Apologies Bear Fuit

But it was bitter fruit. President B.O. found out what happens when you start apologizing about your past. You open America up to intense criticism by people you thought would become your friends, you embarrass your citizens, and you open yourself up to a flood of criticism from around the world. In short, you diminish America's power and standing throughout the world.

Are these nations who are quick to criticize America without fault? Is there not one of these loud-mouth leaders who wouldn't prefer to be the leader of OUR country instead of their pathetic, third-world regime? Good grief! How naive...

Obama Endures Ortega Diatribe

FOXNews.com
April 18, 2009
By Major Garrett

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago -- President Obama endured a 50-minute diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that lashed out at a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America and included a rambling denunciation of the U.S.-imposed isolation of Cuba's Communist government.

Obama sat mostly unmoved during the speech but at times jotted notes. The speech was part of the opening ceremonies at the fifth Summit of the Americas here.

Later, at a photo opportunity with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama held his tongue when asked what he thought about Ortega's speech.

"It was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."

Just Like Cigarettes...

Except this time it isn't true. That's right. Four decades ago the Surgeon General, a bureaucrat, decreed that smoking caused cancer. The activists cheered and the lawsuits followed. The net result was multi-billion dollar settlements to individuals and state governments, the demonization of an industry, and huge increases in the cost of cigarettes, from both tax increases by indignant politicians and by the cigarette manufacturers themselves to cover the costs of the multi-billion dollar legal settlements.

The same will happen as a result of the EPA's ruling against so-called greenhouse gases, except that there will be dramatically higher costs across virtually every sector of our economy, and they will be paid by every consumer in America. Every product manufactured, every mile driven by anyone to go anywhere, every gallon of gasoline or diesel used to deliver products, every megawatt of power generated by fossil fuels...the list goes on and on.

Worse yet, this ruling empowers any citizen or government agency to file a lawsuit against manufacturers, power generation companies, public utilities, coal mining, oil exploration, refining and distribution, automakers and dealers. They can even sue your local gas station for dispensing an illegal substance, but yet these same zealots want to legalize marijuana. The list is endless and the reasons are downright laughable.

The justification for the government's action against cigarettes was that "cigarette smoking was dangerous to your health." Sound familiar?

The only difference between the bureaucratic ruling on cigarettes and Friday's bureaucratic ruling by the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency is that the Surgeon General was right and the EPA Director is dead wrong. So-called "global warming" - which has now been conveniently renamed "climate change" because the globe isn't warming anymore - is the greatest "con" ever perpetrated upon the American people.

Stand up and fight, America! Your way of life is being dramatically altered by a group of clueless, radical, liberal ideologues!

EPA moves toward regulating greenhouse gases

April 18, 2009

Sandy Bauers and John Shiffman

Apr. 18--WASHINGTON -- In a landmark move that countered eight years of inaction by the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency determined yesterday that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare because they contribute to climate change.

The ruling set the stage for the agency to regulate emissions from a spectrum of sources, including automobiles, ships, airplanes, power plants, oil refineries, steel mills, and more.

Supporters and critics agreed that the finding was a game-changer with potentially profound consequences, though opponents warned that implementing new rules would have devastating impact on the economy.

The finding, which includes carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, is subject to a period of public comment, after which the agency has no timetable and broad leeway in how to proceed.
"This finding confirms that greenhouse-gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said yesterday.

She said the solution would "create millions of green jobs and end our country's dependence on foreign oil."

Environmentalists said the decision, though long overdue, was the only logical course of action the government could take.

" 'Duh' may not be a scientific term, but it applies here," said Emily Figdor, global-warming director of Environment America. "Today, common sense prevailed over pressure from big oil and other big polluters."

Sen. Tom Carper (D., Del.), chairman of the subcommittee on clean air and nuclear safety, said: "The science about global warming is clear. The need to act is urgent. This announcement is further proof that the Obama-Biden administration is serious about addressing global warming."
Opponents have said the finding will prompt an economic train wreck and a constitutional crisis.

Sen. James Inhofe (R, Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee and a leading skeptic on global warming, said the decision would "unleash a torrent of regulations that will destroy jobs, harm consumers, and extend the agency's reach into every corner of American life."

The petroleum industry called the action "the EPA's single largest and potentially most complex assertion of authority over the U.S. economy and Americans' lifestyle."

The manufacturing industry said the ruling would "burden an ailing economy while doing little or nothing to improve the environment."

And the electricity industry predicted massive costs to the nation and its households if coal-fired generation were to diminish significantly as a result of new regulatory programs.

"A more potent anti-stimulus package would be difficult to imagine," said Marlo Lewis, senior fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The EPA said the finding was based on "rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific analysis" of six gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.

They contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. Most of the gases come from smokestacks and tailpipes.

In an annual report released Wednesday, the EPA found that emissions of the six gases had increased 17 percent from 1990 to 2007, largely because of a boost in carbon dioxide emissions associated with fuel and electricity consumption. Carbon dioxide represents 85.4 percent of the emissions.

Climate change affects human health and welfare in many ways, causing both more frequent droughts and heavier storms, more intense heat waves and wildfires, rises in sea level, and harm to agriculture and natural resources.

The EPA's analysis also found that climate change has "serious national-security implications" because of the potential for political and social upheaval related to food shortages, environmental refugees, and clashes over fuel, water, and other resources.

Many expect the agency to address emissions from cars and trucks first, since the EPA already is considering California's request to allow the state to require new standards for autos that would reduce emissions.

As the process moves forward, the agency will have to consider what the best available technologies are and whether they are economically feasible. This is likely where the debate between environmentalists and industry will escalate.

Meanwhile, the Senate is working on legislation addressing greenhouse gases, and many predicted that yesterday's EPA announcement would speed up the effort.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.), who last year introduced a climate-change bill he said was supported by labor and industry, said it would be best if Congress settled the issue with a new law rather than leaving the issue to an administrative EPA rule.

"It deserves the analysis you get with congressional hearings and floor debates," Specter said.
Environmentalists said the finding would give states the leverage to move forward with their own plans.

"The worst strategy right now is to pretend that doing nothing is the cheapest course of action," said John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "What's needed today is what was needed yesterday. Pennsylvania needs to move forward with energy conservation, with biodiesel, with technologies that capture carbon, with the solar program."

New Jersey DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said officials were "very pleased" with the EPA decision, given that the state has been "feverishly working on its greenhouse gas emissions-reduction plan" and other initiatives.

The finding also could give the nation needed credibility and leverage at international climate meetings, supporters say.

"This is going to position us for a very aggressive role" at the next major international climate meeting, scheduled to take place in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, said Robert McKinstry, a partner at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll L.L.P. who is an expert in climate-change litigation. "Basically, international progress has been stymied by the United States' lack of participation."

Yesterday's finding is a response to a Supreme Court ruling handed down after Massachusetts -- later joined by New Jersey and other states -- sued the EPA to force it to regulate carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

The court ruled in 2007 that the EPA had the authority to determine whether greenhouse gases were a danger to human health. Such an "endangerment finding" would trigger an EPA obligation to regulate greenhouse gases.

By December 2007, career and political officials had prepared a draft that declared climate change a threat to public welfare. Bush's EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, approved the document and it was e-mailed to the White House.

But in a move that would cement Bush's legacy on what every former EPA administrator has said is the most critical environmental issue, White House officials refused to open the e-mail attachment. They knew what was inside and that once the attachment was opened, it would become public record.

The White House asked Johnson to reconsider. Seven months later, he issued a watered-down climate-change document that called for more study. Johnson told The Inquirer last year that he did so as part of an effort to "provide some rationality to the debate based on the best available science that keeps in mind the economic consequences as well as energy security."

Former EPA political appointee Jason Burnett, who wrote the original finding and later resigned over its rejection, applauded the agency for directly addressing the health consequences of global warming.

He said it was a good idea to include all six gases, which would lead to more flexibility in meeting the overall goal of reducing emissions.

But best of all, he said, unlike his own experience under the previous administration, this time the endangerment finding "was actually proposed."

Yep, He Heard Us

Regardless of what you hear the B.O. administration, the looney left, and the mainstream media say, they ALL got the message on Tax Day. The hundreds of tea parties across America sent a powerful message that we're all mad as hell and we're not going to stand by and let them destroy our country without a fight.

Here was an excerpt from President B.O.'s Saturday radio address...

"In the coming weeks, I will be announcing the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective," he said. "In this effort, there will be no sacred cows and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it's time their government did the same." - Barack Obama

Don't believe it for one minute. It's merely another smokescreen from Team B.O. to leave the impression that they care about what we care about. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just look at the facts...he's already the biggest spender in presidential history. He has spent over $1 Trillion of our tax dollars in only his first three months in office, and has proposed another $3.6 Trillion in additional spending in the next budget year alone. Not to mention his long-term spending proposals on healthcare, energy, and education.

Just how does he propose to cut that much from existing programs? No matter what he does, he will be a net "Big Spender", delivering deficits in only ten years that will exceed ALL previous presidents combined!

Torture? I'll Show You Torture...

The laughable New York Times, in lock-step with the Obama administration, had the audacity recently to lament the so-called "torture" tactics used by our CIA against selected high-level al Qaida prisoners. Here is a quote from their recent story...

"The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters."

Confining someone in a box? Slamming them into a FLEXIBLE wall? They call that torture? Let me show you what al Qaida does to our prisoners when they're not beheading them...

The above drawings were found in a raid on an al Qaida camp. Now THAT'S torture, and it's what happens to OUR prisoners, so get over it, NYT! Don't they even remember what happened to fellow journalist Daniel Pearl?

Worse yet, now President B.O.'s administration, specifically the brilliant Eric Holder of "nation of cowards" fame, has released to the world all of the techniques used against al Qaida by the CIA. Reading the list, al Qaida leadership can confidently tell their recruits, in between belly laughs, not to fear capture by the US.

And to think that I thought the Clinton nitwits did damage to the US...

You're On Your Own!

The following is an excerpt from a speech delivered in Naples, Florida, on February 18, 2009, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar by John C. Goodman, President of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

It should scare the hell out of you. And my read? Fellow Americans, we are all on our own...

When we get through the economic time that we're in right now, we're going to be confronted with an even bigger problem. The first of the Baby Boomers started signing up for early retirement under Social Security last year. Two years from now they will start signing up for Medicare. All told, 78 million people are going to stop working, stop paying taxes, stop paying into retirement programs, and start drawing benefits. The problem is, neither Social Security nor Medicare is ready for them. The federal government has made explicit and implicit promises to millions of people, but has put no money aside in order to keep those promises. Some of you may wonder where Bernie Madoff got the idea for his Ponzi scheme. Clearly he was studying federal entitlement policy.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, many employer-sponsored pension plans are not fully funded. Nor is the federal government insurance scheme behind those plans. We have a potential taxpayer liability of between 500 billion and one trillion dollars for those private pension plans, depending on the markets. And on top of that, roughly one-third of all Baby Boomers work for an employer who has promised post-retirement health care. As with the auto companies, almost none of that is funded either. Nor are most state and local post-retirement health benefit plans. Some California localities have already declared bankruptcy because of their employee retirement plans and the first of the Baby Boomers is still only 63 years old.

What all this means is that we're looking at a huge gap between what an entire generation thinks is going to happen during its retirement years and the funds that are there—or, more accurately, are not there—to make good on all those promises. Somebody is going to be really disappointed. Either the Baby Boomers are not going to have the retirement life that they expect or taxpayers are going to be hit with a tremendously huge bill. Or both.

The Mess We're In

How did this crisis come about? After all, the need to deal with risk is not a new human problem. From the beginning of time, people have faced the risks of growing old and outliving their assets, dying young without having provided for their dependents, becoming disabled and not being able to support themselves and their families, becoming ill and needing health care and not being able to afford it, or discovering that their skills are no longer needed in the job market. These risks are not new. What is new is how we deal with them.

Prior to the 20th century, we handled risks with the help of family and extended family. In the 19th century, by the time a child was nine years old, he was usually paying his own way in the household. In effect, children were their parents' retirement plan. But during the 20th century, families became smaller and more dispersed—thus less useful as insurance against risk. So people turned to government for help. In fact, the main reason why governments throughout the developed world have undergone such tremendous growth has been to insure middle class families against risks that they could not easily insure against on their own. This is why our government today is a major player in retirement, health care, disability and unemployment.

Government, however, has performed abysmally. It has spent money it doesn't have and made promises it can't keep, all on the backs of future taxpayers. The Trustees of Social Security estimate a current unfunded liability in excess of $100 trillion in 2009 dollars. This means that the federal government has promised more than $100 trillion over and above any taxes or premiums it expects to receive. In other words, for Social Security to be financially sound, the federal government should have $100 trillion—a sum of money six-and-a-half times the size of our entire economy—in the bank and earning interest right now. But it doesn't. And while many believe that Social Security represents our greatest entitlement problem, Medicare is six times larger in terms of unfunded obligations. These numbers are admittedly based on future projections. But consider the situation in this light: What if we asked the federal government to account for its obligations the same way the private sector is forced to account for its pensions? In other words, if the federal government suddenly closed down Social Security and Medicare, how much would be owed in terms of benefits already earned? The answer is $52 trillion, an amount several times the size of the U.S. economy.

What does this mean for the future? We know that Social Security and Medicare have been spending more than they are taking in for quite some time. As the Baby Boomers start retiring, this deficit is going to grow dramatically. In 2012, only three years from now, Social Security and Medicare will need one out of every ten general income tax dollars to make up for their combined deficits. By 2020—just eleven years down the road—the federal government will need one out of every four income tax dollars to pay for these programs. By 2030, the midpoint of the Baby Boomer retirement years, it will require one of every two income tax dollars. So it is clear that the federal government will be forced either to scale back everything else it's doing in a drastic way or raise taxes dramatically.

I have not even mentioned Medicaid, but it is almost as large a problem in this regard as Medicare. A recent forecast by the Congressional Budget Office—an economic forecasting agency that is controlled by the Democrats in Congress, not by some conservative private sector outfit—shows that Medicare and Medicaid alone are going to crowd out everything else the federal government is doing by mid-century. And that means everything—national defense, energy, education, the whole works. We'll only have health care. If, on the other hand, the government continues with everything else it is doing today and raises taxes to pay for Medicare and Medicaid, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, by mid-century, a middle-income family will have to pay two-thirds of its income in taxes!

This Time it's Israel

First, he reaches out to Iran and gets his hand slapped. Then he normalizes relations with Castro's Communist Cuba and makes nice with Venezuela's dictator, Chavez. Now he turns his back on Netanyahu and Israel. And what does Israel say? "We're gonna bomb Iran."

Anybody see a trend here? That's right...he's reaching out to all the bad guys.

Obama's Stance Worries Israelis

The Age

Jason Koutsoukis
April 18, 2009

Can Israel still call the United States its best international friend? Apparently not, if you believe the tone of the local media.

Watching the drama unfold inside Israel, the increasingly tense dialogue between US President Barack Obama and new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking on all the trappings of a duel.

Almost every day brings news of another sore point between the two countries, a source of yet further inflammation of their once warm relations.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the more immediate threat to Israel's national security lay across the Atlantic rather than from closer to home.

It is bad enough that President Obama uses almost every opportunity he can to set the parameters of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Now US officials are openly using Israeli anxiety over Iran's fledging nuclear program as a bargaining chip to force Israel's hand on giving up control of the West Bank Palestinian territory.

No less a figure than White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel — whose father fought with the militant Zionist group the Irgun, and whose appointment had provided such reassurance to Israeli officials — was quoted this week laying down the law to Israel.

If Israel wants US help to defuse the Iranian threat, Mr Emanuel was reported to have told Jewish leaders in Washington, then get ready to start evacuating settlements in the West Bank.
Talkback radio blazed with fury across the country the same day, as Israelis protested that no US official had the right to tell them where to live.

Then on Thursday came the news that Mr Netanyahu's planned first meeting with President Obama in Washington next month had been called off.

Mr Netanyahu had hoped to capitalise on his attendance at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington to visit the White House.

But Administration officials informed Mr Netanyahu's office that the President would not be "in town".

Washington sources added that the Obama Administration would not be continuing the tradition that had developed during the Bush years of hosting Israeli prime ministers whenever they showed up in town, sometimes with just a phone call's notice.

It might have been no more than coincidence, but yesterday Israeli defence officials told the liberal daily Haaretz that Israel's $US15 billion ($A21 billion) purchase of 75 US-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets was now under review due to "the unexpected high cost and disagreements with the manufacturer".

Contrary to initial expectations, President Obama has wasted no time becoming fully engaged in the Middle East peace process, despite the magnitude of his domestic political agenda. While Mr Netanyahu has refused to endorse a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict agreed to by his predecessor, President Obama has made it abundantly clear that the US will accept nothing less than Israel living side by side with a sovereign Palestinian state.

Mr Obama is also demanding a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, and has dropped the Bush administration's opposition to Hamas being part of a future Palestinian Authority government.

According to prominent Israeli political commentator Maya Bengal, who writes for the country's second-largest selling newspaper Maariv, the holiday is over.

"As Passover comes to an end, so comes to an end, it seems, the days of grace granted to the Netanyahu Government by the American Administration," says the commentator.

Tel Aviv barman Meir Avraham, 30, says he can feel on the street the tensions being played out between the US and Israel.

"This is one of the the main things that the people are talking about at the moment," says Mr Avraham, who recently returned to Israel after several months in Townsville.

All Israelis, says Mr Avraham, understand the vital nature of the relationship between Israel and the US. "If we lose America, then we are alone," he says. "So we must listen to what America wants. But really I think this is more about the little brother testing the limits of the big brother."

Buddies!

Communist President Obama

meets

Communist Dictator Chavez

So

much

in

common...