The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Unemployment Rate in U.S. Declined to 9.7% in January
The unemployment rate in the U.S. unexpectedly declined in January to 9.7 percent, the lowest level since August, while payrolls dropped as companies boosted worker hours and overtime instead of taking on new hires.
Employment fell by 20,000 last month, reflecting a plunge in construction jobs and a drop in state and local government hiring, figures from the Labor Department in Washington showed. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News forecast a gain. Manufacturing employment, factory hours and overtime increased.
Stock-index futures were little changed after the report. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in March rose 0.1 percent to 1,062.2 at 9:01 a.m. in New York.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aFvLQKf6GQsY
With Scott Brown sworn into Senate, parties shift strategies
Just after 5 p.m. Thursday, the headcount in the Senate shifted one seat to the Republican side, as Sen. Scott Brown (R) of Massachusetts was sworn in as the 41st Republican.
But well before his arrival in Washington, leaders on both sides of the aisle have been recalibrating strategies for party agendas that take into account the new clout of the minority.
Majority Democrats no longer hold the 60 seats needed to break a filibuster. That means they will have to reach out to at least one Republican to move major legislation. Some centrists in Democratic ranks say that’s all to the good.
Republican leadership is going back to the demands they made at the beginning of the 111th Congress, before Sen. Arlen Specter (D) of Pennsylvania quit GOP ranks to caucus with Democrats. With Senator Specter’s exit, Republicans lost much of their bargaining power. With Senator Brown’s arrival, they get it back.
Congress passes pay-go, record debt hike
Congress approved a record $1.9 trillion debt ceiling increase Thursday together with Democratic-backed legislation to reinstate “pay-go” rules credited with helping to rein in deficits in the 1990s.
Final passage took two highly partisan House votes, but the end product was something of a coup for the embattled leadership cheered on by a flash from their past: former President Bill Clinton.
With new unemployment numbers out Friday, Democrats now can afford to turn their full attention back to the economy without fear of Republicans bleeding them to death with more painful debt votes before the November elections. By adding statutory pay-go rules, the leadership also hopes to have found a new message — and budget compass — by which to steer in the sea of red ink facing them and President Barack Obama.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32537.html#ixzz0eflL80RF
Opinion:
The Tea Party movement – a political reality Democrats have yet to understand.
Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift long ago ceased being a legitimate journalist – having chosen instead to be only a far left party flack. (Nothing basically wrong with being a flack, some of my best friends are.)
In the current Newsweek Magazine – an outlet for liberal propaganda and political spin, Ms Clift proves how totally ignorant she and her ilk are about the Tea Party Movement. (There are a lot of Republicans who don’t really get it either)
In a screed entitled “Week Tea (Party)”, Clift trills a deep and desperate Democrat yearning:
"It was conventional wisdom to dismiss the tea-party activists who disrupted town-hall meetings around the country last summer as a bunch of crazies orchestrated by Republican activists. They equated President Obama's policies with socialism, communism, and fascism, whichever -ism was handy, and their angry rhetoric was so over the top that Democrats dismissed them as a fringe group not worth worrying about.”
Clift is right about the anger, but misses reality by calling it “over the top”. For the record, the Tea Party movement is not a monolithic organization – it has no designated leader. It is from it’s spontaneity that it draws its power and political importance.
In many cases, the Tea Party Movement sprung from volunteers who communicated with others of like minds and primarily identified locations where elected Democrats would appear and be open to a demonstration by angry members of the general public.
Here in Panama City, Florida, the Internet was suddenly filled with emails noting Blue Dog Democrat Alan Boyd would be here to speak at a specific time and day. Boyd voted for the Democrat “Cap and Trade” bill – a conspiracy through which new taxation – as much as $3,000 a family according to a Heritage Foundation calculation – and which would send prices for energy and things such as groceries and gasoline, (to use Obama’s own words) “skyrocketing”.New taxes and high prices, are not what we want
An angry, spontaneous gathering met Boyd and shouted him down as he entered his speaking venue. Boyd eventually had to sneak out a back door. The story was reported on a Fox News appearance by local pundit, Karl Rove, who also mentioned the Boyd ambush a few days later in an editorial he penned for the Wall Street Journal.
Bumper stickers (“Tell Washington No”) from Panama City were sent spontaneously between Internet friends to Philadelphia where they became a rallying point for normal Americans who showed up to demand honest answers from their Senator Arlan Specter. The resulting uproar (and shots of the bumper stickers) made national news and was repeated over and over.
No giant organization was involved.
What liberals just don’t get is the real Tea Party message. Real America – normal America – those Americans Obama describes as clinging to their bibles and guns – and are finally speaking up. They are mad at liberal Democrats and think liberals are sending the nation down the road to socialism or ruin. Ms Clift should know, she is one of them.
Tea Partiers want reform of health care – but don’t want government run health care – the bottom line of liberal Democrats. Even Barney Frank admits the end game is socialized medicine as is seen in Canada. Also resented is the extravagant, irresponsible spending.
If Tea Party participants strongly resent Cap and Trade and those who would impose it, they really hate encouraging illegal immigration and providing amnesty for those who choose to become criminals when they sneak across our borders and set foot on US soil.
A few years back, a real anger of normal America shouted down an amnesty for illegals scheme backed by the US Senate, the Bush White House, and the mainstream media.
Bottom line – the tea party movement is spontaneous – reflecting the bitter resentment of normal America against liberal extremism that has dominated Washington for decades – even during administrations of conservative Presidents..
The tide has changed. The Internet has allowed millions of normal Americans to learn they are not alone – that they are not the odd ball, out of step crazy liberals such as Ms Clift claim.
Tea parties are made up of real Americans.
Ms Clift provides another liberal perspective:
“Less than half a year later, the tea-party movement is the tip of the spear shaping the White House policy agenda, putting Obama on the defensive on spending and forcing Democrats to elevate deficit reduction as a priority. Tea-party activists backing Scott Brown in Massachusetts showed a willingness to be pragmatic, setting aside divisive cultural issues and focusing on economic freedom and free markets.”
Asks Clift:
…are the tea-partiers a lasting force?
The answer is “yes”, because it’s spontaneous – not contrived. It will follow those who lead responsibly and who reflect the needs, desires, and convictions of normal people.
It is not monolithic, it is not an organized party – nor should it be. Who needs meetings, conventions, and posturing leaders? Let freedom ring, let liberty – real liberty – be the order of the day. Follow the Constitution – that’s what its designed for.
Summing it up, tea party signs offer an admonition: “Don’t tread on us”. Politicians who fail to understand and heed that admonition will be swallowed by the political tsunami that is currently raging.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010
Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- "I am not an ideologue," protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.
Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society -- health care, education and energy.
A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill."
This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?
Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.
Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"
A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."
Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself "for not explaining it (health care) more clearly to the American people." The subject, he noted, was "complex." The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.
Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people's anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.
That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.
It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick's masterwork, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," "proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification." The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.
This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.
By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted (BEG ITAL)dissent(END ITAL). And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is "one of the truest expressions of patriotism."
No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.
Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions.
For liberals, the observation that "the peasants are revolting" is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.
The ankle-dwelling populace pushes back. It re-centers. It renormalizes. Even in Massachusetts.
Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2010/02/05/the_great_peasant_revolt_of_2010
2.
Pay attention to Eric Holder’s law firm and Gitmo detainees
Michelle Malkin
A good friend writes:
[A]s nearly 100 of the remaining detainees are Yemenis, reflecting that country’s refusal to assure security for repatriated Yemenis, note that AG nominee Eric Holder is a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo. From the C & B website:
The firm represents 17 Yemeni nationals and one Pakistani citizen held at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court will soon review the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that ordered the dismissal of a number of habeas petitions filed by Guantánamo detainees; some of our clients are petitioners in the Supreme Court case.
We expect to play a substantial role in the briefing. We also plan to petition the Supreme Court to hear our Pakistani client’s appeal from the D.C. Circuit’s order dismissing his case. Further, we are pursuing relief in the D.C. Circuit under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 for all of our clients. On a separate front, we filed amicus briefs and coordinated the amicus effort in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which the Supreme Court in the summer of 2006 invalidated President Bush’s military commissions and in which we have obtained favorable rulings that our clients have rights under the Fifth Amendment and the Geneva Conventions.
Covington & Burling’s Gitmo bar roster has included some of the most radical detainee advocates; see David Remes, who peeled down to his underwear at a press conference in Yemen to draw attention to his clients’ plight and Marc Falkoff, who published a book of detainee poetry and who, in the book’s intro, compared their heroic struggle to the Jews held in concentration camps and Japanese Americans held in internment camps during WWII. [One of Falkoff's "gentle, thoughtful" young poets--a Kuwaiti "cleared for release" and repatriated in 2005--blew himself up in a truck bomb in Mosul last March, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42 others.]
The fact that Mr. Holder, while Deputy Attorney General, pushed for the release of 16 violent FALN terrorists against the advice of the FBI, the US Attorneys who prosecuted them and the NYPD officers who were maimed by them, suggests that he was perfectly willing to put politics before the national security interests of the country. He is not suited for the job of attorney general, which is central to the issues surrounding the disposition of war on terror detainees.
3.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/do_democrats_lack_a_conscience.html
Do Democrats Lack a Conscience?
Lauri B. Regan
If only a White House reporter would ask Barack Obama this one question: "How do you look in the mirror every day?" As a majority of Americans watch in horror at the Democrats consciously driving the country on a collision course with disaster, I have become quite cynical about whether Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the Democratic aristocracy have consciences -- and if so, how they live with themselves.
It is not just the dichotomy of Obama's words versus his lifestyle that bear out the hypocrisy of his character and his soul (or lack thereof). It is the arrogance on display since the day he was inaugurated that is most astounding. It is the self-entitlement, the "I won," the belief that "the big difference here and in '94 was you got me," and the egocentric narcissism that is not only disgusting to watch, but has additionally resulted in policies detrimental to America.
This conceit is what is driving Obama, his staff, and the Democrats in Congress to rule as dictators rather than as democratically elected leaders. And it will be the ruination of the nation if they are not all booted out as soon as possible.
The shocking steps the Democrats took to pass health care legislation prior to Scott Brown's election are historic. The corruption, lies, and concealment were not politics as usual; they were politics of the worst kind. To what can we attribute the number of hours dedicated to the drafting and passage of a health care bill, the secrecy under which it had been drafted, the partisanship which had closed out any Republican input, and the name-calling and vehemence that pervaded the process?
The only logical conclusion is that the Democratic leadership has completely lost its mind with greed and self-grandiosity to the point that its members are ignoring their constitutional oaths of office, ignoring their role in protecting the nation, and ignoring their constituencies. Democrats are either electing to be thrown under the bus or are hanging on by a thread in order to fulfill the will of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate while completely ignoring the will of the people who elected them to office. They have gotten their hands dirty with backroom deals, bribes, and discriminating provisions in order to get something -- anything -- passed, just so Obama's ego could be fed with one more faux accomplishment. And they still turned up empty.
While the mainstream media obediently ignore the seamy acts of the Democrats, the citizens of this country thankfully have woken up to the harsh reality that they have elected rogue rulers. It is bad enough that one MS-NBC host publicly stated that he would cheat and commit voter fraud just to "keep the bastards out." It is even worse to read a mass e-mail from the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, in which he reduced himself to the level of a sniggering teenager, calling Republican candidate Scott Brown a "far right tea bagger."
Yet, despite the devastating loss in Massachusetts, which clearly should have presented a wake-up call to these bullies, Dick Morris recently reported that "[h]ighly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare 'reform' and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts."
Prior to the Massachusetts revolt, Barney Frank proclaimed that "God didn't create the filibuster," suggesting that the Senate rules need to be amended in order to pass Obamacare. And as analyzed in an AT article last week, Frank was not alone, as many on the left, joining this chorus, continue to ignore the will of the people they were elected to represent -- not to mention the intent of the Framers.
To make mtters worse, Nancy Pelosi, Queen of the House, with neither conscience nor soul, promised, "We will have health care one way or another." Democrats have contemplated just about every option short of walking over to the National Archives building and burning the Constitution.
While the politically correct Democrats argue that waterboarding terrorists is unconstitutional and anti-American despite the fact that it inflicts no injury and has been proven to save countless American lives, those same individuals continue to torture Americans with their broken promises, exorbitant spending sprees, disregard for the interests of the nation, and threats and intimidation of those who do not fall in line.
Many have attempted to explain away the policies of the Democrats by attributing their actions to a sense of elitism and their belief that they know what is best for the country even if the voters do not.
Obama even said as much when justifying the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat. However, after one year of full control of both the executive and legislative branches of government, the Democrats have proven to care about one thing, and it is not what is in the best interests of American citizens. It is power, pure and simple.
While the Democrats proceed with their anti-American and disingenuous policies based on a pompous belief that they were given a mandate to gut the Constitution and their insatiable hunger to win at all costs and ensure their control of the government for years to come, Americans have awoken to the reality of a future unimpeded by the checks and balances designed by the Founding Fathers. This country was created specifically upon a rejection of unbridled power. The founders of this great bastion of freedom understood that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Obama campaigned on promises to break from politics as usual. And the electorate bought it lock, stock, and barrel. They believed him when he promised transparency and bipartisanship, health care debates aired on C-SPAN, and no new taxes on people earning less than $250,000. With a year of broken promises, disdain for hardworking Americans, and pure greed, how is it that 47% of Americans still support this guy? It is time for those who can no longer use the Koolaid buzz as their excuse for blind support of a president devoid of conscience to take a look in the mirror. Unlike the anointed One, who adores his own reflection, we can only imagine what they will find staring back.
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