Obama’s Green Fiascoes and Boondoggles

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A barrage of news headlines on the Solyndra scandal continue to remind us that President Obama made green jobs one of his administration’s priorities. Those headlines also reveal this initiative to have been a costly mistake.

The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that has collapsed despite receiving half-a-billion dollars from the federal government, is only the tip of the iceberg. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that several other green companies that received generous federal aid are teetering on the brink.

Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel received a $118 million federal grant, lost $165 million in fiscal 2010 and has dim prospects. According to the Journal, Ener1 had “lost its bid to supply batteries to Fisker Automotive, a battery-powered car maker which received a $529 million U.S. taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantee in 2010,” when “Fisker chose to buy its batteries from a company called A123 Systems, itself the recipient of a $249 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.”

Great! First Team Obama extends taxpayer dollars to green companies, then it torpedoes them by giving larger grants to their competitors. Meanwhile, Fisker, itself a recipient of over a half-billion dollar handout from Uncle Sam, is making its cars in Finland.

Team Obama’s record on creating green jobs is no more confidence-inspiring than its record in midwifing a viable electric car industry.

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 Read More at floydreports.com By Mark W. Hendrickson, floydreports.com

Please, No Excuses or Misplaced Empathy for Sandusky’s Enablers

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Well, it’s already started. With the nation still reeling in shock over the child-rape scandal at Penn State, the excuses and misplaced empathy for Sandusky’s enablers have quickly usurped the public anguish, which should rightly be reserved for the child victims.

Victims? What victims? The nation’s eyes have become fixed on the ignoble fall of a noble man, Coach Joe Paterno, in what many see as an unjust end to a luminous, generation-enriching career.

We really ought only to be thinking now of the real victims. There are eight young male victims listed in the 40-count indictment against Jerry Sandusky. Two of these are listed due to eyewitness testimony, though their identities are still unknown.

The truth is we may never know how many victims there actually were.

Some are grown men, who may never come forward even when and if Sandusky goes to trial. Deeply imbedded shame and chronic depression keep many victims of childhood sexual abuse in lifelong shadows. Some of these victims will never reveal, even to their most trusted intimates, that they were ever sexually abused. Yes, the shameful scars go that deep.

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 Read More at kyleanneshiver.com

Lawmakers grill Obama over Border agent trial

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U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who apparently unsuccessfully demanded answers from Attorney General Eric Holder about the prosecution of a Border Patrol agent, today was joined by dozens of his colleagues in going over Holder’s head to address the questions to Barack Obama.

A copy of the letter, signed by Hunter and 36 other members of Congress, was obtained by Andy Ramirez, president of the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, which is working on the case involving the prosecution of and two-year sentence for agent Jesus Diaz.

After twice being cleared by investigators of wrongdoing, he was prosecuted by the Obama administration and ultimately sentenced to two years for violating the constitutional rights of an illegal alien drug smuggler he caught hauling 75 pounds of marijuana into the U.S.

He was accused of pulling on the juvenile smuggler’s arms after they had been handcuffed to make him comply with orders.

“We believe that prosecution of Border Patrol agents, including the case against Agent Diaz, sets a dangerous precedent for handling these issues in the future and could force agents to hesitate in the line of duty posing a risk to their own lives and the lives of others,” said the letter to Obama.

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 Read More at WorldNetDaily By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily

Police Clashes Mar Occupy Wall Street Protests

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Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, the New York Stock Exchange and the subways to raise their voices against what they say is corporate excess.

But since police in riot helmets, batons and riot shields ousted them from their two-month encampments, Occupy Wall Street protesters singled out officers as another enemy, saying their crowd control tactics were an excessive, chilling use of force against free speech.

“The police played their role. I wouldn’t call it respectful,” said Danny Shaw, 33, on Thursday in a day of protests across the country to mark the two-month anniversary of the movement against what demonstrators say is economic inequality.

Tear gas in Oakland, Calif., pepper spray that hit an 84-year-old Seattle woman in the face and hundreds of arrests of demonstrators and journalists at Occupy protests across the U.S. this week shone the spotlight on the varying crowd control tactics of police, most who used helmets and riot gear as they broke up encampments in New York and other cities.

“Police Brutality,” protesters’ signs blared. New York officials have called for investigations of the police raid of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan early Tuesday.

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 Read More at officialwire.com By Amy Westfeldt and Colleen Long, AP and OfficialWire

Is Newt Gingrich a Conservative? You decide

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[Editors Note: The following list was sent to us last night by conservative researcher Steve Baldwin. It is sure to spark controversy, and I wanted to bring it to your attention.]

Newt Gingrich is a political chameleon that has inexplicably managed to fool conservatives for 30 years. He is a globalist to the bone and supports every opportunity to erode American sovereignty and the constitution. He disguises his statist positions with an abundance of flip-flopping and pandering as needed. He has a long history of expanding the Federal Government and deficit spending. He is the very definition of an Establishment Insider.

– Card-Carrying member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a globalist think tank
– “Distinguished member” of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (neocon, pro-interventionism group)
– Member of Bohemian Grove
– Member of the World Future Society
– Voted for NAFTA, a blatant circumvention of Congress’ exclusive power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Took power from American people and put it into the hands of unelected Binational panels, made mostly of foreigners.
– Supported GATT
– Supported WTO
– Continually supported increased federal spending.
– Supported the National Endowment for the Arts;
– Voted for the creation of the Federal Dept. of Education in 1979 under Jimmy Carter.
– Big supporter of Foreign Aid — even to Soviets through the Export-Import Bank.
– In one year (1994-1995) Gingrich voted for nearly $45 billion in foreign aid.
– He helped push through Federally-funded loan guarantees to Communist China.

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Read More at floydreports.com

Guilty: Obama Admin Illegally Used U.S. Funds to Promote Abortion in Kenya

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A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds the Obama administration gave taxpayer funds to an organization that illegally lobbied Kenya to liberalize its abortion law as the president’s ancestral nation revised its constitution. Moreover, a high-ranking State Department employee stonewalled the investigation.

The Obama administration dedicated at least $18 million to convince Kenyans to ratify the new constitution, which expanded women’s legal right to an abortion. Although a 1981 law known as the Siljander Amendment specifically states “none of the funds made available under this Act may be used to lobby for or against abortion,” one recipient of U.S. aid pressed the issue anyway.

The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) “provided technical assistance” to the Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review (COE) at each stage of the constitutional review. The U.S. taxpayer paid IDLO $400,000 for this service. After the COE drew up the first draft of the new constitution in November 2009 — which did not mention abortion — “the IDLO report advised that the COE might consider adding language to make clear that the fetus lacks constitutional standing, and that the rights of women under these articles therefore take priority.” IDLO’s report itself stated the COE should “modify [the constitution] to make clear that a person is a human being who has been born,” thus legalizing abortion during all nine months of pregnancy.

The following January, the second draft constitution allowed abortion only if “the life of the mother is in danger.” IDLO responded, “even understanding the powerful feelings invoked on all sides of the abortion issue, the omission of a ‘health of the mother’ exception in this provision seems overbroad.” That is precisely the formula the final draft adopted — despite the fact that the “health of the mother” exception has been used as a massive loophole granting an abortion for virtually any perceived malady including stress.

The report makes clear as many as 24 grant recipients discussed abortion in some way, although none specifically cited the expansion of death as a reason to vote for the new constitution.

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 Read More at Floyd Reports By Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

BREAKING: Senate Rules Committee Blocks Tea Party Debt Commission Hearing on Budget Reform

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Senate Rules Committee staff on Thursday removed microphones and locked the doors of a hearing room in the Russell Senate Office Building where an informal hearing was scheduled to review the findings of the Tea Party Debt Commission, a months-long crowd-sourced effort to develop a budget proposal that balances the budget, reduces the debt and gets America’s fiscal house back in order

“The Senate hasn’t been able to pass a budget resolution three years running. They have been unable to do their job, and now the Rules Committee is trying to prevent the American people from doing it for them,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks

“The Senate has refused to let the American people know what the highly secretive budget ‘Super Committee’ is doing behind closed doors,” Kibbe added. “We’ve come to Washington with the real solutions developed by the American people, and the Rules Committee won’t let their voices be heard in an open forum. It’s outrageous. They’re kicking us out of our own building because they’re afraid we are going to do something crazy like balance the budget.”

The hearing was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. in Hearing Room 325 of the Russell Senate Office Building, one of three senate office buildings across Constitution Avenue from the U.S. Capitol. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sponsored the hearing so lawmakers and the public would have an opportunity to hear the findings of the Tea Party Debt Commission (TPDC). The commission of 12 volunteer tea party activists developed its report based on the results of a crowd-sourced online poll completed by nearly 50,000 Americans and field hearings held around the country in recent months

Sen. Lee is leading the tea party members to the Hillsdale College Kirby Center (10 G St. NW, Washington, DC, 20002), where the meeting will continue.’

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 Read More at freedomworks.org By Tabitha Hale, freedomworks.org

ACLU boss: We’re like the tea party

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American Civil Liberties Union President Susan Herman says she’s concerned about her organization being branded as left-wing and went so far as to draw parallels between the civil rights group and the tea party movement.

“The ACLU is non-partisan. We’re not Democrats, we’re not Republicans,” Herman told POLITICO in an interview to promote her new book, “Taking Liberties.” “Probably more of our positions happen to coincide with more progressive, Democratic or liberal organizations, in terms of number of issues. But what I can tell you is that there are places where we agree with people who are right-wing libertarians.”

In some ways, Herman said, there was even an overlap between the ACLU and the tea party – at least in rhetoric.

“I think we are in total agreement with the tea party that the Constitution is our governing document. Our rhetoric is going to be very similar to the tea party’s in that we say we should get back to our fundamental constitutional principles,” said Herman. “We just have different interpretations of what the Constitution means.”

That said, Herman didn’t hesitate to quip about at least one Tea Party-backed Republican presidential candidate. “Michelle Bachmann said recently that the ACLU is controlling the CIA – and to that I say, ‘I wish!’ We wouldn’t have had as much torture if we had been,” Herman joked.

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 Read More at Politico By Tim Mak, Politico

Media Won’t Link White House Shooter to Occupy Wall Street

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The identity of the man responsible for loosing a few shots at the White House last week has been made public by the D.C. police but one little fact is being buried by every news report about this guy. He is linked to the Occupy movement. Yet the media refuses to make the connection explicit. Imagine how the media would be wailing if the guy was a Tea Partier! But that this shooter was part of the Occupy movement seems somehow unimportant to the Old Media.

In fact, there doesn’t even have to be any link to the Tea Party for the Old Media to immediately jump to blaming the Tea Party movement for a shooting. If you’ll remember the outrageous accusations that the media made that the nut that shot Gabrielle Giffords was a Tea Partier or was driven to his criminal act by the “violent rhetoric of the right,” you’ll remember that shooter Loughner ended up having no real political point of view and was not connected even tangentially with the Tea Party.

But with this White House shooter, 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega of Idaho, we find that he was in Washington D.C. attending the Occupy protests there. But in every story I’ve seen that fact is only resides in the last paragraphs if it is mentioned at all.

Now imagine if this guy was a Tea Partier! If this guy was a conservative of a member or even just a participant at a single Tea Party event, that fact would have led the news. But in contradistinction to how the media reported the Giffords’ shooting, that Ortega was at Occupy D.C. is a fact pushed to the bottom of every story.

Certainly I am not saying that this guy is a full-on Occupy Wall Street participant. For all I know this goof was just hanging out and really didn’t have any solid sympathies or connection to Occupy. I am not tarring the Occupiers with this shooter. In fact, they are far worse than a guy that just fired a few shots ineffectively at the White House. The Occupiers are druggies, rapists, and thieves, for Lord’s sake!

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 Read More at Canada Free Press By Warner Todd Huston, Canada Free Press

There’s No Conservative Case for Romney

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I had the pleasure of appearing on National Public Radio’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook to discuss “the conservative case for Mitt Romney” with Tom, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson and for the last half hour of the show, Ryan Hecker, formerly with the Houston Tea Party, now Chief Operating Officer of FreedomWorks of America.

It was a good conversation, not only because Ashbrook, Gerson and Hecker had some interesting observations about the current Republican presidential nomination process, but because the callers confirmed one of my major concerns about the potential nomination of Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate for President — namely, that many conservatives and Tea Partiers would be unlikely to vote for Romney in the general election.

Of the dozen or so callers who spoke on the show, only one said he was for Romney, and the rest, when asked, either equivocated or indicated they would not vote for Romney even against Barack Obama.

While this seemed to be something of a surprise to our host Tom Ashbrook — it was no surprise to me, or to Tea Partier Ryan Hecker, who predicted Romney would get “zero” Tea Party support in the primary, and here’s why.

Romney has been stuck in the mid-twenties for the entire five years he has been running for President. This is about the same number of Republicans who do not self-identify as conservatives.

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 Read More at Real Clear Politics By Richard Vigurie, Real Clear Politics