Here’s our good friend, and “Birthday Boy,” AP, who turned 93 just a week or so ago. What a guy, huh?
OBAMA’S SELECTIVE MEMORY OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY…….”Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind a conservative commentator that for years what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example, and I am confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.” (April 2, 2012)
“Let me be very specific. We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an economic issue, like health care, that I think most people clearly consider commerce – a law like this has not been overturned at least since the 30’s, pre-New deal.” “And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And the sole burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.” (Obama, clarifying comments he made the previous day, April 3)
President Obama made these remarks during a series of a high-profile news conference, taking the unusual step of commenting on a Supreme Court case, the challenge to the Affordable Care Act, while the justices were still deliberating.
YOU WILL NOT FIND IN THE CONSTITUTION………..Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is a courtly Virginian who conveys a manner as soft as a Shenandoah breeze. He has written a book, Why Americans are Losing Their Inalienable Rights to self-Government, in which he takes on issues of the Constitution, pro and con. I wish to quote parts of his thoughts: “The Constitution is a companion of the Declaration of Independence, and should be construed as an implementation of the Declaration’s premises, Government exists not to confer rights but to secure pre-existing rights…The constitution is a Document, one understood, as America’s greatest jurist, John Marshall, said, chiefly from its words. And those words are to be construed in the bright light cast by the Declaration. [Wilkinson] worries] about judges causing an ever increasing displacement of democracy. Also most worrisome, is the displacement of liberty by democracy in the form of majorities indifferent to or hostile to what the Declaration decrees, a separate sphere of individual sovereignty.”
ANOTHER GOVERNMENT REGULATION?…….While typing the above, I heard an announcement over the TV, that the government was contemplating a regulation as to “what farmers’ kids can or cannot do, even to the limit as to how many square feet of grass can be cut. There were additional examples which I cannot remember, but I am sure there will be some news coverage……..What we need is Buck Rogers and his robots.
“The beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life. I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does”….Helen Keller
DISHONESTY OBAMA STOCK IN TRADE……While dishonesty is aberrant to most Americans, for Obama it is a finely tuned art form. He has been practicing it from day one. From his empty promises of civility, transparency and uniting America, to the way he finagled the cost of Obama Care, he has divided the country and constantly demagogues’ dissenters. His latest masterpiece occurred in Cushing, Oklahoma, where he attempted to create the illusion that he is NOW FOR the Keystone Pipeline, a project he just recently vetoed and lobbied against. He blithely announced that he was “fast tracking” one small portion of this pipeline, from Cushing to the Gulf Coast, knowing full well that this was already a done deal despite his administration doing everything it can to delay the actual work… It is a sorry attempt to woo almost 70% of Americans who favor the entire pipeline, and to deflect attention from the now $4/gallon gas price and his failed energy projects.
He likes to claim we need to create alternative energy because we only have 2%, or 2.2 million barrels, of the world’s oil. Yet his own Department of Energy says we really have 1.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil; not counting for our abundance of gas, we have enough oil for at least 200 years. The “kicker” to all these misleading STATEMENTS is that our liberal media allow the Obama Administration to get away with not informing the public of the real facts. The media is more interested in helping Obama get re-elected than “constantly “reporting the facts.” Hard to tell who is more dishonest, the President or the media.
FAREWELL TO THE NEW FRONTIER……..As the space shuttle Discovery flew three time around Washington, a final salute before landing at Dulles airport for retirement to a museum, thousands on the ground gazed upward with marvel and pride. Yet what they were witnessing, for all its elegance, was a funeral march. The shuttle was being carried because it can no longer fly. Its pallbearer was a 747. The pity is not Discover’s retirement, beautiful as it was. The shuttle proved it was too expensive and too risky to operate; the pity is it died without a successor. The planned follow up; the Constellation rocket capsule programmed to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon, was suddenly cancelled in 2010. And with that, control of manned space flight was gratuitously ceded to Russia and China. Who cares, you say, when we are in economic distress? But if we are talking jobs and growth, science, and technology, R&D and innovation, what Obama insists are the keys to “an economy built to last”, why on earth cancel an incomparable, sophisticated, uniquely American technological enterprise?
Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Gene Cernan are deeply skeptical. In a 2010 open letter, they called Obama’s cancellation of Constellation a “devastating decision that destines our nation to become one of the second or third rate nations.” This is why museum visits to the embalmed Discovery will be sad, indeed. America rarely retreats from new frontiers, yet today we cannot even do what John Glenn did in 1962, let alone fly a circa-1980 shuttle. ……….Discovery will lie intact, a magnificent and melancholy rebuke to constricted horizons. [Excerpted from Charles Krauthammer’s April 25th column.]
OUR DO NOTHING CONGRESS……..Any suggestion of doing something positive about the conditions of our country get nowhere, as every elected person is afraid to step forward in fear that it may cost him/her a vote in the coming election………without a scandal or two, they are sitting, watching the clock and the debt numbers….why in hell don’t they take the time they are wasting, go fishing, without pay of course……..OH, SURE!!!!!!
TREASURY’S RUN AROUND DeMARCO, TAPPING TARP TO PAY FANNIE MAE FOR ANOTHER HOUSING BAILOUT……….If you can’t roll over Ed DeMarco, run around him. That is the latest ploy of Obama’s as he tries to arrange one more election-year housing bailout. Mr. DeMarco is the career civil servant who drew the “short straw” and ended up as the acting chief of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He is legally bound to balance three priorities: preserve and conserve Fan &Fred’s assets to protect the taxpayers, keep the institutions running while Congress figures what to do next, and to maximize assistance to homeowners to minimize foreclosure. The last imperative isn’t supposed to come at the expense of the other two.
But don’t tell that to the Obama Administration, which has been hounding Mr. DeMarco to unleash Fan and Fred to write down principals on millions of home mortgages. DeMarco has resisted on grounds that it would hurt taxpayers. For this effrontery, Democrats in Congress have tried to get DeMarco ”fired”, and even New York Federal Reserve Chief, Bill Dudley, has lectured his fellow regulator to get with the Obama program. Treasury Secretary Geithner joined the pressure campaign, telling the Senate there is a strong economic case for write-downs in some cases because they “might increase the overall recovery of the investor and the tax payer.”
Since Mr. DeMarco won’t budge, Treasury is now proposing an offer they believe he cannot refuse. The Administration wants to take a chunk of the $20.9 billion leftover TARP funds and use it to subsidize mortgage write downs through its Home Affordable Modification Program. About 80% of borrowers with Fannie and Freddie backed loans are under water, with a home worth less than the mortgage, but who still make their monthly payments. Why should taxpayers subsidize people who can afford to pay? And what happens to those who aren’t current, and receive subsidized money? My guess is that the home owner who is paying might stop, knowing that the government will reduce their debt. Contrary to the administration’s guess, Mr. DeMarco told Congress he would consider principal reduction, “if funds become available” to make up for the losses incurred by Fred and Fannie. Instead of using TARP money to reduce the $1.3 trillion federal deficit, Mr. Geithner now wants to hand it to FHFA so Mr. DeMarco can’t object to principal write downs. Thus even as Mr. DeMarco protects taxpayers from losses at Fred and Fannie, Treasury picks the taxpayers’ pockets through TARP. Treasury and President Obama get their election year bailout without having to fire DeMarco.
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”……Helen Keller
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT, AS A POLITICAL TALKING POINT……….Left wingers need to preserve the talking point that the Right hates women. The Violence against Women Act, now pending reauthorization in the U.S. Senate, offers a great example how liberals use political “kabuki” to keep the myth alive. The bill is fundamentally flawed and fully deserving of rejection. As the Washington Post reports, “Democrats see the debate over the bill and potential amendments as an opening to continue accusing Republicans of waging war on women’s rights.” In recent weeks the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has used the issue, including the 11 Democratic women running in the Senate races this year, to raise money from supporters. The NY Times reports, that Republican Senator Murkowski has urged Republicans to surrender on this issue. No one disputes that violence against women is a problem, and one that has to be addressed by law enforcement. But crimes of violence are meat and potatoes issues for state and local enforcement, and Our Founders had set up the Republic with that idea in mind…….James Madison wrote in the, “ Federalist 45 that the powers of the federal government are limited and the powers remaining in the state are numerous.”
The Heritage Foundation notes, “That despite the fact that each state has its own statutes that punish domestic violence, the federal government intervened in 1994 with the Violence against Women Act. The President AND Congress may feel better by passing this law, but the federal government is not supposed to waste federal resources on issues more properly dealt with by the state and local governments.” The pending legislation before the Senate, S1925, vastly increases the rights of the federal government, which in turn creates another subject to dispute, and the liberals have loaded this bill with provisions meant to bait conservatives’ politicians.
What we need is more women in Congress, there are many, many well qualified women in business and politics that have to rise to the top, our country needs the balance of a Margret Thatcher, Eleanor Roosevelt, Golda Meier, Meg Whitman, Sarah Palin, Carly Florina, Jeanne Fitzpatrick and many more………I would be amiss if I didn’t include part of a Mark Twain’s speech on “Votes for Women”…”I should like to see the time come when women shall help make the laws. I should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of women. As for this city’s government, I don’t want to say much, except that it is a shame-a-shames: but if I should live twenty five years longer, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t, I think I shall see the women handle the ballot. If women had the ballot to-day, the state of things in this town would not exist. If all the women in this town had a vote to-day they would elect a mayor at the next election, and they would rise in their might and change the awful state now existing here”
MOOSE SKOWRON, FIVE TIMES World Series champion dies at the age of 81….. Moose was one of the two players who hit three homers in the seventh game of a World Series.; Yogi Berra was the other player. Born, William Joseph Skowron on Chicago’s north side; he said he was given the name “Mussolini” when his grandfather cut his hair at the age of 7 that caused his friends to call him “Mussolini” the knick name was changed as the war ended… He was an All Star with the Yankees from 1957-1961 an All Star again in 1965. He was a class act throughout his career, and a pretty good first baseman…..
Originally I was going to use this space for “comments from our readers”, but I have been reading about one of the government’s “scams” that has my blood boiling, that needs attention……..FRESHMAN CLASS PRESIDENT…Obama (and Congress) rocks the youth vote by soaking the taxpayers……..This past week the President toured college campuses in state critical to his re-election. And thanks to an aggressive interpretation of Federal law, it now seems that both parties are trying to get around this law. The obvious political play is to shore up support among the college-age voters who are faced with an increase on their loans, from 3.4% to 6.8%, starting in July 1, 2012, which amounts to about $6 billion dollars, which both parties would like to freeze for one year, which Obama suggests raising taxes to cover the “freeze” ( It took me several years to pay off the loans that helped two of my children’s education) and now the taxpayers are faced with a TRILLION DOLLAR DEBT, TO PAY OFF OTHER CHILDREN’S EDUCATION DEBT.. The real beneficiaries are ten colleges, whose fees have risen with the increase in the student body, and the prompt payment by the government for the benefit of the student.
The interest rate sounds serious; after all there are 39 million Americans with student loans, which the student made voluntary taking on as an investment to benefit themselves. Federally subsidized loans are handed out to millions of college students regardless of risk. Thanks to taxpayer backing the loans are far below what private lenders would offer. When the student can’t afford to pay, the American people are stuck with the bill. Bankruptcy laws should be reviewed, perhaps like a home mortgage, spread over 25 /39 years, since bankruptcy not available to discharge a student loan. There are about 18 million students enrolled in about 5,000 colleges and universities, and when one checks, he will find that the colleges and universities have determinate badly, when graduation finally arrives, an unacceptable amount of students have actually learned very little, find themselves unable to find a job and yet find themselves trapped in a student “debt loan debt hell” for sensually for the rest of their lives. A debt total that exceeds the credit card debt, automobile loans, except the home owners mortgage.
Finally closure time, all above may be very confusing, which can happened when one is pissed, and I am PISSED……The scam was that the government promoted an education for everyone who could walk, talk and chew gum at the same time, and there were far too many that had boom boxes, cell phones and a lack of ambition, relying that the government will pay for their tuition, and like many of our “projects”, payback time is not in their vocabulary, including those in government who forgot the rules, just as long as the “student” could sign his name on the ballot box. Anxious to see how this matter is discharged, before Election Day, I am sure…………TERM LIMITS, TERM LIMITS, TERM LIMITS!! UNLESS YOU ARE HAPPY WITH A $16 TRILLION DEBT AND COUNTING…….
STAY WELL, KEEP IN TOUCH, AND WE WILL SEE YA’LL IN THE FUNNY PAPERS…AP