"Just the facts M'am, Just the facts." -- Sgt. Joe Friday
By Vincent Carroll
The Denver Post
10/17/2012
If you haven’t seen the video of anti-fracking protesters hectoring Gov. John Hickenlooper in Longmont last month and then thrusting signs against his car, you should Google it to get an idea of the passion behind the movement — here and nationally — to outlaw hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas. [Read more…]
Economic Indicators, September 2012
Economic Indicators – All Years
Look at the growth in the money supply under the Obama administration. Look at the percentage increases under Obama compared to the Bush years. Obama has been hyper-inflating money supply to fund his economy of social justice. Continued travel down this economic path will bring the whole thing crashing down. It’s an open question whether Obama is even aware of the damage he’s done. After 4 years of not learning how to run this country, our only recourse is to vote him out.
B_Imperial
Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches, 2012.
From the Introduction:
“One small example: During the recent debate over reforming Medicare, many liberals insisted that any backsliding amounted to a sacrilegious violation of a fundamental “covenant.” Writing in The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn, a leading health care expert, quotes LBJ’s Medicare law signing statement:
“No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years.”
“Read those quotes carefully,” Cohn advises us, “because they spell out the covenant that Johnson made with the American people on that day: A promise that the elderly and (certain groups) of the poor would get comprehensive medical insurance, no matter what.” Now I cannot and will not criticize Cohn for believing that the government should ensure that the truly needy and elderly receive medical care. That is an honorable, intellectually defensible position. Though I should at least mention that wanting the needy to receive health care does not necessarily require a vast expansion of the federal government. But my point isn’t to debate the means to a desirable end.
No, the reason why I find Cohn’s argument so useful is that it illustrates the progressive mind-set so perfectly. [Read more…]
Danny Danon, Israel – The Will To Prevail, 2012.
“Israel is the one hundredth smallest country in the world, home to less than 1/1000th of the world’s population with just 7.1 million people. Its $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita among working people, ranking third in the industrialized world after the United States and Holland. It also has the highest number of museums, orchestras, and zoos per capita. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin – 109 per 10,000 people—and also has one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed. [Read more…]
A Commentary By Michael Barone
Thursday, October 11, 2012
“The Illegal-Donor Loophole” is the headline of a Daily Beast story by Peter Schweizer of the conservative Government Accountability Institute and Peter Boyer, former reporter at The New Yorker and The New York Times.
The article tells how Obama.com, a website owned by an Obama fundraiser who lives in China but has visited the Obama White House 11 times, sends solicitations mostly to foreign email addresses and links to the Obama campaign website’s donation page.
The Obama website, unlike those of most campaigns, doesn’t ask for the three- or four-digit credit card verification number. That makes it easier for donors to use fictitious names and addresses to send money in.
Campaigns aren’t allowed to accept donations from foreigners. But it looks like the Obama campaign has made it easier for them to slip money in. How much foreign money has come into the Obama campaign? Schweizer and Boyer say there’s no way to know.
The campaign — as my former boss, pollster Peter Hart, likes to say — always reflects the candidate. A campaign willing to skirt the law or abet violations of it reflects a candidate who, as president, has been doing the same thing. [Read more…]
“If Rowland’s church is actively promoting a candidate or a party, then its participation should be questioned because it is in violation of the Constitution.” William C. Thomas
Wrong. A church so engaged may violate a tax regulation, but it’s definitely not violating the Constitution. Mr. Thomas, like many liberals, forgets that the Constitution, including the Amendments such as those in the Bill of Rights consist of negative laws against government power. Constitutional limitations on government powers, by default, create the free domain in which citizens, and yes, even citizens acting in legal organizations like churches and corporations, may exercise their freedom.
Seems like liberals like to think that the Constitution mandates certain behavior. They seem to always be searching for a constitutional justification to force one of their notions upon the country. They fundamentally don’t seem to understand how freedom works. Our Constitution sets the boundaries for government, the rest of what we do is up to us. Maybe, since they don’t seem to understand freedom, that’s why they don’t seem to understand how so much of what they promote actually damages our freedom. They don’t get that by growing laws, they actually shrink our free domain.
The 1st Am. limits what government can do with regard to religion. “Congress shall make no law…” The 1st Am. simply does not limit what people can do in their own religious interest.
One more thing, constitutional amendments modify and supersede language in the body of the Constitution. If an amendment exists on the subject, that’s where the analysis should begin. Mr. Thomas can’t cut and paste the Constitution to find a bit of language to support his case. Well, I suppose he can…. but it’s not going to be very persuasive.
B_Imperial
Andrew Klavan
A Fantasy Election, an Imaginary Man
Barack Obama has always been less real than dream—a media dream.
5 October 2012
Even before his inauguration, Barack Obama was an imaginary man, the creation of his admirers. Think back to the 2008 Time magazine cover depicting him as FDR, the Newsweek cover of the same year on which he was shown casting Lincoln’s shadow, or the $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”—this in 2009, less than a year after he had taken office. It was not that Obama had done nothing to deserve these outsized comparisons and honors—it was not just that he had done nothing—it was that he seemed for all the world to be a blank screen on which such hysterical fantasies could too easily be projected, a two-dimensional paper doll just waiting to be dressed in leftist dreams. [Read more…]
Investors.com Posted 10/03/2012 06:39 PM ET
Geopolitics: What do Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Gulf oil sheiks and President Obama have in common? They all want to halt the U.S. energy revolution in fracking. No wonder so many of them are endorsing Obama. [Read more…]
Transcript: Pat Caddell – The Audacity of Corruption
Obama used his presidency to substantially exacerbate the Long War with Islam. 
Full text of Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly
09/30/2012 14:14
PM Netanyahu addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly Debate, drawing red lines on Iran’s nuclear program.
Thank you very much Mr. President.
It’s a pleasure to see the General Assembly presided by the Ambassador from Israel, and it’s good to see all of you, distinguished delegates.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Three thousand years ago, King David reigned over the Jewish state in our eternal capital, Jerusalem. I say that to all those who proclaim that the Jewish state has no roots in our region and that it will soon disappear.
Throughout our history, the Jewish people have overcome all the tyrants who have sought our destruction. It’s their ideologies that have been discarded by history.
The people of Israel live on. We say in Hebrew Am Yisrael Chai, and the Jewish state will live forever.
The Jewish people have lived in the land of Israel for thousands of years. Even after most of our people were exiled from it, Jews continued to live in the land of Israel throughout the ages. The masses of our people never gave up the dreamed of returning to our ancient homeland.
Defying the laws of history, we did just that. We ingathered the exiles, restored our independence and rebuilt our national life. The Jewish people have come home.
We will never be uprooted again. [Read more…]
By DOUGLAS MACKINNON
Posted 09/27/2012 04:43 PM ET at Investors.com
President Obama offers an applause at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington on April 30, 2011.
Mitt Romney can still win this election, but first he has to confront the largest single domestic threat to our liberty, our values, and our national and economic security — the mainstream media.
Most mainstream “journalists” unethically supported then-Sen. Obama in 2008, and most have doubled-down on that bet in 2012. And that biased and corrupt support may be the least of their professional sins.
The nation and world face an epic crisis made more dangerous by the proliferation of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and twisted minds who’d think nothing of using them to advance their cause or “theology.”
Yet, our mainstream media deliberately choose to ignore these exponentially growing threats while working in concert with the Obama campaign to ensure the president’s re-election.
Much worse, some in the media are themselves betraying national security secrets in an effort to make Obama look more “presidential” or harm the conservative narrative.
Beyond their leaking of highly classified information, the media are a real threat to security because they flat-out know:
• Public employee unions have decimated the finances of an expanding number of cities, counties and states.
• Poverty is rising, unemployment is accelerating, median household incomes have fallen and Obama has created a debt poison-pill that will cripple our economic future.
• Teacher unions are destroying the futures of poor and at-risk children, but the media look the other way to protect one of the largest special interests of the Democrat Party.
• Obama has no foreign policy, and his ineptitude, along with that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was exposed with the planned terrorist killings of U.S. diplomats in Libya — murders the president dismissed as “bumps in the road.”
Yet the media choose to attack Romney for rightfully calling on the president and Clinton to stop their campaign of appeasement and apology.
• “Green” initiatives such as Solyndra are paybacks to major donors, outright frauds or alternative energy “solutions” with one real purpose: to give liberals false talking-points while sucking hundreds of billions more out of taxpayers’ bank accounts.
The list goes on, but suffice it to say a case can be made that the mainstream media represent a clear and present danger to our well-being.
They also represent a clear and present danger to Gov. Romney’s chances for election.
Even in the age of the Internet, blogs, cable shows and alternative news, I maintain that upwards of 80% of Americans still get 80% of their “news” from the left-leaning mainstream media.
Those who still have jobs under this president work extremely hard — often at two or more jobs. And between taking care of their children, after-school activities or even night classes, they don’t always have the time to hunt and peck to find honest news.
What little “news” many Americans do get is filtered or invented by liberal media. Knowing that, and knowing these liberal media have it in for him, Romney needs to confront them as many times as possible between now and Election Day.
He must challenge them to be honest. He must ask who among them still cares about ethics, morality and doing their jobs in a professional manner? He should write op-eds calling out compromised liberal papers like the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Romney needs to let the American people know that the fix is in and the mainstream media are either trying to suppress the vote of millions of would-be Romney supporters or blatantly trying to steal the election for Mr. Obama.
During his first debate with Obama, Romney needs to shame the media by telling Americans exactly how they’ve conducted themselves during this election.
Should Romney choose not to confront this No. 1 domestic threat to our security, he may not only doom his own campaign, but hurt us all in the process.
If not him, who? If not now, when?
• MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
ISRAEL – The Will To Prevail, by Danny Danon, 2012, pp. 103-112.
THE OFFICIAL CREATION OF THE JEWISH STATE IN 1948
The story of U.S. recognition of the new State of Israel is a complex one, full of twists and turns. But I think it is worth going over in some detail, especially since many of the initial issues and debates are ongoing. America’s policies toward Israel were often confused and contradictory, as officials tried to sort out what was in the best interests of the United States. If Israel had had to depend on U.S. support through this difficult but exhilarating time, she might not have made it. As often happens, history is a much messier affair than conventional hindsight recalls. [Read more…]