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ABC Finally Catches Up with Democratic Scandals; Flashback: 152 Stories on Foley

Subject: txt 2010 1st msm bias -
ABC's World News on Friday night finally caught up with burgeoning Democratic scandals, though hardly showing the same zeal as when the networks incessantly focused on Republican Congressman Mark Foley back in 2006.

On Thursday, the MRC's Scott Whitlock documented how this week the ABC evening newscast had “devoted almost six times as much coverage to Senator Jim Bunning and his temporary hold-up of an unemployment bill as the program did for the ongoing revelations that Democratic Charlie Rangel violated House ethics with his trips to the Caribbean...

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Dems Race to Pass Health Care Bill Ahead of Wave of Town Hall Meetings

Subject: txt 1st 2010 hcare -
Democrats are racing the clock to pass health care reform ahead of a wave of Tea Party-driven town hall meetings planned for the spring recess -- the kind of gatherings that nearly derailed the package last August. But there's a big difference this time around. Last summer, Democrats were encouraged to hold the town hall meetings, and they were blindsided by the backlash, which was recorded and promoted in countless YouTube clips.

This time around, they have a good idea of what's coming -- and they're lying low...

[Representative government?]

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POLL: 55% Say Congress Should Start Over On Health Care

Subject: txt 1st hcare -
Following a small bounce in support following his health care summit last week, President Obama has continued to try to rally House Democrats to vote for his health care overhaul. He wants the legislation approved by the Senate passed in December as a “first step” towards further improvements of the plan.

However, most U.S. voters (55%) would rather see Congress scrap the original plan and start all over again, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

[Again, if the House passes the Senate bill as-is it will be the LAST step: both would have approved and Oby need only sign it to become LAW.]

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Onward with Obamacare, regardless

Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: a dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed -- say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak is to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?

Perhaps something like 3 to 1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry's feeling about the current Democratic health-care bills.

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health-care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch...

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Obama's Healthcare Pitch to Democrats: Trust Me

Sunday, 07 Mar 2010 10:17 AM Article Font Size
In private pitches to Democrats, President Barack Obama says he will persuade Congress to pass his health care overhaul even if it kills him and even if he has to ask deeply distrustful lawmakers to trust him on a promise the White House doesn't have the power to keep.

That, in a sometimes darkly joking way, is what the president is telling Democratic House members as he begins an all-out push to coax Congress into passing his proposals despite voters' opposing the idea...

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MSNBC: : 'It's The End of the Democratic Party' If Senate Doesn't Pass Healthcare Via Reconciliation

Subject: txt hcare fnn msm - Matthews
[OK]

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Armey: Dems Should Realize People Are Getting Info From Some Place Other Than MSNBC

Subject: txt msm bias hcare 2010 - fnn -
Speaking about the Democrats, Armey said,

"They need to understand they live in an Internet world now, and people are getting their information from some place other than MSNBC or other soft news sources that are pandering to the Left"

(video embedded below the fold):

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Iran Draws Closer to Nuclear Capability as World Watches

Subject: txt gwot nsec owg intl iran -
Last Friday, the New York Times ran an interesting piece by David Sanger about a puzzling element that emerged in the latest IAEA report on Iran — namely Iran’s decision to bring most of its LEU stockpile to the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant for further enrichment to 19.75 percent levels. The move was puzzling for the simple reason that Iran did not need to feed its entire stockpile for further enrichment in order to address its shortage of 19.75 percent uranium needed at the Tehran Research Reactor for medical purposes...

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Nuclear Inspectors: Iran Worked on Warhead

[HT:DT]

The United Nations' nuclear inspectors last week declared for the first time that they had extensive evidence of "past or current undisclosed activities" by Iran's military to develop a nuclear warhead, The New York Times reported. The report—issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—cited 'new' evidence that appeared to paint a picture of a concerted drive in Iran toward a weapons capability.

Echoing the Obama administration, the agency described an escalating series of worrisome steps by Iran: the enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, its acknowledgment of a secret enrichment plant in Qom and its rejection of a deal to enrich its uranium outside the country. The Islamic Republic also told inspectors it was preparing to make its uranium into a metallic form—a step that is widely viewed as necessary for making the core of an atom bomb...

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U.S. to Syria: Stop Arming Hizballah

Subject: txt israel gwot -
The Obama administration has asked [?] Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately stop transferring arms to Hizballah.

Hizballah's war against Israel in the summer of 2006, Hizballah fired more than 4,000 Syrian and Iranian supplied rockets into Israel. Damascus continues to help Hizballah rearm, both directly and by permitting the shipment of Iranian-arms through its territory—a violation of [the worthless] U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war.

Syria has long provided financial and military support for Hizballah and other terrorist organizations and has been on the U.S. list of designated state sponsors of terrorism since 1979.

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Nuclear arms treaty stalls over Russian demands

Subject: txt intl nsec russia -
Washington - The US President plans ''dramatic reductions'' in the US nuclear weapon stockpile as part of a sweeping review designed to prove his commitment to the goal of global nuclear disarmament. The news of Barack Obama's review emerged as negotiations to complete a US-Russia nuclear arms treaty stalled over a Russian demand for the option to withdraw unilaterally if Moscow determines that US missile defence would threaten its intercontinental nuclear missile force...

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Bungling Russia

Subject: txt intl russia trade nsec -
First Obama visited Russia and displayed craven weakness before his KGB counterparts in the Kremlin. He barely even paid lip service to American values, crushing the spirits of Russia's democracy movement leaders, and his unilateral reversal of the Bush missile defense plan for Eastern Europe led only to more posturing and aggression by Russia against its neighbors and demands for more concessions from Obama.

And now, things have gotten even worse.

Obama has given the cold shoulder to Nicholas Sarkozy of France, apparently believing him to be part of the conservative rabble who are beneath his dignity to treat seriously. Panicked and offended at his loss of influence with the USA, Sarkozy has fallen back on the predictable French model: Play the Russia card.

Specifically, Sarkozy has agreed to sell Russia not one but four dangerous "Mistral" class battleships. Russia has only one purpose in mind for these vessels: It wants to use them to seal off the nation of Georgia from the sea, thereby significantly enhancing its ability to browbeat the tiny country back into the Russian "sphere of influence."

... Obama is apparently willing to sacrifice American values and his own principles on the altar of his fanciful notion that if he makes enough unilateral concessions to Russia and utters enough amorous phrases, he will transfer Russia's KGB government from pathological haters of America into a band of allies ... Obama must have been surprised, then, to see Russia announce that it would press forward with its plan to sell S-300 air defense missiles to Iran...

But there is no sign of any change in Obama's policy. Worse, there is little sign from Republican quarters that conservatives are willing to step up and challenge Obama's actions...

One would think that the lesson of Chamberlain has stuck by now: Weakness begets only defeat. Unilateral concessions beget only demands for more of the same....

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The ICC: International Justice or Global Government?

Subject: txt owg lbrty -
Remember President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen last year? Not the failed Chicago Olympics bid, but the Climate Change Conference where he attempted to place America under a cooperative international climate treaty.

Now, the President has turned his attention to other avenues of global entente, and the frustrated momentum of the climate treaty has been replaced with a move towards closer cooperation with the International Criminal Court.

Committing the U.S. to international accords that threaten to undermine our nation’s sovereignty appears to be a temptation the current administration cannot resist.

In November 2009, Stephen Rapp, the American Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues announced that the “[U.S.] government has now made the decision that Americans will return to engagement at the ICC.” At first glance this may appear as a great opportunity for America to shed its big-bully persona and embrace an agreeable multi-lateral approach.

However, as Marion Smith of the Heritage Foundation argues in a recent Backgrounder, An Inconvenient Founding: America’s Principles Applied to the ICC, American involvement in the ICC would represent nothing short of ceding America’s sovereignty to an unaccountable international legal body.

ICC membership would represent an important break from our First Principles. Citing historical examples dating back to the Founding, Smith argues that the U.S. has always been wary of international agreements that may supersede the power of the Constitution and consequently threaten the sovereignty of the U.S.

The continued independence of the U.S. remains crucial to the maintenance of America’s democratic institutions. Despite mounting global pressure to the contrary, America must remain true to its constitutional obligations and continue to defend the sovereignty of our nation.

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Government Dependents: The New Majority

Subject: txt sclm bbro bdd vals - 2010 -
Welfare State: A major newspaper looks at the data and finds that Americans have become more dependent on government than at any time since the Depression. Something's gone terribly wrong in our country. We Americans pride ourselves on our independence. Our nation's founding document even uses that in its title — the Declaration of Independence. But this spirit is fading with each new year, each new state and federal program, each new unkeepable promise made to a growing throng of citizens looking to government — not their own abilities, savvy, learning and hard work— to get by in life...

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Reality Check...

Subject: txt mny msm sclm bbro libs -

"These folks can afford it. They were rich back in the 90s."

President Barack Obama, in support of his proposed "tax increases on families earning $250,000 or more a year" as reported by the Washington Times.

Date sources: top marginal rates from the IRS, Historical Table 23, federal revenue 1930-2002 from US Statistical Abstract, Historical Statistics, federal revenue 2003-07 from US Statistical Abstract, Table 451.

Percentage of federal income tax returns filed by those reporting incomes (AGI) of $200,000 or more in 2005: 2.7%.


Percentage of federal income taxes paid by those reporting incomes (AGI) of $200,000 or more in 2005: 51%.

Data source: US Statistical Abstract, Table 470.

[I.e., Any taxation above 20% results in a retarded GDP until the 20% equilibrium is reestablished. I.e., lower tax rates to grow the pie the governments slice comes from...]
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[HT:DT]

The democracy will cease to exist
when you take away from those
who are willing to work and give
to those who would not.

Thomas Jefferson

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff122881...html

Britain's Independence Party Wants to Ban Gore's Film from Schools

Subject: txt grn edu -
The Independence Party in Great Britain wants to ban Nobel Laureate Al Gore's fact-challenged schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" from being shown in schools.

The British Telegraph reported Thursday:

Following a number of scandals around the science of climate change, UKIP are promising to launch a Royal Commission led by a High Court judge to investigate whether global warming is man-made...

Wait. It gets better...

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Even the Criminals of Climategate Avoid Gore

Subject: txt grn owg 1st -

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”—Mark Twain.

Twain’s observation is precisely the issue with the Nobel Peace Prizes given to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now completely discredited because the ‘scientists’ it used for its 'data' fabricated the bulk of it...

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(Honorary) Dr. Al Gore

[But in American academia...]

The University of Tennessee announced that former Vice President Al Gore will receive an honorary doctorate of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology on May 14 at graduation ceremonies, where he will be the featured commencement speaker.

Abraham Lincoln said,

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

Apparently the only people still fooled by Al Gore in Tennessee are the academics running the State University in Knoxville.

His fellow Tennesseans are not. The knoxnews.com website that published the article conducted an online poll. More than 90% of almost 14,000+ people who've responded thus far expressed the opinion that Gore doesn't deserve the honorary degree...

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The Pathetic God of Environmentalism

Subject: txt grn lbrty bdd -
Many writers have pointed out that the global warming scam, and environmentalism in general, is a religion or a cult. What has not been done is to examine the nature of the deity of the religion.

The god of the environmentalists has three characteristics:

1) Their god is our planet, the Earth.

2) Their god is female. She is benign, protective, and, most important, vulnerable.

3) Their god is vulnerable because of the "pollution" (most specifically, CO2 -- a naturally occurring chemical compound) produced by human beings and our modern industrial society. This defilement of the atmosphere has caused (notice the gender used in the description) "man-made global warming."

The "pledge of allegiance" to the earth, from the Oregon Country Fair, sums up all three of these characteristics:

There is no doubt about the religious element that the prophet of global warming brings to the table. CBS news said of Gore, when he was promoting his film An Inconvenient Truth,

His slideshows are tailored to his audiences. For example, when he talks to evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible.

"I'm offering you the choice of life or death. You can choose either blessings or curses. -Deuteronomy Chapter 30, Verse 19"

Gore is trying to redefine this as a moral and spiritual issue.

The theological conclusion that follows from worshiping Mother Earth is that she is no god at all. She doesn't even have the power to defend herself from the CO2 that is emitted when we exhale.

The real gods of the environmentalists are the politicians and the scientists who believe that they can save the planet. Those who worship the environment should understand exactly who their gods are...

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