As I have been saying, this november will see the greatest sweep in modern electoral history. And again in 2012...T
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gives President Barack Obama only a 20 percent chance of being reelected — and says he might be the one to give Obama the boot.
Gingrich, who this week published a book called “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” said he thinks Obama has “about one chance in five of getting reelected.” and called him “the closest thing to Jimmy Carter I’ve seen.”
“Because he’s so radical, you’re now going to have, I think, the most consequential campaign since 1932,” when Franklin D. Roosevelt clobbered President Herbert Hoover, Gingrich said.
Giving predictions for November’s midterms, Gingrich said House Republicans will pick up “somewhere between 40 and 65 or 70 seats” — enough to gain control of the House. “I believe John Boehner will be speaker in January,” he said.
Gingrich said he even sees a chance of Republican control of the Senate. “If they can beat Barbara Boxer [in California], I think that [Mitch] McConnell is going to be the Senate majority leader.”
The former speaker said there is “more of a possibility now” that he’ll run for president than when he was considering the idea ahead of the 2008 election. He said he’ll decide in February or March of next year and will base the decision partly on whether there is “a potential to raise the resources to be a serious, major candidate.”
Gingrich said he and his wife, Callista, will base the decision on two top factors: “Is the case for basic change clear enough, and powerful enough, that articulating it and carrying it is a legitimate part of my role as a citizen?” and “Is there a potential to raise the resources to be a serious, major candidate.”
“This is a decision that will change the entire rest of our lives, and I think we're taking it with our daughters and our son-in-laws and our grandchildren,” he said. “We're taking this very methodically and very seriously. It's very daunting. … The whole point of my book is to say: We have to have a decade of really profound, deep, change, and it has to be in the right direction to compete with China and India and to defeat terrorism. And if we don't get those, we are in deep trouble. …
“The movement that would achieve that can't just be the presidency—that's where Obama didn't get it. It can't even just be the Congress. It's got to be school boards, city council, state legislature, county commission, governorships. I mean, you have to have a wave of change in this country for us to be able to compete with China and India. … There are thousands of people around the country who walk up and say: ‘We have to have leadership that will get this done.’”
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
GINGRICH: 80% CHANCE OBAMA LOSES -- GOP COULD GAIN 70 HOUSE SEATS, TAKE SENATE
Posted by Navitor at 10:33 PM 0 comments
Labels: Barack Obama, Conservative vs. Moderate Republicanism, Economics 101: Free to Choose or Compelled to Follow?, Election News, Jimmy Carter, Obama Socialism
Monday, May 17, 2010
Obama the destroyer
Image via Wikipedia
Well, friends, it is "put up or shut up" time for our few remaining elected representatives who care that we have a constitution. There is scarcely any of it left to shred, except for those parts that service the progressives interests (separation clause & commerce clause bastardisations)
This fanatic progressive she-NAZI has no place in the hallowed halls of out supreme court. One would have to strain to find significant distance between Kagen and William Ayers, intellectually. For that matter, one would have to strain to find significant intellectual distance between comrade Obama and comrades Mao and Stalin...
President Obama is subverting the Supreme Court. His latest pick for the high court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, is a radical leftist who would rubber-stamp Mr. Obama's transformative socialist agenda. She is not an independent, serious nominee, but an Obama ideological clone.
The Supreme Court is the nation's highest legal body. It represents the apex of a separate branch of government designed to serve as a pivotal check and balance against the executive and legislative branches. A functioning democracy based on the rule of law depends upon an independent judiciary - especially, a Supreme Court immune from the corrosive grasp of political power.
This is why dictators and socialist autocrats often seek to control their nations' supreme courts: By imposing their will on the high court they can bend the nation's judiciary to submit to their rule. Dominating the high court removes a major institutional bulwark to consolidating state power. Hence, our Founding Fathers believed that Supreme Court justices should be individuals of the highest intelligence, character, moral integrity, political independence and fair-minded temperament. They are not - and should never be - partisan hacks.
Ms. Kagan is unfit to sit on the high court. She is an incompetent apparatchik, whose only purpose is to blindly advance Mr. Obama's revolutionary progressivism. She possesses no judicial experience; never once being a judge. Her litigation background is thin. She is neither an accomplished lawyer nor jurist. She is no Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Her liberal defenders insist Ms. Kagan has a first-rate legal mind. She is an academic, having served as dean of Harvard Law School. This supposedly qualifies her to be on the Supreme Court. It does not. Unlike other constitutional scholars, Ms. Kagan has not written any books. Her body of written work is sparse and shallow. Besides several articles and book reviews, she has produced nothing of consequence. She is a mediocre bureaucrat, who has excelled mostly at climbing the greasy pole of academic politics.
Moreover, Ms. Kagan was a corrupt administrator, who turned a blind eye to plagiarism by prominent Harvard faculty members. Confronted by overwhelming evidence that scholars Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree - two leading liberals on campus - had pulled word-for-word, direct material from other authors, she effectively gave them a slap on the wrist. If students had committed the same offense, they would have been rightly suspended or expelled. She oversaw the creation of a two-tier system: one set of rules for leftist academics, another one for the student body.
As dean, she prevented military recruiters from coming on campus. The reason: She opposed the "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy on homosexuals serving in the military. Her active opposition to military recruitment took place during a time of war. American troops were fighting - and dying - in Iraq and Afghanistan. They needed every soldier and official possible. Ms. Kagan's dogmatic liberalism trumped patriotism.
The real - and only - reason Ms. Kagan has been selected is that she is a partisan ideologue. She worked as a policy aide under the Clinton administration. She is Mr. Obama's solicitor general, arguing the administration's cases before the Supreme Court. Abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, school prayer, the war on terror, the constitutional legitimacy of Obamacare - she will vote the Obama line on every issue.
Ms. Kagan is not simply a traditional liberal. Like her master, Mr. Obama, she seeks to erect a European-style socialist state. She is anti-capitalist. Her undergraduate thesis discussed the glories of socialist agitation in America during the early part of the 20th century. She celebrated their goal of overthrowing the free-market system.
She is also a staunch supporter of European-style "hate speech" laws. In a 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review, Ms. Kagan called for the "redistribution of speech." Repeating the arguments of the European left, she called for the government to restrict or prohibit speech that might cause "harm," either directly or by inciting others to commit violence. In other words, protected classes - gays and lesbians, Muslims, minorities, women - should be given privileged status against the claims of free speech. Such hate speech laws have been used to delegitimize and criminalize conservative opinions.
In that same article, Ms. Kagan also argues that the government has the "right" to "unskew" an "overabundance of ideas" in the marketplace. In other words, if there is too much of an idea that the ruling liberal elite does not like, then speech can be "redistributed" to ensure a more "level playing field." It echoes the left's long-held goal of smashing the dominance of conservatives on talk radio.
Western liberalism is sliding towards an embrace of multicultural tyranny. In Europe, soft totalitarianism is becoming a reality - Christianity is being purged from the public square; real conservative opinion is being marginalized; statism is becoming entrenched. The Trojan horse for this assault on human freedom has been so-called hate-speech laws. Through the use of an imperial judiciary, leftist activists are engaging in a massive social-engineering experiment.
The same is now occurring in America. If Ms. Kagan is confirmed, Mr. Obama will be one step closer to reshaping the Supreme Court in his image. His first pick, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the "wise Latina," is doing his bidding. Ms. Kagan is next. Mr. Obama is slowly turning us into Europe. Once he stacks the Supreme Court with a majority of justices, his revolution will be complete. And traditional America will be no more.
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Sunday, May 09, 2010
Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009
9 out of 10 are democrooks, no surprise...T
Washington, DC
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
1.Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.
2.Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: "The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…" The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.
3.Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank's intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
4.Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: "Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned 'full details' of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG." Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed "household help" ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the "Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington" list.
5.Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton's scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder's former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder's controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder's politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.
6.Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named "Senate Candidate A" in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat. According to Reuters: "Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich -- later charged with trying to sell Obama's Senate seat -- at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor's aides about his desire to be appointed." Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.
7.President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration "lowlights" from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's scheme to sell the President's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President's bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control — through fiat and threats — large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: "The administration's central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption." Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors — this is Obama's "ethics" record — and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency.
8.Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2009 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker's 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA's use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)
9.Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks -- tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA's offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, "Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills." When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, "cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file." The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha's nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: "Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military."
10.Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow "forgot" about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making "campaign contributions" to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: "The reigning member of Congress' top tax committee is apparently 'wrangling' other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles...Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him." Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That's why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional colleagues.
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