Senate Dem Asks South Carolina’s Top Attorney to ‘Call Off the Dogs’
In a phone call Thursday, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., urged South Carolina Republican Attorney General Henry McMaster, the head of a group of 13 GOP state attorneys general who are threatening to file a lawsuit against the Senate health care bill, to reconsider, Politico reported.
A Democratic senator from Nebraska who played a crucial role in getting health care legislation passed in the Senate last month has asked South Carolina’s top attorney to “call off the dogs” — a reference to the state official’s threat to challenge the constitutionality of the bill. Read more.
How Much Did Big Banks Lend to Small Business in ’09?
Subprime lending was a leading factor in the collapse of the economy, and entrepreneurial advocates say small-business lending is crucial to its full resurrection. FOXBusiness.com asked the nation’s big banks: how much did you give the “little guy” in 2009?
Employing more than half of the nation’s nonfarm private workforce and, according to the Labor Department, generating 64% of net new jobs between 1993 and the third quarter of 2008, it is not hard to argue that small businesses are key to an economic recovery in the United States. Read more.
We’re losing faith in Obama’s ability
President Obama’s policies, performance, and attitudes are putting all of us, including his staunchest supporters, at higher levels of risk. The “underwear” bomber incident is just the latest example where I believe the president is not measuring up.
His Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, in whom the president has expressed full confidence, told the American people that the system worked! No it didn’t! Read more.
GOP makes Obama foil in state races
In governor’s races across the country, top GOP candidates are concentrating their attacks on the White House, the surest sign yet that Republicans see opportunity in nationalizing the 2010 election and a departure from the strategy that elected two Republicans to governorships in November.
While Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia both refrained from overt criticism of President Barack Obama in their successful 2009 races, the current crop of GOP gubernatorial contenders seems intent on making the 2010 election a referendum on Obama’s policies. Read more.
More than two years’ income on his Raleigh home was never reported as required
RALEIGH — Former Gov. Mike Easley failed to list income from the rental of his Raleigh home on at least three consecutive annual economic interest statements — a violation of state ethics laws.
The home on East Lake Drive was rented for $1,500 a month for three years while Easley served as governor. Concealing income or failing to fully disclose it on a Statement of Economic Interest is a misdemeanor. Providing false information is a felony. Read More.
Steps Back Towards a Citizen Run Government
Proposed:
Congressional Reform Act of 2010
1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.
A. Two Six year Senate terms
B. Six Two year House terms
C. One Six year Senate term and three Two Year House terms
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work. Read more.
High Maintenance First Lady
First Lady Michelle Obama’s Servant List and Pay Scale.
First Lady Requires More Than Twenty Attendants- Here are their salaries, Names, and Titles.
1. $172,2000 – Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)
2. $140,000 – Frye, Jocelyn C . (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)
3. $113,000 – Rogers, Desiree G (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)
4. $102,000 – Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)
5. $100,000 – Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady) Read More.
Wilmington mayor Saffo says he will not run for N.C. Senate
Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo will not seek New Hanover County’s state Senate seat in 2010, he said Monday afternoon.
“I felt that I had made a commitment to run for mayor of the city, and I needed to fulfill that commitment,” he said.
It was a “very tough decision,” Saffo added. “I was very humbled at the amount of people that thought enough about me to say, ‘Make the run. Read More.
Newt Gingrich: ‘We are not safe’
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday night that Americans are less “safe” than they were a year ago.
During an interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, the former Republican congressman from Georgia blamed a federal bureaucracy that is “so lacking in focus” that even though the father of the accused Christmas Day bomber warned a U.S. embassy about his son, “we couldn’t find a way to stop him.”
“We are not safe. We are in much greater danger than we were a year ago,” Gingrich said, though adding that “it’s not just Bush vs. Obama.” Read More.
Burr: Obama should copy Bush on terror
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr says President Barack Obama’s administration isn’t tough enough on terrorism.
In an interview on the Bill LuMaye radio show on WPTF-AM, Burr said last week that the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing was the result of a “colossal communications failure” between federal agencies that should have prevented the attempted attack.
Obama’s administration has not handled the incident well, Burr said. Read More.
Wake Up America: Senate Ignores Criminal Liability For Bribery
In an effort to take away our freedom and liberty under the guise of “reforming health care,” the Senate has sunk to new lows in its effort to gain favor with an inexperienced, egotistical president.
We have all heard the phrase “the issue isn’t the issue” and so it is with the health care atrocity that this Administration and runaway Congress are forcing us to swallow. Despite the fact that 60 percent of Americans are against these 2000 page tomes that give the government control over one-sixth of our economy and remove our choices, Congress, in its zeal to ensure that President Obama “makes history,” is ignoring us. Is that because they are so enamored with this legislation? I think not. Rather, they are in love with the thoughts of having total control over the American people — wake up, America. These people are leading us down a dangerous path toward socialism and communism because they crave power. Their insatiable hunger has led them to acts that would be considered criminal if you or I performed them. Read more.
Obama, Dems Agree to Closed-Door Health Negotiations
President Obama and congressional Democrats head into another strategy session Wednesday over health care reform after deciding Tuesday night to keep the final negotiations as GOP-free as possible by bypassing the traditional conference committee process.
The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress decided to keep the last leg of talks a closed-door affair. They concluded that the House will work off the Senate’s version, amend it and send it back to the Senate for final passage, according to a House leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private meeting.
The move streamlines the process to avoid Republican efforts to slow it down. Read more.
C-SPAN Challenges Congress to Open Health Care Talks to TV Coverage
The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.
C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open “all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings,” to televised coverage on his network.
“The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety,” he wrote. Read more.
United States Elections – 2010 and 2012
Elections to the United States Senate will be held on November 2, 2010, for at least 36 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate.
Thirty-four of the seats are for six-year terms, beginning January 3, 2011. They will join Senate Class III, which traces its roots back to the Senators who served full six-year terms from March 4, 1789 to March 3, 1795.
The Senate is currently composed of 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. Of the seats expected to be up for election in 2010, 19 are held by Democrats and 18 are held by Republicans. Read more.
Economy Loses 85000 Jobs in December 2009
WASHINGTON – Lack of confidence in the economic recovery led employers to shed a more-than-expected 85,000 net jobs in December even as the unemployment rate held at 10 percent. The rate would have been higher if more people had been looking for work instead of leaving the labor force because they can’t find jobs.
The sharp drop in the work force — 661,000 fewer people — showed that more of the jobless are giving up. Once people stop looking for jobs, they’re no longer counted among the unemployed. Read more.
CIA Bombers Wife Says War Must Go On Against US
ISTANBUL – (AP) The Turkish wife of a Jordanian doctor who killed seven CIA employees in a suicide attackin Afghanistan says her husband was outraged over the treatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Defne Bayrak, the wife of bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, said in an interview with The Associated Press that his hatred of the United States had motivated her husband to sacrifice his life on Dec. 30 in what he regarded as a holy war against the U.S. Read more.
Steele slaps ’singular focus’
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele released a statement Friday reacting to the December unemployment report by attacking President Barack Obama’s “singular focus on enacting his government-run liberal policies.”
Steele pointed to Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-Neb.) recent comment that the White House should have focused on the economy before health care and added his own urging that the president ”put his full and undivided attention on fixing our economy.” Read more.
Geithner Called to Explain AIG Bailout Secrecy
WASHINGTON (AP) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will face a congressional grilling later this month about the suppression of details on deals that funneled billions to big investment banks while he was president of theFederal Reserve Bank of New York.
Lawmakers reacted angrily Friday to revelations in e-mails sent in late 2008 and early 2009 between lawyers for the New York Fed and American International Group Inc. The exchanges show the New York Fed wanted AIG to withhold information about deals that sent billions from the taxpayer bailout of AIG to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Societe Generaleand other major banks. Read More.
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