This is a pretty big endorsement, considering that the GOP primary season is heading into South Carolina, a state with a large illegal immigrant population, and which has passed an Arizona type law (Washington Times) Mitt Romney collected the endorsements Wednesday of the architect of Arizona’s immigration-crackdown law, marking the final step on a journey that
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Romney Gets Big Endorsement From Architect Of Arizona’s Immigration Law
You might have to try hard to suppress the laughter that will surely begin to bubble over as you read the latest about 58 year old Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin. Putin is allegedly trying to show off his physical prowess by partaking in a strongman competition at a pro-Kremlin youth camp where he attempted to scale an alpinist climbing wall without safety gear, partake in an arm-wrestling match with a fellow nearly twice his size and bend a frying pan with his bare hands. He was reportedly unsuccessful with the latter. What’s more, the chino-clad Russian PM tried to sound tough too, reportedly calling the U.S. a parasite on the global economy. The Telegraph gives us more into the ludicrous: The 58-year-old Russian prime minister put in his latest display of physical prowess at a Kremlin youth camp 230 miles northwest of Moscow in front of thousands of patriotic young Russians who are encouraged by organisers each year to put the strongman politician on a pedestal. Dressed in chinos and a light-coloured striped shirt, Mr Putin talked tough too, calling the United States a parasite on the global economy. But it was his physical feats that seemed to wow his young audience more than anything. Photographs of the event, which took place on Monday, showed Mr Putin trying to crush a frying pan with his bare hands as young admirers looked on. It is not clear whether he succeeded. Another image of a man many Russians regard as the father of the nation showed him shimmying up an artificial climbing wall spider man-style without a safety harness or helmet. Mr Putin leapt off the wall before reaching the top, jokingly muttering something about cowardice. Other images showed he had adjudicated an arm wrestling contest between two young men, taken part in a contest himself, and looked on as a weight lifter balanced a barbell loaded with heavy weight plates on his back. But Putin’s attention-seeking antics might be an omen of what’s in store for the PM as many speculate he will contest a presidential election next March. And if a campaign video released by the ruling United Russia party this week called “We are building a new Russia. V. Putin” is any indication, Putin may very well be considering it. The campaign video, by the way, reportedly casts Putin as the architect of a most awe-inspiring post-Soviet renaissance. But the Telegraph tell us more: He has also emerged as the key figure in a new political movement called the All-Russian People’s Front whose stated aim is to revitalise the flagging fortunes of the ruling party. Young female supporters have done their bit for his publicity campaign too with bikini-clad young girls organising a free car wash in Moscow in his honour. Meanwhile, an affiliated young female fan group, calling itself “the Army of Putin,” has released a raunchy video challenging girls to rip off their tops or lay into his critics in a show of support. It is a story filled with narcissism and perhaps a touch of the bizarre. Watch the video below:
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Why is Vladimir Putin Arm Wrestling and Trying to Bend a Frying Pan?
Rush reminds Republicans not to operate out of fear. President Barack Obama’s a loser. “Winners do not compromise.” See: ” You Can Be Proud, Conservatives: Tea Party Puts Country Over Party .” Winners do not compromise. Winners do not compromise with themselves. The winners who do compromise are winners who still don’t believe in themselves as winners, who still think of themselves as losers. And you and I are finished with supporting people who think of themselves as losers, or in the minority, or we don’t have the power, or we don’t control all three branches, or what have you. I wish Barack Obama would give a speech every day. I don’t believe the news reports that say Obama’s losing sleep. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe his hair’s getting gray. I think they’re putting flour in it every day to make it look like it’s getting grayer or whatever the makeup trick is. This man has taken our country to the brink. The gross domestic product, the growth numbers today, my friends, are unacceptable. It is a shame and it is an embarrassment. The ChiCom economy is growing at 94 percent. We’re being outperformed by a communist country. There’s no excuse for this. This should not be our new norm, and there is no way that we ought to be compromising with the architect of the disaster that has befallen our country. On what basis is Barack Obama viewed as a leader? On what basis is Barack Obama viewed as even a winner? He and his party were shellacked in the November elections. There are 25 or 30 courageous Republican freshmen who held out for this. Mike, grab audio sound bites 9, 10, and 11. I want you to hear these. This is the media, befuddled over these Tea Party freshmen. BONUS : At Instapundit, ” NEW YORK POST : So Who’s Playing Politics With The Debt? ” Also, check Cold Fury and The Other McCain for updates. And Sundries Shack too.
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Rush Limbaugh Congratulates Conservatives and the Tea Party
If you have to tell someone you just told a joke after they failed to laugh, usually that tells you something. So it’s worth wondering what went wrong when the president tried to crack a funny while introducing his choice to head the new consumer protection bureau Monday afternoon. During his introduction of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, the president mentioned that Cordray is a former five-time Jeopardy champion. Consequently, he said, “all [Cordray's] answers at his confirmation hearings will be in the form of a question.” The audience was silent. “That’s a joke,” Obama said smiling, allowing the crowd to break out in a chorus of chuckles: Presidential jokes are welcomed, and the president tells them often. But this one, it seems, fell flat, either because it wasn’t funny, it had poor delivery, or no one wanted to be the first to break out in laughter during a serious moment. Whatever the reason, it was awkward. As for the actual nomination of Cordray, that isn’t a joke, and in fact, many Republicans have deep concerns about him. Obama and Cordray were joined in the Rose Garden by Elizabeth Warren, a special assistant to the president who had been charged with getting the agency running. Warren is widely considered the architect of the bureau, and consumer groups wanted her to be named its leader. But she was strongly opposed by Republicans and would have faced a difficult path to confirmation. Republicans have already threatened to block Cordray’s Senate confirmation as well. Cordray, 52, is considered a Warren ally and has been working with her as director of enforcement for the agency. Republicans fought fiercely against the creation of the bureau last year and have been trying to place restrictions on its work. In May, all Senate Republicans joined in a letter to Obama threatening to withhold their support for any nominee to the position if the White House didn’t seek significant changes to the agency. The financial industry has also expressed concerns about the agency, worrying that it would restrict new products just when companies are seeking to replace profits squeezed by the new financial rules. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it had deep concerns over how Cordray would use the agency’s “broad powers.” The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a central feature of a law Congress passed last year that overhauled the rules that govern the financial sector. The agency will serve as a government watchdog over mortgages, credit cards and other forms of lending when it officially begins its work on July 21. You can read our initial report on Cordray here . The Associated Press contributed to this report. (via Greg Hengler )
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Obama‘s ’Jeopardy’ Joke Falls Flat During Press Conference
Though Gadhafi is a repellent figure, the architect of the Lockerbie massacre, we have no vital interest in who rules Libya.
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Return of the Anti-Interventionist Right
A professor of political science at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution . McFaul had an obligatory essay back in 1992, widely assigned on graduate syllabi: ” A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era .” This is quite an accomplishment for him. At New York Times : ” Policy Adviser to Become U.S. Ambassador to Russia “: WASHINGTON — President Obama has decided to send the architect of his so-called Russia reset policy to Moscow as the next United States ambassador there, seeking to further bolster an improved relationship as both countries head into a potentially volatile election season. Mr. Obama plans to nominate Michael McFaul, his top White House adviser on Russia policy, for the post, according to administration officials who declined to be identified before the formal announcement. Mr. Obama told the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, of his choice during a meeting in France last week, officials said. In selecting Mr. McFaul, Mr. Obama is breaking with recent tradition in Moscow, where all but one of eight American ambassadors over the last 30 years have been career diplomats. But in choosing someone from his own inner circle, Mr. Obama underscored his determination to keep Russian-American relations a centerpiece of his foreign policy after his early push to reset the relationship following years of growing tension. “Mike, as the guy who really helped the president establish the reset, is the perfect person to go to Moscow to make sure there’s no lapse in momentum in the relationship,” one of the administration officials said … Although not a diplomat, Mr. McFaul, 47, is widely considered one of the foremost American voices on Russia, with deep contacts in Moscow. He was a Rhodes scholar who first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1983 and lived there at several points over the next decade. A Stanford University professor and Hoover Institution fellow, he is the author or editor of more than 20 books, establishing a reputation as a vocal advocate of Russian democracy and sharp critic of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s crackdown on dissent. Mr. McFaul’s friendly ties with neoconservatives at times have generated suspicions among his fellow Democrats, but since joining the White House he has also occasionally been at odds with fellow democracy advocates who have been critical of the reset policy. He’s a good guy. Amazing Obama’s not sending some ACORN communist to Mosow.
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Political Scientist Michael McFaul Tapped as Ambassador to Russia
**Written by Doug Powers So this is what they mean by “transparency” : An aide to Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) tells CBS News that the Indiana Republican plans to introduce legislation next week that would encase the House Gallery in “a transparent and substantial material” such as Plexiglas that would keep members of the public from being able to throw explosives or make other attacks on members on the House floor. Burton has introduced similar legislation in the past. It reads in part, “The Architect of the Capitol shall enclose the visitors’ galleries of the House of Representatives with a transparent and substantial material, and shall install equipment so that the proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives will be clearly audible in the galleries.” Security concerns are understandable, but I’m not sure putting up chicken wire between Congress and the public like the house band at the Double Deuce trying to avoid being hit by Falstaff bottles is a dignified or necessary solution. However, I’ll reserve a final opinion on Operation Saran Wrap until we know for sure if the purpose of the Plexi-bubble will be to keep the public out, or Congress in. It could be a moot point, because a major offender when it comes to disrupting House sessions is Code Pink, and most of those quasi-women would be able to shatter the Plexiglas shield with little more than a glance and a wink. **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Bubble Congress: Rep. Burton to Introduce Legislation to Encase House Gallery with Plexiglas
Scroll for updates… The deepwater drilling moratorium may have been “lifted” in an election-season feint, but the eco-radicals have already accomplished their mission: Zero drilling permits issued . Today’s column spotlights the ideological engine behind the Obama job-killing machine: Carol “The Green Menace” Browner. Update: The Senate Republicans on the Committee on Environment and Public Works have called on chairwoman Barbara Boxer to hold hearings on Browner’s data doctoring. See more below column. *** Throw Carol Browner under the bus by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2010 Energy czar Carol Browner needs to go the way of disgraced green jobs czar Van Jones: under the bus and stripped of her unbridled power to destroy jobs and lives in the name of saving the planet. ASAP. One of the Beltway’s most influential, entrenched and unaccountable left-wing radicals , Browner has now been called out twice by President Obama’s own federal BP oil spill commission and Interior Department inspector general. How many strikes should a woman who circumvented the Senate confirmation process and boasts a sordid history of abusing public office get? Pushing the question — and shining a bright, hot spotlight on Browner’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering — should be a top priority of the new House GOP majority. Not least of all because Washington insiders are still buzzing about possible White House plans to increase her policy role and elevate her status with Team Obama. First, the BP oil spill panel dinged her for disseminating misleading information to the public about the scope of the disaster. In the aftermath of the spill, she falsely claimed that 75 percent of the spill was “now completely gone from the system” and falsely claimed that the administration’s August report on the disaster was “peer-reviewed.” The false claim “contributed to public perception” of Browner’s calculation as “more exact and complete” than it was ever designed to be, the oil spill commission concluded in October. This week, the Interior Department inspector general singled out Browner’s office for butchering peer-reviewed scientists’ conclusions in a key report about the administration’s preordained deepwater drilling moratorium. The scientists first blew the whistle on the administration’s monkey business this summer (pdf here ). A federal judge sided with the misrepresented scientists and blasted the Interior Department’s big green lie that its moratorium was “peer-reviewed” and endorsed by “seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” As the court concluded: “Although the experts agreed with the safety recommendations contained in the body of the main Report, five of the National Academy experts and three of the other experts have publicly stated that they ‘do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium’ on floating drilling.” It was Browner’s office behind the hatchet job. After cutting, pasting and tweaking the drilling moratorium report, one of Browner’s staff members sent a 2 a.m. e-mail back to the Interior Department on May 27 with edited versions that implied that the outside scientists endorsed the moratorium. The Interior Department inspector general tip-toed around Browner’s responsibility for fudging the truth, using passive language to describe how the edited versions “caused the distinction” between what the administration wanted and what the scientists believed “to become effectively lost.” Nonsense. The distinction didn’t “become” lost. Browner’s office disappeared it, doctored it and obliterated it. Browner’s wordsmiths played Mad Libs with the report until it fit their agenda. There was “ no intent to mislead the public ,” Browner’s office claims. But this eco-data doctoring fits a long pattern of politicized science over which Browner has presided. While head of the Clinton administration’s EPA, she ordered a staffer to purge and delete her computer files to evade a public disclosure lawsuit. Lambasted by the judge for “contumacious” behavior and contempt of court, Browner claimed it was all an innocent mistake — and blamed her young son for downloading games on her work computer that she was trying to erase. During her tenure as EPA chief, she was also caught by a congressional subcommittee using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 grassroots environmental lobbying organizations. Browner exploited her office to orchestrate a political campaign by left-wing groups, who turned around and attacked Republican lawmakers for supporting regulatory reform. According to the left-leaning Atlantic, Obama has increasingly relied on Browner’s counsel on issues beyond her environmental portfolio. Which means he’s listening to her advice and strategizing on how to apply her truth-fudging, transparency-evading tactics to the rest of the economy and domestic policy. Browner, a darling of left-wing billionaire George Soros’ environmental justice circles and the wife of a top energy lobbyist , is a dangerous woman whose ideological zeal has helped power the Democrats’ war on prosperity. Sunlight, as always, is the best disinfectant — and a much-needed monkey wrench in the Obama job-killing machine. *** EPW GOP MEMBERS WANT HEARING ON BROWNER’S EDITING OF MORATORIUM REPORT Time for Transparency with Browner, Architect of Cap-And-Trade Agenda Washington, D.C.-Senators James Inhofe (R-Okla.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and David Vitter (R-La.), Republican Members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, demanded openness and accountability from Carol Browner, the President’s top climate change policy official, and architect of the Obama cap-and-trade agenda. Inhofe, Barrasso, and Vitter called on EPW Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to hold a hearing on findings by the Interior Department’s Inspector General that an official in Browner’s office edited the Interior Department’s report on the Obama Administration’s Gulf drilling moratorium. The official edited the report to say that independent scientists who reviewed it agreed with the moratorium when in fact they did not. In 2008, Sen. Boxer convened a hearing examining allegations that Bush White House officials interfered with decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Center for Disease Control. Senators Inhofe, Barrasso, and Vitter strongly urge Sen. Boxer to pursue similar oversight of Carol Browner and her staff. Sen. Barrasso, Ranking Member of the EPW Subcommittee on Oversight: “Under Carol Browner’s watch, politics is trumping science. Congress must investigate the editing of scientific reports and secret meetings where nothing was put into writing. As the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Oversight, I will demand that hearings be held immediately. This ‘Czar’ should be accountable to the people, not the other way around.” Sen. Inhofe, Ranking Member of the EPW Committee: “For two years, Democrats refused to conduct oversight of the Obama Administration, while congratulating themselves this Administration would be different-that it would be open, transparent, and rely on the best available science. Yet we know otherwise: conducting negotiations on global warming regulations in secret, hiding the costs of its green jobs program, and now a sensitive report on the drilling moratorium manipulated to achieve political ends. This is all part of the Administration’s cap-and-trade agenda, designed to raise energy prices for consumers and destroy jobs. It’s time the American people fully understand what the architect of that agenda, Carol Browner, is doing with taxpayer dollars. To help with that, Sen. Boxer should conduct real oversight.” Sen. Vitter, Ranking Member of the EPW Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety: “This blatant disregard by Administration officials to push their job-crushing moratorium on the people of the Gulf Coast absolutely must be further investigated. The IG report that I requested in June and that was released this week revealed that the recommendations to move forward with the moratorium were directed by politics-not science or expertise. The Administration should explain themselves before Congress so the thousands of impacted Louisianians can hear why politics was put before their best interests.”
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Throw Carol Browner under the bus; Update: Senate GOP calls for probe
One small South American country may soon be capitalizing on the world’s once straight-thinking populace spellbound by Al Gore’s charm and global warming “climate disruption” wizardry. According to the UK’s Guardian , Ecuador is demanding money from the global community — not in exchange for its vast oil resources, but in exchange for keeping them in the ground . Yes, the world is going to pay Ecuador to do… nothing: [Alberto Acosta] is the architect of the Ecuadorean government’s plan to guarantee to leave 965m barrels of oil in the Yasuni national park in eastern Ecuador if the world contributes $100m in the next year and eventually around $3.6bn. The revolutionary economic idea to earn money by not exploiting a resource has been endorsed by the government and will be administered by the UN Development Programme. $3.6 billion all for just sitting on vast oil reserves? This guy is a genius . Why am I not surprised the UN put its own emphatic stamp of approval on this plan?
