The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Nancy Pelosi predicts Democrats will hold the House
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) predicted Sunday that Democrats will retain their majority in the fall, in no small part because the party is already bracing itself for what it knows will be a difficult election.
"We are ready," Pelosi told CNN's Candy Crowley. "And in the past when there [have] been these swings, it's been when people had not been ready." Pelosi also touted her party's record in special election, noting that Rep. Bill Owens' (D) win in New York's 23rd was the first time since the Civil War era that Democrats had controlled the district. (Omitting the fact a third party candidate, governed the outcome’s favoring the Democrat)
Pelosi told Crowley that Democrats will have to talk about "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs" if they want to perform well at the ballot box this November. "We inherited a terrible mess from the Bush administration and their failed economic policies," Pelosi added. "And so we have -- now we are in charge, fully in charge, we have to create jobs." (In a separate interview with ABC's Elizabeth Vargas,
Charlie Rangel to keep gavel -- for now
Charles Rangel met with New York Democrats on Saturday in an effort to save embattled Gov. David Paterson. But the meeting could just as easily have been about Rangel himself.
The House ethics committee decision to admonish Rangel for taking two corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean has turned up the heat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman — with even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that Rangel’s actions don’t pass the “smell test.” (Note: In addition to corporate hand outs, Rangel is also revealed as a tax cheat.)
Several House Democrats have now joined Republicans in calling for Rangel to lose his gavel, and The New York Times has chimed in, saying the “arrogance” Rangel showed in the wake of Thursday’s ethics committee ruling provides “one more reason” for Pelosi to “stop protecting him and relieve him of his crucial role as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33668.html#ixzz0gvuKykbA
Farrakhan predicts 'white right' trouble for Obama
Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, boasting his divine stature, on Sunday predicted trouble ahead for President Barack Obama and urged him to do more to improve the lives of blacks and the downtrodden.
The 76-year-old leader said the "white right" was conspiring to make Obama a one-term president, and pointed to his stalled efforts to introduce health care legislation as proof. He said those opponents and lobbyists were trapping him into a future war with Iran that could lead to mass destruction.
An estimated 20,000 people attended the heavily guarded Saviours' Day event at the United Center in Chicago. Followers — men dressed in navy uniforms and women in white skirt suits with matching hijabs — cheered on Farrakhan with shouts of "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jJkCIU0H6uFzTBYSE5eZ94bUxjpQD9E5IU200
Opinion:
Pelosi, Obama, and an incredible example of arrogance of power
Either Obama and Pelosi know something no one else does, or they have a political death-wish for their party and its far left philosophy..
The American public rejects the Democrat health care plan. In fact, 67% of the American public say they are fed up with the debate. Health care reform is not all that high on the list of issue concerns, but Obama and Pelosi hard-headedly continue pushing it along, in the process, dooming Democrat majorities – maybe the party itself.
Democrats already face serious losses in November – if they choose to use reconciliation (the nuclear option), the magnitude of their defeat will be even greater. Reconciliation will put a political tsunami into play.
History shows people need to see bi-partisan participation before they will embrace congressional action. The health care bill is anything BUT bi-partisan. It was contrived in secret behind the tightly shut doors of Democrat Senate Leader, Harry Reid’s own office. Republican participation and insight was specifically rejected in both the House and in the Senate. It is nothing less than incredible to see Democrats deny that fact,
Yet, over the week end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on fellow Democrats to put their Congressional careers on the line and vote for the health care scam. (Easy for Pelosi to say – she safely represents a section of Frisco – an area hardly representative of real America!)
A key moment lost by many, came from Obama as his health summit dog-and-pony show drew to a close. He grimly mumbled “that’s what elections are for”. Many took this to mean, judgment on health care will come when America votes in November. Actually the opposite was his intent. He was actually proclaiming “we won the election” (last year) so now we’ll do as we wish It was a threat and a proclamation all rolled into one.
We now see Democrats desperately laying ground work for imposing their will through a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation. Democrats open all interviews claiming reconciliation is common – used many times – mostly by Republicans. It’s another “It’s Bush’s fault” whine. The comments are non-sequiturs and deserve a big-time “so what”.
All of this is a liberal conspiracy to send health care in the direction of single payer versions – it would usher in Canadian-style socialized medicine.
Democrats are awash with claims there are many points of agreement between themselves and Republicans. Of course they are. But again, “so what?” Democrat positions contradicts a basic truth – they believe deep within their hearts that any reform must be imposed, regulated, and enforced by the federal government. Otherwise the effort cannot be sustained. Republicans (and most Americans) reject that idea and believe honest reform must be based on free choice, and regulated by the market place. Until that chasm is breached, real agreement and compromise fall flat.
Meanwhile, Obama and his congressional Democrats demand an "up-or-down vote" on a health care. This is their euphemism for reconciliation. “Our way or the highway” is the Democrat battle cry.
Obama will likely reveal how he intends to proceed on his pet issue sometime this week. Meanwhile Democrats on Capitol Hill are starting to openly rally around reconciliation. The tactic would eliminate any chance for a Republican filibuster – thus once again, shutting out honest discussion or insight and making whatever is produced an all Democrat, all the time, creation.
"The health care reform has already passed both the House and the Senate, with not only a majority in the Senate but a supermajority," White House Office for Health Reform director Nancy Ann DeParle said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." What she fails to acknowledge is the arm twisting and unabashed bribery necessary to get enough Democrat votes. In fact, the worst concepts, rumors, and claims about the what goes on within Capitol Hill operations, were on display as desperate Democrats struggled to impose their health care conspiracy.
It was as if it is suddenly revealed that when the lights are turned off at night, monsters really do lurk in the shadows and in dark corners.
The shadows have become real, and their intent is should be feared and resisted by all America.
Buddy
Top blogs:
1.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/secretary_geithners_got_some.html
Secretary Geithner's Got Some Explaining to Do
David Yerushalmi
While everyone, including Congress, the media, and the public, have focused on AIG's $100-million bonus payments to key employees, and most recently on AIG's stealth payments to counterparties like Chase and the French giant Société Générale -- the latter made worse by the fact that it was the Federal Reserve (FED) that wanted to keep these payments hidden from public view -- the problem with the AIG bailout is much deeper and more fundamental.
Just about everyone has had something to say about this bailout -- mostly that it was an ugly but necessary step to stave off a domino effect that would have brought the world's financial system to its knees. But what we have not yet heard is just how Treasury Secretary Geithner, as then-head of the NY FED, got away with taking ownership of 77.9% of AIG's equity and voting rights in clear violation of the law.
The question we are left with is: Why? What motivated this illegal grab of AIG's equity and voting rights? Was it desperation in the face of the largest potential collapse in the history of modern finance? Was it unbridled power combined with supreme hubris? Or was it just criminal? The answer to this query resides in the as-yet-hidden files of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, now subject to a subpoena issued by my office in the federal lawsuit Murray v. Geithner, pending in the Eastern District of Michigan.
In this lawsuit, brought on behalf of Kevin Murray, an Iraq War veteran and taxpayer, my co-counsel, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, and I have challenged the U.S. government's takeover of AIG as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the taxpayer bailout has the effect of promoting and advancing AIG's Shariah-adherent insurance business -- the largest in the world. AIG promotes itself as a global advocate not only of Islam, but also of the Islamic legal doctrine known as Shariah -- which is the Islamic legal doctrine and program that calls for a global hegemony referred to as the Caliphate, the murder of apostates, and jihad against infidels. The most austere and important Islamic legal authorities who legitimize Shariah-compliant finance, like AIG's takaful insurance products, are the same ones issuing fatwas for jihad against the West.
In the course of discovery, resisted by the government at every turn, we have learned that the deal Geithner put together as the NY Fed's president was illegal on its face.
The Deal
Specifically, the deal Geithner put together in September 2008 was for the NY FED to pour up to $85 billion of debt funding into AIG to solve its liquidity crisis as the Credit Default Swap counterparties, the banks which had insured themselves against the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, demanded payments under their AIG insurance policies. AIG ended up drawing down $60 billion almost overnight.
But Geithner was not content with a straight debt deal where AIG promised to pay back principal and interest and handed over almost all of its assets as collateral. Geithner wanted real ownership and control (77.9%, to be exact) of AIG's equity and the voting rights to go along with that.
The problem Geithner knew he had to confront, however, was that the FED was not authorized to take ownership in AIG or any other financial institution. The law authorized the FED only to loan money and take collateral. While the FED might end up with ownership after a default and foreclosure on the collateral, the Federal Reserve Act does not authorize the NY Fed to structure the debt deal with an equity piece.
The Criminal Artifice
So what did Geithner do? He took equity, but he used a fictitious "Trust" to accomplish that which he could not do legally. The AIG Credit Facility Trust has three so-called independent, non-governmental trustees owning the 77.9% of the legal interests of AIG, and the Trust agreement assigns the U.S. Treasury the beneficial interests in the 77.9%. The highly-touted "independence" of the trustees is quite obviously critical to save the Trust from the claim that it is merely a ruse for FED ownership and control.
But there is only one problem with this Trust structure: It is invalid and illegal for two important reasons, not the least of which is that its independence is nonexistent.
Specifically, the Trust Agreement includes a hardly-noticed section 1.03, which gives the FED absolute authority over the Trust's existence and its terms, effectively granting the FED control over the actions of the trustees. By any legal definition, this is not a valid independent trust. This means, at the very least, that the FED is the real owner of the legal interests in 77.9% of AIG's equity, and this is, as Geithner himself testified before the Senate Banking Committee in April 2008, not legal.
But the Trust's infirmities do not stop at its lack of independence. The Trust Agreement also assigns the beneficial interests to the U.S. Treasury as the Trust's beneficiary. This assignment is patently invalid because a trust beneficiary must be a person or entity that can own title to things in its own name. But the U.S. Treasury is -- by statute, by case law, and by actual fact -- nothing more than a bank account or depository for things owned by the U.S. government. And a bank account cannot own anything.
So how and why did the dozens, if not hundreds, of government and private-sector high-priced lawyers working on this transaction make such an elementary mistake? We don't know the answer to this question yet, but we do know why they could not name the Treasury Department as the beneficiary: because like with the FED, at the time, it did not yet have legal authority to acquire an ownership interest in any of the failing financial institutions, either. That authority would come later, when Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which authorizes the use of TARP funds for acquiring equity. But even that legislation instructs the Treasury Department to avoid acquiring voting rights. Geithner's deal was all about acquiring not just voting rights, but super-majority control. Unfortunately, there was no legal authority at the time to do so.
The brute fact that now standing exposed before us is the use of an invalid Trust structure to conceal the unlawful ownership and control over 77.9% of AIG's equity and voting rights by the FED. If Geithner knew he was breaking the law, then this just happens to be the definition of criminal money-laundering under Title 18, Section 1956. Secretary Geithner has some explaining to do to AIG's public shareholders. We suggest that he seek legal advice first -- but this time, from lawyers who actually know what they are doing.
David Yerushalmi is a litigator specializing in securities law and public policy and serves as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank specializing in national security. Mr. Yerushalmi is also representing the plaintiff in Murray v. Geithner et al. in a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. government's takeover of AIG on First Amendment-Establishment Clause grounds.
2.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/healthcare_summit_democrat_dem.html
Healthcare Summit Democrat Demagoguery
Carl Paulus
Joseph Epstein once wrote, ''Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone on the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, coldhearted, a sellout, evil.'' Throughout the health care summit on Thursday, I was constantly reminded of this observation.
Most Democrats at the meeting started their monologues with a heart-wrenching story of a victim of our current health care system. Instead of defending how their plan would help those in need, they relied on emotional pleas that "we must do something" and hoped that the stories themselves would be enough to convince the public to embrace their total reform of the nation's health care system. Rarely did a Democrat point to specific ways in which they could work with Republicans to solve the problems they so aptly retold.
Democrats have employed this tactic since coming to power in 2006, but at the Thursday summit, the Democrat-as-defender-of-the-helpless argument reached its pinnacle. President Obama began their routine. Only minutes into the meeting, the president talked about letters he received from families going bankrupt or unable to get insurance for children with preexisting conditions. He even mentioned his own daughters, one with asthma and the other going to the emergency room to be treated for meningitis. He deeply expressed his feelings of "what if." This started the parade of sad stories that Democrats told the national audience for nearly seven hours.
Nancy Pelosi spoke of a woman in Michigan who had to choose between her food and her deductible. Harry Reid opened by talking about a baby with a cleft palate. Steny Hoyer described the problems one woman faced after being diagnosed with a tumor. From the opening comments to the final hour, it became clear that these emotional pleas, pointing to more questions rather than solutions, would be the Democrats' tactic of the day.
Senator Jim Clyburn discussed a hospital administrator who told him that people with insurance could not afford their high deductibles from going to the emergency room in a small hospital in Dillon, South Carolina. Rep. George Miller talked about his artificial hips. Then, as the morning session came to a close, Rep. Louise Slaughter informed the audience of a woman who wore her dead sister's dentures because she could not afford her own. These stories seem far removed from the 80 percent of the Americans who told Gallup less than six months ago that they feel satisfied with their coverage.
The appeal to our emotions continued into the afternoon. This time, Democrats worked to demonize those they believed stood in their way. Taking President Obama's lead after he blamed his former car insurance company for him not buying collision insurance from them, Senator Harkin compared "the segregation" of those with preexisting conditions today with African-Americans under the oppression of Jim Crow before Brown v. Board in the 1950s. Senator Jay Rockefeller said, "The health insurance industry is the shark that sits right below the water, and you don't see that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark." Since every story about a victim needs to have a wrongdoer, Democrats alluded to the irresponsible practices of insurance companies and, of course, their Republican allies.
After working to make insurance companies the enemy, Democrats went back to the sad stories. Senator Kent Conrad talked about his father-in-law's heart condition. Senator Dick Durbin relayed a story about a woman who suffered burns after her surgical oxygen caught fire. Rep. Henry Waxman talked of a child with a hole in his heart. Senator Chris Dodd spoke of a small businessman losing a favored employee because of health care costs. Finally, near the end of the day, Senator Patty Murray gave us the most heart-wrenching tale when she explained how talking about health care reminded her of a little boy whose single, working mom passed away because she lost her health insurance after missing work too many times.
Over a seven-hour span, American viewers heard fifteen unfortunate stories told by Democrats, which apparently represent a nation of 300 million people. Most of the stories involved situations that are addressed in current Republican health bills. Yet they were all told as apparent proof that we should accept and pass -- unchanged -- an enormous Democratic overhaul of the American health care system.
Democrats demonize and victimize when they need the public's support. They did it in the summer, when they used AIG as a whipping boy of populist anger, and last week, when they provided the New Jersey Assembly with a blind thirteen-year-old to discuss the troubles with budget cuts as a way to attack the state's debt. Their reliance on the tactics of victimization rather than facts, however, is exemplified best in an exchange between Paul Ryan and Xavier Becerra that took place Thursday.
Rep. Paul Ryan succinctly and correctly explained the budget gimmicks behind the Democratic health care plans. Ryan started by saying, "First, a little bit about CBO. I work with them every single day -- very good people, great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is full of gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors." Clearly, Ryan believed the CBO's results, as he chastised the gimmickry of the Democratic plan, not the CBO itself.
However, instead of discussing the Democrats' plan and working in the realm of facts, Becerra stated, "[Ryan] and I have sat on the Budget Committee for years together, and you have on any number of occasions in those years cited the Congressional Budget Office to make your point, referred to the Congressional Budget Office's projections to make your point. And today, you essentially said you can't trust the Congressional Budget Office." In this case, Becerra's victimization of the CBO clearly failed in the face of Ryan's clearheaded financial assessment. Recognizing this, the congressman from California simply ignored Ryan's criticism of the budget gimmicks and praised the plans for their budget-neutrality.
Thomas Sowell builds on his former work and describes this phenomenon of emotional pleas in his newest book, Intellectuals and Society. He claims that many on the Left have what he labels "the vision of the anointed." Americans across the country saw the encapsulation of this idea in the Health Care Summit. Instead of detailing why their plan works better, Democrats instead accused their detractors of insincerity and cold-heartedness towards suffering Americans. They acted as though only Democrats want to help those in need. This tactic gave them no reason to explain why their reforms will work. Before passing a bill that a majority of Americans do not want, they must still explain why their plan is better. Hopefully the American public will see beyond these tactics and prevent the anointed Democrats from doing whatever it takes to pass their bill.
Carl Paulus is a Ph.D. candidate at Rice University, where he studies nineteenth-century United States politics.
3.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/01/skating-on-thin-ice-for-climate-change/
EDITORIAL: Skating on thin ice for climate change
Steven Chu's zealotry leaves Americans cold
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Energy Secretary Steven Chu didn't reach the pinnacle of his profession by treading the well-worn path of modern group-think. It's regrettable that the Nobel Prize-winning physicist is stuck in that rut now.
Mr. Chu took great pains in a Feb. 19 speech to a Denver energy summit in arguing the case for human-induced climate change. "We have to convince all of America that this is a nonpartisan issue. ... This is our economic future," he said.
You have to feel for a man of science trying to make the jump to politics. In science, facts speak for themselves. In politics, facts are often run to ground by baloney.
As energy secretary, Mr. Chu has traded fact for fiction and now spends his days selling President Obama's discredited climate-change policy.
Surely, Mr. Chu must be aware that the case for human-induced climate change, the cause that he has embraced as the paramount mission of his secretariat, has been exposed as fraught with fraud. Two weeks ago, Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' pre-eminent climate-change official, announced his resignation amid a groundswell of derision over his failure to confront the global-warming hoax.
Evidence of falsified data, errors in the U.N.'s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and biased ground-based temperature data are all part of the body of bogus science that has become known as Climategate.
On Wednesday, when Mr. Chu toured the site of Abu Dhabi's Masdar City - touted as "the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city" - he felt compelled to voice climate-change-equals-jobs rhetoric similar to that which he delivered in Denver. When completed, the sparkling 6-square-kilometer model city will be equipped with the world's priciest energy technologies, including solar, hydrogen and geothermal power plants - energy toys that a few opulent oil sheiks can afford to play with, but a country the size of America cannot. What he saw there will not be "our economic future," at least not anytime soon.
Mr. Chu's official government biography crows that he has "devoted his recent scientific career to the search for new solutions to our energy challenges and stopping global climate change - a mission he continues with even greater urgency as secretary of energy."
The Cabinet secretary could learn from the example of the wise Viking King Canute. Legend has it that when His Majesty learned that his flattering courtiers were claiming he was "so great, he could command the tides of the sea to go back," he had his throne carried to the seashore. When the tide rose, he commanded the waves to halt. When his command had no effect, he pointed out to all that though the deeds of kings might appear great to men, they were nothing compared to the forces of nature.
Likewise, the energy secretary would be smart to apprehend the limits of his power. Climate will change - or cease changing - but not by his leave.
The real challenge of helping Americans develop clean, affordable and plentiful energy sources should be enough to occupy his days in office.
(NOTE: From my friend Harry Becker: “(Past) Time for government to get out of the way so that free enterprise can get on with recovering, refining & marketing the energy we need in the forms that are most efficient for the user. To assist us by protecting us from enemies is the principle reason to bother with having government. Those we have chosen to lead in that effort seem to have forgotten & have been seeking the power to control us. Bout time to abolish the mess, the bloated halls of government and find a few good men and women interested in serving the people.)
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