Obama Gets Heckled; Brainwashing Global Warming; Belt-tightening in New Jersey; Obama Losing His Old Friends; Our Universities Under Control of State Government

Yahoo News reports: President Barack Obama got heckled at a fundraiser Wednesday night by protesters pushing for more funding for AIDS programs and quicker action to allow gays to serve openly in the military.
"Some of those signs should be going up at the other folks' events, and folks should be hollering at the other folks' event. Because the choice in November could not be clearer," the president said.
Addressing an activist pushing for more funding for global AIDS initiatives, the president said, "We heard your point. And as I said before, we increased AIDS funding. ... The people who will take over if we don't focus on the election, I promise you, will cut AIDS funding." [It seems that the old adage that the bigger the lie is, the more people believe it.  First of he, where is his proof that Republicans will cut AIDS funding - in their recent Pledge?  I don't think so. Perhaps, in the name of honesty (not one of Obama's strong points), he should have admitted that George W. Bush tripled America's funding of AIDS programs.  I recall that when I was in Africa, President Bush was a hero to the Tanzanians, Muslims all - for having donated over a million bed nets to save the lives of millions of Africans who would otherwise die of malaria.  This disease was exacerbated by the banning of DDT by America decades ago, by the way.  Today, the science is not even so sure that DDT was actually causing many illnesses in the first place. Not being able to use it to control mosquitoes does cause millions of deaths, however.]    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100922/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_hecklers 
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From CNS News:  Like I keep saying over and over again, if you get young people invested in those ideas early on, that will result in those kinds of positive policy developments," Sarbanes told CNSNews.com. "So, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s population growth, whether it’s all these factors that impact the health of our world, raising that awareness early among young people is only going to promote the agenda.” When asked if students should be taught that global warming is a threat, Sarbanes said: “If you’re promoting outdoor education, building that into educational programming, they [students] can’t help but understand about climate change because they’re going to see the effects of it. They’re going to go to a local science center , right, and they’re going to learn about the effect that global warming is having right in their own communities. [Let the brainwashing begin, and don't let them hear that it may all be a hoax!  Let no real debate exist - just scare them out of their wits that the world is coming to an end because of man.  Who cares if students have to be treated for depression and nightmares?]  http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75645
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National Review online:  Part of Gov. Chris Christie’s belt-tightening plan for New Jersey was the termination of $7.5 million in public funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, a decision Democrats in the legislature countermanded with a bill that cleared the Senate with a 30-10 vote — sufficient to override a veto. But when that veto came and the Democrats scheduled an override vote, Republicans in the legislature backed down, and the measure failed 23-17. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/247495/christie-veto-shuts-down-abortion-clinics-nj-daniel-foster
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The Washington Post opines: In his nearly two years in office, President Obama has relied on a very small clique of advisers that serves as his most trusted sounding board on politics and policy.
Members of his staff describe Obama as wary of outsiders and reluctant to widen his inner circle. As one of his advisers bluntly put it, the president "doesn't like new people."
Like it or not, he will soon be surrounded by them as an expected staff shuffle will deprive Obama of two of his closest aides and an influx of replacements will take their places within the West Wing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/22/AR2010092206741.html
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Expose Obama reports: According to the Centennial Institute, a proposed new rule by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) “would place private colleges and universities under the ultimate control of state governments, rather than independent accrediting agencies. The notice of proposed rulemaking was posted in the Federal Register on June 18 for a public comment period ending Aug. 2. It could take effect as soon as November.”
Armstrong says the attempt by the government to regulate curricula “is part of an unprecedented power grab in which government has already moved to dominate such industries as automobiles, energy, health care, banking, home loans and student loans — and now seeks dominance over the colleges and universities themselves.” http://www.exposeobama.com/2010/09/23/obama-plans-to-control-what-private-universities-teach/?utm_source=Expose+Obama&utm_campaign=a4941f62fe-EO_09_23_20109_23_2010&utm_medium=email
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The Wall Street Journal writes:  Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for better-off Americans, spooked by protests from vulnerable incumbents and bleak prospects for passage.For now, taxpayers confront a number of worrisome scenarios, including the possibility Congress might deadlock on the issue in the post-election "lame duck" session, resulting in across-the-board tax increases.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509793142421332.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
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The News Gazette in Illinois reveals: In a move that hasn’t happened for years, University of Illinois Board of Trustees voted to deny a professor emeritus status Thursday.
Chairman Chris Kennedy of Chicago, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, said he would not vote for emeritus status for University of Illinois at Chicago Professor William Ayers.
The rest of the trustees agreed to vote no, without discussion.
Ayers, a former ’60s radical, was one of four authors of a 1974 book, “Prairie Fire,” a manifesto of the radical Weather Underground.
“I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy. There can be no place in a democracy to celebrate political assassinations or to honor those who do so.”
After the meeting, several trustees said they would rather not comment on the vote out of respect to Kennedy.
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2010-09-23/emeritus-status-ayers-denied.html
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We Conservatives Use Our Lizard Brains;

The Huffington Post writes: There is a new book out called Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The authors write about how people make choices and decisions about their health, their money and their happiness. They talk about the two systems of the brain that people use -- the automatic brain, which harkens back to the more primitive lizard brain, and the reflective more rational part of their brain. They note that voters often react with the automatic lizard response to political choices. They even say "How can people be simultaneously so smart and so dumb?" Why do they act against their own self interest? They do it because they are not thinking with their rational brain, they are making off the cuff, instant judgments about people and policies, often without even realizing that they swallowed the sound bite whole. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-bergthold/the-war-of-the-lizard-bra_b_125226.html
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From Glenn Beck's "The Blaze":  As the intellectual Left struggles to understand why the majority of the country is standing athwart the Obama administration’s signature attempts at “fundamental transformation,” they’ve apparently agreed on one thing: we’ve all got lizard brains.
It turns out, according to people such as President Barack Obama and liberal media magnate Arianna Huffington, that many people are acting so irrationally because their brains are not fully developed and in times of uncertainty, we revert back to this “reptilian” way of thinking. (It couldn’t have anything to do with people actually disagreeing with them…)
During a recent appearance on The View, the president himself used this elitist line of thinking to try and explain the apparent rampant racism present in today’s society:
More recently, Huffington yesterday warned of the dangers of “lizard brains” in today’s electoral politics, blaming them for people’s so-called irrational support of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell:
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Gather your armies ad:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iQ7ZDUutU4&feature=player_embedded
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[Do you recall Barack Obama campaigning for the Presidency while repeatedly saying that "Bush's" war in Iraq was the wrong war?  He opined that Afghanistan is the important war that we must not lose?  So do I.  So here he is saying that he is not looking for a strategy for victory, but instead an exit strategy.]  From the NYT:  A new book, “Obama’s Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.
The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says. “I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”  [While I have no argument with an exit strategy, it should be following a victory.  Being reelected should not be the rationale for decisions on war.]  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/asia/22policy.html?_r=1
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Politico writes: President Barack Obama was heckled multiple times during his speech at a Democratic fundraiser in one of the country’s most Democratic cities.
Demonstrators held signs that said “Broken Promises” and interrupted his speech to protest AIDS funding and the stalled repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the policy banning gays from serving openly in the military that Obama has promised to lift.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42585.html#ixzz10MDWUYp7

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American Spectator writes: The CBS affiliate in Denver reports that the Census Bureau paid about $100,000 in airfare, meals and hotel for 140 of its administrators in the West to gather at a Las Vegas luxury hotel to confer on "lessons learned." Rep. Mike Coffman, a Colorado Republican, saw it differently:
"It's impossible to argue this without saying these folks took a vacation and they took it at taxpayer expense.... I mean I think it's the equivalent of theft," said Coffman, who insisted the Census Bureau could have saved taxpayers money by gathering the same information from administrators by conducting online and written surveys, phone conferencing and a host of other data-gathering methods that would not involve congregating in Las Vegas.  [$100,000 here, $100,000 there - pretty soon it adds up.  All the while we the people are told by Obama that times are tough (except for him).  At least he gave a little back to Vegas, a city whose economy took a nosedive following Obama's castigation of those who would go there for a meeting.]  http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/22/census-party-time-in-vegas
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Barack Obama famously said: "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2010/09/23/elizabeth-warren-first-amendment-right-scares-me-needs-dialing-bac#ixzz10MLaRjR3

Unintended Health Care Bill Consequences; Obama Loses His Magic

From the LA Times: Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others say they will make the move as soon as Thursday when parts of the new healthcare law take effect. They cite potentially huge and unexpected costs for insuring children.

Major health insurance companies in California and other states have decided to stop selling policies for children rather than comply with a new federal healthcare law that bars them from rejecting youngsters with preexisting medical conditions.
Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others will halt new child-only policies in California, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut and elsewhere as early as Thursday when provisions of the nation's new healthcare law take effect, including a requirement that insurers cover children under age 19 regardless of their health histories.
The action will apply only to new coverage sought for children and not to existing child-only plans, family policies or insurance provided to youngsters through their parents' employers. An estimated 80,000 California children currently without insurance — and as many as 500,000 nationwide — would be affected, according to experts.
Insurers said they were acting because the new federal requirement could create huge and unexpected costs for covering children. They said the rule might prompt parents to buy policies only after their kids became sick, producing a glut of ill youngsters to insure. As a result, they said, many companies would flee the marketplace, leaving behind a handful to shoulder a huge financial burden.  [Welcome to the real world of unintended consequences.]  http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fi-kids-health-insurance-20100921,0,799167.story
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This, from a President Bush detractor:  In 20 months, Barack Obama has outbottomed W.  His 75 percent approval rating is barely 40. Like “stimulus,” “health care” is such a dirty word the Left dare not proclaim its name. A Rasmussen poll asks Ohio who it wished were president: Shockingly, W. beats Obama, 52-44 percent. One cause is policy. Another: Increasingly, Obama seems cheap in a rude and snarky way.

Think of Obama as Eddie Haskell Goes to Washington: TV’s “Leave it to Beaver” late 1950s and early ’60s essence of narcissism gone mad. Despite his toxic waste, Bush could be gracious: honoring Ted Kennedy, preaching tolerance, treating critics civilly. By contrast, Obama has become an MSNBC caricature: a hip, glib and graceless man.

Obama ridicules Nancy Reagan’s “seances,” calls Winston Churchill a drunk and terms tanned Republican leader John Boehner’s “color not found in the natural world.” He or aides insult “lost souls ... liars ... narrow-minded nut jobs” for “spewing misinformation” — actually, for noting that non-“recovery summer” has begot a winter of our discontent.

Like Eddie Haskell, Obama cries wolf, saying health care would slash cost while bulging coverage. Both blame others — here, the GOP — except that, controlling nothing, how can it be to blame? Each always comes back to them, as in Obama’s Labor Day diatribe. “They talk about me like a dog.” “If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no.” “Their slogan is ‘No we can’t. Nope, no, no, no.’” A juvenile delinquent would sound more mature.
What a contrast. Nixon hailed a predecessor whose war enormously complicated his presidency. Obama can’t praise a predecessor responsible for his presidency’s signal triumph. Perhaps one day we will again have a president who is also an adult.

Radical. Uberpartisan. Self-absorbed. Each describes a man whose “change we can believe in” now seems more farce than hope. Like Eddie Haskell, though, the word most applicable is “small.” If grace determined a person’s height, Obama would be 2-feet tall.http://www.uticaod.com/opinion/x1547939079/Eddie-Haskell-goes-to-Washington
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A GOP video ad; YouCut Wants Federal Employees to Pay Their $1 Billion in Taxes Due; Thursday's Announcement of What Republicans Will Do If Elected; Obama "Invests In America" TV Conversation

http://minx.cc/?post=304681  What a great ad this one is, from the GOP!  Be sure to watch it.
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From Eric Cantor: The current Speaker [of the House], Nancy Pelosi, is now considering raising taxes on American families and small businesses, many of which are already struggling to pay the bills. While she is talking about raising your taxes, over 97,000 government employees haven't even bothered to pay theirs - owing almost $1 billion in unpaid taxes.
This is simply unacceptable and the YouCut movement spoke out - this week's winning item, championed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, requires the collection of unpaid taxes from federal employees.

We brought your voice to the House floor - every Republican voted with you to hold these government employees accountable just like every other citizen. Unfortunately, 226 of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted against it; proving once again how out of touch with the American people they really are. Eric Cantor House Republican Whip
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From Politicl Ticker: Washington (CNN) – House Republicans plan to unveil what amounts to a campaign blueprint on Thursday in suburban Virginia, GOP sources have told CNN.
The much anticipated announcement comes after a nearly three-month-long listening session with the public online and through town hall meetings, dubbed "America Speaking Out," and is intended to show that House Republicans would have a governing agenda if rewarded with majority control in the congressional elections on November 2.
Many GOP strategists call such an agenda - like the 1994 Contract with America - a critical missing ingredient for Republicans this election season to help give voters a reason to vote for GOP lawmakers, not just against Democrats. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/20/house-gop-to-unveil-agenda-thursday/
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The NYT writes: WASHINGTON — It was billed as “Investing in America,” a live televised conversation on the state of the economy between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check.  But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters.
People from Main Street wanted to know if the American dream still lived for them. People on Wall Street complained that he was treating them like a piñata, “whacking us with a stick,” in the words of Anthony Scaramucci, a former law school classmate of Mr. Obama’s who now runs a hedge fund and was one of the president’s questioners.
"I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” said the first questioner, an African-American woman who identified herself as a chief financial officer, a mother and a military veteran. “I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class and I’m waiting sir, I’m waiting. I still don’t feel it yet.”

“I was really inspired by you and your campaign and the message you brought, and that inspiration is dying away,” one man said, adding, “And I really want to know, is the American dream dead for me?”
“The challenge for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically: What would you do?” the president said. “It’s not enough to say get control of spending. I think it’s important for you to say, ‘I’m willing to cut veterans benefits, or I’m willing to cut Medicare or Social Security, or I’m willing to see taxes go up.’ ”  [This begs the question:  why didn't you, Mr. President tell us specifically what your "fundamental transformation" of America would have you do to our country?] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/us/politics/21obama.html?_r=1&ref=us
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Constitution Day; Governement to Determine Our Household Appliances; Democrat Ad Against Tea Parties; Outreach to Palestine; Insulting Christianity OK (Islam? Not So Much); President Takes Creator Out of Declaration of Independence

Readers:  Following each item which is selectively quoted is the web address for the entire article.

   ANAHEIM HILLS – The Cookie Monster was busted. SpongeBob Squarepants, jailed without trial. And some ninja turtles were facing prison after police found them loaded down with weapons.
Fortunately for all of them, they had the U.S. Constitution on their side – as hundreds of school children learned Friday.
Anaheim Hills-area schools celebrated Constitution Day on Friday with skits that brought each article and ten amendments to life – in terms that any fifth grader could understand. It was a lot more fun than the stale textbook entries of old, and teachers said it works: Social-studies test scores, they said, have risen in the schools that participate.
Since 2005, the federal government has required any school that receives federal funding to teach the Constitution on Sept. 17. That was the day in 1787 when 39 delegates and a secretary scratched their names onto the original, making the Constitution law.
"It's how we ended up today," said William Klos, 11, of Anaheim Hills. "The Constitution has all the rights and laws on it, and what you should do and shouldn't do."   http://www.ocregister.com/news/constitution-267015-school-day.html
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Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi said Thursday that the U.S. Department of Energy has a “mandate” to issue regulations to determine what household appliances are available to Americans in the future.Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the recently reestablished Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), Zoi pointed to four tactics the Obama administration intended use to advance the “deployment of clean energy.” The first three were government subsidies for private-sector green energy projects, special tax incentives for green energy projects and low-interest government-backed loans for green energy projects.
“The fourth one, which the secretary and I love,” said Zoi, “is where we have a mandate. Where we can actually just issue regulations and do market transformation.” http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75469
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WASHINGTON — President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.  “We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/politics/20dems.html?_r=1
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The Tea Party victories of last week have clearly revealed the movement for what it actually is: not a tantrum, not a voter mutiny, not a short-term insurrection, but something never actually seen before in this country -- it is a counter-revolutionBut such speculation, I think, misses the point, which is this: the Tea Party tsunami is knocking down every obstacle in its way, no matter if it's Republican or Democrat. If there were Whigs or Ghibellines running, they'd be dropping too. The Tea Parties are a political phenomenon the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes, one that occurs once every century or so. It is exhilarating to witness. http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_counterrevolution_has_begu.html
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BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Bush administration said it was prepared to absorb 100,000 Palestinian refugees if a peace deal was reached, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday, Israeli media reported. Speaking at a Geneva Initiative conference in Tel Aviv, Olmert said during negotiations under his premiership with President Mahmoud Abbas that he had offered a solution that would have been in line with the Arab league Peace plan, Israeli daily Haaretz reported. He also said former US President George W Bush had offered the immediate recognition of 100,000 Palestinian refugees as American citizens.  http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=316230
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So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.

More importantly, the logic of Breyer's halfwit intervention is to incentivize violence, and undermine law itself. What he seems to be telling the world is that Americans' constitutional rights will bend to intimidation. If Koran-burning rates a First Amendment exemption because Muslims are willing to kill over it, maybe Catholics should threaten to kill over the next gay-Jesus play, and Broadway could have its First Amendment rights reined in. Maybe the next time Janeane Garafolo goes on MSNBC and calls Obama's opponents racists, the Tea Partiers should rampage around town and NBC's free-speech rights would be withdrawn.

Meanwhile, in smaller ways, Islamic intimidation continues.
Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?  Thank you to everyone at the Danish Free Press Society who helped make my trip to Copenhagen such fun http://www.steynonline.com/
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The most famous words in the Declaration of Independence — and almost surely the most famous words ever written by an American — read, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

On Friday evening, when President Obama addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, he quoted that passage as follows (on the clip at 22:30):  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal [pause], endowed with certain unalienable rights:  life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In Obama’s version, there is no “Creator.”

Only two plausible explanations spring to mind.  One is that President Obama isn’t very familiar with the most famous passage in the document that founded this nation; that even when plainly reading from a teleprompter, he wasn’t able to quote it correctly.  The other is that President Obama doesn’t subscribe to the Declaration’s rather central claim that our rights come from our “Creator” (also referred to in the Declaration as “Nature’s God” and “the Supreme Judge of the World”). http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/does-president-obama-think-our-rights-come-our-creator
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At the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing last Thursday, Democrats passed a bill to require federal health officials to question anyone seeking services from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) community health centers or other programs about their sexual orientation and “gender identity.” Introduced by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), H.R. 6109 requires HHS to obtain, retain and analyze sexual identity information from patients who seek healthcare, including children. “This bill is about collecting data, no more, no less,” Baldwin said. According to Baldwin, the current “lack of cultural competency” among federal officials http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39076

New UN Summit For Global Taxation; EPA Regulations Uses Discreditied Science;

Expose Obama has written: Next Wednesday, Barack Obama is scheduled to address a United Nations summit calling for a “small global tax” on the U.S. economy and hundreds of millions more dollars in U.S. aid — and some of his advisers do not believe that is enough.
Obama will speak to the UN Summit on Millennium Development Goals, a global “anti-poverty” blueprint that calls for $845 billion in foreign aid from the U.S. before 2015. But the UN and several foreign nations will use next week’s conference to push for “small global taxes” on airline tickets and financial transactions that could net $30-$35 billion a year. The new UN tax will deposit the money collected from developed Western nations into a “Global Solidarity Fund,” which will then redistribute the funds to other nations. The president told the UN last year, “We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals.”


An undisclosed portion of this will go toward “climate change mitigation” — that is, advancing the global socialists’ Green agenda. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has no plans to keep the international slush fund small....
An undisclosed portion of this will go toward “climate change mitigation” — that is, advancing the global socialists’ Green agenda.  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has no plans to keep the international slush fund small, insisting properly saving the world from greenhouse gases “would require financial assistance of perhaps an additional 1 percent of gross domestic product of rich countries in 2015.” (Emphasis added.) That would haven taken $143 billion out of the U.S. economy last year alone, a debt he deems “a small sum compared with the likely costs of inaction.”
It is a small sum compared to the plan advocated by Barack Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren, who has spent the last 30 years calling for a UN tax ten to twenty times that amount:   Science Czar Wants a $1.4 Trillion UN Tax September 17th, 2010 Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
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[Continuing this same item in the news, according to Canada Free Press]:  In an article in The Christian Science Monitor, under the headline, “Small global taxes would make a big difference for world’s ‘bottom billion,’” the foreign minister of France and other officials of foreign nations endorse various forms of “innovative development financing.” One of their proposals is a tax on international currency transactions that could generate $35 billion a year.
The proposal, popular at the United Nations for decades and long-advocated by Fidel Castro, is called the Tobin Tax and named after Yale University economist James Tobin. Steven Solomon, a former staff reporter at Forbes, said in his book, The Confidence Game, that such a proposal “might net some $13 trillion a year…” because it is based on taking a percentage of money from the trillions of dollars exchanged daily in global financial markets.
He is referring to the fact that once such a tax is in place, it could be easily raised to bring in hundreds of billions of dollars or more a year to the U.N. and other global institutions.
The term “small global taxes” brought a stunned reaction from Senator David Vitter, when he was told of what is being proposed in advance of the U.N. summit. Vitter introduced Senate resolution 461, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that Congress should reject any proposal for the creation of a system of global taxation and regulation,” to put the Senate on record against any such measure. He has vowed to maintain pressure on the world body to avoid implementing any of these schemes and thinks that the Congress has to use whatever financial leverage it has to frustrate U.N. demands for more power and authority in world affairs.
The Vitter resolution was sent to the liberal-controlled Senate Finance Committee, which declined to act on it.
Obama has been a major U.N. supporter since he was in the Senate and sponsored a bill, the Global Poverty Act (S 2433), to force U.S. compliance with the MDGs. Joseph Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tried to get it passed into law but ultimately failed. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/27761
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 WOAI Radio in Texas reveals: The state of Texas today sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a federal appeals court in Washington DC, claiming four new regulations imposed by the EPA are based on the 'thoroughly discredited' findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and are 'factually flawed,' 1200 WOAI news reports. 
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the rules are illegal and if imposed, will cost Texans in higher energy costs and tens of thousands of lost jobs.   
One of the rules imposed by the EPA would extend clean air regulations to the tailpipes of personal cars and trucks, but Abbott says the pollutants which the EPA aims to restrict by this rule aren't even found in internal combustion vehicles. 
  One of the rules, the so called 'Tailoring Rule,' would require that all Texas clean air regulations be 'tailored' to match federal rules by January 2, 2011, or the US EPA will impose it's rules on Texas. 

  "Today's court filings challenge the EPA's attempts to ignore federal law, impose their federally mandated deadlines and force Texas to spend millions of dollars advancing the Administration’s regulatory agenda," Abbott said.

http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=119078&article=7606198 
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Tax Breaks for All; New EPA Rule Would Bankrupt Coal Industry; Government Benefits SEIU; Australian Tea Party; Extreme Judicial Nominees; Why Businesses Sit on Cash

Thirty-one House Democrats, most of whom face tough re-election bids this fall, have signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging them to extend expiring tax breaks for all income levels, including the wealthy. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/15/more-democrats-break-with-obama-on-tax-cuts/
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The Washington Examiner writes: Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), an industry-backed think tank, said the new EPA rule "will bankrupt the coal industry and cause electricity prices to 'necessarily skyrocket,' fulfilling two more promises President Obama made while running for office. The magnitude of this EPA decision on new and renewal permits in Appalachia will cost American jobs and put mom and pop operators out of business." 

Pyle was referring to Obama's 2008 statement that his energy and environmental policies would "necessarily skyrocket" consumer costs for energy.

Big Green environmentalists are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to ban "mountaintop removal" coal mining. To that end, the enviros have organized a vintage politically correct national pr campaign dubbed "Music Saves Mountaintops" featuring part country music and part the usual Natural Resources Defense Council agitprop.
The slogan of the campaign is "Save a Mountain, build a wind mill," referring to the contention of President Obama and his Big Green allies that alternative energy sources like wind can replace energy generated by fossil fuels. Eighty-seven percent of America's energy is currently produced using coal, natural gas and oil.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Save-a-mountain-build-a-windmill-freeze-in-the-dark-103055094.html#ixzz0zi4KEMAs

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Big Government reveals: It seems no matter where you these days it is easy to find another rule of law or procedure bent by this government to the benefit of SEIU.
FEC law specifically prohibits threats of financial reprisals in an effort to obtain PAC (Political Action Committee) contributions. Not only does SEIU threaten every local member that their PAC contributions must meet SEIU national Headquarters’ goal; SEIU brazenly made it a part of the union’s constitution.
Under this scheme, SEIU political planners notify each local of its PAC contribution goal.  If that PAC goal is not achieved, then the local receives a reduction in its allocation of forced dues money equal to the PAC shortage plus 50%. Looks like threats with financial reprisals.
Not only did the FEC ignore FEC rules in dismissing of the NRTW complaint; it hid its reasoning for dismissing the complaint until well past the 60-day deadline, thus prohibiting the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation an opportunity to challenge the FEC dismissal in U.S. District Court.
For some, rules do not apply. http://biggovernment.com/dloos/2010/09/15/fec-okays-seiu-threats-for-pac-contributions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigGovernment+%28Big+Government%29
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The Australian writes: the Australian T.E.A. Party (an acronym for Taxed Enough Already) will be targeting pre-selections across the country and heavily promotes its links to "our friends" in the United States. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/capital-circle/tea-party-comes-to-australia/story-fn59nqgy-1225924785030
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The Washington Times opines:  President Obama sent another reminder on Monday about the importance of this fall's Senate races by resubmitting five judicial nominations so extreme as to be alien to the American experience.
All five nominations were held up for months because not even many Democrats want to go on the record voting for their confirmation. The nominations officially lapsed when the Senate recessed for more than 30 days in August. Rather than letting them die quietly and without embarrassment, the president renominated them - as if to emphasize his utter disdain for the usual American norms of justice.
The five radical judicial nominees are:
Robert N. Chatigny, a federal district judge from Connecticut, showed bizarre sympathy for a serial rapist-murderer, saying his "sexual sadism" was a "mitigating factor" rather than reason to punish him to the extent of the law.
Federal magistrate Edward M. Chen of San Francisco objected to the singing of "America the Beautiful" at a funeral because of his "feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted by appeals to patriotism." He also once explained that a judge should "draw upon the breadth and depth of their own life experience. ... Inevitably, one's ethnic and racial background contributes to those life experiences." So much for a neutral arbiter of justice.
University of California at Berkeley law professor Goodwin W. Liu likewise has argued that the judiciary should be "a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning" and that there is a constitutional right to welfare.
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And From Forbes: When U.S., corporations sit on more than $800 billion without creating jobs, when banks hoard more than $1 trillion in profits without lending to small businesses and consumers  and when health insurance companies with tens of billions in profits demand huge premium increases, there are only two words to describe such greed says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

“Economic treason!”

 [Is this where Juan Williams of Fox News got the notion that businesses who are sitting on cash are part of the cause of this recession?]

it’s even worse. U.S. corporations actually hold a trillion more than you say — $1.8 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.

Does anyone in the AFL-CIO’s donut lounge pause to ask why corporations aren’t hiring or banks lending? Of course, you would have to talk to a real employer or banker to get the answers. I have. Here is what they say: 
1. Corporations aren’t hiring because Congress and the Obama Administration, particularly with health care, have made it costlier to do so in a time of slowing growth.
2. Banks aren’t lending because small business is getting kicked in the teeth. The survivors are playing defense.
Read details @ http://blogs.forbes.com/richkarlgaard/2010/09/16/economic-treason-not-to-hire/?boxes=Homepagecolumnsblogs

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Onerous Obamacare Law on Business Transactions Left In; Michelle Can't Stand Being First Lady; Arizona Sheriff to Build Armed Volunteer Posse

John Thune I voted today to strip a ridiculous requirement from the ObamaCare law requiring every business transaction over $600 to be reported to the IRS. The provision will drown small business owners in paperwork. Unfortunately the vote failed to get support from enough Democratic Senators to pass. We will keep working to change it.

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Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb. slammed Section 9006 of the mammoth bill, which requires a "2,000 percent increase" in mandatory filings of 1099 tax forms for businesses, charities, state and local governments, and even churches. Johanns said Democrats stealthily slipped the onerous new requirements into the bill as an added source of revenue to help foot the overall legislation's multi-trillion dollar price tag, and did not consider the effect it would have on businesses across the country.

As the current law stands, starting in 2012, all organizations will be mandated to issue 1099 tax forms not only to contracted workers, but to any other group or business from which they purchase at least $600 worth of goods or services in a given year. They'll also be required to send a copy of each 1099 document to the IRS. Johanns called the entire process "punishing" to businesses and cited a July report from the IRS' independent taxpayer watchdog arm warning that Section 9006 "may impose significant burdens" that it labeled "disproportionate" and perhaps unenforceable.  [That ought to inspire businesses to hire new workers, right? - No, it won't.]  http://townhall.com/columnists/GuyBenson/2010/09/15/democrats_torpedo_repeal_of_harmful_obamacare_provision/page/full/

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Michelle Obama, according to the wife of the French President, thinks being America’s First Lady is ‘hell’, Carla Bruni reveals today in a wildly indiscreet book.
The UK Daily Mail writes: 
Miss Bruni divulges that Mrs Obama replied when asked about her position as the U.S. president’s wife: ‘Don’t ask! It’s hell. I can’t stand it!’
Details of the private conversation, which took place at the White House during an official visit by Nicolas Sarkozy last March, emerged in Carla And The Ambitious, a book written in collaboration with Miss Bruni.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1312462/Michelle-Obama-thinks-First-Lady-hell-says-Carla-Bruni.html#ixzz0zhArplwo

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PHOENIX - Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he's still planning to build an armed volunteer posse to fight illegal immigration. Currently, unarmed volunteers help Arpaio with his immigration sweeps and crackdowns. But soon, Arpaio plans to build a volunteer posse that will be armed with weapons and gear. Their main job will be to enforce immigration and smuggling laws. http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/immigration/arpaio-crimesweep-posse-09152010

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Townhall and Dr. Paul Kengor revisit the wisdom of Milton Friedman, a fierce defender of the benefits of capitalism:
It has been almost 50 years since Milton Friedman, Nobel economist, released his classic, Capitalism and Freedom. The book has slowly slipped from my course syllabus, not to mention that of the political elite. And why not? What Friedman said is now obvious. Surely, Americans, given the indisputable superiority of the free market over the statist model, no longer needed reminding of the abject failures of socialism, collectivism, wealth distribution, prime-the-pump “stimulus” spending, Keynesian deficit spending, and other discredited policy prescriptions?
Well, after a century of examples of what works and what doesn’t, look at how America voted on November 4, 2008. As Ronald Reagan said, freedom is always a generation from extinction; it must be handed on again and again. The teaching process never ends.
So, I dusted off Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. To be sure, Friedman had his faults, particularly in monetary policy, but, generally, his thoughts on economic freedom and the dangers of collectivism and central planning are timeless—especially right now.

Thus, [now] the managers and planners are in charge, with their hands on the ship of state, seizing the resources that feed the most dynamic, prosperous engine that capitalism and freedom ever produced. The Invisible Hand has been waved off by the visible hands of the reformers. And they are spending us into oblivion. Not only did we hit unprecedented deficits in the first year of the Obama administration, but we’re at debt levels unseen since World War II. The record deficit left by George W. Bush suddenly looks desirable.
Interestingly, Milton Friedman offered this parting thought: He said that if these individuals ever actually gained the power they craved, they would ultimately “produce a collective state from which they would recoil in horror and of which they would be among the first victims.”
Are they recoiling in horror? I see no evidence. The planners and “stimulus” pushers seem to think the problem hasn’t been enough planning and stimulus . http://townhall.com/columnists/DrPaulKengor/2010/09/15/a_dose_of_capitalism_and_freedom

 

 

Stealth Immigration Bill; Poverty Increases Under Obama; Severence Clause Not in Healthcare Bill; Black Panther Investigation; Mother Earth; Oil-and-gas Drilling Bans

Washington (CNN) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he will add the DREAM Act, a controversial immigration measure, to a defense policy bill the Senate will take up next week.
The decision means the defense bill, which often passes with bipartisan support, will be home to two major, thorny political issues – the other being the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Reid called the DREAM Act "really important" and said it should be passed because it provides a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who go to college or serve in the military. DREAM is an acronym for Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/14/reid-adds-controversial-immigration-measure-to-defense-bill/
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Yahoo News reports:  The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100911/ap_on_bi_ge/us_poverty_in_america
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American Thinker writes: Virginia is asserting that certain portions (that is, personal mandate) of ObamaCare are unconstitutional. If Virginia prevails, it leaves the question of what happens to the rest of the ObamaCare statute? This is where the concept of severance comes in. Normally all comprehensive laws contain a boilerplate severance clause; it says that if any portion of the law is found to be unconstitutional that portion is severed from the rest of the law, that is, the rest of the law stands.

But ObamaCare contains no severance clause. Virginia is asserting that if it prevails on its substantive claims, the whole law is unconstitutional. (If Virginia does not prevail, any one of the 20 plus legal challenges have the same severance argument available.)

If a severance clause is normal boilerplate, why does not ObamaCare contain one? This is where Scott Brown's election enters.  Recall the House passed its version of ObamaCare. On Christmas Eve, after much horsetrading and bribing, the Senate passed its version.  The Senate version was not drafted to be in its final form; it was drafted to get 60 votes.  Normally, these bills would be reconciled in a conference committee and the final version would have to be voted on again with 60 votes in the Senate.  However, before it could be sent to conference and reconciled, Scott Brown won in Massachusetts -- a reconciled bill could no longer get 60 votes!  That is why the House had to vote up or down on the Senate bill which was basically a draft without the normal boilerplate inserted.

As Virginia argued in its Memorandum (Pages 24 to 28), the presence of a severance clause raises a presumption that Congress did not intend the whole statute to depend on the constitutionality of any particular clause.  But with no severance clause, they are not entitled to that presumption. A court cannot sever the offending clause on its own if the statute would not function as Congress intended.  http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/obamacares_fatal_flaw_1.html

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From the Washington Times: The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division — in the wake of the New Black Panther Party case — is being investigated by the department's office of inspector general to determine whether voting section employees have been harassed for participating in specific investigations or prosecutions.
In an end run around policy barring IG investigations of Justice Department litigators, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said his office will review what types of cases are being investigated, whether there have been changes in enforcement policies and procedures, and whether the civil rights laws are being enforced in a non-discriminatory manner. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/13/justice-ig-probing-black-panther-case/
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CNN reports: Paris, France - The French senate approved Tuesday a law banning any veils that cover the face -- including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women -- making France the first European country to plan such a measure. The law passed by a vote of 246 to 1, with about 100 abstentions coming essentially from left-leaning politicians. The legislation was overwhelmingly approved by the lower house of parliament in July and will go into effect next spring. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/14/france.burqa.ban/index.html?hpt=T2
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From Newsweek: The cover of The American Scholar quarterly carries an impertinent assertion: “The Earth Doesn’t Care if You Drive a Hybrid.” The essay inside is titled “What the Earth Knows.” What it knows, according to Robert B. Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, is this: What humans do to, and ostensibly for, the earth does not matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth. We must, Laughlin says, think about the earth’s past in terms of geologic time.
amaging this old earth is, Laughlin says, “easier to imagine than it is to accomplish.” There have been mass volcanic explosions, meteor impacts, “and all manner of other abuses greater than anything people could inflict, and it’s still here. It’s a survivor.”

Climate change over geologic time is, Laughlin says, something the earth has done “on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.” People can cause climate change, but major glacial episodes have occurred “at regular intervals of 100,000 years,” always “a slow, steady cooling followed by abrupt warming back to conditions similar to today’s.”

Six million years ago the Mediterranean dried up. Ninety million years ago there were alligators in the Arctic. Three hundred million years ago Northern Europe was a desert and coal formed in Antarctica. “One thing we know for sure,” Laughlin says about these convulsions, “is that people weren’t involved.”  http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/george-will-earth-doesn-t-care-what-is-done-to-it.html?from=rss
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The Hill writes: The Interior Department spending bill slated for markup Thursday in the Senate Appropriations Committee will re-impose oil-and-gas drilling bans off the Pacific Coast that lapsed after decades in 2008, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said. Obama administration offshore leasing plans do not contemplate oil-and-gas development off the coasts of California, Oregon or Washington. But Feinstein — who chairs the subcommittee that crafts Interior spending bills — said in the Capitol Tuesday that the measure would re-instate the bans to provide extra protection. http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/118651-feinstein-senate-interior-spending-bill-block-west-coast-drilling
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[In the I'm not kidding you category]:  (CNSNews.com) – The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.
The genitalia-washing program is part of a larger $12-million UCLA study examining how to better encourage Africans to undergo voluntary HIV testing and counseling – however, only the penis-washing study received money from the 2009 economic stimulus law. The washing portion of the study is set to end in 2011. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/75198
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Breitbart reveals: Bank of America will charge clients new monthly fees if their accounts do not meet a minimum balance, the bank's CEO Brian Moynihan said on Tuesday. "We will increase the account balance minimums or charge monthly fees in lieu thereof, which is the choice of the customer," Moynihan said at a Barclays Capital conference in New York.
These and other measures will allow the bank to compensate for revenue lost due to new regulations put in place following the 2008 financial crisis that led the US government to salvage many banks with massive bailouts, he said. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bb54d137200b27d4f18a20472252604a.10b1&show_article=1
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Ideas For Changes in American Government Policies

BRAINSTORMING IDEAS FOR CHANGE IN AMERICA: [My latest Guest Commentary published in the local liberal newspaper]

As the election approaches, along with our chance to make our votes count toward changes we desire, I am considering changes many might like to see.

Our country’s government should learn to live within its budget, just as we families must do. An end to earmarks, and a cut in government spending nearly across the board, not just a decrease in the planned increases, would be beneficial.  If Americans saw our government cut spending in times of economic woe, we would know that our grandchildren will not be saddled with enormous debt.  If government would cut its creation of yet more government jobs as an answer to job losses, and instead put its focus on what would inspire private small businesses to hire, Capitalism would have a chance to be the amazing creator of jobs it has always been. That would not only raise employment but inspire Americans.

The Bush tax cuts should not be allowed to expire, for that would be devastating to a failing economy.  It would be the largest tax increase in our country’s history. And it is “rich” people, after all, who create businesses that create jobs and attending perks, not poor people.

Businesses would be encouraged to hire once again if they knew that they will not have new and higher Business and Corporate taxes, higher energy bills thru a new Cap and Tax bill, a new VAT tax and continued increases in their obligations to pay for higher health care costs.  An assurance that the Lame Duck Session will not produce onerous unpopular bills would also be a boon.  Businesses are waiting for signs positive for growth, and should not be denigrated for keeping their cash on the sidelines, as Juan Williams has suggested.      

Because a number of states are litigating against the new healthcare bill and the majority of Americans are against the bill as well as the incentive-ridden votes which passed it,  the health care bill could be rewritten, repealed or defunded until its Constitutionality is decided.  It is a model for more government intrusion into our lives.  Democrats are being advised not to say the law will reduce costs and deficits, for the CBO has now admitted that it will do neither.  As Nancy Pelosi actually said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”.  What we have learned is that it will harm our country, as almost daily we learn of the rising monetary and human costs of the particulars in the bill.  It will not be possible to insure 30 million more people, waiting in line to be cared for by the same number of doctors, while simultaneously cutting costs.  In this healthcare bill are more non-healthcare related stealth taxes on “the rich”, such as on excess profits on the sale of one's home and on income from investments.  How does this pertain to healthcare?

It would save our government money if it would not prosecute the state of Arizona for actually enforcing a federal law that mandates that being illegal – is illegal!

Our President should quit shaming Americans for going to certain vacation spots while he lavishly vacations every month.  His remarks about Las Vegas sent their economy plummeting, as many conventions were cancelled.

As we actually loan money to other countries for their offshore drilling endeavors, we should end the drilling moratorium in our own Gulf, restoring many thousands of jobs there.

As Ronal Reagan once said, “Government is not the solution to our problems; government IS the problem”.

No Funding for Green Jobs; Clean Energy Works coalition; Financial Transaction Tax; Build Mosque at Ground Zero or Else; Offshore Drilling; and Bush Era Tax Cuts

The Washington Times reports on a little-noticed aspect of the administration’s latest — and likely fruitless — effort at stimulus: It doesn’t include funding for green jobs. The long delays typical with environmentally friendly projects — combined with reports of green stimulus funds being used to create jobs in China and other countries, rather than in the U.S. — appear to have killed the administration’s appetite for pushing green projects http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2043-even-obama-no-longer-pushing-green-jobs
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The UK Guardian reveals: America's environmental groups have given up on getting climate change legislation through Congress at a time of Republican ascendancy, and have downsized to a series of more modest goals like fuel economy. In a sign of that strategy reshift, 20 environmental groups launched a new campaign yesterday to press Barack Obama to propose far more ambitious fuel efficiency and pollution standards for cars of 60mpg by 2025. Meanwhile, Clean Energy Works, a coalition of 80 grassroots groups that had 45 paid staff in Washington to lobby to get a climate change law through Congress, is shutting up shop. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/10/barack-obama-us-cars-fuel-efficiency
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Newsmax: A proposed tax on financial transactions "has a great deal of merit" and would help Congress raise needed revenue, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.

"I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit," Pelosi said at a news conference.

The tax would have a "really minimal impact on the transaction, but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs," Pelosi said. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/12/03/pelosi_transaction_tax_has_great_deal_of_merit.html 
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[I am sure we are not supposed to consider this a threat, of course, but] CNN reports:  -- The religious leader behind plans to build an Islamic center and mosque a few blocks from New York's ground zero said Wednesday night that America's national security depends on how it handles the controversy.
"If we move from that location, the story will be the radicals have taken over the discourse," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told CNN's Soledad O'Brien on "Larry King Live."
"The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack."
But some critics decried his assessment.
"The whole national security thing: that's a veiled threat," Andy Sullivan, a union construction worker who wants all New York construction workers to boycott the proposed Islamic center, said on CNN's "AC 360" Wednesday night. "He's saying 'you make me move' and, guess what, the whole radical Muslim world is coming after us.  The imam, who repeatedly said his mission was to promote peace and build a bridge among faiths  [It seems to me that it is in the hands of this "peaceful" Imam to prove that he was trying to, as he said, "establish a space that embodies the fundamental beliefs that we have as Jews, Christians and Muslims, which is to love our God and to love our neighbor -- to build a space where we have a culture of worship." He can do this by moving the site while making Islam see that it is the right thing to do.  It's time for some "love" from the Islamics, isn't it?] shttp://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/09/new.york.islamic.center.imam/index.html?hpt=Sbin
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Despite President Obama's moratorium on U.S. deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Export-Import Bank intends to guarantee $1 billion in loans to PEMEX, the Mexican state oil company, to bolster the company's oil drilling in the region. The bank, which is the official American export credit agency, loaned more than $1 billion to PEMEX in 2009 -- when the company was the bank's largest borrower -- in support of its drilling activities. That year, the bank also guaranteed two loans totaling $300 million made by a commercial lender. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/11/backs-b-loan-mexico-oil-drilling-despite-obama-moratorium/
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Red-district Democrats are pressuring Speaker Nancy Pelosi to extend Bush-era income tax rates for all brackets, revealing a high-stakes rift between the party's vulnerable moderates and its safe liberals as the issue increasingly dominates the national debate. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42042.html
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