Obama Ignores Texas Wildfires

Hey, now why would anyone expect the most liberal President ever to care about a conservative, historically Republican state like Texas:

Republican Gov. Rick Perry accused President Obama of neglecting Texas Thursday when he slammed the administration for failing to declare a disaster in the wildfire-damaged state.


"You see hundreds of thousands of acres of Texas burning and you know that there will soon be emergency declarations, and we did that now a couple of weeks ago, but still no response from this administration," he told local news radio station WOAI in an interview.


Perry requested a federal declaration for emergency in Texas on April 16 after destruction from wildfires reached 252 counties in the state. An emergency declaration from the president would clear the path for federal aid to Texas.


Obama approved GOP Gov. Robert Bentley's request for emergency federal assistance in Alabama on Wednesday, the same day it was requested, after a wave of tornados ripped through the state. According to FEMA, emergency declarations are made when "an incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond state and local capabilities and that federal assistance is necessary."


Obama visited Tuscaloosa, Alabama Friday, touring damaged regions of the city. He pledged the federal government would "do everything we can to help these communities rebuild."


"I've never seen devastation like this," the president said.


But Perry aired his frustration over what he perceives as a lack of needed attention to Texas, venting, "They watch TV, they know what's going on here, they can recognize that there is going to be a request for assistance, a request for help."


Perry protested what he views as a lack of response from President Obama 13 days after his request for emergency funds, though federal agencies such as the National Park Service have supplied firefighters to support the state.


"There is a point in time where you say, hey, what's going on here. You have to ask why are you taking care of Alabama and other states? I know our letter didn't get lost in the mail."

Mitch Daniels To Sign Bill Defunding Planned Parenthood

Not taking away "women's right", just let somebody other than the taxpayers pay for it:

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels plans to sign a bill that will restrict abortions and make Indiana the first state to cut off all government funding for Planned Parenthood.


The move is likely to beef up his credentials among social conservatives as he considers a 2012 presidential run.


Daniels said Friday that he's supported the abortion restrictions from the outset and the provision added to defund Planned Parenthood didn't change his mind. Daniels says women's health, family planning and other services will remain available.


The move puts at risk $4 million a year in federal family planning grants likely to be cut off because of the bill. The legislation also would ban would abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy unless there's a substantial threat to the woman's life or health.

Donald Trump Was A Draft Dodger

Not that I ever believed that he was running for Prez, but this, and not Obama finally releasing his birth certificate yesterday, should be the final nail in the coffin:

This week, Trump discussed why he did not fight in the Vietnam War with local Fox affiliate WNYW:


I actually got lucky because I had a very high draft number. I’ll never forget, that was an amazing period of time in my life.


I was going to the Wharton School of Finance, and I was watching as they did the draft numbers and I got a very, very high number and those numbers never got up to.


What Trump didn’t mention, however, was that he actively avoided serving. According to The Smoking Gun, the business mogul’s Selective Service records reveal that by the time his draft number – 356 – was drawn during the December 1, 1969 draft lottery, Trump had received four student deferments and one medical deferment. These can be seen in a document on file with the National Archives and Records Administration.


The Smoking Gun explains:


Trump obtained his first two Class 2-S student deferments in June 1964 and December 1965, when he was student at Fordham University in the Bronx. He was briefly reclassified as 1-A–or “available for military service”–in late-November 1966, but that classification was switched back to 2-S three weeks later.


Another 2-S deferment is dated January 16, 1968, just months before his graduation from UPenn (to which he transferred following his sophomore year at Fordham).


Following his UPenn graduation, Trump–no longer qualified for a 2-S deferment–was again briefly classified as available for service on July 9. However, three months later, on October 15, his classification was switched to 1-Y, which was given to men deemed qualified for military service “only in time of national emergency.”


The 1-Y classification came a month after Trump underwent an “Armed Forces Physical Examination,” according to Selective Service records, which note the results of the exam as “DISQ.” While the military records do not further detail why Trump was granted the 1-Y deferment, a 1992 biography of the businessman by journalist Wayne Barrett reported that Trump received a medical deferment following the September 17, 1968 exam.


Now. Who wants to participate in a The Last Word drinking game organized around what Lawrence O’Donnell might have to say about this? One shot for each look of unbridled glee, two shots for each mention of NBC, and an exploded liver every time he mentions that it’s not like Trump is going to run anyway.

Ann Coulter Reminds Liberals That It Was Hillary Clinton Who Started The "Birther' Claim

Sure it went too far, but far be it for a far-Left loon to admit who planted the seeds:

Ann Coulter made an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor this evening to lend her voice to the discussion of today’s big media story: “The birth certificate thing.” Host Bill O’Reilly asked Coulter whether she could put the issue in “any kind of context that matters.” Well, said Coulter, “we were right, they were wrong,” meaning that the conservative establishment has long been denouncing the “birther” movement as a distraction and a non-issue. So, then, who’s to blame for this movement blossoming under the watchful gaze of so many television sets? MSNBC, of course:


Well, it started with Hillary Clinton. It was her campaign who looked into it. And, by the way, if the Clintons couldn’t run this down, Trump wasn’t going to…


And then I think it was a lot of liberals who were pretending to be conservatives or, on MSNBC [...]


But MSNBC, there’s nothing secret about MSNBC. They cover it approximately 55 minutes of every hour. And, yeah, you didn’t hear anything about it at all on Fox News, so they were the ones promoting it, because it made conservatives look crazy.

Sarah Palin Is Still Bitter About Katie Couric

Instead of letting Katie Couric's fall for grace speak for itself, Sarah Palin, still showing signs that she remains bitter about a 3-year-old question that a 5th grader could answer, felt the need to throw some childish jabs at The Perky One:

As Katie Couric gets set to leave CBS News after five years in the anchor chair, it doesn't appear as if Sarah Palin will be sending any flowers.


Appearing on Fox News Tuesday, Palin mocked the CBS newswoman who told People Magazine she is looking forward to a new position that will facilitate "multi-dimensional storytelling."


"Yeah, and I hear that she wants to now engage in more 'multi-dimensional story telling' versus I guess just the 'straight on, read into the, that teleprompter screen story telling,'" Palin said. "More power to her. I wish her well in her - 'multi-dimensional story telling.'"


Palin has repeatedly made clear she is still no fan of Couric, who's interview with Palin produced one of the most memorable political foibles of the 2008 presidential campaign.


In a series of interviews with Couric authorized by the McCain campaign, Palin stumbled over a number of questions, most memorably when asked, "When it comes to establishing your world view…what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read?"


Palin appeared unable to name a single publication – a performance for which she was much maligned – and later said she found the question insulting, as well as emblematic of a liberal slant in the mainstream media.

Yes, Katie Couric was never a credible journalist to begin with. And yes, as yet another rich, liberal elite fronting as a "reporter", Couric most likely did come with an agenda when she interviewed Palin in 2008. But really how hard is it to answer somebody when they ask about what kind of stuff you read? I'm sorry, but I saw the interview and in no way did I see Couric try to trick or pull a fast one on Palin. Bottom line, there's no excuse for anybody over 7 years old, much less a potential vice-president, to not have the ability to answer that question. Palin screwed up and it's sad to see that all these years later she remains so bitter over it.

Obama Finally Releases "Long Form" Birth Certificate

Surprised he'd do this considering how much his loon base wanted to keep the "Birther" stuff out there to continue distracting Americans from 3 wars, rising gas prices, high unemployment and the whole lot of real issues that represent Barry's utter fail of a Presidency:

The White House has released President Obama's long-form birth certificate, saying the document is "proof positive" the president was born in Hawaii.


The release marked an unexpected turn in the long-simmering, though widely discredited, controversy over Obama's origin. Obama's advisers have for the better part of three years dismissed questions about the president's birth, directing skeptics to the short-term document released during the 2008 campaign. But as the issue gained more attention at the state level and particularly in the 2012 presidential race, Obama said Wednesday that it was starting to distract attention from pressing challenges like the budget.


The president, who discussed the release at the White House without taking questions, said he had been "puzzled" by the enduring shelf life of the issue and acknowledged the announcement may not put the so-called birther controversy to rest. But he told the public and the media that it's time to "get serious."


"We do not have time for this kind of silliness," Obama said. "We've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do. We've got big problems to solve."


He said the country will not solve those problems if people are "distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."

Obama's Broken Promise: I'll Help Jobless Blacks

Not that Barry's done anything for Blacks since he took office, but hey give this props for having the courage to speak out about it. Of course, he'll probably be branded an 'Uncle' for daring to publicly criticize a black President, but that's what happens on the Left when you spout the truth:

This is not an easy column for me to write. It's never easy to tell someone you like that he's a disappointment. I like Barack Obama. I liked him the first time we met back in 2006 when I took a small group of journalism students to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with the then-freshly minted U.S. senator.


I liked Obama even more when an aide to his presidential campaign invited me to a July 2007 speech he gave laying out his commitment to improve life for people in urban America — which for most politicians is a euphemism for black America.


"Today's economy has made it easier to fall into poverty. … Every American is vulnerable to the insecurities and anxieties of this new economy. And that's why the single most important focus of my economic agenda as president will be to pursue policies that create jobs and make work pay," Obama said that day to his mostly black audience.


At that time, the nation's overall unemployment rate was 4.7%. Whites had a jobless rate of 4.2% while the black unemployment rate stood at 8.1%. Today, the black rate is 15.5%, nearly double that of white job-seekers.


I don't blame Obama for the economic conditions that are responsible for so many blacks being out of work. The seeds of this problem were planted long before he moved into the Oval Office. But I do fault him for not doing more to fix this problem.


The poor in urban America, he said in that 2007 speech, "suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the most money, and influence, and power." And then he asked rhetorically, "How can a country like this allow it?" To which he answered, "We can't."


But so far, under his leadership, he has allowed it.


Finding work for the jobless is the best anti-poverty program this nation can mount. But while the Obama administration spends $608 million during the first 17 days of its involvement in Libya's civil war — it can muster neither the money nor the will to combat black unemployment.


The president's failure to fight this problem as vigorously as he wages war abroad gets a pass from black leaders, many of whom complain to me privately but remain silent in public. They're reluctant to challenge Obama the way Martin Luther King Jr. did Lyndon Johnson in 1967.


America "would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor" so long as it was involved in the Vietnam war, King said in a speech in which he called for an end to that bloody conflict.


Last month, as the Obama administration applauded the creation of 216,000 new jobs and a slight dip in the overall unemployment rate, the gap between whites and blacks without work widened as the black unemployment rate inched up.


In December 2009, when the black unemployment rate was just 5.5 percentage points higher than the national rate, Obama told USA TODAY that he didn't think he needed to do anything special to close this gap. Now that it is nearly 7 percentage points higher, black leaders should demand that the president devote as much attention on this problem as he has on ending the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and in pushing for immigration reform.


They should demand an end to the wasteful spending on wars that can't be won and insist that the resulting peace dividend be used to finance that revitalized urban policy — the one Obama not so long ago promised would be the focus of his economic agenda.

Ron Paul Announces Presidential Run, Says Youth Will Abandon Obama

CBSNews.com:

Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican known for his staunch libertarian views, announced today he's forming a presidential exploratory committee.


This marks Paul's third bid for the presidency. He first ran in 1988 and again in 2008, winning a small but enthusiastic group of supporters among the GOP electorate.


Part of Paul's fervent support in 2008 was grounded in college-aged voters, a constituency that also largely favored Barack Obama. In this campaign, the 75-year-old Paul said today, Mr. Obama won't be able to hang on to the youth vote.


"I think that Obama will not be able to hang on to that enthusiasm of the young people because of what's happened in the last couple years," Paul said in Des Moines, Iowa, after his exploratory committee was announced.


The financial crisis, the bloated deficit and the ongoing wars make the libertarian views Paul is known for -- such as his anti-interventionist foreign policy and his antipathy toward the Federal Reserve -- even more relevant than in 2008, Paul suggested.


"I believe there are literally millions of more people now concerned about the very things I talked about four years ago," he said, such as "the excessive spending, the entitlement system, the foreign policy, as well as the monetary system."


"If you want to curtail spending... you can't do it without addressing the inflationary system," continued Paul, who chairs a House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy. "Congress does not have to act responsibly... they've resorted to printing out money."

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Gets Owned By Rev. Franklin Graham

Source

Rachel Maddow Caught By Guest Liberal Lying Again

Newsbusters.org:

Once again, a presumably simpatico guest on "The Rachel Maddow Show" undermined a claim she made on the same show.


This occurred twice in the same week back in March, as I described at the time. It happened again Friday night when Maddow talked about Republican congressmen facing constituents angered by the GOP budget plan. Maddow compared this to the contentious public forums on health reform in August 2009.


Here's what Maddow said about the Republican budget's effect on Medicare, followed by her guest claiming something altogether different


MADDOW: Well now, a year and a half later, the same sort of thing is happening, minus the talking points and the vinyl-wrapped buses. This time, with Congress on recess, town hall events across the country are again lighting up with anger and frustration, but this time it is about the official Republican Party budget plan. The Paul Ryan budget plan, which drastically cuts taxes for the richest Americans back to what they were in the 1930s. It drastically cuts taxes for corporations. It gives billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies, those poor, orphaned, hard-luck oil companies. And it also, incidentally, ends Medicare, it repeals Medicare. It turns Medicare instead into a coupon system and it makes senior citizens buy private health insurance.


Which is hardly how the GOP plan for Medicare was described by Maddow's next guest, Center for American Progress senior fellow Matt Miller, a Washington Post online columnist and former Clinton administration economic adviser --


MILLER: Obama doesn't do enough, not only on the debt, but on reorienting enough of federal spending away from the elderly, which is where all the growth is in the budget. Even Paul Ryan is increasing Social Security and Medicare by something like 75 percent over the next 10 years. The entire federal budget today goes for consumption for the elderly on health care and pensions and there's less and less left for education, to recruit a new generation of teachers ...


Presumably Miller meant entire growth in the federal budget -- not the "entire federal budget" -- is spent on health care and pensions for the elderly, as he had already stated.


Miller's remarks came close to the end of a long segment, with Maddow not having time to respond. Will she address the disparity between her claim and Miller's in an upcoming show? One can only hope while also not holding one's breath.


Even though the GOP plan substantially increases funding to Medicare over the next decade -- as acknowledged by a liberal policy wonk -- the plan "ends Medicare" according to fringe leftists like Maddow because the federal government would no longer wield complete control over it.

Politiks As Usual: In The News 4/25/11

Franklin Graham: Sarah Palin Not Running For President

WikiLeaks Publishes Guantanamo Detainee Documents

Alitalia Crew Reportedly Foils A Hijacking Attempt

Americans Don't Want Debt Hike - By 2-to-1 Ratio

Mormon Church Backs Illegal Immigration

The World Needs An America That Understands Freedom

Good Friday: Google Celebrates Earth, Ignores Jesus

HHS Touts 'Hazard-Free' Medical Facilities On Earth Day

Rep. Giffords Cleared To Attend Shuttle Launch

Curriculum Proposal Slams Ex-'Gays'

Rachel Maddow Complains That The Huffington Post Isn't Liberal Enough

John McCain Has A Lot To Answer For On Libya