Obama Used DOE Loans To Bolster Harry Reid

Culture of corruption.

President Obama claims that political considerations did not influence the Energy Department’s green energy loan program, but newly-released internal emails show that his administration subsidized Nevada companies in order to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., win his 2010 reelection campaign.

“And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” Obama said last week when asked about the green companies that have gone bankrupt despite receiving taxpayer support.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released DOE emails today that compromise Obama’s position on two counts: one, the emails show that Obama himself was involved in approving loans; two, DOE officials were keenly aware of the political interests at stake, as they regarded the loans as a way for the White House to help Reid by giving him a way to brag about bringing federal money into Nevada.

Obama Back To Vegas Baby?

What is it about Barack Obama, tragedy and Las Vegas?

Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod said Wednesday the president intends to resume campaigning on Thursday. Campaign officials say the president will make stops in Green Bay, Wis., Las Vegas and Boulder, Colo.

A New Campaign Symbol For Obama

David Ignatius Has Questions About Benghazi

A rare leftist who cares about the truth? Or another leftist who desperately wants Obama to finally concoct a lie that doesn't disintegrate before November 6th?

Former Chair Of Democrats Abroad Endorses Romney

Not up to the party's historical standards.

I am a former chairperson of Democrats Abroad Israel, and was an official delegate to the 1992 National Democratic Convention. In all of my 80 years, I have never before voted for a Republican for president. But this time around, I am not only proudly voting for Mitt Romney, but feel compelled to encourage others to do the same.

I grew up in a Reform Jewish family in Missouri, and came of age politically as a proud Democrat due to the inspiration of my native-son president, Harry Truman. I have been involved in Democratic Party politics for many years in both America and Israel, including serving as vice chairperson of the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee in Missouri.

It is precisely because of my belief in the longtime ideals of the Democratic Party that I feel the responsibility to speak out now.

Why? First, because we ask in each presidential cycle, “Are we better off now than we were four years ago?” This year, the answer is a resounding “NO!” But even more troubling, in so many ways, President Barack Obama has betrayed the ideals of the great Democratic Party. He is a poor successor to Truman’s legacy.

No Democratic president has ever been so fiscally irresponsible. President Clinton worked together with Congress to balance the budget and erase the deficit; President Obama has run trillion-dollar deficits every year, and we are now $6 trillion deeper in debt than when he was elected. Over 40 cents of every dollar we now spend is borrowed from China.

Future generations are being saddled with this burden.

Past Democratic administrations have records of high economic growth and high employment. Yet, under Obama, millions more Americans are without jobs than before he took office, and half of recent college graduates are unable to find work. Far too many of the jobs that Obama claims to have created or saved are in the public sector, and small businesses, the backbone of our economy, are hurting. Property values have not rebounded, and home foreclosures continue at a frightening pace.

On the international level, President Obama has proven himself to be a weak leader. Where has any of his diplomacy succeeded? Presidents Truman and Kennedy stood strong against the tyrannies of their time; President Obama bows down to the king of Saudi Arabia, and does not stand up to the president of Iran.

 

DEMOCRATS BELIEVE in furthering human rights and promoting liberty around the world. But Obama completely misreads the international scene. He called Syria’s Assad a “reformer,” yet has remained silent as Assad slaughters his own people. He abandoned president Hosni Mubarak to the Egyptian mobs. In addition, he allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to take control, not only threatening Israel but also terrorizing Egypt’s minorities.

Nowhere has President Obama failed to live up to Democratic ideals more than in his relationship with democratic Israel. From his creation of “daylight” between our countries to constant public criticism of Israeli policy – does Obama do this to any other country? – Obama has allowed severe deterioration of our special relationship just as Israel and the world face extreme danger.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S open hostility to Israel’s prime minister, and his insulting true feelings caught on an open microphone, indicate antipathy towards the citizens of Israel. Obama’s administration does not even maintain symbolic gestures: at the recent opening of the United Nations Assembly, the United States sat and listened to the address by the president of Iran, yet Ambassador Rice was absent during the entire presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This wasn’t lost on the leaders of Israel’s enemies.

Coming from Missouri, I take immense pride that President Truman had the courage, conviction and moral compass to recognize the nascent state of Israel. By comparison, President Obama has steered our relationship to an abysmal low.

In reviewing the above, I see no choice but to switch sides and cast my vote for the Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney, who better embodies our Democratic ideals. I ask you to join me.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Acts Like Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Publicly berates a policeman who had the nerve to ask her to obey the same rules that little people have to follow.

Wasserman Schultz was greeting voters and waiving her campaign signs on a street that leading into the polling site and was obstructing traffic by stopping cars before they could even enter the parking area.

The police officer respectfully asked Wasserman Schultz to move onto the sidewalk as everyone else was required to do, but the  Congresswoman was unhappy with not being able to campaign how she saw it fit.  Unnerved by the simple request from a police officer, Wasserman Schultz made a “well placed” phone call to some unknown individual in a position of authority.  Five minutes later, the Aventura City Mayor came to the scene and was confronted by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and proceeded to get an earful from her as well.  

Wasserman Schultz stayed about 20 minutes before she  left the scene with the six or so supporters she brought with her .  After the congresswoman left, one of the Democrat supporters who witnessed the whole incident confronted the Mayor and told him that what she did was “extremely inappropriate” for her to berate him in the manner she did.

Just In Case You've Forgotten What An Asshole Alan Grayson Is

He spends an evening reminding you.

“Rape jokes are great because they make a comedian seem very edgy and very dangerous,” she said.

Plus, she added, “who’s going to complain?”

Silverman joked that rape victims are “traditionally not complainers” and the worst that could happen is ”after a show a woman might come up to you and say, ‘Look, I’m a victim of rape … and I thought that joke was insensitive and inappropriate and totally my fault.’”

Moving away from rape jokes, Silverman told the crowd of just under 100 that they must remember that both conservatives and liberals want the best for the country, even if liberals are more “open-minded” and conservatives are “less open-minded” and ” a little more “faggot-ish.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/31/thedcs-jamie-weinstein-at-alan-graysons-hollywood-fundraiser-rape-jokes-abound/#ixzz2AsheCPly

Just When I Think That MSNBC Has Bottomed Out

MSNBC demonstrates that there is no bottom.

A Disaster - Just In Time For Obama

The mainstream media firewall was crumbling, and with it, Obama's favorability ratings. Obama welcomes Hurricane Sandy.

Last week, I speculated that we may be seeing a "preference cascade," as people who previously supported Obama now feel safe about publicly changing their minds. It seems that we're seeing more of that this week as word of the Benghazi debacle spreads. The Obama campaign no doubt hopes you'll be distracted from this by hurricane news, but that's probably a vain hope on its part.

On the left, the defections are mounting. Last week, I spoke to Camille Paglia about her new book on art history, but she also stopped to explain why she wasn't voting for Obama this time: basically, disappointment. She said he ran as a moderate, but has been "one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races."

She was also unhappy with the Libya intervention -- which admittedly hasn't turned out well -- and with the ongoing drone attacks, as well as the way ObamaCare turned out. She says she'll vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, whom I interviewed here a while back, instead.

Fast And Furious A "Deliberate Strategy"

Eric Holder should be impeached and imprisoned.

The latest congressional report on Operation Fast and Furious found that the gunwalking-program-turned-scandal was the result of a “deliberate strategy created at the highest levels of the Justice Department aimed at identifying the leaders of a major gun trafficking ring.”

The report is the second installment in a three-part series from Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley and House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa.

What Defines "Legitimate News?"

Late in the 2000 presidential election, someone discovered a 24 year old drunken driving arrest in George Bush's record. The mainstream media went wall-to-wall with its coverage. 

As Barack Obama's facade of lies surrounding the terrorist attack at Benghazi crumbles, it exposes ineptitude, dishonesty, corruption and an indifference to the fate of heroes willing to die for their country. 

In other words, the difference is that Benghazi exposes Barack Obama's actually performance as president, in ways that an ancient traffic ticket does not. The other difference is that the mainstream media have imposed a blackout on Benghazi.

Last week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources on the ground in Libya say they pleaded for support during the attack on the Benghazi consulate that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. They were allegedly told twice to "stand down." Worse, there are suggestions that there were significant military resources available to counterattack, but requests for help were denied.

If true, the White House's concerted effort to blame the attack on a video crumbles. Yet, last Friday, the president claimed that "the minute I found out what was happening" in Benghazi, he ordered that everything possible be done to protect our personnel. That is either untrue, or he's being disobeyed on grave matters.

This isn't an "October surprise" foisted on the media by opposition research; it's news.

This story raises precisely the sort of "big issues" the media routinely claim elections should be about. For instance, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that the "basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on, without having some real-time information about what's taking place." If real-time video of the attack and communications with Americans on the ground begging for assistance doesn't constitute "real-time information," what does?

Filthy Rich, Pompous, Sanctimonious Bono Discovers Capitalism

Is a good thing.

The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been “a humbling thing for me” to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who “got into this as a righteous anger activist with all the cliches.”

“Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge,” he told an audience of 200 leading technology entrepreneurs and investors at the F.ounders tech conference in Dublin. “We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce.”

Now, if he could just explain this to Barack Hussein Obama.

When The SEALS Needed Help, Obama Said "No"

And went to bed. After all, he had a date in VEGAS BABY!

Where Are These Orders?

Barack Hussein Obama now claims that he issued orders securing our embassy personnel on September 11, 2012. Where's the order? This should be much easier to produce than a birth certificate.

[T]he general in charge of the Africa region has allegedly said he received no directive from Washington to dispatch military aid. Members of the mutual protective society of generals are offering the bizarre defense that our Africa Command could do nothing because it has no military assets; it’s some sort of ghost command. Even if that is true, the most powerful nation in the world has sufficient forces and flexibility to send fighter aircraft over a consulate in flames, or to land some troops at the secure airport east of Benghazi. After all, our embassy in Tripoli, 400 miles away, sent an aircraft with six Americans to fight in Benghazi. But our base in Sigonella, 480 miles away, sent no help.

If General Dempsey had concluded that the U.S. military should do nothing, he would have reported his decision not to act back to his commander-in-chief before the latter went to bed to rest up for his campaign trip to Las Vegas the next day. After all, the ambassador was still missing. And brave Tyrone Woods was to die in a mortar attack five hours later. President Obama would naturally be more than a bit interested in why the military and the CIA did nothing after he explicitly ordered them “to make sure we are securing our personnel.”

Unemployment Declines: Reagan Versus Obama

The drop in the unemployment rate under Obama hasn't just been slow, it has nothing to do with increasing employment. During Obama's "recovery" the workforce shrunk. Under Reagan's, the workforce grew.

When President Obama took office, the LFP rate was 65.7% vs. 63.6% last month. If the LFP had just stayed steady all of this year, the unemployment rate would still be in the mid 8% range.

When the unemployment rate fell sharply under Reagan over the same period — from 9.2% in September 1983 to 7.3% in September 1984 — the LFP rose to 64.1% from 63.5%. Optimistic Americans were pouring into the job market and finding jobs. The economy was booming — and would continue to boom for a generation.

Well, At Most, Only One Of Those Stories Can Be True

Obama is offended that anyone would believe that he hasn't told the truth about Benghazi.

“Anytime a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans who were serving our country get killed, we have to figure out what happened and fix it,” he said, speaking with Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in New Hampshire. “But I do take offense with some suggestion that in any way, we haven’t tried to make sure that the American people knew as the information was coming in what we believed.”

Bill Clinton Preemptively Politicizes Hurricane Sandy

Classless in Connecticut.

“We’re coming down to the 11th hour. We’re facing a violent storm,” Clinton said according to the Connecticut Mirror. “It’s nothing compared to the storm we’ll face if you don’t make the right decision in this election.”

New York Times Assigns Six Reporters To Read Sarah Palin's Emails

Benghazi emails? What Benghazi emails? We need to know about Sarah Palin.

A scan of Ms. Palin’s e-mails in the weeks just before and after she was chosen as Mr. McCain’s running mate on the Republican ticket — among some 24,000 pages of them released by the State of Alaska on Friday — show in minute detail how she went overnight from being a small-state governor who was midway through her first term to a dominant figure in Republican politics. 

One moment she was immersed in board appointments and the Miss Alaska beauty pageant, the next she was receiving advice from the likes of Newt Gingrich and fielding questions from the national news media, including whether she believed that dinosaurs and humans had walked the earth together.

NY Times Recruits Volunteers To Scan Sarah Palin Emails

Benghazi emails? What Benghazi emails? We need to learn about Sarah Palin's tanning bed.
 

The New York Times Investigated Sarah Palin's Tanning Bet

But can't be bothered with telling its readers what happened in Benghazi. Priorities.

Obama Tells Heroes To Die Well

No help forthcoming.

“The fighting at the CIA annex [in Benghazi] went on for more than four hours – enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.” 

This latest report comes as the Obama administration continues to fend off criticism that it misunderstood (or deliberately misled in its public statements) what was happening in Benghazi, including the extent to which al Qaeda or its affiliates were involved in the attack.

Writing last week in the conservative National Review online, former Marine Corps officer and Reagan administration senior Pentagon official Francis “Bing” West outlined much the same scenario as Fox News, including a timeline of events in Benghazi.

“Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours,” Mr. West wrote. “If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F-18 [Navy fighter jet] in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.”

Oliver Stone Sours On Barack Obama

When you've lost Oliver Stone...

“The country Obama inherited was indeed in shambles, but Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse,” Stone and Kuznick wrote. “…[R]ather than repudiating the policies of Bush and his predecessors, Obama has perpetuated them.”

Obama’s election “felt like a kind of expiation for the sins of a nation whose reputation had been sullied, as we have shown throughout this book, by racism, imperialism, militarism, nuclearism, environmental degradation and unbridled avarice,” they wrote.

But on subjects from Wall Street reform to health care to Afghanistan, Stone and Kuznick rip Obama for breaking campaign promises and continuing the policies of President George W. Bush — who’s roundly condemned throughout the book. In some instances, they write, Obama went further than Bush’s White House toward anti-progressive policies.

“Obama asserted presidential power in ways that must have made Dick Cheney jealous,” they wrote.

Is there anyone left who's left wing enough for Oliver Stone?

Romney 52, Obama 47

Erosion.

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent.  The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent.

While Obama can close the gap with a strong voter turnout effort, “reports from the field would indicate that not to be the case, and Mitt Romney may well be heading to a decisive victory,” says pollster Ed Goeas.

Should Romney win by 5 percentage points, it would increase Republican chances of gaining control of the Senate.  His coattails would help elect GOP Senate candidates in Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.  “Republicans are now certain to hold the House,” Goeas said, “regardless of how the presidential race turns out.”

The Worst Senate Ever

Led by suspected pederast Harry Reid.

Consider the record. In 2011 and 2012 the House passed more than three-dozen economic or jobs-related bills and with only a few exceptions they died in the Senate without a vote. The bills dealt with regulatory relief, tax reduction, domestic drilling for energy, offshore drilling, a jobs bill for veterans, repeal of ObamaCare and many more. Many passed the House with significant Democratic support, as the nearby list shows. 

Then there is the Democratic failure on their constitutional obligation of passing a budget. House Republicans passed their budgets in each of the past two years in the spring. The latest one, crafted by Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, contained $4.5 trillion in deficit reduction—at least twice as much as Mr. Obama's budget proposal.

By contrast, the Senate failed to pass any budget in 2012. Or 2011. Or 2010. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in more than 1,200 days. Sorry, Harry, you can't blame that on a Republican filibuster, because it takes only 51 votes to pass a Senate budget resolution. In 2011 and 2012 the Senate Budget Committee never even drafted a budget, thus inspiring a House bill to dock the pay of Senate Budget Committee Members for not doing their job.

Rush Limbaugh Was Right About Colin Powell

It's all about race.

Special Report On Benghazi, 3 PM Eastern, Fox News

Mainstream news media should tune in to learn what they've been missing.

On Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists overran the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya and murdered our ambassador along with three other Americans.

Now, more than six weeks after the attack, some of the most important questions remain unanswered: Who did this and why?

Could the attack have been prevented or repelled after it began?

What did the White House know and when?

And, as we enter the final stretch of the race for the White House, which side is closer to the truth: Those who argue this terrible tragedy was largely unforeseeable or those who say we're seeing President Obama's foreign policy unraveling right on our TV screens?

Fox News has been on this story from the very beginning. Tune in this weekend, Bret Baier reveals explosive new details that you haven't heard.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-reporting/transcript/special-report-investigates-benghazi-new-revelations#ixzz2AbSb42Mt

Obama Not So Good With Math

We've noticed.

Do You Remember When Obama Promised $2500 Reduction In Insurance Premiums?

Neither does he. And he wishes you wouldn't either.

During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term.

But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama's vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey.

Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370.

What's more, premiums climbed faster in Obama's four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.

Higher Education Must Be Forced Back To Its Roots

One of the wisest observations I’ve ever heard regarding the role of higher education was imparted to me many years ago by a fellow graduate student. We, along with many others, were laboring away on our PhD research fully expecting that our discoveries would change the world.

“It probably won’t,” he said. “If you want to change the world, then you should focus on your teaching skills. You will have far more impact through the undergraduates you educate than through any research you conduct.”

He was right. Only a very small fraction of the research conducted at even the finest research universities will have any lasting, tangible value. But we turn out millions of young people, each of whom will affect the world in at least some small way. And some will change it in a big way. Cumulatively, they will have a far greater impact than all the professors who educated them.

By failing to acknowledge this truth, higher education has underperformed in its core function, education. And through its negligence, higher education has burdened the nation and the economy with maleducated graduates, weighed down with crippling student loan debts that will leave them underperforming in the economy for decades. And their underperformance will harm all of us. It already is.

Unfortunately there is no system in place to hold colleges and universities accountable for the quality of their product. And let’s be honest. Although higher education traditionally sneers at the great masses of unwashed who toil outside of its ivory towers, the simple fact remains that a college education is a commodity, and colleges are too far removed from the quality of the commodity that they produce.

In the real world, the consumer dictates what commodities it will consume and what price it will pay. In the land of higher education, the factory (higher education) tells the market what it must accept. They are able to get away with it because the federal government insulates them from the consequences of their work.

As economist Thomas Sowell once observed, “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

Federally managed financial aid has helped fuel a staggering inflation rate in higher education. For the last few years, tuition at Washington State University has been rising at an annual rate of roughly 15%. These tuition increases have been forced upon WSU by a state that has reduced its support for higher education by more than half.

The state has been able to unload its obligations onto the students because the students then postpone bearing that burden with financial aid. This aid can take the form of direct grants or student loans. WSU will disperse roughly $300,000 this year and will get it all right back in the form of tuition and mandatory fees.

Under this system, colleges and universities get their money regardless of how poorly their graduates perform in the economy.

And once again, the federal government contributes to the declining quality of education. While the state cuts its support for education, higher education’s priorities turn away from education and toward the pursuit of federal research grants.

I am old enough to recall when university departments would hire faculty with the aim of providing undergraduates with the proper spectrum of academic specialties within a major course of study. Each faculty member was hired to provide expertise in specific disciplines needed to turn out a properly educated graduate.

That is no longer the case. And higher education pays no price for its neglect of undergraduate education.

I have a modest proposal to address that. Require each department cosign for the student loans taken out by undergraduates who major in that department. If colleges and universities were on the hook for the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of student loans that their undergraduates must take out, then those departments would give more consideration to their priorities.

They might also use a little more discretion in how many majors they certify. There are a number of easily researched majors that have little utility in the job market. Some have never had value and others no longer fit into the current job market. To charge exorbitant tuition for degrees in these disciplines is educational malpractice. And those malpractitioners should be held accountable.

The ten worst majors.

The best majors.

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology degree pays morethan Harvard degree.

$120 billion in student loans in default.

Higher education loan default rates continue to climb.

College education costs rise faster than health care.

Trading caps and gowns for mops.