New EPA rule will cost each taxpaying American $280

By the EPA's own admission, power plants will have to spend $10.6 billion over the next four years to meet new, more stringent standards for anti-pollution controls. The EPA says that these measures will "save $59 billion to $140 billion in annual health costs, preventing 17,000 premature deaths a year along with illnesses and lost workdays."

Of course, just how those ridiculous figures were arrived at is anyone's guess, because the EPA doesn't make that research readily available. Think about it: those statistics are, at face value, patently false. We have 17,000 premature deaths a year thanks to dirty air? Sure we do. And a secret town in Kansas is the source of all baby unicorns.

No, this is another step to de-industrialize America and to "fundamentally transform" our nation into some sort of backwater country. Maybe it's payback, our chickens coming home to roost, in the words of one Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

All that said, what's the impact of these outrageous rules on Americans?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 153,683,000 civilians in the workforce (as of Nov. 2011).

Let's assume that each of these private sector employees are responsible for an equal amount of the EPA's egregious tolls. But Doug, you might say, don't public sector employees also have to pay these bills? Sure, but since the public sector is funded entirely by the private sector, they don't count in this calculation.

Furthermore, only half of workers pay net taxes to the government.

Here's what the EPA's disgusting new rules will cost each of us: $140. Every American will have to pay an additional $140 (really, figure double that because of markup and government inefficiency in these estimates) for the privilege of attaining some arbitrary new air-cleanliness standard that has no merit and no scientific basis.

Kind of like the billions we piss away on the global warming scam.

This administration simply must be turned out of office in 2012 if we are to save this country.

Photo: Stress Taking Its Toll on Former Democrat Presidential Candidate John Edwards

Former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards faces charges of using illegal campaign funds to hide an extramarital affair. His trial is ready to begin within the next several weeks and -- as you can see -- the stress has taken quite a toll on Silky Pony:


Edwards is alleged to have taken a million dollars from two wealthy campaign contributors to help cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter, which resulted in a love child.


* Our lawyers tell us that the accompanying photograph may not be real.

Obama: I'm only the 4th most awesome president in history (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Truman, JFK, Reagan hardest hit)

Humility:

60 Minutes Broadcast Edits Out Laughable Obama Claim as 4th Best President

George Washington was the father of our country.

Eh! No big deal. Barack Obama is better...at least in his own mind. Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn't see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast...

KROFT: Tell me, what do you consider your major accomplishments? If this is your last speech. What have you accomplished?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we're not done yet. I've got five more years of stuff to do. But not only saving this country from a great depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But putting in place a system in which we're gonna start lowering health care costs and you're never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Making sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer-funded bailouts, and the system is more stable and secure. Making sure that we've got millions of kids out here who are able to go to college because we've expanded student loans and made college more affordable. Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Decimating al Qaeda, including Bin Laden being taken off the field. Restoring America's respect around the world.

The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it.

...One can only guess just how extensive the trademark Kroft look of bemused skepticism would have covered his face if, say, George W. Bush had made the same claim of presidential greatness. When Obama makes it, the laughable claim just gets edited out of the broadcast even though it was by far the highlight of the interview.

I think this nicely summarizes the bizarre worldview of the radical Left and legacy media. But I repeat myself.

Statement from Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Eric Holder's Lawless Behavior

Attorney General Eric Holder has gone all in. Not only is he neck-deep in Murdergate and Kagangate, but he is also trying to make an example of Sheriff Joe Arpaio for the lawman's willingness to enforce federal immigration law.

Arpaio's statement (PDF) is one for the history books.

On the surface, it may appear that today’s findings and actions by our federal government are directed towards this Sheriff and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The truth of the matter is that this is a sad day for America as a whole.

Today, the federal government moved to do everything it can to put this agency out of the illegal immigration enforcement business.

We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration. We have been responsible for finding and identifying 25% of the nation’s illegal alien criminal offenders through the 287G program. Sadly, much of that work will no longer be permitted by the Obama administration.

Today the federal government cancelled our 287 G agreement. What that means is that we are no longer able to verify the immigration status of any criminal offender brought into our jails. This was a program responsible for detecting over 44,000 illegal alien criminal offenders since 2007, many of whom we can assume were deported by ICE officials back to their country of origin. [Ed: Knowing this administration, I'd say that's wishful thinking.]

Now with the cancellation of this agreement, illegal criminal offenders arrested and brought into my jails will go undetected and ultimately dumped back onto a street near you. For that, you can thank your federal government. By their actions today, President Obama and his band of merry men might as well erect their very own pink neon sign at the Arizona-Mexico border saying "Welcome All Illegals to your United States." Our home is your home.

On Sept 28, 2011, President Obama was questioned at the White House, by Hispanic journalist and asked why there was no resolution in the civil rights investigation against me for allegedly racially profiling Hispanics. He stated that he had to be careful to comment on individual cases handled by the DOJ. The president stated he challenged the AZ Law (1070) that was supported by me, because he thought there was a great danger of naturalized citizens with Latino surnames could potentially be vulnerable to questioning. It is interesting that after 100 days in Office by President Obama, that the Democrat Chairmen of the judiciary Committee in Congress initiated this investigation.

After all this time, the head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division, who reports to Attorney General Holder, held a press conference December 15, 2011, which is 2 days after the Supreme Court agreed to accept the 1070 lawsuit. It’s also interesting that Perez came to Phoenix for the press conference on the anniversary of the brave border patrol agent Brian Terry’s death, who was killed because of the failed Justice department’s “Fast and Furious” case, which is presently holding hearings this week on Attorney General Eric Holder. Just this week, 2 Democrat Latino US Congress men from Arizona, joined by several other Latino Legislatures want me to resign my office. All of these same Democratic elected officials, throughout the years, have been criticizing my enforcement of State and Federal Illegal immigration laws...

...We have a civil rights racial profiling case brought by the ACLU, which will be before a federal judge with oral argument on summary judgment next week. Is the DOJ press conference, among other reasons, geared to poison the court against our position in this civil rights case?

Question for John Boehner: how many more offenses against the American citizenry must Eric Holder commit before the Republican leadership begins impeachment proceedings?

Good News: EPA Funding Modern Dance Troupe

But there's nothing to cut.

A small troupe of highly trained dancers will soon appear before Salt Lake City schoolchildren gliding, leaping and twisting into shapes that intend to teach them about air pollution and the environment.

The program is funded by a federal grant... [namely] $25,000 that the Environmental Protection Agency awarded Monday to the Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) as part of its environmental-justice grants.

All told, the EPA handed out more than $1 million to 46 nonprofit and tribal programs.

This country is headed for fiscal calamity -- and that's not me saying it, it's President Obama's former chief economic adviser, Peter Orszag! -- and I can come to no other conclusion that it's intentional.


Image: Earth Beat Radio.

Outrage over West's Goebbels remark (Obama likening the U.S. to Nazi Germany on NPR remains in memory hole, however)

Please consider this report from The Hill:

Dems call on Rep. West to apologize for Joseph Goebbels comparison

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) landed in hot water on Friday for his remarks the previous day comparing the Democrats’ proficiency in getting out their message to the notorious head of the Nazi Party’s propaganda department under Hitler.

“If Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud of the Democrat Party, because they have an incredible propaganda machine,” West said Thursday... “Shame on him,” tweeted Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). “Rep. West needs to apologize now for insulting the memories of the millions who lost their lives during the Holocaust.”

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) also called on West to apologize.

Curiously, these Democrat hacks were utterly silent when then-candidate Barack Obama was revealed to have compared the United States to Nazi Germany during an NPR interview.

None other than Charles (or the "Chuckster", as he prefers to be known) Johnson of LGF -- then in the patriotic phase of his career -- discovered Obama tarring America as a fascist regime.

The audio recording of Barack Obama espousing his socialist philosophy of “redistribution of wealth” is all over the internet and Fox News today (although the other media outlets are ignoring it), but there’s another disturbing section on that tape that has so far escaped notice.

The link to the audio is here: Chicago Public Radio - Audio Library: Odyssey.

At about 15:30, Obama compares what was going on in the United States during the time of Brown vs. the Board of Education to ... Nazi Germany. Yes, really. Here’s the quote:

“...just to take a, sort of a realist perspective...there’s a lot of change going on outside of the Court, um, that, that judges essentially have to take judicial notice of. I mean you’ve got World War II, you’ve got uh, uh, uh, the doctrines of Nazism, that, that we are fighting against, that start looking uncomfortably similar to what we have going on, back here at home.”

There you have it. America is close to electing a President that compares his own country to Nazi Germany.

Countdown to media analysis of Obama's egregious statements in: 3... 2... never.

Holder DOJ, with no pressing matters to deal with, pursues Climategate leakers in the United Kingdom

The Holder Justice Department, having stonewalled Congressional investigations of Murdergate and Kagangate, appears to have a lot of spare time on its hands.

So much so that it is investigating Climategate -- the release of emails that show scientists hiding, destroying and changing data to fit the global warming agenda.

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change "skeptic" blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked [Climategate] records derailed “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, as well as talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.

They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the U.S. (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including stonewalling me for two years, and three other requesters for longer).

...In the U.S., the academic and political Left have had fits about Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli exercising even more specific, anti-fraud authority to seek further records from University of Virginia in following up on indications from the first Climategate release of possible fraud against the taxpayer.

Apparently, that represented an abuse of the police power. No word yet if they are outraged by DOJ’s current foray or that of the UK raiding team.

...This is a case which has members of the Virginia faculty and establishment beside themselves and demanding an all-out effort to oppose production of the requested documents in an effort to wear us and Cuccinelli down.

So far UVA has spent upwards of $1 million fighting Cuccinelli’s request, and school officials continue to fight us in court every step of the way.

Clearly, this is no small matter in the quarters insisting that this taxpayer-financed information never see the light of day. Even the criminal legal apparatus of the U.S. and UK must be invoked against this threat, apparently.

To review: The UK police and the US DOJ, Criminal Division, are pursuing a leaker of public records subject to one or more FOIA, records that were unlawfully withheld under those laws, which leaks indicate apparent civil violations (tortious interference by seeking dismissal of certain “skeptics”), and raising reasonable questions of fraud against taxpayers.

And they are pursuing the leaker.

But the law works both ways. Former Margaret Thatcher adviser Christopher Lord Monckton is pursuing his own brand of justice.

Now that six policemen from the Norfolk and Metropolitan forces have invaded the home and “borrowed” the computers of “Tallbloke”, the first blogger in the UK to reveal the existence of the 5000 Climategate 2.0 emails, you may ask why the British police seem so much more interested in tracking down and punishing the whistle-blower/“thief” than in dealing with the many crimes by crooked IPCC “scientists” that the emails expose.

...What offenses have been committed? Serious frauds, that's what. Some of the most prominent Climategate emailers appear, on the face of the evidence in the emails, to be engaged with each other and with others in an elaborate series of connected deceptions calculated to enrich themselves and their associates, impoverish everyone else and destroy key industries and national economies wholesale by systematically and often greatly exaggerating the supposed threat and costs of anthropogenic “global warming”, the certainty of the science that underlies the IPCC's claims, and the effectiveness of the various methods proposed for the attempted mitigation of anthropogenic “global warming”, while correspondingly understating the benefits of that warming and the costs of its attempted mitigation.

...In many jurisdictions, fraud is a common-law offense: that of obtaining a pecuniary advantage for oneself, or inflicting a pecuniary disadvantage upon another, by deception. The twin tests are money gain or loss, and deception.

...Suppose that the lead author of an IPCC chapter admits that he allowed a flagrantly incorrect value to appear in the Fourth Assessment Report because “I wanted to influence governments”, and suppose that notwithstanding the objections of the “reviewers” the erroneous value was printed, and suppose that for several months the IPCC, at the highest levels, tried to conceal the deception. That is fraud.

...In each instance, the perpetrators of the fraud will be named and their roles described.

Read the whole thing.

No Offense, But Republicans Can't Be the 'Stupid Party' With Nancy Pelosi Saying Stuff Like This

Moronic, botox-addicted, Statist hacks hardest hit.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that extending unemployment benefits would add “600,000 jobs to our economy.”

She also said that the money from unemployment benefits creates a “safety net” for the U.S. economy because it “injects demand into the economy -- creating jobs.”

...“The unemployment insurance extension is not only good for individuals. It has a macroeconomic impact. As macroeconomic advisers have stated, it would make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy.”

Pelosi did not name those “macroeconomic advisers.”...

Of course not, because those -- ahem -- advisers' names all start with the letter K and end with rugman. You know, the same nincompoop who was lauding Europe's economic model just two short years ago.

Sorry, folks, RINOs are plenty dumb, but they can't compete with this trio of Democrat leaders:

• Harry Reid -- a man with a truly feeble, if not failing, mind. Each day he seems more and more likely to give an incoherent, rambling speech (remember "cowboy poetry"?). For that reason, he is prohibited from speaking to the public without Chuck Schumer standing next to him, usually with a hand up the back of Reid's shirt like a ventriloquist.

• Nancy Pelosi -- a woman who's had so much work done on her face that her eyes appear ready to pop right out of her head -- has made tens of millions of dollars over the last few years thanks to insider trading crony capitalism savvy investing. And she's going to teach us how to create jobs.

• Finally, Barack Obama -- a man who has no transcripts from Occidental College, no transcripts from Columbia University, no transcripts from Harvard, no thesis papers, no law practice client list, no state senate records, and no ex-girlfriends -- but he's going to tell us how much electricity is going to cost, what kind of health care we should receive, what kind of cars we need to drive, how much our credit-card fees must be, why we shouldn't drill or refine oil, and why we should borrow trillions of dollars from the Chinese government to give to his public sector union boss buddies (hint: so it goes back into his reelection campaign coffers).

No, my friends, you can call the establishment Republicans many things, but only a claque with Pelosi, Obama and Reid in charge can be called "the Stupid Party".

Tales From the Obamaconomy: Debtors' Prisons Make a Comeback

The perfect complement to today's report that "1 in 2 Americans are now poor or low income" is the fact that Dickensian debtors' prisons are returning to America.

As if life wasn't already tense enough for Americans who can't pay their debts, collection agencies are now taking advantage of archaic state laws to have some debtors arrested and sent to jail. More than one-third of US states allow debtors to be arrested and jailed, says Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the Wall Street Journal.

...Of course, the reason debtors have failed to make court-ordered payments is often the same reason they didn't pay their debts in the first place: They don't have any money... In September, a 53 year-old woman named Vivian Joy was stopped for a broken tail-light in Champaign, Illinois. And then, because the cops discovered that she still hadn't paid $2,200 to a collection agency, she was cuffed and carted off to jail.

Joy's excuse? She doesn't have any money.

Jailing debtors for not paying their debts is apparently especially popular in Illinois...

Since the state of Illinois itself is months late paying $4.8 billion to its vendors and suppliers, my question is this: when does Governor Quinn and the rest of the Democrat machine get thrown in the clink to share cells with Bubba and Rodney?

Sweet Fancy Moses: Obama Stimulus Signs Even Pollute the Grand Canyon

There really are no limits for the Obama propaganda machine.

They want you to know that they... did something or other to improve the Grand Freaking Canyon. I guess they made it more magnificent by dint of the Great Leader's imprimatur.

People like myself travel to places such as Grand Canyon National Park to enjoy the natural beauty of God's creation. So imagine my disappointment when Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I--not even 500 yards inside the park--encounter an Obama stimulus campaign sign.

I've seen these signs in Yosemite and Mesa Verde national parks.

Five million people visit Grand Canyon National Park, most of them enter the park at the South Rim entrance, where this sign stands.

Doesn't this strike you as the kind of thing Hugo Chavez would do?

And at the rate we're going, Venezuela may be our next stop on the economic totem pole.

USA Today: Electricity Prices Necessarily Skyrocket

Remember how, in May of 2009, the president said that, "under my plan... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket"?

Well, I'm sure the "middle class" -- whoever that is -- appreciates the one campaign promise that Barack Obama kept.

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity...

...Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That's the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s...

...Electricty [sic] is consuming a greater share of Americans' after-tax income than at any time since 1996 — about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated, a USA TODAY analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data found...

...High taxes, limits on air-polluting fuels and the expense of maintaining an underground transmission system keep consumer costs high, says ConEd spokesman Chris Olert.

But then again, maybe USA Today is some kind of propaganda arm for the right wing Visigoths.

Or perhaps the EPA is just an out-of-control, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy bent on de-industrializing America in pursuit of the United Nations' thrice-debunked climate scam.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

One Year Ago Today, Brian Terry Was Murdered Thanks to Eric Holder's Fast and Furious (Which is kinda like Watergate, Only With 200 Dead)

On the one-year anniversary of Brian Terry's murder at the hands of Eric Holder's Operation Fast and Furious, the family of the slain Border Patrol agent spoke out in The Los Angeles Times.

One year after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in southern Arizona, his family said it believes that if a flawed gun-tracking operation run by federal ATF agents violated any laws, then “those responsible for Fast and Furious should be held criminally liable.”

The comments came Wednesday as a Border Patrol National Honor Guard held a brief ceremony at a cemetery in Flat Rock, Mich., where Terry was raised and is now buried. He was shot late on the night of Dec. 14 last year while his Border Patrol team was working a rugged canyon south of Tucson, and pronounced dead early the next morning. Two firearms recovered at the scene were traced to Operation Fast and Furious.

The operation was run by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, part of the Department of Justice, and allowed illegal buyers to purchase firearms with the [Ed: I think they mean 'no' here, since there was no attempt to track] hope of tracking the weapons to Mexican cartel leaders. But authorities lost track of hundreds of guns, some of which also surfaced later at crime scenes in Mexico.

“We find it incomprehensible that members of ATF and DOJ would embark on such an egregious operation and then try to conceal the link between this failed investigation and Brian’s murder,” his family said in a statement. “Much to our dismay, no one in ATF or DOJ has come forward to accept responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious.”

Terry’s family continues to press for answers, and said, “We now believe that if it can be shown that laws were broken, then all those responsible for Fast and Furious should be held criminally liable.”

May Brian Terry and all of the others murdered by this criminal operation rest in peace.

And may Eric Holder and everyone else who orchestrated Murdergate receive swift justice in a court of law.

The Horrifying Chart That Democrats and RINOs Don't Want You to See

It has now been nearly 1,000 days since the Democrats last passed a federal budget. This unprecedented act of fiscal irresponsibility -- one that no other Congress in generations has committed -- allows the most profligate administration in American history to continue racking up more than a trillion dollars in deficit spending each year.

What Democrats and big-government Republicans aren't telling you is this: the Obama-Pelosi-Reid "one-time Stimulus package" was built into the baseline, which means each year that the Obamacrats can avoid writing a budget is another year that this cash furnace can continue burning your children's money.

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, decent human beings though they may be, haven't even raised this issue with the public. They don't have the spine to enact the drastic cuts this country requires to survive.

This chart illustrates why we Tea Party activists must nominate and elect the most conservative candidates possible in 2012. We have two missions: to politically obliterate the Marxist Left that has subsumed the empty husk of the Democrat Party; and to continue our hostile takeover of the Republican Party, in order to return it to its Reagan-esque roots.

We have no choice if we are to save this Republic.

Just in time for Christmas, President Obama gives the gift of unemployment to more than 100,000 Americans

He's the gift that keeps on taking!

In an environment where jobs are hard to find, the Obama administration has thrown more than 100,000 health insurance agents and brokers under the bus and given them the gift of an unemployment line just before the holidays. To make matters worse, a large number of insurance agents, known in the trade as producers, are self-employed and under the prevailing laws may have difficulty receiving unemployment insurance.


It all stems from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), known colloquially as Obamacare. PPACA dictates [price controls for insurers including commission payments]... Insurance agents were recently able to get backing from National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) to exclude their commissions from [these price controls].

...Led by National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU), which claims to represent 100,000 health insurance agents, brokers, and related professionals, the Obama administration was lobbied hard to provide relief to insurance agents. The hope of the insurance agents had risen because of the recent backing by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

In a recent ruling, the Department of Health and Human Services dashed all hopes.

Merrrrrrrrrrryyyy Christmas!

Oh, and as an added bonus, the president's decision to delay the gigantic Keystone XL pipeline not only prevents the creation of 20,000 jobs in 2012, it is already costing jobs today.

"Layoffs and a brief company shutdown is what employees face at Welspun Tubular Company, which makes steel pipes for the oil industry."

Rest assured, citizen, that the the president will not rest until every American has a job. That is, while he enjoys his 37 Christmas trees in the White House, prior to leaving this weekend for a 17-day Hawaiian vacation.

Surprise! Poll with ties to SEIU and Daily Kos says... Ron Paul getting close to leaders in Iowa

Before you put too much stock in the most recent PPP poll, you may want to review this April 2011 Hill article:

A top union and a top liberal blog announced Tuesday that they'll team up to sponsor polling through the 2012 elections. Daily Kos and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said they will join forces to conduct issue and campaign polling in key states and races over the next two years...

...The SEIU/Daily Kos poll will use Public Policy Polling (PPP), a Democratic firm that uses automated polling rather than live, over-the-phone survey methods. Moulitsas contracted with PPP in June of 2010 after severing ties with Research 2000, which faced allegations of producing faulty poll results.

So when you read news like this, take it with a grain of salt.

Oh my: Ron Paul within one point of Gingrich in Iowa? ... "There has been some major movement in the Republican Presidential race in Iowa over the last week, with what was a 9 point lead for Newt Gingrich now all the way down to a single point. Gingrich is at 22% to 21% for Paul with Mitt Romney at 16%, Michele Bachmann at 11%, Rick Perry at 9%, Rick Santorum at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 5%, and Gary Johnson at 1%."

Really? Methinks that the PPP poll is patently bogus. The Intrade prediction market, probably the best indicator of reality, has Gingrich trading at a 47% chance of winning Iowa versus 29% for Paul.

And let's not forget who Ron Paul really is:

• A man who claims that bloodthirsty Islamist terrorists are morally equivalent to Americans?

• A man who vocally encourages the despicable 9/11 Truther movement?

• A man who embraces virulent anti-semites and is inspired by those who despise Jews?

• A man whose foreign policy prescriptions are so "far left" that they are outright dangerous?

• A man whose strongest supporters vilify Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ed Meese, Sarah Palin, etc.?

• A man who despises Israel, a beacon of freedom in an otherwise barbaric Middle East?

• A man so power-hungry that he refuses to rule out a third-party run, which would very likely help reelect Barack Obama?

Jeffrey Lord offers the quintessential summary of Ron Paul for conservatives:

The Ron Paul campaign is really about re-educating America to what can only be called Neoliberalism. Which, based on the evidence and writings of its supporters, appears to be a thin gruel of free markets and non-interventionism seasoned heavily with anti-Semitism, morally obtuse Neo-Confederates, and an outspoken contempt for both conservatism and conservative leaders past and present.

I don't care how well-organized the Paulbots are in Iowa. I put as much stock in PPP polling as I do in lunar cheese. No thinking Republican would ever cast a vote for a man who advocates a George McGovern foreign policy. Ever.

Holder Justice Department to begin investigating... Voter ID laws

Although it would seem -- curiously! -- that the New Black Panthers have once again escaped scrutiny.

The Obama administration on Tuesday will wade into the increasingly divisive national debate over new voting laws in several states that could depress turnout among minorities and others who helped elect the president in 2008.

A dozen states this year tightened rules requiring voters to present state-issued photo identification at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Although Democratic governors vetoed four of the measures, liberal and civil rights groups have been raising alarms about the remaining laws, calling them an “assault on democracy” and an attempt to depress minority voter turnout.

Supporters of the tighter laws say they are needed to combat voter fraud.

With the presidential campaign heating up, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will deliver a speech Tuesday expressing concerns about the voter-identification laws, along with a Texas redistricting plan before the Supreme Court that fails to take into account the state’s burgeoning Hispanic population, he said in an interview Monday...

Meanwhile, Senator John Cornyn has warned Holder not to mess with Texas' voter ID law.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn sent a clear message to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder this afternoon: Don’t mess with Texas’ voter identification law... “Voter identification laws are constitutional and necessary to prevent fraud at the ballot box,” Cornyn said.

The San Antonio Republican, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made his comments hours before Holder is scheduled to speak at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin. Holder is planning to criticize “voter ID” laws passed by Republican legislatures in states including Texas.

Democrats say the laws are designed to reduce minority voter turnout in the 2012 election. But Cornyn said President Obama is the one who’s politicizing the issue.

“Facing an election challenge next year, this administration has chosen to target efforts by the states to protect the democratic process,” Cornyn said. “They would do well instead to focus on job creation, the economy, and reducing our national debt.”

Oh, and the examples of vote fraud are real and they're spectacular:

Never mind the fact that Mississippi NAACP leader Lessadolla Sowers was recently sentenced to 50 years in prison for vote fraud, that the now-defunct ACORN recently received the maximum fine possible for vote fraud by a Nevada judge or that Holder’s own Justice Department is accused of making a sweetheart settlement with members of the New Black Panther Party who were accused of voter intimidation in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008.

This is all part of the Obama administration's plan to erode the integrity of the ballot box, Chicago-style, prior to the 2012 election.

Actions like this, along with his direction of "Operation Fast and Furious" and his stonewalling of the Kagan health care memos, highlight the need for the House Judiciary Committe to begin impeachment proceedings against Eric Holder.

The most lawless attorney general in American history needs to be held to account.

Obamas somehow make do with only 37 Christmas trees in White House before they leave on 17-day Hawaiian vacation

Like the movie Fletch, I can imagine President Obama ordering all of these extravagant parties, vacations and over-the-top celebrations and, when the tab comes, he says: "Put it on the Underhill account."

And we're the Underhills.

The economy may be weak, unemployment strong and the first family soon to vacate the White House for another half-month of vacation in Hawaii.

But the Obamas have gone all out in decorating their house this year, including a nearly quarter-ton gingerbread White House.

They have also installed 37 different Christmas trees. Thirty of the trees are live, or were, including one nearly 19-feet tall from Wisconsin. Seven of the three dozen Christmas trees are artificial or homemade including, of course, one from recyclables.

"We have 37 Christmas trees here at the White House--37!" Michelle Obama excitedly told a recent group of visitors. "That's a lot, right? Yes, that's a lot of trees. And we also have a 400-pound White House gingerbread house."

Yeah, and I'll bet the ginger for the gingerbread house was grown by Michelle in her organic garden.

You know, the only members of the "one-percent" I know are the Obama family, Congress and the rest of the overpaid paper-pushers in Washington.

More SmartPower™ From Obama: Hey Iran, Can We Get Our Drone Back?

No, seriously. I'm not making this up.

Even ABC News is chortling as the Organizer-In-Chief tries to push the Reset button... all the way back to the Carter administration.

President Barack Obama said today the U.S. has requested that Iran return the highly sensitive stealth drone that crash landed there two weeks ago, but an Iranian general already said that's not going to happen.

"We've asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said at a news conference... A senior Iranian military commander, however, said on Iranian television Sunday that not only would Iran not turn over the drone, but warned of a "bigger response" to the "hostile act" of crossing into Iranian airspace.

"No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country," Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps [IRGC] Lt. Commander Gen. Hossein Salami said, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said told reporters today that "given Iran's behavior to date, we do not expect them to comply" with Obama's request. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also said he didn't expect Iran to hand over the drone...

Impressive. What's next? A Presidential request to pretty-please-stop-building-nukes-with-a-cherry-on-top?

Needle on Hypocrisy-Meter Breaks Off: Unions require photo IDs to vote in their elections

Gee, I guess the unions are raaacist.

[Via] John Romano at "Yes, But, However!" at the link. He asks the perplexing question of why do Democrats so fear voter ID? Apparently even unions don't see the requirement of a photo ID as too burdensome.

"A picture is worth a thousand words. According to OpenSecrets.org unions belonging to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) have donated over $26 million to Democratic candidates and causes since 1990. During that same period, the union gave a paltry $272,311 to the Republican Party.

As you’ll note in the photo below the union requires its own members to produce a photo ID in order to vote. The photo shows a union worker voting earlier today on whether to sanction a new four-year contract with Boeing, clearly the union understands the need for a picture ID in order to help guarantee a clean election:

In America, one needs an ID to vote in a union election, buy liquor, drive a car, board an airplane, use a credit card and a slew of other things in our society. Yet, the Democratic party refuses to back the idea of requiring an ID to vote in state and federal elections under any circumstances. A sensible voter ID law that respects the rights of the poor, elderly, and minorities is a great idea. What are Democrats afraid of? You connect the dots.

The most lawless attorney general in American history -- and I'm including the pathetic John Mitchell in the mix -- is visiting Austin, Texas tomorrow.

And guess what? He will be lobbying for vote fraud, supporting a United Nations resolution that is designed to erode the integrity of the ballot box and, ultimately, destroy the United States Constitution.

If you're in the area (Houston included), I'd strongly encourage you to join the counter-rally.

Like former DOJ official J. Christian Adams says, it's high time this national disgrace was impeached.


Hat tip: @EyeOnPolitics

Faux Journalist Steve Kroft Interviews Obama, Forgets to Ask About Calls to Impeach Holder, Kagan Recusal, Corzine, Solyndra, etc.

President Obama received another in-kind donation from CBS News tonight in the form of a fawning 60 Minutes interview by "journalist" Steve Kroft. If that is his real name.

Kroft apparently had a brief case of amnesia and forgot about a few mildly important issues:

• The increasing calls for Eric Holder's resignation and/or impeachment for Operation Fast and Furious, etc.

• The newly revealed Obamacare emails that appear to show Elena Kagan lied under oath

• The catastrophic failure of MF Global, headed by none other than one of Obama's leading fundraisers, John Corzine

• The billions in "green energy" funds that went to Obama's fundraisers and political cronies, Solyndra being only the most visible example

• The "historic" $4.2+ trillion budget deficits thanks to Obama's disastrous stimulus debacle and the Democrats' failure to pass a budget for 1,000+ days

Obama has blamed the weather, earthquakes, ATMs, and the Internet -- among other things -- for the bad economy. In the Kroft interview, he said, "I'm being judged against the ideal. And, you know, Joe Biden has a good expression. He says, 'Don't judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative.' "

There he goes again, comparing himself with God.

No, Mr. President. Our ideal is Ronald Reagan who, having inherited a far worse recession than you, had the economy rockin' and rollin' at the exact same point in his presidency.


Hat tip: BP.