Chinese-Made Turbines to Fill U.S. Wind Farm
A Chinese wind-turbine company, with financing help from Beijing, has struck a deal to be the exclusive supplier to one of the largest wind-farm developments in the U.S., a sign of how Chinese firms are aggressively capitalizing on America’s clean-energy push. The 36,000-acre development in West Texas would receive $1.5 billion in financing through Export-Import Bank of China. Shenyang Power Group, a five-month-old alliance, would supply the project with 240 of its 2.5-megawatt wind turbines, among the biggest made in the world. The Obama administration is hoping a shift to renewable energy will inject new life into the U.S. manufacturing base and provide high-paying jobs, making up for losses in other sectors. But while the U.S. has poured money into renewable energy through tax credits and other subsidies, China has positioned itself to reap many of the benefits by ramping up its export machine. [Like we need more made in China crap coming into this country, and headed for Texas no less, when we could be creating AMERICAN jobs by building these stupid things right here…ed]
Dozens in Congress under ethics inquiry
House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July. The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer. The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. (SNIP) The staffer was fired, a congressional aide said. [When Nancy Pelosi became speaker she said that she would preside over the most ethical House in history. She did, for about 12 seconds. Perhaps she really meant to say the most ethically CHALLENGED bunch of Democrats this country has ever seen?…ed]
Democrats’ Healthcare Scheme Is Pure Insanity
Whole industries and banks are biting the dust; unemployment lingers close to double-digits; government deficits rise like a mountain of nuclear waste; the communist Chinese are buying up our debt in anticipation of God knows what kind of future demands; and more soldiers die needlessly while the President dithers with his golf game. Purely mad social engineers — Obama, Pelosi, & Reid — are on a determined march toward nationalizing one sixth of the entire American economy. Their scheme will have far-reaching effects on one hundred percent of the men, women and children in this country. The whole idea is patently ridiculous, especially in light of the host of other impending disasters. But the fact that these Democrat power-mongers are attempting to foist upon us a system already tried-and-failed so many times in so many places pushes the current national healthcare debate into the realm of pure lunacy. (SNIP) Want a real fix? Two things in less than fifty pages: tort reform and a national competitive market for insurers. I think I’ll run for President. [The Americanthinker.com post of the day…ed]
House health bill clocks in at 1,990 pages
It runs more pages than War and Peace, has nearly five times as many words as the Torah, and its tables of contents alone run far longer than this story. The House health care bill unveiled Thursday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. With an estimated 10-year cost of $894 billion, that comes out to about $2.24 million per word. And for some members, that may not be enough. A “robust” public option can’t be found in the bill. Neither can the word “doctor” – save for a few references to degrees. No “cost curve” is bent. No “blue pill” is dispensed. “Death” and “taxes” are both in there, but “death panel” is not. [For comparison, there are 4543 words in the original, unamended Constitution, including the signatures and The Declaration of Independence contains 1458 words. 6001 words to create this great nation and 2000 pages of this corrupt garbage to begin tearing it down…ed]
It’s alive! End-of-life counseling in health bill
It’s alive. The Medicare end-of-life planning provision that 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said was tantamount to “death panels” for seniors is staying in the latest Democratic health care bill unveiled Thursday. The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death. For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed this summer to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger. Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach. [The Associated Press will be excoriated by the Obama administration for this “misleading” article concerning “death panels” in 3…2…1…ed]
At key moment, Obama leaves health post unfilled
Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government’s health insurance programs for the elderly and poor, play a big role in the health care reform proposals being considered on Capitol Hill. President Obama and Democrats in Congress hope to cut Medicare spending by nearly a half-trillion dollars over the next decade, and reform plans call for a big expansion of Medicaid during the same period. (SNIP) Congress would like to pose those questions, and many more, to the top administrator of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Except there isn’t one. Even though the job is critical to the current health care debate — and would become even more critical should reform pass — Obama hasn’t gotten around to filling it yet. [Bet you didn’t know about this did you?…ed]
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That’s a relief: White House says Stim bill is working
I must admit I had my doubts, but when the White House announced today that the stim bill had “created or saved” 650,000 jobs my heart soared like a hawk. (SNIP) Needless to say, the fact that the “reports” are coming from states and companies without any corraborating data, with completely subjective criteria, and most importantly, without any rational definition of what constitutes a “saved” job, makes this White House study the most spectacularly political, and walloping unscientific report in history. Meanwhile, the Associated Press of all things, supplies a little balance to this report by pointing out figures from another stim bill report: “A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced. A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending. A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.” [What kind of idiot would actually believe this drivel released by the Obama White House? Even if it were true what brand of stupid is it when these dunces are bragging about spending $230,000 PER FREAKIN JOB “saved or created?”…ed]
Time Inc. to Cut $100 Million; Extensive Layoffs Are Expected
Signaling that worse times are ahead for magazines, Time Inc. is expected to announce next week that it will cut $100 million from costs, including another big round of layoffs. The timing is coordinated with the third-quarter earnings announcement from its parent company, Time Warner, sources said. That is scheduled for Wednesday morning. Time Inc., the publisher of magazines like Time, Fortune, and People, has already cut costs drastically: a year ago, it announced it was dismissing 6 percent of its work force, or about 600 people. [I guess Obama’s stimulus program hasn’t helped his rabid and soon to be unemployed supporters over at Time magazine all that much these days…ed]
Massachusetts downturn deepens
Massachusetts may be mired in a recession through the end of the year, even as the nation’s economy tentatively pulls out of the worst downturn in decades, according to reports released yesterday. On the same day Gov. Deval Patrick announced major layoffs in state government, the University of Massachusetts reported that the state’s economy shrank by about 1.1 percent in the third quarter – as indicated by increasing corporate layoffs and plunging tax revenues. “We’re at the bottom and we might bounce around there for a while,” said Michael Goodman, co-editor of the report and chairman of UMass-Dartmouth’s department of public policy. [I guess Obama’s stimulus program hasn’t helped Deval Patrick, his brutha from anotha mutha, all that much up there in uber liberal Massachusetts these days…ed]
Economy returns to growth after deep slump
The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year as government stimulus helped lift consumer spending and home building, fueling an unexpectedly strong advance. Signaling the end of the worst recession in 70 years, the Commerce Department on Thursday said the economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the July-September period, snapping four down quarters with its fastest growth pace since the third quarter of 2007 and exceeding forecasts for a 3.3 percent rate. The report helped lift global stock markets which were also boosted by improving third-quarter corporate earnings, including higher-than-expected profits from household goods makers Procter & Gamble Co and Colgate-Palmolive Co. (SNIP) But, worryingly for economists, it was also driven by emergency government programs like the popular “cash for clunkers” incentive for new auto purchases and an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers. The auto discount program ended in August and the home tax credit is due to expire next month, although Congress is working on a plan to extend it. [Of course you have to keep reading in order to get the real reason for the ONE quarter bump in GDP. “Stripping out auto output, the economy would have expanded at only a 1.9 percent rate in the third quarter.” Oh, ok so the $24,000 PER CAR taxpayers were forced to spend is what made this report look so rosy…ed]
Barack Obama: so much for superhero
What a difference a year makes. On a balmy Tuesday evening in November just under a dozen long months ago, Barack Hussein Obama’s unlikely journey to the presidency reached its heady conclusion. Americans had shown, he proclaimed, that they could “put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day”. The then Illinois senator told the enraptured crowd, and a world that watched in awe at what the United States had achieved, that “all things are possible”, that “our union can be perfected” and it was time for the “partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long to be cast aside”. [Oh Obama is still a superhero alright and performing his job just the way he has been instructed to by that anti American prick George Soros…ed]
United States Attorney Terrence Berg, Eastern District of Michigan, Andrew G. Arena, Special Agent in Charge (SAC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, (FBI), Detroit, Michigan, and Police Chief Warren Evans, Detroit Police Department (DPD), Detroit, Michigan announced a federal complaint was unsealed today charging Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a.k.a.Christopher Thomas, and 10 others with conspiracy to commit several federal crimes, including theft from interstate shipments, mail fraud to obtain the proceeds of arson, illegal possession and sale of firearms, and tampering with motor vehicle identification numbers. The eleven defendants are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years, and known to be armed. (SNIP) The Ummah is ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rapp Brown, who is serving a state sentence in USP Florence, CO, ADMAX, for the murder of two police officers in Georgia. [So a converted muslim murderer of two police officers is running a terrorist organization out of a SUPERMAX prison? And the Obama administration wants to bring the terrorists from GITMO into the US and house them in our prison system huh?…ed]
Homeland Security Department Gags Local Law Enforcement to Protect ‘Privacy’ of Illegal Aliens
The Department of Homeland Security is gagging local law enforcement agencies around the country to protect the privacy of illegal aliens. Under “revised” 287(g) agreements between the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division and state and local law enforcement agencies, any information about local police efforts to enforce federal immigration law must be cleared through ICE before it can be released to the media or the public. DHS says it is doing this to protect the privacy of illegal aliens. “The Privacy Act and the privacy policy provide protections for U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and, in the case of the privacy policy, illegal aliens,” Kelly Nantel, press secretary for ICE, told CNSNews.com, referring to the Privacy Act of 1974. Nantel said that although illegal aliens are not protected under the Privacy Act, it is the policy of the Department of Homeland Security to extend the privacy protection to individuals who are in the country illegally, a policy she said was put into place by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who served under President Bush. [Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit, these guys found yet another thing to blame on Bush! I wonder if we’ll EVER get an administration who actually gives a rat’s ass about this country’s sovereignty?]
The White House Stupidly Goes To War With Car Web Site Edmunds.com
It is an odd, and we’d say regrettable, pattern of this White House that it lets itself get dragged down into fights with specific media outlets. George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal. But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com. They’re actually using The White House blog to dispute the site’s analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers. [Obama and his Chicago street thugs continue to boldly go where nobody with any political sense has ever gone and we love it. Keep it up you clowns because every time you guys attack, your target gains more popularity than they could have ever acquired otherwise…ed]
Lieberman Marching Further Right in 2010
Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012. “I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said in an ABC News “Subway Series” interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System. [Looks like ol’ Lieberman just shot the dingy Harry Reid’s filibuster proof Senate right in the ass…ed]
Harkin warns Lieberman: Healthcare filibuster could put chairmanship at risk
One of the leading Senate Democrats on healthcare reform legislation fired a warning shot in Sen. Joe Lieberman’s direction yesterday, previewing the possible consequences of joining a GOP filibuster. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, told reporters that Lieberman (I-Conn.) ought to consider the benefits of his membership in the Democratic caucus before he decides how to vote on healthcare reform. “[Lieberman] still wants to be a part of the Democratic Party although he is a registered independent. He wants to caucus with us and, of course, he enjoys his chairmanship of the [Homeland Security] committee because of the indulgence of the Democratic caucus. So, I’m sure all of those things will cross his mind before the final vote,” Harkin said in a conference call. [And predictably of course here come the threats against Lieberman from the Democrats…ed]
Blacks vying for all-white Md. council
Greenbelt, a city that prides itself on its heritage as a New Deal-era social experiment, is finding its commitment to inclusiveness tested as two black candidates contend for seats on its all-white City Council in Tuesday’s elections. Until this year, only two blacks had ever run for the council and none had been elected, even though blacks account for nearly half the 21,000 residents of the 6-square-mile city just outside the Capital Beltway, according to the most recent census estimates. (SNIP) For Kathleen Norvell, a Greenbelt resident and ACLU member who disparaged the rights organization’s interference, it is simply a matter that the city’s black voters have never taken an interest in local politics. “It’s a theoretical community,” she said of Greenbelt’s black residents, most of whom are clustered in rental units on one side of the city and are more transient than the mostly white homeowners. “If people don’t want to be involved, you can’t make them,” she said. [It looks like we have a little dustup in a liberal community over why they won’t allow blacks to participate in the town’s political matters. I’m sure the New York Times, the Washington Post, msnbc, cnn, cbs, nbc and the rest of the left wing media will jump all over this story just as soon as they get a chance…ed]
Old Soviet joke: Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. “Niki, I’m dying. Don’t have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble.” A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: “Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe.” A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: “Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe.” Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: “Prepare three envelopes.” In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. [Good article from the Canadian Krauthammer. Two things the American people are getting sick and tired of with this Obama guy, the blame Bush for everything bullshit and seeing his dopey looking face on our televisions screens 24/7…ed]
Would Larry David Urinate on the Koran?
n a recent Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, Larry David accidentally urinates on a picture of Jesus while he is a guest in someone else’s home. This, in turn, leads to a misunderstanding in which the homeowners think they have a miraculously weeping Jesus. Some Christians are understandably upset. Just some thoughts on what this episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm has revealed: Are producers of this show, or Larry David, or anyone else connected to it fearing for their lives right now? Are there Christian groups calling for the death of anyone in connection to this episode? In comparison, let us say, to the Muhammad cartoons riots and death threats, what does this say about Islam and Christianity? Which faith is a Religion of Peace and which one is not? [I wonder why are all the “brave” left wing envelope pushers, who have no compunction whatsoever attacking Christianity, are so afraid of baggin’ on muslims, Islam and the koran?…ed]
Off-duty NYPD detective Kevin Spellman arrested after killing pedestrian; refuses Breathalyzer test
An off-duty NYPD detective who refused a Breathalyzer test was arrested early Friday after running down an elderly pedestrian in the north Bronx, police said. Kevin Spellman, a 22-year department veteran, smelled of alcohol when he was taken into custody after the deadly 6:30 a.m. accident at W. 232nd St. and Kingsbridge Ave., police said. Spellman, 42, was driving south when his 2009 Chevrolet Impala slammed into the unidentified woman as she walked along the street. She was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital. Spellman refused a Breathalyzer test at the scene, but his blood was taken at a local hospital sometime before noon, police said. The head of the detectives union said the victim in the pre-dawn crash was wearing dark clothes, and noted that Spellman immediately came to the victim’s aid. “The moment he struck her he stopped,” said Michael Palladino. “There were witnesses on the scene – people going to work – (and) he asked for help, for someone to call 911.” [Asking for help and for someone to call 911 after mowing someone down while allegedly driving drunk does not excuse anyone’s behavior. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say if this officer was stone cold sober he would have been more than happy to blow into the breathalyzer and demonstrate to his fellow cops he wasn’t plastered at 6:30 in the morning…ed]
Mafia killing in Italy caught on camera
The horrific footage, which was captured by closed circuit cameras, shows the assassin walk up to a man in broad daylight outside a bar in Naples and shoot him three times. As the victim slumps to the ground, the hitman then finishes him off with a bullet to the head and calmly walks away. Blood can be seen spreading onto the pavement from the head of the dead man, who is still holding a cigarette in his hand. He was named as Mariano Bacio Tarracino, 53, and is believed to have been connected to a mafia clan involved in a drug trafficking turf war with a rival group. Anti-mafia investigators said they released the horrific footage of the murder, which happened in May, because they still had not managed to find the killer – despite the fact that the angle of the surveillance cameras means that his face is clearly visible beneath his baseball cap. He even seems to be smirking after carrying out the execution. [Live by the sword die by the sword. These mafia dudes don’t mess around…ed]
Quote of the day.
The art of leadership … consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.
-Adolf Hitler. This sounds just like what the Obama crew has been doing since day one!