Political Truth and Fact

Tuesday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion

Glenn Beck, Obama, and Democrats who are fearful of the future – and should be.

Upon finding an essay on the Glenn Beck rally, and the current state of things that so cogently and precisely “tells is as it is” – it would be redundant to comment further.

There’s time enough, of course, to take opportunities in the future, to repeat the message in many ways.  That will happen.  For the moment, the following says what needs saying.

Buddy

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/545505/201008301904/Ignoring-Glenn-Beck-and151-And-Us.htm

Ignoring Glenn Beck — And Us

Grass Roots: The president says he didn't watch any of Glenn Beck's "Restore Honor" rally on the National Mall. That's not surprising. Democrats and the White House haven't been listening to the people for awhile.

Whistling past the political graveyard looming for his party in November, President Obama dismissed the crowd gathered to hear the Fox News pundit, telling Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News, "It's not surprising that someone like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of (the American people) ... "

He dismissed this crowd just as he and his party dismissed the "angry mobs" that descended on health care town meetings wanting to know why their government no longer wanted to hear their voices or seek out the consent of the governed. Those people were also said to have been "stirred up" by political opponents and conservative talk radio.

This genuine grass-roots movement was dismissed as "astroturfing" by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. But their anger did not have to be manufactured. It was a quite natural response to a government that is bankrupting their children and grandchildren as it spends money we don't have on things that don't work.

"Mr. Beck" didn't manufacture the people on the Mall. He merely has given them a voice and a focal point, and a reminder that we are endowed with inalienable rights from a higher authority than any gaggle of senators and representatives. "We the people" assembled on the Mall, not an angry mob stirred up by rabble-rousers.

The movement that met on the Mall and had coalesced into what became known as the Tea Party comes from different parties and, despite what the so-called mainstream media say, different ethnic groups and nationalities. They have one thing in common: They are tired of being ignored. They are opposed to the kind of arrogance that convinces a president that maybe he just didn't make himself clear enough and he only needs to make more speeches in a perpetual campaign to get it through our thick skulls.

It is the kind of arrogance that Pelosi demonstrated when she said we'd have to pass health care reform to find out what's in it and that government needs to intervene between a patient and a doctor. People are tired of votes bought through Cornhusker kickbacks and bills written behind closed doors that are voted on without being read.

The Democrats push health care that Americans don't want by overwhelming numbers. The feds sue the sovereign state of Arizona over the wishes of a majority of Americans that want secure borders. Then the secretary of state slams Arizona, citing SB1070 as a human rights violation to the United Nations.

The American people see the disconnect between "saved" jobs and near double-digit unemployment. They are weary of a government so out-of-touch that once again we seem to have taxation without representation. They see a government making war on job-creators, punishing success and rewarding failure, redistributing wealth while creating none. They see an energy policy that produces no energy in order to save a planet that is not in danger.

Ignore that crowd on the Mall at your peril, Mr. President. That "certain portion" of the people grows bigger every day and by November your party may lose big in all 57 states you campaigned in.

The day’s top political news:

Gallup finds Republicans holding their largest lead ever heading toward November’s mid-term election

The latest weekly tracking poll from Gallup gives Republicans a 10-point edge on the generic ballot, the party's largest lead ever -- yes, ever -- in the poll's more than six decades of asking the question in midterm elections.

Fifty-one percent of registered voters said they would vote for an unnamed Republican candidate for Congress this fall while 41 percent opted for a generic Democrat. The numbers mark the fifth straight week in which Republicans have held an edge on the question in Gallup polling.

The generic ballot has long served as an accurate predictor of the broad sentiment of the electorate and the general direction of an election. The last two times Republicans held as wide a gap on the generic in Gallup polling -- the summers of 2002 and 1994 -- the fall election led to House gains for the GOP.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/142718/GOP-Unprecedented-Lead-Generic-Ballot.aspx

Developer Of The Ground Zero Mosque Has Lengthy Record of arrests, Dating Back To 1990

Mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal has several run-ins with the law, his most recent arrest coming in 2005 for assaulting a man while working as a waiter in a New York restaurang. Records show he had trouble coming up with the $15,000 settlement reached in 2008, and had to pay interest

Also, In 1990, he was arrested in Nassau County and pled guilty to disorderly conduct; -In 1992, he pled guilty in Nassau to DWI and paid a $350 fine; in 1993, he pled guilty in Nassau to attempted petit larceny and paid a $100 fine; in 1994, arrested for disorderly conduct in Manhattan; in 1998, there was another Manhattan disorderly conduct arrest; in 1999, yet another Manhattan disorderly conduct arrest.

A potential problem for the mosque developer is a deposition he gave in the assault case in October 2007. When asked if he was ever convicted or pled guilty to a crime, El-Gamal replied “no.” El-Gamal also owes over $227,000 in unpaid real estate taxes and a spokesman for the Department of Finance said interest will be added for each and every day its unpaid

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/08/30/who-is-the-man-behind-the-ground-zero-mosque/

Education secretary urged his employees to attend Sharpton's rally

Obama's top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger event on the Mall hosted by Fox personality, Glenn Beck..

"ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the 'Reclaim the Dream' rally and march," began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.

The Washington Examiner learned of the e-mail from a Department of Education employee who felt uncomfortable with Duncan's request. Although the e-mail does not violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from participating in political campaigns, Education Department workers should feel uneasy, said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Education-secretary-urged-his-employees-to-go-to-Sharpton_s-rally-651280-101839293.html#ixzz0yBhUhK4M

Blogs:

1.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/about_us/public_relations/press_room/press_releases mad_as_hell_how_the_tea_party_movement_is_fundamentally_remaking_our_two_party_system

Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System

The riotous tea parties and angry town hall meetings of last summer took everyone by surprise. They shouldn’t have: populist movements have always arisen in times of economic hardship and uncertainty. In Mad as Hell, pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen use extensive and original research to explore the mind and heart of the populist turmoil that has suddenly thrown American politics into turmoil.

In the past, populist movement have taken root either on the right or on the left. Today’s populist revolt is unusually broad and has two wings: a left wing that wants universal health care and redistributive economic policies and a right wing that wants to reduce the power of government to interfere in our lives. Both are hostile to the Washington political class, Wall Street, and the mainstream media—all of which they consider out of touch with the concerns of “real” Americans. The key difference is that the left populists are effectively represented by Barack Obama and congressional Democrats who are pursuing their agenda, while right populists are chiefly represented by Fox News and voices outside of Congress—an angrier and potentially more powerful political force.

So-called professionals in politics, business, and media have completely failed to comprehend the new populism and have dismissed it as marginal and extreme. The authors explore the broad-based nature of the new populist movement and explain how it is reshaping American politics—whether politicians and elite journalists like it or not.

The Tea Party movement is not a flash in the pan, as many have assumed. Nor is it a movement of racist rednecks and ignorant boobs, as its detractors have crudely suggested. To the contrary, it is an authentic grassroots movement of concerned American citizens demanding to be heard by an out-of-touch political establishment. Their concerns are real and their issues are legitimate. Moreover, the new populism is here to stay and it has already changed our politics for the better.

In Mad as Hell, Rasmussen and Schoen have produced an authoritative guide to the new populism, featuring a combination of proprietary polling data, political analysis, and interviews with on-the-ground players. It is must reading for anyone interested in twenty-first century American electoral politics.

2.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/america_to_be_reviewed_by_thug.html

America to Be Reviewed by Thugs of U.N. Human Rights Council

Eileen F. Toplansky

On May 11, 2009, Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, expressed his deep concerns about the United Nations Human Rights Council. Havel had led the dissident movement in then-communist Czechoslovakia during the 1970s and 1980s and had also spent several brutal years in prison. Thus, he understood only too well the machinations of totalitarian governments. His op-ed in the New York Times criticized the U.N. Human Rights Council, which had replaced the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Governments seem to have forgotten the commitment made only three short years ago to create an organization able to protect victims and confront human rights abuses wherever they occur.

An essential precondition was better membership. The council's precursor, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, was folded in 2006 mainly because it had, for too long, allowed gross violators of human rights like Sudan and Zimbabwe to block action on their own abuses.

The council was supposed to be different. For the first time, countries agreed to take human rights records into account when voting for the council's members, and those member-states that failed to, in the words of the founding resolution, ‘uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights' would find themselves up for review and their seats endangered. For victims of human rights abuses and advocates for human rights worldwide, the reforms offered the hope of a credible and effective body.

Now, it seems, principle has given way to expediency. Governments have resumed trading votes for membership in various other United Nations bodies, putting political considerations ahead of human rights. The absence of competition suggests that states that care about human rights simply don't care enough. Latin America, a region of flourishing democracies, has allowed Cuba to bid to renew its membership. Asian countries have unconditionally endorsed the five candidates running for their region's five seats - among them, China and Saudi Arabia.

Anne Bayefsky, long in the forefront of highlighting U.N. abuses, was appalled that in May of  2010, Libya was to be included in the U.N. Human Rights Council. Although the United States Department has stated that in "Libya there is routine torture and abuse of detainees, legally-sanctioned amputations and flogging, sentencing of political opposition members without trial, [and] indefinite detention of women and girls 'suspected of violating moral codes, ...'" the Obama administration made no move to deny Libya a seat.

The Council also comprises Malaysia, Mauritania, Uganda, Angola, and Qatar. In Uganda, "wife-beating [is] a husband's prerogative." Monitoring of internet chat rooms and widespread rape of inmates occurs in Angola, while "in Malaysia, religious authorities arrest 'deviants' in order to return them to the ‘true path of Islam.'" In Qatar, "the law calls for 10 year sentences for individuals proselytizing anything but Islam, [and] conversion away from Islam is a capital offense." Furthermore, "the legal system treats with leniency men who murder women where there has been ‘immodesty' on the part of the victim." Syria promotes the infamous blood libel against Israel, and Algeria describes Israelis as "butchers."

Many of these Council members criticize free speech, constantly denounce Israel, exonerate Muslim extremists, and deny basic freedoms to their own people. In fact, Israel-bashing is a persistent theme of the Council. Furthermore, at no time have Iranian calls for genocide been criticized by this body.

Notwithstanding all this, joining the Council was one of Obama's priorities, and this occurred in May of 2009. Thus, Obama was content with joining current Council members like Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, Russia, Egypt, and Kyrgyzstan. Previously, "Bush had decided not to seek a seat on the Council on the grounds that the reform had been a sham."

So against this backdrop, Barack Hussein Obama now has the United States positioned to come under international review by some of the most brutal and despotic nations in the world. The Obama administration has issued a 29-page report, the first ever "Universal Period Review (UPR) report" to the United Nations by the United States.

And lo and behold, the State of Arizona is included in this report. In section 94, the report states that

[u]nder section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, DHS may delegate authority to state and local officers to enforce federal immigration law. DHS has made improvements to the 287(g) program, including implementing a new, standardized Memorandum of Agreement with state and local partners that strengthens program oversight and provides uniform guidelines for DHS supervision of state and local agency officer operations; information reporting and tracking; complaint procedures; and implementation measures. DHS continues to evaluate the program, incorporating additional safeguards as necessary to aid in the prevention of racial profiling and civil rights violations and improve accountability for protecting human rights.

95. A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.

96. President Obama remains firmly committed to fixing our broken immigration system, because he recognizes that our ability to innovate, our ties to the world, and our economic prosperity depend on our capacity to welcome and assimilate immigrants. The Administration will continue its efforts to work with the U.S. Congress and affected communities toward this end.

As Doug Hagmann has written, "The stakes for our national sovereignty have been just raised by the submission of this document, which is the first step of 'voluntary compliance' to the provisions of the United Nations' Human Rights Council."

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer writes that "the idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional. Human rights as guaranteed by the United States and Arizona Constitutions are expressly protected in S.B. 1070 and defended vigorously by my Administration." 

In fact, S.B. 1070 clearly states that "a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection[.]" 

Furthermore, Governor Brewer has said that "the State of Arizona will fight any attempt by the U.S. Department of State and the United Nations to interfere with the duly enacted laws of the State of Arizona in accordance with the U.S. Constitution."

Because of Obama's decision to have America join the Council, American taxpayers are now financially supporting anti-Israel, anti-American rhetoric and hatred "posted, translated and broadcast around the world." That a single dollar is used to promote this disgusting agenda is deplorable; that the man who is supposed to represent the best interests of America should sanction it makes one wonder about his true allegiance.
 
3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/woodrow_wilson_and_barack_obam.html

Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama: Lifestyles of the Rich and Progressive

David Pietrusza

By now, the adjectives have become commonplace for Barack Obama and his administration.

Progressive.

Game-Changing.

Wilsonian.

Yes, similarities do exist between Barack Obama and his Democratic predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. Both are frigidly demeanored but messianic academics. With barely two years of government experience in statewide office, each assumed the presidency and presided over fundamental overhauls of the existing American system.

But here's where one can find another little-noticed but perhaps telling comparison: their work habits.

Barack Obama is already more famous for vacations, golfing, and theater-going than he ought to be. In a period of economic crisis, he is off to Maine and Hawaii and Broadway and Martha's Vineyard. His wife communes with the King of Spain. In time of war, he ducks a Memorial Day ceremony to vacation in America's favorite sun-and-fun vacation spot -- Chicago. He plays basketball. He works out. He golfs and golfs -- and golfs.

The pattern and the perception are set. Aside from Barack Obama's time before the teleprompter, the American public, now out of work, remains unsure of just when this fellow works.

And that brings us back to Mr. Wilson.

It is quite well-known that Woodrow Wilson spent much of the last two years of his tenure stroke-ridden and unable to really work. This is fully understandable and to be sympathized with, not condemned.

But even before his crippling strokes of September and October 1919, President Wilson was no great workhorse.

Again, his health was in play. Even before assuming the White House, he had suffered two lesser strokes. One in 1896 temporarily restricted the use of his right hand. Another in 1906 seriously damaged the vision in his left eye.

Wilson was, as well, diagnosed with arteriosclerosis. Accordingly, Wilson's White House physician, Dr. Cary Grayson, recommended a severely restricted work schedule for his patient. As President, Woodrow Wilson never normally worked more than three or four hours per day. He rarely worked on Sundays. His summer schedule was even more relaxed. He enjoyed cruises upon the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay aboard his presidential yacht. He rode horses. He took long rides in his Pierce-Arrow limousine. After one confusing 70-mile Wilson jaunt through New Hampshire, the Washington Post noted, "STOPS OFTEN TO INQUIRE WAY." When he finally got back, he golfed [i].

Beyond that, Wilson loved to while away his time in light amusements. He thrived upon the theater, particularly vaudeville, and spent every Saturday that he could at B.F. Keith's High-Class Vaudeville Theatre.

"I like the theater ... ," he wrote in 1914, "especially a good vaudeville show when I am seeking perfect relaxation; for a vaudeville show is different from a play. ... if there is a bad act at a vaudeville show you can rest reasonably secure that the next one may not be so bad; but from a bad play there is no escape."

A plaque dedicated at the Keith Theatre in 1931 even marked the frequency of Wilson's attendance (to be fair, the greatest period of that attendance was his stroke-ridden post-presidency). History records him attending the Philadelphia Orchestra at the National Theater or his delighted 1915 presence at stage star Chauncey Olcott's debut in "Shameen Dhu" at Washington's Columbia Theater in January 1915 (Wilson's golf was fogged out that morning) or at Louis Mann's opening night as a German-American in "Friendly Enemies" in 1918.

Like the Obamas, in November 1914, Wilson visited Broadway. But unlike them, for once, he did not attend the theater. Following an afternoon of eighteen holes on Long Island fairways (he shot an 80), Wilson visited his adviser Colonel Edward M. House in the city. Together, they attempted an incognito Broadway stroll. The pair progressed as far as an open-air Salvation Army camp meeting before all hell broke loose. Eventually, Wilson and House took safety from overzealous admirers in the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, before Secret Service agents packed the President of the United States off on a passing Fifth Avenue bus and back to Colonel House's 115 East 53rd Street apartment [ii].

Wilson enjoyed motion pictures as well. Following a White House screening of director D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, Wilson allegedly commented that the controversial film was "like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true." In any case, Griffith eventually partook of several "fireside chats" with Southern-born Wilson -- although the film pioneer later complained of the president's distinct lack of personal hospitality [iii].

Wilson loved attending baseball games. He was the first president to throw out the first pitch at a World Series. And though he was wise and responsible enough to forgo attendance at Washington's Griffith Stadium during wartime, before the outbreak of hostilities, his attendance at games was fairly common -- at least by president standards. In April 1913 alone, he not only threw out the season's first pitch, but also attended three games of a four-game Senators-Red Sox series.

Vacations? For the first three summers of his presidency, Wilson understandably abandoned Washington for Cornish, New Hampshire's cooler climes. In 1916, he summered at the Jersey shore. Such vacations were lengthy, involving "a month or two"[iv] from his desk -- and they hardly seemed to be working vacations. In August 1915, for example, the Washington Post noted that "a mass of work" awaited Wilson's return from his recent three-week New England stay. Yet a month later, he was headed back to New Hampshire. "He may be away for a week," speculated the Post. "He may stay two or three weeks" [v]. Secretary to the President Joseph Tumulty did not accompany him [vi].

Even when the nation went to war in 1917 and Wilson abandoned such absences, the Post noted he did not forgo his "customary morning golf game" [vii].

Wilson scholar John Milton Cooper also references Wilson's "daily round of golf" and notes that it was when Wilson was departing for the course in May 1915 that he learned of the sinking of the British passenger liner RMS Lusitania by the German U-boat U-20. Wilson canceled his golf. He waited for more news -- it was, however, reported he did not communicate with Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan -- and then went for another limousine ride.

It was, however, after returning from golf one day in March 1915 that the recently widowed Wilson chanced to meet the widow Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt. His frenzied courtship threw his already leisurely work schedule into chaos. Recalled White House Chief Usher Irwin "Ike" Hoover,

The President was simply obsessed. He put aside practically everything, dealing only with the most important matters of state. Requests for appointments were put off with the explanation that he had important business to attend to. Cabinet officers, Senators, officials generally were all treated the same. It had always been difficult to get appointments with him; it was now harder than ever, and important state matters were held in abeyance while he wrote to the lady of his choice. When one realizes that at this time there was a war raging in Europe, not to mention a Presidential campaign approaching, one can imagine how preoccupied he must have been. There was much anxiety among his political friends, who just had to accept the inevitable, but who began to look about for a way to postpone it until after the election, for fear lest the people would not approve [viii].

Yet Wilson survived a Republican resurgence to narrowly gain another term in 1916. The early Wilson years, after all, were years of prosperity. And in comfortable times, it matters not at all whether Ike golfs or LBJ pulls beagles up by their ears. Conversely, when unemployment or inflation stalk the land, it remains of similar low consequence if solemn engineers Herbert Hoover or Jimmy Carter burn the midnight oil to fiddle with the details of a sinking ship of state.

The bottom line: if the American people are at work in 2012, it matters not at all if Barack Obama plays.

Monday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
Obama hypocrisy summed up in a single word: immigration

There are few examples of open hypocrisy by the Obama Administration more obvious than its dealing with the crisis of illegal immigration.

Make no mistake about it – Democrats, especially the Obama Administration – don’t want to stem the invasion of illegals, and they are quite dedicated to granting amnesty to illegals already in the country. In fact, the Obama Administration and other Democrats conspire to grant amnesty with or without consent of Congress and in spite of opposition by a majority of the American psople.

Today, the first of 1,200 troops are heading to the Arizona border.  When they were announced some months back, P. J. Crowley, Hillary’s  designated mouthpiece tasked with proclaiming the ridiculous with a straight face, dashed to the nearest microphone to hurriedly assure one and all, that not a single one of these troops would be involved in enforcing the border or immigration activity.  None, nada, zip.  Crowley’s frantic message was aimed at audiences throughout Latin America, or course.

State Department types seem oblivious to the fact growing numbers of illegals have roots in the Middle East and Asia – often paying up to $50,000 apiece to be smuggled across our border. 

Not only is the 1,200 a measly number of troops and hardly a number sufficient to  meet the real needs, but the huge delay in their arrival shows how little stress the Administration places on honestly dealing with immigration issues.

Of course, political professionals expect Democrats to corral the illegals, then contrive a means for getting them registered to vote, using them as another reliable and steadfast liberal voting bloc. 

Recently, it has been revealed the immigration enforcement agency, “ICE” is not really into enforcing immigration.  In fact, unless an illegal alien is arrested for a felony, he (or she) will be allowed to walk.  This ignoring of  doing its duty, means ICE – presumably at the behest of the Obama Administration – is choosing to impose amnesty despite the fact a majority of Americans oppose and resent the concept.

A few years back, an “immigration reform” bill had the enthusiastic support of the US Senate, the Bush White House, and even the mainstream media, but public reaction was so great, it was withdrawn and never voted into law.  That was a major demonstration of the new found political power of the Internet.   It also demonstrated the degree of opposition by Americans to granting citizenship to people who choose to become criminals by sneaking across our border.

Of course, illegal aliens have generated massive crime statistics, and have furthered the growth of drug traffic.

Recently, bucking a majority of Americans, the Obama Administration challenged an Arizona law dealing with illegal immigration.  This action came despite the fact a solid 70% of Arizonans support the law.

Public opinion and the will of the governed have no impact on Democrat politicians, especially those of the Obama Administration.  This defiance by Democrats is playing a major role in the rising tide of resentment that will likely lead to massive political defeat in November.

To make matters worse, Hillary Clinton’s State Department has gone other Democrats one better, pointing to the Arizona immigration law as an example of human rights abuses of which the US ,, State Department under Hillary claims the US is guilty.  The guilty plea  is absurd, insulting, and stupid, of course, but it marks just one more act of hypocrisy by Democrats under Obama.

Hypocrisy manifested now by Democrat posturing about having sent troops to the border.  Far too little, far to late. But don’t expect Obama to come clean.

Meanwhile, the invasion continues apace, bloody violence rages just across our borders, and Democrats remain impassive.  They will pay a serious price in November, of course, but what can be done to repair the damage and prevent continuing the problem given the damage already done.

After all, immigration was one area in which Bush veered away from his own hard core support.  A political misstep that helped lay the foundation for Democrat victories that have given us today’s magnitude of the problem.

If Republicans manage to regain power, a first step will require cleaning their own hands.  But at least they seem willing to do that.  Such a willingness marks a difference between the GOP and Democrats…an important difference, to say the very least.

Buddy

The day’s top political stories:

Obama, Democrats got 88 percent of political contributions by TV network execs, writers, and reporters in 2008 -- over $1million

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis reported by Mark Tapscott of the The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880. By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of only $142,863 (a 10 to 1 margin). The average Republican contribution was $744.

Disclosure of the heavily Democratic contributions by influential employees of the three major broadcast networks follows on the heels of controversy last week when it was learned that media baron Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. contributed $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-Democrats-got-88-percent-of-TV-network-employee-campaign-contributions-101668063.html#ixzz0y647N89d

N.Y. Islamic center imam calls opponents 'small, vociferous' group

The leader of efforts to build a mosque near Ground Zero, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was interviewed by the Abu Dhabi-based daily newspaper the National and says the clash over the proposed center, the Cordoba House, is not "between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between moderates of all the faith traditions and the radicals of all the faith traditions." Public reaction and raging controversy see matters otherwise.

The Imam is currently in the Middle East on a U.S. State Department-taxpaid tour of Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, where he is speaking to groups of Muslims in an attempt to boost relations between America and Islam. Political professionals see the tour as providing a major fund raising potential for the construction of the Mosque.

Rauf claims the clash over the proposed mosque is not "between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between moderates of all the faith traditions and the radicals of all the faith traditions." In truth, a major segment of Americans see the mosque as an intended in-your-eye taunt aimed at non Muslims.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/08/abu-dhabi-ground-zero-mosque-imam-calls-opponents-small-vociferous-group.html

Record numbers are enrolled in government anti-poverty programs

Government anti-poverty programs that have grown and now serve a record one in six Americans.  The anti-poverty programs are continuing to expand. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. "Private physicians are already indicating that they're at their limit," says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years. Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-08-30-1Asafetynet30_ST_N.htm

BLOGS:

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http://directorblue.blogspot.com/search?q=

What's America's biggest national security threat? According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: It's the Democrats' Spending

The national debt has grown 60% since Nancy Pelosi and her cadre of far left Democrats took control of Congress and the nation's budget. For this reason, Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called out the calamitous, wildly undisciplined spending as the nation's number one security threat.

The national debt is the single biggest threat to national security, according to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit.

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he said, adding that the Pentagon needs to cut back on spending... “We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”

Perhaps we can arrange an MMA fight between Mullen and the Times' most sanity-challenged columnist, Paul Krugman, whose policy positions change with the party of the office-holder.

 [Krugman's] attitude, which seems to be shared by the Democratic leadership in D.C., is that America can spend an unlimited amount of money with no serious consequences, that we should do so in order to pump up the economy, and then at some undefined later point, somebody else will have to restrain spending. Incidentally, this was not Paul Krugman's attitude early on in the Bush Administration. The Paul Krugman from back then sounded a great deal more concerned about fiscal conservatism than the Paul Krugman of today does.

Setting aside the fact that the evidence government spending can drive economic growth in this country is sparse indeed -- and that the debt crisis in Europe that's already hitting Greece and could easily hit us in a few years -- at what point do we say we simply admit that we don't have the money to pursue this liberal economic pipedream any more? Put another way, America has spent far too much, for far too long, and because of that, even if Krugman's desire to borrow and spend our way to prosperity worked (which it doesn't), we're so deep in the red that the cure would be worse than the disease.

Recall as well that, for the first time in modern history, Democrats did not even pass a federal budget this year. Instead, they 'deemed as passed' a non-existent budget that allows them to, well, spend like drunken progressives.

Last night, as part of a procedural vote on the emergency war supplemental bill, House Democrats attached a document that "deemed as passed" a non-existent $1.12 trillion budget. The execution of the "deeming" document allows Democrats to start spending money for Fiscal Year 2011 without the pesky constraints of a budget... The procedural vote passed 215-210 with no Republicans voting in favor and 38 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote against deeming the faux budget resolution passed.

Never before -- since the creation of the Congressional budget process -- has the House failed to pass a budget, failed to propose a budget then deemed the non-existent budget as passed as a means to avoid a direct, recorded vote on a budget, but still allow Congress to spend taxpayer money.

This is but one of many reasons that erstwhile Obama supporter and US News & World Report economist Mort Zuckerman calls the Obama Democrats "The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History."

Obama, Pelosi and Reid will be long gone when the entire system collapses, thanks to their malevolent treatment of the U.S. taxpayer. Like I always say: it's November or never.

2.

http://townhall.com/columnists/SalenaZito/2010/08/29/sarah_palin_destination_unknown

Sarah Palin Destination Unknown

Salena Zito

She holds the distinction of being the only man or woman who warrants a personal influence-tracking map on the Washington Post’s politics page.

Republican and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has arrived, much to the consternation of many on the left, on the right and in the media. Why? Because no one can pin her down, even those who are close to her.

As one confidante recently whispered, “Where is she going with this?”

The debate over her influence on a number of primary elections has the political elite and the media chattering – yet Isaac Wood, a campaign analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, dismisses it as just that, chatter.

“This is another in a long line of examples of people overestimating the effect of endorsements,” Wood explains. “In most of the races so far, it doesn’t mean a thing. Sometimes she picked winners, sometimes losers, but nowhere is it clear that her endorsement actually caused the result, one way or another.”

Palin is a heroine to many at this moment but with that comes the reality of how her stature remains that of an outsider.

She means a lot of things to a lot of different people.

Many liberal feminists view her as a modern version of anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly, a threat to the progress women have made in politics, business, and society over nearly 50 years.

Yet many Tea Partiers, libertarians and conservative Republicans view her as an inspiring leader for conservative women and a national symbol of anti-elitism.

In 1984, the choice of Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y., as the vice-presidential running mate to Democrat Walter Mondale excited progressive women and made them believe they had a place at the political table.

Although many analysts believe the political "gender gap" came about after that because women started voting more for Democrats, it really was a case of women staying with the party that they (along with much of the rest of the country) joined during Franklin Roosevelt's administration – partly owing to the inspiration of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Ferraro's candidacy just gave women a reason to stay.

Eight years later, 1992 became known as the “Year of the Woman,” says Lara Brown, a political science professor at Villanova University, in which “more women ran for office and the percentage of women serving in the U.S. Congress jumped from 6% in 1991 to 10 percent.”

Viewed through this prism, Palin now gives some women a reason to join the Republican Party or run for elected office.

“Even though some feminists view her advocacy of conservative ideas as a setback for women, it is clear to me that women will only be perceived as individuals – truly equal to men – when there are women in politics who reside all along the ideological spectrum,” says Brown.

No one would presume that conservative talk-radio king Rush Limbaugh and MSNBC progressive provocateur Keith Olbermann hold the same views simply because they’re men.

In short, we’ll know that gender parity in presidential politics has arrived when both major parties’ nominees are women.

We've had 54 elections since George Washington stepped down in 1796, and all of the major-party nominees have been men.

Palin represents not only the anti-establishment, as so many are wont to refer to her brand of politics, but also the anti-elite. She did not attend an Ivy League university, as did our last four presidents. She attended four colleges over five years (from 1982-1987) and, while some view this as evidence of a lack of intellectual curiosity, it might be thought of more appropriately as a mark of tenacity and resiliency.

“Like many of our past politicians and presidents – Democrats Andrew Jackson and Harry Truman especially come to mind – she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and followed her rising star to the national stage,” says Brown.

Which is why, within specific voting blocs, her endorsement carries weight.

Yet no one, including friends, knows where she will take her potency, if anywhere.

“In the end, her endorsement power is being watched much more closely by the national media and the inside-the-beltway crowd than it is by actual voters,” says Wood.

“While national pundits are giving Palin credit for Joe Miller’s shocking upset in Alaska” over incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, he adds, “most of the observers on the ground there say it was a ballot referendum about abortion which gave him the biggest boost.”

3.

http://townhall.com/columnists/KatieGage/2010/08/29/union_bosses__their_supporters_on_capitol_hill_put_the_lame_in_lame_duck

Union Bosses & Their Supporters On Capitol Hill Put The Lame In Lame Duck

Katie Gage

As if Big Labor hasn’t already squeezed enough out of Congress with payoffs upon payoffs, they are now positioning themselves for one last-ditch effort to achieve the mother of all gifts, the job-killing Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA).

One of the biggest impediments to economic recovery is the uneasy feeling small businesses and employers are sensing across the country. Over the past 18 months, President Obama and some Members of Congress have injected a large measure of uncertainty into the economy through the introduction of controversial new laws, contentious administration appointments and deeply disturbing Executive Orders favoring political donors like the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), among others.

Unfortunately, a measure of stability that our economy should finally be able to count on remains elusive, even as the sun beings to set on the 111

th Congress. Instead of finally being able to breathe a sigh of relief that EFCA – the most radical change to labor law in generations, possibly in history – will not come about, we’re forced to brace for what could be one of the most brazen free-for-all lame duck sessions in recent memory.

Lame duck sessions occur after an election has taken place and they usually focus on specific, bipartisan, non-controversial pieces of legislation that were not able to receive sufficient consideration during the regularly scheduled session.

Instead, union boss advocates like Senator Tom Harkin appear to be planning a strategy to ignore the will of the people at the ballot box and attempt to reward their political benefactors in a lame duck session with a bailout for Big Labor bosses at the expense of small businesses and jobs.

Harkin, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) stated, “To those who think [EFCA’s] dead, I say think again … We’re still trying to maneuver … A lot of things can happen in a lame duck session, too.” In spite of a series of questionable comments on Harkin’s part in recent months, his threats have to be taken seriously as he is the chairman of the corresponding committee and in close communication with his national union boss buddies.

But Harkin should proceed with great caution as he will be putting senators up for re-election in 2012 in a precarious position. The reality is that EFCA is incredibly unpopular across the country and candidates who have decided to stand with labor bosses over workers have run and lost. One needs to look no further than Bill Halter to understand the fate that will befall candidates ignoring the will of the people.

The members of Harkin’s caucus understand the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act benefits Big Labor, while it hurts workers and small businesses. During a lame duck, these newly, in-cycle candidates would most likely show very little enthusiasm in support of job-killing legislation, just as many of their colleagues up for election and re-election this cycle have done.

And the reality is that the 111th Congress and Obama Administration have already been a boon to Big Labor. In February, Congress passed a health care plan only after exempting labor unions from many of its provisions.

Then in March, President Obama appointed former labor lawyer and radical Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Becker was promptly mired in controversy for failing to recuse himself in the face of an obvious conflict of interest in a case involving one of his former employers, the SEIU.

Make no mistake, Becker’s appointment was controversial due to the fact his nomination was unable to receive sufficient bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate resulting in a recess appointment.

There are literally dozens of examples of special treatment for national labor unions at the hands of those in power and at the expense of the American people. But Becker’s appointment is illustrative of the lengths those in Washington will go to in an effort to “payback” their friends in Big Labor.

That means, the business community must remain vigilant and cannot take anything for granted. We must hold our elected officials responsible for their words and deeds ensuring they understand that supporting the forced unionization of America’s small businesses would be the equivalent of a death sentence to their political careers.

But the stakes couldn’t be higher for small businesses across the country as the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act would force them to lay off workers and shut their doors. Taking away the secret ballot and allowing the government to mandate contracts on employees and employers alike without their consent doesn’t make sense in a good economy and in a bad one, the threat alone increases uncertainty, which results in less jobs and economic development.

Congress has the opportunity to do what they know is right, permanently table the job-killing EFCA legislation. Any attempts to bring it up leading into the midterm elections or shortly thereafter in a lame duck session of Congress would only expose more candidates to the fate met by others who have decided to stand with union bosses over their constituents, certain failure.

Sunday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
Beck’s Rally – no violence but clearly a political threat to liberals

Glenn Beck held his rally yesterday at the Lincoln Memorial, even as Al Sharpton led a counter rally nearby.  Fortunately, the scene produced no reports of any violence.

That’s welcomed news for all decent Americans.

Beck clearly drew a far larger audience, and news coverage as  much as conceded that with its television coverage.  Bech’s coverage by groups such as C-Span, presented many shots with wide angle perspectives and even a couple of airborne ones.  Sharpton’s rally featured closer shots – all the better to avoid unattractive comparisons.

Of course comparisons will be made.  If the day’s success is measured by the magnitude of the crowds, Beck carried the day.  Even the National Park Service – which no longer makes official evaluations – unofficially put the size of Beck’s rally at a solid 300,000.  Take that as the low end estimate.

No matter. Quibbling over crowd size is time wasted.  Beck drew a huge and enthusiastic crowd that hints the tea party bunch may be saying “you aint seen nothing yet” as the nation heads toward the November elections.

The best measure of Beck’s success can be found in coverage by the mainstram media which signed on to open collusion with Obama and Democrats some time back. They just hated the Beck rally, and didn’t bother hiding their feelings.

Even Greta Van Sustren – who shares the Fox News label with Beck, providing a liberal element of “fair and balanced”, attacked Beck’s choice of a date marking the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  :

Said Sustren, "Yes he has a First Amendment right to do it...but what about the wisdom of it?  Glenn should move his event. It does not help heal the country on so many fronts if we poke a stick in eyes."

Beck’s rally was hardly a “poke in the eye” rejection of King’s civil right’s effort.  In fact King’s own niece was a participant.  Parts of the ceremony seemed much like a revival in a black church.  No negative signs were seen.

Leave it to the New York Times to provide the snidest evaluation.

The New York Times' Race-Baiter-in-Chief (Bob Herbert) decries the loss of civility in "America Is Better Than This":

Whimpers Herbert: “For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure... Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior.”

Actually, it seems Herbert is the bigot.

Earlier, former DC’s non-voting Delegate to Congress, Walter Fauntroy, also exposed his personal bigotry by pretending to not see any difference between tea party protesters and the old KKK.

Fauntroy’s whimper is quite revealing.  The old KKK was known for violence and racism.  None of that can be attributed to the tea party people no matter how hard liberals try to claim it..  No violence, no racism, but a ton of political activism aimed directly at driving Democrats from Capitol Hill.

By the way, Walter, the old KKK was an all Democrat organization, crafted in Tennessee as a means of intimidating Republican voters and keeping them from the polls. 

The KKK anti-voting effort is sort of like some “blue states” currently involved in a violation of federal voting law by failing to make it possible for military people on the front lines in combat, to be able to vote.  A simple act, but it should be noted a majority of military voters vote Republican.  No wonder those “blue states” find it impossible to comply with the law.  No wonder Eric Holder’s very political DOJ chooses to give them all a pass. 

Meanwhile, Beck issued his core message to the crowd on the mall and those watching the proceedings on C-Span and on a host of Internet feeds.

Beck exhorted the crowd to "recognize your place to the creator. Realize that he is our king. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us." He asked his audience to pray more. "I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see," he said.

Beck is right to exhort Americans to involve their children in family prayer at home.  After all, the Supreme Court and predominantly Democrat groups such as the ACLU, wont let them pray at school, before sporting events, or even at school graduations.

Meanwhile, DC’s current Congressional Delegate, Democrat Elanor Holmes Norton, sniffed “Glenn Beck's march will change nothing,", adding he has "March on Washington envy."

No violence was reported yesterday, but there was much emotional violence implied in the minds of liberals.  They see the writing on the wall, and they don’t like the message.

"Something beyond imagination is happening," Beck told his masses. "America today begins to turn back to God."  A group, political or not, that resents such a message, has more to dread than counting crowd sizes or quibbling about dates..

Buddy

The day’s top political news:

Glenn Beck calls on crowd to turn to God

Glenn Beck, the popular conservative talk show host, turned preacher Saturday, telling a large crowd gathered on the National Mall that in order to restore America's honor, it must "turn back to God."

Standing on nearly the same marble steps from which Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech 47 years ago, Mr. Beck, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others called on the crowd gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to honor the country's military members and to return the country to the traditional religious values and principles of "faith, hope and charity" that made it great.

Despite his attempt to bill the event as "nonpolitical," Mr. Beck's remarks were based on the belief that the country had lost its moral compass and lost its respect for the individual -- problems he often blames on President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/28/beck-calls-crowd-find-god/

Cordoba Mosque Developer Tax Deadbeat

The NY Post reports that Gamal has a signficant unpaid tax bill  Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show.

El-Gamal's company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department. The delinquency is a possible violation of El-Gamal's lease with Con Edison, which owns half of the proposed building site on Park Place.

The Post has learned that before any building can go forward, the developers also must get approval from the MTA because the 2 and 3 subway lines run under a portion of the Park Place property.

http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/cordoba-mosque-developer-tax

Political Upstarts hoping it's Joe Miller-like time

An obscure, underfunded conservative attorney, now appears on the verge of knocking off a well-known incumbent Republican Senator.

A handful of upcoming primary elections will be the test of whether Joe Miller’s shocker against Sen. Lisa Murkowski really was a unique, outside-the-Lower-48, perfect-storm kind of event or part of a larger, still-escalating revolt against political insiders that may yet claim another scalp before November.

The good news for incumbents is, they’re largely off the hook.  Most primaries are over, and the trend for November may be more anti Obama specifically and anti Democrat in general, may be the case.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41560.html

Blogs:

1.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/hypocrisy_in_the_lefts_definit.html

Hypocrisy in the left's definition of 'tolerance'

Aaron Gee

Commentators have noted the hypocrisy of those that claim that "sensitivity" has no place in the decision to build a Islamic center 2 blocks from ground zero, for them this is a constitutional issue.  Many of those same pundits also think it is paramount to consider the "sensitivity" of some people if Glenn Beck chooses to exercise his first amendment rights.  When Mr. Beck chooses a date for practical reasons, he is lambasted as being insensitive and told that he should move his event.  His fellow Fox News host Greta Van Susteren had this to say on her blog;

"Yes he has a First Amendment right to do it...but what about the wisdom of it?  Glenn should move his event. It does not help heal the country on so many fronts if we poke a stick in eyes."

Isn't this the same argument used by those that opposed the building of the ground zero Islamic center?  An argument, not over constitutionality, but of propriety?  This raises an interesting question.  Why do liberal believe that some people's feelings have more merit and carry more weight than others?  If we follow the liberal narrative, Americans that are offended that Beck holds an event on the same date that King spoke count more than the Beck's first amendment rights.  On the other hand Americans offended by an Islamic Center 2 blocks from ground zero are to be ignored. 

The left in America has long held an excruciatingly painful view of tolerance.  Examples that typify the lefts tolerant behavior include suing a school for a student-led prayer or asking a park to tear down a cross in the dessert.  Another prominent example of liberal tolerance includes going after municipalities over Christmas displays.  This "tolerance by lawsuit" has a chilling effect on other organizations both public and private due to the cost associated with defending such a suit, even if they win.  For the liberal faithful, tolerance means legally attack those with whom you disagree and find deep offense in any action or word uttered by a political opponent.  Contrast that with the words of Martin Luther King;

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

For the practitioners of victimology and grievance politics, King's dream is deadly.  If we hold these truth's to be self-evident, then special privilege should be given to no person.  That strikes at the heart of the leftist coalition, which is held together by common goal of extending special benefits to small groups of "grieved" parties.  It also strikes at the heart of politics as usual.  When American's stop vying to be politically favored over their fellow American, they will start voting for smaller government, as opposed to politicians that "bring home the bacon".  Beck is on the forefront of the smaller government movement, and it is that reality, not the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, that offends leftists most.

2.

 

Beck rally signals election trouble for Dems

Philip Elliott

WASHINGTON (AP) - If Democrats had doubts about the voter unrest that threatens to rob them of their majority in Congress, they needed only look from the Capitol this weekend to the opposite end of the National Mall.
 
It's where Ken Ratliff joined tens of thousands of other anti-government activists at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial for conservative commentator Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally.

"There's gotta' be a change, man," said Ratliff, a 55-year-old Marine veteran from Rochester, N.Y.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans can afford to ignore the antiestablishment fervor displayed Saturday during Beck's rally that took on the tone of an evangelical revival.

Billed as a nonpolitical event, it nevertheless was a clarifying moment for those curious as to what clout an anti-Washington sentiment could have on midterm congressional elections in November. The gathering was advertised as an opportunity to honor American troops. But it also illustrated voters' exasperation - and provided additional evidence that Democrats in power - as well as some incumbent Republicans - may pay the price when voters go to the polls.

The tea party is essentially a loosely organized band of anti-tax, libertarian-leaning political newcomers who are fed up with Washington and take some of their cues from Beck. While the movement drew early skepticism from establishment Republicans, these same GOP powerbrokers now watch it with a wary eye as activists have mounted successful primary campaigns against incumbents.

The Beck rally further demonstrated the tea party activists' growing political clout.

If the GOP is able to contain and cooperate with the tea party, and recharge its evangelical wing with Beck-style talk of faith, it spells the kind of change Ratliff and others like him are searching for.

The promise of change helped President Barack Obama win the White House in 2008, but could turn against his fellow Democrats this year. Americans' dim view of the economy has grown even more pessimistic this summer as the nation's unemployment rate stubbornly hovered near 10 percent and other troubling economic statistics have emerged on everything from housing to the economy's growth.

That's been a drag on both congressional Democrats and the president. While Obama has shelved his soaring campaign rhetoric on change, Beck has adopted it.

At Saturday's rally, the Fox News Channel personality borrowed Obama's rhetoric of individual empowerment from one of the then-candidate's favorite themes on the 2008 campaign trail.

"One man can change the world," Beck told the crowd. "That man or woman is you. You make the difference."

Or change Washington. And while Beck didn't say so, that means change the party in power.

His followers got the message.

"A lot of people want our country back," said Janice Cantor. She was raised a Massachusetts Democrat and is now a North Carolina tea party activist.

Beck's religion-laden message was a departure from most tea party events, which tend to focus on economic issues.

Beck, who speaks openly about his Christian faith on his radio and cable news shows, relied heavily on religion during his speech, perhaps offering up a playbook for tea party activists and Republicans this November.

Earlier, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin urged the gathering to change the course of the nation, although she said "sometimes our challenges seem insurmountable."

"Look around you," she told the crowd. "You're not alone."

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

3.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/545372/201008271903/Enforcement-On-ICE.htm

Enforcement On ICE -- a case of amnesty by stealth

Politics: If there's one agency that's been made useless by its leaders, it's Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If, under a new policy, being here illegally is no longer reason enough for deportation, why does it still exist?

The Obama administration has effectively declared open borders to millions of would-be illegal immigrants — not through legislation, but with a sneaky policy move.

On Aug. 20, its man at ICE, John Morton, wrote a memo stating that being in the U.S. illegally is no longer sufficient reason to send someone home. An illegal immigrant now has to be a security threat or else commit a crime — and a violent one at that. To everyone else, ICE turns the blind eye.

Director Morton says it's a matter of priorities. But make no mistake: This is amnesty by another name.

Adding insult to injury, ICE will empty its costly, just-built detention centers of 17,000 existing deportation cases as long as an illegal can show that he or she has applied to become legal.

This, says the New York Times, will "pare huge case backlogs." And to ICE bureaucrats, it's proof they're doing their jobs.

In fact, it's an astonishing abrogation of duty. The policy turns ICE into a $6 billion border-jitney service for the subset of illegals who were picked up by other law enforcement agencies, convicted of violent crime and have served their time, and whose jailers didn't forget to put them on an "immigration hold" list.

Any others can make themselves at home.

That goes for the Mexican Zeta cartel members who are busy recruiting assassins in barrooms around Phoenix, as Fox News reported Friday.

Nothing violent about recruiting, you know — and that goes for illegal immigrants who've illegally voted in U.S. elections.

In the latter case, Fox reported that ICE itself helpfully sent a form letter to an illegal who admitted doing that, coaching him to take his name off the voter rolls first so his application could go through smoothly. ICE didn't mind that the man had admitted to committing a felony. The bureaucrats just wanted to issue him his U.S. citizenship so they could clear the backlog.

It also goes for the Mexican cartel members who may be buying off city governments like that of Cudahy, Calif., which is under FBI investigation. It also goes for illegal immigrants who invade rural properties at night in Arizona, terrifying ranchers.

Not surprisingly, there's no one angrier about this mission-nullification than ICE agents themselves. Last June their union issued a letter expressing a membership consensus of "no confidence" in Morton and Assistant Director Phyllis Coven.

They have "abandoned the agency's core mission of enforcing United States immigration laws and providing for public safety, and have instead directed their attention to campaigning for programs and policies related to amnesty," the agents declared.

By extension, no one's happier than the Mexican cartels that have muscled into the immigrant-smuggling business, making about a third of their income from fees charged for such assistance.

Morgan's no-deport policy is just the enticement they need to bring in new business that will fatten up the fee income they use to make war on the Mexican state.

Last Monday's discovery of a massacre of 72 would-be illegals in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on their way to Los Angeles makes clear what lies ahead. Human smuggling is an evil ICE should not encourage.

The cartels are monopolies that make $500,000 or so per human "load" into the U.S., but they also press many illegals into becoming foot soldiers. Some are forced into sex slavery, and others — as the sole survivor of the Tamaulipas massacre claimed — are ordered to become cartel assassins in the U.S. — or else.

The fact that the U.S. no longer enforces immigration laws for anyone except those with violent criminal or terrorist convictions will draw would-be immigrants into this racket like a magnet.

At a time when U.S. diplomats' families have been ordered to evacuate the consulate in Mexico's second-biggest city, Monterrey — as happened Friday — any encouragement of illegal immigration works at cross purposes to the real national security mission of defeating cartels.

ICE leaders talk smugly about "priorities," but they've effectively abandoned their agency's core law-enforcement mission and become servants of the immigration lobby. ICE should be allowed to do the job it's tasked with. Failing that, it should be disbanded.

Saturday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
Glenn Beck and prospects for violence

Depending on when you read this, the Glenn Beck gathering at the Lincoln Memorial is about to happen, or is underway.

I am nervous about this assemblage.  Very nervous.

Liberals simply cant (or refuse to) grasp the fact the tea party movement, so-called, is neither violent nor racist.  Not at all, and the history leaves no doubt about that fact.

But liberals simply refuse to accept it, and continue insisting the reverse is true.  Violence has to be a by-product of such gatherings because liberals expect it.  Nancy Pelosi fell flat on her face anticipating anti Obamacare demonstrators would throw something her way as she and other far left Democrats shoved their way into crowds of demonstrators.  There was no violence, so members of her group invented racist slurs no one else saw or heard, and that no one else can find in the tons of video of the incident.

It’s a different matter today.  Now liberals not only expect violence from the Beck gathering, but need violence to result from the Beck meeting.

Democrat political fortunes are dragging the ground and get dimmer daily.  They need something, anything, to reverse the momentum.  Some will no doubt theorize violence at the Beck event might just be the ticket.

Don’t ask for an explanation of the reasoning leading to such a conclusion – liberals are basically alien to reason and to logic as well.  Some among them just think that way.  They cant help it.

Besides, they have access to thugs who are up to the task.  The SEIU union provided the only violence to visit the town hall meetings last year.  Those thugs roughed up a wheel chair bound conservative vendor at one meeting, and pummeled some young people at another. 

There has been no violence from tea party participants themselves.

Many anticipated violence during Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the same venue as Beck’s outing almost 50 years ago (47 years ago to the day, actually) But by the time of that speech, MLK’s standing had faded from its apex at Selma a few years earlier, and was declining due to his moving toward support of unions and opposition to the war.
 
King met violence a short time later as a result of a single sniper.

Today, Beck’s popularity is on ascendency and he faces political forces that need some sort of spark to reverse things for them politically.  At the same time,. Al Sharpton, who came to prominence through racist fraud, is holding a gathering of his own  in Washington. and it will march toward Beck’s venue.

Whoever approved such a plan should have his head examined, but it was likely someone within the District government, so we cannot expect better.

So we will sit by our TVs today and watch Beck with the same lurid fascination that makes auto racing, bull fighting, and no-holds-barred fist fighting so popular.  The Beck show is free.

District police deftly handled such demonstrations during the sometimes violent days of the early 70s.  Back then, radical groups such as the Weather Underground, actually waged war against America.  They even set off bombs in federal buildings, staged armed robberies, and caused the deaths of law enforcement personnel.

Now the founders of the Weather Underground – openly unrepentant – are honored White House visitors.  Such people are now calling the shots in the Oval Office in the same general area where Beck will be holding his gathering..

Pray for calm today. Pray also for November.

Buddy
 

The day’s top political news:

Ground Zero Muslim center may get public financing

The Ground Zero Mosque could qualify for tax-free financing, according to a spokesman for New York City Comptroller John Liu .Liu is reported willing to consider approving the public subsidy.

A Democrat comptroller's spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has endorsed the project from the start.

However, many non-Muslim Americans see the mosque as taunting by Muslims and a potential barrier to diminishing hostilities between the cultures.  The Mosque’s Imam is currently on a tour of oil-rich Muslim nations paid for by US taxpayers.  Political campaign professionals project the tour will generate millions of contributions for the mosque.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67Q5BW20100827

EPA Surrenders to NRA on Gun Control Issue

In a swift and unexpected decision, the Environmental Protection Agency today rejected a petition from environmental groups to ban the use of lead in bullets and shotgun shells, claiming it doesn't have jurisdiction to weigh on the controversial Second Amendment issue. The decision came just hours after the Drudge Report posted stories from Washington Whispers and the Weekly Standard about how gun groups were fighting the lead bullet ban.

The EPA had planned to solicit public responses to the petition for two months, but this afternoon issued a statement rejecting a 100-page request from the Center for Biological Diversity, the American Bird Conservancy, and three other groups for a ban on lead bullets, shot, and fishing sinkers. The agency is still considering what to do about sinkers.

The decision is a huge victory for the National Rifle Association which just seven days ago asked that the EPA reject the petition, suggesting that it was a back door attempt to limit hunting and impose gun control.  It also was a politically savvy move to take gun control off the table as the Democrats ready for a very difficult midterm election.

http://politics.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2010/08/27/epa-surrenders-to-nra-on-gun-control-issue-epa-rejects-attempt-to-regulate-lead-in-bullets-after-nra-protests.html

Fla Gov Charlie Crist flip-flops again, now says he 'misspoke' on healthcare

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I) is desperately reversing himself on his stand on Obama’s radical health scheme.  Crist is seeking a Senate seat from Florida, a state with a huge senior population.  The Democrat health “reform” is prejudicial in its plans for seniors.

Crist told a local TV station Friday that he would have voted in favor of President Obama's healthcare proposal were he in the Senate – a reversal of his previous position against the healthcare law.  Now, he offers a reversal of his reversal.

Now, Crist says he "misspoke" in that interview. His campaign frantically issued a statement Friday afternoon “clarifying” Crist's position on the healthcare law.  Earlier, Crist had pledged to run as a Republican, then, when polls looks glum, he reversed himself as he is doing now.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/116145-crist-says-he-misspoke-on-healthcare-

Blogs:

1.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/08/25/gop_vs_dems_whos_best_for_the_economy/page/full/

GOP vs. Dems: Who's Best For the Economy?

Michael Medved

The choice for voters in this year's fierce fight for congressional control will come down to a single question: Which political party -- Democrats or Republicans -- will do a better job coping with crippling unemployment and a devastating deficit?

To Democrats, the answer is obvious. Just look at the recent record. Bill Clinton took the White House at a time of financial turmoil and during the course of his eight years in office steered the nation to sharply lower unemployment while turning deep deficits into budget surpluses.

Liberals believe the good times ended abruptly with George W. Bush, who turned the nation from the grandeur of its Clintonian golden age to the fiscal wreckage that characterized his two terms of conservative misrule.

As President Barack Obama plaintively inquires on the campaign trail, "Why would anyone want to go back to the economic policies that got us into this mess in the first place?"

Though endlessly regurgitated by mass media, this melodramatic (and highly partisan) storyline amounts to a misleading simplification of the historical record.

Indeed, looking at the data, it would be more accurate to talk about the "Gingrich boom" and the "Pelosi collapse," than to rant so endlessly about the "Clinton boom" and the "Bush collapse."

Official U.S. government figures show that the two presidents each experienced decisive turning points that shifted the fiscal fate of the nation when voters in midterm elections rejected the party in power.

In Clinton's case, the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 saved his floundering presidency and brought about his reputation for savvy financial management. For George W. Bush, however, the 2006 triumph of Pelosi's Democrats (based largely on Iraq war disillusionment) led straight to disaster, turning a president with a solid economic record into a symbol of catastrophic collapse.

During the first two years of Clinton's term of office, while Democrats enjoyed overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, the average unemployment was rate 6.5 percent -- even worse than the 6.3 percent four-year average of his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, who'd been voted out of office because of economic hard times. Following the 1994 GOP congressional takeover (for the first time in 40 years), business conditions dramatically improved, with the unemployment rate declining to an average of 4.77 percent (during the six years the Republicans and Clinton exercised divided rule).

The deficit picture also brightened after tight-fisted Newt Gingrich and his allies captured 53 Democratic House seats and took the initiative on government spending. During two years of all-Democratic rule (1993-94), the federal deficit averaged 3.35 percent of the gross domestic product, but the subsequent six years (under GOP congressional leadership) brought deficits averaging less than zero -- with surpluses from 1998 through 2001.

Some commentators suggest that these figures show that Washington works best when different parties control White House and Congress, but the 2006 midterm victory for Democrats during George W. Bush's presidency spelled economic calamity.

In W's first six years, with his GOP allies dominating Capitol Hill, Bush deficits averaged 1.91 percent of the GDP -- well below the 60-year postwar average. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., brought their free- spending ways to House and Senate, deficits soared to a dangerous 4.74 percent over the next two years -- and continued to skyrocket to a projected (and appalling) 10.27 percent for the first two years of Obama.

The unemployment rate went from an average of 5.29 percent during Bush's first six years (with Republican majorities) to 6.57 percent after the Dems came to power -- and an excruciating 9.4 percent (average) during the first 18 months of Obama.

All this highlights the huge stakes in the upcoming congressional elections.

A change of power on Capitol Hill can influence the economic direction of the nation at least as decisively as a shift of control in the White House. After all, it's the Congress, not the president, that makes final decisions on spending and taxes.

In terms of current partisan battles, neither side counts as blameless or masterful. Within 10 years of winning congressional majorities, the Republicans eventually lost sight of the party's traditional values of fiscal responsibility and spending restraint, contributing to their electoral fiasco in 2006. But the resurgent Democrats quickly outdid their GOP predecessors in terms of reckless expenditures while watching unemployment shoot up dramatically.

In other words, those who insist that continued Democratic congressional control will improve prospects for job creation and deficit reduction cling to a naive misinterpretation of the past. They ought to examine the actual record of the past two decades and begin to reconsider their assumptions.

2.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-electioneers-documentary-to-reveal-the-extent-of-2008-voter-fraud/?singlepage=true

Obama’s Electioneers: Documentary to Reveal the Extent of 2008 Voter Fraud

The New Black Panther case? That type of behavior didn't just happen on Election Day. It was rampant during the Democratic primaries. (Update: Don't miss Joe Hicks's new interview with the filmmaker of the documentary on PJTV.com.)
Gigi Gaston
 
I am a documentary filmmaker, a Democrat. During the 2008 primaries, I was asked by a former congressional investigator to watch for and document any voter fraud occurring in the Democratic Party caucuses. Complaints had been filed, claims that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote but lost the caucus vote.

What I witnessed in Texas — and later in many other states — were things I could never forgive.

The New Black Panther case — think that was an isolated incident? It certainly wasn’t. That type of lawless behavior got started in the primaries. I listened to first-hand accounts of Obama’s supporters threatening Clinton’s. I heard accounts of Obama supporters stopping fellow Democrats from voting Hillary by any means possible — intimidation, locking doors to prevent entry, sending elderly voters to the wrong address, putting false start times on buildings, fabricating counts, using false information on caucus sign-in sheets, even stealing and altering caucus results.

I recorded eyewitness accounts of people being bussed in from out of state to caucus in Indiana.

And in Kansas. And Iowa.

I heard of addresses and names being copied out of the phone book to nudge the results towards Obama. I heard of Obama supporters being allowed to vote without ID. Heard of Hillary voters being flat-out lied to: told they were not on the list and unable to vote, when they were.

In El Paso, at a 13-delegate precinct, Obama supporters attempted to award him 19 delegates.

I was horrified that this was occurring in America and that it would continue on at the Democratic National Convention. Worst of all, our protected free press was nowhere to be found: Hillary’s team tried to alert the media, but very few listened.

Caucuses are undemocratic — politicians know this, but not all Americans, and you simply must. The documentary has a clip of Gloria Allred saying: “Lets get a Democrat in the White House, and then we will take care of the caucus.” This has, of course, not occurred — in fact, quite the opposite. A DNC committee co-chaired by Claire McCaskill has since voted to establish more caucuses, minimizing what transpired and disenfranchising the thousands of voters who sent complaints to Howard Dean, the DNC chair at the time.

Why did a party, why did our country tolerate this behavior, which deserved nothing less than a protest march on Washington? Are this many Americans comfortable with abandoning the foundation of our republic?

In 2008, most of my fellow Democrats cared about nothing more than winning the presidency and anointing this Senator Obama their savior. The liberal press, the Democratic Party, and the Obama fraudsters chose victory over truth.

Dr. Lynette Long performed a study on caucus fraud, and her discovered accounts are devastating. Her site and mine link a complaint letter from the Hillary Clinton team to Nevada Democratic Party Chair Jill Derby, alleging:

There was a premeditated and predesigned plan by the Obama campaign to engage in systematic corruption of the Party caucus procedures. Compounding this blatant distortion of the caucus rules was an egregious effort by the Obama campaign to manipulate the voter registration process in its own favor, thereby disenfranchising voters.

Look out for my documentary, and know that what happened in 2008 will happen again this year. I hear Republican bravado lately, talk of taking back Congress — they better be on guard in November. This historical chapter of rampant Democratic Party voter fraud is still being written.

Gigi Gaston is a writer and filmmaker.

3.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/stunning-revelations-from-obama-the-lightworker/?print=1

Stunning Revelations from Obama, the Lightworker

Kyle-Anne Shiver
 
How long has it been since you’ve heard some starry-eyed Obama worshiper gush on and on about the Lightworker [1]? Or heard suspicious accounts of “leg-tingling [2]” from media folks? Or heard a supposedly intelligent American drone on about Obama as hovering above the rest of us as “sort of God [3]”?

Yes, it’s been quite a while since the throngs fainted, fawned, and followed The One.

But let’s cut Obama, our benevolent leader, a little slack. While he’s off spreading our wealth around in that pestilence-ridden pocket of American poverty, Martha’s Vineyard, let’s recount the stunning truths Obama’s presidency and Democrat rule have taught us so far. I surely do hope this rekindles the national conversation on the amazing prowess of The One.

Revelation #5: We now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our formerly august mainstream media is replete with socialists.

How do we know? Thanks to their crass pre-election fawning and subsequent cover-up [4] of Obama’s radical beliefs and associations, the media has shown their true colors to every single sentient American. This revelation has brought to an end the decades-long debate over bias in the media — it’s settled, and that’s that. Americans are voting on the out-of-the-socialist-closet media by ignoring them and tuning them out in record numbers. What a relief. Thank you, Lightworker!

Revelation #4: We now know that “limousine liberals” is objectively apt — they only love the poor with other people’s money.

We know that when it comes to the high life, Democrats believe in partying hardy [5], sending taxpayers [6] every bill they can while living lives of luxury [7] the rest of us can ill-afford. We know, too, that Democrats cheat [8] on their taxes and wrangle [9] government deals for their relatives with a feeling of entitlement that is sure to put the term “public servant” in disrepute for the next century. Thanks to the growth of government on the Lightworker’s watch, we have seen public employees now eclipse [10] the earnings and benefits of private workers, with the only end in sight the fate of Greece.

Praise to the Lightworker and his fellow Democrats for teaching us these essential lessons, which reinforce our will to throw them all on the unemployment lines posthaste.

Revelation #3: We now know that the only economic policy liberals consider is tax and spend, spend, spend, then tax some more. Nothing else even enters the discussion.

Between the host of economic advisers brought on board by the Lightworker in Chief, there isn’t a smidgen of real-life business [11] experience among them. Promised by his economic brain trust that unemployment [12] would not rise above 8% if the stimulus package was passed, we are now experiencing 9.5% unemployment in a seemingly never-ending cycle.

It’s hard to know how to create jobs when you’ve never had a real one.

Thanks again to the Lightworker, the words “hope” and “change” have become the summer’s pejoratives, and Americans are wondering whether there is a single person in this administration who gives a darn. But at least America now knows that there really are people who believe that money grows on trees, and apparently they all work for Democrats in government.

Gratuitously thrown into this revealing pot is the revelation that Ivy League degrees, once sought and revered, aren’t worth the cost of the paper upon which they’re printed. Parents now know to save a bundle of cash by avoiding the Ivies like the plague and sending their kids to colleges not run by liberals — where real math, economics, science, and history are still taught.

Revelation #2: The Lightworker has revealed for all the world to see — again — that appeasement still does not work. And that awarding peace prizes preemptively, based on someone’s decision to, again, try appeasement, reveals just what fools the Nobel elitists are.

We know now that appeasement does not [13] bring enemy nations to lay down their arms and come amiably to the negotiating table. We see clearly that, once given an inch of unilateral disarmament [14], imperialism just salivates over the mile. We understand that when America plays weak on the world stage, instead of quelling their desire for war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, enemies simply become emboldened [15].

Thanks to the Lightworker, “cowboy diplomacy” has been redeemed with frightening clarity.

Which brings us to the most stunning revelation of all regarding Obama and his Democrat rule.

Revelation #1: Liberal Democrats don’t stop to ask the following questions before pressing forward:

1. Is it constitutional [16]?

2. Will it work [17]?

Yes, they really are this aloof. Democrats care nothing for the rights of individual citizens, and simply do not grasp how such rights can be respected only by a limited government.

They couldn’t care less whether a program will actually work, or if it’s simply an experiment. Heck, they don’t even read the bills [18] they pass.

Clearly, the only question liberal Democrats ask is: “can we get away with it?” And for the past 18 months under the Lightworker’s care, the only answer — in complete disregard of public opinion — is a hearty, in-your-face: “yes, we can [19].”

So on behalf of all humble citizen taxpayers, allow me to extend gracious thanks to Barack Obama for shedding such brilliant light on the darkness of Democrat machinations. He has indeed done this country a mighty favor. One really can’t put a price tag on enlightenment of this magnitude. He is a Lightworker, all right, the kind that hopefully comes along only once every other century or so.

Friday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
If confession Is good for the soul, Hillary aspires to sainthood. Her State Department hands our enemies a confession

With the current US State Department firmly in the hands of the Obama Administration, who among us needs to look far to find really bad people?  It would be hard to get worse than the America Hillary’s State Department sees and describes in a report to the United Nations.
 
George Bush was smart enough to ignore such a report in the first place.  He gave it the brush off. Anyone who would suggest the US is a major human rights violator should anticipate ridicule from intelligent people.  But the Hillary-run State Department doesn’t see things the same way real Americans across the country do..

Yesterday, Hillary, as Obama’s Secretary of State, revealed her 2009 Country Report on “Human Rights Practices”. It is about what savvy readers knew they could expect.  Based on its title alone, they will expect a diatribe about US excesses on many fronts – violations real and imagined – discrimination and woeful mistreatment of its people.

In an incredible document, Hillary and her stripe-panted colleagues manage to plead guilty – in the name of all Americans – to conducting torture, engaging in discrimination of minorities,  and especially discrimination against those who don’t speak English.

The State Department document insults the intelligence of all who read it.

So absurd is Hillary’s Mea Culpa, it even manages to blame the nation’s current economic problems on America’s human rights violations.  As a Washington Times editorial on the report explains:

“the current economic woes are blamed on the housing crisis, which itself was the result of ‘discriminatory lending practices.’ The implication is that if Americans had only been less racist, they would be enjoying prosperity today.”

“Nuff said”

The ridiculous report was sheepishly submitted to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and claims to detail the progress and problems in dealing with human rights issues in and by the United States,

Proclaims the report: “Progress is our goal”. 

Why the US State Department would involve itself in such a project is something intelligent Americans have a right to ask.  Certainly those in the U.N. and that international body itself, is hardly a justifiable group for passing judgment on the US in any field – especially when the question is “human rights violations:. No other people respond as generously as the US when a crisis grips another country and its people.

We are winding down a war that freed an entire nation from real human rights violations, real torture, and real oppression.

However, far left observers don’t buy any of that. As Obama demonstrates in his endless apologies overseas, those on the left are obsessed with thinking the worst of this country, its people, and their intentions.

Of course, as we see in the current arguments regarding the Ground Zero Mosque issue, liberals have no reluctance to avoid truth and fact when reality betrays their side of the argument.

Liberal after liberal, frantically insists a constitutional  issue is involved.

It is not.  But Liberals never let truth intervene, and when they are trapped on a losing end of debates, they strike out by calling opponents racists. 

We are seeing this right now as liberals such as former Non-voting DC Delegate, Walter Fauntroy claims the Glenn Beck demonstration on the Mall tomorrow is organized by “the same people who cut audio cables from a sound system the night before the historic March on Washington and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the Lincoln Memorial.”

Fauntroy’s extremism is showing again, as is his total disregard for truth and fact.  To put it succinctly, Fauntroy is lying.

At a news conference, the former Delegate babbled about organizing a new political organization.  He explained his mission:”We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux -- I meant to say the Tea Party," Fauntroy told a news conference at the National Press Club. "You all forgive me, but I -- you have to use them interchangeably."

Sorry, Walter, no forgiveness for engaging in such obvious bald faced lying.

Fauntroy’s absurd babble helps explain the absurdity of Hillary’s human rights “report”.  Both reveal an inherent bigotry among liberal politicians  who believe all who differ with them are violence-prone racists.

BTW Walter, those who opposed MLK so fervently, were Democrats – elected Democrats.  You know what I mean. After all you once were one.

So is Hillary.

Her embarrassing report to the U.N. concludes, "Progress is our goal and our expectation thereof is justified by the proven ability of our system of government to deliver the progress our people demand and deserve."

Someone should explain to Hillary that “our people” don’t buy what her report says.  “Our people” are not “her people” and are proud of America’s human rights record, and dare other nations to match its record.

But then, “our people” are all smart enough to know Hillary’s State Department is not that smart and is engaging in truly stupid rhetoric.  Of course Fauntroy is just lying. 

Buddy

The day’s top political news:

Glenn Beck gathers a flock of supporters on a demonstration of patriotism and rededication

Beck, a daily political pundit and commentator on Fox Newa, is sponsoring a major demonstration tomorrow on the Mall in Washington – the same site from which Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

King’s niece is a major supporter of Beck and his demonstration which will come exactly 47 years after the stirring King speech.  At the time, King’s popularity was seriously damaged by his stand on the Vietnam War that many saw as his providing aid and comfort to US enemies in SE Asia.

Predictions of the probable size of the Beck crowd reach 300,000, but reality is likely to be far more modest.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-27/beck-palin-rally-in-washington-drawing-supporters-of-babies-guns-jesus-.html

Report card on Obama “stimulus” plan: Meager payback from trillion dollars

So much for the Obama “Summer of Recovery”.  Claims the Obama “stimulus” scheme turned things around fall flat – weak impact from the trillion dollar dog and pony show.  Democrats are braced for a result in the results of mid-term elections.

The Commerce Department will revise its estimate for economic growth in the April-to-June period and Wall Street economists forecast it will be cut almost in half, to a 1.4 percent annual rate from 2.4 percent.

That's a sharp slowdown from the first quarter, when the economy grew at a 3.7 percent annual rate, and economists say it's a taste of the weakness to come. The current quarter isn't expected to be much better, with many economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent.

Such slow growth won't feel much like an economic recovery and won't lead to much hiring. The unemployment rate, now at 9.5 percent, could even rise by the end of the year.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100827/D9HRP2DG1.html

GOP plans wave of White House probes

If they win back the majority, Congressional. Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies

Everything from the microscopic – the New Black Panther party – to the massive –- think bailouts – is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO.

Republican staffers say there won’t be any self-destructive witch hunts – but they are clearly relishing the prospect of extracting information from an administration that touts transparency. A handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41506.html#ixzz0xobRrlBU

Blogs:

1.

http://clips.shadowtv.net/media/stv/18625/12/2010/239/08/18625_12_20100827_083953_470.wmv   

President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder

Robert Weissberg

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the U.S. became the world's only superpower -- Uncle Sam would say, "Jump," and the response would be, "How high?" This has not continued; if anything, on today's world stage, Uncle Sam increasingly resembles Rodney "I don't get no respect" Dangerfield. We cannot even kill off a few ragtag third-world pirates, let alone impose our will on Iran or make Hugo Chávez nervous.

There's a simple explanation: we are no longer feared. Superpowers of yesteryear, going back to the Greeks and Romans, were feared for a reason -- they leveled a city to make an example. Today, by contrast, Uncle Sam relies on cajoling, bribery (think North Korea), entreating puny leaders of inchoate states (special envoys to the PLO's Mahmoud Abbas)k and otherwise playing weak hands. We have gone from resolve to U.N. resolution. We've forgotten Machiavelli's sage advice: since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

Being feared does not require bombing Iran into the Stone Age, though that would certainly terrify North Korea and even slow down the Somali pirates. Being feared is when your enemy believes that you are willing to use overwhelming, deadly force, and this need not require nuking anybody. The trick is creating a credible, threatening persona -- convincing your enemy that while you may speak softly, you also carry a big stick and are willing to use it. Israel long ago learned this lesson, regardless of world outrage.

Unfortunately, an ability to project a "don't mess with Uncle Sam or you'll be sorry" persona escapes today's presidential qualification list. Ronald Reagan was the last president who truly embodied this quality. He was neither a personally violent man nor physically menacing, and he certainly eschewed bombast. Yet, when all was said and done, he was not to be antagonized. Perhaps "unschooled," blunt language swayed our enemies. Reagen also used big sticks to swat flies, and this hardly went unnoticed. Recall him sending American warplanes to avenge the Libya-organized terrorist attack on American soldiers in Berlin. One can almost imagine a movie in which Reagan says, "Well Moamar, I bet you don't think I'll launch an air strike on your desert tent for killing some of our boys, but you ask yourself to ask yourself one question: 'Do you feel lucky?'" It was no accident that the Iranian hostage crisis ended within minutes of Reagan's inauguration -- the Iranians had already absorbed President Carter's hardest shot in the failed rescue attempt of April 24, 1980. It was a pathetic, incompetent gesture befitting an airhead peanut farmer, but who knew what the wild-man cowboy Reagan might attempt?   

Clinton and Bush were hardly Andrew Jackson incarnate, but Barrack Obama is the opposite. Everything about Obama, regardless of his "tough" Chicago activist background, suggests a man not taken seriously by foreign dictators. His is the toughness of academic infighting or bureaucratic maneuvering. Saul Alinsky was a genius on intimidating American corporations or stealing elections, but these lessons are immaterial when confronting tyrants starving and beheading their enemies.  

This wimp quality is most apparent when Obama travels abroad to "represent" the U.S. Make no mistake: foreign leaders scrutinize these events to size up the president. Perhaps his troubled childhood ingrained in him the habit of appeasing bullies. As one peruses his speeches, there is absolutely nothing in them suggesting woe to those who cross Uncle Sam. At bottom, he is asking the world to like America, please, pretty please, and if you do, I'll be your best friend. This solicitation might fly in Norway when Peace Prizes are awarded, but it will bomb in Iran. 

In his July 24, 2008 Berlin speech, Obama spoke of being "a fellow citizen of the world," with an American mother but a father who grew up herding goats in Kenya while his grandfather was a cook and domestic servant for the British (picture class-conscious Germans hearing this "proud" pedigree). He recalled how the U.S. and German people overcame the Berlin blockade (June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949), though the U.S. military was no match for the much larger nearby Soviet army, a view that ignores the then-U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons (and a sitting president who had already dropped two). Then, out of absolutely nowhere, he told his audience, "As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya." Even in environmentally conscious Germany, such gratuitous throwaway lines are undoubtedly judged as ill-informed pandering.

This was before Obama's election, but his June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo would remove all doubt regarding Obama's toughness. It was an exercise in self-humiliation, as if the assembled Muslims, not the U.S., were the superpower. The president asserted, "For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress." He then claimed some remarkable accomplishments for Islam: the order of algebra, the magnetic compass, a mastery of pens and printing, wondrous architecture, plus timeless poetry and cherished music. Islam was also hailed for its religious tolerance and racial equality. As for Muslims in America, they have stood for civil rights and excelled in sports.

And just to make sure that his audience grasped America's military might, Obama explained how we plan to spend billions on schools and hospitals in Pakistan and Afghanistan while pulling our troops out of Iraq by 2012. These are hardly worlds to inspire fear, let alone respect.

This is a compulsive disorder. On August 11, 2010, Obama continued with the lies when celebrating Ramadan in the White House:

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam's role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.  Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world -- and your families and friends -- as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.

Imagine Kim Jong-il, Hugo Chávez, or any other tinpot tyrant reading theses speeches. Perhaps the Somali pirates are waiting for American subsidized health care. Is this a man who strikes panic into the hearts of those who would mess with Uncle Sam? 

There is nothing to contradict this personal wimpiness. To exaggerate only slightly, if Obama really gets angry, he may dispatch his failed political rival Secretary of State (or worse, the fearsome Joe Biden) to warn the bad guys that unless they stop hurting Uncle Sam, they're going to get stockings of coal next season (Christmas or holidays obviously constitute impermissible offensiveness).

What would Teddy Roosevelt say?

Robert Weissberg is Professor of Political Science-Emeritus, University of Illinois-Urbana. His latest book is  Bad Students Not Bad Schools. badstudentsnotbadschools.com

2.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/545172/201008261900/Crying-Bigotry-Last-Refuge-Of-The-Liberal.htm

Crying Bigotry: Last Refuge Of The Liberal

Charles Krauthammer

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the 40-year liberal ascendancy that James Carville predicted into a full retreat.

Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" — this part is less remembered — "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, ObamaCare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a Ground Zero mosque.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.

The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and SB 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays — particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the Ground Zero mosque. The intelligentsia are near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief.

Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms).

Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

3.

 http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/07/27/pigford-v-glickman-86000-claims-from-39697-total-farmers/?singlepage=true

Andrew Breitbart is a media genius.

Robert W. Fortner

He proved it originally with his brilliant handling of the ACORN 'hooker' scandal which he skillfully manipulated so that the corrupt media was forced, against its will, to broadcast corruption in one of Obama's most powerful political support groups.  But Breitbart's handing of that affair is nothing  compared to his brilliant manipulation of the Shirley Sherrod 'white farmer' scandal.
   
It all began last Monday, July 22, 2010.  As the country watched in horror, Breitbart released a snippet of a tape on his "Big Government" site which showed an obscure black female official of the Dept. of Agriculture laughing to a roomful of NAACP members about how she'd discriminated against a destitute white farmer and refused to give him the financial aid he desperately needed.  As she smirked to the room, she'd sent him instead to a white lawyer - 'one of his own kind' -for help. 
 
The black woman was Shirley Sherrod - and almost immediately she became the center of a firestorm of controversy which exploded throughout the country  Within a day of the release of that infamous tape, the head of the Dept. of Agriculture, spurred on by Obama, demanded - and received - Sherrod's resignation.  Breitbart had won.
   
But then seemingly Breitbart's actions began to explode in his face.  As Sherrod screamed in protest, FOX News released the entire text of her speech last March to the NAACP.  And there on tape Sherrod was shown supposedly repenting of her racism against a white farmer and instead championing his fight to win funds to keep his farm afloat. Within hours of that entire tape being revealed, the entire world turned against Andrew Breitbart. 
 
Conservatives throughout the country were enraged that he'd endangered their reputations by releasing a 'doctored' tape.  Breitbart, they thundered, had dealt a fatal blow to the conservative media.  I confess that I also was horrified at what I saw as the clumsiness and stupidity of Breitbart in  'doctoring' a tape to make a supposedly innocent woman look guilty.  But now I discover I have been as guilty of haste to judgment of Breitbart as the Dept. of Agriculture was of Ms. Sherrod.
   
Only now am I realizing the real purpose for Breitbart's release of that tape snippet.  It was to allow him to cunningly trick the media into exposing one of the most shocking examples of corruption in the federal government - a little known legal case called "Pigford v. Glickman".
   
 http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/07/27/pigford-v-glickman-86000-claims-from-39697-total-farmers/?singlepage=true
   
"In 1997, 400 African-American farmers sued the United States Department of Agriculture, alleging that they had been unfairly denied USDA loans due to racial discrimination during the period 1983 to 1997." The case was entitled "Pigford v. Glickman" and in 1999, the black farmers won their case.  The government agreed to pay each of them as much as $50,000 to settle their claims.
   
But then on February 23 of this year, something shocking happened in relation to that original judgment.  In total silence, the USDA agreed to release  more funds to "Pigford".  The amount was a staggering $1.25 billion.  This was because the original number of plaintiffs - 400 black farmers - had now swollen in a class action suit to include a total of 86,000 black farmers throughout America.
   
There was only one teensy problem.  The United States of America doesn't have 86,000 black farmers.  According to accurate and totally verified census data, the total number of black farmers throughout America is only 39,697.  Oops. 
   
Well, gosh - how on earth did 39,697 explode into 86,000 claims? And how did $50,000 explode into $1.25 billion?  Well, folks, you'll just have to ask the woman who not only spearheaded this case because of her position in 1997 at the "Rural Development Leadership Network" but whose family received the highest single payout (approximately $13 million) from that action - Shirley Sherrod.  Oops again.
   
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/110/024/Is_There_More_to_Sherrods_Dismissal.html
   
Yes, folks.  It appears that Ms. Sherrod had just unwittingly exposed herself as the perpetrator of one of the biggest fraud claims in the United States - a fraud enabled solely because she screamed racism at the government and cowed them into submission.  And it gets even more interesting. 
 
Ms. Sherrod has also exposed the person who aided and abetted her in this race fraud.  As it turns out, the original judgment of "Pigford v. Glickman" in 1999 only applied to a total of 16,000 black farmers.  But in 2008, a junior Senator got a law passed to reopen the case and allow more black farmers to sue for funds.  The Senator was Barack Obama.
   
Because this law was passed in dead silence and because the woman responsible for spearheading it was an obscure USDA official, American taxpayers did not realize that they had just been forced in the midst of a worldwide depression to pay out more than $1.25 billion to settle a race claim.
   
But Breitbart knew.  And last Monday, July 22, 2010, he cleverly laid a trap which Sherrod - and Obama - stumbled headfirst into which has now resulted in the entire world discovering the existence of this corrupt financial judgment.  Yes, folks - Breitbart is a genius.
   
As for Ms Sherrod?  Well, she's discovered too late that her cry of 'racism' to the media which was intended to throw the spotlight on Breitbart has instead thrown that spotlight on herself - and her corruption.   Sherrod has vanished from public view.   Her 'pigs', it seems, have come home to roost.  Oink!

Video with an important message:

From the Republican Study Committee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wusgcG4rfo

Thursday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
Know our enemy

Knowing the enemy is important in all struggles, particularly political ones.  Our nation faces a major, perhaps pivotal, political struggle this November.

Increasingly radical programs and positions by the Obama Administration draw a line in the sand.  To make it simple: liberals are running things, but liberals don’t think like most ordinary Americans.

Liberals and ordinary Americans are miles apart on how they view things.  The difference is important – in the case of this election, it is crucial.  Over the next 26 months, political struggles may well chart the direction of this nation for decades in its future.

The far left began the Obama Administration era holding all the cards.  In addition to having the keys to the Oval Office, liberals – who prefer the phony term “progressive” -- also had dominating majorities on Capitol Hill.  They were free to do whatever they wish.  They tried.

Who would sound an alarm?  The Mainstram Media long ago abandoned its position and corrupted its existence by signing on, body and soul, with Obama and his “Hope” and “Change” fantasy.  The media ceased even pretending to be honest.  The corrupted media included most every daily newspaper in the country, and all over-the-air television network news.  Add to that undistinguished list, the CNN Cable network and the hapless MSNBC.

But something happened along the way. First, there was a cry from financial circles regarding irresponsible amounts of federal spending, then a spontaneous arousal of grass root Americans spread across the country and began directly impacting politics and the few campaigns in the off year.

Liberals lost all those races.

Now liberals  are worried, truly worried. 

In news reports, “Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi had expected Democrats to run on their “accomplishments” – primarily Obama’s radical health care plan.  A majority of Americans have always opposed the scheme, now Americans are  seeing they have been lied to about “Obamacare”

Things are so bad that professional politicians are advising Democrat candidates to avoid bragging about healthcare reform claims and to change the subject.

Obama made things even worse, when he gave his endorsement to a mosque adjacent to Ground Zero.  A furor erupted, but liberals – predictably – didn’t understand the issue. 

Commented the liberal Washington Post: “If….you do not believe that the attack was launched by an entire religion, you have a moral duty to support the creation of the Islamic center.”

Obviously a dumb premise resulting in a stupid conclusion.  Liberals, crippled by actual fact, avoid the real issues and try to make the controversy one involving religious freedom and constitutional rights.  It is neither.

Again, a majority of Americans oppose the liberal position supporting the mosque.  Real Americans see the controversy as a contrived insult to non-Muslim Americans.  Sponsors and backers of the Mosque have done nothing to dissuade opponents, and have presented extreme positions that are increasing cultural divisions.

Also, the Obama administration boasted this week that $100 billion invested in innovative technologies under the economic stimulus law is "transforming the American economy".

However, the facts are different: “an examination of details in the 50-page report unveiled Tuesday by Vice President Joe Biden reveals: a collection of rosy projections that ignore many of the challenges, pitfalls and economic realities in all those areas.”

It is not surprising liberals and ordinary Americans see things differently.  A coalition of liberal organizations has just signed on to support Democrats in November.  A check of just a few is quite revealing.  The list includes:

Center for American Progress (The George Soros funding far left think tank);

The Committees for Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism,

Code Pink (famous for having shouted insults at wounded American military victims at Walter Reed Hospital);

The Institute for Policy Studies/New Internationalism Project (reputed to have received its initial funding from the KGB – back in the days before Communism collapsed);

Progressive Democrats of America;

SEIU (The giant union whose thugs introduced violence into the town hall demonstrations last year), and

The National Council of La Raza (a radical Latino group that claims portions of Southwestern US belongs to Mexico).

You get the idea.  The pattern is clear and it tells the story.

Obviously, when people say “this is not just another election” – it’s a factual comment, not political hyperbole.

The bugles sound. The barbarians are at the gates.

Buddy

The day’s top political news:

Democrats privately fear House prospects worsening

Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.

In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.

They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover – or that anything resembling the White House’s promise of a “recovery summer” is under way. They are even more concerned by indications that House Democrats once considered safe – such as Rep. Betty Sutton, who occupies an Ohio seat that President Barack Obama won with 57 percent of the vote in 2008 – are in real trouble.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41469.html#ixzz0xia1gI00

Liberals heavily fund counteroffensive on the Obama health care scheme

After months of being pummeled by Republican attacks on the liberal  healthcare law, the Obama administration and its allies are striking back in an attempt to stem public disaffection with the health overhaul ahead of the November election.

A nationwide, multimillion-dollar ad offensive — organized in consultation with the White House and funded by sympathetic groups and wealthy individual donors — is set to kick off in the coming days. At the same time, dozens of leading consumer advocates, patient associations and medical groups, working independently and alongside the Obama administration, are scrambling to put together initiatives to tout the law's benefits.

The effort is up against an intense Republican campaign that has painted the healthcare bill as a symbol of all that's wrong with Democratic-dominated Washington.  A growing majority of Americans oppose the Obama health scheme.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health-ads-20100826,0,7988566.story

FACT CHECK: Stimulus assessments overly optimistic

The Obama administration boasted this week that $100 billion invested in innovative technologies under the economic stimulus law is "transforming the American economy" by putting the nation on track for technological breakthroughs in health care, energy and transportation.

But an examination of details in the 50-page report unveiled Tuesday by Vice President Joe Biden reveals: a collection of rosy projections that ignore many of the challenges, pitfalls and economic realities in all those areas.

While the Recovery Act may  have helped increase renewable energy, the fact that it is a one-time jolt makes it difficult to project that the growth will continue for the next couple of years. George Sterzinger, executive director of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a Washington think tank that promotes renewable energy, said the Recovery Act's cash grant program for renewable energy projects "jump-started a lot of stuff. But there's nothing beyond that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100826/ap_on_bi_ge/us_fact_check_stimulus;_ylt=AqLLH0FVX41SiDoRg2l1wXqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlbGVuMDBvBHBvcwM4MQRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNmYWN0Y2hlY2tzdGk

Blogs:

1.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/crimes_against_liberty.html

Crimes Against Liberty

Steve McCann

Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign made it clear, to all that were not captivated by his cult of personality, that he was going to "transform America."  In only 19 months he has set the United States on a collision course with national bankruptcy and the ultimate end of our economic and military super-power status.

This head-long dash, with the acquiescence of the Democrats in Congress, has been so intense and so rapid that it has been difficult to adequately chronicle.  The internet, talk radio, Fox News and some newspapers have done a superb job in revealing the methodology and long term implications as the individual actions and the frontal assault on the Constitution were taking place.  However so much was taking place, by design, that it was nearly impossible to not only keep up but to bring the larger picture into focus.

However David Limbaugh with his new book: Crimes Against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama has, in a highly readable and well-documented treatise,  pulled together all the myriad of threads that have made this brief period in the history of the United States so potentially devastating.

Mr. Limbaugh, in a clear and concise manner, has proffered a bill of indictment to a grand jury that is the American voter.  It goes into not only Barack Obama's dictatorial bent and deliberate flaunting of the rule of law but also his alliances with those fellow travelers that view the United States as the villain in world and domestic affairs and the need to re-distribute wealth as a punishment. 

The case is made that Mr. Obama has willfully and with forethought set out to destroy the country that he, during the campaign, claimed to love.

This book is not only a must read as a primer prior to this election but should be kept in prominent place on the bookshelves of all Americans as a reminder of what can happen when the public is easily taken in by good looks, soothing rhetoric and meaningless platitudes by someone with no experience whatsoever and who was brought up and immersed in a sea of radical ideology.

2.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/beware_falling_into_the_demoni.html

Beware falling into the 'Demonization' trap

Lauri Regan

Dennis Prager wrote a terrific article over at National Review Online today entitled, "Demonization and the Ground Zero Mosque." Using a multitude of examples extracted from commentary by "mainstream" proponents of the mosque, including Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan, Peter Beinart, Nicholas Kristof, Keith Olbermann, and Frank Rich, Prager states the larger view that:

"Demonization of opponents is a fundamental characteristic of the Left. It is not merely tactical; they believe people on the right are bad...

A related defining characteristic of the Left is the ascribing of nefarious motives to conservatives. For the Left, a dismissal of conservatives' motives is as important as a dismissal of the conservatives as people. It is close to impossible for almost anyone on the left - and I mean the elite Left, not merely left-wing blogs - to say, ‘There are good people on both sides of this issue.'

This is not true of elite conservatives. Leading conservative columnists, leading Republicans, etc. rarely depict liberals as motivated by evil. Conservatives can say, ‘There are good people on both sides of the issue,' because we actually believe it."

I have argued that while emotions on the right have flared due to the implementation of Obama's horrific policies, we on the right must be careful to not reduce ourselves to the same name calling and stereotyping that is so commonplace on the left. I called for rational thought and conclusions to be made on Obama in the context of historical and factual analyses.

As Prager points out, leading conservative columnists and Republicans have not succumbed to the tactics of the left, not because they are avoiding the temptation to do so, but because they simply do not believe their opponents are evil. And while many AT readers may disagree, the point is that it does not help to fall into the trap of allowing emotions to overtake rational debate. We have all encountered friends, family, and co-workers who make vapid arguments which cannot be substantiated. They always conclude with some sort of personal attack on the right using terms like racist, bigot, intolerant, or fascist.

The success of the tea parties has been their participants' ability to remain above the fray of the personal smears, name calling, and classless accusations which have played a role in the demise of the political left. November 2 will be a day of resounding success for conservatives in this country and while the election results will reflect the failure of the Obama administration to lead the country in the right direction, the success will also be due in part to the manner in which conservatives were able to communicate their message to the American people. Understanding that lesson will help lead to continued success for Republicans in 2012 and into the future.

3.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/544950/201008251830/The-State-Depts-Campaign-Brochure.htm

The State Dept.'s Campaign Brochure

Abuse Of Power: How could the Obama administration top wasting a trillion-plus dollars on bogus "job creation"? With a taxpayer-funded report to the U.N. celebrating President Obama.

When the president violated all traditional comportment and protocol in his State of the Union address in January by blasting Supreme Court justices sitting a few feet away from him, he said he didn't think "American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse by foreign entities."

Now his administration has reversed that image. Our own State Department has had the taxpayers bankroll what amounts to an Obama campaign pamphlet concocted for the consumption of a foreign entity: the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Its message: "A more perfect union, a more perfect world."

"Our Founders ... proclaimed their ambition 'to form a more perfect Union,'" the report noted, but Obama wants to "usher us toward a more perfect world, a world characterized by, as President Obama has said, 'a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.'"

That quote is taken from the president's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. The online version of the report features links to the text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, immediately followed by links to Obama's Nobel speech.

We are apparently to conclude that the great words of Jefferson and Madison have been matched, 11 score and 14 years later, by Obama's as he accepted an award he did not earn — awarded to him by Euro-socialist appeasers hoping he would make America less American.

The State Department document might as well have been the Democratic Party's convention platform. Icons of the Democratic left are honored.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently once again channeling the departed spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, whom the report describes Hillary as "echoing." FDR's socialistic "Freedom From Want" is flaunted, while Ronald Reagan is cited only in a disingenuous reference to liberalized immigration policy.

What are some of America's great achievements? Well, there's Barack Obama and Eric Holder. "Thirty years ago, the idea of having an African-American president would not have seemed possible; today it is our reality," State tells the U.N. "Our attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement officer, is also African-American."

In fact, by 1980 America already had two black ambassadors to the U.N., and a black Supreme Court justice had been serving for well over a decade. Colin Powell was already a general, and within a few years would become one of the most popular national figures.

In 1980, three years had passed since the "Roots" miniseries finale was the most-watched TV episode in history, with over 36 million American households — most white — tuning in and identifying with noble black heroes battling their white oppressors.

At the beginning of the '80s, liberal Norman Lear's black sitcom "The Jeffersons" was, except for "Dallas" and "60 Minutes," the most watched show on TV. So the America of 30 years ago really wasn't as backward as State suggests.

Foggy Bottom seems to have too much spare time away from the global war on terror on its hands; it's even getting into the business of homosexual activism. The State Department touts the president's support of extending benefits to same sex partners.

"Furthermore, President Obama is committed to the repeal of the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' statute, which prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military"; supports new laws against "discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation or gender identity"; and backs repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The most absurd observation in the entire report may be when Hillary Clinton's foreign affairs bureaucracy foolishly wades into economics.

"The recession in the United States was fueled largely by a housing crisis, which coincided with some discriminatory lending practices," it asserts.

It was, in fact, the government-dictated criminalization of lenders discriminating between borrowers with good credit and those with bad that led to the worst global financial calamity since the Depression.

It may be time for the State Department to register was a Democratic Party political action committee.

 

Wednesday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
The Obama we don’t know

The White House is upset again, and the mainstream media is awash with indignation.

The problem stems from recent poll figures showing about one in four Americans believe Obama is a Muslim.  This is particularly troubling for the White House since it comes in the middle of the growing controversy over Muslim plans to build a Mosque adjacent to Ground Zero in New York City.

Incredibly, the mosque controversy was brought to full boil by Obama himself.  Having made a somewhat strange decision to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Ramadan at a White House Dinner, Obama made things worse by choosing the event to announce his support for the Mosque.

Many Americans see the Mosque as a conspired taunt by Muslims.  No one argues Muslims don’t have a right to build a Mosque, and to build one wherever they wish.  The issue is the choice of this particular site, and subsequent actions by the Imam heading the project, and his wife.  They have done nothing to mitigate the belief by many that this is an in-your-face insult aimed at non-Muslim Americans.

Given the fact “truth is what the people believe” the mosque is, and always will be, a monument to Muslim gloating.  That will be the case no matter the outcome of the controversy.

The Mosque and Obama’s position, serve to underscore the poll findings.  What should be of greater concern is 43% of those polled, have no idea what Obamas’ religion is.  Added to those thinking he is Muslim, a majority of Americans seriously question whether Obama is Christian (as he claims) or not.  There is great confusion on the issue.

As the Washington Post notes: “Clearly the White House is worried by the poll results. And it should be worried -- but not for the reasons it seems to think. It should be concerned that, after watching the president in office for a year and a half, many Americans still don't know who Obama really is -- and that a growing number have concluded that he does not believe what they believe.”

The Post continues: “Rather than trying to convince Americans that Obama is indeed a practicing Christian, White House officials should be doing some deep thinking about why the president's job approval rating has flipped -- with most polls showing that more Americans now disapprove of his performance in office than approve of how he's doing. Strong majorities now disapprove of his handling of many of the issues driving key congressional races in 2010 -- such as the economy, health care, the deficit and immigration. A recent Democracy Corps survey found that about six in 10 likely voters believe President Obama is "too liberal" and that he is a "big spender" -- and 55 percent say that "socialist" is a fair description of him.”

The Media elite – that perpetually arrogant gaggle of mainstream media sniff at all these troubling poll findings.  They conclude the figures represent a failure of average Americans to do due diligence and learn more about their president.  Shame on all of us.

Thus we have another “not so fast my friend moment”.  The obligation is Obama’s.  He has not only worked hard to conceal much of his early biographical information, and has allowed questions to fester without honest or effective refutations, but his actions raise questions as well.

His demands that crosses and other religious symbols be shrouded duringt his Notre Dame speech, his brushing away National Day of Prayer ceremonies, and his constant impulse to apologize for imagined evils for which he sees this country as culpable, all serve to raise legitimate questions. Questions Obama refuses to satisfy.

Americans deserve answers.  So far, honest answers have not been offered by the White House – nor from its Democrat co-conspirators on Capitol Hill.

The Health scheme was crafted behind closed doors, and there is clear evidence the Obama Administration plans to accomplish amnesty for illegal aliens by bypassing Congress – the same sort of stealth assault the Obama EPA threatens as a means of imposing Cap and Trade provisions that will blow major holes in the economy and burden American families with increase costs – just to satisfy Al Gore’s myths and fantasies.

Come to think of it, maybe the real problem is not what we don’t know about Obama, but what we do know.

One thing is quite clear, few Americans signed on for his version of “Change” and growing majorities “Hope” his plans can be blocked and this nation returned to its rightful owners.

Buddy

The day’s top political news:

Plunge in Home Sales Stokes Economy Fears

U.S. home sales plummeted in July to a level not seen in more than a decade, spurring fears of renewed weakness in housing prices and the broader economy.

Sales of previously owned homes fell 27.2% from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday, the lowest level since the industry group started its tally in 1999.

The data sent stocks tumbling, briefly pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average below 10,000 for the first time since early July. The index closed at 10040.45, down 133.96 points

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703447004575449352676306326.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3

NY Mayor Bloomberg, rejects Mosque compromise, demonstrates ignorance of real issues involved

A defiant Mayor Bloomberg, saying there should be no compromise, insisted last night that a mosque be built near Ground Zero, declaring, "We must do what is right, not what is easy.

"And we must put our faith in the freedoms that have sustained our great country for more than 200 years," he told Muslim-American guests breaking of their fast during the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. 

Bloomberg said there is no middle ground when it comes to religious liberty, calling the plan to erect the mosque a litmus test for upholding "American values." The Mayor nisses the fact opponents of the Mosque don’t question a right to build it. They oppose the Muslim efforts to making the mosque a taunt to non-Muslim Americans.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/pro_mosque_mike_kos_compromise_SzQcRzaYlcIFVwJAfguV7K#ixzz0xcgyyqSX

AFL-CIO and SEIU unions conspire on spending in far left campaigns

The two largest labor unions are conspiring to try defending Democrats this November.

Polling predict Democrat defeat, but union bosses are confident of their ability to raises millions of campaign dollars and deliver campaign assets to Democrat campaigns facing major challenges from Republicans and lack of popularity from voters.

Labor bosses claim an ability to provide $88 million in campaign cash to protect far left Washington politicians.  They are targeting 26 states, including California, as well as mid west states. 15 million people in union-member households will be contacted by the campaign.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/afl-cio-and-seiu-unions-team-up-on-campaign-spending-101454529.html#ixzz0xcnutrsq

Blogs:

1.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/apologia_for_the_left.html

Apologia for the Left

James Lewis

In the spirit of Obama the Apologist, I have to tell you how sorry I am. But not for myself, because I'm not responsible for anything. Just like Obama, I get to pin my apology on other people.

That might not be your idea of saying "I'm sorry," but it sure is his. "I'm sorry for your sins" is the gag Our Hero likes to pull, to cleanse himself of that per'lous stuff that weighs 'pon the soul. Guilt for the sins of others -- especially the ones who don't happen to look like him. I don't know if Obama ever feels guilty for something he's done wrong. I haven't seen it.

I must therefore apologize in all humility -- for the international Left, starting with Jean-Jacques Rousseau before 1780 and still going strong today.

Call it 2.3 centuries of systematic horrors by the Left to feel really sorry about.

Really. Sorry.

As in "kill myself from guilt" sorry.

This is not a Communist Manifesto, but a Communist Apologia. Like Obama said in Berlin, "Citizens of the world! I'm so sorry!" Didn't he say something like that?

But this is just a rough draft. Ask your liberal friends to add anything I missed. This should be a community effort, as our friends are always saying. Maybe this could start a viral apology around the dark side of the web.

The Black Book of Communism is the best single source for the crimes of the Left, written by a group of French Marxist historians. The authors made their confessions "against self-interest," as the courts would say. They wouldn't accuse their own side if the evidence wasn't overwhelming. It is overwhelming.

Here we go.

1. The Black Book: murders.

"We, the international Left, confess to the murder of 100 million innocent people, as a matter of deliberate Marxist state policy, not as a mistake, and not as a result of having to defend our own lives. Our victims were killed in pursuit of an aggressive, international imperialist movement, as surely so as the Japanese Empire or the Nazis. This wasn't an accident, but mass murder as a matter of deliberate policy."

2. The Black Book: torture and imprisonment.

"We  confess to having routinely tortured and imprisoned tens of millions of human beings in Soviet Gulags and concentration camps. Those starvation camps continue today in China, North Korea, and Vietnam, and as long as we keep telling lies about Marxism -- as the U.S. media do every single day -- we fully understand that we continue to be responsible for those ongoing horrors."

"We're sorry about that."

3. The Black Book: involuntary servitude.

"We, the international Left, confess that we knowingly locked a billion human beings into mental and physical prisons over the seven long decades of the tyranny that we inflicted on Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, and many, many other countries."

4. The Black Book: corruption, bribery, and exploitation.

"We confess that we, the international Left, profited immensely in our own lives from the misery of others, by living in luxury upon the backs of our peasant and worker slaves for more than seventy years, and continuing today at the United Nations, the European Union, and the Democratic Machine in Chicago." 

5. Criminal collusion with fascist tyrannies.

"We, the members of the international Left, confess to enabling, supporting, lying about, and protecting all the worst tyrannies in the world, even if they were our deadly ideological enemies. That includes the European Nazis as well as the fascists of Italy, Spain, Argentina, Iraq, Syria, and Iran." 

6. Criminal collusion with Islamist fascism, including suicide bombers and their sponsors.

"We, the international Left, confess to actively aiding and abetting Islamic fascists against America and Israel, against moderate Muslims throughout the world, and after 9/11/01, against freedom-loving Americans who will not surrender to our extremist ideology." 

"We confess to knowingly and purposely facilitating the massive immigration of brainwashed Islamist ideologues into the West in order to control the major cities of Europe, Paris, London, Birmingham, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Malmo, and many others. We confess to undermining America's defenses and borders with the same intent to sabotage and undermine the safety, security, and democratic ideology of the United States."

7. Collusion with mass murder in the undeveloped world.

"We, the Western Left, knowingly colluded with all the crimes, past and present, that our ideological friends and allies have inflicted in third-world countries. Such mass murders continue today in North Korea and Vietnam and, in the case of infant girls, in China and elsewhere in Asia."

8. Systematic persecution of people of faith.

"We, the international Left, confess that we have always persecuted people of faith all over the world, and that we continue to do so today in China and Vietnam, Africa and North Korea. For this terrifying policy of massive intolerance and cruelty, we humbly apologize. (Even though we are continuing to scapegoat and slander devout Christians and Jews in Western countries at every opportunity.) "

9. Actively working to destroy free peoples, especially the United States and Israel.

"We, the international Left, have long boasted that we smuggled nuclear weapons secrets from the U.S. Manhattan Project to Stalin's Soviet Union. We told ourselves that we did so for the cause of peace in the world, and we now recognize and confess our criminal folly. By giving nuclear weapons to the Soviets and their allies, we triggered the first nuclear arms race in the world."

"Far from recognizing our own mistakes and misdeeds, we have continued to support and defend the production and spread of nuclear weapons to criminal regimes, notably North Korea, Iran, and Syria. We continue to sabotage free people by enabling nuclear proliferation today."

8. Taking bribes from oil despotisms.

"We confess to allowing ourselves to be bribed and suborned by oil money from the reactionary regime in Saudi Arabia, from the Saddam Hussein terror regime, and from today's suicide-murder cult in Tehran, in order to protect the worst kinds of tyranny inflicted every day upon innocent women, children, and men, and upon Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahá'ís, and even upon atheist Marxists in those countries."

9. Active collusion with worldwide abuse of women and girls.

"We, the Leftist feminists, confess to supporting and enabling the oppression of women and girls, including terrorizing them into submission, wounding them by genital mutilation, and murdering them if they try to escape the control of their tyrannical families and communities."

10. Using lies and indoctrination as standard policy tools.

"We, the international Left, confess to and apologize for spreading lies wherever we go. We apologize for peddling a mendacious history of the United States through the fraudulent People's History of the United States, written by recently exposed member of the Communist Party USA Howard Zinn."

11. Willfully poisoning the wells of truthful information.

"We, the international Left, confess to mass indoctrination by self-serving lies; we confess to regular and repeated slanders and libels designed to destroy individuals and political groups. We confess to undermining and destroying the values of science and scholarship throughout the civilized world, including the fraud of "global warming," numerous public hysterias about nonexistent dangers, all designed to empower the international Left and Islamic fascist forces around the world. We confess to our ongoing efforts to do so via media control conspiracies such as JournoList, in active collaboration with the major corporate media." 

"For these criminal transgressions against human welfare, against genuine progress, against freedom and morality, we humbly apologize."

That would be a nice start.

2.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/sustainable_poverty_the_real_f.html

'Sustainable' Poverty: The Real Face of the Leftist Environmental Agenda

John Griffing

Since the seventies, the American left has warned of coming famine, overpopulation, total deforestation, urban sprawl, and overcrowding. The only problem is that none of this has ever happened. The left lied, and freedom died. 

As a consequence of population hysteria, Western countries have overcorrected, aborting pregnancies and exchanging the cradle for a career. The result? The population of the developed world is now shrinking. The European Union (EU) relies on a steady influx of Muslim immigrants to keep pensions afloat. Forest coverage has actually increased in the United States despite sensationalist warnings. 

Suburban sprawl never became a substantial problem. In fact, the 2000 Census records show that 94 percent of the United States is still rural, and only 5 percent of U.S. land mass is urban. A study by the Center for Immigration Studies demonstrates that what sprawl does occur is isolated and directly linked to uncontrolled immigration, a problem easily corrected -- without central planning -- if immigration laws are simply enforced.

And food? It just so happens that due to scientific innovation, farmers are growing more food per hectare on less land. But despite the factual evidence, leftists are now implementing environmental policies based on incorrect and historically inaccurate assumptions. 

Paying homage to a long legacy of radical environmentalism, President Obama's faithful followers have advanced the Livable Communities Act to attack nonexistent problems like sprawl and overpopulation, as well as sub-issues like pollution. Humans will be punished for seeking to improve their quality of life, with new limits on mobility and Orwellian guidelines dictating where citizens will be allowed to live and work, with the justification of ushering in "sustainable growth." The facts do not matter to Obama and the left. The fact that urban sprawl is a nonexistent problem, that "smart growth" fails where tried, and that the Constitution does not permit government to dictate where and how citizens will live is irrelevant.

The current practices of federal agencies provide a few clues. Although the only body authorized under the Constitution to buy or sell land for government purposes is Congress, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other federal agencies like the Forest Service have for several decades deprived private property owners of their land (and cattle) at below market prices. The land is then leased back to its owners for a yearly fee. Land that predates the BLM is simply confiscated by way of litigation [i]. 

In one such case, a rancher named Wally Klump contested the BLM's rights to his land owing to the fact that his ranch predated the BLM by one hundred years. When Klump refused to move, he was held in contempt and sent to federal prison. The result should come as no shock, since internal BLM documents reveal that humans are viewed as a "biological resource" for the purposes of "ecosystem management activities."

Most Americans are unaware that an organized assault on private property rights is tied to a series of dangerous foreign agreements that would transform America into Soviet-style "common" space by way of numerous "biosphere reserves." Never ratified by Congress, these agreements have been incorporated into U.S. regulatory law by way of a Memorandum of Understanding. Interestingly, the "biosphere reserves" program aligns closely with the current Livable Communities Act, conjointly proposing more concentrated human habitats and "buffer zones" to limit human environmental impact. Family trips to Yosemite? Not for long.

Similarly, the EPA has sought to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity by regulation, a treaty that was defeated in Congress on the grounds that it would have opened the door for a possible confiscation of up to fifty percent of the U.S. landmass under the guise of "conservation," including private property. The Convention used the controversial Wildlands Project, which seeks to "rewild" the United States, as its model [ii]. 

Reed Noss, a Wildlands Project proponent, once remarked that, "... the native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. ..."[iii]. At issue is the constitutionality of regulation or foreign agreements using the Wildlands Project as the philosophical foundation for declared goals.

Is the Constitution's explicit protection of private property rights consistent with the huge assumptions of human expendability inherent in the Wildlands Project and the companion Convention on Biological Diversity? 

Even proponents of the Convention do not think so. The Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA), commissioned by the Convention, had this to say of property rights:

It should be noted that in some countries, constitutional restrictions can make regulatory approaches to biodiversity conservation difficult.  One frequently occurring constitutional provision that may cause difficulty is a guarantee against deprivation, or acquisition, or taking of property without compensation [iv]. 

The U.N. and its team of environmental activists view U.S. property rights as a "difficulty." The right to live and work in a place of one's own choosing is the definition of freedom. Karl Marx realized the connection between property and freedom. It was Marx who once said, "In a word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend." Conversely, the revered Justice Joseph Story once remarked, "That government can scarcely be deemed to be free when the rights of property are left solely dependent upon the will of a legislative body[.]" 

We know how well the Soviet Union protected the environment. Is this really the model we want to pursue under the guise of "livable communities"?

If we follow the suggestions of the radical environmentalists, human beings will be sacrificed on the altar of "sustainability." And sometimes, quite literally. This is not stewardship, but perversion. 

Clearly, the environmental agenda is not about protecting the environment, but about controlling human beings. The only thing "sustainable" about the radical environmental agenda is the predictable misery and poverty it will yield.

3.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244252/point-no-return-thomas-sowell

The Point of No Return

Dr. Thomas Sowell
 
How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but also very different values and ways of governing?

Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.

Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the institutions set up by the Constitution are enough to ensure the continuance of a free, self-governing nation. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what members of the Constitutional Convention were creating, he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

In other words, a constitutional government does not depend on the Constitution but on us. To the extent that we allow clever people to circumvent the Constitution while dazzling us with rhetoric, the Constitution becomes just a meaningless piece of paper as our freedoms are stolen from us, much as a pick-pocket might steal our wallet while we were distracted by other things.

It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have agendas of their own that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom.

Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias, “social justice.”

Those who construct moral melodramas — starring themselves on the side of the angels against the forces of evil — are ready to disregard the constitutional rights of those they demonize, and to overstep the limits that the Constitution puts on the powers of the federal government.

The outcries of protest in the media, in academia, and in politics when the Supreme Court ruled this year that people in corporations have the same free-speech rights as other Americans were a painful reminder of how vulnerable even the most basic rights are to the attacks of ideological zealots. Pres. Barack Obama said that the Court’s decision would “open the floodgates for special interests” — as if all you have to do to take away people’s free-speech rights is call them special interests.

It is not just particular segments of the population that are under attack. More fundamentally under attack are the very principles and values of American society as a whole. The history of this country is taught in many schools and colleges as the history of grievances and victimhood, often with the mantra of “race, class, and gender.” Television and the movies often do the same.

When there are not enough current grievances for them, they mine the past for grievances and call it history. Sins and shortcomings common to the human race around the world are spoken of as failures of “our society.” But American achievements get far less attention — and sometimes none at all.

Our “educators,” who cannot educate our children to the level of math or science achieved in most other comparable countries, have time to poison their minds against America.

Why? Partly, if not mostly, it is because that is the vogue. It shows you are “with it” when you reject your own country and exalt other countries.

Abraham Lincoln warned of people whose ambitions can only be fulfilled by dismantling the institutions of this country because no comparable renown is available to them by supporting those institutions. He said this 25 years before the Gettysburg Address, and he was speaking of political leaders with hubris, whom he regarded as a greater danger than enemy nations. But such hubris is far more widespread today than just among political leaders.

Those with such hubris — in the media and in education, as well as in politics — have for years eroded both respect for the country and the social cohesion of its people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today’s dismantling of America, which is now approaching the point of no return.

 

Tuesday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
The Ground Zero Mosque – a question of judgment and an amazing lack of it

More often than not, political operatives inside Washington’s Beltway are tone deaf to sentiments of voters across the country.

Through sheer arrogance, such operatives often sneer at comments and suggestions from the hustings.  Political pros rely on polling to provide them accurate measurements of public opinion.

Sometimes, polling shocks the professionals, by revealing moments in which political dynamics change dramatically. 

The Ground Zero Mosque controversy is one such moment.  Increasingly it seems November’s outcome will reflect voter opinion of that issue.  That impact is not good news for Democrats.  They are seen as being tied to the Mosque and those who conspire to build and fund it.

Rasmussen reports results of a new survey that finds 85% of U.S. voters are now following news stories about the mosque.  Rasmussen says that’s a 34-point jump from a month ago.  Chalk that jump up to Obama’s decision to openly support the mosque project.  

Unfortunately for Obama and Democrats, Rasmussen finds Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Mainstream voters are opposed to the project, and to the Democrat position on the issue..

Rasmussen is not alone. A new TIME poll, finds 61% of respondents oppose the mosque’s construction. More than 70% of voters concur in viewing proceeding with the mosque as an insult to the victims of 9/11.

Arguments by Liberals that the issue is one of religious freedom fall flat.  No one denies Islam can build mosques wherever they wish.  In the case of the Ground Zero project, it’s a question of common sense, sensitivity to public feelings, and judgment.

A prime law of politics, and opinion measuring in general, holds “truth is what the people believe”. In other words, “perception is reality”.

No matter the intent, the Ground Zero Mosque will forever be saddled with the view that it is a conspired taunt – an in-your-face insult to non-Muslims. Bad judgment becomes an unshakable belief.

Writing for Spectator, Jeffery Lord, comments, “most importantly for Republicans, all of this bad judgment over the Mosque issue easily translates into a connection with the bad judgment that has sent the American economy into a tailspin. Near double-digit unemployment and potentially nation-crippling national debt -- not to mention mess that is ObamaCare.”  Lord says such issues are “nothing but poster children for bad economic judgment.”

Lord predicts “the new emblem of this year's campaign -- the Ground Zero Mosque and Obama's support for it -- will be used as … an illustration of colossal bad judgment across the board. Bad judgment that will have a considerable negative impact on an election that was already sending Democrats reaching for the political smelling salts. Races for House, Senate and gubernatorial seats from New York to Nevada are going to be affected by this -- as Harry Reid's rush to separate from the Obama stance on the Mosque issue so vividly demonstrates.”

No matter.  Democrats are joined at the hip with the Ground Zero Mosque, including questions about the source of the $100 million needed for the project.

An answer to the troubling funding question is provided by travels of the Imam who heads the project.  He is currently on a junket throughout oil-rich Muslim nations – a junket busily followed by Muslim news outlets – and one being provided under the leadership of none other than Hillary Clinton.  Now she has a hint of what “is” might be. 

The Imam’s junket is clearly a fund raising vehicle, whether it was intended as such or not.  Perception is reality.

Bad judgment across the board in the Mosque issue is troubling, but there are also dark shadows hovering and unspoken in the background.  New polling also shows 25% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim himself, and another 35% aren’t sure what his religious affiliation might be.  Suspicions such as that, paired with the Mosque issue, don’t help generate confidence in how the emergence of a now nuclear-capable Iran might be handled, or how issues such as the Gaza flotilla flare ups may play out..

Solid judgment at this moment in history is critical.  The Obama Administration’s supply of that commodity is quite low.

Anyone who would think for a moment that the Ground Zero Mosque would provide a bridge to understanding between Muslims and non-Muslim Americans, not only is short on judgment – or common sense is beyond dumb..Anyone  who believes such a fantasy is an unmitigated idiot.

Point your fingers where you might wish.

Buddy

The day’s top political news:

GOP Targets Obama's 'Recovery Summer' Amid Economic Gloom

After months of withering job losses and weak economic growth, summer was going to be the season of recovery, the Obama administration heralded in June.

Thousands of infrastructure and construction projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were to come on-line during June, July and August, helping to "create jobs for American workers and economic growth for businesses, large and small."

The White House dubbed it "Recovery Summer" and President Obama declared the economy had begun "growing at a good clip." Vice President Joe Biden predicted weeks earlier that creation of 250,000 to 500,000 new jobs a month could soon be on the horizon.  But with summer quickly coming to an end, those jobs gains and a robust economic recovery have not yet materialized, leaving Democrats on the verge of a fall election campaign in which Republicans are poised to make them eat their words.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-recovery-summer-stimulus-projects-fail-yield/story?id=11463344

Obama's failed stimulus scam cost more than the Iraq war

Expect to hear a lot from Democrats about how much the Iraq war cost. The message being peddled by far left Democrats: “The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq.

The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion.

Among the actual facts about the war, spending, and Obama’s “stimulus” scam:

* Obama's stimulus, passed during his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- $100 billion (15%) more.
* Just the first two years of Obama's “stimulus” cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Little-known-fact-Obamas-failed-stimulus-program-cost-more-than-the-Iraq-war-101302919.html#ixzz0xWpoILAe

Net-neutrality group challenged by ties to MoveOn.Org, ACORN

A bipartisan coalition in favor of net neutrality is unraveling. The Gun Owners of America (GOA) severed ties with the net-neutrality coalition Save the Internet after a conservative blog questioned the association with liberal organizations such as ACORN and the ACLU.

The blog RedState described Save The Internet as a "neo-Marxist Robert McChesney-FreePress/Save the Internet think tank" and questioned why GOA would participate in a coalition that includes liberal groups such as the ACLU, MoveOn.Org, SEIU, CREDO and ACORN.

Net-neutrality advocates are struggling to maintain bipartisan support during an election season that has cast the issue along party lines. Last month, 35 Tea Party groups came out against net neutrality in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The letter accused the FCC of “relentlessly pursuing a massive regulatory regime” that would stifle the growth of the Internet.

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/115367-as-elections-near-net-neutrality-backers-challenged-by-moveonorg-and-acorn-ties

Blogs:

1.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2010/many_more_now_following_mosque_controversy_and_don_t_like_it

Many More Now Following Mosque Controversy – And Don’t Like It

A lot more voters are paying attention to the plans to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, and they don’t like the idea.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 85% of U.S. voters say they are now following news stories about the mosque planned near Ground Zero. That’s a 34-point jump from a month ago when only 51% said they were following the story. 

The new finding includes 58% who are following the story very closely, up from 22% in mid-July.

Now 62% oppose the building of a mosque near where the World Trade Center stood in Lower Manhattan, compared to 54% in the previous survey. Twenty-five percent (25%) favor allowing the mosque to go ahead, and 13% more are not sure.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the Political Class, however, favor building the mosque near Ground Zero. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Mainstream voters are opposed.

Since the July survey, the local New York City zoning debate over the planned 13-story Cordoba mosque has escalated into a national controversy. It has even been addressed by President Obama, who supports the building of the mosque in the name of religious tolerance. Opponents of the project, including many who lost loved ones in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, see the mosque as a deliberate provocation that dishonors the memories of the 3,000 people who died that day.

In mid-July, most voters in New York (58%) opposed the building of the mosque near Ground Zero. Twenty percent (20%) supported it, and 21% were undecided.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls).  Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 19-20, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters nationwide say the building of the mosque near the 9/11 site is insensitive. Just 23% disagree.

Only 22% say they are at least somewhat confident that the mosque is being built to honor those who died in the 9/11 attacks, as some have suggested. That’s down eight points from last month.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) are not confident that the mosque is intended to honor those killed by the terrorists. This includes eight percent (8%) who are Very Confident and 41% who are Not At All Confident.

Still, just 49% say the mosque issue is at least somewhat important in terms of how they will vote, with 27% who say it is Very Important. Forty-six percent (46%) view the mosque as unimportant to their vote, including 20% who say it is Not At All Important.

There’s a high level of interest in the mosque story across all demographic categories.

Yet while 85% of Republicans and 62% of voters not affiliated with either party oppose the building of the mosque near Ground Zero, Democrats are evenly divided on the question. There’s a similar division of opinion in the president’s party over whether the location of the mosque is insensitive, while Republican and unaffiliated voters believe strongly that it is.

But most Democrats like the majority of GOP voters and unaffiliateds are not very or not at all confident that the mosque is being built to honor those who died on 9/11.

Fifty-two percent (52%) of the Political Class, on the other hand, are confident that the mosque will honor those killed by the terrorists. Eighty-two percent (82%) of Mainstream voters don’t share that confidence.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Mainstream voters say the mosque issue is important to how they will vote, with 34% who say it is Very Important. Political Class voters say overwhelmingly that the issue is not important to their vote.

For the first time this year, the number who believe America is safer today than it was before the 9/11 terrorist attacks is slightly higher than those who disagree.

2.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/544672/201008231910/Secretary-Clintons-Climate-Con.aspx

Secretary Clinton's Climate Con

(Hillary?  Lying?  Again?)

Junk Science: Our secretary of state tells the world the devastating Pakistani floods are caused by man-made global warming as the U.N. plans to exploit the crisis to restart stalled climate talks. Repent, the end is near.

In an interview with Anwar Iqbal of Pakistan's Dawn TV posted on the State Department's Web site, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while discussing the Pakistani floods and American relief efforts, gratuitously said "having gone through Katrina and seeing what's happening around the world with the increase in the number of natural disasters and the extent of the damage that they're causing ... some people believe (they are) linked to global climate change."

When asked if this was her belief, Mrs. Clinton responded: "I think that there is a linkage. You can't point to any particular disaster and say, 'It was caused by ... .' But we are changing the climate of the world; we've seen that with the Russian forest fires ... ."

Pressed as to whether she thought there was a link between the Russian fires and the flood in Pakistan, Clinton, channeling Al Gore, said: "Not a direct link. But when you have the changes in climate that affect weather that we're now seeing, I think the predictions of more natural disasters are unfortunately being played out."

Well, not exactly, according to Indur M. Goklany, a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation Academic Advisory Council and a researcher who's been associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception in 1988. Extreme weather events, he has found, have had a minor and declining role in global public health and deaths and death rates.

Based on 2000-08 data, extreme weather events are responsible for about 0.05% of all global deaths (31,700 deaths vs. 58.8 million, annually). That is, despite the media attention to such events, extreme weather has a minor impact on global public health.

Goklany reports: "Long term (1900-2008) data show that average annual deaths and death rates from all such events declined by 93% and 98%, respectively, since cresting in the 1920s." Deaths and death rates from droughts also peaked in the 1930s, declining by 99.97% and 99.99%, respectively. For floods, deaths and death rates have declined by 98.7% to 99.6% since the 1930s.

In our current 24-hour news cycle, perception becomes reality. Storms have seemed to get worse and more frequent as populations have increased and, particularly in the U.S., migrated to vulnerable coastal areas and flood plains.

Noted climatologist Roger Pielke Jr. finds that once damage from hurricanes is normalized for changes in population and other demographic factors, there is no long-term change in the amount of destruction they are causing.

As Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), states: "I speak for many hurricane climate researchers in saying such claims are nonsense."

Goldenberg observes that "Katrina is part of a well-documented multidecadal scale fluctuation in hurricane activity," adding, "this cycle was described in a heavily cited article printed in the journal science in 2001."

Goldenberg's colleague at NOAA, Dr. Chris Landsea, agrees. "If you look at the raw hurricane data itself," he said, "there is no global warming signal. What we see instead is a strong cycling of activity. There are periods of 25 to 40 years where it's very busy and then periods of 25 to 40 years when it's very quiet."

Not letting a weather-related crisis go to waste, however, the New York Times reports that Pakistan's foreign minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "hinted that they would use the Pakistan crisis to spur the now-stalled international climate talks."

As for the Russian fires, a list of the top-10 killers compiled by the folks at Juggle.com shows no link between increasing CO2 levels and fire deaths. Correlation is not causality, and weather is not climate change. Secretary Clinton should stick to putting out foreign policy fires.

3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/even_in_massachusetts_a_gop_su.html

Even in Massachusetts, A GOP Surge

Charles Johnson

"Massachusetts Republican" -- once an oxymoron, now a cliché? After Scott Brown's election, a party once near extinction now has crowded primaries.

State Rep. Jeff Perry (Sandwich) stands out from the crowd, running for Massachusetts's 10th congressional district: WBUR calls the race Perry's to lose. Center-left blog FiveThirtyEight.com lays out how Republicans just might "captur[e] the Cape." Perry's qualified "contender" in the NRCC's Young Guns candidate program for House races, by raising more than $400,000 -- with 82 cents of every dollar coming from the district -- recently opened his third campaign office in Quincy.

He's done it by playing by the book -- his book, My GOP, which he self-published at the low point of national Republicanism in 2009. Times then seemed especially dismal for the party, but Perry believes and lives his subtitle: "to get back to the principles of Ronald Reagan." Perry knows, as Reagan knew, that there is no reason to vote for Republicans who don't believe in their own principles, so each chapter helpfully describes a political principle -- and how it's being ignored on Beacon Hill. My GOP educates, and with wit. One chapter title asks of Beacon Hill: "What part of illegal do they not understand?" Jeff Perry opposes all taxpayer benefits for illegal immigrants. One of only two Republicans statewide to vote against RomneyCare, Perry explains that it is unconstitutional to force people to buy insurance. A Virginia federal judge recently allowed an important lawsuit which argues exactly that to proceed against ObamaCare.

Perry, like Reagan before him, grounds his politics in liberty. Reagan carried Massachusetts twice. Perry thinks Reagan Democrats will carry him to Washington. The GOP's problem, as he explains via phone, is branding. There's no reason for people who, like Perry, grew up in Democratic households to pull another lever if Republicans offer Democrat-lite.

Speaking of Democrat-lite, Perry will surely dispatch former Treasurer Joe Malone in the September primary. Malone, running as a social liberal and fiscal conservative, is the former, but not the latter. Malone wasn't so fiscally conservative with investors' money, or with taxpayers'.

Rep. Perry is not without his critics. Some contend that the former cop "acted stupidly" -- as President Obama said of the Cambridge police last year -- in under-investigating an underling's sexual assault on a teenage girl. Perry was cleared of all wrongdoing. Democrats' sanctimony runneth over. In the 10th district, after all, they did continually reelect Gerry Studds, who was censured and nearly removed by his House colleagues for having sex with a 17-year-old male page. When Studds retired, William Delahunt replaced him. Delahunt later described human rights-abusing Colombian dictator Hugo Chávez as an "excellent friend," caring not a bit about the nature of Chávez's atrocious regime.

The latest "scandal" concerns Perry's academic credentials. Perry was taken in by a huckster school that offered him an online graduate degree. When he found out about the fraud, he scrubbed references to the degree from his website in 2002. Of course, there's also something unseemly about barring a man from office because he lacks the "proper" academic credentials, anyway. Phony credentials from a fraudulent school don't make a fraudulent man. Character counts more than a community college pedigree. Bluebloods in the bluest state forget that Perry's blue-collar successes -- first in his family to go to college -- represent middle-class Mass. at its best.

That middle class sees red and may be ready to vote "red." A recent poll of registered voters says that 54 percent plan to vote out their incumbent congressman. Perry's hope and slogan is "Wake up, Washington." But with Beacon Hill doing the redistricting in 2012, he'd better let some sleeping dogs lie.

Charles Johnson, a native of Milton, Mass., is a Claremont Review of Books fellow. He can be reached at cjohnson@claremont.org.

Monday's Web

Political Truth and Fact.Com

Neither fair nor balanced, but absolutely factual

Opinion:
Does Obama care about re-election?

A writer for the British newspaper, “The Telegraph” muses about whether Obama cares if he is re-elected and, perhaps, has greater ambition.

Its interesting speculation.  There is much to contribute to the concept.  As the writer, Toby Harnden, points out interesting facts:

Writes Hamden, “almost everything Obama does these days suggests that he doesn't care much about being re-elected. Strange as it might seem, perhaps he wants to be a one-term president.

“Obama was elected in 2008 at an extraordinary moment in American politics. Suddenly, this charismatic figure, elected to the Senate without serious opposition in 2004 and without any executive experience, was catapulted into the White House.

“His presidential bid “, notes Hamden, “had been based on the power of his life story and his ability with the spoken word. Doubtless he was as surprised as anyone else that he pulled it off. Governing has been altogether more difficult for him and there are signs he is already tiring of it.”

Obama won primarily because his race came during a “perfect storm” of American politics.  He ran against Hillary Clinton, at the time the most hated woman in American politics, then in the General election was pitted against John McCain who was saddled with Bush-era unpopularity and with his own badly expressed campaign instincts.  He angered many would be supporters time and time again. 

Then came the financial explosions.

Obama benefitted by all those factors and swept into office with what appeared to be to many liberals as a mandate.  They were wrong.  However, Obama and Democrats overreached with their health care takeover, their bail outs, and radical proposals such as Cap and Trade.

Now, Obama has unnecessarily embroiled himself in the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero Mosque.  What’s more, his position is on defending a Constitutional question that is not actually at issue.

Toby Hamden continues, “Obama does not suffer for self doubt. He has long seemed so convinced of his own virtue that to question his motives is illogical. Increasingly, his pronouncements carry the tone of one who believes those who disagree are stupid or bigoted.

Concludes Hamden, “It seems highly unlikely that Obama will decide not to run in 2012. But he might well be calculating that a embarking post-presidential role as the leading global thinker in the post-American world as a Republican successor enters office is more attractive than being sullied by the political compromises and manoeuvrings necessary to win.”

We once speculated Bill Clinton had ambitions of being made head of the UN – a position without much real power.  Obama seems to have even greater ambitions.

That should be kept very much in mind as we proceed.

Buddy

The day’s top political news:

Ground Zero Mosque Promoters compare opposition to persecution of Jews

A leader of a planned Muslim Mosque Ground Zero, has compared opposition to the project to the persecution of Jews. "We are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasized antisemitism," said Daisy Khan, who is spearheading the project with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. "It's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims."

Ms. Khan, appearing on ABC News's "This Week" on Sunday, vowed to push ahead with plans to build a 15-story complex two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan, saying there was "too much at stake."

The words could further inflame an already angry debate about the proposed location of the mosque, which opponents denounce as a "victory mosque." Rival protests for and against the $100 million center were planned in lower Manhattan on Sunday.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703589804575445671238186074.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Uninsured Slow To Sign Up For Health Coverage – Just two sign up in New Jersey

Just two people in New Jersey will begin receiving coverage Monday under new plans created by Obama care. NJ Protect plans are available to those who have been without insurance for at least six months and submit evidence of pre-existing health conditions.

The state will receive $141 million in federal subsidies to cover claims that exceed the premiums paid by the beneficiaries.

Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey spokesman Tom Vincz expects more people will enroll in the coming weeks.  Still, government takeover of health care loses its appeal.

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/new_jersey/uninsured-slow-to-sign-up-for-coverage-20100823-apx

In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market

Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.

Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.

If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked. Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/business/22invest.html?_r=2&hp

Blogs:

1.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/why_jews_are_deserting_obama_a.html

Why Jews are Deserting Obama and the Democrats

Ed Lasky

One little-noticed trend that speaks volumes: the decline in Democratic Party identification and support for Barack Obama from American Jews, once among their most reliable and enthusiastic backers.

There has been a steady drip-drip-drip of Jews leaving the Democratic Party, most recently noted by the Pew Research Center. This has caused consternation among the usual suspects -- among them, the National Jewish Democratic Council and New York Times columnist and uber-liberal Charles Blow, who commented just a few days ago:

In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled "Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim" (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it's less than two to one.

This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking "special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world," as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.

With all due respect to Mr. Blow, this shifting dynamic is a bit more complicated than blaming it all on Barack Obama's harsh treatment of Israel.

Blow's simplistic approach suggests the ugly issue of dual loyalty. Most Jews are not single-issue voters, and Israel is not the top concern of most Jews. This fact has not escaped the notice of pro-Israel groups in America, which are often at wit's end to generate pro-Israel feelings among American Jews. Yet Blow and others seem to want to focus on Israel. Hispanics aren't accused of putting their home countries above America when they march for immigration "reform"; Poles aren't criticized when they express pride in their homeland, and they were among the fiercest domestic foes of  the Soviet Union (these include Zbigniew Brzezinski, who routinely all but charges Jews with dual loyalty but omits his own role in bringing the Taliban to power in Afghanistan as a way to weaken the Soviet Union to the point where it had to eventually stop occupying his homeland). The political correctness that is the guiding principle at the New York Times apparently does not extend to American Jews. Be that as it may, Jews are
as American as everyone else and focus on domestic concerns when they vote. What they see happening under Democrat rule, they don't like.

Indeed, it can be argued that among all the groups that America can be divided into (and Obama's reign seems to be splintering America at its seams into various tribes), Jews are the ones paying the steepest price for the Democrats' policies. Many of the changes undertaken by Obama have had a disparate negative impact on American Jews.

The legacy of anti-Semitism has been a major force that has driven many Jews to become small business owners. They are in for a load of trouble in the days ahead. More onerous regulations, such as having to file many more 1099s so the IRS can make sure they get every nickel possible from Americans and a pro-union agenda that rewards unionized firms, are just the tip of the iceberg. Many small businesses are incorporated as S-corporations; these will now face onerous new taxes. Small business owners are the unsung heroes in America; they generate most of the private-sector jobs. They also lead generally very stressful lives -- trying to deal with the challenges of competition, labor relations, customer service, risks of bankruptcy. Barack Obama and the Democrats have just loaded onto their shoulders many more problems.

Jews in America are also among the highest per-capita earners. Why? Again, anti-Semitism may be a factor. This has led American Jews toward entrepreneurship and professional careers that allow them to develop talents that shield them from bosses who don't like Jews. There is also a cultural reason: Jews revere education. Many become doctors and lawyers. But this dynamic has had a toxic side-effect: it has generated anti-Semitism and slurs in the past. In any case, Jews are being surpassed by Asian-Americans, including Indian-Americans, so maybe that will recede as a problem (it already has, because Americans, despite the bleating of liberals, are among the least prejudiced people in the world).

But what won't recede is the wave of higher tax rates targeting higher-income Americans. David Drucker writes in the New York Post:

High-income people will lose many of their tax cuts under the Democrats' plan: they'll lose a large fraction of their itemized deductions including charitable gifts and mortgage interest. Their tax rate on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains will go from 15% to 20%, and the top two wage tax rates will return to 36% and 39.6% from their current levels of 33% and 35%.

Jews will get hit with multiple whammies on New Year's Day.

Higher taxes on income will be just one of them (and since many still live in New York, they will face an even worse hangover, since New York taxes are confiscatory). But higher taxes on capital gains will bring its own pain to many Jews because of a demographic fact: Jews are the oldest ethnic group in America.

Older people have often relied on the health of the stock market to cushion their retirement years. That cushion has deflated this year under the multiple blows administered by Barack Obama and the Democrats. (Much of last year's growth was due to the Federal Reserve running its printing presses overtime -- the only government branch that worked overtime last year; also, the market was just vastly oversold in the panic of 2008.) As Democrat policies took hold (the failed stimulus, ObamaCare, financial "reform"), the market started to tank because investors saw a bleak future for free enterprise in the Age of Obama. Obama's penchant for railing against Wall Street -- historically, an anti-Semitic rallying cry -- may strike the wrong chord with American Jews. Didn't the self-declared student of history who absurdly claimed that "nobody has spoken out more fiercely on that issue of anti-Semitism than I have" attend any of his  history classes (or did he play hooky, as he claimed to during all those days that Jer
emiah Wright broadcast his jeremiads against whites, America, and Israel?).

Also, American Jews have far fewer children on average than most groups in America. Children are expensive, but they also have historically been seen as a form of insurance by people: the kids will be there to help seniors. But if people have fewer kids, they not only have the ability to save more money (again, kids are expensive), but also must save more money to help themselves during their sunset years.

The stock market stall, combined with vastly increased taxes on capital gains and dividend income, bode ill for America's oldest "tribe": Jews.

Since I mentioned ObamaCare, one can ask, how will that impact American Jews? Not well. As noted above, many Jews are doctors. The healing arts are revered among Jews ("my son, the doctor"). ObamaCare will suppress the freedom of doctors, load them up with additional paperwork and patients, and will eventually hit their bottom line.

Furthermore, seniors are very concerned about the future of health care in America, as they should be. How welcome will be the gutting of Medicare and Medicare Advantage to fund health care for legions of younger people who can opt in and out of government-funded medical care whenever it suits them (for example, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital)? Not very -- and that includes the oldest demographic sliver in America: Jews.

These are just a few reasons why American Jews might be open to moving to the other side of the aisle. Others include a massive change in the Jewish population from the influx of Russian Jews, who abhor statist control of the economy and of their daily lives, and who revere liberty as only those who never had it before would. There has also been a surge in the Orthodox community -- and they have far more children than Reform Jews, so the Jewish population as a whole is moving inexorably more towards conservatism. They also tend -- as is true of religious Christians -- toward the redder end of the political spectrum. Simplistically and myopically blaming Obama's approach toward Israel for the "defection" of American Jews from the Democratic Party short-changes Jews and is wrong. The single-minded obsession  that Jews focus only on Israel runs the risk of encouraging charges of dual loyalty, and that has led to a great deal of suffering for Jews throughout history.

A digression on the charge of dual loyalty: 

Living in Chicago, I have seen the efflorescence of ethnic pride and identity politics. St. Patrick's Day brings us the greening of the Chicago River and the sprightly appearance of leprechauns. Latino Congressmen such as Luis Gutierrez make immigration reform a top priority -- even if it leads to his arrest. Chicago has a potent African-American business and political block that both propelled Barack Obama's career and gave America Oprah Winfrey. What other city in America allows kids a day off school to honor Casimir Pulaski? When the World Cup happens, I learn a great deal from the giant flags whipping from car windows. There is nothing wrong with people caring for their relatives and friends in foreign lands. But for Blow and others to point their finger at Israel as the reason Jews are leaving the Democratic Party is wrong. They should stop promoting that canard.

Jews are as American as everyone else. When they see their lives being harmed, their interests being ignored, and their dreams being dashed to death by Democrats, they respond just as other Americans do. They express their concerns and seek to protect their future in that most American of places: the voting booth.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.

2.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/22/tea-party-struggles-on-democrats-turf/

'Tea party' struggles on Democrats' turf
Little sway in Mid-Atlantic races

Joseph Weber
The Washington Times

The "tea party" movement that staged upset midterm victories from the rugged Westto the Deep South faces tough challenges next month in the Mid-Atlantic states of Maryland and Delaware — Democratic strongholds where more established, well-funded candidates have big leads in the marquee races.

In Maryland, investor and GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy has a Sarah Palin endorsement and support from one tea party group — the Maryland Society of Patriots.

But former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is expected to easily win the Sept. 14 Republican primary, then face Gov. Martin O'Malley, the Democratic incumbent, in a rematch of the 2006 contest.

Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. O'Malley are now essentially tied at 44.5 percent with just 3 percent going to the remaining candidates, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll last week.

Tea party candidates have lost other primaries or now trail in general election polls, but the Mid-Atlantic has its own circumstance.

"The South and West are notoriously suspicious of Washington," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "The Mid-Atlantic has more liberal states."

He said Mr. Ehrlich is among the Republican candidates who are likely better off without anti-establishment endorsements because registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 3-to-1 in Maryland.

"The only way Ehrlich can win in November is to prevail upon voters that he's a moderate," Mr. Sabato said.

In Delaware, grass-roots Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell faces Rep. Michael N. Castle, a Republican who has roughly $3 million in campaign funds and a political career that dates back to his election to the state General Assembly in 1966.

Ms. O'Donnell and Mr. Murphy have campaigned in part on the grass-roots issues that matter to voters who live outside major cities.

Mr. Murphy has taken up the issue of illegal immigration and has the support of a popular sheriff who wants his get-tough immigration program to be implemented statewide.

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins — who has turned over roughly 600 illegal immigrants to federal agents for deportation proceedings — startled the state GOP establishment when he announced his support for Mr. Murphy during a recent volunteer fire company carnival.

Mr. Murphy said internal polls show that his message of a balanced budget, no tax increases and jobs reaches cities and suburbs. "It resonates with everybody," he said. "It's all the same. People get it."

Meanwhile, Ms. O'Donnell's strategy includes traveling south from the city of Wilmington — where about 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies have corporate headquarters — to Sussex County, where farmers, outdoorsmen and other conservative voters are concerned about gun rights and mostly oppose the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar corporate bailouts.

Ms. O'Donnell, backed by the Tea Party Express, is critical of Mr. Castle's corporate backing and his frequent voting with Democrats in Congress, even in Delaware, which is home to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and gave roughly 63 percent of the state's presidential vote to Barack Obama in 2008.

"Republicans are tired of having to hold their nose and go vote for Mike Castle," said Ms. O'Donnell, who lost to Mr. Biden in 2008 and is still raising money for TV ads. "People don't have to anymore."

The primary is Sept. 14, and the winner likely will face County Executive Chris Coons, a Democrat, for the seat vacated by Mr. Biden.

Polls showing that Mr. Castle has less than 50 percent of the vote is another example that Republicans in Washington have failed to understand why voters have backed non-establishment, tea party candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ms. O'Donnell said.

She also has tried to inject urgency into her campaign by telling voters that the November winner will be immediately seated in Congress and that she, unlike Mr. Castle, would vote against cap-and-trade legislation.

"I'll do more than vote," she said. "I'll advocate against it."

A Castle staffer said the congressman has publicly stated that he is opposed to considering controversial legislation during a lame-duck session.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC

3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/gallup_ignoring_its_own_big_st.html

Gallup Ignoring Its Own Big Stories

Bruce Walker

The Gallup Poll is one of the oldest in polling organizations in America. Its reputation ought to be important. The articles which accompany Gallup's polls, however, seem calculated to hide the real story. Consider an article last August, entitled "Political Ideology: 'Conservative' Label Prevails in the South." That is not exactly earth-shattering news. Anyone who has even casual acquaintance with American politics knows that the South is the most conservative part of our country. 

The subtitle of the article appears to tell more: "Conservatives outnumber liberals in nearly every state, but not in D.C." That subtitle, in much smaller font below the headline, is, in fact, false. The data which Gallup provides in the actual poll reveals this remarkable fact: conservatives outnumber liberals in every single state of our nation, without exception, including such proverbial bastions of leftism as Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, and Rhode Island. This is electrifying news, particularly in light of the Tea Party movement and the rebellion within the Republican Party against RINOs. Why would Gallup ignore this fascinating news it discovered? Why would Gallup place a subtitle around this poll which is not true and which understates the poll's importance? 

Six months later, Gallup announced a poll on the same question: the ideology of respondents in each of the fifty states. What was the title of this article? "Ideology: Three Deep South States Most Conservative," although in much smaller print, the subtitle was "Only District of Columbia has More Liberals than Conservatives." This reconfirms the almost unbelievable results of the August 2009 poll, yet Gallup practicably ignores what its own data shows.

On August 18, 2010, Gallup announced that "Voter Enthusiasm Highest Among Conservatives," but don't try reading the online article. Instead, watch and listen to Frank Newport, Editor in Chief, talking to you about the data but only barely showing it. Why not let visitors see the data instead of listening to Dr. Newport tell us what he thinks the data means (conservatives and liberals are the most enthused voters and moderates the least enthused)? Because -- if you are prepared to stop and start the video clip and look for the faded numbers -- the dramatic difference in ideological enthusiasm makes the title of the poll patently milquetoast. It is almost as if Gallup did not want you examining intellectually its data and wanted you, instead, to watch Newport's bobbing head as he speaks on a busy city sidewalk.

Most curious of all is the poll dated August 17, 2010 with the title "GOP Shows Strongest Positioning Yet in 2010 Test Vote." The four graphs in that article show that since January 2010, Republican support in the generic congressional ballot reached a high water mark in mid-August 2010: interesting, but with polls fluctuating all over the place in the last decade, how important is that polling data really? Surely Gallup did not appear to see much historic about the generic ballot data in August.

But the Gallup Poll released also in August 2010, entitled "Gallup Election 2010 Key Indicators," shows something incomparably more interesting. The tables at the top show that Republicans have a seven-point lead in the generic ballot, and the graph immediately below that -- which inexplicably stretches out a five-month period -- seems to show that the lines of congressional ballot support for the two political parties have almost no trend at all. The bottom graph, which is curiously disconnected from the other graph, shows the generic ballot trends from 1950 to 2006. (Why not extend that to 2010?) That graph shows that, except for a brief period in 1994, when Republicans had a five-point lead for a few weeks, and for a briefer period in 2002, when Republicans had a four-point lead, Democrats have always led in the congressional ballot.

Go to yet another Gallup Poll, this one released on April 13, 2010, and the investigative reader would discover that in those periods not shown in the August 2010 article, Democrats led on the generic congressional ballot from 2006 through 2009 -- which is not particularly surprising. Put these three separate articles together, and a genuinely dramatic fact can be deciphered: in August 2010, the Gallup generic ballot showed Republicans stronger against Democrats than in more than sixty years of tracking this data.

So why is the title to this article not "Republican Lead over Democrats Largest in Polling History"? Or why not "Democrat Generic Ballot Weakest in Sixty Years"? Why, since Gallup reports all this data in scattered reports and must have all the figures together in a single database, did someone at Gallup not play with a spreadsheet, push a button, and then say, "Wow! Look at this, guys! Republicans are in the best position on the congressional ballot than they have ever been! What a story!" We all know why, don't we?

Bruce Walker is the author of a new book: Poor Lenin's Almanac: Perverse Leftists Proverbs for Modern Life.