Bankrupt Specter Campaign - Demand Full Refunds Of Your 1980-Present Donations

Donors demand refund from Specter
Political switch gets expensive as lawmaker's support shrinks

By S.A. Miller | Thursday, April 30, 2009

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/30/donors-demand-refund-from-specter/

Sen. Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party is prompting his campaign donors large and small to demand their money back, including several Republican senators whose political action committees gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Pennsylvania lawmaker.

Sen. Johnny Isakson didn't waste any time putting himself at the front of the refund line. The Georgia Republican asked Mr. Specter for a return of his leadership political action committee's $5,000 contribution Tuesday on the Senate floor - just hours after Mr. Specter announced he was changing his political stripes.

"Senator Specter readily agreed to return the contribution," said Isakson spokeswoman Sheridan Watson, adding that the exchange was cordial.

While not legally bound to refund any legitimate campaign donation, Mr. Specter has pledged to honor requests for refunds - and the requests are pouring in.

"That's the right thing for him to do and we will request a refund," said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. His fundraising committee, the Tenn PAC, had given $5,000.

Corrected paragraph: Other Republicans who are clawing back contributions include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who gave $10,000 through his Bluegrass Committee; Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), who gave $5,000 through his Alamo PAC; and Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who gave $5,000 through his Rock City PAC.

"They gave that money to elect a Republican. They did not give that money to strengthen [Democratic Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid's majority," NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh said. "I expect a lot of people will be looking to have their money returned."

Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Robert A. Gleason Jr. isn't satisfied with Mr. Specter returning campaign contributions on request. He wants the senator to return all of his campaign loot voluntarily.

Mr. Gleason told CNN that the new Democrat should "do the right thing and proactively return any and all campaign contributions he has received in recent months to run as a Republican in the upcoming election."

He also wants Mr. Specter to apologize to the state's Republicans for misleading them.

Mr. Specter, long considered among the more liberal Republicans in Congress, said he switched parities in part to avoid a formidable challenge from staunch fiscal conservative Pat Toomey in the Republican primary for the 2010 election.

Mr. Specter's political rebranding gives the Senate Democratic caucus 59 seats, including two independents, which is one vote shy of the 60 needed to break filibusters and ram President Obama's agenda through the chamber.

Mr. Obama, who was joined by Mr. Specter at a White House appearance Wednesday, lauded the new Democrat for his independence and "courage" in changing sides.

"I don't expect Arlen to be a rubber stamp," Mr. Obama said. "...I'm eager to receive his counsel and advice, especially when he disagrees."

Mr. Specter has vowed to remain fiercely independent and continue to oppose several of Mr. Obama's priorities, including the "card check" bill that would make it easier to unionize workplaces. He was one of four Democrats who voted against the Obama 2010 budget Wednesday afternoon in the Senate, which passed on a 53-43 vote.

Mr. Specter's party switch is not only costing him existing campaign cash, it could impede future fundraising as Republican contributors turn away and Mr. Specter's established stable of fundraisers could abandon the candidate, said a Republican campaign adviser.

"A lot of [the campaign staff] are probably as Republican as they are career Specter men," said the adviser, who did not want to be identified discussing his colleague's predicament. "Are they going to go work for Toomey or are they going to stay with him?"

Before the party switch, Mr. Specter had raised nearly $1.3 million since January and has $6.7 million in the bank for the 2010 race, according to first quarter campaign finance reports filed this month.

Mr. Specter retains a large pool of donors who are lobbyists and lawyers, groups that have been the financial backbone of his campaigns for decades. He also enjoys broad support among Pennsylvania Democrats.

Richard Ehst, Sovereign Bank's regional president for southeastern Pennsylvania, said he will not ask for a return of his $250 contribution to Mr. Specter.

"The man has behaved more like a Democrat than a Republican for years," Mr. Ehst said. "I think moving across the aisle might better define where his allegiances are."

• Christina Bellantoni contributed to this report.

Barack Peron Announces His Argentina-Style Chrysler Takeover By Rush Limbaugh

Source: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_043009/content/01125108.guest.html

April 30, 2009

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: In a few short minutes, the president of the United States, Barack Peron, will announce his Argentinean-like takeover of Chrysler. Yeah, we don't hear much about Juan Peron anymore, we hear about Evita. What's happening to Chrysler today the president's going to announce it according to the schedule in four minutes, right outta Juan Peron's playbook. Left-wing fascism coming out for Chrysler. Hey, folks, great to have you with us. It's EIB Network and El Rushbo at 800-282-2882.

I did not watch it last night. I did not watch the press conference last night. I've heard all about it. I've seen it, I didn't watch it. I had to veg last night. I got an hour-and-a-half of sleep the night before, and I went home, I watched a movie, I watched Lost, and then I crashed. I forgot the president was even on. I heard all about the enchanted question, and that's what happens with the feminization of our culture. There was a New York Times question, some enchanted question. Yeah, we've got the sound bites from it and so forth.

The Chrysler bankruptcy is going to be announced in mere moments, but that just sets the stage for what's coming. Now, it's being portrayed as a legal bankruptcy rather than a political one, but I'm not so sure.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There's the president now. He's announcing what's going to happen. We know what's going to happen. I'll tell you here in mere moments exactly what this is, as president Barack Peron announces what's going to happen to Chrysler. This bankruptcy today for Chrysler took place after how many billions of dollars in bailout money? What did we give Chrysler, 10 billion, 15 billion? I get them sometimes confused with General Motors. But the point is what does this prove? We gave them billions; we gave them multiple fortunes to bail Chrysler out, and what's happening today? It wound up in the same place. It didn't work! That was your money, folks, that's down the rat hole. That was your taxpayer dollars, whether it's today's dollars, printed dollars, taxed dollars tomorrow, or what have you, it's money from the private sector that's down the rat hole 'cause it didn't work. What this means is that the laws of economics cannot be changed. Liberalism is a failure.

The way to look at this today, the president announces what's happened to Chrysler, this is a huge Barack Obama failure. Well, actually, at the end of the day it's a dynamic success for Barack Obama. This is precisely what he wants to happen. The United Auto Workers ending up with majority control of this company. But in terms of the way he sold this, only the government can do this. Remember, only the government can save these companies. Only the government can save our economy, only the government. Well, this is on his head now. He set up the committee to prevent what's happening today, the bankruptcy of Chrysler. He set up the committee to prevent it. He supported billions of dollars to subsidize Chrysler so that this would not happen. Last night in the press conference he all but took credit for preventing this and yet today here it is happening, crashing down on his head. So, from the standpoint of what Barack Obama told the people of this country, this is a failure, from the standpoint of what he secretly always wanted to accomplish, it's a huge success. From the standpoint of telling us what he was going to do, this is gonna save the auto business, we had to do this, only the government could do it. It's not being saved, is it? Standard old bankruptcy is what's taking place right now, controlled by the government.

So this is a huge President Obama failure. We were told this was going to save Chrysler, and it hasn't. Now, you may be wondering, "Why are you calling him Barack Peron?" Well, I'll tell you, because this Chrysler deal is reminiscent of Peronism, Juan Peron of Argentina. It's classic, undiluted Juan Peronism. You intimidate lawful debt holders into surrendering their legitimate claims in a bankruptcy, i.e., the bondholders. The same thing is going to happen at General Motors. The bondholders, private sector investors have $27 billion in bonds, UAW has $10 billion in bonds, but the UAW is going to get 39% of General Motors. In the case of Chrysler I don't know what the breakdown is in terms of the bondholders, what percentage they own versus the union and its percentage of bonds, but the lawful debt holders, the private sector debt holders are being intimidated here into surrendering their legitimate claims in the bankruptcy because, it just can't work, it's good money after bad. We tried, we tried. We said, how many, 10, $15 billion. We tried. We failed. It didn't work. But we can't let this company go south; it's the auto industry, and so forth.


So, after you intimidate lawful bond debt holders, the bondholders into surrendering their legitimate claims in the bankruptcy -- by the way, to illustrate this again, during the beginning of this so-called crisis in the automobile sector, when bankruptcy was first suggested and proposed, do you remember what the initial rejection to it was? There were two. "Who's going to buy a car from a bankrupt company? Nobody's going to do that. Plus the bondholders would get killed. The company wouldn't survive the bankruptcy and the bondholders, the private sector would get killed," remember? That's what happens in a bankruptcy, you're basically telling your creditors (blowing a raspberry), "We're outta here, we're going to reorganize. You may get some back but certainly not all of it." So that is what precisely has happened here. The lawful debt holders have been intimidated into surrendering their legitimate claims in a bankruptcy. The next thing you do, right out of the pages of Juan Peron, you force state-owned banks -- and we have state-owned banks, don't we, now? Notice the bankruptcy is happening after the bank takeovers, after nationalization of a certain percentage of some banks. Isn't it interesting the timing here? So you force state-owned banks -- you don't have to force them because they're yours anyway -- and these state-owned banks, and they're the big lenders to Chrysler over the years, you force them to give up most of their claims in a bankruptcy, 'cause you gotta save the company. I mean, that's the bottom line, gotta save the company for America.

Then after you have forced the lawful debt holders to surrender their claims and the state-owned banks, the big lenders, to give up most of their claims in a bankruptcy, then what do you do? You hand the company to your union allies. Fifty-five percent of Chrysler today will be owned by the United Auto Workers. Now, many Americans do not recognize this pattern, because we don't see this pattern in this country. This method of bankruptcy and of saving a company by basically turning it over to people who have hardly any investment in it, the United Auto Workers, at the result of an iron fist from the state, i.e., Barack Obama, this is so far outside the American political spectrum, business spectrum, people can't get their arms around it because they've never seen it before, and they probably don't know what Juan Peronism is, they may not even know who Juan Peron is. They know who Evita Peron is, they think it's Madonna and they think she was great.

So if the supreme leader, Barack Peron, succeeds in a lot of this, then we are taking a page out of another dictatorship in our hemisphere, no less, and that would be Argentina. But the thing to remember, if all of the bankruptcy stuff confuses you, and if the Juan Peron stuff -- by the way, it's accurate and legitimate -- but if all that confuses you, the thing to remember here, I want you to go back to the end of last year, we were told during the transition and when Obama first assumed office that these bailouts were the only way we could save these companies, these car companies. We had to do this. The government was the only institution that could do this. And then after they gave them the money, Barack Obama's car czars told them how to run the company. You gotta do this, you gotta do that, you gotta pass tests, you gotta give us your reorganization plan, you've got to tell us how you're going to run the company. And what happened? It didn't work. That's what you have to realize, after pouring in 10, 15, whatever it was, billion of your dollars with directions from Washington on how to save the company, it didn't work.

Political solutions to business problems do not work. The UAW, yeah, take it over, the UAW has a plan. Here's Obama supporting Chrysler's effort -- they've got no choice! Chrysler has no choice, whatever Obama told him to do, whatever his car czar, Steve Rattner and the rest of the boys told Chrysler they had to do, they did, but they failed. In their original promise to us, in their original claim of how this was all going to work out, they failed. A Barack Obama failure. However, for Barack Obama the president, this end result is a huge success. But it is a failure in the context of what he told us would happen and how the federal government's assistance would save this company.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My friends, if you will indulge me, I want to go through this briefly again. President Obama just concluded his news conference, announcing the bankruptcy procedure for Chrysler. Some of our stations might have carried it live, and so I want to do my own national rebuttal again, for those of you who did not hear the opening of the program because perhaps (I don't know how many did) your local stations carried the Obama announcement with the car czar team standing behind him at a new location in the White House. He said that Chrysler just didn't move fast enough. They just weren't moving fast enough here, and somebody had to step in, and we're much better off than we were 30 days ago.

Folks, here's the bottom line -- and again, please indulge me if you just heard this. I'll go through it very quickly. Last year when these car companies ended up in huge trouble, it was Barack Obama who told us only the government could fix them; only the government could save them. We had to give them bailouts. We had to bail them out, and that's what was going to save 'em, and when we bailed them out we then -- well, not "we," but the Obama administration -- gave them instructions. Remember, they couldn't fly their corporate jets into town to make their case. After they did that one time they were humiliated. They had to drive to down for the second round of hearings.

They had to tell Congress, they had to tell Obama what they were going to do to save their companies after they got all their money, and if they did that, these bailouts would work. What we have here is an abject failure of government saving a business. This is totally not an accident reported this way. This is a Barack Obama failure. As promised, government cannot overcome the laws of economics. This was not technically a failure from Obama's standpoint because he got what he wanted. He got the United Auto Workers as the majority owners of Chrysler, and pretty soon a similar situation's going to happen with General Motors. So he sends out all the money to them. He gives them instructions: "Come back with a plan for your reorganization that we approve of."

They never had a chance because he wasn't going to approve any of it because what he wanted was what happened today, and it's straight out of Juan Peron. It's straight out of Argentina. You intimidate lawful debt holders, the bondholders into giving up their legitimate claims in a bankruptcy. Do the same thing to the state-owned banks. Obama owns a lot of the banks now, or a portion of them. He leans on them. The banks are the big lenders to Chrysler. He tells them to give up their claims in bankruptcy. The government runs the bankruptcy for 60 days. They're going to funnel another $8 billion into this. So whatever it is, 10 or 15 billion that Chrysler's got now, another 8 on top of it, did not save the company. What it ended up doing was turning the company over to Barack Obama's union allies.

You hand the company to the supreme leaders, labor union allies. You don't recognize this because this is not the way things have been done in America before. It's not been done in American business. This is outside the American political spectrum, and so there you have it. This is the objective. I made this prediction back in December that the autoworkers were going to be the majority owners in these companies. In the case of Chrysler, it will now happen -- and it was announced today as some great success story by President Obama. He said, "We did this. This worked. This is great. These companies have been better than they've ever been before. We saved them. This is tremendous, and we're going to have the best cars in the world again. They just weren't moving fast enough for me; it's why I had to move in today."


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Going to start in Detroit. Ken, you're up first. Great to have you today on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Yeah, Rush, I'm calling as a former UAW member. And my comment was, considering that the unions don't believe in profits, and considering that the unions do not believe in employee incentives for hardworking people to make more than lazy employees, allowing the government and the UAW to run the auto industry is like letting a fox run the chicken coop.

RUSH: This is interesting you bring this up because the union does believe in earning extra money with overtime, but, you know, merit pay, they're not really for that, because it will make others who are not seeking merit pay look bad. But one of the questions I've had, the United Auto Workers with 55% ownership of Chrysler stock is going to have a majority of people on the board. What is the next contract negotiation going to look like between the UAW-owned Chrysler and the United Auto Workers line assembly workers?

CALLER: Well, Rush, what you have to keep in mind is that the way the unions work, is that they encourage their employees to be as nonproductive as they can, therefore the company has to hire more people to do the job. That's like having four people to do the job of one.

RUSH: Now, it's a pretty big leap here for you to -- I know that that happens, I've had my run-ins with the bricklayers on that way, way, way back, I know that happens, the bricklayers had to back off when I made that claim, they wanted less bricks laid per hour, per day, in the next union contract, late eighties or seventies. Anyway, for you to say the autoworkers do not believe in profits.

CALLER: That's correct. The reason I know this is that not only had I been involved behind the scenes with the UAW, but I grew up in a household where my father for 40 years actually was a high-ranking union official, and this is where I learned that the union philosophy is to get more people in. And if that means that you work as slowly as you can, therefore the company has to get more people hired to do the job, this is the way they do business.

RUSH: All right, but we need to separate things here.

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: Union leadership is one thing. The union rank-and-file, many of them, are like everybody else. They're sheep, they're followers, and many of them don't have any choice in terms of where their donations are spent politically and so forth. But are you telling me that there's no understanding anywhere that a company where a union is employed has to show some kind of profit just to stay in business?

CALLER: Well, Rush, if someone comes in and he is self-motivated, he's motivated, but what happens is you have a lot of people that come in that are unfortunately on the lazy side of it, and they'll come in, they'll punch in in the morning, they --

RUSH: No, I understand -- so you're saying indirectly, indirectly, they're not concerned with profit, they're going to get paid regardless. All right, I get it. I still think it's going to be comical or has the potential to be comical to watch United Auto Workers' board, majority owners of Chrysler negotiate with the United Auto Workers line assembly people.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have some sound bites here, President Obama announcing the end of Chrysler as we know it. Here's the first of three sound bites.

OBAMA: Today I am pleased to announce that Chrysler and Fiat have formed a partnership that has a strong chance of success. It's a partnership that will save more than 30,000 jobs at Chrysler and tens of thousands of jobs at suppliers, dealers, and other businesses that rely on this company. It's a partnership that the federal government will support by making additional loans that are consistent with what I outlined last month. As part of their agreement, every dime of new taxpayer money will be repaid before Fiat can take a majority ownership stake in Chrysler.

RUSH: Well, I don't know when that's going to happen, then. The United Auto Workers are going to be the majority ownership of Chrysler. The union is getting 55% of the stock here. The thing you have to remember about this is, very simple, last December, January, all this money to the automakers, Chrysler, General Motors, and they were given requirements, "You gotta get back to us reorganization plans if you want more money." And finally, they had to say it didn't work, Obama is saying you guys aren't doing it right; we're going to make you go into bankruptcy. So all those billions in bailouts didn't work, a genuine failure of the Obama administration to save Chrysler. So now we're getting basically Juan Peronism, you convince the legitimate debt holders to give up much of their value, the banks, the big lenders, same thing, and then you send in union allies to take over. Here's sound bite number two.

OBAMA: A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting. I don't stand with them. I don't stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices.

RUSH: Now, you just have to laugh. This is another assault on the wealthy. It's an assault on hedge funds. Hedge funds are the villain. And furthermore, he is now impugning their motives. They were hoping everybody else would make sacrifices and that they would have to make no sacrifices. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting? Since when does any of this have any relevance once the federal government moved in with bailout money and with orders and instructions to the CEO on how this thing is to be restructured. This is classic statism, an authoritarian figure dumping on the private sector at every opportunity, to mischaracterize their motives, to mischaracterize the reasons for the investment in things. Here's the third sound bite from President Obama.

OBAMA: That's why I'm supporting Chrysler's plans to use our bankruptcy laws to clear away its remaining obligations so the company can get back on its feet and onto a path of success. This process will be quick. It will be efficient. It's designed to deal with those last few holdouts, and it will be controlled. It will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler.

RUSH: Oh, of course, can't have that. It's going to disrupt a lot of other people's lives, but we can't disrupt the lives of the union workers and the people who work there.


END TRANSCRIPT

Enhanced Lying

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326678070127102

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Interrogations: Not since Bill Clinton has there been a bigger fib told by a public official. A report from the director of national intelligence confirms Nancy Pelosi knew waterboarding had already been performed.

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Read More: Global War On Terror

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Lying to Congress is a crime. Lying from Congress is not. Otherwise, House Speaker Pelosi would rightfully belong in the same facility that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was sent to for being found guilty of having a faulty memory.

Just as Bill Clinton swore he never had sex with that woman, Pelosi wagged her finger at an April press conference and swore she was advised only on the legality of waterboarding — that it might be used but not that it had.

In December 2007, after the Washington Post reported that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, Pelosi admitted she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

When asked about a September 2002 meeting with intelligence officials and then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, Pelosi proclaimed: "In that or any other briefing . . . we were not, and I repeat were not, told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used."

How is it then that a memo issued by the director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency says the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered EITs, an abbreviation for enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, a technique successfully used on Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The meeting is described in the 10-page memo as a "briefing on EITs, including the use of EITs on Zubaydah, background on authorities and a description of particular EITs that had been employed." "Had been" is past tense. According to the interrogation memos recently released, Zubaydah was waterboarded in August 2002, a month before Pelosi was told about it.

The memo outlines many other briefings with members of Congress, including Rep. Jane Harman, who became the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when Pelosi became minority leader.

"Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," recalls Goss, who chaired the committee from 1997 to 2004 before becoming CIA director. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congress twice had a chance to specifically proscribe waterboarding, but passed on it.

It could have done so in the Detainee Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Instead it passed the buck, settling on opposition to vague "cruel, human and degrading" practices. When Democrats, led by Pelosi, seized control of Congress in 2006, they ignored the subject.

Brendan Daly, a Pelosi spokesman, says Pelosi's recollection of the 2002 meeting is different from the way it was described in the report from the DNI's office.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Goss was left "slack jawed" that any member so briefed could "claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed."

"It must be hard," Goss wrote, "for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience."

History, it has been said, is a lie agreed upon. Nancy Pelosi is attempting to rewrite history.

NBA, Olympic coach Chuck Daly dies at 78

NBA, Olympic coach Chuck Daly dies at 78

By LARRY LAGE, AP Sports Writer – 1 hr 4 mins ago

DETROIT – Chuck Daly, who coached the original Dream Team to the Olympic gold medal in 1992 after winning back-to-back NBA championships with the Detroit Pistons, has died. He was 78.

He died Saturday morning in Jupiter, Fla., with his family by his side, the team said.The Pistons announced in March that the Hall of Fame coach had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing treatment.

He was renowned for his ability to create harmony out of diverse personalities at all levels of the game, whether they were Ivy Leaguers at Pennsylvania, Dream Teamers Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, or Pistons as dissimilar as Dennis Rodman and Joe Dumars.

"It's a players' league. They allow you to coach them or they don't," Daly once said. "Once they stop allowing you to coach, you're on your way out."

Daly was voted one of the 10 greatest coaches of the NBA's first half-century in 1996, two years after being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. He was the first coach to win both an NBA title and Olympic gold.

"I think Chuck understood people as well as basketball," former Pistons guard Joe Dumars told The Associated Press in 1995. "It's a people business."

Doug Collins, a former Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls coach, learned the intricacies of the game from Daly.

"He was a man of incredible class and dignity. He was a mentor and a friend," Collins said. "He taught me so much and was always so supportive of me and my family. I loved him and will miss him."

Daly had a golden touch at the Barcelona Games with NBA superstars Magic Johnson, Jordan, Larry Bird and Barkley, using a different lineup in every game.

"I played against Chuck's teams throughout the NBA for a lot of years. He always had his team prepared, he's a fine coach," Bird said shortly after Daly's diagnosis became public.

"Chuck did a good job of keeping us together," Bird said. "It wasn't about who scored the most points, it was about one thing: winning the gold medal."

Daly humbled the NBA superstars by coaching a group of college players to victory in a controlled scrimmage weeks before the Olympics.

"I was the happiest man in the gym," Daly said afterward.

Daly also made the right moves for the Pistons, who were notorious for their physical play with Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn leading the fight, Dennis Rodman making headlines and Hall of Fame guards Isiah Thomas and Dumars lifting the team to titles in 1989 and 1990.

Former Piston John Salley gave Daly the nickname Daddy Rich for his impeccably tailored suits.

Daly had a career regular-season record of 638-437 in 13 NBA seasons. In 12 playoff appearances, his teams went 75-51. He left Detroit as the Pistons' leader in regular-season and playoff victories.

"The Daly family and the entire Detroit Pistons and Palace Sports and Entertainment family is mourning the loss of Chuck Daly," family and team spokesman Matt Dobek said. "Chuck left a lasting impression with everyone he met both personally and professionally and his spirit will live with all of us forever."

Despite his success, Daly wasn't part of a Coach of the Year presentation until he handed the trophy to then-Detroit coach Rick Carlisle in 2002.

"This is as close as I've ever been to that thing," Daly said, looking at the Red Auerbach Trophy.

Born July 20, 1930, in St. Marys, Pa., Charles Jerome Daly played college ball at St. Bonaventure and Bloomsburg. After two years in the military, he coached for eight seasons at Punxsutawney (Pa.) High School and then spent six years as an assistant at Duke.

Succeeding Bob Cousy as coach at Boston College, Daly coached the Eagles to a 26-24 record over two seasons and then spent seven seasons at Pennsylvania, leading the Quakers to the Ivy League championship in 1972-75.

Daly joined the NBA coaching ranks in 1978 as an assistant under Billy Cunningham in Philadelphia. His first head coaching job was with Cleveland, but he was fired after the Cavaliers went 9-32 over the first half of the 1981-82 season.

In 1983, Daly took over a Detroit team that had never had two straight winning seasons and led the Pistons to nine straight. He persuaded the likes of Rodman, Thomas, Dumars, Mahorn and Laimbeer and to play as a unit and they responded with back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990.

Far from being intimidated by the Pistons' Bad Boys image, Daly saw the upside of it.

"I've also had players who did not care," he said a decade later. "I'd rather have a challenging team."

After leaving Detroit, Daly took over the New Jersey Nets for two seasons and led them to the playoffs both times.

He left broadcasting to return to the bench 1997 with the Orlando Magic and won 74 games over two seasons, then retired at the age of 68 because he said he was weary of the travel.

Daly joined the Vancouver Grizzlies as a senior adviser in 2000.

In retirement, he split time between residences in Jupiter, Fla., and suburban Detroit.

The Pistons retired No. 2 to honor their former coach's two NBA titles in January 1997.

"Without you, there wouldn't be us," Mahorn said to Daly during the ceremony.

Daly is survived by his wife, Terry, as well as daughter Cydney and grandchildren Sebrina and Connor.

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Associated Press writer Jim Irwin in Detroit and AP Sports Writer Cliff Brunt in Indianapolis contributed.

What Green Means

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326414989713648

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Marketing: The environmental left is conceding that its effort to "fight" global warming is in trouble because the public has tuned out the message. So the plan is to obscure the agenda even more.

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Read More: Global Warming

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An agenda that eviscerates property rights, enlarges the regulatory state, increases taxes and forces egalitarianism isn't an easy sell in a nation with a legacy of liberty and free markets.

But some time ago, eco-activists and their allies in Congress understood that they could march the country to the left by small degrees if they disguised socialism as environmentalism.

And thus the environmental movement was hijacked.

Decades of sermonizing have indeed nudged us leftward, but we are still — for now — a nation of mostly free men and largely free markets. Credit a public that seems to grasp we don't have to kill capitalism in order to save the planet.

This same public has become increasingly skeptical of the global warming assumption, perhaps the environmentalists' last chance to remake the country in their image.

Now, frustrated with their inability to have forced a deeper leftward shift, the environmental activists feel the need to recast the language of the debate.

Using polling and focus groups, ecoAmerica, an environmental group that develops marketing and messaging strategies, has forged a list of recommendations. It was obtained by the New York Times, which says it's one of "a number of news organizations" that was accidently e-mailed a "summary of the group's latest findings and recommendations."

Rather than talk about "global warming," which is already being replaced by the less-specific "climate change," ecoAmerica suggests that alarmists should discuss "our deteriorating atmosphere." And instead of picking on carbon dioxide per se, it proposes we simply abandon "the dirty fuels of the past."

The memo also recommends embroidering conversations with language about "shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency," which is ironic, since those are the uniquely American qualities that the environmental movement seems to be moving us away from.

What's clear is eco-activists and their allies will do anything to avoid talking about their real goals, which have less to do with cleaning up the environment than with pulling down capitalism.

Every solution they offer to the problems they exaggerate erodes economic freedom, increases regulation or both. Blurring the real meaning of words can't change that.

Waxman shortcircuits debate to ram eco-taxes through Congress By Michelle Malkin

Source: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/05/05/waxman-shortcircuits-debate-to-ram-eco-taxes-through-congress/

May 5, 2009

What do you do when dissenting opinions are dragging down your massive government expansion plans disguised as environmental do-good-ism?

Shortcircuit the debate and skip past all that messy procedural stuff:

Democrats in the House of Representatives said on Tuesday they were still working to pass a climate change bill by year’s end as they scrambled to get enough of their fellow lawmakers to support the initiative.

But in an important procedural move, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said he would leapfrog a subcommittee and have the controversial legislation voted on by the full committee before his end-of-May deadline for the panel to act.

Citing the approaching self-imposed deadline, Waxman said it “requires that we go right to full committee and bypass the subcommittee.”

Environmentalists who want quick passage of the bill to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions have noted the measure would have an easier time getting through the full committee, where opposing viewpoints would be diluted by broader support.

Waxman and other Democrats on the committee met with President Barack Obama to discuss the climate change bill. “We are determined to pass a bill by this year,” Waxman said.

But it is proving difficult to craft a law that can attract enough Democratic support and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said there is “not a consensus” on the issue.

Who needs consensus? Leapfrogging powers…activate!

***

Related: Introducing “Cash for Clunkers.” Sounds like the name that belongs on every bailout/spending bill Congress has passed over the last year.

The Passing Of A Champion

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326329690694754

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, May 04, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Jack Kemp: The godfather of supply-side economics helped spawn a revolution that unleashed America's entrepreneurs. He knew a lot about level playing fields, but that equal opportunity did not mean equal success.

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Read More: General Politics

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In the middle of the Carter years, a congressman from the unlikely precincts of Buffalo, N.Y., had an idea: "When you tax something you get less of it, and when you reward something you get more of it."

With that simple thought, Jack Kemp would change his party, his country and, ultimately, the world.

In legislative form, it became a bill called Kemp-Roth that he sponsored in the House of Representatives. William Roth, a Delaware Republican, would sponsor it in the Senate. It met resistance and failed at first. But as in his football career, Kemp kept going deep.

Kemp, a star in the AFL and GOP.

The concept was daring: cut federal income tax rates over three years. He would reward the risk takers, savers and investors by letting them keep more of what they earned. He would not spread the wealth around. He would let people create and keep their own.

By 1980, he had convinced candidate Ronald Reagan that it would be the mechanism of economic recovery, and the idea was written into the Republican platform. In August 1981, President Reagan was signing it into law. The rest, as they say, is history.

Double-digit inflation and interest rates vanished as Reagan not only reversed the malaise of Jimmy Carter but fueled an economic boom that lasted 92 months and created 20 million new jobs. The economy grew by a third and tax receipts doubled as we added the equivalent of the West German economy to our own.

Jack Kemp was a self-proclaimed "bleeding-heart conservative" who believed that compassion was measured not by how much money was bestowed on the poor but by how much opportunity was given to them. He was an advocate of inner-city "enterprise zones" that would attract job-creating businesses and entrepreneurs, not community organizers.

His preference was not a welfare check but the opportunity for a paycheck. He was a football player in an integrated sport where there was no need for affirmative action, at least not on the playing field. If you could block, tackle, catch, throw or run better than the next guy, you had a chance to succeed on your own merits and as far as your legs or arm could take you.

As quarterback, he led the Buffalo Bills to American Football League championships in 1964 and 1965. He co-founded the AFL players association in 1964 and was elected union president for five terms.

He would translate this success into nine terms as the representative from Buffalo.

Unfortunately, his 1988 presidential bid would fail. But he would serve four years as secretary of housing and urban development, a post in which he observed, and fought, the disastrous effects of modern urban liberalism.

From January 1993 to July 2004, he was co-director of the appropriately named Empower America, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy and advocacy organization he co-founded with William Bennett and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. That was what Kemp was about: empowering Americans and not government.

Kemp was also a good friend of Investor's Business Daily, writing columns, speaking at our economic conferences and talking us up whenever he could. It made us proud, and we'll always be grateful.

We have wandered far afield from Kemp's dream of an entrepreneurial society where government got out of the way and hard work and success were rewarded rather than punished or redistributed to others.

As the nation struggles with multitrillion-dollar deficits and stealth socialism, we may soon feel the need to reopen Jack Kemp's free-market playbook and go deep. He is already missed.

Pelosi was silent on torture: She could have objected when first briefed. Now, she is self-righteous. By Charles Krauthammer

Source: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090504_Pelosi_was_silent_on_torture.html

May. 4, 2009

Torture is an impermissible evil - except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb: An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.

Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation.

It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national-security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.

The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking-time-bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. We know we must act, but have no idea where or how - and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.

Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do, too. And that includes waterboarding.

Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together."

Michael Hayden, who was CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 ... fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high-value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.

Asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened." Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough, and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.

Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a Washington Post report that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

Today, Pelosi protests "we were not - I repeat - were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary, it is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying, "Don't do it."

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting; "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly, but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now, "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.

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Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist.

His e-mail address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.

Can Obama Be Called an Economic Fascist? by Jerry Doyle

Source: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31701

05/04/2009

It is dangerous in this day and age to use the word “fascism” lightly. Liberals sling around the term “fascism” without regard to its meeting -- for the left, “fascism” applies to everything from religious social perspectives to conservative tax cut prescriptions. But economic fascism has a precise, defined meaning. And Barack Obama’s economic policy fulfills that meaning in every conceivable way.

Economic fascism can be defined as government control over the four P’s: Product, Price, Profit Margin, and People. When the government controls the product created by the market, when it controls the price structure for product and company securities, when it controls how much profit particular companies can make, and when it controls the people who are hired and fired, economic freedom has been banished, and economic fascism reigns supreme.

And economic fascism reigns supreme in Barack Obama’s America. Just look at the recent government handling of Chrysler. In a series of press conferences this week announcing Chrysler’s bankruptcy, Obama hit on all of the four P’s.

First, Obama stated that Chrysler’s product had to be revamped -- and that he knew how best to do it. “For too long,” Obama said, “Chrysler moved too slowly to adapt to the future, designing and building cars that were less popular, less reliable, and less fuel efficient than foreign competitors. That’s part of what has brought us to a point where they sought taxpayer assistance.” It’s easy for Obama to criticize Chrysler -- he’s never run so much as a lemonade stand. He’s never had to produce a product for the market. And his ideas are routinely foolish: his first brilliant automotive move was touting the GM/Segway two-wheel idiotmobile, designed to navigate through traffic.

And yet Obama wants control of the car industry. “I'm not an auto engineer,” Obama admitted on Wednesday. “I don't know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid. But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same. So my job is to ask the auto industry: Why is it you guys can't do this?” Why is it his job to ask that question? Shouldn’t the market be asking that question? Not in an economically fascist state, where the government controls the product.

Second, Obama announced that he would be setting prices on senior debt. Obama’s proposed plan for Chrysler involved destroying senior debtholders, paying them a whopping $0.33 on the dollar for their loans. When the senior debtholders refused to abide by such a plan, Obama excluded them from the Chrysler bankruptcy negotiations altogether, then labeled them “speculators” and blamed them for Chrysler’s downfall -- all the while kowtowing to the interests of four large banks (Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley) that own 70 percent of Chryslers debt. All of them have taken government bailout cash.

The lenders who have not taken government cash, by contrast, were left out in the cold. “We have been forced to communicate through an obviously conflicted intermediary: a group of banks that have received billions of TARP funds," the lenders wrote in a press release. “In its earnest effort to ensure the survival of Chrysler and the well-being of the company's employees, the government has risked overturning the rule of law.” There is no risk of overturning the rule of law -- the rule of law has already been overturned. And Obama celebrates the death of the rule of law, dancing on the corpses of the “speculators.” The “speculators,” announced Obama “were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none … I don’t stand with them. I stand with Chrysler’s employees, and their families and communities.”

Posing as a populist, Obama undermined the very basis of free enterprise in this country: the power of investors to lend money at return. Instead, he says he stands with employees, families, and communities -- all of whom would be bankrupt without the power of private investment. Preaching economic fascism in the guise of warfare on “speculators” -- this is how freedom dies.

Third, Obama stated that he would henceforth control the profit margin for Chrysler. He did this by putting the unions in control of Chrysler -- the new majority owner of Chrysler is the union retiree health fund, which has a 55 percent stake in the new company. And yet Obama assures us that the unions have made “great sacrifices.” The unions have made great sacrifices in the same way Agamemnon made great sacrifices. Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia for his own ends; the unions have sacrificed the America auto industry for their own ends. Meanwhile, Obama will set profit margins for auto executives in the same way he unilaterally set them for Wall Street. After all, Obama stands for the “employees,” not for the bosses. Where bosses used to employ the employees, the government will now do the job.

Fourth, and finally, Obama has decided that the government shall control the people who are hired and fired at America’s largest companies. After defenestrating the head of GM, Rick Wagoner, Obama forced out the head of Chrysler, Robert Nardelli. He then stacked the nine member board of the company with four government picks, three Fiat picks, one union pick, and one Canadian pick. Chrysler is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government. And the same President who urged us to “buy American” in his Thursday speech handed over the levers of power to an Italian car company, Fiat.

We are living in momentous times. There are many who question whether American capitalism will survive Obama. The verdict is in. It will not. It has not. We are already living under the rule of economic fascism. The jackboots are already in charge of Washington D.C. Obama’s dictatorial command and control of the economy spell disaster for our principles and our prosperity.



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Mr. Doyle is the host of the nations 7th Largest radio show, 'The Jerry Doyle Show,' according to TALKERS magazine. Mr. Doyle's background includes 10 successful years on Wall Street, playing Michael Garibaldi on the Emmy Award winning TV series Babylon 5 along with many appearences in movies and TV, running for the U.S. House of Representatives for California's 24th District in 2000, and being an Honorary F-16 Test Pilot and an Honorary Naval Aviator

EXCLUSIVE: Lobbyists help Dems draft climate change bill By Tom LoBianco

The Air That I Breathe
Uploaded by unecricri

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/04/green-lobby-guides-democrats-on-climate-bill/

May 4, 2009

Democratic lawmakers who spent much of the Bush administration blasting officials for letting energy lobbyists write national policy have turned to a coalition of business and environmental groups to help draft their own sweeping climate bill.

And one little-noticed provision of the draft bill would give one of the coalition's co-founders a lucrative exemption on a coal-fired project it is building.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, both of California, were among the Democrats -- then in the minority -- who slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for holding closed-door meetings to draft energy policy early in the Bush administration.

Republicans "invited energy lobbyists to write the energy bill that gouges consumers with big payoffs to Big Gas and Big Oil," Mrs. Pelosi said in 2005. "They have turned Washington, D.C., into an oil and gas town when it is supposed to be the city of innovation, of new, of fresh ideas about our energy policy."

But the sweeping climate bill Mr. Waxman and Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the panel's key environmental subcommittee, introduced at the end of March includes a provision that benefits Duke Energy Corp., a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), whose climate plan released in January the lawmakers have frequently called a "blueprint" for their climate legislation.

The exemption would save Duke Energy -- along with other firms now building new coal power plants -- from having to spend millions of dollars outfitting its Cliffside, N.C., power plant currently under construction with "clean coal" technology.

"The USCAP companies must be delirious over the freebies that they've received after writing the blueprint for [the House draft bill]," said Larry Neal, deputy Republican staff director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

At the kickoff to hearings last week on the massive climate bill, Myron Ebell, climate and energy policy director for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told lawmakers, "The authors of the draft bill have invited the beneficiaries of what could turn out to be the biggest transfer of wealth from consumers to special interests in American history to write the rules for this legalized plunder."

A spokeswoman for Mr. Waxman rejected any parallel with the previous administration.

"It's just not a fair comparison," said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for Mr. Waxman, saying the process for the climate bill had been far more transparent.

Members of the Cheney energy task force crafted energy policy in secret in 2001, and Democratic lawmakers spent months battling the Bush administration to release records of the meetings, she said.

By contrast, Mr. Waxman's committee has held dozens of hearings on the topic of climate change, and USCAP's blueprint has been publicly touted since its January release, Ms. Lightfoot said.

It was USCAP that provided language to the Waxman-Market draft that effectively bars construction of new coal-fired projects for 10 to 15 years, until "clean coal" technology is developed. The draft bill has language that effectively shields Duke and few other energy companies from the restrictions for unfinished plants already well along in the permitting process.

Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey have said they used USCAP's climate-change proposal as a "blueprint" for the broad-based legislation they outlined in late March and are starting to put into final form.

At a January hearing, Mr. Waxman promised the USCAP ideas would be written into climate legislation.

USCAP's members include environmental advocacy groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund and corporate giants such as PepsiCo Inc. and Ford Motor Co., in addition to many of the nation's top energy providers.

Critics say the little-noticed provision affecting the Duke Energy coal plant is a prime illustration of the close links between industry and environmental lobbies and the bill's authors.

Supporters of the exemption say it would protect energy companies from having to scrap coal projects well under way. Critics say the provision amounts to the same type of handout Democrats accused Republicans of approving eight years ago.

Duke Energy spokesman Tom Williams would not disclose whether his company requested the language, but said an exemption makes sense.

"When you're building a plant, it's not good practice to have legislation that somehow retroactively hinders the permit," Mr. Williams said. "You can't operate a business that way."

The House draft bill says any coal plant that obtains final construction approval after Jan. 1, 2009, must meet the stringent pollution control rules. Duke Energy has two new coal projects under way, both of which obtained their permits in January 2008.

Duke Energy Chief Executive Officer Jim Rogers has been an influential voice in the Hill debate over climate change. When he testified last month on a panel of USCAP members, he did not mention the provision, which directly affects the Cliffside plant.

The exemption would benefit 45 other coal facilities that are under construction or have received permits (including a second Duke Energy project in Indiana), but Duke Energy is the only affected company that belongs to USCAP.

Many environmentalists have chafed at new coal plant construction, calling the term "clean coal" a "dirty lie." More than 40 environmental activists were arrested outside the Cliffside plant protesting the coal project late last month.

"It is just the most blatant hypocrisy," Jim Warren, executive director of North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network and one of the 44 protesters arrested, said of Mr. Rogers' environmental proclamations.

Mr. Rogers told North Carolina public officials in 2007 that he would actively lobby to exempt the Cliffside plant from stricter pollution standards.

"So you're going to be lobbying in Congress essentially to have Cliffside be grandfathered?" Gudrun Thompson, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, asked during a January 2007 hearing on the project.

Mr. Rogers said he thought the plant would be grandfathered "because it's perceived by the government as we perceive it, as a clean coal plant."

Committee staff confirmed that the provision exempting the Duke coal project was drawn from the USCAP blueprint.

"We've been very clear that we do not advocate for any provision or recommendation, we advocate for the document as a whole," USCAP spokeswoman Katie Mandes said.

"USCAP felt it was important to include a proposal for emissions standards going forward, that's why it was included in the blueprint," Ms. Mandes said.

Mr. Williams said it is not certain that the Cliffside plant would be exempted from the new requirement, because of a question whether a pending legal challenge to the project would affect its permit status.

The provision in the Waxman-Markey bill would effectively ban construction of new coal plants for the next decade by requiring them to install "clean coal" technology that captures and stores carbon emissions to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The climate bill introduced in the previous Congress by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell, Michigan Democrat, and energy and air quality subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, Virginia Democrat in October included a similar exemption for coal-fired plants.

Duke Energy donated $11,000 to Mr. Dingell and $10,000 to Mr. Boucher during the 2008 election cycle. Mr. Dingell and Mr. Boucher still held their respective chairmanships at that time.

Duke's North Carolina project would face major hurdles without the exemption. Although the company could retrofit the plant to capture carbon emissions, it would have to pipe the carbon dioxide out of the state because no good geological storage sites are nearby.

The second Duke Energy coal-powered project under construction, a coal gasification plant in Indiana, also would be exempted by the provision, but would have less trouble retrofitting with "clean coal" technology.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will take up the climate bill again this week in subcommittee. Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey have said they want the full bill to be reported to the House floor by Memorial Day.

Ted Nugent: 100 days — so far, so bad

Source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/05/03/05032009wacnugent.html

May 03, 2009

President Truman had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.”

If Barry Obama (B.O.) decides to place a sign on his desk in the Oval Office, I recommend he go with something such as, “Don’t point me at anything you don’t wish to destroy.”

The destruction in the first 100 days of our sentence under B.O. is staggering:

* He first follows through on a campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay in a year, even though the subhuman debris are housed under nicer conditions than many of our heroic troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He has no plan whatsoever as to what to do with the evil monsters housed there.

But he goes about devising a detailed plan to find the perfect dog for his daughters. A man has to have priorities.

* One of his first appointments is that of admitted tax cheat Tim Geithner, henceforth to be known as The Weasel. He’ll run, of all agencies, Treasury.

Perfect Chicago-style politics, Mr. President. Put a thief in charge of money.

Is it just me or does The Weasel always have the pained look of constipation on his face? Guilt is difficult to hide.

* With the economy taking a hard turn south due to the failure of Democrats in Congress to provide any oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, B.O. then tries to drive the final stake through the free market’s heart. He gets the Fedzilla dopes in his party to go along with a trillion-dollar “stimulus” plan and multi-year trillion- dollar deficit spending.

B.O. and the Fedzilla Reserve give hundreds and hundreds of billions in loans to banks, automobile companies and AIG.

* B.O. hires Eric “Black Power” Holder to be the attorney general.

Holder’s first act is to imply all white people are racists.

* Our leader heads to Europe where he blames all of the world’s ills on America. “Hate America First” is his playbook.

European nations go ga-ga over this message, so they generously agree to send a half-dozen or so more non-combat troops to Afghanistan.

* With General Motors tanking despite bailout money B.O. fires its CEO. Not a single autoworker is canned, proving that the unions, not the stockholders, are in charge.

* Department of Homeland Insecurity boss Janet Napolitano, aka the New Queen of Mean, issues a report that says veterans, gun owners and all conservatives need to be watched extra closely because they do not spread palm leaves in front of B.O.’s limousine as he drives by.

* While The Queen is issuing baseless reports, a couple of hundred thousand Americans protest B.O.’s gigantic spending spree on April 15. David “Axe Man” Axelrod, a B.O. tough guy in the White House who obviously despises the First Amendment, says the protests are “unhealthy.”

* Our fearless leader leaves the country again and finds himself shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, one of the world’s most egregious human-rights violators.

Before it’s over, Chavez gives him a book on how to hate America in 12 easy steps. B.O. smiles.

And it all happened in a 100-day heartbeat.

If this is the kind of hope and change you wanted, you will get plenty more of it. And then the bill for it all will come and we can all play dumb.

Ted Nugent is a Waco-based musician and television show host. Contact him directly at tednugent.com.

Obama: Fraud And A Disgrace

"...He's lying about people in television ads, he is dredging up and he is promoting racism. He is behaving like a segregationist from the 1950s. Barack Obama is a disgrace. So much for all this postracial, postpartisan, change future mantra. So much for The Messiah, the one who's going to lower the levels of the sea. He is nothing more than a Chicago thug street organizer in the mode of Saul Alinsky, and, by the way, Saul Alinsky's kid works for public television in Boston and wrote an op-ed congratulating Obama on executing Alinsky tactics to the T, said it was a great honor to his father. Yeah, I had it in yesterday's Stack..." -- Rush Limbaugh, September 2008

David Alinsky, Son Of Saul Alinsky Praises Obama
Son sees father's handiwork in convention
The Boston Globe
August 31, 2008

ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people. The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

L. DAVID ALINSKY
Medfield