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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries from August 31st, 2010

Obama and the Democrat’s Social Security Bait and Switch

August 31st, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Economy, Ethics, Federal Spending, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Social Security, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Unemployment

Associated Press

‘Harry, am I making this up?’ Yes, Mr. President, you are.

Democrats are trying to keep control of Congress by scaring the wig off grandma with a phantom GOP plot against Social Security. That is not news. Social Security scare tactics have been regular campaign themes since FDR. President Obama’s unique contribution is to do this even as he’s begging Republicans to help him reduce the deficit and reform entitlement spending.

On the one hand, Mr. Obama has charged his deficit commission with crafting a bipartisan plan to restrain entitlements. “Everything’s on the table. That’s how this thing’s going to work,” he said when he created the commission in February. “We now have to, in a gradual way, reduce spending, particularly on those big ticket items” like Social Security, he later added in Racine, Wisconsin. “That’s going to be our project for the next couple years.”

Yet even as Mr. Obama beseeches Republicans, he and his political allies are playing the Social Security card for all it’s worth in this campaign season. This has all the earmarks of a political bait and switch designed to ambush Republicans if they’re gullible enough to believe his bipartisan pleas.

Mr. Obama personally teed up the campaign theme earlier this month when he celebrated Social Security’s 75th anniversary by claiming that “privatizing Social Security” is “a key part” of the Republican “legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall.” He went on to say that this plan, which does not in fact exist, is “wrong for America” and “I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street. Because you shouldn’t be worried that a sudden downturn in the stock market will put all you’ve worked so hard for—all you’ve earned—at risk.”

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CBO Update

August 31st, 2010 · CBO Update

The following has been added to CBO’s Web site:

  • H.R. 5756, Training and Research for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act of 2010
    Cost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on July 28, 2010
    http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=11839
  • S. 3486, A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to repeal the prohibition on collective bargaining with respect to matters and questions regarding compensation of employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs other than rates of basic
    Cost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on August 5, 2010
    http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=11840

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Eddie Bernice Johnson, Texas Dem Rep., Steered Scholarships To Family And Friends

August 31st, 2010 · Corruption, Democrats, Ethics, Greed

WASHINGTON — A Texas congresswoman admitted that she wrongly steered thousands of dollars in college scholarships from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to her own relatives and the children of a staff member but said she did so unintentionally.

Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson said in a statement Monday that she will reimburse the foundation by the end of the week. She did not state how much money was involved. The Dallas Morning News reported Monday that 23 scholarships she has handed out since 2005 violated the foundation’s eligibility rules.

The Morning News reported on its website that Johnson had arranged scholarships between 2005 and 2008 for two grandsons and two grandnephews and the son and daughter of a Dallas-based aide, Rod Givens. The newspaper placed the amount of those scholarships at up to $20,000.

In 2009, according to the foundation, Johnson gave two grandsons and the aide’s two children two scholarships apiece from foundation funds, the newspaper reported.

Relatives of members of Congress are ineligible to receive scholarship funds from the foundation because of anti-nepotism rules. The scholarships also violate a foundation rule that recipients need to live or study in the district represented by the Black Caucus member who awards the scholarship.

“As previously stated, I was unaware of being in any type of violation and never intentionally violated the CBCF’s rules,” Johnson said in a statement sent by e-mail by her office. She said she would appoint a third party to examine her office’s practices in distributing scholarship money.

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Obama administration intensifies efforts in Sudan as Mid-Term election nears

August 30th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Obama's Scheme

By Mary Beth Sheridan – Monday, August 30, 2010

The Obama administration, which came to office promising stronger leadership on Sudan, is now scrambling to salvage a 2005 U.S.-backed peace accord and prevent Africa’s largest nation from sliding back into civil war.

In recent weeks, the administration has doubled its diplomatic presence in South Sudan and dispatched a respected former ambassador to help with negotiations on an independence referendum for the region, which is scheduled for January.

President Obama and his advisers are also mulling over incentives to persuade Sudan’s leadership to cooperate with the referendum, officials say.

Former officials and activist groups worry that the flurry of action may be too little, too late. They say the Obama administration’s efforts over the past year have been hobbled by infighting and a lack of high-level attention.

“President Obama’s approach to Sudan may well lead to his being the one who ‘lost’ Sudan and the opportunities for peace” in the 2005 accord, said Roger Winter, who helped negotiate the deal that ended Sudan’s 21-year civil war. He added, however, that the recently intensified diplomatic effort offers some hope.

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Indiana’s Ellsworth, onetime Democratic star, now a symbol of party’s struggles

August 30th, 2010 · Accountability, Change of Power, Democrats, Dissention, Obama Exposed

By Shailagh Murray Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 29, 2010; 10:16 PM

INDIANAPOLIS – When Brad Ellsworth won his U.S. House seat in Indiana four years ago, he was hailed by Democrats as the future of their party: a telegenic former sheriff with moderate instincts and an ability to appeal to a diverse electorate.

It was candidates such as Ellsworth who enabled the Democrats to conquer frontiers that mostly seemed beyond their reach, places such as Evansville and Terre Haute, which stuck with the party in 2008 and enabled President Obama to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Indiana in 44 years.

Today, those gains are in jeopardy, with Democratic prospects following the downward trend of the economy and Obama’s approval ratings. Ellsworth is running well behind in the race to replace Sen. Evan Bayh and has now become the face of the Democrats’ reversal of fortunes across the Midwest. The state’s two other vulnerable House Democrats, Reps. Joe Donnelly and Baron P. Hill, are battling to hold their seats, and Republicans could reclaim the district Ellsworth has represented for the past four years.

The dynamics raise a question larger than any one race – whether new Democrats have succeeded in expanding the political map in any sort of lasting way or whether candidates such as Ellsworth were just in the right place at the right time.

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In 2010, Obama’s poll numbers less of an asset for congressional Democrats

August 30th, 2010 · Accountability, Change of Power, Democrats, Dissention, Obama Exposed

By Chris Cillizza Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2010; 12:18 AM

Two years can change just about everything in politics.

In the 2008 campaign, Democrats running for the Senate did anything – and everything – to associate themselves with then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

With about two months remaining in the 2010 campaign season, however, Obama’s political fortunes have dipped in a handful of states holding competitive Senate races – complicating the winning math for Democratic candidates already struggling with a pessimistic electorate that remains deeply concerned about the country’s direction.

“In midterm elections, the presidential numbers serve like a weight on scale,” said one senior Democratic consultant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about the playing field. “The heavier [or worse] the numbers, the harder it is for any person in the party to get back to even keel.”

Recent polls on Obama conducted for many of the nation’s top Senate races show that those who disapprove of the job the president is doing outweigh those who approve.

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A sign of Obama Change… Not for the Best.

August 30th, 2010 · Accountability

A sign of Obama Change...Not for the better!

What Diplomacy? I do what I want!

Who cares what I look like? I am only walking the dog.

This picture is worth $13,375,222,710,985 !

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The Folly of Subsidizing Unemployment

August 30th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Treason, Unemployment

My calculations suggest the jobless rate could be as low as 6.8%, instead of 9.5%, if jobless benefits hadn’t been extended to 99 weeks.

By Robert Barro

Congressman John Boehner recently suggested that President Obama replace his top economic advisers. I think he may have a point. The economic “recovery” has been disappointing, to put it mildly, and it has become increasingly clear that the blame lies with the policies of the Obama administration, not with those of its predecessor.

In general, the current administration has been too focused on expanding government, redistributing more from rich to poor, and stimulating aggregate demand. I have previously criticized the stimulus package as cost-ineffective. In particular, whatever tax reductions were in the package did not involve the cuts in marginal income tax rates that encourage investment, work effort and productivity growth.

Now the administration wants to kill the 2003 income-tax cuts, at least the parts that reduced marginal income tax rates for high-income earners and for all recipients of dividend income. This proposal is particularly disturbing because the 2003 law was George W. Bush’s main economic achievement; unlike most of Mr. Bush’s policies, this one was well-conceived and effective.

I want to focus here on another dimension of the Obama administration’s policies: the expansion of unemployment-insurance eligibility to as much as 99 weeks from the standard 26 weeks.

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Beck, Palin tell thousands to ‘restore America’

August 29th, 2010 · Accountability, Change of Power, Dissention, Obama Exposed, Republicans

By Amy Gardner, Krissah Thompson and Philip Rucker – Sunday, August 29, 2010; 12:08 AM

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck on Saturday drew a sea of activists to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he championed a religious brand of patriotism and called on the nation to recommit itself to traditional values he said were hallmarks of its exceptional past.

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, steps away from where it was delivered, Beck and fellow “tea party” icon Sarah Palin staked a claim to King’s legacy and to that of the Founding Fathers. They urged a crowd that stretched to the Washington Monument to concentrate on the nation’s accomplishments rather than on its psychological scars.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Beck said. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

The event was billed as “nonpolitical,” and Beck steered clear of the partisan commentary that has made him a hero to many conservatives and a nemesis to many on the left. But political overtones were unmistakable, and the rally drew an enormous crowd – including many who said they were new to activism – that was energized and motivated to act.

The effort by Beck and Palin to lay claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement drew protests from the Rev. Al Sharpton and others who marched in a separate and much smaller event, to the Mall from Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, to commemorate King’s speech 47 years ago.

“The ‘March on Washington’ changed America,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said at the Sharpton rally, referring to King’s speech. “Our country reached to overcome the low points of our racial history. Glenn Beck’s march will change nothing.”

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Dangers of war persist for soldiers left in Iraq

August 28th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Foreign Policy, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

By Leila Fadel Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 28, 2010; 12:13 AM

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, IRAQ – Col. Malcolm Frost knew there would be questions. The official end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq was approaching, but his soldiers, operating in two of Iraq’s most dangerous provinces, would still be here.

He sat down and penned a letter to the soldiers’ families. “01 Sept. 2010 does not mean a light switched on or off in Iraq,” the brigade commander wrote. “. . . The weight of responsibility upon our shoulders is great, because we must follow through to the very finish.”

For the soldiers in Frost’s brigade, Sept. 1 will mark an arbitrary milestone. There are fewer troops here, just under 50,000 now, consistent with an Obama administration pledge, and the troops leave base less often. But Americans still die in Iraq, and the fight for stability is far from over.

Iraq remains a battleground, American soldiers say, even if they are no longer kicking down Iraqi doors.

Instead of carrying out combat missions, Frost’s unit has been designated an “advise and assist” brigade, like five other American brigades left behind in Iraq. Its task is to train Iraqi security forces, gather intelligence, assist Iraq’s fledgling air force, and, ultimately, close up shop and go home. The lower-profile approach under Operation New Dawn is the latest step in a transition that began more than a year ago when American soldiers were pulled back from Iraq’s urban centers and for the most part retreated into their bases.

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