http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/ Observations of a Reformed Liberal]]> en-us 2010-03-11T12:51:39-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/11/docs_obama_justice_dept_shut_down_federal_acorn_investigation.php Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailing federal investigations into the alleged corrupt activities of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The documents reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by ACORN as well as the Obama administration’s decision to shut down a criminal investigation without filing criminal charges.The documents include background information on two specific complaints filed in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively, during the 2008 election season. . . .The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.Read it all here.The most transparent and least corrupt administration in history? I think not.Technorati Tags: ACORN, Judicial Watch, Department of Justice, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice... Obama, Barack Hussein AlphaPatriot 2010-03-11T12:51:39-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/11/78_expect_middle_class_tax_hike_for_obamacare.php From Rasmussen, 78% Expect Middle Class Tax Hike To Pay For Health Care Reform.With almost 25 percent real unemployment, is it any wonder that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to start over?Technorati Tags: Socialized Medicine, Crushing the Middle Class with Taxes, Rising Unemployment, ObamaCare and Other Bad Ideas... Healthcare AlphaPatriot 2010-03-11T07:53:03-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/10/plowing_detroit_under.php Detroit is the capital of the Rust Belt; once a thriving city that manufactured cars for the world it is declining into crime and being abandoned at a frightening rate. A radical plan is being shopped around: demolishing whole neighborhoods and turning it into farmland. It has been estimated that Detroit has 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots.Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural. . . .Politically explosive decisions must be made about which neighborhoods should be bulldozed and which improved. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars will be needed to buy land, raze buildings and relocate residents, since this financially desperate city does not have the means to do it on its own.I am all for plowing that city under and give my whole-hearted well-wishes to the effort. But will someone please tell me why I have to help pay for making a city full of bad decision makers back into farmland? The politically connected would be granted that farmland, and in a few years (when the economy starts to grow again) will be selling it to real estate developers for a huge profit. My tax dollars should pay for this scheme? I think not.Technorati Tags: Turning Detroit into Farmland, Ballooning National Debt... Economics and the Economy AlphaPatriot 2010-03-10T23:43:48-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/10/dept_of_education_buying_27_shotguns.php Say Uncle reports: US Department of Education Needs 27 Short-Barreled Shotguns.Now that is one tough school.Speaking of tough schools, Memphis City Schools wants its own police force:Memphis City Schools already spends $10 million dollars a year on school security. And now, a resolution is on the table to expand that."Further expand Memphis City Schools security force and eliminate Memphis Police from all campuses," says Kenneth Whalum, a MCS Board Commissioner.The elimination of MPD officers from campuses is a controversial idea. Dr. Cash has been pushing to change state law in order to have his own "peace keeping force" since he took over as head of schools.What is happening to our country?Technorati Tags: Department of Education, Memphis City Schools, Gangs in Schools... Education AlphaPatriot 2010-03-10T22:41:25-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/10/republicans_becoming_conservatives.php Republicans may have woken up:GOP leaders released a statement announcing their move Wednesday night; they'll bring the matter to their conference on Thursday."We believe the time has come for House Republicans to adopt an immediate, unilateral moratorium on all earmarks, including tax and tariff-related earmarks, and we will support changing the official rules of the House Republican Conference to incorporate such a moratorium when a special conference meeting on the matter takes place Thursday," the GOP leaders said in the statement."When Republicans take back the House, we will rein in out-of-control federal spending and bring fundamental change to the process by which Congress spends American taxpayers’ money.”Promises, promises.If Republicans had acted like conservatives when they already had control of Congress (and the White House) then they wouldn't have lost it all in the first place. And we wouldn't be trillions in debt with double-digit unemployment. But noooo!Term limits. That's all I'm saying.Technorati Tags: GOP Promises, Republicans Acting Like Conservatives, Rising Unemployment, Ballooning National Debt, Destruction of the American Economy, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice... Budget AlphaPatriot 2010-03-10T22:33:11-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/09/papers_comrade.php The Wall Street Journal reports that biometric identification cards are the centerpiece of new immigration legislation currently making its ways through the halls of Washington. These cards not just for immigrant workers which would later be expanded to the American populace later. No, this is the establishment of a national identification system that everyone must carry:Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.So far only one "Republican" has signed on, Lindsey Graham (SC), who is cosponsoring the bill with ultra-liberal Chuck Schumer (D, NY).CATO sensibly predicts:Once in place, watch for this national ID to regulate access to financial services, housing, medical care and prescriptions—and, of course, serve as an internal passport.Exactly.Technorati Tags: Declining Privacy in America, American National ID, Immigration, Rise of Socialism in America... Immigration AlphaPatriot 2010-03-09T21:49:11-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/09/raving_rathers_rhetoric_not_rascist.php The blogosphere is all a-twitter about Dan Rather saying that Obama couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him state troopers to flag down the traffic. And yes, at first glance, his statements do appear to be "racist rhetoric":DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. "Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death." And a version of, "Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate" this is what's been used against him, "but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic."I'm certainly no lover of extreme-left talking heads, but I don't believe Rather was being racist. I think he was stereotyping conservatives as racists. That is, he wasn't saying that Obama couldn't sell watermelons, he was saying that Republicans will say that Obama couldn't sell watermelons.So while Rather wasn't being racist, he was being a typical left-wing moonbat. And yes, I see the irony of me saying that.Technorati Tags: Dan Rather and Other Barking Moonbats... Leftists, Liberals & Other Silliness AlphaPatriot 2010-03-09T20:58:35-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/09/more_millennial_than_gen_xers.php Pew Research Center has a short test to see how much you resemble the kids today. I got a 63, which is pretty close.Look at me, I'm just a tat and an Obama tee away from being a member of the infamous Generation Y.Technorati Tags: Pew Research Center, Generation Y, Millennial Generation, Echo Boomers... AlphaPatriot 2010-03-09T12:22:42-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/09/over_1m_for_each_arra_job_created_in_shelby_county.php Shelby County garnered $478 million as a result of the federal government's foolish attempt to tax and spend their way out of the recession. The result of the government's largess (at taxpayer expense) has been 346 jobs saved or created.That's right, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) monies distributed in Shelby County have saved or created 346 jobs at a cost of about $1,381,503 each.Call me silly, but I'd prefer you just give me the million and I'll live off the interest and leave the rest to my kids. You can keep your job.Statewide, Tennessee is expected to get almost $6b, which is projected to save or create 10,300 jobs. A little simple math tells us that each job only costs the American taxpayer $582,524. Again, I'm thinking that would make a very nice nest egg to carry me through the recession until the free market starts generating real jobs.What's that? The free market can't create jobs under the crushing burden of trillions of dollars of additional national debt? And how is the government tax-and-giveaway supposed to help that? It isn't? Isn't anyone thinking ahead?Oh yeah. Just to the next election cycle.Time for term limits. And Fair Tax.Technorati Tags: ARRA, Stimulous and Other Failures, Free Market, Fair Tax, Rising Unemployment, Destroying the American Economy, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice... Economics and the Economy AlphaPatriot 2010-03-09T11:56:14-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/09/the_stimulus_actually_raised_unemployment.php The Investor's Business Daily has an excellent analysis of the efficacy of the "stimulus." First, what the money actually accomplished:In reality, as the CBO explains, "five programs accounted for more than 80% of the outlays from ARRA in 2009: Medicaid, unemployment compensation, Social Security ... grants to state and local governments ... and student aid."In other words, what was labeled a "stimulus" bill was actually a stimulus to government transfer payments — cash and benefits that are primarily rewards for not working, or at least not working too hard.Then the damage done:From the CBO figures, it appears that 39% to 44% of the $862 billion will be for increased transfer payments, including refundable tax credits (checks to people who don't pay taxes).The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 had extended federally funded unemployment benefits by 53 weeks, and another bill in November added 20 more — bringing the total up to 99 weeks in states with high unemployment.As the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee minutes for January noted: "The several extensions of emergency unemployment insurance benefits appeared to have raised the measured unemployment rate, relative to levels recorded in past downturns, by encouraging some who have lost their jobs to remain in the labor force. ... Some estimates suggested it could account for 1 percentage point or more of the increase in the unemployment rate during this recession."My own estimate, in past articles available at cato.org, is that the stimulus act added about 2 percentage points to the unemployment rate.Roosevelt's New Deal extended the Great Depression by years. Obama's Great Giveaway has done the same. Watch out for the double dip.Technorati Tags: Stimulus and Other Failed Big Government Initiatives, Destruction of the American Economy, Rising Unemployment, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice... Economics and the Economy AlphaPatriot 2010-03-09T09:52:21-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/08/barcelona_heaviest_snow_in_25_years.php Schools closed, roads shut down, stalled trains evacuated, power outages, flights canceled, border crossings closed. All as a result of the heaviest snowfall in Barcelona in a quarter century, with as much as 20 inches forecast for parts of Catalonia. As many as 10,000 clients were left without power.Given the highly extraordinary situation, the Barcelona government activated its municipal emergency plan. Authorities also shut down the AP-7 highway and the national N-II. The border with France was also completely shut down leaving 4,000 trucks and around 1,000 vehicles stuck at the frontier.The intense snowfall also meant that 142,000 children couldn’t get to school. A collapse of various high-voltage cables also meant that around 200,000 Fecsa-Endesa clients were left without electricity. Southern France was struck with exceptionally heavy snow, with up to 16 inches falling overnight in Languedoc-Roussillon, Provence, the Rhône valley and Mid-Pyrénées.Meanwhile, the Boston Globe points out that Gore still hot on his doomsday rhetoric:To climate alarmists like Gore, everything proves their point. For years they argued that global warming would mean a decline in snow cover and shorter ski seasons. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,’’ one climate scientist lamented to reporters in 2000. The IPCC itself was clear that climate change was resulting in more rain and less snow.Undaunted, Gore now claims that the blizzards that have walloped the Northeast in recent weeks are also proof of global warming. “Climate change causes more frequent and severe snowstorms,’’ he posted on his blog last month. . . .But while Gore prays for redemption, the pews in the Church of Climate Catastrophe are gradually emptying. The public’s skeptical common sense, it turns out, is pretty robust. Just like those Himalayan glaciers.HT to the Drudge Report.Technorati Tags: Barcelona Snow, France Snow, Spain Snow, Global Warming and Other Myths, Al Gore Snake Oil Salesman... Global Warming AlphaPatriot 2010-03-08T22:18:41-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/08/antartica_sea_ice_increasing.php MasterResource posts an incredibly detailed analysis that disproves yet another IPCC claim, that the increase in sea ice around Antarctica from 1979 through 2005 has been slight and not statistically significant. MasterResource not only disproves this claim, but shows the statistical tricks that the IPCC employed to get away with such a claim.HT to Climate Change Fraud, who notes:The computer models on which so much of the concern regarding global warming is based have always predicted that ice would melt quickly in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Indeed, ice did melt quickly in the Arctic, reaching a low in 2007. The ice there has recovered dramatically, however, and it looks like we're going to have to stay tuned for further developments regarding it.But ice in the Antarctic has been increasing, not decreasing. A lot of different ways of looking at this have come to the same conclusion. The ice is increasing. . . .The only real question is, as we dispose of these manufactured worries one by one, what new ones will they come up with to continue trying to scare us?Technorati Tags: Antarctic Sea Ice, IPCC Lies, Artic Ice, Global Warming and Other Myths... Global Warming AlphaPatriot 2010-03-08T21:27:28-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/08/unemployment_animation.php American Observer has an awesome animation of county-by-county unemployment beginning in January 2007 through December 2009.HT to TMF Global Gains.Technorati Tags: Rising Unemployment, Destruction of the American Economy, Bush Legacy, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice... Defining Bush AlphaPatriot 2010-03-08T13:47:17-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/07/steyn_why_obamacare_at_any_cost_for_dems.php If you read only one article today, make it Mark Steyn's Obamacare worth the price to Democrats. The premise:Because it's worth it. Big time. I've been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally "conservative" parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (Let's not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a "conservative").The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.Exactly. Remember, we never recovered from Roosevelt's New Deal or Johnson's Great Society. Nor will we recover from Bush's Medicare expansion. Similarly, once implemented we will never roll back medical care expansion.Technorati Tags: Obamacare, Democrat Obsession with Expanding Bureaucracy, Expanding Socialism in America, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice... Healthcare AlphaPatriot 2010-03-07T22:55:44-06:00 http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2010/03/07/is_the_internet_a_fundamental_right_poll.php Engadget has an interesting poll up: is the internet a fundamental right?Their writeup has some results by country which I found rather fascinating. Hopefully they will analyze their results the same way. In the meantime, go vote.Technorati Tags: Freedom, Fundamental Rights, Internet... Miscellaneous AlphaPatriot 2010-03-07T22:05:38-06:00