The Noise live in Manchester New Hampshire
As I have mentioned once or twice in previous posts, my son is a guitarist in a band called The Noise and last Saturday night they played a benefit show for a severely disabled little girl in Manchester New Hampshire. It has been a few months since the full band has performed and this was a great show–there was a large crowd and they were really into the set.
Here are a few videos from the show; the vocals turned out a little low in my recordings during a few of the songs, but they are still pretty good in my opinion. In order they are the originals What are We Fighting For, Hold On, Six Foot Fame, Will I Remember, and Life, followed by a cover of Simple Man.
The White House rejects Solyndra subpoena
Barack Obama has become embroiled in a growing stimulus/green energy initiative scandal which has come under investigation in the Congress, but he has been less than willing to provide the Congress will all of the requested documents so last week the Congress had no choice but to subpoena the White House.
For those who might be unfamiliar with the case of Solyndra I will provide a brief background: Barack Obama fast tracked a review of Solyndra in order to give the company a $500 million loan guarantee with stimulus money and provide Joe Biden with a backdrop to announce Barack Obama’s new “green initiative” policy. But because the review was fast tracked the proper time wasn’t put into a study of the viability of the company and subsequently Solyndra went out of business. But that is not the worst of it because it just so happens that a major Democrat donor was involved in Solyndra and had visited the White House several times in the week leading up to the loan, and shortly before the loan was granted the rules were rewritten to protect the investors in the company by prioritizing them over the taxpayers who foot the bill for this disaster.
As bad as that is, Solyndra is just the largest stimulus/green energy scandal but it is not the only one; there is also SunPower, LightSquared, Tesla, Fisker, and Beacon Power. There are questions about Barack Obama’s involvement with all of these companies but for now the Congress’ investigation is focusing on Solyndra.
The State Department is funding Islamists in Egypt
While trying to explain the reason that he decided to interfere in Libya’s civil war Barack Obama laid out the Obama Doctrine. Basically the Obama Doctrine states that when “our interests and VALUES are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.” No longer does America have a responsibility to act simply when our interests or our national security is at risk, but also when American values are at stake. This sounds quite similar to the type of nation building that Barack Obama condemned President Bush for pursuing, and the very type of foreign policy that he promised not to engage America in in the future.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that Barack Obama has decided that American values are worth defending-if not at home than abroad–and with this news that the State Department is funding Islamic parties in Egypt heading into that country’s elections one has to wonder exactly what Barack Obama thinks that American values are.
U.S. assistance to Egypt is helping political parties of all ideologies prepare for the upcoming elections — even Islamic parties that may have anti-Western agendas.
“We don’t do party support. What we do is party training…. And we do it to whoever comes,” William Taylor, the State Department’s director of its new office for Middle East Transitions, said in a briefing with reporters today. “Sometimes, Islamist parties show up, sometimes they don’t. But it has been provided on a nonpartisan basis, not to individual parties.”
In the interest of appearing to be “non-partisan” the State Department is actively helping Islamic parties gain the knowledge they need to be successful headed into that country’s elections, even if that means the potential regime in Egypt will have an anti-American agenda.
Obamacare: Over half of the mandated deadlines have not been met
According to this article the Obama regime has failed to meet more than half of the deadlines implemented under Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation:
The Obama administration has failed to meet more than half of the new health care law’s deadlines, from submitting plans for new, value-based Medicare purchasing programs to publishing criteria for determining the medically underserved.
A report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, indicates that the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies missed 18 of 30 deadlines since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.
Here are a couple of the deadlines which were not met:
In one instance, a National Healthcare Workforce Commission created by the law was appointed but has not been funded and has not submitted two reports that were due on April 1 and Oct. 1.
In another example, the comptroller general didn’t submit to Congress a report on seniors’ access to vaccines that was due on June 1.
Couple this with the news that the Obama regime was forced to scrap the long term care provision of the healthcare law because of a lack of funding–even though Democrats argued on the floor that the mandate was fully funded for the next 75 years–and it looks as if Obamacare might be unraveling even before the Supreme Court hears a challenge of the law’s constitutionality.
The first stimulus/green initiative scandal to come to light was Solyndra but it wasn’t the last as we soon learned about the SunPower, LightSquared, Fisker, and Beacon Power scandals. All of these scandals involve stimulus money sent to dubious companies which are owned by or invested in by major Democrat supporters.
The first of these scandals–Solyndra–is the largest with over $500 million of taxpayer money lost and has become the target of a congressional investigation partly because the Obama regime rewrote the stimulus rules in order to protect Democrat donors and investors in the company while ignoring the taxpayers who are on the hook for the lost money.
Naturally when the investigation into Solyndra was first initiated the Congress requested documents from the Obama regime related to the scandal but–as is the case in the Gunrunner, Fast and Furious, Castaway, Gangwalker, and Grenadewalker scandals–the Obama regime has been less than forthcoming with the documents. In other words, the Obama regime has been stonewalling the investigation by refusing to release the documents and it can be easily surmised that the Obama regime is trying to hide something.
Because of the Obama regime’s unwillingness to cooperate with the investigation the Congress was left with no other option but to subpoena the White House and Barack Obama for documents related to the scandal, and today they did just that.
By a 14-9 party-line vote the Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative subcommittee authorized issuing a subpoena for any White House documents related to Solyndra, which received renewable energy loan guarantees under President Obama’s stimulus program. The request for documents could include details of the president’s own travel and
We simply cannot allow the executive branch at its highest levels to pick and choose what they will produce, or whether they will produce anything at all,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican who runs the investigative panel.
Solargate: A second “green” company files for bankruptcy after receiving stimulus money
First came the Solyndra scandal, this was quickly followed by the SunPower, LightSquared, and Fisker scandals–all involving both the Obama regime’s green energy initiative and the stimulus bill. While these scandals are still swirling around the Obama regime yet another potential green energy scandal may be about to unfurl.
In addition to the Obama backed company Solyndra going bankrupt after receiving stimulus funds, a second Obama backed company has also gone bankrupt after receiving taxpayer dollars. Beacon Power received a $43 million loan guarantee–a mere pittance compared to Solyndra’s $500 million but not much less offensive–from the Obama regime only to subsequently file for bankruptcy shortly thereafter.
Two things are becoming more and more obvious to the observer of these scandals: first, these “green” energy companies are not sustainable on their own and need government subsidies just to survive (and even that isn’t enough to make these companies viable) because the technology is not there yet; and second, the Obama regime is so blinded with its support for this “green” energy initiative that it is throwing our money at these companies without first doing the proper legwork to ensure that our money is protected.
This is what happens when you hand the government a blank check. The government is not concerned about the money because it is not their money–it is our’s–so they feel as if they can take chances with the money that they wouldn’t take if they were spending their own money. This loss of money does not affect them in the pocketbook, it only affects their agenda and when the government does a risk analysis between losing money which does not belong to them and the possibility of pushing forward their agenda the agenda wins and the American taxpayer loses.
Gunrunner: Hillary Clinton claims the State Department was not notified of Fast and Furious; if true this is a felony
During Janet Napolitano’s testimony last week it was learned that Fast and Furious was an OCDETF operation and not simply an ATF operation, if this is true than it means that several departments were involved–the number being floated about is ten–and had to sign off on the operation. Included in the scope is the Department of “Justice” yet Eric Holder maintains the unbelievable position that he did not know of the operation until after Brian Terry’s murder.
But what about the State Department? What did Hillary Clinton know? And when did she know it? Those are more questions that need to be answered.
The last paragraph of this article contained a revelation that I found to be quite interesting indeed; last week Hillary Clinton stated that the State Department was not notified of the deadly Fast and Furious operation. This is unbelievable on its face considering this was an OCDETF which would have required a sign off from the State Department, but even if we take Hillary Clinton at her word it brings to light another little problem for the Obama regime, in addition to Mrs. Clinton’s incompetency.
Just before Lanny Breuer was set to testify before the Congress the Department of “Justice” decided to release hundreds of pages of documents and the reason for this latest document dump seems to be twofold to me: First, this appears to be an attempt to shift the blame for the gunwalking scandal to the left’s favorite target, President Bush; and second, to make Lanny Breuer the fall guy for Eric Holder.
Once again the Obama regime is trying to draw comparisons between Fast and Furious and President Bush’s failed attempt at tracking weapons sold to drug dealers under the Operation Wide Receiver program authorized by the former president. Lanny Breuer has now admitted that it was a mistake not to inform Eric Holder of the similarities between Operation Fast and Furious and Operation Wide Receiver: Read more…
Power is back on
Just wanted to let everyone know that at some point today we got our power back, while I was at work, so I am back in cyberspace again. The outage didn’t last as long as I had feared.
I am going to spend tonight trying to catch up with what I have missed in the blogosphere and will resume posting tomorrow.
Thanks for all well wishes everyone.
No power
Well, it looks as if Barack Obama dusted off Dick Cheney’s Halliburton hurricane machine and has sent it to the Northeast for Halloween. So I have no power and probably won’t for a few days.
I’ll be back as soon as possible.
America's Watchtower 