We all know the story by now.

Former Speaker of the House–and current Minority Leader–Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, bought 5,000 shares of Visa stock at a preferential IPO price in 2008. That same year, Speaker Pelosi failed to support a bill that would have protected consumers and amended anti-trust laws so that credit card companies would have to negotiate their “swipe fees.”

The Pelosi-Visa IPO story has made the rounds ever since Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer revealed the connection in his new book, Throw Them All Out, which was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes in November (Schweizer’s book and the CBS report were targeted by Pelosi’s Congressional office in a November 13 statement).

According to Schweizer, the Pelosis were granted the IPO opportunity from Visa just before Nancy could supported the Credit Card Fair Fee Act, a bill which had cleared the Judiciary Committee and reportedly had 77 percent support from the American public (according to the Merchant’s Payment Coalition). If passed, the bill would have dented Visa’s profits by reducing so-called “interchange fees,” the 1 to 3 percent charge retailers pay Visa when customers use their credit cards for purchases. The four major credit card companies reportedly collected $48 billion in 2008 from interchange fees.

Although Pelosi has been known to crusade against credit card companies, disclosure reports indicate that she and her husband bought between $1 million and $5 million of Visa stock (Congressional members are only required to report ranges, not specific amounts) at the IPO price of $44 a share. Two days later, the stock soared to $65 a share, producing a 50 percent profit. The Pelosis then bought more Visa stock, and by the time they engaged in their third purchase on June 4, 2008, Visa was selling for $85 a share.

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Something amazing happened at the Occupy LA rally the other night.  Who knew a capitalist would confront the people at the Occupy LA Rally.

Also funny to see that so many of the Occupy LA crowd would support Herman Cain for president. The even chanted “9-9-9!” Looks like Cain has crossover appeal that the GOP establishment has overlooked.

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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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Maxine Waters’s startling call for a trillion-dollar jobs bill this past week sent shudders down the spines of Democrats–for more than one reason. In addition to her ubertransparency about the progressives’ Keynesian desire to heap debt upon debt, you have to wonder if they’re hoping no one remembers what happened almost exactly one year ago this week.

It was September 16, 2010, when President Obama signed into law the Democrats’ Small Business Jobs Bill, a behemoth lending program in the mold of the TARP bailouts with a soaring price tag–and even more soaring promises from the promoters of this spending.

Clocking in at a sobering $30-billion, The Small Business Jobs Act was touted as the last, best chance for the Democrats to show the country how their solutions would restore our economy’s strength. The premise was that the Treasury would flood banks with capital, in the hopes that they would lend the money to small businesses–despite the lack of any requirements for banks to use this money to lend.

Some of the claims made exactly one year ago this month, as part of the full-court-press marketing for The Bill to End All Jobs Woes:

“Democrats estimate the measure could create 500,000 new jobs,” one reporter noted in September of 2010.

From the Democrats’ House Committee on Financial Services website:

Wow. Not even a pretense of caring about fiscal responsibility. Keep the status quo, even if it means America is doomed to suffer a Greek-style budget meltdown.

Those were my thoughts when I heard that Harry Reid appointed Senators Kerry, Murray, and Baucus to the “super committee” created by the debt limit bill.

And then I was similarly stunned when Nancy Pelosi picked Representatives Clyburn, Becerra, and Van Hollen.

If you wanted to select the six most doctrinaire statists in Congress, you’d be hard pressed to come up with a different list. To understand just how left wing they are, here’s a chart showing their 2010 ratings from the National Taxpayers Union. They all had the same grade – a big fat F. And that is rather remarkable since NTU grades on a big curve. A score of 19 is all it takes to get a D.

For purposes of comparison, I’ve also added a line indicating Senator Ted Kennedy’s lifetime rating. He got an F, of course, but his average rating was higher than every single one of the big-government clowns named by Reid and Pelosi.

As I said earlier, wow.

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Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

Judicial Watch took the lead in exposing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) abuse of military aircraft. The massive amount of press coverage resulting from our investigation not only led to a great deal of embarrassment for Pelosi, but it also prompted current House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to announce he would fly commercial between his home district and Washington, DC. Unfortunately, however, according to a new batch of documents we recently uncovered from the United States Air Force, the abuse of military resources continued in 2010, not only by Pelosi, but by other members of Congress as well.

The records, which include flight manifests, expense summaries, copies of receipts and Congressional correspondence, detail a number of trips made by Speaker Pelosi and other Members of Congress in 2010, including:

• A May 6-10, 2010, Congressional Delegation to Afghanistan and Germany “to discuss issues of mutual interest in Qatar and Afghanistan, as well as conduct oversight on women’s issues (troops) in Afghanistan and to visit with US troops and meet with government officials in Germany.” The total cost of military travel was $204,135.00. The records indicate then-Speaker Pelosi made a personal request that the “maximum per diem allowance be made available at the enhanced rate of an additional $50.”
• Numerous trips made by Speaker Pelosi between San Francisco and Andrews Air Force Base. Several of these trips included members of Speaker Pelosi’s family, including her husband, daughter, granddaughters and son-in law. For example, one “Staff Summary Sheet” detailing a January 4, 2010, flight from San Francisco to Andrews Air Force Base notes that Pelosi’s daughter, Christina, owes for $99.00 (flight) and $7.82 (meal). The documents suggest the Speaker’s office was billed for the fees but do not indicate whether or not the bills were paid.
• A January 7-11, 2010, Congressional Delegation to Detroit, Michigan for the expressed purpose of reviewing “the impact of congressional appropriations and policy in promoting innovation, technological development and job creation in US auto industry.” The Detroit trip required $24,336.60 in commercial air travel and an additional $10,046.87 in expenses. The Pentagon paid for military escorts for the trip.
• One document notes that the mode of transportation for the trip would be “Comair and Milair,” (commercial air travel and military air travel). However, the only cost related to the military portion of the transportation detailed in the records is a $15,000 advance secured for ground transportation, meals and lodging. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) drove himself to Detroit and sought $228 in mileage reimbursement. A total of 25 House members (16 Democrats, 8 Republicans), led by then-Speaker Pelosi and then-Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), were on the list of trip participants.

Overall, according to documents we uncovered in January 2011, Pelosi used the Air Force aircraft for a total of 43 trips, covering 90,155 miles, from January 1 through October 1, 2010. (These documents provide some additional detail regarding the specific trips.) We continue to pursue other records related to Pelosi’s use of Air Force aircraft through the Freedom of Information Act. (Notwithstanding the Speaker’s announcement, we have also initiated a separate investigation into travel since Republicans took control of the House.)

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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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President Obama:

I am pleased that today, the House has joined the Senate in passing the Claims Settlement Act of 2010. This important legislation will fund the agreements reached in the Pigford II lawsuit, brought by African American farmers, and the Cobell lawsuit, brought by Native Americans over the management of Indian trust accounts and resources. I want to thank Attorney General Holder and Secretaries Salazar and Vilsack for all their work to reach this outcome, and I applaud Congress for acting in a bipartisan fashion to bring this painful chapter in our nation’s history to a close.

This bill also provides funding for settlements reached in four separate water rights suits brought by Native American tribes, and it represents a significant step forward in addressing the water needs of Indian Country. Yet, while today’s vote demonstrates important progress, we must remember that much work remains to be done. And my Administration will continue our efforts to resolve claims of past discrimination made by women and Hispanic farmers and others in a fair and timely manner.

***

Speaker Pelosi:

Today vote in the House to pass legislation to provide funding to settle African  American farmers’ and Native Americans’ lawsuits against the federal government brings a much-delayed end to serious cases of discrimination. Settlements were reached in both of these class action lawsuits, and now we have finally ensured the federal government will honor its commitments. By compensating black farmers and Native Americans for past failures of judgment by the United States Department of Agriculture and Department of the Interior, we close the door on an old injustice. And we are proud to have done so in a fiscally responsible way, not adding a dime to the deficit. (more…)

Changing the majority party in Congress won’t change how Congress works. The American people consider both parties out-of-touch, and they demand a change in the very culture of Congress.

Unless citizens demand that newly-elected Congressmen act immediately during November, they cannot expect to fix the broken system in Washington come January.  Key decisions will already be made before new members take office.

How can the system be fixed?  The first step is stop yielding excessive power to party leaders, who then control legislation by dominating chokepoints like the House Rules Committee.  Party leaders have been given too much control over the committee process.

The four years under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) demonstrates how consolidating too much power has led to ignoring the voice of the American people.   The Constitution intends that individual members of Congress would retain their autonomy from party leaders; they designed the House to be the body closest and most responsive to the people.

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After what seems like a decade’s worth of commercials, more talking head blather than should be allowed under the Geneva Conventions and spin enough to make even the most rabid rollercoaster fan nauseous, election 2010 is upon us. Any reading of the news would lead you to believe that Republicans will have a good night tomorrow and Democrats will learn nothing, unless your news source is MSNBC, in which case reread the “Democrats will learn nothing” part of this sentence. The disservice outlets like MSNBC and Huffington Post have done liberals is a column for another day, this one is about the election and what you should look for as results roll in tomorrow.

The Guessing Game

Just how many House seats Republicans win tomorrow is irrelevant, the only number that matters is 39. If Republicans win 39 more seats than they have today they will take control of the House and Nancy Pelosi returns to being as insignificant a factor in your life as the kid who sat next to you in 3^rd period French class your senior year in high school. You shared some times and even wrote “Keep in touch” in his yearbook, but you didn’t include your phone number so he actually could, and now he’s gone.

As soon as those 39 seats flip Nancy returns to being Minority Leader, a fate former Speakers of the House resign from faster than a call girl cancels a date on Charlie Sheen. But I digress.

Pundits are predicting historic numbers, up to 100 seats are in play, they say. Maybe they are, but it doesn’t matter, all that matters is 39. Predictions of 50 to 75 have not been uncommon in the last few weeks; if Republicans surpass those numbers the predictors will claim the “wave” was so big no one could have foreseen it, if they are close they will claim a clairvoyance not seen since the glory days of Miss Cleo. If they fall short, the story they will tell is one of a rejection of the Tea Party, of limited government, of Americans “coming to their senses,” a near-literal smearing of lamb’s blood on the door posts of Congress to ward off the 10^th plague of the 10^th Amendment. Don’t listen to them either way. All that matters is 39.

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The mainstream media–a group of people far to the left of the American public–are deeply concerned that the extremist tea party–a group of people whose ideals represent the American mainstream–are threatening the careers of centrist Democrats… who are extremists.

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This morning I had the opportunity to listen to a NAACP conference call that was organized to release its report highlighting alleged (yet unproven) Tea Party ties to racist groups. This conference call, report, and website reminded me very much of the quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

What was reiterated on the call by the NAACP and it’s minion of “progressive” allies was the same old, unproven, nonsensical charges against the strongest modern grass-roots movement in decades.

“The Tea Party used the N word against a Black Congressmen during the Healthcare Debate.” Indeed Ben Jealous, CEO of the NAACP had the audacity to reload this charge in spite of Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000.00 challenge to anybody that could document the occurrence and in spite of the Tea Party Federation’s unanswered challenge to the Congressional Black Caucus to have a joint investigation of the phony incident.

The most illuminating part of the call came when “progressive” ally, Larry Cohen of the CWA (Communication Workers of America) revealed the real agenda of the attacks on the Tea Party by the Left, “We disagree with the agenda of the tea party Movement… They advocate slavery,” and this classic gem, “We don’t need 19^th century capitalism.”

What this potpourri of “progressive” groups are really trying to do is inspire an uninspired liberal base of voters, days before the predicted November election bloodletting. (more…)

Talk about arrogance. Even in the face of a Judicial Watch investigation spotlighting Nancy Pelosi’s abuse of military air craft, the House Speaker shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Speaker Pelosi may have set a frequent flyer record for taxpayer-financed luxury jet travel.

We recently obtained new documents from the United States Air Force detailing Speaker Pelosi’s use of United States Air Force aircraft between March 2009 and June 2010. And they pretty much tell the same, outrageous story as previous documents we’ve uncovered and released.

Here are the highlights from the newest batch of documents, which we obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on January 25, 2009:

•Pelosi used the Air Force aircraft for a total of 85 trips, covering 206,264 miles, from March 2, 2009 through June 7, 2010. Pelosi, her guests and Air Force personnel logged a total of 428.6 hours on these flights.
•Members of Pelosi’s family were guests on at least two flights. On June 20, 2009, Speaker Pelosi’s daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons joined a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to San Francisco International Air Port. That flight included $143 in on-flight expenses for food and other items. On July 2, 2010, Pelosi took her grandson on a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, which is northeast of San Francisco.

According to previous documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the Speaker’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol. Seriously, review these documents for yourself and you can see that Nancy Pelosi repeatedly turned indispensible Air Force aircraft into congressional party planes.

For example, purchases for one Pelosi-led congressional delegation traveling from Washington, DC, through Tel Aviv, Israel to Baghdad, Iraq May 15-20, 2008, included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar’s scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.

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Glen Templeton \”God Bless Good Old Boys\”

Harvard Professor V.O. Key, Jr stated in his seminal work, “The Responsible Electorate”: “The most effective weapon of popular control in a democratic system is the capacity to throw a party from power.”    That weapon is aimed at San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts who hijacked the peoples’ House.

There has been much said about the Tea Party blaming its views on right wing talk show hosts and political pundits.  Many believe the Tea Party was formed by a Democratic Party and Administrations false conclusion that their success in the 2008 election was a vindication of their beliefs, the swing of the electorate response to the campaign positions taken, an indication of the intuitive mood of the people and, finally, as the respect it represents by an intelligent electorate.

Key concluded:  “This narcissistic approach assumes it’s most repulsive form among election winners who have championed intolerance, who have stirred the passions and hatreds of people, or who have advocated causes known by decent men to be outrageous or dangerous in their long run circumstances.”  The great Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt called it the pivotal nature of character to Presidential performance and James Barber of Duke University enhanced it with his classic book “Presidential Character”.  They both concluded that it was character more than policy that determines Presidential performance.

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Would you vote to cut taxes only for the middle-class, if that were your only choice?  Who says it’s your only choice?  It’s time to place the blame on those who try to box people in.

The furor over the tax cut answer given by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R, OH) obscures the fact that it’s a tough question–one for which all politicians should have a response ready before it’s asked.

Reporters want to push them onto the horns of a supposed dilemma:  either disavow across-the-board tax cuts or be labeled a toady for the rich.  Or dodge the question and get depicted as a weasel.

The better approach is to challenge the very premise of the question.  Who is trying to force a decision between bad alternatives?  It’s known as a “Sophie’s Choice”–from the Meryl Streep portrayal of a mother cruelly forced by Nazi’s to choose only one of her children to save from a death camp.

America’s economy is hurting, but must President Obama and his team of class warriors insist that some can be saved from January’s automatic tax hikes but others must not be?

Examples abound that Obama’s selective approach hurts the very group that creates the jobs we need; the entrepreneurs who are holding back from expanding and creating jobs due to Obama’s impending higher taxes and heavier regulations; the 5 per cent who are credited with 37 per cent of consumer spending.  As The Wall Street Journal reports, “According to new research from Moody’s Analytics, the top 5% of Americans by income account for 37% of all consumer outlays.”

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This week, The Heritage Foundation released a monumental policy guide titled “Solutions for America”. For the last year and a half, President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have charged conservatives with having “no ideas” or “old ideas.” The release of “Solutions for America” will stop this false narrative once and for all. The fact is that conservatives have been offering policy solutions for the past two years, and now The Heritage Foundation has combined its research with common sense solutions to give America the answers it needs. Let’s look at a few of them.

Health Care

In March 2010, Democrats in Congress finally passed the health care legislation they had been trying to enact since January 2009. And though we already spend over 17% of GDP on health care, this trillion-dollar plan piles on even more spending. Without listening to the public, Democrats passed this massive government takeover of health care,  creating more spending, expanding bureaucracy, and ensuring that the already confusing health care system will only get worse. All throughout the debate, Democrats in Congress and even President Obama declared that the Republicans offered no alternatives for their health care reform plan. Nothing could have bene further from the truth. Now that Obamacare has passed, what do we do now? The Heritage Foundation offers some solutions.

The first thing Heritage recommends is to repeal Obamacare. Heritage Action for America, the sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, has been leading the charge to repeal Obamacare by presenting Members of Congress who voted against Obamacare with a Discharge Petition that would force Congress to vote on repealing Obamacare. The Heritage Foundation also wants to give citizens control of their health care through Tax Equity, which would give individuals who buy health coverage on their own (separate from their employer) the same kind of tax breaks that people get when they purchase from their employer. Today, they receive no tax breaks. Health Care also needs to be portable, like car insurance to remain cost-effective and efficient.

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The president’s problem is largely a mess of his own making. Deficit spending did not begin when Mr. Obama took office. But he and his Democratic allies have supported, proposed, passed or signed and then spent every dime that’s gone out the door since Jan. 20, 2009. Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one. Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion stimulus and a $1 trillion health-care overhaul, and they now are trying to add $266 billion in “temporary” stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline. It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars and want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit. It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury. It is the Democrats’ profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year. This is indeed the road to fiscal hell, and it’s been paved by the president and his party.

Texas Democrat Kesha Rogers campaigned for for Congress with Obama-Hitler signs.

The signs even have the tag- “Paid For By Kesha Rogers for Congress” – on the bottom.

But, the state-run media won’t run this photo.

They won’t publish this photo because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Remember last year when the Democratic-Media Complex reported that the tea party protesters were waving Obama-Hitler signs? What the media purposely omitted from their stories was the fact that the protesters waving these astroturfed Obama-Hitler signs were radical left-wing extremists. They were radical activists from the LaRouche organization. But, this didn’t fit the state-run media’s narrative that tea party activists were radicals and racists so they omitted this from their reports. (more…)