Wednesday August 11th, 2010



World & National News

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -22 (see trends).

This matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet measured for this president. Platinum Members can see key demographic information and other members-only information.



Democrats, Advocacy Groups Blast Cuts to Food Stamps

Some  Democrats are upset and advocacy groups are outraged over the raiding of the food-stamp cupboard to fund a state-aid bailout that some call a gift to teachers and government union workers.

House members convened Tuesday and passed the multibillion-dollar bailout bill for cash-strapped states that provides $10 billion to school districts to rehire laid-off teachers or ensure that more teachers won't be let go before the new school year begins, keeping more than 160,000 teachers on the job, the Obama administration says.



Florida AG proposes law against illegal immigrants

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum on Wednesday proposed legislation that would toughen law enforcement measures against illegal immigrants in the melting-pot southeastern U.S. state.

The proposal by McCollum, who is engaged in a tough election race as a Republican candidate for the state governorship, was certain to thrust Florida into the sensitive immigration debate that has become a hot political issue ahead of mid-term Congressional elections on November 2.

The legislation would require law enforcement officials to check a suspected illegal immigrant's status in the course of a stop, or a violation of another law.



Fed Looks to Spur Growth by Buying Government Debt

Federal Reserve officials decided to reinvest principal payments on mortgage holdings into long-term Treasury securities, making their first attempt to bolster growth since March 2009 to keep the slowing U.S. economy from relapsing into recession.

“The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement in Washington. “To help support the economic recovery in a context of price stability, the Committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level.” The Fed retained a commitment to keep its benchmark interest rate close to zero for an “extended period.”



Feds rethink policies that encourage home ownership

Just how much should Uncle Sam do to help Americans buy their own homes?

For 70 years — and for the last 15 in particular — the answer has been: Whatever it takes.

Now, policymakers are pausing to reconsider. In the next few months, they'll weigh whether there can be too much of a good thing when it comes to helping families finance the American Dream.

The rethink could mean a shake-up for a mortgage market addicted to government subsidies.



Alaska rescuers had to cut out 3 survivors from plane
Ex-NASA chief critical after crash; former senator among 5 who perished

Rescuers arriving at the scene of the Alaska plane crash had to cut a large hole in the side of the plane in order to save three of the four surviving passengers, the first two National Guardsmen to respond to the accident said Wednesday.

The fourth survivor was found under the wing, attempting to stay dry in the wet conditions, Sr. Master Sgt. Jonathan Davis said.



Primary winners highlight political inexperience

All hail inexperience — the less familiarity with politics the better, no matter the party or state.

"The support of the voters of Connecticut isn't bestowed by the establishment or the pundits or the media. It isn't a birthright," former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon said after winning the GOP senatorial nomination in her first run for office.

Two mountain ranges away, appointed Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado, tried to express the same sentiment after dispatching his rival, a former state house speaker. "This election is the first time my name has ever been on the ballot," said Bennett, who enjoyed President Barrack Obama's support in the bitter Democratic primary.



Can Republicans Take Over the Senate?

It's an unlikely possibility, one that's been largely ignored as chances of a House takeover have dominated midterm discussion, but it's a long-shot possibility nonetheless.

Under perfect circumstances of Republicans winning most of the competitive races this cycle, it could happen. According to current polls, Republicans are poised to pick up seats in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, and Delaware, where GOP candidates lead by double digits in polls. In New Hampshire, the Republican candidate leads by eight percentage points. Democrats are engaged in close races to defend seats in Washington, Nevada, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Colorado. If Republicans win all those races, it would net them 12 seats. Should Linda McMahon use her vast personal wealth to pull off an upset in Connecticut, Republicans would take over 13 Democratic-held seats.



Rangel's Defiant Speech Stuns Democratic Leaders

Embattled long-time Rep. Charlie Rangel shocked Democratic leaders by taking to the House floor Tuesday afternoon to deliver an impassioned harangue from the floor of the House in defense of his decision to fight ethics allegations leveled against him.

His diatribe, which could hardly come at a worse time for Democrats facing disenchanted voters in the November midterms, ranged from defiant to apologetic. Rangel painted himself as a victim because the House Ethics committee has not yet informed him when his ethics case will be heard, he said.



Arizona Sheriffs Call ICE Honcho Visit a 'Stunt'

Two key sheriffs along the Arizona-Mexico border on Tuesday called a planned visit by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton a "political stunt" and described as "pathetic" Obama administration attempts to "cover up its inaction in protecting our borders."

"The administration blew past their promised Aug. 1 deadline to send 524 National Guard troops to Arizona, and now they are trying to appear concerned by sending the ICE director, who recently received a vote of 'no confidence' by ICE's union," Arizona Sheriffs Paul Babeu of Pinal County and Larry Dever of Cochise County said in a tersely worded statement.



The Obsolescence of Barack Obama
The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it.

Not long ago Barack Obama, for those who were spellbound by him, had the stylishness of JFK and the historic mission of FDR riding to the nation's rescue. Now it is to Lyndon B. Johnson's unhappy presidency that Democratic strategist Robert Shrum compares the stewardship of Mr. Obama. Johnson, wrote Mr. Shrum in the Week magazine last month, never "sustained an emotional link with the American people" and chose to escalate a war that "forced his abdication as president."

A broken link with the public, and a war in Afghanistan he neither embraces and sells to his party nor abandons—this is a time of puzzlement for President Obama. His fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past.



Stimulus Pushers
The latest bailout for public unions and spendthrift states.

To treat Washington's spending addiction, the November elections are the taxpayer's best chance to stage an intervention. But until then, President Obama and the Democratic Congress are determined to keep pushing strung-out state governments to take one more fix.

Witness yesterday's 247-161 largely party-line House vote to approve a Senate bill shovelling another $26.1 billion out to state education and Medicaid programs. The White House has promoted the bill as emergency assistance for strained state budgets. But this unique brand of therapy drives states to spend more, not less. The "assistance" is so expensive that several governors were begging for relief even before Mr. Obama signed it into law.


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)
.
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.