President Obama’s plan to trim the rising pile of home foreclosures contains a comprehensive list of new ideas and old ones — an acknowledgment that there is no single solution to the housing crisis at the heart of the recession. The plan applies $75 billion from the taxpayer-funded financial rescue package to help lenders lower borrowers' monthly payments and reach the administration's goal of keeping up to 9 million families in their homes.
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"The shift in tone (on the stimulus bill) has been so sudden that even the mainstream press has noticed."[Who cares - it's passed now.]
Confidence in America’s future remains steady this week, as 28% of voters say the nation is heading in the right direction and 64% say it is going down the wrong track.
The majority of African-American voters (53%) now say the United States is going in the right direction, while 38% say the opposite. Last week, 47% thought the country was going in the right direction.
Among white voters, 24% say right direction, while 69% say wrong track.
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Concluding his press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa, President Obama concluded with a line that should keep talk radio back home busy for a week to come."I want to also, by the way, thank some of the Canadians who came over the border to campaign for me during the election," Obama said. "It was much appreciated."
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US calls for NATO allies to send more forces to Afghanistan have met with a weak response. Germany is against Washington's plans to provide security during the coming elections with the alliance's rapid response force.
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French DM rules out more troops for Afghanistan
France's defense minister is ruling out for now increasing the country's military presence in Afghanistan. Herve Morin told France-Inter radio Sunday that France has ''already made a considerable effort'' toward stabilizing the troubled country. He said ''there's no question for the moment of sending additional troops.''
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[Allies?]
[HT:TT]
Iran has now built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday. In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme,
UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.
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U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday the new administration of President Barack Obama hasn't decided what to do about a proposed European missile shield detested by Russia. In Krakow, Poland, for NATO talks, Gates said the economic crisis and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken precedence. (Snip) Obama has not been a vocal supporter of the program, but hasn't indicated he would cancel it either.
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Wilders was told in a letter from the Home Office that he is not welcome here because his statements about Muslims and their beliefs “threaten community harmony and therefore public safety”. He may not be entitled to know what that means, but we certainly are. Yet the government has been very coy about explaining.
David Miliband, our gaffe-prone young foreign secretary, was quick to point out that Fitna is “a hate-filled film designed to stir up religious and racial hatred and is contrary to our laws”. But he then had to admit that he hadn’t seen it.
I have seen the film, twice. It is very short and anyone can find it easily on the internet. It did not strike me as contrary to our laws, stringent though they now are, and no one but Miliband seriously makes that claim.
It is unsophisticated and one-sided and likely to upset people, yet I do not think it is factually untruthful. It juxtaposes certain texts from the Koran, commanding the faithful to kill infidels, apostates, homosexuals and so on and to take over the world, with news footage of Islamist terrorists carrying out these commands and film of Islamist supporters cheering them on. In short, the film show precisely the things that deeply worry a lot of non-Muslims. [snip]
Labour laws against freedom of expression, in particular against incitement to religious hatred, have now been enacted under Muslim pressure. Yet despite these laws, which silence critics of Islam, Muslims are allowed to teach views that are illegal - and in public mosques. The awkward truth is that certain teachings in the Koran are against the law in this country – teachings about homosexuality and the position of women, for example. [snip]
And it was an opportunity for the government to prove that it is not prepared to appease any threatening minority, but will stand up for freedom and tolerance. But it was an opportunity this government was incapable of taking. It doesn’t even understand the importance of it.
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[It's called cowardice, and is how evil triumphs.]
>> VIEW VIDEO HERE
The Wall Street Journal Europe dropped its sponsorship of the current Dubai tennis tournament after the United Arab Emirates refused to issue a visa to Israel's star tennis player Shahar Peer. Peer was reportedly denied the visa due to fan anger over Israel's recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip. UAE officials said that they feared riots could break out.
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[Well done WSJ. Tell 'em here> feedback@wsj.com. Better, Subscribe Here.]
AUSTRALIA faces the prospect of paying an extra $870 million for greenhouse gas emissions after Kevin Rudd's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and a new UN target for carbon pollution.
After a year-long review by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change committee, Australia has been given a tougher target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN has reduced the amount of greenhouse gas emissions Australia is allowed to produce by 6.6 million tonnes ayear.
If Australia is above the carbon emissions target at the end of 2012, it will be required tomake up any shortfall by buying carbon credits from other nations.
Continuing growth in Australia and the new target have led leading global carbon market analyst Point Carbon to estimate a potential extra cost to taxpayers of $870 million in carbon credits in 2012. [but that's just the delta... snip]
The Rudd Government's updated forecasts estimate Australian industry will have to pay $23.5 billion for carbon emission permits in the first two years of the ETS.
[Well what did you expect - you're growing - can't have that. Are we really foolish enough to allow ourselves to be regulated by the UN - on anything?]
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The federal government has doubled the size of its commitment to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, increasing the guarantee against losses on their mortgage investments to $400 billion. The massive expansion of this public backstop for the troubled mortgage giants was disclosed this morning among the details of the Obama administration's plan to reduce foreclosures.
[This is government: they both failed - so we pump more money into them]
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[Heard this video on the radio on the way into work yesterday and went and found it...]
The chief executive officers of the nation's largest corporations are viewed favorably by just 22% of American adults, lower even than the ratings earned by members of Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 26% now have a favorable opinion of the nation's legislators.
[I.e., demonization campaigns work]
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Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently told the Los Angeles Times that global warming might melt 90 percent of California's snowpack. This, Chu said, would mean "no more agriculture in California," the nation's leading food producer. Chu added: "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going."
No more lettuce or Los Angeles? Chu likes predictions, so here is another:
Nine decades hence, our great-great-grandchildren will add the disappearance of California artichokes to the list of predicted planetary calamities that did not happen, just as global cooling has... [snip]
Speaking of experts, in 1980 Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990, accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon.
When Ehrlich predicted the imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased scarcity.
Ehrlich picked five metals -- chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten -- that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the basket decline, the price of all five declined.
An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today is President Obama's science adviser...
[Recommended > for the multiple specifics re: the chronic wrongness to these folks' records - yet chronically ignored by the MSM]
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Britain faces electricity blackouts unless the Government does more to support nuclear and clean coal as well as renewables, experts have warned. Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford, said the UK will face shortages and high prices for electricity from 2020 when the current generation of coal-fired power stations and nuclear stations have to close down.
[reminder: the US gets most - ~55% - of its electricity from coal. So, when we all switch to electric cars, where's the juice going to come from?]
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The reality of government-controlled medical treatment.
This is an emergency book review.
Before you do anything else, make a note to read The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care by Sally C. Pipes. It might literally save your life, by checking the political stampede toward a government-controlled medical profession — usually presented politically as “universal health care.”
It is one of the painful signs of our times that millions of people are so easily swayed by rhetoric that they show virtually no interest at all in finding out the hard facts. Any number of other countries already have government-controlled medical professions. Yet few Americans show any interest in what actually happens to medical care in those countries.
--- Cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than in Europe --- annually tens of thousands of Canadians seek medical treatment outside of Canada, even though treatment is 'free' inside Canada --- waiting times for surgery are months longer in Canada, Britain, and Australia — all countries with government-controlled medical care — than in the United States ---
As an organizer from Nashville searched for housing and services for about 50 Egyptian men and their families who want to move to Shelbyville to be close to their new jobs at Tyson Foods, the county mayor said that the food giant should hire Bedford County residents first. (Snip) Concerns have once again risen in Shelbyville about immigrants and refugees coming to Bedford County to apply for jobs at the Tyson Foods poultry plant.
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LOS ANGELES - A college student has filed a lawsuit saying a public speaking professor berated him in class for making a speech opposing same-sex marriage.
In the federal court suit filed last week, student Jonathan Lopez said that midway through his speech, when he quoted a dictionary definition of marriage and recited a pair of Bible verses, professor John Matteson cut him off and would not allow him to finish.
He said the professor also called him a "fascist bastard."
A student evaluation form included with the lawsuit lacks a score for Lopez's speech, and reads "ask God what your grade is." [snip]
In a letter, Dean Allison Jones wrote that she had met with Lopez, considered his complaint "extremely serious in nature," but that two students were "deeply offended" by the speech, and quoted one as saying "this student should have to pay some price for preaching hate in the classroom." [snip]
"Basically, colleges and universities should give Christian students the same rights to free expression as other students," David J. Hacker, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that is representing Lopez, told the Los Angeles Times.
Lopez and his attorneys are seeking financial damages and want the court to strike down a code at Los Angeles City College forbidding students from making statements deemed offensive.
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[And what about those who find support of gay marriage offensive? Obviously, their sensibilities don't count. The 'price' this student should pay for an unpopular {although the passage of prop. 8 suggests otherwise} view is unpopularity - anything more is fascism {in this case, of the liberal variety}.
This is particularly troubling to my mind that it's our 'institutions of higher learning', where you'd think the power of arguments - and the right to make them - would hold supreme. But liberal indoctrination has supplanted genuine differing-discourse within US academia at all levels.
Extreme statement? Consider > ]
... The framework for the attempt by Democrats to silence political opposition is already in place in what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) calls localism, a scheme set up in the form of local “community boards” that will decide whether or not your local broadcast station is meeting the standards required to review and renew their broadcast licenses every two to four years.
As you can see from the FCC localism webpage, localism regulations have already been through well over a year’s worth of procedural hearings, and, as of April 2008, “Broadcast Information Specialists are Available for Public Inquires.” The rules and regulations have been set forth in “The Public and Broadcasting,” which is the FCC field manual for the ACORN “activists” and lawyers to intimidate your local community boards into harassing your local radio stations into submission or recommend the revocation of their broadcast license.
Given the reported $4.2 billion allocated for ACORN and like groups by the so-called stimulus bill signed into law by Obama yesterday, all that is left to fulfill this scenario is the confirmation of Obama’s new FCC chairman, nominee Julius Genachowski. After he’s confirmed, the full frontal assault on our First Amendment rights will begin quickly...
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In case you haven’t noticed, California is fast becoming a third world economy. Its government has ceased to provide basic services (its schools now rank 48th; its prisons were ordered to release more than 50,000 inmates because of inadequate healthcare). The Wall Street Journal editors explain:
The Golden State — which a decade ago was the booming technology capital of the world — has been done in by two decades of chronic overspending, overregulating and a hyperprogressive tax code that exaggerates the impact on state revenues of economic boom and bust. Total state expenditures have grown to $145 billion in 2008 from $104 billion in 2003 and California now has the worst credit rating in the nation — worse even than Louisiana’s. It also has the nation’s fourth highest unemployment rate of 9.3% (after Michigan, Rhode Island and South Carolina) and the second highest home foreclosure rate (after Nevada).
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Democrats slipped into the so-called "Economic Stimulus" bill a provision to give millions, if not billions, of dollars to ACORN.
ACU raised awareness about ACORN in the last election campaign. They were raided by FBI agents and investigated for falsifying thousands of voter registration records. We produced short documentary videos on ACORN; their ties to left wing groups, the Obama campaign paying them for voter turnout and other activities. Worse, we showed that ACORN was actually involved in the push for subprime loans and the mortgage meltdown that has driven down our economy. If you have not seen our short videos, you can see them here on our ACORN action page.
Boehner noted that, "The House Democrats' trillion dollar spending bill also includes $1 billion for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program." He then went on to point out that ACORN reports filed with the Office of Management and Budget shows that ACORN spent almost 1.6 million in federal taxpayer Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program funds from 2003 through 2007. Now they are going to come back for more.
Boehner's analysis also shows that ACORN has been awarded more than $53 million in taxpayer dollars over the last several years. This amount does not reflect the millions more ACORN has received in federal block grant funds awarded to state and local agencies which passed them on to ACORN.
We need your help to fight back. We want to flood Capitol Hill and the news media with petitions against these attempts to take our tax dollars and give them to left-wing advocacy groups.
Please go here, now to sign our ACU ACORN Stimulus bill 
