Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Obama refuses to release data on 'cash for clunkers'
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The Obama administration is refusing to release U.S. government records on its "cash for clunkers" rebate program that would substantiate -- or undercut -- claims of the car purchase program's success.
President Barack Obama wants $2 billion more to boost car sales just days after the first $1 billion was made available for the program. Obama has promised greater transparency for his administration, but transportation officials say they do not have time to turn over sales data car dealers have provided that would shed light on the program.
The information released so far shows most buyers are not picking Ford, Chrysler or General Motors vehicles, and six of the top 10 vehicles purchased are Honda, Toyota and Hyundai.
The Associated Press has sought release of the data since last week.
[A new era of transparency.]
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POLL: 54% Oppose More Money for ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program
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Fifty-four percent (54%) of Americans oppose any further funding for the federal "cash for clunkers" program which encourages the owners of older cars to trade them in for newer, more fuel-efficient ones. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 33% of adults think Congress should authorize additional funding to keep the program going now that the original $950 million allocated for it has run out.
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Reid: 'Shall Pass' Clunker Extension Before Recess
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he has votes to extend "Cash for Clunkers," ensuring that the popular program will receive a $2 billion extension before Congress leaves for the recess.
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Made in the USA Jihad
Everything the sociologists are saying about terrorists is wrong
This week's arrest of seven North Carolina residents, including Daniel Boyd and his two sons, on charges of supporting terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder abroad, showed how the problem of homegrown Islamic terrorism is far more rampant than the media or the public is aware of. Just look at the major cases in the past year alone:
- The convert from Long Island who joined al Qaeda (disclosed this past week) and gave the group information about Long Island trains and New York City's subways.
- The plot to blow up two synagogues and a National Guard plane in upstate New York by prison converts (scheduled to go to trial).
- The plot to kill hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix by assimilated American Muslims living here 25 years (all convicted).
- The plot to operate a terrorist training camp in Oregon (pleaded guilty).
- The plot to blow up buildings by the Liberty City 7 (all convicted).
- The sweeping conviction of Hamas officials for conspiring to support terrorism overseas.
- The cases of young Somali teenagers raised in the U.S. going overseas to become suicide bombers.
The Boyd family was white, had a middle-class existence, and had the economic opportunities afforded all Americans—just like most of the terrorists cited above—and yet chose to engage in jihad to the point that Daniel Boyd was willing to send his two kids on suicide missions to Israel.
In the end, the mainstream media refuses to recognize that the "mainstream" Islamic groups are actually radical organizations that teach and imbue their followers with a hatred of the United States and Israel.
These groups front as civil-rights groups, but in fact are radical Islamic groups whose constant message disseminated to the millions of Muslim followers is that the U.S. is an evil country engaged in a war against Islam.
Once that message takes hold—and after all, these groups control the mosques, the Islamic newspapers, the Islamic schools, and the Islamic leadership from which American Muslims and converts get their ideas about the world—it is not a huge leap for some of them to become committed to violent jihad.
And it is up to all of the citizens of the U.S. to admit that yes, there is a problem of Muslim terrorism right here in our country and to call it by its proper name.
That the FBI stopped all these plots is amazing, but they will never continue to bat a thousand. One of these days, the jihadists will succeed.
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CIA Documents Will Show Enhanced Techniques Worked
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The ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence told CNSNews.com that releasing Central Intelligence Agency documents describing the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA used on a few high-level terrorist detainees would show that these techniques worked.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R.-Mich.) said that he had called several months ago for these documents to be released, a proposal that has been pushed by former Vice President Dick Cheney.
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The Religion of Peace
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Hamas launches 'virtue campaign' in Gaza
Shopkeepers in the Gaza Strip have been ordered to remove lingerie from their windows as part of a ''virtue campaign'' launched by Hamas.The Islamic group has also told female lawyers to wear headscarves in court and teenagers have been ordered to stop playing ''suggestive'' modern music.
.....Hamas have been patrolling the beach asking men to cover up bear chests and separating groups of single people congregating together...
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Nigerians count cost after uprising by Islamic sect
Maiduguri, Nigeria - Samuel Yunana's father, Fayam, was taken from his home, stabbed in the side of the stomach and told to convert to Islam. When he refused, his throat was slit.
.....Fayam was among more than 700 people killed in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri during an uprising last week by a radical Islamic sect which wants sharia (Islamic law) imposed across Africa's most populous nation...
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Hizbullah TV network gets okay to air in Australia
Hizbullah-sponsored TV network Al-Manar TV has been granted permission to broadcast in Australia, after having been banned on two occasions.
.....Dr. Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, said the decision Friday by the Australian Communications & Media Authority that Al-Manar TV did not violate government anti-terror laws was ' ''regrettable, if unsurprising''...
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Clinton's Unwise Trip to North Korea
John Bolton
Former president Clinton was met at Pyongyang's airport by notables led by Kim Kye Gwan, the North's long-time chief nuclear negotiator, an unmistakable symbol of linkage. In Pyongyang's view, the two reporters are pawns in the larger game of enhancing the regime's legitimacy and gaining direct access to important U.S. figures.
The reporters' arrest, show trial and subsequent imprisonment (twelve years hard labor) was hostage taking, essentially an act of state terrorism. So the Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea, whether or not he carried an official message from President Obama.
Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so.
While the United States is properly concerned whenever its citizens are abused or held hostage, efforts to protect them should not create potentially greater risks for other Americans in the future.
Yet that is exactly the consequence of visits by former presidents or other dignitaries as a form of political ransom to obtain their release. Iran and other autocracies are presumably closely watching the scenario in North Korea.
With three American hikers freshly in Tehran's captivity, will Clinton be packing his bags again for another act of obeisance? And, looking ahead, what American hostages will not be sufficiently important to merit the presidential treatment?
The point to be made on the Clinton visit is that the knee-jerk impulse for negotiations above all inevitably brings more costs than its advocates foresee. Negotiating from a position of strength, where the benefits to American interests will exceed the costs, is one thing.
Negotiating merely for the sake of it, in the face of palpable recent failures, is something else indeed...
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LEAVE SWISS BANKS ALONE
Swiss financial privacy laws respect the privacy of citizens, unlike the "Orwellian" systems in places like America
In Switzerland, financial privacy laws are a foundation for individual dignity and basic property rights.
Unfortunately, the confidentiality that is the hallmark of Swiss banking is coming under increasing pressure. The global economic crisis has led some governments to intensify efforts to seek tax revenue abroad -- and Switzerland, which accounts for nearly 30 percent of all offshore private wealth, is a natural target. Earlier this year:
- Switzerland was put on a "gray list" by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and threatened with financial sanctions, leading the government to provisionally renegotiate tax agreements with a dozen countries so far.
- Most of those agreements would require Switzerland to hand over individuals' financial information for tax purposes in accordance with the organization's standards.
- The United States Justice Department went even further and filed a lawsuit against UBS, seeking the names of 52,000 account holders suspected of hiding money from the Internal Revenue Service.
Today, Swiss citizens continue to vote on any tax increases in referendums (and sometimes even accept them). These healthy curbs on government contrast with the Orwellian concept of the "transparent citizen" whose every act is known to government.
[Again and again: liberal-progressive governments think it's their money...]
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Dad fined for belting man wooing his child
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A Blenheim father has been convicted and fined $1000 for assaulting a man who wanted to have sex with his 13-year-old daughter.
Defence lawyer Michael Hardy Jones told the Blenheim District Court yesterday that the May 5 assault occurred after the defendant and his wife had tried other ways of keeping the man away from their daughter.
[We've a legal crisis in this country.]
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Could bar stools be next?
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Could bar stools and pool cues be next to be banned from Queensland pubs and clubs, following the State Government's decision to replace glass with plastic cups in some bars.
In March, Treasurer Andrew Fraser said some Queensland licensees had taken voluntary action to make '''glass alternatives''' available to patrons...
[It doesn't stop until stopped.]
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AP Finally Discovers 'Head-Snapping' U.S. Receipts Dive
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Well, it only took them about 3-1/2 months.
Yours truly and others have since April noted a precipitous and likely historic dive in Uncle Sam's monthly collections. Year-over-year declines actually began last summer. The degree of monthly fall-offs has gotten "progressively" worse since then.
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Higher Costs Spur Rise in Spending
[Credit where due; from the NYT {even a blind squirrel...}]
The broader economy may be testing the bottom, but for American consumers, there appears to be no end yet in sight for falling wages and higher living expenses. That was the picture painted Tuesday by the government’s monthly report on personal incomes and consumer spending.
While consumers spent more in June, they did so because prices of food and energy were rising, and not because they were ready to spend freely again...
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Green Jobs: Fast-tracking Economic Suicide
The sobering real world economic realities for "countries like Spain, Germany and Japan" who "surged ahead"
It's a shame that members of the US Congress that voted for the recent Cap and Trade Climate Bill did not bother to check up on the economic realities which are causing European states to back away from expensive alternative energy commitments and the ‘green job' creation schemes associated with them by inserting all manner of substance-emptying ‘get-out' clauses into EU cap and trade plans.
Germany's Angela Merkel has already insisted on major exemptions for German heavy industry come December's ‘definitive' global climate summit in Copenhagen. Bizarrely, for a so-called ‘Green Chancellor', Merkel's government is also supporting the building of 26 new coal-fired power plants across Germany.
Italy also rocked the EU climate boat by insisting on exemptions for its own energy-intensive industries at the turn of the year. Most significantly, it is an exemption that requires the EU to renegotiate Europe's entire climate policy after the UN summit in December -- effectively, giving Italy a veto. [and after the US has signed up to lunacy without such veto clauses]
In June, deputy head of Poland's Solidarity trade union, Jaroslaw Grzesik, estimated that the EU's climate policy would cost 800,000 European jobs. The think-tank Open Europe has already estimated that the same policies will cost the UK $9 billion a year, leaving an additional 1 million people in poverty by 2020.
Cited as a role model nation by President Obama in Januaray 2009, Spain is the only country to have produced an in-depth analysis of the impact of renewables on the jobs market.
The Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources was published by a team at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in March, 2009, and though largely ignored by the mainstream press [but not the amateur press*], its findings were damning. Here are just a few:
- "Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) ‘green jobs' policies ... Spain has created a surprisingly low number of jobs."
- "Since 2000 Spain has spent €571,138 ($800K) to create each ‘green job', including subsidies of more than €1million ($1.4million) per wind industry job."
- "The programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy or 2.2. jobs destroyed for every ‘green job' created."
- "Each ‘green' megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics (solar), 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro."
The report concludes, "Policymakers must recognize that because of government action, other jobs are not created." And, most significantly for international consumption, "These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain's approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."
If Obama & Co. were to remove their green-tinted glasses for just a moment and take a long hard look at the European experience they profess to cite as ‘proven', they would discover those glasses have been rose-tinted all along.
[Ah, but saving mother Gaia isn't really their objective...]
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*FLASHBACK >
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Spain’s green jobs boondoggle
Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job,
HEALTH "REFORM" THAT ISN'T
Despite the rhetoric, health care costs will rise under the President Obama's "reform"
The health care conundrum involves a contradiction that the administration steadfastly obscures: in the short run, government cannot both insure the uninsured and rein in health spending:
- The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) judges that the cost would be $1 trillion over the decade; of that, $239 billion would add to the budget deficit.
- Worse, the costs would rise faster than the sources of financing, including a tax on the wealthy; in 2019, the deficit would be $65 billion.
- Assuming that deficit rises four percent a year, the cumulative shortfall in the second decade would total $800 billion.
But because the president is so well spoken, he has the ability to make misleading statements sound reasonable or sophisticated... [and go unchallenged by our professional media]
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Alinsky-in-August Offensive
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Alinsky Rule #13:Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Nancy Pelosi, last Thursday:"It's almost immoral what they are doing," Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. "Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure," she said, adding, "They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening."
On Friday, The Hill intercepted a top-secret, Dem communiqué that spelled out the battle plan for the Alinsky-in-August MediCoup offensive, echoing Imperious Nancy's salvo at the insurance companies, the now-to-be targeted "villain."
The Democrats' war strategy is simple and, of course, it's pure Alinsky. Target the insurance companies and make them out to be reprobate wretches of the most vile, greedy, Simon-Legree sort imaginable. We are sure to be treated to ads, which feature purely hair-raising "robber-baron-rips-off-Harry&Louise" tales of insurance company bad guys.
Setting up the battle lines, Pelosi told the NYT what the so-called enemies of the little people will do in August:"This is going to be carpet bombing," she said. "Carpet bombing, slash and burn, shock and awe - anything you want to say to describe what the insurance companies will do to hold on to their special advantage, which exploits the patients and holds the American consumer at the mercy of the insurance company."
But, so far, none of the Democrats' tactics has worked all that well in convincing a wary public to just trust them to know what's best for all our healthcare.
When 83% of Americans are quite happy with the healthcare they have, then convincing them to let go of it for the obviously-fools-gold "public option" is an up-hill battle, as the Dems have finally figured out.
So, they will employ their usual politics-by-fear, and fill the airwaves with individual stories about evil insurers denying coverage, and plant the fear that the same will happen to you without the MediCoup solution... [snip]
When every single Democrat Congressperson and their President signs a pledge to be the first enrollees in their "public option" health insurance scheme, then, and only then, will we be willing to talk about reform. Because, at the moment, we -- Harry & Louise Q. Citizens -- are the only ones with any skin in this game and we're feeling mighty burned.
Besides, it's hard to trust an insurance salesman who hasn't even read the policy, now isn't it?
[And according to Gibbs yesterday, has no intention of ever reading what Congress eventually asks for his signature on.]
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Obama Joker Poster Popping Up In Los Angeles
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Have you seen this poster?
Apparently, it's beginning to appear in odd places in Los Angeles, but nobody seems to know who's responsible for it.
Radio host Tammy Bruce posted some pictures of this odd creation at her blog Saturday morning (h/t Pamela Geller) leading me to investigate further.
At this point, all I could find on the subject was an April 25 article from Bedlam Magazine:
A poster of Barack Obama in Heath Ledger-style Joker make-up with the legend 'Socialism' beneath it has been popping up recently on surfaces around L.A. It does not appear to be in the same category as the many benign take-offs on the Shepard Fairey 'Hope' poster, such as the one by Australian James Lillis (more of a straightforward spoof that merely substituted a Shepardized image of Heath Ledger as Joker on the Obama poster).
The ObamaJoker poster has also been seen in Hollywood.
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Obama Joker Poster Stirs Outrage, Bush Joker Poster Not So Much
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Not surprisingly, the Obama Joker Poster reported by NewsBusters Saturday is already drawing some outrage.
According to a television station where the posters have been spotted,
"Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous."
Hmmm. I wonder where the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable was when Vanity Fair published this last July:
And where was their outrage when the Village Voice published this on the cover of its October 26, 2004, issue:
In reality, if I wanted to, I could likely produce hundreds of disgusting drawings of Bush, Cheney, and others in their Administration plastered at publications across the fruited plain the last eight years.
That was acceptable commentary and political satire - back then.
Now that Obama is in the White House, it's called "mean-spirited and dangerous"??
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‘jOker’: When the Left’s Scared They Scream ‘Racist’
Naturally those who enjoyed (and created) all the “art” and pop culture used to demonize and dehumanize George W. Bush (whoops!) are now crying “racism” with the turning of the tables. They’re worried, and this hollow cry is all they got because who knows better the power of this kind of imagery than those who have been using it for decades to further their goals of enslaving entire populations under the cruel yoke of Big Government.
Yesterday, when the “L.A. Weekly” went all crybaby over the Obama-Joker poster, they must have known that they themselves had published a cover portraying Bush as a blood-thirsty vampire. But all’s fair in love and war and this is ideological war where hypocrisy is a weapon, not something to be ashamed of.
The Left wants Obama-Joker nipped in the bud, and their goal is to stigmatize it as something racist before it shows up on t-shirts all over the country — before it catches fire.
Like Zorro with his “Z,” this artist strikes anonymously — and who can blame the desire for anonymity. No one even knows who this person is (he or she might be an Obama fan who thinks the posters are cool), and already the “R-Word” has been thrown about. Imagine if this individual is found to be anti-Obama.
Remember Politico digging up dirt on a private citizen who merely asked Obama a question; the coordinated attack on Sarah Palin’s family courtesy of Hollywood and the media? Hell, Carrie Prejean agreed with Obama on gay marriage and look what they did to her. No, anonymity is probably a good idea.
Here’s another reason to stay in the shadows — a political reason:
When Obama has no one to attack, he must address the issue of his socialist policies directly, instead of attacking critics (or more accurately, using the media to do it for him). Personally, I hope the artist is a little, old, African American lady from Compton.
Personally, I hope the first person to give me a hard time over my Obama-Joker t-shirt is wearing something Leftist-approved, like something found here.
That kind of irony doesn’t come along every day.
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The Great Lie: ‘Americanism’ Doesn’t Sell Overseas
If you think the national news media is biased, spend some time rummaging through the world of entertainment news.
Today’s L.A. Times piece about the marketing of “G.I. Joe” has an especially priceless whopper:
"Yet overseas, where big action films often earn 60% or more of their ticket sales, rah-rah American sentiment doesn’t play well."
The Great Lie told by Leftist Hollywood and the media who shill for them is that in order to make money the likes and dislikes of an “international” audience must be considered, and international audiences loathe Americanism.
Let’s see how that’s working out with some overseas numbers for a few “big action films.”
To excuse the stripping of Superman’s Americanism (and masculinity), a lot of fanfare was made over the need for “Superman Returns” to appeal to the foreign box office, and yet the film bombed both here and abroad, making only $191 million overseas.
Compare that to the international box-office for Sam Raimi’s ”Spider-Man” trilogy, which never shied from its hero’s unique Americanism or an iconic shot of the stars and stripes:
Spider-Man: $418 million [ *-all]
Spider-Man II: $410 million
Spider-Man III: $554 million
Here’s the international box-office for some “big action” films from the last fifteen years unafraid, and in some cases proud, of their Americanism:
National Treasure: $174 million
National Treasure II: $237 million
Pearl Harbor: $251 million
Armageddon: $352 million
Independence Day: $511 million
I Am Legend: $329 million
Hancock: $396 million
At best, Leftists can argue “pro rah-rah” is a box-office wash outside the states, but “anti-rah-rah” has zero appeal to international audiences, and yet Hollywood refuses to stop making them.
Here are the overseas numbers for those with so-called “bankable” stars attached:
Lions for Lambs: $43 million
In the Valley of Elah: $22 million
Rendition: $17 million
Stop-Loss: $291 thousand
Body of Lies: $75 million
A Mighty Heart: $9 million
Grace is Gone: $887 thousand
Don’t confuse my argument here. I am not saying ”rah-rah American sentiment” does sell overseas What I’m arguing is that it’s wholly dishonest for anyone to flatly and matter-of-factly state it does not.
This myth about international box-office was created to give Hollywood a “business” excuse when they refuse to portray America in a positive light or turn Superman into a flying symbol of United Nations conflicted meterosexuality.
The unquestioning entertainment media jumps right on board because it’s yet another way for them to spread dishonest propaganda regarding America’s unpopularity overseas.
It’s a win-win - except at the box office...
[*Links to all revenue claims at source.]
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