Saturday, May 12, 2012

Political Digest for May 12, 2012

The Old Jarhead Blog: Bringing you news and information the MSM is too busy covering American Idol, celebrity affairs and sensational missing person cases to cover. Please forward to friends who need to be informed.

Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.

Due to commitments, I’ll probably not get to the Digest for Sunday. Take the day off and I’ll try to get more bad news to you on Monday. ~Bob.

Worth Reading: Media keepers of the status quo upset at Lugar's defeat. By John Kass
Excerpt: You could fill volumes with such examples. Conservatives are rigid and inflexible, and wed to ideology by unrealistic passion. But Republican moderates who've spent years going along with big spending by Republican and Democratic White Houses, and doing little about entitlements that will surely drown young Americans in debt, are considered reasonable and pragmatic. And so the high priests define the terms.

Lugar’s Downfall
Excerpt: One way to explain Sen. Richard Lugar’s loss to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in this week’s Indiana Republican primary is to attribute it to a tea party takeover of the GOP. A second explanation is that a venerable public servant overstayed his welcome and ran for reelection one time too many. A third is that Lugar was too focused on international relations and grew too distant from his state—that he didn’t keep his political fences mended back home. The fact is, all three factors contributed to Lugar’s defeat.

Occupy Wounded Knee: Warren found listed as a minority professor at second law school
Fake Injin in heap trouble, Kemosabe. ~Bob. Excerpt: Elizabeth Warren was listed as a minority professor by a second law school in a report detailing the school's progress in creating a diverse faculty. In addition to Harvard University, where Warren is on faculty, the University of Pennsylvania Law School also touted Warren

Congress To Amend NDAA – DOD & NSA Granted Even Greater Power
Excerpt: One part that has not faced as much scrutiny is the section concerning “military activities in cyberspace.” While the existing version grants the Defense Department the ability to conduct those kinds of military activities, but only “upon direction by the President” and if the purpose for such action is to “defend our Nation, Allies and interests,” being subject to existing laws.

US officials said to be fearful of looming Israeli strike on Iran: Channel 10 report says unity government has Washington worried about attack, even before November elections. By Ron Friedman
Excerpt: US officials fear the unity government established earlier this week signals an impending Israeli attack on Iran, Channel 10 News reported Thursday evening. According to the report, officials are holding marathon talks in Washington out of concern that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program may take place before the US presidential elections in November. (Throughout Jewish history from Pharaoh to Haman to Hitler (y.s)., and everywhere in-between, the fear of Jews getting “too strong” has provided the pretext for rulers to try and destroy the Jewish people. Should be no surprise, then, that history is repeating itself - with a twist. This time around it’s the American President taking his turn attempting to get in Israel’s way and leaving her vulnerable to an Iranian atomic attack. --DF)

Union president says she told Jerry Brown: 'furloughs are off the table'
Excerpt: In a memo to members today, SEIU Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker said that she was consulted about Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to cut state employees' pay and that she drew a line at imposing unpaid time off on workers. "First let me say that I have made it clear that furloughs are not on the table," Walker wrote. (Unfortunately, there's no money on the table, either. Maybe Greece will float them a loan. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Nancy Keenan will step down from her post as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, out of concern that the pro-choice movement could be headed in the wrong direction.

New rules authorize government to destroy Obama's draft records
http://times247.com/articles/federal-document-dump-policy-changes-after-obama-probe-begins
Excerpt: Changes in the wording of Selective Service System record-keeping requirements, made days after the opening of an investigation into the alleged forgery of President Barack Obama’s Selective Service registration form, raise serious questions about U.S. government intentions. (Gee, this is…Wait! Look over there! Mitt Romney in High School ~Bob.)

Young Obama Bullied….A Girl
Excerpt: The above text comes directly from President Obama’s first memoir, “Dreams From My Father” and recounts an incident which occurred while he was in middle school. When our president became the subject of taunts from his fellow classmates, he decided to shove a little girl named Coretta.

Worth Reading: Washington Post Romney Hit Piece Implodes
Excerpt: Today’s unconscionable Washington Post story, which implied without evidence that Mitt Romney was a homophobic bully to one John Lauber back in his high school days five decades ago, has totally imploded. Timed to drop the day after President Obama’s announced embrace of same-sex marriage, the story set the political world atwitter.

Lauber sibling reportedly has no knowledge of Romney prank
Excerpt: A family member of the classmate whom Mitt Romney allegedly bullied in high school says she has no knowledge of the incident, according to news reports. Christine Lauber, the older sister of former Romney classmate John Lauber, has told ABC News she was at college when the incident allegedly occurred while her brother, John, and Romney attended high school at the Cranbrook School, in Bloomfield, Mich. … She also said that if her brother were alive “he would be furious” about the story.

Family of Romney’s Alleged Bully Victim Speaks Out: ‘The Portrayal Of John Is Factually Incorrect’
Excerpt: On Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was accused of attacking a student whom he believed to be gay during his prep school years. Although Romney claimed to have no memory of the incident, he apologized on Thursday for the “dumb things” he did back in high school. But now, the family of the purported victim is speaking up and slamming the story as a political ploy.

License to Work
Excerpt: An occupational license is, put simply, government permission to work in a particular field. To earn the license, an aspiring worker must clear various hurdles, such as earning a certain amount of education or training or passing an exam. Of interest is the trend in increasing licensure: while only one in 20 workers in the 1950s required licensing, that figure has since risen to one in three.

Interesting: The History of the Democratic Party and Racism
Excerpt: Robert Caro pointed out in his extensive biography of LBJ, shortly after signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in a phone conversation (on tape at the LBJ Library) with Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, LBJ said, "That'll keep the niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years." (Some interesting history. The quote is sometimes disputed. ~Bob.)

Stopping the Largest Tax Hike in History
Excerpt: The largest tax hike in history is due to strike the United States on January 1, 2013. Known as "Taxmageddon," it would impose $494 billion in higher taxes on the American people in the first year. So terrible would be its impact that yesterday Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Senate Democrats that the country is headed toward a "fiscal cliff" and that Congress must deal with the impending tax nightmare. On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced that his chamber will take up the issue before the November election.

A Santa Rosa man pleaded guilty Thursday to a crosswalk hit-and-run crash that killed a 4-year-old boy and rekindled the debate about unlicensed drivers.
Excerpt: Marcos Lopez Garcia, 24, admitted guilt for the three charges against him in the Aug. 18 death of Christopher “Buddy” Rowe near Santa Rosa’s Jacobs Park. … He will be deported after serving any prison time, his lawyer said.

Bill blockbuster: O’s an ‘amateur.’ By Carl Campanile
Excerpt: Bill Clinton thought so little of President Obama — mocking him as an “amateur” — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims. “The country needs you!” the former president told Hillary Clinton, urging her to run this year, according to accounts of the conversation included in Edward Klein’s new biography of Obama. (Maybe the Clintons will endorse Keith Judd for President. ~Bob.)

Spy who uncovered underwear bomb plot is British national, sources say
Excerpt: The spy who helped Western intelligence agencies thwart a plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner was a British national of Middle Eastern origin, sources tell NBC News. The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, also say that British intelligence was "heavily involved" in recruiting the spy, who has not yet been identified publicly, and penetrating the plot by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to detonate a new, more sophisticated underwear bomb aboard a U.S. jetliner.

Eurozone economy to shrink by 0.3%, EU Commission says
Excerpt: The European Commission's spring forecast confirmed its prediction of a 0.3% contraction in 2012 in the economies of the 17 countries that use the euro. It predicted growth of 1.0% for the eurozone in 2013.

The Big Picture: Our Curiously Failing Civilization. By Jack Curtis
Excerpt: Governments around the world are in various stages of financial failure, all seemingly trying to be Argentina. Curious, no? Look at debt and deficits; you see government spending issues; most of the few exceptions have other problems. Look then at global migration patterns showing people leaving poor places for places going broke, an unhappy trend line. Look anywhere; we can't seem to govern ourselves worldwide, while people protesting are multiplying everywhere. (OK, here is another essay on doom and gloom, that I hope is really a lot of overstatement. But there certainly is some truth in the overall description of the world as having a lot of societies beset with stresses that are building towards some kind of breaking point. I'd be a lot less concerned if I saw Europe really adjusting to their fiscal reality instead of coasting along with several states showing big fracture lines already. And a collapse in Europe would have ripples that would come across the ocean to affect us as well. We're a lot better off than Europe, but if we don't reverse direction soon we can easily slide down the same slope they're already on. We do live in interesting times. –Del)

'Money Primary' Pushes Obama to the Left. By Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: Nearly everything we've seen from Obama in the last five months has been an attempt to re-create the institutional benefits of a primary season without having an actual opponent. Peddling "stop the war on women" propaganda, visiting college campuses with enough frequency to get on the meal plan, making the "Buffett Rule" into the centerpiece of his domestic policy, trying to bribe students with breaks on their student loans, inserting himself into the Trayvon Martin case: These were all efforts to get the base of the Democratic Party re-engaged with the presidential race. And to raise cash, of course.

Obama’s new Ohio ad: just making stuff up at this point. It's like these people don't do any vetting at all. By Moe Lane
Excerpt: Let me present to you the amazing amount of scrutiny that apparently needs to go into a Barack Obama campaign ad, just to understand what it actually means. (He’s been making stuff up all alone. In 2008, Obama claimed that doctors got paid $50k for an amputation, so they preferred to amputate. The real number is under $1k. The media ignored the fabrication. ~Bob.)

Today's Influence Ads: Beer Institute Says A 'Beverage Can Only Do So Much'
Excerpt: The Beer Institute has a series of new ads today arguing that beer is overtaxed, according to a compilation of print influence ads by Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group. "Taxes made up 45% of what consumers paid for beer in 2010," one of the ads says. "We're proud to do our part. But a simple beverage can only do so much." The ads feature pictures of beer labeled "Overtaxed Pilsner" and "Excise Taxed Ale." (For anyone not involved in advertising, ads come in two flavors: promotional, with a “special price or feature,” and institutional or influential, promoting the company or an idea the company values. For example those Walmart ads that say “we have lower prices” but don’t mention a specific product are institutional ads, not promotional. States have always taxed whatever they considered “sinful” products and activities. Beer, wine, whiskies, many amusements (especially movies!), even gyms and bowling alleys in some places, are taxed. Some taxes have even gone obsolete—playing cards and comic books, for example. I included this story to give you an idea how much we REALLY pay in taxes as it goes far beyond what is withheld from your paycheck. Some years ago, when our state kindly raised the tax on cigarettes by a dollar a pack—not TO a dollar a pack, but BY a dollar a pack—I sat down with a tobacco rep and we figured out what the “taxes and other required fees” came to. The retail plus sales taxes on the price that includes the “sin” taxes then came to around $5.50 per pack. All the taxes and fees came to just over $4. The cost of the product, transporting it to the store and a competitive mark-up came to just under $1.50. Both prices and taxes have gone up since then, but the proportions are surely about the same. Ron P.)

Another Electric Car From Obama-Funded Company Catches Fire
Excerpt: Last week, a fire badly damaged the home of a new Fisker Karma owner, and authorities are saying that the electric car was the source of the blaze.

Barack Obama: I’m the Real Small-Government President, Not Reagan
Excerpt: President Barack Obama tried to make the argument today that he’s the real small-government leader, not Reagan and other Republicans.

Excerpt: The prepared content of a Tuesday presentation to the House Democratic Caucus and staff indicates that Democrats will seek to portray apparently neutral free-market rhetoric as being charged with racial bias, conscious or unconscious.

The Great & Mighty Union Machine
Excerpt: Big Labor has established a system that uses hard-earned dues from union members in ways that benefit few outside the bosses themselves. Dollars go toward waste and overhead, lobbying and politics, among other items with the majority of union households disagreeing bosses “give members their money’s worth for the dues that they pay."

AFP -Wisconsin Calls On Candidates For Governor To Declare Budget Plans
Excerpt: Americans for Prosperity – Wisconsin is calling on Mayor Tom Barrett to announce his plan on how he would balance the Wisconsin State Budget. As the Democratic Party nominee for Governor, Barrett has yet to announce his proposed budget or how he would have changed the 2011 State Budget passed last year.

Excerpt: Iran’s ayatollahs are showing frustration with Iranians leaving Islam for Christianity in large numbers despite the threat of execution for apostasy. A former intelligence officer in the Guards, who has now defected to Europe, told The Daily Caller that the country’s regime has ordered the domestic intelligence apparatus to use drastic measures to stop them — including imprisonment, torture and the mass-burning of Bibles.

API wants quicker frack permits
Excerpt: "It takes more than half a year on average to get a federal drilling permit for development on federal lands," he said in a statement. He said delays in the permit process left an estimated 17,000 wells idled in Wyoming. (Getting Pounded at the Pump? There are many reasons. This is one. ~Bob.)

Learning What not to Do from the Europeans. By Charles Payne
Excerpt: The key characteristic of Rally 2012 has been resolve, but the shenanigans in Europe are wearing out investors all over again. Watching it all play out is like watching the last race after a long night at the demolition derby. That last race pits all the losing cars from earlier in the evening in a blind free for all.

Worth Reading: Pork Chop Hill. By Richard Fernandez
Excerpt: The challengers aren’t the machine fighting against some poor, hapless, bipartisan incumbent. On the contrary, the incumbents are the machine — an invincible, clanking, sparking, and all powerful juggernaut crushing all before it. This steamrollering phenomenon is well-known. (Having once defeated a powerful incumbent—by nine votes—I can relate. ~Bob.)

Issa tightens pressure on Obama’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman. By Neil Munro
Excerpt: Evidence is piling up that the White House-appointed chairman of Nuclear Regulatory Commission lied to Congress last December, according to a four page latter signed by House government oversight chairman Rep. Darrell Issa.”

Wonderful: Illegal Aliens Received $4 Billion in Tax Refunds in 2011
Excerpt: The failed president has been babbling on for months about subsidies worth $4 billion that oil companies have been receiving. Well, here’s an easy way to recoup that $4 billion. Stop allowing illegal aliens to receive tax refunds.

Al-Jazeera Host: Demanding Intervention Against Arab Dictators Is Legitimate
Excerpt: On April 1, 2012, prominent media figure Faisal Al-Qassem, who hosts the popular Al-Jazeera talk show "The Opposite Direction," published an article in the Qatari daily Al-Sharq. In it, he claimed that the Iraqi opposition that fought Saddam Hussein and cooperated with the Americans for that purpose deserves an Arab apology. Al-Qassem pointed out that today, the calls for external intervention made by Arab oppositionists battling their tyrannical rulers are considered acts of patriotism, while the opposition to them is considered treasonous. (Recognizing that the Arabs were either incapable or unwilling to do it themselves. Cordially, Larry Greenberg)

The Truth about Jobs in the Obama Economy
.Excerpt: President Obama has been using the downtick in unemployment from 8.2% to 8.1% and the addition of 115,000 jobs in April as evidence of a continuing recovery. This has frustrated conservatives because, even though the unemployment rate has technically been going down, the jobs situation is actually getting much worse.
           
Business Set To Boom Between India And Pakistan. By walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: Anything that promotes trade and normal economic relations between these often combative neighbors is of vital importance for the security of south and central Asia. Pakistan’s Army has been notably complacent about the opening of trade with India.

China Threatens War With Philippines. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: China has been remarkably patient as the US raised its profile in Asia, supported China’s neighbors over the South China Sea issue, pulled Myanmar out of its tight orbit around China and stepped up its military presence in the region. But a combination of Philippine and Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea has now created the first genuine test of America’s new Asia policy, and so far at least, China is taking a much tougher line.

CNN Legal Analyst: Obama's Grandparents 'Would Have Looked a Lot Like George Zimmerman's Grandparents'
Excerpt: CNN legal analyst Mark NeJame, after uncovering a picture of George Zimmerman's relatives during his investigation of this matter, told Piers Morgan Thursday, "If President Obama has indicated that his son would have looked like Trayvon Martin, then most respectfully, if you look at these pictures, his grandparents and great-grandparents would have looked a lot like George Zimmerman's grandparents and great-grandparents…

Gay Marriage Cartoon

Debt Tweet from Kevin@keder
This tweet is your daily reminder that Obama once called adding $4 trillion to the debt 'unpatriotic' http://t.co/kZ5UAq10

Obama on Time
I’ve avoided the tacky Time breastfeeding cover flap, but this is too funny. ~Bob.

Nancy Pelosi: My Catholic Faith ‘Compels’ Me To Support Same-Sex Marriage
Excerpt: “My religion has, compels me–and I love it for it–to be against discrimination of any kind in our country, and I consider this a form of discrimination. I think it’s unconstitutional on top of that,” Pelosi said during her weekly Capitol press briefing. (I, personally, don’t have a problem with gays getting married. Many larger problems in this world. Real, life threatening problems. But I never blamed my position on my religion. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: The campaign contour is pretty clear: The Obama reelection team will not make the case for the advantages and popularity of Obamacare, for the Chuian advantages of $4-a-gallon gas, for the dynamism of a 1.7 percent GDP growth rate, for the stimulatory effects of adding $5 trillion in new debt, or for why 8 percent unemployment does not qualify under the old rubric of a “jobless recovery.” Instead we are going to see a) mostly the spike-the-football sloganeering about Osama bin Laden and adherence to the Bush-Petraeus timetable in leaving Iraq, b) the supposed racism (Trayvon Martin–style), sexism (“war on women”) and homophobia of the Right, and c) personal attacks on Romney’s past.

VIDEO: Biden Claimed Coal Power Is More Dangerous Than Terrorism
Don’t believe Obama “evolving” position on coal, after a federal convict got 41% of the Democrat vote against him in the WV primary. ~Bob.

The Student-Loan Scam. By Michael Medved
Excerpt: Does it make sense for the government to take taxes from the big majority of Americans who never managed to win college degrees in order to subsidize the pricey education of the fortunate few who get to attend top universities?
Why is it fair to increase burdens on stressed-out working families so the feds can reduce future interest payments on student loans for members of the elite?

1 comment:

  1. The electric car article states that oil companies will not allow people to build cheap electric cars. How do they accomplish this?

    ReplyDelete