Large majorities of Americans, even Democrats, want a smaller federal government

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A survey of 3,130 American adults conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation between July 25 and August 5 discovered that large majorities of Americans favor a smaller federal government and believe the government controls too much of our daily lives.

The survey discovered these results even though only 25 percent of the people it polled were Republicans, while another 34 percent were Democrats and another 34 percent were Independents.

The poll asked: “Would you say you favor a smaller federal government with fewer services, or larger federal government with many services?”

Among all those polled, 55 percent said they wanted a smaller federal government and 40 percent said they wanted a larger federal government.

Among just the registered voters in the poll, 58 percent said they wanted a smaller federal government and 37 percent said they wanted a larger federal government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Busted! Leaked emails snag NASA’s global warming alarmists

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Photo credit: Rob Shenk

While NASA climate alarmist James Hansen insists record summer heat and drought are caused by man-made global warming, leaked internal emails from just three summers ago reveal that he and his colleagues expressed alarm that the planet was inexplicably … cooling.

Hansen, often called the “godfather of global warming,” announced earlier this month that blistering heat across the United States is so rare that it can’t be anything but the man-made global warming he has been warning about for decades.

“This is not some scientific theory,” he told the Associated Press. “We are now experiencing scientific fact.”

But in 2009, as the thermometer hit record lows in America, he and other climate scientists panicked in a flurry of emails: “Skeptics will be all over us – the world is really cooling, the models are no good.”

They lamented that Mother Nature was not cooperating with their predictions that global temperatures would smash heat records last decade. They blamed their miscalculation on sulfate emission trajectories and revised their forecast to show a cooling trend lasting until 2020.

Serious Problems Mount for Biden (+video)

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Biden’s ‘good friend,’ donor receives $20M federal loan to open foreign luxury car dealership in Ukraine

By Christopher Bedford. In late July, John Hynansky — a longtime friend of Vice President Joe Biden, and a major donor to Biden’s campaigns as well as President Barack Obama’s — was awarded a $20 million taxpayer loan to build a foreign-car dealership in Ukraine.

According to a public summary document, the loan, from the federal government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation, is for “[u]p to $20.0 million,” and is designed to “expand Winner Import Ukraine’s automobile business, [and] construct and operate ‘Winner Autocity,’ which will have two new, state-of-the-art dealership facilities for Porsche and Land Rover/Jaguar automobiles.”

Porsche is a German-made luxury and sports car, and Jaguar Land Rover is a British luxury and sports car company owned by an Indian subsidiary.

Under “U.S. Economic Impact,” the summary document says, “This project will have a positive developmental impact on the host country, Ukraine. The project will generate a significant number of new local jobs. Running a dealership for premium automobile brands requires a highly trained sales force, mechanics, accountants, communications and advertising specialists, IT specialists, service personnel, warehouse managers, and customer relations specialists.”

Along with his family, Hynansky also owns car dealerships in Pennsylvania and Biden’s home state of Delaware. Read more from this story HERE.

Biden sent home to Delaware to start weekend early

By Neil Munro. The updated White House calendar for Aug. 17 reports that “in the morning, the Vice President will meet with senior advisers. Later, the Vice President will be in Wilmington, Delaware.”

“There are no public events scheduled,” said the 5:36 p.m. White House announcement, titled “Daily Guidance for the Vice President.”

Biden’s retreat home during the increasingly frenetic 2012 race comes amid increased criticism for his campaign-trail performance.

Biden was slated to share an uncomfortable lunch with President Barack Obama on Thursday, following his disastrous week on the campaign trail, which culminated with a racially inflammatory warning to African-American supporters that Mitt Romney will “put y’all back in chains.”

The flubs revived chatter about whether the president will drop Biden, and seek a substitute vice president to win the tough 2012 race.  Read more from this story HERE.

New Video Regarding Biden Unveiled After Obama Voices “Confidence” in Biden:

Progressive Insurance Chair donates millions to leftist causes & other bad news for liberal insurer

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Photo credit: Granite Mountain Insurance

The recent actions of Progressive Insurance Chairman Peter Lewis in donating millions of dollars to leftist causes give new meaning to the word “Progressive” in Progressive Insurance.  WND reports:

Word started to leak out earlier this year, when Forbes reported that the “left-leaning billionaire Peter Lewis,” Progressive’s chairman, got involved in the 2012 election with a $200,000 donation to American Bridge 21st Century, a “liberal upper PAC founded by David Brock of Fox News watchdog Media Matters for America.”

Forbes also reported “Lewis has been bankrolling the effort to legalize marijuana across multiple states for years.”

The Boston Business Journal confirmed the report, noting Lewis donated $525,000 in July for an effort to give voters a ballot question on medical marijuana.

Lewis’ leftist goals have been blasted in a commentary on the Daily Paul website, which criticized Lewis as “your typical rich spoiled kid who took over the company from his father and apparently feels guilty for his success.”

“Between 2001 and 2003, Lewis funneled $15 million to the ACLU, the group most responsible for destroying what’s left of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage. … One of the ACLU projects he earmarked his funds for was an effort to sue school districts who have drug testing policies.”

Columnist Michelle Malkin detailed Lewis’ “progressive interests” over the years, noting in 2000 that Lewis was one the “leftist billionaires, union bosses, and partisan community organizers pushing the socialized medicine agenda.” [Read more from this story HERE]

And it just gets worse for Progressive.  A blog posting entitled My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court by the brother of a Progressive-insured woman who was killed in a car accident is going viral:

 I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.

I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

Now, I don’t discount the possibility that Katie was at fault in the accident, but it never really looked that way. The only witness who gave a statement on the day said that Katie had the light, etc. The totality of the evidence left some room for argument, but that will be the case any time there’s a catastrophic car accident that doesn’t happen underneath an array of video cameras.

One indication that the case was pretty open-and-shut was that the other guy’s insurance company looked at the situation and settled with my sister’s estate basically immediately. Now, because the other driver was underinsured, that payment didn’t amount to much, but my sister carried a policy with Progressive against the possibility of an accident with an underinsured driver. So Progressive was now on the hook for the difference between the other guy’s insurance and the value of Katie’s policy.

At which point we learned the first surprising thing about Progressive: Carrying Progressive insurance and getting into an accident does not entitle you to the value of your insurance policy. It just pisses off Progressive’s lawyers. Here I address you, Prospective Progressive Insurance Customer: someday when you have your accident, I promise that there will be enough wiggle room for Progressive’s bottomless stack of in-house attorneys to make a court case out of it and to hammer at that court case until you or your surviving loved ones run out of money. [Read more from this story HERE]

 

Baker overwhelmed with business after refusing VP Biden service

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One man in Radford is being called the next “Joe the Plumber.”

He owns a bakery, but he’s becoming known fast as the man who said “no” to the Vice President.

Since saying ‘no to Joe,’ “Chris the Baker” is baking like a crazy man.

It’s been 24 hours since Chris McMurray said “no” to a photo op with Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

And his Radford bakery, “Crumb and Get It” has been slammed ever since.

“It’s been a great response,” McMurray said from his store Thursday. “The overwhelming majority of people have been supportive and calls from Texas and Chicago and California. Ordering cookies and telling us to send ‘em to veterans and homeless shelters. It’s been incredible.”

McMurray’s been in business only three months. Saying “no” to Joe, may have been the best business decision he’s ever made.

Read more from this story HERE.

General Motors headed for bankruptcy . . . again

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President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.

Right now, the federal government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26% of the company. It would need to get about $53.00/share for these to break even on the bailout, but the stock closed at only $20.21/share on Tuesday. This left the government holding $10.1 billion worth of stock, and sitting on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.

Right now, the government’s GM stock is worth about 39% less than it was on November 17, 2010, when the company went public at $33.00/share. However, during the intervening time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by almost 20%, so GM shares have lost 49% of their value relative to the Dow.

It’s doubtful that the Obama administration would attempt to sell off the government’s massive position in GM while the stock price is falling. It would be too embarrassing politically. Accordingly, if GM shares continue to decline, it is likely that Obama would ride the stock down to zero.

GM is unlikely to hit the wall before the election, but, given current trends, the company could easily do so again before the end of a second Obama term.

Read more from this story HERE.

Black Democratic Governor, Congressman slam Biden and Obama (+video)

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America’s first black governor in modern times has become the most senior Democrat to break ranks over Joe Biden’s ‘y’all in chains’ comments, telling the Vice President: ‘Slavery is nothing to joke about.’

Douglas Wilder, who was governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994 and the first black governor since Reconstruction, told CNN that ‘without question’ Biden’s remarks in Danville, Virginia (though the veep seemed to think he was in North Carolina) ‘were appeals to race’.

He continued: ‘The important thing I got out of this was Biden separated himself from what he accused the people of doing. As a matter of fact, what he said is they are going to do something to y’all, not to me. Not us. So he was still involved with that separate American.

‘As far as I am concerned, the President would not associate himself with those remarks. And I expect as the days go forward there will be more clarity associated with what the president feels about what Joe Biden said.

In another interview, with Fox News, Wilder said: ‘Slavery is nothing to joke about. And the history of this nation’s involvement with slavery is nothing to pass off in a joke.’  Read more from this story HERE.

Four-term black Democratic Congressman Artur Davis also slams Biden and Obama for the “racial viciousness” of Biden’s chain remarks.

US Recovery Worst Since at least the Great Depression, foreign debt at record levels

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By Paul Wiseman. The recession that ended three years ago this summer has been followed by the feeblest recovery since the Great Depression, according an extensive review of the country’s economic ups and down over the past eight decades.

Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest.

The ugliness goes well beyond unemployment, which at 8.3 percent is the highest this long after the end of a recession.

Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.

More than in any other post-World War II recovery, people who have jobs are hurting: Their paychecks have fallen behind inflation.

Many economists say the agonizing recovery from the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 during the George W. Bush administration and ended in June 2009, is the predictable consequence of a housing market collapse and a grave financial crisis.  Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Government’s Foreign Debt Hits Record $5.29 Trillion

By Terence P. Jeffrey.  The money the U.S. government owes to foreign entities rose to a record $5.2923 trillion in June, according to data released by the U.S. Treasury Wednesday afternoon.

In May, the U.S. Treasury had owed $5.2581 trillion to foreign entities. On net, in June, the U.S. government borrowed an additional $34.2 billion from foreign entities in order to fund U.S. government operations.

The U.S. government’s indebtedness to foreign interests has grown by 72.3 percent during President Barack Obama’s term in office. In January 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, the U.S. government owed $3.0717 trillion to foreign entities, according to the Treasury Department. That has increased by $2.2206 trillion—or 72.3 percent—to the record $5.2923 trillion reported for yesterday.

Entities in the People’s Republic of China remain the largest holders of U.S. government debt. Entities in Japan, however, are on track to eclipse the Chinese as the top holders of U.S. government debt.

In June, the Chinese held $1.1643 trillion in U.S. government debt, up slightly from the $1.1640 trillion in U.S. government debt the Chinese held in May. However, Chinese ownership of U.S. government debt hit an historical peaked of $1.3149 trillion in July 2011 and has been on a generally downward trend since then.  Read more from this story HERE.

DC shooting spurs debate: do pro-marriage organizations deserve the “hate group” label?

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Photo credit: killingclipart

By Jordy Yager. The shooting of a security guard Wednesday at the Family Research Council (FRC) has spurred a torrent of heated accusations from both sides of the gay-rights debate about claims that the conservative organization is a “hate group.”

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of the nation’s leading opponents of same-sex marriage, told The Hill the shooting was a direct result of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision in 2010 to place the FRC on its list of hate groups for its rhetoric on gays.

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, pointed to a recent blog post by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest gay-rights groups in the country. The post, “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference,” called attention to the vice presidential candidate’s scheduled appearance at the FRC’s national summit next month.

“Today’s attack is the clearest sign we’ve seen that labeling pro-marriage groups as ‘hateful’ must end,” Brown said in a statement issued following the shooting.

“For too long national gay-rights groups have intentionally marginalized and ostracized pro-marriage groups and individuals by labeling them as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.’” Read more from this story HERE.

Despite the DC shooting and ensuing debate, Obama remains silent

By Penny Starr. As of mid-morning Thursday, President Barack Obama had not yet commented publicly or released an official statement reacting to Wednesday’s shooting of a security guard at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C., office.

The only response from the Obama administration came from White House spokesman Jay Carney, as relayed to the public through the White House correspondents’ pool report:

The pool report noted that President Obama, traveling in Iowa, was informed of the 10:45 a.m. shooting several hours later.

Carney said the president expressed his concern for the individual as well as the belief that “this type of violence has no place in our society.”

It is unclear from the pool report whether Carney was directly quoting the president or if the words were Carney’s own.  Read more from this story HERE.

FRC: Southern Poverty Law Center fostered climate leading to DC shooting (+video)

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

By Mackenzie Weinger. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on Thursday said the shooting at the conservative Christian organization’s Washington, D.C., headquarters was an act of terrorism and he accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of fostering the climate that allowed the crime to occur.

Fox News’s Megyn Kelly asked Perkins whether he thought the Wednesday shooting of an unarmed security guard for the group “was an act of domestic terrorism.”

“Terrorism is designed to intimidate and to drive people back and make them feel fearful. Well, that I believe would describe what they tried to do here yesterday at the Family Research Council and by extension to traditional value supporters, Christians across the nation,” Perkins said. “But I want to tell you it’s not going to work. We’re not going anywhere. We’re more committed today than we were yesterday to defending and advancing faith, family and freedom here in our nation’s capital.”

The gunman suspected of shooting the guard and shouting a political statement was charged with assault with intent to kill on Thursday, according to reports. Floyd Lee Corkins II, 28, of Virginia told the building manager, Leo Johnson, “I don’t like your politics,” and then shot him in the arm on Wednesday morning, The Associated Press reported. Johnson then unarmed Corkins and the suspected shooter was taken into custody.

In Corkins’s backpack, investigators found ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches, the AP said.  Read more from this story HERE.

Tony Perkins addresses the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “reckless rhetoric” that gave “a license to shoot an unarmed man” in this video: