Could It Be Republicans Call For Ban On For-Profit Earmarks

:From The Hill House Republicans approved a conference-wide moratorium on earmarks on Thursday, one day after a House committee enacted a ban on for-profit earmarks. 

The Republicans' moratorium is more extensive than the House Appropriations Committee's ban in that it applies to all earmarks for all members of the caucus. 

The moratorium was passed via a "strong" voice vote, according to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who participated in the nearly two-hour-long conference meeting.

Senate Republicans appeared receptive to the House's proposal Thursday. 

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) offered a one-year moratorium on earmarks on the Senate floor as the House Republicans were taking their vote. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) specifically complimented the House's plan in a Twitter post.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey's (D-Wis.) proposal to cut all for-profit earmarks on his panel was met with staunch opposition from his Senate counterpart, Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) cheered the effort and has floated the idea of a full earmark ban. 

Freshman Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) on Thursday issued a statement calling for an end to all earmarks. 

One Nation Under GOD Still

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs.
"The Pledge is constitutional," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded."
The same court ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002 after he sued his daughter's school district for having students recite the pledge at school.
That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court ruled that Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.
So Newdow, who is a doctor and lawyer, filed an identical challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to the recitation of the pledge at school. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, ruling that the pledge was unconstitutional.
"I want to be treated equally," Newdow said when he argued the case before the 9th Circuit in December 2007. He added that supporters of the phrase "want to have their religious views espoused by the government."
In a separate 3-0 ruling Thursday, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on coins and currency, saying that the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic, not religious.
Reached on his cell phone, Newdow said he hadn't been aware that the appeals court had ruled against him Thursday.
"Oh man, what a bummer," he said.
Newdow said he would comment further after he had read the decisions.

These Truthers Never Give Up

Jesse Ventura Jesse Ventura – Read Jesse Ventura's other articles on HuffingtonPost.com

You didn't see anything about it in the mainstream media, but two weeks ago at a conference in San Francisco, more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.
That's right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy because they don't buy the government's version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible -- or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the Twin Towers and Building 7.
Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: "The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction." He's especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 447 stories came down in "pure free-fall acceleration" that afternoon -- even though it was never hit by an aircraft.
This is a subject I take up in my new book, American Conspiracies, published this week by Skyhorse. An excerpt follows:

****Some people have argued that the twin towers went down, within a half hour of one another, because of the way they were constructed. Well, those 425,000 cubic yards of concrete and 200,000 tons of steel were designed to hold up against a Boeing 707, the largest plane built at the time the towers were completed in 1973. Analysis had shown that a 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour (and those had four engines) would not cause major damage. The twin-engine Boeing 757s that hit on 9/11 were going 440 and 550 miles an hour.
Still, we are told that a molten, highly intense fuel mixture from the planes brought down these two steel-framed skyscrapers. Keep in mind that no other such skyscraper in history had ever been known to collapse completely due to fire damage. So could it actually have been the result of a controlled demolition from inside the buildings? I don't claim expertise about this, but I did work four years as part of the Navy's underwater demolition teams, where we were trained to blow things to hell and high water. And my staff talked at some length with a prominent physicist, Steven E. Jones, who says that a "gravity driven collapse" without demolition charges defies the laws of physics. These buildings fell, at nearly the rate of free-fall, straight down into their own footprint, in approximately ten seconds. An object dropped from the roof of the 110-story-tall towers would reach the ground in about 9.2 seconds. Then there's the fact that steel beams that weighed as much as 200,000 pounds got tossed laterally as far as 500 feet.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started its investigation on August 21, 2002. When their 10,000-page-long report came out three years later, the spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest a controlled demolition. But Steven E. Jones also says that molten metal found underground weeks later is proof that jet fuel couldn't have been all that was responsible. I visited the site about three weeks after 9/11, with Governor Pataki and my wife Terry. It didn't mean anything to me at the time, but they had to suspend digging that day because they were running into heat pockets of huge temperatures. These fires kept burning for more than three months, the longest-burning structure blaze ever. And this was all due to jet fuel? We're talking molten metal more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Probably the most conclusive evidence about a controlled demolition is a research paper (two years, nine authors) published in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal, in April 2009. In studying dust samples from the site, these scientists found chips of nano-thermite, which is a high-tech incendiary/explosive. Here's what the paper's lead author, Dr. Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen's chemistry department, had to say about the explosive that he's convinced brought down the Twin Towers and the nearby Building 7:
"Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel."
Richard Gage is one of hundreds of credentialed architects and structural engineers who have put their careers on the line to point out the detailed anomalies and many implications of controlled demolition in the building collapses. As he puts it bluntly: "Once you get to the science, it's indisputable."

I Think He Needs To Eat Better And Work Out Once In A While

This video is of Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO in Washington D.C. yesterday.
There are some big problems with these sheeples "Stop Big Insurance" Progressive talking points. First off Medicare is the #1 insurance that turns down the most for care. Yes the governement option that we already have withholds medical treatment more then any other insurance company. And Medicare has more waste then the insurance companies have profit. In other words the government waste more then the 3.4% profit margin the insurance companies make. And while Big Labor wants this health care reform they don't want to pay for it.  And how in the world can the government compeat with the non-profit Blue Cross? You can't do better then that when it comes to profit. Is there anyone out there that believes that insurance companies are the enemy of the people? Or could it be BIG Government and Big Labor that are our real enemies? Take a look at the facts and then ask yourself if what these idiots in Washington DC and Big Labor Unions are trying to do is in our best interest or theirs. If this is such a great thing for these unions then let them pay for it. We need to stop listening to the Progressive lies these people are trying to sell us. We all want people to have a fair shake when it comes to previous conditions. Both parties agree with that part of the bill. It's just all the other BS progressive special interests that are killing the bill. When Big Labor Unions pay for whaqt they want and the governement Medicare cleans up their messes then maybe we will listen to them. But until then they are just playing loose with the facts and trying to pull the wool over our eyes by attacking the insurance companies while the rest play loose and free with our money. An another thing. Have you ever heard of having to pay almost $2 tillion to save money? What kind of VooDoo  are they trying to pass off as a good idea?

83% Of Americans Think Obama Is A Liar and so does Dick Durbin

Senator Dick Durbin  (D-IL) didn’t come right out and say “Obama is a liar,” but he may as well have.

“Anyone who would stand before you and would say, ‘Well, if you pass health care reform, next year’s health care premiums are going down’ I don’t think is telling the truth.”

By a slim margin, voters would advise their representative in Congress to vote against President Barack Obama's healthcare bill, a new poll found.

48 percent of people told the Gallup poll that they would tell their lawmaker to vote against a health bill similar to Obama's, while 45 percent said they want their representative to vote in favor of the bill.

The three point margin is within the poll's four percent margin of error, and seven percent of respondents told Gallup they had no opinion on the legislation.

The close tally reflects the split public opinion over the healthcare proposals favored by the president as Democrats in Congress appear to be moving toward finishing work on the legislation.

The reasons cited by poll respondents for favoring or opposing the bill also closely track the lines of arguments made by lawmakers in support of and against the health reform plans.

29 percent of supporters of the bill cited concerns over too few people being uninsured as their main reason for favoring the legislation, while 20 percent of opponents said they feared the plan would make healthcare less affordable.

The poll was conducted March 4-7.

“Barack Obama is now a social pariah and most Democrats and he knows it.”

Posted by Erick Erickson

Here’s a dirty little secret in American politics. A lot of the reporters who cover politics don’t know the first thing about politics. They cannot read the tea leaves. They do not know how. They do not even try.
That is why men like Larry Sabato, Chuck Todd, etc. have become so prominent. It is not hard to figure things out, but a lot of reporters are lazy. They need the story spoon fed to them.
There is a massive story out there right now and the political reporters have totally missed it. Let me spoon feed them and educate everyone in the process.
Barack Obama has become the first major Democrat to admit, though tacitly, the Democrats are screwed in 2010.
All you have to do is look to Missouri.First, let me explain what a “joint fundraising committee” is. This is a committee whereby a political organization can link to a political campaign and the two entities can raise money together, sharing both the expenditures and receipts. The fundraising committee typically benefits the organization more than the candidate, but in every case the organization has a vital role to play in the election of the candidate so it makes sense for the candidate to sign on.
For example, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has a joint fundraising committee with Carly Fiorina. Senator Jim DeMint has a joint fundraising committee with Marco Rubio. It is a mutually beneficial relationship.
One would think the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (”DSCC”) would have a joint fundraising committee with Robin Carnahan, running against Roy Blunt in Missouri. And one would think they would use Barack Obama as the front man for the joint fundraiser.
If one thinks that, one would be wrong.
Today in Missouri, Barack Obama spoke at the fundraiser organized by the joint fundraising committee of the DSCC and sitting United States Senator Claire McCaskill — a woman not up for re-election.
At this event, Robin Carnahan, the 2010 Democratic Senate candidate in Missouri, was no where to be seen.
It goes downhill from there:

The president’s visit is also raising eyebrows because his evening fundraiser is slated to benefit Sen. Claire McCaskill, who doesn’t stand for re-election until 2012.
“We are not aware of another example of the president ignoring a U.S. Senate candidate on the ballot in less than eight months and instead raising money for someone who is not up for re-election until 2012,” noted [a Republican].
Democrats point out that Obama’s fundraising will also benefit the party’s Senate campaign committee, which could be used to aid Carnahan.
“Some of the funds raised should indirectly help Robin in her race,” Zakula said.
But when asked why Obama was raising money for McCaskill rather than Carnahan, Zakula responded, “that’s a question for the White House.” He also could not say whether Obama would campaign with Carnahan this fall.

Note the “could” and the “should.” It’s not sounding too definite for Robin.
Here’s where it gets odd. According to McCaskill’s campaign, a “large” chuck will go to benefit Carnahan’s campaign.
So where is the disconnect? Carnahan does not show up on stage with Barack Obama at his big event and Barack Obama raises money at a McCaskill fundraiser and not a Carnahan fundraiser. To top it all off, the joint fundraising committee is between the DSCC and a senator not even up for re-election?!
If we apply the easiest explanation for all of this, we arrive at the answer.
Obama has campaigned for three statewide candidates in the past four months only to see each one of them go down in flames. At the end of the day, politics is about the survival of the fittest and Barack Obama sees where things are headed.
Obama’s refusal to be seen with Carnahan or to raise money for Carnahan is a sign that Robin Carnahan is toast. Obama does not want to have another victim on the tally sheet. He does not want to get blamed.
Now here is why this is so important.
In Texas, Rick Perry is the longest serving Governor in Texas history. He was just able to beat the popular senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, by running an entire campaign against Washington.
In Missouri, Robin Carnahan, the state’s Secretary of State, is running against Congressman Roy Blunt, a man who has been in Washington for twelve years and is a Republican — a party everyone including myself points out polls worse than Democrat even in Missouri.
Carnahan should be able to do like Rick Perry and run a race against Washington and against the Republicans. Except she can’t. Her party owns Washington. And because her party owns Washington and Barack Obama owns the party, Robin Carnahan is screwed.
Barack Obama knows it. He’s trying to stay away lest political reporters finally start paying attention like the rest of us and realize Barack Obama is exactly what I said he was — Barack Obama is now a social pariah and most Democrats and he knows it.
So do Democrats really want to pass a health care plan so closely connected with a man who himself tacitly admits those he campaigns for go on to lose?

Is This The Christians or Jews Fault?

 

ISLAMABAD - Terrorists armed with grenades attacked the offices of a Christian aid group helping earthquake survivors in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six employees and wounding several others, police and the organization said.



Terrorists have killed other people working for foreign aid groups in Pakistan and issued statements saying such organizations were working against Islam, greatly hampering efforts to raise living standards in the desperately poor region. Many groups have scaled down operations in the northwest or pulled out altogether.

The attack took place in Ogi, a small town in Mansehra district, which was badly hit by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

"It was a brutal and senseless attack," said Dean Owen, World Vision spokesman in Seattle, Washington. "It was completely unexpected, unannounced and unprovoked."

Another spokesman said the group had suspended operations across Pakistan as a result of the attack.

Two women were among the six dead, said local police chief Sajid Khan. Four people were wounded.

He said about 10 gunmen took part in the raid.

"They went inside, opened fire indiscriminately and then threw grenades before fleeing," said Khan.

Al Qaeda, the Taliban and allied groups are strong in northwestern Pakistan, but Mansehra lies outside the tribal belt next to Afghanistan where the militants have their main bases and is relatively peacefully.
Islamist militants see foreign aid groups and local outfits that receive international funds as a challenge to their authority in regions under their influence. The organizations often employ women and support female rights initiatives, further angering the extremists.

Many foreign aid groups set up offices in Mansehra after the 2005 earthquake, which killed about 80,000 people.

In 2008, militants there killed four Pakistanis working for Plan International, a British-based charity that mainly helps children.

World Vision is one of the world's largest and well-funded Christian aid groups. It was founded 60 years ago in the United States.