Friday, October 21, 2011

Is This a Problem?


Obama = Anti Business

Obama continues to go to extremes in order to pay back his union buddies...




From Investor's Business Daily:


A powerful House Republican committee chairman accused the National Labor Relations Board of being a “rogue agency” in a letter to its general counsel Monday. The chairman claimed the NLRB knowingly withheld damaging documents relating to his committee’s probe of the agency’s controversial Boeing (BA) complaint.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darryl Issa, R-Calif., in a letter to Lafe Solomon, NLRB acting general counsel, said the withheld documents “demonstrate that the NLRB is acting as a rogue agency that believes it does not have to fully answer to Congress.”
Issa was referring to a cache of emails obtained earlier this month by the watchdog group Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act.
He expressed anger that the emails were not turned over to his committee first and said the messages demonstrated the agency’s lack of impartiality. He further alleged that some of them contradicted claims NLRB staffers made as part of his committee’s probe.
NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleland said the agency had not withheld the emails. She said that the committee’s requests and the FOIA requests that produced the emails were handled separately by different people and that caused confusion.

Fair for Whom?


Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Obama by the Numbers

Obama's African 'Fast and Furious"



In my house we have a few basic rules.  No dogs on the couch, dirty plates go in the sink, and don't give kids under the age of fifteen an AK-47 or rocket propelled grenades (RPG).  It seemed like a good rule.  Even our government has a rule about not providing military aid to African countries that use kids under the age of 15 in their military (often times by force.)   But you know how kids are, always complaining their parents are too strict,  "All the other kids get their own AK-47!  Even President Obama is sending them to the poor starving kids is Africa!"

And now it turns out that's true.  The Obama administration has waived (very quietly of course) the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008.  For the second time in two years.



From Foreign Policy magazine website:

"President Barack Obama has decided to waive almost all the legally mandated penalties for countries that use child soldiers and provide those countries U.S. military assistance, just like he did last year.



The White House is expected to soon announce its decision to issue a series of waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act, a 2008 law that is meant to stop the United States from giving military aid to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 15 and use them to fight wars. The administration has laid out a range of justifications for waiving penalties on Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which amount to a gutting of the law for the second year in a row.
Last year, the White House didn't even tell Congress or the NGO community when it decided to do away with the Child Soldiers Prevention Act penalties. Most had to read about it first on The Cable. Aid workers, human rights activists, and even congressional offices were shocked that the administration had gutted the law without consulting them.
...
To the human rights community, today's action by the White House represents both an abandonment of efforts to protect children, and a betrayal of the NGO community, which had been promised that this year would be different from last year.
"The White House said last year that they were putting these countries on notice but now it's a year later and the U.S. is still handing over taxpayer money to countries that use child soldiers with no strings attached," said Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch.
"President Obama's decision today to provide taxpayer funded military assistance to countries that use children as soldiers is an assault on human dignity," said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE),  vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights. "Good citizens of this country who do not want to be complicit in this grave human rights abuse must challenge this administration."


I couldn't agree with the last sentence of that last statement more. Obama has got to go.




Bernie Sanders Wants Your Money

Share the wealth!  It's only fair!  Senator Bernie Sanders believes we need to spread the money around.  




I kept waiting for Fed Chairman Bernanke to respond that perhaps the reason there were a small group of people who created tremendous wealth since the late 1970's is that these Americans worked to develop and market world class technology, goods, and services.  Wealth driven by the success of companies like Microsoft, Dell Computers, Oracle.  But of course since Bernanke is an Obama appointee, that did not happen.

Maybe Senator Sanders would be happy if we all emptied our 401(k) accounts, went to Wall Street, and handed out cash to those less fortunate, like this guy who is currently occupying Wall Street:




Like the President said, spread the wealth!





The Party of No

President Obama and the Democrat party has been accusing the Republicans of being the "Party of No".  It makes for great political rhetoric during a time when the American people are frustrated with their government and the quagmire in Washington.   But as is often said, facts are stubborn things.

From The L.A. Times:

"As the president in Texas urged Congress to vote on his jobs bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threw the Senate a curveball on Tuesday by trying to do just that.

“I agree with the president, I think he’s entitled to a vote on his jobs bill,” the Republican leader said on the Senate floor as he tried to force an immediate vote on the American Jobs Act by attaching it to unrelated legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused."

More from TheHill.com:


"In a lively spat on the Senate floor Tuesday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) attempted call up President Obama’s jobs plan for an immediate vote in the upper chamber. 
However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who supports the legislation, blocked the vote.
...
“What I am trying to do here today by requesting this vote on the president’s jobs bill ... is to honor the request of the president of the United States that we vote on it now,” McConnell said. “He has been asking us repeatedly over the last few weeks that we vote on it now.”
“I think the president of the United States, whose polices I generally do not support ... is entitled to know where the Senate stands on his proposal that he has been out talking about ... and suggesting that we are unwilling to vote on it," he said."





The best part of the story is Obama is hitting the fund raising circuit using the premise that the Washington stalemate is due to Republicans, and if they'd only pass his jobs bill flying unicorns would appear in the sky distributing bags of money to his supporters for infrastructure projects and green jobs.

From The Daily Caller:


"Almost simultaneously, the Obama campaign sent supporters an e-mail titled “They won’t even vote it.”
“President Obama is in Dallas today urging Americans who support the American Jobs Act to demand that Congress pass it already,” the e-mail read. “Though it’s been nearly a month since Obama laid out this plan, House Republicans haven’t acted to pass it.”




Now it appears that some Republicans in Congress are getting tired of being the used as the President's political punching bag when Reid and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate have yet to produce a budget for the country.



I expect come next November, we"ll discover which party is seen by the American people as the 'Party of No'.





Monday, October 3, 2011

Fast and Furious: Holder's Smoking Gun

Regardless of what Obama knew and when he knew it, Attorney General Eric Holder is toast.   The only hope Obama has of surviving this during what promises to be a challenging election year is to throw Holder under the bus.   The new revelation on the paper trail is being reported by CBS News, so this can not be discounted as some right wing blogger throwing out unsubstantiated accusations.



"WASHINGTON - New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.
On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."
Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious."

And of course FOX New is more then willing to pile on: