SOLYNDRA AND KEYSTONE: DUAL DEBACLES

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/15/solyndra-and-keystone-dual-debacles/print/

President Obama is sticking by his policy of declaring the producers of trendy, impractical energy sources “winners,” leaving taxpayers to be the losers. Take the case of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the administration is effectively shutting down in the wake of the scandal surrounding solar-panel maker Solyndra. Stubbornly clinging to environmental fashion over a practical boost to America’s energy supply will further cloud America’s economic horizon.

The timing of two announcements out of Washington is hardly coincidental. On Thursday, the White House said it would end its heated standoff with House Republicans. Members sought documents related to the administration’s decision to shower Solyndra with $535 million in taxpayer funds. Before the sun set at Foggy Bottom, the State Department spread word it had ordered a new environmental review of TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline, effectively delaying any possibility of approval until after the 2012 election. The takeaway from the dual decisions: There’s a price for messing with the not-so-jolly green giant.

FINALLY!!!! LAWMAKERS DEBATE FOREIGN AID TO CHINA…..SEE NOTE

AT THE LAST DEBATE PERRY BROKE NEW GROUND WHEN HE SAID HE WOULD CUT ALL FOREIGN AID TO ZERO AND STUDY CASE BY CASE…..RSK http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9R1DOLG3&show_article=1 WASHINGTON (AP) – Lawmakers demanded to know: Why should China, a major foreign competitor and America’s biggest creditor, be receiving millions of dollars in development aidfrom the U.S.? A House […]

POLL: TROOPS LOSING CONFIDENCE IN OBAMA…ELAINE DONNELLY

http://bigpeace.com/edonnelly/2011/11/15/poll-troops-losing-confidence-in-obama-commander-in-chief/

President Barack Obama is working hard to shore up his liberal political base, but military voters may be less likely to lend support for his re-election. According to the 2011 Military Times Poll of active-duty subscribers, confidence in the overall job performance of the Commander-in-Chief has plummeted from 70% to 25%. The steep decline was illustrated with a multi-color bar graph on a page 10 of the September 19, 2011, Navy Times print edition, and in a secondary link in the web-posted article available to non-subscribers, titled “A Souring Mood.”

HOT TOPICS FROM FSM

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1685/pub_detail.asp Solyndra: Energy Dept. pushed firm to keep layoffs quiet until after midterms [WA PO] New emails: DOJ, Eric Holder manipulated press for favorable ‘Fast and Furious’ coverage [DAILY CALLER] GOP senators rip Iraq pullout plan: McCain, Graham fear ‘losing the peace’; Panetta: Baghdad left us no choice [WT] How Can The American People Ever […]

WHAT DOES DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTEL JAMES CLAPPER HAVE TO DO TO GET FIRED? RYAN MAURO

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10830/pub_detail.asp The International Atomic Energy Agency’s incriminating report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program should be the last straw—not just for Iran, but for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The country simply cannot afford to have him in charge of overseeing our entire intelligence community any longer. In March, Clapper stood by the controversial National […]

ZUHDI JASSER: THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS REPORT…A ROADBLOCK TO AMERICAN PROGRESS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10832/pub_detail.asp

The Center for American Progress Fear, Inc. Report: A Roadblock to American Progress
The Center for American Progress (CAP) recently issued a 132 page report entitled “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” (pdf). The report’s supposed objective is to “expose—and marginalize—the influence of the individuals and groups” that CAP claims are a part of an “Islamophobia network in America.” The report was immediately seized upon by many Muslim organizations and enablers on the political left as well as the Iranian government’s Press TV as proof positive of the victimhood of American Muslims.

This report portends to be an in-depth investigative analysis that connects the dots of a supposedly sinister anti-jihadist movement. But a glossy cover around 132 pages of political blog material does not make a report either journalistically or academically sound. From my perspective, CAP lost all journalistic and academic credibility when it failed to contact me to corroborate, refute or even respond to any of the accusations the report levels against me and our organization- the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. This would not be considered acceptable for a college term paper, let alone a report that is being billed as useful in-depth analysis.

BOB OWENS: WARPED PRIORITIES PENN STATE VS. GUNWALKER

“The same media and public that caused Paterno and McQueary to be fired cannot seem to raise the same level of indignation against those political appointees and law enforcement officers that knew they were enabling murderers.”

http://pjmedia.com/blog/warped-priorities-penn-state-vs-gunwalker/?print=1

In one of the most repulsive scandals in college history, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged [1] with 40 counts of sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period, some of them as young as seven. Sandusky is alleged to have used a charity he founded to help disadvantaged boys, the Second Mile Foundation, to find his victims in assaults that occurred between 1994 and 2009.

The American public, and the media in particular, is sickened by these charges and has reveled in the opportunity to destroy the perverse and their enablers in this scandal.

Yet Elisabeth Meinecke, deputy managing editor of Townhall.com, has noticed that the public and media outcry regarding the abuse of these eight children is almost entirely absent from a concurrent scandal of far greater magnitude [2]:

But across the news cycle, this cry for accountability seemed to vanish when applied to a similar situation in the political world, a place where a program cost someone his life and responsibility always seemed to be the job of someone else.

SUPREME IRONIES: OBAMACARE AND THE COURT: RICK RICHMAN

http://pjmedia.com/blog/supreme-ironies-obamacare-and-the-court/?print=1

When Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow Supreme Court justices review Obamacare next year, it will be a moment of supreme irony.

The Roberts Court will decide the constitutionality of President Obama’s signature legislation under the Commerce Clause, since the law was cast as a regulation of interstate commerce, although it was actually a massive new government entitlement, using an unprecedented individual mandate to provide insurance companies the funds to administer it. Appellate courts across the nation have struggled with the issue, producing opinions in six different circuits covering a total of 654 pages, using diverse analyses to reach conflicting decisions (and usually split ones), necessitating Supreme Court review.

How should the Justices approach the issue Obamacare presents? What judicial philosophy should they bring to the question? The answer to that question may require the resolution of an issue raised six years ago — in a confirmation proceeding involving a new senator seeking to justify his vote against an indisputably qualified nominee.

The nominee was John Roberts, and the senator was Barack Obama.

BEN SHAPIRO: THE BANALITY OF COLLABORATIVE EVIL

http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2011/11/16/penn_state_the_banality_of_collaborative_evil

When the Israeli government captured Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, journalist Hannah Arendt was struck by the fact that Eichmann appeared to be a nondescript accountant type. He was not highly intelligent, and he did not appear to be particularly vicious. This led Arendt to the conclusion that anyone could, under the right ideological circumstances, become evil. Evil, she said, was banal.

This was an exaggeration of the case. Eichmann was a willing executioner of Hitler’s orders; he identified deeply with Hitler’s anti-Semitism. He was not just a cog in the system, he was an active system-maker.

But there is truth to the notion that anyone, given the right amount of self-interest, can be sucked into collaborating with evil — or at least looking the other way. Edmund Burke once stated that all that was necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing. The Nazis believed ideologically in the murder of Jews, but the rest of the Western world, including the Roosevelt administration, were willing to sit idly, closing their gates to the refugees. A Holocaust is a worldwide affair.

At Penn State, the same principle applied. Former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky spent decades sexually assaulting young boys. He started a charity, The Second Mile, to recruit young boys. One victim was a houseguest with Sandusky. Sandusky fondled him, performed oral sex on him and forced the boy to perform oral sex in return. A Clinton County high school routinely called the victim out of study hall to meet Sandusky in a conference room. The wrestling coach at the high school, Joe Miller, saw Sandusky molesting the victim; Sandusky said that he was wrestling the boy. Miller found the situation odd, but said nothing. This behavior lasted from 2005 to 2009.

IRELAND’S NEW PRESIDENT IS THE MOST ANTI-AMERICAN AND ANTI-ISRAEL HEAD OF STTE IN THE WESTERN WORLD

In President Higgins’s Ireland, The Wearin’ Of The (Islamic) Green?

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
As the Irish blogger Mark Humphrys has remarked, deploringly, Michael D. Higgins, sworn in on 11 November as the ninth President of the Republic of Ireland, is the most anti-American and most anti-Israel head of state in the western world.

With Higgins’s track record, its no wonder the extremely virulent Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign is cock-a-hoop at its old friend’s rise to a position if not of wide formal powers, then certainly of not inconsiderable influence.

I’ve taken my eye off the Emerald Isle since posting about Michael D. Higgins a little while ago. So I’m grateful to Mark Humphrys (whose blog has many revealing photos of Higgins like this one) for paying a visit to this site just now, and giving me the tidbit that at President Higgins’s inauguration an Islamic cleric recited a prayer.

Nothing wrong with a little bit of ecumenism, you might say. After all, what better way to make all sections of society feel they are part and parcel of the nation in which they live than by their religious representatives participating at such a state occasion?