Saturday, June 12, 2010

Declaration of Independence and Constitution are Now Offensive; Upgrades to Immigration Detention Centers; ACORN Fraud ; and Oil Booms on the Way

You spoke out. You voted. The winning item this week for saving government money was to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would generate over $30 billion in savings for the taxpayers. As promised, House Republicans again made history by bringing the item you selected to the floor for an up-or-down vote.

The spending reforms were defeated 230 to 180.
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A Virginia-based publisher has decided that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and other founding books are likely offensive and they want their readers to understand that these old documents are no longer valid ways of thinking. And so the publisher, Wilder Publications, has put a warning label on its reprints of America’s founding documents and books to shield American’s delicate sensibilities.
The warning label reads, “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”
The warning labels appear on copies of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, as well as other founding books and documents the company reprints.
FoxNews was not able to elicit a comment from Wilder Publications and the webpage of the company seems to feature a lot of self-published type stuff, so big time it is not.  http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/24102
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MYFOXNY.COM - Things got heated at a community meeting on Staten Island where representatives from an Islamic group answered tough questions about their pending purchase of a former convent. When one man began shouting down another, the meeting's organizers shut down the event, the Staten Island Advance reported.
The Archdiocese of New York has struck a deal to sell an unused property in the Midland Beach section of the borough to the Muslim American Society, which intends to turn it into a mosque and community center.
The plan is a reflection of Staten Island's growing Muslim population, but it has drummed up opposition and concerns from other residents of the neighborhood.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese said that the agreement to sell the convent to the Muslim American Society is not final because it still needs to pass through various internal and civil stages.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are preparing to roll out a series of changes at several privately owned immigration detention centers, including relaxing some security measures for low-risk detainees and offering art classes, bingo and continental breakfast on the weekends. The changes, detailed in an internal ICE e-mail obtained by the Houston Chronicle, were welcomed by immigrant advocates who have been waiting for the Obama administration to deliver on a promise made in August to overhaul the nation's immigration detention system. 
But the plans are prompting protests by ICE's union leaders, who say they will jeopardize the safety of agents, guards and detainees and increase the bottom line for taxpayers. Tre Rebstock, president for Local 3332, the ICE union in Houston, likened the changes to creating “an all-inclusive resort” for immigration detaineeshttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/immigration/7043040.html
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The radical activist group ACORN “works” for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, are FBI investigators’ reports related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Mo., workers from ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate for violation of election laws. All eight employees involved in the scandal later pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud.
Project Vote is ACORN’s voter registration arm. Project Vote continues to operate despite the reported dissolution of the national structure of ACORN.
The handwritten reports by FBI agents show that ACORN employees reported numerous irregularities in the nonprofit group’s business practices.
Another report indicates an employee told the investigator, that ACORN “[t]old employees not to talk to the FBI.” The FBI is “‘trying to intimidate you.’”
“These documents show the need for a national criminal investigation by the Obama Justice Department into ACORN,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.
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Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.
Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.
U.S. ships are being outfitted this week with four pairs of the skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days. Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludgehttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7043272.html  [And we Americans are not supposed to say that our President has failed in leadership on this issue....]

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An Army officer who invited his own court-martial to resolve for the nation questions about Barack Obama's eligibility to be president has waived a preliminary hearing in his case.[This officer is risking 2 years of hard labor in prison to finally have this question answered instead of being covered up via almost a million dollars of Obama's money for the work of his attorneys.]
The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
WorldNetDaily is reporting: There have been a multitude of challenges and lawsuits over the issue. Some have alleged that he was not born in Hawaii in 1961 as he has written, or that the framers of the Constitution specifically excluded dual citizens – Obama's father was a subject of the British crown at Obama's birth – from being eligible for the office. [For details, do follow the link to the article.]
Besides Obama's actual birth documentation, the still-concealed documentation for him includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records. [He certainly does act as someone who has something to hide.]

Friday, June 11, 2010

EPA Vote; HIV Needles in Taliban Bombs; Iran's UN Sanctions; Seizing Oil Companies; What's Wrong with Obama; and more

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday that President Barack Obama should find someone's "ass to kick" regarding the budget deficit.
The Republican leader riffed off comments the president made Tuesday that he consults with experts on the BP oil spill to determine "whose ass to kick."
"Look, we’re broke," Boehner said in a statement. "We’re $13 trillion in debt, and 43 cents of every dollar the federal government spends this year we’re going to have to borrow and pass the bill on to our kids and grandkids.
"I think it’s time for Democrats here on Capitol Hill to start listening to the American people. They want spending cut and they want it cut now. And I’m wondering, why isn’t the president looking for someone’s ‘a-- to kick’ on this subject?"  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2531035/posts
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On Thursday, the Senate voted No on S.J.Res.26, a resolution to block EPA from usurping powers never delegated to it by Congress. Failure means allowing EPA to go forward, apparently in flagrant violation of our constitutional traditions simply because too many in Congress desire, but can’t bear to take responsibility for, more of the Obama agenda. EPA’s breathtaking Power Grab raises questions critical to our form of governance. The powers EPA has claimed for itself include staking out national policy on the contentious “climate” issue, and even amending the Clean Air Act on its own initiative and authority.  http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/08/senate-to-vote-on-obamas-power-grab/
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From the UK: TALIBAN fighters are burying dirty needles with their bombs in a bid to infect British troops with HIV, The Sun can reveal.

Hypodermic syringes are hidden below the surface pointing upwards to prick bomb squad experts as they hunt for devices. The heroin needles are feared to be contaminated with hepatitis and HIV. And if the bomb goes off, the needles become deadly flying shrapnel.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/3005443/Taliban-using-HIV-bombs.html#ixzz0qMIMV0wF
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Iran dismissed new U.N. sanctions on Wednesday as "valueless," vowed to continue its nuclear work and warned it may reduce cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to Tajikistan: "these (U.N.) resolutions have no value...it is like a used handkerchief that should be thrown in the waste bin."
"Sanctions are falling on us from the left and the right. For us they are the same as pesky flies...We have patience and we will endure throughout all of this," he said in comments in Farsi translated into Russian.
 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100609/wl_nm/us_iran_nuclear_reaction
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[In the I kid you not category, and as Glenn Beck reports]:  A Canadian youth soccer league and the new rule they introduced. Any team that wins a game by more than 5 points will lose by default. Yes, you read that correctly.   The rule intended to foster sportsmanship. [Well, that's a unique way to foster good clean competition, and being the best one can be, isn't it?]
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Glenn Beck:  "Another brilliant idea from a Hollywood celebrity regarding the BP oil spill situation: seize them [the oil companies]! Yes, this is the kind of advanced thinking that conservatives could only dream of coming up with. Nothing bad could come of the government taking over our energy sector because government always runs things more smoothly and more efficiently than the private sector could ever dream of". O'DONNELL: "Seize their assets today, take over the country, I don't care. Issue an executive order. Say BP, guess what. Call it socialism, call it communism, call it anything you want. Let's watch Rush Limbaugh explode on TV when he talks".   [If this just seems silly to us, we must remember that this is what qualifies as good NEWS to those who are watching!  These people do not mind being labeled as Communist, for they like communism!  Do you recall that the young people knew of Sarah Palin only what Tina Fey depicted on Saturday Night Live?]
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Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Maurice Ferré says the United States spends an ``absurd'' amount on end-of-life care and should gradually move to a universal health system in which the government controls costs by setting prices for medical procedures and capping expenditures based on age and medical condition.  [But don't you dare refer to this idea as using a "death panel"!]
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/10/1672403/ferre-cut-medical-costs-for-those.html?mitest=B_case 
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"We know how to enumerate safely because we are required to read" the Census handbook. "Number 3, 'wear comfortable shoes. These shoes may come in handy should there be a need to run . . . (And) as you walk toward your vehicle, scan beneath the vehicle for persons waiting to charge out at your ankles.' Who knew?"
* "I have been hired and laid off (by Census) five times. Each time I had to refill out paperwork as if a new hire, get fingerprinted, etc. Each training session is four days, at least 35 hours plus (50 cents a mile) mileage. Each assignment only lasts about one-third as long as told when called up."
"Working here in Kansas, we Census workers were basically ordered to obtain the info by any means possible, (including) asking neighbors. This strongarm tactic was enough to make several of us quit, as we felt it was a blatant violation of privacy since the Census forms clearly have 'refusal' as one of the choices."
* "I work Manhattan South. I have never seen such waste and inefficiencies in my working life. The Census makes a big deal about you living in the area you work in -- however, the guy who runs Manhattan lives in New Jersey."
"We are not supposed to wear any political signage, or talk politics, but in our training meeting the (unit leader) said, 'You have to be careful about Tea Party members, they are on purpose not giving out information and they may shoot you. They are nutjobs.' "
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The following is a small part of a column in American Thinker titled:  A Shrink Asks: What's Wrong with Obama?

[For fascinating details of Obama's life as a child, do read the entire article.  It is not the first time I have read of this, and is shocking and unsavory to say the least.  That it is getting coverage in this venue proves how important it is.]  James Carville railed about Obama's blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill. The New York Times' Maureen Dowd revamped Obama's "Yes We Can" motto into "Will We Ever?"
The liberal women of the TV show "The View" have expressed sympathy for Michelle Obama's living with a man so out of touch. Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe, recently pronounced him disconnected.  
Obama is flat when passion is needed; he's aggressive when savvy is required. What's most worrisome is that Obama doesn't even realize that his behavior is inappropriate.
Yet a personality disorder like narcissism does not explain Obama's strangeness: his giggling while being asked about the economy; his continuing a shout-out rather than announcing the Ft. Hood shootings; or his vacations, golfing, partying and fundraising during the calamitous oil spill.

Take also Obama's declaring on the "Today Show" that he wants to know whose ass to kick. Consummate narcissists would never stoop to this vulgar display of adolescent machismo.

Obama is flat when passion is needed; he's aggressive when savvy is required. What's most worrisome is that Obama doesn't even realize that his behavior is inappropriate.
It means that liberals need to wake up and spit out the Kool-Aid...and that conservatives should put aside differences, band together, and elect as many Republicans as possible. Because Obama will not change. He will not learn from his mistakes. He will not grow and mature from on-the-job experience. In fact, over time, Obama will likely become a more ferocious version of who he is today. 

Why? Because this is a damaged person. Obama's fate was sealed years ago growing up in his strange and poisonous family. Later on, his empty vessel was filled with the hateful bile of men like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers. Obama will not evolve; he will not rise to the occasion; he will not become the man he was meant to be. This is for one reason and one reason alone:  He is not capable of it.  http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/a_shrink_asks_whats_wrong_with.html
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist in Berkeley and a recovering liberal. 
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Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Land of the Slave, the Home of the Coward........

The Chairman of the Democrat National Committee recently put forth eight  points on which the Dems should run for office, one of them being that they have strengthened their relationships with our allies across the world.  Funny, eh?  Here is what the Russians have to say, according to the European Union Times: 
Foreign Ministry reports circulating in the Kremlin today are warning that an already explosive situation in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse as a new law put forth by President Obama is said capable of seeing up to 500,000 American citizens jailed for the crime of opposing their government.
Sparking the concern of Russian diplomats over the growing totalitarian bent of the Obama government is the planned reintroduction of what these reports call one of the most draconian laws ever introduced in a free society that is titled “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”.
 [They end the article with this summary:]
As another example of how dictatorial the Obama regime has become, and as the Gulf of Mexico oil debacle has now become the worst ecological disaster our World has ever seen, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this past week slammed American reporters for “asking too many questions about BP”.  Leading one to ask that if Obama’s regime can’t be asked about this disaster, what can they be asked about?
The answer is apparently none, as Obama himself, just this past week, in announcing his signing of a new law called the Press Freedom Act refused to answer any reporters questions and abruptly left them standing in stupefaction over the irony an ordeal that shows how far America has fallen.
Another irony apparently lost upon the American people is that their President Obama, who has been dubbed “The Great Communicator”, now holds the dubious distinction of having held less press conferences than any American President in modern history.  And if yesterday’s press conference, his first in nearly a year, was any example one can see why as incredulous press corps was left astounded that Obama had no knowledge of the firing/resignation of one of his top officials.
In all of these events one fact, beyond all others, stands out….in what was once called “The Land of the Free, And the Home of the Brave”…..the United States today has become “The Land Of Slave, And the Home of the Coward”….and these Americans have only themselves to blame.  http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/new-obama-law-warned-will-jail-500000-americans/

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Obama Appointees; Un-Presidential Speech; Presidential Speech with Telepromtors; Emanuel and BP; and US Jobs

The American Thinker opines:  The amorous Dr. Berwick [founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has reportedly been named by President Obama to head Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the organization that administers programs including Medicare and Medicaid] wants American health care to mimic the NHS, which, according to Cato Institute's Michael Tanner, has three-quarters of a million patients waiting to enter hospitals. The U.K. had hoped to achieve a wait time of less than eighteen weeks by 2008. The deadline now passed, the NHS hopes to improve on an abysmal 30 to 50 percent of patients seeing specialists within eighteen weeks. Shockingly, each year, 50,000 queued-up NHS patients become too sick to undergo what might have been life-saving surgeries.

In early 2009, at one hospital alone, Britain's Healthcare Commission reported 1,200 deaths attributable to "appalling standards of care," "patients left for hours in soiled bedclothes," unattended injured people "covered in blood and without pain relief," and patients receiving wrong or no medication. Also in 2009, London's Daily Telegraph documented nearly 400 deaths a year at two hospitals that lacked "basic nursing skills" and made a habit of parking untreated patients in emergency areas for ten hours.
The doctor tells the NHS audience that there is "little evidence" that consumer choice and competition create a "healthcare system you want and need."  http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/leader_with_a_plan_invites_a_h.html
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Fox News reports: The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision that upheld Arizona's right to punish employers for hiring illegal immigrants. The Arizona law gives the state the right to suspend or terminate business licenses. "If you hire a person in this country illegally knowingly, you'll lose your license. First offense, 10 days. Second offense, revocation, never to do business in the state of Arizona again," said Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican who helped draft the new controversial Arizona law that cracks down on illegal immigrants.  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/03/justice-dept-challenges-arizona-immigration-law-targeting-employers/
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Powerline reports:  President Obama has announced the appointment of retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and current undersecretary of defense for intelligence, to be the next Director of National Intelligence. Eli Lake has some interesting background on Clapper. According to Lake, in 2004 Clapper supported the view that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.
I had never heard of Clapper's name before reading of Obama's nomination of him to replace Blair as the DNI. If Pete Hoekstra opposes him, however, there must be reasonable ground for believing Clapper may not be the man for the job. Hoekstra is the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and a serious man. Politico reports that Hoekstra has related the existence of "bipartisan opposition" to Clapper's nomination, and complained that Clapper failed to brief Congress on "an extraordinarily sensitive program."
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026470.php
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[The oh, so Presidential Obama, on the oil spill, on MSNBC]:  "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar [a venue in which he could excel], we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/07/obama_seeking_ass_to_kick_over_oil_spill.html   [As Lucianne at Lucianne.com says: Teachers, clergy, nice people everywhere try to get their heads around a president who uses street language.What are you telling your kids?]
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President Obama uses teleprompters while giving the commencement address at Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan.  [And still, he is thought of as a great orator!  It boggles the mind...]
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The title of the article?  "The ties that bind.
Remember Rahm Emanuel's
rent-free D.C. apartment?
The owner: A BP adviser"
Los Angeles Times, by Andrew Malcolm  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/rahm-emanuel-bp-gul-oil-spill.html

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Friday's US jobs report, according to the UK Guardian:  caught most economic analysts by surprise. After touting the strength of the recovery for months, they had to come to grips with the fact that the economy just is not creating very many jobs.
If the temporary jobs generated by the census are pulled out of the count, the economy created just 20,000 jobs in May. The average rate of growth of non-census jobs over the last three months has been just 130,000 a month, only slightly faster than the growth of the workforce. At this rate of job growth, it will take decades, not years, to get back to normal levels of unemployment. It's time that we stop the happy talk about recovery and get serious about the country's economic problems.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jun/07/deficit-cultists-jobs-report
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President Obama said Tuesday he would have fired British Petroleum's CEO Tony Hayward for comments downplaying the Gulf oil spill if Hayward had been working for him,
"He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," Obama said in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's TODAY show, reportsMSNBC. [This is outrageously hilarious.  He is surrounded by incompetence and/or unethical appointees (Napolitano, Holder and Emanuel come to mind), and he has yet to fire one who matters.  He is, after all, an organizer, not a leader.]
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From Politico:  A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas. "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November." [This is money shich could have been added to their pension funds, which Americans may have to guarantee and pay if government plans are successful.]
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith /0610/White_House_official_Organized_labor_just_flushed_10_million_of_their_members_money_down_the
_toilet_.html?showall#

Monday, June 7, 2010

On Israel and Jews

How is this for an unbiased reporter - old Helen Thomas:  rhttp://www.breitbart.tv/helen-thomas-tells-jews-get-the-hell-out-of-palestine-and-go-back-to-germany-poland  [In this video, Helen is heard using the aforementioned quote, during a Jewish Heritage Celebration at the White House on May 27, 2010, of all places!  Doesn't this anti-Semite know that Jews lived in Palestine before the Holocaust?  Or that 6 million Jews were killed in their "homes" of Poland and Germany?]

[Then, on June 1, 2010, following the flotilla incident] Newsbusters writes:  Helen Thomas was on her typical, Israel-hating self Tuesday when during the White House press briefing, she called the previous day's flotilla incident a "deliberate massacre, an international crime."  [Never mind that the actual facts of the situation were not yet known.]

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As National Review Online writes:  In contrast to the general directions of Helen ("Go back to Germany and Poland") Thomas, the peace-lovers aboard the Mavi Marmara were more specific:
In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they are approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara respond, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11".
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[How is this for our President making America more loved across the world"]  From the Israeli National News:  In the hubbub surrounding the “battle of the flotilla,” Netanyahu’s quick reversal of his decision to remain in the United States has been largely ignored. It turns out that Obama told him to leave because he didn’t want Netanyahu to use the White House as a stage on which to present Israel’s side of the story. (Snip) The meeting was to have been a way for Obama to make up for the humiliation he dealt Netanyahu on his last visit, when he refused to be seen with the Israeli leader in public.
The flotilla violence caught Netanyahu in the midst of a diplomatic trip to North America. He was in the Canadian capital of Ottawa at the time, about to leave for Washington for a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. The meeting was to have been a way for Obama to make up for the humiliation he dealt Netanyahu on his last visit, when he refused to be seen with the Israeli leader in public.
Netanyahu announced immediately after the flotilla news broke that he would remain in North America and would meet with Obama as scheduled. However, within minutes after media reported Netanyahu would continue with his trip as scheduled, he abruptly announced a change of plan and set off immediately for Israel to “deal with the flotilla crisis.”  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137838
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U.S. President Barack Obama is anti-Israel, says Israel National News, and “is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please Muslim nations," former New York City Mayor Ed Koch charged.  According to Israel National News: 
Koch, a Jewish Democrat, has been gradually “falling out of love” with President Obama, a term he used in a commentary he published last August. The recent snub by the president of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, highlighted by a meeting without a press conference or even an official photograph, broke the proverbial camel’s back for Koch.
After having opposed President Obama’s health care reform plan and expressing disappointment over his failure to convince Russia and China to back harsh sanctions against Iran, the former mayor recently wrote, “President Obama’s abysmal attitude toward the State of Israel and his humiliating treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu is shocking.”   "I have been a supporter of President Obama and went to Florida for him, urged Jews all over the country to vote for him, saying that he would be just as good as John McCain on the security of Israel. I don't think it's true anymore.” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136845
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On the subject of lionizing Joseph Stalin, National Review writes:

Lee Edwards of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, statues of Joseph Stalin have been torn down all over Europe and even in the former Soviet Union itself. The world is closer than ever before to a consensus on the evils of communism and Stalin's primary role in the worst crimes of the last century. And yet a statue of Stalin is included in the National D-Day Memorial, to be dedicated in Bedford, Virginia, this Sunday, June 6.  http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGI2NzE3MGZlNTIwZGZjZGEzNzk4MjMwYmU2ODQ2MzQ=

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Saturday, June 5, 2010

New Government Jobs; Fidel Castro; and Paul McCartney;

95% of new jobs last month came from the GOVERNMENT!!  [Strangely, that does not keep our President from bragging!]  The Labor Department said on Friday payrolls rose 431,000 as the government hired 411,000 workers to conduct the population count. That was the largest monthly increase since March 2000 and marked a fifth straight month of gains.
But private employment, a barometer of labor market strength, increased just 41,000 after rising 218,000 in April, as employers opted to increase hours rather than hire new workers. The average workweek rose to 34.2 hours from 34.1 hours in April.  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Payrolls-hit-10year-high-on-rb-3972278328.html?x=0&.v=7
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Fidel Castro speculated Wednesday that a nuclear strike on Iran might help President Barack Obama win a second term in the White House and also suggested the United States could attack North Korea.  http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ghGthxqnYMWcICCnEkjH5ayqPamQD9G38G8O0
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Sir Paul McCartney's cheap shot aimed at former President George W. Bush at a White House event on Wednesday has prompted House Minority Leader John Boehner to demand an apology from the Beatle.

McCartney literally gushed over President Obama throughout his East Room concert.  “Getting this prize would just be good enough, but getting it from this president…” McCartney said letting his praise trail off as if there were vast volumes left unsaid.
The prize McCartney was given is the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, a lifetime achievement award bestowed by the Library of Congress.  "After the last eight years, it’s great to have a President who knows what a library is,” McCartney quipped.  [And of course, those in attendance laughed and cheered....]
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Friday, June 4, 2010

Health Care Problems; President Obama's Agenda; Arizona Boycotts; International Investigation


Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model:

We can't continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services. [You don't say!]
Healthcare in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded system, which covers all "medically necessary" hospital and physician care and curbs the role of private medicine. It ate up about 40 percent of provincial budgets, or some C$183 billion ($174 billion) last year.
Spending has been rising 6 percent a year under a deal that added C$41.3 billion of federal funding over 10 years.
But that deal ends in 2013, and the federal government is unlikely to be as generous in future, especially for one-off projects. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100531/hl_nm/us_health_3
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From American Spectator: President Obama has nominated Donald Berwick to head CMS. Berwick is a blinkered ideologue with an abiding admiration for Britain's National Health Service (NHS), and the significance of this for the future of U.S. health care can hardly be overstated.  The NHS is no public-private hybrid. It is a full-fledged socialized medical system. Yet Berwick has written, "I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it... All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at healthcare in my own country." That the President has nominated a man with such views to run CMS is a clear signal that he intends to lead us out of what Berwick calls "the darkness of private enterprise."  http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/01/an-incurable-romantic
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The Daily Caller writes:  Critics say missed deadlines and other signs show the Obama administration is stumbling out of the gate on its early steps to implement the president’s health-care law.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already missed as many as four deadlines under the law – not on any major regulations — but still a worrying trend, critics say.
Congressional staff and industry representatives have also been asking HHS for a timeline specifying when it will issue the numerous regulations required by the law. [I remind us that many times in this law are the words giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to set law.]  They were shocked to find the agency has not produced such a document, one aide said.  The issue is important because vast industry sectors are trying to plan their own implementations of the health-care law and most of the details remain in bureaucrats’ hands, leaving a vacuum of uncertainty about the final burdens the law will impose.

While missing the deadlines, the administration has found time to send promotional material touting the law’s benefit, including a brochure for senior citizens and post cards from the IRS advertising tax breaks under the law.  [So - how much taxpayer money was spent on this indoctrination?  And why did we receive two of them - to the same address?  It's just money, I guess.]
One example of this is a deadline for an advisory committee to issue a progress report on deciding what counts as “medically underserved populations and health professional shortage areas” that receive extra federal money.
The progress report was due April 1, nine days after the president signed the health-care bill into law. But HHS is also required to give the public 30 days to comment on the membership of the advisory committee. The comment period ends June 10, until which the advisory committee cannot exist.
In other words, it was legally impossible for HHS to meet the deadline.
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Washington Times:  With his party's poll numbers flagging and crises testing his own leadership, President Obama said Wednesday that November's elections will amount to a referendum on whether voters want to go back to the policies of the Bush administration or stick with his vision of change.  [Exactly, Mr. President.]  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/obama-tells-voters-remember-bush/
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From the NYT:  Mr. Obama had hoped to spend his summer creating jobs, passing financial reform, promoting his health care program, getting a Supreme Court justice confirmed and an arms control treaty with Russia ratified, pressing for international sanctions against Iran and jump-starting the troubled Middle East peace process. While not abandoning any of those goals, Mr. Obama now must find ways to continue pushing them while demonstrating to the nation that he is concentrating on a spill he has called “our highest priority.”
“This has hijacked his entire legislative agenda,” said Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University who has written about Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was consumed by the Iran hostage crisis. “The White House felt they were on a roll. They were looking to be a new New Deal or new Great Society and they were just getting momentum going. Something this awful has sidetracked the agenda.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/politics/03memo.html
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http://www.wsbtv.com/video/23438021/index.html  [So - you think only Mexicans are invading our country through our borders?  Check this out - Other Than Mexicans....]
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Breitbart says:  He [Barack Obama] didn’t endorse the boycotts [of Arizona] either, as you’ll see, so it’s a classic case of Obama voting “present.”  [In discussing the various attempts to boycott the state of Arizona for their illegal immigration law, Obama said, " I am President of the United States.  I don't endorse boycotts, or not endorse boycotts. That's something that the private citizens can make a decision about."  First of all, I think Obama did a pretty fair job of boycotting Las Vegas with his derogatory words about those who would vacation there during a recession.  More importantly, he has once again shown us either how empty his suit really is, or he has declared that he really is abetting the destruction of our country, as well as pitting Americans against each other...  Has he never heard of the Commerce Clause?  According to Cornell University Law School, the Commerce Clause "has historically been viewed as both a grant of congressional authority and as a restriction on states’ powers to regulate. The “dormant” Commerce Clause refers to the prohibition, implied in the Commerce Clause, against states passing legislation that discriminates against or excessively burdens interstate commerce."  Perhaps he needs an informed Attorney General at his side.  Oh - he doesn't have one, I guess.]

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/27/one-more-clip-obama-refuses-to-criticize-boycotts-of-arizona/ 
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The crowd pushing President Obama to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay posthaste, as he so prematurely promised, should acquaint themselves with a stunning recommendation by his own task force:
Of the 240 detainees there, 48 should be held indefinitely, without trial, under the laws of war.
Why? Because they are believed to be members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or another enemy force - but those charges cannot be proven in either civilian or military court.
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Forbes Magazine opines:  The Obama administration is pushing for an internationalized investigation of Israel's recent effort to preserve its naval blockade of Hamas-run Gaza. In an extraordinary interference with the sovereignty of a democratic society and its right of self-defense, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said Wednesday that the United States wants "a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation. ... We are open to different ways of assuring a credible investigation, including international participation ... " (Snip) That would be the same international community which has condemned Israel without the facts...  http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/03/israel-gaza-blockade-obama-opinions-contributors-anne-bayefsky.html?boxes=Homepagechannels
 
PEACE activists are people who demonstrate nonviolently for peaceful co-existence and human rights. The mob that assaulted Israeli special forces on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on Monday was not motivated by peace. On the contrary, the religious extremists embedded among those on board were paid and equipped to attack Israelis.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/opinion/03oren.html
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Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Bill Maher; Chris Matthews; New MASS. Law; Governor (MI) Granholm;

HBO's Bill Maher: "I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president. You know, this [BP oil spill] is where I want a real black president. I want him in a meeting with the BP CEOs, you know, where he lifts up his shirt where you can see the gun in his pants. That's -- (in black man voice) we've got a 'motherfu**ing problem here?' Shoot somebody in the foot." [Well it sure is a good thing that we can't find any racism in these comments, eh?  And Obama's Interior Secretary has already said that he is "keeping his boot on their throats", after all.]
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BP underwrote Chu's institute with a $500 million grant. Then Obama appointed him as energy secretary.
Chu is not a climate scientist, and won his Nobel for his work on lasers. But he was well-known at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for his outspoken concern about climate change and his commitment to developing clean energy long before Obama appointed him.



The Guardian writes: Chu is not a climate scientist, and won his Nobel for his work on lasers. [And he must have spent the nite at a Holiday Inn Express, no doubt.] But he was well-known at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for his outspoken concern about climate change and his commitment to developing clean energy long before Obama appointed him.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/04/steven-chu-obama-climate-change-drought
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[The man who once sent a thrill up the leg of Chris  Matthews no longer pleases him] American Thinker opines:   Hot Air has a video of Chris Matthews saying something that I heartily agree with in toto. "If I hear one more time that Secretary Chu has a Nobel Prize I'm going to barf. I don't care. This idiotic cerebral meritocracy has got to step aside and let people who do things take over".  http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/obamas_best_and_brightest.html    [He is commenting here on the brainiacs which Obama is employing, who have no experience in the business world, but fit Obama's desire to radicalize our government - and our country.]
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Have you heard that the great state of Massachusetts has passed a new law on illegals immigrants in their state?  The measure, according to Conservative Outpost:  "which passed on a 28-10 vote as an amendment to the budget, would bar the state from doing business with any company found to break federal laws barring illegal immigrant hiring. It would also toughen penalties for creating or using fake identification documents, and explicitly deny in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants.

"The amendment would also require the state’s public health insurance program to verify residency through the Department of Homeland Security, and would require the state to give legal residents priority for subsidized housing.   Democrats had resisted such a sweeping proposal, but spent last evening negotiating today’s measure, shortly after a new polled showed 84 percent of the liberal-leaning state’s voters supported tough immigration rules barring state services to illegal immigrants. ...... [I wonder when Obama will tell us all how inappropriate this is, and when Sharpton and others will condemn the state for being racist, and which other states will boycott Massachusetts?] http://www.conservativeoutpost.com/massachusetts_racist
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As The NYT reports about this law:
The measures, which passed 28 to 10 in an amendment to a budget bill, would require state contractors to confirm that their workers were here legally and prohibit the contractors from doing business with the state if they were found to employ illegal immigrants.
The changes would also codify into law an existing state policy that bars illegal immigrants from qualifying for resident-tuition rates at state colleges. And they would require public housing agencies to give legal residents priority for subsidized housing.
In addition, the state attorney general’s office would be required to set up a hot line for people to anonymously report businesses that hire illegal immigrants, and to investigate any such reports.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28mass.html
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Prince William County in Virginia has had a very similar immigration law to Arizona's since 2007...and it works!  (Be sure to watch past the commercial on "green jobs.")  80% of citizens surveyed support the law, illegals have fled the county, crime has been reduced by 38%, and there has not been ONE case of racial profiling reported.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4211920/immigration-law-success?playlist_id=86912
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The Washington Times opines:  On May 20, Oxford Union, the prestigious 187-year-old English debating society, formally considered the question of whether it was more important to focus on growing the economy or solving global warming. Climate realism won the day, 135 to 110. During the debate, Lord Whitty, former environment minister under the Labor government, claimed 95 percent of scientists were in agreement that man was responsible for a coming climatic cataclysm. Lord Monckton, representing climate realists, asked him to provide a reference backing up the claim. The audience jeered Lord Whitty for having none beyond, "Everyone knows it's true."  We think we need public policy that's based in facts, rather than facts that are based on a public agenda," Colorado State University professor Scott Denning said.

In 1895, the New York Times suggested the Earth was headed toward a "second glacial period" in which "countries now basking in the fostering warmth of the tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions." By 1923, the Gray Lady had decided, "The Arctic seems to be warming up" as "so little ice has never before been noted." By the 1970s, schoolchildren were indoctrinated by textbooks blaming a new ice age on man's Earth abuse.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/31/climate-alarmists-on-the-run/  [When will it end, this belief that man actually has the power to significantly affect what this planet has the power to do to us?  We should be good stewards of the Earth, doing our small parts, for Mother Nature is in control, as always.]
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It is encouraging that Gov. Jennifer Granholm, [Governor of Michigan] has issued an executive order (2009-44) abolishing the Michigan Climate Action Council. It should never have been created to begin with. Committing Michigan to regional greenhouse gas emission requirements to combat the elusive fear of global warming is fraught with peril for Michigan households and businesses. Many of the recommendations coming out of the Council will invariably lead to higher energy costs for heating and cooling homes and running businesses.
http://www.mackinac.org/12870
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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday he could “understand” if reporters thought he was responsible for keeping them in the dark about an administration position offered to Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) — but he had no immediate answers for reporters about details of the deal. A reporter asked Gibbs why he wouldn’t discuss the offer over many months, even as the administration contended that nothing inappropriate had taken place. “I’d have to ask counsel for a better answer,” Gibbs said.  http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0610/secretive_on_sestak_435a43c7-f633-414e-adf7-b50533599c78.html
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Monday, May 31, 2010

Wind Turbine Turned Down; Biomass Center is Dangerous; Key Global Warming Vote; and Israel's Nukes

Thank those who have protected our country and secured our freedoms, as well as those who have lost a family member to the great cause of a free America!  They are our heroes.
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TRAVERSE CITY -- The Bay Area Transportation Authority (BATA) said it decided to drop a proposed wind turbine project in Long Lake Township.  According to BATA, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) awarded a $600,000 energy grant for BATA to build a wind turbine. The turbine was expected to generate enough power to cover BATA’s annual electric costs, officials said.
The grant was awarded back in 2005, and BATA officials said it is no longer in their best interest to pursue the project.
“I just don’t think it was a prudent business decision to go into something with have a good handle on where your suppliers were and what your cash flow is, so it really was not a good return on investment for us in the long term,” Executive Director Thomas Menzel said.
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[Also from Traverse City comes news that the planned biomass center is raising concerns from physicians who say the air pollution caused by it would be most dangerous.  Green energy is not as good and as simple as the global warming fanatics would have us believe.  After all, man is also one of the animals on our planet who must be considered.]
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President Obama has been very made clear that his top domestic priorities are health care and global warming. We all know what happened on health care. Now the date is set for the key Senate showdown on global warming: June 10. That’s when the Senate will vote on a resolution introduced by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (S.J. Res. 26) that would overturn the EPA’s global warming regulations. It’s not subject to filibuster. There is no place for weak-kneed senators to hide. In just two weeks we’ll know where every member of the Senate stands.
As I’ve previously discussed here in the Fox Forum and documented on www.ObamaChart.com, the Obama administration is not waiting for Congress to enact a national cap-and-trade program to move ahead with its global warming agenda.
Under the watchful eye of White House Climate czar Carol Browner (who originally developed the legal theory of using the 1970 Clean Air Act as a global warming law, bypassing Congress) the EPA is moving forward on a staggering regulatory power grab that includes about 18,000 pages of appendices and will eventually regulate nearly every aspect of the U.S. economy.
And at least one more key Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, is already feeling enormous pressure on this vote from back home. On Tuesday Tea Party activists rallied outside one of Rockefeller’s state offices with the simple, commonsense argument that EPA regulations are an illegitimate, backdoor way to get cap-and-trade without a vote in Congress.
Senator Rockefeller responded to the protest by saying: “We cannot wait any longer to send the message that relying on EPA is the wrong way to go. The fate of our entire economy, our manufacturing industries and our workers should not be in the hands of EPA.”
The only vote that will happen -- for sure -- is the vote on June 10. And it will be a clean, clear, up-or-down vote on the Senate floor—a yes to stop the EPA power grab, or a no to look the other way and let it happen.
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From American Thinker: On Monday, the NY Times broke with years of blatant warmist bias in reporting that Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons.  

Now Newsweek has joined the newly aware, but with a dash more honesty.  In a piece titled Uncertain Science, the normally climate alarm sounding magazine has also acknowledged the turning tide:
Blame economic worries, another freezing winter, or the cascade of scandals emerging from the world’s leading climate-research body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But concern over global warming has cooled down dramatically. In über-green Germany, only 42 percent of citizens worry about global warming now, down from 62 percent in 2006. In Britain, just 26 percent believe climate change is man-made, down from 41 percent as recently as November 2009. And Americans rank global warming dead last in a list of 21 problems that concern them, according to a January Pew poll.  http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/are_climate_alarmists_losing_t.html
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Washington's unprecedented backing for a UN resolution for a nuclear-free Middle East that singles out Israel has both angered and deeply worried the Jewish state although officials are cagey about openly criticising their biggest ally. The resolution adopted by the United Nations on Friday calls on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and urges it to open its facilities to inspection.
Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its capabilities since the mid-1960s.
The document, which singles out Israel but makes no mention of Iran's controversial nuclear programme, drew a furious reaction from the Jewish state who decried it as "deeply flawed and hypocritical."
But it was US backing for the resolution which has caused the most consternation among Israeli officials and commentators, who interpreted the move as "a resounding slap around the face" which has dealt a very public blow to Israel's long-accepted policy of nuclear ambiguity.  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.5eaf6bbb255b23063c3b3635bd5f7c52.161&show_article=1