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Such a noble, thoughtful and heartfelt gesture .... I'm so impressed NOT!
You can bet the farm if the same bunch is elected .... business as usual hurling us deeper into a bottomless pit of debt and restrictions.
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"Election spooks lawmakers, curbs Congress spending
"Ayers, Dorhn helped organize 'peace' flotilla
Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as well as Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, helped organize the Free Gaza Movement, which launched the six-ship flotilla from Turkey to Israel that ended in a violent clash with Israeli Defense Forces, BigGovernment.com............."
reported.............."http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/06/ayers_dorhn_helped_organize_pe.html
Like or hate him President Bush could speak far better from the heart than from a teleprompter. However, ability to speak eloquently and level of intelligence are two entirely different aspects of a person with one NOT flowing into the other by defalult. George Bush was smart like a fox but not a BSer like Clinton or Obama. 
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"Obama pays price for thinking Bush was a dunce
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
June 3, 2010
Source Washington Examiner
"President Obama went from the triumph of passing his national health plan to the tragedy of the BP oil spill in just two months.
It was only March 28 when Obama pronounced that getting Congress to pass a bill strenuously disliked by the American people was proof that government could "still do big things." By May 28, Americans were watching oil belch up from the briny deep and wondering whether government could do anything at all.
Blame over what Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano might call a "man-caused disaster" in the Gulf of Mexico will be traded until long after the last pelican has been wiped down and the final check has been cut to an out-of-work shrimper.
BP will get most of the blame, and there's reason to wonder whether a company that saw its stock described as having "the smell of death" will survive billions of dollars in fines, lawsuits and cleanup fees.
But Obama will be endlessly second-guessed for allowing more offshore drilling before he made sure that his regulators were up to the task and then taking so long to jump in after it was clear they weren't.
Some of the blame will be unfair, and some will be well placed. But a good bit from both categories will adhere to the president, who once was seen as spotless.
But Obama needn't wonder why the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon will have done so much damage to his political fortunes.
By raising expectations for what government can do and for campaigning irresponsibly against the failures of his predecessor, Obama made his own eventual fall all the more precipitous.
When Obama was running for president in 2008 he was still bashing George W. Bush for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, scoffing at Bush's promise to "do whatever it takes" to help New Orleans residents rebuild.
"Those words have been caught in a tangle of half-measures, half-hearted leadership and red tape," Obama said on a campaign swing through New Orleans.
Obama can hardly be surprised to now hear Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal giving him a taste of his own medicine for the administration's slow response to local requests for permission to act against the disaster when the feds weren't offering better ideas of their own.
Obama knew perfectly well that there were problems in New Orleans that predated Katrina that could never be fixed by the federal government, no matter how long the Bush administration carpet-bombed the city with free money. But he was not going to give up any of his rhetorical flourishes because of a fear that he might raise expectations too high in NOLA.
Obama believed his own hype and figured that he could succeed where Bush failed.
Now, two more years down the road, Obama has been unable to solve the problems that he accused Bush of leaving behind through "half-hearted leadership." And now the city faces another disaster, in part because Obama's administration was so bad at regulating the oil industry.
Obama, who railed against the oil industry and wrapped himself in the suffering of the poor people of New Orleans, surely was attuned to the risks at play in deepwater offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
But even he could not fly in like Superman and save the day.
Of all the fictions that Democrats embraced during the Bush presidency, perhaps the most dangerous was that Bush was an idiot.
John Kerry's bitter joke to a college class about poor students getting "stuck in Iraq" and Obama's famous line about being opposed to "dumb wars" reveal the view among liberal intellectuals that the country's problems arose because Bush was a dunce.
It played well to the liberal base that sees Bush as Will Ferrell's impersonation of him: a dope who was led around by Dick Cheney and a cabal of war-mongering oil barons. And as the Iraq war bogged down, New Orleans moldered under floodwaters and the Panic of 2008 wiped out retirement accounts, the idea that it could all be blamed on Bush's incompetence was appealing.
It was certainly more appealing than a more "nuanced" (as Kerry would say) view that America, in the third decade of its third century, faced some nearly impossible challenges.
Agree with him or not, George W. Bush was no dummy. But assuming that he was one allowed Obama to believe the job of being president was easier than it is.
Obama's misapprehension will pay bitter dividends for his presidency for years to come."
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at
Came in email .... easy listen.
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Las Vegas hotel owner Steve Wynn splitting headquarters to Asia.. China is much more stable than USG--Video
Posted By: Watchman
Date: Friday, 28-May-2010 21:32:28
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"Obama Under Fire for Backing Deal to Lift Global Ban on Commercial Whaling
Interesting ....... maybe Hayward's psychic.
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"BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill
The chief executive of BP sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused its value to collapse.
Source Telegraph
By Jon Swaine and Robert Winnett
Published: 12:10AM BST 05 Jun 2010
Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.
Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million. ................"
"Marco Rubio: The Real Deal (Florida)
Source Powerlineblog.com
"Never Letting a Serious Crisis Go to Waste
"White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel gained notoriety for declaring his credo: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” In other words, when there is tragedy and suffering, intense human pain and disaster, a political expert enjoys a unique opportunity to push the least popular parts of his agenda past a distracted electorate.
No sooner had President Barack Obama entered the White House than the Emanuel Doctrine was put into motion with the 1,073-page $787 billion “stimulus bill” that had to be rushed through Congress, seemingly overnight. As Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said: “We have not had a single hearing on anything in front of us….We’ve been told that even one hearing would be one too many, and that we have a single day to approve these five complex propositions that will affect the lives of millions.”
Faced in January 2009 with a looming national financial catastrophe, as a crash in the residential real estate market prompted a grave Wall Street crisis, the Obama White House detected cover to raid the public till and reward staunch Democrat loyalists under the rubric of a “stimulus bill.” Beneath the public radar and buried within the bill’s 1,073 pages, the “stimulus” allocated inter alia $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly half a billion dollars for people interested in researching “global warming,” even at least $18 million for the website that reports how the “stimulus” funds are allocated. Overturning a prime achievement of the Clinton Administration, the “stimulus” restored key elements of the welfare practices that America had abandoned. Over time, the “stimulus” has trickled down to fund $233,825 for explaining voting patterns in Africa and $363,760 for two jobs “[d]evelop[ing] ‘real life’ st[or]ies that underscore job and infrastructure related to [the Stimulus Bill] research findings.”
In sum, there was crisis – thus opportunity. The sweaty-palms sense of crisis that demanded virtually overnight passage before Congressional representatives could read its encyclopedic contents has long since proven exaggerated. The vast majority of the bill’s funds still have not stimulated anything. Much of it still has not been infused into the economy.
This is the Emanuel Doctrine: never let a crisis go to waste. This doctrine similarly was implemented after the ObamaCare health measure had been all-but-abandoned when Scott Brown surprisingly defeated Attorney-General Martha Coakley in the race for United State Senator from Massachusetts. Soon after, unexpectedly, a national pseudo-crisis emerged when Anthem Blue Cross, a California health insurer, sought to raise its health premiums by as much as 39 percent. The crisis was not wasted by Washington. Within days, ObamaCare was rushed back onto the House calendar. Forgotten amid the federal legislative carnage that followed – most recently credited with helping bring down Rep. David Obey, Rep. Bart Stupak, and Sen. Arlen Specter – is that Anthem Blue Cross ultimately withdrew their rate-hike request as the California insurance oversight system effectively regulated as intended.
Considered in the light of this prior experience, it becomes understandable why the Obama Administration has opted to curtail oil-exploration, suspending and rescinding permits, in response to the tragic Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill off the Gulf of Mexico. The story is fresh in the public mind. In raw numbers, eleven have died, and between 18 million and 39 million gallons of oil have gushed along America’s Gulf Coast, already exceeding the Exxon Valdez disaster that spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil into the waters along Alaska. One of America’s fiercest Democrat partisans, New Orleans resident James Carville, went on an extraordinary tear last week against the Obama Administration: “The President of the United States could’ve come down here. He could’ve been involved with the families of these 11 people….These people are crying. They’re begging for something down here, and it just looks like he’s not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this. Put somebody in charge of this and get this thing moving. We’re about to die down here.” Observing that “[t]he political stupidity of this is just unbelievable,” Carville emphatically repeated his call: “There’s a thousand things that he could do. He just needs to get down here and start doing something, people are dying.”
By last Thursday, the daily Rasmussen tracking poll revealed that 26 percent of Americans strongly approve of the President’s job performance, while 42 percent strongly disapprove, giving Mr. Obama a Presidential Approval rating of minus-16. A USA Today/Gallup survey found that 53 percent of Americans rate his handling of the crisis as “poor” or “very poor” while only 43 percent still are satisfied. Nevertheless, Americans continue to support oil exploration. By a significant margin, Texas voters still want more offshore oil drilling. Similar percentages hold nationally. However, for this White House, proceeding with new drilling would “waste” the crisis.
If Obama’s goal were to evaluate ecologically responsible alternatives to drilling for oil a mile below the gulf’s surface, the White House could reconsider exploring for oil and natural gas in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the north Alaskan coast. Of ANWR’s 19 million acres, there is enormous potential in a small section, the “10-02 Area,” which still would leave 92% of ANWR untouched. Only one-ten-thousandth of ANWR – a section smaller than LAX airport – actually would have surface drilling rigs. ANWR exploration could pump scores of billions of dollars into the national economy, create half a million great-paying jobs, and reduce American fuel-import expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars. Moreover, the local caribou population fare better around oil pipelines than environmentalists ever expected.
The Obama White House also could focus its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster by intensifying federal efforts to clean the environmental catastrophe to Louisiana’s fishing waters, and by moving rapidly to approve Gov. Bobby Jindal’s almost-frantic pleas for federal permission to erect more protective sand berms along the coast. However, prior crisis behavior by this White House – whether prompted by a devastating Wall Street collapse or an outlier health insurer inordinately applying to raise rates by 39 percent – reflects that President Obama deems moments like these as unique opportunities for “transformative social change.” Thus, we may well anticipate an intensified effort in the near term to resuscitate the moribund “Cap and Trade” bill which would add between $1,761 and $3,100 in annual energy costs for most American homes.
For the President’s longer-range vision of this crisis, we again encounter his determination to pursue ideological goals that clash with the American people’s concerns. He is now stopping new oil exploration: suspending plans for exploratory drilling off the Virginia and Alaska coasts; stopping 33 exploratory drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico, and; continuing a six-month moratorium on all permits for offshore drilling. Although our Outer Continental Shelf contains as much as 86 billion barrels of oil, with possibly 130 million barrels off the coast of Virginia alone, the President’s response means that we instead will continue importing approximately 13.5 million barrels daily – more than twenty percent of that from the Persian Gulf dictatorships – at prices that now hover around $70 a barrel. We will send Arab Gulf despots some $175 million daily or some $65 billion a year, even as our deficit-driven economy starves for capital, and as our unemployed search for good-paying jobs at home.
Our nation consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil daily, importing nearly sixty percent from foreign countries whose production standards are far less friendly to the polar ice caps than ours. Saudi Arabia, for example, ranks last as the dirtiest emitter of greenhouse gases among the 57 countries rated on one NGO’s “Climate Change Performance Index.” Moreover, our imported oil necessarily arrives in tankers – the petroleum obviously cannot be delivered any other way – and those tankers pose even more extreme environmental risks. The 1979 Atlantic Empress tanker spilled 88.3 million gallons of oil. The ABT Summer tanker spilled 78 million off the Angola Coast in 1991. The Castillo de Bellver spilled 78.5 million. The Amoco Cadiz tanker lost 68.7 million gallons off France’s Brittany coast. The Odyssey spilled 43 million off Nova Scotia. The Haven poured 42 million gallons in the waters outside Italy. The list goes on. Yet oil-importing tankers have not been suspended from sailing America’s waters. Nor do we suspend air travel after a tragedy in the sky nor rail transportation after a train wreck.
President Obama has long opposed new oil exploration. In November 2005, he voted against oil and gas leasing in the Alaskan Coastal Plain. On April 20, 2007, rolling out his “Initiative to Combat Global Warming,” he told students in New Hampshire that “[i]t will take a grassroots effort to make America greener and end the tyranny of oil.” Weeks later, he told a crowd: “The age of oil must end.” In his second Presidential Debate against John McCain, he stated: “[W]e can’t simply drill our way out of the problem. And we’re not going to be able to deal with the climate crisis if our only solution is to use more fossil fuels that create global warming.”
Now, with a crisis too opportune to waste, the President has chosen not to respond with a comprehensive proactive approach to America’s energy choices. He could have encouraged safe new exploration by directing his Interior Secretary henceforth to administer and enforce competently the safety regulations already on the books, but which his Minerals Management Service ignored on his watch during the construction of Deepwater Horizon. He could reconsider opening ANWR to drilling, encourage efforts to expand clean-coal technology, and even order a prioritized review aimed at reviving the construction of nuclear power plants in America. (America has not built a new nuclear power plant in more than thirty years, even as France’s sixteen nuclear power plants generate nearly 80 percent of that country’s electricity.) Instead, this Administration, which knows that it can take ten years from licensing exploration until newly discovered oil reaches market, is prepared to risk laying the foundations for a future crisis by presently deterring new exploration and instead tilting disproportionately at windmills."
Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political, cultural, and religious issues. He is author of
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/03/never-letting-a-serious-crisis-go-to-waste/
Friday, June 4. 2010
Posted by Karl Denninger in Macro Economics at 08:57
Source The Market Ticker
"Non-Farm Payrolls 6/4: OUCH
Total nonfarm payroll employment grew by 431,000 in May, reflecting the hiring of 411,000 temporary employees to work on Census 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Private-sector employment changed little (+41,000).
So much for the "strong" (+200,000) private sector job growth that everyone was expecting. ........"
*****GRAPHS******
http://market-ticker.org/archives/2372-Non-Farm-Payrolls-64-OUCH.html
"Federal debt tops $13 trillion mark - Washington Times
".........At $13 trillion, that figure has risen by $2.4 trillion in about 500 days since President Obama took office, or an average of $4.9 billion a day. That's almost three times the daily average of $1.7 billion under the previous administration, and led Republicans on Wednesday to place blame squarely at the feet of Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats. ........"
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/federal-debt-tops-13-trillion-mark/
"HAVANA — Fidel Castro speculated Wednesday that a nuclear strike on Iran might help President Barack Obama win a second term in the White House and also suggested the United States could attack North Korea. ..........."
We no longer have a 'war on terror', but a 'Secret War' which gives it a pass.
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"U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role
That rhetoric is not much different than Bush's pledge to "take the battle to the enemy . . . and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The elite Special Operations units, drawn from all four branches of the armed forces, became a frontline counterterrorism weapon for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ......."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304965.html
"Mexican consulate moves illegal immigant ID card handout
By: Sara A. Carter
National Security Correspondent
06/03/10 12:37 PM EDT
Source Washington Examiner
"Mexican government officials have moved their satellite consular office from the Catalina Island Country Club to a Catholic Church – citing protection under the Vienna Convention - after it was discovered that they did not have the appropriate paperwork to issue the island’s illegal immigrants identification cards.
Since The Washington Examiner reported that the management of the club, on the island of Catalina, discovered that the event was not a multi-cultural celebration as they had been told and refused to allow the Mexican government to set up shop.
The Mexican officials will provide "matricular" card services to Mexican nationals at St. Catherine’s Church, on the island.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican whose district includes Catalina Island, is heading to the island by helicopter today to confront the officials.
“If the Catholic Church insists on preventing immigration law from being enforced, then they should step up and pay the bill. Let the Catholic Church open up its schools for free and use their vast resources to pay for the benefits of illegals if they feel it’s such a moral issue,” Rep. Rohrabacher told The Examiner. “I don’t exactly see Cardinal Mahoney announcing the sale of catholic church property to pay the bills for illegal immigration. This holier than thou hypocrisy has got to stop.”
________
"Mexico opens California office to provide ID for illegals
By: Sara A. Carter
National Security Correspondent
June 3, 2010
Source Washington Examiner
"The Mexican government is opening a satellite consular office on Catalina Island -- a small resort off the California coast with a history of drug smuggling and human trafficking -- to provide the island's illegal Mexican immigrants with identification cards, The Washington Examiner has learned.
The Mexican consular office in Los Angeles issued a flier, a copy of which was obtained by The Examiner, listing the Catalina Island Country Club as the location of its satellite office. It invites Mexicans to visit the office to obtain the identification, called matricular cards, by appointment.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican whose district includes Catalina Island, said handing out matricular cards will exacerbate an already dangerous situation.
"Handing out matricular cards to Mexicans who are not in this country legally is wrong no matter where it's done," he said. "But on Catalina it will do more damage. It's a small island but there's evidence it's being used as a portal for illegals to access mainland California."
Rohrabacher added, "If there were a large number of Americans illegally in Mexico and the U.S. consulate was making it easier for them to stay, Mexico would never permit it."
Mexican officials with the consular office in Los Angeles could not be reached immediately for comment. The matricular consular identification card, is issued by the Mexican government to Mexican nationals residing outside the country, regardless of immigration status. The purpose is to provide identification for opening bank accounts and obtaining other services. But the cards are usually used to skirt U.S. immigration laws, since Mexicans in the country legally have documents proving that status, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.
In 2004 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI officials called the card an unreliable form of identification. The agency said that Mexico lacks a centralized database for them, which could lead to forgery, duplication, and other forms of abuse.
Officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said their agency was asked by Mexican officials not to enforce U.S. immigration laws on the island while the cards were being issued.
"It amazes me every time that the Mexican government has the gall to tell us what to do," said an ICE official, who asked not to be named. "More surprisingly is how many times we stand by and let them. This is just an example of one of hundreds of requests we've had to deal with."
In April, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies seized a boat carrying large quantities of marijuana and detained three Mexican nationals who said they were being smuggled into the United States.
The island has a sizable Mexican migrant population. Most are undocumented low-income workers."
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
"Feds Arrest Crist's Man in the Florida GOP
[Daniel Foster]
Source Corner.NationalReview.com
"Federal authorities today arrested Jim Greer, a close Charlie Crist ally and the governor's hand-picked choice to run the Florida Republican Party. No word yet on charges.
UPDATE:The Orlando Sentinel has the scoop on the charges against Greer, with a reliable source saying they will include four counts of grand theft, one count of attempt to defraud and one count of money laundering. Bail has been set at $105,000.
Meanwhile, Crist tells reporters that he is "disappointed" by the news but does not "feel complicit" with Greer's actions as head of the state Republican Party.
Gov. Charlie Crist didn't have a lot to say about the arrest of Jim Greer when asked this morning at a press conference dealing with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Crist, answering a question from a reporter, said he was "disappointed" by the news.
"I have faith in our judicial system," Crist said. "I know they will handle it appropriately."
A second question seemed to center around whether Crist felt responsible for Greer's actions as head of the Republican Party of Florida. Crist answered: "I do not feel complicit."
UPDATE II: More from the Sentinel outlining the case against Greer:
At a lunchtime press conference in Orlando, Statewide Prosecutor William Shepherd said Greer developed a scheme to take money from the Republican Party through a shell company he created, Victory Strategies. He used the money for his personal expenses — at least $100,000, Shepherd said.
A statewide grand jury indicted Greer on six felony charges: organized scheme to defraud, money laundering, and four counts of grand theft.
Greer was forced to resign in January amid allegations of extravagant overspending.
Since then, he's become the subject of a criminal investigation for income he earned from Victory Strategies LLC, a fund-raising company that kept 10 percent of all major donations it raised for the party. Greer owned a 60-percent stake of the company.
Shepherd also said Greer sent e-mails directing additional party funds to Victory Strategies, "per the chairman." He did not specify how much.
Greer was backed for the chairmanship job in 2006 by then-Gov. elect Charlie Crist, and an Orlando Sentinel analysis of party spending found Greer dramatically increased spending and the use of American Express charge cards during his three-year tenure."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDA4ZDc1Y2Q0OWE0NTk0YmE5OWY2YTZiMmRkZWY5YmY=