Stocks closed out the first quarter on a high note with the S&P 500 piercing through levels last seen in 2007 to end at a record high near 1,570 and the Dow logging its strongest quarter in 15 years.
The S&P finally surpassed its closing high level of 1,565.15 shortly after the market open after flirting with the milestone for weeks, recovering all its losses from the financial crisis. The next milestone for the index is its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, set on October 11, 2007.
Four senior managers who oversaw the ill-fated federal gun-tracking probe called “Fast and Furious” will be fired if recommendations from a disciplinary panel are accepted.
People familiar with the matter said the Professional Review Board of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent notices of its decision in recent days to bureau managers, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
In addition, two lower-level employees face disciplinary actions, short of firing. The move from the ATF’s review board is the first step in what could be a months-long process, including appeals.
Barack Hussein Obama has decided that in order to punish Arizona for having dared enforce American immigration laws, he has ordered his federal agencies to basically stop working with Arizona’s law enforcement agencies concerning illegal immigrants. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr has also made it known as the nations chief law enforcement officer that he too is only going to selectively enforce immigration laws that he personally likes. More to the point, Holder will only enforce what is beneficial to his boss’s re-election campaign. If I’m not mistaken, this attitude by both men is blatantly UNCONSTITUTIONAL and falls under the heading of “high crimes and misdemeanors’, an IMPEACHABLE offense!
Mr. Obama, how in the world can you look at the people of Arizona and tell them that YOU are not willing to give them EQUAL PROTECTION under the laws of the United States? Brian Terry, an American Border Patrol Agent, was shot in the back 18 miles INSIDE the border of the United States! Jaime Zapata, an ICE agent, was also killed because of an illegally run and botched program known as Fast & Furious. Being an accomplice to murder, Mr. Obama, is a crime punishable by prison time. Maybe you and Mr Holder could share a cell? Anyway, I digress…..again!
My feelings are, Mr. Obama, that you should be impeached before any more American and Mexican bodies pile up because of your insanity. Mr. Holder should be found guilty of contempt of Congress and charged with negligent homicide in the cases of the two dead federal agents. You and Holder should also have to face justice in the death of the Arizona rancher and others who were killed by your illegal compadres coming across our borders and onto American’s rightfully-owned land. I have an idea for a reverse gun walking program that I would like to run called “Slow & Deliberate”! It’s a program whereby I legally get to use federal funds to LEGALLY buy guns from LEGAL gun shop owners and arm American citizens to help guard the American border from the intrusion of illegals from everywhere. No problems, no paperwork, no questions! All neat, tidy, and LEGAL!
A new government study released Tuesday says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.
The Congressional Budget Office report says that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of next year if the government is allowed to fall off this so-called “fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1 _ and that the higher tax rates and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies are kept in place.
There’s common agreement that lawmakers will act either late this year or early next year to head off the dramatic shift in the government’s financial situation. But if they were left in place, CBO says it would wring hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget deficit that would “represent an additional drag on the weak economic expansion.”
CBO projected that the economy would contract by 1.3 percent in the first half of 2013, which would meet the traditional definition of a recession, which is when the economy shrinks for two consecutive quarters. “Such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession,” CBO said.
CBS – Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday he “would consider” running in the vice presidential slot on the 2012 Republican ticket, though is “so focused” on his current job that it’s “not even” in his mind.
Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, unveiled a budget plan this week that has been praised by GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney — and been dubbed the “Romney-Ryan budget” by top Obama administration adviser David Plouffe.
“I’m so focused on my job in Congress. If I wanted to be president or vice president so badly I would have run for president. I don’t — so I didn’t,” Ryan said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Still, Ryan wouldn’t entirely close the door on the No. 2 spot when pressed by host Norah O’Donnell.
“I would consider it but it’s not even something in my mind because it’s a decision someone else makes at a later time,” he said. “It’s a bridge I haven’t gotten close to having to cross so in the meantime I think it’s important to do my job.”
Throughout the brutal and agonizingly long recession, only one large metropolitan area escaped largely unscathed: Washington, D.C. The city that wreaked economic disasters under two administrations last year grew faster in population than any major region in the country, up a remarkable 2.7 percent. The continued steady growth of the Texas cities, which dominated the growth charts over the past decade, pales by comparison.
Boom times in the capital — particularly amid a weak recovery elsewhere — are driving this growth. Since 2007, notes Stephen Fuller at George Mason University, the D.C. region’s economy has expanded 14 percent compared with a mere 3 percent for the rest of the country. Washington’s unemployment never scaled over 7 percent, well below the national average, and is now down to around 5.5 percent, about the lowest of any major metropolitan area. Unemployment of course is much higher, reaching 25 percent, in some of the district’s poorer neighborhoods.
I have written on the unconstitutionality of the Federal Reserve System before and how that fiat money is not to be printed by the federal government in any form. The Constitution is clear that only gold and silver coin is to be coined by the government. Those metals are the only metals they have authority to coin. Yet the propaganda machine of the Federal Reserve is now putting out it’s own educational propaganda material in order to teach 8-12 graders otherwise.
The lesson description begins,
The Constitution of the United States outlines the basic principles of the U.S. government. This lesson focuses on the express and implied powers of Congress and the power of the Supreme Court to decide whether a law is unconstitutional.
On the surface, the differences between the Occupy movement and the TEA party movement are quite apparent. The OWS movement trashes parks and streets, commits violent acts against businesses, and all manner of degenerate behaviours. The TEA party movements, on the other hand, generally hold their protests with minimal litter, no known acts of vandalism(that I know of), are generally respectful of communities’ laws regarding assembling and protestation, including to those in the law enforcement community representing those communities. But describing the visual and audible differences is not my point, although those differences certainly play into it. That is, the biggest difference between the two movements has to do with freedom and liberty.
Here’s why tomorrow’s Michigan primary is so important: it’s about establishment confidence in Mitt Romney and the last outside chance of getting another entrant in the race.
There are, as I’ve noted previously, a number of different types of “establishment” vs “grassroots” divides in the GOP, but you don’t have to have any particular definition of ‘establishment’ to recognize that Romney’s candidacy leans heavily on the support he draws from traditional ‘establishment’ or ‘insider’ sources: money from big-dollar fundraisers, endorsements from big-name elected officials, and covering fire from right-leaning journalists at major mainstream publications and conservative journals. Romney has depended, time and again, on his ability to get out of trouble by having the resources to go more negative than whatever opponent he’s targeting: more money to dump on negative ads and a bigger chorus of voices amplifying those attacks.
Aside from Mormon support – which is somewhat sui generis to Romney – some of Romney’s structural support comes from people who know him personally or identify with him as a fellow wealthy businessman; some comes from people who fear running a bold-colors conservative; and some comes from those who, whether or not they’d support a conservative in theory, fear Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich as electoral liabilities, Santorum for his overly outspoken social conservatism, Newt for his long train of baggage. (It’s obviously Santorum represents a serious threat to Romney at present.)
When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer parlayed the leverage that she had by threatening to move Arizona’s primary up and cause chaos in the primary calendar to get Arizona a nationally televised GOP debate, she ensured that all eyes would be on her state.
With Mitt Romney struggling in Michigan, Santorum challenging Romney’s front-runner status, Gingrich needing to climb back into the race and Paul being Paul, tonight’s debate will be critical in influencing not only the next three weeks in the GOP primary but perhaps being a determinative debate.
Here are the stakes for the four candidates going into the debate:
AP – Feb. 2, 2012: FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The FBI has removed hundreds of counterterrorism training documents after a months-long review found inaccuracies and other problems in their description of Muslims.
The review was triggered after a September blog in Wired magazine revealed training documents that reportedly called the Prophet Muhammad a “cult leader,” claimed “devout” Muslims have been generally violent for hundreds of years and made other controversial statements.
The FBI did not get into details about which documents were taken out, but a law enforcement source confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday that hundreds were removed because they were deemed “not consistent with the highest professional standards and the FBI’s core values.”
AP – Feb. 9, 2012: Sen. Marco Rubio addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
A conservative Hispanic group is coming to the defense of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio after Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid questioned the Cuban-American lawmaker’s commitment to “Hispanic issues” given his early opposition to an ambassadorial nominee who is Puerto Rican.
Reid made the remark in an interview with Politico. Reid criticized Rubio for initially opposing President Obama’s nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte for ambassador to El Salvador.
“In Nevada, this woman is seen by the Puerto Rican community, the Hispanic community, as really somebody who is an up-and-rising star. … I just think it’s a mistake for someone who is supposedly representing Hispanic issues to do what (Rubio) has done,” Reid said.
Yes, the “Truth Team” is here to correct all the lies about the budget process. Michael Czin of Obama for America tweets that the new squad will “help communicate a positive message about the President’s record of keeping his word.”
Tuesday could be Rick Santorum’s big day – his chance to break back into the news cycle with some strong primary performances, and make the case that he’s a better choice than Newt Gingrich for those seeking an alternative to Mitt Romney.
On the national level, it’s really still a fairly close race. An ABC News / Washington Postpoll concluded on the eve of this weekend’s Nevada caucuses had Romney in the lead with 38 percent support, but Gingrich, Santorum, and Ron Paul were fairly close together with 24, 18, and 14 percent, respectively. Very few delegates have been assigned by the primaries and caucuses held thus far. There is still plenty of time for the race to change.
It’s the local polling that makes Tuesday exciting for the Santorum campaign. Missouri is holding a “just for show” meaningless primary ahead of its March caucuses, but Santorum is looking very good there. He’s just a hair behind Gingrich, and a bit ahead of Romney, but Gingrich didn’t qualify for the primary, so Santorum has a great opening to win over those march Missouri caucus-goers.
TEA PARTY IS ALIVE AND WELL, THANK YOU. YOU LIBERALS HAVE AWAKENED A SLEEPING GIANT!
“The tea party has dispersed,” Gloria Borger proclaimed on CNN after the Romney victory in Nevada.
Huh? what does that mean?
She concludes, as many in the Activist Old Media have, that a Romney victory in Nevada is a defeat for the tea party.
My conclusion; the media is looking for any reason, any reason, to declare the tea party dead. Plus, a few recent polls show that Romney actually is getting tea party support.
The Super Bowl is a big game so that means the tea party is dead. There is snow in Denver, so the tea party is dead. As long as you say the tea party is dead, you have a spot on a panel with the Activist Old Media.
It just amazes the media that Mitt Romney can run away with a state like Nevada, with a prominent tea party contingent (albeit for the first time in the primaries; it’s too early to say it’s a trend), so they conclude the tea party must be dead.
It is central to a free society that every man owns his own soul. Thus the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion.
A free society must not live in fear of the state: hence the Second Amendment.
We do not trust democracy or the separation of powers to protect freedom of religion or of the press, or the right to keep and bear arms. In those cases, the Constitution was specifically amended to highlight the danger and protect us.
Then where in the U.S. Constitution, designed primarily to limit the power and scope of the federal government, is there a limit to the size and cost of the state?
Did everyone in Philadelphia just assume this was understood? Sort of the way they forgot to mention property rights–because everyone assumed they were assumed?
For at least 30 years now, conservatives have been working to enact a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the federal Constitution to prohibit or limit Congress’s ability to borrow money.
The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it was likely to raise interest rates at the end of 2014, but not until then, adding another 18 months to the expected duration of its most basic and longest-running response to the financial crisis.
The announcement means that the Fed does not expect the economy to complete its recovery from the 2008 crisis over the next three years. By holding short-term rates near zero beyond mid-2013, its previous estimate, the Fed hopes to hasten that process somewhat by reducing the cost of borrowing.
The Fed said in a statement that the economy had expanded “moderately” in recent weeks, but that unemployment remained at a high level, the housing sector remained in a deep depression, and the possibility of a new financial crisis in Europe continued to threaten the domestic economy.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at a presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – A poll of 1,540 likely South Carolina Republican primary voters completed on Friday night had former House Speaker Newt Gingrich leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 37 percent to 28 percent. The poll put former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in third with 16 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in fourth with 14 percent of the vote.
The poll was conducted Jan 18-20 by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling company based in Raleigh, N.C. It was done through automated telephone calls.
In just the polling done on Friday night, Gingrich actually led Romney, 40 percent to 26 percent.
…CNN’s John King opened the Charleston debate with a direct question to Gingrich about his past. “Do you want to take a moment to address that?” King asked.
“No, but I will,” Gingrich replied. And he wound up his ire and spent the next few minutes pulverizing the media for digging into his past on the eve of the South Carolina primary. When King tried to deflect Gingrich’s wrath back off onto ABC, Gingrich would have none of it: King has brought up the issue in the debate, after all. King looked visibly cowed.
Pessimism is permeating our national atmosphere. Newsweek may as well publish an article titled “We Are All Declinists Now,” for if there is one thing the left and the right, from Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, seem to agree on, it is that things are not going well in this country and appear to be getting worse.
This crisis of confidence is not unique to America, of course — across what was once quaintly referred to as “Western Civilization,” economies of entire nations are either suffering in stagnation or teetering near total collapse. Falling or stagnating living standards and birthrates portend a considerably older and poorer West in the not-so-distant future.
The reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs are many and varied, and not yet fully understood. But let us put aside the question of causation for a moment and ask instead: Can we in the West — and in the United States in particular — turn this boat around? Must we accept decline as inevitable?
Two phenomena in particular give cause for hope. One is applicable specifically to the United States: the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The other applies to the West as a whole — the Renaissance.
(Excerpted from Chapter 19: The Eight Families: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf… Part one of a five-part series)
The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.
According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation. [1]
For the second time in a session that is only weeks old, Indiana House Democrats refused to show up for work on Tuesday, effectively delaying the passage of right-to-work legislation. The first delay was a three-day boycott that finished with Democrats coming back to the table to continue other legislative business. House Republicans expected to have a vote on the contentious right to-work bill after Democrat leader B. Patrick Bauer (known for vainly sporting a toupee) made public and private promises that his caucus would show up and participate in the legislative process.
But while Bauer and his fellow Democrats have been throwing temper tantrums and obstructing legislative business, other opponents of right-to-work legislation have been busy producing and distributing studies that purport to show how the reform would hurt Indiana’s economy. The several studies and reports reach a variety of conclusions. Some say that right-to-work would undermine private sector pension plans and others say that the reform will not have any meaningful impact on drawing job creators – especially those in the manufacturing sector – to the state. South Carolina’s success in attracting a new Boeing plant seems to go unmentioned.
Leading the way among those providing intellectual firepower and talking points for pro-union right to-work opponents is the Economic Policy Institute. EPI, a D.C. based think-tank that specializes in state-based research, has released a steady stream of information and research allegedly debunking the benefits of the reform and calling on Indiana policymakers to bend to union demands by killing the legislation.
EPI has been successful in influencing the debate in Indiana. Their work has been mentioned in news reports.
But make no mistake – there is an agenda behind the research produced by EPI. That agenda is George Soros and another far-left Chicago-based group, The Joyce Foundation.
According to IRS filings (summarized by a third-party here), the Economic Policy Institute received over $6.4 million in funding from the Open Society Institute between 2005 and 2009, the latest year for which documents are available. The Open Society Institute is the organization liberal billionaire George Soros founded to manage his investment in hyper-liberal infrastructure. The amount they gave to EPI makes EPI the 11th largest recipient of Soros money over that time period.
In a column for today’s Wall Street Journal, I elaborated on those concerns, explaining why a VAT is bad fiscal policy. I had three main points. First, I noted that the big spenders need a VAT in order to achieve a European-sized welfare state in America.
… the left needs a VAT. It is the only realistic way to collect the huge amount of revenue that will be necessary to finance the mountainous benefits promised by our entitlement programs. Which is exactly what happened in Europe, where welfare-state policies only became feasible after VATs were adopted, beginning in the late 1960s.
Second, I explained that the left favors this giant tax on the middle class because they want more money and soak-the-rich taxes don’t generate much revenue.
Have you ever wondered what presidential candidate Michele Bachmann considers her favorite gun? Well wonder no more: it’s an AR-15.
An AR-15 — Michele Bachmann’s favorite gun.
Bachmann made the revelation during a radio interview with WHO-AM RADIO on Thursday morning. But that wasn’t the only gun-related news she discussed. She also talked about how she‘s a concealed carry permit holder and how she’s actually set to go on an upcoming bird hunt with Rep. Steve King.
“Hey, I’m a pretty good shot, I got to tell you,” she said, later adding, “I learned how to hunt here in Iowa from my dad. I went through gun safety when I was 12. … And I scored the best in my class of any of the men, too, in that class.”
So why does she like the AR-15 so much? “Because you can be so accurate with it.”
“I love it. I love it, it’s a great gun. I like being accurate, and that is a great gun.”
You can listen to her describe her love for the AR-15, as well as the size of her magazine, below:
WARNING: Freedom of SPEECH and of the PRESS is still the LAW.
THIS WEBSITE IS SERVING THE PUBLIC INTEREST. TAMPERING WITH THIS WEBSITE IS PUNISHABLE BY LAW AS A VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Scripture Call for God’s People:
II Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
LIKE us on FACEBOOK
FoxNews “The Speaker’s Lobby”
We the People...
Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed
Four senior managers who oversaw the ill-fated federal gun-tracking probe called “Fast and Furious” will be fired if recommendations from a disciplinary panel are accepted.
A new government study released Tuesday says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.
Madeleine Morgenstern
Throughout the brutal and agonizingly long recession, only one large metropolitan area escaped largely unscathed: Washington, D.C. The city that wreaked economic disasters under two administrations last year grew faster in population than any major region in the country, up a remarkable 2.7 percent. The continued steady growth of the Texas cities, which dominated the growth charts over the past decade, pales by comparison.
One of those OWS defining messages…
Here’s why tomorrow’s Michigan primary is so important: it’s about establishment confidence in Mitt Romney and the last outside chance of getting another entrant in the race.
by John Hayward
She concludes, as many in the Activist Old Media have, that a Romney victory in Nevada is a defeat for the tea party.
Posted: January 28, 2012
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at a presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Jan. 16, 2012. (AP Photo)
[PJMedia.com]
Pessimism is permeating our national atmosphere. Newsweek may as well publish an article titled “We Are All Declinists Now,” for if there is one thing the left and the right, from Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, seem to agree on, it is that things are not going well in this country and appear to be getting worse.
(Excerpted from Chapter 19: The Eight Families: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf… Part one of a five-part series)
Leading the way among those providing intellectual firepower and talking points for pro-union right to-work opponents is the Economic Policy Institute. EPI, a D.C. based think-tank that specializes in state-based research, has released a steady stream of information and research allegedly debunking the benefits of the reform and calling on Indiana policymakers to bend to union demands by killing the legislation.
In a column for today’s Wall Street Journal, I elaborated on those concerns, explaining why a VAT is bad fiscal policy. I had three main points. First, I noted that the big spenders need a VAT in order to achieve a European-sized welfare state in America.
Jonathon M. Seidl
An AR-15 — Michele Bachmann’s favorite gun.
CWNews Posted Comments