Oh, of course…….the water:

From ESPN:

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with “facts,” in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the New York Times reported on Feb. 12 that “President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities.”

Read the whole thing here

How far off course have we gotten when environmental extremists can exert this much influence over a sitting president?

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-Cnation

Update: This afternoon (Sunday) I saw the video of Palin consulting her hand during the post-speech Q and A. You know, while I don’t fault her for keeping notes - even notes written on her hand (as someone who does it all the time, I completely get it) - I still have to wonder what the heck she was thinking…as though the nutjob leftie blogs wouldn’t get a hold of some video stills and run with it. Good grief….

Still, at least she didn’t mispronounce ‘corpsman’. Three times. Interesting how the hypocrites on the left have nothing to say about that.

But let’s face it, their real problem with Palin’s speech last night is that she decimated their president and his fatally flawed ideology.

They probably oughta get used to it…

…..

So what is the left going after this morning? They’re going after the fact that Sarah Palin had to refer to notes and what were presumably a few bullet points scribbled in the palm of her hand during her Tea Party convention speech last night.

Because really, that’s so much worse than mindlessly reading every single word that’s been carefully scripted for you by someone else off a teleprompter.

And, you know….it’s not necessarily even Zero’s incessant teleprompter use in and of itself that’s the problem, it’s his utter inability to speak clearly and intelligently without it which both amuses and frightens us.

Unlike Zero, Palin speaks with conviction, from the heart, with a clarity of purpose that connects directly with the conservative majority in America, and which rightfully scares the living shit out of the progressives/leftists of the world as they see their agenda crumble before their eyes.

So, the next time you hear one of your moron leftist friends attempting to ridicule Palin, understand they’re just not capable of better. Immaturity and intellectual dishonesty of the type they’re displaying this morning is their stock in trade, especially when they’re getting their asses handed to them.

Pity them as you might an unruly emotional child, but then just smile and walk away.

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-Cnation

A speech given by an American who truly loves her country, to her fellow Americans who truly love their country.

The smackdown she laid on the current administration and its policies was thorough and dead-on accurate.

AND….not a teleprompter in sight.

This video is in 5 parts, all selectable from the bottom and sides of the video frame.

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-Cnation

I just received an email that requested I visit an anti ‘r-word’ website and pledge my support towards ending use of the word ‘retarded’, which these P.C. pussies boldly refer to as the ‘r-word’.

I went to the site. This is what I wrote:

“I pledge and support the elimination of Politically Correct insanity that would eliminate the use of a completely acceptable and accurate word from our vocabulary rather than admonish those who would misuse it.”

Yes, I’m fully aware they won’t publish it.

This uproar over Rahm Emanuel’s use of the term ‘fucking retarded’ is ridiculous; his response and the media reaction is pure insanity.

It’s not the word that is the problem, it’s the use of the word as a pejorative. I’ll even go so far as to admit that its as a pejorative is a rather large problem. But is the answer really to ban the word or refer to it - in a most infantile way - as the ‘r-word’?

Of course not.

Banning a word or referring to it as we once did as children (MOM! JOEY SAID THE F-WORD!!) does nothing but attempt to mask the problem. It’s like trying to fix rust by hiding it under a fresh coat of paint.

The idea, that by somehow eliminating a word deemed offensive from our vocabulary we will also eliminate the stigma attached to its misuse, is flawed to its core. The stigma will simply transfer to whatever word or term is used to replace it. In fact, it already has. If you haven’t heard the jokes and slurs centered on the word ‘challenged’, you have simply not been listening.

If we want to attack the underlying problem, we start - as we do in so many situations where the PC police would otherwise attempt to run the show - by teaching our children the difference between right and wrong, and that intentionally insulting anyone - regardless of physical/mental abilities or lack thereof - is unacceptable. That is where this whole argument should begin and end. Unfortunately, this would require both discipline and personal responsibility, two concepts virtually unknown to the liberal PC crowd except as the occasional punch line.

The word ‘retarded’, like it or not, is accurate and correct when applied to those now referred to ‘mentally challenged’ (or whatever the acceptable-pc-obfuscation-of-the-week happens to be as of this writing), and probably the least offensive of any of the PC-concocted terms created to replace it.

I’m not going to devote a lot of time to this, but in closing I would like you to consider the following: how many words in the English language are or can be used in an ‘offensive’ manner? If we eliminated all of them, what would we be left with?

We as free Americans need to draw the line.

American Thinker has a great piece on this very subject this morning that begins with a Confucius quote:

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”

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-Cnation

From the GOP:

Pence Decries Democrat Debt Limit Increase and PAYGO

“American people long for this administration and this Congress to lead us away from the brink of fiscal disaster

Washington, DC - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, delivered the following remarks today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in opposition to H. J. Res. 45, Democrat legislation that will increase the national debt limit by a record $1.9 trillion:

“Time for a little bit of truth telling about their side and about our side. The truth telling about our side is that back when we were in charge we didn’t do so well on controlling runaway federal spending. My colleagues, who know me well, know that I, many times, found myself at cross purposes in fighting the president of my own party and some leadership of my own party in some of those big spending fights. But under the last administration we doubled the national debt. I want to stipulate to that. But frankly, that’s no excuse for what’s happening today, Madam Speaker.

“Over the last three years, the Democrat majority has literally broken the ceiling on fiscal responsibility, and as I just admitted, that ceiling was pretty high. Since Democrats took control of Congress in January, 2007, the national debt had increased by $3.96 trillion, a 42 percent increase in three years. To keep up with this spending binge, Congress has increased the debt limit five times over the last 19 months. Three times since the current administration took office one year ago. And the statutory debt increase that comes before us today, $1.9 trillion, is the largest one-time debt increase in U.S. history.

“This is the fifth increase, as I mentioned, in the last 19 months. This one-time increase in the debt limit of $1.9 trillion is actually larger than the entire GDP of almost every country in the world.  It’s larger than the GDP of Canada, Russia, Spain, or Brazil. And it’s larger than the GDP of Australia and Poland combined. The American people are looking at this extraordinary gusher of spending and debt and they are asking the question: ‘When will it stop?’  And the answer is, as we look at the budget that the administration submitted earlier this week, no time soon.

“I hasten to add, the administration, just this week, announced plans for a budget $3.8 trillion in scope, with a $1.6 trillion deficit and $2 trillion in higher taxes.  And let me say with respect, the American people looking in ought not to be deceived by the promises of fiscal discipline known as ‘PAYGO.’  And the truth is, the bill before us today is 58 pages long and 32 of those pages are all the programs that are exempted from the PAYGO requirements.  Forty percent of federal spending is exempted from the fiscal discipline fix that we’re being told is encompassed in PAYGO.  The truth is, PAYGO really means here in Washington: you pay and they go on spending.

“The fact is that what we see here is a failure of leadership.  President Obama, as a United States Senator, said in March of 2006, when he came out against raising the debt limit in a vote, ‘The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.  It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills.  It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s recklessness.  America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.’  So said then-Senator Barack Obama, March 2006.  Let me suggest he was right, then, and his words are equally true today.

“The American people long for us to put our fiscal house in order.  They long for us to embrace true fiscal discipline and reform.  They long for this administration and this Congress to lead us away from the brink of fiscal disaster.
This PAYGO, this debt ceiling vote, is no solution, and I urge its opposition.”

To view this floor speech, click here.

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-Cnation

…fucking Avatarded:

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-Cnation

It is time to take to the streets again.

From a story at Hot Air; according to Senator John Kyl, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi may have come to an agreement and found a way to get Obamacare through both chambers of Congress.

First, here’s the basic mechanics of how they will do it. From Dick Morris @ Newsmax:

Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are “flipped” and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.

Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?

That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.

But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?

According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.

Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.

This plan, of course, is a total subversion of the legislative process.

Typically, the Senate and House pass their own unique legislation and then both bills go to a conference committee. In conference, the leadership of both Democrat-dominated houses wheels and deals and irons out differences.

The final compromise bill is then sent back to the full Senate and full House for a vote and has to pass both to go to the president.

In the House, a simple majority passes the legislation. But under Senate rules, major legislation requires 60 votes to end a filibuster.

As it stands, the House bill and Senate bill have major discrepancies. Reid does not have 60 votes to pass a compromise bill that would no doubt include some of the radical provisions House members have been demanding.

But if the House passes the exact Senate bill that passed by a 60-39 Senate vote last month, there is no need for a conference on the bill. It will go directly to the president’s desk.

That was this past Sunday. Yesterday (Wednesday 1/27/2010), the LA Times reported:

Reporting from Washington - Laying out a possible path to approving healthcare legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Wednesday that the House should pass the Senate’s version and then use a process known as “budget reconciliation” to make the changes some lawmakers are demanding.

The politically fraught strategy might allow Democrats to salvage a version of the overhaul that senior lawmakers pushed through the House and Senate late last year. Because budget reconciliation requires only a simple majority in the Senate, it could enable Democrats to circumvent a threatened GOP filibuster.

But in order to get this cluster you-know-what in motion, Reid and Pelosi first have to rewrite the bill in a fashion that would not only satisfy the requirements of the reconciliation process, they’d have to write it in a way that’s agreeable to the relevent majority of both chambers. That brings us to the present.

From Fox News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion “fix” to the Senate health care bill, saying that her chamber could approve the Senate’s package if those changes are made first.

Senior Democratic aides told Fox News that Pelosi has offered up the new package of changes to Senate Democratic leaders, with the hope that they will be able to pass it using a controversial procedural maneuver known as “reconciliation.” The maneuver would allow Democrats to pass the measure with just 51 votes, without having to first overcome the normal 60-vote threshold.

Some Democrats are keen on using that process, since the election last week of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts broke the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority. However, some Democratic moderates — notably Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh — have balked at using the controversial tactic to ram through health care reform measures.

Pelosi announced last week that she did not have the votes in the House to pass the Senate health care reform bill as is. But Pelosi is now floating the possibility that if the Senate, and House, approve the package of adjustments first, the House can then take up the original Senate bill.

So there it is. Morris was right, and the Dems, it seems, are going to be moving ahead, the voice of the American people be damned.

All is still not lost though. The reconciliation process has its own unique set of rules, one of which the Republicans have said they’d use to kill this thing. Unlike normal senate procedure wherein debate on a bill can be ended at any time, reconciliation has an open-ended amendment process, which means there is literally no limit to the number of amendments that can be offered, and each and every one would have to be voted on. The Republicans could therefore theoretically stall this all the way through the end of the current session, while simultaneously forcing Dems to vote on things that could hurt them badly politically.

If this thing does make it to reconciliation, and IF Harry Reid can scrounge up the 52 votes he would need, then it would remain to be seen if the Republicans have the stones to follow through on their threat.

They’d better. For all of our sakes.

Further reading:

TNR: How Reconciliation Would Work

Project Vote Smart: GOVERNMENT 101: How a Bill Becomes Law

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-Cnation

Just read this at Michelle Malkin’s site: The senate today voted to increase the debt limit to $14 TRILLION dollars. The vote was, of course, right along party lines. Also - for reasons not clear to me - Senator Paul Kirk from Mass, the man who Scott Brown is supposed to be replacing, is still voting.

Read the whole thing here, and then let your Democrat senator know how you feel about this.

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-Cnation

Red State: A Declaration Of War:

After reflection on Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, I am left with one overarching conclusion: while boring, preachy, dull, overly serious, then flipping to overly jocular tones while trying to balance pandering to the middle class with holding his base — Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was a declaration of war on the free market. more…..

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NRO: Statist Quo

Everything changes except President Obama. His agenda doesn’t change. He has had no second thoughts about the wisdom of his health-care policies, or any of his policies; resistance is always and only a reason for redoubling. Also unchanging is the condescension with which he articulates his agenda: He faulted himself for not explaining health care well enough to the easily confused American public. The same familiar strawmen dot the landscape of his rhetoric. (Republicans want to “maintain the status quo” on health care. This president is willing to listen to Republican ideas, just so long as he can then forget that he has ever done so.) Narcissism, too, is a constant companion. The opening of the speech, and the end, invited us to regard Obama as the embodiment of the nation. But it is not the country’s future that has suddenly come under doubt. It is his administration’s. It is not the country’s spirit that is in danger of breaking. It is contemporary liberalism’s. more…..

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Byron York: Obama: You liked my speech? Please send money.

About an hour after the end of his State of the Union address, in which he called for an end to the partisan conflict that has plagued his first year in office, President Obama sent out a political fundraising appeal through his permanent campaign organization, Organizing for America. more…..

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-Cnation

….and to absolutely nobody’s surprise - at least among those capable of rational thought - Zero is shown to have been somewhat less than honest.

From the AP via Yahoo, original article here:

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

___

OBAMA: “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.”

THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

___

OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said, “Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.”

THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage — the majority of Americans under age 65 — in the plans they already have. But Obama can’t guarantee people won’t see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans. Because of elements such as new taxes on insurance companies, insurers could change what they offer or how much it costs. Moreover, Democrats have proposed a series of changes to the Medicare program for people 65 and older that would certainly pinch benefits enjoyed by some seniors. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted cuts for those enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.

___

OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have “outsized influence” over the government. He said his administration has “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” He also said it’s time to “require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress” and “to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.”

THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that’s unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they’re limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.

___

OBAMA: “Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. … And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million “compared with what those values would have been otherwise.” It said the ranges “reflect the uncertainty of such estimates.” And it added, “It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

___

OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress “to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve.”

THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.

___

OBAMA: “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.”

THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.

___

OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: “And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008.”

THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.

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-Cnation