konane's Blog

Great speech definitely worth the listen.

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"BACK FROM THE DEAD: DEMS VOW TO RAHM-THROUGH HEALTHCARE!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100219/pl_nm/us_usa_healthcare1

Real eye opener.

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Still in campaign mode  ..... pretty clear he's using these give away promises and pledges to buy approval his job performance certainly doesn't justify. 

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"Obama to tout housing help Friday in Las Vegas

Feb 19, 7:05 AM (ET)
By BEN FELLER
Source MyWay.com

"LAS VEGAS (AP) - President Barack Obama is unveiling $1.5 billion in housing help, a boost timed to his appearance in the city with the worst foreclosure crisis in the nation. ......."

"........Obama was to announce that housing finance agencies in the five hardest-hit states in the housing crisis will receive $1.5 billion to help spur local solutions to the problem. Those five are Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada. ......"

".......The first day of the trip was all politics. Obama campaigned Thursday for Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado in Denver, then held a $1 million fundraiser for Democrats in Las Vegas. ........."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100219/D9DV7SS00.html

Quick read.  Guess major stock holders don't want to lose all that money.

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i-Qd-q3ALSGUV0tZqwFVoy1GlGfQD9DUH8G80

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100216/ap_on_re_us/us_suburban_homeless

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"Obama's misleading jobs rhetoric

Examiner Editorial
February 16, 2010
Source WashingtonExaminer.com
 
"There he goes again. In the latest Economic Report of the President, Obama repeats his claim that the $787 billion economic stimulus program "has saved or created roughly two million jobs so far." Administration officials stopped saying that last year after journalists and think tankers across the political spectrum examined the supporting data posted on the official recovery.gov Web site and found it full of factual holes.

Thousands of jobs were claimed to have been saved or created in phantom congressional districts and ZIP codes. Thousands of raises given to public employees were counted as jobs saved or created. The Examiner's David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway examined media investigations and found nearly 100,000 phony positions. In other words, the claim that 2 million jobs were saved or created by the Obama economic stimulus program was exposed as being about as trustworthy as the used car salesman's assurance that the clunker on his lot was owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.

The fiasco prompted Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag to issue new "simplified guidelines" for how to measure the effect of the stimulus program on employment. But, as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote in a Jan. 8 letter to recovery.gov's inspector general, the new guidelines actually raised additional credibility questions about White House assertions on the stimulus program's effectiveness.

Said Issa: "The new guidance counts every job that is funded using stimulus money -- even if it existed before the Recovery Act, and was not in any danger of being eliminated -- as 'created or saved.' This definition ignores the plain meanings of the words 'created' and 'saved,' and makes Recovery.gov's 'JOBS CREATED/SAVED' label a falsehood, further eroding the confidence of the American people in their government."

Some of the president's closest economic advisers also made some startling claims in connection with the new Economic Report. Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer, for example, said the economic stimulus program saved millions of Americans from "destitution." The dictionary defines destitution as "utter poverty" and the "lack of the means of subsistence." Who could have imagined that wasting money on fake jobs would yield such miraculous results?"

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obama_s-misleading-jobs-rhetoric-84422777.html

Interesting insights from friends and associates.

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http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?&articleid=1232943&format=&page=1&listingType=Loc#articleFull

Fries with that crow????

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" 'Warming' meltdown

"Climate 'consensus' cracks up

Last Updated: 11:59 AM, February 16, 2010Posted: 12:58 AM, February 16, 2010Rich Lowry
Source NYPOST.com

"Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes and catastrophic global warming. They used this presumed scientific certainty as a bludgeon against the skeptics they deemed "deniers" -- a word meant to have the noxious whiff of Holocaust denial.

All in the cause of hustling the world into a grand carbon-rationing scheme. Any questions about the evidence for the cataclysmic projections, any concerns about the costs and benefits were trumped by that fearsome scientific "consensus," which had "settled" the important questions.

A funny thing happened to this "consensus" on the way to its inevitable triumph, though: Its propagators have been forced to admit fallibility.

For the cause of genuine science, this is a small step forward; for the cause of climate alarmism, it's a giant leap backward. The rush to "save the planet" can't accommodate any doubt, or it loses the panicked momentum necessary for a retooling of modern economic life.

Phil Jones is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a key "consensus" institution that has recently been caught up in an e-mail scandal revealing a mind-set of global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry.

Asked by the BBC what it means when scientists say "the debate on climate change is over," the keeper of the flame sounded chastened. "I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this," Jones said. "This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the . . . past as well."

Jones discussed the highly contentious "medieval warming period." If global temperatures were warmer than today back in 800-1300 AD -- about 1,000 years before Henry Ford's assembly lines began spitting out cars -- it suggests that natural factors have a large hand in climate change, a concession that climate alarmists are loath to make.

Jones said we don't know if the warming in this period was global in extent since paleoclimatic records are sketchy. If it was, and if temperatures were higher than now, "then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented."

Jones also noted that there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995, although the cooling since 2002 hasn't been statistically significant, either.

All of this is like a cardinal of the Catholic Church saying the evidence for apostolic succession is still open to debate.

The other main organ of the climate "consensus" is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It won the Nobel Peace Prize for its 2007 report -- which turns out to have been so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.

It said Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, warned that global warming could reduce crop yields in Africa by 50 percent by 2020, and linked warming to the increased economic cost of natural disasters -- all nonsense.

These aren't random errors. As former head of the IPCC, the British scientist Robert Watson notes, "The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact."

Too many creators and guardians of the "consensus" desperately wanted to believe in it. As self-proclaimed defenders of science, they should have brushed up on their Enlightenment. "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state," said Voltaire, "but certainty is a ridiculous one."

The latest revelations don't disprove the warming of the 20th century or mean that carbon emissions played no role. But by highlighting the uncertainty of the paleoclimatic data and the models on which alarmism has been built, they constitute a shattering blow to the case for radical, immediate action.

In The Boston Globe, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel marshals a new argument for fighting warming: "We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come." Really? That's not what we were told even a few months ago -- before climate alarmism acknowledged doubt."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/warming_meltdown_iD1hypJAstOrvovafbIbGK

Her accounting of how Hitler was elected in Austria by 98% of the vote is very interesting.

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Kitty Werthmann
For the Argus Leader
published: 3/11/2003

Kitty Werthmann, 77, of Pierre, is president of the South Dakota Eagle Forum. She lobbies the state Legislature on family issues. She has lived in the United States since 1950 and has been a U.S. citizen since 1962.
http://www.eagleforum.org/misc/states/articles/2003/werthmann-3-11-03.shtml

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Source Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/x-25060-Fort-Worth-Christianity--Culture-Examiner~y2009m11d29-America-Truly-is-the-Greatest-Country-in-the-World--Dont-Let-Freedom-Slip-Away

Interesting opinion.  Decide for yourself.

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In addition to the "global warming" rip-off, you can add another huge international racketeering operation -- the H1N1 "pandemic" of 2009

"Europe to Investigate the UN Over “Pandemic” Scam

By Jim O'Neill     Saturday, January 2, 2010

Source Canada Free Press

“UN report says pandemic may result in anarchy—‘could kill millions’—unless western world pays for antiviral drugs and vaccines!” —From “The Guardian” September 20, 2009

"WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect non-infected patients. — Associated Press—October 25, 2009

In addition to the “global warming” rip-off, you can add another huge international racketeering operation—the H1N1 “pandemic” of 2009. 

Both of these ploys were designed to fleece the western nations of billions, possibly trillions, of dollars.  In the case of the H1N1 scam, the western governments have already coughed up billions of dollars for vaccines to prevent a bogus “pandemic.”  That means that we, the taxpayers, have been ripped-off yet again. 

If class action lawsuits aren’t on the way, then they darn well should be.

The European nations have apparently not been paid off to the extent of the U.S. Congress, and have decided to look into things. 

According to a report filed by F. William Engdahl, the Council of Europe Parliament has unanimously proposed to start an investigation this month into “the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign.”

The purpose of the inquiry is to investigate collusion between the “Golden Triangle” of the UN’s WHO (World Health Organization), certain pharmaceutical companies, and academic scientists. 

That scenario should sound familiar, as it’s similar to “global warming’s” collusion between the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), “green energy” corporations, and academic scientists.

Both scams were intended to “redistribute the wealth” globally, while making the Global Elite, very, very rich.  They get to wipe out the middle-class, destroy capitalism, install a UN-run global regime, and get exceedingly wealthy, all at the same time.  It’s a win/win situation all around, for Progressives at least.

The resolution just passed by the Council of Europe Parliament includes the charge that, “In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines…pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies…to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”

The motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg,  Chairman of the European Parliament Health Committee.  He stated that millions of healthy people were unnecessarily “exposed to the risk of poorly tested vaccines,” for no other reason than the purported threat of a flu strain that is “vastly less harmful” then previous flu strains. 

Dr. Wodarg’s talking about the Swine Flu, or H1N1, or “novel H1N1,” or “2009 H1N1,” or whatever they’re trying to pass it off as these days.  You remember—the national emergency?

You ought to remember—after all, you helped to pay for the billions spent on vaccines.  Big Pharma thanks you, and so do their stockholders.  Speaking of which, do you think some of those stockholders just might be Global Elitists?  Just asking.

Dr. Wodarg suggested that, “The Council of Europe and its member-states should ask for immediate investigations and consequences, on their national levels, as well as on the international level.”  Consequences—hmmm, good suggestion.

Why isn’t the U.S. doing the same?  Too many bribes, too many “donations” made to too many politicians, too many deals made with Big Pharma to get Obama-Care passed?  That would be my guess.

Our renowned “people’s watchdog,” the Lame Stream Media, remains ever-vigilantly silent on the subject.  Although I must admit that CBS did, almost, nearly look into malfeasance on the part of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) regarding the Swine Flu scam.

I guess, once again, it’s up to “we the people” to straighten things out.  Anybody know some good class action lawsuit lawyers?

Laus Deo."

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18527

"Poll: 75% 'angry' at government

By ANDY BARR | 2/8/10 11:52 AM EST
Source Politico

"Three-quarters of the nation’s voters are “angry” at the federal government’s policies, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey out Monday.

Of the 1,000 likely voters surveyed Feb. 5-6, 75 percent said they were either “very” or “somewhat” angry with the “current policies of the federal government.” Forty-five percent said they were “very” angry.

Only 19 percent said they were “not very” or “not at all” angry with the government, while 6 percent were not sure.

Nearly two-thirds, 60 percent, agreed with the statement that “neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today.”

The Republicans surveyed were angrier than Democrats, but both expressed frustration.

Eighty-nine percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats said they were angry, while 78 percent of independent voters said they were.

More men were angry with the federal government than women, and voters who earned from $60,000 to $100,000 were found to be the angriest.

The percentage of those who said they were angry with the federal government has been on the rise.

In September, 66 percent of those surveyed said they were either “very” or “somewhat” angry, while in November 71 percent said they were.

The poll has a margin of error of plus- or minus-3 percentage points."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32680.html

If memory serves me, believe something of this nature was included in an obscure provision of the CAFTA treaty which is feared will be implemented in the US.  Irony ..... medical marajuana legal, vitamins banned. 

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"I attended this past weekend’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important.  The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger:  America’s Third Great Awakening.

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature.  Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different.  It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble:  It’s America’s politicians and parties.  They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent.  So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Most of the attention focused on this weekend’s convention seemed to involve the keynote speaker, Sarah Palin.  But though Palin wowed the crowd with red-meat attacks on overspending, weak national defense, and broken promises, the key phrase in her speech was this one: “All power is inherent in the people.”

And the biggest action item that she presented the crowd with wasn’t to support Sarah Palin, as most politicians would have asked, but to challenge incumbents in primary races.  Primary battles aren’t “civil war,” she said.  They’re the kind of competition that produces strength in the end.

This seemed to resonate with what I heard from conference attendees. Over and over again, I heard from Tea Party Activists that they were planning to take over their local Republican (and, sometimes Democratic) party apparatus starting at the precinct level and shake things up.

The sense was that party politics have been run for the benefit of the party insiders and hangers-on, not for the benefit of constituents and ideals.  And most of the conference, in fact, was addressed to doing something about that, not to worship of Sarah Palin, with sessions on organizing, media skills, and the like.

Even the much-hyped counter-Tea-Party protest, featuring three activists from the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition, underscores this point.  Despite their small numbers, they drew a large press gaggle hoping to get some negative energy going.

I watched as Knoxville Tea Party organizer Antonio Hinton -- who drew the largest crowd, perhaps because he is black, or perhaps because he’s an excellent speaker - was asked repeatedly by the press to say something negative about Sarah Palin or the National Tea Party Convention, but he called Palin
“a breath of fresh air.”

And he stressed that he and his cohorts - representing a collection of several dozen Tea Party groups around Tennessee - weren’t so much there to complain about the convention as to point out that there was a lot more to the Tea Party movement than that one meeting.

They were right.  The Tea Party movement is bottom up, not top down. Lots of Tea Party people think well of Sarah Palin, but I doubt that many, even among the attendees at this weekend’s convention, would do much of anything just on her say-so.  People I’ve talked to, both there and at other events, aren’t looking for a charismatic leader.

That’s the Barack Obama model, now somewhat tattered.  Instead, they’ve had enough and they’re taking the reins themselves. Over and over again, I heard people at this convention tell me that they had never been involved in politics before the Tea Party movement. And, having tried it, they’re finding that politics can be fun, and they’re encountering the joys of learning that they’re not alone.

Accustomed to major-media treatment that strongly implied that anyone favoring small government must be some kind of fringe wacko, they’re discovering that lots of people feel the way they do, and that they can wield a lot of power if they try.  I suspect the power-wielding part is just starting.

In less than a year, the Tea Party movement has gone from a few spontaneous protests against Obama’s stimulus bill to a nationwide phenomenon rating major media coverage, with several political scalps on its belt.  And these inexpert activists are getting better with practice at what they do, with a lot of room on the learning curve ahead.

It’s fun to put on a protest rally for the first time and have it work out, but it’s even more fun to elect -- or defeat -- a candidate.  Or, as Tea Party activists are beginning to do, to run for office yourself.

Over the next couple of years, these multitudes of virgin political operatives are going to acquire considerably more experience and self-assurance, which means they’re probably going to become considerably more effective, too.  Politics may not be the same when they’re done."

Examiner contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds covered the National Tea Party Convention for PJTV.com.  He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Glenn-Reynolds-Tea-Party-Nashville-was-Americas-Third-Great-Awakening--83762647.html

http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/02/07/you-betcha-palin-campaigns-for-rick-perry-writes-hi-mom-on-her-hand/

February 7, 2010

Source Times Online 

"School bombing exposes Obama’s secret war inside Pakistan

Last week America launched its first multiple drone attack, according to Pakistani security officials. Eighteen missiles were fired from eight unmanned aircraft in Dattakhel village, killing 16 people.

The discovery of the dead US soldiers revealed that America’s shadowy war in Pakistan not only involves drones but also small cadres of special operations soldiers.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, insisted that US troops were in Pakistan only to provide counter-insurgency training for the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force operating in the tribal areas.

Other sources said there were about 200 US military inside the country. “I’m not sure you could just call it training,” one official said. “They are hardly behind the wire if they are on trips to schools in Dir.”

The three US soldiers, who have been described variously as special operations forces and civil affairs troops, were killed when their convoy was bombed as it travelled to the re-opening of the school. It had been rebuilt with US aid after being bombed by the Taliban last year.

Three schoolgirls, two villagers and a Pakistani soldier were also killed in the attack, for which the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. More than 100 were wounded, mostly schoolgirls.

It was officially reported that the device was a remote-controlled bomb. It has now emerged that a suicide bomber rammed into the vehicle carrying the Americans. This suggests the bomber had inside information. “This attack was too perfect: they lay in wait for the convoy to pass and knew exactly which vehicle to hit,” a US military officer told the Long War Journal.

One of those killed was Sergeant Matthew Sluss-Tiller, 35, the father of a three-year-old daughter. His mother, Jane Blankenship, said her son had been in Pakistan on a civil affairs mission and had grown a beard for it.

One official suggested the “trainers” may be used to pick up intelligence on drone targets, particularly because the CIA did not trust its counterparts from the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service that has close links to the Taliban.

The Americans insist the drone attacks have been a success, picking off the second and third tier of Al-Qaeda’s leadership. In August they killed Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban. They recently claimed to have killed his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, but Pakistan’s foreign minister said this had not been confirmed.

To the irritation of Washington, Islamabad has kept up a pretence that drone attacks are carried out without its approval, even though the aircraft are based in Pakistan.

Among the Pakistani public, there has been outcry at the attacks. Surveys constantly show that Pakistanis consider the US a greater threat than the Taliban, despite 3,021 Pakistani deaths in terrorist attacks last year.

If the drones are controversial, the presence of US soldiers on Pakistani soil is far more so. Despite a $1.5 billion (£959m) aid programme, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, had to fly into Pakistan two weeks ago to reassure its military leadership. “Let me say definitively the US does not covet a single inch of Pakistani soil,” he told Pakistan’s National Defence University."

Additional reporting: Daud Khattak"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7017929.ece