Monthly Archives: September 2009
The Best Job In The World – ABC News
It’s probably the best job in the world, now that the Australian tourism bureau has finally selected somebody to live on an island and write about life as a beach bum.
The new hire will get to live in a fantastic house on a paradise island in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for six months and get paid $110,000 to do it. The only requirement: write a weekly blog. That’s right, weekly, not even daily.
Within the first 48 hours of the contest, the tourism group received more than 7,500 online applications. In the end, 34,000 people applied. Each made a 60-second video resume. They were told to be creative and they were.
Sixteen finalists flew to Australia for the final, “grueling” selection. Let’s just say, it involved massages.
The job requirements are quite simple: The ability to speak English and swim.
Psycho Bitch From Hell, Susan Atkins, Dies
Susan Atkins, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson whose remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world, has died. She was 61 and had been suffering from brain cancer.
Atkins’ death comes less than a month after a parole board turned down the terminally ill woman’s last chance at freedom on Sept. 2. She was brought to the hearing on a gurney and slept through most of it.
California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that Atkins died late Thursday night. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, had a leg amputated and was given only a few months to live.
She underwent brain surgery, and in her last months was paralyzed and had difficulty speaking. But she managed to speak briefly at the Sept. 2 hearing, reciting religious verse with the help of her husband, attorney James Whitehouse.
Homeless Sex Offenders Qualify For Stimulus Money
A slice of $7.5 million in federal stimulus money is being offered to help homeless sex offenders and predators living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway to cover rent, housing and utilities.
The money comes from federal funds designated for homeless people in Miami-Dade, but convicted sex offenders who meet income requirements are eligible, said Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, who has led efforts to find housing for the bridge dwellers.
Under the program, participants can receive financial assistance for up to 18 months, but must be recertified every 90 days.
The camp, which has become a national embarrassment for Miami, is emptying.
Book estimates that from a high of about 100 a few months ago, 49 remain in cardboard boxes and rusty cars in the sandy, bug-infested underpass. Some of them are still unwilling to leave, but they are moving one by one, he said.
UK Store Launches Underpants For Left-Handed Men – Reuters
A British store is launching a range of underpants for left-handed men, an innovation it says will save them both time and embarrassment in front of the porcelain.
The new range, by UK-based Hom, will have a horizontal opening instead of a vertical slit accessed from the right-hand side, breaking a tradition that has lasted for 75 years.
“In our view, this is a vital step toward equality for left-handed men,” said Rob Faucherand of Debenhams store.
Almost 10 percent of British men are believed to be left handed but men’s Y-fronted underpants have traditionally had a right handed opening from the time they were invented in 1935.
“As a result,” Debenhams said, “left handed men have to reach much further into their pants, performing a Z shaped maneuver through two 180 degree angles before achieving the result that right handed men perform with ease.”
Drunk Man Drove Car Into Deputy’s Home – Gainesville Sun
A Gilchrist County man accused of driving his car through a fence and into a deputy’s concrete block home was charged with DUI.
Rodney Troy Whitley, 40, was arrested by the Florida Highway Patrol after the 1:26 a.m. incident north of Bell in northern Gilchrist County.
According to FHP, the white minivan Whitley had been driving wound up embedded on the north side of a home built with concrete blocks and owned by a Gilchrist County deputy and her husband.
The deputy told FHP that they heard a loud noise and then saw that the minivan had come through their bedroom wall. The couple went outside and found Whitley behind the wheel of the minivan, according to Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Major Tony Smith. The deputy was not injured, but her husband required stitches due to cuts from flying debris, Smith said.
Whitley reportedly told an FHP trooper that he lost control of the minivan while answering a text message on his cell phone.
After a breath test determined Whitley’s blood alcohol level was 0.140, above the legal limit of 0.08, he was arrested on the DUI charge and booked into the Gilchrist County jail.
Obama Administration Moves To Shut Down Disclosure Of Big Labor-ACORN Connections – Big Government
Even before U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was sworn in, Big Labor insiders like AFL-CIO lawyer and Obama appointee Deborah Greenfield were busily dismantling useful union financial disclosures produced by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. It’s another Big Government – Big Labor partnership aimed at keeping individual workers, whom they claim to represent, in the dark.
Why the hurry? Perhaps Union Bosses wanted to prevent the Virginia GOP and inquisitive people like Patrick Semmens from visiting DOL’s UnionReports.gov website that clearly reveals the Big Labor-ACORN collusion. Semmens discovered that teachers’ union bosses gave about $500,000 to the same Brooklyn ACORN office exposed on BigGovernment.com. Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) awarded ACORN service contracts.
That’s right; union bosses gave teachers’ forced union dues to the same ACORN that appeared to have no problem facilitating child prostitution. No wonder Solis’ Big Labor friends want to shutdown financial disclosure!
In fact, UnionReports.gov provides detailed union financial reports and is a primary source for many union members, reporters, columnists, bloggers, and researchers. But, the days of disclosure are numbered. Big Labor has commanded Labor Secretary Solis to shut it all down.
Will Big Labor’s ties with ACORN be hidden again?
In 2003, some sunlight began to shine on union financial disclosure revealing payments to groups like ACORN.
Itemized ACORN payments were previously hidden somewhere in reports like the 2004 NEA LM-2 report below. A quick comparison of NEA financial disclosure reports appears below illustrating the value of the reformed 2008 report verses the 2004 pre-reform disclosure. (For the entire reports, please click the following links: 2004 and 2008 NEA LM-2 reports.)
NEA Disclosure before Bush Administration Reforms (2004)
Somewhere in the NEA’s 2004 LM-2 Schedules 12 and 13 are disbursements to groups like ACORN, but how was anyone to know? Where did the union dues go?
After years of battling big labor lawyers, the Bush Administration prevailed in court creating a LM-2 financial disclosure report that union members and researchers have found informative. The image below is just one of the several hundred 2008 itemized NEA disbursement.
NEA Disclosure after Bush Administration Reforms (2008)
“Nonpartisan voter registrant*CONTRIB DONATIONS/GIF”, Really? Well, at least the reformed disclosure provides the recipient ACORN and its address.
Note: In 2003, the AFL-CIO’s disdain toward ‘informed’ workers was apparent in its 2003 official comment to the Labor Department. It claimed that these reports would be too confusing for union members:
Such enormous masses of data do nothing to simplify, condense and aggregate financial information into meaningful totals that unions’ members could use to understand the financial status of their union. Rather, the proposal would disclose massive amounts of non-material financial data, with the result that union members will be distracted and confused in their efforts to parse out what is meaningful in the LM-2 versus what is simply noise.
U.S. Big Labor Department swings into action
Instead of focusing on the economy or the alarming unemployment trends, Obama’s Big Labor Department seems to have focused little on the men and women behind those numbers. Instead, Secretary Solis has focused like a laser beam on eliminating disclosure of labor bosses perks and their spending of money collected as a condition of employment from millions of workers.
A Secret White House Power Grab Is In Full Swing – Fox News
It’s one thing for President Obama to surround himself with the advisers he’d like to have, but it’s another to bestow on them sweeping powers to broker secret negotiations and push forward vast new regulations that could cost American families thousands of dollars.
Cap-and-trade energy tax legislation appears stalled, at least for now, in the U.S. Senate. But that doesn’t mean the cap-and-trade energy tax isn’t imminent.
Senate Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer hasn’t even introduced the bill yet; new Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln has declared the House bill dead on arrival; and there are several other cross-cutting controversies that divide Democrats on the bill. The Obama administration is unfazed. They are moving full steam ahead with an even more costly regulatory scheme in the name of global warming – shoehorning the regulation of greenhouse gases into the 1970 Clean Air Act, a bill passed before anyone had ever thought of global warming and that couldn’t be less suited to the task.
Driving the push for this massive power grab and circumvention of the elected branches is a key White House official who avoided Senate confirmation by being installed not as EPA director, but instead as White House Climate Czar: Carol Browner.
Long before the Supreme Court ruled in a highly questionable 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA, that the EPA has the legal authority to justify its proposed 18,000 pages of greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act, Browner (then EPA director under President Bill Clinton) had her general counsel, Jonathan Cannon, prepare a now-infamous memorandum arguing – for the first time – that the EPA possessed such a power. At the time it was dismissed as a wild-eyed overreach that Congress would never allow. Now it’s happening, and Browner is right at the center of it.
Mary Nichols, the chair of the California Air Resources Board, has confirmed that Browner was the lead White House negotiator in establishing new automobile emissions standards, which for the first time rely on EPA’s presumed authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the 1970 Clean Air Act. Nichols told The New York Times that Browner quietly orchestrated private discussions from the White House with auto industry officials. “We put nothing in writing, ever,” Nichols said.
Left unchecked, Browner will move beyond automobiles to EPA’s entire staggering 18,000-page blueprint for regulating the U.S. economy. It will eventually regulate everything that moves (light-duty trucks, heavy-duty trucks, buses, motorcycles, planes, trains, ships, boats, tractors, mining equipment, RVs, lawn mowers, fork lifts, and just about every other piece of equipment that has a motor) and lots of things that don’t (any building over 100,000 square feet could be pulled in, along with smaller carbon dioxide emitters, like restaurants, schools, and hospitals that have commercial kitchens with gas burners).
It’s bad enough that the EPA is moving ahead with plans to pursue expensive global warming regulations instead of leaving the complex issue to Congress, the branch of government constitutionally tasked with making laws. It’s made much worse by the fact that the effort is being led not by Lisa Jackson, the duly confirmed and therefore accountable administrator of the EPA, but by Carol Browner, the unaccountable, unconfirmed White House Climate Czar.
The Rules Murdering Our Troops – New York Post
When enemy action kills our troops, it’s unfortu nate. When our own moral fecklessness murders those in uniform, it’s unforgivable.
In Afghanistan, our leaders are complicit in the death of each soldier, Marine or Navy corpsman who falls because politically correct rules of engagement shield our enemies.
Mission-focused, but morally oblivious, Gen. Stan McChrystal conformed to the Obama Way of War by imposing rules of engagement that could have been concocted by Code Pink:
* Unless our troops in combat are absolutely certain that no civilians are present, they’re denied artillery or air support.
* If any civilians appear where we meet the Taliban, our troops are to “break contact” – to retreat.
These ROE are a cave-in to the Taliban’s shameless propaganda campaign that claimed innocents were massacred every time our aircraft appeared overhead. (Afghan President Mohammed Karzai and our establishment media backed the terrorists.)
The Taliban’s goal was to level the playing field – to deny our troops their technological edge. Our enemies more than succeeded.
And what has our concern for the lives of Taliban sympathizers accomplished? The Taliban now make damned sure that civilians are present whenever they conduct an ambush or operation.
So they attack – and we quit the fight, lugging our dead and wounded back to base.
We’ve been through this b.s. before. In Iraq, we wanted to show respect to our enemies, so the generals announced early on that we wouldn’t enter mosques. The result? Hundreds of mosques became terrorist safe houses, bomb factories and weapons caches.
Why is this so hard to figure out? We tell our enemies we won’t attack X. So they exploit X. Who wouldn’t?
It isn’t just that war is hell. It’s that war must be hell, otherwise why would the enemy ever quit?
This week’s rumblings from the White House suggest that we may, at last, see a revised strategy that concentrates on killing our deadliest enemies – but I’ll believe it when I see the rounds go down-range.
Meanwhile, our troops die because our leaders are moral cowards.
Author Confirms Bill Ayers Helped Obama Write ‘Dreams’ – WorldNetDaily
Confirming the literary detective work of WND columnist Jack Cashill prior to the 2008 election, author Christopher Andersen says in a newly released book that former domestic terrorist William Ayers helped Barack Obama write the president’s highly acclaimed memoir “Dreams from My Father.”
Obama’s 1995 book won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album and drew praise from Time magazine, which called it “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”
But since July 2008, Cashill has unveiled in nearly two dozen columns, summarized here, his compelling evidence that the unrepentant co-founder of the radical Weather Underground group – dismissed by Obama during the campaign as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” – shaped and refined the book with his exceptional writing skill and radical ideas.
Cashill, who acquired a copy of Andersen’s new book today, told WND the author “lays out the scenario just as I envisioned it.”
Andersen, in “Barack and Michelle: Portrait of a Marriage,” writes that Obama was faced with a deadline with the Time Books division of Random House to submit his manuscript after already having canceled a contract with Simon & Schuster. Confronted with the threat of a second failure, his wife, Michelle, suggested he seek the help of “his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”
Obama had taped interviews with relatives to flesh out his family history, and those “oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers,” writes Andersen.
The author quotes a neighbor in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where Obama and Ayers lived, who says of the two, “Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together.”
“It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both,” the neighbor said, according to Andersen.
Andersen also has written “marriage portraits” of George and Laura Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and John and Jackie Kennedy. Among his other books are “Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve,” “Barbra: The Way She Is,” “Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot” and “After Diana: William, Harry, Charles, and the Royal House of Windsor.”
Andersen writes:
In the end, Ayers’s contribution to Barack’s “Dreams from My Father” would be significant – so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writing.
Andersen concludes, “Thanks to help from the veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Books.”
Mass. GOP Seeks Injunction On Kirk Appointment – Boston Herald
The Massachusetts Republican Party has filed an injunction in a Boston court seeking to block former Democratic Party chairman Paul Kirk from becoming the interim replacement for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Lawmakers this week passed legislation giving Gov. Deval Patrick the power to appoint an interim replacement, but laws approved in Massachusetts usually take 90 days to go into effect. Patrick signed an emergency letter that he says allows the law to become effective immediately.
Republicans allege in their court filing that Patrick did not have the constitutional authority to do that.
ACORN Suing Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe And Andrew Breitbart For ‘Extreme Emotional Distress’
Community activist group ACORN is suing the makers of a hidden-camera video that showed employees of its Baltimore office giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman posing as a prostitute.
The liberal group contends that the audio portion of the video was obtained illegally because Maryland requires two-party consent to create sound recordings.
The two employees seen in the video were fired after it was posted online. The lawsuit says the employees, Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams, suffered “extreme emotional distress.”
The multimillion-dollar lawsuit seeks damages from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the pimp and prostitute in the videos, and from conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who posted the videos on his Web site.
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NOTE: What the AP story fails to mention is the fact that - under the relevant Maryland law – a party which has not consented to being recorded by another must show that he, she or they had “a reasonable expectation of privacy” at the time the recording was made for it to be considered unlawful by the courts.
According to the Reporters Committee For Freedom Of The Press:
State courts have interpreted the laws to protect communications only when the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus, where a person in a private apartment was speaking so loudly that residents of an adjoining apartment could hear without any sound enhancing device, recording without the speaker’s consent did not violate the wiretapping law. Malpas v. Maryland, 695 A.2d 588 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1997); see also Benford v. American Broadcasting Co., 649 F. Supp. 9 (D. Md. 1986) (salesman’s presentation in stranger’s home not assumed to carry expectation of privacy).
Click HERE For Complete Text Concerning The Relevant Maryland Law
ACORN is a public organization, funded with taxpayer dollars and it is, therefor, difficult to understand how its employees can rightly claim that they have a reasonable expectation of privacy while serving in their capacity as paid community activists in a building open to the general public.
Furthermore, it is unclear how strictly the law applies to audio-inclusive videotape recordings, which may be treated differently than stand-alone audio recordings by the courts.
Census Worker Hanged With ‘Fed’ On Body – AP
A U.S. Census worker found hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery had the word “fed” scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.
The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word on the chest of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and teacher. He was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.
The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation. An autopsy report is pending.
Investigators have said little about the case. FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is assisting state police and declined to confirm or discuss any details about the crime scene.
“Our job is to determine if there was foul play involved — and that’s part of the investigation — and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a Census worker,” said Beyer.
Bawney Fwank On Acorn: Investigate… The Investigators! – Wall Street Journal
In a letter published nearby, Representative Barney Frank takes us to task for an editorial last week in which we noted his absence from the House’s 345-75 vote to defund Acorn, the “community organizing” group that has been caught on video at least five times offering advice on how to evade the authorities while enslaving children as prostitutes. Mr. Frank, whose spokesman tells us he would have voted against the measure (that is, in favor of funding Acorn), has a point. Any implication that he is trying to dodge the matter is mistaken.
Even after the recent revelations, Mr. Frank is a vigorous and unashamed defender of Acorn. Yesterday he and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers sent a letter to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) requesting a “careful and objective analysis of a number of issues concerning ACORN.” (Mr. Conyers voted to defund Acorn but later said he did so “accidentally.”)
The investigation that Messrs, Frank and Conyers envision does not, to say the least, sound aggressive. They ask the researchers to get to the bottom of, among other things, “the extent to which ACORN has assisted [the] homeless.” With respect to the child-prostitution sting, they ask the CRS to look into “conflicting allegations” about “the propriety of these activities” – by which they mean not the advice Acorn gave on getting away with crimes, but “the federal and state laws that could apply to such videotaping and distribution of conversations without the consent of all parties.”
The Democratic duo also ask CRS whether the legislation defunding Acorn “could constitute an unlawful bill of attainder” by singling out the group – as if the refusal to continue providing federal subsidies is tantamount to punishing it for a crime. Such Constitutional scruples were not evident in March, when the pair joined all but six House Democrats (and 85 Republicans) in voting to impose a 90% tax on executives of AIG and other disfavored corporations.
President Obama’s Socialist Reading – Different World
This photo was taken of then candidate Obama. Look closely at the book he’s reading.
Check this book out on Amazon.com and you’ll be shocked. Here’s a taste of the description given:
Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest” – the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others – as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world.
Why bother reading about, say, The Constitution when he can be learning how to trash it and move us away from freedom and into a one-world system?
Dems Lied, Transparency Died
Senate Finance Committee Nixes Obamacare Online Disclosure – Michelle Malkin
The Senate majority’s contempt for the American people rears its ugly head again. The Senate Finance Committee just voted down a GOP amendment requiring that Obamacare legislation be available online 72 hours before the panel votes. Instead, the Democrats offered to make “conceptual language” available.
Dems lied, transparency died:
Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.
Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting.
Democrats said it was a delay tactic that could have postponed a vote for weeks.
The Democrats noted that unlike other committees, the Finance Committee works off conceptual language that describes policies — instead of legislative language that ultimately becomes law, and which the GOP amendment would have required.
Democrats accepted an alternate amendment to make conceptual language available online before a vote.
Philip Klein has more:
Currently, the only version of Chairman Max Baucus’s proposal we have is a 223-page draft that is written in plain English and explains the bill in conceptual terms. Republicans argued that until the bill is written in legislative language it will be impossible for the CBO to provide an accurate cost estimate.
The Bunning ammendment would have required the committee to have the legislative language of the bill, along with the CBO cost estimate, posted on the internet for 72 hours before a vote.
Democrats argued that waiting for the legislative languange to be written, and for the CBO to evaluate it, would needlessly delay the process by weeks.
“Let’s be honest about it, most people don’t read the legislative language,” Sen. John Kerry said.
The Bunning amendment was defeated by a 12 to 11 vote, with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln the only Democrat voting in favor.
Excerpts Of Sarah Palin’s Hong Kong Speech – Wall Street Journal
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, delivered her first major international speech outside North America Wednesday in Hong Kong at an investor conference. The speech was closed to the media, but The Wall Street Journal reviewed a recording of the event.
Here are some excerpts on various topics, from death panels to Chinese human rights.
U.S. DOMESTIC POLICY
On Conservatism:
You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we’ll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism… Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.
We don’t believe that human nature is perfectible; we’re suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it’s trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean that we’re resigned to, well, any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature…
On Liberalism:
The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can’t fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don’t trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is.
On what caused the financial crisis:
While we might be in the wilderness, conservatives need to defend the free market system and explain what really caused last year’s collapse. According to one version of the story, America’s economic woes were caused by a lack of government intervention and regulation and therefore the only way to fix the problem, because, of course, every problem can be fixed by a politician, is for more bureaucracy to impose itself further, deeper, forcing itself deeper into the private sector.
I think that’s simply wrong. We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn’t yet afford to own a home. In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians.
Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks.
On Milton Friedman:
Now even Milton Friedman, he recognized that the free market is truly free when there is a level playing field for all participants, and good financial regulations aim to provide the transparency that we need to ensure the level playing field does exist, but we need not, we need to make sure that this regulatory reform that we’re talking about is aimed at the problems on Wall Street and won’t attack Main Street.
On the Federal Reserve:
How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words “fox” and “hen house” come to mind. The Fed’s decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you’ll see the Fed somewhere in the background.
On deficits and Reaganism:
Common sense tells you that when you’re in a hole, you have to stop digging! A common sense conservative looks to history to find solutions to the problems confronting us, and the good news is that history has shown us a way out of this, a way forward from recession. Ronald Reagan, he was faced with an even worse recession, and he showed us how to get out of here.
If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! And you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate capital gain taxes and slay the death tax, once and for all. Get federal spending under control, and then you step back and you watch the U.S. economy roar back to life. But it takes more courage for a politician to step back and let the free market correct itself than it does to push through panicky solutions or quick fixes…
I can’t wait until we get that Reaganomics sense supplied again because we are going to survive, and we’re going to thrive and expand and roar back to life.And as the world sees this, the world will be a healthier, more secure, safer and more prosperous place when this happens.
On greenhouse gas legislation:
It seems like some are looking to ever more ways that will actually destroy economic opportunities today. Take for example, Washington’s cap-and-trade scheme. I call it the “cap-and-tax” scheme. Right now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and it’s still rising. And yet some in D.C. are pushing a cap-and-tax bill that could cripple our energy industry or energy market and dramatically increase the rates of the unemployed, and that’s not just in the energy sector.
American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under this cap-and-tax plan. The cost of farming will certainly increase. That’s going to drive up the cost of groceries and drive down farm incomes. The cost of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also rise. We are all going to feel the effects. The Americans hardest hit will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet today, much less with this new tax every month…
I am not indifferent to environmental concerns. Far from it. As governor, I created a sub-cabinet to study the impacts of climate change in my state. And I was the first governor to do so. It took us in a new direction…
I’m a supporter of nuclear power and renewables. We can develop these resources without destroying our economy. And we can help the environment and our economy through energy independence.
On health care:
I seem to have acquired notoriety in national debate. And all because of two words: death panels. And it is a serious term. It was intended to sound a warning about the rationing that is sure to follow if big government tries to simultaneously increase health care coverage while also claiming to decrease costs. Government has just got to be honest with the people about this….
As I said, it’s just common sense to realize that government’s attempts to solve large problems like the health-care challenges that we have, more often create new ones, and a top down one size fits all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for some one-fifth of our economy.
Common sense also tells us that passing a trillion dollar new retirement program, that’s not the way to reduce health-care spending. Real health-care reform is market oriented, patient centered and result driven. It would give all individuals the same tax benefit, that an ideal plan that I would have in mind, same tax benefits as those who get coverage through their employers. And give Medicare recipients vouchers so that they can buy their own coverage. And reform tort laws and change regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top down government plan, we should give Americans themselves control over their own health care with market friendly responsible ideas.
FOREIGN POLICY
On relations with China:
We engage with a hope that Beijing becomes a responsible stakeholder, but we must take steps in the event that it goes in a different direction. See, we all hope to see a China that is stable and peaceful and prosperous. Optimism that yes, it will be.
Asia is at its best when it is not dominated by a single power. In seeking Asia’s continued peace and prosperity, we should seek, as we did in Europe, an Asia whole and free. Free from domination by any one power…
On China’s relations with Taiwan, and other controversial issues:
We simply cannot turn a blind eye to Chinese policies and actions that could undermine international peace and security. Here, China has some one thousand missiles aimed at Taiwan and no serious observer though believes that it poses a serious threat to Beijing. Those same Chinese forces make our friends in Japan and Australia kind of nervous.
China provides support for some of the most questionable regimes, from Sudan to Burma to Zimbabwe. China’s military buildup, it raises concern from Delhi to Tokyo because it’s taking place in the absence of really any discernable threat to it. China, along with Russia, has repeatedly undermined efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its defiance of the international community in pursuing its nuclear program. And the Chinese food and safety, uh food and product safety record, of course it’s raised alarms from East Asia and Europe to the U.S. and domestic instance of unrest. From the protest of Uighurs and Tibetans to Chinese workers throughout the country rightfully makes a lot of people nervous.
On human rights and democracy in China:
The more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnic group will be able to settle disputes in court rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we’ll be concerned about its military buildup and its intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is that they will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests. And I’m not talking about a U.S.-led democracy crusade. [We’re] not going to impose our values on other countries. We don’t seek to do that. But the ideas of freedom and liberty and respect for human rights, it’s not just a U.S. idea. They’re very much more than that. They’re enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international covenants and treaties.
On China-U.S. economic relations:
Our economic interdependence drives our relationship with China. I see a future of more trade with China and more American high tech goods in China. But in order for that to happen, we need China to improve its rule of law, and protect our intellectual property. We need to avoid protectionism and China’s flirtation with state assisted national champions. On our part we should be more open to Chinese investment where our national security interests are not threatened. In the end though, our economic relationship will truly thrive when Chinese citizens and foreign corporations can hold the Chinese government accountable when their actions are unjust.
GOP Report Charges AARP Getting “Kickbacks” In Dem Health Care Bills – American Spectator
One of the subplots to the health care debate I’ve been following is the cozy relationship between AARP and the Obama administration, as the group has thrown its full-throated support behind the Democrats’ health care push even though their membership comes from the age group most opposed to Democratic health care proposals. Today, House Republicans have issued a report providing evidence that AARP is in a position to receive tens of millions of dollars in “kickbacks” if Democratic health care legislation becomes law.
President Obama and Democrats have proposed saving money to pay for health care legislation, in part, by cutting $162 billion in payments to Medicare Advantage, which allows Medicare recipients to choose privately-administered coverage. If these changes go through, millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage would lose their current coverage, forcing them into government-administered plans with less generous benefits. As a result, many of them would have to purchase policies to supplement traditional Medicare. Enter AARP.
In 2008, AARP generated $652.7 million in revenue by selling products like Medigap supplemental Medicare insurance, accounting for over 60 percent of the group’s revenue, according to an analysis of its financial statements cited in the report released by the House Republican Conference.
If the House Democrats health care bill becomes law, the report argues, it would be a boon to AARP, because while Medicare Advantage plans will be required to pay out 85 percent of the money collected in premiums to claims made by policy holders, the requirement would only be 65 percent for the kind of Medigap policies sold by AARP.
“In other words, under the Democrat bill, seniors could pay as much as 20 cents more out of every premium dollar to fund ‘kickbacks’ to AARP-sponsored Medigap plans than Medicare Advantage plans,” the GOP report charges.
Murderous Dictators Praise Obama
Qadhafi: Obama Should Be President Forever – The Hill
Libyan President Muammar al-Qadhafi showered Barack Obama with unexpected praise on Wednesday, telling the U.N. General Assembly he hoped Obama “can stay forever as the president of the United States.”
It was, perhaps, the only kind words Qadhafi had for anyone in his hour-long speech, during which he vented against what he called the “inequality” of the United Nations.
“You are the beginning of a change,” the Libyan leader said of the U.S. president. “But as far as I’m concerned, Obama is a glimpse in the dark for the four years or the next eight years, and I’m afraid that we may go back to square one. How can you guarantee America after Obama?”
Castro To Obama, Right On – Powerline
President Obama has received high marks from Fidel Castro for his U.N. speech of yesterday. Castro was impressed by Obama’s admission of past errors by the U.S. with respect to climate change issues. “It would only be fair to recognize that no other United States president would have had the courage to say what he said,” Castro gushed.
Castro is wrong. Modern Democratic presidents are quite prone to admit errors, real and imagined, committed by their predecessors. What it is that’s “courageous” about such statements remains unclear.
Still, with Obama’s foreign policy being widely panned, and playing out so poorly in key areas of the world, Obama will perhaps take comfort from the fact that one veteran practitioner, albeit from a backwater, has praised him.
Mackenzie Phillips Confesses To 10-Year Incestuous Affair With Father
Former child-star MacKenzie Phillips, whose life has been marred by drug abuse and arrests, confessed today that she engaged in a 10-year consensual sexual relationship with her father, rock star John Phillips.
Phillips, 49, the former star of ’70s-’80s sitcom “One Day at a Time,” told Oprah Winfrey that she was first raped by her father in a hotel room when she was 18 while passed out after a drug binge but continued to use drugs and have consensual sex with him for years.
The relationship continued long after she married Jeff Sessler when she was 19, and ended only when she became pregnant and feared her father was the baby’s father, Phillips said. John Phillips, she said, paid for an abortion.
Reading an excerpt from her new book, “High on Arrival,” on Winfrey’s show today, Phillips said of her first sexual experience with her father: “I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my father. I don’t know how it started.”
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Dave C
