Obama Gives Unions a 'Massive Payback' with Executive Order, Contractors Claim

Excerpt: The nation’s non-union contractors, who constitute the bulk of the construction industry, say President Obama has given a “massive payback” to unions by implementing an executive order that would help them secure billions of dollars in construction contracts on public projects -- and a House Republican congressman agrees.

The executive order, implemented in mid-April, encourages federal agencies to use “project labor agreements” or PLAs on their construction projects, which could require any non-union workers to pay into ailing union pension funds and follow work guidelines set out by a union. Read article here.

Congress Approves Referendum on Puerto Rico’s Future - Denicrats Searching for Votes

Excerpt: Washington (AP) - The House on Thursday approved legislation that could set in motion changes in Puerto Rico's 112-year relationship with the United States, including a transition to statehood or independence.

The House bill would give the 4 million residents of the island commonwealth a two-step path to expressing how they envision their political future. It passed 223-169 and now must be considered by the Senate.

Initially, eligible voters, including those born in Puerto Rico but residing in the United States, would vote on whether they wish to keep their current political status or opt for a different direction.

If a majority favors changing the current situation, the Puerto Rican government would be authorized to conduct a second vote and people would choose among four options: statehood, independence, the current commonwealth status or sovereignty in association with the United States. Congress would have to vote on whether Puerto Rico becomes a state.

Read article hers.

Scandal: Obama, Gore, Goldman, Joyce Foundation CCX partners to fleece USA

Excerpt: Glenn Beck breaks the biggest corruption story of the century yesterday and it doesn’t appear on a Front Page anywhere. Beck points the way to the 15 Trillion dollar scam that has some amazing players. Read article here.

May Day, May Day By Robin of Berkeley - A Comedic Twist

Excerpt: As you can imagine, IWD is a popular day around these parts. In fact, it's an official city holiday. Along with Malcolm X's Birthday, Indigenous People's Day, and International Women's Day, the school kiddies and the city rank and file get the day off. Even some popular places, like Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, close in observance.

I considered it a great honor to celebrate May Day, which represents all things Marxist. My deep and exhaustive knowledge of Communism was limited to the movies, for instance, "The Motorcycle Diaries," and "Reds." Warren Beattie and Diane Keaton appeared so courageous and passionate in "Reds," and the guy playing Che was hecka hot. Anyway, Hollywood wouldn't mislead us, would they?

Consequently, I was deeply disturbed when the Soviets failed and the former Republics embraced the big and bad capitalism. Luckily, I could still wax rhapsodic about Cuba, and dream of someday visiting that utopia. Since I'm playing True Confessions here: I even drove my car out of my way to fill up with Citgo, the gasoline from Venezuela.

What can I say? I was an idiot.

Which brings me to today's May Day celebration, a unique one, because the Left is now showcasing illegal aliens. While at one point I would have vehemently defended their "right" to be here, no more. Now I wonder why we should be welcoming with open arms people who are doing something illegal. Don't we have enough deceitful people in this country without importing more?

The Left plans to use the day to demonstrate the worth and value of illegals. To do this, both illegals and legals have threatened violent protests. There's nothing like ransacking stores and setting cars on fire to win over the country's hearts and minds! Read full article here.

Wow… Arizona Passes Bill Banning Radical Ethnic Studies Programs

Haven’t seen any negatives yet on the Gateway Pundit blog. I believe that the only way to stop the progressive movement is to stop them in the schools and universities. This bill is a start. Hope this alien virus is catching and invades other states’ boundaries.

FOX News reported, via Free Republic:

After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature sent Gov. Jan Brewer a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.

After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.

The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.

The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

The bill stipulates that courses can continue to be taught for Native American pupils in compliance with federal law and does not prohibit English as a second language classes. It also does not prohibit the teaching of the Holocaust or other cases of genocide.

Schools that fail to abide by the law would have state funds withheld.

Read Gateway Pundit article here.

In response to critics, Arizona tweaks new immigration law

Glad to see the amendments to clarify so that the intent cannot be misconstrued. LOL. We all know that the MSM and liberal establishment will do everything they can to demonize the Republicans and secure the Mexican vote. After all, they will have 10 million new Democrats as soon as amnesty goes through.

Excerpt: In recent days, some critics of the new Arizona immigration law have said the measure will lead to Arizona becoming a police state. Many of the criticisms — some including the words Nazi and fascist — have been based on a general objection to the law and to the enforcement of the country’s immigration laws. But some have been specifically focused on a few key phrases in the law.

Now, Arizona lawmakers have made some changes intended to clarify their intent and, perhaps, silence some of the critics. The changes were first reported by Phoenix television station KNXV, better known as ABC15.

The first concerns the phrase “lawful contact,” which is contained in this controversial portion of the bill: “For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person…” Although drafters of the law said the intent of “lawful contact” was to specify situations in which police have stopped someone because he or she was suspected of violating some other law — like a traffic stop — critics said it would allow cops to pick anyone out of a crowd and “demand their papers.”

So now, in response to those critics, lawmakers have removed “lawful contact” from the bill and replaced it with “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” In an explanatory note, lawmakers added that the change “stipulates that a lawful stop, detention or arrest must be in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state.”

“It was the intent of the legislature for ‘lawful contact’ to mean arrests and stops, but people on the left mischaracterized it,” says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush Justice Department official who helped draft the law. “So that term is now defined.”

The second change concerns the word “solely.” In a safeguard against racial profiling, the law contained the phrase, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.” Critics objected to that, too, arguing again that it would not prevent but instead lead to racial profiling. So lawmakers have taken out the word “solely.”

“There were misstatements by the opponents of the law that this was written to permit some consideration of race in the enforcement of this law,” says Kobach, “and that’s not the case at all.”

So will the changes satisfy the critics who have made some rather amazingly intemperate charges about the bill? Kobach is doubtful. “I have a feeling that even though it will be virtually impossible to mischaracterize the law with any honesty, that’s what they will do.” Read Examiner article here.

Fannie Mae owns patent on residential 'cap and trade' exchange

This is one of the pieces of the "Cap & Tax" fraud being loaded onto the American taxpayer. It is interesting to note that this piece of Beck's puzzle last evening, dates back to November 2006. If you watched Beck last night, Al Gore is also a major beneficiary of this proposed bill. This fraud has been in the works for years and now the Democrats wield enough power to run the final piece, the Cap & Tax bill, through Congress and into law. We will all suffer. Schemes like this in the private sector would demand jail time for all the participants.

Excerpt: When he wasn't busy helping create a $127 billion mess for taxpayers to clean up, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines, two of his top underlings and select individuals in the "green" movement were inventing a patented system to trade residential carbon credits.

Patent No. 6904336 was approved by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office on Nov. 7, 2006 -- the day after Democrats took control of Congress. Former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., criticized the award at the time, pointing out that it had "nothing to do with Fannie Mae's charter, nothing to do with making mortgages more affordable."

It wasn't about mortgages. It was about greenbacks. The patent, which Fannie Mae confirmed it still owns with Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary CO2e.com, gives the mortgage giant a lock on the fledgling carbon trading market, thus also giving it a major financial stake in the success of cap-and-trade legislation.

The patent, which covers both the "cap" and "trade" parts of Obama's top domestic energy initiation, gives Fannie Mae proprietary control over an automated trading system that pools and sells credits for hard-to-quantify residential carbon reduction efforts (such as solar panels and high-efficiency appliances) to companies and utilities that don't meet emission reduction targets. Depending on where the Environmental Protection Agency sets arbitrary CO2 standards, that could be every company in America.

The patent summary describes how carbon "and other pollutants yet to be determined" would be "combined into a single emissions pool" and traded -- just as Fannie's toxic portfolio of subprime mortgages were.

"Fannie Mae earns no money on this patent," communications director Amy Bonitatibus told the Washington Examiner. "We can't conjecture as to the cap-and-trade legislation."

But passage of the legislation would create an artificial, government-mandated, trillion-dollar carbon trading market that would drive up the price of energy, indirectly making housing more expensive.

If the proprietary emissions trading system functions like other exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange, which makes most of its revenue on listing and trading fees, its owners could see extremely generous profits, especially with a patent that keeps out competition for two decades.

So Fannie Mae, a quasi-governmental entity whose congressionally mandated mission is to make housing more affordable, has been a behind-the-scenes participant in a carbon trading scheme that would do just the opposite.

In January, Europol announced that up to 90 percent of the volume in the European Union's own carbon-trading market was fraudulent, costing EU members $5 billion during the previous 18 months. That would be just the tip of the iceberg if the Congress were to make a similar mistake.

But if it does, thanks to Raines and his fellow "inventors," Fannie Mae will be laughing all the way to the (bailed-out) bank. Read Examiner article, that tells you who the players are, here.

Getting Back to Basics

This candidate appears to be going at it the "right" way. Like his background also. Hope he didn't make too many enemies as an NCAA basketball referee.

Excerpt: Right now, Democrats in Congress are desperate to ram as many of their radical ideas through Capitol Hill as possible. There is talk of a value-added tax on top of the income taxes we already pay, weighing our families down with greater and greater levels of payments to Washington. There are threats of more "economic stimulus" bills, where the only thing being stimulated is the growth of government. There are veiled threats of legislation that would limit our citizens' Second Amendment rights. Frankly, I'm a little surprised this crowd in Washington isn't looking for a way to tax our Second Amendment rights; it might be more profitable for them.

It's not a surprise that the feds are looking for more taxes and fees from us; our national debt is at the back-breaking point. The problem is taxes and fees and heaping more financial pressure on taxpayers isn't the way to do it. Our nation has reached a point where with debt eating away at our national productivity and competitiveness, the sustainability of our government will actually be in doubt a decade from now.

Imagine, a federal government unable to pay its bills to defend our country, to provide those basic tasks our citizens expect the federal government to undertake, never mind the tasks we'd prefer bureaucrats not get involved in. This is not the America any of us want to pass to the next generation.

It's up to us, good, commonsense conservatives, to clean up this mess. It's up to us to fight for the policies that shrink the size of government and expand opportunity for our citizens, to lift the burden of taxes from the backs of our fellow citizens and get America back on track. Read article here.

The author, Jim Tracy, a Tennessee state senator, is a candidate for Congress in Tennessee's 6th district. He is a small business owner, former teacher and coach, and former TSSAA & NCAA basketball referee. Jim and his wife Trena live in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill - BIG BROTHER IS HERE!

This will cost businesses millions of dollars for needless info that the IRS will not be able to process effectively. The government wants to know about every transaction you and business enters into. BIG BROTHER IS HERE! Are you scared or JUST MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE?

Excerpt: There appears to have been little discussion before this damaging mandate was slipped into the health bill and rammed through Congress, but a few business groups did raise concerns. Here’s what the Air Conditioner Contractors of America said:

The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.

In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.

Private transactions are the core of a market economy, and the source of America’s growth and prosperity. Now the federal government is imposing a vast new web of red tape on perhaps billions of these growth-generating private exchanges.

For what purpose? So the spendthrift Congress can shake a few extra bucks out of private industry? The business sector is the generator of America’s high living standards, but most federal legislators just see it as a kitty to be raided or a cow to be milked dry. Read article here.

Cellphone Payments Offer Alternative to Cash

Did a focus group in NYC about 25-30 years ago that I think was working on debit card issuance at the time. Times have really changed. I still like cash and swiping my card at the supermarket, but I'll bet the younger generation will flock to it.

Excerpt: You win a bet, but the loser does not have enough cash on him to settle it. If he has a credit card, and most people usually do, there is finally a solution. A number of big and small companies — including eBay’s PayPal unit, Intuit, VeriFone and Square — are creating innovative ways for individuals to avoid cash and checks and settle all debts, public and private, using their cellphones.

Several of the companies have developed small credit card scanners that plug into a cellphone and for a small fee enable any individual or small business to turn a phone into a credit card processing terminal. PayPal’s cellphone app calls for only a simple bump of two cellphones to transfer money. Apple has submitted a patent application for a cellphone payment system.

The new services could have the biggest impact on the smallest businesses, like farm stands or house cleaners, that accept only cash and checks because they do not have stores to house credit card terminals and do not want to enter into complicated, long-term relationships with credit card companies.

Rachel Ancliffe, a clothing designer in Portland, Ore., sells her dresses and blouses at sample sales and from her home, and uses Intuit GoPayment to process credit card payments.

Instead of replacing credit cards, technologies like Square and GoPayment rely on them. Credit card companies stay in the middle, extracting a fee with each swipe or bump.

GoPayment costs $12.95 a month on top of a per-transaction fee of 30 cents plus 1.7 percent to 3.7 percent of the payment, depending on the credit card companies’ rates. Square is free and users pay 15 cents plus 2.75 percent to 3.5 percent of each transaction. It will be available for iPhones and iPod Touches in May and for other phones and laptops later.

Exchanging money with friends using PayPal’s iPhone app is free if payers use a bank or PayPal account, and costs 30 cents plus 2.9 percent of the transaction for credit cards.

But a cashless society could become a reality as the younger generation, accustomed to buying music on iTunes and virtual gifts on Facebook, grows up.

“Older people still tend to like to use cash or checks,” Mr. Abernathy said. “Younger people don’t want to touch a piece of paper. They want to do it all electronically.” Read article here.

'The Lottery' documentary shows education is a sure bet

The article goes on to recognize that studies show not all charter schools perform better than public schools, however, the private schools escape from the public regimentation and create experimentation that can discover better learning environments.

Moskowitz's schools may have found something.

Excerpt: "The Lottery" will create and energize charter supporters by the thousands. It conveys the desperation and urgency of urban public education better than the anti-charter forces can defend a status quo that is shockingly unfair and wholly unacceptable.

What people in well-off communities take for granted - the simple process of enrolling a child in kindergarten - takes on huge stakes in the film, which follows four Harlem families as they hope and pray (sometimes literally) for one of the scarce kindergarten slots in one of Moskowitz's schools, allocated by lottery.

Some charters - privately managed public schools with the power to alter their hours, work rules, budgets and curriculum - are scoring significantly better on standardized tests than the regular public schools around them.

Beyond scores, there's the look and feel of learning. You know it when you see it.

I (Errol Louis) have spent most of my life in one school or another. As a student, I've attended Catholic school in Harlem, public school in Westchester and earned degrees from Harvard, Yale and Brooklyn Law. As a college professor, I've spent at least one semester a year for the past decade teaching graduate and/or undergraduate students at Pace, Pratt, NYU, Long Island University and Hunter College.

I've visited Moskowitz's schools, sat in on classes and talked with her students. Anybody familiar with high-performing learning environments can tell within a few minutes that she's on to something that other educators should study and try to copy.

That's easier said than done. In Harlem and other communities, outstanding performance by charters has provoked envy, resentment and an organized backlash by teachers unions. Read Daily News article here.

Democrats' Financial Reform Looks Like a Protection Racket

If this was done in the private sector someone would be in jail for extortion, yet we put up with it with our elected officials. Vote all the bums out and hopefully we'll elect fewer bums.

Excerpt: The more Washington does, the greater the need to protect yourself, and the greater the opportunities for profit. A writer for the Huffington Post reported on carve-outs in the financial-reform bill. ‘Obtaining a carve-out isn’t rocket science,’ a Republican financial-services lobbyist told the website. ‘Just give Chairman [Chris] Dodd and Chuck Schumer a [expletive denoting a lot] of money.’ That’s the Democratic appeal writ large. They are running a protection racket. No matter how bad a ‘reform’ is, it could be worse. This is how they bought off the drug companies in the health-care debate—by threatening worse. It is why the insurance companies were conflicted. Yes, they were maligned. But they’d live to fight another day, and in the meantime, the government would mandate that people buy their product. The entanglement of business and government is potentially lucrative for both sides.

So the Democrats can threaten anything from ‘reforming’ to nationalizing an industry, and then collect a boatload of money from frightened corporate executives who want a “carve-out.” It’s like something out of The Sopranos. In the immortal words of Silvio Dante, as he collected his protection money, “You’re only as good as your last envelope.” Democrats' Financial Reform Looks Like a Protection Racket

Can world's largest laser zap Earth's energy woes?

This is the "stuff" that the series "Star Wars" is made of. Who knows, this may be the science breakthrough that sends us to the "Stars".

Excerpt: Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world's largest laser -- it's the size of three football fields -- to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it's stolen from the plot of an "Austin Powers" movie. But it's no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.

If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the global energy crisis by harnessing the energy generated by the mini-star.

The fusion reaction at the heart of this recipe is the same one that fuels the sun in our solar system and other stars.

"It's the most fundamental energy source in nature," Van Wonterghem said.

Workers at the Livermore Lab insist that the reaction isn't dangerous. Their version of fusion is controlled, rather than explosive like in America's current arsenal of nuclear weapons, which include a fusion reaction.

"There's no danger to the public," said Lynda Seaver, spokeswoman for the project.

"The [worst possible] mishap is, it doesn't work."

The value of this summer's experiment in laser-induced fusion will be in proving that powerful beams of light can produce a controlled fusion reaction, Seaver said.

It will take at least another 20 years, with adequate funding, to develop a continuous fusion reaction that could heat water, create steam and turn generators at a commercial fusion power plant, she said. Read article here.

Hispanics Plan Rallies in 70 Cities

Reminds me of a joke that is going around: If you are fed up with the long waits in the hospital emergency room, the next time wear your tee shirt with the INS logo on it.

Maybe we should get the "INS" out this weekend.

Excerpt: PHOENIX - U.S. Hispanics and Democratic lawmakers furious over Arizona's harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants expect huge weekend rallies across the United States, piling pressure on President Barack Obama to overhaul immigration laws in this election year.

Protest organizers said on Wednesday outrage over the Arizona law -- which seeks to drive illegal immigrants out of the state bordering Mexico -- has galvanized Latinos and would translate into a higher turnout for May Day rallies in more than 70 U.S. cities.

"The marches and demonstrations are going to be far more massive than they otherwise would have been," said Juan Jose Gutierrez, a Los Angeles rally organizer who runs an immigration assistance company.

The backlash began on Friday after Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a measure that requires state and local police to determine a person's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" they are undocumented. Critics say it is unconstitutional and opens the door to racial profiling.

Republican backers of the law say it is needed to curb crime in the desert state, which is a key corridor for drug and migrant smugglers from Mexico.

A Rasmussen Reports poll on Wednesday found that almost two-thirds -- 64 percent -- of voters in the state favored the measure. Hispanics Plan Rallies in 70 Cities

Illegal Immigrants Plan to Leave Over Ariz. Law

I have mixed emotions about the immigration mess in that many of the illegals are conscientious hard workers, trying to create a better living for their families, families that have very little hope of securing a decent life in their home countries. However, most of this labor is in an underground economy that does nothing to pay for the multitude of services and benefits that the illegals partake of. In addition, much of the fruits of their labor is sent directly to their homeland creating a drain on our economy of billions of dollars.

If this source of labor disappears, maybe, just maybe, wages will increase to a point where unemployed American citizens can find a job.

Excerpt: "Nobody wants to pick us up," Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store.

Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the law hope it creates jobs for thousands of Americans.

"We want to drive day labor away," says Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the law's sponsors.

An estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years as it cracked down on illegal immigration and its economy was especially hard hit by the Great Recession. A Department of Homeland Security report on illegal immigrants estimates Arizona's illegal immigrant population peaked in 2008 at 560,000, and a year later dipped to 460,000.

The law's supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents in a state with a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

Kavanagh says day labor is generally off the books, and that deprives the state of much-needed tax dollars. "We'll never eliminate it, just like laws against street prostitution," he says. "But we can greatly reduce the prevalence. Read article here.

Mojave War Memorial Cross Ruling a 'Good Sign'?

WASHINGTON -- Some legal experts believe the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that a war memorial cross may remain on federal land in the middle of California's Mojave desert may have set a precedent.

On Wednesday, the high court ruled the display of the cross is not automatically an unconstitutional mixing of church and state.

The case is important because it gives Americans a glimpse of how future courts will rule on religious issues.

Alito: Cross Seen by More Snakes than People

In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that until this case the cross was likely seen by more rattlesnakes than people.

The symbol had been covered up while a lawsuit against it made its way to the Supreme Court. By a 5-4 vote, the justices refused to order its removal.

"The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgement of religion's role in society," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

"It is a good day for people who support the cross and understand the importance of these monuments," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice.

The cross was erected 76 years ago by the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a memorial to soldiers killed in World War I.

Some critics say Wednesday's ruling is an example of the government endorsing religion.

"This is one more example of a bad trend where the Supreme Court doesn't seem to care about religious minorities and non-believers," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In his opinion, Justice Kennedy admitted the cross is more than a religious symbol.

"The monument "evokes thousands of small crosses" in cemeteries marking the graves of fallen American troops," Kennedy wrote.

A Court Precedent?

The court's ruling also gave Americans a look at how Justice Sonya Sotomayor may rule in future cases concerning government and religion, including the recent federal ruling that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.

"Now we've seen she's joining that liberal block pretty firmly, which is against any kind of religious display or any kind of religious language in the public square," Sekulow said.

Although the decision was narrow, it's a good indication of how justices will rule in future cases involving religious monuments on public property. From CBN News

Tea Party Gathering Ahead of Obama's Visit to Missouri

Here is a video report on 1,000 protesters gathering ahead of President Obama's scheduled visit to the rural Missouri town of Macon. Tea Party members and other local citizens gathered to protest Obama's policies, particularly the recent Health Care Law rammed through Congress despite public opposition.

Why Do We Want Uninformed, Unmotivated People To Vote?

Anyone who has watched Leno's Jay Walking segments will know where this article is coming from. I believe that every citizen should have the right to vote, but I also believe it is their responsibility to be well informed prior to voting.

Excerpt: In Ridgway Colorado they're proposing mandatory voting:

Hennessy, a popular Ridgway brewer and pub owner, is proposing that the mostly dirt-street town at the edge of the San Juan Mountains become a national model by enacting a mandatory-voting statute. Residents who don't bother to vote, for no good reason, would be fined.

"We could do this. It would be a paradigm shift," Hennessy said. "We could be the great civics lesson in representative democracy."

Why do we want people who don't know who the Vice-President is to vote? How about felons? People who aren't sure which party is anti-abortion? People who vote based on which candidate is taller? Women who haven't looked at the news in 5 years? Men in insane asylums? Old people who still think Nixon is President? Young people who've played video games for 14 hours a day for the last year?

In all honesty, we'd be better off if less people voted. If the only people voting were well informed, highly motivated people who paid income taxes, I guarantee you we'd have a much better government and a much better country. So, if you don't follow the news and you don't really care much about the issues or who wins, the country would be better off if people like you didn't vote.

See entire article with South Park parody here.

Bring Arizona Law to the Rest of the Union; Fire ICE, Napolitano

Debbie Schlussel, writer of this article, has the right idea. All states should enact the Arizona immigration law which copies the Federal law that is not enforced by Napolitano and the government. It is the citizens who suffer and it is the responsibility of government to protect them. If you have any contacts in your state government, ask them to submit the bill: Arizona SB1070

Excerpt: Agents at ICE–Immigration and Customs Enforcement–have repeatedly told me they are not allowed to arrest any illegal aliens unless they are violent criminals. Moreover, even to arrest those, they have to fill out about seven tedious forms AND get approval from ICE headquarters in Washington. That isn’t how a nation polices its borders and interior and enforces immigration laws. It’s how a government intentionally invents extra layers of bureaucracy to ensure that large numbers of new Obama voters and workers for greedy businesses who don’t want to pay Americans a decent wage are allowed to enter the country and stay here. The Obama-niks don’t want Arizona’s law because it betrays their claim that we need amnesty for illegal aliens because we “can’t” solve the problem. Uh, Barack, Yes. We. Can. Arizona will enforce the law and show we need to send illegal aliens packin’– not roll-out the amnesty welcome mat–to tackle the problem.

If ICE agents were allowed to do their jobs hassle-free, Arizona wouldn’t need this law. And ICE agents would be national heroes, rather than the much derided, demoralized men with guns and badges that they are. But Obama’s people–Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and ICE Moron John Morton–have emasculated them even worse than was the case under Bush. Moreoever, the Obama administration made it easier for illegal aliens to seek asylum and disappear into the U.S. before trial. It’s fitting that while President Obama is busy condemning the Arizona law enforcing laws he is duty-bound and swore to enforce but won’t, his ICE people are trying to hire Harold Hurtt, a man who opposes local cops enforcing immigration laws, to head up ICE’s program working with local cops to enforce immigration laws.

Arizona is not the only state over-run with illegal aliens. They are everywhere, taking jobs from hard-working, desperate Americans and undercutting wages. They are committing crimes against Americans–violent crimes. And they need to go.

If the feds won’t do it, the States need to pick up the slack. And Arizona has bravely taken the lead. Time for everyone to follow. Read Schlussel's article here.

Hear what Jack Cafferty has to say on CNN

6 volcanoes that could shut down the world

Excerpt: Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull wreaked havoc on European air travel, but it could have been worse. Much, much, much worse

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull caused billions of dollars in economic damage, and left millions of travelers stranded. But on the Volcanic Explosivity Index — volcanologists' tool for rating the severity of an eruption — the event rated only a two out of a possible eight. More severe eruptions cause "death and destruction" on a planetary basis, points out Simon Winchester in The Guardian. "They can darken skies and cause devastating changes in the weather. They can and do bring about the abrupt end to the existence of entire populations of animals and people" — not to mention economic damages that could run into the trillions. Here are six volcanoes worth fearing: Read about the 6 and their potential here.

Damning Report and Damnable Liars: Dems Bury Health Care Cost Report

Excerpt: The American Spectator reported, via FOX Nation:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.”

Yes, for normal people who aren’t Liar McLiarsons, the entire point of having a review like this is to find out the effects of the subject of the report prior to, you know, instituting it. Normal people do this in their daily lives; they’ll read Consumer Reports or look up reviews on the Web prior to making the purchase of a refrigerator, for goodness sake. We are talking about one sixth of our entire economy here. You would think that a review of the causative effects of the legislation would be of paramount import. Nope! Not to liars, it isn’t:

The analysis, performed by Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a “nonpolitical” office, set off alarm bells when submitted. “We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff,” says the HHS staffer, “and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.”

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote.

So. The White House had the report. Yet, President Obama was out every day prior to the stealth, sneaky, dead of night votes. He was out bald-faced lying, claiming if we would only pass the health care bill, costs would go down. Speaker Pelosi was also bald-faced lying with her “we have to pass the bill, so that you can find out what’s in the bill” line. They already knew.

And didn’t care. Read full article here.

Video: Orszag explains how ObamaCare imposes rationing

The power given to the (IPAB) Independent Payment Advisory Board by Congress and Obama in the ObamaCare bill is unprecedented and unconscionable.

Hot Air article: Not that any of this comes as a surprise to those who paid attention to the ObamaCare bill, of course. I wrote about the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) twice in December, first when the CBO scored the bill as a $130 billion deficit reduction, and the second time just before the passage of ObamaCare by the Senate. In both posts, I noted how the IPAB was set up specifically as a rationing system, which ObamaCare advocates denied, but which none other than OMB Director Peter Orszag confirms in this interview from earlier this month, caught by Naked Emperor News for Breitbart TV: View video here.

If anything, Orszag might be underestimating the difficulty in changing the IPAB’s decisions on rationing. The bill required a supermajority of 67 votes in the Senate to override the IPAB, which made Jim DeMint irate and prompted a big “I told you so” from Sarah Palin. As I wrote at the time, based on information from a Capitol Hill source:

The bill sets up a supermajority threshold of 67 votes to bring accountability to [IPAB] decisions, and the rule on being in or out of order can get waived at 60 votes. However, as this battle shows, even getting to 60 is almost an impossibility, let alone 67. Clearly [Harry] Reid wants to put accountability out of reach with these radical propositions.

ObamaCare is a rationing system, and the IPAB will be one of the key drivers for that rationing. If you don’t believe me, just listen to Orszag.

AMNESTY ASSURED TO CREATE ADDED ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Excerpt: A recent Zogby International discovered that, “…people in Mexico think that granting legal status to illegal immigrants would encourage more illegal immigration to the United States. As the top immigrant-sending country for both legal and illegal immigrants, views on immigration in Mexico can provide insight into the likely impact of an amnesty.”

Among the findings:

• A clear majority of people in Mexico, 56 percent, thought giving legal status to illegal immigrants in the United States would make it more likely that people they know would go to the United States illegally. Just 17 percent thought it would make Mexicans less likely to go illegally.

• Of Mexicans with a member of their immediate household in the United States, 65 percent said a legalization program would make people they know more likely to go to America illegally.

• Two-thirds of Mexicans know someone living in the United States; one-third said an immediate member of their household was living in the United States.

• Interest in going to the United States remains strong even in the current recession, with 36 percent of Mexicans (39 million people) saying they would move to the United States if they could. This is consistent with a recent Pew Research Center poll which found that about one-third of Mexicans would go to the United States if they could. At present, 12 to 13 million Mexico-born people live in the United States.

• An overwhelming majority (69 percent) thought that the primary loyalty of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) should be to Mexico. Just 20 percent said it should be to the United States.

• Also, 69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States.

• A plurality, 39 percent, of Mexicans thought that in the last year fewer people they know had gone to the United States as illegal immigrants compared to previous years. Only 27 percent thought more had gone.

• A plurality, 40 percent, also thought that in the last year more of the illegal immigrants they know had returned to Mexico compared to previous years. Only 25 percent thought the number returning had fallen.

• Both the bad economy and increased immigration enforcement were cited as reasons fewer people were going to America as illegal immigrants and more were coming back to Mexico. Read article here.

Whose country is this? by Patrick Buchanan

Watching the protests in Phoenix I got the feeling that many of the protesters would be deported under the new law and should have been already if the Federal Government had done their job. Another portion were probably recipients of amnesty after crossing our borders illegally back in the 70's and 80's. Buchanan has the right question, "Whose Country Is This". What about the word "illegal" don't our representatives in Washington understand?

Excerpt: We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington.

What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.

He has denounced Arizona as "misguided." He has called on the Justice Department to ensure that Arizona's sheriffs and police do not violate anyone's civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in their midst.

Obama has done everything but his duty to enforce the law.

Undeniably, making it a state as well as a federal crime to be in this country illegally, and requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" is here illegally, is tough and burdensome. But what choice did Arizona have?

The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border.

Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk.

If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California.

What we are talking about here is the Balkanization and breakup of a nation into ethnic enclaves. A country that cannot control its borders isn't really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.

Could It Really Be Noah's Ark?

Article: THE remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered 13,000ft up a Turkish mountain, it has been claimed.

A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say they have found wooden remains on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.

They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old — around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.

Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team, said: "It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it."

He said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.

The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000ft in the vicinity, Yeung said.

Local Turkish officials will ask the central government in Ankara to apply for UNESCO World Heritage status so the site can be protected while a major archaeological dig is conducted.

The biblical story says that God decided to flood the Earth after seeing how corrupt it was.

He then told Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every animal species.

After the flood waters receded, the Bible says, the ark came to rest on a mountain.

Many believe that Mount Ararat, the highest point in the region, is where the ark and her inhabitants ran aground. Read Sun News article here.

Breitbart TV B-Cast

Sign Of Times Under ObamaCare: 'The Doctor Is Out — Permanently'

This is just a preview of the article by SALLY C. PIPES which paints a bleak picture of the quality of our future health care system and the availability of qualified doctors. It is well worth the read.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama's health care bill aims to achieve universal coverage while at the same time reducing costs. In reality, this contradictory strategy will ensure that Americans enjoy less health care, of poorer quality, and from fewer doctors.

Already Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., says the public option might not be dead if insurance companies do not offer competitive rates within the exchanges. And Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has revived a proposal that gives the secretary of health and human services the power to review premiums and block any rate increase bound to be "unreasonable."

America's primary care system is already under stress. Low reimbursement rates, bureaucratic paperwork and long hours are driving family physicians out of medicine and pushing new doctors into specialized practices. Half a century ago, one in two doctors practiced general medicine. Today, 7 in 10 specialize.

And the gap is growing. A mere 1 in 12 medical-school graduates now head to family medicine. In 2009, the American Academy of Family Physicians warned that we'd be short 40,000 family doctors in a decade, if present trends continued. Today, medical schools produce one primary care doctor for every two who are needed.

ObamaCare will add strain to an already burdened system. The new bill seeks to increase the load on family doctors while holding the line on costs by putting price controls on government insurance plans. In due course, price controls on private plans will be inevitable.

The problem: Where will the docs come from? They may start coming from the bottom of the class. Or as happened in Canada under a medical system that disallows private health care, it may become cheaper to bring in International Medical Graduates from abroad than to train America's best and brightest at our own medical schools. After all, being a physician under this system will be just another government job. Read Investors.com article here.

Who You Gonna Trust?

What's there to trust? Obama ran as a moderate and is governing from the far left, as evidenced by his big government policies and staff and department appointees.

For the last 70 years, the federal government has grown in ways that would have been anathema to our founding fathers. What is happening now would have sent them to their graves.

We need a little sanity in Washington and a change in direction back to the Republic as defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Excerpt: There has been a lot said and written in the last couple of days about a new poll showing that only 20% or so of Americans "trust the government." The news is being gravely received and treated as further and redundant proof that the country is in a bad way.

To me, though, it sounds like pretty good news. We need more distrust of government for the very good reason that government is pretty much an untrustworthy enterprise. If more Americans had been inclined to distrust the government five, ten, twenty, or more years ago, we might not be in the fix we are in today and our distrust might not be so bilious.

Wouldn't it, for instance, have been a good thing if we had distrusted the entire Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac contraption which was the foundation of the housing bubble that, when it burst, led to the economic distress that has so many of us feeling distrustful and worse? If we had been a little skeptical of the government's claim that Fanny and Freddy were not backed by the full faith and etc. of the government and would not be bailed out if they got into trouble, then they might not have grown so fat on preposterous mortgages that they had to be bailed out using the full faith and etc. And we might all have jobs and more money today. But the people who ran those Government Sponsored Enterprises -- and got hog-rich doing it -- assured us that all was well. And we trusted them. Read American Spectator article here.

ObamaCare Mulligan About those lower insurance costs we promised . . . .

Democrats have found the way to ignore the Senate's procedural rules and will, most likely, pass many bills to get what they want included into ObamaCare. They already know that costs are going to skyrocket, so they want a bill that allows them, in effect, to bankrupt insurance companies, hospitals and doctors by limiting premium increases.

Excerpt: In now-they-tell-us hearings on Tuesday, the Senate health committee debated a bill that would give states the power to reject premium increases that state regulators determine are "unreasonable." The White House proposed this just before the final Obama- Care scramble, but it couldn't be included because it violated the procedural rules that Democrats abused to pass the bill.

Most of ObamaCare's unrealistic "savings" come from cranking down the way Medicare calculates its price controls, and Mr. Foster writes that they'll grow "more slowly than, and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers' costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries." He expects that 15% of hospital budgets may be driven into deficits, thus "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries." Isn't reform grand?

The official who will preside over this fiscal trainwreck is Donald Berwick, the Harvard professor and chief of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who the White House has nominated to run Medicare. Dr. Berwick explained in an interview last year that the British National Health Service has "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn." He added that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."

In fact, the real choice with medical care, as with any good or service, is between rationing via politics and bureaucratic lines or via a competitive market and prices. As Democrats are showing by trying to pass a new insurance bill, they want all U.S. health care to function like price-controlled Medicare. Dr. Berwick's job as the country's largest purchaser of health care will be to find ways to offset the higher insurance and medical costs that ObamaCare's subsidies and mandates will cause, which will inevitably mean political rationing of care. Read WSJ article here.

Ray Stevens - Throw the Bums Out

Topic of Joel Osteen's Sermon Sunday

Ephesians 3:20 (New International Version)

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,

The Federal Budget in Pictures

Click here for The Budget Chartbook.

Jim DeMint Talks to Brody File About Whether He Wants to Run for President

Senator Jim DeMint, a favorite of the Tea party movement and an influential conservative in the country tells The Brody File that while he won’t rule out running for President in 2012 he says, “It’s not something I desire”.

He also said the following that made The Brody File wonder if he’s not purposely leaving the door open just ever so slightly:

“Frankly, the people that I’ve seen here in politics I realize that I can hold my ground with any of them. There are a lot of changes I’d like to make in this country.”



Read interview here.

Chris Christie, GOP dark horse for 2012?

A bit premature but interesting. I agree with the article that, at the present time, the Republicans do not have a strong leader that represents the core values of the party. Christie is showing some "good stuff", but is not yet strong in "executive" experience and has one of my personal negatives, he is a "lawyer". I guess this can be overlooked because he was a good lawyer, a "prosecutor".

Excerpt: Suddenly, you can't go a day without stumbling upon a new glowing profile of Chris Christie from a conservative writer.

On Thursday, George Will described Christie, New Jersey's new chief executive, as "the nation's most interesting governor." Fred Barnes, in the latest Weekly Standard, devoted 1,741 words to him. And in the Wall Street Journal last week, columnist William McGurn praised Christie for "offering the voters a dose of Reagan Republicanism -- with a Jersey twist." And then there's Rush Limbaugh, who recently treated his listeners to a dramatic reading of Christie's budget address to the state Legislature.

"Is it wrong to love another man?" Limbaugh asked. "Because I love Chris Christie."

On one level, the reason for the right's sudden infatuation with the Garden State's governor is obvious. New Jersey is one of the nation's most liberal states, a place where it’s long been assumed Republicans could only win by moving to the left on social issues and cozying up to the powerful public employees unions -- and even then, they'd still need to get lucky. This was the basic blueprint used by Tom Kean and Christie Whitman, who were the only two Republicans to win statewide elections in New Jersey for 36 years -- until last November.

That's when Christie, a pro-life, anti-gay marriage Republican, unseated Jon Corzine by four points -- a landslide by New Jersey Republican standards. His victory was mainly a referendum on Corzine -- there's the getting lucky part -- but since taking office, he's happily picked a fight with the state's public school teachers, slashed the state budget by gutting local aid, and refused to extend the state's "millionaire's tax." National conservatives have never seen anything quite like this in New Jersey, so of course Christie has caught their eye. Read full article here.

Nanopatch, New Technology for Vaccinating Without Needle

Article: Researchers from the University of Queensland have come up with good news for people who fear getting vaccinated through painful syringes and suffer from needle phobia. The researchers have discovered a painless and far more effective way of vaccinating by the help of nanotechnology.

Professor Mark Kendall's, from Bio engineering and Nanotechnology team, has been credited with developing a Nanopatch which uses 100 times lesser vaccine than a syringe and also of a size of postal stamp.
The Nanopatch will prove very helpful to the nations that face shortage of vaccination and can also modernize the vaccination programs both in industrialized and developing nations.

Prof Kendall explained that Nanopatch focuses on specific antigen-presenting cells that are found beneath the skin surface; this in turn less than one-hundredth of the dose used by a needle was used to force the intended immune response.

It is noticeable that this research claims their finding to be 10 times better than any other methods. Another plus point is that the nanopatch does not even require any immune stimulants or adjuvants, not even any multiple vaccinations.

The discovery although is minute in size, but is capable of encompassing thousands of densely packed projections that cannot be seen by a human eye.

Viva Christie

Less than a year ago, I saw an article on the Tigerhawk blog showing a Chris Christie campaign stop that was almost a total no-show for supporters. My guess at that time was that Christie didn't have a chance. Well, times have changed and doing what seemed impossible in NJ, Christie is now Governor. What is more of a shock is that he is doing what he said he would do and is cutting government spending, not only by doing what is easy, but also going after the bloated education union pension and benefit plans.

Only time will tell how successful he will be, but right now, Christie is a ray of hope for all NJ citizens. Doing what is right is not always the smart thing for a politician. Perhaps, if he gets voted out in NJ, he can run for President. The federal government needs someone that preaches what Christie preaches and then walks the walk.

Excerpt: You haven’t made it in New Jersey until organized labor wants you dead. By that measure, Chris Christie is already one of the most influential governors in the Garden State’s — shall we say, colorful history. Just a few months into his term, Christie has taken the fight to the blood-engorged leech of a public sector so quickly and so hard that one teacher-union apparatchik sent an e-mail to thousands praying for his untimely demise.

But Chris Christie lives. And nearly two-thirds of the state’s bloated school budgets are not so lucky, having perished at the polls — the local tax levy proposed by each school district in New Jersey is subject to voter approval — in greater proportion than in any year since 1976. This is undoubtedly a win for New Jersey taxpayers, who recognize the necessity, if not the palatability, of Christie’s strong fiscal medicine in a state that teeters on the brink of bankruptcy even as it pays the highest tax burden in the nation.

Decades of big, bad government and a rare red mandate in a blue state have left Chris Christie with the daunting task of convincing the beneficiaries of the status quo that the party is over and that they’ll have to help clean up. The school-budget battle was the first real test of the feasibility of that program. In winning that battle by, in his words, treating voters like adults and “governing like a one-termer,” Christie may have drawn the union’s death wishes, but he just might have saved New Jersey’s life. Read full article here.

Stephen Hawking - Aliens

Excerpt: “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

A few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” Read "Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking" here.

Nullify ObamaCare in Your State With This Model Health Care Nullification Act

Excellent approach to the eventual elimination of ObamaCare. Read and send to your state representatives.

Excerpt: With so much of our freedom and prosperity at stake it is highly advisable to pursue all three strategies for stopping ObamaCare. However, there are some definite drawbacks to each method. The battle in the courts is over the principle of whether the state can mandate individuals to purchase healthcare insurance. Although this mandate is a very important provision of ObamaCare, a favorable court decision would likely not be sufficient to repeal all of the two ObamaCare laws. The presumably massive remnant of ObamaCare would likely have enough provisions to complete the federal government's takeover of healthcare in spite of any court rulings striking down the individual mandate. And, the court battle will be lengthy.

An outright repeal of the two ObamaCare bills by Congress would be ideal; however, even if the makeup of Congress changes sufficiently in both the Senate and House in the fall 2010 elections to pass repeal legislation in 2011 or 2012, President Obama could still veto it. So, that means that outright repeal would depend on electing a new President in 2012 that would favor repeal. Once again, the process is lengthy.

Nonetheless, the third strategy, nullification by state legislatures, could begin immediately in 2011 (and possibly in 2010 in those few states where such new legislation could still be introduced this year). Although the nullification strategy has the disadvantage of being unfamiliar to most Americans, it has the definite advantage of being part of the hottest current trend in state legislative initiatives, the Tenth Amendment movement to reassert state sovereignty over those powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. Nullification refers to the process by which a state passes a law declaring a certain federal law (or laws) to be null and void within that state based on the absence of constitutional authority for the federal government to pass such a law (or laws). Historian Thomas Woods has written an excellent brief history of state nullification of federal laws in his article, "The States’ Rights Tradition Nobody Knows." Nullify ObamaCare in Your State With This Model Health Care Nullification Act

The States’ Rights Tradition Nobody Knows - Nullification

For those of you that are interested in the historical background of State's "Nullification" laws, this article is a good source.

Excerpt: In 1798, the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky approved resolutions that affirmed the states’ right to resist federal encroachments on their powers. If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, warned the resolutions’ authors (James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively), it will continue to grow – regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other much-touted limits on government power. The Virginia Resolutions spoke of the states’ right to “interpose” between the federal government and the people of the state; the Kentucky Resolutions (in a 1799 follow-up to the original resolutions) used the term “nullification” – the states, they said, could nullify unconstitutional federal laws.

The States’ Rights Tradition Nobody Knows

Don Rickles Roasts Reagan - Laugh for the Day

State Dept. blame game - NY Post Article

Job losses? Redistribution of your wealth?

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's State Department is blaming US firms for failing to compete for a $5.4 million agency contract for custom embassy glassware -- even though the department never put the contract up for open bidding.

The contract caused an uproar last month because New York's Steuben Glass and other US manufacturers got stiffed, while the tiny DC firm that got it without competitive bidding doesn't even make glass, and sent the work to Sweden.

"We had conversations with a wide range of companies on this contract but at the end of the day they chose not to bid," said State spokesman P.J. Crowley.

But in comments that were anything but crystal clear, Crowley also acknowledged that Systems Design Inc. got the contract under the 8(a) minority/disadvantaged program, where awards are, by definition, not competitively bid.

"We take our commitment to awarding contracts to all types of American small businesses very seriously," Crowley said.

Fumed one source familiar with the process, "I can emphatically tell you that they never put this out to bid."

Last month, after learning about the deal from a press release, Steuben called for "a fair opportunity for businesses like Steuben Glass to bid on the contract and to help us maintain American jobs rather than sending them overseas."

As The Post exclusively revealed this week, the feds have yet to receive a single glass after paying $800,000 so far. NYPost

Goldman Sachs - Victim or Beneficiary of Gangster Government?

Michael Barone is right, Obama's rhetoric connects the Republican's with Wall Street but the facts show that the financial reform legislation before the Democrat Congress is beneficial to those very firms. Taking care of their benefactors, the Democrat say "the taxpayer be damned".

Excerpt: Fast forward to last Friday, when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Goldman Sachs, alleging that the firm violated the law when it sold a collateralized debt obligation based on mortgage-backed securities without disclosing that the CDO was assembled with the help of hedge fund investor John Paulson.

You may want to believe the denials that the Democratic commissioners timed the action in coordination with the administration or congressional leaders. But then you may want to believe there was no political favoritism in the Chrysler deal, too. The SEC complaint looks a lot like Gangster Government to me.

The Dodd bill, however, has it trumped. Its provisions promise to give us one episode of Gangster Government after another.

At the top of the list is the $50 billion fund that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp could use to pay off creditors of firms identified as systemically risky — i.e., "too big to fail."

"The Dodd bill," writes Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman, "has unlimited executive bailout authority. That's something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn't dare ask for."

Politically connected creditors would have every reason to assume they'd get favorable treatment. The Dodd bill specifically authorizes the FDIC to treat "creditors similarly situated" differently.

Republicans have been accurately attacking the Dodd bill for authorizing bailouts of big Wall Street firms and giving them unfair advantages over small competitors. They might want to add that it authorizes Gangster Government — the channeling of vast sums from the politically unprotected to the politically connected. Gangster Government Becomes a Long-Running Series By Michael Barone

Second Navy SEAL found not guilty of prisoner abuse

Two down, one to go.

Excerpt: A second U.S. Navy Seal facing charges of prisoner abuse was acquitted in Baghdad Friday.

Petty officer Jonathan Keefe's acquittal followed a similar not guilty verdict against fellow serviceman Julio Huertas on Thursday. Read NY Post article here.

Public-sector unions bankrupting America

Another example of corrupt government. Businesses are required by law to properly fund their pension plans and extravagant benefits will cripple them. Governments have no restrictions. Promise and tax. Promise and tax. Local and state taxes not enough, Congress will bail out those public employee union plans. Our taxes again.

I guess we would all like a pension like the one below.

Excerpt: Usually it takes a national government to spend itself into a debt measured in the trillions. Yet it comes as little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the corridors of federal power infects this country's 87,000 state, county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars.

The reason pension plans are headed toward financial disaster is simple. Ever-expanding public-sector unions have flexed their political muscle and larded up with lavish benefits to be be paid out decades from now. In a properly run,private-sector business, future retirement benefits are paid for using present-day contributions. This is not the case when lawmakers have the power to boost public-employee benefit packages while using accounting gimmicks to conceal and pass on the debt to future generations.

California's public-employee retirement system stands in the most perilous condition, facing a half-trillion in unfunded liabilities. That's not surprising when you consider a California highway patrol officer can retire at age 50 and collect up to 90 percent of his salary for the rest of his life. According to the agency's website, a typical officer's pay will reach $109,147 after just five years on duty - an amount that can rise significantly with overtime benefits. That means a fit and healthy 50-year-old "retiree" who began work at age 20 would receive $98,232 a year from taxpayers for the rest of his life, and nothing prevents him from taking another government job to collect two paychecks. This form of double-dipping is rampant.

While most private-sector firms have trimmed their work force during the recession to achieve more efficient and profitable operations, public agencies have expanded. State and local governments employ about 15 million individuals, a figure that has jumped up 40 percent from 1992. By 2016, the number of state and local bureaucrats is projected to reach 20 million. Too many of these people are being promised far too much money, leaving state and local systems as bankrupt as Social Security, Medicare and other multitrillion-dollar federal entitlements. Read Washington Times editorial here.

Party Affiliation Gap in U.S. Narrowest Since 2005

What is enlightening to me is the extent that the independents actually control the elections.  It is up to the Republicans to prove that democracy and free enterprise works and that they can forgo the temptation to spend taxpayers lifeblood on big government programs not related to Constitutional dictates. Read poll result analysis here.

Obama Seems Allergic to Profits

Is it too late to save our free enterprise system? A great deal of damage is being done by Congress and the Obama administration and they know that they have a limited time to enact their agenda. The process of the health care bill shows the extent they will go to get their legislation passed.

We need to elect a Congress and President who will not only stop this headlong rush to socialism, but who will reverse and repeal the damage that has been done for many, many, years.

Excerpt: Indeed, just one sentence later, Obama added one of his ubiquitous free-market qualifiers: "But a free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get however you can get it."

Excuse me? Please tell me one capitalist who believes that a free market is synonymous with a license to steal. None does. They all understand that our capitalist system operates under the rule of law. We already have laws preventing stealing, fraud, and the like. So why does he have to frame the issue in such distorted extremes? Also rhetorical.

But let me ask you something: Could Obama make the same statements about the federal government, as in, "I believe in the power of the federal government, but the federal government was never supposed to have a license to take whatever it can get however it can get it"?

Sure he could make the statement, but would he mean it? Rhetorical. Surely we all can agree that he has far more confidence in the federal government than in the invisible hand of the free market. In fact, Obama leftists these days are coming out of the woodwork to condemn conservatives and other free market advocates for believing that capitalism can possibly work without the constant heavy hand of government regulation pressing down on evil entrepreneurs for their excess profiteering.

Raised and mentored at the feet of capitalist-hating leftists, Obama repeatedly reveals a visceral distaste for profits. And I don't mean only so-called "excess" or "ill-gotten" profits, but just plain old profits. Obama thinks, like a Marxist, that profits are "surplus value" stolen by capitalists from laborers who produce the wealth.

In hot pursuit of his latest federal power grab (a complete financial overhaul), what Obama doesn't tell us is that an unregulated market wasn’t the primary cause of the financial crisis — the crisis that facilitated his ecstatic quest to transform America into a socialist state.

Rather, the cause was largely an unbridled, out-of-control, do-gooder leftist Congress that substituted its values for the wisdom of the market and incentivized and forced financial firms to make loans to people who couldn't possibly repay them, among other things. These wonderful leftist congressmen, who hold themselves out as impartial regulators, resisted Republican efforts to rein in their friends at Fannie and Freddie. Read full article here.

New Alzheimer vaccine to be tested in Europe

Excerpt: The AD02 vaccine, developed with British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, was already tested for safety and tolerability over the past year.

The clinical trials will now test its efficacy, with results expected as early as 2012, the company said.

ADO2 is meant to prevent the building up of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain, which cause the degradation of nerve cells and are believed to play a crucial role in causing Alzheimer's disease.

The vaccine works by causing the body to attack these plaques by producing more antibodies, Till Jelitto, a spokesman for Affiris, told AFP.

More specifically, these antibodies are meant to attack only the part of the beta-amyloid protein that causes the plaques, he added.

This would reduce the risk for patients, as the protein as a whole already exists in healthy individuals.

The current vaccine is therapeutic, meaning it is aimed at treating patients already affected by the disease. But if results are positive, the technology could also be used to manufacture a prophylactic, or preventative, vaccine, Jelitto said.

Read article here.

GM Pays Back TARP Loan With TARP Money? Wish I Could Do That!

Since GM recorded a loss last year, as an accountant, I was wondering where GM got the cash flow to pay back the TARP loan. I guess it is no secret now. We, the taxpayers, paid it back to ourselves???? Reason, to exclude Government Motors from a new TARP tax proposal??????? Just as unions get preferential treatment from the Democrats, GM is getting tax advantages from them, in effect, tilting the playing field in the auto industry toward GM. Wonder what Ford shareholders have to say about that. This government is totally "Chicago" and totally corrupt!

Excerpt: General Motors (GM) yesterday announced that it repaid its TARP loans. I am concerned, however, that this announcement is not what it seems. In fact, it appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.

The bottom line seems to be that the TARP loans were “repaid” with other TARP funds in a Treasury escrow account. The TARP loans were not repaid from money GM is earning selling cars, as GM and the Administration have claimed in their speeches, press releases and television commercials. When these criticisms were put to GM’s Vice Chairman Stephen Girsky in a television interview yesterday, he admitted that the criticisms were valid:

Question: Are you just paying the government back with government money?

Mr. Girsky: Well listen, that is in effect true, but a year ago nobody thought we’d
be able to pay this back.

Mr. Girsky then said that GM originally planned to pay the loan over the next five years. So the question is why—other than a desire to justify excluding GM from the administration’s TARP tax proposal—would Treasury and GM reduce GM’s TARP debt with TARP equity and then mischaracterize it as a repayment from earnings? Read Grassley letter here.

Nasa readies jumbo eye in the sky

Excerpt: The 40,000-pound (18,181kg) telescope assembly is housed behind a huge cavity door in the side of the jetliner.

"It is open to the atmosphere," explains Mr Meyer.

"There is nothing obscuring the view of the telescope itself; and on the cabin side of the bulkhead, the scientists can ride along in a shirt sleeve or airline type environment and make the astronomical measurements with science instruments that are installed on the telescope."

Nasa is completing the test flight stage of the project. The first science flights are due to take place next winter.

Sofia will explore the Universe in minute detail. It will investigate molecular clouds to find out how stars and planetary systems form.

Evidence will be sought that can help astronomers understand the origin of life by studying complex biogenic molecules. Scientists hope to learn how galaxies evolve with time by studying the dust and gas within them.

Sofia will also make measurements associated with comets and their characteristic tails. There is a long-held theory that comets, colliding with Earth millions of years ago, may have brought water and other raw materials that made life on our planet possible. Read article here.

Christian Theologian on Earth Day: ‘Climate Change Is the Totalitarian’s Dream Come True’

This is an interesting twist on the normal discourse centered on the cap & tax bill. This article approaches the subject from the religious point of view.

Excerpt: “Climate change is the totalitarian’s dream come true,” Beisner, founder of the CASC, said at a conference on Thursday at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. “It offers a rationale for government intrusion into every aspect of life for every person on Earth.”

In his speech, Beisner said that Christians should be concerned about global warming policies because they affect a myriad of issues, such as the sanctity of human life, individual liberty, the survival of free enterprise and free markets in the United States, compassion for the poor around the world, and a sovereign America with the kind of limited government envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Christians are commanded by God to care for the poor, which Beisner said would suffer the most from the kind of environmental controls and alternative energy plans proposed by both the United Nations and the U.S. Congress.

Senator Dodd’s Financial Regulation Plan: 14 Fatal Flaws

The Heritage Foundation reviewed the Senate's financial reform bill that is currently being debated and came up with 14 fatal flaws. The following is a listing of their findings and the full article explains each flaw. It appears to be a road map for the takeover and control of the whole financial industry, enabling the seizure of private property, a slush fund and "line of credit" to reward allegiance to Democrats and a "lollipop" for the trial lawyer constituency.

Not listed is the Consumer Protection Agency being established on top of the SEC, FTC, and Fed Reserve. Where is the cost savings in this.

Excerpt:
1. Creates a protected class of “too big to fail” firms.
2. Provides for seizure of private property without meaningful judicial review.
3. Creates permanent bailout authority.
4. Establishes a $50 billion fund to pay for bailouts.
5. Opens a “line of credit” to the Treasury for additional government funding.
6. Authorizes regulators to guarantee the debt of solvent banks.
7. Limits financial choices of American consumers.
8. Undermines safety and soundness regulation.
9. Enriches trial lawyers by authorizing consumer regulators to ban arbitration agreements.
10. Subjects firms to hundreds of varying state and local rules.
11. Subjects non-financial firms to financial regulation.
12. Imposes one-size-fits-all reform in derivative markets.
13. Allows activist groups to use the corporate governance process for issues unrelated to the corporation or its shareholders.
14. Does nothing to address problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I Voted Democrat Because...............

Saw this on the American Digest today and enjoyed the sarcasm.

When your friends can't explain why they voted for Democrats, give them this list. They can then pick a reason.

10. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

9. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

8. I voted Democrat because Freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

7. I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

5. I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies through abortion so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

4. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

3. I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the democrats see fit.

2. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

1. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

Potentially deadly fungus spreading in US, Canada

This is for my readers in the Northwest US and Canada. I don't know how prevalent this fungus is, but it is spreading and is deadly. Symptoms include a cough that lasts for weeks, sharp chest pain, shortness of breath, headache, fever, nighttime sweats and weight loss.

Article: WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - A potentially deadly strain of fungus is spreading among animals and people in the northwestern United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia, researchers reported on Thursday.

The airborne fungus, called Cryptococcus gattii, usually only infects transplant and AIDS patients and people with otherwise compromised immune systems, but the new strain is genetically different, the researchers said.

"This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people," said Edmond Byrnes of Duke University in North Carolina, who led the study.

"The findings presented here document that the outbreak of C. gattii in Western North America is continuing to expand throughout this temperate region," the researchers said in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000850.

"Our findings suggest further expansion into neighboring regions is likely to occur and aim to increase disease awareness in the region."

The new strain appears to be unusually deadly, with a mortality rate of about 25 percent among the 21 U.S. cases analyzed, they said.

"From 1999 through 2003, the cases were largely restricted to Vancouver Island," the report reads.

"Between 2003 and 2006, the outbreak expanded into neighboring mainland British Columbia and then into Washington and Oregon from 2005 to 2009. Based on this historical trajectory of expansion, the outbreak may continue to expand into the neighboring region of Northern California, and possibly further."

The spore-forming fungus can cause symptoms in people and animals two weeks or more after exposure. They include a cough that lasts for weeks, sharp chest pain, shortness of breath, headache, fever, nighttime sweats and weight loss.

It has also turned up in cats, dogs, an alpaca and a sheep.

Freezing can kill the fungus and climate change may be helping it spread, the researchers said.

Bringing Thunder-ous Change to New Jersey By George Will

It appears it can be done. The gap is closed, now Christie is tackling the public unions. We should have a President and Congress that takes action to balance the budget and get rid of all unnecessary agencies and spending.

Excerpt: He inherited a $2.2 billion deficit, and next year's projected deficit of $10.7 billion is, relative to the state's $29.3 billion budget, the nation's worst. Democrats, with the verbal tic -- "Tax the rich!" -- that passes for progressive thinking, demanded that he reinstate the "millionaire's tax," which hit "millionaires" earning $400,000 until it expired Dec. 31. Instead, Christie noted that between 2004 and 2008 there was a net outflow of $70 billion in wealth as "the rich," including small businesses, fled. And he said previous administrations had "raised taxes 115 times in the last eight years alone."

So he closed the $2.2 billion gap by accepting 375 of 378 suggested spending freezes and cuts. In two weeks. By executive actions. In eight weeks he cut $13 billion -- $232 million a day, $9 million an hour. Now comes the hard part.

Government employees' health benefits are, he says, "41 percent more expensive" than those of the average Fortune 500 company. Without changes in current law, "spending will have increased 322 percent in 20 years -- over 16 percent a year." There is, he says, a connection between the state being No. 1 in total tax burden and being No. 1 in the proportion of college students who, after graduating, leave the state.

Partly to pay for teachers' benefits -- most contribute nothing to pay for their health insurance -- property taxes have increased 70 percent in 10 years, to an average annual cost to homeowners of $7,281. Christie proposes a 2.5 percent cap on annual increases.

Challenging teachers unions to live up to their cloying "it's really about the kids" rhetoric, he has told them to choose between a pay freeze and job cuts. Validating his criticism by their response to it, some Bergen County teachers encouraged students to cut classes and go to the football field to protest his policies, and a Bridgewater high school teacher showed students a union-made video critical of him. Christie notes that the $550,000 salary of the executive director of the teachers union is larger than the total cuts proposed for 190 of the state's 605 school districts.

Read article here.

Earth Day

On this Earth Day, it is time that we take a step back and recognize what a good number of people and the government really want. I believe that most people are concerned about our planet and do what they feel appropriate to keep it healthy. Some overzealous well-meaning citizens want to impose their beliefs, whether supported by scientific fact or not, on everyone. And still others, including our government, use the environment as a political tool to tax and control. Many of our children have been indoctrinated in the schools to be "eco-warriors. If you read the article you will see how Emma was affected. It is time to take that step back and celebrate life on this "Earth Day".

Excerpt: Now, if the planet is not about to crash and burn, why turn children like Emma into eco-warriors? Why condition them to take three-minute showers and lambaste their elders?

The Left's underlying goal: to convince all of us that we don't matter. Our happiness, our cleanliness, our ease of living, our money, and our time...it's the government's business, not ours. While Marxist theory celebrates the proletarian, in actuality, people become interchangeable cogs in the collective wheel.

With the promotion of environmental hysteria, the government keeps the masses frightened and in survival mode. When you traumatize and terrify people, they're malleable. As stated succinctly by Adolph Hitler himself, "Terror is the best political weapon."

Another potent way to dominate people? Blame and shame them; make them feel defective if they trash a bottle or enjoy a hot bath. Self-hate and shame are unbearable states of mind. People will do almost anything to get out of them.

Simply put, the Green Meanies care about power, not the planet. Does anyone out there really believe that Obama gives a hoot about the spotted owl?