Time For McCain To Retire
By concretebob | March 10, 2010
John McCain claims his many years in the Inner Circle of the Washington elite make him qualified candidate to be the Senator from Arizona.
Who is in McCain’s Inner Circle?
When it comes to Illegal Immigration, La Raza and the Democrats are part of the McCain inner sanctum. McCain, LaRaza and the Democrats are all in when it comes to the quest to grant Illegals Amnesty
Who is LaRaza? The Amnesty Lobby! (So much for curbing special interests, Senator McCain!)
Do you remember the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill? Do you remember the last time John McCain tried to force Amnesty on America? That was back in 2007…
- …After 12 to 40 million illegal aliens had invaded the U.S. from across the Mexican border, John McCain proposed Amnesty!
- …When the economy crashed, causing the largest recession and loss of jobs since the Great Depression, John McCain proposed Amnesty (and is still pushing for illegals to come to America and take the jobs that U.S. citizens desperately need.)!
- …And as the flow of drugs from South America and Mexico across the U.S. border increased to record levels, John McCain proposed Amnesty!
McCain’s record of National and “Border INsecurity” continues even today. According to Homeland Security’s own reports, thousands of people from 14 “special interest” countries with links to terrorism have already come into the United States illegally.
Do you still doubt what John McCain will do if given another term in the U.S. Senate?
…The REAL John McCain is clear on his Amnesty position.
When John McCain proposed S1433, the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, he promised America: “Amnesty has to be an important part.”
…and John McCain hasn’t backed down from that position. After losing his presidential campaign to Barack Obama, he immediately tried to broker a new peace with the Obama White House by pledging to work with the president to pass Amnesty.
And, just days ago, John McCain badly pretended to be surprised when he questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a committee hearing: “…People could come up through our southern border?” and she truthfully responded, “Potentially, yes.”
It is outrageous that McCain could even pretend to be surprised when Napolitano continued and said of illegals crossing the border, “On the human trafficking side, it’s not solely illegal immigrants coming to work, but the ability of people from countries of special interest to immigrate into Central America and be ferried up to the border and over into the United States.”
The bottom line is we just can’t trust John McCain on Amnesty. We just can’t take another chance!
As long as John McCain is determined to be La Raza’s voice in Washington for Amnesty and open borders, he can never be our voice!
BUT… No one questions the Consistent Conservative, JD Hayworth, because his position on Illegal Immigration is, well, consistent.
- J.D. Hayworth is a national leader in the fight to secure our borders
- J.D. Hayworth has actually “written the book” on the subject, “Whatever It Takes”.
- When John McCain proposed his Amnesty Plan-the Heritage Foundation said it would cost taxpayers $2.6 Trillion-J.D. Hayworth stood up and fought against it.
Taking on a U.S. Senator with nearly 30 years of seniority took courage, but J.D. understood that our economy could not survive the long-term effects of the McCain-Kennedy plan, and that encouraging millions of illegals by granting amnesty to break our laws was a recipe for disaster.
J.D. has led the fight for real border security, interior enforcement, requiring that law our current laws need to be enforced to protect our citizens.
It is no surprise that he has been endorsed by great leaders like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio whose efforts have captured and detained 25% of all illegals in the US that are returned to Mexico or their home countries.
We believe we have had enough of the kind of experience that John McCain brings to Washington. It is time to Secure the Southern Border of the United States.
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MyHeritage Update
By concretebob | March 10, 2010
Let Iraq be a lesson for Iran
Though there remains much work to be done in Iraq, the election turnout last Sunday suggests that American efforts to promote stability and democracy in the region are paying off. Despite threats of violence, nearly 62 percent of Iraq’s 19 million voters showed up to the polls in what the New York Times describes as “arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war.”
The news of Iraq’s successful parliamentary elections was all the buzz around Washington. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined a number of his congressional colleagues in commending those who made the election possible:
To the men and women who have served in Iraq, this is a testament to your service. To the Iraqi people, well done. Keep trying, democracy is hard, but there is a better way for your children if you continue the course that you’re on. It will be a moderating force in the Mideast at a time when we desperately need it.
But the Iraqi regime still faces many internal and external hurdles. Perhaps the greatest challenge is its larger neighbor to the east: Iran, the foremost state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian regime is steadfast in its desire to sabotage Iraq’s democratic experiment. Its threat to Iraq’s fledging democracy cannot and should not be downplayed. Were they to succeed, the repercussions would stretch beyond Iraq and into the entire Middle East and even back to the United States.
Maintaining and improving stability in Iraq is largely contingent on how the world responds to Iran and its rogue nuclear program. To succeed, America and its allies will require a clear and well-designed strategy. The Heritage Foundation has outlined Ten Steps to a Free Iran, each of which should be incorporated into this comprehensive strategy:
1. Impose and enforce the strongest sanctions;
2. Drop opposition to gasoline sanctions;
3. Target public diplomacy to expose the regime’s human rights abuses;
4. Facilitate communications among dissidents;
5. Aid opposition groups;
6. Reduce Iran’s meddling in Iraq;
7. Target covert actions to discredit the regime;
8. Modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal;
9. Expand U.S. military capabilities to defend U.S. interests and allies; and
10. Deploy a robust and comprehensive missile defense system.
In combination, these steps will better enable America and our allies to build upon the Iraqi regime’s success by standing firm against Iran. We should work to preserve stability in Iraq, both because it benefits Iraqi citizens and because Iraq can serve as a model of freedom for the Iranian people.
» For more Heritage research on Iran, visit the Iran Briefing Room.
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Patriot Post
By concretebob | March 10, 2010
Village Idiots
You don’t say: “I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis.” –Algore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change
Unsolicited advice: “I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that’s been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do.” –from an open letter to BO from crockumentarian Michael Moore
Useful idiot: “Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. … [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.” –actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (No wonder they get along so well!)
In need of remedial history: “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” –actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific”
Somehow not comforting: “Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do.” –White House adviser David Axelrod
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Heritage Foundation Morning Bell-Healthcare
By concretebob | March 10, 2010
The Up or Down Vote Our Country Really Deserves
President Barack Obama is touring the country asking for an up-or-down vote on his health care plan. Forget for a second that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) can schedule an up-or-down vote on the Senate health care bill any time she wants, and keep in mind that while Democrats are trying to create the legislative text for President Obama’s “new” health care proposal, Senate Democrats are also pushing to include student lending provisions in the reconciliation bill. What does student lending have to do with health care you might ask? Nothing. But the Senate routinely attaches seemingly unrelated matters to must-pass legislation.
That is what makes Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) refusal to honor Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) request to offer an amendment funding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) to the American Workers, State and Business Relief Act so transparently hypocritical. Lieberman has been fighting for months to get an up-or-down vote on the DCOSP and saw a good opportunity with the Business Relief Act. But Reid prevented an up-or-down vote by ruling Lieberman’s amendment “not germane” to the underlying legislation. When has that ever stopped the Senate before?
The reality is that the Obama administration and Senate Democrats want to avoid an up-or-down vote on the DCOSP at all costs. Such a vote would force them to choose between their lofty post-partisan education rhetoric and the cold hard reality of the fact that liberal Democrats are beholden to the interests of the teachers unions. Articulating the official position of the Obama administration, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote in The Wall Street Journal last year: “We must close the achievement gap by pursuing what works best for kids, regardless of ideology. In the path to a better education system, that’s the only test that really matters.” What works. Regardless of ideology. That’s the only test. Read the rest of this entry »
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Morning Must Reads
By concretebob | March 10, 2010
New York Times — Parliamentary Hurdle Could Thwart Latest Health Care Overhaul Strategy
A lot of Democrats are looking for a reason not to vote for the president’s health care plan – particularly one that won’t have Rahm Emanuel chasing them into the showers at the House gym.
But the administration can afford zero defections in the House. Because of vacancies, if every Democrat who voted for the House health bill votes for the Senate health bill, the measure would pass on a one-vote majority. No nays have switched to yeas so far, but plenty of yeas have expressed reservations.
One of the big beefs is that the president’s plan calls for the House first passing the Senate bill, then the Senate passing a modification package with 51 votes as a rider to a budget bill, and then passing a third piece of legislation to ban subsidies for elective abortions.
House members dislike this plan because it depends on the Senate and Obama following through, and past experience suggests those are not guaranteed outcomes.
Liberals are afraid of being marooned with the crony capitalism of the Senate bill if the president’s reconciliation plan craps out. Socially conservative/fiscally liberal Democrats of the old model know that the Senate won’t pass any abortion language more stringent than the watered down version which Sen. Ben Nelson embraced (along with $100 million for his state).
As Examiner colleague Susan Ferrechio explains, the complications are such that House Democrats blew off the White House-imposed deadline on March 18, with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sending a special raspberry to ham-handed press secretary Robert Gibbs.
Now, members are waiting for the first of many possible parliamentary rulings on the legislative tripsichore required to advance the plan. The big question being – Can you modify the budget impact of a law that hasn’t become a law?
Writers Robert Pear and David Herszenhorn explain:
“Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said the reconciliation instructions in last year’s budget resolution seemed to require that Mr. Obama sign the Senate bill into law before it could be changed.
‘It’s very hard to see how you draft, and hard to see how you score, a reconciliation bill to another bill that has not yet been passed and become law,’ Mr. Conrad said. ‘I just advise you go read the reconciliation instructions and see if you think it has been met if it doesn’t become law.’”
Washington Post — Massa investigated for allegedly groping staffers
What a weirdo!
Former Rep. Eric Massa went on Glenn Beck’s show for some support in his effort to say that Rahm Emanuel is a little bully. He was, it seems, looking for love in all the wrong places.
Beck pummeled Massa for his “familiar” relationship with male staffers, and the more Massa tried to explain, the worse it got. He described tickle fights with his male aides but thought it preposterous that anyone would object.
In retrospect, Massa may wish that he had acceded to Emanuel’s demands and switched his vote on the president’s health plan – originally a nay cast on the grounds that the plan was insufficiently liberal. He is not the one man with courage who makes a majority.
Writer Carol Leonning got more dirt on Massa from house Democrats looking to 86 the former freshman before he could do any more damage. But Massa was doing a good enough job of that himself on TV.
“Though Massa has resigned, it is possible that the ethics investigation will continue, according to two sources. The reason for such an inquiry would to be to address the circumstances of any hostile work environment. There are no indications that any of the harassment allegations were shared with law enforcement officials.”
New York Times — A Consumer Bill Gives Exemption on Payday Loans
The witches’ brew of a financial regulation package being cooked up by Senate sorcerers Chris Dodd, Bob Corker and Richard Shelby is getting more pungent by the day.
Dodd has already taken care of the medium-sized banks that have patronized him for so long, now writer Sewell Chan explains what Corker wants for adding a bipartisan veneer to the plan.
Corker is looking to protect the bottom feeders of the financial industry – strip mall payday lenders who prey on the working poor and skirt state usury laws by operating as check cashing businesses that charge exorbitant fees rather than lenders.
Corker’s relationship with the industry goes way back and one of his greatest political benefactors is a legal loan shark who has been bankrolling him since he ran for mayor of Chattanooga.
“Under the proposal agreed to by Mr. Dodd and Mr. Corker, the new consumer agency could write rules for nonbank financial companies like payday lenders. It could enforce such rules against nonbank mortgage companies, mainly loan originators or servicers, but it would have to petition a body of regulators for authority over payday lenders and other nonbank financial companies.”
Wall Street Journal — Decision on 9/11 Trial Could Undercut Holder
After accommodating the venal whims of the Clintons, Eric Holder was hoping to get right as an attorney general of principle in the Obama administration.
His mistake, like so many Democrats in Washington, was taking Obama at his word.
Writer Evan Perez explains how Holder rushed to please his boss by setting up civilian trials for terrorists in densely populated areas. Now that Obama is ditching the plan in the face of a gale of political opposition, Holder is in an embarrassing position, which is bad, and he’s also become an embarrassment to the administration, which is worse.
Even if Holder wants to accommodate Obama by backing down, he will remain the personification of the politicized priorities of the president.
“Justice Department officials say Mr. Holder’s decision was predicated in part on an earlier decision by Mr. Obama. In a speech at the National Archives in May, Mr. Obama said: ‘First, whenever feasible, we will try those who have violated American criminal laws in federal courts—courts provided for by the United States Constitution.’
When Mr. Holder announced civilian trials for the alleged 9/11 plotters, he was unaware that Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, opposed the idea, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Emanuel, these people said, felt constrained about discussing the issue with Mr. Holder.”
USA Today — Internal report issues black eye for U.S. Embassy in Kabul
Writer Ken Dilanian got a copy of an inspector’s report that found the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had too many tasks, too few resources, and was letting too much slip through the cracks.
The report particularly chides the State Department for handing out $2 billion worth of contracts for projects like drug eradication and civilian training without much oversight.
Part of the problem has been that the radical de-Bushification of the embassy, combined with the effort to add 600 Staties to the 300 person staff have sewn confusion and created a shortage of experienced operators.
Another problem is that while catering to every Congressman and think tanker who shows up for a passport stamp and a photo-op, embassy workers can’t do their real jobs.
“The report also undercuts a key example cited by [Envoy Richard] Holbrooke as part of his pledge to reduce the government’s reliance on contractors for reconstruction and aid projects. In discussing that change, Holbrooke has repeatedly cited his canceling of a $30 million contract for women’s programs. He said he gave the money to the Kabul embassy.
However, the embassy doesn’t have people to oversee the grants, the audit says. While the embassy hired more staff, Hayden said, it also had to hire a Washington-based contractor to administer the program because Afghan organizations lacked the “internal controls” required to receive direct U.S. funding.”
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