Environmental and liberal groups announced today that they have collected more than 400,000 signatures urging President Obama to reverse his plan to allow drilling in new offshore areas.Well, if we don't immediately bow down to the wishes of 0.13 percent of the population we're just a bunch of savages!
Stock futures gave up most of their early morning gains Wednesday and were trading in a narrow range after another disappointing report on the jobs sector.But the Vice
Payroll company ADP said private employers added just 13,000 jobs in June. That's well short of the 60,000 economists polled by Thomson Reuters forecast...
The ADP report is often seen as a precursor to the Labor Department's big monthly jobs report due out Friday. ADP's data only includes jobs created by private companies so it can vary widely from the Labor Department data, which also includes government jobs.
In fact, Friday's report is expected to show employers cut a total of 110,000 jobs in June. However, economists predict the net loss of jobs is tied primarily to the government laying off temporary workers that were hired to work on the 2010 census.
But with the weak report from ADP, there could now be major questions about how many jobs the government will say were added by private employers this month...
The weak jobs report falls into a trend that was seen throughout the quarter and helped lead to a brutal three-month stretch for the market. Heading into the final day of June, the Dow is down 9.1 percent for the second quarter. Investors have been routinely disappointed by economic data that showed the economy's recovery is slow and choppy.
But routine vandalism of churches, synagogues, etc. isn't, including when illegal alien supporters and gay activists vandalized churches recently (proving time and again that it is leftist protesters that are the violent, angry mobs...not grannies ticked off about cuts to Medicare and uncontrolled government spending).
But when the President, not someone the media already thinks is an idiot (at their own peril), flubs a line and talks about going to visit the "headquarter of Twitters", well, not so much.On NBC's Today on Friday, White House correspondent Chuck Todd preemptively dismissed any criticism of President Obama referring to "Twitters" during a joint press conference with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on Thursday: "It turns out he didn't misstate it. It was written incorrectly in his prepared remarks."I believe the headquarter of Twitters is in the 54th state, South Missitucky.
During Todd's report, a clip was played of Obama noting how in a visit to California's Silicon Valley, Medvedev went to "visit the headquarter of Twitters." Obama simply placed an 's' after the wrong word. Rather than let the minor gaffe stand, at the conclusion of the report, Todd made to sure to explain the typographical error to viewers: "You did not mishear. The President did say the word 'Twitters,' plural." Despite Obama's inability to correct the remarks off the cuff, Todd solely blamed a White House staffer for the mistake: "A speechwriter falling on his sword on that one."
Todd quickly changed the subject to a similar gaffe made by President Bush: "...it did bring back memories of President Bush one time referring to those 'internets.'" The media was certainly never quick to come to Bush's defense after a verbal misstep.
Critical here, all RSOs must comply with the school’s Nondiscrimination Policy, which tracks state law barring discrimination on a number of bases, including religion and sexual orientation. Hastings interprets this policy, asit relates to the RSO program, to mandate acceptance of all comers: RSOs must allow any student to participate, become a member, orseek leadership positions, regardless of her status or beliefs.Allow me to explain the repercussions...
The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) just published in the online edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and funded by the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay Lesbian Medical Association, claims that children of lesbian mothers do better than children from a married-mom-and-dad family. The AAP is no stranger to controversy; they are the pediatrics group that recently capitulated to political-correctness to advocate a “less extreme” form of female genital mutilation and then, when under pressure, reversed their recommendation. The NLLFS study professes to be a highly respected, peer-reviewed “longitudinal” type of study. Longitudinal studies, however, are conducted by researchers who objectively track subjects over a long period of time. In this study, the children were evaluated by their lesbian birth mothers — hardly disinterested, dispassionate researchers.Nice summation from Paul Driessen:
The hype for the study was remarkable, with over 116 newspaper headlines blaring the news: “Children of lesbian couples do well.” Few of the articles questioned the fact that the children’s mothers were reporting on their “little darling’s” well-being, social functioning, behavior, and achievements; nor did publications usually note the lack of cross-checking with objective outcomes. Not mentioned, as well, is that over half of the original lesbian-couple participants in the study were separated by the time their children were age six (mean age), though such family upheaval is typically quite difficult for children. Nor did the laudatory reports question the fact that the 78 children in the study contributed their own assessments about their lives and well-being. Without comparing these personal observations with objective outcomes (teacher/counselor evaluations, school report cards, etc.) the study is highly unreliable.
The study is neither objective nor comprehensive. There are three major problems with the “study”:
1) The “research” consists of the mothers’ opinions about their children;
2) Only 77 lesbian couples participated in the “study,” and they were not typical parents in other regards. An earlier NLLFS report described the sample population as Caucasian (93 percent), predominantly college educated (67 percent), mostly middle and upper class (82 percent), professional or managers (85 percent) and a median household income of $85,000; and,
3) the study did not consist of a random sample — all the participants were volunteers — recruited via posted announcements in women’s bookstores, at lesbian events, and in lesbian newspapers in three major metropolitan areas (Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco)...
Clearly, these lesbian mothers are from Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.
ExxonMobil paid $600,000 when 85 birds died in uncovered waste facilities. PacifiCorp paid was fined $1.4 million after 230 eagles were killed by its power lines over a two-year period. Will those fines set the standard for Gulf oil spill bird deaths? Or will the standard be the zero, zip, nada fines assessed to date on wind turbine operators for their ongoing slaughter?...
Under a cap-tax-and-trade regime, the price of hydrocarbon energy will “necessarily skyrocket,” to “encourage” companies and families to use less fossil fuel energy, and “persuade” them to switch to wind and solar. How will that affect turbine and panel manufacturing costs and subsidies, and the downstream costs of renewable energy and everything Americans make, grow, drive, ship, eat, drink and do?
How will US wind and solar factories compete with Chinese and Indian facilities, if the American plants are compelled to pay two, three, five times as much for electricity, under cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy mandates? How will they compete if they must also pay union wages and gold-plated health and pension plans, if government grants are also tied to compulsory unionization, and if non-union shops and right-to-work states are excluded from the bidding and subsidy process?
How will regulators and “clean energy” companies deal with the nasty pollutants generated in the process of manufacturing hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and millions of acres of solar panels? How will they handle highly toxic silicon tetrachloride, the powerful greenhouse gas nitrogen triflouride and other chemicals used or generated in making solar panels, fiberglass and other components?
Even “little” 1.5 megawatt wind turbines require 700 tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass, copper and rare earth (lanthanide) minerals. Add in the transmission lines and backup gas-fired generators, and we’re talking some serious land use, raw material, pollution, bird kill and economic issues...
Spain lost 2.2 traditional jobs for every wind power job its massive subsidies created. President Obama has said we can create 5 million green jobs. How does he plan to compensate 11 million workers who will lose their traditional jobs under the Spanish Scenario? With more stimulus money and red ink?
Every seven million gallons of corn-based ethanol requires billions in subsidies, cropland equivalent to Indiana, millions of gallons of water and millions of tons of fertilizer, to make fuel that costs more but gets less mileage than gasoline. Can someone explain how this is eco-friendly and sustainable?
When Arizona signed its new immigration law, SB 1070, on April 4, the immediate response by several cities and states was to enact economic boycotts against the state, with the aim of pressuring legislators to rethink the law.Well, that "allows police officers to question anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant" part is just a flat-out lie. And people wonder why people like me and increasingly more and more Americans don't trust the mainstream media - not when we have ready access to actual facts via the internet and know we're being lied to, instead of just suspecting it.
Now, with just over a month to go until the law takes effect July 28, maintaining those embargoes appears to have been tough going for most – especially in the wider economic downturn – and several have watered down their actions.
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday granted itself an exemption to the city’s boycott of Arizona to keep a red light photo enforcement program operating. The program generates about $3.6 million in annual ticket revenue for the city. The day before, Oakland voted to approve a $1 million contract with a multinational advertising company with corporate offices in Phoenix.
San Jose, which has several contracts with Arizona companies cited potential economic harm in stopping short of a full boycott, voting instead for an official denunciation of SB 1070. The Arizona law allows police officers to question anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant, and makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.
Uhhhh....wait.Dear MoveOn member,Free clue for the clueless, you can't "overturn" a Supreme Court decision without a Constitutional amendment...and in this case the amendment would have to explicitly abolish or restrict free speech. Good luck with that one. I'm sure you money will be better spent on that than in supporting your local hemp clothing outlet, oxygen bar, or WalMart and actually, you know, stimulating the economy instead of George Soros.
A whopping 96% of MoveOn members voting decided to launch a major campaign to counter corporate corruption—centered on the following 3 point agenda we're calling the Fight Washington Corruption Pledge:
1. Overturning Citizens United
2. Public Financing for Fair Elections Now
3. Passing the Lobbyist Reform Act
...10. Can you explain the error in reasoning in your memo to Justice Thurgood Marshall regarding Bowen v. Kendrick, and how can we be sure such a costly mistake will not happen again once you are at the Supreme Court?What a Sack of Sacrosanct by Ann Coulter:
In that memo to Justice Marshall, Kagan argued in favor of discrimination against religious groups based on their beliefs. She later recanted that position at her Senate hearings for U.S. Solicitor General, calling it “the dumbest things [she] had ever heard.”
We agree.
But she must explain her troubling views. Would Kagan herself support someone to sit on the highest court of the land if they had argued for a legal position she considered “the dumbest thing she ever heard”?
9. Do you believe there is room for a judge to recognize a deity in law?...
8. Where do you find guidance — or what is your authority — on what is moral, and what role does it play in the law?
As it is now famously known, as dean of the Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan barred military recruiters from campus. In a 2003 e-mail message to students, she said, “I abhor the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy. ... This is a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order.”
Kagan took her moral views and turned them into a legal argument in an amicus brief for Rumsfeld v. FAIR, where the U.S. Supreme Court upheld unanimously (8-0) the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, completely disagreeing with Kagan’s flawed logic.
7. Is it proper for an officer of the court to violate a law with which she does not agree?...
6. Do you believe it is okay for an officer of the court to support the passage of a law he believes to be unconstitutional?...
5. Would you agree that if confirmed you should recuse yourself from cases having to do with restrictions on a woman’s “right” to choose?...
Her hostility towards those who believe life begins at conception was very evident in her article for the Daily Princetonian, where she called them the “avengers of ‘innocent life.’”
4. Does the government have the power to ban political books?
As Solicitor General, Kagan argued that it does, although they probably would not use it. In oral arguments for Citiziens United v. FEC, Kagan affirmed that political pamphlets could run afoul of the law as examples of “classic electioneering.” Chief Justice Roberts ultimately said Kagan’s view would even “empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations.”
3. Can international law or norms help us determine the constitutionality of a statute passed by our legislature?
As dean at Harvard, Kagan made International law a required first-year course for every law student, while ignoring Constitutional law as a requirement altogether. And as Solicitor General, she said she believed she should use international law in arguing domestic cases to persuade those justices that look at international law for guidance. Will she be looking at international law to decide domestic cases at the Supreme Court?
2. Do you agree with President Obama that the law will direct 95 percent of cases, but then there are those really difficult ones that must be decided “on the basis of one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy”?
President Obama voted against Chief Justice John Roberts based on this logic...because he would not go outside the law and use his empathy to steer the law. Here is the exchange between Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) and then-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on the issue:
Sen. Kyl: Let me ask you about what the president said — and I talked about it in my opening statement — whether you agree with him. He used two different analogies. He talked once about the 25 miles — the first 25 miles of a 26-mile marathon. And then he also said, in 95 percent of the cases, the law will give you the answer, and the last five percent legal process will not lead you to the rule of decision. The critical ingredient in those cases is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart. Do you agree with him that the law only takes you the first 25 miles of the marathon and that that last mile has to be decided by what’s in the judge’s heart?
Sotomayor: No, sir. That’s — I don’t — I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. He has to explain what he meant by judging. I can only explain what I think judges should do, which is judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart. They don’t determine the law. Congress makes the laws. The job of a judge is to apply the law. And so it’s not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It’s the law. The judge applies the law to the facts before that judge. …
Kyl: Have you always been able to have a legal basis for the decisions that you have rendered and not have to rely upon some extra-legal concept, such as empathy or some other concept other than a legal interpretation or precedent?
Sotomayor: Exactly, sir. We apply law to facts. We don’t apply feelings to facts...
Encore! Encore!
1. Do you believe it is wrong for judges to promote a social agenda through the law?
Kagan wrote in her Oxford thesis:
As men and as participants in American life, judges will have opinions, prejudices, values. Perhaps most important, judges will have goals. And because this is so, judges will often try to mold and steer the law in order to promote certain ethical values and achieve certain societal ends. Such activity is not necessarily wrong or invalid. The law, after all, is a human instrument — an instrument designed to meet men’s needs.
This view is dangerous and should be disqualifying. Let’s hope this becomes a major issue during the hearings so we can engage in a vigorous debate about the proper role of a judge.
...If New York liberals insist on bragging about their intellectual bravado in believing "nothing is sacrosanct," it would really help if they could stop being the most easily offended, P.C., group-think, thin-skinned weanies in the entire universe and maybe ease up on the college "hate speech" codes, politically correct firings, and bans on military recruiters.
With that in mind, here are some questions it would be fun to ask a New York liberal like Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan at her hearings next week:
-- Roughly one-third of Americans are Evangelical Christians. Do you personally know any Evangelical Christians? Name two.
-- In 1972, Richard Nixon was elected president with more than 60 percent of the vote, winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. How many people do you know who voted for Nixon?
-- Appropriate or inappropriate: Schools passing out condoms to seventh-graders? Schools passing out cigarettes to seventh-graders?
-- Who is a greater threat to America, Sarah Palin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown’s office asked Mayor John Peyton’s chief of staff to help protect her Jacksonville home from rising floodwater Friday.that's far from elite...
Adam Hollingsworth, who once worked for Brown, told city workers to deliver sandbags to her home, something he now says was a judgment error. No one else would get such preferential treatment, he said when contacted by the Times-Union, and Brown will be billed by the city for reimbursement.
Dean Black launched a campaign Monday called “Stop the Sandbagging.” It’s a campaign that reminded voters of an August 2008 controversy when Brown requested sand bags be brought to her home during Tropical Storm Fay. Though she denied receiving special treatment from the city, her neighbors said similar requests from them had no response.Soooo...it is a game and she wants you to bring trash to her yard? I'm not ain't not getting it not at all, completely, nowise.
Black said that when his supporters contribute $24.95 to his campaign, he will have sand bags delivered to Brown’s home. However, Brown said Tuesday that she will seek prosecution if Black follows through on his pledge.
“Because this is not no game,” Brown said. “Don’t bring no trash to my yard!”
Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells — a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday.How cool is this?
The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.
"This is a roaring success," said ophthalmologist Dr. Ivan Schwab of the University of California, Davis, who had no role in the study — the longest and largest of its kind...
In the study, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers took a small number of stem cells from a patient's healthy eye, multiplied them in the lab and placed them into the burned eye, where they were able to grow new corneal tissue to replace what had been damaged. Since the stem cells are from their own bodies, the patients do not need to take anti-rejection drugs...
The Italian study involved 106 patients treated between 1998 and 2007. Most had extensive damage in one eye, and some had such limited vision that they could only sense light, count fingers or perceive hand motions. Many had been blind for years and had had unsuccessful operations to restore their vision...
"They were incredibly happy. Some said it was a miracle," said one of the study leaders, Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena's Center for Regenerative Medicine in Italy. "It was not a miracle. It was simply a technique."...
Dr. Sophie Deng, a cornea expert at the UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute, said the biggest advantage was that the Italian doctors were able to expand the number of stem cells in the lab. This technique is less invasive than taking a large tissue sample from the eye and lowers the chance of an eye injury.
Without action by Congress, President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced that his administration will issue regulations applying the Family and Medical Leave Act to homosexual couples and requiring most hospitals to allow homosexuals to visit their partners.Why Activists Connect Men in Dresses to Same-Sex Marriage
One conservative group criticized the White House for handing out “political favors” to the homosexual lobby – and vastly expanding presidential power in the process.
“Piece by anti-democratic piece, the White House is executing its plan for a vast expansion of presidential power,” the Family Research Council said. “What this administration has accomplished is nothing less than suspending the power of Congress.”
Speaking at an LGBT [Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender] Pride Month reception in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday evening, Obama told homosexual activists that his Labor Department has made it clear that under the Family and Medical Leave Act, “same-sex couples -- as well as others raising children -- are to be treated like the caretakers that they are.”
Hours before the White House reception started, President Obama’s Labor Department announced a new “interpretation” of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the 1993 law that allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period to care for loved ones or themselves...
Obama on Tuesday also touted passage of the federal hate crimes law; he pledged to end the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military; and he pledged to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)...
Moreover, the Labor Department’s new interpretation of the Family and Medical Leave Act “will be implemented without so much as a courtesy call to America's real lawmaking body, Congress,” FRC warned.
“Under Article I of the Constitution, America's lawmaking ability is wholly vested in the House and Senate--not government agencies or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. By granting these special privileges to homosexuals -- privileges that are in direct conflict with U.S. law -- the President is breaching the Constitution and its limits on Executive authority.”
The Family Research Council says President Obama is getting away with it because he knows that Americans will keep quiet on issues such as homosexuality.
“But no matter how indifferent voters may be to the President's gay agenda, they must understand that the White House is gaining power to use in other areas," FRC warned...
Most Americans are aware that gay activism rarely presents itself as a movement solely for the rights of gays. For example, the acronym for the gay rights movement is "GLBT," meaning Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender.
Interestingly, few people ever ask about the "T." What do transgendered have to do with gays? How and why are they connected by activists, gay and straight, on the Left? Strictly speaking, gays have no more in common with transgendered people than straights do.
To understand the answer is to understand much of what animates the Sexual Left.
The aim of GLBT is not merely that society not persecute gays and accept them as equal fellow citizens. If it were, the movement could largely disband. The battle for acceptance of gay people has largely been won. And deservedly so: The persecution of people for being sexually attracted to the same sex has been as morally wrong as it has been consistent. I am among the majority of Americans, and presumably non-Americans, who still hold to the male-female sexual ideal and who seek to retain the man-woman definition of marriage. But I fully recognize there have always been individuals who are no more capable of sexual attraction to the opposite sex than men like me are capable of being sexually aroused by the same sex. They should not be ridiculed, let alone persecuted, for their sexual orientation...
But what does any of this have to do with the transgendered, i.e., people who do not psychologically identify themselves with their biological sex, who act as if they were a member of the opposite sex, and who have not changed their biology? Why does the Left include the transgendered in its activism on behalf of gays?...
To the Left, this is just another example of fighting discrimination -- how dare society ask men who prefer to wear women's clothing not to do so at work? As New York Times columnist Frank Rich recently wrote with regard to changing the definition of marriage to include members of the same sex, Americans regard all this with a "shrug."
Likewise, last year, the civil rights commission of the State of Maine asked that no Maine schools should insist that biological males use only boys' or men's rooms in schools. From elementary school on, every student in Maine should be allowed to determine if he feels male or female, and enter whichever bathroom matches this self-definition.
The Maine commission also called for a ban on schools from enforcing gender divisions in sports teams, school organizations and locker rooms. It says forcing a student into a particular room or group because of his or her biological gender amounts to discrimination...
So, then, why the "T" in GLBT?
Because the Left seeks to obliterate the distinction between men and women. This distinction is considered to be a social construct. That is why, to this day, despite all the scientific evidence (as if that were needed) proving how different male and female brains are, many Leftwing academics still argue that boys play with trucks rather than with dolls because of sexist socialization; and girls play with dolls because of socialization.
And that is why, on the Left, changing the definition of marriage is only worth a shrug. Since there are no inherent differences between men and women, what difference could it possibly make whether a man marries a man or a woman, or whether a woman marries a man or a woman? Or if children have two fathers, two mothers, or a father and mother?
The Chicago Blackhawks are bringing the Stanley Cup to the Chicago's gay Pride Parade on Sunday, June 27 for all the right reasons.I just hope they remember that by participating they're buying in to the whole deal. If it's like most others of the type, that means they're associating their sport, their professional organization, and their professional league with the hairy, half-naked men dressed up like nuns bearing oversized sexual, uh, enhancement tools, public lewdness not tolerated of straight people, intolerance for dissenting opinions, disrespect and mockery for religious opinion or belief, and vulgarity up the uh...five hole. If they're OK with that, or if this parade will break with, uh, tradition...then so be it.
When we first reported on the Chicago Gay Hockey Association's request to have the Blackhawks represented in this year's parade, we noted that their timing was perfect.
The Blackhawks took pride in bringing the city together during their quest for the Cup; cutting across demographics and eventually partying with 2 million Chicagoans at their championship rally. They also took pride in sparking a revival for hockey in the Windy City, and grassroots organizations like the CGHA are essential to the expansion of the fan base and the growth of the sport.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that tax increases will eventually be necessary to address the nation's mounting debt, raising a difficult election-year issue as Democrats fight to retain control of Congress.I mean, I can't even stomach really getting into this whole thing.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, "It's now official. Top Democrats on Capitol Hill are starting to signal their intention to raise taxes on the middle class."Gag me with a teleprompter.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.Ah, remember those days?
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things...
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply...
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, said yesterday that Barton's decision to criticize the White House for pressuring BP PLC to create a $20 billion compensation fund was a "political gift" that Democrats would exploit in this fall's midterm elections.Right.
The crisis has cost Obama dearly, in time and focus. He'd rather devote his time to push for passage of jobs legislation, put in place his new health care plan, develop an energy package, tend to two wars and deal with other priorities.Poor f***ing, baby. No time like after two years of bickering, illegalities, partisan sniping, and a lack of accomplishments despite super-majorities throughout Congress to work on that "can-do image". Asses. Yeah, I remember all those sob f***ing stories they used to publish about how Bush had to focus on important national security and safety issues after the 9-11 attacks instead of other priorities...in Obama's case that would be Mussolini-ing our country.
That doesn't just hurt him; it's a frustration to congressional Democrats anxious to project a can-do image ahead of the fall elections.
The media have been crowing that Republicans will lose the Hispanic vote forever if they support enforcing laws against illegal immigration, such as the Arizona law. To great fanfare, a poll was released last week showing that 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the Arizona law...Some apt comments from David Stokes:
Incidentally, 67 percent of Hispanics also vote Democrat. The exact same percentage of Hispanics who oppose the Arizona law voted for Obama over John McCain -- who was championing amnesty for illegals.
Suck up to Hispanics with insane amnesty proposals; get one out of three Hispanic voters. Do the right thing and defend the country's borders; get one out of three Hispanic voters. ... Promise to make every Tuesday "Ladies' Night"; get one out of three Hispanic voters. Offer them a choice between "Extra Crispy" and "Original Recipe"; get one out of three Hispanic voters...
The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse recently compared the Arizona law to Hitler's policies toward the Jews. You remember how Jews were constantly sneaking across the border into Nazi Germany?
Barack Obama recently referred to the time since his election as President of the United States as, “the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.”...
Can anyone seriously suggest that what our nation has been experiencing since around November of 2008 at all compares to bread lines, soup kitchens, unemployment rates fixed for years around 20%, and more than 9,000 banks failing? A little more than 200 banks have failed since the beginning of 2009, a rate on pace to better resemble the situation during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s—when 747 institutions went under—than the tsunami of failures during the 1930s...
First, if by “the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s” he means the geopolitical situation, I would encourage him to read any good history of World War Two—or watch the classic World At War videos narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. All that happened before my time, but it looked pretty bad to me...
Maybe the President was talking about our economic struggles. If so, he might want to place a call to Plains, Georgia and talk to a certain former peanut farmer who happened to preside over an economy where people could only buy gasoline every other day and interest rates were upwards of 18 per cent...
And some of his predecessors actually had to serve in the Oval Office with the other party in control of some or all of Congress. Mr. Obama’s bummer of a year and a half has played out with his party in control of virtually everything.
The courtship started in a bullpen, of all places.Click through if you want more details.
Jason Phillips spotted a woman at Safeco Field last May and knew he had to make a choice: Be bold or be ignored. As the Mariners bullpen catcher, Phillips is used to anonymity, used to spending half the year tucked away in a box with pitchers. It's a thankless job that he does well and without complaint. But this time, he needed to stand out or risk eternal regret.
He shared a few stares with the woman, who was entertaining business clients. Then he made a promise to the fellas in the 'pen.
"If we go extra innings, I'm gonna make a move," Phillips said. "If we go to extra innings, that's gotta be a sign."
The game with the Oakland A's went into extra innings. Phillips grabbed a baseball, scribbled his number on it, got the woman's attention and tossed it to her. And for the rest of the game, he was left to wonder how she'd respond. He couldn't wait to return to the clubhouse and check his messages. Naturally, the game would drag for 15 excruciating innings.
But by then, she had sent him a text message: "My name is Molly. Nice to meet you."
And that's how a bullpen catcher fell in love.
On Sunday, Jason Phillips and Molly Ray will get married, and their wedding guests will attend the ceremony in the only logical place to celebrate their serendipitous romance.
The bullpen.
"It kind of has to be there," Phillip says. "It's only right."...
Sometimes you can read a book that will change your mind on some fundamental issue. Rarely, however, is there just one page that can undermine or destroy a widely-held belief. But there is such a page-- page 77 of the book "Out of Work" by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway.
The widespread belief is that government intervention is the key to getting the country out of a serious economic downturn. The example often cited is President Franklin D. Roosevelt's intervention, after the stock market crash of 1929 was followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, with its massive and long-lasting unemployment...
What is on that one page in "Out of Work" that could change people's minds? Just a simple table, giving unemployment rates for every month during the entire decade of the 1930s.
Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table.
Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed-- and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930...
What the government decided to do in June 1930-- against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it-- was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods...
Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits-- and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started...
While the market produced a peak unemployment rate of 9 percent-- briefly-- after the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment shot up after massive federal interventions in the economy. It rose above 20 percent in 1932 and stayed above 20 percent for 23 consecutive months, beginning in the Hoover administration and continuing during the Roosevelt administration...
The very fact that we still remember the stock market crash of 1929 is remarkable, since there was a similar stock market crash in 1987 that most people have long since forgotten.
What was the difference between these two stock market crashes? The 1929 stock market crash was followed by the most catastrophic depression in American history, with as many as one-fourth of all American workers being unemployed. The 1987 stock market crash was followed by two decades of economic growth with low unemployment.
But that was only one difference. The other big difference was that the Reagan administration did not intervene in the economy after the 1987 stock market crash-- despite many outcries in the media that the government should "do something."
A 74-page study by the Environmental Protection Agency released Tuesday said that the cap-and-trade provisions of the American Power Act would cost an average U.S. household from $80 to $150 a year. Lieberman was clearly pleased by the analysis...You have to be absolutely sick in the head to think that now is the right time to raise taxes and costs on Americans. Seriously...that's just sick. The only thing sicker is telling us it's for our own good.
Lieberman should be disabused of this fantasy and shamed into telling the country the truth. The cost will be higher, much higher. A Heritage Foundation analysis of a similar cap-and-trade bill found that the legislation would by 2035 cause a total GDP loss of $9.4 trillion, reduce the average family's net worth by $40,000 and cost 2.5 million jobs...
As we have noted before, no program has exceeded its projected costs more egregiously than Medicare. When it was created in 1965, the public was told that its hospital portion would cost a mere $9 billion by 1990. The real cost, though, was $66 billion.
For all parts of the Medicare program, the cost was projected to be $12 billion by 1990. Yet it actually cost $107 billion.
When a fourth part — the prescription drug benefit — was added to Medicare in 2003, Washington was still having trouble calculating future costs. When the program was being debated, the public was told it would cost $400 billion in its first decade. After it was passed, forecasts assumed the program would cost $534 billion across its first 10 years.
Then, within the space of a few months, the projection jumped to $1.2 trillion.
The cost of Medicaid, the government's health care system for the poor, has followed an upward trend similar to that of Medicare. Launched in 1965, it was supposed to cost $9 billion by 1990. But after that quarter of a century, Medicaid's real cost was $67 billion.
A special hospital subsidy was added to Medicaid in 1987 that Washington said would cost $100 million in five years. Yet the government spent $11 billion on it.
The architects of Medicare and Medicaid should have learned from Social Security, which began collecting payroll taxes 28 years earlier. The tax rate needed to keep that monster fed has grown sharply, from 1% to 12.4%, (total of the combined "contributions" from both employee and employer)...
Even if the EPA estimate is correct, there is also the question of effectiveness. Why should Americans be forced to spend even a single dime on a program that's not needed and would be grossly ineffective?...
And grossly ineffective because, according to climatologist Paul C. Knappenberger, the American Power Act would cut global temperatures by only 0.077 of a degree Fahrenheit by 2050 and 0.2 of a degree by 2100.
At less than a dollar a day, it's still a poor investment because there simply is no return. Paying for Lieberman and Kerry's vanity legislation would be like paying for a ride on a unicorn: The promise will never materialize.
A tale of two disasters: On ABC’s Good Morning America this morning, weatherman Sam Champion’s piece included reaction from several residents of Florida, Alabama and Louisiana to President Obama’s oil spill speech, and found three outright critics and no defenders of the administration’s handling of the disaster. One woman exclaimed: “What I would have liked to heard from him – that he actually had a plan.”
The kindest review came from a man in Alabama who merely hoped the federal response would improve: “I think we're seeing a change in how he's handling the situation. And I hope it's for the better.”
Five years ago, after President Bush spoke in New Orleans a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast, ABC assembled a focus group of six people displaced by the storm, and taking refuge in Houston’s Astrodome. But to the evident astonishment of ABC’s correspondent, not one member of that group would denounce President Bush, but instead leveled their criticism at local officials who failed to prepare the city ahead of time.
As MRC’s Brent Baker reported at the time:ABC News producers probably didn't hear what they expected when they sent Dean Reynolds to the Houston Astrodome's parking lot to get reaction to President Bush's speech from black evacuees from New Orleans. Instead of denouncing Bush and blaming him for their plight, they praised Bush and blamed local officials......MRC intern Alex Fitzsimmons caught Sam Champion’s report from the Gulf this morning. Co-anchor Robin Roberts framed the reaction as one of “cautious optimism,” but the soundbites from the residents are much more negative than the reporters’ script:
Not one of the six people interviewed on camera had a bad word for Bush -- despite Reynolds' best efforts. Reynolds goaded: "Was there anything that you found hard to believe that he said, that you thought, well, that's nice rhetoric, but, you know, the proof is in the pudding?" Brenda Marshall answered, "No, I didn't," prompting Reynolds to marvel to anchor Ted Koppel: "Very little skepticism here."CO-ANCHOR ROBIN ROBERTS: People on the front lines of this spill, residents on the Gulf coast, watched President Obama’s address to the nation with cautious optimism. Sam Champion is in Pensacola, Florida and got some of their reactions. Good morning, Sam.
WEATHERMAN SAM CHAMPION: Hey, good morning, Robin. Welcome back. We've spent a lot of time walking and talking with the people who live in this area. They've spent some time watching and waiting. And they really only have one course. You said it at the top of the show: action. Folks in Pensacola Beach usually come to the Flounder's Chowder House to forget their worries....
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: What I would have liked to heard from him – that he actually had a plan.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: If we're in a war, as he says we are, then why aren't we bringing everybody into the picture that's offered their help?...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think it's lacking. I don't think he's responded to what we're going to do about the cleanup issues...
Defense is one area in which the Lakers have improved this season, and they put it on full display, holding the Celtics to 33 percent shooting and punishing them for trips down the lane. Artest elbowed Rajon Rondo in the chin. Andrew Bynum felled Kendrick Perkins.And now this one:
Perkins was hurt midway through the first quarter of Boston's 89-67 loss in Game 6 on Tuesday night when he landed awkwardly after battling under the hoop with Lakers center Andrew Bynum.Let's be perfectly clear about what happened here. Perkins had position under the hoop to grab an offensive rebound. Bynum wasn't even close to him. As the ball came down Perkins grabbed it and Bynum came soaring in from behind him and landed on top of him, smashing his arms down on Perkins shoulders who, of course, was off balance as he was landing from grabbing the rebound. He landed awkwardly and the damage was done.
The oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is giving Democrats leverage to obtain funds to help offset a new pared-down version of the tax extenders bill.
A new amendment from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would levy a 49-cent-per-barrel tax on oil producers to help pump up the oil spill liability trust fund that helps to cover economic and natural disaster costs after a company pays up to the $75 million liability cap. The current fee is 8 cents a barrel, and the fund contains about $1.5 billion...
The House passed its $115 billion version of the tax extenders bill last month, which included a 34-cent-per-barrel tax for the oil spill liability fund.
It should of course read - "Credit card BALANCE holders to get some relief"...There appears to be a coordinated effort by President Obama and liberals in academia, the media, Congress and advocacy groups to damage the reputation of conservative members of the Supreme Court by falsely characterizing them as activists who have “abandoned the principle of stare decisis” and who have broken their promises of “fidelity to the law” from their confirmation hearings.
By doing so, liberals hope to fool the public into believing that left-wing ideologues such as Kagan or Goodwin Liu are not the danger; conservative “activist” justices like Roberts and Alito are. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Judicial activism -- real judicial activism -- occurs when judges write subjective policy preferences into their legal decisions rather than apply the Constitution impartially according to its original meaning or statutory law based on its plain text. Such activism is not a function of outcomes, but one of interpretation. It does not necessarily involve striking down laws; it may occur when a judge applies her own policy preferences to uphold a statute or other government action that the Constitution clearly forbids.
Dissatisfied with this logical and accepted definition, liberals have been striving to redefine judicial activism downward. Under one formulation, judicial activism occurs anytime that a statute is struck down, like the federal ban on independent political expenditures in Citizens United v. FEC. In another popular version, judicial activism is all-but-meaningless -- a term of derision that means little more than “I don’t like the policy outcome of this decision.” Both definitions of judicial activism are incorrect, and both are in full display in the debate over Citizens United and Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co...
Many of Ledbetter’s arguments in the case (echoed by critics of the Court) were “policy arguments in favor of giving the alleged victims of pay discrimination more time before they are required to file a charge with the EEOC.” But those policy arguments were being made to the wrong branch of the federal government. It was Congress, not the Court, which chose a very short deadline for filing employment discrimination claims with the EEOC. Critics who did not like that short deadline apparently wanted the Court to “twist” Title VII to write that deadline out of the statute. Because the majority refused to do so, but instead applied the statute as written, they are supposedly “activist” judges who were defying Congress in favor of a corporate defendant, a completely false claim.
The Ledbetter decision and its legislative aftermath actually demonstrate the best features of our constitutional system and the separation of powers the Framers designed and built into it. The Supreme Court followed stare decisis and its own correct precedents and interpreted Title VII’s statute of limitations as Congress promulgated it. Congress didn’t like the result and, listening to the policy (as opposed to legal) arguments made in this case, changed the law with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, amending the 180-day statute of limitations for filing a pay discrimination claim.
The facts of both cases, and an examination of the legal analysis applied by the justices in their majority opinions, show there is no merit to any of the liberal claims. It’s obvious that some liberal federal judges are feeling vulnerable to the charge of left-wing activism, which has been properly and correctly leveled against them for refusing to follow the law and imposing their social and ideological views in the courtroom. By ascribing the “activist” label to conservative judges, liberals appear to be attempting to damage the public image of the Supreme Court (and certain justices) and make it easier to slide liberal nominees like Kagan past the Senate and onto the Court.
This is also clearly an attempt to propagate a moral equivalency with liberal judges who are the true activists. It is unfair to the justices on the Court who participated in these decisions. It’s a cynical and derisive tactic that injures the faith and confidence of the public in the judicial system.
In 1992, the feminists in the media rejoiced at what they called "The Year of the Woman," when 10 Democratic women (and one Republican) were running for the Senate in the aftermath of Anita Hill's unproven sexual-harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas. Just two years before, seven Republican women (and two Democrats) ran. But the media yawned.Yup, the occasionally sane Jake Tapper thinks it's OK to compare your opponent to Nazis (you know, the ones rounding up Jews and murdering them in concentration camps by the millions) if they have "a lot of money".
In 1992, the evening newscasts aired 29 stories exclusively devoted to women Senate candidates. In 1990, there was one ... on election night. In 1992, the morning shows interviewed women Senate candidates on 26 occasions. In 1990, there were zero interviews...
One low point came from former Clinton bimbo-crusher George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "Good Morning America," asking Haley on the morning after her victory about how she's somehow embarrassing her state by being accused without proof: "Do you expect more incoming during the runoff?" And: "Can you assure South Carolina voters that they're not going to be embarrassed if they elect you?"
Stephanopoulos, like many good Clintonistas, is incapable of embarrassment over his hypocrisy...
Several networks found "news" and some kind of national controversy in Fiorina mocking Boxer's hairdo as "so yesterday" when she was wearing an open microphone off-camera. Stephanopoulos gave it a whole story when he moonlighted as evening anchorman on "World News." NBC's "Today" led off the show with this nothing-burger and mentioned it three times. Co-host Hoda Kotb touted it as a "big gaffe-a-rooney."
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift insisted Fiorina was wrong about just who was "so yesterday" in politics. "And these two Republican women are also social conservatives in a state that's very pro-choice. So maybe those issues will be cast as 'so yesterday.'" Clift's wishful thinking had to be corrected by Monica Crowley, who informed her that Whitman favors abortion.
That's not as bad as Jerry Brown accusing Whitman in advance of tarring him in her ads: "It's like Goebbels. Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."
Amount of network outrage? Zip. The only network mention came from ABC's Jake Tapper on "This Week," and even he said, "(R)egardless of the tastelessness, Jerry Brown has a point ... that she has a lot of money." The media can disregard a lot of tastelessness when the women who are smeared are Republicans.
Housing starts fell more than expected in May to a five-month low as a homebuyer tax credit expired while plunging energy costs pushed producer prices lower, buying time for the Federal Reserve to maintain its ultra-low interest rate policy.Unexpected? Let's see, Obama stopped giving away free money for buying a house and after that people bought less houses.
New home building dropped 10 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000 units, the lowest level since December, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday.
PARIS (AP) -- France will raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 in 2018 in an effort to get the country's spiraling public finances under control, the labor minister said Wednesday.Man, we are so much less civilized than the Europeans...if only we acted more like them!
Eric Woerth called the measure -- already strongly opposed by the opposition Socialist Party and labor unions -- a "real moral obligation," given France's burgeoning deficit and its aging population, which he said threatens the viability of the money-losing pension system.
The French budget deficit was at 7.5 percent of gross domestic product last year. The conservative government has vowed to bring it under 3 percent -- the threshold set by the European Union -- by 2013. The Greek crisis has given added urgency to France's plans to cut back.
The Times shows a double standard on political “gaffes” in California. Prepping for an interview for Sacramento TV last Wednesday, California Republican Senate primary winner Carly Fiorina was caught on an open mike mocking opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer's hair. On Friday, Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer called Fiorina's impolitic but innocuous comments a “classic campaign gaffe' that 'could haunt her throughout the campaign.”
Not content with a full story on the non-story, the Times followed up with a small illustrated story, headlined “Fighting Words,” on page 2 of the Sunday Week in Review, featured dueling quotes from Fiorina and Sen. Barbara Boxer's campaign manager.
Meanwhile, this weekend the Democratic nominee for governor Jerry Brown compared his Republican rival Meg Whitman to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in a off-the-cuff conversation with California radio journalist Doug Sovern. The rant has so far been totally ignored by the Times; a Monday afternoon search at nytimes.com found no reference either in print or online.
Holly Bailey at Yahoo News picks up the story:...Brown suggested his GOP rival would use that money to smear him. "You know, by the time she's done with me, two months from now, I'll be a child-molesting ..." Brown, according to Sovern, paused. "She'll have people believing whatever she wants about me." But Brown didn't stop there. "It's like Goebbels," Brown told Sovern, referring to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's Minister of Propaganda. "Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."Whitman responded on her campaign website, calling Brown's comments “deeply offensive and entirely unacceptable.” But not even that has so far moved the Times to even mention Brown's offensive comment.
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