Did the Administration Pressure a General to Change Testimony?

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From the Daily Beast:

…The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

The episode—confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee—is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser…

There are two questions we need to have answered, over all:

1.  Has government policy been for sale?  Did the Administration set things up so that their donors and cronies would get the government swag regardless of the needs of the nation?

2.  If so, then what did the President know, and when did he know it?

Yes that second question is the “Watergate/impeachment” question.  And we need both questions answered.  We already see in the preliminary stages of the growing Solyndra scandal that Obama’s people would ensure that donors got special treatment…now we need to know, further, if outright lies were sought or presented by the Administration to ensure their cronies got government largesse.  Once we find that out, we then need to know if President Obama was aware of it, and when he became aware.  The answers to these questions will tell us if we’ve just got some rather routine government back scratching, or if we’ve got a government which has put the United States up for sale to the highest donor.

Will Obama Quit?

Mark Noonan15 Comments

PJ Tatler has a run down on the growing rumors that Obama  may quit – pull an LBJ and back out of running in 2012.  I don’t think this will happen.

First off, the only people on the Democrat side who might suggest this – Lieberman, Bayh, etc – are not the sort of people Obama will listen to.  Locked in to his array of sycophants, Obama is not about to allow some outsider to tell him that the game is over and its time to go home.  I can very much see some sensible Democrats wanting to do this – there is a chance with Obama on the ticket that a defeat in 2012 will turn in to an epic, blow out loss – but I can’t see any way for such people to reach Obama.

Secondly, and this ties in to why there won’t be a serious primary challenge, to move against Obama is to risk the Democrats’ hammer lock on the African American vote.  This isn’t just about the 2012 Presidential election – this is about whether or not liberals can retain any power to influence American policy.  A defeat in 2012 would be bad for them – but there is defeat, and then there is crushing loss.  Defeat is Obama out and the loss of 20 House and 5 Senate seats. Bad.  Means GOP controls things for at least two years.  Lots of conservative reforms can be implemented…but the chances of a major overhaul of the FDR/LBJ settlement are small.  Crushing loss is Obama out and the loss of 50 House and 15 Senate Seats.  Horrific.  Means GOP has the power to pretty much do whatever it wants…every liberal program is on the chopping block.  Just can’t be allowed to happen.

But that is what would happen if the Democrat party – by calling on Obama to quit or engineering a serious primary challenger – were to be perceived by African American voters as having betrayed Obama.  Its not that they would vote GOP, but that they would stay home on election day.  Without high African American turnout going 90%+ for the Democrats, the horrific scenario becomes a reality.  Of course, the Democrats might endure the horrific loss, anyway, but why make it a certainty by stabbing Obama in the back?  For good or ill, Democrats have Obama for 2012…in 2008, they jumped on his bandwagon presuming that he could initiate 50 years of liberal rule.  It hasn’t worked out that way.  Even if Obama manages to win in 2012, he has completely failed in that promise…but if the liberals want to have a future in America, they have to ensure that 2012 doesn’t work out as a blowout loss.  Easier to keep losses to a minimum with Obama than without.

I could be wrong about this – there might be a revolt of the remaining moderates in the Democrat party.  More than likely, though, there won’t be…and if there is, it will work out as a quixotic, third party alternative…which would help sink Obama, but wouldn’t destroy the Democrat party for the next 20 years.  That will all be as it may – none of us get a say in how Democrats do things.  Our job is to work for the blowout victory no matter what they do – because right now we have that chance to really do it:  to win so much power that we really can dismantle the Welfare State.

So, let’s just get out there and do it..

Reid: I’ll Force a Vote on the Jobs Bill…Eventually

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From the Las Vegas Sun:

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Republicans won’t support President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, but he still wants them to vote on the sweeping $450 billion economic recovery effort.

“We are going to have the Republicans belly up to the bar to turn down this plan,” Reid said during a virtual town hall meeting with supporters Wednesday.

Reid said he won’t immediately take up Obama’s plan because the Senate must tackle other issues first. He didn’t specify which bills would receive priority over Obama’s economic solution…

Anyone have an idea of what other, crisis issue we have before us which pre-empts jobs?

What is really happening here is not a Reid worry that the GOP will uniformly vote it down, but that half a dozen vulnerable, 2012 Democrats will vote against it, as well.  The last thing Obama, Reid and the Democrats need is for the Obama jobs bill to die in the Democrat Senate.  So, Reid’s “I’ll force them to vote” is just bluster…he won’t move until the House does.

Solyndra II?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Not satisfied with having thrown hundreds of millions away on Solyndra, the Obama Administration is now going to throw billions – from a Department of Energy press release:

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the Energy Department finalized a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Mojave Solar LLC for the development of the Mojave Solar Project (MSP).  When complete, the 250MW solar generation project located in San Bernardino County, California will increase the nation’s currently installed concentrating solar power (CSP) capacity by approximately 50 percent.  Abengoa Solar Inc., the project sponsor, estimates it will fund more than 900 construction and permanent operations jobs…

Sounds great, huh?  But we’ve heard this before from DoE:

Vice President Joe Biden, appearing via satellite from Washington D.C., today announced the Department of Energy has finalized a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, Inc., which manufactures innovative cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels that provide clean, renewable energy. The funding will finance construction of the first phase of the company’s new manufacturing facility. Annual production of solar panels from the first phase is expected to provide energy equivalent to powering 24,000 homes a year or over half a million homes over the project’s lifetime.  Solyndra estimates the new plant will initially create 3,000 construction jobs, and lead to as many as 1,000 jobs once the facility opens.  Hundreds more will install Solyndra’s solar panels on rooftops around the country…

Will the new loan guarantee prove better than the last, or is this good money after bad?  Also, did the people running Mojave Solar LLC donate to President Obama?  Other Democrats?  How often have they been to visit the White House?  Is this a hard-nosed, business decision or just another political pay off?

HAT TIP:  Zero Hedge

Team Obama: Utterly Clueless

Mark Noonan40 Comments

From the Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama will present his “jobs plan” on Wednesday at a company which is shipping jobs overseas.

Obama is scheduled to present his “jobs plan” in Apex, N.C., on Wednesday at the headquarters of WestStar Precision.

WestStar is a high-end, specialty manufacturer that just opened a new facility in San Jose, Costa Rica — creating many new jobs there, but not in the United States…

You have to wonder – are they really this stupid?  Obama has a massive staff of people dedicated to his well being and re-election…did no one check to see just what this photo-op backdrop was up to?  Couldn’t they find one company out there which actually expanded its American facilities of late?  Which didn’t just ship a bunch of jobs overseas?  Making this even more bizarre is the fact that the company owner is a Democrat who has donated to Obama’s campaign.

If we on the GOP side were allowed to write the script for Democrat implosion in 2012, we couldn’t have done better than this.  One thing I’d like to know – you liberals out there who are convinced that Obama is on the side of the little guy…here he’s going to an event to tout his job program at a company which ships US jobs overseas  rather than endure all the laws and regulations you liberals have imposed…and the owner of the company is not some GOP “millionaire and billionaire” fighting tenaciously for his corporate jet tax break…he’s a liberal Democrat.

Explain that, if you can.

Median Male Earns Less Than in 1968

Mark Noonan68 Comments

From Zero Hedge:

While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to Table P-5 of the Census report of (Lack of) Income, the median male is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in… 1968! While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since risen declined to $32,137 as of 2010. And there is your lesson in inflation 101 (which we assume is driven by the CPI, which likely means that the actual inflation adjusted income decline is far worse than what is even reported). The only winner: women, whose median inflation adjusted income over the same period has increased by 188%. That said, it is still at 65% of what the median male makes. So injustice all around…

Why has this happened?  Because since 1968 we have gone about destroying – via taxation, regulation, lawsuits and “nimbyism” – the ability of Americans to make, mine and grow things.  We can’t all answer phones in call centers, nor can all of us be computer programmers.  We have to make things, mine things and grow things…we have to produce wealth.  If we do, then wages rise…if we don’t, then they stay flat or decline.

It is time to restore the American economy be removing the barriers to wealth creation.  We have to allow people to work for a living – if we do, then wages will start to rise, fewer people will need government assistance and our overall finances – public and private – will improve.  If we don’t, then we die as a nation.  It is as stark as that.

And in order to do all that, we must over turn the current Ruling Class – they are in charge of Big Government and Big Corporation.  They are very well off and don’t care at all about how the average American lives.  They live in a world where struggle is non-existent, the family is unimportant and God is forgotten. As long as they are latched on to us, things cannot improve.  Remember that as we go in to 2012…anyone who is unwilling to shake up the status quo is unworthy of support…and the more revolutionaries  (ie, TEA Partiers) we can elect, the better.

White House Pressured OMB on Solyndra Loan

Mark Noonan13 Comments

From the Washington Post:

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget…

Hey, gotta rush it through – Biden needed a photo-op and Obama donors didn’t want to wait around for a payoff on their investment!  I mean, my goodness, its not like it was real money – it was taxpayer money!  You can do anything you want with that!  As long, that is, it goes to line the pockets of liberal crony-capitalists…

Investigate all loans by the US government to all entities – for profit or not for profit; any time the US government guaranteed a loan, we need to find out just how and why it was done.  Who got paid?  Once we know that, we’ll be able to really unravel the corruption.

Special Elections

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Here are the AP results for the NY-9 race, and the NV-2 race.

The NV-2 race is just about a foregone conclusion – as it turns out, I’ve been up in Reno the past few days and so caught a bit of the GOP advertising:  all Obama, all the time…”don’t send a rubber-stamp to DC”, that sort of thing.  I don’t recall they even mentioned the Democrat candidate’s name.  Expectations are for a double-digit GOP blowout…but Mark Amodei, taking nothing for granted, has been pressing the turnout efforts.

The polls in the NY-9 race just closed a few minutes ago and while polling has been good for the GOP, I do expect a Democrat win…they are pulling out all the stops and the district does have a reputation for voter fraud.  But even if the Democrats managed to squeak out a win, it will be a signal for defeat in 2012 unless Obama changes course.  And if the GOP does pull out a win, just that much more devastating for the Democrats.

UPDATE:  In NV-02, Amodei has 64% against Marshall’s 31%; NY-09, Turner has 51% against Weprin’s 48%; still way early.

UPDATE II:  NY-09, 271 of 512 precincts reporting, GOP winning 53/46; NV-09, 166 of 858 reporting, GOP winning 58/37.

UPDATE III:  AP calls NY-09 for Republican Bob Turner.  First GOP win in NY-09 since 1921.  Dems already spinning it as  meaningless…meanwhile, in private, they are starting to wonder if they should “primary” Obama…

UPDATE IV:  AP calls NV-02 for Republican Mark Amodei.  A crushing victory – 57% to 37%.

Turns Out, It Doesn’t Take a Village

Mark Noonan26 Comments

From Physorg:

“In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families,” said U-M researcher Beverly Strassmann, professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “There’s a naïve belief that villages raise children communally, when in reality children are raised by their own families and their survival depends critically on the survival of their mothers.”…

Only in modern, liberal times can it require a study to find out that families raise children and do just fine with it.  Sorry, Hillary, but we don’t actually need a “village” populated with Department of Education and Health and Human Services bureaucrats…

All government policies must be directed towards this end:  making it possible for one man and one women to raise their children as they see fit.  If it helps in that task, it is good and must be done…if it harms that effort, it must be stopped.

HAT TIP:  Instapundit