Friday, May 7, 2010

Punishments for Being Illegal; Energy Bill Update; and Primary Turnouts

[I notice that liberals are condemning the email which is circulating which tells about how other countries handle illegals.  Contrary to what they are declaring, that conservatives want America to go to such lengths with our illegals, I wish to point out that once again, they are misrepresenting us.  What conservatives are demonstrating is that what Arizona has decided to do, actually uphold the laws of America, is not so bad after all.  We don't want to kill illegals or imprison them.  We wish to remove them until they find a legal way to become a working, contributing resident or an American citizen.] 


                          [Here are a few examples of other countries and their policies]:
The Washington Times notes that "Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals. The law also says Mexico can deport foreigners who are deemed detrimental to "economic or national interests," violate Mexican law, are not "physically or mentally healthy" or lack the "necessary funds for their sustenance" and for their dependents."
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/03/mexicos-illegals-laws-tougher-than-arizonas/
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The BBC  reports: North Korea is to put a US citizen on trial for illegally entering the country, its state news agency has said.
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DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) _ Russian border guards shot and killed two drug smugglers trying to cross from Afghanistan into Tajikistan with more than 176 pounds of heroin, the border guards' office said Sunday.
The smugglers were spotted as they crossed the muddy Pyandzh River, 118 miles west of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. One of the smugglers opened fire …
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The Department of Foreign Affairs in China declares: All foreigners are required to register their place of residence with the local Public Security Bureau within 24 hours of arrival.  Foreigners staying with family or friends in a private home must comply with this requirement. If you are staying at a hotel, this is done as part of the normal check-in process. This applies every time a foreigner re-enters China.  Chinese authorities are now rigorously enforcing the registration requirement and failure to do so could result in fines and detention. 
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From Wikipedia:  In the first six months of 2005 alone, more than 120,000 people from Central America have been deported to their countries of origin. This is a significantly higher rate than in 2002.   In September 2007, Mexican President Calderón harshly criticized the United States government for the crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it has led to the persecution of immigrant workers without visas. “I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico,” he said
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Again from Wikipedia:  Illegal border crossing is considered a crime, and on occasions captured illegal border crossers are sentenced to a prison term. For example, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported in October 2008 the case of a North Korean who was detained after illegally crossing the Amur River from China. Considered by Russian authorities an "economic migrant", he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and was to be deported to the country of his nationality after serving his sentence, even though he may now risk an even heavier penalty there. That was just one of the 26 cases year-to-date of illegal entrants, of various nationalities, receiving criminal punishment in Amur Oblast.[90]
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[The email continues with these points, along with some that I believe are not valid]:  if you cross the US border illegally you get.....  

           1 - A job        
             2.  A free education
             3.  Free health care        
             4.  A lobbyist in Washington
             5. A drivers license
             6.  And the right to carry your country's flag while you are protesting that you don't get enough 
respect, [and while your President declares that "Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."]  
[This country should be allowed to defend its sovereignty by controlling its borders, and U.S. law says so!] Thanks for this, Suz!
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The Associated Press managed to report on yesterday's primaries in North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio while muddling the incontrovertibly disastrous results for Democrats in those states. Even while touting the races as harbingers for November, the AP failed to extrapolate the trends right before their eyes. In short, turnout for Republican primaries in all three states was up almost across the board, while Democratic turnout "dropped precipitously," in the words of National Journal's Reid Wilson. The AP noted the "exceptionally light [turnout] in Ohio and North Carolina," failing to mention that GOP turnout in these states was up in virtually every race, while a drop in Demcorats at the polls produced the "light" numbers it mentions.
Liz Sidoti and Deanna Martin, who penned the AP piece, bizarrely postulate that  low turnout in those two states is "a possible indication that voter anger over economic woes, persistently high unemployment and Congress itself wasn't influencing elections - and, perhaps, a reflection of the limited influence of the conservatives and libertarians who make up the fledgling tea party coalition."
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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Swat Team for Tea Party; Divisive Talk; GM Payback Sham; and Ft. Hood Info

A Quincy, Ill., Tea Party protest convened several weeks ago as President Barack Obama spoke at the nearby convention center. Things got SO out of hand, the SWAT team was called in for crowd control. Check out some of the horrifying images from the riot, via GatewayPundit: well, the photos are of peaceful , smiling people who love their country, many of them with gray hair - those who have never had reason to protest anything in their lives before now......  It is yet one more attempt by this Administration to demonize Tea Party attendees...
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From ABC News:  Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.
In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republican party.
Tea Party activists loath the term “tea baggers,” which has emerged in liberal media outlets and elsewhere as a method of mocking the activists and their concerns.
On Saturday, the president delivered a commencement address at the University of Michigan in which he said that he condemns those who say all government is bad. [I just don't know whom he is talking about, as conservatives think that far-reaching, dictatorial, over-spending government is bad - not all of it.]  He said that one way “to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate … But we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down.”  [How about it, Mr. President?  Maybe you could lead by example.]   http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/05/president-obama-gop-opposition-to-stimulus-helped-to-create-the-teabaggers.html
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From the Washington Post:  The Obama administration has refused to comply with a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoena demanding access to documents and witnesses from last year’s Ft. Hood terrorist attack. Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and raking Republican Susan Collins (R-Maine) issued the subpoena when the Obama administration refused to provide the documents voluntarily. The Pentagon says giving the committee access to investigative reports and witnesses might interfere with their prosecution of Major Nidal Hasan, the terrorist shot at the scene of the attack.  
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Real Clear Politics is reporting that Forbes reporter Shikha Dalmia reports:  GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced in a Wall Street Journal column Wednesday that his company has paid back its government bailout loan "in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule."As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as "working capital" in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money--government money--to pay back the government loan.  In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM's government debt--not pay it back.

Here are the facts according to the inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program:  his most recent quarterly report explained that "the source for the debt payments will be other TARP funds currently in escrow accounts. In a letter to Whitacre from Reps. Issa and Jordan, they say that the "GM chairman's words come "dangerously close to committing fraud" and "your false statements may expose GM to millions of dollars in damages, further reducing the value of the taxpayer-owned company.  The American people, as the majority shareholders of GM, have a right to know the truth behind the cost of the GM bailout and BM's genuine financial condition."
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AP reports: The no-fly list failed to keep the Times Square suspect off the plane.
Faisal Shahzad boarded a jetliner bound for the United Arab Emirates Monday night before federal authorities pulled him back. Although under surveillance since midafternoon, he had managed to elude investigators and head to the airport.
The night's events, gradually coming to light, underscored the flaws in the nation's aviation security system, which despite its technologies, lists and information sharing, often comes down to someone making a right call.  [And I suppose Obama will continue to say he has full faith and confidence in Janet Napolitano, that she is not incompetent....]
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Monday, May 3, 2010

Health Care Costs, Its Illegal to be Illegal!

The AP reports:
Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.
But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.
It's a worrisome assessment for Democrats.
In particular, concerns about Medicare could become a major political liability in the midterm elections. The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, "possibly jeopardizing access" to care for seniors.
"During 2010-2019, however, these effects would be outweighed by the increased costs associated with the expansions of health insurance coverage," wrote Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary. "Also, the longer-term viability of the Medicare ... reductions is doubtful." Foster's office is responsible for long-range costs estimates.
In another flashing yellow light, the report warned that a new voluntary long-term care insurance prog created under the law faces "a very serious risk" of insolvency.
[It has been suggested that this report was ready one week prior to the big vote, but was withheld because they didn't want to "influence the vote".  Now isn't that just terrific?]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_law_costs
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A Republican Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona, a move state Democrats say would be a mistake.
Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday's editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.
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Fox News reports:  After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.  The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.
The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne called passage in the state House a victory for the principle that education should unite, not divide students of differing backgrounds.
"Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds," Horne said. "This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism."
Horne began fighting in 2007 against the Tucson Unified School District's program, which he said defied Martin Luther King's call to judge a person by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Horne claimed the ethnic studies program encourages "ethnic chauvanism," promotes Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States and tries to intimidate conservative teachers in the school system.
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Human Events has written:  It has been revealed 33 employees over the last several years, making between $90,000 and $222,000 a year, paid for with your hard earned money, were spending up to eight hours daily downloading pornography during working hours.
The names of these offenders have not been revealed, but the biggest offender was a SEC lawyer making in excess of $222,000 a year who spent so much time downloading porn he filled up his government hard drive. He then began “burning” porn to CDs and DVDs that were stored in his office. If you began watching the videos he downloaded, you’d be watching porn for over 16 years without a break. That seems like an obsession, but worse, how does anybody get any work done in that environment? 
The Obama Administration continues to demonize businesses in the healthcare industry and now the financial sector without looking at the corruption in the federal government. If the President was really for “hope and change” he’d start with cleaning up his own mess first. Make sure every agency of the federal government is tightened up from top to bottom.
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So now, in response to those critics, lawmakers have removed “lawful contact” from the bill and replaced it with “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” In an explanatory note, lawmakers added that the change “stipulates that a lawful stop, detention or arrest must be in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state.”
“It was the intent of the legislature for ‘lawful contact’ to mean arrests and stops, but people on the left mischaracterized it,” says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush Justice Department official who helped draft the law.  “So that term is now defined.”
The second change concerns the word “ In a safeguard against racial profiling, the law contained the phrase, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”  Critics objected to that, too, arguing again that it would not prevent but instead lead to racial profiling.  So lawmakers have taken out the word “solely.”
“There were misstatements by the opponents of the law that this was written to permit some consideration of race in the enforcement of this law,” says Kobach, “and that’s not the case at all.”
“They are minor changes to clarify some of the terms the ACLU and others had been distorting in public.  In an abundance of caution, the legislature and the governor’s office have made a few minor adjustments to respond to the mischaracterizations.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/in-response-to-critics-arizona-tweaks-new-immigration-law-92495249.html#ixzz0mbOlV7Tf

[On the subject of the new Arizona Immigration Law, I find it laughable that a state has to have a law saying that the law is the law, that being illegal is illegal.  Already the illegals are returning to Mexico!  I find it terrifying that our President is once again fomenting class warfare and hatred of selected groups.  And he is doing so by saying that the police will ask for the papers of a family taking their children out for an ice cream cone.  The bill clearly states that profiling is not to be used, that some other legal contact has had to have occurred prior to asking for proof of citizenship.  If there is to be any fault, it will be for rogue cops who may not follow the law.  I recall that during the health care bill campaign, Obama accused doctors of cutting off limbs and tonsils just to get patients and more money.  Barack Obama has in other words called the 70% of Arizonans who like this bill RACIST.
As I spoke at the time he was elected, I have feared that, rather than being a "post-racial" president, this Obama administration would prove to be a dangerous one for our country, with an administration and media which will turn to the accusation of racism whenever Obama doesn't like what some Americans believe. Statements such as these should never come from our President.  To me, unfortunately, it is no longer shocking.]
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/04/026189.php      Powerline reports that:  President Obama has selected Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick is a Harvard professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit that, according to its website, has a staff of over 100 people. These seem like dubious qualifications to head a massive organization with a budget greater than that of the Department of Defense. As Jeffrey Anderson explains, however, Dr. Berwick is a perfect pick for Obama. For like Obama, Berwick believes that our health-care system should be run through Washington,
Unlike Obama, Berwick is completely up-front about this. His view of the rationing of health care is that "the decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."
Berwick has his eyes on the British method of rationing, as implemented through Great Britain's National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE).



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Friday, April 30, 2010

Global Warming and NASA - and the EPA

Popular Science reports:  In 1985, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey found a giant hole in the ozone layer of Earth's atmosphere over the South Pole. This discovery prompted a largely successful international effort to ban CFCs, the chemicals largely responsible for man-made thinning of the ozone layer.
Unfortunately, a new analysis from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) suggests that stopping ozone depletion may actually increase global warming and speed up sea level rise. This discovery pits two important environmental missions against each other, while highlighting the complexity of our effect on the planet.
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New Scientist reports: ...GOODBYE air pollution and smoky chimneys, hello brighter days. That's been the trend in Europe for the past three decades - but unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun's rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred.
Christian Ruckstuhl of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland and colleagues took aerosol concentrations from six locations in northern Europe, measured between 1986 and 2005, and compared them with solar-radiation measurements over the same period.
"The decrease in aerosols probably accounts for at least half of the warming over Europe in the last 30 years," says Rolf Philipona, a co-author of the study at MeteoSwiss, Switzerland's national weather service.
The latest climate models are built on the assumption that aerosols have their biggest influence by seeding natural clouds, which reflect sunlight. However, the team found that radiation dropped only slightly on cloudy days, suggesting that the main impact of aerosols is to block sunlight directly.   [Oops - does this mean we need to beginning using aerosols with CFC's once again?  I'm confused.]
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Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano is emitting between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, a figure placing it in the same emissions league as a small-to-medium European economy, experts said on Monday.  
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This week’s Obama NASA speech stirred up controversy in more ways than one. There’s the fact that he said he plans to ditch going back to the moon in favor of landing on asteroids. There’s also his stated plan to privatize space exploration. Add to that the usual grand plans with little if any detail or idea as to how to make those plans come into fruition, and you have controversy. One person sees it one way, another sees it another way. The Obama NASA speech in Florida this week even got a commentator on MSNBC a little vexed. It seems that no NASA employees allowed to hear the president’s plans for the future of American exploration into space.
Obama took a trip down to Florida to give a speech to NASA about is vision for the future of U.S. space travel. The problem is, the whole this was apparently staged. I know, I know, staging Obama is not news. However, this one was not just the ever-present teleprompters we’ve grown so accustomed to that we don’t even comment on them any more. It wasn’t even just the planted questions or the invitation only audience. This one went so far that it even caught the attention of long-time NBC science correspondent Jay Barbree. It seems that Obama’s speech to NASA didn’t include NASA. NASA was simply not invited.
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Proving once again that weather and Mother Earth cannot be easily predicted comes this news from Brussels: The computer models that guided decisions to impose a no-fly zone across most of Europe in recent days are based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials. As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses.
“It is a black box in certain areas,” Matthias Ruete, the EU’s director-general for mobility and transport, said on Monday, noting that many of the assumptions in the computer models were not backed by scientific evidence.
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 CNX News reports:  President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the public to create video advertisements that explain why federal regulations are "important to everyone."

The contest, which ends May 17, will award $2,500 to the makers of the video that best explains why federal regulations are good and how ordinary citizens can become more involved in making regulations. The videos must be posted on YouTube and can be no more than 60-90 seconds in length.

In the current contest, each video must include the slogan “Let your voice be heard,” and it must direct viewers to the government’s regulatory website www.Regulations.gov. The winning video will then be used by the entire federal government to promote the regulatory process and enhance the public’s participation in it.
[I am not knowledgeable enough to do it, but if I could, I would send in a video about why overreaching federal regulations are NOT good. This is particularly true for regulations for which Congress is not allowed to vote, a usurpation of our Constitutional three branches of government.  To my knowledge, the EPA is not one of those branches.  It would include the questions I pose below, by the way.]
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From the Little Traverse Conservancy news:  Just a few mile southeast of Petoskey, MI lies a high glacial moraine, deposited onto the land when the ice masses retreated more than 11,000 years ago.  From atop this hill are sweeping views of Little Traverse Bay.  [What I've always wanted the global warming crowd and EPA to answer is this: what caused the glaciers to "retreat" 11,000 years ago?  Or what caused Greenland (so called because it was verdant and green at one time) to become a land of ice? If they could answer that it was mankind, then I might begin to believe that we actually have the capacity to stem what Planet Earth has been up to for millions of years.]  
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Obama quote

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Oh, yeah, and just for good measure, he's now in the process of healing the racial divide.
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(CNNMoney.com) -- The recovery is picking up steam as employers boost payrolls, but economists think the government's stimulus package and jobs bill had little to do with the rebound, according to a survey released Monday.
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ABC News reports: Fulfilling his commitment made last year in Cairo to help deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world, President Obama today kicked off a two-day Entrepreneurship Summit in Washington, DC. (Snip) “We will bring business and social entrepreneurs from Muslim-majority countries to the United States and send their American counterparts to learn from your countries. Women in technology fields will have the opportunity to come to the United States for internships and professional development. And since innovation is central to entrepreneurship, we’re creating new exchanges for science teachers.” 
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From the New York Post comes the following description of the new Financial  Regulatory Bill: The financial-regulatory bill now before the Senate is so filled with special-interest loopholes and exclusions that it makes the health-care "reform" bill, with its "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase," look like a model of rectitude.
The Senate bill, sponsored by Democrat Chris Dodd, claims to subject all "too big to fail" institutions to greater federal supervision, but in fact it only mandates such regulation for bank-holding companies. Regulators would have to make a case-by-case decision on whether to apply it to other financial companies.
The Senate financial-regulation bill offers a stark choice: Do we aspire to be a country where everyone is subject to the same rules? Or do we accept a system where power, influence and money can buy exclusions and exemptions?
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Obama's Debt Committee Panel has been asked to figure out what to do with our government debt.  Isn't it interesting that the panel is not to give us their findings until after the November elections?
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Monday, April 26, 2010

Clinton, Reno and Morris, An Obama Birth Certificate, Goldman Sachs

 The fight is still on...and it's a fight worth having.

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From Fox News: in response to Bill Clinton’s highly publicized linking of the Tea Party movement to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing former Clinton adviser Dick Morris appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox Show disclosing that it was Clinton himself, and not Attorney General Janet Reno, who called the shots during the 1993 botched FBI action that led to the death of seventy-six people.

“Let’s understand what was Timothy McVeigh’s motivation …he himself had said that it was the reaction to the Waco takeover. Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover.”
“Clinton in fact was so ashamed about what he did in Waco that he was not going to appoint Janet Reno to a second four-year term. She told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day … ‘If you don’t appoint me I’m going to tell the truth about Waco.’ And that forced Clinton’s hand … It’s never been said  before.”
Morris ended up by saying that he never knew what Reno's secret was. It certainly appears that Clinton is covering something up.
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PHOENIX -- The Arizona House on Monday voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state's ballot when he runs for reelection.
The House voted 31-22 to add the provision to a separate bill. The measure still faces a formal vote.It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president.Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill is one of several measures that are making Arizona "the laughing stock of the nation."Mesa Republican Rep. Cecil Ash said he has no reason to doubt Obama's citizenship but supports the measure because it could help end doubt.
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The Washington Examiner opines:  Campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees to President Obama are nearly seven times as much as President Bush received from Enron workers, according to numbers on OpenSecrets.org.
President Bush's connections to Enron were well-hyped during the company's accounting debacle that rippled through the economy. Time magazine even had an article called, "Bush's Enron Problem." The Associated Press ran with the headline, "Bush-backing Enron makes big money off crisis." David Callaway wrote that Enron for Bush was worse than Whitewater for Clinton.
It's not even just campaign contributions. There's quite the revolving door. According to our own Tim Carney:
Greg Craig, Obama's first White House counsel, has joined Goldman, we learned this week. He may not have too much pull in the West Wing, which drove him out for hewing too close to Obama's campaign promises, but as a former insider he will provide valuable intelligence to the world's largest investment bank.
Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, was paid $35,000 as a consultant to Goldman while also working as Bill Clinton's top fundraiser. Obama's fundraiser and economic adviser Warren Buffett is very long on Goldman, having bet on them in 2008 in the expectation of a bailout. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was a Goldman Sachs lobbyist until months before joining Team Obama. [Though some Republicans are giving their money back to Goldman, we cannot expect for Obama to return his nearly 1 million in donations to his campaign.

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Friday, April 23, 2010

Government Propagana, Sedition, and Ft. Hood Subpoena

Can't we all just get along?  No, I didn't think so...

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From Politico:  Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight committee, is demanding a slew of documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission, asserting that the timing of civil charges against Goldman Sachs raises “serious questions about the commission’s independence and impartiality.”

Issa’s letter, addressed to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro and signed by eight other House Republicans, asks whether the commission had any contact about the case, prior to its public release, with White House aides, Democratic Party committee officials, or members of Congress or their staff.

“[W]e are concerned that politics have unduly influenced the decision and timing of the commission’s controversial enforcement action against Goldman,” Issa writes.

Issa implied that the timing was a bit too convenient, saying President Barack Obama’s push on Wall Street reform “neatly coincided with the commission’s announcement of the suit.”
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AARP reports:  Cass Sunstein has favored the government using outside parties as government propaganda agents to paint their opposition as fringe and undermine their credibility.”  [Think Tea Party put-downs and disruptions.]
Astroturf is the act of professional interest groups designing campaigns that appear to be grassroots efforts, but are not. It is what the left has accused the tea parties of being. Only more and more it looks like the anti-tea party movement is truly astroturfing.
Writing on January 15, 2010, Glenn Greenwald at Salon noted Barack Obama’s new head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein , had championed creating fake websites and using outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to act as alleged independent champions of government policy and to “cognitively infiltrate” opposition websites, etc.
In other words, Cass Sunstein has favored the government using outside parties as government propaganda agents to paint their opposition as fringe and undermine their credibility. Kind of like what has been happening with the tea party movement – lots of SEIU members pretending to be tea party activists causing violence in front of TV cameras.
Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging
Considering Sunstein’s recommendations, it is not far removed to speculate the Obama administration is behind a new anti-tea party website called The Other 95 , which defends the government from tea party criticisms and attacks the tea party movement as fringe.
The website purports to be authentically grassroots, though one must wonder when the last time was any grassroots activist took the time to defend the government.
The designer is affilated with MoveOn.org and other leftwing sites and causes.
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On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time columnist Joe Klein all but accused former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Fox News host Glenn Beck of sedition.

"I did a little bit of research just before this show - it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious."
[Proving that he is oh, so in touch with the values of Tea Party citizens], New York magazine's John Heilemann also suggested that the alleged up tick in militia activity is a result of the Obama presidency. Klein said it was not only the Obama presidency, but that he was "African-American," and had "Hussein" as a middle name, along with the "scary" economic crisis. [And I assume he thinks there is nothing inflammatory about these lies....]

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 Acorn CEO Bertha Lewis "Tea Party is a Bowel Movement", speaking at the Winter Conference of the Young Democratic Socialists on March 25, 2010.

The world now knows that ACORN is a dirty corrupt organization willing to break laws to make a buck by now but here is a video showing how Bertha Lewis (CEO of ACORN) really feels about Conservatives and the Tea Party Movement. If this doesn't give you an understanding of how our President feels about our Country nothing can turn you around. ACORN was Obama's family until he got into politics.  Part of her statements: "If any of you can say I'm young, I'm a Democrat, and I'm a Socialist" - Here she ardently claps... She added, "You’ve got to know, actually, we are living in a time that’s going to dwarf the McCarthy era. It is going to dwarf the internment of World War II. We are right now in a time that is going to dwarf the era of Jim Crow and segregation.
They are coming. And they are coming after you. And they are going to be brutal and oppressive. They’ve already shown it. … This is not rhetoric or hyperbole — this is real. … This tea party so-called movement — a bowel-movement in my estimation — and this blatant uncovering and ripping off the mask of racism." [I believe that any fair-minded person will see this as inflammatory speech, and none of it true.  I have heard black men and gays on the radio saying they have never been anywhere else where they are so warmly accepted and embraced as at Tea Parties - except for insults from black and gay anti-Tea Party protesters, of course.]
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Health Care Fines for Congress & Other Health Care Issues

From Reason Magazine: Not only will members of Congress and their staffs lose their health care plans under ObamaCare, it now looks like they'll be fined millions for doing so: Congress may be fined tens of millions of dollars a year under its own health-care law, in part because the bill dumps members of Congress and their staffs from their current health-care plans. But no one really knows for sure what the bill does, not even the experts. For instance, exactly who qualifies as an “employer”—and therefore is subject to fines up to $3,000 per employee—is undefined in the bill.
If Congress were subject to a $3,000 fine for each of its employees, it would need to shell out approximately $50 million each year to Uncle Sam. Congress’s research arm, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), informally confirmed the possibility to Republican aides.
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Front Page Magazine reports: The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses. From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty. Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves. Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.” [Coming to a hospital in the USA someday?]
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Think tank analysts usually brim with pride when the president of the United States goes around claiming that his policies are based on their work. But when President Obama tries to sell his health-care law as a moderate approach that borrows ideas developed by the Heritage Foundation, we get incensed. (Snip) This is why we at the Heritage Foundation respectfully ask President Obama and his acolytes to stop misrepresenting our research. We think this massive health law is abominable and should be repealed. And until Congress repeals it, lawmakers should starve this monstrosity of taxpayer funds.
It began when President Obama told "Today" show host Matt Lauer on March 30 that "a lot of ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation."
First, Heritage did not originate the concept of the health insurance exchange. Furthermore, the version of the exchange we did develop couldn't be more different than that embodied in this law.
For us, the health insurance exchange is to be designed by the states. It is conceived as a market mechanism that allows individuals and families to choose among a wide range of health plans and benefit options for those best suited to their personal needs and circumstances. People would have a property right in their health policy, just like auto or homeowners' policies, and be able to take it with them from job to job.
Under the Heritage design, individuals could choose the health plan they want without losing the tax benefits of employer-sponsored coverage. The exchange we propose would be open to all state residents and -- very importantly -- be free of federal regulation.
The other charge -- repeated on this page and elsewhere -- is that the federal individual mandate in Obama's health-care plan came from us.
For the record, we think that the law's federal mandate is unconstitutional. Our legal center, led by former attorney general Edwin Meese III, notes that Congress has no authority to force an American to buy any good or service merely as a requirement of being alive.
Yes, in the early 1990s, we, along with other prominent conservative economists, supported the idea of such a mandate. It seemed the only way to solve the "free-rider" problem, in which individuals can, under federal law, walk into any hospital emergency room nationwide and rack up big bills at taxpayer expense.
Our research in the ensuing two decades has led us to realize our initial idea was operationally ineffective and legally defective. Well before Obama was elected, we dropped it. In the spring 2008 edition of the Harvard Health Policy Review, I advanced far better alternatives to the individual mandate to expand coverage, relying on positive tax incentives and other mechanisms to facilitate enrollment in private health insurance. This is what researchers and fact-based policymakers do when they discover new facts or conduct deeper analysis.
The president and his supporters invoke the Heritage Foundation to convince the American people that his health bill is somehow a middle-of-the-road approach. It isn't. So please, Mr. President, stop it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/18/AR2010041802727_pf.html
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In an election year dominated by health care, dozens of candidates for Congress have a catchy campaign slogan at their disposal: Send a doctor to the House.
Forty-seven physicians — 41 Republicans and six Democrats— are running for the House or Senate this year, three times the number of doctors serving in Congress today, according to a USA TODAY review.
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On the most recent "Two Guys Named Joe" podcast from political consultants Joe DiSano and Joe Munem, U.S. Representative John Conyers, D-Detroit, repeatedly referred to tea party activists as "tea baggers" [Do you readers even know what a "tea bagger" is?  Suffice it to say, it is highly derogatory and lewd, and a misuse of tea party principles] and said that their "rational abilities" are "compromised" because of their anger.
"We are here now to understand the frustration of the tea baggers and the people who are angry," said Conyers. "Many times when you're angry, your rational abilities are compromised."
The comments came at the Michigan Democratic Party endorsement convention.
Conyers, who is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, turned the conversation towards the tea parties and the recent health care bill after being asked how Democrats could remain in contention in Michigan.
"The facts are, many of the tea baggers that were hollering and being profane and screaming and using profanity...guess what?  They are going to be beneficiaries [of the health care bill]."  [Here's a news flash for Conyers - we actually put our country and our grandchildren before ourselves.  Imagine that!  Sound to me like something JFK once asked of us. We don't want his health care!]
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Monday, April 19, 2010

Abe Lincoln, The Right to Peaceably Assemble, A History Lesson, & Our Last Best Chance

 Abe Lincoln:
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

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In February, President Obama signed a new Executive Order.  Although 88% of construction workers in America are NOT in a union, it requires contractors to sign union-only project labor agreements (PLAs) as a condition of performing work on federal and federally funded construction projects.The union workers are certainly getting their money's worth from this administration, and private enterprise is getting the short shrift.   The Card Check bill is the only step left, which mandates that workers must vote for or against unionization in public, not with a private ballot. Andy Stern, the most frequent visitor to the White House and the retiring President of SEIU must be so proud to be Obama's friend....
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 From the NYT: With the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing approaching, former President Bill Clinton last week drew parallels between the anti-government tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today, saying government critics must be mindful that angry words can stir violent actions.  Mr. Clinton, who was in his first term at the time of the bombing, warned that attempts to incite opposition by demonizing the government can provoke responses beyond what political figures intend. “There can be real consequences when what you say animates people who do things you would never do"

My response to this is that our government should remember the Constitution and remember that they are our servants, not our dictators. If they actually govern in reasonable ways, the public would have no need to be so reactive. The Administration is now working full tilt on Cap and Tax, Amnesty for Illegals, and anything else they can pass before they lose the November elections. The fact that Obama has quadrupled the deficit in just one year, and the result will most likely be a VAT tax on top of all our other taxes, gives us reason to proclaim, as did a screaming Hillary Clinton during the last administration, "I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration."

President Clinton said about political disagreement:  "You can attack the politics. Criticize their policies. Don’t demonize them, and don’t say things that will encourage violent opposition.” Mr. Clinton called America a nation born out of protests, and said that he had no interest in reducing productive civic dialogue. Now that's a good thing.  We shall plead for a non-violent change in our government this November.

I would like to ask President Clinton if he was equally worried when Democrats to this day try to say that in spite of 3 or 4 recounts in Florida, George Bush was not a legitimate President.  Did he have a press conference or speech in which he decried the book and movie about President George Bush's death?  I know, you probably think I'm making this up.  However, here it is described: 
Bush's Assassination, a novella by Alien Cultist, was published in 2004 by Fiction Press and was listed as Fiction: Adventure/Parody:
I moved my aiming reticles back on Bush's head. Ugly little bugger. Then there was one click of the flashlight slowly, then a second, and a third, from which I then pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot was completely muffled by the crowd's applause for an idiot son of an asshole. Applause was quickly shifted to screams as the bullet rippled through his eye, and out the back of his head. He laid sprawled, and slightly twitching in his left leg, in his own pool of blood and brain tissue…."Pawn down," I smiled.
I wonder if President Clinton thought this to be inflammatory?
Or what about Harry Reid's proclamation that Bush was a liar?  Has he complained that from the very start, our government has repeatedly reported that Tea Party goers might be terrorists - or that we are dumb or racist or homophobic?  No, I didn't think so.
On NBC News last night a black man attending a Tea Party was asked by the reporter if he didn't feel rather lonely there.  His answer:  "No - these are my people.  They are Americans."


By the way, President Clinton, I imagine that what might have incited Timothy McVeigh 15 years ago were the debacles of your Administration, a show of awesome federal power over people: Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Elian Gonzalez......and it was a far left loon who went over the edge.  Keep in mind that conservatives like to keep things non-violent.  It was President Obama himself who said,  “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in Philadelphia last night. “Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”  And yet Clinton finds Sarah Palin's pledge to "reload" as dangerous....

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For those of you who don't remember, here's a bit of history about both events, each occurring during this
 President Clinton's time in office:
The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 1995, p. A14.
Ruby Ridge: The Justice Report
By James Bovard
The 1992 confrontation between federal agents and the Randy Weaver family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, has become one of the most controversial and widely discussed examples of the abuse of federal power. The Justice Department completed a 542-page investigation on the case last year but has not yet made the report public. However, the report was acquired by Legal Times newspaper, which this week placed the text on the Internet. The report reveals that federal officials may have acted worse than even some of their harshest critics imagined.  http://www.stormfront.org/ruby.htm
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  

The Waco Siege[3] began on February 28, 1993, when the United States ATM attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located nine miles (14 km) east-northeast of Waco, Texas. An exchange of gunfire resulted in the deaths of four agents and six followers of David Koresh. A subsequent 51-day siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ended on April 19 when fire destroyed the compound. Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals)[4] died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.

Before the raid, Rick Ross advised the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that arresting Koresh at Mt. Carmel in the presence of his followers would likely provoke a violent response. Joyce Sparks, an investigator from the Texas agency responsible for child protective services also advised ATF against such action.

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And who can forget Janet Reno, Attorney General to Clinton, and Elian Gonzalez?   I do wonder if any of these government oversteps are noted in current history books.  And we don't need to wonder if these actions might have upset some of those on the fringe.  What President Clinton might have said is that government overreach is once again inflammatory - this time in a grassroots peaceful way.
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Attorney general Janet Reno ordered the return of Elián to his father and set a deadline of April 13, 2000, but the Miami relatives defied the order. Negotiations continued for several days as the house was surrounded by protesters as well as police. The relatives insisted on guarantees that they could live with the child for several months and retain custody, and that Elián would not be returned to Cuba. Negotiations carried on throughout the night, but Reno stated that the relatives rejected all workable solutions. A Florida family court judge revoked Lázaro's temporary custody, clearing the way for Elián to be returned to his father's custody. On April 20, Reno made the decision to remove Elián González from the house and instructed law enforcement officials to determine the best time to obtain the boy. After being informed of the decision, Marisleysis said to a Justice Department community relations officer, "You think we just have cameras in the house? If people try to come in, they could be hurt."[12][13]
In the pre-dawn hours of April 22, pursuant to an order i issued by a federal magistrate, eight SWAT-equipped agents of the Border Patrol's elite BORTAC unit as part of an operation in which more than 130 INS personnel took part[14] approached the house; they knocked, and identified themselves. When no one responded from within, they entered the house. Pepper-spray and mace were employed against those outside the house who attempted to interfere. Nonetheless, a stool, rocks, and bottles were thrown at the agents.[15] In the confusion Armando Gutierrez called in Alan Diaz, of the Associated Press, to enter the house and entered a room with Elián, his great uncle's wife Angela Lázaro, her niece, the niece's young son, and Donato Dalrym ple (one of the fishermen who had rescued him from the ocean). They waited in the room listening to agents search the house. It was later falsely claimed by Marisleysis Gonzalez, that once they found the locked door to the room, agents kicked it down; however, photos taken by Alan Diaz prove that the door was intact and the damage to it, as well as damage that Marisleysis claimed was done to the room and to Elián's bed, had all been done after the INS agents had left, most likely by the residents of the house.[16]
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I am deeply offended by this Administrations' attempts to diminish what is truly an American right - to peacefully assemble and to disagree with our government.  Words like Obama's, Pelosi's and Clinton's will not quell our vigor to defend what is America's greatness!  It is Obama's friend William Ayers (who actually bombed buildings in rebellion against government) whom President Clinton should have referenced, perhaps.
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Following is what I wrote to the local newspaper.  I am surprised they printed it.
We deserve to hear the truth.  The people who attend Tea Party functions are not violent – they are trying to get their words heard by a Congress who doesn’t seem to care what they think.  Many are taking a peaceful, energetic stand for the first time in their lives.  The reason there is such high “rage” against this health care bill is that this law was passed by flaunting the precedents set by Social Security with yeas and nays of both houses at 449 to 39, and Medicare passage with yeas and nays of 377-130.  Whenever Congress forces onto us a bill of this magnitude with absolutely no bi-partisanship, the Founding Fathers are being ignored and the citizens are entitled to be outraged – and energized. 
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Democrats will make fun of us, marginalize us, demonize us, ignore us, and underestimate us - at their own peril - come November.  We are not giving up because they want us to, or because they threaten us in various ways to quell our influence.  For there is nothing so powerful as the Silent Majority finally deciding they've had enough!
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Please!  We now have less than 7 months to make a difference. I truly believe that this is our last best time to right what is wrong with government, to prevent a VAT tax, to defund or repeal the healthcare bill, to stave off Cap and Tax, amnesty for illegals (along with their always democrat votes), and perhaps even the government take-over of our (401)Ks (yes, that is now being considered).  It is time for  most Americans to once again be engaged by paying at least a small income tax (currently only less than 50% actually pay taxes, with some getting money because they don't pay taxes).  Please send my blogs on to your email lists.  You are MY group of possible influence.  Please consider developing your own group by informing your contacts of the truth. With apologies to my family for not having as much time with them til November - I am redoubling my efforts.  What can you do?
 
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