Tag: Democrats

ACU Offers support for a price, Democrats rejoice; But! Democrats do the same thing….

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Well, Maybe a little worse. But anyhow…Here’s the quote:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.

In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS. Keene did not return a message left on his cell phone.

via Exclusive: Conservative group offers support for $2M – Mike Allen – POLITICO.com.

Video via Politico:

Without missing a beat, the Democrat/Liberal bloggers all jumped up at once and said, “Ho Ho! See??!?! The Conservative are in the bed with BIG BUSINESS!”

….and the Democratic Party is without fault and never commits acts of dishonesty, right? Well, Not so much. As the Politico’s Glenn Thrush points out: (H/T to HotAir.com)

Three House Democratic leaders who were whipping members on the climate change bill gave tens of thousands in campaign cash to party moderates around the time of the 219-212 vote on June 26, according to Federal Election Commission records.

It’s impossible to tell if that torrent of cash was an attempt to schmear wavering Democrats — or just part of the usual cash dump made by leaders on the eve of the June 30 quarterly fundraising deadline.

Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) doled out $28,000 to reps who eventually voted yes on June 24, two days before the big vote — on a day when House leaders were doing some heavy-duty arm-twisting.

Clyburn recipients who voted for the bill included a who’s-who of battleground district Dems: Steve Driehaus, D-OH ($2,000); Martin Heinrich, D-NM ($2,000); Suzanne Kosmas, D-Fla. ($4,000); Betsy Markey, D-Colo. ($2,000); Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH ($2,000), Baron Hill, D-Ind. ($2,000); Alan Grayson, D-Fla. ($2,000); Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa ($2,000); Jim Himes, D-Conn. ($2,000);  Mary Jo Kilroy, D-OH ($2,000); Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. ($2,000); Jerry McNerney, D-Calif. ($2,000) and Tom Perriello, D-Va. ($2,000).

On the other hand, Clyburn also gave at least $14,000 to Democrats who voted no despite his pressure: Mike Arcuri, D-NY ($2,000); Marion Berry, D-Ark. ($2,000); Bobby Bright, D-Ala. ($2,000); Chris Carney, D-Penn. ($2,000); Chet Edwards (D-Tx.), Travis Childers , D-Miss. ($2,000); Parker Griffith, D-Ala. ($2,000) and Harry Mitchell, D-NM ($2,000).

The same pattern held true for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who gave $4,000 to yes-voting Ohio Democrat Zack Space and the same amount to no-voting Chris Carney.

House Energy and Commerce Henry Waxman gave at least $16,000 to yes-voters on June, 25, FEC records show.

A Waxman campaign spokesman said the payouts were part of the usual “end-of-quarter activity.”

Ken Spain, communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee emails this response:

“If this was a concerted effort by the Democratic leadership to purchase votes for Nancy Pelosi’s national energy tax at the eleventh hour, then it is unconscionable at best and corrupt at worst. The sad fact for those Democrats who were seemingly bought and paid for, is that it will take a lot more money than they received to defend such an atrocious vote.”

Of course, the Democrats right away sent Glenn a list of Republicans; who supposedly have done the same thing. Mostly vulnerable Republicans who may lose their seats in the 2010 election. (But of course!)

The point of this is, both of these parties are inherently corrupt and both need a good cleaning out and need new faces and new leadership; preferably ones that cannot be bought.

Others, on both sides of the fence: The Huffington Post, Michelle Malkin, Outside The Beltway, Right Wing News, Think Progress, Zandar Versus The Stupid, Firedoglake, Hot Air, The Note, Gawker, The Volokh Conspiracy, MoJo Blog Posts, Balloon Juice, Weekly Standard, Riehl World View, Washington Monthly, Democracy in America, Salon, Reason, The Corner, Newshoggers.com, The Atlantic Business Channel, Vox Popoli, Michael Calderone’s Blog, Say Anything, Eschaton, Conservatives4Palin.com and The Washington Independent

Sweet Justice: Susan Roesgen’s contract at CNN will not be renewed

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I love it, when stuff like this happens to people like her:

Breaking: TVNewser has learned CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen’s contract will not be renewed and she will be leaving the network.

Roesgen, you’ll recall, was criticized for her coverage at the tax day tea parties in April, when she said the event she was covering in Chicago was, “anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing, conservative network Fox.”

Roesgen took a break for a few weeks after that reporting and returned to the air in May covering the Drew Peterson arrest. Most recently, she covered Michael Jackson’s death from Los Angeles. Roesgen joined CNN in 2005.

When TVNewser asked whether Roesgen’s comments at the Chicago tea party rally had anything to do with her not being renewed, a CNN spokesperson said, “I can’t comment on personnel matters.”

via Susan Roesgen Out at CNN – mediabistro.com: TVNewser.

Of course, Liberal Blogger Zander the Stupid trots out a silly straw-man argument:

Perhaps we should apply the same journalistic integrity standards to, say, FOX morning host Brian Kilmeade’s recent antics.

Nice try dude; but Kilmeade’s antics, while facepalm worthy, never rise to level of stupidity, not to mention condensation of working class in this country; of Roesgen.

Dan Riehl writes:

Actually, I hope she gets another gig. Out of work is still out of work

With all due respect to Dan; BULLSHIT! I personally hope the little harpy sits out of work, for at least a couple of year. Let her feel the pain of her Obama-Massiah! Let her experience MY WORLD for a year or so. How it feels to have NO MONEY coming in, with bills coming in and no way to pay for them. Sorry Dan, the bitch had it coming; and honestly? It could not have happened to a better person.

Others on this sweet story: AmSpecBlog, Gateway Pundit, NewsBusters.org, Pajamas Media, American Power, Chicago Boyz, Moe Lane, Founding Bloggers, The Other McCain, Macsmind,

I was not aware that Al Sharpton was looking for help

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First off, let me say that I think Cap and Trade is wrong, will kill jobs and so on.

But this is totally disgusting:

Some of my fellow Conservatives are loving it. I personally found it to be most offensive and quite childish. The man was being outmaneuvered and instead of trying to argue the point; he chose to play the race card. How convenient.  :pissedoff:

Al Sharpton would have been proud. So would John Podhoretz possibly.

Not that I am defending Boxer, she is an idiot. But the worst way to fight idiocy; is with MORE idiocy.

Color me among those who are quite unimpressed. :smug:

Others: Townhall.com, Weekly Standard, The Other McCain, Say Anything, Wonk Room, Gateway Pundit and Weasel Zippers

Congress Delivers a Healthcare Bill

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You can read about it here.

You can read the details here. (Adobe Reader Required)

Commentary up the wazoo here.

A couple of rubs:

The proposal would also impose a “play-or-pay” requirement on employers, who would either have to offer qualifying insurance to their employees and contribute  a substantial share toward the premiums, or pay a fee to the federal government that would generally equal 8 percent of their payroll. Small employers (those with an annual payroll of less than $250,000) would be exempt from those requirements. As a rule, full-time employees with a qualifying offer of coverage from their employer would not be eligible to obtain subsidies via the exchanges, but an exception to that “firewall” would be allowed for workers who had to pay more than 11 percent of their income for their employer’s insurance. In that case, the employers would have to pay an amount equal to the per-worker fee due for firms subject to the “play-or-pay” penalty. Firms with relatively few employees and relatively low average wages would also be eligible for tax credits to cover up  to half of their contributions toward health insurance premiums.

Comment on the underlined part: Which would of course, run some Businesses out of business. Either you play along or pay taxes out the nose. The small Employers part is nice. But this would put the squeeze on the Medium to large businesses.

Of course, you’ve got your “Let’s Cover our backsides” Caveats:

Important Caveats Regarding This Preliminary Analysis

There are several reasons why the preliminary analysis that is provided in this
letter and its attachments does not constitute a comprehensive cost estimate for
the coverage provisions of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act:

• First, our analysis was based on specifications regarding insurance coverage that were provided by the tri-committee group and that differ in important ways from the “discussion draft” version of legislative language that was
released on June 19, 2009. The specifications that we analyzed are supposed to be reflected in the draft language released by the three committees today, but we have not yet been able to analyze that language to determine whether it conforms to those specifications. Our review of that language could have a significant effect on our analysis. More generally, as our understanding of the specifications improves, that also could affect our future estimates.

• Second, some effects of the proposal have not yet been fully captured in our analysis. In particular, we have not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies, nor have we
accounted for all of the proposal’s likely effects on spending for other federal programs. We expect to include those effects in the near future, but we also  expect that they will not have a sizable impact on our analysis.

• Third, the budgetary information shown in the attached table reflects many of the major cash flows that would affect the federal budget as a result of implementing the specified policies, and it provides our preliminary assessment of the proposal’s net effects on the federal budget deficit (subject  to the caveats listed above). Some additional cash flows would appear in the budget—either as outlays and offsetting receipts or outlays and revenues—but would net to zero and thus would not affect the deficit. CBO and the JCT staff have not yet estimated all of those cash flows but expect to do so in the near future.2 Those additional cash flows would include the premiums collected by the public plan and its outlays as well as risk-adjustment transfers from plans with relatively healthy enrollees to plans with relatively unhealthy enrollees.

The Requirements:

The proposal’s major provisions—including the establishment of an individual mandate to obtain insurance, an expansion of eligibility for the Medicaid program, and the creation of new insurance exchanges through which certain people could purchase subsidized coverage—would be implemented beginning in 2013.

All legal residents would be required to enroll in a health insurance plan meeting certain minimum standards or face a tax penalty (described below). Individuals not required to file a tax return would be exempt from the penalty; exemptions for hardship and other  reasons would be determined by a new and independent federal agency overseeing the health insurance exchanges (also described below).

The penalty assessed on people who would be subject to the mandate but did not obtain insurance would equal 2.5 percent of the difference between their adjusted gross income (modified to include tax-exempt interest and certain other sources of income) and the tax filing threshold. The amount of the penalty could not exceed the national average
premium for plans offered in the exchanges.

New health insurance policies sold in the individual and group insurance markets would be subject to several requirements regarding their availability and benefits. Insurers would be required to issue policies to all applicants and could not limit coverage for people with preexisting medical conditions. In addition, premiums for a given plan could not vary because of enrollees’ health but could vary because of their age by a factor of two (under a system known as adjusted community rating). Individual policies that were purchased before 2013 and maintained continuously thereafter would be “grandfathered,” meaning that they would not have to conform to the new rules but would still fulfill the individual mandate. Existing group policies would have to conform to the new rules by
2017.

In order to fulfill the individual mandate, policies that were not grandfathered would have to cover a broadly specified minimum benefit package (which was assumed to have the same scope of benefits as seen in a typical employer-sponsored plan) and would have to have a minimum actuarial value of 70 percent and a limit on out-of-pocket costs no
greater than $5,000 for individual coverage and $10,000 for family coverage. (A health insurance plan’s actuarial value reflects the share of costs for covered services paid by the plan.) After 2013, the maximum levels of those out-of-pocket caps would be indexed to general inflation.

The proposal would establish a national exchange through which certain individuals and employers could purchase health insurance; states could also opt to operate their own exchanges (either one per state or one covering several states). All insurance plans sold  through an exchange would be required to cover the “basic” benefit package described above. “Enhanced” plans would have an actuarial value of 85 percent, and “premium” plans would have an actuarial value of 95 percent.

Except as specified below, individuals and families who enroll in exchange plans and have income between 133 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) would be eligible for premium subsidies and cost-sharing subsidies (see table below).

Federal premium subsidies in a given area would be tied to the average premium of the three lowest-cost plans providing basic coverage in the exchange in that area. The subsidies would limit an enrollee’s contribution to a percentage of income ranging from 1.5 percent to 11.0 percent (see table); those caps would not be indexed over time. The federal government would fully fund cost-sharing subsidies, which would increase the actuarial value of enrollees’ coverage to specified tiers based on income.

Say goodbye to your freedoms folks. Because in a socialist society. You have none, at all.

Besides all that, how the hell are we going to pay for all this? Seeing our Economy is in the toilet and all. Stupid is, stupid does, I guess. :struggle: :silly:

Update: Ed Morrissey, As always, does a bang up job analyzing this new Bill and as I suspected; There’s some crap in it. :pissedoff:

Oh Wonderful….: The Economy is screwed to hell, worse than originally thought!

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Hope and Change……and Unemployed:

The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:

  • – June’s total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends. But many of the mythical jobs are in industries that have absolutely no job creation, e.g., finance. When the official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, June will look worse.
  • – More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don’t count on the unemployment roll.
  • – No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn’t searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.
  • – The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.
  • – The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours. That’s 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago. Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity. If Americans were still clocking those extra 48 minutes a week now, the same aggregate amount of work would get done with 3.3 million fewer employees, which means that if it were not for the shorter work week the jobless rate would be 11.7%, not 9.5% (which far exceeds the 8% rate projected by the Obama administration).
  • – The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.
  • – The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.
  • – The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs — 223,000 in the last report alone.
  • – The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.

Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.

via Average length of unemployment highest since 1948. – WSJ.com.

So much for “The One” fixing the economy. Oh, right; he misread it. Looks like this Blogging gig get might be my only job for a long time to come.  The Left is now spinning saying it will never recover.

Here’s ol’ Floppy ears talking about it:

Others: Hot Air, Pajamas Media, QandO, The Strata-Sphere, Stop The ACLU and Balloon Juice

TOTUS goes to pieces………Literally

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Ya know; I’ve heard of going to pieces on the job. But, this is a little ridiculous.

Jack Tapper reports:

ABC News’ Sunlen Miller and Jake Tapper report: If a teleprompter falls in the White House, does it make a sound?

Yes, especially when it’s the President’s teleprompter – or TOTUS as it is often referred to.

Midway through his speech on urban and metropolitan policy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon, one of his two small glass prompters came crashing down, hitting the wood floor and crashing in many pieces. It made quite a ruckus.

“Oh, goodness,” a startled President Obama said. “Sorry about that, guys.”

He then proceeded on with his remarks, “To pull our economy back from the brink, including the largest and most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation’s history…”

For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.

Shards of glass remained near the president’s feet for the duration of his speech.

Video:

Alternative View Here

Poor thing; must have gotten tired, with all the hard work in the White House. Either that or all of the Socialism had him depressed, and he just could not take it any longer.

Other Blogs covering this horrible tragedy:

(H/T and Thanks to AllahPundit)

No Matter what your Politics is… Hate Speech is STILL WRONG

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There is a big story burning up the Blogsophere right at the moment. I guess some liberal happened to go over to Free Republic and spotted some nasty remarks about Obama’s daughter.

Gawker has the story:

We should’ve seen this coming: conservative blog Free Republic fired hate speech off at Malia Obama after this photo of her appeared, letting their commenters go to town. But the journalist who reported this as news isn’t innocent, either. Chris Parry of The Vancouver Sun highlighted some of the comments on the mainstream, hard right-wing blog/news aggregator Free Republic. Among them, a picture of Michelle talking to Malia Obama with the caption: “To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds.” Classy.

[….]

FreeRepublic claims to be a site that “does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government.” Yet, the thread went down, and back up with the original comments in tact, and then some, notes Chris Parry, the story’s writer. Parry was careful and kind enough to – maybe unnecessarily – note the few reasonable voices in the crowd who were conservative, on Free Republic, and not racist. But there’re always going to be a few exceptions to the rule, which, as far as you should be concerned, are absolute swamp creatures. Pardon any political incorrectness, but I think you’ll agree if you happen to go over and dip your toe in what’s mostly a bog of contagiously slimy invective and general retardation.

It gets worse, though. Chris Parry, it appears, has advocated on his Daily Kos blog any number of egregious offenses, among them: posting hate speech on sites like Free Republic and blaming it on conservatives. Parry posted under the name “hollywoodoz” on Daily Kos, where his signature was “Fool me once, I’ll punch you in the fucking head.” Parry outed himself as hollywoodoz here, where he discloses the company he helped start. In essence: Parry, the journalist, found his story right where he’d been circling it for a very long time, and reported it as news. Sigh.

Bottom line: Parry’s noble intentions are paving him a road to hell, by taking the same one the slimeball majority at Free Republic employs. They’re probably going to cheer a “mainstream,” centrist blog pointing out the offenses of a liberal reporter trying to expose hate speech, but they shouldn’t get it mixed up. A quick glance at Free Republic and you’ll probably see the same thing I did: some of the most egregious examples that lend credence to the idea that some people just shouldn’t be allowed near a keyboard, or to open their mouths, no matter what their political affiliation. Or, as some would have it: STFU.

There you have it; What happened, basically in four paragraphs.

Here is my take on all this mess. As someone who has went over the line once myself. Hate Speech is wrong. I do not give two flips who is doing it. I do not care, if you are a Right Winger, or a Liberal. This sort of nonsense is wrong. You say, “But they do it!”, So what? Do two wrongs make a right? Hell No! It just makes two wrong people!  This Chris Parry nut-job ought to be fired for trying to smear Conservatives, and ought to be SUED for a libel by the owner of the Free Republic. Not to mention the Vancouver Sun for allowing this idiot to write this report.

Just as well; The owner of the Free Republic ought to take some responsibility for the actions of his users. Whomever made the racist comments ought to be banned for life from that site. I know that I have had to snip some comments here from this Blog myself, when a couple people went overboard. It is simply called responsibility.

My feelings on this subject are not limited my partisan or Political Ideology. What is wrong; is wrong. No matter who is doing it. Period.

Others: Politics Daily, Say Anything, Lean Left, JammieWearingFool, Scared Monkeys, Gateway Pundit, The Progressive Republican, freerepublic.com, The Moderate Voice, The Huffington Post, Wake up America, Mediaite, Moonbattery, The Reaction and Latest Open Salon Blog

Update: Title changed after someone politely informed me, that I was using an improper word.

John Stossel takes on Liberal Propagandist Michael Moore

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I happen to like John Stossel; because he dares to take on the Liberals. Not in a mean or nasty way. But by simply stating the truth.

He writes about Michael Moore’s latest Movie:

Michael Moore has been working on another documentary.  This time, he’s taking on capitalism:

“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money.”

How ridiculous is that?  The wealthy, and everyone else, almost always decide that they don’t have enough wealth.  People ask their bosses for raises.  We invest in stocks hoping for bigger returns than Treasury Bonds bring.  “Greed” is a constant.  The beauty of free markets, when government doesn’t meddle in them, is that they turn this greed into a phenomenal force for good.  The way to win big money is to serve your customers well.  Profit-seeking entrepreneurs have given us better products, shorter work days, extended lives, and more opportunities to write the script of our own life.

He goes on…:

Moore also fails to understand is that it was not “capitalism” run amok that caused today’s financial problems.   In reality, it was a combination of ill-conceived government policies and an overzealous Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates to fuel a bubble in the housing market.  Then it was government that took money from taxpayers and forced banks to accept it.

Moore ought to understand that, because he makes a good point when he says his movie will be about “the biggest robbery in the history of this country – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.”

That is indeed robbery.  It sure doesn’t sound like capitalism.

Nope, sounds more like socialized Healthcare or simply Socialism in general; to me.

Mike Tennant writing over at Lew Rockwell’s Blog chimes in:

According to the press release you linked, Chris, “Moore has made three of the top six highest-grossing documentaries of all time,” which presumably means he has accumulated a great deal of wealth.  Apparently, since he continues to foist his so-called documentaries on an unsuspecting public, Moore has decided that he doesn’t have enough wealth.  He wants more–a lot more.

Like most anti-capitalists, Moore has no problem personally profiting from his own endeavors while demonizing other successful persons and attempting to have them dispossessed of their wealth.  The good news is that Moore ultimately has to answer to the marketplace and thus may find himself begging for work from the very people he now condemns if enough of his audience members wake up to the fact that he’s a charlatan and stop shelling out their increasingly scarce cash for his celluloid propaganda.

Mike is right on point; that is exactly how the socialists in America are. The Socialist left wants to preach to America, how evil, rotten, nasty and no good the evil capitalist system is; all the whole pocketing a profit from their lectures, Movies and the books that they just happen to make a profit at.  It is more of that “Yea for me, but Nay for thee”, type of mentality and outright hypocritical nonsense that the Far Socialist left is known for.

The troubling thing about it, is this; these knuckle-headed socialists basically control the Democratic Party and it’s message.  Hence my reasoning for not wanting anything to do with them or their Party any longer.

Give me Capitalism, Freedom and Liberty or Give Me Death!

Others: Wake up America

“The Wise Latina” Sotomayor backers target Firefighter Frank Ricci

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Calling Joe The Plumber!”

WASHINGTON — Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who’s at the center of Sotomayor’s most controversial ruling.

On the eve of Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the “troubled and litigious work history” of firefighter Frank Ricci.

This is opposition research: a constant shadow on Capitol Hill.

“The whole business of getting Supreme Court nominees through the process has become bloodsport,” said Gary Rose, a government and politics professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

On Friday, citing in an e-mail “Frank Ricci’s troubled and litigious work history,” the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters’ attention to Ricci’s past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.

Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he’s dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.

The Middletown-area fire department was subsequently fined for safety violations, but the Connecticut Department of Labor dismissed Ricci’s retaliation complaint.

No People for the American Way officials could be reached Friday to speak on the record about the press campaign.

“To go after so sympathetic a plaintiff as Frank Ricci . . . is a new low in the politics of personal destruction,” said Roger Pilon, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. “If they were smart, they’d keep a low profile.”

Ricci, though, has his own advocates, including conservative commentators such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Fox’s Sean Hannity

via Sotomayor backers urge reporters to probe New Haven firefighter | McClatchy.

Disgusting. The Staff of People for the American Way ought to be shot. The Communist bastards. 😡

Other Covering: PoliGazette, Hugh Hewitt’s TownHall Blog, Cold Fury, Townhall.com, Blue Crab Boulevard, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Verum Serum, Macsmind, Don Surber, Gateway Pundit, NewsBusters.org, The Jawa Report, and JammieWearingFool

Unbelievable: Eric Holder Considering Prosecuting Bush Administration officials; for keeping America safe

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This piece of sorry news comes from NewsWeek:

It’s the morning after Independence Day, and Eric Holder Jr. is feeling the weight of history. The night before, he’d stood on the roof of the White House alongside the president of the United States, leaning over a railing to watch fireworks burst over the Mall, the monuments to Lincoln and Washington aglow at either end. “I was so struck by the fact that for the first time in history an African-American was presiding over this celebration of what our nation is all about,” he says. Now, sitting at his kitchen table in wtcattack1jeans and a gray polo shirt, as his 11-year-old son, Buddy, dashes in and out of the room, Holder is reflecting on his own role. He doesn’t dwell on the fact that he’s the country’s first black attorney general. He is focused instead on the tension that the best of his predecessors have confronted: how does one faithfully serve both the law and the president?

Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence. Few succeed. At one extreme looms Alberto Gonzales, who allowed the Justice Department to be run like Tammany Hall. At the other is Janet Reno, whose righteousness and folksy eccentricities marginalized her within the Clinton administration. Lean too far one way and you corrupt the office, too far the other way and you render yourself impotent. Mindful of history, Holder is trying to get the balance right. “You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation’s laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort,” Holder says. “But the reality of being A.G. is that I’m also part of the president’s team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values.”

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an wtcattack2announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”

[….]

Holder began to review those policies in April. As he pored over reports and listened to briefings, he became increasingly troubled. There were startling indications that some interrogators had gone far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the Justice Department, which were themselves controversial. He told one intimate that what he saw “turned my stomach.”

It was soon clear to Holder that he might have to launch an investigation to determine whether crimes were committed under the Bush administration and prosecutions warranted. The obstacles were obvious. For a new administration to reach back and 911firefightersmemorialinvestigate its predecessor is rare, if not unprecedented. After having been deeply involved in the decision to authorize Ken Starr to investigate Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Holder well knew how politicized things could get. He worried about the impact on the CIA, whose operatives would be at the center of any probe. And he could clearly read the signals coming out of the White House. President Obama had already deflected the left wing of his party and human-rights organizations by saying, “We should be looking forward and not backwards” when it came to Bush-era abuses.

Still, Holder couldn’t shake what he had learned in reports about the treatment of prisoners at the CIA’s “black sites.” If the public knew the details, he and his aides figured, there would be a groundswell of support for an independent probe. He raised with his staff the possibility of appointing a prosecutor. According to three sources familiar with the911attack process, they discussed several potential choices and the criteria for such a sensitive investigation. Holder was looking for someone with “gravitas and grit,” according to one of these sources, all of whom declined to be named. At one point, an aide joked that Holder might need to clone Patrick Fitzgerald, the hard-charging, independent-minded U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair. In the end, Holder asked for a list of 10 candidates, five from within the Justice Department and five from outside.

[…]

The next few weeks, though, could test Holder’s confidence. After the prospect of torture investigations seemed to lose momentum in April, the attorney general and his aides 911attackfirefightersturned to other pressing issues. They were preoccupied with Gitmo, developing a hugely complex new set of detention and prosecution policies, and putting out the daily fires that go along with running a 110,000-person department. The regular meetings Holder’s team had been having on the torture question died down. Some aides began to wonder whether the idea of appointing a prosecutor was off the table.

But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general’s thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Depart ment office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as “the dark side.” He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was “shocked and saddened,” he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America’s name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.

I hope that if and when Mr. Holder decides to appoint this special prosecutor; that he keeps the follow items in mind: (H/T to The Corner)

*  Alberto Gonzales did not attempt to mislead Congress in 2007 when he testified that the controversy that erupted at the Justice Department in 2004 was not over what was popularly known as the “terrorist surveillance program” (i.e., the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program to intercept suspected terrorist communications that crossed U.S. borders — the effort the Left smeared as “domestic spying”).  In fact, as Gonzales told the Senate judiciary Committee, the controversy was about other intelligence activities.

*  When congressional Democrats rolled their eyes, suggested that Gonzales was lying, and groused that a special prosecutor should be appointed, they well knew he wasn’t lying — but they also knew he couldn’t discuss the intellligence activities at the center of the controversy because those activities were (and remain) highly classified. That is, they knowingly badgered the Attorney General of the United States at a hearing in a calculated effort to make him look dishonest and to intimate something they knew to be untrue: namely, that the dispute at DOJ arose because senior officials believed warrantless surveillance was illegal.

*  Before Gonzales and President Bush’s then chief-of-staff, Andy Card, went to see Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital (where he was being treated for pancreatitis), President Bush directed his administration to meet with top congressional Democrats and Republicans (Senate leaders Frist and Daschle, Speaker Hastert and House minority leader Pelosi, Roberts and Rockefeller from Senate Intel, and Goss and Harman from House Intel) to alert them that Ashcroft’s deputy, Jim Comey, had refused to sign off on intelligence activities that Ashcroft had previously approved.  Advised of the problem, the Gang of Eight did not agree to a quick legislative fix but, according to Gonzales’s contemporaneous notes, agreed that the intelligence activities should continue.  (Three years later, after Gonzales’s testimony, Pelosi, Rockefeller and Daschle claimed that they hadn’t agreed.)

*  Only after this meeting with the bipartisan congressional leaders, and with the prior 45-day authorization for all the program’s activities about to expire, did Gonzales and Card go to the hospital to visit the ailing Ashcroft — at the direction of President Bush.

*  Between the time the time the collection intelligence activities that came to be known as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was first authorized after the 9/11 attacks until the warrantless surveillance aspect of the program was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005, the Bush administration briefed the bipartisan leadership of the congressional intelligence committees 17 times about the activities involved in the program.

In sum, congressional Democrats knew about the program and knew that the dissent of the Justice Department’s senior leadership in 2004 was not about warrantless surveillance. They knew that if they postured that the dissent was about warrantless surveillance, Gonzales — not an adept communicator — would not be able to rebut them in a public hearing because the details of the dispute were classified.  Congressional Democrats also knew that President Bush agreed to make changes in the program in March 2004 to assuage DOJ’s concerns, and they knew that the program activities continued thereafter for a year-and-a-half (i.e., until the Times blew part of the program) without incident and with bipartisan congressional leadership continuing to be briefed.

The point I am trying to make is this, that the so-called “torture”; which was approved by Congress, prevented attacks on Los Angeles and various cities around the country.  It also saves lives and gets people to talk. It is also used to train our Military as well.

My advice to Holder is this; if you want to tear this Country apart, again, after a long eight years of it being sharply divided; go right ahead. If you want to tear down the Democratic Party; you know; the one of your own boss? The go right ahead and do this. If you want ruin the chances of America ever defending itself from another terrorist attack, then go right ahead and do this.  If you want to make a mockery of yourself and the entire polical system in America, go right Mr. Holder and do what you must do. It will be on your hands, what becomes of this Country.

I dread the next coming months.

Others: Gateway Pundit, Atlas Shrugs,

Another Liberal Non-Story Story….

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You remember that Story about the intelligence program that Former President Bush was so hell-bent on keep secret; so much so that the program was deemed not to really work?

Well, now one of the Democratic Party’s print media wings is now report, that Dick Cheney was somehow involved.

Before we continue, let’s put the spooky music on here:

[podcast]http://www.komar.org/halloween/music-sounds/tocatta.mp3[/podcast]

(click to start)

Anyhow, the Washington Post is reporting:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

Here’s the real deal about this so-called horrific program, that nobody knows anything about:

  1. It was so secretive that it did not even work.
  2. It was ended when Panetta found out about it
  3. If there’s even morsel of truth to the story, it obviously never carried out.

So, where’s the story here? Oh, it is because Dick Cheney’s name is on it! Oooooh, Shiny!

Just another liberal Non-Story Story; to distract us from the real agenda of the Socialist President and his Administration.

Video: The Southern Avenger on “High Infidelity”

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Jack tries to sell this one, but based on the comments over at facebook; it is going to be a tough sell.

—–

Synopsis:

In the wake of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s infidelity scandal, it is worth noting that rampant adultery amongst politicians still poses less danger than their politics.

Headline of the Day

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Every now and again; I see a headline that stops me cold in my tracks. Here’s the one I saw today:

“Christian Believers Would Be Excluded From Government If The Left Liberals Had Their Way”

You will never be able to guess where I saw such a headline…… Go on, guess!

The New Republic

I know.. “What?!?!“; that’s what I thought too, when I saw it.

Money Quote:

As it happens, one doctor to whom I spoke (he is a professor at the Harvard Medical School and vice president for research at one of its teaching hospitals) compared the Collins group’s identification of the errant gene that causes cystic fibrosis to the discovery of one disabled bulb in the entire American electric web. No mean piece of work.

So what’s wrong with Collins?

He is a practicing and believing Christian. It’s odd–isn’t it?–that this fact should make a scientific designee unfit or unsuited for a job. Soon we will hear the same about judicial nominees. The establishment mounted a sustained campaign in the Senate (and outside) against President Wilson’s nomination of Louis D. Brandies to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the candidate was Jewish, although some of his critics tended to be euphemistic rather than direct about their objections. Not so those who are against Collins.

The president must have anticipated this reaction. It is reassuring that he did not crumble in advance.

Needless to say, there are some liberals that are NOT happy with the wording in this article. Well, the way I see it. Anything that makes the far left Liberals Angry is usually just well-written or is filled with absolute truth about them.

I think I have a whole new respect for The New Republic. It’s recent past notwithstanding.

From the Dept of “How to kill your business in little or no time flat…” – NYT considering fee to access content

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I can almost guarantee that this will kill the New York Times, if they go through with this:

July 9 (Bloomberg) — New York Times Co. said in a survey of print subscribers that it’s considering a $5 monthly fee for access to its namesake newspaper’s Web site.

Times Co. also asked whether subscribers would be willing to pay a discounted fee of $2.50 a month for access to the site, in the poll confirmed today by Catherine Mathis, a company spokeswoman. Nytimes.com, the most visited among newspapers’ sites, is currently free.

Times Co. is contemplating additional sources of revenue as marketers slow spending on the Internet. Ad sales at the publisher’s sites, also including about.com and boston.com, fell 8 percent and 3.5 percent in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2008 respectively. They gained 6.5 percent last year.

“The question here for consumers is the psychological barrier of now paying when you were getting it for free before, and you’re going to lose some readers as a result,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell Inc. in Burlingame, California. “The New York Times will also have to evaluate what this means for ad rates as they lose readers.”

Times Co., based in New York, lost 11 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $4.80 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have fallen 35 percent this year.

The New York Times had an average of 647,695 weekday home delivery subscribers as of the 26 weeks ended March 29, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data. That doesn’t include single-copy sales or third-party sales. Its site is the most visited among news sites, according to ComScore Inc. data.

via New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee (Update2) – Bloomberg.com.

Here is why I believe that this will be a business killer for the New York Times. Quite simply put; people are just not going to pay for content that they can access elsewhere. Sure, the locals will pay to access to the local related content; but all the National News stuff usually comes from the AP or Reuters; and people just are not going to pay for it, when they can get it for free elsewhere.

The reason the New York Times  is hurting for revenue is two fold. One; is the economy, people just are not spending the extra money to buy papers and Businesses are tightening their belts due to losing in the Stock Markets and because of the major recession. Secondly; it is because of the liberal slant of the paper. The average person is just not as far left as the New York Times. People want honesty and integrity; and the New York Times, along with the rest of the Liberal media went into the tank for President Obama. It worked for a little while, but people have begun to see, that they were being sold a bag of lemons and are now waking up to the fact that President Obama is more of the same in Washington D.C.

This is especially true on the far, far, left. The Iraq War still continues, and this after Obama promised to end the war. The Gay community sees President Obama as a enemy to their cause. President Obama’s poll numbers are a reflection of this. As you might already know, his poll numbers took a major dip; especially in Ohio. This could come back haunt him come 2012, if he runs again. It also could be a indication of things to come in 2010.

Either way, this idea, like the one that Rupert Murdoch proposed doing with the New York Post, will be a business killer. Hopefully, these knuckleheads wise up and don’t follow this plan of disaster.

Others: MoJo Blog Posts, DailyFinance, Mashable!, Mediaite, Silicon Alley Insider, Gawker, The New Republic and MediaMemo

Congress put the brakes on Obama’s Cap and Trade bill

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Looks like the Hope and Change will be slightly delayed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s push for quick action by Congress on climate change legislation suffered a setback on Thursday when the U.S. Senate committee leading the drive delayed work on the bill until September.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer said her self-imposed deadline of early August for finishing writing a bill to combat global warming has been put off until after Congress returns from a recess that ends in early September.

“We’ll do it as soon as we get back” from that break, Boxer told reporters. Asked if this delay jeopardizes chances the Senate will pass a bill this year, Boxer said, “Not a bit … we’ll be in (session) until Christmas, so I’m not worried about it.”

But Boxer did not guarantee Congress will be able to finish a bill and deliver it to Obama by December, when he plans to attend an international summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

“I want to take this as far as we can take it (before Copenhagen). The more we do the better,” Boxer said.

via Obama’s drive for climate change bill delayed – Washington Post. (H/T to HotAir)

Contrary to what the Democrats are trying to tell the media, this here is why the bill has been delayed:

WHEELING – He is not yet back to work in the Senate chamber, but U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd is opposing “cap and trade” legislation pushed by the Obama administration.

The 91-year-old Byrd, D-W.Va., was released from an unidentified Washington, D.C. hospital last week after a month-long stay for a staph infection. He expects to return to the chamber before the Senate begins debate on “cap and trade” – which is tentatively set for this fall, according to Byrd’s office.

“I cannot support the House bill in its present form,” Byrd said in a statement. “I continue to believe that clean coal can be a ‘green’ energy. Those of us who understand coal’s great potential in our quest for energy independence must continue to work diligently in shaping a climate bill that will ensure access to affordable energy for West Virginians. I remain bullish about the future of coal, and am so very proud of the miners who labor and toil in the coalfields of West Virginia.”

Byrd grew up in the coalfields of Stotesbury, W.Va., in Raleigh County. Jesse Jacobs, spokesman for Byrd, said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will begin marking up the “cap and trade” bill later this month, with floor debate scheduled for September or October.

I will give kudo’s to that old man. He might have been a Klan member at one point; something that he has profusely apologized for many times. He might be a democrat, but I cannot sit her and fault a man for looking out for his people. That is what Congressman are supposed to do, and I give all the credit due for that. Senator Byrd is of the old school Democratic Party. Before the stupidity of socialism took it over, he still believes in the principles of free markets and capitalism; in short, he has not sold out to the Socialist nonsense of the modern day Democratic Party.

God Bless Him for that. 🙂

Michael Goldfarb just cannot contain his racial bias

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Michael Goldfarb in his Wilsonian Magazine writes:

Given that Palin is basically in a statistical tie with Romney and Huckabee for the pole position in the 2012 primary, it’s not clear why Steele keeps shooting his mouth off about a favorite among the rank and file, but he’d be well advised to zip it. Also, it would be helpful if Steele could just let us know which candidates he is grooming so that the party can quarantine them in case the stupidity is contagious.

Gee Mike, I wonder; would you have written that about Steele if he were a White Man? I highly doubt it. Further more, this speaks to the desire of the Wilsonian, Neo-Conservative wing of the Republican Party to want to still control that Party.

The man and his Wilsonian counterparts ought to just face facts, they lost; because of their elected leaders idiotic nonsense for past 8 years, They lost the country to a Neo-Liberal. Which now is going to lead the Nation down a very hard path. That what happens when you put Zionistic ideology in front of the best interests of the Country.  

No wonder John McCain lost the election and more recently, no wonder Rupert Murdock sold that idiotic magazine off. Rolling Eyes

How’s that stimulus working out for you Barry?

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Apparently not too well it seems.

The Washington Post (!) Reports:

Five months after Congress approved a massive package of spending and tax cuts aimed at reviving an ailing economy, the jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery is on the right track.

Yesterday, Obama took time out of his first presidential trip to Moscow to defend the $787 billion stimulus package, arguing that the measure was the right medicine at the right time. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he told ABC News

So, beings the Democratic Party’s proverbial teeth chattering session, where they realize, “Uh-Oh, we messed up! Now how do we fix it?”

Back in Washington, senior Democrats on Capitol Hill were nervously contemplating whether additional government stimulus spending may be needed to pull the nation out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February. But they reported that only about $100 billion has so far been spent and that as increasingly large sums flow out of Washington, the program is on pace to save or create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.

“It is clear from the data that there needs to be more fiscal stimulus in the second half of the year than there was in the first half of the year,” White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said. “Fortunately, the stimulus program designed by the president and passed by Congress provides exactly that.”

Leading economists agree that the most powerful effects of the stimulus package have yet to be felt. But even if the measure lives up to Obama’s expectations, it would barely offset the 433,000 jobs the nation lost last month alone, and the resulting employment would represent a drop in the bucket compared with the 6.5 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.

“Just 130 days out on the adoption of a very, very major effort to get the economy moving, certainly I don’t think we can make a determination as to whether or not that’s been successful,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday. But, he said, “I think we need to be open to whether or not we need additional action.”

Oh Yes! We just poured a couple generation’s worth of money into a Economic system that is basically; on it’s face, is broken and does not work. This did not work, so, we’re going to basically pour money into that same broken system and see if we can make the economy recover. Rolling Eyes

If anything this ought be a lesson for the Democratic Party that Keynesian Pump Priming, just does not work. But you think that the Democrats would learn that lesson? No. Because they’re dumb! Silly

Of course, the Republicans are a bit more smarter about this:

Republicans, meanwhile, pounced on news that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent in June and accused the Democrats of sinking the nation deeper into debt to finance an economic recovery package that has failed to save American jobs. Noting that the Obama administration predicted earlier this year that stimulus spending would keep the unemployment rate under 8 percent, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the No. 2 Republican in the House, said, “I think any objective measure would indicate there’s a failure when you have a commitment of nearly $800 billion in taxpayer funds and you have the type of job loss we’re experiencing.”

With many economists forecasting that the jobless rate will continue to climb — and is likely to stay above 10 percent through much of next year — Republicans vowed to make the 2010 midterm election a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy. “I think they’re going to have some significant problems,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who leads the GOP campaign operation in the Senate, “and I view those as opportunities for us.”

Hopefully, the Republicans will frame these opportunities properly. Of course, their track record here as of late, has not been too good.

Meanwhile, in the reality sector:

Despite the deepening pain of the recession, many Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill yesterday counseled patience. They said it would be extraordinarily difficult to win approval for more spending on the economy when Obama is pursuing a host of other expensive initiatives, including a $1 trillion expansion of the nation’s health-care system. And they argued that the current stimulus package should be given a chance to work.

The stimulus was designed to deliver a gradually stronger push to the economy through the end of next year. It contains about $499 billion in new spending and about $288 billion in tax cuts for working families, businesses, college students and first-time home buyers.

When the measure passed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that about a quarter of the money would be spent by year’s end, and that about 75 percent would flow by the end of 2010. So far, economists said, spending appears to be on track.

According to administration estimates, about $158 billion in new spending had been committed to specific projects by the end of June, but just a fraction of that money — about $56 billion — had been delivered to struggling state governments, unemployed workers and other recipients. An additional $43 billion had been left in the pockets of individuals and businesses through uncollected taxes, much of it the result of Obama’s signature Making Work Pay tax credit for working families.

Those figures track closely with estimates by Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, who calculates that the government made $242 billion in stimulus funds available for various purposes through the end of June and paid out about $110 billion. In a recent analysis, Zandi predicted that “the maximum contribution from the stimulus should occur in the second and third quarters of this year,” when it will add more than three percentage points to overall economic growth.

“It’s pretty much according to plan in terms of the payout and in terms of its economic impact. This is in the script,” Zandi said. The problem, he said, is that “the economy has been measurably worse than anyone expected,” with a surprisingly sharp “collapse in employment and surge in unemployment” that caught most economists off guard.

“That’s why the administration’s forecasts have been so wrong,” he said.

None of this surprises me in the least. I warned on this blog long ago that this would happen. But, of course, you have the Democrats spinning this, and very hard too:

The White House continues to predict that the stimulus package will save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year. Zandi predicts it will fall short of that, producing about 2.5 million jobs — still a significant impact.

Whatever the number, Democrats are hoping it will be enough to convince voters that Obama is leading them out of the economic wilderness.

“I think the president was very clear that things were going to take a long time to turn around,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in charge of electing Democrats to the House. Republicans “are making the argument to the American people that doing nothing would have been the best policy. And I don’t think people will buy that. . . .

“The measures we have taken have certainly prevented things from getting much worse.”

According to what figures? Because the charts I have seen, say otherwise:

stimulus-vs-unemployment-june-proj-dots

What this chart shows is that unemployment was far higher with the stimulus plan, than it would have been, if Team Teleprompter would have just left well enough alone.

What this means to me personally is this; I will most likely be unemployed until like 2010 or longer. Thereby making myself impossible to he hired anywhere, because I haven’t worked in so long. Which is just wonderful. Rolling Eyes

Thank you President Bambi Teleprompter for ruining America, you feckless idiot! Angry

Others:  Hot Air,  

A Libertarian Lefty Attacks me….

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Some libertarian leftist slams me on a blog, that brought 40 whole readers over here… 🙄

Anyhow… here’s what the Anarchist wrote:

looks like Lew Rockwell’s strategy of printing non-anarchist essays snagged a state-lover. When Lew showed his true nature, anti-state, this person thought he was being anti-American. Hey, Pat. I love my country, but I hate your government. And so does Lew. When you’re ready to stop pointing guns at people over every little thing, we can talk. But I’m not going to close comments on my blog, like you did on yours. Afraid of a little debate, eh?

via WTF?: Starting to really wonder about Lew Rockwell’s Blog | End the War on Freedom.

3 years ago, when I first started blogging; I would have ripped this person a new one. But seeing that I am a bit more refined than this guy. I will simple answer the questions.

  1. No, I am not a Statist.
  2. If you so hate this Government; which is an extension of this country; so much, why don’t you leave? Nothing is keeping you here.
  3. I will stop pointing Guns at people, when people like the Islamic Terrorists, (I know, Islamic, Terrorist = Redundancy)   that you lefties just love to death, stop trying to kill people.

The whole problem with you lefty anarchists is this, you love chaos, and that chaos is used to forum a vacuum; which is quickly filled by big Government. Which I totally despise. Kinda like I despise the Socialism of your Democratic Cousins. (Again, Democrats, Socialism = Redundancy)

The problem with the puritan stance on the Libertarian foreign policy is that it is rooted in flawed thinking and conspiracy theory. Hence the reason that Ron Paul looked like a damn buffoon. He is absolutely right on Iran and So are you. I give you that; but Afghanistan is another story. Those bastards that flew those planes into the trade centers were not Jews, Not Christians, not anything, but Muslims, Islamic men. Terrorists? The whole damn religion is a religion of war.

The whole idea, that according to the Libertarian idea of foreign policy is that if we are attacked, we should just sit and take it and not do nothing; is idiotic at best. Hence the reason I am not involved in that party, in a formal manner.  I agree with the principles of free enterprise and capitalism. But that party loses me, when they beginning to speak of the federal Government in conspiratorial terms. I just do not believe that the Government is smart enough to do anything, like they believe that it does; much less keep it a secret.

Also, let me say another thing. Libertarians; especially those of the Libertarian left or anarchists is this. They hate our Country and it’s form of lawful Government. In the name of so-called freedom, they commit acts of, yes, terrorism. To further their political agenda. Kind of like Bill Ayers. Yes, that is correct, I said it. Al-Aqaeda and the Libertarian left have much in common. They both hate our Country and our values system, our freedom and our Capitalist system.  It was this same attitude that was on the mind of those who flew those planes into the trade centers. It is a sad thing to say, but it is the truth.

Admittedly, there have been times, when the Federal Government has overstepped it’s bounds. I have blogged about many instances where this has happened. That is why you have Conservatives and Right-libertarians, like myself, who have blogs, like me, that throw up the red flag and bring this sort of nonsense to the attention of the American people. This causes the Government, like in recent times to go, “Ooops! Our Bad!” and make changes to correct those mistakes. This is why people like me believe that big Government is BAD GOVERNMENT! Because of it’s tendency to make very stupid and sometimes horrific mistakes. Case in point; Waco, Ruby Ridge, and so on….

In fact, anyone that has read this blog, more than just coming and read one entry knows; that I am totally anti-centralized Government.  In fact, I, like many of my Southern Paleo-Conservatives believe that Abraham Lincoln was a traitor. Not because he freed the slaves; but because he introduced a centralized form of Government. Not to mention the form of barbarism or as it called today; Terrorism that he inflicted on the south, in a war; that was not even fought remotely fair.

Having said all that……. I did answer his accusations of me not wanting a debate. I do close comments here after 10 days. Because I hate getting comments about something that I wrote like, a year ago and have go back and see what they heck they are talking about. Running a blog is all about being current and fresh. Not about harping on the past. Hence the reason they automatically close. I think he wants a blog fight or a argument. I just don’t desire to debate people that I disagree with; it doesn’t change a damn thing. All it does is cause problems, and I just do not need it, nor want it.

Heh: Liberals are now whining about increased food prices

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TOO FUNNY!:

Until recently, whenever we went to the farmers’ market, we would lug home $50 pork roasts and $14 gallons of milk. We would spend over $100 on food that might not last more than three days. Sometimes we’d shop on Saturday morning and have nothing to make for dinner on Monday. I shrugged this off as one of those oddities of New York life, like getting a ticket because your neighbor put out his trash on the wrong day. But the $35 chicken made me reconsider. Buying sustainably raised beef and sustainably squeezed milk and sustainably hatched poultry is a way of life that, these days, I just can’t sustain.

There were reasons I fell into the habit of spending more money in one morning at the farmers’ market than some people spend on an engagement ring. These farmers — whom I began to imagine driving new BMWs once they got back upstate — were doing good work. They stayed away from pharmaceuticals, so we didn’t have to worry that we were feeding Dexter and his baby brother, Elliot, stray hormones or antibiotics. We had never been strict about buying organics, but we liked apples from orchards that didn’t apply pesticides with a fire hose. And apart from that infamous chicken, most of the products from the farmers’ market were grand on the dinner table. The question was: How much grandeur could we afford?

via Cooking With Dexter – The New Chicken Economy – NYTimes.com.

Liberals think it is bad now; wait till the hyper inflation hits, no thanks to “The One’s” failed stimulus plan.

(H/T and Thanks to Mere Rhetoric)

Next time someone tells you that Islam is a Religion of peace; Show them this video

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The Synopsis of this video:

This is a video of David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi asking questions at Arabfest, Dearborn. The date is June 21st, 2009. There was a booth at the festival which had a banner titled “Islam: Got Questions? Get Answers.” From their table, we picked up a pamphlet claiming that Islam promotes peace. We noticed that it was full of poor logic and errors, so we decided to make a video refuting it. We went to the booth that gave us the pamphlet to give them the opportunity to defend their claims. Security, however, stepped in and forced us to turn off our camera.

We left the booth, received advice from police, and found out that the actions of the security guards were illegal. We went back to the booth to record a potential answer again. Realizing that the Muslims present had no answer, we left.

When we came outside, we were asked some questions by two young men, who had been sent by security to entrap us. While we responded to them, festival security started assaulting us, as you will see in this video. The conclusion of this video is a mob of festival security attacking our cameras, pushing us back, kicking our legs, and lying to the police.

We ask you, is it a coincidence that the city with the highest percentage of Muslims in the United States is the city where Christianity is not allowed to be represented (let alone preached) on a public sidewalk? Is it coincidence that in this city, people will say “No way!” when we say “This is the United States of America”?

Is this what will happen when Islam takes over the United States?

You see Ladies and Gents, THIS is what celebrating diversity does to you. It gets you attacked by Islamic terrorist THUGS! Rick Warren and his purpose driven life, “Let’s love everyone and not judge”, kind of Christianity is just that; it celebrates diversity. Islam, a religion of peace….. What a lie! 😡 This is why, if I ever was going to film, I would go armed. Any security person who approached me and tried to hurt me, would be killed.

Enjoy this video! (Via Gateway Pundit)

WAKE UP AMERICA to the LIE OF ISLAM!

Acts 17 Apologists website.

For once, The Left Shows Some Class and Yes; Some brains….For a Change

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Anyone that has read this Blog, for more than a week; knows that I criticize that which I feel needs to be criticized. However, I also very much praise that which I feel deserves to be praised.

This posting may cause some on the right to think, that I am not a true blue Conservative. To which I offer a very plain and quite blunt response:

I don’t give a damn. 😡

After some Liberal idiot over at the Huffington Post decided that it would be cute to joke about mental retardation; which resulted in this idiot getting a butt load of hate mail, not only from the right, but also from left. This moron, a Erik Sean Nelson; pulled the article and left this non-apology apology:

I wrote a piece making fun of the fact that a Trig Palin joke was given as the reason that Sarah Palin left office. I wrote jokes that were offensive but my intent was for them to be ironic and therefore not offensive. I was wrong. Within ten minutes of my post I received some emails from the loved ones of the retarded and I saw that my piece was hurtful. Therefore, I removed the post right after receiving the first 2 emails.

I removed it immediately because I saw that it did not come across as I intended. I apologize to all of those who were offended.

Like I said; quite the non-apology apology. Well, it seems someone on the left, is thinking along the same lines as me. A Blog, that I have known about for quite a long time; agrees with me. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo writes:

ah, the “offensive stuff written ironically so it’s not offensive any more” defense, eh?

and we are aghast that nelson would actually write that some “loved ones of the retarded” sent emails.

it’s rather like saying, “i heard from some jungle bunnies, and they were upset. i apologize.”

look, folks, we know the left has had an amazing amount of good luck lately, w/ensign, sanford, and palin’s troubles, not to mention franken getting seated, but that’s no excuse to be rude. nothing is less appealing than an ungracious winner.

firstly, as someone related to a differently-abled american, skippy is incensed that the perjorative “retarded” is being used in a top blog like huffpo.

but secondly, if the idiot who used the offensive word continues to use it in his apology, he obviously hasn’t learned a damned thing about human beings.

we call upon arianna, whose house we have been in and whose shrimp we have eaten, to never, ever, publish mr. nelson’s garbage again.

Mr. Kangaroo, (Boy, does it ever feel strange typing that!) as the nephew of a developmentally disabled or as it once was called; mentally retarded aunt, I thank you for standing up and calling this what it is. I thank you for going against the grain in your own party. Not for the sake of Sarah Palin, but for those who are born with conditions that they have absolutely no control over. This shows class sir; and I thank you for being the one to say what I was feeling when I saw that awful piece written.

……Now if we could just work on the rest of that damned Party……..