The recent tragic events in Norway have saddened the world. It has been reported  that a 32 year old man, Anders Behring Brevivik is believed to be the lone assailant responsible for the shootings at a youth camp on an island in Norway; as well as the Oslo bombing.

Many people lie dead. Numbers extending into the nineties. Most of the dead were young people on summer holiday at a camp on Utoeya Island. The youth group for The Labour Party of Norway, gathered together to learn more about the bombing in Oslo. Dressed as a police officer, Breivik commenced to shooting. Leaving the wounded in heaps. He shot the piled bodies repeatedly, hoping to kill more hiding among the dead.

The vicious assault came shortly after a bomb went off in Oslo. The Christian Post reports that the intended target was Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. He was unharmed.

The gunman labeled as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist has been vocal about his dislike for multiculturalism and Islamists. Often, writing about it in blogs.

Initially, reports were made that this was the act of a Middle Eastern terrorist group. Which later turned out to be incorrect. Criticism about fact checking and speculation are starting to surface. The American Muslim was particularily harsh in it’s condemnation of news organizations. Calling for readers to check out other articles with words in the titles such as, Why do they hate us and A shameful day in journalism.

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Today, in 1965, Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. It was the beginning of the end of the Hippies, even if they didn’t realize it.

Newly created ACORN front groups across America have signed on to SEIU’s economic terrorism and sabotage campaign. ACORN, long associated with President Obama, is participating in the disruptive campaign through its newly renamed state chapters. Mortgage and student loan strikes, crippling bank boycotts, intimidation, and who knows what else are all on the agenda.

I reported on the emergence of the “new” ACORN groups in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. Although ACORN filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy last Election Day, its state chapters have been quietly restructuring under assumed names. Mortgage bubble generator ACORN Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America while ACORN’s vote fraud factory Project Vote continues operating out of ACORN’s old Washington, D.C. office.

The subversive plan hatched by Stephen Lerner, an international board member of the radical Service Employees International Union, aims to destroy the nation’s financial system. Lerner is influential in leftist organizing circles and has reportedly visited the Obama White House at least four times.

After Greeks rioted over austerity measures, the stock market fell, Lerner observed. “The folks that control this country care about one thing: how the stock market does; how the bond market does; and what their bonus is.”

Lerner said a strategy was needed that addressed the following questions: “How do we bring down the stock market, how do we bring down their bonuses, how do we interfere with their ability … to be rich?” It is important “to politically isolate them, economically isolate them and disrupt them,” he said.

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As the Administration’s push for alternative fuels grows stronger, Congress is set to consider H.R. 1380, which would create very generous tax credits to manufacturers who retrofit existing work vehicles to run on natural gas rather than on that terrifying global menace known as oil, and very generous subsidies to natural gas vehicle consumers: $7500 per car and a whopping $64,000 for heavy-duty trucks and 18-wheelers. It’s common knowledge in DC that Texas hedge-fund operator and natural gas-magnate T. Boone Pickens is the force behind this bi-partisan, pork-laden legislation, possibly because his natural gas empire would greatly profit from the sudden influx of billions of taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies listed in the bill.

But hidden behind the scenes is another multi-billionaire, one with a much more sinister motive than mere profit. A man who’s vast fortune of nearly $7 billion is being used to subvert nearly every American institution to conform with his dream of a worldwide socialist utopia.

George Soros.

According to the website GuruFocus, which tracks the investment habits and portfolio trends of some of the world’s richest people, George Soros has made some intrigiung investments into alternative fuel companies of late, specifically those at the forefront of natural gas. This would not be so troubling except that, as GuruFocus points out, Soros has accurately predicted both economic bubbles and quickly growing industries. As a result, Soros’s funds have turned out a 30% return on investments since their inception.

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From Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

House Republicans are finishing work on a new proposal to resolve the standoff over the debt ceiling. The proposal, set to be finished and crafted into the form of a bill by Sunday, will be in two parts. The first will combine a short-term increase in the debt ceiling with spending cuts. The second will lay the groundwork for a longer-term increase in the debt ceiling coupled with far-reaching deficit reduction.

“Senator Reid said on Friday that he is going to wait for us to move,” says a well-informed GOP House aide. “So we’ll move.” Another well-informed aide confirmed the basic outline of what’s happening.

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New York City families and school choice advocates were handed a major victory late Thursday evening when a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled that 22 failing public schools must close and 15 charter schools must be allowed to share space in public school buildings.

The ruling gives hope to many New York City families eager to see their children receive a quality education. The NAACP and the teacher unions so despise non-unionized charter schools that the groups were willing to see students remain trapped in ineffective schools for selfish political and financial reasons.

Thursday’s ruling corrects that injustice.

Education Action Group believes that all parents should have the right to choose where their children attend school. Each child deserves access to an effective educational experience that will prepare them for life.

The state Supreme Court has previously ruled that the New York Constitution requires that students receive a “sound, basic education.”  There is nothing that says that education must occur in a traditional government-run school.

That principle was indirectly affirmed again last night by the Manhattan Supreme Court judge’s ruling.

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“We inherited a mess…”

How many times have we heard this tired mantra, usually offered as a rebuttal to suggestions that Obama and his party are responsible for our ongoing economic doldrums? It seems reflexive, almost unconscious. How else can one explain how liberals continue to defend themselves against the indefensible?

The explanation is both psychological and political.

Psychology has long sought to comprehend and explain these tendencies. One of the hallmarks of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is the concept of defense mechanisms. These are unconscious maneuvers that a person’s ego utilizes to protect one’s personal sense of integrity. Students who passed  Psychology 101 likely recall some of the well-known defense mechanisms: denial (such as Jay Carney’s  recent insistence that “The economy is vastly improved…”), regression (the infamous tantrums of Rahm Emanuel and Alan Grayson), and repression (Harry Reid conveniently “forgetting” that he had railed against raising the debt limit just a few years ago). But the most infantile— and therefore common— defense of the Left is projection.

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Actually, the answer is all of the above.

He pontificates about debt, but he voted for the fake stimulus and budget-busting Obamacare legislation.

He’s a preening self-styled deficit hawk, but the nation’s four largest deficits have occurred since he became Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

As Chairman of the Budget Committee, with a bloated staff and a budget of millions of dollars, his only responsibility – under law – is to produce a budget resolution every year, yet it’s now been more than 800 days since he’s bothered to fulfill this obligation.

You may be asking why I’m going after Senator Conrad. Is it because I’m upset that he has played a key role in tricking some gullible Republicans into supporting tax increases, based on a laughably vague set of talking points?

Sure, that galls me, but I’m used to Republicans engaging in self-immolation. I can’t really get too upset with Conrad for taking advantage of GOP naiveté.

What irks me is that this buffoon went to the Senate floor last week to make an impassioned plea for higher taxes. But rather than honestly say that he wants to take more of our money, he demagogued about a building in the Cayman Islands.

According to our financial-wizard friend from North Dakota, there is something inherently criminal about this structure (offices of a top-flight international law firm) because it is the home of more than 18,000 companies.

Here’s an image I captured from one of Conrad’s earlier speeches, where he made the same accusation.

So why am I irritated about his speech? Is it because Senator Conrad lied about the number of companies at Ugland House? No, the Senator is correct (unlike Obama, who demagogued about the same building during the 2008 campaign, but said there were 12,000 companies).

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Today, in 1929, diplomats from around the world signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which repudiated war as a matter of policy. From that day forward, according to the international community, wars would never be fought again. So, we have that going for us.

Organizing for America is back to being Obama for America now that the never ending campaign of President Obama is calling itself one again. Other than that, not much has changed with Team Lightbringer.

The campaign has just released a new video, “How Wall St. Reform is working for you”, that tells a nice story which, none too coincidentally, dovetails perfectly with the president’s caterwauling about “THE RICH!” during the debt ceiling negotiations.

The tale begins by detailing the lead-up to the meltdown that we’re all-too-familiar with at this point. Well, many of us are, anyway. On the other side of the political aisle many of the overwhelming contributing factors have all but been ignored. The video completely forgets to mention the roles that Fannie and Freddie played because honesty doesn’t fit the narrative here. And what, you ask, is that narrative?

That the government is here for you and your lives would be miserable without it, of course.

Even when it’s the government that helped bring the pain in the first place.

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Lost in the blow-up between Representatives West and Wasserman Schultz is that only two days earlier, Allen West said something much more significant and more massively belligerent — about Barack Obama — something the left would prefer drowned out.

Must we “know the enemy” or is it enough for those elites in the know to go through their motions and machinations, while mushroom managing the Sovereign American People?  Apparently, most “conservative” members of Congress think it is just okay for us all to be kept in the dark and fed manure, at least those politicos who are not too fungous, themselves, to see.

Very exceptional is the former combat officer of Florida, who seems to think it important to give his superiors the actionable intelligence we need, in order to make our ultimate decisions — in measured doses, at least.  By last weekend, he even went as far as using a word with which most readers in Big Government are already familiar in the identification of Barack Obama: Marxist.

Gasp, choke, a milestone in Congressional honesty was reached.

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Connecticut state correctional officers and prison employees say they have been misrepresented by their union leaders. The current members of a Connecticut local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are actively soliciting membership, instead, in the Massachusetts-based National Correctional Employees Union (NCEU), following their union leaders’ participation in a decision by the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) to change its bylaws. SEBAC voted on the change in order to make good on a $1.6 billion concession package deal struck with Democratic and Working Families Party Governor Dannel Malloy. The AFSCME local’s 4,500 members rejected the original concession package, leading to only a 57% approval vote, when the bylaws required 80% approval by rank and file members. SEBAC has now voted to lower the bar for ratification of contracts to require only a simple majority.

Since the rejection of the concessions package, Governor Malloy has threatened to lay off about 4,300 state workers and put an end to many government services. The governor plans to lay off nearly 900 correctional officers and close several prisons, two of which, Mr. Malloy’s advisor states, will close even if a new labor agreement is achieved.

According to CT News Junkie, correctional officer John Boyle, who will be retiring, said he is very unhappy with both AFSCME and SEBAC, both groups he views as existing only to collect dues from workers. “They’re taking people’s money going behind closed doors and selling them out,” he said. Mr. Boyle is organizing a class-action suit against union leaders.

The Day reports that Christopher Murphy of the NCEU, is helping to gather signatures to begin the process to allow the correctional officers to leave AFSCME. “They feel AFSCME is taking care of its own issues and has its own agenda, and is working very closely or is in bed with the governor.” Mr. Murphy said that SEBAC has overreached its authority by negotiating agreements beyond those related to healthcare and pension provisions. He added that SEBAC violated its own bylaws in the process of changing them and suggested NCEU would fight them with every legal avenue available.

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The recent debt ceiling debate has prompted increased focus on deficit reduction, with President Obama and congressional leaders proposing various cuts and tax increases aimed at moving the budget towards balance.  As has become typical, for President Obama and his friends in Congress, this means targeting the oil and gas industry with proposals to nix tax credits and deductions that are broadly available across industries well beyond oil and gas.

Ironically, however, two new studies indicate that if Obama wanted to boost revenues from the oil and gas industry, he would not need to do it via pursuing tax hikes.  Rather, according to a new study commissioned by the Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST), an organization dedicated to helping rebuild the Gulf Coast’s flagging economy, returning to normal drilling levels in Gulf waters would boost revenues demonstrably.

Since the BP Gulf Oil spill – which happened over one year ago – the Administration has been dragging its feet in allowing American companies to drill in American waters. Approvals for shallow- and deep-water exploration permits are down by over 50 percent and 80 percent respectively.  But a resumption of drilling would pour $44 billion into the American economy, create 230,000 jobs and, what’s more, increase tax revenues from American oil and natural gas companies by $12 billion, according to GEST.

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From The Financial Times:

Barbara Mikulski, Democratic senator from Maryland, best captured the turn of events in the critical US debt talks.

After emerging from a lunch meeting on Thursday with members of her party and Jack Lew, the White House budget director, Ms Mikulski said her colleagues were feeling “volcanic” about the prospect of a $3,000bn deal to cut deficits and raise the debt ceiling that did not include any higher taxes, adding that it was “like Mount Vesuvius” in the room.

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Earlier this week, the RAND Corporation released the results of a study that found merit pay had no effect on increasing student achievement or teacher motivation.

Teacher union supporters are gleefully promoting this study as proof that merit pay does not work.

Before the RAND study enters the information bloodstream and is accepted as conventional wisdom, Education Action Group would like to point out two serious concerns we have with the study:

First, buried three paragraphs from the bottom of RAND’s press release announcing the results, is this little stink bomb:

“Researchers also found that a majority of the schools disseminated the bonuses equally among staff, despite program guidelines granting school committees the flexibility to distribute the bonus shares as they deemed fit.”

In the summary, the study’s authors elaborate:

“About 31 percent of schools reported using individual performance as at least one of the factors for determining awards. The remaining schools either did not differentiate or reported using only factors related to time or job title but not individual performance.”

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From Politico:

Rep. David Wu has been accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend, the latest scandal to engulf the troubled Oregon Democrat.

The Oregonian reported that the 56-year-old Wu “acknowledged a sexual encounter to his senior aides but insisted it was consensual,” according to sources aware of the incident.

The unidentified teenager and her family did not file any criminal complaint over the incident, which apparently took place sometime around last Thanksgiving.

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From The Associated Press:

The roller-coaster debate over raising the nation’s debt limit has forced the White House to explain away, brush aside or even ignore declarations by President Barack Obama and aides that no longer served much purpose in the unpredictable negotiations.

First, the White House wanted a congressional vote separated from spending cuts. Now the administration likes them linked.

Obama said he would reject any short-term deal to raise the borrowing limit. Now the White House says he could make an exception.

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I’m blogging from the 102nd annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the JW Marriott in Los Angeles, CA.

At last year’s convention, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party after claiming (falsely) for months that Tea Party members had used the “N-word” against members of the Congressional Black Caucus at an anti-ObamaCare rally on Capitol Hill in March 2010.

A year later, after the Tea Party helped lead Republicans to sweeping electoral victories in November 2010, the political landscape has changed nationwide–and so, apparently, has the NAACP’s rhetoric.

Today, at an introductory press conference, NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous appeared to strike a conciliatory tone, highlighting areas of cooperation with the Tea Party and prominent conservatives, even amidst broad policy disagreements.

One place of agreement we have found with the Tea Party this year, in places like Texas, has been the urgent need to reform our nation’s criminal justice system. Even as we battle on 99% of the issues, we have found one place to work together.

Grover Norquist, and the California state prison guards’ union, the CCPOA, joined us and the U.S. students’ association and the ACLU. Newt Gingrich sent a statement to say it is time that this state and this country get back to investing in education, and away from investing so much in incarceration.

In the brief question-and-answer session that followed, a local reporter asked Jealous to respond to plans by a Tea Party group in predominantly black South Central Los Angeles to protest against the NAACP on Sunday.

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