Posts Made By: david elosser

They work while we are asleep in the middle of the night. They work while we are celebrating our most precious religious holidays. They buy off votes for their massively unpopular legislation with hundreds of billions of our dollars. And now this...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/12/reid_bill_declares_future_cong_1.asp

"...it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection [of the Reid Health Care Reform Bill]."

David E

" Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives have been pressuring him not to speak out on the "compromise" abortion language in the Senate version of the health care bill...Stupak said he is not alone in being pressured from the White House and the House Democratic leadership – other pro-life Democratic colleagues apparently are, as well. But they plan to hold firm, he said."

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/58921

“We’re getting a lot of pressure not to say anything, to try to compromise this principle or belief,” Stupak said. “[T]hat’s just not us. We’re not going to do that. Members who voted for the Stupak language in the House – especially the Democrats, 64 Democrats that voted for it – feel very strongly about it. It’s been part of who we are, part of our make up. It’s the principle belief that we have. We are not just going to abandon it in the name of health care."

David E

"As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year...California has been particularly hard hit. The latest data show small-business bankruptcies up 81% in the state for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, compared with the previous year.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-smallbiz-bankruptcy22-2009dec22,0,3305684.story

Here's what really gets me- you have this story from the article:

Cecily McAlpine, who filed for bankruptcy protection for her Cold Stone Creamery franchise this spring, said the experience was humiliating but she had no choice. Receipts at the fledgling Compton ice cream shop plunged dramatically during the recession, and by late 2008 she was paying her employees out of her pocket.
"When the refrigerator died, that was it; I'd just had it," McAlpine said. "That was the day I broke. I just started throwing stuff away." McAlpine recently withdrew her bankruptcy filing after selling all the store equipment and paying off her creditors. She is slowly paying off some back-rent and utility debt, and will officially dissolve her business in the next couple of weeks, she said.

And then you have Obama's solution to her problem:

Recognizing the problems of business owners like McAlpine, the Obama administration has proposed using federal stimulus money to help funnel more loans to small businesses. The White House has also asked Congress to eliminate capital gains taxes for one year on new investments in small-business stock, and called for a new tax incentive to encourage small businesses to hire more employees.

Yeah, right. If Ms McAlpine had just borrowed a couple a hundred grand or hired 10 more people, that would have saved her business! Mr Obama, you just don't have a clue, do you? And someone needs to tell that brilliant LA Times writer Nathan Olivarez-Giles that a capital gains tax cut wouldn't have helped McAlpine because she had lost all her capital. Besides, Obama ain't getting no captial gains tax cuts; there's a bill currently in the House to double them! How's that hope and change, California?

David E

From the Wall Street Journal:
"Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If so, it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704254604574614183270356274.html

Prior to 2007, with Republicans in control, reconciliation of House and Senate bills took place in public. Since the Democrats took over control of Congress in 2007, when opposing bills needed reconciling, "Rather than appoint members to a public conference committee, those measures were "ping-ponged" -- i.e. changes to reconcile the two versions were transmitted by messenger between the two houses as the final product was crafted behind closed doors solely by the leadership."

David E

"White said the out-of-state company got the contract because there were no local companies that could do the work."

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2009/12/29/news/300city.txt

David E

"Belief that the bad guys are winning the War on Terror is now at its highest level in over two years, and nearly half of U.S. voters say America is not safer than it was before 9/11."

"Just 18% believed the terrorists were winning the week President Obama took office in January. At that time, 55% said America and its allies were on top. Now, just 36% say the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror. Only once since July 2007 have voters had less confidence."

"However, 47% say it is not [safer since before 9/11], [t]hat latter figure marks a nine-point jump from earlier in the month and is the highest negative finding on the question since Rasmussen Reports began surveying on it in 2002."

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/war_on_terror_update

This can be a loaded question (no pun intended) as the general public is not savy to everything that goes on WRT our national security. President Bush admitted that there were some domestic terror attacks that were thwarted, so clearly we are always at danger. OTOH there have been two successful terror attacks this year that were not thwarted by anyone in the Obama administration.

David E

Item 1) "When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer," he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. "I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal -- read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up," Tenet wrote in his memoirs."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/605iidws.asp

Item 2) In January of this year President Obama decided to suspend military tribunals of captured terrorists, leading many to believe that this would lead to terrorists being read their Miranda rights when captured on the battlefield:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Security/Default.aspx?id=394756

Item 3) On March 22nd of this year, on 60 Minutes show aired by CBS, President Obama said this (quote): "Now, do these [terrorist] folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not."

Item 4) June 18th 2009: "The Justice Department confirmed last week that FBI agents in Afghanistan are reading Miranda warnings to suspected terrorists captured there, a practice that Republican congressmen this week branded as "crazy" and "stupid."...[This] contradicts what President Barack Obama said in March, when he indicated that Miranda rights did not apply to terror suspects captured overseas."
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/49738

David E

"Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere...In contradiction to some recent studies, [Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol] finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm

Won't stop the Crap And Trade crowd though...
David E

After learning that releasing Gitmo prisoners during the Bush administration was a deadly mistake, and while knowing all along that Yemen was a hotbed for Al Qaeda breeding, the Obama administration decided that one of the best ways to fight terrorism was to continue to release Gitmo prisoners back to Yemen. Obama released six prisoners to Yemen last month, December 2009. Recently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “Obviously, we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region.” No kidding Mrs C! Did Elenor Roosevelt help you with that one?

How To Fight A War, the Saudi Way:
A number of prisoners released over the past few years have ended up in Saudi Arabia, where they where they went through the Saudi's extensive Rehabilitation Progam (aka the "Saudi High Intensity Training"). The Saudi's rehabilite their former Gitmo prisoners, in part, by giving them a car, a job, and a wife. I kid you not.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6975971.ece

David E

From AP: "Counterterrorism officials have moved the names of dozens of people onto the terror watch list and the no-fly list after reviewing a massive government database of suspected terrorists."

"An intelligence official says the government scrubbed thousands of names in its database after an attempted bombing aboard a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9D139BG1&show_article=1

Kinda makes one wonder why they didn't do that, say, last January?

David E