Monday, April 23, 2012

Political Digest for April 24, 2012

Grabbing time for a few items while traveling. I apologize for all the e-mails I didn’t have time to read. Thanks to all who sent congratulations on my MCHA Gannon Award for my poetry book. ~Bob.

Excerpt: senator) Left never had any principled objection at all. Instead, whatever Bush was for, they were in Pavlovian fashion against. I can say that without a charge of cynicism, because after January 2009, Obama embraced or expanded every Bush-Cheney protocol that he inherited.

The Bloated Government of America
Excerpt: The General Services Administration blew through $820,000 in taxpayers’ money in a lavish ”team building” trip to Las Vegas, and President Barack Obama is “apoplectic” at the news, according to the president’s campaign advisor, David Axelrod. Obama, he says, has devoted his efforts to saving “tens of billions of dollars” in cutting waste, fraud and inefficiency in government. Yet under President Obama’s leadership, government spending keeps growing irresponsibly, and neither he nor his allies in Congress are doing anything about it.

US, Afghanistan Reach Deal on Strategic Pact
http://www.military.com/news/article/us-afghanistan-reach-deal-on-strategic-pact.html?ESRC=eb.nlExcerpt: The U.S. and Afghanistan reached a deal Sunday on a long-delayed strategic partnership agreement that ensures Americans will provide military and financial support to the Afghan people for at least a decade beyond 2014, the deadline for most foreign forces to withdraw. (For what ever it might mean, as I recall, the US also Reached a Deal on Strategic Pact with the Government of South Vietnam. --Mike)

America's Crisis of Character By Peggy Noonan
Excerpt: I've long thought that public dissatisfaction is about more than the economy, that it's also about our culture, or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture. Now I'd go a step beyond that. I think more and more people are worried about the American character -- who we are and what kind of adults we are raising.

Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals
Excerpt: Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.” Aides say many more such moves are coming.

Media Favored Romney Over Obama During GOP Primaries: Study
Excerpt: Overall, it was no contest. From Jan. 2 through April 15, Romney’s coverage was 39 percent positive, 32 percent negative, and 29 percent neutral, the researchers found. Obama’s coverage was 18 percent positive, 34 percent negative, and 34 percent neutral. That means Romney’s depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the president’s. So much for liberal bias. (Only in the mind of a leftist could this conclusion be reached. I wonder if the author also thinks Judas gets unbalanced coverage in the Bible? Obama should have run in the Republican primaries. No doubt that would’ve improved his coverage numbers, at least until he lost. Ron P.)

Excerpt: Writing for Forbes Magazine, climate change alarmist Steve Zwick calls for skeptics of man-made global warming to be tracked, hunted down and have their homes burned to the ground, yet another shocking illustration of how eco-fascism is rife within the environmentalist lobby. (Doesn’t a burning home add to your carbon footprint? ~Bob.)

Obama's Real Hilary Rosen Problem by Star Parker ) Problem by Star Parker
The issue was not so much what Hilary Rosen said, but who said it. More than Rosen’s words, her persona itself is an assault on working class, traditional thinking Americans of both sexes. Rosen, who works closely with the White House, is a high dollar lesbian “inside-the-beltway” Washington power broker. She and her now estranged partner, the former director the Human Rights Campaign – an organization championing rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders – adopted two black children in 1999.
Her current lesbian partner is president of the American Federation of Teachers – the nation’s second largest teachers’ union.

Longing for jobs we used to hate
Excerpt: I don’t know how many times I’ve seen liberal commentators look back with nostalgia to the days when a young man fresh out of high school or military service could get a well-paying job on an assembly line at a unionized auto factory that could carry him to a comfortable retirement. As it happens, I grew up in Detroit and for a time lived next door to factory workers, so I know something that has eluded the liberal nostalgiacs — which is that people hated those jobs. Assembly-line work was boring and repetitive.

Video: Obama Campaign Disables Credit Card Verification, Accepts Donation from ‘Nidal Hasan’ And Aunt Zeituni. Watch the video.
Excerpt: This video is a follow-up to Adrian Murray’s facebook post over the weekend, in which he says that he donated to the Obama campaign as “Adolph Hitler,” occupation “Dictator” living at a German address. As you can see in the clip, citizen journalist George Scaggs of Austin tries the same thing at three different campaign sites, that of Obama, Romney and Santorum. Only the Obama site accepted the donation without the verification number. (No wonder he has over $100 million….Barb.)

Sri Lankan held for "witchcraft" in Saudi Arabia
The real War on women. ~Bob. Excerpt: A Sri Lankan woman has been arrested on suspicion of casting a spell on a 13-year-old girl during a Saudi family's shopping trip, a police spokesman said on Wednesday, and may face death in a country where convicted sorcerers are beheaded.

100,000 British women mutilated
The real War on women. ~Bob. Excerpt: As many as 100,000 women in Britain have undergone female genital mutilations with medics in the UK offering to carry out the illegal procedure on girls as young as 10, it has been reported.

The Auschwitz Album- Visual Evidence of Mass Murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Obama Administration's 15+ Scandalous "Achievements"
Excerpt: Sometimes I think my conservative compatriots go a bit too far. They say that the three-year-old Obama administration is totally void of achievement. That is total nonsense; in three short years Barack Obama has increased the national debt by $5 trillion dollars, that's more than George Bush did in eight years and almost as much as every president from Washington-Clinton combined.

My response to CBS’ 60 Minutes Hatchet Job on Israel for Christians Fleeing Palestinian Territories
CBS' 60 Minutes continued its assault on Israel. You will remember its previous one sided report on the building of homes in Jerusalem. Now CBS is blaming Israel for the Muslim war on Christians in the Palestinian territories. I posted the following response on their website,
I know I left out several key arguments, but I did not want their website to time out on me. Cordially, Larry Greenberg

Reports: Obama's war chest dwarfs Romney's
Excerpt: Mitt Romney's presidential campaign raised $12.6 million in contributions in March, adding to roughly $14 million his Republican Party brought in last month. But the combined figure puts Romney at a disadvantage with the man whose job he wants in November.. President Barack Obama countered Romney's fundraising haul with about $53 million in donations between his campaign and the Democratic Party during the same period. That left his campaign with $104 million cash on hand -- about 10 times more than the $10 million Romney had in the bank at the end of March….. (Between stuffing the ballot boxes and allowing anyone to vote, Soros controlling interest in company that makes electronic voting machines? And all this unaccounted-for cash, what hope? –Barb.)

Loud Explosion And Fireball Likely Caused By Meteor
Excerpt: The sound of the explosion around 8 a.m. prompted a flood of calls to law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Sierra Nevada in the two states. The explosion rattled windows and shook houses from Reno to Winnemucca in Nevada, and from the Sacramento to Bakersfield areas in California. (If it was a meteor, it exploded “harmlessly” in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. This time. It was likely smaller than an automobile and had a glancing trajectory. Had it come straight in, it might have caused a large explosion on impact with the ground. Ron P.)

Northeastern University Attacks Holocaust Survivors By Stella Paul
Excerpt: "Why would anyone want to give money to Northeastern University?" asks Holocaust survivor Helga Lustig. That's a question that many donors and parents may be asking, after watching a chilling new video that documents Northeastern's institutional anti-Semitism and its vicious attacks on survivors of Nazi genocide.

The Week That Was: 2012-04-21 (April 21, 2012)
Excerpt: Because oil might take up to 10 years to reach market, we were told that the nonwilderness portion of ANWR could not be part of the solution to our energy challenges. Nearly every senator who spoke against the amendment in 2002 listed this as a factor in his or her decision. Now, 10 years later, it is plain to see that the argument was not just wrong, but backward. Instead of being a reason to oppose development in ANWR, the time it takes to develop the resource should be treated as a reason to approve it as quickly as possible. Consider what would be different today had the Senate agreed to open those 2,000 acres a decade ago. If production were coming online right now as expected, it would be providing our nation with a number of much-needed benefits—including a lot more oil. (The excerpt is taken from Article #2 at the bottom of this week’s digest. Written by Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, it reminds us where to look for the sources of today’s energy problems. There are many good articles, as always. Ron P.)

How EPA Uses “Sue and Settle” Agreements To Steal Power from the States
Excerpt: Recently, however, EPA has found a way to ditch the States, and instead render environmental policy with environmentalist litigation groups. Here’s how it works. An environmentalist litigation outfit like the Center for Biological Diversity sues EPA for missing a deadline to implement a regulation pursuant to the Clean Air Act. Due to the almost absolute discretion that courts give federal agencies to implement laws, EPA could squash this suit in court with ease. (All this is one piece with Obama’s vision of hope and change to a regulatory state. Part of the problem is that the courts have allowed the States to be excluded, never considering they may have different interests from EPA. Another part is that frequently, EPA “agrees” to pay the legal expenses incurred by the organization bringing the suit. Perhaps this could be justified if there was a truly adversarial relationship, but when both sides are working toward the same end—which is imposing EPA’s will on the State without the state’s consent—it becomes just another way to corrupt the system. Although Congress is “working” on this, there can be no real solution until we take the power of proposing regulations away from regulators and force Congress to take it back and be responsible for the real laws and regulations of the land. Ron P.)

Trustees say Medicare, Social Security funds running out quickly
Excerpt: Medicare and Social Security are on a fast track to deep fiscal problems, trustees for the two programs warned Monday. By 2024, the trustees said, Medicare’s trust fund won’t be able to cover seniors’ hospital benefits. Social Security is expected to reach the same tipping point in 2033 — three years earlier than the trustees estimated last year. The funds won’t be entirely empty on those dates, but rather will not be taking in enough money to keep paying 100 percent of the benefits they’re supposed to provide. (On the plus side, I don’t expect to be alive in 2024. On the down side, I expect things to get much worse before then. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Medicare and Social Security, the nation's two largest programs, have long-term deficits of $63.3 trillion, according to annual reports from the programs' trustees released today. The reports underscore the dire need to reform the programs if the nation wants to avert a fiscal crisis. Though most news reports will focus on the trust fund exhaustion date (2024 for Medicare and 2033 for Social Security) the reality is that the trust fund is a farce. The Social Security program is financed primarily by payroll taxes.

Environment Confession: Climate Scientist Says He Was ‘Extrapolating Too Far’, Outs Others as Alarmists Too
Excerpt: The Gaia hypothesis states essentially that “Earth’s physical and biological processes are inextricably bound to form a self-regulating system”. The Gaia theory website goes on to say this is “more relevant than ever in light of increasing concerns about global climate change.” But today, one of the first people to expound upon this theory, James Lovelock, has admitted to being a “climate alarmist” and is now reversing his stance on the extremes he once thought man-made global climate change would lead us to.

G.A.O. Calls Test Project by Medicare Costly Waste
Excerpt: Medicare is wasting more than $8 billion on an experimental program that rewards providers of mediocre health care and is unlikely to produce useful results, federal investigators say in a new report. The report, to be issued Monday by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, urges the Obama administration to cancel the program, which pays bonuses to health insurance companies caring for millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

USAID suspends foreign training program for English-speaking jobs By Caroline May
Excerpt: The United States Agency for International Development has suspended a program it was using to train foreign workers in the Philippines for jobs in English-speaking call centers…. “For the U.S. government to be borrowing money from China to train people in the Philippines to take our jobs is not only bad policy, it’s insanity,” added Jones. “I am pleased to learn that USAID has recognized how appalling this is to U.S. taxpayers, and has suspended the program.” In 2010, the pair forced USAID to end a similar program in Sri Lanka.

Spies & Muscle: Holder, Secretive Doj Group Helped Oust Sanford Sheriff
Excerpt: The Obama administration may have had direct involvement in shaping the Trayvon Martin shooting narrative, including direct involvement in forcing Sanford, FL sheriff Bill Lee to temporarily step down.An Orlando Sentinel article detailing how the Department of Justice’s secretive Community Relations Service worked to bring about Sheriff Lee’s ouster raises troubling questions about the Obama administration’s involvement, especially when coupled with the cozy relationship that Attorney General Eric Holder has with one of the lead Trayvon Martin agitators, the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Grassley, Thune Want Answers on $529M Loan to ‘Troubled’ Luxury Hybrid Firm
Excerpt: Two senators want answers from the Obama administration about a $529 million federal loan for advanced technology vehicles manufacturing to a company now described as “troubled.” Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Thune (R-S.D.) are also asking why taxpayer money went to fund research for a plug-in hybrid car that retails over $100,000 and is built in Finland.

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