Monday, December 5, 2011

Obama showers ACORN housing with $730,000; Boeing settles by increasing pay and benefits in state of Washington; Occupy protests Obama big time fundraiser; Obama tries not to pat himself on the back too much; $7.7 trillion dollars in secret Federal Reserve loans; Obamacare loophole; Biden declares non victory in Iraq; Obama cohort supports China method with unions; Senate repeals military law on sodomy; More registered voters in Detroit than there are people over 18; Newt Gingrich fact checking

The Washington Times reports: The Obama administration has showered its allies at ACORN Housing with $729,849 so far this year despite powerful, newly unveiled evidence of corruption and massive accounting irregularities at the longtime affiliate of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).
Watchdog group Cause of Action recently pressured NeighborWorks America, a taxpayer-funded federal nonprofit that funneled more than $26.5 million in federal foreclosure-avoidance money to ACORN Housing, to disclose an internal audit furnished to then-Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, late last year.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/28/obama-uses-taxpayer-cash-to-back-acorn-name-change/?page=all#pagebreak
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Investors.com writes: Boeing (BA) and the machinists labor union have resolved their highly contentious lawsuit after several weeks of secret meetings, nullifying the need for one of the most controversial cases in decades to come before the National Labor Relations Board.
The agreement would call for a new 737 aircraft line to be built in Washington state and to increase pay and benefits for union workers in the Puget Sound region. The deal would likely mean Boeing's 787 Dreamliner factory in South Carolina would continue to operate, though that wasn't immediately clear.http://news.investors.com/Article/593243/201111301637/boeing-union-settle-nlrb-lawsuit-south-carolina.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The NY Times writes: More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a Midtown hotel on Wednesday night to protest a fund-raising event for President Obama.
Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.
One man, wearing a mask of the president’s face and holding a cigar, carried a sign that read, “I sold out!”
Ben Campbell, 28, one of the march’s organizers, said he hoped to prove to skeptics of the protests that the demonstrators were political critics of equal opportunity.
“President Obama is coming to town solely to raise money from the richest of the rich,” Mr. Campbell said. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/occupy-protesters-mobilize-for-obamas-visit/
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The Jerusalem Post writes: US President Barack Obama defended his policy toward Israel on Wednesday at a political fundraiser where a prominent American Jewish leader mentioned concerns in the Jewish community about the US-Israeli relationship.

Obama, who has been criticized by some of Israel's US supporters for being tough on a close ally and has had strained ties with Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu, offered strong assurances of his commitment to Israel's security.

"I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration," Obama said. "We don't compromise when it comes to Israel's security ... and that will continue." http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=247682
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The Daily Caller writes: The Federal Reserve doled out a staggering 7.77 trillion dollars in secret loans in an effort to stabilize banks during the  financial crisis — cheap money from the public purse that the banks subsequently lent out at higher rates for a profit of $13 billion dollars, Bloomberg News reports.
Although Bloomberg has been publishing findings from its analysis of over 29,000 pages of documents since August, the true magnitude of the central bank’s intervention during the economic crisis has only come to light in recent days.

At the time of TARP’s passage, members of Congress were unaware of the extent of the Fed’s behind-the-scenes lending activity.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/01/congress-was-unaware-of-7-77-trillion-in-secret-fed-loans-ahead-of-tarp-vote/#ixzz1fI8p5nqY
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The Weekly Standard writes: Minnesota Public Radio reports, “A loophole in the federal health care overhaul would allow many employers to game the system by dumping their sicker employees [into] public health insurance exchanges, according to two University of Minnesota law professors.” Such “targeted dumping” of sicker employees would cause Obamacare’s taxpayer-subsidized exchanges to cost more — potentially far more — than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/study-under-obamacare-employers-will-likely-engage-targeted-dumping-employees_610739.html
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Commentary Magazine writes: U.S. troops are rushing pell-mell for the exits in Iraq. Time has almost run out on their presence because the Obama administration–either through incompetence, lack of will, or both–did not renew the treaty that would allow a residual force to remain behind in 2012 and beyond. The Iraqis, as they have repeatedly said, would be open to a training mission, but instead of getting the job done, the administration is pulling out.
The sad coda for our involvement may well have come from Vice President Biden, who has just recently visited the country we are abandoning:

“We’re not claiming  victory,’’ he said. “What we’re claiming here is that we’ve done our job — ending the  war we did not start, to end it in a responsible way, (and) to bring Americans home. (We want to) end bleeding both financially and physically that this war has caused, and to leave in place, the prospect of a trained military, a trained security force within democratic institutions. It’s not done yet, but there’s real hope.”
What an amazing and appalling statement. Biden recognizes we have not yet won the war, that the job is “not done yet,” but we’re pulling out anyway."
But the most outrageous thing about this statement is Biden’s conceit that he and Obama are “ending the war we did not start.” Obama and Biden are the two most senior elected officials of the U.S. government. The U.S. government as a whole made a decision to intervene in Iraq, and it is the height of irresponsibility for one administration to think it can abandon with impunity the commitments made by its predecessor, whatever it may think of those commitments. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/01/biden-statement-on-iraq/
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Redstate writes: Well, in at least one way you can certainly say that labor’s organized in the PRC: the ChiComs haven’t been shy about instituting absolute and exclusive control over trade unions.  There’s precisely one trade union in China – the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which is, as CNN helpfully notes, “a government-sanctioned organization whose primary mission is to support Communist party policies and seek basic compensation for workers.”  If you don’t like that union?  Suffer.  Want to start your own?  Here comes the cops.  Want to do collective bargaining?  Oh, you poor, naive so-and-so – hey, wait: isn’t Andy Stern in favor of collective bargaining?  Why, yes, so he is. So why is Stern supporting a country where they routinely oppress the workers (including children)  in ways that go beyond even the most fetid fever-swamp agitprop of the American labor movement?  Particularly when labor unrest in China just keeps increasing? http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2011/12/01/andy-stern-scab-for-the-chinese/

There has hardly been a better example in recent years than Andy Stern’s Wall Street Journal December 1st op-ed entitled “China’s Superior Economic Model.” In his article, Stern approvingly quotes Intel Corporation co-founder and former CEO Andy Grove who stated in a 2010 Business Week article that there is “emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.” http://rossputin.com/blog/index.php
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Vision to Anmerica writes:The Senate this evening is poised to vote on a defense authorization bill that includes a provision which not only repeals the military law on sodomy, but also repeals the military ban on sex with animals–or bestiality.
On Nov. 15, the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision to repeal Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
Article 125 of the UCMJ makes it illegal to engage in both sodomy with humans and sex with animals.
http://visiontoamerica.org/5989/senate-ready-to-legalize-sodomy-and-bestiality-in-u-s-military/
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Crain's of Detroit: There are about 560,000 registered voters in the city of Detroit. But the 2010 U.S. Census found only 523,430 Detroiters over 18, according to Data Driven Detroit.*
So that's a problem.
Detroit's voter rolls have been plagued by duplicate, incorrect or invalid registrations for a long time, and bringing the lists into compliance is a Herculean task.
"Because of the National Voter Registration Act (of 1983), we are required to hold onto and include in our count those who more than likely be should cancelled because they have moved, relocated and the like, or there has been no activity for a number of years," City Clerk Janice Winfrey said. "However, we have to hold them for two consecutive federal elections. So after this federal election, by the beginning of 2013, we'll have nearly 30,000 we can cancel." http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20110822/STAFFBLOG04/110829985/detroit-has-more-registered-voters-than-residents-over-18-census-finds#
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National Review reports: At the forum hosted tonight by Fox News host Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich said this about cap-and-trade:
But if you notice, I never favored cap-and-trade. I –  in fact, I actively testified against it.  I was at the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee the same day Al Gore was there to testify for it.  I testified against it.  And through American Solutions we actively fought it in the Senate, and I think we played a major role in defeating it. 
Both the Perry and Paul campaigns e-mailed media this quote from Gingrich in 2007 on PBS after he made the claim that he had “never favored cap-and-trade”: “I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly suggest. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/284839/gingrich-cap-and-trade-katrina-trinko
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Gingrich, "Meet The Press" 1993, quote: "I am for people, individuals--exactly like automobile insurance--individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance."
Gingrich, "Meet The Press" May 15, 2011--post Obamacare, quote: "I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay--help pay for health care. I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or post a bond."
(i.e., A key component of Obamacare at the federal level.) http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/gingrich-health-care-insurance/2011/05/15/id/396426
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