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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

Retired Detective Drew Peterson Convicted of Murder

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Retired Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson was found guilty Thursday of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio, the verdict eliciting a gasp from a packed Will County courthouse and ending a case that for years has received salacious tabloid news coverage.

Peterson showed no emotion as the verdict was read. He was shackled, said “Good job” to his attorneys and was led off. Sentencing has been set for Nov. 26. Savio’s family and supporters hugged and cried along with witnesses who testified for the state.

“I knew it,” said Savio’s brother-in-law, Mitch Doman. “Now I can go out there and say he’s a murdering bastard. You can print that. You can put it in a headline.”

Nick Savio, Kathleen Savio’s brother, choked up outside the courthouse as he called the verdict “bittersweet.”

“It’s better than a White Sox World Series win,” he said, his face quivering with emotion. “This has been a very long time coming.”

He read a brief statement from the Savio family saying Kathleen can “now rest in peace.”

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Fact Check: Michelle Obama Lies About Early Financial Struggles

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First Lady Michelle Obama’s pitch to voters last night relied on the premise that she and her husband understand what it is to struggle to make ends meet. She spoke movingly about their early years–about how a young Barack Obama drove a car that was “rusted out” and found his furniture “in a dumpster,” how they both came from families that had to “scrape by.” Her fairy tale–however well-delivered–was one great, big, colorful lie.

Both Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama began their adult lives with a leg up on the rest of America. They attended elite schools: Michelle went to Whitney Young, the public magnet school for Chicago’s upper class, while Barack attended Punahou, the private prep school for the top stratum of Hawaiian society. They were accepted to Ivy League schools despite undistinguished credentials, and both attended Harvard Law School.

“[B]elieve it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage,” Michelle said. That sounds like a raw deal–but in fact reflects their fortunate circumstances. They had both just graduated from a very expensive law school, and their combined income from cushy law firm jobs dwarfed the repayments. Barack also soon enjoyed a second salary from the University of Chicago.

They had expensive tastes, reflected in the $277,500 two-bedroom condo they bought in 1993–a high price even by today’s standards. Several years later, they moved into their $1.65 million mansion in Hyde Park–with the help of fraudster Tony Rezko. Barack often told a story of hardship on the campaign trail in 2008 about having his credit card declined–once. The fact that he thought this counted as real hardship speaks volumes.

As her husband moved onto the national political stage, Michelle Obama began to enjoy a lavish lifestyle at taxpayer expense, directly and indirectly. When Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, he obtained a $1 million earmark for the University of Chicago Hospital–and his wife’s salary as Vice President for Community Affairs jumped from $121,910 to $316,962. Her job: pushing poor, uninsured patients to other hospitals.

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Obama’s (un)American Auto Bailout (+video)

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By Michelle Malkin. Cue “Fanfare for the Common Man” and rev up the Government Motors engines. Wednesday is Great American Auto Bailout Day at the Democratic National Convention. Party propagandists have prepared a prime-time-ready film touting the “rescue’s” benefits for American workers. UAW President Bob King will sing the savior-in-chief’s praises.

But like all of the economic success stories manufactured by the White House, the $85 billion government handout is a big fat farce.

“I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” Obama bragged on the campaign trail. Here’s the inconvenient story they won’t tell you:

GM is once again flirting with bankruptcy despite massive government purchases propping up its sales figures. GM stock is rock-bottom. Losses continue to be revised in the wrong direction. According to The Detroit News, “The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That’s 15 percent higher than its previous forecast.”

The claims that GM paid back its taxpayer-funded loans “in full” — a story peddled in campaign ads narrated by Hollywood actor Tom Hanks — were debunked by the Treasury Department’s TARP watchdog this summer. GM still owes nearly $30 billion of the $50 billion it received, and its lending arm still owes nearly $15 billion of the more than $17 billion it received. Bailout watchdog Mark Modica of the National Legal and Policy Center adds: “In addition to U.S. taxpayers anteing up, Canada put in over $10 billion, and GM was relieved of about $28 billion of bondholder obligations as UAW claims were protected. That’s an improvement of almost $90 billion to the balance sheet, and the company still lags the competition.” Read more from this story HERE.

The Romney Campaign has finally figured out that this false story about the GM bailout is just smoke and mirrors. See the campaign’s new ad, just released yesterday:

Bill Clinton: Please don’t judge Obama by the standards he set

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Campaigning in 2008, Barack Obama set the very highest goals for his presidency. He would not only bring about economic recovery, he would lay the foundation for a new economy, bring Americans together, reduce the rancor of political debate, and even slow the rise of the oceans. Now, as he runs for re-election, Obama is caught in a trap of his own making: Many Americans who voted for him, particularly independents, are judging him not so much by what he has done in office as by what he promised to do. If voters hold Obama to that standard on Election Day, he will lose.

What Obama desperately needs to do in the campaign’s last two months is to lower expectations, to bring the high hopes of 2008 in line with the reality of 2012. That might be an impossible job, but Team Obama realized there was just one Democrat capable of even giving it a shot: Bill Clinton. So the former president was given the spotlight at the Democratic convention in Charlotte Wednesday night, his assignment to convince voters that the standards Obama set for himself in ’08 were unrealistic.

Clinton argued that the economic crisis Obama inherited was so serious that “No president — not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.” Obama will need eight years to finish the job, and even if people don’t see things getting better now, they will if they’ll just vote for Obama. “He has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity” Clinton said, “and if you will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it.”

“I believe that with all my heart,” Clinton added. He said it with such apparent conviction that it’s likely some longtime Clinton watchers immediately assumed it was not true. And it’s probably not. But with Clinton, who knows? Everyone knows he and Obama have had a difficult relationship. Everyone knows what happened in the 2008 Democratic primaries. But Clinton remains a Democrat, and he said what he needed to say.

Sincerity aside, there’s no doubt Clinton can make the case for Barack Obama’s re-election far better than Obama himself. At age 66 and nearly a dozen years removed from the White House, Clinton remains the best simplifier, the best explainer, in American politics. Obama can’t touch him.

Read more from this story HERE.