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Tea Party leaders ask voters to help draft ‘Contract from America’

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It's reminiscent of 1994, but in addition to budget balancing and term limits amendments, there’s a plank for preventing the government from regulating the Internet.

A list of issues that the activists will vote on include:

• Amending the constitution to require a balanced budget and a two-thirds majority for any tax hike.
• Permanently repealing all tax hikes scheduled to begin in 2011.
• Requiring every bill in Congress to be made public seven days before any vote can be taken and all government expenditures authorized by any bill to be easily accessible on the Internet before the money is spent.
• Requiring each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
• Permitting all health insurance plans to be sold anywhere in the United States through the purchase of insurance across state lines. Allow small businesses and associations to pool together across state lines to buy insurance.
• Adopting a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and “replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words — the length of the original Constitution.”
• Imposing a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.
• Allowing Americans to opt out of Social Security and Medicare and instead put those same payroll taxes in a personal account “they own, control and can leave to whomever they choose.”
• Preventing any regulation or tax on the Internet.
• Improving education by eliminating ineffective and wasteful programs, giving parents more choices from pre-school to high school and improving the affordability of higher education.
• Authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition.
• Prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from using funds to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
• Creating a Blue Ribbon task force that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs.
• Blocking state and local governments that receive federal grants from exercising eminent domain over private property for the primary purpose of economic development or enhancement of tax revenues.
• Preventing the EPA from implementing costly new regulations.
• Placing a moratorium on all earmarks until the process is fully transparent. Also requiring a two-thirds majority to pass any earmark.
• Making all lawmaking regulators, including presidential appointed czars, be affirmatively approved by Congress and signed into law by the president.
• Audit the Federal Reserve System.
• Making sure the federal government does not bail out private companies. The government should also immediately divest itself of its stake in the private companies it owns from recent bailouts.
• Amending the constitution to require congressional term limits. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than twice or to the House of Representatives more than four times.
• Making all regulations “sunset” after 10 years unless renewed by congressional vote.
• Broadcasting all non-security meetings and votes on C-SPAN and the Internet.

Tea Party Patriots, the group organizing the effort, will hold a press conference on Thursday in Washington, D.C., at the CPAC conference to announce the launch of thecontract.org, where activists can help “draft” the finalized contract by voting for their top 10 of those issues.

Ryan Hecker, a national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots and a member of the Houston Tea Party Society who developed the contract idea, said it “is a grassroots, bottom-up document.”

“It’s going to be a very democratic process,” Hecker said.

After releasing a final “Contract from America” on April 15, activists will ask members of Congress to sign the final document.

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ABC Dismisses the Idea That 2010 Will Be Trouble for Dems: 'A Tempest in a Teapot'

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Good Morning America on Sunday derided the idea that Democratic retirements in Congress spell bad news for the party in 2010. Hendren, a day before Evan Bayh announced he's leaving the Senate, dismissed,

"But, for now, despite all the passionate, anti-incumbent tea parties, the math suggests limited changes on Capitol Hill. A tempest in a teapot."

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The Republican Party Began as a Tea Party Movement

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Republicans should welcome a comparison of their party’s history with that of the Democrats – the party of slavery and socialism, Big Government and the Ku Klux Klan. As Republicans try to repel the socialist onslaught, the way to win – and to deserve to win – is to embrace our party’s original reform agenda. The patriots who created our Grand Old Party did so in order to preserve the vision of the Founding Fathers. And the way they did it has valuable lessons for us today...

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MSNBC Mocks 'Controversial' Tea Party Convention and the 'Funny Outfits'

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[Professional journalism.]

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Marines link up in Afghan Taliban stronghold

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Marjah, Afghanistan - Marines moving by land from the north linked up Tuesday with U.S. units that have faced nearly constant Taliban attack in the four days since they were dropped by helicopter into this insurgent stronghold in southern Afghanistan. Also Tuesday, U.S. artillery fired non-lethal smoke rounds to disperse Taliban fighters

Commanders refused a Marine request to fire deadly high-explosive rounds because the unit on the ground could not be sure civilians weren't at risk...

[Insanity. Tecmuseh (Sherman) was right.]

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Qassam fired from Gaza explodes near Ashkelon

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A Qassam rocket fired from Gaza exploded just south of Ashkelon on Thursday, causing no casualties or damage. The rocket fire came at the heels of a barrage of mortar shells earlier in the day, with Gaza militants firing at least 10 shells into Israel, and an anti-tank missile being fired at Israel Defense Forces troops patrolling the border with Gaza...

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Congressman says US should break Gaza blockade

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The United States should break Israel's blockade of Gaza and deliver badly needed supplies by sea, a US congressman told Gaza students.

Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington state, also urged President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy to visit Hamas to get a firsthand look at the destruction caused by Israeli's military offensive last year...

[ And if Mexico lobbed missiles toward San Diego, that wouldn't be cause for retaliation if they caused no major harm? Meaning we'd wait until after one hit a school {being targeted by Hamas, btw} to take seriously? Unbelievable. {Sadly, not.}. ]

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Greece loses EU voting power in blow to sovereignty

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The European Union has shown its righteous wrath by stripping Greece of its vote at a crucial meeting next month, the worst humiliation ever suffered by an EU member state.

The council of EU finance ministers said Athens must comply with austerity demands by March 16 or lose control over its own financial policies altogether.

It if fails to do so, the EU will itself impose cuts under the draconian Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty in what would amount to economic suzerainty...

[Ignoring the fact that the Lisbon Treaty has yet to be ratified, does stripping Greece of its vote not mean it's to be governed without representation?

There's a collective tyranny emerging in Europe's 'union' that has all but supplanted any claim to self-governance on that continent...]

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U.S. Should See Greece as A Warning

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The fiscal collapse of Greece has rattled international markets and renewed questions about the feasibility of maintaining a single currency across Europe.

But it should also provide a warning to Americans about how quickly things can unravel for a country when it refuses to confront the realities of its mounting debt.

If it's hard to imagine the same sort of meltdown happening here, consider this: in Greece, debt is currently at 112. 6 percent of GDP.

According to the Congressional Budget Office's fiscal projections, we're on course to reach roughly that level (with debt at 111.5 percent of GDP) in 2025.

That's just 15 years from now...

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image toon - mny tax - Ob feeding more stimulus to debt lion

Obama’s Stimulus One Year Out: Employment Falls, Deficits Grow

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A year after Congress passed President Barack Obama's $862 billion stimulus package, unemployment remains stubbornly high, and the federal deficit has mushroomed. By the time the stimulus program kicked in, the recession had cost the economy more than 6 million jobs. Since the program began, the nation has lost 2 million more.

Many experts feel it is was costly, debt-increasing blip that merely made ripples in the nation's economy...

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Now IPCC hurricane 'data' is questioned

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More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming.

A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported...

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IPCC Report of Increased Hurricanes Not Supported by the Data

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A new study raises serious questions about yet another IPCC forecast of doom.

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The red-hot scam unravels

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Not everybody is on to the global-warming scam, not yet, but all the people — or enough of them — are getting there. "Global warming," or even "climate change" as Al's marketing men now insist that it be called, is becoming the stuff of jests and jokes.

Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican, built an igloo of that hot stuff that buried Washington last week on the Capitol lawn and dubbed it "Al Gore's new home"...

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image toon - grn - burn Gore's books, keep farmers almanac

SOCIALISM KILLS: THE COST OF DELAYED ECONOMIC REFORM IN INDIA

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In "Socialism Kills: The Cost of Delayed Economic Reform In India," Aiyar seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates" and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. He finds that with earlier reform:

• 14.5 million more children would have survived.
• 261 million more Indians would have become literate.
• 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line.

The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

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Organizing Kids for Obama

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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog AtlasShrugs.com..

I would like to talk to you today about Organizing for America (OFA), formerly Obama for America, and what it is doing in public schools....

[Parents: do you know what your children are being 'taught'?]

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What Bias? Re: CBS Skips Part of Poll Finding Most Americans Want Smaller Government

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Touting the latest CBS News/New York Times poll on Friday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer concluded that Americans were upset with President Obama and Congress simply over the influence of "special interest groups," without mentioning massive government spending or ObamaCare as other possible reasons.

After reporting that 70% of Americans were "dissatisfied or angry about the way things are going in Washington," Smith focused on the poll question about special interests: "8 in 10 say Congress is more interested in serving the needs of special interest groups rather than the people they represent." Schieffer explained: [snip]

However, neither Smith nor Schieffer brought up the part of the poll that showed the desire by a majority of Americans for smaller government:

"59% of Americans think the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals....56% would choose a smaller government providing fewer services over a bigger government providing more services, up from 48% last spring and the highest percentage in more than a decade."

[Professionals both.]

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THE NATIONAL DEBT: DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH YOU NOW OWE?

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As of Feb. 7, our total national debt was $12,348,804,540,946.54 or $12.35 trillion which is larger than the economies of China, the United Kingdom and Australia combined.

The national debt is growing with the spending spree in Washington, D.C. According to the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget:

• Our national debt will grow an additional $9 trillion over the next decade, to more than $20 trillion.
• During that time, the United States will accumulate $2.5 billion in new debt each and every day.
• That's $1.72 million per minute, for the next ten years.

According to the Department of the Treasury the estimated population of the United States is 307,795,997 so each citizen's [man, woman and child] share of this debt is $40,146.02.

And all these calculations are before Congress tacks on trillions for health care, cap and trade, new federal stimulus programs, and other yet to be identified spending programs.

Part of the way President Obama plans to pay for his new round of spending is to eliminate the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts families making more than $250,000 per year which impacts a ton of family-owned, small businesses which are the backbone of our economy and nation...

[All the wrong steps...]

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Obama misdiagnoses source of deficits

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President Obama says he wants to reduce America's record trillion-dollar deficits. Too bad he hasn't even correctly diagnosed their cause. Yes Mr. Bush implemented the three policies mentioned by Mr. Obama in his State of the Union address.

Yet by 2007 — the last year before the recession — the budget deficit stood at only $161 billion.

So how could those policies cause trillion-dollar deficits from 2009 through 2020?

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CNN: Bush Tax Cuts Are Largest Cause Of Budget Deficit

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CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday demonstrated just how ignorant most media members are of how the federal budget actually works. During the most recent installment of "Fareed Zakaria GPS," the host actually said,

"[T]he Bush tax cuts are the single largest part of the black hole that is the federal budget deficit."

Before we examine the staggering stupidity on display here, let's first look at exactly what Zakaria said (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

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uffett: Bush Did Good Job During Financial Crisis

Investment legend Warren Buffett says he has come to respect President Bush’s handling of the financial crisis. The Oracle of Omaha notes that he has read great economists from Adam Smith to John Keynes.

“But I’ve never heard a more eloquent statement that succinctly summed up the economic world than George Bush made in September 2008, when he said in a memorable 10 words, ‘If money doesn’t loosen up, this sucker can go down.’”

The remark resembled Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “short, but to the point,” Buffett said.

“He (Bush) went to (Harvard) business school. He had a good fundamental understanding of markets and economic issues. I really did gain an appreciation for the fact that he understood what was going on and understood what needed to be done. He cared about them.”

[Again, I think history will consistently improve its opinion of our sometimes-ineloquent 43rd President.]

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CBS’s Schieffer to Biden: Doesn’t George Bush ‘Also Need a Little Thanks for That?’



Words never spoken before by a CBS News journalist: “Do you think also that George Bush would also need a little thanks for that? I mean, does he share in the credit or not?”

That very unusual quest to credit former President Bush came from Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, since even for him Vice President Joe Biden’s claim -- “Iraq, I think, is going to be one of the great achievements of this administration” -- was too much. Cuing up a retort from former VP Dick Cheney on ABC’s This Week aired just over an hour earlier, Schieffer challenged Biden:

"You said the other night to Larry King in an interview that you thought Iraq could be one of the “great achievements” of this administration. And I must say a lot of people, when you said that, said their response was “what?” This administration didn’t have very much to do with Iraq and your friend, Dick Cheney, had a thought about that, as well. So let’s listen to this.”

Cheney suggested “for them to try to take credit for what’s happened in Iraq strikes me as little strange” and recommended “it ought to go with a healthy dose of ‘thank you, George Bush,’ upfront.”

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