Obama blows off Congress

He has done this on immigration, is going around Congress using the EPA and Dept of Energy, and shows total disrespect for the law and the Constitutional separation of powers.

Excerpt: When the president of the United States signs a bill into law, it’s expected that he will abide by it. That’s not the case with President Obama, who has a sudden interest in novel legalistic interpretations getting him off the hook from laws he doesn’t like.

One of the presidential pet peeves is that Capitol Hill put the kibosh on his czars. Those high-level White House appointments aren’t confirmed by the Senate but are central to implementing Mr. Obama’s liberal agenda. Lawmakers specifically blocked funding for salaries and offices for four of his nine czars: health care (who coordinates Obamacare), automobile industry (“car czar”), urban affairs and climate change.

The president protested that defunding those positions “could prevent me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibilities, by denying me the assistance of senior advisers and by obstructing my supervision of executive branch officials.” Thus, he’s going to interpret the law as he sees fit.

The American system of government is based on a separation of powers, not presidential fiat. Mr. Obama should abide by every word of the 1,200-page bill passed by Congress and signed by his own hand.

Read full Washington Times article here.

Rosen: Who is Obama kidding?

Obama's rhetoric not so accurate. Surprised?

Excerpt: In his campaign speech earlier this month in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama dramatically revealed his desperate re-election strategy of class warfare and big government. He has little choice. He certainly can't run on his record, so he's going all in on his fundamental ideology.

The speech got rave reviews from the left, encouraged that Obama has rediscovered his inner self. Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne loved it. So did Robert Reich, the leading advocate for socialism in the Clinton administration during his stint as secretary of labor, although he did scold Obama for including the Tea Party with the Occupiers in a part of the speech about the debate over "the defining issue of our time." Reich asserted that "the former (Tea Party) hates government; the latter focuses blame on Wall Street and corporate greed." (And welshing on their student loans.

Obama's biggest whopper in that speech was his misrepresentation of his conservative critics. As he put it, "Their philosophy is simple. We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules." What fantasy world does he live in? Does he imagine that our government, whether Democrats or Republicans are in power, comes anywhere close or is likely to leave people to "fend for themselves and play by their own rules"?

Most importantly and appropriately, we have the Department of Defense to provide military protection. Then there's the FBI and the CIA to protect us from enemies domestic and foreign. Our water and air are protected by the Environmental Protection Agency. Interstate business is regulated by the Department of Commerce, which, unless the Supreme Court trumps Obamacare, will also mandate that we buy health insurance. Social Security protects our retirement. Medicare and Medicaid underwrite our health care. The IRS collects federal taxes from 53 percent of the population to subsidize the other 47 percent. Food stamps feed the poor; housing subsidies provide their shelter. The Americans with Disabilities Act protects the disabled. The Voting Rights Act protects minorities. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights protects everyone. The Department of Education ensures that no child will be left behind. The National Labor Relations Board, under Obama, favors labor unions at the expense of businesses. The Securities and Exchange Commission protects our investments; the FDIC, our bank accounts; the Food and Drug Administration, our food and drugs. The Consumer Product Safety Commission protects consumers.

And I'm just scratching the surface. At about 80,000 pages, the Federal Register keeps us informed about the status of mountains of laws and regulations.

These myriad departments, agencies, bureaus, commissions, committees, services, panels, etc., regulate and seek to control, to one degree or another, most every element of our personal lives and businesses.

Everybody left to fend for themselves, indeed. Who's Obama kidding?

Read full Denver Post article here.

Boeing Employees Hit Machinist Union with Charge for Discriminating against Workers in Right to Work States

It is about time non-union workers had some say in their own job security. Unions are for unions, not for the worker.

Excerpt: Washington, D.C.– Three Charleston-area Boeing company (NYSE: BA) employees filed a federal retaliation charge against the Washington State union behind the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) high-profile case against Boeing for building a new facility in South Carolina.

The Charleston-area Boeing employees filed the unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB Wednesday with free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation.

The charge comes in the wake of the recent announcement of a backroom deal cut between IAM, its Local 751 union, and Boeing officials which led to the end of the NLRB’s case. The Charleston Boeing employees, who were granted intervenor status in the case by the NLRB in Washington , D.C. , were denied participation in the hearing concluding the case.

The charge spells out how IAM union bosses abused the NLRB’s adjudicative process to bully Boeing into locating production of the company’s 737 Max and future airplane production in Washington State , which does not have a Right to Work law. The IAM union bosses’ accusations against Boeing had a chilling effect on Boeing and other companies, deterring them from locating work in South Carolina and other Right to Work states where workers can not be forced to join or pay fees to a union as a job condition.

The charge also details how IAM union bosses retaliated against the Charleston workers after the workers at the Boeing Dreamliner plant expelled the IAM from their workplace before the production line was located there. One of the employees filing the charge led the effort to remove the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union from the Charleston plant.

The charge points out that if the IAM union hierarchy still had a presence in the South Carolina plant, then the South Carolina workers’ jobs would not have been at risk. Even NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon – who issued the NLRB’s complaint against Boeing – admitted in Congressional testimony that it was inconceivable that IAM union officials would have pursued charges against Boeing if workers had not removed the union from their workplace.

“Workers should be free to choose whether or not to affiliate with a union and not have to worry about their jobs as a result,” said Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work. “The IAM union bosses’ dangerous abuse of federal labor law, which is supposedly intended to protect the rights of individual workers, has set a devastating precedent to discourage job providers from locating work in states with Right to Work laws on the books – the very states luring job providers and independent-minded workers alike.”

Meanwhile, Foundation attorneys have sent a letter to the NLRB’s Chief Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) asking him to investigate the conduct of the ALJ overseeing the NLRB’s case against Boeing in allowing the backroom deal cut between company and union officials to serve as the basis for the case’s dismissal.

Read source article here.

VIDEO: Eye-opening insight into America's youth and the entitlement society

The GOP's Answer to Union Money

Am happy to see that Republicans are getting organized in a way that might make a difference. I guess the only problem I have is that the organizers are headed by Washington insiders who are somewhat to the left of mainstream Republicans. They may stop a major calamity, but will not roll back inroads the progressives have made since FDR.

Excerpt: For Mr. Law, it was a revelation and a lesson. He concluded that the labor movement had enlarged and strengthened the coalition that helped produce Democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008.

Now, as president and CEO of the independent pro-Republican group American Crossroads (AC), Mr. Law is preparing to fund seven or eight conservative organizations and create a broad front of support for Republican candidates in 2012. As a trial run, AC gave $3.7 million to the National Federation of Independent Business, $4 million to Americans for Tax Reform, and $1.5 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee in last year's midterm election campaign. Republicans won a massive victory, and Mr. Law decided it was money well spent.

"Funding the right," as AC calls it, isn't the only political tactic Republicans are swiping from Democrats for use next year. Another is focusing on early voting in the weeks before Election Day, a tactic that helped Democrats capture both houses of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. AC tested an early-voting operation in a special House election in Nevada in September. Republican Mark Amodei won a majority of early voters and was elected handily.

The organization has also embraced two other tactics that have been applied more effectively by Democrats in recent elections than by Republicans. One is "stretching the battlefield," as a Republican consultant describes it, to make the Republican presidential candidate competitive in normally Democratic states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, for example. The other would expand the issue environment by raising subjects, such as the Solyndra solar-subsidy scandal, that voters may have heard of but failed to understand.

American Crossroads is prepared to fill the gap and spend millions of dollars on a TV blitz defending the Republican candidate and criticizing Mr. Obama to ensure that "the candidate remains viable," as a Republican operative told me. Then, in the final weeks of the campaign, AC aims to help nullify the usual Democratic advantage. That's when Democrats spend the most. Creating a balance in late spending is included in AC's playbook.

AC won't be alone in all this. The group is part of the Weaver Terrace Group, named for the location of Mr. Rove's residence (although he's since moved) where two dozen groups gathered last year to share their plans for the midterm election. Now they convene monthly in Mr. Law's office in downtown Washington.

AC will concentrate on the presidential race and a few tight House and Senate contests. The American Action Network, which was active in the 2010 campaign, is targeting House races. The new Young Guns political action committee plans to support Republican House candidates. Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch brothers, stirs grass-roots activism.

Read the full WSJ article here.

RECALL: Montanans Organize to Remove Senators Who Voted For Traitorous Detainment Bill

I am glad to see that at least one of our Senators here in SC, Jim DeMint, read the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, prior to voting. Of course the Defense Department has to be funded, but the "power hungry" elites in Washington DC managed to insert wording that should send chills up and down the spines of every American. It allows the President to make you and me disappear if we are, in his mind, a threat to the USA. I wonder if disagreement with ObamaCare, or wealth redistribution, or humongous deficits, or EPA regulations, or higher taxes, or bigger government or cap and tax, or open borders or putting our Constitution on the back burner qualify as seditious acts. My guess is that for the most vocal of us, these opinions could qualify.

I checked and found out that SC is NOT one of those states that allow for the recall of our elected officials. This is surprising in that SC is one of the most Conservative states in the Union. I guess we will have to wait until 2014 to get rid of that RINO Sen. Lindsey Graham..

Excerpt: As Americans enjoyed themselves with the holiday shopping season, Congress and the Executive branch worked tirelessly to destroy the 4th and 6th Amendments of the US Constitution, which protect an individual’s natural right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and ensure due process with evidence, witnesses, and public trial. The passage of the NDAA has prompted Senator Rand Paul to warn Americans that they could be considered terrorists for seemingly innocent activity and an an op-ed in the New York Times titled Guantanamo Forever? by U.S. Marine generals Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar argued that the new legislation would essentially nullify aspects of the Constitution, saying “due process would be a thing of the past.”

One thing is clear with the passage of this legislation, and that is those Senators and Congressman who voted for its passage are violating their oaths to support and protect the Constitution of the United States, because everything in the bill is counter to the principles outlined in our founding document. As such, concerned citizens around the country are now actively pursuing grass roots efforts to utilize a never-before enacted power of the people: the recall.

Via The Daily Kos and Sherri Questioning All:

Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86 – 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.

Montana is one of nine states with provisions that say that the right of recall extends to recalling members of its federal congressional delegation, pursuant to Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses.

Section 2 of Montana Code 2-16-603 reads:

“(2) A public officer holding an elective office may be recalled by the qualified electors entitled to vote for the elective officer’s successor.”

While the Montana Constitution (and those of other states) allows for a recall to take place, there is some question about whether these powers, which are technically undefined by the US Constitution, can be used to remove acting Congressional representatives:

The website Ballotpedia.org cites eight other states which allow for the recall of elected federal officials: Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, and Wisconsin. New Jersey’s federal recall law was struck down when a NJ state judge ruled that “the federal Constitution does not allow states the power to recall U.S. senators,” despite the fact the Constitution explicitly allows, by not disallowing (“prohibited” in the Tenth Amendment,) the states the power to recall US senators and congressmen:

“The powers not…prohibited…are reserved to the States…or to the people.” – Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The issue of federal official recall has never reached the federal courts.

Nonetheless, we may soon find out, as Montana is spearheading the movement to remove both of their Senators from office, as per the petition draft that is now circulating:

“The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S citizens:

“a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…”

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA 2011) permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, “for the duration of hostilities” in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as “task which does not end” to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001.

Those who voted Aye on December 15th, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. We the undersigned call for a recall election to be held for Senator Max S. Baucus [and Senator Jonathan Tester] and charge that he has violated his oath of office, to protect and defend the United States Constitution.”

While there may be eight other states whose Constitutions allow for the recall of federally elected officials, the US Constitution itself has reserved these rights for the people of each state, suggesting that such a recall movement can gain steam all over the country, and may be our last best hope of restoring Constitutional rule of law to America.

Read full article here.

Santorum on CNN poll: "Hard work pays off'"

Do we have a new candidate du jour?

Excerpt: Moments after a new CNN/Time/ORC International poll showed Rick Santorum surging in Iowa, the Republican hopeful attributed his late-in-the-game success to campaign grit.

Santorum, who has long said Iowa voters would come around to him eventually, said his message of social conservatism combined with strong national security was making a dent a week ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucus.

"We've always felt we could trust the people of Iowa, that when they got down to the time they were going to look at all the candidates and measure up to people they've had the opportunity to see, that they would do well," Santorum said.

Mitt Romney, who led the Iowa poll at 25%, is too inconsistent in his message, Santorum said.

"His position on Romneycare, on marriage, on cap and trade, there's a whole laundry list of issues where Mitt's been all over the map," Santorum said.

The former Pennsylvania senator said Romney's record on gay marriage was particularly egregious, saying he should have done more to oppose Massachusetts' state law.

"It's clear he had a choice and he made the wrong choice," Santorum said. "If you're looking at someone who is a conviction politician, who's not going to move around on the issues and present a clear contrast. Mitt Romney's never proven to win in an election where he had to get independents as a conservative."

Ron Paul's history of opposing foreign military action by the United States presented another concern for Santorum.

"My concern is that Ron Paul would walk in there, day one, pull our troops back and leave an enormous void around the world," Santorum said. "He can do that day one without congressional approval. He can, as commander in chief, move our troops anywhere in the world, disengage from every place from Europe to the Middle East, China, abandon the Strait of Hormuz, pull the 5th Fleet back. That's one of the reasons I think you see folks who are having second thoughts."

Read full interview here.

THE US HAS "MORE OIL THAN ALL THE MIDDLE EAST PUT TOGETHER"

Have reported on this previously, but thought a refresher was due. To not develop our own resources, and use the environment as the excuse is criminal. I guess if we burn gas from OPEC oil or Soros' Brazilian oil in our cars, it is somehow cleaner than good old American oil. Obama is pumping $'s into the pockets of George Soros who in turn is donating to Obama and his liberal Democrats. I wonder if OPEC is really funding the radical environmental movement. That would be a story for someone to break.

Excerpt: 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—

The government is, increasingly, the enemy. Imagine the jobs, the wealth, the independence, and cutting the jihad snake off at the head. There is no downside. We could easily extract that oil with minimum impact to the trees.

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota ; western South Dakota ; and extreme eastern Montana ..... check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea..' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

'This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years' reports, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL! That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight. 2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO!

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World! Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- 22-times as much oil as Iran
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen
- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

For decades, Democrats have blocked efforts to responsibly develop this nation's energy resources, transforming vast areas of opportunity into "The No Zone." (hat tip Jim)

Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

But they're funding projects in Brazil. The Wall Street Journal:

Barack Obama's pal George Soros, "The Black Hand," is heavily vested in PBR, Brazilian Petroleum, which Obama loaned money to through the US Import/Export bank -drill offshore oil and development. Which they wouldn't do here in Alaska or Utah.

Read full report here.

ONLY ONE CANDIDATE IS RIGHT ON THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES - Ann Coulter

Coulter has some great points favoring Romney.

Excerpt: In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently.

All current Republican presidential candidates say they will overturn Obamacare. The question for Republican primary voters should be: Who is most likely to win?

2012 is not a year for a wild card. It's not a year for any candidate who will end up being the issue, instead of making Obama the issue. It's not a year for one wing of the Republican Party to be making a point with another wing. (And there are no Rockefeller Republicans left, anyway.) It's not a year to be gambling that America will vote for its first woman president, or that the country is ready for a nut-bar libertarian.

Running against an incumbent president in a make-or-break election, Republicans need a candidate with a track record of winning elections with voters similar to the entire American electorate.

Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have never had to win votes beyond small, majority-Republican congressional districts.

Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have won statewide elections, but Huntsman and Perry ran in extremely red states that don't resemble the American electorate. Only Romney and Santorum have won a statewide election in a blue state, making them our surest-bets in a general election.

But if Santorum wins, we lose on the second most important issue -- illegal immigration -- and he'll be the last Republican ever to win a general election in America.

Just as Americans ought to be able to learn the perils of a welfare state by looking at Greece, we ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California.

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore.

Only Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney aren't trying to sneak through amnesty for illegal aliens. Both support E-Verify.

Numbers USA, one of the leading groups opposed to our current insane immigration policies, gives Republican presidential candidates the following grades on immigration: Paul, F; Gingrich, D-minus; Huntsman, D-minus; Santorum, D-minus; Perry, D; Romney, C-minus; and Bachmann, B-minus.

And that was before Romney said last week that Obama's drunk-driving, illegal alien uncle should be deported!

That leaves us with Romney and Bachmann as the candidates with the strongest, most conservative positions on illegal immigration. As wonderful as Michele Bachmann is, 2012 isn't the year to be trying to make a congresswoman the first woman president.

Two Little Indians sitting in the sun; one was just a congresswoman and then there was one.

Read full article here.

Tent Collapsing on Climate Change Circus - USA's and World's Economy are Disintegrating

Even with the "petri dish" countries of Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal showing signs of total economic ruin with their socialist history and "green" energy agenda, Obama is ignoring the writing on the wall and, with his EPA buddies, is embracing all of the policies that have brought those countries to the brink. Even though the Congress has rejected his "cap and tax" legislation, he is, by Executive order through the EPA, enacting much of his plan. Obama and the EPA are not happy with $3-$4 gasoline, skyrocketing electricity prices and the transfer of a significant portion of America's wealth to the Muslim OPEC countries; by shutting down our coal fired power plants, restricting oil exploration and drilling, blocking pipeline construction and supporting George Soros' oil ventures in Brazil and Colombia, he is dooming the once powerful USofA to the economic waste bin.

Four more years is all Obama needs to complete his total destruction of our economy.

Excerpt: During his 2008 campaign, President Obama made his support of climate-change interventions clear, stating that his presidency would slow the rise of the oceans and begin to heal the planet. He promised that a cap-and-trade system would curb global warming.

He was elected, but the electorate hasn’t liked many of his policies. Cap and trade never passed Congress. To this day, President Obama has remained comparatively popular, but people believe he is taking the country in the wrong direction—toward a European system. Even his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, believes our gasoline prices should be higher, like Europe’s.

While Italy is in the news for its brutal economic woes, it shares several components with the US.

Italy has a declining private sector with growth in government, disappearing industrial production being filled in with goods from China, and high gas prices/imported oil. Italians are still consuming, but now their euros are going to other countries—most notably China and the OPEC countries, resulting in exploding trade deficits. (Sound familiar?)

Climate-change mitigation adds to the problem as it artificially inflates energy prices through the troubled Ponzi-like cap-and-trade scheme and creates more government jobs, regulation, fees, and hidden taxes. With the increasing production costs, industry declines and unemployment rises. Over time, some of those put out of work in industry may get absorbed by government—which keeps the unemployment numbers from looking as grim as they might without the government jobs. Government jobs do not create wealth, as mining and farming do, but like a funhouse mirror, they distort the true picture.

All of the above sounds eerily similar to the US—except we did not sign on to the Kyoto protocol, nor did we pass cap-and-trade legislation. However, President Obama has not given up on his plans to “curb global warming.” Instead of cap and trade, we have the EPA directed by President Obama’s appointee, Administrator Lisa Jackson—who, by her own admission, aims to level the playing field. The EPA is doing everything it can to raise the cost of energy, which, if left unabated, will continue the demise of American industry and the growth of the government sector—resulting in exploding trade deficits. (Sound familiar?)

Back to Italy. In EU terms, Italy is one of the “poor” countries—along with the other Club Med countries: Greece, Spain and Portugal. In the mini-global government known as the EU, the “wealthy” countries no longer want to carry the “poor” ones.

Germany and Italy are both EU members and in good times, Italy’s growing government sector could mask the harsh economic realities. By comparison to Italy, Germany has abundant energy supplies from nuclear and coal-fueled power, a strong industrial sector, and a good work ethic. Germany “has”; Italy “has not.” In EU terms, Germany is expected to carry Italy—but they don’t want to.

The US “has” abundant energy supplies; the EU “has not.” The EU has to depend on schemes like carbon trading, about which Rob Elsworth of the climate-campaign group Sandbag in London said: “is a pretty important revenue stream for most member states.” He asks, “If you take away this green-economy narrative, what's really left of Europe?”

The EU’s economic crisis provides the US with living proof that we do not want to play in the global-government game where the “haves” are expected to carry the “have nots.” We have the resources; we still have industry; and we still have a good work ethic. Will we use them to save America and the free market system that has allowed us to grow to strength, or will we be drawn into the green big top?

Read full Townhall report here.

Twenty years later, with Putin, the Soviet model still prevails in Russia

Those of us here in America have watched Putin slowly consolidate his power base and take Russia steadily back to the Russia of old. Now it appears that the Russian people have awakened and are demonstrating against the corruption of the Putin regime. Will it be enough, or will the people of Russia again be subjected to the will of an elite few?

Excerpt: Post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s was a brutish, free-for-all crony capitalist state. To be sure, the revolution had certainly achieved more freedoms for ordinary Russians and more opportunities, but the common man sensed something was wrong, something was amiss amid the oligarch deals and the declining growth rates and the whiplash economy. Older Russians pined nostalgically for a mythical past.

Enter Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man of the old guard, willing to knock heads with the "new guard" elite that looked to many Russians like mere opportunists, and spinning a narrative that Russia could be "great" once again, as it was in Soviet days. Of course, there was nothing "great" about a state that had killed more than 20 million of its people in forced famines, secret prisons and gulags, dramatically underperformed its economic potential, crushed all forms of dissent, and subjugated peoples across Eastern and Central Europe through violence and intimidation.

But history did not matter. The chest-thumping nationalist on a white horse had arrived. The Russian cavalry would make Russia "great" again, and the KGB man with a taste for daredevil sports and manly displays of strength stormed through Russian politics.

The economic growth numbers were impressive. The former Communist state had become fashionable in investment circles. It made up a letter in the most famous acronym in the history of investing: the BRICs. Mr Putin seemed genuinely popular. He won elections with relative ease.

But the old KGB man never seemed comfortable with the free flow of ideas and opposition and political differences that come with a democracy. He preferred "managed democracy", one that limited candidates and muzzled opponents and silenced noisy media critics. It seemed to work through his first eight years in office, but when his mandated terms came to an end, he chose not to leave the stage. He lurked in the background as "prime minister" and now has announced another run for the presidency next year.

A sizeable number of Russians have grown weary of the Putin show and all that it entails: the "managed" media, the "managed" democracy and the "managed" economy. They are weary of the corruption: Russia stands alongside Nigeria and Uganda in the Transparency International Index of corruption - nothing "great" about that company.

And so Mr Putin faces his most critical test to date. On Saturday, some 100,000 Russians took to the streets of Moscow to protest what they deemed a rigged parliamentary election earlier this month. Mr Putin's United Russia party won nearly 50 per cent of the vote, a fall from their near two-thirds majority in the 2007 elections, but still a cause of suspicion among Russia's emerging middle class.

In 1991, in those fateful weeks, decades happened. While the stand-off today is likely to be less dramatic, the opposition protests represent the most vital test for the post-Soviet state since the rise of Putin 12 years ago. The next few weeks and months will decide Russia's coming decades.

Read full article here.

Celine Dion - O Holy Night

Synchronized Christmas lights - Carol of the Bells

The Amazing Grace Christmas House

Obama Christmas Carol Parody

"President Obama Just Stated That He Can Have ANY American Citizen Killed!" Jonathon Turley

Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers Up to $250K Per Vehicle

Another example of Obama's idiocy.

Excerpt: Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle.

GM has estimated they’ve sold 6,000 Volts so far. That would mean each of the 6,000 Volts sold would be subsidized between $50,000 and $250,000, depending on how many government subsidy milestones are realized.

“It just goes to show there are certain folks that will spend anything to get their vision of what people should do,” said State Representative Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills. “It’s a glaring example of the failure of central planning trying to force citizens to purchase something they may not want. … They should let the free market make those decisions.”

Read full article here.

‘BRAIN PILL’ COULD TREAT ALZHEIMER’S…OR RESULT IN ‘SUPER HUMAN MEMORY’

Although a few years away, this could be great news for those early onset sufferers. Let's hope it pans out.

Excerpt: Finding that gamma interferon could suppress the PKR molecule and result in increased communication between neurons led the researchers to create a drug to inhibit the molecule. Kresimir Krnjevic, a professor emeritus in neurophysiology at McGil University and contributor to the study, told the Sun that this was the first time improved memory had been seen from the association between PKR and gamma interferon. According to the Sun, the team injected this inhibitor into mice stomachs with success, shedding positive light the potential for an ingestable drug.

The researchers say that a pill version for clinical trials of the suppressor is at least a few years away, depending on funding and lab research. Costa-Mattioli told the Sun that since even healthy people could take the pill and develop a “superhuman memory”, although that‘s not the research’s aim

In 2011, Alzheimer’s was named the sixth leading cause of death in the United States — the only one among the top 10 that is not preventable — according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Read full article here.

Condoleezza Rice: Excellent Choice For Republican VP!

Would make a lot of sense.

Excerpt: America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.

After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.

Ready indeed. She still rises at 5:30 a.m. and runs through a vigorous P90X workout. (Her guns are now a match for those of first lady Michelle Obama.) Sure, she’s been playing a lot of golf, and no doubt banging on the piano (sometimes with cellist Yo-Yo Ma), but she’s clearly ready for more.

Her addition to the ticket, which wouldn’t come until late next summer, would dramatically change the dynamics of the 2012 election. As a black woman - her family has roots in the Deep South stretching back to before Civil War era, and worked as sharecroppers after emancipation - she would mute Democrats’ charges of racism among conservatives, especially tea party members. And her sex would likely prompt moderate women to take a serious look at the Republican ticket.

Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.

Read full Washington Times article here.

Gingrich: Send U.S. Marshals To Arrest Activist Judges? Not Really!

The details of this piece do not support the headline. This is sensationalism at its best. Escorting judges to Congress to force judges to testify is not the same as arresting them. Judges today are making more damaging laws than Congress does and are reshaping our society in a way that favors the far left. Something has to be done to stop the liberal hogwash that is coming from the bench and they should be held accountable for their usurpation of Congressional authority.

Excerpt: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich showed no sign Sunday of letting up on his assault on “activist” federal judges. During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich suggested the president could send federal law enforcement authorities to arrest judges who make controversial rulings in order to compel them to justify their decisions before congressional hearings.

When asked by host Bob Schieffer how he would force federal judges to comply with congressional subpoenas, Gingrich said he would send the U.S. Capitol Police or U.S. Marshals to arrest the judges and force them to testify.

Gingrich, who in recent weeks has surged to the front of the pack in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has come under fire from the left and the right for his attacks on the federal judiciary. Michael Mukasey, former attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, said some of Gingrich’s proposals were “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle.”

Read full report here.

Capitalism and the Right to Rise - Jeb Bush

Laws, rules and regulations are stifling our economic and personal growth.

Excerpt: Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: "The right to rise."

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn't seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing. People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings.

But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself.

Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

Read full opinion piece here.

National Review Editor Praises Gingrich

This lends some balance to the criticism. I'm not too surprised that the "Republican establishment" is so vehemently against Gingrich. I am not at all surprised that the liberal media is laying off Romney, a candidate they consider to be the weaker of the two, and one they could live with if he were somehow elected. Gingrich is a true smaller government Conservative with some nutty ideas that could easily be controlled by a Republican majority in Congress. He scares the **** out of "government is my home" Democrats and RINOs.

Excerpt: National Review contributing editor and columnist Andrew C. McCarthy says Newt Gingrich is a strong conservative with a significant track record — and countered his own publication's editorial criticizing the former House speaker.

In McCarthy's online column posted Saturday, he wrote: "I respectfully dissent from National Review's Wednesday evening editorial."

McCarthy continued: "Regarding former Speaker Gingrich, I have no objection to the cataloguing of any candidate’s failings, and Newt has certainly made his share of mistakes. But there ought to be balance — balance between a candidate’s failings and his strengths, balance between the treatment of that candidate and of his rivals. The editorial fails on both scores."

In his own column, entitled "Gingrich's Virtues," McCarthy seeks to offer that balance.

"Gingrich’s virtues are shortchanged," McCarthy argues, "His great accomplishment in balancing the federal budget is not even mentioned, an odd omission in an election that is primarily about astronomical spending."

He added that National Review had not offered similar critiques of other GOP candidates with liberal records.

"Nevertheless, if the Editors were enterprising enough, they could just as easily write a similar editorial, with the same tone of alarm, about, say, Governor Romney or Governor Huntsman," McCarthy said.

McCarthy recounted some of Gingrich's spectacular conservative successes:

"Gingrich is the candidate who can say he actually wrestled the federal budget into balance . . . "
“In an election about the imperative to repeal Obamacare, Gingrich is the candidate who helped defeat Hillarycare — by comparison, Governor Romney ushered in a health-care system that became a model for Obamacare (and he stubbornly continues to insist that it was a great achievement — the main reason he can’t crack the 25 percent ceiling in most polls)."
"Gingrich is the candidate who reformed welfare — which, the Editors acknowledge, is 'the most successful social policy of recent decades.'”


Read more on Newsmax.com: National Review Editor Praises Gingrich, Slams Editorial
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Read full article here.

Misbegotten Constitutional Principle Stifles Competition - Free Market Is Circumvented

This is a little known case that could have a great impact on judicial decisions of the future and help shrink the boundaries of the Federal Government. Rather than letting the free market pick the winners and losers, the elitists in government believe they have, not only the right, but the obligation to do what is necessary to advance their omniscient point of view. Let's hope the courts decision here will bring our lofty representatives' feet back down to the ground.

Excerpt: In 1927, seven years before the board game was created, Washington state decided to play monopoly.

It gave a private interest the exclusive right to operate a ferry on 55-mile long Lake Chelan in the northern Cascade Mountains.

The state apparently will defend this folly until Judgment Day, when state officials will get an earful from the Creator who — we have Jefferson's word for this — endowed everyone, including Jim and Cliff Courtney, with the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Courtney brothers' happiness would be enlarged if they could operate a competing ferry. But 84 years ago Washington state asserted a principle much favored by all of America's governments, the principle that it may parcel out certain economic liberties sparingly and only to those who can prove to government that their exercise of their liberty will satisfy some government-concocted criteria.

That principle lacks constitutional warrant and repudiates the nation's foundational philosophy. Hence the national importance of the Courtney brothers’ litigation, which asks courts to correct judicial mistakes of 1873 and 1938.

The brothers live in Stehekin on the lake's northern tip and provide recreational services to people who manage to get there from Chelan on the lake's southeast end. But people can get to Stehekin only by plane or boat. And during the summer season, when the boat schedule is most convenient, the two boats operated by the state-conferred monopoly make only one trip a day in each direction, and both depart at the same time in the same direction.

But before the Courtney brothers can give travelers a better choice, they must receive from the state a "certificate of public convenience and necessity." The burden is on them to prove that the current monopolist's service is not "reasonable and adequate." At least four would-be competitors tried and failed to get such a certificate; the most recent attempt generated a 515-page transcript.

The Courtney brothers are represented by the Institute for Justice, which battles government infringements of individuals' liberties — particularly economic liberties. In an 1873 decision, the Supreme Court (divided 5-4) defined Americans' "privileges or immunities" — the 14th Amendment's language meaning rights — narrowly. The court recognized only a few rights, mostly essential to national citizenship, and not including economic liberty.

In 1938, the court bowed to the progressive desire to empower government to allocate wealth and opportunity. The court decided — without citing a supportive constitutional text, there being none — that economic liberty should be assigned a status markedly inferior to that of "fundamental" liberties. This spurious dichotomy jettisoned America's natural rights tradition reflected in the Ninth Amendment's protection of unenumerated rights "retained by the people."

The Courtneys' litigation is a little lever that could move the entire nation back toward the Founders' vision. It will do so if it advances the presumption of liberty. This, says Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett, is the principle that the government must be required to justify its restrictions on liberty, rather than requiring citizens to prove that the liberty they wish to exercise is somehow "fundamental" and therefore not an optional gift from government.

The Courtneys deserve judicial engagement where judges actively judge in defense of economic liberty. This means active enforcement of the principle that neither Congress nor the states are entitled to determine the limits of their powers. The Constitution made this determination before the mistakes of 1873 and 1938.

Read full George Will article here.

Constitution Repealed - Obama Signs NDAA Martial Law

More info on failed telephone protest. We here in SC must rid ourselves of Lindsey Graham along with Obama.

The Excellence Gap - Our public schools are shortchanging their best students.

In reading this article, I had to disagree with one of the author's conclusions in that "Democrats and Republicans need to reunite and recognize that federal support for elite education—above all, in math and science—is essential for advancing America’s economic success."

Being one of the proponents of the original NCLB legislation, the author has a vested interest in staying with the Federal Government as a cure all. I am happy to see that charter schools are now in the mix.

It is my feeling that the education of our children should be left at the local level and that the Department of Education should be assigned to the trash bin. There is absolutely no proof that the Feds have had any favorable influence on our education system.

Excerpt: If an out-of-control national debt weren’t reason enough to worry about America’s global competitiveness, here’s another. Virtually all education reformers recognize that America’s ability to remain an economic superpower depends to a significant degree on the number and quality of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians graduating from our colleges and universities—scientific innovation has generated as much as half of all U.S. economic growth over the past half-century, on some accounts. But the number of graduates in these fields has declined steadily for the past several decades. A report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation concludes that “bachelor’s degrees in engineering granted to Americans peaked in 1985 and are now 23 percent below that level.” Further, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 6 percent of U.S. undergraduates currently major in engineering, compared with 12 percent in Europe and Israel and closer to 20 percent in Japan and South Korea. In another recent study, conducted by the Conference Board of Canada, the U.S. scored near the bottom relative to major European countries, Canada, and Japan in the percentage of college graduates obtaining degrees in science, math, computer science, and engineering. It’s likely no coincidence that the World Economic Forum now ranks the U.S. fifth among industrialized countries in global competitiveness, down from first place in 2008.

Making matters worse is mounting evidence that America’s best students—kids we’re counting on to become those engineers, scientists, and mathematicians—have had a drop-off in academic performance over the past decade. A recent Thomas B. Fordham Institute study finds that the country’s highest-performing students in the early grades are losing some of that advantage as they move through elementary school and into high school.

Ironically, one reason for their slipping performance is almost certainly the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, the most significant federal education-reform legislation of the past half-century. Partisan squabbling has stalled congressional reauthorization of NCLB for two years. But NCLB became law thanks to a rare bipartisan consensus that U.S. public schools were failing to turn out high school graduates who could flourish in a technology-based economy.

Read full article here.

Jim Jones bucks Obama on Keystone XL pipeline

It is a sad day when the President of the United States would go against common sense and the economic welfare of the American people to placate the far left environmentalists, part of his voting block. The project has been studied to death for the past three years and now they say 60 days is not enough time to finish the analysis. Coincidentally, the amount of time needed puts us about 1 second past the 2012 elections.

Excerpt: Former National Security Advisor Jim Jones called today for quick action on the Keystone XL pipeline construction, directly opposing the White House he worked for only a few months ago.

Jones, who rarely speaks in public and almost never contradicts his former boss President Barack Obama, lashed out against the administration in a press call and warned of grave consequences to U.S. national security if the project to build the pipeline doesn't move forward immediately. The call was sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute and Jones was joined on the call by API President and CEO Jack Gerard.

"In a tightly contested global economy, where securing energy resources is a national must, we should be able to act with speed and agility. And any threat to this project, by delay or otherwise, would constitute a significant setback," said Jones. "The failure to [move forward with the project] will prolong the risk to our economy and our energy security" and "send the wrong message to job creators."

The comments come at the worst possible moment for the Obama administration, which is trying to beat back an effort from congressional Republicans to attach language that would force a decision on the pipeline to legislation that extends unemployment insurance and the payroll tax holiday for middle class Americans.

Obama has promised to veto any bill that comes to his desk with the Keystone XL pipeline language, and the State Department has said that if it is forced to come to a quick decision on the pipeline, that decision would be no because there has not been enough time to properly evaluate environmental and logistical considerations.

Jones said the project was an important piece of the U.S.-Canada relationship and that if the United States doesn't act, Canada may decide to cancel the project and give its energy resources to the Chinese. He also said if they United States doesn't move forward with the pipeline, that would be another signal of fading U.S. leadership in the world.

"If we get to a point where the nation cannot bring itself to do, for whatever reason, those things that we all know is in our national interest... then we are definitely in a period of decline in terms of our global leadership and in terms of our ability to compete in the 21st century," said Jones.

Read full report here.

Voter ID's

VIDEO: Best Conservative Arguments Against Liberals

Congress to Approve Keystone Pipeline Provision in Budget Deal

It is about time the Republicans stick to their guns.

Excerpt: A Senate source tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that congressional leaders have worked out a two-month budget deal that includes a fully-funded extension of the payroll tax cut. The deal will also require the Obama administration to decide within 60 days on whether or not it will approve construction of the Keystone oil pipeline. President Obama has threatened to veto any deal that includes the Keystone pipeline provision.

Read original Weekly Standard posthere.

A STORY ABOUT A LITTLE BOY'S FAVORITE ANIMAL:

Our teacher asked what my favorite animal was, and I said, "Fried chicken."

She said I wasn't funny, but she couldn't have been right, because everyone else laughed.

My parents told me to always tell the truth. I did. Fried chicken is my favorite animal.

I told my dad what happened, and he said my teacher was probably a member of PETA.
He said they love animals very much.

I do, too. Especially chicken, pork and beef. Anyway, my teacher sent me to the principal's office.

I told him what happened, and he laughed, too. Then he told me not to do it again.

The next day in class my teacher asked me what my favorite live animal was.

I told her it was chicken. She asked me why, so I told her it was because you could make them into fried chicken.

She sent me back to the principal's office. He laughed, and told me not to do it again.

I don't understand. My parents taught me to be honest, but my teacher doesn't like it when I am.

Today, my teacher asked us which famous person we admire the most. I told her, "Colonel Sanders."

Guess where I am now...

Saul Alinski Scare Tactics Used Against Pro-Scott Walker Teachers

SEVEN REASONS WHY BUYING AN ELECTRIC CAR (Chevy Volt?) MIGHT BE A TERRIBLE IDEA

The few people that have bought the Chevy Volt should have read this article prior to wasting their money and the taxpayers' money on failed technology that has the reverse effect on the environment than what was expected. The government at its worst.

Excerpt: a great idea, right? Think about it: instant torque, few moving parts, and relatively easy maintenance. But in reality, there are so many downsides to owning an electric vehicle (EV) that the fact that major car companies have brought them to market without first addressing these issues is baffling.

[Editor's note: Hybrids, although successful, have been excluded from this discussion because of their reliance on gas; they cannot be considered "true" electric vehicles.]

Here are some of the reasons why buying an EV is a terrible idea (as listed by Business Insider):

1. Limited Range

2. Long Charge Times (up to 20 hours)

3. Infrastructure (limited number of charging stations)

4. Cost

5. Pollution (surprise)

6. Government (normal costly screw-ups)

7. Ease of Gasoline

Read full The Blaze article here.

Corzine, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the Rule of Law

It will be interesting to see if the Congress and the Democrats go after one of their own and enforce the provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Excerpt:  “I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine’s prepared testimony read. “I do not know which accounts are unreconciled or whether the unreconciled accounts were or were not subject to the segregation rules.”

Sarbanes-Oxley requires him as the CEO of a company to (1) guarantee that effective risk controls and rules are in place and (2) monitor their compliance. It renders failure to do so — that is, the old-fashioned “I didn’t know” defense that was routinely used after 2000-era failures in the Internet space – a felony.

Now of course Mr. Corzine is entitled to the presumption of innocence and he is entitled to a trial before being pronounced guilty, but the law on this point is clear: Executives, the CEO and CFO in particular, are required under Sarbanes-Oxley to factually know about matters such as this and they are required to attest to that knowledge — and the presence of appropriate and sufficient risk controls under penalty of felony indictment.

It appears that Mr. Corzine has admitted in front of a Congressional Committee that he does not know, and therefore this appears to be a prima-facie admission that he is in direct violation of this law.

If this is not dealt with on an expeditious fashion and the law is not enforced you have just seen proof on national television that there is no longer a rule of law in this nation of any substance.

You must, therefore, presume that there is no longer any Constitutional protection afforded to you and you thus have no rights and no recourse to the law of any sort. Your “rights” have just been downgraded to only that which you are willing and able to personally enforce at any instant in time.

This in turn means that it is impossible for you to engage in any sort of commercial transaction where performance cannot be verified before you hand over payment in full, because you have no means of compelling the other party to perform and no recourse of any sort to the law, nor do you have any expectation that someone who violates the law, irrespective of who it is, will be held to account.

Read full article here.

Obama's Debt

Bush Is Not To Blame!

This is just a History lesson. I am sending it to all regardless of party . I bet I know who wouldn't read it -- those afraid of the truth. It is history and nothing can change it. The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd,2007,the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.

The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is "Bush's Fault", think about this:

January 3rd, 2007, the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:

The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77

The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%

The Unemployment rate was 4.6%

George Bush's Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION! Remember that day...

January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES! THANK YOU DEMOCRATS, especially Barney for taking us from 13,000 DOW, 3.5 GDP and 4.6% Unemployment...to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES! Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie and Freddie, starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy. Barney Frank blocked it and called it a "Chicken Little Philosophy" (and the sky did fall!)

And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? OBAMA.

And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? OBAMA and the Democrat Congress, especially BARNEY. So when someone tries to blame Bush... REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007.... THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!"

Bush may have been in the car but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel and they were driving the economy into the ditch.

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January, 2007 is the Democratic Party. Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 and 2009 as well as 2010 and 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budget. And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009.

Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is "I inherited a deficit that I voted for,
and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th." There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

"The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living." This is just a History lesson.

Anonymous

Phoenix sued over paying for union leaders’ salaries and benefits

Politicians on both the left and the right have for decades given in to union demands, demands for benefits that far exceed those of non-union employees. It is easy for politicians to spend “other peoples’ money”, and in the process create a “Frankenstein monster”, in this case a glutinous union that has its own expansion and well being at heart, and not that of the people who its members are hired to serve. Even FDR, ultra-liberal that he was, said that public employee unions should be prohibited and, if allowed to exist, would be impossible to control. Here’s hoping the lawsuit prevails.

Excerpt: PHOENIX — Paying top city employees to work exclusively for public employee unions was challenged as an unconstitutional giveaway of taxpayer money in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Maricopa County Superior Court.
City officials had no immediate comment.

The suit seeks to end the practice of “release time,” under which city workers draw full pay and benefits even though they are released from their regular jobs to work for labor unions that represent municipal workers.

It was filed by the Goldwater Institute, a non-partisan government watchdog organization, on behalf of two Phoenix taxpayers, William Cheatham and Marcus Huey. (Flatten is an investigative reporter for the Institute.)

All seven of the unions that represent Phoenix city workers are allowed to have their top officials released from their government jobs to work full time for the unions, an investigative report by the Goldwater Institute revealed in September. The total cost to Phoenix taxpayers is about $3.7 million per year, based on payroll records supplied by the city.

In all, more than 73,000 hours of annual release time for city workers to conduct union business at taxpayers’ expense are permitted in the agreements.

Read full article here.

Gingrich: John Bolton will be my secretary of state

Bolton has appeared many times on FOX News and is extremely knowledgeable. He does not see the terrorist threat through rose colored glasses like Obama and Clinton, and I believe would be invaluable to Newt as a foreign policy adviser.

Excerpt: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich promised conservatives on Tuesday he would ask former U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton to be his secretary of state if he’s elected president next year, according to several of those who met with him.

Hours later he repeated that vow publicly to the Republican Jewish Coalition, winning a round of applause.

“If he accepts it, I will ask John Bolton to be secretary of state,” said the former House speaker, who national polls show has vaulted to the top of the Republican presidential field and leads in three of the first four states that will vote for the next Republican nominee.

During the closed-door meeting in Arlington, Mr. Gingrich spoke and fielded questions for about two hours from 70 conservatives, and many said afterward that they came away impressed.

Asked by one questioner how he could assure conservatives he would be trustworthy, Mr. Gingrich volunteered that he would tap Mr. Bolton, a hero to conservatives who served President George W. Bush first as the State Department’s top nonproliferation official and then as an outspoken ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Bolton’s strong views and skepticism of multilateral bodies like the United Nations, and Mr. Bush named him as a recess appointment to the U.N. ambassadorship after Senate Democrats refused to confirm him.

Mr. Gingrich’s statement that Mr. Bolton would be his pick to head the State Department drew applause from the conservatives.

“John Bolton is certainly extremely well thought of by those in the conservative movement who care about national security, and I would certainly love to see him as secretary of state,” said Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a leading social conservative.

Read full Washington Times article here.

ACORN Being Funded Through The Justice Department In Violation Of The Law?

Where is the prosecution of the government agencies that violated the Congressional law defunding ACORN? Maybe we need a Congressional enforcement division to keep the Administration from having to police itself.

Excerpt: Now, the Justice Department's own Inspector General released a report that exposes corruption surrounding a $138,130 grant that OJJDP awarded to an ACORN branch in New York City. The IG's audit found that there were internal control weaknesses, unsupported grant expenditures, lack of contractor monitoring, weaknesses in budget management, inadequate grant reporting, unmet conditions and deficiencies with the program’s overall performance.

The IG also describes the New York group as a “pass-through entity” for ACORN, the crooked nonprofit that’s raked in huge sums of taxpayer dollars over the years. In 2009, Congress actually passed a law (Defund ACORN Act) to ban federal funding for ACORN after a series of exposés about the group’s illegal activities, which include fraudulent voter registration drives and involvement in the housing market meltdown.

The group has close ties to President Barack Obama, who worked for ACORN as a "community organizer" in Chicago, prior to embarking on his political career.

Earlier this year a Judicial Watch probe found that the Obama Administration violated the ban on federal funding for ACORN by giving the beleaguered group nearly $80,000 to “combat housing and lending discrimination” against minorities.

After sorting through droves of government records, Judicial Watch investigators discovered that an ACORN affiliate in New Orleans, ACORN Housing Corporation Inc., got $79,819 as part of a larger $40 million allocation to “fair housing organizations” that educate the public and combat discrimination.

This year Judicial Watch also published a special report about the organization’s transformation into various spinoffs and affiliated groups. Amid a massive fraud scandal and a series of criminal probes, ACORN supposedly dismantled but the reality is that it simply changed its name.

For instance, under the rebranding New England United 4 Justice, ACORN has been one of the driving forces behind the movement to end economic segregation and social injustice in the U.S. culminating in the current Occupy Wall Street movement.

In fact, former Obama colleague and Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, was recently hired by Occupy Wall Street and he's being paid by the groups funding the OWS protests, such as the Tides Foundation, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and George Soros' front organizations.

Read full Examiner article here.

Modeling Computers After The Human Brain?

Interesting article in the NYTimes about artificial intelligence.

Excerpt: Yet the principles of biology are gaining ground as a tool in computing. The shift in thinking results from advances in neuroscience and computer science, and from the prod of necessity.

The physical limits of conventional computer designs are within sight — not today or tomorrow, but soon enough. Nanoscale circuits cannot shrink much further. Today’s chips are power hogs, running hot, which curbs how much of a chip’s circuitry can be used. These limits loom as demand is accelerating for computing capacity to make sense of a surge of new digital data from sensors, online commerce, social networks, video streams and corporate and government databases.

To meet the challenge, without gobbling the world’s energy supply, a different approach will be needed. And biology, scientists say, promises to contribute more than metaphors. “Every time we look at this, biology provides a clue as to how we should pursue the frontiers of computing,” said John E. Kelly, the director of research at I.B.M.

Dr. Kelly points to Watson, the question-answering computer that can play “Jeopardy!” and beat two human champions earlier this year. I.B.M.’s clever machine consumes 85,000 watts of electricity, while the human brain runs on just 20 watts. “Evolution figured this out,” Dr. Kelly said.

In designing chips that bear some structural resemblance to the brain, so-called neuromorphic chips, neuroscience was a guiding principle as well. Brains are low-power, nimble computing mechanisms — real-world proof that it is possible.

A brain does its computing with a design drastically different from today’s computers. Its processors — neurons — are, in computing terms, massively distributed; there are billions in a human brain. These neuron processors are wrapped in its data memory devices — synapses — so that the brain’s paths of communication are extremely efficient and diverse, through the neuron’s axons, which conduct electrical impulses.

A machine that adopts that approach, Dr. Modha said, would represent “a crucial shift away from von Neumann computing.” He was referring to a design with processor and memory physically separated and connected by a narrow communications channel, or bus, and operating according to step-by-step sequential methods — the von Neumann architecture used in current computers, named after the mathematician John von Neumann.

Read full NYTimes article here.

The Heartbeat Bill

I guess my beliefs are somewhat mixed. The Heartbeat Bill being considered in Ohio does not exclude pregnancies due to rape or incest. I believe a woman has a choice to engage in sexual relations or not, and knows full well the possible consequences. In the case of rape or incest, she has no choice before the fact, but afterward should be given the choice to abort or not to abort.

Excerpt: But now many activists and evangelical Christian groups are pressing for an all-out legal assault on Roe. v. Wade in the hope — others call it a reckless dream — that the Supreme Court is ready to consider a radical change in the ruling.

The rift widened last month over a so-called personhood amendment in Mississippi that would have barred virtually all abortions by giving legal rights to embryos. It was voted down but is still being pursued in several states.

Now, in Ohio, a bill before the state legislature that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, usually six to eight weeks into pregnancy, is the latest effort by activists to force a legal showdown. The so-called heartbeat bill is tearing apart the state’s powerful anti-abortion forces.

Ohio Right to Life, which has been the premier lobby, and the state Catholic conference have refused to support the measure, arguing that the court is not ready for such a radical step and that it could cause a legal setback. But the idea has stirred the passions of some traditional leaders, even winning the endorsement of Dr. John C. Willke of Cincinnati, the former president of National Right to Life and one of the founders of the modern anti-abortion movement.

“I was Mr. Incremental,” Dr. Willke, 87, said of his career promoting the more modest restrictions. “But after nearly 40 years of abortion on demand, it’s time to take a bold step forward.”

Dr. Willke, who in 1971 created what became Ohio Right to Life, called his onetime organization out of touch with the “unrestrained enthusiasm” that the heartbeat bill has unleashed and that he said is emerging in many other states.

Mark S. Gietzen, director of the Kansas Coalition for Life, called the bill “the most exciting thing that has happened in the pro-life movement since Roe v. Wade,” adding that a heartbeat bill modeled on Ohio’s would be introduced when the Kansas Legislature convenes in January.

Conservative evangelical groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association have endorsed both the personhood and heartbeat approaches. Matthew D. Staver, dean of the law school at Liberty University, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, said that National Right to Life had “lost its legitimacy” and was “on the wrong side of advancing human life protections.”

Michael Gonidakis, the executive director of Ohio Right to Life, called the internal split “a difference over tactics.” He noted that anti-abortion forces have won several important legislative victories in the state this year and that a large majority of local chapters remained on board. “We’ve tried to shine light on the unintended consequences of the heartbeat bill,” he said. “This division is unfortunate because it takes us off message and does not help one mother or protect one baby.”

But feelings are running high in the departing chapters.

“We’ve had 39 years of talk and regulation, it’s time to WIN this war and actually PROTECT babies with beating hearts,” said Julie Doehner, president of the Geauga County chapter of Ohio Right to Life, in a news release on Nov. 28 announcing that the county was shifting its allegiance to the new group that endorsed the heartbeat bill.

“If the choice is between unity and life,” she said, “we choose life.”

Read full NYTimes article here.

Marxist Democrat Cringes As Russian Immigrants Compare Communism to…Democrats!

It takes a former one to know one.

Excerpt: When you read how some of New York’s Russian immigrants (who know Soviet-style Communism all-too-well) are aligning with Republicans—because they view Democrats’ policies to be too similar to the failed policies of their homeland—there is just something richly ironic there. However, when you read how their never-met-a-Marxist-she-didn’t-love Democrat legislator reacts to be having her party compared to Soviet Russia, now that is just over-the-top funny:


Businessman Arkadiy Fridman said that the newly formed Citizens Magazine Business Club, a confederation of more than 50 Russian-owned businesses here and in Brooklyn, has aligned itself with the Molinari Republican Club (MRC) in an effort to increase the Russian community’s political and economic clout.

CLOSE TO OWN VISION

“We decided we had to support this club,” said Fridman, a former Soviet Army officer who came to the United States in 1992. “They are very close to our political and business vision.”

[snip]

Fridman said that the Democrats “are going in an absolutely different direction,” focusing on “income redistribution” and rich-versus-poor “class war.”

“It’s too socialistic,” said Fridman, head of the non-profit Staten Island Community Center and president of Citizens Magazine, a public affairs publication. “It’s very painful for us to see.”

And, if that weren’t bad enough, the Democrats’ are reminding the Russian immigrants of something they thought they left behind:

The Big Brother approach reminds Fridman too much of what he left behind in the former Soviet Union.

“It’s the same rule like it was there,” said Fridman, who estimates there are around 55,000 Russian immigrants here.

Michael Petrov of the Digital Edge data management firm in Bloomfield, said that he objects to the “micro-managing of the economy” he’s seen from city as well as federal officials.

“Government is affecting small business more and more,” said Petrov, who came to the United States in 1994. “It’s the same as what’s happening in Russia.”

The Russian immigrants seem to know the path the Democratic Party is leading the nation down far better than many Democrats, which is why it seems the GOP is a better fit for the Russians.

Read full Red State article here.

Boeing pact’s effect on S.C. plant unclear

It sounds like the Union has agreed to a deal that lets Obama and the NLRB off the hook. It appears to have cost Boeing quite a bit, but, as in all extortion attempts, the lawyers are in a win, win situation and the NLRB will go scot-free.

Excerpt: A contentious labor dispute between the Obama administration and Boeing Co. that spawned a national political fight likely will be settled after the aerospace giant and the Machinists union announced Wednesday a tentative deal on a new four-year collective-bargaining agreement.

It was not immediately clear what, if any, impact the new agreement would have on a massive new Boeing plant in South Carolina, where the company has opened a new production line for its 787 airplane.

In a decision roundly condemned by congressional Republicans and leading business groups, the National Labor Relations Board filed a lawsuit earlier this year alleging that Boeing violated labor laws by opening the South Carolina line. The agency claimed that Boeing was punishing Washington state workers for past strikes and said the company should return the work to Washington.

Boeing has vigorously denied the charges, claiming it opened the South Carolina plant for valid economic reasons. GOP lawmakers have introduced a bill in Congress seeking to force the agency to back down.

The case became a major political issue, with Republican presidential candidates using it to bash the Obama administration. While the labor board is an independent agency, it is dominated by appointees of President Obama, and settlement of the Boeing case removes a potentially damaging element for Mr. Obama in the 2012 campaign.

Read full Washington Times article here.

Mysterious blasts, slayings suggest covert efforts in Iran

My money is on the Israelis and the Saudis in support of the MEK, a fringe Iranian group. Just another way to "kill the cat".

Excerpt: At an Iranian military base 30 miles west of Tehran, engineers were working on weapons that the armed forces chief of staff had boasted could give Israel a "strong punch in the mouth."

But then a huge explosion ripped through the Revolutionary Guard Corps base on Nov. 12, leveling most of the buildings. Government officials said 17 people were killed, including a founder of Iran's ballistic missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.

Iranian officials called the blast an accident. Perhaps it was.

Decades of international sanctions have left Iran struggling to obtain technology and spare parts for military programs and commercial industries, leading in some cases to dangerous working conditions.

However, many former U.S. intelligence officials and Iran experts believe that the explosion — the most destructive of at least two dozen unexplained blasts in the last two years — was part of a covert effort by the U.S., Israel and others to disable Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The goal, the experts say, is to derail what those nations fear is Iran's quest for nuclear weapons capability and to stave off an Israeli or U.S. airstrike to eliminate or lessen the threat.

"It looks like the 21st century form of war," said Patrick Clawson, who directs the Iran Security Initiative at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank. "It does appear that there is a campaign of assassinations and cyber war, as well as the semi-acknowledged campaign of sabotage." Read full LA Times article here.

President Obama’s top 10 constitutional violations

I have provided the list of 10 but you should read the original article for the detailed reasoning behind each violation. Not being a "birther", but a very real skeptic, I would add falsifying birth records to qualify for his candidacy to the growing list of Constitutional faux pas. I firmly believe that any attempt by the Republicans to impeach Obama will cause them to face a stinging defeat in 2012. The only way to rid the country of this "Obamination" is to defeat him soundly at the polls.

Excerpt: One of the biggest political changes that 2011 brought — in large part due to the tea parties and their effect on the 2010 election — is the centrality of the Constitution to our public discourse. Lawmakers and citizens no longer consider simply whether a given bill or policy proposal is a good idea but whether it is constitutional. “Where does the government get the power to do that?” is often critics’ rallying cry.

That’s a healthy development. For far too long, even in those rare moments when politicians were faced with constitutional concerns, they’ve had the attitude Nancy Pelosi did when asked about the authority for Obamacare’s individual mandate: “Are you serious?” Because, of course, constitutional arguments are the last refuge of the scoundrel who has no good policy arguments to make or political power to levy.

And so it’s a good thing that Americans are taking their founding document seriously. After all, the Constitution is the font of all federal power. Its carefully crafted structural provisions that we learned about in grade school, such as the separation of powers and checks and balances, are not merely an application of political theory.

“Federalism is more than an exercise in setting the boundary between different institutions of government for their own integrity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court earlier this year. “By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life,” Kennedy continued, “federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.” If the federal government acts outside the scope of its delegated and carefully enumerated powers, then it’s no better than an armed mob.

The Obama administration and its allies in Congress have perpetrated more than their share of such mob-like actions. While it’s hard to narrow them down, here’s my stab at the government’s top 10 constitutional violations since President Obama took office.

1. The individual mandate

2. Medicaid coercion

3. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (a.k.a. “The Death Panel”)

4. The Chrysler bailout

5. Dodd-Frank

6. The deep-water drilling ban

7. Political-speech disclosure for federal contractors

8. Taxing political contributions

9. Graphic tobacco warnings

10. Health care waivers

Read the full The Daily Caller article here.

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Obama Set to Veto Pro-Job Deregulation Bill

One blog said that it is laughable to believe that Harry Reid would even allow this bill to come to a vote in the Senate. That is the roadblock the Republican House has had for all the deficit reduction and jobs bills they have passed in the last year. Too bad we never hear the real facts as to who is holding up progress on the job front.

Excerpt: Yesterday, President Obama spoke at Scranton High School about his roundly-unsupported American Jobs Act, during which he branded himself a pro-jobs tax cutter.

I know, I know. Contain your laugher.

He spent a great deal of time blaming Republicans for his bill's failure, and appealing to voters for support of his proposed millionaires' tax, which would cover the costs of extending the payroll tax cut. In addition to his rhetorical staples -- "Pass this bill" and "fair share" among them -- he claimed to be fighting for small businesses and the middle class:

So there he is, America. The economy's number one cheerleader. Why, then, is he set to veto bill intended to save jobs from overregulation?

In an op/ed today, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) gives a rundown of three bills coming before the House this week that are intended to hold regulatory agencies more accountable for the measures they pass. The goal is to ensure that businesses aren't tied up trying to figure out how to comply with myriad federal regulations, and can instead focus on growth.

The REINS [Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny] Act requires Congress to take an up-or-down vote to approve regulations that have an economic impact of $100 million or more before they can be imposed on the American people.

The REINS Act enables the American people to hold their elected representatives in Congress accountable for the most burdensome regulations.

The Regulatory Accountability Act is a bipartisan, bicameral bill that ensures regulations are necessary and cost-effective. It requires agencies to do a better job of determining whether new regulations are even needed. And when regulations are necessary, the bill requires agencies to adopt the lowest-cost alternative to achieve the goals.

The Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act requires agencies to identify the costs new regulations could impose on small businesses and to write the regulations in ways that reduce those costs. It also gives small businesses more opportunities to be heard as regulations are written and forces agencies to look at ways to cut the costs of regulations already on the books.

Granted, it's not wholly surprising to learn that the president is opposed to measures that would curb regulation-happy agencies such as the NLRB -- after all, that's hardly the politically expedient option for a man who believes government is the solution to everything. Still, though, it bears note that once again, his pro-jobs rhetoric is just that: rhetoric. And so, too, is his anti-Washington schtick.

In that same speech in Scranton, he said, "This cannot be about who wins and loses in Washington. This is about delivering a win for the American people. That’s what this is about."

Except, apparently, when it's he and his regulatory agencies who lose. In that case, veto away.

Read full Townhall article here.