This blog is no longer active as of October 31, 2011
See that there is quite the Meme happening right now about the Anti-Stimulus demonstrations going around. I thought I would offer this video to the short memory Neo-Conservatives, like Michelle Malkin, who are bitching about this Stimulus. This video asks the question, where exactly were these people when George W. Bush was spending this country into a hole with Iraq?
The Video:
In order to “preserve the Union,” Lincoln destroyed the very principles upon which the Union was created. His audacity is without equal. For example, to prevent a possible vote of secession by the Maryland legislature, Lincoln ordered federal troops to seize and arrest the Maryland congressional delegation. And of course, he was more than willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of America’s finest and best to destroy Jefferson’s declaration that the states of our Union are “Free and Independent States.”
I invite all those pro-Lincoln apologists out there to seriously answer this question: Does an abusive husband who beats and batters his wife have the right to force her (at the point of gun) to remain married to him? (Even the God of the Bible, Who cast marriage in the most sacred terms, recognizes the right of lawful separation.) If you answer no, how can you continue to justify Abraham Lincoln’s actions? In a political and governmental sense, that is exactly what Lincoln did. Forced union, of any kind, is slavery. In the name of emancipating slaves, Lincoln enslaved an entire nation.
It was Abraham Lincoln who, for all intents and purposes, destroyed federalism and limited government in America. In fact, on December 15, 1866, renowned British historian, Lord Acton, wrote a letter to General Robert E. Lee. In the letter, Acton said, “I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.” – Chuck Baldwin on Abraham Lincoln
This is just too rich:
U.S. Sen. Roland Burris said today he is open to a Senate ethics investigation into how he got the Senate seat from ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and that he has reached out to a Sangamon County prosecutor who is reviewing Burris’ sworn testimony before Illinois lawmakers.
Burris comments came less than 24 hours after he acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for Blagojevich at the request of the governor’s brother at the same time he was seeking the appointment to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.
It was the first time Burris has publicly admitted trying to raise money for Blagojevich. Previously Burris has left the impression that he always balked at the issue of raising money for the governor because of his interest in the Senate appointment.
In comments to reporters after appearing at a Democratic dinner Monday night the senator several times contradicted his latest under-oath affidavit that he quietly filed with the Illinois House impeachment panel earlier this month. That affidavit was itself an attempt to clean up his live, sworn testimony to the panel Jan. 8, when he omitted his contacts with several Blagojevich insiders.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan called for the Sangamon County prosecutor to investigate Burris’ testimony at the statehouse in Springfield, and today her father, House Speaker Michael Madigan, forwarded Burris’ testimony and affidavits to State’s Atty. John Schmidt.
In a brief statement to reporters today in Peoria, Burris said an aide had reached out to the Sangamon County state’s atttorney, who is reviewing testimony Burris gave last month to House lawmakers in Springfield about his contacts with allies of the ousted governor.
“I have made an effort to be as transparent as I can, and I’m willing to take a further step as I have nothing to hide,” Burris said.
via Burris open to ethics probes, will cooperate with perjury review | Clout Street .
Hmmmm… I wonder where Bobby Rush is? I’m surprised that he’s not there playing the race card, like last time.
Update: One of my friends on the left, The Gun Toting Liberal is shocked that I agree with him; He snarks:
SHOCKINGLY ENOUGH — Even some bloggers from the “right” seem to largely agree with we “lefties” on this issue, including: Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey; Political Byline’s Paleo Pat; Patterico’s Pontifications
Hey, just because I’m a Conservative does not mean that I’m an idiot. If the dude lied, He should go, does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out…..at least not with me.
The GTL’s picture:
The Gun Toting Liberal
I dunno ’bout you, but I would not want to meet him in dark alley… Ol’ fella needs to learn to smile! 😛 😉 😀
Others: Washington Wire, The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, Chicago Breaking News, CBS News, The Politico, The Capitol Fax Blog, Patterico’s Pontifications, Think Progress, Chicago Sun Times, The Swamp, Hot Air, MyDD, DISSENTING JUSTICE, Commentary, Washington Monthly, The Raw Story, PoliticalBase.com Blog, PoliGazette, The Aristocrats, Scorecard’s Blogs, Moe Lane and Sunlight Foundation and Memeorandum
It looks like the party of Freedom is selling the American people up the river:
Nationalization, long regarded in Washington as a folly of Europeans, is gaining rapid ground among US opinion-formers. Stranger still, many of those talking about federal ownership of banks are Republicans.
Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for North Carolina, said that many of his
colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”.
Mr Graham said that people across the US accepted his argument that it was untenable to keep throwing good money after bad into institutions such as Citigroup and Bank of America, which now have a lower net value than the amount of public funds they have received.
“You should not get caught up on a word [nationalisation],” he told the Financial Times in an interview. “I would argue that we cannot be ideologically a little bit pregnant. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but we can’t keep on funding these zombie banks [without gaining public control]. That’s what the Japanese did.”
Barack Obama, the president, who has tried to avoid panicking lawmakers and markets by entertaining the idea, has recently moved more towards what he calls the “Swedish model” – an approach backed strongly by Mr Graham.
via FT.com – Bank nationalisation gains ground with Republicans.
Nationalization is nothing more than Communism. We are being sold up the river. Remember this come 2010.
(H/T Drudge)
I figured this was coming:
The Story:
President Obama has not ruled out a second stimulus package, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday, just before Mr. Obama signed his $787 billion recovery package into law with a statement that it would “set our economy on a firmer foundation.”
The president said he would not pretend “that today marks the end of our economic problems.”
“Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr. Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of playoffs.”
Mr. Gibbs, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Denver, said, “I think the president is going to do what’s necessary to grow this economy.” While “there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package,” he added, “I wouldn’t foreclose it.”
Mr. Obama began the first leg of a two-day trip, using the museum ceremony to spotlight the bill’s clean-energy provisions. The president will also visit Phoenix, where he will unveil his new housing plan on Wednesday.
After a bruising legislative battle on the stimulus bill, which drew only three supporting votes from Republicans in the Senate and none in the House, the White House is trying to recapture the debate over the economy. Mr. Obama’s message is that the bill will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.
While the bill has been criticized by conservatives as bloated with pork-barrel spending, it has also been criticized by the left as too tepid and not bold enough to jumpstart the economy. Mr. Gibbs’s remarks on the plane seemed to echo that concern.
In describing the package, the press secretary called it “a strong start towards economic viability” and “the beginning of getting our economy back on track.”
via Signing Stimulus Bill, Obama Does Not Rule Out Another – NYTimes.com.
I figured Obama would do this, sign one porkus bill into law and say, “This is not the end, but just the beginning of the pork!”
Meanwhile, the markets basically tanked, even more so than last week: (Via the New York Times)
From Hong Kong to eastern Europe to Wall Street, financial gloom was everywhere on Tuesday.
Stock markets around the world staggered lower. In New York, the Dow fell more than 3 percent, coming within sight of its worst levels since the credit crisis erupted. Financial shares were battered. And rattled investors clamored to buy rainy-day investments like gold and Treasury debt.
It was a global wave of selling spurred by rising worries about how banks, automakers — entire countries — would fare in a deepening global downturn.
“Nobody believes it’s going get better yet,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “Do you see that light at the end of the tunnel? Any kind of light? Right now, it’s not there yet.”
At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 297.81 points or 3.7 percent to 7,552.29 points as losses in General Motors, Bank of America and American Express dragged the blue chips lower. The only Dow stock in positive territory was Wal-Mart, which rose after reporting better-than-expected profits.
“If we get substantially below 800 then look out below,” said Marc Groz, chief investment officer at Topos, a risk-advisory firm in Greenwich, Conn.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index slid 3.7 percent to drop below 800, which analysts said was an important trading threshold.
Investors know what this is, it is basically nationalization of our Economy, our banks, everything. They are just not going to invest money in a Government owned banking system. I believe this drop is just the beginning. Wait till it totally collapses and the world is thrust into chaos. It will be an interesting time, indeed.
This cannot be good:
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.
“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in “pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills” to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.
Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad’s infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.
Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud.
American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004. It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, who have both said they have nothing to hide.
Indeed I have suspected that there was major thievery going on during the war in Iraq. This story shines a light on this. Hopefully this new Administration will bring those to justice, who were responsible for these horrific actions. However, I will not hold my breath.
(H/T Freedom’s Phoenix)
This is absolutely sick and disgusting…. 😡
An American gun manufacturer has hired a professional killer to tout the merits of its weapons. What better spokesman could a company have than one who has shot and killed a young mother with her baby in her arms?
The South Dakota company’s Internet website has proudly published a letter attesting the greatness of its new sniper weapon.
“Pound-for-pound, component-for-component, dollar- for-dollar, you will not find a better rifle,” says the new spokesman for H-S Precision in Rapid City. His name is Lon Horiuchi, a government assassin who retired from the FBI in 2006. AFP called to ask him if this was also the weapon he used to blow away the face of Vicki Weaver at the remote area of Ruby Ridge in Idaho in 1992, but he did not return the calls.
On Aug. 21, 1992, U.S. marshals perpetrated a sneak attack on the mountain cabin of the Randy Weaver family in northern Idaho. When the family dog, Striker, a docile and loving golden retriever, began to bark at the agents, they shot him dead “because he was giving away our position,” one said later. Sammy Weaver, 14, saw the incident and screamed, and the agents nearly blew his arm off (the impact of which spun him around), and then zippered him through the back with a three-round blast from automatic weapons. The boy was dead before he hit the ground. His father, Randy, later told this writer that when he got to him, “his chest was blown out and his heart was like raw hamburger.”
The marshal directing the raid, Bill Degan, was also killed, maybe by his own men.
During the afternoon and night, all sorts of deceptive information was being transmitted from the scene to the FBI headquarters in Washington. The marshals, desperate after being caught in the act of breaking the law, had made up all kinds of cover-up stories—the most outrageous being that the Weaver family had them pinned down for eight hours in an all-day shootout in which Randy’s 16- and 10-year-old daughters had been holding them off with high-powered weapon fire from the windows of the cabin.
via americanfreepress.net – Gun Company Hires Mother’s Assassin. (Yes, I know what kid of books they sell, but that doesn’t take away from this story at all.)
No matter one’s opinions of what happen during the Ruby Ridge stand off or of Randy Weaver, this has to be one of the worst P.R. Disasters in modern history. Hiring a man as a spokesman for a company, who basically murdered a child and a man’s wife. Someone somewhere made a huge bad marketing decision.
Please, keep in mind, that I do know the full history behind the “American Free Press”, and sometimes the Anti-Government and Anti-Zionist tone of much of their news, but this does shine through that, very much so. I think someone needs to rethink a marketing strategy, and fast!
(H/T Freedom’s Phoenix)
Well, this is quite interesting:
Stopping what it called a “massive ongoing fraud,” the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday accused Robert Allen Stanford, the chief of the Stanford Financial Group, of fraud in the sale of about $8 billion of high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm’s bank in Antigua. Also named in the suit were two other executives and some affiliates of the financial group.
In the complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Dallas, the S.E.C. accused Mr. Stanford and two associates — James M. Davis, a director and chief financial officer of Stanford Group and the Antigua-based bank affiliate, and Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer of both organizations — with misrepresenting the safety and liquidity of the uninsured CDs.
The CDs were sold by Stanford International Bank through the firm’s registered broker-dealer and investment adviser, which are in Houston. Both the bank, which claims $8.5 billion in assets and 30,000 clients in 131 countries, and the brokerage unit, which operates about 30 offices in the United States, were named in the S.E.C. suit. Stanford Financial asserts that it advises about $50 billion in assets.
Shortly after 10 a.m. Central time, about 40 police officers and other law enforcement officials simultaneously entered Stanford Group’s two office buildings in Houston. Many of the law enforcement personnel carried large black briefcases. Stanford group’s headquarters are in two offices in Houston, one within a tower of the Houston Galleria shopping mall, and the other across the street.
A spokesman for Stanford Group declined to comment.
It is amazing how a major meltdown in the markets will expose the frauds.
Vox Day Snarks:
What, there was something fishy about high-yield Antiguan CDs? Really? What will shock us next, the discovery that the import/export firm with the branch office in Medellin is selling coke?
Heh.
While I think it is alright to have a sense of humor about it. One must realize that there most likely some people “taking a bath” right about now. So, I shall keep the giggles to a minimum. Who I feel mot sorry for, are the peole who trusted these companies to invest thier money properly, and have gotten horribly screwed over. Those are the one’s I feel for.
Allan Keyes still does not get it, after all these years. After he was basically chased out of the Republican Party because of his outlandish behavior, he is still trying to garner some sort of spotlight.
Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate who now is a plaintiff in one of the many lawsuits seeking to verify whether Barack Obama qualifies under the U.S. Constitution’s requirements to occupy the Oval Office, says the tactics adopted by lawyers for the president confirm there is an issue for the courts to investigate.
Keyes, who was the candidate of the American Independent Party, cited a recent exchange with lawyers representing Obama in which they warned they might seek monetary penalties against those raising the question of Obama’s eligibility under the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural born” citizen.
“It confirms the common sense suspicion that he won’t act forthrightly in this matter because he has something to hide,” Keyes wrote on his blog after WND reported the warning about “sanctions” was raised by Obama’s defense lawyers.
The onetime U.S. ambassador explained on his posting that those raising questions over Obama’s eligibility so far have simply been ignored by courts.
“In effect, the courts are refusing to admit plaintiffs on this matter into the courtroom, thereby denying them justice,” he wrote. “Madison wrote, ‘Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It will be pursued either until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.'”
via Keyes: President ‘has something to hide’ on eligibility.
From what sources tell me, the only reason Alan Keyes was ever offered a position in Reagan’s Cabinet is because Ronald Reagan felt sorry for the man. Also because Reagan wanted to make points with the Black Republicans at the time. Ever since then, Keyes has tried to garner the spotlight and has tried to make himself a so-called rightful heir to Reagan’s legacy; All the while being laughed at, by the rest of the Republican Party. One would think that this uppity fool would get the message that nobody, and I mean nobody wants this religious zealot in politics, but still he keeps on trying to get the spotlight. It is truly one of the tragic legacies of the Reagon era.
Here’s more fallout from the economy bubble…:
He is known as a successful entrepreneur to the millions who watch him on the US version of The Apprentice but Donald Trump on Tuesday suffered the indignity of watching a company that bears his name file for bankruptcy protection.
Trump Entertainment Resorts, of which Mr Trump owns 28 per cent, filed for Chapter 11 protection at a court in New Jersey on Tuesday after bondholders who control the debt-laden casino operator rejected Mr Trump’s attempt to take the company private.
The filing came as the group missed its last deadline on a $53m interest payment. It is not the first time the group has filed for Chapter 11: four years ago, an earlier incarnation of Trump Entertainment also sought bankruptcy protection from its creditors.
The filing reveals that the company has assets of $2bn and total debts of $1.7bn. Its biggest creditor is US Bank, which is acting as agent for the bondholders in the group. The group of bondholders could not be reached for comment but they are owed $1.3bn, according to the filing.
Other creditors include Bally Gaming, a Las Vegas-based group, and Bovis Lend Lease, the property developer, which is owed $7.5m.
Like other casino operators, Trump Entertainment, which owns three resort properties in Atlantic City, has been hit by the economic downturn and a severe slump in visitor attendance and gaming revenues.
But of course “The Donald” did not feel like take responsibility for his failure. He did what most rich executives do and what some politicians do; He blamed someone else:
In a stinging statement released last week following his resignation from the board, Mr Trump laid the blame for the group’s demise squarely on the bondholders. He accused their representatives of making “a series of bad decisions” and said they had “encouraged wasteful spending, which has led to severe problems with the company”.
Mr Trump pointed to the contrast between Trump Entertainment and The Trump Organisation, which he controls. “While The Trump Organisation grows and flourishes, Trump Entertainment …has languished. The Trump Organisation’s portfolio of residential, commercial, hotel, and golf properties has expanded all over the world, while Trump Entertainment has yet to diversify outside of Atlantic City.”
Mr Trump could not be reached for comment but his statement of last week suggests he opposed the bankruptcy route. “Now I will study and watch as the horrible and outrageous fees being paid to lawyers and consultants will suck the blood from the company,” he said.
“This internal turmoil will be compounded by dramatically deteriorating revenues across the board for casino companies in Atlantic City as the market tanks and competition from local markets grows.”
Ah yes, put the blame on someone else for the failure of a company that bears your name. Instead of being a man and admitting the failure. Trump could have went down there an fired all the idiots, took over ownership of the company and steered it to prosperity, but instead, he continued to lease his name to a failing enterprise and now that it’s bombed, he’s casting blame elsewhere. Typical of people of his ilk.
(H/T The Daily Beast)
Telling the truth about the founding father of American big government.
Sam Donaldson
Yes, I called him an icon, and I am damned proud of it. Sam Donaldson is icon of my youth, someone I remember watching as a kid. This back before my time in the political world. Back before I even knew the difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. A man who can be traced back to the days of Television, when there still an ounce of integrity.
The Washington Post reports:
Whatever else he accomplished in his 41 years at ABC News, Sam Donaldson knows he’ll be remembered mainly for his bellowing voice.
“I guess it’ll be on my tombstone: ‘He yelled at Ronald Reagan,’ ” Donaldson says.
Now, with little fanfare, the 74-year-old newsman is retiring from full-time work next week. “Some people leave the business bitter, feeling they’ve been cast out, or they hang on too long,” he says. “And I don’t ever want to get in that position.”
There was one thing in this story, that I really wanted to comment on:
Donaldson’s detractors viewed him as a liberal blowhard, and there were certainly times when his mouth outran his brain. Donaldson encouraged Colin Powell to run for president in 1996 and kept predicting that he would. Five days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, Donaldson said of Bill Clinton: “If he’s not telling the truth, he’s done. . . . I think his presidency is numbered in days. This isn’t going to drag out. We’re not going to be here three months from now talking about this.
You might be shocked to know this, but I never noticed Sam Donaldson acting like a “Liberal Blowhard.” If he ever did when I was watching, he was not very obvious about it. Unlike the anchors of today; like Keith Olbermann, who bellows his political opinion out, like it is the Gospel according to St Luke or something to that effect. For the record, I never heard or saw Sam Donaldson getting on National Television and screaming, “Shut the Hell up!” Like Keith did.
I think it goes back to a word that I used in the beginning of this Blog Entry; Integrity. It is something that the America Media needs to get back to, in a very big way.
Others: Michael Calderone’s Blogs and The New Republic
First off, as a rule, I do not get myself involved with what other people write on their Blogs. I believe in freedom of speech, Freedom of Expression and so forth.
However, this morning, I happen to come across something that caught my eye. If you’re following the headlines, there is a woman who’s a columnist at the Tennessean. Her name is Gail Kerr. She wrote a piece on some Tennessee lawmakers who are pursuing the Obama birth certificate issue.
Now let me say from the outset that I respect her opinions; I do not agree with them, at all. However, I happen to read a blog reaction to what she had written over at pirate’s cove, which is owned by a one William Teach, who’s real name is Porter Good. As I suspected, it was of the usual Conservative affair, criticize the piece and take gentle pokes at the author. However, there was a small bit in this piece that I found to be most offensive and I thought I would blog about it, and possibly inform Mr. Teach, that there are others out there that read his Blog. The offending part is underlined:
After eight years of the Left accusing Bush of everything that they don’t blame on anthropogenic global warming, and sometimes they blame both, with little to no proof, lefties, still riding high on hopeNchange, and probably the fumes from their black velvet Obama paintings, just do not like it when anyone asks for simple proof of Obama’s citizenship. Witness barking moonbat, and member of The Tennessean, Gail Kerr take on the subject of Barry’s birth certificate (and, hopefully, Jenny Craig)
The picture of the Woman in question:
Mr. Teach, let me remind you sir, that there are people in this world, who are not of perfect physical condition. As someone who is overweight and has struggled with weight gain for my entire life. I found your crass, asinine, dig towards this woman’s weight to be totally uncalled for, over the top and quite frankly immature, and most unbecoming of a Conservative Blogger. While I wholeheartely agree with you on your assessment of B. Hussein Obama, I do not believe that the personal insult of this woman’s Physical appearance was even remotely needed in the context of this discussion.
While I realize that a Blogger of any sort of integrity would ‘Man Up” and apologize, I do not expect this of teach at all. As I have observed, he has spent the good part of his Blogger career, cheerleading for George W. Bush and kissing the ass of the Podhoretz clan; so, one can only expect so much.
Update: Porter Good posts in the comments section says, verifying his true depraved nature:
And, yeah, I defended W when he deserved it, and attacked him when he deserved that, particularly on illegal immigration. As far as the Podhertz crack, that sounds vaguely anti-semetic on your part. Are you a Jew hater? Sounds like you owe me an apology. Oh, I misread your intent? Goodness!
It’s quite funny, when confronted with the truth, Neo-Con’s resort to playing the race card. Just like their Democrat counterparts. (There are those who would say that Democrats and Neo-Cons are one in the same, but that’s out of the scope of this discussion…) Identity Politics is such a tragic thing, on the left….. and the Right.
Others: The Moderate Voice, Washington Monthly, At-Largely, and The Mahablog
This is a bit funny.
Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated with the brash political attacks Sen. John McCain has launched against Barack Obama in the weeks since the new president took office. No one expected the Arizona Republican to be a legislative ally for this administration. But it was widely assumed that Obama’s overtures to McCain in the weeks
after the election would dull some of the hard feelings between the two. Now, they are realizing, it has not.
“He is bitter and really angry,” Bob Shrum said of McCain in an interview on Friday. “He is angry at the press, which he thinks is unfair. He is angry at Obama and angry at the voters. He has gone from being an angry old candidate to being an angry old defeated candidate.”
Indeed, during the debate over the economic stimulus package it was McCain, as often as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spearheaded the opposition. The Arizona Republican denounced the proposal as pure pork on the Senate floor and introduced an alternative measure comprised nearly entirely of tax cuts.
On Sunday, McCain wouldn’t let the fight die, even with the legislation through Congress. Appearing on CNN, he described the $787 billion measure as “generational theft” and said that the bill’s authors should “start over now and sit down together.”
Meanwhile, appearing on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Lindsey Graham — McCain’s chief ally in the Senate — said of the process by which the stimulus was forged: “If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country is screwed.”
via huffingtonpost.com — Dems Fed Up With McCain: “Angry Old Defeated Candidate”.
Humph… I don’t feel a bit sorry for the old bastard. When you run a terrible campaign and basically whore yourself and your running mate out to the far right, and then try and pimp yourself to the left; what do you expect? The old codger just needs to retire or preferably just drop dead, so Cindy can collect.
The Economy is going to hell and a hand basket and the President is shirking his responsibilities to take the First bitch Lady out for Valentines Day.
After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway.
Obama arrived at his home in Chicago on Friday, and treated wife Michelle to a Valentine’s Day dinner downtown last night. The couple was spotted leaving upscale Table Fifty-Two, which specializes in Southern cuisine, with the first lady toting what appeared to be a doggie bag.
The president plans to spend the Presidents’ Day weekend in the Windy City, and is not expected to sign the bill until Tuesday, when he travels to Denver to discuss his economic plan.
Both the House and Senate passed the bill Friday night.
The push to get the bill through before the holiday weekend was so frantic, members of Congress didn’t have a chance to read all 1,071 pages of the document before they could vote.
After all, what does he care? That Limousine Liberal does not care, he’s got money coming out his rather skinny wazoo…
Of course, I just loved this comment over at the Post:
ConcernedAmerican wrote:libh8r wrote:
I wander what was in the doggy bag that Michelle was carring home???
It’s Barry’s Balls
This is not in the least surprising, at least not to me anyhow.
Via the U.K. Telegraph:
A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government’s art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.
The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush’s tenure.
But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Diplomats were at first reluctant to discuss the whereabouts of the Churchill bronze, after its ejection from the seat of American power. But the British Embassy in Washington has now confirmed that it sits in the palatial residence of ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald, just down the road from Vice President Joe Biden’s official residence. It is not clear whether the ambassador plans to keep it in Washington or send it back to London.
American politicians have made quoting Churchill, whose mother was American, something of an art form, but not Mr Obama, who prefers to cite the words and works of his hero Abraham Lincoln. Indeed a bust of Mr Lincoln now sits in the Oval Office where Epstein’s Churchill once ruled the roost.
The reason I say that it is not in the least surprising, is because this is the same man, who said he would meet with Iran without any preconditions. But quickly changed it, when it began to erode his support amongst independents. Those who will talk to terrorists and terrorist nations are not to apt to keep busts of great warriors in their offices.
Of course, there is this reason too:
Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill’s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President’s grandfather.
Ah yes, but of course, it is the old, “Let’s hold the White Man responsible for things that their ancestors did 300 years ago”; trick. The old white guilt trick. This is the same man, whom holds in high regard the man, whom some feel sold the Anglo-Saxon race up the river, just so he could further his own political career and the man whom some refer to as the Patron Saint of White Guilt.
Others: Jules Crittenden, Riehl World View, Fausta’s Blog, TigerHawk, NewsBusters.org, protein wisdom Theo Spark, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS
I know, that’s what I said too. 😮
Glad to see someone on the left knows what that’s all about!
Watch it:
Link: 
(H/T AllahPundit)
Even more Religious Tolerance from this satanic religion:
The foster mother struck off for allowing a Muslim girl to convert to Christianity took the child in after she was threatened with an arranged marriage.
The woman, a devout Christian, was asked to care for the teenager after the authorities learned of her abusive family background.
Her father beat her just for chatting to boys and warned he would haul her off to Pakistan to marry against her will, a friend claimed.
But council officials were angered when the girl chose to be baptised. They insist the foster mother failed in her duty to preserve the girl’s original religion.
As a result, the girl was removed and the foster mother struck off the register last November, despite having worked with children for ten years with a perfect record.
Neither the carer, who has looked after more than 80 children, nor the girl, who is now 17, can be identified.
But a friend of the girl claimed yesterday:
‘Her dad is a very strict Muslim who could get violent. One time he hit her with a belt just because she chatted with a couple of boys.
‘Another time he beat her over and over and said he would take her to Pakistan and make her marry.
via Muslim girl in baptism row was fleeing an arranged marriage | Mail Online.
You see why I refuse to believe that this so-called Religion is a religion of peace? Plus too, there was this beheading yesterday as well.
I suggest you stop by my bookstore’s Islam section and pick up a book or two on this subject and learn.
This Nation needs to crackdown, we need to outlaw the practice of the Islamic faith in America, before it is too late.
Others: protein wisdom and Fausta’s Blog
Oh Please, this is about the lamest damn thing ever….
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama’s stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.
“When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today,” said Specter, “one of my colleagues said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ My Republican colleague said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ I said, ‘Are you going to vote with me?’ And he said, ‘No, I might have a primary.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know very well I’m going to have a primary.'”
Specter, along with centrist Maine Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, joined with Democrats last week to move the stimulus bill forward. Specter said he doubted there would be any more Republican votes than those three Friday night.
“I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation,” he said.
Specter was asked, How many of your colleagues?
“I think a sizable number,” he said. “I think a good part of the caucus agrees with the person I quoted, but I wouldn’t want to begin to speculate on numbers.”
via HuffPo Says: Republicans Support Stimulus, Don’t Want ‘Fingerprints’ On It.
Name one, Arlan, name just one. I dare you. Truth is, there were no other supporters, nobody self-loving Republican, Conservative or Libertarian would ever vote for a bill of this sort. This bill is nothing more than watered down, and in some places; not-so-watered down communism!
I find it absolutely amazing that Sen. Arlan Specter would stoop to outright lying about something as paramount as this bill.
Others: Gateway Pundit
Remember the program that the liberal station in Michigan here refused to air, that I blogged about?
Well, it turns out, two stations; one in Michigan here and one in Ohio refused to air the program.
Here is that program in full:
You can order this program to show at your Church and you can order the entire series of “Speechless…Silencing the Christians.”
Christians and Conservatives alike need to take a stand against the radical gay agenda!
Trackposted to Nuke’s, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Over at The Big Picture:
Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. No, they are borrowing it from China. Your children are expected to repay the Chinese.Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.
Ha! Too Funny….. 😆
Feeling stimulated yet? 😛 😀 😉
(via Freedom’s Phoenix)
What an idiot…..
A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States.
The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.
At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan’s northwest border.
“As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said of the planes.
via Predator drones flown from base in Pakistan, U.S. lawmaker says — chicagotribune.com.
Feinstein ought to be arrested and tried on treason. Revealing Government secrets is illegal. But because she’s a Democrat, nothing will happen.
Others: protein wisdom, Wizbang , The Strata-Sphere, HotAir
They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.
Via the Washington Post:
The U.S. banking system is close to being insolvent, and unless we want to become like Japan in the 1990s — or the United States in the 1930s — the only way to save it is nationalization.
As free-market economists teaching at a business school in the heart of the world’s financial capital, we feel downright blasphemous proposing an all-out government takeover of the banking system. But the U.S. financial system has reached such a dangerous tipping point that little choice remains. And while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s recent plan to save it has many of the right elements, it’s basically too late.
The subprime mortgage mess alone does not force our hand; the $1.2 trillion it involves is just the beginning of the problem. Another $7 trillion — including commercial real estate loans, consumer credit-card debt and high-yield bonds and leveraged loans — is at risk of losing much of its value. Then there are trillions more in high-grade corporate bonds and loans and jumbo prime mortgages, whose worth will also drop precipitously as the recession deepens and more firms and households default on their loans and mortgages.
Last year we predicted that losses by U.S. financial institutions would hit $1 trillion and possibly go as high as $2 trillion. We were accused of exaggerating. But since then, write-downs by U.S. banks have passed the $1 trillion mark, and now institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and Goldman Sachs predict losses of more than $2 trillion.
But if you think that $2 trillion is high, consider our latest estimates at RGE Monitor, the financial Web site we run: They suggest that total losses on loans made by U.S. banks and the fall in the market value of the assets they are holding will reach about $3.6 trillion. The U.S. banking sector is exposed to half of that figure, or $1.8 trillion. Even with the original federal bailout funds from last fall, the capital backing the banks’ assets was only $1.4 trillion, leaving the U.S. banking system about $400 billion in the hole.
Nationalization is Federal Ownership of a private industry; which is what Communist Russia did during the soviet era. It is Communism. This is the agenda of the Liberal left, the Federal ownership of the banking system. It also sets the United States up for the Biblical Mark of the Beast.
We are living in dangerous times.
From the Bible:
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (Revelation 13:1-18 KJV)
Others: The Corner, Vox Popoli
I find it very interesting, that Keith Olbermann will use a word, that he continually excoriated the Bush Administration for using.
Watch it:
colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”.
after the election would dull some of the hard feelings between the two. Now, they are realizing, it has not.