Thursday August 12th, 2010



World & National News

Florida Pushes New Immigration Law Tougher Than Arizona's

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has proposed a tough new law aimed at curbing illegal immigration that he said would go further than a bill signed into law in Arizona.

“I think this is a law that is overdue in Florida and something that we’re very proud of today,” McCollum said at a Wednesday morning media event in Orlando.

"This legislation will provide new enforcement tools for protecting our citizens and will help our state fight the ongoing problem created by illegal immigration.



Jobs picture dims as unemployment claims rise

The employment picture is looking bleaker as applications for jobless benefits rose last week to the highest level in almost six months.

It's a sign that hiring is weak and employers are still cutting their staffs.

First-time claims for jobless benefits edged up by 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 484,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts had expected a drop. That's the highest total since February.



G.M. Chief Stepping Down

In a surprising development, GM’s chairman and chief executive, Edward Whitacre Jr. announced Thursday that he would step down as chief executive on Sept. 1 and be succeeded by Daniel F. Akerson, a G.M. board member and a managing director of the Carlyle Group.

Mr. Whitacre will stay on as chairman until year end, when Mr. Akerson will assume that role as well.

“We’re going to have a smooth, seamless transition here,” Mr. Whitacre said.



Rangel's night for ethics amnesia
New York pols show up - some reluctantly - to congressman's bash

It was the antithesis of Chelsea Clinton's wedding — a glittering social event on the New York political calendar that many prominent politicians wished (very privately) they did not have to attend and hoped (very secretly) would somehow be canceled.

But Charlie Rangel's 80th birthday party and campaign fundraiser in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel went off without a hitch Wednesday night . . . if you don't count the formal ethics charges filed against the 20-term Harlem Democratic congressman last month, his rambling and defiant defense of his conduct on the House floor Tuesday, and the last-hurrah aura to his re-election campaign. Grabbing a microphone at the beginning of the evening and abandoning any pretence of stiff formality despite the lavish setting, Rangel declared, "I've been to a lot of funerals, but this damn sure ain't no funeral, is it?"



Should Judge Allow Gay Marriage in California?

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker will announce today whether gay marriages are allowed to resume immediately in California or whether the state's ban on gay marriage should remain in effect until an appeals court issues its decision.
Prop 8 Stay: Should the Judge Allow Gay Marriage Immediately in California?

Walker ruled last week that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license," Walker wrote in his 136-page decision.



Sanctions helping Tehran, says top dissent

PUNITIVE international sanctions imposed on Iran have strengthened the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and helped its post-election crackdown on the opposition movement, a leading reformist politician and former presidential candidate says.

More than a year after widespread unrest erupted after Mr Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election as President last June, Mehdi Karroubi blamed the US and Britain for adopting counterproductive policies to combat Iran's suspect nuclear program, describing sanctions as a gift to the regime.



Obama won't face Dem primary challenge from Kucinich

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs may have criticized attacks from what he called the "professional left," but presumed member-in-good-standing Dennis Kucinich said today he won't challenge President Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

"What we have to do is focus on coming together for the purposes of getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan," Kucinich told our old pal George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

Kucinich, who has run for president twice, joined many liberal colleagues in criticizing Gibbs' comments in an interview with The Hill. The Obama spokesman said liberals who compare his boss to predecessor George W. Bush "ought to be drug tested," and added that they "wouldn't be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."



Obama and Netanyahu: Worlds Apart on Israel

Two photographs adorn the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike — in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies — than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.

One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national homeland.



China's Army Condemns South Korean-US Sea Drills

China's military on Thursday condemned a second round of U.S.-South Korean naval drills planned in the Yellow Sea in the coming weeks, vowing it would respond in kind.

Beijing opposes actions by foreign military ships and planes in waters near its coast that could "affect China's security interests," the military's newspaper People's Liberation Army Daily said in an editorial.



Barack Obama 'may be prepared to meet Iranian president'
Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Gen James Jones, has indicated the President may be prepared to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if the regime resumed negotiations over its nuclear programme.
 
The retired general also indicated that the return of three American hikers held in Iran for the past year would be an “important gesture”.

Earlier this month, Mr Ahmadinejad requested face-to-face talks with Mr Obama during the UN General Assembly meeting in New York. The White House had appeared to rule out any meeting.



Washington vs. Paul Ryan
What happens when a politician is more honest than his critics.

The immune system of the modern body politic is nothing if not resilient, and this summer all of its antibodies seem to be trained on heretofore little known Congressman Paul Ryan. That makes this a particularly instructive moment, because the attacks on the Wisconsin Republican show how deeply his radical honesty is subverting Washington's flim-flam—to borrow a phrase.

"The flim-flam man" is what Paul Krugman called Mr. Ryan in a New York Times column last week that set a spleen-to-substance record even for him. Amid drive-by attacks on the Congressman's ethics and integrity, Mr. Krugman savaged Mr. Ryan's "roadmap"—his detailed, long-range proposal to equalize taxes and the size of government—as "a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America's fiscal future."

This might be dismissed as a familiar primal scream, except it perfectly echoes the Democratic Party's emerging election strategy.



The Blame Bush Strategy Won't Work
Polls reveal voters are receptive to GOP ideas.

To save themselves in the midterm elections, Democrats are counting on selling two themes: The state of the economy is all George W. Bush's fault, and Republican policies will take us backwards. President Obama relished going to Texas this week to blame his predecessor for the current bad economy.

Nice try, but it won't work. Don't take my word. This is what Mr. Obama's pollster, Joel Benenson, has found. The Benenson Strategy Group wasn't exactly quite this blunt in its report for the "Third Way," a centrist Democratic organization. But its data was.



Grim Voter Mood Turns Grimmer
Pessimism Rises on Economy and War; Bad Reviews for Both Democrats and GOP

Americans are growing more pessimistic about the economy and the war in Afghanistan, and are losing faith that Democrats have better solutions than Republicans, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Underpinning the gloom: Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the economy has yet to hit bottom, a sharply higher percentage than the 53% who felt that way in January.



Disorder
     By Geoff Metcalf


"In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed."
             -- John Stuart Mill

I have tried and failed to give our young hope and change President the chance to demonstrate by action that those of us who had been critical of his lack of experience, hypocrisy and duplicity might have been wrong. The republic needs help and what is right and wrong should overshadow who is right or wrong.

However, this president seems intent on establishing new standards for incompetence, failure and even the barest minimal capacity to judge the climate, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats his actions (and inaction) precipitate.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that statistically, the administration might be right more based on pure chance probability?  Not even!  Even the liberal punditry class is wishing Hillary had prevailed.

Nobel laureate Isidor Issac Rabi once observed, "Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious."  Hell-o?!?!?

Barack Obama is failing epically. Even the brayed about Obamacare victory (?) has supporters seeking cover.  Woodrow Wilson was a flop as president largely because he allowed the oligarchy to do what they wanted to do. And look what it got us…the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the 16th Amendment and systemic Big Brotherism.

Jimmy Carter failed without help from the CFR magus…his monumental failures were largely his own. LBJ failed…but at least was slick enough to craft his own exit strategy.  Richard Nixon was Richard Nixon and although he has become a stereotype for all things venial and wrong, he still gets kudos for statesmanlike props because of China (which yet may come back to bite us in the bottom).

Barack Obama however, is a horse in another garage…a new standard to overshadow all previous failures. The Obama failures are not isolated or focused…no; they are routine, ubiquitous, and the new standards.

The President's job performance has been not just bad but way bad: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, (no one could have forcast our first Black president's awful ham handedness in turning minor racial issues into such a monumental SNAFU) and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people (for whom he appears to show open distain)
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Cicero noted, “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not a traitor, he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politics so that it can no longer resist.  A murder is less to fear.  The traitor is the plague.”

The Wall Street Journal said Obama is failing because "he has no understanding of the American people". Some say he just flat out doesn’t like the American people he is supposed to serve.

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says Obama is failing because he has "lost control of his message", and is overexposed. However, the systemic problem from the jump was the message was form without substance…it was a catch phrase without a plot. Beyond winning the election, Obama really had no strategy and no tactics.

Clarice Feldman of American Thinker dared to say what needed to be said...not just that the emperor has no clothes but, “Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.”

The real villain in the contemporary American tragedy is not really Barack Obama, or even his liberal socialist masters.  Justice Hugo Black once wrote, "The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people."  However, we now have a press that has epically failed in its responsibilities “to prevent any part of government from deceiving the people.”

The main stream media has become a willing and hyper-active co-conspirator enabling an incompetent dysfunctional administration that has done (and continues to do) irreparable harm to the republic.