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It seems Pope Francis needs to brush up on his Tertullian!

It has been reported (in The ChristLast Media, I must note) that the current Pope does not like the phrase "lead us not into temptation...

"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture." -- Pope Sixtus III

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Battleground: Pennsylvania UPDATE

For the first time, Pennsylvanians can take pride in the fact that both Repansycan and Democrass criminals are going to jail for public malfeasance.

This is why Tom Corbett won the race for governor and will someday be a force in national politics, if that is what he wants.

From ABC27.com:


Ex-House Speaker Perzel pleads guilty in public corruption case

Former Speaker John Perzel has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a state public corruption investigation of the House Republican Caucus.

Perzel entered the plea in Dauphin County court Wednesday to two counts of conflict of interest, two counts of theft, and four counts of conspiracy.

As part of the plea deal, the 61-year-old Perzel agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors. He faces a maximum of 24 years in prison and a $50,000 fine when he is sentenced. Prosecutors said it's likely he will serve at least 18 months to four years.

In a statement, Perzel apologized to his constituents. "To the voters who put their trust in me, I want to express my profound regret for my actions," the statement read. "You had a right to expect better from me, and I am sorry that I let you down."

Prosecutors in the state attorney general's office said Perzel's cooperation in their investigation is critical. It's likely he will testify against others.

"Whenever we have somebody of this responsibility and this position stepping forward and taking responsibility for illegal conduct, its an important event," Chief Deputy Attorney Frank Fina said.

Prosecutors secured a fifth guilty plea in the case from Perzel's nephew, 36-year-old old Eric Ruth. The former House Republican Information Technology Deputy Director admitted to one count each of conflict of interest and conspiracy.

Three people who worked for Perzel - ex-chief-of-staff Paul Towhey, brother-in-law Samuel Stokes, and former campaign aide Don McClintock - pleaded guilty earlier this month and agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants as part of an agreement with the state attorney general's office.

Perzel is the highest-ranking state politician to admit guilt in the corruption investigation.

Perzel, of Philadelphia, was initially charged with 82 counts including theft, conflict of interest, and obstruction of justice. He was one of 10 people charged in November 2009 after then-Attorney General Tom Corbett led an investigation into the misuse of public funds, employees and resources in the caucus.

Corbett said Perzel orchestrated a scheme in which more than $10 million in taxpayer money was used to fund computer technology that was to give him and other candidates a competitive advantage in elections.


Polls are racist, too.

From Gallup.com:

Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Up in August


Underemployment is at 18.5%, with 9.4% working part time but seeking full-time jobs



PRINCETON, NJ -- Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is at 9.1% at the end of August -- up from 8.8% at the end of July.

Gallup's U.S. Unemployment Rate, 2010-2011

These data further confirm Gallup's mid-month prediction that the August unemployment rate that the government will report Friday will be higher than the 9.1% it reported in July -- barring another sizable decline in the U.S. workforce or an unusual seasonal adjustment.

The percentage of part-time workers who want full-time work is at 9.4% at the end of August -- up from 9.2% in mid-August and at the end of July.

Percentage of Americans Working Part Time but Wanting Full-Time Work, 2010-2011

Underemployment Worsens in August

Underemployment, a measure that combines the percentage of workers who are unemployed with the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, is 18.5% at the end of August -- up from 18.0% at the end of July.

Gallup's U.S. Underemployment Rate, 2010-2011

The increase in unemployment and underemployment that Gallup finds in August is reflected by Americans' elevated level of concern about losing their jobs. Thirty percent of U.S. workers in an Aug. 11-14 Gallup poll said they fear being laid off, which essentially matches the record-high 31% who said the same in August 2009. This may also signal additional job losses yet to come.

Looking Ahead to the Government's Next Unemployment Report

The government's August unemployment report will be based on data collected during mid-August, around the time Gallup released its mid-month findings. At that time, Gallup suggested that the government would report an increase in the U.S. unemployment rate for August. The continued job deterioration Gallup has found since mid-month reinforces this idea.

Gallup's end-of-August data are consistent with Wednesday's slightly disappointing report from ADP, the nation's largest payroll service, which found a less-than-predicted rise in private-sector payrolls. These data are also consistent with the possibility that the government will report that the U.S. unemployment rate increased in August, although the consensus expectation is that it will be unchanged.

One caveat is that Gallup's unemployment numbers are not seasonally adjusted, and the way the government adjusts its unemployment report for seasonal effects may affect Friday's report. There is also the issue of the shrinking U.S. workforce. Last month, the number of Americans in the labor force declined by nearly 200,000. The number of Americans in the labor force is down about 400,000 over the past year. If more Americans got discouraged and simply dropped out of the job market in August -- meaning they are no longer counted as unemployed because they are no longer actively seeking work -- the government may end up reporting a lower unemployment rate than Gallup's unemployment data suggest.

While the dismal job situation is a negative for the economic outlook, unemployment is generally seen as a lagging indicator. Americans' worries about potentially being laid off are much more of a leading indicator, and Americans are now worried about losing their jobs to the same degree they were in 2009. People are likely worried about their job situation both because their Economic Confidence is low, and because they fear their companies may be scaling back on hiring. When a large percentage of Americans are worried about their jobs, it does not bode well for consumer spending or the prospects for another recession.

How Gallup's Unemployment Measure Differs From the U.S. Government's Measure

Gallup.com reports results from these indexes in daily, weekly, and monthly averages and in Gallup.com stories. Complete trend data are always available to view and export in the following charts:

Daily: Employment, Economic Confidence and Job Creation, Consumer Spending
Weekly: Employment, Economic Confidence, Job Creation, Consumer Spending

Read more about Gallup's economic measures.

Dope and Mange only gets you so far.

Obama lowers bar in recent stump rhetoric

By Dave Boyer - The Washington Times

When he ran for the presidency in 2008, candidate Barack Obama sprinkled his campaign speeches with ambitious catchphrases such as “the fierce urgency of now” and “yes we can.”

Nowadays, as he gears up for his reelection campaign, prepares a much-anticipated address on the economy to Congress and confronts the worst polling numbers of his presidency, President Obama has lately been trotting out a stump speech with a far less lofty message for voters: You expected too much from me.

Hee-hee.

“When I ran in 2008, I think that a lot of folks believed we elect Obama and suddenly we’re going to fix politics in Washington,” the president told a group of wealthy donors in Manhattan in one typical passage on Aug. 11. “And then, after 2½ years, it’s been tough and there have been setbacks. It turns out that there are a lot of bad habits that have been built up over time [in Washington], and we’re also a big, diverse country and not everybody agrees with me.”

Scapegoating and cowardice.

Referring to deliriously happy supporters on Election Night 2008 in Chicago, the president told Democrats in Miami this summer, “I tried to warn people, I explained to them: This isn’t the end, this is just the beginning. We weren’t going to be able to do it in a day or a week or a year or maybe even not in one term.”

The president’s attempt to dampen expectations retroactively is calculated, given a national unemployment rate that remains above 9 percent after the expense of his $821 billion economic recovery program. But observers are struck by the oratorical change for the worse in the candidate who transfixed so many audiences with powerful speeches three years ago.

“It’s almost as if he’s moving in reverse,” said Stephen Hess, an expert on the presidency at The Brookings Institution. “People usually get better at giving speeches, not worse.”

He wasn't that good back in the day. Certain kinds of people ignored his incompetent babble because they wanted a totalitarian leftist in charge.

In 2008, Mr. Obama’s speeches “held tens of thousands spellbound,” Mr. Hess said.

So did Hitler, you clown.

“But it’s very hard to find a very strong speech he’s given since he’s been in office,” he added.

Part of Mr. Obama’s difficulty in finding the right inspirational tone now for a stump speech is making the transition from blameless candidate to culpable leader, said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

“He’s having his own teachable moment between campaigning and experienced governing,” Mr. Bonjean said. “First, he blamed the Bush administration, then he blamed Congress, and now he’s saying [to voters], ‘It’s your fault for expecting too much of me.’”

Hee-hee.

Mr. Bonjean added, “The last thing voters want to hear are excuses or whining. You can’t offer excuses and then be an inspirational leader.”

In fundraising speeches early this year, Mr. Obama often referred to the need to rebuild America’s infrastructure by pointing to a United States in decline and calling attention to better facilities in other countries.

“America has always had the best stuff,” Mr. Obama said at a fundraiser in Washington on June 20. “People would travel from around the world to marvel at the infrastructure we had built. We can’t claim to have the best anymore. You go to airports in Beijing or Singapore that put a lot of our airports to shame. [There are] high-speed rail networks all through Europe that could be built here in the United States of America.”

Time to resign, loser. Reality is obviously way too much for your tiny, closed mind.

But on his most recent campaign-style trip, a three-day mid-August bus tour through swing states in the Midwest, Mr. Obama changed his tune to one of American pride.

“I believe with every fiber of my being … that there is not a country on Earth that would not be willing to trade places with the United States of America,” Mr. Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa, to enthusiastic applause. “We’ve got the best universities. We’ve got the best entrepreneurs. We’ve got the best scientists. We’ve got the best market system, the most dynamic in the world. And so as tough as things are, all of us are incredibly blessed to have been born in the United States of America.”

Wow, does that ring hollow, or what? It's like Charlie Sheen preaching moderation and chastity.

As Mr. Obama tries in campaign speeches to advance a vision of America with a robust role for government, he’s also confronting another problem: More people of all political persuasions say they distrust government. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg wrote recently in the New York Times that his focus groups “tune out the politicians’ fine speeches” and dismiss them as “just words.”

“This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism,” Mr. Greenberg wrote, noting that only 25 percent of Americans are optimistic about the government. “A crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?”

I wish I could believe that's true, kiddies.

As the 2012 race intensifies, Mr. Obama is shifting his campaign rhetoric by asking supporters to take a more historical view of his presidency. At the event in Manhattan two weeks ago, the president talked about the theme he planned to strike in a now-postponed speech at the dedication of the monument to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall.

“Now that King has his own memorial on the Mall, I think that we forget when he was alive there was nobody who was more vilified, nobody who was more controversial, nobody who was more despairing at times,” Mr. Obama said. “There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks [were] angry.

“But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice,” the president said. ” But it doesn’t bend on its own. It bends because all of us are putting our hand on the arc and we are bending it in that direction.”

“And it takes time.”

Just leave us alone, you jackass.

'Green jobs' is code for payoffs to Okhrana's financial backers. [Part Two]

From AP via The Washington Times:

Solar firm lays off 1,100, filing for bankruptcy

A California solar-panel manufacturer once touted by President Obama as a beneficiary of his administration’s economic policies — and the recipient of a $535 million federal loan — is laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy.

Solyndra LLC of Fremont, Calif., is the third solar company to seek bankruptcy protection this year. Officials said Wednesday that the global economy as well as unfavorable conditions in the solar industry combined to force the company to suspend its manufacturing operations.

The price for solar panels has tanked — dropping by 42 percent this year, largely because of heavy competition from Chinese firms.

Mr. Obama toured the company’s facilities last year to highlight the economic benefits of the solar industry and an economic stimulus package that provided seed money for solar startups. At the time, the president said that the new plant being built by Solyndra would employ 1,000 workers.

In a blog posting, Energy Department spokesman Dan Leistikow said that Solyndra was a once-promising company that had increased sales revenue by 2,000 percent in the past three years. The loan guarantee was sought by both the Bush and Obama administrations, he said, and private investors put more than $1 billion into Solyndra.

“We have always recognized that not every one of the innovative companies supported by our loans and loan guarantees would succeed, but we can’t stop investing in game-changing technologies that are key to America’s leadership in the global economy,” Mr. Leistikow said.

Brian Harrison, Solynda’s president and CEO, said that raising capital became impossible.

“This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate,” Mr. Harrison said in a statement.

Solyndra had been in the center of a political controversy in recent months. House Republicans subpoenaed documents relating to the loan from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Another solar company, Spectrawatt Inc. of Hopewell Junction, N.Y., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Aug. 19. Its CEO said in the filing that it could not compete with solar manufacturers in China, which receive “considerable government and financial support.”

Spectrawatt’s filing came four days after Evergreen Solar Inc. of Marlboro, Mass., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

'Green jobs' is code for payoffs to Okhrana's financial backers. [Part One]

From The Washington Times:

Energy Obamanomics: No green jobs and plenty of red ink

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf


It wasn’t enough to preside over the first-ever downgrade of America’s credit rating. Now the Obama administration is downgrading America’s energy supply as well. “We’ll invest $15 billion a year over the next decade in renewable energy, creating five million new green jobs that pay well, can’t be outsourced and help end our dependence on foreign oil,” candidate Barack Obama promised in the fall of 2008. But why stop there? Why not claim that you can heal the planet - whatever that means - and control the ocean levels too? Oh yeah, he did.

Let’s start at the beginning. America’s energy policy should center around the obvious: supplying Americans with affordable and reliable energy. File that under D for “duh.” Instead, it has been hijacked by those with ulterior motives ranging from slaying the mythical man-made-global-warming monster to scoring political points against “Big Oil” to creating phony jobs programs. So, how well have President Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives fared?

The president recently toured Johnson Controls Inc., a Michigan company that received $300 million from “Obama’s stash” to create - drumroll, please - a whopping 150 jobs. Do the math: That’s $2 million per green job. And this is the company the White House chooses to showcase? Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts company, also received stimulus money, but the White House that is “the most open and transparent in history” won’t say how much, only that Evergreen is “hoping to hire 90 to 100 people.” Instead, it declared bankruptcy and shipped 800 jobs overseas. Well, so much for green jobs.

Should we be surprised? During the campaign, Mr. Obama held up Spain’s green initiatives as a blueprint for America. We now know that the Spaniards lost 2.2 actual jobs for each “green job” they created. Some blueprint.

Consider ethanol. The government takes billions of dollars from people with actual jobs to prop up the ethanol industry. The trifecta of ethanol’s corporate welfare includes a 45-cents- to 55-cents-per-gallon subsidy, a mandate that forces supposedly free Americans to buy the industry’s product and an anti-competitive tariff on ethanol imports to prevent consumers from purchasing it at a lower price.

The unintended but easily predictable consequence of burning our food supply in our gas tanks is that grocery prices have skyrocketed. When the limited supply of farmland is diverted to ethanol, the demand for the remaining land goes up, so all food prices are affected. Simple economics. Food shortages are being felt around the world. When Mexico runs short on corn tortillas, you know there’s a problem.

Proponents of ethanol trumpet its grandness with undelivered promises of “green jobs,” environmental impact and energy independence, but they leave important questions unanswered: If ethanol is so great, why can’t it pay its own bills? Energy companies, the president reminds us constantly, are making “record profits.” Why then must Americans be forced by law and then still bribed - with their own money - to buy ethanol?

Compare this with John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. While ethanol, solar power and other “green” boondoggles claim they need corporate welfare during their never-ending “infancy period,” Rockefeller almost single-handedly built the American oil industry. Perhaps the most successful businessman in world history, the oil magnate catapulted America ahead of Russia as a 19th-century world power not by begging politicians and taxpayers for handouts but by following a simple rule: “We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.”

Barack Obama does not know John D. Rockefeller.

The president tried to sock it to the poor man with his “cap and trade” energy, plan under which, in his words, “rates would necessarily skyrocket.” The Obama energy policy started with, again in the president’s own words, putting a “boot on the neck” of America’s oil suppliers. Since he effectively imposed a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which resulted in the administration’s being found in contempt of court, 10 oil rigs have left the Gulf and are providing affordable energy and jobs for South America, Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile, gasoline prices have doubled since Mr. Obama took office. The court didn’t go far enough. This White House is in contempt, not just of court, but of the American people themselves.

Mr. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is poised to stomp a few more necks. The EPA’s regulatory train wreck is a set of regulations that energy experts say will add $129 billion to Americans’ already high energy bills while threatening to dismantle one-fifth of the nation’s coal-mining capacity. Considering that coal provides almost half of America’s electricity, this could be devastating. State leaders are already warning their residents to brace for roaming blackouts if these regulations are enacted.

American family and business budgets depend every bit as much on energy that is “cheap and good” today as they did in Rockefeller’s day. It’s time we refocus our energy policy on affordable and reliable energy rather than sabotaging it with the false promises of green jobs and the suffocating effects of governmental regulations.

It’s time for downgraded America to demand that every business pay its own bills. Mr. Obama would like to end what he calls subsidies to oil companies. Fine. Let’s apply that evenly to all energy companies. In fact, let’s apply it to all companies in America. No more bailouts, subsidies, targeted tax breaks, selective tariffs, mandates to purchase certain products or any other form of corporate welfare. If alternative energy is half as good as its proponents claim, the companies will have no problem thriving in the marketplace, but think about it: If ethanol or solar power or other so-called green companies can’t survive without keeping the oil, coal and nuclear power companies around to pay their bills for them, what’s the point?

Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist, medical director and a cousin of President Obama’s. He blogs daily at miltonwolf.com.

Water sports.

Sorry, kiddies. This is sad, not funny.

From Cincinnati.com:

Cops: Man had sex with inflatable pool raft

A repeat public indecency offender has been arrested for allegedly engaging in "sexual activity" with a pink inflatable swimming pool raft, according to Hamilton police.

Edwin Charles Tobergta, 32, was arrested at his Harmon Avenue home early Sunday after he was spotted in the act in an alley in the 1800 block of Howell Avenue behind a residence, a police report shows.

A male witness, who owns the raft and lives in the home near the alley, told Hamilton Police Officer William Thacker he shouted at the suspect to stop.

Tobergta took the raft and fled, the report states.

When police caught up with him, he admitted to the crime and begged for help, according to police.

"Defendant advised officers that he was doing it but only because he has a problem and that he needs help and please don't send him to prison but send him somewhere to get help," the report reads.

Tobergta, who remains at the Hamilton city jail, had been arrested at least five times for similar offenses, most recently in 2008, Hamilton Municipal Court records state.

Tobergta’s grandmother, Linda Tobergta, cried as she explained to a reporter Wednesday how the family has tried to seek mental care for her grandson over the years, to no avail. He suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and has abused his medication in the past, she said.

“He has a lot of mental problems and he’s always had a fascination for plastic,” she said. “That’s just it. That’s all of it. We never could get the proper care for Edwin. It’s like nobody cares.”

Some problems require more than medication...

The People's House bitch-slaps Barry into next week.

The same thugs who cry about the "imperial presidency" every time a Repansycan occupies the White [Racist.] House have a cow when anyone stands up to their favorite fascist.

From the Commie News Network:

Boehner Disses Presidency, And Obama Takes It

The way I see it, House Speaker John Boehner's eloquent letter to President Obama requesting he push back his address really could have been summed up in two words-- screw you...


From The Atlantic Wire via Yahoo! News:

Washington Freaks Out Over A Petty, Day-Long Dispute

Wednesday was is sort of like watching a reality TV show about a strange subculture, like rich housewives or Jersey Shore vacationers or sorority girls. One of the joys of watching those shows is when one person violates the strange little rules of the group -- rules that are alien to the rest of us -- and everyone totally freaks out over what looks like a minor misstep. On Real Housewives of New York, for example, it's against the rules to bring up a fight at a party. When one housewife does it, the rest freak out. Then they take refuge in the mantra: "This is not the time, nor the place."

Obama and Boehner both violated Washington norms yesterday. The White House says it alerted the House to his speech request, and, as spokesman Jay Carney said on Morning Joe, "No objection was raised. The letter went up." But a Republican aide tells NBC News' First Read that Obama only gave Boehner 15 minutes before he went to the press. Politico's Mike Allen explains, "White House and Hill officials from several eras tell us these things are normally worked out privately between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue before either side goes public with a date." A Boehner staffer huffed to Politico's Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Allen, "It’s unfortunate the White House ignored decades -- if not centuries -- of the protocol of working out a mutually agreeable date and time before making any public announcement.

But Democrats counter that it was Republicans who violated tradition. Presidents George W. Bush and Clinton got the dates they wanted without a fuss; so did Obama in 2009. A Democratic staffer explained to Politico, "Yes, consultation always occurs, but the President always gets the date he wants." A Democratic strategist to the New York Post that Boehner's pushback was "incredibly disrespectful." Even so, members of Obama's own party were annoyed he broke another rule: giving them a heads up. A Senate Democratic aide told Politico it was "pure Obama -- keeping us in the dark until the last minute."


Shelby Steele disects the muddled mullah of mediocrity with surgical precision.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Obama And The Burden Of Exceptionalism

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama's character, today's left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there.

I'm sure Mr. Steele is used to being called an Uncle Tom and a race traitor, but please remember him in your prayers, kiddies. Words like these tend to inflame the passions of the ignorant and the evil.

Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-'60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America's exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America's greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.

Mr. Obama did not explicitly run on an anti-exceptionalism platform. Yet once he was elected it became clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. There was his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street—as if his mandate was somehow to overcome, or at least subdue, American capitalism itself.

Anti-exceptionalism has clearly shaped his "leading from behind" profile abroad—an offer of self-effacement to offset the presumed American evil of swaggering cowboyism. Once in office his "hope and change" campaign slogan came to look like the "hope" of overcoming American exceptionalism and "change" away from it.

So, in Mr. Obama, America gained a president with ambivalence, if not some antipathy, toward the singular greatness of the nation he had been elected to lead.

This is so spot-on, it's scary.

But then again, the American people did elect him. Clearly Americans were looking for a new kind of exceptionalism in him (a black president would show America to have achieved near perfect social mobility). But were they also looking for—in Mr. Obama—an assault on America's bedrock exceptionalism of military, economic and cultural pre-eminence?

American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.

Yet today America is fighting in a number of Muslim countries, and that number is as likely to rise as to fall. Our exceptionalism saddles us with overwhelming burdens. The entire world comes to our door when there is real trouble, and every day we spill blood and treasure in foreign lands—even as anti-Americanism plays around the world like a hit record.

At home the values that made us exceptional have been smeared with derision. Individual initiative and individual responsibility—the very engines of our exceptionalism—now carry a stigma of hypocrisy. For centuries America made sure that no amount of initiative would lift minorities and women. So in liberal quarters today—where historical shames are made to define the present—these values are seen as little more than the cynical remnants of a bygone era. Talk of "merit" or "a competition of excellence" in the admissions office of any Ivy League university today, and then stand by for the howls of incredulous laughter.

Our national exceptionalism both burdens and defames us, yet it remains our fate. We make others anxious, envious, resentful, admiring and sometimes hate-driven. There's a reason al Qaeda operatives targeted the U.S. on 9/11 and not, say, Buenos Aires. They wanted to enrich their act of evil with the gravitas of American exceptionalism. They wanted to steal our thunder.

So we Americans cannot help but feel some ambivalence toward our singularity in the world—with its draining entanglements abroad, the selfless demands it makes on both our military and our taxpayers, and all the false charges of imperial hubris it incurs. Therefore it is not surprising that America developed a liberalism—a political left—that took issue with our exceptionalism. It is a left that has no more fervent mission than to recast our greatness as the product of racism, imperialism and unbridled capitalism.

But this leaves the left mired in an absurdity: It seeks to trade the burdens of greatness for the relief of mediocrity. When greatness fades, when a nation contracts to a middling place in the world, then the world in fact no longer knocks on its door. (Think of England or France after empire.) To civilize America, to redeem the nation from its supposed avarice and hubris, the American left effectively makes a virtue of decline—as if we can redeem America only by making her indistinguishable from lesser nations.

Since the '60s we have enfeebled our public education system even as our wealth has expanded. Moral and cultural relativism now obscure individual responsibility. We are uninspired in the wars we fight, calculating our withdrawal even before we begin—and then we fight with a self-conscious, almost bureaucratic minimalism that makes the wars interminable.

America seems to be facing a pivotal moment: Do we move ahead by advancing or by receding—by reaffirming the values that made us exceptional or by letting go of those values, so that a creeping mediocrity begins to spare us the burdens of greatness?

As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them.

Like me, he is black, and it was the government that in part saved us from the ignorances of the people. So the concept of the exceptionalism—the genius for freedom—of the American people may still be a stretch for him. But in fact he was elected to make that stretch. It should be held against him that he has failed to do so.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Among his books is "White Guilt" (Harper/Collins, 2007).




Wednesday, August 31, 2011

David Edwards, Requiescat In Pace.

The last of the Delta bluesmen has left us.

Photobucket


From Bloomberg:

David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, Delta Blues Legend, Dies at 96

David “Honeyboy” Edwards, a guitarist and singer who was present at the creation of the Mississippi Delta’s folk-blues style and was one of its most enduring practitioners, has died. He was 96.

Edwards died yesterday in Chicago “while resting peacefully at home,” according to a statement on his website. No cause of death was given. He suffered from a weak heart, his manager, Michael Frank of Earwig Music Co., told the Associated Press. Edwards canceled his schedule of concerts when his health declined in late April, according to the statement.

Edwards, son of a sharecropper, began his career by crisscrossing the U.S. South on freight trains as a teenager. His circle of friends included Robert Johnson, the legendary blues artist.

During the 1950s, Edwards joined a musical migration to Chicago and found his place in the city’s electric-blues scene, which included Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. He began recording albums in his 60s and performed into his 90s.

“Edwards embodies the continuity of the blues tradition and the various pathways it has taken,” University of Maryland Professor Barry Lee Pearson wrote in the liner notes for “Mississippi Delta Bluesman,” a reissue album from 2001.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammy Awards, gave Edwards a lifetime-achievement award in 2010. He won his only Grammy three years earlier for performing on the album “Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas.”

Originally Honey

Other honors included a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Blues Foundation’s W.C. Handy Award, now known as the Blues Music Award.

Edwards was born on June 28, 1915, in Shaw, Mississippi. He was the oldest of four children of Henry and Pearl Phillips Edwards. His father had three boys and two girls from a previous marriage.

“When I started to recording, I gave the name of Honeyboy, but my people only knew me by Honey,” Edwards said in “The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing,” a 1997 autobiography. He got the nickname from a half-sister, Lessie, who called him Honey while trying to get him to walk.

As a nine-year-old, he worked alongside his parents, plowing fields and picking cotton. The family moved east to Greenwood, Mississippi.

Leaving Home

At 14, he learned to play a second-hand guitar that his father had bought for himself. He performed locally and got to know musicians such as Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton, Pinetop Perkins and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Edwards left home at 17 with another blues guitarist, Big Joe Williams, to find work playing music. They traveled through the South for months as hobos, hitching train rides from city to city, and ended up in New Orleans.

When he went back to Mississippi, he didn’t return to the cotton fields. He moved at 19 to Memphis, Tennessee, where he backed Big Walter Horton, a blues harmonica player. They performed on Beale Street, the hub of the city’s music scene.

Edwards came home the next year, and found out that his father had died days before his arrival.

“I just run astray after that,” he said in his book, a collection of stories compiled by Frank and writer Janis Martinson. “I run all through the country, hoboing and playing my guitar.”

First Recordings

Robert Johnson, who would inspire Eric Clapton, was performing in Greenwood when Edwards visited in 1937. They met and became friends. The next year, he went to see Johnson play there and saw the musician was sick, according to the book. Johnson had drunk poisoned whiskey and later died.

Edwards made his first recordings in 1942 with Alan Lomax, who recorded blues and folk artists for the Library of Congress, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The session consisted of 15 songs.

Nine years would pass before Edwards got a chance to record again. He played four songs for Artist Record Co., a Houston- based label known as Arc. Two of them, “Build a Cave” and “Who May Your Regular Be,” were released and credited to “Mr. Honey.” The single, sold locally, was Arc’s only release.

Sun Records, based in Memphis, recorded his version of Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” in 1952. The song went unissued for years, as did “Drop Down Mama” and three others he performed for Chess Records in Chicago the following year.

Chicago, which he first visited during the late 1940s with blues harpist Little Walter Jacobs, became his home in 1956. He played in the city’s blues nightclubs and appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s “Blues Jam in Chicago,” an album released in 1969.

‘I’ve Been Around’

Edwards’ music was available only on compilation albums for years. After stints with the Milestone, Adelphi and Blue Horizon labels, he released his debut solo album, “I’ve Been Around,” in 1978 on Trix Records. The follow-up, “Old Friends,” featured him with Horton and three other blues musicians that he knew, Floyd Jones, Kansas City Red and Sunnyland Slim.

“Old Friends” came out on Earwig, a label founded by Frank, who met and befriended Edwards in 1972. Frank backed him in the Honeyboy Edwards Blues Band and performed with him as a duo.

Earwig released most of his Library of Congress recordings on “Delta Bluesman,” released in 1992. Edwards had albums on the APO, Document, Evidence, Folkways, Genes and Testament labels as well. He was featured in “Honeyboy,” a documentary from 2001, and appeared in the 2007 movie, “Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story.”

Edwards’ wife, Bessie, died in 1972 after two decades of marriage. The couple had a son, David, and a daughter, Betty.

I'd call it poetic justice, but that might be construed as racist.

What? You expected a commie sculptor from Slave China to get it right?

Talk about context...

From The Lookout via Yahoo! News:

'Mistake' on MLK memorial stirs anger


Poet and author Maya Angelou says a recently unveiled monument to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is inscribed with a quote taken out of context that makes the reverend seem "arrogant."

I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness, the inscription on the 30-foot-tall statue of King reads.

"The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit," Angelou told The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten, and added that she thinks it should be changed. "He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply."

The quote was taken from a sermon King gave shortly before his death, where he imagined what his own eulogy would sound like.

"If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice," King said. "Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."

Angelou, who has served as poet laureate of the United States and read a poem at Bill Clinton's first inauguration, told Weingarten that taking out the "if clause" at the beginning of the quote makes King sound conceited, as if he were praising himself for no reason.

Angelou was on a committee of historians who helped choose the inscriptions, and the memorial's chief architect, Ed Jackson Jr., said that she didn't attend any of those meetings. But it also appears that the historians chose the entire quote, not the shortened version memorial officials eventually selected due to space constraints.

The Washington Post's Rachel Manteuffel expanded on Angelou's criticism, noting that King's original sermon was actually "about the desire in the human spirit to be great without doing any great, difficult things. To be at the front of the pack, drawing all the attention. This is folly, King says." King admits in the sermon that he is also prone to this weakness like everyone else, but hopes that he will be remembered for fighting for noble causes and helping others, not for seeking attention. The shortened quote conveys none of that interpretive context.

Angelou isn't the only one who has found fault with the four-acre, $120 million monument, which sits on the National Mall alongside monuments to Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Much of the criticism centers around the statue of King, which was controversially designed by a Chinese artist and built by Chinese workers. (Critics said an African-American artist should be chosen.)

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer objects to the 30-foot-tall statue, which was sculpted by Lei Yixin, an artist from China who has also sculpted monuments of Chairman Mao. "His flat, rigid, socialist realist King does not do justice to the supremely nuanced, creative, humane soul of its subject," Krauthammer says.

The New York Times' Edward Rothstein writes that the imposing statue and choice of quotations turns "the minister into a warrior or a ruler."

"The mound's isolation from any other tall objects, its enormity and Dr. King's posture all conspire to make him seem an authoritarian figure, emerging full-grown from the rock's chiseled surface, at one with the ancient forces of nature, seeming to claim their authority as his," Rothstein writes.

The Economist writes that it's disappointing "that a man who fought so intransigently, bravely, and beautifully for equality, of all things, has been set up for worship as a towering idol, more mountain than man."

"The image that we chose is one that, from our point of view, presents Dr. King as a philosopher of ideas, someone who was strong in his belief of what America stood for and where America should be going," the architect, Jackson, told The Root. "The goals he set have not been reached, but we have a memorial that allows us to champion his message, so that we don't forget to pick up where he left off in trying to make the world a better place."



A CBC stooge uncivilly tightens the rhetorical rope around Rep. Giffords neck and kicks away the stool.



From Politico:

Carson: Tea party wants blacks 'hanging on a tree'

A top lawmaker in the Congressional Black Caucus says tea partiers on Capitol Hill would like to see African-Americans hanging from trees and accuses the movement of wishing for a return to the Jim Crow era.

Rep. Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana who serves as the CBC’s chief vote counter, said at a CBC event in Miami that some in Congress would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree.”

Carson also said the tea party is stopping change in Congress, likening it to “the effort that we’re seeing of Jim Crow.”

The explosive comments, caught on tape, were uploaded on the Internet Tuesday, and Carson’s office stood by the remarks. Jason Tomcsi, Carson’s spokesman, said the comment was “in response to frustration voiced by many in Miami and in his home district in Indianapolis regarding Congress’s inability to bolster the economy.” Tomcsi, in an email, wrote that “the congressman used strong language because the Tea Party agenda jeopardizes our most vulnerable and leaves them without the ability to improve their economic standing.

“The Tea Party is protecting its millionaire and oil company friends while gutting critical services that they know protect the livelihood of African-Americans, as well as Latinos and other disadvantaged minorities,” Tomcsi wrote. “We are talking about child nutrition, job creation, job training, housing assistance, and Head Start, and that is just the beginning. A child without basic nutrition, secure housing, and quality education has no real chance at a meaningful and productive life.”

And now for the moral equivalency [Ha!] part of the program...

Carson is hardly the first lawmaker to use heated rhetoric. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled “you lie” as President Barack Obama was addressing Congress. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) yelled “baby killer” at former Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) as abortion was being discussed during the health care debate.

Carson, who represents Indianapolis, is the second Muslim to ever serve in Congress. He has been in office since 2008 and took the seat that was held by his late grandmother — Democratic Rep. Julia Carson.


The fascist left is partying like it's 1984.

George Orwell, call your office.

From the childlike [and not in a good way] Jay Carney's August 29th
press briefing:

Q When will the President go visit any of the areas that have been hit by the hurricane?

MR. CARNEY: Ann, I don't have a scheduling announcement for you at this point. I don't have an announcement of that nature to make.

Q And he put out a statement on Katrina six years later. Does he feel that the federal government is significantly better in its reaction now than it was six years ago?

MR. CARNEY: Well, I think Administrator Fugate addressed that and addressed it from firsthand experience, and I think his answer was, yes, basically.

Q But President Obama, particularly -- does he feel that on his watch -- yesterday he said he took -- if you need something, tell me about it. Does he really think that the federal government is in a keener position?

MR. CARNEY: He thinks that his administration has from day one tried to be proactively responsive in the case of national disasters like hurricanes, floods, tornados, and that that posture has been the right one to take. Others will judge whether or not FEMA's response, the federal government's response, has been adequate. We are certainly -- the President is making sure that all resources available, all aspects of the federal family, [Emphasis mine. F.G.] are focused on this, led by Administrator Fugate and, again, the assessments will be made by others. We have heard some positive ones, but as the President said yesterday and as Administrator Fugate made clear today, this is not over. There are still impacts to be felt in certain states and a lot of recovery to be done.


In case you think that was merely Carney being his sissified self, here it is again. It is really the oligarchs' subtle way of admitting that the people hate their government.

After all, who could hate a "family"?

“Since the end of last year's hurricane season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been working with the nation's entire emergency management team to get ready for this year's hurricane season. That team includes the entire federal family, [Emphasis mine. F.G.] state, local and tribal governments, the faith-based and non-profit communities, and the private sector.”

-- McClatchy Newspapers Op-Ed by Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Jack Hayes, director of the National Weather Service



From Fox New:

"Federal Family” Learns a Lesson About Disaster Politics

American politicians have a gift for over learning the lessons of the immediate past, and the response to Hurricane Irene is a prime example.

Compared to the other major natural disasters of the year – the rash of cyclones that killed hundreds across the Southeast in April or the mile-wide tornado that killed 160 people in Joplin, Mo. on May 22 –Irene was a dud.

But the storm had all the makings of a catastrophe: large, slow-moving and pointed at the heart of the nation’s largest city. It was not hard to imagine that the low-lying central part of Manhattan would be swamped like New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Not only would there have been scores of lives lost, but the beating heart of America’s financial industry would have been stifled.

In the end, though, the storm was nothing like Katrina and the small number of dead and isolated property damage will be lamented now, but soon swept from the front pages. It takes a lot to hold the nation’s disaster fascination: ask the still-struggling folks in Alabama and Joplin.

But before Irene fizzled, the Obama White House wanted to make sure that Irene was no Katrina and that, in fact, the president and his aides would be seen in compassionate command of the situation.

Hence the introduction of what may be the most condescending euphemism for the national government in its long history of condescending euphemizing: “federal family.”

This new phrase was supposed to, Power Play supposes, make anxious East Coasters feel the love of a caring federal government -- tender squeeze from the Department of Homeland Security, a gentle embrace from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The phrase was a centrally distributed talking point, appearing in op-eds, press releases and statements from across the administration.

No major hurricane had hit the U.S. mainland in the Obama era, and the “federal family” had obviously been saving up a lot of new approaches to differentiate itself from the clan under President George W. Bush.

President Obama, presumably the federal father, came home early from his vacation and addressed the nation on the progress of the storm daily. The agency heads, presumably the siblings of this caring network, fanned out to show intimate engagement with the subject, from sandbagging procedures to storm tracking.

Meanwhile, Democrats were already pushing hard on the notion that Republican spendthrifts had crippled federal disaster preparedness, laying the predicate for pinning the blame for the disaster on the Tea Party movement. When the worst came, the president’s allies wanted to make sure everyone knew who was trying to break up the federal family.

It’s easy to say today, in hindsight, that the administration and its allies over-hyped the storm. If the damage had been greater, the panicky preamble and blame placement would seem justified. But the Obama political team has undoubtedly been taught a lesson about political perception.

It’s much easier to score negative points against someone else than it is to add positive ones to your own tally.

The president made attacking the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina a big part of his rise to power. Obama frequently used the storm and its aftermath to highlight the differences between himself and the man who is now his predecessor. This was a useful strategy because it plugged into one of the dominant narratives of the time: that Katrina was a domestic Iraq, a place where the president allowed people to suffer and die because of his own indifference or stupidity.

While Bush himself would later lament holding back a federal intervention in New Orleans, the largest part of the tragedy of Katrina came because of poor planning, poor preparedness and the sunken geography of the poorest parts of New Orleans. But the establishment press narrative fit fabulously and helped consign the GOP to two massive electoral defeats.

Obama called Irene an “historic storm” on Friday, but she will be all but forgotten soon enough. Katrina, conversely, brewed and churned in just the wrong way to suddenly swamp New Orleans. Remember that Katrina crossed Florida with minimal damage and only became the monster storm of legend when it entered the Gulf of Mexico.

While Americans had days to watch and worry over Irene, Katrina had already been dismissed by many as just another tropical depression before she started sucking up warm Gulf water and picking up speed. It was a perfect disaster.

Irene’s long lead time and the untapped hurricane plans of the Obama administration caused overwrought phrases like “federal family” and for a general sense of anxious hovering. The potential for massive disaster and graphic memories of Katrina cause local leaders to follow suit and join their presidential papa.

(Power Play would suggest that any New Yorkers and New Jerseyans currently complaining about the dire warnings of their mayor or governor ask themselves this: Would they rather have Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco?)

It is in this way that campaigns shape governments. The way that Obama ran for office, in this case blasting Bush for Katrina, caused his organization to place an excess premium on hurricane preparedness and messaging.

Some of it may have been defensive, since Democrats came to realize the political potential of a disaster while using the tragedy against Bush, but most of it was probably juxtapositional: “We can do this because we are the party of government. The Republicans hate government and that kills people.”

But rather than having a chance to show how effectively the government party can unite the federal family to a common cause, the president’s team got all worked up for a storm that most Floridians wouldn’t have interrupted their canasta games for. That’s how it goes with natural disasters.

The political lesson, though, is one that the members of Team Obama seem to be constantly being taught: it’s a lot easier to run for president than it is to be one. As they watch Republican frontrunners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney take chunks out of the embattled president’s hide, they will continue to re-learn it.


A victory for freedom and education in Indiana.

Vouchers are a good way to get children out of the government indoctrination centers. That's why the left-fascists hate them so.

From AP via Yahoo! News:

Indiana vouchers prompt thousands to change schools

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Weeks after Indiana began the nation's broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils.

It's a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.

In at least one district, public school principals have been pleading with parents not to move their children.

"The bottom line from our perspective is, when you cut through all the chaff, nobody can deny that public money is going to be taken from public schools, and they're going to end up in private, mostly religious schools," said Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association.

Under a law signed in May by Gov. Mitch Daniels, more than 3,200 Indiana students are receiving vouchers to attend private schools. That number is expected to climb significantly in the next two years as awareness of the program increases and limits on the number of applicants are lifted.

The vouchers are government-issued certificates that can be applied to private tuition, essentially allowing parents to channel some of the tax dollars they would normally pay to public schools to other institutions.

Until Indiana started its program, most voucher systems were limited to poor students, those in failing schools or those with special needs. But Indiana's is significantly larger, offering money to students from middle-class homes and solid school districts.

Nearly 70 percent of the vouchers approved statewide are for students opting to attend Catholic schools, according to figures provided to The Associated Press by the five dioceses in Indiana. The majority are in the urban areas of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Gary, where many public schools have long struggled.

John Elcesser, executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association, said it's not surprising that Catholic schools are receiving so many of the vouchers, even though they make up fewer than half of the 415 schools in the group.

Most Catholic schools already had state accreditation, which some private schools lack. And they are more established and have more space available, he said.

John West, an attorney for a group suing to stop the Indiana program, said during a hearing on the issue that only six of the 240 private schools that have signed up for the voucher program are secular.

Our Lady of Hungary Catholic School in South Bend is among those institutions reaping the benefits of the vouchers. Just two years ago, it was threatened with closure by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. At the time, the bishop said several other schools were at risk of closing, too.

Now enrollment at Our Lady of Hungary has jumped nearly 60 percent over last year, largely because of an influx of voucher students. The halls are bustling more than they have in years.

"This has exceeded all crazy expectations," Principal Melissa Jay said.

At its height in 1953, the school had 702 students. But that number had fallen to 135 last year. It now has 213 students.

The enrollment boom has forced the school to hire three more teachers. It's also allowed all but the seventh and eighth grades to be separated into single classes. In years past, the school has combined grade levels because of low enrollment.

Other states that have introduced voucher programs also have seen booms in parochial school enrollment.

In Ohio, where children from low-performing public schools can use vouchers to attend private schools, about 70 percent of students receiving vouchers have used them to attend Catholic schools, said Chad Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio.

That demand comes at a price to public schools, which say the voucher program siphons off money they need.

The South Bend district expects to lose $1.3 million in funding if all the students who have signed up for vouchers leave.

Interim Superintendent Carole Schmidt instructed principals to contact parents of students who are leaving to find out why and make a last pitch for them to stay.

Rita Baxter of South Bend said she won't be dissuaded from sending her 14-year-old daughter to the private Marian High School in Mishawaka.

The Baxters' 16-year-old son attends a public high school in South Bend, and his parents are pleased with his education. But they think Marian is a better fit for their daughter.

Baxter and her husband planned to pay their daughter's tuition to Marian on their own until he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer two years ago. His illness devastated their finances and made it impossible for him to continue working as a vice president for the Silver Hawks minor league baseball team. He is still recovering and can't work full time.

At first, they assumed Sara would have to forget about Marian. Then they heard about the voucher program.

"We're hoping that my husband makes a full recovery and goes back to work, and we can go back to just being normal and let somebody else have the voucher," Baxter said.



Today's headlines from CNSNEWS.

Check out CNSnews.com.



Bolshevik The Clown [The lyinest clown in town!] stars in a remake of 'Groundhog Day'

Photobucket


From CNSNews:

Flashback Obama in 2010: New Jobs Plan after Vacation

President Barack Obama, in an Aug. 29, 2010 interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, said he would propose a plan for jobs and economic growth when he returned from his summer vacation, the same claim he made after returning from his vacation this year.

“We anticipated that the recovery was slowing – the economy is still growing, but it’s not growing as fast as it needs to. I’ve got things right now before Congress that we should move immediately, and I said so before I went on vacation, and I’ll keep on saying it now that I’m back,” Obama told Williams when asked if he had a jobs plan.

“There are a whole host of measures we could take – no single element of which is a magic bullet – but cumulatively can start continuing to build momentum for the recovery,” he said.

The promise of a plan echoes a similar promise Obama made on Monday, saying that in the coming week he would present concrete proposals that would spur hiring and economic growth.

“Next week, I will be laying out a series of steps that Congress can take immediately to put more money in the pockets of working families and middle-class families, to make it easier for small businesses to hire people, to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nation’s roads and railways and airports, and all the other measures that can help to grow this economy,” Obama said on Monday at a Rose Garden ceremony for new Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Alan Krueger.

Obama proposed only one concrete idea in the 2010 interview – legislation that “eliminates” capital gains taxes on small business. That idea did not make it through Congress. However, a similar measure allowing some small-businesses to write off 100 percent of their capital gains taxes on new investment was attached to the deal extending the Bush tax rates.

Another less-concrete idea, to allow businesses easier access to credit, did eventually pass, making $30 billion available to small banks in exchange for increased lending to small businesses.


The Michael and Cathryn Borden Memorial Book of the Day.*


The last real man in American politics takes some shots at the Repansycans who plague us.

Photobucket


In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir
by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney

From Washington's other newspaper:

In memoir, Cheney defends decisions, Bush as president

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney provides an unapologetic defense of the George W. Bush administration in his memoir to be released next week, including explanations of his own decisions on contested national security and domestic policies that often come at the expense of former Cabinet members and colleagues.



Those include the justification to invade Iraq in 2003, a judgment he blames on CIA failures, and the lack of support for his urging that the United States strike a Syrian nuclear reactor site in 2007. Israel ended up doing so despite recommendations from then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that it “choose the path of diplomacy,” which Cheney correctly predicted the Israelis would reject.
Although he praises Bush for his leadership and many of his decisions, Cheney said he warned him that nominating White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court would be “a tough sell.” Bush eventually withdrew the nomination amid questions about her qualifications to serve on the high court.
“The president later said he was sorry he had put his friend through such a meat grinder,” Cheney writes in “In My Time,” a copy of which The Washington Post obtained on Thursday.
Cheney's “personal and political memoir,” as he describes it, confirms the central role he played in the eight tumultuous years of the previous administration. He notes that “from the transition onward, there were media stories that I was somehow in charge,” echoing accounts of his time in office that portray him as one of the nation’s most powerful vice presidents.
“They weren’t true,” Cheney quickly adds. “And stepping out too publicly would only have fed them.”
But at times he belies that statement with details that suggest Bush relied on his opinion. For example, Cheney writes that he received his daily intelligence briefing at 6:30 a.m., then attended the president's briefing a few hours later.
“If I was traveling or at an undisclosed location, the president would often be briefed in the White House Situation Room, so I could join by secure videoconference,” Cheney writes.
Cheney also recalls Bush, then the governor of Texas, bringing him a cup of coffee in his room at the governor’s mansion in Austin where in February 1999 he was meeting with the emerging campaign team. He calls it the “highest-ranking room service I've ever had.”
Later, Bush asked Cheney to lead his vice presidential search. Cheney writes that “it is harder to find a good vice presidential candidate than you might think,” adding that “everyone has negatives.”
Sen. Connie Mack (Fla.) told Cheney that he did not want to be considered, and Cheney discloses that Donald H. Rumsfeld, who would later become Bush’s defense secretary, was briefly on the list of possibilities. Finally, Bush turned to him.
“He said to me more than once, ‘Dick, you're the solution to my problem,’ ” he writes.
Mindful of his weak heart, Cheney left a signed resignation letter with David Addington, his general counsel, to be given to Bush if he were ever incapacitated.
This story continues below...

*Huh? Look here.

Yet another member of the Obama crime family is nabbed.

Heck, DUI and illegal immigration? Why doesn't anyone go after the big boss?

From Australia's Daily Telegraph:

Onyango Obama, uncle of US President, arrested for drunk driving and detained as illegal immigrant


Onyango Obama, 67, is the “long-lost” uncle who left Kenya for the US in the 1960s and who the US President wrote of in his memoir Dreams From My Father.

Mr Obama was arrested on August 24 outside a Framingham, Massachusetts restaurant after he drove his Mitsubishi through a stop sign to take a quick left turn and nearly crashed into a police car. Mr Obama allegedly said the police officers should have given way to him, reports the Times.

When the police breathalysed Mr Obama he registered a blood alcohol level of 0.14, above the state limit of 0.08, according to a report filed with the Framingham District Court.

Mr Obama was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and driving to endanger, as well as failing to use a turn signal.

Wow. I wish failure to use a turn signal was a crime around here. The jails would be overflowing.

Police discovered an outstanding deportation warrant on Mr Obama from the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained him as an illegal immigrant.

Mr Obama’s sister Zeituni Onyango moved to the US from Kenya in 2000, and was ordered to be deported in 2004, however she recently won the right the stay in the United States.

Hmmm...I wonder how that member of our thing managed that...

Ms Onyango’s lawyer Margaret Wong, confirmed she will also be representing Mr Obama for his legal battle.

Mr Obama and Ms Onyango are the half brother and sister of President Obama’s father.

In President Obama’s book Dreams From My Father, President Obama writes of "the uncle who had left for America 25 years ago and had never come back".


About Me

My photo
First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct. "My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up. What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.

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