No, the big news today, according to the Obama campaign is Mitt’s “War on Big Bird”. (Tee hee.)
This will come as a shock to Democrats, I’m sure – but there are more than a few of us out here, who have no use for Big Bird, or any of his muppet ilk, and never did. Yeah, I said it. I didn’t watch Sesame Street as a kid, and none of my six kids did, either. It wouldn’t bother any of us in the least to see Big Bird or his left-wing muppet gang go the way of the dodo. I also suspect that there are more than a few Sesame Street fans out there who have no problem with PBS being defunded. “Big Bird” is a 1 percenter – he’s part of a multi-million dollar industry and should be able to stand on his own without taxpayer help.
Surprisingly enough, while Team Obama pummels Romney for threatening to defund PBS, PBS isn’t playing along.
Via Michelle Fields, Sesame Street has asked that the video be taken down:
Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.
And via Sooper Mexican, an Obama campaign staffer tweeted out this response:
Obama spox says they have received Sesame Street's complaint and will be reviewing their concerns.
It’s merely under consideration….because their pro-Big Bird stance is such a winner for them (and such an effective distraction from Obama’s colossal failures) they are willing to go against the wishes of the people they are ostensibly trying to defend.
It’s all part of Team Obama’s never-ending quest to secure the STUPID vote. That’s why President “Eye Candy” has gone out of his way to appear on Entertainment Tonight, The View, Letterman, etc…and now Nickelodeon, too.
(Mediaite) Nickelodeon’s news outfit Nick News is reportedly “disappointed” that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has declined to appear in the channel’s “Kids Pick the President” election special, which airs several weeks before the election.
“After numerous attempts by ‘Nick News’ to get former Governor Mitt Romney to participate in the special, his camp declined saying he was unable to fit it into his schedule,” Nickelodeon said in a press statement.
Last time I checked, “kids” can’t vote.
President Barack Obama will appear, however, having pre-taped his answers to kids’ questions at the White House. As a stand-in for official Romney responses to the kids’ queries, the channel will use archive video clips of the GOP candidate answering similar questions.
Kids can’t vote, but their parents can. And many of them will be watching with their kids.
His wife, for some reason, has practically become a permanent fixture over there – (“hey, mom! Michelle Obama’s on Nickelodeon, again!”) – just one more reason to kick these shameless charlatans to the curb on Nov. 6.
Whoa, I really slept in, today. While I’m still trying to get up to speed on today’s, news, here’s a little something I found in my inbox from the cool folks at Occupy the White House: OCCUPIED! – Obama’s Un-Affordable Health Care TAXES and CONTROL ACT.
This is the ONLY way to listen to an Obama speech:
My favorite part? The freeze frame on Obama’s contempt filled stare. I’ve actually done the same thing while watching Obama videos – freeze-frame on his hateful expressions. There is something very, very wrong with the guy.
From the Occupy the White House YouTube page:
When promoting his legislation “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”, H.R. 3590, then-president Obama deceived the public in a myriad of ways including outright lies about the Act and its consequences as well as gigantic omissions regarding its costs, scope of invasive power, implementation and enforcement.
Please READ THE BILL. It’s a behemoth of bureaucracy and encroachment, full of socialistic sounding terms and its dictates are terrifying. It is NOT “European style” health care. Europeans — especially liberal Europeans — would never tolerate the consolidation of so much personal information within one single government agency.
They’ve had their Hitler.
Thanks to so many writers, bloggers, commenters and talk radio hosts — most especially Mark Levin, Americans for Tax Reform and the Western Center for Journalism — who have brought light, knowledge and insight to the UN-affordable Health Care Taxes and Control.
We all want health care reform. We never wanted it this way.
Via The Blaze comes the shocking news that the Obama State Dept may be teaming up with unrepentant domestic terrorist, Brett Kimberlin, the Indiana Speedway Bomber turned Soros-funded “social justice” activist who routinely uses lawfare against bloggers who tell the truth about his past.
MAY 24, 2012 - JTMP has been a participant in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Programfor 3 years now, where citizens from around the world involved in the arts get to come to America and visit to learn about the role of arts in the US. This year we had visitors that came from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia to see how Justice Through Music Project uses art to raise awareness on issues, and to bring about social change. This year’s contingent had musicians, playwrights, and people involved in art production. We gave them a presentation and showed them many of our musical art videos that deal with politics and issues, while we spoke about how we operate and produce our art videos. We then showed them how we use this art on our website and YouTube channel to raise awareness on an issue to help bring about positive social change.
The International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) is the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program. Launched in 1940, the IVLP is a professional exchange program that seeks to build mutual understanding between the U.S. and other nations through carefully designed short-term visits to the U.S. for current and emerging foreign leaders. These visits reflect the International Visitors’ professional interests and support the foreign policy goals of the United States.
Who are considered “international visitors?”:
International Visitors are current or emerging leaders in government, politics, the media, education, the arts, business and other key fields. Over 5,000 International Visitors come to the United States from all over the world each year. Since its inception in 1940, thousands of distinguished individuals have participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program, including 330 current and former Chiefs of State and Heads of Government, thousands of cabinet-level ministers, and many other distinguished leaders from the public and private sectors.
What’s more, the State Department website goes on to explain that these international visitors travel to the U.S. to engage in “carefully designed programs that reflect their professional interests and U.S. foreign policy goals.”
Here’s an example of Kimberlin’s music from his band, Op Critical, a little anti- fracking ditty:
Freakin Frackin by Op-Critical – Protest Music Against Fracking! JTMP.ORG and OC:
http://www.jtmp.org and http://www.op-critical.com present “Freakin Frackin” by Op-Critical, a protest song against “hydraulic fracturing”. Hydraulic fracturing, or “Fracking”, is using over 500 toxic chemicals to shatter rock to extract more natural gas from wells, driving profit up. It pollutes our groundwater and the air and is killing us. It is putting profit over the planet. It is time we ban this toxic practice that is harming our planet.
Please order and watch the DVD “Gasland”, a great documentary about “Fracking”. by filmmaker Josh Fox. Get informed about “Fracking”, and we urge you to contact your representatives and say, “No Fracking Way!”, and join the call for a moratorium and eventual ban of hydraulic fracturing.
Link the foreign leaders with their U.S. counterparts, providing a solid professional experience and in-depth, substantive exploration of key issues and diverse, balanced approaches to these issues.
Enable the visitors to gain a better understanding of the history and heritage of the United States, a better sense of who [Americans] are as a people and what [Americans] value.[2]
I can’t think of a more unbalanced approach to a key issue like fracking, than the video above.
Who else is Obama’s State Department partnering with? Bill Ayers? Charles Manson? I’m almost afraid to check.
This morning on “Fox & Friends”, Sen. Sessions was asked about the recent controversy surrounding the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ judicial conference, scheduled for this August in Maui, Hawaii. Coming on the heels of the GSA scandal, this conference is reported to cost taxpayers over one million dollars.
Sessions drew parallels between this controversy and the scandal relating to the GSA’s recent junket in Las Vegas, noting that President Obama has yet to assert the kind of managerial discipline to let government employees know that such expenditures are not acceptable during this time of fiscal crisis. Sessions also said that future judicial appropriations will have to be examined in light of this lavish conference.
“From the very top of this government, we’re not receiving the kind of determined leadership to bring expenses under control that we need. I mean, the president needs to spend more time managing rather than making speeches around the country, in my opinion… The sooner we get the message down to the lowest level of government that this country’s got to change the way we handle the taxpayer’s money, the better off we’ll be…
Ultimately, the Congress has the power to appropriate money, and we need to evaluate the judicial branch budget request in light of some of these expenditures.”
Something has to be done — liberals won’t stop living it up on the taxpayer dime unless they are literally cut off.
Ahead of today’s 1:30 PM (est) GSA Hearing, the committee on Government Oversight and Reform posted a mashup to help get folks up to speed on the issues.
Even lefty-wing John Stewart couldn’t overlook the assploding hypocrisy in this scandal, or as he put it, irony!
“The people holding the conference, that wasted a ton of government money… are the people in charge of making sure the government doesn’t waste a ton of money!”
Bonus quote (much to his lefty audience’s chagrin): “It’s like the Justice Dept selling guns to Mexican drug dealers. “
1:30pm on Monday, April 16, 2012 in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building
The details that have come to light about a General Services Administration Conference held in Las Vegas have raised serious questions in the minds of the American people about how government is using their tax dollars. What has come to light surrounding GSA’s activities should give pause to anyone who has opposed cutting government size and spending.
Wasteful spending is a problem that transcends multiple Administrations and multiple Congresses but it’s incumbent on the present Administration and the current Congress to mandate a culture that prevents this type of waste and mismanagement, no matter what happened before them.
Why did it take eleven months for the Obama Administration to take meaningful action? The Inspector General briefed the Administration with details about the specific action of those responsible for gross waste, yet documents show that some political appointees believed even this year that the report could be kept private and the outrageous details dealt with quietly.
Some of those same senior political officials approved a bonus for Jeff Neely, the regional public building commissioner who was chief organizer of the 2010 Vegas conference. In the same e-mails where senior leaders are discussing whether or not to offer Neely a bonus, they are speculating on the timing of the release of the IG’s report and the political impact it will have.
Furthermore, if the political officials responsible for taming bureaucratic excess ignored and dismissed such flagrant and flamboyant violations of the rules, then what confidence do we have that GSA can prevent more shrewdly executed fraud and waste the future?
I look forward to hearing testimony from the witnesses attending Monday’s hearing as the committee continues its ongoing efforts to shine a light on a culture of wasteful spending within the federal bureaucracy. Changes have been made at GSA, but whether they are enough to change a culture of lavish excess remains in question.
I’ve been yawning at the Daily Caller storieschronicling the collusion between Media Matters and the White House because nothing about this administration surprises me, anymore, especially something like this. Oh really? Media Matters is the media arm of the Obama White House feeding all it’s propaganda to MSNBC? Uh….duh?
But when you see how the story lines up so perfectly with what brought down the Nixon administration, you tend to perk up, a little:
What are the striking similarities between Nixon’s Watergate and what might be called, inevitably, Obama’s Media Mattersgate?
• The use of private investigators to investigate the private lives of opponents: In the Nixon era, hiring a private investigator (Tony Ulasewicz) to investigate the private lives of opponents was the brainchild of John Ehrlichman. In the Obama era, hiring private investigators appears as a Media Matters recommendation in a memo by Karl Frisch.
• The involvement of White House aides: This is what the House Judiciary Committee’s liberal Democrat Congressman Sarbanes was referring to when he said Ehrlichman and Caulfield’s involvement meant “that activity [the hiring of private investigators] has the cloak of authority.” In the Obama Administration this “cloak of authority” appears, based on the Daily Caller stories, to attach itself to at minimum two separate episodes. One, the June 16, 2010 meeting between Valerie Jarrett and Media Matters, attended by the recently departed White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. And two, what the Daily Caller describes as “a weekly strategy call” between the White House and Media Matters, the latter the group recommending the employment of private investigators to investigate political opponents of President Obama. Note: The question arises as to whether there were other meetings or discussions between Ms. Jarrett or other White House staffers and Media Matters or a third party go-between that were either on the phone, in e-mail, or — most importantly — did not occur at the White House. Was, for example, Ms. Dunn a go-between for the White House and Media Matters? Both during and after her White House tenure. Again, White House Counsel John Ehrlichman flew to New York for his secret meeting with Tony Ulasewicz in a VIP lounge at LaGuardia Airport. It did not occur in the White House.
• The Nixon tapes and David Brock’s book: What finally ended the Nixon presidency was a unanimous Supreme Court decision forcing the Nixon White House to yield the secretly made tape recordings, whose existence was discovered in the middle of the Senate Watergate Hearings. Those tapes, specifically a tape of June 23, 1972, produced what became known as the “smoking gun”: there, in spite of repeated denials, was the voice of Richard Nixon, in Theodore White’s words, “directing the CIA to halt an FBI investigation which would be politically embarrassing to his re-election — an obstruction of justice.”
If Richard Nixon’s tapes did him in, so well may David Brock’s book do in not only Media Matters but, incredibly, the Obama White House itself. A congressional investigation would doubtless focus on any information in the book obtained through the use of private investigators. Investigators acting under Sarbanes’ rule of a White House “cloak of authority.” Investigators paid for by wealthy Obama contributors.
• Follow the money: For the Nixon White House, the man to see was Nixon lawyer Herbert Kalmbach. It was he who, receiving authorization from John Ehrlichman, (that “cloak of authority”) paid Tony Ulasewicz. Who is the Media Matters equivalent of Herb Kalmbach? Mr. Kalmbach, by the way, went to jail and lost his law license temporarily, it being restored three years after Nixon’s resignation.
Here are the differences, though – and they are monumental differences -
1. As Lord notes, in 1973, the Nixon White House stonewalled – “they made false statements to investigators, withheld evidence, counseled witnesses to lie, interfered with a Justice Department investigation”. I think it goes without saying that there will be no Justice Department investigation of Media Mattersgate in 2012.
2. In 1973, the liberal media was all over Watergate. Every reporter wanted to have a piece of the story. In Obamerica 2012, the MSM are partners in crime with this corrupt White House, and have every reason – including protecting their own reputations – to ignore the story.
As The Daily Caller has exposed here and here, there have been direct ties between Media Matters and various mainstream media outlets. The Caller lists, among others, MSNBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Huffington Post.
Again, I think it goes without saying that there will be no MSM firestorm over MediaMatters Gate, and there will be no Pulitzers in the offing for the bloggers who pursue this story.
And pursue it they should - remember this “great idea” from from Media Matters’ Karl Frisch, which supposedly wasn’t acted upon?
“We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff.”
The question becomes, how did the reportedly mentally unstable Brock find dirt to “savage” Fox News employees with for his new book:
The “great idea” over at Media Matters surfaced in this line in the Frisch memo that recommended hiring, in effect, a bunch of left-wing Tony Ulasewicz’s. Said the memo:
“[W]e should write a book under David’s name that savages Fox News and Fox News employees. The market for this is likely huge.”
Just this book is bursting onto the scene this week under David Brock’s name: The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine.
Lord concludes that a full congressional investigation is in order
Will Harry Reid do this? Of course not. So the ball bounces to the House. And what will they be looking for? As with Nixon in Watergate, these congressional investigators will be looking for one, very simple thing — a simple thing expressed in multiples of ways by multiples of people. That would be?
Abuse of power.
Well, just one more example of abuse of power out of many for this White House. Whether or not our jellyfish-spined Republicans will act on it, remains to be seen.
From the Washington Times: “Media Matters for America founder David Brock finally responded to someone about The Daily Caller series regarding allegations that Washington D.C. based non-profit has a plan of attack against the Fox News Channel that would include investigations into the personal lives of employees who work for the cable news channel.“
Brock blamed Fox News saying that because the allegations made by the Caller have been reported on Fox, the coverage was in response to his book, “The Fox Effect,” that hit shelves today.
America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. – Josef Stalin
National Condom Week, celebrated by Planned Parenthood affiliates and colleges across the country, began at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970s and has expanded into a nationwide effort to promote safer sex.
“I certainly do believe that sex education is extremely important, especially with the growing number of drug resistant sexually transmitted diseases and that hooking up National Condom Week with Valentine’s day is a great way to get that message across,” NationalCondomWeek.com administrator Jeffrey Strain explained to The Daily Caller in an email.
By the way, the concept of “TMI” is a foreign one to PP:
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest has also gotten into the Condom Week spirit, tweeting out a new website — called “WhereDidYouWearIt.com” — offering condom users a chance to report the location of their most recent sexual encounter, the reasons they used a condom and how good the sex was.
The condoms distributed will be Planned Parenthood’s new brand, Proper Attire. The brand was launched two years ago and the packaging is designed to appeal to women, with the goal of making women more comfortable in purchasing and carrying condoms.
Because what do guys and gals who go to bars love more than anything else? — games and giveaways to increase awareness about STDs. Hey, are there back rooms available where they can sample the wares? #PProcks!
Oh cool - Planned Parenthood encourages young women armed with condoms to go on pub crawls….
“Hi, guys! Look at us! We have condoms! Want to buy us drinks?!”
If you aren’t convinced by now that there are some truly sick pups behind Planned Parenthood, this video from the American Life League should erase any lingering doubts. In the name of “education”, Planned Parenthood exposes children as young as 10 years old to pornographic illustrations of masturbation, nudity, sexual activity, and much much more. The fact that Planned Parenthood receives any amount of public funding only makes it that much harder to stomach, but even if it was a private organization this would be no less revolting. In fact criminal is probably a better word to describe it.
This is what happens over time when liberals are in charge of any organization….(CONTENT WARNING):
According to the American Life League, everything in the video is taken from Planned Parenthood’s own websites and social networks.
Seriously, there is no reason – NONE – why American taxpayers should be funding this sleaze. When are Republicans in Congress going to end this madness?
Kansas City, Missouri- Today, Jacob Turk, Republican candidate for Missouri’s 5th district denounced the Obama administration’s creation of a hotline to help illegals fight deportation.
“This is a waste of taxpayer resources. The federal government should not be using funds to help illegal immigrants fight deportation. It sends the wrong message that we are not serious about securing our borders,” said Turk.
The Homeland Security Department has launched a toll free hot line that is staffed 24 hours a day. Personnel from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement man the line to answer questions on how to fight deportation. The hotline number is (855) 448-6903.
“Taxpayer funds should be used to help our legal citizens or pay down the debt. It shouldn’t be used to help keep people who broke our laws in the country,” said Turk.
Turk supports the Obama administration’s Secure Communities program that helps expedite the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants by granting local law enforcement access to fingerprint databases making it easier to identify who is in this country illegally. The program is supposed to quickly deport illegal immigrants who have further broken our laws and are violent offenders. It is a way of making our streets safer. Turk believes that the new hotline established by Homeland Security completely undermines the program.
Turk suggests that these funds would be better spent on securing the borders than giving advice to illegal immigrants on how to circumvent American law.
Having come very close to defeating Congressman Emanuel Cleaver in 2010 and closer than any Republican in the 5th district since 1946, Turk is in a strong position to defeat the incumbent next November.
Jacob Turk has been a resident of the 5th Congressional District for 31 years. After completing his Marine Corps service, Turk attended college thanks to the GI Bill, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri. After owning his own small business for 12 years, Turk went to work for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners as a programmer and analyst in the research department. Jacob holds the principles of our Constitution and our nation most dear: a nation founded by the ideals of free enterprise, freedom of speech and religious expression; where one can rise from poverty to prosperity in a single generation through hard work and determination; where people are free to succeed and free to fail.
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Jacob Turk- Republican for Missouri’s 5th District. We believe representatives must listen to all. Lead with integrity. Protect life and property. Champion opportunity. Leadership. Not politics.
The Tucson school district’s Mexican American studies program violates state law, an Arizona administrative law judge ruled Tuesday, paving the way for the possible demise of the program.
The judge affirmed a prior decision by the state’s schools chief that the Tucson Unified School District’s program violates a law that aims to outlaw divisive ethnic studies classes.
In June, John Huppenthal, the state superintendent of public instruction, had deemed the program to be in violation of the law. That law, among other things, bans classes primarily designed for a particular ethnic group or that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”
The school district appealed the ruling, and testimony before the administrative law judge concluded in October.
The decision by the judge, Lewis D. Kowal, is merely a recommendation to Huppenthal, who can now take action against the program if it does not come into compliance with the law.
Should the program not come into compliance — as Huppenthal sees it – the district could lose about $15 million in state aid.
According to “Save ethnic Studies”, the program started as a grass roots effort in the late 1990s “to reverse some disturbing educational trends among minority students in TUSD” and “blossomed into a highly successful national model documented over and over in educational peer review literature.”
Other “educational peers” who reviewed the the program came to a very different conclusion:
Over the summer, the ongoing battle over ethnic studies in Arizona royally exposed the grimy politics and tactics of the right wing.
Arizona HB 2281 became effective Jan. 1, aimed at the popular and successful Mexican American studies program (also known as MAS or La Raza studies) of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). The bill outlaws courses that “promote the overthrow” of the government, “promote resentment toward a race or class of people,” are “designed primarily for people of a particular ethnic group, or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.”
The bill’s author was Tom Horne, who is famously opposed to La Raza education because it is critical of the U.S. government’s relationship with Latin America and treatment of Latinos. As the state superintendent of schools, Horne conveniently was able to find the Tucson ethnic studies program in violation of the new law immediately before leaving that position to become the state’s attorney general.
Last May, a woman had engaged in “grimy politics” by reading excerpts from a book in the Tucson Ethnic Studies programat a school board meeting. These outrageous and toxic books were teaching kids that the United States is an institutionally racist system filled with “bloodsucking capitalists” and Anglos who “rape Hispanic culture”.
“Hard drugs and drug culture is an invention of the gringo because he has no culture.”
“We have to destroy capitalism and we have to help 5/6 of the world to destroy capitalism in order to equal all peoples’ lives.
“The Declaration of Independence states that we the people have the right to revolution…the right to overrule the government…”
“Any country based on capitalism is based on greed…”
The woman had to be warned to watch her language as she read from the text (written for kids as young as 10 years old) because they were in a public forum where children were present.
One shudders to think how many Hispanic kids’ minds were polluted with this toxic swill, knowing that the program started in the ’90′s.
On April 22, 2011, Acting NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon sent an email to Wilma Liebman, outgoing Chairwoman of the NLRB, “The article gave me a new idea. You go to geneva [Switzerland] and I get a job with airbus [French company]. We screwed up the us economy and now we can tackle europe.” Solomon’s comment was in response to an article published in French on the European Planet Labor website noting the devastating potential economic impact on South Carolina if the plant were to be scuttled: “Two billion dollars were invested in Charleston, 1,000 employees were recruited, and the site was supposed to open in July… until the NLRB meddled in.”
On April 22, 2011, NLRB attorney Debra Willen received an email, in which Republican Sen. James DeMint of South Carolina is ridiculed as “Sen. Dement.”
On May 12, 2011, NLRB Deputy Assistant General Counsel Joseph Baniszewski emailed a political cartoon to Deputy Assistant General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo mocking the state of South Carolina with regard to Boeing Corporation’s decision to locate its manufacturing facility in that state.
On April 28, 2011, Miriam Szapiro sent an email to NLRB attorney Debra Willen commenting on an article in The Economist expressing some support for the Boeing lawsuit: “Exactly; it just shows you how incredibly reactionary the US is, that the conservative Economist thinks we’re Neanderthal.”
On April 20, 2011, Mara-Louise Anzalone, counsel for Acting NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, took exception to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) statement, “As Senator, I will do everything in my power, including introducing legislation cutting off funding for this wide goose chase, to stop the NLRB’s frivolous complaint [against Boeing].” In an email to NLRB regional attorney Anne Pomerantz, Anzalone writes, “Awesome. Sounds like they’re just going to furlough you and me.”
Not only do these emails reveal the low moral character of the radicals running the NLRB – they show them to be complete idiots who don’t realize that their emails can eventually be made public. Talk about Neanderthals.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Friday described the National Labor Relations Board as a “rogue agency” for its response to subpoenas he issued for documents related to the panel’s legal complaint against airplane manufacturer Boeing.
The NLRB has yet to provide any documents to Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The board’s general counsel said Friday in a letter to Issa that the NLRB was concerned about releasing any documents prematurely.
That provoked a harsh response from Issa, who said the NLRB’s hesitation put into question “the integrity of NLRB and its leadership.”
“The National Labor Relations Board and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon have thus far failed to comply with a lawful subpoena,” Issa said in a statement released Friday. “This refusal by NLRB to abide by the law further heightens concerns that this is a rogue agency acting improperly.”
What a busy little weekend for news we just had. The S&P downgrade has the Dem-Socialist spin machine working on all cylinders, and boy oh, boy, are they laying it on thick…
Think back just three short years ago when a Republican held the White House, or a little further back when Repubs briefly held both Houses of Congress. Can you imagine for one second, our Republican leaders besmirching their fellow citizens in this way? Dem Socialists loved to howl every five minutes that Republicans were questioning their patriotism, but that was always just misdirection. They knew they were putting politics above country when troops were on the battlefield, and they didn’t want people to notice. But did Republican Congressmen, President Bush, or Vice President Cheney ever attack or vilify Democrats, or the Communist fronted anti-war protesters (whose very goal was to undermine the war effort) during the Bush era?
In fact, President Bush (ChimpyMcHitlerHaliburtonInc) always defended their right to protest. Protesters from every wacko lefty fringe group you can imagine protested during the Bush years, and Republicans in power managed to endure it all without viciously attacking their fellow citizens even when they protested in the mostvile, uncivil and unhinged manners imaginable. Although, to be fair, they may not have commented on the more egregious elements of the protests because the MSM never reported on it.
People forget what it was like before our country was this profoundly sick and divided. Oh, it was divided before – but not like this. Never before have we had a President who would instruct his left-wing followers to “punish” their political enemies whether it be at the ballot box, on Twitter, on the White House Snitch Site, outside a Russ Carnahan Townhall, you name it…..This President has infected Washington DC with a Chicago style of political thuggery that should make every alert citizen recoil. But not the far left. They recoil at everything decent, holy and good–they won’t do the sane thing and cut spending because the left truly is sick.That’s right, I said it - mentally ill. Why else would they put their own self interests above the country’s economic or national security interests? Their quest for power supersedes everything else?
These are not happy people and they want everyone else to join them in their misery. They’ve succeeded – their sickness infects the entire country, and we can’t seem to shake it.
You demonized the only adults in Washington D.C. who were among the Tea Party. You made certain we would end up here.
How hard could it have actually been? The ratings agencies TOLD you what you needed to do — rein in spending – it wasn’t bloody rocket science. Hell anyone who ever balanced a CHECKBOOK could have told you what you needed to do.
But you played politics. You acted like Scarlet O’Hara and just refused to think about anything unpleasant. Well, Barry, I hate to tell you this, but there’s no kindness of strangers here to rely on. This is cold, hard reality. Until YOU, sir, the U.S. credit rating has always been stable or improving. YOU, sir, own this. You and your lickspittle accomplices in Congress and the media have brought us to this point.
Do not think the American people will forget. Do not think we will forgive. This country is angry sir, and nation after nation has discovered there is nothing on Earth more dangerous than a pissed-off American.
This country is on the edge of something very ugly, sir, and you personally have brought us here.
Put aside for a moment the fact that Obama’s willingness to compromise was entirely theoretical; never did he put such a compromise plan on the table. His FY 2012 budget proposal was anything but a compromise; it included no entitlement reform and projected massive deficits for as far as the eye could see, and therefore received not a single vote in Congress.
What is most ludicrous is the Democrats’ effort to distract attention from the fact that they controlled Congress from January 2007 until January 2011. The first Congress that had any ability to be influenced by the Tea Party movement has been in office for only six months. Do the Democrats seriously expect anyone to believe that S&P’s downgrade of U.S. debt arises out of something that Republican Congressmen have done in the last six months? We expect the Democrats to appeal to ignorance at all times, but this is ridiculous.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane. What did the Democrats do with respect to federal debt during the four years they controlled both Houses of Congress? Here is a summary of the deficits the Democrats racked up during that time:
Of the $14.5 trillion national debt, nearly $4.8 trillion–one-third of the total–was incurred during that four-year period when the Congress was exclusively controlled by the Democrats. Moreover, and equally important, during that time the Democrats did nothing to assure the markets that they have a long-term plan to deal with the country’s burgeoning debt. On the contrary, for more than two years the Congressional Democrats have refused to adopt or even to propose a budget! If you are looking for the reason why rating agencies have lost faith in the ability of our government to get its spending and debt under control, you need look no farther.
Let us stipulate that (a) U.S. fiscal health wasn’t exactly robust when Obama became president, and (b) in a time of fiscal crisis, a steadfast opposition to tax increases doesn’t soothe the worries of the bond market, yet still the fact remains that the immediate cause of the current crisis was the incredible two-year Obama/Pelosi/Reid deficit spending binge. And Obama’s response to the debt-ceiling impasse – tax the rich! millionaires and billionaires! corporate jets! Republicans are coming to steal Granny’s Social Security check! — was immature, selfish and harmful.
Democrats don’t want to fix the problem, they want to score political points against Republicans. And they expect their liberal friends in the media to help them do it — a perfectly realistic expectation, given the fact that Barack Obama could only have become president with the willing assistance of his liberal friends in the media, who more or less anoninted him as the Democratic nominee the day he beat Hillary in the Iowa caucuses.
I’d imagine even some liberal reporters are now experiencing buyer’s remorse and — despite their profound instinctive loathing of Republicans — are sick and tired of watching Obama scapegoat others for his own incompetence.
As Hinderaker noted at the end of his piece:
…it is hard to believe that even the dimmest voters will fall for the idea that the movement that was founded in order to do something about the spending and debt crisis is somehow to blame for that crisis.
Keith Koffler of White House Dossier sounding as pessimistic as me, here, (and after watching that video, who wouldn’t feel fatalistic about our country’s future): The Sickness Besetting the Country, and the President:
There is a sickness gripping America, an systemic illness that threatens President Obama more than any particular problem.
Because the problems are but symptoms of the illness.
Two of the symptoms appeared just in the last few hours: the downgrade of U.S. debt, and the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan, killing 31 U.S. special forces.
The downgrade is not just an economic blow; it’s a disgrace. The helicopter is not an isolated incident, but consistent with stepped up attacks by a Taliban sensing our eagerness to leave.
The illness, perceived by a country that overwhelmingly says things are on the wrong track, is such: This country is out of control, and the president is either incompetent or unwilling to lead it.
Other symptoms abound: the abnegation of the U.S. leadership in the world, the rise of China to take our place, the failure to deal with a gnat like Qaddafi, the high price of gasoline, the millions of jobless Americans.
The president has both created the illness and failed to cure it, because he has failed to rise above his limitations: He is a leader who has never led anything larger than a Senate office, and he is a liberal ideologue.
Today the S&P fired back saying treasury’s argument “is irrelevant.” Zero Hedge reported, via Free Republic:
Yesterday we showed that when it comes to projections, the CBO’s own track record makes S&P shine in comparison. Apparently this fact was not lost on S&P itself which sent out a note explaining which “clarified assumption used on discretionary spending growth.” Basically, as S&P says, “Our ratings are determined primarily using a 3-5 year time horizon. In the near term horizon, by 2015, the U.S. net general government debt with the new assumptions were projected to be $14.5 trillion (79% of 2015 GDP) versus $14.7 trillion (81% of 2015 GDP) with the initial assumption – a difference of $345 billion.” So yes, while by 2021 the difference could be $2.1 trillion based on the CBO’s current baseline model, the truth is that the CBO’s own estimate on revenue and spending projections in a decade will likely have a +/- $10 trillion margin of error. So does anyone really care? In essence all S&P did was point out what Zero Hedge and others have been saying: that a “deficit cutting” plan which is massively back end loaded and has about $20 billion in cuts over the next year is absolutely without credit or merit.
The Hill)— Standard & Poor’s laments the possibility cuts to entitlement programs won’t materialize and the decreasing likelihood of new tax revenues.
The decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating to “AA+” at once laments the possibility that cuts to entitlement programs will not materialize and the decreasing likelihood of new tax revenues. But it appears to give more weight to the need for more spending cuts, as it warns that a further credit rating downgrade is in the cards if the U.S. does not trim spending.
In contrast, while the report indicates that new tax revenues would help mitigate the debt crisis, failing to find these revenues does not immediately put the U.S. at risk of another downgrade.
Specifically, the report warns directly that a further downgrade to “AA” status could occur within the next two years if there is “less reduction in spending” than what was agreed in the debt ceiling agreement. S&P said one factor that could lead to this second downgrade is if the minimum $1.2 trillion in spending cuts under the debt ceiling agreement does not occur.
That would be Obama’s thoroughly disgusting former “Car Czar”, Steven Rattner, the hyper partisan corruptocrat behind the threats to Chrysler bondholders, and the Dealergate scandal. A real sweetheart. He figures, “oh what the hell, I got the whole table in my corner – most people ain’t gonna check the transcript, or watch it on Youtube. Yeah – I didn’t say what the square, here says I said”.
Americans prefer to see themselves as doers rather than victims. They do not see themselves, as the masses in the Progressive Era a century ago may have done, as helpless victims of large corporations and financial interests.
They want public policies that enable them to earn success, and they resent policies that channel money to the politically well positioned or to those who have not made decisions and taken actions necessary for earned success. They want to be empowered, not patronized.
One might think that after a historic shock to the American economy in the first serious downgrade of our credit rating in decades, an American President would want to speak to a worried nation about the future and his plans to address the situation. Instead of taking an opportunity to demonstrate leadership, Barack Obama instead spent the weekend away from public scrutiny at Camp David. ABC News reports this morning that Obama won’t talk publicly today, either:
After spending a low-key weekend at Camp David, the only item on the president’s schedule this morning is his daily briefing in the Oval Office.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Obama will make two public appearances this evening, Mary Bruce notes … at two fundraisers. With no cameras allowed.
What’s Obama going to say? He doesn’t want to muss himself with all the finger pointing and tea party demonization. His minions have that covered quite adequately. Meanwhile, the White House prepares itself to make war on S&P over the downgrade. They should put Rattner in charge.
Captain Ed points out the trouble with that strategy:
That runs into two problems, however. National Journal’s Michael Hirsh notes one of them, which is that Egan Jones had already downgraded the US over its dept-to-GDP ratio and the prospects of rapidly increasing debt over the next several decades. The second is the immediate spin from the White House and Democrats that tried to blame the entire thing on Tea Party intransigence. Essentially, that spin corroborates S&P’s analysis; it just blames it on a minority of politicians in a party that only controls one chamber of Congress, a rather ridiculous notion.
The White House seems rudderless, responding in entirely contradictory ways to the embarrassment of the downgrade, without any sense of leadership from the man in charge. This isn’t “leadership from behind,” it’s the political equivalent of an absentee landlord.
It would almost be funny watching the liberal mob acting out every single word Ann Coulter wrote about them in “Demonic”- their casual embrace of contradictory ideas, demonization of their enemies, idolization of their leaders, their ferocious lies and desperate need for approval – but I’m feeling a little too sick to my stomach, right now, to laugh.
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If you’re not already depressed enough after reading this compilation of bad news, readMark Steyn’s: Mad Debt.
You heard right. While Obama threatens to withhold Social Security checks from our own senior citizens, his State Dept is funding the refurbishing of Mosques in Egypt through USAID, while their Islamic extremists laugh at us:
A Channel 2 Action News investigation found that the State Department is sending millions of dollars to save mosques overseas. This investment has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in government spending.Plenty of outrage following the announcement made Thursday afternoon by a government commission that suggested huge cuts to the budget, including eliminating the interest education for home mortgage. This juxtaposed with United States investing millions to refurbish mosques as a good-will effort in Muslim countries has upset many taxpayer groups.
When I was at RightOnline, last month, I heard that Mr. O’Keefe was in the process of conducting another sting operation. This video is the first installment of Project Veritas’ latest investigation, this time targeting Medicaid fraud.
What you are about to see are government employees in Ohio assisting two outrageously crooked, and unqualified Russians with applications for Medicaid.
In the video, the men explain to Ohio Medicaid workers that they are Russian immigrants who sell illegal drugs, drive a modified McLaren F1 sports car with a gold-coated engine, and use their underage sisters to perform sexual favors in exchange for drugs.
In response, Ohio employees tasked with disbursing federal Medicaid dollars are shown coaching the men through the process of applying for benefits. “If it’s not something registered here, maybe I just wouldn’t mention it,” a Franklin County Medicaid officer named Traci Daniels tells the men, when asked whether they should mention owning a vehicle that retails for nearly $1 million, as they apply for government aid designed to help poor people. “Not that I can say that. You didn’t hear that from me. But, that would right there, that would throw him off. He would be immediately not qualified.”
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I can tell you right now what Media Matters’ angle is going to be to discredit the whole thing.
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Sergei didn’t really wear that hat and it was edited so the whole thing is a HOAX!!!!!
A complaint filed July 7, 2010 indicates ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera (seen here in the ACORN San Diego investigation) is suing James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in federal court for at least $75,000. Vera alleges Giles and O’Keefe violated the Invasion of Privacy Act when they videotaped him giving advice regarding underage prostitution to the fake pimp and prostitute in 2009.
You can support Project Veritas and help O’keefe and Giles fight in court by donating here.
Ace sees the problem as endemic in all bureaucracies, and of course, he’s right:
The thing is, this isn’t an isolated thing. I’m sure that 90% of employees in the various bureaucracies do this, because it’s the path of least resistance, not even for ideological reasons. It’s just easiest to help people scam the system than to turn them away.
And that’s not really a problem of any particular employee, but of the system which encourages this, and which tells them to just get the government checks out there by hook or by crook because who cares, it’s free money anyway.
Over and over again this is what happens in bureaucracies. There are the paper “rules” that exist in the employee handbook and are entirely hypothetical and notional, and then there are the actual rules for conduct which everyone knows, the rules for keeping your job and not getting hassled and not making the decisions or exercising the judgment you are (supposedly) hired to make or exercise.
Is it too much to ask that government employees be specifically trained to protect the taxpayer, instead of the corrupt fraudster?
Charles Krauthammer was absolutely correct about that, and he went back to the Clinton/Gingrich budget showdown in 1995 to help make his point. Krauthammer’s segment starts at approx. 1:40.
“People have to remember that with divided government, Gingrich attempted to govern when the Republicans had two houses of congress, in the absence of the Presidency, and were defeated. And now the idea is that the Republicans are going to govern and impose all these cuts holding only the House? It’s impossible. And if they lose the public relations battle here, it will be like 1996, all over again…and they’ll lose the Presidency…If they want real change they’re going to have to elect a Republican, and that is what McConnell has in the back of his mind…”
Brit Hume’s plan to get a debt ceiling agreement with massive cuts and a Balanced Budget Amendment sounds good, but Mitch McConnell’s statement on the Senate floor, today is landing like a lead balloon in the right-wing blogosphere:
Here’s Rich Lowry: “It’s beginning to get out on the Hill. It’s complicated, but here is the gist as I understand it: Congress authorizes in legislation the president to submit a request for an increase in the debt limit in three tranches over the next year or so, with corresponding proposals for spending cuts; when the president submits his request, Congress immediately considers a resolution of disapproval; if the resolution passes, the president can veto it and–assuming his veto is subsequently upheld–he gets the increase in the debt limit. Got it? More later…”
Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich even took to Twitter to voice his disapproval, saying, “McConnell’s plan is an irresponsible surrender to big government, big deficits and continued overspending. I oppose it.”
Is that the same Newt Gingrich who got his ass handed to him in ’95/96?
Here’s what’s got conservatives so up in arms: We Will Not Pretend That a Bad Deal Is a Good One:
It wasn’t a bad speech, and given the predicament Republicans are in, (which Krauthammer crystallized, above), you can have some sympathy for his way of thinking.
McConnell is not known for his fiery rhetoric. But plainly, the White House shenanigans have aggravated, if not angered, him. He does a service to his own side and to the national debate by refusing to fuzz up the issues: “We will not pretend that a bad deal is a good one.” He laid out the options: “If you think that the federal government isn’t big enough, then the only responsible thing to do is to support higher taxes. For those who are honest about that, I appreciate their candor. But for those of us who don’t think the federal government should be in charge of banks, the auto industry, the housing business, the student loan business, health care and regulating everything else under the sun, we’re not about to further enable that model of government by shaking down the American people for more money at a time when they can least afford it.”
McConnell’s plan is the ultimate backstop. If Obama doesn’t get off his tax hikes, McConnell has a plan ready for a vote. Democrats could try to filibuster it, but default would then result. It is time to change the rules of the game, McConnell has decided. Let’s see what happens.
The old, fat Klein makes the point that no one cares about the debt ceiling hike. At least, not the broad voting population.
I mentioned in a comment that McConnell had a similar scheme back in December 2009 as we were voting on ObamaCare. We could have forced the Democrats to remain in session through the holidays; instead, McConnell agreed to let them recess and come back, in exchange for a supposedly prominent vote on the 2010 debt ceiling hike.
Yeah, that wasn’t as prominent as planned, was it? No one reported on it and it resulted in zero political benefit.
Here’s the sort of shameless demagoguery Republicans are having to deal with:
He could have said something like “If a deal isn’t made there will of course be a problem paying for Social Security in the long term, but in the short term I have many options as far as shuffling dollars around to fund high priorities, so I can say with confidence that Americans who depend on Social Security will still get their checks for the foreseeable future while we sort this out.” But Obama didn’t say that.
Presidential leadership is about making difficult choices and assigning rational priorities. Because Mr. Obama is virtually incapable of making difficult choices, he is content to “lead from behind,” as he does with the budget. The debt ceiling–which is in place to keep irresponsible politicians whose only skill is wasting other people’s money from literally spending America into oblivion–need not be raised. The alternative is to get spending immediately under control, but this is not a possibility for Mr. Obama. If the kitty is a bit short, his only solution is to rob pensioners? What brilliant, inspired leadership. No doubt our Treasure Secretary, Mr. Geithner, came up with that one. May I suggest a few additional alternatives?
Mr. Obama could–and should–have said:
(1) I can’t guarantee that the EPA will be able to continue regulating American business out of existence while destroying jobs.
(2) I can’t guarantee that the Department of Education will be able to continue wasting huge amounts of money while over-regulating school districts everywhere.
(3) I can’t guarantee that the ATF will be able to continue allowing weapons to flow into the hands of domestic and foreign criminals.
(4) I can’t guarantee that all of my unelected, unaccountable czars will be able to continue to subvert American democracy.
He ain’t finished – read all 15 of his ideas. Not that Bam would take them up. It’s fun to dream, anyway. The point is – there are any number of programs and bureaucracies that could be cut and no one would miss them (in fact the country would be better off without them). This is why Obama is such a cheap Chicago thug for trying to scare granny with his vicious SS threat..
How dangerous this delusional man might be is moot. What seems no longer at issue is Obama’s “superior intelligence.” Obama’s belief system is dominated by the dismissed exploitation theories of Karl Marx and the 60′s style radicals he grew up around. The Reverend Wright, preached to him for twenty years about exploitation in terms of Black Liberation Theology. An unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers was a close friend and arguably author of one of Obama’s autobiographies. His personally selected “Czars” are the sorriest collection of Presidential advisors ever, at least in terms of reflecting American values and beliefs.
Many went on the same intellectual voyage that Obama did. Most of us outgrew this nonsense, usually by our mid-twenties. Obama never did. He is still a child, intellectually undeveloped and locked into the ideas from the 60′s — both the 1960s and the Marxist 1860s. In that sense he is an intellectual dwarf, frozen in the equivalent of a state of intellectual puberty. His “knowledge” is based on nothing but the discredited ideologies of Socialism.
The claim that Obama is the smartest man to ever hold presidential office is absurd and a reflection on the state of our media who insist on propping up this man-child. Obama’s obsession with keeping his college records and personal past secret is prima facie evidence that the claim is untrue. His knowledge base and dismal performance on the world stage is even more damning.
Instead of having a superior intellect, we likely have the most ignorant, ideological, brainwashed dupe this country has ever elected to high office. The man’s intellectual development never progressed beyond the stage of all-night freshman bull sessions where all the world’s problems were solved (with help from adequate amounts of beer of course).
This intellectual pygmy must be removed from office by whatever possible peaceful means. Impeachment is in order, but will not happen. Thus the 2012 election is critical.
The Democrat Party knows what happened in 2010. They also know that they have an albatross at the top of their ticket. It is likely they will turn on this poseur before the election. If so, this act will be their most significant public service in years.
Read the full article at the site. It’s all that good.
