a state that now has 11 Republicans and eight Democrats in the House is likely to have as many as 12 Democrats under the new mapNever has been losing a House seat so much fun for the Democrat party.
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So at best, Obama is incompetent and doesn't know what eth heck he's doing. At worst, he does know and is doing it anyway. In either case, it's bad.President Obama is in Europe, supposedly trying to dissuade the Europeans from participating in the Palestinians’ attempt to gain statehood without offering peace to Israel. At his press conference he, no surprise to his critics, revealed he really doesn’t have a clue how to proceed when he described the major issues between the parties...
Alan Dershowitz points out the key error that Obama made on the Middle East policy, one so fundamental one can only imagine it was his idea rather than anyone with a modicum of experience in the Middle East. Dershowitz explains:There is no way that Israel can agree to borders without the Palestinians also agreeing to give up any claim to a “right of return.” As Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad Salaam once told me: each side has a major card to play and a major compromise to make; for Israel, that card is the West Bank, and the compromise is returning to the 1967 lines with agreed-upon adjustments and land swaps; for the Palestinians, that card is “the right of return,” and the compromise is an agreement that the Palestinian refugees will be settled in Palestine and not in Israel; in other words, that there will be no right to “return” to Israel.That is what has gotten sophisticated observers, including Democrats, on Capitol Hill so riled up...
President Obama’s formulation requires Israel to give up its card and to make a “wrenching compromise” by dismantling most of the West Bank settlements and ending its occupation of the West Bank. But it does not require the Palestinians to give up their card and to compromise on the right of return. That “extraordinarily emotional” issue is to be left to further negotiations only after the borders have been agreed to.
It’s not some misunderstanding about Obama’s position on the 1967 lines, unfortunately. No, this is the same pattern that has driven American Jewish leaders and pro-Israel congressmen to distraction for over two years, as Dershowitz notes:Once again, President Obama, by giving the Palestinians more than they asked for, has made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Palestinians to compromise. Earlier in his administration, Obama insisted that Israel freeze all settlement building, despite the fact that the Palestinians had not demanded such action as a precondition to negotiating. He forced the Palestinians to impose that as a precondition, because no Palestinian leader could be seen as less pro-Palestinian than the American President. Now he’s done it again, by not demanding that the Palestinians give up their right of return as a quid for Israel’s quo of returning to the 1967 borders with agreed-upon land swaps.Democrats are loath to admit the president doesn’t know what he is doing, so they are left trying to convince themselves and others that this is a fuss about nothing. The most honest defense I heard from a pro-Israel Democratic staffer was to acknowledge that Obama had made mincemeat out of the “peace process” but to remind me that talks aren’t going anywhere anyway. In essence, “no harm, no foul” and look at all the hardware and military support we’ve given Israel
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After hearing news the other day that the Obama administration had appointed a new position to monitor and push back against negative online press we thought some liberals in DC might think it wasn't enough. So we sent Joe Schoffstall out to see just how far liberals would go to silence conservative speech. Joe went around Georgetown in DC with a petition to "Ban Conservative Hate Sites". Here is what went down.You can see what's to come from a mile away, even if you're blind:
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We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profitSo, don't be fooled by Meyerson's misleading statements on socialism. You can't have private property without a private profits.
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More from The Lonely Conservative and Wake up America. A video report:Media reports in recent weeks say that Senate Democrats are considering a 3% surtax on income over $1 million to raise federal revenues. This would come on top of the higher income tax rates that President Obama has already proposed through the cancellation of the Bush era tax-rate reductions.
If the Democrats' millionaire surtax were to happen—and were added to other tax increases already enacted last year and other leading tax hike ideas on the table this year—this could leave the U.S. with a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%. That's more than double the highest federal marginal rate of 28% when President Reagan left office in 1989. Welcome back to the 1970s.
Here's the math behind that depressing calculation. Today's top federal income tax rate is 35%. Almost all Democrats in Washington want to repeal the Bush tax cuts on those who make more than $250,000 and phase out certain deductions, so the effective income tax rate would rise to about 41.5%. The 3% millionaire surtax raises that rate to 44.5%.
But payroll taxes, which are income taxes on wages and salaries, must also be included in the equation. So we have to add about 2.5 percentage points for the payroll tax for Medicare (employee and employer share after business deductions), which was applied to all income without a ceiling in 1993 as part of the Clinton tax hike. I am including in this analysis the employer share of all payroll taxes because it is a direct tax on a worker's salary and most economists agree that though employers are responsible for collecting this tax, it is ultimately borne by the employee. That brings the tax rate to 47%.
Then last year, as part of the down payment for ObamaCare, Congress snuck in an extra 0.9% Medicare surtax on "high-income earners," meaning any individual earning more than $200,000 or couples earning more than $250,000. This brings the total tax rate to 47.9%.
But that's not all. Several weeks ago, Mr. Obama raised the possibility of eliminating the income ceiling on the Social Security tax, now capped at $106,800 of earnings a year. (Never mind that the program was designed to operate as an insurance system, with each individual's payment tied to the benefits paid out at retirement.) Subjecting all wage and salary income to Social Security taxes would add roughly 10.1 percentage points to the top tax rate. This takes the grand total tax rate on each additional dollar earned in America to about 58%.
Then we have to factor in state income taxes, which on average add after the deductions from the federal income tax roughly another four percentage points to the tax burden. So now on average we are at a tax rate of close to 62%.
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...the four "chose to escalate their behavior, which appeared well-orchestrated and deliberate"Of what behavior do they speak? Here's the video for some background:
A federal appeals court today invalidated a leafleting ban in Dearborn, ruling the city violated a man's free-speech rights when he was blocked from trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.Hopefully, the City will pay and furthermore will stop persecuting Christians. More from Answering Muslims: Free Speech Victory in Dearborn, Michigan!
The 2-1 decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sends the case back to federal court in Detroit, where the city and Police Chief Ronald Haddad could be held liable for damages.
George Saieg, a Christian Arab American from California, sued Dearborn for being prevented in 2009 from handing out literature at the annual Arab International Festival on Warren Avenue. The festival will be held again next month.
The appeals court today said the city's ban is not reasonable and that the city and Haddad violated Saieg's First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
"Absent an injunction, Saieg will continue to suffer irreparable injury for which there is no adequate remedy at law," the court concluded.
Maybe I shouldn't say "in" Dearborn, since the city only sought to suppress free speech in this case. An outside court (the United States Court of Appeals) had to impose Constitutional law on the city.In 2009 these same people were attacked at the Muslim festival:
Dearborn hosts an annual Arab Festival on Warren Avenue. During the festival, the street is reserved, but the adjacent sidewalks are not reserved and therefore remain public property. Hence, prior to 2009, many people would distribute pamphlets, DVDs, CDs, etc., on the public sidewalks. However, when Ronald Haddad took over as Chief of Police, he announced that no one would be allowed to distribute materials on the public sidewalks. Indeed, he insisted that no one would be allowed to distribute materials within five blocks of the festival. (He justified his decision by claiming that he needed to keep the area clear for pedestrian traffic.)
From a Constitutional perspective, this was quite disturbing, as the government was officially limiting free speech on public sidewalks. Moreover, those of us who attended the festival noticed that security only enforced the policy on Christians. Muslims remained free to distribute their materials.
...Lower courts had ruled in favor of Dearborn (i.e. that Dearborn police could stop people from exercising their freedom of speech on the public sidewalks adjacent to the festival). The appeals court reversed the decision on Constitutional grounds.
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Gov. Rick Perry today gave his strongest indication yet that he may run for president.The GOP's strongest potential candidate , right now.
“I’m going to think about it” after the legislative session ends Monday, Perry said. He added, “But I think about a lot of things.”
For years, Perry has said that he would not run for president and that he had no interest in the job. He has often said that he has said no to the presidential question in as many ways as he could.
But he and his advisers have inched closer to saying he may run all week, following the announcement that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels would not enter the GOP field. A couple of days ago, he told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News that a run was tempting.
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U.S. Rep. Barney Frank admitted he helped his ex-lover land a lucrative post with Fannie Mae in the early 1990s while the Newton Democrat was on a committee that regulated the lending giant — but he called questions of a potential ethical conflict “nonsense.”Imagine that...
“If it is (a conflict of interest), then much of Washington is involved (in conflicts),” Frank told the Herald last night. “It is a common thing in Washington for members of Congress to have spouses work for the federal government. There is no rule against it at all.”The GOP wasted no time, nor should they have:
...Asked if he should have disclosed his efforts to help Moses land the job at Fannie Mae, Frank said: “It was widely known. It was out there in the public. It’s nonsense.”
“Just when you think you’ve heard the worst, Democrats in Massachusetts take shameless politics to a new low,” said Tory Mazzola, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The fact that Barney Frank didn’t see this as a conflict of interest is alarming by itself, but it’s so deceitful that it really shows voters that he’s not looking out for them in Washington.”Recently there was this case of projection involving Frank: Barney Frank Calls Republicans Morally Stupid Bigots. Frank himself was at the top of the list of those that caused the mortgage meltdown:
NOW IT’S BARNEY FRANK’S MOM who — well, whose group — turns out to have gotten Fannie Mae money.
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10:04 AM
samavadey
