1/31/2012

Dems Release False Report on Fast and Furious

Posted by Brian
Senator Charles Grassley says report doesn't "pass the laugh test."


Ranking Member Elijah Cummings and other Democrats in the minority of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have made an attempt to whitewash apparent felonies committed by the Department of Justice during Operation Fast and Furious:

Democrats looking into Operation Fast and Furious say a yearlong investigation has turned up no evidence that the flawed gun smuggling probe was conceived or directed by high-level political appointees at Justice Department headquarters.
The probe, the Democrats say, was just one of four such operations that were part of a misguided five-year-long effort, during both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives against firearms trafficking along the Southwest border.
“Operation Fast and Furious was the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office,” the report from Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says.

Senator Charles Grassley, who has helped lead the investigation of the gunwalking plot, reacted angrily to the minority report:
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Eric Holder Threatened With Contempt Of Congress

Posted by Brian

Darrell Issa threatens Eric Holder with contempt
By TIM MAK | 1/31/12 5:48 PM EST Updated: 1/31/12 7:18 PM EST



House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) threatened Tuesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress if the Justice Department did not provide certain documents in response to the committee’s subpoena.
In a letter to Holder, Issa wrote that “this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress” if Holder and the DOJ didn’t produce documents they demanded relating to the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.
Read More at Politico

Fund Manager Issues Warning That Stock May Be About To Collapse

Posted by Brian

WARNING: Stocks May Be About To Collapse

Now that the Europe crisis is solved and volatility has disappeared and stocks just climb higher every day despite high valuations and mediocre economic data, it's worth considering that this state of affairs may not last forever.

Fund manager John Hussman, for one, is freaked out enough by the current mix of conditions that he has gone so far as to issue a "warning" that stocks may be about to collapse.

Now, John Hussman would be the first to admit that timing such crashes precisely is basically impossible, so don't guffaw at him if stock prices are higher a month from now.

Read More at Business Insider
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Bias Alert: Media Report Party Affiliation Of Republicans with Scandals, Not Democrats

Posted by Brian


Media Act As Though Only Republicans Misbehave

Journalism: What's the difference between Republican and Democratic political operatives who end up on the wrong side of the law? In the "unbiased" press, only the Republicans' party ID and connections merit attention.
In a blog post on Publius' Forum this week, Warner Todd Huston noted the glaring difference in how the media treated the recent arrests of Zachary Edwards and Tim Russell.
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Laffer: Gingrich Flat Tax Plan "Significantly Better" Than Romney's

Posted by Brian

Why Gingrich's Tax Plan Beats Romney's
Newt's flat tax would do a lot more to attract capital, spur growth and reduce compliance costs.


If we judge both leading contenders in the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, by what they've done in life and by what they propose to do if elected, either one could be an excellent president. But when it comes to the election's core issue—restoring a healthy economy—the key is a good tax plan and the ability to implement it.

Mr. Gingrich has a significantly better plan than does Mr. Romney, and he has twice before been instrumental in implementing a successful tax plan on a national level—once when he served in Congress as a Reagan supporter in the 1980s and again when he was President Clinton's partner as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. During both of these periods the economy prospered incredibly—in good part because of Mr. Gingrich.

Jobs and wealth are created by those who are taxed, not by those who do the taxing. Government, by its very nature, doesn't create resources but redistributes resources. To minimize the damages taxes cause the economy, the best way for government to raise revenue is a broad-based, low-rate flat tax that provides people and businesses with the fewest incentives to avoid or otherwise not report taxable income, and the least number of places where they can escape taxation. On these counts it doesn't get any better than Mr. Gingrich's optional 15% flat tax for individuals and his 12.5% flat tax for business. Each of these taxes has been tried and tested and found to be enormously successful.
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CBO: Real Unemployment Rate is 10%, NOT 8.7% As Reported!

Posted by Brian

Latest Congressional Budget Outlook For 2012-2022 Released, Says Real Unemployment Rate Is 10%

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2012 10:30 -0500
U6 Unemployment Graph



What do the NAR, Consumer Confidence and CBO forecasts have in common? If you said, "they are all completely worthless" you are absolutely correct. Alas, the market needs to "trade" off numbers, which is why the just released CBO numbers apparently are important... And the fact that the CBO predicted negative $2.5 trillion in net debt by 2011 back in 2011 is largely ignored. Anyway, here are some of the highlights.
  • 2012 Deficit: $1.1 trillion; 2013 Deficit: $0.6 - yes, we are cackling like mad too...
  • Unemployment to remain above 8% in 2012 and 2013; will be around 7% by end of 2015; to drop to 5.25% by end of 2022.
    • This forecast is utterly idiotic and is completely unattainable unless the US workforce drops to all time lows and the US economy generates 300,000 jobs a month for 10 years
  • Needless to say, CBO assumes the best of all worlds in this meaningless forecast
  • But here is the kicker: "Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle (on the basis of the experience in previous downturns) not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼ percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7 percenttranslation: CBO just admitted that the BLS numbers are bogus and real unemployment is 10%. Thank you
Read More at Zero Hedge
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Obama Tells Woman Her Husband Shouldn't Be Unemployed According To What He Hears

Obama: "I meant what I said: If you send me your husbands resume, I'd be interested in finding out what's going on there".  What goes unsaid is "I'll find your husband a job, and I'm going to use you as a pawn in my reelection campaign, trotting you out at campaign events, and dropping your name into speeches to show the people how much I care about putting people back to work. I don't do this stuff without getting some political mileage from it".

During his Google+ hangout Pres. Obama tells a woman that her husband shouldn't be unemployed from the growth he has seen in the economy. Obama said he finds it "interesting" because he is getting "the word" that someone in her husband's job field "should be able to find something right away."
More at Real Clear Politics



Posted by Brian
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BIAS ALERT: Reporter on MSNBC Calls N. FLA Counties "Cracker" Counties

Posted by Brian
h/t to The Rush Limbaugh Show

Cracker: 5US offensiveanother term for poor white
Oxford English Dictionary

Can you imagine the outrage, the sheer apoplectic fits, that the media would be having if a conservative commentator or, God forbid, a Fox News anchor were to use the term "cracker" to paint white voters, or predominantly white counties with? He may as well as called the voters in N. Florida white trash, or trailer trash. You know - conservatives. The casualness with which it rolled off his tongue, and the lack of any reaction from the others in the segment is also telling. Apparently, it is a term all of them a familiar and comfortable with.
Remember the outrage over George Allen calling an Indian man "macaca", which by the way, is not in the Oxford English Dictionary? The media, and some in the Democrat Party, were sure that is was a racial slur, and used the stretch to say that he was calling the man a Macaque (ma kak'), a type of monkey. The charge sank Allen's run for VA Governor.
A reporter calling voters "crackers" will get virtually no play in the media. It's just instructional to see these buffoons display their hypocrisy right before our eyes. It also shows how they view the 40% of self professed conservative people in the country.



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Romney's Huge Problem - Side by Side Comparison with Obama

Apparently the left is confident that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee as they are already using RomneyCare as a campaign issue for Barack Obama.
From Think Progress



Posted by Brian
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Romney Praises Ted Kennedy At RomneyCare Bill Signing

h/t to The Mark Levin Show
Mitt Romney with Ted Kennedy behind him at RomneyCare signing ceremony

For the Mitt Romney campaign the 'elephant in the room' has always been his RomneyCare health care mandate in Massachusetts. Though Romney has today's Florida vote locked up, this issue is going to become a larger issue in some of the red states, up to and through Super Tuesday on March 6th. Rick Santorum  brilliantly, and skillfully exposed Romney's problem with RomneyCare at the last debate (see video below). Romney was unable to put up a credible defense of his plan, and eventually his defense of RomneyCare showed that it is effectively identical to ObamaCare.
Now we have even the uber-liberal Mother Jones pointing out the problem that Mitt Romney is going to have with this issue.


VIDEO: Mitt Heaps Praise on Romneycare "Parent" Ted Kennedy
The GOP front-runner is doing his best to sidestep the health care reform landmine. This video sure won't help.
—By David Corn | Wed Oct. 12, 2011 2:00 AM PDT

It's no secret that Mitt Romney has an albatross around his neck: Romneycare, the Massachusetts health care overhaul he enacted while governor of the Bay State. The plan, which included a mandate compelling state residents to obtain health insurance, was a model in part for President Barack Obama's health care reform, which is much-despised by conservatives and Republican voters.
Read More at Mother Jones



Rick Santorum Destroys Mitt Romney on RomneyCare




Posted by Brian
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Infamous Rolling Stone Journalist Admits Most Journalists Are Liberal

"Polk Award-winning journalist" Michael Hastings states the obvious, that most journalists are liberal, and that a journalist’s job is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”. Interesting, but I thought that the highest tenet of journalists was to tell the truth, no matter where that truth led.



Posted by Brian

Chris Matthews: 'I never said Tea Partiers were violent, but I meant it at the time'

The DC Trawler’s Jim Treacher brings us classic audio from Hardball host Chris Matthews, who, this morning, in an interview with Mary Katharine Ham on WMAL in D.C., tried to say he never fretted in 2009 that Tea Partiers might become violent. When MKH calls him out for a specific quote, he admits lamely, “Well, obviously, I meant it at the time.”
Read More at Hot Air


CHRIS MATTHEWS on WMAL


Posted by Brian
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Obama's Racial Politics

Posted by Brian


There's been a heap of criticism placed upon President Barack Obama's domestic policies that have promoted government intrusion and prolonged our fiscal crisis and his foreign policies that have emboldened our enemies. Any criticism of Obama pales in comparison with what might be said about the American people who voted him in to the nation's highest office.

Obama's presidency represents the first time in our history that a person could have been elected to that office who had long-standing close associations with people who hate our nation. I'm speaking of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not "God Bless America," but "God damn America."

Then there's William Ayers, now professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Although Ayers was never convicted of any crime, he told a New York Times reporter, in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attack, "I don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough."

Obama has served on a foundation board, appeared on panels, and even held campaign events in Ayers' home, joined by Ayers' former-fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bill Ayers' close association with Obama is reflected by his admission that he helped write Obama's memoirs, "Dreams from My Father."

Many Americans thought that with Obama's presidency, we were moving to a "post-racial society." Little can be further from the truth. 

Read More at CNS News
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CBO: Taxes Will ‘Shoot Up by More Than 30 Percent’ Over Next 2 Years

Posted by Brian




(CNSNews.com) - The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlookpublished today by the CBO.
At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

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5 Year Old Gets Surprise Reunion With Soldier Dad In Classroom

Sgt. Adam Page has served in the U.S. Army for several years, most recently in Afghanistan. Today, the soldier surprised his five year old daughter, Bailey, during reading time in her kindergarten class.



Posted by Brian

1/27/2012

Barack Obama: Our First Metro-Sexual President?

Posted by Brian


Michelle Obama Says Her Husband Identifies With Women Who 'Are Not Treated Well in the Workplace'

(CNSNews.com) - During a daylong fundraising sweep in Florida, First Lady Michelle Obama told a crowd at a Palm Beach mansion that her husband "knows what it means when women are not treated well in the workplace."

The Palm Beach Post quoted Mrs. Obama as saying that Barack was raised by a single mother, Ann Dunham, who rode the bus to the bank where she worked. "She hit the glass ceiling. For him, this is not abstract or hypothetical."

Read More at CNS News

Defense Secretary: Military Cuts Create Risks In US Ability To Respond

Posted by Brian

Panetta: Obama's Cuts Create ‘Risks’ in Military’s ‘Capability to Respond’
By Edwin Mora January 27, 2012


(CNSNews.com) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that the cuts in defense proposed by President Barack Obaama will create "risks" in America's "capability to respond" to threats.
“The risks come with the fact that, you know, we will have a smaller force," Panetta said a t a Pentagon briefing. "As we said, it’s larger than we had prior to 9/11, but obviously it will be a smaller force, and when you have [a] smaller force there are risks associated with that in terms of our capability to respond.”
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Obama State of the Union: 27% Changed Channel after 5 minutes

Posted by Brian
The bloom continues to fall off of the rose for Obama.

Another Look at the State of the Union Address: 27% Turned Away After First 5 Minutes

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Rush Limbaugh's Brother David 'Goes Rogue' Endorses Santorum In Florida



Posted by Brian

Former Reagan Aide: Gingrich Was A "Loyal Friend And Ally" To Reagan

Posted by Brian
The long knives are out for Gingrich, both from the media and Mitt Romney acolytes. A recent hit piece in National Review has been totally debunked, thanks to some serious legwork by a former aide of Newt Gingrich, as well as a former aide to Ronald Reagan. The piece, which claims that Gingrich was hyper-critical of the former President and his policies, has been shown to be a mishmash of statements taken out of context, and other statements that were purposefully misrepresented.
Gingrich most undoubtedly has some baggage, but being anti-Reagan is not one of those bags. This would help explain the endorsements by Michael Reagan and former Reagan economic advisor Art Laffer, as well as Nancy Reagan passing the conservative torch to Gingrich at a 1995 Goldwater Institute dinner honoring Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it is the Romney supporters who are concerned that it will finally bubble to the top that it is in fact Romney who has repeatedly distanced himself from Reagan  in the past, (See videos below) as well as telling reporters that he is a moderate and a progressive, which are not exactly Reagan-esque.
Romney and his supporters just got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Elliott Abrams Caught Misleading on Newt
By Jeffrey Lord on 1.27.12 @ 11:28AM


As Ronald Reagan used to say: Well.
Yesterday we took note of former Reagan State Department official Elliott Abrams' piece over at NRO that went after Newt Gingrich on his relationship with Reagan. While voting regularly with Reagan as a young congressman from Georgia, Gingrich, claimed Abrams, "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat Communism." Abrams then goes on to cite " a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986."
Or sort of cites it. 
In fact, I'm sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott Abrams, a considerably admirable public servant and a very smart guy, has been swept up in the GOP Establishment's Romney frothings over the rise of Newt Gingrich in the Republican primaries. He is even being accused of trolling for a job in a Romney administration. No way!!!! Really????
What else can possibly explain a piece like the one Abrams penned on a day when Gingrich was being of a mysterious sudden targeted in one hit piece after another for his ties to Reagan? The pieces invariably following the Romney line that Newt had some version of nothing to do with Reagan.
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