Cold Blue Steel

Mexican Marines Reconstruct the Death of Don Alejo Garza

2010-12-06T22:51:00.001-06:00

When Mexican Marines arrived at the San Jose Ranch, 15 kilometers from Victoria, Tamaulipas, the scene was bleak: The austere main house was practically destroyed by grenades and heavy gunfire.

Outside of the home, they found four bodies. Cautiously, and with their weapons drawn, the troops continued inspecting the exterior and found two more gunmen, wounded and unconscious, but alive.

Inside the house only one body was found, riddled with bullets and with two weapons by it's side. The body was identified as Don Alejo Garza Tamez, the owner of the ranch and a highly respected businessman in Nuevo Leon.

Upon further inspection of the interior, marines found weapons and ammunition at every window and door. This allowed them to reconstruct how, just hours prior, the battle had played out.

Marines searched for more bodies inside the house, but none were to be found. It seemed hard to believe that one person, armed only with hunting rifles, had caused so many casualties on the attackers.

Dozens of spent shells and the smell of gunpowder gave proof of the tenacity of the man who fought to the end in defense, of not only his ranch, but his dignity.

In the end, it was deduced the man had created his own defense strategy to fight alone, placing weapons at every door and window.

The story began in the morning of Saturday November 13, when a group of armed gunmen went to deliver an ultimatum to Don Alejo Garza Tamez: He had 24 hours to turn over his property or suffer the consequences.

Using the diplomacy he had acquired over nearly eight decades of life, Don Alejo flatly announced that not only would he not be surrendering his property, but that he'd be waiting for them.

When the men had left, Don Alejo gathered his workers and ordered them to take Sunday off, he wanted to be alone.

He dedicated the rest of Saturday to taking stock of his weapons and ammunition and creating a military fortress style defense strategy for his home.

The night of Saturday the thirteenth was long and restless, much like his past hunting adventures; Don Alejo woke early. Shortly after 4 a.m. the motors of various trucks could be heard entering the property from a distance.

Marines who investigated the scene could only imagine how it was that morning: armed men, their impunity secured, confident they'd soon be owners of yet another property. Nobody, or almost no one, could hold out against a group of heavily armed gunmen. Only Don Alejo.

The trucks entered the ranch and took up positions surrounding the house. The gunmen got out of their trucks, fired shots in the air, and announced they came to take possession of the ranch. They were expecting the terrified occupants to run out, begging for mercy with their hands in the air.

But things didn't go as expected. Don Alejo welcomed them with bullets; the entire army of gunmen returned fire. Don Alejo seemed to multiply, he seemed to be everywhere. The minutes would have seemed endless to those who had seen him as easy prey. Various gunmen were killed on sight. The others, in rage and frustration, intensified the attack by swapping out their assault rifles for grenades.

When everything finally fell silent, the air was left heavy with gunpowder. The holes left in the walls and the windows attested to the violence of the attack. When they went in search of what they had assumed was a large contingent, they were surprised to find only one man, Don Alejo.

The surviving gunmen did not take over the ranch. Thinking the military would arrive at any moment, they decided to run. They left behind what they thought were six corpses, but two of their gunmen had survived.

Shortly after, the Marines arrived and methodically reconstructed the events. A lone rancher, a man who worked a lifetime to be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor such as his ranch, had defended it to his death.

In the last hunt of his life, Don Alejo surprised the group of assassins who wanted to impose the same law on his ranch that they had on the State, the law of the jungle.

The marines who were present will never forget the scene: a 77 year old man, who before death, took out four gunmen, fighting the same as the best soldiers: with dignity, courage, and honor.

Unusual methods helped ICE break deportation record, e-mails and interviews show

2010-12-06T22:41:00.001-06:00

By Andrew Becker
Center for Investigative Reporting

For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations.

But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol.

When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark, it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.

Instead, officials told immigration officers to encourage eligible foreign nationals to accept a quick pass to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record, ICE employees said.

The option, known as voluntary return, may have allowed hundreds of immigrants - who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation for offenses such as drunken driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault - to leave the country. A voluntary return doesn't bar a foreigner from applying for legal residence or traveling to the United States in the future.

Read More: The Washington Post

Rangel in deeper with new ethics charge

2010-12-06T22:36:00.001-06:00

By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN

The Federal Election Commission is investigating a complaint that Rep. Charles Rangel improperly used his National Leadership PAC to fund his legal defense on ethics charges for which he was censured Thursday, The Post has learned.

The FEC is acting on a complaint by the National Legal and Policy Center filed after The Post reported last month that Rangel paid nearly $400,000 from his PAC.

Lawmakers are only allowed to use money in their individual campaign funds for legal fees, or they can set up legal defense funds for such costs. Rangel appeared before the House Ethics Committee last month saying he could no longer afford legal counsel after already burning through $2 million.
The center expects to file a second complaint this week contending that Rangel's PAC money included at least $195,000 in donations from lobbyists with business before the House Ways & Means Committee, of which he is a member.
Yesterday, the Harlem pol said he's ready to put the incident behind him.

Read more: The New York Post

Convicted for Transporting Guns While Moving, N.J. Gun Owner Seeks Justice

2010-12-06T22:23:00.000-06:00

Friday, December 03, 2010

In a case that has drawn national attention, a New Jersey gun owner has been sentenced to seven years in prison for having two unloaded, cased handguns in his car trunk while moving to a new home.

In January 2009, Brian Aitken had recently returned to New Jersey after living in Colorado, and was in the middle of moving from one residence in New Jersey to another, when a concerned family member called police in response to a comment he’d made about his personal life. A search of Aitken’s car by the police revealed two handguns. The handguns—legally purchased in Colorado—were unloaded and contained in a locked box inside a duffel bag. (Aitken was being careful during his move; in fact, he’d contacted the New Jersey State Police to learn about the state’s requirements.)

Despite his care, Aitken was arrested and prosecuted under New Jersey gun laws, which are highly restrictive and even more highly confusing. In New Jersey, it is generally illegal to possess a handgun without a “permit to carry,” but there are many exceptions to the requirement, such as possession in the home. One of the exceptions allows transportation of an unloaded and cased firearm “between one place of business or residence and another when moving.”

Unfortunately for Aitken—who refused to accept a plea bargain because he believed he had done nothing wrong—the judge in the case refused to instruct the jury about the exceptions, despite repeated requests from Aitken’s attorney and even from the jury itself. Lacking that information, the jury convicted Aitken and he received a harsh prison sentence.
Aitken’s attorney, Evan Nappen, called the case a “perfect storm of injustice.” (The NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund supported Aitken’s defense at trial.) At press time, Aitken is serving his sentence while his appeal is pending. He is also seeking a pardon or commuted sentence from Gov. Chris Christie. In a letter to the governor supporting Aiken’s clemency request, pro-gun Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll rightly noted that even if Aitken had committed “wholly technical violations [of] wholly problematic laws,” “not every violation of the law warrants an indictment, let alone incarceration.”

We can only hope this case will wake up more New Jersey lawmakers to the impact of their posturing on honest citizens.

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Obama’s Jeffersonian Muslim Revisionist Lie

2010-11-28T13:19:00.000-06:00

by Susan Dale
11/23/2010
Barack Hussein Obama is a practitioner of many nasty and nefarious things as our President, but none are more destructive to our nation and its endlessly fascinating and largely glorious past than his frequent practice of revisionist history.

The term revisionist means actually, well, lying.

The most recent of these was made during a Presidential speech at a White House dinner, hosted by Barack and Michelle Obama, to celebrate the end of the month-long fast on the part of the Muslim world, a practice which is known as Ramadan. The end of the fast, which seems to require some sort of celebratory event, at least in the alternate universe of the Obama Administration, is known as Iftar. In his remarks at this dinner, the second in his two year Presidency, Obama made various claims in his increasingly pathetic attempts to legitimize the world of Islam, the most outrageous of which was that one of our greatest Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, (who Obama fashioned as a fellow admirer of the Muslim world), hosted the first Iftar dinner at the White House.

Both of these claims are patently false.

The truth about Thomas Jefferson and his involvement in the world of Islam in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries is a fascinating tale, and can be described as both romantic and dashing. It involves pirates, known swashbucklingly at the time as ‘corsairs,’ international intrigue and ultimately acts of astounding military courage on the part of the newly-created United States Marines.

Read the story in it's entirety - Human Events

Bill Whittle on 2nd Amendment Rights

2010-11-28T13:03:00.000-06:00

Andrew Traver: Is Obama's choice for ATF chief an 'antigun zealot'?

2010-11-28T12:57:00.000-06:00

Obama's nomination of Andrew Traver to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reignites concern that the White House wants to whittle away at gun rights. The last time that happened, Americans armed up.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / November 19, 2010

Atlanta
ATF special agent Andrew Traver, who last year let a TV reporter fire an AK-47 from her hip to demonstrate the weapon's lethality, is set to become America's chief firearms inspector. But Mr. Traver, currently the Chicago ATF chief, faces a tough nomination battle as gun-rights groups amass their forces in opposition.

The nomination of the Naperville, Ill., native to be top gun cop is applauded by gun-control activists, who say the 5,000-employee ATF has lost ground in its regulation of the $28 billion US firearms business, having labored under interim directors since 2006.

But the idea of an ATF director who hails from Chicago, a city without gun shops, and who has conflated black market automatic weapons with legal semi-automatic "assault-style" rifles is causing Second Amendment defenders to worry that President Obama intends to blast away at gun rights by force of bureaucracy, if not law.

"This is a demonstration that Obama has ... the same attitudes about Second Amendment rights now as he did [when he was an Illinois state senator], which is quite hostile," says Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Golden, Colo., that promotes free-market ideas. "He's picked a strong anti-Second Amendment person for an administrative job that has far more influence over the practical exercise of Second Amendment rights than any other job in the country."

Read the story in it's entirety - Christian Science Monitor

MSNBC's Ed Schultz Marvels at White House Photo Shrine to Obama

2010-02-07T19:56:00.000-06:00

Why Is Obama Still Using Blackwater?

2010-02-07T19:42:00.000-06:00

by Jeremy Scahill - The Nation
September 16, 2009

Two years ago on September 16, 2007, on a steamy hot Baghdad day with temperatures reaching 100 degrees, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy entered a congested intersection at Nisour Square in the Mansour district of the Iraqi capital. The once-upscale section of Baghdad was still lined with boutiques, cafes and art galleries dating back to better days. The ominous caravan consisted of four large armored vehicles with machine guns mounted on top.

As the Blackwater convoy was entering the square that day, a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Hathem Al-Rubaie was driving his mother, Mahasin, in the family's white sedan. As fate would have it, they found themselves stuck near Nisour Square. The family were devout Muslims and were fasting in observance of the holy month of Ramadan.
Ali Khalaf Salman, an Iraqi traffic cop on duty in Nisour Square that day, remembers vividly when the Blackwater convoy entered the intersection, spurring him and his colleagues to scramble to stop traffic. But as the Mambas entered the square, the convoy suddenly made a surprise U-turn and proceeded to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. As Khalaf watched, the convoy came to an abrupt halt. He says a large white man with a mustache, positioned atop the third vehicle in the Blackwater convoy, began to fire his weapon "randomly."

Read this article in its entirety - TheNation.com

Friday Night Country

2010-02-05T19:26:00.000-06:00

Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show

Franken shuts down Lieberman on Senate floor

2009-12-17T18:14:00.001-06:00

WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Al Franken took the unusual step Thursday of shutting down Sen. Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, currently is the target of liberal wrath over his opposition to a government-run insurance plan in the health care bill.

Franken was presiding over the Senate Thursday afternoon as Lieberman spoke about amendments he planned to offer to the bill. Lieberman asked for an additional moment to finish — a routine request — but Franken refused to grant the time.

"In my capacity as the senator from Minnesota, I object," Franken said.
"Really?" said Lieberman. "OK."

Lieberman then said he'd submit the rest of his statement in writing.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona came to his friend Lieberman's defense, saying he'd never seen such a thing occur. "I must say that I don't know what's happening here in this body but I think it's wrong," McCain said on the floor.

Franken's spokeswoman, Jess McIntosh, said that the Minnesota senator wouldn't allow Lieberman to continue because time limits were being enforced by Senate leaders rushing to finish a defense spending bill and get to the health bill.

Staff Sergeant First Class John C. Beale

2009-12-14T18:06:00.000-06:00

Killed in action the week before, the body of Staff Sergeant First Class John C. Beale was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City, Georgia, just south of Atlanta, on June 11, 2009. The Henry County Police Department escorted the procession to the funeral home in McDonough, Georgia. A simple notice in local papers indicated the road route to be taken and the approximate time."

"Nowadays one can be led to believe that America no longer respects honor and no longer honors sacrifice outside the military. Be it known that there are many places in this land where people still recognize the courage and impact of total self-sacrifice. Georgia remains one of those graceful places. But only watch this if you wish to have some of your faith in people restored. Please share widely.

Link to Source - RightsideVA.blogspot.com

Climategate Liars Continue Lying

2009-12-11T21:24:00.000-06:00

MND Thursday, Dec 10th, 2009

So what do you do after 10s of billions in public funds are invested in a bogus climate project, all your fancy and very expensive computer programs expressing your “theories” have been proven wrong, and you’ve been exposed for suppressing real scientific data and creating your own fake data to keep the hoax going? The answer from Copenhagen; lie some more.

Despite the well-publicized fact that global climate has not reacted to increasing CO2 as Al Gore would have liked – by increasing global temperatures to the point of killing everyone except him and the people who bring him food – there are some the-climate-is-actually-ok deniers at the Copenhagen Climate Summit reporting the opposite.

For many of us, it’s not the least bit surprising that the false information being presented in Copenhagen comes from the very same sources that have already been busted for lying about climate change and its causes. Reported by China View:

The past decade has been the warmest since records began 160 years ago and the year 2009 ranks in the top ten warmest year, Britain’s Met Office and UN World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

“Despite 1998 being the warmest individual year, the last 10 years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia,” the statement from the U.K.’s national weather service said.

Complete article: Current decade warmest, 2009 fifth hottest, since 1850

Judge Rules Effort to Strip ACORN of Federal Funds Unconstitutional

2009-12-11T21:16:00.000-06:00

ACORN claimed in its lawsuit that Congress' decision to cut off its funding was unconstitutional because it punitively targeted an organization

NEW YORK -- The U.S. government's move this fall to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Friday, handing the embattled group a legal victory. U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon issued the preliminary injunction against the government, saying it's in the public's interest for the organization to continue receiving federal funding. ACORN claimed in its lawsuit that Congress' decision to cut off its funding was unconstitutional because it punitively targeted an individual organization. Gershon said in her ruling that ACORN had raised a "fundamental issue of separation of powers. They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or even administrative, process adjudicating guilt."

Bill Quigley, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of ACORN and two affiliates, said the decision sends a sharp message to Congress that it can't single out an individual or organization without due process. "It's a resounding victory for ACORN," he said. "I'd be surprised if the government decides to appeal."

ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, describes itself as an advocate for low-income and minority homebuyers and residents in communities served by its offices around the country. Critics say it has violated the tax-exempt status of some of its affiliates by engaging in partisan political activities. The law that halted ACORN's federal funding took effect Oct. 1 and was extended Oct. 31. It was set to either expire or be extended again on Dec. 18. ACORN's lawsuit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn and sought reinstatement of the funds. Quigley said millions of dollars in funds should begin to flow again to ACORN next week. The judge said the "public will not suffer harm by allowing the plaintiffs to continue work on contracts duly awarded by federal agencies."

ACORN has been dogged by allegations of voter-registration fraud and embezzlement. Several of its offices were the subject of an embarrassing hidden-camera sting in which ACORN employees were shown advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp to lie about her profession and launder her earnings. The videos sparked a political uproar, with Republicans trying to use the group's troubles to portray Democrats as corrupt. The group's lawsuit named the U.S. government, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the secretary of the Treasury as defendants. Justice Department spokeswoman Beverley Lumpkin said the agency was reviewing the decision and declined to comment further. "Today's ruling is a victory for the constitutional rights for all Americans and for the citizens who work through ACORN to improve their communities and promote responsible lending and homeownership," ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said in a statement.

Link to Source - Fox News

Friday Night Country

2009-12-11T18:06:00.000-06:00

Sing it Waylon...

Obama's 47 Percent Approval Lowest of Any President at This Point

2009-12-08T20:28:00.003-06:00

President Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.

Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama's immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage. Bush's support came shortly after he launched the war in Afghanistan in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he doesn't "put a lot of stock" in the survey by Gallup, which has conducted presidential approval polls since 1938, longer than any other organization.

"If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I'd visit my doctor," Gibbs said in response to questions from Fox. "I'm sure a six-year-old with a Crayon could do something not unlike that. I don't put a lot of stake in, never have, in the EKG that is daily Gallup trend. I don't pay a lot of attention to the meaninglessness of it."

Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport responded: "Gibbs said that if Gallup were his EKG, he would visit his doctor. Well, I think the doctor might ask him what's going on in his life that would cause his EKG to be fluctuating so much. There is, in fact, a lot going on at the moment -- the health care bill, the jobs summit, the Copenhagen climate conference and Afghanistan."

The new low comes as Obama struggles to overhaul the nation's health care system and escalates America's involvement in the Afghanistan war. He is also presiding over a deep and prolonged recession, with unemployment at 10 percent.

"There's no doubt Obama's 47 percent is mainly a result of the continuing bad economy," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "But there is also a growing concern about government spending and debt, and a sense that Obama is trying to do too much, too soon."

He added: "President Obama has reason to be concerned about his ratings. Even in tough times, presidents have usually been able to stay above the critical 50 percent mark in the first year, when the public is most inclined to give the new incumbent the benefit of the doubt."

Obama officials have not always shown disdain for Gallup. During last year's presidential campaign, Obama adviser David Plouffe, trumpeted "the latest Gallup poll" to reporters because it showed that 53 percent of Americans did not find Obama Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, "trustworthy."

When Gallup began taking presidential approval polls 71 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt had been president for more than five years. During his remaining time in office, his job approval rating never fell below 48 percent.

The next 11 presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, all had higher job approval ratings than Obama at this stage of their tenure. Their ratings were:

George W. Bush, 86 percent
Bill Clinton, 52 percent
George H.W. Bush, 71 percent
Ronald Reagan, 49 percent
Jimmy Carter, 57 percent
Gerald Ford, 52 percent
Richard Nixon, 59 percent
Lyndon Johnson, 74 percent
John Kennedy, 77 percent
Dwight Eisenhower, 69 percent
Harry Truman, 49 percent

The poll is an average of a three-day tracking of 1,529 adults taken Dec. 4-6. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Link to Source - Fox News

NRA-ILA :: Overturned Murder Conviction Will Stand for Arizona Man Who Used a Firearm in Self-Defense

2009-12-08T20:19:00.000-06:00

Fairfax, Va. -- An Arizona man who spent nearly three years in prison for justifiably shooting a man in self-defense is now free and clear of all guilt in his case. This week the Arizona Supreme Court let stand the state appellate court’s decision to overturn Harold Fish’s second-degree murder conviction. The National Rifle Association provided assistance in this case. NRA’s Office of General Counsel advised Fish’s defense counsel, and the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund provided financial aid for Fish’s defense.
Chris W. Cox, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action said, “We are pleased that justice has finally prevailed for Mr. Fish in this case that was clearly justifiable self-defense. We wish the best for Mr. Fish and his family in the future.”

In 2006, Harold Fish was convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Grant Kuenzli. Fish encountered Kuenzli and his vicious dogs while hiking on a trailside in Coconino County in May of 2004. After Fish fired warning shots at the aggressive dogs, Kuenzli tried to attack him, and Fish was forced to shoot him in self-defense. At the time of the shooting, current self-defense laws in Arizona -- which put the burden of proof on the prosecutor instead of the defendant -- did not exist. During Fish’s trial, the jury was not allowed to hear evidence that Kuenzli had acted violently in similar situations in the past. In June, an Arizona appellate court overturned Fish’s conviction, acknowledging the jury should have heard this evidence and also saying the jury was not instructed properly on the meaning of “unlawful physical force.” Attorney General Terry Goddard had asked the Arizona Supreme Court to review the appellate court’s decision, and this week they declined.

Fish’s case spawned two laws in Arizona strengthening the rights of gun owners to use a firearm to defend themselves and their loved ones. SB 1145, passed in 2006, put the burden of proof back on the state, saying that those who use firearms in self-defense are to be considered innocent until proven guilty. This year, Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1449 into law, making retroactive SB 1145, which effectively allowed Fish and others in similar positions the right to a new trial, as well as to be considered innocent in the justifiable use of force unless the state proves otherwise.
-nra-

Carbonhagen: World Leaders Drive to Climate Summit in Gas-Guzzling Luxury Fleet

2009-12-08T20:05:00.000-06:00

World leaders and VIPs began pouring into Copenhagen Monday morning for the city's long-awaited climate summit, arriving in style in a fleet of gas-guzzling limos and luxury cars. Most delegates to the climate change conference haven't exactly been hoofing their way to Denmark's capital, swarming the city's airport with 140 private jets, 1,200 hired limousines and a carbon footprint the size of a small country. Video shot on the scene Monday shows squads of new arrivals at the green gathering pulling up in BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, sleek Volvos and plush Jaguars. A bus reserved for the delegates rode along empty outside the conference center.

The head of Copenhagen's biggest limo company says her business usually has a dozen cars on the road. But during the conference — which has been billed as the last best chance to save the environment — she'll have 200 vehicles churning out fumes, the Daily Telegraph reported. "We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," Majken Friss Jorgensen told the newspaper. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report." France alone has ordered 42 vehicles, she said, and the auto supply in Denmark is very quickly drying up. To make up for shortages, Jorgensen and her competitors are bringing in lines of limos from as far away as Germany and Sweden. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand," she said, adding that just five cars in her fleet will be environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles, which are almost impossible to procure in tax-heavy Denmark.

Once the estimated 30,000 delegates, activists, protesters and members of the press arrive this week and next, they'll find a sumptuous and steeply priced spread awaiting them. Expensive hotels are sold out, and the conference organizers have been busy laying 560 miles of computer cable and 50,000 square miles of carpet, according to the Times of London. The conference center hosting the meetings has set up four "climate kitchens" to cook healthy, organic meals for attendees, but they aren't coming cheap. Visitors ordering the regular meal will get finger sandwiches, a quiche, some cheese and dessert, but those going "deluxe" get a mini croissant, canape with smoked salmon, mini pizzas, fancy cheese and some pineapple in chocolate — all for an estimated $40 a person.

The whole conference rings up at just under $215 million, according to a report from the U.K.-based Taxpayers' Alliance, which argued that even though delegates to the climate conference don't expect to emerge with any signed commitments, they're still doing potential damage by making their two-week visit.

Conference organizers have gone the whole nine yards seeking to offset the Copenhagen carbon crunch (the U.N. estimates an output of 41,000 tons of gas), using energy-efficient lights, powering the proceedings with a giant wind turbine, and offering visitors recycled materials instead of wasteful plastic water bottles. They've also purchased carbon offsets to help manage the output from their 12-day affair.

But Matthew Sinclair, the research director for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said their presence means that "a huge amount of money is going to be spent on the summit, and thousands of tons of carbon dioxide emitted to get there, just to give the delegates a good photo

ObamaCare’s Cost Could Top $6 Trillion

2009-11-28T14:36:00.000-06:00

Posted by Michael F. Cannon
Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years. Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019). Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”

Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance. When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax. When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending. But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending. That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan. And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs. When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4).

Here’s where things get really ugly. TPMDC’s Brian Beutler calls “the” $2.5-trillion cost estimate a “doozy” of a “hysterical Republican whopper.” Not only is he incorrect, he doesn’t seem to realize that Gregg and I are correcting for different budget gimmicks; it’s just a coincidence that we happened to reach the same number.

When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion. That’s not a precise estimate. It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.

Beutler and other supporters of ObamaCare can react to this news in two ways. They can continue to deny the enormous cost of the legislation they support. Or they can question how President Obama’s health plan came to be so blessedly expensive, and how (and by whom) they were duped into thinking it wasn’t.

Link to Source - Cato Institute

The Five Obama Fails

2009-11-28T14:29:00.001-06:00

By Adam Sparks
The Obama Administration burst onto the presidency with a historic wealth of good will, hope and change. It is now marked by one failure after another. Unfortunately, these failures are not without costs. The heavy burden is born by consumers, taxpayers and to generations yet to come. Nearly one year later we have an economy heading in the wrong direction, unemployment rising, a deficit that will double, banks failing, a war command which is virtually ignored, 911 terrorists given all the rights at a civil trial and an Administration hell bent on destroying...

Read the article in it's entirety - American Thinker

1948 Cartoon Nails It!

2009-11-28T13:40:00.001-06:00

The point this cartoon makes is beware of any individual, organization, or administration that attempts to escalate class, or race warfare to divide the country and make socialism appear to be the solution. Placing the government in charge of everything, and surrendering personal freedoms is not the only solution...

Friday Night Country

2009-11-27T19:57:00.000-06:00

Old Crow Medicine show - Wagon Wheel

Ammunition Bill Signed into Law

2009-11-26T11:47:00.001-06:00

SACRAMENTO, CA - Before the midnight deadline, Gov. Schwarzenegger acted on 685 bills that were on his desk. He signed 456 and vetoed 229.

One of the bills that he signed was Assembly Bill 962. It requires handgun ammunition to be kept behind the counter where customers cannot access it without assistance. It also requires gun shop owners to thumbprint people who buy handgun ammunition, as well as record their identification and provide that information to police.

Schwarzenegger released a statement explaining why he signed the bill.

"To the Members of the California State Assembly: I am signing Assembly Bill 962. This measure would require vendors of handgun ammunition to keep a log of information on handgun ammunition sales, store ammunition in a safe and secure manner, and require the face to-face transfer of ammunition sales.

Although I have previously vetoed legislation similar to this measure, local governments have demonstrated that requiring ammunition vendors to keep records on ammunition sales improves public safety. These records have allowed law enforcement to arrest and prosecute persons who have no business possessing firearms and ammunition: gang members, violent parolees, second and third strikers, and even people previously serving time in state prison for murder. Utilized properly, this type of information is invaluable for keeping communities safe and preventing dangerous felons from committing crimes with firearms.

Moreover, this type of record keeping is no more intrusive for law abiding citizens than similar laws governing pawnshops or the sale of cold medicine. Unfortunately, even the most successful local program is flawed; without a statewide law, felons can easily skirt the record keeping requirements of one city by visiting another. Assembly Bill 962 will fix this problem by mandating that all ammunition vendors in the state keep records on ammunition sales.

As Governor, I have sought the appropriate balance between public safety and the right to keep and bear arms. I have signed important public safety measures to regulate the sale and transfer of .50 caliber rifles, instituted the California Firearms License Check program, and promoted the use of microstamping technology in handguns. I have also vetoed many pieces of legislation that sought to place unreasonable restrictions and burdens on firearms dealers and ammunition vendors.

Assembly Bill 962 reasonably regulates access to ammunition and improves public safety without placing undue burdens on consumers. For these reasons, I am pleased to sign this bill."

Link to source - News10/KXTV

Obama’s Trumped-Up Job Count Flunks Science Test

2009-11-25T18:07:00.000-06:00

Commentary by Caroline Baum

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- At first it was just an unverifiable assertion. Now it turns out to have been a case of bureaucratic ineptitude and possible fraud. Transparency and accountability aren’t working out the way President Barack Obama had hoped.

The administration was already skating on thin ice when it announced on Oct. 30, with great fanfare, that 640,329 jobs had been created or saved as a result of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Not 640,000, or even 640,300. Six-hundred-forty-thousand- three-hundred-and-twenty-nine.

Asked about accumulating reports of phony jobs in phantom districts, Obama told Fox News’s Major Garrett that “this is an inexact science.”

Turned into an exact one by his administration, I might add.

Even Vice President Joe Biden had the good sense to round up to the nearest million, which puts the number of jobs created or saved in line with “government and private forecasters’ estimates” for the Recovery Act.

Local newspapers across the country started to notice problems with the, er, jobs. Small stuff, like jobs that weren’t created and congressional districts that don’t exist. You have to admire the consistency.

Watchdog.org, a collection of independent journalists covering state and local government, has put together a “Guide to the Stimulus, District by (Phantom) District.” Overall the group found that 440 phantom districts in 50 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories received $6.4 billion and created or saved -- let’s consolidate to “craved” -- 30,000 jobs. That works out to $213,333 per job. Think how much easier, not to mention transparent, it would have been to hand out that kind of real money to real people who will spend it!

‘Misplaced Decimal’

It’s not only self-appointed watchdogs who have found problems with the data set. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, issued its own report last week, citing “a range of significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed.”

Read the article in its entirety - Bloomberg.com

Recession Map 2007 - 2009

2009-11-22T17:48:00.001-06:00

Click here to view the interactive Recession Map

Travesty in New York

2009-11-22T17:37:00.000-06:00

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 20, 2009

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the "propaganda of the deed." And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 -- not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life -- and KSM, a second act: "9/11, The Director's Cut," narration by KSM.

September 11, 2001 had to speak for itself. A decade later, the deed will be given voice. KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable -- a civilian trial in the media capital of the world -- from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America.

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure -- acquittal, hung jury -- is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover, everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.

Read this article in its entirety - WashingtonPost.com

The Coming Deficit Disaster

2009-11-22T17:29:00.001-06:00

The president says he understands the urgency of our fiscal crisis, but his policies are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg.

By DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN

President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures.

Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.

Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the president's budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms.

The planned deficits will have destructive consequences for both fairness and economic growth. They will force upon our children and grandchildren the bill for our overconsumption. Federal deficits will crowd out domestic investment in physical capital, human capital, and technologies that increase potential GDP and the standard of living. Financing deficits could crowd out exports and harm our international competitiveness, as we can already see happening with the large borrowing we are doing from competitors like China.

At what point, some financial analysts ask, do rating agencies downgrade the United States? When do lenders price additional risk to federal borrowing, leading to a damaging spike in interest rates? How quickly will international investors flee the dollar for a new reserve currency? And how will the resulting higher interest rates, diminished dollar, higher inflation, and economic distress manifest itself? Given the president's recent reception in China—friendly but fruitless—these answers may come sooner than any of us would like.

Mr. Obama and his advisers say they understand these concerns, but the administration's policy choices are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. Perhaps the most vivid example of sending the wrong message to international capital markets are the health-care reform bills—one that passed the House earlier this month and another under consideration in the Senate. Whatever their good intentions, they have too many flaws to be defensible.

First and foremost, neither bends the health-cost curve downward. The CBO found that the House bill fails to reduce the pace of health-care spending growth. An audit of the bill by Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, found that the pace of national health-care spending will increase by 2.1% over 10 years, or by about $750 billion. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bill grows just as fast as the House version. In this way, the bills betray the basic promise of health-care reform: providing quality care at lower cost.

Second, each bill sets up a new entitlement program that grows at 8% annually as far as the eye can see—faster than the economy will grow, faster than tax revenues will grow, and just as fast as the already-broken Medicare and Medicaid programs. They also create a second new entitlement program, a federally run, long-term-care insurance plan.

Finally, the bills are fiscally dishonest, using every budget gimmick and trick in the book: Leave out inconvenient spending, back-load spending to disguise the true scale, front-load tax revenues, let inflation push up tax revenues, promise spending cuts to doctors and hospitals that have no record of materializing, and so on.

If there really are savings to be found in Medicare, those savings should be directed toward deficit reduction and preserving Medicare, not to financing huge new entitlement programs. Getting long-term budgets under control is hard enough today. The job will be nearly impossible with a slew of new entitlements in place.

In short, any combination of what is moving through Congress is economically dangerous and invites the rapid acceleration of a debt crisis. It is a dramatic statement to financial markets that the federal government does not understand that it must get its fiscal house in order.

What to do? The best option would be for the president to halt Congress's rush to fiscal suicide, and refocus on slowing the dangerous growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax systems that would generate revenue sufficient to fund its spending desires in a pro-growth and fair fashion.

Reducing entitlement spending and closing tax loopholes to create a fairer tax system with more balanced revenues is politically difficult and requires sacrifice. But we will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness.

The time to worry about the deficit is not next year, but now. There is no time to waste.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin is former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This is adapted from testimony he gave before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10.

Obama Union Rules

2009-11-22T17:26:00.002-06:00

A federal agency rips up 75 years of labor policy.

The National Mediation Board, which oversees labor relations in the air and rail industry, this month moved to overturn 75 years of labor policy.

The board plans to stack the deck for organized labor in union elections. Under a proposed rule, unions would no longer have to get the approval of a majority of airline workers to achieve certification. Not even close. Instead, a union could win just by getting a majority of the employees who vote. Thus, if only 1,000 of 10,000 flight attendants vote in a union election, and 501 vote for certification, the other 9,499 become unionized.

This radical break with precedent is the handiwork of President Obama's appointees to the three-member board: Harry Hoglander, once president of a pilots union, and Linda Puchala, former president of the Association of Flight Attendants.

The board got a request to adopt the jerry-rigged voting standard from the AFL-CIO in September. Without a hearing or invitation for preliminary views, the Obama duo drafted the AFL-CIO demand and published it in the Federal Register. It's now subject to a 60-day comment period, after which Ms. Puchala and Mr. Hoglander will no doubt vote to inflict it on all the nation's airline and rail carriers.

Since 1934, every National Mediation Board—even those with Democratic majorities—has upheld the current rule on grounds that companies governed by the Railway Labor Act are vital to the U.S. economy. The existing rules were designed to reduce strikes by ensuring that a majority of airline and rail employees support union representation. In their rule change, Mr. Hoglander and Ms. Puchala brush aside the many historical and legal barriers to their change, arguing that under "broad statutory authority" they can do what they want.

And that's kind compared to their treatment of the board's Bush-appointed Chairman Liz Dougherty. According to a letter Ms. Dougherty sent Congress, the two Democrats never sought her input or participation in crafting the proposal. Instead, they gave her a "final" version of the rule, said they were sending it in two hours and forbade her from publishing a dissent. They relented later, but only if she removed some of her criticism.

Ms. Dougherty noted such "arbitrary" and "exclusionary" behavior (we'd call it thuggish) has never been the norm at the agency. Her Democratic colleagues' frantic rush to change a 75-year-old rule "gives the impression that the Board has prejudged this issue," and is trying to "influence the outcome of several very large and important representation cases currently pending."

Indeed. The AFL-CIO letter was inspired by Delta's acquisition of Northwest. Northwest was largely unionized but Delta wasn't. The unions are now struggling to win the required new elections, and they want the Mediation Board to manipulate the rules in their favor. It is growing clear that Ms. Puchala and Mr. Hoglander are in on the game. So too, presumably, are the folks who appointed them.

Listing the New Taxes in the Senate Health-Care Bill

2009-11-22T17:20:00.001-06:00

By Jacob Goldstein

The CBO may grab all the headlines in wonky conversations about the costs and effects of big health-care bills. But the Joint Committee on Taxation, another nonpartisan body, also plays a key role: Estimating how much revenue new taxes are likely to generate.

Last night, JCT put out this handy PDF estimating the effects of the new tax rules included in the Senate health-care bill. The document shows how many different sources the Senate bill would draw on to pay for increasing the number of Americans with health insurance.

We won’t repeat the whole list, but here’s how much revenue some of the provisions are estimated to generate over the next decade:

Tax on high-end health insurance plans: $149.1 billion
Capping flexible spending accounts at $2,500: $14.6 billion
Fees for drug makers: $22.2 billion
Fees for medical device makers: $19.3 billion
Fees for health insurance companies: $60.4 billion
Higher floor for deducting medical expenses: $15.2 billion
Higher payroll tax for top earners: $53.8 billion
Tax on cosmetic surgery: $5.8 billion

Eric Holder's Baffling KSM Decision

2009-11-22T17:16:00.002-06:00

The attorney general's Senate testimony this week did nothing to reassure the families of 9/11's victims.

By DAVID BEAMER

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to question Attorney General Eric Holder about his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others in criminal courts rather than military tribunals. As the father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, I was able to attend that hearing. What transpired caused me great concern and shook my confidence in our current administration.

The committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), displayed the division in our country not only visually—the Democrats were seated on the left and the Republicans on the right—but in every aspect of the proceedings. I expected that some members would agree with Mr. Holder and that others would have challenging questions about his decision. What I did not anticipate was the level of partisanship showed by the majority party. It seemed clear to me and other family members of victims that party loyalty is trumping concern for America's security interests.

In his opening remarks, Attorney General Holder acknowledged that these defendants could have been brought to trial in civilian court or before military tribunals. But he made the argument that trying them in our criminal courts would restore the integrity of our judicial system. He assured us that the trials would be quick, that the safety of New Yorkers would be paramount, that classified information would not be revealed, that the evidence was overwhelming, and that justice would be served.

Then he said that the USS Cole attackers would be tried in military courts since they attacked our military. So how does Mr. Holder categorize the Pentagon? Inexplicably, he offered up the body count of 9/11, the fact that civilian deaths outnumbered military ones, as a rationale for his decision.

Then the Republican members proceeded to ask Mr. Holder thoughtful questions. Some examples:

How can we be assured that these enemies will be found guilty? Given that criminal courts are now the presumed venue for those captured on the battlefield, will soldiers need to read them their rights at the time of capture? Since you wish to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis to the presumed civil venue, don't all those captured need to be read their rights and have the opportunity to remain silent? Won't this venue expose intelligence to our enemies? Can our classified information really be secured? Can we in fact predict how the judge will rule? If these people are brought into the country will they get additional rights under immigration law? What if they claim asylum?

The attorney general seemed bewildered in the face of these inquiries. Recurring themes in his responses included "I think," and "I can't imagine," and "I am not an expert in immigration."

Has our attorney general not considered these issues, or imagined the possible unintended consequences that will arise from his historic decision? It certainly seemed that way. If he had, he would have had better answers.

A second shocker: Mr. Holder said that he and his boss had not spoken in person about this decision. This matter only involves upholding the constitutional rights of Americans, establishing a precedent with battlefield impact, and the safety and security of our citizens in a time of war. What are the criteria to make something a priority with President Barack Obama? How can it be that this matter didn't make the cut?

The Democrats used much of their questioning time to heap praise upon Mr. Holder. They all repeated the same trope: We'll show the world that America can conduct these trials openly in criminal courts. And we'll be successful, even as we convey rights to the defendants that are not warranted.

Since when has "show the world" been a primary objective?

No thoughtful questions from the majority party regarding this decision were forthcoming. Their questions mostly addressed other matters. They discussed overcrowding in our prisons (too many drug criminals being sentenced), asked why none of the $500 million in appropriations have helped the rape-kit processing backlog, and inquired about when recommendations for additional staff would be presented for confirmation. Their lack of attention to the pressing matter at hand suggested apathy.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) did ask a question about how much the trials will cost. Clearly there will be expense incurred if this does go to trial in New York City. The early, and by no means complete, estimate is that it will cost $75 million for the first year. Mr. Schumer did not express any concern about the costs involved but only asked the attorney general for assurance that all would be covered by federal funds. This question was promptly and explicitly answered in the affirmative by Mr. Holder. After all, this is a rather modest amount by Washington standards.

Our enemies must be thrilled. We are willingly handing them an opportunity to inflict economic harm on New York City, keep their cause in the headlines, gather new intelligence, create new terror strategies, stimulate recruiting, celebrate new-found rights, and foist a fresh round of pain and suffering upon their victims.

This decision is September 11, the sequel. It is my hope that Mr. Holder will reconsider.

A final observation: During the proceedings a young lady, dutifully attentive, sat with a stack of paper about 15 inches high on her lap. The papers contained names, single spaced, of some 100,000 people who signed a letter in opposition to this decision. This young woman, Jill Regan, lost her dad, Donald J. Regan, FDNY of the Bronx, who died trying to save others on 9/11. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Al.) asked that those names be entered into the record at the end of the session. It was agreed, but by that time the chairmen and most of the Democrats were already gone. I grieved for her—and for all of us—anew.

Mr. Beamer is the father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11.

Agency Says it Stands By Job-Creation Estimate

2009-11-22T17:15:00.000-06:00

By LOUISE RADNOFSKY

WASHINGTON -- The government agency charged with overseeing the economic-stimulus program says it doesn't plan to change its position that the package directly created or saved 640,329.17 jobs through September, despite its own admission and statements from the White House that the number is not accurate.

Ed Pound, spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said that the number would not be changed. The Government Accountability Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report last week saying that there were "significant issues to be addressed" in the accuracy of reports. The report said that "many entries merit further attention" and raised concerns about 58,000 jobs which appeared to have been created by recipients who said they had not yet received any stimulus money.

Administration officials also say that less than 5% of the reports have been identified as inaccurate, and that the number of jobs created or saved could have been undercounted as well as overcounted.

In an initial review, the Wall Street Journal found hundreds of reports inflating the job total by at least 20,000 because recipients counted college part-time work-study positions, employees who got small pay raises, indirect jobs they assumed to have been created as result of their spending and people working on decades-old government contracts as full-time jobs created or saved by the stimulus.

Some of the recipients contacted by the newspaper said they had tried to correct their reports when they discovered the mistakes, but had been unable to do so after Oct. 29. The recovery board confirmed that recipients will not be able to fix their own reports until January.

The board made corrections last week to details about some of the congressional districts listed in reports filed by stimulus recipients, which are the basis for the government's claims of the $787 billion package's impact. The White House asked for the corrections to be made after news reports suggested that stimulus money had gone to non-existent places.

"Unless we find significant errors causing public confusion, we are not planning further corrections," Mr. Pound said Friday.

The administration and recovery board said forms which appeared to have overcounted 60,000 jobs were removed before the reports were released to the public on the board's website, recovery.gov, on Oct. 30.

Ed DeSeve, the White House's senior adviser on the stimulus plan, told reporters Thursday that the data "may be imprecise" but that he thought the jobs numbers were "a good representation of what's going on" and were supported by some economists' estimates of the overall economic climate.

"The American people care a lot more about our success in creating jobs than our precision in counting jobs," he said.

Protesters gather at UCLA to oppose UC fee hike

2009-11-22T17:11:00.000-06:00

Nov 19 01:22 PM US/Eastern
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Hundreds of protesters chanted, marched and took over a building Thursday on the UCLA campus, where University of California regents were scheduled to vote on a 32 percent student fee increase.
The UC Board of Regents is considering boosting undergraduate fees—the equivalent of tuition—by $2,500 by summer 2010.

For a second day, the proposal drew demonstrators to the University of California, Los Angeles. Some came from other UC campuses and stayed overnight in a tent city.

The demonstrators outside UCLA's Covel Commons building chanted, beat drums and waved signs urging "No fee hikes" and "Wanted: Leadership."

Campus police in helmets with face shields stood guard outside the conference building. UCLA officials said police from several UC campuses were brought in.

Laura Zavala, 20, a third-year UCLA student, said she may have to get a second job to afford the increase.

"My family can't support me. I have to pay myself," she said. "It's not fair to students, when they are already pinched."

About 30 to 50 protesters staged a takeover of Campbell Hall, a building across campus that houses ethnic studies, said UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton.

They chained the doors shut but were peaceful and there were no immediate plans to remove them, Hampton said.

No arrests had been made, although 14 demonstrators were arrested on Wednesday and cited for failure to disperse or disturbing the peace.

Demonstrations also were held at other UC campuses.

UC President Mark Yudof told reporters Wednesday he couldn't rule out raising student fees again if the state is unable to meet his request for an additional $913 million next year for the 10-campus system.

"I can't make any ... promises," he said.

After a series of deep cuts in state aid, and with state government facing a nearly $21 billion budget gap over the next year and a half, Board of Regents members said there was no option to higher fees.

"When you have no choice, you have no choice," Yudof said after a Regents' committee endorsed the fee plan Wednesday. "I'm sorry."

The Los Angeles meeting was repeatedly interrupted by outbursts from students and union members, who accused the board of turning its back on the next generation.

"We are bailing out the banks, we are bailing out Wall Street. Where is the bailout for public education?" asked UCLA graduate student Sonja Diaz.

University of California, Irvine, economics student Sarah Bana told the board,

"You are jeopardizing California's future."

Saturday Night Live Obama Skit

2009-11-22T17:06:00.000-06:00

Hacked Emails Show Climate Science Ridden with Rancor

2009-11-22T16:58:00.001-06:00

By KEITH JOHNSON

The picture that emerges of prominent climate-change scientists from the more than 3,000 documents and emails accessed by hackers and put on the Internet this week is one of professional backbiting and questionable scientific practices. It could undermine the idea that the science of man-made global warming is entirely settled just weeks before a crucial climate-change summit.

Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England, were victims of a cyberattack by hackers sometime Thursday. A collection of emails dating back to the mid-1990s as well as scientific documents were splashed across the Internet. University officials confirmed the hacker attack, but couldn't immediately confirm the authenticity of all the documents posted on the Internet.

The publicly posted material includes years of correspondence among leading climate researchers, most of whom participate in the preparation of climate-change reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative summaries of global climate science that influence policy makers around the world.

The release of the documents comes just weeks before a big climate-change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, meant to lay the groundwork for a new global treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change. Momentum for an agreement has been undermined by the economic slump, which has put environmental issues on the back burner in most countries, and by a 10-year cooling trend in global temperatures that runs contrary to many of the dire predictions in climate models such as the IPCC's.

A partial review of the emails shows that in many cases, climate scientists revealed that their own research wasn't always conclusive. In others, they discussed ways to paper over differences among themselves in order to present a "unified" view on climate change. On at least one occasion, climate scientists were asked to "beef up" conclusions about climate change and extreme weather events because environmental officials in one country were planning a "big public splash."

The release of the documents has given ammunition to many skeptics of man-made global warming, who for years have argued that the scientific "consensus" was less robust than the official IPCC summaries indicated and that climate researchers systematically ostracized other scientists who presented findings that differed from orthodox views.

Since the hacking, many Web sites catering to climate skeptics have pored over the material and concluded that it shows a concerted effort to distort climate science. Other Web sites catering to climate scientists have dismissed those claims.

The tension between those two camps is apparent in the emails. More recent messages showed climate scientists were increasingly concerned about blog postings and articles on leading skeptical Web sites. Much of the internal discussion over scientific papers centered on how to pre-empt attacks from prominent skeptics, for example.

Fellow scientists who disagreed with orthodox views on climate change were variously referred to as "prats" and "utter prats." In other exchanges, one climate researcher said he was "very tempted" to "beat the crap out of" a prominent, skeptical U.S. climate scientist.

In several of the emails, climate researchers discussed how to arrange for favorable reviewers for papers they planned to publish in scientific journals. At the same time, climate researchers at times appeared to pressure scientific journals not to publish research by other scientists whose findings they disagreed with.

One email from 1999, titled "CENSORED!!!!!" showed one U.S.-based scientist uncomfortable with such tactics. "As for thinking that it is 'Better that nothing appear, than something unacceptable to us' … as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant. Science moves forward whether we agree with individual articles or not," the email said.

More recent exchanges centered on requests by independent climate researchers for access to data used by British scientists for some of their papers. The hacked folder is labeled "FOIA," a reference to the Freedom of Information Act requests made by other scientists for access to raw data used to reach conclusions about global temperatures.

Many of the email exchanges discussed ways to decline such requests for information, on the grounds that the data was confidential or was intellectual property. In other email exchanges related to the FOIA requests, some U.K. researchers asked foreign scientists to delete all emails related to their work for the upcoming IPCC summary. In others, they discussed boycotting scientific journals that require them to make their data public.

CBO: By 2019, Taxpayers Will Pay $196 Billion A Year for Obamacare, But 24 Million People Will Remain Uninsured

2009-11-22T16:56:00.000-06:00

Thursday, November 19, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief CNSNews.com

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., with Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, left, and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., leaves a news conference on Capitol Hill after unveiling the Senate’s health care overhaul bill on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
(CNSNews.com) - Under the health care bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday, by 2019 taxpayers will be paying $196 billion per year to subsidize other people’s health insurance coverage, but there still will be 24 million uninsured people in America, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Reid’s proposal mandates that all individuals legally resident in the United States purchase health insurance and offers subsidies to people making up to 400 percent of the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four) to purchase insurance as long as they buy a federally regulated and approved plan sold in a federally regulated insurance exchange.

According to an analysis published Wednesday by the CBO and JCT, this subsidy will cost taxpayers $196 billion per year by 2019 but will still leave 24 million people uninsured in America, about 8 million of whom will be illegal aliens. The estimate assumes that there would otherwise be about 55 million uninsured people in the United States.

"The gross cost of the coverage expansions, consisting of exchange subsidies, the net costs of expanded eligibility for Medicaid, and tax credits for employers: Those provisions have an estimated cost of $196 billion in 2019, and that cost is growing at about 8 percent per year toward the end of the 10-year budget window. As a rough approximation, CBO assumes continued growth at about that rate during the following decade," says the joint CBO and JCT analysis.

“By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 31 million, leaving about 24 million nonelderly residents uninsured (about one-third of whom would be unauthorized immigrants),” says the CBO and JCT analysis.

Table 3 in the report indicates that when the health-insurance mandate and subsidy program becomes fully operational in 2014 there will be 35 million uninsured in the United States and this number will drop to 23 million by 2018 before rising back to 24 million in 2019. The report does not indicate how many uninsured people will remain after 2019, or whether the upward trend between 2018 and 2019 will continue.

Table 3 also shows that the cost to taxpayers of paying the insurance subsidies in the bill as well as the cost for increased eligibility for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) instituted under the bill will dramatically escalate over the next decade.

In 2010, the year of the next congressional election, the gross cost of the subsidies is expected to be $0. In 2012, the year of the next presidential election, the gross cost of the subsidies in the bill is expected to be only $4 billion. But in 2014, the costs are expected to dramatically escalate to $48 billion for the year. From that point on, the costs increase every year, jumping to $147 billion by 2016 and then to $196 billion by 2019.

Correction: An earlier posting of this story inaccurately said that the cost of subsidizing health insurance under the Reid health care bill would be $194 billion by 2019. The correct figure is $196 billion.

Friday Night Country

2009-11-06T18:19:00.000-06:00

Chinese Bluegrass (REDGRASS): Red Chamber紅庭, Jaybirds
I stumbled across this YouTube video and thought it was cool as hell...

Smith & Wesson Model 12The .38 Military & Police Airweight

2009-11-02T20:57:00.007-06:00

Caliber: .38 Special
Capacity: 6
Finish: Blued or Nickel
Construction: Aluminum frame w/steel cylinder and barrel*
Barrel Length: 2" or 4"
Sights: fixed
Grip: Round Butt or Square Butt

The Smith & Wesson Model 12 is an Airweight .38 Special revolver built using the short action medium size KA-frame. It is an aluminum frame version of the Smith & Wesson Model 10. The Airweight frame of the Model 12 and it's -1, -2, and -3 variants had a .080" thinner frame than a steel K-frame revolver so the factory grips were specific to those models. When the -4 variant was introduced in 1984 the frame dimensions were the same as the standard K frame.

The two-inch barrel Model 12 is a good choice for concealed carry use because it is lightweight, accurate and compact enough for easy concealment. Because it's been such a popular carry gun most used Model 12's will exhibit some "holster wear" on the muzzle and cylinder. Normally holster wear does not detract from the Model 12's function or value, such wear just adds character to a vintage concealed-carry piece. An important earmark is the factory stamp Mod-12 on the frame inside the yoke. The Model 12 holds its market value nicely and is fairly collectible. Recently, nice shooter quality examples have been selling in the $450+ range on the online auction sites.

The Model 12 pictured is of 1961 vintage, with original numbered "Diamond Magna" grips, Tyler "T"-Grip adapter and a flat latch cylinder release. Using a 6 o'clock hold, it shoots to point of aim with 158gr. bullets.

*Early versions of the Model 12 were produced with an alloy cylinder which was prone to cracking. If found, these revolvers should not be fired.

Friday Night Country

2009-10-29T20:21:00.000-05:00

The Del McCoury Band singing 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

Alan Grayson Stands by"K Street Whore" Comment

2009-10-29T20:06:00.004-05:00

Outspoken Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson is under fire from both Republicans and Democrats after a month-old radio interview was posted online in which Grayson is heard calling an adviser to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke a "K Street whore."

You can hear Grayson making the comment about the Bernanke adviser, who is named Linda Robertson, here. "This lobbyist, this K street whore, is trying to teach me about economics," he said.

Grayson has been widely criticized for his comment, as Politico and the Associated Press report. Republican Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Grayson is "out of control," while Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner asked, "Is this news to you that this guy’s one fry short of a Happy Meal?"

"Alan Grayson's latest comments are disgraceful, inappropriate and disrespectful to women," RNC Co-Chairman Jan Larimer said, calling on Grayson to issue an apology.

That seems unlikely to happen. Todd Jurkowski, Grayson's spokesman, sent an email to Hotsheet standing by the comment and further criticizing Robertson.

"Let’s be clear about the context," he said. "The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life."

"She attacked the Congressman and his efforts to promote a Republican bill to audit the Federal Reserve," Jurkowski said. "She actually questioned his understanding of the difference between fiscal and monetary policy. She had the audacity to attack a Congressman who used to be an economist. She's a career lobbyist who used to work for Enron and advocates for whatever she gets paid to promote."

K Street is where many Washington lobbyists work, and "K Street whore" is a derogatory – though not uncommon – phrase used to describe them in the nation's capital. Grayson, who wants to limit the power of the Fed, made the comment while appearing on the Alex Jones radio show.

Just a few months ago, Grayson was a Florida House freshman with virtually no national name recognition. But he burst onto the scene in September when he suggested on the House floor that the Republican health care plan is "to die quickly if you get sick."

Called upon to apologize for those comments, Grayson instead apologized to "the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."

Earlier this month he set up a Web site called NamesOfTheDead.com intended to draw attention to people who die without health coverage. (Republicans suggested it was more about Grayson drawing attention to himself.)

Last month, Grayson told Hotsheet that "people like a Democrat with guts."

His campaign has regularly sent out releases trumpeting Grayson's fundraising – it says he raised more than $250,000 in the first three weeks of October – and potential opponents seem to be shying away from challenging Grayson even though he is a House freshman from a swing district.

Link to Source - CBSNews.com

California Rep. Waters is under investigation

2009-10-29T20:01:00.002-05:00

By LARRY MARGASAK (AP)
WASHINGTON — The House ethics committee said Thursday it's investigating whether California Rep. Maxine Waters used her influence to help a bank in which her husband owned stock — and whether the couple benefited as a result.

Waters is the No. 3 Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee and chairwoman of its subcommittee on housing. She has been an influential voice in the committee's work to overhaul financial regulations.

Waters came under scrutiny after former Treasury Department officials said she helped arrange a meeting between regulators and executives at OneUnited Bank last year without mentioning her husband's financial ties to the institution.

Her husband, Sidney Williams, holds at least $250,000 in its stock. He previously served on the bank's board. Waters' spokesman, Michael Levin, said Williams was no longer on the board when the meeting was arranged.

Waters has said the National Bankers Association, a trade group, requested the meeting. She defended her role in assisting minority-owned banks in the midst of the nation's financial meltdown and dismissed suggestions she used her influence to steer government aid to the bank.

"I am confident that as the investigation moves forward the panel will discover that there are no facts to support allegations that I have acted improperly," Waters said in a statement.

The committee unanimously voted to establish an investigative subcommittee to gather evidence and determine whether Waters violated standards of conduct.

The committee said it would investigate "alleged communications and activities with, or on behalf of, the National Bankers Association or OneUnited Bank" and "the benefit, if any, Rep. Waters or her husband received as a result."

The committee also voted unanimously to investigate whether Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., violated rules of the House, its Code of Conduct or the Ethics in Government Act by failing to disclose property, income and liabilities on her financial disclosure forms.

The investigation also will determine whether Richardson received an impermissible gift or preferential treatment from a lender, "relating to the foreclosure, recission of the foreclosure sale or loan modification agreement" for her Sacramento property.

Richardson said she has been subjected to "premature judgments, speculation and baseless distractions that will finally be addressed in a fair, unbiased, bipartisan evaluation of the facts."

"Like 4.3 million Americans in the last year who faced financial problems because of a personal crisis like a divorce, death in the family, unexpected job and living changes and an erroneous property sale, all of which I have experienced in the span of slightly over a year, I have worked to resolve a personal financial situation," she said in a statement.

The committee ended an investigation of Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and released a report finding no ethical violations. It investigated whether Graves used his position on the Small Business Committee to invite a longtime friend, and business partner of his wife, to testify at a committee hearing on the federal regulation of biodiesel and ethanol production.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

House health-bill event closed to public

2009-10-29T19:51:00.000-05:00

By Kara Rowland

House Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health-care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West side of the Capitol.

The audience at the crowded press conference included Hill staffers, union workers, health care providers and students, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who thanked them for attending.

Mrs. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders announced the chamber's long-awaited version of a health care overhaul, which would expand insurance coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans, costing less than $900 billion over 10 years.

The West side of the Capitol — the area where President Barack Obama was inaugurated — is traditionally open to the public. But the entrances were blocked off Thursday morning by metal fences, with Capitol police officers standing next to staff members holding clipboards with lists of approved attendees.

Reporters with press badges were able to get in.

Democrats repeatedly touted the openness of the development of their health care bill, which House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called "the most deliberative, transparent and open process" he had seen in his career on Capitol Hill.

A video posted on YouTube by Minority Whip Eric Cantor's office depicted a Republican staffer attempting to attend the press conference and being turned away by a police officer.

• YouTube video: People being turned away from the health-care bill ceremony.

"Our event had more than 250 people present, primarily supporters, but also some protesters," said Doug Thornell, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Our blended bill was posted online this morning. In contrast, the Republican event today was open only to credentialed media and GOP staffers. More importantly, it's been 134 days and they still haven't shown the American people their bill or pledged to post it online for 72 hours like we have."

Several protesters gathered outside of the fenced-in event. Near the beginning of Mrs. Pelosi's remarks, a man shouted on a megaphone that Democrats would "go to hell for this," to which she quipped: "Thank you, insurance companies of America."

Republicans held their event in the House television studio, a standard location for news conferences. Press gallery rules restrict access to members of Congress who have been invited to appear, and to their press secretaries.

Link to Source - WashingtonTimes.com

Obama unhappy with criticism of his NYC date night

2009-10-29T19:39:00.002-05:00

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says only once since Jan. 20 has White House life annoyed him.

It was the Saturday in May when, trying to be a good husband, he kept a campaign promise to take his wife, Michelle, to New York after the election for one of their "date nights" - dinner and a Broadway play.

Conservative commentators and Republican officials criticized him for doing so.

"People made it into a political issue," Obama told The New York Times Magazine for an article about the Obamas' marriage, appearing in the Nov. 1 issue. The article was posted on the Times' Web site on Wednesday.

"If I weren't president, I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers," he said. "That would please me greatly."

Presidents, however, don't travel by any means other than secure government aircraft or vehicles.

Obama added: "The notion that I just couldn't take my wife out on a date without it being a political issue was not something I was happy with."

The article explores the effects of the presidency on the couple's 17-year union, and revisits well-documented tension between them in earlier years as Obama pursued his political career in Illinois, leaving Mrs. Obama largely home alone in Chicago with their daughters.

It also delves into her roles in the presidential campaign and in the White House.

Mrs. Obama, who sat with her husband for the interview in the Oval Office, said marriage doesn't necessarily become easier just because a couple moves into a big white house with servants and security at every turn.

"The strengths and challenges of our marriage don't change because we move to a different address," she said. Mrs. Obama said "the bumps" happen to everybody all the time "and they are continuous."

"The last thing we want to project," she said, is the image of a flawless relationship.

"It's unfair to the institution of marriage, and it's unfair for young people who are trying to build something, to project this perfection that doesn't exist," Mrs. Obama said.

Edmunds Says Program Cost Taxpayers $24,000 per Clunker

2009-10-29T19:34:00.000-05:00

By Julia A. Seymour
October 29, 2009

Remember the Cash for Clunkers (CARS) program the network media liked so much? Well, according to analysis from Edmunds.com the government spent $24,000 per car when you subtract cars that would have been sold even without the program.

CNNMoney.com reported Oct. 29 that only 125,000 vehicles sold under the program (out of 690,000) "would not have been sold anyway," according to Edmunds.

The government allotted $3 billion for the CARS program, but Edmunds' said that more than 80 percent of those cars would have been purchased anyway.

Jeremy Anwyl, Edmunds' CEO, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal Aug. 3 pointed out that in any month there are 60,000 to 70,000 "clunker-like" sales. "We have crammed three to four months of normal activity into just a few days," Anwyl concluded.

Despite misgivings from Anwyl and others, the network news media embraced the government giveaway. All three networks described it as a "victim of its own success" AFTER it ran out of taxpayer funding in its first week.

Katie Couric heaped praise on CARS saying Aug. 3, "[S]ales reports out today show the Cash for Clunkers program gave U.S. automakers a much-needed jumpstart." While CNBC's Jim Cramer called it "money well-spent" during the "Today" show.

In clunker stories citing experts, proponents of CARS outnumbered critics nearly three times as often (between July 4 and Aug. 3).

Occasionally a downside was mentioned, such as the "five hours of paper for each car" reported by ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi.

—Julia A. Seymour is an assistant editor for the Business & Media Institute.

Link to Source - Newsbusters.org

Friday Night Country

2009-10-09T20:02:00.002-05:00

Keith Whitley - I'm Over You

Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil

2009-10-08T20:26:00.001-05:00

BANGKOK — There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.
Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.
That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban dismissed the IEA figures as “biased” and said OPEC's own calculations showed that Saudi Arabia would lose $19 billion a year starting in 2012 under a new climate pact. The region would lose much more, he said.
“We are among the economically vulnerable countries,” Al Sabban told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the talks ahead of negotiations in Copenhagen in December for a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
“This is very serious for us,” he continued. “We are in the process of diversifying our economy but this will take a long time. We don't have too many resources.”
Saudi Arabia, which sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, is seeing economic growth slide because of fallout from the global meltdown, but experts still expect the country, flush with cash from oil's earlier price spike last year, to be better able than other nations to cope with the current crisis.
Al Sabban accused Western nations of pursuing an agenda against oil producers, under the guise of protecting the planet.
“Many politicians in the Western world think these climate change negotiations and the new agreement will provide them with a golden opportunity to reduce their dependence on imported oil,” Al Sabban said. “That means you will transfer the burden to developing countries, especially to those highly dependent on the exploitation of oil.”
Al Sabban said his country wanted a new deal and was not impeding progress in talks as some activists have claimed.
An Arab environmental group IndyACT and the environmental group Germanwatch released a report today accusing Saudi Arabia of blocking key elements of the negotiations. Among their tactics, the groups said, was slowing negotiations by insisting that the economic woes of oil producers be included in the text.
“Despite the variability in the region, the current Arab position is mainly focused around protecting the oil trade rather than saving the planet form the adverse impacts of climate change,” said Wael Hmaidan, the executive director of IndyACT.
Most countries have agreed that any new pact should include provisions to avoid temperature increases of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels — the threshold at which most scientists say serious climate change will ensue.
That would require emissions cuts from industrial countries of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, far above the 15 to 23 percent cuts rich countries have offered so far. It would also require developing countries to scale back their emissions.
Both rich and poor countries are counting on a transition to a low carbon economy as a key component of meeting their reductions, a move that would require them to away from fossil fuels and toward renewables like solar, wind and hydro power.

Media Outlets Neglect to Mention that Doctor Photo-Op Was Staged!

2009-10-06T22:51:00.001-05:00

In his latest push for a health care overhaul bill, President Obama spoke to doctors in the White House Rose Garden yesterday. Painting a nice picture of the event were many media outlets that neglected to mention the White House's doctoring (forgive the pun) of the audience in an attempt at a powerful photo-op.
Doctors attending the event were instructed to show up in white lab coats to give observers the feeling that doctors stand behind the President's health care plans.
"White Coats in the Rose Garden, as Obama Rallies Doctors on Health Overhaul," read a New York Times blog post headline. "The roughly 150 doctors assembled wore white lab coats under the brilliant fall sun," the Washington Post recalled. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Obama faced rows of smiling doctors, all wearing white lab coats." NBC News also noted the white coats donned by the doctors in attendance.

But none of these media outlets mentioned that the White House had to hand out lab coats to a number of the doctors in attendance who showed up in business attire. Apparently trying to drive home the image of medical professionals applauding the President, the White House would not start the press conference until all of the doctors were dressed in the "spiffy" outfits, in the President's words.
The Washington Post and the New York Times included pictures in their respective stories showing white-coated doctors listening to and conversing with the President.

According to the Associated Press, the Obama offered nothing new in his address to the doctors, so the event was clearly an opportunity to show the country that medical professionals support his plan. Many major media outlets declined to note the botched attempt to enhance the 'doctors-support-the-plan' image of the event, playing right into the White House's objectives.
Rather than cover the clear attempt by the President to use visuals to enhance the public perception of support from the industry, media outlets chose to rehash White House talking points.

UPDATE
The New York Times has revealed yet another double standard in covering political advocacy groups.

The Times was quick to condemn the Bush administration for conducting "too many photo-ops aimed at giving Mr. Bush and his fellow Republicans a short-term lift in the domestic opinion polls." But the Times didn't seem to have a problem with Obama "trying to use his platform to keep public attention on the effort."
Furthermore, the Times noted in an update to the aforementioned blog post, which appeared in print in today's paper (without the update), that Doctors for America, the group attended the Rose Garden photo-op, "appears to be working closely with Organizing for America," an extension of the Obama campaign.

Considering the Times claimed that Tea Party protests were organized by "some well-funded Astroturf outfits from the permanent lobbying class inside the Beltway," one would think they would mention this blatant connection to the White House in initially reporting the story. Handing out signs is comparable to handing out lab coats, after all.

The whole photo-op stinks of Astroturf. But apparently manufactured showings of support are all well and good, but manufactured showings of dissent are off limits.

Jack Webb Schools Roman Polanski on Sex with Children

2009-10-04T19:28:00.000-05:00

These Dragnet themed videos on YouTube are funny as hell...

Friday Night Country

2009-10-02T17:37:00.000-05:00

Vern Gosdin - Set 'em Up Joe

Alan Grayson on the GOP Health Care Plan

2009-10-01T20:02:00.002-05:00

Representative Alan Grayson’s sophomoric remarks about the Republican plan for health care reform were nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt. One would expect a graduate of Harvard Law School (with honors) to express himself in a more articulate and well-reasoned manner.

He later defended his remarks adding, "I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,"

Average Americans are growing weary of the Left’s rhetoric, they are becoming their own worst enemy…

Katie Couric interview with Glen Beck

2009-09-30T22:28:00.000-05:00

High Court Will Decide Whether Strict Gun Laws Violate Second Amendment Rights

2009-09-30T21:39:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says it is now prepared to resolve an issue about gun ownership it left unanswered when it made its historic 2008 ruling striking down the District of Columbia's strict handgun law.

The justices announced Wednesday they will hear an Illinois case asking if their ruling last year in District of Columbia v. Heller extends to the states.

The lawsuit the justices agreed to hear was originally filed within hours after the high court's ruling that overturned a ban on possessing handguns in the nation's capital. Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. have similar bans that are now being challenged.

The case is led by the lawyer who successfully argued Heller before the high court last year and is sure to become the focus of all interests in the gun debate but the legal question that is now before the Court is a bit more mundane.

Incorporation is the technical word for making a Constitutional Amendment applicable to the states. When the Bill of Rights was passed, the Founders specifically rejected a proposal to incorporate the Amendments. Instead, the laws were only applicable to the federal government.

But starting in 1897, the high court has undergone a piecemeal process of incorporating various parts of the Bill of Rights. Today's cases are asking the justices to extend the federally protected Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms to the states. Something has yet to do.

Last year, in a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that individuals do have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion specifically avoided the question of whether or not that ruling extends to the states. Since then, lower courts have divided on the matter.

In the Illinois case, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the gun advocates saying that there was no high court precedent allowing it to apply the Second Amendment to the states.

The Court isn't expected to hear arguments in the case until next year.

Link to Source - FoxNews.com

AP: Gov't Still Hiding Secrets After Obama Order

2009-09-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

Obama's first public act in office was to order more government transparency, but federal agencies are still trying to hide information sought by reporters, news outlets say.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's new standards of openness in the federal government have not trickled down to some of its agencies, where officials have used special statutes inserted into bills to skirt the Freedom of Information Act, open government advocates said Wednesday.

Efforts to strengthen the 42-year-old law "have been hampered by the increasing use of legislative exemptions that are often sneaked into legislation without debate or public scrutiny," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said in remarks prepared for a hearing on the issue.

News organizations and media groups said new legislation was needed to limit the information agencies may keep secret and for how long.

Read the article in its entirety - FoxNews.com

Hollywood Calls For The Release Of Roman Polanski

2009-09-29T21:30:00.000-05:00

"The Hollywood Elite" were stunned by the arrest of filmmaker Roman Polanski in Switzerland over the weekend. The director was arrested on Saturday when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. Polanski's arrest stemmed from a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, filed over 30 years ago in California.

Actress/Rocket scientist Whoopi Goldberg suggested that whatever he was guilty of, it wasn't "rape-rape". During an episode of The View, , Whoopi said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. It was something else but I don't believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and and when they let him out he was like, 'You know what, this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail. I'm not staying.' So that's why he left."

Um, OK Whoopi! Court Transcripts from the Grand Jury Proceedings dated March 24, 1977 detail how a 44 year old man lured a 13 year old girl, gave her alcohol, drugs and performed sexual acts on her. She said "NO" several times and finally submitted because she "was afraid of him." How is that not "rape-rape"? Just in case the definition isn't clear:

Main Entry: rape
Function: noun
: unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent because of mental illness, mental deficiency, intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception —see also STATUTORY RAPE
NOTE: The common-law crime of rape involved a man having carnal knowledge of a woman not his wife through force and against her will, and required at least slight penetration of the penis into the vagina. While some states maintain essentially this definition of rape, most have broadened its scope especially in terms of the sex of the persons and the nature of the acts involved. Marital status is usually irrelevant. Moreover, the crime is codified under various names, including first degree sexual assault sexual battery unlawful sexual intercourse, and first degree sexual abuse.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Whoopi wasn't alone in her sympathy for Polanski's plight. Film industry organization, Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) is circulating a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from Swiss detention. The petition has been signed by more than 70 film industry peers, including directors Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Julian Schnabel, the Dardenne brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Walter Salles and Jonathan Demme. Actors Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci, Asia Argento, and producer Harvey Weinstein. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and David Lynch have also put their names on the petition.

These people have no concept of reality...

Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan

2009-09-26T10:09:00.000-05:00

By JOSH MITCHELL and STEPHEN POWER

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.

The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns.

The awards to Fisker and Tesla have prompted concern from companies that have had their bids for loans rejected, and criticism from groups that question why vehicles aimed at the wealthiest customers are getting loans subsidized by taxpayers.

"This is not for average Americans," said Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, an anti-tax group in Washington. "This is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece. It's status symbol thing."

Read the article in its entirety - WSJ.com

Alleged Plot Is Tied to 9/11 Anniversary

2009-09-26T10:01:00.000-05:00

By Stephanie Simon - Wall Street Journal

Denver -- The 24-year-old Afghan immigrant now in federal custody planned to build a bomb and may have intended to use it in New York City on Sept. 11, the anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Evidence gathered in the case showed "a chilling, disturbing sequence of events that suggests that the defendant was intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11 for purposes of perhaps using" the explosives, prosecutors said Friday in court.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer denied bail during a hearing Friday for Najibullah Zazi, an airport-shuttle driver, and ordered him transferred to New York to face a federal conspiracy charge. Mr. Zazi has denied any wrongdoing.

Read the article in its entirety - WSJ.com

Administration Will Cut Border Patrol Deployed on U.S-Mexico Border

2009-09-26T09:23:00.001-05:00

By Terence P. Jeffrey - CNSNews.com

Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of the border are “easily breached,” and the Government Accountability Office has revealed that three persons “linked to terrorism” and 530 aliens from “special interest countries” were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Border Patrol Director of Media Relations Lloyd Easterling confirmed this week--as I first reported in my column yesterday--that his agency is planning for a net decrease of 384 agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2010, which begins on October 1.

Read the article in it's entirety - CNSNews.com

Scary Similarities...

2009-09-25T21:13:00.001-05:00

The cult like fascination with President Obama is getting very weird indeed. While some may call it celebration, it looks more like indoctrination to me. I'm so glad my kids are through with public school...

Now

Then

An interesting mix of the two!

Friday Night Country

2009-09-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

Hank Williams - Lost Highway

Friday Night Country

2009-09-18T22:16:00.001-05:00

Don Gibson - Sea of Heartbreak

To Kill an American

2009-09-12T12:17:00.001-05:00

You probably missed this in the rush of news, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper, an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is. So they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)

An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.

An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as Native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan; the only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.

The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!

As of the morning of September 11, 2001, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.

Americans welcome the best of everything…the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, the Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.

Some of them were working in the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001, earning a better life for their families.

It’s been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world.

But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

Women vs. Guns

2009-09-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

TOP TEN REASONS MEN PREFER GUNS OVER WOMEN

#10. You can trade an old 44 for a new 22.

#9. You can keep one gun at home and have another for when you're on the road.

#8. If you admire a friend's gun and tell him so, he will probably let you try it out a few times.

#7. Your primary gun doesn't mind if you keep another gun for a backup.

#6. Your gun will stay with you even if you run out of ammo.

#5. A gun doesn't take up a lot of closet space.

#4. Guns function normally every day of the month.

#3. A gun doesn't ask, "Do these new grips make me look fat?"

#2. A gun doesn't mind if you go to sleep after you use it.

And the number one reason a gun is favored over a woman.

#1. YOU CAN BUY A SILENCER FOR A GUN

Census Severs Relationship With ACORN

2009-09-12T09:04:00.003-05:00

September 11, 2009

The Census Bureau late this afternoon “severed” its relationship with the non-profit housing and grassroots community organizing group ACORN for the 2010 Census.

ACORN – the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – bills itself as “the nation's largest community organization of low and moderate income families.”

Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said officials in the bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, had been concerned with news reports about ACORN for awhile and “had been monitoring them.”

Buckner said recent videotapes posted on BigGovernment.com and broadcast on Fox News -- showing a young man and young woman pretending to be a pimp and prostitute, declaring themselves such and apparently able to secure the help of ACORN employees in Washington D.C. , and Baltimore, in obtaining housing – was “the tipping point.”

It was “cumulative,” Buckner said, “but certainly the recent activity didn’t help.”

In a letter to ACORN President Maude Hurd, Census Bureau director Robert Groves wrote that, while “not decisive factors in this decision, recent events concerning several local offices of ACORN have added to the worsening negative perceptions of ACORN and its affiliation with our partnership efforts.”

Groves wrote that the Census Bureau no longer has “confidence that our national partnership agreement is being effectively managed” through ACORN’s many local offices.

“Their affiliation caused sufficient concern with the general public,” said Buckner, so that ACORN outreach on behalf of the Census would be “a distraction from our mission, and would maybe even be a discouragement” for participation.

ACORN encouraged some minority and poor populations to participate in the Census, Buckner said, telling them it was “important to participate in and safe to participate in.”

There’s a “correlation” between those who are poor and those “mistrustful of government,” he said. But he said the Census Bureau officials are confident they can reach those populations with their 80,000 other partners.

In a written statement, Alton Bennett, the president of ACORN housing, and Mike Shea, the executive director, said they "were appalled and angry to see the video of two Washington, D.C. employees offering advice on how to operate an illegal enterprise to keep it hidden from the government. While no transaction took place – no loan documents were signed or submitted, no bank loans were arranged, no new business was established – this is not how we behave. All ACORN Housing staff members undergo rigorous training and are expected to comply with high standards for ethical behavior and compliance with the law."

But that said, Bennett and Shea say the BigGovernment.com "video tape is slanted to misinform the public about ACORN Housing. The people who made this tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing offices where they were turned away or where ACORN Housing employees responded by calling the police. That is not mentioned on the tape – it is part of a long-term plan to smear ACORN Housing for political reasons and provide entertainment in the process. But that does not excuse the behavior of the employees. We have fired them and are initiating an internal review of practices and reminding all staff of their obligation to uphold the highest legal and ethical standards."

Rep. Charles Boustany, Jr., of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the Oversight Subcommittee for the House Ways and Means Committee, called for a subcommittee hearing to "investigate ACORN’s activities in providing tax advice and tax preparation services, as well as whether ACORN has conducted activities inconsistent with the requirements for retaining tax-exempt status."

Link to Source - ABC News

Michael Savage on Cass Sunstein

2009-09-12T08:18:00.001-05:00

Cass Sunstein: An even bigger threat than Van Jones?

2009-09-12T07:49:00.003-05:00

Karole Dolen-Proffit
Sacramento Conservative Examiner

September 11

In a 57-40 vote, Obama's Regulatory Czar of choice Cass Sunstein was confirmed to the official title of Director to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Sunstein is just one of Obama's many Czars who inspires controversy and strong opposition. Following Van Jones' resignation, attention has now been turned to Sunstein due to his radical ideas on free speech, the right to bear arms, and animal rights. He has been named "Obama's Gun Grabbing Czar" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, and deemed the "most powerful man you never heard of" by Fox News' Glenn Beck due to his extremely radical ideas.

With regard to free speech, Sunstein has said, "A system of limitless individual choices with respect to communications is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government." He also believes that the government should control the Internet through the implementation of an "Internet Fairness Doctrine."

In 2007 he spoke at the Chicago School of Law about an individual's right to bear arms.

In his 2005 book "Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America" he writes, "[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."

Sunstein also believes that hunting and the use of animals for food is morally akin to slavery and mass extermination of human beings.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign Obama told the American people to "Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself." Anyone who took a serious look at all of these chosen people would have to wonder if he might want to consider taking that statement back.

Friday Night Country

2009-09-11T17:51:00.003-05:00

Darryl Worley - Have you forgotten?

The Truth AboutArms Trafficking In Mexico

2009-09-11T17:47:00.002-05:00

Friday Night Country

2009-09-07T20:28:00.003-05:00

Sorry it's a little late...

John Stossel Links Gun Control to Higher Crime Rates

2009-08-31T21:06:00.001-05:00

57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress

2009-08-31T19:39:00.001-05:00

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote. Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October. When Congress was passing the unpopular $700-billion bailout plan in the heat of a presidential campaign and a seeming financial industry meltdown, 59% wanted to throw them all out. At that time, just 17% wanted to keep them. There has been a bit of a partisan shift since last fall. With Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, it's not surprising to find that the number of Democrats who would vote to keep the entire Congress has grown from 25% last fall to 43% today. In fact, a modest plurality of Democrats would now vote to keep the legislators. Last fall, a plurality of Democrats were ready to throw them all out.

Read the article in its entirety - RasmussenReports.com

AFL-CIO, Dems push new Wall Street tax

2009-08-31T19:35:00.001-05:00

By Alexander Bolton - 08/30/09

The nation’s largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters.

The AFL-CIO, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful allies, would like to assess a small tax — about a tenth of a percent — on every stock transaction.

Small and medium-sized investors would hardly notice such a tax, but major trading firms, such as Goldman, which reported $3.44 billion in profits during the second quarter of 2009, may see this as a significant threat to their profits.

“It would have two benefits, raise a lot of revenue and discourage speculative financial activity,” said Thea Lee, policy director at the AFL-CIO.

“The big disadvantage of most taxes is that they discourage some really productive activity,” she said. “This would discourage numerous financial transactions. People flip their assets several times in an hour or a day. They make money but does it really add to the productive base of the United States?”

Lee said that taxing every stock transaction a tenth of a percent could raise between $50 billion and $100 billion per year, which could be used to pay for infrastructure projects and other spending priorities. She said the tax could be applied nationwide or internationally.

Read the article in its entirety - TheHill.com

Bill Clinton and Al Gore reunite in Tennessee

2009-08-31T19:26:00.001-05:00

NASHVILLE — Two old friends, fresh from a day of mourning in rainy Boston, came south Saturday night to pledge to a roomful of roaring Tennessee Democrats that Ted Kennedy’s dream indeed will never die.

Al Gore and Bill Clinton — ghosts of Democratic victories past who are increasingly showing up to buck up the faithful as President Obama goes through his first real trials in office — were the star guests at the Tennessee Democratic Party’s annual Jackson Day dinner.

As you would expect from two very skilled old pros, they were careful to not inject a note of abject partisanship into a day when much of the nation watched the services and burial for the legendary Massachusetts senator, a man Gore called “by far the most effective member of the United States Senate that I ever served with.”

And both men — as was Obama in his eulogy early in the day — seemed deliberately careful to underline the bi-partisan mourners who helped take Kennedy to his final rest Saturday. “There were as many Republicans as Democrats in that church today,” Gore said.

But Clinton and Gore also offered a skillfully threaded approach that might allow Team Obama to channel the emotion and determination many party activists feel at Kennedy’s loss without spilling over into the kind of raw partisan sentiment that Republicans have warned will trigger a major pushback as an inappropriate attempt to make political hay out of Kennedy’s death.

Read the article in its entirety - Politico.com

Where's the Proof?

2009-08-31T19:19:00.003-05:00

National Security Adviser Says President Obama Is Having Greater Success Taking Terrorists Out of Commission Than Bush Did

Responding to criticism from former Vice President Cheney that President Obama is making the nation more vulnerable to terrorism, the president’s National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.), told ABC News in an exclusive interview that actually the reverse is true: President Obama’s greater success with international relations has meant more terrorists put out of commission.

“This type of radical fundamentalism or terrorism is a threat not only to the United States but to the global community,” Jones said. “The world is coming together on this matter now that President Obama has taken the leadership on it and is approaching it in a slightly different way – actually a radically different way – to discuss things with other rulers to enhance the working relationships with law enforcement agencies – both national and international."

Jones said that “we are seeing results that indicate more captures, more deaths of radical leaders and a kind of a global coming-together by the fact that this is a threat to not only the United States but to the world at-large and the world is moving toward doing something about it.”

The former Marine General didn't provide any specific numbers to back up his claim, but he said “there is an increasing trend and I think we seen that in different parts of the world over the last few months for sure.” He added that he was not “making a tally sheet saying we are killing more people, capturing more people than they did -- that is not the issue.”

Read the article in it's entirety - ABCNEWS.com

Attorney General Holder Reverses Interrogation Process

2009-08-30T20:06:00.001-05:00

By Dick Morris 08.25.2009

Holder has now appointed a special prosecutor to investigate those who kept us safe from terrorist attacks. He has totally reversed the proper process. Now the hunters will be hunted, those who protected us will be punished, those who sought to destroy us will be exalted. Fortunately, the American people will see this charade for what it is and will realize the total masochistic reversal implicit in the today’s liberalism. We should be pinning medals on those who kept us safe, not appointing a special prosecutor to investigate them. Where is the special prosecutor to investigate those who attempt to destroy us?

Beyond the ideological implications of this reversal of values lies its political impact. Here, the Attorney General has explicitly reversed the decision of the president. While President Obama decided not to dig up these old wounds, Attorney General Holder has decided to revisit them in excruciating detail. This conflict raises the legitimate question: Who is in charge here?

Digg Dialogg - Timothy Geithner

2009-08-30T19:57:00.002-05:00

Presented by the Wall Street Journal

New FCC 'Chief Diversity Officer' Co-Wrote Liberal Group's 'Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio'

2009-08-29T10:28:00.001-05:00

By Seton Motley
August 6, 2009 - 18:47 ET

The Best Censorship Weapon of All

UPDATE: Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin read this piece in nearly its entirety last night. His on-air stylings can be found here.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a new "Chief Diversity Officer," communications attorney Mark Lloyd.

But Doctor of Jurisprudence Lloyd is far more than merely a communications attorney. He was at one time a Senior Fellow at the uber-liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), for whom he co-wrote a June 2007 report entitled "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio."

Which rails against the fact that the American people overwhelmingly prefer to listen to conservative (and Christian) talk radio rather than the liberal alternative, and suggests ways the federal government can remedy this free-market created "problem."

•Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.
•Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
•Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.
These last two get perilously close to the use of "localism" to silence conservative (and Christian) radio stations, about which we have been warning for quite some time.

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"Localism" is a nebulous FCC regulatory requirement that radio stations must meet to get and keep their broadcast licenses. How it is defined and enforced is wide open to the interpretation of whomever is doing the enforcing. It can mean something benign like airing local public service announcements, or it can be used as a weapon by activists to punish, harangue and ultimately shut down stations they don't like.

In a follow-up essay to the CAP report entitled "Forget the Fairness Doctrine," Lloyd specifically instructs liberal activists to do the latter - use the "localism" requirement to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC. The FCC would then assess these stations fines, with the money going to (very liberal) public broadcasting.

Or worse - the FCC would rescind these stations' broadcast licenses. In other words, shut them up by shutting them down. Thus, as Lloyd says, no need for the mis-named "Fairness" Doctrine.

From Lloyd's piece:

To be fair, even some progressives are confused about the Fairness Doctrine. A recent news story reported that the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC for short, has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine—even as the same article reports on a speech to LULAC by ABC News correspondent John Quinones, who spoke of his work bringing to audiences a hard-earned perspective to the long-running immigration debate.

Quinones told the LULAC audience that he got his start because a San Antonio community organization threatened that if the stations didn't hire more Latinos, the group would go to the FCC and challenge their licenses. "Thank God for them," Quinones said. "I wouldn't be here."

Equal opportunity employment policies. Local engagement. License challenges. Nothing in there about the Fairness Doctrine.

"Community organizations" (run one would think by community organizers) threatening the licenses of stations with whom they do not agree politically.

Or making them pay hefty fines, which would be added to the public monies already being given to liberal public broadcasting.

The other part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (i.e. Rush Limbaugh fans, meant here by Lloyd to more broadly refer to fans of all conservative talk) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don’t want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community.

Lloyd's instructions to Leftist activists are clear: use the FCC to pummel conservative talk radio. With fines, or entirely out of existence.

And now Lloyd works for the FCC.

—Seton Motley is Director of Communications for the Media Research Center.

Where is the Left's Outrage?

2009-08-28T18:58:00.000-05:00

Deadliest year for troops in Afghanistan

By Sardar Ahmad (AFP)

KABUL — A roadside bomb blast killed four US soldiers in Afghanistan on Tuesday, making 2009 the deadliest year recorded for foreign troops in the country since the US-led invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001.

The grim milestone was likely to further fuel political debate in Washington, London and the capitals of other NATO troop contributing countries where the escalating war is increasingly being questioned.

"Four International Security Assistance Force service members were killed today as a result of an improvised explosive device (IED) detonation that occurred in southern Afghanistan," NATO announced in a statement.

All four soldiers were American, the military announced.

IEDs are the weapon of choice for Taliban insurgents fighting the Western-backed Afghan government and foreign troops, and are particularly strong in the south.

The latest deaths came as incumbent Hamid Karzai was narrowly leading a neck-and-neck race for the Afghan presidency with just two percent more votes than his closest rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

The partial results amount to about 10 percent of the total ballots cast in only Afghanistan's second direct presidential election, which was held last Thursday and has been overshadowed by claims of massive fraud.

The independent icasualties.org website said 63 foreign soldiers died in Afghanistan so far this month and 295 so far this year, making 2009 the worst year on record after less than nine months.

This year, the same website said, 172 US troops have died so far, up from 155 US troops in 2008 out of total foreign troop deaths of 294.

US President Barack Obama has made Afghanistan the cornerstone of his foreign policy and ordered an extra 21,000 troops to the country in a bid to turn around the war against the Taliban, whose insurgency is at record levels.

Foreign troop casualties have risen steadily each year and the Taliban-led insurgency is now claiming record deaths.

Obama's hand-picked commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is expected to call for even more troops in a formal review of the war-fighting strategy anticipated within the next two weeks.

The decision will likely be wrenching for Obama particularly as a large proportion of the US public has turned against the war and his popularity has waned.

The president, who accused predecessor George W. Bush during the 2008 campaign of favouring a "war of choice" in Iraq over a "war of necessity" in Afghanistan, has already ordered 21,000 more soldiers to the fight.

That could prove to be a major political headache for an administration locked in pitched battles for congressional approval of its sweeping domestic agenda, including a health care overhaul and measures to fight climate change.

Britain, Canada and the Netherlands are the biggest troop contributors to the NATO-led effort in Afghanistan, after the United States.

British casualties have already shot beyond the 200 milestone to 206, renewing debate about the country's role in the conflict, the equipment available to protect its troops and whether any progress is being achieved.

The Afghan government said Tuesday that four civilians were killed and five others were wounded in a roadside bomb, in the east near the Pakistan border.

The bomb that killed the Afghan civilians was similar to that which killed the US troops. The government blamed the attack in Paktia province on Taliban-linked rebels.

The Absent-Minded Chairman

2009-08-28T18:52:00.001-05:00

Charlie Rangel wins the personal lottery

When normal people happen to "find" their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you're Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth.

Earlier this month the Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee "amended" his 2007 financial disclosure form—to the tune of more than a half-million dollars in previously unreported assets and income. That number may be as high as $780,000, because Congress's ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges. This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr. Rangel's net worth for 2007 to somewhere between $1.028 million and $2.495 million, while his previous statement came in at $516,015 and $1.316 million.

When you're a powerful Congressman and working diligently to increase tax rates to pay for President Obama's health-care plan, we suppose it's easy to lose track of one of your checking accounts. That would be the one at the federal credit union with a balance somewhere between $250,001 and maybe as high as $500,000. And when you're crunched for time and pulling together bills to pass in a rush, we guess, too, that you might overlook several other investment accounts, even if some of them are sizable, such as the ones Mr. Rangel missed at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and BlackRock.

Read the entire story - Wall Street Journal

Friday Night Country

2009-08-28T18:47:00.004-05:00

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder - I`m ready to go!

LA CONGRESSWOMAN PRAISES CUBAN REVOLUTION & CASTRO’S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

2009-08-28T18:20:00.000-05:00

"You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met."

KABC’s Michael Linder was the only broadcast reporter at Thursday night’s town hall health care debate at Wade AME Church when Rep. Diane Watson [D] made some astonishing comments including claims that those opposed to health care reform are attempting to destroy a president “who looks like me.”

Later, Watson praised heath care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba — and, it seemed, the Cuban revolution itself.

Vampire Gun

2009-08-28T18:00:00.003-05:00

This Highly Embellished Colt Detective Special
is Just the Thing for Dealing With the "Undead.

By Garry James

The "Vampire Exterminator" Colt Detective Special was engraved by Colt master engraver Leonard Francolini and cased in a specially fabricated ebony casket.

That guns have been part of myths and mythology has been part of firearms history cannot be denied by anyone familiar with either genre.Some time ago, a spectacular Colt Detective Special was offered up for auction at Butterfield & Butterfield in San Francisco, California, that more than proves the above aphorism.The "Vampire Exterminator Gun," which was purchased as part of the Petersen Museum Collection, is one of the most spectacular—perhaps the most spectacular—examples of an embellished Detective Special extant.As its name implies, its motif is in keeping with the legends of Dracula, himself. Engraved in 1975 by Colt master engraver Leonard Francolini, who claimed the gun was undertaken on the order of one Dr. Abraham van Helsing, the gun is entirely silver-plated. Decorations include elaborate scroll engraving that includes such designs as bats, dragons and tangled foliage of the type one might find on the weathered battlements of some Transylvanian fortress. The muzzle through which the bullet must pass is emblazoned with a cross, further strengthening its effect against the unholy undead. Even the traditional rampant colt is depicted as standing on a coffin. The smooth ebony grips are capped off by a silver band and lanyard ring and have two small bats inset into the lower left panel—presumably trophies of some successful anti-Nosferatu foray.

Read the entire article - Guns&Ammo Online Magazine

Obama Appoints Tobacco Czar

2009-08-23T18:19:00.004-05:00

On June 22, President Obama signed a law giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products. On Wednesday the Food and Drug Administration named Dr. Lawrence R. Deyton as the first director of the newly created Center for Tobacco Products. The newly created division at the FDA has the power to regulate the sale and advertising of tobacco products, ban ads and force advertisements in stores to become no more than black and white text. Dr. Deyton’s office would also be able to regulate ingredients in tobacco products for the first time, banning flavorings and limiting nicotine. The legislation creating the division has been controversial and very unpopular with the tobacco and advertising industries.

Dr. Lawrence R. Deyton previously served as chief public health and environmental hazards officer at the Veterans Health Administration. For many years he has been one of the greatest advocates for research and care for veterans living with HIV and hepatitis C virus. He is also an associate professor at George Washington University, in Washington, DC, and still practices medicine. One of the new director’s first challenges is likely to be a lawsuit from tobacco companies challenging the constitutionality of new marketing restrictions in the law.

Friday Night Country

2009-08-21T19:50:00.006-05:00

Jamey Johnson and Lee Ann Womack

Gun Toting Protesters are "White" Racists

2009-08-21T18:21:00.002-05:00

What MSNBC didn't tell viewers was the man carrying the AR-15 at the beginning of the video was BLACK. Why is MSNBC trying to make this a racial issue? Where is responsible journalism? It's as if they are trying to create controversy where none exists...

Click here to see video interview with gun toting "white" racist.

Nugent on the Second Amendment

2009-08-16T15:56:00.002-05:00

List of Obama's Czars

2009-08-16T09:53:00.004-05:00

President Obama has nearly three dozen czars in his administration, managing everything from closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to ending the genocide in Darfur.

* denotes positions that existed during previous administrations.

1. Afghanistan Czar - Richard Holbrooke
2. AIDS Czar * - Jeffrey Crowley
3. Auto Recovery Czar - Ed Montgomery
4. Border Czar * - Alan Bersin
5. California Water Czar - David J. Hayes
6. Car Czar - Ron Bloom
7. Central Region Czar - Dennis Ross
8. Climate Czar - Todd Stern
9. Domestic Violence Czar - Lynn Rosenthal
10. Drug Czar * - Gil Kerlikowske
11. Economic Czar * - Paul Volcker
12. Energy and Environment Czar - Carol Browner
13. Faith-Based Czar * - Joshua DuBois
14. Government Performance Czar - Jeffrey Zients
15. Great Lakes Czar - Cameron Davis
16. Green Jobs Czar - Van Jones
17. Guantanamo Closure Czar - Daniel Fried
18. Health Czar * - Nancy-Ann DeParle
19. Information Czar - Vivek Kundra
20. Intelligence Czar * - Dennis Blair
21. Mideast Peace Czar - George Mitchell
22. Pay Czar - Kenneth R. Feinberg
23. Regulatory Czar - Cass R. Sunstein *
24. Science Czar - John Holdren
25. Stimulus Accountability Czar - Earl Devaney
26. Sudan Czar - J. Scott Gration
27. TARP Czar - Herb Allison
28. Technology Czar - Aneesh Chopra
29. Terrorism Czar - John Brennan
30. Urban Affairs Czar - Adolfo Carrion Jr.
31. Weapons Czar - Ashton Carter
32. WMD Policy Czar - Gary Samore

Source: Glen Beck.com - For detailed information on each Czar's responsibilities,qualifications and background history.

Glenn Beck Exposes Rahm Emanuel's Root and Corruption in the Obama's Administration

2009-08-14T22:41:00.001-05:00

The People's Genie Is out of the Bottle

2009-08-14T22:22:00.002-05:00

Calling the people names was the last straw. The Genie tipped the bottle over, put his feet against the cork, and kick his way out. Beware of an uncorked Genie.

As this happened, the people started coming to town hall meetings, meant mostly to convince them to go-along to get-along. They held the heavy healthcare bill in their hands. Dog-eared from having been read.

The big spenders were shocked to learn that the people had taken time to do what they, the professional legislators, had not done - they'd read the bill! The people came armed with enlightened questions, reasoned arguments, and impassioned opinions. All things the big spenders lacked. In some cases, numbers were handed out at the entry door to qualify and order those who could speak. Then, one after the other, questioners asked clear, targeted questions. Sharpshooters picked at random. Remarkable.

The people stood, a furrow plowed across their foreheads. Their eyebrows lowered. Their chins up, lips pressed tight, gaze intensified. The Genie was out. When the big spenders told them that their reading of the bill was incorrect, the people found their voice. And, though some quivered with nervousness, they pushed against the glass. This time their voice was most definitely heard.

Read the article in its entirety - AmericanThinker.com

Bush as HitlerSwastika-Mania: A Retrospective

2009-08-14T18:54:00.005-05:00

Nancy Pelosi claimed that protesters are "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care." although I have yet to see proof that it actually happened. Even if it did happen, what's the big deal? For the past 8 years the left has demonstrated their "BushHitler" comparisons in every way imaginable. I don't condone treating President Obama with the complete lack of respect that President Bush was subjected to, but the same standards should apply. The Libs phony outrage over this matter is yet another example of their hypocrisy...

Zombietime.com - Bush as Hitler, Swastika-Mania: A Retrospective.

They can't take it no more...

2009-08-11T18:46:00.004-05:00

While James David Manning PhD has his fair share of critics, at least he has the guts to call things as he sees them...

Falling Out of Love with Barack Obama

2009-08-11T18:31:00.001-05:00

By Ed Koch

I continue to be a supporter of President Barack Obama. He has had several outstanding successes. The major one has been a positive change in the economy due primarily, I believe, to his hand-picked team of economic advisers who, from all indications, have fashioned an effective economic recovery plan. The recovery still has a long way to go, but using the language of my doctors at the hospital in which I recently spent six critical weeks recovering from open-heart surgery, "All the numbers are going in the right direction." I also believe his reaching out to our allies and those not allied with us has somewhat calmed the world's roiled waters.

Yet, strangely, the President's support is waning. A recent CNN poll gave him a C-minus after 200 days in office, whereas at the end of his first one hundred days, he got almost universally a B-plus.

I think most people would say that the President's standing with the American public has suffered as a result of his handling of health care policy. During the election, Barack Obama promised to speedily deliver universal health care. However, to date President Obama has presented no health care bill to the Congress and that legislative body has come up with a number of proposals for which he is being held responsible. Furthermore, the President has seemingly caved on important aspects of his health care agenda such as not restricting private insurance coverage and obtaining volume discounts from drug companies.

In order to keep costs from rising, most people acknowledge the need for some kind of limitations on spending. Rationing of public monies makes sense, e.g., should public monies be used to give a kidney or heart transplant to a 90-year-old patient, when it is necessary to reduce the costs of Medicaid and Medicare to keep them solvent? Both programs are totally government funded and operated. I would say no.Then the question becomes what about private funds being used by an individual willing to buy gold-plated insurance to provide unlimited medical expenditures for their health and survival? Should the government be able to limit such expenditures? My answer would be no.

I speak from personal experience. I have been told that the cost of my hospital care, including the services of 20 doctors and 72 nurses and medical technicians over a six-week period may ultimately cost a million dollars. My private insurance policy is paid for by my law firm, Bryan Cave LLP, and because I still work full-time, that insurance policy is my primary one, not Medicare, even though I am 84 years old. Will that continue to be the case under any law signed by President Obama or will I be denied the right to spend my own money and my law firm's for such unlimited coverage?

The President, I believe, has said that there will be no restrictions on private insurance coverage, other than to expand that coverage for all by, for example, denying the insurance companies the right to reject persons with prior existing medical conditions. But he has not spoken loudly enough, nor has there been any discussion on the premiums that companies will be able to charge in such cases.

Most alarming for people like me, who at 84 years of age recently needed a quadruple bypass and aortic valve replacement, are the pronouncements of President Obama's appointee, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who, according to a New York Post op ed article by Betsy McCauley, former Lt. Governor of the State of New York, stated, "Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, 'as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others' (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008)." He also stated, "...communitarianism' should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those 'who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens...An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.' (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). "

Opponents of Obama's health care proposals raise the specter of a panel making decisions on who should receive health care. I am not aware of any proposed panel. However, an article in today's New York Times, referring to a Senate bill, stated, "The legislation could have significant implications for individuals who have bought coverage on their own. Their policies might be exempted from the new standards, but the coverage might not be viable for long because insurers could not add benefits or enroll additional people in noncompliant policies."

So, where lies the truth? I don't know. But I do know that I want the continued right to purchase and have available insurance that will permit me, no matter my age and physical condition, to purchase with my own money all the medical care I can afford.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake the President has made regarding health care was the statement by a White House spokesman on the subject of using volume discount pressures on the drug companies in order to save money on Medicare prescription drug purchases which now cost over $800 billion a year. The spokesman for the drug industry, former Congressman Bill Tauzin, recently announced that the drug industry had entered into an agreement with the White House in exchange for its support of universal medical coverage. Under the agreement, the drug companies would contribute $80 billion over a 10-year period to defray the cost of universal medical coverage, while the White House has agreed not to require the drug industry to make any further financial contributions, meaning no change in the law barring the use of Medicare volume discounts and probably continuing the prohibition against importing American-made prescription drugs from Canada which are sold there at up to 50 percent less.

On August 6th, The New York Times reported, "Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion," over a 10-year period which confirms the Tauzin statement.

Following that statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a number of Congressmen, including Henry Waxman of California, said they would not be bound by the White House agreement. According to The Times, Waxman "vowed to fight the White House, asserting that it was conceding too much to the powerful drug industry lobby PhRma."

Incidentally, why wouldn't the drug industry support universal medical care under any and all circumstances? With such legislation will automatically come more people covered by insurance that will provide prescription drug coverage to more people, creating an enormous new market for them. Volume discounts at only ten percent with existing expenditures by the government will bring in more than $80 billion a year, as opposed to the drug companies' offer of $80 billion over 10 years, or $8 billion a year.

President Obama might not be persuaded to rethink some of his positions on health care because of the protests of moderates like me who support him, but he surely has to be alarmed by the comments of his most ardent supporters like New York Times columnist Frank Rich who, discussing the pending health care legislation warns, "It's in this context that Obama can't afford a defeat on health care. A bill will pass in a Democrat-controlled Congress. What matters is what's in it.

The final result will be a CAT scan of those powerful Washington interests he campaigned against, revealing which have been removed from the body politic (or at least reduced) and which continue to metastasize. The Wall Street regulatory reform package Obama pushes through, or doesn't, may render even more of a verdict on his success in changing the system he sought the White House to reform...The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy."

Love, we know, is never having to say you're sorry. When falling out of love, hopefully, a reversible process, saying one is sorry is not enough; change is required. Why do so many of our heroes ultimately have clay feet?

Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City.

Source: Real Clear Politics

Angry Mobs ?

2009-08-10T22:22:00.002-05:00

The Club for Growth has assembled a library of Town Hall protest videos from around the country, see 'em here...

Obama to critics: 'Get out of the way'

2009-08-10T21:54:00.004-05:00

President Obama said Thursday that he wants critics to "get out of the way" so his administration can clean up the economic "mess" that the previous administration left him. The president spoke Thursday night at a rally in Virginia for state Sen. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for governor.

He used his speech to condemn critics who say his economic stimulus is not working and complain about his administration's spending. Obama noted that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit when he took office, and urged the "naysayers" to get out of the way.

"We've got some work to do. I don't mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I'm the president," Obama said. "But I don't want the folks that created the mess -- I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. "I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking," .

Obama's critics say he's only making matters worse with his stimulus package, cap and trade as well as health care reform. Opponents of Obama's health care plan are flooding town hall meetings around the country, publicly challenging Democrats on the bill.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said "I think the president gets fired up." adding "We get free advice every day from people that took the bus and rode it into the ditch and now want to give free advice on how you get it out."

Obama and his handlers can try to spin this thing 7 ways from sundown but the American people see it for what it really is. The administration is trying to silence it's critics. I guess free speech is OK as long as it isn't dissenting...

SEIU boss denounces 'terrorist tactics' of the Right, day after alleged SEIU assault on conservative

2009-08-10T21:42:00.002-05:00

By: David Freddoso
Washington Examiner
Commentary Staff Writer
08/07/09 4:11 PM EDT

Dennis Rivera, health care chairman of the Service Employees International Union, denounced "radical fringe right-wingers" this afternoon for using "terrorist tactics" to thwart the discussion of health care reform.

His remarks came one day after SEIU members allegedly assaulted a conservative protestor outside a town hall meeting in St. Louis County, Mo. The end of the attack and its aftermath were caught on tape.

"These are the times to clearly speak out in a civilized way, and tell them we won't be prevented by these terrorist tactics from participating in these town hall meetings," Rivera told to thousands of SEIU members on a conference call this afternoon.

Kenneth Gladney, a conservative activist who was distributing Gadsden Flags at the St. Louis town hall meeting, sought medical treatment after the attack, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. David Brown, who wrote on the St. Louis Tea Party blog today that he is Gladney's attorney and witnessed the incident, identified individuals in SEIU's purple shirts as assailants. In this video, taken moments after the alleged assault, an SEIU-purple-clad man is arrested by police. Brown has not responded to The Examiner's inquiries.

There have been no reports so far of violence by town hall attendees protesting against President Obama's health care plan.

Rivera also encouraged union members on today's conference call to step up the “purple army” presence at Congressional town hall meetings this month.

Read the story in it's entirety - Source: Washington Examiner

Read the Bill

2009-08-10T21:08:00.002-05:00

Conyers Sees No Point in Members Reading Health Care Bill

During his speech at a National Press Club luncheon, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan), questioned legislators need to read the health care bill.

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers. “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

There was a time in our country's past when people recognized that they had no representation in the system that taxed them and forced unwanted protections on them. Their response was to rise up in revolt to free themselves from oppression. Now, we are finding out that our elected "representatives" no longer represent the American people. They don't read tax bills, they just vote yes. This amounts to taxation without representation. We shouldn't have to wonder, "Will my "representative" read the bill before they vote?" They freely admit that they won't and aren't the least bit apologetic about it.

It's time for them to go...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Police Report

2009-08-10T20:58:00.003-05:00

"I'll speak with your mama outside,"
Harvard prof told Cambridge cops

JULY 23--Here are the police reports detailing the confrontation last week between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge cops, who were condemned last night by President Barack Obama for acting "stupidly" in arresting the African-American scholar. Cops responded to Gates's house after neighbor Lucia Whalen reported spotting "two black males with backpacks" trying to gain entry to the home (Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, and his driver were contending with a stuck front door). The Cambridge Police Department reports, authored by Sergeant James Crowley and Officer James Figueroa, quote an incensed Gates yelling, "This is what happens to black men in America!," and, when asked by Crowley to speak with him outside the residence, Gates replied, "ya, I'll speak with your mama outside." A disorderly conduct rap was filed against Gates, but quickly dropped by prosecutors. Gates is reportedly considering legal action against the Cambridge police.

Read the article in it's entirety - The Smoking Gun

Rules for Radicals

2009-08-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

Rules for Radicals

In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing titled Rules for Radicals. Those who prefer cooperative tactics describe the book as out-of-date. Nevertheless, it provides some of the best advice on confrontational tactics. Alinsky begins this way:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
His “rules” derive from many successful campaigns where he helped poor people fighting power and privilege

For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.

According to Alinsky, the organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”

Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.

Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

Protestors are too well dressed?

2009-08-10T18:54:00.006-05:00

"People storming these Town Hall meetings" are well dressed so they are obviously operatives of the vast Right Wing Conspiracy. They look like normal hard working Americans to me! Maybe Ms. Boxer is used to the shabbily dressed (or partially dressed) supporters normally found at Democrat backed protests.

To use Barbra Boxer's terminology, this is a "diversion". Questioning the motives of the protesters in an attempt to de-legitimize them distracts attention from the protesters message, which is really what's important...

The Sunday Smiths

2009-08-09T17:17:00.004-05:00

I stumbled onto The Arms Room during an internet search for info about Smith&Wesson's Model 49 "Bodyguard". Billed as "an online firearms museum", The Arms Room has a great series "The Sunday Smith" which details vintage and modern Smith&Wesson firearms.

How Fast Is Fast?

2009-08-09T16:53:00.003-05:00

Calling it amazing would be an understatement! Shooter Jerry Miculek demonstrates what's possible when a champion wheelgunner is on his game. Incredible...

Brits Speak Out Against Gun Control

2009-08-09T16:32:00.002-05:00

"Freedom is only for those who have the guts to defend it"