"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this Presidency" – Barack Obama.

In March 2011, President Obama was given a "transparency award" from five different open government advocate groups. The award was presented to Obama in a private White House ceremony closed off from reporters and the public. Ironically, Obama received his transparency award in secret, because it could have proved very embarrassing to the President if reporters had brought up any of the following information at his TRANSPARENCY award celebration:

• President Obama has not decreased, but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy. According to a new report to the president by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) – the federal agency that provides oversight of the government's security classification system – the cost of classification for 2010 has reached over $10.17bn. That's a 15% jump from the previous year, and the first time ever that secrecy costs have surpassed $10bn. Last month, ISOO reported that the number of original classification decisions generated by the Obama administration in 2010 was 224,734 – a 22.6% jump from the previous year (see The Price of Secrecy, Obama Edition).

• There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies – 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

• Obama has invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor. The list of this president's invocations of the "state secrets privilege" has already resulted in shutting down lawsuits involving the National Security Agency's illegal wiretapping – Jewel v NSA and Shubert v Obama; extraordinary rendition and assassination – Anwar al-Awlaki; and illegal torture – Binyam Mohamed.

• Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama's presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers. President Obama's behaviour has been in stark contrast to his campaign promises, which included live-streaming meetings online and rewarding whistleblowers. Obama's department of justice is twisting the 1917 Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national security leaks – more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous administrations combined.

• The Obama justice department's prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake, who, up till 9 June, faced 35 years in prison for having blown the whistle on the NSA's costly and unlawful warrantless monitoring of American citizens, typifies the abusive practices made possible through expansive secrecy agreements and threats of prosecution.

• President Obama has set a powerful and chilling example for potential whistleblowers through the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning, whose guilt he has also publicly stated prior to any trial by his, Obama's, military subordinates.

• Obama is the only president who has reenacted Fahrenheit 451 by actually having his agency collect and burn a book due to a never-justified classification excuse: Lt Col Tony Shaffer's Operation Dark Heart.

• Under President Obama, the FBI has launched a series of raids and issued grand jury subpoenas targeting nearly two dozen antiwar activists. Over 2,600 arrests of protesters in the US have been made while Obama has been president, further encroaching on the exercise of first amendment rights.

• President Obama has initiated a secret assassination programme, has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Awlaki.

• President Obama has maintained the power to secretly kidnap, imprison, rendition, or torture, and he has formalised the power to lawlessly imprison in an executive order. This also means the power to secretly imprison. There are some 1,700 prisoners outside the rule of law in Bagram alone.

• The Obama administration is also busy going after reporters to discover their sources and convening grand juries in order to target journalists and news publishers.

• President Obama promised to reveal White House visitors' logs. He didn't. In response to outrage over his refusal to reveal the names of health insurance CEOs he had met with and cut deals with on the health insurance reform bill, he announced that he would release the names going forward, but not those in the past. And going forward, he would withhold names he chose to withhold. White House staff then began regularly meeting lobbyists just off White House grounds in order to avoid the visitors' logs.

• President Obama has sent representatives to aggressively pressure Spain, England and Germany to shut down investigations that could have exposed the crimes of the Bush era, just as he has instructed the US justice department to avoid such matters. This includes his refusal to allow prosecutions of the CIA for torture, following a public letter from eight previous heads of the CIA informing him that he had better not enforce those laws.

While I don't agree with all the aforementioned accusations against Obama, this President deserved a transparency award about as much as he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize while he was fighting two wars and attacking people in other countries with Predator drones. It doesn't get more ironic than that. Btw, Obama just announced he's sending U.S. combat troops to Uganda ! Sigh. I think the U.S. now has troops everywhere except Antarctica. No, strike that. It turns out we DO have troops in Antarctica. Must be those insurgent penguin factions.

In a related transparency story, one of the names on the White House visitors' log in 2009 was one Malik Shabazz. You may remember a fellow named Malik Shabazz is a leader of the New Black Panther Party. You may also remember Malik Shabazz was one of the New Black Panthers who stood in front of a Philadelphia voting booth with nightsticks and intimidated voters. That is a federal crime, but Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder inexplicably dismissed the case. Two months later, someone named 'Malik Shabazz' visited the White House. Big Government's Andrew Breitbart has been asking the White House for over a year if the Malik Shabazz who visited the White House in 2009 was the New Black Panther Malik Shabazz (Panther Shabazz says it was), but the "transparent" White House has not answered his requests. Perhaps the White House wants to keep quiet the fact that then-candidate Obama appeared on the same podium with the New Black Panthers, a hate group, in 2007. It seems our mainstream media can't be bothered with such a story when it involves Obama, a Democrat. No, the media is too busy talking about an offensive word that was written on a rock 27 years ago on some hunting land Rick Perry's family once leased, a word that neither Perry nor his family placed on the rock, and that Perry's family painted over. THAT is somehow news when it involves a Republican. But Obama appearing onstage with a hate group in 2007 while he was running for President….nah, nothing to see here, says the illustrious mainstream media.

And speaking of Attorney General Holder…how many different stories are we going to get from him regarding the Fast And Furious incident ? When Holder was asked by Congress in May 2011 when he first heard of Fast And Furious, he said "I'm not sure of the exact date but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." Later he told reporters, "The notion that this reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don't think is supported by the facts and I think once we examine it and once the facts are revealed we'll see that's not the case." Unfortunately, none of what Holder said was true. E-mails revealed Holder knew about Fast And Furious since at least July 2010. Holder either lied to Congress, a federal crime, or he conveniently forgot all about an ATF program (the ATF works for Holder as head of Justice) in which thousands of American-made guns were purposely put into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the deaths of at least two U.S. agents and countless Mexicans. After Holder's falsehoods were revealed, the DOJ lamely claimed Holder doesn't read his e-mails, adding possible dereliction of duty charges to Holder's other problems. Then the Justice Dept. told CBS News that Holder thought the congressional inquirers were talking about some OTHER case (ah yes, the OTHER Fast And Furious operation ! That explains it. NOT !). Then they told CBS that Holder misunderstood the question, and that he DID know about the Fast And Furious case, just not the details…I assume Holder's next excuse will be, 'the dog ate my Fast And Furious notes'. This thing practically screams "coverup". The DOJ has not been cooperating with the investigation, and this week Congressman Issa (R-CA) subpoenaed all DOJ documents regarding Fast And Furious.

Can't you just smell the transparency ???

Btw, the White House just refused to turn over documents related to the Solyndra debacle, in which over a half billion taxpayer dollars were flushed down the toilet.

Maybe we should give Obama another transparency award. What the heck ? After all, he is a Democrat.

When you ask liberals if they believe in corporate welfare, they will overwhelmingly say 'no'. They are outraged over corporate welfare !!! I'm down with that…but then ask those same liberals if Uncle Sam should subsidize renewable energy initiatives, and the answer magically changes to 'yes'. Therefore, liberals are against corporate welfare, except when they are for it.

The country's head liberal, President Obama, is one of those who rails against corporate welfare while he pushes corporate welfare at the same time. As the Prez has told us countless times, he thinks green jobs are the future. That may be true, but Obama omits the part about American green jobs not being so much the NOW. Obama is all about subsidizing green companies at taxpayer risk. As we have seen from the collapse of Obama's favorite green-tech company, Solyndra, along with the collapse of other green companies that were funded by Obama's Stimulus plan, the President's wishes don't make things so. Obama can engage in all the hope and change dreams he wants, but somewhere along the line, reality must be taken into account.

Here was the reality of Solyndra:

An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for years before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee in September 2009. The company eventually got $528 million.

Sounds like a great investment, eh ? But I want to be fair. Startup up companies sometimes do lose money initially. It's the profit potential that motivates investors. What were Solyndra's future prospects ?:

"We have incurred significant net losses since our inception, including a net loss of $114.1 million in 2007, $232.1 million in 2008 and $119.8 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2009, and we had an accumulated deficit of $505 million at Oct. 3, 2009," the company said in a December 2009 filing to the SEC. "We expect to continue to incur significant operating and net losses and negative cash flow from operations for the foreseeable future."

Hmmm. So, when the Obama administration looked at Solyndra, a company that had lost hundreds of millions of dollars from day one, a company that expected to lose hundreds of millions of dollars more in the "foreseeable future", a company that lost money on every single product it sold,…Obama decided to lend THAT company $535 million in taxpayer-guaranteed money and make it the highlight company for his green jobs agenda. That sounds more like a pipedream than hope to me. And then when Solyndra, as predicted, burned through it's cash like a Texas wildfire, the Obama administration restructured the loan so the private investors would be repaid ahead of the taxpayers….and one of those private investors just so happened to be a big-time Obama campaign contributor !!!:

Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors — Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP — stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.

Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president's aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs.

Ka-ching !!! That must be the 'Change' part of Hope And Change. Cronies get paid first.

This all sounds pretty bad. Why would the government do this ? Let's turn to the DOE for an explanation:

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Friday that the company's financial losses were not uncommon for a high-tech startup and were a major reason Solyndra applied for the federal loan. The loan program is intended to help promising companies that cannot receive financing through private banks because of high risk.

Okay, now it all makes perfect sense. You see, when the government runs across a company so risky and shaky that the banks won't lend it money, THAT'S when the taxpayers should be put on the hook for the dough…when it's likely the company will, you know, collapse. Sigh. This stuff is getting so outrageous that I can't even be outraged anymore. I'm getting numb to it. When did this country enter the Twilight Zone, and how do we get out ? Now we have the federal government gambling taxpayer dollars like it's playing roulette in Vegas. Only the "high risk" companies merit taxpayer investment ??? WTF ?!?!?!

I can't stand it anymore. Over and out.

You can always tell the statesman from the politician. The politician is the one who manipulates, deceives, and spins. The politician is the person with his finger in the wind, constantly trying to gauge public opinion so he knows what to say or do, in order to win the next election. The politician is the person who depends on you not remembering what he said or did yesterday, when he contradicts his own words and actions today. We have lots of politicians in Washington D.C.

Barack Obama is a very good politician.

These days, Obama has been attempting to portray himself as the grownup in the room, the guy who wants a comprehensive deficit reduction plan, if only those darned Republican obstructionists weren't standing in his way. This comes on the heels of Obama running up deficits and debt faster than any President in American history. Columnist Charles Krauthammers points out the fallacy of Obama's words today in a column titled "Call His Bluff" (Obama warned Rep. Eric Cantor (R-NY) not to call his bluff). Krauthammer does remember yesterday:

President Obama is demanding a big long-term budget deal. He won’t sign anything less, he warns, asking, “If not now, when?”

How about last December, when he ignored his own debt commission’s recommendations? How about February, when he presented a budget that increases debt by $10 trillion over the next decade? How about April, when he sought a debt-ceiling increase with zero debt reduction attached?

All of a sudden he’s a born-again budget balancer prepared to bravely take on his own party by making deep cuts in entitlements. Really? Name one. He’s been saying forever that he’s prepared to discuss, engage, converse about entitlement cuts. But never once has he publicly proposed a single structural change to any entitlement.

Hasn’t the White House leaked that he’s prepared to raise the Medicare age or change the cost-of-living calculation?

Anonymous talk is cheap. Leaks are designed to manipulate. Offers are floated and disappear. Say it, Mr. President. Give us one single structural change in entitlements. In public.

I'm reminded of what I heard House Majority leader John Boehner (R-OH) say yesterday, that negotiating with Obama is like dealing with Jello. The President doesn't propose anything solid, except for tax increases. When it comes to spending cuts, the President will discuss, engage, and converse, but he never makes an actual proposal. Have any of you ever heard him make one ?

Another question we need to ask is why Obama opposes a shorter-term deal. That would be better than no deal. It would be far better to extend the negotiating period than to exceed the debt limit, would it not ? Krauthammer supplies the answer again:

As part of the pose as the forward-looking grown-up rising above all the others who play politics, Obama insists upon a long-term deal. And what is Obama’s definition of long-term? Surprise: An agreement that gets him past Nov. 6, 2012.

Nothing could be more political. It’s like his Afghan surge wind-down date. September 2012 has no relation to any military reality on the ground. It is designed solely to position Obama favorably going into the last weeks of his reelection campaign.

Barack Obama is a very good politician. That's why he manipulates the public by preying on fears of Social Security checks not going out in August, when our President knows darn well that they will go out.

That's also why the President talks about superfluous things, such as tax loopholes for corporate jets. Obama the politician is counting on your knee jerk reaction against tax breaks for the wealthy. What he doesn't tell you is where those corporate jet tax loopholes came from. But Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told us this last night on the Greta Van Susteren show:

'[The corporate jet tax loophole] was in the stimulus package. None of us voted for the stimulus package. This was called accelerated depreciation. It's a tax policy that the president put into his stimulus package and passed. Now he's saying that it's a corporate jet loophole. It applies to lots of things, airplanes included. What I find interesting about this one particular issue was it never came up in our debt negotiations, it never came up in discussions. The first time I heard about a corporate jet loophole, which was in the stimulus package, was when he mentioned it six times in a press conference. "

The Democrats put in the corporate jet tax loophole, Obama signed it into law, no Republicans voted for the stimulus package…but now Obama uses his own tax loophole against the Republicans in deficit reduction negotiations. He says Republicans are protecting the corporate jet tax loophole that Obama signed into law. How does he get away with this stuff ?

And btw, the Republican budget, the Ryan budget, did away with those types of loopholes. The Democrats would not hear of it. They already rejected the House Budget in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Here's Ryan again:

Look, I understand it plays for good politics and class warfare and makes it look like all we care about is that corporate – who cares about that corporate jet loophole? It's – we want to get rid of all those loopholes in tax reform. And what people don't tell you is our Republican budget? That's exactly what we proposed doing! We're saying clear out the brush of loopholes and lower everyone's tax rates so we can create jobs in the economy. That way the government doesn't lose any money but we clean up the tax code and we're not picking winners and losers in the tax code. General Electric paid no taxes but made a lot of money. UPS, another big company, paid about a 34% tax rate and their competitor, DHL, paid 24%. So there's something wrong with the fact that we're taxing a lot of our employers more".

Yes, the class warfare card does play well to an uninformed public. That's why Obama and the Democrats do it. It works for them, even when it's a bunch of hooey.

Barack Obama is a very good politician. He's just not much of a man.

The Democrats keep angling for tax increases as part of the debt limit deal. They don't bother to tell you that taxes are already going to increase by $1.5 trillion in 2013 when the ObamaCare taxes kick in. They also don't tell you the Bush tax cuts expire again at the end of 2012, right after the next elections. No, they don't tell you these things as they propose $2 trillion more in tax increases as part of the debt limit deal. The reason they don't tell you is, the Democrats are jockeying to pass the most massive tax hikes in American history in exchange for vague promises of future spending cuts that the Democrats hope to avoid ever making. That's their game. The Dems have pulled this bait and switch routine before (Bush I, Reagan). That's why the Democrats all jumped to approve Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) Plan B proposal, the one that allowed OBAMA to make future spending cuts in exchange for a debt limit increase. The Democrats hope to wriggle out of those cuts, or turn them into bogus cuts. The Dems could propose increasing spending by another $3 trillion, then do a "bogus cut" for $2 trillion, and say 'look, we cut the $2 trillion like we promised. Aren't we wonderful ?' Then the media would pretend not to notice that the only thing that happened was another trillion dollars in spending was approved. This phony tactic has been used a lot. It seems the only thing our government ever really "cuts" is the rate of it's own growth, which isn't a cut at all. It's a spending increase. Obama the politician talks about cutting the deficit in half, leaving out the part about how that still leaves us with an $800 billion deficit, larger than any in American history prior to Obama arriving in the White House. The Dems are angling for a tax increase bomb the likes of which this country has never seen, because the last thing the Dems want is to have to stop spending your money. That would loosen their grip on you, and they like having their hands around your throat. They like it a lot.

Yes, Obama's a very good politician. And that's no compliment.

When dealing with a political Jello-fish like the President, the only thing to do IS call his bluff. Here's what Krauthammer recommends:

The Republican House should immediately pass a short-term debt-ceiling hike of $500  billion containing $500  billion in budget cuts. That would give us about five months to work on something larger.

I agree with this strategy. The debt limit talks are going nowhere. They fell apart again yesterday. If the Republicans wait until D-Day on August 2nd, they will lose this political battle, and we won't get any spending cuts. The Democrats don't look at this as a debt limit deal or a budget negotiation. They look at it as a political contest to gain the upper hand. So should the Republicans. If they force congressional Democrats to vote on a smaller proposal that passed the House, it would put the Democrats on record and shift the onus to them. And if it passed the House and Senate, Obama's hand would be forced. Imagine the political fallout against Obama if he vetoed that bill. Yes, let's call his bluff. It's better than nothing America, and nothing is what we have now.

It would also be nice if we sent The Politician packing in 2012 and replaced him with a statesman (or stateswoman)…but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

I shamelessly stole the above headline from commenter 2012, because it's too perfect not to use. No way could I come up with a better one. Thanks, 2012 !

The State Of The Nation: Unemployment just rose to 9.1%. Economic growth is anemic. Half the feeble number of jobs created last month came from McDonald's fast food restaurants (I wonder how Oz-bama is going to take credit for that ?). We're in debt up to our eyeballs. Housing prices are continuing downward. Gasoline is expensive. Health care costs are exploding. Commodity prices are rising. Congressional Democrats haven't produced a budget in over two years. We're involved in three wars in the Middle East. We're on an unsustainable fiscal path…..so many big problems in this country…

So let's talk about Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), since that's all our media seems interested in. Okay, I'm not being fair to our illustrious media. They are also interested in the sex scandals of John Edwards and Arnold Schwarzenegger, not to mention their ongoing obsession with bashing Sarah Palin all day every day (FYI – Palin was right about Paul Revere, you media dolts. Read a history book).

As for Weinergate, it turns out the weiner WAS Weiner's, and Weiner is a lying, twittering weiner who likes to sext up women on the internet. Is anyone shocked by this stuff anymore ? It seems almost routine by now. Weiner pulled a series of collosal boners in the aftermath of Weinergate, acting all cock-y and abrasive with reporters, but the New York Congressman says he will not go limp and resign. He still has a hard-on for power, and hopes to win future erections, er, I mean, elections. What a d*ck. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says she will conduct an ethics investigation, to see if Weiner indeed has any ethics. All the evidence says no, and there's only a snowball's chance that liberal spinmeisters can still blame this all on Andrew Breitbart, as they tried to do when they ejaculated prematurely in his direction prior to Weiner blowing his load on televsion yesterday in the face of so much evidence against him and his penis. Now, of course, Weiner is truly sorry…sorry he got caught.

About the only thing that stands out about Weinergate, other than Weiner's shorts, is how bad his cover story was. It was obvious he was lying from the beginning. Very disappointing. I expect much better lies from our elected officials, and Weiner didn't live up to established congressional lying standards. Thus, how can he have a future on Capitol Hill ? I don't see it. Weiner could try to transform himself into one of those rare politicians who say what they really think, like Ron Paul (R-TX) or Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), but there's no surer way to be ostracized from the Congressional Country Club than that. Your own party will treat you like a loveable crank if you deviate from the party line, and the media will treat you like a joke. A media whore like Weiner wouldn't enjoy being laughed at, though at this point I don't see how the laughing could possibly get any louder.

For the benefit of Mr. Weiner, I offer the following video clip as instruction in the art of lying your butt off with sincerity. I present the Gold Standard, the Master Prevaricator, the most sincere liar I know, former presidential and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards:

That's how it's done, Mr. Weiner.

You can view some of Weiner's pathetic, combative, double-talking lies here. What an amateur, and I say that with "certitude".

Finally, let's not forget how the left-wing pseudo-news organization known as MSNBC tried it's best to discredit Breitbart to draw the attention away from their liberal man Weiner, a frequent MSNBC guest. This is must see video. It is truly sad, and truly representative of the way MSNBC conducts itself.

When the new Congress convenes, the GOP-led House is planning to move on several fronts.

1. They are going to try to repeal ObamaCare:

The new Republican-controlled House plans to schedule a vote to repeal the sweeping health care overhaul before President Barack Obama delivers his annual State of the Union address late this month, incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Sunday.

“We have 242 Republicans,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” He added, “There will be a significant number of Democrats, I think, that will join us. You will remember when that vote passed in the House last March, it only passed by seven votes.”

Upton, whose committee will play a key role in the GOP's effort to roll back the law, said that he believes the House may be near the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

Regardless of how the repeal vote turns out, the GOP will go after pieces of ObamaCare:

Upton specifically called out the requirement for businesses to complete 1099 tax forms, the individual mandate and the amendment on abortion introduced by Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak. "We will look at these individual pieces to see if we can't have the thing crumble," he said.

This should cause quite a stir. Democrats will fight back:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, appearing on CNN, said “health care reform is going to go down in history as one of the great achievements of this president.”

And Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said repeal is a lost cause for Republicans.

“We cut prescription drug bills for senior citizens by 50 percent,” she told CBS. “We've already made sure that young adults up until they're 26 can be on their parents' insurance. A constituent in my district came up to me a few weeks ago and thanked me for saving her $3,000 a year because she could put her two adult children back on her insurance," she said.

"That's what the Republicans are going to be proposing to repeal this week," Wasserman Schultz added. "It's not going to happen. If it's about jobs and the economy and reducing the deficit, wasting time and money and adding to the deficit by repealing health care reform or on the attempt is irresponsible.”

In order for the Republicans to successfully repeal ObamaCare, I believe they will have to come up with a REPLACEMENT for it, a better idea. If the GOP forgets all about that part of it, they might be doing themselves more harm than good. I'm all for repealing ObamaCare, as long as something better takes it's place. We can't just stick our heads in the sand and pretend spiraling health care costs are not a problem.

2. Rep. Darrell Issa plans to go after wasteful government spending by the Obama administration:

The Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight called President Obama's administration "one of the most corrupt administrations" on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers.

Issa, who as chairman will have subpoena power, said he will seek to ferret out waste across the federal bureaucracy. While he used fiery rhetoric in describing the Obama administration in a series of television interviews Sunday, he said he will focus on wasteful spending, not the prosecution of White House officials.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about reports that the White House is staffing up on lawyers to prepare for his oversight hearings, Issa said: "They're going to need more accountants.

"It's more of an accounting function than legal function," Issa said. "It's more about the inspector generals than it is about lawyers in the White House. And the sooner the administration figures out that the enemy is the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending, not the other party, the better off we'll be."

Issa said he plans to lead bipartisan investigations on food and drug safety, as well as Medicare fraud.

"We can save $125 billion in simply not giving out money to Medicare recipients that don't exist for procedures that didn't happen," Issa said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "These are real dollars. Ten percent of the deficit goes out in wasted money – money that doesn't get one person health care in Medicare."

On the CNN show, Issa said: "When I look at waste, fraud and abuse in the bureaucracy and in the government, this is like steroids to pump up the muscles of waste."

Here is a list of investigations Issa has planned:

As the replacement for outgoing Democrat Henry Waxman, Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.

According to an outline of the committee’s hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown.

A look at the preliminary hearing schedule illustrates that Issa plans to stay away from hurling subpoenas at the White House.

In investigating the impact of regulation on job creation, the committee plans to ask why the economy hasn’t “created the private sector jobs the president has promised,” and he’s calling in business leaders to explain “about the government regulations that are doing the most harm to job creation efforts.”

“The committee will examine how overregulation has hurt job creation and whether the administration intends to try and abuse the regulatory process to implement regulations that Congress would reject,” according to an outline of committee hearing topics.

Issa also wants to study why the financial crisis commission couldn’t reach consensus last year. He’d like to call Phil Angelides and former Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the chair and ranking member of the committee, to determine if there was any agreement on the panel in relation to the cause of the meltdown.

Thar's a new sheriff in town, and his name is Darrell Issa.

3. The Republicans might demand budget cuts in exchange for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling:

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, said if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, the “impact on the economy would be catastrophic.”

“I don’t see why anybody’s playing chicken with the debt ceiling,” Goolsbee said today on ABC’s “This Week” program. “If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

The government is slated to hit the legal limit on borrowing, $14.3 trillion, early this year. Congress must agree to raise that ceiling or the U.S. could be forced to default on its obligations.

After candidates supported by anti-deficit Tea Party activists were elected on pledges to rein in government spending, some lawmakers have said they would demand budget cuts in exchange for voting to raise the debt ceiling.

The U.S. has a $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit. President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction panel failed last month to agree on its chairmen’s recommendations for ways to reduce the annual deficit to about $400 billion in 2015.

The plan would have increased taxes by $1 trillion by 2020 by scaling back or eliminating hundreds of deductions, exclusions or credits such as those allowing homeowners to write off interest on their mortgage payments. It would also have cut individual and corporate income tax rates.

Goolsbee said he anticipates Obama will find common ground with Republicans on legislation to benefit the economy, citing investment incentives and tax cuts for workers and small businesses, and warned against cutting back on spending needed for economic growth.

“The reason the deficit is big this year is because we’re coming out of the worst recession since 1929,” Goolsbee said. “That’s the reason. The longer-run fiscal challenge facing the country is important.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said failing to raise the debt ceiling “would be very bad for the position of the United States in the world at large.” Still, he wouldn’t vote to raise it “until a plan is in place” to deal with debt, Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

If the GOP was paying attention to the last election, they definitely SHOULD demand some budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. How else will the runaway freight train of government spending ever slow down ? The federal government has been kicking the fiscal responsibility can down the road for a long, long time now. It has to stop.

There are some things I just can't take. One of those things is being preached to about the lack of media ethics by the most unethical, lying, pompous, arrogant, smarmy jerk-off ever to grace the boob tube. I'm referring, of course, to MSNBC's propagandistic hack toad, Keith Olbermann (Ubermoron). Watching five minutes of Olby's hate-filled, hypocritical, and imperious over-the-top smack makes me feel dirty. I feel the need to shower in order to remove his foul stench.

Ubermoron, who evidently has not an iota of self-awareness or shame, doesn't even realize that in his "special comment" rants against Fox News (or whichever conservatives he is calling evil racist terrorists that day), he could just as easily be talking about himself. He has engaged in absolutely every unethical act of which he accuses others.

This is glaringly apparent in his latest spew about the Shirley Sherrod situation. The hambone Ubermoron returned from his vacation (hopefully, he was resting comfortably at a mental hospital with a thorazine drip) to make the following exaggerated condemnations against those who rushed to judgement about Sherrod.

(I don't blame you if you can't stomach the entire clip. Three or four minutes of it should give you the bomb-throwing gist).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Absolutely everything Ubermoron said about a lack of media ethics in this clip could also be said of Keith Ubermoron.

Let's cut directly to the chase. Has Ubermoron ever taken any conservative words out of context and twisted them into meaning something other than what was actually intended ??? You're damn skippy. He does it routinely, and he does it intentionally. Here's but one small example out of a boatload. Google 'Olbermann lies' and you will find PLENTY more examples:

Keith Olbermann IS what Keith Olbermann condemns.

At the same time he condemns the right wingers, the ThinkProgress phony Tea Party racism tape has been exposed, and the Journolist reporters have been exposed (see my previous post). The lying scum assasin known as Ubermoron doesn't even MENTION these example of unethical media actions (and tellingly, neither does the rest of the mainstream media, speaking of ethics). No, no. That would be inconvenient to the phony partisan bilge he's trying to shove down the gullible throats of his lemming audience (which, fortunately, is relatively small). Instead, he uses Breitbart to condemn everything the conservative media has ever said, everything they have ever done. He takes everything way too far, as he always does. Ubermoron has been calling the Tea Party racist since it's inception. He calls them fascists, compares them to the KKK, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. He phonies up charges of Tea Party violence. I'd compare Olbermann to a DailyKos diarist, but he actually IS a Kos diarist, which should clue you into his game right there.

The egoistic turd known as Keith Olbermann is no panacea for the media's lack of ethics. He is the embodiment of that lack of ethics.

And that's my "special comment." Good night, and good luck. You'll need it if you believe in Keith Olbermann.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing - Edmund Burke

In march 1964, a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese drove home from work and parked her car in Queens, a borough in New York City. She lived in a nice neighborhood there, Kew Gardens. Genovese exited her car and a man came after her, stabbing her in the back. The assault took place on the sidewalk in front of a row of shops and across the street from a ten-story apartment building called the Mowbray. The assailant, twenty-nine-year-old Winston Moseley, retreated to his car and backed it down the street out of view. Moseley returned to the scene of his crime, sexually assaulting Genovese and stabbing her again. The stabbing and and sexual assault went on for 35 minutes, then Moseley went back to his car and drove home. Kitty Genovese was left dead.

This is a horrible story, one that is played out all too frequently. The Genovese story, however, became national news due to a New York Times article that was written about it. The article stated the following:

For more than half an hour, thirty eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens…Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.

The apathy of Genovese's neighbors sparked outrage across the nation. People couldn't understand how they could be so cold-hearted. It was generally agreed that the incident represented a new low in human civilization. The inaction of the neighbors in the face of such evil was itself a form of evil, known in legal circles as "depraved indifference."

Now let's expand that Queens neighborhood. Let's expand it to include the entire world. What is our proper response in the face of evil ? What responsibility do we have ? Do we get involved, or do we stand by watching and doing nothing like the neighbors of Kitty Genovese ? An easy example of this is our response to the warmongering of Adolph Hitler. All but the most feeble-minded among us know that our only choice there was to get involved, no matter how high the price. If we had stood by idly then chanting simple-minded flower-child slogans like the 60's-era "war harms children and other living things," it would have had disastrous results. The body count would have been far more astronomical, the Holocaust many times larger, and Hitler's endgame was to attack the United States after Europe and Russia were defeated, thereby conquering the world. We know this from Hitler's own writings. In an unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf, Hitler acknowledged this endgame. He considered the United States his most dangerous enemy, and he was proven correct, fortunately for the world.

But not all evil in the world represents a direct existential threat to the United States, as Hitler did. We can stand by and watch the human carnage and do nothing if we wish, just as the neighbors of Kitty Genovese did. We can adopt a policy of depraved indifference and watch the genocide in Darfur, the brutal repression of the Taliban, or the mass murders of Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad. Often we have sat back and watched the human carnage play out as we went happily about our daily lives. We good men have watched the triumph of evil as we did nothing, or at least nothing effective. We get together with other alleged civilized countries and draft meaningless U.N. resolutions condemning mass murderers, while the mass murderers go right on pillaging, slaughtering, raping, and mutilating. As grateful as I imagine the genocide victims are for those spineless U.N. resolutions, it seems a country like the United States, a superpower, should do more than talk or pass an economic sanction. Sometimes, it takes armies to do the talking, and sometimes, even though war is as terrible as it gets, war is the answer. Sometimes, as Orwellian as it sounds, only war can bring peace. If humans were a more noble species, it might not be so, but if human history teaches us anything, it teaches us that humans have been on a thousands of years long struggle for power. That says something dark about the human heart, or at least some human hearts, but we can't deny it. That power struggle will be quite fruitless if evil wins in the end, and the depraved indifference of the free world, led by the United States, can only help to bring about that very result.

And that is why people of a certain political stripe should shut the hell up about U.S. military spending, as if it's all a tremendous waste of money on the "war machine." That is a self-defeating view, and naive beyond belief. I'm sure we can streamline our military spending and make it more effective, but I doubt any spending we do is more essential. If we disarm, I guaran-fricking-tee you our enemies will not. Our enemies will be absolutely thrilled if we disarm, and I'm all for NOT pleasing them. I want the USA to be the strongest, because I believe in our principles far above those of Iran, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc. It should be obvious, but for some it isn't. They take freedom for granted in a critical failure of logic. I will never understand what they can possibly be thinking. Maybe they have a death wish or maybe they just live in lollipop land, but I know one thing for sure – we should not listen to them, ever.

Let's get the crazy train rolling at high speed right off the bat with this first quote…

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.” – Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse (link).

Let me get this straight. After years and years of Democrats attempting to undermine President Bush at every turn in the War On Terror, er, I mean the Overseas Contingency Operation, including attempts to lose the Iraq war, a DNC spokesman now has the nerve to say Republicans have thrown in with the terrorists because some Republicans opined that Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (which he most assuredly didn't, as Obama himself even said). Wow-freakedy-wow-wow. Words fail me. I literally can't think of a negative adjective strong enough to convey how wrong this remark is. I can't even think of a way to equate an opinion on the Nobel Prize with throwing in with terrorists, but evidently Brad Woodhouse can.

And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) seems to agree. I expect this stuff from dolts like Keith Olbermann or the other lib-nuts on MSNBC, who routinely compare Republicans to jihadis, but not from Democratic Senators or the DNC.

Also, somebody better hip Woodhouse to the fact that the Obama administration has decided the Taliban isn't our enemy any longer. Or Hamas either, for that matter. I bet that'll do wonders for the morale of our troops who've been fighting against the Taliban and dying in Afghanistan for the last seven years. Acceptance of the Taliban is also a major step backwards for human rights, especially from a President who just won the Nobel Peace Prize here on Planet Orwell. Sigh. Is the world turning on it's ear, or is it just me ?
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Next up is this very conscientous Democratic Senator, who is fully committed to doing his job:

"I don't expect to actually read the legislative language [of the health care bill] because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life." –Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE)

Yes, being a Congressman is soooo hard, and now they expect Sen. Carper to read AND understand the legislation he's voting upon ? What's a poor Senator to do ? Study or something ? I presume Carper's state of confusion over the legislation won't prevent him from voting "Yea" on the health care bill. You just don't see integrity like Carper's anymore. On second thought, yes you do, all the time on Capitol Hill, and that's the problem.
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Now we move on to another patriotic Senator, John Kerry (D-NVA). Here's what Kerry said about cap-and-trade legislation:

"Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent."

Yeah, baby ! We're fundamentally transforming America !!! If we can only make this recession a lot worse, and make it last forever, we can help the environment ! And golly gee, if we go into a full-fledged permanent Great Depression II, maybe we can even reach the Kyoto emission standards ! Victory is at hand ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can, Destroy The Economy !!!! C'mon, everybody sing !

"Obama ! mmmm mmmm mmmm."

I can't stand it. Where did I put that hammer ?

Barney Frank (D-VT) wants the federal government to decide how much Wall Street executives (and all other executives of private companies) are paid. Barney also wants the government to decide how they are paid. Legislation to ban incentive-based pay for private corporations has been approved by the House Financial Services Committee.

I don't know where in the U.S. Constitution the federal government thinks it obtains the authority to do this, but, hey, we don't use that musty old Constitution thingy anymore anyway. The notion of limiting centralized governmental power (federalism) envisioned by the founding fathers is as outdated as bell bottomed jeans. These days, we seem to be climbing all over ourselves to give the federal government all the power it wants (totalitarianism). The statists are on the march, making all the same false promises the statists always make, the false promises that never quite seem to materialize (FYI – health care reform = forcing all Americans to buy health care insurance and then having the government determine what medical procedures you are allowed to have, in case you haven't figured that out yet).

Here is Barney's rationale for limiting executive pay:

"The problem with executive compensation is essentially, from the systemic standpoint, that it gives perverse incentives," said Frank, a Democrat. Without penalties for bad bets, the system means "heads you win, tails you break even," he said.

Perverse incentives. That means people shouldn't be rewarded for driving their companies into the ground. They should be held accountable instead. I think we can all agree with that, if not with the idea that the federal government should dictate people's salaries. That is so……Soviet.

Let's continue with these ideas of accountability and perverse incentives. As of July 31st, 2009, the federal debt stood at $11,617,400,889,464.57. That's over $11.6 trillion. As soon as I write these words, they are outdated, because the national debt is now higher. The debt has increased by $3.89 billion PER DAY since September 2007. In addition, the federal government is projected to run nearly a $2 trillion deficit in 2009. We paid $451 billion in interest on the federal debt in 2008. This year it will be much higher. The interest on the debt is money flushed down the toilet (or sent to a foreign government, like China) that could easily pay for any imaginable health care reform we could dream up. Instead, our federal government has burdened every American citizen with roughly $38,000 in debt. The federal government is the poster child for incompetence.

This means the federal government, if viewed as a corporation (FedCorp), would be the worst run corporation in the entire history of the world (with the possible exception of those defunct Soviets we're trying to emulate). So, how are we holding FedCorp accountable ? Why, we're about to hand the entire health care system over to them !!! We're going to reward the worst company ever, FedCorp, by handing it control over 16% more of our economy. Talk about perverse incentives. This is equivalent to handing the entire energy sector over to Enron. FedCorp has shown NO ability to be responsible managers of taxpayer dollars, so, naturally, let's keep giving them ever more and more. That's the ticket. And never mind that the part of health care FedCorp already controls, Medicare/Medicaid, has such massive unfunded liabilities that it is threatening to destroy our economy down the road. If not addressed, the unfunded entitlement liabilities will hit our economy with such an economic tidal wave that the current recession will look like a ripple in a pond by comparison.

While we're on the subject of salaries, FedCorp is holding itself accountable for it's putrid mismanagement by…..giving all FedCorp's civilian employees a 2.9% pay raise in 2010. This is after Congress voted itself a 2.8% pay raise in January 2009, with the country in the depths of the recession. Apparently, accountability and perverse incentives don't apply to FedCorp, only to that horribly greedy entity known as the private sector (the sector that produces all our goods and services). FedCorp is spitting directly in your faces, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. YOU tighten your belts. THEY get raises.

There are so many examples of the federal government throwing away taxpayer dollars that I could never list them all. This post would be a thousand pages long if I tried. Go to the website YouDontKnowJack to see some examples of how just one Congressman, Jack Murtha (D-PA), aka, the King Of Pork, throws YOUR money around to his cronies and special interests. It's disgusting.

And it wasn't that much better when the Republicans were in charge. During the Bush years, with Republicans controlling Congress, government spending STILL skyrocketed. Federal spending went from $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year during Bush's tenure (and those guys were supposed to be conservatives ??? I don't think so). The only way the Bushies were conservative is if you compare them to Obama and the Democrats, who are trying to match Bush's 8-year federal spending increase total ($1 trillion) in their FIRST YEAR. If Bush was the frying pan, Obama is the fire. I find myself longing for the return of Bill Clinton and his Republican Congress. At least those guys realized the economy was EVERYTHING. Those guys look like geniuses compared to Bush and Barry, and even Clinton ran net deficits and added $1.5 trillion to the debt. Things have been so bad since then that Clinton and his GOP'ers seem like the good old days.

Our federal government is so far out of control that I barely know where to start. This post is only a drop in the bucket in trying to describe it. FedCorp is like a bunch of crack addicts with our money. They can never get enough. With an addict, there's only one cure. You have to MAKE them stop. WE have to make them stop. WE have to get rid of the whole bunch of them. WE have to vote them all out of office and start over. That's the only way WE can make a difference, the only way WE can make the federal crackheads stop. Barring that, WE are screwed. Barring that, America, the land of the free, will very soon be OVER. There is only so much money that FedCorp can spend. There are only so much taxes that FedCorp can take from us. We're on the express train to poverty as long as this continues. Wake up, America. Your country is disappearing before your very eyes.

Upon taking office, President Obama vowed to "restore science to it's rightful place."

Enter John Holdren, whom Barack Obama recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Holdren's informal title is Science Czar (and as you shall see shortly, "Czar" is definitely the correct description for Holdren).

The following ideas come from the 1977 book Ecoscience, co-authored by Holdren, and illustrate what our radical new Science Czar thinks is the "rightful place" of science. Passages from this book read like the fiction from Huxley's Brave New World, or the ravings of a tyrranical lunatic. According to this book, Holdren is a totalitarian, a eugenicist, and an environmental extremist. What he proposes is simply beyond belief. Here are some direct quotes from Holdren's book:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

Hmmm. I don't remember reading anything in the Constitution that would allow the government to mandate forced birth control or forced abortions. I wonder who "concluded" that ?

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

Forced marriage, forced adoption. Holdren isn't quite up to speed on the ideas of liberty or freedom of expression, is he ? I'm pretty sure the Constitution DOES say something about those concepts.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Sterilize the population via drinking water, as long as it doesn't harm the livestock. Sure, Mr. Holdren. Was it Thomas Jefferson who first spoke those inspiring words, or was it Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address ? I can never remember.

a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
…
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

Maybe they can combine the sterilization implant with the National ID implant chip. The totalitarian two-fer. I'm glad Holdren left open the possibility that some of us peons MIGHT be able to have children with the permission of the government. Of thee I sing.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

I wonder how the government will determine which people are causing "social deterioration" ???? Eugenics, anyone ? Btw, the government is already trying to require us to "exercise responsibility" in our "resource-consumption patterns," in case anyone was wondering if this type of stuff could ever really happen.

Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

One worlders unite !!! I don't know why Holdren mentioned the Constitution in that previous passage from his book, because he clearly could care less about it. He wants to throw it out the window in favor of a planetary governing body. Holdren doesn't recognize any limitations on the power of the state. At least we won't have to worry about maintaining the integrity of sovereign nations any longer, because there won't be any sovereign nations. It's Big Brother gone global. What could possibly go wrong ?

If such things are science's "rightful place," well, I'd rather go back to where it was before. What kind of lunacy are we ushering into being here ? Where is America going ? The former fringe radicals are taking the seats of power, and that is truly frightening. What's next, Bill Ayers as the Education Czar ? It wouldn't be much different. We have to stop these people.

The Senate formally apologized for slavery yesterday, one hundred and forty four years too late, one hundred and forty four years after slavery was abolished.

Do we all feel better now ? A bunch of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery have apologized for it. Now we know that America doesn't condone slavery (and here I thought the Civil War settled that issue). Thank goodness. All those American pro-slavery groups can go pound salt. If there are any, that is, which there aren't (I hope).

But even the Senate's unaminous and meaningless kumbayah vote to apologize for slavery isn't without controversy here in grievance-based America, where it seems everyone feels slighted over something. The Senate's slavery apology contained a disclaimer which stated the apology didn't authorize any reparations claim for the descendants of slaves.

Cue the outrage. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the reparations disclaimer.

Sigh.

To be clear, I believe reparations for slavery were in order, but they were in order 144 YEARS AGO, not now. They were in order for people who actually WERE slaves. There are no reparations in order for people who are six or seven generations removed from slavery, for people who have the same civil rights as everyone else, for people who even have MORE civil rights than everyone else (affirmative action). I agree with President Obama, who said the best reparations are "good schools in the inner city." Obama embodies the lunacy of the reparations argument. Should we pay reparations to Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, just because his skin contains the required amount of melanin ? I don't think so.

As I'm writing this, there are some teevee talking heads arguing about whether or not the coverage of Michael Jackson's death is motivated by race. One talking head is saying it is, that the media is talking about all Jackson's drug use because he is black.

Sigh.

That talking head must not remember the teevee coverage of the deaths of Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith, or Elvis Presley. The media wallowed in all the minutiae of each one's drug use, ad nauseum. It's about celebrity, not race.

Speaking of race-based issues, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court ruling in the Ricci case, and ruled that New Haven discriminated against 19 firefighters (18 white and 1 hispanic) when they threw out the results of a promotion test because no blacks scored high enough to be promoted. New Haven officials were afraid of protests by civil rights groups if no blacks were promoted, so they discriminated against the 19 firefighters and denied them the promotions they earned. As with so many of these types of cases, the Supreme Court vote was split. The 5-4 majority decision was resisted by the Court's four liberal members (who think discrimination is fine and dandy as long as it's done against white people). Of note is the fact that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was one of those overturned by the Supremes. As one of the appellate court judges, Sotomayor thought discrimination against white people was hunky-dory in the Ricci case too.

Your going to hears lots of grievance-mongering and spin about the Ricci case, but there is no reason for any of it. This country was founded on the notion that all men are created equal, and equal protection under the law is mandated in our Constitution. We have a Civil Rights Act that says you may not discriminate against people based upon race. That goes for ALL races. That's why slavery and Jim Crow laws were wrong. All we should do in this country is give everyone the same opportunity (as in, all the New Haven firefighters had the SAME opportunity for promotion, regardless of race. They all took the same test. That's equality). When we go beyond that to dictate outcomes based solely upon race, we violate our own principles and make a mockery of them.

It's time to get beyond race, as well as all the other false constructs that divide us. I've watched the civil rights movement go from one of righteousness in the 60's to the "gimme" entitlement mindset of today. No. You aren't entitled to anything in this country, except the equal opportunity to achieve or fail. After that, it's up to you, no matter who you are.

Not by the leftmedia, anyway.
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Ever since Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain's running mate last year, she has faced a barrage of ethics complaints. No less than 14 complaints have been filed against her, for everything from firing Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner, to taking trips out of state, to conducting television interviews in her state office, to Palin wearing a jacket from her husband's snowmobile racing sponsor to a public function. Out of the 14 ethics complaints, obviously motivated by partisan politics, Palin has been cleared of every single one.

Palin said defending herself against all the frivolous complaints has cost more than $500,000, and she set up a legal defense fund to cover the costs.

Can anyone guess what happened next ?

Palin has been charged with ANOTHER ethics violation for setting up the defense fund !!! From the Washington Times:

Eagle River resident Kim Chatman challenged [Palin's defense fund]. "Governor Palin is perched to improperly receive an enormous amount of money for herself and her family and position a pool of pre-paid defense lawyers organized to deflect consequences of wrongdoings," Ms. Chatman said in the filing.

Egads. At what point do Palin's opponents go from being watchdogs to being harassers ? I think the line has definitely been crossed. Why don't they just cut to the chase, make it illegal to oppose liberals, and be done with it ?

In related news, be sure to stay tuned for MSNBC's upcoming "Palin removes tag from pillow !!" blockbuster expose, complete with Keith Olbermann's finest faux gesticulations and hyperbole, including a couple "Palin is worse than Hitler" comparisons for good measure. Do I smell a Pulitzer ?
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As the USA moves left politically, with Democrats scoring big victories in the last two elections, the European Union is moving to the right. The EU countries, having already seen the consequences of adopting socialist democratic policies, handed big electoral victories to conservatives in last sunday's elections. From AP:

The European Union said center-right parties were expected to take the most seats — 267 — in the 736-member parliament. Center-left parties were headed for 159 seats. The remainder were expected to go to smaller groupings.

Right-leaning governments were ahead of the opposition in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium, while conservative opposition parties were leading in Britain and Spain.

We are the force that is acting level-headedly and correctly in this financial and economic crisis," said Volker Kauder, the leader of Merkel's [conservative] party in the German parliament.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's governing conservatives trounced the Socialists, while an ecology-minded party vaulted to a surprisingly strong third place, according to official results.

The Socialists, who dominated the last vote in 2004, suffered a stinging defeat, barely clinging to the No. 2 spot.

"Tonight is a very difficult evening for Socialists in many nations in Europe," said Martin Schulz, the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament. "(We will) continue to fight for social democracy in Europe."

For all those who have desired America to be more like Europe….okay, it suddenly sounds pretty good to me. Let's go for it.

What if Bush or Palin said this ?: "It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of — I don't know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics" – Barack Obama, who apparently doesn't know that Austrians speak German.

Yes, but freedom fries were before Sarkozy: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." – Barack Obama, Apologist-In-Chief. Maybe you didn't notice Barry, but Europe was pretty dismissive of YOU during your overseas lovefest. The NATO countries are bailing on the Afghanistan War. Someone please remind me, why does NATO still exist ?

Um, weren't those JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ideals and values ?: "One of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." - Barack Obama in Turkey.

The times, they are a changin': "London hosted a Group of 20 meeting amid chaos. Chinese communists are now the capitalists, France's president is Hungarian, the Anglo-Saxons are being led by a socialist and a Kenyan, and Germany is refusing to send troops into other countries. Astronauts aboard the Space Station report the Earth is spinning backwards." – comedian Argus Hamilton.

This guy knows liberals: "The Huffington Post is organizing "citizen journalists" to attend the protests, allegedly to "report." Which means that they will try to find someone in a crowd who says something stupid, will post it on the internet, and build an argument around it trying to demonize the movement. And left-wing bloggers will react in unison like dogs responding to a whistle, about the "dangerous" and "violent" and "racist" tea parties. This tactic is as old as time; or at least as old as the internet." - William Jacobson, creator of the website Legal Insurrection, describing the pre-emptive faux-horror strategy of the left about the upcoming "treasonous and seditious" tea party rallies. Which reminds me, I'll see you at the Cleveland Tax Day Tea Party rally on April 15th at Mall C from 4-6pm.

And here's the reason why we are having Tea Party rallies: "Finally, what of the claim not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year? Even ignoring his large energy taxes, Mr. Obama must reconcile his arithmetic. Every dollar of debt he runs up means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. Mr. Obama is going to leave a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of additional future taxes, unless he dramatically cuts spending. (With interest the future tax hikes would be much larger later on.) Call it a stealth tax increase or ticking tax time-bomb.
What does $6.5 trillion of additional debt imply for the typical family? If spread evenly over all those paying income taxes (which under Mr. Obama’s plan would shrink to a little over 50% of the population), every income-tax paying family would get a tax bill for $163,000. (In 10 years, interest would bring the total to well over a quarter million dollars, if paid all at once. If paid annually over the succeeding 10 years, the tax hike every year would average almost $34,000.) That’s in addition to his explicit tax hikes. While the future tax time-bomb is pushed beyond Mr. Obama’s budget horizon, and future presidents and Congresses will decide how it will be paid, it is likely to be paid by future income tax hikes as these are general fund deficits." – Michael Boskin.

For science lover's only: "New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain. Dr Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s – particularly in the Arctic – may have resulted from changes in levels of solid “aerosol” particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level – of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.
Shindell’s research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:
Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates." – Lewis Page, The Register.

Snort. I knew those NASA guys were nothing but a bunch of evangelical religious nut holocaust denying flat-earther zealots in the pocket of big oil. Geez. Don't they know the "debate is over," as the pre-eminent [non]scientist Al Gore says ? Enough with this so-called "science." It only confuses people.

Congress gets very upset when TARP bailout money goes to corporate employee bonuses, corporate jet rides, and corporate golf tournaments.

What Congress doesn't get so very upset about is when TARP bailout money goes to Congress, in the form of campaign contributions.

In recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty." "This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions," says Brett Kappell, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it's his "policy to accept legal contributions.")

In addition, TARP fund recipients paid $114 million in political contributions and lobbying efforts in 2008.

Some of the top recipients of contributions from companies receiving TARP money are the same members of Congress who chair committees charged with regulating the financial sector and overseeing the effectiveness of this unprecedented government program. They include Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (he received $854,200 from the companies in the 2008 election cycle, including money to his presidential campaign) and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chair of the Senate Finance Committee (he received $279,000). In total, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Senate Finance Committee and House Financial Services Committee received $5.2 million from TARP recipients in the 2007-2008 election cycle. President Obama collected at least $4.3 million from employees at these companies for his presidential campaign.

The companies making the biggest political donations just so happened to be the same companies that received the largest TARP bailouts. What a coincidence.

The companies giving the most to fund lawmakers' campaigns and spending the most on lobbying efforts were also those that received the most TARP money to help them stay afloat. This includes General Motors, which spent $15 million between campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures and got $10.4 billion (more than all other companies), Bank of America (and the investment company it bought last year, Merrill Lynch), which spent $14.5 million to play politics and received $45 billion from the bailout bill; and American International Group (AIG), which spent $10.6 million and was paid out $40 billion. Citigroup was also one of the largest spenders to see a big result: between lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions, the company spent $12.5 million and got $50 billion.

For a complete list of TARP recipients that spent money on campaign contributions and lobbying, see the above link.

While I'm sure all our congressional members have the very highest ethical standards (LOL. Sometimes I crack myself up), this information makes it look like taxpayer dollars were for sale to the highest bidder.

Just like always.

Maybe the campaign contributions made these companies too big to fail.

FYI – Bank of America, receiver of $45 billion in TARP funds, MADE A PROFIT in 2008. So did Goldman Sachs. So did Morgan Stanley. Hmmm. Citigroup lost a lot of money in 2008, but over the last five years, has made a five year net profit of about $39 billion. All these companies made a bundle if you look back beyond the fourth quarter of 2008. They all made HUGE profits for years prior.

Get the picture ? These companies are not only to big to fail, they're too big to suffer even a one quarter loss before the government takes money from us peons to prop up the earnings statements of the big boys.

THEY are too big for the government to let fail. WE are too small for the government to give a damn about.

Campaign promise:

"sunlight is the best disinfectant…and when there's a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you, the public, will have five days to look online and find out what's in it, before I sign it." – Barack Obama

Reality:

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – wasn't put online.
The SCHIP expansion – signed before the five day waiting period.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – passed late friday night, will be signed on tuesday, less than five days (granted, America will vaporize if Obama waits).

But Obama's promise sure sounded good to his blind and adoring followers, just like the one he broke before he even took office about not having any lobbyists on his team.

Here's what Obama said about lobbyists on the campaign trail:

"I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."

Statements like these drew great applause from Obama's naive and adoring fans, but they were always hogwash. When is somebody in the media going to realize that Obama For America is itself nothing but an army of people attempting to influence legislative actions (lobbying) ? Community organizers, like Obama used to be, also mobilize people for legislative change. They are lobbyists too. So, let's stop playing political pretend about lobbyists. ALL politicians and those associated with them are LOBBYISTS, attempting to implement their political agenda for their own ends. The Democratic and Republican parties are nothing but huge, well-funded lobbying groups. Attempts to ban lobbyists are essentially an attempt to remove politics from politics. Impossible. If it's the influence of lobbyist's money that we are trying to prevent, we must agree to the public funding of political campaigns, like John McCain did, and Barack Obama DIDN'T (breaking his word again). Change We Can Believe In.
===
It looks like the man appointed to take Obama's Senate seat, Roland Burris (D-IL), perjured himself during the Blagojevich pay-to-play investigation. In a sworn statement to the Illinois House panel investigating Blagojevich, Burris said he had no contacts at all with the impeached governor before his appointment in late December. But it seems Burris left out one itty bitty little detail – Blagojevich’s brother solicited $10,000 in campaign cash from Burris before Blago named Burris to Obama's seat. Oops. That sounds like contact with Blago to me, and there's no way this solicitation could have slipped Burris' mind when it was the very subject of the Blagojevich investigation.

I can hardly wait for the forthcoming "it was an innocent mistake and I'm deeply sorry for the oversight" claim from Burris.
===
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) opened her fat yap and exposed some key counterterrorism information. Feinstein revealed that unmanned CIA Predator drones monitoring terrorists are run out of an airbase inside Pakistan. It was always assumed previously that the drones came from U.S. airbases. This hints at a much deeper cooperation between the Pakistan and U.S. governments than was thought before, and causes credibility problems between the Pakistan government and it's own anti-american citizenry, complicating the fight against terrorism. Feinstein is the chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, though maybe the word "Intelligence" doesn't apply here. Pakistan possesses 100 nuclear weapons, and if you were to pick a world government most likely to be overthrown and placed under Taliban/Al Qaeda/Islamic rule, Pakistan would be it. Thanks, Diane.
===
The Honorable Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) will stay on as chairman of the House Ways And Means Committee. Rangel, a tax cheat, is in charge of writing the tax code (How did Obama miss this guy for a cabinet position ?). Rangel's past is littered with one scandal after another, yet he always manages to avoid any real consequences (It's good to be a Democrat !).

Rangel's number one excuse for not paying his taxes is…are you ready for this ?…he didn't understand the tax code (that Rangel himself is in charge of writing). You couldn't make this up. Nobody would believe it.

I seem to remember something about a "culture of corruption." Wasn't it Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who coined that phrase ? Of course, she was talking about Republicans (Abramoff, Cunningham, Delay), but these days it seems a week can't go by without hearing about some new scandal involving Democrats. Daschle, Geithner, Richardson, Jefferson, Blagojevich, Kilpatrick, Murtha, Rangel, Jefferson, Spitzer, Dodd, Conrad, Mollohan, Solis…

Sure glad we restored ethics to government.

Lawyers give more money to political campaigns than does any other industry. During the 2004 elections, lawyers donated $183.8 million. So far in 2008, they've given $103 million, and we have 7 months to go until the election. Approximately 75% of the lawyer's money goes to Democrats. Lawyers, and specifically trial lawyers, are the Democrats number one special interest group, and have been for years. By comparison, the industry that donates the biggest percentage to Republicans is Oil/Gas. They are 16th on the industry donor list, having given $11.5 million in 2008. 73% of that goes to the GOP. You can find the donor numbers at opensecrets.org. The other big Democratic donor industries are Securities/Investment (like Bear Stearns), TV/Movies/Music (the liberal media), and Education (failing public schools/teacher's unions).

So, what do lawyers get in return for all that money they are throwing at the Democrats ?

Well, the Dems let the Protect America Act expire rather than grant immunity to the telecom companies that aided the government in tracking terrorists following 9/11. The lawyers have billions in lawsuits waiting in the wings there. Even national security took a back seat to the trial lawyers on that issue. That's what the Dems do for the trial lawyers. Dems block tort reform, block medical malpractice reform, block 'loser pays' lawsuit reform, and block damages award caps. Democrats are a trial lawyer's dream come true. Dems allow lawyers to continue to feed at the trough, uninhibited. Dems are money in the bank for trial lawyers. It's no wonder that Obama, Hillary, and John Edwards are all lawyers. No wonder all three of them buy into the ideas of victimology and entitlement. It's in their DNA. Everybody I know thinks our society has become overly litigious (except the litigators living in their mansions. They think it's peachy). Democrats are the reason our society is so sue happy. It's a big part of their agenda.

This leads me to the prestigious law firm of Milberg Weiss LLC (and by 'prestigious', I mean 'crooked as hell'). Milberg Weiss is one of the big tort law firms, and their specialty is class action lawsuits against corporations on behalf of their shareholders. You see, if shareholders don't get the expected return on their stock investment, the landsharks at Milberg Weiss are ready and willing to call that fraud or mismanagement, and sue the corporation. I kid you not. If you are a corporation and your stock price drops, Milberg Weiss will sue you if they can get enough of your stockholders to go along. Another specialty of Milberg Weiss is the so-called 'strike suit', which is a lawsuit that is so expensive to defend that corporations find it easier and less expensive to settle rather than fight. I'm pretty sure they used to call that extortion in the old days, but this is a brave new world.

There was a bigger problem with Milberg Weiss – they gave kickbacks to shareholders who provided primary testimony against the corporations they were suing. In other words, the testimony was bought and paid for, and that IS fraud, big time.

To call Milberg Weiss successful is an understatement. A 2004 Forbes article estimated Milberg Weiss lawsuit winnings at $30 billion. A couple weeks ago, I heard a Wall Street Journal analyst say it was up to $45 billion by 2008. The pattern of corruption at Milberg Weiss was mind boggling. They paid millions in kickbacks.

When the Bush Justice Department indicted several Milberg Weiss attorneys in 2006, after investigations that had been going on since the Clinton administration, Democrats in the US Congress rushed to their defense. The Dems politicized the indictments (surprise, surprise !) by issuing the following accusatory statement against the Bushies, which was signed by four Democrat Congressmen – Charles Rangel, Carolyn McCarthy, Gary Ackerman and Robert Wexler:

“The unprecedented recent indictment of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman is a very thinly veiled attempt by the Bush Administration to accomplish by bullying and intimidation what it has not been able to do by law – to end class-action lawsuits, one of the few tools remaining to safeguard the American consumer.”

That is typical Dem hyper-partisanship, but Rangel and company had a bit of a problem – Milberg Weiss attorneys were guilty as hell, and now the convictions are coming down. Seymour Lazar, retired, was convicted of paying $2.6 million to "professional plaintiffs" [link], and previously was found guilty of obstruction of justice, filing a false tax return, and making false statements to the court. Mel Weiss pled guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice by hiding secret payments to plaintiffs in securities lawsuits [link]. The prosecutor in the case against Mel Weiss said the firm has been running this scam for 25 years. Bill 'The King Of Torts" Lerach was also convicted in the kickback scheme [link]. Several others are still awaiting trial.

So, what kind of prison time did these felonious mass corrupters of the justice system get ?

You're gonna love this part.

After defrauding and extorting corporations for 25 years, bribing witnesses, giving kickbacks, obstructing justice, lying to the court, and collecting tens of billions in ill-gotten gains from it all….

Seymour Lazar got probation (he's 80 years old). Mel Weiss got 20-33 months, and Bill Lerach got 2 years. You'd get more time than that if you robbed $200 from the local mini mart.

Isn't it great to have friends in high places ?

Btw, Hillary Clinton has received more money from Milberg Weiss than any other member of Congress. Barack Obama received a lesser amount.

The Emperor's Club…is that the 796 Democratic superdelegates who are poised to trump the will of the people at their whim during the Democratic primaries ? Or is that the Democratic National Committee, who disenfranchised voters in two entire states during the Democratic primaries ?

Naw, it isn't a group of politicians at all. It's a different kind of prostitute, the kind that sell their bodies to emperors like Eliot Spitzer, Democratic governor of New York.

I guess I should write about what a hypocrite Spitzer is, and ask how a former prosecutor and attorney general who ran for governor on a platform of high ethical standards and cracking down on crime could prosecute people like the Emperor's Club and patronize them at the same time, but all you have to do is turn on the television to hear that stuff. Spitzer's hypocrisy is plain for all to see. I guess I could politicize this and talk about a "culture of corruption" within the Democratic party, like Nancy Pelosi did when Republicans were caught being corrupt, but that would only be partisanship, and basically dishonest, so I'll leave the dishonesty to Pelosi and her ilk. For every Democrat caught doing something like this, there is also a Republican caught doing something like this. There is no political party that has a monopoly on corruption. I could reel off at least twenty corrupt politicians from both parties right off the top of my head, and I imagine most of you reading this could also.

So, I'll take a different tack.

Spitzer spent $4,300 for a hooker ? For one night ? Are you kidding me ? And now they are saying he spent $80,000 for hookers ! That's a lot of booty for booty.

This proves what I always say about government spending. Your average Democrat will always spend way more than your average Republican. Compare Spitzer to Larry Craig, Republican governor of Idaho. When Craig allegedly went looking for a little something, he went to the airport restroom. That's called being a FISCAL CONSERVATIVE, folks. Craig didn't waste no $4,300 just to get laid. Just think, all that money Eliot Spitzer wasted on hookers could have been used to buy little Johnny a new kidney, or buy food for those who are hungry in the world. Instead, Spitzer just throws all that money down a hole (pun intended). Larry Craig didn't waste money like that. I bet Craig, had he been able to complete his transaction, would have been in and out (pun intended) for twenty bucks, maybe less. THAT'S a public servant, ladies and gentlemen.

People are saying that Eliot Spitzer was a potential presidential candidate prior to this sex scandal, so I have to ask this question – Since when does a sex scandal disqualify a Democrat from being president or in a position of government power ? Hello ??? McFly ??? Just how short ARE everyone's memories ?

And haven't we seen enough of the wives of these cheaters standing beside them at the press conference, looking like they've just been hit with a club, but "standing by their man" (who didn't stand by them) ? The only time I ever want to see this again is if the wife wacks the sob over the head with a frying pan right on national tv. Stand by this.

As always, the message here is – power corrupts. It always has, and it always will. There is no way to eliminate it, but in order to minimize it, here's a suggestion:

Don't hand all the power over to the government in the first place. That's where those low taxes, limited government, free market ideas come from. Too bad we don't have political parties that actually follow them, as our founders intended.

Clinton/Spitzer in '08. I hear Obama turned down Hillary's offer of the VP job. Pretty rude of him after Mrs. Clinton was kind enough to offer, don't you think, lol ? Sounds like the Clintons are still in denial. I figure Spitzer would be a good fallback choice for Hillary. She's used to handling cheaters. Plus, with both Spitzer and Bubba in the White House, the Emperor's Club would probably go public and become a good growth stock.

It's time again to vote for the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) Porker of the Year.

The public outcry over the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at special-interest, pork-barrel projects reached a fever pitch in 2007. But who truly stood out as the worst custodian of your hard-earned money last year? Cast your vote for CAGW’s 2007 Porker of the Year!

Chosen by CAGW staff from among the 2007 Porkers of the Month, the nominees are:

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), for "airdropping" a $3 million earmark for the First Tee golf program into the fiscal 2008 Department of Defense Appropriations Act conference report.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), for thwarting three amendments to the Farm Bill that would have provided modest reform.

Rep. John "Jack" Murtha (D-Pa.), for throwing a temper tantrum and threatening his colleagues over a challenge to a $23 million pet project he inserted into the Fiscal 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act and for purposefully putting up roadblocks and barriers to hinder earmark accountability and reform.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), for proposing a "temporary" 5-cent increase in the gas tax in the wake of the Minnesota bridge collapse to raise $25 billion within three years for a new bridge trust fund.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), for an $11 million Health Resources and Services Administration earmark for his alma mater, the University of Alabama.

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), for defending earmarks and pledging to continue his state's disproportionate harvest of federal tax dollars and for earmarking $10 million for an unnecessary county road project in Florida which was rejected by local politicians.

Cast your vote today and help CAGW decide who will receive the “dishonor” of being named 2007 Porker of the Year!

Here's House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's summation of the performance of the Democrat led Congress in 2007, according to The Washington Post:

"the Democratic-led House is listening to the American people and providing the New Direction the people voted for in November. The House has passed a wide range of measures to make America safer, restore the American dream and restore accountability. We are proud of the progress made this session and recognize that more needs to be done."

In addition, Pelosi claims:

"the House has had a remarkable level of achievement over the first year, passing 130 key measures — with nearly 70 percent passing with significant bipartisan support."

As David Broder notes in his WaPo article, Pelosi counts as "bipartisan" any vote that had 50 or more Republicans vote for it. There are 202 Republicans currently in the House. If 152 vote against Democratic legislation and 50 vote for it, that's bipartisan support to San Fran Nan. No wonder she's a politician. Such dishonesty doesn't work in most other professions. For instance, I doubt Exxon would launch a huge ad campaign touting $3.00 per gallon gasoline as costing only $1.00 per gallon. People would see through that rather easily.

They see through Pelosi as well. RealClearPolitics has a poll that averages the results of all recent polling. The current Congress gets an approval rating of 25%, and a disapproval rating of 63.5%. By contrast, President Bush gets a 35.4% approval rating.

This Hot Air video, called Pelosi's Promises, could explain some of the gap between Pelosi's rosy assessment and the people's perception of reality. Did the new Democratic Congress accomplish Pelosi's election night 2006 promises ? Did they 1) Restore civility and bipartisanship ? Were they 2) The most ethical Congress in history ? Did they 3) Work with the president on Iraq ? Have you stopped laughing yet ? I don't think I'm being partisan when I say they didn't even come close (not that they ever intended to).

To me, it feels like the Dems spent the whole year investigating Republicans for anything and everything, while ignoring or promoting obvious corruption within their own ranks (Jefferson, Hastings, Murtha, etc). I do have to take issue with the Hot Air video on one thing though. Creating a new cafeteria menu was not the biggest accomplishment of Congress. That's probably only in fourth or fifth place in the annus horribilis of Democratic accomplishment. This Congress also raised the minimum wage by a buck (good news for teenagers who need a couple extra bucks on saturday night), mandated increased car mileage standards (this one I like), and put through a one-year fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax (violating their own PAYGO promise in the process). Looking at the accomplishments of this Congress, I think the people would have been better served if our illustrious representatives had all taken 11-month vacations and just went along with the Bush budget (with no pay, of course. That would have been a case of Congress actually saving us some dough). Then, at least we wouldn't have had a situation like the one with the last minute december Omnibus bill, where the minority party had less than 24 hours to read massive spending legislation that contained 12,000 pork items that passed with no oversight and no discussion. The alternative was to defund the troops in the field. Yeah, great. What was that you said about bipartisanship and ethics, Mrs. Pelosi ? Now we know what Pelosi meant when she said the Dems were going to "… make America safer, restore the American dream, and restore accountability". That translates to lose the war, raise taxes and spending, and be more corrupt than ever. Pretty much what I thought from the beginning.

And then there was Nan's trip to Syria.

Great. Just great. Anybody got any Advil ?

The Clinton campaign brought up Barack Obama's high school drug use as a weapon against him. Obama has openly admitted to it and never attempted to hide it. Unlike Bill Clinton, who "didn't inhale", Obama did inhale and is honest about it. I respect Obama for telling the truth, even if it hurts him in this presidential race. There are no perfect people on this earth. As for respecting the Clintons…nah, don't think so.

This story is standard operating procedure for a Clinton campaign. First, the story is leaked to the press, and then the Clinton candidate denies any knowledge of it. They have run this play many times before. The hit man this time was Bill Shaheen, national co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Shaheen made his remarks to the Washington Post (Gosh, I can't imagine how it became public after telling the Post !). Now, get a load of this. Shaheen said he was concerned that REPUBLICANS would use Obama's past drug use against him, even as Shaheen, representing the Clinton campaign, was using Obama's past drug use against him. These people are shameless.

Here's what Shaheen said, from the article:

Shaheen, an attorney and veteran organizer, said much of Obama's background is unknown and could be a problem in November 2008 if he is the Democratic nominee. He said Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama's admittedly spotty youth.

"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" said Shaheen, whose wife, Jeanne, is the state's former governor and is running for the U.S. Senate next year.

"There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.

And here's the stock Clinton denial:

Clinton's campaign said it had nothing to do with his comments, and Shaheen said later he regretted them.

"I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way," Bill Shaheen said in an e-mail released by the campaign.

A campaign spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, earlier had said "Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way."

Right. And Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Anybody who believes this was not a planned move by the Clintons, please raise your hand (Seriously. I have special software that allows me to see you sitting at your computer reading this…Reverend, you can put your hand down. I already know you believe the Clintons. It's part of your religion, The Doctrine of Democratic Infallibility). The rest of us all know better. The second Shaheen mentioned the Republicans during this dirty political trick against Obama, everyone in the country should have know it came straight from Hillary. Hillary blames the Republicans for everything, especially her own coverups. A vast right-wing conspiracy, remember ? Every time she gets into a rough spot in a debate, she starts talking about the "Republican machine". It's a reflex with her.

Obama knows the Clintons are being dishonest. Here's a response from his campaign manager, David Plouffe:

"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."

I, for one, hope this blows up right in Hillary's face. I hope she loses Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Does anybody have Oprah's phone number ?

Ex-prez Bill Clinton, stumping in Iowa for the would be next-prez, his wife Hillary, re-created a little history yesterday. That's not an unusual thing for a Clinton to do, pretty normal really, but this one was notable. Here's the statement Bubba made, according to the Washington Post:

"Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning, I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers," Clinton said. He said he "should not have gotten" the tax cuts he received as a wealthy earner.

Today, Fox News was talking about Bill saying that he "opposed Iraq from the beginning", because, well, he didn't. In May of 2003, Mr. Clinton said, "I supported the president when he asked for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq". So, Bubba was for the war before he was against it, and let's not forget that he was also the one who made regime change in Iraq the official policy of the US government in 1998 when he signed the Iraq Liberation Act. Let's also not forget the Clintonistas were sure those wmd were in Iraq in 1998, 2000, and 2002. Let's also not forget that Bubba's wife voted FOR the Iraq war, also before she was against it. Bill Clinton's only caveat against the Iraq war was his precarious statement that he wished Bush had let the weapons inspectors finish their job, even though the weapons inspectors had been attempting to do their job for over 10 years in Iraq, but couldn't, due to Saddam's misdirection and interference.

Do these politicians not realize that we have the ability to look their previous statements up on the internet nowadays ? How do they think they can get away with this stuff ? These lies just don't fly.

But that stuff is just Clintons being Clintons. If they didn't lie all the time, they wouldn't BE Clintons. If they didn't lie all the time, they'd be real human beings, complete with consciences and other vestiges of humanity. Oh well.

What I really want to talk about is the other part of Bubba's statement, the part where he said he didn't deserve the Bush tax cuts, and that he was "not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers". Now, maybe the ex-prez wasn't asked to give his money to support those soldiers, but he sure as heck has the opportunity, as do all the others who think they aren't paying enough in taxes. For all you rich folk out there who don't think you're paying your fair share, i.e. Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett, Barbra Streisand, and all the rest of you overpaid phonies, I'm going to help you all to ease your consciences and assuage your guilt. Lord knows, I don't want a bunch of guilty liberals running around crying in their stretch limos. So, get out your checkbooks right now and write a bunch of big fat multi-million (or billion, Mr. Buffett) dollar checks to Uncle Sam right now. I'm sure it will be greatly appreciated. If enough of you guilty fat cats like Mr. Clinton get together and pony up enough dough, maybe y'all can support the troops AND get rid of that federal deficit. I'll even provide the address for you. Consider it a public service:

Internal Revenue Service,
1111 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20224.

(You'd think Bill Clinton would know about this IRS place, since he lived right down the street from it for 8 years)

If y'all don't want to pony up the money, that's fine too, but please then, Mr. Clinton and all the rest of you rich whining pinheads, shut your lying yaps !

So, whaddya think, everyone ? Will those rich people start sending in their big checks to support the troops now and fill up the federal government's coffers ?

Not a chance.

You are supposed to feel guilty today, you know. We all want to celebrate Thanksgiving, because most of us realize we have a lot to be thankful for, but protesters remind us that the original Thanksgiving wasn't followed up by many more good times for the Indians, I mean, Native Americans, while other protesters tell us that killing turkeys isn't such a good thing either. So humanocentric. Maybe we should listen to PETA and eat some tofurkey instead, whatever that is. Plus, eating all that food will make us fat and lead to health problems, overburdening our health care system and causing us to miss work, decreasing productivity.

And what are all you men doing sitting on the couch watching football while the women do all the work, you sexist pigs ?

After today, the Christmas shopping season kicks into full gear, with all our american decadent consumerism on full display. Oh, wait a minute, am I still allowed to say 'Christmas', or is that a bad word now ? Do I have to say 'the holiday shopping season' instead ? Lord knows, I mean, gosh knows, I want to be politically correct. Let me phone the ACLU to check on this year's protocol. I'll remember to press '1' for english.

Or…..

Forget all that, and have a great day with your loved ones. Thank God for your blessings, and say a prayer for our troops while you're at it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We are truly fortunate to live in this country and in this time.

The other day, Mitt Romney said the USA should withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Much to Romney's chagrin, the USA is already boycotting the UN Human Rights Council, so we don't have a seat. Oops. Mitt made a mistake, but he also said a mouthful.

The former Massachusetts governor said the U.N. Human Rights Council has repeatedly condemned Israel while taking no action against nations with repressive regimes.

"The United Nations has been an extraordinary failure of late," Romney said in response to a question at a pancake house along the coast of early voting South Carolina. "We should withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council."

Irwin Cotler, Canadian Parliament member, details some of the discriminatory policies of the UN council in this Boston Globe article. The UN condemns an Israeli attack on Palestinians even as they ignore the Palestinian attack that provoked it. Ditto on battles between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel has been so singled out, that even former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the entire UN loses credibility over the discriminatory and obsessive targeting of Israel. There were even three special sessions held to condemn Israel in 2006 before the Council ever got around to thinking maybe the genocide in Darfur might be a bad thing. I guess they couldn't figure out a way to blame Israel for that. No wonder Mitt Romney also called for a new coalition:

Romney also said he would support a new "coalition of the free nations of the world and bring those nations together so that we can act together".

"We should develop some of our own – if you will – forums and alliances or groups that have the ability to actually watch out for the world and do what's right", Romney said.

I hear you, Mitt.

Ironically, the UN Human Rights Council was started in 2006 due to the disappointing performance of it's predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights. Guess what the big failure of the Commission on Human Rights was ? If you guessed 'discriminating against Israel', you win first prize.

In June 2007, the UN Human Rights Council voted to 'permanently indict' Israel, with Israel being the sole nation in this singular category. No word yet on whether the next special session of the Council to condemn Israel will take place at Auschwitz, so they can put the Jews in yet another 'singular' category. In all, four UN resolutions have been passed against Israel, and none against any other country. None. Maybe the Council heard Ahmadinejad's Columbia speech where Mahmoud said that there aren't any homosexuals in Iran, and forgot about the reason: Iran executes homosexuals. When a member of UN Watch, a United Nations watchdog group, called attention to the inequities of the Council, his speech was banned.

The UN Human Rights Council also condemned 'defamation of religion' following the dustup over cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. Somebody tell me what this has to do with human rights, please. The resolution was introduced by Pakistan and passed easily, with 16 of the 17 Council members from the Organization of the Islamic Conference voting for the resolution, along with China, Russia, and South Africa (anybody notice the miserable human rights records of most of these countries ?). Opposing the resolution were all of the European Union, Japan, Ukraine, and South Korea (aka, the non-repressive regimes). It's pretty ironic that a so-called 'Human Rights Council' would advance a resolution stifling freedom of expression, no ? The resolution claimed that things like the Mohammed cartoons cause "negative stereotyping" of religions and "attempts to identify Islam with terrorism". Right. Everyone knows it's those crazy Methodists who are blowing sh*t up all over the world. Looks like politics rule the day over at the UN, and the wrong politics at that. It's time for the nations that really promote freedom to take the lead. This nonsense has gone on long enough. The UN Human Rights Council is a joke.

Since the Democrats captured congress in 2006, Henry Waxman (D-Cal) has been investigating alleged government misconduct. Actually, he's been doing it for 8 years, but when the Democrats took control, Waxman became chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which gave him subpoena power and free reign to investigate, in Waxman's own words "everything that the government is involved with". The targets of Waxman's probes have been the Plame farce, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the mischaracterization of Pat Tillman's death, the 'heroics' of Jessica Lynch, the government of Iraq, Walter Reed Hospital, construction and hiring practices at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Defense and State contracting practices, and Halliburton. Time magazine, in a misleading piece of admiration masquerading as reporting, called Grand Inquisitor Waxman, The Scariest Guy In Washington, due to his carte blanche investigative authority. Oliver North wrote an article about Waxman that offsets some of Time's partisan hype.

Waxman hasn't come up with much of any wrongdoing yet with all his investigating, but as Time said, he has sure produced a lot of newspaper headlines, which is, of course, the point. Actual wrongdoing doesn't need to be uncovered as long as the accusations and allegations are flying around in the mainstream media every day. For any who don't know, 90% of the mainstream media acts as the publics relations arm of the Democratic party (while feigning neutrality, very poorly). The political issues the Democrats want on the front page ARE on the front page. The issues Democrats want ignored ARE ignored. Invariably, the issues are framed and spun to suit the Democrats needs as well. The Republicans have only Fox News and talk radio on their side (and the Democrats are busy trying to censor talk radio. Talk about arrogance).

Between Waxman and Patrick Leahy (D-Hell), who has been investigating the legal firing of 8 US attorneys for about 46 years now, they have also pushed enough paper to destroy the rainforest. Maybe someday, hope against hope, they will actually find that someone somewhere has done somebody or something wrong. I bet Nancy Pelosi is praying for it, just like she prays for Bush to save all those middle class children by expanding the S-CHIP program on the backs of 22 million new smokers (most of whom will be lower income folks, according to the statistics). Amen.

You might be saying to yourself, 'what's wrong with investigating the government ? The government SHOULD be held up to the light and examined', and I agree. However, notice that in the long list of Waxman's investigations, you will only find investigations into alleged Republican misconduct. Mr Waxman doesn't seem to have any interest at all in the John Murthas, Harry Reids, or William Jeffersons in government. It's only Republican skirts he wishes to lift up and peek under. The House Government Reform Committee has become the Republican Government Reform Committee. He isn't investigating "everything that government is involved with", he's investigating "everything that Republicans are involved with". That makes Waxman a partisan witch hunter, not a seeker of truth and justice. Waxman is Torqemada in a three piece suit, seeking out heretics who would stand in the way of Democrat rule.