Sen. Kerry: ‘Too bad’ Gov. Sarah Palin didn’t go missing
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. John Kerry must have been channeling his inner Letterman:
“Too bad, if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin."
Subject: txt 1st lbrty owg bdd hstry -
"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."- Nobel Peace Prize Committee of the Norwegian Parliament
announcing the award to Barack Obama of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Subject: txt 1st hcare msm -
"We're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."
The major provisions of ObamaCare already have been tried and they've led to increased costs and reduced access to care
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously envisioned the states serving as laboratories, trying "novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." And on health care, that's just what they've done, says Peter Suderman, an associate editor at Reason magazine.
The results have been dramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health care costs, and reduced access to care. In other words: The reforms have failed. New York is exhibit A:
ubject: txt 1st hcare -
Anew Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 55% of U.S. voters oppose that proposal. Just 32% of voters think young and healthy Americans should be forced to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure.
Among voters ages 18 to 29, 29% favor the provision, known as “the individual mandate,” while 57% are opposed to it.
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[Meanwhile, in our professional media...]
Instead of explaining the skepticism toward how the massive additional spending could lead to less spending, reporter Nancy Cordes touted how “the new numbers give health care reform a much-needed boost” and credulously recounted the spending would be offset by fees, taxes “and trims to Medicare.” When Republicans proposed a reduction in the rate of increase of Medicare spending the media screamed about “cuts.” Now a $400 billion change is merely a “trim.”
And who really believes the CBO's PRELIMINARY 'estimate' - made without actual legislative language (i.e., no details whatsoever - only descriptions of what Democrats say they'll eventually put in it)??
[Think about that: what the Senate passed through committee yesterday was essentially a 'pre-approved' legislation, with the details to be added later.]
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Despite his claims, the president has no Afghan strategy
Repeatedly, he claimed that, if elected president, he’d unveil a new “stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy.”
In March, in one of those solemn-looking occasions in which he excels, Obama said that the new strategy, which he did not elaborate, was already in place. He speeded up the troop buildup ordered by the Bush administration, and a few weeks later named a new commander for Afghanistan.
That commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lost no time in revealing that the Obama administration had no specific strategy and that his first task was to work one out... [snip]
One can only imagine the general’s surprise when President Obama, asked to comment on the leaked report, said he wouldn’t allow himself to be rushed into sending more troops, as requested by McChrystal, pending the development of a [new] “new strategy”...
[Meanwhile, Americans die...]
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txt gwot heroes -
"the insanity of the current situation and the suicidal position this administration has placed these warriors in."[More, all of it disgusting.]
txt gwot iran - intl israel -
The ancient city of Herat is Afghanistan's best-kept secret. For years, it has enjoyed 24-hour electricity and a booming economy, reports CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan. But it's not thanks to U.S. efforts - it's all because of Iran. The city lies right on Afghanistan's border with Iran, (Snip) A soldier from 7th Group Special Forces finds rocket propelled grenades in a hard-core Taliban village that he knows from experience, are made
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Subject: txt intl - DeMint:
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he is mystified at the hostility the Obama administration is showing to Honduras since that long-time U.S. ally removed President Manuel Zelaya and replaced him with Vice President Roberto Micheletti.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the South Carolina senator recounts how the White House revoked the U.S. travel visas of Micheletti, his government, and private citizens — refusing to talk to the government in Tegucigalpa.
“It's frozen desperately needed financial assistance to one of the poorest and friendliest U.S. allies in the region,” DeMint argues. “It won't release the legal basis for its insistence on Mr. Zelaya's restoration to power. Nor has it explained why it's setting aside America's longstanding policy of supporting free elections to settle these kinds of disputes.”
“America's Founding Fathers — like the framers of Honduras's own constitution — believed strong institutions were necessary to defend freedom and democracy from the ambitions of would-be tyrants and dictators,” he writes. “Faced by Mr. Zelaya's attempted usurpations, the institutions of Honduran democracy performed as designed, and as our own Founding Fathers would have hoped.”
Why would President Obama openly challenge the highest rated news channel in existence?
Obama's poll numbers are dropping, his policies are running into serious problems even though his own party has a super majority, and even his personal appeal has failed him. Many in the media are scratching their heads trying to figure out why a sitting President would do something so foolish.
The answer is simple. Obama's stock and trade when he was a community organizer was peddling a victimization mentality that blames all manner of bogeymen but never looks at the culture of failure that created the conditions he railed against. For a every victim our community organizer needs an oppressor. Finding an oppressor when you're the President of the most powerful country in the world isn't easy. It appears President Obama has formerly decided that Fox News will be his oppressor and has sent out his aides to tell the world. Obama has decided to play role of the victim.
Playing the victim accomplishes a few things;
- Openly challenging FoxNews takes up a news cycle or two among the talking heads and serious issues won't be explored. Every time the public starts to examine Obama policies closely the lower the President's poll numbers go, so, distractions are viewed as good for Obama and his policies.
- It plays to the storyline that the committed left lives by and believes. This helps keep the leftist base active, which is important for a left of center President trying to govern in a center right country.
- Playing the victim absolves Obama of the responsibility among his supporters if things don't go his way. If the public option doesn't make it into health care reform, you can bet it will be Foxnews' fault. We saw similar rhetoric from the left in the lead up to the war in Iraq.
Subject: txt msm fnn -
[This from the B-Sun!?!]
David Zurawik, a TV critic for The Baltimore Sun, has called for the
“TV press...to step back and question how it is covering President Barack Obama.”
“I hesitate to write these words, but good for Fox. It must be doing something right, if it has the President complaining about the tiny bit of scrutiny he gets on TV.”
[HT:MM]Subject: txt mny -
At least one rising congressman, Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, is raising an alarm about the Federal Reserve's ability to protect the dollar and maintain the Fed's own inflation-fighting capacity. At the root of his concern, he says, is the Fed's new role as "one of the largest bondholders in the world."
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been piling up purchases of "mortgage-backed" securities to keep money flowing into the housing market. Though the Fed recently said it would slow its buying, the central bank now sits on a giant portfolio worth $650 billion.
Here's the problem: If the Fed decides to raise interest rates to combat inflation, even a small hike would likely knock billions of dollars off the value of the Fed's holdings.
Mr. Kirk estimates that if rates go up two percentage points -- a plausible scenario given short-term rates are near zero now -- the Fed could lose $100 billion from its own balance sheet. The danger is that the mere existence of such a concern could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the markets doubt the Fed would endanger its own financial welfare to fight inflation.
[The predictable consequences of letting the government into the business of business.]
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Stanford University's noted global warming alarmist and Al Gore advisor Stephen Schneider appeared in a 1978 television program warning Americans of a coming Ice Age.
For those that have forgotten, "In Search of..." was a televised documentary series from 1976 to 1982 that was normally narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
DR. STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: Can we do these things? Yes. But will they make things better? I'm not sure. We can't predict with any certainty what's happening to our own climatic future. How can we come along and intervene then in that ignorance? You could melt the icecaps. What would that do to the coastal cities? The cure could be worse than the disease. Would that be better or worse than the risk of an ice age?
Subject: txt grn engry msm -
The New York Times ran a story that has been big news across the blogosphere for quite a while but not, until yesterday, fit to print: global temperatures have been steady for the past decade, not rising inexorably toward a climatic Armageddon. Many scientists even think they will decline over the next few years.
Today, the Times is at it again, running an above-the-fold story on how this has been a banner year for oil exploration. Major strikes have been found in Iraq, Australia, Ghana, Brazil, Russia, Norway, and Sierra Leone. BP has hit what may turn out to be the largest field yet found in the Gulf of Mexico, currently estimated at 4 billion to 6 billion barrels. Even Israel has struck oil, in the Dead Sea area.
Indeed, oil companies have found more oil in the past two years than they have extracted - ever. So much for the we’re-inevitably-running-out-of-oil-and-soon meme so popular on the Left... [snip]
Naturally, the Times, still the Paper of Record for the liberal elite if not many others, remains adamantly opposed to oil exploration—even just finding out if the oil is there, let alone extracting it—in most of the most promising areas in the world: the United States and its offshore waters...
[Everyone but U.S.]
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If the Obama Administration succeeds in counting 12 million illegal immigrants in next year's census, it will effectively disenfranchise an equal number of U.S. citizens
Next year's decennial census is rife with opportunities for a major power grab by the president's party, says Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
The White House has made very clear that their intention is to put extra effort into counting illegal immigrants in the next Census. It wants to make sure that all 12 million illegal immigrants are counted, a task that's not easy given the desire of most people who are illegally in the United States to avoid detection:
Subject: txt edu msm bias bdd -
A New Jersey elementary school is under scrutiny after students were seen on tape singing a song in praise of President Barack Obama. On Monday, dozens of protesters chanted outside the school, saying the children are being brainwashed.
"Educate, don't indoctrinate; Educate don't indoctrinate,"
Subject: txt msm bias sclm bbro - lbrty -
Given how our media have assisted in selling Obama paraphernalia since Inauguration Day, one has to wonder what their position will be on the attractive keepsake pictured right.
(larger picture of flag below the fold, h/t Atlas Shrugs):
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Subject: txt edu crpt -
It is not uncommon to find tax exempt and state-supported academic institutions hosting labor study centers that conduct research and offer training programs for unions. Because unions are highly partisan political powerhouses, the possibilities for abuse are endless, in effect funneling public money into politics (as may have been the case with ACORN). The left's dominance on most campuses only increases the hazzards.
Accordingly, The Landmark Legal Foundation has filed information requests and complaints with 11 academic institutions. Sunshine is as much anathema to the left-labor cozy campus arrangements as it is to Dracula. The American Association of University Professors, which is a labor union more than an academic organization is outraged, crying that academic freedom is at risk... [no news there - snip]
The AAUP statement reads in part:
Thus far, to our knowledge the most serious complaints, which threaten academic freedom, appear to have taken place at UC Berkeley and Evergreen, where the foundation seeks to restrict the work of the centers, in terms of who they serve and what they do.
At Berkeley, among other charges, that the Labor Center provides services for private (union) benefit rather than for public benefit.
The letter from Landmark went on to say that "Rather than a valid public purpose, the Center's activities are designed to promote a particular political ideology."
Subject: txt bdd vals msm -
"I can just see the visions of plantation grandeur dancing in his head as we speak,"
Subject: txt lbrty gdd guns -
"Allowing more people to carry concealed handguns in densely populated cities, on crowded subways, on buses and in sports stadiums, is a recipe for disaster."- The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
NBC’s Williams Derides Blogosphere as ‘Comic Element of Our Society’
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”Mahatma Gandhi
ubject: txt 1st - owg -
Americans are much more skeptical of the motivation behind the awarding of the prestigious international Nobel Prizes following President Obama's win Friday of the Nobel Peace Prize.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 58% of American adults now believe that politics plays a role in the awarding of the Nobel Prize. That's an 18-point jump from 40% a year ago.
Just 21% of Americans say politics does not play a role in the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Twenty-one percent (21%) are not sure.
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Subject: txt 1st fnn owg -
A marvelous thing happened on Sunday's "This Week": Donna Brazile said Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was "well-deserved," and host George Stephanopoulos couldn't restrain his laughter.
Such happened moments after George Will said,
"[T]he Nobel Prize committee would with this decision have forfeited its reputation for seriousness - if it had a reputation for seriousness."
Subject: txt 1st hcare mny -
Anyone who reads beyond the top-line numbers of the CBO's estimate of the Senate health care bill will find that the it creates massive new spending commitments that will inevitably explode over time, and that this is "paid for" with huge tax increases plus phantom spending cuts that will never happen, says the Wall Street Journal. For example:
- Baucus spends $10.9 billion to eliminate the scheduled Medicare cuts to physician payments --but only for next year.
- In 2011, he assumes they'll be reduced by 25 percent, with even deeper cuts later, with no specifics as to how provided.
- Congress has overridden this "sustainable growth rate" every year since 2003 and will continue to do so because deeper cuts in Medicare's price controls will cause many doctors to quit the program.
- Fixing this alone would add $245 billion to the bill's costs, according to an earlier CBO estimate.
Some of the headlines in recent days are not worthy of belief.
I'm referring to the headlines earlier in the week to the effect that the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus will cut the federal deficit by $81 billion over the next 10 years.
Yes, that is what the Congressional Budget Office estimated. But, as the CBO noted, there's no actual Baucus bill, just some "conceptual language." Actual language, CBO noted, might result in "significant changes" in its estimates.
No wonder Democratic congressional leaders killed requirements that the actual language be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before Congress votes... [snip]
More significant is the number most publications did not put in their headlines and lead paragraphs: CBO's estimate that the Baucus "conceptual language" would increase federal spending by $829 billion over 10 years. So how do you increase federal spending and cut the deficit at the same time?
In a word, taxes... [everywhere on everyone - snip]
We can reasonably conclude that the Baucus bill -- or whatever similar measure Reid and Schumer concoct -- would vastly and permanently increase public sector spending and impose a crushing burden on the private sector in a weak economy.
That burden would be particularly heavy on low earners forced to buy expensive policies or else pay stiff fines, with money they would otherwise receive as wages or salaries.
There are no good public policy reasons to pass such a bill hurriedly or otherwise. Only political ones...
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Subject: txt 1st hcare -
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said,
“No family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
Subject: txt 1st hcare bdd -
Do you think Congress should vote on bills without reading them? How about voting on bills that don’t even exist yet, except in fragments? The Senate Finance Committee is poised to vote on a massive health care reform bill on Tuesday allegedly authored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
A glaring, outrageous, unreported fact is that the bill’s actual text has been kept secret. No one actually knows what’s in it – not even the senators...
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[Yet they're voting on it TODAY...
"REJECT BAUCUS BILL"
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...
Subject: txt gwot -
KABUL - Thousands of foreign fighters have poured into Afghanistan to bolster the Taliban insurgency, the country's defense minister said Saturday as he called for more international troops.
[Again and again. G.W.O.T.]
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Subject: txt gwot nsec - ... Again
For Vice President Joe Biden and some senior Obama White House staff members (we do not know the position of the president yet), the alleged weakness and ineffectiveness of al-Qaida is sufficient justification for ending our major ground troop presence in Afghanistan.
The current discussion of al-Qaida's capacities in Afghanistan is being carried out with cherry-picked intelligence. The assertion of al-Qaida's weakness by the White House is merely an excuse to justify the political decision that already has been made (by some) to get out of Afghanistan.
On Sept. 30, the Post ran a spectacular front-page, above-the-fold lead story, headlined
"Success Against al-Qaeda Cited: Infiltration of Network Is a Factor as Administration Debates Afghanistan Policy."
"evidence that Obama's principal objective -- destroying al-Qaeda -- can be achieved without an expanded troop presence."
"largely because of better intelligence, stemming from a stronger U.S. counter-insurgency program on the other side of the border in Afghanistan."
Subject: txt gwot - 29% Disagree
Voters aren’t brimming with confidence that the United States can win the war in Afghanistan, but, despite news reports of a worsening situation there, support for a continued U.S. military presence in the country is unchanged.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of voters believe it is possible for the United States to win the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan. Twenty-nine percent (29%) do not think a U.S. victory is possible there, and another 25% aren’t sure.
But 52% of voters continue to believe that no firm timetable should be set for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. That number is unchanged from a survey at the beginning of September.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of men say America can win the war in Afghanistan. Women are evenly divided.
Sixty percent (60%) of Republicans say a U.S. victory is possible, a view shared by just 35% of Democrats.
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[Meanwhile, our professional media...]
"I honestly think it's probably time to start leaving the country. I really don't see how this is going to end in anything but tears,"
"The idea of going in to nation-build and win hearts and minds, I think, over the long term is kind of a loser."
Subject: txt islm bdd vals -
"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem,"
"In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam,"
"Even Muslims who say they are against terrorism secretly admire and applaud the 9/11 hijackers."
Subject: txt msm bias bdd vals islm -
Subject: txt islm - Barack
President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.
Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice"...
[On our Presidents council...]
Subject: txt gwot intl - owg -
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday that a plan for Russia to help enrich uranium for an Iranian reactor has yet to be finalized, in the highest-level Russian confirmation of a tentative agreement reached between Tehran and six world powers last week. Lavrov said that experts would have to work out specifics of the deal involving the United States, France, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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Subject: txt gwot intl othr lbryt -
A decision by the Obama administration to deny federal funding to a group that keeps track of human rights abuses in Iran is a misguided attempt by the White House to appear non-confrontational with the Islamic republic, critics say.
The Connecticut-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center has received more than $3 million in grants from the State Department since its inception in 2004. Executive Director Rene Redman learned in July that the group's federal funding request was denied, an unexpected decision given the abuse of protesters in Iran following the country's disputed June 12 presidential election.
The State Department has not divulged the reason the request was denied.
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Subject: txt intl -
Tokyo - Barack Obama will visit Japan next month, putting his hosts under pressure to resolve pressing alliance issues arising from the recent change of government in Tokyo.
[Last I checked, Japan was an ally, so yeah - there he'll talk tough...]
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image toon - intl - NKorea out of toilet paper - grab another American
The idea that job losses can be blamed on the trade deficit is simplistic and wrong
The Wall Street Journal reports that the
"U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly narrowed for the first time in four months in August, with exports rising to their highest level of the year and imports easing despite higher oil prices."
- Between 1993 and 2007, the U.S. economy created 26 million new jobs, net; this is one of the greatest job creation booms in American history.
- During the same period, the trade deficit swelled from 1 percent of gross domestic product to 6 percent of GDP.
- Since 2007 the trade deficit as a percentage of GDP has fallen by half, to about 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) today; but the U.S. economy has shed 6 or 7 million jobs.
Subject: txt fnn msm bias bdd lbrty -
MSNBC Features Lefty Sports Writer to Trash ‘Racist’ ‘Swine’ Rush Limbaugh
"about having somebody in an NFL owners box who [players] know views them with naked and open contempt because of the color of their skin."Read more
“Lord, thank you for my enemies.”Read More
Subject: txt mny -
When David Paterson became governor of New York, he shocked New Yorkers by declaring that taxes were too high and that he had many friends who had left the state because there were better opportunities elsewhere.
Paterson quickly got rolled by the big-government wing of his own party, which passed a budget for this year with $6.1 billion in projected new taxes and fees, led by sharply higher rates starting for those earning more than $200,000 a year.
Asked if the budget made sense in the recession, an outgunned Paterson said: "None of this makes sense."
Revenue from tax increases was running 20 percent below projections and that, in particular, the wealthy were not paying up - they were leaving.
"You heard the mantra, 'Tax the rich, tax the rich,'" ... "We've done that. We've lost jobs and driven people out of the state."
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An 'investment' of $10 trillion in 'renewable' energy and 'carbon-abatement' technology will be "necessary" over the next two decades to limit the rise in the Earth's temperature, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns in a new report.
The IEA, energy adviser to the world's richest nations, urges more-aggressive reductions in carbon emissions than what many nations are already planning:
- The IEA calls for investment -- in clean-energy initiatives such as solar power, new nuclear plants and other measures -- of $500 billion a year over the next 20 years.
- That is 37 percent more investment than what the IEA estimated was necessary just a year ago.
Subject: FW: txt engry -
Forecasts that global oil production will soon start to decline and that most oil will be gone within a few decades are pessimistic hogwash, says Leonardo Maugeri, group senior vice president for corporate strategies and planning at the Italian energy company ENI. For example:
Subject: txt reps libs msm bias fnn - CNN:
White House Attacks On Fox Help Its Ratings,
Such was discussed on Thursday's "Situation Room" by a panel consisting of CNN's Gloria Berger, David Gergen, and John King, as well as Politico's Nia-Malika Henderson and Republican strategist Tony Blankley.
Makes you wonder why Kurtz on Sunday didn't ask Dunn about the following tremendously relevant conversation that happened on his own network a few days earlier (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Mediaite):
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UPDATE: Fox officials agree that all this attention is helping ratings.
.
Irony Alert: White House Praises 'Unbiased' CNN as Network Runs Promo Appealing to Democrats
Yesterday, Sheppard posted a story about White House communications director Anita Dunn whining at length on Howard Kurtz's "Reliable Sources" about how supposedly unfair Fox News is. Her appearance on that show was instigated by Dunn's complaints about White House coverage by Fox News in a Time magazine story by Michael Scherer.
Among her attacks upon Fox News was the assertion that it wasn't a real news network "the way CNN is." Well, Michael Scherer himself wrote a followup blog post and pointed out the supreme irony of attacking Fox News as biased while CNN was running "Anderson Cooper 360" promos pitching that show as appealing to liberals....
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