The administration also wants to a remarkably open-ended authority to transfer funds between accounts — a power that is sure to be resisted by the Appropriations Committee leadership.

As Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posts, this request is an attempt to avoid the checks and balances built into our system of government:

This is what’s known as “burying the lead” in journalism.  A Republican House will have the “power of the purse” to put an end to executive branch overreach — for instance, the efforts at the EPA to create carbon caps outside of Congressional authorization, the FCC’s attempts to regulate the Internet, and so on.  That power is a key part of the checks and balances in federal government, forcing agencies to account for themselves and their behavior to Congress, and putting limits on executive authority to issue orders for regulation without Congressional approval.

All-in-all, looks like its just another day at the Obama White House. Shredding the Constitution, turning a deaf ear to the American public, and in general not giving a fig about anyone but himself. Looks like Obama is right on schedule to make himself a one-term President (Thank God!).

The son of the U.S. Air Force pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare says the Obama administration’s decision to send a U.S. delegation to a ceremony in Japan to mark the 65th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is an “unsaid apology” and appears to be an attempt to “rewrite history.”

Gene Tibbets, son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., says Friday’s visit to Hiroshima by U.S. Ambassador John Roos is an act of contrition that his late father would never have approved.

“It’s an unsaid apology,” Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com from his home in Georgiana, Ala. “Why wouldn’t it be?  Why would [Roos] go? It doesn’t make any sense.

“I know it’s the anniversary, but I don’t know what the hell they’re trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over.”

While controversial, America’s use of the Atomic Bomb to end World War II has been almost universally acknowledged to have ended the war sooner than other strategies available at the time, while at the same time saving thousands of American soldiers’ lives.  Apparently, Obama is ashamed of this and feels the need to apologize to a country who, at the time was guilty of killing a couple thousand Americans in a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

When asked about it, the Obama Administration did what it does best; it passed the buck:

White House officials on Wednesday referred calls to the State Department, which did not  respond to several inquiries about how the decision was made or if national veterans organizations were contacted prior to the announcement that a delegation would attend the commemoration.

Would you expect anything else from someone who spent most of his time in political office voting “Present” on important issues? This is yet another example of how the Obama Administration’s lack of Foreign Policy experience is destroying America’s reputation and credibility around the world. By the time The Obamasiah© leaves office in January of 2013, the world’s sole remaining super-power will be regarded as no more than a third-world banana republic by other world powers. This will be the lasting legacy of  Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to build momentum behind his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, and planned to travel to Oslo to accept the prize.

Personally, I felt that the Nobel “Peace Prize” lost its credibility years ago when they awarded it to a terrorist, namely Yassir Arafat, in 1994. It seems now that the Nobel people have dropped all pretense and are acknowledging that the awarding of this prize is based solely on the acceptability of a nominee’s politics.

The President’s response started off in the right direction:

“I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize,” he said.

Ok, he’s right. Regardless of what his plans are, the President has not really had the time to do anything substantial in the Foreign Policy area. He recognizes this, so this should lead to the next logical step — declining the award.

“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century.”

Oh, come on! You didn’t think The One’s© ego and arrogance was going to allow him to do the right thing, did you? Remember, he is The Obamasiah©, the one and only true hope for the survival of all mankind! The problems of the planet will cease to exist simply because he won the election!

Seriously, if I were Nelson Mandela (you know, someone who actually worked hard and suffered greatly for peace), I’d be tossing the prize into the garbage can. This is nothing less than a direct insult to people like him.

If Obama had any class whatsoever, he would have politely declined the award while explaining that he really had not yet done anything worthy of it. However, Obama is a man who has about ten times the arrogance of any man on Earth, and absolutely no class whatsoever.

A peer-reviewed study on the affect of humans on the global climate has shown that over 80% of climate changes over the ladder half of the 20th Century can be attributed to nature. Further, the study found that human activity has little affect on the climate.

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Can someone drag the Gorebot away from the McDonald’s long enough to break the news to him? Carbon off-sets? A scam. Cap-n-Tax? Another scam based upon fraud. One can only hope that the Obamassiah will come to his senses and kill his economy-killing Cap-n-Tax proposal. I’m not hopeful that he will, because I think he’s had too much of the environmental lobby’s Kool-Aid to be able to think clearly on this matter.

Climate Change Bill: Obama worships at the feet of the Global Warming lobby, so his enthusiasm for this bill isn’t surprising.

President Obama pushed urgently Thursday for passage of legislation to confront global warming, billing it as a job-creating machine rather than the costly “job killer” Republicans denounced and telephoning wavering Democrats on the eve of what could be a historic House vote.

Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House, Obama said Washington must not miss the opportunity to work on cleaning the air and at the same time creating new “green” energy jobs. He called the measure “a jobs bill” and said the country for far too long has been too reliant on energy from fossil fuels.

Speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House, Obama said Washington must not miss the opportunity to work on cleaning the air, creating new “green” energy jobs and moving the nation away from its reliance on fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

The White House appeared concerned that momentum for the bill was slipping, though White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that when it came time for a House showdown, “I’d bet on the president.”

Democratic leaders scurried to line up enough votes to get the bill passed. They enlisted former Vice President Al Gore, the most prominent U.S. voice on the urgency of addressing climate change, to make phone calls to wary lawmakers — including some who believe the House bill was too weak rather than too strong.

House Republicans for weeks have maintained a drumbeat against the legislation, calling it a massive energy tax on every American and a “job killer” because it will force higher prices on electricity, gasoline and other energy sources as the economy shifts from cheaper fossil fuels, or as companies and utilities are forced to buy pollution allowances.

The Republicans are right. Hell, even Obama admits that the cost of electricity, under this plan, will skyrocket:

Cap and Trade, more appropriately called Cap and Tax, will increase the cost of energy for every person in the country, regardless of income. This means, of course, that when Obama says he is going to cut taxes for 95% of the population, he is lying; He’s just replacing the tax increase with a “fee.” The result is the same: Your family will be worse off if this bill passes.

Also, those great new “green” energy jobs Obama keeps talking about? None of them will materialize in a sufficient number until one of these types of alternative energy becomes practical to use. That isn’t solar, that isn’t wind, that isn’t Ethanol, that isn’t anything you can name right now or for the next generation. Oil, gas, coal and nuclear are the proven and safe ways to produce energy in America right now, and to discard them just because you want to use the shiny, new technology is foolish and stupid. Yes, continue to develop the new energy technologies, but for God’s sake don’t tie the country’s economic health to them until they’re developed enough to be practical.

Health Care Bill: With this one piece of legislation, the Obama Administration will not only destroy the number one health care system in the world today, it will also drive the world’s richest economy into bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON (AP) – A bipartisan group of senators at work on health care reported progress Thursday in holding the cost of legislation to their $1 trillion target, but Republicans quickly added there was no agreement on even the outlines of a bill. “We have options that would enable us to write a $1 trillion bill, fully paid for,” Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters.

His comments came one week after analysts set the cost of earlier proposals at $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

The Montana Democrat provided no details, but others have said the changes made in recent days would lower the cost of government subsidies for those who cannot afford insurance, as well as pare back a planned 10-year series of rate increases for doctors serving Medicare patients.

Only $1 Trillion dollars! Of course, he says this without providing any details on just how they have “fully paid for” the cost. You and I both know that the way they will pay the cost will be to ration health care to the very sick and the elderly, as well as tell doctors what they are allowed to charge and earn. Also, since this new “public option” will not have to generate a profit, the private insurance companies will be forced out of business and every single American will be forced to get their insurance through the government. Oh yeah, don’t forget that this bill contains a specific provision that exempts members of Congress and the President from having to participate in this program. That’s right; they’re saying it is the best plan out there, but it isn’t good enough for them. Not only that, but they also want to tax your health benefits to help pay for this boondoggle — unless you’re a union member.

It could very well be that by the end of the summer the United States of America you find yourself living in will bear little, if any, resemblance to the country you grew up in. Buck up, Comrade! You can do it!

Well, for the second time in recent memory the Democrats are trying to foist government-run healthcare on the American public. When the Clintons tried, it died a horrible death in the press and in the Congress due to its prohibitive costs and attempts to ration healthcare to control costs. Now, the Obama Administration is pushing a similar proposal which promises healthcare rationing to an even greater extent than the Clinton plan, and will cost many trillions of dollars more than they’re telling us.

Hoping to make history, the Senate set off on its major overhaul of the nation’s health care system Wednesday, but its first steps were quickly overtaken by fresh cost concerns and partisan anger.

An ambitious timetable that called for completing committee action in early summer seemed in danger of slipping away.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee began work on a bill encompassing President Barack Obama’s top legislative priority. It marked the first time since President Bill Clinton’s ill-starred attempt in the early 1990s that Congress was tackling such a broad overhaul.

But the more important Senate Finance Committee announced it would delay action, as senators sought to retool their proposals to slash the cost by more than one-third, from an intial $1.6 trillion over 10 years, to less than $1 trillion. Of the five major panels working on health care, Finance has the best odds of coming up with a bipartisan proposal that could overcome gathering opposition.

Lobbyists representing every nook and cranny of the economy were on high alert – even if they were on their best behavior.

Majority Democrats running the Finance Committee have told lobbyists that their views will be taken into account as long as their groups don’t mount public campaigns against the legislation, numerous lobbyists say. So far, health industry groups have not launched aggressive attacks against Democrats’ emerging plans.

The costs of this whole proposal are staggering, but that’s not the worst part:

The measure before Kennedy’s committee would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years, but leave 37 million people uninsured, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Parts of the draft bill have yet to be finalized, so its true costs and benefits are not fully understood.

So, $1 Trillion dollars will still leave 37 million people without coverage under the current proposal. Obama has promised to cover absolutely everybody, so you can do the math to estimate the costs.

Then, there is this: One cost that the Administration is not factoring into all of this is the cost of insuring all of the people who will lose their healthcare benefits once companies and corporations drop their benefits and the associated costs. Companies and corporations are in business to make a profit, and if the government is going to offer healthcare benefits employers will no longer feel that they will have to offer them. Thus, Obama’s mantra of, “If you want to keep your current healthcare plan, you can” is a false promise. You can’t keep something which is no longer available.

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Also being discussed is whether or not to tax your healthcare benefits as if they were income. Seems like Obama can’t do anything without reaching into the taxpayer’s wallet first.

Finally, let’s look at how the US Government does when it runs something really big and that costs a whole lot of cash; healthcare for our Veterans and military personnel. Veterans have been complaining about almost every facet of the healthcare they receive from the Veteran’s Administration for as long as I can remember. Hospitals in disrepair, massive delays in getting doctor’s appointments and routine diagnostic procedures,and cost overruns have been the norm for years. What makes Obama think that he’s going to be able to do any better when we’re talking about many millions more people and many trillions more dollars? He can’t do any better, and chances are he would do a lot worse.

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Even with all of its flaws, the American healthcare system is the envy of the world. People fly here from around the world to get care that they cannot get anywhere else. People who live in countrys which have government run healthcare come here to get treatment which is either denied them by their government or is not available in a reasonable time frame. Now, Obama wants to scrap the whole thing, spend trillions and trillions of dollars, and set up a government-run system which shows all of the promise of a world-class disaster in the making. All of this, and we have not even touched on what this proposal will do to the doctors and nurses out there. Suffice to say, most of them are not happy with this proposal.

This proposal must fail in order for America to survive and prosper. As proposed, this whole thing is going to destroy what little is left of the economy, while dragging the healthcare and insurance indistries down at the same time. If you do nothing else, please do whatever you can to defeat this.

The leader of the nation’s largest veterans organization says he is “deeply disappointed and concerned” after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.

“It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

Refused to hear arguments? I knew that Obama had absolutely no experience going into his first term, but this is just arrogance.It appears that the Obamessiah has started to believe his own press.

When a citizen volunteers for the armed services, one of the pacts which is made is that the country will take care of the solider should they be wounded in service to their country. It’s practically a sacred oath between the armed services and the individual. If Obama gets his way, our wounded veterans, and even veterans who are not wounded, will be screwed in the following ways:

• Small businesses will refuse to hire these folks because it will drive up their insurance costs.
• People will stop volunteering for military service.
• Coverage limits for wounded veterans could be exhausted by the veteran’s injuries alone, leaving the rest of the family without coverage.
• Everybody’s insurance rates will increase to cover the costs now incurred by private insurance companies in caring for the wounded veterans.

Its obvious that Obama cares not one whit about the people who risk their lives to protect the freedom we enjoy in this country. Remember this; Obama is doing this at the same time he is spending trillions of dollars on pork in the budget, in baling out deadbeats with mortgage problems, and giving billions of dollars to mismanaged banks who are still operating under the direction of the people who mismanaged them in the first place.

This is the “hope” and “change” liberal America brought to the government. My guess would be that the liberals in power are too stupid to be ashamed of what Obama is doing to our veterans.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reminds us that all of Obama’s campaign promises have an expiration date, even if it is a “sacred trust.”

State Rep. Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas) is proposing a seven cent per bag tax on those cheap plastic bags favored by grocery stores, pharmacies, and big box retailers.

“This will incentivize people to move away from plastic to either bringing their own bag, or moving to paper which is easier to biodegrade, and easier to recycle,” Anchia told 1200 WOAI news.

He says the seven cent per bag tax will go toward local recycling programs.

“Some recycling programs are taking it on the chin, and this would be a state subsidy so those recycling programs could continue, and the subsidy would come out of the seven cents.”

This is a blatant reach into the wallets of Texas residents for no other reason than this guy wants more taxpayer money for his redistribution. How do I know this? It is simple logic, really:

• The reason given for this tax is that plastic bags are bad for the environment, so if we tax people for using them, fewer people will use them and therefore fewer bags will end up in landfills.
• The obvious answer to this problem is to propose a BAN on the use of plastic bags by these stores, which would force everyone to use either paper bags or cloth bags, thus preventing bags from even getting to the landfills.

In any event, it isn’t the State’s job to subsidize recycling businesses with taxpayer money. However, if this were to pass, it would be less than a week before this guy would propose that revenue from this tax be used for several other “projects” he wants to start, and then the tax would probably increase.

In the end, this guy doesn’t care about the environment or even  if you like to use plastic bags. He just wants more money out of your wallet. In fact, he probably wants you to use plastic bags; that way he gets more money. If he really cared about the environment, he would have proposed a plastic bag ban; but he can’t get your money that way.

If this seems familiar to you, you are right. Remember a few years back when State Attorneys General went after the Tobacco companies for millions and millions of dollars? This was the same scenario; they didn’t want you to stop smoking, they just wanted smokers to pay the government for smoking. Again, if they cared about your health or the health of the people around you, they would have pushed for a ban. Ironically, these days many municipalities are instituting smoking bans in as many places as they can.

The Dallas Morning News is behind the idea:

Sure, Texans could do this on their own, and many already have. But Anchía’s bill would speed the transition, quickly raising consciousness about this plastic poison – the bags that will outlive us all.

Perhaps paying 7 cents will compel consumers to use common sense at the check-out by taking a pass on the plastic.

Of course, their reasoning is incorrect — a ban would be the fastest way to transition from plastic to alternatives — but Democrats have long enjoyed the friendship of the Dallas newspaper.

Rep. Anchia needs to learn a thing or two about government. His first lesson should inform him that behavioral modification via taxation should be a last resort, it it is used at all.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) could be replaced by “Mecca Time,” if a group of Muslim leaders get their way.

At the conference, “Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice,” Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.

One geologist at the Qatar conference said Mecca’s longitude is perfectly aligned with magnetic north and should therefore replace the English city, which has been measuring time zones since 1884, the BBC reports.

That’s right; the people from The Land That Time Forgot now want to control time for the entire planet. Just let that little irony slush around in your brain for a minute or two. A civilization whose technology hasn’t risen above the seventh century, with the single exception of the tools of terrorism, wants the entire world to dance to their tune.

I can see it now; common sayings such as “beer o’clock” will morph into “beat-your-wife o’clock.” I just can’t wait.

And by the way, since when did Hell Mecca become the center of the Earth?

Hey, Muslims! You can’t control time until until you can tell time with something other than a sundial.