Tonight, CNN and Tea Party Express co-host a debate of GOP candidates in Tampa, FL, site of the upcoming GOP convention. I’m not really sure how the ‘tea party’ is going to be represented in this debate, since the moderators are pulled from CNN, but there is no way it can be any worse than the MSNBC/Politico forum last week. In that fiasco, John Harris and Brian Williams drew deeply from lefty activists like ThinkProgress to launch attacks on the GOP candidates. It was as if the DNC had done a mind-meld with Harris and Williams (redundant, I know!), and got 90+ minutes to prospect for material for negative campaign ads.

Color me naive, but CNN is not MSNBC. Liberal, sure. But, it at least tries not to seem totally in the tank for the left, unlike Politico and MSNBC. So, I don’t think the DNC will own the same real estate in Wolf Blitzer’s brain as it had in Harris/Williams. Then again, according to news reports today, it won’t have to. Amazingly, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, look set to take a page from the DNC and ThinkProgress playbook and attack Gov. Rick Perry for daring to speak the truth about Social Security. Below is a flier the Romney campaign is distributing in Florida.

And, yesterday, Bachmann’s campaign had this to say to Byron York:

“Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser. “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

So let me get this straight; we now have TWO GOP candidates against any kind of entitlement reform? Really? We can’t begin to get out from under our overwhelming debt burden unless we tackle these auto-pilot programs. You could close every government agency and slash defense spending in half and we’re still screwed if we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How can Romney or Bachmann seek to be President if they don’t understand this basic fact? I mean, its not just a theory…its math.

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I have a great plan for “saving” Social Security.

Today’s average U.S. life expectancy is 78 years. Let’s make the retirement age to collect Social Security 79.

Presto. The “system” is saved (or until life expectancy increases, at which point we can raise the retirement age again).

Pretty dumb? Sure. But if the goal is “saving” the system, nothing would work better.

Wait a minute you say. It’s not about the “system” but about saving me, my children, my grandchildren, my neighbors. It’s about making individuals better off.

But if the point is making individuals better off, why do we only hear assurances from most politicians that they will “save the system?”

The “solution” that I have proposed here is one extreme example how Social Security, if we insist on keeping it as it is today, can be “saved.”

How about raising your taxes to get the same amount of payout at retirement?

How about leaving your taxes the same but requiring that you pay them for a longer period of time, raising the retirement age to collect?

Can you imagine getting a call from your bank that they have run out of money so in order to save your CD they have to cut the interest rate on it in half? Or that you can’t cash in your one year CD for another two years?

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If you need evidence of the turmoil created by Barack Obama’s socialist health care overhaul, you could certainly look at the myriad of legal challenges currently working their way through the courts. (A date with the Supreme Court is a certainty.) Or you could look at the massive influx of applications from unions and companies scrambling to get out from under the law’s oppressive requirements by obtaining waivers from the Obama administration.

The Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced an arbitrary September 2011 cutoff for waiver applications, but right up to this deadline these exemptions continue to proliferate. According to The Hill, 106 new waivers were granted in July, bringing the total to 1,472 unions and companies that have been granted exemptions from Obamacare. And yet, the Obama administration continues to be super secretive regarding just how these waiver applications are evaluated.

But here’s one thing we do know. Approximately 50% of the waivers granted cover employees of unions even though union workers represent about 12% of the total workforce according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics!

Why are unions seemingly getting a disproportionate number of waivers? That’s just one of many questions at the center of a Judicial Watch investigation.

Recently, for example, we obtained 3,497 pages of Obamacare documents from the Obama HHS pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on January 4, 2011.

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Governor Rick Perry of Texas is being attacked by two rivals in the GOP presidential race. His sin, if you can believe it, is that he told the truth (as acknowledged by everyone from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman) about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme.

Here’s an excerpt from Philip Klein’s column in the Examiner, looking at how Mitt Romney is criticizing Perry.

Mitt Romney doubled down on his attack against Texas Gov. Rick Perry this afternoon, warning in an interview with Sean Hannity that his critique of Social Security amounted to “terrible politics” that would cost Republicans the election. Romney’s decision to pile on suggests that he’s willing to play the “granny card” against Perry if it will help him get elected, a tactic more becoming of the likes of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz than a potential Republican nominee.

And here’s a Byron York column from the Examiner looking at how Michele Bachmann is taking the same approach.

…another Republican rival, Michele Bachmann, is preparing to hit Perry on the same issue. “Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser.  “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does.  She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

Shame on Romney and Bachmann. With an inflation-adjusted long-run shortfall of about $28 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme on steroids.

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From The Los Angeles Times:

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard’s Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

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Documents obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel suggest a third gun linked to “Operation Fast and Furious” was found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder, according to the network’s exclusive report Friday. Further, those documents appear to contradict earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government’s now infamous gun interdiction scandal, and network sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. But is this a unique occurrence? One man says, “No.”

Jesse Trentadue has seen similar behavior during his investigation of the Oklahoma City Bombing, an effort he hoped would lead to the truth about the death of his brother, Kenneth Trentadue several months after the bombing while in custody at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City.

Via the Freedom of Information Act, Trentadue has, for more than three years, sought copies of the videotape images captured by more than 20 surveillance cameras operating in the vicinity of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City prior to 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. In addition, he’s tried to obtain a copy of the original videotape taken by the dashboard camera on Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Charles Hanger’s vehicle showing the arrest of Timothy McVeigh a short time later on the same morning.

While the FBI did produce tapes from the buildings around the Murrah Building, the tapes had been edited, Trentadue said. As for the tapes from the cameras on the Murrah Building, the contents of which are describe in a timeline prepared by the Secret Service, the FBI claims it cannot find.

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The Italians have caused an outrage among American firearms customers. A Italian company named Chiappa Firearms sent out a press release (in Italian) last week announcing that it will soon be putting inside each firearm it manufactures an RFID chip (Radio Frequency Identification) meant to track quality control, inventory, and shipping. American gun owners and consumers were whipped into a frenzy of suspicion and fear that government agents will be able to use these RFID chips to track their firearms. But what are the facts and will these RFID tags become common with all firearms manufacturers in the near future?

First of all there is a lot of fear about the capabilities of governments to use RFID chips for nefarious purposes. These are devices that can radio information to someone with a device as inexpensive as $250 and without any “approval” needed for the reading. These chips can relay all sorts of information from location, to detailed records of all sorts.

There are several different kinds of chips but most uses require non-powered chips that can only be read at short distances. In other words we are told that a satellite orbiting in space cannot read a non-powered RFID chip from that distance. Some chips can only be read for a few feet others a few meters.

Despite all the supportive spin that advocates of RFID chips release to ease people’s minds, this identification technology is far easier to misuse than any other ID technology ever invented. But that does not make RFID chips all bad, either.

The fact is, RFID chips are a dream device for manufacturers to identify their products from fabrication all the way to delivery of final products to retail customers. It makes life much easier for companies trying to track their work, improve their process, and make more money.

Companies like Walmart already use RFID chips and so do many others. Book sellers, libraries, even ranchers and farmers use RFID chips to keep track of their livestock.

But, let’s face it, guns are not books or sheep.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Europe’s tanking markets, the opposition to Obama’s call for a payroll tax cut, and is the Solyndra scandal is Obama’s Watergate?

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:

Stocks Hit Hard by Euro Zone Fears
Conservatives join liberals in opposing Obama’s payroll tax cut extension
Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances
A Close Look At The Motives Behind The Solyndra Raid
House Energy and Commerce Committee: Solyndra and The DOE Loan Guarantee Program
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From KTVI in St. Louis:

A witness on board a flight from St. Louis to Dulles Airport in Washington says two men who were originally thought to be behaving oddly on a plane at Lambert Airport Sunday night were indeed federal air marshals.

Ron Meyer says he was a passenger on board United flight #3681 Sunday evening. He says, originally, a flight attendant told the passengers the men were claiming to be air marshals but did not have any identification. However, according to Meyer, a pilot later said the men were indeed federal marshals. All passengers were taken off the flight and re-screened at the request of the pilot.

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From The Hill:

Former Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out of the race last month, endorsed Mitt Romney for president, in an appearance on “Fox and Friends” this morning.

“The next president is going to have to lead on the economy and jobs in a historic way and there’s one candidate in this race who is unmatched in his skills and experience and talent when it comes to turning around this economy and growing jobs. And that’s Mitt Romney,” Pawlenty said on the program. “And I’m proud and excited to endorse him for president of the United States.”

Pawlenty said he will be serving as the national co-chairman of Romney’s campaign. He also said he didn’t want to be considered as Romney’s running mate. Pawlenty will be appearing with Romney Monday at a campaign event in Charleston, South Carolina.

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From AFP:

A small group of Islamist demonstrators staged a protest outside the US embassy in London Sunday during a ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Around 50 people brandished anti-US banners, chanted slogans and burnt a small piece of paper with a picture of the US flag on it, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

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Another poll has the Republican up over the Democrat by 6 in the race to fill Anthony Weiner’s former seat. As upsets go, to invoke V.P. Joe Biden, this would be a big f***ing deal.

Stay tuned.

A newly released poll by Public Policy Polling confirms the 6-point lead held by Republican Bob Turner over Democrat David Weprin in the race to replace Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th congressional district.

There’s also a special election in Nevada on Tuesday. Obama is dragging down the Dem candidate there as well. Dems are starting to worry that Obama could lead them into another bloodbath in 2012.

Today, Obama will finally get around to one of those nagging details of the office; sending his actual ‘jobs plan’ to Congress for consideration. We’ll learn the details of how he plans to pay for another half-trillion in borrowed money.

Yesterday, almost the entire Right side of the blogosphere took out over the New York Times’ Paul Krugman for calling the years  since 9-11 shameful. One has to wonder if Krugamn can even define the word shame, given that he doesn’t appear to feel any for his disgraceful op-ed.

The Brits are gearing up for an economically troubled decade ahead. Headlines like that are but a harbinger of things to come heere at home if we don’t beat Obama in 2012. Also, keep your eyes on the Senate races as an imporant back stop. It’s imperative that we take the Senate in the event the GOP doesn’t win the White House. We need as much control of Washington as is possible if we want to right the ship of state.

The worst pain of Britain’s austerity measures will be felt in the 10 years to come, amid some of the worst falls in living standards since World War II, the IFS economic research institute said Monday. With the government trying to rein in Britain’s record deficit, household incomes will suffer as public spending reductions and tax rises begin to bite, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in a report.

Europe as a whole is suffering significantly from mounds of debt.

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Big Journalism’s Larry O’Connor yesterday highlighted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s unhinged screed that marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11 — an attack on common decency for which Krugman (conveniently) refused to allow any comments. But in his mean-spirited and wholly inappropriate post, Krugman revealed more than he realized about the state of liberal/leftist thought in America today — and the frustration leftists foster about the current state of our politics.

To quickly recap, Krugman wrote:

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te [sic] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

Such a passage makes me wonder if liberals of Krugman’s ilk even hear themselves? I know Krugman thinks Bush is a “fake hero,” because he hates him with a blinding passion. But he wedges W in there as almost an afterthought among his parade of “fake heroes” — ” … and even George W. Bush.” Before that, Krugman calls Rudy Giuliani a “fake hero.”

Now, Giuliani would be the first to reject the “hero” label, because he knows who the REAL heros are. He saw many of their dismembered bodies in the rubble of the WTC. He went to funerals for months on end. But what Giuliani did was of enormous value to the city of New York and the nation: He stayed calm in the face of enormous chaos and fear. And he acted as a leader — as did Bush.

Giuliani suffers in the measure of Krugman (as did Bush) for the same reasons. Both men were non-liberals (non-Democrats) who earned the admiration of the people. Krugman thought he’d be able to belittle Bush for the entirety of what he thought would be one quick term as a “pretender” who “stole” the election from Gore. Only now, of all days (but without comment), does Krugman feel the urge to scratch that long-neglected itch.

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Connie Schultz is one of the most well known columnists working for Ohio’s largest newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  She’s a Pulitzer winner, nationally syndicated and very liberal.  She also happens to be married to Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is also very liberal, being tied with a few others as America’s most far left Senator.

Connie Schultz records Josh Mandel at Tea Party event

She has written frequent columns blasting the Tea Party movement.  However, she had never attended one, only criticized from afar.  So last weekend, she decided to attend a Tea Party Express event that was being held near her home in Avon, Ohio, to experience the Tea Party up close and personal.  It might have been a better idea for her not to attend.  In the conservative Ohio blog Third Base Politics, which I write for, we wrote an exclusive post about what happened at the event.

In her column today, she talks about her experience at a Tea Party event in Avon, here in Lorain County. Reports are that she spent most of her time interviewing attendees for her column. That’s what they pay her to do, right? In her column, she pays a lot of attention to who didn’t show up. However, she fails to mention one of the speakers who WAS there. That speaker would be Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.

I wonder why she didn’t mention this. Why didn’t she mention that when Josh’s name was announced, that she rushed to the seats to sit in a row up front, and pulled out her video camera? Well, maybe SHE didn’t mention it, but SOMEBODY noticed it. See the photo and video.

Our reports also say that Connie didn’t record the other speakers at the event. But she certainly made sure she recorded Mandel. Why was Connie Schultz so interested in Josh Mandel? Oh, please forgive me. I forget to mention something else. Connie’s husband is up for re-election next year, and Josh Mandel is almost certain to be the Republican nominee.

So, it appears that while being paid by the Plain Dealer to write a column about the Tea Party event, she was also stalking her husbands opponent and doing work for his re-election campaign.

Be sure to follow the link and watch the video.  3BP had some tough questions for Schultz and the Plain Dealer:

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First there was the stimulus.  The $787 billion monstrosity was critical to Big Labor because it would save public school teaching jobs, among other unionized positions.

In fact, upon its passage, the News Journal reported on Joe Biden’s appearance before the Delaware teachers’ union:  Citing about $105 billion that is coming to the U.S. Department of Education from the federal stimulus package, Biden said teachers will finally have the means to improve education.

“We’ve been given all the ammunition.  If we shoot and miss, if we squander the opportunity, tell me how long you think it’s going to take for another American president to go and ask for more dollars to correct the education system.”

“You’ve got a president and vice president absolutely committed to having all the tools you need to finally get it right in American public education.”

Then there was the “public education bailout.”  The White House told us the $23 billion bill – mere peanuts by comparison – would stave off a public school employee calamity.

Is there any proof that any of the money spent so far has done anything for student achievement?  I mean, even raised it one single, solitary point on a standardized test?

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Today, the Obama Administration is expected to finally get around to sending their latest “jobs plan” to Congress. The speech outlining the plan was delivered Thursday. These things take time.

A newly released poll by Public Policy Polling confirms the 6-point lead held by Republican Bob Turner over Democrat David Weprin in the race to replace Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th congressional district.

The poll, showing Turner winning 47 percent support to Weprin’s 41 percent in the Brooklyn district, is significant because PPP is regarded as left-leaning. On Friday, an independent Siena poll showed Turner leading 50-44.

According to PPP, President Barack Obama is dragging Weprin down–and his treatment of Israel is a deciding factor:

The issue of Israel does appear to be having a major impact on this race.  A plurality of voters- 37%- said that Israel was ‘very important’ in determining their votes. Turner is winning those folks by an amazing 71-22 margin. With everyone who doesn’t say Israel is a very important issue for them Weprin actually leads 52-36. Turner is in fact winning the Jewish vote by a 56-39 margin, very unusual for a Republican candidate.  This seems to be rooted in deep unhappiness with Obama on this issue- only 30% of voters overall approve of how he’s handling Israel to 54% who disapprove and with Jewish voters his approval on Israel is 22% with 68 of voters disapproving. That has a lot to do with why Turner’s in such a strong position.

On Friday, Democrat state assemblyman Dov Hikind endorsed Turner–and made it clear that Tuesday’s special election was a chance for Democrats to send a message to the Obama administration protesting his policies on the economy and Israel. Hikind also decried the negative tactics being used by fellow Democrats in their attempt to save the seat.

Both candidates resume campaigning tomorrow after a weekend dominated by observances of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Alert readers have reported that their flight, United Airlines 3681, from St. Louis to Washington Dulles had to make an emergency return to the gate as it prepared for take-off. According to local officials, it was found that two men who had boarded the plane as ‘federal air marshals’ didn’t have the proper credentials. Passengers were deplaned, all luggage was removed and re-scanned. All passengers were also re-screened. Passengers are now in the process of re-boarding. There is no word on the two ‘air marshals.’

BigGovernment has contacted security officials in St. Louis. We will report back what we hear. Interestingly, we understand that Oliver North is on the flight, as well.

An interview with one of the passengers is below:

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