Free Republic

The long sordid journey of the White House green jobs czar finally came to an end last night. White House green jobs adviser Van Jones resigned in the middle of the Labor Day weekend following persistent controversy over his past remarks and associations.

Unlike President Barack Obama, I believe we are in for a long recession. I base this on three criteria. --Unemployment. It is rising fast, in both Britain and the U.S.--The public deficit. It is rising at a terrifying rate in both countries. The White House calculates that the deficit over the next ten years will be $9 trillion, which is $2 trillion more than estimated in February. The comparable figures in Britain are also bad, with deficits this year and next at more than £175 billion,... --Neighborhood shops. In my little network of streets in London, 28 shops have shut...

Revealed today was another kick in the teeth for the friends and families of the Lockerbie Bombing. A newspaper in Great Britain is reporting that the doctors who judged Lockerbie terrorist al-Megrahi had only three months to live where paid by Libya. In contrast other doctors suggested the terrorists had 10 or more months to live, not much better, but to get the compassionate release you had to be judged within three months of death. The release itself was disgusting, but what has happened since is like rubbing salt on the still raw wounds of those whose lives were shattered...

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one. The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people...

As scary as this may sound… Glenn Beck might actually have more power than anybody else representing the republican party. As the republican party seemingly has no leader in their ranks, at least one that can represent the voice of the people. The resignation of Van Jones signals that Glenn Beck’s words do not fall on deaf ears. The view’s of Glenn Beck have been labeled “extreme” from just about everyone on the left. Van Jones views are arguably just as extreme, if not more so.

With the family trying for a compassionate discharge that would give their patriarch a brief stay at home, the ad sought letters of support from readers.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Virginia voters finds McDonnell leading Deeds 51% to 42%. That’s little changed from a month ago when McDonnell held the advantage 49% to 41%. All of those figures include “leaners.” Leaners are those who initially indicate no preference for either of the candidates but answer a follow-up question and say they are leaning towards a particular candidate. The survey was conducted shortly after news stories broke about a thesis paper written by McDonnell in 1989. The thesis reflected very conservative views on the role of women in society and other topics. To this...

Some Washington pundits are developing a new narrative for President Obama: the coming of the centrist. It’s a narrative that expects history to repeat itself; something history rarely does. It’s along these lines: The shellacking that the president and his Democrats are taking on health care reform, the stimulus, and cap and trade will grind these and other initiatives to a halt. Democrats will lose one or both houses of Congress in November 2010. Republican majorities will serve as a useful counterbalance to a president whose hard left will continually nip at his heels. A chaste president will govern from...

Axelrod: Firm on public option By: Mike Allen September 6, 2009 10:42 AM EST White House senior adviser David Axelrod tells POLITICO that the administration is not dialing back its support for a public health-insurance option as part of a reform bill, and that a comment he made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” was misinterpreted. Axelrod told NBC’s David Gregory that President Barack Obama “certainly agrees that we have to have competition and choice, to hold the insurance companies honest. … He believes the public option is a good tool. Now, it shouldn’t define the whole health-care debate, however.” The...

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The founders of the National Republican Trust PAC (NRTP), Scott Wheeler and Peter Leitner, are set to release a powerful expose on Barack Obama's unelected shadow government. The book, "Shadow Government: What Obama Doesn't Want You To Know About His Czars," scheduled for release in mid-September is available for order at GOPTrust.com. Several thousand copies have been pre-ordered by the public. -- Adolfo Carrion, former Bronx Borough President with a history of taking bribes and putting the interests of his donors above those of the community was named Director of Urban Affairs by Obama....

President Obama's green jobs czar resigned early this morning after a series of controversial comments sparked a firestorm of criticism. Van Jones, an environmental adviser for the president, had been linked to derogatory comments about Republicans and efforts to suggest that the government had a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Jones apologized Thursday saying, "It certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever," but the White House did not seem satisfied with this explanation. In announcing his resignation, Jones said he was the victim of a “vicious smear campaign.” The resignation, disclosed without advance notice by the White...

In a letter released just after midnight Saturday, Van Jones, President Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality resigned. "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones wrote. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." Jones said that he had "been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight. But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues...

A few weeks ago a group of elected officials asked me the following question: What do we do when we are attacked online? My answer to them: Have the largest online footprint possible. What do I mean by an "online footprint"? In a broad sense, an online footprint is the extent to which you are connected with your supporters in the online space. Sayfie Review founder Justin Sayfie defined the term more specifically in a recent speech to the Tallahassee Tiger Bay Club when he said, "Develop a massive email distribution list, a massive number of Facebook friends, and a...

Obama's Latest Radical at the Defense Department On April 9th, op-ed columnist and Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks penned her final piece for the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper for which she had written on a regular basis since 2005. -SNIP- Brooks’ credentials as a far-leftist are impeccable. For one, she is the daughter of author Barbara Ehrenreich, the Honorary Chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America who has lauded Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. In 2004 Brooks served as a foreign-policy advisor to the John Kerry-John Edwards presidential campaign. She also has been a special counsel to the president...

On Tuesday, September 8th, The Hope Institute for Children and Families will open the doors to a innovative new Chicago contract school, the Hope Institute Learning Academy. The public-private partnership school brings The Hope Institute for Children and Families' Maximum Benefits Model into the public school system discarding the traditional cookie-cutter approach to education in an effort to help every child develop their maximum potential. The Hope Institute Learning academy, a 2010 Renaissance School, will initially offer enrollment for K-3 students. However, the school has plans to expand to a full kindergarten through twelfth grade program in the coming years....

The Van Jones era is now over. Under the cover of weekend, and cloaked by a cloud of misinformation and blame-shifting, Van Jones has resigned as Green Jobs Czar. The money quote: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." Given that Political Castaway has been negligent in writing anything about this man or his record of radical activism, perhaps now is the best time to review that record in light of that quote.

Trips to Israel have given me the impression that that Golda Meir is a bigger hero in the United States than in Israel. The reason is probably that in the 59 years since the War of Independence, the Yom Kippur War was the closest the Jewish State ever came to being destroyed. One version of history suggests that Meir had pretty strong intelligence that it was about to be attacked, but instead of launching a preemptive attack like in 1967, she heeded US Secretary of State Henry Kissenger's warning not to attack first. Many Israelis, including my friend Avi who...

http://townhall.com/columnists/BillSteigerwald/2007/02/09/a_skeptic%E2%80%99s_take_on_global_warming

Climate Reparations: Western nations 'have already exceeded their quotas'...'The West would give back part of the wealth it has taken from the South in the past centuries' Sunday, September 06, 2009By Marc Morano – Climate Depot Excerpted From a September 4, 2009 article in The German Newspaper Der Spiegel. The interview was conducted by Christian Schwägerl and the article was titled: 'Industrialized Nations Are Facing CO2 Insolvency' Der Spiegel Excerpts: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the German government's climate protection adviser, argues that drastic measures must be taken in order to prevent a catastrophe. Schellnhuber is proposing the creation of a CO2...

Former Kansas Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius won Senate confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary. But the real power lies with with newly-created health czar Nancy-Ann Min DeParle. Her official title: Director of the White House Office for Health Reform. DeParle ran the behemoth Medicare and Medicaid programs under Bill Clinton. She parlayed her government experience into a lucrative private-sector stint. Over the past three years, she made nearly $6 million from her work in the health care industry. Despite President Obama’s loud denunciations of the revolving-door lobbyist culture in Washington, DeParle’s industry ties didn’t bother the White House. She...