Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (37207)	9/18/2009 5:47:34 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "Bush was in the last months of his term, a lame duck." So? (Was he on vacation or something? :-) Re: "Where were the Europeans ?" In EUROPE, I expect. :-)

To: longnshort who wrote (37207)	9/6/2010 11:02:53 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Desperate Liberals Will Be Dangerous This Fall by Brian Darling 09/06/2010 Key polls indicate that the American electorate is on the verge of rejecting Obamanomics and Obamacare. No wonder the President and his allies on the left are in a panic. Unfortunately, a desperate, panicking liberal politician can be very dangerous to freedom. Conservative activists would be well advised to keep a closer watch than usual on their liberal counterparts as another election season gets underway. Obama’s Bait and Switch President Obama’s Oval Office speech about ending the combat mission in Iraq morphed into a plea for Americans to sacrifice more economic freedom for bigger government. He really doesn’t get it. In a speech that sounded at times more like a campaign address than a status update on the war in Iraq, the President tried to excuse his government spending spree—and, alarmingly enough, to ask for more. “Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work,” he said. “To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy.” Uh-oh. More federal intervention in education and more of your money to train workers on the art of building a battery-powered car? That should set off alarm bells in conservative circles. Obama rambled on about the economy and argued that “we must jumpstart industries that create jobs and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult.” When the President says something will be “difficult,” he means “expensive.” When he says we must “jumpstart” and “nurture,” expect another trillion-dollar spending spree. Expect congressional liberals, desperate to keep their jobs, to come in and try to railroad through costly legislation in one last attempt to buy the support of the American people before the elections. Repeal Obama and Obamacare The first concrete rejection of Obamacare and the President’s ideas to transform America into a European-style economy (i.e., a stagnant, quasi-socialist one) may come in a few weeks. The Washington Post reports that momentum is building to repeal a provision in Obamacare that requires “businesses to file 1099 tax forms reporting any purchases they make of goods or services above $600 from any individual or business, including corporations.” This provision was scored as $17.1 billion in tax revenues over the next 10 years. The problem is that this causes paperwork headaches and huge costs on small businesses. Sen. Mike Johanns’ (R.-Neb.) amendment to a bill setting up a TARP program for small businesses is scheduled for a Sept. 14 vote. It would completely repeal this provision. Liberals are upset because the amendment also reduces $11 billion to fund anti-tobacco and anti-obesity initiatives. The liberals further complain that this amendment weakens the individual mandate. Johanns deserves three cheers from conservatives for an idea that will help small business, weaken the unconstitutional individual mandate and reduce funding for programs that dole out pork to anti-tobacco groups. This is the first shot in a battle for a complete repeal of Obamacare. Not an average Joe Joe Miller is the Republican nominee for Senate in Alaska. Miller, and other constitutional conservatives, will dramatically change the Senate next year if they win in the November elections. There is a new breed of politician running to impose change from the grassroots. Conservatives, of course, want House and Senate members who respect and look to the Constitution for guidance. They hope to have a new Congress full of representatives and senators who will not do anything that violates their oath to the limited government our Founding Fathers envisioned. Filibuster the Lame Duck After the fall elections, there is the possibility of 50 unelected members of the House and 15 unelected members of the Senate voting on the future of American tax policy and on important foreign policy initiatives. Will brave members of the House and Senate use every parliamentary maneuver to make sure that out-of-control liberals don’t hijack the Lame Duck session, after the fall elections, to impose one last dose of big government on a population that has rejected the President’s vision of a massive federal government and a weak foreign policy? Stay tuned. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Darling is director of U.S. Senate Relations at The Heritage Foundation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- humanevents.com

To: longnshort who wrote (37207)	9/29/2010 11:02:32 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Halting Lame Duck Mischief by Connie Hair 09/29/2010 Republicans could pick up as many as three “special election” seats in the U.S. Senate on November 2 that would give them 44 seats for a lame duck session after the election. West Virginia, Illinois and Delaware are each holding special elections that would be filled immediately following the elections. And the GOP candidate is leading in the latest polls in two of the races. A two or three seat pickup would likely sound a death knell for some big ticket legislation the current Democratic majority seeks to ram through before the newly elected 112th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2011. The West Virginia Secretary of State’s election office tells HUMAN EVENTS the winner of November’s special election—to serve the remainder of the term of the late Robert Byrd—would be seated as soon as votes are counted, certified and the next session of the Senate begins. John Raese is the Republican candidate running against a very popular incumbent Democrat governor, Joe Manchin. No election handicapper gave Raese a chance at the outset. Now Manchin trails in the two latest consecutive polls: Rasmussen (48%-46%) and Public Policy Polling (46%-43%). His soaring popularity as governor has not translated into support for another vote for Harry Reid’s lame duck agenda in the Senate. In Barack Obama’s adopted home state of Illinois, where the President’s approval rating hovers around 50%, Republican Mark Kirk leads Democrat Alex Giannoulias according to the latest Rasmussen survey of the race. A federal court in Illinois ruled in July that two concurrent races must take place in Illinois on November 2: one to fill the seat for the lame duck session which completes the remainder of Obama’s term and a second vote to elect a new senator from Illinois to a new term in the 112th Congress. Kirk and Giannoulias are the candidates in each of those elections. In addition to his election as Vice President in 2008, Joe Biden was also re-elected as U.S. senator from Delaware. That term runs through 2014. The winner of this special election would also be seated for the lame duck session to fill the remainder of Biden’s term. Self-described “bearded Marxist” Chris Coons is the Democrat’s nominee. Conservative Tea Party-backed Christine O’Donnell stunned liberal Republican Congressman Mike Castle to win the Republican primary. Castle is reported to be considering a write-in candidacy for the election. In a hypothetical three-way matchup between O’Donnell, Coons and Castle, O'Donnell trails Coons by nine points, 49%-40% with Castle taking 5%. O’Donnell has been under a deluge of attacks from the hard left and “elites” in both parties—the likes of which has not been seen since Sarah Palin entered the 2008 presidential race as the Republican vice presidential nominee. Accurate numbers for the Delaware race will be difficult to immediately assess. The race is still amorphic and will be difficult to poll until independents and leaners solidify in the coming weeks. One thing is clear: Democrats want to shove through the last remnants of their hard-left agenda right after the elections. Republicans need every single Senate seat to act as a buffer against any RINOs or disgruntled losers who may be inclined to vote with Democrats on a specific piece of legislation. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska) is a wild card and is not very fond of conservatives about now. Nothing like a lady scorned to make things interesting should she also lose her quixotic write-in bid for re-election after losing the Republican nomination to conservative Joe Miller. The stakes are high. Legislation that could come under consideration in a lame duck session later this year: • Cap-and-trade national energy tax. • Legislation to bar the EPA’s plan to enact cap and trade through questionable regulation methods using Clean Air Act permitting. • Obama tax hikes for job creators. • Card check, a.k.a the Employee Free Choice Act, removing secret ballots for union certification. • Amnesty or a slower, back-door DREAM Act amnesty allowing any illegal alien under the age of 15 a path to citizenship and consequently their entire families through chain migration. • Over $3 billion more in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailouts. • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal. • Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research in the wake of a court injunction on Obama’s executive order to fund the destruction of embryos for research. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Connie Hair writes daily as HUMAN EVENTS' Congressional correspondent. She is a former speechwriter for Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and a former media and coalitions advisor to the Senate Republican Conference. You can follow Connie on Twitter @ConnieHair. humanevents.com