tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28214249377170404772024-02-19T04:24:06.340-07:00Hamilton, Madison, and JayThis blog is devoted to a variety of topics including politics, current events, legal issues, and we even take the time to have some occasional fun. After all, blogging is about having a little fun, right?Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.comBlogger1639125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-41941546918903478072010-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:002010-08-11T08:01:38.938-07:00A little housekeeping<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Regular readers know that my lovely wife and I were constant and consistent bloggers. When she finished her undergrad degree and moved onto law school, the blogging fell into my lap to handle. I did a pretty good job on my own. (I was blogging before she was, so it really wasn't that difficult to do solo blogging again.) But law school is done for her, and she took the Bar Exam last month. I'm crossing my fingers she passed it first time through.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">So what does this have to do with the site? Well, let's just say that the blogging will be infrequent from this point forward. I'm working on a personal project, a novel specifically. The novel idea has been rattling around my cob-web-filled skull for the last twenty years, and I made a promise to myself this year to get on the stick and write it finally. As of today I'm just over 220 pages into it, and I'm shooting for between 500 and 600 pages, and hopefully about 100,000 to 200,000 words.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Thus far it's been fun. A ton of research has gone into this novel. I have easily done as much research for this book as I have done as a blogger. The difference comes in what exactly is being researched. My novel is a thriller a la Vince Flynn and Daniel Silva, so there's research on firearms, countries, certain intelligence agencies and how they work, and Washington, DC. (The novel takes place in DC.) So, if everything goes as planned, I'm hoping to be shopping this around to publishing houses by summer of 2011. Once the rough draft is finished, then it's time for some proof-reading, polishing, and fine-tuning. (There are also considerable hoops I've got to jump through to prepare the manuscript for a publishing house.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">But this is why the blogging here has dropped significantly in the last few weeks. I just don't have the time to do it day-in and day-out while I'm working on this. I will say that if I do have a few minutes to post something up, it'll be on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday. Those are the days that I actually have extra time, usually late mornings, when I'm not at work or working on the novel.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">My apologies to our regular readers, but I decided it was time to get this done. Twenty years is long enough to put this off, and I'm not getting any younger.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-77719421423479539102010-08-04T08:53:00.002-07:002010-08-04T10:37:03.998-07:00NRO editors on the Ground Zero mosque<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">When this was first presented, I thought it was a political hoax, or a joke cooked up by some nutter in New York. But it's a reality, and it's a reality we're 100% opposed to. We're not opposed to a religion being allowed to build a church, but Ground Zero is hallowed ground. We wouldn't support ANY religion putting up a church at Ground Zero. We would stand against any sort of inappropriate display or building on any ground in America that is considered hallowed. (After all, we believe the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, but there's no way in Hell we'd support any sort of display at the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii "commemorating" that brain-dead decision. We also wouldn't support the Ku Klux Klan erecting any sort of memorial at Gettysburg.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Point being, there's a level of respect that is due at places like Ground Zero. <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/438963/not-at-ground-zero/the-editors"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Over at National Review, the editors have penned a piece on this issue</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The story of the proposed mosque at the site of the World Trade Center has been thoroughly misrepresented, as have the parties behind the project. They present themselves as ambassadors of moderate Islam. Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, says the project aims to put the Muslim community “at the front and center to start the healing.” </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Ms. Khan knows better, because she is also Mrs. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the wife of the main Islamic cleric behind the project. Rauf is no moderate. He presents himself as a peacemaking Islamic Gandhi, but he is in fact an apologist for the terrorist outfit Hamas, which he refuses even to identify as a terrorist organization. Nor is Rauf exactly full-throated in his rejection of terrorism, offering only this: “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” While he cannot quite bring himself to blame the terrorists for being terrorists, he finds it easy to blame the United States for being a victim of terrorism: “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">As National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy has documented, Rauf’s book, published in the West as What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America, had a significantly different title abroad: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. “Dawa” means Islamic proselytizing, a process that ends in the imposition of sharia. The book was published abroad with the assistance of the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which are two appendages of the Muslim Brotherhood, <strong>an organization behind much of the world’s murderous Islamic terrorism.</strong> The Islamic Society of North America </span><a href="http://www.nysun.com/national/islamic-groups-named-in-hamas-funding-case/55778/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case. The co-founder and president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Awani, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Sami al-Arian terrorism case.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">This dispute has been presented as a question of whether an Islamic center and mosque should be built in proximity to the scene of the worst act of Islamic terrorism — and the worst act of political violence — ever committed on U.S. soil. But at least as germane to the dispute is the question of whether these particular parties ought to be doing so. <strong>The fact that an apologist for terrorists and an associate of terrorist-allied organizations is proceeding with this provocation is indecent.</strong> We have thousands of mosques in the United States, and who knows how many Islamic cultural centers in New York City. <strong>We do not need this one, in this place, built by these people. We’re all stocked up on Hamas apologists, thanks very much.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The libertarians among us are wrong to take a blasé attitude toward this, asking, “If their permit applications are in order, why not?” Here is why not: because this is not just a zoning dispute. <strong>The World Trade Center is, in effect, the gravesite of 3,000 Americans who died at the hands of Islamist radicals, and to build a mosque on this site — particularly a mosque with Muslim Brotherhood connections — would be extraordinarily unseemly.</strong> We will not appeal to the official powers to use the machinery of government to stop this project. We appeal, instead, to the sense of decency of the American Muslim community, and to its patriotism. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Beyond that, Americans should make their displeasure with this project felt economically and socially: No contractor, construction company, or building-trades union that accepts a dime of the Cordoba Initiative’s money should be given a free pass—nobody who sells them so much as a nail, or a hammer to drive it in with. This is an occasion for boycotts and vigorous protests — and, above all, for bringing down a well-deserved shower of shame upon those involved with this project, and on those politicians who have meekly gone along with it. It is an indecent proposal and an intentional provocation.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">That is our overall gripe. The fact that they want it so close to Ground Zero is an affront to this nation, and every American should lodge their formal complaints to the companies involved in its construction. We don't support boycotts because they generally don't work. But in this instance we do support a boycott, including a boycott of New York City. The asininity involved in this decision is astronomical. If those on the Landmark Commission are elected, we hope New York residents boot them from office. If they're appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, then Bloomberg should be ousted. (He is for the mosque being built; such is the life of a disrespectful ass. Giuliani would never have allowed this mosque to go through.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The fact that this mosque's construction will be funded by Muslim Brotherhood blood money is sickening. This is how the leaders of Islam now are acting. The moderates don't have a voice in Islam. They're shunned, or worse, silenced. The radicals are the ones in charge now, and while they can offer empty platitudes about how this will help "heal the wounds," it's a lie. They will be celebrating their mosque's construction <a href="http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/b1d033d7-0044-42c3-a506-220486221caa"><span style="color:#ff0000;">just two short blocks from the most sanctified, honored ground in the entire nation</span></a></li>. And readers will kindly recall that this is not the first time hallowed ground has been tainted. <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2005/09/10/flight-93-memorial-seeing-is-believing/">The United 93 memorial in Shanksville, PA</a></li> drew significant ire and controversy with its shape (a red crescent) and alignment (in direct alignment with Mecca).</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The terrorist apologists will stop at nothing when it comes to infiltrating this name, and every time we give in, it's a victory for them. For the last time, repeat after me: Lan Astalem -- I will not submit! Enough is enough. We live in a nation where we are being ruled by the minority, and their leadership (if you could call it that) is extremely detrimental to this great republic. It's time to get rid of the politically-correct @$$holes, and take this nation -- it's identity, it's ideals, and it's values -- back from these people who seem intent on wrecking everything good about America. The Landmark Commission should be ashamed for clearing the way for this Muslim front group to erect a mosque so close to Ground Zero. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">This will not help "heal" squat. It'll only serve to continue the animosity towards a group of people who can't seem to figure out how to drag their 7th Century, anachronistic asses into the 21st Century.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-31353473369702144372010-08-03T12:09:00.000-07:002010-08-03T12:10:19.783-07:00House outlook for midterms: Pelosi would be smart to worry<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">The midterm elections are less than 100 days away, but in an interview on This Week with Christiane Amanpour <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/pelosi-nervous-midterms/story?id=11299127"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Nancy Pelosi says she's not nervous about the upcoming election</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">In an exclusive interview on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., struck a confident tone on the electoral prospects for Democrats this November, despite predictions by many, including at least one top White House official, that Democrats could lose control of the House. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">"I'm not nervous at all," Pelosi said. "I never take anything for granted. And our agenda now is ... we're not going back to the failed policies of the Bush administration. We're going forward," she said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">"So what does it make you feel then, when the president's own spokesman said that you might lose the majority?" Amanpour asked her. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">"With all due respect," Pelosi shot back, "I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about what the president's employees say about one thing or another." </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">She's not nervous, but many of her colleagues are. <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/02/abc-pelosi-should-be-nervous-about-november/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Captain Ed</span></a></li> points to recent pieces written on <a href="http://rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The Rothenberg Political Report</span></a></li>. For example, there's this assessment written by Mr. Rothenberg:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Democrats now hold a 39-seat edge in the House. Yet the playing field continues to expand: The Rothenberg Political Report currently lists 88 seats as “in play.” Seventy-six of those seats currently are held by Democrats.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Many of the same places that helped build the president’s winning coalition in his race against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — states such as Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and Pennsylvania — could be the places where Republicans rack up the gains they need to take back the House.<br /><br />In many of those districts, the Obama agenda has been widely unpopular. House members are left defending votes on items including the stimulus, bailouts, health care and cap-and-trade that have grown more unpopular with the passage of time.<br /><br />It means that the president and his agenda will very much be on the ballot — while the president himself won’t be the best position to help Democrats play defense.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">I said in January of last year that if the Democrats led as moderates, and kept their hard-Left ideology in check, they'd be successful come the 2010 midterms, and the 2012 election. I warned that if it wasn't kept in check, the people of America would do their best to bounce the problems from office. And no one can deny that the Democrats and their agenda is a problem. It's a serious one because they haven't addressed the problems facing the nation. They've exacerbated the recession, spent the nation into trillions of dollars in debt, and they've engaged in thuggish tactics that would've made Al Capone jealous. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />Let’s be clear about where we all would be if unemployment were actually at 4 percent right now.<br /><br />Most of the hand-wringing about jobs and the economy would be gone, stronger employment numbers would mean a more vibrant economy (which almost certainly would mean higher federal and state revenues and lower deficits) and polling undoubtedly would show the president with better numbers, Congress with a higher approval rating and the Democratic Party more popular than it is now. Because of that, the huge enthusiasm gap that now exists and is likely to fuel GOP gains in November would be much smaller or nonexistent. …<br /><br />Actions, indeed, do have consequences. In this case, the combination of an aggressive Democratic agenda, a weak jobs recovery and a large deficit has created a political environment very different from the one 18 months ago, when Democrats won a special election in New York’s open 20th district by demonizing Republicans for waffling on, then opposing, Obama’s economic stimulus plan.<br /><br />It’s very difficult to imagine Republican gains in the House of fewer than two dozen seats, and my own newsletter, after going race by race, recently placed likely GOP gains in the range of 28 to 33 seats, if not higher.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">The nation has been waiting to see if the adults will step forward and deal with the economic problems we're facing, but they haven't. The children are still behind the wheel of dad's car with an open bottle of Jack Daniels held between their knees. The unemployment numbers haven't eased, and it's taken shady practices to make people think that the employment situation is getting better. (That was revealed when temporary Census workers reported being hired, then laid off, then rehired again, skewing the numbers for a couple of months leading up to summer.) The Democrats haven't taken care of our economic woes. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Instead of spending us into oblivion, the Democrats could have easily written themselves a ticket to success by lowering tax rates across the board, and suspending all non-essential government spending. Hell, if they really wanted to turn the economy around in record time, that would help, but a tax holiday for small businesses for a year would have greatly improved the economic situation in America. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">But the Democrats couldn't set aside their ideology long enough to do what was right. As was revealed back in February of last year, the Democrats had a forty year wish-list that they wanted to implement immediately. Their own selfish desires for power and control have brought reality to their doorstep, and a lot of them are going to lose their jobs this fall. The House appears to be a lock, with the GOP taking as many as forty seats. The Senate isn't as rock solid, but the GOP will make some significant gains there. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">And what are the Democrats going to do after the bloodbath in November? The rumors on Capitol Hill is that in their lame duck session, they're going to do their damnedest to ram through everything they couldn't get passed earlier such as cap and trade and card check. The small coalition of Blue Dogs in the House begging the president to back an initiative to extend President Bush's tax cuts beyond 31 December of this year lack the clout to push for the move. Pelosi has no desire to extend those tax cuts. The quote above in her interview proves it. She's blaming Bush, just like Barry does. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">The simple fact is that the Democrats are obviously too stupid to figure out where they went wrong, and they're too bloody arrogant to admit they were wrong. Mr. Rothenberg finishes up <a href="http://rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com/2010/07/gop-gains-werent-always-inevitable-this.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">with more wisdom, and reasoned analysis, than the Democrats (especially Nancy Pelosi) will ever come up with</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />The House surely is at great risk, and anyone who asserts that Democrats are certain to maintain their majority after November is simply not worth listening to on the subject. The trajectory of this election cycle is clear. But don’t delude yourself. It didn’t have to be this way.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Hammer. Nail. Head. 'Nuff said.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-48015170791287034012010-07-27T11:45:00.000-07:002010-07-27T11:45:50.942-07:00Dennis Prager on why the Left hates conservatives<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">I've often considered writing such a piece myself, but every time I begin it, I always notice that I just don't quite put it the right way. I know the Left despises conservatives for a whole host of reasons but <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/438670/why-the-left-hates-conservatives/dennis-prager"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Dennis Prager</span></a></li> puts it succinctly today at National Review. (And before any liberal readers go off half-cocked on this column please remember that Mr. Prager always speaks in generalities. Of course not every liberal shares this same hatred of conservatives, but the vast majority do.):</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Of all the recent revelations to come out of JournoList, an e-mail list consisting of about 400 liberal/left journalists, perhaps the most telling is the depth of their hatred for conservatives. That these journalists would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. What is jolting is the hatred of conservatives on display, as exemplified by the e-mail from a public-radio reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death — and the apparent absence of any objection from her fellow liberal journalists.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs — such things exist on the right as well — but to mainstream, elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the Left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the Left’s hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes that they could be present while Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore died slowly and painfully of a heart attack?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people of the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them. The question is, why?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Here are three possible answers. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">First, the Left thinks the Right is evil. Granting the exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad. Examples are innumerable. Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic party, said, “In contradistinction to the Republicans, Democrats don’t believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.” Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), among many similar comments, said, “I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It’s very simple: We have a conscience.” ...</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Second, when you don’t confront real evil, you hate those who do. You can see this on almost any school playground. The kid who confronts the school bully is often resented more than the bully. Whether out of guilt over their own cowardice or out of fear that the one who confronted the bully will provoke the bully to lash out more, those who refuse to confront the bully often resent the one who does. During the 1980s, the Left expressed far more hatred for Ronald Reagan than for Soviet Communist dictator Leonid Brezhnev. When Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” the liberal world was enraged . . . at Reagan. ...</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Third, the Left’s utopian vision is prevented only by the Right.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">From its inception, leftism has been a secular utopian religion. As Ted Kennedy, paraphrasing his brother Robert F. Kennedy, said, “Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?” That exemplifies left-wing idealism — imagining a utopian future. There will be no poor, no war, no conflict, no inequality. That future is only a few more government programs away from reality. And who stands in the way of such perfection? Conservatives. How could a utopian not hate a conservative?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">This hatred will only increase if the Left feels its programs to greatly increase the size of government are in any way threatened in the forthcoming elections. The problem is that this hatred does not decrease when the Left is in power.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Hatred of conservatives is so much a part of the Left that the day the Left stops hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of the Left as we know it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Mr. Prager is more correct than people will give him credit for. The simple fact of the matter is that we conservatives utilize logic, intellect, common sense, and a real-world understanding to motivate our ideology. Whereas the Left will claim we want to see people starve when we stand in opposition to an increase in welfare or jobless benefits, we argue that it would be more beneficial to help employ those people, and ease their tax burdens. Give a tax break to small businesses (America's bread-and-butter when it comes to employment), and that employer can hire more workers, employing more people, and instilling personal responsibility. But the Left doesn't like that idea so they throw up an emotional straw man filled with the idea that people would rather have a hand-out than work an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. On this point there is reinforcement.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">In his autobiography <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Life-Ronald-Reagan/dp/0743400259"><span style="color:#ff0000;">"An American Life"</span></a></li> Ronald Reagan wrote about the work he did helping unemployed people during the Great Depression. He noted that when he found the people he was helping work, they stood a little taller, felt pride in doing work. But the person who oversaw what he was doing scolded him to stop helping these people. Just give them their unemployment check, and send them on their way. Reagan knew then as we do now that a man takes pride in the work he does, takes pride in being able to provide for his family. A man who is given a hand-out feels no pride. In fact, as my grandfather used to tell me "That which is given has no value." He was right. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The Left thrives on emotion. It is an adolescent emotion that has morphed into an ideology that is a detriment to any free society. They believe in a larger, more intrusive government. They abhor the idea of personal responsibility. When it comes to defense, they're more apt to point the finger at America and blame it for the ills and gripes of others. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The very worst of liberalism is embodied in the current president. Barry has exhibited every pratfall of liberalism to the point where the public is genuinely outraged at much of what he has done, and they abhor him for his general attitude towards this nation. He takes no pride in the fact that America is a "shining city on a hill;" an embodiment of freedom and democracy that the world always looks to. And his cronies in Congress are no better. Radical liberals like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are the cause of the lack of faith in Congress amongst the voting populace. <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/08/congress-hits-single-digits-rasmussen/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Captain Ed reported on 8 July</span></a></li> that congressional approval had hit a first time low of 95 -- the first time Congress's approval dropped to single digits. Who controls Congress? The Left does.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">When the Left gets their way, the people aren't pleased. America is a center-right nation, not a hard Left nation. Therein lies the problem for liberals this coming November. The voting public is going to throw these bums out in the hopes that the GOP can do better. I don't know if that'll work, but right now anything is better than handing the Left the car keys after a year and a half of binge drinking. Make no mistake, they're drunk on power, and it's already evident in the rhetoric coming out of them now. The Left has said after they lose in November, before the GOP takes back the reins of power, that their lame-duck session is going to be one jam-packed with everything they couldn't get passed in the last 18 months. Rather than listen to the people, they're content to move forward -- full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, and damn the nation for retaliating against them.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Elections have consequences, and the people would be better suited to remember that before leaping off the cliff with the rest of the lemmings.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-19028488731469964682010-07-21T09:54:00.000-07:002010-07-21T10:04:44.402-07:00JournoList Part Two -- Gag FOX News, and bias against the Tea Party movement<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"><a href="http://fedpapers.blogspot.com/2010/07/journolist-scandal-pointing-out-obvious.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Yesterday, Jonathan Strong revealed the JournoList discussion of how the media insulated Barry from the Jeremiah Wright controversy</span></a></li>. I know I was snarky when I said that he was pointing out the obvious, but what was interesting about his piece was how quickly the media circled the wagons in an orchestrated effort to protect their candidate of choice. <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/liberal-journalists-suggest-government-shut-down-fox-news/print/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Today, Mr. Strong points out that many big names in the media debated over whether or not the government should take control of FOX News</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. </span><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “</span><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/3/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization.</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. </span><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/7/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">“I hate to open this can of worms,”</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />And so a debate ensued. Time’s Scherer, who had seemed to express support for increased regulation of Fox, suddenly appeared to have qualms: </span><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/4/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">“Do you really want the political parties/white house picking</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />But Zasloff stuck to his position. “</span><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/8/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">I think that they are doing that anyway; they leak to whom they want to for political purposes</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">,” he wrote. “If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Scherer seemed alarmed. “So we would have press briefings in which only media organizations that are deemed by the briefer to be acceptable are invited to attend?”<br /><br />John Judis, a senior editor at the New Republic, came down on Zasloff’s side, the side of censorship. “Pre-Fox,” he wrote, “I’d say Scherer’s questions made sense as a question of principle. </span><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/2/"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">Now it is only tactical.</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Now, is anyone surprised by this discussion, open and candid, amongst journalists? It shouldn't. the alphabet networks and the mainstream news industry have been attacking FOX News since it first took to the cable airwaves. And it has consistently decimated the other cable news networks. At this point in time, MSNBC resembles Air America in its death throes. Their commentators are partisan jokes that no one with a brain takes seriously, and their bias is so evident that it's laughable to think these people still claim to be unbiased news observers, commentators, and reporters.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">As for pulling FOX's license, I'm not too sure that would be possible because, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/21/journolisters-debate-endorse-govt-control-of-fox-news/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">as Captain Ed points out in his piece on this topic today</span></a></li> FOX may not have an FCC license:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000000;">I’m actually unclear on whether Fox News has an FCC license, <strong>since it uses satellite transmission rather than actual broadcast through local affiliates. Usually, it’s the affiliates themselves that have to get the licenses, not the network whose content they broadcast, and Fox News doesn’t use traditional TV stations for its content.</strong> But that’s a more esoteric point. The point is that Zasloff has no trouble letting government determine whether a news organization should be allowed to publish, apparently based on nothing more than its discomfort with the news itself. Not only does this sound as though Zasloff needs a refresher course on Constitutional law and free speech, it also sounds like an endorsement for fascism, in which governments pick and choose which businesses are allowed to exist based on their level of cooperation with the government.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">And speaking of fascism, early on in Mr. Strong's piece he cites Bloomberg's Ryan Donmoyer and his illiteracy when it comes to history when comparing events to the Tea Party movement:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">In the summer of 2009, agitated citizens from across the country flocked to town hall meetings to berate lawmakers who had declared support for President Obama’s health care bill. For most people, the protests seemed like an exercise in participatory democracy, rowdy as some of them became.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists or actual Nazis.<br /><br />“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, <strong>is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts</strong>?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Quick history lesson for Mr. Donmoyer: The Brownshirts were the SA, the precursor to the SS, and were so named because of their uniform. Once the SS was established, it quickly pushed the SA (Brownshirts) out of power. And the point behind their creation was to sweep national socialists into power under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. The Tea Party movement is comprised of everyday, average America citizens that aren't pleased with the direction the federal government is going in, they're not happy with the fact their elected representatives aren't listening to them, and they're appalled at the intense and swift growth of government intervention in their lives. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">The Tea Party movement wasn't established to commit a coup by election, as the Nazis had been. The movement was established to send a message to Washington, DC to knock off their crap, and listen to the people, and the movement promised repercussions in the midterms if their voice wasn't heeded. And if you've been watching the polls, they're telling a story of a political bloodbath in November. Do I believe the prognostications that are claiming this will be a sweeping victory for the GOP? I take such predictions with a grain of salt.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Is there a chance that the GOP could take the House back? Yes, a very good one, and even Democrats are admitting it. The House is divided with 257 seats controlled by Democrats and 178 seats controlled by the Republicans. The GOP only needs 39 seats to take the majority. So it is a distinct possibility the GOP could retake the House. The Senate is separated by nine votes, and it could also be taken from the Democrats. When the party in charge is the focus of the voter's ire, the voters will take their frustration out on that party. The Tea Party is hardly a <em>putsch</em>, and it's offensive that a journalist would even make such an equivocation. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-84687926239403229702010-07-21T08:18:00.001-07:002010-07-21T08:19:36.986-07:00New Quinnipiac numbers; things trending down for Barry<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">And the hits just keep on coming, folks. <a href="http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseId=1478&ss=print"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Quinnipiac has released some interesting numbers today that show Barry, if he runs in 2012, could very well lose to any Republican, named or otherwise</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">A year after President Barack Obama's political honeymoon ended, his job approval rating has dropped to a negative 44 - 48 percent, his worst net score ever, and American voters say by a narrow 39 - 36 percent margin that they would vote for an unnamed Republican rather than President Obama in 2012, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />This compares to a 48 - 43 percent approval for Obama in a May 26 national poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University and a 57 - 33 percent approval last July, <strong>just before the political firestorm created by opposition to his health care plan galvanized political opponents and turned independent voters against him. </strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br /><strong>In this latest survey of more than 2,000 voters, independent voters disapprove of Obama 52 - 38 percent and say 37 - 27 percent they would vote for a Republican contender in 2012. </strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br /><strong>American voters also say 48 - 40 percent Obama does not deserve reelection in 2012.</strong> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Anti-incumbent sentiment slams both parties as voters disapprove 59 - 31 percent of the job Democrats are doing, and disapprove 59 - 29 percent of Republicans in Congress. <strong>But voters say 43 - 38 percent they would vote for a Republican in a generic Congressional race. </strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />American voters say 42 - 32 percent that Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush, similar to the 43 - 30 percent who felt that way in January of 2010. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />"It was a year ago, during the summer of 2009 that America's love affair with President Barack Obama began to wane. In July of 2009, the President had a 57 - 33 percent approval rating. Today, his support among Democrats remains strong, <strong>but the disillusionment among independent voters, who dropped from 52 - 37 percent approval to 52 - 38 percent disapproval in the last 12 months, is what leads to his weakness overall when voters start thinking about 2012</strong>," said Peter A. Brown., assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />"In politics a month is a lifetime and we have 28 months until November of 2012. But politicians with re-elect numbers at 40 percent bear watching," Brown added. ...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">"The Republican tilt of the electorate little more than 100 days before the 2010 election is evident, but not overwhelming. Republicans hold a 43 - 38 percent lead on the 'generic ballot,' compared to a 42 - 34 percent Democratic lead in July 2009," said Brown. "What a difference a year makes." </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Voter approval of the President's handling of some of the nation's problems shows: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />-- Disapprove 56 - 39 percent of his handling of the economy; </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />-- Disapprove 46 - 43 percent of his handling of foreign policy; </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />-- Disapprove 51 - 41 percent of his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill; </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />-- Disapprove 58 - 30 percent of his handling of illegal immigration; </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />-- Approve 46 - 34 percent of his nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />"The massive disapproval of his handling of illegal immigration stems from voter opposition to his decision to have the government ask the federal courts to throw out the Arizona law. They say <strong>60 - 28 percent</strong> the lawsuit is a bad idea," said Brown.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Bear in mind that we still have just over two years before 2012, but the fact remains that Barry has dropped like a rock the longer he has been in office. The "hope" and "change" from 2008 is gone, the honeymoon is over, and he's honked off the number one constituency that put him over the top. I know there are prognosticators that claim it was minorities that put him over the top, but they're wrong. The Independent voter was the key to the whole election, and after the health care debacle back in March, where an overwhelming majority of Americans did not want to see it passed after they learned what it entailed, the Independents walked away from Barry and haven't looked back since.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">This is why Quinnipiac is focused on the Independent's disillusionment with him. They bought his crap, hook, line, and sinker. A year after Barry was inaugurated we're sick of hearing from these people about how they were duped. Know why we're sick of hearing this whining and complaining?</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">BECAUSE WE BLOODY WELL TOLD YOU WHO THIS MAN WAS, WHAT HE WAS ABOUT, AND THE FACT THAT HE HAD ZERO EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE!!</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">This schmuck hasn't even run a bloody lemonade stand, and we listened to so many people during the election speak of their hopes and dreams for this man. Well, guess what? You were played like a harp from Hell. The Pied Piper strutted on in from Chicago, and the rats lined up to follow him. Only they look less like rats and more like lemmings running right off of a cliff.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Of course, <a href="http://fedpapers.blogspot.com/2010/07/journolist-scandal-pointing-out-obvious.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">thanks to the "One-Party Media" covering Barry's @$$ in 2008</span></a></li> these voters were "misinformed" or not privy to what we knew. I mean, let's face facts folks: Unless you spend a decent amount of time on the Internet each day, or unless you listen to talk radio throughout your day, you aren't going to get the full story on ANY issue from today's media outlets if the journalists don't want you to know about it. The media quashed any and all stories regarding Jeremiah Wright in 2008, and George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson were rebuked by their fellow journalists for even broaching the subject with Barry. (In their colleague's eyes, it was beyond the pale to even bring it up in a presidential debate.)</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Chances are you won't hear too much about this poll today, and you sure as Hell won't see it anywhere in the media. 2010 is on everyone's mind right now, and it should be. The 2012 race won't even begin to heat up until after the midterms as GOP contenders jockey for position and file their paperwork. Our focus now should be in getting rid of as many Democrats in Congress as possible in an attempt to take back the Congress. I'm not going to get into a tit-for-tat argument over which House of Congress is more important to retake. They both have their respective power, and the necessity to wrestle control away from the Democrats is imperative this year. Furthermore, the Republicans need to promise, and carry through on the promise, to rollback as much of the president's radical agenda as they can starting with Obamacare. In fact, the Republicans need to campaign on easing the tax burden on the American worker and on American companies to try and bring us out of this recession. Additionally they need to stand in firm, lock-step opposition to raising the national deficit anymore than it already is until this recession is over.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">But regardless of who runs in 2012, we seriously don't see a scenario where Barry is anything more than a Jimmy Carter redux, in and out in four years.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-47398164998331173342010-07-20T11:57:00.001-07:002010-07-20T12:00:43.570-07:00JournoList scandal: Pointing out the obvious<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">For those that don't know what JournoList is, it's a Google Groups forum for the media to discuss politics and current events. It was <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/03/26/journolist-revealed-inside-the-liberal-media-email-cabal.aspx"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Mickey Kaus</span></a></li> that broke the story behind JournoList, and put up on his blog a public discussion on the site. The public got an inside look at the media and their inherent liberal bias. It created a firestorm that came and went within a week or two. <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Today, Jonathan Strong from the Daily Caller</span></a></li> exposes just part of the lengths the media went through to protect their golden child, Barry, in the 2008 primaries and the general election: (HT to <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/103274/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Glenn Reynolds</span></a></li>)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">As Professor Reynolds urges, read it all. It's three pages long, and it's eye-opening to those who still think the media is an unbiased observer/reporter of the news of the day. They're not, folks. They haven't been ever since the day that <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Walter Duranty</span></a></li> whitewashed Stalin's atrocities in the Soviet Union. It continued through <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/9302"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Walter Kronkite's</span></a></li> days as a biased journalist, and up through <a href="http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/category/rathergate/">Dan Rather</a></li> who was made infamous for his story about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, informally dubbed "Ra<sup>th</sup>ergate." </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">(The "th" superscripted in the scandal's title refers to the "th" in the <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/12615"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Killian memo</span></a></li> denoting the 187th fighter wing that Bush was a member of. The "th" in 187th was superscripted; a task unable to be done on typewriters of the day, and required a different typewriter for that sort of feature that Killian's secretary said he never would have used for such a compartmentalized memo.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">In short, Mr. Strong is revealing nothing more than what we already knew. The media is biased. They can't deny it, and they can't even explain it. In numerous interviews with journalists, <a href="http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Hugh Hewitt</span></a></li> has consistently asked those reporters if there is a bias in the media. By an overwhelming majority, they tell him there is, and it's to the liberal side of the issues/ideology.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Are all media outlets included in this? Yes they are, even FOX News. Ywes, even FOX News has its ideological liberals. The difference between them and others is that they still present a balanced approach to news commentary, and when they report the news they do so as journalist of old did -- Report the facts, and let the viewer/listener determine the truth or veracity of the story. MSM outlets, like those listed in Mr. Strong's piece, don't do that. They start from a point of ideological bias, and craft the story (or defense of, in the case of Barry and Jeremiah Wright) around that bias.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"><a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/103259/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Professor Reynolds</span></a></li> also brings up another take on the media on his site today. It comes from <a href="http://rightcoast.typepad.com/rightcoast/2010/07/the-oneparty-media-maimon-schwarzschild.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Maimon Schwarzschild at Right Coast</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The usual disillusioned phrase is “mainstream media” or MSM. The problem, of course, is not mainstream-hood. Angrily talking about the “state-run media” is even more misguided: the media were anything but state-run, or state-sympathetic, when Bush was president; and Republican or conservative officials or judges can expect relentless hostility now as much as ever.</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What we have is One-Party Media: newspapers, broadcast networks, newsmagazines which represent the views and preoccupations of the Democratic Party and the political left, and consistently denigrate or ignore the views and preoccupations of the political right or centre-right; and which very often systematically ignore any news or information which might reflect badly on the one party, or reflect well on the policies, proposals, or values of the other. . . . It is extraordinary, and I think unprecedented, that a free press has voluntarily transformed itself into something not very different from the controlled press in an undemocratic country. But that is what has happened.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Say it with me, folks: "Understatement of the Year." We do have nothing more than a One-Party Media, for the most part, and they will do anything they can to protect this incompetent, obtuse, agenda-driven president that was elected by a majority of America that were sucked in by a snake-oil salesman. He offered them "hope" and "change;" empty rhetoric that didn't require any specificity. But now that the people see that the emperor has no clothes (and no clue, for that matter), they're turning on him. Thanks to those who are investigating the JournoList scandal, we see that the all powerful Wizard IS hiding behind the curtain, and that the media -- the Wizard -- is the source of Barry's real power. So long as his willing defenders are ready to paint dissenters as racists (their preferred card in this debate) Barry is safe behind the facade of competence and power. In fact, he's a weak, petulant bully. They know it. We know it. And now we know that they know it otherwise there wouldn't have been a need to dig in and coordinate a defense for him.</span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-28914485391288746092010-07-20T10:40:00.000-07:002010-07-20T10:43:36.412-07:00Kagan out of Judiciary Committee<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Yes, Elena Kagan was <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100720/ap_on_go_su_co/us_kagan_supreme_court;_ylt=Agfy0.IG9Mu2M5w1lVcT0t.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNuYzIxdTI3BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNzIwL3VzX2thZ2FuX3N1cHJlbWVfY291cnQEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMxMQRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDanVkaWNpYXJ5cGFu"><span style="color:#ff0000;">voted out of the Judiciary Committee this morning by a vote of 13-6</span></a></li>. Her passage shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, folks:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#990000;">Pushing toward an election-year Supreme Court confirmation vote, a polarized Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday approved </span><span style="color:#990000;">Elena Kagan</span><span style="color:#990000;"> to be the fourth female justice.</span></span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Just one Republican joined Democrats to approve Kagan's nomination and send it to the full Senate, where she's expected to win confirmation within weeks.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., broke with his party to cast the sole GOP "yes" vote on President Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. The vote was 13-6.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">I'll give you guys the skinny on dumb@$$ Lindsey Graham, and his idiotic comments about Kagan, but let me give you the general consensus of the GOP on Kagan:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#990000;">But most </span><span style="color:#990000;">GOP senators</span><span style="color:#990000;"> are against her, arguing that she would put her political views ahead of the law. They point to what they call her liberal agenda and on such issues as abortion and gun rights, and have chastised her for the decision as dean of Harvard Law School to bar military recruiters from the campus career services office because of the policy against openly gay soldiers.</span></span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Ms. Kagan's record shows that she supports an activist judicial philosophy, and that her personal and political views drive her legal views," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">That is exactly the opinion of most of the GOP senators on Kagan. She lacks judicial experience, she doesn't have a great track record as the US Solicitor General, and she has an activist view of what jurists should be doing. In short, she is the president. She is one of his rubber-stamps. She shouldn't make it to the Supreme Court, but she will. Regardless of how the vote goes down, the Democrats don't even need the GOP to approve her. This sixty vote canard is pure BS. Democrats want sixty votes to stave off a GOP filibuster, which isn't even on the horizon. The GOP never intended to launch a filibuster. Why? Because our side plays by the rules. The president is entitled to his appointees. The GOP needed to pull out the long knives in committee, and show the people WHY Kagan shouldn't be on the high court. They didn't. They dropped the ball.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Now, onto Senator Lindsey "Idiot" Graham's <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/lindsey-graham-to-support-kagan-plenty-of-reasons-for-a-conservative-to-vote-yes.php"><span style="color:#ff0000;">clueless comments about Ms. Kagan</span></a></li>. Hold onto your lunch, folks: [emphasis mine]</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">“<strong>What’s in Elena Kagan’s heart is that of a good person</strong> who adopts a philosophy that I disagree with,” Graham said after other Republicans criticized Kagan, the solicitor general, as lacking judicial experience. “There’s plenty of reasons for a conservative to vote no, but there are plenty of reasons for a conservative to vote yes.”</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“She is a loyal American, very patriotic,” Graham said after detailing her record on military issues. <strong>He said Kagan was “smart” and “funny” and that shows “you are pretty comfortable with who you are.”</strong> He added, “she’s liberal.” Graham also said Miguel Estrada’s letter in support of Kagan hit him “hard” and factored into his decision. During her confirmation hearings, Graham and Kagan discussed Estrada’s legal career and she agreed to write a letter recommending him for the high court. Today, Graham read aloud from Kagan’s letter, which called Estrada a “towering intellect.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">He cited Barack Obama’s election in 2008, saying he’s constitutionally bound to support a qualified nominee and “honor elections” even though he would have made a different choice because he and Obama are on opposite political sides. <strong>“She’s passed all those tests,”</strong> Graham said.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Republican also cited upcoming elections, even though he’s not up for reelection this fall. “I’m going to vote for her,” Graham said, “and that doesn’t mean I’m pro-choice. <strong>I believe the last election had consequences and this president chose someone who is qualified, who has the experience and knowledge to serve on this court, who is in the mainstream of liberal philosophy and understand the difference between being a judge and a politician.”</strong></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">I hope Lindsey Graham doesn't lie awake at night wondering why so many Republicans -- so many conservatives -- detest him. This is a good example of why people don't like him. Who cares if Elena Kagan is a "good person," or if she's "smart" and "funny?" Are those qualifications for the high court? No, they're not. The qualifications are pretty simple: Rule on constitutional challenges, and leave your personal policy preferences at the door; be in "good Behaviour" while serving. "Good Behaviour," for those unaware of the term, comes directly from Article III of the US Constitution, and judicial activism, i.e., legislating from the bench, hardly qualifies as "good Behaviour." In voting for her, Senator Graham is signalling to his constituents that he doesn't care what they think. <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/june_2010/42_still_oppose_kagan_s_confirmation_but_87_expect_her_to_be_confirmed"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Rasmussen's poll on Kagan at the beginning of July</span></a></li> tells the story of how people view her:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that the plurality (42%) still opposes Kagan’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Thirty-six percent (36%) favor her confirmation, while 22% are still undecided. </span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Whether they want to see it happen or not, most voters continue to see Kagan’s nomination as inevitable. Eight-seven percent (87%) say it’s at least somewhat likely Kagan will be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. That number includes 59% who say it’s Very Likely, the highest result yet.<br />Voters’ support for Kagan’s confirmation has changed little over the month of June, falling into a range of 33% to 36%. Meanwhile, the number of voters who are opposed to her confirmation has ranged from 41% to 42% during the same period. Voters were more divided on the question in surveys conducted in May. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">While 62% of Democrats favor Kagan’s nomination, nearly the same number of Republicans (65%) oppose it. Voters not affiliated with either major political party are more evenly divided, but the plurality (49%) opposes. </span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">What do these numbers tell me? Democrats were always in favor of her, regardless of what she said in her hearings. Republicans were opposed to her, especially when certain aspects of her past came to light. Those without an opinion didn't have the time or the information about her at their fingertips. That last part tells me the GOP dropped the ball in showing just how dangerous a clueless, activist-minded nominee will be on the high court. Don't buy the bull the media is shoveling. She's not a moderate. She's not an originalist. She won't reinforce the originalist wing of the court. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Her nomination is payback for her support of Barry, and she will be his rubber-stamp. As for Lindsey Graham, when this POS is up for reelection, he needs to go. Voters in South Carolina, please take note. Get rid of Graham in 2014 and save the nation from the continued headaches from this moron.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-29241171736200888892010-07-13T10:16:00.002-07:002010-07-13T10:16:58.733-07:00Andrew McCarthy deconstructs Eric Holder<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Andrew McCarthy is a former US attorney that worked in the Justice Department, and worked on the cases to try to the 1993 World Trade Center bombers including the "Blind Sheikh," Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to the prosecution of terrorists that we have captured, and he's taken Eric Holder to the woodshed before over the idiotic notion that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five of his confederates would receive a fairer trial in civilian court. <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/437992/holder-aiding-al-qaeda/andrew-c-mccarthy"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Today is no exception</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;">Eric Holder is chief among the many Obama Justice Department lawyers who, during the Bush years, donated their services as private attorneys for the benefit of al-Qaeda terrorists. His motive was to frustrate efforts to treat our wartime enemies as just that: wartime enemies. He preferred the failed law-enforcement model that regards our enemies as garden-variety criminals — the counterterrorism approach he had overseen as deputy attorney general while America was serially attacked during the Clinton years. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;">Nothing has changed. As the Obama administration’s attorney general, Holder is still gratuitously taking positions that help the likes of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Witness his baffling suggestion this weekend that it would be better to try KSM and five other 9/11 plotters in civilian court because of the purported legal uncertainty about whether guilty pleas are permissible in military death-penalty cases.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">To be clear, I am not contending that the attorney general approves of terrorists or that his purpose is to help them. I am saying that Holder is in the thrall of an ideology, the inevitable effect of which is to aid our enemies. This progressive ideology, shared by many legal elites, holds that the use of military legal processes during military conflicts — processes to which the United States has resorted throughout our history — is somehow a greater danger to us than international terrorism itself.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The attorney general would doubtless like to see al-Qaeda chieftains convicted and executed, but only if it is done on his own terms. That means using civilian courts, regardless of whether this rewards the terrorists who have committed the worst atrocities with valuable due-process advantages; betrays the underlying imperative of international humanitarian law to protect civilians from being targeted for attacks; and makes it more difficult to convict and execute war criminals.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The attorney general’s latest claims are grossly misleading. First, he asserts that guilty pleas are permitted in civilian capital cases — as if to imply that only in military courts must we have burdensome trials in which juries must approve the death penalty. Try telling that one to the Moussaoui jury. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">At his civilian trial in Virginia, Zacharias Moussaoui did plead guilty to participation in the 9/11 plot. But that plea did not end the case. Under federal law, capital cases are bifurcated: Even if a defendant admits guilt, the issue of punishment must still be tried to the jury. Holder conveniently elides mention not only of this fact but of the history of capital punishment in civilian international-terrorism cases. In the 16 years since the federal death penalty was restored in 1994 — 16 years throughout which the United States has been ravaged by jihadist terror — the Justice Department has approved capital charges for exactly three defendants: Moussaoui and two of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombers. In each case, civilian juries rejected the death penalty. If Holder is saying there’s a better chance these savages will be executed if they are tried in the civilian system (and that is precisely what he’s implying), there is nothing to support that claim.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Second, the claim Holder floats that guilty pleas may not be permissible in capital military-commission cases is meritless. Holder did not explain his theory, but we can speculate that he is referring to a suggestion spun last year in a New York Times report. The paper intimated that federal law might be ambiguous on whether guilty pleas were allowed. Positing that “military law” is the “model for the military commission rules,” the Times report pointed out that, in courts martial for members of our armed forces, guilty pleas are prohibited in capital cases. Prosecutors must prove guilt even if a soldier wants to plead guilty. The Times, which is resolutely anti–death penalty, added that this was to “ensure fairness.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Nice try. Military commissions are not courts martial, even though it has been a project of the Left — when it is not trying to endow our terrorist enemies with all the rights of American civilians — to vest them with the same legal protections our law gives to American soldiers. Commissions, moreover, do not take place pursuant to the “model” of military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Instead, they are governed by a special statute, the Military Commissions Act (MCA). </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Unlike the UCMJ, the MCA provides no bar to guilty pleas in capital cases. To the contrary, MCA Section 949i(b) </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">states</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> that when an accused pleads guilty to “any charge or specification” (capital charges are not mentioned, much less exempted), a finding of guilt “may be entered immediately without a full vote” of the commission. At that point, the commission moves on to consider sentencing. A different MCA provision, Section 949m, </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">directs</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> that commission members must be unanimous in imposing death. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">So where are Holder and the Times getting the idea that guilty pleas are not permitted? They are obviously relying on a portion of Section 949m that says an accused may not be sentenced to death unless he is “convicted of the [capital] offense by the concurrence of all the [commission] members[.]” But that provision is plainly talking about what happens when an accused pleads <em>not guilty</em>, necessitating a <em>trial</em>. It is not silently undertaking to supersede the aforementioned Sec. 949i(b), which separately governs <em>guilty pleas</em>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">As they say, read it all folks. At least by reading this, it will serve as a primer for what actually occurs in a military commission. And based on reading this piece by Mr. McCarthy, it looks as if the new Arizona immigration law, referred to as SB 1070, isn't the only thing Eric Holder hasn't read.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">He apparently hasn't read what the Military Commissions Act says, and that makes him incompetent when dealing with these matters. He needs to admit his mistake and let the commissions take place. Don't put these animals through the US civilian court system. It wasn't designed to deal with such matters, and Holder knows this. But ideology seems to trump intelligence in this administration, especially in the Justice Department.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-18092786916606259322010-07-13T09:45:00.002-07:002010-07-13T09:53:15.590-07:00R.I.P. George Steinbrenner<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Our sincerest condolences to the Steinbrenner family for their loss. And you can expect the same sort of vitriol directed towards George that we'd expect towards a Republican because he was the most hated man in baseball. Too bad <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2010/07/13/2010-07-13_yankees_owner_george_steinbrenner_suffers_a_massive_heart_reports.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">he died this morning</span></a></li> because I'm sure all the wishes calling for his death would've made him smile:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">George Steinbrenner, a towering and intimidating figure who dominated the New York sports scene for 35 years, winning 11 American League pennants and seven world championships as owner of the Yankees, in and around two suspensions from baseball and multiple feuds and firings, died Tuesday morning in Tampa after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 80.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">"The Boss" - as he was so aptly named by Daily News columnist Mike Lupica, his longtime antagonist - died at around 6:30 a.m. He had been suffering from failing health, the result of a series of strokes, for the past few years.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">His family released a statement Tuesday morning. "It is with profound sadness that the family of George M. Steinbrenner III announces his passing," the statement said. "He was an incredible and charitable man. First and foremost he was devoted to his entire family - his beloved wife, Joan; his sisters, Susan Norpell and Judy Kamm, his children, Hank, Jennifer, Jessica and Hal; and all his grandchildren. He was a visionary and a giant in the world of sports. He took a great but struggling franchise and turned it into a champion again."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">As the old yarn states, "There was no joy in Mudville." Sure, that dealt with a player who struck out at the plate, but it is assured that Yankee fans across the nation are in mourning today. Yes, the fans will miss him, and rivals will take delight that they no longer have to deal with Steinbrenner ever again. Of course, that doesn't mean the Yankees will go downhill. Their management is stellar, and they're rebuilding. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The Yankees will be back.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Eleven pennants and seven World Series victories under his direction is the legacy he leaves for Yankee fans. He will be missed. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-16519976405556914642010-07-07T11:03:00.000-07:002010-07-07T11:04:12.567-07:00Rich Lowry on the administration's obtuse move to sue Arizona<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Readers know that my lovely wife and I live in Arizona. We applauded Governor Jan Brewer for having the political courage to sign SB 1070. Well over 70% of the nation supports the new Arizona law; <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/56_oppose_justice_department_challenge_of_arizona_immigration_law"><span style="color:#ff0000;">56% of people polled by Rasmussen disapprove of the Justice Department moving forward with this lawsuit</span></a></li>. But as <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/437691/the-united-states-vs-arizona/rich-lowry"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Rich Lowry observes over at National Review</span></a></li> this lawsuit has everything to do with politics, and little to do with the law:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The legal case against the Arizona immigration law is unassailable.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union argue that the law impermissibly “conflicts with federal law and enforcement priorities,” in the words of the ACLU suit. And who can disagree? Clearly, Arizona’s priority is to enforce the nation’s immigration laws; the federal government’s priority is to ignore them as much as possible. Case closed.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">In his immigration speech last week, Pres. Barack Obama warned ominously of a “patchwork” of immigration laws arising as “states and localities go their own ways.” Oddly enough, sanctuary cities acting in open defiance of immigration laws have never notably been the object of his wrath. Who’s to judge the good-hearted people of Berkeley? There’s only one part of the dismaying patchwork that stirs Obama’s cabinet to outrage, and his attorney general to legal action — Arizona’s commitment to enforcement.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The legal fight between the federal government and Arizona will be a case of dueling insincere arguments. The federal government will pretend that it objects to Arizona’s supposedly creating a wholly new scheme of immigration regulation, when its real problem is that the state wants to take existing law too seriously.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Arizona will pretend that it is acting in accord with longstanding federal intent, when in fact its law never would have been necessary if the feds intended to enforce their own statutes. Instead, the federal government has adopted what the Justice Department calls — in a euphemism for the ages — “balanced administration of the immigration laws.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The case against Arizona rests on “preemption,” the notion that federal law “occupies the field” on immigration and prevents states from passing their own regulations. In the context of the initial gusts of outrage at the Arizona law, this is a somewhat technical transgression. Couldn’t Eric Holder have nailed Arizona for its nascent Nazism?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Arizona has been here before. Pro-immigration groups sued over its workplace enforcement law passed in 2007. All the same arguments were mustered about federal preemption. A U.S. district-court judge (upheld by the appeals court) rejected them because the state law so closely tracked the federal law and didn’t contradict its stated purpose.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The drafters of the new law attempted to meet these same standards by directly drawing on federal statutes for its definition of immigration offenses. The courts have long upheld the right of states to make arrests for violations of federal immigration law, and the Supreme Court in a 1976 decision said federal immigration law didn’t intend “to preclude even harmonious state regulation.” Regardless, the courts will now decide.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The Obama administration hasn’t always been such a stickler for national uniformity. Last year, it reversed Bush-administration policy and stopped prosecuting violations of federal marijuana law by users and suppliers of medical marijuana in states that have legalized it. The upshot is that the direct violation of federal drug laws is acceptable at the state level, whereas the direct enforcement of federal immigration laws at the state level is not.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The animus toward Arizona is nakedly political. Obama, the former hopemonger, has become a moveable feast of cynicism. He promised that he’d move comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. This became known as la promesa de Obama in the Latino community, and it suffered the same ignominious fate as his pledges to enact a net spending cut and to comb through the federal budget line by line. <em>La decepción de Obama.</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;">According to Gallup, Obama’s approval rating has held steady this year among whites (41 percent) and blacks (91 percent). But it has dropped from 69 percent to 57 percent among Latinos. On cue, Obama gave an immigration speech touting comprehensive reform even though there’s no legislative path forward, and his attorney general sued Arizona. If the thoroughly political Holder thought it would help, he’d sue John Boehner.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;">And so the battle is joined, with the federal government making the plea — please, whatever you do, let our immigration laws molder on the books.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">This is all about politics. Barry & Company want to push through their version of immigration reform which is hardly a reform. It will be much like the failed comprehensive immigration reform that was tried back in 2006 by Senators McCain and Kennedy. That reform was basically amnesty-lite; it would focus more on regularizing illegal aliens here now, and less on enforcement. Recall, if you will, the amnesty passed by President Reagan back in 1986, and the promise that went along with that mistake. The promise was that there would be tougher enforcement of America's immigration laws. After the amnesty was approved, the Congress seemingly forgot their promise to focus on border enforcement.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The issue of illegal immigration has been a political football played by both sides of the aisle. Republicans enjoy the cheap labor from the illegal aliens, and Democrats hope to cement them as a voting bloc. All the citizens of America have ever demanded is that we enforce the laws on the books. Neither side wants to do that, which has led Arizona to take these steps. We are not usurping the federal government's power to prosecute immigration laws. We are pushing them to do it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Critics of the law claim that it is based on racial profiling. That is an outright lie. If you read the law, racial profiling is specifically prohibited. The police aren't allowed to go up to anyone, and demand to see their proof of citizenship or legal residency. The law outlines the steps that must be taken to even check on the immigration status of a person within the state's borders. First, there has to be an infraction; that is, the person in question has to have broken the law. The police will ask for identification (which they always do, and according to the law, anyone over the age of eighteen is REQUIRED to carry an ID on them at all times in public), and if the person they've stopped or approached lacks that identification then they're subject to arrest. THEN and only then may an officer check their immigration status. IF they have a legal, valid form of ID then the officer can't check on their status. End of story.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">But the lawsuit doesn't address the assumption that this law will lead to racial profiling. No, it's based on the preemption argument; that Arizona is taking a power from the federal government, and undermining their immigration enforcement efforts. (OK, stop laughing. I know the federal government isn't doing that job, at least not as they should be.)Further reading of the law states that if the police do detain someone here illegally, that person is to be turned over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for processing. The moment we hand them over to ICE, it's then in the hands of the federal government. Is that usurping their power? No, it isn't. The new law seeks to reinforce the federal law. If you read the law you'll note that it sounds familiar; that it sounds very much like the federal law. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">One can even say that the law is rather redundant. Local law enforcement have been allowed to deal with illegal immigrants for years, as empowered by the federal law. <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=833-851.90"><span style="color:#ff0000;">California has a law that is much tougher than our own, and instructs their law enforcement to work hand-in-hand with federal immigration officials to enforce the federal immigration laws</span></a></li>. In fact, that law also exclusively outlaws "sanctuary cities" and California has more than a couple of those that flout the law on the books. No one threw a hissy fit when California passed that law back in the late 1990s. But God forbid Arizona do it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">This is an exercise in the absurd. The federal government basically has no leg to stand on. As Mr. Lowry notes, the Worker Sanctions law passed by Arizona back in 2006 was upheld in federal court because it mirrored the federal law closely, and it abides by the definition of the law. That is exactly how this is going to go. And this won't be over in a month, either. Some prognosticators (amateurs, for lack of a better term) claim that this will be all said and done by November. No, this will drag out for the next year, or so, and possibly longer depending on the appeals that will be filed at the end of this initial challenge. In the end, the Arizona law will be upheld because we're not usurping federal power. We're reinforcing it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-15611496016546121062010-07-06T11:19:00.001-07:002010-07-06T11:20:13.396-07:00The coming clash: Executive versus Judiciary<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">HT to <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/102404/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Professor Glenn Reynolds</span></a></li></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/health/la-na-court-roberts-obama-20100706,0,7184862.story"><span style="color:#ff0000;">LA Times</span></a></li> has the story today about the impending battles that Barry and the Supreme Court will be running into in the years to come. Granted, the Times is liberal in its news coverage and commentary (and they get it wrong with the justices that are "conservative" as Justice Kennedy isn't a solid conservative), but they do get it right with the coming collision course that is completely unavoidable:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week after landmark decisions protecting the right to have a gun and the right of corporations to spend freely on elections. But the year's most important moment may have come on the January evening when the justices gathered at the Capitol for President Obama's State of the Union address.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">They had no warning about what was coming.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Obama and his advisors had weighed how to respond to the court's ruling the week before, which gave corporations the same free-spending rights as ordinary Americans. They saw the ruling as a rash, radical move to tilt the political system toward big business as they coped with the fallout from the Wall Street collapse.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Some advisors counseled caution, but the president opted to criticize the conservative justices in the uncomfortable spotlight of national television as Senate Democrats roared their approval.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">[Let me inject right here, right now, that it was improper for the president to do that -- singling out the justices in public -- for the decision they made in <em>Citizen's United</em>. You've got a problem with it? Fine. You bite your tongue and keep your thoughts in the privacy of the White House. You don't go around basically calling out the Supreme Court on decisions they make, decisions they are tasked to carry out. It was unprofessional, petulant, incompetent, amateurish, and unfitting for a sitting president, and his congressional majorities, to do such a thing.]</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is still angered by what he saw as a highly partisan insult to the independent judiciary. The incident put a public spotlight on the deep divide between the Obama White House and the Roberts court, one that could have a profound effect in the years ahead.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The president and congressional Democrats have embarked on an ambitious drive to regulate corporations, banks, health insurers and the energy industry. But the high court, with Roberts increasingly in control, will have the final word on those regulatory laws.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Many legal experts foresee a clash between Obama's progressive agenda and the conservative court."</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Presidents with active agendas for change almost always encounter resistance in the courts," said Stanford University law professor Michael W. McConnell, a former federal appellate court judge. "It happened to [ Franklin D.] Roosevelt and it happened to Reagan. It will likely happen to Obama too."</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Already, the healthcare overhaul law, Obama's signal achievement, is under attack in the courts. Republican attorneys general from 20 states have sued, insisting the law and its mandate to buy health insurance exceed Congress' power and trample on states' rights.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Two weeks ago, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled Obama had overstepped his authority by ordering a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">On another front, the administration says it will soon go to court in Phoenix seeking to block Arizona's controversial immigration law, which is due to take effect July 29. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer said Arizona would go to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to preserve the law.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">As chief justice, Roberts has steered the court on a conservative course, one that often has tilted toward business. For example, the justices have made it much harder for investors or pension funds to sue companies for stock fraud.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Two years ago, the court declared for the first time that the gun rights of individuals were protected by the Constitution. This year, the justices made clear this was a "fundamental" right that extended to cities and states as well as federal jurisdictions.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Since the arrival in 2006 of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Roberts has had a five-member majority skeptical of campaign funding restrictions. At first, he moved cautiously. Roberts spoke for the majority in 2007 in saying that a preelection broadcast ad sponsored by a nonprofit corporation was protected as free speech even though it criticized a candidate for office.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Last year, the court had before it another seemingly minor challenge to election laws by a group that wanted permission to sell a DVD that slammed Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was running for president in 2008. This time, however, Roberts decided on a much bolder move.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">As they say, read it all, folks. The LA Times has hit the nail on the head. Barry's agenda is going to be challenged left-and-right in the federal courts. Will there be setbacks? Sure. More than likely those in opposition to this power-grabbing agenda will run into liberal judges that side with the administration. But given the hostility towards the federal courts from the White House, these appellate courts and the Supreme Court will be more likely to take up these cases as opposed to passing them over. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">That's not to say the courts will suddenly become political. However even they can see that there is something wrong with this president's agenda, and it spells disaster for the nation if it's allowed to continue. Remember, the role of the federal courts was to be the final check-and-balance against an overreaching federal government, protecting the rights and liberties of the citizens of this nation. Those on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts specifically, understands this concept, and agrees with it. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">There will be a fight between the Executive and the Judiciary in the next couple of years, and if the decisions come down on the side of the Constitution, Barry isn't going to be a happy person. But it will further show this nation that Mr. Constitutional Scholar doesn't know his @$$ from a hole in the ground. Just because he views the Constitution his way doesn't make it so, and he'll have to convince the courts to see things his way. He won't succeed because he doesn't know a bloody thing about the founding document, what it entails, what it means, and what it does for the people of this nation. He'll never get it because the originalist/textualist interpretations of the Constitution are anathema to his political ideology. He is hostile towards the document that guarantees our rights and liberties because, in his opinion, it only speaks of negative liberties with regard to government power.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">That, Mr. President, was the intention of our Founding Fathers. I guess he missed that week in history class.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-7144458834990475552010-07-06T09:52:00.002-07:002010-07-06T10:43:54.243-07:00Justice Kennedy plans on sticking around<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">It's a story from the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/07/06/2010-07-06_holdin_court_at_73_justice_kennedy_tells_pals_hes_not_retiring_for_years__thats_.html#ixzz0stqY"><span style="color:#ff0000;">New York Daily News</span></a></li> (HT to <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/06/kennedy-i-think-ill-stick-around-until-2013/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Captain Ed</span></a></li>) that probably has Barry steamed. Justice Kennedy has confided to friends and family he doesn't intend to leave the Supreme Court until 2013, the year following, hopefully, Barry's defeat for a second term as president:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">President Obama may get liberal Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, but conservative swing-voter Anthony Kennedy says he's not going anywhere anytime soon.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years - through the end of Obama's first term, sources said.<br /><br />That means Kennedy will be around to provide a fifth vote for the court's conservative bloc through the 2012 presidential election. If Obama loses, Kennedy could retire and expect a Republican President to choose a conservative justice.<br /><br />Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, has been on the court 22 years. He has become a bit of a political nemesis at the White House for his increasing tendency to side with the court's four rock-ribbed conservative justices.<br /><br />Without naming Kennedy, Obama was unusually critical of his majority opinion in the Citizens United case, handed down last January. That 5-4 decision struck down limits on contributions to political campaigns as an abridgement of free speech.<br /><br />Obama called the ruling "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power ... in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."<br /><br />He was so angry that he took the unusual step of blasting the decision in his Jan. 27 State of the Union address, with Kennedy and five other justices looking on.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">What Barry did during his State of the Union speech was uncalled for, extremely unprofessional, and appeared to be rather petulant. He called out the high court on their decision like he was some sort of disapproving parent, or worse a petulant child not satisfied that he didn't get his way. We'd like to think that Justice Kennedy is holding on just to spite the president, and teach the Narcissist-in-Chief a lesson as to where his authority resides. His power isn't found in the judiciary. It's found in the executive branch which, aside from being able to appoint jurists to the federal bench, those powers end right there. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Of course Justice Kennedy isn't doing this out of spite. He's got a lot more class than Barry does. Our best guess is that Kewnnedy sees the direction Barry is wanting to take the high court, and it has shades of FDR's "court-packing" plan in it without the threat of expanding the size of the court. Justice Sotomayor, while deemed competent by the Senate's standards, is a far-left liberal jurist with tendencies towards judicial activism. Of the 380 opinions joined by her or penned by her, the high court granted a hearing to five of them. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/27/60-reversal-of-sotomayor-rulings-gives-fodder-to-f/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Three were overwhelmingly reversed by the Supreme Court</span></a></li>. So, in terms of sound judicial philosophy, Justice Sotomayor seems to lack it.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Elena Kagan has been appointed to the high court by Barry to replace retiring justice John Paul Stevens. And while she win confirmation (don't kid yourselves folks; she's a shoo-in regardless of what she has said or what has been found in her past) her views regarding the Constitution were called into question by the GOP on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Past statements made, past articles written, shows that she lacks the intellectual heft that is needed for a sitting justice on the Supreme Court. Now, we warn readers that her win-loss record as solicitor general means virtually nothing. As solicitor general, it was her job to argue the government's side of an issue before the justices. The cases the solicitor general takes on are generally tough cases, and many seen as unwinnable or virtually impossible to prevail, especially if the lawyer in question lacks a firm grasp of constitutional jurisprudence. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">That's two liberal justices replacing two liberal justices. It's a wash in a way, and the only drawback to both Sotomayor and Kagan winning their confirmation battles (hardly battles as the Senate has basically rolled over for their belly scratch on both jurists) is that they will be on the high court for decades to come. As of 2012 four justices will be age 75 or older -- Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Justice Scalia, like Justice Kennedy, has no intention of retiring anytime soon. Justice Ginsburg has continually waved off questions about her possible retirement. Justice Breyer has been mum on the subject, as well. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">But given how the midterms might go in November, even if there is a retirement Barry probably won't be able to nominate another jurist in the mold of liberals Sotomayor or Kagan. He would be forced to appoint a moderate jurist which, when Kennedy retires, would be the new swing vote on the high court. Justice Kennedy assumed that mantle when Justice O'Connor retired back in 2006. While some may say that he runs a 50-50 split on swing decisions, if you take a close look at the cases where he has swung towards the conservative wing of the high court, those decisions are important ones that include First and Second Amendment issues. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">This news today is important. Well, it's important for us court watchers especially with consideration to this incompetent president, and his desire to rewrite the law from the bench as opposed to the halls of Congress. Both of his choices to replace outgoing justices aren't exactly friendly to the Constitution, and both have made statements in the past akin to the president's belief that the <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102708/content/01125107.guest.html">Constitution is constructed of negative liberties</a></li>; it tells us what the government -- be it federal or state -- can't do rather than what they can do on the behalf of the people. <a href="http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/preamble"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Here's a constitutional lesson for the president</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />We the people of the United States, <strong>in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity</strong>, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">I think it's pretty cut-and-dry as to what the government was supposed to do, and where its powers lay, i.e., what the government can do for the people. Barry forgets this even though it is the very first thing cited in the US Constitution. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">We hope that Justice Kennedy can hang on through the remainder of this rookie's term in office. If not, his departure would signal a significant shift on the Supreme Court, and spark a war in the Senate over who Barry would choose to replace Kennedy with. And make no mistake folks, his nominee will be as close to his own philosophy as possible.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-43413676099727387552010-06-30T10:31:00.001-07:002010-06-30T11:02:05.288-07:00Barry's "To-Do" list for the Gulf oil spill<div><font face="arial" color="#000099">From <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/30/morning-bell-obamas-oil-spill-to-do-list/"><font color="#ff0000">The Heritage Foundation's "Morning Bell" blog</font></a></li>:</font></div><br /><div><font face="Arial" color="#000099"></font> </div><br /><div><font face="arial" color="#990000">The oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico gets worse by the day. Oil spews from the broken well, further polluting our water and shores. The clean-up efforts drag on with bureaucratic interference, making matters worse. And what is the Obama administration doing? It continues to push for unrelated responses that will have a disastrous effect on our economy, especially the economy of the Gulf states most affected.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br />In fact, President Obama summoned a bipartisan group of senators to the White House on Tuesday to discuss his climate change legislation. When Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander suggested that any such energy meeting should include a focus on the oil spill and BP, Obama responded: “</font><a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/06/gop-sen-to-obama-you-cant-talk-energy-bill-without-talking-bp.html"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">that’s just your talking point</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">” and refused to discuss the crisis.</font></div><br /><div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br />Unfortunately, the American people are not hearing any of this. Day after day, blind allegiance to the president causes his supporters on the left to simply say the government is doing all that it can. The national media, prone to attention deficit disorder when a president they support is in the White House, have already moved on to a myriad of other subjects, offering only sporadic updates on the continuing crisis. ...</font></div><br /><div><font face="arial" color="#990000"></font> </div><br /><div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><strong>1. Waive the Jones Act:</strong> According to one </font><a title="http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=" word="jones+act%29" href="http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=542R5JNH&word=jones+act%29"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">Dutch newspaper</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">, European firms could complete the oil spill cleanup by themselves in just four months, and three months if they work with the United States, which is much faster than the estimated nine months it would take the Obama administration to go at it alone. The major stumbling block is a protectionist piece of legislation called the Jones Act, which requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flagged ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens. But, in an emergency, this law </font><a title="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/08/to-save-the-gulf-send-the-jones-act-to-davy-jones%E2%80%99-locker/" href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/08/to-save-the-gulf-send-the-jones-act-to-davy-jones%E2%80%99-locker/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">can be temporarily waived</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">, as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff did after Katrina. Each day European and Asian allies are prevented from helping us speed up the cleanup is another day that Gulf fishing and tourism jobs die. For more information on this, click </font><a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2010/06/Why-Wont-Obama-Waive-the-Jones-Act"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>2. Accept International Assistance:</strong> At least thirty countries and international organizations have offered equipment and experts so far. According to </font><a href="http://http//finance.yahoo.com/news/US-accepts-international-apf-4104246595.html?x=0&.v=2"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">reports</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000"> this week, the White House has finally decided to accept help from twelve of these nations. The Obama administration should make clear why they are refusing the other eighteen-plus offers. In a statement, the State Department said it is still working out the particulars of the assistance it has accepted. This should be done swiftly as months have already been wasted.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br />Take Sweden, for example. According to Heritage expert James Carafano: “After offering assistance shortly after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Sweden received a request for information about their specialized assets from the State Department on May 7. Swedish officials answered the inquiry the same day, saying that some assets, such as booms, could be sent within days and that it would take a couple of weeks to send ships. There are three brand new Swedish Coast Guard vessels built for dealing with a major oil spill cleanup. Each has a capacity to collect nearly 50 tons of oil per hour from the surface of the sea and can hold 1,000 tons of spilled oil in their tanks. But according to the State Department’s recently released chart on international offers of assistance, </font><a href="http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/143488.pdf"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">the Swedish equipment and ships are still ‘under consideration.’</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000"> So months later, the booms sit unused and brand new Swedish ships still sit idle in port, thousands of miles from the Gulf. The delay in accepting offers of assistance is unacceptable.” For more information, click </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/24/flooded-with-help-but-oil-spill-cleanup-still-flailing/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000"> or </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/22/our-government-slowed-down-the-gulf-cleanup/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>3. Lift the Moratorium:</strong> The Obama administration’s over-expansive ban on offshore energy development is killing jobs when they are needed most. A panel of engineering experts told The </font><a title="http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-14/1276064428189870.xml&coll=" href="http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-14/1276064428189870.xml&coll=1"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">New Orleans Times-Picayune</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000"> that they only supported a six-month ban on new drilling in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. Those same experts were consulted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar before he issued his May 27 report recommending a six-month moratorium on all ongoing drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. A letter from these experts reads: “A blanket moratorium is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill. We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do.”</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br />And just how many innocent jobs is Obama’s oil ban killing? An earlier Times-Picayune report estimated the moratorium could cost Louisiana 7,590 jobs and $2.97 billion in revenue directly related to the oil industry. For more information on this, click </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/22/moratorium-one-of-many-obama-oil-spill-mistakes/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>4. Release the S.S. A-Whale:</strong> The S.S. A-Whale skimmer is a converted oil tanker capable of cleaning 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the Gulf waters. Currently, the largest skimmer being used in the clean-up efforts can handle 4,000 barrels a day, and the entire fleet our government has authorized for BP has only gathered 600,000 barrels, total in the 70 days since the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The ship embarked from Norfolk, VA, this week toward the Gulf, hoping to get federal approval to begin assisting the clean-up, but is facing bureaucratic resistance.</div><br /><div><br />As a foreign-flagged ship, the S.S. A-Whale needs a waiver from the Jones Act, but even outside that three-mile limitation, the U.S. Coast Guard and the EPA have to approve its operation due to the nature of its operation, which separates the oil from the water and then releases water back into the Gulf, with a minor amount of oil residue. The government should not place perfection over the need for speed, especially facing the threat of an active hurricane season. For more information on this, click </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/28/giant-cleanup-ship-met-with-puny-response-from-bureaucrats/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>5. Remove State and Local Roadblocks:</strong> Local governments are not getting the assistance they need to help in the cleanup. For example, nearly two months ago, officials from Escambia County, Fla., requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola’s beaches. County officials still haven’t heard anything back. Santa Rosa Island Authority Buck Lee </font><a title="http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/09/fed-up-with-bp%E2%80%99s-lack-of-response-one-florida-county-wants-cleanup-reins/2/" href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/09/fed-up-with-bp%E2%80%99s-lack-of-response-one-florida-county-wants-cleanup-reins/2/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">explains</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000"> why: “Escambia County sends a request to the Mobile, Ala., Unified Command Center. Then, it’s reviewed by BP, the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. If they don’t like it, they don’t tell us anything.”</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br />State and local governments know their geography, people, economic impacts and needs far better than the federal government does. Contrary to popular belief, the federal government has actually been playing a bigger and bigger role in running natural disaster responses. And as Heritage fellow Matt Mayer has </font><a title="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/04/Federalizing-Disasters-Weakens-FEMA-and-Hurts-Americans-Hit-by-Catastrophes" href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/04/Federalizing-Disasters-Weakens-FEMA-and-Hurts-Americans-Hit-by-Catastrophes"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">documented</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">, the results have gotten worse, not better. Local governments should be given the tools they need to aid in the disaster relief. For more information on this, click </font><a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/Stopping-the-Slick-Saving-the-Environment-A-Framework-for-Response-Recovery-and-Resiliency"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>6. Allow Sand Berm Dredging:</strong> The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recently </font><a href="http://www.wdsu.com/news/23997498/detail.html"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">prevented </font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">the state of Louisiana from dredging to build protective sand berms. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser immediately sent a letter to President Obama requesting that the work continue. He </font><a href="http://www.wdsu.com/news/23997498/detail.html"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">said</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">, “Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil. Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.” For more information on this, click </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/23/feds-continue-to-block-oil-spill-cleanup/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>7. Waive or Suspend EPA Regulations:</strong> Because more water than oil is collected in skimming operations (85% to 90% is water according to Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen), operators need to discharge the filtered water back into the Gulf so they can continue to collect oil. The discharged water is vastly cleaner than when it was skimmed, but not sufficiently pure according to normal EPA regulations. If the water has to be kept in the vessel and taken back to shore for purification, it vastly multiples the resources and time needed, requiring cleanup ships to make extra round trips, transporting seven times as much water as the oil they collect. We already have insufficient cleanup ships (as the Coast Guard officially determined); they need to be cleaning up oil, not transporting water. For more information, click </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/28/giant-cleanup-ship-met-with-puny-response-from-bureaucrats/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>8. Temporarily Loosen Coast Guard Inspections:</strong> In early June, sixteen barges that were vacuuming oil out of the Gulf were ordered to halt work. The Coast Guard had the clean-up vessels sit idle as they were inspected for fire extinguishers and life vests. Maritime safety is clearly a priority, but speed is of the essence in the Gulf waters. The U.S. Coast Guard should either temporarily loosen its inspection procedures or implement a process that allows inspections to occur as the ships operate. For more information, click </font><a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/23/feds-continue-to-block-oil-spill-cleanup/"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>9. Stop Coast Guard Budget Cuts:</strong> Now is not the time to be cutting Coast Guard capabilities, but that is exactly what President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are doing. Rather than rebuilding and modernizing the Coast Guard as is necessary, they are cutting back assets needed to respond to catastrophic disasters. In particular, the National Strike Force, specifically organized to respond to oil spills and other hazardous materials disasters, is being cut. Overall, President Obama has told the Coast Guard to shed nearly 1,000 personnel, five cutters, and several helicopters and aircraft. Congress and the Administration should double the U.S. Coast Guard’s active and reserve end strength over the next decade and significantly accelerate Coast Guard modernization, but for the time being, they should halt all budgetary cuts. For more information, click </font><a href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/Stopping-the-Slick-Saving-the-Environment-A-Framework-for-Response-Recovery-and-Resiliency"><font face="arial" color="#ff0000">here</font></a><font face="arial" color="#990000">.</font></div><font face="arial" color="#990000"><br /><div><br /><strong>10. Halt Climate Change Legislation:</strong> President Obama has placed his focus to the oil spill on oil demand rather than oil in our water. Regardless of political views, now is not the time to be taking advantage of this crisis to further an unrelated piece of legislation that will kill jobs and, in the President’s own words, cause energy prices to “skyrocket.” Less than 5% of our nation’s electricity needs are met by petroleum. Pushing solar and wind alternatives is in no way related to the disaster in the Gulf. It’s time for President Obama to focus on the direct actions he can take in the Gulf rather than the indirect harm he can cause in Congress. As Heritage expert David Kreutzer opines: “Fix the leak first, and then we’ll talk.” A crisis should not be a terrible thing to waste, as Rahm Emanuel said, but a problem to be solved.</div><br /><div> </div><br /><div><font color="#000099">Folks, if we had thinkers like those at Heritage in the Obama administration, I'm pretty confident that the last year-and-a-half wouldn't have been as much of a disaster as it has been, and the president wouldn't be seeing his approval numbers below 50% right now. Barry is a failure. He doesn't want to be the president. He just enjoys the perks of the taxpayer dime as he jets around the world for idiotic purposes, as he plays golf, shoots hoops, and generally makes himself a paint in the @$$ to the American public.</font></div><br /><div><font color="#000099"></font> </div><br /><div><font color="#000099">Hey Barry, would you actually like to BE the president now instead of doing your best Martin Sheen impression of playing the president?</font></div><br /><div><font color="#000099"></font> </div><br /><div><em><font color="#000099">Publius II</font></em></font></div>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-55818759978861346232010-06-28T08:37:00.000-07:002010-06-28T08:39:13.700-07:00Robert Byrd RIP<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39087.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The longest serving senator in the US Senate died early this morning</span></a></li>, leaving the Senate with a pickle of a problem, legislatively speaking:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The Senate has lost one of its legends with the death of Robert C. Byrd, an orphan child who married a coal miner’s daughter and rose from the hollows of West Virginia coal country to become the longest serving senator in U.S. history.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />He died around 3 a.m. Monday morning after being admitted to the hospital last week for dehydration, yet his condition worsened over the weekend and he became critically ill. Byrd was 92.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">What's the pickle? <a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/senator-byrd-is-ill-note-on-west.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Nate Silver explained part of this</span></a></li> prior to the passing of Senator Byrd:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#990000;">Byrd’s current term expires on January 3, 2013. Under West Virginia </span><a href="http://www.sos.wv.gov/elections/voter-information-center/officesissues/vacancies-and-unexpired-terms/Pages/default.aspx"><span style="color:#ff0000;">state law</span></a><span style="color:#990000;"> on handling Senate vacancies, “if the vacancy occurs less than two years and six months before the end of the term, the Governor appoints someone to fill the unexpired term and there is no election”. Otherwise, Manchin would appoint an interim replacement, and an special election would be held in November to determine who held the seat in 2011 and 2012.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="color:#990000;"><br />In other words, we are within a week of the threshold established by West Virginia law. If a vacancy were to be declared on July 3rd or later, there would not be an election to replace Byrd until 2012. If it were to occur earlier, there could potentially be an election later this year, although there might be some ambiguities arising from precisely when and how the vacancy were declared.<br /><br /></span><span style="color:#000099;">That's just part of the problem, and that one lies at the feet of Governor Manchin. Granted, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/28/robert-byrd-rip/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">as Captain Ed notes</span></a></li>, Manchin wanted that seat for himself. <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/06/robert-byrds-replacement-when-does-the-vacancy-occur.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">ABC News</span></a></li> reports that Manchin has to declare the seat vacant, and if the voters in West Virginia don't raise a big stink about it then he can take his time.</span><br /></span><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">However, the longer this takes that means Harry Reid has one less vote in the Senate. And should Barry apply pressure to Manchin to name a replacement, he would be interfering in a state matter. It is up to the governor, and the governor is going to want to appoint the seemingly best person to the position (not so good he couldn't take the seat himself at a later date, of course), but at least someone who has a clue as to what they're doing (unlike Roland Burris). </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">As for kind words on his passing? I really don't have a lot of them. The man was an embarrassment to the Democrat party. He was a former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, and had a history rife with racism. It wasn't until his later years when he apologized for that past, and admitted that today's world had no room for those views. He was also an embarrassment when it came to his self-described classification of being the "constitutional expert" in the Senate. I could care less about his four-volume set of books on the Constitution, the man didn't know squat about the document. He was a pork-barrel spender for the state of West Virginia, so much so that the taxpayers of his state raised a statue in his honor.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">The man should have retired decades ago. Our condolences to the remaining family he has, but we have little else to offer in terms of kind words. We didn't like the man, and didn't believe he should have been lauded the way most Democrats did.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-38032370328786642082010-06-23T10:53:00.000-07:002010-06-23T10:53:52.999-07:00McChrystal out, Petraeus in<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">This is breaking just now. Apparently General McChrystal <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9GH48I00&show_article=1"><span style="color:#ff0000;">has tendered his resignation with Barry, and it's been accepted</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">A senior administration official tells The Associated Press that President Barack Obama has accepted Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and is replacing him with Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />McChrystal was pushed out over his blistering remarks about administration officials quoted in a magazine interview.<br /><br />After an Oval Office meeting with McChrystal in the morning, Obama huddled with his war advisers and planned to announce his decision on the general's fate to the nation at 1:30 p.m. EDT in the </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Rose Garden.</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />The official spoke only on condition of anonymity, because the president's announcement was not yet public. Petraeus now oversees the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Look, we knew this was going to happen. We knew that either General McChrystal was either going to resign or be sacked. The thin-skinned president isn't one to allow criticism to go unpunished, and it was clear yesterday that he was out. We had hoped that he'd end up with a dressing down; a reprimand, and be allowed to return to duty in Afghanistan. Apparently, that's not the case.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Do we excuse General McChrystal and the comments that were quoted from his aides? No, we don't. They should know that any public rebuke or critique of the administration was going to result in someone losing their job. The lessons from MacArthur during Korea should have served as a reminder to what they were saying, and who they were saying it to. Evidently, they didn't take that into account.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Do soldiers gripe in the field? Hell yes they do, and more often than not, their ire is directed towards the civilian leadership in DC. The military detests back-bencher, armchair quarterbacks questioning them, and constantly checking up on them. But you don't go off spouting about it in public, and that was where they made their mistake. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">It's a shame to see McChrystal go, but at least the troops in Afghanistan will be in good hands when General David Petraeus arrives. He helmed the Surge in Iraq, and he'll do what he has to do to win in Afghanistan. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-64039664251143076772010-06-23T08:53:00.002-07:002010-06-23T09:14:11.272-07:00More feckless bureaucratic fiddling while the Gulf burns<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Actually, a plan early on in the Gulf situation called for burning the oil off, but the enviro-weenies the president seems beholden to threw a hissy fit over that idea. But the situation in the Gulf isn't getting any better, and <a href="http://www.wdsu.com/news/23997498/detail.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">federal government has ordered the complete shut-down of berm building to go into effect tonight at midnight</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is being done. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.<br /><br />Nungesser said the government has asked crews to move the dredging site two more miles farther off the coastline.<br /><br />"Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil," Nungesser wrote to Obama. "Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.<br /><br />Nungesser has asked for the dredging to continue for the next seven days, the amount of time it would take to move the dredging operations two miles and out resume work.<br /><br />Work is scheduled to halt at midnight Wednesday.<br /><br />The California dredge located off the Chandelier Islands has pumped more than 50,000 cubic yards of material daily to create a sand berm, according to Plaquemines Parish officials.<br /><br />Nungesser's letter includes an emotional plea to the president.<br /><br />"Please don't let them shut this dredge down," he wrote. "This requires your immediate attention!"<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><em>"Mr. Nungesser, I'm sorry but the president is currently unavailable. He had to take time out of his busy golfing/hoops shooting day to <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">dress down General Stanley McChrystal</span></a></li>. Please leave your name, number, and contribution check for the president, and we'll make sure he gets back to you at his earliest possible convenience." </em></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;"></span></em><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Folks, "feckless" doesn't even begin to describe the lack of leadership and effort to stave off the flow of oil into the Gulf and its clean-up. We are now on Day 64, and we're still no closer to cleaning this mess up than we were from the start. Had the federal government actually acted in the beginning, much of this would already be cleaned up. (After all, the <a href="http://askheritage.org/Answer.aspx?ID=1038"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Dutch did offer their help, and that of another dozen nations to help with the clean-up</span></a></li> but that offer was turned down by the White House.)</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Barry's sycophantic supporters can repeat his mantra of being involved in this "from Day One," but that boast doesn't even come close to passing the smell test. Governor Bobby Jindal has been screaming at the federal government to do something other than twiddle their thumbs, and demand that environmental impact studies be completed before any clean-up work really starts. This is what happens when a bloated bureaucracy leaps into action ..... Two months later people are still waiting for action.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">The simple fact is this: The president doesn't seem to care about the oil accident. He's shown that in how long it took him to address the accident to begin with (10 days), and the consistent demands for berms, booms, and skimmers went unheard for the better part of two months. As Governor Jindal started to move, the White House finally relented, and allowed the construction of the berms.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">But now they're being told to stop, and built them another two miles out. Um, where was this decision two months ago? That was a decision that should have been made in the hours after the accident, not months. Barry is showing this nation exactly what he is: A clueless rookie that never had to make a decision harder than what to pair the Kobe beef steaks with. He is an embarrassment to the nation, and the world is having a <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=facepalm"><span style="color:#ff0000;">facepalm moment</span></a></li> in trusting this guy to know what the Hell he's doing.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-21878163010417563052010-06-22T11:40:00.001-07:002010-06-22T11:42:57.495-07:00General McChrystal called on the carpet<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">General Stanley McChrystal is facing a firestorm over his controversial interview with Rolling Stone magazine (whiskey-foxtrot-tango?) and <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38837.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">has been ordered to the White House, from Kabul, to explain himself, and get a dressing down from the president</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been summoned to the White House to explain biting and unflattering remarks he made to a freelance writer about President </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Barack Obama</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> and others in the Obama administration.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">McChrystal</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> to resign for insubordination.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />McChrystal has been instructed to fly from Kabul to Washington today to attend Obama’s regular monthly </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">security team</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> meeting tomorrow at the White House.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />An administration official says McChrystal was asked to attend in person rather than by secure video teleconference, “where he will have to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes about his colleagues in the piece.”<br /><br />Both Defense Secretary </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Robert Gates</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have spoken with McChrystal. Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen, said “the chairman spoke to General McChrystal last night and expressed his deep disappointment with the article and with the comments expressed therein.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">First, let me say that Rolling Stone is hardly the place to vent. After all, the magazine is barely more than a rag akin to the Arizona Republic (or Arizona Repugnant, if you live in Arizona, and know the paper as well as we do). That said, there's an unwritten rule in the military that you take up such matters in private, and if privacy isn't available, you bite your tongue, and keep your opinions to yourself. So, McChrystal screwed up on that particular point. However, the people calling for his head on a platter seem to forget that Barry doesn't exactly have a plethora of counter-terror/counter-insurgency experts to choose from. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">General Stanley McChrystal was credited with taking out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and his career has been exemplary as an Airborne Ranger. The man helped create the counter-insurgency strategy used in Iraq for the Surge, and he has carried much of that over to Afghanistan. So, if relieved of his command, Barry will be hard-pressed to find a suitable replacement. The question remains "Does this amount to insubordination?" <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The link to the Rolling Stone article is here</span></a></li>. HT to <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/22/the-rolling-stone-article-as-bad-as-advertised/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Captain Ed</span></a></li> for the link.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Taking the advice of both the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he also fired Gen. David McKiernan – then the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan – and replaced him with a man he didn’t know and had met only briefly: Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was the first time a top general had been relieved from duty during wartime in more than 50 years, since Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better.<br /><br />“It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his f*cking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">[I censored the language above.] Captain Ed is correct: This sort of criticism is reserved for memoirs, or after one leaves the service; it's not for when one is still serving the current Commander-in-Chief. You can despise Barry all you want, and believe me we do, but there is a certain professionalism and decorum when you're a serving commander of military forces that's called for when it comes to speaking of the president. More:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.<br /><br />“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”<br /><br />“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?” ...<br /><br />McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have someone yanking on shit.”<br /><br />At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” he groans. “I don’t even want to open it.” He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail. ...<br /><br />Part of the problem is structural: The Defense Department budget exceeds $600 billion a year, while the State Department receives only $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985.” Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.” Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. “Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,” says an adviser. “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’ ”<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Is this insubordination? No, not by my reading. <a href="http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/l/blucmj91.htm"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Insubordination, as defined by the Uniform Code of Military Justice is</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />ART. 91. INSUBORDINATE CONDUCT TOWARD WARRANT OFFICER, NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER, OR PETTY OFFICER<br /><br />Any warrant officer or enlisted member who--<br /><br />(1) strikes or assaults a warrant officer, noncommissioned officer, or petty officer, while that officer is in the execution of his office;<br /><br />(2) willfully disobeys the lawful order of a warrant officer, noncommissioned officer, or petty officer; or<br /><br />(3) treats with contempt or is disrespectful in language or deportment toward a warrant officer, noncommissioned officer, or petty officer while that officer is in the execution of his office;<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Nothing in this applies to the president. It applies to officers the person serves with. What McChrystal did falls under <a href="http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/ucmj/blart-89.htm"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Article 89 of the UCMJ</span></a></li>:</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><span style="color:#990000;">ART. 89 DISRESPECT TOWARD SUPERIOR COMMISSIONED OFFICER</span> </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />Any person subject to this chapter who behaves with disrespect toward his superior commissioned officer shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Or, more likely, under <a href="http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/ucmj/blart-88.htm"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Article 88 of the UCMJ</span></a></li> [emphasis mine]:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><span style="color:#990000;">ART. 88 - CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALS</span> </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><strong>Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present</strong> shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">General McChrystal may be brought up on Article 88 charges, and be court-martialed for it. He clearly did exactly that in this article (at least his aides did in recounting what the general supposedly said in closed quarters), but if what has been relayed is true, McChrystal is guilty of this charge. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">I'll be blunt: We don't like the president. We think he's an incompetent rookie that couldn't find his @$$ in the dark with both hands and a flashlight. However, when you take the oath in the military, it's expected that you will follow the orders of the duly-elected president who is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, and if you have a beef with him, you bring it up to him directly, and privately. You don't criticize him publicly. That's a no-no. Every military veteran we know, and every serving soldier we know, will not publicly criticize the president. They may not like him, and they may tell us that in private, but they're not going to go spouting off, in public, how much they dislike him. They understand the necessity for unanimity in the military and in the chain of command. They also understand that such things, when said in public, could very well affect the morale of soldiers they serve with or serve over. That is unacceptable. McChrystal should have known better, and apparently he didn't.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">A court-martial would be in order. But his removal from command would be asinine. The pundits calling for his head need to shut up. A reprimand should be in his record, and that should be the end of this little issue. If the president demands his resignation, he's cutting off his nose to spite his face, and he's feeding his already overblown ego. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">That won't serve the troops well in Afghanistan, nor will it win him any serious support (other than lip service) from the troops in the region that continue to fight this war.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-32311205575245366812010-06-16T10:26:00.000-07:002010-06-16T10:27:41.233-07:00Reaction to Barry's lifeless, specificity-lacking speech<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Presidents don't often get the chance to address the nation from the Oval Office. Those occasions are usually reserved for a national tragedy (a la the space shuttle Challenger blowing up in 1986), or for consoling the nation in the face of a serious tragedy (a la President Bush's address to America on 11 September). Barry's address last night was a serious let-down, and that's not just the reaction from those of us on the conservative side of the political spectrum. <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38609.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Andy Barr at Politico</span></a></li> picks up on a couple instances where those on the Left tossed in their two cents worth, which was about how much the president's address was worth:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"><span style="color:#990000;">“Junk Shot,” blared the headline at Huffington Post. Salon took a similar theme: “Just words: Oval Office speech fizzles.” ...</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days,” said Olbermann on his show’s recap of the speech. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />He noted that there was “not even much of a pitch for his own energy bill which, as he mentioned, was passed by the House, which he did not mention was stalled in the Senate and still sits there.”<br /><br />“Nothing specific,” he added. “Nothing specific at all.”<br /><br />Appearing with Olbermann, “Hardball” host Matthews said Obama fell short in showing the American public that he is in charge.<br /><br />“I don’t sense executive command,” Matthews said.<br /><br />Huffington Post, underneath a picture of Obama, linked to stories from its own writers on what he was “overlooking” and asking “what was the point of that terrible speech?”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Ouch. Granted, those opinions aren't as harsh as other ones. Take, for example, <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026535.php"><span style="color:#ff0000;">John Hinderacker's take on the speech at PowerLine</span></a></li>. (HT to <a href="http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/92e1e363-2fb3-445d-af5b-a72a8e00afda"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Hugh Hewitt</span></a></li>.) Mr. Hinderacker is a lawyer, and takes a sharp scalpel to the president's speech:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">I read President Obama's Oval Office speech at an airport gate rather than seeing it on television, so I might have misjudged its impact. But it struck me as uninspiring at best. Obama has been behind the curve ever since the Deepwater Horizon exploded, and over the last week or two he has transparently tried to stop the political bleeding with a series of symbolic acts. The problem is that these gestures won't do anything to contain the oil that is already swirling around the Gulf--currently spewing out at an upwardly-revised estimate of up to 60,000 barrels per day--and the environmental disaster will continue to unfold over the coming weeks and months regardless of what the federal government now does. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />So nothing Obama says is likely to change the negative impression the public has already formed, rightly or not, of the administration's response to the spill. Residents of Louisiana, by a 50-35 margin, </span><a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_LA_615.pdf"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">rate</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> the Obama administration's response worse than the Bush administration's performance on Hurricane Katrina.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />It's hard to see how an Oval Office Speech could help much, even if it had not been pedestrian. In fact, the speech offered nothing new, and featured the same BP-bashing and pledges to unleash squadrons of lawyers to collect damages that already grate on most Americans. Obama doesn't seem to understand how hollow, and sometimes petulant, his vows to make BP pay sound.<br /><br />But what struck me the most about tonight's speech is how dishonest Obama was. There is nothing new about this, but tonight's performance seemed to pack a lot of whoppers into a relatively small space. Here are a few:<br /><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><em>I've talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don't know how they're going to support their families this year. I've seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers - even in areas where the beaches are not yet affected. I've talked to owners of shops and hotels who wonder when the tourists will start to come back. The sadness and anger they feel is not just about the money they've lost. It's about a wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.</em></span><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><em>I refuse to let that happen. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness.</em></span><br /><br /></span><span style="color:#990000;">Two problems here. First, collecting money from BP won't restore the way of life that many on the Gulf fear is slipping away. Second, while human error no doubt played a role in the disaster, there is no evidence that BP was "reckless." As I noted yesterday, BP's market capitalization has declined by around 50 percent--$100 billion--as a result of the spill. By any rational measure, BP has been harmed more by the spill than anyone else, even Barack Obama. It serves no purpose to launch unsupported accusations of recklessness. One might say, on the contrary, that it is reckless to do so.</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">I'd cite the whole thing from Mr. Hinderacker, but I think you ought to go and read it for yourselves. It's lengthy, but he hammers the president on his whoppers, his twisting of facts, and more importantly he unloads on the president for the one thing that people down in the Gulf wanted to hear.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">He offered no solution. He blasted British Petroleum again. And he basically offered up the idea of a carbon tax. Taxes are the last thing people in the Gulf wanted to here. Given the huge deficits the government is running up right now, the people have no more money to give to Uncle Sam, and if the Democrats go along with this they're finished in November. It's already apparent that they'll take a drubbing at the ballot box in November, but if they go along with the idea of adding another tax to our backs we'll make sure they don't see the slightest hint of power for the next decade.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Instead of speeches and more empty suit rhetoric this nation wanted to hear solutions to the problem. He gave none. As Keith Olbermann observed (cited above) there was nothing specific that he proposed to the nation. I'd add that people are also sick of him pointing fingers. He is the President of the United States, and at some point during his term in office (may it only be four years) he needs to stand up and be a leader. Since being inaugurated last January he has done what he did last night.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">He voted present.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-36062728425114411062010-06-15T12:37:00.000-07:002010-06-15T12:38:35.597-07:00Observations on the continued Gulf oil spill circus ...<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">First off, <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/140738/Obama-Weekly-Job-Approval-Rating-46.aspx"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Gallup has Barry's approval sitting at 46%</span></a></li>. that's the lowest his numbers have been since being inaugurated last January, and <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/137615/Americans-Critical-Oil-Spill-Response-Keeping-Close-Tabs.aspx"><span style="color:#ff0000;">back on 27 May, Gallup reported that a majority of Americans believed the government, led by Barry, had failed in containing this spill, and acting effectively to deal with it</span></a></li>. Whether Barry and his sycophantic supporters want to believe it or not, this is THIS president's "My Pet Goat" moment, complete with the deer-in-the-headlights anxiety that we see from this administration. Now, what could I possibly mean by that? I defer to <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/15/oil_vs_snake_oil_105964.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Thomas Sowell</span></a></li> who sums this up perfectly:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Let's stop and think. Either the government knows how to stop the oil spill or they don't. If they know how to stop it, then why have they let thousands of barrels of oil per day keep gushing out, for weeks on end? All they have to do is tell BP to step aside, while the government comes in to do it right.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">If they don't know, then what is all <strong>this political grandstanding</strong> about keeping their boot on the neck of BP, the attorney general of the </span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">United States</span><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> going down to the Gulf<strong> to threaten lawsuits</strong> - on what charges was unspecified - and President Obama showing up in his shirt sleeves?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Just what is Obama going to do in his shirt sleeves, <strong>except impress the gullible</strong>? He might as well have shown up in a tuxedo with white tie, for all the difference it makes.<br /><br /><strong>This government is not about governing. It is about creating an impression. That worked on the campaign trail in 2008, but it is a disaster in the White House, where rhetoric is no substitute for reality.</strong><br /><br />If the Obama administration was for real, and trying to help get the oil spill contained as soon as possible, the last thing its attorney general would be doing is threatening a lawsuit. A lawsuit is not going to stop the oil, and creating a distraction can only make people at BP start directing their attention toward covering themselves, instead of covering the oil well.<br /><br />If and when the attorney general finds that BP did something illegal, that will be time enough to start a lawsuit. But making a public announcement at this time accomplishes absolutely nothing substantive. <strong>It is just more political grandstanding.</strong><br /><br /><strong>This is not about oil. This is about snake oil.</strong><br /><br />Nothing will keep a man or an institution determined to continue on a failing policy course like past success with that policy. Obama's political success in the 2008 election campaign was <strong>a spectacular triumph of creating images and impressions.</strong><br /><br />But creating political impressions and images is not the same thing as governing. Yet Obama in the White House keeps on <strong>saying and doing things to impress people, instead of governing.</strong><br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Hammer. Nail. Head. No one quite hits the target the way Dr. Sowell does, and he is spot-on in his assessment. Now, contrast the grandstanding with the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/WN/article/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindal-orders-national/story?id=10914348"><span style="color:#ff0000;">real leadership from Governor Bobby Jindal; fed up with empty rhetoric from this administration</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />Eight weeks into the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of the Mexico, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has told the National Guard that there's no time left to wait for BP, so they're taking matters into their own hands.<br /><br />In Fort Jackson, LA., Jindal has ordered the Guard to start building barrier walls right in the middle of the ocean. The barriers, built nine miles off shore, are intended to keep the oil from reaching the coast by filling the gaps between barrier islands.<br /><br />Today, huge Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters lined up in the air, dropping sandbags one by one into the sea.<br /><br />"They are lifting up about 7,000 pounds of sandbags," said 1st Lt. James Tyson Gabler.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">We can understand the governor's frustrations with BP, but the facts still speak for themselves. Governor Jindal was told by the administration that he couldn't act to protect his shores until an environmental impact survey was conducted to see what effect, if any, the berms would have. The administration seemed more fixated on the damage that might potentially be done by constructing the berms to prevent the oil from washing ashore as opposed to the real damage the oil itself would do; this despite Governor Jindal's warnings about the environmental damage that would occur if the oil reached Louisiana.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Since this accident occurred, the president has been more concerned about rhetoric and image as opposed to action. As Dr. Sowell observes, the talking points and platitudes are great on the campaign trail, but being president means having to make decisions, sometimes tough ones, and rhetorical flourishes have no place in that office when action is demanded.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2010/06/15/pining-for-his-own-911/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Michelle Malkin</span></a></li> notes that Barry is catching flak for his poorly-chosen words comparing the Gulf oil spill to the 9/11 attacks. Now when we heard that, we were naturally ticked; angered by the misplaced allegory. But we were also amused that he would dare to compare his actions in this accident to that of President Bush in the aftermath of the worst attack on the United States, ever. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">We can start with the basics such as the fact that Bush was at Ground Zero a couple short days after that attack whereas it took Barry ten days to even mention the accident, and another few days before he showed up down in Louisiana. The Left criticized Bush for not jumping up like Superman when he learned of the attacks, but they give Barry a pass for his nonchalant attitude regarding this accident. Bush's response was to go to Congress, and ask for a declaration of war. Barry declared war on the only entity qualified to handle the accident which was British Petroleum. And the list is seemingly endless. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286245/BP-OIL-SPILL-Fury-Obama-compares-Gulf-leak-9-11-attacks.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Oh, and Barry, the Brits aren't exactly happy with you making that comparison. They called the statement "cruel." Personally, we call it stupid, but that isn't exactly news concerning this administration</span></a></li>. This administration has to be filled with some of the most inept, incompetent, ill-educated, non-common sense-minded people this nation has ever seen. Congrats guys, you managed to knock Jimmy Carter off the top of the list as the worst presidency ever in the history of the nation.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"><a href="http://askheritage.org/Answer.aspx?ID=1038"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The Heritage Foundation</span></a></li> has done yeoman's work in investigating what could and should be done to deal with this spill. What they reveal in this piece should have everyone -- regardless of whether or not you're an environmentalist or not -- spitting nails. The media has ignored this little fact, but not Heritage:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />When the federal government isn’t sapping the initiative and expertise of local governments, it has been preventing foreign governments from helping. Just three days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, <strong>the Dutch government offered to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms and proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.</strong> LA Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) supported the idea, but <strong>the Obama administration refused the help.</strong> <strong>Thirteen countries have offered to help us clean up the Gulf, and the Obama administration has turned them all down.</strong><br /><br />According to one <a href="http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=542R5JNH&word=jones+act%29"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Dutch newspaper</span></a>, <strong>European firms could complete the oil spill cleanup by themselves in just four months, and three months if they work with the United States, which is much faster than the estimated nine months it would take the Obama administration to go at it alone.</strong> The major stumbling block is a protectionist piece of legislation called the Jones Act which requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens. But, in an emergency, this law <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/08/to-save-the-gulf-send-the-jones-act-to-davy-jones%E2%80%99-locker/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">can be temporarily waived</span></a>, as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff did after Katrina. Each day our European allies are prevented from helping us speed up the cleanup is another day that Gulf fishing and tourism jobs die.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">They refused the help. Barry is having more fun sucking up to tinhorn dictators and thugs than with accepting help from our allies. This administration has set US foreign policy back decades with its continued snubbing of our allies, from the Brits, to the Israelis, to the Iraqis, and now the Dutch; a nation willing to work in concert with a dozen other nations and the US in containing and cleaning up this mess. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">But Barry & Company aren't interested. They're concerned with rhetoric, public image, and their agenda, and all of this garbage he's had to face since being inaugurated is a distraction; an interruption that prevents them from pushing their radical agenda forward. Funny thing about a president's agenda: They can get a decent amount of their agenda passed and enacted, but the real world tends to befuddle their plans and timetable. After all, Bush never wanted to be a wartime president, but he stepped up to the task when the decision hit his desk. Barry is still in the middle of voting "present" than making decisions.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-28215050009929374702010-06-09T09:11:00.000-07:002010-06-09T09:12:20.466-07:00Primary round-up<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Last night was a big primary night around the country. We're pretty sure that more than a couple Democrats aren't pleased with who they're going to be facing this fall. Needless to say, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/us/politics/09primary.html?hp"><span style="color:#ff0000;">the GOP women shined brightly last night in their wins</span></a></li>:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, who ascended to the top of the business world before turning to politics, prevailed on Tuesday in their respective battles for the Republican nominations for the United States Senate and governor in California, setting the stage for costly general election fights this fall.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Ms. Fiorina, a former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, beat Tom Campbell, a former congressman, and Chuck DeVore, whose candidacy drew the backing of many Tea Party activists. She will face the incumbent senator, Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, in the fall. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay and a billionaire, had invested a small share of her personal fortune to prevail in the governor’s race over Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, who put $24 million of his own money into his primary campaign. She will challenge Jerry Brown, the state’s Democratic attorney general, who was first elected governor of California three decades ago. ...</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">In a closely watched race in Arkansas, Senator Blanche Lincoln survived a tough challenge from her party’s left wing to capture the Democratic nomination in a runoff primary election, resisting the anti-incumbent wave that has defined the midterm election year. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Mrs. Lincoln withstood a multimillion-dollar campaign against her from organized labor, environmental groups and liberal advocacy organizations from outside Arkansas as she prevailed over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. She faces a difficult contest in the fall, but her victory challenges the suggestion that voters are poised to oust all officeholders. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">“We proved that this senator’s vote is not for sale and neither is yours,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “We took on the outside groups seeking to manipulate our votes.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">It was the busiest primary day so far this year, a coast-to-coast series of contests that stretched from Maine to California and helped to decide which candidates will be on the general election ballot in races for governor, the House and the Senate. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Setting the stage for one of the more intriguing races this fall, Nevada Republicans chose Sharron Angle, a candidate backed by the Tea Party, to challenge Senator Harry Reid, the embattled Senate majority leader. Mr. Reid has emerged as a primary target of conservatives intent on dethroning key Democrats this year. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">In South Carolina, Nikki Haley moved closer to becoming the first female governor of South Carolina as she strongly outpaced three Republican primary rivals in one of the nation’s most divisive contests. ...</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Iowa Republicans nominated Terry Branstad, who served as the state’s governor from 1983 to 1999, to run again. He prevailed in a three-way primary and will face Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, in the fall. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> In another South Carolina race, Representative Bob Inglis, a Republican who has occasionally broken with his party on national security and social issues, was forced into a runoff against Trey Gowdy. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> In the only contest of the night that will send a new lawmaker to Congress, voters in the northwest corner of Georgia elected a former State House member, Tom Graves, to fill a House vacancy created when Representative Nathan Deal left to run for governor. It was a low-turnout election and is expected to be the last special Congressional election before November, meaning that any new vacancies will be filled on Nov. 2. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> In Virginia, Robert Hurt, a state senator, easily won a contested Republican primary to challenge Representative Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat, in November. Mr. Perriello is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents because of his votes for both the Democratic health care bill and climate change measures. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">What the Times failed to cover was that Jim DeMint won his primary in South Carolina, as well, putting to rest all of the critics saying he was done like dinner. Also, sadly, John Eastman came in second in the California AG race. While we would've liked to see him on the ballot in November, his half-million votes showed that he wasn't a flash in the pan, and many, many Californians that backed him were signalling that they wanted to see a serious change in the AG's office. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Anyone who thought that Ms. Whitman, Ms. Fiorina, and Ms. Angle didn't have a shot at winning, I hope you all enjoy the egg on your face. Both Whitman and Fiorina are going to be tough opponents for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, respectively. (If I were either of them, I'd be sitting down with my campaign staff today to devise a strategy. However, they'd be smart to remember both of these women are former CEOs -- captains of industry -- and they're extremely smart, savvy, and shrewd.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">On a lighter note, noted Birther, Orly Taitz, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/09/taitzmas-fails-to-arrive/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">lost in her bid to be California's GOP nominee for Secretary of State</span></a></li>. This loon is so out there she tried to get her opponent thrown off the ballot, using the argument he didn't file his registration by the deadline. Furthermore, if any of you happen to be fans of her, and are still holding out a glimmer of hope she can win any of her nutty Birther lawsuits in an effort to overturn the presidential election in 2008, you can forget it. She's been sanctioned by so many courts, forbidding her suits, that this should be the final nail in this woman's coffin, both politically and legally. And just as we shed no tears for Helen Thomas retiring, we shed no tears over this nutbag's loss.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Congrats to the winners. They have a long, tough slog ahead of them. We know Democrats aren't going to silently disappear into the night. They know that their political future this year doesn't look good. Between the anti-incumbent sentiment in the country, the ire the nation has towards congressional Democrats, and the constituents the so-called Blue Dogs lied to the Democrats could face a serious drubbing this November. The Cook Political Report's last numbers that I saw showed a significant shift in the House, with the GOP retaking it, and some heartbreakers in the Senate that will, at the very least, narrow the numbers. In short, November is going to turn this president into a eunuch. Barry will be forced to work with the GOP legitimately in an even-handed and honest fashion, or he'll be relegated to lame duck status.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-25088897016481686762010-06-08T10:59:00.000-07:002010-06-08T11:00:07.095-07:00News for the day<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Normally, I'd focus on one topic for a post, and leave it up for the day. However, I've decided to make a slight change in that. See, I'm a tad busy right now. I'm in the middle of writing a novel, and I need to focus a little more on that. But I don't want to neglect you, the reader, and I feel just simply putting up one post is doing exactly that. So, consider this your morning briefing.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">First up, I'd like to say a couple things about <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/07/white-house-blasts-absent-thomas-in-todays-briefing/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">the old witch</span></a></li> that retired yesterday after she <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/06/helen-thomas-agency-dumps-her-as-client/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">was dropped by her agency as a client</span></a></li>. Neither of us are shedding tears that the Anti-Semitic old buzzard is gone. As far as we're concerned, she should have retired a couple decades ago. I remember first seeing Helen Thomas berating President Reagan's press secretary, Larry Speakes, over the Iran-Contra affair. We also will never forget the day that <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/6477"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Tony Snow</span></a></li> slammed the door on the Anti-Semitic old hag when she was criticizing the US's actions during the Israeli/Lebanon War in 2006. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and by all means Helen, DLTDHYWTGLSY. (<a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38236.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">I'd be remiss if I didn't note that a few of her colleagues weren't thrilled with her outspoken nature</span></a></li> and apparent lack of objectivity. Of course, that's almost a pot and kettle moment, no?)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Second, Barry seems to be getting a tad angry over the criticism he's taking over the Gulf oil spill. (To be fair, he could've done something sooner, but he was too busy playing golf and having his entertainment nights at the White House to really give a rat's @$$ about a massive oil spill.) <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2010/06/07/nbc-leads-touting-obama-showing-anger-promising-kick-ass"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Last night he was interviewed by Matt Lauer</span></a></li> and let this part of the exchange fly:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;">I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers <strong>so I know whose ass to kick.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Sorry Barry, but unlike you, the talking heads were all over this spill from "Day One." Most talking heads, and your looney tree-hugging special interests, were screaming at you to do something. In fact, one Day One, Mark Levin reminded listeners that under the Clean Water Act (passed by Congress, and signed by President Nixon that would've allowed Barry to federalize the spill, and begin clean-up) he was mandated to take action. But he didn't. Instead, he played the blame game, which is often the case in DC politics. He has blamed British Petroleum. He has blamed Governor Bobby Jindal for being a pain in his backside. He has blamed everyone except himself. It must be hard to kick that ass when one's head is so far up it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Third, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38238.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">It's primary day across the country</span></a></li>. Well, at least it's some serious primaries that people have been keeping a close eye on. And there's the run-off in Arkansas where it appears that Lt. Gov. Bill Halter might actually take out Blanch Lincoln. Again, good riddance. In California, the primaries are on who will have the honor of taking on Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown in November. Good luck to Meg Whitman. She can take out Governor Moonbeam Brown (he was a former governor, for those keeping track of history), and Good luck to either Chuck Devore or Carly Fiorina in their efforts to knock off Boxer. And good luck to Niki Haley in South Carolina. Forget the mudslinging crap coming from her opponents. She's leading her GOP opponents by close to 20 points. Kudos to all of the Nevada candidates, and whoever manages to win the primary -- Sharron Angle, Sue Lowden, or Danny Tarkanian -- Godspeed in removing Harry Reid from the US Senate. All in all, today will be an interesting day in America's political landscape, and hopefully on that has Democrats wetting their pants over who they'll have to face.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Fourth, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38249.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Nancy Pelosi</span></a></li> made an absolute fool of herself yesterday with a speech. See, she not only had to deal with a bunch of hecklers, criticizing her over a host of issues, but she decided to pull out the big guns and blame Republicans for the lack of action on the BP oil spill, and the outrageous deficits being run up by Congress. Um, Nancy, you and your cronies have been in charge of Congress since January of last year. Kind of hard to put the blame at the feet of the MINORITY party, don't you think?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Lastly, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38223.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The Politico is reporting</span></a></li> that Barry is reshaping the federal judiciary with an "unprecedented number" of female and minority nominees. Again, this shows the complete lack of attention the president has to the American electorate. The public doesn't give a rat's @$$ about the number of minority jurists on the federal bench; they want competent jurists that follow the rule of law, the US Constitution, and don't attempt to rewrite the bloody thing to suit social needs. In other words, they want originalist-minded jurists. They don't want judges that see things in the Constitution that aren't there. So, Barry can pat himself on the back for nominating minorities, but the public won't be pleased by his picks. All we need to do is look at his Supreme Court picks to see he clearly is pushing an agenda of judicial activism and social justice. Neither have a damn thing to do with interpreting the highest law in the land.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-89354460065066823002010-06-02T09:28:00.001-07:002010-06-02T09:34:12.998-07:00Former GOP backstabber now reveals he's "very lonely"<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Who is this? <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/100947-crist-says-hes-lonely-out-on-campaign-trail"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Charlie Crist</span></a></li>, that's who.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says it is “very lonely” running as an Independent.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Since he quit his party, Crist says he has discovered that people he thought were friends turned out to be only Republican friends who dropped Crist after he left the GOP.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Gee Charlie, it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact you lied, and stabbed the party in the back, would it? After all, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/09/crist-im-not-running-as-an-independent/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">you did tell voters you wouldn't run as an Independent</span></a></li> and then less than a month later <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/30/crist-im-following-lincolns-advice-or-something/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">you reneged on that promise</span></a></li>.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />Crist has lost so many campaign staffers that his sister is now running his third-party effort.<br /><br />“When you’re not affiliated with a party, it can be very lonely, particularly initially,” Crist told The Hill in an hourlong phone interview.<br /><br />Still, he insists he has no regrets about his decision, and offered criticism for the GOP activists who took a stand against him after he supported President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.<br /><br />“It just became increasingly apparent to me that a segment of the party was drifting so far to the right that it just wasn’t a place where I felt comfortable anymore,” Crist said.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Whoa. Just a second there, pal. You got the endorsement of the NRSC. And as to the stimulus argument, the GOP has been virtually lock-step together in opposing the federal funds being wasted by this administration. Those funds were supposed to have eased this recession, and they haven't. They were supposed to go for the creation of jobs, and they haven't. These funds haven't been spent wisely at all, and most of it is going straight to Barry's cronies who worked to get him elected. What's so extreme, so "far to the right" about opposing federal tax dollars being misspent?</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br />“That level of acrimony and bitterness is what frustrates people today. There is this focus on being loyal to a party over the people, and it’s just wrong,” Crist said.<br /><br />Crist won’t say which party he will caucus with in the Senate, if he is elected. When asked if he still considers himself a Republican, however, his answer is clearer: “I’m an Independent. I’ve changed my registration.”<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">That's Crist-speak for "I'll caucus with whichever party kisses my @$$." I'm serious, folks. Charlie Crist cares about one thing in this world -- himself. He proved that by breaking his promise to voters to run as a Republican. He proved it when he <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/12/unbelievable-crist-now-refusing-to-refund-donations/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">refused to give back campaign donations</span></a></li> breaking a promise made just sixteen days prior. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Voters in Florida have seen Crist for what he is: a two-faced, backstabbing political hack that will say and do whatever he has to to get elected. Charlie Crist is lonely not because his "loyal" supporters abandoned him. He's lonely because he's burned so many damn bridges in Florida that even his most loyal supporters are fed up with him, his ego, and his antics. When he loses, and make no mistake he will lose, he's going to blame everyone around him. Instead of pointing fingers at others, maybe Charlie should take a look in the mirror. He should also do the voters in Florida a huge favor, and bow out of the race. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Finish out your term as governor Charlie. Shut up, and fade into obscurity. Don't worry. You'll still get noted in history; a footnote, mind you. You'll be remembered not as an also-ran, but as a never-was.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">ADDENDUM: </span><span style="color:#000099;">It's actually a side note, and doesn't really affect Charlie Crist. (Well, unless he had a hand in this, that is.) <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/02/ex-florida-gop-chair-greer-arrested-unknown-charges/?test=latestnews"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Jim Greer</span></a></li>, Charlie Crist's handpicked Florida GOP chairman, was arrested this morning:</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#990000;">The former chairman of the Florida Republican Party was arrested Wednesday, officials said, though they did not release the charges and there was no immediate word on whether they were linked to a probe of his finances.</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><br />Jim Greer, who had been handpicked to lead the state GOP by Gov. Charlie Crist, was arrested at his home near Orlando, Seminole County authorities said. …<br /><br /><strong>The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been investigating Greer since an audit found he awarded himself and his executive director a fundraising contract that paid them about $200,000.</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />The department declined to comment ahead of a news conference scheduled for later Wednesday morning.<br /><br />Greer owned 60 percent of a corporation set up to raise money for the party and former party executive director Delmar Johnson owned the other 40 percent. That corporation got a 10 percent commission on money it brought in, the audit found.<br /><br /></span><span style="color:#000099;"><a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/02/man-who-abandoned-party-refused-refunds-suddenly-very-lonely-guy/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">HT to Captain Ed</span></a></li> who notes that both Greer and Johnson are close allies to Charlie Crist. That fact, alone, should have Florida law enforcement taking a closer look at their ties to Crist just in case he might be caught up in this investigation.</span><br /></span><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-29427903905497411262010-06-02T08:44:00.001-07:002010-06-02T08:44:59.619-07:00Say it ain't so!: More Census fraud<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">On the heels of my post <a href="http://fedpapers.blogspot.com/2010/06/james-okeefe-strike-again.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">yesterday</span></a></li> citing <a href="http://biggovernment.com/jokeefe/2010/06/01/undercover-census-fraud-investigation-new-jersey/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">James O'Keefe's investigative report</span></a></li> on Census payroll fraud in New Jersey comes <a href="http://biggovernment.com/sadeleye/2010/06/02/undercover-census-fraud-investigation-louisiana/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">this report from Shaughn Adeleye at Big Government</span></a></li> about more Census payroll fraud, this time in Louisiana:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">From May 3rd to May 8th of this year, I worked for the United States Census Bureau in Lafayette, Louisiana. With the aid of a hidden camera, <strong>I witnessed and captured evidence of wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars–one systemic failure after another of this a Constitutionally mandated entity during a time of great recession and high unemployment.</strong></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">The training course consisted of four three-hour days and one eight-hour day. I was paid for a total of 20.75 hours, 3.5 of which I did not work. I was paid with your money, money that was stolen from you.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">On multiple occasions I was given three 15-minute breaks over the course of three hours and was instructed to fill out false ending times. When I confronted the supervisor about the discrepancy, she said she was just “giving us this time” and told me “I think you’re worrying over nothing.” <strong>At any business, this would be theft.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />We were also coached to indicate government phone numbers were in fact our personal cell phone numbers (a blatant lie) in order to prevent people from calling and harassing us. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />When I addressed what seemed to be a discrepancy on my form, I was told to not worry about it: <strong>“As long as you don’t have any major felonies or your fingerprints don’t come back as jack the ripper, you’ll be fine.”</strong> And yet sex offenders and rapists </span><a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/05/census_bureau_adopts_stricter.html"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">find a way to squeeze through the government filter</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">. <strong>If a business hired this way, they would be held criminally liable for the actions of their employees.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />I had a payroll supervisor tell me not to worry about having been paid for hours I did not work: <strong>“I think you are just making a big deal out of it… I would just throw it away.”</strong> Yet within a few minutes I was told it was an offense worthy of termination.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />I resigned prior to doing any of the enumeration work door-to-door. There have been </span><a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/two_more_census_workers_blow_the_OqY80N3DBTvL17VmxKKR0O"><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff0000;">other reports around the nation</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"> of the systemic waste and abuse on the part of the United States Census. The nation sees it for what it is. It’s the same continual waste of taxpayer funds in a time of need, the fraud that frolics freely through our political landscape, and corruption that would rather see us silent and submissive. The media will say that all government steals, is inefficient, and wasteful, but during this time of budgetary crisis, when everyone else is asked to tighten their belts, <strong>Obama’s Census gets to lie, cheat, and steal as much as it can get away with.</strong> Obama moved control of the census to directly report to the White House, and yet <strong>the quality is dreadful</strong>. <strong>No one is accountable, no one takes any responsibility, and the media yawns while as much as a billion dollars is wasted.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />This is what’s wrong with America.<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Mr. Adeleye is quite correct. Since the Census was moved to the White House, it has been nothing more than a barrel of waste and abuse. But are we really surprised? After all, this is the most inept, incompetent, and hyper-partisan presidential administration since Jimmy Carter. (The only difference between Carter and Barry is that Carter didn't adhere to the unions as much as Barry has.) </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">And where is Congress? They are, after all, the body that should be doing the oversight on the Census. The Census may be routed through the White House, but it's Congress that ultimately spends the money to run the Census. Where are the watchers? This is preposterous to see the Census handled in this fashion, wasting our hard-earned dollars. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Additionally, with the discovery of this fraud, eyebrows should be raised when it comes to the data collected. After all, if these people can't manage their funds properly, then it stands to reason that they're not handling the data properly either. If anyone else is running an undercover operation like the one done by James O'Keefe and Shaughn Adeleye, don't quit after the training. Document everything that happens with the payroll, but we also need to see if supervisors are manipulating the data collected. </span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000099;">Let's see if we can blow this wide open. Payroll fraud is one thing, and heads should roll. But if it's discovered that data is being tainted by Census workers, then there should be criminal prosecution as well. Those in the administration that are overseeing the Census should be dragged in front of Congress for hearings into the malfeasance being perpetuated by Census workers.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2821424937717040477.post-6500006234286150852010-06-01T11:17:00.001-07:002010-06-01T11:19:16.145-07:00James O'Keefe strike again!<span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">You all remember him, right? His <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/14/acorn-video-prostitution-scandal-in-new-york-ny/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">investigative journalist</span></a></li> <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/11/washington-dc-acorn-video-child-prostitution-investigation/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">pieces that</span></a></li> <a href="http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/10/complete-acorn-baltimore-prostitution-investigation-transcript/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">crucified and crushed ACORN</span></a></li> are legendary. He and Hannah Giles exposed ACORN for the corrupt organization that it is. (Yes, ACORN has reconstituted itself under a new banner. In California they are <a href="http://www.calorganize.org/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment</span></a></li>. In New York they are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/us/politics/20acorn.html"><span style="color:#ff0000;">New York Communities for Change</span></a></li>. And ACORN itself was renamed <a href="http://www.communityorganizationsinternational.org/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Community Organizations International</span></a></li>. Thanks to Mr. O'Keefe's work, ACORN is dead, but not gone.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">Today, Mr. O'Keefe gives everyone a head's up on another story. This one involves the <a href="http://biggovernment.com/jokeefe/2010/06/01/undercover-census-fraud-investigation-new-jersey/"><span style="color:#ff0000;">US Census in New Jersey</span></a></li>. It's a story about the fraud going on behind the scenes there with the tax money we send to Washington, DC:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">On April 27, 2010, I got a job with the United States Census Bureau in New Jersey. With a hidden camera, I caught four Census supervisors encouraging enumerators to falsify information on their time sheets. Over the course of two days of training, I was paid for four hours of work I never did. I was told to take a 70 minute lunch break, was given an hour of travel time to drive 10 minutes, and was told to leave work at 3:30pm. I resigned prior to doing any data collection but confronted Census supervisors who assured me, “no one is going to be auditing that that level,” and “nobody is going to be questioning it except for you.” Another Census supervisor only said he’d adjust my pay after I gave him a letter recanting my hours.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">As to whether this is an “isolated incident” or if there are more Census videos showing more waste, fraud, and corruption, we’ll let you take a wild guess.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#000099;">Given the fact that the Census is run by the federal government, this is hardly a surprise. Additionally, I doubt that this is an isolated incident. The nonchalant attitude about auditing not being done at the "street" level isn't surprising either. Washington, DC seems to have made a career out of wasting taxpayer dollars. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">The downside of his reporting is that it doesn't deal with actually taking the data as a Census worker, or if there was any fraudulent tweaking of said data. Granted, this story is a fairly big one, especially if he can add more to this story, but it would've been a helluva lot bigger if he caught senior Census workers/supervisors fraudulently changing the data collected by other Census workers. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">I'd love to see how far this story goes. His last series of stories brought down a corrupt community organizing group. Time will tell if the federal government audits it's actions, and deals with those who are wasting our money and committing fraud. My guess, as this story applies solely to New Jersey, a few Census supervisors are likely to be fired. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;">And this isn't the only story of Census fraud. <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/two_more_census_workers_blow_the_OqY80N3DBTvL17VmxKKR0O"><span style="color:#ff0000;">There is this infamous story from 25 May 2010</span></a></li>. It involves the Census cooking employment books to give the president some room on the unemployment numbers:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#000099;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">Last week, one of the millions of workers hired by Census 2010 to parade around the country counting Americans blew the whistle on some statistical tricks. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />The worker, Naomi Cohn, told The Post that she was hired and fired a number of times by Census. Each time she was hired back, it seems, Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Below, I have a couple more readers who worked for Census 2010 and have tales to tell.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;">But first, this much we know. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Each month Census gives Labor a figure on the number of workers it has hired. That figure goes into the closely followed monthly employment report Labor provides. <strong>For the past two months the hiring by Census has made up a good portion of the new jobs. </strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#990000;"><br />Labor doesn't check the Census hiring figure or whether the jobs are actually new or recycled. It considers a new job to have been created if someone is hired to work at least one hour a month.<br /><br /><strong>One hour! A month! So, if a worker is terminated after only one hour and another is hired in her place, then a second new job can apparently be reported to Labor.</strong> (I've been unable to get Census to explain this to me.)<br /><br />Here's a note from a Census worker -- this one from Manhattan:<br /><br />"John: I am on <strong>my fourth rehire</strong> with the 2010 Census.<br /><br />"I have been hired, trained for a week, given a few hours of work, then laid off. <strong>So my unemployed self now counts for four new jobs. </strong><br /><br />"<strong>I have been paid more to train all four times than I have been paid to actually produce results</strong>. These are my tax dollars and your tax dollars at work.<br /><br />"A few months ago I was trained for three days and offered five hours of work counting the homeless. Now, I am knocking (on) doors trying to find the people that have not returned their Census forms. <strong>I worked the 2000 Census. It was a far more organized venture.</strong><br /><br />"Have to run and meet my crew leader, even though with this rain I did not work today. So I can put in a pay sheet for the hour or hour and a half this meeting will take. Sincerely, C.M."<br /><br />And here's another:<br /><br />"John: I worked for (Census) and I was paid $18.75 (an hour) just like Ms. Naomi Cohn from your article.<br /><br />"I worked for about six weeks or so and I picked the hours I wanted to work. I was checking the work of others. While I was classifying addresses, another junior supervisor was checking my work.<br /><br />"In short, we had a "checkers checking checkers" quality control. I was eventually let go and was told all the work was finished when, in fact, other people were being trained for the same assignment(s).<br /><br />"I was re-hired about eight months later and was informed that I would have to go through one week of additional training.<br /><br />"On the third day of training, I got sick and visited my doctor. I called my supervisor and asked how I can make up the class. She informed me that I was 'terminated.' She elaborated that she had to terminate three other people for being five minutes late to class.<br /><br />"I did get two days' pay and I am sure the 'late people' got paid also. I think you would concur that this is an expensive way to attempt to control sickness plus lateness. I am totally convinced that the Census work could be very easily done by the US Postal Service.<br /><br />"When I was trying to look for an address or had a question about a building, I would ask the postman on the beat. They knew the history of the route and can expand in detail who moved in or out etc. I have found it interesting that if someone works one hour, they are included in the labor statistics as a new job being full.<br /><br />"I am not surprised that you can't get any answers from Census staff; I found there were very few people who knew the big picture. M.G."<br /><br /><span style="color:#000099;">This is our tax dollars at work, folks. The Census is an important function of the federal government. Forget the federal money states get, and think more about the representation in Congress. This is how we determine that enumeration. And this administration, backed by bureaucratic red tape, is treating it like it treats everything else -- they act like an absentee landlord unfazed by the problems, but thrilled to be the focus of attention. I swear, based on these two stories, the Census appears to be as incompetent and narcissistic as the president is.</span><br /><span style="color:#000099;"></span><br /><em><span style="color:#000099;">Publius II</span></em></span>Syd And Vaughnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09461825782496517901noreply@blogger.com0