Louisiana has been dredging and creating berms designed to both protect the coastline and help stop the oil from the BP oil spill from washing ashore. Today the federal government has ordered Louisiana to stop the dredging because of concerns raised by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department about where the dredging is taking place.
Apparently they feel as if the dredging is taking place in sensitive areas and feel the dredging could hurt the environment of those areas. They also apparently are missing the fact that thousands of gallons of oil are washing up on shore and killing fish and wildlife in the Gulf. It would seem to me that the thousands of gallons of oil washing up on the shore pose a higher risk of environmental damage than does taking sand from a sensitive area.
Louisiana is not very happy about this and Billy Nungesser– president of the Plaquemines Parish has sent a letter to Barack Obama begging him to let the dredging continue. He had some harsh words to say about the federal government which seems to be doing all that it can to hinder the efforts of the Gulf states to minimize the damage done by the leaking oil well:
Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil,” Nungesser wrote to Obama. “Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil
For some unknown reason the Fish and Wildlife Department don’t see this crisis as being important enough to allow Louisiana to take the necessary steps in order to protect their coastline.
Between this and the fact that Barack Obama refuses to override the Jones act to allow foreign countries to help clean up this spill because he is more interested in protecting the unions, one has to wonder if letting the oil spill become as disastrous as possible is part of Barack Obama’s plan to pass cap and trade legislation. It is becoming more and more obvious that this regime has its priorities misplaced. On top of ignoring this crisis for so long the federal government is prohibiting Louisiana from taking the necessary steps in order to minimize the size of the crisis.
This regime is not working for the best interests of Louisiana and it is not working in the best interests of the country; this regime is working in the best interests of the regime alone, and I find it deplorable that they are making it harder for Louisiana to cope with an already devastating disaster.
According to this article several senators have learned that Barack Obama may grant amnesty to illegal aliens using an executive order if he is not able to get 60 votes in the senate to pass amnesty.
Eight senators have sent a letter to Barack Obama asking him to clarify whether this is an option the president is considering.
Barack Obama has already shown the American people that he does not give a damn what they want in the debate over healthcare reform. Barack Obama and congress bent the rules in order to pass the unpopular healthcare reform bill against the will of the American people and there is no reason to believe that he will not use shady tactics in order to pass another unpopular bill– amnesty for illegals.
Regardless of which side of the amnesty debate you are on, consider for a moment the precedent that this move would set. The constitution sets up a check and balance that is supposed to guard against any one branch of government from becoming too powerful (especially the office of the president) by putting in place a procedure where a bill must be approved by both houses before the president can sign it into law. Yet– if this story is true– all of the proper constitutional procedures would fall by the wayside. If congress can not agree on a bill, Barack Obama is intending to side step that little inconvenience and declare that illegals will be granted amnesty.
This is anti-constitutional to say the least. Why even bother with the charade of debate in congress anymore if this is what it is going to come down to? If it no longer matters what happens in congress because the president is going to issue a proclamation declaring what the new law is regardless of what the constitution states is the acceptable procedure, why are we wasting our time in congress trying to come up with a bill that most Americans can agree with?
God save King Hussein!
Judge lifts Barack Obama’s moratorium on oil drilling, claims that he mislead the American people
A federal judge has lifted Barack Obama’s moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. After the BP oil spill, Barack Obama ordered that all drilling in the Gulf be stopped even though these other companies did nothing to warrant having their businesses ground to a halt and their employees put out of work.
In his decision, Martin L.C. Feldman stated that Barack Obama never proved that a ban on all oil drilling was needed, misstated the opinions of the experts that were consulted because these experts did not support a ban on oil drilling, and mislead the American people.
Much to the government’s discomfort and this Court’s uneasiness, the summary also states that ‘the recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.’ As the plaintiffs, and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this statement was misleading
Barack Obama decided early on that instead of providing the necessary leadership during this crisis, he would use it as a political tool in order to push for cap and trade instead.
Part of this plan included stopping all oil drilling in the Gulf in an attempt to drive up the price of oil in order to get the American people to support a climate change bill. He mislead the American people (where have we heard that before) and the judge in this case has confirmed that Barack Obama mislead the people.
While this decision is great news, and a victory for the American people, this story is not over. The Obama regime has already stated that they will appeal this decision. Barack Obama is hell-bent on stopping oil companies from drilling in the Gulf and he will not stop until he succeeds.
While pushing his political agenda as oils spills into the Gulf, the president seems to be missing the human element to this story. People are affected by the president’s rash decision to stop all oil drilling in the Gulf in ways that Barack Obama either didn’t conceive or didn’t care about. He has his eye on the prize, and that prize is cap and trade. The end justifies the means in his book, and if Obama has to hurt a few of the “small people,” so be it.
Thankfully we have at least one judge who sees this, hopefully as the appeal moves forward there will be more.
It is now being reported that General McChystal has tendered Barack Obama his resignation after he criticized the president in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine. It is now up to Barack Obama whether the general’s resignation will be accepted, he has recalled the general from Afghanistan and it appears as if General McChystal’s military career may be over.
The interview has not yet been published, but it will be in the issue that is due to be released this Friday. From what we can gather from the information that has been released, General McChrystal criticized Barack Obama’s lack of leadership, his Afghanistan policy, his lack of knowledge on military issues, and what he has deemed as Barack Obama’s disinterest in listening to what he had to say at their one previous meeting.
My regular readers know that there is no bigger supporter of the military than I. I love, admire, respect, and support all of our men and women who have chosen to wear the uniform of the United States of America, past, present, and future. That is what makes this post a little hard for me.
Let me first state that I agree with most of what the general has reportedly said. I do not think that Barack Obama has the military knowledge or the resolve to fight these wars the way they should be fought. However, the general has done a disservice to all of the men and women who are fighting for him and dying under his command. There is a proper time and place to criticize a president’s war policies– I for one am unwilling to criticize Barack Obama’s war policies, I am unwilling to politicize the wars while Americans are fighting and dying for us. I support the president’s war policies and hope that he is receiving, and listening to, the right advice– and it was not the proper time, and certainly not the proper place for General McChrystal to be criticizing the war effort.
By making these statements publicly he has provided the very enemy he is fighting with an assessment of the president that can only serve to embolden them and put our heroes more in harms way than they already are. While it is true that most terrorist leaders have probably already come to the same conclusions as has General McChrystal, to have the general who is in charge of the Afghanistan war come out and confirm what they already believe is unforgivable.
I respect the general and thank him for his years of service to our country but he has gone over the line and needs to be removed from his position. There can be no defending what he said during a time of war, he has given the enemy reason to believe that there is dissent among the ranks of the military with their leader, and in doing do he has given the enemy another reason to fight even harder against us.
What the general said might be true, but he showed an unbelievable lack of discretion and clearly was not thinking about the possible ramifications on our soldiers because of what he was saying. Because of this his resignation or firing is both proper and necessary. Or heroes deserve a better commander.
Peter Orszag set to resign from the Obama administration
Yesterday it was reported that Rahm Emanuel was going to resign— or is being forced to resign– from his post as Chief of Staff and now we are hearing rumors that Barack Obama’s budget director may also be stepping down. It is being reported that Peter Orszag will resign sometime this year, although it isn’t clear when the resignation will be official.
Peter Orszag came under a little bit of fire earlier this year– at least on the blogs– for hiring Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel, as an adviser because Ezekiel Emanuel advocates a 10% value added tax (VAT) in order to help pay for healthcare reform. The VAT amounts to nothing other than a national sales tax, and we have to assume that if Orszag would hire a proponent of the VAT, he would also be open to the idea.
The exact reason why Peter Orszag has made this decision is not clear, but it is easy to speculate about. The Obama regime is coming under increasing pressure to stop the excessive spending. People are becoming concerned that this regime’s spending is out of control and they are worried about their children’s future and the debt that we are burdening them with.
The Tea Party has been demanding that the regime stop the excessive spending, and the truth is that the Tea Party is not only not going to go away; the Tea Party is expanding– maybe not officially, but people who do not consider themselves aligned with the Tea Party are also worried about the way this regime is borrowing money and spending money. While these people may not be willing to call themselves Tea Party members, they are with us in spirit on this issue.
The reason that we have been given for the resignation of Rahm Emanuel is, Emanuel is upset that Barack Obama hasn’t been aggressive enough, but many Americans are concerned that Barack Obama is moving too fast. With Rahm Emanuel out of the way the Obama regime will be able to claim that Rahm Emanuel was actually the one trying to move too fast, not Barack Obama. Rahm Emanuel will be the fall guy for the criticism that Barack Obama is moving too fast.
With the resignation of Peter Orszag, the Obama regime will be able to claim that Orszag is the one to blame for this administration’s excessive spending, not the president. Peter Orszag will be the fall guy for Barack Obama’s excessive spending.
This is all playing out nicely for the president; if all goes according to plan, he will be able to deflect the blame on two issues that the voters are most worried about.
Rahm Emanuel may resign after the mid-term elections
According to this article, Rahm Emanuel is going to resign as Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff and the resignation will most likely happen after the mid-term elections.
According to the article, the reason for Rahm Emanuel’s likely departure is because of his frustration that Barack Obama has not been forceful enough in pushing his leftist agenda. Rahm Emanuel wants Barack Obama to “bang heads together” and is apparently not satisfied with the pace that the Obama regime has been operating on up until this point.
Having watched the way Barack Obama and congress bent the rules in order to pass healthcare reform against the will of the people, and seeing how the Obama regime is readying unpopular cap and trade and immigration reform legislation to ram down the throats of unwilling Americans I have to wonder if there is more to this story than we are being told.
This story just does not hold water in my opinion, so could there be another reason that Rahm Emanuel is preparing to resign? Could it be the fact that according to this article Rahm Emanuel was seeking to trade favors with disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich? While Rahm Emanuel’s conversations with the hopefully soon to be convicted Blagojevich do not have appeared to have been against the law, it certainly represents a black eye to the man who promised to run the most ethical and honest administration in history. Is it possible that Barack Obama has actually asked for Rahm Emanuel’s resignation in order to avoid the embarrassment of having it learned that he selected him as Chief of Staff with the knowledge that he had been talking to Blagojevich? I think so.
This would help to explain why Rahm Emanuel is planning to hold onto his job until after the mid-term elections; he does not want to be in the midst of a potential scandal in the months leading up to the mid-terms. So he will hang on and hope that nothing comes of either the leak of his impending resignation, or the revelations that he was seeking favor trading with Rod Blagojevich.
Whatever the reason for his departure ends up being, this is good news for the American people. While his departure will probably not have an effect on the way Barack Obama operates, and while it will not have an effect on what Barack Obama hopes to accomplish– turning American into a European-style socialist country– because Barack Obama is an ideologue, perhaps without the pressure of constant fabricated crisis to scare the American people onto supporting legislation they would otherwise oppose, it might just slow Barack Obama down a little bit.
Barack Obama picked his oil spill investigation panel based on climate change politics
Barack Obama has named a panel to investigate the BP oil spill, but the members of that panel don’t have much technical background and seem to have been picked for their pro climate change views rather than for anything they could have contributed from an engineering or practical standpoint. At least one member of this panel blamed America’s addiction to oil as the reason why the oil spill happened in the first place.
I have been one of many who has claimed that Barack Obama sees this oil spill more as an opportunity to push his leftist climate change legislation and less as a crisis that requires swift action and leadership. He has sat idly by for almost two months while oils spills into the Gulf and when he finally addressed the American people last week he used the opportunity to talk about how this spill should prove to Americans that the time for alternative energy is now. This lack of a response has led many to question whether Barack Obama is even upset that this spill happened in the first place because of the opportunity he feels it provides him to pass legislation that he would not have been able to just three months ago.
With the revelations that the oil spill panel is short on engineering knowledge yet long on climate change knowledge, there can no longer be any denying that Barack Obama’s highest priority in this crisis is not getting to the bottom of what happened, and his highest priority is not making sure that this will not happen again or in saving the sea-life, sea coast, or the livelihood of all those affected by this tragedy; his highest priority is getting the climate change propaganda machine in full gear in an effort to use this crisis to pass legislation that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to pass.
It is becoming more and more obvious that Barack Obama’s one great concern is trying to pass cap and trade and he is willing prolong the crisis with his lack of leadership on the immediate problem in order to lead America down the path to a national energy tax, in effect blaming and punishing the “small people” for BP’s problems.
Did Elana Kagan compare the NRA to the KKK?
Did Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court– Elena Kagan– compare the NRA to the KKK? On the surface it sure looks like she did. From this article:
Two documents discovered at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and obtained by National Review suggest that Kagan was involved in these discussions. One does not contain her name, but the handwriting appears to be hers. (You can see an example of Kagan’s handwriting here.) It has the name of administration colleague Fran Allegra at the top, and lists two “Bad guy orgs” that might be covered — the NRA and the KKK.
The second does have Kagan’s name on it; it is a memo from Allegra to Kagan. Allegra reports that he checked the IRS’s “Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170(c)” — the list of tax-exempt organizations, which, he says, are the only organizations the bill would cover — and that neither the NRA nor the KKK was on it. “If you have other names you want me to run down in the Cumulative List, I would be glad to check them out,” he adds, suggesting that Kagan requested the initial check of the NRA and the KKK.
No, she did not directly compare the NRA to the KKK, but she does lump them together as “bad guy” organizations, so in a way she was comparing the two organizations. While she may not be calling NRA members clan members, the fact that she puts both the NRA and the KKK on what she considers the “bad guy” list is bad enough in itself. She has lumped the NRA and KKK together as organizations that she considers bad.
To even mention the NRA in the same context as the KKK is deplorable. This just goes to show us that Elena Kagan needs to be examined thoroughly during her confirmation hearing. There is not allot that is known about her, but we can rest assured that Barack Obama knows enough about her to believe she will be a good card carrying liberal on the Supreme Court. The more that we learn about her, the more I am convinced that she is not the type of person that should be anywhere neer the Supreme Court. When she was announced as Barack Obama’s choice to replace the retiring Justice Stevens many on the right breathed a sigh of relief because they thought that the choice could have been much worse. I am now beginning to wonder if that is true.
It is up to Elena Kagan to prove that she is not the radical I believe she is when she testifies before the confirmation hearings, and the senators at that hearing owe it to the American people to expose he if she is indeed as radical as I am beginning to believe she is.
Having failed in its previous bid to regulate the internet with ” Net Neutrality,” the FCC is changing tactics and moving forward using another angle to try to gain control over the internet– reclassifying it from an information service to a telecommunications service.
If the FCC is able to reclassify the internet it will give the federal government broad powers to regulate the internet, even though federal law states that the internet “unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
This is something that Barack Obama is pushing for, after all he did say that information is a distraction and a diversion to Americans, and he also said that this information is putting pressure on our country and on our democracy.
Maybe information is putting too much pressure on Barack Obama and it is making it harder for him to push his radical agenda as people find out the truth about him. Maybe when he states that information is putting pressure on our country he is talking about the future of the country as he hopes to see it– a European-type socialist nation. He spoke out against the fact that he believes much of what is written on the internet does not rank very high on the “truth meter.” Is that the real truth or the truth as Barack Obama sees it?
When you hear the president of the United States whine about the fact that Americans have access to 24-7 news coverage, and bitch about the amount of information that Americans are able to receive about their president–while he was delivering a speech at a college graduation (that was odd enough by itself)– and then you see the angling by the FCC to gain control over the internet even after they were rebuked by the courts once before, you have to come to the conclusion that the Obama regime wants to be able to gain control over the information that is being fed to the American people. Barack Obama may be the most thin-skinned, arrogant, egotistical man to ever ascend to the presidency. To quote the movie 1984, “it is not enough to obey him… you must love him!”
When you couple all of this with the news that Janet Napolitano believes that monitoring the internet is a civil liberties trade off that the American people need to accept in order to protect them from themselves, you have to begin to wonder what the government is afraid of. If this was George Bush that was advocating these policies the left would be up in arms, but now that Barack Obama wants to intrude on civil liberties the left is an all too willing accomplice.
Is the FCC becoming….. the Ministry of Truth?
Florida Democrats may vote for Charlie Crist
The Florida senate race is shaping up to be a very interesting race to watch. When Republican Charlie Crist realized that he was going to lose his primary bid to new comer Marco Rubio he left the party and decided to run as an Independent. Since this move, Charlie Crist has tacked noticeably to the left in an attempt to pull in Democrat voters.
Now there is another interesting angle that could come into play in this race and that is the fact that the Democrat candidate that appears ready to win the Democrat nomination– Jeff Greene– is a man who made a fortune betting that the housing market would crash.
While Jeff Greene may pull off a victory in the Democrat primary there will be many Democrats who cannot vote for a man that made money by hoping for and betting on the collapse of the housing market. But where can these Democrats turn if they cannot vote for Jeff Greene? Certainly they will not vote for Maro Rubio, that leaves Charlie Crist.
According to this article, there is the very real possibility that Democrats who cannot vote for Jeff Greene will instead turn to Charlie Crist. But can they trust Charlie Crist enough to vote for him? That is the question they must ask themselves. Or will Charlie Crist move back towards the right if he is elected?
Marco Rubio has the support of the Tea Party movement and even if Charlie Crist does move back towards the right, he will still be to the left of Marco Rubio. This could make Crist a more acceptable alternative to Rubio, even if they have their doubts about him. This may help Charlie Crist gain enough support among Democrats to hand him Florida’s senate seat.
If Charlie Crist does manage to win as an independent it will be interesting to see which party he most often votes with. And will this question be enough to ensure that Democrats remain true and vote for the man they know is most liberal– Jeff Greene.
All of the questions will be answered in time, but the one thing I do know is that the Florida race is going to be interesting to follow even after the election is over.
America's Watchtower 