Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Another Dem Leaves Party
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-artur-davis-former-prominent-obama-backer-leaves-democratic-party-20120530,0,269770.story
Artur Davis, former prominent Obama backer, leaves Democratic party
Artur Davis, one of President Obama’s earliest supporters and a former co-chairman for his presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Democratic party for good.
In a post published Tuesday on his website, Davis was vague about his future political endeavors, but declared: “If I were to run, it would be as a Republican. And I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.”
Davis, who represented Alabama’s seventh congressional district from 2003 to 2011, was notably the first member of Congress outside of Illinois to endorse then-Sen. Obama’s 2008 presidential bid. And it was Davis who seconded the official nomination of Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Along with making hints at the future, Davis reflected on his experiences as a Democrat, and condemned the path he believes the party is taking.
Renouncing the party “is no light decision on my part,” he wrote. “Cutting ties with an Alabama Democratic Party that has weakened and lost faith with more and more Alabamians every year is one thing; leaving a national party that has been the home for my political values for two decades is quite another.”
But “wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities,” he said.
“On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again,” he said. “I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country.”
Given Davis’ previous stances on pivotal Obama policies, his departure from the party can’t be too much of a surprise. Davis was the sole member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against Obama’s healthcare reform legislation in 2010. He also ran a relatively conservative campaign for the governorship of Alabama in 2010, but failed to win a primary battle against then-Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, losing by a margin of 25 percentage points. After the loss, Davis declared he would no longer seek public office.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign has heralded Davis’ retreat from the Democratic party as evidence of “mounting opposition among Democrats to President Obama’s campaign message and tactics,” in a release sent out Wednesday.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Good One
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/a-users-guide-to-smoking-pot-with-barack-obama
A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama
Bailouts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/forget-bain-obamas-public-equity-record-is-the-real-scandal/2012/05/24/gJQAXnXCnU_story.html
Forget Bain — Obama’s public-equity record is the real scandal
By Marc A. Thiessen, Published: May 24The Washington Post Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.
Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:
● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
● Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”
● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”
● Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
● Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at
Forget Bain — Obama’s public-equity record is the real scandal
By Marc A. Thiessen, Published: May 24The Washington Post Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.
Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:
● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
● Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”
● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”
● Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
● Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at
Friday, May 11, 2012
Obama's Own Doctor Slams ObamaCare as 'Failure'?
Obama's Own Doctor Slams ObamaCare as 'Failure'?
President Obama's former doctor claims that the president lacks passion, feeling and humanity
In a revealing new book, The Amateur, author Edward Klein interviews President Barack Obama’s physician, Dr. David Scheiner, MD, who blasts the president’s health care plan and says that President Obama has an “academic detachment” that he could never break through.The doctor fears that if the health care plan is “the failure” he believes it will be, because of runaway costs and other problems, then any health reform will be set back for years to come.
These are only a few of many reveals in Klein’s book, which makes the case that President Obama is not the political machine that people fear, but an amateur with a messianic complex who is completely out of his depth.
In an exclusive preview of The Amateur by Human Events, Obama’s longtime physician reveals the lack of humanity in Obama’s character and carelessness with which he enacted the entirely politicized health insurance reform, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often called ObamaCare.
Scheiner said that he believes the president miscalculated politically and that the health reform is ultimately doomed to fail. Worse, Scheiner doubts the character of a man who holds the highest and most influential office in America: “I think there is too much of the University of Chicago in him. By which I mean he’s academic, lacks passion and feeling, and doesn’t have the sense of humanity that I expected.”
The author, Klein, later in the book, compares Obama’s personality to early the 20th Century progressive president, Woodrow Wilson. By quoting the historian Forrest McDonald, who called Wilson’s perception of himself, “little short of Messianic,” Klein says that McDonald’s description of Wilson “fits Obama to a T.”
The Amateur is set to be released Tuesday, May 15. It is published by Regnery Publishing, owned by Eagle Publishing, which also owns Human Events.
In the chapter titled, “Hollow at the Core,” Obama’s former physician, who is a liberal, blasts the president for being uncaring, and perhaps worse, incompetent.
“He has no cost control. There would be no effective cost control,” said Scheiner. “The [Congressional Budget Office] said it’s going to be incredibly expensive… and the thing that I’m incredibly worried about is, if it is a failure that I think it will be, then health reform will be set back a long, long time.”
Scheiner said that the Obama administration neglected the advice of real physicians and instead decided to let political operatives craft Obama’s signature health care law. People like Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, were the kinds of medical people that the White House consulted.
Clinton Call Obama an "Amateur"
Bill blockbuster: O’s an ‘amateur’
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bill_blockbuster_an_amateur_XJHYdaV5LT1vpr5I39IKrN
Bill Clinton thought so little of President Obama — mocking him as an “amateur” — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims,
“The country needs you!” the former president told Hillary Clinton, urging her to run this year, according to accounts of the conversation included in Edward Klein’s new biography of Obama.
The title of Klein’s explosive, unauthorized bio of Obama, “The Amateur” (Regnery Publishing), was taken directly from Bill Clinton’s bombshell criticism of the president, the author said.
“Barack Obama,” Bill Clinton said, according to book excerpts, “is an amateur.”
The withering criticism is incredible, given the fact that Bill Clinton is actively campaigning for Obama’s re-election.
But according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president’s home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.
“The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does,” Bill said.
Bill Clinton insisted he had “no relationship” with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.
Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”
But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.
“Why risk everything now?” a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.
“Because,” Bill replied, his voice rising, “the country needs you!”
“The country needs us!” added Bill
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