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'No Bundler Left Behind'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, October 30, 2009 11:04:53 AM
The Obama White House: Bundlers' Paradise
by Michelle Malkin

Like Capt. Renault in "Casablanca," I am shocked, shocked to discover that access peddling is going on in the Obama White House. Perks for deep-pocketed donors? Presidential meetings for sale? The stale Chicago odor of pay-for-play wafting from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Knock me over with a feather.

Despite the president's claimed distaste for the campaign finance practice known as "bundling" (rounding up aggregate contributions from friends, business associates and employees), the House of Obama has been a campaign finance bundlers' paradise from Day One. A new report by Matthew Mosk of The Washington Times just confirms the gob-smackingly obvious: It's business as usual in the era of Hope and Change. O's wealthiest Democratic donors have received lavish receptions, golf outings, bowling dates and movie nights with Obama.

And internal Democratic National Committee documents acquired by the Times reveal that "high-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections." Yup, they're just haggling over the price.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/10/30/the_obama_white_house_bundlers_paradise#at
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Don't Trust the NBER and Their Declaration of Recessions

Posted by Defend America on Friday, October 30, 2009 10:38:31 AM

The Recoveryless Recovery

By Randall Hoven

The recession is over, supposedly. The preliminary estimate of the 3rd quarter's Gross Domestic Product was announced Thursday, and it showed the economy growing at an annual rate of 3.5% from July through September, after four consecutive quarters of decline. 

As the Associated Press reported, waiting for the official call from the National Bureau of Economic Research -- specifically, its Business Cycle Dating Committee -- is all but a formality. That's funny; GDP growth was not used as the measure for timing the beginning of this recession. So why would it be used to time its end?

GDP last peaked in the 2nd quarter of 2008. Yet the NBER said the recession started in December 2007, six months earlier. In fact, the NBER declared the recession before we'd even had two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the standard rule-of-thumb for calling a recession. 

Could it be political?  The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee is the "official" caller of recessions.  It looks for peaks and troughs in economic indicators.  It explains its method as follows.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/the_recoveryless_recovery.html#at

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Obama Can't Go to Berlin

Posted by Defend America on Friday, October 30, 2009 10:19:27 AM

O's embarrassment

Berlin rhetoric vs. DC reality

By MICHAEL BARONE

Last Updated: 9:41 AM, October 26, 2009

Posted: 1:18 AM, October 26, 2009

PRESIDENT Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenha gen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympic Games for Chicago, apparently can't find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent America ably in Berlin.

Still, it seemed an odd decision to me -- until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many policies he has been pursuing as president.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/embarrassment_ysgnpIlJWYMuwW5PZzdjBI

Tags: obama  
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'Liberalism's War on Dissent'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, October 30, 2009 10:17:53 AM
Obama's War on Fox Is Liberalism's War on Dissent
by David Limbaugh

Can you imagine the outrage that would have ensued had former President George W. Bush declared off-limits those media outlets he thought (correctly) treated him unfairly?

Heck, the left declared him a dictator simply because he led a war on Iraq that Congress approved. He never tried to shut down his critics. He rarely even objected to their abuse.

But liberal politicians have been spoiled with mainstream media favoritism for so long that they believe anything other than sycophancy is mistreatment. Their selective outrage is as hollow as it is risible.

In fact, Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas -- except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2009/10/27/obamas_war_on_fox_is_liberalisms_war_on_dissent#at
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Messages for 'Elite Republicans'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, October 30, 2009 10:15:50 AM
5 Messages for 'Elite' Republicans
by John Hawkins

Stop sabotaging our candidates: It is absolutely infuriating that Republican Party organizations talk incessantly about conservative principles, rely on conservatives for the overwhelming majority of their funding, and then turn around and sabotage conservative candidates like Doug Hoffman and Marco Rubio. Who the hell do you think you are?

We're not telling the Republican Party to endorse conservative candidates over moderate candidates or demanding that middle-of-the-road candidates be tossed from the party. What we are saying is, "Don't take our money, use it against us, and then take a haughty 'we know best' attitude." If you do, we're going to take you to the woodshed and show you why it's a bad idea.

"There will be no elite in a bankrupt America." -- Jonathan Hunter: If fiscal conservatism doesn't work any more, then America doesn't work any more because we can't live like this long term. If even the Republicans look at government as just another way to distribute as much borrowed money as they can get by with to their supporters, then this country is going to look like Argentina after the crash in twenty years. This is do or die for the future of this country and Republicans, including Republican members of Congress from blue states, need to understand that.

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/10/27/5_messages_for_elite_republicans?page=2#at


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Sex Discrimination Has Nothing to Do with the Conscience Clause

Posted by Defend America on Friday, October 30, 2009 10:14:16 AM
Got Monks? Get the Monks!
by Ken Blackwell

President Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) seems determined to go after a small Catholic college in North Carolina. Readers of First Things, the thoughtful journal founded by Rev. Richard Neuhaus, are familiar with the funny ads regularly run by Belmont Abbey. “Got Monks?” reads the white-on-black ad that encourages serious young Catholics to consider a college where the Benedictine monks seek God and where the students seek truth.

But Obama’s EEOC obviously reads that ad as an invitation to “get the monks.” The EEOC’s district office in Charlotte, N.C., is demanding that Belmont Abbey cease and desist violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If you thought that act was about ending racial and sex discrimination, you would be right. If you thought that unelected bureaucrats could not use that law as a sledgehammer to threaten religious schools, you would be naïve.

What the EEOC is complaining of is Belmont Abbey’s practice of not providing abortion-inducing contraceptives to their employees in their health insurance plan.

But Belmont Abbey is a Catholic institution, one that prides itself on its adherence to Catholic teaching. The college maintains that it cannot be guilty of discriminating against female employees since it does not provide any form of contraceptives to its all-male body of monks, or to its lay male employees. How can this be sex discrimination?

http://townhall.com/columnists/KenBlackwell/2009/10/29/got_monks__get_the_monks!#at


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