Monday, September 19, 2011

Obama's $5 million dollar jobs; The facts on our $535 million loan to Solyndra; A General was asked to change his testimony for Obama; Obama donors and LightSquared; GE's Immelt is Obama's Jobs Czar; Obama now a punchline; Obama claims Republicans will make US like a third world country; Taxpayer grants go to ACORN entities; Department of Health and Human Services grants money for abortions; American Journalism failed to be watchdog on Obama; UAW gets raises and bonuses; New book about Obama; Geithner mocked by Europeans; Cutting payroll taxes decreases funds for SS

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."

 

American Thinker reports: According to Energy Department figures, the administration has spent $17.2 billion in loan guarantees to create 3,545 jobs, a cost of nearly $5 million per job.   

In fact, hundreds of new regulations continue to be published each week in regard to health care, financial services, energy, and other areas. [Congress has itself to blame for these new regulations which are not voted upon by Congress.]

.http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/obamas_hope_and_lies.html

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Powerline writes: The facts are very bad. Solyndra was a money-loser from beginning to end. Its business model was untenable. The Bush administration turned it down for funding. Its owners wanted to do a public offering; for that purpose, they had to have their books audited and a report written by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The report was more or less an obituary for the company:
[O]utside auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) found that condition to be dire. “The company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception, and has a net stockholders’ deficit,” the PWC accountants concluded. Even with the gigantic Obama loan, Solyndra was such a basket case that PWC found “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”
Given that harsh assessment, the IPO failed for lack of new investors willing to pour their money down the rathole. 
So your money was poured down the rathole instead. Incredibly, the Obama administration bailed out (at least in part) Solyndra’s investors by putting them ahead of the taxpayers in the company’s inevitable liquidation. There was no conceivable business justification for this action, so it can only be ascribed to the substantial amounts of money Solyndra’s founders raised for the Obama campaign, and to their dozens of lobbying visits to the White House. McCarthy concludes:
As the IPO failed and the company inevitably sank in a sea of red ink, Solyndra’s panicked backers pleaded with the administration to restructure the loan terms — to insulate them from their poor business judgment, allowing them to recoup some of their investment while the public took the fall.  http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/09/barack-obama-flim-flam-man.php
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Sweetness and Light comments on taxpayer dollars going to LightSquared:  "In this time of record debt, I question whether the government is qualified to act as a venture capitalist, picking winner and loser in speculative ventures and shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat," said GOP Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.
The episode —confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee —is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers…
Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone.
According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, officials said.
“There was an attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage LightSquared in the process in order to bias his testimony,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said in an interview. http://sweetness-light.com/
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The Center for Public Integrity reports: Wireless firm LightSquared pressed its case for government approval of a new national broadband network in numerous contacts with presidential aides, at times citing its fundraising for Democratic causes and President Obama, White House emails show.
On the day that LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja made a $30,400 contribution to the Democratic Party, two of his deputies appealed to the White House for meetings with top technology advisers to Obama, according to emails obtained by iWatch News . http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/09/14/6458/emails-show-wireless-firms-communications-white-house-campaign-donations-were-made/?utm_source=iwatchnews&utm_medium=site-features&utm_campaign=most-active
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Washington Examiner opines: [GE (whose CEO was appointed as President Obama's Jobs Czar) said]: "Last year, only 4 percent of our revenue came from sales to the U.S. government."
This is really off target. The dig at GE is not that it makes all its money selling to the U.S. government. It's that it finds all sorts of ways to profit off of big government, including subsidies and regulations.
Off the top of my head, here are a few ways:
  • GE is a top beneficiary of Export-Import Bank subsidies.
  • GE launched an embryonic stem-cell business just after President Obama announced the government would start subsidizing them.
  • GE owns half of Greenhouse Gas Services, a business that generates and trades in greenhouse-gas credits -- something that only has value if government constrains GHG emissions.
  • GE is a leading manufacturer of wind turbines, which receive all sorts of federal and state subsidies.
  • GE lobbied for and benefits from the light-bulb efficiency regulations that drive consumers to more expensive light bulbs.
  • On the state level, GE gets generous "incentives" (subsidies) from governments. Consider this Virginia case.
  • GE got $140 billion bailout from the FDIC in 2008.
I would like GE to explain why this isn't corporatism or crony capitalism.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/ge-responds-charges-crony-capitalism
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Commentary Magazine opines: Gone are the days when all Obama had to do to charm the news media was don a pair of blue jeans. Now the Solyndra scandal has become a Jon Stewart punchline, news outlets are joining the mockery of the the AttackWatch campaign site, and even James Carville is advising the White House to panic.
David Axelrod, clearly longing for the good old days, is now blaming the media for hyping Obama’s bad month (in a memo he released to the media):
More than anything, the memo is a sign the media culture is beginning to change. Obama still gets far better coverage than a Republican politician would. But the rise of right-leaning media outlets and the competition for web traffic has made it much harder for mainstream outlets to ignore legitimate stories that reflect poorly on Democrats. That’s not to say the coverage of Obama’s campaign will be as fair and balanced as it should be, but he’s not going to get as much of a free pass as he did in 2008. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/16/axelrod-media-obama/
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In a Washington Times editorial titled “Obama’s Third World America,” this statement caught my attention: “On a campaign fundraising trip to Chicago, Mr. Obama quipped that under the proposed Republican budget plan, ‘we would be a nation of potholes, and our airports would be worse than places that we thought — that we used to call the Third World, but who are now investing in infrastructure.’ He failed to elaborate on which developing countries he thinks should be models for the United States, but his policies have secured America’s status as part of the declining world.”
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Patriot Update reports: Section 261 of the bill provides $15 billion for “Project Rebuild.” Grants would be given to “qualified nonprofit organizations, businesses or consortia of eligible entities for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed-upon properties and for the stabilization of affected neighborhoods.” Radical groups like ACORN won’t get the whole $15 billion, though, because they will have to compete with state and local governments for the money.
In March of this year, Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to the Miami branch of the massive conglomerate known as ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers in 2010 legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). The nonprofit corporation owed $162,813 in back taxes to the IRS, states, and cities as of this past July.
Despite the new name, AHCOA is the same old corrupt organization. It even uses AHC’s federal Employer Identification Number (72-1048321). http://patriotupdate.com/12253/obamas-jobs-bill-makes-acorn-eligible-for-15-billion-in-taxpayer-money
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World Net Daily reports: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded Planned Parenthood of New Hampshire $1 million after the state legislature voted to cut off the stream of taxpayer money to the largest operator in the nation's abortion industry.
It's just one of a number of states where local managers and officials have decided against providing tax money to Planned Parenthood, only to see their work overturned through what one critic calls government by fiat.
Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser says the New Hampshire dispute is just another example of the Obama administration's abuse of states' rights.
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The National Post opines: As the bad economic news continues to emanate from the United States — with a double-dip recession now all but certain — a reckoning is overdue. American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.
Much of the Obama coverage was orchestrated sychophancy. They glided past his pretensions — when did a presidential candidate before “address the world” from the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin? They ignored his arrogance — “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” And they averted their eyes from his every gaffe — such as the admission that he didn’t speak “Austrian.” 
The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jermiah Wright. In the midst of the brief stormlet over the issue, one CNN host — inexplicably — decided that CNN was going to be a “Wright-free zone.” He could have hung out a sign: “No bad news about Obama here.”
To the degree the press neglected its function as watchdog and turned cupbearer to a styrofoam demigod, it is a partner in the flaws and failures of what is turning out to be one of the most miserable performances in the modern history of the American presidency. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/09/17/rex-murphy-the-medias-love-affair-with-a-disastrous-president/ 
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The Sun Times reports:The United Auto Workers union [who now own 17% of GM] won $5,000 signing bonuses  and the possibility of sweeter profit-sharing checks as part of a new four-year contract with General Motors Co., two people briefed on the talks said Saturday. [Perhaps they should be paying we the taxpayers the $14 billion they still owe us.]  The deal reached late Friday also includes a $2 to $3 an hour pay raise for entry-level workers over the life of the contract and guarantees more union jobs, the people said. http://www.suntimes.com/business/7723000-420/gm-workers-to-get-5000-signing-bonus-in-deal.html
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The UK Telegraph opines: A new book about Barack Obama, whose Pulitzer-prize winning author received extensive co-operation from the White House, portrays the American president as indecisive, out of his depth and facing insubordination from advisers. 

Larry Summers, a former top economic adviser is quoted as telling Peter Orszag, then Mr Obama's budget director, at a dinner in Washington's Bombay Club: "We're home alone. There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes." Mr Summers was US Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton.  

Anita Dunn, a former Obama communications director, is quoted as saying that "looking back, this place would be in court for a hostile workplace ... Because it actually fits all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace for women." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/8772380/Barack-Obama-book-casts-grim-view-of-presidents-leadership.html

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The UK Daily Mail comments on the new book about Obama: Top female advisers felt left out by a boy's club in the White House where rampant infighting sabotaged the administration's economic decisions, according to a controversial new book.
Sidelined and ignored in the West Wing, some women aides reportedly complained to President Obama about their treatment in 2009.
In an excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, a female senior aide is quoted as calling the White House a hostile environment for women.
'I felt like a piece of meat,' Christina Romer, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said of one meeting with Summers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038386/Obamas-White-House-hostile-environment-women-treated-like-meat.html#ixzz1YJ0N0XY1
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Forbes opines: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has been savaged in the United States for cheating on his taxes (you can buy a T-shirt to commemorate his tax dodging), but he’s becoming a punch line in the rest of the world for different reasons.
I wrote two years ago about Chinese students erupting in laughter after Geithner claimed the Administration believed in a strong dollar.
Now he’s getting mocked by the Europeans.
And here is a brief excerpt from the Financial Times.

…some eurozone finance ministers hit back at Mr Geithner’s comments, questioning the usefulness of his visit. “I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the eurozone, that they tell us what we should do and when we make a suggestion … that they say no straight away,” said Maria Fekter, Austria’s finance minister. Sweden’s Anders Borg said: “we need to make progress, but it’s quite clear the US has a big debt problem and the situation would be better if the US could show a sustainable way forward.”
When the dust settles, though, the fact that Secretary Geithner is getting laughed at and mocked by people in other countries is not that funny. Not because he doesn’t deserve abuse, but rather because the bad policies of the Obama Administration are resulting in genuine hardship and sufferinghttp://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/09/18/geithners-trip-to-europe-spend-aholics-shouldnt-give-advice-to-spend-aholics/
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Expose Obama opines: Ironically,the centerpiece of President Obama’s recently announced jobs program would cut payroll taxes [and increase taxes by $1.5 trillion] – the principal funding source for the Social Security Trust Fund – without immediately making up for those lost revenues through other revenue streams. Normally,the employer and employee pay an equal share,6.2 percent of income up to $106,200. This provided $544.8 billion in funding for Social Security in 2010. Last year,President Obama persuaded Congress to pass a two percent employee payroll tax cut for 2011. Thus,there will be $112 billion less in revenues to go into paying for Social Security benefits,according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. That will require finding other funding sources to make up the difference. http://www.exposeobama.com/2011/09/16/the-obama-jobs-plan-jeopardizes-social-security/
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Saturday, September 17, 2011

My Boyne City Gazette Column; Obama racing towards $3 Billion more green energy loans; We lose $14 billion in auto company bailout, and that's good news?; A union raids a grain terminal, smashes windows and threatens security guards; House passes law protecting jobs from government interference; Government protected Obama investors over taxpayers in Solyndra deal


   President Obama, the EPA, and  job losses

   As have presidents before him, President Obama has enacted part of his agenda through signing statements and Presidential orders, thereby bypassing the consent of Congress.  Having failed to pass Cap and Tax, he has given the EPA the authority to impose any regulations it desires using the Clean Air Act to force companies to pay for expensive new equipment or to pay for greenhouse gas emissions. Those companies then must raise their prices to consumers. If a state refuses those mandates as Texas has, the EPA has delayed or refused gas permitting authority.  
   Petoskey recently quashed plans to erect a large windmill because of the unacceptable levels of noise it would create, noise associated with human illnesses such as high blood pressure and infrasonic waves generated by the rotors.  Add to this many other problems: they require vast amounts of land space; they don't work when it is not windy; they need to be heated when the temperature is low; they require very expensive repairs; they kill hundreds of birds; and at best they produce only 2% of needed electricity. 
   Michigan Country Lines wrote, "Even if Congress grants a reprieve on greenhouse gas regulations, red tape from the other EPA rule-making efforts will trigger higher electric bills.  Co-ops expect EPA's rule making will eventually have the practical effect of eliminating coal as a power plant option." As Barack Obama actually said during his campaign, "So if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can.  It's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that is being emitted."  Country Lines finished its newsletter to customers by writing, "We are expecting a number of power plants to simply be retired.  The cost to comply....will simply be too much.”
   The President and CEO or the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity warns of job losses totaling 1.4 million and a 23% increase in electric rates if the EPA mandates are followed.  Green energy companies paid for by taxpayer dollars via Stimulus money, such as Solyndra ($535 million) are frequently going bankrupt.
   The Wall St. Journal called for a suspension to EPA rules; The New York Post warned of an “economic train wreck” if EPA rules take effect; the Texas Public Utility Commission predicted rolling blackouts.  Even John D. Rockefeller (D) asked for a two year delay of rules.   The EPA just sought further delay in their rules, saying the regulations would cost $900 billion per year.
   Even as we hope for alternative energy to fulfill our needs in the future, it is far from being able to do so at this time.  Alternatives are fraught with problems of all kinds, which is why their production needs taxpayer dollars to sustain their production.  America does not have the revenues to keep supporting unworkable projects just to provide a few more, and increasingly temporary jobs.
   In an obvious effort to be re-elected, and knowing that this fall the Republican House planned to legislate to cancel the EPA rules,  President Obama recently did the right thing by using  a proviso allowing him to overrule the EPA.  If he is truly interested in jobs, he should also end his de facto ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and permit the building of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Midwest and the Gulf coast. I imagine he will instead cast the Tea Party as the terrorist, racist group which keeps him from his stated plans to “fundamentally change America.”
   Perhaps his next step should be the repeal of Obamacare, as it is a major reason for current unemployment in the health care fields, as well as freezes on hiring in many companies.  But don’t count on it.  
   Some members of Move On, a very liberal, George Soros-funded organization, are “wondering how they can ever work for Obama’s re-election.”  I’m quite sure they will find a way to continue to support Obama, as they will come to understand that this EPA reversal is but a temporary move.  Jimmy Hoffa, on the other hand, failed to fault Obama, proclaiming that unions are “at war” with the Tea Party and that they will “take these SOBs out.”
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National Journal writes: The Obama administration is in a race against the clock to close by month’s end more than a dozen renewable-energy loan guarantees totaling $9 billion. Of that, just over $3 billion would come from the federal government’s coffers.
It now has to do that amid an escalating political battle over a federally backed solar company spiraling into bankruptcy and facing an FBI probe. President Obama once praised the company, California-based Solyndra, as “the true engine of economic growth.”
At a House hearing Wednesday, there was bipartisan concern about risking more taxpayers’ dollars on renewable energy projects that ultimately fail. While Republicans’ rhetoric was more heated, Democrats agree it is a critical issue.gh
The loans conditionally committed to the companies borrowing from the government total $3.18 billion. The other half loaning from private lenders totals roughly $5.8 billion. Most of the companies are in the solar industry. Of the companies seeking to borrow from the Treasury Department, the biggest loan—worth $1.18 billion—would go to SunPower Corporation Systems to build a solar farm in California. Another hefty loan of $737 million would go to SolarReserve to build a solar farm in Nevada. Most of the money Treasury has available—if loans are closed by Sept. 30—is targeted to solar companies. Of the seven companies borrowing from the government, four of them are in the solar industry, two in biofuels, and one in the wind sector, according to DOE’s website.  http://nationaljournal.com/energy/government-races-to-close-billions-in-renewable-energy-loan-guarantees-20110915
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US News reports: Taxpayers will lose about $14 billion in the government's $80 billion bailout of Chrysler and GM, the White House said Wednesday, portraying the outcome as good news since the losses are far lower than originally anticipated.
Seizing on the figures, the Obama administration took credit for the resurgence of the U.S. auto industry, assuring taxpayers that the government's bailout of Chrysler and GM was an investment worth making.
A report by the president's National Economic Council noted that as Detroit automakers rebound, the taxpayers' loss from the bailout will be about $14 billion, or less than 20 percent of the $80 billion that the Bush and Obama administration used to prop up the companies in 2008. The Treasury Department had expected losses closer to 60 percent."  [Let's not forget that the unions now own a substantial part of GM.]  http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/09/16/ford-tv-ad-slams-obama-auto-bailouts
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The AP reports: A federal judge found a union in contempt of court Thursday, a week after police said hundreds of its members raided a grain terminal in southwestern Washington, smashed windows and menaced security guards.
U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton said he wants the operator of the Longview grain terminal, EGT, to provide him an accounting of the damage for purposes of gauging how much he should fine the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Locals 4 and 21. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WASHINGTON_UNION_CLASH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-09-15-20-11-51
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US Representative Sue Myrick (NC-09) today voted in favor of HR 2587, The Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, introduced by Rep. Tim Scott (SC-01).
The bill amends the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to prohibit the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from ordering an employer to relocate, shut down or transfer employment. This is especially important given the ongoing situation in South Carolina involving the NLRB and The Boeing Company, which may destroy thousands of jobs on which hardworking Americans were depending. http://myrick.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=22&sectiontree=21,22&itemid=929
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Expose Obama writes: On February 23,the government restructured its agreement with Solyndra to entice investors to sink another $75 million into the failing firm. The restructuring agreement provides that,in case of bankruptcy,those investors get to recoup their funds before taxpayers are repaid. Republican Congressman say this is a clear violation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,which states taxpayer dollars must “not [be] subordinate to other financing.”
As such,the restructuring alone may be an impeachable offensehttp://www.exposeobama.com/2011/09/16/did-valerie-jarrett-push-corrupt-solyndra-loan-deal/
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Friday, September 16, 2011

No praying in the streets of Paris; More money to Dept. of Education results in 4 decade-low SATs; Star Wars video game adds same-sex romances; Solyndra scandal and Obama's campaign bundler; D.C. Mayor's aid admits to voter fraud; $19 Billion in fraudulent state unemployement benefits were paid; Obama administration closes public access to online database of physician malpractice records; EPA again delays global warming regulations

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."
 

The UK Telegraph reports: Praying in the streets of Paris is against the law starting Friday, after the interior minister warned that police will use force if Muslims, and those of any other faith, disobey the new rule to keep the French capital's public spaces secular. 

Claude Guéant said that ban could later be extended to the rest of France, in particular to the Mediterranean cities of Nice and Marseilles, where "the problem persists".
He promised the new legislation would be followed to the letter as it "hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens".
"My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied. Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism, the minister told Le Figaro newspaper.
"All Muslim leaders are in agreement," he insisted. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8766169/Praying-in-Paris-streets-outlawed.html
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The Washington Post reveals: SAT reading scores for graduating high school seniors this year reached the lowest point in nearly four decades, reflecting a steady decline in performance in that subject on the college admissions test, the College Board reported Wednesday.
In the Washington area, one of the nation’s leading producers of college-bound students, educators were scrambling to understand double-digit drops in test scores in Montgomery and Prince William counties and elsewhere. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sat-reading-scores-drop-to-lowest-point-in-decades/2011/09/14/gIQAdpoDTK_story.html
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Big Hollywood reports: Apparently, after selling somewhere around 500,000 copies to unsuspecting families everywhere, the creators of the video game “Star Wars: The Old Republic” have decided to add same-sex romances to the online feature.
Say goodbye to your child’s innocence.
Though Star Wars: The Old Republic has wooing, romance, and all that soppy stuff one would expect from a BioWare game, the developer had so far said that the MMORPG would only allow coupling with NPCs of the opposite sex, not same-sex pairings. Delightfully, it’s now changed its mind, announcing that same-sex romance will be added post-launch.
The revelation comes from an official statement posted on the game’s official forums (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun):

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/09/15/will-game-ask-your-child-to-engage-in-same-sex-relationships/ 

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Expose Obama writes: The Obama administration’s Solyndra scandal goes beyond pressuring career federal employees to approve a $535 million loan guarantee to a company largely held by an Obama crony. When the government restructured the loan in February, officials appear to have broken the law by allowing the company’s private investors to recoup their funds before U.S. taxpayers get their money back.

Much of the media and political backlash has focused on the Obama administration’s lobbying for the loan’s swift approval in 2009. George Kaiser bundled between $50,000-$100,000 in campaign contributions for Obama in 2008, and the George Kaiser Family Foundation controls 35.7 percent of Solyndra Inc. Despite analysts’ significant misgivings about the company’s viability, the well-connected company received approval on the administration’s expedited schedule. http://us.mc1610.mail.yahoo.com/mc/showMessage?.rand=1170027557&fid=Inbox&mid=1_183194_AG/ci2IAAUZuTnHgJgCKZRWhHXQ#_pg=showMessage;_ylc=X3oDMTBucmhobGR0BF9TAzM5ODMwMTAyNwRhYwNkZWxNc2dz&mid=1_159_AD7ci2IAADslTnL0ZwVy%2BWqqbHE&fid=Inbox&sort=date&order=down&startMid=0&filterBy=&.rand=241860488&hash=5fe7693ae7d65ec92ea8670a42080e41&.jsrand=826557

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Expose Obama writes: After confessing to what appears to constitute voter fraud, high-level Democratic Party insider Andrea “Andi” Pringle has abruptly quit her post as senior aide to Washington,D.C.,mayor Vincent Gray.
Barely a week into the job,Pringle,who was Gray’s deputy chief of staff,resigned her recently position after admitting she voted in the September 2010 primary election in the District of Columbia even though she was residing at that time in neighboring Montgomery County,Md. In her resignation letter Pringle said she was quitting because she had “become a distraction from the important work of”Gray’s administration,as local media in the nation’s capital have reported.
The resignation comes as several U.S. states initiate a crackdown on voter fraud. It also comes weeks after it was reported that Lessadolla Sowers,a member of the executive board of the Tunica County,Miss.,NAACP,was sentenced to five years in prison for voting 10 times in the names of other people. http://www.exposeobama.com/2011/09/15/acorn-operative-admits-voter-fraud/
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The Wall St. Journal writes: Nearly $19 billion in state unemployment benefits were paid in error during the three years that ended in June, new Labor Department data show.
he amount represents more than 10% of the $180 billion in jobless benefits paid nationwide during the period. (See a sortable chart of each states’ overpayments) The tally covers state programs, which offer benefits for up to 26 weeks, from July 2008 to June 2011. Layers of federal programs that help provide benefits for up to 99 weeks weren’t included.

Improper payments most often occur when recipients claim benefits even though they have returned to work; employers or their administrators don’t submit timely or accurate information about worker separations; or recipients don’t correctly register with a state’s employment-service organization. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/09/14/billions-in-unemployment-benefits-paid-in-error/tab/print/
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The LA Times reports: Patient advocacy groups and leading journalism associations are protesting a decision by the Obama administration to close public access to an online database of anonymous physician disciplinary and malpractice records.

The groups are calling on the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, to restore public access to the data, which journalists, researchers and consumer advocates have relied on to expose dangerous medical practices.

“Reporters for years have used this database to help document lax oversight of doctors by their state's medical boards,” said Charles Ornstein, president of the Assn. of Health Care Journalists, one of three journalism groups that sent a letter to the HRSA administrator Thursday.
“It is important to understand that the law that created the National Practitioner Data Bank requires that information about individual practitioners [doctors, nurses, etc.] must remain confidential,” said HRSA spokesman Martin Kramer.
“When HRSA became aware that a reporter in Kansas City was able to use the information in the Public Use File and other information to obtain details about a specific physician we had no choice but to take down the Public Use File.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-physician-records-20110915,0,6100698.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29
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The Washington Examiner reports: For the second time in four months the Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed that they will again delay the release of their much anticipated global warming regulations.
An EPA spokeswoman told National Journal Thursday that the EPA will not issue caps on greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to the Clean Air Act by their latest September 30th deadline. The EPA had originally promised the environmental activist groups suing the federal government that they would issue global warming regulations by July 26th.
The EPA's latest retreat on climate change regulation comes almost two weeks after President Obama ordered EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to rescind her ozone ruleshttp://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/epa-delays-global-warming-rules-again

Thursday, September 15, 2011

If you love Obama, help him pass this bill; Prosecutions needed at Justice Department; Nobel Prize winner disgusted over officially stated policy and resigns; China to liquidate more Treasuries and buy American companies; Obama compromises national security by telling secrets;

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."


Obama promoted his jobs bill in North Carolina on Wednesday, the third stop on what White House press secretary Jay Carney has called a ‘campaign’ for jobs.
Not for the first time, Obama called back to an audience member who shouted ‘I love you’ with ‘I love you back.’
On Wednesday he added, ‘But if you love me you’ve got to help me pass this bill.’”  http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/09/what-it-means-to-love-me--ruminations-from-barack-obama
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American Spectator writes: It's long past time to force mass resignations at, and possible prosecutions of members of, the Obama Justice Department -- and, more broadly, of the West Wing itself. Forgive all the links, but the scope of the corruption is so large as to defy adequate descriptions, in a single column, of each abomination. 
This week, meanwhile, Christian Adams continued Pajamas Media's mind-boggling series of stories on blatantly illegal hiring practices at DoJ. Please read that linked story, and all the previous stories linked therein. This is amazingly disturbing stuff. Of 106 supposedly apolitical hires by the Obama/Holder Civil Rights Division, all 106 are demonstrably, irrefutably leftist activists. Again, these are for "career" slots for which no political bias is supposed to be used to hire them.  
Buried in Christian Adams' latest story on this scandal comes what should be an incredibly explosive allegation: "Worse, Loretta King, while serving as the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights at the outset of the Obama administration, ordered the resumes of highly qualified applicants to be rejected only because they didn't have political or left-wing civil rights experience. Multiple DOJ sources with direct knowledge of hiring committee practices have confirmed this to me."
Then there is the continuing failure of systems that are supposed to ensure that military personnel abroad can get ballots cast and counted, which is part of a seemingly deliberate pattern of obstruction by the Obama/Holder Justice Department.  [And on and on it goes.] http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/15/deep-corruption-at-the-obama-j
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Fox News reports: Dr. Ivar Giaever, a former professor with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the 1973 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday, Sept. 13, from the premier physics society in disgust over its officially stated policy that "global warming is occurring."
The official position of the American Physical Society (APS) supports the theory that man's actions have inexorably led to the warming of the planet, through increased emissions of carbon dioxide.
Giaever does not agree -- and put it bluntly and succinctly in the subject line of his email, reprinted at Climate Depot, a website devoted to debunking the theory of man-made climate change.
"I resign from APS," Giaever wrote.
"The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period," his email message said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The The UK Telegraph reports: The debt markets have been warned. A key rate setter-for China's central bank let slip – or was it a slip? – that Beijing aims to run down its portfolio of US debt as soon as safely possible. "The incremental parts of our of our foreign reserve holdings should be invested in physical assets," said Li Daokui at the World Economic Forum in the very rainy city of Dalian – former Port Arthur from Russian colonial days. "We would like to buy stakes in Boeing, Intel, and Apple, and maybe we should invest in these types of companies in a in a proactive way." "Once the US Treasury market stabilizes we can liquidate more of our holdings of Treasuries," he said. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100011987/china-to-liquidate-us-treasuries-not-dollars/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Last Human Events opines: Last week the History Channel premiered the documentary "Targeting Bin Laden," which celebrates “the greatest victory in the war on terror.”  It included interviews with President Obama and his key national security advisers and was chock-full of sensitive national security information that reflects the administration’s full cooperation.

The History Channel evidently tapped many of the same sources used by Nicholas Schmidle to write his incredibly “insightful” Aug. 8 article for The New Yorker.  Together, that article, "Getting Bin Laden," and the documentary recklessly expose the identities of national security personnel and our special operating forces’ techniques, tactics, procedures and technologies used in the May 2 raid to take down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Clearly politics was the administration’s rationale for being so generous with our secrets.  Our enemies and Obama’s image benefit, while our national security suffers. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46202
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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Republicans beat Democrats in NY and Nevada; Tectonic shift predicted; Obama's diplomatic crisis for America in Middle East; EPA can't sue DTE Energy; Private health insurance decreases, just as Obamacare means for it to; Pennsylvania judge deems Obamacare mandate unconstitutional; NBC to cover a "Day in the life of Ahmadinejad"; Bill prohibiting NLRB to order plant closings considered; White House rushed federal reviews on solar company; Media ignores damaging info on Democrats

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."
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The Washington Post writes: With the outcome of his own reelection effort 14 difficult months away, President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke Tuesday when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic district that has not been in GOP hands since the 1920s.
Bob Turner, the winner, cast the election as a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy and, in the state’s Ninth Congressional District, which has a large population of Orthodox Jewish voters, the president’s position on Israel.
With 75 percent of the precincts reporting at press time, Turner had a commanding lead, with 53 percent of the vote, compared with 47 percent for Weprin.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republican-wins-democratic-new-york-house-seat/2011/09/13/gIQAoos5QK_print.html
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Big Government wrote: Just as Weiner kept on making critical errors every step of the way as his personal scandal unfolded earlier this year, President Obama has done everything in NY-09 to show that he is no friend of Israel and has no clue how to create jobs or learn from his many mistakes.
I predict a tectonic shift among American Jews and within the Democratic Party if Obama doesn’t quietly retire. All the spinning in the world can’t spin away the trend of Scott Brown, the Tea Party victory of November 2010, and now the Turner earthquake.
Many Democrats are awakening to the reality that their party has been hijacked by a radicalism completely unfamiliar to their parents’ and grandparents’ Democratic Party. http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/09/13/after-turner-earthquake-in-weiner-district-democrats-civil-war-against-obama-begins/
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Daily Caller reports: Late Tuesday night National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Pete Sessions painted the Republican win in the special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District as a snapshot of the problems Democrats will face in 2012.
“Nevadans have handed an unpopular President Obama and his party yet another rejection message for making a bad economy worse,” Sessions added.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/14/nrcc-on-nevada-victory-democrats-just-saw-their-2012-playbook-fall-apart/#ixzz1XvS9osPO
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Fox News reports: The Obama administration is scrambling to contain an emerging diplomatic crisis in the Middle East, as Israel's closest Muslim allies lash out at the country in a string of demonstrations some fear could jeopardize an already-fragile peace. 
The latest flare-up occurred over the weekend, when hundreds of protesters in Cairo stormed the Israeli embassy, forcing Israeli diplomats to flee. That comes on top of a prior clash between Egyptian and Israeli officials after Palestinian militants coming by way of the Sinai Peninsula attacked Israeli targets last month. Three Egyptian officers were killed as Israel returned fire. 
To make matters worse, Turkey earlier this month moved to expel Israel's ambassador and downgrade diplomatic ties, escalating a long-simmering dispute over Israel's raid last year on a Gaza-bound Turkish ship. 
This all comes in the run-up to a planned vote at the United Nations on Palestinian statehood, which has the potential to fuel more unrest along the Israeli border regardless of the outcome. [I guess all our President's Muslim outreach is not getting the desired, loving results after all.]  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/us-scrambles-to-ease-tension-as-israel-s-ties-with-allies-erode/?cmpid=cmty_email_Gigya_U.S._Scrambles_to_Ease_Tension_as_Israel%27s_Ties_With_Allies_Erode
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Michigan Messenger writes: A federal judge has decided that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can’t sue DTE Energy for failing to install pollution control equipment at the company’s Monroe plant during an equipment upgrade last year.
Business Week
reports:
After more than a year of litigation, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman didn’t need a trial to convince him to rule in favor of the utility. He said the Environmental Protection Agency went to court too soon and needs to collect more data to determine whether improvements at Monroe Unit 2 have caused an increase in emissions. http://michiganmessenger.com/52391/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-over-pollution-from-dte-coal-plant
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The Washington Times reports:  "Over the last 10 years, private health insurance has continuously decreased," said Brett O'Hara, chief of the Census Bureau's Health and Disability Statistics Branch. "The number of people covered by government programs has increased for the fourth consecutive year."

According to the data, employment-based coverage dropped by 1.5 million, while the number of people covered by government programs rose by 1.8 million and now stands at 31 percent of the population. http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2011/sep/13/census-fewer-people-covered-work-health-insurance/
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Philly.com reports: The requirement in the national health-care overhaul law that individuals buy health insurance is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Tuesday in a question that the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to settle.

Conner, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush, said the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of authority granted to the federal government under the Constitution's commerce clause.
"The nation undoubtably faces a health care crisis," Conner said. "Scores of individuals are uninsured and the costs to all citizens are measurable and significant. The federal government, however, is one of limited enumerated powers, and Congress's efforts to remedy the ailing health care and health insurance markets must fit squarely within the boundaries of those powers."
While most of the massive law can remain intact, Conner said, certain provisions are linked to the health insurance requirement and must also be struck down. Those provisions are designed to guarantee that insurance companies cannot discriminate against or deny coverage to the sick or people with pre-existing conditions.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20110913_ap_pafederaljudgerulesagainstinsurancemandate.html
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Jerusalem Post writes: In the lead-up to next week's UN General Assembly in which he was scheduled to speak, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allowed NBC's Ann Curry to shadow him in Iran for a feature entitled, "A Day in the Life of Iran's President." http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=237771
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Yahoo News writes: House Republicans, angry over the government's labor dispute with Boeing Co., are taking up a bill that would prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from ordering any company to close plants or relocate workers, even if a company flouts labor laws.
The measure would undercut a high-profile lawsuit filed in April that accuses Boeing of violating labor laws by opening a new production line for its 787 airplane in right-to-work South Carolina. The board says Boeing is punishing unionized Washington state workers for past strikes.
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The Washington Post reports: The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.
The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.
The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-pushed-500-million-loan-to-solar-company-now-under-investigation/2011/09/13/gIQAr3WbQK_print.html
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American Thinker writer describes America's problems with a mostly left media: I had been a leader of the Marxist students at Occidental College myself, starting in 1976 when I founded the precursor of the Democrat Socialist Alliance on campus.  The young Obama I knew was a Marxist socialist who would have been quite comfortable with Communist party members like his Hawaii mentor Frank Marshall Davis, retired domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers, or active socialist politicians like Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer.
The Obama I knew was nothing like the lifelong pragmatic centrist that he was pretending to be in the 2008 presidential campaign.  When I talked politics with the young Obama, he expressed a profound commitment to bringing about a socialist economic system in the U.S. -- completely divorced from the profit motive -- which would occur, in his lifetime, through a potentially violent, Communist-style revolution.  In this context, I saw my report on young Obama as a key piece of evidence suggesting a profound continuity in his belief system
Once I saw the significance of my face-to-face observations on the young Obama, I went out of my way to get my story on record with the Orange County Register.  I tried to contact, among others, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, the folks behind the Swiftboat ads, and the McCain campaign.
I thought I would get a phone call back from Fox News -- someone, somewhere -- and I still do not understand why no one seemed to catch on to the urgency of the situation.  I understand that I did not have audio tape of young Obama.  I did not have any photos or home movies.  Nevertheless, I was extremely active in the leftist politics and counter-cultural milieu of Occidental College in the 1970s. 
What shocked me about my experience in the summer of 2008 is that I thought my experience as a Williams College political science professor, my small business owner status, and my visibility in the Orange County community would allow my message to immediately go to the very top of the McCain campaign.  I thought my story would be welcomed by Fox News.  http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/even_republicans_rejected_info_about_obamas_past.html
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