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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (81538)	9/17/2010 5:19:58 PM
From: Carolyn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

And that's what they want! Jerks!

To: mph who wrote (81538)	9/18/2010 8:55:10 AM
From: Peter Dierks	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Elizabeth III Obama to Senate: Stick that in your advice and consent clause SEPTEMBER 18, 2010. Whatever else can be said about this White House, it isn't afraid to poke a stick in the eye of its critics. How else to explain President Obama's decision Friday to put Elizabeth Warren in charge of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while avoiding Senate confirmation and, for that matter, any political supervision. The chutzpah here is something to behold. The pride of Harvard Law School, Ms. Warren is a hero to the political left for proposing a new bureaucracy to micromanage the services that banks can offer consumers. But she is also so politically controversial that no less a liberal lion than Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has warned the White House that she probably isn't confirmable. A President with more political and Constitutional scruple would have nominated someone else. Mr. Obama's choice is to appoint her anyway and dare the Senate to do something about it. The plan is for Ms. Warren to run the new bureau from an office at the Treasury Department. Instead of calling her the "Director" of the bureau—the statutory title for the organization's boss—Mr. Obama has appointed her an "assistant" to him and a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Mr. Geithner's supervision will be pro forma, however, because Ms. Warren rolled over him during the financial reform debate and has her own pipeline to the Oval Office. The President emphasized that Ms. Warren will enjoy "direct access" to him and said she would oversee all aspects of the creation of the new agency, including staffing and policy planning. For all intents and purposes, Ms. Warren will be Treasury Secretary for all consumer lending. We would have thought a Harvard law professor would object to the extra-legality of this arrangement, but then this is also the crew that gave us ObamaCare via budget reconciliation and put Donald Berwick in charge of Medicare without a Senate debate. Remind us again why the tea party critique of Obama governance is crazy. The new bureau was already destined to be a bureaucratic rogue. When Members of Congress objected to ... Message 26830288

To: mph who wrote (81538)	9/19/2010 9:04:06 PM
From: Cheeky Kid	Respond to of 90947

This woman has her facts straight, I wonder if her life is in danger in Islamic countries? youtube.com

To: mph who wrote (81538)	9/22/2010 11:44:54 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Census Bureau At Odds With Politician Over Vegas Trip FoxNews.com Published September 21, 2010 The U.S. Census Bureau is facing criticism for sending 140 managers to Las Vegas last month for a business trip that cost taxpayers nearly $100,000. The agency told FoxNews.com that the meetings on "lessons learned" from the 2010 census are required by Congress to identify operation improvements and cost efficiencies for the national head count that happens every 10 years. But a Republican lawmaker accused the agency of stealing taxpayer money to bankroll a lavish vacation for its top employees. "It's impossible to argue this without saying these folks took a vacation and they took it at taxpayer expense," Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado told CBS4 Denver, a local affiliate that first reported the trip. "I mean, I think it's the equivalent of theft." The Census Bureau defended the trip. "We returned $1.6 billion to the taxpayers in part because we do the 'lessons learned' process before and after our operations," bureau spokesman Steve Jost told FoxNews.com, referring to the $1.6 billion the agency says it saved nationwide over the course of the 2010 census – a figure questioned by Republicans who claim the census actually exceeded its budget. Jost said the trip to Sin City Aug. 24 cost $88,767 in airfare, meals and hotel costs – or $634 per person -- a price that would have been "substantially higher" anywhere else in the region. The bureau sent managers from 10 different states in the region to review the training process, as well as detail the agency's good and bad practices. The trip lasted a day and a half, Jost said. "We believe this is a good investment in the next census to figure out how we can do this more efficiently," he said. "I don't know if we'd be having this conversation if we had it in Denver or Albuquerque." Coffman told CBS4Denver that if the agency was serious about saving taxpayer money, it could have gathered the same data by conducting online and written surveys, or via teleconference. "The congressman stands by his comment," spokesman Nathaniel Sillin told FoxNews.com. "The burden is on the Census Bureau to show that this trip was of value to the taxpayers in a time of economic austerity." The agency said it did conduct online and written surveys and that the Vegas trip was the culmination of the process. "At some point, face-to-face meetings are logical and necessary," he said. "Managers have to get together and compare notes on what worked and what didn't work." The controversy comes after President Obama encouraged Americans to visit Vegas following a wave of criticism over his remarks that corporations shouldn't use federal bailout money for trips to Sin City. Jost said he was unaware of the controversy involving Obama and that the business trip to Vegas had nothing to do with that. .

To: mph who wrote (81538)	10/29/2010 12:02:19 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

H/T to mph: From mph: MY OPEN LETTER TO THE POST 11/2 GOP: I am sure that we will gain many seats in both the House and Senate on November 2nd. What concerns is whether the GOP will bungle the success. Here are my suggestions for the way to handle things in the post 11/2 environment: 1. Forget all notions of “compassionate conservatism.” The whole notion of the compassionate conservative is ridiculous. There is nothing about conservatism itself which lacks compassion. The moniker of “compassionate conservative” was a tacit, if not explicit, admission that the dems’ mischaracterization of conservatives as racists hard-hearted, mean-spirited, etc. were true. So knock it off! 2. Forget about compromise and bi-partisanship. If the GOP truly exceeds all expectations on 11/2, the mandate will be clear; the citizenry is fed up with the radical liberal agenda of Obama and his congressional enablers. When the democrats are in power, they do not want any input from republicans, unless they can drag the republicans into their own camp. IOW, compromise means us giving in to them. Bush’s biggest failure as president were those instances in which he allowed democrats to draw him in. No Child Left Behind is a good example as was his commitment to amnesty. His failure to use the veto pen was the worst. The mandate now is for smaller government, control of the deficit, control of spending, and policies that ACTUALLY encourage job creation. In this, you must make the democrats come to you. There is no room for compromise. 3. Learn to frame the debate. The prime failure of the GOP, in my opinion, is its inability to frame the issues in a compelling way. Instead, the party insists on playing defense and allows the democrats and its handmaidens in the MSM to set the tone, make the accusations, and structure the debate in a way disadvantageous to conservatives and republicans. There is no reason to constantly allow this. Republicans need to learn the chess game. We need to be several moves ahead of the opposition, not constantly running to catch up. 4. Stop trashing your own! The democrats never trash their own. In fact, regardless of the allegations, they circle the wagons and deny, poo-poo or turn the tables. The republicans, out of some misplaced sense of piety, do quite the opposite. This is acceptable should the allegations, if proven, amount to ethical breaches or criminal conduct; however, this is hardly the case when it comes to people like Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell. It’s time to support republicans who deserve support and not to trash them for petty egotistical reasons. 5. Don’t subvert new conservatives in office. The anti-incumbent trend this election season is obvious. Institutionalized Washington is being kicked out. When the members arrive in D.C. with their mandate, DO NOT go back to business as usual, dragging them along. That ship has sailed. The country needs a new approach. As Obama would say, "It's time to buck up" . And for those of the non-distaff persuasion, as Sharron Angle would say, "Man up!"

To: mph who wrote (81538)	10/29/2010 1:07:48 PM
From: Carolyn	Respond to of 90947

Did you send your letter to the GOP leadership?

To: mph who wrote (81538)	11/2/2010 4:19:10 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

From mph: MY PSYCHOLOGICAL AUTOPSY OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY The democratic party has been overtaken by the radical left. With this influence has come psychological trauma and a slow death spiral. These problems resulted from an inability to merge reality with inbred rhetoric. My verdict is suicide. The following factors influenced my decision: Words are not actions. The democrats are all about words. They will say anything. The concept of truth plays no role. Words are simply a means to an end. The problem is that the words neither match reality nor are they indicative of necessary action. For example, the democrats use words of compassion for minorities and others whom they regard as less fortunate; however, for decades this supposed compassion has not translated into actual help for the objects of their faux affection. Things are worse than ever for minorities and ghettos(see Detroit). The reality is that the democrats talk a good game but their actions were designed to maintain a permanent underclass, brain washed into assisting the democrats in retention or increase of power. Intentions and emotions are not actions. Democrats like to use the language of emotion and claim for themselves all the world’s good intentions. However, merely stating good intentions in the language of emotion accomplishes nothing. Such tactics are really for the benefit of the speaker looking to inflate his already oversized ego. From a darker perspective, this language is used by the hard left regressives to mask their true intentions, which have everything to do with power and nothing to do with empathy. Ideas and Implementors The regressives in the leadership of the current democratic party are pushing an agenda that is decades old and has failed every time it has been attempted. This does not matter to the current leadership. Despite the fact that a simple glance at the failure of the experiment in Europe would tell any thinking person that the socialist mode is faulty, the democrats here will not accept it. The reason is that they regard themselves as so superior that the outcome must necessarily be different if they are allowed to control the system. Napoleonic complex shared by so-called elites. Lies can be true when history is written. One need only consider the run up to passage of Obamacare to recognize the unfamiliarity of democrats with the concept of truth. Obama gave up to 100 speeches in his quest to pass Obamacare and in so doing blatantly lied, at worst, or was reckless in making statements without adequate regard for the truth, at best. Similarly, the stimulus was touted as the savior of the economy and a job producer. When called on these untruths, history was rewritten and suddenly the citizenry became stupid and overly demanding. That is what occurs when sociopaths are in charge. Another example is Barney Frank and the mortgage crisis. He was among the main offenders who caused the crisis. To hear him talk now, he was nothing but an innocent bystander. Again, sociopaths will say anything. Degrees are not the same thing as intelligence. There has been much talk about the elitism displayed by the Left, including the MSM. There is a disconnect between the self-image of these people and their actual accomplishments. For example, most of the Obama appointees come from academia and the world of tenure. That is a world where everything is theoretical and very little is practical. In addition, academia is, for the most part, a closed shop and echo chamber. This was by design. The Left invaded and subsumed the education system in this country over the past fifty odd years. Despite a plethora of degrees, most of these people are detached from reality and possessed of overblown egos. As a consequence, they cannot accept a rejection of their ideas. Instead, as Obama has shown us, it must be the stupidity of those they seek to convince as opposed to a flaw in either their concepts or the explication of same. The is a good example of rampant narcissism. The willingness of the hard Left to close its eyes to reality and to project blame for its own failures on the American people can only described as suicidal.

To: mph who wrote (81538)	11/2/2010 6:48:08 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Take Your Olive Branch and Shove It, Democrats Michelle Malkin On the eve of a historic midterm election upheaval, President Barack Obama tried to walk back his gratuitous slap at Americans who oppose his radical progressive agenda. "I probably should have used the word 'opponents' instead of 'enemies' to describe political adversaries," Obama admitted Monday. "Probably"? Here is an ironclad certainty: It's too little too late for the antagonist-in-chief to paper over two years of relentless Democratic incivility and hate toward his domestic "enemies." Voters have spoken: They've had enough. Enough of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner's rhetorical abuse. Enough of his feints at bipartisanship. Whatever the final tally, this week's turnover in Congress is a GOP mandate for legislative pugilism, not peace. Voters have had enough of big government meddlers "getting things done." They are sending fresh blood to the nation's Capitol to get things undone. Just two short years ago, Obama campaigned as the transcendent unifier. "Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states," he proclaimed. "We have been and always will be the United States of America." It's been an Us vs. Them freefall ever since. "We don't mind the Republicans joining us," Obama taunted a few weeks ago. "They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back." "They're counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home," the fear-mongering agent of hope and change jeered on the campaign trail last month. "You would think they'd be saying thank you," he sneered last April, when millions turned out for the nationwide Tax Day tea party protests. "I want them just to get out of the way" and "don't do a lot of talking," he scoffed in response to prescient critics of the federal trillion-dollar stimulus boondoggle. In addition to labeling GOP opponents of his open-borders policies "enemies" who needed to be "punished" by Latino voters, Obama accused them — that is, us — of lacking patriotism. "Those aren't the kinds of folks who represent our core American values," he told viewers of the Spanish-language network Univision. Democratic leaders have taken their cue from Team Obama's persistent politics of polarization. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called vocal citizens who protested the federal health care takeover bill during the town hall revolts of 2009 "un-American," too. Remember? "These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American," Pelosi and Hoyer blasted in an op-ed piece for USA Today last summer. "Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades." This from the woman who called for a vengeful government investigation of grassroots opponents of the Ground Zero mosque. Obama's pal Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, whom the president hailed as an "outstanding" member of Congress, accused Republicans of wanting elderly people to "die quickly" and of presiding over a "holocaust in America." Vice President Joe Biden hailed Grayson as a "guy who doesn't back away from a fight, and doesn't back down from what he believes in" and told him at a fundraiser: "We owe you one, buddy." No mention of Grayson's smear of a female Federal Reserve adviser as a "K Street whore." In California, entrenched incumbent jerk Pete Stark derided immigration enforcement activists at a town hall by asking: "Who are you going to kill today?" To an elderly constituent who opposed the health care bill, Stark retorted: "I wouldn't dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn't be worth wasting the urine." As voters who have been maligned by the ruling majority as stupid, unwashed, racist, selfish and violent headed to the polls Tuesday, Democrats released "talking points" attacking Republican leaders who "are not willing to compromise." But "no compromise" is exactly the message that un-American Americans delivered to Washington this campaign season: No more compromising deals behind closed doors. No more compromising bailouts in times of manufactured crisis. No more compromising conservative principles for D.C. party elites. No more compromising the American economy for left-wing special interests. No more compromising transparency and ethics for bureaucratic self-preservation. Let us be clear, in case it hasn't fully sunk into the minds of Obama and the trash-talking Democrats yet: You can take your faux olive branch and shove it. Thank you. Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. .

To: mph who wrote (81538)	11/21/2010 10:44:08 PM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Respond to of 90947

H/T to mph [she nails it again]: OPEN LETTER TO GOP LEADERSHIP, PART TWO One need only read the New York Times to catch on to the Democrats' latest meme, to wit, that the Republicans are unwilling to compromise and that they care nothing about national security because they are unwilling to automatically ratify the START treaty. Once again, the GOP leadership is behind the power curve in framing the debate. First, the treaty was signed in April 2010. Instead of securing its ratification in a timely fashion, Obama was too busy cramming healthcare "reform" down our collective throats. If he thought it was important, it would have been addressed months ago. Second, who really cares about monitoring the Soviets' nuclear arms? Mutually assured destruction has kept a check on United States/Soviet relations for decades. More critically, why is it in our interest to reduce our nuclear arsenal when we have allowed Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan to ramp up their nuclear programs? Third, there are many more critical national security issues than a treaty with the Russians. For example, securing our national borders, which has an effect not just on the influx of illegal aliens, but on terrorists entering through unsecured areas. In other words, it is more important to secure our borders than it is to sue Arizona for its attempt to do the job the federal government refuses to do. In the area of airport security, why is it that average citizens are being subjected to overly intrusive methods under the guise of security at the same time Janet Napolitano is actually considering exempting Muslim women from these same methods? Why not use profiling when there is a legitimate basis for same? Have any of the recent terrorist attacks and/or foiled attacks been undertaken by 80-year-old grandmothers, Catholic nuns or six year-old children? While profiling might not be PC, it would certainly be effective. As for the criticism concerning the Republicans' failure to show for Obama's command performance on November 18, the NYT and Democrat hierarchy should be reminded of their dear leader's inflammatory language during the 2010 campaign. He told Hispanics to treat Republicans as their enemy and suggested that Republicans should ride "in the back of the bus." Under the circumstances, an invitation couched in terms other than an edict from on high would have been the ticket. This rhetoric was overlain on Obama-isms such as "elections have consequences" and "I won." After such treatment, why would any Republican even care what Obama has to say? The Republicans should recognize that they have a mandate as a result of the 2010 election results. The main focus is on domestic economic issues. To the extent foreign policy is implicated, there is little Obama accomplished in the past two years that is of any benefit to this country. In fact, it appears that his luster has diminished considerably on the world stage. He has been reduced to looking for compliments and ignoring legitimate criticism both here and abroad. The GOP focus should be on legitimate security concerns. Obama's quest for justification for his first Nobel Peace Prize or quest for a second is not our prime mission or interest. To reiterate: 1. Make it clear that the treaty is not the primary concern for security or foreign-policy, and why. Highlight the other security concerns and posit fixes for same. 2. Be true to your mandate. This election was about fiscal responsibility. Do not forget that. But, Obama's trashing of this country, particularly on foreign soil, is a part of the equation. The American people will not stand for this, at least not very long. 3. Do not be lulled into compromise with the Democrats. To them, compromise means that you give in to what they want. To combat this, you have to frame the debate in the correct terms for public consumption. If you fail to do that, you will lose the battle and ultimately the war.