Allen West defends Newt Gingrich’s “food stamp president” comment
As regular readers of America’s Watchtower already know, I am not fan of Newt Gingrich and I do not wish to see him win the Republican nomination. However he has been under attack as being a racist and using racial code to win support of the Tea Party in South Carolina for calling Barack Obama the “food stamp president” and because these attacks are unjustified I am now compelled to defend him.
I cannot possibly defend him as well as Allen West did, so I will let his words do my dirty work. As can be read here, Allen West came to Newt Gingrich’s defense today:
There is no race code. It’s a fact. Since President Obama has been in the Oval Office, you’ve seen a 41 percent increase in the food stamp recipients in the United States of America. We have a president that’s making more American victims rather than victors.
He continued: Read more…
It might sound like something you would read about in Atlas Shrugged–the Anti-Dog eat Dog Bill or the Equalization of Opportunity Bill–but sadly this idea of creating a “Reasonable Profits Board” to gain greater control on oil industry profits is being introduced by six Democrats in the House. In case you were wondering, the six Democrats are; Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers Jr., Bob Filner, Marcia Fudge, Jim Langevin, and Lynn Woolsey.
The bill would create this board which would be charged with implementing a “windfall profit” tax on the oil companies, up to 100%, after they reach what this unelected board (the three members would be chosen by the president) decided was a reasonable profit. However the bill doesn’t define what a reasonable profit is, that would be left up to the three member panel. And the money will then be spread around by the government and used to invest in alternative energy.
What could possibly go wrong with this plan? Think Solyndra, SunPower, LightSquared, Fisker, Beacon Power, BrightSource, Solazyme, and Tesla–all companies involved in the Solargate scandal and all companies with ties to Democrat donors which happened to receive billions of dollars in stimulus money. I think we can reasonable expect the same in this instance.
Remember Barack Obama once said that at “some point you’ve made enough money” and now Democrats are moving to set up a board which would tell oil companies when they made enough money and who doesn’t think that this idea will spread into other industries over time until we get to the point where an unelected panel is deciding not only how much money they can make but also how much product a company can produce, what they can produce, and how much they can charge for that product?
What type of person do you think Barack Obama would place on this board? I think I know who his first nominee will be:
South Carolina primary wrap up
What a difference a week makes!
Last week at this time it looked as though Mitt Romney was positioned to win the first three contests and sweep his way to the Republican nomination virtually unchallenged; he had won Iowa and New Hampshire and had a big lead in South Carolina and Florida, but when the Iowa votes were recounted because of a typo Rick Santorum was declared the winner in Iowa. This news, coupled with Newt Gingrich’s strong debate performances last week and Mitt Romney’s debate meltdown over a question he should have twice been prepared for allowed Newt Gingrich to surge into the lead in the South Carolina polls leading up to the vote and he won the primary going away, has shaken up the GOP primary race.
Gunrunner: Arizona official to plead the fifth and will not testify in front of the Congress on Fast and Furious
I am writing to advise you that my client is going to assert his constitutional privilege not to be compelled to be a witness against himself
This is his right as guaranteed under the constitution and I do not begrudge him this right, but we all know that most of the time when the fifth amendment is invoked that the person invoking the fifth is guilty of something. How can a person be a witness against himself if he were not guilty of something? A person would not plead the fifth if he had the chance to clear his name and normally I would feel that Cunningham is guilty of a crime, but there just might be more to this story.
Primary news: Rick Perry drops out, Rick Santorum wins Iowa, the latest South Carolina poll, and Newt Gingrich’s personal problems
Today was an unusually busy day in the Republican primary and I thought that I would touch on everything that happened in one post. We have four stories which I consider to be big news items and it is hard to chose which to go into first but I have decided to start with the fact that when the candidates debate tonight there will be one less participant because earlier today Rick Perry dropped out of the race.
Stating that he saw no viable path to the nomination, Rick Perry suspended his campaign and endorsed Newt Gingrich for president. It is true that Rick Perry was only polling at around 2% in South Carolina so what will Perry’s endorsement mean in South Carolina? I expect most Perry supporters to back Newt Gingrich in South Carolina while some may head over to the Rick Santorum campaign, and I don’t see many of Rick Perry’s supporters ending up in Ron Paul’s camp.
Barack Obama says no to the Keystone Pipeline
The last order of business which the Congress was charged with before they adjourned was extending Barack Obama’s payroll tax cut. The House had passed a one year extension of the tax cut and sent it to the Senate where a two month extension was passed. The Senate then promptly adjourned–they did not go into recess–and forced the House to vote on the two month extension, and eventually the House agreed to this extension but not before getting a small concession.
That concession was setting a deadline of February 21st for the president to make a decision on the Keystone Pipeline–a decision which he did not want to make before the 2012 election because he knew he could not win no matter what his decision was. This was a no-win proposition for Barack Obama; if he ruled in favor of the pipeline he would upset the environmentalists and if he ruled against the pipeline he would draw the ire of the right, so he would have rather postponed this decision until it could not hurt his chances politically.
Today Barack Obama made that decision: Siting his concern that the deadline imposed on him by the Congress did not allow for an adequate review of the pipeline, Barack Obama killed the Keystone Pipeline and quickly blamed House Republicans for forcing him to make this decision. There are some legitimate concerns about this pipeline, specifically in Nebraska, where the pipeline would extend over a waterway which supplies eight states with drinking water. But is there more to Barack Obama’s decision?
At this point this is not breaking news, but Jon Huntsman announced earlier today that he is dropping out of the race for president and is throwing his support behind Mitt Romney. In my opinion Jon Huntsman’s undoing was threefold:
1. Name recognition
2. A mistrust among conservatives
3. Political miscalculation and campaign strategy
I believe that these three issues are intertwined and so I will address them collectively instead of individually: Because Jon Huntsman did not have name recognition and because he worked in the Obama regime as ambassador to China conservative voters didn’t really know much about him other than the fact that he was employed by Barack Obama.
It’s on!
When three of Barack Obama’s recent recess appointees joined an existing lawsuit, arguing in favor of new regulations on small businesses, Mark Mix of the National Right to Work Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Barack Obama’s recess appointments. He claims that Barack Obama did not have the constitutional authority to appoint these nominees because while the House was in recess the Senate was not, so this means the new appointees could not join the fight for these new regulations, and because of this the National Labor Relations Board did not have the necessary quorum needed to move the lawsuit forward.
Here is some of what Mark Mix had to say in filing this court challenge:
We asked [the judge] to consider the question of whether they are constitutionally seated,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation.
Without legitimate appointments, they can’t participate in the lawsuit, Mix told The Daily Caller. And without their participation the board does have the quorum needed to implement the new regulations that the foundation opposes.
When the president installed the three officials on Jan. 4, he justified his move by saying the Senate was in recess.
The U.S. Constitution allows the president to bypass the usual Senate debate and vote to appoint officials when the Senate is in recess.
But “the Senate was never in recess, notwithstanding what the justice department has said,” Mix said
The president’s claim that he can determine when the Senate is in recess is a constitutional issue, he added, because it is an effort to expand the president’s ability to appoint people whose nominations elected Senators oppose.
If not struck down by a court, “that is a dramatic endangerment of the checks and balances in our constitution,” Mix told TheDC.
When Barack Obama named these recess appointments he ignored years of precedent–a political gimmick known as pro forma Congress; the Congress adjourns but does not recess thereby blocking recess appointments by the president. This was a tactic which has been accepted by both parties and in fact Harry Reid once bragged about using pro forma to block President Bush from doing what Barack Obama has done.
No president has pushed these boundaries before; Barack Obama has entered unchartered waters in relation to executive power and now it will be up to the courts to decide if he was within his power to do so or whether he overstepped his constitutional authority.
It has been awhile since we have heard anything about Solyndra and Solargate so let me refresh your memory: Solyndra was an alternative energy company which the Obama regime awarded $500 million in stimulus money. The Obama regime was anxious to kick off its “green jobs initiative” so the loan was fast tracked and the review was not completed before the money was awarded to Solyndra even though there were major concerns about the companies viability.
This provided Joe Biden with a nice little backdrop for the Obama regime to announce the “green energy initiative” but the concerns over the company’s viability were soon realized when Solyndra filed for bankruptcy. But the story gets worse because the Obama regime rewrote the stimulus loan terms to ensure that Solyndra investors–who just happen to be Democrat and Obama donors–were prioritized and protected ahead of the taxpayers.
Fast forward to today:
New Hampshire primary wrap up, on to South Carolina
Before I get in to my wrap up on the New Hampshire primary I would like to take a little time to gloat over my primary predictions. Here are the results I predicted in New Hampshire:
1. Mitt Romney 35%
2. Ron Paul 22%
3. Jon Huntsman 15%
4. Newt Gingrich 12%
5. Rick Santorum 10%
6. Rick Perry 2%
And these were the actual results:
1. Mitt Romney 38%
2. Ron Paul 23%
3. Jon Huntsman 17%
4. Newt Gingrich 10%
5. Rick Santorum 9%
6. Rick Perry 1%
I predicted the exact order of the primary and with the exception of Mitt Romney–by a 3% margin–I was within 2% of predicting the final vote tally of all the candidates. While all of the professional pundits expressed surprise at Ron Paul’s finish–even though this was about where he was polling–I knew his poll numbers were legitimate, and unlike Sarah Palin, who stated that New Hampshire was a center-left state, Ron Paul’s showing confirms what I have been saying all along–New Hampshire voters are independent minded, libertarian leaning people who do not like the Nanny State politicians running our lives. Perhaps Sarah Palin should take a look at how New Hampshire fared in 2010 when there was no anti-Bush wave to ride on; maybe then she–and the other pundit–wouldn’t have been so surprised at Ron Paul.
Okay, that’s enough gloating, onto the wrap up:
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