Would You Trust These People With Your Investment Portfolio ?

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about the investments the Obama Administration has made in alternative energy companies.

The article reports:

The Romney campaign later clarified that he was talking about the DOE’s 1705 loan program which doled out $16.1 billion to green energy companies, accordingto the Washington Post. Of the 33 companies that received 1705 loan guarantees, only three have declared bankruptcy.

The article further reports:

The blog Green Corruption’s “Obama green-energy failure” list contains 23 bankrupt and 27 troubled green energy companies which were backed by the federal government. This list uses data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, but also includes some things the conservative think tank doesn’t.

According to the Heritage Foundation, $80 billion was set aside in the 2009 stimulus package for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, and 10 percent of these funds have gone to companies that have filed for bankruptcy or are in dire straits.

As I have said before, I believe there will come a day when green energy makes sense. I also believe that day will come after the free market has culled out the technologies that do not work and the technologies that do work have naturally risen to the top of the pile. Government subsidies interfere with that process and actually slow down the successful development of green energy–not to mention the amount of money the government has lost in picking winners and losers (mostly losers).

As taxpayers, we have the right to invest our money where we chose to invest it. There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the government the right to make investments in green energy for us.

 

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About Those Voting Machines

On October 24, I posted an article about voting machines in North Carolina that were malfunctioning (rightwinggranny.com). Well, it seems that North Carolina is not the only place where voting machines have a mind of their own.

The Marion Star is reporting today that a voting machine in Marion, Ohio, showed a vote for President Obama when the voter voted for Governor Romney.

The article reports:

Joan Stevens was one of several early voters at the polls on Monday. But when Stevens tried to cast her ballot for president, she noticed a problem.

Upon selecting “Mitt Romney” on the electronic touch screen, Barack Obama’s name lit up.

It took Stevens three tries before her selection was accurately recorded.

So if you are not paying attention, it would be very easy for your vote to be recorded incorrectly. Please vote carefully–regardless of how you vote.

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Some Strong Words From Retired Adm. James A. Lyons, Former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Senior U.S. Military Representative to the United Nations

On Sunday, the Washington Times posted an article by Retired Adm. James A. Lyons, former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations, about the September 11 attack in Benghazi.

The Admiral did not mince words, and as a retired military man, he had a better understanding of how the military chain of command works than most of us have.

The article reports:

We now know why Ambassador Christopher Stevens had to be in Benghazi the night of 9/11 to meet a Turkish representative, even though he feared for his safety.  According to various reports, one of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 – portable SAMs – to Islamists and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria. In an excellent article, Aaron Klein states that Stevens routinely used our Benghazi consulate (mission) to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East. Further, according to Egyptian security sources, Stevens played a “central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad Regime in Syria.”

What in the world are we doing? Didn’t we learn our lesson when we created the Taliban regime in Afghanistan?

The Admiral concludes:

Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what’s right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only in incomprehensible, it is un-American.

Somebody high up in the administration made the decision that no assistance (outside our Tripoli embassy) would be provided, and let our people be killed. The person who made that callous decision needs to be brought to light and held accountable. According to a CIA spokesperson, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need.” We also need to know whether the director of CIA and the director of National Intelligence were facilitators in the fabricated video lie and the overall cover-up. Their creditability is on the line. A congressional committee should be immediately formed to get the facts out to the American people. Nothing less is acceptable.

I suspect that the truth of this event will come out after the election. It should come out before. The events of September 11 reflect very badly on the people in the Obama Administration who were making decisions that night–whoever they were. They need to be held accountable.

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Bad Things Happen When People Are Not Free

CBN.com posted a story today about Spanish babies who were taken away from their mothers at birth and sold on the black market.

The article reports:

Beginning during the Franco dictatorship in 1939 and continuing until the 1990s, newborns were stolen from hospitals and trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests, and nuns.

It began as a system for taking children from families considered politically dangerous to the Franco regime to re-educate them.

The story came to light as a result of a deathbed confession:

What began as a system of political control gradually turned into a giant money-making operation. And it never came to light until a man named Juan Luis Moreno sat by his father‘s deathbed and was told that both he and his childhood friend Antonio Barroso were both purchased from a nun.

“It was horrible, first to know that my father was dying, but then to learn that my father wasn’t really my father and that my best childhood friend was stolen just like I was,” Moreno told CBN News.

Barroso recalled, “When I was a boy, other boys at school said that my mother wasn’t my real mother. So I asked my mother, and she said, ‘of course you’re my son.’ But when I did a DNA test with my mother, the probability of maternity was 0 percent.”

The article concludes:

The victims’ group Anadir has filed more than 900 lawsuits over stolen babies, but most have been thrown out because of lack of evidence.

Even if the Spanish legal system gets to the bottom of this crime, it can never repair the damage done to so many Spanish mothers and the children they never knew.

This is the video covering the entire story:

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There Really Are No Controls On Some Campaign Donations

Today’s Daily Caller posted a story today that illustrates the problems with controlling the amount of money that flows into some political campaigns and the sources of these donations.

The article reports:

A Jerusalem journalist writing for a conservative website reported Monday night that he was able to make two small financial contributions to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in the name of the late terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Aaron Klein, writing for WorldNetDaily, said he successfully made campaign donations of $15 and $5 through a “proxy” service that masked his location and provided the Obama campaign website with a Pakistani Internet Protocol (IP) address instead.

The Obama campaign, Klein wrote, accepted and acknowledged both contributions, made with a disposable credit card, and followed up with additional fundraising emails to a Gmail account set up in the dead terrorist’s name.

This is not good. On October 8, Breitbart.com reported:

Even though the Obama campaign is touted for its technological sophistication and sites run by top Obama technology advisers use the “CVV” feature, the Obama campaign itself does not use the “CVV” feature on its donation pages — even though it does use the feature on the merchandise pages where it sells campaign merchandise. 

This means someone who donates $2,500 to the campaign online has to go through less security than someone who goes online to buy an Obama campaign mug.

There are simple ways to prevent foreign donations being made online. The problem here is that some candidates are not willing to employ these measures. The answer is not more regulation–the answer is honest people running for office.

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Why You Should Not Believe Anything You See On Television

We are in the last days of the silly season for this election. We will be seeing news stories and pictures designed to change your mind. Some of them will be real, and some of them will be totally false. To illustrate the fact that things are not always what they seem, I am posting a YouTube video below:

Keep this video in mind as you watch the political ads making the closing arguments.

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Searching For The Truth About Delphi

 

The Washington Free Beacon and the Daily Caller have both posted articles about how the bailout of the automobile industry was handled in regard to Delphi, a company which supplies electronics and technology to the auto industry.

The Daily Caller posted an article stating that the decision to end the pensions of the non-union  workers at Delphi was not made independently by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the federal government agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues, but that the decision was the result of pressure from the Treasury Department. They have uncovered a chain of e-mails that backs up this conclusion.

The Daily Caller reports:

The email chain was titled “Delphi Hourly Plan.” Delphi’s unionized hourly retirees originally saw their pension plans terminated together with the nonunion Delphi salaried retirees’ plans in a process that commenced on July 31, 2009.

Later, in September 2009, the union retirees’ plans were topped up while nonunion retirees’ plans remained terminated.

 These emails contradict July 2012 congressional testimony Feldman (Treasury official Matt Feldman) gave during an investigation by the subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs.

The treatment of Delphi employees is becoming a campaign issue in Ohio, where many of its employees were located. Paul Ryan met with nine Delphi retirees who lost their pensions, while their union coworkers pensions were untouched.

The Washington Free Beacon explains some of the details of the bailout:

Delphi was an important element of the auto-bailout. The company, one of GM’s largest parts suppliers, had been in bankruptcy since 2005 and Treasury officials recognized that it would need to be lifted from bankruptcy along with GM.

To cut costs, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), an independent federal insurer of retirement systems, terminated the nonunion plan while GM volunteered $1 billion to top-off pensions belonging to the United Autoworkers union.

The administration has contended that GM was acting on a 1999 agreement with the union to close any pension gap that emerged if Delphi declared bankruptcy.

That agreement, however, was liquidated when GM itself entered bankruptcy and emerged as a new company, according to bankruptcy expert Todd Zywicki.

General Motors’ decision to guarantee the obligations of a separate company—Delphi—was completely unjustified under established principles of bankruptcy law, and it increased the cost of the taxpayer bailout of the automotive industry by more than $1 billion with no reciprocal benefit to General Motors,” he told Congress in July.

The auto industry bailout is an example of the government interfering with the laws of bankruptcy and acting in total disregard to the law. It’s time to bring people into Washington who respect the laws of this country.

 

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General Carter Ham Has Lost His Job

Today’s Washington Times is reporting that General Carter Ham has been relieved of his command as head of Africom. During the Benghazi attack, the General disobeyed a direct order to stand down. After receiving e-mails during the attack, General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready. He then received the order to stand down. He ignored that order and proceeded to respond to the request for aid.

The article reports:

Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

I realize that the General disobeyed a direct order, but some of the military people who understand these things are saying that this is very weird. Something strange is going on here.

 

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I Wonder If We Will Ever Find Out The Truth

Sometimes writing a blog can be discouraging. There is so much information on the Internet, and it is difficult to figure out what is true and what is not. I have a few sources I trust more than others, but sometimes the sources I rely on less than others turn out to be surprisingly accurate. I have a feeling that may be the case when the Benghazi attack is finally sorted out.

Real Clear Politics posted a video on Friday of an Ed Klein interview talking about the fact that the embassy in Benghazi was denied extra security. Here is the video:

This is the silly season. It is ten days before the election. Trying to figure out the antics of the Clintons and the Obamas is like trying to figure out the poison scene in “The Princess Bride.” (If you are one of the three people in America who have never seen that movie, rent it. It is a wonderful story.) The antics of these people could easily give you a serious headache.

The shoes are continuing to drop in this story. The one thing I think I can safely say is that we will not know the truth before the election. I am not even sure we will know the truth after the election.

My heart goes out to the families of those lost in Benghazi. Every day they have to deal with all the confusion surrounding the loss of their loved ones. We need to remember them as the story continues.

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Another Reason To Remove The United Nations From New York

Today, Breitbart.com reported that the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) is calling for a boycott of all American companies that do business with Israel. The HRC is made up of such champions of human rights as Cuba, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. If you believe that human rights flourish in these countries, try to build a Christian church in either Libya or Saudi Arabia.

The article reports:

The HRC is calling for “legal and economic warfare” on Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard, because these companies refuse to quit doing business with Israel. Companies in Europe targeted for boycott include Volvo, the Dexia Group, and Group 4 Security.

The Obama-approved HRC keeps an investigator who monitors so-called violations of “human rights” by Israelis in “the Palestinian territories.” The current investigator, professor emeritus of international law Richard Falk (Princeton), is “a 9/11 truther” who is known for his anti-Semitic views.

The latest report from the HRC attempts to frighten companies into anti-Israel compliance by warning that individual employees of Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard may be targeted if the pressure on company execs does not succeed.

The obvious questions here is, “What about the rights of the individual employees of these companies?” This seems like bullying more than it seems like protecting human rights.

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This Just Isn’t Getting Any Clearer

Yesterday the Weekly Standard reported:

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”

OK. Who did tell the military special forces not to help those under attack in Benghazi? And why? It seems to me that at least the first question should have been answered by now.There are phone records and email records that should paint a fairly clear picture of who said what.

I heard a theory today that totally unnerved me. The New York Times reported recently that the Obama Administration was selling weapons to the rebels in Syria, despite the fact that these rebels have close connections to Al Qaeda. It also should be noted that Libya has supplied a major portion of the Al Qaeda soldiers we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. What if the Ambassador (who was a good man who had a heart for the Arab people) was about to blow the whistle on our gun running activities in the Middle East? Would that have been a reason not to send help? As I said, that is just someone’s theory, but can someone come up with a better explanation as to why help never came?

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Where Did The Money Go ?

We all understand that federal spending has increased under President Obama. We also know that the economy is limping along rather than following the path of a traditional recovery. We have had stimulus packages and Quantitative easing (QE), and we are still struggling.

Yesterday the Washington Times posted an article about the money invested in green energy.

The article reports:

Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program.

“Outcomes for participants were far less than originally proposed,” the auditors said.

The government earmarked more than $400 million for green jobs training programs, and $328.5 million has been spent so far.

About half were already working in the energy sector and wanted retraining, and half were potential new energy workers.

Of those workers who already had energy-sector jobs, the auditors said they were retrained, even though they didn’t need it.

A 16 percent success rate is nothing to brag about. So what was the stimulus to green energy about?  The truth comes out in the last paragraph of the article:

Mr. Issa [Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)]said in addition to poor performance records, the green jobs money “served as a slush fund” for the Obama administration to dole out payments to allies “like the National Council of La Raza, the Blue Green alliance and the U.S. Steelworkers Union.”

This is one example of many reasons taxes on working Americans can easily be cut.

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When Town Politics Cost The Taxpayers Money

My daughter and son-in-law are in Massachusetts this weekend for a junior hockey tournament. It is a real junior tournament–my grandson in seven years old. They live in New York and are avid New York Islanders fans. My daughter has not forgotten her New England roots–she supports the Patriots and the Red Sox, but she has defected to the Islanders in hockey.

Needless to say, they were not happy with the recent announcement that the Islanders will be moving from Long Island to Brooklyn. Yes, I know Brooklyn is on Long Island, but it is a very different world. My son-in-law directed me to an article in the bleacherreport which explains the history of the Islanders and the reason they are moving. Unfortunately, it comes down to county politics and bad reporting by local news sources.

The quest for a new arena for the Islanders began in the 1990’s under owners Gluckstern and Milstien.

The article reports:

The Gluckstern-Milstien disaster can basically be seen as the Islanders ownership group trying to have the Nassau Coliseum condemned, so they could break the lease with Nassau County and try to strong-arm the construction of a new arena.

As we all know, you cannot strong-arm your way through Nassau County red tape and Town of Hempstead politics.

They moved the Islanders offices out of the building, claiming it was unsafe to inhabit, and said the Islanders would not play any games in the arena. They even went so far as to say that the scoreboard was in danger of falling from the ceiling.

Needless to say, that was not a good beginning to the story. Charles Wang become a part owner of the Islanders in 2000. He bought out his partner, Sanjay Kumar , in 2004. Mr. Wang’s first attempt to improve the area around the arena was the Lighthouse project–a privately funded project that would have provided jobs for construction workers and much needed lower-to-mid-cost housing. He would have created an area similar to Patriot Place in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

The article reports:

Ultimately, the project was given Nassau County approval. It was given New York State approval. Then it fell to the governing body known as the Town of Hempstead. Surely this would not be an issue, right? Surely they could see the benefits of such a project? Surely they would work with Mr. Wang to get this deal done?

Wrong. Instead of trying to work with Mr. Wang and his Lighthouse project, the Town of Hempstead had the audacity to come up with their own vision of what they thought should be built there, going so far as to present an artist’s rendering. 

Excuse me? Since when does a publicly-elected governing body tell a private developer what he can build? They presented a zoning plan that cut down the project to such a level that not only did Charles Wang not see the value in it, no one else has seen the value in it either.

The next suggestion–a taxpayer-funded arena–was voted down by voters last year. That was the final nail in the coffin. The vote was the result of news reporting that told frightened voters that their taxes would greatly increase if they voted for the new arena. The reports failed to mention the possibility that if there was no new arena, the Islanders might find a more friendly environment, and taxes would go up anyway.

I don’t particularly like to idea of the public funding sports arenas, but I a can see that Charles Wang had no reason to rebuild an arena he did not own. This could have been totally avoided had the lighthouse project been approved.

Something to think about–votes have consequences.

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Sometimes It’s Not What You Know–It’s Who You Know

Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted a story about the price of state dinners at the White House. The cost of those dinners has soared during the Obama Administration. Please follow the link above to read the story. It states the obvious, but near the bottom of the story, there is an interesting fact:

The documents also reveal that the Obama White House retained an outside planner for the dinners. Bryan Rafanelli, a Boston-based celebrity event planner who was retained last year, managed former first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 nupitals. His firm’s website boasts that he produced “State Dinners hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.”

WALSH

Rafanelli’s business partner, Mark Walsh, is deputy chief of the State Department’s Office of Protocol, which reimburses the White House executive residence for the events.

My, isn’t that convenient.

The article further reports:

Asked about the propriety of a White House contractor having a business relationship with a federal official in a position such as Walsh, Walters (Gary Walters, who ran presidential household operations for 21 years during Democratic and Republican administrations) said, “I don’t think it looks very good. Does it smell right? No.”

Walters said he never used outside event planners because “I believed the White House residence staff could do the job.”

Does anyone remember the White House travel office under the Clintons? It just seems as if the last two Democrat Presidents have used the office as their own personal payback fund.

 

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What In The World Were They Thinking ?

The story of Benghazi has been in the news for more than a month now. There are many aspects of this story that are downright disturbing. The latest has to do with the military and special forces people that could have helped the Americans under fire being told to stand down. Stand down? While the higher-ups in the Obama Administration watched Americans being killed in real time? What in the world is this?

Fox News reported some of the details today. Fox reports:

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.” 

…According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from. 

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help. 

American soldiers have a tradition of leaving no man behind. Evidently the Obama Administration was not familiar with that tradition. One of the problems Benghazi has caused is that it will reinforce the Al Qaeda attitude that America is a paper tiger. The lack of response to this attack with embolden Al Qaeda to plan and execute more attacks on American soil (an Embassy is considered American soil) without fear of retribution. This is very reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter administration–the reason the Iranian hostages were returned as soon as Ronald Reagan took office was that the Iranians feared that President Reagan would actually retaliate if the hostages were not returned. There was reason to respect the power of America. We have lost that respect and need to restore it.

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About That Apology Tour

When Mitt Romney mentioned the ‘Obama Apology Tour’ during Monday night’s Presidential debate, President Obama interrupted him saying, “This has been probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the course of this campaign, and every fact-checker and every reporter who’s looked at it, governor, has said this is not true.”

Well, Investors Business Daily has a few comments on the tour: The article at Investors Business Daily takes a look at the advisers behind the tour and what they believe. A few examples:

Samantha Power. “U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought,” according to Obama’s national security adviser for multilateral affairs and human rights. “Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors.”

Power has suggested the president literally bow to foreign leaders, as atonement for Americans’ “sins” — and that’s exactly what he’s done.

Anne-Marie Slaughter. The former State Department policy chief, who last year returned to Princeton University, also has advised the president to apologize for the war on terror.

“The president must ask Americans to acknowledge to ourselves and to the world that we have made serious, even tragic, mistakes in the aftermath of Sept. 11 — in invading Iraq, in condoning torture and flouting international law, and in denying the very existence of global warming,” Slaughter said.

Rashad Hussain. The White House adviser-turned Mideast envoy helped Obama kick off his apology tour in 2009 with a remorseful speech to Muslims in Cairo that he helped draft.

…Hussain also helped engineer the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt as Obama’s envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a powerful bloc of 57 Muslim governments that some say is a caliphate in the making.

Rose Gottemoeller. Echoing the president, the top State official thinks America is a global “bully” and that its nuclear superiority has created a global arms race.

She argues the U.S. must show humility by signing nuclear disarmament treaties and become strategically equal with Russia and China.

…”She (Gottemoeller) loves to shmooze the Russians,” said national security expert Bill Gertz — and the Chinese, who she’s invited back to the nuclear weapons labs. After Gottemoeller kicked open Los Alamos as head of the Clinton Energy Department’s national security office, Chinese espionage exploded.

Sounds like a great bunch.

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History Repeats Itself

In 2004, Barack Obama was campaigning to become a U. S. Senator from Illinois. After he opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race, Barack Obama easily won. What happened?

According to a Slate Magazine article from June 23, 2004:

Records from the 1999 divorce of Illinois Senate candidate Jack Ryan were unsealed Monday, and the revelations contained therein are spooking some of his supporters. The documents contain allegations from his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, that her then-husband had a predilection for taking her to raunchy sex clubs. Both Ryans opposed the unsealing of the divorce records. Why was the court permitted to overrule their wishes?

Because the First Amendment rights of media organizations generally supercede the privacy rights of litigants, since the American legal system favors transparency in all court proceedings. In the Ryan case, the Chicago Tribune and a Chicago TV station sued in Los Angeles (where the divorce proceedings took place) to unseal the records. In keeping with prior rulings nationwide, the court concluded that the public’s right of access outweighed whatever emotional distress the unsealing might cause.

The records were extremely embarrassing to Jack Ryan, and he dropped out of the race.

Fast forward to 2012. Yesterday Fox News reported:

DNC delegate and partisan Democrat lawyer Gloria Allred attended the “30 Days to Victory” Obama fundraiser at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on October 7th.

…Now, two weeks later Allred is spearheading an “October surprise” targeting Mitt Romney just days before the election.

Allred is looking to unseal testimony that the GOP presidential candidate gave in the divorce case of Staples founder Tom Stemberg. Staples was founded with seed money from Romney’s firm, Bain Capital and Stemberg is a Romney surrogate. Allred appeared in court today with ex-wife Maureen Stemberg.  Many are wondering if there is any coordination between the Obama campaign and Gloria Allred, considering the relationship involved…

The testimony in question revolves around the fact that Ms. Stemberg was not told that Stapes planned to go public three years after the divorce  (Ms. Stemberg sold her Staples stock before that event–not realizing the increase that would come). The court document points out that the plan to go public was not a definite plan and that there was no way to know when and if it would happen.

The Weekly Standard posted the 1994 document that allowed the original divorce agreement to stand. It concludes that Ms. Stemberg did not prove “fraud, culpable nondisclosure, duress, coercion or undue influence.

Evidently President Obama’s approach to dealing with campaign opponents has not significantly changed over the years.

 

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“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Goodreads.com attributes the quote “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything” to Joseph Stalin. Why am I quoting Stalin? There seems to be a slight problem in one of the ‘swing states.’

An article posted yesterday by the Fox News outlet covering the Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem, North Carolina area reported:

On Monday, several voters complained that their electronic ballot machine cast the wrong vote.  All the complaints were made by people who voted at the Bur-Mil Park polling location.

One of the voters, Sher Coromalis, says she cast her ballot for Governor Mitt Romney, but every time she entered her vote the machine defaulted to President Obama.

“I was so upset that this could happen,” said Coromalis.

Guilford County Board of Elections Director George Gilbert says the problem arises every election. It can be resolved after the machine is re-calibrated by poll workers.

The election officials in charge are reporting that the machines have been fixed.

I hate to be suspicious, but the fact that this is happening in a swing state totally unnerves me.

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About That Wonderful Friendship Between President Obama And Israel

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday detailing the relationship between President Obama and Israel. President Obama claimed in Monday night’s debate that he is a great friend of Israel. Well, the history tells a different story.

Some of the items listed in the story (please follow the link above for the complete list):

President Obama has never visited Israel during his time in office, despite having been as close as thirty minutes away in Egypt, and managing to go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq.

President Obama told Jewish leaders in July 2009 that he was deliberately adopting a policy of putting daylight between America and Israel.

President Obama has legitimized the UN body most responsible for demonizing Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator. The president joined the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 and is now seeking a second 3-year term, despite Israel’s requests that he do the opposite.

President Obama made Israeli settlements the key stumbling block in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Starting in 2009 he chose to castigate Israel publicly, often, and in extreme terms at the General Assembly and the Security Council. The Palestinians took the president’s cue and ended direct negotiations until such time as Israel capitulates, even though the subject is supposed to be a final status issue.

President Obama treated Israel’s Prime Minister to a series of insulting snubs during his visit to the White House in March 2010.

With friends like that…

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Don’t Mess With The State Department

The State Department has an interesting history. They selectively leaked information during the Bush Administration to undermine the Bush presidency. From the beginning of the Benghazi attack, Hillary Clinton (and the State Department) took responsibility for not providing accurate security in Benghazi. President Obama has said in multiple news conferences and campaign appearances that his claim that the attack on the Embassy Annex was caused by a video was based on information he received from the State Department. Well, the truth is starting to come out.

This article is based on three sources–an article posted by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air today, an ABC News story posted last night and a Fox News story posted today.

Hot Air reports:

If the scoop from Reuters last night surprised Americans with the knowledge that the intel community knew that the Benghazi attack was not a spontaneous demonstration that spun out of control, no one was more surprised than Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Saxby Chambliss.  His committee has been requesting those e-mails for weeks, and Chambliss to Fox and Friends that the information in them shows why they demanded them in the first place.

…Finally, we have last night’s revelation that the Situation Room got e-mails from the intel community while the attack was underway that clearly gave evidence that this was no spontaneous demonstration gone amok. They had plenty of evidence — “concrete evidence,” to use Jay Carney’s terminology — that the sacking of the consulate and assassination of our Ambassador was a planned terrorist attack.

ABC News reports:

A series of email alerts sent as Obama administration officials monitored the attack on the U.S consulate in Benghazi last month are the latest to shine light on the chaotic events that culminated in the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The names of the individual recipients of the emails, first reported by CBS News but independently obtained by ABC News Tuesday evening, are redacted. A source who requested anonymity said it appears they are sent by the State Department Operations Center to distribution lists and email accounts for the top national security officials at the State Department, Pentagon, the FBI, the White House Situation Room and the office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Fox News reports:

A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows that officials reported within hours of last month’s deadly consulate attack in Libya that Al Qaeda-tied group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility.

The emails provide some of the most detailed information yet about what officials knew in the initial hours after the attack. And it again raises questions about why U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, apparently based on intelligence assessments, would claim five days after the attack that it was a “spontaneous” reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film.

First of all, if anyone in the White House was aware of this attack in real time, why didn’t they send help? Second of all, why the rush to blame the video? Third, why is the man responsible for the video being kept in jail until after the election?

The attack in Benghazi was an indication of the fact that the Arab Spring has not brought democracy–it has brought persecution of Christians, Sharia Law, and chaos. These are not the results of a successful foreign policy. We have been lied to from the start of the reporting on this attack, and it is time to vote the liars out of office.

 

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Deja Vu All Over Again

On Monday The Weekly Standard posted an article about religious freedom at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

The article reports:

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts has banned a Christian group from campus because the group requires student leaders to adhere to “basic biblical truths of Christianity.” The decision to ban the group, called the Tufts Christian Fellowship, was made by officials from the university’s student government, specifically the Tufts Community Union Judiciary.

The ban means the group “will lose the right to use the Tufts name in its title or at any activities, schedule events or reserve university space through the Office for Campus Life,” according to the Tufts Daily. Additionally, Tufts Christian Fellowship will be unable to receive money from a pool that students are required to pay into and that is specifically set aside for student groups.

This is nothing new.  On March 30, I posted an article about a similar problem at Vanderbilt University (rightwinggranny.com). I reported what had happened at Vanderbilt:

Vandy Catholic — a student group with some 500 members — has decided it cannot agree to the policy and will be leaving campus in the fall. PJ Jedlovec, the president of Vandy Catholic, says it was a difficult decision, one made after much prayer and discussion. 

“We are first and foremost a Catholic organization,” says Jedlovec. “We do, in fact, have qualifications – faith-based qualifications for leadership. We require that our leaders be practicing Catholics. And the university’s nondiscrimination policy — they have made it clear that there is no room in it for an organization that has these faith-based qualifications.”

The whole purpose of a group on campus is to allow students with similar interests and ideas to get together to discuss and explore those interests and ideas. It seems to me that every group meeting on campus probably has leadership that represents the interests and ideas of the group. This is clearly a violation of the First Amendment rights of these students.

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Another Side Effect Of ObamaCare

Real Clear Politics posted an article today about the impact of ObamaCare on the full-time job market.

The article reports:

Just recently, the Internal Revenue Service issued an 18-page, single-spaced notice explaining how to distinguish between full-time and part-time workers under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). The difference matters, because the ACA requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health insurance for those workers. At the same time, no company has to buy insurance for part-time employees, defined as those working less than 30 hours a week.

I’ll go into the details of what that means in a minutes, but stop a minute and look at what just happened. A new law about healthcare is causing the Internal Revenue Service to issue a notice explaining full-time and part-time employment. I thought ObamaCare was about healthcare.

The part of ObamaCare that this IRS notice relates to will not kick in until after the election (surprised?).

The article reports on the impact:

Employers have a huge incentive to hold workers under the 30-hour weekly threshold. The requirement to provide insurance above that acts as a steep employment tax. Companies will try to minimize the tax. The most vulnerable workers are the poorest and least skilled who can be most easily replaced and for whom insurance costs loom largest. Indeed, the adjustment has already started.

Please follow the link to the Real Clear Politics article to read the details. This is a law that needs to be repealed.

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