_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[Click the date before an article of interest to view the original article on the Web for an item published since 8/6/11 (rather than the headline itself that is the link to the original article on the Web for earlier dates). Click here to go to the index in which clicking a headline link accesses a particular article's giac2002.org article quotation summary.
5/18/12 Why So Many Americans Still Don't Know Much of Anything About Barack Obama Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Excerpts
RUSH: You know, this Reverend Wright stuff with Barack Obama, it's back in the news again. Something is happening. It's anecdotal, but I happen to think that this might be applicable in a statistical way to the nation at large. We played the audio sound bite from Obama reading from one of his books a couple of weeks ago, in which he admitted bullying a young girl, in which he admitted trying cocaine, admitted that he drank a lot, basically just lollygagged around. I know we've got new listeners to this program. It's been documented by the official ratings companies that monitor such things.
There are tons and tons of new listeners, but even at that, I'm overwhelmed by the number of people -- we're three-and-a-half years into his regime, and I'm getting e-mails from people that the first time they'd heard he'd done cocaine was in the past two, three weeks. The first time they'd heard that he had bullied a young girl. They didn't know his college transcripts hadn't been released. They just assumed all that had happened and they missed it. They didn't know any of this.
Now, we know Obama wasn't vetted. We know the mainstream media has done everything they can to protect him. But the Reverend Wright stuff was out there. I'm even getting e-mail from people who had not heard all the Reverend Wright stuff. New listeners, not people who listen to this program regularly. New listeners say they're hearing this for the first time. I'm getting e-mails from people like we got when we were in the first year or first two years of the program. "My gosh, I found you the other day driving around. I couldn't get anything else on the radio, and I'm hooked now." Similar comments from customers at Two If By Tea who are finding the program for the first time and learning stuff about Obama that we've all known for four years. They're just now hearing about it.
It's driving home the fact that the Drive-Bys didn't vet this guy at all. We know it, but I'm sitting here, I assume everybody knows that Obama did cocaine, and this is the mistake we make. We know it, so we assume everybody else knows it because of word-of-mouth and this kind of thing. Some of the Reverend Wright stuff surfaced again because there's some new aspects to the Reverend Wright case. For example, in Ed Klein's book, The Amateur -- and Klein's got this on tape -- a friend of Obama's offered Wright 150 grand, a bribe, to stop preaching during the 2008 campaign. Yeah, it was just 150. That's probably why Wright didn't take it.
But there was another story in the Ed Klein book that Obama was talking to Wright one day, Reverend Wright, and said, "You know, Reverend, your problem is you have to tell the truth. As a politician, I don't. I don't have to tell the truth. I can make the truth whatever I want it to be." It's not on tape, but Klein claims that Obama said that to Wright. So there's all kinds of new stuff that's surfacing about Reverend Wright, in addition to the old stuff being recycled that people are hearing for the first time. It literally is amazing. The Wright stuff was all over talk radio. It was all over Fox News. But in one way this is encouraging because it is a great indication of just how many additional people are finding their way to conservative media now.
[In case you might be among the uninformed--Obama raised his kids in Reverend Wrights church that Obama and his wife attended for twenty years. Among other outrageous quotes from his sermons, Reverend Wright said: "Not 'God Bless America,' but 'God D**n America.' Obama never raised a peep." Click the date to read more that Rush describes in this article. I intend to add this to the "Classic Links" on this Web site so you and other readers can be informed perpetually and never again vote for this man with his un-American, even anti-American, background and beliefs.]
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5/18/12 Dems Disenfranchise Voters After Polls Show Obama in Close Primary Race
By MICHAEL WARREN, The Weekly Standard
"Is this some kind of North Korea thing?"
"After a poll released this week showed President Barack Obama only beating his Democratic primary opponent John Wolfe Jr. by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, state Democrats moved to practically disenfranchise Arkansas voters. '[D]elegates Wolfe might claim won't be recognized at the national convention,' national party officials are telling state Democrats. Wolfe is being accused of not following the party rules.
"'They want a coronation,' Wolfe tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. 'They’re conflating [Obama] with the party. Are we supposed to call him ‘Dear Leader’? Is this some kind of North Korea thing?'
"Wolfe insists he’s done the due diligence to qualify for
delegates and that the state party is making decisions ad hoc to get the
results they desire. 'This is ridiculous,' he says. 'These guys are trying
to tamp down voter enthusiasm.'
"If he's denied delegates he's rightfully won, Wolfe says, Democrats
would be effectively disenfranchising those who chose him over President
Obama. And if that happens, he’ll take his own party to court.
"'They took my money and put my name on the ballot,' he says. 'They’re trying to make people think it’s hopeless to vote against Obama.'”
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5/18/12 Massive Canadian oil sands deposit may offer new hope for US fuel security
"Outside of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, America has no energy security plan. The next best thing may lie 500 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border in a remote area of Alberta.
"Here, in an area roughly the size of Florida, lies the largest single deposit of petroleum anywhere in the world. Current estimates of recoverable oil are at 170 billion barrels. Future advances in technology could push that figure as high as 300 billion barrels – bigger than oil titans Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
"And this oil doesn’t come from nations with a history of sketchy relations with the United States. Canada is among the most stable democracies in the world. Not a shot has been fired in anger toward the United States in 200 years.
"'This really does represent energy security when you talk about North America,' Shell Canada’s Stephanie Sterling said. 'We are a friendly neighbor to the U.S., so what a terrific energy source to be able to provide to our neighbors.'
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5/18/12 Drop George Zimmerman’s murder charge By Alan Dershowitz / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
New evidence suggests Trayvon Martin's killer acted in self-defense
"A medical report by George Zimmerman’s doctor has disclosed that Zimmerman had a fractured nose, two black eyes, two lacerations on the back of his head and a back injury on the day after the fatal shooting. If this evidence turns out to be valid, the prosecutor will have no choice but to drop the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman — if she wants to act ethically, lawfully and professionally.
"There is, of course, no assurance that the special prosecutor handling the case, State Attorney Angela Corey, will do the right thing. Because until now, her actions have been anything but ethical, lawful and professional.
"She was aware when she submitted an affidavit that it did not contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She deliberately withheld evidence that supported Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. The New York Times has reported that the police had 'a full face picture' of Zimmerman, before paramedics treated him, that showed “a bloodied nose.” The prosecutor also had photographic evidence of bruises to the back of his head.
"But none of this was included in any affidavit.
"Now there is much more extensive medical evidence that would tend to support Zimmerman’s version of events. This version, if true, would establish self-defense even if Zimmerman had improperly followed, harassed and provoked Martin.
"A defendant, under Florida law, loses his “stand your ground” defense if he provoked the encounter — but he retains traditional self-defense if he reasonably believed his life was in danger and his only recourse was to employ deadly force.
"Thus, if Zimmerman verbally provoked Martin, but Martin then got on top of Zimmerman and banged his head into the ground, broke his nose, bloodied his eyes and persisted in attacking Zimmerman — and if Zimmerman couldn’t protect himself from further attack except by shooting Martin — he would have the right to do that. (The prosecution has already admitted that it has no evidence that Zimmerman started the actual fight.)"
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5/18/12 Police: Man, 19, beaten by two groups of students downtown Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun
"Also that night, a
Virginia man was beaten and stripped of his clothing near the downtown
courthouse, an attack that was caught on tape and garnered national
attention.
"The racial elements of that crime fed much of the outrage - the victim
was white, and the attackers were all black. In Thursday's reported assault,
Guglielmi said the 19-year-old victim was white and the attackers were all
juvenile black males.
"The reports of the St. Patrick's Day incidents prompted Baltimore County
Del. Pat McDonough, a conservative radio show host, to issue a statement
asking the governor to send in the Maryland
State Police to control 'roving mobs of black youths' at Baltimore's Inner
Harbor. He said the Harbor should be declared a 'no-travel zone' until
safety can be ensured.
"His comments were denounced by other politicians, including Gov. Martin
O'Malley, and a group of activists to call for an apology. McDonough has
declined, saying to do so would be 'political correctness on steroids.'"
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5/18/12 Literary agency explanation raises more questions than it answers on Obama Kenya birth assertion
"[A] fact-checker does not make up text. A fact checker receives a text written by someone else, and then determines whether the factual assertions are based on the verifiable truth.
"So the question remains: who submitted the text that was insufficiently fact-checked by Ms. Goderich? Who, in other words, first offered the assertion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya?
"One must ask who on earth other than the client himself, Barack Obama, would have had the data upon which to assert that Barack Obama was born in Kenya? If that person was not Obama, then why would such person believe that Obama was born in Kenya? Recall that at the time, Obama occupied no political office, and had been in the public eye primarily because he was the first black person elected president of the Harvard Law Review. It seems very likely that Barack Obama himself supplied the information. Who else would be in a position to make such an assertion? Who could have supplied such 'mistaken' information to the literary agent?"
[Born in Kenya or liar?]
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5/17/12 Democrat-led Senate votes down 4 GOP budgets for 2013
By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times
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5/17/12 US envoy to Israel: US ready to strike Iran FoxNews.com
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5/17/12 The Vetting - Exclusive - Obama's Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii' Joel B. Pollack, Breitbart.com
"Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as 'born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.' . . .
"Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White."
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5/17/12 Walker widening lead in latest polls The Chippewa Herald
"LA CROSSE — New polling data suggest Republican Gov. Scott Walker is pulling ahead of Democratic challenger Tom Barrett with three weeks to go until Wisconsin’s recall elections, with jobs and the economy still dominating the agenda.
"Results of a Marquette Law School poll conducted in the four days after last week’s primary and released Wednesday show Walker with a six percentage point lead over Barrett among likely voters, 50-44, and more voters say they favor Walker when it comes to job creation.
"Just 3 percent of voters said they are undecided.
"Wednesday’s results mirror data collected for the left-leaning Daily Kos website by Public Policy Polling, which indicated Walker up 50-45." [Hopefully a great harbinger of things to come.]
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5/17/12 The UN proposal for a global financial transaction tax is socialism writ large on a world scale By Nile Gardiner, The Telegraph
"I wrote a piece earlier on the UN Human Rights Council’s ludicrous attack on Canada over what it calls unacceptable levels of “food insecurity” in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Now a group of United Nations 'independent experts' is pushing the European Union to back a global financial transaction tax ahead of the G-8 Summit 'to offset the costs of the enduring economic, financial, fuel, climate and food crises, and to protect basic human rights.'
"According to this statement posted by the UN, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council:
'Where the world financial crisis has brought about the loss of millions of jobs, socialized private debt burdens and now risks causing significant human rights regressions through wide-ranging austerity packages, a financial transaction tax (FTT) is a pragmatic tool for providing the means for governments to protect and fulfill the human rights of their people,” said the rights experts on extreme poverty, food, business, foreign debt and international solidarity.' . . .
"The last thing the global economy needs right now is an oppressive international tax on financial transactions that would stifle the free market, help kill job creation and place an additional yoke around the necks of businesses and entrepreneurs. It is nothing more than socialism writ large on a worldwide scale, and UN officials are deluding themselves if they think it will actually be implemented across the globe."
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5/17/12 Juan Williams Runs Interference for Eric Holder, Fast & Furious Mary Chastain, Breitbart
"Like Lanny Davis, Juan Williams has written an op-ed in The Hill to run interference for Eric Holder in the growing Fast & Furious gunrunning scandal. And like Davis, Williams only gives partial facts to distort the true story.
"First off, here’s a huge fact Mr. Williams and other Democrats conveniently leave out: Operation Fast & Furious is linked to the deaths of Border Patrol Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexicans. People have lost their lives and will continue to do so for who knows how long. Mr. Holder even admitted as much. It is very easy to harp on Mr. Issa when someone 'forgets' about the victims.
"Mr. Williams thinks Mr. Issa’s 'number one danger is a constitutional crisis.' There isn’t one. Congress’s enumerated powers are filled with oversight implications. Mr. Williams says the DOJ is supposed to be an independent agency. But it’s not. It falls under the Executive Branch, which means the DOJ is subject to oversight. They are a government agency.
There’s a reason why Mr. Issa’s primary concern is Mr. Holder not turning over documents. He hasn’t! Mr. Issa has every reason to be upset. Mr. Williams is correct to state that the DOJ has provided 7,000 documents. But that’s only 7,000 documents of the more than 70,000 documents Mr. Issa has subpoenaed.
"Mr. William’s article wouldn’t be complete without a reference to Operation Wide Receiver. It’s still precious to me when Democrats whine over President Bush’s Operation Wide Receiver, especially since it was started in 2006. What happened in 2006? That’s right. Democrats won the House and Senate. Democrats might want to take it up with their own party and ask them why they didn’t do a thing about gun walking during 2006-2008.
"The DOJ deserves this attack. They knew about Operation Wide Receiver. They knew of previous gun walking programs, yet they decided it was a good idea to implement their own? Say what you will about Operation Wide Receiver, but you had better apply it to Operation Fast & Furious too, especially since it is well known this one is linked to the deaths I mentioned before.
"This isn’t a witch-hunt. This is an investigation to hold those responsible for this awful operation. These people have blood on their hands. This operation is a great reason why there needs to be oversight of government agencies.
"Mr. Holder can end this right now by handing over the rest of the documents and firing those responsible for this operation. It’s that easy. Until then, I know Mr. Issa will do everything he can to give the family members answers and the victims the justice they deserve."
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5/17/12 Obama Made Mexican Maids Cry in College by Michael Paranzino, Breitbart
The Democrat Media Complex (DMC), desperate to divert attention from Obama’s weak economy, has spent the last week obsessing over GOP presidential nominee-to-be Mitt Romney’s high school days.
"Like other recent Democrat efforts at distraction – Sandra Fluke’s inability to get her male partner to kick in for the $9/month birth control; Mitt Romney’s dog -- the 5,400 words from the Washington Post on Romney’s high school pranks almost 50 years ago have backfired miserably. Turns out Romney was a typical teen, and the Post really is a joke. But the DMC’s pimping of Haircutgate has also prompted conservatives to reread Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from My Father, with an eye for vetting him as thoroughly as the amateur historians at the Post.
"Romney’s mid-1960s high school years are in play? How about Obama’s college years? How about the time Barack Obama so destroyed his college dormitory that it brought his Latino maids to tears! What—you have never heard that reported by the DMC?
"Let’s go to Obama’s Dreams (p. 109, paperback copyright 2004), when he is recounting a college party his sophomore year at Occidental College. . . .
'Just as she was finishing, Reggie wandered out of the kitchen, drunker than I was. He came over and threw his arm around my shoulder. “Obama! Great party, man!” He threw Regina a sloppy grin. “Let me tell you, Regina, Obama and me go way back. Should have seen our parties last year, back at the dorms. Man, you remember that time we stayed up the whole weekend? Forty hours, no sleep. Started Saturday morning and didn’t stop till [sic] Monday.”
'I tried to change the subject, but Reggie was on a roll. 'I’m telling you, Regina, it was wild. When the maids show up Monday morning, we were all still sitting in the hallway, looking like zombies. Bottles everywhere. Cigarette butts. Newspapers. That spot where Jimmy threw up . . .' Reggie turned to me and started to laugh, spilling more beer on the rug. 'You remember, don’t you, man? Shit was so bad, those little old Mexican ladies started to cry. ‘Dios Mio,’ one of ‘em says, and the other one starts patting her on the back. Oh shit, we were crazy….'
"Dios Mio indeed. Obama, in college, completely trashed his California dorm room and left it for “Mexican” women to clean. It was so beyond the pale, including vomit, it brought the hard-working women, who had no doubt seen messes every day, to tears—in Barack Obama’s presence—but he did nothing and let the immigrant women clean up his vandalism and destruction. . . .
"Mr. President, what is worse, cutting a kid’s hair in high school or abusing Latino women in college?
"Now let’s be clear. The cries of 88 million adults not in the anemic labor market are better reasons to send Obama packing in November than his mistreatment of and indifference to Latina women when he was 20, as deplorable as it was. But if they want to talk Romney’s haircut, let’s talk Obama’s Mexican maids. Makes you wonder how he’ll trash the White House on the night of January 19th, 2013."
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5/16/12
RUSH: Developments in the Trayvon Martin case, and you'd be hard-pressed to find these developments out there. There have been two dramatic developments in the Trayvon Martin shooting case. According to ABC News, George Zimmerman's family doctor saw him the morning after the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Here's what George Zimmerman's doctor found: A broken nose, two black eyes, bruises on his face and lip, two cuts on the back of his head, and a back injury.
The NBC affiliate in Florida is reporting that the medical director who performed the autopsy on Trayvon Martin found only two injuries on his body: the gunshot wound and broken skin on his knuckles. Welcome to the Duke lacrosse case all over again. Everything Zimmerman said about what happened to him turns out to be true after the media trying to cast him along with the civil rights coalitions of this country, the race-baiters, as abject lies. (interruption) What do you mean, not rush to judgment? It's been two months. I'm not speculating. I'm telling you what the doctor said. There's no speculation going on. The doctor is not speculating. The doctor did the exam the day after the incident happened. It's all been suppressed. Nobody's reported it. That's the point. And there wasn't even any media curiosity about it.
Now, I'm not a forensic scientist, and I don't guess on matters like this. I don't have to guess; the facts are here. It's kind of hard not to connect the dots. Now, all of this information is coming out. You know why it's coming out? Because we're in the discovery phase of the Zimmerman trial, where each side has to show the other side what evidence they have. But you really have to wonder here, folks, why none of this came out before in the prosecutor's charging affidavit. Can we go back to that? The charging affidavit, which, remember Dershowitz at Harvard said it was an embarrassment that wouldn't survive the first inspection by a judge, but it did. But he said it was pathetic, it was unprofessional.
I happened to report what Dershowitz said and my own affiliate in Jacksonville called the attorney's office, "What do you think about what Limbaugh said about your charging document?" None of this is in the charging document, or the affidavit. I thought that the state was obligated, or obliged, anyway, to provide all the relevant details in a case to the judge, but apparently I was mistaken. But, anyway, as I said, ladies and gentlemen, the news media seem to be ignoring these developments. I mean they're out there, touched on a little bit by ABC. But the news that I just gave you has barely been mentioned on the cable news channels. I don't watch it, but I'm told that MSNBC only got around to reporting this about an hour ago, and they ran a banner at the bottom of the screen that said, "Proof of self-defense? Trayvon Martin family lawyer calls medical report suspicious."
So the doctor puts out a report, Zimmerman's doctor, and now MSNBC is saying he might be a liar. And they have to because they gotta cover their own rear ends the way they reported this. (interruption) I don't know if Zimmerman's doctor is a white Hispanic, Mr. Snerdley. But you really have to wonder here when the news media began to lose interest in the Trayvon Martin story, 'cause you know they did. They lost interest. They were going 150 miles an hour on this story, and then all of a sudden they dropped it like a hot potato, and you have to wonder why they did that. Was it when they found out that George Zimmerman is actually Hispanic and a Democrat to boot? Was it when Trayvon Martin's gangsta-like tweets surfaced along with the more recent photos of him with his gold teeth? Maybe the news media is just afraid of whipping up racial... no, they do like to whip up racial strife. But they didn't even proceed under that rubric. They just dropped this case like a hot potato.
Another detail that has come out in the local reports. Zimmerman's grandfather was black. That's exactly right. That has also surfaced. I wonder how long all of this stuff has been known by our friends in the Drive-By Media? George Zimmerman has more black in him than Elizabeth Warren has Indian. Exactly right. George Zimmerman's grandfather was black. Now, I had never heard that before, but assuming that that's true, George Zimmerman is a heck of a lot more black than Elizabeth Warren is Indian, exactly as you stated, Mr. Snerdley. (interruption) You have a question? Yeah, he's a black-white Hispanic. In fact, given our current culture and the president, the way he weighs in on things, I have the perfect way now to describe George Zimmerman. If all this is true, and just going by the photos that we've seen of Zimmerman, I'd almost have to say that if Obama had another son, he would look a hell of a lot like George Zimmerman.
RUSH: A minor, minor correction here. It was Zimmerman's mother's grandfather who was black, which would make it his great-grandfather. Zimmerman's great-grandfather was black. It still makes him more black than Elizabeth Warren is Indian. You believe we're talking about people this way? You believe we have to categorize people this way? And we are simply reacting. This is the way the left, this is the way the media, this is the way Obama, the Democrat Party, look at people and categorize them. It wasn't me, folks. The New York Times calls George Zimmerman a white Hispanic.
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5/16/12
Court records say George Zimmerman had multiple injuries after Trayvon
Martin's fatal shooting FoxNews.com [One source you can count
on to give you the straight story.]
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5/16/12 Obama budget defeated 99-0 in Senate By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times
"President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.
Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.
"Republicans forced the vote by offering the president's plan on the Senate floor.
"Democrats disputed that it was actually the president's plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn't actually match Mr. Obama's budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president's numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.
"Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up.
"'A stunning development for the president of the United States in his fourth year in office,' Mr. Sessions said of the unanimous opposition."
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5/16/12 Auto Workers Union Opposes Obama's Budget The Weekly Standard
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5/16/12
"New emails obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform show a direct link between the Department of Energy’s controversial green energy loan program and the White House, Republicans on the committee said Wednesday.
"The White House and Energy Department have long held there was no political influence in the decision-making process that awarded billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees to renewable energy companies. However, emails disclosed at the hearing reference to communications with the White House.
"House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said the emails are the first in the committee’s more than yearlong investigation that show a direct link between the White House and the decision to award the loan guarantees.".
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5/16/12 Obama's fatal flaw revealed in White House website's presidential bios
By Arthur Herman, FoxNews.com
"What’s chilling is that a president who treats his office as nothing more than a prism for reflecting his own virtues, is never going to admit his own policies might be why we are experiencing the slowest economic recovery in modern history, persistent high unemployment, the collapse of respect for America around the world-–and why 70% of polled Americans say we’re on the wrong track.
"It takes a strong president to admit a mistake and change course in midstream. Abraham Lincoln decided he couldn’t win the Civil War without renouncing his earlier promises not to interfere with the institution of slavery, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
"Franklin D. Roosevelt realized that to arm this country in preparation for World War Two, he had to give up his instinctive dislike of capitalism and turn loose America’s businessmen to build his “arsenal of democracy.”
"Harry Truman learned that his initially conciliatory approach to Stalin and the Soviet Union wasn’t working, and embraced a get-tough policy of containment instead.
"George W. Bush was willing to scrap three years of failed strategy in Iraq, in order to give General David Petraeus a chance to launch his surge.
"And even Bill Clinton, no slouch at self-preening, realized his left-leaning social policies including HilaryCare, were losers and moved to the center instead.
"Don’t expect any such change if Obama gets re-elected in November. It’ll be more of the same failed policies, the same game of blaming George Bush and Republicans and the One Percent for everything that’s going wrong.
"And if we don’t thank him for the wreckage he leaves behind, it’ll be our failing, not his.
"The White House website will say so."
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May 8 Carolina Patriots Candidate Forum By Florin A. Lepadatu, YouTube Videos [Click dates for each.]
5/16/12 Katherine Jenerette, Candidate S.C. District 7 U.S. House of Representatives
5/16/12 Larry Richardson, Candidate S.C. House District 68
5/16/12 Q and A Audience, U.S. Congress District 7 Candidates Katherine Jenerette and Chad Prosser,
and S.C. House District 68 Candidate Larry Richardson
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5/15/12 Obama Will Make Welfare And Foreign Aid Mandatory
By Dick Morris, DickMorris.com [Click the date to access this important video.]
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5/15/12 US Leads Major War Drill in Jordan – Israel Not Invited
By Gabe Kahn, IsraelNationalNews.com
"Over 12,000 soldiers are taking part in the war games, representing 19 countries, including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Australia.
"Jordanian army operations and training chief Major General Awni Adwan said the military exercise 'has been in the planning phase for the past three years.'
"'No forces will be deployed north … the exercise is not connected to any real world event,' Adwan said when asked if the war games were related to the ongoing violence in Jordan’s northern neighbor Syria.
"'This has nothing to do with Syria. We respect the sovereignty of Syria. There is no tension between the Syrians and us. Our objectives are clear,' Adwan said.
"Israel – despite having extensive security agreements with Jordan – was not invited to participate in the exercises. Several Arab nations participating in the drill are still formally at war with the Jewish state." [I report. You decide. Seems strange to me.]
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5/15/12 Zimmerman Medical Report Shows Broken Nose, Lacerations After Trayvon Martin Shooting By MATT GUTMAN and SENI TIENABESO, ABC News
"A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a "closed fracture" of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation.
"Zimmerman faces a second degree murder charge for the Feb. 26 shooting that left the unarmed 17-year-old high school junior dead. Zimmerman has claimed self defense in what he described as a life and death struggle that Martin initiated by accosting him, punching him in the face, then repeatedly bashing his head into the pavement.
"Also today, a trove of documents are being examined by lawyers for both the defense and prosecution as part of discovery in Zimmerman's trial -- including 67 CDs worth of documents, video of Martin on the night of the shooting, his autopsy report and videos of Zimmerman's questioning by police."
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5/15/12 U.S. Army soldier brutally beaten in South Tampa WTSP.com
"Police want your help finding four men who teamed up to beat a young U.S. Army soldier in a South Tampa street.
"It was an awful welcome to Tampa Bay for a young soldier. Police say the victim of a violent beating caught on camera is 24 years old and has lived in Tampa for less than a month.
"He's a U.S. Army soldier assigned to MacDill Air Force Base and lives not far from the base at Dale Mabry Hwy. and Interbay Blvd.
"Police say Sunday morning, at around 3 a.m., the soldier's car broke down a few miles from home along Westshore Blvd.
"The attack came when he was walking home and using Iowa St. to get from Westshore to Dale Mabry. At the intersection of Iowa and Renellie Dr., the man came into the view of a neighbor's motion-activated security camera.
"A group of three [African-American] young men is seen walking ahead of the soldier. Police say one of the men in the group doubled back and asked to soldier to borrow a dollar. When the soldier reached for his wallet, the first punch flew.
"The first, tremendous sucker punch laid the victim onto the ground. The other two men joined in, punching and kicking the soldier.
"A fourth man comes sprinting into view from the left edge of the video. The new attacker -- a man the soldier said he had walked past earlier -- joined in the beating."
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5/15/12
"A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections.
The location of the conference had been kept a closely guarded secret by the members and guests of Democracy Alliance (DA), a collection of ultra-wealthy liberal donors formed in 2005, . . .
"Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and frequent White House visitor, lounged by the Biltmore’s 'lagoon sized pool.'
"DA board member and Soros spokesman Michael Vachon swam laps.
"Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters for America (MMFA), was overheard speaking to colleagues about his plans for a new MMFA fellowship, and bragging about a phone call he had received from Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the Obama re-election team. . . . .
"The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank with deep ties to the Obama administration, was also heavily represented. CAP president Neera Tanden joined former Rep. Tom Perriello (D., Va.), president and CEO of the CAP Action Fund, and Van Jones, a senior fellow and former White House green jobs adviser, among others. . . .
VOther notable attendees include Cynthia Ryan, a principal at the investment firm Schooner Capital, who has bundled between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign.
"The SEIU’s Larry McNeil, identified as a long-time 'Saul Alinski organizer' [sic] in one online biography, was there with his wife Anne Bartley, currently a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a top contributor to the EMILY’s List Women Vote! PAC.
"Sandor Straus, a prominent investment manager who has given at least $115,000 to Democratic candidates and liberal organizations this cycle, and Al Yates, the former Colorado State University president who played a pivotal role in the DA’s formation, were also in attendance.
"DA founder emeritus Rob Stein has described the group as a 'political investment bank' whose mission is to 'balance the market place of ideas and political activism with center-left ideas, messages, and organizing strategy.' Members are required to pay annual dues starting at $30,000 and contribute at least $170,000 per year to recommended groups."
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5/15/12 Urban Radio Callers Slam Obama Over Gay Marriage Support FoxNews.com
"Listeners of New York hip hop radio station HOT 97 did not take kindly to the news that President Obama had endorsed same-sex marriage. The day after the announcement, callers took to the airwaves to express their disappointment with the news."
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5/15/12 George W. Bush: ‘I’m for Mitt Romney’ABC News
Mitt Romney has the support of George W. Bush.
"'I’m for Mitt Romney,' Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.
"Bush’s endorsement isn’t a surprise, given that Romney is virtually the Republican Party’s nominee. But the 43rd president has been absent from the 2012 campaign and hasn’t made any public comments showing his support for Romney.
"Romney did get the formal backing of Bush’s parents, President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, in March."
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5/14/12 Team Obama panics, and it’s only May By Joseph Curl, The Washington Times
"We’ll never see the internal polls, but the externals are awful: Down 8 percent to challenger Mitt Romney in the latest poll, with fewer than 180 days; disillusioned college kids, independents and the white working-class fleeing in droves. Even the barber-shops boys are mocking their Man. Makes sense that in Chicagoland, Obama Central, the internals they’re seeing are even worse.
"Which explains this past week. Joe 'Blunderbuss' Biden on May 6 blurts out that he’s totally cool with gays marrying. Mushroom cloud. Release the hounds: The vice president is at odds with the president. Monday, the White House slow-plays it (with spokesman Jay 'Talking Points' Carney finally fully filling his role as Chief Buffoon). Tuesday, a fierce press corps demanding answers (ABC’s Jake Tapper gets his Underoos all in a wad.) Chief Buffoon repeating over and over, no change — until there’s a change. Oh, and North Carolina just happens to be busy voting down gay marriage. . . .
"The whole thing was (say it with me) — a setup. Send Joe out — he’s a goof, he might misspeak, who knows? — and then play it for all its worth. Work it for the week — the press will go along. Jobs? The economy? Please. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this gay marriage thing!
"But even that bodes ill: The big brains on the yellow couches in the Oval Office are busy coming up with ways to distract from the economy by pandering to the most liberal people in America. They must’ve concluded they don’t have much else. Can they do it every week, for the next six months? Panic. Desperation.
"By the way, why is it that when a Republican changes his mind, based on life experience, learned wisdom, he’s a 'flip-flopper,' but when a Democrat changes his mind — opposes gay marriage, as Mr. Obama did, then takes no stance (politics), then suddenly supports it — he has 'evolved'? You can look it up: the president has completely flip-flopped; still, it’s an 'evolution,' according to the MSM. . . .
"Now, Team Obama is known for sifting through the sordid pasts of every candidate it has faced: In fact, it’s the only way he won two races in Illinois, one for the Statehouse, one for U.S. senator. But here, in May, via The Washington Post, are they really going through the high school days of their coming opponent? Mr. Obama was fond of blowing a doob in college, but that’s not an issue. Mitt being mean to another boy nearly five decades ago? Smacks of desperation.
"And it’s only May. Mr. Obama is already behind — well behind, according to the most accurate pollster from 2008 — and panicking. Worse, the enthusiasm of the base is dwindling. Kicking off his 2012 campaign, Mr. Obama played to empty seats in Ohio. What was a revolutionary movement four years ago is now just another callow political campaign, with the candidate willing to say whatever it takes to win supporters. Worse, the kids who supported him last time are bored.
"The gay marriage move will, eventually, prove to be a major miscalculation. Trying to shore up the liberal and college vote — pushing the college-loan thing apparently was not enough — Mr. Obama just bolstered his opponent among Christians: Even as a Mormon, he might line up better with Christians who oppose gay marriage. There goes North Carolina, and maybe Virginia, too. Sure, Hollywood is more jazzed, but it will turn out not to be worth it: He just lost more votes than he gained.
"However it plays out, the panic and desperation of Team Obama is palpable. And for the incumbent president to be forced to pander so cravenly to his base less than six months from Election Day: They definitely know something we don’t yet know — and it isn’t good." [Works for me :>)!]
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5/14/12 Obama Campaign Practices Private Equity Double Standard Investors.com
"Hypocrisy: While the president blasts Mitt Romney's private equity successes, he happily takes private equity campaign cash. If this election becomes 'the company fixer' vs. 'the economy wrecker,' Obama is in big trouble.
"How you made your money is evil, but to get re-elected president I'm happy to take lots of cash others made in the same way.
"That, in essence, is Barack Obama's message in condemning Mitt Romney's many years of work fixing and saving major employers through private equity financing — while having another private equity maestro deliver carts of booty to Obama's own campaign. [Click date for particulars.] . . .
"Let's get to the heart of this. Mitt Romney should be proud of taking troubled companies and using the complex tools of private equity to turn them around.
"In the 14 years Romney ran Bain Capital it fixed more than 150 companies, turning an original $37 million into $60 billion in managed investments.
"Romney took Staples, for example, with one store in a Boston suburb in 1986, and turned it into a McDonald's-like national institution employing close to 70,000 workers.
"In wondering why Mitt Romney ended up winning the GOP nod this year, perhaps we need go no further than his promise, years ago to Fortune magazine, to apply private equity methods to a corrupt and broken Washington: 'I will do a complete assessment ... every dimension of government I would take apart — look at how effective they are.'
"Obama's experience with private finance, by comparison, includes the bankrupt MF Global, whose CEO, ousted New Jersey Democratic politician Jon Corzine, raised more than $500,000 for Obama but told Congress 'I simply do not know where' a missing $1.2 billion in MF Global customers' money disappeared to.
"The president's jobs strategy, quite different from Romney's, was to spend the country into a $1.3 trillion deficit and $15.7 trillion in national debt, while crossing his fingers in the vain hope it would create jobs. "
"His opponent this November, unlike him, knows what creates jobs because he has done it himself — and without the taxpayers' money.
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5/14/12 Media Rekindle Their Obama Love Affair Investors.com
Media Bias: The Washington Post defends its Mitt Romney hit piece by claiming it didn't collude with the Obama White House on timing. Collusion isn't the problem. The fact that they both share the same goal is.
Three years ago, former CBS News correspondent Bernie Goldberg wrote the aptly titled book "A Slobbering Love Affair," in which he detailed how the mainstream press had gone above and beyond its own well-established liberal bias to take on the corrupting role of Obama's cheerleader, collaborator and protector.
Now having helped land Obama in office, the so-called independent press is determined to keep him there. Which helps explain why the Washington Post — the paper that still vigorously pats itself on the back for "bringing down" President Nixon — has been so willing and eager to bring down President Obama's opponent.
For those who haven't heard, the Post devoted the top of its Friday paper, along with two full pages inside, to chronicle Romney's alleged bullying ways in high school against a "presumed" homosexual back in 1965, when Obama was four years old..
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5/4/12 Is A Race War Being Censored To Avoid White Backlash?
"When two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks — beaten so badly that they had to take a week off from work — that might seem to have been news that should have been reported, at least by their own newspaper. But it wasn't.
"'The O'Reilly Factor' on Fox News Channel was the first major television program to report this incident. Yet this story is not just a Norfolk story, either in what happened or in how the media and the authorities have tried to sweep it under the rug.
"Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug as well.
"In Milwaukee, for example, an attack on whites at a public park a few years ago left many of the victims battered to the ground and bloody. But, when the police arrived on the scene, it became clear that the authorities wanted to keep this quiet.
"One 22-year-old woman who had been robbed of her cell phone and debit card, and had blood streaming down her face, said:
"'About 20 of us stayed to give statements and make sure everyone was accounted for. The police wouldn't listen to us, they wouldn't take our names or statements. They told us to leave. It was completely infuriating.'
The police chief seemed determined to head off any suggestion that this was a racially motivated attack by saying that crime is colorblind. Other officials elsewhere have said similar things.
"A wave of such attacks in Chicago were reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal justice system.
"What the authorities and the media seem determined to suppress is that the hoodlum elements in many ghettos launch coordinated attacks on whites in public places. If there is anything worse than a one-sided race war, it is a two-sided race war, especially when one of the races outnumbers the other several times over."
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5/14/12 House Bill Seeks to Deny ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Immigration Enforcement Funds By Edwin Mora, CNSNews.com
"'Sanctuary' cities and states that fail to enforce federal immigration law will be denied funding from a program designed to offset costs incurred in the incarceration of criminal illegals – if a prohibition built into an appropriations bill becomes law.
"The Republican-controlled House on May 10 approved a 2013 appropriations bill containing a provision, introduced by Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), that prohibits the Department of Justice (DOJ) from disbursing State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) funds to such authorities.
"SCAAP provides federal funds to states and localities that incur costs for incarcerating illegal criminal aliens who have committed at least one felony or two misdemeanor, and are kept in custody for at least four consecutive days. . . .
"'This is a smart amendment that will require America’s local law enforcement officers to do just that – enforce the laws we pass – to receive the money we provide them to do so.' . . .
"The White House has threatened to veto the measure, arguing among other things that it includes deeper cuts than the spending caps agreed under last year’s Budget Control Act."
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5/13/12 Follow the Money: One in Six Top Obama Bundlers Identify as Gay
by Wynton Hall, Breitbart.com
"Heeding the journalistic adage to 'follow the money,' the Washington Post has found that every one out of six of President Obama's top fundraising 'bundlers' who have hauled in $500,000 or more publicly identify themselves as gay.
"The implications are clear: as Obama's campaign continued to struggle to haul in large donations, his team needed to fire up his fundraising base by announcing this week's "evolution" on gay marriage. Indeed, as the Washington Post notes, 'some liberal gay donors had threatened to withhold contributions over Obama’s stance on gay marriage as well as his administration’s decision to shelve an executive order banning sexual-identity discrimination by federal contractors.'
"But Mr. Obama's flip-flop on same-sex marriage has, for the moment at least, stopped his slippage among big money gay donors. As Obama reelection bundler Jon Cooper conceded, the President's new position on gay marriage will be a boon for fundraising, particularly for the one in six Obama campaign bundlers who come from the LGBT community: . . .
"The Daily Mail calls Obama's change in position a 'cynical cash grab that will cost him votes.' And still others have pointed out that those who naively met The President's announcement with gleeful praise will ultimately be disappointed when they realize that the president's carefully parsed statement actually changes nothing; it maintains the status quo by allowing states to decide.
"In the end, the political maneuver to shore up dwindling big donor support among Mr. Obama's base may create even more daunting political headaches for a president already lagging 7 points behind his GOP rival in the polls. [Emphasis added.] In 2004, Mr. Obama said, 'I’m a Christian. I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.' That means hitting Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper--a Democratic theme once thought viable--will be far more difficult.
"Then there is the possible backlash in enthusiasm from African-American Christians who overwhelmingly oppose same-sex marriage.
But in politics, cash reigns king. And with 1 in 6 of Obama's top fundraisers belonging to the LGBT community, something had to give so that Obama's big money backers would do the same."
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5/13/12 New Book Purports to Unburden the Obamas of Their Dirty Laundry
By Andre Tartar, NYMag.com
'And one of the first things Barack said was, 'I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.' He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, 'I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.'
'And what did you say?' I asked.
'I said, 'I don’t see it that way. And anyway, how am I supposed to support my family?' And he said, 'Well, I wish you wouldn’t speak in public. The press is gonna eat you alive.'
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5/13/12 Can't draw a crowd, Mr President? Obama makes speech in couple's GARAGE... and even they say they might not vote for him
By Nina Golgowski, Daily Mail
"As leader of the free world President Obama will be used to
making speeches to millions of people around the globe.
"So he might have felt the occasion was a little beneath him yesterday
when he stopped off in Reno, Nevada, to deliver an address outside a
couple's garage.
"In what could be a disastrous photo opportunity for the President's
campaign, Mr Obama spoke to a handful of people in the crucial swing state.
"The president's 15 minute address outside the home of Paul and Val
Keller on Friday afternoon, drew a small audience of neighbours and
supporters - though even his hosts said they were not sure if they would
vote for him in the coming election."
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5/13/12 Change--And Some Hope By Victor Davis Hanson, PJMedia
"The Rasmussen Tracking Poll recently had Romney up 50 to 42 over Obama. At this early juncture, such polls mean nothing—except as diagnostic indices of why perhaps both candidates go up and down in popularity.
"So why has Barack Obama plunged in the polls these last few days?
"The Republican slugfest is over. The media cannot headline any longer the daily conservative suicide. Barack Obama’s job report came out at 8.1% unemployment—but, more importantly, with information that a smaller percentage of adult Americans are working than ever before, and fewer in absolute numbers than nearly four years ago when Obama took office.
"So someone must be asking, 'What then was the lost $5 trillion for?' Note, in this regard, the 5.4% unemployment rate that won George Bush the slur of a 'jobless recovery” in 2004.'"
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5/13/12 We Are Swimming In Oil
May 12, 2012 in Energy Policy, PowerLine
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5/13/12 The Belief That CO2 Can Regulate Climate Is “Sheer Absurdity”
May 13, 2012 in Climate, Energy Policy, PowerLine
"factum: You’ve been criticising the theory of man-made global warming for years. How did you become skeptical?
"Puls: Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it. The CO2-climate hysteria in Germany is propagated by people who are in it for lots of money, attention and power. . . . [Click the date for the full discussion following.]
"factum: So we don’t need to do anything against climate change?
"Puls: There’s nothing we can do to stop it. Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other."
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5/12/12 Commencing with Standards: Romney at Liberty
By Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review Online
[As usual click the date for the Web original and full text.]
"Mitt Romney was warmly welcomed in Lynchburg, Virginia, this morning for an important address for him — and religious liberty in America — at Liberty University’s commencement. Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, spoke effectively about religious freedom, eternal purpose, marriage (received by cheers and a standing ovation), Rick Santorum, and alluded to China’s one-child policy before the estimated 35,000 in attendance at what Liberty describes as 'the largest private non-profit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world.'
"Here is a bit of the address (as prepared), to the largest crowd he is likely to encounter before he is officially nominated at the Republican convention in Tampa:
'Today, thanks to what you have gained here, you leave Liberty with conviction and confidence as your armor. You know what you believe. You know who you are. And you know Whom you will serve. Not all colleges instill that kind of confidence, but it will be among the most prized qualities from your education here. Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning.
'That said, your values will not always be the object of public admiration. In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world. Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid. It demands and creates heroic souls like Wesley, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, John Paul the Second, and Billy Graham. Each showed, in their own way, the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ. May that be your guide. . . .
'You enter a world with civilizations and economies that are far from equal. Harvard historian David Landes devoted his lifelong study to understanding why some civilizations rise, and why others falter. His conclusion: Culture makes all the difference. Not natural resources, not geography, but what people believe and value. Central to America’s rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition, with its vision of the goodness and possibilities of every life.
'The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and, at the foundation, the pre-eminence of the family.
'The power of these values is evidenced by a Brookings Institution study that Senator Rick Santorum brought to my attention. For those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and marry before they have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2%. But, if those things are absent, 76% will be poor. Culture matters.
'As fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debate. So it is today with the enduring institution of marriage. Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.
'The protection of religious freedom has also become a matter of debate. It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with. Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government.
'But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.'"
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5/12/12 Report: Eagle Ford shale in South Texas created 48,000 jobs
News-Journal.com
"An oil and gas bonanza in South Texas supported nearly 48,000 jobs this past year while creating overnight boom towns cashing in on a $25 billion economic windfall from the liquid-rich Eagle Ford shale, according to a university study released this week.
"An energy rush that began with the first drilling in 2008 mushroomed into nearly 1,700 wells last year. Oil production is up more than six-fold since 2010 to more than 28 million barrels, while gas production has doubled.
"The ladle-shaped shale formation stretches from the western Texas-Mexico border and hooks all the way toward Louisiana.
"Blanketing the lucrative play are once-struggling rural counties that must now spend million-dollar tax rolls on infrastructure, development and education before the boom goes bust, cautioned the study from the University of Texas At San Antonio’s Institute for Economic Development."
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5/12/12 House Republicans: HHS Has Become “Too Big to Control”
by Brian Koenig, New AmericanThe Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has adopted a “too-big-to-control” model that is wasting billions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans indicated Wednesday during a hearing on the agency’s lavish spending habits. Republican members of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight subcommittee railed against the HHS' exorbitant spending, specifically on issues such as international travel, its skyrocketing payroll costs, and the agency’s refusal to terminate wasteful and ineffective programs.
"'It does appear that HHS is now too big to control,' charged Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn., pictured above left). 'It is very evident to us that you are too big to manage. You are too unwieldy. … You are spending money in ways that you ought not to be spending it.'
"Norris Cochran, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Budget for the HHS, countered Blackburn and her colleagues, saying the agency’s staff has grown significantly in recent years to help support the Indian Health Service and the Food and Drug Administration. However, Cochran neglected to mention the HHS’ new agency, the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO), which was established to govern President Obama’s contentious healthcare reform law. [Emphasis added.]
"The CCIIO has demanded a slew of resources to carry out its mission, which is to provide 'national leadership in setting and enforcing standards for health insurance that promote fair and reasonable practices to ensure that affordable, quality health coverage is available to all Americans.' In effect, the HHS’ new arm was founded as an oversight group to regulate insurance providers and enforce strict new rules on the health insurance market.
"During the two-hour hearing, House Republicans targeted the HHS on an array of issues, two items in particular being its rising salaries and exorbitant travel expenses. Panel chairman Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), for example, noted that 90 of the 100 highest-paid federal workers are on the HHS payroll."
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5/12/12 Top Romney Donor on Obama's 'Enemies List': They're Stalking My Kids by Jim Hoft, Human Events.com
"Romney donor Frank VanderSloot, one of the eight men detailed by the president's 'Truth Team' by the campaign, was on with Greta Van Susteren on Friday night.
"Frank is discovering what it means to be on a president's "enemies list." The top Romney donor says that Obama lackeys are attacking him and starting rumors about him and his family. Vandersloot revealed in an interview on Fox News that his business practice is being hurt by the attacks from the Obama team.
"He also told Greta that Team Obama supporters are stalking his children.
'There's been a ton of electronic media... that have lodged all kind of innuendo in my direction, accused me of all kinds of bad things. People have called my children. They've been surfing their LinkedIn sites. They've been asking interviews of my kids.'
"It's the Chicago way."
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5/12/12 Traitor!: Left Launches Hate Campaign Against Romney
John Nolte, Breitbart.com
"Because the media is now obsessed with distracting voters from Obama's failed policies and failing economy, we are now talking about same-sex marriage and what Mitt Romney might have done a half-century ago in high school.
"This very day, however, 50 year-old Barack Obama is abusing his power as president to bully private citizens who dare give money to his opponent and, according to the Guardian, Obama's leftist supporters are ginning up a hate campaign.
"Four days ago I wrote a piece about this shout of 'traitor' at Obama's flop kick-off event. We now know for a fact that other than a tweet, BuzzFeed Politics chose not to report the incident and that any other media types who heard it have also chose to cover it up (other than the Guardian). This from the same MSM that crafted a major scandal from lies they told about what was heard from Republican crowds in 2008.
"Now we know that on behalf of Obama, left-wing groups intend to gin up a hate campaign against his opponent. In some ways, you can't blame them. It's not as though there's anything to champion about President FailureTeleprompter. But once again as we watch our corrupt media obsess over a phony 47 year-old tale of high school bullying while wilfully ignoring Obama's Enemies List and this hate campaign, we have to remember that it's only May and that over the course of the next six months, we're in for a helluva media battle for the truth."
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5/10/12 Sheriff Joe to Holder: 'Clean your own house first!'
by Jerome R. Corsi, WND
Arizona lawman remains steadfast despite lawsuit threat
"The sheriff charged that the Obama administration is attacking him in an effort to gain Hispanic votes in November for the Democratic Party.
"'This is a coordinated effort directed from the White House to deflect attention from Eric Holder’s failure to cooperate in the congressional investigation into Fast and Furious,' he said.
"Arpaio accused Obama of wanting to make him the 'poster boy' in the administration’s public relations effort to deflect attention from Holder.
"Phoenix today will be the site of dueling press conferences, with the Justice Department scheduling a late afternoon event. In addition, Randy Parraz, the radical agitator with a union-trained background as a Saul Alinsky “organizer,” also plans to hold a press conference today. Parraz moved to Phoenix to launch an effort demanding the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors order Arpaio to resign.
"However, Arpaio, who is near the end of an unprecedented fourth term as Maricopa County sheriff, is an elected official who cannot be dismissed by the county overseers.
"Arpaio cautioned that Holder should think twice about joining forces with activist operatives like Parraz.
"'I won’t surrender,' Arpaio insisted, referring to the Justice Department’s demand to put federal monitors within the MCSO. 'I intend to fight back.'
In November, Arpaio faces re-election for a fifth term.
"‘Prove it!’
"Repeatedly, Arpaio has charged the Justice Department has nothing against him but anecdotal evidence of isolated instances in which Hispanics have complained of MCSO activity.
As WND has reported, the Justice Department has refused to produce evidence substantiating the allegations against Arpaio, insisting that the allegations themselves are sufficient to demand a remedy.
"'It’s ironic, don’t you think,' Arpaio said, 'that Eric Holder refuses to comply with congressional subpoenas to deliver to Congress the information about his management of the Justice Department, but the Justice Department has no hesitation to make public their complaints about me despite the fact those allegation have never been proved to be true?'
"Obama eligibility investigation to continue
"Arpaio also told WND he will not abandon his volunteer team’s investigation into Obama’s eligibility for the Arizona presidential ballot.
"'The Obama investigation remains ongoing,' he confirmed. 'I have no intention of abandoning the Obama investigation until the Cold Case Posse has done its job.'
"Arpaio’s office has announced the sheriff is preparing for a second press conference to update findings of the Cold Case Posse."
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5/10/12 Coal industry warns proposed EPA rule could force fourth of plants to close FoxNews.com
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5/10/12 While MSM Proclaims Its Death, The Tea Party Builds an Army
by Jenny Beth Martin, Breitbart.com
"The Tea Party has spent the past several months methodically building, training, and developing its army without much flashy media attention. The lack of media coverage has led a few people to ask if the Tea Party is still alive. After his defeat at the hands of the Tea Party, soon-to-be former Senator Dick Lugar can tell you, the Tea Party is not only alive but they are also organized to fight, and win.
"Lugar, a well-entrenched member of the Republican establishment, betrayed Tea Party values by casting too many fiscally liberal and self-serving votes, and too few fiscally responsible ones. In fact, over Lugar's thirty-six year tenure in the Senate, the national debt increased $14.9 trillion! The Tea Party responded to his derilection of duty by mobilizing grassroots and working intelligently and vigorously to replace him with someone who will, hopefully, provide more fiscally conservative representation in the Senate.
"The role of the Tea Party in opposing Lugar was downplayed by the media and the Ruling Class. Many Americans probably had no idea what was happening. But almost immediately following his defeat on Tuesday the media is buzzing about the resurgence of the movement. The establishment should be abuzz as well. It comes as no surprise to Tea Party Patriots that the media either misses or ignores the real story, which is that the Tea Party never faded. In fact, it has been quietly growing in strength.
"The next big battle ground in which the Tea Party will exercise its more refined skills is the June 5 recall election in Wisconsin. Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest grassroots Tea Party umbrella group, already has advance teams laying the groundwork for a massive influx of reinforcements to support Tea Party principles in Wisconsin.
"By next week, buses will begin bringing Tea Party Patriots volunteers from all across America to start canvassing Wisconsin and motivating the voters to support fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. It remains to be seen if the Ruling Class--i.e. the glad-handing, back-slapping, good ol' boys and girls in both parties and their complicit cohorts in the mainstream media--will be able to see past their own bigoted prejudices enough to pay attention."
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5/10/12 Obama Repeats Whopper About Mom's Health Insurance Investors.com
"The Obama Record: In a campaign infomercial, the president suggests his late mother's health insurer denied her coverage in her cancer battle. It's a heart-breaking story. Only it's not true.
About midway through the slick 17-minute video, 'The Road We've Traveled,' narrator Tom Hanks explains that Obama made enacting his health care reforms a top priority because 'he knew from experience the cost of waiting.'
"'He remembered the millions of families like his who feel the pressure of rising costs and the fear of being denied or dropped from coverage,' Hanks says, as photos of Obama and his late mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, appear on the screen. Dunham died in 1995 after a bout with ovarian cancer.
"Then the first lady chimes in about Dunham not having 'good, consistent insurance,' and the president himself adds that it 'drained all her resources.'
"'That's a tough thing to deal with — watching your mother die of something that could have been prevented,' Michelle Obama says. 'I don't think he wants to see anyone go through that.'
"The suggestion is that a heartless U.S. health insurance industry denied the president's own mother medical coverage when she needed it most. And this not only bankrupted her, but sped her death.
"The heart-tugging narrative echoes what Obama said during a 2008 presidential debate: 'For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that.'
"He told the story again during a 2009 town hall meeting while selling his health care plan: 'I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment.'
"All three accounts are fictional. A new book puts the lie to his story. According to 'A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother,' Dunham had an employer-provided health insurance policy that paid her hospital bills directly. Her insurer, Cigna, never denied payment for her cancer treatment.
"The deathbed dispute was over disability coverage to replace lost wages, not medical coverage. But then Obama knew this. As his mother's lawyer, he reviewed all the insurance claims.
"This isn't another case of Obama blurring the issue. This is the president deliberately deceiving the public to sell it socialized medicine. Worse, he used his late mother's tragedy to do it."
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"'I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors,' he said, 'who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'don't ask, don't tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage.'
"This arrogant statement is reminiscent of the days of Imperial Rome, when the legions pledged their personal loyalty to the emperor. More modern tyrants have demanded and received such pledges of loyalty. But Obama surely must know that while he is their civilian commander in chief, he is not an emperor commanding his Roman legions.
"Actually it explains quite a lot, from the faux Greek columns and the pompous acceptance of his party's nomination in 2008 at Denver's version of the Roman Coliseum to campaign flicks about his, not our, hunt for Osama bin Laden and the guided tours of the once privileged Situation Room.
"Obama is our constitutionally designated civilian commander in chief. He sends our soldiers, sailors and pilots into battle and through the chain of command gives them their marching orders.
"But they fight and die for their country, not Barack Obama personally.
"Frankly, we doubt our forces fighting in Afghanistan have gay marriage uppermost on their minds. Survival might top the list, followed by having a job when they get home."
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Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Excerpts--
5/9/12 The Election Results are No Surprise to Us: America Doesn't Want Any More of Obama
5/9/12 Eight West Virginia Counties Vote for Federal Inmate Over Obama in Dem Primary
5/9/12 The American People are Fed Up
5/9/12 Conservatives Can't Wait to Vote
5/9/12 Dick Lugar Became Part of the Problem
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5/9/12 Obama vs. Romney -- how the electoral college math adds up
"[A]ll President Obama needs to do is win either Ohio (18 Electoral College votes) or Florida (29 Electoral College votes) – or a combination of two or more states including Virginia (13), New Hampshire (4), Iowa (6), Missouri (10), Colorado (9), North Carolina (15), or Arizona (11).
This seems like a very achievable proposition in light of the findings from the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, which found that for the first time, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting – with more than half of Obama supporters (55%) saying they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in this year's presidential election, compared to only 46% of Romney supporters
"The bottom line is that President Obama’s path to electoral victory seems clear."
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5/9/12 Limbaugh ‘Rush Babes for America’ Facebook page surpasses NOW in 24 hours Caroline May, The Daily Caller
"Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s latest jab at the National Organization for Women has attracted more Facebook 'likes' in 24 hours than NOW’s main page has collected in a little under four years.
"Limbaugh’s new 'Rush Babes for America' Facebook page – also known as “The National Organization of Rush Babes” — was open for public viewing just prior to the beginning of his radio program Tuesday. He announced it in the third hour of his show, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. EDT.
Twenty-four hours later, Limbaugh’s page devoted to conservative women had more than 33,800 'likes.'
"The National Organization for Women launched its main Facebook page on June 17, 2008. At time of publication, that page had 28,146.
"Limbaugh launched the new Facebook page as a direct response to NOW’s campaign to get him off the air. The conservative host explained Tuesday that he believes NOW does not represent the views of a majority of American women.
"'[W]hat ‘Rush Babes for America’ is about is posting stories and ideas that happen here on the program, and occasionally elsewhere,' he said Tuesday, 'and inviting all of you to participate in conversations on Facebook with other women about what matters to you as a means of demonstrating just what a minority the National Organization for Women and its so-called affiliates really are.'”
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5/9/12 The Evidence: Obama Is Undermining U.S. Troops in Afghanistan to Put the Taliban in Power By Tara Servatius, American Thinker
"President Obama has spent the last three years trying to figure out how to turn over Afghanistan to the Taliban without taking the political heat for it. In the process, the Obama Administration has committed a betrayal of our troops so stunning that anything done to them in or after Vietnam pales in comparison.
"While the Taliban kills our troops and innocent bystanders in Afghanistan, the Obama Administration is fighting to give them the one thing they can't seem to win on the battle field: control over the whole country.
"It is no accident that despite the deployment of 33,000 troops under Obama, the Taliban in Afghanistan has thrived and grown, as documented by a recent Congressional report released earlier this week. This has happened while the Pakistani Taliban and insurgent groups have been assassinated or bombed into relative submission by our drones next door in Pakistan.
"Why haven't we been as successful, or as aggressive, in Afghanistan? Evidence is mounting daily that the Obama Administration has not only held back in Afghanistan, but has deliberately undermined the war effort there.
"A stunning Washington Post piece on Sunday documented how we've been secretly releasing captured combatants from Afghan jails to placate the Taliban and other insurgent groups and entice them to negotiate with us. Administration officials wouldn't say if these terrorist thugs went on to murder our troops, probably because they have.
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5/8/12 Obama’s real ‘war’ is against the elderly By Charles Hurt, The Washington Times
"When it came time for him to find spending cuts to pay for some fraction of his massive health care overhaul, where did Mr. Obama go? He raided Medicare.
"Bipartisan projections predict that over 10 years, $500 billion will be siphoned out of the seniors’ health-care program to pay for Mr. Obama’s political boondoggle. As if it is not cruel enough to strip away trusted doctor care for the elderly, Mr. Obama also seems to enjoy terrorizing seniors whenever he doesn’t get his way.
"The first time we saw this tantrum was last year during the epic debate over whether to allow the government to borrow another $2 trillion to keep our “vital” federal operations going. . . .
"Mr. Obama was adamant that the government could not withstand further cuts. And, he insisted, the “debt ceiling” had to be lifted right away. If not, Mr. Obama threatened belligerently, seniors would not get their Social Security checks. He even took veterans and handicapped hostage on that one.
"'It’s not just a matter of Social Security checks,' he menacingly implored. 'These are veterans checks, these are folks on disability and their checks.' . . .
"Roundly mocked and ridiculed for his ham-fisted attempts to bully the court, Mr. Obama quickly resorted to his old stand-by tactic: threatening Granny.
"In papers quietly filed with the Supreme Court last week, Mr. Obama warned — once again — that seniors would be dumped into the streets if the court overturns Obamacare. Such a move by the court, his lawyers warned, would cause 'extraordinary disruption' in Medicare payments.
"In past disputes, Mr. Obama’s allies have been quick to portray those who disagree them as people willing to dump Granny out of a wheelchair and over a cliff. Or down a set of stairs.
"Ironically, the truth is that it is always Mr. Obama steadying Granny in a wheelchair on the precipice of long, steep, marble steps and threatening to let go if he doesn’t get his way."
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5/8/12 Richard Lugar loses primary to Tea Party challenger Mourdock By Brian Montopoli, CBSNews
"[H]e is known for his extensive work on crafting bipartisan
foreign policy, which has included reaching across the aisle to pass
legislation with Democrat Sam Nunn to disarm nuclear warheads in the former
Soviet Union. Lugar's willingness to work with Democrats made him a target:
Mourdock ran ads showing President Obama discussing reaching out to Lugar as
evidence that the six-term senator should be defeated.
"In his remarks Tuesday evening, Lugar said he believes 'our political
system still can work.'
"'I believe that people of goodwill, regardless of party, can work together for the benefit of our country,' he added.
"The 60-year-old Mourdock, who told the New York Times it is 'time
for confrontation' as opposed to collegiality, also criticized Lugar for
supporting the financial bailout, President Obama's Supreme Court nominees
and raising the debt limit. "His message was amplified by the
Tea Party-aligned FreedomWorks, which held 'activist training' sessions and
made phone calls on Mourdock's behalf, and the super PAC Club for Growth,
which spent more than $1.4 million on the race. (Lugar's campaign, which had
spent $6.7 million on the race as of April, did significantly outspend
Mourdock's, which had spent $2 million as of April.)
"Mourdock and his allies also spotlighted the fact that Lugar no longer
seemed to live in the state that he represents: In March, he was
declared ineligible to vote in his home precinct, having effectively
moved his family to suburban Washington in 1977 after selling his house in
Indiana. . . .
"Other Democrats celebrated Mourdock's victory, which they said would put the seat up for grabs. (One Democratic poll in March showed The Democratic candidate, Rep. Joe Donnelly, leading Mourdock in a head-to-head race.) Republican need a net gain of four seats to take control of the Senate, and they are expected to at least come close to doing so. Donnelly, a conservative Democrat, supports gun rights and the Keystone pipeline and opposes abortion rights and climate change legislation.
"'Tonight's results make the Indiana Senate race a toss-up race,' said Guy Cecil, Executive Director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee."
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5/8/12 Tea Party Rising By Ramesh Ponnury, National Review Online
"It’s easy to underestimate the tea-party achievement in ousting Senator Lugar. After all, haven’t the tea parties knocked off a lot of incumbent Republicans in primaries? Actually, no. Most tea-party successes have come in races for open seats. In the last Senate cycle, Specter was pushed out of the party before the tea parties even started, because he was unacceptable to a lot of types of Republicans. (Recall that he barely won his primary in 2004.) Bennett lost a convention, not a primary. Murkowski lost a primary, but came back in the general. Lugar is (if I’m recalling correctly–commenters?) the first Senate incumbent whose career has come to an end because tea partiers beat him in a primary. And he lost while having a reasonably conservative voting record: He had voted with pro-lifers, for example, unlike Specter and Murkowski.
"You could tell a similar story in the House. In 2010, the only Republican incumbents to lose were Parker Griffiths–who had been a Republican for only a few weeks–and Bob Inglis, who had alienated conservatives over taxes, global warming, and national security. But a few weeks ago incumbent Jean Schmidt lost a primary almost purely on tea-party issues.
In short: The tea party may be losing popularity, but its power inside the Republican party appears to be growing."
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5/8/12 Unprecedented: Top DOJ Officials Were Obama Bundlers with Wall Street Ties
"Four of the top officials at the Department of Justice were all big money fundraisers for President Obama’s 2008 campaign with strong ties to Wall Street—the very entity the Obama Administration has said must be criminally prosecuted for bringing about the biggest financial crisis in U.S. history [Named in original that can be viewed by clicking the date]. . . .
"Despite Holder and Obama’s “get tough” rhetoric against Wall Street, to date, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.
"In the age of presidential bundling, staffing the Department of Justice’s top brass with big money fundraisers is unprecedented. To be sure, William French Smith shared Ronald Reagan’s legal philosophy and was a close political friend. And Janet Reno shared Bill Clinton’s judicial philosophy. But neither were fundraisers.
"The nexus between big money campaign fundraising and senior appointments at the Department of Justice raises numerous questions and appearances of conflict of interest that go far beyond mere recusal from certain cases. "Furthermore, many of the financial institutions the Department of Justice claims to be criminally investigating for financial fraud are former clients of the law firms from which DOJ’s top brass hail.
"Put simply, the 'cops on the beat' come from the very places that represent Big Finance and the big banks. What’s more, as with the case of former Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason, top Justice officials often return to these same law firms after completing their time in public service."
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5/8/12 Union with Obama ties rents offices for Occupy DC Aubrey Whelan, WashingtonEzaminer.com
"A labor union with strong ties to President Obama is helping make the Occupy Wall Street movement a more permanent fixture in the nation's capital, moving Occupy DC into office space the group can use to organize and grow through the presidential election.
"The Service Employees International Union, one of Obama's most vocal supporters among labor groups, is paying $4,000 a month for three offices the Occupy protesters will use for at least the next six months to plan future demonstrations, organize and host workshops.
"The offices are at the Institute for Policy Studies, a nonprofit progressive group headquartered at 16th and L streets NW, amid the major law firms, trade groups and lobbying shops that Occupiers have spent the past seven months denouncing. The offices are just a short distance from the tent city Occupy DC established in McPherson Square in October.
"Occupiers moved into their new digs Monday. The SEIU will pay the rent for six months, said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies."
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5/6/12 Why is Obama degrading our satellite capabilities?
"The U.S. is beginning to lose its satellite earth observation capabilities according to a recent National Research Council report.
"From Space Daily:
'The report cautions that the nation's earth observing system is beginning a rapid decline in capability, as long-running missions end and key new missions are delayed, lost, or cancelled.
''The projected loss of observing capability will have profound consequences on science and society, from weather forecasting to responding to natural hazards,' said Dennis Hartmann, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, and chair of the committee that wrote the report.
'Our ability to measure and understand changes in Earth's climate and life support systems will also degrade.' . . .
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5/6/12 Dick Morris: White House will spin Holder contempt proceedings as racism for political gain Jeff Poor, The Daily Caller
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5/6/12 George Will: If you strike first-person pronouns from Obama’s vocabulary ‘he would fall silent’
"'Look, self-absorption is part of the occupational hazard of politics, and it’s also part of the job description of being president,' Will said. 'All that said, try to imagine Dwight Eisenhower talking about D-Day saying, ‘I did this. I decided this. I did this and then I did that.’ It’s inconceivable.'
"That comparison between Obama and Eisenhower illustrated the problem for the president, Will said.
"'If you struck from Barack Obama’s vocabulary the first-person singular pronoun, he would fall silent, which would be a mercy to us and a service to him, actually,' Will continued. 'Because he was been so incontinent for the last three years that you wind up with, as you said, [an] Ohio State University with empty seats.'
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5/6/12 Spin of the Times: Bias cloaked as front-page news
By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS, New York Post
5/6/12 Early The Whole Truth By AmericaDocs4Truth, [Click date to see video--Obamacare throws seniors off cliff]
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5/5/12 Warren Buffett in Recent interview with CNBC, offered one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling Liveleak.com [Congressional Reform Act of 2012]
"'I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,' he told CNBC. 'You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-eliection.'
"The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18-year-old's)took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.
"Congressional Reform
Act of 2011 [Quoted article is dated October 21, 2011 but 2012 works!]
"1. No Tenure / No Pension.
"A Congressman/woman
collects a salary while in office and receives nopay when they're out of
office.
"2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in SocialSecurity.
"All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social
Security system immediately. All future funds flow into "the
Social Security system, and Congress participates with the
American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
"3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all
Americans do.
"4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.Congressional pay
will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
"5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in
the same health care system as the American people.
"6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American
people.
"7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void
effective 01/01/12. [Again, now -- 01/01/13} The American people did not
make this contract with Congressmen/women.
"Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in
Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen
legislators, so ours should serve their
term(s), then go home and back to work."
[The above is validated on snopes.com--> http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/buffett.asp
This falls neatly with the Declaration of Independence self-evident truth that all men are created equal
with the corollary that law should apply equally to all regardless of position, wealth, race, creed, etc.]
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5/5/12 Obama Launches Campaign in Empty Arena
by Alexander Marlow, Breitbart.com
Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state. . . ."During the speech, Obama ripped into the presumptive GOP nominee and discussed nation building at home, but the most newsworthy item of the day was not the talking points Obama delivered: it was the crowd... or lack thereof. According to ABC News, the Obama campaign had expected an 'overflow' of people. Instead, the arena looked half-empty. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Obama organizers even had people move from the seats to the floor of the gym in order to project a larger crowd on television.
"According to the Toledo Blade, the venue for Obama's rally seats 20,000 but "there were a lot of empty seats." Comparatively, Obama drew a crowd of 35,000 at Ohio State when he campaigned for former Governor Ted Strickland in 2010.
"The official Barack Obama Tumblr boasts a figure from ThinkProgress that 14,000 attended the event--70% of the stadium's seating capacity.
"To hold a campaign event in a room that you can't fill is a mistake; to promise the media a more-than-capacity crowd then fall this far short of that promise is utter incompetence. In 2008, Obama ran a near-flawless campaign, buoyed by enthusiasm and effective organizing. But it's not 2008 any more, and on day one of the 2012 campaign, Team Obama has already made an embarrassing blunder."
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5/5/12 Obama's budget got 0 votes in Congress; Where's the leadership in 0?
By ANDREW MALCOLM, Investors.com
"Last Sunday marked three years since the Senate has passed a budget. Three years. Think about that. The federal government, which spends more than $3.5 trillion a year, much of it borrowed from outside the United States, has no guideline for how that money is spent.
"The Democratic Leader of the Senate said it would be ‘foolish for
us to do a budget at this stage,’ and he’s even refused to hold a vote. When
the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee attempted to hold a
markup on a budget, he was stopped at the last minute and pulled a vote from
consideration.
"And what about our presidential leadership? President Obama’s budget
failed to receive a single 'yes' vote in either House of Congress last year.
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, this year’s
presidential budget would actually decrease economic growth over the next
decade.
"This kind of Washington mismanagement has put us in a place where
over the last three years our debt has increased by more than $4 trillion.
"Failing to accomplish even the most basic responsibility of government is a total failure of leadership and represents everything the American people hate about Washington.
Just last month, the trustees for Medicare and Social Security reiterated that the programs are on a path towards insolvency and in urgent need of reform."
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5/5/12 Oil in Free Fall as Economic Worries Spur Selling By: Patti Domm, CNBC
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5/5/12 Is The Obama Cabinet Working Against America's Interest?
"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has overseen some $5 trillion in new debt. To help pay for it, he wants the rich — the top 1% already contributes more in income taxes than does the bottom 90% — to pay more for what he calls 'the privilege of being an American.'
"Geithner, whose department oversees the IRS, should have taken his own advice: As a rich American one-percenter, he once failed to pay his own self-employment taxes, and improperly claimed his children's camp costs as a dependent-care deduction.
"Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has pulled off the near impossible: At a time when the known gas and oil reserves of the U.S. on public lands have soared, he has cut back on federal leasing of them to just about 2% of available offshore lands and 6% of onshore.
"Meanwhile, huge new amounts of oil are now found on private lands despite, not because of, the Interior Department.
"When he was a U.S. senator, Salazar claimed that even $10-a-gallon gas would not change his mind about voting to increase offshore drilling. And although he controls the leases of the richest oil and gas reserves in the Western world, he just recently shrugged that no one knew whether gas would hit $9 a gallon.
"Then there is the even stranger case of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department helped oversee millions in bad loans to green companies like Solyndra, First Solar and Solar Trust of America — the Teapot Dome scandals of our times. Chu once infamously quipped before assuming office that he wanted U.S. gas prices to reach European levels. Apparently Chu wanted to force less fossil-fuel burning — although he later confessed that he does not drive a car.
"Farm Takeover
"Chu also once warned that California's Central Valley agriculture might disappear due to global warming. True, it could decline, but more likely due to the Obama administration's decision to divert irrigation water in hopes of helping out the 3-inch San Francisco Delta smelt. Chu should realize that private-sector California farmers create thousands of jobs, while his own Cabinet's Solyndra-like projects have done precisely the opposite.
"Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation. That may explain why he said nothing when the same group put out a dead-or-alive bounty poster on George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting case.
"Holder has praised the race-baiting Al Sharpton for his "partnership" and called the country "cowards" for not holding a national conversation on race on his terms. The attorney general has referred to African-Americans as "my people," and he has characterized congressional oversight of his office's failure to rein in the Fast and Furious scandal as racially motivated attacks on himself. . . .
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5/4/12 Obama's Orwellian Unemployment Numbers Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript
RUSH: Barack Obama has decided that the only way to lower the unemployment rate is to kill off jobs. The unemployment rate went down one-tenth of a percent from 8.2% to 8.1%, but the number of people who left the labor force is at an all-time high. . . .
[L]ike AP said yesterday, they predicted they're gonna have it below 8% by Election Day. The only way they can do that is force people out of the job market, and that is exactly what is happening. But only in the Orwellian world of government statics could the fact that more people gave up looking for work, make the unemployment rate go down. That claim would embarrass a Soviet. If an adviser to Lenin or Stalin came in and said, "Comrade, we want to kick people out of the job market, give them no hope of getting a job.
"That's how we'll lower the unemployment rate!" That person would have been sent to a gulag somewhere next to Solzhenitsyn. . . . .
The U-6 (U, dash, six) number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- which is not reported -- which does count the people who have stopped looking, was unchanged at 14.5%. . . .
Not one promise, not one theory, not one assurance has come close to being true as told us by this administration. The unemployment rate has not been this high for this long since the Great Depression. This is life in Obama's America.
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5/4/12 The awful April jobs report: Is the ‘real’ unemployment rate 11.1%?
"Any way you slice or dice it, the April jobs report was terrible—and terribly disappointing. Employers added just 115,000 workers to their payrolls last month, way below the 180,000 Wall Street economists were expecting. . . .. . .
"Sure, the official unemployment rate dipped a tenth of a point lower to 8.1%, but that’s only because people continue to drop out of the workforce at an alarming pace. That workforce shrinkage, as measured by the labor force participation rate, totally distorts the true unemployment picture. In fact, the participation rate is now at its lowest level since 1981! (For comparison purposes, the economy added 480,000 jobs back in April 1984, during the Reagan recovery.)
"So what is the true state of the labor market? . . .
"1. If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.6% today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.1%.
"Now, this doesn’t take into account the aging of the Baby Boomers, which should lower the participation due to rising retirements. But is that still a valid assumption given the drop in wealth since 2006?
"2. If you take into account the aging of the Baby Boomers, the participation rate should be trending lower. Indeed, it has been doing just that since 2000. Before the Great Recession, the Congressional Budget Office predicted what the partipation rate would be in 2012, assuming such demographic changes. Using that number, the real unemployment rate would be 10.7%.
"3. Of course, the participation rate usually falls during recessions. Yet even if you discount for that and the aging issue, the real unemployment rate would be 9.3%.
"4. If the participation rate just stayed where it was last month, the unemployment rate would have risen to 8.4%.
"5. Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is still a sky-high 14.5%.
"6. The employment-population ratio dipped to 58.4% vs. 61% in December 2008. An historically and alarmingly low level of the U.S. population is actually working.
"7. And given that real disposable income has been flat the past two years, it stands to reason that many of the jobs being created are in low-wage sectors. Indeed, hiring in sectors such as retail and leisure has accounted for a whopping 40 percent of the jobs added over the past two years."
James Pethokoukis was the business editor and economics columnist for U.S. News & World Report from 1997 to 2008. He has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, National Review, The Washington Examiner, USA Today and Investor’s Business Daily.
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5/4/12 Obama Warns Supremes: Don't Overturn Healthcare Reform
by Ben Shapiro, Breitbart
"The Obama administration warned the Supreme Court this week via papers filed with the Court that if Obamacare is struck down, there will be an “extraordinary disruption” in Medicare. Medicare was not discussed during the Supreme Court arguments, since it was not a Constitutional issue. This is a practical argument, not a legal one; it’s the Obama administration applying pressure to the Supremes.
"But that’s what the Obama administration does – they focus on the politics of the situation rather than on the legalities. If they can’t win on the law, they figure, they’ll push the Court to act via “empathy,” President Obama’s favorite legal standard. And if they lose, they’ll blame the Court for destroying Medicare.
"It’s a win-win for the Obama administration: if the Court strikes down Obamacare, Obama will blame the Court for harming Medicare. If the Court upholds Obamacare to prevent an 'extraordinary disruption' in Medicare, Obama gets what he wants.
"The simple fact is that the “disruption in Medicare” argument could have been made during oral arguments (particularly the section on severability). It wasn’t. Instead, the Obama administration waits until now to 'quietly' inform the Supremes, according to the Associated Press. This is politics, pure and simple."
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5/4/12 Resisting threat of fanatical Islam By Geert Wilders, The Washington Times
West must not surrender permanent liberty for temporary tolerance
"As I write these lines, there are police bodyguards at the door. No visitor can enter my office without passing through several security checks and metal detectors. I have been marked for death. I am forced to live in a heavily protected safe house. Every morning, I am driven to my office in the Dutch Parliament building in an armored car with sirens and flashing blue lights. When I go out, I am surrounded, as I have been for the past seven years, by plainclothes police officers. When I speak in public, I wear a bulletproof jacket.
"Who am I? I am neither a king nor a president, nor even a government minister; I am just a simple politician in the Netherlands. But because I speak out against expanding Islamic influence in Europe, I have been marked for death. If you criticize Islam, this is the risk you run. That is why so few politicians dare to tell the truth about the greatest threat to our liberties today. The Islamic threat to the West is worse than the communist threat ever was. Think of it this way: Politicians who warned against the Soviet threat weren’t forced into hiding, as we who speak out against Islam are.
"I received my first death threats in September 2003 after I asked the Dutch government to investigate a radical mosque. When the death threats became more frequent, the Dutch authorities assigned me a team of police bodyguards. In November 2004, after a Muslim fanatic murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for making a movie about the abuse of women under Islam, policemen armed with machine guns came to my house, pushed me into an armored car, and drove me off into the night. That was the last time I was in my house. Since then, I have lived in an army barracks, a prison cell and now a government-owned safe house."
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5/4/12 Romney: Handling of Chen Case 'Day of Shame' for Obama NewsMaz
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5/4/12 My 100 kilometer mountain bike ride with President Bush and 20 wounded warriors By Dr. Marc Siegel, FoxNews.com
"When he was in the White House the former president often wasn't treated fairly by the news media. But up close and personal, I found the former president’s likability to be through the roof."
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5/3/12 House Drafts Contempt Citation Against Holder Over Fast and Furious
Marin Gould, NewsMax
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5/3/12 Electoral Landscape Looks Bleak for Obama Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript
RUSH:That takes us to Dick Morris last night on The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. Question: "Looking at the board here, you've got Florida -- which everybody says if Romney doesn't win Florida, lights out, go home. You've got, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio. All of those four states, they're gonna tell the tale of the whole country. And it's kind of a little frightening, is it not, the battle between Romney and Obama is gonna be waged in those states?"
MORRIS: Rather than four or five states in play, I think it's more like 12 or 15. I think Iowa will have a lot to do with it. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania I think will be just as key as Ohio. He has a very good chance in Wisconsin and Michigan. I think that he's gonna carry Pennsylvania. The Republicans picked up five seats in Pennsylvania, the governorship, a Senate seat, and both houses in the legislature. You're telling me Pennsylvania will go Democratic? No way.
RUSH: He didn't mention North Carolina. That's gonna be big, and there are continuing troubles for Obama and the Democrats in North Carolina in paying for the convention. They have passed a law that no lobbyists can donate and very few private citizens. I forget the category, but basically the only people that can donate to the actual convention are unions, or pretty much the only people who can, and they're ticked off because North Carolina is not a full-fledged union state.. . . .
RUSH: Obama will work it. He'll get West Virginia, [but] I'll tell you: Anybody in West Virginia voting for Obama? (sigh) [However, West Virginia was a red state in 2008.] This is hard to say, but you deserve what you're gonna get if you vote for this guy. Do you not understand that he has admitted that he wants to drive the coal business out of business? Coal and the energy industries are what West Virginia is all about, the kind of energy that Obama wants to eliminate. I don't know. In a real world with people paying attention, he wouldn't get one vote out of that state. In a real world.
[Click the following links to see that North Carolina and Florida were blue states by the least margin in the 2008 presidential campaign among Iowa, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.]
5/3/12 United States presidential election, 2008 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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5/3/12 Russia threatens to strike NATO missile defense sites
"Russia’s top military officer warned Thursday that Moscow would strike NATO missile-defense sites in Eastern Europe before they are ready for action, if the U.S. pushes ahead with deployment.
"'A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,' Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile-defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials."
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5/3/12 Blind Chinese dissident calls Congress, wants meeting with Secretary Clinton
"Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng called a hearing set up to explore his efforts to leave China and escape persecution—apparently from a Chinese hospital room.
"'I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,' he said on the phone. 'I hope I can get more help from her. I also want to thank her face to face.'"
:"Chen added that he is most concerned with his family, and said, 'I really want to know what's going on with them.'"
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5/3/12 Zuckerberg Facebook IPO to Make Him Richer Than Ballmer
"Facebook Inc. (FB)’s $11.8 billion initial public offering will cement the status of 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg as one of the world’s richest men and put his social network among the highest-valued companies in the U.S."
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5/3/12 United States presidential election, 2008 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| States/districts won by Obama/Biden |
| State | Electors | Obama votes | % | McCain votes | % | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 9 | 813,479 | 38.74 | 1,266,546 | 60.32 | ||||||||||||
| Alaska | 3 | 123,594 | 37.89 | 193,841 | 59.42 | ||||||||||||
| Arizona | 10 | 1,034,707 | 45.12 | 1,230,111 | 53.64 | ||||||||||||
| Arkansas | 6 | 422,310 | 38.86 | 638,017 | 58.72 | ||||||||||||
| California | 55 | 8,274,473 | 61.01 | 5,011,781 | 36.95 | ||||||||||||
| Colorado | 9 | 1,288,576 | 53.66 | 1,073,589 | 44.71 | ||||||||||||
| Connecticut | 7 | 997,772 | 60.59 | 629,428 | 38.22 | ||||||||||||
| Delaware | 3 | 255,459 | 61.94 | 152,374 | 36.95 | ||||||||||||
| District of Columbia | 3 | 245,800 | 92.46 | 17,367 | 6.53 | ||||||||||||
| Florida | 27 | 4,282,074 | 51.03 | 4,045,624 | 48.22 | ||||||||||||
| Georgia | 15 | 1,844,123 | 46.99 | 2,048,759 | 52.20 | ||||||||||||
| Hawaii | 4 | 325,871 | 71.85 | 120,566 | 26.58 | ||||||||||||
| Idaho | 4 | 236,440 | 36.10 | 403,012 | 61.53 | ||||||||||||
| Illinois | 21 | 3,419,348 | 61.92 | 2,031,179 | 36.78 | ||||||||||||
| Indiana | 11 | 1,374,039 | 49.95 | 1,345,648 | 48.91 | ||||||||||||
| Iowa | 7 | 828,940 | 53.93 | 682,379 | 44.39 | ||||||||||||
| Kansas | 6 | 514,765 | 41.65 | 699,655 | 56.61 | ||||||||||||
| Kentucky | 8 | 751,985 | 41.17 | 1,048,462 | 57.40 | ||||||||||||
| Louisiana | 9 | 782,989 | 39.93 | 1,148,275 | 58.56 | ||||||||||||
| Maine | 2* | 421,923 | 57.67 | 295,273 | 40.36 | ||||||||||||
| Maryland | 10 | 1,629,467 | 61.92 | 959,862 | 36.47 | ||||||||||||
| Massachusetts | 12 | 1,904,097 | 61.80 | 1,108,854 | 35.99 | ||||||||||||
| ME 1st Dist. | 1 | 232,145 | 60.51 | 144,604 | 37.69 | ||||||||||||
| ME 2nd Dist. | 1 | 189,778 | 54.61 | 150,669 | 43.35 | ||||||||||||
| Michigan | 17 | 2,872,579 | 57.43 | 2,048,639 | 40.96 | ||||||||||||
| Minnesota | 10 | 1,573,354 | 54.06 | 1,275,409 | 43.82 | ||||||||||||
| Mississippi | 6 | 554,662 | 43.00 | 724,597 | 56.18 | ||||||||||||
| Missouri | 11 | 1,441,911 | 49.29 | 1,445,814 | 49.43 | ||||||||||||
| Montana | 3 | 231,667 | 47.25 | 242,763 | 49.52 | ||||||||||||
| NE 1st Dist. | 1 | 121,468 | 44.34 | 148,179 | 54.09 | ||||||||||||
| NE 2nd Dist. | 1 | 138,752 | 49.96 | 135,439 | 48.76 | ||||||||||||
| NE 3rd Dist. | 1 | 73,099 | 29.63 | 169,361 | 68.64 | ||||||||||||
| Nebraska | 2* | 333,319 | 41.60 | 452,979 | 56.53 | ||||||||||||
| Nevada | 5 | 533,736 | 55.15 | 412,827 | 42.65 | ||||||||||||
| New Hampshire | 4 | 384,826 | 54.13 | 316,534 | 44.52 | ||||||||||||
| New Jersey | 15 | 2,215,422 | 57.27 | 1,613,207 | 41.70 | ||||||||||||
| New Mexico | 5 | 472,422 | 56.91 | 346,832 | 41.78 | ||||||||||||
| New York | 31 | 4,804,701 | 62.88 | 2,752,728 | 36.03 | ||||||||||||
| North Carolina | 15 | 2,142,651 | 49.69 | 2,128,474 | 49.36 | ||||||||||||
| North Dakota | 3 | 141,278 | 44.62 | 168,601 | 53.25 | ||||||||||||
| Ohio | 20 | 2,940,044 | 51.50 | 2,677,820 | 46.91 | ||||||||||||
| Oklahoma | 7 | 502,496 | 34.35 | 960,165 | 65.65 | ||||||||||||
| Oregon | 7 | 1,037,291 | 56.75 | 738,475 | 40.40 | ||||||||||||
| Pennsylvania | 21 | 3,276,363 | 54.64 | 2,655,885 | 44.29 | ||||||||||||
| Rhode Island | 4 | 296,571 | 63.13 | 165,391 | 35.21 | ||||||||||||
| South Carolina | 8 | 862,449 | 44.90 | 1,034,896 | 53.87 | ||||||||||||
| South Dakota | 3 | 170,924 | 44.75 | 203,054 | 53.16 | ||||||||||||
| Tennessee | 11 | 1,087,437 | 41.83 | 1,479,178 | 56.90 | ||||||||||||
| Texas | 34 | 3,528,633 | 43.68 | 4,479,328 | 55.45 | ||||||||||||
| U.S. Total | 538 | 69,498,215 | 52.93 | 59,948,240 | 45.66 | ||||||||||||
| Utah | 5 | 327,670 | 34.41 | 596,030 | 62.58 | ||||||||||||
| Vermont | 3 | 219,262 | 67.44 | 98,974 | 30.44 | ||||||||||||
| Virginia | 13 | 1,959,532 | 52.63 | 1,725,005 | 46.33 | ||||||||||||
| Washington | 11 | 1,750,848 | 57.65 | 1,229,216 | 40.48 | ||||||||||||
| West Virginia | 5 | 303,857 | 42.59 | 397,466 | 55.71 | ||||||||||||
| Wisconsin | 10 | 1,677,211 | 56.22 | 1,262,393 | 42.31 | ||||||||||||
| Wyoming | 3 | 82,868 | 32.54 | 164,958 | 64.78 |
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5/3/12 Election Results 2008 New York Times, Tuesday, December 09, 2008
"365 Obama Electoral Votes Projected Winner. . . 173 McCain Electoral Votes"
5/2/12
LAST CHANCE TO
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"All Lessons Archived — Start Anytime!" [Click the following date to access a fuller description lauding the course. It is offered at no cost although contributions are accepted] 4/14/12 Brief and Makeup of the Free Hillsdale College Constitiution 101 Course:
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5/2/12 You Can't Blame the GOP House for the Democrats' Massive Spending Since 2007 Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Excerpts
CALLER: My question is, if I talk to Democrat friends, they all tell me, "Listen, the Republicans control the purse springs."
RUSH: No, they don't. . . .
Nothing is getting passed. It's stopping in the Senate. And therefore Continuing Resolutions continue to be brought forth to authorize spending. All of this $5 trillion -- the vast, vast majority of it -- was what took place in the first two years, which led to the Tea Party arising and sending the Democrats packing in landslide defeats in the midterm election in 2010. Continuing Resolutions require that spending stays at the same rate, the same level. . . .
RUSH: [Paul Ryan is] personally attacked and destroyed, mocked and made fun of by your precious Democrat friends. There is one party, we can talk about how well they're doing it, there's one party trying to stop this. Paul Ryan is the leader of the budget process in the House for Republicans trying to stop this.
CALLER: Yes, and I appreciate him doing that.
RUSH: Well, yeah, but you gotta pay attention to what's happening to him if you want to understand why these Democrats are talking to you the way they are. He represents a threat. Your Democrats don't want spending cut, but they know most people do so they're going to try to find a way to blame the Republicans for doing what they actually want done. . . .
RUSH:[E]ven now the Democrats control the Senate and the White House, and no law can be passed without the approval from both those bodies. The Republicans controlling the House can't stop anything.
So now, after five years with Democrats in control of two-thirds or more of the government, only somebody genuinely ignorant, or a liar, would think Republicans or conservatives have any responsibility for the current state of affairs. The Republicans haven't had the power to implement their own ideas. The Democrats have not even presented a budget the past three years. Only the Republicans have. Paul Ryan, the past two years, has been the author. And you see what happens to him. And as I said in the last half hour, whenever the Republicans present a budget that has some reductions in spending, the Democrats start talking about potential government shutdowns, and that's when Republicans cave. Oh, no, they don't want to be blamed for that. Not after what happened in 1995.
Now, here are some numbers for you: On January 3rd, 2007, the day the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 12,621. The unemployment rate on January 3rd, 2007 was 4.6%. The gross domestic product, the economic output for the previous quarter was 3.5%. The economy had just set a record of 52 straight months of job creation: 52 straight months of new jobs every month in the 52 months prior to January 2007. Twenty-six million Americans were on food stamps on January 3rd, 2007.
That number has doubled now. The Social Security program took in something in the neighborhood of $100 billion more than it paid out in 2007. The national debt was approaching $9 trillion. What is it now? Well, the Dow is about the same. It's over 12,000 to 13,255, but that's just recently. For most of the past years the Dow was way down and people were in panic over it. The unemployment rate in January 2007 was 4.6%. Today it's 8.3%, and actually in the 9%'s. GDP in January 2007 was 3.5%. Now it's 1.8%.
In January 2007, the economy had just set a record of 52 straight months of job creation. We're into three straight years of job losses since Obama took office. The Social Security program is now spending more than it takes in, and the national debt is approaching $17 trillion. It was $9 trillion in January of 2007. And four out of the five years -- four out of the last five years -- Democrats have had majorities in the legislative and executive branches. There is no intellectual case that can be made that Republicans are the authors of all this spending or the reason for the economic collapse.
There isn't one Republican policy that's been implemented here, not one conservative policy that's been implemented! And Social Security, for the first time ever, is spending more than it is taking in. We have a $16 trillion national debt. GDP is 2% at best. (It's really around 1.5% and falling.) Our debt is rising. There's no way -- it's not mathematically possible, it's not politically true, it is not factually accurate -- to say that all of this decline (all the bad news) has anything to do with conservatives or Republicans.
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5/2/12 China activist appeals to Obama to get him to US
By Shaun Tandon, AFP, Yahoo! News"Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng appealed to US President Barack Obama to help get him and his family out of China, saying he feared for his life just hours after leaving the US embassy in Beijing.
'I would like to say to President Obama: please do everything you can to get our family out,' Chen told CNN, according to a translation of his quote.
"He also accused US embassy officials of pushing him hard to leave the safety of the embassy on Wednesday where he had sought refuge for six days after fleeing his home in the eastern province of Shandong.
"'The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital, but this afternoon, as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone,' Chen told CNN by phone.
"CNN correspondent Stan Grant said he interviewed Chen, who is in a Beijing hospital, at around 3:00 am Thursday (1900 GMT Wednesday) with his wife sitting by his bedside. The US network aired two short audio clips of the interview.
"Chen's comments came hours after US-based rights group China Aid said the dissident had "reluctantly" left the embassy and that it had been told by "reliable sources" that Beijing had made threats against his relatives.
"That claim came despite US officials saying after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in China for pre-arranged talks that Beijing had pledged Chen and his family would be treated "humanely" and moved to a safe place.
"Victoria Nuland, State Department spokeswoman, denied threats were made, but said Chinese officials had made clear Chen's family would be returned to their home in Shandong -- where they suffered repeated abuse -- if he remained at the embassy.
"China Aid said in a statement: 'Chen's decision for departure from the US embassy was done reluctantly because 'serious threat to his immediate family members were made by Chinese government' if Chen refused to accept the Chinese government's offer.'"
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5/2/12 Soros Liberal Front Group Asks FCC to Cancel Fox Television's Licenses
By Matthew Sheffield, NewsBusters
"They've tried and failed repeatedly to install the so-called 'Fairness Doctrine' as a means of using the government to silence conservatives, now a George Soros-connected "ethics" group is taking another route to censorship.
"The Hill reports that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is asking the Federal Communications to cancel Fox's broadcasting licenses in the United States because of the phone hacking scandal involving a newspaper owned by a sister company utterly separate from it in the United Kingdom."
5/2/12 Editorial: Larry Richardson, an unusual, honest candidate
GIAC2002.org
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5/1/12 SEALs: Obama Taking Credit for bin Laden 'Cheap Shot'
By Martin Gould, NewsMax
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5/1/12 Obama: Low Character in High Office Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Excerpt
RUSH: Of all the people involved in the War on Terror, which this president was totally opposed to as a senator, this one guy had the easiest job of all of the people in this chain, from the boots on the ground to the intel people, to the CIA interrogators. You know, it's arguable, had Obama's policies regarding interrogation at Guantanamo Bay or at CIA black sites, secret prisons, had Obama's policies been in force, we may not have ever gotten Bin Laden. That's the real irony here. There was one man, there was a courier, one person who carried messages to and from Osama Bin Laden from that luxurious hideout in Pakistan. The identity of that courier was uncovered by CIA interrogators using enhanced techniques opposed by Obama. It wasn't waterboarding. I don't know what the techniques were. Had it not been for the policies put in place by Bush-Cheney. And by the way, it's impossible to talk about this honestly and not have it sound political.
I am doing my best to have this not sound political. But the Bush-Cheney policies of enhanced interrogation and the conduct of the War on Terror in general led to the identity of the courier and his location, which led to Osama's location. And if Obama's policies as articulated during the Iraq war -- all of his opposition to Petraeus, his opposition to enhanced techniques of interrogation -- had been in place we probably would not have gotten Bin Laden. That's the irony here. So the guy with the easiest job and the least qualified in any room he walks into is now beating his chest and spiking the football, and criticizing the very policies that he opposed. And now running around and saying that Romney is gutless and wouldn't have had the guts to pull the trigger. . . .
So Obama's out there trying, folks, to call himself or have us think of him as a hero. For doing something that if Bush or Cheney had done, Obama probably woulda called 'em war criminals. That's another real irony. If Bush and Cheney had found Osama Bin Laden and he was exactly where he was and they sent the SEALs in there and they got 'em exactly the way they did, and there were no pictures, and then Bin Laden was buried at sea, and there's no real evidence other than we gotta take everybody's word for it, Obama and Pelosi and Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton and the whole bunch of 'em would be accusing Bush and Cheney of lying for political purposes. They'd say, "Where's the proof?" And they would accuse him if it did happen of them being war criminals.
The ironies here are multiple and frequent. To give the go-ahead, to take out an unsuspecting terrorist with the best SEAL Team America has, that's what Obama wants the credit for. And he wasn't even the man in charge of the actual operation. That was the guy named McRaven. We had the details of that story for you yesterday. But Obama can't help it. He's a narcissist, world revolves around him, as you know. And so he has to put the spotlight on himself. Which is wrong. This is like a guy who gives money to charity only for the press release that accompanies it and maybe gets his name on the medical building that they name after him for giving them money. The guy that does everything for public consumption, does everything for public notice, for public approval, not because of the genuineness of the act. . . .
Yeah, Obama would be running around saying, "Osama wasn't Mirandized! You sent the SEALs in there and they didn't read him his rights!" That's what they'd be doing. It's what Occupy Wall Street would be doing. I see desperation here -- sad desperation -- with unlimited funds and enablers doing everything they can to make him feel good about himself. That's what's going on here. . . .
RUSH: Weren't we told that we needed to close down Club Gitmo because it was a recruitment tool for the terrorists? That's right. And who was it that told us that? Why, none other than Senator Barack Obama and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama! He said we had to shut down Club Gitmo. Weren't we told that using enhanced interrogation is a recruitment tool for the terrorists, and that's what we were doing? And, of course, that means we were helping terrorists recruit members.
Weren't we told that we had to bury Osama Bin Laden at sea because his grave might be used as a recruiting tool for terrorists, and we couldn't allow him to be martyred in that way? And weren't we told, ladies and gentlemen, that the government could not release the photos of the body of Osama Bin Laden because the photos would be used as a recruiting tool for terrorists? Yup. We were told, just like the liberals in every instance of a crime, "If we go after the perpetrator, it's gonna make the perpetrator and his friends even madder.
"We don't want to do that! We don't want to celebrate victory over these guys, don't want to put 'em in Club Gitmo. It's just gonna make 'em madder, make 'em more committed and it's gonna recruit more terrorists," right? Well, isn't Obama's campaign ad where he brags about killing Osama a recruiting tool for terrorists? Using his own definition, isn't his endless crowing about killing Bin Laden a recruiting tool? Isn't dancing on Bin Laden's grave and beating his chest and going, "Ahhhhh-ah-ah-ah!" like Tarzan did a recruiting tool?
So are some "recruiting tools" for terrorists worse than others? . . .
OBAMA: As far as, uhhh my personal role and what other folks would do, I'd just recommend that everybody take a look people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pok-ee-stahn and take out Bin Laden. I said that I'd go after Bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did it! If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they'd do something else, then, uhh, I'd go ahead and let them explain it.
RUSH: "Pok-ee-stahn." You know, this is such an obvious attempt here to take what Romney said out of context. It was during a Republican debate, I believe, and what Romney essentially said was that he disagreed with the Democrats that the definition of the War on Terror was whether or not we got one man: Bin Laden. And the War on Terror, the money spent would be much better spent on the broader conflict than throwing millions and gazillions or whatever into getting one guy.
And the reason Romney said it is because Democrats like Obama, since 2004 and 2005, have been claiming failure in the War on Terror 'cause he didn't get Bin Laden! Do you find it interesting, a year after Bin Laden is found and taken out, Obama last week announces the end of the War on Terror?
. . . .
I said, "Why are we still flying drones if the war on terror is over? Why is Al-Qaeda still killing people? Why is the Muslim Brotherhood here and doing what they're doing in Egypt and wanting permission to have sex with their dead wives for six hours after she dies? Why, if War on Terror is over?" And the War on Terror is over 'cause the Democrats always defined it as Osama Bin Laden being killed. Folks, this is infantile.
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5/1/12 The Realization of Osama bin Laden's Dream
By Tara Servatius, American Thinker
"Don't let this week's anniversary of Osama bin Laden's assassination fool you. President Barack Obama may have killed bin Laden, but no one on Earth has done more to help al-Qaeda and the world's radical Islamists achieve their goals in the last year than our president.
Bin Laden's ultimate goal was for radical Islamists to rise up and retake control of the Middle East from largely secular, American-backed leaders. Bin Laden's strategy was to use terror attacks on the West to inspire this.
"Just a few years ago, bin Laden probably couldn't have fathomed that it would be an American president who would ultimately accomplish his goal of bringing radical Islamist leaders to power in Middle Eastern countries, or that the same American president would get closer to accomplishing those goals in just three years than bin Laden himself did in his entire multi-decade terror career.
Bin Laden also didn't know he wouldn't be alive to see it because that president, Barack Obama, would preside over his assassination just as radical Islamists were on the brink of bringing the caliphate to life with the American government's help.
"Today, a year after bin Laden's death, a sizable chunk of Middle Eastern real estate is either in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and other like-minded groups or on the brink of falling into their hands. The newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood, which as recently as two years ago was banned from political life in most of the countries it now runs, comes to and goes from the White House with impunity.
"This happened thanks to a consistent, persistent strategy by the Obama administration of using American pressure, diplomacy, and firepower, or the lack of it, to ensure that country after country slips from secular rule into Islamist control.
"In the beginning, when the people in Washington were pressuring secular leader and long time U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak from power in Egypt, the Obama administration would still distance itself from groups like the Brotherhood, assuring the American public that they wouldn't be strong enough to take over Egypt, or that if they did, they wouldn't really be that radical. Today the Brotherhood controls the Egyptian parliament, and an ex-Muslim Brotherhood leader whom the media is selling as moderate stands poised to take the presidency of that country.
"Meanwhile, the Obama administration is finally beginning to come out of the closet on its real plans for radical Islamists like the Brotherhood -- to put them in power in country after country. Obama administration officials call this strategy 'legitimate Islamism.'
"The theory is that with secular leaders who were former U.S. allies out of the way in Middle Eastern countries, radical Islamists will now have an outlet for their Islamism and won't join al-Qaeda.
"Obama administration officials were pretty blunt about this in a recent National Journal interview, explaining that the president came to a 'realiz[ation that] he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively 'moderate' Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.'
"'It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists,' administration officials told the Journal. 'Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.'
"Today, the Obama administration no longer hides its goal of bringing the Muslim Brotherhood and other like-minded Islamists to power.
"And that's exactly what Obama has been doing. After American and international firepower drove former leader Moammar Gaddafi from power in Libya, the country came to be run by the Transitional National Council, which the Obama administration recognizes as the official government of Libya. It is packed with activists, lawyers, Islamic scholars, and others who have ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
"In 2007, the LIFG formally joined al-Qaeda, an event so well-documented that even Reuters covered it. Its goals at the time included killing Gaddafi, setting up an Islamic caliphate in Libya, and waging international jihad. With Obama's help, they are well on their way to accomplishing these goals.
"The National Transitional Council, which is backed by the Obama administration, has already decreed that the country will be run in accordance with sharia law. The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are expected to make a strong showing in the next election. And they'll have plenty of dough with which to carry out their plans, since the Obama administration and NATO turned the country's oil fields, which are capable of generating billions of dollars of oil revenue a year, over to them.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration is conducting "peace talks" with the Taliban aimed at bringing them into the government, even as Taliban operatives kill U.S. troops daily on the battlefield. Given the Taliban's obvious inability to win control of the Afghan government for themselves on the battlefield, the Obama administration's determination to hand it to them at the negotiating table is baffling. This would create yet another radical Islamist-dominated Middle Eastern nation -- the exact opposite of what American troops have been fighting and bleeding for in that country for a decade.
"In Syria, where the Obama administration is calling for dictator Bashar Assad to step down, the U.S. has left secular forces to fend for themselves and backed an Islamist-dominated group called the Syrian National Council, which has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
"The list goes on and on, but in country after county, the results are the same. Osama bin Laden's dream, which he thought would take decades to achieve, is coming to life in a single term of Obama's presidency. Bin Laden's Middle Eastern caliphate is rising. Once united in Islam, the caliphate was supposed to turn outward, conquering the rest of the Earth for Allah. No word yet on where Obama stands on that part of the plan. Perhaps we'll have to wait for a second term to find out.
"While Americans focus this week on the anniversary of the killing of bin Laden and feel smug about our destruction of al-Qaeda's main cell, they need to understand that with bin Laden's dream already in motion, al-Qaeda is in many ways is an outdated relic whose purpose has already been served."
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5/1/12 Rubio: My VP Consideration 'Tribute' to America
By Greg McDonald, NewsMax
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5/1/12 Obama Accomplishments [From an e-mail, lest you forget. (For this time, the date is not a link.)]
And they say he hasn't done
anything....
A summary of accomplishments by Obama in only 39 months! I wonder how much
damage he would do in another 57 months given a second term plus the 9
months left in his first term. Just a thought. . . .
Who said he hasn't done anything? An impressive list of accomplishments!
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he
was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has never
lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United
States.
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing
oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to defy a Federal Judges court order to cease implementing
the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third
party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs when there
was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies
to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through
executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the
deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. , including those with
criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his
political appointees.
First President to terminate America's ability to put a man in space-defunded
NASA.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and
refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out
on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company (Boeing) in which
State they are allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to
protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly
issued years ago.
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-corps for catching one
of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his
office.
First President to play golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half
years in office, 90 to date and counting.
First President to spend $1M in legal fees to block access to his medical,
educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to not know how to properly pronounce Navy 'corpsman', or
our Marine Corps.
First President to go on multiple global apology tours-including bowing to
foreign rulers.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and
Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends; and paid for by the
taxpayer.
First President to send his 13 year-old daughter to a foreign country “on
spring break’ before classes were over, and with 25 bodyguards, paid by the
taxpayer.
First President to say that America was not a Christian nation.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) just for his
wife
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at
taxpayer expense.
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4/30/12 Obama: Supreme Court at stake in 2012 election
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4/30/12 True The Vote, Day Two: Breitbart Is Here PJMedia.com
"Volunteers from 32 states have gathered to bring integrity back to what has become a corrupted election process. We have heard story after story today and last night — ACORN’s $30 million Project Vote effort in 2008; several jurisdictions across several states have more names on their voter rolls than there are eligible voting adults in their area. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch directly warned that the Obama administration’s Department of Justice is working hand in hand with former ACORN lawyers who have pled guilty in voter fraud cases, on this year’s election strategy. He connected the Obama stealth amnesty for illegal aliens with this voter drive and the administration’s overt opposition to commonsense voter ID laws that have already proven to be no obstacle whatsoever to legitimate voters into a terrifying probability: that the Obama administration is preparing to steal this fall’s election. [Emphasis added.]
"John Fund is on the stage now. Fund has done more than any other reporter to discover, document, and expose voter fraud. But he isn’t here to crow, but to thank the activists in the room. They work for free, because they care about election integrity, at their own personal expense and often in the face of a hostile media. But they protect our votes. Fund rightly said that he could not exist without the activists’ efforts. Election is a core civil rights isue, Fund said, and he’s right: In a country built on the premise that we choose our own leaders, clean elections are fundamental to securing our freedoms. Fund noted that support for voter ID and election security is so strong among minority groups because they’re the most frequent victims of stolen votes. Research done when I was at the Republican Party of Texas backs him up on that: Fraud is worst in Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, where the local Democrats rig primaries and elections year after year after year, often stealing elections for white candidates at the expense of Hispanic candidates.
"The people in this room get that. That’s why they’ve come here at their own expense. This is room full of good people putting themselves on the line to fight voter fraud and keep our country free.
Breitbart is here."
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"Barack Obama is trying to turn back the way of politics to the era of the pre-reform Chicago machine. He was the first presidential candidate to renounce campaign-financing funds since the law was enacted. He opposes any effort to clamp down on voting fraud. Even his compliant media worries that the president’s current jetting from one campaign stop to another in the key swing states is a poorly disguised way to politick on the federal government’s dime. Bundlers are, as was the ancient custom, given plum honorific posts abroad. Obama has held twice as many fundraisers as the much reviled George Bush had at a similar point in his administration. Obama supporters now target large Romney givers and post their names with negative bios on websites, as if we are back to Nixon’s enemies of the people. Websites sprout up that go after administration critics in Agnew style, but without the latter’s self-caricature. The 2008 criticism about ending the revolving door, lobbyists, and pay-for-play renting out of the Lincoln bedroom was, well…just examine the career of a Peter Orszag. An embarrassed media keeps silent about the new reactionary ethics, apparently on the premise that not to would endanger four more years of the 'progressive' agenda. On matters of presidential style, we are likewise retro, as Obama sets records for playing golf, and in Marie Antoinette style the First Family bounces between Vail, Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, Vegas, and Costa del Sol, often in separate jets, as if we, the people, receive vicarious joy from catching glimpses of the Obama versions of Camelot. We have Kennedy wannabes without their own Kennedy money. [Emphases added.]
"Earth Day Forever
"On matters of energy, Obama has regressed to the Earth Day mindset of the 1970s, when we were reaching 'peak' oil, and untried wind and solar were soon to be the new-age remedy for soon-to-be-exhausted fossil fuels. Add up the anti-empirical quotes from Obama himself, Energy Secretary Chu, and Interior Secretary Salazar (inflate your tires, 'tune up' your car, look to U.S. algae reserves, let energy prices 'skyrocket,' hope gas rises to European levels, don’t open federal lands even if gas reaches $10 a gallon, etc.) and, in reactionary fashion, we are time-machined back to the campus quad of the 1970s. In this la la world of Van Jones, evil oil companies supposedly connived to stifle green energy and hook us on fossil fuels, inferior energies that have nothing to recommend them. It is as if the revolutions in horizontal drilling, fracking, and discoveries of vast new reserves never occurred, [Emphasis added.]as if Exxon and Chevron dodge taxes in a manner that Google and Amazon never would, as if efficient smaller gas engines, clean gas blends, and pollution devices have not made the American car both clean-burning and economical beyond our imagination forty years ago. The Obamians, frozen in amber, really believe oil is about to run out, 'tuned up internal combustion engines powering underinflated tires pollute as they did in the 1920s, and Teapot Dome U.S. oil companies need to be 'crucified'—as regional EPA director and Obama appointee Al Armendariz, in fact, boasted. So we borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize money-losing solar and wind plants, while putting federal lands rich in oil and gas off-limits to companies eager to pay royalties, hire thousands, and supply the U.S. with its own energy [Emphasis added.]—and all for a regressive ideology. Few see that Solyndra really is the new Teapot Dome.
[As usual click the date for more from the original article remembrances and the ongoing idiocies of our regressives.]
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4/29/12 Sessions marks three years without budget: ‘Deliberate plan’ by Democrats By Caroline May, The Daily Caller
"April 29, 2009 was the last time the Senate passed a budget — three years ago today. Articulating a budget for the United States is among senators’ legally required duties.
"Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, told The Daily Caller that Senate Democrats’ obfuscation is to blame.
"'This is a deliberate plan that the Democratic majority has executed for three years to avoid the responsibility of laying out a financial plan for America,' he said in an interview.
The Democratic majority in the Senate, Sessions said, 'cannot lead.'
"'When your party cannot coalesce around a plan that your members can support and the American people can support, then you’ve got a very deep, serious problem. And I think that is basically what it is,' he explained.
"'So you’ve got to hide that by avoiding any public accountability. So you have secret meetings, the gang of six, and those kind of things — trying to move along without every having to lay out their vision.'
"'We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it,” Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the 2013 federal budget in February.
"Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad has indicated that he likely will not mark up a budget until after the November election, canceling a planned budget markup and vote last week.
Sessions said such delays are par for the course with this Congress, whose modus operandi in recent years has been last-minute patch-up jobs.
"'The only thing that has worked is when we get into a crisis, like when we had to have the debt ceiling raised and the Republicans were able to force $2.1 trillion in spending reductions over ten years,' Sessions said. 'It was a step — not enough — a step'
"'Already they are trying to undermine that. The president’s budget wipes out half of that $2 trillion in savings. All we’ve done is lurch through deadlines and crises, which is not good for the economy.'
"He added that he believes the American people should take this into account when the vote in the fall."
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4/29/12 Obama has held more re-election fundraisers than previous five Presidents combined as he visits key swing states on 'permanent campaign'
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4/29/12 Transcript: Al Gore Got ‘D’ in ‘Natural Sciences’ at Harvard
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4/27/12 Strassel: The President Has a List The Wall Street Journal
Barack Obama attempts to intimidate contributors to Mitt Romney's campaign.
"Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.
"Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for 'betting against America,' and accuses you of having a 'less-than-reputable' record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.
Are you worried?
"Richard Nixon's 'enemies list' appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.
"Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled 'Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors.' In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having 'less-than-reputable records,' the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that 'quite a few' have also been 'on the wrong side of the law' and profiting at 'the expense of so many Americans.'
"These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having 'outsourced' jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a 'lobbyist') and Thomas O'Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a 'bitter foe of the gay rights movement.'
These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.
""We don't tolerate presidents or people of high power to do these things,' says Theodore Olson,' the former U.S. solicitor general. 'When you have the power of the presidency—the power of the IRS, the INS, the Justice Department, the DEA, the SEC—what you have effectively done is put these guys' names up on 'Wanted' posters in government offices.' Mr. Olson knows these tactics, having demanded that the 44th president cease publicly targeting Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, which he represents. He's been ignored.
"The real crime of the men, as the website tacitly acknowledges, is that they have given money to Mr. Romney. This fundraiser of a president has shown an acute appreciation for the power of money to win elections, and a cutthroat approach to intimidating those who might give to his opponents.
He's targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama's real aim.
"The White House has couched its attacks in the language of "disclosure" and the argument that corporations should not have the same speech rights as individuals. But now, says Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, 'he's doing the same at the individual level, for anyone who opposes his policies.' Any giver, at any level, risks reprisal from the president of the United States.
"It's getting worse because the money game is not going as Team Obama wants. Super PACs are helping the GOP to level the playing field against Democratic super-spenders. Prominent financial players are backing Mr. Romney. The White House's new strategy is thus to delegitimize Mr. Romney (by attacking his donors) as it seeks to frighten others out of giving.
"The Obama campaign has justified any action on the grounds that it has a right to 'hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable,' but this is a dodge. Politics is rough, but a president has obligations that transcend those of a candidate. He swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that gives every American the right to partake in democracy, free of fear of government intimidation or disfavored treatment. If Mr. Obama isn't going to act like a president, he bolsters the argument that he doesn't deserve to be one."
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4/27/12 What 'Gutsy Call'?: CIA Memo Reveals Admiral Controlled bin Laden Mission Ben Shapiro, Breitbart
"Today, Time magazine got hold of a memo written by then-CIA head Leon Panetta after he received orders from Barack Obama’s team to greenlight the bin Laden mission. . . .
"The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the 'timing, operational decision making and control' are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.
"The memo is crystal clear on that point. It says that the decision has been made based solely on the 'risk profile presented to the President.' If any other risks – no matter how minute – arose, they were 'to be brought back to the President for his consideration.' This is ludicrous. It is wiggle room. It was Obama’s way of carving out space for himself in case the mission went bad. If it did, he’d say that there were additional risks of which he hadn’t been informed; he’d been kept in the dark by his military leaders.
"Finally, the memo is unclear on just what the mission is. Was it to capture Bin Laden or to kill him? The White House itself was unable to decide what the mission was in the hours after the Bin Laden kill, and actually switched its language. The memo shows why: McRaven was instructed to “get” Bin Laden, whatever that meant.
"President Obama made the right call to give the green light to the mission. But he did it in a way that he could shift the blame if things went wrong. Typical Obama. And typical of him to claim full credit for it, when he didn’t do anything but give a vague nod, while putting his top military officials at risk of taking the hit in case of a bad turn."
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4/27/12 Obama the Unseemly By JAMES TARANTO, The Wall Street Jounal
A more aggressive press corps might have motivated him to preserve his dignity.
"There's been a lot of talk of late about how "cool" Barack Obama supposedly is. But people are starting to notice the man has no class.
"'Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing 'staycations' because they can't afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family's 17 lavish vacations around the world and don't want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas' holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters,' reports the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard.
"A group of Republican pollsters conducted focus groups of swing-state swing voters, mostly Democrats and independents, and John McLaughlin 'handled blue collar and Catholic voters' in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. He found that they tend to think Mitt Romney is 'too rich,' but 'there is a start of resentment of the government.' In Bedard's words, 'voters were also lumping in the president's vacation spending in with the General Services Administration's Las Vegas scandal and federal spending for those who aren't looking for work.' . . .
"The student-debt debate has underscored another unattractive aspect of Obama's presidential style: his tendency to be always and indiscriminately on the attack. The Washington Post's Rosalind Helderman notes that the president not only personally attacked two Republican congressmen, Missouri's Todd Akin and North Carolina's Virginia Foxx, but grievously misquoted both of them.
"Helderman dryly notes that 'it is somewhat unusual for a sitting president to single out individual rank-and-file members of the opposition party for criticism and scorn in public speeches.' She quotes Speaker John Boehner: 'Frankly, I think this is beneath the dignity of the White House.'
"But is anything beneath the dignity of the Obama White House? This, after all, is the same president who has ignorantly blasted the Supreme Court and Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee. The only difference in his attacks on Akin and Foxx is that he is manifestly punching down. What next? Will he go after private citizens?
"Oh ha ha, he's doing that already, as our colleague Kim Strassel notes:
This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled 'Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors.' In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having 'less-than-reputable records,' the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that 'quite a few' have also been 'on the wrong side of the law' and profiting at 'the expense of so many Americans.'
"Strassel likens Obama's demonization to Richard Nixon's "enemies list," which "appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust." It's an apt comparison, but even Nixon delegated much of his attack-doggery to his vice president, Spiro Agnew. We guess Joe Biden is too goofy for that role so Obama has to do it himself."
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4/27/12 Michelle Obama's $500,000 shopping trip: Huge taxpayer bill for First Lady's Spanish beach getaway revealed New documents disclose $500,000 tab Michelle Obama left for taxpayers Mail Online [Just the headline]
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4/27/12 Obama Has Destroyed the US Economy Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript
RUSH: [T]his is some serious stuff, and it confirms every instinct that every person alive in this country knows. There isn't any economic growth. There's government growth, but there isn't any private sector growth. There's no growth in jobs: 120,000 jobs were created last month, according to the news from yesterday. It's just pathetic. It is why Obama is running around making things up about the "War on Women" and now the student loan interest rate doubling. Which, by the way, Boehner, the Republicans are gonna vote today on a bill to make sure that the interest rate does not double on July 12th. . . .
[R]emember again that's a Democrat law, 2007, the Democrats ran both the House and the Senate, that's when they took over the House.. . .
[T]hey started playing a political game with the student loan interest rate, and they essentially cut the student loan interest rate in half and then wrote legislation that would restore it in July of 2012, knowing full well people wouldn't remember five years ago that it would just appear as though the student loan interest rate was doubling, which that's exactly what it's gonna look like. And guess who's running the House? The Republicans. And so the point was, it was an insurance policy. The Democrats, like the Soviets, they're always looking a hundred years down the road, not just to tomorrow. So they put in place this scheme where the student loan interest rate would appear to double when all it was doing was being restored to what it had always been. And all the better if the Republicans ran the House.
Now, if the Republicans were not running the House, if the Democrats were still in charge, then of course they would pass legislation canceling the increase. It wouldn't be an issue; nobody would know anything about it; it would just be same old low interest rate. But the Republicans running the House, it's scheduled now because of Democrat legislation to restore to what it was, which is gonna appear to be doubled in July. So the Republicans are readying legislation to prevent that from happening. It will be very interesting to see how the Democrats in the Senate vote on this, and the Democrats in the House as well.
So all this is being used by Obama to divert attention from what is a destroyed US economy. I don't know how else to describe it. We're living in an era where the president of the United States and his party have launched an all-out assault on the United States private sector economy. They've been pretty successful. They have not failed. Not from their perspective. GDP growth revised down to -- well, not revised down, at 2.2%. . . .
The government redistributes wealth, destroys wealth, but it does not create wealth. So you have this $800 billion stimulus. Highly touted, Obama and the Democrats, this is save the day. This is gonna save our economy. This is gonna fix all the bad stuff that George W. Bush did. So they're gonna put $800 billion into the economy, they told us. They didn't even do that. The money went to unions. The money went to state employees. The money went to state governments.
The money did not go to shovel-ready projects. The money did not go to rebuilding roads, schools, and bridges. And, by the way, speaking of that, the point I made yesterday, look at the kind of jobs Obama was thinking of creating with that stimulus. Ditch digging. The vision that Obama and the Democrats have of work in this country is a hundred years old. Assembly line jobs, union jobs. It's a hundred years old, 50 years old. There's nothing high-tech, new, forward-thinking about the kind of work they envision.
Anyway, follow me on this. Eight hundred billion that they want you to think that's coming from someplace but it's gonna end up in the private sector, but where did they get the $800 billion? They got it from the exact place they're putting it. There was no stimulus, by definition, in mathematics, whatever. The $800 billion that Obama supposedly injected in the private sector had to be taken from the private sector first. It was a wash, a net zero. There was no new money. All there was was redistribution of money. One of the biggest scams ever run. Everybody that's not aware of this, "Wow man, this is good," but notice that it didn't work. All these economic forecasts for economic growth, wrong by half, wrong by factors of two, it didn't work. It couldn't work. It never had a chance to work because it's impossible. It was word games. And so we end up with the economy growing in 2011 at 1.7%, after forecasting 4.5%
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4/27/12 GOP ignores veto threat, passes student loan bill FoxNews.com
"The GOP-led House passed a bill Friday to keep interest rates on millions of federal student loans from doubling this summer, ignoring a White House veto threat and setting up another likely election-year battle.
"The House approved the bill by a 215-195 vote, also amid pressure from conservative groups that essentially said the government cannot afford the $5.9 billion cost right now.
"President Obama also wants to keep down the interest rates, but the White House doesn't agree with House Republicans' plan to pay the costs, by cutting a preventive health fund created under the president's health care overhaul law of 2010.
"Democrats argued on the House floor the fund mostly benefits women. Republicans call it a loosely controlled slush fund.
"Nobody wants to see student loans go up," House Speaker John Boehner said before the vote. "Now were are going to fight over women's health. Give me a break. This controversy was created by my colleagues across the aisle for political purposes."
4/26/12 Liberal Media Mock Obama for Faux Campaign
"Members of the media are questioning the Obama administration’s numerous “official business” trips to swing states, during which he has been giving stump speeches and raising campaign funds.
"High-profile Washington reporters engaged in a line of questioning on Twitter today that seems to indicate that even staunch supporters of the president think that the use of taxpayer funds for campaign trips is getting out of hand."
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4/26/12 George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting By Chris Francescani, Reuters
"During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old.
But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman's past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting.
"Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America.
"The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.
"A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.
"Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.
"'Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?' the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. 'There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,' she said. 'That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.'" [Click the date for a portrait of a good, caring man.]
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4/26/12
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4/25/12 Supreme Court casts doubt on Obama’s immigration law claim
"Supreme Court justices took a dim view of the Obama administration’s claim that it can stop Arizona from enforcing immigration laws, telling government lawyers during oral argument Wednesday that the state appears to want to push federal officials, not conflict with them."
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4/25/12 EPA Official's 'Philosophy' On Oil Companies: 'Crucify Them' - Just As Romans Crucified Conquered Citizens By Craig Bannister, CNSNews.com
"Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor today to draw attention to a video of a top EPA official saying the EPA’s 'philosophy' is to 'crucify' and 'make examples' of oil and gas companies - just as the Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience.
Inhofe quoted a little-watched video from 2010 of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, admitting that EPA’s “general philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies.
In the video, Administrator Armendariz says:
“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said:
"'It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.
"'Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.'
"“It’s a deterrent factor,' Armendariz said, explaining that the EPA is following the Romans’' philosophy for subjugating conquered villages.
"Soon after Armendariz touted the EPA’s 'philosophy,' the EPA began a smear campaigns natural gas producers, Inhofe’s office noted in advance of today’s Senate speech:
"'Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted US natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.
"'In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best – and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.'
In his Senate speech, Sen. Inhofe said the video provides Americans with 'a glimpse of the Obama administration’s true agenda.'
"That agenda, Inhofe said, is to “incite fear” in the public with unsubstantiated claims and “intimidate” oil and gas companies with threats of unjustified fines and penalties – then, quietly backtrack once the public’s perception has been firmly jaded against oil and natural gas."
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4/25/12 Rep. West: Obama aiming 'tax weapons of mass destruction' at Americans
"'Although he has never served our country in uniform, or risked his life to defend its freedoms and liberties on distant shores, it seems President Obama understands a thing or two about weaponry,' West said on the House floor. "But in the president's case … the current weapon of choice is tax policy, and the enemies are small businesses, investors, entrepreneurs, and corporations, who seemingly are deemed undesirable.
"'President Obama seems determined to punish and wipe out economic success in this country, leveling tax weapons of mass destruction on all taxpayers,' he added."West said Obama favors the expiration of the Bush-Obama tax cuts on marginal rates, as well as reducing estate tax exemptions, and increasing taxes on capital gains and dividends.
"'Next year, unless changes are made to the tax code, America will be bombarded with the heavy artillery of the largest tax increase in the nation's history, causing massive economic injury and destruction,' West said.
"West also criticized Obama's understanding of tax policy, arguing that increased taxes would do little to reduce the deficit, which he said is caused by over-spending. He also said people facing higher taxes would react to these taxes, leading to less new revenue than the Obama administration anticipates.
"'While the President has some understanding of the destructive capability of his tax policy, he demonstrates little understanding of battlefield strategy, because those who are on the receiving end of an artillery barrage seldom stay in place,' West said.
"'The American people … want a constitutional republic, not a socialist, egalitarian welfare nanny-state,' he concluded. 'The American people want an economic future so bright, that they will have to wear sunglasses.'"
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4/25/12 Russia Hires Exxon Mobil to Get Oil Obama Doesn't Want
"Here’s the picture—Alaska contains a wealth of oil both on land, in ANWR, and off shore in its outer continental shelf. But President Obama and the Democrat party are staunchly opposed to allowing us to avail ourselves of it. And via the Keystone Pipeline, Canada could supply nearly 1,000,000 barrels of oil a day that we’re not getting from Alaska, but Obama and the Democrats have stopped that too.
"As a result, the price we’re paying per-gallon for gasoline is steadily climbing, and other countries are choosing to go where we won’t for oil. Thus the oil Canada was going to sell us via Keystone will now go to China and oil up near the Arctic will be going to Russia. And the company Russia has hired to do the extraction is none other than Exxon Mobil.
"Think about how backward things are under Obama—the largest oil company in America is going to be drilling in waters around the Arctic where they expect to find 85 billion barrels in recoverable oil. And instead of sending it to Texas refineries, and thereafter to gas stations across America, the oil will be sent to Russia and refined for their use.
"By the way, if extracted at the rate of 1 million barrels a day, 85 billion barrels of oil would last for 85,000 days. 85,000 days equals well over 200 years. Yet here we are, listening to Obama telling us the future is one of wind farms, electric cars, and a companies like Solyndra.
"Perhaps we’ll get lucky and Russia will sell us some of their oil. If Obama keeps us in this energy stranglehold we’re going to need it."
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4/25/12 Obama Slow-Jams the News to Woo Youth Vote, But Young People Live in the Obama Economy Too Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: What a terrific speech by Romney last night. The speech that essentially inaugurates the campaign. It was his best. There's no question about it. And you know why it was his best? Because it was conservatism from front to back. Now, I know, there are many people who are still asking, "Yeah, but did he mean it?" We'll find out, but for the moment, for what it was, it was awesome. [Note that none of the networks covered the speech!]
At the same time that was happening, Obama was "slow-jamming" the news with Jimmy Fallon on his program on NBC. Snerdley, how many people do you think in this audience know what "slow-jamming" anything is? Dawn, you don't know what slow-jamming the news is? Brian, do you know what it is? We're gonna play you sound bites. I asked Cookie to give me side-by-side, interspersed parts of the Romney speech with Obama slow-jamming the news as a means of illustrating just who is "presidential." I know Obama's gotta get the youth vote. He's in trouble on the youth vote, and that's why all this talk about the student loan program and a number of other things.. . .
RUSH: Let's do the side-by-side illusion from last night. What we have here is a montage of Governor Romney from his speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, and we have mixed it with Obama "slow-jamming the news" on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. We also put some of Obama from his speech last night from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in this.[Click the date to access the audio that the following transcript covers.]
ROMNEY: For every single mom who feels heartbroken when she has to explain to her kids that she needs to take a second job.
OBAMA: I'm President Obama, and I, too, want to slow-jam d'news.
ROMNEY: For grandparents who can't afford the gas to visit their grandchildren anymore. For mom and dad who never thought they'd be on food stamps.
FALLON: You should listen to the president -- or, as I like to call him, "the preezy of the United Steezy."
ROMNEY: For the small business owner desperately cutting back.
FALLON: That's why they call him the POTUS.
OBAMA: "POTUS" stands for "President of the United States."
ROMNEY: To all of you, I have a simple message: "Hold on a little longer."
FALLON: That is how we slow-jam the news.
OBAMA: Oh, yeah!
ROMNEY: The last few years have been the best that Barack Obama can do, but it's not the best America can do!
OBAMA: Can I get an "amen"?
AUDIENCE: Amen!
ROMNEY: Tonight is the beginning of the end of the disappointments of the Obama years.
OBAMA: Can I get an "amen" for that?
AUDIENCE: Amen!
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4/25/12 Mitt Romney says he would boot Ben Bernanke - The Trail Reuters
"The likely Republican nominee says, 'I’d be looking for somebody new' to run the Federal Reserve if he’s elected president. Romney criticized Fed Chairman Bernanke for printing too much money in a bid to stimulate the economy."
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4/24/12 Romney's Big Speech: It’s Still About The Economy …and We’re Not Stupid. Zeke Miller Buzzfeed.com
"Mitt Romney will declare victory himself to be the Republican Party's nominee in a much-anticipated speech in Manchester, New Hampshire headlined "A Better America Begins Tonight."
According to excerpts released by the Romney campaign, the former Massachusetts governor will try to define the 2012 election as a referendum on whether voters are better off than they were four years ago.
"'It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid,' Romney will say.
"Romney will also seek to reclaim the message of 'fairness' from President Barack Obama, framing Obama as someone who blames people for their success.
"'I see children even more successful than their parents - some successful even beyond their wildest dreams – and others congratulating them for their achievement, not attacking them for it,' he will say, drawing a contrast with Obama at every turn.
"'We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends’ businesses; the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.'
"Running as Mr. Fix-It, Romney will sum up his message: 'I have a simple message: Hold on a little longer. A better America begins tonight.'"
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4/24/12 Obama recruits an army of community organizers to ensure his reelection By ANDREW MALCOLM, Investors.com
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4/24/12 Mikhail Gorbachev Endorses Barack Obama Rush Limbaugh Show Tramscript
RUSH: "During a speech to the advanced placement students at Von Steuben High School in North Park, Chicago, former president Mikhail Gorbachev made a strong statement of approval for President Obama. 'Of course,' he said, 'Of course there are many people who don't like what the president is doing, but in my opinion, it's very good. My opinion of him is very favorable. I will support him.'" Well! There you have it. So you could say that America's enemies all support Barack Obama.
We know that the Iranians want Obama reelected, do we not?
We know that the Muslim Brotherhood wants Obama reelected, do we not?
We know that Hezbollah, they want Obama reelected.
We know that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro want Obama reelected.
Who are these guys? They're America's enemies. . . .
Gorbachev said, "Nevertheless, I did say, 'I think you Americans need your own perestroika.'".
Perestroika was Gorbachev's attempt to parcel out freedom but hold onto communism. Perestroika was limited freedom. . . .
Is that what you think we need? You think we need a little bit of capitalism out there with a command-and-control of the whole thing coming from Washington? 'Cause it's where we're headed if we don't stop. . .
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4/24/12 Journalistic Malpractice BY:
"Christian leaders, Middle East experts, and observers on Capitol Hill are crying foul on a CBS News report that they say erroneously blamed Israel for the persecution and migration of Palestinian Christians.
"The report by '60 Minutes' contributor Bob Simon blamed Israeli security policies for the outflow of Christian Palestinians from historically Christian areas such as Nazareth and Bethlehem.
"In interviews with Palestinian Christian leaders and others, Simon concluded that Israel, through its settlements and security measures, is squeezing Middle Eastern Christians into obscurity.
"The segment’s profound inaccuracies were startling, Christian leaders and other experts argued. Simon’s report, they say, whitewashed the extremist rhetoric of its various subjects and intentionally failed to tell the real story behind the West Bank’s Christian exodus—and the continuing growth in Israel’s Christian population.
"'I find it incomprehensible for CBS to focus on one Christian population that is not actually shrinking and blame its troubles on the steps Israel is taking to protect itself from these same Islamic terrorists' who target Arab Christians, said David Brog"
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4/24/12 No Arrests In matthew Owens Beating, Tensions High WKRG News 5
"From his hospital bed and weaving in and out of consciousness, Matthew Owens told his brother Lloyd, 'Don't let me die.' . . .
"Owens' brother, who does not want to be named because he fears for his safety, told News 5 the mob showed up in 3-4 cars full of people. . . .
"Owens' sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. 'It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.' Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using 'brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on.' . . .
"What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said 'Now thats justice for Trayvon.'"
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4/24/12 McCain fingers Schumer as media whore for ‘grandstanding’ on Ariz. immigration law The Daily Caller
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4/24/12 Dalai Lama Tells Shocked Piers Morgan 'I Love President Bush'
By Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters
"The Dalai Lama said something Tuesday guaranteed to make liberal heads explode.
Appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, the Dalai Lama told his very shocked host, 'I love President Bush'
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4/23/12 Cheap Fracked Gas Could Help Americans Keep on Truckin'
Companies and researchers are working on infrastructure and technologies to help bring the nation's growing stock of natural gas to fuel tanks, including those of long-haul vehicles
"A different kind of truck stop is coming soon to Atlanta. Greg Roche, vice president for infrastructure at Clean Energy Fuels, is presently scouting locations to build one of the California-based company's natural gas fueling stations for long-haul trucks by the end of this year. With fracking techniques freeing more and more natural gas in the U.S., the alternative fuel is suddenly much cheaper than those made from petroleum.
"'A trucker can save one third of his energy spend by switching to natural gas,' Roche notes, thanks to the historically low prices for the gaseous fuel occasioned by the boom in U.S. shale gas development via hydraulic fracturing. 'It's also good for the environment because it's the cleanest fuel available for big-rig trucks.'
"Clean Energy Fuels already operates six fueling stations dispensing liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the big trucks that ply the nation's highways, ranging from San Diego to Seville, Ohio. Truck stops that pump LNG can be distinguished by their tall, thin storage silos—capable of keeping up to 68,000 liters of this fuel at low temperatures and high pressures. The LNG, trucked in from big liquefying plants much like diesel fuel is trucked in from refineries, then powers the trucks over hundreds of kilometers. Such a station in the port of Long Beach, Calif., already can handle 1,200 trucks a day."
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4/23/12 Twitter Buzzes With Talk of Zimmerman Riots By Ben Shapiro, Breitbart
"There is a good amount of discussion on Twitter this morning about killing George Zimmerman now that he’s out on bail. But that hasn’t been the only action on Twitter calling for violent action. Since Friday, there has been an explosion of tweets surrounding the possibility of rioting if Zimmerman is acquitted – or even because he was released on bail: [Click the date for instances and comments.]
"It’s not just Tweeters picking up this theme. Mansfield Frazier of The Daily Beast suggested last week, 'As George Zimmerman faces murder charges for shooting Trayvon Martin, it’s worth asking if America is in danger of facing Rodney King, Part II? That’s what I see down the tracks: If this case goes all the way to trial, it’s a train wreck waiting to happen … America can only dodge so many racial bullets, and a not-guilty verdict in this case could very easily turn the racial cold war into a very hot one.'
"This is a trend that bears watching seriously by law enforcement. And watch also for more and more politicians echoing this message."
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4/23/12 Resignation of chief in Martin case rejected
By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press
"ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Sanford city commission rejected the resignation of the police chief harshly criticized for his handling of the Trayvon Martin case.
"The commissioners voted 3-2 Monday to reject the resignation of Bill Lee. The majority blamed the uproar surrounding Martin's death on outsiders.
"Police did not initially charge 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who says he shot the 17-year-old Martin in self-defense.
"Florida law gives people broad leeway to use lethal force if they believe their lives are in grave danger. The Feb. 26 shooting sparked protests nationwide, as well as debates about the laws and race. Martin was black; Zimmerman is the son of a white father and Hispanic mother.
"Lee temporarily stepped down as police chief on March 22, saying he wanted to let tensions cool."
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4/23/12 Media Want Complexion To Count In Guilt Or Innocence
By THOMAS SOWELL, Investors.com [Copied and pasted in entirety from original.]
"Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice.
"An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking — and lack of thinking — that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated.
"One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin.
"That became the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the police dispatcher: 'OK.'
"That reply removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis in fact for believing that he did or didn't.
"Why was that reply edited out by so many in the media? Because too many people in the media see their role as filtering and slanting the news to fit their own vision of the world. The issue is not one of being "fair" to "both sides" but, more fundamentally, of being honest with their audience.
NBC News carried the editing even further, removing one of the police dispatcher's questions, to which Zimmerman was responding, in order to feed the vision of Zimmerman as a racist.
"In the same vein were the repeated references to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic.' Zimmerman is half-white. So is Barack Obama. But does anyone refer to Obama as a 'white African'?
"All these verbal games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is no game.
"If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently or belonged to a different religion.
In the midst of the Florida tragedy, there was a book published with the unwieldy title, "No Matter What ... They'll Call This Book Racist." Obviously it was written well before the shooting in Florida, but its message — that there is rampant hypocrisy and irrationality in public discussions of race — could not have been better timed.
"Author Harry Stein, a self-described "reformed white liberal," raised by parents who were even further left, exposes the illogic and outright fraudulence that lies behind so much of what is said about race in the media, in politics and in our educational institutions. He asks a very fundamental question:
'Why, even after the Duke University rape fiasco, does the media continue to give credence to every charge of racism?'
"Stein credits Shelby Steele's book 'White Guilt' with opening his eyes to one of the sources of many counterproductive things said and done about race today — namely, guilt about what was done to blacks and other minorities in the past.
"Let us talk sense, like adults. Nothing that is done to George Zimmerman — justly or unjustly — will unlynch a single black man who was tortured and killed in the Jim Crow South for a crime he didn't commit.
"Letting hoodlums get away with hoodlumism today does not undo a single injustice of the past. It is not even a favor to the hoodlums, for many of whom hoodlumism is just the first step on a path that leads to the penitentiary, and maybe to the execution chamber."
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4/23/12 Our National Media Don't Deserve Their 'Mainstream' Title
The modern encyclopedia Wikipedia says, "the term 'mainstream' media denotes those generally reflective of the prevailing currents of thought, influence or activity."
But the opinions expressed by the media are neither widespread nor accepted by the majority of Americans. To call today's national media "mainstream" is inaccurate. They are better described as the "liberal" national media. Regardless, the term "mainstream" should be dropped.
According to a Gallup poll, 55% of Americans have little or no confidence in the national media to report fully, accurately and fairly. Americans are right to be skeptical about the news they receive.
How can something be considered "mainstream" if the majority of people lack confidence in it?
Journalists and the public have very different views regarding illegal immigration, for example.
In a Pew Research Center Poll, fewer than one in five journalists said they thought "reducing illegal immigration" was a "top priority." Yet over half the American people rated illegal immigration reduction as a "top priority."
Gun control is another issue where the national media are not "mainstream." According to a study by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy, only 25% of journalists listed the Second Amendment "right to own firearms" as being "essential." A Gallup poll conducted last year shows public support for the right to bear arms to be at an all-time high of 73%.
In 2008, Investor's Business Daily found that an analysis of federal records showed the amount of money journalists contributed in the 2008 election cycle favored Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans. Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, only 20 gave to Republicans.
The national media shouldn't be considered "mainstream" until the majority of Americans and journalists are on the same page. The bias of journalists in the national media has left them not only on a different page than the average American, but in an entirely different publication too.
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4/23/12 Romney, Rubio mum on vice presidential prospects Yahoo! News
"Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney dodged mounting speculation Monday about a potential running mate, even with Senator Marco Rubio, the man now in the VP spotlight, standing right beside him.
"Rubio is the latest among potential vice presidential picks to hit the campaign trail with Romney, but the first since the frontrunner's main rival Rick Santorum bowed out of the Republican race two weeks ago.
"Romney has already pivoted toward President Barack Obama ahead of the November election, telling supporters at a town hall event in Aston, Pennsylvania about the president's "great failings" and saying it was time to 'take back America.'"
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4/22/12 Welfare Spending Up 41 Percent Under Obama FoxNews.com
"In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in America, the poverty rate stood at around 19 percent. Since then, total federal, state, and local spending on anti-poverty programs has amounted to $15 trillion, yet the poverty rate now stands at 15.1 percent, the highest level in nearly a decade.
"The federal government will spend more than $668 billion on anti-poverty programs this year, an increase of 41 percent or more than $193 billion since President Barack Obama took office. State and local government expenditures will amount to another $284 billion, bringing the total to nearly $1 trillion — far more than the $685 billion spent on defense."
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4/22/12 Environmentally Sound Energy Independence
By Sarah Palin, National Review Online [Original article copied and pasted here in its entirety.]
"On this holiest of days for EcoLiberals, how about if Americans celebrate Earth Day with responsible energy development that leads to greater independence and conservation?
"There’s no better way for President Obama and his administration to celebrate Earth Day than to embrace a real, environmentally sound commitment to energy independence instead of relying on foreign countries that lack environmental safeguards. One aspect of the 'all-of-the-above' approach I have been discussing for years involves, of course, the necessity to 'drill, baby, drill.'
"It’s no secret that throughout America, including the very wealthy state of Alaska, we find a storehouse of natural resources that God so benevolently dumped underfoot, just waiting to be tapped. ANWR, for example, is screaming to be used to help bring prosperity and national security to America. Indeed, there is an inherent link between energy and prosperity and energy and security. On this day, as many are focused on preserving the planet, environmentalists need not fear that the land or wildlife would suffer from the wise decision to drill here. As Alaskans know, ANWR is not some luxurious vacation spot teeming with Bambi and friends frolicking through waterfalls and flower-strewn mountainsides, as environmentalist fundraising advertisements depict it. It is a vast, remote, desolate, frozen area available to be used with a tiny drilling footprint to bring the country closer to what is clearly needed: commonsense, money-saving, job-producing energy independence. Believe me, I live in the Last Frontier because I cherish the earth and thrive in the clean air and fresh water amid our plentiful wildlife. I don’t want to mess this up for future generations.
"Thankfully, America has the wonderful opportunity to truly demonstrate a commitment to protecting the beautiful earth we have been blessed with. No one loves our land more than we do, and no one wants to preserve it more than we do. Our high standards for energy exploration prove this. Our guidelines are stricter than those of other nations we seem content to rely on for energy, and we benefit from reasonable guidelines here. However, caring about the earth also means caring about measures being employed globally to access resources. What better way to walk the environmental walk than to take the lead rather than sitting back while less environmentally conscious countries develop resources for us—and hold us over the barrel in the process?
"America isn’t the only country that celebrates Earth Day, but we are the most exceptional. It’s time for the greatest nation on earth to tap into its full potential, and one surefire way to do so is to tap into what is beneath this earth. Energy independence awaits, and her companions are national security and financial prosperity."
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4/22/12 Reuters: Obama needs vote fraud by Don Surber, Daily Mail
"Democrats have gotten too clever for themselves in battling voter ID. Requiring people to show the same ID to vote that they must show to buy cigarettes or beer somehow disenfranchises them according to those great super-duper thinkers on the Left. It’s comical. And the British business wire service, Reuters, bought into the liberal line so much that it inadvertently makes Barack Obama seem like one big crook.
"From Reuters: 'The new laws – many of which include measures requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls — could carve into Obama’s potential support in Florida, Ohio and a few other politically divided states likely to be crucial in the November 6 election, analysts say. The analysts note that massive registration drives in 2008 helped put millions of people aged 18 to 29 on voting rolls, and that age group — which makes up roughly one-quarter of the U.S. electorate — helped propel Obama to victory, voting 2-to-1 for him. Rock the Vote, a nationwide organization that mobilizes young voters, said the new laws would make it more difficult for the group to educate people on how to sign up to vote.”
"Might I suggest that if you are too ignorant to figure out how to sign up to vote, you really are not intelligent enough to vote? Getting a driver’s license is much more difficult.
"This shows that voter fraud really is rampant — so rampant that the reform has forced liberal front groups, such as the League of Women Voters, to quit. From the article: 'The League of Women Voters also could sign up fewer voters this year, partly because it has joined Rock the Vote in suspending voter registration drives in Florida as the groups challenge that state’s new restrictions in court.'
"ACORN, too, is gone.
"Look, I don’t mind someone canceling my vote. I do mind someone doing so illegally. Campaign reform begins at the ballot box as far as I am concerned."
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4/21/20 A Really Class Act President [E-mail so date is not the usual link to a Web article]
"A doctor had his TV on
in his office when the news of the military base shootings at Ft. Hood , TX
came on. The husband of one of his employees was stationed there.
"He called her into his office and as he told her what had happened, she
got a text message from her husband saying, "I am okay." Her cell phone rang
right after she read the message. It was an ER nurse, I'm the one who just
sent you a text, not your husband. I thought it would be comforting but I
was mistaken in doing so. I am sorry to tell you this, but your husband has
been shot 4 times and he is in surgery."
"The soldier's wife left Southern Clinic in Dothan , AL and drove all
night to Ft.Hood. When she arrived, she found out her husband was out of
surgery and would be OK.
"She rushed to his room and found that he already had visitors there to
comfort him.
He was just waking up and found his wife and the visitors by his side. The
nurse took this picture.
"What? No news crews and
cameras? This is how people with class respond and pay respect to those in
uniform.
"I sent my cousin in Fayetteville , N.C. (Retired from Special Forces)
that picture of Geo. W. and Laura visiting the wounded at Ft. Hood . I got
this reply:
"What is even better is the fact George W. Bush heard about Fort Hood,
got in his car, without any escort, (apparently they did not have time to
react) and drove to Fort Hood. He was stopped at the gate and the guard
could not believe who he had just stopped. Bush only asked for directions to
the hospital, then drove on. The gate guard called that 'The President is on
Fort Hood and driving to the hospital.'
"The base went bananas, looking for Obama. When they found it was Bush,
they immediately offered escort. Bush simply told them it was o.k., and to
let him visit the wounded and the dependents of the dead.
"He stayed at Fort Hood for over six hours, and was finally asked to
leave by a message from the White House.
"Obama flew in days later and held a 'photo' session in a gym, and did
not even go to the hospital."
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4/21/20 Senator Larry Grooms: "Call Your Senator!" YouTube Video
"Longtime school choice advocate, Senator Larry Grooms, urges supporters to call their state senators immediately, in support of H. 4894. This legislation is the first school choice bill to pass the SC House, and now it is up for consideration in the Senate Finance committee. Parents deserve to see this issue decided in an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. Please call your state senator, or take a few moments to write them at www.mysclegislator.com."
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4/21/20 Dershowitz Blasts Zimmerman Prosecution: 'Not Only Immoral, But Stupid' Breitbart.com
"With ABC News’ release of the George Zimmerman photo showing blood flowing freely from his head, the question becomes whether Angela Corey, the prosecutor in the case, had access to the photo before charging Zimmerman with second-degree murder.
"The arrest affidavit did not mention the photograph, or the bleeding, gashes, and bruises on Zimmermans’ head. Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School stated upon release of the arrest affidavit that it was 'so thin that it won’t make it past a judge on a second degree murder charge … everything in the affidavit is completely consistent with a defense of self-defense.'
"After the release of the photo, however, Dershowitz went much further, telling Breitbart News that if the prosecutors did have the photo and didn’t mention it in the affidavit, that would constitute a 'grave ethical violation,' since affidavits are supposed to contain 'all relevant information.'
"Dershowitz continued, 'An affidavit that willfully misstates undisputed evidence known to the prosecution is not only unethical but borders on perjury because an affiant swears to tell not only the truth, but the whole truth, and suppressing an important part of the whole truth is a lie.'
"When asked if it made a difference whether the prosecution had the bloody photograph at the time they charged Zimmerman, Dershowitz responded, 'We do know that there were earlier photographs before the affidavit was done that strongly suggested blood on the back of the head, and we know the police had first access to him, so if there was blood they [the prosecution] would know about it
"'I've had cases in Florida against prosecutors,' Dershowitz said, 'and this is not the first time they have willfully omitted exculpatory evidence. It's a continuing problem. Here, it’s not only immoral, but stupid. The whole country is watching. What do they benefit from having half-truths in an affidavit?'
"Dershowitz added, 'I'm not taking sides, but I'm insisting that both sides play by the rules, and so far the prosecution is not playing by the rules.'
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4/21/20 Suspect: I Beat Up White Man Because I Am Mad About Trayvon Martin Case Sun-Times Media Wire, MyFoxChicago.com
Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, 'Empty your pockets, white boy.'
"The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white.
"After being arrested, Hayes told police he was upset by the Trayvon Martin case and beat the man up because he was white, Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said, citing court records."
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4/21/20 Defense worried about Zimmerman's safety in Fla.
Associated Press, FoxNews.com
"Zimmerman appeared to be wearing a bulletproof vest under his charcoal suit, and his wife and parents testified by telephone instead of in the courtroom because they said they've been threatened and feared for their safety. His wife, Shellie Zimmerman, testified she had received hate mail.
"Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester on Friday indicated that Zimmerman would be allowed to leave Florida if arrangements can be made with law enforcement to have him monitored out of state."
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4/21/20 Romney on Keystone: ‘I will build that pipeline if I have to myself’
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4/21/20 LEAKED STRATFOR EMAILS: Democrats Manipulated The 2008 Election Results
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4/21/20 Rush limbaugh Listen to Conservative Talk Shows Right From Your Browser - For Free!
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4/20/20 New photo shows George Zimmerman’s head bloodied after Trayvon Martin’s death By Nina Mandell / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The photo was released hours before the 28-year-old's bond hearing on Friday
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4/20/20 The tab for U.N.’s Rio summit: Trillions per year in taxes, transfers and price hikes By George Russell, FoxNews.com
"The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported, is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, 'a fundamental shift in the way we think and act.'
"Among the proposals on how the “challenges can and must be addressed,” according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:
--More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering “green infrastructure, ” “climate adaptation” and other “green economy” measures.
--New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned, but not specified.
--Further unspecified price hikes that extend beyond fossil fuels to anything derived from agriculture, fisheries, forestry, or other kinds of land and water use, all of which would be radically reorganized. These cost changes would “contribute to a more level playing field between established, 'brown' technologies and newer, greener ones."
-- Major global social spending programs, including a "social protection floor" and "social safety nets" for the world's most vulnerable social groups for reasons of “equity.”
--Even more social benefits for those displaced by the green economy revolution—including those put out of work in undesirable fossil fuel industries. The benefits, called “investments,” would include “access to nutritious food, health services, education, training and retraining, and unemployment benefits."
--A guarantee that if those sweeping benefits weren’t enough, more would be granted. As one of the U.N. documents puts it: 'Any adverse effects of changes in prices of goods and services vital to the welfare of vulnerable groups must be compensated for and new livelihood opportunities provided.'"
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4/20/20 Obama's Snipe Hunt By William Tucker, The American Spectator
"Watching President Obama stumble through his energy crisis, it seems only a question of whether he will end up channeling Jimmy Carter or President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina.
The latter, in case you missed it, just announced that her government will be seizing a 51 percent interest in YPF, the Argentine subsidiary of Repsol, the Spanish conglomerate that is the 15th largest refiner in the world. In most places, that would be called theft, but in the banana republic of Argentina it's just business as usual. In making her announcement, Fernandez de Kirchner stood directly beneath a wall-length portrait of Eva Peron haranguing the masses sometime back in the 1940s. It was an irony that nobody seemed to notice. Who knows, maybe there's a Broadway musical in Cristina's future.
"What prompted the move by the President, who succeeded her husband in 2007, was that YPF, originally founded by the Argentine government in the 1920s and privatized in 1993, wasn't producing enough oil. Why wasn't it producing enough oil? Because the government has imposed price controls. And like price controls everywhere, they have discouraged production while encouraging overconsumption. As a result, Argentina has ended up importing expensive foreign oil despite large discoveries of shale oil in recent years.
"This blast from the past can only remind us that one government intervention in the economy always leads to a bigger one and that, despite this sordid history, old leftist ideas never die. There will always be some demagogue telling us that the government can do a better job at running things than the people who know their business. Kirchner probably doesn't know enough about oil to tell you the difference between a hydrocarbon and a carbohydrate but as a lawyer, she is sure that once she and her friends are running YSF, oil will gush forth like Moses striking the rock.
"So that brings us back to our own Man of the People, President Obama, who is really only in the kindergarten of such retrograde policies but giving it a try. On Tuesday he stood in the Rose Garden flanked by his two apostles of freedom and justice, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder, and announced the solution to our energy problems will be hunting down and prosecuting evil "oil speculators" who are responsible for driving up the price of gas in the U.S. Who are these individuals? We don't have any names but we can already be sure they are "millionaires and billionaires" and don't pay any taxes. Why, aren't these the same people who are messing up the entire economy?! Well, what we do know is that Mitt Romney is their friend.
"Before we go any further with this, perhaps we should ask, just what are 'oil speculators' and why is it so important that they be hunted down? Here is the answer. Oil speculators are investors who think the price of oil is going to go even higher in the future. For whatever reason, they expect supplies to get tighter. Therefore they are willing to buy oil at a premium today in the anticipation that prices are going to go even higher tomorrow. It's a gamble. You don't automatically make money. Sometimes you lose a whole lot.
"What speculators do, however, if they guess right, is smooth out the availability of supplies between the present and the future. By paying a higher price now, they assure that prices will be lower in the future. In effect, they hold supplies off the market today so that they will be available next week or next year when things become even more scarce. Adam Smith described this as preventing a dearth' from becoming a 'famine'"
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4/20/20 CBO estimates Obama's 2013 budget plan would hit economic growth
"After five years, the CBO says, the Obama proposals would reduce economic output by between 0.5 percent and 2.2 percent.
"Larger deficits caused by the budget would cause the government to issue more bonds, sucking up private capital to finance its debts and thereby reducing the funds businesses could use to expand and hire, the CBO said. An increased tax on capital gains included in the president's plan would also tend to reduce private capital, it says."The 2013 Obama budget proposes continuing the Bush tax rates for the middle class and enacting elements of a short-term Jobs Act stimulus. In the near term, actions such as these could increase growth by as much as 1.4 percent, CBO says.
"The new CBO report complements a March estimate that Obama’s budget would add $3.5 trillion to deficits over 10 years compared to current law. That report did not try to capture any effects on economic growth.
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4/19/12 Total Recall: Our Future Hangs on Wisconsin Vote
by Mike Flynn, Breitbart.com
"This week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker received rock-star treatment during a speech to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. Outside the event, thousands of public sector union members angrily protested the visit. It is doubtful that any sitting governor ever sparked such passionate support or opposition in their own state, never mind a neighboring one. Most Governors can slip in and out of other states with almost no notice, but Gov. Walker has been criss-crossing the country speaking on government reform and eliciting both ardent support and fervent opposition. Such scenes go a long way to explaining why the upcoming recall vote in Wisconsin is so critical. In fact, the upcoming vote is the most important election taking place in 2012."Last year, against vitriolic and often violent union protests, Gov. Walker ushered through the legislature a package of budget reforms to address the state's fiscal deficit. The signature reform, Act 10, removed public sector pension and health benefits from the collective bargaining process, empowering local governments and school districts to close their budget gaps without resorting to program cuts or massive lay-offs. The Act also ended the practice of automatically deducting public sector union dues from members' paychecks, giving individual union members a choice in deciding to support certain union activities.
"In just the first few months of the passage of the reforms, local governments across the state have used the new tools to balance their budgets without having to resort to tax hikes or draconian across-the-board spending cuts. The state itself has quickly swung from a trend of multi-billion dollar deficits to balance and fiscal sanity. In short, Walker's reforms worked. And, boy, are the public sector unions ever pissed about it.
"Immediately after the passage of the reforms, the public sector unions threw their considerable political weight behind efforts to recall several GOP senators. They also targeted a state Supreme Court special election, hoping that, having failed in the legislature, they could put a sycophantic judge on the bench to throw out the new reforms. Despite spending tens of millions of their members hard-earned dollars, the unions failed in these efforts.
"Now, in a last ditch battle against the new reforms, the unions are banking everything on an effort to 'recall' the author of the reforms, Scott Walker. Tens of millions of dollars and rank-and-file union members will pour into Wisconsin from all over the country. The vote, scheduled for June 5th, will generate the kind of attention and excitement that is usually reserved for Presidential campaigns. Its outcome will also match the impact of a Presidential election. The future direction of our nation hinges on this vote.
"The unions realize this vote is about much more than Wisconsin or even Scott Walker. As Breitbart.com will explore over the coming weeks, government budgets, at all levels, are on an unsustainable path. Much of the rapid growth in spending by state and local governments is attributable to over-generous pay and benefits for public sector workers. During better economic times, public sector unions were able to leverage their hefty political muscle to win lucrative contracts from state and local officials, many of whom were eager recipients of the unions' campaign donations.
"Over the past couple decades, we've witnessed the creation of a protected political class who use forced union dues collection to lobby state and local officials as well as campaign for them at election time. In essence, the unions have been able to largely hire their own bosses through the ballot box and then secure general pay and benefit packages in return. This illegitimate cycle was funded by us, the taxpayers.
"But, after years of this political carousel, the money is running out. Left unchecked, union contract demands will consumer ever greater shares of public budgets. Honoring these demands will require massive tax hikes or sweeping, and draconian, budget and program cuts. The unions know this and they are scared. They realize that many of these sweetheart deals are an impossible sell to the general public. If Walker's reforms take hold and the public realizes that enormous cost-savings can be achieved through minor changes in public sector compensation, without cutting programs popular with the public, then a wave of reform will likely sweep into other states.
"The unions simply must beat Walker. If they fail, then Governors and Mayors, from both parties, around the country will mimic many of Walker's reforms. They, frankly, have no choice.
"Supporters of reform and fiscal sanity must realize the stakes of the fight this June. If the unions prevail, then efforts to stem the power of this protected class will wither. In many states, satisfying the terms of past union contracts will be all but impossible without higher taxes or crippling debt. If the unions fail, however, then the path to fiscal reform will be open."
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4/19/12 New federal agency OFR stirs 'Orwellian' fears
By James Rosen, FoxNews.com
The Office of Financial Research, or OFR, was created by the Dodd-Frank financial services overhaul that President Obama signed into law in July 2010. Technically housed under the Treasury Department, the agency has until now received its funding not from the Congress, but directly from the Federal Reserve.
Starting in July, the OFR Fiscal Year 2013 budget, estimated at $158 million, will be funded entirely through assessments -- also known as taxes -- on bank-holding firms with consolidated assets worth at least $50 billion.
But as became clear at Thursday’s hearing by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, a close reading of the law the president signed provides no limit on the growth of OFR’s budget, nor on the taxes the agency can impose on big banks to fund it.
“We’ll call you on it,” said Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., when asked if he and his colleagues see the agency growing too large.
Yet the Congress’ prospects for doing that are at present limited, as it holds no power of the purse over OFR. Detractors call it "the CIA of financial regulators,” and conjure "Orwellian" visions of "an omniscient Soviet-style central risk manager."
The agency’s official mission is to collect financial data and funnel it to another Dodd-Frank creation: the Financial Stability Oversight Council. These agencies were designed with the idea of preventing another systemic shock of Lehman Brothers magnitude.
Toward that end, OFR was invested with virtually unlimited subpoena power. It can compel just about any company in America to turn over to the federal government sensitive internal data, even proprietary information.
“We're only going to be collecting the data that we absolutely need, to fulfill our mission,” testified Michele Shannon, the new agency’s chief operating officer. “We're trying to fill data gaps. We're not going to be collecting for collection's sake. We're going to be making sure that only those people who absolutely need to have access to sensitive data have that access.”
But Republicans on the panel remained skeptical about the potential for abuses of power.
“You're able to tax corporations without any oversight by the U.S. Congress,” said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mex. “Our Constitution is pretty clear, and so if we're a little scratchy on our side, just understand it's because you're conducting things that we feel like are completely unconstitutional.”
Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., questioned both the need for OFR to exist and its ability to protect adequately the sensitive data it will collect through its subpoena power."
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4/19/12 Why Obama Lies By Ed Lasky, American Thinker
"George Will writes that 'Barack Obama's intellectual sociopathy -- his often breezy and sometimes loutish indifference to truth -- should no longer startle.' But why do Obama and his supporters feel no compunction when they do so? And does this pattern provide an opportunity for Mitt Romney to gather votes in November?
"As has often been commented, all of Barack Obama's promises come with an expiration date. They range from the relatively minor to the truly majestic such as his promise that he would not raise taxes for those families earning under $250,000 a year and that he would cut the deficit in half.
He peddled a world of wonders that would flow from passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The fabrications started early -- even in the very name of the act. Patients are not protected: not only will they not be able to keep their current plans if they like them, as he promised (businesses have been dropping company plans in reaction to Obamacare), but their care will fall under the control of the Independent Payment Advisory Board that may just decide that various medical procedures are not covered -- and, incidentally, the people on this board are 'unelected.' Where is the Patient Protection?
"Nor is the Act 'affordable'. Obama pledges that the Act would cut the deficit and bend the cost curve downward have been shown to be false." [Click the date to read the original very lengthy list.]
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4/19/12 Indonesian Source: Obama Would Have to Hunt for Dog Meat in Jakarta Charles C. Johnson, Breitbart.com
"Fidogate has just gone international. Already the Left is defending Obama for eating dog meat on the grounds that his stepfather--who was Indonesian--wanted to share his culture and customs with him. But there’s just one problem with this: it wasn’t his culture or custom.
"In fact, in Jakarta, where the Obamas lived with their Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, dog meat is illegal. In the majority Muslim Indonesia, eating dog is forbidden among most ethnic groups in the islands, though a small, black market is said to exist for those looking for it. The only exception are the Batak people, principally of Northern Sumatra who eat it on holidays--but Obama's stepfather, who was raised in West Java, isn’t a part of that ethnic group. Besides, the Obamas lived hundreds of miles and several islands away.
"A diplomatic source close to the Indonesian delegation in the U.S. confirms that while dog is sometimes eaten in Indonesia, it is done so very rarely. 'Obama had to go hunting for dog meat,' the source, who didn’t want to be identified, told me.
"'I don’t know of anyone who eats it and frankly, I’m a little offended you would ask.'
"Breitbart.com scoured Indonesian cook books. Not one mentions ways to prepare dog."
[This is one lie that I don't believe the just previous article picked up.}
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4/19/12 Reid Halts Budget Process; No Vote Likely Until After Nov. Election
"American families make and live by a budget. But not the Congress. [Too, didn't I hear that congress is legally required to pass a budget yearly. But when the constitution means nothing---]Thursday marks the 1,086th day since Senate Democrats passed a budget plan, despite the fact that doing so merely requires a simple majority vote. Yet Sen. Harry Reid's decision to kill the Senate mark-up process this week ensures that the United States Senate will not pass a budget until after the November election."
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4/19/12 Running on the low road By Donald Lambro, The Washington Times
Obama re-election strategy relies on class warfare and demagoguery
"It should be clear by now that Barack Obama will not be running for a second term based on his record over the past four years. After presiding over the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression, with a wreckage of still-high unemployment, reduced incomes, increased poverty and continuing home foreclosures in his wake, Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign won’t be running 'morning in America' ads this year.
"The kind of campaign he will be running became clear in his campaign speech at a community college in Ohio Wednesday when he leveled this personal jab at former Gov. Mitt Romney: 'I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.'
"It was a dirty, below-the-belt swipe unbecoming of the high office to which he was elected.
"For the record, The Washington Post points out that Mr. Romney and his wife 'did not inherit their wealth.' He earned his fortune by working at Bain Capital as a venture-capital investor who took small startup businesses and turned them into successful, job-creating enterprises. . . .
"Mr. Obama is out there talking about 'fairness' when the hard times we’re still experiencing under his policies cry out for growth, jobs, business expansion and new startups that come from, well, investors with money that he wants spent on bigger government.
"That’s what Mr. Obama will be attempting to sell in his low-road campaign for four more years: a fatter, richer, more costly government to make us even more dependent on its largesse.
"And if he is able to divide Americans with this scurrilous class-warfare, anti-wealth-creation campaign, he will succeed."
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4/18/12 House clears highway bill with pipeline mandate, thwarts Obama
"Defying a White House veto threat, the House on Wednesday passed legislation that extends transportation program funding through September and mandates construction of a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.
"All but 14 Republicans, with support from 69 Democrats, voted 293-127 for legislation that falls far short of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) earlier plan to move a sweeping five-year, $260 billion package.
"But Boehner’s retreat serves two crucial tactical and political purposes for the Speaker. It sets up talks with the Senate on the highway bill and keeps the Keystone pipeline — a centerpiece of GOP attacks on White House energy policy — front and center ahead of the November election.
"Republican leaders hailed the bipartisan vote as a rebuke of President Obama. Two senior Democrat leaders, Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.) and John Larson (Conn.), approved the measure.
"'The House is on record again in support of the Keystone XL energy pipeline — a project President Obama blocked, personally lobbied against, then tried to take credit for, and now says he’ll veto,” Boehner said in a statement. “There’s no telling where the president stands from one day to the next on Keystone, but he knows the pipeline has broad and bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people.'
"The House and Senate transportation committee chairmen said they hoped conferees would be appointed quickly.
"'The purpose of this extension is that we can hopefully bring about resolution and conference legislation to complete our transportation bill,' Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said Wednesday.
"A number of key Democrats also said they were supporting the plan as a way to get to a House-Senate conference.
"'It appears that the House has finally found the path out of dysfunction junction,' said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. 'We’ve been there too long.'
"The bill creates another clash with the White House over the Keystone pipeline — a project at the heart of the Republicans’ energy agenda and their election-year attacks against the president.
"Obama, facing divisions in his political base, has delayed a permitting decision on the project until after the election and threatened to veto the House bill over the pipeline language."
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4/18/12 Doctors Feeling Obama's Crushing Health Care Policies
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4/18/12 Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Goes Off On Media And Government’s ‘Rush To Condemn Troops’ Over Photos by Noah Rothman, Mediaite
"After White House condemnation of the L.A. Times for publishing photos of uniformed military posing with the bodies of suicide bombers, Fox News contributor and retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters described himself as 'furious' at the L.A. Times and the civilian military leadership for their handling of the nascent scandal. Peters told Megyn Kelly this controversy was an example of the 'moral cowardice of military leaders who never stick up for our troops but protect their own careers.'
"White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Wednesday that the White House was 'very disappointed' that those photos were published. Defense Sec. Leon Panetta weighed in as well, saying that he 'strongly condemned' the behavior depicted in the photos.
"Kelly said that the Pentagon had requested that the L.A. Times not run the photos and Kelly herself said her program chose not to air the inflammatory images. 'There are fresh concerns that these pictures, just published, could fuel a new wave of anger on the streets of Afghanistan and could endanger American lives,' said Kelly.
"Kelly asked Lt. Col. Peters what his take on the controversy was, and Peter’s said that he believed the L.A. Times was complicit in a 'terrible scandal here,' but that scandal has 'nothing to do with our troops in combat.'
"'No terrorists were harmed in the taking of those snap shots,' said Peters. 'The real scandal is that the L.A. Times, desperate to survive, creates a scandal, publishes those pictures over the Pentagon’s objections. The real scandal is that the establishment media leaps on another chance to trash our troops. The worst of the scandal is that our leaders, in and out of uniform, rush to condemn our troops – no explanation, no context.'
"'I suggest the White House spokesman Jay Carney join the military and see what it’s like himself before he condemns our troops,' Peters continued. 'I’m especially appalled that those in uniform, General [John R.] Allen, our commander in Afghanistan, just jumped to trash our troops.' . . .
"'If our strategy and doctrine is so pathetically weak that it can be derailed, destroyed, shattered, by a few burning Koreans or a few photographs – the dead body parts of terrorists – well that’s not much of a strategy or doctrine,' said Peters. He became visibly agitated and said that he was 'furious' at the 'moral cowardice of military leaders who never stick up for our troops but protect their own careers.'”
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4/18/12 K Street and Tea Party again fight for soul of GOP
byTimothy P. Carney, WashintonExaminer.com
"Big business and the Tea Party are at swords' points once again, with GOP Senate primaries for the second straight election becoming proxy battles in the war over the soul of the Republican Party.
"Conservative insurgents pose serious threats this year to establishment Republicans in at least three open-seat Senate races. In every case, political action committees and lobbyists have hugely favored the establishment pick with contributions. One reason: The GOP establishment rallies industry donors behind the Republican seen as stronger in November. A deeper reason: The revolving-door clique of K Street and Capitol Hill operatives needs Republicans elected to upper chamber who are likely to play ball.
"'We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,' former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said last election cycle. 'As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.' Lott is now a millionaire corporate lobbyist whose clients include bailout beneficiaries like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, subsidy sucklers like General Electric and for-profit colleges and government contractors like Raytheon. He likes Republicans who don't take their limited-government talk so darn seriously -- team players who won't rock the boat, in part because they are eying K Street jobs after retirement.
"Where does South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint fit in? His Senate Conservatives Fund in 2010 helped insurgent conservatives beat establishment Republicans in Florida, Kentucky, Nevada, Colorado and Pennsylvania. Also bringing money to the Tea Party wing is the Club for Growth, which figured in all those races and also helped overthrow notorious Utah porker Sen. Bob Bennett in favor of conservative stalwart Mike Lee. Lee, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul aren't exactly 'disciples' of DeMint, but they are decidedly not the products of K Street.
"Trent Lott vs. Jim DeMint. K Street vs. the Tea Party. The Chamber of Commerce vs. the Club for Growth. The battle lines are the same this year. [As usual, click the date for further details.]
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4/17/12 Tea Party Launches Group to Combat IRS By Elizabeth Harrington, CNSNews.com
"Saying President Barack Obama is 'targeting the Tea Party' and using the 'IRS as a weapon,' Tea Party activists Wednesday launched a coalition to combat the federal government agency’s burdensome and onerous interrogation of conservative groups to determine if they should receive tax exempt status. . . .
"Wilson said his organization and hundreds of others have received letters from the IRS requesting thousands of pages of information about their activities, with a two-week deadline to respond.
"'They’re trying to bury us in time, trying to bury us in paperwork, and they are making us use up resources we don’t have, especially small local organizations and small groups,' he said, referring to an IRS questionnaire with 88 inquiries. 'And they’re doing this during a critical election year. This is not by accident. This is coordinated and this is targeted.' . . .
"Toby Marie Walker, president of the Waco (Texas) Tea Party, said the IRS demanded every Facebook, Twitter and social media post released by her organization over a two-and-a-half year period, as well as lists of any information about politicians the group is associated with and transcripts for their daily radio show broadcasts. Wilson said one organization had to provide 'book reports' of every book recommended or read by their group.
"'Tea Parties and 9/12 groups, liberty groups around the country are small,' Walker said. 'Some of the groups have 20, 30, 40, 50 members, others have a couple thousand. But this is a David and Goliath fight. The IRS has unlimited resources and manpower to try to silence us. We have very limited funds and very limited human resource ability.' . . . . .
"The IRS grants tax-exempt status through its 501 (c) (4) designation for groups not organized for profit and whose exclusive operation is to promote social welfare. Unlike 501 (c) (3) organizations, 501 (c) (4)’s can engage in political activity, endorse candidates and donate to campaigns. [Click: The difference between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations (the next article) for more insight] . . .
"'We want to shine a light of what’s going on,' Wilson said. 'We want to tell the general public that we’re being attacked, the Obama administration is using an arm of the government to go after ordinary citizens.'
"'These are your neighbors, these are the people who are meeting locally and getting together and want to have a voice,' he added. 'That voice is being attacked and that voice is trying to be taken away.'” [Emphasis added.]
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4/17/12 The difference between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations NJ.com
"According to the Internal Revenue Service Code, 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations are nonprofit organizations that are exempt from paying federal income tax. 501(c)(3) organizations are either a public charity, private foundation or private operating foundation with open membership whereas 501(c)(4) organizations are civic leagues or associations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare or local associations of employees with limited membership.
"When it comes to lobbying and political activity, 501(c)(3) organizations can appeal directly to legislative bodies and representatives and may support issue-based legislation. However, they must notify the IRS of their intent to lobby by filing form 5768, which formally informs the federal government that one has elected to use the expenditure test to have the organization's lobbying activity measured. Under this test, lobbying capacity is typically limited to spending less than 5 to 20% of the organizational budget on lobbying activities, depending on the size of your organization.
"501(c)(4) organizations can engage in unlimited lobbying so long as it pertains to the organization's mission. 501(c)(3) organizations are not permitted to engage in political activity, endorse or oppose political candidates, or donate money or time to political campaigns, but 501(c)(4) organizations can do all of the above.
"In regards to supporting these organizations, donations made to 501(c)(3) organizations are deductible to the full extent of the law as charitable contributions. Donations made to 501(c)(4) organizations are not deductible, though some businesses who make these contributions often write them off as advertising or business expenses. (Please consult your accountant.) " Also click Glossary of Terms
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4/17/12 Glossary of Terms OpenSecrets.org
501(c) Groups: Nonprofit, tax-exempt groups organized under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code that can engage in varying amounts of political activity, depending on the type of group. Notably, 501(c) groups are not legally required to disclose any information about their donors.
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4/17/12 Zoning the ocean by Audrey Hudson, Human Events
"The massive undertaking also includes control over key inland waterways and rivers that reach hundreds of miles upstream, and began with little fanfare when Obama signed an executive order in 2010 to protect the aquatic environment.
“This one to me could be the sleeping power grab that Americans will wake up to one day and wonder what the heck hit them,” said Rep. Bill Flores (R –Texas).
"'This is pure administrative fiat,' said Sen. David Vitter (R –La.). 'It’s very troubling.'
"'This is purely a unilateral administrative action with no real congressional input or oversight,' Vitter said. 'I think it clearly threatens to have a big impact on a lot of industry, starting with energy, oil and gas, and fishing.'
"But in his zeal to curb sea sprawl, lawmakers say the president’s executive order also gives Washington officialdom unprecedented reach to control land use as well.
"'The order says they shall develop a scheme for oversight of oceans and all the sources thereof,' Flores said. 'So you could have a snowflake land on Pikes Peak and ultimately it’s going to wind up in the water, so as a result they could regulate on every square inch of U.S. soil.'
"Impacts on industry, consumers
"The effects of Obama’s far-reaching policy would be felt by numerous industries including wind farms and other renewable energy undertakings, ports, shipping vessels, and other marine commerce, and upstream it would also affect mining, timber, even farming.
"It will impact consumers directly through rules addressing recreational uses such as fishing and boating, and restricting the multiple use development of the ocean’s resources would also increase the cost of fuel and food, lawmakers say.
"The idea to create a policy to oversee multiple uses of the ocean originated during the Bush administration, but after push back from within the ranks, including Vitter, the idea was dropped.
"Critics of this revised plan say it is more narrowly focused, and that the Obama administration is taking their marching orders from environmental groups who want to move away from a multiple-use ocean policy to a no-use policy.
"'If you look at the catalyst for the entire initiative, it comes from the playbook of environmental groups that think the ocean ought to be controlled by the federal government,' Flores said.
"Added Vitter: 'This (Obama) administration is more aggressive and left-leaning, and they are going whole hog. I think it’s clearly a threat, and in terms of negatively impacting jobs, it’s a very, very big threat.'" [Click date for more specifics.]
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4/17/12
"Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) will not draft a Democratic budget before the 2012 election, he announced today.
"Instead of going through the traditional markup process in the committee, Conrad said he would introduce the 2010 report drafted by the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, and then indefinitely delay a vote in order to allow time for 'negotiations.'
"In all likelihood, Conrad told reporters on Capitol Hill, lawmakers would not come to an agreement until after the November election.
"Conrad said his intention was to offer 'a blueprint to build a bipartisan agreement.' A traditional budget, authored and supported by Democrats, he added, was 'probably not going to help.'
"Senate Democrats have yet to offer a formal budget resolution in nearly three years, in violation of federal law.
"The move came as a surprise to many, as reports over the last couple of weeks had indicated that Conrad would mark up an original budget resolution and attempt to pass it through his committee.
"One GOP aide told the Washington Free Beacon that Republicans on the budget committee were completely caught off guard by Conrad’s announcement, as the chairman’s staff had been coordinating with staffers in preparation for a full markup session complete with multiple votes on amendments.
"The aide suspected that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had “pulled the plug” on a traditional markup in an effort to shield Democratic members, a number of whom are facing tough reelection fights in 2012, from casting a series of politically difficult votes on issues such as health care, energy, taxes, and government waste.
"'Something clearly changed,' said the aide. 'I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Harry Reid shut it down.'
"Reid has made no secret of the fact that he does not think Democrats should offer a budget. Doing so, he has said, would be 'foolish.'
"Reports have indicated that some Democratic members were reluctant to cast votes on a budget resolution that was likely to include significant tax increases and reforms to entitlement programs. [Bottom line: If intents are know--defeat.]
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4/17/12 Republicans Sue Obama Over Recess Appointments by Breitbart News
"Today, Senate Republicans hired Miguel Estrada, the 2002 judicial nominee for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals filibustered by Senate Democrats, to press a lawsuit against the Obama administration. The lawsuit itself is based on President Obama’s non-recess “recess appointment” of political allies to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees management-union relations; it was originally filed by Noel Canning, a soft-drink business owner who sued the NLRB over its ruling that the company had to work with a labor union.
"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out firing today:
'The president’s decision to circumvent the American people by installing his appointees at a powerful federal agency, when the Senate was not in recess, and without obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate, is an unprecedented power grab. We will demonstrate to the court how the president’s unconstitutional actions fundamentally endanger the Congress’s role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch.'"
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4/16/12 Obama takes over fracking by Don Surber, Daily Mail
"Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller called him the president he waited for all his life. At the time, the price of natural gas topped $11 per million Btu. Thanks to fracking in Appalachia, the supply of natural gas is enormous and enough to drop that price to less than $2. Drill, baby, drill worked.
"Well, Barack Obama will just see about that!
"The president Jay Rockefeller waited all his life for assumed command of the fracking oil fields of western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and northern West Virginia on Friday. The president has no authority from Congress or the Constitution to do so, but by golly he is taking over fracking.
"We’ll see if Democratic Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, Democratic state Attorney General Darrell McGraw or Democratic Senator Joe Manchin will take any action against this unconstitutional attack on West Virginia.
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4/16/12 Convicted defendants left uninformed of forensic flaws found by Justice Dept.
By Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post
"Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.
"Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports surfaced that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.
"In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.
"As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects.
In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in 1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review. Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.
"The case of a Maryland man serving a life sentence for a 1981 double killing is another in which federal and local law enforcement officials knew of forensic problems but never told the defendant. Attorneys for the man, John Norman Huffington, say they learned of potentially exculpatory Justice Department findings from The Washington Post. They are seeking a new trial.
"Justice Department officials said they met their legal and constitutional obligations when they learned of specific errors, that they alerted prosecutors and were not required to inform defendants directly.
"The review was performed by a task force created during an inspector general’s investigation of misconduct at the FBI crime lab in the 1990s. The inquiry took nine years, ending in 2004, records show, but the findings never were made public.
"In the discipline of hair and fiber analysis, only the work of FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone was questioned. Even though Justice Department and FBI officials knew the discipline had weaknesses and that the lab lacked protocols — and learned that examiners’ “matches” were often wrong — they kept their reviews limited to Malone.
"But two cases in D.C. Superior Court show the inadequacy of the government’s response.
Santae A. Tribble, now 51, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978, and Kirk L. Odom, now 49, was convicted of an unrelated sexual assault in 1981.
"Key evidence at each of their trials came from separate FBI experts — not Malone — who swore that their scientific analysis proved with near certainty that Tribble’s and Odom’s hair was at the respective crime scenes.
"But DNA testing this year on the hair and on other old evidence virtually eliminates Tribble as a suspect and completely clears Odom. Both men have completed their sentences and are on lifelong parole. They are now seeking exoneration in the courts in the hopes of getting on with their lives.
"Neither case was part of the Justice Department task force’s review.
"A third D.C. case shows how the lack of Justice Department notification has forced people to stay in prison longer than they should have.
"Donald E. Gates, 60, served 28 years for the rape and murder of a Georgetown University student based on Malone’s testimony that his hair was found on the victim’s body. He was exonerated by DNA testing in 2009. But for 12 years before that, prosecutors never told him about the inspector general’s report about Malone, that Malone’s work was key to his conviction or that Malone’s findings were flawed, leaving him in prison the entire time.
"After The Post contacted him about the forensic issues, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District said his office would try to review all convictions that used hair analysis.
"Seeking to learn whether others shared Gates’s fate, The Post worked with the nonprofit National Whistleblowers Center, which had obtained dozens of boxes of task force documents through a years-long Freedom of Information Act fight.
"Task force documents identifying the scientific reviews of problem cases generally did not contain the names of the defendants. Piecing together case numbers and other bits of information from more than 10,000 pages of documents, The Post found more than 250 cases in which a scientific review was completed. Available records did not allow the identification of defendants in roughly 100 of those cases. Records of an unknown number of other questioned cases handled by federal prosecutors have yet to be released by the government.
"The Post found that while many prosecutors made swift and full disclosures, many others did so incompletely, years late or not at all. The effort was stymied at times by lack of cooperation from some prosecutors and declining interest and resources as time went on.
"Overall, calls to defense lawyers indicate and records documented that prosecutors disclosed the reviews’ results to defendants in fewer than half of the 250-plus questioned cases.
"Michael G. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and the inspector general who investigated the FBI lab, said in a statement that even if more defense lawyers were notified of the initial review, 'that doesn’t absolve the task force from ensuring that every single defense lawyer in one of these cases was notified.'
"He added: 'It is deeply troubling that after going to so much time and trouble to identify problematic conduct by FBI forensic analysts the DOJ Task Force apparently failed to follow through and ensure that defense counsel were notified in every single case.'
"Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the federal review was an 'exhaustive effort' and met legal requirements, and she referred questions about hair analysis to the FBI. The FBI said they would evaluate whether a nationwide review is needed.
"'In cases where microscopic hair exams conducted by the FBI resulted in a conviction, the FBI is evaluating whether additional review is warranted,' spokeswoman Ann Todd said in a statement. 'The FBI has undertaken comprehensive reviews in the past, and will not hesitate to do so again if necessary." [Click the date for more specifics.]
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4/16/12 Obama loses vote on ‘Buffett,’ gains tool By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times
"Republicans on Monday banded together in the Senate to block President Obama’s 'Buffett rule' tax, halting one of his chief legislative goals but leaving him with what the White House believes is a potent political weapon heading into November’s elections.
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4/16/12 Military votes don’t count By Eric Eversole.The Washington Times
Obama Justice Department excuses failure to deliver ballots to troops
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4/15/12 David Bismark: E-voting without fraud Video
[As usual, click the date to access the video. This strikes me as an outstanding voting/vote counting procedure that, in my mind, deserves considerable serious thought beyond my and your initial consideration. It deals with the secrecy of the ballot, individual verification that votes are properly recorded and world wide access for count verification. It does not deal, for instance, with the registration process. The "TED conversations" provided below the video are intriguing and, I'm confident, deserve our review and our potential contributions to the dialogue. The ted.com Web site itself is intriguing.
Thanks
to Paul Grim for bringing this to our attention. Other related links on
this, GIAC,Web site that might deserve consideration with this are
Voting System and Fraud Prevention Tradeoffs,
Ensuring Valid Vote Counts,
and
Voting System Recommendations.
Click the underlined item to view
the article itself.
[Registration and voter fraud are our biggest problems in the 2012 campaign
along with trying somehow to get through to those not yet convinced what a
disaster a second Obama term would be. Perhaps, we could somehow convince
our state representatives to impose really serious penalties upon those who
commit these types of fraud on our books as an example for all states--if
there are not there already, but just not enforced. Another thing that
volunteers could do, but also richly deserves government funding, is conduct
wholesale purges of voter registration records to remove at least obvious
frauds--in the political subdivisions of all states.]
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4/15/12 Cheney: Obama "Has Been An Unmitigated Disaster To The Country" Real Clear Politics
"'He has been an
unmitigated disaster to the country,' Cheney said of President Barack Obama.
"'I can't think of a time when I felt it was more important for us to
defeat an incumbent president today with respect to Barack Obama. I think he
has been an unmitigated disaster to the country,' Cheney said at the Wyoming
Republican Party state convention in Cheyenne on Saturday.'
"'I think to be in a position where he gets four more years in the White
House to continue the policies he has, both with respect to the economy, and
tax policy, and defense and some other areas would be a huge, huge
disappointment,' the former Vice President said.
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4/15/12 'A Struggle Ensued': Lynch Mob Justice In Florida By Clarice Feldman, American Thinker
"From time to time the U.S. is engaged in its popular, charming pastime, following criminal cases. Once the special hobby of retirees who flooded the courthouses, since cable TV and the Internet, anyone can participate in these modern versions of morality plays. The latest episode is the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman one, a story that shows how a media rife with malpractice and incompetence, a black grievance industry supported by a corrupt Attorney General , and a special prosecutor in a difficult re-election fight can twist facts and put to jeopardy a man already cleared of wrongdoing despite the lack of persuasive, dispositive new evidence sufficient to meet the state's burden of overcoming a claim of self-defense. . . ."The affidavit is so thin that commentators both left (Professor Alan Dershowitz) and right (Mark Levin) have been critical of Corey and skeptical that the state can ever make its case, even assuming 12 jurors who are sentient and untainted by the media coverage can be found . Under Florida law, Zimmerman can raise the self-defense claim at a preliminary hearing scheduled April 20 and, should he lose there, he can re-raise it at trial.
"To get a notion of how the self defense claim has been handled in other Florida cases, on January 5 of this year a teen who stabbed to death a classmate was not charged with a crime when the judge found that the murder victim had first struck him in the back of the head and continued to punch him . That sounds awfully like Zimmerman's assertion -- supported by physical evidence and witness testimony-- that Martin punched him in the nose and banged his head against the sidewalk, doesn't it?
"In sum, it appears to me an innocent man has been railroaded by the press and the race baiters, aided by an unethical, irresponsible special prosecutor and a racialist President and Attorney General. I haven't seen a shred of credible evidence to the contrary. Nothing good can come of this."
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4/15/12 Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin The Guardian
"The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
"In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world". 'I am more worried than I have been in the past,' he said. 'It's scary.'
"The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of 'restrictive' walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
"The 38-year-old billionaire, whose family fled antisemitism in the Soviet Union, was widely regarded as having been the driving force behind Google's partial pullout from China in 2010 over concerns about censorship and cyber-attacks. He said five years ago he did not believe China or any country could effectively restrict the internet for long, but now says he has been proven wrong. 'I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle,' he said.
"He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.
"'There's a lot to be lost,' he said. 'For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it.'
"Brin's criticism of Facebook is likely to be controversial, with the social network approaching an estimated $100bn (Ł64bn) flotation. Google's upstart rival has seen explosive growth: it has signed up half of Americans with computer access and more than 800 million members worldwide.
"Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. 'You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive,' he said. 'The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.'
"He criticised Facebook for not making it easy for users to switch their data to other services. 'Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years,' he said."
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4/15/12 Welch Hits Finger-Pointer In Chief Investors.com
"A business icon has ripped the administration's "divide and conquer" strategy, the president's refusal to take responsibility for his policies and for an enemies list that would make a disgraced ex-president proud.
"We now have the Obama Principle. It's like the Peter Principle, in which people rise to the level of their incompetence, except as redefined by this administration you refuse to recognize your incompetence and constantly blame others when things go wrong.
"Jack Welch, renowned former CEO of General Electric before it became the nontaxpaying sock puppet for the administration's green energy push, has penned an Op-Ed article for Reuters in which he says Obama's "divide-and-conquer" re-election strategy is unworthy of a great leader and chides the president for blaming others for our economic woes.
"'Over the past three years,' Welch wrote last Wednesday, 'Obama has taken a sort of divide-and-conquer approach, amassing a list of enemies that would make Richard Nixon proud — bankers, health care insurance providers, oil companies, wealthy taxpayers, Congress and, most recently, the Supreme Court.
"'Gas prices are the fault of oil speculators. The failure of solar power companies is the fault of unfair Chinese competition. 'The bad economy is one of the many things he inherited, as is the deficit. Operation Fast and Furious was a program begun under the Bush administration that he knew nothing about. The deficit is skyrocketing because the rich aren't paying their 'fair share.'"
"On CNBC's 'The Kudlow Report' the next day, Welch elaborated: 'It was the insurance executives in health care. It was the bankers in the collapse. It was the oil companies as oil prices go up. It was Congress if things didn't go the way he wanted. And recently it's been the Supreme Court.'
"Indeed, of all the trial-balloon campaign slogans that President Obama has and will be trotting out, 'the buck stops here' will not be one of them.
"The slogans have ranged from 'we can't wait,' a slogan that blames a Congress that for two years was a wholly owned subsidiary of his own party, to saying he wanted to build an 'America that can last.' Which sums up his statement that the system of free-market capitalism, democracy and respect for the Constitution — a system that raised a colonial backwater to the greatest economic and military superpower in history — never worked.
"While Obama says he wants an 'America that can last,' we long for a president who can govern, who sits in the Oval Office in this time of crisis instead of jet-setting from one fundraiser to another. Ronald Reagan worked with Tip O'Neill. Bill Clinton worked with Newt Gingrich. Obama couldn't work with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to produce a budget as deficits soared. . . .
"The goal of such companies, of course, is to turn profits and provide good returns to investors — concepts foreign to a president more interested in redistributing wealth than creating it. When Obama's creeping socialism and industrial policy of picking winners and losers fails, he seeks scapegoats rather than solutions.
President Obama is the Steve Urkel of presidents, the bumbling sitcom character who, when his ill-conceived plans and blundering actions caused disaster, would look around plaintively and asked, "Did I do that?"At least Urkel knew he had nobody to blame but himself.
"Not Obama."
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4/15/12 Does Obama really want to bring up illegal immigration? By Don Surber, Daily Mail
"The first president in my lifetime with absolutely no positive accomplishment in a full first term is going to focus — like a laser — on illegal immigration.
"From ABC News:
'CARTAGENA, Colombia — President Obama, on a three-day trip to South America, attacked GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney’s stance on immigration reform today, saying his support for Arizona’s tough immigration law is 'very troublesome.'
'We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country … and these are laws that potentially would allow someone to be stopped and picked up and asked where their citizenship papers are based on an assumption,' Obama told Univision during an interview in Cartagena, where the president is attending the Summit of the Americas.
"The Arizona law enforces existing U.S. law — the one that was overwhelmingly passed by a democratically elected group of people, to quote a minor ward healer from Chicago.
"From the Hill:
'I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term,' Obama said in an interview with Univision set to air on Sunday. 'I want to try this year. The challenge we’ve got on immigration reform is very simple. I’ve got a majority of Democrats who are prepared to vote for it, and I’ve got no Republicans who are prepared to vote for it.'
"President Obama’s plan is the Aunt Zeituni/Uncle Onyango Plan, whereby if you jump the border and become an illegal alien, you will be given welfare, placed in public housing and be allowed to drive drunk however many times you want. Best of all, all your hospital visits will be covered by Medicaid. Plus illegal aliens will be allowed to vote. There is no need to show proof of identification to vote. If anyone tries, Eric Holder will sue the state."
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4/14/12 Brief and Makeup of the Free Hillsdale College Constitution 101 Course:
"The Meaning and History of the Constitution' By George Edwards, GIAC2002.org
[Click the date to read the text.]
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4/14/12 NRA official: media sensationalizing Trayvon Martin case Associated Press, STLToday.com
"Police initially didn’t charge Zimmerman, prompting nationwide protests. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder last week.
"The case has drawn new attention to self-defense laws that give people a broad right to use deadly force without having to retreat from a fight. The NRA strongly supports such statutes, known as 'stand your ground' or 'castle doctrine' laws, which are in effect in about 30 states.
"Until Saturday, LaPierre had declined to comment on the Martin case, citing a need to learn all the facts. During the NRA gathering, he called the news media 'a national disgrace.' LaPierre said violent crime is an everyday fact of life in every American city.
"'But the media, they don’t care,' LaPierre said. 'Everyday victims aren’t celebrities. They don’t draw ratings, don’t draw sponsors. But sensational reporting from Florida does. In the aftermath of one of Florida’s many daily tragedies, my phone has been ringing off the hook' with calls from reporters.
"Some gun-control advocates have seized on the shooting to renew debate about guns. . . .
"NRA Executive Director Chris Cox defended such self-defense laws during Saturday’s meeting, recalling the case of Sarah McKinley, who was alone with her baby in her rural Oklahoma home when an intruder armed with a hunting knife broke down the door. McKinley shot and killed the man.
"“Castle doctrine can literally save your life,' Cox said."
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4/14/12 Media Malpractice By MARK HEMINGWAY, The Weekly Standard
"Any hope that the media might fairly and responsibly cover the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin was effectively doomed the moment Al Sharpton descended on Sanford, Florida, and started holding rallies with the victim’s family. Recall that Sharpton once said of Clarence Thomas’s tenure on the Supreme Court, 'I remember growing up reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Now I get to see it.' Unless they agree with his race-driven political agenda, Sharpton is not above accusing even African Americans of wanting to return to a day when the Fugitive Slave Act was still on the books. . . .
"[I]f a major news corporation deems Sharpton fit to cover the Trayvon Martin killing, the more depressing sign of the times is that the rest of the media have been no better. A senior NBC producer was fired after it was revealed the Today show had edited Zimmerman’s 911 phone call to make it sound like he had volunteered the information that Martin was black, as if that alone made the teenager suspect. It turns out the 911 dispatcher had specifically asked Zimmerman about Martin’s race. CNN later ran a segment on the 911 call that went over the static-filled tape with Zapruder-like zeal, suggesting that Zimmerman had said the racial slur “f—ing coons,” though the network later conceded it was more likely he said 'f—ing punks' or 'f—ing cold.' When a 13-year-old witness to the incident appeared to corroborate Zimmerman’s account, saying Martin was on top of Zimmerman during the struggle between the two, the media broke the normal protocol of protecting minors and revealed his name. The media also ran with grainy photos that purported to contradict Zimmerman’s claim he had hurt his head in the scuffle with Martin. Other photos surfaced showing Zimmerman did appear to have abrasions on his head. And, bizarrely, the media fanned the racial flames by adopting the term “white Hispanic” in describing Zimmerman’s ethnicity. (One can only imagine the denunciations if commentators started referring to the president as a 'white African American.') . . .
"[L]ast week George Zimmerman was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The right thing to do is reserve judgment until the evidence emerges in a court of law. One hopes that the media haven’t poisoned the well such that Zimmerman can’t get a fair trial. Meanwhile, it’s worth remembering America has a black president, and the country has seen undeniable racial progress. Given the political leanings and professional standards of America’s newsrooms, it’s increasingly implausible to say the media have."
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4/14/12 Martin Case Affidavit By Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Online [Entire original text here.]
"I strongly disagree with David French’s analysis. I’m inclined, instead, to agree with commentators ranging from former Reagan Justice Department official Mark Levin to Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz that the affidavit is stunningly weak — 'unethical,' as Prof. Dershowitz puts it. In fact, I go further (which, after nearly 20 years of writing and supervising the writing of complaint affidavits, I think I’m qualified to do). This affidavit is not law, it is agitprop: invoking, for example, the explosive term 'profiled' but carefully avoiding any discussion of what it means and failing to note that (a) there is no evidence of racial profiling, and (b) absent an invidious racial component there is nothing wrong with profiling (indeed, we want police to do it so that innocent people don’t get hassled).
"A few points:
"1. David makes much of the fact that Zimmerman may have continued to follow Martin despite a dispatcher’s admonition to the contrary. But a citizen engaged in innocent behavior (including investigating a potential crime) is not required to heed a dispatcher’s advice. If Martin had disregarded the direction of a police officer on the scene, that might be different. But no one is required to act on a dispatcher’s direction, even if it would be prudent to do so. Bad judgment is not a crime.
"2. David observes that we haven’t been informed of Zimmerman’s statements to the police and then oddly suggests that this is a fact in the prosecutor’s favor. There are ambiguities in the complaint that more information could have cleared up. The prosecutor has more information. Yet, she chose to leave matters ambiguous. That strongly suggests the additional information would hurt the prosecution’s case — a suggestion that is bolstered by the affidavit’s self-serving omission of any mention of Zimmerman’s injuries (and, for that matter, by the fact that the prosecutor chose not to submit the case to a grand jury but, instead, unilaterally decided to charge base on ambiguous allegations).
"3. David strangely describes the affidavit as 'agnostic' on the matter of who initiated the 'struggle.' But as we all know, prosecutors do not get to be agnostic. An ethical prosecutor does not charge unless he is personally convinced that the evidence establishes all key elements of the cited offense, as defined by the legislature. If he has such evidence, a probable cause affidavit is the vehicle for leveling allegations with clarity, not fudging them.
"4. David uses the prosecutor’s fudging to conflate 'confrontation' and 'struggle' — as if we should now assume that Zimmerman initiated a physical assault on Martin. To the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that if the prosecutor had evidence that Zimmerman physically attacked Martin, she would say so. Instead, the prosecutor cagily says, 'Zimmerman confronted Martin [note the active voice is used when nothing criminal is claimed -- 'confronting' someone is not a crime] and a struggle ensued' [as if the struggle, presumably meaning the physical encounter, happened spontaneously -- no one is identified as initiating it]. If I ask, 'What are you doing?' and you respond by punching me in the nose, and this leads us to grapple, my having confronted you does not alter the fact that you are responsible for the ensuing struggle. Again, we know that the prosecutor has an account from Zimmerman — and perhaps from other witnesses — and thus probably has a good idea of exactly how the physical altercation started. Yet, she knowingly withheld that information (in addition, again, to the information about injuries sustained by Zimmerman).
"5. David wildly overestimates the likely impact of testimony from Martin’s mother to the effect that she recognizes her son’s voice on recorded cries for help. It is not a pleasant experience to cross-examine a mother, but experienced trial lawyers do it all the time and they tend to be very effective in highlighting the mother’s obvious bias without being disrespectful or insensitive. The affidavit says there were 'numerous' calls for help, 'some' of which were recorded. Neither the affidavit nor the mother’s information discounts to possibility that Zimmerman called for help. More importantly, unlike the audience for this affidavit, a trial jury would not get the mother’s information in a vacuum. Jurors would get to put the mother’s information in context with other relevant proof — evidence of Zimmerman’s injuries, probably Zimmerman’s testimony, accounts from other witnesses, and forensics about the relative positions the combatants were in when the fateful shot was fired. Again, it is more than a little curious that the prosecutor has declined to reveal any of that information even though she obviously has a lot of it. This shooting did not happen yesterday — it happened nearly two months ago.
"6. Finally, David’s summation just confuses matters. He declares that 'there’s probable cause for an arrest (and it’s really not close).' But prosecutors are not supposed to authorize arrests based on bromides like 'When an armed man shoots an unarmed man … charges are expected and routine.' Prosecutors actually have to identify a specific charge and present evidence that establishes probable cause for each essential element the legislature has prescribed in defining that charge.
Conveniently, David neglects to specify a Florida statute for which he thinks there is such patent probable cause. Maybe there is one — although, having perused them, I doubt it. But one thing I can say with confidence is that there is not probable cause in that affidavit for the charge the prosecutor has selected, second-degree murder. It requires proof of depraved indifference to human life. Nothing in the affidavit, and nothing we otherwise know about Zimmerman, indicates such a state of mind — and it’s really not close.
"If David had said there was arguably probable cause for a charge of manslaughter, I could at least have seen his point. Florida law makes causing the death of a person under the age of 18 manslaughter, provided there has been 'culpable negligence.' It also criminalizes as manslaughter the 'unnecessary killing' of a person in order to resist or prevent that person’s violation of law (e.g., the use of lethal force to repel a clearly non-lethal threat).
"Neither of these charges would have been a slam-dunk; indeed, they’d be losers if Zimmerman shot because he was justifiably in fear of his life. But certainly an arrest could be rationalized if you think, as David appears to think, that when an unarmed man has been killed by an armed man, a prosecutor should have wide latitude to bring charges on the less burdensome 'probable cause' standard — with the understanding that, at the eventual trial, where the defendant will have the added protection of a higher 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard, a jury presented with all the evidence (not just the prosecutor’s unchallenged version) can sort out whether the use of force was justifiable. But you never get to that point unless the prosecutor can cite a charge for which he at least arguably has probable cause. You don’t get to make an arrest just because your intuition tells you what happened was really bad and screams out for an arrest.
"If I were a cynic, I’d say that an ambitious special prosecutor — exploiting the rabble-rousing of the U.S. attorney general and the racial grievance industry — [emphasis added.] filed an exceedingly serious charge for which she lacks evidence, second degree murder, in order to bask in the mob’s adulation while pressuring Zimmerman to plead guilty to a lesser charge, manslaughter, on which the special prosecutor runs a high risk of losing if Zimmerman forces a trial. So I’m sure glad I’m not a cynic."
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4/13/12 Alan Dershowitz: Zimmerman Arrest Affidavit "Irresponsible And Unethical"
Real Clear Politics Video [Click the date to access the video.]
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4/13/12 Where’s the ‘Probable Cause’? National Review Online
The affidavit in the Zimmerman case fails to justify a second-degree-murder charge.
"The charges brought against George Zimmerman sure look like prosecutorial misconduct. The case as put forward by the prosecutor in the “affidavit of probable cause” is startlingly weak. As a former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, I have read a number of such affidavits, and cannot recall one lacking so much relevant information. The prosecutor has most likely deliberately overcharged, hoping to intimidate Zimmerman into agreeing to a plea bargain. If this case goes to trial, Zimmerman will almost definitely be found “not guilty” on the charge of second-degree murder. . . .
"Even if everything in the affidavit is correct, it does not even begin to deal with the most crucial question: Who attacked whom? Even if it is true that 'Zimmerman confronted Martin and a struggle ensued,' there may have been no wrongdoing on Zimmerman’s part. 'Confronted' does not mean 'provoked or 'assaulted.' It could simply mean that Zimmerman followed Martin and asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood. Surely Zimmerman had the right to investigate a strange person in his neighborhood. The police operator’s advice that 'we don’t need you to do that' was merely suggestive, not an order to stop. Indeed, the police had no authority to give Zimmerman such an order.
"Now take the charge of 'second degree' murder. There is no way that the affidavit justifies such a charge. In Florida, second-degree murder is defined as 'the unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.' But if Zimmerman was being beaten, there was no 'depraved mind regardless of human life,' and the act 'imminently dangerous to another' would be justified as self-defense.
"Angela Corey, the special prosecutor who filed charges, claimed multiple times on Wednesday that the prosecutors 'are seekers of the truth.' In our legal system, grand juries can sometimes provide a check on prosecutors who indict based on political pressure or the desire to seek the limelight. It is no surprise that Corey avoided the grand jury."
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4/13/12 The Left's War on Women is Actually a War on Families
Demetrius Minor, TownHall.com
"Thanks to liberal Democrat Hilary Rosen’s vicious attack on Ann Romney claiming that she has never had a “real job”, the conservative base of the GOP is now united in one front, to call out liberalism. Ann Romney, mother of 5 boys and a survivor of multiple sclerosis and breast cancer, is a testament to the many mothers who made the selfless service of putting their families first.
"This goes beyond attacking the wife of a presidential candidate. This is a vile attack on conservative women nationwide. According to the logic of the left, if you choose to raise a child instead of aborting one, you are less of a woman. We have seen countless, vicious and character attacks on women of conservative ideology. Sarah Palin, for example, was criticized and scorned by the liberal left for raising a child with Down syndrome while pursuing her career. Black conservative women are CONSTANTLY being targeted for their belief in the pro-life movement, small government and for their opposition to President Obama’s policies.
"President Obama wants to vocalize his support for women, but the facts say otherwise. Women employees at the White House make 18 percent less of the median salary as do male employees. According to Amy Sullivan of TIME Magazine, the Obama administration is described as a 'boy’s club' and suggested that the president has a woman problem. It is reported that senior women staffers are seen and not heard during policy meetings.
"It is an outrage that lefties attack women instead of having a constructive dialogue about the core issues affecting Americans today. The REAL war on women is the economic plight that they are experiencing due to big government spending, high unemployment rate, a raking deficit and a President who is opposed to job creation that will benefit many women in the U.S. today.
"I am proud to say that I am a beneficiary of a productive stay-at-home mom. I will forever be in debt to my mom countless hours raising me as a child. She did more than cook and prepare meals. She home-schooled me for a period of time, cleaned and washed dirty laundry, was a mode of transportation for me when I was without a vehicle, provided spiritual guidance, and sacrificed career opportunities so that I was raised in a good home and was provided with a balanced family structure.
"The left’s war on women affects the family as a whole. It is indeed the demonizing of the mother figure, the husband that supports her, and the children that have grown to admire her. This war must be stopped and the best way to put it to a stop is at the ballot box in November."
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4/13/12 Most Americans back right to use deadly force: poll Deborah Charles, Edmonton Sun
"Most Americans support the right to use deadly force to protect themselves - even in public places - and have a favorable view of the National Rifle Association, the main gun-lobby group, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
However, there was also strong support from respondents for background checks as well as limiting the sale of automatic weapons and keeping guns out of churches, stores and workplaces.
"The online survey showed that 68%, or two out of three respondents, had a favorable opinion of the NRA, which starts its annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri, on Friday.
Eighty-two percent of Republicans saw the gun lobbying group in a positive light as well as 55% of Democrats, findings that run counter to the perception of Democrats as anti-NRA.
"Most of the 1,922 people surveyed nationwide from April Monday through Thursday said they supported laws that allow Americans to use deadly force to protect themselves from danger in their own home or in a public place.
"'Americans do hold to this idea that people should be allowed to defend themselves and using deadly force is fine, in those circumstances,' said pollster Chris Jackson. 'In the theoretical ... there's a certain tolerance of vigilantism.' . . .
"Eighty-seven percent of respondents - with high numbers among both Republicans and Democrats - supported the use of deadly force to protect themselves from danger in their home.
"Two-thirds said they backed laws permitting the use of deadly force to protect themselves in public"
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4/12/12
"The Obama administration is taking an undeserved victory lap for increased U.S. production of oil, Republicans and proponents of expanded oil production say.
"The administration’s latest attempt to claim it is expanding oil production came from the Department of Interior. The agency recently announced a new program to streamline and automate permit applications for oil and gas drilling.
The project is an expansion of a pilot program and is expected to reduce average approval time for drilling permits from 298 to 60 days.
"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that, 'By upgrading and improving our oil and gas drilling permit processing systems and technologies we believe we can improve efficiencies while ensuring thorough reviews for safety and compliance.'
"But the pilot project was originally created by a provision in a 2005 Republican-sponsored energy bill. Not only that, but the administration has spent the last four years trying to repeal portions of it.
"In its 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 budgets, the Obama administration requested the pilot program, which was funded with money from sales of oil leases, be zero-funded. Instead, the administration requested increased permit fees on oil well operators.
"'It’s like they killed somebody and are now taking credit for resurrecting them,' said Dan Kish, the senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that promotes expanded oil and gas production.
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while applauding the program, noted the Interior Department was 'taking credit for a program they have consistently tried to shut down, similar to taking credit for increased oil production that resulted not from its own policies, but, rather, from those implemented by previous administrations.'
"However, an Interior official said the comparison was 'apples and oranges.' The old program had little to do with automating the permit process, the official told the Free Beacon.
"'In short, we believe that companies, not the taxpayers, should be able to help foot the bill for processing [Applications for Permit to Drill],' an Interior official said. 'It appears that some on the other side want to continue to give oil companies a break when it comes to who pays for processing their permits.'
"This isn’t the only energy project the president has attempted to take credit for in recent months.
"'Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years,” the president told an audience in late March during a four-state tour to promote his self-described 'all of the above” energy policy.
"Republicans, however, have hammered the administration for blocking the Keystone XL pipeline and dragging its feet on approving new leases for drilling.
"'Over the past three years, President Obama has delayed, blocked, and restricted access to America’s energy resources, leading to a seven percent drop in federal energy production and no real options to address the energy crisis we face today,' House Speaker John Boehner wrote in a recent column."
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4/12/12 Obama administration rebuffs subpoena by Audrey Hudson, Human Events
"According to an inspector general investigation of the matter, Interior Department (DOI) officials said it was 'never their intention to imply the moratorium was peer reviewed by the experts, but rather rushed editing of the executive summary by the DOI and the White House resulted in this implication.'
"The Inspector’s General office said it 'determined that the White House edit of the original DOI draft executive summary led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed by the experts.'
"In Mansour’s letter to the Resources Committee, he called the mistake a 'drafting error.'
"Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the committee, said the resulting moratorium caused the loss of several thousand jobs and economic pain throughout the Gulf region.
"'It’s important to clearly understand exactly how this happened,' Hastings said.
"Spencer Pederson, spokesman for the House committee, said the subpoena was clearly worded and that the investigation 'very clearly includes the decision to impose the moratorium, the report, and the process that resulted in the misrepresentation of scientific views to further political plans to halt offshore drilling.'
"'The department’s surreal claim that they don’t understand what is being investigated raises questions about whether they’re truly interested in living up to the president’s pledge of unprecedented transparency, or they’re maneuvering to withhold unknown amounts of information from public scrutiny and Congressional review,' Pederson said."
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4/12/12 While We Dither On Oil, It's Drill, Beijing, Drill Investors.com
"A Chinese oil company is now the world's top producer. While we sleep and watch pump prices rise, China, India and even Cuba seek supplies the world over, including drilling off the Florida coast.
"Global demand for oil is rising, as is its global price, as energy-hungry economies such as China, India and Brazil scour the earth for oil they know will be the energy of the present for some time to come.
"Even those lacking their own technology are asking others to help them get more. For them, there is no such thing as 'peak oil.'
"The U.S., however, stands alone as the only major country not actively seeking new supplies.
"Less than two years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion of a single rig virtually shut down our efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, a Chinese rig built for a Spanish company, Repsol, has begun exploratory drilling for oil off Cuba as close as 50 miles to Key West, Fla. The Scarabeo 9 rig will drill at a depth of 6,000 feet underwater. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill happened at a shallower depth of 5,500 feet." [Click the date to read further on the Obama Administration knifing us.]
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4/12/12 Allen West versus the Communists by John Hayward, Human Events
"Oh, my gosh, did you hear that Rep. Allen West claims there are seventy or eighty card-carrying members of the Communist Party serving as Democrats in Congress? The House Un-American Activities Committee must be re-opening for business!
"That’s the headline you’ll see all over the left side of the blogosphere. And it’s got to be true, because they’ve got video! Here’s a clip of West (R-FL) speaking at a town hall meeting in Jensen Beach on Tuesday: [Click the date to access.]
"Except all of these video clips are very carefully edited to cut out the next thing West said. Here is the quote in full, with the omitted part presented in boldface:
'It’s a good question. I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.'
"He is very clearly not saying he thinks there are eighty secret Commies working as moles in the Democrat Party. He’s insulting the Congressional Progressive Caucus by saying they’re functionally equivalent to the Communist Party. The Caucus has 76 members, so West guessed a bit high when he rattled the number off the top of his head.
"Now, that’s a provocative jibe, and anyone sympathetic to the Congressional Progressive Caucus is perfectly entitled to be duly provoked, but portraying West as seriously suggesting Boris and Natasha lurk in the House cloak room, hatching plots against Moose and Squirrel, is silly and disingenuous. One can chastise West for noodling the CPC in this manner without editing his remarks to make him sound like a wild-eyed disciple of Joe McCarthy.
"An alternative brand of misreporting about West’s town hall meeting holds that he claims to have “heard” there are 80 dirty Commies running around Capitol Hill, insinuating that the Congressman is a credulous dimwit who reflexively believes and repeats such outlandish allegations.
"The CBS news affiliate in Miami manages to misrepresent the Congressman - complete with the headline 'Rep. Allen West: 80 Communist Party Members in U.S. House' - even though they included the full transcript of West’s remarks, and a further statement from his office, in the body of their article: . . .
"So now he’s saying socialism is basically what the Communist Party USA is all about, or at least they view it as an appetizer to the main totalitarian course they offer. And it should be totally cool for an out-and-proud Communist to serve in Congress, but it’s also a “slander” to insinuate that a sitting member of Congress might have Communist sympathies. I’m sure this was probably all covered in more detail at an Occupy Wall Street meeting.
"The comedy of the situation comes from the tortured maze of leftist taxonomy, which is made shadowy and complex by their constant need to lie about what they really believe, sometimes even to themselves. Socialism is super awesome… until nervous independents start thinking that’s what Democrat Party orthodoxy boils down to. They can’t call themselves 'liberals' any more, because that sends voters fleeing into the streets. They’re pretty sure they’re not 'communists,' even though very few rank-and-file American leftists understand what communism or Marxism really are… or, more importantly, why they are always and invariably murderous failures."
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4/12/12 Obama's Bible: The Alinsky Testament by Dr. Timothy Daughtry, Breitbart
"People familiar with orthodox Christian teaching -- as opposed to liberation theology -- will instantly note that the scriptures in question convey the exact opposite message from that which Obama intends. In the Christian worldview, caring for our neighbors and giving from what we have is a result of an inner conviction and conversion. Those actions represent submission to God, not to government. Consequently, charitable attitudes and actions are voluntary and not coerced. Jesus told the rich young man to sell his riches to give to the poor, not to redistribute what his neighbor has earned.
"But the most interesting facet of Obama’s religious references is not his leftist interpretation of the message; it is the left’s sudden tolerance for mentioning scripture in public. Liberals who constantly warn the rest of us to keep our deepest religious values out of the voting booth seem strangely happy with the daily devotional coming from the White House. Where is the ACLU? Where are those who decry any public suggestion of a power higher than government as establishing a state religion? Though it is tempting to interpret their silence as yet another example of liberal double standards, it is more likely that the left sees Obama’s religious appeals as purely tactical, as less about saving souls and more about saving Obamacare. In that light, we can see Obama’s scriptural references as more in line with Alinsky’s classic Rules for Radicals than with orthodox Christianity.
"Alinksky’s fourth rule advises radicals to use the enemy’s “own book of rules” against them. In the worldview of the leftist community organizer, the enemy is those of us who believe that we are entitled to the fruits of our labors and who do not want a central government to rule every aspect of our lives. And our 'book of rules' is the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview. But in the worldview of the radical left, morality does not stand on its own; instead, it serves as a 'passport' to political power. The left uses the language of traditional morality to cover the reality of their political agenda.
"One of Alinsky’s central tenets is that the end justifies the means, and using morality as a smokescreen to gain power is just one of the means that the left has mastered. Liberal rhetoric is sweet; it is the reality that keeps us up at night. People may have voted for Obama’s rhetoric in 2008, but they are living with the reality of high unemployment, skyrocketing gas prices, and a national debt that will lead to ruinous inflation, and the full costs of Obamacare have not hit yet.
"After the election of 2008, the new administration joined forces with Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House to push through a radical agenda that stunned mainstream America. The liberal strategy of gradualism gave way to a frontal assault on any remaining vestiges of limitations on the role of government, and Obamacare was the battering ram of that assault. If the government can take over our healthcare, there is nothing that the government cannot take over, and that point became evident as the Supreme Court considered the case against Obamacare.
"But another of Alinksy’s tactics is to pick out and to polarize a target, and Obama has followed suit with his recent warnings to the Supreme Court that overturning Obamacare would be 'judicial activism.' After appointing two judicial activists to the court, Obama’s sudden concern about judicial activism comes across as more tactical than heartfelt, as another case of the rhetorical ends justifying the political means. The idea is to bring intense pressure on the court’s conservatives to give in to the left’s demands or to face a political firestorm from the left. In so doing, he is pressuring the court to act more as a legislature, interpreting the political winds instead of the Constitution.
"As it is apparently acceptable these days to mention it in public, perhaps Christian teaching would be helpful here. Christians are taught that governments are instituted for our good and that we should show proper respect for legitimate authority.
"And in the United States, legitimate authority resides in the Constitution."
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4/12/12 Liberals or Conservatives: Who’s Really Close-Minded?
"Haidt’s research asks individuals to answer questionnaires regarding their core moral beliefs—what sorts of values they consider sacred, which they would compromise on, and how much it would take to get them to make those compromises. By themselves, these exercises are interesting. (Try them online and see where you come out.)
"Haidt’s research went one step further, asking self-indentified conservatives to answer those questionnaires as if they were liberals and for liberals to do the opposite. What Haidt found is that conservatives understand liberals’ moral values better than liberals understand where conservatives are coming from. Worse yet, liberals don’t know what they don’t know; they don’t understand how limited their knowledge of conservative values is. If anyone is close-minded here it’s not conservatives.
"Haidt has a theory regarding why this is the case, based on the idea that conservatives speak a broader and more encompassing language of six moral values while liberals embrace three of the six in a narrow set of core values. I see nothing wrong with this explanation.
"But let me present a complementary, more practical explanation: If you’re a conservative who lives in a major metropolitan area or who simply reads the New York Times, you get used to being outnumbered by liberals. Liberals, by contrast, get used to being surrounded by other liberals, both in person and in culture and the media. As a result, liberals speak their minds freely, often in ways that are harshly condemnatory of conservatives and their stands on issues. As a conservative, you can defend your values against friends and acquaintances who essentially just called you stupid and evil or you can keep quiet.
"Most conservatives, most of the time, choose the latter. That is, they stay in the closet to avoid being accused of hating the poor, gays, or polar bears. As a result, liberals aren’t gaining any commensurate information. In fact, the silence of their conservative friends helps reinforce their views. Much of the time, liberals’ views of conservative positions and values are simply a caricature that bear little resemblance to what conservatives actually think and, more importantly, why they think it.
"But during that time when conservatives’ mouths are shut, their ears are open. They’re listening and understanding what liberals think—and what liberals think of them. Conservatives understand their own world—whether it’s of religious organizations, talk radio, Fox News, or whatever—along with the New York Times, network news world of liberals."
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4/11/12 Merchants of Despair Video--Bill Whittle [To refresh your memory and get out the conservative vote.]
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4/11/12 Gingrich to Newsmax: I'm Going to Tampa, Blasts Romney's Negative Ads, 'Etch A Sketch' Conservatism
By Paul Scicchitano and John Bachman, NewsMax
"Gingrich complained with
some bitterness that the Romney campaign had been too negative against
fellow Republicans.
"'I didn’t mind being drowned in money, but I did mind that many of the
ads were dishonest,' he said of Romney. 'I think that’s a mistake on his
part.'
"He added that he would like to see less negativity in the final months
of the primary battle leading up to the GOP convention in Tampa this August.
"'I think that he has enough resources and enough of an advantage,' said
Gingrich. 'This last phase of the campaign — he ought to be able to win it
in a positive campaign — not a negative one.'
"While the lopsided balance sheets have been a key factor in the
Republican race, Gingrich said that it would be interesting to see how
Romney would fare against President Obama’s political war chest.
"'I think what you’re seeing is the ability to go to Wall Street and
raise millions of dollars has had an impact— and it’s one of the things that
will be sobering this fall because as much as Romney can raise— I suspect
Obama can raise more,' he said.
"Despite his differences with Romney, Gingrich said he would be willing
to help the candidate in any way he could should Romney become the party’s
standard bearer up to and perhaps including a place on the Romney ticket if
asked.
"'I’ll do anything I can to make sure that we defeat Barack Obama,' he
declared. “I’ve said all along — Gov. Romney said the same thing as did Sen.
Santorum — each of us would like to be president. But we’re all dedicated to
the idea of beating Obama.'”
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4/11/12 Rand Paul: Hillary Commits to UN Small Arms Treaty Rand Paul, The Right Planet
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced the Obama Administration will be working hand-in-glove with the UN to pass a new 'Small Arms Treaty.'
"Disguised as an 'International Arms Control Treaty' to fight against 'terrorism,' 'insurgency' and 'international crime syndicates,' the UN Small Arms Treaty is in fact a massive, GLOBAL gun control scheme."
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4/11/12 Eric Holder Praises Left-Wing Activist Al Sharpton, Says Facts, Law Will Guide Trayvon Martin Investigation By Elizabeth Harrington, CNSNews.com
The National Action Network, which Sharpton founded, has held multiple rallies about the Martin shooting, largely critical of shooter George Zimmerman, irrespective of an ongoing investigation.
Zimmerman, who has not been arrested in the case, said he acted in self-defense after following Martin on Feb. 26, the night Martin was killed. A Florida special prosecutor announced on Monday that the case will not be taken before a Florida grand jury, though the investigation will continue. The FBI and Justice Department are also pursuing their investigations.
MSNBC’s Sharpton has led several rallies, shouting 'Arrest Zimmerman Now!' and has called for civil disobedience and an 'occupation' in Sanford, Fla., if an arrest is not made.
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4/11/12 Congress flooded with calls to probe Obama WND
Thousands demanding answers about president's eligibility
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he’s talked to members of his state’s congressional delegation about his Cold Case Posse investigation that suggests there was fraud in the creation of Barack Obama’s birth documentation that was released by the White House in 2011.
"The investigation also concluded that Obama’s Selective Service registration is the same – a forgery, leading to the obvious question of what happens if Obama legally cannot be president.
"But he’s seen no results.
"Now, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people are going to see whether Congress ignores their concerns, too.
"During the first day it was available, some 1,000 people signed up every hour. That means a patriotic American was adding his or her name to the list every … wait … there it is … few seconds.
"Click on this link to read the petition and add your name (Please sign only once). . . .
"A multitude of court cases have come and gone, some being rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court where one justice admitted the panel was avoiding the issue.
"In recent weeks a new round of court challenges has arisen, where citizens utilize state laws allowing challenges to candidate eligibility. They simply are asking Obama to document his eligibility."
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4/11/12 Hillary Clinton Sides with Palestinians Over Republicans
Sara Sorcher of National Journal reports, The Weekly Standard
"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is allowing U.S. funds to flow to the West Bank and Gaza despite a hold by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., a rare display of executive-branch authority sure to anger the key lawmaker concerned about protecting her congressional oversight role.
"A State Department official said that the letter was delivered on Tuesday to key members of Congress informing them of Clinton's decision to move forward with the $147 million package of the fiscal year 2011 economic support funds for the Palestinian people, despite Ros-Lehtinen's hold. Administrations generally do not disburse funding over the objections of lawmakers on relevant committees.
"'[The funds deliver] critical support to the Palestinian people and those leaders seeking to combat extremism within their society and build a more stable future. Without funding, our programs risk cancellation,' the official, who was not authorized to speak about the issue, said in an e-mail. 'Such an occurrence would undermine the progress that has been made in recent years in building Palestinian institutions and improving stability, security, and economic prospects, which benefits Israelis and Palestinians alike.'”
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4/11/12 12 Christians in Iran await verdicts after Easter Sunday apostasy trial
Twelve Christians stood trial Easter Sunday in Iran, where they were called “apostates” in a courtroom and tried on multiple charges, according to sources close to Iran’s Christian community.
The Christians had been acquitted on the same charges, including “crimes against the order,” a year ago in Bandar Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea. The group was first arrested when authorities found them drinking wine while taking communion, according to sources.
“It ultimately illustrates that being a Christian is illegal in Iran. No matter how clear or how open a pastor and a church may be, Christians are being brought to trial just for being Christian,” said Jason DeMars, director of the Present Truth Ministries advocacy group who is in daily contact with the Evangelical Christian community in Iran.
4/11/12 Fear Armstrong Williams, TownHall.com
"The Democrats are using fear more than hatred since the House passed the Ryan budget along party lines. Many people do not need to be persuaded of the details—fear is enough for them to take the Democrat side. Ryan is 'changing Medicare as we know it,' they say, and 'change' of any kind is suddenly an automatic disqualifier.
"Why are these rank and file Democrats afraid of the Ryan budget, and not afraid of the President’s budget, which, by the way, was shot down without receiving a single vote even from Democrats? President Obama has yet to offer a budget that ever balances—if we take any of his budgets, they promise permanent deficit spending. The Republican messaging problem is that no one is afraid of that. . . .
"Why are people not afraid of this crushing inflation? How can we take this also for granted? People often remark and joke about how cheap a loaf of bread used to be, but never realize how harmful it is that the dollar has been so weakened.
"Fear is sometimes appropriate, and this would be one of those times. We should fear skyrocketing debt and its consequent inflation; we should fear the disintegration of the family in our society; we should fear cuts to our already over extended military.
"What we shouldn’t fear? The Ryan Budget, for one thing, which doesn’t even balance this decade. This is hardly a radical proposal—it’s only radical compared to our Far Left president.
"To my Democrat friends, who believe so strongly in the virtue of big government, I say this: perhaps spending cuts could actually make the government work better. Maybe if a government agency couldn’t simply borrow and borrow indefinitely, it would be forced into efficiency. We can certainly agree that infinite spending does not encourage efficiency; why be so afraid of cutting the deficit, of approaching a balanced checkbook?
"All this fear- mongering from the left has got me afraid."
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4/11/12 Obama Besmirches Reagan's Name to Distract Us from His Own Dismal Record
Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: Here. I want to read to you, ladies and gentlemen, from one of Obama's books that we're told that he wrote. It is chapter seven of his first autobiography. Obama has two, you see. He's done so much as a community organizer and as a lecturer and a rabble-rouse, it takes two massive -- massive -- volumes to catalog this incredible life led by Barack Obama. The first book, Dreams from My Father, page 54 is when Obama tells us why he got into political. "In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer," writes The One. "There wasn’t much detail to the idea; I didn’t know anyone making a living that way.
"When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change."
Democrats always run as conservatives. Even Obama is gonna run as a conservative. That's what he's trying to do here. He so despised Reagan it's what made him want to become a community organizer to start coalescing and effervescing from the bottom up! Yet when he gets in trouble, who does he invoke? Ronaldus Magnus! He's out there saying in Palm Beach Gardens (impression) "We tried! We tried it, uhhhhh, for ten years with Bush, and it didn't work." It did work. The Bush-era tax cuts were followed by 52 consecutive months of job growth. Fifty-two! Obama doesn't have one policy that will make that happen.
Every policy Obama has in place is an obstacle to job creation. The Bush-era tax cuts were followed by 52 consecutive months of job growth. That, by the way, is a record in US history. The Bush tax cuts helped to create more than eight million new jobs. That's close to a record in the period of time. The Bush tax cuts brought the unemployment rate down to 4.5%. The Bush tax cuts worked better than even their biggest advocates dreamed they would work. And Obama has the audacity here in Florida last night to tell people they didn't work. These people... It's why, folks, you cannot... It's why it's a mistake for Paul Ryan to start debating any assertion Obama makes. It's all lies.
You know the old adage about getting in an argument with a fool: After not too long a time, people can't tell the difference. The way to deal with this is, you know, put some facts out there, but focus on the dismal failure that Obama is. We had a 4.5% unemployment rate, and it was even as low as 5% in 2008. Do you realize in the spring of 2008, the election year, the unemployment rate was 5%, as opposed to the so-called 8.2% today? Yep, it didn't work, did it? It was all fake, phony!
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4/10/12 Holder’s Black Panther blind spot The Washington Times
Justice Department ignores black-on-white crime
"What is it about the Justice Department and the Black Panthers? On March 24, Mikhail Muhammad, leader of the New Black Panther Party, offered a $10,000 bounty for the 'capture' of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. The Panthers distributed wanted posters, calling him a 'child killer' and offering the bounty 'dead or alive.' Muhammad warned that Mr. Zimmerman 'should be fearful for his life.'
"These acts were almost certainly criminal. Florida Code 787.01 makes it a felony to threaten someone or abduct them with the intent to terrorize. Florida Code 777.04 further criminalizes solicitation which 'commands, encourages, hires or requests another person' to engage in criminal activity such as kidnapping. Solicitation to kidnap is also a federal crime, and the fact that this was unambiguously racially-based brings it within the purview of federal hate-crime laws.
"There is an important moral dimension at play as well. This scandal offers an opportunity for the Obama administration to show it can act impartially and calm racial tensions. So far, the White House has failed to lead on the issue. President Obama’s high-profile public statement - 'If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon' - was bizarre and seemed to show undue bias. Taking swift action against those who seek to incite racial violence would demonstrate that the federal government enforces the law without prejudice.
"The Justice Department has yet to step up. Mr. Zimmerman’s worried family sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asking, 'Why, when the law of the land is crystal clear, is your office not arresting the New Black Panthers for hate crimes?… Since when can a group of people put a bounty on someone’s head, circulate Wanted posters publicly, and still be walking the streets?' They are still awaiting a response.
"This isn’t the first time Mr. Holder’s department has been accused on being soft on black radicals. In 2009, Justice was pressured into acting against two Black Panthers who showed up armed and made threats to voters at a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 election. Some charges were later narrowed and most were withdrawn. This light touch prompted internal and independent investigations into why the Black Panthers were not brought to justice.
"Attorney J. Christian Adams, who resigned from Justice in 2010 to protest the handling of the Black Panther case, testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he was told 'cases are not going to be brought against black defendants for the benefit of white victims.' The December 2010 Civil Rights Commission report on its investigation said, 'While the department has issued general statements that it enforces the laws without regard to race, these assurances do not confirm, deny or explain the specific allegations of misconduct.' In March 2011, Mr. Holder claimed it was “simply false” that the Justice Department made enforcement decisions based on race. Now he has an opportunity to prove it by opening a criminal investigation against the Black Panthers."
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4/10/12
The Social-Darwinist Smear
National Review Online
President Obama throws another rhetorical
temper tantrum.
"President Barack Obama lambasted the Paul Ryan budget as 'thinly veiled social Darwinism' in a scorching budget speech last week. The charge displayed the same care as his contention that it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation passed by Congress — in other words, another verbal temper tantrum substituting petulance for reason. . . .
"Doesn’t Ryan want to cut taxes for the rich? He would reduce tax rates, while making the revenue up by closing loopholes and deductions. This Darwinistic notion was endorsed by President Obama’s own fiscal commission, chaired by men the president fulsomely praised without ever once mentioning that they were a danger to the weak and the vulnerable on account of their unhinged belief in a society run by and for the evolutionarily superior.
"But Ryan wants to end Medicare, doesn’t he? Ten years from now, Ryan proposes introducing an element of choice into Medicare while limiting the program’s growth to the GDP growth rate plus 0.5 percent, the same spending goal that the president sets out in his own budget. If Ryan is 'red in tooth and claw' on Medicare, so is the president. The difference is that President Obama prefers a price-setting bureaucratic panel to competition as his Darwinistic tool to weed out the maladapted elderly.
"If the president were asked to enunciate a line between heartless social Darwinism and prudent budgeting, he surely couldn’t do it. What he means by a social Darwinist is someone who wants to spend less money than he does. By this standard, the president is a damnable social Darwinist compared with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which wants to spend $1.5 trillion more than he does over the next ten years and raise taxes by several trillion more.
"If social Darwinism is merely the belief that the market is the best system for allocating capital and wealth, and that a free society will necessarily be an unequal one, then almost everyone in America is a social Darwinist. . . .
"[L]iberalism hasn’t evolved at all down through the decades: Seventy years later, it’s still the same witless insult, for the same reason."
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4/10/12 Paul Ryan: Obama creating ‘government-centered society’ of ‘debt and decline’
"Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that President Barack Obama is creating a 'government-centered society' that will lead to the 'decline' of America unless the federal government changes its current fiscal policy.
"'On the one path, we’ve got the president’s path: A government-centered society, a society on the path of debt and decline — the path we’re on today. On the other path is what we’re proposing: A path to prosperity,' said Ryan at the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s 'Tax Policies For 4% Growth' conference at the New York Historical Society on Tuesday.
"'A path to actually getting us back onto growth, fixing these problems and pre-empting a debt crisis. And this November, what we’re asking for is the affirmation of the county to give us the permission and the obligation to put these things into place to fix this before it gets out of our control. … I would argue that President Obama is bringing us toward this government-centered society. He is putting his trust in government and this is a trust that puts us down the path of debt and decline.'
"Ryan outlined two 'tipping points' Europe has 'already crossed' which he said will be 'difficult' for America to “come back from” after they occur.
"'A tipping point of debt, after which if the bond markets turn on us then we’re in the austerity mode, then we’re in the cutting benefits for current beneficiaries, changing the social contract for people who have already retired who organize their lives around these programs,” Ryan said.
"'Cranking up taxes, slowing down your economy, and then we’re in manage-decline mode. Then our budget is whatever the bond markets tell us it has to be.'
"According to the Department of Treasury, the current public debt is $15,621,445,734,132.83
"Ryan called the 'moral tipping point' a 'tougher' obstacle for the U.S. to overcome.
"'The tougher tipping point is the tipping point of the moral tipping point, where we become more of a taker society versus a maker society; the kind of tipping point where the vast majority of able-bodied Americans do not see themselves as the provider for themselves, but the government,' said Ryan.
“Where we have taken our safety net and instead of working it and reforming it to get people off of welfare and on to work, turn it into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency.”
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4/10/12 Is Anyone Really Shocked That Obamacare Costs More Than They Told Us?
Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: I'm sitting here, my mouth is agape. Everybody is all bent out of shape over this report that Obamacare's gonna add $340 billion to the deficit, as though that's somehow big news. Has everybody forgotten, it was just a couple of months ago that it was documented by the Congressional Budget Office that the whole thing's gonna cost twice as much as it was projected. The original cost of Obamacare was under a trillion dollars. The magic number was a trillion because that was the cost of the Iraq war. And Obama had to say that he hated the Iraq war; it was a waste of a trillion dollars; we want to put that money to better use with health care. They had to score that stupid health care bill so it came in under a trillion dollars.
The way they did that over a ten-year period was to start the tax increases immediately, but they delayed any of the so-called spending or health care benefits, the bulk of them, 'til 2014. So we had ten years of tax increases, only six years of so-called health care benefits, and that's how they kept the number under a trillion dollars. The CBO looked at it and said, "By the way, when this thing gets fully implemented and we're gonna count both the tax increases and the spending over ten years, guess what? The cost goes up to nearly two trillion."
And today there's a story, a Republican report, Medicaid actuary, Medicare, whatever, that it's gonna add $340 billion in debt. That's like adding a quarter -- $340 billion dollars is a sizeable amount of money, but it's gonna be so much more than that. Anyway, the White House is acting like stuck pigs over this news. They're trying to deny it. They're saying it was partisan, a Republican report, 52 pages, put this out. But it's chump change compared to what this thing is actually gonna cost. And don't forget the news recently that 4,000 IRS agents are being hired and $500 million is being diverted to hire them and to put them into gear. You need to be asking yourself, in a health care bill where it's all about you getting treated for the mumps or whatever, why in the world is the IRS involved? . . .
I'm the only one who made a big deal out of the trillion-dollar CBO scoring? I'm the only one who made a big deal over the fact it was gonna cost two trillion in ten years? I'm the only one? Well, that means at least 20 million Americans know because they listen and we didn't just lightly touch that. We didn't just barely gloss over it. We made a big deal out of it.
Folks, you are so far ahead of the game listening to this program. You are so far ahead of the learning curve. But it's laughable, and everybody's all excited. I mean, even people on our side are acting shocked and stunned and like they stumbled across some big, new news story that they can really use to effectively kill Obamacare. . . .
Even the AP, in their story on this, admits that all of the supposed savings in Obamacare come from double counting Medicare cuts. They double count Medicare, $500 billion dollar times two. They double count it. The first thing they do is they cut it, and then they put it back in, and they count it both times when they do this. "Under federal accounting rules, the Medicare cuts are also credited as savings to that program’s trust fund. But the CBO and Medicare’s own economic estimators already said the government can’t spend the same money twice." [It all has been so obviously a total lie.]
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4/9/12 Learn Continuous Chest Compression CPR medicine.arizona.edu
"This video is worth sharing," said Gordon A. Ewy, MD, director of the UA Sarver Heart Center and one of the research pioneers who developed this method. [As usual, click the date to access the important video.]
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4/9/12 Why I Do Not Like The Obamas [Copied and pasted in the original article's entirety]
Mychal Massie
The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn’t like the Obama’s? Specifically I was asked: “I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama’s? It seems personal not policy related. You even dissed their Christmas family pic.” The truth is I do not like the Obamas, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policiesand legislation.
I’ve made no secret of my contempt for the Obamas. As I responded to the person who asked me the aforementioned question, I don’t like them because they are committed to the fundamental change of my/our country into what can only be regarded as a Communist state.
I don’t hate them per definition, but I condemn them because they are the worst kind of racialists, they are elitist Leninists with contempt for traditional America. They display disrespect for the sanctity of the office he holds, and for those who are willing to admit same Michelle Obama’s raw contempt for white America is transpicuous.
I don’t like them because they comport themselves as emperor and empress. I expect, no I demand respect for the Office of President and a love of our country and her citizenry from the leader entrusted with the governance of same. President and Mrs. Reagan displayed an unparalleled love for the country and her people. The Reagans made Americans feel good about themselves and about what we could accomplish. Could you envision President Reagan instructing his Justice Department to act like jack-booted thugs?
Presidents are politicians and all politicians are known and pretty much expected to manipulate the truth, if not outright lie, but even using that low standard, the Obama’s have taken lies, dishonesty, deceit, mendacity, subterfuge and obfuscation to new depths. They are verbally abusive to the citizenry and they display an animus for civility.
I do not like them, because they both display bigotry overtly, as in the case of Harvard Professor Louis Gates, when he accused the Cambridge Police of acting stupidly, and her code speak pursuant to now being able too be proud of America. I view that statement and that mindset as an insult to those who died to provide a country where a Kenyan, his illegal alien relatives, and his alleged progeny, could come and not only live freely, but rise to the highest, most powerful, position in the world. Michelle Obama is free to hate and disparage whites, because Americans of every description paid with their blood to ensure her right to do same.
I have a saying, that “the only reason a person hides things, is because they have something to hide.” No president in history has spent over a million dollars to keep his records and his past sealed. And what the two of them have shared has been proved to be lies. He lied about when and how they met, he lied about his mother’s death and problems with insurance, Michelle lied to a crowd pursuant to nearly $500,000 bank stocks they inherited from his family. He has lied about his father’s military service, about the civil rights movement, ad nauseum.
He lied to the world about the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address. He berated and publicly insulted a sitting Congressman. He has surrounded himself with the most rabidly, radical, socialist academicians today. He has fought for abortion procedures and opposed rulings that protected women and children, that even Planned Parenthood did not seek to support. He is openly hostile to business and aggressively hostile to Israel.
His wife treats being the First Lady, as her personal American Express Black Card (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I condemn them because, as people are suffering, losing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, he and his family are arrogantly showing off their life of entitlement – as he goes about creating and fomenting class warfare.
I don’t like them, and I neither apologize nor retreat from my public condemnation of them and of his policies. We should condemn them for the disrespect they show our people, for his willful and unconstitutional actions pursuant to obeying the Constitutional parameters he is bound by, and his willful disregard for Congressional authority.
Dislike for them has nothing to do with the color of their skin, it has everything to do with their behavior, attitudes, and policies. And I have open scorn for their playing the race.
It is my intention to do all within my ability to ensure their reign is one term. I could go on, but let me conclude with this. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate them as they did President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are. There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord over the people as these two are permitted out of fear for their color.
As I wrote in a syndicated column titled “Nero In The White House” – “Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood…Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement – while America’s people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.”
Oh, and as for it being personal, you tell me how you would feel if a senator from Illinois sent you a personally signed card, intended to intimidate you and your family. Because you had written a syndicated column titled “Darth Democrat” that was critical of him.
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RUSH: The IRS has been a part of Obamacare since the first days they started writing it. This is nothing new that happened this week. This isn't new. You probably know this. But for the rest of the audience: They didn't just decide last week to take $500 million and divert it to the IRS. This has been in the health care bill from the get-go. It's in the 2,700 pages. Obamacare is just a new tax, folks. A series of new taxes. That's all it is. It is not a health care bill. It's disguised as a health care bill to expand the size, the reach, and the scope of government and to have it as intimately involved in everybody's life as possible.
It has nothing to do with providing people health care.
It isn't going to succeed at that.
It's not about providing everybody with health insurance. It's going to destroy the private sector health market. And if you think getting health insurance and treatment from the DMV is something you want to do, that's what you face here. This is not about that. It is about a way to tax people who don't have insurance and to tax the employers who don't provide coverage. This is about collecting money from people for health care who are not spending any money on health care. And that's why the IRS is there: To enforce these new taxes -- or fines or levies -- if you don't follow the rules and buy a policy. That's why the IRS is there. That's why this has nothing to do with health care. It's taxes and collection in 2,700 pages.
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4/9/12 O'Keefe Voter Fraud Investigation: Young Man Offered Holder's Ballot By Breitbart News
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has declared that there is no proof that in-person voter fraud is a problem. He's about to see proof that even he can't deny.
"In a new video [Click the date to access the video and insightful reader comments.] provided to Breitbart.com, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas demonstrates why Holder should stop attacking voter ID laws--by walking into Holder’s voting precinct and showing the world that anyone can obtain Eric Holder’s primary ballot. Literally.
"The video shows a young man entering a Washington, DC polling place at 3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW, on primary day of this year--April 3, 2012--and giving Holder’s name and address. The poll worker promptly offers the young man Holder’s ballot to vote.
"The young man then suggests that he should show his ID; the poll worker, in compliance with DC law, states: “You don’t need it. It’s all right. As long as you’re in here, you’re on our list, and that’s who you say you are, you’re okay.”
The young man replies: “I would feel more comfortable if I just had my ID. Is it alright if I go get it?" The poll worker agrees.
"'I’ll be back Faster than you can say Furious,' the young man jokes on his way out, in a reference to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal that has plagued Holder’s Department of Justice.
"Holder has maintained that voter fraud is not a major problem in the United States, and that voter ID would not curb voter fraud in any case.
"As Project Veritas has proven, voter fraud is easy and simple--and may be increasingly common in the absence of voter ID laws.
"Project Veritas has already shown how dead people can vote in New Hampshire, prompting the state senate to pass a voter ID law; they’ve also shown people can use celebrity names like Tim Tebow and Tom Brady to vote in Minnesota, prompting the state legislature to put voter ID on the ballot as a constitutional amendment." [Note the young man did not say he was Holder so no lie or fraud there.]
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4/9/12 Why We Need Voter-ID Laws Now , National Review Online
"Voter fraud is a scandal, and the attorney general can’t look away anymore.
Attorney General Eric Holder is a staunch opponent of laws requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls to improve ballot security. He calls them 'unnecessary' and has blocked their implementation in Texas and South Carolina, citing the fear they would discriminate against minorities.
"I wonder what Holder will think when he learns just how easy it was for someone to be offered his ballot just by mentioning his name in a Washington, D.C., polling place in Tuesday’s primaries.
"Holder’s opposition to ID laws comes in spite of the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in 2008, authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, that upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s tough ID requirement. When groups sue to block photo-ID laws in court, they can’t seem to produce real-world examples of people who have actually been denied the right to vote. According to opinion polls, over 75 percent of Americans — including majorities of Hispanics and African-Americans — routinely support such laws.
"One reason is that people know you can’t function in the modern world without showing ID — you can’t cash a check, travel by plane or even train, or rent a video without being asked for one. In fact, PJ Media recently proved that you can’t even enter the Justice Department in Washington without showing a photo ID. Average voters understand that it’s only common sense to require ID because of how easy it is for people to pretend they are someone else
As for the D.C. Board of Elections, its loose practices are a matter of record. Last year, a community activist uncovered the fact that Andrea Pringle, the new deputy chief of staff to Washington, D.C., mayor Vincent Gray, had voted illegally in the district even though she admitted to living in Maryland. She resigned in the face of the criticism. . . .
"'From voter fraud to election chicanery of all kinds, America teeters on the edge of scandal every November,' says Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and author of a comprehensive survey of voter fraud called 'Dirty Little Secrets.' The fact that so many people want to thwart legitimate and prudent efforts to improve ballot integrity has become a scandal in its own right. Attorney General Holder is unlikely to agree with that, but after what happened at his polling place last Tuesday, he should at least understand that voter fraud itself is a scandal worth investigating."
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Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: It's a Rasmussen poll, but the fact of the matter, the numbers are going up, and dramatically. Thirteen points after the oral arguments. Now, the White House is gonna look at this, it cannot make them happy. Obama has been trying to make people despise the court, distrust the court. It's like everything else in reality that's happening to Obama, it's going in the wrong direction. Like they're trying to manufacture, for example, this phony Republican war on women, and now they're out trying to say that Romney is forever tainted by this and cannot overcome it. . . .
[T]hey think they're winning their war on the economy. The war on the economy is to make people think that 8.2% unemployment is equal to 5% unemployment. That five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is the same as three dollars. They're trying to redefine the economy now, what we have now as the new normal. . . .
[T]he real war on women is being conducted by the regime, by the Obama administration. Since Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate for women has gone up from seven to 8.1%. Since Obama took office, the number of female workers has declined by 683,000. Since Obama took office, the number of women unemployed has increased by 858,000, close to a million. The poverty rate among women rose to 14-and-a-half percent last year, up from 13.9% when Obama was immaculated. That's over half a percentage point in Obama's three years. And it happens to be the highest rate for poverty in women in 17 years. If there is a war on women, it is happening and it is being directed from the White House with Obama as the generalissimo.
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4/8/12 Saudi cleric issues fatwa to demolish Christian Churches in Arabia
"Saudi Arabia’s top Muslim leader recently issued a religious decree calling for all Christian churches on the Arabian peninsula to be demolished, a move that elicited protests from the U.S. government and undermines recent efforts in the kingdom to promote interfaith tolerance.
"Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh issued the fatwa, or Muslim religious decree, on March 11, although government-controlled media in the country so far have not reported it. . . .
"The grand mufti is the most senior religious law official in the Sunni Muslim kingdom. He also heads the Supreme Council of Ulema, or Islamic scholars, and the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas. . . .
The grand mufti is the most senior religious law official in the Sunni Muslim kingdom. He also heads the Supreme Council of Ulema, or Islamic scholars, and the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas.
"The mufti’s remarks followed an announcement on Twitter by Kuwaiti parliamentarian Osama Al-Munawer that he planned to submit a draft law that would ban all churches in the country.
"Al-Munawer later clarified the comment by saying existing churches should be permitted to remain but that a ban should be imposed on the building of new, non-Islamic houses of worship.
"The banning of Christian churches and destruction of the existing ones would represent a more extreme form of Islam than existed in the past when Christians and Jews were free to practice their faith openly in the region. . . .
"'Freedom of religious assembly is severely limited [in Saudi Arabia], because the government does not allow individuals to publicly assemble based on religious affiliation,'” the most recent State Department religious freedom report says. 'This freedom is also limited in other ways, including the government’s hindering of the establishment and maintenance of non-Sunni places of worship.'
"Additionally, the report said, 'Sunni clerics, who received government stipends, occasionally used anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-Shiite language in their sermons.'
"The report also noted that the government’s official policy of allowing private religious worship for all, including non-Muslims, is not followed in practice."
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4/8/12 Blacks Can Murder Whites, and It Won’t Make National News Doug Giles, TownHall.com
4/8/12 Do the Media Want a Race War? Written by Chip Wood, New American
"It’s no surprise that Al Sharpton and his fellow rabble-rouser, Jesse Jackson, are doing everything they can to stir passions to the boiling point regarding the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. That’s been their modus operandi for more than 20 years. Does anybody remember Tawana Brawley, the fake rape victim Sharpton used as his first stepping-stone to national fame (or should I say infamy)?
"But I can’t remember a time when the media were so eager to give nationwide publicity to every vicious lie and racist accusation. Forget about trying to get calmer heads to prevail or any of that nonsense about not rushing to judgment. The media want someone’s head on a platter (or at least George Zimmerman’s body in jail). And they want it now.
"If they have to doctor the facts a bit to get it, so what? They’re willing to use some incredibly dishonest means to see that 'justice' is done.
"NBC was guilty of one of the most egregious examples, when it ran a clip on the Today show of George Zimmerman’s call to 911. According to the excerpt NBC broadcast, Zimmerman said, 'This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.'
"Obviously, NBC wanted its audience to believe that Zimmerman is a Neanderthal racist who wouldn’t hesitate to gun down an innocent 17-year-old just because he was black.
"As it turns out, Zimmerman did utter those words. But the clever editors at NBC left out some incredibly important dialogue that occurred between the two sentences. Here’s what was actually said:
"Zimmerman: 'This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.'
"911 Dispatcher: 'OK. And this guy, is he black, white or Hispanic?'
"Zimmerman: 'He looks black.'
"Clearly, Zimmerman was simply answering the dispatcher’s question. He did not equate Martin’s race with 'being up to no good.' But that’s not how NBC portrayed it. I guess Sharpton has a buddy in their editing room.
"As you probably know, Zimmerman claims that after calling 911, he did not continue to follow Martin, as many of his critics contend. Instead, he says he returned to his SUV when Martin approached him. Words were exchanged, then Martin punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and started beating him. An eyewitness says he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, who was yelling: “Help, help!”
"That was when Zimmerman shot his assailant. So far, the police have not released any evidence that contradicts his claim. Just to make sure the facts come out, however, Florida Governor Rick Scott has asked State Attorney Angela Corey to take over the investigation. Corey has a reputation in Florida as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor. So there is no reason to believe she will be part of any cover-up.
"That, of course, is not enough for Sharpton and his cronies. They are threatening to 'escalate' the demonstrations if Zimmerman is not immediately arrested. The New Black Panthers Party has gone even farther, offering up a bounty for Zimmerman.
"And where is our President in all of this? He says that “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin.” You do have two daughters, Mr. President. Does either one of them look like Aliyah Shell?
"In case you’ve never heard of Aliyah, she was a 6-year-old black girl in Chicago who was shot to death last month while sitting with her mother on the front porch of her home. She was one of 10 blacks murdered in Chicago over St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Police say all 10 were murdered by other blacks.
"In fact, according to FBI statistics, 93 percent of all blacks murdered in this country are killed by other blacks. But Jesse Jackson insists that 'blacks are under attack.' And Spike Lee obviously had whites in mind when he wrote, 'You can’t keep killing black children.'
"Meanwhile, the media continue to do everything they can to treat Martin like a saint (Don’t you just love the innocent-looking baby pictures of him they show over and over again?), while trying to cast doubt on anything Zimmerman says in his own defense.
"Attacked and beaten by the youth? ABC News says that “no abrasions or blood can be seen” in the surveillance video that was shot when Zimmerman arrived at the Sanford police station.
"The police report made at the time says that Zimmerman’s nose was bleeding and his back was covered in grass stains when he arrived at the police station. His lawyer said his client went to the doctor the next day and was treated for a broken nose.
But of course facts don’t matter to agitators who are looking for a cause célčbre.
"Even some liberals have acknowledged what’s been happening. Writing in the New York Times, Bill Keller referred to Al Sharpton’s rabble-rousing as 'the kind of demagoguery that could prejudice a prosecution or mobilize a mob.' Then he added, “Is it not creepy, by the way, that Spike Lee was tweeting the suspected home address of George Zimmerman? As if to say, ‘Go get him!’ ”
"Of course, as you probably heard, the leftist film producer (and host of a million-dollar fund-raiser for Barack Obama) got the house number wrong. Instead of terrorizing Zimmerman, he gave the street address of an elderly couple who fled their home in fear. Lee later apologized for sending out the wrong address — but not for trying to create problems for Zimmerman.
"On March 28 Bobby Rush, a black Congressman from Chicago who says he is proud to have been a member of the Black Panthers, demonstrated his support for Martin by appearing on the House floor in a hoodie and sunglasses. He was escorted off the floor a few moments later for violating House rules on decorum.
"Of course, Rush had achieved exactly what he wanted: more one-sided publicity in the national media. To my knowledge, he has said absolutely nothing about the murder of so many blacks, including Aliyah, in the district he actually represents. After all, those are merely statistics, while Martin’s death is an opportunity.
"Who was it who said that the Democrats should never let a crisis go to waste? Clearly, Sharpton, Jackson and their cohorts will use this tragedy all they can. Too bad the national media are so willing to help them.
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4/7/12 Obama's legal humiliation By Dianna C. Cotter, pravda.ru
"Today there is no American news outlet factually covering the illegal actions of the sitting President of the United States in context. Nor is there one consistently exposing the laws his administration has flagrantly broken, though this corruption now demonstrably permeates every level of the federal system.
"Attorneys General Tom Horne, Arizona; Pam Bondi, Florida; Sam Olens, Georgia; Bill Schuette, Michigan; Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma; Marty Jackley, South Dakota; Alan Wilson, South Carolina; Greg Abbott, Texas; and Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia produced a joint memo on March 5th, 2012 detailing 21 blatant violations of law committed by the Obama administration.
"By now it is unsurprising the media has by and large ignored this announcement
- PPACA (Obamacare): Individual Mandate; To be heard by Supreme Court of the United States in March
- FCC: Regulation of the Internet in the face of a court order from Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. stating that the FCC does not have the power to regulate the Internet
- EPA 1: GHG (Green House Gas) lawsuit; EPA's own Inspector General reported last September that EPA failed to comply with its own data standards; Heard in Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. in February
- OSM: Attempting to impose regulatory requirements on the 19 states with authority for exclusive regulation of their coal mines for the first time in more than 30 years
- DOJ: South Carolina & Voting Rights Act: Rejecting voter ID statutes that are similar to those already approved by the Supreme Court of the United States; DOJ ignored section 8 of the Voting Rights Act which calls for protections against voter fraud, and used section 5 to administratively block measures to protect the integrity of elections passed by state legislatures in preclearance states including South Carolina; South Carolina voter ID law merely requires a voter to show photo identification in order to vote or to complete an affidavit at the pain of perjury if the voter does not have a photo ID
- DOJ: Arizona & Voting Rights Act: Rejecting voter ID statutes that are similar to those already approved by the Supreme Court of the United States
- DOE: Yucca Mountain; In 2009, Administration arbitrarily broke federal law and derailed the most studied energy project in American history when DOE announced intent to withdraw 8,000 page Yucca Mountain licensing application with prejudice.
"14 more violations of law are listed in the AG's memo. At one time or another, many of these violations have made the news, yet the full list is never presented to the public. When complied, it is apparent even at a glance, that the federal government as led by Barack Obama has no respect for law. Clearly the Obama government is acting as it deems fit. Much as a monarchy would. As if the States did not exist. As if the Constitution of the United States did not apply.
"Indeed, when it comes to Obama and his government, the constitution is a barrier to be removed. As Obama stated in a 2001 interview with NPR, 'generally the constitution is a charter of negative liberties,'. Undeniably, the Constitution limits government negatively, it states what it cannot do. From the point of view of someone attempting expand government powers beyond that which the constitution limits it to, it is extraordinarily negatively limiting. It was designed that way. It is the keystone, the cornerstone, the foundation of a free people; one freed and protected from government tyranny.
"If more evidence were needed to delineate the obvious disrespect coming from the Oval Office for the Law, on Monday, April 2nd 2012 President Barack Obama attempted to erase 200 years of legal history, stating in a press conference with world leaders, that the law codified in the Supreme Court Case Marbury v. Madison (5 U.S. 137) 1803 is not valid:
"'Ultimately, I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress.' - Barack Obama 4-5-2012
"Hundreds of bills have passed out of congress and been found unconstitutional, overturned by the Supreme Court, since Marbury V. Madison established in 1803 the Supreme Court's right of judicial review.
"The Supreme Court has been the final arbiter of law, determining the constitutionality of laws passed by congress for over two hundred years. There is no Article or Section in the constitution which specifically bestows this power within the court. Instead, Marbury was the court's interpretation of the constitution; furthermore the legal precedent it set in that decision still stands as good law today. . . .
"Attorney General Eric Holder stated in the department's court ordered response: 'The Department has not in this litigation, nor in any other litigation of which I am aware, ever asked this or any other Court to reconsider or limit long-established precedent concerning judicial review of the constitutionality of federal legislation.' Even the Attorney General of the United States is hanging Obama out to dry on this issue."
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4/7/12 Nobody here but us morons New York Post
"Mystery solved.
"The other day, we speculated that President Obama’s astonishing broadside against the US Supreme Court meant one of three things:
"Either he’s ignorant, or he was trying to bully the justices deciding the fate of ObamaCare in his favor — or he thinks Americans are morons.
"Well, the answer is now clear:
"He thinks we’re all morons.
"'The president was not clearly understood by some people because he is a law professor [and] he spoke in shorthand,' White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday.
"Well, pardon us.
"But it seems that one of those who didn’t comprehend Professor Obama’s highfalutin’ academic lingo was Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, considered the leading liberal scholar of constitution law. (Sorry, Mr. President.)"
4/7/12 How Sturdy Is the Obama Narrative that 'Keeps Us Silent'?
By Monte Kuligowski, American Thinker"Recently, Kimball wrote a piece affirming the brave observations of Diana West found in her piece, 'Silence of the Lapdogs.' In her essay, West explains why the incriminating findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team are not common knowledge.
"Regarding the nativity story of Barack Obama, Kimball notes that '[i]t's not just that you are not allowed to express certain opinions about the subject. You are not even allowed to publicly entertain any questions about it.'
"The accepted Obama narrative has been a secure fortress for Obama. The president stays inside its walls unruffled, with lifted chin. The narrative "keeps us silent" even though in reality it's a house of cards. . . .
"'Obama has provided almost 'ironclad proof' by "releasing" his long-form birth certificate'
"Well, the ironclad proof happens to conflict with the opinions of numerous nonpartisan forensic/computer software experts and the findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team -- the posted file image is a computer-generated forgery. "Arpaio is under personal attack, but curiously, his control-sample findings are not being refuted by the so-called mainstream news media.
"Among the many reasonable questions we aren't allowed to 'publically entertain' is, why did Mr. Obama get a certification from Hawaii in 2008 when the birth certificate was there all along? And why get the birth certificate from Hawaii anyway when, as Obama mentions in his book, he has a paper copy in his possession? With such widespread doubt and polls of no confidence, why wait three years to abruptly "release" the elusive birth certificate?
"And as Andrew McCarthy wondered the day after Obama 'released' his birth certificate on April 27, 2011, '[w]here are the indignant questions to Obama?' Specifically, why were we told for three years that Obama's only birth certificate had been posted online by Robert Gibbs? Why was Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin imprisoned for demanding to see a birth certificate that ostensibly existed all along? Why would Obama spend money fighting its production in court after court? Why were only select non-experts and Obama defenders allowed to inspect copies of the White House postings behind closed doors?
"Based on Sheriff Joe's remarkable findings and all the available evidence, coupled with the manifold oddities and bizarre secrecy of Obama, it is 'nonsense' to conclude that it's 'nonsense' to ask questions.
"One may assume and hope by faith that Obama was Hawaii-born and still demand that Obama's original records (including vital, education, passport, Selective Service, etc.) be unsealed for verification.
"The burden is on no citizen to prove anything. No conspiracy theories are needed to ask questions and demand 'ironclad' proof 'in the most resolute way humanly possible.' As it turns out, that level of proof means simple compliance with basic legal standards."
Monte Kuligowski is a Virginia attorney.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke.
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4/7/12
By DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN ERLANGER, The New York Times
"WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and its European allies plan to open new negotiations with Iran by demanding the immediate closing and ultimate dismantling of a recently completed nuclear facility deep under a mountain, according to American and European diplomats.
"They are also calling for a halt in the production of uranium fuel that is considered just a few steps from bomb grade, and the shipment of existing stockpiles of that fuel out of the country, the diplomats said.
"That negotiating position will be the opening move in what President Obama has called Iran’s “last chance” to resolve its nuclear confrontation with the United Nations and the West diplomatically. The hard-line approach would require the country’s military leadership to give up the Fordo enrichment plant outside the holy city of Qum, and with it a huge investment in the one facility that is most hardened against air-strikes.
"While it is unclear whether the allies would accept anything less than closing and disassembling Fordo, government and outside experts say the terms may be especially difficult for Iran’s leaders to accept when they need to appear strong in the face of political infighting.
"Still, Mr. Obama and his allies are gambling that crushing sanctions and the threat of Israeli military action will bolster the arguments of those Iranians who say a negotiated settlement is far preferable to isolation and sanctions. Other experts fear the tough conditions being set could instead swing the debate in favor of Iran’s hard-liners. . . .
"The shift has underscored doubts among Obama administration officials and their European negotiating partners about Iran’s readiness to negotiate seriously and to finally answer questions from international nuclear inspectors about its nuclear program’s “possible military dimensions.” Those questions are based in part on evidence that Iran may have worked on warhead designs and nuclear triggers.". . .
"European allies, especially the French and the British, say they are concerned that Mr. Obama will want to keep the negotiations going, however unproductive, through the November presidential election to avoid the possibility of a military strike if the talks fail.
"Israel and some European leaders fear that would play into what they perceive as Iran’s strategy to use the talks to buy itself time while its centrifuges keep spinning."
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4/7/12 CNN's Banfield Falsely Claims Trayvon Martin Eyewitness Told Her Attacker Was Hispanic
Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters
"You'd think on the very day an NBC News producer was fired for editing George Zimmerman's 911 call to make it appear he was racist media members would be extra careful to be as factually accurate as possible when reporting on the Trayvon Martin shooting.
"CNN's Ashleigh Banfield clearly didn't get this memo for while substitute-hosting on Anderson Cooper 360 Friday night, she twice falsely claimed that an eyewitness she had just interviewed said the person she believed was the attacker - meaning the one on top during the fight near her house - was Hispanic (video follows with transcript and commentary):" [Click the date to access.]
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4/7/12 Dangerous Desperation Michael Oberndorf, Canada Free Press
"Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed a radical escalation of destructive policy moves by the Obama-Soetoro administration and a flow of outrageous, patently obvious lies from the Prevaricator-in-Chief, himself. People, especially commentators on the right, seem nonplused by this, unable to figure out the reasoning behind it all. Once again, the failure to understand is the result of their refusal to recognize Obama-Soetoro and his cronies for the desperate, radical Marxist revolutionaries that they clearly are.
"As we have moved closer to the November elections, it has become evident, even to die-hard media sycophants, that Obama-Soetoro’s popularity is rapidly eroding, the result of multiple 'failed' policies that have worsened the economy. No one seems to be buying the statistical tricks used by the government to make the nearly 11% real unemployment look like it’s only slightly over 8%. And despite the administration’s best efforts to claim inflation is minimal, Americans are not stupid. They have watched as their budgets have been busted by rising prices for everything, especially groceries and gasoline. They have also noticed that Obama-Soetoro has pretended that it’s not happening, ignoring the plight of the middle class and poor that he claims to care so much about.
"So why, one might ask, is Obama-Soetoro apparently throwing caution to the wind and unabashedly lying his cigarette-smoker’s butt off in support of evermore destructive, legally questionable new moves?
"The answer is simple: Communist Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Obama-Soetoro’s bible.
"See if these items taken from Rules for Radicals, in an article by Ann-Marie Murrell, describe how and what B. Hussein and the Democrats have been doing lately: [Click the date if you wish to read the list.]
"They know that in spite of the massive efforts of the Ministry of Propaganda, aka, the “mainstream” media, the American people have not been fooled, do not buy their utopian Marxist nonsense, and intend to unceremoniously dump them like the trash that they are, come November. Despite all the media attacks and lies to the contrary, the Tea Parties are alive and well, and stronger than ever. Thus, like cornered rats, the administration is lashing out in an attempt to do the most damage they can before it’s all over.
"Unfortunately for We, the People, it’ll get lots worse, since no one in the 'loyal opposition' in Washington seems willing to do what’s necessary to stop them."
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4/6/12 A Know Nothing By Ben Stein, American Spectator
"1. The President supposedly went to Harvard Law School, graduated from same, was Law Review President of the Harvard Law Review at Harvard Law School. Then he supposedly taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Those are powerful law schools. Yet he obviously knows little of how the Constitution works if he thinks it would be rare or startling for the Supreme Court to overrule a law passed by Congress.
"Judging whether or not a law is constitutional is precisely, exactly what the Supreme Court does. Passing on the constitutional muster of laws is their job. They do it often with federal laws and with state laws. The Supreme Court overruling legislatures is a commonplace.
"If President Obama does not know this, it's a mark against Harvard and against the University of Chicago. Mostly, it is a serious mark against President Obama.
"2. If he does not know how the government works under the Constitution, he should not be President.
"3. If he does not know how the Constitution works even in its broadest strokes, what else does he not know?
"He apparently thinks that it's his job to leave Western Europeans and Americans stripped of missile defense. He apparently thinks it's his job to unilaterally disarm America. That shows a yawning chasm in what he knows and what he does not know.
"Another subject Mr. Obama thinks he knows about and doesn't is the oil companies. . . .They provide employment to millions and a comfortable way to travel to hundreds of millions. Why does Mr. Obama hate them? Because of a juvenile, City College of New York circa 1937 leftist view of the whole world. Sad. Disturbing. That is a highly anti-American worldview."
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4/6/12 Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare By Peter Ferrara, Forbes
"President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.
"The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered.
"And given that Obama is so certain you can’t remember what happened just two years ago, he is more than certain that you have never heard of the ancient history of Marbury v. Madison, where the 14-year old Supreme Court in 1803 took the then unprecedented step of overturning a provision of law adopted by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That case was where the Supreme Court first recognized its power of judicial review, under which it is empowered to strike down laws found unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday:
"'In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of these laws were passed by a ‘democratically elected’ legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by ‘strong’ majorities….probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act.'
"As a former constitutional law professor and President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama no doubt knows all about Marbury v. Madison and judicial review. But he figures he can safely assume a majority of you know nothing about it, and his party controlled media will not tell you anything concerning it at this inopportune moment. Hence, another classic example of what I have called Calculated Deception.[Emphasis added.]
"President Obama further assailed any Supreme Court decision ruling his Obamacare health care takeover unconstitutional as 'judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.' Alexander Hamilton disagreed over 200 years ago in Federalist 78, writing, 'There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .'
"Or, as the Wall Street Journal explained on Monday:
"'Judicial activism is not something that happens every time the Supreme Court overturns a statute. The Justices owe deference to Congress and the executive, but only to the extent that the political branches stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Improper activism is when the Court itself strays beyond the founding document to find new rights or enhance its own authority without proper constitutional grounding.'”
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4/6/12 What If YOU Doctored a Tape At Your Job? Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Excerpt
RUSH: You and I couldn't get away with one-tenth of what happens. You and I would be fired, canned. We'd lose all credibility. We wouldn't be listened to if we were that demonstrably wrong, purposely wrong. What happens to you at your job if you do the equivalent of doctoring a 911 tape like this producer at NBC? What happens to you at your job? (interruption) Exactly right. You're not only fired, you are held up as the worst example. You are humiliated. You become an object lesson in how not to do the job. At NBC you get shielded and protected, and they attempt to explain it all away. (interruption) Why would they think to do it in the first place? Oh. Well, that's the point I was making yesterday. You and I wouldn't even think of doctoring something that isn't true to make it look like it's true because we live in Realville. Who wants to be right by virtue of a lie? You're not right. You can't be right. You and I don't even think this way. . . .
[Blacks] overwhelmingly believe that George Zimmerman ... believe that racial bias was a major factor in the events leading up to the shooting; and believe that Zimmerman would already have been arrested had the victim been white, not black." But what else do we know? We know that the three networks totally doctored the evidence that made people think this. NBC doctors the 911 tape. ABC doctors the police video. And CNN misinterprets the police 9/11 call.
And in each instance, the racial component disappears when you take away the doctoring of the tape. So those of you... You black Americans, you have been lied to. You have been totally lied to by the networks regarding the details of the case. You really can't be blamed for what you think. NBC, ABC, and CNN doctored the evidence in such a way as to exacerbate racial tension. They did it on purpose. It's only natural you think what you think, based on the way it's been reported to you.
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4/6/12 Not Even State-Run AP Can Hide That the Unemployment Number Went Down Because Fewer People are in the Labor Force Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Excerpt
RUSH: The number today will be revised upward in a month, and that has happened 11 out of the last 12 months. It's the same thing with the economic growth rate. They report it, then they revise it sometime later, and it's never as strong or as good as they said it was. But all you really need to know here is this: If the workforce participation rate, the labor force participation rate were the same as it was when Obama took office, the reported unemployment rate today would be 10.9%. [Emphasis added.] And that's why the workforce has to be tweaked by the Labor Department, to get to 8.2. It's very simple. If you take over two million jobs out of the universe but don't change the number of people looking, you're gonna have, obviously, a higher level of reported employment.
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4/6/12
RUSH: The Heritage Foundation in its Morning Bell blog this past week had an interesting post called "Beware the Taxmageddon -- In a mere 271 days, you and your fellow Americans will be hit with a tax [increase] the likes of which this country has never seen. . . .
"The prevailing wisdom is that 'something will get done' in a lame duck session of Congress after the election. But why wait? And why after the election? Here’s why you should be worried. For starters, remember that this is the same President who in 2009 promised, 'if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.' That’s a vow he’s broken, and in 2013, things are going to get even worse if this year Obama doesn’t lead and Congress doesn’t act. Katy, bar the door, there’s big trouble in store. The tax man won’t draw his billions from the American taxpayer with just one big needle -- the massive tax increase will be the product of tax policies expiring in seven different categories, on top of five new Obamacare tax hikes taking effect."
Grand total of twelve new tax increases coming, and here are some of the details: "'Almost 34 percent of the tax increase from Taxmageddon comes from the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. These cuts are best known for reducing marginal income tax rates, but they also reduced the marriage penalty, [the Bush tax cuts] increased the Child Tax Credit and [the Bush tax cuts increased] the adoption credit, and [the Bush tax cuts] increased tax breaks for education costs and dependent care costs.'" That's all gone when they expire. "'Another 25 percent of Taxmageddon comes from the expiration of the once-temporary payroll tax cut.
"'The expiration of the patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) -- which would raise the income threshold over which families qualify for the AMT to prevent middle-income families from paying this tax that is only supposed to impact “the rich” -- accounts for 24 percent of the total potential 2013 tax increase.'" An Alternative Minimum Tax that's supposed to only affect those who aren't paying any taxes will affect so many Americans that 24% of the largest tax increase in history will come from the AMT hitting more people than ever before.
"The balance of the tax hikes comes in part from new taxes under Obamacare, the expiration of tax cuts in the 2009 [porkulus], the expiration of a group of policies known as 'tax extenders,'" and it goes on and on and on. But it's huge. And if you add rising gasoline prices to it and everything else that's seeing the price increase because of inflation, it is an all-at-once explosion of tax increases that's gonna destroy disposable income. And it's all planned. And it's all planned to hit after the election. Just like Obamacare doesn't get fully implemented until 2014, when theoretically, Obama's no longer accountable because he will not be facing an election again.
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4/6/12 Van Jones group plans American’s “Arab Spring” revolt Paul Bedard, The Examiner
"An Egypt-styled 'Arab Spring,' which has put radicals in charge of the government, will be launched in the United States this spring with a war on 'corporate power, Wall Street greed and the political corruption of the 1 percent,' according to the group headed by former Obama green aide Van Jones.. . .
"The plan for now is to hold protest training sessions around the nation
next week. Over 900 are scheduled so far.
"Once
ready, the group and dozens of others, notably MoveOn.org and labor unions,
will launch the
'99 Percent Spring' offensive against government and financial centers."
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4/6/12 The Rebirth of Birthers? By William Sullivan, American Thinker
"New evidence, however, has reignited conservative interest in Obama's birth certificate. Conservative icon Sherriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, at the behest of a petition presented by the Surprise, Arizona Tea Party organization, organized a 'cold case posse' and completed a six-month examination of the released birth certificate in order to determine its authenticity. The results are in, Joe says, and they point to the document being a fake.
"Skilled as Sherriff Joe's team undoubtedly is in identifying forged documents, last month offered interesting substantiation of the team's findings. Renowned skeptic of global warming theories Lord Christopher Monckton, who has experience investigating high-level fraud as a policy adviser under Margaret Thatcher, has given the claim added veracity.
"According to World Net Daily, Monckton said that 'it appears that the document was cobbled together in layers, pointing to evidence that three date stamps and a registrar's stamp were superimposed on it from another document.' If there were a single, original document to verify the president's Hawaiian birth, why 'go to all that trouble, he reasoned.'
"Monckton's conclusion? 'My assessment is that they are right to be worried... That document is not genuine.'
"This conclusion glaringly lacks ambiguity. And if Monckton is correct, we should be beyond worried. We should be outraged, and we should demand justice for the betrayal of the American people's trust.
"Mockton's testimony is a bombshell. It is a credible voice suggesting that the image on the White House website, offered to the American people in good faith, was presented as an accurate depiction of Obama's birth certificate, and for whatever reason, it is not. This is forgery, a crime in itself, but it is the reason for the possible forgery -- fraud -- that keeps the media and lawmakers from running with this amazing story.
"Anyone calling Obama's birth certificate into question will have to entertain the notion that perhaps the forgery was made because the president does not have legal proof of his American birth. And anyone carrying that message will have the stink of 'right-wing birther' on him, and he will be swiftly devoured by the attack dogs in the media and marginalized. So in a way, I don't blame conservative lawmakers and pundits for treading lightly around the issue.
"The discourse has already been cleverly manipulated, you see, to shift the burden of proof from Obama to his detractors. Reasonably, it should never have been incumbent upon Americans to prove that Obama is not a natural born citizen, but rather it should have always been incumbent upon Obama to prove to the American people, verifiably and indisputably, that he was born in the United States.
"Barack Obama again has that chance, and Arpaio has articulated that very point. 'The president can put all this to rest quite easily,' he said. 'All he has to do is demand [that] the Hawaii Department of Health release to the American public and to a panel of certified court-authorized forensic examiners all original 1961 paper, microfilm, and computer birth records the Hawaii Department of Health has in its possession.'
"But then, the president has always had the opportunity to do this, and he has never seized it. One can speculate as to why."
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4/5/12 Obama's Budget: 'Interest Payments Will Exceed Defense Budget' in 2019
"The latest chart from the Senate Republican Budget Committee, pointing out that under President Obama's budget, the U.S. government will be spending more in 2019 to pay the interest on the national debt than it will be to defend America:"
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4/5/12 Romney to Newsmax: Obama Intentionally Distorting Supreme Court's Role
By David A. Patten and Kathleen Walter, NewsMax
"'Well the whole idea of
the Constitution and the courts that apply the Constitution is to have the
capacity to ensure that Congress and the president do not pass legislation
that violates the Constitution,' Romney told Newsmax.
"The former Massachusetts governor described the Supreme Court as 'one of
the bulwarks against the unconstitutional acts of the majority.'
"Added Romney: 'So the president suggesting that somehow the court would
be violating its duty by applying the Constitution to test the validity of a
piece of legislation is an extraordinary reach and a misunderstanding, and I
think a distortion — a purposeful distortion — of the role of the
judiciary.'
"On Tuesday, Obama backed down from questioning the court’s power of
judicial review, saying that whatever verdict the court renders must be
respected.
"But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals demanded a written clarification
from the Justice Department on whether it disputes the right of federal
appeals courts to pass judgment on the constitutional validity of
legislation signed into law.
"Some conservatives saw the president’s remarks as a transparent bid to
sway the Supreme Court’s looming verdict on the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act. The Court is expected to announce its decision sometime
in June.
"Other highlights from Romney’s exclusive interview with Newsmax:
-
He is not going to urge his three Republican primary opponents to exit the campaign, but does hope the party can decide on its nominee 'sooner rather than later' in order to focus on challenging Obama.
- Romney touted the recent endorsements he received from top Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Budget Committee chief Rep. Paul Ryan, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. He said they will help him unite conservatives behind his candidacy.
- He charged that Obama 'is seeking to impose a government-centered society” by replacing free markets with “an economy driven by a government that has bureaucrats thinking they know better than the free market how to fuel growth and put people to work.'
- He saluted Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal, which has been attacked by the president, pointedly noting that Obama has been unable to get a Democratic-controlled Senate to pass his budget proposals.
- The former Massachusetts governor professed not to be too worried about polls that suggest women voters have been alienated by the GOP primary debate over contraception. Romney blamed Democrats for distorting Republicans’ views, adding, 'I think this will pass as an issue as people understand our real position.'
- He stated that he has no list of potential vice presidential prospects, because that would be 'presumptuous' until he wins the nomination. But Romney did speak highly of Puerto Rico Republican Gov. Luis Fortuno, calling him 'a solid conservative and a firm leader.'”
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4/5/12 Obama's Officious Opinions By Ross Kaminsky, American Spectator
"On Tuesday afternoon, in a stunning rebuke of President Obama, Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided he had heard enough of the president's incessant hyper-partisan rhetoric challenging the independence of the federal judiciary. Judge Smith, who was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan, 'referring to statements by the president in the past few days to the effect… that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed 'unelected judges' to strike acts of Congress,' said that Obama's comments 'have troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority…. And that's not a small matter.'
"He then ordered the Justice Department to respond to the court by noon on Thursday with a letter (minimum three pages, single-spaced) explaining with specificity the DOJ's position on 'judicial review, as it relates to the specific statements of the president, in regard to Obamacare and to the authority of the federal courts to review that legislation.' (Audio of the relevant portion of the hearing can be found here [2.7MB], and audio of the full hearing here [29MB].)"
[Click the date to access the above audios and the original article's further expansion on Obama's opinions.]
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4/5/12 Obama Is Making the Case For His Own Impeachment By Tony Katz, TownHall.com
"The President’s latest tactic, taking on the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review with a preemptive striking against justices who might contemplate an unfavorable ruling on ObamaCare, following on the heels of last week’s 'open mic gaffe' in which he explained Russian President Dimitri Medvedev that he’d have more 'flexibility' to sacrifice American security after his re-election, lead to one question: Is Barack Obama making his own case for impeachment?
"Obama is no longer fit for the job. I don’t say this lightly. I don’t say it with glee or joy. And I don’t say it with malice. But rather with recognition that the Office of the President must be protected. And the citizens of the United States must protect themselves from a president who is either incapable or unwilling to fulfill his responsibilities to the American people and respect the Constitutionally proscribed limitations on his powers.
"Obama’s pronouncement about the Supreme Court was so disingenuous and divisive as alone to warrant impeachment proceedings."
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4/5/12 McConnell tells Obama to 'back off' over court Paige Winfield Cunningham, The Washington Times
"'The president crossed a dangerous line this week,' the Kentucky Republican [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell] said to the Lexington Rotary Club, 'and anyone who cares about liberty needs to call him out on it. The independence of the court must be defended.'"
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4/5/12 AP Chairman Slobbers All Over Obama Rush Limbaugh Show Segment Transcript
RUSH: They're everywhere. And they want everybody to believe that they're straight down the middle. That they are uninterested in the outcome of events. That they are just as fair and unbiased and objective as the business model demands and calls for. They are the epitome of journalistic standards. That's the AP. That's what they want everybody to believe. I have three sound bites here of Dean Singleton [the chairman of the Associated Press] introducing the president of the United States. Here's the first.
SINGLETON: I asked him a question from the audience related to how he might deal with "Obama" bin Laden, if elected. In his always genteel way, he asked, "Might you be referring to Osama bin Laden?" It was a slip of the tongue heard around the world. Thanks to the delights of our digital age, and YouTube in particular, I won't soon escape that embarrassing moment, even four years later. But we do have the answer to the question. Today there is no mistaking his name and even I can't mess it up. It's Mr. President.
RUSH: And they cheered, and Mr. Singleton continued...
SINGLETON: President Obama made history as the first minority to be elected president. Even many who opposed his election felt proud of our country as he took the oath of office. As president, he inherited the headwinds of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. He pushed through Congress the biggest economic recovery plan in history and led a government reorganization of two of the Big Three auto manufacturers to save them from oblivion. He pursued domestic and foreign policy agendas that were controversial to many, highlighted by a signature into law of the most comprehensive health care legislation in history.
RUSH: Now, you tell me who wrote this for this guy. That sounds like Jay Carney wrote this. It sounds like somebody in the White House wrote this. This is the chairman of the AP introducing Barack Obama to a room full of journalists as a messiah: He overcame such obstacles. He inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression! He saved two automobile companies. He signed the biggest health care reform legislation in the history of the world into law. He's like our god!
Here's more from Mr. Singleton...
SINGLETON: While we thought the 2008 White House race was rough and tumble, the 2012 race makes it look like bumper cars by comparison. Our country has become even more polarized. The 1% and the 99% are at each other's throats. Really, who would want this job in the first place? We're very honored today to have the man currently holding the office and aspiring for it for another term, and -- with apologizes to Al Green -- my new favorite singer, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States of America.
RUSH: And Obama came out and there were cheers and so forth. The only thing missing at the end of the introduction was, "I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message." It's a campaign ad delivered by the chairman of the Associated Press. "I'm Barack Obama. I approve this message." I air this for you because nobody else is going to air it -- I mean, in terms of the networks, you're not gonna see it anywhere -- and just to offer you confirmation of where the media is vis-a-vis Obama and his reelection and basically making the case for him. Whatever they say in the White House is what AP is gonna report. If they want accolades, AP is going to be right there with all the accolades necessary.
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4/5/12 The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin By Shelby Steele, The Wall Street Journal
The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
"[T]is story brought reaction from the White House: 'If I had a son he would look like Trayvon,' said the president. The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ubiquitous icons of black protest, virtually battled each other to stand at the bereaved family's side—Mr. Jackson, in a moment of inadvertent honesty, saying, 'There is power in blood . . . we must turn a moment into a movement.' And then there was the spectacle of black Democrats in Congress holding hearings on racial profiling with Trayvon's parents featured as celebrities.
"In fact Trayvon's sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America's civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the "poetic truth" that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.
"The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this "truth" has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites.
"If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this—a call 'to turn the moment into a movement'—it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
"So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today's Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America's racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life. . . .
"The reason Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have become such disreputable figures on our cultural landscape is that they are such quick purveyors of poetic truth rather than literal truth.
"The great trick of poetic truth is to pass itself off as the deep and essential truth so that hard facts that refute it must be dismissed in the name of truth. O.J. Simpson was innocent by the poetic truth that the justice system is stacked against blacks. Trayvon was a victim of racist stereotyping—though the shooter never mentioned his race until asked to do so.
"There is now a long litany of racial dust-ups—from Tawana Brawley to the Duke University lacrosse players to the white Cambridge police officer who arrested Harvard professor Skip Gates a summer ago—in which the poetic truth of white racism and black victimization is invoked so that the actual truth becomes dismissible as yet more racism.
"When the Cambridge cop or the Duke lacrosse players or the men accused of raping Tawana Brawley tried to defend themselves, they were already so stained by poetic truth as to never be entirely redeemed. No matter the facts—whether Trayvon Martin was his victim or his assailant—George Zimmerman will also never be entirely redeemed."
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4/4/12 Obama Understands Judicial Review, But Counts on the Ignorance of His Audience
Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: Barack Obama a couple of days ago gets a question at a joint preference with Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderon about the Supreme Court decision coming up on Obamacare. And what he says makes it sound like he doesn't understand the concept of judicial review, which was established in a long ago Supreme Court case called Marbury v. Madison in which the Court appointed to itself the job, the right of determining what and what isn't constitutional in terms of what comes out of Congress. And it's been that way for hundreds of years. Obama implicitly -- he implied that he -- doesn't know that. . . .
RUSH: Now, as to Obama judicial review, Marbury v. Madison, all of this. Let's be perfectly clear. He knows what he's doing. He knows he was lying. He knows about judicial review. He knows that the Supreme Court has thrown out many laws. He knows all this. People that have never gone to law school know this. It's absurd, folks, to think that he doesn't know this. His audience, for those comments that he's made the last two days on Obamacare and the Supreme Court, is the ignorant population of America who he wants to believe that the court is going to do something it's never done before. .
He doesn't care what the law professors at the University of Missouri write. He didn't care what James Taranto writes. He doesn't care, 'cause he knows his audience isn't gonna see what they write. His audience is never gonna hear one disagreement with what Obama has said. His audience will listen to him because the media will see to it that he is what they watch. This court's gonna do something they've never done before. The court is gonna take away their health care that he gave them. The court is going to take away their insurance and take away their treatment, the court is. That's all this is. A brazen pander to the stupid, the uninformed. And he's counting on the stupid to never come in contact with shows like this or columns by James Taranto or blogs written by professors at the University of Missouri law school.
He's counting on them running into things like this. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times called Men in Black. I think she owes a royalty to Mark Levin. He has a book by that title long before Maureen Dowd wrote her piece. But that's another subject. Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times, actually wonders, in her column, why Obama should have to respect the court. That's her point. Why does he even have to listen to 'em? And I'll give you a little hint. He won't, folks. If there is a decision he doesn't like, he'll just not accept it. Mark my words. Maureen Dowd apparently doesn't know that the court is a coequal branch of government. She goes on to rant this.
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Other Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment titles follow with date links to the original Web segment--
4/4/12 Brave Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Makes Himself a Target of the Regime
4/4/12 How to Respond to Obama's Lies?
4/4/12 Judge Napolitano: Rush is Right
4/4/12 What Obama Will Say if Obamacare Loses
4/4/12 Ryan Reacts to Obama's Demagoguery
4/4/12 Mine union boss: Coal industry could suffer same fate as bin Laden
"The coal industry will suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden
under new climate regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection
Agency, the head of the United Mine Workers of America said this week.
"'The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot
us in Washington,' Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said
during
an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews
Talkline.
"Roberts blasted Jackson, the EPA administrator, over
the proposed regulations, which would limit greenhouse gas
emissions from new power plants. Opponents of the regulations, including
Roberts, say the new rules would be the death knell of the coal industry.
"New coal-fired power plants would have to install technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions in order to comply with the rules. The technology, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), “is not commercially available,” Roberts said.
"'This rule is an all-out, in my opinion, decision by the EPA that we’re never going to have another coal-fired facility in the United States that’s constructed,' Roberts said."
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4/4/12 Romney accuses Obama of phony arguments and ‘rhetorical excess’
By David Chalian, Yahoo! News
"'President Obama came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making and criticized policies no one is proposing. It's one of his favorite strategies, setting up straw men to distract from his record,' Romney said. 'And while I understand why the president doesn't want to run on his record, he can't run from his record either.' . . .
"In his remarks before newspaper editors from across the nation, Romney sought to define the 2012 battle for the Oval Office as one of great consequence. In that, Romney and Obama agree.
"On issue after issue, Romney sought to portray the president as a failed leader who has abdicated his responsibilities on foreign affairs, the economy and the looming fiscal crisis due to exploding deficits and debt.
"Romney also keyed off the president's recent open-mike incident with his Russian counterpart, where he indicated he would have more 'flexibility' in a second term, to employ a character-based line of attack on Obama.
"'Unlike President Obama, you don't need to wait until after the election to find out what I believe or what my plans are,' Romney said. 'Unlike President Obama, I have the courage to stand behind my plan and the leadership experience to enact it.'"
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4/4/12 Congress Considers Endless War, Worldwide Written by Alex Newman, New American
"A controversial provision in the National Defense Authorization Bill that would 'affirm' the President’s supposed power to wage perpetual war anywhere on Earth against undefined enemies — including Americans in the United States — is attracting fierce criticism from across the political spectrum.
"The
language was inserted into the bill by Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.),
the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who unveiled it last week.
President Obama never even requested the sweeping powers. In fact, the
administration believes it already has all the authority it needs to wage
the terror war.
"But a coalition of advocates is now furiously attempting to downplay the
measure’s significance, claiming it simply re-affirms the executive branch’s
power to carry on the 'War on Terror' for as long as there might be 'terror'
in the world. From the
Washington Post to the
Wall Street Journal, establishment media outlets are painting
the proposed language as a harmless statement acknowledging that the terror
war is legal.
"But the reality is that the provision in question is extremely
dangerous, according to
critics. And it is also very different from past authorizations to use
military force.
"The provision would, for example, purport to give the President
unchecked power — maybe even the duty — to attack unspecified countries,
organizations, and people no matter where in the world they might be
located. All with no limitations whatsoever. It purports to cede 'the
authority to use all necessary and appropriate force' to the executive
branch in its never-ending battle against unnamed countries, organizations,
and people.
"The military could even be used to go after Americans in America. And
the targets would not even have to represent a national security risk to the
United States — real or otherwise — based on the language in the bill.
So-called “belligerents,” Americans included, could be detained without
trial until the end of hostilities. And that 'end' may never come. Even
'substantially supporting' somebody or some group the government deemed an
enemy could get a person jailed indefinitely with no charges.
"Of course, opposition to the provision is growing rapidly. A coalition
of almost two dozen groups — human-rights, anti-war, Christian, Jewish,
Islamic, and other organizations — recently sent
a strongly worded letter to the Armed Services Committee urging it to
stop the proposal.
"'This monumental legislation — with a large-scale and practically
irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the President — could
commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without
any geographical boundaries,' noted the letter, pointing out that it would
permit the use of military force within America. There would be no
boundaries related to time or objectives to be accomplished."
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4/4/12 The Democrats' Election Forgery Racket By Michelle Malkin, TownHall.com
"Behind the scenes, Democrats have been busy faking petition signatures, forging ballots and enlisting medical professionals to authorize fraudulent doctors' notes for liberal teachers-union operatives protesting Republican opponents. . "This week, four Democratic officials in Indiana were hit with felony charges related to petition fraud in the state's 2008 primary. The prosecutions are a result of the local South Bend Tribune newspaper's investigation last fall into 'hundreds of county residents' signatures' forged on petitions [emphasis added] used to put Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic primary ballot. At least two whistle-blowing government officials came forward to expose the forgery racket, which court documents say was formulated by Democratic Party officials inside local party headquarters.
"A veteran county Democratic Party chair, Butch Morgan, resigned in October over the scandal; three employees in the St. Joseph County voter registration office reportedly helped Morgan execute the scheme. Among the hundreds of unsuspecting residents whose names were illegally signed to the petitions: the prosecuting attorney in the case and a former Democratic governor of the state! [Emphasis added.]
"That's the audacity of ACORN-style hoaxes.
"Without the phony signatures, there's a significant chance that Obama would not have qualified for the primary ballot -- throwing the validity of the entire election into question.
"Dr. Deb Fleming, the county's Republican chairwoman, told the South Bend Tribune that the Democratic machine has dominated her backyard for decades. 'They have 'a culture of corruption' here and throughout Indiana. 'I'm sure there are other things. They've just never gotten caught,' she speculated. 'Because they've been in control of St. Joseph County for so long, they felt they could get away with it.'
"It's a widespread culture of election corruption that has festered in Obama's Chicago, crossed into Indiana and bubbled up across the country. [Emphasis added.]
"On Tuesday, a New York judge set new trial dates for Democratic officials and political operatives accused of another ballot fraud conspiracy. A first round of prosecutions against Democratic Elections Commissioner Edward McDonough and his co-defendant, former Councilman Michael LoPorto, ended in mistrials last month. The two men also face separate voter fraud charges involving a plot by Democrats to win the radical Working Families Party primary back in 2009. The WFP is a front group for President Obama's dear old friends at fraud-plagued ACORN. [Emphasis added.]
"According to law enforcement authorities, the ring of Democrats tried to rig the primary election for city council and county legislature by forging absentee ballots and ballot applications to ensure that their candidates also won the Working Families Party primary line.
"Fox News Channel investigative reporter Eric Shawn noted that a whistle-blower in the case, WFP employee Sarah Couch, told investigators that her bosses 'asked her to issue a Working Families Party press release that would 'point blame at the Republican Party,' and she refused to do so.' Another whistle-blower, Democratic operative Anthony DeFiglio, told police that 'faking absentee ballots was a commonplace and accepted practice in political circles, all intended to swing an election.' [Emphasis added.]
"Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the state's Medical Examining Board decided last month to investigate 11 additional doctors for writing fake sick notes for public union teachers who ditched their classrooms to protest GOP Gov. Scott Walker. Nine other medical professionals have already received slaps on the wrist.
"Primary petitions. Absentee ballots. Doctors' orders. Fraudulent signatures are becoming the signature of desperate Democrats who play the electoral game by one set of rules: By Any Means Necessary. [Emphasis added.]
"Yet, progressives in the media and White House continue to strike a see-no-election-fraud, hear-no-election-fraud, speak-no-election-fraud pose. And Team Obama's Axelrod supplies the laugh track. Yuck, yuck, yuck."
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies"
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4/4/12 In Direct Appeal to the Dumbest Americans, Obama Claims the Republican Budget Will Poison Air, Water, Food -- and Even Screw Up the Accuracy of Weather Forecasts
Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: Obama's speech yesterday on the economy and Paul Ryan. This also plundered new depths of cynicism and outright prevarication. But it's an election year and Obama does not have one thing in his record to run on. He cannot point, nor can the Democrats, to one thing they have done and say, "You want more of this? Vote for us." Not one, folks. There isn't a single thing. Now, they're gonna try to make Obamacare that, but the court might get in the way. But I want you to listen to Obama yesterday afternoon talking to his stenographers at the AP and the American Society of News Editors, the ASNE convention. The acronym is A-S-N-E. This was specifically during the Associated Press luncheon. I want you to listen to one sound bite. We'll get into this in greater detail as the program unfolds. I want to do the judge stuff first. But I just want you to hear this, because this is an example of what we're gonna be hearing from now through the election.
OBAMA: Two million mothers and young children would be cut from a program that gives them access to healthy food. There would be 4,500 fewer federal grants at the Department of Justice and the FBI to combat violent crime, financial crime, and help secure our borders. Hundreds of National Parks would be forced to close for part or all of the year. We wouldn't have the capacity to enforce the laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink or the food that we eat. Our weather forecasts would become less accurate because we wouldn't be able to afford to launch new satellites.
RUSH: Now, this is the worst of the worst that we've had from President Obama. This is shameful. It is sophomoric. It is sophistry. It is a blatant appeal to the dumbest Americans. It really is pathetic. It is beneath the office of the presidency. But it is an appeal to the stupidest of our people. Now, let me tell you about Ryan's budget. This is what he's talking about, is Paul Ryan's budget. Paul Ryan's budget doesn't balance, what, 'til 2040? Paul Ryan's budget is less than a trillion dollars smaller than Obama's. Paul Ryan's budget doesn't cut anything. It takes a long time to balance. It shifts some things, but it's not Draconian at all.
Let's go through this line by line. "Two million mothers and young children will be cut from a program that gives them access to healthy food." Okay, so the Republicans are going to purposely starve two million mothers and their children. Or, said another way, Republicans want two million mothers and their children to have contaminated food. "There would be 4,500 fewer federal grants at the Department of Justice and the FBI to combat violent crime, financial crime, and help secure the border." So the Republicans want rape to increase, bank robberies to increase. The Republicans want more illegal immigrants flooding across the border. The Republicans want Wall Street banks to continue to screw people. The Republicans want more violent crime. The Republicans don't want to secure the border.
"Hundreds of National Parks would be forced to close for part or all of the year," because the Republicans don't like nature. . . .
[H]e is appealing to the absolute, most ignorant segment our population with this and what he's doing with the Supreme Court and the upcoming decision on his health care law. It is clear what he's doing, and it's clear what he thinks of this country.
His reelection hinges on him being able to mobilize the ignorant, the shallow, the uninformed, the uneducated, the dumb, and the stupid. . . .
You don't need 60, and the Democrats have 53 or 54 seats. They could pass it whenever they want. They haven't advanced a budget in three years, the Democrats haven't, because they don't want anything on paper for which they will be held accountable. They don't want anything on paper that could be run against. For three years the Democrats in Congress have not presented a budget. Obama's last two budgets have gone down to humiliating defeats. Paul Ryan has a budget here that attempts to do some good things. And you could see it's under assault, under attack with one lie and one mischaracterization after another.
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4/3/12 NBC News and ABC News Don't Let Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story
Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: NBC is still investigating what happened. It turns out that the RTDNA, the Radio Television Digital News Association, a professional group, not a trade group, the RTDNA, the head honcho has put a post on their website saying this was very, very bad. It's really bad what NBC did. Obviously it wasn't bias, but it was very, very bad. Wasn't bias? Here you have something on tape. You had plenty of chances to edit this, get it right. It went out the way they wanted it.
Now, if they don't think there's bias in what NBC did then it's so institutionalized, racial bias is so institutionalized at NBC that they don't even recognize it. But to deny that there was bias involved in what NBC did? They're still investigating how in the world that 911 tape could have been doctored. Bernie Goldberg was on O'Reilly last night and he said, (paraphrasing) "Look, you and I do this investigation and it's over in ten minutes. We bring the guy in and say, 'Why'd you do it?' Whatever he says, 'You're gone.'" There's no justification for this.
And guess what now? Guess what now? "Enhanced video of George Zimmerman being led into a Florida police station appears to show possible injuries to the back of his head, lending credence to his claim he was in a struggle with Trayvon Martin when he shot the teen. ABC News initially released video of Zimmerman that did not clearly show marks on his scalp, but had the video enhanced digitally and released a new clip on Monday. That clip appears to show a gash. Zimmerman's father claims his son was being beaten by the 17-year-old teen when he shot Martin in self-defense. Martin's supporters say Zimmerman shot the unarmed teen on Feb. 26 after racially profiling him --" There was no racial profiling. The only reason anybody thinks that is because of what NBC did.
This is a Fox News story I'm reading from. "After racially profiling him and stalking the youth through the neighborhood." There was no racial profiling. Doesn't that kind of cut the legs off the entire mainstream media story on this? There wasn't any racial profiling. ABC's first videotape shows no injury to Zimmerman. But then all of a sudden for some reason they found another layer on the video, and when they enhanced it, lo and behold, right here it is, there's a gash. Well, what other video has ABC shown us over the years that has not been enhanced? (interruption) What was the evidence for racial profiling? The NBC 911 tape. The evidence for racial profiling was the NBC 911 tape. (interruption) The hoodie? Well, no. Snerdley, the reason why they think there's racial profiling is because of what NBC did with the 911 tape. . . . So what did we have? We had an NBC 911 audio that made it look like Zimmerman was profiling Trayvon Martin. It turns out that wasn't true. Then we had an ABC video which showed that Zimmerman wasn't injured. Now all of a sudden we've been told that NBC doctored the audio on the 911 tape and ABC found a new layer when they enhanced their video. News reports say that paramedics treated Zimmerman at the scene, but ABC says in the first report he wasn't injured. So did the paramedics lie? It's all breaking down. The Trayvon Martin story is falling apart.
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4/3/12 Obama Assaults the Supreme Court, Day Two: the Human Element Rush Limbaugh Show
RUSH: [D]uring the Q&A, the moderator is the chairman of Associated Press, Dean Singleton, who said, "Mr. President, you said yesterday it would be unprecedented for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. Yet that's exactly what the court's done during its entire existence. . . .
OBAMA: What I did emphasize yesterday is there is a human element to this that everybody has to remember --
RUSH: Stop the tape! Let me tell you what the human element is in Obamacare. The human element is telling a 100-year-old woman, "Sorry, here's the pain pill. You don't get the pacemaker. You're too old." That's the human element in Obamacare. The human element in Obamacare is the death panels. The human element in Obamacare is the government, a bunch of bureaucrats that we'll never meet, deciding who gets treated and how extensively we get treated. And they'll make their decisions based on a bunch of factors that we'll have no control over. If you're 73 and you come in with a case of cancer, it's "Well, know if we should spend the money to treat a 73-year-old. We could better spend the money on a young person that's got something wrong with them." That's the Obama death panels. There's your "human element," . . . .
RUSH: How many human elements have been killed by Roe vs. Wade? What is that number? For a while there, wasn't it over a million human elements a year that were killed by Roe vs. Wade since 1973? Yeah. That's right, the human element of abortion.
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4/3/12 Appeals court fires back at Obama's comments on health care case Jan Crawford, CBSNews
"In the escalating battle between the administration and the judiciary, a federal appeals court apparently is calling the president's bluff -- ordering the Justice Department to answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom.
"The order, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, appears to be in direct response to the president's comments yesterday about the Supreme Court's review of the health care law. Mr. Obama all but threw down the gauntlet with the justices, saying he was 'confident' the Court would not 'take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.'
"Overturning a law of course would not be unprecedented -- since the Supreme Court since 1803 has asserted the power to strike down laws it interprets as unconstitutional. The three-judge appellate court appears to be asking the administration to admit that basic premise -- despite the president's remarks that implied the contrary. The panel ordered the Justice Department to submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday addressing whether the Executive Branch believes courts have such power, the lawyer said.
"The panel is hearing a separate challenge to the health care law by physician-owned hospitals. The issue arose when a lawyer for the Justice Department began arguing before the judges. Appeals Court Judge Jerry Smith immediately interrupted, asking if DOJ agreed that the judiciary could strike down an unconstitutional law.
"The DOJ lawyer, Dana Lydia Kaersvang, answered yes -- and mentioned Marbury v. Madison, the landmark case that firmly established the principle of judicial review more than 200 years ago, according to the lawyer in the courtroom.
"Smith then became 'very stern,' the source said, suggesting it wasn't clear whether the president believes such a right exists. The other two judges on the panel, Emilio Garza and Leslie Southwick--both Republican appointees--remained silent, the source said.
"Smith, a Reagan appointee, went on to say that comments from the president and others in the Executive Branch indicate they believe judges don't have the power to review laws and strike those that are unconstitutional, specifically referencing Mr. Obama's comments yesterday about judges being an "unelected group of people. . . .
"'I would like to have from you by noon on Thursday -- that's about 48 hours from now -- a letter stating what is the position of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, in regard to the recent statements by the president,' Smith said. 'What is the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review?' . . .
"In asking for the letter, Smith said: 'I want to be sure you're telling us that the attorney general and the Department of Justice do recognize the authority of the federal courts, through unelected judges, to strike acts of Congress or portions thereof in appropriate cases.'"
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4/3/12 Paul Ryan: Obama distorting my budget plan By SEUNG MIN KIM, Politico
"'History will not be kind to a president who, when it came time to confront our generation’s defining challenge, chose to duck and run,' Ryan said. 'The president refuses to take responsibility for the economy and refuses to offer a credible plan to address the most predictable economic crisis in our history.
"'Like his reckless budgets, today’s speech by President Obama is as revealing as it is disappointing: While others lead by offering real solutions, he has chosen to distort the truth and divide Americans in order to distract from his failed record,” added Ryan, who is in Wisconsin campaigning with Mitt Romney ahead of Tuesday’s primaries there. 'His empty promises are quickly becoming broken promises – and the American people will hold him accountable for this violation of their trust.'
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) echoed that critique, accusing Obama of “shrinking” from the debt challenge.
"'If the president were serious, he would put forward a plan to deal with our debt crisis and save Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for future generations of seniors without raising taxes on small businesses that are struggling in this economy,' Boehner said in a statement. 'Instead, he has chosen to campaign rather than govern, and the debt crisis he is presiding over is only getting worse.'
"Ryan’s budget passed the House last week on a mostly party-line vote and is dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate. Romney has embraced Ryan’s budget and the fiscal blueprint will be a key campaign platform for Republicans in the 2012 elections."
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4/3/12 Romney sweeps primary night, wins Wisconsin contest, Fox News projects FoxNews.com
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4/3/12 U.S. runs on oil; Obama runs on anti-oil fibs By Charles T. Drevna, The Washington Times
President’s propagandists fuel sputtering campaign with false claims
"The political memo falsely claims that the oil sector gets federal subsidies. But companies that produce oil and natural gas and that manufacture fuels and petrochemicals don’t get a penny of subsidies. We just get the same types of tax deductions and credits as other American manufacturers.
"In addition, the memo falsely claims that oil companies work to 'manipulate the price and supply of gasoline to increase their profit,' but 36 government investigations since 1973 have all found such allegations are baseless.
"The memo falsely claims American companies are oil exporters and says such exports should end. In truth, our nation imports about 60 percent of the crude oil we use. We also are a net importer of gasoline, but a net exporter of refined petroleum products overall - primarily diesel fuel.
"'More exports mean more jobs,' President Obama said in his Feb. 18 weekly address, adding that 'we need to invest in American-made energy.' As American manufacturers of the fuels that keep our nation moving, we agree - and so should Mr. Podesta and Mr. Garin. . . .
"At a time of rising gasoline prices, Mr. Obama’s anti-fossil fuels crusade has certainly put him in 'difficult circumstances.' The president has repeatedly refused to increase the U.S. supply of oil - which accounts for 76 percent of the price of gasoline - even though such action would put downward pressure on gasoline prices.
"For example, the president has refused to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring more than 800,000 barrels of oil every day from Canada, Montana and North Dakota to Gulf Coast refineries. He has also barred drilling and exploration for oil on the vast majority of federal lands and waters, while camouflaging this policy by highlighting increased drilling on private lands that remain outside the scope of his anti-oil policies.
"Mr. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has created a blizzard of conflicting regulations on oil producers, fuel manufacturers and petrochemical plants that raise energy costs by billions of dollars, are sometimes impossible to comply with, and accomplish little or nothing for the environment. Almost daily he calls for discriminatory energy-tax increases that could further raise the costs of producing oil and manufacturing fuels.
"Mr. Obama has made it clear in the past that his chief energy goal is not to lower fuel prices, but to get Americans off fossil fuels as quickly as possible by forcing up the price of petroleum products and heavily subsidizing 'alternatives.'
"The U.S. Energy Department has poured $14.5 billion in loans - financed by your tax dollars - into 'alternative' energy companies, some of which have gone bankrupt and laid off their workers. These include the Solyndra solar-energy company, which is unable to repay a $535 million federally backed loan.
"The president has also backed other multibillion-dollar energy subsidies, such as the $7,500 that now goes to each buyer of a new electric car - a subsidy he now wants to raise to $10,000 because so few people are buying electric vehicles.
"The polling data that is the foundation of the Podesta-Garin memo is based on questions phrased in an extremely negative and misleading manner about the oil sector, eliciting a predictably negative response.
"Mr. Garin would not dare ask Americans if they favor an oil and natural-gas sector that supports more than 9 million American jobs, pays more than $31 billion in federal taxes and pays additional billions to states and localities, and strengthens America’s economic and national security. Such a question would undoubtedly elicit very different responses."
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4/2/12 WSJ: Fed Buying 61 Percent of US Debt Julie Crawshaw and Forrest Jones, Money News
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4/2/12 Unemployment is not 8.3 percent -- it’s 15.1 percent by Donald Lambro, Human Events
"One unassailable fact
continues to give Barack Obama and his top campaign strategists political
nightmares. No president has won re- election since the Great Depression
when the unemployment rate was more than 8 percent.
"Despite all of the data-twisting hoopla from the White House and their
compliant allies in the news media, the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
unemployment rate remains at 8.3 percent, which is nothing to write home
about.
"But, dig a little deeper among the unemployed, and you will find that
the real-honest-to-God national jobless rate is much higher than that
because it includes numbers BLS leaves out of its employment equation.
"More ominous for Obama and his bid to be a two-term president is that
most economic forecasters do not see the jobless rate falling below 8
percent by November.
"The economy appears to be slowing down and with it, new job creation,
economists say.
"'Going forward, unemployment is not likely to fall much further and
could rise again,' says University of Maryland's Business School economist
Peter Morici, who has been severely critical of the president's sorry jobs
record.
"'Fourth-quarter growth was stronger as the global economy recovered from
first-half disruptions such as the earthquake in Japan, but going forward,
economists expect growth to slow to about 2 percent,' Morici said.
"The unemployment elephant in the labor statistics room has been
discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job and dropped out of
the workforce and those who are forced to take temp jobs or are working
fewer hours.
"It didn't make the nightly newscasts or most newspaper reports, but BLS
reported in January that "working age adults not participating in the labor
force--those neither employed nor looking for work -- increased by 88,000."
"This highlights the big under-reported story in Obama's persistently
lackluster jobs record: the rapidly declining labor force participation
rate.
"'In the latest, much celebrated, unemployment report, the labor force
participation rate had plummeted to 63.7 percent, the most rapid decline in
U.S. history, writes economist Peter Ferrara.
"'That means that under President Obama nearly 5 million Americans have
fled the workforce in hopeless despair,' Ferrara adds.
"The nightly network news ballyhooed the 243,000 new jobs that were
created in January, but what they did not report was that 1.2 million
discouraged workers had simply dropped out of the workforce, Ferrara
reported.
"But they were not counted among the unemployed because they had ceased
looking for a job and that sent the unemployment rate down.
"Pretty clever, huh?
"'They may desperately need and want jobs. They may be in poverty, as
many undoubtedly are, with America suffering today more people in poverty
than in the entire half century,' [Emphasis added.] says Ferrara. 'But
they are not counted in that 8.3 percent unemployment rate that Obama and
his media cheerleaders were so tirelessly celebrating last week.'
Add these discouraged dropouts and Obama's shameful unemployment rate climbs
to 11 percent.
"But there are more shenanigans in the BLS's statistical gymnastics.
Another 2.8 million, BLS said, 'wanted and were available for work, and had
looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months,'
but they weren't counted as unemployed because they said they had not looked
for a job in the previous four weeks.
"All of these workers, discouraged drop-outs and the so-called
'underemployed' forced to work part-time or temp jobs, pushes the real
jobless unemployment rate to 15.1 percent.
"As for BLS's average 8.3 percent unemployment rate, it is worth noting
that millions of Americans do not live in the average column. Sixteen
states, including the most the populated, had jobless rates that fell
between 12.3 percent and 8 percent in February.
"Among them: Nevada, 12.3 percent; Rhode Island, 11 percent; California,
10.9 percent; North Carolina, 9.9 percent; Florida, 9.4 percent; Georgia and
Illinois, 9.1 percent; New Jersey, 9 percent; Michigan, 8.8 percent;
Kentucky, 8.7 percent; and New York, 8.5 percent.
"Obama insists we're moving in the right direction, even though
unemployment rates remain very high by historical standards.
"Economists say the unemployment figures are still dreadful.
"'The unemployment rate today, 10 quarters after the end of the
recession, is still a full two percentage points higher than it was during
the peak of the last recession in 2003,' Heritage Foundation economist J.D.
Foster told Human Events.
"In the fourth year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, after a deep
recession, unemployment was 7.5 percent. It was a tame 5.8 percent in 2008,
the last year of George W. Bush's presidency. Can Obama do any better? So
far he hasn't.
"Even Obama's supporters in the news media think he has failed miserably
on the economic front, especially on jobs.
"Liberal New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman says, 'things
are not O.K. -- not remotely O.K. This is still a terrible economy.'"
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4/2/12 Obama warns 'unelected' Supreme Court against striking down health law FoxNews.com
"Republican lawmakers slammed the president for his Supreme Court comments. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accused the president of misrepresenting the implications of a ruling against the law.
"'It must be nice living in a fantasy world where every law you like is constitutional and every Supreme Court decision you don't is 'activist,' he said in a statement. 'Many of us have been arguing for nearly three years that the federal government does not have the power to dictate individuals' purchasing decisions. After a national debate on the subject, more than two-thirds of Americans agree that the Obamacare insurance mandate is unconstitutional.'
"The president spoke following meetings with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Until the heath care case remarks, the press conference was focused mostly on economic issues, as well as the war on drugs.
"The leaders vowed a new effort to boost North American trade and cut needless regulation that stifles it. 'Our three nations are going to sit down together, go through the books and simplify and eliminate more regulations that will make our joint economies stronger,' Obama said.
"Obama noted trade among the three neighbors now tops $1 trillion a year, and he wants to see that number rise.
But notable by its absence from the post-summit news conference in the Rose Garden was the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada's oil sands in Alberta to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Obama shelved the plan pending further review -- and has endured ferocious GOP attacks ever since, with Republicans calling the move a blow to job creation and U.S. energy needs. He maintains GOP leaders in Congress forced his hand by insisting on a decision before an acceptable pipeline route was found.
"Harper has voiced disappointment with Obama's decision. He also visited China in February to explore alternatives. Canada has the world's third-largest oil reserves -- more than 170 billion barrels -- after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to rise to 3.7 million by 2025."
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4/2/12 If The Court Says No, Obama Is Toast! Dick Morris, DickMorris.com
[Click the date to access this video.]
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4/2/12 4 Indiana Dems charged with election fraud in 2008 By Eric Shawn, FoxNews.com
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4/2/12 Obama Opposes Basic Economic Freedom Rush Limbaugh Show Transcript Segment
RUSH: [H]e characterization of capitalism as "you're on your own" economics is so flawed as to be insulting, that this is what I mean about these people being ignorant. Conceited, ignorant. I have no doubt he believes this. He's been taught this. He's theorized about it in the faculty lounge. He believes that capitalism is you're on your own. He believes that capitalism is people destroying each other, stealing from each other. That's what he thinks of competition. Competition is immoral, it's unhealthy because all it does is lead to cheaters. And who are the cheaters? The people that win.
This is striking, to have this kind of conceit and arrogance combined with ignorance in a president of the United States is profoundly dangerous, shockingly dangerous to have this kind of thinking. He's put this in his books another way. He has written: white man's greed runs a world in need. But capitalism is not "you're on your own." Capitalism is free markets and self-interest. You see, that's what these people can't abide, the self-interest. The mother and father who go to work attempting to improve their family's economic standing is self-interest. It isn't selfishness, and they're not doing what they're doing to take from other people, but Obama thinks they are.
They're not doing what they're doing to destroy other people. They're doing what they're doing to improve their own lot in life, and as they do their children's lives prove and so do the lives in their neighborhoods and their communities improve, and this works geometrically in proportion. The president of the United States thinks this country has never worked. The most prosperous, generous, good country on the face of the earth in the history of the world.
RUSH: Capitalism is simply economic freedom. If you're against capitalism, you're against basic economic freedom. Simple as that.
RUSH: So capitalism, the most successful economic system ever created by man, stop and think of this in more than just political terms. Think of it in terms of whether somebody's smart and knows what they're talking about. The greatest economic reality in the history of mankind. In 300 short years, compared to the length of time other nations have been on earth, societies, cultures, none ever got close to the standard of living, economic output. We start with 13 colonies and become the only genuine world superpower. We create a standard of living for our citizens and others around the world. We feed much of the world. We are the first on the scene for disasters that happen anywhere else around the planet.
It's striking to look at the history of the United States and call it a failure. But that is what our president is doing. And he's doing it as part of his reelection campaign. The United States of America is a failure. It's a failed experiment. It needs to be cast aside. Now, stop and think of that. In real world terms, we have to throw it out and replace it with what? Six decades of failed liberal social programs, the New Deal, FDR, and we had the Great Society, LBJ, the war on poverty, all of these things did what? Did we reduce poverty? No. Not with liberal programs. The abjectly failures, demonstrable, provable failures, are the things Obama believes in. But it's not just ignorance. It's not just arrogance. It's not just conceit.
What is happening under Barack Obama is a willful destruction. Barack Obama really believes, he's not just saying, he really believes and he is campaigning on the premise that the United States is a failure, as founded. And the last three-plus years we have been involved in a purposeful, willful transformation of this country from what it was that made it a failure in his mind to what it will take to make it successful or morally just. You see, in his world the United States is immoral and unjust. The wars that we have fought are immoral and unjust, and our superpower status did not arise out of our own creativity, industry, and production. It only happened because we stole the resources that we don't have from other people around the world. We stole their oil. We stole their best people. We stole their best ideas. We stole whatever. And we made people poor. We took other people's wealth. We stole it.
Meanwhile, we didn't steal anything. People from all over the world have wanted to come here for as long as this country has been the United States of America. Capitalism is the most non-ideological, nonracist, most successful economic system in the history of the world. What's worked better, capitalism or the New Deal? Capitalism or the Great Society? Capitalism or Obamaism? Capitalism or the Soviet Union? Capitalism or communist China? Capitalism or Cuba? Capitalism or Venezuela? In every one of these countries where I've offered a comparison, I'm comparing a land of freedom and economic liberty to tyranny and totalitarianism. China, the old Soviet Union, the current Cuba, the current Venezuela.
Wherever you go that there is entrenched socialism, you have tyranny and totalitarianism. And you don't have human life anywhere near as just flat-out enjoyable as it is in the United States, and that might be part of the reason Obama and people like him are mad. It could well be that they look at it as just not fair, that the United States has such wealth, such opportunity for contentment, pursuit of happiness, enjoyable lifestyle, expectation of all that. Maybe that's what bothers them. It's unfair. In fact, I think it is. I think a lot of Obama's belief is rooted in it's time we found out what it's like elsewhere in the world. The problem is he thinks that the way it is elsewhere in the world is our fault because we've taken, we've stolen, or we've conquered or what have you.
You boil it all down to a very simple explanation, and Obama is running for reelection on this premise: the United States of America is the problem in the world, not the solution. And that, folks, is scary. That's frightening. That we have a president of the United States who thinks that his country is the problem in the world, it's time this country was knocked down a couple of pegs, find out what it's like to be exploited by other people, like we did to the rest of the world. Every previous president in this country... well, take it back. Certainly not Woodrow Wilson. But I would dare say 99%, 98% of all American presidents have believed with every fiber of their soul that the United States was the solution to the world's problems.
We have one who believes it's the problem. We and everything about us are the problem. Why else apologize, folks, to all these world leaders in his first year? Why bow down to these other leaders? Why run for office on the premise that the United States will once again be loved if we have a president who also dislikes this country, like other foreign leaders do?
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4/1/12 Energy: Obama's Favorite Topic of Deception By Jack Kelly, Real Clear Politics
"The president was in Cushing, Okla., March 22 to pretend he was for the Keystone XL pipeline he blocked in January, and to feign support for domestic production of oil and natural gas, which his administration hinders in every way it can.
Posing in front of stacks of pipe, Mr. Obama said: 'Today, I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority.'
"Not the whole pipeline, which was to run from Alberta's tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Just its southern end, over which Mr. Obama has little control. He still won't permit the pipeline to cross the Canadian-U.S. border.
"Drilling can't bring down gasoline prices, Mr. Obama said, because "we only produce 2 percent of the world's oil." The actual figure is 6.5 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
"Mr. Obama flubbed a deception he employs often. What he meant to say was that America possesses only 2 percent of the world's proven reserves of petroleum. What he doesn't say is that "proven reserves" measure oil recoverable in known reservoirs under 'existing economic and operating conditions.' Drill in more locations and employ new techniques and we have 60 times our proven reserves in 'technically recoverable oil,' the EIA says.
"The Keystone speech did not go over well. Referring to the president's support for only part of the XL pipeline, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., said he was 'highlighting a waffle,' keeping the issue alive while pleasing no one. 'I think it's the most idiotic political move I've ever seen.'
"'The president wants to reject the pipeline, and yet take credit for approving it,' said the president of the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in Houston.
"Environmentalists who cheered when Mr. Obama blocked Keystone in January expressed alarm.
"In Golden, Colo., two days earlier, the president said it was Congress and the Chinese, not he, who are to blame for the failure of Solyndra, a solar firm which went bankrupt after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees. 'This was not our program per se,' he said.
"Mr. Obama made Solyndra the poster boy for his massive 'investment' in green energy. Solyndra's owner was a frequent guest at the White House, which approved the loan to Solyndra despite concerns raised by financial experts and the Office of Management and Budget.
"With YouTube around, it's hard to drop a whopper that big down the memory hole. An ad is up which juxtaposes the president in 2010 taking credit for Solyndra's 'success' with his remarks in Golden.
Mr. Obama lies most often about energy, but not only about energy.
"Obamacare will cost taxpayers a lot more than he said it would. It raises, not lowers, health insurance premiums. You might not be able to keep your doctor or private health insurance plan. The individual mandate isn't a tax, Mr. Obama said. His lawyers told the Supreme Court that, in essence, it is.
"The president was overheard Monday making a politically embarrassing request of Russia's president. In trying to explain it away, Mr. Obama claimed he'd been talking about nuclear weapons stockpiles when in fact he'd been talking about missile defense.
"'The Taliban's momentum has been broken,' the president said in the State of the Union address Jan. 24. The Taliban consider victory 'inevitable' once coalition troops withdraw, according to interviews with Taliban prisoners cited in a NATO report.
"Lobbyists 'won't find a job in my White House,' candidate Obama promised, then filled his administration with former lobbyists.
"'My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," he said. No recent president has done more to hide things from press and public, say critics such as Katherine Meyer, a lawyer who's been filing freedom-of-information cases since 1978, according to a report in Politico.
"When Mr. Obama departed from the truth in the past, journalists were reluctant to call him on it. Now, as he races about the country, trying, frantically, to fool the people one more time, the lies are coming faster than his friends in the news media can cover them up.
"'Americans aren't stupid,' Mr. Obama said. We'll find out Nov. 6."
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4/1/12 Neighbor defends George Zimmerman myfoxtampabay.com
Despite booking video from the Sanford Police Department that many say shows George Zimmerman largely unscathed from his encounter with Trayvon Martin, the neighbor said he saw Zimmerman with obvious injuries.
"The neighbor is talking for the first time about what he saw on George Zimmerman's face less than 24-hours after Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin.
"'I saw George. He was banged up. His head had two big bandages, that weren't flat, had a bump on them,' the neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said. . . .
"'I seen him have a big bandage on his nose and his nose swollen. On the side, where his eyes were at, it was swollen,' he said.
"He points out exactly where on a picture.
"'I seen the bandage right here, and this side of his nose and this side of his nose was swollen.
"The surveillance video was released by Sanford police of Zimmerman when he was brought in for questioning after the shooting. Bruises and bandages aren't visible, but you can see an officer looking at the back of his head.
"'Once you get into a fight you don't show bruises that day, it shows the next day,' he said.
"The neighbor says Zimmerman had to have acted in self-defense.
"'I think something happened that night where he had to defend himself," the neighbor said.
"He says that the voice heard screaming on the 911 call is that of George Zimmerman.
"'I hear his voice every single day, I talk to him every single day,' he said. . . .
"He believes Zimmerman was defending his life, and that's why he's defending Zimmerman now. He says he doesn't believe race played a role in what happened.
"'I don't think race is involved at all, because I've seen black, African-American folks come to George's house,' he said.
"The neighbor says he's tired of Zimmerman being portrayed as the bad guy."
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4/1/12 Exclusive - Palin to Couric: 'Game On' Alexander Marlow, Breitbart
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4/1/12 Top Obama campaign donor accused of fraud
A major donor to President Barack Obama has been accused of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official, creating new headaches for Obama's re-election campaign as it deals with the questionable history of another top supporter.
The New York donor, Abake Assongba, and her husband contributed more than $50,000 to Obama's re-election effort this year, federal records show. But Assongba is also fending off a civil court case in Florida, where she's accused of thieving more than $650,000 to help build a multimillion-dollar home in the state - a charge her husband denies.
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4/1/12 William Ayers: 'I get up every morning thinking ... today I'm gonna end capitalism' FoxNews.com
"William Ayers, in a pep talk to an Occupy Wall Street gaggle, said he wakes up every morning thinking about how he's going to end capitalism -- though he acknowledged he goes to bed "every night disappointed."
The co-founder of the radical, Vietnam-era Weather Underground was videotaped chatting up what was identified as an Occupy Union Square group this past week in New York City. . . .
"Ayers' past ties to President Obama stirred trouble for the Democratic candidate when he was running in 2008. The two worked together on a charitable board starting in the mid-1990s, and Ayers once hosted a campaign event for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois Senate."Click here to go to the index