The most ethical administration in history

What good is it to implement all these ethics standard when you give waivers to everyone who applies for job.

Another 10 get waivers to work for team obama.......

Calling President Obama's Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel "the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history," White House counsel Norm Eisen on Friday announced 10 more waivers for Obama administration officials.

The waivers will allow the officials to participate with persons with whom and entities with which "the appointees formerly had a professional relationship," Eisen wrote, "because there was a compelling public interest in allowing it."

More.......

Tea Party notes

I just got back from the Tea Party at Voice of America Park in West Chester. Like a ding dong, I forgot my digital cameras so I bought a disposable. As a result, I did discover that one hour photo means we'll get around to it when someone shows up for their shift. I'll be posting the photos as soon as I get them back from the one hour photo.

Some notes...

I would put attendance somewhere around 10,000 people in and out during the festivities.

I found it disgusting that not one local news crew could be found on the grounds. You could have 40 people advocating abortion rights in a library and you'd find 10 TV cameras in the room.

The organization that it took to put the program on was impressive. Especially when you have no idea how many people will actually show up for the event. All the volunteers it took to put that together are truly selfless.

I still believe that people still have a misconception about the people who go to these tea parties. For every person at this rally was 10,000 people who couldn't be there because they are the kind of people you won't see on a reality show. They're the people who have to attend a JV football games. They're the people who had to go into the office to finish a project. They're the kind of people who keep informed and vote but don't have time for political rallies. They're the people who pay their taxes, fund their 401k's, don't commit crimes, try to be kind to their neighbor and are sick and tired of being blamed for what's wrong with America.

But maybe, even more than that, there's absolutely no one in the government to defend them.

Barack Obama?
John McCain?
Hilary Clinton?
Bob Taft?
Ted Strickland?
George Voinovich?
Sherrod Brown?
George Bush?

Can you name one politician who actually defends and/or represents the people who carry the load in this country?

I can't.

None the less, the tea parties are an eruption of people who have finally decided to be seen and heard.

I would advise the politicians to watch and listen.

A Soviet immigrant's take

Instead of Obama asking students what they can do for him, why don't they distribute this letter from a Russian immigrant and her observations about our country..........

In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West.

The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy.

Government-controlled health care destroyed human dignity.

Chairman Nikita Khrushchev released facts about Stalin and his purges. People learned of the horrific purge of more than 20 million citizens, murdered as enemies of the state.

Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise. The majority of those immigrants achieved a better life for themselves and their children in this capitalist land.

These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party. The freedom to pursue personal self-interest led to prosperity. Prosperity generated charity, benefiting the collective good.

An absolute must read. Thanks to reader Rick.

Hydrogen Barackside

From reader Bernie

Governor Schwarzenegger - Dumbbell Finder

Too bad he can't find a few billions to reconcile their budget

Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH), Columbus Ohio Mayor duck the details on how to pay for health care

We truly have a culture war

How do you know?

When a group feels empowered enough to pull this one off......

Two radio station towers were toppled early Friday, and the station's manager said an ecoterrorist group's initials were left at the scene. An e-mail to a newspaper said the Earth Liberation Front was responsible.

A sign bearing the letters ELF was found near the towers, said Andy Skotdal, general manager of KRKO Radio in Everett, about 25 miles north of Seattle. The group is a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s.

Hey, maybe Van Jones can appoint these guys to jobs in his Czardom.

More........

Glenn Beck with David Horowitz on Obama's Communist Czars, Part 1

The AP is disgusting

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”

The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.

AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”

The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.

Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed – as was the case with Walter Reed.

“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page

of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”

The four-paragraph letter concluded, “Sincerely,” then had Gates’ signature...

So let me make sure I have this right. They contacted the father twice, he requested they not print the photo and they did anyway.

It's clear they had every intention of printing that photo. The request to the father was a contrived attempt to give them cover. That makes it even more disgusting.

Read the rest here.......

Why people fear the Obama school speech

This is prior to the election.

Give me more cowbell

The David Axelrod solution to all things Obama.......

Why the Obama administration is determined to do the time warp again is easier to decipher. Obama’s advisers think the answer to every problem is more cowbell, if by “cowbell” you mean “Obama.” It’s like Obama guru David Axelrod is the Christopher Walken character from the Saturday Night Live skit about Blue Oyster Cult (if you don’t know the reference, Google “cowbell”).

Every time someone comes up with an alternative to throwing Obama on TV, Axelrod says, “No, no, no. Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription . . . is more Obama!”

But is that really what the doctor ordered?

Obama’s address next week will be his third prime-time appeal in three months and the fifth in his seven-month-old presidency. The networks are chagrined about this, not least because the ratings half-life of these events is severe. (Fox’s broadcast network beat out the other networks by running So You Think You Can Dance instead of his last prime-time press conference.) More relevant, they haven’t done Obama much good.

His July 22 press conference was billed as perhaps Obama’s last chance to save health-care reform. It tanked (partly because Obama’s attack on the Cambridge police dominated the press). Afterward, public support for Obamacare dropped significantly. A Pew poll taken that week found that more people opposed the proposals being considered by Congress than supported them, and that Obama’s overall approval had dropped 7 points from the previous month. Other polls showed similar declines.

Now, more than a month later, things look even worse. The obvious solution? Even more cowbell.

Read the rest........

FOX News Allstars: Obama's Communist Green Czar Van Jones Will Be Gone By Monday

These are the people populating the Obama administration.

Nice..........

Obama's lost one

Of the relatives on the immediate side of my family, only one person voted for The One.

Note to Obama. Don't count on that vote in 2012.

Asked what it was that she didn't like about Obama the quote was, "everything".

I won't go into details about our conversation, outside of saying that who he is versus what he sold is a big problem.

What I find most sad, is that this is from a family with democratic roots. It goes back to Reagan's line "I didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me!"

Life in "Progress" City

From the city of Atlantic City, who hasn't had a conservative run the city since Brontosaurus roamed the land.........

Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 people who worked on his unsuccessful mayoral campaign this spring were indicted Thursday on charges they conspired to commit election fraud during the June Democratic primary through a variety of schemes involving messenger absentee ballots, state Attorney General Anne Milgram announced in Trenton.

The state Division of Criminal Justice obtained a 10-count grand jury indictment charging Small, 35, who is also director of after-school activities for the Atlantic City School Board, and 13 campaign workers. Small and the others are charged with conspiracy, four counts of election fraud, absentee ballot fraud, tampering with public records, falsifying records, and forgery. Four of the people are also charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution.

"Councilman Small and his co-defendants are charged with seeking to corrupt the election process," Milgram said. "We charge that they disenfranchised voters by destroying messenger ballots that were voted for Small's opponents and submitting ballots as votes for Small from people who never received them. This conduct is a violation of the fundamental right to vote and the right of the electorate to have their vote counted."

The indictment alleges that Small and the others conspired to commit election fraud through the following schemes, among others:

They allegedly solicited applications for messenger absentee ballots from individuals not qualified to receive them and had the voters not fill in the name of the messenger, so they could fraudulently designate themselves as the authorized messengers or bearers.

They allegedly obtained messenger ballots from the Atlantic County clerk and submitted them to the Board of Elections as votes on behalf of voters who, in fact, never received or voted the ballots or, in some cases, were given only the security envelope for the ballot and were told to sign it. Those people were not given the opportunity to vote in most instances.

What's so "progressive" about election corruption?

More.....

Indoctrination, er, education in Obamaland

From the WSJ.......

President Obama's plan to speak to America's schoolchildren next Tuesday has some Republicans in an uproar. "As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," thunders Jim Greer, chairman of Florida's Republican Party, in a press release. "President Obama has turned to American's children to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American's [sic] youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves." Columnists who spy a conspiracy behind every Democrat are also spreading alarm.

This is overwrought, to say the least. According to the Education Department's Web site, Mr. Obama "will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning"—hardly the stuff of the Communist Manifesto or even the Democratic Party platform. America's children are not so vulnerable that we need to slap an NC-17 rating on Presidential speeches. Given how many minority children struggle in school, a pep talk from the first African-American President could even do some good.

On the other hand, the Department of Education goes a little too far in its lesson plans for teachers to use in conjunction with the speech—especially the one for grades 7 through 12. Before the speech, teachers are urged to use "notable quotes excerpted (and posted in large print on board) from President Obama's speeches about education" and to "brainstorm" with students about the question "How will he inspire us?" Suggested topics for postspeech discussion include "What resonated with you from President Obama's speech?" and "What is President Obama inspiring you to do?"

This seems to cross the line between respecting the office and aggrandizing the man who currently holds it. As the President and his speechwriters prepare for school on Tuesday, we hope they will be more circumspect than the education bureaucracy.

Article here......

Life in "Progress" State

From the state of Michigan, who hasn't had a conservative run the state since the Wright Brothers built bicycles.........

A central belief in Washington and most state capitals nowadays is that government should "invest" in certain businesses—"clean tech," say, or manufacturing—to drive job creation. We hope it all turns out better than it has in Michigan.

For the past 14 years, Lansing politicians have offered $3.3 billion in tax credits through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and spent another $1.6 billion in outlays to create and retain jobs. The subsidies have ranged from tax breaks for Hollywood, to money for new industrial plants, to millions for TV ads starring Jeff Daniels and Tim Allen talking about business and tourism in the state.

It's one of the largest experiments in smokestack chasing in American history, but one thing it hasn't done is create jobs. An exhaustive new 100-page study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, has reviewed where all the money has gone and what came of it. The study finds that for every 100 jobs that were promised with these tax credits over 14 years, only 29 arrived. Dare we call this cash for clunkers?

Economist Michael Hicks, a business school professor at Ball State, calculated the rate of return on the corporate tax credits. He found that for every $1 million in tax credits awarded, there were 95 lost manufacturing jobs in the counties where the companies were located—a result that is "strongly statistically significant." There was no gain in personal income in these counties. Perhaps more jobs would have been lost without the credits, but what is undeniably clear is that the businesses that got the government loot were not magnets for other employers.

Many of these handout programs were started in 1995 by former Republican Governor John Engler, who we criticized at the time in "A Governor's Gimmick." They have since been expanded 18 times under current Governor Jennifer Granholm. Two of the most celebrated initiatives were the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund and the Broadband Development Authority. Ms. Granholm's vision was that these grants and credits would create 500,000 jobs and $440 billion in new investment by 2010.

Liberals cheered this "progressive" alternative to tax cutting. But the jobs lured to Michigan were so few that the programs were killed in 2007. The broadband program's legacy was $14.5 million of bad loans eaten by taxpayers. Then State Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, an original supporter of the telecom program, called it "one of the biggest flops in state government."

More.....

Proof Positive the Public Option Will Lead to Single Payer

Baron Hill (IN-09): This Is My Town Hall Meeting. I Set the Rules.

Arrogance run amok

Pete Stark Blows Up Over National Debt

Obama Kids: Sing for Change (Pyongyang Remix)