Obama's Abuse of Power

Keiko Matsui - Forever Forever

Punch Brothers: Manchicken

"Deadbeat Nation"

video h/t iOTW

Fox Business, January 06, 2012 -
Florida Senator Marco Rubio sent this blistering letter to President Obama faulting his “failed leadership” for America becoming a “deadbeat nation.”[snip]

Dear Mr. President: Any day now, news reports suggest you will ask Congress to approve yet another increase in the debt ceiling. The expected request is another $1.2 trillion, adding to a three year debt binge that has totaled $4.5 trillion on your watch and that has enabled our overall debt to surpass $15 trillion. Your latest request will push the federal debt limit well above $16 trillion.

This pending request will be the sixth time during your Presidency that Congress is being asked to keep allowing government and spending to grow at rates that are unsustainable. In other words, you have made it a routine part of your job to ask for more room to spend without any plan to reduce our debt.

Instead of making debt ceiling increases a routine Washington exercise, we need to make it routine to actually spend no more than we take in. Until then, I will oppose your request to continue borrowing and spending recklessly.

As I wrote in The Wall Street Journal in March 2011, I will oppose a debt ceiling increase unless such an authorization is accompanied by a real plan to tackle our debt. Ideally, such a plan would feature both pro-growth elements and spending restraints, including fundamental tax reform, regulatory reform, meaningful cuts to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security and Medicare. [...Read more]

Obama Continues His Pursuit To Weaken Our National Defense

Washinton Times - OBAMA TO SHARE SECRETS
President Obama signaled Congress this week that he is prepared to share U.S. missile defense secrets with Russia.

In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.

As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.

There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses. [...read all]

Obama's Submission to Taliban?

NRO, Andrew C. McCarthy, The administration is working with a Muslim Brotherhood jurist

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.

I wrote about Qaradawi at length in The Grand Jihad and, here at NRO, have regularly catalogued his activities (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here; [all links in original article] see also Andrew Bostom’s “Qaradawi’s Odious Vision”). For those who may be unfamiliar with him, he is the most influential Sunni Islamist in the world, thanks to such ventures as his al-Jazeera TV program (Sharia and Life) and website (IslamOnline.net). In 2003, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq. As he put it,

Those killed fighting the American forces are martyrs given their good intentions since they consider these invading troops an enemy within their territories but without their will. . . . Although they are seen by some as being wrong, those defending against attempts to control Islamic countries have the intention of jihad and bear a spirit of the defense of their homeland.

Qaradawi urges that Islam must dominate the world, under a global caliphate governed by sharia. He maintains that Islam “will conquer Europe [and] will conquer America.” [...read more]

Earth is Closest to the Sun Today, Jan.5th

EarthSky.org - When 2012 began on January 1, our planet Earth was very close to its perihelion – its closest point to the sun for the year. In 2012, Earth will be closest to the sun on Thursday, January 5 at 1 hour Universal Time (UT). Translating UT to Central Time in the United Sates, perihelion happens today, on Wednesday, January 4, at 7:00 p.m.

The word “perihelion” is from the Greek words peri meaning near, and helios meaning sun.

Earth is closest to the sun every year in early January, when it’s winter for the Northern Hemisphere. We’re farthest away from the sun in early July, during our Northern Hemisphere summer. So you can see that Earth’s distance from the sun isn’t what causes the seasons. On Earth, it’s mostly the tilt of our world’s axis that creates winter and summer. In winter, your part of Earth is tilted away from the sun. In summer, your part of Earth is tilted toward the sun. The day of maximum tilt toward or away from the sun is the December or June solstice. [...readmore]

Navy Unnecessarily Paying $15 per Gallon for Bio-Fuel

WASHINGTON — (AFP) – Dec 5, 2011- The US Navy unveiled plans Monday for its biggest-ever biofuel purchase as part of an effort to reduce dependence on imported oil.

US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the 450,000 gallons (1.7 million liters) were part of the "largest single purchase of advanced drop-in biofuel in government history." The biofuel also "comes from non-food sources and does not increase the carbon footprint."

The purchase aims to meet President Barack Obama's goal "to achieve more energy security by finding ways to lessen our dependence on oil and fossil fuels," Mabus said. [...article]


"...the current structure of government support for biofuels has a number of problems. First, it is not cheap or cost effective relative to other kinds of fuel. Even with subsidies, ethanol is pricey and energy-inefficient. Biofuels currently require 35% more energy per BTU than oil and 61% more per BTU than natural gas, with a comparable difference in economics. In other words, only through government subsidies can current ethanol production compete with traditional fuels. More importantly, with the subsidies in place, the industry has no incentive to find ways to operate more efficiently." [article]

What A Wonderful World With David Attenborough

A celebration of Natural History on BBC One with David Attenborough.