The stimulus package was one of the biggest crises driven, pay-to-play politics schemes in the history of this nation.  Our country already has an example of what works and what does not during a recession.  We can look back at the Great Depression and see that FDR’s actions of more government control/intervention and spending didn’t even begin to work until we began WWII, ramping up production of military equipment for other countries who were overspent.  Nothing that FDR did directly stimulated the economy and it took 8-9 years to get there.  Reagan, on the other hand, who was elected during another time of tremendous economic turmoil cut taxes, cut the size of government, and curtailed spending until we were out of the inflationary recession.  His actions even took time, but not as long as 9 years – more like 1-2.  This is what I do not understand?  Why do liberals think you can resolve your debt problems by spending more money that you don’t have – where is the common sense?

The same thing is bound to happen in this scenario once deflation runs its course.  There will be inflation and there is still the very real possibility that it could be hyperinflation – maybe not as high of a chance but still feasible given the volatility.  There are several estimates that the bond market is on the brink of imploding; if that happens it will take everything else down with it!  Sorry to be a negative Nancy but take a look at the below video clip – this guy is very intelligent:

Of course the administration wants to sell their little (and by little I mean massive) piece of legislation to the public to make it appear as though it’s working and that they didn’t just pay off their cronies for last year’s campaign contributions, ensuring more votes the next election cycle.  So the administration puts out a booklet marking the 100th day anniversary of the dreaded (to us fiscal conservatives) stimulus.  He of course touts it as the best thing since sliced bread, so whatever is stated as fact in that booklet should be checked and double checked.  Propaganda abounds in the Democrat party, that’s not to say that it doesn’t in the Republican party either, but I have not seen the likes of the indoctrination or the Pravda media campaign for the Dems since I was eligible to vote!

Without question the book lists many projects that are having an impact of one way or another on the economy.

But the first one of the projects featured in “100 Days, 100 Projects”  doesn’t seem to withstand the scrutiny of its description.

The project is described by the Obama administration this way:

“Using $27 million of Recovery Act funding, a public housing development in Washington, D.C., the Regency House, has undergone a green retrofit. As part of this upgrade, the building installed solar panels, a ‘green’ roof, a rainwater collection system, energy-efficient lighting as well as water conserving toilets, showerheads, and faucets. The greening of this building will allow the Regency House to save money in energy costs, while lessening their impact on the environment.”

In reality, the work done on the Regency House that was funded by the stimulus package amounted to $59,000 in parts and labor, according to Dena Michaelson, director of public affairs for the Washington DC Housing Authority.

The $27 million is the total amount given by the stimulus act to the Washington DC Housing Authority, the vast majority of which hasn’t been spent.

In addition, though the White House’s “100 Days, 100 Projects” entry for the Regency House work lists “solar panels, a ‘green’ roof, a rainwater collection system, energy-efficient lighting as well as water conserving toilets, showerheads, and faucets” as what was done as “part of the upgrade,” the only parts funded by the stimulus were the solar panels, at a cost of $45,000, and the rainwater collection system, at a cost of $14,000.

The response of the White House to questions about the claim in the book evoked a critique of journalists.

Liz Oxhorn, Recovery Act Press Secretary, said in a statement that the Regency House work is “one of thousands of targeted investments we’re making nationwide to jumpstart new and ongoing energy efficiency renovations to public housing units and we only wish the same amount of time and energy that has gone into dissecting the structure of three sentences had gone into exploring the billions of dollars in new job-creating projects like this one now underway thanks to the Recovery Act.”

Michaelson said that installation of the solar panels necessitated 330 total man hours: 202 man hours for plumbers and helpers, 40 man hours for electricians, 50 man hours for welders, 30 man hours for superintendents, and eight man hours for a crane operator.

The booklet also mentions the “police academy graduates in Ohio” whose graduation ceremony President Obama attended in March, heralding how the stimulus enabled the city of Columbus to hire 25 cadets.

But this week Police Chief Walter Distelzweig told the Columbus Dispatch that unless residents approve a tax increase, those 25 cadets face the real possibility of layoffs.

And what good does the stimulus have on jobs if they are willing to, in the future, tear down other sectors of the economy like energy/coal production, the auto industry, the financials, health care, etc.  Or what if they pass amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens in the fall – how much stimulus will we really have if we already have double digit unemployment, but we allow more in?  There is something inherentlywrong with the logic of all of this.

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Two of the latest corruption/fraud stories coming out of the media, ABOUT the media, are from the New York Slimes!

I realize that this is incredibly surprising to hear about one of the most reputable news organizations in existence today, but it is important to remember that it can happen to any of us…/sarc.

The New York Times has finally admitted that it “spiked” the ACORN/Obama corrupt association story.

Acknowledging what the blogosphere has known for weeks, the New York Times finally went on record to admit that just before last Election Day it killed a politically sensitive news story involving corruption allegations that might have made the Obama campaign look bad.

But the admission on Sunday, which came seven months after NYT staff reporter Stephanie Strom’s reporting about possibly illegal coordination between the Obama campaign and ACORN last year, took the form of a snarky column from Clark Hoyt, the Old Gray Lady’s “public editor.” Hoyt used the word “nonsense” to describe the allegations of impropriety leveled against ACORN and the Obama campaign.

When isn’t the NYT snarky and condescending?  It’s not like they have the country’s or the American citizens’ best interests at heart…

A little background:

The aborted story that gave rise to the Obama/ACORN controversy centers around information provided by Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN employee whom Hoyt acknowledges “fed information to Stephanie Strom of The Times for several articles on troubles within the group.” Apparently the information MonCrief provided was good.

We know this because Strom broke a number of important stories about ACORN and surely much of the information she used came from her trusted source Anita MonCrief. In July she reported that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from the group. She also reported that ACORN management covered up the embezzlement for eight years, withholding information even from ACORN’s national board.

The next month Strom reported that Tides Foundation founder Drummond Pike, a comrade-in-arms of liberal philanthropist George Soros, had personally covered what remained of Wade Rathke’s debt (the embezzler had agreed to a slow-as-molasses repayment plan that would have kept him in debt well into old age).

In September Strom reported on two ACORN national board members’ lawsuit aimed at forcing ACORN to provide financial documents regarding the embezzlement.

She followed up the next month with a story on ACORN’s efforts to sever its remaining ties with its founder. (Strom reported that Wade Rathke resigned as chief organizer of ACORN. In fact, Rathke was fired, as shown in the ACORN national board’s minutes of June 20, 2008, available at page 11 of the linked PDF file.)

The same month Strom wrote about an internal memo written by ACORN’s lawyer that alerted the group to potential legal problems related to its organizational structure.

But apparently MonCrief’s information was suddenly no good when it might have embarrassed the Obama campaign.

Heidelbaugh testified before a congressional committee in March that the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the Obama campaign sent ACORN its “maxed out donor list” and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group’s employees “to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

As if the withholding of a story that size during a presidential election wasn’t enough, there is also proof of plagiarism by one of NYT’s most prominent/famous columnists; Maureen Dowd.

It was a wild Sunday for New York Times columnist. It opened with her latest column in the newspaper, which closed by declaring that she had once opposed a wide-ranging probe of the uses of torture, and who authorized and knew about it, during the Bush administration but now favored it. This brought some praise liberal news sites and bloggers often critical of Dowd.

But by mid-afternoon she was on the hot seat for using a paragraph almost word-for-word from one of the most prominent liberal bloggers, Jost Marshall of Talking Points Memo, without attribution. Charges of “plagiarism” ensued.

By early evening, Dowd had admitted wrongdoing, in an email to Huffington Post, and said she wanted to apologize to Marshall. She also said that the Times would issue a correction tomorrow — and the copy was changed in her column to attribute the line of thought to Marshall.

She seemed to be suggesting, however, that she had merely heard the line of argument from a friend, who did not attribute it to Marshall. This wouldn’t explain, however, why the rather lengthy sentence, a full paragraph, matched Marshall’s writing virtually word for word.

Can I ask why this liberal rag is still in business or is used as a credible source?

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You don’t think there could be a reason she is hiding do you?  Could it be that she doesn’t want to be trapped in yet another lie or contradictions from previous recollections of her CIA briefings?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turned down invitations to be on several Sunday morning talk shows and is instead spending the weekend with her family.

The Speaker was invited to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to sources at the networks.

One source said Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be attending her granddaughter’s first communion in Phoenix on Sunday.

The Sunday morning talk show circuit is a traditional place to find politicians trying to recover from political missteps or trying to explain themselves after a week at the top of the news cycle. It can also give them a chance to set the agenda for the week ahead. A Sunday show appearance, with its in-depth, one-on-one interview format, gives politicians a chance to answer many questions on a specific topic, often resulting in a controversy being put to bed.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), for example, opted to go on the Sunday morning show circuit after his decision to switch parties, appearing on “Meet the Press” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” on May 3.

Am I buying the “communion?”  Nope!  Everyone knows that you go on the Sunday morning circuit if there are current events going on in which you are involved… As many of us already know, the controversies will not be put to bed because Nancy Pelosi is not smart enough to lie well and tends to put her foot in her mouth.  The fact that these lies are directed at the national intelligence community only hurts her more.

I think it might be time to find out the truth!

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We all knew that Ms. Piglosi was lying from the get go when new information came to light regarding who was privy to the CIA briefing about interrogation methods, namely waterboarding.  She came up with a Bill ‘Clintonesque’ to attempt to confuse anybody who can’t read or surf the net. 

She admitted the CIA briefed her and others on interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay prison.  BUT her excuse was she didn’t know that they would ACTUALLY use those methods on the terrorists.  She then asked what the definition of IS, is.

Most of us were not born yesterday, so it was obvious she was grasping at straws during her press conference.  However, there was no proof, only “he said, she said,” of the briefing; that is until the CIA released their briefing report yesterday.

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.

*EITs = Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

Human Events obtained the list of those who were briefed and privy to the interrogation techniques in 2002 – and not surprisingly, Democrat after Democrat is listed on this document:

• Nancy Pelosi
• John Rockefeller
• Harry Reid
• Dianne Feinstein
• Jane Harman
• Babs Mikulski
• John Murtha
• Adam Schiff
• Carl Levin
• Russ Feingold
• Evan Bayh
• Bob Graham

They are going to need another made up CRISIS to get out of this one!

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Frank the Tank suffers from another case of diarrhea of the mouth:

I say move as far to the left as possible Barney – this will ensure the change of power from liberals to conservatives in 2010 since progressives have horrible policy ideas and almost always overreach.

It’s also quite amusing that Barney Frank of all people is commenting on not being part of the Wall Street Democrats, the same Barney Frank who received the most money from the sub prime debacle and had corrupt dealings with Fannie and Freddie… Barney Frank seriously needs to consider seeing a psychiatrist ~ He is a pathological liar.

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The New York Times just like their uber-left counterparts care more about islamofascist terrorists than their own country and its citizens.

NYT also lied in an article last weekwhen describing the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  The NYT claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, which will become a typical liberal talking point when arguing about Gitmo detainees and interrogation methods.  Khalid was only waterboarded a total of 5 times.  Let me repeat that again, 5 times!  Each of those times is timed specifically which was defined by law in order to meet specific conditions that would not be considered torture.  There is also a physician on site when waterboarding is used.

The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The “183 times” was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed’s face — not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of “five sessions of ill-treatment.”

Our own soldiers have been trained and waterboarded more times than all the detainees combined.  Only 3 of the detainees were ever waterboarded and 2 of those were major leaders in the radical Islam movement who had valuable information.  That information was disclosed to us through waterboarding.  If these detainees were only waterboarded 5-10 times total imagine how easy it would be for them to train for that now.

“The water was poured 183 times — there were 183 pours,” the official explained, adding that “each pour was a matter of seconds.”

The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.

And again that would be 83 pours of water… entirely different than being waterboarded 83 times.  Each sessions consists of short and long pours of water and the specific time allotted per session was all laid out.

The Justice Department memos described the maximum allowed use of the waterboard on any detainee, based on tactical training given to U.S. troops to resist interrogations:

– Five days of use in one month, with no more than two “sessions” in a day;
– Up to six applications (something like a dunk) lasting more than 10 seconds but less than 40 seconds per session;
– 12 minutes of total “water application” in a 24-hour period

These lying Democrats have now put our country at incredible risk and have given our enemies plenty of ammo and ability to train and be more difficult to glean information from.  As an FYI to the peaceniks – people are evil, they are not all good in this world and there is nothing you can do to change that or control that even if you can’t understand that.  Sharing tea and crumpets with them will not resolve anything, nor will it keep your country safe.

Real American…./Sarc!  Hey NYT – did your article happen to mention that Khalid is the one who chopped off Daniel Pearl’s head?  I guess that’s acceptible to the likes of NYT… and the hypocrites on the far left.

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Barack Obama was unequivocal during the campaign: As president, he would recognize the nearly century-old massacre of Armenians in Turkey as genocide.

In breaking that promise Friday, the president did the same diplomatic tiptoeing he criticized the Bush administration for doing.

Like George W. Bush before him, Obama did not want to alienate vital ally Turkey by declaring the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians to be genocide — especially with Turkey and Armenia now exploring reconciliation.

Instead, he said he had not changed his view from the campaign, even as he declined to state it, and added: “My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”

In a statement on the anniversary of the start of the killings in 1915 — a day when U.S. presidents typically honor the Armenian victims — Obama said: “Each year, we pause to remember the 1.5 million Armenians who were subsequently massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”

The statement was less than the full and frank acknowledgment he promised Jan. 19, 2008, when he vowed that as president, “I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,” and repeatedly used the word.

The only president to fully recognize the first genocide of the 20th century has been Ronald Reagan. 

In a proclamation on April 22, 1981, Reagan stated,

“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it – and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples – the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”

Obama has become just the typical politician, playing to his own special interests and trying not to offend anyone in the name of political correctness and political expediency.  But as we have begun to see, he is actually offending a greater number of people as his term rolls on.

An excerpt from that 2008 campaign statement, one of several he released on the subject:

“I also share with Armenian Americans — so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors — a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history. As a U.S. Senator, I have stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide.

“Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term ‘genocide’ to describe Turkey’s slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary (Condoleezza) Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy.

“As a senator, I strongly support passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.106 and S.Res.106), and as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.”

Typical, just another broken campaign promise that many fell hook, line, and sinker for.  Just like those kids who ran for class president in high school ~ I’m still waiting for chocolate milk to replace water in the fountains…

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Many of us didn’t need anymore evidence to know that Barney Frank was a huge player, if not the main player, in the housing market meltdown that took place under his watch. His ineptitude or unwillingness to believe that there were problems with the housing market bubble, when he had the chance, prove this:

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The cat is out of the bag and Cheney did make a hand-written request to the CIA to release the entire documentation/memos of the detainee interrogations.

The White House and some CIA officials were denying that Cheney ever made that request, however, this documentation has been found and it appears that both the White House and the CIA members who were scared to go against the orders of the current Executive Branch lied to try and discredit Cheney so they could get away with only releasing the “torture.”

You can find Cheney’s hand-written request here.

Politico reported on this:

The form filed with the National Archives’ Presidential Libraries section on March 31 of this year shows that Cheney asked for declassification review of the two items from a folder called “detainees” within “OVP Cheney immediate office files.” The titles of the memoranda or reports were blacked out for classification reasons, however, one memo sought was dated July 13, 2004, and totaled eight pages, and another dated June 1, 2005, totals 13 pages.

Cheney filled out the request himself–it’s in his handwriting. The Archives later amended Cheney’s request to describe the two records simply as CIA reports (probably more vaguely than the ex-veep did). The archvists also upped the page counts to a total of 31.

I’m looking further at those dates to see whether we can identify the documents indpendently. However, June 1, 2005 seems to coincide with a time frame involving a lot of action surrounding the legal justifications for the interrogation program. One Justice Department memo released last week, finding the techniques did not constitute torture under international law, was issued on May 30, 2005, just a day before the document Cheney asked for.

National Archives officials said earlier this week that the request has been routed to the CIA for action.

POLITICO obtained Cheney’s request under the Freedom of Information Act.

UPDATE: The July 13, 2004, memo seems to coincide roughly with a meeting the CIA held with the so-called principals of the National Security Council to discuss the status of the interrogation efforts and perhaps to discuss a May 2004 report from the CIA’s inspector general on the program. The meeting was revealed in a chronology issued this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

UPDATE 2: Blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that the July 13 date is also the same as a CIA report called “Preeminent Source” about Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. The report is referenced in the same May 30, 2005 legal memo. So likely that’s one item Cheney was after.

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As we see here it was not just a handshake, it was a casual conversation with a man whom only a couple years ago called us an evil imperialist and had a seething hate towards the United States. This is perfect for the idealists who believe in Utopia and that all men are kind-hearted and value peace and equality, however, that is just not reality and meetings like this are detrimental to us as a nation. This was a casual meeting with no real understanding of what was said between the two (obviously no preconditions).

The reporter describes, in Spanish, the events surrounding their meeting and a brief, general description of the event and what took place between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, she does not have privy to, nor does she delve into the subject of what they may have discussed.

She spoke about the book that Hugo Chavez gave to Barack Obama, how this was the first time that the US head of state has met with Hugo Chavez and the first time there was a meeting so close in proximity of the two without security. She also said that they reassured their confidences in hopes to work together in the future and that the internal matters of the discussion were unknown as stated above. She also spoke about the reviews by the press and the journalists around the globe and their reaction to the meeting. She spoke about the handshake and the original photo that was taken before we caught word of the actual video clip of them having what appeared to be a “lengthy” discussion (can’t tell the real length).

Hugo Chavez will use this as a propaganda tool to lift his image and the appearance of strength and importance in his own country.  I also find it interesting that Obama is willing to work with and discuss matters with dictators like Hugo Chavez, the Castros, Ahmadinejad and Iran, who all work together, after what Ahmadinejad said today in regards to Israel.

Did Obama not know that he was being recorded? Why would his administration, again, feel the need to lie and say that it was only a handshake when it most obviously was not as we can see today. Something smells to high heaven.

For another great write-up on the matter of Cuba and Venezuela and Obama’s special interest ties and lack of leadership and foreign policy experience shining go here…

Canada, by contrast, is taking the lead. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his top priority at the Summit is to champion free trade, in line with the will of the region’s real democracies.

“Our focus for the Summit of the Americas will be about free trade and avoiding other countries moving back to protectionist measures,” Harper’s spokesman said. “Canada’s position is that we must not allow the impact of the (financial) crisis to reverse our hard-fought progress towards freer trade and investment.”

The region’s protectionists can be counted on one hand, and they just happen to be the same countries trying to ruin their own democracies — among them Venezuela, whose de facto dictator, Hugo Chavez, declared at the last summit in 2005 he would “bury” free trade of the Americas. With Obama failing to lead, he’s effectively handing Chavez the leadership, as well as a victory.

He’s also giving Cuba a victory, unilaterally loosening rules for remittances to the island, providing the bankrupt Castro dictatorship with an economic lifeline as well as a fresh pool of visitors to spy on, blackmail and potentially recruit.

Instead of taking a principled stance, Obama seems to be following the example of other countries in the region. The problem is that in letting the summit focus on his unrequited overture to Cuba, a non-democracy that isn’t even allowed to take part, he dumbs down the standards of democracy. That’s not leading.

Perhaps this lack of leadership is based on ignorance of history. Obama told CNN En Espanol: “There has always been a tradition of concern that the United States has been heavy-handed when it comes to foreign policy in Latin America. And that’s not something that just arose during the Bush administration. That’s something that dates back to the Monroe Doctrine and a long history of U.S. involvement in Latin America.”

Some history: President Bush was the first U.S. leader in decades to launch no military action on a Latin country. Not very “heavy handed.” In fact, his immigration plan showed he was a softie.

Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine was declared by President Monroe to protect Latin America’s infant democracies from European takeover, a real prospect in 1823. Obama’s double apology for that as Iran and Russia erect bases in the region is a bad signal to the region’s real democracies — and comfort for our foes.

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