Republican Senate 'leader' Mitch McConnell needs to go with his heart and switch to the Democrat party

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3/1/12, "Senate GOP Leader Does Not Want to Anger Harry Reid With Obamacare Vote," Erick Erickson, RedState.com

"I reported yesterday that Mitch McConnell is expressly blocking a vote on a conservative backed measure to repeal Obamacare, but there is news this morning that the situation is far worse than even I thought.

Alexander Bolton reports Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell intends to avoid any votes on repealing Obamacare this entire year lest he anger Senator Harry Reid.

Obstensibly, McConnell says a vote on the DeMint authored legislation would give the Democrats cover to vote against Obamacare headed into the election. But this makes no sense because McConnell intends to offer up Senator Blunt’s amendment tomorrow on religious liberty, also letting Senate Democrats get on record defying the President on a controversial issue related to Obamacare.

In fact, however, Senate Republicans are willing now to go on record and offer up an even more damning reason — they don’t want to upset Harry Reid.

Believe it or not, Senator McConnell also perversely appears to want to “shield his Senate GOP colleagues from voting to repeal popular portions of the healthcare law.”

One lawmaker who spoke on background said McConnell is concerned that repeated efforts to force votes on amendments to repeal healthcare reform will lead to procedural stalemate with Democrats.

The senator said McConnell wants to schedule votes on other GOP-sponsored amendments on energy and jobs. McConnell, the senator said, anticipates that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would shut down those opportunities if Republicans insist on votes to repeal healthcare reform.

Why would Senator Harry Reid take action against the Republicans if such votes were hurting the Republicans? Answer: he would not. Democrats are well versed in the art of staying out of the way when Republicans hurt themselves.

Reid would take the actions Republicans fear because he knows that a majority of Americans still oppose Obamacare, it is one issue that unites independent voters with Republicans, and his anger would stem from Republicans reminding the American people which Democrats must go this pivotal election year in order to repeal Obamacare.

But hey,

Some of the healthcare law’s biggest critics in the upper chamber do not think another vote is necessary.

“People are on record,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), one of McConnell’s deputies.

Why the hell do we even need a Democratic Party when Senator McConnell does their bidding for them?"

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10/20/11, "The Lost Decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute

"America's current ruling class, the people who lost the War on Terror, monopolizes the upper reaches of American public life, the ranks of those who make foreign and domestic policy, including the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties. It is more or less homogeneous socially and intellectually. In foreign affairs, the change from the Bush to the Obama Administrations was barely noticeable. In domestic matters, the differences are more quantitative than qualitative. Dissent from the ruling class is rife among the American people, but occurs mostly on the sidelines of our politics. If there is to be a reversal of the ongoing defeats, both foreign and domestic, that have discredited contemporary America's bipartisan mainstream,

• heretofore marginal people will have to generate it,
  

• applying ideas and practices recalled from America's successful past."...

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Andrew Breitbart, 'We will take it from here...rest well Patriot'

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Hate tweets roll in on the death of Andrew Breitbart, PJ Media:

"Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone: “Good! Fuck him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.”
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"Remember this stuff the next time one of these people tries to play the “Have you no decency?” card. As I said, even in death Andrew is exposing them." Instapundit

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"And if you think you can unring this bell… you’re wrong.”" Andrew Breitbart, CPAC speech, Feb. 18, 2010, via Gateway Pundit


Andrew Breitbart in Madison, Wisc., Feb. 19, 2011



comment at AT

"Yael

"There was a beautiful comment - at Huffington Post, of all places. I keep re-posting it because I am still too shocked to think in words.

"Thank you Andrew for blazing the trail. We will take it from here.... rest well, Patriot."

A monumental loss."




Andrew Breitbart spoke to this crowd in Madison, Wisc., 2/19/11

"All we did was ask the mainstream media to correct their bias problem. When they wouldn't correct themselves, citizens in the form of the Tea Party, people with video cameras going everywhere said, "If you're not gonna correct yourself, we're gonna create a media in the wake of your incompetency, and that's what's happening. It's the most exciting time in media and unfortunately the

• mainstream media is so upset about it,

• it covers it as if we're the villains out there."...

4/19/11, "Two Book Recommendations: Andrew Breitbart and Tom Watson," RushLimbaugh.com

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3/30/11, " A Nationwide Movement To Eliminate Voter Fraud Is Born," RedState.com poster cringinghere

• "Cringinghere" attended the first big True the Vote summit among whose speakers was Andrew Breitbart:

"But he’s not a politics guy, he told us. 

“I don’t care that much about politics, I don’t go on CNN or Fox to talk about politics, I care about the culture. We’ve allowed the cultural Marxists to take over our culture and I just want to expose some of what they do. I’m about exposing the mainstream media

• I’m about exposing Hollywood,” he said in quick time."

Andrew Breitbart speaking in Newport Beach.
Rest in peace, Andrew Breitbart.



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Bernanke warns fiscal crisis ahead if allow Bush tax cuts and others to expire

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A day ago pundits said stock market roared because it decided Obama was going to win. Oops. "Could knock GDP down to 1%." "Could trigger another financial crisis."

2/29/12, "Bernanke warns lawmakers country headed for 'massive fiscal cliff'," The Hill, P. Schroeder

"Congress risks taking the economy over a “massive fiscal cliff,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned lawmakers on Wednesday.

In remarks that hit Wall Street stock prices, the central bank boss suggested the economy could hit a serious roadblock if Congress allows the Bush tax rates and a payroll tax cut to expire and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts to be implemented simultaneously in January.

“Under current law, on Jan. 1, 2013, there’s going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases,” Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee. “I hope that Congress will look at that and figure out ways to achieve the same long-run fiscal improvement without having it all happen at one date.

“All those things are hitting on the same day, basically. It’s quite a big event.”

The tax hikes and spending cuts could knock GDP growth in 2013 down from 2.6 percent to 1 percent, according to Andrew Fieldhouse, a federal budget policy analyst with the liberal Economic Policy Institute .

“There is obviously a huge fiscal drag pending if Congress adheres to existing law,” he said.

Bernanke’s comments underline the stakes for this year’s post-election lame-duck session of Congress, when the fate of the tax rates and spending cuts are likely to be determined. Congress is also not expected to raise the debt ceiling until after Election Day, but is unlikely to be able to punt that decision beyond the lame-duck session.

The nation’s triple-A credit rating hangs in the balance, with agencies likely to decide on whether to downgrade the United States depending on what happens to the debt ceiling, tax rates and spending cuts. The fiscal triple whammy was set up by the failure of a supercommittee of lawmakers to agree on a deficit-cutting plan last year.

Bernanke, who has long advised policymakers to rein in the deficit, called again Wednesday for a “credible plan” to reassure markets that the nation is repairing its finances.

Failure to do so could trigger another financial crisis and sharply higher interest rate, as is happening in Europe, he said.

Bernanke warned that draining funds from the economy by allowing tax cuts to expire and trimming spending could slow growth.

“You ... have to protect the recovery in the near term,” he warned.

Some Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), have already vowed to find alternatives to the spending cuts, which would hit the Pentagon. And the fight over the Bush tax rates will be a central theme of the presidential election.

President Obama wants to extend the individual tax rates for families with annual income below $250,000 and individuals below $200,000, while allowing tax rates on higher incomes to rise. Republicans want to extend all the Bush-era rates.

Congressional Democrats are increasingly embracing $1 million in income as the right threshold above which higher income taxes should kick in.

“Obviously, the Speaker is opposed to the massive tax hike that Washington Democrats have engineered for the end of the year,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), said Wednesday.

While economic conditions have improved and the unemployment rate has fallen, Bernanke warned that the labor market is still “far from normal.”

“The unemployment rate remains elevated, long-term unemployment is still near record levels and the number of persons working part-time for economic reasons is very high,” he said.

Underlying data suggest the economic expansion is “uneven and modest by historical standards,” and that Europe’s debt crisis remains a persistent threat to the U.S. recovery, he said.

The Fed has lowered interest rates effectively to zero and vowed to keep them there through the end of 2014 in response to those challenges, but Bernanke suggested there is little more the central bank can do.

“Monetary policy is not a panacea,” he said. “The long-term health of the economy depends mostly on decisions taken by Congress and the administration.”...

“These criticisms are easy for me to make,” he said. “I don’t have to deal with the politics.”

He steered clear of recommending a specific deficit-reduction path for Congress, but said it is “very important” to address rising healthcare costs and that the economy would benefit from a clear plan from Congress to reform the housing market." via Drudge

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Two more US soldiers murdered on base in Afghanistan, 4 injured, one killer from Afghan Army, at least 6 US soldiers killed since Obama apologized

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UPDATE: 3/1/12, They were American soldiers, 2 killed, 4 others injured. "Two American Soldiers Die in Shooting at Afghan Base," NY Times

Killed on a base. Maybe if Obama returned the Nobel Peace Prize it would help.

3/1/12, "Nato says two soldiers shot dead in Afghanistan," BBC

"Nato says two of its soldiers have been shot dead on a base in southern Afghanistan.

It said the shooting in Kandahar Province was carried out by an Afghan National Army service member and another attacker in civilian clothing.

But officials in Zheray district say only one man - who was on the base to teach Afghans literacy - opened fire.

Six Nato personnel have been killed since protests erupted last week over the burning of the Koran by US troops.

The Nato personnel are among more than 30 people who have died in the protests over the past week.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says it is unclear how a teacher was allowed to stay on the base and have access to a weapon.

Hours earlier the head of Nato forces in Afghanistan, Gen John Allen, told the BBC that recent violence over the burning of the Koran by US soldiers was a "setback" that would be overcome.

Gen Allen said he would be willing to walk, unarmed, into the Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul, where two Nato military advisers were shot dead on Saturday.

Last Thursday, two US soldiers were shot and killed by a man wearing Afghan army uniform during protests at a Nato base in eastern Nangarhar province."

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2/29/12, "President Obama: Koran Apology 'Calmed Things Down'," ABC News

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Royal Dutch Shell has fed. gov. OK to drill in Arctic yet anticipates lawsuits from at least 12 environmental groups, so is suing them first

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"The suit names the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, the National Audubon Society and several others"

2/29/12, "Arctic Ocean drilling: Shell launches preemptive legal strike," LA Times, Kim Murphy, from Seattle

"Royal Dutch Shell launched an extraordinary preemptive legal strike Wednesday against opponents of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, filing suit against more than a dozen environmental organizations likely to challenge its plan for drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer.

In a petition for declaratory relief filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, the oil giant seeks to have the court rule that the U.S. government complied with federal law when it approved Shell’s oil spill response plan for upcoming exploratory well-drilling in the Arctic.

The move is a clear attempt to beat environmental organizations to court and avert potentially costly delays for a project on which Shell has already spent $4 billion without drilling a single well.

The oil company launched a separate petition against Greenpeace, whose activists last week boarded the drilling rig now moored in New Zealand and scheduled to begin drilling in the Arctic in July. Six activists, including television actress Lucy Lawless, climbed the rig before being arrested.

A hearing was underway Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Anchorage on the company’s request for a temporary restraining order prohibiting Greenpeace from engaging in “illegal and dangerous actions” tied to the upcoming offshore drilling program.

“This is a very unique legal approach. I’m not sure anything like this has ever been done before,” Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh told the Los Angeles Times.

The suit names the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, the National Audubon Society and several other groups which for years have filed lawsuits and appeals challenging the federal government’s offshore leasing programs in the Arctic, the lease sale under which Shell gained the right to explore in the Chukchi, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of air quality permits for drilling operations.

Op de Weegh said Shell attorneys were convinced that conservationists would probably file suit against the oil spill response plan recently approved by the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and wanted to make sure that didn’t occur on the eve of drilling — an outcome that, since drilling can be done only during the ice-free summer months, could delay operations for another full year....

“This does not restrict, and we’re not seeking to restrict, any parties’ right to challenge the oil spill response plan,” she added. “The goal is to have the court review BSEE’s approval of this plan, saying in the court’s opinion it was thoroughly reviewed, the approval was valid.”

Whit Sheard, Pacific counsel and senior advisor for Oceana, one of the defendants named by Shell, said his organization already filed earlier this month a challenge to the company’s exploration plan.

We don’t think they’ve adequately met the requirements of the law,” he said. “This cleanup plan, just like their previous cleanup plans, is woefully inadequate, based on technology that has never been proven, and continues to be too risky for the Arctic environment.”

Peter Van Tuyn, attorney for the Alaska Wilderness League, said a legal challenge to the oil spill response plan was likely in any event, “and I presume the plaintiffs would want to hear it pretty quickly anyway,” he said...

Sheard said Shell appears to be calculating that filing suit in Alaska, where there is a strong economic interest in proceeding with offshore oil exploration, will give the company an edge in winning approval to proceed."... via Lucianne

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GOP congressman says we should put up someone of integrity equal to Obama

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2/29/12, "GOP Congressman: 'We Need to Put Forward Someone of Equal Integrity’ to Obama," CNS News, Susan Jones

"(Republican Utah Rep. Jason) Chaffetz said one of the reasons he supports Mitt Romney is Romney's family life: "He's been married for 42 years, he got this wonderful, beautiful family, he's been scandal-free in his personal life.

"That's the kind of person -- that's what the Democrats did, right? They put up someone with a beautiful family in the Obamas.

• And we need to put forward someone of equal integrity."

----------------------------

Ed. note: Chaffetz is either grossly uninformed or delusional but of course the pathetic state of the GOP is why we have Obama. Obama and the radical left have caused terrible suffering across this country and around the world. He has given Wall Street bankers the greatest wealth and political power they have ever known. He has called the Tea Party racists. He has not condemned Occupy and other gang violence. He has kicked the middle class to the gutter. He has spent billions of US taxpayer dollars supporting and arming terrorist populations. The word integrity does not belong in the same sentence with the name Obama or anyone else on the radical left. The GOP needs to differentiate itself from democrats. If they like democrats so much, fine, go be a democrat.

via Instapundit

54% of likely voters in Wisconsin don't wish Governor Walker to be recalled-Rasmussen Poll

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Poll conducted Feb. 27 among 500 likely voters. I didn't see party affiliation mentioned but in other polls he's done about 1/3 each Repub., Dem., Ind.

2/29/12, "54% in Wisconsin Oppose Recall of GOP Governor Walker," Rasmussen Poll

"Most Wisconsin voters approve of the job embattled Governor Scott Walker is doing and oppose the effort to recall him from office before the next election.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 52% of Likely Wisconsin Voters at least somewhat approve of Walker’s job performance to date, while 46% at least somewhat disapprove. These findings include 40% who Strongly Approve of how the Republican governor is doing and just as many (40%) who Strongly Disapprove. (To see survey question wording, click here.)...

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Wisconsin was conducted on February 27, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology." via Lucianne

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Did lawsuit hasten Olympia Snowe departure?

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The company was taken over in 2006 by Goldman Sachs who retained Snowe's husband.

3/1/12, "Did lawsuit factor in Olympia Snowe's departure?," Sunlight Foundation, Allison and Young

"Last August, while Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was in the midst of an intensive round of fundraising for her 2012 reelection bid, a four-year-old civil lawsuit alleging fraud by an education company in which she and her husband are heavily invested became public.

Nationally, most of the coverage of Snowe's decision to drop her reelection bid has focused on the centrist Republican's frustration with the polarized politics on Capitol Hill. But in Maine, a few newspapers have speculated that her husband's legal entanglements had a role in Snowe's sudden and surprising decision, which left her with more than $3 million in her campaign coffers and her party without a Senate candidate less than three weeks before the filing deadline for Maine's June 12 primary.

According to the senator's most recent financial disclosure form, she and her husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan Jr., have investments worth between $2 million and $10 million in Education Management Corp., a Pittsburgh-based company that operates for-profit higher education institutions. McKernan is chairman of the board of directors of the company, now embroiled in a lawsuit in which the federal goverment, 11 states and the District of Columbia are seeking to recover a portion of the $11 billion in federal student aid that the education firm has received since July 2003.

Originally filed in April 2007 by a pair of whistleblowers, the lawsuit alleges that the company violated a federal law that prohibits schools from paying admissions officers based on the number of students they recruit and enroll. Those numbers can affect a school's revenues because more students mean a school is potentially eligible for more federal aid dollars. The whistleblowers alleged, and provided documents indicating, that they were paid bounties for the number of students they enrolled.

The Justice Department's decision to intervene on Aug. 8 made the lawsuit, which had been under seal, public. In its complaint, Justice alleged that Education Management Corp. submitted "knowingly false, misrepresented, and/or improper certifications" to the Education Department, stating that it did not offer enrollment incentives to its admissions officers. Without those certifications, students enrolling at the the company's schools, which include Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University, would not be eligible for federal financial aid. The complaint names Snowe's husband, noting that in December 2006, while he was the company's chief executive officer, McKernan personally signed certifications that Education Management Corp.'s schools complied with the ban on offering compensation to admissions officers based on the number of students they recruit.

Education Management Corp. has asked that the case be dismissed. In a press release issued after the suit was announced, Bonnie Campbell, spokesperson for the company's legal team and a former attorney general of Iowa and Justice Dept. official, described the suit as "flat-out wrong." Campbell stated that the company's compensation policies for admissions officers were based on a number of factors, not solely the number of students they recruited, and had been developed with the aid of outside consultants to ensure they complied with federal law.

According to the company's most recent proxy statement, McKernan, who was briefly named as a defendant in the suit but removed, owns more than 835,000 shares in the company, worth more than $14.9 million at current prices. That was up from the 128,000 shares he owned when he became CEO in 2003. He joined the company in 1999, and stepped down from the CEO position in February 2007.

A report from New America Foundation's Higher Ed Watch noted that Education Management Corp. in the words of its founder, Robert Knutson, was "oriented to the needs of [its] students" until 2006, when a group of private equity investors led by Goldman Sachs acquired the company. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that McKernan was involved in the acquisition talks, receiving the first contact about an acquisition and serving on a special committee to advise the board on the progress of talks. Goldman Sachs retained McKernan, but did away with the rest of the management, according to the Higher Ed Watch Report. The new management greatly increased enrollment at Education Management Corporation's schools, doubling it to 160,000 students.

The company's most recent annual report filed with the SEC shows that 74.3 percent of the company's revenues--some $2.6 billion--came from programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, which requires recipients to certify that they don't offer incentives to admissions officers based on the number of students they enroll.

When news of the lawsuit was released, political opponents of Snowe's raised the issue, the Lewiston (Me.) Sun Journal reported. Scott D'Amboise, a Republican challenging her in the Senate primary, called on her to resign, while Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Shripal Shah charged that Snowe and her husband may have personally profited while defrauding low income students.

At the time, Snowe dismissed the charges, citing the care the company took in developing its compensation policies. Her office did not respond to requests for comment." via Instapundit

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