SOURCE: IowaHawk
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Obama’s Way of War
May 14, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 33
• By REUEL MARC GERECHT
The Weekly Standard:
Is Barack Obama a warrior president? Not in the British tradition, of course, which gave us Winston Churchill, with his crazy cavalry charge against Sudanese spears, or the more cerebral Harold Macmillan, shot to pieces in World War I, lying in the blood and the mud reading Aeschylus. Obama is a post-Vietnam president: He walks in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who took different paths away from the jungles of Southeast Asia but later sent Americans into harm’s way in foreign wars. He is—if we are to believe his campaign ads, his vice presi-dent, and a recent breathless encomium in the New York Times—a commander in chief more in line with “Teddy Roosevelt than Jimmy Carter.” He is a “gutsy” guy, who has “embraced SEAL Team 6 rather than Code Pink.”
Politically, it’s common and fair for an American presi-dent seeking reelection to accentuate his manly qualities. Most Democrats to the right of the editors at Mother Jones—and that is still most Democrats—don’t want to elect a wimp. Modern democracies understandably don’t demand that their leaders come from military backgrounds, let alone have shown valor in battle. So we use a different standard to assess their martial toughness. President Obama, his minions, and his admirers have loudly told us he stakes his claim on two accomplishments: the raid to kill Osama bin Laden and the aggressive use of drones against jihadists. So let’s look.
The last two presidents, in fact, have used Predators to kill our enemies. For going after Muslim holy warriors in geographically challenging regions of the Greater Middle East, remote-controlled aircraft are militarily and politically safer and more economical than sending in special-operations teams. Early on, the Bush administration accelerated the development of drones because they were an immediately useful part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s technology-driven transformation of the armed forces. Still, for the Bush administration to trumpet Predators as a sign of the president’s warrior ethos would have seemed surreal, given his invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It also would have appeared unseemly, when Rumsfeld’s high-tech doctrine fared poorly against insurgencies that demanded more troops than the secretary had deemed necessary.
In theory, killer drones are almost a liberal’s fighting dream-machine: no dead Americans (unless they are the targets), no captured U.S. soldiers, no wounded to transport home, no crashing helicopters, a minimum of soul-tormenting reflection, no blood or gore on TV or in print, and limited collateral damage. Perhaps best of all, because of drones’ stealth, cooperating Muslim governments can deny their complicity with the infidel superpower. True, some leftists have risen to question the ethics of drone use (if terrorism should be treated as a crime, which is sometimes the view of the Obama administration, then killing folks without trial or judicial review, remotely and clandestinely, is wrong). But most American liberals have approved or kept their reservations quiet. Killing jihadists overseas is apparently more moral than putting them alive into Guantánamo Bay.
If we look down the road, Predators will likely be an essential part of the foreign policy of any liberal president ambivalent about the use of American power. Given President Obama’s near-total silence about the impending sequestration of nearly $600 billion in military spending because of a budget impasse (half the cuts will come from defense, which accounts for less than one-quarter of the budget) on top of the $800 billion already axed, the president obviously sees spending on defense as less necessary to the nation’s health than maintaining the entitlement status quo and implementing Obamacare. Drones sustain the illusion that you can do more with less, that jihadists and their organizations can be sufficiently neutralized without contemplating more troops or aerial bombardments.
As Max Boot has pointed out, the president’s eager use of drones and the raid on Abbottabad have actually allowed Obama’s inner dove to come out. A strong preference for massive welfare-state spending aside, slashing defense spending is one sure and lasting way to militarily neuter the United States. Like many liberals under the age of 60, President Obama has a problem with American hegemony—the idea that American military power is essential and decisive in keeping malevolent ideologies and states at bay. Where downing an aggressive fascist dictator with a proven hunger for weapons of mass destruction and long-standing relationships with terrorists seemed sensible to senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden in 2003, a certain Illinois state senator knew better. President Obama’s profound foreign-policy “caution” is rooted in a common, if not sacrosanct, historical understanding of post-Vietnam liberalism: that America is more likely to do harm than good when it intervenes in the Third World.
With drone attacks and bin Laden’s death for backdrop, the president seems to think—and he may be right—that he can disengage the United States from the Greater Middle East without political risk. Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun minorities know that an American withdrawal on the president’s schedule will unleash civil war that will likely bring the Taliban and their many jihadist allies back to the gates of Kabul. Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara are already envisioning the new Afghan Army’s crackup into its component parts. In 1990 it was impossible to argue in Washington that America should remain engaged in Afghanistan (in the CIA, you could have counted on one hand the folks who didn’t snore when Afghan-related intelligence crossed their desks). Americans were tired of the Cold War. It’s a delicious irony that many on the left who after 9/11 underscored George H.W. Bush’s failure to pay attention to Afghanistan when the Soviet Union retreated now 23 years later worry little about U.S. withdrawal.
On the left and right, Muslim-fatigue has set in. The conflict is too costly in dollars and manpower, the viability of non-Taliban Afghan power requires too much American support, and the American people, our elected representatives plead in private, just want out, consequences be damned. The Republican-controlled Congress has so far approved the enormous reduction in military spending that will likely create a downward spiral difficult to stop. Many Republican members would rather not talk about the Muslim Middle East, just as our fore-fathers once avoided talking about leprosy. Eleven years after 9/11, George F. Will, once a peerless supporter of a strong military and both Iraq wars, sees massive defense cuts as a good thing if they limit “America’s ability to engage in troop-intensive nation-building.” Muscular Wilsonian liberals and neoconservatism have become as injurious to the nation’s health as socialized medicine.
In great part, the president, his Predators, and the raid on Abbottabad loom large because Republicans have become so small. The world that George W. Bush gave them they cannot handle. The second Iraq war is probably the single greatest catalyst behind the Great Arab Revolt. In much the way that former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, twin beacons of American “realism,” predicted, the war shocked the region. What had been seen as immovable autocracies became fragile regimes fearful and contemptuous of all the talk of democracy that poured forth from Westernized Arab expatriates, disenchanted youth, and Islamists. The Iraq war provocatively and irrepressibly introduced the discussion of popular government into the region: “democracy through the barrel of a gun,” as antiwar Westerners and Arabs put it. For those Westerners who had eyes to see, knew Arabic, and kept an open mind, the conversation was deafening. All that was needed was a spark. The self-immolating Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi provided it.
The antiwar Democratic intelligentsia, which includes the president, has been wrong on just about everything in the Greater Middle East since 2001. It’s impossible to read The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right, by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, now senior administration officials and two of the best minds the Democrats have on counterterrorism, and not sigh. The 2005 book saw the Iraq war as our undoing. In a rush to judgment, Benjamin and Simon completely missed the developing conversation about representative government. They misapprehended the radical Islamic threat.
The Iraq war didn’t unleash a tidal wave of Arab holy warriors against the United States or Europe. Mesopotamia is one of the foundational lands of Islam—for Shiites it’s ground zero—yet the number of jihadists who went to fight the Americans in Iraq after 2003 was probably far less than the number who went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, a land on the periphery of the Arab imagination. The Soviet-Afghan war produced bin Laden, the CEO of modern Islamic terrorism. More important, it created the legend that proud, death-defying holy warriors could take down a superpower. Contrary to the fears of the American left, the Iraq war produced no great jihadist thinker. No myth of indomitable zeal. The best it produced was Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a ferocious beast who gave even bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, heartburn because his methods did the impossible, creating widespread Sunni sympathy for Iraq’s bombed and butchered Shiites. The Americans killed al Zarqawi, and no fundamentalist of note has immortalized him.
Republicans ought to be embracing the struggles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all that came in their wake, not dreading them. President Obama has consistently been behind the curve on the Arab Spring. He has handled the rebellion in Syria abominably—though it should have been the easiest strategic decision of his presidency. Syria’s long-suffering Sunni population finally revolted against a ruthless, terrorist-loving, Iran-supporting, heretical Shiite dictatorship—an amazing feat. Without the Alawite Arabs ruling in Damascus, the Islamic Republic of Iran has no reliable access to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the only faithful Arab offspring of Iran’s revolution. Since even the Obama administration perhaps now realizes that the only sure solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is regime change in Tehran, each step toward that goal is important. Iran’s losing Hezbollah to the Great Arab Revolt would be a significant blow to the mullahs, let alone a blessing to Lebanon’s internal politics. The president has declared that Bashar al-Assad must go, but he has offered no real support to the opposition. The CIA exists for a reason.
Yet most Republicans are silent on Syria, or reinforce the president’s position by adding their concern to the administration’s calculated leaks about al Qaeda’s presence in the Syrian opposition. News flash to Republicans: Al Qaeda will always try to plant itself in movements opposing the anciens régimes of the region. If it does not do so, it’s finished among the Arabs. The rebellions against tyranny are enormously popular throughout the Middle East. Al Qaeda Central and its allied jihadist groups did not see the democratic wave coming. Bin Laden and al Zawahiri viewed democracy as a dismal, antireligious idea, but they weren’t blind to its seductive power among the faithful. Al Qaeda is trying to play catch up where it can, improvising as it goes along. The longer and bloodier the Syrian rebellion, the greater the opportunity for al Qaeda and other radical groups to gain ground.
To counter the president’s unfailingly self-indulgent take on the Middle East, Republicans ought to be at the forefront of thoughtfully critiquing Islamic militancy (admittedly a difficult task, given the Islamophobes within the party). They should not allow Obama to define the threat down to the latest victim of a CIA drone.
No one knows what Mitt Romney would have done a year ago if he’d received the information about bin Laden’s possible presence in Abbottabad. In such situations, what-ifs are unanswerable, even for ex-presidents like Bill Clinton, who should know what it feels like to have made wrong decisions repeatedly about al Qaeda and the Taliban. President Obama deserves credit for breaking loose from the mindset common in Washington fearful of possibly rupturing U.S.-Pakistani relations.
But give establishmentarian opinion its due: The U.S.-Pakistan relationship still means something. A war is going on in Pakistan over national identity and what it means to be a Muslim in an artificial country. Indian officials sometimes remark that they have yet to see a single Indian Muslim outside of Kashmir join jihadist ranks. Hindu India has something that Pakistan lacks: a rich history and an optimistic future that native Muslims can peacefully claim for themselves. We don’t want the wrong side to win in nuclear Pakistan, with catastrophic consequences for the United States. Pakistan offers a large pool of well-educated Muslim militants who could go global in their hatreds. Al Qaeda itself should be viewed as a Pakistani-Arab hybrid. The raid on Abbottabad has likely helped the internal debate in Pakistan, which is another reason why President Obama was right to strike.
Killing bin Laden was great; capturing and interrogating him would have been bolder and a much better decision given the irreplaceable intelligence-gathering opportunity. Declassifying and releasing all of the captured bin Laden files is a poor second choice, but it’s one Republicans and Democrats in Congress should insist on. The most important counterterrorist questions, however, are much larger than any one man. They are strategic.
The Greater Middle East is in transition. We don’t know where it’s going. We need to pay close attention to the intellectual whirlpools that are developing throughout the region as democratic, Islamic, and other convulsive ideas collide. It’s way too soon to be as cocky as this administration has become about the decline of al Qaeda and lethal Islamic militancy. The president and his followers may try to depict Obama as counterterrorist warrior par excellence. Republicans would be wise to point out that Jimmy Carter is the commander in chief who really did risk all to save American lives and honor (Abbottabad pales in comparison with Desert One, which one of the officers involved likened to the Alamo, except the Americans were trying “to get in, not out”).
After doing so, Republicans, and especially Mitt Romney, might consider whether they, too, want to lead from behind. The defense budget needs to be saved. Everything starts with that. Then they need to realize that the Middle East will not be ignored while we pretend to transfer our concern and military muscle toward China. Across the region, which is in profound flux, the United States increasingly appears as a listless superpower. President Obama may think that shows appropriate and overdue disengagement. We fear it shows troubling and provocative weakness.
• By REUEL MARC GERECHT
The Weekly Standard:
Is Barack Obama a warrior president? Not in the British tradition, of course, which gave us Winston Churchill, with his crazy cavalry charge against Sudanese spears, or the more cerebral Harold Macmillan, shot to pieces in World War I, lying in the blood and the mud reading Aeschylus. Obama is a post-Vietnam president: He walks in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who took different paths away from the jungles of Southeast Asia but later sent Americans into harm’s way in foreign wars. He is—if we are to believe his campaign ads, his vice presi-dent, and a recent breathless encomium in the New York Times—a commander in chief more in line with “Teddy Roosevelt than Jimmy Carter.” He is a “gutsy” guy, who has “embraced SEAL Team 6 rather than Code Pink.”
The last two presidents, in fact, have used Predators to kill our enemies. For going after Muslim holy warriors in geographically challenging regions of the Greater Middle East, remote-controlled aircraft are militarily and politically safer and more economical than sending in special-operations teams. Early on, the Bush administration accelerated the development of drones because they were an immediately useful part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s technology-driven transformation of the armed forces. Still, for the Bush administration to trumpet Predators as a sign of the president’s warrior ethos would have seemed surreal, given his invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It also would have appeared unseemly, when Rumsfeld’s high-tech doctrine fared poorly against insurgencies that demanded more troops than the secretary had deemed necessary.
In theory, killer drones are almost a liberal’s fighting dream-machine: no dead Americans (unless they are the targets), no captured U.S. soldiers, no wounded to transport home, no crashing helicopters, a minimum of soul-tormenting reflection, no blood or gore on TV or in print, and limited collateral damage. Perhaps best of all, because of drones’ stealth, cooperating Muslim governments can deny their complicity with the infidel superpower. True, some leftists have risen to question the ethics of drone use (if terrorism should be treated as a crime, which is sometimes the view of the Obama administration, then killing folks without trial or judicial review, remotely and clandestinely, is wrong). But most American liberals have approved or kept their reservations quiet. Killing jihadists overseas is apparently more moral than putting them alive into Guantánamo Bay.
If we look down the road, Predators will likely be an essential part of the foreign policy of any liberal president ambivalent about the use of American power. Given President Obama’s near-total silence about the impending sequestration of nearly $600 billion in military spending because of a budget impasse (half the cuts will come from defense, which accounts for less than one-quarter of the budget) on top of the $800 billion already axed, the president obviously sees spending on defense as less necessary to the nation’s health than maintaining the entitlement status quo and implementing Obamacare. Drones sustain the illusion that you can do more with less, that jihadists and their organizations can be sufficiently neutralized without contemplating more troops or aerial bombardments.
As Max Boot has pointed out, the president’s eager use of drones and the raid on Abbottabad have actually allowed Obama’s inner dove to come out. A strong preference for massive welfare-state spending aside, slashing defense spending is one sure and lasting way to militarily neuter the United States. Like many liberals under the age of 60, President Obama has a problem with American hegemony—the idea that American military power is essential and decisive in keeping malevolent ideologies and states at bay. Where downing an aggressive fascist dictator with a proven hunger for weapons of mass destruction and long-standing relationships with terrorists seemed sensible to senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden in 2003, a certain Illinois state senator knew better. President Obama’s profound foreign-policy “caution” is rooted in a common, if not sacrosanct, historical understanding of post-Vietnam liberalism: that America is more likely to do harm than good when it intervenes in the Third World.
With drone attacks and bin Laden’s death for backdrop, the president seems to think—and he may be right—that he can disengage the United States from the Greater Middle East without political risk. Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun minorities know that an American withdrawal on the president’s schedule will unleash civil war that will likely bring the Taliban and their many jihadist allies back to the gates of Kabul. Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara are already envisioning the new Afghan Army’s crackup into its component parts. In 1990 it was impossible to argue in Washington that America should remain engaged in Afghanistan (in the CIA, you could have counted on one hand the folks who didn’t snore when Afghan-related intelligence crossed their desks). Americans were tired of the Cold War. It’s a delicious irony that many on the left who after 9/11 underscored George H.W. Bush’s failure to pay attention to Afghanistan when the Soviet Union retreated now 23 years later worry little about U.S. withdrawal.
On the left and right, Muslim-fatigue has set in. The conflict is too costly in dollars and manpower, the viability of non-Taliban Afghan power requires too much American support, and the American people, our elected representatives plead in private, just want out, consequences be damned. The Republican-controlled Congress has so far approved the enormous reduction in military spending that will likely create a downward spiral difficult to stop. Many Republican members would rather not talk about the Muslim Middle East, just as our fore-fathers once avoided talking about leprosy. Eleven years after 9/11, George F. Will, once a peerless supporter of a strong military and both Iraq wars, sees massive defense cuts as a good thing if they limit “America’s ability to engage in troop-intensive nation-building.” Muscular Wilsonian liberals and neoconservatism have become as injurious to the nation’s health as socialized medicine.
In great part, the president, his Predators, and the raid on Abbottabad loom large because Republicans have become so small. The world that George W. Bush gave them they cannot handle. The second Iraq war is probably the single greatest catalyst behind the Great Arab Revolt. In much the way that former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, twin beacons of American “realism,” predicted, the war shocked the region. What had been seen as immovable autocracies became fragile regimes fearful and contemptuous of all the talk of democracy that poured forth from Westernized Arab expatriates, disenchanted youth, and Islamists. The Iraq war provocatively and irrepressibly introduced the discussion of popular government into the region: “democracy through the barrel of a gun,” as antiwar Westerners and Arabs put it. For those Westerners who had eyes to see, knew Arabic, and kept an open mind, the conversation was deafening. All that was needed was a spark. The self-immolating Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi provided it.
The antiwar Democratic intelligentsia, which includes the president, has been wrong on just about everything in the Greater Middle East since 2001. It’s impossible to read The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right, by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, now senior administration officials and two of the best minds the Democrats have on counterterrorism, and not sigh. The 2005 book saw the Iraq war as our undoing. In a rush to judgment, Benjamin and Simon completely missed the developing conversation about representative government. They misapprehended the radical Islamic threat.
The Iraq war didn’t unleash a tidal wave of Arab holy warriors against the United States or Europe. Mesopotamia is one of the foundational lands of Islam—for Shiites it’s ground zero—yet the number of jihadists who went to fight the Americans in Iraq after 2003 was probably far less than the number who went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, a land on the periphery of the Arab imagination. The Soviet-Afghan war produced bin Laden, the CEO of modern Islamic terrorism. More important, it created the legend that proud, death-defying holy warriors could take down a superpower. Contrary to the fears of the American left, the Iraq war produced no great jihadist thinker. No myth of indomitable zeal. The best it produced was Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a ferocious beast who gave even bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, heartburn because his methods did the impossible, creating widespread Sunni sympathy for Iraq’s bombed and butchered Shiites. The Americans killed al Zarqawi, and no fundamentalist of note has immortalized him.
Republicans ought to be embracing the struggles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all that came in their wake, not dreading them. President Obama has consistently been behind the curve on the Arab Spring. He has handled the rebellion in Syria abominably—though it should have been the easiest strategic decision of his presidency. Syria’s long-suffering Sunni population finally revolted against a ruthless, terrorist-loving, Iran-supporting, heretical Shiite dictatorship—an amazing feat. Without the Alawite Arabs ruling in Damascus, the Islamic Republic of Iran has no reliable access to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the only faithful Arab offspring of Iran’s revolution. Since even the Obama administration perhaps now realizes that the only sure solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is regime change in Tehran, each step toward that goal is important. Iran’s losing Hezbollah to the Great Arab Revolt would be a significant blow to the mullahs, let alone a blessing to Lebanon’s internal politics. The president has declared that Bashar al-Assad must go, but he has offered no real support to the opposition. The CIA exists for a reason.
Yet most Republicans are silent on Syria, or reinforce the president’s position by adding their concern to the administration’s calculated leaks about al Qaeda’s presence in the Syrian opposition. News flash to Republicans: Al Qaeda will always try to plant itself in movements opposing the anciens régimes of the region. If it does not do so, it’s finished among the Arabs. The rebellions against tyranny are enormously popular throughout the Middle East. Al Qaeda Central and its allied jihadist groups did not see the democratic wave coming. Bin Laden and al Zawahiri viewed democracy as a dismal, antireligious idea, but they weren’t blind to its seductive power among the faithful. Al Qaeda is trying to play catch up where it can, improvising as it goes along. The longer and bloodier the Syrian rebellion, the greater the opportunity for al Qaeda and other radical groups to gain ground.
To counter the president’s unfailingly self-indulgent take on the Middle East, Republicans ought to be at the forefront of thoughtfully critiquing Islamic militancy (admittedly a difficult task, given the Islamophobes within the party). They should not allow Obama to define the threat down to the latest victim of a CIA drone.
No one knows what Mitt Romney would have done a year ago if he’d received the information about bin Laden’s possible presence in Abbottabad. In such situations, what-ifs are unanswerable, even for ex-presidents like Bill Clinton, who should know what it feels like to have made wrong decisions repeatedly about al Qaeda and the Taliban. President Obama deserves credit for breaking loose from the mindset common in Washington fearful of possibly rupturing U.S.-Pakistani relations.
But give establishmentarian opinion its due: The U.S.-Pakistan relationship still means something. A war is going on in Pakistan over national identity and what it means to be a Muslim in an artificial country. Indian officials sometimes remark that they have yet to see a single Indian Muslim outside of Kashmir join jihadist ranks. Hindu India has something that Pakistan lacks: a rich history and an optimistic future that native Muslims can peacefully claim for themselves. We don’t want the wrong side to win in nuclear Pakistan, with catastrophic consequences for the United States. Pakistan offers a large pool of well-educated Muslim militants who could go global in their hatreds. Al Qaeda itself should be viewed as a Pakistani-Arab hybrid. The raid on Abbottabad has likely helped the internal debate in Pakistan, which is another reason why President Obama was right to strike.
Killing bin Laden was great; capturing and interrogating him would have been bolder and a much better decision given the irreplaceable intelligence-gathering opportunity. Declassifying and releasing all of the captured bin Laden files is a poor second choice, but it’s one Republicans and Democrats in Congress should insist on. The most important counterterrorist questions, however, are much larger than any one man. They are strategic.
The Greater Middle East is in transition. We don’t know where it’s going. We need to pay close attention to the intellectual whirlpools that are developing throughout the region as democratic, Islamic, and other convulsive ideas collide. It’s way too soon to be as cocky as this administration has become about the decline of al Qaeda and lethal Islamic militancy. The president and his followers may try to depict Obama as counterterrorist warrior par excellence. Republicans would be wise to point out that Jimmy Carter is the commander in chief who really did risk all to save American lives and honor (Abbottabad pales in comparison with Desert One, which one of the officers involved likened to the Alamo, except the Americans were trying “to get in, not out”).
After doing so, Republicans, and especially Mitt Romney, might consider whether they, too, want to lead from behind. The defense budget needs to be saved. Everything starts with that. Then they need to realize that the Middle East will not be ignored while we pretend to transfer our concern and military muscle toward China. Across the region, which is in profound flux, the United States increasingly appears as a listless superpower. President Obama may think that shows appropriate and overdue disengagement. We fear it shows troubling and provocative weakness.
Obama may release dead Bin-Laden photos to help his re-election bid
Personally, I’d love to see the dead Osama Bin Laden photos, I would assume most Americans do. I don’t think Obama releasing the photos would have any affect on his chances for re-election, but the man and his cronies in his campaign are getting really desperate. Sources at Judicial Watch tell Debbie Schlussel said the photos could be released soon.
told me the other day that the photos could be released soon. He said:
It would not surprise me in the least if Obama reversed course and released the bin Laden photos to help his reelection effort.
And I think he’s spot on. If Obama is losing to Mitt Romney–whether badly or in a tight race, come mid-to-late October–I believe that suddenly all of his statements about not wanting to “spike the football” will be thrown out the window.
He’ll do what it takes to win. And if it takes the Bin Laden photos and video, he’ll release them.
FireAndreaMitchell.com
Sky-high Electric Bills Courtesy of Obama EPA’s War on Coal
Written by William F. Jasper
The New American:
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” — Candidate Barack Obama, San Francisco Chronicle interview, January 17, 2008
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” — Candidate Barack Obama, Same interview as above
“We’re going to have to cap the emission of greenhouse gasses. That means that power plants are going to have to adjust how they generate power … but a lot of us who can afford it are going to have to pay more per unit of electricity, and that means we’re going to have to change our light bulbs, we’re going to have to shut the lights off in our houses.” — Candidate Barack Obama, Iowa PBS interview, November 9, 2007
Electricity rates are indeed set to skyrocket, as Barack Obama predicted back in 2008, while he was still a freshman Senator and ambitiously aspiring to White House occupancy. The Obama administration’s new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-fired electrical power generation, if allowed to go into effect, will mean that even a lot of us who can’t afford it will “have to pay more per unit of electricity.” But the pain will be much more severe than merely having to change our light bulbs.
A Grim Scenario
If Congress doesn’t act to rein in the EPA’s all-out war on coal, we will all be paying much higher electrical rates — and higher prices for just about everything else, since virtually everything we eat, drink, wear, and use requires energy for production and transportation. Thousands of coal-mining jobs are on the chopping block, of course, but hundreds of thousands of other jobs spread across all sectors of our economy are on the same chopping block. For businesses that are struggling to remain viable in this ongoing recession, energy costs are critical and even a slight uptick in rates can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The billions of dollars in compliance costs that the Environmental Protection Agency is mandating for coal-fired electrical plants will be that straw for many businesses, as those costs get passed on. Dozens of power plants, however, are simply shutting down; the costs of compliance are simply too high. So, another pain we may soon experience is an increase in rolling brownouts and blackouts.
In July 2011, Georgia Power Company announced that it would be closing three coal-fired power plants over the next two years, due to the EPA’s new regulations.
“Georgia gets more than half its energy from coal, and Georgia Power gets 60 percent or more from coal,” noted Benita Dodd, vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. “So this is going to become a very expensive venture for Georgia ratepayers.” Georgia electricity customers will be socked by a formidable one-two economic punch, Dodd explained. “The closures are going to hurt ratepayers now, but the regulations are going to hurt when they’re implemented,” Dodd said. “These regulations are indefensible, they’re unnecessary, and they’re incredibly expensive.”
The same grim scenario is rolling out across much of the nation. “The impact of these EPA rules will be felt most severely in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which together account for more than a fourth of all U.S. manufacturing,” writes Paul Driessen, in his 2001 report, The EPA’s Unrelenting Power Grab, published by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. “These states,” notes Driessen “rely on coal to generate 65-92% of their electricity, which keeps costs down for hundreds of companies that remain competitive nationally and internationally primarily because they can utilize energy-intensive industrial boilers, furnaces and electrical machinery, to boost their productivity per worker-hour: 6.9 to 9.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in those six states, versus 11 to 17 cents per kWh in states that generate 1-30% of their electricity with coal.”
In December 2011, the Associated Press reported that “32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations.” The AP also published a list of the plants that would be shuttered. However, that list quickly became obsolete; as utilities crunched the numbers and surveyed the costs, more began throwing in the towel.
Politics in Play
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, condemned EPA’s attack on coal in unsparing terms. “It’s hard to imagine that the Obama EPA is announcing a massive energy tax today on Americans at a time when they are already reeling from skyrocketing gas prices,” Inhofe stated. “So much for President Obama’s claims to be for an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach — these regulations are designed specifically to kill coal in American electricity generation, which will significantly raise energy prices on American families. This plan is the most devastating installment of the Obama administration’s war on affordable energy: it achieves their cap-and-trade agenda through regulation instead of legislation.”
The regulations to which Inhofe, Driessen, Dodd, and other critics are referring is actually a series of three EPA policy edicts unleashed by the Obama administration that include a huge array of complex mandates. They are:
• The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which requires 27 states to reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from power plants in Eastern states in an effort supposedly to improve ozone and fine particulate air quality in other downwind states. Under CSAPR, EPA set new limits on SO2 and NOx emissions for each state beginning in 2012. The limits tighten in some states in 2014.
• Utility MACT, which requires stringent new standards for removing mercury and other hazardous wastes.
• Policies to regulate coal combustion residuals (CCR) under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and to regulate cooling water intake under Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act.
• Carbon dioxide regulations requiring new coal plants to produce no more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electricity.
The first three policies outlined above are aimed at killing off existing coal-fired plants; the fourth policy, on CO2, aims at killing new coal-fired plants before they can be born.
A study released in September 2011 by National Economic Research Associates, Inc. (NERA) paints a very harrowing picture of the impact of the EPA rules on existing coal plants. The study concluded:
Over the period from 2012 to 2020, about 183,000 jobs per year are predicted to be lost on net.... The cumulative effects mean that over the period from 2012 to 2020, about 1.65 million job-years of employment would be lost. U.S. GDP would be reduced by $29 billion each year on average over this period, with a cumulative loss from 2012 to 2020 of $190 billion (2010$). U.S. disposable personal income would be reduced by $34 billion each year on average over this period, with a cumulative loss from 2012 to 2020 of $222 billion (2010$).
And those are conservative estimates; the NERA economists note that they do not consider several other variables that would likely drive the total costs and losses higher.
Those figures also do not include the costs that the EPA’s CO2 rules will impose on future energy production.
This being an election year, and with energy prices being a major campaign issue, it is not surprising that the Obama administration is trying to portray the onerous new regulations as moderate, sensible, and flexible. “Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in her March 27 statement announcing the CO2 mandates. “We’re putting in place a standard that relies on the use of clean, American made technology to tackle a challenge that we can’t leave to our kids and grandkids.”
Jackson concluded her statement with the incredible assertion that “EPA does not project additional cost for industry to comply with this standard.”
Environmental extremists have greeted all of the EPA’s attacks on coal, and especially its CO2 regulations, with jubilation because they believe (the administration’s current rhetoric notwithstanding) these will prove to be lethal blows to coal, the ultimate villain d’jour of those who identify themselves as “greens.” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune is overjoyed that the EPA’s CO2 rule would make it “nearly impossible to build a new coal plant,” apparently agreeing (for once) with the American Public Power Association, which claims the new mandate will “kill coal going forward.”
“EPA’s action will effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants,” says Dr. Bonner Cohen, senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. He explains why that is:
Under the rule, no new power plant will be allowed to emit more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. On average, U.S. coal plants emit 1,768 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electricity. The rule requires future plants to use as yet non-existent carbon capture and control technologies to cut their emissions to the new standard. With no technology available to bring down CO2 emissions to the new standard, EPA, in the name of combating climate change, is effectively telling the coal industry, which produces 55 percent of our nation’s electricity, that its days are numbered.
The “All-of-the-Above” Lie
Striking his best moderate-sensible-flexible pose, President Obama stated, in his February 23, 2012 Miami speech on energy, that “we’ve got to have a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. Yes, oil and gas, but also wind and solar and nuclear and biofuels, and more.”
Whether the President’s omission of coal in that equation was intentional or a Freudian slip, it is clear that his administration does indeed have coal in the crosshairs — and it is firing one shot after another into its intended victim. That is a terrible crime because it is killing our economy as well as killing some of our best prospects for moving toward energy independence, prosperity, and fuller employment.
In our March 19, 2012 cover story, “Coal: The Rock That Burns,” Ed Hiserodt provides a detailed report on the enormous current and potential benefits that our massive coal deposits offer, noting that the United States “is considered by many geologists as the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of coal.” He writes:
The Energy Information Agency reports the United States has a Demonstrated Reserve Base of 496 billion short tons of coal, of which 272 billion tons are considered recoverable with current technology. With U.S. usage at 1.1 billion tons per year, we have about 250 years’ supply at the present rate of consumption. But as with other energy resources — though we use millions of tons of coal — reserves rise each year as new coal seams are located.
Coal, Hiserodt points out, “provides life-saving and life-enhancing energy for America.” It is, he notes, “a resource that is proven and available. We should be very thankful for this energy miracle that provides us comfort, improves our health, and gives us more years to enjoy the blessings of life.”
However, the Obama administration seems to be packed with activists who are pathologically obsessed with obstructing our ability to utilize this “miracle rock.” At the same time, the EPA radicals are also throwing roadblocks in the way of our access to, and use of, oil, natural gas, uranium, and every other viable form of energy.
The New American:
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” — Candidate Barack Obama, Same interview as above
“We’re going to have to cap the emission of greenhouse gasses. That means that power plants are going to have to adjust how they generate power … but a lot of us who can afford it are going to have to pay more per unit of electricity, and that means we’re going to have to change our light bulbs, we’re going to have to shut the lights off in our houses.” — Candidate Barack Obama, Iowa PBS interview, November 9, 2007
Electricity rates are indeed set to skyrocket, as Barack Obama predicted back in 2008, while he was still a freshman Senator and ambitiously aspiring to White House occupancy. The Obama administration’s new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-fired electrical power generation, if allowed to go into effect, will mean that even a lot of us who can’t afford it will “have to pay more per unit of electricity.” But the pain will be much more severe than merely having to change our light bulbs.
A Grim Scenario
If Congress doesn’t act to rein in the EPA’s all-out war on coal, we will all be paying much higher electrical rates — and higher prices for just about everything else, since virtually everything we eat, drink, wear, and use requires energy for production and transportation. Thousands of coal-mining jobs are on the chopping block, of course, but hundreds of thousands of other jobs spread across all sectors of our economy are on the same chopping block. For businesses that are struggling to remain viable in this ongoing recession, energy costs are critical and even a slight uptick in rates can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
The billions of dollars in compliance costs that the Environmental Protection Agency is mandating for coal-fired electrical plants will be that straw for many businesses, as those costs get passed on. Dozens of power plants, however, are simply shutting down; the costs of compliance are simply too high. So, another pain we may soon experience is an increase in rolling brownouts and blackouts.
In July 2011, Georgia Power Company announced that it would be closing three coal-fired power plants over the next two years, due to the EPA’s new regulations.
“Georgia gets more than half its energy from coal, and Georgia Power gets 60 percent or more from coal,” noted Benita Dodd, vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. “So this is going to become a very expensive venture for Georgia ratepayers.” Georgia electricity customers will be socked by a formidable one-two economic punch, Dodd explained. “The closures are going to hurt ratepayers now, but the regulations are going to hurt when they’re implemented,” Dodd said. “These regulations are indefensible, they’re unnecessary, and they’re incredibly expensive.”
The same grim scenario is rolling out across much of the nation. “The impact of these EPA rules will be felt most severely in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which together account for more than a fourth of all U.S. manufacturing,” writes Paul Driessen, in his 2001 report, The EPA’s Unrelenting Power Grab, published by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. “These states,” notes Driessen “rely on coal to generate 65-92% of their electricity, which keeps costs down for hundreds of companies that remain competitive nationally and internationally primarily because they can utilize energy-intensive industrial boilers, furnaces and electrical machinery, to boost their productivity per worker-hour: 6.9 to 9.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in those six states, versus 11 to 17 cents per kWh in states that generate 1-30% of their electricity with coal.”
In December 2011, the Associated Press reported that “32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations.” The AP also published a list of the plants that would be shuttered. However, that list quickly became obsolete; as utilities crunched the numbers and surveyed the costs, more began throwing in the towel.
Politics in Play
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, condemned EPA’s attack on coal in unsparing terms. “It’s hard to imagine that the Obama EPA is announcing a massive energy tax today on Americans at a time when they are already reeling from skyrocketing gas prices,” Inhofe stated. “So much for President Obama’s claims to be for an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach — these regulations are designed specifically to kill coal in American electricity generation, which will significantly raise energy prices on American families. This plan is the most devastating installment of the Obama administration’s war on affordable energy: it achieves their cap-and-trade agenda through regulation instead of legislation.”
The regulations to which Inhofe, Driessen, Dodd, and other critics are referring is actually a series of three EPA policy edicts unleashed by the Obama administration that include a huge array of complex mandates. They are:
• The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which requires 27 states to reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from power plants in Eastern states in an effort supposedly to improve ozone and fine particulate air quality in other downwind states. Under CSAPR, EPA set new limits on SO2 and NOx emissions for each state beginning in 2012. The limits tighten in some states in 2014.
• Utility MACT, which requires stringent new standards for removing mercury and other hazardous wastes.
• Policies to regulate coal combustion residuals (CCR) under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and to regulate cooling water intake under Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act.
• Carbon dioxide regulations requiring new coal plants to produce no more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electricity.
The first three policies outlined above are aimed at killing off existing coal-fired plants; the fourth policy, on CO2, aims at killing new coal-fired plants before they can be born.
A study released in September 2011 by National Economic Research Associates, Inc. (NERA) paints a very harrowing picture of the impact of the EPA rules on existing coal plants. The study concluded:
Over the period from 2012 to 2020, about 183,000 jobs per year are predicted to be lost on net.... The cumulative effects mean that over the period from 2012 to 2020, about 1.65 million job-years of employment would be lost. U.S. GDP would be reduced by $29 billion each year on average over this period, with a cumulative loss from 2012 to 2020 of $190 billion (2010$). U.S. disposable personal income would be reduced by $34 billion each year on average over this period, with a cumulative loss from 2012 to 2020 of $222 billion (2010$).
And those are conservative estimates; the NERA economists note that they do not consider several other variables that would likely drive the total costs and losses higher.
Those figures also do not include the costs that the EPA’s CO2 rules will impose on future energy production.
This being an election year, and with energy prices being a major campaign issue, it is not surprising that the Obama administration is trying to portray the onerous new regulations as moderate, sensible, and flexible. “Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in her March 27 statement announcing the CO2 mandates. “We’re putting in place a standard that relies on the use of clean, American made technology to tackle a challenge that we can’t leave to our kids and grandkids.”
Jackson concluded her statement with the incredible assertion that “EPA does not project additional cost for industry to comply with this standard.”
Environmental extremists have greeted all of the EPA’s attacks on coal, and especially its CO2 regulations, with jubilation because they believe (the administration’s current rhetoric notwithstanding) these will prove to be lethal blows to coal, the ultimate villain d’jour of those who identify themselves as “greens.” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune is overjoyed that the EPA’s CO2 rule would make it “nearly impossible to build a new coal plant,” apparently agreeing (for once) with the American Public Power Association, which claims the new mandate will “kill coal going forward.”
“EPA’s action will effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants,” says Dr. Bonner Cohen, senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. He explains why that is:
Under the rule, no new power plant will be allowed to emit more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. On average, U.S. coal plants emit 1,768 pounds of CO2 per megawatt of electricity. The rule requires future plants to use as yet non-existent carbon capture and control technologies to cut their emissions to the new standard. With no technology available to bring down CO2 emissions to the new standard, EPA, in the name of combating climate change, is effectively telling the coal industry, which produces 55 percent of our nation’s electricity, that its days are numbered.
The “All-of-the-Above” Lie
Striking his best moderate-sensible-flexible pose, President Obama stated, in his February 23, 2012 Miami speech on energy, that “we’ve got to have a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. Yes, oil and gas, but also wind and solar and nuclear and biofuels, and more.”
Whether the President’s omission of coal in that equation was intentional or a Freudian slip, it is clear that his administration does indeed have coal in the crosshairs — and it is firing one shot after another into its intended victim. That is a terrible crime because it is killing our economy as well as killing some of our best prospects for moving toward energy independence, prosperity, and fuller employment.
In our March 19, 2012 cover story, “Coal: The Rock That Burns,” Ed Hiserodt provides a detailed report on the enormous current and potential benefits that our massive coal deposits offer, noting that the United States “is considered by many geologists as the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of coal.” He writes:
The Energy Information Agency reports the United States has a Demonstrated Reserve Base of 496 billion short tons of coal, of which 272 billion tons are considered recoverable with current technology. With U.S. usage at 1.1 billion tons per year, we have about 250 years’ supply at the present rate of consumption. But as with other energy resources — though we use millions of tons of coal — reserves rise each year as new coal seams are located.
Coal, Hiserodt points out, “provides life-saving and life-enhancing energy for America.” It is, he notes, “a resource that is proven and available. We should be very thankful for this energy miracle that provides us comfort, improves our health, and gives us more years to enjoy the blessings of life.”
However, the Obama administration seems to be packed with activists who are pathologically obsessed with obstructing our ability to utilize this “miracle rock.” At the same time, the EPA radicals are also throwing roadblocks in the way of our access to, and use of, oil, natural gas, uranium, and every other viable form of energy.
Open wide and bend over! Freddie Mac wants $19 million bailout after first quarter losses
Last year alone, Freddie Mac got a whopping $7.6 billion in tax payer bailout dollars. Again, I’m going to assume Congress had to authorize this, but I’m not 100% sure. As we continue along in Obamaville, Freddie Mac lost $1.2 billion, or 38 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2012. In the first quarter of 2011, Freddie Mac lost $929 million, or 29 cents a share, so you can see where this is going.
Source: FireAndreaMitchell.Com
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has windows in his home shattered by Obama-Approved Occupiers tossing rocks (Video)
Seattle police are investigating after vandals threw rocks through windows at the home of Mayor Mike McGinn following violent May Day protests.
McGinn spokesman Aaron Pickus confirmed Wednesday that the rocks sailed through his dining room and living room windows around midnight. McGinn and his wife were home but were not injured.
According to a police report, the mayor’s wife saw two people outside the home after the rocks were thrown. One waved and then both suspects walked away. A police search of the area failed to locate them.
SOURCE: FireAndreaMitchell.Com/YouTube
Navy Commissions USS Barack Obama
May 4, 2012
By Jedidiah Noble
Independent Sentinel:
If you were an adult in 1987, you probably remember the Mobro which left Islip, NY with tons of garbage for NC so the garbage could be turned into methane as part of a pilot program. A news helicopter spotted it and broke the story. The barge was ordered to leave and ended up traveling to Belize and back, finally ending up in Brooklyn where the gar-barge was finally incinerated.
Sorry liberals, I’m just kidding, it’s not being commissioned as the USS Barack Obama.
This is the true story -
Hat tip to Harvey Miller for the video..
By Jedidiah Noble
Independent Sentinel:
If you were an adult in 1987, you probably remember the Mobro which left Islip, NY with tons of garbage for NC so the garbage could be turned into methane as part of a pilot program. A news helicopter spotted it and broke the story. The barge was ordered to leave and ended up traveling to Belize and back, finally ending up in Brooklyn where the gar-barge was finally incinerated.
Sorry liberals, I’m just kidding, it’s not being commissioned as the USS Barack Obama.
This is the true story -
Hat tip to Harvey Miller for the video..
The End of Obama Liberalism as an Intellectual Movement
May 5, 2012
By Carl Paulus
American Thinker:
Over the past six months the public has watched the current liberal intellectual movement crumble as its leaders have failed to provide a tenable solution to the serious problems facing our nation. President Obama is desperately searching for a way to convince the public he should be reelected. But his liberal ideology is no longer capable of providing effective answers to the questions of the 21st century. Today's liberalism has been reduced to an opposition movement, rather than a coherent ideological alternative to conservatism. The Democratic Party all but confirmed this notion with their latest slogan for the 2012 campaign: "Not A Republican."
When President Obama and the Democrats used the largest majority in over three decades to pass Obamacare -- despite the objections of the country -- they did so because they believed that it offered a significant solution to a problem. Though it remains unpopular with a majority of citizens, at least Obamacare was introduced as a bill, debated publicly, and signed into law. However, after being rejected by the people in 2010, modern liberalism has ceased to be a serious intellectual movement, trading gimmicks and demagoguery for substantial policy initiatives. Starting with the introduction of the Ryan budget in 2011, Democrats -- led by the president -- have disengaged from discussing ideas and negotiating legislation. Instead, emotional rhetoric has been used to mask the evidence that liberal programs offer very little substance to move the nation forward in the modern world.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner exhibited the lack of ideas coming from the Democrats when he told House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan that the administration "doesn't have a definitive solution" to the impending debt crisis, but that they do know that they "just don't like" the House Republican plan. In other words, liberals have admitted that they only have the intellectual disposition to oppose Ryan rather than providing a different way forward. Democrats have become the armchair quarterbacks of public policy. They offer criticism without a workable alternative.
Liberals have abandoned policy issues as a way to intellectually combat those who disagree with them. It was not a coincidence that the Obama administration announced a plan to force Catholic institutions to go against their consciences and pay for contraception and abortifacients just three days after the White House outlined its budget for 2013. Instead of debating budgetary reforms the country desperately needs, liberals sparked a faux debate over contraception, claiming that arguments based in both the history of the Enlightenment and the founding of the nation regarding religious freedom were actually about access to contraception in general. Liberals maintain that women who work for and attend Catholic institutions are not exercising a choice to do so. In effect, they undercut the feminist movement that for decades argued that women have the capability to make their own decisions and provide for their own lifestyles, undermining an intellectual foundation they helped to create. The entire topic of contraception was brought up without any Republican, especially the presumptive nominee, talking about birth control during the campaign.
The White House sparked a month-long, superficial debate over the Republican "War on Women" in order to distract Americans from the stunning realization that President Obama is the first president in American history to have two budgets rejected unanimously by his own party in Congress. Furthermore, Democrats have controlled the Senate for nearly six years. Yet, under Harry Reid's leadership, they have proposed a budget only once since the inauguration of President Obama and no longer even attempt to seriously negotiate a budget with Republicans. The entire discussion about the "War on Women" substantiates that modern liberalism offers no intellectual foundation for governing the United States.
The rhetoric and actions stemming from the fight over contraception might be construed as an isolated instance -- a desperate president hoping to change the narrative in a cynical attempt to be reelected. Unfortunately, it was not. When Mitt Romney appeared to secure the Republican nomination, the president, with the full support of his party, reignited the discussion of the Occupy-Wall-Street inspired tax on millionaires he named the Buffett Rule. Democrats hoped to sell it to the people as significant piece of legislation. President Obama first suggested it was needed to help reduce the deficit. When that was disproven, he then said it should be enacted in the interest of "fairness." When that fell flat the president finally maintained that the Buffett Rule was based on "an argument about how do we grow the economy in a 21st century environment."
President Obama's reasoning for the Buffett Rule changed for clear reasons. His attempt to add a special tax on the wealthy had little substance and was nothing more than an emotional ploy meant to appeal to the "Not Republican" liberal base. Rather than providing an intellectual foundation to tackle the numerous challenges the country faces, liberalism has deteriorated into a purely reactionary doctrine that hopes to win an election by demagoguing the wealthy. Liberals want to say that Mitt Romney's success makes him unelectable just eight year after nominating the billionaire John Kerry for the presidency because that's all they really have left to argue.
Over the next six months the president and his supporters are going to talk a lot about "fairness." However, do not expect them to offer a definition of the term. Vague rhetoric about their plans, just as in 2008, will be used to conceal the lack of appreciable ideas coming from the Democratic Party. When a liberal such as Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, gets precise, the electorate is rather unkind. The reason for this is clear: emotional rhetoric about the rich not paying enough in taxes only works on the envious or guilt-ridden. Ordinary Americans are neither of those things. This is why when pollsters ask the public what the wealthy should pay in taxes they choose a lower rate than the current tax code.
Liberalism used to be a movement capable of producing ideas that could be debated both publicly and in the intellectual marketplace. Though conservatives disagreed with them, liberal ideas had to be contended with through thoughtful rebuttals produced by those, in the words of the historian Gary Nash, who "engaged in study, reflection, and speculation; purveyors of ideas." Conservatives had to explain why our path was a better way forward than the left's. However, today's liberal movement offers no direction, just resistance. Modern liberals have become defined by this picture: empty chairs in a budget committee meeting that they control. Admittedly, their focus is solely on policy aimed at stirring controversy and allowing them to act as demagogues. President Obama and the current Democratic leadership have ushered in the end of liberalism as an intellectual movement because the ideas they offer are based more empty rhetoric than smart policy.
Conservatives must be wary and refuse to be pulled down into their realm of liberal inanity, even if it can be fairly funny to mock them. After all, the true unemployment rate is still in double digits and in the five minutes that it took to read this article the United States of America added 15 million dollars to the debt as we race towards a crisis. Our current problems require thoughtful solutions.
Carl Paulus, Ph.D., is a historian of American Politics and a staff assistant for the Robert Gonzalez congressional campaign in TX-14.
By Carl Paulus
American Thinker:
Over the past six months the public has watched the current liberal intellectual movement crumble as its leaders have failed to provide a tenable solution to the serious problems facing our nation. President Obama is desperately searching for a way to convince the public he should be reelected. But his liberal ideology is no longer capable of providing effective answers to the questions of the 21st century. Today's liberalism has been reduced to an opposition movement, rather than a coherent ideological alternative to conservatism. The Democratic Party all but confirmed this notion with their latest slogan for the 2012 campaign: "Not A Republican."
When President Obama and the Democrats used the largest majority in over three decades to pass Obamacare -- despite the objections of the country -- they did so because they believed that it offered a significant solution to a problem. Though it remains unpopular with a majority of citizens, at least Obamacare was introduced as a bill, debated publicly, and signed into law. However, after being rejected by the people in 2010, modern liberalism has ceased to be a serious intellectual movement, trading gimmicks and demagoguery for substantial policy initiatives. Starting with the introduction of the Ryan budget in 2011, Democrats -- led by the president -- have disengaged from discussing ideas and negotiating legislation. Instead, emotional rhetoric has been used to mask the evidence that liberal programs offer very little substance to move the nation forward in the modern world.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner exhibited the lack of ideas coming from the Democrats when he told House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan that the administration "doesn't have a definitive solution" to the impending debt crisis, but that they do know that they "just don't like" the House Republican plan. In other words, liberals have admitted that they only have the intellectual disposition to oppose Ryan rather than providing a different way forward. Democrats have become the armchair quarterbacks of public policy. They offer criticism without a workable alternative.
Liberals have abandoned policy issues as a way to intellectually combat those who disagree with them. It was not a coincidence that the Obama administration announced a plan to force Catholic institutions to go against their consciences and pay for contraception and abortifacients just three days after the White House outlined its budget for 2013. Instead of debating budgetary reforms the country desperately needs, liberals sparked a faux debate over contraception, claiming that arguments based in both the history of the Enlightenment and the founding of the nation regarding religious freedom were actually about access to contraception in general. Liberals maintain that women who work for and attend Catholic institutions are not exercising a choice to do so. In effect, they undercut the feminist movement that for decades argued that women have the capability to make their own decisions and provide for their own lifestyles, undermining an intellectual foundation they helped to create. The entire topic of contraception was brought up without any Republican, especially the presumptive nominee, talking about birth control during the campaign.
The White House sparked a month-long, superficial debate over the Republican "War on Women" in order to distract Americans from the stunning realization that President Obama is the first president in American history to have two budgets rejected unanimously by his own party in Congress. Furthermore, Democrats have controlled the Senate for nearly six years. Yet, under Harry Reid's leadership, they have proposed a budget only once since the inauguration of President Obama and no longer even attempt to seriously negotiate a budget with Republicans. The entire discussion about the "War on Women" substantiates that modern liberalism offers no intellectual foundation for governing the United States.
The rhetoric and actions stemming from the fight over contraception might be construed as an isolated instance -- a desperate president hoping to change the narrative in a cynical attempt to be reelected. Unfortunately, it was not. When Mitt Romney appeared to secure the Republican nomination, the president, with the full support of his party, reignited the discussion of the Occupy-Wall-Street inspired tax on millionaires he named the Buffett Rule. Democrats hoped to sell it to the people as significant piece of legislation. President Obama first suggested it was needed to help reduce the deficit. When that was disproven, he then said it should be enacted in the interest of "fairness." When that fell flat the president finally maintained that the Buffett Rule was based on "an argument about how do we grow the economy in a 21st century environment."
President Obama's reasoning for the Buffett Rule changed for clear reasons. His attempt to add a special tax on the wealthy had little substance and was nothing more than an emotional ploy meant to appeal to the "Not Republican" liberal base. Rather than providing an intellectual foundation to tackle the numerous challenges the country faces, liberalism has deteriorated into a purely reactionary doctrine that hopes to win an election by demagoguing the wealthy. Liberals want to say that Mitt Romney's success makes him unelectable just eight year after nominating the billionaire John Kerry for the presidency because that's all they really have left to argue.
Over the next six months the president and his supporters are going to talk a lot about "fairness." However, do not expect them to offer a definition of the term. Vague rhetoric about their plans, just as in 2008, will be used to conceal the lack of appreciable ideas coming from the Democratic Party. When a liberal such as Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, gets precise, the electorate is rather unkind. The reason for this is clear: emotional rhetoric about the rich not paying enough in taxes only works on the envious or guilt-ridden. Ordinary Americans are neither of those things. This is why when pollsters ask the public what the wealthy should pay in taxes they choose a lower rate than the current tax code.
Liberalism used to be a movement capable of producing ideas that could be debated both publicly and in the intellectual marketplace. Though conservatives disagreed with them, liberal ideas had to be contended with through thoughtful rebuttals produced by those, in the words of the historian Gary Nash, who "engaged in study, reflection, and speculation; purveyors of ideas." Conservatives had to explain why our path was a better way forward than the left's. However, today's liberal movement offers no direction, just resistance. Modern liberals have become defined by this picture: empty chairs in a budget committee meeting that they control. Admittedly, their focus is solely on policy aimed at stirring controversy and allowing them to act as demagogues. President Obama and the current Democratic leadership have ushered in the end of liberalism as an intellectual movement because the ideas they offer are based more empty rhetoric than smart policy.
Conservatives must be wary and refuse to be pulled down into their realm of liberal inanity, even if it can be fairly funny to mock them. After all, the true unemployment rate is still in double digits and in the five minutes that it took to read this article the United States of America added 15 million dollars to the debt as we race towards a crisis. Our current problems require thoughtful solutions.
Carl Paulus, Ph.D., is a historian of American Politics and a staff assistant for the Robert Gonzalez congressional campaign in TX-14.
Occupy Oakland Snubbed by Other May Day Pro-Labor Protesters
by John Sexton
Breitbart News:
Poor Occupiers. They can't get any respect, even from other left-wing groups. The March for Dignity is an event put on by immigrants' rights supporters which was held on May Day in Oakland this year. It can fairly be classified as a left-wing effort. The press release announcing the march reads in part:
Oakland has been a key site of resistance, from the vibrancy of recent struggles to the legacy of the Black Panthers and 1946 General Strike. Oakland is also a microcosm of predatory capitalist oppression, from foreclosures and school shutdowns, to police brutality and deportations, to income inequality and debt. This May Day we are therefore calling on forces from around the Bay Area to converge on Oakland for a massive show of solidarity, to celebrate our Resistance and lay claim to our Dignity.
It certainly sounds like an Occupy-friendly event, but the march organizers didn't see it that way. When Occupy tried to latch on to their event Tuesday, they refused to allow it:
Occupy protesters apparently wanted to get in with this huge crowd and waited at San Antonio Park to join the tail end of the March for Dignity to City Hall. "There were some heated conversations between Occupy and the organizers for the March for Dignity," said Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan. "At one point (immigrant) marchers stopped and took a different route to avoid the Occupy people who were in the (San Antonio) park."
The Dignity march reportedly had as many as 5,000 people; however, many decided not to continue on to City Hall after hearing that Occupiers were there squabbling with police.
"We are peaceful protesters," said Gary Jimenez, vice president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021. "We don't condone the destruction of property or vandalism. We believe in using our voices."
That's what I'd call a stinging rebuke. At the end of the day, March for Dignity protesters (while not my cup of tea) conducted themselves like grown-ups. There were zero incidents involving the police at their march. By contrast, the smaller Occupy march resulted in 39 arrests in Oakland alone.
When you've lost the faith of other protesters on your own side of the aisle, it's probably time to stop and reassess what you're doing.
Number of Americans Paid Not to Work Growing Faster than Number of Taxpayers
by Chuck DeVore
Breitbart News:
The federal government announced the new, official unemployment rate this week: 8.1 percent, down from 8.2 percent. Far fewer jobs were added in April than expected--115,000--so the official rate declined slightly because more people stopped looking for work.
The workforce participation rate is now at its lowest rate in 30 years, with 63.6 percent of adults who could work actually working.
When people can’t find work, they adjust. Families spend less. Children move in with parents. Some people seek additional training to improve their marketable skills. And some former workers apply for various forms of public assistance, such as unemployment compensation, food stamps, or welfare. But since the historic welfare reforms of 1996, welfare for able-bodied adults is generally limited to five years (except in California, where they’ve always sought an exemption). This appears to have caused a shift to other forms of public assistance.
The number of Americans drawing checks from the federal government via Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income Program swelled from 7.0 million in FY 2007 to an estimated 8.0 million in FY 2012, with the growth rate in the program doubling at the onset of the recession. This program is expected to cost taxpayers about $52 billion in FY 2012.
Similarly, the number of Americans suddenly finding themselves “disabled” enough to receive Disability Insurance benefits from Social Security is projected to swell to 11 million in FY 2012, with applications rising more than 5 percent in 2010 alone.
Since the formal end of the recession in June 2009, the number of new people entering the Disability Insurance Program--4.7 million--is double the growth in non-farm payrolls--2.3 million.
In 1975, 1.33 percent of working age adults received Disability Insurance payments from the U.S. Today, the rate of officially disabled Americans of working age has soared to 7.1 percent.
Given all the advancements in workplace safety and ergonomic design, are Americans really 5.4 times more likely to be truly disabled than they were 37 years ago? Or, are government incentives not to work, combined with an economy slowed by overregulation, making us “disabled”?
This post originally appeared on “Speaking Freely,” the blog of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Olmert: US money led to collapse of peace negotiations
By JPOST.COM STAFF
05/05/2012 05:19
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert blamed right-wing extremists in the United States for the collapse of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, in an interview with CNN released Friday.
Speaking at the sidelines of this week's Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on Sunday, Olmert said his peace plan would have been accepted by the Israeli public, but was hampered by radical elements in the Jewish diaspora. "I had to fight against superior powers," he said, "including millions and millions of dollars that were transferred from this country by figures from the extreme right wing."
Read the full story here
05/05/2012 05:19
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert blamed right-wing extremists in the United States for the collapse of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, in an interview with CNN released Friday.
Speaking at the sidelines of this week's Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on Sunday, Olmert said his peace plan would have been accepted by the Israeli public, but was hampered by radical elements in the Jewish diaspora. "I had to fight against superior powers," he said, "including millions and millions of dollars that were transferred from this country by figures from the extreme right wing."
Read the full story here
@LifeOfJuIia parody account suspended
Posted at 6:05 pm on May 4, 2012 by Twitchy Staff
In this case, however, we’re pretty sure the suspension has nothing to with silencing conservatives.
Amidst all the #Juliagate goings-on yesterday, a Twitter parody account was created. Since then, @LifeOfJuIia had built up a pretty solid following. This afternoon, though, several people noticed that the account had been suspended. In light of the recent rash of account suspensions, it was not such a leap to suggest that Twitter had also allowed abusers to shut down the parody account.
But here’s what we think happened: the parody account’s handle is actually written as @LifeOfJuIia, where the L in “Julia” has been replaced with a capital I (“eye”). The @LifeOfJulia account, in which the L in “Julia” is in fact an L, belongs to a woman in Sweden. As the parody account increased in popularity, more and more people tweeted at the Swedish woman by mistake and her account was bombarded by tweets from people she didn’t know. To her, it seemed that she was the target of spammers, and so it would make sense that Twitter might suspend the account that initiated the problem.
We could be wrong, of course, but right now, it appears that #Julia’s Twitter account was an unfortunate casualty of look-alike letters.
In this case, however, we’re pretty sure the suspension has nothing to with silencing conservatives.
Amidst all the #Juliagate goings-on yesterday, a Twitter parody account was created. Since then, @LifeOfJuIia had built up a pretty solid following. This afternoon, though, several people noticed that the account had been suspended. In light of the recent rash of account suspensions, it was not such a leap to suggest that Twitter had also allowed abusers to shut down the parody account.
But here’s what we think happened: the parody account’s handle is actually written as @LifeOfJuIia, where the L in “Julia” has been replaced with a capital I (“eye”). The @LifeOfJulia account, in which the L in “Julia” is in fact an L, belongs to a woman in Sweden. As the parody account increased in popularity, more and more people tweeted at the Swedish woman by mistake and her account was bombarded by tweets from people she didn’t know. To her, it seemed that she was the target of spammers, and so it would make sense that Twitter might suspend the account that initiated the problem.
We could be wrong, of course, but right now, it appears that #Julia’s Twitter account was an unfortunate casualty of look-alike letters.
Smartest Guy in the Room
Five-terms in the Senate have made failed presidential candidate, Obama surrogate, and potential secretary of State John Kerry an amazingly prescient investor
BY: Andrew Stiles - May 3, 2012 12:00 pm
Failed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry’s (D., Mass.) long history of ethically dubious investments could invite controversy as he takes on a new role as a “top surrogate” for President Obama’s reelection campaign.
Kerry’s net worth as listed on his 2011 financial disclosure form is at least $193 million and likely much higher, making him the wealthiest member of the Senate. He is also a prolific investor, maintaining an array of stocks and other holdings through a mix of family trusts, marital trusts, and commingled fund accounts with his wife, Big Ketchup baroness Teresa Heinz.
The five-term Senator has a well-documented history of investing in companies that would benefit from policies he supports, as well as making conveniently timed and highly profitable trades coinciding with the passage of major legislation and, in some cases, the dissemination of privileged information.
For years, Kerry has invested millions in a number of green energy companies that have benefitted from the president’s efforts to aggressively subsidize the industry with taxpayer dollars.
These companies include Exelon, which received a $646 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan in 2011 to build a solar facility in California and created only 20 permanent jobs, as well as Fisker Automotive, the fledgling electric car company that offshored its manufacturing operation to Finland after receiving a $529 million federal loan guarantee in 2010.
The loan guarantees, approved by the Department of Energy, were made possible by funding allocated in the 2009 stimulus bill, which Kerry supported. According to Kerry’s own office, the Senator “played a key role” in crafting the portions of the legislation designed to offer federal support for green energy projects.
Additionally, Kerry co-authored the controversial cap-and-trade legislation that would have effectively imposed a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the bill ultimately failed, the New York Times noted that Exelon and companies like it “would emerge as financial winners” if the legislation was enacted.
Kerry has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a venture capital firm run by John Doerr, a prominent Obama donor who served on the president’s Economy Recovery Advisory Board.
The firm, where former vice president Al Gore is a partner, invests heavily in alternative energy companies such as Fisker Automotive and Amonix Inc., a Nevada-based solar panel manufacturer that laid off two-thirds of its workforce earlier this year despite receiving nearly $6 million in federal tax credits.
Amonix was one of 16 companies (out of 27 overall) listed in Doerr’s “green-tech” portfolio to receive some form of federal support under Obama.
Kerry purchased—through family trusts—between $30,000 and $100,000 worth of shares in a number of KPCB investment funds, including its “Green Growth Fund,” and continued to purchase shares throughout 2010, according to the Senator’s financial disclosure forms.
Kerry is one of several lawmakers prominently featured in Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer’s landmark book on how elected politicians exploit their privileged positions to enhance their personal wealth.
The Massachusetts Senator’s most dubious trading activity coincided with two major political events—the financial crisis of late 2008 and the passage of President Obama’s controversial healthcare overhaul in March 2010.
Kerry was one of at least 10 Senators to trade financial stocks just days after a Sept. 16, 2008 meeting between Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, and leading members of Congress to discuss the increasingly dire state of the financial markets.
In mid-October 2008, as the Treasury was discussing which banks would be bailed out in the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), Kerry bought up to $550,000 worth of Citigroup stock and up to $350,000 worth of Bank of America shares. Days later, the American public learned that Citigroup would receive $50 billion from the TARP fund and up to $277 billion in additional loan guarantees. Bank of America also received $50 billion from TARP.
During the contentious healthcare debate in 2009, Schweizer noted, Kerry loaded up on pharmaceutical stocks, purchasing close to $750,000 worth of shares in one company—Teva Pharmaceuticals—in the month of November alone.
Drug companies were viewed to be among the major beneficiaries of the Democratic healthcare legislation. Pharmaceuticals “kicked in $80 billion to help make the bill work, but stand to make 10 times that amount in revenues from added government and government-subsidized business,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek.
Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains.
Kerry also bought shares of ResMed, a company that makes medical devices, which surged more than 70 percent after the healthcare bill’s passage. Throughout the healthcare negotiations, Kerry consistently opposed efforts to increase taxes on companies like ResMed.
He also purchased stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a firm providing products and services to hospitals, at $35 a share. After passage, they were trading at $50 a share, an increase of more than 40 percent.
As Kerry was buying shares of companies certain to benefit from healthcare reform, he was selling stock in healthcare insurance providers, which were deemed big losers under the new law.
That is hardly the extent of Kerry’s questionable dealings, however. He has millions of dollars invested in funds operated by some of his largest campaign donors, including Bain Capital, Beacon Capital Partners, and the Blackstone Group, investment firms that have collectively given more than $170,000 to Kerry’s campaigns since 2007.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in February that Kerry helped secure a $3.5 billion windfall for hospitals in Massachusetts that would net tens of millions in new federal support for Partners HealthCare, another prominent campaign donor.
Kerry’s controversial financial activity could complicate his recently announced role as a top surrogate for Obama’s reelection campaign. The president has repeatedly sought to blame wealthy investors such as Kerry for precipitating the financial crisis of 2008 and has expressed sympathy for the controversial “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which has become notorious for advocating and in many cases carrying out vandalism against large banks and investment firms.
Employing Kerry as a prominent campaign spokesman could also unwittingly highlight a popular criticism of the president—that his major policy initiatives have had little impact on the struggling economy but have succeeded in enriching a small number of wealthy supporters.
BY: Andrew Stiles - May 3, 2012 12:00 pm
Failed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry’s (D., Mass.) long history of ethically dubious investments could invite controversy as he takes on a new role as a “top surrogate” for President Obama’s reelection campaign.
Kerry’s net worth as listed on his 2011 financial disclosure form is at least $193 million and likely much higher, making him the wealthiest member of the Senate. He is also a prolific investor, maintaining an array of stocks and other holdings through a mix of family trusts, marital trusts, and commingled fund accounts with his wife, Big Ketchup baroness Teresa Heinz.
The five-term Senator has a well-documented history of investing in companies that would benefit from policies he supports, as well as making conveniently timed and highly profitable trades coinciding with the passage of major legislation and, in some cases, the dissemination of privileged information.
For years, Kerry has invested millions in a number of green energy companies that have benefitted from the president’s efforts to aggressively subsidize the industry with taxpayer dollars.
These companies include Exelon, which received a $646 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan in 2011 to build a solar facility in California and created only 20 permanent jobs, as well as Fisker Automotive, the fledgling electric car company that offshored its manufacturing operation to Finland after receiving a $529 million federal loan guarantee in 2010.
The loan guarantees, approved by the Department of Energy, were made possible by funding allocated in the 2009 stimulus bill, which Kerry supported. According to Kerry’s own office, the Senator “played a key role” in crafting the portions of the legislation designed to offer federal support for green energy projects.
Additionally, Kerry co-authored the controversial cap-and-trade legislation that would have effectively imposed a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the bill ultimately failed, the New York Times noted that Exelon and companies like it “would emerge as financial winners” if the legislation was enacted.
Kerry has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a venture capital firm run by John Doerr, a prominent Obama donor who served on the president’s Economy Recovery Advisory Board.
The firm, where former vice president Al Gore is a partner, invests heavily in alternative energy companies such as Fisker Automotive and Amonix Inc., a Nevada-based solar panel manufacturer that laid off two-thirds of its workforce earlier this year despite receiving nearly $6 million in federal tax credits.
Amonix was one of 16 companies (out of 27 overall) listed in Doerr’s “green-tech” portfolio to receive some form of federal support under Obama.
Kerry purchased—through family trusts—between $30,000 and $100,000 worth of shares in a number of KPCB investment funds, including its “Green Growth Fund,” and continued to purchase shares throughout 2010, according to the Senator’s financial disclosure forms.
Kerry is one of several lawmakers prominently featured in Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer’s landmark book on how elected politicians exploit their privileged positions to enhance their personal wealth.
The Massachusetts Senator’s most dubious trading activity coincided with two major political events—the financial crisis of late 2008 and the passage of President Obama’s controversial healthcare overhaul in March 2010.
Kerry was one of at least 10 Senators to trade financial stocks just days after a Sept. 16, 2008 meeting between Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, and leading members of Congress to discuss the increasingly dire state of the financial markets.
In mid-October 2008, as the Treasury was discussing which banks would be bailed out in the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), Kerry bought up to $550,000 worth of Citigroup stock and up to $350,000 worth of Bank of America shares. Days later, the American public learned that Citigroup would receive $50 billion from the TARP fund and up to $277 billion in additional loan guarantees. Bank of America also received $50 billion from TARP.
During the contentious healthcare debate in 2009, Schweizer noted, Kerry loaded up on pharmaceutical stocks, purchasing close to $750,000 worth of shares in one company—Teva Pharmaceuticals—in the month of November alone.
Drug companies were viewed to be among the major beneficiaries of the Democratic healthcare legislation. Pharmaceuticals “kicked in $80 billion to help make the bill work, but stand to make 10 times that amount in revenues from added government and government-subsidized business,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek.
Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains.
Kerry also bought shares of ResMed, a company that makes medical devices, which surged more than 70 percent after the healthcare bill’s passage. Throughout the healthcare negotiations, Kerry consistently opposed efforts to increase taxes on companies like ResMed.
He also purchased stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a firm providing products and services to hospitals, at $35 a share. After passage, they were trading at $50 a share, an increase of more than 40 percent.
As Kerry was buying shares of companies certain to benefit from healthcare reform, he was selling stock in healthcare insurance providers, which were deemed big losers under the new law.
That is hardly the extent of Kerry’s questionable dealings, however. He has millions of dollars invested in funds operated by some of his largest campaign donors, including Bain Capital, Beacon Capital Partners, and the Blackstone Group, investment firms that have collectively given more than $170,000 to Kerry’s campaigns since 2007.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in February that Kerry helped secure a $3.5 billion windfall for hospitals in Massachusetts that would net tens of millions in new federal support for Partners HealthCare, another prominent campaign donor.
Kerry’s controversial financial activity could complicate his recently announced role as a top surrogate for Obama’s reelection campaign. The president has repeatedly sought to blame wealthy investors such as Kerry for precipitating the financial crisis of 2008 and has expressed sympathy for the controversial “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which has become notorious for advocating and in many cases carrying out vandalism against large banks and investment firms.
Employing Kerry as a prominent campaign spokesman could also unwittingly highlight a popular criticism of the president—that his major policy initiatives have had little impact on the struggling economy but have succeeded in enriching a small number of wealthy supporters.
Obama abolishes the press conference
by Keith Koffler
May 4, 2012, 11:07 am
White House Dossier:
President Obama has held just one full length, multi-topic, solo press conference in the last six months, effectively abolishing the most accessible venue for American citizens to observe the thinking and learn the views of their leader.
It’s May, and the president has stood for only a single such news conference this year, a March 6 event in the briefing room. He’s had only three since last June, counting a November press conference in Hawaii that was supposed to be devoted to the just-held Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit but which veered off into other issues.
Nor does Obama generally allow questioning during brief appearances at the White House, such as when he makes statements with foreign leaders. Previous presidents, including George W. Bush, routinely took a couple of questions on the topic of the day at such gatherings.
Obama doing what he loves best at a press conference.
Bush also held fewer press conferences than he should have. But this doesn’t excuse Obama, who would seem especially obligated to appear before the press given his pledges to maintain an “openness” administration.
Instead, the White House does its best to control access to Obama, presenting him to local and sometimes national reporters in “one-on-one” settings.
While these sessions occasionally do make news, they are poor substitute for formal press conferences. The local reporters are often not as well versed in the subtleties of national and international news as White House reporters and are more likely to be intimidated when suddenly finding themselves sitting in the White House interviewing the president.
And whether local or national reporters, those granted one-on-one interviews often aren’t given much time to probe – particularly with Obama’s longish answers – and so are incentivized to stick to their few prepared questions and “get them in” before time runs out. And a special invitation to interview the president is such a coveted coup for any news organization that there is enormous incentive to tread lightly for fear of never being invited back again while watching your competitors be welcomed instead.
And of course, the audience for each of these sessions is limited.
Press conferences are extraordinarily important for several reasons. A number of questions are asked on different topics. The pressure of being on national TV forces the president to explain his thinking. The public gets to actually see the president think and understand how he comes to his conclusions, an invaluable public service.
What’s more, the prospect of a press conference forces the White House to think through its own views. Everybody in the West Wing, including the president, has to stop and consider just what they are doing and why. Often the agencies are mined for answers about current policies so that White House aides can prepare the president, giving the West Wing valuable feedback about what’s going on.
Of course, Obama has switched almost fully from governing to campaigning. So maybe the need for a West Wing gut check has declined, since policy is mostly being made not in Washington but in Chicago. The home, of course, of the Obama 2012 campaign.
May 4, 2012, 11:07 am
White House Dossier:
President Obama has held just one full length, multi-topic, solo press conference in the last six months, effectively abolishing the most accessible venue for American citizens to observe the thinking and learn the views of their leader.
It’s May, and the president has stood for only a single such news conference this year, a March 6 event in the briefing room. He’s had only three since last June, counting a November press conference in Hawaii that was supposed to be devoted to the just-held Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit but which veered off into other issues.
Nor does Obama generally allow questioning during brief appearances at the White House, such as when he makes statements with foreign leaders. Previous presidents, including George W. Bush, routinely took a couple of questions on the topic of the day at such gatherings.
Bush also held fewer press conferences than he should have. But this doesn’t excuse Obama, who would seem especially obligated to appear before the press given his pledges to maintain an “openness” administration.
Instead, the White House does its best to control access to Obama, presenting him to local and sometimes national reporters in “one-on-one” settings.
While these sessions occasionally do make news, they are poor substitute for formal press conferences. The local reporters are often not as well versed in the subtleties of national and international news as White House reporters and are more likely to be intimidated when suddenly finding themselves sitting in the White House interviewing the president.
And whether local or national reporters, those granted one-on-one interviews often aren’t given much time to probe – particularly with Obama’s longish answers – and so are incentivized to stick to their few prepared questions and “get them in” before time runs out. And a special invitation to interview the president is such a coveted coup for any news organization that there is enormous incentive to tread lightly for fear of never being invited back again while watching your competitors be welcomed instead.
And of course, the audience for each of these sessions is limited.
Press conferences are extraordinarily important for several reasons. A number of questions are asked on different topics. The pressure of being on national TV forces the president to explain his thinking. The public gets to actually see the president think and understand how he comes to his conclusions, an invaluable public service.
What’s more, the prospect of a press conference forces the White House to think through its own views. Everybody in the West Wing, including the president, has to stop and consider just what they are doing and why. Often the agencies are mined for answers about current policies so that White House aides can prepare the president, giving the West Wing valuable feedback about what’s going on.
Of course, Obama has switched almost fully from governing to campaigning. So maybe the need for a West Wing gut check has declined, since policy is mostly being made not in Washington but in Chicago. The home, of course, of the Obama 2012 campaign.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Occupy Chicago May Day march pics you won't see in the establishment media
Occupy Chicago May Day march pics you won't see in the establishment media
After a slew of videos, I now turn to my photographic files from yesterday's Occupy Chicago May Day march.
LINK HERE
After a slew of videos, I now turn to my photographic files from yesterday's Occupy Chicago May Day march.
LINK HERE
Where’s the Combat Footage?
By R. Mitchell
May 04, 2012
CDN:
During Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom the press was embedded with American troops showing regular footage to American T.V. watchers causing an anti-incumbent sentiment as it was designed. Americans saw guided bomb hits, infantry assaults, tank maneuvers.. One question remains – where are the combat reporters in Afghanistan during Obama’s leadership?
No Time magazine covers of injured soldiers? New Y0rk Times interviews with Afghanistan civilians? No huge stories on torture, Gitmo or any of the other activities that have not stopped during the Presidency of Barack Obama despite his promises?
The impeachment of the American media is incomplete. While many have asked about the rush to judgement in the Treyvon Martin shooting, the lack of honesty from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, there is more that is oddly missing and unjust.
Remember this video from CNN when we had a real President?
When was the last 60 minutes story on the fighting in the Middle East?
While CBS news is covering Pizza Hut creations in the region there is no riveting TV coverage of the fighting in the tribal regions of Afghanistan.
Is it the quiet cover for the sitting President that no one objects to? Sure, there are printed stories and 10 second quick-cover stories, but where are the every day battering of the American population with war footage that happened during a Republican presidency?
There is the current Administration’s disdain of Bush’s “unilateral” action in the region despite the press coverage of British successes and the more than 25 nations involved in the conflict. The media and re-historians even paint President George H.W. Bush as a fascist.
The previous White House also sought the approval of Congress for military actions as outlined by U.S. law – a process the Obama Administration has waved off, ignored and spoken against. Why Congress is not more inflamed that their part in our government has been lessened is unfathomable, questionable and possibly impeachable.
Congress has forgotten our fighting men and women. The press could care less about them. When it is not politically advantageous to do so, the most brave are forgotten – where is the combat footage?
The main stream media cover for the Democrat administration is not as obvious as many point out – in many cases, it is as simple as forgetting to report what’s actually going on because it suits an end.. by any means.
As we near Memorial Day, it is a behavior that Americans must deplore, outrage against and decide whether those networks deserve their time and money.
May 04, 2012
CDN:
No Time magazine covers of injured soldiers? New Y0rk Times interviews with Afghanistan civilians? No huge stories on torture, Gitmo or any of the other activities that have not stopped during the Presidency of Barack Obama despite his promises?
The impeachment of the American media is incomplete. While many have asked about the rush to judgement in the Treyvon Martin shooting, the lack of honesty from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, there is more that is oddly missing and unjust.
Remember this video from CNN when we had a real President?
When was the last 60 minutes story on the fighting in the Middle East?
While CBS news is covering Pizza Hut creations in the region there is no riveting TV coverage of the fighting in the tribal regions of Afghanistan.
Is it the quiet cover for the sitting President that no one objects to? Sure, there are printed stories and 10 second quick-cover stories, but where are the every day battering of the American population with war footage that happened during a Republican presidency?
There is the current Administration’s disdain of Bush’s “unilateral” action in the region despite the press coverage of British successes and the more than 25 nations involved in the conflict. The media and re-historians even paint President George H.W. Bush as a fascist.
The previous White House also sought the approval of Congress for military actions as outlined by U.S. law – a process the Obama Administration has waved off, ignored and spoken against. Why Congress is not more inflamed that their part in our government has been lessened is unfathomable, questionable and possibly impeachable.
Congress has forgotten our fighting men and women. The press could care less about them. When it is not politically advantageous to do so, the most brave are forgotten – where is the combat footage?
The main stream media cover for the Democrat administration is not as obvious as many point out – in many cases, it is as simple as forgetting to report what’s actually going on because it suits an end.. by any means.
As we near Memorial Day, it is a behavior that Americans must deplore, outrage against and decide whether those networks deserve their time and money.
Fast and Furious: DoJ-supplied guns used in Mexican lawyer’s murder
by Cardigan
May 3, 2012
IOwnTheWorld:
Sistertoldjah:
Well, ain’t that just dandy.
I’ve said before that the number of Mexican soldiers, federal agents, police and civilians killed by weapons allowed to “walk” over the border into Mexico under the Department of Justice’s “sting” operation has amounted to at least 300, per the Mexican Attorney General.
Here are some specifics, courtesy of Borderland Beat:
Firearms connected to Operation Fast and Furious were used in the 2010 slaying of the brother of the former Chihuahua state attorney general, according to a U.S. congressional report.
The report said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced two of the weapons suspected in the murder of lawyer Mario González RodrÃguez, but did not report this fact to the Mexican government until eight months after the tracing.
(…)
A video of Mario González RodrÃguez’s “interrogation” by armed men was carried on YouTube. The body of the well-known Chihuahua City lawyer was found Nov. 5, 2010, in a shallow grave.
Then, Mexican federal authorities, following a shootout with drug cartel suspects, seized 16 weapons and arrested eight men in connection with Mario González RodrÃguez’s murder.
More
May 3, 2012
IOwnTheWorld:
Sistertoldjah:
Well, ain’t that just dandy.
I’ve said before that the number of Mexican soldiers, federal agents, police and civilians killed by weapons allowed to “walk” over the border into Mexico under the Department of Justice’s “sting” operation has amounted to at least 300, per the Mexican Attorney General.
Here are some specifics, courtesy of Borderland Beat:
Firearms connected to Operation Fast and Furious were used in the 2010 slaying of the brother of the former Chihuahua state attorney general, according to a U.S. congressional report.
The report said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced two of the weapons suspected in the murder of lawyer Mario González RodrÃguez, but did not report this fact to the Mexican government until eight months after the tracing.
(…)
A video of Mario González RodrÃguez’s “interrogation” by armed men was carried on YouTube. The body of the well-known Chihuahua City lawyer was found Nov. 5, 2010, in a shallow grave.
Then, Mexican federal authorities, following a shootout with drug cartel suspects, seized 16 weapons and arrested eight men in connection with Mario González RodrÃguez’s murder.
More
Commie Cheerleaders
Commie Cheerleaders
Under communism, everything is insipid, unappealing, and inferior — even cheerleaders:
Would you exchange the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders for this crew? Then why let Obama et al. exchange America for the fundamentally transformed USSA?
On a tip from Smorfia48.
By Dave Blount May 02, 2012 MoonBattery.Com
Under communism, everything is insipid, unappealing, and inferior — even cheerleaders:
Would you exchange the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders for this crew? Then why let Obama et al. exchange America for the fundamentally transformed USSA?
On a tip from Smorfia48.
By Dave Blount May 02, 2012 MoonBattery.Com
On the Brink
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff - May 3, 2012 4:55 pm
First Solar, the recipient of nearly $1.5 billion in taxpayer-financed grants and loans, appears to be on the brink of financial collapse.
The Arizona-based solar company on Thursday reported a net loss of $0.08 per share and a 12 percent decline in revenue during the first three months of 2012, far below analyst expectations.
Business Insider reports:
Revenue for the first quarter of 2012 came in at $497.1 million, as prices continued to fall across the industry.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg had forecast top line results of $678.8 million and earnings per share of $0.48.
“First Solar’s performance in the quarter was impacted by an aggressive competitive environment resulting from persistent supply-demand imbalances in the market, as well as restructuring costs that will improve our operating efficiency and help position us for the future,” First Solar Chairman Mike Ahearn said.
Just last month, First Solar announced plans to lay off 2,000 employees—about 30 percent of its workforce—and close a number of its facilities around the world.
Two green energy companies—Solyndra and Beacon Power—recently filed for bankruptcy, despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-guaranteed loans from the Department of Energy. The funding was made possible by the controversial $787 billion stimulus package passed by the Democratic Congress in early 2009.
Obama Praises Nazi Supporter in Jewish Heritage Month Proclamation
May 3, 2012
by Breitbart News
President Barack Obama issued a proclamation yesterday in celebration of Jewish Heritage Month that lauded Nazi supporter Gertrude Stein, the Algemeiner reports.
Stein, who was Jewish, supported the puppet Vichy regime in France in the Second World War through her friend, historian and Nazi collaborator Bernard Fay. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently agreed to update an exhibition of Stein's work with a reference to her Nazi connections.
The White House claimed that the inclusion of Stein had been a mistake, the result of an earlier draft of the proclamation released in error. However, Algemeiner preserved a screen shot of the original proclamation, which remained on the White House website after the new press release had been drafted.
Writing in Algemeiner on May 1, addressing the museum controversy, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz summarized Stein's efforts for the Nazis:
Stein, a “racial” Jew according to Nazi ideology, managed to survive the Holocaust, while the vast majority of her co-religionists were deported and slaughtered. The exhibit says “remarkably, the two women [Stein and her companion Alice Toklas] survived the war with their possessions intact.” It adds that “Bernard Fay, a close friend…and influential Vichy collaborator is thought to have protected them.” That is an incomplete and distorted account of what actually happened. Stein and Toklas survived the Holocaust for one simple reason: Gertrude Stein was herself a major collaborator with the Vichy regime and a supporter of its pro-Nazi leadership.
According to a new book entitled Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay and the Vichy Dilemma, by Barbara Will, Stein publicly proclaimed her admiration for Hitler during the 1930s, proposing him for a Nobel Peace Prize. In the worst days of the Vichy regime, she volunteered to write an introduction to the speeches of General Phillipe Petain, the Nazi puppet leader who deported thousands of Jews, but who she regarded as a great French hero. She wanted his speeches translated into English, with her introduction, so that Americans would see the virtues of the Vichy regime. In that respect she was like other modernist writers, such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot who proudly proclaimed their pro-Fascist ideology, but Stein’s support for Fascism was more bizarre because she was Jewish.
Stein’s closest friend, and a man who greatly influenced her turn toward fascism was Bernard Fay, who the Vichy government put in charge of hunting down Masons, Jews and other perceived enemies of the State. Fay was more than a mere collaborator as suggested by the Met exhibit. He was a full blown Nazi operative, responsible for the deaths of many people. After the war, when the horrendous results were known to all, Gertrude wrote in support of Fay when he was placed on trial for his Nazi war crimes.
No apology from the White House has yet been reported.
by Breitbart News
President Barack Obama issued a proclamation yesterday in celebration of Jewish Heritage Month that lauded Nazi supporter Gertrude Stein, the Algemeiner reports.
Stein, who was Jewish, supported the puppet Vichy regime in France in the Second World War through her friend, historian and Nazi collaborator Bernard Fay. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently agreed to update an exhibition of Stein's work with a reference to her Nazi connections.
The White House claimed that the inclusion of Stein had been a mistake, the result of an earlier draft of the proclamation released in error. However, Algemeiner preserved a screen shot of the original proclamation, which remained on the White House website after the new press release had been drafted.
Writing in Algemeiner on May 1, addressing the museum controversy, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz summarized Stein's efforts for the Nazis:
Stein, a “racial” Jew according to Nazi ideology, managed to survive the Holocaust, while the vast majority of her co-religionists were deported and slaughtered. The exhibit says “remarkably, the two women [Stein and her companion Alice Toklas] survived the war with their possessions intact.” It adds that “Bernard Fay, a close friend…and influential Vichy collaborator is thought to have protected them.” That is an incomplete and distorted account of what actually happened. Stein and Toklas survived the Holocaust for one simple reason: Gertrude Stein was herself a major collaborator with the Vichy regime and a supporter of its pro-Nazi leadership.
According to a new book entitled Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay and the Vichy Dilemma, by Barbara Will, Stein publicly proclaimed her admiration for Hitler during the 1930s, proposing him for a Nobel Peace Prize. In the worst days of the Vichy regime, she volunteered to write an introduction to the speeches of General Phillipe Petain, the Nazi puppet leader who deported thousands of Jews, but who she regarded as a great French hero. She wanted his speeches translated into English, with her introduction, so that Americans would see the virtues of the Vichy regime. In that respect she was like other modernist writers, such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot who proudly proclaimed their pro-Fascist ideology, but Stein’s support for Fascism was more bizarre because she was Jewish.
Stein’s closest friend, and a man who greatly influenced her turn toward fascism was Bernard Fay, who the Vichy government put in charge of hunting down Masons, Jews and other perceived enemies of the State. Fay was more than a mere collaborator as suggested by the Met exhibit. He was a full blown Nazi operative, responsible for the deaths of many people. After the war, when the horrendous results were known to all, Gertrude wrote in support of Fay when he was placed on trial for his Nazi war crimes.
No apology from the White House has yet been reported.
Dictator Obama Issues New Threat to Supreme Court over ObamaCare
Obama Administration has been quietly sending missives to the Supreme Court threatening that if it doesn’t rule in his favor on ObamaCare, Medicare will face disruption and “chaos.”
- Sher Zieve
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Canadian Free Press:
In his latest display of his full USA federal government dictatorship over both the American people and the former co-branches of government, Dictator Obama is warning the Supreme Court to either rule in his favor or face severe consequences.
Fox News’ Martha McCallum advised Thursday that the Obama Administration has been quietly sending missives to the Supreme Court threatening that if it doesn’t rule in his favor on ObamaCare, Medicare will face disruption and “chaos.” Therefore, if SCOTUS rules in favor of the US Constitution, Obama & Co will begin its campaign to either destroy Medicare or make those on it suffer greatly. The Obama syndicate is said to be threatening to hold off Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals if SCOTUS does not comply with Obama’s demands and submit to him.
As an additional example of Obama’s illegal and (I believe) highly treasonous behaviors, on 1 May and 2 May Obama issued two additional unconstitutional and illegal Executive Orders. The first E.O., issued 1 May 2012, makes the USA subject to “international regulations” as opposed to looking to and following the US Constitution. Also, with this new E.O., the US FDA will now be able to be bypassed by International committees—thus, replacing the FDA with any international group which may be chosen. In essence, Obama is quickly eliminating US Sovereignty and selling the USA to the international “community.”
The second E.O. issued in 2 days was signed by Obama on 2 May 2012. This E.O. instructs the USA to bow to international regulations instead of the US Constitution and Businessweek reports: “Obama’s order provides a framework to organize scattered efforts to promote international regulatory cooperation, the chamber’s top global regulatory official said today.
“Today’s executive order marks a paradigm shift for U.S. regulators by directing them to take the international implications of their work into account in a consistent and comprehensive way,” Sean Heather, vice president of the chamber’s Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation, said in an e-mailed statement.” This also brings the USA closer to becoming a “North American Union” and—also—eliminating its sovereignty—in toto.
Suffice it to say, no one in Congress has issued even the proverbial “peep” over either of these illegal “orders.” Do the American people really want to continue to live under this blatant tyranny?
The second question is “Will the Supreme Court of the United States of America bow to Obama and give up its co-equal status to the dictator as the US Congress has already done?” If so, perhaps its time for We-the-People to recruit the Honduran Supreme Court who, along with their military, ousted its then President Manuel Zelaya who had become a dictator. Oppression under the Obama syndicate becomes worse each and every day, folks. Will we ever choose to go back to the sunshine?
“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?”—Revelation 13:4
- Sher Zieve
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Canadian Free Press:
In his latest display of his full USA federal government dictatorship over both the American people and the former co-branches of government, Dictator Obama is warning the Supreme Court to either rule in his favor or face severe consequences.
Fox News’ Martha McCallum advised Thursday that the Obama Administration has been quietly sending missives to the Supreme Court threatening that if it doesn’t rule in his favor on ObamaCare, Medicare will face disruption and “chaos.” Therefore, if SCOTUS rules in favor of the US Constitution, Obama & Co will begin its campaign to either destroy Medicare or make those on it suffer greatly. The Obama syndicate is said to be threatening to hold off Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals if SCOTUS does not comply with Obama’s demands and submit to him.
As an additional example of Obama’s illegal and (I believe) highly treasonous behaviors, on 1 May and 2 May Obama issued two additional unconstitutional and illegal Executive Orders. The first E.O., issued 1 May 2012, makes the USA subject to “international regulations” as opposed to looking to and following the US Constitution. Also, with this new E.O., the US FDA will now be able to be bypassed by International committees—thus, replacing the FDA with any international group which may be chosen. In essence, Obama is quickly eliminating US Sovereignty and selling the USA to the international “community.”
The second E.O. issued in 2 days was signed by Obama on 2 May 2012. This E.O. instructs the USA to bow to international regulations instead of the US Constitution and Businessweek reports: “Obama’s order provides a framework to organize scattered efforts to promote international regulatory cooperation, the chamber’s top global regulatory official said today.
“Today’s executive order marks a paradigm shift for U.S. regulators by directing them to take the international implications of their work into account in a consistent and comprehensive way,” Sean Heather, vice president of the chamber’s Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation, said in an e-mailed statement.” This also brings the USA closer to becoming a “North American Union” and—also—eliminating its sovereignty—in toto.
Suffice it to say, no one in Congress has issued even the proverbial “peep” over either of these illegal “orders.” Do the American people really want to continue to live under this blatant tyranny?
The second question is “Will the Supreme Court of the United States of America bow to Obama and give up its co-equal status to the dictator as the US Congress has already done?” If so, perhaps its time for We-the-People to recruit the Honduran Supreme Court who, along with their military, ousted its then President Manuel Zelaya who had become a dictator. Oppression under the Obama syndicate becomes worse each and every day, folks. Will we ever choose to go back to the sunshine?
“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?”—Revelation 13:4
GOP/Romney Needs To Hang OWS Around Obama/Democrats' Necks
John Marzan
Ricochet.com:
Instead of only doing rapid response and reacting to every Obama attack ads, Romney and the his Republican/Tea Party surrogates should "punch back twice as hard." Timing is everything. Wouldn't it be nice to see ads linking Obama/Dems to OWS anarchy violence right about now (post May Day)?
Something like this:
Here are some video materials Romney and his surrogates can work on. There's more where this came from from Breitbart video.
If the Repubs/Tea Party want to win in 2012, they need to link the Obama Democrats to Occupy Wall Street. That's what breitbart would have done.
Ricochet.com:
Instead of only doing rapid response and reacting to every Obama attack ads, Romney and the his Republican/Tea Party surrogates should "punch back twice as hard." Timing is everything. Wouldn't it be nice to see ads linking Obama/Dems to OWS anarchy violence right about now (post May Day)?
Something like this:
Here are some video materials Romney and his surrogates can work on. There's more where this came from from Breitbart video.
If the Repubs/Tea Party want to win in 2012, they need to link the Obama Democrats to Occupy Wall Street. That's what breitbart would have done.
The Last Thing Unions Are Concerned About Is Free Choice For Workers
By THOMAS SOWELL
Investors Business Daily:
Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do.
Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric.
However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off."
That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.
First there was the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting — a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.
Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.
As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.
Now that the administration has appointed a majority of the National Labor Relations Board members, the NLRB has imposed new requirements that employers give union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.
In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union.
Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.
Workers who don't want to join a union will now have to decide how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going to put up with, if they don't knuckle under.
In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest to vote against joining.
When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected president, with large financial support from unions, the rules were in fact changed by Obama's NLRB.
As if to make the outcome of workers' "choices" more of a foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an election and the election itself has been shortened by the NLRB. In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount of time it takes, for it to prepare and implement an organizing campaign — and then suddenly announce a deadline date for the decision on having or not having a union.
The union organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers have time to organize a comparable counterargument or the workers have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured.
The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a captive group ofmembers, whose compulsory dues provide a large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses, to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose where to make campaign contributions from the union members' dues.
Union elections don't recur like other elections. They are like some Third World elections: "One man, one vote — one time." And getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle.
But so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and corrupt process can continue.
Investors Business Daily:
Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do.
Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric.
However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off."
That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.
First there was the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting — a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.
Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.
As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.
Now that the administration has appointed a majority of the National Labor Relations Board members, the NLRB has imposed new requirements that employers give union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.
In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union.
Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.
Workers who don't want to join a union will now have to decide how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going to put up with, if they don't knuckle under.
In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest to vote against joining.
When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected president, with large financial support from unions, the rules were in fact changed by Obama's NLRB.
As if to make the outcome of workers' "choices" more of a foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an election and the election itself has been shortened by the NLRB. In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount of time it takes, for it to prepare and implement an organizing campaign — and then suddenly announce a deadline date for the decision on having or not having a union.
The union organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers have time to organize a comparable counterargument or the workers have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured.
The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a captive group ofmembers, whose compulsory dues provide a large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses, to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose where to make campaign contributions from the union members' dues.
Union elections don't recur like other elections. They are like some Third World elections: "One man, one vote — one time." And getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle.
But so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and corrupt process can continue.
It’s working, Wisconsin!
May 3, 2012
by Lance Burri
Troglopundit
First, new state business rankings:
The Badger State keeps rising in the Chief Executive Best States/Worst States list, and that’s got Wisconsin businesses cheering—as well as investing. Nevertheless, CEOs and entrepreneurs there are worried that an election recall this summer of their champion, Governor Scott Walker, could upend the great improvements made in the state’s business climate in just two years.
We’re on the way up, but, oh crap! The recall might turn us back around again!
Wisconsin leapt to 20th place in our Best States/Worst States list this year from 24th last year, one of only eight states that enjoyed a rise of at least four spots. That followed a phenomenal 17-place leap in last year’s list, where it occupied the doldrums of 41st place. Wisconsin also fared well by other gauges last year, especially in how it treated entrepreneurs. The state ranked 4th last year in tax costs on new firms, as calculated by the Tax Foundation, and a Kauffman Center Index of Entrepreneurial Activity showed Wisconsin with the 7th largest rise last year among the handful of states that did better at all.
Hat tip Charlie Sykes for that one. Next, a little something about jobs from Dr. Tim Nerenz:
According to BLS – not me – the number of persons employed in Wisconsin in March of 2011 was 2,838,145. And according the BLS – not me – the number of persons employed in Wisconsin in March of 2012 was 2,856,643. My calculator says that is an INCREASE of 18,498.
My Excel spreadsheet says that is an INCREASE of 18,498. Arithmetic by hand says that is an INCREASE of 18,498. Slide rule, abacus, ponies stomping – anyway you count ‘em up, that is 18,498 more people are working now than a year ago, not less.
Hat tip Fred Dooley.
Wrap this all up for us, Governor Christie:
“All the eyes of America for the next five weeks are going to be on the state of Wisconsin.”
“…the common sense solutions that are being put forward by two guys who care more about making the lives of all of our friends and neighbors better than they care about preserving their own political careers.”
“I cannot wait to be sitting in my living room on Tuesday, June 5, and watch Wisconsin make America proud again.”
Hat Tip: Ann Althouse
by Lance Burri
Troglopundit
First, new state business rankings:
The Badger State keeps rising in the Chief Executive Best States/Worst States list, and that’s got Wisconsin businesses cheering—as well as investing. Nevertheless, CEOs and entrepreneurs there are worried that an election recall this summer of their champion, Governor Scott Walker, could upend the great improvements made in the state’s business climate in just two years.
We’re on the way up, but, oh crap! The recall might turn us back around again!
Wisconsin leapt to 20th place in our Best States/Worst States list this year from 24th last year, one of only eight states that enjoyed a rise of at least four spots. That followed a phenomenal 17-place leap in last year’s list, where it occupied the doldrums of 41st place. Wisconsin also fared well by other gauges last year, especially in how it treated entrepreneurs. The state ranked 4th last year in tax costs on new firms, as calculated by the Tax Foundation, and a Kauffman Center Index of Entrepreneurial Activity showed Wisconsin with the 7th largest rise last year among the handful of states that did better at all.
Hat tip Charlie Sykes for that one. Next, a little something about jobs from Dr. Tim Nerenz:
According to BLS – not me – the number of persons employed in Wisconsin in March of 2011 was 2,838,145. And according the BLS – not me – the number of persons employed in Wisconsin in March of 2012 was 2,856,643. My calculator says that is an INCREASE of 18,498.
My Excel spreadsheet says that is an INCREASE of 18,498. Arithmetic by hand says that is an INCREASE of 18,498. Slide rule, abacus, ponies stomping – anyway you count ‘em up, that is 18,498 more people are working now than a year ago, not less.
Hat tip Fred Dooley.
Wrap this all up for us, Governor Christie:
“All the eyes of America for the next five weeks are going to be on the state of Wisconsin.”
“…the common sense solutions that are being put forward by two guys who care more about making the lives of all of our friends and neighbors better than they care about preserving their own political careers.”
“I cannot wait to be sitting in my living room on Tuesday, June 5, and watch Wisconsin make America proud again.”
Hat Tip: Ann Althouse
'Too Fat To Fly' Passenger Sues Southwest Airlines For 'Discriminatory Actions'
BY JUJU CHANG (@JujuChangABC) , ELIZABETH STUART (@elizabethstuart) , LAUREN EFFRON (@LEffron831) and SALLY HAWKINS
May 3, 2012
ABC News - Kenlie Tiggeman, the overweight passenger who garnered national attention last May after she claimed a Southwest gate agent told her she was "too fat to fly," is now suing the airline.
Tiggeman, who lives in New Orleans and blogs about weight loss on her website, AllTheWeigh.com, filed an injunction against Southwest in district court on April 20, alleging that the Southwest agents "did not follow their company policy and chose to discriminate, humiliate and embarrass" her in front of "airport onlookers," and that the airline uses "discriminatory actions ... toward obese customers."
Southwest currently has a Customers of Size policy, which requires passengers to buy a second seat if they can't fit between the armrests. Southwest's seats measure 17 inches across.
Tiggeman said she is not seeking monetary damages from the airline and filed the injunction application pro se, without legal representation. She said she wants an industry standard to be put in place for flyers who have to buy a second seat, including rules so that it is no longer up to gate attendants to decide whether or not an obese passenger has to purchase a second seat.
"If you're telling me I have to buy two seats, you should tell me at the point of purchase, not the day I'm flying when I check in at the terminal," she said.
Tiggeman said she was horrified last May when a Southwest Airlines gate agent told her to buy a second seat.
"The gate agent came up to me and he asked me how much I weighed, what size clothes I wore," Tiggeman said. "He said that I was too fat to fly, that I would need an additional seat, and he was really sort of crass about the whole thing."
At the time, Tiggeman said she weighed between "240 and 300 pounds."
"There was no privacy," she continued. "He didn't know what the policy was. So he actually brought in a supervisor as well who didn't know."
After the incident, Tiggeman said a Southwest executive contacted her to apologize, refunded her ticket and offered her flight vouchers, which she accepted. But last November, Tiggeman said she was again told by a Southwest agent that she was too fat too fly.
In a statement to "Nightline," Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said she was aware of Tiggeman's blog post describing the suit, but hadn't confirmed the filing with the airline's legal department.
"We realize that it's a sensitive conversation and we train our Employees to approach the situation as discreetly as possible," King said in the statement. "The ... best case scenario is for the Customer to notify us of any special needs ahead of time. If providing the additional seat does not result in our having to deny another Customer boarding, we will refund the ticket to the Customer at no charge, which happens more than 90 percent of the time."
Tiggeman's crusade is just a small part in what feels like a war that has erupted between the airlines and their passengers. Many charge for everything from onboard snacks, to blankets and pillows, to excess baggage and body weight. Just today, Spirit Airlines announced that passengers may have to pay up to $100 for a carry-on, meaning bags that have to go in the overhead compartment and are checked in at the gate. Bags that can fit under the seat are still free.
But if you weigh more, should you pay more? Peter Singer, a bio-ethics professor at Princeton University, raised this simple, but inflammatory question.
"It's not about treating obese people badly," he said. "It's about people paying for the costs that they are imposing on the airline or in general."
Singer is a mega-commuter, flying from his home in Melbourne, Australia, to the States. He thinks that on a flight from, say, Melbourne to New York, an obese person should face a roughly $30 surcharge.
"The airline is just one example that I've chosen," Singer said. "Buses and trains may have to provide wider seats. Hospitals have to have stronger beds, even having to have extra-large refrigerators for their morgues. So it's not hostility to obesity. It's just saying, where people are paying, why should other people who are lighter be subsidizing those who are heavier?"
There are plenty of people who are on board with Singer's idea, like MeMe Roth, the founder of National Action against Obesity, who has very strong opinions about the wide-ranging impact of obesity.
"I don't want the person next to me on top of my seat, or coming underneath the armrest because I've paid for my whole seat," she said. "It's nothing personal against them."
And there are plenty of people who sympathize with Kenlie Tiggeman. Brandon Macsata, an advocate for passengers' rights, has become a leader in the "fat acceptance" movement and thinks an obesity surcharge would spark outrage.
"These aren't durable goods being shipped from point A to point B. This isn't cattle being shipped to a livestock farm," he said.
But making overweight people pay more for their flight might ultimately be bad for business. While Roth argued that airlines weigh bags discreetly, Macsata said, "That's a bag. It's not a person."
In fact, Macsata's fat acceptance group has proposed that airlines provide a row of extra wide eats for larger passengers at a higher price, which they can buy voluntarily.
Pressing forward with her lawsuit, Kenlie Tiggeman said she is not an advocate for obesity, but wants to be treated with respect.
"Shaming people isn't the right way to do it, then you'll just have a lot of depressed people," she said. "I don't care if I have to pay more, just tell me what I have to do and I'll do it."
ABC News' Dan Przygoda contributed to this report.
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