percent more energy efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. That efficiency goes up to 50 percent by 2014 and only goes higher from there, all the way to 2030. That, by the way, is not merely a target but a requirement of the law. New homes must reach those efficiency targets no matter what.

But what does that have to do with current homeowners like you? Well, I'm glad you asked. You're certainly not off the hook, no way, no how. Here's what the Democrats have planned for you. The program requires that states label their buildings so that we can all know how efficient every building (that includes residential and non-residential buildings) is and it requires that the information be made public. To that end, the bill suggests a number of circumstances under which the states could inspect a building, including:

(A) preparation, and public disclosure of the label through filing with tax and title records at the time of-- 
    (i) a building audit conducted with support from Federal or State funds;
    (ii) a building energy-efficiency retrofit conducted in response to such an audit;
    (iii) a final inspection of major renovations or additions made to a building in accordance with a building permit issued by a local government entity; 
    (iv) a sale that is recorded for title and tax purposes consistent with paragraph (8);

    (v) a new lien recorded on the property for more than a set percentage of the assessed value of the property, if that lien reflects public financial assistance for energy-related improvements to that building;

or

    (vi) a change in ownership or operation of the building for purposes of utility billing; or
(B) other appropriate means.

Pay close attention to (iii), (iv), and (vi) because those hit you right where you live. What that's saying is the state will be empowered to inspect your home if you want to 1) renovate your house in any way that requires a building permit, 2) sell your house, or 3) change the name of the person responsible for any utility bill.

By now, if you haven't swallowed your tongue and are in need of medical attention, you're probably wondering if there's a penalty for not being in compliance with the new efficiency ratings. The answer is no, and yes. Here's where the bill gets really sneaky. So far as I can tell, there is no direct penalty if your house does not meet the bill's target. However, it does require that the number of buildings inspected by the state meet certain percentage targets and if they do not, the state loses out on a significant portion of the money it could get from Washington. In other words, the bill demands certain things from the states, but ties funding for those demands to compliance with the demands.
Did I say the bill gets sneaky? I was wrong. The bill strong-arms the states like a couple mob heavies leaning on a witness in a Rico trial. In turn, the states are going to put the screws to you, so it gets the billions of dollars Washington is dangling in front of them. So while the Federal government won't directly punish you, it will provide the states with lots and lots of rectangular, green reasons to do so.
And it gets worse. The Federal government has graciously offered to help homeowners with the retrofits the states will force them to do through a program called the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Purposes (REEP). REEP sets aside a pool of money in each state for property owners who have to turn their polar bear-killing buildings into lean, mean, green machines. But, and I'm sure you've guessed this already, there's a catch. Before I get to that, here's the magic formula (and don't read ahead and spoil the surprise!):

    (i) AWARDS- For residential buildings--

    (I) support for a free or low-cost detailed building energy audit that prescribes, as part of a energy-reducing measures sufficient to achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in energy use, by providing an incentive equal to the documented cost of such audit, but not more than $200, in addition to any earned by achieving a 20 percent or greater efficiency improvement; 
    (II) a total of $1,000 for a combination of measures, prescribed in an audit conducted under subclause (I), designed to reduce energy consumption by more than 10 percent, and $2,000 for a combination of measures prescribed in such an audit, designed to reduce energy consumption by more than 20 percent; 
    (III) $3,000 for demonstrated savings of 20 percent, pursuant to a performance-based building retrofit program; and 
    (IV) $1,000 for each additional 5 percentage points of energy savings achieved beyond savings for which funding is provided under subclause (II) or (III).

If you want to hit that 50 percent savings mark that all new homes have to hit, then you can get as much as $12,200, including inspection, as you scoop all those awards. That's a pretty good chunk of change that should cover most, if not all of the costs of a retrofit on any moderately-sized older house, right? Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

Except for that catch and boy is it a doozy.

    (ii) MAXIMUM PERCENTAGE- Awards under clause (i) shall not exceed 50 percent of retrofit costs for each building. For buildings with multiple residential units, awards under clause (i) shall not be greater than 50 percent of the total cost of retrofitting the building, prorated among individual residential units on the basis of relative costs of the retrofit.

Did you get that? You'll be on the hook for half of the cost of the retrofit, no matter what. To get the full effect of that part of the bill, I suggest you visit this web page and click the big yellow button right after you finish reading it.

I think Mark Steyn sums it up rather nicely:

I confess I'm finding it harder and harder to see why you fellows bothered holding a revolution. Under this bill, it will be illegal for me to sell my property to a willing buyer without first bringing it into line with some twerp bureaucrat's arbitrary and ever shifting "environmental" regulations originally designed for California, and which have helped turn the Golden State into the foldin' state, but which are nevertheless now to be applied from Maine to Alaska. And no matter what you spend a couple of years down the road the standards will be "revised" and you'll be out of compliance all over again.

And the very worst thing about all this is that it is only one little bit of what the Democrats in Washington want to do to you. Are you getting a little bit upset yet? If not, here are 49 more things they want to do to you in the name of climate change. I'm sure you can find something in there that might give you a reason to contact your Senator today.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I found the nifty linkable form of the bill thanks to this post by Pat who runs the quite good blog And So It Goes in Shreveport. As some of you know, it's very bad mojo not to like to a blogger who provides nifty and/or useful information. Thank you also to those of you who are sending this link around on Twitter. You make a blogger's heart grow three sizes too large this morning!

If this is your first visit to AIP, feel free to leave a comment to say hello (or groan audibly about Henry Waxman's folly of a bill). While you're here, why not take a couple extra minutes to read some of the other good blog posts. The Morning Conservative Reading List is a great place to start (and a reason to visit every day!). From there you can read about Czar Mania, some strange economic polling, and a David Axelrod fact-check beatdown, just for starters.

 UPDATE 2: Melissa Clouthier, AIP columnist and blogger extraordinaire, asks an interesting question:
Consider this for a moment. Right now, at this writing, there is a glut of new home supply. Will those homes have to be retrofitted to meet the government's 30% more fuel efficient standards? And how does one magically do this? Already, homes are being built with air-tight windows, special insulation, more efficient air conditioners, etc. What would make it more energy efficient? 

I'll give you a hint: think appliances. Trust me, Section 304 is but a miniscule fraction of the mandates the Democrats want to foist upon you.

2.
 
Price: Call back stimulus funds
Georgia Republican wants any unspent dollars returned.
Bob Keefe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON —- Amid growing debate over the effectiveness of President Obama’s economic stimulus program, a Georgia congressman wants to end it and recall any unobligated money that hasn’t been spent yet.

U.S. Rep. Tom Price, a Roswell Republican who’s never hesitant to criticize the Obama administration, calls his bill the “Reducing Barack Obama’s Unsustainable Deficit Act.” He plans to introduce it in the House today, though it likely won’t go very far.

“What I heard when I was back home [over the July 4th holiday] was people saying, ‘Stop the madness, stop the spending, stop the bailouts,’” Price said. “That’s what this does.”

(NOTE: I we are to get effective answers to the madness now coming out of Congress and the Obama administration, it will take Congressmen such as Tom Price to make it happen.  The Price position is a rational one.   Obama has proven claims of “shovel ready” projects that could be funded, did not exist, had not be identified, and are unlikely.  Obama had his way in forcing through an irrational “stimulus” bill.  It hasn’t worked – yet Democrats are suggesting we do it again. Amazing!!)

Price’s proposal comes as the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act faces increased questioning about how much good it is doing as unemployment continues to rise and the recession drags on.

Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office released a report indicating that the Recovery Act is clearly helping Georgia and other states address budget crises and stave off mass layoffs of state employees. But the GAO also was critical of how some Recovery Act funds are being used and tracked.
Transportation funds to help create jobs, for instance, are often winding up elsewhere, according to the GAO.

At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Robert Nabors, deputy director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, testified that 150,000 jobs had been created or saved by Recovery Act spending.

Even Obama and Vice President Joe Biden acknowledge the Recovery Act isn’t having as big an effect as they’d like.

In an interview with the ABC television network, Biden said the administration “misread” the economy. Obama said in Moscow that it appears the administration had “incomplete information” about the severity of the downturn. Still, he said, “there’s nothing that we would have done differently.”

Other White House officials and some congressional Democrats have said a second round of stimulus funding may be necessary.

Price’s proposal would repeal any remaining unspent money authorized by the Recovery Act, and recall any unobligated money authorized by the Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out banks and other financial institutions.

Price said the moves would save taxpayers more than $600 billion.

Of course, with Democrats firmly in control of Congress and the White House, Price acknowledges his proposal is likely to go nowhere. But, he said, it’s a step toward holding the White House accountable and keeping alive the Recovery Act debate.

3.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50677

Democratic Leader Laughs at Idea That House Members Would Actually Read Health-Care Bill Before Voting On It

Monica Gabriel and Marie Magleby

Washington (CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.

Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.

(NOTE: A tactic of Hoyer and other members of the Obama government has emerged in several key legislative measures to date.  They force a vote on a bill that leaves no time to read, analyze, and fully understand what that bill provides.  The tactic may be effective, but it is ethically reprehensible.  Of course the Obama government relects its Chicago Democrat Machine roots – “power is everything, forget what people want or need”.)

In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.

“Members clearly--and staff and review boards, they read them in their entirety. They go over it with members, and members read substantial portions of the bill themselves, but the issue is--I don’t know who signed this (pledge), but frankly the opposition has been very vociferous, not of the verbiage and bill, but on the concept that it incorporates,” Hoyer said.

Let Freedom Ring, a Delaware-based conservative organization, is circulating a pledge that asks members of Congress  to promise to read the entirety of the final text of a health-care reform bill before they vote on it.  They also are asking that the full bill be made available for review by the public for 72 hours before Congress votes on it.
 
Colin Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring, said Hoyer’s comment is evidence that lawmakers in Congress are “off-track.”
 
“It tells the American people how off-track our legislative process has become,” Hanna said. “I think if the framers of our Constitution ever saw an entire legislative body vote on a 1,500-page bill that no one had read, they would shudder--if not go into fits of apoplexy.”
 
Hanna said the pledge to read the full health-care bill--and all future bills--is one way for lawmakers to show that they are not casual in their commitment to constituents.
 
“We think the American public expects their legislators to know what’s in a bill before they support it, and we’re urging legislators to sign a pledge to that effect,” Hanna told CNSNews.com.
 
By signing the “Responsible Health-care Reform Pledge,” lawmakers commit to reading the entire bill and making it available to the public for three days before they cast their votes.
 
The pledge says, “I, (Name inserted here), pledge to my constituents and to the American people that I will not vote to enact any health-care reform package that: 1) I have not read, personally, in its entirety; and, 2) Has not been available, in its entirety, to the American people on the Internet for at least 72 hours, so that they can read it too.”
 
Earlier CNSNews.com stories revealed that few – if any –congressmen read the 1,550-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 or the 1,071-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 before voting on the bills.

Wednesday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Pope Calls for New World Financial Order

Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics, dignity and the search for the common good in the third encyclical of his pontificate.

In ''Charity in Truth,'' Benedict denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality of the globalized economy and lamented that greed had brought about the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The document, in the works for two years and repeatedly delayed to incorporate the fallout from the crisis, was released one day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet to coordinate efforts to deal with the global meltdown.

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/global_economy/2009/07/07/232693.html?s=al&promo_code=82E2-1

Democrats Split on Stimulus as Job Losses Mount, Deficit Soars

Democrats who control the levers of power in Washington are divided over whether to push for more deficit spending to end the recession and stem job losses, complicating the possibility of a second stimulus bill.

Obama underscored the dilemma by addressing both sides of the argument. In an interview with ABC News yesterday, he said unemployment approaching 10 percent is something “we wrestle with constantly.” He added that spending more borrowed money is “potentially counterproductive.”

The split reflects two major challenges facing the Democrats: Record budget deficits that make additional spending much tougher to pass and a 26-year-high unemployment rate of 9.5 percent that is expected to rise to double digits.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aIHpsBT0JHFc

Jury sees videos of Louisiana Democrat. congressman accepting cash

A federal jury has seen video of a former Louisiana congressman accepting a suitcase filled with $100,000 in cash outside a northern Virginia hotel.

The videos played Tuesday are a key piece of evidence in the bribery trial of William Jefferson, a Democrat who represented parts of New Orleans. He's accused of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes to broker business deals in Africa.

On the video, Jefferson seemed wary of accepting the money in public. When asked by an FBI informant if he wanted to peek inside the suitcase at the contents, he tersely replied, "No, I would not."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gAhJ_ijKsVNeqkiH39KhnCUNj-fQD999OKUO0

Opinion:
Tea Party Protests – so where do we go from here?

Tea Party protests have sent millions of Americans into the streets to protest liberal extremism in our government. Bailouts, outrageous spending, and plans and programs that will damage America.

In their frenzy to give government access to our healthcare system, liberals such as Obama are even supporting denying full coverage and treatment to senior citizens.  Any American over the age of 49 should be seriously troubled by this fact and should immediately involve themselves in political efforts opposing the liberal grab of healthcare.

Face it – the debate over healthcare is a choice between quality healthcare, and Obama’s “healthcare on the cheap”.  When government is involved, quality is impossible.

That’s just one issue.

The mainstream media has worked overtime to avoid honest coverage of the tea party movement, and to downplay the numbers of Americans involved.  Lest anyone doubt the potential impact of the sentiment we have witnessed, there is real hope liberals can be defeated.

Case-in-point: the amnesty bill a year or two ago.  That bill had the full support of the White House, the US Senate, and the mainstream media.  Yet, through the Internet, that bill was literally shouted down and defeated.

It was a major victory for normal Americans everywhere.

As important as turning back amnesty, is the demonstration that aroused public opinion can veto outrageous actions in Washington.  In short, we can “Tell Washington No”.

We must organize to enable us to arouse normal America as they were aroused by the prospect of granting amnesty to illegal aliens who sneaked across our border and who create massive costs and other problems daily.

But we MUST organize and develop an ability to sound the alarm and focus the tea party sentiment.  Shortly, our new web site, TellWashingtonNO.com will open with a focus on providing support for the tea party movement.

Here is a draft outline of how the program may work:

Taking the Tea Parties to a new level of effectiveness:

Tea Party protests have galvanized normal American outrage and prodded millions to go into the streets and stand up against the liberal insanity we see from Washington, and stand up for America itself.

Far more Americans have taken such a stand than the media will admit.  Far, far more are cheering the movement on from behind their computers and TV news programs.

So far, the tea parties have succeeded in attaining their goal. They have given normal America a platform from which to shout their personal outrage.

Where do we go from here?

1. Consolidate the email potential:  Communications is key in our taking our country back.  We must make certain as many of our people as possible, know the facts and understand the truth.

2. Tea party sentiment and activism must be focused on impacting government and liberal politicians.  (In Panama City, 300 tea party demonstrators ambushed a Blue Dog Democrat and forced him to sneak out a back door.  Almost immediately, a California-based, liberal environmental group began running TV spots in an attempt to give the Congressman cover.)  That impact needs to be repeated again and again and again.

3. While most of us want to keep our address books private, we DO need a contact in every Congressional District.  We need a means for alerting grass root Americans of issues and happenings that threaten their particular areas.

4. We cannot defeat all the liberals in just one election, but we can pick off vulnerable liberals.  We are targeting specific campaigns and will focus efforts on those districts.  We intend to pick off stragglers among liberals, and reinforce conservatives who may be in trouble.

5. Local leaders in this effort must spread the word to their friends, neighbors, and relatives to make sure we reach as many people as possible.

6. Think, plan, and innovate.  We don’t  have all the answers (no one does), but we do have a group of people available who have been involved with successful political efforts in every state.

7. We will create necessary information for reaching local free media in the targeted areas.  At the same time, dollars permitting, we will air TV commercials on cable TV and through the Internet via email videos, Youtube, and other options.  We must support our candidates, and we must attack our liberal opposition.

8. We will instigate a professional effort to raise the funds necessary for underwriting this effort.

9. Beginning in September, a dedicated effort will make lists of voters local leaders believe will vote our way.  They may vote to support a dedicated conservative, they may vote to kick out a liberal politician, they may vote simply to express their frustration with liberal corruption in Washington.

10. On election day, we will mount an effort (focused on our targeted areas) to turn out our voters and get them to the polls to vote.  Polls show 40% of Americans are conservative.  An effective voter turn out program can make such strength a mighty weapon that can win a lot of elections. If we succeed in turning out more of our voters – especially those who would not vote without being prodded by us -- we win any election.  40%, if fully energized, can become over 50% and provide a winning edge.

Think of our Tell Washington No movement as an answer by normal America to the threat ACORN and similar liberal groups pose to honest elections and vote counting.  We MUST have an effective voice and force through which to protect our democratic system and our freedom itself.  ACORN must be effectively confronted, opposed, and defeated.  That takes organization, leadership, and funding.

Winning elections is our ultimate goal.  Turning back liberal damage requires us to undercut the liberal domination we see today, and replace it with conservatives.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

The view of a Conservative Woman – a real grass root commentary on the Sarah Palin story. Tex comments:

I see Sarah took Monday off and spent it with her husband doing what they enjoy doing together. Fishing! Even if it is commercial, it is a relaxing work, away from the pressures of the Governor's office. A time to clear her head, think, regroup and set priorities. I admire her that her family first of all, is her first priority.

Sarah is a pioneer for women in politics. Women have been harassed in the work place since the beginning of time. Sexual innuendoes, gossip by men and women have taken time away from meaningful business in all work places.

She was obviously a huge threat to these small minded people who have hounded her, slandered her and her family for months, otherwise they would not have gone after her like a pack of wolves.

Sarah will be back on the center stage of the National politics. She is a fast study, fast learner. She will be grooming herself for bigger things.

Meanwhile, I do hope  she files suit for slander regarding the vicious attacks on her and her family. I hope legislation takes place, placing boundaries on related attacks on family members of politicians.

In this day and time, what family has not been touched with an unwed pregnant family member. Most would have rushed to an unwanted wedding to hide, hoping people couldn't count the months, or they would have quietly had an abortion, murdering the unborn baby. What parent hasn't taught a child one way of life, and had that child do exactly what they had taught them to not do?  Does that make them a bad parent? Does that make their child a bad child? Nope, it makes them human! It makes them parents who have high standards, but sometimes our children do disappoint us and have to learn things the hard way for themselves.

The same type of attacks took place on former President Bush's beautiful teenage daughters. They did not choose to be in the National spotlight, and any pictures and gossip of them on their college campus should have been off limits.

When a blogger demeans Sarah's precious down syndrome baby it is the lowest of all scum attacks!  I can only imagine the hurt to the other children who love their baby brother and would certainly be protective.

I'd say Sarah may have  a little battle fatique, or perhaps lost a squirmish or two, or a battle, but she has not lost the war.

 “Tex” Ethylene Beard  (Tex is a leader for “Tell Washington No” in the Houston area.)

2.

Q and A on the Climate Bill
David A. Fahrenthold and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers

The climate bill approved by the House last month started out as an idea -- fight global warming -- and wound up looking like an unabridged dictionary. It runs to more than 1,400 pages, swollen with loopholes and giveaways meant to win over un-green industries and wary legislators.
Here are answers to some key questions about the bill.

How would it work?

The legislation sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and gradually tighten it. Major emitters of greenhouse gases -- including any business that burns fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas or coal -- would have to reduce their emissions or buy allowances, which would be traded on markets like commodities. This would be the first economy-wide limit on greenhouse gases in the United States; Europe has had a similar system in place for years.

Would this bill stop climate change?

No. Even if it works exactly as planned -- delivering a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 2005 levels -- it might not slow down the rate of climate change by very much.

That is because emissions are a global problem: Greenhouse gases contribute to the Earth's warming whether they are emitted in China or in Chevy Chase. Even if the United States meets the legislation's goals for 2020, the world's total emissions would be reduced by about 3 percent, according to Energy Department projections.

That would be a start, environmentalists say. Usually emissions grow as the economy grows, so a 17 percent cut would be a huge feat for the energy industry. But scientists say that far deeper cuts are needed to head off disaster from warming temperatures, rising sea levels and other climate changes. The legislation would require reductions of 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050.

What will all this change cost, and who will pay?

Less than 50 cents per household per day, according to estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Congressional Budget Office. And that does not take into account benefits from avoiding hard-to-calculate costs associated with accelerating climate change.

According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, the cost would be much steeper:

$11.78 per day in the coming decades. According to House Republicans, the costs would cripple the U.S. economy and drive American jobs to countries that do not have climate regulations.

These costs are a mix of higher prices for carbon-based fuels -- the whole idea of a cap-and-trade system -- offset by a complex series of tax breaks and free allowances, new technologies and behavioral changes, and impacts on corporations and their profits.

Any estimate is tough to make because it is difficult to forecast exactly how the system would work and what new technologies will emerge. New technologies might make it cheaper to turn wind and sunlight into electricity, or make it possible for coal plants to capture carbon dioxide on a wide scale and store it underground.

Or they might not: It is difficult to forecast the effect of inventions still un-invented. Photovoltaic cells are similar to computer chips, whose prices keep falling, but carbon capture and storage is largely uncharted territory.

What did Waxman and Markey give away to get the bill passed?

Plenty. But the compromises -- with the possible exception of one involving agriculture interests -- would affect who pays the costs of cutting greenhouse gases, without undermining the emission targets.

What Waxman and Markey gave away were free emission allowances during a transition period of 10 to 20 years. The biggest chunks would reduce costs for certain companies and consumers, especially those reliant on coal. Other allowances would essentially be subsidies, going to states, a new clean-energy bank, forestry groups, automakers, and others that would sell them and use the proceeds.
Who loses in these compromises?

The federal government. Under President Obama's initial proposal, the federal government would have auctioned off 100 percent of the emission allowances under the cap. The Waxman-Markey bill would auction off about 15 percent to start with and would not phase out the free stuff until 2030. During the program's first 10 years, a full auction could have pumped an extra $713 billion in revenue into the Treasury. That could have been used to slash the deficit, pay for health care, cut payroll taxes or fund energy research. Obama had proposed a combination of energy aid for lower-income households and an extension of a temporary tax cut approved this year.

Who benefits?

-- Local electricity distribution companies that rely heavily on coal would get 35 percent or more of the allowances through 2025. Local utility regulators would decide whether costs can be passed through to consumers, but the Waxman-Markey bill has provisions designed to ensure that the benefits of free allowances flow to consumers.

That is great politics. But it means consumers would not have as much financial incentive for energy-efficient home improvements. The bill would still send powerful signals to anyone building a power plant, which is expected to last long after the phase-out of the proposed free allowances.

-- Energy-intensive manufacturers, such as those that make aluminum, glass or steel. These firms are worried about competition from countries such as China and India, which do not price greenhouse gases. These firms would get 10 to 15 percent of allowances for most of a decade. (A tariff would take effect in 2020 for goods from countries still lacking carbon prices.)

-- Various companies and agencies. According to Point Carbon, a market analysis firm, rural electricity firms would get an extra $6.4 billion worth of allowances thanks to an amendment to the bill. Three-quarters of 1 percent of all allowances would go to about a half-dozen small, independent oil refiners, said Kevin Book, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners; major oil refiners would get 2 percent of allowances. Automakers would need allowances to cover only their manufacturing emissions, not tailpipe emissions. But they would still get 3 percent of allowances for six years, then 1 percent of allowances for eight more.

Companies working on carbon capture and storage would get as much as 5 percent of allowances.
In the initial years, state governments would get 10 percent of allowances, which they would sell to finance a range of energy-efficiency activities, including mass transit.

An additional 5 percent of allowances would help groups fighting deforestation. They would sell the allowances to fund projects in places such as Brazil, Indonesia and China.

(NOTE: Face it.  This is another liberal scam.  Al Gore has manufactured the crisis and parlayed it into major dollars, and even a Nobel Prize – illustrating how totally and politically corrupted the Nobel process has become.  The “Cap and Trade” bill, is simply, purely, and completely one more scam through which liberal Democrats craft a way to tax Americans again.)

What could go wrong?

The bill's success depends heavily on carbon offsets. These are official certificates given for greenhouse gases that might have been emitted but were not or for emissions that were somehow removed from the atmosphere.

U.S. polluters could buy them and pay someone else to reduce emissions, instead of doing it themselves. But, if some offsets turn out to be bogus, the climate loses and the system bleeds credibility.

The idea behind overseas offsets is that foreign companies might be able to reduce their emissions more cheaply than U.S. firms could here. That would provide an equal benefit to the climate at a lower cost. It also might prompt foreign companies to buy emissions-reducing technology made in America.
If the government does not allow offsets from overseas, the EPA estimates, this might drive up the price of carbon credits, the allowances that polluters need for each ton of greenhouse gases emitted, up by 89 percent.

But some critics say that it will be difficult to verify whether an overseas company really reduces its emissions -- and show that these reductions would not have happened on their own. Offsets make political targets, too. "I'm sure our constituents want our money shipped overseas to plant trees," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said sarcastically during debate on the measure.

"I think people will buy the offsets," said Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "The question is whether or not the offsets, especially the foreign ones, can be validated and meaningful."

What about U.S. farmers?

U.S. agriculture interests won two key concessions. Unlike interest groups that won free allowances, the agriculture concessions could undermine the cap. That is because the bill would put the Agriculture Department, instead of the EPA, in charge of agricultural offsets. Those could include credits for tillage techniques that would minimize carbon dioxide emissions. If the Agriculture Department is too lax with standards or credits for long-standing practices, it could mean little change in emissions.
What else is in the legislation? A lot. It is called a cap-and-trade bill, but key portions are about regulation. The provisions would act as backstops, cutting emissions even if the cap-and-trade system does not work as advertised.

One section would require new coal-fired power plants to emit 50 percent less carbon dioxide than existing plants do. Plants licensed after 2020 would have to cut emissions by 65 percent. Other parts would establish more energy-efficient building standards and order the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbon, a refrigerant that is a strong greenhouse gas.

Finally, the legislation would establish a nationwide renewable electricity standard, requiring utilities to meet 20 percent of their 2020 power needs from renewable energy sources or energy efficiency. The generous set-asides for efficiency and the definitions of renewables make this standard weaker than those most states have already adopted.

How will the world view this?

This might be the most surprising answer of all: A bill swimming in bureaucratic minutiae might make its biggest impact as a broad-stroke idea, a symbol that the United States is serious about climate change.

"It really sends a signal to the international community that one of the largest emitters means business," said Elizabeth Perera of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group. If that persuades other large-scale polluters such as China to set their own emissions standards, Perera said, the world might get the major reductions that scientists say are needed.

Dont ever forget -- "Cap and Trade" is justs another Democrat tax raising scam.

3.

Poll: 60 Percent Oppose Another Stimulus Plan
Jim Meyers      

Amid calls for a new stimulus plan, a Rasmussen Reports poll reveals that only 27 percent of voters support another economic stimulus package this year, while 60 percent oppose it.

Public opposition to a second stimulus plan is explained in part by the mixed feelings voters have about the first plan: 31 percent say it has helped the economy, and 30 percent say it has hurt," Rasmussen said.

In another survey, pollster Doug Schoen found that 56 percent of respondents are opposed to the notion that government should spend money to stimulate the national economy even if it means increasing the budget deficit. Only 37 percent support that position.

These polls show that voters are deeply concerned about higher budget deficits created by government stimulus, Politico observes.

(NOTE: That misses the point.  Normal Americans oppose another stimulus plan because they know a scam when they see one.  The first “stimulus” bill should never have been passed, and only because liberals have a dominating majority on Capitol Hill, is another being proposed.  This is a clear indication of the arrogance among liberals today – having sneaked the Cap and Trade conspiracy across the finish line in the House, they believe they can pass almost any other absurd bill they wish.  The problem is, they likely have the votes to make good their threat.)

But several unions, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, plan to begin pressuring legislators for a jobs bill, saying the $787 billion stimulus package approved earlier this year wasn't large enough.

Calls for a new stimulus plan are being fueled by rising unemployment, which hit 9.5 percent in June, The Hill newspaper reported. Obama administration officials predicted in January that the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent if a stimulus plan was passed.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., who voted against the stimulus package, said Republicans could work with Democrats on a new stimulus plan if it includes significant tax cuts, in particular cuts targeted at small businesses and their employees.
But Vice President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the current stimulus plan needs more time to work. He told ABC News: "We misread just how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package."

Nevertheless, 68 percent of likely voters surveyed by Rasmussen believe that Congress and the president will try to pass another stimulus package this year, while only 20 percent believe they will not, and 12 percent are not sure.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved

Tuesday's Web

The day’s top political news:

“The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground” -- Obama

Obama agrees to substantial cuts in US Nuclear forces – including delivery systems – in his meetings with the Russians.  Security experts are deeply concerned.

Accord failed regarding Georgia aggression by Russia.  Agreement, but only so much.

Also failing to gain agreement is the defensive missiles for Poland and the Czech Republic – protecting those nations from potential attacks from Iran.

http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1908976,00.html?xid=rss-quotes

Al Gore likens fight against climate change to battle with Nazis

Al Gore has compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis.

The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change.

Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as the threat from Nazi Germany.  Selling an absurd premise is never easy – and shouldn’t be.  Man-made global warming is a long running Gore scam and scheme.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6658672.ece

Obama Adviser Says U.S. Should Mull Second Stimulus

The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.

The current plan “will have a positive effect, but the real economy is a sicker patient,” Tyson said in a speech in Singapore today. The package will have a more pronounced impact in the third and fourth quarters, she added, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not the administration.

Tyson’s comments contrast with remarks made two days ago by Vice President Joe Biden and fellow Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee, who said it was premature to discuss crafting another stimulus because the current measures have yet to fully take effect.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=ajQbZ.WrAVwQ

Opinion:
Central America placed at risk under Obama

Twenty five years ago this December, a group of us set out to help a small Central American nation and its people break free from left of center political domination.

Now Obama is headed toward undoing in Central America what we – and the people of that nation – worked  so hard to achieve. 

There were three of us.  Debby, who later became my wife; Jim Plummer, a long time GOP activist who continues providing this web site with important input and articles, and myself.

We went to Belize – the lone English-speaking enclave surrounded by Spanish-speakers.  Guatemala to the west, poses an ongoing threat – claiming Belize is theirs.  We were Belize at the request of Dean Lindo – founder of an opposition party that was right of center. Reagan’s people gave us a wink and a nudge to go and do what could be done.  The incumbent Belize Prime Minister, George Price, was the longest ruling head of state in the world - a member of the Queen’s Privy Council – a former priest who had run things for more than 20 years.  Price had taken an oath of poverty and seemed intent on making the people of Belize join him.

As is the case in the US today, the socialists had firm control of the Belize government.  But, as is also the case in the US today, they could not and did not produce on their political promises.  In another parallel, a major issue was energy -- Belize has no power grid, and its largest city got its electricity from two very old diesel generators that were cast offs from the British colonial rule.

Through a well-run campaign by the United Democrat Party, Dean Lindo and his party won.  It was a major and surprising victory.  Those of us who worked on that campaign so hard, were more than delighted to see “the good guys” win 21 of the 23 seats in the Belize legislative body.  The Prime Minister, Price, was ousted, and even lost his own constituency seat.  Manuel Esquivel became Prime Minister, and Belize launched its journey into a new era.

Normal America can take hope from that victory against all odds, and bring the same dedicated effort to the 2010 elections here.

It was an important victory because it demonstrated the stifling politics of the left could be turned back.  We would shortly see the Contras drive the Communists from ruling Nicaragua, and Panama was freed a few years later from its own dictatorship .  Freedom was on a roll throughout Central America.  Freedom was growing on the doorstep of America itself.

Today, things are different.  The old party rules Belize once again, and though I have had little information in recent months, the last news was not encouraging.  Now, just to the south, Honduras is in turmoil.

In 1984, Reagan’s people were providing quiet support to the forces of freedom in Belize – helping local people yearning for freedom, win.  That is not the case today with the American government.  Instead, the policies and actions of the Obama administratrion are  supporting political policies on the side of the left.  The extreme left.  Dictaors such as Castro and Chavez.  Such a policy shift is hardly a road to peace and prosperity for the people.

Let there be no confusion regarding Honduras. Victor Davis Hanson sums it up quite well:

 “Consider: the U.S. reacted quickly and meddled unambiguously in condemning the Honduran arrest of President Zelaya. It mattered little that for the first time in memory we Americans now were on the side of autocrats like Castro, Chavez, Morales, and Ortega in showing revolutionary solidarity with Zelaya ( and of course the UN as well).

We cared little that both the Honduran Supreme Court and Parliament had acted lawfully in ordering their President’s removal on grounds that he had acted unconstitutionally, in bold, unlawful efforts to obtain a third presidential term through a likely rigged plebiscite.

(It would be analogous to an Obama or Bush demanding a third term, illegally acquiring ballots to force a plebiscite, ignoring a Congressional conviction of impeachment, and a Supreme Court edict of unconstitutionality, only to be arrested by the Joint Chiefs and escorted out of the country).”

There are several important points in all this:

   First, Obzma’s policy regarding the Honduran turmoil puts us clearly on the side of the left wing dictators, and against the cause of freedom and liberty.

   Second, it sends a message throughout Latin America that the US and its power, has come down on those who have long been considered enemies to freedom, decency, and the people crushed down by typical left wing policy.

   Third,  It opens a door to making the American southern border even more vulnerable.  It reinforces the Democrats party encouragement of illegal aliens from Latin America.  If the US smiles on the likes of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Fidel Castro and his brother, to whom can freedom loving people of the region look for help and support? 

   Fourth, most of all, the Obama policy in Honduras, provides another window into his thinking, his political preferences, and his personal ideology.  The sight through that window is not a good one – nor for freedom lovers in Central America, and not for norml Americans in our own country.
Not a lot of hope is being offered these days by the strongest nation in the hemisphere  -- a nation whose interests and attention is far more concerned with Sarah Palin, the romantic problems of South Carolina’s governor, and Michael Jackson’s funeral.

The story serves as a sad illustration of where we are today.  Those who are paying attention are justly worried and concerned.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.
 
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/our-chrysalis-stage/2/

Our Chrysalis Stage
Victor Davis Hanson
Only Room for One Obama?

I got a lot of flak the last year for writing two or three columns suggesting the Europeans and other Leftists abroad might be careful about what they wish for in Obama: he might well leap-frog over them, leaving them all with the world they used to fantasize about, while in reality they profited from the world they demonized.

(As I wrote, a keen Frenchman whispered to me at a reception “There is room for only one to play Obama-and we are already Obama.”)

Comrade Hugo

Consider: the U.S. reacted quickly and meddled unambiguously in condemning the Honduran arrest of President Zelaya. It mattered little that for the first time in memory we Americans now were on the side of autocrats like Castro, Chavez, Morales, and Ortega in showing revolutionary solidarity with Zelaya ( and of course the UN as well).

We cared little that both the Honduran Supreme Court and Parliament had acted lawfully in ordering their President’s removal on grounds that he had acted unconstitutionally, in bold, unlawful efforts to obtain a third presidential term through a likely rigged plebiscite.

(It would be analogous to an Obama or Bush demanding a third term, illegally acquiring ballots to force a plebiscite, ignoring a Congressional conviction of impeachment, and a Supreme Court edict of unconstitutionality, only to be arrested by the Joint Chiefs and escorted out of the country).

The Real Project for the New American Century

What is our logic? Given the history of imperialism and colonialism, anytime in Latin America anyone in uniform arrests an elected president in a tie, it is a coup and must be condemned, no matter the legality or the ideology involved.

But let us not miss the forest for the trees. The larger fact is that suddenly the United States has become a sort of revolutionary force itself. At the next G-8 summit there will be no more hectoring of Europeans to stop selling sniper rifles to Iran or sophisticated machines tools used to enhance nuclear centrifuge operations.

Instead, the Europeans–”shocked” over the mayhem in the streets of Tehran, and still hurting over the kidnapping of British sailors, the jailing of Western journalists, and the arrest of Western embassy personnel–will be hectoring the Obama administration to please tighten up the old Bush sanctions.

(In the new, no-more-anti-ballistic-missile age, Frankfurt and Paris will soon be in range of the planned Iranian nukes.)

(NOTE: Ignoring the implications of leaving Berlin and Paris vulnerable to Iranian missiles, I cannot resist saying “they have no one to blame but themselves”.  In their immediate past, neither Germany nor France supported the US in the Global War on terror.   They forced us to go it alone, with the notable exception of Great Britain.  We found who our friends were – now those nations that chose to sit on their hands, must face the reality they have wrought.)

And Americans, I think, will resist increased sanctions or embargoes. As a transracial, transnational Gandhi-like figure, Obama believes that he alone understands and empathizes with the previously demonized Third-World revolutionary leaders.

Yes, on our behalf it is his destiny to talk with them, and tame them in a manner of speaking, perhaps to stop their terrorizing, drug-running, arming, and bullying, or more likely the overt manifestation of all that. In other words, he’s our Che, a universal pop star, part Bono, part Mandela, part Michael Jackson, and part Al Gore that deflects criticism that we are all Texas oil men with twangs who talk about Gawd, Eye-Rack, and Jasus.

This metamorphosis is to be accomplished by Obama’s singular charisma and ‘empathy’: as a person of color, on his paternal side from a  Muslim family, and of African heritage, Obama “knows” that he too has been on the butt-end of Western hegemony (forget the subsidized ride to prep school, Occidental, Columbia, Harvard, the mansion, etc.; we are talking of perceptions, not reality), and thus can assure an Ahmadinejad he ‘feels’ what it is like to be an Iranian leader with all sorts of globalized and Western-inspired pressures.  Just as the elite Sotomayor knows what it is to be a Latina in a repressive America, so Obama knows what it is to be a leader of color in a Western-dominated global order.

Our America–nationalizing the auto industry, socializing the health care system, allowing state, local, and federal income and payroll tax to confiscate 65-70% of the wealthy’s income, gravitating to a state-run, Ministry of Information media in which ideology governs access, news dissemination and appraisal, and even the banalities of press conference questioning–is now to be not that different from previously demonized states.

We are no longer “exceptional” (Obama’s words, not mine), and merely a postnational state with no particular global interests other than “world peace” and “global fairness”. In other words, there is now no real reason why an Iran or Venezuela should have any reason to be angry with the United States.

Our President sympathizes with much of their past hurts and sensitivities; he has voiced similar criticism of the past global role of the United States; and America will now find  its new role as one with those it used to isolate and bully. (The Europeans used to despise sanctimonious, moralistic and non-interventionist  Jimmy Carter; but they can’t really get mad at Obama. He’s no Georgia peanut farmer, with drawl, Bible, and Billy, but a metrosexual, Europeanized one of them who will drive them absolutely crazy as he sermonizes and pontificates.)

“Democracy” is largely a neoconservative construct, definable through a myriad of narratives, none of which with any exclusive claim on a relative notion like “truth.” Who is to say that Iranian or Venezuelan democracy is any less valid than the American strain of  democracy? (Again, for those who think I exaggerate or am being facetious, cf. Bill Clinton’s Davos praise of Iranian democracy in 2005).

Or who  is to say that what we call aggression is not merely someone’s self-defense? Only an empathetic soul can fathom how the other sees and suffers reality, since there is no real objective reality, just what we with power used to proclaim it as.

Ironies Abound

In this brave new age, there will be ironies glories, not all of them in the short-term uncomfortable. No more European internationalists will be taking cheap shots at U.S. ‘hegemony’ as we protect them.

No, they will be more worried that (1) America has out-lefted them (much more so than in the 1930s when we did not wish to join “British imperialism” in its efforts to stop Hitler, or during the 1950s when we objected (with Russia) against Anglo-French efforts to “recolonialize” Suez.). (2) We are no longer the “bad cop”, but the divine one, who has separated ourselves from the colonial European tradition. Oh yes, Europe wanted Obama, but he is not a creature of the Sorbonne salon, but rather sees himself and his paternal family more a victim of past colonialism (cf. the fate of the Churchill bust).

I think after Afghanistan, NATO will be analogous to the International Criminal Court–a Hague-like institution that will let the Euros deal with the Russians or the Islamists on their own, while issuing all sorts of moral “grave concern” and “extremely troubled” communiqués.

Hey, What Happened to Awful America?

We won’t be giving any more lectures on “neo-liberalism” and the glories of free markets. More likely, Americans will rather offend the socialist Europeans with our gargantuan public spending, vast pressure on international banks and lending institutions, repressively high taxes, big government, slow growth, high unemployment, and protectionist, unionized economy–an equality of result culture that in good ol’ American fashion trumps their own. I don’t think the game any longer is to label George Bush’s America heartless and cruel while you ship over billions of dollars in Mercedeses, Volvos, and elegant olive oil to a wide-open, no-holds-barred, free market consumer economy-as Bush the “Decider” leers at Russians, Muslims, Eye-ranians and anyone else that might push around the Euros.

But Wait a Minute

The problem with all this is that Obama’s sleek Boeing jet, his neat helicopters, his Chicago mansion, his children’s’ upscale prep schools, the flying in of chefs or flying in for a night in New York, are all predicated on a bountiful, profit-minded capitalist system of production, in which entrepreneurs take enormous risks in search of sizable personal profits, and are left alone to profit within government’s wide parameters of fair play.

A state-of-the-art military protects the global capitalist order, ensuring both free sea lanes and communications, but also plays the theoretically ultimate enforcer of fair play on things as diverse as copyright laws to patent protection. Tamper with all that? I don’t know at what point the proverbial goose and golden egg rule applies, but it is somewhere-as we see in the messes elsewhere in most of the world.

Obama has surrounded himself with legions of ‘fixers.’ Bright men and women who have Ivy League law degrees, business school credentials, PhDs in the social sciences, and academic pedigrees in science, humanities, and engineering. Quite impressive, these Platonic Guardians of the soon to be perfect state. But most of their careers in finance, government, business, and academia have been well-paid jobs critiquing, administering, regulating, nuancing, writing about, and hectoring those who create things–builders, developers, industrialists, farmers, truckers, transportation execs, retailers, lenders and investors.

 [ Reminds me of Ayn's Mouch & the 'looters'  HB ]

We are being run now by film critics, not directors, book reviewers not writers, music  columnists, not musicians. And it is far easier to fault than to birth, nuance rather than build.

The irony is that the muscular classes carry the regulating and talking classes on their backs. They don’t mind being whipped occasionally and even bridled, but like any good mule will suddenly stop and no longer move when they feel the rider either does not know where he is going, or is going to kill the mule with his switch, spurs, and yanking on the bit.

Yes, we are in the chrysalis stage and we will come out looking altogether different from what we were when we went in the cocoon.
 
2.

THE PRO-DICTATORSHIP ANTI-DEMOCRACY PRESIDENT 
 
Jack Kelly    

Manuel Zelaya, a Hugo Chavez wannabe, was elected president of Honduras in November, 2005.  He wanted to serve a second term.  But there was a difficulty.  Under the constitution of Honduras, the president may serve only a single four year term.

Mr. Zelaya proposed to circumvent that difficulty by holding a popular referendum on whether he should be allowed to run for a second term.  But there was a difficulty with that, too. 

The constitution of Honduras provides only one way for the constitution to be amended.  That is by a two-thirds vote of all the members of the National Congress in two consecutive regular annual sessions.

The Supreme Court of Honduras ruled the referendum was unconstitutional, and the National Congress passed a law forbidding referenda within 180 days of a national election.  (Honduras' next is this November.)  But Mr. Zelaya pressed on. 

When the army -- acting on an order from the Supreme Court -- refused to distribute ballots for the referendum (which had been printed in Venezuela), the president fired its chief of staff.  The Supreme Court unanimously declared the firing illegal, and Honduras' attorney general asked congress to oust the president.

Push came to shove on Sunday (6/28).  The army, acting on a warrant issued by the Supreme Court, arrested Mr. Zelaya and sent him into exile (in his pajamas, to Costa Rica).  This was described as a "coup" by the news media, and was denounced by, among others, Hugo Chavez, who threatened military action to restore Mr. Zelaya to power, and the Obama administration.

It's the Obama administration's view the coup was an "illegal and illegitimate act that cannot stand," White House officials, briefing on background, told journalists.  Mr. Zelaya must be returned to power, they said.

"Knowing trouble was brewing in Honduras over several weeks, the Obama administration warned power players there, including the armed forces, that the United States and other nations in the Americas would not support or abide a coup," the AP quoted "officials" as saying. "They said Honduran military leaders stopped taking their calls."

It seems more accurate to say that Mr. Zelaya, with Venezuelan help, was trying to execute a coup against the Honduran constitution than to accuse the military -- which was acting on orders from the Supreme Court and with the support of the legislature (124 of 128 deputies in the unicameral congress endorsed Mr. Zelaya's removal Sunday afternoon) -- of having done so.

Daniel Lopez Carballo, a retired Honduran general, told CNN that if the military hadn't acted, Mr. Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator, would have been running Honduras by proxy.

Typically in a coup, the military seizes control of the government.  But the military quickly surrendered power to an acting president -- from Mr. Zelaya's own party -- chosen by the National Congress.

The streets of Tegucigalpa were quiet after Mr. Zelaya's removal, perhaps because not many Hondurans like him.   In a Mitofsky poll taken in April, Mr. Zelaya had an approval rating of 25 percent, the lowest of 18 regional leaders.

So Mr. Obama is intervening on the wrong side.  But if you take him at his word (a dangerous thing to do), the wonder is that he is intervening at all.  This is the guy, you'll remember, who was so concerned about being perceived as "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs that he, alone among Western leaders, refused to denounce the blatantly stolen election in Iran, or to express support for those who protested the theft.

Mr. Obama is now doing with regard to Honduras what he has refused to do with regard to Iran: organizing an international coalition to pressure the country to reverse course. 

Why threaten Honduras, but not Iran?  Honduras is no threat to us.  Iran is.  A large majority in Iran oppose the government's brutality.  Apparently, a large majority in Honduras support what the army has done.

There is a disturbing consistency to Mr. Obama's apparent inconsistency on Honduras and Iran.  In both the case where he has intervened, and in the case where he hasn't, he has taken the side of anti-American dictators (in Mr. Zelaya's case, a wannabe dictator) over the vast majority of their people.

"We're getting a close look at Obama's priorities, and they are hideously out of step with democracy and the rule of law," concludes Web logger Ed Morrissey of Hot Air.

So hideous that it seems reasonable to conclude that the President of the United States is on the side of dictators instead of democracy, and that he is not on the side of America at all.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

3.

http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.blogspot.com/2009/07/sarah-palin-declares-her-independence.html
 
A Time For Choosing
Sarah Palin Declares Her Independence 
 
Once the hunted, Sarah Palin becomes the hunter.
 
Sarah stunned the world Friday by doing something that isn't done. She is willfully giving up one of the most powerful positions a politician can aspire to. She is stepping down as Governor of one of the most important states in America.
 
The media elites were stunned. It was almost hilarious watching their reactions of disbelief. Their commentary was downright entertaining, and further proof that they don't have a clue. Even those on Fox!
 
And the symbolism of doing this on the 4th of July holiday, the time we celebrate our nation's birth, and our independence, was completely lost on the whole lot!
 
Almost universally, no one in the elite media got it. This is a huge comment on why our nation is in deep, deep trouble. One reporter on Fox, who has covered Sarah since she became Governor, went so far to say that her speech was "rambling", and "incoherent." Again, this just proves that even the media we most trust for news doesn't a clue about real Americans.
 
Sarah Palin sounded just like us! We, the people, understood every single word she said. This is the reason she is wildly popular in the first place. She IS one of us!
 
Of course, just as universally silly as the commenters are, the pundits are even more clueless. And, evidently, devoid of any and all abilities of comprehension, be it for the written word, or spoken. We'll get to the speech itself in due time, but suffice it to say, that for normal Americans, those who this speech was aimed at, this was a call to action.
 
Now the talking heads all agree that Sarah is done.
 
No chance of ever being anything again.
 
Certainly no chance of ever being President. Some say this was political suicide. Well, it won't be the first time Sarah has committed "political suicide."
 
After Mayor Sarah Palin was term limited out (why don't we have term limits for ALL elected officials?) she decided her next move would be Lt Governor. She lost. But Governor Frank Murkowski saw a talented woman with a lot of grit. He appointed her as Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. An important job. One that regulates Alaska's most important activities, oil and natural gas production.
 
Chairman Palin was charged with maintaining ethics as part of her job. Something that her history has shown she takes very seriously. And her talent in this area was soon to be put to good use. There were a lot of less than ethical things going on, some big, some really big.
 
Now one thing, Alaska is a "good old boy network" kinda state. And her agency was filled with a lot of movers and shakers in the Republican party. Including the party chair, and even a former attorney general. So as one would imagine, there was some push back when Chairman Palin sought to end some of their practices.
 
Now mind you, this is a high paying gig. Six figures. Something a mother of four had to be thinking about.
 
So, what did Sarah do? Well, she committed "political suicide" and resigned from the post. She then took her fight to the people. She also filed formal complaints.
 
We all know the result of this effort. Commissioner Randy Ruedrich who is also the chair of the Republican party, was forced to resign, and paid the largest fine in state history for this sort of thing, $12,000. Gregg Renkes the former attorney general was also forced to resign.
 
Both of these men had conflicts of interest in dealing with companies they were supposed to be regulating. And Ruedrich was also guilty of doing party business on state time. The effort to go after Renkes was bi-partisan, as Sarah joined in with democrat Eric Croft.
 
Oh, and one more thing, Sarah took on her former boss, Governor Frank Murkowski, and defeated him in a landslide primary election, and defeated popular former democrat Governor Tony Knowels in the general election.
 
So much for "political suicide."
 
People who have followed Sarah Palin for a long time absolutely get what she is doing.
 
One of the big things behind this move is to change the rules. When Sarah became Governor, she and her administration passed sweeping ethics reform. That's a good thing. But since she returned to Alaska after the presidential election, the democrat party has turned around and used these very laws she championed against her and the state of Alaska. Chicago politics at it's "finest."
 
I have written about Barack Obama's direct involvement in the failed "troopergate" smear, and even his payoff to former Alaska Senator Kim Elton for his efforts. I have also written extensively about Linda Kellen Biegel, the Democrat National Committee's "official blogger for Alaska."
 
This Biegel woman has turned her insane hate into a cottage industry, openly raising money online to fund her efforts, the legality of which is in question.
 
She's not alone in this, as other paid operatives, as well as screw loose crazies, have filed 15 so-called "ethics complaints" since Sarah has come home from the presidential trail!
 
These deals range from the silly, to the down right idiotic!
 
One complaint had to do with the fact Sarah was photographed holding a fish!
 
Some background. Sarah has worked as a commercial fisherman. She and her husband still own a commercial fishing business, and yes, when time permits, she has been known to go out and work the nets!
 
One complaint had to do with the fact she did an interview in her office!
 
She got tagged because, as Governor, she was at this year's Iron Dog race, at nearly 2000 miles, the longest most difficult snow machine race in the world.
 
She showed up in sub-zero weather wearing a jacket.
 
Oh, the humanity!
 
Yes, the jacket had the logo of the company that sponsors her husband, Todd, who is a multi-championship winning racer. And?
 
The bottom line, is these loons, and democrat operatives have managed to cripple the Governor, her staff, and grind governing to a halt. This nonsense has cost Governor Palin and her family $500,000 personally, but more importantly, to her, the state of Alaska has spent $2 million dollars, and 1000's of hours in time messing around with these complaints.
 
Needless to say, ALL of these complaints have been thrown out. But as I reported earlier, that means nothing to these bloggers. There were many more bogus ethics complaints planned.
 
This is Saul Alinsky's Rules being used relentlessly, and being sanctioned by Chicago's most famous citizen.
 
And with a group of dishonest democrats who will just keep filing these bogus ethics complaints, with absolutely no repercussions, she just saved the citizens of Alaska at minimum a couple of million dollars the state would have had to shell out had she completed her term.
 
This is pretty typical Sarah Palin. When she took office she went on a cost cutting spree. She famously put the executive jet for sale on eBay. And while it was not sold there, it was sold. It was a jet the previous Governor had purchased to travel the state. On the surface, not a bad idea. Alaska is roughly the size of the entire western United States, and many cities are only easily accessible by either air or water.
 
The only problem, is that jet was unable to land on most of the unimproved airfields in Alaska, and kind of useless.
 
Palin reassigned the "executive chef" at the Governor's mansion saying she didn't want her kids to get used to being waited on by staff. That saved the state money. She also, along with Lt Governor Sean Parnell, turned down a substantial pay increase this year. Something that just isn't done.
 
So by stepping down, Sarah Palin just changed the rules on these people. As a private citizen, she is not subject to the constraints of office. She doesn't have to maintain a certain decorum.
 
Make no mistake about it, Sarah Palin is a street fighter. What she has done is declare herself the left's worst nightmare! The paid DNC operatives, and loons, are going to look back and wish they had let sleeping dogs lie.
 
Case in point, one of the DNC operatives, Huffington Post blogger Shannyn Moore has already been out there spreading lies about Sarah. Moore, who earlier in the year was obsessed with what was under Sarah's skirt, is peddling a story that Palin is about to be indicted on some sort of federal charges.
 
Palin's attorney Thomas V Van Flein has already put Shannyn Moore, the Huffington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times, as well as the Washington Post on notice that they will be seeking actions against them for printing such lies.
 
Van Flein's open letter to the parties explains the facts of the story in question, which involves the Wasilla Sports Complex that came to be during Sarah's tenure as Mayor of Wasilla. Needless to say, another attempt to smear Sarah Palin knocked to the ground.
 
"Screw Political correctness!"
 
"Politically Speaking, I don't care if I live or die, I'm not going to sit down, I'm not going to shut up!" ___Sarah Palin in a June speech introducing Michael Reagan.
 
It seems we saw signs of Sarah's big move a while back. We just didn't know what we were looking at. Sarah made the above remarks during a speech where she introduced Michael Reagan to a crowd in Anchorage.
 
In her speech she also took Obama and his economic policies head on, as well as his foreign policy. She spoke at length about states rights, and how the federal government had become too big, and too controlling.
 
It seems that the trip to Kosovo and Germany to visit the troops may have also held clues to what was about to happen. While there, and in Sarah's tweets, she continually talked about the sacrifices of our brave soldiers, and about the greatness of America. It's obvious that while her move to change directions has been in the works for some time, her second trip to visit troops in the past two years really had a profound effect on Palin.
 
Of course, there are all of her detractors who are now saying she is "abandoning her job." Funny thing, she is transferring power to Lt Governor Sean Parnell. This is the same Sean Parnell who she would have transferred power to had she become Vice President.
 
Some say they don't buy the "lame duck" excuse. But having followed Sarah since she became Governor, having read her writings, watched her speeches, and read other's thoughts about her, people who know her, I think I understand, at least in a tiny way, how she thinks about her duty to the folks who put her in office.
 
Again, it's a given, the loons and DNC operatives were never ever going to stop costing the state of Alaska millions of dollars in their perverted attacks on Sarah Palin. So that obviously weighed very heavily on her mind. As soon as Sarah started speaking out. As soon as Sarah started really challenging those who would destroy America from within, the attacks would come.
 
Sarah recognizes what most of America now does. We are in real trouble. We have incredibly incompetent leadership in Washington. Both parties are filled with people who are more interested in power than doing their jobs. We have a Congress that spends trillions of dollars and passes insane legislation that will destroy our personal liberty, without reading a single word in these bills!
 
Congress passed the trillion dollar stimulus package and absolutely no one read this bill. It was rushed through by Barack Obama and his crew. Obama shouting that if the bill wasn't passed immediately the sky would fall! Then, once passed, Obama took a long weekend, while staff set up the photo op!
 
The stimulus package has been a disaster, so far.
 
The House of Representatives just passed the largest tax increase in human history, the cap and tax bill on "climate change." Here's a bill that will double or triple the cost of energy, and by default, effect the cost of every single product consumers purchase. And this bill will actually do nothing to help the climate! It would also cost millions of jobs, and send most manufacturing overseas to nations that haven't bought into the "climate change" nonsense.
 
Even better, most Americans understand that "global warming" is a hoax. That the planet is actually cooling. More and more scientists have come out and disputed the whole scheme.
 
In fact, the latest scandal surrounding this involves an internal EPA memo that disproves "global warming", that was suppressed ahead of the House vote.
 
Not only had no one read this incredibly huge tax bill, an additional 300 pages were slipped into the bill in the dead of night just before the vote!
 
This isn't just insanity, this is criminal!
 
This sort of thing is why Sarah felt she could no longer sit still and keep her mouth shut. This is why she has decided to travel and speak out.
 
Of course, as Governor, she does have the bully pulpit, but since the DNC has their operatives filing bogus ethics complaints at the drop of the hat, it would be very detrimental to Alaskans for Sarah to use her power as Governor to challenge these crooks in DC.
 
Better to take them on as Sarah Palin, America, than as Governor Sarah Palin.
 
And she did have a point about lame ducks spending the people's money while doing little of their work.
 
Now with the dishonest press, and the talking heads, there is a huge double standard. They think its just horrible that Sarah is "abandoning" Alaska.
 
On the other hand, no one in America seemed to have a problem when Barack Obama, the very inexperienced Junior Senator from Illinois, after promising the people of Illinois that he wouldn't run for President in his first term, worked a mere 143 days out of his six year Senate term, only to abandon his job completely to spend a year and a half running for President!
 
All the while collecting his paycheck from all of us taxpayers.
 
Double standard?
 
You bet'cha!
 
I prefer Sarah's way of doing things.
Now for her speech!
 
What a red meat patriotic speech it was. This was Sarah Palin speaking out to all of America and letting them know she's heard the call, and is ready to answer it.
 
In her speech Sarah talks about the need to end politics as usual. Yeah, I know, all politicians say that. But with Sarah Palin, you instinctively know that she actually means it. And frankly, has put her money where her mouth is by resigning to take those who are harming America straight on!
 
Sarah talks about how we need to build America up, not tear it down. She called the extreme spending spree being championed by Barack Obama "obscene" and "immoral."
 
Sarah, in her speech, repeatedly called on all to get involved and make a difference.
 
Of course, the elite media who evidently feel it's their job to tell us what to think (or spread propaganda, I can never decide which) are so sure that Sarah has had enough of all of this and is going home.
 
So as if to make sure there will be no doubt to her intentions, Sarah put out an Independence Day message.
 
The end of the message goes as follows:
 
"I shared with you yesterday my heartfelt and candid reasons for this change; I've never thought I needed a title before one's name to forge progress in America. I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!
 
God bless you! And I look forward to making a difference - with you!
 
Sarah"
 
Now to many, this is Sarah's way of announcing her intentions to be the next President of the United States, and it may very well be. But I am absolutely under the impression that this doesn't really matter to her. I firmly believe she is more interesting in changing America for the better. I firmly believe she is more interested in stopping the destruction that Barack Obama and Congress is causing our great nation.
 
Of course, this is WHY Sarah Palin will be President. Her millions of followers will demand it. Absolutely no one currently in politics has the vision for America that sees us returning to the principles that our founding fathers set forth.
 
Absolutely no one out there has the ability and desire to take on Barack Obama and Congress with no holds barred. Straight up, no quarter.
 
Absolutely no other political figure represents the conservative movement as defined by one of our greatest Americans, Ronald Reagan. An America where personal freedom and liberty rein. A strong America. An America that made us the envy of the world.
 
Both Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin see America as a shining city on a hill. God's greatest gift to mankind. The world's best hope.
 
Our President and Congress are doing their level best to destroy that vision of America. They are spending our grandchildren's and great grandchildren's future on their socialist schemes. They are ignoring the growing threats around the world, while passing unread legislation that threatens our personal liberties and freedom.
 
Sarah Palin recognizes this, and has answered the call.
 
The real question here is for you, the gentle reader.
 
Will you also answer the call? Or will you continue to just sit and complain, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting for you?
 
Sarah Palin looked at her kids and asked: "Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children's future from outside the Governor's office?" She got four "yeahs" and a HELL YEAH" in response!
 
So again, what will your answer be? Sarah has put her entire career on the line for America.
 
What are you willing to do?
 
It's time to choose!
 
"In the words of General MacArthur: We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction."_____Sarah Palin

Monday's Web

The day’s top political news:

California’s Nightmare Will Kill Obamanomics

With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year.

The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTKrn1jUJwdE

Robert McNamara, Architect of Vietnam War, Dies at 93

Robert Strange McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93.

Family members said McNamara died at his home in Northwest Washington. They did not give a cause of death.

McNamara was secretary of defense during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. In that capacity he directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. When the war was over, 58,000 Americans were dead and the national social fabric had been torn asunder.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070601197_pf.html

Palin takes to Web for hints of political future

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin didn't wait long to give some hint of what her political life might look like after she leaves office at the end of the month.

After staying out of the public eye for most of Saturday, a day after abruptly announcing she would soon give up her job as governor, Palin indicated on a social networking site that she would take on a larger, national role, citing a "higher calling" to unite the country along conservative lines.

Palin shocked even her closest friends on Friday when she announced she would resign July 26, more than a year before her first term ends. But the controversial hockey mom has not revealed many details of bigger plans and national agenda.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090705/D9988SCG0.html

Opinion:
Another “stimulus” scam from liberal Democrats?  Surely you jest.

This morning, rumors are circulating that liberals are considering another “stimulus” scam…more American dollars down the drain.  The obvious failure of the first financial fiasco liberals hid behind the “stimulus” cover.

It didn’t stimulate, it hasn’t even been spent.

Commentator Neal Boortz has a comment:

“We’re billions of dollars further in debt (trillions?) and the economy is still stagnant. TARP, the stimulus bill, massive debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay .. and what has this all brought us? Banks aren’t lending, businesses aren’t hiring – let along expanding – and consumers aren’t buying. Oh, to be sure, the malls are crowded. Turn up the thermostats and see how long that lasts. Those aren’t shoppers, they’re just your neighbors trying to stay cool while watching the latest absurd teen fashion and freak shows.

Do you know what the initials SNAFU mean? That word was created to define government action, or inaction as the case may be. In 1942 Time magazine carried this revelation: "Last week U.S. citizens knew that gasoline rationing and rubber requisitioning were snafu.” Well .. if there was ever a SNAFU, our economy would fit the description. To fully understand this, you have to know what the acronym stands for. Go ahead … Google it.”

Liberals can pass another “stimulus” scam if they wish.  They have enough votes to do anything they wish.   Normal America must understand this and begin right now working to oust as many Democrats as possible in the 2010 election.

A second “stimulus” scam is one and only one thing: it’s a liberal finger in the eye and middle finger salute to normal Americans who are protesting bailouts and government spending in the tea party protests.

Liberals are terrified of what they are seeing in the tea parties.  And well they should be.  These demonstrations of grass root outrage is massive – more massive than any such uprising in memory.  The national media – long ago having joined the campaigns of liberal Democrats – are doing their best to avoid coverage of the massive outpourings or downplaying their implications.

Passing another stimulus bill – massive robbery of the public treasury – is the most effective answer liberals have.  They are saying “if you whine about the first stimulus, here is another shot across your bow”.  It’s a clear and unmistakable insult to normal America and open abuse of the power liberal Democrats have taken.

We can only hope the protests gain focus, not on all of Washington, but where the outrage belongs – in the laps of liberal Democrats – politicians we must begin working right now to defeat and remove from office.

This is a test of wills that normal Americans cannot lose.

Buddy

The Day’s top blogs:

1.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/limbaugh_obama_third_term/2009/07/01/230937.html?s=al&promo_code=8294-1

Limbaugh: Obama Laying Groundwork for Third Term

Rick Pedraza  
 

Rush Limbaugh is suggesting that President Barack Obama and his political operatives already are laying the groundwork for a third term
 
“You have to wonder if Obama is just trying to lay a foundation for not being a hypocrite when he tries to serve beyond 2016,” Limbaugh told his national radio audience. “I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next number of years there is a move on the 22nd Amendment”.

Limbaugh has a point.
 
Upon Obama's taking office, Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., introduced legislation in the House to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits presidents to two consecutive terms or 10 years in office. Serrano’s justification for the bill is that, until 1951, nothing prevented a president from serving more than two terms.

Additionally, a grass-roots movement is under way to make Obama's third term possible. A Web site, End22.com, is dedicated to abolishing the 22nd Amendment and is asking supporters for donations to make it happen.

"We are wise enough to choose our own leader and to decide how long that leader will serve," the Web site states, noting there was nothing in the original Constitution of 1787 that barred a third or fourth term for presidents.

"With our current crises, the American People need to take back their right to elect the leader of their choice. The task is too large and the risk is too great. We must act now!"
Limbaugh acknowledged that Obama may not try to repeal the amendment on his own.
 
“He may not openly try to change the Constitution. But there might be this movement in the country from his ‘cult-like’ followers to support the notion that a democratically-elected leader who is ‘loved’ and ‘adored’ has carte blanche once elected — just serve as long as he wants because the people demand it, because the people want it, because the people love it.”

(NOTE: Liberal Democrats have the votes with which to kill the 22nd Amendment.  They can give Obama an option for running for a third term if they decided to do so.  There is only one potential for opposing that idea: defeating Democrats on Capitol Hill and replacing them with Republicans.  There is no “Plan B”.  This is a war for our nation and it must be waged and won through the two party system – like it or not.”)

Limbaugh said Obama has sympathy for dictators; he relates to them. He inherited his father's Marxism.

“I wouldn't put it past Obama to be plotting right now how to serve beyond 2016, and I think [that’s the reason for the] way he's reacting to what's happening in Honduras.

 They've got a constitution. They’re a democratically elected set of officials down there, and you had a guy running the country, Mel Zelaya, who was just going to basically rip that country's democracy to shreds and the country moved in to stop him from doing it. And Obama sides with the guy who wanted to rip up the constitution.”
 
Limbaugh said Obama sides with other dictators in the region, as well, and “is nothing if not a hardcore liberal, always more sympathetic, appearing to side with the bad guys on the world stage.”
Limbaugh described Obama's followers as a “cult-like bunch” whose “attachment to him is not political, it's not ideological, it is not issue-wise. It is cultish. It includes a wide percentage of minorities who, for different reasons, will come to think that he simply cannot be replaced.

“[If he] succeeds with amnesty, for example, and all the illegal aliens are instantly made citizens — he'll be too important. Just like right now — he's too big to fail as far as the drive-bys are concerned; he's too important to be replaced. No one else can lead the nation, they will say.”

During a news conference Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked whether Obama supports Serrano’s House Joint Resolution No. 5, which, if passed, could lead the way for an Obama run at a third term. It was noted that Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also supports repeal of the amendment.

“You're going to find I tend to get it mixed up with House Joint Resolution Four and Six,” Gibbs said, to laughter from the press corps.

“I think the president is firmly in support of an amendment that would limit his time in the presidency to eight years if he's given that awesome responsibility by the American people.”
But Limbaugh disagrees.

“Anybody who thinks [Obama] intends to just constitutionally go away in 2016 is nuts. I think that's what all this ACORN stuff is all about. I think given ACORN money and fraudulent voter registration — whatever it's going to take — these are people who seek power for reasons other than to serve. They seek to rule.”
 
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

2.

http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.blogspot.com/2009/07/sarah-palin-declares-her-independence.html
 
A Time For Choosing
Sarah Palin Declares Her Independence 
 
Once the hunted, Sarah Palin becomes the hunter.
 
Sarah stunned the world Friday by doing something that isn't done. She is willfully giving up one of the most powerful positions a politician can aspire to. She is stepping down as Governor of one of the most important states in America.
 
The media elites were stunned. It was almost hilarious watching their reactions of disbelief. Their commentary was downright entertaining, and further proof that they don't have a clue. Even those on Fox!
 
And the symbolism of doing this on the 4th of July holiday, the time we celebrate our nation's birth, and our independence, was completely lost on the whole lot!

(NOTE:  It was lost on many people.  In politics, its necessary to avoid assuming the voting public is smarter than they seem to be.  They often don’t think that deeply.  That Obama could get elected despite his being totally unqualified is a case in point.  Palin needs to make sure she communicates her message and  does so effectively.)

Almost universally, no one in the elite media got it. This is a huge comment on why our nation is in deep, deep trouble. One reporter on Fox, who has covered Sarah since she became Governor, went so far to say that her speech was "rambling", and "incoherent." Again, this just proves that even the media we most trust for news doesn't a clue about real Americans.
 
Sarah Palin sounded just like us! We, the people, understood every single word she said. This is the reason she is wildly popular in the first place. She IS one of us!
 
Of course, just as universally silly as the commenters are, the pundits are even more clueless. And, evidently, devoid of any and all abilities of comprehension, be it for the written word, or spoken. We'll get to the speech itself in due time, but suffice it to say, that for normal Americans, those who this speech was aimed at, this was a call to action.
 
Now the talking heads all agree that Sarah is done.
 
No chance of ever being anything again.
 
Certainly no chance of ever being President. Some say this was political suicide. Well, it won't be the first time Sarah has committed "political suicide."
 
After Mayor Sarah Palin was term limited out (why don't we have term limits for ALL elected officials?) she decided her next move would be Lt Governor. She lost. But Governor Frank Murkowski saw a talented woman with a lot of grit. He appointed her as Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. An important job. One that regulates Alaska's most important activities, oil and natural gas production.
 
Chairman Palin was charged with maintaining ethics as part of her job. Something that her history has shown she takes very seriously. And her talent in this area was soon to be put to good use. There were a lot of less than ethical things going on, some big, some really big.
 
Now one thing, Alaska is a "good old boy network" kinda state. And her agency was filled with a lot of movers and shakers in the Republican party. Including the party chair, and even a former attorney general. So as one would imagine, there was some push back when Chairman Palin sought to end some of their practices.
 
Now mind you, this is a high paying gig. Six figures. Something a mother of four had to be thinking about.
 
So, what did Sarah do? Well, she committed "political suicide" and resigned from the post. She then took her fight to the people. She also filed formal complaints.
 
We all know the result of this effort. Commissioner Randy Ruedrich who is also the chair of the Republican party, was forced to resign, and paid the largest fine in state history for this sort of thing, $12,000. Gregg Renkes the former attorney general was also forced to resign.
 
Both of these men had conflicts of interest in dealing with companies they were supposed to be regulating. And Ruedrich was also guilty of doing party business on state time. The effort to go after Renkes was bi-partisan, as Sarah joined in with democrat Eric Croft.
 
Oh, and one more thing, Sarah took on her former boss, Governor Frank Murkowski, and defeated him in a landslide primary election, and defeated popular former democrat Governor Tony Knowels in the general election.
 
So much for "political suicide."
 
People who have followed Sarah Palin for a long time absolutely get what she is doing.
 
One of the big things behind this move is to change the rules. When Sarah became Governor, she and her administration passed sweeping ethics reform. That's a good thing. But since she returned to Alaska after the presidential election, the democrat party has turned around and used these very laws she championed against her and the state of Alaska. Chicago politics at it's "finest."
 
I have written about Barack Obama's direct involvement in the failed "troopergate" smear, and even his payoff to former Alaska Senator Kim Elton for his efforts. I have also written extensively about Linda Kellen Biegel, the Democrat National Committee's "official blogger for Alaska."
 
This Biegel woman has turned her insane hate into a cottage industry, openly raising money online to fund her efforts, the legality of which is in question.
 
She's not alone in this, as other paid operatives, as well as screw loose crazies, have filed 15 so-called "ethics complaints" since Sarah has come home from the presidential trail!
 
These deals range from the silly, to the down right idiotic!
 
One complaint had to do with the fact Sarah was photographed holding a fish!
 
Some background. Sarah has worked as a commercial fisherman. She and her husband still own a commercial fishing business, and yes, when time permits, she has been known to go out and work the nets!
 
One complaint had to do with the fact she did an interview in her office!
 
She got tagged because, as Governor, she was at this year's Iron Dog race, at nearly 2000 miles, the longest most difficult snow machine race in the world.
 
She showed up in sub-zero weather wearing a jacket.
 
Oh, the humanity!
 
Yes, the jacket had the logo of the company that sponsors her husband, Todd, who is a multi-championship winning racer. And?
 
The bottom line, is these loons, and democrat operatives have managed to cripple the Governor, her staff, and grind governing to a halt. This nonsense has cost Governor Palin and her family $500,000 personally, but more importantly, to her, the state of Alaska has spent $2 million dollars, and 1000's of hours in time messing around with these complaints.
 
Needless to say, ALL of these complaints have been thrown out. But as I reported earlier, that means nothing to these bloggers. There were many more bogus ethics complaints planned.
 
This is Saul Alinsky's Rules being used relentlessly, and being sanctioned by Chicago's most famous citizen.
 
And with a group of dishonest democrats who will just keep filing these bogus ethics complaints, with absolutely no repercussions, she just saved the citizens of Alaska at minimum a couple of million dollars the state would have had to shell out had she completed her term.
 
This is pretty typical Sarah Palin. When she took office she went on a cost cutting spree. She famously put the executive jet for sale on eBay. And while it was not sold there, it was sold. It was a jet the previous Governor had purchased to travel the state. On the surface, not a bad idea. Alaska is roughly the size of the entire western United States, and many cities are only easily accessible by either air or water.
 
The only problem, is that jet was unable to land on most of the unimproved airfields in Alaska, and kind of useless.
 
Palin reassigned the "executive chef" at the Governor's mansion saying she didn't want her kids to get used to being waited on by staff. That saved the state money. She also, along with Lt Governor Sean Parnell, turned down a substantial pay increase this year. Something that just isn't done.
 
So by stepping down, Sarah Palin just changed the rules on these people. As a private citizen, she is not subject to the constraints of office. She doesn't have to maintain a certain decorum.
 
Make no mistake about it, Sarah Palin is a street fighter. What she has done is declare herself the left's worst nightmare! The paid DNC operatives, and loons, are going to look back and wish they had let sleeping dogs lie.
 
Case in point, one of the DNC operatives, Huffington Post blogger Shannyn Moore has already been out there spreading lies about Sarah. Moore, who earlier in the year was obsessed with what was under Sarah's skirt, is peddling a story that Palin is about to be indicted on some sort of federal charges.
 
Palin's attorney Thomas V Van Flein has already put Shannyn Moore, the Huffington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times, as well as the Washington Post on notice that they will be seeking actions against them for printing such lies.
 
Van Flein's open letter to the parties explains the facts of the story in question, which involves the Wasilla Sports Complex that came to be during Sarah's tenure as Mayor of Wasilla. Needless to say, another attempt to smear Sarah Palin knocked to the ground.
 
"Screw Political correctness!"
 
"Politically Speaking, I don't care if I live or die, I'm not going to sit down, I'm not going to shut up!" ___Sarah Palin in a June speech introducing Michael Reagan.
 
It seems we saw signs of Sarah's big move a while back. We just didn't know what we were looking at. Sarah made the above remarks during a speech where she introduced Michael Reagan to a crowd in Anchorage.
 
In her speech she also took Obama and his economic policies head on, as well as his foreign policy. She spoke at length about states rights, and how the federal government had become too big, and too controlling.
 
It seems that the trip to Kosovo and Germany to visit the troops may have also held clues to what was about to happen. While there, and in Sarah's tweets, she continually talked about the sacrifices of our brave soldiers, and about the greatness of America. It's obvious that while her move to change directions has been in the works for some time, her second trip to visit troops in the past two years really had a profound effect on Palin.
 
Of course, there are all of her detractors who are now saying she is "abandoning her job." Funny thing, she is transferring power to Lt Governor Sean Parnell. This is the same Sean Parnell who she would have transferred power to had she become Vice President.
 
Some say they don't buy the "lame duck" excuse. But having followed Sarah since she became Governor, having read her writings, watched her speeches, and read other's thoughts about her, people who know her, I think I understand, at least in a tiny way, how she thinks about her duty to the folks who put her in office.
 
Again, it's a given, the loons and DNC operatives were never ever going to stop costing the state of Alaska millions of dollars in their perverted attacks on Sarah Palin. So that obviously weighed very heavily on her mind. As soon as Sarah started speaking out. As soon as Sarah started really challenging those who would destroy America from within, the attacks would come.
 
Sarah recognizes what most of America now does. We are in real trouble. We have incredibly incompetent leadership in Washington. Both parties are filled with people who are more interested in power than doing their jobs. We have a Congress that spends trillions of dollars and passes insane legislation that will destroy our personal liberty, without reading a single word in these bills!
 
Congress passed the trillion dollar stimulus package and absolutely no one read this bill. It was rushed through by Barack Obama and his crew. Obama shouting that if the bill wasn't passed immediately the sky would fall! Then, once passed, Obama took a long weekend, while staff set up the photo op!
 
The stimulus package has been a disaster, so far.
 
The House of Representatives just passed the largest tax increase in human history, the cap and tax bill on "climate change." Here's a bill that will double or triple the cost of energy, and by default, effect the cost of every single product consumers purchase. And this bill will actually do nothing to help the climate! It would also cost millions of jobs, and send most manufacturing overseas to nations that haven't bought into the "climate change" nonsense.
 
Even better, most Americans understand that "global warming" is a hoax. That the planet is actually cooling. More and more scientists have come out and disputed the whole scheme.
 
In fact, the latest scandal surrounding this involves an internal EPA memo that disproves "global warming", that was suppressed ahead of the House vote.
 
Not only had no one read this incredibly huge tax bill, an additional 300 pages were slipped into the bill in the dead of night just before the vote!
 
This isn't just insanity, this is criminal!
 
This sort of thing is why Sarah felt she could no longer sit still and keep her mouth shut. This is why she has decided to travel and speak out.
 
Of course, as Governor, she does have the bully pulpit, but since the DNC has their operatives filing bogus ethics complaints at the drop of the hat, it would be very detrimental to Alaskans for Sarah to use her power as Governor to challenge these crooks in DC.
 
Better to take them on as Sarah Palin, America, than as Governor Sarah Palin.
 
And she did have a point about lame ducks spending the people's money while doing little of their work.
 
Now with the dishonest press, and the talking heads, there is a huge double standard. They think its just horrible that Sarah is "abandoning" Alaska.
 
On the other hand, no one in America seemed to have a problem when Barack Obama, the very inexperienced Junior Senator from Illinois, after promising the people of Illinois that he wouldn't run for President in his first term, worked a mere 143 days out of his six year Senate term, only to abandon his job completely to spend a year and a half running for President!
 
All the while collecting his paycheck from all of us taxpayers.
 
Double standard?
 
You bet'cha!
 
I prefer Sarah's way of doing things.
Now for her speech!
 
What a red meat patriotic speech it was. This was Sarah Palin speaking out to all of America and letting them know she's heard the call, and is ready to answer it.
 
The Video is here and the transcript's here for all to enjoy.
 
In her speech Sarah talks about the need to end politics as usual. Yeah, I know, all politicians say that. But with Sarah Palin, you instinctively know that she actually means it. And frankly, has put her money where her mouth is by resigning to take those who are harming America straight on!
 
Sarah talks about how we need to build America up, not tear it down. She called the extreme spending spree being championed by Barack Obama "obscene" and "immoral."
 
Sarah, in her speech, repeatedly called on all to get involved and make a difference.
 
Of course, the elite media who evidently feel it's their job to tell us what to think (or spread propaganda, I can never decide which) are so sure that Sarah has had enough of all of this and is going home.
 
So as if to make sure there will be no doubt to her intentions, Sarah put out an Independence Day message.
 
The end of the message goes as follows:
 
"I shared with you yesterday my heartfelt and candid reasons for this change; I've never thought I needed a title before one's name to forge progress in America. I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!
 
God bless you! And I look forward to making a difference - with you!
 
Sarah"
 
Now to many, this is Sarah's way of announcing her intentions to be the next President of the United States, and it may very well be. But I am absolutely under the impression that this doesn't really matter to her. I firmly believe she is more interesting in changing America for the better. I firmly believe she is more interested in stopping the destruction that Barack Obama and Congress is causing our great nation.
 
Of course, this is WHY Sarah Palin will be President. Her millions of followers will demand it. Absolutely no one currently in politics has the vision for America that sees us returning to the principles that our founding fathers set forth.
 
Absolutely no one out there has the ability and desire to take on Barack Obama and Congress with no holds barred. Straight up, no quarter.
 
Absolutely no other political figure represents the conservative movement as defined by one of our greatest Americans, Ronald Reagan. An America where personal freedom and liberty rein. A strong America. An America that made us the envy of the world.
 
Both Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin see America as a shining city on a hill. God's greatest gift to mankind. The world's best hope.
 
Our President and Congress are doing their level best to destroy that vision of America. They are spending our grandchildren's and great grandchildren's future on their socialist schemes. They are ignoring the growing threats around the world, while passing unread legislation that threatens our personal liberties and freedom.
 
Sarah Palin recognizes this, and has answered the call.
 
The real question here is for you, the gentle reader.
 
Will you also answer the call? Or will you continue to just sit and complain, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting for you?
 
Sarah Palin looked at her kids and asked: "Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children's future from outside the Governor's office?" She got four "yeahs" and a HELL YEAH" in response!
 
So again, what will your answer be? Sarah has put her entire career on the line for America.
 
What are you willing to do?
 
It's time to choose!
 
"In the words of General MacArthur: We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction."_____Sarah Palin
 
3.

Sotomayor and ACORN -- joined at the hip
Rick Moran

This is not surprising - Republican senate staffers have been whispering for weeks that a Sotomayor-ACORN connection was in the process of being unearthed.

But the extent of the relationship is more than a little shocking. Jennifer Rubin writing in Contentions:
Below the surface of the daily news coverage, Senate Republicans have been struggling to get documents from PRLDEF, the liberal civil rights group in which Sotomayor held a variety of leadership positions for a dozen years. It seems odd, at first blush, that there should be a tussle over a group whose public positions on a variety of issues are well known and in which Sotomayor played such a central leadership role. Why fight over boxes of old letters and legal briefs? At first, many speculated that this might have been problematic because it would feed the racial preference storyline and breathe new life into the "wise Latina" remakrs. But maybe it is far more explosive.

(NOTE: There are many reasons for opposing Sotomayor.  She is clearly obsessed with racism and anti White America.  No matter.  Democrats as liberal as Obama have a dominating majority in the Senate, and they will confirm whomever they wish…even if Sotomayor was to be defeated, any Obama selection will be just as offensive to normal America.)

Roll Call buries the lead on this one:

The PRLDEF on Tuesday turned over a number of documents that could become political flash points, including papers on the organization's work with the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now during Sotomayor's time with the PRLDEF. ACORN has become a major rallying cry for conservatives after allegations that its organizers falsified voter registration forms in the 2008 election. The mere mention of ACORN in association with Sotomayor - regardless of how significant her involvement with the group was - will almost certainly intensify opposition to her high court installment from conservatives on and off Capitol Hill.

Ya think? Well that would be problematic.

Indeed it would be - and is. Sotomayor apparently held several positions with the group, including "Member and Vice President, Board of Directors Chairperson, Litigation and Education Committees." And the  New York Times reported:
 
This news will have no impact on Democrats. But it will make it a little harder for those Republicans who were planning on deserting the party and voting for her confirmation to make the case she is a "mainstream" judge. ACORN is a proto-Leninist, thuggish group of far left radicals who want to overturn American society and create a Marxist state.

Perhaps some Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee might ask her whether she still believes in ACORN's "mission" which lately appears to be gaming the electoral system by trying to steal elections.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
 

 

 

 

Sunday's Web

The day’s Top Political News:

Obama assured of a chilly Russian welcome despite first signs of thaw

 Obama will have few traffic problems getting to the Kremlin for his first summit with Russian president Dmitri Medvedev on Monday – the Obamamania that has swept much of the rest of the world is absent from Moscow; there will be no adoring crowds to greet him.

A recent poll by Russia's Levada Centre found only 23 per cent of citizens believe the US president will "do the right thing in world affairs", with many doubting his promise of change will heal antagonisms between Russia and the West.

A long list of issues – from Nato's eastward expansion, to missile defence, to human rights, to the contest for oil and gas in Central Asia – continue to poison relations between the former Cold War superpowers.

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Obama-assured-of-a-chilly.5429112.jp

Palin takes to Web for hints of political future
 
After staying out of the public eye for most of Saturday Palin indicated on a social networking site that she would take on a larger, national role, citing a "higher calling" to unite the country along conservative lines.

"I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint," the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote in a posting on her Facebook page. Palin's spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, confirmed Palin wrote the entry.

Palin shocked even her closest friends on Friday when she announced she would resign July 26, more than a year before her first term ends. But the controversial hockey mom has not revealed many details of bigger plans and national agenda.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090705/D9988SCG0.html

Former D.C. Mayor Barry charged with stalking

Police say former Washington Mayor Marion Barry has been arrested and charged with stalking a woman.

The United States Park Police said Barry, a current D.C. Council member, was arrested Saturday in Washington after a woman flagged down an officer and complained that Barry was stalking her.

Barry was charged with misdemeanor stalking and released.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090705/D9988JVG0.html

Opinion:
A time for a bit of plain speaking – especially about Obama’s “Healthcare on the cheap”.

First, a personal thought:

My greatest thought on this Fourth of July, was a recollection of my observation of that holiday on July Fourth, 1976.  It was our bi-centennial celebration.  A major event --especially in Washington.  By invitation, I joined my daughter, Carolyn on the lawn of the White House.  Along with President Gerald Ford (and a few thousand of his other closest friends) we watched an amazing display of fireworks, then tried to fight incredible traffic getting back to my apartment in Crystal City.

“Bumper to bumper” is as close as I can come to describing the mob.  No one could move in any direction – my roomy of the time, the steely-eyed Bill Lee – couldn’t resist temptation.  He picked up the mike of his CB radio and said to those listening “what’s the problem.  We are totally in the clear over here”.   In between doing GOP campaigns and reacting to whims of the RNC, Lee engaged in action with Green Berets.

That was more than a quarter century ago. Today I don’t visit the White House, applaud its current occupant, or support the incredible extremism being pushed by Obama and his very liberal movement.

In my personal view – it’s a movement that is downright impossible for any normal American to support – or fail to do all that is possible to defeat.

I stayed away from any serious discussion of where Obama may or may not have been born.  I assumed that to be a minor dust up that had no credibility or basis.  For a candidate for president to have not been vetted regarding a requirement as simple and basic as his place of birth – was a concept impossible to embrace.  After all, it was the obligation of the DNC to certify the legal qualifications of all  its candidates.   Then I noted Obama had stonewalled media questions on the issue – despite having that media as a lapdog and actual participant in his campaign.

Then I began noticing the extreme and often frantic efforts to which Obama and his handlers went to avoid an honest answer.  The Obama frenzy was highlighted by their posting of a totally phony document claiming to end the discussion.  It had quite the opposite result.

After several months brushing off the clamor, I began giving it serious thought.  I recalled how pregnancy for unmarried women was a major disgrace back in the days in which Obama entered the world.  It was a major disgrace.  Obama’s mother was no model of respectability, by any means.  She eagerly sought out male companionship and intimacy with men of races other than her own.  She despised America.  She was an atheist.

But even liberal wackos such as Obama’s mother have families and I am told she was living with her mother and father at the time – and they lived in Seattle.  I recalled a daily ferry runs up to Vancouver -- or did when I last spent time there.  An easy out for a “girl in trouble”  would have been for her to step on the ferry, spend a few days in Vancouver long enough to deliver baby Obama, then return and slip away to Hawaii where local law provided easy cover for such births – even certificates noting a “live birth” had occurred.

Chip shot to escape the humiliation that Obama’s birth represented in those days.

After all, Obama’s mother could hardly have anticipated her son could some day become president of the United States. She needed no further cover for her “problem”.

Thus the truth is obvious.  Even if Obama was born in Kenya rather than Canada, he is still illegitimate in terms of constitutional requirement for president.
 
In either case, Obama was not born on US soil -- but nothing will be done about it.  Even the top tier of our national government has caved on the issue -- Obama's birth certificate fraud ("hold me to those constitutional details, and I'll have rioters in the streets burning your cities) will succeed. Think of Obama's birth certificate scam as being Jesse Jackson on steroids. The image of cities burning if the first Black president was ousted for (what his rabid supporters will contend) a technical requirement, is in the minds of those obligated to dealing honestly with the issue.

Ergo, the fix is in, and will remain in.

Obama received the votes of a majority of Americans in the election, and the “powers that be” take that as trumping Constitutional requirements for eligibility.

Nuff said.

“Seniors have an obligation to die and get out of the way”.

That was the chilling position of former Colorado governor, Dick Lamm.  The extremism and cold cruelty of that position outraged most decent Americans of that day and drew a lot of negative attention to Lamm himself.

Today, that way of thinking is on the verge of becoming national policy.

Bloomberg reports on the attitude of Obama assumed Healthcare Secretary. Former Senator Tom Daschle.  (Daschle ran afoul of tax evasion problems and withdrew from consideration) Says Bloomberg: "Daschle says health-care  reform will not be pain free. 
Seniors should be more accepting  of the conditions that come with age instead of treating  them."

Obama has echoed that way of thinking.  ?Don’t treat Americns over 49 – let them suffer and do the best they can – preferably die and get out of the way” is poised to become official US health policy.

“Suck it up, seniors, your days are behind you” would be an appropriate bumper sticker or bill board for the Democrat healthcare plan.

Not that younger Americans get much better.  As they look forward to dark days of pain and suffering as they reach 49, they must realize government healthcare will also deny them quality care.

Qaulity care or Obama care on the cheap, is the basic issue as the House and Senate debate proposals.

It is crucial every American – no matter their age – understands what is really at stake and what liberals offer everyone:

“Healthcare on the cheap” – Obama policy, coming to doctors, hospitals, and care centers near us all.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

1.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50304

Arizona Moves to Oppose Obama’s Expected Health Care Mandates

Fred Lucas, Staff Writer

CNS News: Voters in Arizona will decide next year whether residents will be subject to mandates in the pending health care reform that President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are promoting.
 
At least five other states – Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming – have considered proposals to take pre-emptive action against the pending federal mandates, but those proposals have either not made it out of committee, failed to get enough votes from one side of the legislature, or are still being crafted.
 
Only the Arizona Legislature introduced an initiative (HCR2014), which if passed, would amend the state constitution to codify that no resident would be required to participate in any public health care option. Arizonans will vote on the initiative in November 2010.
 
“HCR2014 is proactive and will protect patients’ fundamental rights,” Arizona State Rep. Nancy Barto, a Republican, said in a statement. “We are a front-line battle state to stop the momentum of this powerful government takeover of your health care decisions. Health care by lobbyists thwarts your rights and can be stopped here.”

(NOTE: More than quality healthcare is involved in this Arizona debate -  as that state government moves to protect its people – it also assert state rights and the principle involved in the tenth amendment core – that states continue to have inalienable rights and the federal government cannot legitimately trump those rights unilaterally.  Its among the most basic challenges to liberal omnipotence to be presented.  Obama’s “healthcare on the cheap” could provide an easy target for reasserting the rights of states.)

The main issue is the core of the Obama health plan – a government run or “public option” – to compete with private health insurers. Some state lawmakers fear such legislation would force residents to buy into the public plan.
 
“The eyes of the nation will be on Arizona next year to see what happens,” Christie Herrera, director of the Health and Human Services Taskforce with the American Legislative Exchange Council, told CNSNews.com. “If this succeeds in Arizona, other states will take notice and push harder.”
 
The Obama administration insists that the public option will provide another choice for Americans who are not insured or are unhappy with their current insurance and will force private companies to be more competitive.
 
Critics of the plan say private firms could not compete with a public option – with unlimited government resources – and thus would go out of business, leaving what is tantamount to a single-payer system in place.
 
What happens in Arizona could spur other states to pass similar laws or constitutional amendments, said Wisconsin State Rep. Lea Vukmir, a Republican, who sponsored similar legislation in 2008 that passed the House but failed in the Senate. 

If the Obama administration’s “public option” becomes law before Arizonans vote in November 2010, their initiative would still allow the state the challenge the Obama plan.
 
Vukmir said that the Obama proposal could be unconstitutional, under the Tenth Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
                          
“I’m a strong believer in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment,” Vukmir told CNSNews.com. “The Tenth Amendment has been eroded by Congress and the Supreme Court for decades. We have to ask, does the Tenth Amendment have any meaning? We are supposed to have strong state governments and a weak central government. That has eroded away.”
 
Georgia State Sen. Judson Hill, a Republican, said that the Obama plan would put a big strain on state budgets and told CNSNews.com that he would be interested in introducing similar legislation in the Georgia state house.
 
Medicaid and S-CHIP payments to states already make cutting costs untenable for states in lieu of a benefit cut or tax hike, Hill said.
 
He has introduced legislation to use state medical grants to go directly to patients as a sort of medical scholarship. (S-CHIP is the acronym for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, run by the federal Health and Human Services, which provides matching funds to states that provide expanded health insurance programs for families with children in low- to moderate-income brackets.)
 
“I call them federal crack dollars,” said Hill. “States get addicted to health dollars sent by the U.S. government.”
 
Arizona’s Health Care Freedom Act, firstly, establishes the right of state residents to spend their own money to seek and receive health care and, secondly, the right to choose not to participate in any health care system of any type.
 
An advocacy group was started to campaign for the amendment.
 
“Protecting the rights of individuals to be in control of their health and health care must be a fundamental component of health care reform, so the Arizona legislature is to be congratulated for giving all Americans the opportunity to make certain our voices are heard,” said Dr. Eric Novack, chairman of the group Arizonans for Health Care Reform.

2.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF30Ak02.html
 
Obama creates a deadly power vacuum
'Spengler' 
 
There's a joke about a man who tells a psychiatrist, "Everybody hates me," to which the psychiatrist responds, "That's ridiculous - everyone doesn't know you, yet." Which brings me to Barack Obama: one of the best-informed people in the American security establishment told me the other day that the president is a "Manchurian Candidate".
 
That can't be true - Manchuria isn't in the business of brainwashing prospective presidential candidates any more. There's no one left to betray America to.
 
Obama is creating a strategic void in which no major power will dominate, and every minor power must fend for itself. The outcome is incalculably hard to analyze and terrifying to consider.
 
Obama doesn't want to betray the United States; he only wants to empower America's enemies. Forcing Israel to abandon its strategic buffer (the so-called settlements) was supposed to placate Iran, so that Iran would help America stabilize Iraq, where its influence looms large over the Shi'ite majority.

(NOTE: The real victor in the 2006 election that gave a major nod to liberal Democrats was Iran. Democrats made very clear they had no intention of opposing our enemies or defending out allies.  Their traditional strategy of “cut, run, and surrender to the enemy” remains as consistent for liberals as ever…count on its result to be as disastrous as always.  It leaves Israel isolated in a sea of enemies and makes Iran an almost certain entry into the nuclear society.  Iran won, the US and its allies lost in 2006 – now Obama is compounding the Democrat “felony” with irresponsible policies of his own.)

America also sought Iran's help in suppressing the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Obama's imagination, a Sunni Arab coalition - empowered by Washington's turn against Israel - would encircle Iran and dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, while an entirely separate Shi'ite coalition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would suppress the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
 
This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama's face.
 
Iran already has made clear that casting America's enemies in the leading role of an American operation has a defect, namely that America's enemies rather would lose on their own terms than win on America's terms. Iran's verbal war with the American president over the violent suppression of election-fraud protests leaves Washington with no policy at all. The premise of Obama's policy was that progress on the Palestinian issue would empower a Sunni coalition. As the president said May 18:

If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians - between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with the potential Iranian threat.
Israel's supporters remonstrated in vain. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Obama supporter, wrote, "If there is to be any linkage - and I do not believe there should be - it goes the other way: it will be much easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran does not have a nuclear umbrella under which it can continue to encourage Hamas and Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israeli civilians."
 
No matter: America made clear that it had annulled the George W Bush administration's promise that a final settlement would allow most of Israel's 500,000 "settlers" to keep their homes, in order to launch the fantasy ship of Iranian cooperation with America.

That policy now is in ruins, and Washington has no plan B.
 
David Axelrod, Obama's top political advisor, told television interviewers on January 28 that Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who spent the last week denouncing the United States, "Did not have final say" over Iran's foreign policy and that America still wanted to negotiate with Iran. This sounds idiotic, but the White House really has painted itself into a corner. The trouble is that Obama has promised to withdraw American forces from Iraq, and Iran has sufficient influence in Shi'ite-majority Iraq to cause continuous upheaval, perhaps even to eventually win control of the country.

By a fateful coincidence, American troops are scheduled to leave Iraq's urban centers on June 30. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein left Iraq open to Iranian destabilization; that is why the elder George Bush left the Iraqi dictator in power in 1990.

Offering Iran a seat at the table in exchange for setting a limit to its foreign ambitions - in Lebanon and Gaza as well as Iraq - seemed to make sense on paper. But the entity that calls itself revolutionary Islam is not made of paper, but of flesh and blood. It is in danger of internal collapse and can only assert its authority by expanding its influence as aggressively as it can.

After the election disaster, Iran's revolutionary leadership urgently needs to demonstrate its credibility. Israel now can say, "A country that murders its own citizens will have no compunction about massacring its enemies," and attack Iran's nuclear capacity with fewer consequences than would have been imaginable in May. And if an Israeli strike were to succeed, or appear successful to the world, the resulting humiliation might be fatal to the regime.

Israel may not be Tehran's worst nightmare. Iraq's Sunnis are testing the resolve of the weakened mullahs.
 
The suicide bombing that killed 73 people at a Shi'ite mosque in Kirkuk on June 20 and a second bombing that killed another 72 Shi'ites in Baghdad's Sadr City slum most likely reflect Sunni perceptions that a weakened Tehran will provide less support for Iraqi Shi'ites. Although Shi'ites comprise more than three-fifths of Iraq's population, Sunnis provided the entire military leadership and are better organized on the ground. America's hopes of enlisting Iran to provide cover for its withdrawal from the cities of Iraq seem delusional.

What move on the chessboard might Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei venture to pre-empt an Israeli air raid against the nuclear facilities?
 
Iran has the rocket launchers of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and terrorist sleeper cells throughout the world. Iran might seek to pre-empt what it anticipates to be the next move from Israel by demonstrating its capacity to inflict injury on Israel or on Jewish targets elsewhere. That would require careful judgment, for a heavy handed action could provide a pretext for even more serious action by the Israelis and others. The same sort of consideration applies to Iranian support for Pakistan Shi'ites, for Hezbollah, and other vehicles of Iran's program of imperial expansion.

The Obama administration has put itself in a peculiar bind. It has demanded that the Pakistani army suppress the Taliban, after Islamabad attempted a power-sharing agreement that left the Taliban in control of the Swat Valley.
 
To root out the largely Pashtun Taliban, Pakistan's largely Punjabi army has driven a million people into refugee camps and leveled entire towns in the Swat Valley. Tens of thousands of refugees are now fleeing the Pakistani army in the South Waziristan tribal area. Punjabis killing Pashtuns is nothing new in the region, but the ferocity of the present effort does not augur well for an early end to the conflict.

While the Pakistan army holds nothing back in attacking the Taliban, American troops in Afghanistan have been told that they no longer can call in air strikes if civilians are likely to suffer. That will put American forces in the unfortunate position of the Pirates of Penzance, who exempted orphans. Once this became generally known, everyone they attempted to rob turned out to be an orphan.

The Taliban need only take a page from Hamas' book, and ensure that civilians are present wherever they operate. The US has made clear that it will not deal in civilian blood, the currency of warfare in that region since before the dawn of history. It will not be taken seriously in consequence.

What will the administration do now? As all its initiatives splatter against the hard realities of the region, it will probably do less and less, turning the less appetizing aspects of the fighting over to local allies and auxiliaries who do not share its squeamishness about shedding civilian blood. That is the most dangerous outcome of all, for America is the main stabilizing force in the region.

The prospect of civil wars raging simultaneously in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq is no longer improbable.
 
The Israel-Palestine issue is linked to all of these through Iran, whose credibility depends on its ability to sustain such puppies of war as Hezbollah and Hamas. Whether or not the Israelis take the opportunity to strike Iran, the prospect of an Israeli strike will weigh on Iran's proxies in the region, and keep Israel's borders in condition of potential violence for the interim.

America's great good fortune is that no hostile superpower stands ready to benefit from its paralysis and confusion.
 
When Soviet troops landed in Afghanistan in December 1979, America was in the grip of an economic crisis comparable to the present depression. American diplomats at the Tehran Embassy were still hostages to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The price of gold doubled from around $400 to $800 after the Russian invasion because most of the world thought that Russia would win the Cold War. If America lost its dominant superpower status in the West, the dollar no longer could serve as a global reserve currency. To the superpower goes the seigniorage, the state's premium for providing a currency.

By contrast, the gold price barely fluttered all through the present crisis.
 
America remains the undisputed global superpower for the time being. America's creditors express consternation about its $1.8 trillion budget deficit and many trillions more of guarantees for the banking system, but there is nothing they can do about it for the time being but talk. That is how one should interpret a June 25 Reuters report that a "senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party" had urged China to shift some of its $2 trillion in reserves out of dollars and into gold.
Li Lianzhong, who heads the economic department of the Party's policy research office, said China should use more of its $1.95 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to buy energy and natural resource assets. Speaking at a foreign exchange and gold forum, Li also said that buying land in the United States was a better option for China than buying US Treasury securities.

"Should we buy gold or US Treasuries?" Li asked. "The US is printing dollars on a massive scale, and in view of that trend, according to the laws of economics, there is no doubt that the dollar will fall. So gold should be a better choice."
There is no suggestion that Li, even though he is a senior researcher, was enunciating an agreed party line.

The last thing China wants at the moment is to undercut the US dollar, for three reasons.
 
First, as America's largest creditor, China has the most to lose from a dollar collapse. Second, Americans would buy fewer Chinese imports. And third, the collapse of the dollar would further erode America's will to fulfill its superpower function, and that is what China wants least of all.

America remains the indispensable outsider in Asia. No one likes the United States, but everyone dislikes the United States less than they dislike their neighbors.
 
India need not worry about China's role in Pakistan, for example, because America mediates Indian-Pakistani relations, and America has no interest in a radical change to the status quo. Neither does China, for that matter, but India is less sure of that. China does not trust Japan for historical reasons that will not quickly fade, but need not worry about it because America is the guarantor of Japan's security. The Seventh Fleet is the most disliked - and nonetheless the most welcome - entity in Asia.

All of this may change drastically, quickly, and for the worse.
 
Obama's policy reduces to empowering America's enemies in the hope that they will conform to American interests out of gratitude. Just the opposite result is likely to ensure: Iran, Pakistan and other regional powers are likely to take radical measures. Iran is threatened with a collapse of its Shi'ite program from Lebanon to Afghanistan, and Pakistan is threatened with a breakup into three or more states.

Obama has not betrayed the interests of the United States to any foreign power, but he has done the next worst thing, namely to create a void in the region by withdrawing American power. The result is likely to be a species of pandemonium that will prompt the leading players in the region to learn to live without the United States.

In his heart of hearts, Obama sees America as a force for evil in the world, apologizing for past American actions that did more good than harm. An example is America's sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the left-leaning government of Mohammed Mossadegh.

"In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," the president offered in his Cairo address to Muslims on June 5. Although Iran's theocracy despises Mossadegh - official Iranian textbooks call him the "son of a feudal family of exploiters who worked for the cursed Shah, and betrayed Islam" - Iran's government continues to reproach America for its role in the coup. "With a coup they toppled the national government of Iran and replaced it with a harsh, unpopular and despotic regime," Ahmadinejad complained in a January 28 speech.

It is a bit late to offer advice to Obama, but the worst thing America can do is to apologize. Instead, it should ask for the gratitude of the developing world. Weak countries become punching-bags in the proxy wars of empires. This was from the dawn of history until the fall of the last empire - the "evil" empire of Soviet communism.

The Soviets exploited anti-colonial movements from the 1917 Bolshevik coup until the collapse of the Afghanistan adventure in the late 1980s. Nationalists who tried to ride the Russian tiger ended up in its belly more often than on its back. Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Angola and numerous other weak countries became the hapless battleground for the contest of covert operations between the Soviet Union and America - not to mention Vietnam and Korea.

The use of developing countries as proxy battlefields and their people as cannon fodder came to an end with the Cold War. As a result, the past 20 years have seen the fastest improvement in living standards ever in the global south, and a vast shift in wealth towards so-called developing countries.

By defeating Russia in the Cold War, America made it possible for governments in the global south to pursue their own interests free from the specter of Soviet subversion. And by countering Soviet subversion, America often averted much worse consequences.

Many deficiencies can be ascribed to the Shah of Iran, but a communist regime in the wake of a Mossadegh administration would have been indescribably worse. The septuagenarian Mossadegh had his own agenda, but he relied on the support of the communist Tudeh party. The US feared a Soviet invasion of Iran, and "the [Harry S] Truman administration was willing to consider a Soviet invasion of Iran as a casus belli, or the start of a global war", according to Francis J Gavin's 1999 article in The Journal of Cold War Studies.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with help from British intelligence helped the shah overthrow the left-leaning regime. But this was no minor colonial adventure, but a flashpoint with the potential to start a world war.

It is painful and humiliating for Iranians to recall the overthrow of a democratically elected government with American help. It would have been infinitely more humiliating to live under Soviet rule, like the soon-to-be-extinct victims of Soviet barbarism in Eastern Europe.

The same is true of Chile, where the brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973, with help from the CIA. Allende was surrounded by Cuban intelligence operations. As Wikipedia reports:

Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende in November 1970, the [Cuban Directorate of Intelligence - DI] worked extremely closely to strengthen Allende's increasingly precarious position. The Cuban DI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona even married Salvador Allende's daughter Beatrice, who later committed suicide in Cuba. The DI organized an international brigade that would organize and coordinate the actions of the thousands of the foreign leftists that had moved into Chile shortly after Allende's election. These individuals ranged from Cuban DI agents, Soviet, Czech and North Korean military instructors and arms suppliers, to hardline Spanish and Portuguese Communist Party members.

My Latin American friends who still mourn the victims of Pinochet's "night and fog" state terror will not like to hear this, but the several thousand people killed or tortured by the military government were collateral damage in the Cold War. Like Iran, Chile became the battleground of a Soviet-American proxy war. The same is true in Nicaragua. (Full disclosure: I advised Nicaragua's president Violeta Chamorro after she defeated the Cuban-backed Sandinistas in the 1990 elections; I did so with no tie to any government agency.)

Obama's continuing obsession with America's supposed misdeeds - deplorable but necessary actions in time of war - is consistent with his determination to erode America's influence in the most troubled parts of the world.
 
By removing America as a referee, he will provoke more violence than the United States ever did. We are entering a very, very dangerous period as a result.

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, Associate Editor of First Things (www.firstthings.com)

3.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090703/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul

Under Senate health care plan, either way you pay

WASHINGTON – First you paid to insure your car. Soon you may have to add health insurance premiums to that stack of monthly bills as well.

In a revamped health care system envisioned by senators, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now. The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face fines of more than $1,000.

(NOTE: Additionally, that healthcare Americans are being ravaged to support, will not be quality healthcare.  With the government in charge, kiss quality good bye.  We are being offered, Obama care – best describes as “healthcare on the cheap”.  Save a buck and pay with your life.  Seniors need not look for help or support in any case.)

The details were unveiled Thursday in a health care overhaul bill supported by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines would raise around $36 billion over 10 years.

Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which now imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage. Under the federal legislation, families would pay higher penalties than individuals.

Called "shared responsibility payments," the fines would offset at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation. The goal is to nudge people to sign up for coverage when they are healthy, not wait until they get sick.

In 2008, employer-provided coverage averaged $12,680 a year for a family plan, and $4,704 for individual coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey. Senate aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the cost of the federal plan would be lower but declined to provide specifics.

The legislation would exempt certain hardship cases from fines, which would be collected through the income tax system.

The new proposals were released as Congress neared the end of a weeklong July 4 break, with lawmakers expected to quickly take up health care legislation when they return to Washington. With deepening divisions along partisan and ideological lines, the complex legislation faces an uncertain future.

Obama wants a bill this year that would provide coverage to the nearly 50 million Americans who lack it and reduce medical costs.

In a statement, Obama welcomed the legislation, saying it "reflects many of the principles I've laid out, such as reforms that will prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and the concept of insurance exchanges where individuals can find affordable coverage if they lose their jobs, move or get sick."

The Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions bill also calls for a government-run insurance option to compete with private plans as well as a $750-per-worker annual fee on larger companies that do not offer coverage to employees.

Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said in a letter to colleagues that their revised plan would cost dramatically less than an earlier, incomplete proposal, and help show the way toward coverage for 97 percent of all Americans.

The Congressional Budget Office, in an analysis released Thursday evening, put the net cost of the proposal at $597 billion over 10 years, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago. Coverage expansions worth $645 billion would be partly offset by savings of $48 billion, the estimate said.

However, the total cost of legislation will rise considerably once provisions are added to subsidize health insurance for the poor through Medicaid. Those additions, needed to ensure coverage for nearly all U.S. residents, are being handled by a separate panel, the Senate Finance Committee. Bipartisan talks on the Finance panel aim to hold the overall price tag to $1 trillion.

The Health Committee could complete its portion of the bill as soon as next week, and the government health insurance option virtually assures a party-line vote.

In the Senate, the Finance Committee version of the bill is unlikely to include a government-run insurance option. Bipartisan negotiations are centered on a proposal for a nonprofit insurance cooperative as a competitor to private companies.

Three committees are collaborating in the House on legislation expected to come to a vote by the end of July. That measure is certain to include a government-run insurance option.

At their heart, all the bills would require insurance companies to sell coverage to any applicant, without charging higher premiums for pre-existing medical conditions. The poor and some middle-class families would qualify for government subsidies to help with the cost of coverage. The government's costs would be covered by a combination of higher taxes and cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.

4.

Dems won unexpected GOP support for their new high tax bill 
Jared Allen 

House Democrats were surprised at the number of Republican votes they won on the razor close climate change vote, which allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to let a few more Democrats cast their own no votes.

In what Democrats are readily admitting was their toughest vote since they took back power in 2007, the eight Republican votes proved critical to letting Pelosi hand out as many free passes as she could to members who thought that it would be too difficult to selling the bill in their districts.

The climate change bill passed 219-212, by just two votes more than were necessary for passage. Forty-four Democrats bucked their leaders and voted no on the legislation.

Republicans have been relentless in attacking Democrats who supported the bill, which would set up a carbon cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that Republicans have tried to label as “cap and tax,” citing studies that many consumers could see their local utility rates increase.

Some of the Republicans also cast their votes early, as dozens of Democrats were holding off on making their decisions.

“The early yes votes from them surprised us,” said a Democratic leadership aide. “We had assumed that Republican leaders had asked their yeses to hold their votes until the end.”

Instead, at least two Republicans voted yes very early in the 15-minute voting window, including Rep. Bono Mack (R-Calif.) and Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.), Obama’s choice to serve as Secretary of the Army.

Democrats, who whipped the bill for weeks and right up until the last minute, had counted on winning over anywhere from two-to-four GOP members.

And the majority wouldn’t have been surprised if Republican support had been limited to a single yes vote from Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), the lone GOP supporter of the bill as it fought its way through the Energy and Commerce Committee.

(NOTE: the list of all eight GOP defectors who supported the bill that means new and higher taxes for us all: Bono Mack (R - CA), Castle (R - DE), Kirk  (R - IL), Lance (R - NJ), LoBiondo (R - NJ), McHugh (R - NY), Reichert (R - WV). Smith (R-NJ).                                                     

In spite of that, Democrats contended that they had enough votes of their own to pass the bill, but used the GOP cushion to allow some members to go ahead and vote no and other members who had promised Pelosi they wouldn’t let their no votes sink the bill keep their no votes in place.

Aides would not say who those members were, but said there were as many as six Democrats who were prepared to switch their votes at the last minute in order to save the bill from failing if necessary.

“We knew that if we had that many Republicans, then we had more people who wanted to vote no who could vote no,” a leadership aide said. “There were a few of them who told us that they didn’t want the bill to go down from their no votes.”

No Democrats changed their recorded votes.

Democrats credited the stronger-than-expected GOP showing to the Speaker’s direct outreach to a hand-picked group of moderate Republicans in the week leading up to the vote.

Through two meetings in her office – one a listening session and the second an education effort – Pelosi, bill authors Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (Mass.) and conservative Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) were able to convince many of moderate Republicans to support the massive climate change bill.

The Republicans who cast yes votes – Bono Mack, McHugh, and Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Mike Castle (R-Del.), Dave Reichert (R-Wa.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), and Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) – spent the week getting blasted on conservative talk radio.

Throughout the 111th Congress, House Republicans have put up a number of united fronts against the Democratic agenda, often denying Pelosi and Obama even a single vote in support of their legislative priorities.

But despite a intense whipping effort and a rousing floor speech against the bill by Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that won widespread praise throughout the conference, Republicans couldn’t hold their line quite so intact.

“There was never a who’s with me, who’s against me count,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said of the Republican outreach. “It was just a genuine attempt at listening to their concerns and explaining to them how we were able to address those concerns. A lot of what they were concerned about had been taken care of by [Agriculture Chairman Collin] Peterson.” 
 
 

Saturday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made a surprise announcement Friday that she is resigning from office at the end of the month without explaining why she plans to step down, raising speculation that she would focus on a run for the White House in the 2012 race.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate hastily called a news conference Friday morning at her home in suburban Wasilla, giving such short notice that only a few reporters actually made it to the announcement.

State troopers blocked late-arriving media outside her home, and her spokesman, Dave Murrow, finally emerged to confirm that Palin will step down July 26. He refused to give details about the governor's future plans.

Palin terrifies liberal Democrats and other political foes – the depths of that terror can be measured by the attacks from extremists – from the TV clown, David Letterman, to the “anonymous” McCain staffer quoted by a notorious left wing magazine.   Give today’s corruption of journalism, we have no confidence the attack on Palin has any real source outside the editorial offices of the magazine.  Nuff said, she scares them silly.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99776200&show_article=1

Obama Urges Groups to Stop Attacks

Advocates should turn its attention to promoting legislation, Obama says.

Obama, strategizing with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation such as the new Cap and Trade tax and socialized medicine.

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/03/AR2009070302309_pf.html

Opinion:
Stand up for America

It’s the day on which we annually celebrate creation of our Declaration of Independence.  This year, with our government suffering under the weight of oppressive liberal government – a government that not only often spurns our basic values, but which also sneers at many of them.

The President’s constitutional eligibility for office is among those questions, but since there is also no credible question about that issue, and because the fix is in and nothing will be done regarding it, we wont spend time in that discussion.

America is mad.  Really mad.  We are seeing the sorts of anger and fury that turned back the amnesty bill a few years back, despite all the Senate, White House and mainstream media could do.

We should always keep that grass root victory in mind.

Today, all across America, normal Americans are rallying in an attempt to take back their country from radical liberals who have ridden to power despite their embrace of ideas and concepts which, in saner times, would be laughable.  Political correctness comes to mind.  In fact that oxymoron is as good an illustration of just how absurd and stupid the left as exists.  It’s trivial and silly.  No intelligent people should take it seriously.

The we have the Gore scam and scheme regarding his myths of man made global warming.  We have learned the “powers that be” dishonestly hid scientific evidence that Gore’s con game is dead wrong.  They had to, they were using Gore’s shtick to push through a new tax – liberals love new taxes.  Raping productive America is a major liberal pastime.

Liberals have serious feelings of inferiority.  They are terrified by the thought of honest competition, and they want to be loved because they thing being loved will cover up their failings.

It won’t.

Liberals are stupid enough to take such international con games as the UN seriously.  At its best, the UN is nothing but a diplomatic chat room.  The UN accomplishes nothing unless the US actually does it.  Why not eliminated that corrupt middle man and just go at the problem directly all by ourselves?

Normal America wants nothing to do with political liberals IF they understand the real question.  Fortunately, they are beginning to get the message and understand.  The Tea party protest movement is a good indication.  Conservative, normal Americans are not given to street demonstrations, so you can take the numbers of protesters, and multiply them by a factor of one hundred or more, and get a clearer understanding of just how many Americans are fed up enough to take and demand action.

Of course multiply again to make up for the predictable under reporting of tea party crowds by a mainstream media corrupted by the left.

We have a chance today to shout our disdain and disgust through action.  The Tea Party protest movement can be very good for America IF that sentiment and momentum are focused on really effective political action.  :Lest there be any confusion, let me state clearly what the objective and end product of the movement:

We have got to defeat liberal Democrats and remove them from office.  Every Democrat defeat is a victory for American freedom. 

If that partisanship offends, so be it.  It’s a fact of life. For better or for worse, we live in a two party system, and that wont change anytime soon.  Liberal Democrats are forcing votes on bills they present then demand votes on those bills on a time frame that makes reading and analyzing such bills impossible.

No one who voted on Obama’s ridiculous “stimulus” bill had read it.  Obama didn’t want it read.  The same was true of the “Cap and Trade” scam last week that threatens a huge tax increase unless the Senate can turn it back.  Sadly, the Senate is dominated by liberal Democrats.  To get House passage, the liberals managed to sneak in over 300 secret pages only hours before the vote.  Except for 8 turncoats, Republicans rejected the tax.

This is Independence Day and there have been few times in our history in which our Independence is so important to our future.  We must stand up, stand together, and stand for America.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs

1.

http://townhall.com/columnists/OliverNorth/2009/07/04/wrong_again
 
Wrong Again
Oliver North

WASHINGTON -- It took the Obama administration eight days to figure out whether Iranians being gunned down for protesting a fraudulent election and demanding basic civil liberties deserved to be acknowledged by the president of the United States. It took the O-Team less than eight hours to side with Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega over the ouster of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.

As we now have come to expect, Mr. Obama got it wrong again, but this time, nobody noticed. The U.S. news media, preoccupied with the sudden demise of Michael Jackson, ignored the event in Central America. For those who care about things more important than the passing of a "pop music legend," here's the rest of the story:

Manuel Zelaya, a wealthy rancher and agribusiness executive and a self-described "poor farmer," won a four-year term as Honduran president in November 2005, with 49.8 percent of the vote. Article 374 of the Honduran Constitution bars the nation's chief executive from serving consecutive terms.

Apparently, one term wasn't enough for Zelaya, a protege of Venezuela's strongman, Hugo Chavez, and Nicaragua's phobic anti-American leader, Daniel Ortega.

Late last year, as the Honduran economy tanked and unemployment grew to nearly 28 percent, Zelaya forced Elvin Santos, the country's elected vice president, to resign and began holding conversations with Chavez and Ortega on how to hold on to power. In lengthy Chavez-like populist speeches, he denounced the U.S. and wealthy landowners and linked himself with leftists in the Honduran labor movement. On March 23, he issued an executive decree directing a national referendum on a Venezuela-style constituent assembly to rewrite the country's constitution in time for presidential and legislative elections in November. The Obama-Clinton State Department was mute about all of this.

Unfortunately for Zelaya's aspirations, the Honduran Constitution requires that amendments be passed by a two-thirds vote of the country's unicameral Congress during two consecutive sessions. By late May, the Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court, the commissioner for human rights, and the Honduran electoral tribunal all had overwhelmingly declared the referendum unconstitutional. Zelaya ignored the people's representatives, had ballots printed in Venezuela, and announced that the vote would take place June 28. Again, the O-Team was silent.

In keeping with the rule of law, Honduran Attorney General Luis Alberto Rubi took the case to court. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum to be illegal and ordered the ballots to be confiscated. Late on June 23, Zelaya countermanded the court order and directed the army to distribute the ballots. Gen. Romeo Vasquez, the chief of staff of the Honduran military, sought legal opinions and decided not to distribute them. The following day, Zelaya accepted the resignation of the minister of defense, Edmundo Orellana, and fired Vasquez.

The Honduran Supreme Court unanimously ruled the Vasquez firing illegal and reinstated him June 25. That prompted Zelaya and a group of supporters to seize the ballots and issue another executive decree, which directed government officials to set up 15,000 polling stations at schools and community buildings across the country. In response to a request from Attorney General Rubi, the Honduran Congress -- controlled by Zelaya's own Liberal Party -- opened an investigation into the president's mental stability and fitness to govern. Zelaya replied with a two-hour broadcast harangue, in which he claimed: "Congress cannot investigate me, much less remove me or stage a technical coup against me, because I am honest. I'm a free president, and nobody scares me."

On Sunday, just hours before the referendum was to begin, the Honduran army, acting on a warrant issued by the Honduran Supreme Court, arrested Zelaya and sent him, in his pajamas, into exile in Costa Rica. The Honduran Congress affirmed Zelaya's departure and, in accord with the constitution, named Roberto Micheletti, who had been president of the Congress, as interim president of the country.

(NOTE: There has been an on-going story of struggles to turn back the inherent evil of left wing dictatorships in Central America. My wife and I, along with a good friend who often contributes material to this web site, worked with local leaders to turn back socialism in Belize many years ago – the little nation prospered as a result.  The corruption of “Liberation Theology” has led Churches and their clergy to often side with the Communists.  The same Communists who slaughter their own people and persecute others.  Cuba stands as exhibit “A”.  Obama’s dismaying desertion of the forces of freedom to support the cause of Chavez, Castro, et al is outrageous.  It tells us more about the deep seated feelings of Obama than we really wanted to know.)

It has been downhill from there. Chavez, Ortega, Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales immediately condemned the "coup" and demanded that Zelaya be restored to power. Chavez went so far as to threaten military action. When asked about these events Sunday, the O-Team punted the issue to the Organization of American States, calling for "all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter." Now there's a powerful statement of support for a constitutional process and the institutions of democracy. Meanwhile, the Clinton State Department is said to be looking at cutting off aid to the impoverished country.

The O-Team doesn't seem to grasp that simply holding an election does not guarantee a democracy. Adolf Hitler was elected. Hugo Chavez was elected. The Castro brothers were "elected." When potentates decide that the rule of law does not matter, that constitutional restrictions on power can be overcome by executive fiat, the people inevitably suffer. It's a point to remember as we celebrate our own nation's 233rd Independence Day.

2.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidHarsanyi/2009/07/04/welcome_to_the_hope_economy

Welcome to the 'Hope' Economy
David Harsanyi 
 
After being asked when the public should begin judging the success of the nearly $800 billion stimulus plan, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs answered, "I think we should begin to judge it now."
Let's take his advice.

The administration warned that if we failed to support a stimulus package, unemployment would hit a dire 9 percent by 2010. With the stimulus, unemployment, it claimed, would stay in the 8 percent range.

This week, the Labor Department announced that the jobless rate jumped to 9.5 percent, higher than it's been anytime since August 1983.

(NOTE: Count on unemployment to shortly pass the 10% mark.  Obama’s “stimulus” bill has always been a scam. He rushed it through to prevent those voting on it from being able to read it, and we can expect a plethora of horror stories to be hidden in its depths.)

It's not as if the administration was close. As The New York Times notes: "The difference between the situation that the Obama advisers predicted and the one that has come to pass is about 2.5 million jobs. It's as if every worker in the city of Los Angeles received an unexpected layoff notice."

Don't get too dejected, though. We still have an economic plan with a heaping dose of hope. Surely, you'll feel better when the president begins doling out his two-pronged faith-based explanation -- and if we're lucky, he'll do it at a "town hall" meeting with approximately 100 of his closest friends.

First, you always should assume things could have been worse.

This leap of faith involves buying the "save-and-created-jobs" myth the president likes to peddle. And if you're lucky enough to be working on some state-run boondoggle awash in freshly printed money, smile. As for the rest of America, we once again learn that government spending rarely spurs wider economic prosperity.

But let's, for argument's sake, make believe that the stimulus plan has saved or created 150,000 jobs.
By the end of June, $53 billion in stimulus funding had been spent on weatherizing projects, bridges for rodents and checks for 10,000 formerly living Americans. (This administration doesn't only create jobs; it creates life.) That puts the cost of each job saved at about $354,000, or exactly the sort of efficiency you expect from D.C.

The "things-could-have-been-worse" argument is nothing new, and neither is the second line of defense: Blame capitalism.

So let's also pretend, for the moment, that an era of widespread deregulation spurred a global recession. What exactly has Obama done to mitigate it?

Instead of exerting his extraordinary political capital to bolster American business, the president was busy targeting the investor class; instead of easing the burden on the middle class, Obama radically increased spending and debt; instead of encouraging market innovation, Washington has bolstered the status quo by bailing out antiquated, poorly run industries and crowding out small businesses.

Obama now urges Americans to be patient on the stimulus package. Yet at the same time, the president exhibits a decisive lack of patience as he sprints forward with generational tax increases, in both cap and trade policy and a trillion-dollar-plus health care "reform."

Not surprisingly, many polls illustrate an increasing skepticism regarding the stimulus package and a growing distrust of Washington's unparalleled meddling in the economy. According to a June Rasmussen poll, a plurality of Americans now want government stimulus spending to be canceled.
This rising unease did not stop White House counselor David Axelrod from recently declaring that a second stimulus might be needed.

Needed to do what, one wonders? "Save and create" another 150,000 imaginary jobs?
One day, we will emerge from recession; we always do. And on that day, Obama almost certainly will take credit.

But one wonders: When will the glorious "new era of responsibility" ever actually kick in?
After all, as of right now, judging solely from the administration's very own promises and timeline, we are left with nothing to show for an irresponsible spending binge.
 
3.
 
http://www.coyoteblog.com/
 
Don’t Forget the Minimum Wage

The entire Pacific coast is vying to become the next rust belt.  Only the nice climate and beautiful scenery will keep anyone there.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that Oregon’s unemployment rate soared to 12.4% in May, the nation’s second highest after Michigan’s 14.1%. What to do? If you’re the geniuses in the state legislature in Salem, you naturally raise taxes.

Last week the legislature approved a $2 billion tax hike on personal income and small businesses that haven’t already left the state. The highest tax rate on income above $500,000 would climb to 11% — up from an already high 9%. Oregon will soon boast the second highest income tax rate in the nation, moving ahead of California (10.55%), and only slightly behind New York City (12.6%). Corporations will pay a 7.9% tax on gross receipts, up from 6.6%.

(NOTE: “Raising taxes” or creating new ones is a mania among liberals.  Congressman Charles Rangel – who has no problem avoiding paying his own taxes – is a real fanatic about supporting in tax bill that comes along.)

To be fair, Oregon does not really have a sales tax, so it is hard to compare apples and oranges on taxes. 

But missing from the article is another factor in their unemployment, and the reason our company ultimately had to leave the state:  Oregon has the second highest minimum wage in the country (just behind Washington State and just ahead of California), and it is getting higher every year as it is automatically indexed to something or other that seems to be rising faster than inflation.

4. 
 
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/capandtrade_means_regulate_and.html

Cap-and-Trade Means Regulate and Subsidize

Brian Sussman

Last week, prior to voting for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, House Republican Leader John Boehner spent the better part of an hour reading from the 1201-page bill and the associated 300-page addendum, which had been dumped on Congress' door at 3:09AM. He did so, he told The Hill, because he believed "people need to know what's in this pile of s-it." 

Congressman Boehner was correct.  There may be no better description of what's in this phony legislation, designed to supposedly halt global warming.

(NOTE: we must begin with the fact that man made global warming is a scam, a myth, a scheme.  Scientists have proven this to be the case, and Congressional supporters of this new tax is a case in point.  Unless the Demcrat-laden Senate stops this bill, a “green police” force will knock on your door to inspect your house and force you to make changes to suit Al Gore’s manic obsession.)

First, a couple quick facts: 

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it's a fertilizer. It accounts for a feeble .038 percent of the atmosphere. According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, a research wing of the Department of Energy, only 3.2 percent of that thin atmospheric component is created by anthropogenic emissions. 

The earth's temperature has only risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 150 years, and most of that occurred prior to the 1940s.  The Thirties was the hottest decade on record, with 22 of the current 50 states having established their all-time high temperatures during that sizzling ten years.  There has been no warming of the earth's climate since 1998, and in the past 18-24 months there has been a slight cooling.

Anthropogenic global warming is a myth, and therefore there is no need for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.  Climate change is simply an excuse for another massive government attempt at control and giveaways.

For example, buried on pages 1014-1016 of the bill is the "Monthly Energy Refund." According to this plan, for those with a gross income that "does not exceed 150 percent of the poverty line...a direct deposit," of an undisclosed amount of money, will be sent "into the eligible household's designated bank account..."

On pages 502-503 we find the "Low Income Community Energy Efficiency Program," whereby grants will be issued "to increase the flow of capital and benefits to low income communities, minority-owned and woman-owned businesses and entrepreneurs..."

Further proving this is actually a welfare scheme, on page 973 we discover that for workers who lose their manufacturing jobs because the caps on their companies are too repressive, and their employer either has to shut down, or move operations to the Third World to avoid regulation, the "adversely affected worker" shall receive 70 percent of their prior weekly wage, "payable for a period not longer than 156 weeks."  In addition, on pages 986-987 we read the unemployed worker can submit up to $1,500 in job search reimbursements, and get another $1,500 to cover his moving expenses.

And then there are the new federally mandated building codes, which will supercede local rules and regulations.  The new codes will be enforced by a green goon squad.  On pages 319-324 we read the Secretary of Energy "shall enhance compliance by conducting training and education of builders and other professionals in the jurisdiction concerning the national energy efficiency building code."  These EPA badge-wearing G-Men will be funded both through global warming revenues procured through the cap and trade scheme, as well as by $25 million designated annually from the Department of Energy "to provide necessary enforcement of a national energy efficiency building code..."

Oh, but there's more of the stinky stuff Mr. Boehner was referring to.  A new office will be created at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government's primary weather body.  If this bill becomes law, NOAA will have a "Climate Service Office," as described on pages 1083-1087 of the document.  This new office will "ensure a continuous level of high-quality data collected through a national observation and monitoring infrastructure..."

Question: shouldn't NOAA already be doing this?  If not, perhaps the idiotic forecasts of gloom and doom from the government's chief global warming forecaster James Hansen, who supposedly relies on NOAA products for his scare tactics, have been incorrect after all, due to corrupt data? 
Anyone can see through this charade -- the Climate Service Office will ensure that skeptics and deniers are silenced, and that all research will be controlled and monitored to ensure that global warming is the lie of the land.

In a further effort to perpetrate this fraud, on page 1102 we discover the "Summer Institutes Program and the Regional Climate Center."  According to the bill: "The purpose of the program is to provide training and professional enrichment by providing opportunities for interaction between participants and climate scientists in a research and operational setting to-enable middle school and high school teachers to integrate weather and climate sciences into their curricula: and encourage undergraduate students to pursue further study and careers in weather and climate sciences." 

This is nothing but government sponsored brainwashing, folks.

Thank you Mr. Boehner, for saying it like it is. You, sir, are a great American.  Now let's place pressure on the Senate to keep this sucker bill from passing its stinky gas.

Brian Sussman is a former television meteorologist, turned conservative radio talk host.  He is heard nightly on KSFO-560AM in San Francisco (streaming live at KSFO.com) between 6 and 8PM Pacific.  His upcoming book, "Global Whining: confidence to confront the biggest scam in history" will be published by WND Books.