(Video) Big money Obama donors receiving ambassadorships

We've gone from "Hope and Change" to give Obama money and he will keep the change.

I thought Obama was going to get money out of politics. But as CNN reports, big donors to the president's campaign fund are receiving plum ambassadorship posts.

For instance, a hedge fund manager--I thought they were evil?--who raised $1 million for the Obama campaign will likely be the next US ambassador to France.

Technorati tags: newsDemocrats Obama Barack Obama

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With new tax, Chicagoans will pay $6.67 per pack for cigarettes in taxes

Here comes a sales boom for retailers on the other side of the Cook County border. When new county cigarette taxes kick in tomorrow--and Chicagoans will pay a whopping $6.67 per pack in taxes, that is, if they buy those smokes in the city. They'll pay a little less where I live in suburban Cook and a lot less elsewhere.

Of course Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle says that the new taxes will bring in lots of revenue.

But those estimates always fall short, which forces government to raise taxes in other ways. I mean, do you think they'll cut spending voluntarily?

Only New York City residents pay higher cigarette taxes.

Technorati tags: politics Democrats Illinois Politics Cook County chicago chicago politics cigarettes smoking taxes business economy

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Idiocy on plastic bag ban in Austin, Texas

Tomorrow a ban a plastic bags--which are recyclable--starts in Austin, Texas. When shoppers show up at a store, they'll learn about the ban. Grocery stores are a terrific equalizer--almost everyone uses them. But just in case, Austin is wasting $850,000 on an ad campaign about the bag ban. Cash is not recyclable. Instead of plastic bags, Austin is touting a non-recyclable Chinese-made multiple use bag.

Plastic bags are not a threat. In California they represent a paltry 0.13 percent of its waste stream. According to the British Environmental Agency, a cloth bag has to be reused 131 to offset any global warming effect.

Technorati tags:california jobs economy plastic bags business economy news politics nanny state

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White House enemies list? Woodward threatened

Richard Milhous Obama

Does the White House have an enemies list?

Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate scandal along with Carl Bernstein, is used to dealing with a thug White House. But say what you will about Richard M. Nixon, his staff never threatened the pair. Woodward is one of the few mainstream journalists who is telling the truth that the sequestration cuts scheduled to take effect tomorrow were the idea of the Obama administration.

Facts are stubborn things, John Adams once wrote, and the Obama cultists are infuriated when their false narrative is exposed.

From ABC News:

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward is embroiled in an extraordinary public clash with the White House over his reporting on the sequester.

Woodward has been making the rounds to cable TV and print outlets accusing a "very senior person" in the administration of threatening him last week ahead of an op-ed he later published in the Washington Post attributing the idea for the automatic spending cuts to President Obama.

Take a look at this bit of rudeness:

The blitz drew a harsh rebuke from former senior Obama adviser David Plouffe Wednesday night: "Watching Woodward last 2 days is like imagining my idol Mike Schmidt facing live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated," he wrote on Twitter.

Of course the Obama White House is reminiscent of the early 1970s Phillies teams--tt's a failure.

Technorati tags: newsDemocrats Obama Barack Obama

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Phill Gramm rips Obama's sequester fear mongering

Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm slams Obama's sequestration scare tactics in the Wall Street Journal today:

President Obama's message could not be clearer: Life as we know it in America will change dramatically on March 1, when automatic cuts are imposed to achieve $85 billion in government-spending reductions. Furloughed government employees, flight delays and criminals set free are among the dire consequences the president has predicted. If the Washington Monument weren't already closed for repairs, no doubt it too would be shut down.

Scare tactics such as these are similar to the ones that were made when I co-authored the first sequester legislation in 1985, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. The 1986 sequester was triggered anyway, but the predicted disaster never came. The nation survived then. It will now.

The president's response to the sequester demonstrates how out of touch he is with the real world of working families. Even after the sequester, the federal government will spend $15 billion more than it did last year, and 30% more than it spent in 2007. Government spending on nondefense discretionary programs will be 19.2% higher and spending on defense will be 13.8% higher than it was in 2007.

For a typical American family that earns less than it did in the year President Obama was elected, the anguished cries and dark predictions coming out of the White House should elicit not sympathy but revulsion.

Technorati tags: newsDemocrats Obama Barack Obama

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Ugh! Hagel confirmed as SecDef

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President Obama now has his man in place to dismantle the most powerful military known to humanity. With four Republican defections--Thad Cochran, Mike Johanns, Richard C. Shelby and Rand Paul, Republican-in-name-only Chuck Hagel is the new Secretary of Defense. In his keynote address at the Republican National Convention in 2004, Zell Miller warned that our armed forces would only be armed with "spitballs" if John Kerry defeated George W. Bush that fall. The Haughty Frenchman is now Secretary of State and Hagel is on spitball duty.

Technorati tags: hagel israel politics news current affairs

Hostess shutdown made a little sweeter thanks to feds

The closing of Hostess was made a bit sweeter by the pro-Big Labor Obama administration.

From Investors Business Daily:

Labor: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business by refusing to negotiate, union bakers have been rewarded by the White House with Trade Adjustment Assistance. It's all the foreigners' fault.

Last November, Hostess Brands went into liquidation, throwing 18,500 employees out of their jobs. The baking giant had been through two restructurings, but the company remained unprofitable.

All the same, most workers at the bread and pastry maker, famous for its Twinkies and Ho Hos snack cakes, were willing to tighten their belts until good times returned.

More...

This week, the Labor Department decided to shower Hostess workers with Trade Adjustment Assistance, a multibillion-dollar pork barrel program that was beefed up as a bone to Democrats, who were blocking passage of three free-trade treaties in Congress in 2012.

Foreign competition had little or nothing to do with Hostess shutting its doors.

Technorati tags: labor unions politics newscurrent events

The fall of liberalism: From "Only thing we have to fear is fear itself" to fear mongering

Not a fear mongerer

In his first inaugural address, Franklin D. Roosevelt famously remarked, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

How far has liberalism fallen? President Obama is resorting to fear mongering, claiming that tens of thousands of teachers will be laid off and parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids if the sequester--which was his idea--goes through. Obama is also fanning the fear embers by stating that nearly 100,000 civilian defense workers--in just Virginia--will lose their jobs.

What else? Arizona, Obama says, will lose funds for senior meals. Airports, the White House purports, will be less safe.

What happened to Hope?

Oh, even if the sequestration goes through, federal spending will still increase.

Even the normally Obama-supportive AP is decrying the sky-is-falling rhetoric.

Technorati tags: newsDemocrats Obama Barack Obama

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