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Hmmmmm....

No way to confirm what is stated here as 'fact', but I sure do agree with his final conclusion.

Guess Which Party Oakland Mayor Represents?

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF OAKLAND FROM THE OAKLAND POLICE OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION

1 November 2011 – Oakland, Ca.

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.

Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.

That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?

It is all very confusing to us.

Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.

The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.

All of these mixed messages are confusing.

We love Oakland and just want to do our jobs to protect Oakland residents. We respectfully ask the citizens of Oakland to join us in demanding that our City officials, including Mayor Quan, make sound decisions and take responsibility for these decisions. Oakland is struggling – we need real leaders NOW who will step up and lead – not send mixed messages. Thank you for listening.

Twinkles Up!

The Colbert Report
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Better Off?

Blast From The Past

This one was first broadcast November 11, 1977

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?

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'.

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:

Time for Some Sunshine on Obama's Solar Agenda

The Obama administration just 'invested' another $5 Billion dollars of taxpayer money in the manufacture of solar energy just as the month end dead line approached.   Is green energy and the related technology in it's current state truly a viable option?  Or is the "green" in green energy refer to money?  The Daily Caller investigates what other motives may drive this push:


"A Daily Caller investigation has found that in addition to the failed company Solyndra, at least four other solar panel manufacturing companies receiving in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration employ executives or board members who have donated large sums of money to Democratic campaigns.

And as questions swirl around possible connections between political donations and these preferential financing arrangements, the Obama White House suddenly began deflecting The Daily Caller’s questions on Wednesday to the Democratic National Committee."

“It is becoming more clear with each revelation that warning signs were ignored in the Solyndra case,” Texas Congressman Barton (R). “Yet in the next 48 hours — because of a deadline that can still be changed — the Department of Energy is going to hand out another $5 billion in loans.”

Companies like First Solar, SolarReserve, SunPower Corporation and Abengoa SA have already, collectively, received billions in loans through Obama administration stimulus programs to build solar power plants in the southwestern United States.

Yet each, with the exception of the privately held SolarReserve, has seen its stock price hammered at the same time it was lobbying the Obama administration and Congress for billions in loan guarantees."

The report provides the dirty details of the financial transactions and support between those who benefit from the loans and those in the current administration who control who gets the advantage of building their business with taxpayer money.


Why would the White House defer questions on the tactical actions under by their current policy to the Democratic National Committee???  Perhaps they don't want these questions being brought up during the daily briefing, which could force Obama's friends in the media to start asking questions the White House doesn't want to answer.   Awkward questions that could follow Obama through the election process.   


Could it be that the White House doesn't want to deal with question on why First Solar founder and Chairman Michael Ahearn, who donated $123,650 to Democrat election campaigns and whose company just received $2.1 BILLION in taxpayer money, cashed in $68.9 Million of company stock ?   If the founder and Chairman is betting against his company by dumping nearly $70 Million of stock, why are taxpayers being asked to provide life support to another green energy company that can not otherwise compete in the market?   I'm guessing the White House is attempting to push this investigation as far away from them as possible, knowing that their friends in the mainstream media will not pick up this story until the public forces them to.


    
More from The Washington Post:  

"The U.S. Department of Energy learned in December that Solyndra was violating its federal loan deal, but the agency changed the loan terms to allow the solar company to continue receiving taxpayer funds, federal officials confirmed Wednesday.

Executives at Solyndra, which had been awarded a $535 million government-backed loan to spur its solar-panel production, confided to the Energy Department late last fall that the Fremont, Calif., company was running out of money and at risk of liquidating.

Congressional investigators have questioned why the Obama administration agreed to help the company in late 2010 when it was warned that the firm was at risk of collapse. Internal e-mails show federal reviewers initially estimated they could save the taxpayers as much as $168 million by letting the company go under in December 2010, rather than resuscitating it and allowing it to draw down more federal money.

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera confirmed Wednesday that the agency knew Solyndra had violated the loan terms but agreed to change the requirement to help Solyndra. The agency originally required that Solyndra make six installments of $5 million each, starting in December, to create a $30 million cash cushion for problems."

The Weekly Standard is not just following this story, they are running this headline:

"Crony Capitalism: $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi's Brother-In-Law"

Click the headline to jump to the link to their story.



And now it turns out the IRS was modifying tax policies that would specifically benefit Solyndra:

"WASHINGTON, D.C. – Just weeks before Solyndra received approval for a $535 million taxpayer-funded loan, the Fremont, Calif.-based solar panel manufacturing company received a favorable ruling from the Internal Revenue Service, giving its customers a significant tax break.

The U.S. tax code has long allowed buyers of solar panels to deduct a portion of the installation cost from their taxes. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, that credit was boosted from 10 percent to 30 percent through 2016.

But in August 2009, the IRS also determined that companies buying Solyndra products would qualify for another 30 percent tax credit – as long as they were installed on roofs painted white to reflect the sun. At the time, only Solyndra was selling products that would work on so-called "cool roofs."

It's time to shine some sunlight on the Obama administration's investments in green energy.

German Finance Minister: No Thanks to Obama "Stupid Idea"

 From The Telegraph:


"German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU's bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.
"I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense," he said. Mr Schauble told Washington to mind its own businesss after President Barack Obama rebuked EU leaders for failing to recapitalise banks and allowing the debt crisis to escalate to the point where it is "scaring the world"."


I can't imagine why the Germans wouldn't want to jump all over Obama's economic theories and ideas.  After all, look at what a great job he's been doing for us.

Obama Warned Green Jobs Possible "Colossal Failure"

The one time that our Treasury chief was right about something and President Obama chooses not to listen.

From the LA Times, hardly a beacon for conservative thinking:

"Treasury chief Timothy F. Geithner and others were worried that the selection process for federal loan guarantees fell short and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong firms.

Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company's rapid ascent.

At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help."

If I were a greedy capitalist, I'd make the argument that companies with solid business plans in a growing market don't need taxpayer support.  And unless there is some greater need such as national security and defense, companies that can only survive through infusions of massive amounts of taxpayer funds probably don't have a purpose for their existence.   

But hey, that's just me.  

It's ALMOST as if Obama had some ulterior motive for wanting to give Solyndra federal government support...

Execution for Iranian Pastor Who Refuses to Renounce Christianity

(CNSNews.com) – An Iranian pastor who refuses to renounce his Christian faith could be hanged as soon as Wednesday, after a trial court ruling this week upheld his death sentence for “apostasy.”


Nadarkhani was first arrested in October 2009, reportedly for objecting to the teaching of Islam to Christian children at Iranian schools. The indictment against him accused him of organizing evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith and inviting others to convert, running a house church and “denying Islamic values.”


Click HERE for the details of the activities of those fun loving Iranian Muslims. 

Think Deeper...

Long, but worthwhile.  It goes in a different direction then you expect.  

Piling On: More Changes of Possible Obama Corruption

New video of White House press secretary Jim Carney explaining the Solyndra scandal just when the Daily Beast levels new charges of corruption against the Obama administration...



Eli Lake at the Daily Beast breaks the story: 


"The four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, officials said.


The White House confirmed Wednesday that its Office of Management and Budget suggested changes to the general’s testimony but insisted such reviews are routine and not influenced by politics."

To quote the legendary Bill Mayes, "But Wait, there's MORE!".   It turns out that President Obama himself was personally invested in LightSquared...From The Center for Public Integrity:

When the Federal Communications Commission granted LightSquared Inc. expedited approval to launch a new wireless Internet service, some powerful voices in Washington expressed alarm, including the Pentagon and one-third of the U.S. Senate.  

LightSquared's bloodline is particularly rich. Its ties to President Obama's supporters and the administration's policy interests run deep, explaining the company's ability to do battle with powerful entrenched interests: 

Several major Democratic campaign contributors and longtime Obama supporters have held investments in the company and its affiliates during its tangled decade of existence. They include Obama's good friend and political donor Donald Gips, his former White House personnel chief, who now serves as U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Records show that Gips maintained an interest, worth as much as $500,000, as the FCC was weighing LightSquared's request. 

Obama installed one of his biggest fundraisers, Julius Genachowski, a campaign "bundler" and broadband cheerleader, as chairman of the FCC, whose staff granted LightSquared a special waiver to operate.

LightSquared's current majority owner, hedge fund manager Philip Falcone, made large donations to the Democratic Party while his broadband request was pending before the FCC. He and LightSquared executives met with White House officials. Neither Falcone nor the White House would comment on what was discussed. 

LightSquared employs lobbying firms that wield formidable Democratic firepower: Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania and onetime chair of the Democratic National Committee, as well as the firm of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt.

Jeffrey J. Carlisle, the company's vice president for regulatory affairs, served with Genachowski and Gips on Obama's transition team. 

  





 

Business Truths Meets Hope and Change!

When you piece together the timeline, showing how the Bush administration passed up the 'opportunity' to loan taxpayer money to the financial black hole now known as Solyndra, only to have the Obama administration push it through immediately upon taking office, it's almost enough to make a cynical person suspicious.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.

Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work."

(Right, after all look at all those people in the Obama administration with a solid track record in real world business. No wait...)

"Even with the federal help, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month and laid off its 1,100 employees."

(Big surprise!)

"The loan restructuring is one element congressional investigators are focusing on as they look into the federal loan guarantee Solyndra received under the economic stimulus law.

Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors — Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP — stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.

Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president's aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs."

Taxpayer money was illegally subordinated to an investor with major ties to Obama???

Here's the icing on the solar cake, the Bush administration didn't make the loan because they were uncomfortable with the numbers.

"WASHINGTON -- Solyndra officials were intensely pressuring Bush administration officials in early January 2009 to approve a government loan for the solar company before the Obama administration took power, according to new emails obtained by Fox News on Friday.

On Jan. 12, 2009, Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet sent an Energy Department official an email marked "urgent" expressing outrage that Bush officials had decided a few days earlier that while the loan application had "merit" it needed further study before officials could move forward with a taxpayer-financed loan.

Gronet wrote just days before President Obama's inauguration that stretching the process out could have a "severe" impact on Solyndra."

Severe impact indeed, like filing for bankruptcy because it was loosing money on every solar panel they sold. Stupid Republicans don't know beans about business compared to college professors and community organizers. Everyone knows that sales volume offsets transaction losses. I believe I read that on Guy Kawasaki's blog.









I'd say the business skills of the Obama administration is as good as the German Coast Guard English...

Pirates in Gulf of Mexico!

Oil is being discovered in unheard-of quantities, 230 miles into the Gulf of Mexico in waters so deep its retrieval would have been impossible even five years ago.

ExxonMobil, and its Norwegian partner Statoil made the biggest discovery of all — a field worth a billion barrels of oil — 7,000 feet below sea level in its "Julia" field in 2007.

Exxon tried to keep its discovery secret to keep marauders away. Sadly, the pirates in this instance are U.S. regulators — and their aim is to stop them.

That's right: Instead of marvel at the continuing treasures of the New World, or hail the human ingenuity that made retrieval of so much oil possible, or simply quantify how this discovery will boost U.S. energy security, Interior Department bureaucrats moved instead to snatch Exxon's permits and shut the whole thing down.

Employing an extreme technicality, these regulators claimed that Exxon's request in 2008 for a short suspension of activity to upgrade and make safer its drilling operation amounted to an abandonment of three of its five permits, simply because Exxon hadn't signed a contract with another partner, Chevron, by the time the suspension was completed.

In the past, such glitches were no problem — after all, it's obvious Exxon, which spent $300 million on exploratory wells, hasn't abandoned the operation.

But in the Obama era, which demonizes oil production in American waters by American companies, the bureaucrats came up with this permit technicality to effectively expropriate the entire operation.

Exxon is now fighting the permit action in a federal court in Lake Charles, La., calling it "arbitrary," "capricious" and "an abuse of law." It's also a textbook case of the anti-business climate fostered by the Obama administration which should be bending over backward to help Exxon create jobs and profits.

So let's look at what the Obama administration is trying to accomplish, and what it's costing you as a result.

The Exxon discovery is the biggest in a decade. If put into operation, its billion barrels will be enough to make a dent in America's oil dependency on foreign tyrants. If that isn't a sufficient national security reason, what is?

Exxon's discovery will also create thousands of jobs — at a time of 9.1% unemployment. Already the oil industry supports 9.2 million jobs and 190,000 more will be added if Gulf drilling is allowed to resume — along with a big multiplier effect. Many of those jobs will be in manufacturing — in places like Youngstown, Ohio, which just opened a new steel plant to make drilling pipes.

Oh yes, and if it can simply start up operations, Exxon's discovery will generate $10 billion in taxes and royalties for the heavily indebted U.S. government.

The fact that the Interior Department is using its permit process to bludgeon signals this is really about politics. This administration wants to punish Exxon for its refusal to kowtow to Obama's green agenda, as well as for its high profits ,which are reviled by the left.

It's a sorry spectacle to see Exxon — which willingly endured the risk, put in vast infusions of investment capital, sent out brave men to watery no-man's land to drill, and invested massive amounts in R&D — lose its entire operation over a petty permit dispute.

Exxon believes it can win its case in court, but the effects of such bureaucratic plunder will spread a message — that anyone who succeeds in striking black gold will become a government target.

White House Gives America Another Friday News Dump

The White house has a habit of quietly releasing news late on Fridays, hoping no one will notice. So while you were enjoying your Friday cold beverage of choice, the White House released this little gem:

The Obama administration granted another 106 waivers last month from part of the healthcare reform law — the first round of three-year waivers the Health and Human Services Department has approved.

The new approvals bring the total number of waivers to 1,472, according to HHS. Those figures cover waivers granted through the end of July.

Of course the majority of those 1,472 waivers went to Unions and other Obama supporters. Obama is sipping his cold beverage during his $50,000 vacation on Martha's Vinyard. Where'd you spend YOUR last vacation?

NPR Has Solution for Jobs!

What we need right now is more populist rhetoric from the Populist Rhetorician-in-Chief!

So is Nina Totenberg of PBS's "Inside Washington" saying that President Obama's teleprompter is the solution to the country's problems?

Yeah, THAT'S the ticket!

Obama's Solution to Jobs and Immigration

According to a Wall Street Journal report, illegal aliens will be eligible to receive work permits if their deportation is deferred through the Obama Administration's new policy. On Friday, the Administration announced that the Department of Homeland Security will review all deportation cases on a case-by-case basis and only deport illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes...

...Illegal aliens living in the United States typically don't apply for work permits for fear of deportation, but under the new policy, they could apply for work permits if granted deferred action or parole and compete with 22 million Americans who can't find a full-time job.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll Wednesday found that 73 percent of Americans believe the country is off on the wrong track.

"Obama started going wrong from the get-go. Far from offering the economic boost that was promised, the stimulus was instead the single largest payoff to the Democratic clientele in political history. Liberals are telling us now that it was not large enough – but conservatives have been saying for two-and-a-half years that pork for Democratic loyalists is a lousy way to jump-start the economy, no matter how expensive it is. Then, Obama followed that up not with a “laser-beam” focus on jobs – but rather cap and trade and Obamacare. These two items dominated the legislative agenda through the rest of 2009 and the first part of 2010. They were not priorities of the public, but rather of the party elite, whose attitude was: We have this enormous majority, so we’d better do something with it."

"It is hard to imagine public optimism being more negative about the economy than it is right now. ... In terms of pubic opinion he has got a huge hill to climb" -- Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

"The debt ceiling fiasco and the downgrade, punctuated by ... stock market gyrations, has made something in me snap. "It's the sound of confidence in Obama's leadership breaking" -- Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

"The president has failed up until now to produce a coherent explanation about where we are and what we need to do that Americans can understand" -- William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

"As he confronts the threat of another recession and turmoil in the financial markets, President Obama is being advised by an economic team that is noticeably short on big-name players — potentially hurting his ability to find solutions and sell them to Wall Street, Congress and the American public.

“When you ask about the economic team, it’s kind of like, ‘What economic team?’” said Edward Mills, a financial policy analyst with FBR Capital Markets. “They are very thin at a very critical time.”

Perhaps more telling, there no longer is a formal economic briefing in the Oval Office every morning, a gathering in which Summers, Romer, Geithner and other key advisors assessed the data and batted around ideas with Obama." -- LA Times

"Handle it!"

A small piece of so much that is wrong in America.

If this were your son, would you consider yourself a successful parent? Consider this young man, and the contrast to the 31 military members (including those of SEAL Team 6) that killed when their chopper was shot down. Further proof that life is not fair.

Leading From Behind: Economics

"John Cambers, the chairman of Standard & Poor’s sovereign debt ratings, on Sunday estimated that it could take between 9 and 18 years for the nation to regain its AAA credit rating.

Chambers said the credit agency could further downgrade the national rating depending on whether President Obama and congressional leaders can agree on reducing the deficit."

Yes We Can!

Kick this idiot to the curb in 2012!

They Passed It, Now We Know

Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future. To encourage hiring, Congress should repeal Obamacare.

A recent study by McKinsey & Co. reveals the level of unease felt by employers.

Thirty percent of those polled reported they will definitely or probably stop offering health insurance in the coming years. The study further showed the more aware employers were of the law, the more likely they were to think they would drop coverage for their employees.

Job creators aren’t the only ones left with uncertainty. Also buried in the 2,700-page law is a newly created board of 15 unelected bureaucrats who will have the power to severely limit services available to our nation’s seniors. Unlike many “boards” created in Washington, the Independent Payment Advisory Board’s recommendations to the secretary of health and human services will have the power of law.