"Freedom FROM the press"

Top Russian reporter in serious condition after attack
Breitbart

Oleg Kashin, who covers the sensitive issues of opposition protests and youth groups for the respected Kommersant daily, suffered fractures to his jaw, concussion and broken fingers in the attack early Saturday. (emphasis mine)

Konstantin Fetisov, head of the local branch of the opposition Right Cause party for Khimki, was beaten after attending a protest Thursday against the dumping of household waste in the area.

Local newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, who had been highly critical of the local Khimki administration, was assaulted in November 2008, losing a leg and several fingers.

Dozens of journalists have been beaten and even killed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most notably campaigning writer Anna Politkovskaya who was gunned down in her apartment building in 2006.

More than four years after her murder, no-one has been found guilty of the killing.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 52 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992 and the country ranks eighth on its impunity index for journalist killings.

How can they blame Bush....?

Number of the Week: $10.2 Trillion in Global Borrowing
The Wall Street Journal
By Mark Whitehouse

Now we're Greece?

Next year, the U.S. government will have to find $4.2 trillion. That’s 27.8% of its annual economic output, up from 26.5% this year. By comparison, crisis-addled Greece needs $69 billion, or 23.8% of its annual GDP.

Stating the obvious:

Still, there’s reason to be concerned that governments’ appetite for borrowing could ultimately push up interest rates, or worse.

Define "Safe":

The Federal Reserve has committed to buy an added $600 billion in U.S. government debt over the next eight months. Demand from households has been very strong as U.S. consumers boost their savings rate. Tighter regulations could push banks to buy more safe assets such as U.S. Treasurys.

Another great article by Charles Krauthammer...

The pull quote: "Obama thinks large. He wants to be a consequential president on the order of Ronald Reagan. His forthright attempt to undo the Reagan revolution with a burst of expansive liberal governance is the theme animating this entire election."

The great campaign of 2010
By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 9:45 PM
The Washington Post

In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who "sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.' " Quite a uniter, urging Hispanics to go to the polls to exact political revenge on their enemies - presumably, for example, the near-60 percent of Americans who support the new Arizona immigration law.

This from a president who won't even use "enemies" to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America - but the United States of America.

This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends - not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.

Ultimately, it will be up to the Republicans, aided by the Tea Party and other like minded groups, to communicate to the American people that we need to move back toward the original American exceptionalism that has made us the shining city on the hill. The debate needs to be framed in those terms. Do we want to be, like BHO says, no greater than any other country, or do we want to be the leaders? Do we want to become more like "them" (the socialized 'democrat' Europe type country) or would we like to maintain our American exceptionalism and keep them pursuing us as the leaders? And keep in mind it is not just the European nations, but China, India, and Brazil who are still (for now) pursuing us.

I know my choice and I know how to articulate my arguments. Do you?

The JFK's Democrat Party....

Watch this one first, then the one below it. Great stuff!



So remember, the former Democrat Presidential Candidate and former Chairman of the DNC supports this:

One Nation Working Together

Ok. So here is the liberals answer to Glen Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally on Washington DC.

Look at the sponsors... These are the groups aligned with BHO - POTUS:

Are you gay? Did you know you are aligned with the Communist Party of the USA? Are you are a proud member of a the NEA? Did you know your dues go to support the same ideology as the Democratic Socialists of America? Member of the United Methodist Church? Did you know the General Board of Church and Society - UMC is aligned with the La Raza (translated "The Race")?

They say, "Politics makes strange bedfellows...", but I wonder how many of you REALLY know what is going on... I mean REALLY know!

Get informed!

Mourning in America....

Young Guns.... Finally!

I never thought I'd agree with a Democrat, but.....

No kidding...

Jobs deficit lays bare failure of Obamanomics
Asia Times Online
By Peter Morici

With thousands of young college graduates moving in with parents and returning Iraq-war veterans facing long-term unemployment, President Barack Obama is scrambling for cover. Irresponsible spending, largesse for big banks and subsidies for a broken healthcare system have busted the budget and failed to create jobs.

Economists expect the US Labor Department to report on Friday that the economy lost another 80,000 jobs in August after shedding 131,000 in July.

My question is, "How long with it take for them to realize their policies were never intended to work?"

I mean really, will anyone in the Fringe Media ever figure out that BHO is intentionally destroying the American economy, so they can "remake america" (little 'a') in their image. One of government largess doled out by the ruling class. You can call it what ever you want: socialism, communism, statism, whatever, the result is the same. Those of us in the country class (out here in fly-over country) get the shaft. This is exactly as they planned. Create chaos Cloward & Piven style by over loading the system, then come to the rescue with big government intervention.

The bottom line is, their policies were never intended to work. No one with an once of economic knowledge would do what they are doing with the thought that it was going to improve the economy.

Does Barack Obama want to be re-elected in 2012?

Does Barack Obama want to be re-elected in 2012?
Few Americans consider themselves bigger than the presidency but Obama might be one of them. The man in the Oval Office, argues Toby Harnden, may already be preparing for a role as a post-president in a post-American world.
UK Telegraph

Obama was elected in 2008 at an extraordinary moment in American politics. Suddenly, this charismatic figure, elected to the Senate without serious opposition in 2004 and without any executive experience, was catapulted into the White House.

His presidential bid had been based on the power of his life story and his ability with the spoken word. Doubtless he was as surprised as anyone else that he pulled it off. Governing has been altogether more difficult for him and there are signs he is already tiring of it.

Can I get an Amen...?

Most transparent administration my a**.....

Obama closes curtain on transparency
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
August 12, 2010

President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.

"There are other directions, to be sure, that people are actively considering as we speak. Without tipping my hand or those of others who are professionally creative, the money will find an outlet." - White House Counsel Bob Bauer

This perfectly captures the Obama White House's attitude toward disclosure. Sure, the administration publish the names of all White House visitors, but, as the New York Times reported a few weeks back, White House folks just meet their lobbyists at Caribou Coffee across the street. Sure, they restrict the work of ex-lobbyists in the administration, but lobbyists who de-list aren't questioned.

And we've seen just a few of the e-mails former Google lobbyist, now Obama tech policy guru, Andrew McLaughlin traded with current Google lobbyists using his Gmail account, but who knows what else the White House whiz kids are doing to avoid the Presidential Records Act -- Facebook messages? Twitter direct messages? Did I mention Bauer was a lobbyist? At Perkins Coie, Bauer lobbied on behalf of America Votes Inc., a Democratic 527 funded by the likes of the AFL-CIO and ACORN.

Leadership. At least Obama is a good example of how NOT to be a leader....

Oil Spill Timeline Update Day 84 from RightChange on Vimeo.

Nice....

Fed's Hoenig: Keeping Rates Too Low 'Dangerous Gamble'

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on National Bank, 1791 (I challenge you to read this. It's amazing stuff, really... JFK was right when he said, "[This is]...probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone," while describing a dinner for Nobel Prize winners, 1962.

Fed's Hoenig: Keeping Rates Too Low 'Dangerous Gamble'

Excerpts:

The Federal Reserve is undertaking a "dangerous gamble" by keeping rates at near zero for so long, and must start raising rates or risk damaging the nascent U.S. recovery, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday.

The Fed took the further step of saying it would begin reinvesting cash from maturing mortgage bonds to buy more government debt. The decision reflected the Fed's concern over the slowdown in the economic recovery it helped bring about by cutting rates to near zero in December 2008 and buying nearly $1.3 trillion in mortgage-linked debt to shore up the housing market.

U.S. central bank policies weren't the only targets of [Kansas City Reserve Bank President Thomas] Hoenig's criticism. Hoenig also expressed doubt that international and domestic policies designed to prevent another financial crisis will be effective.

Internationally, the Basel Committee, which is working on new global banking standards, has agreed to establish capital-to-asset ratios for the largest global banks at levels that leave too small a margin for error, he said.

A newly created consumer bureau will bring benefits only if its resources are directed toward payday loan providers and other financial institutions that are currently underregulated, he said.

And the part of the law designed to end the need for fresh government bailouts of failed financial institutions may not work because it requires a complex set of steps that will be cumbersome to put into effect.....

Oh, The Hypocrisy of the Left Never Fails to Amaze....

Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation
ANDREA TANTAROS
Thursday, August 5th 2010, 1:53 AM

Sacrifice is something that many Americans are becoming all too familiar with during this economic downturn. It was a key theme in President Obama's inaugural address to the nation, and he's referenced it numerous times when lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.

But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns - or forgoing them altogether - the Obamas don't seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

The Best Article I Ever Read....

America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution
By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 - August 2010 issue

The American Spectator

I encourage all of you who are thinkers; who think of yourselves as 'independent minded'; who want to know a good reason for all the lunacy you witness around you to read this article from beginning to end. Then do it again. And again.

These authors have nailed what most of us "country class" folks have known for a long, long time. And they have done it in a very thorough and thoughtful manner.

Here are some excerpts:

Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America's upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and "bureaucrat" was a dirty word for all. So was "social engineering." Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

The Ruling Class

If, for example, you are Laurence Tribe in 1984, Harvard professor of law, leftist pillar of the establishment, you can "write" your magnum opus by using the products of your student assistant, Ron Klain. A decade later, after Klain admits to having written some parts of the book, and the other parts are found to be verbatim or paraphrases of a book published in 1974, you can claim (perhaps correctly) that your plagiarism was "inadvertent," and you can count on the Law School's dean, Elena Kagan, to appoint a committee including former and future Harvard president Derek Bok that issues a secret report that "closes" the incident. Incidentally, Kagan ends up a justice of the Supreme Court. Not one of these people did their jobs: the professor did not write the book himself, the assistant plagiarized instead of researching, the dean and the committee did not hold the professor accountable, and all ended up rewarded. By contrast, for example, learned papers and distinguished careers in climatology at MIT (Richard Lindzen) or UVA (S. Fred Singer) are not enough for their questions about "global warming" to be taken seriously. For our ruling class, identity always trumps.

Disaggregating and Dispiriting

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people's family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones. In no other areas is the ruling class's self-definition so definite, its contempt for opposition so patent, its Kulturkampf so open. It believes that the Christian family (and the Orthodox Jewish one too) is rooted in and perpetuates the ignorance commonly called religion, divisive social prejudices, and repressive gender roles, that it is the greatest barrier to human progress because it looks to its very particular interest -- often defined as mere coherence against outsiders who most often know better. Thus the family prevents its members from playing their proper roles in social reform. Worst of all, it reproduces itself.

Since marriage is the family's fertile seed, government at all levels, along with "mainstream" academics and media, have waged war on it. They legislate, regulate, and exhort in support not of "the family" -- meaning married parents raising children -- but rather of "families," meaning mostly households based on something other than marriage. The institution of no-fault divorce diminished the distinction between cohabitation and marriage -- except that husbands are held financially responsible for the children they father, while out-of-wedlock fathers are not. The tax code penalizes marriage and forces those married couples who raise their own children to subsidize "child care" for those who do not. Top Republicans and Democrats have also led society away from the very notion of marital fidelity by precept as well as by parading their affairs. For example, in 1997 the Democratic administration's secretary of defense and the Republican Senate's majority leader (joined by the New York Times et al.) condemned the military's practice of punishing officers who had extramarital affairs. While the military had assumed that honoring marital vows is as fundamental to the integrity of its units as it is to that of society, consensus at the top declared that insistence on fidelity is "contrary to societal norms." Not surprisingly, rates of marriage in America have decreased as out-of-wedlock births have increased. The biggest demographic consequence has been that about one in five of all households are women alone or with children, in which case they have about a four in 10 chance of living in poverty. Since unmarried mothers often are or expect to be clients of government services, it is not surprising that they are among the Democratic Party's most faithful voters.

While our ruling class teaches that relationships among men, women, and children are contingent, it also insists that the relationship between each of them and the state is fundamental. That is why such as Hillary Clinton have written law review articles and books advocating a direct relationship between the government and children, effectively abolishing the presumption of parental authority. Hence whereas within living memory school nurses could not administer an aspirin to a child without the parents' consent, the people who run America's schools nowadays administer pregnancy tests and ship girls off to abortion clinics without the parents' knowledge. Parents are not allowed to object to what their children are taught. But the government may and often does object to how parents raise children. The ruling class's assumption is that what it mandates for children is correct ipso facto, while what parents do is potentially abusive. It only takes an anonymous accusation of abuse for parents to be taken away in handcuffs until they prove their innocence. Only sheer political weight (and in California, just barely) has preserved parents' right to homeschool their children against the ruling class's desire to accomplish what Woodrow Wilson so yearned: "to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible."

At stake are the most important questions: What is the right way for human beings to live? By what standard is anything true or good? Who gets to decide what? Implicit in Wilson's words and explicit in our ruling class's actions is the dismissal, as the ways of outdated "fathers," of the answers that most Americans would give to these questions. This dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension.

The Country Class

Describing America's country class is problematic because it is so heterogeneous. It has no privileged podiums, and speaks with many voices, often inharmonious. It shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards inept and haughty. It defines itself practically in terms of reflexive reaction against the rulers' defining ideas and proclivities -- e.g., ever higher taxes and expanding government, subsidizing political favorites, social engineering, approval of abortion, etc. Many want to restore a way of life largely superseded. Demographically, the country class is the other side of the ruling class's coin: its most distinguishing characteristics are marriage, children, and religious practice. While the country class, like the ruling class, includes the professionally accomplished and the mediocre, geniuses and dolts, it is different because of its non-orientation to government and its members' yearning to rule themselves rather than be ruled by others.

Negative orientation to privilege distinguishes the corporate officer who tries to keep his company from joining the Business Council of large corporations who have close ties with government from the fellow in the next office. The first wants the company to grow by producing. The second wants it to grow by moving to the trough. It sets apart the schoolteacher who resents the union to which he is forced to belong for putting the union's interests above those of parents who want to choose their children's schools. In general, the country class includes all those in stations high and low who are aghast at how relatively little honest work yields, by comparison with what just a little connection with the right bureaucracy can get you. It includes those who take the side of outsiders against insiders, of small institutions against large ones, of local government against the state or federal. The country class is convinced that big business, big government, and big finance are linked as never before and that ordinary people are more unequal than ever.

Members of the country class who want to rise in their profession through sheer competence try at once to avoid the ruling class's rituals while guarding against infringing its prejudices. Averse to wheedling, they tend to think that exams should play a major role in getting or advancing in jobs, that records of performance -- including academic ones -- should be matters of public record, and that professional disputes should be settled by open argument. For such people, the Supreme Court's 2009 decision in Ricci, upholding the right of firefighters to be promoted according to the results of a professional exam, revived the hope that competence may sometimes still trump political connections.

The country class actually believes that America's ways are superior to the rest of the world's, and regards most of mankind as less free, less prosperous, and less virtuous. Thus while it delights in croissants and thinks Toyota's factory methods are worth imitating, it dislikes the idea of adhering to "world standards." This class also takes part in the U.S. armed forces body and soul: nearly all the enlisted, non-commissioned officers and officers under flag rank belong to this class in every measurable way. Few vote for the Democratic Party. You do not doubt that you are amidst the country class rather than with the ruling class when the American flag passes by or "God Bless America" is sung after seven innings of baseball, and most people show reverence. The same people wince at the National Football League's plaintive renditions of the "Star Spangled Banner."

The Classes Clash

The ruling class's appetite for deference, power, and perks grows. The country class disrespects its rulers, wants to curtail their power and reduce their perks. The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid. The country class is ever more convinced that our rulers are corrupt, malevolent, and inept. The rulers want the ruled to shut up and obey. The ruled want self-governance. The clash between the two is about which side's vision of itself and of the other is right and which is wrong. Because each side -- especially the ruling class -- embodies its views on the issues, concessions by one side to another on any issue tend to discredit that side's view of itself. One side or the other will prevail. The clash is as sure and momentous as its outcome is unpredictable.

Certainly the country class lacks its own political vehicle -- and perhaps the coherence to establish one. In the short term at least, the country class has no alternative but to channel its political efforts through the Republican Party, which is eager for its support. But the Republican Party does not live to represent the country class. For it to do so, it would have to become principles-based, as it has not been since the mid-1860s. The few who tried to make it so the party treated as rebels: Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The party helped defeat Goldwater. When it failed to stop Reagan, it saddled his and subsequent Republican administrations with establishmentarians who, under the Bush family, repudiated Reagan's principles as much as they could. Barack Obama exaggerated in charging that Republicans had driven the country "into the ditch" all alone. But they had a hand in it. Few Republican voters, never mind the larger country class, have confidence that the party is on their side. Because, in the long run, the country class will not support a party as conflicted as today's Republicans, those Republican politicians who really want to represent it will either reform the party in an unmistakable manner, or start a new one as Whigs like Abraham Lincoln started the Republican Party in the 1850s.

The New Face of Obama Bashing....

Don't you love how the Dems eat their young... ?

It seems the "tingle-up-the-leg-honeymoon" is over. Poor Obama....

Dereliction of Duty

Dereliction of Duty
Congressional Democrats skip passing a budget—and hope no one notices.
BY STEPHEN F. HAYES
The Weekly Standard
June 28, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 39

The 1974 Budget and Impoundment Act requires Congress to pass a budget resolution by May 15 of each year. Congress hasn’t done so yet in 2010. But that isn’t so unusual. Delays are common.

They are usually the result of interparty or intercameral disputes. But this year is different. Congressional Democrats aren’t simply delaying, they’re deliberately refusing to offer a budget until after the November elections. They’re simply choosing to ignore the law.

The politics are not complicated. Democratic leaders do not want to send members home to face their constituents after voting for a budget that would take the deficit to record levels. But the spending trajectory established by Barack Obama—and rapidly growing entitlements—leaves them little choice. The administration’s own proposal, offered in February, runs a deficit of 7-10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for the next nine-year budget window. That’s unsustainable and irresponsible. So rather than vote for such a grotesquely distended budget, Democrats reason, better to simply skip the vote and shrug off whatever criticism comes.

'I'm Not George Bush' is Not a Foreign Policy

I love Victor Davis Hanson's take on things...

'I'm Not George Bush' is Not a Foreign Policy

Not being George W. Bush while apologizing for America's purported sins is not a foreign policy

Ronald Reagan came into office with the idea of rolling back the Soviet Union. Reagan hoped that such an evil empire might collapse from its inability to match a newly confident United States.

George H.W. Bush sought to oversee a peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire, the reunification of Germany and a new Western-led world order that thugs such as Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein could not disrupt.

Bill Clinton pushed Western-inspired liberal globalization to lift the Third World out of poverty.

After 9/11, George W. Bush sought to keep America safe from another round of Islamic terrorism while promoting Middle East constitutional government as a way of weakening Islamic terrorism.

But what exactly does Barack Obama wish to accomplish abroad?

On a more serious (and thoughtful note...)

"Change" is Not New
By Thomas Sowell
March 30, 2010

Please just read it!

Far be it from me to correct someone like Thomas Sowell, but there two things I would like to correct:

Thomas says, "The huge political, financial and ideological investment of many individuals and institutions in the "global warming" hysteria makes it virtually impossible for many of the climate crusaders to gamble it all on a roll of the dice, which is what empirical verification is."

I would say, "global warming" hysteria makes it completely impossible for many of the climate crusaders to gamble it all on a roll of the dice..."

And Sowell ends with, "Educators who turn schools into indoctrination centers have been going all out to propagandize a whole generation with Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth"-- which has in fact carried a message that has been very convenient for Al Gore financially, producing millions of dollars from his "green" activities."

I would say while Algore may be only making millions onw, he stands to me BILLIONS... YES, BILLIONS!!!

Oh, the irony.....

Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death in Antarctica
The Ecoenquirer.com

(Punta Arenas, Chile) Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing", recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. "There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, 'HELP-COLD'".

One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His wife, Linda, said that she had heard him discussing the trip with his environmental activist friends, but she assumed that he was talking about the Greenland ice sheet, a much smaller ice sheet than Antarctica.

"He kept talking about when they 'get down to chili', and I thought they were talking about the order in which they would consume their food supplies", Mrs. Schneider recounted. "I had no idea they were talking about Chile, the country from which you usually fly or sail in order to reach Antarctica". [Are you kidding me? Do you think there was a lack of communication in this marriage?]

Apparently, while all of Prof. Schneider's friends were assuming that the July trek would be to Greenland, during Northern Hemisphere summer, his plans were actually to snowmobile to the South Pole - which, in July, is in the dead of winter. [Opps! And these are the people who are telling us the science is REAL? REALLY? Even I knew that July is winter in the southern hemisphere and I am an idoit gloabal warming denier....]

Mr. Dolittle related how some people do not realize that, even if there has been warming in Antarctica, the average temperature at the South Pole in July still runs about 70 degrees F below zero. "Some people think that July is warm everywhere on Earth."

"And I was surprised to see how close they got to South Pole Station. They ran through all of their gas supplies for the snowmobiles", explained Doolittle. "They had cold weather gear and clothes, but during this time of year you just don't go outside unless it is an emergency."

"At least James died for something he believed in", said Mrs. Schneider. "He died while trying to raise awareness of the enormous toll that global warming is taking on the Earth."

Interesting idea....

This is as good an idea as I've heard yet...

I wish this were a joke....

...but it isn't. She actually posted the transcript of the speech on her website. Really, check it out here. (It's the first line of paragraph 31 of the speech)

Do you want to know what healthcare in the US will look like in 10 years of the liberal/progressives get their way?

Here it is:

Leading article: The real lessons of this NHS disaster
Staffordshire Inquiry
The Independent
Thursday, 25 February 2010

The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, yesterday described the appalling treatment of patients at Stafford hospital as "ultimately a local failure". This misses the point. For one thing, Stafford is not the only NHS hospital that has put patients' lives at risk in recent years. Basildon and Colchester hospitals were also discovered to have jeopardised safety in 2009.

What is more, Mr Burnham's efforts to quarantine this disaster suggest an unwillingness to face up to the scale of the problem that has been revealed. The failure in Stafford is not just the tale of one badly run hospital, but the failure of a regulatory system that did little to sound the alarm until very late in the day. From 2005 to 2008 Stafford hospital was judged by regulators and the Government to be performing well. It passed many inspections and the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust even achieved foundation status, supposedly the benchmark of excellence.

Yet as yesterday's independent report on Stafford by Robert Francis QC outlines, the hospital was, during this time, drastically cutting staffing budgets and leaving patients to fester in soiled sheets. How did the inspectors miss this? The report says the hospital's management was pre-occupied with cost-cutting and meeting crude targets set by Whitehall. But so too, it would seem, were the regulators. The trust appears to have been judged on the quality of its balance sheet rather than the quality of care offered to patients.

The regulators not only turned a blind eye to the cost cuts, they seem to have rewarded the Trust for it. It is true that the Healthcare Commission, did, in the end, sound the alarm over Stafford after being alerted to higher than usual death rates. But that does not excuse the fact that it – along with other monitoring bodies – missed the problem for years, during which hundreds of patients died needlessly. The NHS's regulators clearly need to overhaul their own procedures.

As for ministers, rather than attempting to present what occurred in Stafford as an isolated example of bad practice, they should examine how their own targets contributed to the distortion of care on the ground. Lessons will never be learnt while the authorities insist on burying their heads in the sand.

And:

Up to 1,200 needless deaths, patients abused, staff bullied to meet targets... yet a secret inquiry into failing hospital says no one's to blame
By Fay Schlesinger, Andy Dolan and Tim Shipman
UK Daily Mail
Last updated at 1:45 PM on 25th February 2010

Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night.

Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.

But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction.

Indeed, some have either retired on lucrative pensions or have swiftly found new jobs.

Former chief executive Martin Yeates, who has since left with a £1million pension pot, six months' salary and a reported £400,000 payoff, did not even give evidence to the inquiry which detailed the scale of the scandal yesterday.

He was said to be medically unfit to do so, though he sent some information to chairman Robert Francis through his solicitor.

The devastating-report into the Stafford Hospital-shambles' laid waste to Labour's decade-long obsession with box-ticking and league tables.

The independent inquiry headed by Robert Francis QC found the safety of sick and dying patients was 'routinely neglected'. Others were subjected to ' inhumane treatment', 'bullying', 'abuse' and 'rudeness'.

The shocking estimated death toll, three times the previous figure of 400, has prompted calls for a full public inquiry.

Bosses at the Trust - officially an 'elite' NHS institution - were condemned for their fixation with cutting waiting times to hit Labour targets and leaving neglected patients to die.

But after a probe that was controversially held in secret, not a single individual has been publicly blamed.

The inquiry found that:

• Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets;
• Four members of one family. including a new-born baby girl. died within 18 months after of blunders at the hospital;
• Medics discharged patients hastily out of fear they risked being sacked for delaying;
• Wards were left filthy with blood, discarded needles and used dressings while bullying managers made whistleblowers too frightened to come forward.

Last night the General Medical Council announced it was investigating several doctors. The Nursing and Midwifery Council is investigating at least one nurse and is considering other cases.

Ministers suggested the report highlighted a dreadful 'local' scandal, but its overall conclusions are a blistering condemnation of Labour's approach to the NHS.

It found that hospital were so preoccupied with saving money and pursuit of elite foundation trust status that they 'lost sight of its fundamental responsibility to provide safe care'.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham accepted 18 recommendations from Mr Francis and immediately announced plans for a new inquiry, to be held in public, into how Department of Health and NHS regulators failed to spot the disaster.

But Julie Bailey, head of the campaign group Cure the NHS, condemned his response as 'outrageous' and backed Tory and Liberal Democrat demands for a full public inquiry into what went wrong.

Tory leader David Cameron said: 'We need openness, clarity and transparency to stop this happening again.' Gordon Brown described the scandal as a 'completely unacceptable management failure' and revealed that the cases of 300 patients are now under investigation.

He told MPs the Government was belatedly working on plans to 'strike off' hospital managers responsible for failures. The hospital could also lose its cherished foundation status.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said 'These awful events show how badly Labour has let down NHS patients. It should never again be possible for managers to put a tick in a box marked "target met" while patients are pushed off to a ward and left to die.'

The Francis probe was launched following a Healthcare Commission report on Stafford Hospital in March last year. It found that deaths at the hospital were 27 to 45 per cent higher than normal, meaning some 400 to 1,200 people died unnecessarily between 2005 and 2008.

This story continues and I urge you read the entire article. It's scary stuff....

Stafford Hospital caused ‘unimaginable suffering’
The Times
David Rose, Health Correspondent
February 25, 2010

Patients were routinely neglected or left “sobbing and humiliated” by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs.

The inquiry report, published yesterday by Robert Francis, QC, included proposals for tough new regulations that could lead to managers at failing NHS trusts being struck off.

Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses “left a lot to be desired”.

The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that “unimaginable” suffering had been caused. Regulators said last year that between 400 and 1,200 more patients than expected may have died at the hospital from 2005 to 2008.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said there could be “no excuses” for the failures and added that the board that presided over the scandal had been replaced. An undisclosed number of doctors and at least one nurse are being investigated by the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Mr Burnham said it was a “longstanding anomaly” that the NHS did not have a robust way of regulating managers or banning them from working, as it does with doctors or nurses. “We must end the situation where a senior NHS manager who has failed in one job can simply move to another elsewhere,” he added. “This is not acceptable to the public and not conducive to promoting accountability and high professional standards.”

A system of professional accreditation for senior managers would be considered and the Mid Staffordshire trust might lose its foundation status.

Some NHS chief executives have received six-figure redundancy packages or moved to other trusts despite poor performance. Martin Yeates, the former chief executive at Mid Staffordshire, received pay rises that took his annual salary to £180,000, while standards at the trust deteriorated.

The Liberal Democrats claimed that he had also received a payoff of more than £400,000 after stepping down last March, though Mr Burnham said he had received “no more than his contractual entitlement”.

Again, it goes on and I suggest (assuming you think you can stomach it) you finish reading the article.... To say that government run healthcare is corrupt, dysfunctional and horribly managed is an understatement. Too which I respond to all the pro-single payer system supporters: "What makes you believe it will be any different here in the US?"

"UNBALANCED"?

Greenspan: U.S. recovery "extremely unbalanced"
On Tuesday February 23, 2010, 1:22 pm EST
By David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters)

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday the U.S. economic recovery was "extremely unbalanced," driven largely by high earners benefiting from recovering stock markets and large corporations.

Small businesses and the jobless are still suffering from the aftermath of a credit crunch that was "by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever" -- including the 1930s Great Depression, said Greenspan in an address to a Credit Union National Association conference.

"It's really an extraordinarily unbalanced system because we're dealing with small businesses who are doing badly, small banks in trouble, and of course there is an extraordinarily large proportion of the unemployed in this country who have been out of work for more than six months and many more than a year," said Greenspan, who headed the Fed from 1987 to 2006.

With both housing starts and auto sales "dead in the water," he said he thought it would be difficult to make the case that the economy is poised for a strong rebound.

Greenspan did see signs pointing toward a modest recovery in job creation, saying that staffing levels at U.S. firms, which were deeply cut, remain below what is sustainable in the long run. But unemployment rate could still remain stubbornly high.

"The reason why the unemployment rate is going to be sticky is that as soon as employment starts picking up, a lot of the people who have not been seeking jobs are going to come back into the labor force, and they will keep the official unemployment rate in the 9 percent area, something like that," Greenspan said.

He also said it was important for U.S. policy makers to prevent perceived expectations of inflation that could push up yields on long-term U.S. Treasury securities, which would raise mortgage interest rates and prevent a recovery in the housing market.

The 10-year Treasury yield is the "one statistic that I watch every morning and every afternoon," he said.

At first I thought Al was talking about himself: "unbalanced" from all the 'irrational exuberance' regarding his appearance at the Credit Union National Association (not to be confused with the National Credit Union Association). For being one of a handful of people who played a huge role in the creation of this mess, you'd think he'd have more to say....

Go home to Andrea and watch the reruns of BHO's “immaculation”!

We could "Call him Al" if anyone could find him...

Where's Al?
by Ken Connor
Townhall.com

In the face of the embarrassing Climategate scandal and an unprecedented winter season that has for the first time ever delivered measurable snowfall to all 50 states, Al Gore’s absence from the public stage has been conspicuous...

The bottom line is that intelligent, responsible people are getting tired of being made to feel guilty for every carbon credit consumed and every mile-per-gallon burned, especially when it’s becoming more and more clear that the current climate change hysteria is being fueled less by solid scientific evidence than by an extreme Green ideology that – much like Agent Smith in the Matrix movies – views humanity as a virus, a plague upon the earth that must be contained and ultimately eradicated. For the extreme enviro-ideologues, mankind’s devastating impact on the earth is a foregone conclusion; the appeal to “science” is simply a clever public relations tactic.

There aren’t many fields of scientific inquiry where the level of negligence, irresponsibility, and carelessness that characterizes the study of global climate trends would be allowed to prevail. Scientists take pride, above all, in their dedication to The Method. In order for a hypothesis to gain any traction, it much be researched, tested, replicated, and analyzed. Any 8th-grader will tell you that sloppy work in setting up your experiment, failure to account for relevant variables, or insufficient presentation of data will get you an F on your end-of-semester project. Yet somehow the entire globe has been taken captive by an ideology driven by shoddy science.

Algore and his crazy ideas runs parallel to Jim Carter giving advice to any president. The good news for Jim is that at least BHO is making him look good....

But I'm sure they'll get a "fair" trial.....

Holder admits nine Obama Dept. of Justice officials worked for terrorist detainees, offers no details
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
Washington Examiner
02/19/10 3:52 PM EST

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in. Holder's admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee "the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department."

Why is it the more I learn about this adnministation the more uneasy I get about our national security?

John Stossel : Hurtling Down the Road to Serfdom - Townhall.com

Another excellent article by John Stossel. I can see why he had to leave MSM.

John Stossel : Hurtling Down the Road to Serfdom - Townhall.com

The end of the global warming hoax.....

The great global warming collapse
As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement
Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail

But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

I'll bet anyone no one in the MSM picks up on these type of stories....

Am I paranoid or does this make sense...?

Color me a paranoid, but this seems to make sense....

Oh no, the media isn't in the tank for BHO....

Backdoor taxes to hit middle class
Mon Feb 1, 4:09 PM
By Terri Cullen

Full story before being pulled...

NEW YORK (Reuters.com) --The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 -- though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

Now....

Advisory: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class

Mon Feb 1, 8:07 pm ET
The story Backdoor taxes to hit middle class has been withdrawn. A replacement story will run later in the week.

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

Huh...

The Scott Brown ad that won the race and it's follow-up.

I hope for the nation's sake both parties wake up and run conservative candidates...

Yeah, it's us conservatives that are racist's....

President Obama's First Year: Keeping Faith in the White House - ABC News

Holy BlackBerry! Obama Finds Ways to Keep the Faith During First Year in Office
Has the First Family's D.C. Church Search Come to a Close?
By DEVIN DWYER
Jan. 29, 2010

This is rich...

The first family, once regular churchgoers, have publicly attended services in Washington just three times in the past year, by ABC News' count, even bypassing the pews on Christmas Day.

"Barack Obama is a Christian. He's always been clear and unapologetic about that, and he's comfortable with his own faith," Rev. Jim Wallis, an Obama friend and spiritual adviser...

"My Faith and Neighborhood Initiatives director, Joshua DuBois, he has a devotional that he sends to me on my BlackBerry every day," Obama said. "That's how I start my morning. You know, he's got a passage, Scripture, in some cases quotes from other faiths to reflect on."

Why do we even listen anymore...?

An Honest Politician...?

and in the EU, no less....



You gotta love it! "Algore - Crook!"

More Big Government....

FCC Overreach
Posted 01/15/2010
IBD

Regulation: The Federal Communications Commission's urge to put a government collar on the Web is a prime example of tone-deafness. Is anyone inside the Beltway aware of China's meddling with Google?

Government officials won't admit that their urge to issue orders to ISPs is a power grab. Rather, they frame the issue as a matter of consumer protection.

"I am absolutely certain that consumers expect protection against gatekeeper control," said Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat. "That's why we need to move forward with whatever tools we have at our disposal to ensure an open Internet."

Does Copps not understand that the Web would no longer be open once government steps in? A third party of lawmakers and bureaucrats will be an occupying force. Policies will be made in the halls of government and they will be based on politics, hardly an advancement for such a key resource as the Internet. To say the FCC will "open" the Web by violating ISPs' right to determine how their property is used is to pervert the language.

Here they come...

Healthcare, cap & tax, card-check, and internet power grab...

When will we fight back...?

How far will we let them push us...?

When will we say, that's too far...?

The Real Reason for the MSM Implosion...

Violating the ‘Rosenthal Rule’: When Reporters Sleep With Their Sources

Posted by Ben Shapiro Jan 9th 2010

Hypocrisy in action...

Reid to Obama: Sorry for 'no Negro dialect' remark

Imagine the firestorm of controversy if it had been Sarah Palin (or any conservative Republican) who had uttered these words. It turns out, it is liberal dems who view the world in black and white, rich and poor, haves and have not’s. Conservatives understand that a rising tide raises all boats. It's a shame no one from the liberal "state run" fringe media will cover this....<br>
Reid to Obama: Sorry for 'no Negro dialect' remark

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid apologized on Saturday for saying Barack Obama should seek—and could win—the White House because Obama was a "light skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Obama in '02: 'The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott'
5:28 PM, Jan 9, 2010 · BY John McCormack

In light of President Obama's decision to forgive Harry Reid's remarks about Obama's skin color and lack of a "Negro dialect," check out what Obama said about Trent Lott in 2002:

Oh, the hypocrisy....

Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D-13th), who hosted WVON's Cliff Kelley Show, challenged the Republican Party to repudiate Lott's remarks and to call for his resignation as senate leader.

"It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do," said Obama.

He said: "The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party."

--From the December 12, 2002 issue of the Chicago Defender.

And even the dem godfather....

...Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.