These articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
PELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail
Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail for five years.
The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.
In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”
http://republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=153583
Obama Calls "for calm" after US military base killings
Barack Obama cautioned a stunned public on Friday against “drawing quick conclusions” on a shooting rampage by an officer at a Texas military base that killed 13 people.
The president made the comments as the commander of Fort Hood, the US’s largest base for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, quoted witnesses as saying the suspected gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, shouted the Muslim declaration “Allahu Akbar” – God is great – as he opened fire. Speaking at the White House, Mr Obama said: “We don’t know all the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.” (Huh?)
Major Hasan, who was shot by a civilian policewoman in the incident, is reported to be unconscious and on a ventilator in custody.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb3f2e32-cb16-11de-97e0-00144feabdc0.html
ACORN offices in New Orleans raided
State investigators raided ACORN offices Friday, taking away computer hard drives and documents as part of a probe into alleged embezzlement and tax fraud when the organization's national headquarters was based in New Orleans.
“This is an investigation of everything — ACORN, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities, specifically as it relates to any potential violations of Louisiana law,” Assistant Attorney General David Caldwell said.
ACORN staff on the scene declined to comment, but an attorney for the group said in a statement the raid was prompted by allegations that former ACORN employees had removed or altered electronic documents and may do so in the future.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/06/20091106acorn-probe-ON.html?source=nletter-
Opinion:
America’s health care is on the line today.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is forcing the House to meet in extraordinary session today as she attempts to impose her version of the Democrat scheme aimed at taking over our health care system.
Despite their claims to the contrary, make no mistake about it: this is a ham handed effort to take control of our health care. “Control” is the objective, “Reform” is only a cover to make the effort seem legitimate.
Democrats hide their schemes behind false fronts – as we see in their so called “Cap and Trade” bill which they claim is focused on climate change – in truth, it’s simply one more scheme by Democrats to create a huge tax – plan to cough up an additional $3,000 every year if Democrats succeed in passing it in the Senate.
There are some reports this morning that Democrats in the House are losing some of their support. If so, it may be a result of the “whip list” being circulated on email that fingers Congressmen who are undecided on the issue, and those who are openly voting against the American people.
The Pelosi bill will create government-run health care – that means surrendering health care quality. Government and “quality” are natural enemies. Pelosi also intends to pass a “public option” plot that would eventually lead to Canadian-style socialized medicine.
Work the phones and any other access to Congress you may have. This is how the vote stood 24 hours ago and their phone numbers.
Work the phones, save our health care, show Democrats in Congress that a tidal wave of opposition awaits those who vote against the American people.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-Examiner~y2009m11d4-Congress-moves-to-control-all-US-water
Congress moves to control all U.S. water
Law Enforcement Examiner Jim Kouri
Congress is attempting to expand their power over US waters by including those on private property.
Civil libertarians are warning Americans about the ambitions of federal lawmakers to control all waters within the United States including those on private property, in the latest power grab by politicians in Washington, DC.
According to the American Land Rights Association, the Obama Administration and Congress are attempting to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2009 (S787) that would amend the 1972 Clean Water Act and replace the words "navigable waters" with "waters of the United States."
"The US Constitution's Tenth Amendment automatically reserves power for controlling waters to the states, not to the Oval Office and US Congress," said political strategist Mike Baker.
"This is just one more power grab by out-of-control politicians who only adhere to constitutional law when it suits them," he added.
Section 3, Paragraph 8 stipulates that "this Act will treat, as ‘waters of the United States’, those features that were treated as such pursuant to the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers in existence before the dates of the decisions referred to in paragraph (10), including--
(A) all waters which are subject to the ebb and flow of the tide;
(B) all interstate waters, including interstate wetlands;
(C) all other waters, such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds;
(D) all impoundments of waters of the United States;
(E) tributaries of the aforementioned waters;
(F) the territorial seas;
(G) wetlands adjacent to the aforementioned waters."
After being overuled by the U. S. Supreme Court in two recent decisions that the words "navigable waters" in the Clean Water Act limited federal agencies to regulation of navigable waters only, Democrats and liberal Republicans in Congress are striking back.
They are attempting to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2009 (S 787) that would amend the 1972 Clean Water Act and replace the words "navigable waters" with "waters of the United States."
"The bill also defines "waters of the United States" with such breathtaking scope that federal agencies would be required to regulate use of every square inch of the U.S., both public and private," according to the American Land Rights Association.
"Obviously, those behind this legislation have only contempt for the Constitution, limited government and private property rights. To understand what the framers of the Constitution intended, one need only look to their writings and the writings of those from whom they took wisdom and direction," said officials at ALRA.
"This is a terrible bill that would give the Federal government jurisdiction over anything that is wet including seasonal mud flats. This means that the Feds could enter your property and dictate what you can do with bodies of water on your land," said political strategist Mike Baker.
"It also means that the Great Lake States and Provinces could not protect the Great Lakes from being pumped dry to feed the growth of California and the Southwest. In that area, Democrat Senator Russ Feingold has sold out his own state: Wisconsin."
"Senate Bill 787 will change federal jurisdiction over “navigable” water, to give the federal government control over all water everwhere, in municiple reservoirs, and on private lands, and in private wells. This bill ignores state water law authority and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," stated Barbara H. Peterson, a farm lands protection activist.
"If the Feds own the water, then they can do anything they want to with it, and I have to ask permission to get a drink or water my animals," she stated.
More information on this subject may be found on these web pages:
www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s787/text
www.landrights.org/
www.thewesterner.blogspot.com/.../us-senate-moves-to-seize-deserts-under.html
www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/111_SN_787.html
www.protectmywater.org/documents/060109_2_pager.pdf
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). In addition, he's the former editor for the House Conservatives Fund's weblog. Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.
2.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=511441
Just Reverting To Norm After Anomaly Of '08
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of ObamaCare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010.
But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.
In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future.
One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservativism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.
This was all ridiculous from the beginning. 2008 was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression.
And still he won by only seven points.
Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia — presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years — went red again.
With a vengeance.
Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 — a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus 15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-4 in 2009. A 19-point swing.
What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20%; the under-30 vote by 50%. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.
'08 Never Again
White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat?
Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.
3.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=511489
Desperate Dems
Politics: Despite the whipping they took in Tuesday's election, congressional Democrats are moving fast on cap-and-trade and health care. Are they politically tone-deaf, or is this some kind of desperate strategy?
Our guess is that Democratic leaders, having gotten a very negative message from the off-year balloting, are moving as fast as they can to pass the main big-spending items on their unpopular agenda. If they don't act now, the know their radical agenda is dead.
On Thursday, Senate Democrats hustled the cap-and-trade bill out of committee without so much as a hello-and-howdy to the Republicans — knowing full well the GOPers would oppose it.
All this haste, even though global participants in the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks planned for December agree that any CO2-cutting deal is probably a year away.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in the House want a Saturday showdown for their $1.2 trillion health care takeover after trumpeting support from the AARP and American Medical Association.
As the publication The Hill noted, Democratic leaders are still scrambling to "placate party factions threatening to defeat the health care bill over hot-button issues such as spending, immigration and abortion." They need 218 votes in the House, and they don't seem to have them.
What's the big hurry for a bill that won't even go into effect until 2013? And why act with such haste to move the cap-and-trade bill out of committee? The only obvious answer is Democratic leaders are running scared. Yet there's an element of self-delusion to their strategy.
Just listen to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after her party's shellacking at the polls: "From our standpoint, we won last night."
"We won"? Sure, and from the standpoint of the Titanic's passengers, it was a heckuva half-voyage.
Fact is, 2010 has many Democrats — especially moderates in red or purple states carried by John McCain in 2008 — fearful of a wave of anti-incumbent and anti-Democrat sentiment.
It hasn't helped that voters have been frightened — and justifiably so — by the $787 billion stimulus, the $700 billion in bailouts, the $1 trillion-a-year deficits and the government takeover of key U.S. industries such as autos and finance. There's practically no evidence any of these initiatives has worked to any meaningful degree.
Recent polls show the president and Congress falling fast in public esteem. The RealClearPolitics poll of polls, which aggregates a number of congressional favorability surveys, shows an average of 25.5% approval and 66.7% disapproval for a -41.2% spread.
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