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The other day, I wrote that President Obama has "run out of both charm and ideas." I was too kind. To judge from the string of whoppers in his dreary jobs speech yesterday, he's also run out of facts. And he's still whining about the problems he inherited and blaming Republicans. He might as well be barking at the moon. That's sort of what he is doing, because the American people are tuning him out at a stunning pace. The latest Gallup Poll gives him a record low 47 percent approval. Only 26 percent in another poll say he deserves...

WASHINGTON -- After days of secret talks, Senate Democrats tentatively agreed last night to drop a full-blown government-run insurance option from sweeping health-care legislation -- a concession to party moderates whose votes are critical to passage of President Obama's top domestic priority. In its place, officials said, Democrats had settled on a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage, with the possibility of greater government involvement, if needed, to ensure consumers enough choices.

Speaking of the Connecticut primary, past positions may come back to haunt Rob Simmons in the Republican primary against Linda McMahon. Mr. Simmons has modeled himself as a movement conservative, even brandishing tea bags and a copy of his pocket Constitution during stump speeches, but his voting record as a member of Congress will give the 'tea party' crowd pause. As a member of Congress, Mr. Simmons was a co-sponsor of the House's "cap and trade" bill and the Employee Free Choice Act, called "card check" by its opponents. These two pieces of legislation are vehemently opposed by the free-marketeers...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama outlined major new government stimulus and jobs proposals on Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to “spend our way out of this recession.” Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient. “We avoided the depression many feared,” Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, “Our work is far from done.”

The other day, I wrote that President Obama has "run out of both charm and ideas." I was too kind. To judge from the string of whoppers in his dreary jobs speech yesterday, he's also run out of facts. And he's still whining about the problems he inherited and blaming Republicans. He might as well be barking at the moon. That's sort of what he is doing, because the American people are tuning him out at a stunning pace. The latest Gallup Poll gives him a record low 47 percent approval. Only 26 percent in another poll say he deserves...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, frustrated by the Justice Department's failure to explain the dismissal of charges against New Black Panther Party members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's elections, has subpoenaed the department demanding records showing how the case was handled. David P. Blackwood, the commission's general counsel, said Tuesday in a letter to the Justice Department that efforts since June to obtain an explanation had proceeded "without any success" and the "dearth of cooperation" had prompted the commission to issue subpoenas. "We are both mindful of the sensitivity of the subject matter involved and...

In his economic speech yesterday, President Obama made it clear that his administration will take a step forward on job creation. Unfortunately, it's also taking three steps backward -- which all adds up to more unemployment. The good news is that Obama understands why unemployment has risen so sharply. Media coverage strongly implies that joblessness has risen because layoffs are up -- but that's only part of the equation. The number of jobs lost by firms rose 15 percent from the start of the recession to the first quarter of this year. These layoffs are real and painful for the...

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Tuesday, thousands of people mourned their deaths with a touching memorial service. How did Mike Huckabee honor the victims? He appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to promote his book.

The conviction of Joseph Bruno, the former state senator who once was one of the most powerful state leaders in the country, is an indictment of the entire New York State Legislature. Mr. Bruno was convicted on two felony...“theft of honest services”... --snip-- The 50 or so lawyers in the Legislature, including the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and the Republican Senate leader, Dean Skelos, are not required to reveal their clients. What if those clients have business with the state, which certainly means that their business crosses the desks of these lawmakers? The public is kept in the dark. That...

I am black. I am a woman. And, with all due respect, I think Harry Reid has lost his mind. Yesterday, on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Reid compared those who oppose his healthcare reform package to those who opposed ending slavery, fought against women's suffrage, and thwarted civil rights. What's next, Holocaust comparisons? Many assume that given my race and gender, I would support the Senate health reform bill as a savior of the masses. I do not. And thousands, if not millions, of blacks, Hispanics, women, low-income, and at-risk communities feel the same. There are many reasons why...

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue. "Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't...

Officials are in the early stages of deciding if Salt Lake City wants to compete for the 2012 Republican National Convention — so early, in fact, that they have not yet formed a bid committee to decide. Salt Lake City was invited by the Republican National Committee to attend an "interested parties" presentation in Washington, D.C., three weeks ago, said Scott Beck, president and chief executive officer of the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau. Beck attended, along with a representative from the governor's office. There, they learned what requirements in terms of amenities a host city would have to...

It is fascinating to watch the mainstream media in America duck (and/or make excuses for) the greatest scam in modern history: the "science" behind man made global warming. Even more entertaining, and far more enlightening, is to follow the analyses by the experts in computer programming of the recently disclosed methods used by the Climate Research Unit (CRU) from the University of East Anglia. Most commentators in the media have been talking about the "REM" statements in the purloined emails and computer codes from the CRU.[i] True believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), especially those in the mainstream and "scientific"...

Abortion opponents are urging local Catholic bishops to use the power of Communion to influence the national health care debate by withholding the sacrament from politicians who favor federal dollars for abortion. Randall Terry led five protesters Friday in front of Sen. Robert Casey's office, Downtown, and St. Paul's Cathedral in Oakland. He is founder of Insurrecta Nex, Latin for "revolt against killing," a Washington group opposed to abortion. Casey is a Catholic. "Part of what we're doing on this tour is calling on the bishops to obey the teachings of the church and to enforce them," Terry said. "This...

Dick Cheney blasts Obama on Afghanistan View article... Cheney: Terror trials 'huge mistake' View article...

NJ Vote on Gay Marriage Could Shape Battles Ahead REUTERS December 9, 2009 TRENTON (Reuters) - The legalization of same-sex marriage faces a critical test in New Jersey this week that advocates on each side of the controversial issue argue will shape the fate of gay-marriage battles across the nation. If the proposal to legalize gay marriage passes the state Senate vote on Thursday, New Jersey could be on its way to joining five other U.S. states that allow gay couples to wed. Advocates hope to pass the bill in the legislature so Governor Jon Corzine, a supporter, can sign...

On Today's Show... December 8, 2009 President Hoax and Change Gives Economic Speech Full of Lies, Blames Bush  Amazingly, Obama is still blaming Bush for the economy. Almost every line in this breathtaking speech was a lie. It's too bad it wasn't delivered in prime time. (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen) » Full Text: Obama Speech on Jobs and Growth » IBD: TARP Cannot Cover Stimulus, Experts Say » Heritage: TARP: Will This Crony Capitalist Slush Fund Ever Die?   "Obama has absolutely no credibility. He can give speeches all day long, but this isn't a campaign. He's not running...

Good news: the financial bailout part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) looks like it ended up costing about $200 billion less than originally projected ($341 billion). Bad news: the administration seems to think that this has freed up a lot of extra money that they can use for "Stimulus II" for job creation. Unfortunately, the money isn't his to spend, because it was borrowed from taxpayers in the first place. Showing that the issue has indeed jumped the shark, CBS News even acknowledged it in its recent article title, "U.S. Expects to Lose $200B Less on TARP." Republicans...

In 2006, Ron Suskind published “The One Percent Doctrine,” a book about the U.S. war on terrorists after 9/11. The title was drawn from an assessment by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who, in the face of concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda, reportedly declared: “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” Cheney contended that the U.S. had to confront a very new type of threat: a “low-probability, high-impact event.” Soon...

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party end the year far weaker than they started it, according to a McClatchy-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Obama has the lowest approval rating of his presidency - 49 percent - slipping below 50 percent in the poll for the first time and entering a danger zone for presidents heading into a midterm election year. The sinking numbers extend to his party as well. The Democratic Party has lost double-digit ground to the Republican Party on every issue, including the economy, other domestic issues such as health care and foreign affairs. On the economy, for...

Civil Liberties Group Loses $20 Million Donor STEPHANIE STROM December 8, 2009 A longtime anonymous donor to the American Civil Liberties Union has withdrawn his annual gift of more than $20 million, punching a 25 percent hole in its annual operating budget and forcing cutbacks in operations. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U., acknowledged in a written statement that a “family” had told the organization in September that it could not make its annual gifts, at least for next year. “This family, that has sought to protect its privacy by arranging its gifts anonymously, notified us last month...

As the Climate-gate controversy continues to grow, amid charges of hiding and manipulating data, and suppressing research by academics who challenge global warming, there is one oft-repeated defense: other independent data-sets all reach the same conclusions. "I think everybody is clear on the science. I think scientists are clear on the science ... I think that this notion that there's some debate . . . on the science is kind of silly," said President Obama's Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, when asked about the president's response to the controversy on Monday. Despite the scandal, Britain's Met, the UK’s National Weather Service,...

Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- California officials plan to suspend new enrollments for a program that tests low-income women for breast cancer and to tighten eligibility standards when the program reopens. The Every Woman Counts program won't enroll new clients from Jan. 1 until July 2, 2010, and will restrict enrollment to women over the age of 50 thereafter. Previously, women had to be 40 years old to be eligible for the program. California Department of Public Health director Dr. Mark Horton said in a statement that declining state tobacco tax revenues and increased demand were to blame for cutbacks.

Fellow FR member has been invited back on Fox & Friends tomorrow morning to talk about small business and Obama's fake job summit. From 6:15-6:25 or so with a panel of two other small business owners. Mark Kreslins The Forgotten Men Show (930 WFMD)

When your own outfit is trying to put you in jail, it’s time to go.” Those are the words of Robert Baer, once a CIA operative in the Middle East, describing the days in 1995 when he found himself under investigation by the Clinton administration, the FBI, and the CIA’s own inspector general. Baer’s crime? Daring to talk to Iraqi dissidents who were plotting to assassinate Saddam Hussein. CIA officers in 2009 who are living with a Sword of Damocles hovering over their heads—in the form of a special prosecutor appointed by Barack Obama’s attorney general in August to probe...

Tea parties: time to look at the big picture December 8, 7:37 AM It was reported on AOL this morning that the tea party movement may be fracturing. There are several different groups who make up the overall movement, and each is trying to put its stamp on the direction in which they are headed. Further, some think the drive is being co-opted by the Republican party for its own use. It can seem a tangled web.*snip* Without Washington our nation would not have been formed. Without Lincoln the Civil War may have been lost. Without Reagan the prosperity of...

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Connecticut now finds Dodd attracting just 35% to 40% of the vote against three possible Republican challengers. Former GOP Congressman Rob Simmons is still his toughest opponent, leading Dodd 48% to 35%. Seven percent (7%) prefer some other candidate in this contest, and 11% are undecided. Those figures are a slight improvement for Simmons since September. The newest Republican in the race, Linda McMahon, the ex-CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, earns 44% of the vote to Dodd’s 38%. Eight percent (8%) opt for another candidate, with nine percent (9%) not sure. Long-shot candidate...

When the CRU at East Anglia disclosed that it had lost some of the raw temperature data, leaving only the “homogenized” data, some honest commentators expressed the hope that the homogenizing was competently done. Anyone who has been following Climate Audit for the last few years knows that at least some of the adjustments to the raw data done by the major data depositories appear to have been incompetently done at best. The statistical techniques used in the scientific backwater of historical climatology are often ad hoc, bearing little relation to the techniques that are standard in other fields. In...

Republican Jimmy Higdon has won today’s special election for the 14th state Senate District seat, the Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting. The newspaper says Democrat Jodie Haydon, who was backed by the thoroughbred horse industry, called to concede. (Here are the results by county.) The win deals Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear a major blow in his bid to pave the way for legislation to allow video lottery terminals at racetracks, which passed the Democrat-controlled House during June’s special legislative session but died in committee in the Republican controlled Senate. With tonight’s election, Republicans hold a two-seat majority in the Senate heading...

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama announced a new spate of measures aimed at jumpstarting an economy suffering from record levels of unemployment, and designed to complement last Thursday's jobs summit in Washington. While last week's event was greeted with a healthy dose of skepticism in some quarters, critics may find succor in at least a few of the proposals floated by the president...

Attorney General Martha Coakley has defeated three other candidates to win the Democratic nomination in the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. On the Republican side, State Sen. Scott Brown defeated attorney Jack E. Robinson. Jim Gomes, director of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise, a policy research group at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., said public interest in filling the seat with someone like Mr. Kennedy, who died Aug. 25 after a bout with brain cancer, faded after the senator's wife and other family members declined to enter the race. "I have not sensed the voters of Massachusetts...

Tonight's call starts in a few minutes, at 9 am eastern The call-in number is: (218) 339-2222 and the conference ID is: 340794# It's also available for listen-only livestream at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/AIPThere's also an online meeting room for chat-style text discussion at http://www.hotconference.com/conference,58542473

With the clock ticking down towards the close of the polls at 8 p.m., some communities reported low voter turnout in the special primary elections for US Senate. People breezed past community centers, gymnasiums, town halls, and other polling places without a second thought, the majority paying no mind to the race to fill the office left vacant by the late Edward M. Kennedy. Four Democrats and two Republicans ....

Phoenix - According to the conventional wisdom after last year's presidential election, Barack Obama's victory proved that a number of once-reliably red states -- Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado among them -- were turning blue, perhaps permanently. Even here in Arizona, Obama gave Republican favorite son John McCain a run for his money, and the 2008 election handed a majority of the state's congressional districts to Democrats. The home of Barry Goldwater might not have been truly blue, but it was shading purple. That was then. Now, with Democrats pushing an agenda of stimulus, cap and trade, and health care...

BOSTON – Massachusetts had a light turnout for party primaries Tuesday as voters took the first step to fill the U.S. Senate seat held for nearly a half century by Edward M. Kennedy.Four Democrats, from political insiders to newcomers, and two Republicans were competing for their respective party nomination in the quick campaign to succeed Kennedy. He died of brain cancer in late August at age 77 after holding his seat since 1962. The primary winners will face off in a general election on Jan. 19.Kennedy's widow, Vicki, called each of the Democrats early Tuesday to wish them well, an...

Enjoy yourselves, Tea Partyers. You are one-third of the way through your 15 months of fame and there are still reasons to party like it’s 1996. But take a few moments from your merriment to think about your next moves. Are you a political party or just a movement? Pondering that choice might force you to sober up to make some tough choices before finishing your journey. Those choices are going to be made tougher by an incongruous poll released by the Rasmussen organization this week. Just when the consensus seemed to be emerging among Tea Partyers that the movement...

Pelosi: President and Congress Working on Jobs Package to Put Americans Back to Work and Keep Economy Growing Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today after President Obama’s speech on job creation and economic growth at the Brookings Institution: “President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress share a strong commitment to our top priority: putting Americans back to work. “There is growing consensus around the need for action to create more jobs, keep our economy on the road to recovery, and to lower the deficit. This year, the Recovery Act and other efforts have created or...

New York Times readers were treated to a rare dose of sympathy for Sarah Palin and her new book yesterday. Columnist Stanley Fish reviewed "Going Rogue", and cast it in a generally appealing light, while dispelling some of the most trumpeted criticisms of the former Alaska Governor's autobiography. Fish introduces his review with a humorous anecdote poking fun at some of the more deranged Palin-haters: Upon asking a customer service representative in a Manhattan bookstore where he could find "Going Rogue," the employee "looked at me as if I had requested a copy of 'Mein Kampf' signed in blood by...

CBS) It was a security breach and a big embarrassment for the Transportation Security Administration. A secret manual that tells airport screeners around the country how to do their jobs somehow wound up on line for all the world to see. It detailed who should be screened, how often bags are checked for explosives, how to deal with CIA agents traveling with high-value intelligence assets - even provided images of various special identification cards, as CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports. The breach reveals some of the government's most sensitive aviation security secrets. A 93-page manual prepared for federal airport...

Like any good magician the CommiecRats are shifting this market collapse to the last 8 years when actual graphs show it was the last 2 years that is the entire problem. As your 201K shows, the previous 6 years was a steady pattern of growth and economic stability. Ask yourself the most important question of your life, are you better off today than you were 2 years ago? Like any change of leadership the lag between takeover and your policies taking effect is 6 mos after your installation. Looking at the Dow Jones graph you can see that the slide...

Sarah Palin may not be your huckleberry when it comes to the presidency, but she came to Washington the other night and proved she has more political sex appeal than anyone on the scene with the exception of Barack Obama. The former Alaska governor, last year’s media-maligned GOP vice presidential nominee and now author, showed up at one of the toughest venues in town — as the Republican speaker at the venerable Gridiron Club. The very fact she was willing to take the chance of appearing in a room full of her most disdainful critics is testimony to her courage....

Although The Times was among the first to report on the e-mail, in a front-page article late last month, and has continued to write about the issue almost daily in the paper or on its Web site, readers have raised a variety of complaints: Some say Andrew Revkin, the veteran environmental reporter who is covering what skeptics have dubbed “Climategate,” has a conflict of interest because he wrote or is mentioned in some of the e-mail messages that the University of East Anglia says were stolen. Others wondered why The Times did not make the e-mail available on its Web...

Senate Defeats Nelson Amendment to Stop Abortion Funding in Health Care Washington, DC -- The Senate on Tuesday voted 54-45 to defeat the Nelson amendment that would have removed the massive abortion funding from the Senate government-run health care bill. With the defeat, pro-life advocates will unite behind a concerted effort to defeat the entire health care bill. http://www.lifenews.com/nat5748.html

The conflict between parenting and career is hardwired in the female brain.In the struggle for equality between the sexes, it keeps coming down to motherhood, doesn’t it? Consider a recent article by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic. Rosin finds that nursing her infant is holding her back from the work she enjoys, despite her plan for a fully egalitarian marriage. “We were raised to expect that co-parenting was an attainable goal,” she laments, yet breast-feeding ties her, and not her husband, to their baby. She combs through research on the health benefits of breast-feeding for babies and makes a convincing...

GOP senators on Tuesday highlighted “pure waste” in the billions of stimulus funds spent this year, including money for fossil research in Argentina, puppet shows and to protect cruise ships from terrorist attacks. The Obama administration has spent $217 billion in economic stimulus funds as of the end of November. A new report issued Tuesday by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, concluded that $7 billion was wasted or mismanaged. At the top of the GOP list of wasteful projects is a $5 million grant from the Department...

The good guys won. I announced Overstock's lawsuit against Rocker in an August 12, 2005 conference call I titled, "The Miscreants' Ball". In that call (and in subsequent elaboration on DeepCapture.com) I claimed that a network of dirty Wall Street players was engineering modern bear raids, destroying companies and destabilizing the system. I claimed that the network of hedge fund manipulators and compliant reporters intersected in a dirty journalist named Jim Cramer. In the network, I claimed, were hedge funds such as David Rocker's; putatively independent research firms like Gradient which essentially took dictation from hedge funds; a small group...

Senate rejects Nelson amendment on abortion

Over ONE MILLION copies sold! On the NYTimes Bestseller List for 19 weeks, 12 weeks at #1!Buy it… read it… live it!“Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811