Archive for May 22nd, 2009
Obama shafts prudent credit card users
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President Obama signed new credit card legislation today. Again, thanks to Barry O, responsible Americans will wind up paying for irresponsible Americans.
The White House staged a signing ceremony in the Rose Garden, an indication of the legislation’s importance to Obama. Though opposed by many financial companies, the bill cleared Congress with broad support.
Obama made clear that he didn’t champion the changes with the intention of helping those who buy more than they can afford through “reckless spending or wishful thinking.”
“Some get in over their heads by not using their heads,” the president said. “I want to be clear: We do not excuse or condone folks who’ve acted irresponsibly.”
He doesn’t condone it? Why, then, would he sign legislation that would shift the costs of the irresponsible to the responsible?
Despite being touted as a victory for consumers, financial experts said the bill could have unintended consequences as credit card companies look for ways to make up for potential lost revenue. Those measures could include more cards with annual fees and the loss of a grace period before interest accrues, which would affect even those consumers who pay off their balance each month.
You could call the consequences unintended if the facts weren’t known ahead of time. In this case they were. This is just another way for the Socialist in Chief to spread the wealth around.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Ew – Reuseable Grocery Bags Can Make You Sick
Posted by: | CommentsI’m not a big fan of those “green” grocery bags. I like them for carrying heavy things, but not grocery shopping. I tried to use them but kept forgetting to bring them into the store. Now I’m glad I gave up on the darned things.
Via Yid with Lid:
Back to plastic? Reusable grocery bags may cause food poisoning
by Karen HawthorneGet out your bleach and launder those reusable fabric grocery bags after each use. You’re not clogging up landfill with plastic throw-aways, but your environmental conscientiousness could make you sick.
A microbiological study – a first in North America – of the popular, eco-friendly bags has uncovered some unsettling facts. Swab-testing by two independent laboratories found unacceptably high levels of bacterial, yeast, mold and coliform counts in the reusable bags.
“The main risk is food poisoning,” Dr. Richard Summerbell, research director at Toronto-based Sporometrics and former chief of medical mycology for the Ontario Ministry of Health, stated in a news release. Dr. Summerbell evaluated the study results.
“But other significant risks include skin infections such as bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections,” he stated.
The study found that 64% of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water.
Further, 40% of the bags had yeast or mold, and some of the bags had an unacceptable presence of coliforms, faecal intestinal bacteria, when there should have been 0.
Fecal bacteria!?! Yuck! I’ll stick with plastic and paper, thank you very much.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Tweet of the Day
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President Obama will make it a lot easier for most people to do their income taxes next year. No jobs, no income.
From Bruce Majors
Popularity: 6% [?]
The Obligatory Mancow Gets Waterboarded Post
Posted by: | CommentsTalk radio host Mancow Muller was waterboarded to see what it was like. Needless to say, he didn’t enjoy the experience. But nobody ever said it was pleasant.
via Memeorandum
Popularity: 5% [?]
Pay up, suckers!
Posted by: | CommentsYou get what you vote for. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us.
House Democrats passed their massive cap and trade tax yesterday. So much for the promise to lower taxes on 95% of Americans. This will raise taxes on 100% of Americans.
House Republicans issued a scathing statement.
House Democrats used political muscle and party loyalty on Thursday to ram through an anti-global warming bill that opponents caution could cost a family of four $2,937.38 a year.
The action came after a marathon committee session that spent 37 hours over four days methodically rejecting 56 separate Republican efforts to learn the full cost of the bill, to prevent scams in its trading system and even get the feds out of hot tubs. The massive, 946-page Waxman-Markey global warming bill was named for its authors, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. It passed the Waxman committee on a vote of 33-25.
“We have legitimate and serious concerns about the redirection of our energy policy in America, which is the foundation and bedrock of our free market economy, the most productive and the largest in the world,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the committee’s ranking Republican. “A third of the world’s GDP is based on the United States economy and that economy for over 150 years has been based on a free market allocation of resources in the energy sector. This bill makes fundamental changes in that basic philosophy.”
Cost analyses of the bill vary because hard information on it had been scarce, but few disagreed that the legislation will cost working people billions of dollars through devices intended to force people to stop using energy by making it dramatically more expensive.
“One estimate puts its price per family of four at $29,373.85 over 10 years,” Barton said. “Another estimate is that it will raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation, and boost gasoline prices 74 percent and natural gas prices 55 percent.”
The cost of electricity and natural gas are high enough where we live. It’s only going to get worse, and they don’t care! As long as they can please the kook fringe, the economy and working families can go to hell.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Pelosi: I stand by my comment.
Posted by: | CommentsWhich comment is that, I wonder?
Popularity: 5% [?]
RNC revives ‘Daisy Girl’ for new ad
Posted by: | CommentsObama the candidate: “Close down Guantanamo. That’s easy.”
Below you can view the original “Daisy Girl” ad run by Lyndon Johnson, his cheap way of portraying Barry Goldwater as some sort of warmonger.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Obama’s Ugly on Defense
Posted by: | CommentsDick Cheney, whose popularity is on the rise, has put President Obama in the position of playing defense.
Over the past few weeks, Obama has been back on his heels over torture and terror, issues on which he surely thought he had the upper hand.
And he spent Thursday battling charges from a man he surely thought he had vanquished in November, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
It took some worried calls from Capitol Hill Democrats, congressional aides said, to convince him otherwise – that he needed to give a speech defending his plan for closing the terror prison at Guantanamo Bay, and rebutting Republican claims that the move would endanger Americans where they live.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others made clear “that we’re going to need a lot more cover if we’re going to be able to deal with this issue,” said one Democratic leadership aide.
When playing defense, Obama’s showing he plays dirty, and downright ugly. The Commander in Chief used a commencement address at the Naval Acadamy to rap the Iraq war.
What makes this nod to politics at Annapolis’s commencement especially cheap is that John McCain, whose son graduated today, was in the audience. That’s the same John McCain who gave Obama cover last night on Fox News by reiterating his belief that waterboarding is torture, the same John McCain whom The One is counting on for further cover in closing Guantanamo, and the same John McCain who concluded, in all apparent good faith, that the Iraq war was necessary after all. And still, Obama couldn’t help himself.
This certainly won’t be the last time Obama’s on defense. I have a feeling it’s only going to get uglier.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Obamanomics – ain’t it fun? Update: More bad news
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AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
There isn’t much good news to report about the economy heading into Memorial Day weekend.
Inflation is going to rise, the dollar is in a free fall, and the US deficit is so out of control that the United States is at risk of losing it’s AAA credit rating.
Obamanomics at work. Can we survive three and a half more years of this guy?
Update – I think the answer is “no, we can’t.” The Wall Street Journal reports that soon the US jobless rate may top Europe’s.
Via Memeorandum
Popularity: 5% [?]
House Republicans stand up for GM bondholders
Posted by: | CommentsThe war on capital continues, but at least there are a few republicans who recognize it and are trying to do something about it. Reps Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Pete Sessions and Jeb Hensarling are calling out the Obama administration for thwarting the rule of law with its handling of General Motors.
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – Four U.S. Republican lawmakers have complained to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that a plan to restructure automaker General Motors Corp (GM.N) subverts the rights of bondholders, according to a letter from the lawmakers obtained by Reuters on Friday
A proposed restructuring favors the claims of the United Auto Workers union “over the rights and claims of the company’s diverse group of bondholders, who collectively hold $7 billion more in General Motors debt than the UAW’s health trust and are equal members of the creditor class,” the lawmakers said.
“Bondholders must have a seat at the table during negotiations in how the company would be restructured,” said the letter to Geithner from Representatives Jeb Hensarling, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence and Pete Sessions.
“We are extremely concerned that in the name of restructuring General Motors, the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry … has begun waging what some believe amounts to a war on capital: contractual rights of investors are being trampled by the government under the rationale of ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” the lawmakers wrote.
I’m sure their complaints will fall on deaf ears. But at least someone’s bringing attention to the fact that the Obama administration is not acting within the law. What kind of nation are we when contracts can be ripped up by politicians? They’re job is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, not the UAW.
If you believe these bondholders are rich fat cats, you’re wrong. Not only are pensions for teachers and firefighters getting the shaft, so are ordinary Americans who invested their retirement savings in what they believed were secure bonds.
So much for looking out for the little guy.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Cold – White House turns away kindergarteners
Posted by: | CommentsThey can’t vote, so who needs ‘em!?
Thursday was supposed to be the highlight of the year for more than 100 kindergarteners from Stafford County, Va. They got up early and took a chartered bus to the White House for a school field trip. But when they arrived, all the 5-year-olds got was a lesson in disappointment.
The buses from Conway Elementary arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a little later than planned, and they were locked out.
“We were going to the White House, but we couldn’t get in so I felt sad,” 5-year-old Cameron Stine said.
Parents say they were just 10 minutes late for their scheduled tour. School officials say White House staff said they needed to get ready for the president’s event with the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, so they couldn’t come in.
“I was angry cause they were disappointed,” parent and chaperone Paty Stine said.
The Steelers and the Obama administration used their time together to create 3,000 care packages for U.S. troops as part of a Wounded Warriors initiative.
A lot of preparing had gone into the trip. Conway Elementary teachers had been planning the trip for months, each child paid $20 for a seat on the chartered bus, and names were submitted to the White House for clearance.
Parents say they tried to make it on time, but their chartered buses hit heavy traffic that slowed them down substantially. They thought they were supposed to show up by 10:15, but they say they arrived at 10:25 instead, and couldn’t get in.
“The person who headed this White House trip up came out and said, ‘I’m sorry, the White House tour’s off.’ There were a lot of crying kids,” parent Barbara Stine said.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Video: Beware the Obamanots
Posted by: | CommentsChilling new video from I Own the World. Hide the children!
Popularity: 5% [?]
Another day, another broken promise
Posted by: | CommentsHere is President Obama on January 21, 2009 – the day after his inauguration – promising a new era of transparency.
So, how is he doing?
Let’s see, he won’t release a report documenting that one out of every seven Gitmo detainees goes back to a life of inflicting terror after release. It seems the president is only willing to release information that supports his political positions.
He also promised a new transparency when it comes to spending our hard earned money. Another dismal failure.
To build support for the stimulus package, President Obama vowed unprecedented transparency, a big part of which, he said, would be allowing taxpayers to track money to the street level on Recovery.gov. Together with a spruced-up WhiteHouse.gov, the site would inject the stodgy federal bureaucracy with the same Webby accessibility and Facebook-generation flair that defined the Obama campaign.
But three months after the bill was signed, Recovery.gov offers little beyond news releases, general breakdowns of spending, and acronym-laden spreadsheets and timelines. And congressional Democrats, state officials and advocates of open government worry that the White House cannot come close to clearing the high bar it set.
He’s about at transparent as mud. But on the bright side, Michelle Obama made the cover of Time Magazine - again.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Waxman: Don’t ask me details of my bill!
Posted by: | CommentsTax and trader Henry Waxman was asked about his cap and trade bill and he replied (I kid you not) “You’re asking me?” What a knucklehead.
This congress couldn’t be more ridiculous if they tried.
Where’s a speed reader when you need one?
H/T Michelle Malkin via memeorandum
Popularity: 6% [?]
Sarah Palin to Visit Upstate New York
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I’m not sure if this is official, but it’s more recent than when I first reported that Governor Palin may visit Central New York.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will help a central New York city celebrate 50 years of Alaskan statehood.
Auburn officials say Palin will take part in their inaugural Founders Day celebration on June 6.
Alaska and Auburn are linked through William Seward, who lived in Auburn and was secretary of state under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Seward negotiated the deal to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million.
I would love to go, but the governor’s visit just happens to fall on my son’s birthday weekend. She’s always welcome to stop by for the festivities!
Popularity: 7% [?]
