Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly took aim at "unmarried women" at a recent
"Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider," said Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum and infamous for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.
A liberal organization recorded the Schlafly comments at a Troy, Michigan fundraiser Saturday for a Republican congressional candidate, the Detroit Free Press reported. In an interview with TPM this afternoon Schlafly stood by her comments and said Obama is trying to boost welfare rolls to help with his reelection and to help Democrats.
The latest version of the CLEAR Act is slated for a floor vote in the House this week as Democrats look for ways to use the Gulf oil spill as a means to pass elements of their unpopular energy agenda.
ReplyDeleteHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stripped out authorization for an independent investigation into the Gulf disaster.
The Natural Resources Committee unanimously passed the amendment in committee markup July 14 offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would establish a bipartisan, independent, National Commission on Outer Continental Shelf Oil Spill Prevention.
Unlike the commission set up by President Obama -- packed only with environmental activists and no petroleum engineers -- the commission unanimously approved by the Natural Resources committee would be comprised of technical experts to study the actual events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Not a single member of the committee voiced opposition at the bill’s markup. The Senate has also approved an independent commission.
According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action” — that is, without the consent of the American people through a vote in Congress.
ReplyDelete“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to . . . reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” it reads.
Also: “In the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear (NTA), and adopting significant process improvements.”
In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others in Congress have been pressing the administration to disavow rumors that a de facto amnesty is in the works, including in a letter to Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano. “Since the senators first wrote to the president more than a month ago, we have not been reassured that the plans are just rumors, and we have every reason to believe that the memo is legitimate,” a Grassley spokesman tells NR. (NR contacted DHS, but a spokesman did not have a comment on the record.)
Many of the memo’s proposals are technical and fine-grained; for example, it suggests clarifying the immigration laws for “unaccompanied minors, and for victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, and other criminal activities.” It also proposes extending the “grace period” H-1B visa holders have between the expiration of their visa and the date they’re expected to leave the country.
Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY) is in full-on damage control mode this evening after the New York Observer revealed that an aide to his reelection campaign attempted to highlight an opponent's out-of-district donor base with a list of donors entitled "Jewish Money Q2."
ReplyDeleteThe basic summary of the situation, from the Observer piece: McMahon's finance director, who is Jewish, pored through the campaign finance reports from one of one of McMahon's Republican opponents, former FBI agent Mike Grimm, and compiled a list of donors to who she claimed are Jewish to showcase money raised Grimm raised from outside the Staten Island, New York district. A spokesperson for McMahon's campaign told the Observer the finance director labeled the donors Jewish because "she knows a lot of people in that community" and could, presumably, recognize their names.
"Where is Grimm's money coming from," Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign communications director told the paper. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."
America’s recession is exposing societal fault lines, as various groups fight over increasingly smaller pieces of the pie. Tensions are particularly flaring between government workers and employees of private businesses.
ReplyDeleteDavid Walker, the U.S. comptroller appointed by President Bill Clinton who continued in the role under George Bush, on Friday gave a bracing indictment of the pension and salary benefits being rewarded to government workers at the federal, state and local level. Walker said that public sector workers are growing prosperous on the back of private sector workers.
“There is a huge gap. State and local plans on average … are much more lucrative than typical plans for employees. State and local government employees, on average, have greater job security than people in the private sector. And state and local government employees, in the middle of government, in many cases make more money than their private sector counterparts,” Walker said during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to Pew numbers provided by the Chamber, the budget gap to cover state employees’ benefits totals $1 trillion.
“Therefore, if governments expect taxpayers to pay more taxes to fund lucrative benefit programs that are much better than the average employee gets, in jobs that more job security and in some cases make more money than their private sector counterparts, that ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “But the only way it’s not going to happen is if there’s transparency and if the cover is blown, so that pressure is brought to bear to make changes.”
Walker, who is now president and chief executive of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said there are “many vested interests in the status quo, whether it be elected officials, appointed officials, union officials or otherwise.”
“The only way you’re going to break the cycle is to make this information public in an understandable, clear, compelling and concise form, such that the first three words of the Constitution can come alive: we the people. That’s the only way,” he said.
Walker spoke at the beginning of a half-day Chamber conference on the “impending dangers of the retirement financing crisis.”
He emphasized that he thought state pension fund obligations are only part of a larger “national fiscal challenge” at all levels of government spending, with health-care costs being the most explosive cost driver.
Poll: Majority Thinks America Moving Towards Socialism
ReplyDeleteA Fox News poll released Friday finds widespread belief among American voters that the country is on the decline as a civilization. In addition, a majority thinks the country is moving toward socialism.
A 62 percent majority of voters thinks the United States is on the decline. That's more than twice as many as the 26 percent who believe it is on the rise.
Most Republicans — 76 percent — think the country is in decline, and 64 percent of independents agree. Views among Democrats are more evenly split: 41 percent say on the rise and 43 percent say on the decline.
There's a slight gender gap as men (64 percent) are somewhat more likely than women (59 percent) to take the negative view of the country's progress. Across generations there is substantial agreement: young voters ages 35 and under (58 percent) are about as likely as seniors 65 and over (57 percent) to think things are on a downward slide.
Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY) is in full-on damage control mode this evening after the New York Observer revealed that an aide to his reelection campaign attempted to highlight an opponent's out-of-district donor base with a list of donors entitled "Jewish Money Q2."
ReplyDeleteThe basic summary of the situation, from the Observer piece: McMahon's finance director, who is Jewish, pored through the campaign finance reports from one of one of McMahon's Republican opponents, former FBI agent Mike Grimm, and compiled a list of donors to who she claimed are Jewish to showcase money raised Grimm raised from outside the Staten Island, New York district. A spokesperson for McMahon's campaign told the Observer the finance director labeled the donors Jewish because "she knows a lot of people in that community" and could, presumably, recognize their names.
"Where is Grimm's money coming from," Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign communications director told the paper. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."
Lot's of great post Anon. I'll have to read them later.
ReplyDeleteI think Anon needs to get his own blog. Why clutter Chris's????
ReplyDeleteI think thats a stupid comment by a woman who's made stupid comments all her life. She's some sort of folk hero for the right even though she's a straight up KOOK.
File her away with all the other old dotards making bullshit statements.
It sounds to me like you are an age bigot Joe. Am I reading that correctly?
ReplyDeleteChris, lol....thats funny.
ReplyDeleteYou know my grandfather got old and talked to people who weren't in the room, let alone the house. There comes a time when you mental faculties leave you due to old age, just look at Al. I think she's gone past that point.
She always was crazy, now she's crazy and not all there. its a lovely combination.
and before you say it, your left with two choices here. Either she's right and 70 percent of unmarried women are of flawed charatcer and on welfare or she's getting old and not as sharp as she used to be.
Occams Razor. Her wits have gone to glory.