Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken

[Soul Crusher]

March 15, 2011
None of the Above on Energy
By Jeffrey Folks



In terms of energy policy, as in so much else, the Obama administration is in leaderless disarray. The only thing it seems capable of doing is delaying and shutting down energy production.  As soon as some promising new supply pops up, like the shale gas capable of fueling America for the next century, the Obama EPA is there launching an environmental study designed to regulate and restrict it. At the moment when new energy supplies are most needed, there are no plans to increase supplies -- only plans to reduce them. One would almost think that this President wants to bring America to its knees.


Meanwhile, for the Chinese and other fast-growing economies, it's full speed ahead on new energy projects. Chinese oil companies are pursuing new oil and gas exploration on a global scale, even in the mainland U.S. They are buying up oil and gas leases in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, including just offshore Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.


But China is not limiting its options to petroleum. It is acquiring vast reserve of coal, importing U.S. coal that environmentalists have put off-limits to electric utilities in the United States and securing ownership of coal mines in Australia, Asia, and Latin America. The purchase of Felix Resources by China's Yanzhou Coal in December 2009 was the largest coal acquisition in Australian history, but it was by no means the last. Asian buyers are now competing for another big prize: Whitehaven Coal. Soon, even if American policymakers were to wake up to the threat we face, there will be no more major coal properties available for purchase.


The situation with uranium supplies is equally dire. At present the U.S. is the largest nuclear energy producer in the world, but China is out to change that. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, China plans to build 60 large nuclear reactors by the end of this decade, and it is acquiring the uranium necessary to fuel these facilities along with its existing plants. Chinese state-owned companies are bidding on uranium-rich companies around the world, including Kalahari Minerals, owner of large uranium deposits in Namibia.


In response, the Obama administration has not approved a single one among the pending 21 applications for new nuclear facilities in the U.S. With no action on the part of regulators, American companies are loath to acquire rights to new supplies of uranium. They have been largely absent from bidding for the world's remaining supplies.


This review is not intended as a criticism of China, which is simply pursuing the kind of coherent, long-range energy policy that is lacking at present in the U.S. China is acting in the rational self-interest of its people, and its people will reap the reward of this effort in the decades ahead.


Obama's policy, on the other hand, is simply "none of the above." America will also reap the rewards of its energy policy under Obama and Energy Secretary Chu. With no additional nuclear facilities under development, with the withering away of domestic coal-power production, and with no access to major new Alaskan and offshore oil supplies, America faces a future energy shock of unprecedented proportions.  Once the effects of Obama's restrictions on drilling begin to be felt, today's gas prices are going to seem like a blue-light special.


The question is, why does Obama want to forestall access to so many of our energy resources just at the moment when gas prices are hitting $4 a gallon and experts are predicting they will go higher? Either the President is out of his mind, or he is intent on wrecking our future. Since spiraling gas prices are also going to hinder Obama's re-election, it is a difficult question to answer. The truth may be that he just hasn't thought about it. He's too busy shooting hoops and hosting rappers like Jay-Z in the White House Situation Room.


Unless reversed by a conservative president and Congress following 2012, Obama's failed energy policy will have devastating consequences. Americans will pay much higher prices for energy in the future, as high as $12 a gallon for gas and four times the current price of about 15 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. More important yet, high energy prices will sap economic growth, and slower growth will result in structurally high unemployment, declining living standards, and a weakening of our national defense. Maybe this is what Obama wants -- I believe that it is -- but it is not what most Americans hope to see.


Slow growth and a weakened military may not seem like such an awful fate to the fashionable idiots on the left. It is, in fact, exactly what they are seeking: an America brought to its knees, one weak little nation among many, no more powerful or influential than Bolivia or Peru. A nation that sits happily on the sidelines of history, content to consume its "fair share" of the earth's resources and live at the average level of the world's economy, somewhere between Nigeria and Moldova.


That is the happy future that Obama has in mind for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A pair of plastic sandals and a government-issued bike for transport, a bowl of rice for supper, a three-month wait for a visit to the physician's assistant, and a hundred-square-foot apartment with a wall screen permanently tuned to MSNBC.


There are some Americans who are born communists -- those who fancy the Mao suit, the masochistic fall-into-line mentality, the fondness for self-abasement and diminishment. These natural-born comrades, eager to hand over their liberties to some vicious and inscrutable dictator, must like what they see in Obama. The rest of us will continue fighting to preserve our liberties.


Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/none_of_the_above_on_energy.html


 at March 15, 2011 - 08:05:36 AM CDT

[Soul Crusher]

Tel Aviv Journal: Obama’s Scandalous Approach to the Middle East
Martin Peretz
March 15, 2011 | 12:00 am


.What is now clear is that the only help Barack Obama was willing to give to the Arabs was his coldness to the Jewish nation. Or, and I want to be frank, his hostile indifference to Israel. It has been a not quite sub rosa sub-theme of his presidency since the beginning. He had not the slightest idea or maybe couldn’t care less that Zion and Zionism meant the retrieval of the Jews from a harrowing if remarkable history. The president is of the generation—or perhaps the temperament—that knows not the “long is the road” Hebrew story of national philosophical rebirth in the context of 1848, the saga of the pogroms, the disenchantment with bourgeois liberalism, the stubborn persistence of blood libels and its cumulative consequence in the unrivaled catastrophe of the Nazi ghettoes and concentration camps after which, not miraculously but conscientiously, a dispersed community was reborn as a commonwealth and as a state. Unlike the Palestinian pretense, it did not have even to be reimagined, save for its old scriptural language which is now at once practical and poetic. (The literate high Arabic language cutting across cultures, as prosaic Arabic does not, also has its own beauties, both tranquil and heroic, even to someone who reads it only in translation.)

Now, please do not be troubled by my insistent questioning of the authenticity of “the Palestinian nation.” It doesn’t mean that Israel should continue to hold much of the West Bank, and it does not mean that the present voices of the Palestinians are inauthentic either. But they happen to reach for different ends. Most states in the world (and in the United Nations) are not properly nation states, by which I mean that they are mostly accretions of tribal groups—which does not, of course, necessarily translate into “primitive”—or clans, the loyalties of which are to their specific own rather than to the wider rhetorical assemblages that are represented in world politics. Perhaps it is pointless to cavil against an international system when what strains it most is the hostility within rather than among its constituent parts. Zimbabwe and “Democratic” Congo, for example. Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, even Jordan: Antagonistic visions animate each of these polities. Like Palestine. Give it a decade or two, and the same will be said for Saudi Arabia. Already the tiny wealthy but all less-wealthy-than-they-were-two-years-ago emirates cannot count their own native-born as a majority and that is because they are in most of them a small minority. It’s a curious point: But the 22-member Arab League and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference usually vote as one. It’s within the individual states and statelets where the rancor expressed is truly felt.

What is curious about Obama’s infatuation with Arab societies (and with non-Arab Muslim societies, too) is that he knows just about nothing about them. And I don’t just mean their histories or theology. What’s clear is that the president grasps pretty-close-to-zero about the actualities of these states, their economic and social realities, the stratifications by tribe and sex, the race between literacy and population growth, the synchrony of tradition with bureaucracy, the stultification of education, the militarization of these polities, their abhorrence of liberal ideas. And the fact is that Obama is neither fast-spirited nor supple. He certainly was blind-sided by the turbulence and torment that has wracked the region over more than two months now. Why could he not see the new amidst the crumbling old? And why was he also not liberated a bit from the old order to which he had mysteriously attached himself?

The fact is that Obama is a victim of a certain sort of “orientalism” transmitted to him by his friend Rashid Khalidi carrying the message of Edward Said. Except that this form of the dogma, now hopefully on its last legs in the academy, does not idealize the vision of the imperials. It idealizes whatever Arab reality happens to have survived western imperialism. Among them is the standing of the hijab or burqa. This is part of the civilizational conflict in the world of Islam and, as I have pointed out at least twice, Obama has spoken up for the looking-backwards end of the dispute. Why should he not, in Cairo and at the White House, have defended the modernizers instead? This would have put him on the side of the future, though if he didn’t want to intrude on an internal Muslim struggle he could have simply shut up. But no. This president thinks he speaks with authority on any topics he chooses to address.

Alright, so Obama patters on about Koranic theology or whispers arcane words, throaty or mellifluous, in Arabic. Wow! He is a vernacular panderer to one group and then another, including the Jews. As anybody current with the conflicts in Arab and Islamic culture understands, the place of memorization in the education of the young is right there at the top. Anybody who has read the various volumes of the United Nations Arab Development Report also understands why this is so. Well, the horrendous prevalence of illiteracy in these countries, where the Prophet’s scripture is hammered into the heads of boys (and now sometimes girls, too), testifies to the deformity of the entire system. Being “progressives,” Barack and Michelle are more than likely to disapprove of rote learning in American schools. But since the president takes each and every opportunity he can to fawn over antiquarian Islam he has also made himself heard on this vexing issue of teaching and knowing.

We now know from many scholars, and especially Dan Diner in his book Lost in the Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still,about which I’ve written several times, that it is not Islam per sebut the very restraints on print and the idolization of language, among other factors, that are responsible for the benighted state of intellectual achievement in that orbit. A brand new book by Duke economic historian Timor Kuran, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, which I half-read when I was home in Cambridge a fortnight ago, argues that the rules of the religious structure inhibited virtually to a standstill the development of economic and social forces in the region. Kuran ends on an optimistic note and it is based on the near-collapse of the societies without oil and the distorted growth of those with oil. The thesis (and I mean no disrespect): It’s so bad that it has to get better. Of course, it is now mostly about education, which means openness to the new. Society must sign the pledge.

Actually, then, the most shocking thing Obama ever said in my view had little intrinsic or concrete implications for U.S. foreign policy. But it was an endorsement of the awful vocation of memorization of text. He was announcing the appointment of Rashad Hussain, an apparently quite talented student of Middle Eastern affairs, to be the president’s envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Now, the truth is that the Conference ain’t really much of anything. But it is, by the administration’s own admission, an instrument of its blah-blah diplomacy.

Here is the beginning of the “White House Blog” item of March 7, 2010, posted by Pradeep Ramamurthy, senior director for Global Engagement at the National Security Council:

During his speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, the President articulated a vision for a New Beginning with Muslims around the world -- one based on mutual respect and the pursuit of partnerships in areas of mutual interest.  Around the world, from Rabat to Jakarta, the United States is engaging Muslim communities around the world and building mutually beneficial partnerships that expand opportunity.  As part of our commitment to dialogue, our embassies have held roundtables with thousands of students, civil society leaders and entrepreneurs, among others, and senior officials like Secretary Clinton have held televised townhalls.

Over the past nine months, the Administration has been delivering on the specific commitments the President made in his speech – from appointing science envoys, creating a Technology and Innovation Fund, and expanding exchanges to hosting a Summit on Entrepreneurship in April.  But, the U.S. Government has done far more than deliver the specific commitments from President Obama's speech.  For example, while we have partnered with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to eradicate polio, we also worked with Saudi Arabia to prevent the spread of H1N1 influenza during hajj.

The speech in Cairo expressed an overarching vision for our engagement.  To help pursue that vision, the President recently appointed Rashad Hussain to be his Special Envoy to the OIC.  Rashad has played an important role in developing the New Beginning we seek with Muslim communities around the world.  In his new position, he will continue to play a key role in expanding our engagement with Muslims around the world.

And the president added to Hussain’s credentials in his own statement by announcing that his designee was also “a hafiz (memorization student) of the Quaran,” as if this were a high distinction rather than a commonplace. After all, millions and millions of clever boys, many of them actually illiterate and without understanding any of the Arabic in which the holy book is written, have committed the text to their heads. Maybe I am being persnickety in pointing out these small details of Obama’s presentation. But they are telling.

Especially in contrast with his palsied response to the historic revolution of the Arabs that for a few weeks seemed unstoppable. Let’s face it: Obama is petrified by the unprecedented newness emerging in the desert. In Tunisia and Egypt the crowd moved quickly against the regime which meant at least that the old regime would be gone. What will happen next is anyone’s guess, except for American intelligence which has finally lost its credentials for both analysis and prophecy. It was probably the CIA that put us on the side of Hosni Mubarak in the early days of the Tahrir Square manifestations. The president was quiet and then was just sheer bluster, not decisive and not imaginative either. He was not a man of history. Except to move it backwards.

If any power has allowed Muammar Qaddafi, tyrant and psychotic, to remain in power it is the clinical allergy to power of our president. He is weak-willed and weak-kneed. Here, after all, was a brave people who’d been brutalized for more than four decades, been run by gangsters and still had the clarity of the lure of liberty. They’d also been unlucky in their northern neighbors across the Mediterranean, Italy and France, who had maintained the vocation of imperials for many decades. Despite this and perhaps because of it Paris and Rome have now dumped their long-time partner in crimes against humanity. Of course, Washington has finally proclaimed Tripoli an illegitimate government. As if a statement without practical action would have any real resonance.

Qaddafi possesses the power of any dictator, men in arms who will follow him and behave brutally. They are waging a war against the rebels but also against the innocent. Bombing from the air without targets to create chaos and dread. Pace Robert Gates, a no-fly zone would have imperiled nothing except the colonel’s air force.

But the American refusal to recognize the provisional government in Benghazi is the true betrayal of the Arab revolution, of an Arab people and of Arab hope. For were the president to announce that the U.S. sees the revolutionaries and rebels as the legitimate representatives of their long betrayed people, some $30 billion in assets in our country would be theirs. Perhaps more. This added to the other enormous holdings of the Libyan people in French, Italian, and British banks could make that people free.

Martin Peretz is the editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.

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Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/85234/peretz-israel-palestinian-obama

[Soul Crusher]

White House Urges Supreme Court Not to Jump Into Health Care Law Cases Prematurely
FOX News ^ | 3/15/11 | Lee Ross


The Obama administration told the Supreme Court on Monday night it should stay away from a high-profile challenge to the 2010 health care law until after a lower court has had a chance to review the case. (Snip) In his filing last month, Cuccinelli said there's a "palpable consensus" that the high court will ultimately have to pass judgment on the merits of President Obama's health care law and should do so without delay. Furthermore, Cuccinelli argues that his case involves "pure issues of constitutional law" that appellate judges on the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will be unable


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Obama Taping NCAA brackets today for ESPN.
Politico ^ | March 15, 2011 | Mike Allen



Text Size -+reset Listen By MIKE ALLEN | 03/15/11 8:30 AM EDT

PRESIDENT OBAMA is taping his NCAA picks today, and they’ll be revealed tomorrow on ESPN. … NATE SILVER’s March Madness bracket http://nyti.ms/fc2qH9 ... At 11:25 a.m., Obama will tape interviews from the Map Room with KOAT Albuquerque, KDKA Pittsburgh and WVEC Hampton Roads on education reform and the need to fix No Child Left Behind.


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

March 15, 2011 10:51 AM PDT
White House wants new copyright law crackdown
by Declan McCullagh




The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.

In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws.

 
Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, with Vice President Joe Biden during an event last year.

(Credit: Whitehouse.gov) The report was prepared by Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator who received Senate confirmation in December 2009, and represents a broad tightening of many forms of intellectual property law including ones that deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and overseas royalties for copyright holders. (See CNET's report last month previewing today's white paper.)

Some of the highlights:

• The White House is concerned that "illegal streaming of content" may not be covered by criminal law, saying "questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works." To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to "clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances."

• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move "would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses."

• Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's generally illegal to distribute hardware or software--such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France--that can "circumvent" copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to "inform rightholders," "provide samples of such devices," and assist "them in bringing civil actions."

The term "fair use" does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that "foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts." (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.)

The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010.

Rob Calia, a senior director at the Chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center, said we "strongly support the white paper's call for Congress to clarify that criminal copyright infringement through unauthorized streaming, is a felony. We know both the House and Senate are looking at this issue and encourage them to work closely with the administration and other stakeholders to combat this growing threat."

In October 2008, President Bush signed into law the so-called Pro IP ACT, which created Espinel's position and increased penalties for infringement, after expressing its opposition to an earlier version.

Unless legislative proposals--like one nearly a decade ago implanting strict copy controls in digital devices--go too far, digital copyright tends not to be a particularly partisan topic. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, near-universally disliked by programmers and engineers for its anti-circumvention section, was approved unanimously in the U.S. Senate.

At the same time, Democratic politicians tend to be a bit more enthusiastic about the topic. Biden was a close Senate ally of copyright holders, and President Obama picked top copyright industry lawyers for Justice Department posts. Last year, Biden warned that "piracy is theft."

No less than 78 percent of political contributions from Hollywood went to Democrats in 2008, which is broadly consistent with the trend for the last two decades, according to OpenSecrets.org.

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Declan McCullagh
 
Full Profile
E-mail Declan McCullagh
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html#ixzz1GhTUvePv

[Soul Crusher]

Medicare and Medicaid Made $70 Billion in ‘Improper Payments’ Last Year—More Than All Spending by Homeland Security and State Departments Combined
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey


Dr. Donald Berwick, whom President Obama recess-appointed as director of CMS. (AP Photo/Goodman Media International, Inc.)

(CNSNews.com) - The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the federal health-care agency that is a key bureaucracy in implementing Obamacare—made at least $70.5 billion in “improper payments” last year.

These improper federal health-care payments amounted to more than the combined total of $68.3 billion spent by the entire Homeland Security and the State departments last year, which spent $44.5 billion and $23.8 billion respectively according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Medicare made at least $48 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010 and Medicaid made $22.5 billion, according to written testimony on "Medicare and Medicaid Fraud, Waste and Abuse" presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management by Kathleen King, director of health care for the Government Accountability Office.

The full amount of improper payments made by Medicare may be higher than $48 billion because the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not yet estimated the dollar amount of improper payments made by Medicare Part D, the prescription drug-benefit program.

“An improper payment,” said the GAO, “is any payment that should not have been made or that was made in an incorrect amount (including overpayments and underpayments) under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements.”

Total combined federal expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid in fiscal 2010 were $781.6, according to the U.S. Treasury. That means the $70.5 billion in improper payments Medicare and Medicaid made during the year equaled 8.95 percent of all Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.

“GAO has designated Medicare and Medicaid as high-risk programs because they are particularly vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and improper payments (payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount),” the GAO's King told the Senate subcommittee. “Medicare is considered high-risk in part because of its complexity and susceptibility to improper payments, and Medicaid because of concerns about the adequacy of its fiscal oversight to prevent inappropriate spending.”

A key element of Obamacare provides government health-insurance to lower income people by increasing the income threshold for Medicaid eligibility and putting more people on the Medicaid rolls.


http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/medicare-and-medicaid-made-70-billion-im

[Soul Crusher]

EDITORIAL: Shipwrecked by the EPA
Regulations leave coastal economy dead in the water
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/15/shipwrecked-by-the-epa


The Washington Times
7:10 p.m., Tuesday, March 15, 2011


Tugboats bring the disabled cruise ship Carnival Splendor to dock in San Diego on Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

Radical greens are using the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan as an excuse to peddle their wacko, pet theories and push for more stringent environmental regulation. Such efforts literally ship U.S. jobs overseas.

On Thursday, Carnival Cruise Lines announced it will move Elation from Mobile, Ala., to Port Canaveral, Fla., so the ship can spend more time in international waters. The culprit is higher fuel costs, which will be exacerbated when the Environmental Protection Agency begins enforcing tough new emissions standards next year. “The Caribbean nations southeast of Florida are not included in the [regulation] zone,” the Mobile Press-Register explained. “That means a cruise ship leaving from Port Canaveral would need to burn the cleaner, more-expensive fuel for much less time than the same ship leaving from New Orleans or Mobile.”

Carnival can’t be faulted for adapting its operations to offset new regulatory costs. Elation’s new berth is based on realistic business factors. The EPA admits the rules could boost ship-operation costs by 3 percent. However, the EPA ignores the real-world consequences left in the wake of its bureaucratic dictates. Cruise-industry analysts reported in 2008 that Elation annually generated 2,130 jobs and $122 million for southern Alabama. Even half of that would be a major boost for a coastline still reeling from Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, a catastrophic oil spill and other economic blows over the past few years.

New emissions regs don’t even make sense from a tree-hugger standpoint because other nations aren’t bound by them. Given that Elation ditched Alabama so it could burn “cleaner” fuel for a shorter time, spending more hours in foreign waters means the oceanliner will be “dirtier” fuel for a longer time. Overall, by green logic, Mother Earth will be worse off, not better, because of EPA meddling.

The new standards will hit many industries hard. According to the EPA, the average 20-foot shipping container will cost $18 more to transport, raising the price of American products. The middle of a recession is no time for government to undermine U.S. competitiveness.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

[Soul Crusher]

Wholesale prices rise 1.6 pct. Biggest jump in food costs in 36 years (Dollar devaluation)
WashingtonPost ^
Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:59:34



WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department says the Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February, double the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January’s 0.5 percent rise.

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


________________________ ________________________ ____________-


QE2 bitches!   

[Soul Crusher]

EPA proposes regulating mercury from coal plants
Posted on March 16, 2011 at 12:24 pm by Matthew Tresaugue in Coal, Environmental Protection Agency
508  |   7 Share 2  share E-mail .
Image: Fotolia
SEE ALSO:

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/03/16/epa-proposes-regulating-mercury-from-coal-plants





Mass. coal plants affected by EPA proposal.Regulations, cheap gas could curb Texas coal plants.Regulations, cheap gas could curb

Texas coal plants, experts say.Regulations, cheap gas could curb Texas coal plants, experts say.Regulations, cheap gas could curb


Texas coal plants, experts say..Federal environmental regulators proposed new rules today for mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants — a move that could cost industry billions of dollars while preventing thousands of premature deaths a year.

The new standards, which the Environmental Protection Agency issued under court order, would require many older power plants to install scrubbers and other pieces of costly equipment to reduce emissions of the pollutants.

The EPA estimates the cost of compliance would be more than $10 billion a year for utilities and other operators of power plants but would bring $140 billion in annual health benefits.

matthew.tresaugue@chron.com

[Soul Crusher]

Obama award for ‘deep commitment’ to transparency postponed
The Daily Caller ^ | 3/16/11 | Steven Nelson

________________________ ________________________ ___________--


The White House postponed an event scheduled for Wednesday afternoon where President Obama was supposed to receive an award for a commitment to transparency due to unspecified “changes to the president’s schedule.”

The award was to be presented by organizers of the Freedom of Information Day conference in conjunction with “Sunshine Week” for the president’s “deep commitment to an open and transparent government—of, by, and for the people.”

The Associated Press reported this week that despite pledges of increased transparency, the Obama administration last year responded to fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the year before.

In 2010 there were 544,360 requests filed at the 35 largest government agencies. The AP reported that the administration “refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

[Fury]

Obama award for ‘deep commitment’ to transparency postponed
The Daily Caller ^ | 3/16/11 | Steven Nelson

________________________ ________________________ ___________--


The White House postponed an event scheduled for Wednesday afternoon where President Obama was supposed to receive an award for a commitment to transparency due to unspecified “changes to the president’s schedule.”

The award was to be presented by organizers of the Freedom of Information Day conference in conjunction with “Sunshine Week” for the president’s “deep commitment to an open and transparent government—of, by, and for the people.”

The Associated Press reported this week that despite pledges of increased transparency, the Obama administration last year responded to fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the year before.

In 2010 there were 544,360 requests filed at the 35 largest government agencies. The AP reported that the administration “refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

(Politico) — President Obama’s only event at the White House that isn’t closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he’ll accept an award for being open to the press.

According to his public schedule, Obama has four behind-closed-doors meetings from 10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m.: his daily briefing, a talk with the USAID administrator, a session with senior advisers, and a huddle with his defense secretary. All of the meets are in the Oval Office, and all of them are “closed press,” the White House says.

But at 2:55 p.m., Obama will emerge to “accept an award from a coalition of good government groups and transparency advocates to recognize ‘his deep commitment to an open and transparent government — of, by, and for the people’ in conjunction with Sunshine Week,” the White House said in guidance to reporters.

And, importantly: “There will be a pool spray at the top.”

The White House didn’t specify what Obama will say, if anything, when he accepts the award. But he probably won’t mention that his administration acted on fewer requests for information last year even as it was asked for more, a tally documented by the AP.

And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view.

We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.





Hahahaha. Talk about a contradiction.

[Soul Crusher]

We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.


________________________ _______


God forbid the messiah ever have to deal with an unscripted moment without the aid of the teleprompter.

[Fury]

We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.


________________________ _______


God forbid the messiah ever have to deal with an unscripted moment without the aid of the teleprompter.

He's a master orator! 

[Soul Crusher]

And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view.


________________________ ________________________ ____-


More lies.   I posted a long story about how his aides are using flats all around DC to hide their meetings with lobbyists 24/7.

Funny - none of TK jumped on me for that one.   

[Fury]

And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view.


________________________ ________________________ ____-


More lies.   I posted a long story about how his aides are using flats all around DC to hide their meetings with lobbyists 24/7.

Funny - none of TK jumped on me for that one.   

They're too busy posting about Palin 50,000 times a day.

[Soul Crusher]

Obama’s OMB nominee admits proposed 2012 budget does not pay down deficit
By Amanda Carey - The Daily Caller   7:03 PM 03/17/2011



 President Obama’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget  (OMB) tried, but failed to defend the proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 in a Senate Budget Committee hearing Thursday afternoon.

Obama’s nominee, Heather Higginbottom, crumbled under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the committee, about the accuracy of statements the president and OMB Director Jacob Lew have made that the proposed budget will not add to the national debt.

The more than six-minute long questioning consisted of numerous exchanges that saw Higginbottom trying to dodge direct questions regarding the impact the president’s budget would have on the national debt:

Sessions: Did Mr. Lew or the President of the United States, when they made that statement “we will not be adding to the debt,” did they say, “by the way American people, what we really mean is some arcane idea about not counting interest payments the United States must make as part of our debt?” Did they say that?

Higginbottom: I’m not sure exactly what they did say.

Sessions: Well if they didn’t say that, would that be an accurate statement?

Higginbottom: The interest costs on what we’re borrowing add to the debt…

A few minutes later:

Sessions: You’re saying that what the president really meant but that he didn’t say, is that one year or so, that you calculate, if you don’t count the interest… then we can tell the American people we’re not adding to our debt?

Do you think that’s a legitimate way to discuss with the American people the debt crisis we now face?

Higginbottom:  …It puts us on a path to stabilize the debt as a percentage of our economy, which is a very important first step in eventually being able to able to pay it down, which is the large task in front of us.

Sessions goes on to ask Higginbottom if she knows the last three years of the president’s ten-year budget proposal all have rising deficits. Higginbottom – the president’s nominee for the second highest position at the OMB — replied with, “I don’t have the deficit table in front of me.”

Sessions’ questioning ends with him pointing out that the president’s proposed budget for FY2012 does not have one year where the deficit falls below $600 billion.

“That is correct,” Higginbottom confirms.


WATCH: Sessions grills Higginbottom


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/17/obamas-omb-nominee-admits-proposed-2012-budget-does-not-pay-down-deficit/#ixzz1Gv5NRMvN

[Soul Crusher]

Heather Higginbottom's Socialist Connection
new zeal ^ | 3/18/11 | Trevor Loudon



Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, faced a tough interrogation yesterday from Ranking committee member and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions during a hearing with the Senate Budget committee.

Perhaps Senator Sessions should ask Heather Higginbottom to explain this photo, taken from here

Heather Higginbottom, podium. Left to right William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark, Bob Haynes. D.S.A. logo on wall center right

The photo above shows Heather Higginbottom, while serving as a legislative assistant to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, addressing an October 30, 2001, Boston Democratic Socialists of America organized forum "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform", with William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark and Bob Haynes.

William Julius Wilson and Jack Clark were confirmed D.S.A. Marxists. Bob Haynes is a long time Boston D.S.A. affiliate - at least.

Incidentally William Julian Wilson spoke at another D.S.A. forum, on February 25 1996, in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago.


(Excerpt) Read more at newzeal.blogspot.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailycaller/20110318/pl_dailycaller/hamasassociatedcairapplaudedbywhitehouse

Hamas-associated CAIR applauded by White House
The Daily Caller Neil Munro - The Daily Caller – Fri Mar 18, 1:58 am ET


________________________ ________________________ ______


White House officials have applauded advocacy efforts by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even though top FBI managers refuse to meet its leaders, the council has been judged by courts to have been associated with the Islamic terror group Hamas, and several of its employees and members have been jailed or expelled for jihadi-related terrorist offenses since 2001.

CAIR was publicly applauded at a Mar. 10 White House event by Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement, for its work with MTV to counter “bullying.” “Bullying can be prevented if we all take action,” said Jarrett, as she cited the MTV project, and named CAIR as a partner.

After lauding the National Education Association, Cartoon Network and a litany of other Democratic-affiliated advocacy groups and companies that are part of the White House’s “anti-bullying” campaign to reshape children’s opinions, Jarrett thanked MTV for “launching a new coalition that will work to fight bullying and intolerance online.” The coalition partners include the Hispanic advocacy group, “the National Council of La Raza, the Anti-Defamation League, and the [Council on] American-Islamic Relations, GLAAD and many others,” Jarrett said.

“There’s no controversy,” said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s press secretary. To advance CAIR’s causes, including “cyber-bullying,” he said, “we do what we think is necessary…what other people do is up to them.”

White House officials declined to respond to inquiries from The Daily Caller.

[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]


On Feb. 11, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House hearing that the FBI does “not have a relationship with CAIR [because] there are individuals in CAIR with whom we had issues with and continue to have issues with.” When pressed by Republican New York Rep. Peter King, Mueller added that “there are occasions when individuals who may be either loosely associated with CAIR or may have attended a CAIR event that we do have relationships with… [and] on some occasions, we may be at [events] or with persons who have an affiliation with CAIR.”

The issues that Mueller referred to include the 2008 Holy Land Fund trial, where evidence showed that the most prominent Muslim advocacy groups in the United States had associations with Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. The tied groups include the Islamic Society of North America, which is an umbrella organization for many Muslim groups, and the North American Islamic Trust, which owns the titles to many U.S. mosques. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas,” Judge Jorge Solis said in a July 2009 ruling.

CAIR is connected with Hamas through its director, Nihad Awad, who was a co-founder in 1994 of the Islamic Association for Palestine. Documents subsequently presented in court by the federal government showed the IAP was the U.S. propaganda and advocacy arm of Hamas, according to data provided by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, founded by journalist Steve Emerson. In turn, the IAP was one element of a larger circle of organizations founded by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1993, these various groups met in Philadelphia and proposed the creation of a media-advocacy organization, according to a FBI tape-recording of the meeting. Awad attended the meeting, as did another CAIR co-founder, Omar Ahmed, who declared that “if Muslims engage in political activism in America and started to be concerned with Congress and public relations we will have an entry point to use them to pressure Congress and the decision-makers in America,” according documents provided by Emerson’s IPT.

Since then, Hamas has instigated and applauded many bloody attacks on Jews, including suicide-bombs detonated on buses and in restaurants. For example, the March 11 killing of the Fogel family, including one infant and a 3 year-old, was endorsed in the Arabic-language portion of Hamas’ website, alqassam.ps, according to a translation provided by a U.S. website, translating-jihad. “Our correspondent in Nablus reported that a Palestinian mujahid [Islamic warrior] was able to break into the usurper [settlement] of ‘Itamar’ south of Nablus in the occupied [West] Bank, and stabbed five Zionist usurpers,” the article said. Another article, published on the Hamas-tied felesteen.ps website, declared the murders to be a “heroic operation,” according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

As of March 17, CAIR’s website did not carry any condemnation of the jihadi attack. The most recent press release displayed on the group’s website was issued March 10, and decried a congressional hearing on Islamic radicalization among Muslim communities.

Hamas has also prompted gays to flee from its Gaza territory. Agudah, an Israeli advocacy group for gays and lesbians, tries to win sanctuary for gays from Gaza who fear they will be executed, as required by Hamas’ application of Islamic law, if they are exposed in Gaza.

CAIR is playing a role in the broad “anti-bullying” campaign by working with the “A Thin Line” project established by the New York-based cable-TV channel MTV. The coalition is intended “to fight bullying and intolerance online,” and it also includes the National Council of La Raza, Anti-Defamation League, and GLAAD. The White House’s website highlighted the MTV project, describing it “a new anti-digital discrimination coalition, which will work with MTV to fight bullying and intolerance online (in partnership with the National Council of La Raza, Anti-Defamation League, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and GLAAD).”

A MTV spokeswoman said they recruited CAIR as part of their effort to build a coalition of minority groups that share a common interest in the reduction of “bullying.” She declined to comment when asked CAIR’s ties to Hamas.

A representative for GLAAD declined to comment about their work with CAIR.

The ADL joined MTV’s group after being reassured that it would play a more central role than CAIR, said Todd Gutnick, ADL’s director of media relations. “We considered this [MTV project] very carefully and decided that despite CAIR, it is central our mission of countering bully and cyber-bullying, and far outweighed any differences we do have” with CAIR, he said. There’s a great deal of anti-Semitism on the Internet, often in comments about American Jews in the news, he said. MTV officials assured the ADL that they would play a greater role in the project than CAIR, he said, adding that “I don’t know what their involvement is with MTV.”

CAIR is part of the MTV project because “American Muslims have the same concerns as other Americans, and cyber-bullying is one of them,” said Hooper.

Like many other activists in the White House’s campaign, Hooper conflated physical bullying and intimidation with routine spoken and online criticism of ideas and behavior, and suggested that CAIR’s critics were violent. “There’s a cottage industry of ‘Muslim-bashers’ who seek on a daily basis to marginalize American Muslims and to demonize Islam,” said Hooper.

The ‘-basher’ phrase was first used by gay-advocates to tar their critics as violent, and is now routinely used by Hooper and other Islamist advocates to portray their critics as violent. ‘Muslim-basher,’ Hooper said, is “colloquial American-English for someone who rhetorically bashes Muslims.”

When asked about CAIR’s view of Hamas, Hooper sent a statement saying “we unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group.” However, CAIR’s statement is ambiguous because Islamists describe Israeli military operations as “terrorism” and their attacks on Israeli civilians as justified “resistance” or “jihad.”

On Friday, a former CAIR official is to be jailed for his work as spy for Saddam Hussein. The sentencing follows the jailing or expulsion of several other former CAIR employees and contractors for terrorism-related offenses.

“We’re on this coalition [with CAIR, but] we’re not working with” CAIR, Gutnick said.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

[Soul Crusher]

CBO: Obama budget worse than projected on 10-year deficit
By Erik Wasson - 03/18/11 02:03 PM ET


http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/150737-cbo-obama-budget-worse-than-claimed-on-deficit?tmpl=component&print=1&page=




The Congressional Budget Office on Friday released its analysis of President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal and found it does less to rein in deficits and the debt than the administration had estimated.

CBO estimates Obama's plan would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion. By 2021, it would increase the debt held by the public to 87 percent of gross domestic product.

The administration, using different methods, estimated budget deficits would total $7.2 trillion over the next 10 years under the 2012 budget. It forecast that total debt in 2021 would be 77 percent of GDP.

[Soul Crusher]

Environment Trumps Health As FDA Ends Sales of Only OTC Asthma Inhaler in U.S.
CNS News ^ | 3/17/11 | Susan Jones



(CNSNews.com) - The only over-the-counter asthma inhaler sold in the United States soon will be banned from store shelves because of environmental concerns, and replacement medications may cost more, the U.S. Food and Drug administration acknowledged.

The FDA announced on Wednesday that Primatene Mist (epinephrine) will be discontinued by the end of the year, as part of an international agreement to phase out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances.

Primatene Mist, approved by the FDA for the temporary relief of occasional symptoms of mild asthma, uses chlorofluorocarbons as a propellant.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

64 Senators Declare Obama AWOL On Deficit, Entitlements
IBD's Capital Hill ^ | 3/18/2011 | Sean Higgins


In a sign of how frustrated members of both parties are with President Obama’s disengagement from the budget debate on Capitol Hill, a supermajority of 64 senators, including Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have signed a letter urging the president to “to engage in a broader discussion about a comprehensive deficit reduction package.”

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., organized the effort. In a conference call with reporters today, Johanns said any hope for broad reform will require leadership from the White House, which the lawmakers haven’t seen so far.


(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.investors.com ...


________________________ ________________________ __________


Unfreaking real.   

who the hell voted for this farce of tha POTUS? 

[Option D]

Environment Trumps Health As FDA Ends Sales of Only OTC Asthma Inhaler in U.S.
CNS News ^ | 3/17/11 | Susan Jones



(CNSNews.com) - The only over-the-counter asthma inhaler sold in the United States soon will be banned from store shelves because of environmental concerns, and replacement medications may cost more, the U.S. Food and Drug administration acknowledged.

The FDA announced on Wednesday that Primatene Mist (epinephrine) will be discontinued by the end of the year, as part of an international agreement to phase out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances.

Primatene Mist, approved by the FDA for the temporary relief of occasional symptoms of mild asthma, uses chlorofluorocarbons as a propellant.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

lmao...obama name isnt even on this one...

[Soul Crusher]

Its his admn pushing this shit.    He is doing crap through regulatory agencies that would never see the light of day if done through the congress.     

[Soul Crusher]

CBO: Obama understates deficits by $2.3 trillion
ap ^ | 03/18/2011 | ap





A new assessment of President Barack Obama's budget released Friday says the White House underestimates future budget deficits by more than $2 trillion over the upcoming decade.

The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama's February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years — an average of almost $1 trillion a year.

Obama's budget saw deficits totaling $7.2 trillion over the same period.

The difference is chiefly because CBO has a less optimistic estimate of how much the government will collect in tax revenues, partly because the administration has rosier economic projections.

But the agency also rejects the administration's claims of more than $300 billion of that savings — to pay for preventing a cut in Medicare payments to doctors — because it doesn't specifying where it would come from. Likewise, CBO fails to credit the White House with an additional $328 billion that would come from unspecified "bipartisan financing" to pay for transportation infrastructure projects such as high speed rail lines and road and bridge construction.

Friday's report actually predicts the deficit for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, won't be as bad as the $1.6 trillion predicted by the administration. But 10 years from now, CBO sees a $1.2 trillion deficit that's almost $400 billion above White House projections.

The White House's goal is to reach a point where the budget is balanced except for interest payments on the $14 trillion national debt. Such "primary balance" occurs when the deficit is about 3 percent of the size of the economy, and economists say deficits of that magnitude are generally sustainable.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Report: U.S. considering strategic outreach to Hezbollah
Haaretz ^ | March 18, 2011 | Haaretz Service



The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is considering reaching out to the political elements in Hezbollah, the Washington Post reported on Friday, stressing that the at this stage it was an intelligence effort, not a policymaking one.

In an opinion piece appearing on the newspaper's online edition, columnist David Ignatius indicated that Washington was considering an effort similar to the one the U.K, implemented "during the 1990s with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army."

"That outreach led to breakthrough peace talks and settlement of a conflict that had been raging for more than a century," Ignatius wrote, adding that several U.S. officials were expected to endorse dialogue with political elements of both Hezbollah and the Taliban in an upcoming intelligence report.

Writing of the effect recent Mideast turmoil may have had on Obama's decision to accept these recommendations, the Washington Post writer said that the "political time bomb ticking away in the [intelligence report] is the question of whether the United States should seek some kind of direct or indirect engagement with Hezbollah — at least with its political wing."

"Officials who support this course argue that the organization is like the IRA or the PLO — with nonmilitary components that can be drawn into a dialogue," Ignatius added.


(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...


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