Wishy-Washy Politicians

Obama Campaigns For Re-Election On Public Dime

2011-12-16T02:53:00.000-08:00

What a total waste of our money and time and it is more important than ever to change this administration from in to out. mc

Posted 12/01/2011 04:04 PM ET

Election '12: President Obama jammed traffic in Manhattan on Wednesday. State business? No, he was raising campaign funds. It's just the latest example of his questionable strategy of running for re-election by taking from the public.

And no, the public was not invited. Three stops the president made were strictly for fat-cat donors who paid as much as $36,000 a plate for the privilege, while reporters weren't even permitted to cover the protests outside the hotels.

But the trip was hardly just between Obama and his donors. The three trips disrupted rush hour traffic in New York City and the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, something that very much cost the public time and money. The only winner was Obama, who flew home with $2.4 million.

That's emblematic of the arrogance of this president and the kind of re-election campaign we can expect him to conduct: always leaning on the public and its government to get his.

Earlier this week, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper noted that Obama's flight schedule had a curious concentration of U.S. swing states in the upcoming election. Tapper asked White House spokesman Jay Carney if it wasn't just disguised "campaigning on the public dime." Carney denied it, disingenuously claiming that Obama spends only 5% of his time on politics.

But maybe that's because he's showered his allies at Acorn's front groups, like Acorn Housing, with as much as $27 million in taxpayer cash, according to research by Matthew Vadum, writing in the Washington Times.

Acorn, remember, was the community organizing group supposedly disbanded over fraud and corruption, but like a boiler room somehow keeps reappearing under new names and raking in taxpayer cash.

Acorn's members already have openly bragged that>>>

Wealth Solves, Rather Than Creates, The Poverty Problem

2011-12-16T02:42:00.000-08:00

Class warfare has become a key talking point in the Obama administration. It is high time to vote this administration out of office before they do more damage to America. mc

By THOMAS L. KRANNAWITTER Posted 11/30/2011 05:48 PM ET

Class warfare is alive and healthy in elite parts of America today. Yes, elite. Only elites — a tiny fraction of a fraction of the American public — are able to camp in public parks denouncing businesses, while other elites in high government offices and the media discuss them. The rest of us have to work.

So what do the elites want? From the repeated assertions of our president that the "rich" pay too little in taxes, to the anti-capitalism chorus of Occupy Wall Street, the echo chamber refrain seems to be that those who've earned less deserve what those who've earned more have. But in the idiom of Marxist political economy — the haves vs. have-nots — what do the haves, have?

It's not money, simply. It's wealth, of which money is merely a measurement. Money and wealth are commonly confused, but their differences are important if we're to respond persuasively to the unjust demands of some for the property of others and explain why the creation of wealth solves, rather than creates, the problem of poverty.

Imagine several people shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Nothing survives the wreck, save only one item: a printing press filled with paper. As the people crawl to safety, they're exhausted. They stare in disbelief and shock.

But soon they begin to realize that they're hungry, thirsty, cold, unprotected from the elements. They're in dire poverty. They must think and act, or die. What shall they do?

Suppose one of them happens to be a member>>>

Will The EPA Choke Oil Shale Production

2011-12-16T02:37:00.000-08:00

Of course they will, that is what they do best. The Obama administration's war on energy is more aggressive than its war on terror. mc

Posted 11/30/2011 06:36 PM ET

New Energy: The latest salvo in the administration's war on energy may be new rules and permits to regulate a process to get oil and gas from porous rock, sacrificing jobs and economic growth while under review.

There are a few areas of the U.S. that are booming. Two of these are in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, states that sit atop two massive shale rock formations, the Bakken and the Marcellus.

Extraction of oil and natural gas from these formations have created jobs and economic growth in the midst of a stagnant and parched economy.

The oil and gas is extracted from this porous rock by a process called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."

The process involves the injection under high pressure of fluids, mainly water with a few chemical additives, to fracture the porous shale rock and allow the release and extraction of the oil and gas trapped inside the porous rock. Environmentalists contend these chemical additives contaminate groundwater supplies.

The fluid used in the process is 99.5% sand and water. There are other chemicals ranging from the citric acid found in soda to benzene, which are used to reduce friction and fight microbes.

Shale formations in which fracking is used are thousands of feet deep. Drinking water aquifers are generally only a hundred feet deep. There's solid rock between them.

Yet the Environmental Protection Agency, >>>

Badly-Needed Alaskan Oil Is Kept From Market By Obama Decision

2011-12-16T02:29:00.000-08:00

Once again our faithful President is avoiding his responsibilities and allowing more dependency on foreign oil. Way to go 'oh anointed one". mc

Posted 11/29/2011 06:48 PM ET

Energy Policy: The same administration that says we can and should get oil from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is blocking a bridge needed to get it to market on environmental grounds.

In his May 14 weekly radio address, President Obama called for annual lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), not necessarily out of any conviction that increased domestic energy supply is good for prices and national security, but basically to perpetuate the myth that the oil companies refuse to drill in leased or leasable areas.

While he restricts oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the north coast of Alaska, and imposes outright moratoriums on federal lands and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Obama wants the appearance, if not the reality, of supporting domestic energy production from fossil fuels.

The NPRA, 23 million acres of North Slope wilderness, was established in 1923 by President Harding to ensure a reserve of oil for the U.S. Navy.

Obama has cited it as an example of areas where the oil companies could drill but are reluctant to, knowing full well his administration has walled off preferred areas offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The problem is that at least one oil company,>>>

Loved by media, Barney Frank Helped Cause Financial Crisis

2011-12-16T02:21:00.000-08:00

The Barney will get off Scott Free and be applauded as a "who me" type of guy. Way to go Barney! mc

Posted 11/28/2011 06:24 PM ET

Congress: Establishment media are swooning over the unexpected departure of ultraliberal Barney Frank. But this "champion of the little guy" actually helped cause the mortgage disaster, then kept the system broken.

'Congress will now be a little dumber," was the kind of nonsense we heard from the mainstream liberal media after Frank, D-Mass., former chairman of the House Banking Committee, said no to running for re-election next year.

Formally reprimanded by a heavily Democratic House on a 408-to-18 vote in 1990 for ethics offenses regarding his financial relationship with a male prostitute, Frank has for decades been a fast-talking, acidic presence in House debates.

But he wasn't smart enough to realize that the politically correct poisoning of mortgages would lead to a calamity rivaling the Great Depression. "I, like many others, did not see the crisis coming," Frank said Monday.

He sure didn't. Back in 2003, what did he say when the Bush administration proposed what the New York Times described as "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago," including a new agency to supervise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Frank said: "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." Fannie and Freddie, of course, are those corrupt public-private hybrid monstrosities that gave lots of mortgages to people with horrendous credit ratings.

After 1996's welfare reform, liberals like Frank found other ways to redistribute wealth. Yet even after the politicization of mortgages led to the financial crisis, last year's Dodd-Frank reform kept "too big to fail" and other defects in our federally mismanaged banking system.

Manhattan Institute scholar and>>>

E-Car Fires: Big Bump In The Road

2011-12-16T02:16:00.000-08:00

When the politicians get involved and in this case mandate electrical vehicles, it is no wonder that where there is smoke there is fire. mc

Posted 11/28/2011 06:52 PM ET

The lithium-ion battery pack for a Chevrolet Volt, shown here at a GM plant in Detroit, is being probed as a fire hazard. AP View Enlarged Image

Industrial Policy: The investigation into the safety of electric car batteries intensifies after additional fires involving the flagship of a proposed electric vehicle fleet. Central planning doesn't work for cars or insurance.

When the Toyota Prius was being accused of having overlooked design flaws that were causing accelerators to get stuck with fatal results, the owners of Government Motors, a competitor, wasted little time pushing for a recall and congressional hearings while accusing Toyota of cutting corners for the sake of corporate profits.

We wonder if the same sense of urgency will prevail in the wake of new safety tests indicating that an earlier test in which a Chevy Volt experienced a battery fire three weeks after a side-impact test was no fluke and that the car's lithium-ion battery poses a fire hazard.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Friday the results of tests designed to replicate the May test. In that test the crash vehicle, stored in the parking lot of a test facility in Burlington, Wis., caught fire. The fire was severe enough to cause several nearby vehicles to catch fire as well.

The latest tests involved three battery packs in which the Volts were subjected to a simulated side-impact collision with a narrow object like a tree or light pole followed by a rollover. The first battery did not catch fire, but another did during testing Nov. 17. The third battery, tested on Nov. 18, began to smoke and emit sparks shortly after being rotated.

The NHTSA reaction was as much of a>>>

Ezra Klein: From 'Journolist' To Liberal Activist

2011-12-16T01:58:00.000-08:00

Why are we not surprised. The Washington Post's standards continue to decline from lower to lowest and yet they still trend downward. mc

Posted 11/28/2011 06:52 PM ET

Media Bias: In the early days of the Gulf War, pundits marveled at the specter of Iraqi troops surrendering to journalists. Well, now it's even worse: Journalists are giving the Democratic Party its talking points.

The Washington Post's 27-year-old star blogger Ezra Klein has been called "whiz kid," and "brat packer" and a "wunderkind." Now he's actually advising Democratic chiefs of staff, briefing them last week about the supercommittee in Congress, according to a report by Fishbowl-DC on MediaBistro.com.

That means the relatively novel idea that bloggers can be placed on an equal footing with reporters in congressional briefings has been one-upped: Bloggers like Klein are now giving the briefings.

That's because Klein himself sports the imprimatur of one of the most vaunted news organizations in the world, the Washington Post. He's supposed to have the Post's high standards. But instead of reporting the news, even at a slant, as bloggers do, Klein takes bias beyond that. Instead of commenting on news, he makes it.

The problem here is not just that he blurs the lines between journalism and activism. It's that the Post is perfectly content with it, and Klein himself says that such activism is actually part of his media ethos.

Think we are kidding? The Washington Post's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli told the Washingtonian last year that Klein "is a new paradigm," for journalism, and "one we would very much like to replicate."

Amazingly, this is all a matter of the public record>>>

Corruption Squared

2011-10-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

The corruption and scandals of this Obama Administration just keep on coming. How corrupt is this?

Posted 09/19/2011 06:19 PM ET

Gen. Shelton wasn't expecting a "rock band" in a quiet neighborhood of low-energy competitors, but then came the White House pressure. AP View Enlarged Image

Scandal: The Air Force's Space Command chief was pressured to alter testimony about the danger of a wireless project developed by a Democratic donor's company. Are lives as well as money being put at risk?

Crony capitalism, which has been rampant in President Obama's push for green energy, is one thing. Rewarding donors with stimulus dollars is merely the "Chicago Way" brought to Washington, D.C.

But when ideology combines with cronyism to place American lives and the nation's security at risk, it's quite another thing.

At issue is a plan by Reston, Va.-based satellite broadcast communications company LightSquared to build a next-generation 4G wireless phone network. Many at the Pentagon, including Space Command chief Gen. William Shelton, think the system would seriously hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems on which the military and many others depend.

The general's public testimony last Thursday>>>

AttackWatch Twits

2011-10-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

Barack Hussein Obama is now the talk of some of the late night talk shows. This just goes to show what goes around comes around and the joke is now on the jokester.

Posted 09/16/2011 06:38 PM ET

Election '12: You know a presidential campaign is going south when its detractors have more fun with its website than do its fans. That's the case with AttackWatch.com, the Obama site that's making him a parody.

According to the logic of AttackWatch.com — cue "Jaws" music — there's a vast, right-wing conspiracy out there determined to lie about the president and vote him out of office. Drastic steps are needed, and the comically menacing black-and-red AttackWatch website is the answer.

Calling on readers to "Get the facts. Fight the Smears," about President Obama's record, the site actually encourages all Americans to become snitches for Obama. That mimics the 2008 Obama campaign's "FightTheSmears.com" site, as well as the George Soros-funded MediaMatters.com. AttackWatch asks readers to "report" the "lies," presumably so the Obama team won't have to Google its own record.

On Twitter, this pompous, conspiracy-minded premise has managed only to attract an outburst of humor.

"I saw a kid eating fries with his happy meal yesterday," tweeted someone signing himself NostraSeamus.

"I did see the price of arugula at the supermarket today," tweeted Krackerjam.

"Watch out, monthly jobless report. @AttackWatch is onto you," tweeted SECupp.

"I'd like to report my neighbour — Bob,>>>

EPA Regulations Still Killing Jobs

2011-10-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

Barack Hussein Obama is at it again with more and more job killing regulations that are strangling our recovery from the Obama Recession.

Posted 09/14/2011 06:32 PM ET

Energy: A Dallas energy company closes two facilities due to a new regulation, costing hundreds of jobs. The president talks up his jobs bill while his administration creates rising unemployment and rolling blackouts.

When President Obama set aside, pending his re-election, proposed ozone national ambient air quality standards, he said it was in the interest "of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover." We have said regarding Obama that you should always keep your eye on what his other hand is doing.

On the same morning he announced his "must pass" jobs bill, a rehash of the failed stimulus, Texas energy company Luminant announced that new Environmental Protection Agency regulations were forcing it to close several facilities, resulting in the loss of 500 jobs and 1,200 megawatts of generating capacity.

The company cited the cross-state air-pollution rule in its decision to cease operations at two electricity-generating facilities and three coal mines. Texas utilities have been ordered by the EPA to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 47% from 2010 levels and nitrogen oxide by 8% and to do it by January. The head of the Texas Public Utility Commission says the rules could lead to rolling blackouts.

The rule affects more than Texas. It requires coal companies in 27 states to slash emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 73% and 54% from 2005 levels by 2014. "Just because wind and weather will carry air pollution away from its source at a local power plant doesn't mean that pollution is no longer that plant's responsibility," said EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

The EPA argues that the rule, issued in July,>>>

Solyndra Redux?

2011-10-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of investigative politics but this skunk from the Obama Administration cries out for a special prosecutor to go after this most corrupt of all Democratic administrations.

Posted 10/13/2011 06:35 PM ET

Solargate: On the program's last day, a billion-dollar loan guarantee went to another politically connected solar outfit in financial trouble. Fiscal insanity is throwing good money after bad and expecting a different result.

They say haste makes waste. But then, so does government. And when you combine the two you get a real mess.

Such was the case when the Department of Energy found itself with $4.75 billion in unallocated loan guarantees as the stimulus loan program responsible for the Solyndra fiasco was ending at the end of September.

In the wake of the $535 million loan guarantee to a failing Solyndra whose major investor was also a major Democratic donor, last-minute loans were given to First Solar, SunPower Corp. and ProLogis. SunPower got a $1.2 billion guarantee. The question is why.

Whatever one's faith in solar energy as a future power source, one would have to question the wisdom of a loan to help build the California Valley Solar Ranch in San Luis Obispo County, a project that will help create 15 permanent jobs — about $80 million in taxpayer money for each job.

SunPower posted $150 million in losses during>>>

An Archipelago Of Progress

2011-10-15T03:33:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent message to send and for just an instant the wishy-washy politicians win one for the good guys.

Posted 10/13/2011 06:58 PM ET

American Power: Congress' passage of three long-stalled free-trade treaties opens spectacular new paths for economic gains for the U.S. and its partners. A Pacific Century lies ahead, and it's about something bigger than China.

The addition of Colombia, Panama and South Korea to our 17-strong list of free-trade partners opens up opportunities on a scale not seen since the expansion of the Wild West, and the U.S. stands to gain immensely.

Just look at the geography of it. Colombia and Panama fill in missing pieces of a free-trade zone that runs down the entire Pacific Coast. From Canada's icy Northwest Territories, through the equatorial tropics to Chile's Tierra del Fuego, we now anchor an 8,000-mile-long trade zone that is longer than Siberia is wide.

Free-trade treaties with a large number of countries bordering one another offer great potential for Asian Tiger-like levels of economic growth, says Scott Lincicome, a top trade attorney at White and Case and a leading advocate for free trade.

"What you can see is the development of complex supply chains where each country specializes, based on its level of education, capital and labor," he said.

"The Apple iPhone is a good example. Components are produced in Japan, assembled in China, and designed and marketed in the U.S. That's what you could see evolving from the new trans-American supply chain."

Agricultural trade, in particular, will be>>>

Alcohol, Tobacco And Murder

2011-10-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Fast and Furious should be the way Eric Holder leaves office!

Posted 09/15/2011 06:24 PM ET

Scandal: Weapons linked to ATF's "Fast and Furious" operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico, including three murders and four kidnappings. At least Solyndra doesn't have a body count.

Administration scandals are piling up fast and furious, no pun intended, but none is worse than the gun-running operation that operated under the umbrella title of Project Gunrunner. Fast and Furious, a deadly subset, gets deadlier by the day.

A letter dated Sept. 9 from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch sent to Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles Grassley, who's been looking into the scandal on the Senate side, provides what it acknowledges is an incomplete list of crimes made possible by guns allowed to "walk" into Mexico as part of the operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

According to the Justice Department letter, among the Fast and Furious firearms used in violent crimes was an AK47-type assault rifle that was purchased by a Fast and Furious suspect and recovered Nov. 14, 2009, in Atoyac de Alvarez, Mexico, after the Mexican military rescued a kidnap victim.

Two AK47-type assault rifles bought by Fast and Furious>>>

A Solar Flare For The White House

2011-10-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

Green energy lacks the power to please other than the Dems'. More corruption is on the way courtesy of the Obama administration.

Posted 10/10/2011 06:48 PM ET

Corruption: Government documents indicate that the White House plan to financially aid a failing green energy company might have been outside the law. The sun never sets on the Solyndra scandal.

On Friday, while most of America was preparing for the weekend and not paying attention to the news, the government released a batch of Solyndra emails.

They showed that Treasury Department and Office of Management and Budget officials were concerned about the Energy Department's giving Solyndra more money even after the failed company had defaulted on its $535 million government loan.

Specifically, the officials worried that the plan was putting Solyndra investors before taxpayers, a violation of federal law. So disturbed were Treasury and OMB that they advised the Department of Energy to consult with the Department of Justice. But DOE, eager to pump the chimera of green energy, declined.

It's also possible there was a financial interest for one DOE >>>

Dems' Stimulus Idea: More Regulations

2011-10-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

Do the words dems' and dumb sound about right to use in the same sentence? Does to me.

Posted 10/10/2011 06:54 PM ET

Red Tape: Businesses might see the Obama administration's regulations as a millstone around the economy's neck. But Democrats say they've got it all wrong. Regulations create jobs, you see, and we need more of them.

Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., issued a report defending the Environmental Protection Agency from GOP attacks. Not only do EPA rules protect the environment, the report says, they are an engine of economic growth.

After all, somebody has to do the work of complying with the rules, and "industries that provide environmental protection," the report says, have "created more than a million jobs."

And new rules are creating still more jobs, according to the report — issued by Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee — like the 54,000 jobs it says will result from tougher auto fuel economy standards.

As an added bonus, EPA rules provide "business with the opportunity to develop, construct and sell new and cleaner products."

Maybe we should call them "federal opportunities" instead of "federal regulations"?

Boxer is hardly alone in this way of thinking

Fannie, Freddie Threaten Taxpayers Again

2011-10-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

Same old, same old and so the world turns further and further away from our founding father's conservatism values.

Posted 10/10/2011 06:54 PM ET

Financial Crisis: While "Occupy Wall Street" tries to live up to its name, the real causes of our financial woes remain on America's balance sheet, unreformed and threatening trillions of dollars more in losses.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-run mortgage enterprises, weirdly were never included in President Obama's supposed financial reform.

Now, looking at a federal debt growing by nearly $1.5 trillion a year, many of the same foreign investors who fueled our housing boom are wondering if they'll ever get their money back.

Even as the White House continues to try to expand the role the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) have in home lending, central banks and sovereign wealth funds across Asia and the Middle East are beginning to sell off their Fannie and Freddie holdings, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Already, the National Pension Service of Korea

A Muslim President, After All

2011-10-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

This is a very important post and please read to the end and decide for yourself--is he a Muslim President? I made up my mind several years ago and you, I suspect, know the answer.

Posted 09/29/2011 06:33 PM ET

View Enlarged Image

Election 2012: Hispanics, blacks and others among President Obama’s base may be abandoning him, but Muslims are holding fast. Apparently, theirs is a special bond born of shared interests.

When Barack Hussein Obama first stepped into office in January 2009, he had 92% approval among blacks, 75% approval among Hispanics and 58% approval among whites, according to Gallup.

Since then, his monthly approval has dropped eight points among blacks, 27 points among Hispanics and 25 points among whites.

Blacks are frustrated with Obama's failure to create jobs in a recession that has hit African-Americans hardest. Discord is so bad that even the Congressional Black Caucus is taking jabs at the first black president.

Hispanics, meanwhile, are miffed at Obama's failure to ram amnesty for illegal immigrants through Congress.

Polls show Obama also has lost ground with independents>>>

More 'Green' For Donor Energy

2011-10-02T04:12:00.000-07:00

The gift that keeps on giving brought to you by team Obama!

Posted 09/29/2011 06:33 PM ET

Solargate: Despite Solyndra, the administration shovels another billion out the door before the deadline as the lists of politically connected companies feeding at the public trough expands. Seems the sun also corrupts.

Follow the money, it has been said, and you'll find out all you need to know. Two days before the expiration of the program that funneled $535 million to a failing but donor-connected Solyndra, another billion dollars was rushed to two more solar energy companies. That money could have repaired more than a few crumbling bridges.

You'd think the program would have been suspended until the administration found out what went wrong. Unless, of course, the program was functioning exactly as intended — to spread the wealth around with an emphasis on Democratic Party donors.

On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said his department had completed a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy for a 110-megawatt solar tower on federal land near Tonopah, Nev., and a $337 million loan guarantee for Sempra Energy to develop a 150-megawatt solar plant near Phoenix.

Known as the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, the Tonopah facility in Nevada's Nye County has had the long and enthusiastic support of favorite son and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

According to the Daily Caller, which reports that the White House was asking that inquiries about the new projects be directed to the Democratic National Committee, SolarReserve LLC of Santa Monica, Calif., parent of Tonopah, has ties to George Kaiser, the Oklahoma billionaire who, through his Argonaut Private Equity Firm, was the major investor in Solyndra. Kaiser raised $53,000 for President Obama's campaign in 2008.

The Daily Caller notes that Kaiser's Argonaut>>>

U.S. Abandons Space

2011-10-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

To me, this is one of the most disappointing and faulty decisions by the Obama Administration. Who do you suppose will be the first to colonize the moon? Oh wait, I know, the Chinese.

Posted 09/30/2011 06:51 PM ET

Exceptionalism: While the American space program is in a museum, Beijing orbits a nearly 9-ton space station module. Soon men will return to the moon, but they will likely be speaking Chinese.

While America was scanning the skies waiting for an aging satellite to fall to earth, China was looking to the skies and seeing its future.

On Thursday, Beijing launched into space aboard a Long March 2F rocket a space station module weighing 8.5 metric tons that will serve as a prototype for a 60-ton Chinese space lab to be in orbit by 2020.

Americans may yawn and say "been there, done that" and, besides, we have other things on our plate right now. But this latest nail in the coffin of American exceptionalism has serious implications for both U.S. leadership and security. China's space program is intimately connected to its military aspirations, and it views space as a venue for more than tadpole experiments.

Not long ago, Capt. Shen Zhong of the Chinese Navy Research Institute said: "The mastery of outer space will be requisite for military victory, with outer space becoming the new venue for combat."

Certainly the Chinese development of an operational anti-satellite program speaks to Beijing's view that space is not a demilitarized zone.

The Tiangong 1 module is expected to remain in orbit for two years. China, the third nation after Russia and America to put humans into space, plans to launch two Shenzhou spacecraft in 2012 for unmanned docking trials. A third may carry a crew to populate the Tiangong 1.

Speaking on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" last week,>>>

On Deaf Ears

2011-10-02T04:03:00.000-07:00

Where is the leadership from The Obama Administration? There is none that I am aware.

Posted 09/30/2011 06:51 PM ET

Leadership: President Obama spent most of this month pressuring Congress to "pass this jobs bill," but he can't even get his own party to support it. He's quickly turning into a leader without any followers.

In the past three weeks, Obama has been pleading with lawmakers to pass his American jobs act, so far intoning "pass this bill" 160 times. "I've already got the pens all ready, all lined up on my desk, ready to sign the bill," he said last week.

His desperate pleas are being met with, at best, indifference. Not from Republicans, whom Obama routinely accuses of putting party over country, but from his own Democrats.

For the past three weeks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been busy making excuses as to why he just couldn't find the time to schedule a vote on the bill, given the Senate's "jammed" schedule that included passing bills like the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act.

Now the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate,>>>

Solargate Opens Wide

2011-10-02T03:51:00.000-07:00

Another day and another green energy scandal brought to us by the Obama Administration.

Posted 09/30/2011 06:51 PM ET

Corruption: It turns out a recent recipient of the administration's largesse is from the House of Pelosi. The green energy scandal keeps picking up speed.

Last week, the Energy Department completed a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy and an additional $337 million for Sempra Energy.

On the surface, there's nothing suggesting either is improper. But just beneath the surface is the clear appearance of impropriety.

Tonopah Solar is a wholly owned subsidiary of SolarReserve, which lists among its "investment partners" a company named Pacific Corporate Group. Again, on the surface, no hint of corruption.

But an enterprising blog called the American Glob dug a bit and found that "The No. 2 guy at Pacific Corporate Group is Ronald Pelosi," who happens to be the brother-in-law of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Fortune senior editor Dan Primack argues that "it is patently false" that Ronald Pelosi "will benefit from the loan."

That's a bit of a stretch, though. He might not be free to put his hands on any of those taxpayers' dollars. But if PCG benefits from the loan, so does he, just as any employee profits when his employer has healthy earnings or receives a windfall.

Merely hanging on to a cushy job due to>>>

A White House 'Gunrunner'?

2011-09-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

Another day and another dollar and another of the Obama administration's brilliant ideas has again failed but not before it has taken lives of American citizens. Who will be held accountable?

Posted 09/07/2011 06:01 PM ET

The Law: Operation Gunwalker, the rogue ATF operation to arm Mexico's cartels, extends now to three White House officials. A bell goes off with the one named Dan Restrepo.

Late last Friday, CBS News and the Los Angeles Times almost buried the news that Restrepo, the National Security Council's top man for Latin America, and two other officials, were in on ATF memos from the Gunwalker operation called "Fast and Furious."

That blows apart White House claims that it had no idea the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was encouraging frontmen for Mexico's cartels to buy weapons from U.S. gun dealers — to "trace" them afterward.

Some 2,000 U.S. guns were sold in Gunwalker but simply disappeared — until they turned up at massacres in Mexico and at the murder scenes of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.

But outgoing ATF acting director Ken Melson and others who've been the fall guys in this scandal darkly hint that their orders came from the White House, and domestic critics think Gunwalker can only be explained as a White House bid to boost support for gun control. Restrepo's involvement distinctly raises both possibilities.

Restrepo is a political operative whose interests are more domestic than Latin American. As a result, he's botched every Latin American operation he's had his hand in, appeasing enemies and blaming the U.S.:

• Honduras: In 2009, Restrepo was behind>>>

Obama's Recovery A Flop Of Historical Proportions

2011-09-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

The Obama administrations continues to flip, flop and flay on its way of harming our America.

By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON Posted 09/06/2011 05:18 PM ET

As President Obama prepares to deliver yet another speech about stimulating the economy — this one to a joint-session of Congress (with or without the NFL game on the monitors) — it's worth reviewing the results of his efforts to date.

It has now been a little over two years — and eight full economic quarters — since the end of the recession Obama inherited. It's time to ask: How does his record of economic growth in the wake of a recession stack up against the records of other presidents?

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines a recession as "a period between a peak and a trough" during which "a significant decline in economic activity spreads across the economy and can last from a few months to more than a year."

By consensus, the most recent recession ended in June 2009, less than six months after Obama took office.

According to the NBER, in the 60 years prior to Obama's tenure, we had 10 recessions. In the two years following those respective recessions, average real (inflation-adjusted) quarterly GDP growth was 5%, according to federal government figures. In the two years of Obama's "recovery," average real quarterly GDP growth has been just 2.4%, less than half of the historical norm coming out of a recession.

What's the difference (in more practical terms) between 2.4% and 5% growth over two years? According to Obama's own budget, this year's GDP will be about $15 trillion. (It's running neck and neck with the national debt.) A 2.6% shortfall, therefore, equals about $780 billion over two years.

If you divide that evenly among the U.S. population of 312 million people, that works out to a shortfall of $2,500 per person — or $10,000 for the average family of four. Call it the Obama penalty.

Some might argue that the anemic post-recession growth>>>

SolarGate

2011-09-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

Let the 'sun shine in' on this most corrupt Obama administration .

Posted 09/06/2011 06:42 PM ET

Corruption: A top bundler and major investor in a now-bankrupt green company made multiple White House visits before he got a guaranteed stimulus loan that the administration monitored to ensure it was granted.

During the Clinton administration, when the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House became a favorite place for campaign contributors to rest their weary wallets, the infamous Johnny Chung made the observation that the White House was like a subway turnstile. You put your token in and you got inside.

Getting inside the White House was easy for billionaire investor George Kaiser, who made multiple visits to the White House and appeared at White House events next to administration officials. One of the prime investors in the green energy company Solyndra, Kaiser put quite a few tokens in the White House turnstile.

As the Daily Caller reports, Kaiser himself donated $53,000 to Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign, divided between Obama for America and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A world-class bundler, Kaiser also raised $50,000 to $100,000 from others for the senator's campaign.

Despite a warning from Solyndra's own accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers that the company's business model was suspect and raised "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern," President Obama visited the company and gave it a glowing endorsement as a government-picked winner alongside electric cars and high-speed rail.

Despite its spotty business record, Solyndra was the first recipient of green stimulus cash in the form of a $535 million guaranteed loan. The loan not only escaped serious scrutiny, according to the Government Accountability Office, but also was — despite denials by White House officials — fast-tracked by an administration that monitored every step in the process.

Last Thursday, House Energy Committee Chairman>>>

The Administration's Solar Eclipse

2011-09-30T03:54:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration continues to engage in corruption politics. I wonder when they will be called to account?

Posted 09/01/2011 06:44 PM ET

President Obama touted solar panels with Solyndra's CEO in 2010. The firm has since said it will file for bankruptcy. View Enlarged Image

Power Sources: A solar panel manufacturer touted by the president as a symbol of his successful green energy policies files for bankruptcy and cuts a thousand green jobs. Maybe its time to drill, baby, drill.

During a visit to Solyndra Inc.'s Fremont, Calif., facility in spring of 2010, President Obama boasted of what the company was going to do with the $535 million in loan guarantees his stimulus package provided.

"We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra," he said. "Through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans."

Loans, by the way, taxpayers are on the hook for as Solyndra on Wednesday announced it is filing for bankruptcy and laying off its 1,100 workers, Solyndra is a poster child for the pitfalls of crony capitalism and what happens when government attempts to pick winners and losers in the marketplace, particularly in the energy sector. It underscores the dangers of an energy policy driven by ideology and not available resources and economic need.

Two months before Obama's glowing speech, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report expressing concern regarding a company that had accumulated losses of $558 million in its five-year lifetime and which had "negative cash flows since inception." There was, the accounting firm said, "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

Not in the mind of the Obama administration,>>>