The Obama campaign sent out an email today asking supporters to urge Congress to at least vote on the president’s jobs bill almost immediately after Democratic majority leader Harry Reid blocked a vote on the bill in the Senate.
On the Senate floor today, Republican leader Mitch McConnell asked for unanimous consent to proceed on voting on the bill. Reid, who has struggled to find enough votes for the bill in the Democratic caucus, objected to the motion and killed the opportunity for a vote.
About ten minutes later, Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, emailed this message to supporters:
President Obama is in Dallas today urging Americans who support the American Jobs Act to demand that Congress pass it already.
Though it’s been nearly a month since he laid out this plan, House Republicans haven’t acted to pass it. And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is out there actually bragging that they won’t even put the jobs package up for a vote — ever.
It’s not clear which part of the bill they now object to: building roads, hiring teachers, getting veterans back to work. They’re willing to block the American Jobs Act — and they think you won’t do anything about it.
But here’s something you can do: Find Republican members of Congress on Twitter, call them out, and demand they pass this bill.
So will the Obama campaign be asking its supporters to “call out” Harry Reid and “demand” he and Senate Democrats pass the bill?
So they want the bill passed now, they just don’t want the bill passed NOW!. Hilarious!
It just proves that the bill was not designed to be passed by Congress but to blame the Republicans for NOT passing it. A purely partisan political maneuver rather than an actual plan.
Fascinating. And very typical of the Left and Obama. Cheap political points and childish “gotcha” moments over anything that’s actually serious.
The legislative gambit will not bar a Senate vote on the bill later this month, but it blunts a Democratic effort to maneuver the GOP into accepting sole responsibility for blocking the package that includes provisions that are popular with voters.
McConnell noted that Obama has asked Congress for an immediate vote on the measure at least 12 separate times.
“I want to disabuse [Obama] of the notion that we are somehow unwilling to vote” on the bill, McConnell said.
Reid objected to McConnell’s request. He used a procedural tactic to block amendments to the bill. “To tack this on to the China currency manipulation legislation is nothing more than a political stunt,” he said. (Weekly Standard)
So was the “pass the bill” crap. But that was their stunt and wasn’t a stunt because they were doing it. 
But it’s nice to see the Republicans doing something other than rolling over and “compromising”.
Oh, and by the way–Eric Holder was warned about Fast & Furious over a year ago. Just thought you’d like to know that “justice” and truth is alive and well in the Obama Administration.
New documents obtained by news organizations show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.
Internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.
In Fast and Furious, ATF agents allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to cross the border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
It’s called letting guns “walk,” and it remained secret to the public until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered last December. Two guns from Fast and Furious were found at the scene, and ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle on the operation.
Ever since, the Justice Department has publicly tried to distance itself. But the new documents leave no doubt that high level Justice officials knew guns were being “walked.”
Oh, and President Obama knew about Solyndra’s potential financial problems BEFORE he even endorsed them but did it anyways for politics and his agenda.
New e-mails released Monday show the White House was warned about Solyndra’s potential problems even before President Obama visited the company’s Fremont, Calif., headquarters and used it as a backdrop for his push for renewable energy investment and green jobs.
“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra,” Steve Westly, managing partner of Westly Group, wrote in an e-mail to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett on May 24, 2010, a day before the president’s well publicized trip to Solyndra. “[T]here is an increasing concern about the company because their auditors, Coopers and Lybrand, have issued a ‘going concern’ letter … Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term.”
“I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press,” Westly wrote. “If it’s too late to change/postpone the meeting, the president should be careful about unrealistic/optimistic forecasts that could haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy, etc.”
“DOE … has one loan guarantee to monitor and they seem completely oblivious to this issue,” one OMB analyst said to another in an April 2, 2010, email.
“What’s terrifying is that after looking at some of the ones that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better,” another OMB e-mail exchange said of Solyndra. “Bad days are coming.” (National Journal)
President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan.
According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds. (DC)
Amy Oliver of Colorado’s conservative Independence Institute said one way to look at these potential “green jobs” shortcomings is that the NREL is exaggerating its claims. Oliver told The Daily Caller that the government-funded lab has seen a surge in government funding in recent years.
“Their funding for 2008 was $328 million,” Oliver said in a phone interview. “In 2010 it was $536.5 million. They’ve had a 64 percent increase in their funding during the Obama administration.”
And it’s doing so well! Lots of money down a rat hole and more people get laid off. The perfect Obama plan.
Candidate Obama pledged in 2008 that he would add 5 million green jobs to the economy, but Republican lawmakers in Washington, D.C. now say the White House has stretched what it defines as a “green job” in order to pad its numbers.
At one recent House oversight committee hearing, Republicans prodded Obama’s Labor secretary Hilda Solis to explain why a bus driver who happens to drive a vehicle powered by “green” or “renewable” energy is classified by Obama administration officials as holding a “green job.” Solis struggled with the answer, instead arguing with Florida GOP Rep. Connie Mack, who asked her the question.
Oliver told TheDC that ordinary jobs with peripheral connections to “renewable energy” are frequently misclassified as “green jobs” in Colorado. With Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter in charge, a strong environmental lobby using local, state and federal government to protect its interests, and news media unwilling to push for answers, Oliver said progressive causes have abused taxpayer dollars at institutions like NREL for years.
In an obvious effort to protect President Barack Obama, a group of congressional Democrats has introduced legislation to create an official process that will allow the commander-in-chief to keep presidential records secret after he leaves office.
Ironically, Obama revoked <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderPresidentialRecords> a similar George W. Bush order in one of his first official acts as president.
The political left has turned obesity among low-income individuals into an argument that low-income people cannot afford nutritious food, and so have to resort to burgers and fries, pizzas and the like, which are more fattening and less healthful. But this attempt to salvage something from the “hunger in America” hoax collapses like a house of cards when you stop and think about it.
Burgers, pizzas and the like cost more than food that you can buy at a store and cook yourself. If you can afford junk food, you can certainly afford healthier food. An article in the New York Times of September 25th by Mark Bittman showed that you can cook a meal for four at half the cost of a meal from a burger restaurant. So far, so good. But then Mr. Bittman says that the problem is “to get people to see cooking as a joy.” For this, he says, “we need action both cultural and political.” In other words, the nanny state to the rescue!
It’s very true that the boxed meals are more expensive than doing it yourself. Fast Food and convenience foods are more expensive in the long run. But making your own food is more time consuming and requires more labor and some skill. Now, does that sound like something a Liberal wants to do when they can just mandate that the government force everyone else to do it for them?
An arrogant elite’s condescension toward the people — treating them as children who have to be jollied along — is one of the poisonous problems of our time. It is at the heart of the nanny state and the promotion of a debilitating dependency that wins votes for politicians while weakening a society.
Those who see social problems as requiring high-minded people like themselves to come down from their Olympian heights to impose their superior wisdom on the rest of us, down in the valley, are behind such things as the hunger hoax, which is part of the larger poverty hoax.
We have now reached the point where the great majority of the people living below the official poverty level have such things as air-conditioning, microwave ovens, either videocassette recorders or DVD players, and own either a car or a truck.
Why are such people called “poor”? Because they meet the arbitrary criteria established by Washington bureaucrats. Depending on what criteria are used, you can have as much official poverty as you want, regardless of whether it bears any relationship to reality.
Those who believe in an expansive, nanny state government need a large number of people in “poverty” to justify their programs. They also need a large number of people dependent on government to provide the votes needed to keep the big nanny state going.
Politicians, welfare state bureaucrats and others have incentives to create or perpetuate hoaxes, whether about poverty in general or hunger in particular. The high cost to taxpayers is exceeded by the even higher cost of lost opportunities for fulfillment in their lives by those who succumb to the lure of a stagnant life of dependency. (thomas sowell)
But it’s “fair” that the not-poor pay for the poor. That the rich be taken down to benefit the rest of us, right?
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)–Karl Marx
And it’s not “fair” that others get more than me. So what if they work harder, longer and are smarter than me. That’s just not “fair”.
It’s all THEIR fault!
