Friday, November 12, 2010

Obama And Pelosi Sitting In A Tree..... K.I.S.S.I.N.G

The mutual admiration society Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi seem to have going reminds me of the childhood rhyme "Obama and Pelosi sitting in a tree... K.I.S.S.I.N.G."

I swear, after suffering the worst defeat in 70 some odd years, one would think that Democrats would get a clue, but no they didn't.

They didn't listen to the public when they were shoving Obamacare down American's throats over the loud objections of the majority. They specifically didn't listen on November 2, 2010, when Americans showed them, through the voting booths that they were taking this country in a direction Americans didn't want to go.

They deserve each other and deserve whatever happens over the next two years.

The Hill headline, "Obama lauds as an outstanding partner" is evidence of their spectacular tone deafness and refusal to understand that it was Obama's agenda and Pelosi's control as Speaker of the House to rubber stamp that agenda and push it on Americans, that caused Americans to overwhelmingly reject that agenda in a manner that left no doubt as to the message.

Message sent but not received.

President Obama lent his support to outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), calling her an "outstanding partner" in advancing his agenda.


That says it all... Pelosi advanced Obama's agenda. Period.

American rejected that agenda on November 2nd. Period.

Pelosi denies that she is the reason or even part of the reason Democrats lost the majority in the House, showing an incredible lack of common sense.

Democrats lost 60 House seats (so far), 6 Senate seats (only a third of the Senate was in play) and 998 seats from Democrats on a state level, increasing their numbers in 73 state legislative chambers of the 87 up for election.

How on earth the two top Democratic leaders, Obama and Pelosi, both of whom presided over a one party rule for two years and caused the biggest losses for their party in 72 years, could sit there and publicly congratulate each other on a job well done... is beyond me.

High court allows gay military ban for now

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military to remain in place while a federal appeals court considers the issue.

The court did not comment in denying a request from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to step into the ongoing federal court review of "don't ask, don't tell." The Obama administration urged the high court not to get involved at this point.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that the policy violates the civil rights of gay Americans and she issued an injunction barring the Pentagon from applying it. But the San Francisco-based appeals court said the policy could remain in effect while it considers the administration's appeal.

President Barack Obama has pledged to push lawmakers to repeal the law in the lame-duck session before a new Congress is sworn in. But administration lawyers have in the meantime defended "don't ask, don't tell" in court.

The policy, which prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, was lifted for eight days in October after U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled that it is unconstitutional. The Obama administration asked the appeals court to reinstate the ban until it could hear arguments on the broader constitutional issues next year.

Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the court's consideration of the issue. Kagan served as the administration's chief Supreme Court lawyer before she became a justice in August.

The Dollar Run Begins?

By Robert Romano

China’s credit rating agency, Dagong, has once again downgraded the U.S. credit rating, this time down to A+. The agency cited the Federal Reserve’s proposed $600 billion in purchases of U.S. treasuries, writing that the “move entirely encroaches on the interests of the creditors, indicating the decline of the U.S. government’s intention of debt repayment.”

While the Fed and the mainstream media looks at the central bank printing money to buy the national debt as being somehow related to reducing unemployment or restoring robust economic growth, the Chinese and the rest of the world see it for what it is: Papering over the debt.

It has begun an international revolt against U.S. dollar depreciation. Germany’s finance minister called the action “clueless” and said it would “create extra problems for the world.” Brazil’s finance minister said it would start a “currency war.” Now, China is calling for the G20 to have a role in Federal Reserve policy. So is Russia.

Dallas Fed head Richard Fisher openly criticized the move: “One cost is the risk of being perceived as embarking on the slippery slope of debt monetization. We know that once a central bank is perceived as targeting government debt yields at a time of persistent budget deficits, concern about debt monetization quickly arises.”

Which is exactly what it looks like. As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson recently noted, “the nation’s central bank will be the largest holder of the national debt in the entire world next year. The Fed already holds $839 billion of treasuries, and was already on pace to have over $1 trillion in treasuries by August, 2011, more than China, Japan, or any other foreign creditor.”

Wilson continued, “With another $600 billion on top of the Fed’s expected trillion-dollar stake in the debt, the signal we are sending to the world is that to pay for our obligations we are printing a ton of new money. In the next three years alone, $5.2 trillion of debt will be coming due. In addition, the Obama Administration plans on increasing the debt another $3.6 trillion over that same period. That means that the Treasury has to sell $8.8 trillion of debt over three years, or $2.93 trillion every year.”

That’s bad, because as Wilson explains, “$2.93 trillion a year is more than the Treasury has ever had to sell. Approximately $630 billion more than it has ever sold. So it is little surprise that now the Fed is coming out saying it is buying another $600 billion of treasuries. This action by the Fed has nothing to do with ‘a stronger pace of economic recovery,’ as the central bank claims. It has everything to do with the fact that we are broke, and we’re printing money to pay the bills.”

That means the Fed actually has little choice other but to print the money.
Get full story here.

I Ain’t Going Anywhere!

Permalink here.

House Republicans’ First Big Test

By Rebekah Rast
Not all Republicans are the same.

Some Republicans in the House of Representatives favor a more moderate approach when voting on big-ticket items like health care, cap-and-trade and stimulus bills. Others stick to fiscally conservative values and shrink away from voting “yea” on anything that would add additional debt to the nation or grow government power.

With 60-plus new House Republican Members joining the forces in January, Republican leadership is tasked with finding the right kind of Republicans to Chair and lead the new House of Representatives.
Since many of the new Members can attribute their win to the tea party movement, Republicans have announced efforts to stick to the values that got them elected, a desire to limit government, shrink the national debt and slash federal spending.

Therefore, those Republicans who vote moderate and maybe lean a little to left, might not stand a chance of any leadership posts in this new Congress — no matter what their seniority status or how deserving they might feel they are of gaining the post.

That includes the naming of the next Chairman for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Get full story here.

Gov. Chris Christie Targeted in NYT Fishing Expedition that Fails to Find Scandal

By Kevin Mooney

Even as the New York Times concedes that Gov. Chris Christie of N.J. is a “rising star in the Republican Party” thanks to his budget cutting, it needles him for billing taxpayers for hotel stays. This criticism is recycled from the state’s 2009 gubernatorial race that ended with Christie unseating Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine.
But it has made its way into the news again on the basis of a report that the U.S. Justice Department released on Monday. Christie served as the U.S. attorney from 2002 until 2008.

“The report cited stays in the $449-per-night Nine Zero Hotel in Boston and the $475-per-night Four Seasons Hotel in Washington,” the NYT informs readers. “Both cost more than double the government rate for those cities. In all, Mr. Christie exceeded the lodging rate on 14 of 23 trips without adequate justification, billing taxpayers $2,176 in excess of the maximum normal rates.”
This is all about fishing for a scandal where one doesn’t exist.

Get full story here.

ObamaCare's pre-existing condition program is a bust.

The title is the sub header from the Wall Street Journal piece explaining the undelivered results of the $5 billion dollar program overseen by Obama's Health and Human Services Department (HHS) to create their own insurance plans to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

HHS claimed the justification for the $5 billion dollar expenditure would be 375,000 signed up in the first year with 400,000 more every year.

The number that signed up? 8,011.

Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.


Take it away Ed:

The Obama administration and its allies in the Nancy Pelosi Congress revamped one-sixth of the American economy, created new federal mandates, and created chaos in system that worked for the vast majority of Americans, just to deal with eight thousand people? Perhaps they should have tested the issue by creating the program separately first and determining whether the demand required a complete overhaul of a health-care system that mainly worked for the rest of us, instead of arrogating to themselves the task of dictating the shape of a market they clearly don’t understand.


Classic Values Told ya so!!

In today's fierce moral urgency of change news, it turns out the market for government health insurance for the uninsured is about 50 times smaller than Obamacare proponents told us it would be. Of course, we opponents of Obamacare were arguing last year this problem was overblown, and it appears in retrospect even our most parsimonious estimates were vastly too generous:

A country in economic turmoil and a Democratically controlled White House, House of Representatives and Senate manages to show an ineptness, sheer incompetence, and a lack of understanding of an industry that they want to take over.

Remember, this is just the beginning.....

This monstrosity of a law, must be repealed and since Republicans who now control the House cannot repeal it without cooperation from the Democratically controlled Senate and even if they could would face a certain veto from the Obama White House, then Republicans must refuse to fund as much of it as possible until it can be repealed and replaced with something clean and small that actually has a chance to work.

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School Tells Boy to Remove the American Flag on his Bike

 by Duane Lester

A California 13-year-old has been told by the local arm of the educational industrial complex that the American flag he attached to his bike has to go.  It could cause racial tensions.
Yeah, you read that right:
“(The) First Amendment is important,” Superintendent Edward Parraz said. “We want the kids to respect it, understand it, and with that comes a responsiblity.”
Parraz said the campus has recently experienced some racial tension. He said some students got out of hand on Cinco de Mayo.
“Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they’ll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don’t really want,” Parraz said. “We want them to appreciate the cultures.”
So if I’m picking up what Parraz is putting down, thirteen-year-old Cody Alicea can’t keep the flag on his bike because some Mexican kids might start a riot.

That sounds like stereotyping to me.  That sounds almost racist.
I think it’s dangerous to assume that a group of young men, because they have darker skin or speak a different languange, might resort to physical violence because they see the Stars and Stripes.
Is it just me, or is this superintendent racist?

On a serious note, what flag flies outside of this school?  What flag to they pledge allegiance to each morning, if they still do that (it is California, after all)?

People shouldn’t have their patriotism suppressed because others might react violently to such behavior.  You punish the negative reaction.  You don’t restrict the rights of the law abiding.

Now I suppose Cody could have put the flag on his bike in order to raise the hackles on the back of the local students with Mexican roots, but perhaps that needs to be addressed.

Two things, Cody, stop antagonizing.  And local students with Mexican roots, you’re in America now.  Learn to love the flag and stop being so damn touchy.

It’s called a melting pot.  If we allow ourselves to be divided on lines of race or national heritage, we won’t be a strong country, but a nation of groups.  While that might work for the Marxists and the liberals, it’s not what America is supposed to be.

We are Americans first.
Remember the words of Teddy Roosevelt:
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities…
Of course, there isn’t a school in the country that is willing to teach that lesson.

Beck: Five Step Plan and Making of the Puppet Master

How George Soros is trying to bring down America Part 2 How George Soros became who he is today Part 3

Media Matters Spends $86k To Win Lunch With Rupert Murdoch

Posted by P.J. Salvatore

Why doesn’t George Soros just go himself?
Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog that spends most of its time attacking Fox News, won a charity auction lunch with Rupert Murdoch for $86,000.
“I look forward to this opportunity to have a friendly lunch with Rupert Murdoch, along with five of my invited guests,” said David Brock, the Media Matters founder and CEO who will be doing the actual lunching. “I will soon contact Mr. Murdoch’s office to determine a mutually convenient time and place in New York.”

Besides the first question, how does a a 501(c)(3) afford this?How can they still operate as a 501(c)(3) when the outfit behaves as a tool through which Soros exercises his hatred of all things conservative?

The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator’s family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests.  No part of a section 501(c)(3) organization’s net earnings may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.  A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization…
More on the lunch:
The item, which was listed on the site Charity Buzz, was billed as a chance to “propose your business ideas” with the media mogul. The winning bid, according to a Media Matters representative, went for $86,000 — the proceeds of which will be sent to The Global Poverty Project. The estimated value of the lunch is $15,000.
Yes, I’m sure Media Matters wasn’t misrepresenting their bid at all. I wonder who was edged out of the chance to propose their ideas to a media mogul?
Murdoch isn’t necessarily bound to have lunch with an outfit whose major investor threatened to take them out:
But there may be a loophole buried in the fine print for the News Corp. CEO to back out. According to Charity Buzz: the meeting will “take place over a friendly lunch at a mutually convenient time in New York City, exact location to be determined. Winner will be subject to security screening and background check.”

Republican Alan Simpson (Chair of Debt Commission) Demanding Cut & Delay of Social Security and Medicare for the Elderly! Forces Them to Eat Cat Food!

The Debt Commission, led by Republican Alan Simpson, is making recommendations to CUT & DELAY Social Security and Medicare, leaving our Seniors to EAT CAT FOOD!

The formation of the Debt Commission (some media outlets are calling it "President Obama's Debt Commission" or "The White House Debt Commission") was originally a Congressionally proposed recommendation for a Commission to be formed to create bipartisan legislation requiring a Congressional vote on its recommendations as presented, without any amendments. In January of 2010, that bill failed in the Senate by a vote of 53-46, when six Republicans who had co-sponsored it nevertheless voted against it. Thereafter, President Obama established the Commission by executive order 13531. Republican Senator Alan Simpson was appointed as co-chair of this bi-partisan Commission.

Republican Simpson, initially supported by both Republican and Democrats as co-chair, has created a number of media frenzies with his blatant and radical outbursts. Back in August, Simpson sent an email to the executive director of the National Older Women’s League in which he described Social Security as being an entitlement program “like a cow with 310 million tits." (WOW!)

Now, Simpson, as co-chair of the Debt Commission, has foregone the support of the members on his committee and has blatantly come out and presented his so-called "committee recommendations" even though the members of the committee DO NOT AGREE WITH IT!

And now Simpson has sparked a political firestorm Wednesday with the early release of his recommendations...a report proposing sweeping changes to Social Security, Medicare and the tax code. Simpson’s plan would increase the Social Security retirement age and limit yearly cost-of-living increases to the rate of inflation rather than of wage growth. The cut in annual increases would affect current retirees! This was supposed to be off the table for the Commission. This means Seniors benefits would go down by about 3 percent after they’ve been retired for 10 years, and about 6 percent after they’ve been retired for 20 years. (Unbelievable!!)

And the retirement age increase is just a particularly cruel way of cutting benefits. The age at which the elderly can retire on full Social Security benefits is already increasing to 67 by 2027. Simpson’s plan would “index” the retirement age to increase in longevity, meaning it would hit 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had this to say about it: “It is reprehensible to ask working people, including many who do physically-demanding labor, to work until they are 69 years of age. It also is totally impractical. As they compete for jobs with 25-year-olds, many older workers will go unemployed and have virtually no income. Frankly, there will not be too much demand within the construction industry for 69-year-old bricklayers.”

New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman also pointed out that “the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.”

At the end of the day, only Republicans/Tea Partiers will support these recommendations. After all, anyone who supports irrational tax cuts for the rich will have no qualms about asking the Elderly in our country to be forced to eat CAT FOOD!

GOP Convention Offer Mulled As Inducement For Michael Steele To Not Run For Re-Election As RNC Chairman

Is the RNC's "Fire Pelosi" cry turning into "Fire Steele"? Some folks are unhappy about his gaffes, his fundraising during his tenure, etc. Even his former closest allies are thinking about running for the chairmanship, as a coalition forms to deny Mr. Steele the votes he will need to remain as chairman. Now this news from the Baltimore Sun: "Advisers to Republican National Chairman Michael Steele hatched a plan to give him a prominent position at the party's 2012 presidential nominating convention if he decided to step aside as head of the Republican National Committee, according to a party official. The official's story, which could not be independently confirmed, involved Steele's chief of staff, Michael Leavitt, and longtime consultant, Blaise Hazelwood."

More: "Concerned that Steele could not be assured of a winning another two-year term when the RNC meets in January, the duo came up with a fallback plan. They would support Wisconsin Republican chairman Reince Priebus, a Steele loyalist, for the top party post if Steele chose not to run again. In exchange, Priebus would agree to make Steele chairman of the convention."