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DON'T BELIEVE LYING LIBERALS!
LET ALL CONSERVATIVES PUT ASIDE THEIR DIFFERENCES AND BAND TOGETHER TO
STOP THIS TYRANNY IN D.C.!
Remember what Ben Franklin said:
"We must
hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang
separately."
The mantra today is that we must get the toxic assets out of the banks and other financial institutions
. That way, the banks will be on a sound footing, going forward. That may or may not be true. But, who are the experts assuring us that various steps are needed, now?
Well, two key people in this process are Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut). Barney Frank had a sexual relationship with the federal official in charge of new products from Fannie Mae. Those new products were the bundled toxic assets that collapsed and started the meltdown.
Frank also accepted large contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sources. And he was saying in Congress that these government-created corporations were “sound” just before the bottom fell out of the financial markets. Lastly, Frank has been at the head of the pitchfork and torches brigade, marching up the hill towards the AIG castle.
This is not to say that the AIG bonuses are a good idea. They could and should have been cut off at the knees. But isn’t Frank trying to channel the people’s anger against others, rather than against him and his allies in the government? Can we trust any judgments and actions by the government now, while Frank is still there as a toxic Congressman?
Turn your attention to Sen. Dodd. He received the maximum political donations from Fannie and Freddie sources of all 535 members of Congress. In a close second place on that donations list was then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois). Whatever happened to him after he left the Senate?
FromThe Endive The News Leader of the Known Universe
Animal rights activists were appalled to learn that an article on The Endive, a conservative news magazine, featured a picture of a stick bug with a big piece of poop stuck on its head and not a stick as represented in the article.
“We are outraged,” said Ingrid Newkirk, President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “The Endive was trying to portray African currency as a piece of s**t on a stick and chose to illustrate it by placing a lump of crap on the head of a stick bug. We demand an apology and we demand that the staff of The Endive go to sensitivity training immediately. Even if those retarded Africans use poop on a stick as currency, it doesn’t mean we can just go around humiliating stick bugs.”
The Endive released a statement standing behind its illustration.
“It’s true that the picture attached to the article China Pushes for World Currency is of a stick bug with a lump of crap on its head,” said the statement from the editorial staff of The Endive, “But that’s only because the stick bug was so convincing as a stick. It did such a good job looking like a stick that we couldn’t find a better illustration for Africa’s currency. The stick bug was compensated for its efforts – it got to keep the poop.”
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 51
INSIGHT
“The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.” –author Dresden James
LIBERTY
“The Modern Liberal believes in the supremacy of the state, thereby rejecting the principles of the Declaration and the order of the civil society, in whole or part. For the Modern Liberal, the individual’s imperfection and personal pursuits impede the objective of a utopian state. In this, Modern Liberalism promotes what French historian Alexis de Tocqueville described as a soft tyranny, which becomes increasingly more oppressive, potentially leading to a hard tyranny (some form of totalitarianism). As the word ‘liberal’ is, in its classical meaning, the opposite of authoritarian, it is more accurate, therefore, to characterize the Modern Liberal as a Statist. … The Statist … knows that despite his successful usurpations, enough citizens are still skeptical and even distrustful of politicians and government that he cannot force his will all at once. Thus he marches in incremental steps, adjusting his pace as circumstances dictate. Today his pace is more rapid, for resistance has slowed. … The Conservative does not despise government. He despises tyranny. This is precisely why the Conservative reveres the Constitution and insists on adherence to it. An ‘effective’ government that operates outside its constitutional limitations is a dangerous government. … The Conservative is alarmed by the ascent of a soft tyranny…. He knows that liberty once lost is rarely recovered. He knows of the decline and eventual failure of past republics. And he knows that the best prescription for addressing society’s real and perceived ailments is not to further empower an already enormous federal government beyond its constitutional limits, but to return to the founding principles. A free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation, and a government operating within the limits of its authority promote more prosperity, opportunity, and happiness for more people than any alternative. Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” –author and radio talk-show host Mark Levin in his book “Liberty and Tyranny”
And FORGET all the other crap that the LeftMedia is having us dwell upon.
Please don’t close your mind to the real issue.
I’ve been around the block a few times and in my many years I’ve probably seen the following tricks used by Greedy Self-serving Politicians at least a hundred times or more, maybe even a 1000 times. It’s an old trick; Politicians take the Heat or Attention off of themselves by diverting attention elsewhere.
Billy Boy Clinton was a master of this.
One event that stands out in my mind is the bombing of Libyan Pharmaceutical Factory when the Sexual questions were getting too hot for him.
The REAL ISSUE is that Obama and his Evil Minions do not care about anything but staying in power.
Even if it means destroying the Economy. oops, WAIT, that’s the twist, they DO WANT to destroy the Economy!
Why do you think they passed all the Pig-marks loaded so called “stimulus” bill? Why the Budget so loaded with Greasy Pork that it will clog our Economy?
It’s their plan.
This is a good article to read to explain my point.
“Creating a national or international crisis is a long standing, time-proven way for a politician or political group to either gain more power or solidify its hold on the power it already has – meantime distracting the attention of “The Great Unwashed” from what it is actually doing. By the time the voters’ attention is once again trained on the politician or political group, these individuals have managed to acquire more power than they had and they will explain that the power grab was necessary to get a handle on the crisis (which did not exist before they created it).”
So we all read and were shocked at reports of IDF atrocities in Gaza. The success of this latest bit of anti-Israeli incitement by the main stream media has been astounding.
So I want to alert you to an article just posted by CAMERA ( the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)– Charges of IDF “Wanton Killing” Crumble. Turns out that contrary to what was on the front page of the New York Times, the supposedly “eyewitness accounts” by Israeli soldiers of atrocities in Gaza were actually just hearsay, unsubstantiated rumors, and “Urban Myths”. It is time for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, the Guardian, the Financial Times, etc., to be held to account for their reckless reporting of fictitious Israeli War Crimes and their anti-Israeli incitement.
And this applies doubly to Ha’aretz, (the Israeli newspaper which is a constant source of Jewish Defamation of Israel) which originated the false story.
To read the article Charges of IDF “Wanton Killing” Crumble written and researched by CAMERA’s Associate Director Alex Safian just click here.
In the barrage of bad news cascading across the globe, one might have missed the trouble brewing in the Balkans .The Balkans seem poised for armed confrontation once again. The Kosovars seem insistent on picking a fight for sovereignty, but oblivious to the fact that their protectors are no longer in a position to back up their bluster. History may again place the Balkans in the position of being a catalyst of consequences far beyond their own importance.
Belgrade, in accordance with the legalese of the resolution is accurate. With Kosovo still under “International Supervision”, “It is obvious to everyone today that 13 months after the illegal UDI, Kosovo is no state.”
The Kosovars seem determined to declare sovereignty, thus shedding their current UN protectorate status and settling the matter between the Serbs and themselves. Also that the Bosnian/Croat relations are deteriorating.
Kosovo lacks any international support for its position having only 56 of 192 UN member states even bothering to establish formal ties. Worse, nearly ¼ of EU members decline to recognize their existence.
That whatever the argument between Serbia & Kosovo, about whose criminal activity is rampant in the disputed territory, that it’s there is uncontested. The right answer is probably both. This fairly guarantees that heavily armed competing interests are in close proximity
A possible eruption of hostilities flaring up in the Balkans again would not occur in a vacuum. As in the 90’s external events would bear heavily on how it would play out, and much has transpired since, that would alter the reactions of the international community. Of the community, the four that would come into play would seem to remain essentially the same, the EU, the US, Russia and the Jihadists who settled in the region in the aftermath of the last conflict.
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 45
PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
(Editor’s Note: Mark Alexander is away participating in a national security forum. This week’s Patriot Perspective is a guest essay by Alexander’s colleague Walter E. Williams. For the top conservative commentary on the Web, look no further than The Patriot’s Opinion page.
States Rebellion Pending
By Walter E. Williams
Our Colonial ancestors petitioned and pleaded with King George III to get his boot off their necks. He ignored their pleas, and in 1776, they rightfully declared unilateral independence and went to war. Today it’s the same story except Congress is the one usurping the rights of the people and the states, making King George’s actions look mild in comparison. Our constitutional ignorance — perhaps contempt, coupled with the fact that we’ve become a nation of wimps, sissies and supplicants — has made us easy prey for Washington’s tyrannical forces. But that might be changing a bit. There are rumblings of a long overdue re-emergence of Americans’ characteristic spirit of rebellion.
Eight state legislatures have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution; they include Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington. There’s speculation that they will be joined by Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, Maine and Pennsylvania.
Today’s music video is ‘Theme For Young Lovers’ from The Shadows.
This song has always been one of my favourites. It was in fact the very first record I spent my own money on to buy. I was a 13 year old when it came out in 1964, and I was just starting to become aware that music was more really than just background. Even though the title mentions young love, this is not why I spent my money to buy the Single. I just loved the guitar, and this one song started out my appreciation of the guitar in music, something that stays with me to this day.
The guitar is played by Hank Marvin, one of the most influential guitarists of all time.
This was The Shadow’s 14th song, the previous 13, as well as this one, all making the top ten, five of them number ones when The Shadows were at their peak from 1960 to 1966.
This song became a hit long before the music video became commonplace, so there are no videos of the original, and the only versions showing the band are compilations, so this copy is the best I can find with the original song.
Once upon a time, there was a dinky little backwoods Stalinist country called North Korea. The country, which split from its more prosperous neighbor South Korea in 1948, is a true socialist haven. In other words, human rights, economic prosperity, and basic foodstuffs are more difficult to come by than a good Ben Affleck film. Undeterred, its diminutive leader, Kim Jong-Il still finds the time to censor the media, throw lavish parties for himself, and spout more propaganda than a George Soros website.
In effect, Kim Jong-Il’s government is just like the Obama administration, without the fashion sense and teleprompter. The truly sad part is that if Jong-Il utilized the services of a teleprompter, he probably wouldn’t stick his foot in his mouth so often. Take this week, for example. The North Korean government has announced that they will proceed with their intended launch of a communications satellite, much to the chagrin and outrage of its neighbors. Japan, the United States, and even Oprah Winfrey have condemned the decision as an overtly aggressive action.
And if anyone knows a thing or two about an overtly aggressive action, it’s Oprah. Remember when she tried to shove that fictional claptrap from James Frey down her viewers’ throats in 2005? Most of her fans ripped that book into A Million Little Pieces.
AP Continues To Perpetuate The US-Kyoto 1997 Mythology.
Tom Blumer.
TonyfromOz prefaces …..
In my series on Kyoto, I also mentioned how it was originally the Clinton/Gore Administration who failed to sign as ratifying The Kyoto Protocol, and even though Al Gore did symbolically sign the Bill, his fellow Democrats, all of them, voted against ratifying the Protocol, and Clinton did not even send it to the Senate. Bush did not sign the bill either, and for the exact same reasons that Clinton did not sign it. So saying it is the fault of the previous Bush Administration alone is totally spurious.
No environment-related historical myth seems stronger than the one claiming that if it weren’t for the Republican Congress in the late 1990s and President George W. Bush after that, the US would have ratified the Kyoto Treaty and would be under mandatory strictures designed to combat alleged “global warming” — which, as frequently noted here and elsewhere, has been, depending on the source referenced, on hiatus for eight years to over a decade.
In an article about the Obama administration’s upcoming involvement in international negotiations about so-called “climate change” after what he calls “eight years on the sidelines” (“US takes new climate change agenda to global talks”), the Associated Press’s Dina Capiello continued the wire service’s dishonorable long-term perpetuation of the GOP-bad, Dems-good myth (just a few previous posts on other AP examples are here, here, and here at NewsBusters; here, here, and here at BizzyBlog) by writing that:
And unlike 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was drafted, there is now a Democratic-controlled Congress moving to embrace mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.
Republican leaders released their budget alternative yesterday, and it came under much criticism since it failed to include any hard numbers. On the bright side, though, the Republicans’ energy budget proposal doesn’t require much funding.
The difference between the budgets is quite simple. Although both parties want to keep energy prices low, they have a different means to an end. President Obama’s budget taxes the nation’s reliable sources of energy, limits access to America’s energy resources, and “invests” in expensive and unproven renewable sources of energy – all to supposedly save the planet. The Republican budget would empower the private sector to expand access to America’s energy resources.
The most onerous element of President Obama’s budget is that it would institute his CO2 cap-and-trade proposal to reduce carbon emissions 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.
The budget includes a number of provisions that raise costs on domestic energy production. Overall, $31 billion in additional revenues would be collected, yet the oil and gas industry already has effective tax rates as high or higher than the industrial average.
When gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon, the American public demanded the government produce policies to increase energy supply in the United States and ultimately lower prices. The Department of Interior’s budget proposal for new excise taxes on offshore oil and gas production, termination of funds to coal states to clean up abandoned mines, and user fees for oil companies for processing oil and gas permits on federal land do the exact opposite.
And for nuclear energy, The Department of Energy eliminates all funding for Yucca Mountain operations and only funds activities related to answering Nuclear Regulatory Commission inquiries regarding the commission’s review of the Yucca Mountain construction permit. Yucca is the geologic repository mountain to store nuclear waste. Consequently, progress on building the repository would be stopped.
Republicans recognize the importance of exploring for American oil and gas in an environmentally-sound manner and support immediately leasing oil and gas resources in the OCS through an expedited and streamlined procedure. The Secretary of Interior should be required to offer new leases in the OCS, and ensure royalty revenues from OCS development are shared with coastal states in an effort to incentivize energy development.
Republicans also support opening the Arctic Coastal Plain to energy exploration and development and intend to carry out exploration in an environmentally safe manner, utilizing a small geographic footprint. Republicans propose streamlining the leasing process and mandating a first lease by the Interior Department within a few years. In addition, Republicans support expediting judicial review of energy development by making the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia the sole venue for review and limiting complaints to a finite period-reducing frivolous anti-energy litigation.
In order to bring online a safe, inexpensive, and clean American energy source quickly, Republicans support removing government barriers to new nuclear reactors as long as they meet strict security and safety criteria. Efforts to streamline the hearing and judicial review process for nuclear permitting to place reasonable limits on arduous anti-energy litigation would be pursued as well.”
Furthermore, alternative energy should not be synonymous with renewable energy:
“Republicans support promoting the leasing of federal lands which contain alternative energy such as oil shale. The Interior Department should provide lease sales of oil shale in an environmentally-sound manner, rather than hinder leasing plans. Republicans also support enabling federal agencies to take the lead in spurring a market by using fuels derived from oil shale, tar sands, and coal.”
Surely wind and solar can play a role in America’s energy portfolio if able to compete in the market. The same can be said for any source of energy. But government “investments” in energy is generally code for taxes that lead to higher prices for energy consumers.
Contributing Author Nick Loris writes at The Heritage Foundation and he is a Research Assistant at The Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.
Have you celebrated Earth Hour tonight by turning off your lights during the hour of 8:30 to 9:30 PM? Time magazine thinks this is so important that they have melodratically asked, Can Earth Hour Galvanize the Global Warming Fight? Writer Bryan Walsh seems to be desperately hoping that the Global Warming movement can find its “defining image”:
Every successful social movement has its defining images. Think of the civil rights movement, and the photos of protesters being attacked by police dogs and pummeled by high-pressure fire hoses. Or the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the video of body bags being beamed back to America’s living rooms. Even environmentalism has its iconic images, like Cleveland’s heavily polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in the 1960s, smog wreathing Los Angeles’s skyline during the next decade and even the stark hole in the ozone over Antarctica. To help galvanize public support – especially around a complex issue – the right picture really can be worth a thousand words.
When it comes to climate change, however, that picture hasn’t yet been found.
Instead of the Negative “Earth Hour” Hocus-pocus nonsense, Celebrate Human Achievement Hour.
Rejoice in the fact that your fellow human beings have mastered fire, created an agricultural world, built wondrous monuments, invented miraculous machines, and otherwise exercised their creative powers to make the world the great place it is today.
Turn ON your lights from 8:30 – 9:30 pm Tonight!
For some insight into this “Earth Hour” Farce see TonyfromOz’s article The Earth Hour Fallacy
Bruce Mansfield Power Plant Shippingport Pennsylvania
Most of you who are reading this post will be sitting there tonight during Earth Hour, not paying any attention to turning out your lights. You’ll be watching TV or maybe a video. However, what you will be doing is actually thinking about it, and that’s the ploy that those organisations are using. They want you to think about it, and they use the element of fear to push their agenda. Most of you will be ignoring it, but as you sit there watching TV, trust me, I know exactly what you are thinking.
“What if they’re right.”
Well fear no more, They are not right, and this so called Earth Hour is the biggest con since someone said they could tow icebergs up from the Antarctic to solve all our problems with water.
Why is it a con then?
Those sponsoring Earth Hour have vested interests, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the environment. They will publish in the media they have in their pockets tomorrow that millions of people turned out their lights and they saved millions of tons of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from being emitted into the Atmosphere.
However, they are actually perpetuating a lie. That lie is one of omission. They neglect to tell you the whole story. It may be innocent, but I strongly suspect that inside those sponsoring organisations, there are people who do know it is a lie. They know the full truth. However, if they were to tell that whole truth, it would totally devalue what they think they are trying to achieve, and that is the omission.
ATTENTION TO ALL READERS: THE STATEMENTS IN BOLD ITALICS BEGINNING WITH PARAGRAPH 10 CONTAIN LANGUAGE AND CONTENT THAT MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME READERS. — EDITOR.
If you think there are no consequences to hysterical, anti-corporate grandstanding in Washington, pay attention to what’s happening across the pond: “This is just the beginning.”
So warned a public letter signed this week by a vigilante group called “Bank Bosses are Criminals.” The thugs claimed responsibility for vandalizing a former financial executive’s home and car in Edinburgh, Scotland. The bank official, Sir Fred Goodwin, was excoriated by U.K. politicians for refusing to give up company pension benefits dubbed “obscene,” “grotesque,” “unjustifiable and unacceptable.” The vigilantes were stoked by a former newspaper editor, one Max Hastings, who wrote a diatribe exhorting citizens to violence:
“The time has come to address the entire robber banker culture. Investment banks have been run not for the benefit of society, customers or even shareholders, but exclusively for the advantage of the bankers themselves. … This is why we must stand outside their homes throwing rocks through the windows until they do.”
This is no marginal movement. Some 3,000 protesters from around the world are expected to wreak havoc on the G20 summit next week in London. What happened at Sir Fred’s house is a mere dress rehearsal. Bankers are being told to dress down to disguise themselves and avoid becoming riot targets. Read the rest of this entry »
I know that sometimes statistics, especially figures, can be a little difficult to grasp, but this enhances what I have been saying all along, that CO2 is but a trace gas in the overall picture. The Greenhouse gas component makes up only 2% of the whole Atmosphere, and CO2 makes up 3.62% of that, which is 3.62% of 2%, which makes a total Atmospheric component of 0.01%, and human activity is 3.4% of that, which effectively means that the total production of CO2 on the surface of the Planet from all man induced sources amounts to 0.00034%. This needs to be taken also in context with how much CO2 is produced on the Planet and emitted into the Atmosphere each and every year, and this amount is close to 50 BILLION tons, and it has been at that level now every year, virtually since the end of World War Two. The chart below shows just the Greenhouse gas component in the Atmosphere. The light blue element of the chart shows the largest of the Greenhouse gases, that being water vapour, mainly held in suspension in clouds, and that is 95% of the total Greenhouse gas component.
Out of the entire atmospheric makeup, only one to two percent is made up of greenhouse gases with the majority being nitrogen (about 78 percent) and oxygen (about 21 percent). Of that two percent, “planet-killing” carbon dioxide comprises only 3.62 percent while water vapor encompasses 95 percent. And of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, humans cause only 3.4 percent of annual CO2 emissions. What does this all boil down to? As shown by the accompanying graph, not very much.
Indeed, anthropogenic effects are real but carbon is such a small portion of the natural cycle, and let’s not forget both the sun and carbon are needed for natural cycles that are good for the earth such as photosynthesis-the process by which plants turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. (For more, check out this Global Warming Primer published by the National Center for Policy Analysis.)
I want to pick up on this article from our friend Donald Douglas on the West Coast. Why I want to do this is to point out something, that being are we seeing the rise of women in politics. Recently here in my home State we had an election, and for the first time a woman (Anna Bligh, leading the Labor Party) was elected to hold the highest Office in our State, that of Premier. (In the U.S. this is the similar post to that of State Governor.) Previously, smooth pre-election transfers had seen 2 women hold that position in other States, but at the following election, both lost power. Anna Bligh now becomes the first female State leader to win power in her own right, albeit with a reduced majority. The leader of the opposing party who in fact came half way back from previous landslide victories against them has resigned to open the way for fresh faces, and one of the contenders is also a woman. Currently at federal level, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia is Julia Gillard, and the Deputy leader of the Opposition party is also a woman, Julie Bishop.
In the recent U.S. election we saw Governor Sarah Palin run on the Republican ticket, and even though not a first, it signals the rise of women into the more influential spheres of the top levels of politics. These are times when what might be perceived as the steadying influence of a woman, (without appearing condescending) might be worth actually looking at. This woman, Michelle Bachmann could be one of those in the vanguard on the Conservcative side of politics.
It’s such a pity that the current woman holding such a high Office in the U.S. is Nancy Pelosi, who, in the eyes of a lot of people, gives female politicians a bad name, and a sour taste in the mouth.
Are conservatives interested in standing up for Michele Bachmann? I sent out my post yesterday to a number of top bloggers but heard nothing. Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe she’s indeed the extremist that the leftists keep portraying her to be. Can it really be that top right-wing bloggers are willing to let Bachmann hold down the fort on her own? Not me. I don’t buy the meme that she’s dog-whistling to the black-copter crowds. Bachmann’s speaking more clearly about things that are half of the top conservative opinion makers in the Washington press corps (Brooks, Frum, etc.).
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been in the U.S. for nearly a week now, doing the rounds on a State visit. He got 70 minutes with President Obama, and short meetings with a couple of others in the Administration, mainly just photo ops.
Former prime Minister John Howard and President Bush were a lot closer than this. Howard got State Receptions, press conferences, White House press calls out the front with two podiums and two flags, State dinners, a standing ovation in a combined Congress and Senate meeting, and was even hosted at Crawford Texas on one of his numerous trips to the U.S.
Rudd gets 70 minutes in what was virtually also just a photo op. Lunch cancelled. Add this to how Gordon Brown was also treated, and it indicates starkly what Obama thinks of what are his closest friends and allies. This guy is either not getting good advice, or is ignoring it. Those leaders are just happy to be seen with him, but we, the people who see this, well, we can decide for ourselves what Obama thinks of us, because this shows it all too well.
Greg Sheridan says Kevin Rudd got a far cooler reception from Barack Obama than reported:
This is actually a significant setback for Rudd…. (I)t is hard to imagine any US president cancelling a lunch with John Howard and this not being reported as a serious snub.
And there’s this wise warning:
Rudd is also in very grave danger of making a fatal miscalculation in the way he handles China. Everyone knows Rudd speaks Mandarin and knows quite a lot about China. But he is seriously overdoing it. He looks obsessive and a bit plaintive in the way he is always promoting China internationally. It is Rudd’s job to talk up Australia, not to talk up China.
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.
BRUSSELS (SR) – The head of the European Union, Mirek Topolanek, slammed President Barack Obama’s plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as “the road to hell.”
“Even an ex-crackhead community organizer should know that trying to repair an economy by spending trillions you don’t have is idiocy,” said Topolanek.
The blunt comments by the Czech Prime Minister to the European Parliament on Wednesday highlighted simmering European differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy.
Obama insisted Tuesday that his massive and bloated budget proposal will put the ailing U.S. economy back on its feet. “Borrowing trillions of dollars for temporary building and pork projects just makes sense to me,” he said, “because it lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity, at least until we have to pay it back.”
Foxes & Henhouses When foxes guard the henhouse, the hens lose. Now substitute lawmakers for foxes, the capitol for the henhouse and citizens for the hens. Guess who loses.
This week, Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV provided yet another example of how lawmakers manage to use their position to feather their own nests with blatant conflicts of interest that are perfectly and shamefully legal. Investigative reporter Jim Parsons documented that a large number of PA lawmakers combine outside income from private ventures with assignments on committees that oversee those same ventures. Among the conflicts:
A lawmaker who is employed by a company that is regulated by a committee on which the lawmaker sits. As if that isn’t enough, the lawmaker also rents his district office space from his employer.
A lawmaker who is both on the board of a company that sells insurance and on the House Insurance Committee.
A lawmaker who both owns a firm that consults with agri-businesses and is chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Lawmakers excuse serving two masters by claiming that their outside occupations bring expertise to committee work. But there is no shortage of expertise available to committees without creating such conflicts of interest. To use a timely example, what bankers sitting on the Banking Committee would blow the whistle on financial derivatives from which they and their employers are making tons of money?
Michelle Malkin.
Andrew Bolt.
