TRYING TO MEET THE CARTER STANDARD

Add President Obama's name to the ever-growing list of global-warming hypocrites.

During the campaign, Obama made no bones about where he stood on the question of energy and global warming:

"We can't drive our SUVs and . . . keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

Obviously, a president gets a necessary pass on driving in a big (i.e., safe) car.

But it turns out that Obama keeps the Oval Office at near-tropical heat levels. The New York Times reports that he doesn't wear a suit jacket at his desk because he has "cranked up the thermostat."

Explained adviser David Axelrod:

"He's from Hawaii, OK? He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there."

So would the rest of us, if we could afford it.

But talk about "Do as I say, not as I do."

Mr. President, how 'bout you turn down the heat - and borrow one of Jimmy Carter's old cardigans?

[2Qs: 1) who the hell is anyone to tell any of us how much power we can use given we each pay for our usage? 2) how about we make more energy and resign such thermostat v sweater 'debates' to the trash heap of infantile ideas where they belong? ]

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State Dept. Cites 'Large Firefights' in Travel Alert on Mexico

The department uses strong language to describe the situation in Mexico.

"Recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades. Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez. During some of these incidents, U.S. citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area."

Being "temporarily prevented" from leaving a firefight is never a good thing...

"U.S. citizens are urged to be alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region. . . . While most crime victims are Mexican citizens, the uncertain security situation poses serious risks for U.S. citizens as well,"

the alert states.

"Robberies, homicides, petty thefts, and carjackings have all increased over the last year across Mexico generally, with notable spikes in Tijuana and northern Baja California. Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales are among the cities which have recently experienced public shootouts during daylight hours in shopping centers and other public venues."

The State Department will review the situation again in six months.

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Wisconsin may fine schools $1,000 a day for Indian mascots

MADISON, Wis.— Democratic lawmakers are proposing a bill that would require the state to investigate complaints about American Indian mascots in Wisconsin schools.If the complaints are justified, the state Department of Public Instruction would have to order the school to drop the mascot or logo within a year or face fines of up to $1,000 a day...

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Reich's Call for Unionization is 'a 1930s Solution to a 2009 Problem,’ Economists Say

Reich is working hand-in-hand with a coalition of labor unions and the Center for American Progress Action Fund to call for increased unionization as a means of “saving the economy.”

As part of that, Reich endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the "Card Check" bill, which would allow union organizers to get employees of a company to create a union simply by signing union cards -- in lieu of workplace secret-ballot elections.

Barbara Comstock of the Workforce Fairness Institute, meanwhile, isn’t buying Reich’s analysis.

“By his logic, Michigan -- the most unionized state in the country -- would be the most prosperous state in the country and the auto industry would be the economic model that the rest of the country should follow,”

Nothing could be further from the truth, she said.

“On a day when the auto companies are asking for tens of billions of dollars more, and Michigan, according to the figures, is one of the least prosperous states with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, that argument makes no economic sense"

Economist and economic historian Robert Higgs, meanwhile, said Reich’s idea of promoting unionization “would be disastrous". Higgs, senior fellow in political economy for The Independent Institute, said that increased unionization in the 1930s actually helped to keep us in the Great Depression longer.

[Common sense folks: it's the number of people working - all of whom buy washers, while not being on the government dole. Less unions, more people with jobs. Recommended > ]

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BENEFITS NEGLECTED FOR CIVIL RETIREES

State and local governments have set aside virtually no money to pay $1 trillion or more in medical benefits for retired [union] civil servants. With bills coming due as baby boomers start to retire, states, cities, school districts and other governments will be forced to raise taxes.

The federal government has a $1.2 trillion unfunded obligation to pay medical costs for retired federal workers and military personnel. Medicare and Social Security push the nation's unfunded promises above $50 trillion.

Last year, for the first time, states and big cities were required to report the value of medical benefits promised to current and future retirees; state and local governments employ 20 million, and an additional 7 million are retired.

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Violating Their Sacred Honor

When the D.C. voting-rights bill comes up for a cloture vote in the Senate this Tuesday, senators will face one overriding question: Will they uphold their oaths to support and defend the Constitution? If they give the District of Columbia a voting representative in Congress, they will break those oaths.

Article I specifies that “Representatives . . . shall be apportioned among the several States,” and this is confirmed in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. One of the qualifications to be a congressman is to “be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.” [snip]

This is not an attempt to secure representation for District residents’ interests, then, but a raw grab at political power. It will establish a new, permanently Democratic seat in the House of Representatives.

Statehood proponents know that there is insufficient support nationwide to amend the Constitution to give D.C. a voting member of Congress. They’re willing to violate the Constitution instead. It will be a sad day in American political life if they succeed.

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"OPPOSE 'D.C.-Utah House Voting Rights Act"


Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...

and as always, pass it on...

.

What Happened to the Hopemonger?

Here's a fact that will probably shock you: Americans today have the same level of confidence in President Obama as they had in George W. Bush after his first month in office. According to Gallup, Obama's public approval rating currently stands at 63 percent, only a point above George W. Bush in late February 2001.

That Obama now stands where Bush did eight years ago, on the eve of his first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, serves as a reminder of how quickly the demands of the presidency can sober even the most talented politicians. [snip]

Both Reagan and Obama began their presidencies with less than one in five Americans satisfied with the direction of the country. At the same time, like when Reagan first took office, eight in 10 Americans today remain "satisfied with the way things are going in" their "own personal life." *

In other words, the people today seem more optimistic than their president. They haven't given up hope, and Obama's burden tomorrow is to demonstrate that neither has.

[Again, 'personal life' is based on first hand experience - and 'national attitudes' are based on what we hear in the media.]

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MASSES LEAVE CALIFORNIA

The state stepped away from the brink of financial ruin when the state Legislature ended months of deadlock and paralysis -- which had shut down road projects and held up tax refund checks -- by agreeing to a budget plan that increases taxes, cuts spending and borrows money to plug a $42 billion deficit by mid-2010. However:

• In Vallejo, a city of 115,000 people, 1,700 homes are in foreclosure or owned by banks.
• The highest foreclosure rate in the United States -- 9.5 percent last year -- was in the California city of Stockton, which Forbes magazine declared as America's "most miserable city."

Signs of decline abound, from potholed streets to public school classrooms that are among the nation's most crowded, to neighborhoods emptied of residents by the mortgage foreclosure crisis:

• Median home values in Southern California dropped 35 percent in the past year, and California has the lowest S&P bond rating of all 50 states.
• In each of four years prior to June 2008, more people left California than moved in from other states, a reversal of a decades-long trend in which the state took in more than it lost.
• Those leaving point to an unemployment rate that hit 9.3 percent in December, up from 5.9 percent a year earlier and fourth-highest in the nation, and taxes on income, sales and gas that are the highest in the nation.*

Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of Public Policy Institute of California, says the problem in the state...is the state itself.

[*yet those highest tax rates somehow aren't enough]

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The Diversity Hustle

Barack Obama ran for office as a unifier, but it was all a hustle. His brand of politics needs enemies. Like southern slave owners of old, today's conservative Republicans represent the enemy to be vanquished by enlightened progressives from the north. This is an old storyline that provides unlimited nourishment to America's liberal elites. Many of us, especially those of us who work in education, have long seen this coming. [snip]

"Individualism, fairness, merit -- these three words are continually in the mouths of our up-to-date, newly respectable bigots who have learned that they need not put on a white hood or bar access to the ballot box in order to secure their ends."

This kind of standard fare, cavalier hatred from the left is what has passed for "tolerance" and "diversity" in our schools for the last couple of decades. What's worse, the most brutal attacks on anything resembling the Enlightenment values of reason, merit, and individualism have occurred in our nation's law schools. [snip]

The authors reveal that professors "who cling to Enlightenment aspirations" are "at some risk of being labeled racists or bigots." Why? Because according to the multiculturalists, "conceptions of merit are invented by the powerful to reinforce their dominant position in society."

The authors go on to suggest that other groups that take advantage of merit based, objective measurements of success - such as Jews and Asians - will soon join white (especially conservative) Europeans as open targets...

[Highly Recommended > ]

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Primates Fear Backlash


A 55-year-old woman was allegedly assaulted by her friend's roommate Wednesday. Doctors listed Charla Nash's condition as critical.

The alleged assault occurred shortly after Nash entered the residence of her friend, Sandra Herold. Herold's roommate, Travis, allegedly confronted Nash shortly after she entered the residence. The nature of the disagreement is uncertain, but the confrontation quickly escalated, according to police.

Police were called to the scene and, in the ensuing conflagration, shot Travis. Travis suffered fatal wounds and was later declared dead by medics at the scene.

Police refused to identify the race, ethnicity or species of Travis. The motive is under investigation, according to a police spokesman. However, a spokesman for CAAR (Congress for American-Ape Relations) feared an unwarranted anti-ape backlash.

"I fear that many people not familiar with the primate culture will use this incident as an excuse to further alienate and demonize the primate community," said Moko Zimbabwe, CAAR spokeswoman. "It is important that the upright-walking ape community understand that this is an isolated incident and that we should not rush to judgment until all the facts are in," she added.

While police are not yet categorizing the assault as a hate-crime, sources at the scene describe aspects of the assault as not unlike those of fundamentalist primates.

Primate expert, Noam Chimpsky, observed that, "this is not completely unusual in the more conservative enclaves of primate society."

Several citizens were held behind police barricades, protesting the extreme response of the police.

"They just showed up and shot Travis dead," said Missy Teethie, a neighbor. "They didn't even talk to him or offer him a banana or nothing. They just shoot, shoot, shoot. I know Ms Herold and she is a nice woman and her Travis was always nice to her, too."

Chief of Police, Rod Blagoranutan, said that while the police at the scene appeared to have followed appropriate procedures, "I am ordering a complete investigation of this incident to make sure all actions taken were appropriate and within the guidelines of established policy."

When contacted by reporters, Koko, a primate familiar with Travis's fundamentalist faction of the primate community, signed that she would like an orange.

['Noam Chimpsky' - that's funny]


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Duck street gangs prey on tourists

No ‘magic bullet’ in Obama housing relief plan

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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image toon 1st mny - Captain Geithner = try new things-make mistakes

Just A Beginning?

"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.]

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Carter voices confidence in Obama stimulus plan

[What more proof do we need?]

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Too subtle?

mage toon - 1st fnn mny bbro sclm - Democrat Donkey = shovel ready

Twice as many feel headed down wrong track

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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image toon - vals reps msm bias - OB monument cracking 2 weeks in fnn

Obama thanks Canadian campaigners

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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NATO Allies Remain Cool to US Call for More Troops in Afghanistan

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?]

image toon - gwot - Pakistan signs treaty w-Taliban

Iran holds enough uranium for bomb

[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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White House undecided on European missile shield

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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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Labour bares its appeaser’s teeth to unbending Muslims

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

Wall Street Journal drops Dubai sponsorship after Israeli tennis player denied visa

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.]

UN carbon cut to cost Australia $870m

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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Government Doubles Available Aid to Fannie and Freddie

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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NRO Talks to CNBC's Rick Santelli

[Heard this video on the radio on the way into work yesterday and went and found it...]

National Review Online: Were you expecting anything like this reaction?

Rick Santelli: Not at all, not at all. It was just, after 48 hours of listening to hundreds of people trying to approach me on floors, on trains, everywhere, the opinions were almost unanimous, and I just tried to pick up that thread, and it just took on a life of its own.

NRO: When we posted a link to the video, we were swamped with e-mails in support, including a couple from traders at the Board of Trade in Chicago, who have been saying right on. How have the e-mails that you’ve been getting, how have they been running?

Santelli: I’ll be honest with you, I think I’ve gotten somewhere between 850-900, and I think I had three that were negative.

[Note the consistent condescension of the anchor personnel. Evidently if you don't subscribe to the new-socialist line there's something wrong with you. Don't believe it - we've no 'moral obligation' to bail our neighbors out, just the opposite; it's immoral to suggest it. Our obligation is to act responsibly ourselves and not become a burden to our fellow citizens, who do likewise.]

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"I remember way back, when a liberal was generous with his own money."

-- Will Rogers
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CEOs Hit Rock Bottom, Less Popular Than Congress

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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image toon - vals libs msm - Dems estatic more popular than ceos

The Law of Doomsaying

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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UK faces energy blackouts without investment in nuclear and clean coal

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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image toon - grn engry - Greeen cars in junk yard because no green coal plants for electricity

Emergency Review

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 with so many government programs, “the poor” are used as a political justification for imposing government-controlled medical care on everyone. But The Top Ten Myths of American Medical Care shows what a fraud that is and can literally be a life-saver. What it reveals is unlikely to be told by the mainstream media or by other enthusiasts for the magic phrase “universal health care.”

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Tyson urged to hire Shelbyville residents before immigrants, refugees

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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College sued over speech against gay marriage

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 > ]

select
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ACORN Pushes Return of Fairness Doctrine

... 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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image c-art - POLL GRAPH re Fairness Doctrine - lbrty bbro sclm -

As Goes California. . .

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).

Governor Schwarzenegger is trying to bully the legislature into a package which includes $14B more in new taxes. That move, if it gets through, plus the general deterioration in the quality of life is likely to increase the outflow of people, and, with it, high earners and businesses whose revenue the state needs. In short, the state is a basket case.

Those in the other 49 should take note. This is what a high tax, overregulated, union dominated economy looks like. And in the information age it is increasingly easy to relocate businesses — to another state or another country. So as we look to the federal government it might be a good idea to keep the California experience front and center. Do we want to dramatically increase the size of government, pass volumes of new environmental and other regulations, pass card check to give unions an even greater influence in the economy, and ( if the Congressional Democrats have their way) raise taxes?

For decades now, we have seen that as goes California, so goes the nation. Let’s hope that is no longer true.

[He missed one. I've come to believe that the Obama's real goal to is emulate California in establishing a permanent Democrat majority in Washington. California did it by gerrymandering it's districts in 2002 to the extent that the Democrat majority in Sacramento is permanent - and they know it. That's how a majority of California's can be opposed to (per KRON-4 poll) the new state budget and our state legislature moves ahead with it anyway.

Obama and company can accomplish it with three things, the first they've already enacted. 1) With the signing of the spendulus bill most Americans will pay no federal income taxes (when the many tax credits are returned to them). 2) Add the corruption of the upcoming census and 3) the FCC's enforcement of 'localization' regulations (stealth Fairness Doctrine with ACORN as litigant) so not enough people know about it until it's too late, and voila: Democrats forever.

I'd love to be wrong - time will tell.]

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ACTION

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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
petition and support ACU on this critical endeavor.

Thank you for your help with this important effort to shine the light on efforts to give billions to ACORN.

Sincerely,

Dennis WhitfieldExecutive Vice President

image photo - fnn - fortune cookie = 'that wasn't chicken

image toon - 1st fnn mny reps - Read before sign = what's worst can happen

Escape From D.C.

It's strange that so few mainstream media outlets have pointed out the obvious: The bill Congress hurried to pass late last week without anyone having read all 1,434 pages will in fact not stimulate much of anything.

It is a spending bill, pure and simple. Every dollar the government spends must either be borrowed, taken through taxation or printed. Any way you look at it, every dollar comes from the pockets of the people...

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Obama’s Stimulus Will Cause 'Lower Wages' for American Workers, Says Congressional Budget Office

[HT:SN]
The huge economic stimulus package that President Obama signed into law Tuesday will result in ''lower wages'' for American workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

(Snip) says the $787-billion plan will increase employment in the short-term, but will run up deficit spending which will ''crowd out'' private investment in the economy in the long-term. The analysis concludes that the stimulus will put downward pressure on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and wages...

TRUTH-O-METER Re: Debt due to Bush tax cuts

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Bush's tax cuts for high earners "have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit."

Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 in during a news conference

Tax cuts for not biggest deficit factor



The Tax Policy Center calculated what share of the federal tax changes each income bracket gained from the Bush tax cuts. The top 5 percent of earners (those making about $225,000 or more) received 30.5 percent of the tax benefits in 2008, according to their analysis. But conversely, the bottom 95 percent of tax payers got 70 percent. Zoom out from the top 5 percent to the top 20 percent, and their share is 47.8 percent. Critics of the Bush tax cuts can call that disproportionate, but it's still less than half and therefore not "the biggest."

Although the wealthy did get benefits from the Bush tax cuts, their benefits did not outweigh those of everyone else put together.

"Within the tax cuts, the largest numbers went to the middle class, and those are the tax cuts that are most likely to be extended," she said. "I don't see how you could read the numbers to say otherwise."

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"We don't have a [52!] trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much." -- Ronald Reagan

image toon - mny sclm - Shovel Ready = over full sandbox

Putin warns US to eschew socialism

What is the world coming to? Pat Dollard reports the Russian leader warned the US against adopting socialism because it doesn't work: Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise

''excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence''

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Could ecoterrorists let slip the bugs of war?

The terrorists' letter arrived at the Mayor of Los Angeles's office on November 30, 1989. A group calling itself “the Breeders” claimed to have released the Mediterranean fruit fly in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and threatened to expand their attack to the San Joaquin Valley, an important centre of Californian agriculture.

With perverse logic, they said that unless the Government stopped using pesticides they would assure a cataclysmic infestation that would lead to the quarantining of California produce, costing 132,000 jobs and $13.4 billion in lost trade.

The infestation was real enough. It was ended by heavy spraying. It is still not known if ecoterrorists were behind it, but the panic it engendered shows that “the Breeders” were flirting with a powerful weapon.

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Court reverses ruling bringing 17 detainees to US

— A U.S. appeals court reversed a ruling Wednesday that would have transferred 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees, none of whom are labeled enemy combatants, to the United States. The ruling casts further uncertainty on the fate of the Turkic-speaking Muslims from western China. [snip]

Only the executive branch, not the courts, can make decisions about immigration, the appeals court said. That fact doesn't change, the court said, simply because the United States has held the men for years without charge.

"Such sentiments, however high-minded, do not represent a legal basis for upsetting settled law and overriding the prerogatives of the political branches,"

Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote.

Earlier this month, Beijing warned other countries not to accept the men, creating a potential diplomatic roadblock to President Barack Obama's plan to close the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year.

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About those innocents . . .

SURPRISE: Closing down that military prison at Guantanamo turns out to be harder than just promising to do so in a presidential campaign. Now that the Obama campaign is the Obama administration, the job is being delayed for up to a year, and all the problems involved are being admitted, referred to study commissions, and-what a surprise again-being blamed on the previous administration.

The usual unidentified sources have told the Washington Post, which can now operate as a branch of the White House press office by printing leaks direct from the top, that the records of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo are in shameful disarray. Instead of a single neat case file a few pages long on each of the prisoners, the records seem to be scattered hither and yon throughout the federal government-from the various military branches to the Justice Department.

Gosh, do you think this mass of scattered records could have anything to do with the U.S. Supreme Court's many, confusing and generally fuzzy decisions granting these prisoners, legal and illegal combatants alike, habeas corpus and various other rights heretofore recognized only in civilian courts?

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Geert Wilders and the Fight for Europe

Does defending Western values constitute “inciting hatred”?

Britain has just witnessed the spectacle of a duly elected parliamentarian from another EU country, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, being denied entry to the country because he constituted “a threat to public policy.” Wilders, after being detained briefly at Heathrow, was sent back to Holland.

Three weeks earlier, a Dutch appeals court had ordered prosecutors to begin criminal proceedings against Wilders for “insulting Muslim worshippers” through his public statements and his 2008 film, Fitna.

The order to proceed with the criminal prosecution resulted from pressure put on European states and on the UN Human Rights Council by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

The OIC is a unique organization — one that has no equivalent in the world. It unites the religious, economic, military, and political strength of 56 states. By contrast, the European Union represents half as many states and is a secular body only.

The OIC’s aim is to punish and suppress any alleged Islamophobia, around the world but particularly in Europe, and it has been a leader in creating the conditions that made the U.K.’s Wilders ban possible.

Geert Wilders is the latest victim of this enormous world machinery. His crime is maintaining that Europe’s civilization is rooted in the values of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and the Enlightenment — and not in Mecca, Baghdad, Andalusia, and al-Kods. He fights for Europe’s independence from the Caliphate and for its endangered freedoms.

Wilders’s enemies pretend that he is an insignificant personality who makes “provocative” statements only in search of fame. In fact, if his motivation were self-interest, he could do far better by courting the OIC’s favors — as so many Europeans are doing, consciously or unconsciously — rather than risking his freedom and indeed his life.

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>> VIEW VIDEO HERE

Owner of Muslim Relations TV Network Beheads Wife, Media Mum

The owner of a cable TV network created to promote better understanding of Muslims in America was arrested in Orchard Park, New York, Thursday for beheading his wife.

If you hadn't heard about this that wouldn't be a surprise for the story has been almost completely boycotted here in the states.

As WIVB-TV reported Friday (video embedded below the fold, h/t Marc Sheppard, photo courtesy WIVB): ....

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Headless Body in Legless Story

Kathryn, that self-pitying imam is part of a now familiar pattern: Pay no attention to that dead body; the real victim here is Islam.

Beheaded woman in Buffalo?

"Shocked friend says murder damages Islam's image."

Hindus, Jews and Christians massacred in Bombay?

"The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India highlight the dangerously vulnerable situation of India’s Muslims."

Jonah writes today about the reluctance of journalists (a profession that congratulates itself on its "bravery" and "courage" far more than, say, firemen do) to speak truth to politically correct power — or, as I put it in my testimony in Toronto last week, their willingness to serve as eunuchs to the PC sultans. [snip]

Oddly enough, the one story that did decline to take spokesimams at face value came from, of all people, The Toronto Star's reporter:

Aasiya Hassan recently filed for divorce, authorities said. According to Buffalo News reports, she obtained an order of protection on Feb. 6, barring her husband from their home in Orchard Park.

Under sharia law followed by Muslims, a woman can ask for a divorce, but only a man can grant the request, and he can refuse, according to a book on sharia published last month, Cruel and Usual Punishment, by Egyptian-born American author Nonie Darwish.

Spousal murder is not unusual. Beheading your wife is. If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie. As I noted at the weekend, when Mr. Hassan launched his Bridges TV station to counter "negative stereotypes" of Muslims, he got the traditional tongue baths from NBC's Brian Williams, NPR's "All Things Considered" et al -

Don't they have a responsibility to revisit the story now that it's got a little more complicated - or, as old-school editors would say, "newsworthy" - than the press releases they read out a couple of years back?

If you're not intrigued by the apparent fraud at the heart of this man's life and work — a fraud in which the U.S. media cheerfully colluded — you lack the elementary curiosity necessary to be a journalist.

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No fans allowed for Israel tennis match

[HT:BN]
Sweden's upcoming Davis Cup tennis match against Israel will be held behind closed doors, Malmö city council ruled on Wednesday. The decision follows a vocal campaign against the match in protest at the situation in the Middle East. The match was scheduled to be played from March 6th to 8th at the Baltiska Hallen venue, which can hold 4,000 spectators.

[It's called cowardice.]

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Obama Naïveté at the U.N.

In a major foreign-policy decision taken over the weekend, President Obama has decided to legitimize the United Nations’s “anti-racism” forum known as Durban II. State Department officials announced in a press release buried on Saturday, that starting today the United States will attend for the first time the preparatory meetings of this controversial U.N. conference. The “Durban Review Conference,” scheduled for April in Geneva, is the progenitor of the anti-semitic hatefest that took place in South Africa in early September 2001.

The searing images of the demonization of America and Jews on the U.N.’s global stage, and the terrorism in New York 72 hours later, should have made joining this revived forum for U.N.-driven hate inconceivable. But President Obama seems intent on learning the lessons of history — and the relationship between hatemongering and violence — the hard way.

The speed at which President Obama is selling off American assets is breathtaking. The speed at which he is selling them out is even faster.

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STUDY WARNS OF HIGH U.S. CORPORATE TAXES

The U.S. corporate income tax rate is higher than all other global regions -- 14 percentage points higher than the global average and nearly 17 percentage points higher than the average among European Union nations, says a new study by KPMG, a U.S. accounting firm.

Of the 106 countries surveyed, only the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Japan impose a higher corporate tax rate than the combined rate of 40 percent in the United States. This is not good for America's competitiveness. According to researchers:

• The global average corporate tax rate is 23.2 percent in the E.U., 26.6 percent in Latin America and 28.4 percent in the Asia Pacific region.
• Nearly 23 countries cut their corporate tax rates in 2008 alone, including Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
• In contrast, the U.S. corporate tax rate has remained unchanged since 1994.
• Recent OECD studies show U.S. corporate income taxes are 50 percent higher than the average among its counterparts in the industrialized world, and that corporate taxes are the single most harmful tax to GDP growth - even more harmful than personal income taxes or consumption taxes.

Furthermore, in 2008, the Tax Foundation released an analysis showing that the U.S. federal corporate income tax quietly taps family pocketbooks for nearly $370 billion per year in the form of higher prices, lower wages and poorer return on investment.

If even notoriously high-tax Sweden recognizes that taxes matter to a country's business climate and work incentives, when will the political class in Washington tack action?

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Bankruptcy remains an option for GM, analysts say

DETROIT - A government-backed bankruptcy reorganization remains an option for saving General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, analysts said on Wednesday, even though the automakers have said they would rather not go down that road.(Snip)

Some Wall Street analysts were disappointed that the restructuring plans submitted to the U.S. Treasury did not include key concessions from the United Auto Workers union and the automakers' bondholders...

[And their we have it: either they reorganize under bankruptcy, which is exactly what it's for, or they bilk us forever.]

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64% Oppose Any More Loans for GM and Chrysler
Wednesday, February 18, 2009

General Motors and Chrysler are back this week seeking $22 billion more in federal help, but 64% of U.S. voters are opposed to providing any additional taxpayer-backed loans for the embattled automakers.

Twenty-four percent (24%) support more loans for GM and Chrysler, and 11% are undecided.

Forty-four percent (44%) say it is better for the U.S. economy to let companies like General Motors fail than for the federal government to provide subsidies that will keep them in business.

In December, just 40% thought it was better to let the auto companies fail.

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Facebook Backs Down After Censoring Opposition Ad

In yet another example of flag spamming and poor corporate over sight Facebook decided this week to remove an ad from the conservative group Americans for Prosperity. The group was advertising a petition on their site nostimulus.com which lets people voice their opposition to the near $800 billion stimulus going through congress right now.

After originally screening and approving the ad CNS News, a sister site of NewsBusters and the Media Research Center, reports that Facebook claimed to have received some complaints from users. They then proceeded to put a disapproval notice on it and then yank it from the site all together.

Luckily Americans for Prosperity didn't take the censorship sitting down and CNS News didn't ignore the story. In a move that Phil Kerpen, the national policy director at Americans for Prosperity, credited to pressure resulting from the CNS News report Facebook decided to back down from its original decision to censor the conservative group's ad.

Of course the reasons Facebook gives for their reversal only go to further the idea that this is indeed a case of liberal flag spamming combined with poor moderation and oversight.

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[Sound familiar to (some of) you? It should, it was this one...

Broken: Barack Obama Campaign Promise No. 505:

PROMISE: Create a $3,000 tax credit for companies that add jobs

"During 2009 and 2010, existing businesses will receive a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each additional full-time employee hired."

UPDATE: $3,000 tax credit not in stimulus bill, no future action seen

The credit was never part of the stimulus legislation as far as we saw, and it was not included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which Obama signed into law on Feb. 17, 2009. Likewise, we see no indication that this idea might re-emerge. So for now, we rate it Promise Broken.

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Jindal Signals Louisiana May Not Take Stimulus Money

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate, has suggested his state may not be interested in all of the roughly $4 billion allotted to it in the economic stimulus package to be signed by President Obama.

“The flawed bill the President will sign today is a missed opportunity, one for which our children and grandchildren will pay a hefty price. It’s a raw deal for American families, providing just $1.10 per day in relief for workers while saddling every family with $9,400 in added debt to pay for special-interest programs and pork-barrel projects. It will do little to create jobs, and will do more harm than good to middle-class families and our economy."

[Responsibility, class.]

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has said he’ll take any money that Louisiana turns down.

[not so much]

Jindal is scheduled to give the response to the president’s not-exactly-a-state-of-the-union address next Tuesday.

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image toon - mny - DOW graphs due to OB actions - 1st fnn -

'Climate Scientist' Ratchets Up Global Warming Alarmism in Face of Record Cold Weather

You're a global warming alarmist yet we're experiencing the coldest winter in decades. What to do? What to do? Well, if you are "climate scientist" Chris Field, you go even further out on the limb and declare that the climate is warming up even faster than predicted despite evidence to the contrary right outside our doors. Here is the Reuters report about Chris Field sounding the global warming alarm bells:

The climate is heating up far faster than scientists had predicted, spurred by sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries like China and India, a top climate scientist said on Saturday.

"The consequence of that is we are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously," Chris Field told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

One "little" problem with this Reuters report written by Julie Steenhuysen. Chris Field is not a "top climate scientist." In fact, he isn't even a climate scientist at all.

Just a wee bit of googling on the part of Steenhuysen would have revealed that Chris Field is a professor of biological sciences whose shtick is pushing something called "global ecology." Field has no more expertise in predicting future climate patterns than, say, a proctologist performing brain surgery.

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Danger of U.S. 'environmental protectionism'

CALGARY — A University of Alberta business professor says America isn’t likely to stop imports from Canada’s oilsands but there’s a credible threat from what he calls “environmental protectionism.”

Andrew Leach says there’s a danger of oilsands costs rising even further if the United States adopts more aggressive climate change rules than Canada has.

Both Ottawa and Alberta back carbon capture as a climate change strategy — but there is disagreement over who should pay billions of dollars for it. Professor Leach says there’s a danger that Washington may levy a special tax on what environmentalists have dubbed “dirty oil” from Alberta’s oilsands.

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60% Stress Need For New Sources of Energy

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Sixty percent (60%) of U.S. voters say finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume.

Generic support for developing new energy sources is up four points from a month ago.

Republicans (71%) and unaffiliated voters (63%) more strongly support placing the priority on finding new energy sources than Democrats (50%).

On a related topic, 51% say more nuclear power plants should be built in the United States

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California Needs California's Oil

Both our energy and budgetary answers lie right off our own shores - available to us immediately to the tune of 1 Trillion dollars...

WATCH THIS (2 minutes)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyNQFZ4Gud8

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California lawmakers fail to pass budget

California lawmakers narrowly failed to pass a $40 billion budget on Sunday. [snip]

The bill includes $14.4 billion in new taxes and $15.1 billion in spending cuts in a bid to close a $42 billion budget deficit the state's government faces over the next 17 months.

Residents of the "Golden State" face a 1 cent [I.e., a 12.5% increase] sales tax rise, steeper income and gasoline taxes and higher vehicle licensing fees. Some aspects face voter approval in May.

Republicans seeking re-election have faced pressure from constituents averse to tax increases, while Democrats are under similar pressure from voters to maintain spending... [last I looked, everyone in the private sector was cutting back in this time of hardship - but evidently that's just for the working class. [snip]

This month Standard & Poor's Ratings Services cut its rating on California's general obligation debt, which has left California, the biggest issuer of public debt, with the lowest rated GO bonds of any U.S. state.

Nevertheless, The budget, which extends through June 30, 2010, also relies on borrowing [another] $11.4 billion. If California receives at least $9.1 billion in new federal funds, the spending cuts would be trimmed [I.e., they'd keep spending at a higher level [snip]

California's treasurer has started delaying tax refunds and other payments because of the cash crunch.

[It's the same old scam: they continuously spend us into oblivion - even when we haven't given them permission to do so {I.e. 'deficit spending'} - and every few years when the crap hits the fan claim the only 'responsible' thing is a 'balanced' approach of some spending cuts and even more taxes. This is the consequence of our permanent Democratic majority in Sacramento {as aided my unions and the media}. ]

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New GOP Senate leader wants to kill proposed state budget deal

California's budget crisis heightened further this morning when the newly elected leader of the state Senate's Republicans, who replaced his predecessor in an overnight ouster, said he hopes to kill the current spending plan.

Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta said this morning that he would like to scrap that plan and renegotiate a package without raising taxes as the current plan does...

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[Sounds good - let's support it...


"REWRITE THE BUDGET - NO NEW TAXES"


CA Governor: http://gov.ca.gov/interact mailto:governor@governor.ca.gov
YOUR CA Legislators (Sen+Assy): http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...

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