Billboard mystery partly revealed

Posted at 11:41 AM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins

Mary Teske, the general manager of Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising reports, "The Bush Miss Me Yet? billboard was paid for by a group of small business owners who feel like Washington is against them. They wish to remain anonymous. They thought it was a fun way of getting out their message."

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2010/02/billboard_mystery_partly_revea.shtml?refid=0

'Miss Me Yet?' Billboard With Photo Of Bush Is Real; Not An Internet Trick

By Mark Memmott

Internet chatter had led to speculation that it might be an urban myth -- nothing more than clever digital trickery spreading via the Web.

But our friend Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio assures us he's seen it with his own eyes:

There is a billboard along I-35 near Wyoming, Minn., with a huge photo of former president George W. Bush and this question: "Miss Me Yet?"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/02/bush_miss_me_yet_billboard_is.html

On Capitol Hill, there's a war being fought over the War on Terror, and so far, Republicans are winning. Or at least they're winning the Battle of Miranda.

GOP lawmakers believe they are having some success in the effort to stiffen the spine of the Obama administration as it makes policy for dealing with captured terrorist suspects in the future. Even as the administration defends its decision to grant accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, the president himself is hinting that things might be done differently in the future.

"Should the practice of reading suspected terrorist their Miranda rights be reviewed?" CBS's Katie Couric asked President Obama during Sunday's Super Bowl interview.

"Absolutely," Obama answered. "Everything should be reviewed."

"It's important for us to recognize," Obama explained, "that when we're dealing with al Qaeda operatives, that they may have national security intelligence that we need, and it's important to make sure that the processes and procedures we approach with respect to these folks are not identical to the ones we would use if we were apprehending the local drug dealer."

Translation: Maybe we'll do it differently next time.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/GOP-winning-war-over-Miranda-rights-for-terrorists-83835672.html

February 08, 2010

America is Not Ungovernable

Recently, some analysts have suggested that the lack of major policy breakthroughs in the last year is due to the fact that America has become ungovernable. Ezra Klein argued that it was time to reform the filibuster because the government cannot function with it intact anymore. Tom Friedman suggested that America's "political instability" was making people abroad nervous. And Michael Cohen of Newsweek blamed "obstructionist Republicans," "spineless Democrats," and an "incoherent public" for the problem.

Nonsense. America is not ungovernable. Her President has simply not been up to the job.

Let's acknowledge that governing the United States of America is an extremely difficult task. Intentionally so. When designing our system, the Founders were faced with a dilemma. How to empower a vigorous government without endangering liberty or true republicanism? On the one hand, George III's government was effective at satisfying the will of the sovereign, but that will had become tyrannical. On the other hand, the Articles of Confederation acknowledged the rights of the states, but so much so that the federal government was incapable of solving basic problems.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2010/02/america_is_not_ungovernable.html

Poll: Debra Medina closing on Kay Bailey Hutchison

By ANDY BARR | 2/9/10 12:58 PM EST

Tea party-backed candidate Debra Medina is closing on Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas’s Republican gubernatorial primary, increasing the odds the race led by Gov. Rick Perry will be thrown into a runoff.

According to a survey out Tuesday by Public Policy Polling, Medina, a nurse who’s now a businesswoman, had the support of 24 percent of likely Republican primary voters, trailing the three-term senator by only 4 percentage points. Perry, who leads Hutchison by double-digits in several polls, got 39 percent in the latest survey.

If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the March 2 primary, the top two finishers will compete in a runoff on April 13.

The poll of 423 likely Republican voters found Medina particularly strong among those angry at Washington. Among the third of voters in the poll who said they disapproved of Washington, Medina topped Perry, 37 percent to 32 percent.

Both Perry and Hutchison had approval ratings of at least 50 percent in the poll, making Medina’s surge even more surprising.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32739.html

MSNBC's Ratigan Blames 'Snowpocalypse' on Global Warming

By Jeff Poor
Tue, 02/09/2010 - 10:44 ET

With Washington, D.C. buried beneath at least 20 inches of snow, and with more in the forecast, common sense would suggest global warming alarmists look elsewhere to make the argument to raise awareness for their concerns.

But no, Dylan Ratigan thinks it's ridiculous to suggest all the snowfall totals could cast doubt on the theory of anthropogenic global warming. On MSNBC's Feb. 8 "The Dylan Ratigan Show," Ratigan criticized those who would dare express misgivings about climate change based on the so-called "snowpocalypse."

"Here's the problem - these ‘snowpocalypses' that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming," Ratigan said.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2010/02/09/msnbcs-ratigan-blames-snowpocalypse-global-warming

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) called on Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan's resignation on Tuesday.

Bond said Brennan, with whom he's tangled publicly over the Obama administration's handling of the attempted bombing of a flight on Christmas, to resign.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/80427-sen-bond-calls-for-brennans-resignation

February 8, 2010 4:00 A.M.

The ‘Shut Up’ Candidate
Obama’s labor pick wants to silence critics and rig the rules in union elections.

Barack Obama and his closest allies have a message for America, and that message is: “Shut up.”

Obama himself is famous for telling his critics to shut up: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,” he said while defending his so-far ineffective economic-recovery agenda. “I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” The president used the State of the Union address to hector, in a most unstatesmanlike fashion, the justices of the Supreme Court for upholding the First Amendment right of nonprofits and businesses to make their voices heard before elections, and demanded that Congress pass legislation to shut them up. Endlessly described as “articulate,” the president apparently desires to monopolize the conversation. But Craig Becker, his nominee to the powerful National Labor Relations Board, surpasses the president in that he has made an entire legal and political philosophy out of “shut your trap.”

The NLRB is one of our most defective public institutions. Charged with policing unfair labor practices in general, and with overseeing union-organizing votes in particular, the NLRB is far from a neutral referee — it acts principally as an organ of the unions themselves, and it bristles with hostility toward business owners who are not eager to have their operations organized by the likes of the Teamsters or the ACORN-affiliated Service Employees International Union.

Becker, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and SEIU, in many ways fits the mold of a typical Democratic pick for the agency, but there are three reasons to have serious reservations about putting him in such a powerful position. First: His opinions are extreme. He has argued that workers should be allowed to choose only between unions, not between a union and no representation, and he wants employers to be banned from even attending NLRB hearings about union elections. On the subject of the NLRB itself, he has gone so far as to write that “employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.” In other words: “Shut up.” Second: He is affiliated with ACORN, a corrupt enterprise that works the intersection of Big Labor and politics for its own benefit. Third: He has lied to Congress about his relationship with ACORN. On all of those grounds, his nomination should be opposed, vigorously.

http://article.nationalreview.com/424227/the-shut-up-candidate/kevin-williamson

Administration Again Cuts Funding for Scholarship Program That Helps Low-Income D.C. Kids
Tuesday, February 09, 2010

By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - In his fiscal 2011 budget, President Barack Obama makes further cuts in funding for the District of Columbia's Opportunity Scholarship Program for low-income, mostly minority students. 
 
Obama stopped funding altogether for the OSP in his 2010 fiscal year budget, but after protests from parents and school choice advocates, the administration decided to let children already receiving scholarships continue to do so until they graduate from high school.

In the new budget, however, funding for the OSP is slashed by $4 million -- from $13 million to $9 million – $1 million of which is for administrative costs.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=61102

Growing up in Michigan in the heyday of the United Auto Workers, I long assumed that labor unions were part of the natural order of things.

That's no longer clear. Last month the Labor Department reported that private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year and now represent only 7.2 percent of private-sector employees. That's down from the all-time peak of 36 percent in 1953 and '54.

But union membership is still growing in the public sector. Last year 37.4 percent of public-sector employees were union members. That percentage was down near zero in the 1950s. For the first time in history, a majority of union members are government employees.

In my view, the outlook for both private- and public-sector unionism is problematic.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Public-sector-unions-bleed-taxpayers-to-help-Dems-83652517.html

Frank Rich and the State of Liberal Commentary
The New York Times columnist offers insults in the guise of thought.

If one had to read one columnist to appreciate the state of contemporary left-wing commentary, my nomination would be Frank Rich of the Sunday New York Times.

No well-known columnist better exemplifies the worst aspects of today’s Left. Virtually every piece is filled with anger, filled with ad hominem responses to arguments, filled with insults of opponents, and at the same time devoid of arguments. A Frank Rich column is essentially a weekly tantrum meant to make his readers nod in agreement and reinforce their contempt for those who differ with them. offer this past Sunday’s column as an example.

The subject was the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy regarding gays in the military.

Not a single serious argument from proponents of DADT was cited, nor did Rich offer a single argument in behalf of repealing it. Instead, the article was a smear of all who support retaining that policy or the male-female definition of marriage. The article contains 71 sentences. Twelve contain an insult. I suspect that the many Times readers who love Rich’s columns — this was listed as the second most e-mailed piece — generally read them to have their hatreds reinforced, not for cogent arguments.

http://article.nationalreview.com/424390/frank-rich-and-the-state-of-liberal-commentary/dennis-prager

Senate jobs bill extends Medicare payment rates -text

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A jobs-creation bill that could pass the Senate this week would delay a scheduled 20 percent reduction in doctor payments under the Medicare health-insurance program, according to a copy of the text obtained by Reuters.

The bill also extends soon-to-expire jobless payments, healthcare subsidies for the unemployed and highway-funding programs, according to the text of the bill, which has not yet been introduced.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWAT01411320100209

Senate stops Craig Becker nomination

By MEREDITH SHINER | 2/9/10 5:00 PM EST

Labor lawyer Craig Becker's nomination for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board failed on Tuesday afternoon, as a few Senate Democrats joined a unified Republican front to block a key Obama White House nomination.

The vote was 52-33 — 60 votes were required to proceed on the nomination and a few conservative Democrats bucked the White House in blocking the nomination. The stalled nomination is a blow to labor unions and showed fractures in the Senate Democratic Caucus, which can no longer rely on a 60-vote supermajority.

Fifteen senators missed the vote when it became clear that Becker would fall well short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32758.html

Tracking Your Taxes: Park Pork?

February 9, 2010 - 12:05 PM | by: William La Jeunesse

If you are hoping to visit the newest crown jewel in America's park system chosen by Congress, throw away the car keys and open up your wallet. The 2,900 pristine acres of beachfront property were not cheap -- or even in the United States.

The property soliciting accusations of "pork" from critics is the Castle Nugent National Historic Park. It's in the U.S. Virgin Islands, about a thousand miles from Miami and an expensive jet ride to get there.

Two weeks ago, on a near party line vote, a huge Democratic majority in the House agreed to spend $50 million to buy the former cotton plantation on the island of St. Croix.

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/02/09/tracking-your-taxes-park-pork/