· September 7th, 2010 6:36 am ET
During the last two years of a virtual jobs depression, these 50 lawmakers led Congress in allowing the addition of another 75,000 permanent working-age immigrants every month and in allowing about 7 million illegal foreign workers to keep their jobs in construction, service, manufacturing and transportation, according to NumbersUSA, a national public-interest group.
Recent government data show that 22 million U.S. workers who want a job can't find one. But these 50 members of Congress deserted those Americans in favor of increasing the number of foreign workers competing with them in the hiring line.
"NumbersUSA is performing a true service for the American people. The group provides a list to help voters decide which politicians are honest and which ones are duplicitous power-grabbers who are betraying their own constituents," said political strategist Mike Baker.
The non-partisan NumbersUSA rates every member on every committee and floor vote and every bill co-sponsorship that would either increase or reduce the foreign workers (legal and illegal) in the country. Those in Congress who do the most to protect American workers in terms of immigration policies receive an A+, while those doing the least receive an F-minus.
All 50 "Deserters" on this list: -- received grades of F-minus and 0%, failing to take a single action to reduce competition for jobless Americans. -- are asking voters to re-elect them to Congress this November -- are in the Senate or in the House where they are leaders with special opportunity to influence policy toward jobless Americans because they either are congressional chairmen, leaders of their Party or on the Judiciary Committee with direct jurisdiction over immigration. WORST DESERTERS IN THE SENATE ----------------------------- Bennet, Michael (CO) Feingold, Russell (WI) Gillibrand, Kirsten (NY) Inouye, Daniel (HI) Leahy, Patrick (VT) Mikulski, Barbara (MD) Reid, Harry (NV) WORST DESERTERS IN THE HOUSE ---------------------------- Ackerman, Gary (NY 05th) Baldwin, Tammy (WI - 02nd) Becerra, Xavier (CA - 31st) Berman, Howard (CA - 28th) Chu, Judy (CA - 32nd) Clarke, Yvette (NY - 11th) Clyburn, James (SC - 06th) Conyers, John (MI - 14th) Cummings, Elijah (MD - 07th) Engel, Eliot (NY - 17th) Grijalva, Raul (AZ - 07th) Gutierrez, Luis (IL - 04th) Hastings, Alcee (FL - 23rd) Hoyer, Steny (MD - 05th) Jackson-Lee, Sheila (TX - 18th) Johnson, Hank (GA - 04th) Kucinich, Dennis (OH - 10th) Lewis, John (GA - 05th) Lofgren, Zoe (CA - 16th) Markey, Edward (MA - 07th) McDermott, Jim (WA 07th) Nadler, Jerrold (NY - 08th) Napolitano, Grace (CA - 38th) Olver, John (MA - 01st) Quigley, Mike (IL - 05th) Pelosi, Nancy (CA - 8th) Rahall, Nick (WV - 03rd) Rangel, Charles (NY - 15th) Rush, Bobby (IL - 01st) Sanchez, Linda (CA - 39th) Schakowsky, Janice (IL - 09th) Scott, Robert (VA - 03rd) Serrano, Jose (NY - 16th) Slaughter, Louise (NY - 28th) Stark, Pete (CA - 13th) Thompson, Bennie (MS - 02nd) Towns, Edolphus (NY - 10th) Velazquez, Nidia (NY - 12th) Tsongas, Niki (MA - 05th) Wasserman-Schultz, Debbie (FL - 20th) Watt, Melvin (NC - 12th) Waxman, Henry (CA - 30th) Woolsey, Lynn (CA - 06th) Source: NumbersUSA
Considered by some to be one of the top 10 most influential newspapers in the country due to its considerable standing with conservatives, The Washington Times has called for the impeachment of Barack Obama.
The Washington Times, which has become known through the years as D.C.'s major alternative newspaper, called for the ouster of Obama in an op-ed column yesterday. The Times is delivered into the mailboxes of every Senator and Congressman in Washington.
While one major site ranks the Washington Times in the top 100 daily newspapers in the country (No. 92), for a publication to rank even in the top 100 out of over 1400 daily papers in America qualifies the Times as a 'major daily.'
Although the column does not officially represent the editorial board of the newspaper, the fact that WT chose to publish it may indicate the official stance of its publisher and ownership, given that the columnist is one of a select few staff editorialists for the paper, and each column written by staff must have prior approval of the WT brass.
In the stunning opinion-piece, columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner stated the following:
"President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors. The Democratic majority in Congress is in peril as Americans reject his agenda. Yet more must be done: Mr. Obama should be impeached."
Kuhner goes further to delineate the specific high crimes and misdemeanors to which he refers.
It turns out that this is not the first time that the Washington Times has hinted that it may now support Obama's impeachment. In July, former GOP Presidential candidate and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo wrote an opinion piece for the paper which also called for Obama's impeachment.
Tancredo maintains that Obama violated his oath of office by his actions and inaction regarding federal enforcement of immigration law and his intention to punish the state of Arizona for passing a law that would enforce federal mandates.
The problem, of course, is that as long as the Democrats control Congress, such a move will never be made. In order for an ouster of a sitting President to occur, a clear supermajority must approve the measure. And, in this current highly partisan political climate, the only way that can occur is a massive Republican (conservatives, not RINOS) takeover of both the House and the Senate in November.
Problems regarding Presidential high crimes and misdemeanors go far beyond the White House, however. Congress walks in tandem with this President's penchant for disregarding our nation's laws and its Constitution.
A clear example of Congress as an accessory to the crimes is a little-reported covert act which made the ominous 'cap and trade' energy tax on Americans a reality without a vote.
Many conservative political observers have long warned about actions such as these by Obama and Congress, but mainly with regard to the upcoming 'lame duck session' between November and January before the new Congress can be seated.
Cap and trade was one of the bills the Left promised to pass before they left office.
Now, however, it appears they have already done so, and that without debate or vote. Although it appears that 65 BILLION dollars have already been transfered to an entity that profits from 'capping' greenhouse gases in the Northeast, citizens still have a window of opportunity to stop it from being implemented across the country--IF they bombard Congress with protests over cap and trade.
Such legislation would add an extra $2400 to $5000 dollars in energy costs PER YEAR PER HOUSEHOLD in America, placing yet another unconscionable financial burden on families who are still suffering from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression.
The fact that these oppressive measures are being forced on the American public by elected co-conspirators in the economic collapse, such as Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, and many others who gave their nod to the dubious government policy dating all the way back to the mid-1990s to essentially turn Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into welfare agencies, only underscores the corruption that is entrenched in Washington in Congress AND the White House.
Thus, not only is it clear that Obama should be impeached and removed from office, but his enablers in Congress, who have controlled the legislative branch since 2006, must be ousted in November.
Cricinfo staff
September 7, 2010
Geoff Lawson, the former Australian fast bowler and Pakistan coach, has criticised the PCB and its chairman, Ijaz Butt, for failing to provide the strong leadership that the country's cricket needs during "one of its biggest challenges."
"Even through this crisis we have heard virtually nothing from their chairman," Lawson said on ESPNcricinfo's audio show Time Out. "He hides from a crisis, he is not a leader and when Pakistan need a strong leader and people to show them the way forward, they are not getting it from their board."
Lawson said before the appointment of Butt, Pakistan cricket had in place detailed long-term plans to develop the game from the grassroots up. "There were 10 and 15 year plans, plans to build regional cricket academies, fitness, fitness trainers, physios and stocking gyms with better equipment and better pay for the first-class players."
Things in Pakistan changed after Butt took charge, Lawson said. "After the elections in 2008, it took some months with their hung parliament to appoint a new chairman and Ijaz Butt was appointed and really, I just see from that instant, there has been a decline in Pakistan cricket."
Before the spot fixing controversy, Butt's tenure coincided with the Lahore attack on the Sri Lankan team, the refusal by other countries to tour Pakistan, several captaincy changes, the fallout of the Australia tour with match-fixing and disciplinary charges being levelled on players and deteriorating relations with the ICC.
Last week, Test captain Salman Butt and fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were charged under the ICC's anti-corruption code and provisionally suspended from the game while their case is being heard. However, Lawson said Salman Butt had done a great job with a young side since being appointed captain of Pakistan and that he would be shocked if Salman Butt turned out to be at the center of the spot-fixing scandal.
"If it is the case that these young players are being affected, then there is something very bad with the environment in which Pakistan cricket is being played in."
Given the stakes, Lawson said the current crisis is the greatest Pakistan cricket has faced, and unlike previous crises, the team will not have the opportunity to mend fences by playing matches at home once things calm down.
"The hearings on Asif, Amir and Salman will be extremely important," he said. "I hope against hope that things will turn out alright but this is very much a watershed for Pakistan cricket right now."
Gen Petraeus says a church should not burn a pile of Qurans. He is concerned
about his kill ratio, which must be around 150 to 1. He thinks people could
get be even more angry at the US government:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100907/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan
How can America be so evil? People burning books? Churches destroying
religious objects? Generals telling churches what to do?
Harland Harrison
LP of San Mateo County CA
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The pastor of a Florida church says he takes very seriously Gen. David
Petraeus' warning that his church's burn-a-Quran day on 9/11 could
endanger U.S. troops and that his congregation is praying about it,
but he still plans to go through with the protest.
Afghans wave banners saying
CAPTIONBy Musadeq Sadeq, AP"We are definitely weighing the situation,"
Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville,
Fla., tells CNN today. "We are weighing the thing we are about to do,
what it possibily could cause, what is our actual message, what we are
trying to get across. How important is that now."
Petraeus, top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in a
statement Monday that the actions by the 50-member church "could
endanger troops, and it could endanger the overall effort."
But Jones says the protest aimed at radical Islam is still on. "Once
in awhile, you see that in the Bible, there are instances where enough
is enough and you stand up," Jones tells CNN.
Our colleagues at Faith & Reason have details on an interfaith summit
of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders that plans to issue a joint
declaration later today.
Gainesville police plan to set up a checkpoint at streets around the
church on Saturday to check driver's licenses and maintain a
heightened police presence, The Gainesville Sun reports. The three-
hour protest is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET.
This comes a day after someone in Gainesville scrawled the word
"Nazis" on a sign erected near an Islamic center announcing
"International Burn A Koran Day," The Sun reports.
The newspaper says a man has turned himself in for the act, but police
are trying to contact the owner of the property before pressing
charges.
At a protest Monday in Kabul, several hundred Afghans rallied outside
a Kabul mosque, burning American flags and an effigy of Dove World's
pastor and chanting "death to America."
**************
Personally, on Fee Speech grounds I can see it.
It is one segment of the U.S. Christian population's right.....just
like it is one segment of the Muslim Afghans (or others) population's
right to counter-protest.
Then you get to the political question.... support or endanger U.S.
troops... well, says who? and will that really happen? Always the
individual person's choice, I would say...... I'm not doing this....
nominal9
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Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com
See a sample reprint in PDF format. Order a reprint of this article nowSo two months before an election, and 19 months after the mother of all spending programs, President Obama said yesterday he's rolling out one more plan to stimulate the economy. We'll discuss the details when they're released, but the effort itself is a tacit admission that his earlier proposals have flopped. As the autumn economic debate gets underway, it's important to understand how and why we got here.
The recession preceded Mr. Obama's Inaugural by 13 months, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and so did the President's fiscal policy ideas. George W. Bush got there first. In February 2008, he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed on a $168 billion combination of federal spending and temporary tax rebates that were supposed to maintain growth through the housing market decline that election year.
Larry Summers, who would later become Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser, made the case for such a stimulus to boost domestic "demand" in late 2007. Any stimulus, he told the Brookings Institution, should be "timely, targeted and temporary." Peter Orszag, then at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before joining the Obama White House, made the same case.
The official GDP statistics did show a growth blip in the second quarter of 2008 to 0.6%, but third quarter GDP fell by 4%, and we all know what happened after the financial meltdown. Stimulus I failed.
Larry Summers
Enter Stimulus II, the $814 billion plan that was also supposed to make up for lost private demand. It too was a combination of one-time tax rebates and spending, mostly on social programs like Medicaid rather than on "shovel-read projects." Mr. Summers promised this would have a 1.5 "multiplier" effect on GDP growth, and White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein famously predicted the spending would keep the jobless rate below 8%.
All during this time, the Federal Reserve was also feeding the economy with unprecedented monetary stimulus, cutting its benchmark interest rate to near zero and expanding its balance sheet by more than $2 trillion by purchasing mortgage-backed securities and other assets.
During this time, too, Congress passed other industry-specific stimulus bills—cash-for-clunkers, the $8,000 home-buyer's tax credit, mortgage payment relief, and jobless pay up to 99 weeks. Yet all of this has merely stolen auto and home purchases from the future, with sales falling once the tax benefits expired. The housing market in particular may be softening again, despite historically low interest rates.
The recovery seems to have begun in summer 2009, with GDP growth hitting 5% in the fourth quarter on the backs of an inventory rebound and expansion overseas. But U.S. growth has since decelerated, to a mere 1.6% in the second quarter, and the jobless rate is 9.6% after three consecutive months of job losses. The economy is growing, but far too slowly to restore broad-based prosperity.
In sum, never before has government spent so much and intervened so directly in credit allocation to spur growth, yet the results have been mediocre at best. In return for adding nearly $3 trillion in federal debt in two years, we still have 14.9 million unemployed. What happened?
The explanations from the White House and liberal economists boil down to three: The stimulus was too small, Republicans blocked better policies, and this recession is different because it began in a financial meltdown. Only the third point has some merit, and for a different reason than the White House claims.
On a too-small stimulus, this isn't what Democrats or most Keynesian economists told us at the time. Even Paul Krugman, who now denies intellectual paternity for this economy, wrote on November 14, 2008 that "My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion." The White House raised him by 33% two months later, but now we're told that wasn't enough.
Given that the stimulus program was so poorly structured and so overtly politicized, how do we know that, say, $500 billion more would have made a difference even on Keynesian terms? The money for government spending has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy. Our guess is that by ensuring even higher debt and implying higher taxes, a bigger spending stimulus would have done even more harm.
Stimulus godfather Mark Zandi and CBO have produced studies claiming that the stimulus saved millions of jobs and thus prevented an even deeper recession. But these are essentially plug-and-play economic models that multiply the amount of dollars spent by the assumed impact on jobs based on previous studies, and, voila, the jobless rate would have been higher without such spending. In the real world, the economy lost 2.51 million jobs.
The claim that recessions rooted in financial panic pose special problems has more truth to it. Credit excesses built up over many years have to be wound down, and that takes time, while banks have to work down their bad assets. However, one good aspect of this recovery is that business balance sheets have shaped up nicely, thanks to productivity gains, and banks have been making healthy profits. The problem is that banks still aren't lending and businesses aren't hiring or investing enough.
Which brings us to another major cause of the Obama malaise. When it took office in 2009, many of us advised the Administration to focus on nurturing the recovery first and postponing social-policy priorities that would only add more economic uncertainty. All the more so given this recession's unusual financial roots.
Instead, Democrats embarked on the most sweeping expansion of government since the 1960s, imposing national health care, rewriting financial laws from top to bottom, attempting to re-regulate the telecom industry, and imposing vast new costs on energy, among many other proposals. Not to stop there, in January it plans to impose a huge new tax increase on "the wealthy," which in practice means on the most profitable small businesses.
Central to Mr. Obama's political strategy for passing these priorities has been trashing business and bankers as greedy profiteers. His Administration has denounced or held up as political or legal targets the Chrysler bond holders, Wall Street bonuses, Goldman Sachs, health-insurer profits, carbon energy investors, and anyone else who has dared to oppose any of its plans to "transform" U.S. society.
Only yesterday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama was at it again, declaring that "anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it'll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up—they just haven't studied our history. We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness."
Whatever else one can say about such rhetoric, it is not the way to restore business confidence or turn a fragile recovery into a durable expansion. It has only spread fear and even greater uncertainty.
As for blaming the Republicans, with only 40 and then 41 Senators they couldn't stop so much as a swinging door. The GOP couldn't even block the recent $10 billion teachers union bailout. The only major Obama priorities that haven't passed—cap and tax and union card check—were blocked by a handful of Democrats who finally said "no mas." No Administration since LBJ's in 1965 has passed so much of its agenda in one Congress—which is precisely the problem.
To put it another way, the real roots of Mr. Obama's economic problems are intellectual and political. The Administration rejected marginal-rate tax cuts that worked in the 1960s and 1980s because they would have helped the rich, in favor of a Keynesian spending binge that has stimulated little except government. More broadly, Democrats purposely used the recession as a political opening to redistribute income, reverse the free-market reforms of the Reagan era, and put government at the commanding heights of economic decision-making.
Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have succeeded in doing all of this despite the growing opposition of the American people, who are now enduring the results. The only path back to robust growth and prosperity is to stop this agenda dead in its tracks, and then by stages to reverse it. These are the economic stakes in November.
by SHEIKYERMAMI on SEPTEMBER 4, 2010
The halal racket is not a real racket unless its totally controlled by the soldiers of Allah
…a sinister midget, with a bucket and a mop, where the blood goes down the drain:
What exactly is 'halal'?
According to al-islam.org, one condition is (all emphasis mine):
i) A person, a man or a woman, who slaughters an animal must be a Muslim. An animal can also be slaughtered by a Muslim child who is mature enough to distinguish between good and bad, but not by non-Muslims other than Ahle Kitab, or a person belonging to those sects who are classified as Kafir, like, Nawasib – the enemies of Ahlul Bait (A.S.). In fact, even if Ahle Kitab non-Muslim slaughters an animal, as per precaution, it will not be halal, even if he utters 'Bismillah'.
So, whenever you see public school system, prisons or other government operated facilities that have changed to a halal menu only to accommodate muslims, keep in mind the government is contracting with slaughterhouses that discriminate against non-muslims.
There must be a way to ban Islam and protect the country from this plague.
| http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/05/can-we-ban-islam-legal-guidelines-for.html Sunday, May 03, 2009
Can We Ban Islam? - Legal Guidelines for the Criminalization of Islam in the United StatesGeert Wilders' recent call at a Palm Beach synagogue to ban Islam has stirred up all sorts of controversy, with more "moderate" blogs speaking out in opposition to it. So let's take a closer look at the issue of banning Islam. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The founders were English citizens and well aware of the way in which religion could stoke political violence. In the late 18th century, Cromwell was not ancient history, neither were the Covenanters or the Gunpowder Plot. While they did not anticipate like the rise of an Islamic insurgency in America, they understood quite well that religion and violence could and would intersect. "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, and that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that the legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."
Sec. 2. The Congress hereby finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. Unlike political parties, which evolve their policies and programs through public means, by the reconciliation of a wide variety of individual views, and submit those policies and programs to the electorate at large for approval or disapproval, the policies and programs of the Communist Party are secretly prescribed for it by the foreign leaders of the world Communist movement. Its members have no part in determining its goals, and are not permitted to voice dissent to party objectives
It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
Sec. 3. Islamic organizations, regardless of their assumed name, whose object or purpose is to overthrow the Government of the United States, or the government of any State, Territory, District, or possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein by force and violence, are not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof; and whatever rights, privileges, and immunities which have heretofore been granted to said party or any subsidiary organization by reason of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof, are hereby terminated:
Sec. 4. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to combine, conspire, or agree, with any other person to perform any act which would substantially contribute to the establishment within the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship
[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.
So back to the original question, can we ban Islam? While we cannot ban an individual from personally believing in Islam, we can ban Islamic practices and organizations-- which would effectively ban any practice of Islam in an organized way. |
