The Right Lane update 3.12.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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We all must sacrifice for the good of our country.....
This is going to be really tough...but we all need to do it!!!! I 'm cutting back and you may want to also.... I'm going to bite the bullet, too!!!! President Obama ordered the cabinet to cut $45 Billion from the $3,500,000,000,000.00 ($3.5 trillion) federal budget. I 'm so impressed by this sacrifice that I have decided to do the same thing with my personal budget. I spend about $2,000 a month on groceries, household expenses, medicine, utilities, etc., but it 's time to get out the budget cutting axe, go through my expenses, and cut back. I 'm going to cut my spending at exactly the same ratio of my total budget. After doing the math, it looks like instead of spending $2,000 a month, I 'm going to have to cut that number by six cents. Yes, I 'm going to have to get by with $1999.94, but that 's what sacrifice is all about. I'll  just have to do without some things, that are, frankly, luxuries - six cents worth.

Did this President actually think no one would do the math? Please send this to everyone on your list so people understand how idiotic a $100 million cut is in a $3.5 trillion budget - ludicrous!!!!!!! "There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword...The other is by debt."John Adams 1826

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Federal Employees Spent 3.4 Million Hours Working for Unions by Gary DeMar

Not only are we being taxed to death and spent into financial oblivion, but now we are paying Federal workers to spend time working for unions. As we all know, unions are in the pocket of the Democrats.

The Democrats make concessions to the unions. The unions collect forced dues from union workers. Those fees are used to support Democrat candidates. If you want to know what the fuss was about in Wisconsin, it was this sort of back-room dealing that the unions did not want to stop. The reason the unions and the Democrats ganged up on Scott Walker was because he threatened to put an end to this sweetheart deal.

The Office of Personnel Management released its annual Labor-Management Relations: Reports of Official Time. It shows that government workers spend some of their time on the job working for increased union power. This is illegal. It’s called stealing. So instead of only being paid for the job they were hired to do, they use a portion of their time promoting union goals that end up costing taxpayers money. Some of the “official time” is “time spent by Federal employees performing representational work for a bargaining unit in lieu of their regularly assigned work.” In other words, Federal union workers spend time on the job doing union work instead of the job they were hired to do.

The law states that Federal union workers are forbidden to strike. To get around this prohibition, they take time from their jobs that you and I pay for with confiscated money and use it for union activities that empower elected officials to take additional money from us to empower unions. “It’s a mad house. A mad house!” “During FY 2011, unions represented 1,202,733 non-Postal Federal civil service bargaining unit employees, an increase of 17,048 bargaining unit employees compared to FY 2010. Agencies reported that bargaining unit employees spent a total of 3,395,187 hours performing representational duties on official time, an increase of 9.66 percent compared to FY 2010. Government-wide, the number of official time hours used per bargaining unit employee on representational matters increased from 2.61 hours in FY 2010 to 2.82 hours during FY 2011.”  If this type of activity went on in a private business, the employees would be fired. Don’t think this has only been going on since Obama took office. As expected, the activity has increased under his tenure as president. State and federal union workers have been subverting politics for a long time. And why not? For every person they help get elected, their union power increases and the coffers of the Democrats are enlarged. It’s time some legal entity takes up this cause to put a stop to it. Any takers? A case like this would anger the majority of Americans like it did in Wisconsin. We might even get some money back. 3.4 million hours times $15 per hour is a lot of money for the unions to have to pay back.

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Why Are the Feds Buying Up 100 Years Worth of Ammo?

When the numbers are put in perspective, the federal government’s extraordinary buildup of ammunition looks even more ominous than critics already have portrayed it. An analysis by Forbes contributor Ralph Benko shows the 1.6 billion rounds of ammo that the government is acquiring would be enough for more than 100 years of training. As WND previously reported, it also would be enough ammunition to fight a war for more than 20 years. It would give the federal government enough ammunition to shoot every American more than five times.

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Cruz Will Use ‘Any Procedural Means Necessary’ to Force Vote on Defunding Obamacare

When the U.S. Senate this week takes up the continuing resolution to fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) will offer an amendment that will prohibit funding for the implementation of Obamacare during that period. “I believe we will have a vote on this amendment and I have said I am willing to employ any procedural means necessary to ensure that we do get a vote on the amendment,” Cruz told reporters today. Cruz, who favors total repeal of Obamacare and has introduced legislation to do that, said in a conference call on Monday that at a minimum Obamacare should not be implemented until Gross Domestic Product has started growing at its average post-World War II level or better. “The historic levels of growth have been 3.3 percent and, in my view, at a minimum, we should see a return to those historic levels of growth before Congress is willing to contemplate putting through another massive burden on the economy that hurts productivity and kills jobs,” said Cruz.

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Hamas: ‘Declaration Of War’ If Obama Visits Temple Mount

NOTE TO OBAMA: with friends like this, you don't have to worry about enemies!  Hamas is warning that if President Obama visits the Temple Mount it would be a “declaration of war” against the Islamic world. Israel National News reports the terror group made the threat during a protest march at the religious site following riots on Friday. Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, called for a third intifada if Obama visits the contested religious site in Jerusalem’s Old City between Israelis and Muslims. Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovich believes the warning will lead to violence flaring up in the region ahead of the president’s visit.  Or as another President once said "Go ahead, make my day!"

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Obama Opens Borders to Terrorists to Punish Americans Over Sequester

The sequester was President Obama’s idea back in 2011 to begin with.  He thought it was an effective extortion tool to force Republicans to do things his way, because he was not willing to compromise on anything.  But it backfired and the Republicans for once stood their ground and called the president’s bluff. Like all bullies, Obama is blaming the Republicans for his sequester and he is doing his best to make it hurt the public as much as possible so that they will blame the GOP.  An email that was leaked by a Department of Agriculture field officer indicated that the Obama administration had given instructions to make the sequestration cuts hurt Americans as much as possible. Rep. Tim Griffin (R-AR) commented on the leaked email, saying:

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the sequester cuts for political gain. You can’t do anything that is inconsistent with the negative impact that we’ve told everybody these cuts are going to have.”

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Feds Spend $1.5 Million to Study Why Lesbians Are Fat By Elizabeth Harrington

The NIH is funding studies to determine why nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians are overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of “high public-health significance." Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity. “Obesity is one of the most critical public health issues affecting the U.S. today,” the description of the grant reads. “Racial and socioeconomic disparities in the determinants, distribution, and consequences of obesity are receiving increasing attention.”  “[H]owever, one area that is only beginning to be recognized is the striking interplay of gender and sexual orientation in obesity disparities,” it states. “It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic."  Maybe we just simply should ask them.  Maybe obese women have a higher propensity to be Lesbian.  No matter.  We do not need to be spending tax payer money on such a study.  How about heart attacks have become the leading cause of death for all women?

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State Department Will Issue 'Female' Passports to Anatomical Males By Penny Starr

The U.S. State Department's policy on dealing with transgendered people will allow Americans who are anatomically male but identify themselves as female to secure U.S. passports that match their gender "identity" rather than their anatomy. The policy also allows records for births abroad to be changed to reflect the “new” gender of an individual. “The U.S. Department of State is pleased to use the occasion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month to announce its new policy guidelines regarding gender change in passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad,” the June 9, 2010 media note states on State’s website states. “Beginning June 10, when a passport applicant presents a certification from an attending medical physician that the applicant has undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition, the passport will reflect the new gender,” the note states. “The guidelines include detailed information about what information the certification must include.” If you plumbing is male or you choose to be neutered, why should I care how you dress?

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NYT to Obama: Prohibit Pipeline to Choke-Off Oil Supply By Terence P. Jeffrey

The New York Times published an editorial on Sunday calling on President Barack Obama to prohibit construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil to the United States from Canada--but not to protect a fragile landscape in Nebraska or anywhere else in the United States. The reason Obama should prohibit the pipeline, according to the Times, is to begin choking off America’s oil supply. The paper thinks this is a good thing. Citing the State Department report, the Times says that refining and using the Canadian oil the pipeline would annually carry would yield about 17 percent more “greenhouse gas emissions” than the average oil now used in the United States. More insanity from the Left.  They are narrow in their thinking and are willing to harm the Nation over the notion humans alone are responsible for greenhouse gasses.  Tell that guy/woman who is filling their tank to go to a minimum wage job!

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Libya's Grand Mufti Issues Fatwa Against U.N. Report on Women's Rights By Susan Jones

A Libyan newspaper reports that the country's Grand Mufti has issued a fatwa against a U.N. report on violence against women, urging Muslim women around the world to protest that report. The report from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women says governments must do more to protect women and girls from violence as well as uphold women's rights and fight discrimination. It says nations must not allow religious considerations to avoid their obligations. In a statement quoted by the Libya Herald, the Grand Mufti said he "strongly condemns" the report on women, calling it "unjust and destructive."  "The least of its danger is the undermining of family’s structure and its integrity as well as advocating immorality and indecency in addition to rebelliousness against religion and clear objections to the laws contained in the Quran and Sunnah,” the statement said. What more proof does one need to understand that Muslim is not a religion as most know it but a theocracy that directs and controls society.

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Educational Rot    By Walter E. Williams

American education is in a sorry state of affairs, and there's enough blame for all participants to have their fair share. They include students who are hostile and alien to the education process, uninterested parents, teachers and administrators who either are incompetent or have been beaten down by the system, and politicians who've become handmaidens for teachers unions.

There's another education issue that's neither flattering nor comfortable to confront and talk about. That's the low academic preparation of many teachers. That's an issue that must be confronted and dealt with if we're to improve the quality of education. Let's look at it. Schools of education, whether graduate or undergraduate, tend to represent the academic slums of most college campuses. They tend to be home to students who have the lowest academic achievement test scores when they enter college, such as SAT scores. They have the lowest scores when they graduate and choose to take postgraduate admissions tests — such as the GRE, the MCAT and the LSAT.

The California Basic Educational Skills Test, or CBEST, is mandatory for teacher certification in California. It's a joke. Here's a multiple-choice question on its practice math test: "Rob uses 1 box of cat food every 5 days to feed his cats. Approximately how many boxes of cat food does he use per month? A. 2 boxes, B. 4 boxes, C. 5 boxes, D. 6 boxes, E. 7 boxes."  Here's another: "Which of the following is the most appropriate unit for expressing the weight of a pencil? A. pounds, B. ounces, C. quarts, D. pints, E. tons." I'd venture to predict that the average reader's sixth-grader could answer each question. Here's a question that is a bit more challenging; call your eighth-grader: "Solve for y: y - 2 + 3y = 10, A. 2, B. 3, C. 4, D. 5, E. 6."

Some years ago, the Association of Mexican American Educators, the California Association for Asian-Pacific Bilingual Education and the Oakland Alliance of Black Educators brought suit against the state of California and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, charging that the CBEST was racially discriminatory.

Plaintiff "evidence" was the fact that the first-time passing rate for whites was 80 percent, about 50 percent for Mexican-Americans, Filipinos and Southeast Asians, and 46 percent for blacks. In 2000, in a stroke of rare common sense, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found CBEST not to be racial discriminatory. Poor teacher preparation is not a problem restricted to California. In Massachusetts, only 27 percent of new teachers could pass the math test needed to be certified as a teacher. A 2011 investigation by Atlanta's Channel 2 Action News found that more than 700 Georgia teachers repeatedly failed at least one portion of the certification test they are required to pass before receiving a teaching certificate. Nearly 60 teachers failed the test more than 10 times, and one teacher failed the test 18 times. They also found that there were 297 teachers on the Atlanta school system's payroll even though they had failed the state certification test five times or more.

Textbooks used in schools of education might explain some teacher ineptitude. A passage in Marilyn Burns' text "About Teaching Mathematics" reads, "There is no place for requiring students to practice tedious calculations that are more efficiently and accurately done by using calculators."

"New Designs for Teaching and Learning," by Dennis Adams and Mary Hamm, says, "Content knowledge is not seen to be as important as possessing teaching skills and knowledge about the students being taught." Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar's text "Methods that Matter" reads, "Students can no longer be viewed as cognitive living rooms into which the furniture of knowledge is moved in and arranged by teachers, and teachers cannot invariably act as subject-matter experts." The authors explain, "The main use of standardized tests in America is to justify the distribution of certain goodies to certain people." With but a few exceptions, schools of education represent the academic slums of most any college. American education could benefit from slum removal, eliminating schools of education. What do you think?  What are you doing for your children?

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From the Left Wing Nut Chris Matthews: Obama Deserves Credit For “This Amazing Economy”

Every time Obama speaks, Chris Matthews “gets a thrill up his leg.” So we can only imagine what Matthews is experiencing now that Obama has created such an “amazing economy.” When government officials say the economy is bad, liberals blame Bush. When government officials say the economy is good, liberals give Obama the credit. But this is Obama’s 2^nd term. They’ve got to skew the data to make it look as good as possible and then give Obama all the credit. That’s what Chris Matthews is doing:

 “[W]hen is President Obama going to get some credit—and this is like Rodney Dangerfield—when’s he going to get some credit for this amazing economy that’s coming back? It definitely is coming back, maybe not like gangbusters, but the unemployment rate really dropped again today, and there really are a quarter-million new jobs out there. It really is amazing… It seems to me when I look at the stock market breaking all records, when I look at 236,000 new jobs and I keep thinking when are the Republicans going to do what Rodney Dangerfield asked for all those years, ‘show a little respect.’ And what does this all mean? Don’t they secretly say ‘damn it, things are getting better!’ I mean what are they saying when they read this stuff?”

Well, one thing that we’re saying is that that the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t include everyone who is unemployed. Howard Portnoy over at Hot Air made this observation:

 “While 236,000 Americans found jobs in February, 296,000 stopped looking. Once an unemployed person has run through 99 weeks of unemployment compensation, moreover, he no longer exists in the eyes of the Labor Department’s statisticians, and is thus no longer counted as unemployed.”  Ever wonder what the Political Class thinks these people are doing, how they are surviving?  They are no longer even a statistic!

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Rice: National Security Adviser?

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice is rumored to be President Obama’s first choice to succeed Thomas Donilon as national security advisor. The Washington Post, citing an administration official familiar with the president’s thinking, reported Saturday that Rice “has emerged as far and away the front-runner.” Tapping Rice would likely to prompt an angry Republican backlash in Congress.  There is always room in the WH for a fellow left wing lib.

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House Majority Whip: We Can Pass Gun Control & Immigration Without Republican Support by Tim Brown

For anyone paying attention in the Republican Party, you should be outraged at the alleged “leadership” in the House. John Boehner’s leadership has been questionable for some time now. Somehow he survived and was re-elected to Speaker of the 113^th Congress. But there is rebellion brewing against him. Now The GOP leadership is reaching across the aisle to Democrats for support in light of 16 House Republicans who are set to vote against a Republican leadership-crafted closed rule on a government funding bill. However, what should be alarming is that the House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy said he is open to ramming through bills on issues like gun control and immigration without the support of his Republican colleagues.  The rule in question was to limit amendments to the government funding bill. However, because Boehner and his posse refused to consider a vote on the amendment that would defund Obamacare, conservatives bucked Boehner on his rule. “I think that is something being discussed on a case by case basis,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), one of the 16 no votes on the rule.

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Coburn: Washington Wastes $200 Billion Annually By: Amy Woods

Sen. Tom Coburn said Sunday last week’s dinner meeting with President Barack Obama about the federal budget and sequestration might lead to a turning point in a “dysfunctional” Washington D.C.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Republican said he is proud of Obama for reaching across party lines and welcomes discussion about how to cut spending. “He is moving in the right direction,” Coburn said. “I’m proud of him for doing it, and I think it’s a great thing. But it shouldn’t be news.” Obama invited a handful of mostly moderate senators, including Coburn, to an exclusive dinner Wednesday night at the Jefferson Hotel. “The fact that this is news is news in itself, because it shouldn’t be news that the president is reaching out in a bipartisan fashion to try to solve problems for the country,” Coburn said. He said Washington D.C.’s dysfunction stems from failing to tackle issues of fiscal responsibility, including runaway Medicare spending. “Washington’s dysfunctional, but it’s dysfunctional in a dysfunctional way,” Coburn said. “Members of Congress and the administration agree on too much. I’ve spent eight years looking at every spending item in the federal government, and we waste, easily, $200 billion a year in totally ineffective or duplicated programs.” He said he will continue to put pressure on the administration to slow such spending. “I’ve got an ammo drawer full of things to complain about when they’re going to say. ‘We’re not going to have enough people in the FAA towers,’” Coburn said. “I can show them all the things, the stupid things, they’ve done over the last two years that we can stop doing." Further, do you think Tom Coburn is naive enough to believe one meeting with this president means anything?  More political theater?  O even has more meetings scheduled this week.  However, in the end he will do what he wants anyway.

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Not so fast, Mr. President: There is lots of low-hanging fruit for the plucking

Bottom of Form

The president says any cuts to the federal leviathan would harm women, children and maybe their puppies and kittens — and so far he’s been able to get away with this fib. Now, the government’s own inspectors general are collectively saying: “Not so fast, Mr. President.” These watchdogs serve as “the eyes and ears of Congress embedded within the federal bureaucracy,” and they’ve identified $67 billion in rampant waste, fraud and abuse. In a report Tuesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee collected and tallied the value of all the unimplemented recommendations from the internal auditors. Since President Obama took office in 2009, money-saving ideas have continued to sit on a shelf, collecting dust. Four years ago, there were 10,894 recommended reductions, compared with 16,900 reductions, worth an additional $30 billion, awaiting action today. Since those “figures reflect the most conservative possible accounting” of the number of recommendations, their value is likely to be “significantly higher,” the committee explains. That’s quite a contrast to the endless parade of sky-is-falling scenarios broadcast by the Cabinet during the sequestration fight over a mere $85 billion reduction in the rate of spending growth. The auditors’ $67 billion in savings is low-hanging fruit, ripe for the plucking, that could easily fund the Departments of Energy, Transportation and Interior, the Social Security Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Small Business Administration in their entirety. Not, it goes without saying, that all of them actually deserve full funding.  Appearing Tuesday night on Greta Van Susteren’s “On the Record” show on Fox News Channel, Rep. Darrell E. Issa, the oversight panel’s chairman, says his report only scratches the surface. “We’re looking at about 7 percent of the budget that falls in this category, which means there’s about another $210 billion per year of this kind of waste.”  So are you still buying into the nonsense of tax increases along with budget cuts?

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Chavez Celebrated at SEIU Offices in New York

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 1199 in New York City allowed a celebration of the life of the late socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to be held in their offices Friday.

The event, organized by the pro-Chavez Bolivarian Circle of New York, was held last Friday at 6:30 PM and promoted on Facebook. The event’s Facebook announcement declared that the event was to be held in the auditorium of the 1199 SEIU building on 43rd street in New York City.  Ah! Around us and amongst us - Communist.  That and they have organized virtually all of YOUR government!!

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Chavez -- the man who would be king  By JAMES ZUMWALT

 (UPI) -- A deadly bacteria superbug has been plaguing U.S. health facilities. The seriousness of this "nightmare bacteria" has prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue an alarm. America's best medical minds will determine how to deal with the problem. A devastating superbug also has been plaguing Venezuela. But the reality of its effects will only be fully understood by its people in the aftermath of Hugo Chavez's death as a new president faces the massive economic and social ills the populist president leaves behind.  The socialism Chavez championed during 14 years of rule has proven to be a superbug of devastation. Unfortunately, many of the best Venezuelan minds needed to deal with these problems have left the country. When he took office in 1999, Chavez promised change. He promised to redistribute Venezuela's oil-generated wealth. He promised to fix corruption. He promised to give power to the people. He promised to destroy a government foundation built on capitalism, cutting economic and political ties to the United States. [whoops for a moment there I thought he was talking about Obama] Today, Venezuela suffers one of the world's highest murder rates, double-digit inflation, water and food shortages, a serious downturn in foreign investment, rampant corruption, etc. Ironically, the only recent economic upturn experienced was in April 2012 after a journalist claimed Chavez was dead. Stock values skyrocketed, only to fall when the claim was found to be untrue.

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