The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn’t surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone. This fact became blindingly obvious to me six years ago this month when a Republican president and a Republican Congress enacted the Medicare drug benefit, which former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has called “the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.” [This article points out perfectly why conservatives are fed up with the Democrat Lite Party aka the Republicans. The GOP lost the majority in Congress in ’06 and the White House in ’08 because true conservatives were pissed off at the free spending of the Bush administration/Republican Congress and they were sick and tired of constantly holding their noses and voting for “moderates” and RINOs…ed]
Fort Bragg lifts all media restrictions for Palin visit
Under threat of a lawsuit by The Fayetteville Observer, The Associated Press, ABC and Capitol Broadcasting Co., Fort Bragg on Friday lifted restrictions on press coverage of an appearance by Sarah Palin. The former Alaska governor is scheduled to sign copies of her book “Going Rogue” on Monday at the North Post Exchange. The lawsuit, which was minutes away from being filed in federal court, asked for a temporary restraining order that would prohibit Fort Bragg from giving media less access to the event than that provided to the public. [There is no doubt the order to prevent the media from reporting on Sarah Palin’s visit to Fort Bragg came down from within the White House. Clearly the Obama administration didn’t want the raucous enthusiastic reception to the former Alaskan governor from thousands of military personnel broadcast all over the airwaves. That certainly wouldn’t look good for the commander in chief…ed]
Publisher HarperCollins said Friday that Sarah Palin’s memoir sold 300,000 copies its first day, among the best openings ever for a nonfiction book. In 2004, Bill Clinton’s “My Life” debuted with sales of 400,000 copies. The year before, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “Living History” started at 200,000. [Her publisher advance was covered the very first day the book was released to the public and it’s already on its second printing. Damn…ed]
Plainly, Obama’s poll numbers have hit the skids, as poll after poll registers new lows in approval and new highs in disapproval. More independents now disapprove than approve of his performance. And more voters disapprove of his handling of specific issues such as health care. So what happened, and why now? Well, it has been a long slide down for Obama; this didn’t all happen in one week or one month. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that something has crystallized over the last few weeks. Perhaps it was the two gubernatorial elections, confirming quiet dissension and suggesting that, yes, things really aren’t going in the right direction. Maybe the plethora of foreign policy debacles — the Middle East, the abject failure at engaging Iran, the dithering on Afghanistan, bowing before yet another monarch — have caught up and shaken Americans. [Let’s face it the only reasons this man managed to get elected was the color of his skin and his ability to read eloquently from a teleprompter as everyone knew he had ZERO qualifications to hold the most important job on the planet. For some that didn’t matter as all they cared about was being able to tell themselves they voted for a “black” man, the future of the country be damned. For millions of the rest of us we knew exactly what was going to happen with this man as president and we have now been proven to be accurately prophetic…ed]
Obama bungle produces ‘worst US-Japan summit in history’
A magazine in Tokyo is reporting that President Obama’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama was a frosty disaster, precipitated by incompetence on both sides and an entirely avoidable diplomatic slight to the Japanese side by Obama. The visit was abruptly re-scheduled, seriously inconveniencing the Emperor of Japan, as well as the Prime Minister, whose intricate schedules require meticulous planning and coordination. Japanese weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun cites an unnamed insider at the Foreign Ministry, who delivers a devastating account of not merely a failure to agree, but figurative slaps in the face of the rude president, delivered in retaliation. If true, President Obama has demonstrated high-handed arrogance once again, and antagonized a key ally, weakening a relationship of critical security and economic importance to the United States. [The AmericanThinker.com post of the day…ed]
Barack Obama’s Chump Diplomacy
Oh, how the international community loves Barack Obama — loves to stiff him, play him along, and manipulate him. He’s the world’s celebrity ingenue, the slender naïf perpetually undone by the recalcitrance of foreign leaders. Earlier this year, in a touching exercise in diplomatic and civilizational outreach, he sent two letters to Iran’s mullahs and a new year’s message to the Iranian people. How mannerly, how unthreatening. When the Iranian government beat protesters in the streets after it stole the election for Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, Obama kept his criticism muted. How sensitive, how subtle. [The foreign policy neophyte Barack Obama will soon learn the bad guys around the world will not change their stripes because he bows down and kisses their asses…ed]
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Girl accuses Sacramento mayor of offering her hush money
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson offered to pay $1,000 a month to one of three girls who had accused him of inappropriately touching her while she was involved in his St. HOPE Hood Corps program, the girl told federal agents during their investigation of Johnson’s nonprofit St. HOPE organization last year. The girl — unnamed in a newly released report by two ranking Congressional Republicans — was interviewed by agents Jeffrey Morales and Wendy Wingers with the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Office of Inspector General during an investigation of St. HOPE’s misuse of $800,000 in federal AmeriCorps grants. Investigators say the girl alleged Johnson had offered to pay her $1,000 a month while she remained in the St. HOPE program, but she refused. [This scandal goes right to the top of the Obama administration and one wonders if inspector general Gerald Walpin was fired because he was getting a little too close to the truth…ed]
White House keeps Fort Hood probe in the family
Any reporter worth their salt knows that when government decides to investigate itself, exonerations tend to follow. That’s why it’s so perplexing that the Obama administration is giving the arms-length treatment to any independent, congressional probe of the Fort Hood massacre, and instead putting faith in a Pentagon-led review. Dana Milbank tackled the subject today in the Washington Post, puzzling over how often President Obama follows the more secretive example of former President Bush — after running on promises of transparency and accountability: [Hope and change and complete transparency Obama says but all I’m hearing is blah, blah, blah…ed]
Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain in fight of career for his Arizona Senate seat: poll
John McCain may have been the Republican Party’s national standard bearer last year, but now it looks like he may have a hard time just hanging on to his Senate seat. A new Rasmussen Reports poll of likely 2010 GOP primary voters in Arizona finds the longtime incumbent in a virtual tie with potential challenger, J.D. Hayworth. McCain earns 45% of the vote, while Hayworth picks up 43%. Another candidate, anti-illegal immigration activist Chris Simcox, is picking up 4%. Hayworth, 51, a conservative former U.S. congressman who now is a popular radio talk show host in Phoenix, is reportedly interested in the race but has not formally declared for it. [Like I said earlier, conservatives have had it with RINOs and with the absolutely pathetic campaign McCain ran in ’08 along with the fact he agrees with the Democrats on way too many issues, the time is right to get this man retired for good…ed]
VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES: Tainted Results in NY-23
The computerized voting machines used by many voters in the 23rd district had a computer virus – tainting the results, not just from those machines known to have been infected, but casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines. Cathleen Rogers, the Democratic Elections Commissioner in Hamilton County stated that they discovered a problem with their voting machines the week prior to the election and that the “virus” was fixed by a Technical Support representative from Dominion, the manufacturer. The Dominion/Sequoia Voting Systems representative “reprogrammed” their machines in time for them to use in the Nov. 3rd Special Election. None of the machines (from the same manufacturer) used in the other counties within the 23rd district were looked at nor were they recertified after the “reprogramming” that occurred in Hamilton County. [There is no question this election was rigged. Republicans have held this seat since the Civil War and everything from the phony liberal Democrat “Republican” Scozzafava running in the race to clear proof the vote counting machines were tampered with to the “winner” Owens being sworn in as a congressman before the state had certified the results show the Democrats were desperate to steal this election…ed]
New Documentary Challenges Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ on Global Warming
In 2007, a British High Court judge ruled that Al Gore’s global warming film contained nine significant errors and should no longer be screened in schools unless accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore’s “one-sided” views. Al Gore’s award-winning global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth,” socked two years ago by a British court ruling that found several errors, is facing additional scrutiny with the release of a new documentary that seeks to rebut many of Gore’s claims. In Gore’s film, directed by Davis Guggenheim and released in 2006, the former vice president argues that humans are causing climate change, a problem he says is the biggest moral challenge facing the globe. [Al Gore’s climate change fraud is quickly unraveling and this new film, Not Evil Just Wrong, will help hammer a few more nails into the coffin…ed]
Hospital Falters as Refuge for Illegal Immigrants
Each had crossed the border years before, smuggled across the desert by a coyote, never imagining the journey would lead to a drab and dusty clinic on the ninth floor of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Some knew before the crossing that they had diabetes or lupus or high blood pressure, but it was only after they arrived that their kidneys began to fail. To survive, they needed dialysis at a cost of about $50,000 a year, which their sporadic work as housekeepers, painters and laborers could not begin to cover. And so they turned to Grady, a taxpayer-supported safety-net hospital that would provide dialysis to anyone in need, even illegal immigrants with no insurance or ability to pay. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning, the 15 or so patients would settle into their recliners, four to a room, and while away the monotonous three-hour treatments by chitchatting in Spanish. [Nice to see our horrible (according to the Democrats) terribly expensive (perhaps due in part to stories like this) healthcare system is providing free services for people in our country illegally. I wonder if it would be less expensive in the long run for American taxpayers to just build several state of the art hospitals IN Mexico rather than treating illegal aliens in ours that way facilities and treatment can be freed up for the people actually PAYING for them?…ed]
Ralph Lawler, Mike Smith suspended for tonight’s Clippers telecast
Veteran play-by-play man Ralph Lawler and analyst Mike Smith (above, left and right) were suspended for tonight’s Clippers telecast on Fox Sports Prime Ticket for comments made during Wednesday’s telecast, according to sources with knowledge of the decision but not authorized to speak publicly. Fox issued this statement at 5:03 p.m. today: “We regret the remarks made by Clippers announcers Michael Smith and Ralph Lawler during Wednesday’s telecast. While we believe that Michael and Ralph did not intend their exchange to be offensive, the comments were inappropriate. We extend our apologies to Hamed Haddadi of the Memphis Grizzlies and to anyone who was offended. We have addressed the situation with Michael and Ralph and have taken appropriate action.” [First, there was NOTHING offensive about what these guys said. Second, it’s this kind of over the top idiotic political correctness that got 14 innocent people killed and dozens more injured at the hands of a fanatical muslim in Texas just a week and a half ago…ed]
Healthcare Radicals Bank on Public Ignorance and Gullibility
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hid a radical health care overhaul bill behind closed doors for weeks, then finally emerged in a news conference on November 18 to proclaim that the bill somehow would cover millions more Americans while simultaneously saving money. To give you an idea of the kind of math that Reid and his allies employ, they conveniently left out of the projected cost of the bill some $247 billion — the cost of a 10-year freeze on cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. Reid had proposed that expensive “doctor-fix” plan to buy off the American Medical Association, which dutifully endorsed the overall health care bill in response to the cash inducement. That helps explain why the left-leaning AMA, which once represented nearly four of every five physicians, now claims closer to just one in five physicians on its dwindling rolls. Such closed-door negotiating and legerdemain have marked the health care overhaul scheming in both the House and Senate, where lawmakers bank on the assumption that the American public is blithely ignorant and supremely gullible. [The taxes start immediately but the takeover of the healthcare system doesn’t start until 2013 or so thanks to all of the ignorant Americans who are apparently too busy to educate themselves about what is happening to our country. Regrettably, the clueless among us outnumber the informed by a wide margin..ed]
Inside ACORN’S Political Plans: Ensuring a Democrat Majority
According to a report from Ohio today, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has asked the ACORN-tainted Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to investigation ACORN’s voter registration work in the state. “U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan has formally asked Ohio’s secretary of state to look into allegations that ACORN had at least a preliminary plan to back Democrat candidates in key Ohio congressional races in 2008.” The political plan was described in an October article as “having been scaled back,” and of course, ACORN denied any partisan activity. [While this may be familiar territory for those who have been following the criminal enterprise ACORN for some time, the rest of the folks may wish to get up to speed about these crooks and this is just more ammo…ed]
Dems snare 60 votes to move ahead on health care
Democratic leaders secured the last two votes to move ahead on historic health care legislation, clearing the way for a Saturday night showdown on President Barack Obama’s top domestic initiative. In long-awaited speeches, centrist Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said they would stand with their party and vote “yes” on the crucial test vote despite deep reservations with elements of the 2,074-page bill to remake the nation’s health care system. “The truth is this issue is very complex. There is no easy fix and it’s imperative that we build on what’s already working in health care in America,” Lincoln told her Senate colleagues. [Millions was paid out in brides to ensure all 60 Senate DEMOCRATS are on board to have a debate on the government take over of our healthcare system. Note that not a single Republican is going along with the program…ed]
Cuba offers free penis implants
Cuba’s government has offered its first free penis implants, part of a program set to be expanded across the communist island, an official newspaper has reported. It is likely not what Karl Marx had in mind when he imagined a society transformed “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” but Juventud Rebelde reported on Friday that the silicon and silver penis implants are set to become more common. [OK I take it all back. Maybe government run healthcare really ain’t all that bad after all…ed]
Quote of the day.
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
-Geraldine Ferraro, opining during the last presidential campaign.
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