Rush Limbaugh: Obama Copied Jimmy Carter’s Convention Acceptance Speech from 1980 (+video)

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Rush Limbaugh dubbed President Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention a “halfhearted effort” that proved the conservative radio host was right when he warned an Obama presidency “would end up being nothing more than the second term Jimmy Carter never had.”

Limbaugh treated his radio listeners to a side-by-side comparison of Obama’s Thursday night speech to Carter’s convention acceptance speech in 1980.

“I’m just sitting here in stunned disbelief,” Limbaugh said, according to a transcript on his website. “Barack Obama, he coulda channeled FDR. He coulda gone back and tried to copy something JFK had said, or RFK. If he’s gonna go back to the past and seek inspiration, if he’s gonna go back in time, if he’s gonna go back to the liberal playbook, if he’s gonna go back to the Democrat Party failed ideas of the past, if he’s gonna go back to the boilerplate, why pick Jimmy Carter, if you want to win?”

Limbaugh said last night’s speech shows just how right he was when he first linked Obama to Carter.

“Little did I know — and I’m always aware when I’m right; I never doubt it — but little did I know how right I was when I warned the people of America that an Obama presidency would end up being nothing more than the second term Jimmy Carter never had,” Limbaugh said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s Jimmy Carter’s 1980 acceptance speech:

Eastwood Says His Convention Appearance was ‘Mission Accomplished’

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AFTER A week as topic No. 1 in American politics, former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood said the outpouring of criticism from left-wing reporters and liberal politicians after his appearance at the Republican National Convention last Thursday night, followed by an avalanche of support on Twitter and in the blogosphere, is all the proof anybody needs that his 12-minute discourse achieved exactly what he intended it to.

“President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle.”

For five days after he thrilled or horrified the nation by talking to an empty chair representing Obama on the night Mitt Romney accepted the Republican nomination for president, Eastwood remained silent while pundits and critics debated whether his remarks, and the rambling way he made them, had helped or hurt Romney’s chances of winning in November.

But in a wide-ranging interview with The Pine Cone Tuesday from his home in Pebble Beach, he said he had conveyed the messages he wanted to convey, and that the spontaneous nature of his presentation was intentional, too.

“I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Violates Law Again: Sequestration Report Deadline Missed

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The White House on Friday said it will miss the legal deadline for delivering a report to Congress on the spending cuts from sequestration that are scheduled to take effect in 2013.

Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One that the report will be coming next week.

Under the terms of the Sequestration Transparency Act signed in August, President Obama was to tell Congress by Friday how the administration plans to implement the $109 billion in automatic cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act.

The Office of Management and Budget has repeatedly failed to make legal deadlines. It delivered its presidential budget proposals and mid-session updates late both this year and last year.

Republicans have tried to tie the tardiness to the failure of the Senate to pass a budget resolution for the last three years.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP to Pass ‘No More Solyndras Act’ when Congress returns

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House Republicans will pass a bill next week that suspends new loans for clean-energy companies under the Department of Energy program that loaned nearly $530 million Solyndra, the failed solar panel producer that Republicans have targeted as an example of government waste.

Under the “No More Solyndras Act,” H.R. 6213, any similar applications for government loans made in 2012 could not be accepted, and any applications submitted before 2012 could only be approved after a Treasury Department review of the proposed financial terms of the loan.

In addition, any loans approved would have to be reported in full detail within 60 days. Any violation of the bill would subject related officials to penalties, including a fine of at least $10,000 and up to $50,000.

The bill finds that the Obama administration pursued a “green jobs” agenda with the use of $90 billion in program funding in the 2009 stimulus bill, in addition to $47 billion in loan guarantees from various appropriations bills that can be used under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The stimulus bill also created a new loan program for commercial technology, and Solyndra was one of several companies that benefited from this new program. Solyndra and two other recipients of the same program have since declared bankruptcy.

Read more from this story HERE.

Elementary School Abolishes Homework Assignments

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Gaithersburg Elementary School [Maryland] has abolished homework. Instead, students are being asked to read a book for about 30 minutes a night.

When Stephanie Brant came aboard as principal two years ago, she and her staff conducted a review of homework assignments.

“We really started evaluating the work that we sent students home with,” explained Principal Brant. “We started looking, and really, it was a lot of worksheets. And the worksheets didn’t match what we were doing instructionally in the classroom. It was just: we were giving students something because we felt we had to give them something.”

So, Brant got permission from the school district to implement a radical experiment: the only homework assigned here is reading.

Fifth grader Ann Urrutia got regular homework here as a second-grader; then it went away. We asked her if she misses doing those math problems at home.

“We do [the math problems] in school,” she explained.

Satire: “It’s all about playing hide & seek on the backs of the poor, sick & elderly”

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How many filthy lies can one Re-“smug”-lican stuff into a meatball sandwich covered in the frothy white racist sauce of the wealthiest 1%? I’ll tell you, because I’m a professor of economics.

Mathematically speaking, when you sat and listened to Paul Ryan give his speech at the Republican National Hate-fest, you actually heard the sound of a weasel strangling a newborn kitten.

Halliburton.

Last week, I heard from a friend who swears that he saw Paul Ryan stab a panda bear in the eye with a rusty compass. Mitt Romney watched and laughed while counting stacks of his secret money he’s hiding in the Death Star. There, I said it.

Blood for oil. Social darwinism.

These spineless luddites refuse to play by the rules. They hate the facts. It’s all about playing hide and seek on the backs of the poor, sick and elderly. Literally and figuratively. And ontologically, which is a word you may not understand, but I do.

The truth means nothing to them. But it means everything to me.

I am a slave to the truth. Truth is my master, and I am in bondage to it. Truth whips me at night. The whip is heated by all the smelly carbon in the atmosphere. Sometimes I cry.

Read more from this comic relief HERE.

August: Lowest Male Employment Rate in History; 4 Stopped Looking for Work for Each New Job

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Just 96,000 American jobs were added in August in a bleak monthly jobs report as 368,000 left the workforce, bringing labour market participation down to its lowest level for 31 years and dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.

The national unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 per cent, down from 8.2 per cent, but this was only because so many people gave up looking for work. If the participation rate had not dropped so precipitously, unemployment would have risen to 8.4 per cent.

Factory employment fell by the most in two years and temporary-help companies eliminated positions for the first time in five months. The 69.9 per cent labor force participation rate for men is at lowest level recorded since the US government began tracking it in 1948.

According to James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, the unemployment rate would be 11.2 per cent if the labour force participation rate had remained what it was when Obama took office in January 2009. The U.S. Labour Department also said that 41,000 fewer jobs were created in June and July than previously reported.

President Barack Obama was made aware of the figures before he took the stage to deliver his prime-time address at the Democratic convention on Thursday night, which could account for his sometimes grim demeanour as he spoke.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fact Checking Last Night’s Speech: Obama Finally Produced Something Shovel-Ready

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President Barack Obama laid claim to a peace dividend that doesn’t exist when he told the nation he wants to use money saved by ending wars to build highways, schools and bridges.

The wars were largely financed by borrowing, so there is no ready pile of cash to be diverted to anything else.

The claim was one of several by Obama in his acceptance speech Thursday at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and by Vice President Joe Biden in earlier remarks that did not match the facts. A look at some of their assertions:

OBAMA: “I’ll use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work — rebuilding roads and bridges, schools and runways. After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it’s time to do some nation-building right here at home.”

THE FACTS: The idea of taking war savings to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand, given that the wars were paid for with increased debt. Obama can essentially “pay down our debt,” as he said, by borrowing less now that war is ending. But he still must borrow to do the “extra nation-building” he envisions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

Tax Dollars at Work: Sculpture of Bare-Breasted Woman ‘Sexting’ is Put on Display in Family Park (+video)

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A bronze statue of a young topless woman who appears to be taking a sexting-style picture of herself has caused outrage in a Kansas City Park.

The bare breasted, headless female figure in Overland Park Arboretum is pointing a camera at herself and the American Family Association of Kansas and Missouri has said that it is obscene and promotes sexting in a venue where families take children.

This week the group collected 4,700 signatures, 1,000 more than is needed to compel a judge in Johnson County to convene a grand jury to investigate whether the work ‘Accept and Reject’ by Chinese sculptor Yu Chang is unacceptable.

In June, local resident and mother Joanne Hughes started a campaign to have the statue removed out of the sight of children and was joined in her efforts by the conservative American Family Asssociation soon after.

‘Well it’s the venue,’ said petitioner Joanne Hughes about why she feels the artwork should be moved. ‘I have been to Florence, Italy, I have seen the statue of David and its beautiful, he is not taking a picture of himself. The venue is where kids go on school field trips, their parents aren’t with them.’ Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a video regarding the ongoing controversy:

Video: Gov. Jennifer Granholm Channels Howard Dean last night at DNC 2012

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Canadian-born Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan goes full-on Howard Dean at the DNC 2012 last night. You gotta watch it to believe it: