The first GOP debate in South Carolina of the presidential election cycle taking place in South Carolina won’t be a game-changer for who will be the next President of the United States. Even though the “big names” are boycotting too busy to attend the debate (which is a likely mistake, given the opportunity to opine on the current fracas over the union-controlled NLRB’s attacks on Boeing and the state of South Carolina), the person who wins the White House in 2012 can almost assuredly be predicted within a short period of time.

While 2010 was just a warm up, the election of 2012 will be the election that, ultimately, determines the future direction of the United States and, perhaps, its very existence (see debt). While President Obama re-lubricates his 2008 OFA machine, determined to win re-election on the back of Osama Bin-Laden’s quickly-disposed of corpse, GOP contenders are beginning to posture for a shot at the White House.

Winning the White House won’t merely be a matter of money (though that will be necessary), since Obama is hoping to raise $1 billion (undisclosed)—nor, is it a matter of name recognition (though that helps too). It will be, however, all about strategy.

And the strategy begins here…

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Even before Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. soldiers, his brand of anti-modern, anti-pleasure Islam was under attack by Bollywood, India’s pop culture juggernaut that boasts a global audience of 3 billion people.

As Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia explains, Bollywood movies and videos appeal to young men and women in Muslim and Arab countries because they dramatize the sorts of tensions between traditional and modern ways of living. “Who should decide who one should marry – is it the parents or is it the boy and girls themselves?” asks the Indian-born and raised Dalmia. “In the West, in Hollywood movies, it’s not even an issue. But it’s a huge issue in that part of the world and all of Bollywood movies deal with that one central question.”

Dalmia also notes that Muslims are among the most popular – and sexually suggestive – performers in Bollywood productions. “When you have Muslims succeeding in Bollywood as Muslims, it makes them feel, well, we don’t have to give up our religion in order to be modern,” observes Dalmia. “That’s very, very subversive…of Islamic demands and Islamic extremism….If you can have a good time in this world…and still be religious, why do you have to strap suicide bombs to your chest and blow yourself up?”

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Tomorrow, Florida has a golden opportunity to strike a major blow for economic liberty.

The vital question is this:  Will Republican senators live up to their promises to remove job-killing regulations and red tape, or will they cave in to powerful special interests and high-paid lobbyists?

On Friday, the Florida Senate will vote on HB 5005, a House bill that removes needless licensing requirements for several harmless trades—including hair braiders, outdoor theater workers and interior designers.

But as the video above explains:

The legislature set out to [remove] unnecessary licensing laws, including one that makes is a crime to practice interior design without a college degree and a two-year apprenticeship . . . . Lobbyists for the American Society of Interior Designers are trying to derail reform efforts by stirring up trouble in Tallahassee before the legislative session ends this Friday.

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) represents less than three percent of all designers, but its members have designated themselves as spokespeople for the entire industry.   And for the last 30 years, ASID has spent millions of dollars on a coast—to-coast lobbying campaign designed to legislate potential competitors out of business.

This 30-year fight all comes down to the Florida Senate tomorrow.

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The U.S. House took another whack this week at defunding Obamacare—although the Senate and White House are poised to protect the funding.  They took a good swing, but didn’t get a hit.

This week the House by 238-183 passed HR 1213, which would repeal the automatic funding that Obamacare provides for federally-dictated insurance exchanges, the mechanisms to sell the re-fashioned and federally-approved insurance policies.  That’s what it would do IF it became law—which the Senate and White House will make sure it does not.

The bill does not, however, seek to repeal the requirement that each state either establish such an exchange or have the feds do it for them.

Billions of taxpayer dollars could be saved if the House bill had a chance to become law, however.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates savings of $14.6-billion over ten years, but the amount is inexact because Obamacare placed no limit on how much would be spent.  The Secretary of Health and Human Services was given a blank check for that purpose.  It’s just one part of the overall $105-billion slush fund in automatic spending under Obamacare.

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Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has given several interviews over the past year where he has casually discussed the possibility of running for President in 2012.

The tone and clarity of that possibility changed the other night when in a rare one-on-one twenty-five minute interview, Ambassador Bolton used his strongest language to date in telling me where he stands on a possible run for the White House. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

I AM VERY SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING RUNNING because President Obama’s leadership on national security has been woefully inadequate. We are grateful that he made one difficult, very courageous decision on Osama bin laden that turned out to be right but that is not reflective of the arc of his overall work

[...]

I understand that a one issue candidate gets marginalized and I will not be a one issue candidate.

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It would be the ultimate irony if the one courageous and decisive act by President Obama turned out to be yet another liability. Quite frankly, it would not be surprising either.

Questions about how the death and burial of Osama bin Laden came about are mounting. It is becoming increasingly evident that the White House is now backing off, changing details, and spinning to its political advantage an event that should primarily celebrate a decade of U.S. policies of intelligence-gathering and military strategy, as well as the strength and competence of the best-trained military in the world.

CIA Chief, Leon Panetta, now appears to be at odds with the White House, regarding both the release of photos of bin Laden’s body and whether waterboarding was used to extract intelligence information from detainees of Guantanamo.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, and now the president himself, has said that the White House is reluctant to release the photos of the body because of concern about “sensitivities.” The question is, whose “sensitivities?” Other radical jihadists who may be enraged further with the United States? American citizens who have already witnessed gruesome photos of dead civilians- courtesy of the main stream media- in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or, the liberal base of the Democratic party, who can’t quite get their heads around the fact that their president- who is supposedly of such superior moral character, and has already done such a thorough job of apologizing to the world for the “transgressions” of the United States- actually made a decision to kill the apparently unarmed terrorist within sight of his wife (or child), to defend and preserve American freedom and security?

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, we’re joined by D.B. Grady, a correspondent for The Atlantic, author, paratrooper, and veteran of Afghanistan, to discuss the regional fallout from the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

D.B. Grady’s Website
The Atlantic: Veteran’s Day
DC Examiner: Pakistan’s Role as Bin Laden’s Protector
RCW: Pakistan’s Osama Problem
RCW: In Osama’s Death, a Vindication of Obama’s Choices
RCW: Should Obama Have Captured Bin Laden?
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Virtually all public officials say they believe in government transparency, but well-meaning words don’t always translate into effective government action.

So, several years ago, the national Sunshine Review (SR) began regularly assessing some 5,000 state and local government websites, using a “Ten-Point Transparency Checklist” to measure how well government officials are using the internet for “proactive disclosure” of information (rather than merely responding to citizens’ requests).

SR’s latest transparency grades show that the Florida is living up to its “Sunshine State” nickname.  Consider:

• The number of local government web sites in Florida earning an A grade from the Sunshine Review more than doubled (from 10 to 22) during the last year, and the Sunshine State once again had more top scores than any other state.
• Of the 22 Florida jurisdictions receiving an A from the Sunshine Review, 12 earned a perfect score and one (Miami) became the first Florida city to receive a “Sunny Award” for transparency excellence.
• Overall, the Sunshine State received a cumulative transparency grade of B.  Among other things, Florida’s cumulative grade was held down by a high number of “problem sites” (those earning a transparency grade of D or F), which declined only modestly, from 51 to 46, during the last year.
• Failing to provide citizens good information about how to access government audits and about how to access public records were the most common transparency problems.

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Rev. Wallace Charles Smith, pastor of the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington D.C., recently made national headlines after President Barack Obama and the first lady chose to attend Easter Service at his church. Then a video surfaced showing Rev. Smith (like Jeremiah Wright Jr.) making some inflammatory and derogatory comments about whites during a speech in January 2010.

In the speech, Smith said that even with a black president, America is not over its race problems. He said that since “Jim Crow” can now “get a regular news program on Fox” and Rush Limbaugh can make the same “statements that were once the purview of Robert Shelton and members of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council.”

Now a new tape of Obama’s Easter Sunday Pastor has surfaced. Smith was interviewed on my show  (The Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show) on January 17, 2011, where he made more controversial remarks about race and defended his friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

During the interview, I questioned Rev. Smith about race relations and Obama’s choice to worship in Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.’s church for 20 years. I also got Smith to go on record about his views regarding Attorney General Eric Holder’s handling of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.

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That recently announced U.S. Senate Candidate Adam Hasner (FL) has already been attacked with what looks to be a dubious, politically motivated ethics complaint by Democrats suggests he’s seen as a serious threat to win and that one of at least two other factors may be in play.

The ethics complaint against Hasner was filed by Diana Demarest, former secretary of the Palm Beach County Democratic party. “I didn’t like Adam Hasner when he was in the Florida House. I certainly don’t want him as my senator. He’s a right-wing zealot,’’ Demarest said.

Either one of his opponents, perhaps Charlie Crist protege, George LeMieux, is stealing a page from his mentor, co-operating with Democrats in hopes of hurting a GOP opponent to win an election, or Florida Democrats see the Tea Party-aligned Hasner as the more serious threat and are already trying to soften him up for the General election.

LeMieux was deputy attorney general when Crist was Florida AG. He masterminded the campaign that put Crist in the Governor’s Mansion. He served as Crist’s first gubernatorial chief of staff.

The latter is more likely. A Democrat calling a GOP primary candidate a “right-wing zealot” while filing a politically motivated ethics complaint, isn’t much of a criticism for now; nor is it likely to hold up in November 2012. While a Conservative, Hasner has managed to repeatedly win re-election in a Democrat-controlled county. More on Hasner here.

As a state representative from Democratic-controlled Palm Beach County, Adam successfully won re-election three times without ever sacrificing his bedrock conservative principles. Adam served alongside Marco Rubio for six years, and in 2007 was tapped by then-Speaker Rubio to serve as Majority Leader for the Republican caucus.

When asked how he consistently achieved re-election under the circumstances, Hasner cited the need for aggressive, effective communication of his principled conservativism, even to moderates, during a recent one-on-one phone interview. With the nation, including Florida, shifting somewhat Right in 2010 and a GOP base increasingly convinced that accomplished conservatives can win espousing their ideology, as opposed to running away from it, Hasner’s message has a good chance of resonating with Florida Republicans in the primary.

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Today, in 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died. Oh, and it is also Cinco de Mayo, whatever that is.

Useful idiots.  That’s what Vladmir Lenin called western sympathizers of the Soviet cause.  He must have been smiling from his cave in Hell Sunday when he saw the Soviet flag – and Communist Party signs – being carried in honor of May Day.

“Union members, pro-labor groups, and even anarchists” participated, according to Fox41.

A couple of anarchists, dressed as clowns (how fitting), were arrested after they scribbled anti-capitalist slogans on downtown buildings in chalk. Meanwhile, in Berlin, Germany, protesters “threw stones at banks and shops, and in isolated incidents police officers were targeted with bottles and fireworks,” according to published reports.

Chalk, schmalk.  Is that the best these crazies can do?  Put some heart into it!  Make a difference for the cause.  Or are they merely the type of useful idiots that bemused Lenin?

Call me a cynic, but I have a hard time seeing how the average American will sympathize with those who carry the flag of an empire that was bent on destroying the western way of life.  But I suppose that’s a minor detail.

Elsewhere in the United States, AFL-CIO heavy Richard Trumka, began his remarks: “Brothers and Sisters, May Day is our day!”

He, along with other six-figure leaders of the “middle class” rallied their members against government spending reforms.

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News that Android and Apple phone communicate collect data on your personal information reveal much about the two companies and their views of the consumer.

Upon the release of the news, Steve Jobs took to the microphone denying Apple products track users calling such accusations “false.”  Emails leaked to the Mercury News tell a different story about Google.  “I cannot stress enough how important Google’s wifi location database is to our Android and mobile product strategy,” Google location service product manager Steve Lee wrote. “We absolutely do care about this (decision by Motorola) because we need wifi data collection in order to maintain and improve our wifi location service.”

This is not Google’s first dust-up regarding privacy violations.  Back in 2003, Google-Watch chronicled major privacy concerns about the company including

1. Google’s immortal cookie: Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it’s years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don’t already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can: For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as “IP delivery based on geo-location.”

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From The Washington Times:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka addressed Communication Workers of America (CWA) union members on a conference call Tuesday evening and relayed his concern about the current battle across the United States over union collective bargaining power, immigration, and education among other issues:

“See, the fact is the fight for workers’ rights and immigrant rights are cut out of the same cloth, because the politicians and their CEO backers are targeting all of us… all working people. They’re targeting immigrants. They’re targeting our collective bargaining rights. They’re targeting professors…trying to silence them if they dare teach something right or a progressive value. They’re going after the poor, trying to take away their voting rights by passing legislation that would say you have to have a driver’s license in order to be able to vote, like the old poll taxes did to us. They’re targeting every progressive group out there to promote their corporate backed political agenda and to continue a power grab.”

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From CBSNews:

In an interview with Steve Kroft for this Sunday’s 60 Minutes, President Obama says he won’t release post-mortem images of Osama bin Laden taken to prove his death.

Video of the comments will appear on the CBS “Evening News” on Wednesday.

Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Wednesday that the Obama administration should not release the gruesome post-mortem images, saying it could complicate the job for American troops overseas. Rogers told CBS News he has seen a post-mortem photo.

“The risks of release outweigh the benefits,” he said. “Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East.”

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Activists in the Lake County Tea Party have received over 300 pages of email correspondence between school officials via FOIA. The emails uncover appalling actions by these officials. The following from  Paul Mitchell at the Lake County Tea Party exposes information about this past school board election, and the consequences that the President of the teacher’s union, Maria Garcia, feared would harm the union’s ability to collectively bargain, if any of the Lake County Tea Party affiliated candidates won the election. The emails how the tactics the officials would use to prevent that occurrence.

The following was sent to District 46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barkley, union leaders Christine Wilson, Diane Elfering, and fellow incumbent candidate Sue Facklam,  from Garcia’s email account in District 30 (Wed., Feb. 23rd, 11:34 AM), where Garcia works as a teacher.

“I think that all members of both Unions should be apprised of this information… There will be no collective bargaining with those 3 on the board. I am very afraid that Sue and I will not have the funds necessary to fight a ‘party’.”

In the following email, Facklam, a voter registrar writes the following, referring to registering high school students to vote.

“Don’t let them turn us in; gifts to register to vote is probably illegal! I did offer Erika [Garcia’s 18-year-old daughter] more gift cards if she can gather up more friends!”(Wed., March 2nd, 10:14 AM to Mary Garcia at her D30 account.) It is a felony to offer remuneration to anyone for voting or registering to vote.

Mitchell explains, “The emails reveal evidence of extensive contributions, expenditures, and in-kind contributions that, by law, ought to have triggered formation of a campaign committee, and been reported to the State Board of Elections.”

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Only in Washington would running out of money and prematurely limiting a program be considered a success. This Friday (May 6,) Obamacare’s first handout program will cease accepting new applications, but not before billions of dollars have been redistributed or promised from taxpayers to the political savy and well connected.

The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) was intended to bridge the time gap between Congress’s passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the law’s implementation. But it has done much more than that. ERRP is saturated with handouts, inaccurate funding assumptions, and shifts an ever greater burden onto the taxpayer.

The Obama administration implemented ERRP on June 1, 2010, as a provision in the president’s health care law. The $5 billion dollar program was supposed to last until 2014, but it has already burned through almost $1.8 billion in less than one year. On March 31, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which administers ERRP, announced that the program had doled out that sum to 1,300 participants.

Administered by the HHS, ERRP disburses funds to unions, corporations, and state governments who then subsidize early retirees’ health care, without any means testing. A business, union, or state simply needs to fill out an application and have workers retiring early—between the ages of 55 and 65—to qualify for the free money.

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