“I think this is madness… I believe the American people will repudiate this agreement as they learn more about it and Congress will therefore kill the deal. This is not any old vote. This is not like a vote on taxes or the debt ceiling where it’s debated for one election and then it’s behind you. Any Congressman or Senator, Democrat or Republican, who votes for this deal is putting his or her political fate in the hands of Ayatollahs for the rest of time."
"Meanwhile, the president is stuck in his games and his history. He should have seen unemployment entering a crisis stage four years ago, and he did not. At that time I was certain he'd go for public-works projects, which could give training to the young and jobs to the experienced underemployed, would create jobs in the private sector and, in the end, yield up something needed—a bridge, a strengthened power grid. He instead gave his first term to health care. And now ObamaCare is being cited as a reason employers are laying people off and not hiring, according to a report from the Federal Reserve.
What a mess."Yesterday's column concerned her discussion with two senators who attended the much-trumpeted dinner with Obama on Wednesday evening:
"Another possibility is that the president’s claiming he’s poison is just a dodge, a way of subtly putting the onus on his foes: I could help if your team didn’t hate me so unreasonably, but alas they do, so I can do little. And this would be an excuse to continue what appears to me to be his preferred negotiating style, which is the nonnegotiation negotiation: Let them guess where I am, let them guess what I’ll do, I’ll be the calm center while they run around like headless chickens.
My sense: If you really want a grand bargain, that dinner was exactly where you’d make it clear you’ll work with them every step of the way, you’ll own this, you’ll lead.
It doesn’t sound like that’s what the president did."
Red states receive, on average, far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. The balance is the opposite in blue states. The secession petitions, therefore, give the opportunity to create what would be, in a fiscal sense, a far more perfect union.Personally, I think the whole idea of "seceding" is simply an expression of frustration from people who do not feel that this government represents them. They're right. It doesn't. Seceding is not the answer though (in my most humble opinion); it feels too much like running away instead of fighting. Plus, at this stage of the game, I sure wouldn't want this gov't to have my name and personal information on a succession petition, would you? Fear of the government for voicing an opinion is not something Americans are accustomed to, but hey, welcome to the Brave New World, Obama-style.
"Daniels started her investigation in August 2009. Given her profession, she has been able to access a variety of proprietary databases. What she learned without much trouble is that Obama has been using a Social Security Number with the prefix “042″ since 1986.
As she discovered, the “042″ number is reserved for the exclusive use of individuals who register in Connecticut. When she ran 10 sequential numbers before and after Obama’s, all returned with the documentation “issued 1977-1979 in CT.” When Daniels ran the numbers immediately flanking Obama’s, she came to the firm conviction that Obama’s number was issued in March 1977 in Connecticut. By all accounts, as Daniels thoroughly documents, Obama was then a 15-year-old living in Hawaii. There is no record of him even visiting Connecticut in or near this time frame."Hmmm. I did a quick google search and found this list of social security area numbers and the state they are assigned to. Yep. Connecticut. Weird. The only exceptions to the area numbers I could find are these:
"Since 1972, the Social Security Administration has been issuing SSN’s centrally from its headquarters in Baltimore. The area code now indicates the person’s State of residence as shown on the SSN application.
There are several exceptions to these rules. Before 1964, area numbers 700-728 were assigned by the Railroad Retirement Board to workers covered by the Railroad Retirement Act.’ Area number 586 is divided among American Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, and Americans employed abroad by American employers and, from 1975 to 1979, it was also used for Indochinese refugees. Area number 580 is assigned to persons applying in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands."Like I said: weird. Evidently, this has been brought up by the "birthers" and also by El Rushbo, but it's the first I've heard of it.
"He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister." And then in April 2007, someone belatedly decided to "check" the 16-year-old "fact" and revised the biography, a few weeks into the now non-Kenyan's campaign for the presidency. Fancy that!
"Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995." There is no evidence that Mrs. Warren, now the Democrats' Senate candidate, is anything other than 100 percent white. She walks like a white, quacks like a white, looks whiter than white. She's the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of White-Out. But she "self-identified" as Cherokee, so that makes her a "woman of color." Why, back in 1984 she submitted some of her favorite dishes to the "Pow Wow Chow" cookbook, a "compilation of recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families." The recipes from "Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee" include a crab dish with tomato mayonnaise. Mrs. Warren's fictional Cherokee ancestors in Oklahoma were renowned for their ability to spear the fast-moving Oklahoma crab. It's in the state song: "Ooooooklahoma! Where the crabs come sweepin' down the plain."Enjoy.
Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.
Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.
By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.
...nearly 20 percent of last May’s waivers went to businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district in California.
Obama widened the hairline crack today by publicly endorsing Medicare means testing that would deny benefits to wealthier Americans.
If adopted, the change would shift the universal Medicare program from a social insurance program for everyone to a welfare program for poor Americans.
Democrats have resisted such a shift for decades out of fear that such would undermine widespread middle class support for government health care programs.
President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.
The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.
President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.
"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."
Details about the "trusted identity" project are unusually scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.
Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.
On "Meet the Press" December 26, top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said President Obama's "biggest regret" is that the severity of the economic crisis forced him to "spend almost every waking hour in Washington focusing very hard on solving that crisis" and thus kept him from traveling the country to connect with the American people. According to Jarrett, Obama recently told aides, "I really want to figure out a way where I can spend more time outside of Washington listening and learning and engaging the American people." Jarrett says that in 2011 the president's schedule will "reflect that priority" -- that is, include more time outside the nation's capital.
But it turns out Obama has already spent nearly half his presidency outside Washington. As of January 2, Obama has been president for 712 days. According to figures compiled by CBS News reporter Mark Knoller, who serves as a sort of unofficial White House record-keeper, Obama has spent 339 of those days -- nearly 48 percent -- outside Washington.
According to Knoller, Obama has spent 176 days on domestic trips, 70 days on foreign travel, 58 days on vacation, and 35 days at Camp David. (You can add a couple more vacation days to the total before the president returns from his break in Hawaii.) Nevertheless, Jarrett claimed that Obama has had to spend "almost every waking hour in Washington" since taking office. The truth is more like half of that.
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| Obama working very hard on the economic crisis. |
Obama's big-spending stimulus plans clearly have failed to revive the economy, and the Fed's policy of printing money and virtually giving it away have rewarded the wrong people and left responsible folks -- those who work, pay taxes, restrain their spending and put away some savings -- feeling like suckers being conned in a political shell game.Yep.
The president badly needs to make more realistic pronouncements. No one expects him to say his policies have failed (although most have delivered far less than claimed at large cost). A little candor about the results of experimentation in uncharted waters would go a long way. But at the very least, his staff needs to avoid putting these exaggerations on the teleprompter. It undermines confidence and raises concerns about competence. It's doing nobody any good—not the economy and certainly not Mr. Obama.
