Tea Party -- One Lump or Two?

CPAC 2012: Allen Covert, Actor

2012-02-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

Romney joke

2012-02-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

EBL: Jim DeMint: Why Republicans Must Become More Liber...

2012-02-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

EBL: Jim DeMint: Why Republicans Must Become More Liber...: h/t: Smitty at TOM Beyond the GOP establishment, this is very good advice for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum . If Rick Santorum embrace...

Protest the Cancellation of 'Freedom Watch'

2012-02-10T05:04:00.001-08:00

Protest the Cancellation of 'Freedom Watch'

If you are as outraged as I am at the cancellation of Judge Andrew Napolitano's magnificent "Freedom Watch," here is something you can do.

Please contact Fox Business to ask them to reverse their decision.
Irena Briganti, Senior Vice President
Media Relations
Phone: 212-301-3608
Fax: 212-819-0816
E-Mail: irena.briganti@foxnews.com
Be respectful be be sure to convey your outrage at this matter, and state that you and many others will boycott the network if the show is

Senate Dems grow optimistic about Obama chances in 2012 - TheHill.com

2012-02-10T05:01:00.000-08:00

Senate Dems grow optimistic about Obama chances in 2012 - TheHill.com

Veterans for Ron Paul at CPAC

2012-02-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

CPAC media awards for Loesch and Atkinsson

2012-02-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

Accuracy in Media is giving awards to talk radio host and CNN commentator Dana Loesch, who also edits BigJournalism for Andrew Breitbart and CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Atkinsson, who is virtually the only network reporter outside of FOX to cover the Fast and Furious scandal. Cliff Kincaid, Roger Aronoff, and other Accuracy in the Media long timers are giving a very boring intro. Leftover media types in audience, including Ryan Reilly for Talking Parts Memo and Michael Calderone for Politico. Kincaid just excoriated David Brock and Media Matters for America as purveyors of fake, partisan media criticism. I guess he doesn't know who is in the audience.

Atkinson was attacked by Media Matters yesterday for receiving this award. She was on assignment today and her bureau chief accepted her award. She is donating the monetary component of her award to the family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Dana Loesch

(Andrew Breitbartt is also in the audience).

Pamela Gellar charges CPAC with censoring critics of Islam

2012-02-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

CPAC for Sissies: Self-Censoring for Sharia

Praying for Obamacare

2012-02-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

Studies show prayer helps people heal faster and stay healthier.

Does that mean the federal government can mandate that atheists and agnostics go to Church?

The Mental Recession: Occupy Wall Street Now Promoting the Weather Under...

2012-02-08T08:46:00.000-08:00

The Mental Recession: Occupy Wall Street Now Promoting the Weather Under...: Occupy Albany has announced an event in March called, The Weather Underground Meets Occupy Wall Street. The event will be held March 3rd,...

Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun

2012-02-08T03:41:00.000-08:00

Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun

Is the Republican Party Committing Political Suicide?

2012-02-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

posted on FEBRUARY 6, 2012 by BOJIDAR MARINOV

Filed under 2012 ELECTION

Comments (203)

It took the North Korean government 50 hours after the death of Kim Jong-Il to decide what lie they will present to the public concerning the death of the Dear Leader.

It took the Republican leadership in Nevada almost as long to decide what lie they will present to the public concerning the caucus results in their state. What should have been announced Sunday early in the morning, took another day, plus actions that cast doubts over the honesty of the counting process. And the results just defy the obvious facts and common sense.

To start with, both CNN and FOX News declared Romney as the “winner” when only 4% of the results were in. That anyone would be so sure with only 4% of the results beats any logic. But the MSM continued declaring the victory for their darling without even explaining how they would know he was the winner.

May there wouldn’t be much of an outcry if the Adelson precinct in Clark County didn’t decide to broadcast the counting of the vote at the precinct. CNN and FOX News were there, and reported from the event. It was about 11pm on Saturday. Why so late? So that observant Jews – a great part of the population of the precinct, could vote after sunset. Observant Jews are also know to be the group least inclined to vote for Ron Paul – according to the neocon myths, Ron Paul is “against Israel.”

An hour after the vote started, the numbers were announced: Ron Paul – 183 votes, Mitt Romney – 45 votes, and the others had even less. Ron Paul captured 58 percent of the votes in that precinct. Suddenly, after the announcement was made, FOX News and CNN decided that there is nothing more to report from Nevada, and imposed a complete blackout on any news about the caucuses, until late in the next day.

Now, there is no reason to believe the Adelson precinct is very much different from the other precincts in Clark County. One would expect about the same results in the other precincts as well. May be, given the fact that Ron Paul’s popularity among observant Jews is so low, the other precincts would have had even greater percentage of voters for him.

But Clark County holds about 53 percent of the votes of the state of Nevada. Which means that if Ron Paul won Clark County, he won the state. Or at least, would be close to winning it. The alternative is to say that one precinct – Adelson – of which we know exactly what the voters’ preferences are, is sharply different than all the other precincts. But there is no reason to believe such a thing about one precinct only.

The end results, released as late as Monday morning: Romney 50%, Ron Paul 18%. The GOP leadership in Nevada declared that they are not going to release the complete final results. They will only have an internal recount.

This is called massive voter fraud. Fraud that we believed only Obama and the Democrats are able of. There is no other explanation for the sharp difference between what the facts showed and what the Republican leadership announced.

The Republican Party leadership sent out a message this weekend: “We don’t care who you vote for, as long as we count the votes. Your vote means nothing. Our agenda is what matters.”

Such message means one thing: The Republican leadership has taken a course to political suicide. It believes that the times haven’t changed; that it can continue its business as usual. That the voters will put up with fraud and manipulation as they have always done. And the Party will continue to ignore their own voters because it has them in its pocket.

This is a mistaken belief. The times have changed. And those who do not understand that the times have changed, disappear from the scene. They get supplanted by those who do understand the times.

The voter fraud committed by the party apparatchiks in Nevada was a waste of time and effort. Romney will never become a President: first, because he doesn’t have what it takes to win a general election; second, because by pushing him down the throats of the Republican voters with such obvious fraudulent practices, the GOP leadership will alienate even those who would have voted for him. But more than waste of time and effort, the GOP leadership is shooting itself in the foot, and may be even worse. Another McCain-type fiasco will demonstrate that the GOP has outlived its purpose, and is now just an accomplice of the Democrats. The rhetoric of “We have to beat Obama” is not going to work if it is used to push another version of Obama on the voters. Eventually, the votes grow tired, and will look for alternatives.

And if the GOP doesn’t reverse its course, an alternative will be found, eventually.

Google Acquiesces and Censors Content in India - SocialTimes.com

2012-02-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

Google Acquiesces and Censors Content in India - SocialTimes.com

After a prolonged district court case ordered Google to take down images that may be offensive to Muslims, Google has agreed to do just that, and has began to censor its search results to remove offensive images. Facebook and Yahoo, also named in the case, are sticking to their guns and saying that they can’t police the content of their sites as that content is uploaded by users.

Google’s official statement was that “This step is in accordance with Google’s long-standing policy of responding to court orders.” While this is true, it doesn’t change the fact that they did not give in to censorship when the Chinese government asked them to. Google clearly has to pick its battles as it moves into the rough tides of International waters, and with the Indian government’s request for censorship representing an earnest plea to keep religious battles from arising, it must have been a difficult call.

A call that Facebook has yet to agree on. Facebook is not censoring their results or users based on the court order, and this may cause problems down the line as they work with the government on further expansion and eventually begin to recruit advertisers in the area.

Read more about the situation at Bloomberg.

The Republican Party Becomes the Whig Party | CNSnews.com

2012-02-07T03:39:00.000-08:00

The Republican Party Becomes the Whig Party | CNSnews.com

OBSOLETE LAW FORUM: FEBRUARY 7, WASHINGTON, D.C.

2012-02-06T07:49:00.001-08:00

START OVER NEWS

Posted 1/18/12 by Common Good

OBSOLETE LAW FORUM: FEBRUARY 7, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Obsolete Law: Does Government Need a Spring Cleaning?

Common Good and the Bipartisan Policy Center invite you to attend a morning forum on the problem of obsolete law on Tuesday, February 7 in Washington, DC.

(Click to download the agenda and flyer as pdfs.)

Agenda:

8:30 – 9:00 AM: REGISTRATION AND BREAKFAST

9:00 – 9:05 AM: WELCOME

Philip K. Howard, Common Good

9:05 – 9:35 AM: MODERATED DISCUSSION

Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia

John C. Fortier, Bipartisan Policy Center (moderator)

Stuart Taylor, Jr., author and journalist (moderator)

9:40 – 10:40 AM: PANEL ONE

Julie Barnes, Bipartisan Policy Center

Richard R. Buery, Jr., The Children’s Aid Society

Philip K. Howard, Common Good

Maya MacGuineas, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Alan B. Morrison, The George Washington University Law School

Andrew J. Rotherham, Bellwether Education Partners

John C. Fortier, Bipartisan Policy Center (moderator)

10:45 – 11:30 AM: MODERATED DISCUSSION

Representative Kevin Brady, R-Texas

Representative Jim Cooper, D-Tennessee

William A. Galston, The Brookings Institution (moderator)

11:35 – 12:15 PM: PANEL TWO

E. Donald Elliott, Yale Law School

William A. Galston, The Brookings Institution

James R. Maxeiner, University of Baltimore School of Law

Ryan McConaghy, Third Way

Philip K. Howard, Common Good (moderator)

As government officials and candidates in the 2012 election talk about ways to cut government spending, trim deficits, create jobs, control healthcare costs, and improve education and infrastructure, the role played by obsolete law needs to be addressed. Forum participants will discuss how laws, regulations, and mandates from years past prevent officials and everyday Americans from making choices for today. Panelists will also consider proposals for reform, including sunset provisions.

When:

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

8:30 AM to 12:00 PM

Discussion begins promptly at 9:00 AM.

A continental breakfast will be provided.

Where:

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20036

To RSVP, please e-mail your name, position, affiliation, and contact information to rsvp@commongood.org. If you have any questions, please contact Andrew Park of Common Good at apark@commongood.org.

This event is the first in a Common Good series titled: “Start Over 2012: A Bipartisan Forum Series”

Most Egyptians Oppose U.S. Economic Aid

2012-02-06T06:47:00.000-08:00

Most Egyptians Oppose U.S. Economic Aid

About All That Finger Waving . . .

2012-02-06T05:35:00.000-08:00

About All That Finger Waving . . .

Occupy DC threatens police before "eviction"

2012-02-06T05:04:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is trying to make the US a more socialist state

2012-02-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

The ideas the President outlined in the State of the Union are based on the very model that is causing the EU to implode.

President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address in Washington. He pledged to fight for a 'fairer America' (EPA)

By Janet Daley @ UK Telegraph

9:00PM GMT 28 Jan 2012

1105 Comments

What was it everybody used to say about the United States? Look at what’s happening over there and you will see our future. Whatever Americans are doing now, we will be catching up with them in another 10 years or so. In popular culture or political rhetoric, America led the fashion and we tagged along behind.

Well, so much for that. Barack Obama is now putting the United States squarely a decade behind Britain. Listening to the President’s State of the Union message last week was like a surreal visit to our own recent past: there were, almost word for word, all those interminable Gordon Brown Budgets that preached “fairness” while listing endless new ways in which central government would intervene in every form of economic activity.

Later, in a television interview, Mr Obama described his programme of using higher taxes on the wealthy to bankroll new government spending as “a recipe for a fair, sound approach to deficit reduction and rebuilding this country”. To which we who come from the future can only shout, “No‑o-o, go back! Don’t come down this road!”

As we try desperately to extricate ourselves from the consequences of that philosophy, which sounds so eminently reasonable (“giving everybody a fair share”, the President called it), we could tell America a thing or two – if it would only listen. Human beings are so much more complicated than this childlike conception of fairness assumes. When government takes away an ever larger proportion of the wealth which entrepreneurial activity creates and attempts to distribute it “fairly” (that is to say, evenly) throughout society in the form of welfare programmes and public spending projects, the effects are much, much more complex and perverse than a simple financial equation would suggest.

It is probably obvious that the people from whom the wealth is taken will become less willing to incur the risks that entrepreneurial investment involves – and so will produce less wealth, and thus less tax revenue. But more surprising, perhaps, are the damaging changes that take place in the beneficiaries of this “fairness” and the permanent effect this has on the balance of power between government and the people.

There is, it turns out, a huge difference between being provided with a livelihood and feeling that you have earned it. The assumption that all the wealth that individuals create belongs, by moral right, to the state, to spend on benefits or phoney job creation schemes (sorry, public infrastructure projects), is proving phenomenally difficult to expunge in Britain, so ineradicably has it embedded itself in the public consciousness.

In the US, it has had only odd historical moments of favour (Roosevelt’s New Deal, Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”), which have been beaten back consistently by the dynamism of a country that sees its existential purpose as being to foster and promote individual achievement and self-belief. It is bizarre that Obama should be regarded (or should regard himself) as a kind-of European who is trying to bring a sophisticated kind-of socialism to American economic life, complete with government-run health care and “fair” (high) taxes on the wealthy. If his European credentials were up to date, he would know that this was precisely the social model that is causing the EU to implode, and whose hopeless contradictions the best economic minds on the Continent are attempting, unsuccessfully, to resolve.

A vendetta against the “wealthy” is one of Obama’s favourite themes, and it strikes a peculiarly familiar note. Back here, Nick Clegg is arguing (rightly) that a tax cut for the lower paid should be accelerated on both moral and economic grounds – because people are struggling, and because allowing them to keep and spend more of their earnings would stimulate growth. But he wants to balance this with a wealth tax or some such penalty on “the rich”. Both Obama and Clegg, by an extraordinary coincidence, used the same semantic trick to try to prove the injustice of their present tax systems. In his State of the Union address, the President slipped subliminally from the fact that his likely presidential opponent Mitt Romney paid tax at a lower rate (because his income came from profits and dividends which were taxed as capital gains) than his secretary (who would have paid income tax), to the claim that Mr Romney paid less tax than his secretary.

Mr Clegg made exactly the same charge against a putative hedge fund manager who “paid less tax” than his cleaner, neatly obscuring the fact that it was the rate of tax that was lower, not the amount which was paid. Needless to say, both Mr Romney and the imagined hedge-fund manager pay vastly more tax than their respective secretaries and cleaners. (The top 1 per cent of earners pay nearly a third of all federal taxes in the US.)

So what does this kind of verbal trick tell us about the honesty – or the desperation – of this argument? At the very least, it is crass populism designed to provoke a particularly counterproductive form of class resentment. What is needed here and in the US are tax cuts for the many, not the few, to adapt Mr Brown, and less demonising of the sorts of people who are able to invest and create the real wealth that will be our only chance for economic salvation.

Obama is clearly living the Left-liberal dream, which still survives in small pockets of American life. He wants to import the democratic socialism that Europe embraced after the war, which was, for European cultural reasons, imbued with aristocratic paternalism and Marxist notions of bourgeois guilt. But neither of these things are part of the American historical experience. The Left-wing intellectuals, including Obama himself, who adopt this language are talking dangerously uninformed rubbish: if democratic socialism was ever a solution to Europe’s problems (and the present crisis is making that seem less and less likely), it is certainly not an answer to any question that Americans are likely to ask.

The United States is a country that was invented to allow people to be free of domination or persecution by the state. Its constitution and political institutions are specifically designed to prevent the federal government from oppressing the rights, or undermining the sense of responsibility, of the individual citizen. If it ceases to stand by that principle, then it will suffer a catastrophic loss of purpose and identity – as well as making a quite remarkably stupid and unnecessary mistake.

A VOTERS' GUIDE TO REPUBLICANS

2012-02-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

Alternet readers call for murdering political opponents

2012-02-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

Over at the more or less Stalinist website Alternet, an article decrying the Koch brothers and their involvement in tea party politics, has some interesting comments from readers. including a few calling for snipers to kill anyone who attends their conference.

poorinbostonCollapse

Next meeting ... infiltrate to find location.

They reserve the entire facility ... a perfect target ...

Employ Palin's Cross Hairs policy ... get a nutjob to aim, shoot ... no problem.

Koch Brothers Convene Super-Secret Billionaires' Meeting for 2012 Elections

Some of America's wealthiest Republicans flew into Palm Springs last weekend to update their stealthy political strategy for 2012.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153998/koch_brothers_convene_super-secret_billionaires%27_meeting_for_2012_elections/

The story is by the humorously named Lee Fang, a main writer at the so-called "Center for American Progress," itself funded by the multi-millionaire (John and Anthony) Podesta brothers, who both live in DC and make money influence peddling. (http://www.podesta.com/sites/default/files/LegalTimesPodesta3-23-09.pdf)

Lee Fang

While You Were Watching The Super Bowl...

2012-02-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

The Military Is Now Telling Catholic Chaplains What They Can And Can't Say About The Obama Administration

2012-02-05T12:28:00.001-08:00

The Military Is Now Telling Catholic Chaplains What They Can And Can't Say About The Obama Administration

Michael Brendan Dougherty | Feb. 3, 2012, 5:28 PM | 9,889 | 116

Jon Terbush / Business Insider

The emerging conflict between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration may have a new front: in the U.S. military itself.

The Catholic Church is fighting mad about an HHS ruling that would have them buy insurance for things they consider sinful–contraception, sterilization and abortion.

All the bishops in the country sent out a letter to be read in their parishes promising that the Church "cannot-and will not-comply with this unjust law."

Even Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who is in charge of Catholic military chaplains sent out the same letter.

But after he did, the Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains sent out another communication forbidding Catholic priests to read the letter, in part because it seemed to encourage civil disobedience, and could be read as seditious against the Commander-in-Chief.

More than one Catholic chaplain who spoke to us off the record confirmed that many chaplains disobeyed this instruction and read the letter anyway. Others sought further instructions from their Archbishop.

Now after much behind-the-scenes bureaucratic wrangling, a new version of the letter will be read, one that was edited of the language about "unjust laws."

A new statement issued this afternoon from Archbishop Broglio's office acknowledged the interference this way:

Archbishop Broglio and the Archdiocese stand firm in the belief, based on legal precedent, that such a directive from the Army constituted a violation of his Constitutionally-protected right of free speech and the free exercise of religion, as well as those same rights of all military chaplains and their congregants.

Following a discussion between Archbishop Broglio and the Secretary of the Army, The Honorable John McHugh, it was agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop's letter. Additionally, the line: "We cannot-we will not-comply with this unjust law" was removed by Archbishop Broglio at the suggestion of Secretary McHugh over the concern that it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.

It's an issue that Catholic chaplains are taking very seriously in private. We obtained a confidential letter sent to the chaplains that prepares priests to contact the Military Archdiocesan lawyer in case of more interference or any punishment.

The Archdiocese believes that any attempt to keep a chaplain from freely teaching and preaching the Catholic faith, for which you were endorsed, is a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. If any of you are in any way punished or slated for punitive action, I ask that you kindly call our Archdiocesan Attorney, John L. Schlageter, Esq. at 202-719-3635 and he will immediately place you into contact with a Religious Freedom Law Firm that will be most willing to take your case free of charge.

The letter also tries to clarify to priests that the Archbishop's letter "concerns a moral, not a political issue."

While it is true that soldiers do not have an unlimited right to free speech or political action, the military does not want to strain relations with the Catholic Church and its chaplains who provide services to many service members of all faiths.

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Alphabet soup of agencies

2012-02-05T11:46:00.001-08:00

Democracy

2012-02-05T11:36:00.001-08:00

Tea Party -- One Lump or Two?

CPAC 2012: Allen Covert, Actor

Romney joke

EBL: Jim DeMint: Why Republicans Must Become More Liber...

Protest the Cancellation of 'Freedom Watch'

Senate Dems grow optimistic about Obama chances in 2012 - TheHill.com

Veterans for Ron Paul at CPAC

CPAC media awards for Loesch and Atkinsson

Pamela Gellar charges CPAC with censoring critics of Islam

Praying for Obamacare

The Mental Recession: Occupy Wall Street Now Promoting the Weather Under...

Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun

Is the Republican Party Committing Political Suicide?

Google Acquiesces and Censors Content in India - SocialTimes.com

TAGS

The Republican Party Becomes the Whig Party | CNSnews.com

OBSOLETE LAW FORUM: FEBRUARY 7, WASHINGTON, D.C.

OBSOLETE LAW FORUM: FEBRUARY 7, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Most Egyptians Oppose U.S. Economic Aid

About All That Finger Waving . . .

Occupy DC threatens police before "eviction"

Barack Obama is trying to make the US a more socialist state

The ideas the President outlined in the State of the Union are based on the very model that is causing the EU to implode.

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While You Were Watching The Super Bowl...

The Military Is Now Telling Catholic Chaplains What They Can And Can't Say About The Obama Administration

The Military Is Now Telling Catholic Chaplains What They Can And Can't Say About The Obama Administration

Alphabet soup of agencies

Democracy