Kitchen Table Conservative

German Physicists Trash Global Warming 'Theory'

Valerie — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:07:08 +0000

German Physicists Trash Global Warming ‘Theory’.

U.S. Weak Dollar Policy Big Threat To Economy – Investopedia.com

Valerie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:16:58 +0000

U.S. Weak Dollar Policy Big Threat To Economy – Investopedia.com.

Fake Jobs and More Bogus Claims from Failed Stimulus

Valerie — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:16:48 +0000

From The Heritage Foundation: Nov 11 09

Forget everything bad you’ve ever heard about President Barack Obama’s $787 economic stimulus. Combing through the data on the $18 million Recovery.gov website you’ll find tons of Obama stimulus success stories from across the country. In Minnesota’s 57th Congressional District, 35 jobs have been saved or created using $404,340 in stimulus funds. In New Mexico’s 22nd Congressional District, 25 jobs have been saved or created using $61,000 in stimulus cash. And in Arizona’s fighting 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending.

The it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-our-tax-dollars-at-stake punch line here is that none of the above Congressional Districts actually exist. Yet those jobs “created or saved” claims still sit on the Obama administration’s official “transparency and accountability” website Recovery.gov. As the Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso points out, it would have been nearly costless for the Recovery.gov site designers to limit the input fields so that non-existent Congressional Districts never made it into the public domain, but for whatever reason the Obama administration chose otherwise. Defending the fake data on his website, Recovery.gov Communications Director Ed Pound told ABC News: “We report what the recipients submit to us. Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on job numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”Pound is dead wrong. The problem with Recovery.gov is not human reporting error, but an error of human design. Highly trained professional economists don’t agree on how to tell when a job has been “saved or created” yet the Obama administration expects a Kentucky shoe-store owner to accurately create such data? “Just throwing in any number.” That just about sums up the accuracy of Recovery.gov. And the usually compliant mainstream press is beginning to notice.The Washington Examiner has begun tracking stories from established media outlets on bogus job claims made by the Obama administration and they have already identified 75,343 fake jobs out of the 640,000 that the Obama administration claimed. You can track Obama job fakery from around the country on the Examiner’s interactive “Bogus Jobs” map here.

The lesson here is that the American people simply cannot trust any stimulus claims made by the Obama White House. Fortunately we have an objective way to hold Obama accountable.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized data employment data since the 1940s.

When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8% and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs. The unemployment rate is now 10.2% and with only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people. That makes President Obama’s stimulus an objective failure.

Obama Appoints Muslim to High-level Position in Department of Homeland Security

Valerie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:58:10 +0000

from John C./Puget Sound Conservative Underground -Nov 16 09

Q: Who is the enemy in the terrorist attacks on the U.S.?

A: Islamic (Muslim) extremists.

Q: What do ALL Islamic extremists have in common?

A: They’re all Muslims

Q: Is this any reason to deny Muslims positions in the military or departments of national security?

A: The answer is obvious.

I remember how much people were up in arms when Bush wanted to appoint a Dubaye company to manage our port security. But maybe that was just a hate Bush thing. No one seems to care (or even know) about the following appontments. JC

Obama Appoints Muslim to High-level Position in Department of Homeland Security
9-20-09
Alikhan has been Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles–in charge of public safety for the city.

Napolitano adds adviser with ties to terror backers

6-7-09

Last week, Napolitano swore in Damascus-born Kareem Shora, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)’s national executive director, to a position on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, an outside-the-department group of national security experts that advises the Secretary. Shora is the first Arab rights advocate on the panel. Shora has with ties to terror backers The ADC has close ties to anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, whose association with BarackObama stirred controversy during last year’s presidential campaign. http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=100486

During his years in Los Angeles, Alikhan was responsible for derailing the Police Department’s plan to monitor activities within the Los Angeles Muslim community, where numerous radical mosques and madrassas existed, and where some of the 9/11 hijackers had received support from local residents.

Alikhan is strongly anti-Israel; he has referred to the terrorist organization Hezbollah as a “liberation movement.” Hezbollah is on the U.S. official terrorist list

While an affiliate of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Alikhan opposed President George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war on Islamic terror.
http://www.chronwatch-america.com/articles/5583/1/Obama-Appoints-Muslim-to-High-level-Position-in-Department-of-Homeland-Security-/Page1.html.

See also: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/06/obama-appointment-arif-ali-khan-asst-secretary-dhs.html

Devout Muslims being appointed to critical Homeland Security positions? Does this make you feel safer, especially after the recent terrorist attack at Fort Hood?

Still think President Obama is focused on our national security rather than his own personal political agenda?

Justice Dept Subpoenas Internet Site Visitors in Secret

Valerie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:54:55 +0000

This is alarming. If the Department of Justice is wiling to go this far than those of us who comment, post and blog online are at risk. What no one can figure out is why they did this and then retracted it.

Investors.com – A Curious Subpoena.

U.S. Unemployment Higher than Europe Now

Valerie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:45:33 +0000

U.S. now beating European unemployment rates

from: The Washington Post

By Frank Ahrens | November 9, 2009; 12:37 PM ET

For many on the left, the lament for years has been: Why can’t America be more like Europe? Why can’t the American lifestyle be more like the European lifestyle? Why can’t our food be more like Europe’s? Why can’t rustic Americans be more like sophisticated Europeans? The sentiment has resurfaced in recent months as the health-care debate has raged on — why can’t the American health-care system be more like Europe’s?

Well, America is now just like Europe in one respect: the unemployment rate.

The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent. It shot up from 9.8 percent in September, blasting through expectations and well besting the European average.

According to the European Union, the unemployment rate in the 16-nation Euro area in September (the most recent month available) was 9.7 percent. Here is the nation-by-nation breakdown:

- Austria: 4.8%
- Belgium: 7.9%
- Cyprus: 5.9%
- Finland: 8.6%
- France: 10%
- Germany: 7.6%
- Greece: Latest available was June, at 9.2%
- Ireland: 13%
- Italy: 7.4%
- Luxembourg: 6.6%
- Malta: 7.2%
- Netherlands: 3.6%
- Portugal: 9.2%
- Slovakia: 12%
- Slovenia: 5.9%
- Spain: 19.3%

Scanning this data, the instant question has to be: What’s wrong with Spain? The answer is: a collapse in the construction industry, as Spain deals with its worst recession in 60 years. Unemployment among young Spaniards (under 25) is a jaw-dropping 41.7 percent. Spain’s is an economy built on temporary employment, leading to the radical swings.

The lesson here is the failure — once again — of socialism. Spain’s socialist government has extended jobless benefits and engaged in massive stimulus spending (sound familiar?) worth about 2.3 percent of GDP.

More importantly, the socialist government refused to cut what are called “firing costs:” how much it costs in severance to lay off an employee. By law, a fired contract employee must receive 20 days’ pay per year worked. But because the unions are so strong and threaten to strike at the drop of a hat, many companies pay much more severance than that.

It’s a catch-22: Struggling companies need to lay off workers to reduce costs, but the cost of laying off workers is so high, there are no cost savings.

Now such sop-to-the-people popularism is backfiring on the socialist government. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero trails his opposition in opinion polls.

I can’t talk about Euro-envy without mentioning France, paragon of sophistication for some, running joke for others.

The French unemployment rate is 10 percent. The under-25 unemployment rate is 24.5 percent, among the highest in Europe.

The French are famous for their liberal unemployment benefits. According to London’s Mail newspaper, “Unemployment benefits in France equal 57 per cent to 75 per cent of a jobseeker’s last salary, capped at 6,366.80 [euros] a month. Benefits can last for as long as three years, and sometimes longer for people nearing retirement.”

I’ll do the conversion for you: 6,366.80 euros equals $9,548.70. That’s per month.

The Mail was occasioned to write the story in February because French financial professionals living in London were fleeing the collapsing banking houses so they could go back to France and collect fat unemployment checks.

Of course, many economists note that such extensive unemployment benefits are a disincentive for looking for work. Actually, you don’t need an economist to tell you that. It’s common sense.

– Frank Ahrens

Free Market Solutions for Real Health Care Reform

Valerie — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:49:02 +0000

From the CATO Institute:A Free-Market Plan for Health Care

In a speech on health care reform in March 2009, President Obama said, “If there is a way of getting this done where we’re driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate, and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I’d be happy to do it that way….I just want to figure out what works.” In a new paper, Cato’s Director of Health Policy Studies Michael F. Cannon explains how tearing down regulatory barriers to competition and allowing workers control over their health care dollars would limit costs, expand choice, improve health care quality, and make health coverage more secure. Writing in Politico, Cannon proposes five ways to cure the health care system:

Give Medicare enrollees a voucher (adjusted for their means and health risk) and let them purchase any health plan on the market,
Reform the tax treatment of health care with “large” health savings accounts, which would give workers a $9.7 trillion tax cut (without increasing the deficit) and free them to purchase secure coverage that meets their needs,
Free consumers and employers to purchase health insurance across state lines (i.e., licensed by other states), which could cover up to one third of the uninsured,
Make state-issued clinician licenses portable, which would increase access to care and competition among health plans, and
Block-grant Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, just as Congress did with welfare.

For more, visit Healthcare.Cato.org.

Washington Post interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Valerie — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:31:30 +0000

‘Just means against an unjust attack’

Lally Weymouth‘s exclusive interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To view the entire article, go to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303591.html?referrer=emailarticle

FDA Corruption and Incompetence Compromise Consumer Safety

Valerie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:35:33 +0000

from Judicial Watch/Corruption Chronicles:

Criminals Conduct FDA Research

10/22/2009

Government scientists convicted of fraud conduct essential drug and biologics research because the notoriously derelict federal agency responsible for protecting public health and safety doesn’t bother removing them.

To avoid compromising the safety of crucial clinical trials that determine the approval of drugs and medical devices, federal law bans any research to be administered by individuals who have been convicted of fraud. Because they risk altering the integrity of important data, it’s the responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to banish them from all taxpayer-funded trials.

Instead, the FDA regularly fails to debar individuals who have been convicted of felonies related to the development, approval or regulation of a drug or biologic. The agency takes anywhere from a year to more than a decade to ban criminals from conducting drug trials, according to a lengthy congressional report published this week.

Congressional investigators considered dozens of cases and found that the FDA took an unacceptable amount of time to disqualify researchers who had previously falsified data. In most instances, the scientists continued working on other important trials that determined whether an investigational product is safe for the U.S. market.

In one case, the FDA took years to ban a study coordinator involved in one of the nation’s largest cases of drug-trial fraud. The woman operated a southern California institute that conducted nearly 200 studies for practically every big pharmaceutical in the world and routinely falsified data. She eventually pleaded guilty to fraud but the FDA didn’t take action for half a decade.

This sort of negligence is nothing new at the FDA, which perpetually fails to enforce federal laws that could negatively impact the profits of the wealthy pharmaceuticals that pay the agency hundreds of millions of dollars in “fees.” In fact, a separate congressional investigation determined that the FDA allows firms that annually pay it more than $400 million in fees to compromise public safety.

Earlier this month a group of scientists chastised the agency for delaying a negative report on a common household chemical deemed unsafe in hundreds of studies and banned in several states. To appease the chemical’s manufacturer, the scientists say, the FDA has disregarded the reputable research and will spend $7 million to further study the chemical which is used to make clear plastic.

Dems Behavior Reaches New Lows

Valerie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:12:11 +0000

From Human Events: Congressional Second Graders

by Alicia Cohn

10/22/2009

	Print This
	Forward
	Feedback
	Facebook
	LinkedIn
	Digg This!
	Subscribe
Sponsored By:

–>

Changing the locks usually signals a bad break-up.

If that is what it means on Capitol Hill, it is a bad sign for bipartisanship.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, changed the locks on the committee’s main chamber, a decision made without the Republican members of the committee. The Republicans were later informed that the Democrats would control access to the room by holding the only set of keys.

When questioned about his actions, Towns said it was a response to a video entitled “Hit the Road Jack: Oversight Democrats Run Away From Countrywide Bribe Program Vote” that was posted on YouTube and linked on Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) Twitter feed.

This is the state of U.S. politics, folks.

The House oversight committee was scheduled to meet on Thursday, Oct. 15 for a mark-up meeting also expected to include a call to vote. Towns wanted to subpoena Countrywide Financial documents from Bank of America. (Bank of America bought Countrywide last year after it had been one of the biggest mortgage bankers to collapse in the housing crisis.) Issa has been investigating the connections between Countrywide’s VIP loan program and Washington legislators, who may have been influenced by Countrywide deals, especially Connecticut Dem Sen. Chris Dodd, who got a “special friend” loan from Countrywide.

At meeting time last Thursday, however, the Republicans showed up while the chairs of the Democrat members remained empty (shown in the video). The original excuse given was a schedule conflict with another committee meeting. Complicating that explanation, however, was the video taped by Issa staff members of Democratic members of the committee exiting a private meeting in a separate chamber after the committee meeting had been scheduled to start.

Towns’ response to the humorous video, which is set to music and narrated with text, was to accuse the Republicans of bad behavior.

Issa’s office retaliated by calling the lock-changing maneuver “juvenile.” Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella said the video will remain posted on the official YouTube channel.

“If only they would use their creative energy to do some actual oversight and maybe hold a hearing rather than resorting to immature tactics,” he said.

The committee was scheduled to meet again today, but according to Bardella, Democrats have cancelled the hearing.

Meanwhile, the Republican Study Committee is channeling their creativity toward something useful by issuing Waste Action Alerts. The RSC Sunset Caucus, launched June 17, highlights wasteful spending, “working to sunset programs that taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for,” according to their mission statement. The first Action Alert highlights legislation introduced by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R.-Utah) to end mohair subsidies.

Mohair: the silky fabric or yarn made from the hair of the Angora goat; possibly used to make expensive sweaters to keep congressmen warm during the winter, although some people find it itchy.

Regardless, Chaffetz and other members have seen fit to question the importance of mohair as part of the federal budget. According to the Action Alert issued by the RSC, the subsidies cost about $1 million per year. Price support for wool and mohair has existed since 1947, according to the Congressional Research Service. At the time, military uniforms were made of a wool and mohair blend.

The proposed bill, which would amend the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, has been referred to the House Committee on Agriculture. Time will tell whether mohair will spin into bipartisan agreement or heated debate, but hopefully at least Chairman Collin C. Peterson (D.-Minn.) will not see fit to change the locks on the committee chamber in order to keep the goats in.