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Obama new five year plan continues “crippling moratorium” on US offshore energy

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The Obama administration’s recently released five-year plan for offshore drilling leases has been met with sharp criticism from the oil and gas industry and Republicans, who say it continues a crippling moratorium on potential energy reserves on the West and East Coasts.

The administration’s 2012-2017 offshore lease plan, released June 28, expands available leasing areas for drilling slightly in the Gulf of Mexico and opens new areas in the Arctic Ocean, but also keeps both the West and East Coasts completely off-limits for offshore oil exploration.

Three of the fifteen lease auctions will be held in the Arctic seas—in Alaska’s Cook Inlet in 2016, in Chukchi Sea in 2016, and in the Beaufort Sea in 2017. The administration lauded its plan, saying the Arctic regions hold more than 75 percent of total undiscovered and recoverable oil.

However, Republicans and industry officials disagreed.

“It’s a very disappointing backtracking of the administration’s supposed ‘all of the above approach,’” said Jim Noe, the senior vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer of Hercules Offshore Inc., the largest shallow-water drilling company in the Gulf of Mexico. “It takes both coasts and leaves us the same areas we’ve been drilling in since the ’40s.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: L.C.Nøttaasen

GOP holds ‘super-Saturday’ blitz in battleground states

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Thousands of Republican volunteers braved scorching temperatures to knock on doors and canvass voters on Saturday as the party staged its first “Super Saturday” blitz hoping to energize supporters and rival Democrats’ volunteer mobilization.

Republican party officials said volunteers were out in a dozen battleground states expected to see close contests in the November 6 election between Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Obama captured all 12 – Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa – when he won the White House in 2008, aided by armies of enthusiastic supporters who helped generate the highest voter turnout in 40 years.

Romney will need to swing a number of them back to the Republican column to defeat Obama this year. Drumming up voter enthusiasm could be a key, especially given polls showing Democrats are more enthusiastic about the 2012 contest than Republicans.

“There’s nothing to substitute for face-to-face, eye-to-eye contact,” former Virginia Governor George Allen told volunteers in Fairfax, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

Transparency Ends at the White House Door

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On his first day in office, President Obama vowed to create “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens.” But the president has not lived up to his transparency rhetoric – and now even the left is taking note.

Liberal magazine Mother Jones laments this week that the Obama administration spent a record-high $12 billion in 2011 to keep government information classified. Since the process of classifying documents is itself classified, it’s impossible to determine the individual merits of those decisions. But it’s instructive to consider the government’s sweeping classification mandate with Obama’s initial pledge that transparency would be one of the “touchstones” of his administration. As he said back in January 2009:

The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, that it should not be disclosed. That era is now over.

Except, plainly, it’s not. And it’s not just the “American people” who are being denied access to government-related information. The president’s cheerleaders in the establishment media have been similarly rebuffed. In June, that frustration led Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times – hardly a right-wing tribune — to blast the administration for its hostility to media coverage and its tightfisted control over information, especially on national security. Abramson revealed that Times reporters who had covered national security issues for several decades had confided in her that “the environment has never been tougher or information harder to dislodge. One Times reporter told me, ‘The environment in Washington has never been more hostile to reporting.’” So much for a new era of accountability.

Obama’s broken promises on transparency are also evident in the administration’s aggressive pursuit of leakers, on whom journalists rely for scoops and inside information. That may seem unlikely, particularly in light of the recent spate of national security leaks from the administration. But those leaks, highlighting the administration’s national security successes — such as the drone program and the foiling of a terror plot through an audacious undercover operation — have largely served to bolster the administration’s public image. By contrast, the administration has come down hard on leakers it sees as damaging to its cause. In its first term, the administration has launched six prosecutions involving such whistleblowers – double the number under all previous administrations combined. Although most of these whistleblowers have leaked information to the media rather than to a foreign government, it speaks to the severity of the administration’s position on leaks that it has gone after them under the 1917 Espionage Act. The message is clear: Transparency ends at the White House door.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: Saint_727

Obama administration “blatantly circumventing” Tenn.’s Planned Parenthood funding ban

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Pro-lifers are calling foul at Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Grants Management has given Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region $395,000 through its Title X Family Planning Services Program.

According to Cohen’s office, Title X is the only federal grant program with the lone mission of funding family planning services.

“Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region has been helping Memphis and Shelby County residents get the health care they need to lead happier, healthier lives for years,” Cohen said in a statement. “These new federal funds will help ensure the Title X Family Planning Program reaches those who need help the most in underserved communities.”

Pro-life groups say that the Obama administration is blatantly circumventing the state’s 2011 decision to defund Planned Parenthood.

“While we are disappointed that any tax funding would be directed to private organizations promoting and profiting from the killing of unborn children, this end run around the people of Tennessee will serve to underscore the urgent need to elect a pro-life president, Senate and Congress in November,” said Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  Fibonacci Blue

Economic stagnation: Obama’s baby

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Today the American unemployment rate remains unchanged at 8.2 percent. The economy is still five million jobs shy of the breakeven point as America continues to drown in a sea of growing government red ink while struggling to tread water under the overburden of oppressive big government regulations.

Since the start of the seemingly never ending “great recession”, the nation has lost 8.8 million jobs. It has regained only 3.8 million, less than 44 percent. According to the most recent Labor Department report, employers added only 80,000 jobs in June. The economy averaged 75,000 jobs a month in the second quarter, one-third the pace of the first quarter. This marks the third straight month of weak hiring, clearly showing that the economy is still struggling under the weight of the current administration’s failed economic policies.

Thanks to the brilliance of Obama’s economic plan, over the course of the past two years, America’s alleged recovery has gone from adding an average of 161,000 jobs per month to 150,000 per month, and now to 75,000 per month. If a recovery was actually taking place, those numbers would be going up instead of down, right? Instead, a sinkhole is swallowing up hope for millions of Americans of finding a job.

Was there not a pledge made in 2009 by the self-imagined, self-appointed intellectual elites working in the White House that if American taxpayers funded the $878 billion “stimulus” package, unemployment would not go above 8 percent? Was there not a promise that the “stimulus” would have unemployment down to 5.5 percent by now? As it turns out the “stimulus” wasted taxpayer dollars, making little dent in the jobless rate.  But it did reward the White House’s political cronies within the inefficient, unproductive, largely imaginary “green energy industry.”  Obama’s claims that millions of jobs were “created or saved by the stimulus” must be met with severe skepticism. The unemployment numbers have never reflected that.

There are far too many people who know the real story because they are living it. Claims made to the contrary by the Obama re-election campaign don’t matter as they fail to reflect the reality people are living. Regardless of what is loaded on the teleprompter, reality cannot and will not be explained away. In short, people living in the real world are not buying the administration’s theoretical “cash for clunkers” economics approach. Taxing successful businesses, taking a cut for DC, then sending the remainder back to your favorite campaign bundlers running phony business fronts is not an economic recovery plan.  That’s money laundering, Chicago style.

How long is it going to be before the current White House occupant and/or his surrogates start popping up like Whack-a-Moles on the Sunday morning political talk shows blaming all of this on George W. Bush?

Did someone say this Sunday?

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates.  Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/.  His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Alaskan DOT signs hacked to read “Impeach Obama”

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Several electronic road construction signs around Anchorage were hacked late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Signs that normally display closure and detour information, like the one on Minnesota Drive near 100th Avenue, were changed to read “Impeach Obama.” That particular sign wasn’t fixed until sometime between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Thursday.

It happened because DOT says it doesn’t lock the boxes on the signs that hold the message control pad.

Construction managers say sign-hacking has never happened before, so they never thought to lock the boxes.

DOT says that changed this morning, and now all of them will be locked.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Tamara Douglas

Brad Pitt’s Mom Pens Anti-Gay, Anti-Obama Letter to Local Newspaper

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An anti-gay letter urging Christians to vote for Mitt Romney that was printed today in The Springfield News-Leader has been confirmed by the newspaper as having been penned by Jane Pitt, mother of Brad Pitt.

The verification comes amid some confusion, as the Missouri newspaper first printed an editor’s note denying any relation between the letter writer and movie star. That was later replaced with a second editor’s note, reading, “To clear up earlier confusion, the News-Leader has verified the letter writer is the mother of actor Brad Pitt and local businessman Doug Pitt.”

The letter — itself a response to another opinion piece in the newspaper justifying Christians’ rights to refuse to vote for Romney because he is a Mormon — identifies Mrs. Pitt as “a Christian [who differs] with the Mormon religion.”

But, Pitt continues, “any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon.”

Pitt goes on to write that “any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Obama is going to impose gun control by treaty . . . on July 27?

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Without any national debate — and after secret negotiations — Obama is going to sign the Arms Trade Treaty which will lead to UN imposed gun control.

Video: Obama needs to walk around DC once in a while

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In this short Stoplight commentary, Stuart Shepard takes us along for a walk in the nation’s capital and explains how Obama completely misunderstands our nation’s religious history.

 

Photo credit:  Rob Shenk

Israeli Gov’t: Another Obama term, “nightmare” for Jewish State

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I am traveling through Israel with the Young Jewish Conservatives—an emerging organization that is breaking the stereotype that all Jews (especially young ones) lean to the left.

Tonight we had the opportunity to speak with someone who shall remain anonymous, and who is a very credible source. He told us that there are those at the “highest levels of the Israeli Government” (possibly including Prime Minister Netanyahu himself) who have recently said that 4 more years of an Obama Presidency would be a “nightmarish scenario” for the Jewish State.

This Israeli fear of a second Obama term should surprise no one that has been following the disintegration of the Israel/American relationship during the last few years. After all, with regards to Israel’s greatest fear, a nuclear armed Iran, Obama has totally dropped the ball.

The only way Iran will peacefully abandon its nuclear weapons program is if it fears a credible military threat from America or Israel. Obama has seriously undermined this threat by giving in to endless “talks” with Iran, and for spending the bulk of his energy convincing Israel not to take pre-emptive military action. As a retired Israeli soldier told us yesterday, “Iran is laughing all the way to the bomb.”

Read more HERE.