Part 19--September, 2010

* 9/1/10--WASHINGTON -- Saying it was time to "turn the page," President Obama declared the end of combat operations in Iraq last night as he vowed to focus his efforts now on the home front's economy. "So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country," Obama said.--NY Post

--President Obama last night declared an official end to US combat operations in Iraq. Now, he said, "It's time to turn the page." But is it? As Obama himself conceded, the US mission in Iraq is far from over. The mission that remains, he said, is the establishment of a stable government in Iraq -- and when that happens, Iraq "will have a strong partner in the United States. Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq's future is not." But what sort of committment? To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, America may no longer be interested in Iraqi combat -- but Iraq's combative factions surely remain interested in America. So what happens if violence resumes? What happens to the president's self-imposed deadlines then? Obama promised that "all US troops will leave Iraq by the end of next year." Similarly, he warned of a "tough slog" ahead in Afghanistan -- yet stuck to his timetable: troops out in a year. But artificial deadlines are antithetical to the responsible conduct of foreign policy -- even if they do have substantial political appeal domestically. We understand this: Isolationism is in America's DNA. But there comes a time when great nations are required to show real leadership -- or to cease being great nations. Alas, it's long been clear that in Obama's view, America is no better than the next nation, and that he finds the pursuit of policies commensurate with the nation's economic and military power distasteful. Yes, he spoke to America's responsibilities last night. "As the leader of the free world," he said, "America will do more than just defeat on the battlefield those who offer hatred and destruction -- we will also lead among those who are willing to work together to expand freedom and opportunity for all people." And this commitment, if sincerely made, is critical. For an abdication of American global leadership would create a vacuum that the world's legion of truly bad actors will rush to exploit. Count on even more violence. More lives and treasure lost. A decline not only in economic standards, but also global freedom. An overstatement? Who will stand up to Iran and North Korea -- or even to a bellicose, imperialist Vladimir Putin? How will allies -- South Korea, Japan, Israel, Europe -- react? Obama's predecessors -- and not just George W. Bush-- understood both the risks and the overriding imperative. They worked to maintain US leadership -- and America (and the world) came to know prosperity, freedom and security of a sort exceeding rare in human history. An abandonment of America's responsibilities would place all of that at risk -- utterly without need. Again, Obama last night spoke to some of these issues -- sometimes wisely. But the deadlines remain. As do the doubts.--NY Post Editorial

* 9/1/10--...In its failure to credit explicitly Bush's surge for turning around the war, the speech was graceless; in its cursory treatment of Iraq, it lacked strategic vision; and in its attempt to hijack the troops for Obama's domestic priorities ('we must tackle ... challenges at home with as much energy and grit, and sense of common purpose, as our men and women in uniform'), it was shameless. Altogether a poor performance." --National Review (From Patriot Post Chronicle)

* 9/1/10--A foreign spy agency attacked Pentagon computers in the worst breach of cyber security ever committed against the United States — in 2008. Information was just released, detailing a "malicious code" on a flash drive that was inserted into a Pentagon laptop, allowing a “digital beachhead” to transfer information from Pentagon computers to the foreign agency. The attack was countered with a cyber-battle launched by American operators, and there was no information released as to the nature of the information that was disclosed.--Townhall.com

* 9/1/10--NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The nation's top automakers reported disappointing sales Wednesday, resulting in the worst August for industrywide auto sales in 27 years. According to sales tracker Autodata, U.S. new vehicle sales fell just short of 1 million vehicles, a drop of 21% from a year ago, which included Cash for Clunkers. That federal program created a sugar rush of sales by dangling an incentive of up to $4,500 in cash for buyers who traded in older gas guzzlers for more efficient models.

* 9/3/10--Washington's elites are once again having it their way. On Aug. 20, Immigrant and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton wrote a memo to the agency's head of removal operations, telling him that being in the U.S. illegally is no longer grounds for deportation. Only illegals who pose a security threat or have violent records need now be deported. The memo represents Barack Obama's announcement of open borders to a waiting world. How much damage can one president create in a single term? Jimmy Carter was a piker compared to this guy. The agency now has also begun an "outreach" program to illegals closest to eligibility for permanent status. It's coaching illegals on how to obtain the proper credentials to vote. ICE even sent a form letter to one illegal who had admitted to voting in a previous election, a felony. But ICE's priority is to get him his U.S. citizenship, not to enforce the law. ICE workers themselves are so angry about Obama's dereliction of his duty that their union issued a membership consensus of "no confidence" in the agency's leaders, something a federal union has never done before. But the drug cartels, whose aim is to turn Mexico into a narco-state on our southern border, are thrilled with the new policy and have already stepped up the terrorizing of residents in Northern Mexico. The recent massacre of 72 would-be illegals in Tamaulipas, Mexico, is the tip of an iceberg. Not only do the cartels smuggle and murder people, but they also enslave many for various reasons: some are forced into sex slavery and some into the ranks of the gangs' foot soldiers. This part of the president's "fundamental transformation" of America is getting ugly. In other news, the Justice Department has followed through on their threat to sue Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for supposed "civil rights" violations in his efforts to round up illegal aliens. It's now the third federal suit against Arizona -- all because the state is picking up federal slack.--Patriot Post Digest

* 9/3/10--(A) new Labor Department report showed private businesses added 67,000 jobs in August, more than forecast. Overall, the nation lost 54,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6 percent.--TheHill.com

* 9/3/10--TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran would retaliate by striking Israel's nuclear facility if Israel attacked its nuclear activities, armed forces chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi said on Friday. "Our developed weapons can hit any part of the Zionist regime (Israel) ... We hope not to be forced to attack their nuclear facility," Firouzabadi told the semi-official Mehr news agency. Iran does not recognize Israel, which it calls the "Zionist regime." Israel regards Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence.

* 9/4/10--A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige. President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King. Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington. For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama....The familiar quote from Lincoln woven into Obama's rug is "government of the people, by the people and for the people," the well-known utterance from the close of his Gettysburg Address in 1863. Funny that in 1850, Parker wrote, "A democracy -- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people." Theodore Parker, Oval Office wordmeister for the ages. --Washington Post

* 9/5/10--(CBS) With many polls indicating the Republicans may win back control of the House of Representatives (and possibly the Senate as well) in the upcoming mid-term elections, Jim VandeHei, the executive editor of Politico, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the Obama administration is in a horrible position. "Does the White House understand this?" asked guest host Harry Smith. "Do you feel any sense of panic or concern" on the part of the administration? "They get it. There's panic. There's concern," VandeHei said. "The reality for this administration stinks, politically and practically, when it comes to the economy. You're not going to be able to change that 9.6-percent unemployment figure. You can't get anything from Congress in the next couple of months." CBS Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes said the Democrats are distancing themselves from President Obama. "Not only are they running away from President Obama, they're running away from being Democrats in some cases. In some races you actually see the Democratic candidates not really mentioning that they're a Democrat in their campaign ads," Cordes said.

* 9/5/10--BAGHDAD (AP) - Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq's ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens. It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting. The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.

* 9/6/10--Iran has increased its total stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 15 per cent, in spite of the pressure on the country exerted by economic sanctions, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In its latest report on the state of Iran’s nuclear programme, the IAEA said the country had produced 2,803kg of uranium enriched to the purity needed to run a nuclear power station.But experts said a stockpile of this size meant that if Iran chose further to enrich this material to the level needed for nuclear weapons, it would be able to build nearly three bombs.--ft.com

* 9/6/10--Boiling-mad opponents of the Tea Party plan to out any racist members on a new Web site. Teapartytracker.org, sponsored by the NAACP and other liberal organizations, says it will monitor "racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement," according to FoxNews.com. "We call on the Tea Party to repudiate extremists among their ranks and join in civil dialogue with all Americans," the Web site says. The organizers are banking on regular Joes to help them ferret out particularly damning video footage and Web musings of Tea Party extremists, which they will post as "gotcha" evidence on the site. Its slogan: "A watched teapot never boils."--NY Post

* 9/6/10--...Last year, for the first time, the number of unionized public employees exceeded the number of unionized private workers -- 7.9 million to 7.4 million. Now, since the country has five times as many private jobs as public ones, this was possible only because the public unionization rate (37.4 percent) was more than five times higher than the private one (7.2 percent). Another big difference: The average federal worker is compensated at $123,000 a year, including $42,000 in benefits -- more than twice what the average private worker gets. (State and local government employees don't do as well, but still beat private-sector pay.) And these days a public job is a lot more likely to be truly a 9 to 5 affair than a private one. Bottom line: Public-sector unions aren't protecting government workers against abuse; they're inflicting abuse on the rest of us -- because private workers pay for all the government jobs by losing their own jobs and with higher taxes. We've seen the most extreme case of that over the last year and half, under the Obama "economic stimulus." If that massive jolt of government spending were a real stimulus, GDP wouldn't be growing at a feeble 1.6 percent, and unemployment wouldn't have skyrocketed to nearly 10 percent and stayed there since Obama took office. Instead, the "stimulus" (and much of the rest of the Obama-era explosion in federal spending) has gone to creating new federal jobs and protecting existing state and local government jobs -- even though tax revenues were falling because of the private sector's suffering....Even as private employment has plummeted, public jobs have been kept safe -- and federal ones have grown at a good clip. In the private sector, where businesses must remain profitable to survive, union reps are kept in check; they're afraid that if they push too hard, they might just kill the goose that lays the golden egg. But governments don't need to turn a profit, and they don't go out of business (at least not yet), so "management" can give away the store. Especially "managers" who owe their jobs to the unions. Andy Stern's SEIU, the union for many federal employees, gave around $80 million to Obama and the Dems' 2008 campaigns. Something's got to give. Despite massive federal bailouts, public-employee costs (not to mention the ruinous expense of pensions far more generous than in the private sector) are breaking state and local governments. Some are having to sell off hard assets to fill in their massive budget gaps. As The Wall Street journal recently reported, California is looking to sell state office buildings and Milwaukee wants to sell its water supply. In Chicago and New Haven, it's parking meters. In Louisiana and Georgia, airports are on the chopping block. So when Obama spends massive sums to boost government employment, that's not stimulus -- it's grand larceny. And private workers -- the only workers who truly produce anything -- are the ones getting their pockets picked. Private-sector jobs are lost because businesses are denied the capital they need to expand -- it's all sucked up in government borrowing -- or business owners are simply too fearful to invest, given the prospect of higher taxes to pay for it all. A century after the Triangle fire, the entire US economy is being incinerated. Only this time, the doors have been locked by power-hungry Democrats and their union masters, not by money-hungry factory owners. And instead of a few hundred underage trapped workers paying the price, now 100 (formerly 108) million non-unionized private workers are getting "burned": Their jobs are being eliminated to make way for public-sector jobs, with the few lucky enough to keep their jobs getting taxed to death to pay for public workers who earn twice what they do. --Stephen B. Meister, NY Post

* 9/6/10--A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely Voters would vote for their district's Republican congressional candidate, while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. The survey data was collected on the seven days ending Sunday, September 5, 2010. This matches the largest advantage ever measured for the Republicans. Three weeks ago, the GOP also held a 12-point lead....Other recent data shows that the number of Republicans in the nation grew by two percentage points over the past month, while the number of Democrats slipped a bit. As a result, the GOP has closed the partisan gap to the smallest margin in five years. The percentage of Americans who consider themselves Democrats has fallen by seven percentage points since George W. Bush left office....When President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, Democrats enjoyed a seven-point advantage. The two parties were very close through the spring of 2009, but in June, around the time Democrats began their campaign for health care reform, Republicans pulled ahead for good....Most voters favor repeal of the recently passed health care law.

* 9/7/10--NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARING--The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing entitled "Firearms in Commerce: Assessing the Need for Reform in the Federal Regulatory Process" for Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. By order of the Chairman.--judiciary.senate.gov

* 9/7/10--WASHINGTON -- President Obama yesterday announced yet another plan to spend taxpayer money -- more than $50 billion on roads, rails and airports -- which immediately drew ridicule from Republicans as an "out-of-control spending spree." The president unveiled the already controversial proposal at a boisterous Labor Day rally in Milwaukee marking the unofficial start of the election season. He ripped into Republicans -- who have launched repeated Senate filibusters and whipped up near-total GOP opposition in the House -- for opposing his agenda....Obama, his sleeves rolled up, vowed, "I am going to keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute to turn this economy around." But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) blasted the new plan. "We don't need more government stimulus spending. We need to end Washington Democrats' out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses," he said. Obama -- alluding to the growing Democratic anxiety that Republicans could take over the House -- ridiculed Boehner in his speech for opposing legislation to keep more teachers and firefighters on the payroll. He referred to Boehner as "the Republican who thinks he's gonna take over as speaker -- that's his opinion." Obama said that his plan would be "fully paid for" and that it would "not add to the deficit over time," wording that appeared to concede at least a short-term hike in the deficit. The administration is proposing to pay for the project by hiking fees on oil and gas-drilling companies. An administration official said the job impact wouldn't be felt until next year.--NY Post

* 9/8/10--WASHINGTON -- The number of independent voters who disapprove of President Obama has hit an all-time high, and even more now want Democrats to lose control of Congress, according to a poll released yesterday. About 57 percent of independents disapprove of Obama, and 61 percent complain that he hasn't brought change to DC, the Washington Post/ABC News poll found. Nearly half of these crucial independent voters said they consider Obama "too liberal." The numbers show momentum surging away from Obama, as a July poll had independents split, with 49 percent disapproving of Obama and 47 percent approving. A series of polls yesterday delivered powerfully bad omens to Democrats, who are hurtling toward a thrashing in the midterm elections Nov. 2. Independent voters have been key in deciding recent elections, siding with Democrats as they took control of Congress in 2006, and with Obama in 2008. But now, most of those voters -- 59 percent -- say they would prefer to have Republicans running Congress to put a check on Obama's agenda, the poll showed. "They [Democrats] are finding out the hard way that bad policy makes bad politics," National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman Ken Spain said. The poll found that just 34 percent of all voters -- and 27 percent of independent voters -- said most Democrats in Congress deserved re-election. The GOP beat Democrats, 51 percent to 32 percent, among independent voters on handling the economy -- the top election issue, according to a CNN poll released yesterday. Among all voters, the CNN survey showed Republicans lead on the economy, 46 to 43 percent, a huge turnaround from last year, when Democrats led on the economy, 52-39. Similarly, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found more Americans -- 61 percent -- believe the country is on the wrong track. Just 39 percent in that poll approve of Obama's handling of the economy. Only 26 percent of voters believe the economy will improve in the next year, a steep drop from the 47 percent who were optimistic a year ago.--NY Post

* 9/8/10--Sarah Palin was right -- the Democrats are for death panels after all. Unfortunately for them, it's their own vulnerable House members that the Dems are preparing to euthanize. The New York Times reports that the Democrats -- panicked by the possibility that they'll lose control of Congress in November -- are preparing "a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on their majority." What that means, the Times said, is that the party plans to look at the polls and then "cut loose members" who aren't gaining ground by diverting cash and other resources to stronger candidates. Actually, it's entirely appropriate that all this is being discussed in the language of health care -- given that ObamaCare is turning out to be electoral poison for Democrats facing the voters this fall. Indeed, the sweeping and radical overhaul -- which President Obama has hailed as the "proudest moment" of his presidency -- is proving so toxic that Democratic candidates are no longer boasting that it will shrink the deficit and lower health-care costs. Instead, we're now hearing language like this from Sen. Max Baucus of Montana -- the bill's primary sponsor, who later admitted he hadn't even read it: "Mark my words, several years from now you're going to look back and say, 'Eh, maybe it isn't so bad.' " Here's a prediction: Triage or not, Democrats who use a line like that are very likely going to need a toe-tag come November.--NY Post Editorial

* 9/8/10--"Politically divided, committed to two wars, in a deep recession, insolvent and still stunned by the financial meltdown of 2008, our government seems paralyzed. As European socialism implodes, for some reason a new statist U.S. government wants to copy failure by taking over ever more of the economy and borrowing trillions more dollars to provide additional entitlements. As panicky old allies look for American protection, we talk of slashing our defense budget. In apologetic fashion, we spend more time appeasing confident enemies than buttressing worried friends." --historian Victor Davis Hanson (Patriot Post Chronicle)

* 9/8/10--In the wake of the battle over a mosque at Ground Zero, a move by the Hartford City Council is sure to have its critics. The Council announced Tuesday that it has invited local imams to perform Islamic invocations at the beginning of the Council meetings in September. An e-mail from the Common Council called it "an act of solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters." The email even referenced the ongoing issue in New York. "One of the goals of the Council is to give a voice to the many diverse peoples of the City, which is especially important given the recent anti-Islam events throughout the country." Council President Jo Winch called it an important move for the Council. "I feel it is very important that, as a Council, we project a culture of inclusiveness in the City of Hartford. Too often it is our differences that divide us. In my opinion, it is our combination of differences that makes us strong," Winch said. On Facebook, Council Minority Leader Luis Cotto wrote: "We start every single council meeting with a prayer. 99% of the prayers are Christian based, and in three years I recall one Rabbi coming through."--nbcconnecticut.com

* 9/8/10--"It's not as bad as it could've been. That, as the Labor Day weekend began, was the cold comfort that many in the media took from the still-dismal August jobs report. Can't we expect something a little better? True enough, 68,000 new private-sector jobs were created last month, showing that private businesses, though gasping for breath, aren't dead yet. But overall, 54,000 jobs disappeared, raising the toll during the 'Recovery Summer' Vice President Joe Biden ridiculously hailed two months ago to 238,000. Nor was the uptick in the unemployment rate to 9.6% from 9.5% what you expect in a 'recovery.' This is not 'better than expected'; it's worse than expected. This can be gauged not by market expectations for modest job creation, but by long-term experience watching how jobs are created in a normal recovery. By that gauge, we're in the worst jobs slump since World War II. ... If it wasn't clear to everyone by now, it should be: All the actions this government has taken -- the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion 'stimulus,' the health care takeover, financial reform -- haven't 'saved or created' 3.8 million jobs, as claimed. Instead, they've destroyed millions of jobs -- and with them, the hopes and dreams of those who've lost the jobs. But the administration remains clueless, hinting that it may seek another 'stimulus' costing billions. This bunch is either willfully doing damage to the U.S. economy, or completely incompetent. On Friday, the president actually patted himself on the back, saying the employment report was 'positive news' that 'reflects the steps we've already taken to break the back of this recession.' If there's one thing that marks this administration as different from others, it's the steadfast refusal to remove its ideological blinders and learn from its mistakes." --Investor's Business Daily (From Patriot Post Chronicle)

* 9/9/10--WASHINGTON -- President Obama yesterday challenged Republicans to agree to extend tax cuts for families making less than $250,000, and maintained his insistence that tax rates for wealthier Americans must be hiked. Speaking to a campaign-style crowd in Cleveland, Obama said he is "ready this week to give tax cuts to every American making $250,000 or less." But he said that extending the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush to the wealthiest Americans would deprive the federal government of $700 billion in additional revenue over the next 10 years. House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) countered with an offer to extend the Bush tax cuts for all Americans and reduce federal spending back to 2008 levels and freeze it there. "We can't deal with the deficit until we are willing to get our arms around spending and have a strong economy," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "And you can't have a strong economy if you're raising taxes on the very people you expect to invest in our economy to begin hiring people again." Asked if Republicans could support Obama's plan to extend tax cuts for those earning less, Boehner seemed to dismiss the notion. "Until the uncertainty and spending is under control, I don't think these will have much impact," he said. Obama's appearance yesterday in the swing state of Ohio was a direct assault on Boehner, whom the president refers to as the "Republican who thinks he's going to take over as speaker" of the House. "So, let me be clear to Mr. Boehner and everyone else," Obama intoned yesterday. "We should not hold middle-class tax cuts hostage any longer." Obama's address yesterday had all the sound and feel of a campaign rally in a state featuring several important races this November. Despite wanting to raise taxes, and despite all the big-government solutions he has offered in the first two years of his presidency, Obama said yesterday he believes private enterprise will be the "main engine of our recovery." "I believe government should be lean, it should be efficient, and it should leave people free to make the choices they think are best for themselves and their families, so long as those choices don't hurt others," he said. The speech came on the heels of Obama's proposal for a $50 billion stimulus package to rebuild the country's roads, bridges, railroads and other infrastructure. Democratic Sen. Mike Bennet, facing a tough re-election campaign in Colorado, announced yesterday his opposition to Obama's new spending plan.--NY Post

* 9/9/10--WASHINGTON -- Public opinion of Democrats has soured so badly that vocal Obama supporters like Sheriff Andy are suffering, even in Mayberry. A new poll shows that Andy Griffith -- an outspoken Democrat who appeared in a controversial ad promoting President Obama's health-care plan -- has seen his popularity collapse in his home state of North Carolina. The "Matlock" and "Andy Griffith Show" star's favorability rating has tumbled over the past two years, from 69 to 44 percent, according to the survey by Public Policy Polling. Twenty-two percent of North Carolina voters actually have a negative view of the folksy local hero. Earlier this summer, the 84-year-old Griffith starred in an ad promising "more good things are coming" with Obama's health-care plan. The White House stuck taxpayers with the $700,000 bill for the ad. "Clearly, it's pushback from the president's health-care plan," Brad Crone, a Democratic consultant, told the Charlotte Observer. "It's a good time to call up Barney Fife." It's troubling news for Democrats, who crowed over their inroads into the traditionally Republican state after Obama won it two years ago. Faring worse among North Carolina voters than Griffith in the poll is Obama himself. His disapproval rating stands at 54 percent, and just 43 percent approve of his performance. --NY Post

* 9/9/10--A major investor in the mosque near Ground Zero said yesterday he is ready to pull the plug and sell some or all of the site if the price is right. Hisham Elzanaty, an Egyptian-born businessman who says he provided a majority of the financing to gain control over the two buildings where an Islamic community center and mosque would be built, said he already has received offers for three times the $4.8 million price of the site. "Develop it, raze it, sell it," Elzanaty, who lives on Long Island, told the Associated Press. "If someone wants to give me 18 or 20 million dollars today, it's all theirs." --NY Post

* 9/9/10--The imam behind the Ground Zero mosque last night warned that caving in to pressure and moving the project would trigger a massive backlash in the Muslim world, jeopardizing national security. "If we move from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said on CNN's Larry King Live. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. The danger from the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security, to the national security of our troops . . . will be increasingly compromised if the radicals are strengthened." --NY Post

* 9/10/10--RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A federal judge yesterday declared the military's ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional, and said she will issue an order to stop the government from enforcing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy nationwide. "Don't ask, don't tell" prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay or are discovered engaging in homosexual activity, even in the privacy of their own homes off base. Judge Virginia Phillips ruled the policy doesn't help military readiness and instead has a "deleterious effect" on the armed services. The Log Cabin Republicans, a 19,000-member group that includes current and former military members, filed a lawsuit in 2004 seeking an injunction to stop the ban's enforcement. Phillips will draft the injunction with input from the group within a week, and the federal government will have a week to respond. The group's lawyer, Dan Woods, argued during the nonjury trial that the policy violates gay military members' rights to free speech, open association and right to due process. He said the ban forces the military to reject talented people as the country struggles to find recruits in the midst of a war. Lawyers also submitted remarks by President Obama stating "don't ask, don't tell" weakens national security. --NY Post

* 9/10/10--WASHINGTON -- Health-care costs are forecast to rise after enactment of President Obama's new health law -- and the average American will have to shell out an additional $265 each year for care, a new government report concludes. Factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019, according to the US Office of the Actuary. Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387. By 2019, health-care spending will be a fifth of the nation's gross domestic product, according to the estimate by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. --NY Post

* 9/10/10--WASHINGTON -- An appellate court yesterday granted an Obama administration request for a temporary stay that lifts a judge's ban on the federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells. The panel said it did so to give its three judges sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the administration's emergency request for a stay. US District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled last month that the research broke the law because it involved destroying human embryos. The president had tried to expand such research in hope that it would lead to new cures for various diseases. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ordered that briefs be filed by Sept. 20 before it decides whether the temporary stay should be extended or ended. The administration had said in its emergency request that Lamberth's ruling was at odds with the intent of Congress when it wrote the law limiting federal funding of stem-cell research. The White House added that Lamberth's ruling would undercut ongoing medical research. --NY Post

* 9/10/10--WASHINGTON -- A wave of Democrats across the country bolted from President Obama over his refusal to extend tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 a year. "I support extending all of the expiring tax cuts until Nebraska's and the nation's economy is in better shape, and perhaps longer, because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery," Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said yesterday. "Continuing all of the tax cuts could provide certainty for families and businesses in Nebraska and nationwide." A host of other Democrats, including several facing elections in November, also said yesterday they are opposed to Obama's plan to raise taxes on families making more than $250,000. Obama declined to say in an interview aired yesterday on ABC's "Good Morning America" whether he would veto a bill that extended all the Bush tax cuts, but said the government could spend that money better than the Americans who earned it. "What I am saying is that if we are going to add to our deficit by $35 billion, $95 billion, $100 billion, $700 billion, if that's the Republican agenda, then I've got a whole bunch of better ways to spend that money," he said.--NY Post

* 9/9/10--The imam behind the Ground Zero mosque last night warned that caving in to pressure and moving the project would trigger a massive backlash in the Muslim world, jeopardizing national security. "If we move from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said on CNN's Larry King Live. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. The danger from the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security, to the national security of our troops . . . will be increasingly compromised if the radicals are strengthened." --NY Post

* 9/10/10--A quest to get Barack Obama to shout his commitment to solar power from the roof tops - by re-installing vintage solar panels at the White House - ended in disappointment for environmental campaigners today. Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, had led a group of environmental activists to Washington in a bio-diesel van hoping to persuade Obama to re-install a set of solar panels originally put up by Jimmy Carter. The actual Carter-era solar panels - which weigh in at 55 kilograms and are nearly 2 metres long - are out-dated now. But campaigners had hoped that the White House would embrace at least the symbolism of going solar - much like Michelle Obama kicked off her healthy food movement by planting a vegetable garden. "Clearly, a solar panel on the White House roof won't solve climate change - and we'd rather have strong presidential leadership on energy transformation. But given the political scene, this may be as good as we'll get for the moment," McKibben said in a Washington Post comment this morning. A California company Sungevity had offered to equip the White House with the latest technology. But the White House declined - twitchy perhaps about inviting any comparison to one-term Democratic president Carter in the run-up to the very difficult mid-term elections in November. The White House did send three staffers to meet the campaigners.--guardian.co.uk

* 9/12/10--WASHINGTON – The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings. It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.--AP

* 9/12/10--Economists peddling dire warnings that the world's number one economy is on the brink of collapse, amid high rates of unemployment and a spiraling public deficit, are flourishing here. The guru of this doomsday line of thinking may be economist Nouriel Roubini, thrust into the forefront after predicting the chaos wrought by the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of the housing bubble "The US has run out of bullets," Roubini told an economic forum in Italy earlier this month. "Any shock at this point can tip you back into recession." But other economists, who have so far stayed out of the media limelight, are also proselytizing nightmarish visions of the future.--Breitbart.com

* 9/13/10--Iran has been stockpiling tons of ura nium while shutting down UN inspec tions, the organization's nuclear watchdog reported last week. The International Atomic Energy Agency says it's been so choked off by Iran that it's using only satellite images to monitor one heavy-water plant -- nuclear oversight via Google Earth. Meanwhile, Iran has produced about 2.8 tons of low-enriched uranium at its Natanz plant -- enough to make two or three warheads once the material is enriched to weapons-grade levels. The White House played down the news, telling The Washington Post that "so long as Iran continues on its current path, its leaders will deepen Iran's isolation and the price it is clearly paying." But Iran doesn't seem to sweat the loneliness. And the mullahs have clearly done their math: The "price" they're paying isn't nearly high enough to stop their atomic march. In June, the administration prodded the UN into issuing what President Obama called the "toughest sanctions ever." But the words "United Nations" and "tough" don't belong in the same sentence, and that's a fact Iran has been quick to notice. According to the UN report, Iran has barred two senior inspectors from their nuclear sites, said it "underestimated" the amount of uranium it has enriched, is developing secret nuke facilities far from prying eyes, and "accidentally" broke the seals on several pieces of equipment that the IAEA had shut down. (And a dissident Iranian group, the People's Mujahideen of Iran, charged last week that extensive tunneling near Tehran is connected to the production of weapons-grade plutonium.) It's all pretty brazen. And it has utterly paralyzed the UN. The IAEA responded in its report by politely requesting that Iran stop violating international laws, please. Handcuffed, tongue tied and generally bamboozled by the mullahs, the UN is instead focusing on a much easier target: Israel, the very country in Iran's nuclear crosshairs. The IAEA voted to censure Israel last year at its annual forum in Vienna, while refusing to even mention Iran. And it dialed up the pressure on Israel last month with a personal visit from the head of the IAEA, pushing Israel to join the non-proliferation treaty and accept UN inspectors at its nuclear sites. We note, without surprise, that the IAEA chief has yet to visit Iran. Why, after all, would he bother? The UN has given Iran and other bad actors the kid-gloves treatment for years, reserving its bare-knuckled fury for the Jewish state. And the IAEA is a mirror image of the UN at large -- impotent in the face of tyrants, deadly serious on one front alone: in its attempts to deliver a knockout blow to Israel. The IAEA has shown its true colors in its feeble battle with Iran. They look remarkably like a white flag.--NY Post Editorial

* 9/14/10--WASHINGTON --Senate Republicans yesterday vowed to block President Obama's plan to cut middle-class taxes unless tax reductions for the wealthy are also preserved. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said every Senate Republican has pledged to fight Obama's tax plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire. "Democrats spent the last two years putting government in charge of health care, the financial sector, car companies, insurance companies, student loans -- you name it. Now they want the tax hike to pay for it all," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "Americans asked the administration to fix the sink, and they remodeled the house instead. And now they're sending us the bill." He added, "Let's face it: The Democrat agenda has been disastrous for the economy. "Two and a half million jobs lost: two and a half trillion dollars more in debt, more job-stifling regulations, mandates, and red tape. And now they want to drive another nail in the coffin -- a massive tax hike on the very people who will dig us out of this recession by expanding their businesses and creating jobs." Moderate Democrats in the House and Senate also are bucking the plan. "I don't think it makes sense to raise any federal taxes during the uncertain economy we are struggling through," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who caucuses with Democrats. "The more money we leave in private hands, the quicker our economic recovery will be," he said. At issue are President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year. Everybody's taxes will go up if Congress does nothing. --NY Post

* 9/14/10--Washington (CNN) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he will add the DREAM Act, a controversial immigration measure, to a defense policy bill the Senate will take up next week. The decision means the defense bill, which often passes with bipartisan support, will be home to two major, thorny political issues – the other being the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Reid called the DREAM Act "really important" and said it should be passed because it provides a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who go to college or serve in the military. DREAM is an acronym for Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act. "I know we can't do comprehensive immigration reform," Reid said at a news conference. "But those Republicans we had in the last Congress have left us." Many Hispanic voters are angry with Democratic leaders for not doing more to pass an immigration overhaul. The decision by Reid to add the DREAM Act now could help soothe that anger. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called Reid's decision "needlessly controversial." The Senate will need 60 votes to take up the bill next week, and Reid said Tuesday he doesn't know if he has enough votes.

* 9/14/10--The Gulf oil spill isn't gone -- it's just hiding on the vast sea floor, according to a study currently under way. "We're finding it everywhere that we've looked," Professor. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia told ABC News. "The oil is not gone. It's in places where nobody has looked for it." Joye's team took 13 sediment core samples from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and found oil in all of them. Last month, President Obama hailed a federal-government report that found roughly three-quarters of the oil had either been cleaned up or dispersed by treatments. Joye's findings directly contradict the report. --NY Post

* 9/14/10--WASHINGTON -- Rep. Charles Rangel isn't likely to face an ethics trial until after Election Day. The Harlem Democrat, who has been hit with 13 charges, could be tried by the ethics committee any time in the coming weeks -- but delays make it look like he'll get a pass until the end of the campaign season. That's probably a good idea, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Ethics hearings shortly before the midterm elections overly politicize the ethics process," she told The Hill newspaper. A two-year House ethics probe found a "pattern" of rule-breaking by Rangel, including a failure to report $1.7 million in personal assets and not paying taxes on income from a Dominican villa. --NY Post

* 9/14/10--VIENNA -- The head of the United Nations' nuclear-watchdog agency is looking into a report by Iranian dissidents that they have evidence of a secret new underground uranium-enrichment site in Iran, he said yesterday. Gen. Yukiya Amano, International Atomic Energy Agency director, said he does not know the full extent of Iran's nuclear program, and urged Tehran to come clean. "We are aware of this information [from Iranian dissidents] through media reports and we are now assessing this information," he told a news conference in Vienna. Iran has denied the reported enrichment site under a mountain near Qazvin, about 75 miles west of Tehran. --NY Post

* 9/15/10--President Obama won't be fasting this year for Yom Kippur, but if he has his way, tens of thousands of Jews will hear him speak during the high holidays. Last week, Obama asked a conference call of about 600 rabbis to preach his Mideast peace plan from the pulpit. He did the same thing last year, pressuring 1,000 rabbis to give campaign-style sermons promoting ObamaCare -- news that broke when one rabbi tweeted the highlights of their conference call. This year, the White House wised up. No, it didn't quit bullying the rabbis. It just made it clear: no more tweets. And this year Obama asked the rabbis to use their "deep moral authority" to stand up for Muslims' rights -- a not-so-veiled plea to promote the Ground Zero mosque in their holiday sermons. It's worth noting that plenty of the president's allies have defended the mosque by touting the separation of church and state. It's shameful that Obama is ignoring that counsel now. What's worse, of course, is that some of the rabbis will probably do the president's bidding. As he noted during remarks defending the mosque: "This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable." That cuts both ways, Mr. President.--NY Post Editorial

* 9/16/10--The defeat industry is back at work again, with the usual suspects acting as a chorus calling for an American retreat in the face of Islamist terror. Five years ago, the same cast of characters was calling for retreat from Iraq, abandoning that country to al Qaeda and its allies. The argument, according to Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was that America, having already lost the war, had better acknowledge defeat and run away. Those who wanted to appear more sophisticated, like then-Sen. Joe Biden, recommended that the United States carve up Iraq into three or five mini-states and then withdraw. At the time, those of us who knew what was going on inside Iraq rejected those calls for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. Our argument was that the Iraqi people didn't want al Qaeda and its allies and that America had a duty to help them defeat their enemies, who also happened to be the enemies of the United States. At the time, the man in the White House was prepared to ignore the siren song of defeatism. He also had a general in the field who knew how to win this new type of war. Today, the arguments used to prepare public opinion for a cowardly surrender in Afghanistan are the same.... President Obama says that victory can't be the objective in Afghanistan. He is confused by his belief that victory means an emperor surrendering to an American general. In war, however, victory means nothing less and nothing more than achieving one's objectives. The man who was in the White House in 2001 set two objectives for the war in Afghanistan: to destroy the bases of international terror and to make sure that that faraway country doesn't become a haven for Islamist terror again. By 2003, the first objective had been achieved. The second, however, remains. Success requires the establishment of a stable system of government based on the freely expressed will of the Afghan people.
Toward that objective, millions of Afghans are preparing to go to the polls next week to elect a new 249-seat parliament with more than 2,600 candidates representing a wide political spectrum.--Amir Taheri, NY Post

* 9/16/10--Michelle Obama thinks being America’s First Lady is ‘hell’, Carla Bruni reveals today in a wildly indiscreet new book. Miss Bruni reveals that Mrs Obama replied when asked about her position as the U.S. president’s wife: ‘Don’t ask! It’s hell. I can’t stand it!’ Details of the private conversation, which took place at the White House during an official visit by Nicolas Sarkozy last March, emerged in Carla And The Ambitious, a book written in collaboration with Miss Bruni.--Dailymail.co.uk

* 9/16/10--US foreclosure activity rose in August from the previous month, and banks and lenders took ownership from homeowners at a record pace, according to a new report released Thursday. Bank repossessions, often the final step in the foreclosure process after a home fails to sell at auction, increased about 3 percent from the month before to 95,364, a record high. -cnbc.com

* 9/16/10--From the administration that brought you "man-caused disaster" and "overseas contingency operation," another terminology change is in the pipeline. The White House wants the public to start using the term "global climate disruption" in place of "global warming" -- fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is. White House science adviser John Holdren urged people to start using the phrase during a speech last week in Oslo, echoing a plea he made three years earlier. Holdren said global warming is a "dangerous misnomer" for a problem far more complicated than a rise in temperature. The call comes as Congress prepares to adjourn for the season without completing work on a stalled climate bill. The term global warming has long been criticized as inaccurate, and the new push could be an attempt to re-shape climate messaging for next year's legislative session. "They're trying to come up with more politically palatable ways to sell some of this stuff," said Republican pollster Adam Geller, noting that Democrats also rolled out a new logo and now refer to the Bush tax cuts as "middle-class tax cuts." He said the climate change change-up likely derives from flagging public support for their bill to regulate emissions. He said the term "global warming" makes the cause easy to ridicule whenever there's a snowstorm. "Every time we're digging our cars out -- what global warming?" he said. "(Global climate disruption is) more of a sort of generic blanket term, I guess, that can apply in all weather conditions." But Republicans predicted that re-branding the issue would have limited effect on the legislative effort. GOP strategist Pete Snyder said he doubts the term is going to change hearts and minds. "Are they going to change the name of weathermen to disruption analysts?" he quipped. GOP lawmakers already exploited a terminology change of their own by re-branding the "cap-and-trade" bill as "cap-and-tax." Holdren's "global climate disruption" isn't the most convoluted term to grace the climate debate, however. According to the NASA article, early studies on the impact humans had on global climate referred to the relationship as "inadvertent climate modification."--Foxnews.com

* 9/16/10--The state of Texas today sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a federal appeals court in Washington DC, claiming four new regulations imposed by the EPA are based on the 'thoroughly discredited' findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and are 'factually flawed,' 1200 WOAI news reports. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the rules are illegal and if imposed, will cost Texans in higher energy costs and tens of thousands of lost jobs. "The state explained that the IPCC, and therefore the EPA, relied on flawed science to conclude that greenhouse emissions endanger public health and welfare," Abbott said. "Because the Administration predicated its Endangerment Finding on the IPCC's questionable facts, the state is seeking to prevent the EPA's new rules, and the economic harm that will result from these regulations, from being imposed on Texas employers, workers, and enforcement agencies." The IPCC has become the target of criticism from other climate scientists, with numerous revelations of sloppy research, junk science, and allegations of cronyism, lack of transparency, and attempts to suppress contradictory opinions in the research which contributed to the IPCC's 2007 findings. "The IPCC had the objectivity, reliability, and propriety of its scientific assessments called into question after a scandal erupted late last year," Abbott said. One of the rules imposed by the EPA would extend clean air regulations to the tailpipes of personal cars and trucks, but Abbott says the pollutants which the EPA aims to restrict by this rule aren't even found in internal combustion vehicles. One of the rules, the so called 'Tailoring Rule,' would require that all Texas clean air regulations be 'tailored' to match federal rules by January 2, 2011, or the US EPA will impose it's rules on Texas. "Today's court filings challenge the EPA's attempts to ignore federal law, impose their federally mandated deadlines and force Texas to spend millions of dollars advancing the Administration’s regulatory agenda," Abbott said.--woai.com

* 9/17/10--WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is putting the kibosh on an effort to extend tax cuts for people in the top income bracket -- despite an intense campaign from moderate Democrats to continue all the Bush tax cuts. Pressed yesterday on whether she would accept a temporary extension of tax cuts for couples earning more than $250,000, Pelosi replied, "Not for the wealthy, no." Pelosi said she was willing to listen to other Democrats who have different ideas, "But I see no justification for going into debt to a foreign country to underwrite and subsidize tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America." She said that at the end of the day, "the extension of the Obama middle-income tax cuts will take place," but wouldn't commit to a vote before the elections on extending the cuts. Pelosi made her comments just hours after getting a letter from 31 House Democratic lawmakers who argued that "raising any taxes right now could negatively impact economic growth." --NY Post

* 9/17/10--In a large step forward, the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) cleared a procedural hurdle when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday voted to move the measure ahead for consideration by the full Senate. Russia and the U.S. signed the treaty on April 8, agreeing to drastically cut back their nuclear weapons arsenal. The committee voted 14-4 in favor of the treaty. The final vote by the full Senate is expected after the Nov. 2 midterm elections. Republican lawmakers had expressed concerns the new agreement would diminish the ability of the U.S. to develop anti-missile defense systems. “This treaty in no way does or will constrain our ability to modernize our nuclear enterprise,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last month, addressing critics of the arrangement. Ratification by the Senate and Russian parliament had been stalled amid a continued squabble between the two sides about U.S. plans to install missile defense facilities in formerly communist Eastern Europe. The previous treaty expired last December.--NEWSCORE

* 9/17/10--Well, well, well, it looks as if Barack Obama's ban on deepwater drilling is actually inflicting pain in shallow waters, too. Thanks to new regulations from the land of czars, shallow-water drilling -- which constitutes the bulk of offshore drilling in the Gulf -- has come to a near-screeching halt. "The pace at which regulators grant drilling permits in water less than 500 feet deep has slowed sharply this summer," according to the Associated Press. "Just four out of 10 shallow-water drilling applications have been approved from June through August; 15 applications were sought and approved in the same period last year." Oil executives say the new rules are not only costing companies millions but are also leading to layoffs. Despite this, the administration released a report this week claiming that there is "no evidence of declining employment after the moratorium was announced." According to the Obama mind-trickers, these are not the unemploids you're looking for. Jobs notwithstanding, the feds aren't budging, and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement head Michael Bromwich stated, "We will not approve applications until and unless they fully comply with the new requirements." On the other hand, Bromwich said that "it is highly unlikely the moratorium will be extended" after it expires in November. Finally, Obama's ban doesn't apply to the Mexican state oil company PEMEX, to which the U.S. Export-Import Bank is guaranteeing $1 billion in loans to support drilling operations. Bank spokeswoman Maura Policelli claims past loans to PEMEX have "helped create or sustain" American jobs. That's little consolation to Gulf workers facing job losses as Obama hand-ties private U.S. oil companies while funding Mexico's government-run counterpart.--Patriot Post Digest

* 9/17/10--The Los Angeles City Controller said on Thursday the city's use of its share of the $800 billion federal stimulus fund has been disappointing. The city received $111 million in stimulus under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) approved by the Congress more than year ago."I'm disappointed that we've only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million," says Wendy Greuel, the city's controller, while releasing an audit report. "With our local unemployment rate over 12% we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work,” she added. According to the report, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works generated only 45.46 jobs (the fraction of a job created or retained correlates to the number of actual hours of work) after receiving $70.65 million, while the target was 238 jobs. Similarly, the city’s department of transportation, armed with a $40.8 million fund, created only 9 jobs in place of an expected 26 jobs.The audit says the numbers were disappointing due to bureaucratic red tape, absence of competitive bidding for projects in private sectors, inappropriate tracking of stimulus money and a laxity in bringing out timely job reports. “While it doesn’t appear that any of the ARRA funds were misspent, the City needs to do a better job expediting the process--ibtimes.com

* 9/17/10--(CBSNews.com) To listen to President Obama, you'd think we were in the grip of a never-ending hostage crisis. In sixteen speeches, statements and interviews this year, including his State of the Union address, he has decried the hostage-taking of one issue or another:

MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUT EXTENSIONS: "So let me be clear to Mr. Boehner and everybody else: We should not hold middle-class tax cuts hostage any longer." -Speech on the Economy, Parma, Ohio, 9/3/10

AID TO SMALL BUSINESS: "Simply put, holding this bill hostage is directly detrimental to our economic growth." Statement on the Economy. -The Rose Garden. 8/30/10

VETERANS PROGRAMS: "...to sign advanced appropriations into law so that veterans health care will never again be held hostage to the budget battles of Washington." -Address to Disabled Veterans of America, Atlanta, 8/2/10

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS: "While a majority of Senators support taking these steps to help the American people, some are playing the same old Washington games and using their power to hold this relief hostage - a move that only ends up holding back our recovery. It doesn't make sense." -Weekly Address, 7/3/10

IMMIGRATION REFORM: Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing and special-interest wrangling..." -and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics. -Speech at American University School of International Service, 7/1/10

HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM: "For too long, we've been held hostage to an industry that jacks up premiums and drops coverage whenever they please. Those days are coming to an end." Address to American Nurses Association, 6/16/10

NOMINATIONS: "The confirmation of well-qualified public servants shouldn't be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual senators." State of the Union Address, 1/27/10.

ENERGY POLICY: "The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century. We are not going to move backwards. We are going to move forward." Speech at Carnegie-Mellon University, 6/2/10

* 9/18/10--The so-called DREAM Act would create an official path to Democratic- voter registration for an estimated 2 million college-age illegal aliens. Look past the public-relations-savvy stories of "undocumented" valedictorians left out in the cold. This isn't about protecting "children." It's about preserving electoral power through cap-and-gown amnesty. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this week that he's attaching the DREAM Act to the defense-authorization bill. With ethnic activists breathing down his neck and President Obama pushing to fulfill his campaign promise to Hispanics, Reid wants his queasy colleagues to vote on the legislation next week. --Michelle Malkin

* 9/18/10--Criticism of President Obama’s appointment of Elizabeth Warren to oversee the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – the Dodd-Frank Act’s contribution to growing the federal bureaucracy – has focused on Obama’s end-run around the Senate confirmation process. By making Warren the White House czar for the CFPB instead of the agency’s director, Obama allows her to “effectively run the agency” (quoting the New York Times) while skirting both the Constitution’s requirement that “officers” of the federal government be confirmed by the Senate and the troubling questions about Warren’s anti-business bent that would inevitably have been part of her Senate confirmation hearings. While the President’s attempt to defeat the constitutional checks and balances provided by the confirmation process is troubling enough, Warren’s appointment as White House czar is undoubtedly also intended to defeat the checks and balances provided by Congressional oversight. Such oversight typically involves testimony by Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials before Congressional committees and the subpoenaing of agency documents. In sharp contrast, the Obama White House has made it clear that its czars cannot be compelled to testify before Congress and will not be allowed to testify voluntarily. Thus, Warren’s appointment guarantees that the powerful new CFPB will be largely exempt from the openness and transparency Obama promised for the entire government. That exemption will come in particularly handy for Obama if the GOP takes controls of either house of Congress in November, giving Republicans oversight authority as the CFPB begins its mischief-making next year. The late Senator Robert Byrd foresaw this problem in February 2009 when he wrote to Obama to express his concern about the President’s excessive use of czars...Under the terms of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Treasury Department, rather than a White House czar, should be running the CFPB until a director is named. But Obama got around that requirement by giving Elizabeth Warren a dual appointment as a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. While Congressional committees cannot compel Warren to testify in her capacity as an assistant to the President, Congress may argue that she can be so compelled in her capacity as a Geithner adviser. But don’t get your hopes up since executive privilege provides the Obama Administration with counterarguments. At the end of the day, Warren is likely to be as unaccountable as the President’s other czars, but with an added and dangerous twist. Obama’s use of White House czars to exempt long-established, largely stable agencies from transparency and accountability has been dangerous enough. But this latest attempt, aimed at shielding from accountability a brand new, poorly understood agency – one likely to be riddled with the mistakes and misjudgments found in any startup – is recklessly irresponsible.--redstate.com

* 9/19/10--WASHINGTON —President Obama's political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said. White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska. “We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks. --nytimes.com

* 9/19/10--DETROIT – Investment bankers handling the upcoming General Motors Co. stock sale are expected to court foreign investors as well as those in North America, according to a U.S. Treasury Department statement. GM and the Treasury Department would not comment Sunday on reports that the automaker is in talks with its current partner in China, SAIC, about buying a stake in the Detroit company. SAIC is owned by the Chinese government. The Treasury Department, in a statement issued late Friday, said investors in GM would be sought across "multiple geographies," with a focus on North America. The U.S. Treasury loaned GM about $50 billion to help it through bankruptcy protection last year. GM has repaid $6.7 billion. The rest of the bailout money was converted to a 61 percent government stake in the company. The government hopes to get the remaining $43 billion back with stock sales that could start in mid-November.--AP

* 9/19/10--Until recently, the implications of ObamaCare were debated in a vacuum. There were allegations and responses, but no results to support either side. Now that we have entered the implementation phase of ObamaCare, things are becoming more clear. Many of the bold promises that were offered to sell ObamaCare to the American public were not based in reality. Taxes increases hit Americans next year and, in many states, they are already seeing health insurance rates increase as a result of ObamaCare. In addition to the Obama Administration promising that insurance rates would not go up, they have also promised that rationing of care would not happen. But bad things seems to be happening sooner than expected and contrary to explicit promises of this Administration. This past August, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the late stage cancer drug Avastin be “de-labeled” because of cost considerations. It is critical to note, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not propose denying cancer victims the right to the drug because of the safety of the drug, but because of a formula containing cost as factor. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) has taken a leadership position on the issue and has written letters to the FDA and expressing concern about “cost rationing.” Senator Vitter is worried that the Avastin case will be the beginning of ObamaCare rationing for drugs that may extend life. Rationing for seriously ill patients based on cost. Should the FDA agree with the advisory panel’s recommendation, private insurers and Medicare will drop coverage for the drug for breast cancer patients, despite the fact that the drug extends life for an average of six months. This is a classic example of why many conservatives are concerned about government run health care. By using cost as a factor in their decision-making, the FDA has begun the implementation of ObamaCare and breast cancer patients may be its first victim. Politically, this is another disaster for those who voted for health care reform. If this drug, or any other, is denied because of cost, they will be forced to defend the decision. The FDA has put off a final decision for another 90 days on the future of the drug according to the AP.--redstate.com

* 9/20/10--President Obama promised that his health reform would "fix" our rising medical costs and a growing legion of uninsured Americans priced out of coverage. Fix it in which direction? Data out last week shows that the price of insurance is rising even faster than before, the number of uninsured Americans is spiraling upward, and the choices people have of doctors and health plans are being sharply constrained as a result. Welcome to ObamaCare, Year One. This is the change we should start believing in. The Obama team blames the recession or the "greedy" insurance industry for these ills. But managed-care firms are simply passing along ObamaCare's higher costs, and the recession can't account for all of these setbacks. The irony is Obama seems certain to run for re-election in 2012 in a country where far fewer people have health coverage than before he tinkered with the system, and those with insurance find themselves paying more money for less. If Democrats think the Obama health plan is hard to campaign on in this year's political cycle, just wait until the next election. --Scott Gotlieb, NY Post

* 9/20/10--At the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing last Thursday, Democrats passed a bill to require federal health officials to question anyone seeking services from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) community health centers or other programs about their sexual orientation and “gender identity.” Introduced by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), H.R. 6109 requires HHS to obtain, retain and analyze sexual identity information from patients who seek healthcare, including children. “This bill is about collecting data, no more, no less,” Baldwin said. According to Baldwin, the current “lack of cultural competency” among federal officials means that “we are left with gaping holes in our knowledge on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) policy” resulting in “significant health disparities.” Baldwin is the first openly-declared lesbian elected to Congress. The new bill’s requirements would apply to all HHS health service programs, requiring the health service employees to ask everyone receiving services their sexual orientation and gender identity -- including those that focus on children at school-based health centers. Children who seek help at government-funded school health clinics would be asked whether or not they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or if they know their gender identity. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), top Republican on the committee, said the legislation was grossly intrusive. “For the life of me I do not see any reason at all to do this bill,” Barton said. “It would require any individual who seeks services from any program offered by HHS to answer questions about their sexual orientation and gender identity. While I assume most adults understand and know what that is, it is inconceivable that a child in a program would even know what some of the terms mean.” Of course, Democrats voted the bill out of committee with 12 Democrats voting yes and 10 Republicans voting no. Democrats were light on the vote due to absences from several members, including Rep. Zach Space (D-Ohio) who hastily exited the hearing room when the bill was called up for consideration. Why not just vote "no" on the bill, Mr. Space?--humanevents.com

* 9/20/10--Discussion of the US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty -- a k a New START -- has so far pretty much skipped one very important consideration: China. In the run-up to last week's committee vote to send the treaty to the floor for ratification this fall, senators quite rightly debated whether New START overly restrains US missile-defense options, has weak verification procedures, cuts too many US missiles or warheads (relative to Russian reductions) or might affect nuclear North Korea and near-nuclear Iran. But lawmakers haven't yet fully faced the problem that, as we build down our strategic nuclear forces (by some 20 percent under New START) in the White House's hopes that others will disarm, China is involved in a strategic buildup. So, before there's any final vote on an arms-control pact that would endure for the next 10 years, it'd be wise to give some thought to Beijing's burgeoning bevy of bombs.--Peter Brookes, NY Post

* 9/21/10--President Obama, at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute last week, omitting the phrase “by their Creator” after the word “endowed” when quoting the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. (Long Pause) Endowed with certain inalienable rights: life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--townhall.com

* 9/21/10--NEW YORK, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce on Tuesday a U.S. contribution of more than $50 million toward providing clean cooking stoves in developing countries to reduce deaths from smoke inhalation and fight climate change.

* 9/21/10--WASHINGTON -- Less than two months before the elections, a stunning 61 percent of likely voters want to repeal this year's health-care law, a new poll yesterday revealed. The strong signal of opposition is the highest since May in the poll, by Rasmussen Reports, as the White House plans to refocus attention on health reform. Of that total, 50 percent strongly favor repeal of the sweeping health legislation, while 11 percent somewhat favor it. Only 33 percent strongly or somewhat oppose repeal.--NY Post

* 9/21/10--The Senate today mustered only 56 votes - four short of the necessary 60 - to break a filibuster and bring to a vote a defense appropriations bill containing two highly controversial provisions: (1) a measure repealing the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (a Clinton-era policy) that permits gays to serve in the military only if they are not openly gay, and (2) the DREAM Act, which permits illegal aliens to earn citizenship either by military service or enrollment in college. Leaving aside Harry Reid (who voted against cloture for procedural reasons*), the opposing votes included all present Republicans as well as Arkansas’ two Democratic Senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. The DADT vote was the headliner, and the subject of much anguish among liberals/progressives and their Hollywood allies who see ending DADT as a key unfulfilled Obama campaign promise. But the fact is, the Democratic leadership was never serious about using this vote to overturn DADT....Anyway, by offering two separate cultural flashpoints in the same bill, the Democrats guaranteed an out to any Republican - or Democrat - who wanted to vote against the bill.--redstate.com

* 9/21/10--WASHINGTON -- A "deeply disappointed" supporter put President Obama on the grill yesterday at a town-hall meeting, telling him that he hasn't lived up to hopes, that she's grown exhausted defending him and that she is fearful about returning to the "hot dogs-and-beans era" of her life because he's not helping the financially strapped middle class. "I've been told that I voted for a man who said he's going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I'm one of those people, and I'm waiting, sir," Velma Hart told Obama. "I'm waiting. I don't feel it yet," the mom and Army Reserve veteran continued. "And I thought, while it wouldn't be in a great measure, I would feel it in some small measure." Hart, the chief financial officer for the veterans group AMVETS, was among the roomful of businesspeople pressing Obama for answers at a televised town hall in Washington sponsored by CNBC. Hart lives with her husband, Karlton, who works as a facilities administrator at DC's Verizon Center, and their two teenage daughters in suburban Maryland. Yesterday she said she feels their middle-class lifestyle slipping away. "I'm also a mother. I'm a wife. I'm an American veteran, and I'm one of your middle-class Americans. And, quite frankly, I'm exhausted," she said. "I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now." "I have two children in private school. The financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family," Hart said. "My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs-and-beans era of our lives. But, quite frankly, it is starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we are headed again." Hart concluded, "Quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly: Is this my new reality?" Obama responded: "As I said before, times are tough for everybody. So, I understand your frustration." He insisted that the policies he has already implemented, including more college scholarships and consumer protections against credit-card and mortgage companies, will help the Hart family. Obama said Hart represented the "bedrock of America." "The life you describe -- one of responsibility, looking after your family, contributing back to your community -- that's what we want to reward," Obama said. Last night, Hart told The Post that she was not completely satisfied with Obama's answer. She complained that he didn't say whether these tough times are a "new reality" or just temporary. "He didn't answer that," she said. "That was the heart of my question. Like most Americans, fear is starting to take hold, anxiety is taking hold. "You can have all the hope in the world, but it has to be backed by action. It's been a long time since I had to make decisions about grocery purchases," she said.... She wasn't the only one at the meeting who challenged the president. "There aren't jobs out there right now," said Ted Brassfield, 30, a recent law-school grad. He praised Obama for inspiring his generation in 2008 but said that feeling is dying. "Is the American dream dead for me?" he asked. "Absolutely not," Obama replied. "What we can't do, though, is go back to the same old things that we were doing because we've been putting off these problems for decades." Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge-fund manager and a Harvard Law classmate of Obama, spoke on behalf of Wall Street, saying: "We have felt like a piñata. Maybe you don't feel like you're whacking us with a stick, but we certainly feel like we've been whacked with a stick." Obama shot back, "I think most folks on Main Street feel like they got beat up on." --NY Post

* 9/22/10--President Obama rejected all the proposals from his military advisors last year when debating a new policy for the war in Afghanistan and instead designed his own strategy, according to a new book. Obama was deeply frustrated with his uniformed staffers - especially Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus, then the head of all US operations in the region - because they reportedly would only offer options with troop levels the president didn’t want. Petraeus felt isolated by the administration and, after imbibing a glass of wine, he told his aides that the White House was, "f—ng with the wrong guy," according to the Washington Post, which obtained an advance copy of journalist Bob Woodward’s new tome, "Obama’s Wars." National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones grew so distrustful of the president’s political aides that he began calling them, "the water bugs," the "Politburo" and the "Mafia," the paper said. Obama eventually decided to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan -10,000 less than his military advisors wanted - and set a timetable for leaving the country.--NY Post

--President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in " Obama's Wars" to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives. "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room." Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars." Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger." --Washington Post

* 9/22/10--WASHINGTON -- The cherished American Dream has become little more than pie in the sky to a large group of Americans dejected by the tough economy. Asked whether the American Dream -- defined as "if you work hard, you'll get ahead" -- still applies, a depressing 43 percent said it once held true, but no longer does, according to a new ABC News/Yahoo News poll. --NY Post

* 9/22/10--The nation's top counterterrorism officials were blunt. The threat from within---of Americans willing to commit terrorist acts--- is growing. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a congressional hearing today that a spike in recent terrorism cases is direct evidence of the evolving threat. "Groups affiliated with al Qaeda are now actively targeting the United States and looking to use Americans or Westerners who are able to remain undetected by heightened security measures," Mueller said. "It appears domestic extremism and radicalization appears to have become more pronounced based on the number of disruptions and incidents." Mueller appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and National Counterterrorism Chief Michael Leiter.--abcnews.go.com

* 9/23/10--WASHINGTON -- Republicans in Congress will unveil a 21-page "Pledge to America" today, vowing to uphold the most basic fiscal principles of their party. "The need for urgent action to repair our economy and reclaim our government for the people cannot be overstated," they write in the introduction. They list their priorities as stopping "job-killing" tax hikes and reducing taxes on small businesses. In fact, small businesses would be exempted from mandates included under the Democratic health-care program. In terms of cutting spending, Republicans say they want to "repeal and replace" the health-care bill. They would also roll back federal spending to 2008 levels and place strict budget caps to limit future federal spending growth. The Republicans promise to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-overseen agencies widely blamed for dangerously inflating the housing bubble. Members of Congress would be required to have at least three days to read a bill before voting on it. Republicans left out of their blueprint any heavy reference to lightning-rod social issues that often bring out their conservative base but also offend more socially moderate fiscal conservatives. Similar to the 1994 Contract with America, which helped Republicans win control of Congress, the Pledge to America aims to capitalize on the widespread dissatisfaction with Democrats and President Obama.--NY Post

* 9/24/10--WASHINGTON -- The Senate will not vote on renewing the George W. Bush-era tax cuts before the elections, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday. "Democrats believe we must permanently extend tax cuts for the middle class before they expire at the end of the year, and we will," spokesman Jim Manley said in an e-mail. "Unfortunately, to this point we have received no cooperation from Republicans to do so." The Senate will come back after its recess for the November elections to address the issue, he said. Democrats want low tax rates extended only for the first $200,000 of personal income, or the first $250,000 of household income.--Reuters

* 9/25/10--President Obama's approval rating hit an all-time low of 42 percent--and more voters now say they value the endorsement of the Tea Party than the president, a new CNN poll found yesterday.--NY Post

* 9/25/10--A testy U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday blamed clueless voters with short attention spans for the uphill battle beleaguered Democrats are facing against Republicans across the nation. “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday. Conservative political blogger William Jacobson, who writes Legal Insurrection, immediately pounced on Kerry’s comments, saying that attitude is why voters are looking to shake up Capitol Hill by electing upstart candidates such as U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. “It just continues the Democrats’ theme that the reason people are upset is because they don’t understand. They’re not smart enough. That sort of rhetoric just gets people even more upset,” said Jacobson--bostonherald.com

* 9/26/10--Democrats found time to bring a comedian to Capitol Hill, but refuse to have a vote on preventing tax increases at the end of the year, House Minority Leader John Boehner said Sunday, lamenting Congress' plan to skip a vote on extending Bush-era tax cuts before adjourning for campaign season. Boehner, R-Ohio, who appeared with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on "Fox News Sunday," said he wants House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold a "fair and open debate" on tax rates because he's confident a bipartisan majority would vote to continue current levels for all tax brackets, which would bring some certainty about the economy for the coming year. "Washington is spending more time with comedians than debating (our) economic future," Boehner said, referring to comedian Stephen Colbert's mocking testimony of the House on Friday. "They have time to bring a comedian to Washington, D.C., but they don't have time to end the uncertainty. "If we leave here this week and adjourn for the election without passing tax cuts, this will be the most irresponsible thing we've seen," Boehner said. McCarthy said uncertainty about next year's tax rates will result in capital left on the sidelines, 1.2 million more lost jobs and $7 billion more in federal waste. "She's afraid," McCarthy said of Pelosi. "She's got 37 Democrats in her own party that say they want to extend" tax cuts for all brackets. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who appeared separately on the same show, said he doubts Democrats will schedule a vote on tax cuts before they depart, most likely at the end of the week, because "the Senate has refused to move forward on this issue."--foxnews.com

* 9/26/10--MANILA, Philippines – The U.S. government said Sunday it made an "honest mistake" when it displayed an inverted Philippine flag — which wrongfully signified that the Southeast Asian nation was in a state of war — in a meeting hosted by President Barack Obama. The Philippine flag was displayed upside down behind President Benigno Aquino III when leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met Obama in New York on Friday. "This was an honest mistake," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Rebecca Thompson said in a statement, adding, "the U.S. treasures its close relationship and close partnership with the Philippines." The American embassy will find out how the "unfortunate" incident happened, she said.--AP

* 9/28/10--Washington - A large majority of independent voters now gives President Obama lousy marks for the job he's doing and also disapproves of his health plan, new surveys reveal. Obama's job-approval rating has dropped to an anemic 31 percent among independents, compared to a dismal 69 percent disapproval, according to a new poll by Harris Interactive. The steep drop in independent support is a blow to Obama, who won independents by a margin of 52 to 44 in the 2008 election. It could prove to be damaging to congressional Democrats who captured marginal districts. The opposition from independents is "issue driven," said Harris Poll Director Regina Corso. "And until they see positive economic signs, it's not likely President Obama will see positive ratings from them." In another poll, by Politico/George Washington University Battleground, independent voters disapprove of Obama's health-care plan, 54 to 38 percent. --NY Post

* 9/28/10--...Whatever else you think of Democrats, they are lousy amateur sociologists and political scientists. Whenever the public rejects them, it's a "temper tantrum," in late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings' term for the 1994 electoral rout. Liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has teed up that tried-and-true explanation for this fall: "The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats." Obama has his own theory of voter irrationality. In his view, if only economic conditions were stronger, reasonable people would be Obama-supporting secularists with liberal mores. During the 2008 primaries, he infamously explained that people in rural areas who weren't supporting him were clinging to guns and religion because of the poor economy. He has attributed misgivings about Islam to economic anxieties. It's the all-purpose explanation for any public sentiment that discomfits liberals. Not far behind is the plaint that "the system" is broken so people are understandably frustrated by the "pace of change." The New Republic profiles "disillusioned" Obama adviser David Axelrod and explains that he's despairing over a "ferociously stubborn, possibly irredeemable system." This is the same system through which Democrats forced a historic $800 billion stimulus bill, a historic health-care law and a historic financial-regulation bill -- as well as lesser stimuli and government takeovers. To borrow President Obama's well-worn metaphor, the Democrats found the fiscal car in the ditch and proceeded to hit the accelerator. Republican Rep. Mike Pence likes to point out that the annual deficit figures for much of the Bush administration have now become monthly deficit figures. The public's reaction against the debt and the manifest failure of the stimuli should be easily understandable on its own terms. If John Kerry's prognosis has any force, it applies to the dew-eyed Obama supporters who bought the fairy tale two years ago and won't bother to show up at the polls in November. These so-called surge voters, many of them young people, are exactly the ones who believed what Kerry calls "simple slogans" -- "hope and change," "yes, we can," "we're the ones we've been waiting for" and other timeless gems of vapid marketing. When the late Democratic Sen. Mo Udall ran for president in 1976, he commented after one primary loss, "The voters have spoken . . . the bastards." That's a great line, but a poor message for a political party.--Rich Lowry, nationalreview.com

* 9/29/10--Officials in the United States and Europe have been warned that terrorists are planning a series of major coordinated attacks, it was reported yesterday. US law-enforcement officials said cells were preparing "Mumbai-style" attacks on targets in Britain, France, Germany and, possibly, America, ABC News said. The information was provided by a recently captured German terrorist who said that several teams of al Qaeda thugs had been sent from training camps in Pakistan with European passports, the report said. France yesterday evacuated the Eiffel Tower for the second time in as many weeks after a bomb threat was called in. It was deemed a false alarm. --NY Post

* 9/29/10--Facing the prospect of losing the House and Senate, national Democrats have their fudge factory working overtime. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts is the latest to pitch an excuse for the dismal November landscape, offering an idea best summarized as, "It's the stupid people, stupid." Here's what he said: "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." This is standard fare at elite salons, which hold that dissenters from liberal orthodoxy don't have legitimate positions. Opponents are either irrational or venal. Kerry has charitably chosen a variation on irrational, which is that the majority of Americans are too dumb to understand the liberal vision for their lives. Others have been less kind, with one Washington Post writer likening voters to children, saying they are having a "temper tantrum" and holding "their breath until they turn blue." These explanations for the public mood are part of the parade of excuses for why President Obama is so unpopular and polarizing. When they get tired of saying everything is George Bush's fault, the apologistas variously blame congressional Republicans, independents, the media, the Supreme Court, insurance companies, doctors, banks, Wall Street traders and life itself. A few inconsolables blame military leaders, and one friendly pundit had a unique answer: Obama needs new speechwriters. That's an unkind cut for a man who seems to do little but give speeches. All of which indicates the factory is running out of fudge. We'll know that's the case when the blame falls on the last possible villain: His TelePrompTers. When it's all their fault, it's game over. --Michael Goodwin, NY Post

* 9/29/10--...It's odd, to put it mildly, that the veep chose to go to New Hampshire on Monday and declare that Democrats disappointed with the president should "buck up" and "stop whining." Vice presidents are at times tasked with issuing direct broadsides against enemies while the top guy stays above the fray. But never before has a vice president served as an attack dog against his own party's voters. One might have chalked up these wild words to Biden's propensity to speak incautiously. But then Rolling Stone released excerpts of an interview conducted 11 days ago with Obama in which the president said almost exactly the same thing: "People need to shake off this lethargy," he insisted. "People need to buck up." He went on to offer a prospective denunciation of anyone who'd voted for him in 2008 but might fail to turn out to vote in congressional races in 2010: "It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election." Even worse, the president was promising he'd judge such "irresponsible" people harshly when it came to their seriousness of purpose: "If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them -- even if their employees have it right.--John Podhoretz, NY Post

* 9/29/10--WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.-gallup.com

* 9/29/10--"Democrats seeking to boost voter turnout this fall are beginning to sound like the late comedian Chris Farley's portrayal of a 'motivational speaker' on Saturday Night Live. Farley's character sought to inspire young people by announcing that they wouldn't amount to 'jack squat' and would someday be 'living in a van down by the river.' ... This week President Obama chimed in with another uplifting message about the American electorate. Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that the tea party movement is financed and directed by 'powerful, special-interest lobbies.' But this doesn't mean that tea party groups are composed entirely of corporate puppets. Mr. Obama graciously implied that a small subset of the movement is simply motivated by bigotry. The President said 'there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the President.' The tea party is now supported by a third of the country in some polls. Perhaps advocates for smaller government shouldn't take Mr. Obama's comments personally. In the new Democratic attacks on the voting public, not even Democrats are spared. Vice President Joe Biden recently urged the party's base to 'stop whining' and 'buck up,' a message echoed by Mr. Obama in his Rolling Stone interview. The President ... added that 'if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place.' Making the case for left-wing voters to show up in November, Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that he is presiding over 'the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.' We'd agree, but his problem is that most Americans don't like that agenda and millions of voters in both parties wanted him to oversee an economic expansion instead. Blaming the voters is not unheard of among politicians, but usually they wait until after an election." --The Wall Street Journal (from the Patriot Post Chronicle)

* 9/29/10--A union chief wants the public to take over private business. Some speak for a generation. Trumka speaks for the intellectually and morally corrupt bloc on the left. ‘We need,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last week, “to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government. That’s a long-term job, but one we should start now.” Speaking last Friday in New York at a panel discussion, “Which Way for the Working Class? Elections 2010 and Beyond,” Trumka told a group of about 400 that organized labor had to “recapture the moment and take control of the national conversation.” Trumka is just one man. He’s not a public official and does not directly vote on government policy. But he does have influence. The AFL-CIO has more than 11 million members belonging to 56 unions. Millions will accept his Leninist creed as legitimate. Trumka speaks for a political bloc. What he said publicly is what most Democrats, modern liberals and self-identified progressives privately believe but won’t say in public. The political left wants to appear to be moderate, middle of the road. But its goals conflict with the founding principles of this country, principles that have brought freedom and prosperity never seen in human history. The political left wants to destroy this.--Investor's Business Daily