Fruits of Liberal Policy

Opinion: On being labeled as ‘racist’ – Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler – POLITICO.com

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Excellent article on Politico.com

…

The NAACP has long history of liberalism and racism.

If you are a conservative — including a conservative African-American — there is no room for you at the NAACP. If you have opinions that differ from the NAACP and the liberal establishment, and if you are African-American, you are an “Uncle Tom,” a “negro,” “not black enough” and “against our people.”

In other words, the NAACP fancies itself the thought police for millions of black Americans. Disagree with them and you will be ostracized and attacked. You will be subjected to public humiliation and racist commentary from NAACP leadership. The message is clear: Tow the line or pay the price.

But the NAACP does not stand alone in this regard. The left has a long history of using the race card. It has been pulled on people across the political spectrum.

President Bill Clinton was smeared as a racist by the Obama campaign when Hillary Clinton was running for president. It seems that anyone who disagrees with the far left, socialist policies of Barack Obama and the current administration is subject to the heavy hand of the race card.

This card is generally played when all else has failed. It was inevitable that it would eventually be used aggressively against the tea party movement.

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Read the rest at Opinion: On being labeled as ‘racist’ – Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler – POLITICO.com.

The Elephant in the Room: Boldly defending marriage | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/14/2010

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Back in 2004, I was part of a small group of Republican senators that forced a floor vote on a motion to consider a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. We needed 60 votes to proceed; we fell just short of 50. Many senators who voted “yea” privately castigated me for making them “walk the plank” on such a tough issue.

A majority of Americans still supports traditional marriage. It has been on the ballot in 31 states and won every time. However, the inside-the-Beltway power centers – the media, campaign contributors, and politically active special-interest groups – passionately want to, as the 2004 Massachusetts majority opinion put it, “eradicate that stain” on our country.

That’s why, when last week’s ruling in Boston knocked down the last defense against judicially mandated same-sex “marriage,” there was largely silence from the political class.

With the exception of a core group of conservatives, most politicians – including the president – continue to publicly back marriage while eagerly awaiting the day when judges will take this issue out of their hands. In this case, silence, as my former colleague Zell Miller once said, is not golden; it’s yellow.

via The Elephant in the Room: Boldly defending marriage | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/14/2010.

Obama’s New ‘Poverty’ Measurement – Robert Rector – National Review Online

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This week, the Obama administration announced it will create a new poverty-measurement system that will eventually displace the current poverty measure. This new measure, which has little or nothing to do with actual poverty, will serve as the propaganda tool in Obama’s endless quest to “spread the wealth.”

Under the new measure, a family will be judged “poor” if its income falls below a certain specified income threshold. Nothing new there, but, unlike the current poverty standards, the new income thresholds will have a built-in escalator clause: They will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the living standards of the average American.

The current poverty measure counts absolute purchasing power — how much steak and potatoes you can buy. The new measure will count comparative purchasing power — how much steak and potatoes you can buy relative to other people. As the nation becomes wealthier, the poverty standards will increase in proportion. In other words, Obama will employ a statistical trick to ensure that “the poor will always be with you,” no matter how much better off they get in absolute terms.

via Obama’s New ‘Poverty’ Measurement – Robert Rector – National Review Online.

Public input period for federal fishery strategy has ended – ESPN

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“Now we see NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.”

In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority.”

Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for “marine spatial planning” by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

Led by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

via Public input period for federal fishery strategy has ended – ESPN.

Obama to spell out new healthcare plan – Yahoo! News

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Here’s the dirty pool that we’ve come to understand as Chicago corruption politics. The Democrats don’t have the votes and don’t have anything but an extremely horrible plan, so they’re openly forcing a dirty corrupt procedure against the will of the people. They need to be removed.

President Barack Obama is expected to publish his healthcare plan as early as Sunday or Monday, combining features of the two Democratic bills passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, congressional aides and healthcare advocates said on Friday.

The administration’s bill will aim to jump-start the stalled healthcare overhaul and comes just days ahead of a planned televised White House summit with congressional Republicans, who are calling on Democrats to scrap the bills and start over with a far less sweeping proposal.

Democrats are struggling to push healthcare legislation over the finish line in the face of sagging public support and solid Republican opposition bolstered by recent election victories in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey.

The legislation the White House will post on its website is expected to reflect common ground negotiated over the past several weeks by House and Senate Democratic leaders.

Those agreements are likely to be combined as a privileged budget reconciliation bill, which only needs a simple 51-vote majority to pass the 100-member Senate instead of the 60-vote supermajority that has become routine in the Senate and gives Republicans power to block the healthcare bill.”I believe that’s the path we are going to take,” a senior congressional Democratic aide said.

via Obama to spell out new healthcare plan – Yahoo! News.

Class Warfare’s Next Target: 401k Savings

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You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on “the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams.”

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are “investing” your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

Read the rest here…

Investors.com – Class Warfare’s Next Target: 401k Savings.

Joe Biden update: Iraq one of Obama’s ‘great achievements’ | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

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Vice-Dunce and his mouth, the gift that keep on giving.

Thank goodness, Vice President Joe Biden went on CNN to chat with Larry King Wednesday night. So many think things are not going so well for the Democrat administration, as The Ticket chronicled here.

Many Americans recall the ex-Sen. Biden's Democratic primary plans to give in to Iraq’s fractious factions and carve the country into three territories. And even more probably recall Biden’s boss’ plan to halt the Iraq war years ago. As long as it got started anyway without the permission of the then state senator.

Plus, of course, the vehement opposition of the Nobel Prize winner to the 2007 American troop surge of you-know-who from Texas that Obama knew for certain was only going to worsen sectarian strife there.

via Joe Biden update: Iraq one of Obama’s ‘great achievements’ | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times.

The great global warming collapse – The Globe and Mail

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…the glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

via The great global warming collapse – The Globe and Mail.