Shirley Sherrod NAACP Obama & Breitbart – Final Thoughts (Part 2)

Shirley Sherrod NAACP Obama & Breitbart – Final Thoughts (Part 3 – End)

www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com

President Obama is once again giving Joe Wilson fits. The President publicly decried the Scottish release of the Lockerbie bomber all the while signaling otherwise to the Scottish government in private diplomatic correspondence.

According to The Guardian:

“Although Megrahi was allowed to go home to die in Tripoli, Scottish officials believe this (the leaked correspondence) undermines Obama’s vigorous criticisms of the decision to free Megrahi earlier this month, when he said he was left “surprised, disappointed and angry” by the Libyan’s release.

The existence and content of the US embassy note was first disclosed by the Guardian last August, at the height of the controversy over Megrahi’s release, and its full text has now been leaked to the Sunday Times.

In it, the deputy head of the US embassy in London, Frank LeBaron, said the US believed Megrahi should remain in Greenock jail because of the seriousness of his conviction for killing 270 passengers and crew, and 11 Lockerbie townspeople, by bombing Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.

But he added: “Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities [conclude] that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose” (emphasis mine).”

The Scottish government took the U.S.’s response to represent only “half-hearted” opposition to Megrahi’s release. And so he was sent home. To Libya. On compassionate grounds. Because he had less than three months to live.

Yet now we learn according to a July 26th article published in The Scotsman, the medical expert who examined Megrahi, the convicted murderer and terrorist, did not endorse the view that he had three months or less to live:

“A cancer specialist who examined the Lockerbie bomber has revealed he did not endorse the view that he had less than three months to live. Professor Jonathan Waxman, one of the world’s leading oncologists, visited Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in prison a year ago but said he was not surprised to see him alive today. Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds was on the basis of a medical report which indicated he had three months to live – but next month will mark a year since he was freed.”

270 lives perished on Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. Eleven more people on the ground also died that day. Mass murder. Lives cut short. Children taken from parents. Parents taken from children. Wives and Husbands. Grandmothers and Grandfathers. Murdered.

But in the twisted world of “compassion” that uneasily co-exists with the tragic reality faced by the victims each and every day, the prisoner, the perpetrator, the murderer is released. It is compassionate. He is dying of cancer we are told. And the victim’s families? They are forgotten in all hoo-haw. They are counting on society to remember, to rally around and do the right thing. Meanwhile, the president of the greatest, most compassionate and fair-minded country in the world, who claims to be “surprised, disappointed and angry,” the evidence would suggest, is none of the above. Another cold and calculated, purely political gesture that stands in direct opposition to the facts. Another Joe Wilson moment–for those of us paying attention–to swallow.

This one made me so sick, I couldn’t write about it for days. I hope you will join me in mourning the victims. The forgotten ones. It seems to me to be the truly compassionate thing to do.

Congressional Oath of Office

www.senate.gov

I am one of those people that think words mean something. I spend a great deal of my day with words. As a college professor, I love meeting new ones, sorting through my brain to recall old ones, searching the dictionary for a precise meaning of a specific one. I hang my hat on words. I depend on them. I respect them.

Which is why I am so troubled with the careless and reckless disregard for the meaning of words in our Congress and by this President. Joe Wilson took a lot of heat for shouting “you lie” during President Obama’s health care speech. Decorum aside I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about. We don’t live in a monarchy or a dictatorship. Disagreement, discourse–these are givens in a free society. One has to merely watch a few minutes of floor debate in the British Parliament to appreciate the relative benignity of Wilson’s comment. I am not justifying his outburst, I am merely reflecting on his right to do so. I encourage you to listen to the speech and determine for yourself if the President spoke the truth or Congressman Wilson did.

In Federalist 51, James Madison writes: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Our government is out of control. In the last year and a half our President has repeatedly overreached the bounds of his office. Congress has passed thousands of pages of new legislation without reading it and without demonstrating a sound understanding of the very Constitution that provides their job description. The one that they have sworn to uphold. Their lack of respect for the Constitution may come from a lack of familiarity with same. House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Representative Jon Conyers referred to the “good and welfare” clause as his justification of the health care bill’s constitutionality. There is no “good and welfare” clause. Representative Phil Hare cited Americans’ right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as his constitutional justification for voting for the health care bill. The phrase life, liberty and pursuit of happiness comes from the Declaration of Independence not the Constitution.

When our representatives in Washington–our congressman and senators and president–swear to uphold the Constitution and then don’t, we have more than a problem on our hands, we have a crisis.

“You just can’t make this stuff up.”
Nancy Tengler 7/23/10

This from the most outrageously spendthrift administration in the history of the United States. This from the man who increased the deficit from north of $400 billion when Bush left office to a CBO estimated $1.85 trillion in 2009.

Let’s start with a definition of terms shall we?

• deficit equals the difference between government revenues and government spending. During the last year of the Bush Administration the deficit was greater than $400 billion. In 2009, the first year of Obama’s Administration the deficit was estimated at $1.85 trillion. For 2010 it is expected to be around 1.5 trillion. Our government is borrowing 41 cents for every dollar it spends. It is crucial to understand that a deficit in one year is added to the deficit in the previous year. That cumulation of deficit spending becomes our debt. Current debt? $13.2 trillion or approximately $42,798 per citizen. And they’re just getting started.
• government revenues = taxes. Taxes are my money and your money being hijacked by the government to pay for programs we have no say in. Entitlements, give aways, preferential hiring and spending–things the Founders, in their wildest nightmares, could never have imagined. Sen. Byron Dorgan’s recent statement on the Senate floor is all you really need to know about Washington’s perspective on revenues and taxes. He went after Republicans who supported tax cuts that would “reduce this country’s income.” Our representatives in Washington think it is their money. Not ours.

Obama decries the spending out of one side of his mouth while signing into law another $33 billion extension in unemployment benefits almost simultaneously. $33 billion dollars we don’t have. Just pile it on, no problem. But don’t think we are going to “continue to spend as if deficits don’t matter.” No sir. We’re not going to saddle our children and grandchildren with debt. Not on your life.

Well, not at least until we have to start paying for Obama’s Health Rationing Plan. Wait to you see the bill for that one!

The Shirley Sherrod Saga Continues — Latest Updates from CNM – [Part 2]

The Shirley Sherrod Saga Continues — Latest Updates from CNM – [Part 3 - Final]

Here’s Part 2:

These videos were from Rusty’s show last night 7/20/10.  This story seems to be changing by the hour.  The Obama Admin after allegedly demanding she resign immediately has now apologized on national TV to her.  Also, in a new twist, the San Francisco Examiner has written a story that raised a whole new set of Q’s on Sherrod, including how she was hired at USDA.  You can check it out here:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Shirley-Sherrods-Disappearing-Act-Not-So-Fast-98846149.html

We’ve got a full rundown of the story as it happened last night. We will shortly be following up with another post and more videos as we learned more about the story today.

The information in the following videos reflects CNM’s knowledge of the events in question on Monday night, July 19, 2010.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

In the summer of 1934, about the same time in FDR’s Administration as we sit in President Obama’s, despite the creation of numerous new agencies and bureaucracies designed to get Americans working again, the unemployment problem simply would not improve. With upwards of 20% of Americans not working (Not so very far off from today’s U-6 of over 17%. U-6 is the Labor Department’s gauge of underutilization, which accounts for those who have given up looking for work or can’t find full time jobs.) William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) began arguing with one of FDR’s New Deal Agencies–the National Recovery Agency (NRA) over new job creation. As Amity Shlaes explains in The Forgotten Man, Green wanted “industry, not relief agencies, to solve the economic problem” (Shlaes 201).

Addressing the surge of NRA hirings and subsequent layoffs, AFL’s Green said, “We cannot indefinitely support one-sixth of our population on money borrowed against future taxes” (201).

The New Dealers were worried because after all the gyrations and machinations, after the grabs for power and unprecedented centralization the “…Depression was refusing to disappear” (202). At the American Bar Association’s annual meeting during the summer of 1934, a report submitted showed that over the last year of FDR’s Administration, 10,000 pages of new law had been written dwarfing a century and a half of federal law which numbered 2,735 pages. For all the agencies created and money spent to puff up government the unemployment rate during that one year period had declined from 22.9% to 21.2%.

The AFL’s Green understood instinctively that growing government would not put the people back to work. Today’s union leaders, however, instead of fighting against our unprecedented and unsustainable borrowing from future generations that has done nothing to improve the unemployment picture would seem, rather, to feed at that very trough.

Where is the outcry from labor now? Andy Stern, former president of the country’s largest union, the SEIU, (the powerful service workers union) in now a member of one of the very agencies Green decried. Stern, who until he left his job to join the Administration was one of the most frequent guests to the White House is now a member of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Sigh.