Archive for September, 2011

Jim Lakely

Countering Al Gore’s 24 Hours of Climate Panic

by Jim Lakely

Al Gore is using his considerable media muscle to express his frustration that people and governments the world over – but especially here in the United States – have increasingly rejected the notion humans are destroying the planet. He’s broadcasting on his cable channel, Current TV, and online something he calls “24 Hours of Reality,” beginning at 7 p.m. CDT, Wednesday, September 14.

Gore will show a new multimedia presentation attempting to “connect the dots between recent weather events” and man-caused global warming. He has promised that 95 percent of the slides are new and different from those he showed in his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth – which is a good thing, considering that film has since been exposed as fraudulent in many respects.

But the truth is, Gore can’t handle the reality that thousands of reputable scientists across the globe have rejected his dogmatic view of climate catastrophe. Those scientists have done the kind of hard scientific work that The Heartland Institute has presented in six conferences, dozens of papers and books, podcasts, videos, and in Environment & Climate News.

Gore is not interested in having a full scientific discussion, but that doesn’t mean you have to see only one side. There will be 23 more hours to kill after you’ve seen Gore’s latest slide show. Fill it by checking out The Heartland Institute’s counter-programing that brings balance to Gore’s propaganda.
Publius

Schakowsky: Americans ‘Don’t Deserve to Keep’ All Their Money

by Publius

From WLS in Chicago:

Schakowsky said that Americans don’t deserve to keep all of their money because we need taxes to support our society.

“I’ll put it this way. You don’t deserve to keep all of it and it’s not a question of deserving because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together. And there are many things that we decide to do together like have our national security. Like have police and fire. What about the people that work at the National Institute of Health who are looking for a cure for cancer,” Schakowsky said.

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Chriss W. Street

New York Fallout: President Obama ‘Moving to Avoid Political Suicide’

by Chriss W. Street

The ultra-liberal Huffington Post blared that President Obama: “MOVING TO AVOID POLITICAL SUICIDE”; as the White House abandoned efforts to pass his American Jobs Act and went into a maximum defensive mode to save the President’s imploding re-election campaign following the loss of Anthony Weiner’s ultra-Democrat New York House seat and the launch of an inter-party rebellion to deny Obama the Democratic nomination for President.

The President took his best shot at trying to sell America his vision for new stimulus spending in last week’s joint- session of Congress speech the main-stream-media adoringly termed: “forceful yet plain-spoken message on jobs and the economy”. Hope for the bill’s passage wilted on Tuesday with front page article: “Support for Big Government Jobs Programs has Evaporated” simultaneously published in the conservative Big Government and the ultra-liberal Huffington Post. The story revealed a 50% opinion poll plunge in “likely voter” support for spending on job creation has doomed much of the bill.

Legislative losses can cause political damage to any Presidential Administration; but the stunning blow last night as voters in New York’s 9th Congressional District, formerly held by disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner, reversed a nearly 90-year tradition by electing a Republican has begun what Andrew Breitbart termed a “Civil War Against Obama”.

The first hint there might be a coup d’etat brewing against the President by the extremist wing of his party came ten days ago in an Op Ed by Mat Stoller: “What Democrats can do about Obama” published in the liberal “Salon” website.

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Ezra Dulis

Watch the Very First AttackWatch.com Commercial!

by Ezra Dulis

Yesterday, Barack Obama’s official Twitter account announced a new Obama for America website, AttackWatch.com. Billed as a way to “get the facts” and “fight the smears,” Attack Watch is the latest in a long line of attempts by the Obama administration to crowdsource snitching and keep tabs on its critics. Unfortunately for Obama, the site’s overdramatic design (complete with a Nazi color palette) and Big Brother vibe turned the site into an instant laughingstock on Twitter.

I’ve been lucky to be part of an upcoming comedy site run by young conservatives called Misfit Politics. No, our site’s not live yet, but the schadenfreude of last night’s #AttackWatch jokes proved too big a temptation to sit on our hands and wait to make the video you’re about to see. I present to you the very first (fake) commercial for AttackWatch.com:


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Jeff Dunetz

What The NY-9 Contest Teaches Us (And Doesn’t ) About the Jewish Vote

by Jeff Dunetz

As usual the Drudge headline was striking and accurate, “Revenge of the Jews.” Indeed a big part of GOP candidate Bob Turner’s win against the Democratic candidate David Weprin was the Jewish vote going to the GOP. NY 9 may be the most heavily Jewish district in the country (estimates range from 33-40% of the electorate). The real question is what does this mean for the 2012 election and can these results be replicated in other districts. The answer is—probably not. What people nationally forget is that some of the Jewish vote for Turner was about Israel, but also some of the vote was about other issues. And it was the combination of issues that gave Turner the Jewish vote last night.

There were three major Issues in the campaign Israel, Gay Marriage and the economy. When Ed Koch got involved and turned the race into a referendum on Jews and Obama, he gave two reasons. The first was Obama’s poor treatment of the Jewish State, and the other was Obamanomics. Interestingly, he did not criticize Obama’s economic platform because of all the conservative reasons such as the debt, big government, etc. Koch criticized it because he wasn’t spending/doing enough.  In his endorsement of Bob Turner published in the Jerusalem Post, he said voters needed to send the Democrats a message that Obama was not liberal enough in the debt ceiling negotiations saying the President has

been the major advocate for seeking a far-reaching deal that would have combined a debt limit increase with substantial spending cuts; significant changes in social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and perhaps Social Security; and as much as $1 trillion in new revenue.

Koch was unhappy that Obama was even considering reforming entitlements.  In the end the message Ed Koch brought to the campaign was Obama hates Israel and is too much of an economic moderate.

That appealed to the Liberal Jews of Queens, especially in the areas of Forest Hills and Kew Gardens.

The message to the more conservative Jews of Brooklyn was a bit different.

They too were energized by Obama and Israel but just as important (If not more) was Weprin’s recent vote in the NY State assembly in favor of Gay marriage. Indeed according to my sources in the campaign much of the robo-calling to Brooklyn pointed out this Weprin vote.

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The New Ledger

The Ugly American Future

by The New Ledger

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Mark Steyn, author of After America, to discuss whether a dystopian future is really upon us and why in America this future might be particularly ugly, what needs to be done to prevent this future and more.

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.

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Publius

New York Fallout: Dem Strategist Warns Candidates Not to Run in 2012

by Publius

From The Hill:


Polling leading up to the race indicated Obama was dragging down the Democratic candidate. Democratic pollster Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling said that a Turner win would be “largely due to the incredible unpopularity of Barack Obama dragging his party down in the district” after PPP’s polling found Obama with just 31 percent approval in a district he won with 55 percent of the vote in 2008.

A Democratic strategist said Obama has become such a problem for down-ticket Democrats that he was wary of encouraging candidates to run next year. “I’m warning my clients — ‘Don’t run in 2012.’ I don’t want to see good candidates lose by 12 to 15 points because of the president,” said the strategist.

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Publius

Retail Sales Flat in August, Demand for Autos Declines

by Publius

From the Associated Press:

Consumers spent less on autos, clothing and furniture to leave retail sales unchanged in August.

The lack of growth suggests households became more cautious during wild stock market fluctuations and increased fears about the economy.

The Commerce Department also said Wednesday that retail sales were slightly weaker in July than first thought. They rose just 0.3 percent, down from the initial reading of 0.5 percent.

Auto sales fell 0.3 percent in August. Sales at clothing stores declined 0.7 percent. Gasoline sales rose.

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F. Vincent Vernuccio

Congress to NLRB’s Becker: ‘Did You Write the SEIU Intimidation Manual?’

by F. Vincent Vernuccio

On September 12, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wrote to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Member Craig Becker, asking him what role he had in drafting a Service Employee International Union (SEIU) manual instructing union organizers how to intimidate business into taking away the secret ballot from workers.

Becker served as Associate General Counsel for SEIU before being recess-appointed to the NLRB by President Obama in March 2010. His nomination was stalled in the Democratic controlled Senate because enough Senators to uphold a filibuster felt his views on labor law were too controversial.

Becker, despite being a former union attorney, is now supposed to be a neutral judge on the NLRB. His writings and many decisions since being appointed indicate a strong bias against business.

The manual, first exposed by The Washington Times in July, came to light during a lawsuit brought by the catering company Sodexo Inc. against SEIU. Sodexo claims that SEIU engaged in an “illegal campaign of extortion,” and brought Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act charges against the union.

However, the revelations came too late for the Senators who questioned Becker during his NLRB nomination hearings.

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Publius

The Cheat Sheet, September 14

by Publius

Obama may be in the house for now, but if this were to keep up, he and his party won’t remain in the White House, or a House of Congress for too long:

It sounded improbable on the surface that a New York City congressional district where Democrats have a 3-1 registration edge and have held office for nearly a century could even come close to electing a Republican to the U.S. House.

But voter frustration over the sour economy and President Barack Obama’s policies made the improbable a reality, as a Republican political novice, Bob Turner, scored an upset victory in a special election Tuesday over David Weprin, a Democratic assemblyman from a prominent local political family. The surprising results in the Brooklyn and Queens-area district portend a perilous national environment for Obama as he prepares to seek re-election next year.

There are few absolutes in politics and it isn’t the end of the Democrat Party; however, along with a failure to get over the top with recall elections in liberal Wisconsin, thanks to their would be messiah, the Democrats now have a serious problem with important elements of their political base. Perhaps deliverance isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be in political terminology. Obama’s failed policies are now delivering sweet victory to the GOP. They won both special elections last night by relatively substantial margins. (In NV-2, a district which McCain won by less than 1%, the GOP candidates stomped to a 20+ point victory.) To the extent there still are Moderate Democrats within the party, last night’s headlines were not reassuring for them, which is not to say that the GOP can simply rest upon its laurels in this political climate, either.

And the news only gets worse for Obama. The White House went green in a big way for failed solar company Solyndra, leading to another investigation by Republican lawmakers. Someone better tell AttackWatch.com, an Obama campaign site claiming to exist to fight the smears. At this rate, they may end up with quite a web archive before they’re through.

The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

Another great accomplishment for Obama, he has now grown the nation’s poor to historic proportions. Heckuva job, Barry. Heckuva job.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid isn’t certain Obama’s jobs bill can pass. Wait, don’t the Democrats control  the Senate? Why, yes they do, as a matter of fact. Clearly Obama now doesn’t, despite the same party affiliation.

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Brett Healy

In Jail and Gettng Unemployment? Yep.

by Brett Healy

Well, they are out of work, after all…

Hundreds of individuals in Wisconsin’s county jails and prison system are illegally receiving unemployment benefits, the MacIver News Service has learned.

In March, the Department of Workforce Development (DWD), started a cross match their data with the Department of Health Services to combat inmate fraud in unemployment insurance claims. As of September 2, the number of over-payments to 236 inmates was $325,416.

According to an official in the Department of Workforce Development about 75-135 jailed individuals receive unemployment insurance on a monthly basis.

DWD Deputy Administrator Andrea Reid deemed about half of these claims to be fraudulent. The other half would be people who are booked over-night or jailed on a short-term basis who therefore are still eligible to file and receive payment for unemployment claims.

“The typical scenario for inmate fraud is the spouse, the girlfriend, the mom, actually reporting for that claimant,” said Reid.

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Christian Hartsock

Project Mayhem, Part I: SEIU, Lies and Videotape

by Christian Hartsock

“The first rule of Project Mayhem: You do not ask questions.” –Tyler Durden, Fight Club

On November 8, Ohioans vote on Issue 2 – which determines the fate of SB 5, signed in March by Gov. John Kasich. The bill offers to save $191 million annually at the state level and millions more at the local level by asking public employees to contribute merely 10 percent to their pensions and 15 percent towards their health care (as opposed to the average 31 percent that private employees contribute).

While actually preserving collective bargaining “rights,” it brings the actual employer (the taxpayer) to the bargaining table by replacing unelected, unfireable binding arbitrators with elected officials directly accountable for budget solvency, and clarifies the collectively bargainable “terms and conditions” – the ambiguities of which have long been exploited by unions for Cadillac benefits at taxpayer expense.

But one must read the bill to know this – which its opponents apparently don’t want you to do.

At an SEIU rally outside the Ohio Capitol in Columbus, I approached a member for information. She responded that under the bill “we will soon not have any seniority benefits, insurance benefits will go out the window” (correction: 90 percent of her pension and 85 percent of her health care will still be taxpayer-funded), and “we won’t have any rights for bargaining for safety” (correction: SB 5 is the very first law to grant workers the authority to bargain on safety under Section 4117.08 – a right not clarified in the Democrat-sponsored Ohio collective bargaining law of 1983).

When I then asked how a law that specifically grants the right to bargain on safety is taking away the right to bargain on safety, an SEIU organizer interrupted the interview, insisting their members are not to answer questions.


One must wonder why the SEIU rank and file – whom their organizers recruit to “get out the message” – are not even trusted by their organizers to, well, explain the message. Like Project Mayhem, the first rule of SEIU is: You do not ask questions.

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Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

Black Caucus Members Brag About Helping Design Obama’s Jobs Plan and Smear Tea Party, Again!

by Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was recently interviewed on MSNBC after President Obama’s speech on his $447 Billion jobs plan and was asked how much the president was listening directly to the Congressional Black Caucus. Waters responded:

“We can see our handprint all over this proposal. We’re pleased about it and wish it had been even bigger, but it’s substantial and it targets the communities in need….”

The CBC’s entitlement-laced jobs plan was on full display at their shameless political pep-rally, which masqueraded as a townhall for jobs, on August 30th in Los Angeles. Black lawmakers demanded government programs, attacked the tea party, and lavished one another with compliments in front of an audience of more than 700 people.

The South Central L.A. Tea Party attended the forum and we were able to get some revealing video footage of these lawmakers in action.

Maxine Waters got the crowd worked up and encouraged them to organize and march against the tea party. She also called for money for a “national housing trust fund” and threatened to tax the “gangsters on Wall Street” out of business.  She went on to say:

“…We have been fighting to get the banks and financial institutions to do loan modifications….They didn’t want bankruptcy, they don’t want to reduce the principle, it’s time for the bully pulpit of the White House to bring the gangsters in, put them around the table and let them know that if they don’t come up with loan modifications to keep people in their homes…we’re going to tax them out of business! [Loud audience applause] We need money….One of the things that we’re going for is a national housing trust fund to build more housing and rental units….”

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Kyle Olson

Class Warfare, Pandering Dominate Phone Call Between Biden, Teachers Unions

by Kyle Olson

Ridiculously false choices and rhetoric ruled the evening when the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers hosted a closed-media conference call with Vice President Joe Biden to inform their members about the latest government school and teachers’ union bailout.



In a recording obtained exclusively by PublicSchoolSpending.com, Biden explained the administration is seeking to spend $30 billion to create a “Teacher Layoff Prevention Fund.”  He also said that many schools today are “deciding whether or not to heat the school or keep a teacher.”

Like school stimuli-past, Biden said schools would not be able to bank the money, but would be required to spend it.  “It’s to be able to keep you at work and even rehire teachers,” he told the unions.  So the Obama administration – yet again – is setting up a situation where the problem will be the same next year and the administration will have to propose another bailout or the school sky will fall in and even more kids will graduate unable to read.

Obama’s proposal includes $10 billion for the 100 “largest, high need public school districts” to use for renovations.  So just prior to the election, the administration is proposing to spend $100 million in communities that traditionally vote for Democrats.  Coincidence?

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Publius

Wednesday Open Thread: McKinley Edition

by Publius

Today, in 1901, President William McKinley died from gunshot wounds suffered on September 6th. Vice-Presiden Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as President.

Andrew Breitbart

After Turner Earthquake in Weiner District, Democrats’ Civil War Against Obama Begins

by Andrew Breitbart

History will never be able to tell us who made the fatal error in New York’s 9th district – Barack Obama, or Anthony Weiner.

Just as Weiner kept on making critical errors every step of the way as his personal scandal unfolded earlier this year, President Obama has done everything in NY-09 to show that he is no friend of Israel and has no clue how to create jobs or learn from his many mistakes.

I predict a tectonic shift among American Jews and within the Democratic Party if Obama doesn’t quietly retire. All the spinning in the world can’t spin away the trend of Scott Brown, the Tea Party victory of November 2010, and now the Turner earthquake.

Many Democrats are awakening to the reality that their party has been hijacked by a radicalism completely unfamiliar to their parents’ and grandparents’ Democratic Party.

An internal, partisan civil war is now brewing in that party. What I think tonight is less important than what Joe Lieberman, Bill Clinton, Evan Bayh, and the rest of the former, and now defunct, reasonable wing of the Democratic Party is thinking tonight.

Joel B. Pollak

Bob Turner on New York Special Election Results: “The numbers keep coming in stronger and stronger” UPDATE: Turner Wins

by Joel B. Pollak

A moment ago, I spoke to Republican Bob Turner, who holds a small lead over Democrat David Weprin in the special election to replace Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th district.

“The results are coming in very positively, and there’s a strong sense of optimism and confidence right now. It looks very good,” he told me, as he prepared to join supporters at a campaign party.

Photo: New York Daily News

“Our volunteers–they’re more enthusiastic than ever. We were ready for a party, or a wake. The numbers keep coming in stronger and stronger, and we’re feeling pretty good.” (more…)

Publius

Special Election Open Thread

by Publius

Voters in New York City and Nevada went to the polls today to fill two vacancies in Congress. The polls have closed in New York City:

Polls have closed in a New York City special election that will determine a successor to a former Democratic congressman who resigned in a sexting scandal.

Republican businessman Bob Turner and Democratic Assemblyman David Weprin (WEHP’-rihn) were locked in a surprisingly close contest in the heavily Democratic district spanning parts of Brooklyn and Queens on Tuesday.

The seat opened up in June, when Rep. Anthony Weiner (WEE’-nur) was pushed by party leaders to resign after sending sexually provocative tweets and text messages to women he met online.

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AWR Hawkins

Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) Joins Boeing Airlines in Telling Obama: Don’t Tread on Me

by AWR Hawkins

Since taking office in January 2009, Obama has been bad for business. You might even say he’s been at war with business (I bet the president of Gibson Guitars and the untold number of small business owners on the verge of ending healthcare benefits for employees because of federal regulations would concur).

And while I don’t want to diminish the jackbooted nature of the raid on Gibson or the lies surrounding the business killing regulations of Obamacare, perhaps the most egregious attack on business by the current administration has been seen in what they’re trying to do to Boeing. For here we’ve see that Obama’s croanies on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are actually trying to tell Boeing which state they can and cannot operate in on based on whether a given state is strong for unions or whether it is designated as “right-to-work.”

Boeing has historically built their planes in Washington state where the Local 751 of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has literally shut the plant down “five times since 1975.” That’s five work stoppages, which equates to five periods of time in which Boeing couldn’t make or deliver the product they’d promised to customers: all because a union was allowed to use its collective powers to bring production to a halt.

Thus, when Boeing was looking for a place to build its new factory, it chose a right-to-work state – in this case, South Carolina – so as to avoid the work stoppages if at all possible.

Doesn’t that just seem like good business sense?

Sure it does.

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Publius

Accusations of Dirty Tricks Fly in New York Special Election

by Publius

From National Journal’s Hotline:


With less than seven hours to go until the polls close in the contentious NY-09 special election, allegations of dirty tricks between Democrat David Weprin and Republican Bob Turnerare flying.

Weprin’s campaign claimed Tuesday afternoon that Turner and his GOP allies sent a 3 a.m. text message asking voters to call Weprin’s campaign headquarters to jam up his phone lines.

“It is outrageous that Bob Turner’s allies would resort to jamming our phones in an effort to prevent our campaign from contacting voters and getting out the message about how radical Bob Turner really is,” said Weprin spokeswoman Elizabeth Kerr. “Republicans participating in phone jamming in the past have landed in jail, and there must be a full investigation into the Republican phone jamming campaign.”

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