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Monday, April 26, 2010
Bay Area Dems request $2.3 BILLION in earmarks
Can you SEC it?
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The most obvious ques tion to anyone reading the Securities and Exchange Commission complaint against Goldman Sachs is this: If the synthetic mortgage product dreamed up by Goldman with the alleged help of hedge-fund maestro John Paulson was "designed to fail," why did it get a triple-A rating from the two top ratings agencies -- Moody's and Standard and Poor's?
Inquiring minds have wanted to know the answer to that question -- and why the SEC hasn't gone after the agencies all week.
On Friday we got the rest of the story, and it's a whopper -- according to an e-mail released by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the guys analyzing all the toxic mortgage junk were victims of the Stockholm Syndrome!
In this case, S&P and Moody's ratings analysts were the hostages and Goldman Sachs and other firms were the kidnappers... [snip]
The ratings agencies were paid by Wall Street to put their "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" on all the junk. American taxpayers will pay the bill for years to come.
Wall Street wants unsuspecting Americans to believe that the story of the Great Recession is too complex to comprehend, let alone assign blame for, and the SEC suit against Goldman goes a long way toward muddying the waters.
The whole sorry saga is right there for the regulators to see, and the ratings agencies are right in the center of it. If only the SEC would take off its blinders. Is that too much to ask?
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Capitalism vs. Capitalists
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Five years ago this week, my former boss William F. Buckley started a column thusly: ''Every ten years I quote the same adage from the late Austrian analyst Willi Schlamm, and I hope that ten years from now someone will remember to quote it in my memory. It goes,
‘The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists.’''
Schlamm’s point is still relevant, even though the kind of socialism we’re dealing with is less doctrinaire. But it also distorts the issue somewhat. One might just as easily say that the problem with socialism is capitalists, too... [snip]
The problem with socialism is socialism, because it is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn’t true.
And it’s also why the problem with capitalism is capitalists. Some people will always abuse the system and take things too far. Some will do it out of the hubris of intellect. Some will do it out of the venality of greed.
I bring all of this up because many in Washington seem convinced that the solution to the problem with capitalists is always less capitalism.
We are fond of saying that the answer to free-speech problems is more free speech. But we seem incapable of grasping that the solution to capitalism’s problems is usually more fair capitalism....
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Melting glaciers in Glacier Park: The view from 1963
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At that meeting the United States Geological Survey staff presented the results of their annual glacier monitoring program and reported that the park glaciers were continuing to shrink.
They assured the park staff that the glaciers would eventually disappear, but would not make any time predictions.
It was understood and accepted by the National Park Service and the United States Geological Survey that the park glaciers were a remnant of the last ice age and would eventually melt.
It is disconcerting to hear government professionals now blame the ice melting on anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming...
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Video: Dem Congressman: ‘Climate Change Is a National Security Issue’
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"Our intelligence analysts and our military folks tell us that environment factors, exactly -- environmental factors determine who we’re going to be fighting, where we’re going to fighting them, whether we’re going to be fighting them," "And so for me, for my colleagues, climate change is a national security issue."
said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.).
[Half right but for all the wrong reasoning: The climate canard is a national security issue, but in its threat to our ability to defend ourselves.
The US is (and has been for decades) the sole remaining democracy maintaining a serious military {re: size; most of our allies service folk are as serious as ours - but consider: western Europe mortgaged its defense capability to pay for its social welfare programs secure in the knowledge that America remained as defender. Best (but not only) case? The British Royal Navy, reduced to a mere 80 ships total (roughly half actual fight vessels) compared with America's 500 - with already passed legislation to reduce yet further}.
Remove America's financial ability to maintain our military through the imposing of Trillions of dollars of economic retardation in the name of saving the planet, and who will counterbalance a resurgent soviet block and ascending China when America no longer can?
A: no one. And that's what makes this climate scam a real national security threat.]
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Saudis Tighten China Energy Ties to Reduce U.S. Dependence
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Riyadh - Li Wei, a Chinese diplomat in Riyadh, had only just seen off a Ministry of Commerce delegation to Saudi Arabia this month when he started preparing for another Chinese governmental visit in two weeks.
''Every month we have delegations coming to Saudi Arabia,''
said Li, who works in the Chinese Embassy’s commercial section in the Saudi capital. China, the world’s second-largest oil consumer, and Saudi Arabia, holder of about a fifth of global crude reserves, are forging ever closer ties...
[They're called 'dots' - have we anyone left in Washington trying to connect them? {It certainly doesn't appear that way base on its inaction}]
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Our Country’s Battles
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It is increasingly likely that the Republican party, in league with more conservative Democrats, will have a decisive say in Congress following November’s elections. The GOP could even be in the majority in the House. With this possibility in sight, the primary focus of conservatives has been the repeal of the recently enacted health care legislation. Given the magnitude of the bill and its impact on both health care and the economy, this is perfectly reasonable. But health care is not the only matter that should come under review if a new working majority of conservatives results from the upcoming elections. Equally important are the Obama administration’s plans for America’s military.
The president’s proposed budgets call for an ever-increasing piece of the federal pie to go to domestic programs and a decreasing amount to national defense. The Obama administration has already flattened out the defense budget this year, while domestic spending has exploded; in last year’s stimulus, virtually every federal program got significant additional money except defense.
We have today an aging and shrinking Air Force and Navy, an Army that is overstretched, reserve forces that are far too “active” in their rate of deployment, and too few dollars to rebuild and modernize. And if the Obama domestic agenda is implemented, discretionary funds available to fund those who “fight our country’s battles/ In the air, on land, and sea” will shrink to a level at which maintaining the dominant military we have become accustomed to since the end of the Cold War will almost certainly be a thing of the past.
Indeed, the Obama administration’s projected budgets have the defense burden shrinking to less than 3 percent of GDP in the decade ahead. A level not seen since before World War II...
[And it takes a decade to restart that which is stopped - read: Raptor.]
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A weapon that can strike anywhere on Earth in 30 minutes
That’s the message from the Air Force after last week’s launch of its X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which can stay on orbit up to 270 days. The Air Force won’t say what, exactly, the robotic space plane will be doing there, how long it will linger this time, or even how much it costs. But the military is already in the process of building a second aircraft, which will fly next year.
[Yeah real secret: it's on the cover of my Popular Mechanics this month.]
The most likely role for the X-37B is also the most obvious: as a replacement for the classified missions once performed by the NASA Space Shuttle, which is now slated for retirement. It’s sometimes forgotten that the Space Shuttle once also carried secret payloads into orbit. But by avoiding the need for astronauts, the Air Force is able to build a smaller spacecraft dedicated solely to military missions.
Pentagon officials, for their part, are determined just to avoid the weapons issue altogether, by calling it something else. “Truthfully, I don’t know how this could be called weaponization of space,” Payton, the Air Force official, said when asked about the issue, just prior to the launch of the X-37B. “It’s just an updated version of the Space Shuttle kind of activities in space.”
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Bill Maher: Barack Obama Is A Moderate Republican By '70s Standards
[Er, no. Closer to the truth {by an order of magnitude} to say John F. Kennedy would be a moderate Republican by today's standards, and stand zero chance of winning a Democratic primary for anything anywhere.
Close Bill, real close.]
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Friday, April 23, 2010
Tehran's Other Target: America 2015
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But Tehran has made no secret of the fact they've a bigger fish that it wants to fry, namely us...
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Valerie Jarrett: Obama's New Nuclear Advisor?
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Now Jarrett, widely viewed as Obama’s radical alter ego, has reemerged – this time as a foreign policy guru...
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China to send Iran gasoline
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The gasoline shipment suggests Chinese refiners are moving to fill the void left by European suppliers, who halted sales to Iran earlier this year...
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Selective Outrage
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While the United Nations Human Rights Council continues to trump up charges against Israel for defending itself against Islamic extremist terrorists seeking its destruction, the Council continues to ignore real illegal occupation of territory within the democratic nation of Georgia by the Russian Federation.
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[Why? A {quote}:
Iran boosts Qods shock troops - IN VENEZUELA
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Iran is increasing its paramilitary Qods force operatives in Venezuela while covertly continuing supplies of weapons and explosives to Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Pentagon's first report to Congress on Tehran's military...
The report on Iranian military power provides new details on the group known formally as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), the Islamist shock troops deployed around the world to advance Iranian interests...
[First report? Tell me that was a typo.]
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White House policy of ignoring President Chávez’s insults is failing
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One fundamental problem is the US’s waning influence in Latin America ...
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The Wrong Message
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He had a moral obligation to add that we need to protect the right of Muslim women not to wear the hijab and punish those who force them to do so...
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Belgium lawmakers to follow France with ban on Islamic burqa
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Comedy Central Caves, Censors 'South Park' from Even Saying 'Mohammed'
[Meanwhile, in America...]
The elite gatekeepers of American pop culture huff and puff about freedom of speech. But when political correctness actually threatens that right, Hollywood's stalwart defenders of free expression are nowhere to be found.
The decision came days after a radical New York-based Muslim fundamentalist group warned that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show's creators, would be killed for supposedly mocking Mohammed...
['Hate speech' charges brought against Boy Scouts for setting rules for its membership, but death threats emanating from an organization within our borders are ignored?
If public Islamic intolerance of everything not Islamic, combined with death threats, isn't hate speech, what is? {rhetorical: see above boy scout point} - I.e., where are the charges against suck Muslim 'organizations'?!?]
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ANGELS OUT OF AMERICA
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Senator Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) 1,400-page financial reform bill contains many economic land mines, says the Wall Street Journal. 
Here's one of the worst: Provisions that would make it harder for business start-ups to raise seed capital.
Currently, wealthy individuals who want to invest directly in a new business can do so with minimum interference from regulators. Entrepreneurs depend on these "angel" investors, since many new businesses lack the collateral for bank loans and are too small to interest venture capitalists. Amazon, Yahoo, Google and Facebook all benefited from angel investors, who typically target companies under five years old:
- According to a 2009 Kaufman Foundation study, such firms are less than 1 percent of all companies yet generate about 10 percent of new jobs.
- Between 1980 and 2005, companies less than five years old accounted for all net job growth in the United States.
- In 2008, angels invested some $19 billion in more than 55,000 companies.
Dodd's bill would change all this for the worse, says the Journal.
Most preposterously, it would require that start-ups seeking angel investments file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and endure a 120-day review. Rare is the new company that doesn't need immediate access to the capital it raises, and a four-month delay is the kind of rule popular in banana republics that create few new businesses.The legislation also removes a federal pre-emption that prevents start-ups and investors from being subject to 50 different state regulators.
The North American Securities Administrators Association, which represents state regulators, argues that federal pre-emption contributes to fraud. But angel investors don't use broker-dealers and other middlemen linked to recent investment scandals. Nascent companies often seek financing from multiple investors in different states, and a state-by-state regulatory regime would mean higher compliance costs and more legal risks - accomplishing only the opposite of what our country needs right now...
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Camp OFA
Organizing for America, Barack Obama's political organization (http://www.barackobama.com), run by the Democratic National Committee, wants to recruit and train a cadre of activists, and is holding camps all over America. Find one near you here:
Training camp for Tea Party infiltrators? Polling place intimidators? Basic training for the Civilian Defense Corps that Obama once-upon-a-time talked about creating?
Are Homeland Security, the FBI and SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] keeping as close a watch on these guys and gals as they do Michigan militias?
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Napolitano: The Issue Is “Turn To Violence”
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"The question is not ideology," ... "We've always had groups on all sides that have held beliefs that are very strong and express them very vociferously."
Instead, the issue is "the turn to violence," according to Napolitano...
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The Violence Card
Subject: txt 2010 lbrty msm - libs bdd -
Liberal Democrats and their friends in the media have tried just about everything to dismiss and discredit the tea-party movement. They've accused Americans who are anxious and angry about a rapidly encroaching government of being racists, extremists, birthers, pawns of a corporate "AstroTurf" effort—and, now, potential Timothy McVeighs. 
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Shocking Report: Police Find TEA Parties More Peaceful Than Anti-war Protests
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police officials have begun to relax security requirements at conservative rallies because of the remarkable absence of violence.
Yes, you read that right: despite nonstop media warnings about hateful protests, violence from TEA party attendants is so nonexistent that police feel safe allowing them to bring large items and even guns.
The Monitor was compelled to check things out when a TEA party in Raleigh, North Carolina, persuaded officials to overturn a ban on flag poles. Such items are typically banned because a flag pole is really just a very big stick that could be used as a weapon. The Monitor's research led the paper to admit that conservative protests are far less threatening than many 'past' demonstrations.
Patrik Jonsson's article drew a stark contrast between violent tendencies of anti war, big business and environmental 'marches' versus the new model of peaceful civil uprising...
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MSNBC: There Are No Violent Liberals
[Meanwhile, in our professional media...]
MSNBC chose to give airtime to Joan Walsh to review her blog posting of “There is no liberal Rush Limbaugh,” which I guess is correct if she’s talking about ratings.
"The problem on the right includes extremists who've made death threats against Democrats like Patty Murray, Bart Stupak, Nancy Pelosi and, of course, President Obama.
There's no one on the left posing the same threat..."
In typical liberal form, Joan was unable to name a single 'extreme' left-wing media figure yesterday even when pressed to do so...
[Talk to Stupak (D) about his death threats from the Left when he was still holding up Obamacare over the funding of abortion {before he caved}.]
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Earth Day: An Assault on Man
[HT: By Brian Sussman]
In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WS) was Congress's leading environmentalist activist. Nelson was the mastermind behind those ridiculous teach-ins, which were in vogue in the late sixties and early seventies. During the teach-ins, mutinous school instructors would scrap the day's assigned curriculum, pressure their students to sit cross-legged on the floor, "rap" about how America is an imperialist nation, and discuss why communism really isn't such a bad form of government -- it just needs to be implemented properly.
In 1969, following a much-hyped oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast, an overblown patch of fire on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, and the pharmaceutically induced vibes cast across the nation via the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Senator Nelson met with Ehrlich and reportedly said, "My God -- why not a national teach-in on the environment?" [That would be in our children's schools. ... snip]
As I write in Climategate:
Earth Day has never been a celebration of God's wonderful creation; instead it's always been an assault on man. "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources," championed the New York Times in an April 23, 1970 editorial, "not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction."
During that first Earth Day man was proclaimed the polluter and would remain as such for subsequent observances that decade. By the Eighties the event's organizers cast man as the tree killer, and, with the Nineties, man evolved into the animal species annihilator.Earth Day is not a celebration of this glorious planet, but instead an assault on man -- and the current energy bill is an assault on America. We must equip ourselves with a complete understanding of the facts so that we can prevent these elitist social engineers from passing this liberty-sapping piece of legislation...
The global warming scare never really became popular until the late Nineties, and when it did, it provided a hook that the compatriots at the Earth Day headquarters could hang their red berets on. Known as anthropogenic global warming, it was a sexy sell: humans-particularly Americans-were now screwing up the entire planet's weather.
By 2000 Earth Day organizers took ownership of this new angle and would never let go... [snip]
[Recommended > ]
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'Mini Page' Propagandizes to Children, Touts Radical Environmentalist Rachel Carson
Subject: txt child = ADD CHILD TARGETS to list -- edu msm -
Under the headline, "Happy Birthday, Earth Day," the April 18 edition provided no information on the negative impact of Carson's efforts:
"In 1962, a scientist, Rachel Carson, published a book called 'Silent Spring.' She caught everyone’s attention with her accounts of birds dying from pesticides. She warned that people were in danger too."
Debnam made no mention of the fact that Carson's "warning" was wrong.
The National Academy of Sciences has called DDT the "greatest chemical ever discovered, a lifesaver of 500 million whose deaths were otherwise inevitable."
Carson's claims that the pesticides could be linked to cancer have been thoroughly debunked. Yet, the Mini Page spun this activist as a hero to children across the country...
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Unions Target Moderate Dems For Defeat In Ideological Purge
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Union head threatens legislators
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Watch on YouTube as a leader of the AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) threatens Illinois lawmakers in order to get them to send more money to public employees...
When will the insanity stop? At least one Governor is taking the battle on, and he has a taxpayer army behind him. All hail Governor Christie of New Jersey...
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NJ Governor Chris Christie winning the battle against teachers unions
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They may want him dead and compare him to Pol Pot, but New Jersey teachers unions are getting bested by their Governor who is rallying New Jersey residents to the cause of fiscal responsibility:
Like their fellow citizens in 54 percent of school districts across the state, the people of Sparta [New Jersey] rejected their local district’s proposed budget yesterday. That’s the highest rate of school budget rejections since 1976, according to the New Jersey Star Ledger.
Why?
Taxpayers are tired of the relentlessly increasing per-pupil cost of public schooling at a time when their own household budgets are under pressure. It helped that popular new governor Chris Christie recommended that voters reject their districts’ budgets unless the teachers unions agreed to a one year salary freeze...
It’s a victory for taxpayers and New Jersey’s children...
[They're bloated and too expensive and worst of all consistently fail our children -- but during this time of double-digit unemployment, just getting them to agree to a salary freeze, which will no doubt thaw at the earliest opportunity, is deemed a 'victory'?
We need universal, unencumbered school vouchers, or our schools will never improve.]
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Advocates carry handguns, rifles at Va. rally
ALEXANDRIA, Va.- Dozens of Second Amendment rights activists holstered their handguns and slung rifles over their shoulders Monday at a gun rights rally in northern Virginia, while hundreds of like-minded but unarmed counterparts converged in the nation's capital.
Those in Washington, D.C., chose not to carry any firearms in compliance with the district's strict gun laws, even though many believe the rules are unconstitutional. The most prevalent sign:"Which part of 'shall not be infringed' confuses you?"
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Bisexual men sue gay group, claim bias
Three bisexual men are suing a national gay-athletic organization, saying they were discriminated against during the Gay Softball World Series held in the Seattle area two years ago. The three Bay Area men say the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance in essence deemed them not gay enough to participate in the series.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle accuses the alliance of violating Washington state laws barring discrimination...
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