Political Digest July 1, 2010

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.

11 Reasons to vote for Democrats in November
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/06/11-reasons-to-vote-for-democrats-this-november-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rightwingnews%2FhGmL+%28Right+Wing+News%29
Great video of their own words. Pass it on.

Political Contributions
Here’s my plan. I’m going to invest $100 in the elections. I plan to send a $5 contribution to each of the twenty statists I’d most like to see defeated, who have a serious opponent—one with a fair chance. The way modern fundraising works, that will get me on the list, and each of them will spend at least $100 each in postage, printing and staff time sending me requests for more money. So my $100 will have the impact of $2,000 on these campaigns.

Why Israel Is Suspicious Of The United Nations?
http://christianactionforisrael.org/un/suspicious.html
I have not verified the “facts” on this list, but they sound correct. For what it’s worth.

“A Pattern of Socialist Associations” – Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan (the Early Years)
http://keywiki.org/blog/?p=775
BO was sold as a “moderate,” which to the Leftstream Media means anyone who shares their statist views. Excerpt: President Barack Obama’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme court, Elena Kagan, has been sold to the public as a “moderate” – yes, a little liberal leaning, but moderate none the less.

Obama: Promoting the Negative, Discouraging the Positive
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/06/30/obama_promoting_the_negative,_discouraging_the_positive
Excerpt: National anger at corruption and incompetence in Washington centers increasingly on a peculiar, profoundly maddening quirk of the Obama administration: its consistent, irrational impulse to reward bad behavior and to punish constructive conduct. The now powerful Tea Party movement began with an on-air rant in February, 2009 by Rick Santelli of CNBC, who complained of a costly new program to protect homeowners who had recklessly committed themselves to unaffordable mortgages; he suggested a “Chicago Tea Party” as a means of protest. Despite the indignation Santelli ignited, various Obama programs continue to tax Americans who’ve never missed a mortgage and send the money to rescue or subsidize their neighbors who made risky, irresponsible decisions at the height of the housing bubble. In a similar spirit, the Obamacare health reforms will provide subsidized insurance or Medicaid benefits for millions of families who previously declined to insure themselves, while bringing higher taxes and rising premiums to those who previously sacrificed to pay for their own protection. The immigration issue provokes explosive rage because of the same sense that government plans to reward those who entered the country illegally, giving them special advantages over law-abiding newcomers who patiently played by the rules. For most people, the underlying problem isn’t the immigrants themselves, but the fear that Washington’s misguided compassion will encourage more unauthorized new arrivals. A revealing CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll in May found overwhelming support for Arizona’s tough immigration law, with 71% of respondents who want “more crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.” At the same time, a startling 80% say they would back a program “to allow illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to stay here and apply for legal residency if they had a job and paid back taxes.” In other words, the public objects to rewarding bad conduct but shows overwhelming support for policies that bestow benefits for a constructive course of action.

If You Believe America Has Lousy Health Care, Here's Why
http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2010/06/29/if_you_believe_america_has_lousy_health_care,_heres_why
Excerpt: If you believe that Americans have lousy health care, it is probably not because you have experienced inferior heath care. It is probably because you were told America has lousy health care. Last week, major news media featured these headlines: Reuters: "U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study" Los Angeles Times: "U.S. is No. 1 in a key area of healthcare. Guess which one ..." NPR: "US Spends The Most On Health Care, Yet Gets Least" The Week: "US health care system: Worst in the world?" Now let's delve into this widely reported headline as written by Reuters. For those readers who rely on a headline to get news -- and we all do that sometimes -- the issue is clear: America is rated as having the worst health care "again." For those who read the first sentence or two, an even more common practice, the Reuters report begins this way: "Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday. The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found." For those reading further, the claim of the headline and of the first two sentences is reinforced. The third sentence offers commentary on the study by the head of the group that conducted it: "'As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it,' Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters ..." Only later in the report does the discerning reader have a clue as to how agenda-driven this report and this study are. The otherwise unidentified Karen Davis, president of the never-identified Commonwealth Fund, is quoted as saying how important it was that America pass President Obama's health care bill. Could it be that Ms. Davis and the Commonwealth are leftwing? They sure are, though Reuters, which is also on the Left, never lets you know. Here's how the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 Report from the president begins: "The Commonwealth Fund marshaled its resources this year to produce timely and rigorous work that helped lay the groundwork for the historic Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in March 2010." As for Davis, she served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Jimmy Carter administration all four years of the Carter presidency. And in 1993, in speaking to new members of Congress, she advocated a single-payer approach to health care. I could not find any mainstream news report about this story that identified the politics of Karen Davis or the Commonwealth Fund. If they had, the headlines would have looked something like this: "Liberal think tank, headed by single-payer advocate, ObamaCare activist, and former Carter official, says America has worst health care" Conversely, imagine if a conservative think tank had released a study showing that, in general, Americans had the best health care in the world. Two questions: Would the media have reported it? And if they did, would they have neglected to report that the think tank was conservative? The answer is no to both.

Christian fashion show angers Muslims
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/652809/cs/1/
Shari’a Law, coming soon to a tolerant country near you. Excerpt: A fashion show held in the Christian village of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, has been condemned by Muslims in the area. The fashion parade, which was permitted by the Palestinian Authority has drawn strong opinions from Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Top Hamas political figures in the West Bank, have condemned the show as immoral and said it never should have happened in an area under Israeli occupation. Saying the parade had violated Islamic values and laws, local Hamas officials said that such events were considered by Islam to be a fahisha, or major sin. President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were strongly criticised "for supporting the fashion show, and spreading moral corruption in the West Bank." The Palestinian Authority was represented at the fashion show to honour fashion designers who were graduating. Late last year, the PA called off a Miss Palestine beauty contest following strong protests from Hamas and many Palestinians.

Innocent couple died 'after wrong house was fire-bombed in bungled honour killing'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1290504/Innocent-couple-killed-house-bombed-bungled-honour-killing.html
Sounds like the paper thinks the intended victims had it coming, that they were not “innocent.” Note that the victims were Muslims too. Just as black folks in the US are the most frequent victims of black thugs, so too are Muslims the most frequent victims of murderous Muslims. Excerpt: An innocent couple died in a house fire at the hands of assailants who got the wrong address in a botched honour killing, a court heard today. Abdullah Mohammed, 41, and his wife, Aysha Mohammed, 39, were overcome by smoke and fumes after an accelerant was poured through their letterbox and set alight. Their killers were ordered by another man to avenge his family's honour but instead of firebombing 135 London Road in Blackburn, Lancashire, they started the blaze at 175 London Road, the court heard. Mr Mohammed was found unconscious in his bedroom along with his wife and two of their three children in the early hours of October 21 last year. He died the same night while his wife died a week later. Their 14-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son survived.

US and UK failing to take Iraq's gay pogrom seriously
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/gay-people-iraq
While I think we should do everything possible to prevent Muslim violence against Gays (or Christian violence against Gays for that matter), seems to me that the blame here falls on the Muslims and their adherence to 7th century teachings and Shari’a Law that is mostly to blame. Excerpt: Last week, 12 Iraqi police officers burst into a house in Karbala, beat up and blindfolded the six occupants and bundled them off in three vans, taking the computers they found with them. The house was then burned down by unknown people. The house was a new "emergency shelter" run by the Iraqi LGBT organisation. Two days later, one of the men turned up in hospital with a throat wound saying he'd been tortured. Iraqi LGBT has ordered those in its other two safe houses to move immediately. The group says the police action is consistent with other state attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq. It has information that the other five – two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people – have been transported 100 miles north to the interior ministry in Baghdad, where they'll be interrogated (ie tortured) to find out more about the group. Then, going on past experience, they'll probably be handed to militias loyal to Shi'a clerics Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr (both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death) and their mutilated bodies will turn up later.

Why Obamacare scares this cardiologist
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/obamacare-scares-cardiologist.html#more-44601
Excerpt: I recently visited my cardiologist. It was a routine follow up after a heart attack a year ago. I enjoy our relationship. As a token of my regard, I came bearing a gift. It was a copy of my book Obama, Doctors, and Health Reform. I knew he had qualms about Obamacare. He expressed doubts about the health reform bill’s merits. The bill will roll out over the next ten years. The big budget items covering the uninsured will start in 2014. He did not think Obama is close enough to the doctor-patient relationship to grasp the bill’s implications. He feels the bill tampers with that relationship. It raises costs of care while discouraging bright young Americans from becoming doctors. One target of the bill, in his view, are specialists like himself. They care for sick Medicare recipients.

An Entourage Surpassing the Queen’s
http://www.polkcountyrepublicans.com/blog/?p=398
Excerpt: With the pending implosion of our economy, P BO isn’t feeling the effects, so how should we expect him to handle the problem correctly? On his recent trip to the G-20 summit, he got noticed for more than just his amazing speaking ability. It was the entourage that caught everyone’s attention. Obama arrived with 500 staff in tow and 4 speech writers and 12 teleprompters! That should make other countries like us better…way to go Mr. President!

Roberts led Supreme Court through assertive term
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062905209.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
But a bare majority of five justices believes that the constitution means what it says, while four believe it says whatever they want it to say. After all, once you declare that the preamble statement of “provide for the general welfare” is an enumerated power, then whatever you believe the general welfare is becomes constitutional. If BO is re-elected in 2012, the majority is likely to switch, and the last barrier to unlimited government coercive power will fall. Can he be re-elected? Certainly. Last year 47% of citizens paid no income taxes. Add to that government employees, and you have a majority that benefits from increased government and more spending. Excerpt: The Supreme Court began its decision-making this term with a groundbreaking campaign finance case and ended it with a landmark gun case. In between, it established itself as a confident group of justices willing to act boldly and speak independently. The court at times jumped without pause into ongoing controversies, sent blunt messages to Congress and the lower courts, and engaged in both bitter internal arguments and broad, big-picture agreements. The ideological differences that divide the court are unchanged -- new Justice Sonia Sotomayor fit comfortably into the liberal role vacated by Justice David H. Souter -- but took a back seat this year to more complicated picture of assertiveness.

CNN's Larry King says he'll retire as talk-show host
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062904751.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
And declining ratings would be caused by what? Perhaps, despite leftist control of the universities, schools and the “mainstream” Media, a large number of folks want news without statist pabulum, though the story tries, as usual, to present him as a centrist. Excerpt: King lost nearly half his audience over the past year but said that did not persuade him to call it quits.

Wall Street conferees adopt changes after Republicans raise objections
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/106165-brown-would-vote-no-on-wall-st-bill-with-19-b-in-fees
Shouldn’t the headline be, “Senators work to craft bi-partisan Wall Street bill”? Excerpt: Democrats were forced to rewrite part of the Wall Street overhaul bill on Tuesday after objections from Republicans threatened to scuttle the legislation. Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) announcement that he would vote against the bill because of a provision imposing up to $19 billion in fees on large financial firms led to lawmakers reconvening a House-Senate conference on the legislation. Brown’s objections and concerns from Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe cast doubt on whether Congress would be able to pass the bill and send it to President Barack Obama’s desk. The three Republicans had joined all but two Democrats to end debate on the Senate’s version of financial legislation in May. Without the support of Brown, Snowe and Collins, Democrats do not have the 60 votes necessary to clear the conference report through procedural hurdles in the Senate.

Daily Kos renounces pollster, threatens fraud suit
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/06/daily-kos-renounces-pollster-t-1.html?wprss=44
Snort, chuckle. Excerpt: Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of the Daily Kos blog, disavowed the results of all polls conducted for his site by the firm Research 2000, alleging that they were unreliable and possibly fraudulent. His accusation, posted on Daily Kos Tuesday: "We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it," Moulitsas wrote. He made the accusation based on a statistical analysis of the Research 2000 results that raised questions about their validity. Its conclusion: "We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls." Given that outcome, Moulitsas declined to stand by any Daily Kos blog posts based on Research 2000 polls. "I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else," he wrote. "I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling."

Mark Kirk tries to push the "reset" button
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/mark-kirk-pushes-the-reset-but-1.html?wprss=thefix
Kirk has served honorably in the military. Stupid that he felt the need to burnish that a bit, especially given that he’s running against the “Banker to the Mob” who never served. Excerpt: A month to the day after the first allegations surfaced about embellishments in his military resume, Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk (R) held a press conference in Chicago designed to re-start a Senate campaign that has gone badly off track. "I was not thinking," said Kirk at the Chicago presser when asked about various misstatements in his military background including that he was once named the Navy's intelligence officer of the year. (He wasn't.) "This was a carelessness that did not reflect well upon me and this is a high office," said Kirk, according to the Chicago Sun Times. "Going forward, you have to speak with great precision and detail." Kirk's political motives in calling the press conference are fairly transparent: end the story once and for all and, in so doing, put the spotlight in the race back on state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic nominee. Whether the strategy will work or not is more difficult to analyze.

Bill Clinton backing Romanoff
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/bill-clinton-backing-romanoff.html?wprss=thefix
Better headline: “Hubby of Sec of State Disses BO!” Excerpt: Bill Clinton endorsed former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's (D) Colorado Senate candidacy, a move that puts him squarely at odds with the White House, which is backing appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D).

Why Friedrich Hayek Is Making a Comeback
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704911704575326500718166146.html
I recently read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and recommend it. But don’t take it on as light reading! Excerpt: He was born in the 19th century, wrote his most influential book more than 65 years ago, and he's not quite as well known or beloved as the sexy Mexican actress who shares his last name. Yet somehow, Friedrich Hayek is on the rise. When Glenn Beck recently explored Hayek's classic, "The Road to Serfdom," on his TV show, the book went to No. 1 on Amazon and remains in the top 10. Hayek's persona co-starred with his old sparring partner John Maynard Keynes in a rap video "Fear the Boom and Bust" that has been viewed over 1.4 million times on YouTube and subtitled in 10 languages. Why the sudden interest in the ideas of a Vienna-born, Nobel Prize-winning economist largely forgotten by mainstream economists?

"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Economic rap music!

As Europe laments welfare state, U.S. turns to it
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-26-tanner25_ST_N.htm
Looks like Europe, in Thatcher’s phrase, is “running out of other people’s money” to spend on socialism. Our turn is coming—soon. Excerpt: As President Obama meets this weekend with the leaders of the G-20 nations in Toronto, it is increasingly apparent that the United States and the European countries are headed in diametrically opposite directions. The Obama administration has been racing to transform the U.S. into a copy of the European social-welfare system, while at the same time those countries are being forced to come to grips with the failure of that welfare state. Greece, Hungry and Portugal have received the most news media attention as their growing debt has threatened the viability of the euro. But all across the European Union, countries are discovering that they can no longer afford the massive cost of providing cradle-to-grave government benefits. France: The poster-child for euro-socialism is facing a national debt of 1.49 trillion euro, about 77% of its GDP. That doesn't count the unfunded liabilities of the country's state pension system, which may exceed 200% of GDP by themselves. Reforming the French welfare system has long been seen as politically impossible, but the fiscal facts have forced the French government to finally propose an increase in the retirement age. The French government is also selling off government-owned land and other property. And the French health care system has gradually been increasing co-payments and other forms of consumer cost-sharing.

Op-Ed: Health Care For Profit
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2010/06/oped-health-care-for-profit.html
Excerpt: I’ve noticed at The Health Care Blog quite a few people are obsessed with the role of profit in the health care system. Many apparently believe that for-profit entities have no legitimate role in an ideal world and that all organizations should be nonprofit.
My own view, interestingly enough, is the exact opposite. Were I a Health Care Czar, I would remove the nonprofit status from almost all health care organizations and force them to be for-profit under tax law. I would be willing to consider some exceptions here and there, and in special cases allow for-profits to set up nonprofit subsidiaries. But the vast majority of all patients in my ideal world would be dealing with for-profits — in getting health insurance and in getting medical care. And in return they would get lower-cost, higher-quality care.

Senate confirms Gen. Petraeus as new Afghan war commander
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063002691.html
Let’s hope he creates the same disaster in Afghanistan all the Democrats now voting for him said he created in Iraq. Excerpt: Gen. David H. Petraeus was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate Wednesday as the new Afghan war commander, replacing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal after his ouster over controversial remarks in a Rolling Stone magazine article. The 99-0Senate vote followed a confirmation hearing Tuesday in which members of the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Petraeus's leadership of the war in Iraq and lauded him as the nation's premier warrior-diplomat. Petraeus told the committee members that the Afghan war, which he said is being waged against "an industrial-strength insurgency" is likely to get worse before it gets better. "My sense is that the tough fighting will continue," Petraeus said. "Indeed, it may get more intense." Petraeus said he would adhere to McChrystal's strategy of trying to avoid civilian deaths in Afghanistan, a keystone of the U.S. military's counterinsurgency approach. But in a nod to U.S. troops who have complained that McChrystal tied their hands by limiting tactics, Petraeus said he would "look very hard" at how directives issued by the former commander were being implemented. "I will continue the emphasis on reducing the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum in the course of military operations," Petraeus said, adding that the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are "fairly standard."

Obama: Our first female president
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062903997.html?wpisrc=nl_pmheadline
No comment. Excerpt: If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president. Phew. That was fun. Now, if you'll just keep those hatchets holstered and hear me out.

Arizona congressional candidate fires guns in ad
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/2010/06/arizona_candidate_fires_guns_i.html
Note the obligatory Leftstream Media smear that anyone who likes guns is likely to be dangerous. Excerpt: Arizona voters who don't pull the lever for Republican congressional candidate Pamela Gorman have this to consider: She just might shoot them. Gorman, in a new ad, fires a machine gun and pistols scores of times as a goofy sounding announcer calls this year "our best shot at changing Congress. 'Course that all depends on the caliber of our candidates."

The ‘Elusive’ Truth About Elena Kagan
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68745
Excerpt: Kagan’s views are “elusive,” the media chant in unison. They all tried to evade Kagan’s vivid writing as a college student in the Daily Princetonian in 1980, about how she cried and got drunk when Ronald Reagan won and “ultraconservative” Al D’Amato defeated her candidate, ultraliberal Democrat Liz Holtzman. She wished that “our emotion-packed conclusion that the world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead and that there was no longer any place for the ideals we held or the beliefs we espoused” would be replaced by the hope that the Reagan era would be “marked by American disillusionment with conservative programs and solutions, and that a new, revitalized, perhaps more leftist left will once again come to the fore.” Unbelievably, our journalistic geniuses can read that and say Kagan’s political views are “elusive.” .... One TV reporter filed one story that broke the mold. On June 3, CBS legal reporter Jan Crawford said documents in Thurgood Marshall’s papers in the Library of Congress showed that, “Kagan stood shoulder to shoulder with the liberal left, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion.” The White House was furious that Crawford would dare tell the truth about such a thing. “Their reaction has been to push back so strongly on allegations, as they would put it, that she’s a liberal,” she revealed. “Like there’s something wrong with that, like it’s a smear to say their nominee is a liberal.”

The Obama Formula
http://weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-formula
Excerpt: There is something strange going on in American politics. Call it the belated triumph of George McGovern’s “Come home, America” campaign. While the secretary of defense works on plans to reduce spending on the military, his boss concocts plan after plan to increase spending on social programs. Even overseas interventions deemed important to national security are grudging, time-limited affairs—we might drop in for a while, but we are soon homeward bound. The American government’s power to influence foreign events is assumed to be extraordinarily limited. While increasingly threatening and intransigent enemies strut across the world stage in defiance of sanctions and pleadings of international institutions, America has cast its lot with those multilateral institutions, eschewing unilateralism even when vital overseas interests are involved, pursuing the approval of adversaries from the Arab Middle East to Russia, Asia, and Africa. Fast forward to domestic policy. Here government power is considered almost without limit. Fossil fuels create environmental and security problems, so government will order the invention of alternatives. The health care system is flawed, but rather than repair it we will transform it into one run largely by government. If Americans cannot be wooed to support these transformations, they are to be ignored by an administration and Congress that is far to their left, deploying a variety of parliamentary tricks. No wooing of support from Americans, from whom approval for domestic interventions is seen as less necessary than is the approval of the “international community” for our foreign policy.

W.H. quiet on Obama-Blago link
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39195.html#ixzz0sMkt3Qag
Excerpt: The White House was mum Tuesday after a union leader testified that Barack Obama personally asked him to approach then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich about appointing confidant Valerie Jarrett to his Illinois Senate seat – testimony Republicans say clearly contradicts the Obama team’s version of events. In testimony at Blagojevich’s federal corruption trial, Tom Balanoff said Obama — speaking a day before his Nov. 4, 2008 triumph in the presidential election – said that Jarrett wanted the job and was qualified, although he wanted her to join him in the White House. Defense lawyers – and now the GOP – have claimed that Balanoff’s version of events conflicts with Obama transition team lawyer Greg Craig’s report on his investigation into contacts between Obama’s inner circle and Blagojevich’s team.

Obama Administration Plays Down Fallout From Spy Case
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68758
Excerpt: The administration sought to dampen tensions, while the Russian government offered the conciliatory hope Tuesday that U.S. authorities would "show proper understanding, taking into account the positive character of the current stage of development of Russian-American relations." The White House response was notably restrained following the dramatic announcement that 11 people assigned a decade or more to illegally infiltrate American society had been arrested. They are accused of using fake names and claims of U.S. citizenship to burrow into U.S. society and ferret out intelligence as Russian "illegals" -- spies operating without diplomatic cover.

VA patients get letter of warning on dental work
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/fitness/article_2729bf3f-d947-5708-9b89-a0d7a1bc5e32.html
Excerpt: The Department of Veterans Affairs is warning hundreds of veterans that they may have been exposed to viruses from dental work performed at the St. Louis VA Medical Center. The federal agency said it was mailing letters to 1,812 veterans treated during a 13-month period ending in March at the clinic at its John Cochran hospital. The letters say the risk of infection is low but offer free blood testing to screen for the hepatitis B virus, the hepatitis C virus and for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection. The VA letter said that dental equipment "may not have been cleaned correctly." "We deeply regret that this situation occurred and we assure you that we are taking all the necessary steps to make certain that testing is offered quickly and results communicated timely," the letter reads. The letter adds, "We want you to know that the staff at the St. Louis VA Medical Center is doing everything possible to address this situation and prevent it from occurring again." (Almost all veterans were vaccinated against Hep A while on active duty and/or in basic training. It is unclear what protection--if any--that gives against other variants of hepatitus. Risks would be higher for dependants, of course. If you're at risk, see your primary care doctor. Ron P.)

Short-term insurance buyers drive up cost in Mass.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/06/30/short_term_insurance_buyers_drive_up_cost_in_mass/
New costs coming soon to the other 49. Excerpt: The result is that insured residents of Massachusetts wind up paying more for health care, according to the report. “The active members subsidize some of the costs tied to those individuals who terminate within one year,’’ the report says. The report was released as state lawmakers consider proposals to make it harder for consumers to jump in and then dump their health insurance coverage. A bill sponsored by Senate President Therese Murray aims to close many of the loopholes by, among other things, allowing consumers buying their own insurance to do so during just one month per year, as is the case with many employer-sponsored health plans. The number of people engaging in this phenomenon — dumping their coverage within six months — jumped from 3,508 in 2006, when the law was passed, to 17,177 in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available. “We believe [Murray’s] fixes could effectively address the gaming in the system — which we believe is adding as much as $300 million dollars to the health care system in Massachusetts’’ each year, said Tara Murray, spokeswoman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest insurer.

U.S. Finally Accepts International Assistance for Gulf Oil Spill
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68767
Been on it from day One, huh, Bammy? Excerpt: The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the State Department said Tuesday. The State Department said in a news release that the U.S. is working out the particulars of the help that's been accepted. More than 30 countries and international organizations have offered to help with the spill. The U.S. hasn't made a final decision on most of the offers. The United States rarely faces a disaster of such magnitude that it requires international aid, but the government did accept assistance after Hurricane Katrina. Most of the countries and groups have offered skimmers, boom or dispersant chemicals, according to a chart on the State Department's website. The chart indicated offers have been accepted from six countries -- Canada, Mexico, Croatia, Holland, Norway and Japan. Offers also were accepted from two groups -- the International Maritime Organization and the Monitoring and Information Center, which is operated by the European Commission.

Gun-Rights Groups Ready for Battle Against ‘Restrictive’ Regulations
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=68735
Excerpt: Given the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on Monday that the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals in the states, gun rights advocates are maneuvering to legally challenge and remove what they view as burdensome regulations on gun ownership and use. "We are already preparing to challenge other highly restrictive anti-gun laws across the country,” said Alan Gottlieb, vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, in a statement. “Our objective is to win back our firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time.” The Second Amendment Foundation was one of the legal co-sponsors for the plaintiff in the case, McDonald v. Chicago, for which the Supreme Court ruled in favor on Monday. Dave Workman, with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said he expects the "battlefield" over gun regulations to "expand to the states now," and that there will be numerous challenges to gun laws and regulations across the country. (This will be a long, hard, expensive, and thankless battle with no quarter given on either side. The nannies will insist only they know what is good for us and will invent reasons why it should be so; those of us who refuse to be nannied will fight bitterly. No matter who wins each battle, the rift in our society will be enlarged. Yet, if the battle is not fought, we lose a freedom vital to protecting all the others. This should have been clarified 100 years ago. Ron P.)

Crime, punishment and Climategate
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/05/crime-punishment-and-climategate/#ixzz0sM5LkLR2
Excerpt: Al Gore and his Climategate colleagues in the academy and the press are like the North Carolina police officers and prosecutors who put an honest man behind bars. Almost all of them began with open minds and the best intentions. At some point they honestly concluded that the Earth was in great peril. They began viewing evidence through this lens, accentuating data that bolstered their view, discounting findings at odds with the “truth.” As their investment in the idea of global warming increased—their careers, good names and sense of themselves—their minds closed. Dissension, debate and doubt became too dangerous. Members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change trumpeted faulty data, climate scientists stifled legitimate inquiry and influential journalists likened those who questioned global warming to Holocaust deniers in the name of truth. In a recent column, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal found it “amusing” that the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert had rejected the seriousness of the Climategate scandal in a recent podcast. “She sounds extremely defensive,” Taranto wrote, “as if she feels personally threatened by questions about global-warmist doctrine.” Of course she does. Kolbert has written numerous articles and a celebrated book, “Field Notes On a Catastrophe,” detailing the threat of global warming. Her investment in it is immense. It cannot be easy for her to even entertain the possibility that she—so smart, so accomplished—might have been duped, even a little bit.

Debts, deficits and defense
http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/28/debts-deficits-and-defense/#ixzz0sHtTdthk
Buy a burka for your granddaughter. Excerpt: In the fight over defense spending, the first round has been fought between Congress and the Pentagon. Congress won by a knockout. In a grudging response to calls from Republicans to bring the White House defense budget cuts to a vote, the Democrat majority allowed a House vote in early June. But it was only on a single item in the long list. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dipped her toe in the water and allowed a vote to decide the fate of the “alternative engine” for the F-35 fighter. She assumed it was an obscure program with minimal support, and the easiest cut to pass. She was mistaken. As of now, Pratt & Whitney has a sole source contract that gives them a monopoly on building the engine for the aircraft that will be 95 percent of our jet fighter force. The F-35 is nothing less than the basis of future American air superiority. But, notwithstanding Pratt & Whitney’s sole source contract, General Electric and Rolls Royce were funded to develop a competitive engine the Government Accounting Office says will reduce costs by as much as 12 percent. Setting technical arguments aside, the issue came down to $485 million. The White House and Pentagon wanted to cancel the competition. When the smoke cleared, a solid majority of votes by both Democrats and Republicans insured the alternative engine program will continue. In the age of trillions, why was this vote over spending less than $500 million important? The Obama administration intends to slash the defense budget in order to pay for its riotous spending on bailouts, “stimulus bills,” their signature healthcare program, and massive pork bribes for votes from congressmen who hopefully will not survive this November’s balloting. To continue the spending spree, the White House plans to eliminate over a trillion defense dollars in the next ten years. Details of those proposed cuts were laid out by Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) Sustainable Defense Task Force in a 56 page report titled: Debt, Deficits, & Defense – A Way Forward. None of the service arms are spared.

Fake Marine Sentenced to Probation
http://www.military.com/news/article/fake-marine-sentenced-to-probation.html?ESRC=marine.nl
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.” –Samuel Johnson. Excerpt: A man who pretended to be a highly decorated Marine will serve three years of probation, including 120 hours of volunteer work, probably in the service of veterans. "I really admire the military," Angel Ocasio-Reyes, 49, said before he was sentenced today for three federal misdemeanor charges under the Stolen Valor Act. "I never meant to hurt anyone." Ocasio-Reyes, of Tampa, bought a beribboned Marine master gunnery sergeant uniform at an Army Navy surplus store in New York and paid a friend $25 for a DD Form 214, an official military discharge document, showing Navy service. He altered the form, typing in his address and a slew of medals and decorations, including the Navy Cross, making it appear as though he served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was injured in combat.

Stop Chicago Corruption - Joel Pollak for Congress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTghLkrDf7g
My candidate in my district.

UN starts $5M cleanup of Agent Orange contamination at former US base in Vietnam
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-as-vietnam-agent-orange,0,6856398.story
Excerpt: The United Nations has launched a $5 million project to clean up Agent Orange contamination at a former U.S military air base in Vietnam, the world body said Tuesday. The project will focus on dioxin contamination at Bien Hoa airport on the outskirts of southern Ho Chi Minh City. It is one of three former American air bases where U.S. forces mixed, stored and loaded the defoliant onto planes for spraying missions during the Vietnam War to destroy jungle hideouts of enemy Communist forces. (want to bet the Us Taxpayers are being ripped off for this? See: Agent Orange Fact Sheet
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/12/agent-orange.html)

Podesta clan's close ties to Obama pay off big
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Podesta-clan_s-close-ties-to-Obama-pay-off-big-97413374.html
Excerpt: John Podesta, chief executive officer of the liberal Center for American Progress, may be President Obama's closest confidant outside of the administration -- he ran the transition and has visited the White House at least 37 times according to visitor logs. Tony Podesta, John's brother, is a corporate lobbyist and a leading fundraiser for Democrats. On at least a handful of issues, John's CAP has advocated the same solutions Tony has lobbied for. On some of those issues, CAP has partnered with the companies that hire Tony as a lobbyist. Given Obama's anti-lobbyist rhetoric -- and the gaping holes in his lobbyist policies that have been repeatedly exposed -- it's worth examining where the work of the president's confidant, John, dovetails with the business of lobbyist and fundraiser, Tony.

Fannie-Freddie Bailout Could Cost Taxpayers $1 Trillion
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=16185
No new financial regulation proposed here. Excerpt: For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion. Two things are clear: Taxpayers don’t want to foot the bill, and Fannie and Freddie, taken over by the government in 2008 to stanch the financial bloodletting, need a major overhaul. “Some of us who don’t even own homes are paying to support others and their home ownership, and they ask ‘why?’ said Robert J. Shiller, a Yale University economics professor and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices…

Political Digest June 30, 2010

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.

Time
I can’t believe this year is half over. But then again, I can’t quite believe the 20th Century is over, though considering the tens of millions of people murdered by statists, I suppose good riddance. Only four months plus a couple of days until the election. I am not so confident as many of the columnists. Elections turn on lots of factors, mostly good candidates, money and hard work.

10 Alleged Russian Secret Agents Arrested In US
http://www.wbaltv.com/politics/24072174/detail.html?treets=bal&tml=bal_natlbreak&ts=T&tmi=bal_natlbreak_1_03000106282010
BO better get over there and do some bowing and scraping. They don’t seem to realize this is a new open era in US Foreign Policy following the Obama reset. Where is Sen. Joe McCarthy now that we need him? Excerpt: Ten people have been arrested for allegedly serving as secret agents of the Russian government with the goal of penetrating U.S. government policymaking circles. The Justice Department announced the arrests Monday. According to court papers in the case, the U.S. government intercepted a message from Russian intelligence headquarters in Moscow to two of the defendants. The message states that their main mission is "to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US" and send intelligence reports.

The General and the Community Organizer
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6581/pub_detail.asp
I don’t buy this. Too convoluted and makes McChrystal look dumb to too many folks. If he disagreed so strongly with BO, the honorably course would have been to resign. If he’d gone public with his reason, would not have been page 22. Excerpt: I suggest that, having his best military judgments subjected to the White House political sieve for nearly a year and a half, McChrystal decided that he’d had enough. And when he announced to his senior staff that he was prepared to retire they decided to push back… to make the most of a bad situation. It was clear that, if McChrystal were to simply take off his uniform and walk away, his retirement would be page-twenty news for a day or two before the mainstream media and the American people forgot all about him. They had to make the most of his retirement because it provided a one-time opportunity to show the American people, as well as our enemies and our allies, that the man who claims the title of Commander in Chief of the U.S. military does not command the respect of our men and women in uniform. To make the most of that opportunity they had to choose their messenger very carefully. They knew that, by openly showing their disrespect for Obama in front of just any newsman, they may not attract the attention they desired. Like any astute observer of the MSM, they knew that most reporters would turn on their own mothers if it meant a good story. But they could not take a chance that a mainstream media reporter might suffer a rare pang of conscience when confronted with the prospect of ruining the careers of some of the most senior officers in the War on Terror. They had to fix the odds as much as possible in their favor so they chose to use Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone Magazine.

Could Mike Huckabee be the 2012 presidential nominee?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2012/is-mike-huckabee-running-for-p.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) leaned heavily toward the 2012 presidential race over the weekend, telling Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace that he "does better against [President] Obama than any other Republican." After Huckabee's interview -- in which he also cited a "strong sentiment out there" for him to run -- the governor wrote a blog post on the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in which he sought to remind people of the stakes in elections. "When I hear a statement like 'Republicans and Democrats are all the same,' I cringe and think of moments in our nation's history just like this one," he wrote. Huckabee has also used his HUCK PAC to endorse and donate to candidates of his choosing -- although his fundraising capacity to date doesn't rival that of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- both of whom are widely expected to run for president in 2012. Of late then, Huckabee is giving every public indication that he is ramping up a run for president.

Gun Control Laws by Thomas Sowell
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/thomas-sowell/2010/06/29/gun-control-laws/
Excerpt: Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect? Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn't be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves. When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence. Many people who are opposed to gun laws which place severe restrictions on ordinary citizens owning firearms have based themselves on the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But, while the Supreme Court must make the Second Amendment the basis of its rulings on gun control laws, there is no reason why the Second Amendment should be the last word for the voting public.

Kagan’s Own Words: It’s Fine If The Law Bans Books Because Government Won’t Really Enforce It
http://www.breitbart.tv/kagans-own-words-its-fine-if-the-law-bans-books-because-government-wont-really-enforce-it/
Apparently, trashing the constitution was only a problem when liberals thought GWB was doing it.

McChrystal to retire from Army
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062804969.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Inevitable. Not that I don’t think he was dumb for running his mouth, but nobody at Rolling Stone will ever be fit to shine his boots. A sad end for long service to the Republic, brought about by his own foolishness and people who care little for America except what they can suck from it. When, say about 2030, Shari’a Law shuts down Rolling Stone, they will ask how it could have happened and why someone didn’t do something. When I was with the 25th Marines as a reservist, the Colonel made me the regiment public affairs officer, since I had contacts with the local press. McC could have used my services.

Study: DC Opportunity Scholarship Program Benefits Participants
http://www.heartland.org/full/27877/Study_DC_Opportunity_Scholarship_Program_Benefits_Participants.html
No chance. Teachers’ unions have a lot more political clout than poor black kids with this president. He is “black” only when politically useful. Excerpt: Eighty-two percent of voucher students graduated high school, compared with 70 percent of students who were offered a voucher but chose not to use it, IES researchers found. The overall high-school graduation rate in Washington, DC is around 50 percent. Wolf says the impact of the scholarship program on high school graduation rates, especially for the subgroup of students who didn’t actually use the voucher, is “huge both in size and importance.” “If the younger [scholarship] students experience the same benefit, of an increase of 12 percentage points in the likelihood of graduation simply from the offer of a scholarship, an extra 449 low-income DC students will graduate from high school solely because of the Opportunity Scholarship Program,” Wolf said. “High school graduation is the Holy Grail of educational interventions in the inner city,” Wolf said, noting high school graduates live longer, experience lower rates of unemployment, earn higher wages on average, and are less likely to be convicted of a crime. “If a program boosts the graduation rate, and does nothing else, it’s a success,” he said.

Important: Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26macdonald.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1277827346-k4eHLJgbMW94xcP9T4dGUQ
Being PC is far more important than protecting the decent people, though most of the victims of black thugs are the decent black folks. If decent black and Hispanic folks have to suffer and die so liberals can feel good about being PC, well, that’s just the way it is. Excerpt: THERE was a predictable chorus of criticism from civil rights groups last month when the New York Police Department released its data on stop-and-frisk interactions for 2009. The department made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year. Fifty-five percent involved blacks, even though blacks are only 23 percent of the city’s population. Whites, by contrast, were involved in 10 percent of all stops, though they make up 35 percent of the city’s population. According to the department’s critics, that imbalance in stop rates results from officers’ racial bias. The use of these stops, they say, should be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated entirely, and some activists are suing the department to achieve that end. Allegations of racial bias, however, ignore the most important factor governing the Police Department’s operations: crime. Trends in criminal acts, not census data, drive everything that the department does, thanks to the statistics-based managerial revolution known as CompStat. Given the patterns of crime in New York, it is inevitable that stop rates will not mirror the city’s ethnic and racial breakdown. CompStat embodies the iconoclastic idea that the police can stop violence before it happens. The department analyzes victim reports daily, and deploys additional manpower to the places where crime is increasing. Once at a crime hot spot, officers are expected to look out for, and respond to, suspicious behavior. Such stops happen more frequently in minority neighborhoods because that is where the vast majority of violent crime occurs — and thus where police presence is most intense. Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.

Food Fights
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/food_fights
Excerpt: Some of the world's most bitter conflicts have nothing to do with access to resources, ethnic chauvinism, or the balance of power. Here's a short guide to the planet's fiercest gastronomic controversies.

Brown would vote 'no' on Wall St. bill; blames $19B in new bank fees
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/106165-brown-would-vote-no-on-wall-st-bill-with-19-b-in-fees
So why not stick it to the big banks? Well, the banks can either take it out of their stockholders, which include the mutual funds in most of our retirement plans, or they can charge it to their customers, who pass it on to consumers—like you and I. But most people can’t think two or three steps beyond the obvious. Excerpt: Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) said Tuesday he would oppose the Wall Street overhaul bill as it stands because of the $19 billion in fees it would place on big financial firms. In a letter to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Brown expressed "strong opposition" to the fees that were added in the conference process between House and Senate lawmakers last week. "If the final version of the bill contains these higher taxes, I will not support it," he said. The letter is the strongest indication yet that Brown will vote against the Wall Street overhaul bill. Brown had voted for the Senate's original version of the legislation before the fee was added. The conference bill cannot be amended on the House and Senate floor. House and Senate lawmakers were planning to pass the overhaul bill this week.
Wall Street bill back to conference as Democrats don't have the votes
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/106165-brown-would-vote-no-on-wall-st-bill-with-19-b-in-fees
Excerpt: Senate and House conferees on Wall Street reform are expected to reconvene Tuesday because of Republican objections to $19 billion in fees that would be placed on big financial firms. The meeting would follow Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) letter to the chairmen of the conference committee on Tuesday, in which he said he would oppose the Wall Street overhaul bill as it stands.

Obama's Islamic Envoy: Obama Is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-america-educator-chief-islam
It is Muslims practicing child marriage, Muslims carrying out murder and suicide bombing in the name of God, Muslims making women second class citizens, Muslims persecuting Christians and Jews in Muslim countries and Muslims practicing FGM who defame Islam. Stop that and the defamation will stop. Speak against that, Mr. President. Excerpt: Rashad Hussain, America’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to “protect” Jerusalem from the Israelis, announced a new title this week for President Barack Obama. According to Hussain, Obama is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam.” Hussain so designated Obama in a keynote speech Wednesday, June 23, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The occasion was another “post-Cairo” conference, following on the event that welcomed Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan to Washington in April. Hussain also declared that Obama is “Educator-in-Chief” on the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which has produced diplomatic and political events around the capital for some years. Hussain affirmed with satisfaction that presidential iftar dinners, where the fast is broken after sundown, and which had formerly been limited to diplomats from Muslim countries, now welcomed American Muslims from throughout society. In his remarks, Hussain also congratulated Obama for sending Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, to last year’s annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a notorious front for Saudi-financed Muslim radicalism. Worse, Hussain has now divulged that the U.S. will support the OIC in the latter’s United Nations effort to criminalize “defamation of religion” – widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights. "The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe," said Hussain. He had previously said, at the above-mentioned April “post-Cairo” conference, that the U.S. would work with the OIC to defend the Muslim head-scarf against prohibitions on its display in schools and governmental offices – a measure common to secular France and now Islamist-ruled, but still legally-secular Turkey, as well as Muslim-majority Tunisia and Kosovo. (Yep, that's the critical thing for the world today, to stop "defamation of religion".... well, that is, if you're referring to any and all criticism of how some Moslems practice the religion. I wonder if the continuous stream of vicious attacks on the religion of Judaism that we see in so much of the Islamic world will be part of what the UN is going to try to fix. Or maybe the attacks on Christianity in places like Saudi Arabia, or even the destruction of the Bahai in Iran, or the Falun Gong in China? I think I'll just sit right by the TV to wait for the announcement of how the UN is going to combat all criticism of any form of organized religion. Sure I will. --Del)

Government by the Faculty Lounge
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson061510BPF.html
Excerpt: We are being run by the mindset of the faculty lounge, as if the philosophy or English department has taken over running the country. Let me adduce some random examples. Tax proposals in haywire fashion are thrown out almost every day from various Obamians, as if at a faculty bull session over coffee. Can we count them all — much less can small businesses plan to hire a worker when they don’t know how much more they will shortly owe the government? Here is what we hear from Barack Obama: a restoration of the death tax. Trial balloons for a national sales tax or a VAT. How high will capital gains hikes go? Rates are to go back to or beyond (?) the Clinton income tax schedules? Was the cap to come off income exposed to the full FICA bite, and was it to be set at $150,000, $200,000, or $250,000? What exactly is the new healthcare surcharge? And when and if these federal income hikes are added to the states’ raises in state income, property, and sales taxes, what will the aggregate tax bite be? Does anyone know? Do any of these guys care how “they” are going to make enough money to pay “us”?

15 insurgents killed by their own bombs in Afghan mosque
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1566665.php/15-insurgents-killed-by-their-own-bombs-in-Afghan-mosque
They should have read the memo. Allah Akbar! Excerpt: Eight Arab, five Pakistani and two Afghan militants were killed when bombs they were making exploded prematurely inside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said Sunday. The insurgents were assembling bombs in Desi Mosque of Yousifkhela district in the south-eastern province of Paktika on Friday, the ministry said. Pakika borders the Pakistani town of Wana, where Taliban militants are said to have training bases. Afghan officials have repeatedly blamed Islamabad for not doing enough to clamp down on cross-border infiltration by insurgents.

Supreme Court to hear Arizona immigration law challenge
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65R3CQ20100628
Interesting pre-curser. Excerpt: The nation's highest court agreed to decide whether the 2007 state law infringed on federal immigration powers and should be struck down. The law at issue in the case is different from the strict new Arizona immigration law passed earlier this year and criticized by President Barack Obama that requires the police to determine the immigration status of any person suspected of being in the country illegally. But the Supreme Court's eventual decision in the case, depending on how the justices rule, could end up affecting the pending legal challenges to the new law as well. The Obama administration last month urged the Supreme Court to rule that the 2007 law was preempted by federal immigration rules and would disrupt the careful legal balance that the U.S. Congress struck nearly 25 years ago.

Tim Blair: Greens Are Biggest Losers In Anti-Green Putsch
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1155-tim-blair-greens-are-biggest-losers-in-anti-green-putsch.html
From Australia. Excerpt: As some prescient bloke wrote 13 months ago: "Climate change has turned out to be a helpful device to change governments, stitch up the middle-class Prius vote, grab Green preferences, impress stupid university students but a bitch of a thing to deal with once in government." Actually, that was me, getting it right for once. Well, maybe only half-right. As an issue, climate change has now gotten rid of both Kevin Rudd, who was in government, and Malcolm Turnbull, who wasn't. Still, that's two Australian millionaires brought down by their climate fixations. So much for IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri's 2007 claim that "it is the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit." Poor Malcolm. Poor Kevin.

Texas schools can't stop teachers from giving zeros
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7084524.html
If teachers have to give honest grades, it will destroy the system and wreck the teachers unions. Not to mention the poor kids unearned self esteem. Excerpt: A Travis County judge ruled today that Texas public schools are required to give students truthful grades on class assignments and on their report cards under a 2009 state law that 11 school districts were challenging in court. The school districts — most of them in Harris County - argued that the law applied only to grades on assignments, noting that the statute didn't specifically mention report cards, semester grades, or six- or nine-week averages. But state District Judge Gisela Triana-Doyal ruled that the statute is "not ambiguous" and clearly means districts cannot require teachers to give students grades they did not earn. The bill's author, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, has said she intended it to apply to all grades.

Living in Fear
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/29/living-in-fear/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_campaign=a0bf710321-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
When one can experience the high of being politically correct, a few dead Jewish kids doesn’t signify. Excerpt: Iris Twito, the mother of two sons injured by Qassam rockets in the city of Sderot, decided to grant an exclusive interview with Sderot Media Center, following the Gaza aid flotilla fiasco. “The entire world hates us,” said Iris, “but they don’t know what we’ve been through.” The Twito family is a living testament for why there is a naval blockade on Gaza. “It’s not just Sderot that is under threat today, but the whole country,” said Iris. “It is vital that we stop these flotilla boats because we cannot allow Hamas to terrorize our Israeli children.” Sitting on her patio in Ashdod, with a cigarette in hand, Iris recalls the most horrifying experience a mother can go through. Three years ago, Iris’s sons Osher and Rami, then eight and 19 respectively, were walking to an ATM in Sderot, when the rocket alarm went off. As the two brothers frantically attempted to locate a shelter in the middle of one of Sderot’s main streets, the Qassam rocket struck meters away from the two. The exploded shrapnel sliced through the boys’ legs. Residents poured out to the street to help, but another rocket alert went off, forcing everyone to flee to shelter again. Moments later, the ambulances arrived to transport the boys to the closest hospital, Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital, located 20 minutes away from Sderot.

Cost of Socialism
http://boilingspringsteaparty.com/2010/06/18/the-real-cost-of-socialism/
European tax rates, coming soon to a wallet near you.

Supreme Court Affirms Racist Origins Of Gun Control
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/24787
Excerpt: How ironic that, on the day former exalted cyclop of the Ku Klux Klan Democrat Senator Robert Byrd died, the US Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the gun control laws that are embedded firmly in the Democratic Party's racist roots. At the heart of the McDonald v. City of Chicago case that is posted on the US Supreme Count's Internet site is the Court's decision that the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution - that was pushed through by Republicans after the Civil War, led by Republican Senator Charles Sumner - is the anchor that binds state and local governments to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self defense. Otis McDonald, one of the plaintiffs, is a black man who just wanted to have the right to protect himself from criminals who terrorized him in his home with frequent break-ins. The only current black US Supreme Court member, Justice Clarence Thomas who was appointed by Republican President George H. W. Bush, courageously delved into the racist origins of gun control laws to demonstrate that such laws have no place in a nation of free people. The liberal justices on the Court, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor who was appointed last year by Democrat President Barack Obama, voted against the black plaintiff and his fellow Chicago residents. The McDonald case provides a bird eye's view of the history of Democratic Party racism. Referenced in the Court's opinion is the 1856 Republican Party Platform that includes language about the "right of the people to keep and bear arms." A key source used by the Court is the book "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877" by Dr. Eric Foner whose biography can be found on the Internet. Forner's book reveals how, before the Civil War ended, Southern States enacted "Slave Codes" that prohibited slaves from owning firearms. After Republican President Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the rebelling States, and after Republicans pushed through the Thirteenth Amendment freeing all the remaining slaves, Democrats in the South persisted in keeping the newly freed slaves from owning the means to protect themselves - guns. The Supreme Court in the McDonald decision wrote about how, after the Civil War, the Southern States started passing laws, called "Black Codes", to systematically disarm blacks, specifically the over 180,000 blacks who returned to the States of the old Confederacy after serving in the Union Army. In response to the "Black Codes," the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. But the Democrats would not be deterred. Very soon after the 1866 law was enacted, Alabama, followed by other Southern States, again passed "Black Codes" that made it illegal for blacks to own firearms. Cited by the Court in the McDonald case, as an example of such a discriminatory code, is the Mississippi law that stated: "no freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife." In one Southern town, according to the Supreme Court, the marshal confiscated the weapons of the returning black Union soldiers and, at every opportunity, promptly shot black people.

Report faults U.S. for being too optimistic about Afghan security capabilities
http://marinepatriot.blogspot.com/2010/06/report-faults-us-for-being-too.html
Excerpt: Congress and the Obama Administration fail to understand the Afghanistan National Army/Police will never totally support a corrupt Afghanistan government and are only serving in the military/police for the money. They also know their limits as they will be killed by the Taliban once we leave Afghanistan. On another point, rules of engagement are getting our troops killed. The concept of giving medals for restricting our forces from firing first is absurd. If we are not going to do what is necessary to win this 9 year old war, then get out of there. General Petraeus has supported these rules of engagement and failed counterinsurgency plan, so he had better come up with another plan ASAP, or the war will drag on and we will ultimately be defeated.

Democrats quietly cheer high court gun ruling
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39142.html
I don’t agree. Only have to ask the Democrats if they support the court’s decision, or if they support legislation, now being offered in Chicago, to water down the decision. Excerpt: When the Supreme Court extended the individual right to own a gun Monday, it handed Second Amendment advocates — many of whom are at home in the GOP — one of their most significant legal victories ever. But who won the day in politics? The Democrats. For them, the court’s groundbreaking decision couldn’t have been more beneficial to the cause in November. Now, Democratic candidates across the map figure they have one less issue to worry about on the campaign trail. And they won’t have to defend Republican attacks over gun rights and an angry, energized base of gun owners. “It removes guns as a political issue because everyone now agrees that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and everybody agrees that it’s subject to regulation,” said Lanae Erickson, deputy director of the culture program at centrist think tank Third Way.

2nd Amendment Rights Finally Considered a Right for Black Chicagoans Too!
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2010/06/29/2nd-amendment-rights-finally-considered-a-right-for-black-chicagoans-too/
At long last the 2nd Amendment has been considered a personal right per the Supreme Court of the United States. In McDonald v the City of Chicago the Supreme Court has ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that Chicago’s gun banning laws are not in keeping with the right to self-defense as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. After 200 some years we are finally accorded our rights officially. Further, the Court found that the 2nd Amendment was meant to protect the very people that Mayor Richard Daley and his comrades are trying to forcibly disarm: black Americans

'We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges!'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703964104575335202155645716.html?mod=djemITP_h
Excerpt: The bandits in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" never said this famous line, not at least in the condensed way it's so often quoted. But the sentiment—disdain for law enforcement and the rule of law—is clear. And it happens to be the same sentiment behind the kneejerk opposition to the Arizona immigration law, which this week may elicit a legal challenge from the Justice Department. In this, the authors of the law were clever. They knew their law was no solution to the federal government's failures on immigration. They also knew—perhaps hoped—that the law would be challenged constitutionally, and that this challenge would likely end up in the Supreme Court. But they knew something else: By writing it the way they did, they would smoke out the "no badges" brigade—those who effectively oppose real enforcement of any immigration law. That's because at its core, the Arizona law adds nothing to immigration law. To the contrary, it empowers Arizona police to do their part to uphold that law when they have a "reasonable suspicion" that someone whom they've stopped for some other law enforcement reason is in the country illegally. On top of this, legislators added language to prohibit using racial profiling to make such a stop. The response has been illuminating. In Mexico, President Felipe Calderón declared that the Arizona law opened the door to "intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement." In the ranks of Congress, members variously invoked—take your pick—"Jim Crow," "apartheid" and "Nazi Germany."

Terrorists Join the Traffic Across the Mexican Border
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6526/pub_detail.asp
Excerpt: The debate about how to make our porous southern border safe and how to deal with millions of illegal aliens in our midst has been dragged into the sunlight by Arizona’s new laws. The vast majority of Arizona voters applauds those laws, yet the Obama administration ignores them as well as the rising tide of American public opinion. Why is that? Could it be the politicians who now rule us need millions of new Democrat voters? No wonder Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threatens to sue Arizona. No wonder Attorney General Eric Holder says not “if” but “when.” Democrat officials are acting so strangely because recent primaries show their party is in trouble in lots of places for lots of reasons and needs lots of new Democrat voters. So amnesty and giving the right to vote to 12 million illegal aliens is essential, even if it means bleeding millions of scarce dollars from state budgets for free healthcare and free education for illegal aliens. Even if it means battles with Mexican drug cartels and a crime wave along the border. Democrats know a quick amnesty and the vote are essential because once 12 million illegal Latinos are enfranchised they will vote Democrat, and the Democrat Party will rule forever.

Kuwaiti Columnist: Pro-Gaza Activists Are Nothing but Terrorists
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4406.htm
Excerpt: In a follow-up to his June 3, 2010 article on the Gaza flotilla [1] Kuwaiti columnist 'Abdallah Al-Hadlaq, who writes in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan, published another column on this issue. In it, he contrasted the global interest in what is happening in Gaza with the disregard to other, graver, humanitarian crises across the world. Al-Hadlaq also stated that the activists working to remove the siege on Gaza were not peace activists but terrorists disguised as humanitarians, and that therefore Israel was fully entitled to defend itself from them. Following are excerpts from his column: [2] The World Is Obsessed with the Situation in Gaza while It Ignores the Real Tragedies in the World. "The world is endlessly obsessed with a murky strip of coast, of no value whatsoever, the home of some 1.5 million [people] living in Palestinian refugee camps dispersed [throughout it] – that is, the Gaza Strip, which was taken over by a group of terrorists named the Hamas movement. "[This obsession contrasts with] the terrible silence, lack of consideration, and indifference that has overcome the world... with regard to more important and more valuable [issues] that merit attention far more than this murky piece of land called the Gaza Strip. Let us look together at the following examples:

The 30-Year War in Afghanistan
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100628_30_year_war_afghanistan?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100629&utm_content=readmore&elq=dbd373964f564d23ab3a3245de62fa39
Excerpt: The Afghan War is the longest war in U.S. history. It began in 1980 and continues to rage. It began under Democrats but has been fought under both Republican and Democratic administrations, making it truly a bipartisan war. The conflict is an odd obsession of U.S. foreign policy, one that never goes away and never seems to end. As the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal reminds us, the Afghan War is now in its fourth phase. The first phase of the Afghan War began with the Soviet invasion in December 1979, when the United States, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, organized and sustained Afghan resistance to the Soviets. This resistance was built around mujahideen, fighters motivated by Islam. Washington’s purpose had little to do with Afghanistan and everything to do with U.S.-Soviet competition. The United States wanted to block the Soviets from using Afghanistan as a base for further expansion and wanted to bog the Soviets down in a debilitating guerrilla war. The United States did not so much fight the war as facilitate it. The strategy worked. The Soviets were blocked and bogged down. This phase lasted until 1989, when Soviet troops were withdrawn. The second phase lasted from 1989 until 2001. The forces the United States and its allies had trained and armed now fought each other in complex coalitions for control of Afghanistan. Though the United States did not take part in this war directly, it did not lose all interest in Afghanistan. Rather, it was prepared to exert its influence through allies, particularly Pakistan. Most important, it was prepared to accept that the Islamic fighters it had organized against the Soviets would govern Afghanistan. There were many factions, but with Pakistani support, a coalition called the Taliban took power in 1996. The Taliban in turn provided sanctuary for a group of international jihadists called al Qaeda, and this led to increased tensions with the Taliban following jihadist attacks on U.S. facilities abroad by al Qaeda. The third phase began on Sept. 11, 2001, when al Qaeda launched attacks on the mainland United States. Given al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan, the United States launched operations designed to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda and dislodge the Taliban. The United States commenced operations barely 30 days after Sept. 11, which was not enough time to mount an invasion using U.S. troops as the primary instrument. Rather, the United States made arrangements with factions that were opposed to the Taliban (and defeated in the Afghan civil war). This included organizations such as the Northern Alliance, which had remained close to the Russians; Shiite groups in the west that were close to the Iranians and India; and other groups or subgroups in other regions. These groups supported the United States out of hostility to the Taliban and/or due to substantial bribes paid by the United States. The overwhelming majority of ground forces opposing the Taliban in 2001 were Afghan. The United States did, however, insert special operations forces teams to work with these groups and to identify targets for U.S. airpower, the primary American contribution to the war. The use of U.S. B-52s against Taliban forces massed around cities in the north caused the Taliban to abandon any thought of resisting the Northern Alliance and others, even though the Taliban had defeated them in the civil war.

Assessing the True Cost of Liberty
http://townhall.com/columnists/JosephCPhillips/2010/06/28/assessing_the_true_cost_of_liberty
Excerpt: My eldest son has decided that he wants to be a marine. His plan is to enter the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and then serve his country as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. My son is still at an age when plans for the future change with the seasons. It may be that time brings about a change of his mind. Even so, when he announced his decision, I couldn’t help but smile. One often hears that this young generation is consumed with narcissism and the accumulation of wealth. When my son informed me that he wished to dedicate his life to serving his country, I felt a real sense of pride. As we approach the 234th anniversary of this nation’s independence, I have begun to think about what that type of service truly entails. The Marine Corp recruiting billboards state that the Marines do not accept applications--just commitments. What is the depth of that commitment? The answer became clear to me a few weeks ago as I stood on the grounds of the Los Angeles National Cemetery. I was participating in a Memorial Day program, which gave me an opportunity to speak to veterans, some of whom had been wounded and even disfigured during combat. It is one thing to objectively recognize the dangers inherent in military service, and it is quite another for a father to subjectively realize that one of the headstones in the cemetery might someday bear the name of his son. Suddenly, I began to think that a medical career might not be so bad. "Son," I said. "Have you thought about attending UCLA?" Nope. He has his heart set on becoming a leatherneck like his new hero, John Basilone.

Bosnia: Jihadists bomb police station; analysts state the obvious and warn of more to come
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/bosnia-jihadists-bomb-police-station-analysts-state-the-obvious-and-warn-of-more-to-come.html
Maybe they didn’t get the memo? Excerpt: As is so often the case with the Balkans, analysts are quick to attribute the problem of jihadist activity to the influence of "Wahhabism," though without accounting for why the Wahhabists' teachings resonate so readily with what we were told were peaceful, secularized, tolerant Muslims. To suppose otherwise, of course, raises the specter of there being something about Islam, even among our modern, moderate "friends and allies" that is not of the Wahhabists' invention, but nonetheless generates acts like the one described below. In any event, however, the West in general, and NATO countries in particular, are dismally willing to stand idly by while Saudi petrodollars fund an Islamic revival, complete with its inherent problems of Sharia law and jihadist doctrine, in the Western pet project comprised by the Muslim components of the former Yugoslavia. At the root of that inaction are two issues: the economic blackmail of dependence on oil, and the politically correct article of faith that Islam must be a "Religion of Peace"... if people would just stop "misunderstanding" it.

Sharia Alert: Mother of two set to be stoned to death for adultery in Iran
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/sharia-alert-mother-of-two-set-to-be-stoned-to-death-for-adultery-in-iran.html
Excerpt: The imam of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an open proponent of Sharia. This is what that means. "Iran: SKSW/WLUML Statement on planned stoning to death of young mother in East Azerbaijan Province," from Women Living Under Muslim Laws, June 18 (thanks to Banafsheh): The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women and the International Solidarity Network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws urge all concerned to immediately contact the Iranian officials to express their concern over the planned stoning to death of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani. On 15 May 2006, Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani was convicted of having an 'illicit relationship' with two men and was sentenced to 99 lashes by Branch 101 of the Criminal Court of Osku, in East Azerbaijan Province. Then, in a September 2006 trial of a man accused of murdering her husband, Mohammadi-Ashtiani was once again accused of committing 'fornication while married'. During this trial, Mohammadi-Ashtiani retracted the 'confession' she supposedly made during pre-trial interrogation, alleging that she had been coerced to confess under duress, and declared her innocence. Two of the five judges found her not guilty, pointing to the lack of evidentiary proof in the case against her, and noting that she had already suffered 99 lashes due to her previous sentencing. Even though double jeopardy is illegal in Iran, the other three judges, including the presiding judge, found Sakineh guilty on the basis of the 'judge's intuition', a provision in Iranian law that allows judges to make their own subjective and arbitrary rulings based on a 'gut feeling', even in the absence of clear or conclusive evidence.

Belgian EU presidency would support enlargement
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/7859632/Belgian-EU-presidency-would-support-enlargement.html
Boy, nothing the EU needs more that an Islamist state with a weak economy. Suicide. Excerpt: Olivier Chastel, the Belgian secretary of state for EU affairs, in a joint news conference with Spanish counterpart Diego Lopez Garrido, raised the possibility of the opening of a new chapter in negotiations with Turkey in the coming months after Spain, which currently holds the EU presidency, backed Ankara's bid despite resistance from France and Germany.

UN summer camp in Gaza vandalized
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOfV86BMSwdxN4ChycGYgmW38TqAD9GK6HR00
This would be the same Hamas that BO is giving your tax dollars to and US Leftists are supporting ending the arms blockade to? Excerpt: Two dozen masked men vandalized a U.N. summer camp for children in Gaza early Monday, burning and slashing tents, toys and a plastic swimming pool. It was the second such attack in just over a month.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Islamic extremists have accused the main U.N. aid agency here of corrupting Gaza's youth with its summer program of games, sports and human rights lessons for 250,000 children. The U.N.'s main competitor in running summer camps is the ruling Islamic militant Hamas movement, which says it reaches some 100,000 children. The Hamas camps teach Islam and military-style marching, along with swimming and horseback riding. In a statement on Monday's attack, the U.N. said about two dozen armed and masked men targeted a seaside camp in central Gaza, one of dozens of U.N. sites across the Palestinian territory.

Brewer: Obama giving twice the money to Mexico than Arizona for Nat. Guard
http://www.resistnet.com/video/video/show?id=2600775%3AVideo%3A2318277&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_video

Arming of Terrorists, Attempt to Kill Defector Cited as Reasons to Return North Korea to Terror List
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68637
They keep trying to engage N. Korea like the west tried to engage Germany in the 1930s, with the same result, for the same reason. Excerpt: The Obama administration says the sinking of a South Korean warship does not justify returning North Korea to the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states, but experts believe there are other good reasons for the administration to do so, including shipments of weapons allegedly destined for terrorists in the Middle East. Just two months ago, agents for the Stalinist regime detained in South Korea admitted they had been sent there to assassinate the highest-ranking North Korean ever to have defected, Hwang Jang-yop, the former secretary of Kim Jong-il’s ruling Workers Party. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters Monday the sinking last March of the Cheonan – which investigators attributed to a North Korean torpedo attack – was in the administration’s judgment “not an act of international terrorism and by itself would not trigger placing North Korea on the state sponsor of terrorism list.”

Gen. Petraeus' nomination puts some Democrats in awkward spot
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/106045-petraeus-nomination-puts-some-dems-in-awkward-spot
Excerpt: President Barack Obama’s nomination of Gen. David Petraeus has put some Democrats in a politically awkward position. While Senate Democrats are expected to rally behind Petraeus to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top commander in Afghanistan, they must also ask tough questions about when the U.S. will withdraw troops from the war-torn country. Many on the left are impatient with the Afghanistan war, and some Democrats are nervous much of their base may not show up to vote in this year’s midterm elections. Meanwhile, Republicans who are looking to drive a wedge between Democratic leaders and the liberal base have pointed to critical statements Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other leaders made about Petraeus a couple of years ago. During the 2007 surge in Iraq, anti-war Democrats — most notably MoveOn.org — strongly criticized Petraeus. Liberal advocacy groups and senators at the time accused Petraeus of misrepresenting the success of the surge of nearly 40,000 troops. Two years later, the four-star general is widely credited for turning around the war in Iraq and holds strong respect among Republicans. And Obama’s decision to replace McChrystal was made easier by his selection of Petraeus, who is expected to be confirmed swiftly. The balancing act for Democrats begins Tuesday when the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to hold its confirmation hearing on Petraeus. Reid told CNN in April of 2007 he did not believe Petraeus’s claim that the surge was working in Iraq. “I don’t believe him, because it’s not happening,” Reid said. “All you have to do is look at the facts.” At a press conference a few months later, Reid said: “For someone, whether it’s Gen. Petraeus or anyone else, to say things are great in Baghdad isn’t in touch with what’s going on in Baghdad, even though he’s there and I’m not.” On Sept. 20 of that year, 25 Democrats voted against a resolution stating that Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, deserved the full support of the Senate and condemning personal attacks on his honor and integrity. That vote came after MoveOn.org took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times in September of 2007 attacking Petraeus as “General Betray Us.” The three top-ranking members of the Democratic leadership, Reid and Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Charles Schumer (N.Y.), voted against the resolution. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, who were both in the Senate at the time, didn’t vote on the measure.

How Obama bungled the oil spill: An inside story
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0610/morris062910.php3
Excerpt: It's one thing to say that Obama's Administration showed its ineptitude and mismanagement in its handling of the Gulf oil spill. It is quite another to grasp the situation up close as I did during a recent visit to Alabama. According to state disaster relief officials, Alabama conceived a plan — early on — to erect huge booms off shore to shield the approximately 200 miles of their state's coastline from oil. Rather than install the relatively light and shallow booms in use elsewhere, the state (with assistance from the Coast Guard) canvassed the world and located enough huge, heavy booms — some weighing tons and seven meters high — to guard their coast. So, Alabama decided on a backup plan. It would buy snare booms to catch the oil as it began to wash up on the beaches. But…the Fish and Wildlife Administration vetoed the plan saying it would endanger sea turtles that nest on the beaches. So, Alabama — ever resourceful — decided to hire 400 workers to patrol the beaches in person scooping up oil that had washed ashore. But…OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Agency) refused to allow them to work more than twenty minutes out of every hour and required an hour long break after forty minutes of work so the cleanup proceeded at a very slow pace. The short answer is that every agency — each with its own particular bureaucratic agenda — was able to veto each aspect of any plan to fight the spill with the unintended consequence that nothing stopped the oil from destroying hundreds of miles of wetlands, habitats, beaches, fisheries, and recreational facilities.

Cuban intelligence nexus with Mexican narcos
http://cubapolidata.com/2010/06/05/cuban-intelligence-nexus-with-mexican-narcotraffickers/
Excerpt: The detention of Gregorio “Greg” Sánchez Martínez (a leftist candidate for the Quintana Roo state governorship in Mexico) for money laundering and trafficking in illegal immigrants has exposed the nexus between Cuban intelligence and Mexican narcotraffickers, reports SIPSE. El Financiero cites José Antonio Pérez Stuart, a columnist and expert on intelligence matters, who believes that the objective of the political association between Cuban intelligence and narcotraffickers is the penetration of Castro agents in Mexican territory in order to infiltrate Mexican politics, control government positions and utilize them to their benefit. Behind the international campaign against the 2010 Arizona Immigration Law—SB1070 are bands of narco-communists, according to Pérez Stuart, in charge of infiltrating the United States from Mexico with Cuban, Chinese and Russian illegal immigrants. Havana’s intelligence services are under suspicion for utilizing trafficking channels of illegal Cuban immigrants to infiltrate intelligence agents into the United States because their spy networks have been discovered/dismantled in recent years.

Sex complaint against Gore is detailed, credible
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Sex-complaint-against-Gore-is-detailed_-credible-97329474.html
Feminists used to say that “Women don’t lie about rape,” but dropped it after their ally Bill Clinton was accused of rape by a woman. Excerpt: The allegation that Al Gore sexually assaulted a woman in a Portland, Ore., hotel room nearly four years ago has dealt a serious blow to the former vice president's story that he and wife Tipper simply "grew apart" after 40 years of marriage. The police report of the masseuse's complaint is 73 pages long and extremely detailed. According to the document, she got a call from the front desk of the trendy Hotel Lucia on the night of Oct. 24, 2006. The hotel had a special guest. Could she come at 10:30 p.m.? She went to Gore's room carrying a folding massage table and other equipment. Gore, whom she had never met, greeted her with a warm embrace. "The hug went on a bit long, and I was taken just a bit aback by it," the masseuse told police. But she went along because Gore "was a VIP and a powerful individual and the Hotel Lucia had made it clear to me by inference that they were giving him 'the royal treatment.'" Gore said he was tired from travel and described in detail the massage he wanted. It included work on the adductor muscles, which are on the inside of the thighs. "I mentally noted that a request for adductor work is a bit unusual," the masseuse told police, because it can be "a precursor to inappropriate behavior by a male client." Gore also requested work on his abdomen. When that began, "He became somewhat vocal with muffled moans, etc.," the masseuse recounted. Gore then "demand[ed] that I go lower." When she remained focused on a "safe, nonsexual" area, Gore grew "angry, becoming verbally sharp and loud." The masseuse asked Gore what he wanted. "He grabbed my right hand, shoved it down under the sheet to his pubic hair area, my fingers brushing against his penis," she recalled, "and said to me, 'There!' in a very sharp, loud, angry-sounding tone." When she pulled back, Gore "angrily raged" and "bellowed" at her.

Media Routinely Used 'Conservative' Label on Bush Nominees to Supreme Court; Obama Picks Always 'Centrist'
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2010/06/28/media-routinely-used-conservative-label-bush-nominees-supreme-court-ob
To be fair, compared to most leftist media types, maybe they are centrists. Excerpt: When President Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in 2005, the media did not hesitate to describe both men as "very conservative," but when President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Elena Kagan this year many in the press couldn't seem to identify any liberal ideology. The Media Research Center has produced a video compilation of examples to further demonstrate the obvious double standard.

Obama postpones tax talk until after election
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama-postpones-tax-talk-until-after-election-97346959.html
Excerpt: Putting off any tough decisions until after the election, President Obama warned that grim financial choices are coming -- including a look at the tax system. "I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step up, because I'm calling their bluff," Obama said. "And we'll see how much of the political arguments they're making right now are real, and how much of it was just politics." "These folks" referenced by Obama include congressional Republicans, who have criticized his deficit spending while balking at rolling back tax cuts or cutting spending. Republicans in the Senate recently cited the deficit in blocking an effort by Democrats to again extend the time Americans can receive unemployment benefits. And a looming issue for both parties is whether to extend the so-called Bush tax cuts, passed in 2001, which are set to expire in January.

Obama: If we work hard, Afghanistan could be a success…like Iraq!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-if-we-work-hard-afghanistan-could-be-a-successlike-iraq-97304859.html
Count this as an apology to President Bush and General Petraeus. Obama: “That doesn’t mean we suddenly turn off the lights and let the door close behind us. And if you look at what’s happening in Iraq right now, we have met every deadline. By the way, there was a timetable in place, and we are – we have – by the end of August, will have removed all of our combat from Iraq. We will maintain a military presence there. We will maintain military-to-military cooperation. And we are providing them assistance, but we’re meeting this deadline. And I think it is worth the extraordinary sacrifices that we are making – and when I say “we” – not just the United States, but all coalition members – to try to see a positive outcome in Afghanistan, as well.”

(Unicorn) The new white meat
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-unicorn-20100628,0,7816178.story
This editorial is a stitch. Excerpt: It's a fine day when we come to work expecting to write about crime or government and end up reporting on, say, the Humboldt Park man with Rod Blagojevich's face tattooed on his thigh. Or the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile getting a parking ticket on Michigan Avenue. Or Mayor Daley joking about pointing a rifle up a reporter's pants. So we imagine an attorney who clocked in expecting to spend the day drafting a motion for continuance would jump at the chance to write a cease-and-desist letter to the purveyors of canned unicorn meat. What a great day to be a lawyer.

Lightening Strikes in Chicago
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/28/lightning-strikes-over-chicago-captured-in-stunning-slow-motion/
Good video. Think this was the storm last Wednesday I was out in.

Terrafugia Transition 'flying car' gets go-ahead from US air authorities
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7860966/Terrafugia-Transition-flying-car-gets-go-ahead-from-US-air-authorities.html
My next car. Excerpt: The Transition was designed as a "light sport" aircraft, the smallest kind of private aeroplane under FAA classification, with a maximum weight of 1,320lb. But the manufacturers found it impossible to fit the safety features - airbags, crumple zones and roll cage, for instance - that are required for road vehicles into that weight. Uniquely, however, the FAA has granted the Transition an exemption - allowing it to be classified as a light sport aircraft despite being 120lb over the limit. Light sport aircraft licences require just 20 hours' flying time, making them much easier to obtain than full private licences. The two-seater Transition can use its front-wheel drive on roads at ordinary highway speeds, with wings folded, at a respectable 30 miles per gallon. Once it has arrived at a suitable take-off spot - an airport, or adequately sized piece of flat private land - it can fold down the wings, engage its rear-facing propellor, and take off. The folding wings are electrically powered. Its cruising speed in the air is 115mph, it has a range of 460 miles, and it can carry 450lb. It requires a 1,700-foot (one-third of a mile) runway to take off and can fit in a standard garage.