Thursday, May 31, 2012
Hypocritical "Princess" Nancy Pelosi...
Pelosi gives Senate Democrats who pay women less a pass, scolds companies
Published: 2:09 PM 05/31/2012 By Michelle Fields -- The Daily Caller
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday condemned companies that pay women less than men, but was unwilling to condemn Senate Democrats who pay their female staffers less than male staffers, saying that the Senate is “another world.”
Speaking in Washington, D.C., Pelosi reminded everyone that there shouldn’t be income disparity between men and women.
“It’s 2012. It’s 2012, everybody. What is it we’re talking about women getting paid less? Are you going home to your little girls each day and saying: ‘Work hard, study hard, be diligent so that when you grow up you can make less than your brother?”
She added, “There seems to be a decision somewhere in some companies and parts of our economy that that’s an okay thing to do.”
The Daily Caller asked Pelosi about a report in the Washington Free Beacon that revealed that women working for Senate Democrats in 2011 had an average salary of $60,877, whereas male staffers made about $6,500 more.
Pelosi chose not to condemn the Democratic senators, claiming that it is “another world.”
“When I was speaker, I was [the] highest paid person on Capitol Hill and the women took great joy in that,” she
Bloomberg...another democrat that thinks he's a dictator, like Obama...
Who does Bloomberg think he is????...he's not a dictator...he can't deny New Yorkers of the freedom to choose....Makes me even more committed to make certain this guy never gets anyting on a national stage....
Companies fire back at proposed NYC big soda ban
By Martinne Geller | Reuters – 5 hours ago.. .
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co and McDonald's Corp fired back at New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg on Thursday for proposing a ban of large-sized soft drinks at restaurants and other food service outlets.
"New Yorkers expect and deserve better than this. They can make their own choices about the beverages they purchase," Coca-Cola said in a statement.
The world's largest soft-drink maker, which would also be disproportionately affected by such a ban, said it already includes calorie counts on the front of its bottles and cans in New York and that restaurants already post the calorie content of all their offerings and portion sizes, including soft drinks.
The statement from Coke comes a day after Mayor Bloomberg said he was proposing an amendment to the city's health code to prohibit food service outlets from selling sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces.
The ban would apply to restaurants, mobile food carts, delicatessens and concessions at movie theaters, stadiums or arenas, where sales of fountain drinks are common. It would not apply to convenience stores, grocery stores or drug stores, which mostly sell beverages in bottles and cans.
Targeting cup sizes is the latest move in an ongoing effort to reduce Americans' calories from sugary drinks. That is part of a broader push to fight obesity, which is a huge and growing burden to the nation's healthcare system.
"Public health issues cannot be effectively addressed through a narrowly focused and misguided ban," said a spokeswoman for McDonald's USA. "This is a complex topic, and one that requires a more collaborative and comprehensive approach."
For years, advocates and health experts have focused on additional taxes that they say would curb consumption and raise billions of dollars nationally.
Several studies have shown that higher taxes on sugary beverages does reduce consumption, helping to prevent diabetes and lowering health care spending. Critics say the taxes are an unfair way to close budget gaps and hurt consumers.
PepsiCo declined to comment, referring questions to the New York City Beverage Association.
Coke dominates the nation's soda fountains with a 70 percent share of the market, according to Beverage Digest, followed by PepsiCo Inc with 19 percent and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc with 11 percent.
Fountain business accounts for about 24 percent of the 9.3 billion cases of soda sold a year, Beverage Digest said. The total market is worth about $75.7 billion.
Beverage Digest publisher John Sicher called the proposal misguided. He said its impact on the beverage industry will not be known for several years.
"I think that it would have some impact, but how much, we're really not going to know until we can gauge the impact in New York and see whether it spreads."
The proposal will be submitted to the New York City Board of Health on June 12. The board will go through a three-month comment period and vote on the proposal.
For some people in New York, the ban would be too much government interference.
"I don't think it should be left up to him (Mayor Bloomberg) to decide what I drink," said Alonzo Johnson, an 18-year-old environmental science student. "I think we should be deciding it."
But as long as the ban only limits the size of the container, and not what is actually in it, some people think it is OK.
"I don't necessarily think it is such a bad thing," Sean Cashin, 47, told Reuters at a McDonald's restaurant in Manhattan.
"(Soda) is my drug of choice and I am dealing with the consequences of it," Cashin said, referring to a struggle with his weight.
Companies fire back at proposed NYC big soda ban
By Martinne Geller | Reuters – 5 hours ago.. .
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co and McDonald's Corp fired back at New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg on Thursday for proposing a ban of large-sized soft drinks at restaurants and other food service outlets.
"New Yorkers expect and deserve better than this. They can make their own choices about the beverages they purchase," Coca-Cola said in a statement.
The world's largest soft-drink maker, which would also be disproportionately affected by such a ban, said it already includes calorie counts on the front of its bottles and cans in New York and that restaurants already post the calorie content of all their offerings and portion sizes, including soft drinks.
The statement from Coke comes a day after Mayor Bloomberg said he was proposing an amendment to the city's health code to prohibit food service outlets from selling sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces.
The ban would apply to restaurants, mobile food carts, delicatessens and concessions at movie theaters, stadiums or arenas, where sales of fountain drinks are common. It would not apply to convenience stores, grocery stores or drug stores, which mostly sell beverages in bottles and cans.
Targeting cup sizes is the latest move in an ongoing effort to reduce Americans' calories from sugary drinks. That is part of a broader push to fight obesity, which is a huge and growing burden to the nation's healthcare system.
"Public health issues cannot be effectively addressed through a narrowly focused and misguided ban," said a spokeswoman for McDonald's USA. "This is a complex topic, and one that requires a more collaborative and comprehensive approach."
For years, advocates and health experts have focused on additional taxes that they say would curb consumption and raise billions of dollars nationally.
Several studies have shown that higher taxes on sugary beverages does reduce consumption, helping to prevent diabetes and lowering health care spending. Critics say the taxes are an unfair way to close budget gaps and hurt consumers.
PepsiCo declined to comment, referring questions to the New York City Beverage Association.
Coke dominates the nation's soda fountains with a 70 percent share of the market, according to Beverage Digest, followed by PepsiCo Inc with 19 percent and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc with 11 percent.
Fountain business accounts for about 24 percent of the 9.3 billion cases of soda sold a year, Beverage Digest said. The total market is worth about $75.7 billion.
Beverage Digest publisher John Sicher called the proposal misguided. He said its impact on the beverage industry will not be known for several years.
"I think that it would have some impact, but how much, we're really not going to know until we can gauge the impact in New York and see whether it spreads."
The proposal will be submitted to the New York City Board of Health on June 12. The board will go through a three-month comment period and vote on the proposal.
For some people in New York, the ban would be too much government interference.
"I don't think it should be left up to him (Mayor Bloomberg) to decide what I drink," said Alonzo Johnson, an 18-year-old environmental science student. "I think we should be deciding it."
But as long as the ban only limits the size of the container, and not what is actually in it, some people think it is OK.
"I don't necessarily think it is such a bad thing," Sean Cashin, 47, told Reuters at a McDonald's restaurant in Manhattan.
"(Soda) is my drug of choice and I am dealing with the consequences of it," Cashin said, referring to a struggle with his weight.
Eric Holder -Political Hack for Obama and again a Racist!
Rush is absolutely correct....Holder once again shows he's a RACIST...and he's nothing more than a political HACK of Obama's....
More Proof that Eric Holder AND Obama are both Racists....
More Proof that Eric Holder AND Obama are both Racists....
This couldn't Happen to a More Deserving A__hole....David Axelrod...
May 31, 2012, 12:43 pm
Axelrod’s Anti-Romney Message Gets Drowned Out
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Loud and rowdy supporters of Mitt Romney in Boston drowned out an attempt by President Obama campaign’s top strategist to attack the former Republican governor on his home turf.
In a morning news conference on the steps of the Massachusetts Statehouse, David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obama’s senior strategists, tried mostly in vain on Thursday to level Mr. Obama’s latest broadside on Mr. Romney’s record as governor of the state.
Instead, he was booed, heckled and chanted down by supporters of Mr. Romney who refused to let up even for a moment as Mr. Axelrod and Democratic state lawmakers sought to make their case.
With cameras rolling, the Republican hecklers yelled “We Want Mitt!” and “Broken Record!” and held signs that said “Go Back to Chicago!” Mr. Axelrod appeared bemused but rattled by them, at one point saying: “You can shout down speakers my friends, but it’s hard to Etch A Sketch away the truth.”
That was a reference to comments by an aide to Mr. Romney who said the general election campaign would be like an Etch A Sketch, which critics said suggested that Mr. Romney would wipe away more conservative positions he took during the nominating contest. But the event on Thursday was more like a verbal brawl in Mr. Romney’s backyard.
The event was supposed to have been a secret. The campaign did not announce Mr. Axelrod’s appearance in Mr. Romney’s hometown until early Thursday morning, although word of it leaked out on Twitter late Wednesday.
Once in Boston, what had been billed as a news conference had the intensity of a late-October political rally, complete with dueling signs, noisemakers and competing chants. At one point, Democratic supporters behind Mr. Axelrod chanted: “Let him talk! Let him talk!”
Mr. Axelrod tried to stay on message, offering a ream of negative statistics about Mr. Romney’s tenure in the state. He said the state was 47th in job creation under Mr. Romney and said that government grew “at a clip of 6.5 percent.”
“This may work in the realm of leveraged buyouts and quick scores,” Mr. Axelrod said. “It may work in that world, but it’s not how you build a future.”
But Mr. Axelrod’s comments — which were mostly carried live on CNN — were hard to hear amid the din of the crowd. At one point, Mr. Axelrod responded to unclear chants from the protesters, saying that “you can’t handle the truth, my friend. You can’t handle the truth.”
Mr. Axelrod was also knocked off message by questions from reporters, who used the opportunity of his presence in Massachusetts to ask about controversies swirling around Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for Senate in the state.
Mr. Axelrod said he had no concerns about her admission that she had represented herself as a Native American to employers. But those questions were well afield of the mission of his trip to Boston, which was to highlight Mr. Romney’s record running Massachusetts.
To that end, the campaign also enlisted the support of several Democratic mayors and state lawmakers, who criticized Mr. Romney’s record while he was in office.
But they, too, were booed by the Romney crowd. Joseph A. Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, noted that some of the hecklers were blowing bubbles at Mr. Axelrod and the other speakers.
“That’s a hell of a lot better than the smoke Mitt Romney blew at us in Massachusetts,” Mr. Curatone said. “Take note America. As governor, Mitt Romney’s approach was all about shifting costs. The story he’s telling now about his time as governor? Hey! It just doesn’t add up.”
A Good Move by Romney Today.....
Mitt Romney Visits Solyndra Amid Attack on Obama Jobs Record
“The reason for keeping it quiet is because we knew if word got out that Solyndra would do everything in their power and the Obama administration would do everything in their power to stop us from having this news conference,” an aide said in a briefing en route. “But taxpayers made a substantial investment in Solyndra, there are serious questions about what happened at Solyndra, why that investment was selected, what happened to that money.”
Solyndra is the failed California-based solar technology company that received more than $500 million in federal stimulus money before it went bankrupt last year. It has since become a mantle of Romney’s argument that Obama doesn’t know how to run the economy.
Beginning in March 2011, ABC News, in partnership with iWatch News-The Center for Public Integrity, was first to report on simmering questions about the role political influence might have played in Solyndra’s selection as the Obama administration’s first loan-guarantee recipient. Federal auditors had flagged the loan, saying some applicants had benefited from special treatment.
Romney’s visit was only revealed after Romney and reporters who follow him on the campaign trail were en route to the location. It was never advised publicly by the campaign, which usually informs both national and local reporters where the candidate will appear.
The Romney campaign this week rejiggered its focus on Solyndra, which was a major talking point for Romney during the primary, in an attempt to highlight what it calls Obama’s mishandling of the economy, but has lately been replaced with a focus on Obama’s health care law and education issues.
Romney’s visit to the shuttered plant comes on the same day that Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, held a news conference in Boston, the city where Romney’s campaign headquarters is located, to discuss the Republican candidate’s record as governor. Axelrod’s appearance will mark one of the first steps in the Obama re-election campaign’s strategy to highlight Romney’s record during his years as Massachusetts’ governor.
The Romney campaign earlier this week released a video, “Not Even Half,” which highlighted the Obama administration’s investment in the now-failed Fremont, Calif., manufacturer. At the time of the federal investment, Solyndra was the nation’s largest solar energy plant and was touted as an example of the president’s commitment to government subsidies that would promote clean energy technology and so-called green jobs.
Solyndra went bankrupt in 2011, laying off more than 1,000 employees, after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees through a ‘s Act program. The investment has been slammed by Republicans who believe the Obama administration chose the plant because of its ties to major donors. It has been the subject of an ongoing congressional investigation.
When the company went bankrupt, taxpayers were left to pay off the loans associated with the grant and Republicans seized on the investment as an example of the administration’s, as Romney says, trying to pick “winners and losers” in the free market that would benefit high dollar donors.
At a private fundraiser in Hillsborough, Calif., Wednesday night, Romney previewed his attacks on the administration’s involvement in Solyndra.
“Have you seen Solyndra’s corporate headquarters?” Romney asked. “You probably have.”
“Who wants to put money in a solar company when a government puts a half a billion into one of its choice?” Romney asked, suggesting that investors and entrepreneurs would be less likely to found their own companies if they believe the government would help a competitor. “They don’t understand how the free economy works.”
During a February campaign speech in Nevada, Romney made similar claims, comparing his own experience starting office supply giant Staples during his time at Bain to the facilities at Solyndra, which he often compares to the Taj Mahal.
“He’s been choosing businesses that add to his campaign, and putting money in them,” Romney said during a February campaign rally in Henderson, Nev. “When we started a little company called Staples, instead of having offices in a big glass Taj Mahal, like Solyndra, our offices were in the back of a shopping mall.
“So his view is what I call ‘crony capitalism,’” Romney said. “Give money to your friends that contributed to your campaign. That’s crony capitalism.”
“The reason for keeping it quiet is because we knew if word got out that Solyndra would do everything in their power and the Obama administration would do everything in their power to stop us from having this news conference,” an aide said in a briefing en route. “But taxpayers made a substantial investment in Solyndra, there are serious questions about what happened at Solyndra, why that investment was selected, what happened to that money.”
Solyndra is the failed California-based solar technology company that received more than $500 million in federal stimulus money before it went bankrupt last year. It has since become a mantle of Romney’s argument that Obama doesn’t know how to run the economy.
Beginning in March 2011, ABC News, in partnership with iWatch News-The Center for Public Integrity, was first to report on simmering questions about the role political influence might have played in Solyndra’s selection as the Obama administration’s first loan-guarantee recipient. Federal auditors had flagged the loan, saying some applicants had benefited from special treatment.
Romney’s visit was only revealed after Romney and reporters who follow him on the campaign trail were en route to the location. It was never advised publicly by the campaign, which usually informs both national and local reporters where the candidate will appear.
The Romney campaign this week rejiggered its focus on Solyndra, which was a major talking point for Romney during the primary, in an attempt to highlight what it calls Obama’s mishandling of the economy, but has lately been replaced with a focus on Obama’s health care law and education issues.
Romney’s visit to the shuttered plant comes on the same day that Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, held a news conference in Boston, the city where Romney’s campaign headquarters is located, to discuss the Republican candidate’s record as governor. Axelrod’s appearance will mark one of the first steps in the Obama re-election campaign’s strategy to highlight Romney’s record during his years as Massachusetts’ governor.
The Romney campaign earlier this week released a video, “Not Even Half,” which highlighted the Obama administration’s investment in the now-failed Fremont, Calif., manufacturer. At the time of the federal investment, Solyndra was the nation’s largest solar energy plant and was touted as an example of the president’s commitment to government subsidies that would promote clean energy technology and so-called green jobs.
Solyndra went bankrupt in 2011, laying off more than 1,000 employees, after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees through a ‘s Act program. The investment has been slammed by Republicans who believe the Obama administration chose the plant because of its ties to major donors. It has been the subject of an ongoing congressional investigation.
When the company went bankrupt, taxpayers were left to pay off the loans associated with the grant and Republicans seized on the investment as an example of the administration’s, as Romney says, trying to pick “winners and losers” in the free market that would benefit high dollar donors.
At a private fundraiser in Hillsborough, Calif., Wednesday night, Romney previewed his attacks on the administration’s involvement in Solyndra.
“Have you seen Solyndra’s corporate headquarters?” Romney asked. “You probably have.”
“Who wants to put money in a solar company when a government puts a half a billion into one of its choice?” Romney asked, suggesting that investors and entrepreneurs would be less likely to found their own companies if they believe the government would help a competitor. “They don’t understand how the free economy works.”
During a February campaign speech in Nevada, Romney made similar claims, comparing his own experience starting office supply giant Staples during his time at Bain to the facilities at Solyndra, which he often compares to the Taj Mahal.
“He’s been choosing businesses that add to his campaign, and putting money in them,” Romney said during a February campaign rally in Henderson, Nev. “When we started a little company called Staples, instead of having offices in a big glass Taj Mahal, like Solyndra, our offices were in the back of a shopping mall.
“So his view is what I call ‘crony capitalism,’” Romney said. “Give money to your friends that contributed to your campaign. That’s crony capitalism.”
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Obama "misspoke???"....He sounds more like Biden Every Day....
Obama Nazi death camp gaffe 'hurt all Poles'
US President Barack Obama's description of a Nazi German Holocaust site as a "Polish death camp" shocked Poland, whose leaders insist the record be set straight 67 years after World War II.
Obama on Tuesday labeled the Nazi facility used to process Jews for extermination as a "Polish death camp." The White House later said the president "misspoke" and expressed "regret".
The linguistic faux pas overshadowed Obama's posthumous award of the highest US civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Jan Karski, a former Polish underground officer who provided early eyewitness accounts of Nazi Germany's genocide of European Jews.
Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday Obama's words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just "regret".
"I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman -- a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors," Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.
"Today, this is a problem for the reputation of the United States," the prime minister said.
Poland's anti-communist icon Lech Walesa meanwhile termed Obama's error a "golden occasion" to set the historical record straight.
Between 1939 and 1945, nearly six million Polish citizens perished under Nazi Germany's brutal World War II occupation of their country.
More than half of Poland's victims were of Jewish origin and they, in turn, accounted for half of the six million European Jews who perished during the Holocaust.
Many were killed in death camps set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland -- including the most notorious, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Poland's government keenly watches the global media for descriptions of former Nazi German death camps as "Polish" because it says the term -- even if used simply as a geographical indicator -- can give the impression that Poland bore responsibility for Nazi Germany's World War II genocide.
Although located in Poland, Auschwitz for example was set up and run entirely by German dictator Adolf Hitler's occupying forces from 1940 to 1945.
While most of the camp's 1.1 million victims were Jews deported from other German-occupied nations, 300,000 were Polish Jews.
Until 1942, the camp was primarily a prison and killing centre for non-Jewish Poles such as resistance members.
An estimated 75,000 died there, out of around 2.6 million non-Jewish Poles who perished under Nazi occupation. Many were resistance fighters like Karski.
As a young man, Karski, who was a clandestine officer of the Polish government-in-exile in London, witnessed scenes of starvation and death after infiltrating Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto.
Dressed as a Ukrainian guard, he also went to a Nazi transit camp near Warsaw where he saw Jews beaten and stabbed and loaded into trains treated with quicklime to be taken to the gas chambers.
Karski took his eye witness testimony to wartime US president Franklin Roosevelt. He later became a professor of history at Georgetown University and died in Washington aged 86 in 2000.
...
.
Confused Barack Obama....
The White House Defends Public Equity
Up is down, left is right, good is bad, and day is night. If you wander inside the Washington, D.C., beltway, you'll enter a bizarro world where, at times, commonsense is replaced by a localized logic that is completely divorced from the reality.
The latest example of political gobbledygook comes courtesy of White House press secretary Jay Carney, who yesterday lapsed into rambling rhetoric when asked to explain how President Obama can defend the failed Solyndra solar boondoggle, yet attack private sector investments that sometimes fail but oftentimes succeed. Here's his response:
Look...there, there, there is the...the...difference in that, your overall view of what...huh, your responsibilities are as president and what your view of the economic future is.
And the president believes as he's made clear that a president's responsibility is not just to, ah, those who win but those who, for example in a company where ah, there have been layoffs or a company that has gone bankrupt, that we have to ah make sure that those folks have the means to find other employment, that they have the ability to train for other kinds of work and that's part of the overall responsibility a president has.
Got all that?
For the duration of his Administration, President Obama has dished out billions of dollars to politically favored companies in pursuit of job creation and a new "green" economy. It's taxpayer-funded crony capitalism that has neither created new jobs nor produced the green-energy payout that the president was looking for. In fact, it's a policy that has failed miserably, leading to bankruptcy after bankruptcy. Yet despite all the failures -- and zero successes -- the president and his Administration are defending the indefensible and standing by a policy that has squandered taxpayer money.
In one instance, President Obama committed $465 million of taxpayer money to Tesla, which was founded by a campaign mega-donor and the 63rd richest man in the world, Elon Musk, to build a $130,000 battery-powered sports car that becomes permanently inoperable if left uncharged for 30 days.
It's gotten so bad that Congress is launching probes of federal green energy programs, including the Energy Department loan program, over concerns that lawmakers fast-tracked approval for politically connected companies. Heritage's Lachlan Markay reports that according to a Republican aide on the Senate Budget Committee, "Politically favored, and often connected, renewable energy plans [receive] less rigorous review than traditional energy projects." In one program, of the $20.5 billion in loans granted, $16.4 billion went to companies linked to donors who contributed to Obama and the Democratic Party.
At the same time the president is defending his taxpayer-funded failures, he's attacking free enterprise, including in private equity and venture capitalism -- enterprises in which investors voluntarily put up their own money to invest in new ideas and rescue existing companies. Sometimes those ventures fail, sometimes their inevitable failure is delayed but temporarily saves jobs amid restructuring, but many times they succeed -- generating profits and producing new jobs.
When Carney was asked to justify the president's defense of one, but criticism of the other, he just couldn't do it. That's no surprise, in that the two positions are logically inconsistent.
This episode calls to mind a quote from George Orwell, a frequent and pointed critic of modern political discourse:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness... the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms ...
Maybe Jay Carney's confused speech is the result of the unbearable heat and humidity that has descended on Washington all too early this year. Or maybe it's a bad case of Potomac fever. But no matter the cause, the results are the same. In Washington, the Obama Administration is hard at work defending the crony capitalist machine while lambasting the free market system -- and it shows no signs of letting up.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
The Democrat Agrument just Doesn't make any sense....
The Democrat pudits arguments just don't make sense....Obama's wasting taxpayer money (our money)....Bain and other venture capitalists are risking private money and certainly some of it does not work and is unsuccessful....but the vast majority of projects DO work and create jobs....Look at all of our money Obama has virtually WASTED on green energy at the expense of fossil fuel development and he's created virtually NO JOBS and has done little to make America any less dependent of fossil fuels.
Obama's Failed Foreign Policy....
Obama has not only screwed up America..it's economy...it's debt...gas prices....housing market etc...but his foreign policy is a total failure....his apoligy tour was supposed to get us respect in the world and all we have now is defiance...the world is more dangerous for us thanks to Obama...
It's time for him to go in November...
Obama administration faces defiance abroad, as foreign policy criticism mounts at home
Published May 27, 2012 FoxNews.com
America's effort to mediate conflict and effect change in some of the world's most troubled regions has been met lately with a startling response, in country after country -- defiance.
Iran stepped out of the latest round of talks on its nuclear program rejecting a key demand of negotiators and pledging to build two new power plants.
In Pakistan, the country just jailed -- potentially for the rest of his life -- the doctor who helped the CIA track Usama bin Laden. To boot, Pakistan also wants $5,000 for every truck that crosses a still-closed supply route into Afghanistan.
And in Syria, the establishment of a peace plan has been followed by weeks of bloodshed, with a massacre of at least 32 children being the latest tragic example.
The turmoil and the defiance are now fueling foreign policy criticism from President Obama's political adversaries.
Though the economy remains the top issue in the presidential campaign, trouble on the foreign policy front could fray the advantage an incumbent president typically has in that area. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has certainly not hesitated in pointing to the latest developments as a sign that the country needs a course correction.
On Sunday, Romney seized on the massacre in the Syrian city of Houla to again challenge the president's policy toward the Assad regime.
"After nearly a year and a half of slaughter, it is far past time for the United States to begin to lead and put an end to the Assad regime," Romney said in a written statement. "President Obama can no longer ignore calls from congressional leaders in both parties to take more assertive steps."
He said the peace plan crafted by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan has "merely granted the Assad regime more time to execute its military onslaught," and he called on the U.S. to arm the Syrian opposition.
The U.N. Security Council, in response to the latest violence, called an emergency session Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps recognizing the Annan peace plan has so far failed to stem the violence -- the death toll has topped 9,000 -- the Obama administration also reportedly plans to float a new plan paving the way for Syria's Bashar al-Assad to leave power.
The New York Times reported that the plan is modeled on the transition in Yemen, where the president stepped down but left some elements of the government in place. In Syria, the U.S. reportedly would rely heavily on Russia, a Syrian ally, to put the plan into action.
Without discussing the supposed plan, administration officials on Saturday condemned the Houla massacre, in which more than 90 people were killed including 32 under 10 years old.
"Those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account. And the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement. She said United Nations observers confirmed the Syrians were killed "in a vicious assault that involved a regime artillery and tank barrage on a residential neighborhood."
The Syrian government later denied responsibility.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who ran against Obama in the 2008 election, on Sunday called the entire Syria response a "shameful episode in American history."
The senator slammed the administration's handling of the uprising and cast doubt on the report of a new plan for Assad's ouster.
"This administration has a feckless foreign policy which abandoned American leadership," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday." "It cries out for American leadership. American leadership is not there."
He accused the administration of trying to "kick the can down the road" until after November.
Syria is just the latest hotbed where the administration is having trouble breaking through.
In Pakistan, the government's decision to sentence Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. track bin Laden, to 33 years in prison drew outrage from Washington and raised new questions about whether the U.S. and Pakistan are in fact working on the same side in the war against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is still trying to demand $5,000 for every truck that crosses its border on supply routes into Afghanistan. Those routes are still closed, in protest after the U.S. inadvertently killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a friendly-fire incident last year.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking Sunday on ABC's "This Week," rejected the Pakistani's truck-crossing demand and said the sentencing of the doctor was "disturbing."
"This doctor was not working against Pakistan. He was working against Al Qaeda. And I hope that ultimately Pakistan understands that," he said, while noting the U.S. would continue to "work at" its relationship with Pakistan.
As for Iran, Panetta reiterated that the U.S. will do "everything we can to prevent them from developing a weapon."
"We are prepared for any contingency in that part of the world," he said.
The latest round of international talks with Iran in Baghdad ended merely with a decision to hold another meeting, in Moscow next month. On the sidelines, Iran's nuclear chief reportedly said Sunday that there was no need to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, as the U.S. and other nations want. And he said Iran would move ahead with plans for two new nuclear plants.
"I think that it's time to draw some red lines, the United States and Israel together," McCain said Sunday.
Fox Reports / State-Run Media Filters....Catholic Church Takes them On....
Just one more big issue you wouldn't know about unless you watch Fox....
Archbishop: Networks 'missed the boat' on coverage of church's ObamaCare lawsuits
Published May 27, 2012 FoxNews.com
The archbishop of Washington on Sunday accused the network news programs of having "missed the boat" by largely ignoring lawsuits filed this past week by Catholic institutions challenging the Obama administration's so-called contraception mandate.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," was responding to an analysis by the conservative Media Research Center of how the networks' evening newscasts treated coverage of the dozen federal lawsuits filed Monday. According to the center, CBS spent 19 seconds on the story after it broke, while the other networks gave it no coverage.
"It is puzzling, particularly since they're focusing so much attention right now on the pope's butler," Wuerl said, in reference the scandal in which the pope's butler Paolo Gabriele was charged with stealing sensitive documents and is suspected of leaking them.
"It seems to me that somehow they've missed the boat. They've missed the story," Wuerl said.
The story, the archbishop said, is "religious liberty."
Wuerl adamantly defended the lawsuits, which were filed by dozens of Catholic-affiliated institutions including schools, charities and the Archdiocese of Washington.
Asked about speculation that the suits were just a vehicle for conservative members of the church to go after President Obama -- considering dozens of dioceses did not join the suit -- Wuerl said the Catholic community is unified.
"I have yet to see among the bishops any split at all," he said.
The contraception mandate was originally a requirement on religious-affiliated institutions to provide access to free contraceptive coverage, as part of the federal health care overhaul. After outcry from Catholic leaders, the administration tweaked the rule so that insurers would be responsible for providing that coverage directly.
The Obama administration argues in defense of the rule by noting that almost 99 percent of women have used contraception and many struggle with the cost, and that a majority of states already require insurance to cover birth control.
Wuerl, though, said this has never been applied at the federal level. "This whole lawsuit isn't about contraception. It's about religious freedom," he said.
He also challenged the administration's "accommodation" to religious groups, noting that many archdioceses are self-insured.
"We are the insurer," he said. "There's no accomodation"
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Obama, very simply Lying AGAIN to the American People....Trust me Barack we are NOT that stupid....
FACT CHECK: Obama off on thrifty spending claim
Published: 8:35 AM 05/26/2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is aggressively pushing the idea that, contrary to widespread belief, President Barack Obama is tightfisted with taxpayer dollars. To back it up, the administration cites a media report that claims federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since the Eisenhower years.
“Federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years,” Obama said at a campaign rally Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa.
The problem with that rosy claim is that the Wall Street bailout is part of the calculation. The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obama’s 2010 results look smaller in comparison. And as almost $150 billion of the bailout was paid back during Obama’s watch, the analysis counted them as government spending cuts.
It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.
Obama rests his claim on an analysis by MarketWatch, a financial information and news service owned by Dow Jones & Co. The analysis simply looks at the year-to-year topline spending number for the government but doesn’t account for distortions baked into the figures by the Wall Street bailout and government takeover of the mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The MarketWatch study finds spending growth of only 1.4 percent over 2010-2013, or annual increases averaging 0.4 percent over that period. Those are stunningly low figures considering that Obama rammed through Congress an $831 billion stimulus measure in early 2009 and presided over significant increases in annual spending by domestic agencies at the same time the cost of benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Medicaid were ticking steadily higher. (VIEW: REBUTTAL INFOGRPAHIC TAKES APART OBAMA SPENDING CLAIMS)
A fairer calculation would give Obama much of the responsibility for an almost 10 percent budget boost in 2009, then a 13 percent increase over 2010-2013, or average annual growth of spending of just more than 3 percent over that period.
So, how does the administration arrive at its claim?
First, there’s the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the official name for the Wall Street bailout. First, companies got a net $151 billion from TARP in 2009, making 2010 spending look smaller. Then, because banks and Wall Street firms repaid a net $110 billion in TARP funds in 2010, Obama is claiming credit for cutting spending by that much.
The combination of TARP lending in one year and much of that money being paid back in the next makes Obama’s spending record for 2010 look $261 billion thriftier than it really was. Only by that measure does Obama “cut” spending by 1.8 percent in 2010 as the analysis claims.
The federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also makes Obama’s record on spending look better than it was. The government spent $96 billion on the Fannie-Freddie takeovers in 2009 but only $40 billion on them in 2010. By the administration’s reckoning, the $56 billion difference was a spending cut by Obama.
Taken together, TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie combine to give Obama an undeserved $317 billion swing in the 2010 figures and the resulting 1.8 percent cut from 2009. A fairer reading is an almost 8 percent increase.
Those two bailouts account for $72 billion more in cuts in 2011. Obama supported the bailouts.
There’s also the question of how to treat the 2009 fiscal year, which actually began Oct. 1, 2008, almost four months before Obama took office. Typically, the remaining eight months get counted as part of the prior president’s spending since the incoming president usually doesn’t change it much until the following October. The MarketWatch analysis assigned 2009 to former President George W. Bush, though it gave Obama responsibility that year for a $140 million chunk of the 2009 stimulus bill.
But Obama’s role in 2009 spending was much bigger than that. For starters, he signed nine spending bills funding every Cabinet agency except Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security. While the numbers don’t jibe exactly, Obama bears the chief responsibility for an 11 percent, $59 billion increase in non-defense spending in 2009. Then there’s a 9 percent, $109 billion increase in combined defense and non-defense appropriated outlays in 2010, a year for which Obama is wholly responsible.
As other critics have noted, including former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the MarketWatch analysis also incorporates CBO’s annual baseline as its estimate for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. That gives Obama credit for three events unlikely to occur:
—$65 billion in 2013 from automatic, across-the-board spending cuts slated to take effect next January.
—Cuts in Medicare payments to physicians.
—The expiration of refundable tax cuts that are “scored” as spending in federal ledgers.
Lawmakers are unlikely to allow the automatic cuts to take full effect, but it’s at best a guessing game as to what will really happen in 2013. A better measure is Obama’s request for 2013.
“You can only make him look good by ignoring the early years and adopting the hope and not the reality of the years in his budget,” said Holtz-Eakin, a GOP economist and president of the American Action Forum, a free market think tank.
So how does Obama measure up?
If one assumes that TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the government as one-time budgetary anomalies and remove them from calculations — an approach taken by Holtz-Eakin — you get the following picture:
—A 9.7 percent increase in 2009, much of which is attributable to Obama.
—A 7.8 percent increase in 2010, followed by slower spending growth over 2011-13. Much of the slower growth reflects the influence of Republicans retaking control of the House and their budget and debt deal last summer with Obama. All told, government spending now appears to be growing at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent over the 2010-2013 period, rather than the 0.4 percent claimed by Obama and the MarketWatch analysis.
Some Cracks in the Obama Camp.....
David Brooks sours on Obama over anti-Bain ads: Administration, campaign ‘demeaned itself’
Published: 2:14 PM 05/26/2012 By Jeff Poor
The tone of this year’s presidential campaign between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been very different from the the atmosphere of the 2008 race, when Obama squared off against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
Gone are the mantras of “hope” and “change.” Negative campaign advertisements have taken their place, like one recently released by the Obama campaign attacking Romney for his time at Bain Capital. This negative campaigning, according to New York Times columnist David Brooks, hurts not just Romney, but also Obama.
“I sort of think this debate hurts both candidates,” Brooks said Friday on PBS’s “NewsHour.” “I think Bain is not popular. It is not well-known. Most Americans don’t know what Bain is, but it is not popular, the idea that he was in some sort of weird consulting group. It’s not popular. And so I do think they are exploiting it for a reason. Nonetheless, I do think hurts Obama, because it makes him look like a very conventional politician. I don’t think, if you are a liberal Democrat, you want to be seen attacking business. People may not love business. They like it a lot better than government. And they don’t want to see an anti-business Democrat.”
Brooks called one ad, which blamed Romney for a steel plant closing, little more than “a whole series of falsehoods.”
“And, finally, I just think the Obama administration, or the campaign has demeaned itself with a series of falsehoods. They released this ad which had a whole series of falsehoods. The one was that this steel company, GST, was a healthy company until Bain took it over, which the ad suggests — completely untrue.”
Brooks added that some of these attacks blamed Romney for Bain’s activities long after the former Massachusetts governor had left the company.
“Second, [the idea] that Romney was part of throwing people out on the street when they finally did have to close this failing company,” he continued. “He was long gone from Bain. And then, finally, that these private equity companies load debt onto businesses. There is a study, though, reported in my newspaper. There is no more debt, no more default in these companies than in other comparable companies. So, it’s this whole series of things which were untrue, which make Obama seem much more like a conventional politician.”
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus agreed generally with Brooks, but also placed some of the blame on Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker’s remarks last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Well, in a sense, David is right — they are both hurt,” Marcus said. “I think one of the reasons we’re talking about Bain for a second week in a row is that we had the experience on Sunday of the Obama surrogate Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who said he found it nauseating that these attacks were coming up. If I were the candidates, I would get together very quietly — and this is my modest proposal to them — just have a pact that whatever — that your surrogate is going to say something really dumb and damaging to you. My surrogate is going to say really dumb and damaging to me. Let’s pretend they don’t exist.”
Brooks compared Obama’s 2008 campaign to his 2012 effort, noting the differences and suggesting Obama is running the risk of turning away a large number of independents.
“To me, one of the major questions of the Obama campaign is — he campaigned in 2008 as an untraditional candidate,” Brooks said. “Now, he did plenty of negative ads and all that. Nonetheless, he was something very different. People were disgusted by politics could really be inspired by Obama, because it was a very different campaign. And, privately, they would say, ‘We’re not going run a Clinton-type campaign. We’re not going to be conventional politicians.’”
“And so they really got a lot of independents excited,” Brooks continued. “Now they are running a completely traditional campaign, literally regurgitating the exact same ad that Ted Kennedy ran against Mitt Romney. And so have they decided, we have just got to win this way? Or are they losing something? I think they’re losing something by being so conventional.”
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Thursday, May 24, 2012
Americans are seeing right through Obama - they are smart enough to know that he will say ANYTHING to get reelected....He's still just a political prostitute...
Obama, the born-again Catholic
Published: 12:39 PM 05/24/2012 By Neil Munro - The Daily Caller
Amid polls showing that his efforts to regulate religious institutions have hurt his image among Catholics, President Barack Obama has begun touting his early ties to the church.
“My first job as a community organizer was with Catholic churches who taught me the power of kindness and commitment to others in neighborhoods,” he declared at a Hollywood fundraiser May 23.
“When I was a young community organizer, I was working with Catholic churches and they taught me that no government program can make as much of a difference as kindness and commitment on the part of neighbors and friends,” he said at a Colorado fundraiser earlier that day.
This new emphasis on his ties to the Catholic Church is a change from Obama’s previous speeches and fundraisers, where he did not mention that, early in his career, he was funded and supported by liberal Catholic officials in Chicago.
His Chicago supporters included a radical Catholic priest, Father Michael Pfleger, who has since been admonished by senior church officials for political advocacy.
Obama’s emphasis on his Catholic ties come as polls show a sharp drop in his support among swing-voting Catholics in battleground states after his February imposition of regulations on churches.
An April poll from Pew reported that Obama’s approval among non-Hispanic Catholics dropped from 45 percent in March to 37 percent in April, while support for Romney rose from 51 percent to 57 percent. That shift could swing the decision in critical swing-states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania.
If broadcast on TV, Obama’s new emphasis on his Catholic ties could bolster his weakened standing among many liberal Catholics, especially those who rarely attend church. It could also boost his support among the many Hispanic Catholics in battleground states like Nevada, North Carolina and Florida.
Obama’s February regulations require government officials to decide whether churches’ activities are religious enough to merit exemption from an unwanted federal mandate that clashes with some churches’ core message. The mandate requires religious institutions to provide contraception and some abortion-related insurance services to their employees who work outside in places such as schools, charities and hospitals.
The regulation is strongly opposed by the Catholic Church — which operates many schools, charities and hospitals — but also by Baptist, Evangelical and Jewish religious groups. They fear it could be used by progressives to impose further disabling regulations on religious observance and on churches.
“They tell us if you’re really going be considered a church… you can serve only Catholics and employ only Catholics,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the most senior Church official in the U.S., told “CBS This Morning” May 22. “We’re like, ‘Wait a minute, when did the government get in the business of defining for us the extent of our ministry?’”
Because of Obama’s regulation “you’ve got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the [Catholic] Church,” Dolan said April 8 on CBS’ Face the Nation.
The Catholic shift away from Obama may grow following Obama’s May 9 decision to endorse same-sex marriage, a position that is especially unpopular among Hispanic Catholics.
In 2008, for example, Arizona voters endorsed a ballot initiative that defines marriage as a one-man, one-woman institution. An advocacy push by Catholic leaders boosted church-going Catholic voters’ opposition to same-sex marriage from 44 percent to 82 percent, according to Catholic officials in the state. A recent Pew poll, however, found that a narrow majority of Catholics nationwide support same-sex marriage rights, including 57 percent of white Catholics.
Dolan and other Catholic leaders have promised to launch an information campaign on the church-state regulation prior to the November election. In addition, 43 Catholic organizations filed 12 high-profile lawsuits around the country against the regulation on May 20.
Obama’s use of his Catholic ties came April 3 at a lunch of media professionals arranged by the Associated Press.
“Some of you know my first job in Chicago was working with a group of Catholic churches that often did more good for the people in their communities than any government program could,” he said.
He cited those ties on April 10, May 5, April 10 and May 10, when he told donors in Seattle that “as a young man, I worked with a group of Catholic churches who taught me that no poverty program can make as much of a difference as the kindness and commitment of a caring soul.”
However, he has not mentioned his Catholic past in numerous other fundraisers, including several given after his May 9 endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Immediately after his Seattle fundraiser, Obama flew to Hollywood for another fundraiser hosted by a famous actor, George Clooney. He didn’t cite his Catholic ties, but did subtly align himself with a cause still opposed by many Catholics — the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples.
“Obviously yesterday we made some news, but — (applause) — but the truth is it was a logical extension of what America is supposed to be… Are we a country that includes everybody and gives everybody a shot and treats everybody fairly, and is that going to make us stronger?“ he said.
In previous speeches, Obama has identified himself with other sub-groups of voters, including Arabs and African-Americans.
In 2008, for example, he declared himself to be an immigrant from from the Indian subcontinent, dubbed a “desi.”
“Not only do I think I’m a desi, but I’m a desi,” he told an audience of Pakistani and Indian donors at a San Francisco event that raised $7.8 million for his 2008 campaign. “I’m a homeboy,” he added, according to an August 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Obama’s eagerness to accentuate some aspects of his upbringing, however, contains some risks beyond the normal difficulty of balancing incompatible demands from rival blocs of voters.
Most notably, the recent discovery that that his literary agent distributed from 1991 to 2007 a glossy biography describing him as being born in Kenya, has prompted critics — including businessman Donald Trump — to suggest he made fraudulent claims about his birthplace to get places in Columbia University and Harvard law school.
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Even Democrats running for Congress are Afraid to Say they would Support Obama....
Even Democrats running for Congress are evidently afraid to say they would support Obama.....Here the Democrat trying to take Giffords spot in the House is afraid to say publicly who he would support in November...
Go Donald Go....Anything Anti Obama is GOOD!
New Trump project: Anti-Obama Super PAC
May 24, 2012 -- 10:58 AM
Sick and tired of the United States looking like a “third world country” and outsiders coming here to “suck the blood out of this country,” quirky developer and TV personality Donald Trump is eyeing a new super PAC to help defeat President Obama.
Presumably, the super PAC would also act to help Mitt Romney, who Trump has endorsed. Money shouldn’t be an issue for the wealthy casino, golf course, resort and real estate developer. And neither should public relations, since Trump is a one-man publicity hound who even toyed with a presidential bid last year.
In an interview with Newsmax TV, Trump voiced anger at OPEC for seeking more than they deserve for oil, and Obama for letting infrastructure fade. But he also expressed high hopes that the nation could turn around, based on tapping home-grown energy sources.
Excerpts from the interview include:
--“If I did one [super PAC] I would show how bad we’re doing as a country, how disrespected we are as a country. I would show people from OPEC, 11 people sitting around a beautiful gold-encrusted table talking about how they are going to continue to rip off the United States.”
--“My super PAC ads would be focused on how outside places and outside things are absolutely sucking the blood out of this country, and this country can’t be great again unless it really starts to generate money.”
--“You come back to this country and you land at La Guardia or Kennedy or in Los Angeles and we’re like a Third World country.”
Just more Hypocrisy from the Democrats....
Senate Dems Betray Lilly
Senate Democrats pay female staffers less than male staffers
BY: Andrew Stiles - May 24, 2012 5:00 am
A group of Democratic female senators on Wednesday declared war on the so-called “gender pay gap,” urging their colleagues to pass the aptly named Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next month. However, a substantial gender pay gap exists in their own offices, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data reveals.
Of the five senators who participated in Wednesday’s press conference—Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.)—three pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers.
Murray, who has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war a women,” is one of the worst offenders. Female members of Murray’s staff made about $21,000 less per year than male staffers in 2011, a difference of 35.2 percent.
That is well above the 23 percent gap that Democrats claim exists between male and female workers nationwide. The figure is based on a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report, and is technically accurate. However, as CNN’s Lisa Sylvester has reported, when factors such as area of employment, hours of work, and time in the workplace are taken into account, the gap shrinks to about 5 percent.
A significant “gender gap” exists in Feinstein’s office, where women also made about $21,000 less than men in 2011, but the percentage difference—41 percent—was even higher than Murray’s.
Boxer’s female staffers made about $5,000 less, a difference of 7.3 percent.
The Free Beacon used publicly available salary data from the transparency website Legistorm to calculate the figures, and considered only current full-time staff members who were employed for the entirety of fiscal year 2011.
The employee gender pay gap among Senate Democrats was not limited to Murray, Boxer, and Feinstein. Of the 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus examined in the analysis, 37 senators paid their female staffers less than male staffers.
Senators elected in 2010—Joe Manchin, Chris Coons, and Richard Blumenthal—were not considered due to incomplete salary data.
Women working for Senate Democrats in 2011 pulled in an average salary of $60,877. Men made about $6,500 more.
While the gap is significant, it is slightly smaller than that of the White House, which pays men about $10,000, or 13 percent, more on average, according to a previous Free Beacon analysis.
The pay differential is quite striking in some cases, especially among leading Democrats. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who runs the Senate Democratic messaging operation, paid men $19,454 more on average, a 36 percent difference.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) paid men $13,063 more, a difference of 23 percent.
Other notable Senators whose “gender pay gap” was larger than 23 percent:
•Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.)—47.6 percent
•Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D., N.M.)—40 percent
•Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.)—34.2 percent
•Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.)—31.5 percent
•Sen. Tom Carper (D., Del.)—30.4 percent
•Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.)–29.7 percent
•Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.)–29.2 percent
•Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.)—26.5 percent
•Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore)—26.4 percent
•Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa)—23.2 percent
Sen. Sanders, who is an avowed socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, has the worst gender gap by far. He employed more men (14) than women (10), and his chief of staff is male. Like many of his fellow partisans, he has previously accused Republicans of “trying to roll back the clock on women’s rights.”
One possible explanation for the pay disparity is the noticeable preference among Senate Democrats’ for male chiefs of staff, who typically draw the highest congressional salaries. Of the 46 Democratic Senators listing a chief of staff on their payroll in 2011, 13 were women.
A similar disparity exists in the White House, which employs 74 men and only 48 women in senior positions.
Senate Democrats have been actively pushing the issue of equal pay over the past several days. “In 19 of the 20 most common occupations for men or women, women earn less for the same work. We need #EqualPay,” the official Twitter account of Senate Democrats wrote on Tuesday.
Sen. Murray has invoked the so-called GOP “war on women” in fundraising pitches for months. “Women are people. That should be obvious, but apparently it isn’t, at least not to extreme Republicans who see us as mere targets of their political strategy,” she wrote in May 10, 2012, campaign fundraising e-mail.
Senate Democrats plan to bring the Paycheck Fairness Act, which some have described as a “trial lawyers’ payday” that would facilitate large punitive damage claims in discrimination suits, up for a vote following the Memorial Day recess.
Congress already passed equal pay legislation in January 2009. President Obama has frequently touted that bill—the Lilly Ledbetter Act—as the first piece of legislation he signed upon taking office, and has sought to declare “problem solved” on the issue of equal pay for women.
“We passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act—the first bill I signed—so that equal pay for equal work is a reality all across this country,” he said in June 2009.
When it comes to prosecuting instances of gender pay discrimination, however, the Obama administration has been far less active than that of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush. Under Obama, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed six gender-based wage discrimination lawsuits. That number is down from 18 lawsuits
Another Obama Major Screwup!!...
Obama Screws Up again....what a disgrace for this nation....How many mistakes can we let the President make before we send him home...
GOP Rep. King says Obama officials disclosed identity of jailed Pakistani doctor
By Joseph Weber Published May 24, 2012 FoxNews.com
GOP Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, expressed concern Wednesday about the extent of the Obama administration’s efforts to protect the Pakistan doctor who was sent to prison in Pakistan for treason after helping to find Usama bin Laden.
"This has been handled very poorly right from the time of the raid," King told FoxNews.com.
Dr. Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief in a May 2011 raid.
The operation outraged Pakistani officials, who portrayed it as an act of treachery by a supposed ally.
King, R-N.Y., said administration officials talked about the doctor and his DNA sampling.
"They put him out there," said King, who made clear he didn't know the exact details about what, if anything, the administration may have done to get the doctor out of Pakistan or otherwise protect him. "I'm focused on that they disclosed his identity."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the administration has "regularly taken up" the issue of Dr. Afridi with Pakistan and she expects "we will continue to."
The doctor was sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday for conspiring against the state -- a verdict officials said is likely to further strain the country's relationship with Washington.
Senior U.S. officials have called for Dr. Afridi to be released, saying his work served Pakistani and American interests.
“What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from treason. It was a courageous, heroic and patriotic act, which helped to locate the most wanted terrorist in the world,” said Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., members of the chamber’s Committee on Armed Services.
They also said Dr. Afridi’s actions were consistent with the multiple, legally binding resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council, which required member states to assist in bringing bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network to justice. They also called upon the Pakistani government to pardon and release Dr. Afridi immediately.
A senior U.S. official with knowledge of counter-terrorism operations against Al Qaeda in Pakistan said the doctor was never asked to spy on Pakistan.
"He was asked only to help locate Al Qaeda terrorists, who threaten Pakistan and the U.S.," the official told Fox News. "He helped save Pakistani and American lives. His activities were not treasonous, they were heroic and patriotic."
But many Pakistani officials, especially those working for the country's powerful spy agency, do not see it that way.
"He was working for a foreign spy agency. We are looking after our national interests," said a Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy.
Afridi's conviction comes at a sensitive time because the U.S. is already frustrated by Pakistan's refusal to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The supply routes were closed six months ago in retaliation for American air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Afridi was detained sometime after the May 2, 2011, raid, but the start of his trial was never publicized.
The U.S. operation severely strained ties with Pakistan. The Pakistani government kicked out U.S. military trainers and limited counter terrorism cooperation with the CIA.
The relationship got even worse in November when the U.S. killed the 24 Pakistani soldiers at two posts along the Afghan border, an attack that Washington said was an accident but the Pakistani army insisted was deliberate.
Pakistan immediately retaliated by closing the NATO supply routes and kicking the U.S. out of a base used by American drones. Before the attack, the U.S. and other NATO countries fighting in Afghanistan shipped about 30 percent of their nonlethal supplies through Pakistan. Since then, the coalition has used far more expensive routes through Russia and Central Asia.
The U.S. has pressed Pakistan to reopen the supply line, but negotiations have been hampered by Washington's refusal to apologize for the attack and stop drone strikes in the country as demanded by Pakistan's parliament. Many observers view the latter demand with skepticism because elements within Pakistan's government and military have supported the attacks in the past.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
At Least the Senate is taking some action!!!! Where's Obama??
Senate panel cuts Pakistan aid over conviction
Published May 24, 2012 Associated Press
A Senate panel expressed its outrage over the conviction of a Pakistani doctor who helped the U.S. get Osama bin Laden by slashing aid by $33 million -- $1 million for every year of the doctor's 33-year sentence.
The Appropriations Committee approved the amendment 30-0 on Thursday as Republicans and Democrats widely criticized Pakistan's conviction of Shakil Afridi for high treason a day earlier. Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the al-Qaida leader in May 2011.
The United States has called for Afridi to be released.
The vote came on a $52 billion foreign aid budget for next year.
Obama - Inappropriate and Totally Political Behavior.....Again...
Just more totally inappropriate and totally political behavior by Obama who is just focused on his own reelection...not the security of the nation...
Obama's Blockbuster Secrets
Deep in the cover of night in the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, a team of Navy SEALs descended from helicopters, breached the compound of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and brought him to justice. The story is the stuff that blockbuster movies are made of, but many of the details are largely a closely guarded secret. That was until the Obama White House granted extraordinary access and information to Hollywood filmmakers for their film about the raid, originally slated to be released just before the November presidential elections. As disturbing as that may be, it is not the first time this White House has disclosed confidential information under questionable circumstances.
The news of the information leak comes from Judicial Watch, a conservative organization that seeks transparency in government. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the organization obtained records from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal. Judicial Watch reports that "According to the records, the Obama Defense Department granted Bigelow and Boal access to a 'planner, Operator and Commander of SEAL Team Six,' which was responsible for the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, to assist Bigelow prepare her upcoming feature film."
Politico reports on a July 2011 meeting between Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Mike Vickers and the film makers in which he told them that leaders of the Special Operations Command couldn’t speak to them for appearances' sake, but that they would make available a Navy SEAL who was involved in planning the raid from its earliest stages. According to Politico, that meeting occurred just weeks after the Pentagon and CIA warned against the dangers of leaked information about the raid. On top of that, Judicial Watch reports on an email exchange in which top officials expressed their desire to "shape the story" and have the filmmakers use "White House talking points," including calling the raid a "gutsy decision" and that "WH involvement was critical."
Not to be missed is the political angle. A June 9, 2011, email reveals that the White House was aware the movie was set for a fourth-quarter release date -- coinciding with the president's re-election bid -- and that the meeting between the filmmakers and the DOD / CIA was arranged by The Glover Park Group, a Democratic-leaning advocacy firm headed up by a former adviser to Al Gore's 2000 campaign. And then there's the fact that Sony Pictures Entertainment, which owns the production house distributing the film, hosted a fundraiser for President Obama on its lot last month, part of a West Coast fundraising tour that raise the campaign more than $4 million.
Though we do not know for certain the full extent of the information revealed, we do know that this is not the first time that the Obama Administration's handling of classified information has been called into question. Earlier this month, former CIA officials blamed the Obama Administration for leaking details on Britain's involvement in a covert mission that resulted in the foiling of an underwear bomb plot. The Guardian reported that the leak followed a series of disclosures beginning with a report on an expansion of CIA drone attacks in Yemen, followed by the president's surprise trip to Afghanistan on the anniversary of the bin Laden mission. Mike Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said of the leak, "MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president... This is really tragic. Any information disclosed is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing."
Of course, the protection of classified information is the sole province of the Executive branch, i.e. the President. It's not unusual for the government to give reporters information about war or to embed journalists with tactical units in certain missions -- that has happened in both in Democrat and Republican administrations. However, there is a fundamental difference between that kind of access, which arguably furthers the public's understanding of the war effort, and disclosures of this nature. The White House knew when the film about the bin Laden raid was slated to be released, and the White House alone decided to release the information. Those facts should raise a red flag for Congress that the White House has come awfully close to the line. It's up to them to find out how this Administration is handling or mishandling ultra-sensitive national security secrets.
Obama's Blockbuster Secrets
Deep in the cover of night in the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, a team of Navy SEALs descended from helicopters, breached the compound of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and brought him to justice. The story is the stuff that blockbuster movies are made of, but many of the details are largely a closely guarded secret. That was until the Obama White House granted extraordinary access and information to Hollywood filmmakers for their film about the raid, originally slated to be released just before the November presidential elections. As disturbing as that may be, it is not the first time this White House has disclosed confidential information under questionable circumstances.
The news of the information leak comes from Judicial Watch, a conservative organization that seeks transparency in government. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the organization obtained records from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal. Judicial Watch reports that "According to the records, the Obama Defense Department granted Bigelow and Boal access to a 'planner, Operator and Commander of SEAL Team Six,' which was responsible for the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, to assist Bigelow prepare her upcoming feature film."
Politico reports on a July 2011 meeting between Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Mike Vickers and the film makers in which he told them that leaders of the Special Operations Command couldn’t speak to them for appearances' sake, but that they would make available a Navy SEAL who was involved in planning the raid from its earliest stages. According to Politico, that meeting occurred just weeks after the Pentagon and CIA warned against the dangers of leaked information about the raid. On top of that, Judicial Watch reports on an email exchange in which top officials expressed their desire to "shape the story" and have the filmmakers use "White House talking points," including calling the raid a "gutsy decision" and that "WH involvement was critical."
Not to be missed is the political angle. A June 9, 2011, email reveals that the White House was aware the movie was set for a fourth-quarter release date -- coinciding with the president's re-election bid -- and that the meeting between the filmmakers and the DOD / CIA was arranged by The Glover Park Group, a Democratic-leaning advocacy firm headed up by a former adviser to Al Gore's 2000 campaign. And then there's the fact that Sony Pictures Entertainment, which owns the production house distributing the film, hosted a fundraiser for President Obama on its lot last month, part of a West Coast fundraising tour that raise the campaign more than $4 million.
Though we do not know for certain the full extent of the information revealed, we do know that this is not the first time that the Obama Administration's handling of classified information has been called into question. Earlier this month, former CIA officials blamed the Obama Administration for leaking details on Britain's involvement in a covert mission that resulted in the foiling of an underwear bomb plot. The Guardian reported that the leak followed a series of disclosures beginning with a report on an expansion of CIA drone attacks in Yemen, followed by the president's surprise trip to Afghanistan on the anniversary of the bin Laden mission. Mike Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said of the leak, "MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president... This is really tragic. Any information disclosed is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing."
Of course, the protection of classified information is the sole province of the Executive branch, i.e. the President. It's not unusual for the government to give reporters information about war or to embed journalists with tactical units in certain missions -- that has happened in both in Democrat and Republican administrations. However, there is a fundamental difference between that kind of access, which arguably furthers the public's understanding of the war effort, and disclosures of this nature. The White House knew when the film about the bin Laden raid was slated to be released, and the White House alone decided to release the information. Those facts should raise a red flag for Congress that the White House has come awfully close to the line. It's up to them to find out how this Administration is handling or mishandling ultra-sensitive national security secrets.
More Cracks in the Democrat Party....Looks like few are staying on message!
Pelosi parts from Obama on Bush tax rates, urges extension for those making under $1M
Published May 24, 2012 FoxNews.com
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi just pulled her caucus well to the right of President Obama, as she dramatically broadened the scope of her proposal for extending the Bush-era tax cuts.
The White House, since Obama took office, has called for those tax rates to be extended only for households making less than $250,000 a year. The president wants the rates to expire for everybody else.
But Pelosi, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, upped that threshold to $1 million. She urged Boehner to schedule a vote "as early as next week" to extend the "middle-income tax cuts" -- which she apparently is defining as those affecting households that make less than $1 million.
"We must ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit," she wrote. "By ensuring that the middle-income tax cuts do not expire, we will put money into the pockets of American consumers, saving the typical middle-income family thousands of dollars per year."
The letter marked a split between how Pelosi and how Obama define middle class.
One senior Republican aide noted "how big a shift this is" after the letter was made public. It's a shift that could make it easier for Democrats from wealthier areas to support the party position.
The president came under fire from Republicans in the last Bush tax cut debate for describing households making $250,000 as wealthy and threatening to let their cuts expire. Ultimately, the rates for everybody were extended -- but that extension expires at the end of 2012 if Congress does not act.
Pelosi's letter adds renewed urgency to that debate, particularly after the Congressional Budget Office warned the country could hit a "fiscal cliff" if the tax cut expiration and other sweeping changes go into effect as scheduled in 2013.
The White House, though, is standing by its position on the tax cuts and its definition of middle class.
"The president has been clear that Congress must extend the tax rates for all families making less than $250,000 a year and let the rates for the very wealthiest expire at the end of the year," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said. "The question now is whether Republicans in Congress will vote to give millions of middle class families the confidence that they won't see their taxes go up at the end of the year, or whether they will continue to hold the middle class hostage so they can extend big tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans that our nation can't afford."
House Republicans aren't backing off their position -- that the tax rates should be extended for all -- either.
"Speaker Boehner has already announced that the House will act to stop the tax hike on every American taxpayer," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said
Published May 24, 2012 FoxNews.com
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi just pulled her caucus well to the right of President Obama, as she dramatically broadened the scope of her proposal for extending the Bush-era tax cuts.
The White House, since Obama took office, has called for those tax rates to be extended only for households making less than $250,000 a year. The president wants the rates to expire for everybody else.
But Pelosi, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, upped that threshold to $1 million. She urged Boehner to schedule a vote "as early as next week" to extend the "middle-income tax cuts" -- which she apparently is defining as those affecting households that make less than $1 million.
"We must ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit," she wrote. "By ensuring that the middle-income tax cuts do not expire, we will put money into the pockets of American consumers, saving the typical middle-income family thousands of dollars per year."
The letter marked a split between how Pelosi and how Obama define middle class.
One senior Republican aide noted "how big a shift this is" after the letter was made public. It's a shift that could make it easier for Democrats from wealthier areas to support the party position.
The president came under fire from Republicans in the last Bush tax cut debate for describing households making $250,000 as wealthy and threatening to let their cuts expire. Ultimately, the rates for everybody were extended -- but that extension expires at the end of 2012 if Congress does not act.
Pelosi's letter adds renewed urgency to that debate, particularly after the Congressional Budget Office warned the country could hit a "fiscal cliff" if the tax cut expiration and other sweeping changes go into effect as scheduled in 2013.
The White House, though, is standing by its position on the tax cuts and its definition of middle class.
"The president has been clear that Congress must extend the tax rates for all families making less than $250,000 a year and let the rates for the very wealthiest expire at the end of the year," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said. "The question now is whether Republicans in Congress will vote to give millions of middle class families the confidence that they won't see their taxes go up at the end of the year, or whether they will continue to hold the middle class hostage so they can extend big tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans that our nation can't afford."
House Republicans aren't backing off their position -- that the tax rates should be extended for all -- either.
"Speaker Boehner has already announced that the House will act to stop the tax hike on every American taxpayer," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said
Slowly Romney is Letting American Know how he will Govern as President....
Romney: I’m not willing to borrow money from China to fund PBS
Published: 5:27 PM 05/23/2012 By Alex Pappas
Mitt Romney likes PBS, but says it’s time for the public broadcasting television network to stop relying on taxpayer funding and find private income sources instead.
“I think there will be things that we think are nice programs, and we’ll say to ourselves, is this program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?” Romney said in an interview with Time magazine’s Mark Halperin on Wednesday. (RELATED: Full coverage of the Romney campaign)
“I like PBS. I’d like my grandkids to be able to watch PBS,” the presumptive GOP nominee said. “But I’m not willing to borrow money from China and make my kids have to pay the interest on that, and my grandkids, over generations, as opposed to saying to PBS, look, you’re going to have to raise more money from charitable contributions or from advertising.”
Yet Romney wouldn’t budge when asked to specifically name cabinet departments or agencies he would do away with if he were elected president.
He said his experience as governor of Massachusetts taught him that it’s best to wait until in office when he can work with the legislature to find areas to cut the cost of government.
“Interestingly, as I got in and was actually becoming the governor and was able to go line by line through the budget, we found places we would have never imagined would be opportunities for reducing cost,” Romney said. “So I know they will be there.”
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Obama's Best Buddy Likes Bain....
This is Obama's best buddy...what would you expect him to say....He says Obama understands business...is he kidding me????...And this Mass Governor is no success story either....
But he does like Private Equity and he likes Bain and what they do...
But he does like Private Equity and he likes Bain and what they do...
The TRUTH about who is behind the Occupy Movement - Obama and his surrogates, Soros, Unions, Far Left Extreme Organizations...
By the way Jay Carney is an IDIOT!
More Disgusting Behavior by Obama and his Administration solely for political purposes....no concern for putting national security at risk!
Rep. King slams White House for sharing bin Laden secrets with Hollywood
Published: 9:44 AM 05/23/2012 By Neil Munro
The White House has apparently undermined the secrecy that protects U.S. anti-jihadi operations because it wants to aid Hollywood’s quick production of a movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden, according to a statement from Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
E-mails released May 22 show “a damning story of extremely close, unprecedented, and potentially dangerous collaboration with top officials at the CIA, the [Department of Defense] and the White House and a top Democratic lobbying firm,” King said.
King is pressing administration officials to explain their unprecedented cooperation with producer Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, whose movie, titled “Zero Dark Thirty,” is slated for release later this year.
Bigelow and Boal apparently used a Democratic lobbying firm, the Glover Park Group, to help them get access to officials and soldiers involved in the successful killing.
“Is it CIA practice to meet with registered lobbyists in order to facilitate access to National Clandestine Service personnel?… Were [CIA spies] introduced to Boal and Bigelow over the objections of the Director of the [CIA counterterrorism center], who apparently declined to meet with the filmmakers?” King asked in a May 23 letter sent to Michael Morell, deputy director of the CIA.
“Who specifically authorized current [Pentagon] Special Mission Unit operators to speak about this mission to uncleared personnel outside of their chain of command?… What specifically was your guidance [given to you] from your chain of command and the White House?” King asked in a second letter to Michael Vickers, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
The information sharing occurred even though top defense officials had apparently won a top White House commitment in May 2011 to shield secret intelligence-gathering techniques from the global media, King said.
“We simply cannot forget what then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said a week after the raid,” King said in his statement.
“Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day,” Gates said in May 2011, shortly after the media began publishing classified information about the raid that had been leaked by government officials.
The details of the close cooperation between White House officials and the filmmakers were published by a D.C.-based public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, following a Freedom of Information Act request.
“The email messages indicate that the filmmakers were allowed an unprecedented visit to a classified facility so secret that its name is redacted in the released email,” said King’s May 23 statement, which also included copies of the letters sent to Pentagon and CIA officials.
King also slammed the White House for allowing a lobbying firm to broker the meetings between the filmmakers and top White House officials, at least one of the officers who planned the raid, and several CIA anti-jihadi officials.
“The Democratic lobbying firm Glover Park Group was… intimately involved in brokering these filmmakers’ access to clandestine officers and potentially special operators only weeks after the mission and when details were otherwise still very closely guarded,” King said.
Since the cooperation took place, a top CIA public affairs aide has joined the Obama reelection campaign, said King’s statement.
Joel Arends, chairman of Veterans for a Strong America also criticized the cooperation, calling the entire move “disgusting and shameful behavior on the part of this White House” in a statement to The Daily Caller.
Arends said, “President Obama claimed he would not spike the football – now he is allowing his administration to literally write the movie and sell the movie rights.”
“The use of classified facilities at the Pentagon and CIA for the purposes of making a movie, which was originally due for release before the election,” he noted, “is the outright use of highly secretive national security
Another Attack on a Conservative Woman...
I'll bet S.E.Cupp won't be getting a call from Obama, nor will Obama even condemn this kind of attack.....Who knows he and Larry Flynt might be friends based on Obama's taste in friends....
AND don't count on NOW to come to Cupp's Aid....
Media Fake Explicit Image of S.E. Cupp Appears in Hustler (Graphic)
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 10:05am by Madeleine Morgenstern
Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has responded to The Blaze and confirmed the image. You can read his statement here.
–
The Blaze has been alerted to a fake explicit image apparently published in Hustler magazine depicting GBTV host and conservative commentator S.E. Cupp engaged in a sex act with what appears to be a penis in her mouth.
Under the headline “Celebrity Fantasy,” the text beside the picture asks, “What would S.E. Cupp look like with a [d**k] in her mouth?”
S.E. Cupp is a lovely young lady who read too much Ayn Rand in high school and ended up joining the dark side. Cupp, an author and media commentator who often shows up on Fox News programs, is undeniably cute. But her hotness is diminished when she espouses dumb ideas like defunding Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the method pictured here is Ms. Cupp’s suggestion for avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.
A disclaimer follows: “No such picture of S.E. Cupp actually exists. This composite fantasy is altered from the original for our imagination, does not depict reality, and is not to be taken seriously for any purpose.”
A blurred copy of the image is below:
Cupp told The Blaze she was “horrified and disgusted” when she first saw the image, which was passed along to her by a friend.
“It’s uncomfortable. I’m not in this business to talk about myself, I’m not in this business to talk about my character,” she said. “I‘d much rather be talking about Obama’s economic record or his foreign policy than myself and having to defend myself against [this photo].”
Speaking with Glenn Beck during his radio program Wednesday, Cupp said she’s seen a lot of misogyny against conservative women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin, but she’s never seen anything “this disturbing and graphic.”
“You have to wonder if they had done this to someone like Nancy Pelosi or Michelle Obama, would that stand, would no one make a stink about it? I have to think they would,” Cupp demanded.
Despite the vile nature of the photo, Cupp said she had to commend Hustler for their “honesty” in the image’s accompanying sidebar.
“S.E. Cupp is lovely, she’s smart, she’s fine but she happens be a crazy conservative who is pro-life and wants to defund Planned Parenthood and for that she deserves the phallus in her mouth — that is essentially what they’re saying and I have to commend that as being incredibly honest,” Cupp said.
She added, “They have uncomplicated this belief system that my political views, my being pro-life, my political views make this kind of behavior OK. It justifies it and I essentially deserve it. That is honesty and I have never seen it before.”
Cupp essentially laughed off the idea of any feminist organizations coming to her defense.
“The National Organization for Women, NOW, will not come out and say liberal women deserve more respect than conservative women and we are not going to defend conservative women. They’re not going to admit to that but let me tell you that is exactly how they feel,” she said.
Despite the storm of controversy that erupted after Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on the radio, Cupp predicted she wouldn’t get the same reaction, even when “clearly by anyone’s standards this is worse.”
“The outrage of Sandra Fluke will not be matched on my side,” Cupp told The Blaze. “It seems that feminism has devolved into an institution that has picked losers and winners and has decided that some women qualify for respect and other women do not.”
Hustler magazine did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
A copy of the image was sent to the National Organization for Women. A press aide told The Blaze she was not authorized to speak for the organization and could not say whether NOW would speak out against it.
AND don't count on NOW to come to Cupp's Aid....
Media Fake Explicit Image of S.E. Cupp Appears in Hustler (Graphic)
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 10:05am by Madeleine Morgenstern
Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has responded to The Blaze and confirmed the image. You can read his statement here.
–
The Blaze has been alerted to a fake explicit image apparently published in Hustler magazine depicting GBTV host and conservative commentator S.E. Cupp engaged in a sex act with what appears to be a penis in her mouth.
Under the headline “Celebrity Fantasy,” the text beside the picture asks, “What would S.E. Cupp look like with a [d**k] in her mouth?”
S.E. Cupp is a lovely young lady who read too much Ayn Rand in high school and ended up joining the dark side. Cupp, an author and media commentator who often shows up on Fox News programs, is undeniably cute. But her hotness is diminished when she espouses dumb ideas like defunding Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the method pictured here is Ms. Cupp’s suggestion for avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.
A disclaimer follows: “No such picture of S.E. Cupp actually exists. This composite fantasy is altered from the original for our imagination, does not depict reality, and is not to be taken seriously for any purpose.”
A blurred copy of the image is below:
Cupp told The Blaze she was “horrified and disgusted” when she first saw the image, which was passed along to her by a friend.
“It’s uncomfortable. I’m not in this business to talk about myself, I’m not in this business to talk about my character,” she said. “I‘d much rather be talking about Obama’s economic record or his foreign policy than myself and having to defend myself against [this photo].”
Speaking with Glenn Beck during his radio program Wednesday, Cupp said she’s seen a lot of misogyny against conservative women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin, but she’s never seen anything “this disturbing and graphic.”
“You have to wonder if they had done this to someone like Nancy Pelosi or Michelle Obama, would that stand, would no one make a stink about it? I have to think they would,” Cupp demanded.
Despite the vile nature of the photo, Cupp said she had to commend Hustler for their “honesty” in the image’s accompanying sidebar.
“S.E. Cupp is lovely, she’s smart, she’s fine but she happens be a crazy conservative who is pro-life and wants to defund Planned Parenthood and for that she deserves the phallus in her mouth — that is essentially what they’re saying and I have to commend that as being incredibly honest,” Cupp said.
She added, “They have uncomplicated this belief system that my political views, my being pro-life, my political views make this kind of behavior OK. It justifies it and I essentially deserve it. That is honesty and I have never seen it before.”
Cupp essentially laughed off the idea of any feminist organizations coming to her defense.
“The National Organization for Women, NOW, will not come out and say liberal women deserve more respect than conservative women and we are not going to defend conservative women. They’re not going to admit to that but let me tell you that is exactly how they feel,” she said.
Despite the storm of controversy that erupted after Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on the radio, Cupp predicted she wouldn’t get the same reaction, even when “clearly by anyone’s standards this is worse.”
“The outrage of Sandra Fluke will not be matched on my side,” Cupp told The Blaze. “It seems that feminism has devolved into an institution that has picked losers and winners and has decided that some women qualify for respect and other women do not.”
Hustler magazine did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
A copy of the image was sent to the National Organization for Women. A press aide told The Blaze she was not authorized to speak for the organization and could not say whether NOW would speak out against it.
Again the Right Message From Romney....
Romney says Congress should wait to act on economy
Published May 23, 2012 FoxNews.com
Mitt Romney says that if elected Congress should wait until he takes office to block automatic spending cuts and to keep tax cuts from expiring.
In an interview with Time magazine on Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate said he wants Congress to deal with major issues to keep the U.S. from going over a "fiscal cliff" after the January swearing-in.
Romney said he wants permanent legislation to deal with those problems instead of a temporary effort.
Government analysts say the economy will shrink if Congress doesn't act to prevent the expiration of two major rounds of tax cuts along with automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs.
Romney said believes he'll have a "grace period" to work on those issues with like-minded lawmakers.
Published May 23, 2012 FoxNews.com
Mitt Romney says that if elected Congress should wait until he takes office to block automatic spending cuts and to keep tax cuts from expiring.
In an interview with Time magazine on Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate said he wants Congress to deal with major issues to keep the U.S. from going over a "fiscal cliff" after the January swearing-in.
Romney said he wants permanent legislation to deal with those problems instead of a temporary effort.
Government analysts say the economy will shrink if Congress doesn't act to prevent the expiration of two major rounds of tax cuts along with automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs.
Romney said believes he'll have a "grace period" to work on those issues with like-minded lawmakers.
Romney taking the Right Positon on Education...
Romney proposing voucher-like education overhaul
Published May 23, 2012 Associated Press
Shifting from the economy to education, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is proposing a voucher-style system that could significantly alter the public school system and revive the debate over school choice.
Romney, who has been reluctant to stray far from the economic issues at the core of the presidential campaign, outlined the proposal during a speech Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The plan will allow low-income and disabled students use federal funding to attend public schools, public charter schools and, in some cases, private schools. Federal funds could also be applied to tutors or digital courses.
The plan is in line with GOP reforms aimed at giving students more educational choices. But it's unclear how schools in areas that depend on the federal funding would fare.
The proposal is not expected to include any new federal money for education.
Romney has so far offered few details for his plans on several key policy areas, including foreign policy, health care and education. He attacked Obama's education policy while speaking to donors in New York City on Tuesday evening, previewing themes likely to play prominently in Wednesday's speech.
"This president receives the lion's share of funding from organized labor, and the teachers' unions represent a massive source of funding for the Democratic Party," Romney said. "The challenge with that is when it comes to actual reform to make schools better for our kids, they talk a good game, but they don't do it."
He continued, "If I'm president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future."
The message is consistent for the Romney campaign, which regularly heaps criticism on the Democratic president's policies but offers only a vague road map for what Romney would do.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that Romney's shift to education was welcome after a campaign season in which he said the GOP rarely mentioned the issue.
"Education never came up in the Republican primary in any of the debates, or if it did, it came up almost never," Carney said.
Carney said Obama's education initiatives have received broad bipartisan support and that the president "looks forward to defending that record."
Romney's shift carries some risk. His regular criticism of labor unions, in particular, threatens to alienate voters in Rust Belt states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a close election may be decided.
Before the speech, Romney announced Tuesday a team of education policy advisers that includes former Education Secretary Rod Paige and other officials from President George W. Bush's administration. Paige is among several prominent opponents of teachers' unions on the panel. As education secretary in 2004, he labeled the National Education Association a "terrorist organization."
Romney's positions on education have evolved over time. He once supported abolishing the Education Department but reversed that position as a presidential candidate in 2007. At the time, he said he came to see the value of the federal government in "holding down the interests of the teachers' unions" and putting kids and parents first.
Romney also changed his position on the Bush-era education overhaul known as "No Child Left Behind." He said he supported the law as a candidate in 2007, but he has since generally come out against the policy many conservatives see as an expansion of the federal government.
Romney continues to support the federal accountability standards in the law, however. He also has said the student testing, charter-school incentives and teacher evaluation standards in Obama's "Race to the Top" competition "make sense," although the federal government should have less control over education. The campaign in recent days has emphasized his support for charter schools while governor of Massachusetts, a theme likely to play out in Wednesday's address.
The speech represents Romney's first public event in four days. Working to close Obama's cash advantage, he's coming off a three-day fundraising swing in the New York area that his chief finance aide said had netted $15 million. A single finance event in Manhattan on Tuesday evening generated $5 million.
Still, the campaign is eager to drive a positive message for voters now tuning in to the contest.
The education speech follows a relatively quiet phase for Romney, who has been focused on fundraising but usually delivers one major address a week. Most of his recent speeches, however, have been about the economic themes that so far have defined his campaign.
Published May 23, 2012 Associated Press
Shifting from the economy to education, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is proposing a voucher-style system that could significantly alter the public school system and revive the debate over school choice.
Romney, who has been reluctant to stray far from the economic issues at the core of the presidential campaign, outlined the proposal during a speech Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The plan will allow low-income and disabled students use federal funding to attend public schools, public charter schools and, in some cases, private schools. Federal funds could also be applied to tutors or digital courses.
The plan is in line with GOP reforms aimed at giving students more educational choices. But it's unclear how schools in areas that depend on the federal funding would fare.
The proposal is not expected to include any new federal money for education.
Romney has so far offered few details for his plans on several key policy areas, including foreign policy, health care and education. He attacked Obama's education policy while speaking to donors in New York City on Tuesday evening, previewing themes likely to play prominently in Wednesday's speech.
"This president receives the lion's share of funding from organized labor, and the teachers' unions represent a massive source of funding for the Democratic Party," Romney said. "The challenge with that is when it comes to actual reform to make schools better for our kids, they talk a good game, but they don't do it."
He continued, "If I'm president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future."
The message is consistent for the Romney campaign, which regularly heaps criticism on the Democratic president's policies but offers only a vague road map for what Romney would do.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that Romney's shift to education was welcome after a campaign season in which he said the GOP rarely mentioned the issue.
"Education never came up in the Republican primary in any of the debates, or if it did, it came up almost never," Carney said.
Carney said Obama's education initiatives have received broad bipartisan support and that the president "looks forward to defending that record."
Romney's shift carries some risk. His regular criticism of labor unions, in particular, threatens to alienate voters in Rust Belt states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a close election may be decided.
Before the speech, Romney announced Tuesday a team of education policy advisers that includes former Education Secretary Rod Paige and other officials from President George W. Bush's administration. Paige is among several prominent opponents of teachers' unions on the panel. As education secretary in 2004, he labeled the National Education Association a "terrorist organization."
Romney's positions on education have evolved over time. He once supported abolishing the Education Department but reversed that position as a presidential candidate in 2007. At the time, he said he came to see the value of the federal government in "holding down the interests of the teachers' unions" and putting kids and parents first.
Romney also changed his position on the Bush-era education overhaul known as "No Child Left Behind." He said he supported the law as a candidate in 2007, but he has since generally come out against the policy many conservatives see as an expansion of the federal government.
Romney continues to support the federal accountability standards in the law, however. He also has said the student testing, charter-school incentives and teacher evaluation standards in Obama's "Race to the Top" competition "make sense," although the federal government should have less control over education. The campaign in recent days has emphasized his support for charter schools while governor of Massachusetts, a theme likely to play out in Wednesday's address.
The speech represents Romney's first public event in four days. Working to close Obama's cash advantage, he's coming off a three-day fundraising swing in the New York area that his chief finance aide said had netted $15 million. A single finance event in Manhattan on Tuesday evening generated $5 million.
Still, the campaign is eager to drive a positive message for voters now tuning in to the contest.
The education speech follows a relatively quiet phase for Romney, who has been focused on fundraising but usually delivers one major address a week. Most of his recent speeches, however, have been about the economic themes that so far have defined his campaign.
Catholic Church Takes on Obama - STATE-RUN Media doesn't even report it....
Interesting that if you watch NBC or ABC you wouldn't even know about this significant lawsuit...evidently it didn't fit their political bias and liberal bent so they decided not to report on it at all....CBS did give it a 19 SECOND mention...What is this nation's press coming to??????....Now it they don't like the story, they just don't report it....I feel like we are in Communist China, not America!
From today's Heritage Foundation Morning Call...
Catholic Institutions Sue to Stop Obamacare's Religious Liberty Violation
Three years ago, the University of Notre Dame invited President Barack Obama to deliver a commencement address and conferred on him an honorary law degree. But on Monday, the university joined 42 other Catholic institutions in suing the Obama Administration over new Obamacare regulations that force religious institutions to pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization regardless of the employers' moral or religious objections.
The mandate's narrow exemption effectively applies only to churches and other houses of worship; religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges, charities and other non-profits don't qualify for a religious exemption. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, explained the significance of the Administration's mandate and its impact on those institutions, remarking that, "For the first time in this country's history, the government's new definition of religious institutions suggests that some of the very institutions that put our faith into practice--schools, hospitals, and social service organizations--are not 'religious enough.'"
In total, 12 lawsuits were filed this week challenging the Administration's anti-conscience mandate, and the wide range of organizations joining the legal challenge underscores the enormous opposition to the mandate. Heritage's Sarah Torre explains that the lawsuits span from the Catholic dioceses of Washington, D.C., and Joilet, Illinois, to Catholic Charities of Jackson, Mississippi, and the Michigan Catholic Conference. "The range of the 43 institutions that have joined the dozen suits highlights the variety of Good Samaritan groups harmed by the mandate," Torre writes. "These ministries serve inner-city children, the elderly, deaf, developmentally disabled, HIV/AIDS patients, and homeless--among many others. Catholic outreach, like many other religious groups in America, seeks to serve those most in need."
These 43 plaintiffs join a number of others who had filed similar suits in recent weeks, including three evangelical higher education institutions: Colorado Christian University, Louisiana College and Geneva College. As the presidents of these schools explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in April:
[T]he Obama administration has passed a rule that will penalize our colleges with faith-based fines merely because we center our beliefs about the sanctity of human life on the Bible, not on the demands of federal bureaucrats. The administration's mandate that religious employers provide coverage of abortion-inducing drugs for their faculty, staff, and students is a bridge too far in America.
This 'conscience tax' is a blatant violation of the freedoms of religion and speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and affirmed by federal laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This mandate would be unjust even if it applied only to those who accept government funding, but it does much more than that. It applies to private, religious employers just because they exist in American society, regardless of whether they receive government funding.
Indeed, it is the Obama Administration's attempt to broadly impose its will on any religious organization in violation of First Amendment protections that brought such a wide variety of institutions to challenge the Obamacare regulations. Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins wrote that his university's lawsuit goes beyond a debate about contraception and is about the freedom of a religious organization to "live its mission":
For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements. If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has called the Obamacare mandate an "unprecedented" violation of religious freedom by the federal government. In addition to the lawsuits, Catholic bishops are planning a national campaign for religious freedom in the two weeks leading up to the Fourth of July holiday. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, explained the urgency behind their actions: "We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress--and we'll keep at it--but there's still no fix. Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now."
So yet again, Obamacare's overreach will come before the courts, this time because its centrally driven health care policy is conflicting with conscience and poses a direct threat to the nation's religious institutions. Regardless of the outcome, there is one thing Congress can do to stop the federal government's vast overreach into American life -- repeal Obamacare now, and then replace it with market-based reforms that respect religious liberty.
From today's Heritage Foundation Morning Call...
Catholic Institutions Sue to Stop Obamacare's Religious Liberty Violation
Three years ago, the University of Notre Dame invited President Barack Obama to deliver a commencement address and conferred on him an honorary law degree. But on Monday, the university joined 42 other Catholic institutions in suing the Obama Administration over new Obamacare regulations that force religious institutions to pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization regardless of the employers' moral or religious objections.
The mandate's narrow exemption effectively applies only to churches and other houses of worship; religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges, charities and other non-profits don't qualify for a religious exemption. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, explained the significance of the Administration's mandate and its impact on those institutions, remarking that, "For the first time in this country's history, the government's new definition of religious institutions suggests that some of the very institutions that put our faith into practice--schools, hospitals, and social service organizations--are not 'religious enough.'"
In total, 12 lawsuits were filed this week challenging the Administration's anti-conscience mandate, and the wide range of organizations joining the legal challenge underscores the enormous opposition to the mandate. Heritage's Sarah Torre explains that the lawsuits span from the Catholic dioceses of Washington, D.C., and Joilet, Illinois, to Catholic Charities of Jackson, Mississippi, and the Michigan Catholic Conference. "The range of the 43 institutions that have joined the dozen suits highlights the variety of Good Samaritan groups harmed by the mandate," Torre writes. "These ministries serve inner-city children, the elderly, deaf, developmentally disabled, HIV/AIDS patients, and homeless--among many others. Catholic outreach, like many other religious groups in America, seeks to serve those most in need."
These 43 plaintiffs join a number of others who had filed similar suits in recent weeks, including three evangelical higher education institutions: Colorado Christian University, Louisiana College and Geneva College. As the presidents of these schools explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in April:
[T]he Obama administration has passed a rule that will penalize our colleges with faith-based fines merely because we center our beliefs about the sanctity of human life on the Bible, not on the demands of federal bureaucrats. The administration's mandate that religious employers provide coverage of abortion-inducing drugs for their faculty, staff, and students is a bridge too far in America.
This 'conscience tax' is a blatant violation of the freedoms of religion and speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and affirmed by federal laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This mandate would be unjust even if it applied only to those who accept government funding, but it does much more than that. It applies to private, religious employers just because they exist in American society, regardless of whether they receive government funding.
Indeed, it is the Obama Administration's attempt to broadly impose its will on any religious organization in violation of First Amendment protections that brought such a wide variety of institutions to challenge the Obamacare regulations. Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins wrote that his university's lawsuit goes beyond a debate about contraception and is about the freedom of a religious organization to "live its mission":
For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements. If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has called the Obamacare mandate an "unprecedented" violation of religious freedom by the federal government. In addition to the lawsuits, Catholic bishops are planning a national campaign for religious freedom in the two weeks leading up to the Fourth of July holiday. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, explained the urgency behind their actions: "We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress--and we'll keep at it--but there's still no fix. Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now."
So yet again, Obamacare's overreach will come before the courts, this time because its centrally driven health care policy is conflicting with conscience and poses a direct threat to the nation's religious institutions. Regardless of the outcome, there is one thing Congress can do to stop the federal government's vast overreach into American life -- repeal Obamacare now, and then replace it with market-based reforms that respect religious liberty.
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