In the news…

-  Democrat Former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is out of a job now that the Wall Street firm he headed, MF Global, has gone bankrupt, but don’t worry. He’ll be just fine.  Corzine has a couple of things to keep him out of the unemployment line. First, he’s a “great friend” and “ally” of President Barack Obama, as the president himself has said.  And second, he’s expected to receive a $12.1 million severance package — the kind of things that critics of Wall Street excess, like Obama, often call “golden parachutes.”

-  When asked for his response to ten executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac receiving $12.79 million in bonuses, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said a “gag reflex in front of all you would be improper, that’s how I feel about it.” Fannie and Freddie have received over $153 billion and counting in taxpayer money.  Republicans have called on Obama to cancel the bonuses.

- And finally, here’s the list of those group or individuals supporting Occupy Wall Street:

	Communist Party USA  Sources: Communist Party USA, OWS speech, The Daily Caller
	American Nazi Party  Sources: Media Matters, American Nazi Party, White Honor, Sunshine State News
	Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran  Sources: The Guardian, Tehran Times, CBS News
	Barack Obama  Sources: ABC News, CBS News, ForexTV, NBC New York
	The government of North Korea  Sources: Korean Central News Agency (North Korean state-controlled news outlet), The Marxist-Leninist, Wall Street Journal, Times of India
	Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam  Sources: video statement (starting at 8:28), Black in America, Weasel Zippers, Philadelphia Weekly
	Revolutionary Communist Party  Sources: Revolutionary Communist Party, Revolution newspaper, in-person appearance
	David Duke  Sources: Talking Points Memo, video statement, davidduke.com
	Joe Biden  Sources: Talking Points Memo, video statement, Mother Jones
	Hugo Chavez  Sources: Mother Jones, Reuters, Examiner.com
	Revolutionary Guards of Iran  Sources: Associated Press, FARS News Agency, UPI
	Black Panthers (original)  Sources: in-person appearance, Occupy Oakland, Oakland Tribune
	Socialist Party USA  Sources: Socialist Party USA, IndyMedia, The Daily Caller
	US Border Guard  Sources: White Reference, www.usborderguard.com, Gateway Pundit, Just Another Day blog
	Industrial Workers of the World  Sources: IWW web site, iww.org, in-person appearances
	CAIR  Sources: in-person appearance, Washington Post, CAIR, CAIR New York
	Nancy Pelosi  Sources: Talking Points Memo, video statement, ABC News, The Weekly Standard
	Communist Party of China  Sources: People’s Daily (Communist Party organ), Reuters, chinataiwan.org, The Telegraph
	Hezbollah  Sources: almoqawama.org, almoqawama.org (2), almoqawama.org (3), wikipedia
	9/11Truth.org  Sources: 911truth.org (1), 911truth.org (2), 911truth.org (3)
	International Bolshevik Tendency  Sources: bolshevik.org, Wire Magazine
	Anonymous  Sources: Adbusters, The Guardian, video statement
	White Revolution  Source: whiterevolution.com
	International Socialist Organization  Sources: Socialist Worker, socialistworker.org, in-person appearance
	PressTV (Iranian government outlet)  Sources: PressTV, wikipedia
	Marxist Student Union  Sources: Marxist Student Union, Big Government, marxiststudentunion.blogspot.com
	Freedom Road Socialist Organization  Sources: FightBack News, fightbacknews.org
	ANSWER  Sources: ANSWER press release, ANSWER web site, Xinhua
	Party for Socialism and Liberation  Sources: Liberation News (1), pslweb.org, The Daily Free Press, Liberation News (2)

Courtesy:  John Paulus

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In the news…

-  The host state of the Democrat Nation Convention is quickly losing jobs.  Payrolls fell in 25 U.S. states in September, led by North Carolina, a sign the weakness in the job market is broad-based.  Employers cut staff by 22,200 in North Carolina last month, according to Labor Department data issued today in Washington. The report also showed the jobless rate decreased in 25 states.  Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid’s state of Nevada continued to lead the nation in unemployment with a rate of 13.4 percent.

-  Former Apple CEO and genius Steve Jobs gave Obama some insight according to an authorized biography.   Jobs also told Obama that “regulations and unnecessary costs” put the United States at a competitive disadvantage with China, where companies can build factories more cheaply.  The recently deceased Jobs also told Obama that the education system was “crippled by union work rules,” according to Isaacson. Jobs proposed principals be able to hire and fire teachers based on merit, and to extend the length of both the school day and academic year.  Jobs’ advice was spot on.

-  More Stimulus waste and pay-offs to Democrat donors.  At least $7 million in federal stimulus money intended to provide jobs to unemployed Oregonians instead paid wages to 254 foreign workers, federal investigators have concluded. But if you think that’s bad, it gets worse.  The Obama Energy Department with the urging of the Obama Administration gave $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker.  The company is operated by large donors to Barack Obama and has a venture partnership with Al Gore.  The Obama Administration said the company would create jobs and put Americans back to work- one problem, the company used the money to build a factory in Finland where it will produce its cars.  Again, the Obama Administration ships more jobs overseas with the use of taxpayer money. Now we have a better idea where all the money has been going to help teachers and fire fighters keep their jobs.

-  Herman Cain continues to shock the liberal press.  Cain now leads Romney in many polls including Iowa- the home of the first caucus.  Cain also leads Obama in a head to head match-up including North Carolina where the Democrats will hold their 2012 Convention.

Courtesy:  John Paulus
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In the news for this Tuesday…

Can the Obama get through the week without another scandal?  The latest involves his attorney general, Eric Holder.  Back in May of this year, during testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Eric Holder is alleged to have perjured himself when he said he was unaware of the ATF’s ‘Fast & Furious’ Program until just two weeks prior.  However, newly released documents show that not only was aware a year earlier, but he was briefed on its details.  In order to protect himself from prosecution for perjury, Holder now claims he “misunderstood the question”.  Is anyone really buying this?

President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan.  According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds.  So much for “green jobs” being the way to the future unless of course that future leads to the unemployment line.

Did you read the report issued today by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carper?  Disabled and elderly drug abusers may be costing taxpayer-funded Medicare almost $150 million a year by convincing doctors to write prescriptions for oxycodone and other narcotics. About 170,000 patients in Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled, acquired often-abused drugs from at least five doctors each in 2008. Taxpayers subsidized multiple prescriptions of hydrocodone, fentanyl, oxycodone and other narcotics at a cost of $148 million in 2007, according to the report.  Wait until ObamaCare.

Obama’s “pass it now” job’s bill ran into some Senate Democrat turbulence today.  Senate Republicans tried to make Democrats hold a quick vote on President Obama’s jobs-stimulus bill Tuesday, but were blocked by Senate Majority Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is sponsoring Mr. Obama’s bill but who said other matters take priority. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, tried to force a vote, which presumably would have resulted in a humiliating defeat for the White House.  “I’d like to give him that vote,” Mr. McConnell said.

Courtesy:  John Paulus

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Expect Vice President Biden to be called into the White House for a bit of a scolding.  Biden told Florida radio station WLRN on Thursday that voters should hold President Barack Obama, not former President George W. Bush, accountable for the poor state of America’s economy.  “Right now, understandably — totally legitimate — this is a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature of the state of the economy,” Biden said.  “Even though fifty-some percent of the American people think that the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant,” Biden stressed. “What’s relevant is we’re in charge. And right now we are the ones in charge and it’s gotten better, but it hasn’t gotten good enough… I don’t blame them for being mad. We’re in charge,” Biden explained.

In the final few days on the month, the Obama Administration pushed to get $1 billion in additional loan guarantees to green energy companies.  One of those companies, SolarReserve LLC, based out of Democrat Senator Reid’s state of Nevada, received $737 million. But this story gets more interesting.  PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC is one of the investors in SolarReserve LLC, and Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who also is the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi is an executive at PCG.  This is not to imply that Ronald Pelosi will benefit financially from the loan, but it is interesting to note all these connections between donors, Democrats, and family to these “green energy” companies.  By the way, the $1 billion in loan guarantees is expected to create just 65 long term jobs.

Parents are outraged that a liberal teacher in California intends to punish any student who says, “God Bless you”, in the classroom.  Steve Cuckovich, a health teacher at William C. Wood High School in Vacaville, California believes it is both disrespectful and disruptive.  The school has come to agree with concerned parents, with the teacher now pledging to implement a more palatable punishment for the offense.

If he were a republican governor liberals would be recalling him and the media would be reporting the story ad naseum.  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo started the process of laying off 3,500 union workers Tuesday night after the state‘s union rejected wage and benefit concessions negotiated to balance New York’s budget, reports Business Insider.  Union members voted, 54 percent to 46 percent, to reject the five-year deal that called for employees to forgo raises for the first three years and accept 2 percent increases in each of the final two years. The deal also called for union members to pay more for health insurance.

“I was not always the very best student that I could be when I was in high school, and certainly not when I was in middle school,” Obama said, speaking at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington DC.  “I did not love every class I took. I wasn’t always paying attention the way I should have,” Obama said. “I remember when I was in 8th grade I had to take a class called ethics. Now, ethics is about right and wrong, but if you’d ask me what my favorite subject was back in 8th grade, it was basketball. I don’t think ethics would have made it on the list.” Nothing needs to be added to these comments.

Courtesy:  John Paulus

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“Pass this bill now” was the rallying cry from Obama, but he seems to have a problem getting his job’s bill passed and it’s not with Republicans.

In the House of Representatives not a single Democrat has taken Obama’s job’s bill and filed it- Congressional rules require that a bill from the President be sponsored by a member of the House and filed in order to be considered for a vote.  No Democrat wants to put his or her name on it.  This bring up the questions; is it because it’s a bad bill or because Democrats want to provide Obama with ammunition to wrongly blame Republicans for not passing a job’s bill.

Then we’re on to the Senate where Harry Reid has said that Obama’s job’s bill is not a priority.  In fact, after Senate Democrats returned from an island retreat in South Carolina last week, they’ll be heading on vacation.  Majority Leader Reid said Monday night that when the Senate returns from a weeklong vacation, the chamber will work instead on a bill that would push to label China a currency manipulator.  Obama has been traveling the country demanding that Republicans stop playing politics, but the truth is his own party has not been keen to rush the legislation. Mr. Reid is the Senate sponsor of the measure, but he said there are other priorities. “We’ll get to that, but let’s get some of these things done that we have to get done first,” he said.

The bottom line is Obama is being more than disingenuous when he claims that Republicans aren’t passing his job’s bill and there may be more here at play than meets the eye.  With no House Democrat sponsoring his Bill and the Democrat controlled Senate putting the job’s bill on the back burner, we may have a case of Democrats and Obama playing politics with jobs and this job’s bill was meant as nothing more than political theater for the President and Democrats.  How unfortunate.

Courtesy:  John Paulus

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It’s another example of a “do nothing” Democrat Senate.  In the early hours of this morning, the Republican controlled House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution which would keep the government operating beyond October 1st.  Included in the Bill was $3.65 billion in disaster relief.  Senator Harry Reid, with Democrat votes, tabled the Bill and blocked emergency disaster relief.  To add more salt to the wound, Reid said that the Senate needed the weekend to “cooling off “.  Remarkably, the Democrat held Senate has not passed a budget in nearly 900 days so delaying emergency disaster relief and a continuing resolution bill for a weekend should not come as a surprise, but is cooling off really the reason for not taking up the  Bill?  According to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee calendar, Democrats are scheduled for the Fall retreat this weekend at an island resort in Kiawah, SC.  Disaster relief can wait.

Still wondering where all those billions of dollars in stimulus money went? President Obama will raise money with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state.  Tom Carnahan, a member of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4.  His investment firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.  An audit of all these “green” company with direct ties to Obama and Democrats should be conducted to evaluate just how many jobs were actually created with these billions of dollars that could have been directed to repairing these bridges Obama says are in disrepair.

In another example of government inefficiency, a report by the AP claims that the federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years, a watchdog report says.  Such payments are meant for retired or disabled federal workers, but sometimes the checks keep going out even after the former employees pass away and the deaths are not reported, according to the report this week from the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general, Patrick McFarland.  In one case, the son of a beneficiary continued receiving payments for 37 years after his father’s death in 1971. The payments – totaling more than $515,000 – were only discovered when the son died in 2008.  Perhaps, energy should be focused resolving inefficient government and rather than taxing the rich.

A report out today claims that more people will gain health insurance under ObamaCare, however, overall cost will rise and patients will have to wait longer for care. And speaking of ObamaCare, the Obama administration has shelved a financially troubled long-term care insurance plan. Officials said Thursday the staff has been cut and it’s an “open question” if the program will be implemented.Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was created under President Barack Obama’s health care law as a voluntary long-term care insurance program for workers. Doubts about its financial viability were raised early on.

Courtesy:  John Paulus

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Can Harry Reid wait out the Tea Party?

The Senate majority leader seems to think so.

Reid sat down with more than 30 Review-Journal staffers Friday afternoon for an hour-long Q&A session at the newspaper’s offices. The bulk of the back and forth was dedicated to federal spending and how Congress might tame exploding budget deficits.

Reid blamed everything that ails Washington and the nation on Republicans. He slammed the GOP for its refusal to go along with tax increases as part of this month’s debt-ceiling deal, saying hard-core fiscal conservatives are making it impossible to strike a long-term deal that slows the growth of the national debt.

“(Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell has done a good job bringing the country to a standstill,” Reid said.

The reason Republicans have drawn such a deep line in the sand on tax increases, of course, is the Tea Party movement. The populist uprising that was born from Washington’s bailouts achieved critical mass after Democrats decided to start spending like no government before. The stimulus. The ObamaCare overreach. Budget deficits that made President George W. Bush look like a piker.

Democrats were tossed from office in record numbers last November. That groundswell is shaping the 2012 campaign.

But Reid doesn’t expect it to last.

“The Tea Party was the result of a terrible economy,” he said. “I’ve said that many times, and I believe that.”

“That (the Tea Party) will pass. They will lose a number of seats next year.”

Reid has amassed his considerable power by never underestimating his adversaries. And he has been known to throw out strategic fibs to create misdirection.

However, Reid left the indelible impression Friday that as long as he’s leading the Senate Democrats, the Tea Party agenda is dead on arrival in his chamber. In exchange for a modicum of reduced growth in federal spending, Reid said someone will have to pay more. There will be reductions and entitlement reforms without tax increases. He singled out the rich and oil companies as especially deserving of punishment.

Perhaps Reid is still savoring his November re-election victory over Tea Party darling Sharron Angle. Perhaps he’s oblivious to the number of Democrats, in both House and Senate races, sprinting to the right to boost their 2012 chances. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking.

But there’s no way the Tea Party is going away — certainly not before the 2012 elections, and certainly not when the national debt is projected to shoot past $20 trillion before the end of the decade. Anyone who minimizes the Tea Party by extension minimizes the massive spending problems that created it in the first place.

Reid rationalizes that those problems are all Republicans’ fault. He opened Friday’s group interview with a two-minute reminder that George W. Bush is responsible for the country’s spending and America’s economic woes. After all, Bush inherited a projected $7 trillion budget surplus from Bill Clinton. (Never mind that Clinton served his final six years over a Republican-controlled Congress. They had nothing to do with that period of spending restraint.)

There’s no denying that Bush did little to rein in the fat-and-happy Congresses that shoveled out the pork during his first six years in office. That deficit spending did incalculable political damage, allowing Democrats to position themselves to the right of Republicans on fiscal policy and falsely run as conservatives in 2008.

But budget deficits under Bush were in the $100 billion to $400 billion range, mostly related to the post 9/11 wars. The Obama administration — working with a Democratic House and Senate its first two years — set the course for budget deficits of more than $1 trillion into the distant future. Obama is on course to pile up more debt in three years than Bush did in eight.

Democrats — led by Reid — now own this country’s debt problem and its struggling economy. The 2012 election will be a referendum on Obama and Reid, not Bush. The Tea Party will see to that.

Among other interesting things Reid had to say Friday:

– Echoing the sentiment of other Democrats and devoted Keynesians, Reid said the failed stimulus just wasn’t big enough. “I had $100 billion in infrastructure development in the bill, but I needed three Republican votes. Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins made me get rid of it.”

– Nevada’s redistricting mess, sent to the courts when the Legislature gave up redrawing congressional and legislative districts, will probably “take at least another five months” to clean up. That means candidates might not know what districts they live in until January or February, with filing for office beginning in March. Fundraising for legislative candidates, in particular, will be hurt by such a delay.

Mercifully, no one on the Review-Journal staff asked Reid about green energy.

Courtesy:  Glenn Cook

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Congress has reached a bipartisan compromise to end the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration that has left 74,000 transportation and construction workers idled, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

The deal would allow the Senate to approve a House bill extending the FAA’s operating authority through mid-September, including a provision that cuts $16.5 million in air service subsidies to rural communities.

Republicans had insisted on the cuts as their price for restoring the FAA to full operation. But the cuts may become moot.

Democrats said they expect the White House to effectively waive or negate the cuts, which would allow continued service to 13 communities affected by the provision.

“I don’t know all the details of how they (the affected communities) will be held harmless. I just know that the White House has provided assurances that they will be held harmless,” said a Senate Democratic leadership aide who asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

“This is a tremendous victory for American workers everywhere,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

Courtesy: Time

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has  signed off on a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, which has been primarily negotiated between his Republican counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and President Barack Obama.

“Senator Reid has signed off on the debt-ceiling agreement pending caucus approval,” Reid’s spokesman, Adam Jentleson, said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.

In coming out in favor of the deal, Reid paves the way for its passage in the Senate. There are likely to be members of both parties who will end up opposing the measure, which would cut $1 trillion in spending over the course of ten years before giving way to a super committee of lawmakers to find $1.8 trillion in additional cuts. But that chamber seems like less of a steep hurdle for passage.

The real question mark is the House of Representatives. On Sunday, Democratic aides suggested that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was inching towards formally supporting the deal. But no formal word has been issued from her office. Her caucus, which is compromise of more progressives than the Senate, presents a far tougher sell than Reid’s.

Even without Pelosi’s support, the real question remains whether House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will end up backing the measure. Members of his conference have raised concerns that the enforcement mechanism to ensure that the committees recommendations are passed into law leans too heavily on cuts to the defense department’s budget. Democrats have countered that the triggers are disproportionately weighted against their interests, as they include no revenue raisers and involve steep cuts to domestic spending and Medicare suppliers.

Boehner is expected to hold a conference call with his members on Sunday. A request for comment from his office was not returned.

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The Senate voted  Sunday afternoon to block legislation crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to raise the debt limit by $2.4 trillion.

Reid and other Democratic leaders worked intently to persuade centrist Republicans to support the plan but fell short.

The vote to end a  filibuster failed 50 to 49. Only Sen. Scott Brown, a centrist Republican from Massachusetts, defied the GOP leadership.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted against Reid’s plan, as did Reid himself in a procedural move that will allow him to bring it back to the floor.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) was the only senator to miss the vote.

Now Democratic senators are waiting for Reid to call a special caucus meeting with senior administration officials to hear about the status of negotiations with GOP leaders. A meeting had been announced for 2 p.m. but it was postponed at the last moment.

Lawmakers say they have been told the president and GOP leaders are closing in on a deal and expect one as soon as this afternoon.

Reid told colleagues shortly after noon that he is cautiously optimistic of a deal.

“We are close to an agreement with Republican leaders,” he said. “[A]fter speaking to Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this morning, we are cautiously optimists.”

Senators will wait for a bipartisan deal to be finalized and then will begin work on advancing it to the House.

If any senator decides to object and drag out proceedings, Congress will not make the Aug. 2 deadline set by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

A Democratic aide said if conservatives filibuster the deal, the soonest it could pass the Senate would be a Wednesday.

A short-term stopgap measure may be necessary to allow the government to pay its bills after Aug. 2. But such a Band Aid would need to receive unanimous consent to pass by Tuesday.

Courtesy:  The Hill

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