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Aimless Obama walks alone

2011-10-10T16:44:00.000-04:00

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.

Obama conceded in one television interview recently that Americans are not “better off than they were four years ago” and said in another that the nation had “gotten a little soft.” Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and sparked comparisons to Jimmy Carter, never a good sign.

Blaming the country is political heresy, of course, yet Obama is running out of scapegoats. His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation -- and that was just last week.

The blame game isn’t much of a defense for Solyndra and “Fast and Furious,” the emerging twin scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best.

Obama himself is spending his public time pushing a $450 billion “jobs” bill -- really another stimulus in disguise -- that even Senate Democrats won’t support. He grimly flogged it repeatedly at his Thursday press conference, even though snowballs in hell have a better chance of survival.

If he cracked a single smile at the hour-plus event, I missed it. He seems happy only on the campaign trail, where the adoration of the crowd lifts his spirits.

When it comes to getting America back on track to economic growth, he is running on vapors. Yet he shows no inclination to adopt any ideas other than his own Big Government grab. His itch for higher taxes verges on a fetish.

Harvey Golub, former chairman of American Express, called the “jobs” bill an incoherent mess. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he said that among other flaws, the bill includes an unheard of retroactive tax hike on the holders of municipal bonds.

“Many of us have suspected that economic illiterates were setting the economic policy of this administration,” Golub wrote, adding that the bill “reveals a depth of cluelessness that boggles the mind.”

The public increasingly shares the sentiment. A new Quinnipiac polls finds that 55 percent now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with only 41 percent approving. A mere 29 percent say the economy will improve if the president gets four more years.

The election, unfortunately, is nearly 13 months away.

The way Obama’s behaving, by then we’ll all be talking to portraits of past presidents, asking why this one turned out to be such a flop.

They doth protest too much

Even as desperate Pander-crats, including the president, continue to baby-talk the Wall Street hooligans, some of whom have violently attacked police, Mayor Bloomberg gets the point and tone just right.

“What they’re trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city,” the mayor told radio man John Gambling Friday. “And some of the labor unions, the municipal unions that are participating, their salaries come from the taxes paid by the people they are trying to vilify.”

Sanity also comes from readers. Sheri Rosen said she works downtown, at 111 Broadway, and is sick of the filth and mayhem.

“We work very hard every day for not that much money,” she writes. “We don’t camp out at a park and act like animals by urinating and stealing milk from the coffee vendors that are also trying to make a living.”

She blasted Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Comptroller John Liu for supporting the demonstrators, saying, “True New Yorkers who work hard for their money won’t forget this on Election Day.”

Reader Harold Theurer sees another angle. Noting the passing of Steve Jobs, he wonders how many protesters carrying Apple products understand how those gadgets came to exist.

“What started out as two men in a garage with ideas and passion would have been nothing more than two guys in a garage with ideas and passion had it not been for an IPO on Dec. 12, 1980, when Apple went public at $22 per share,” he writes.

“Big Bad Wall Street raised $101 million for Mr. Jobs to expand his ideas, create jobs and change the landscape of technology. The next time any of the Wall Street occupiers makes an iTune purchase, it can be traced back to some Big Bad Banker’s belief in Mr. Jobs and his company.”

Class dismissed.

AP: Obama disconnects rhetoric, reality

2011-10-10T16:17:00.000-04:00

By ERICA WERNER - The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In President Barack Obama's sales pitch for his jobs bill, there are two versions of reality: The one in his speeches and the one actually unfolding in Washington.

When Obama accuses Republicans of standing in the way of his nearly $450 billion plan, he ignores the fact that his own party has struggled to unite behind the proposal.

When the president says Republicans haven't explained what they oppose in the plan, he skips over the fact that Republicans who control the House actually have done that in detail.

And when he calls on Congress to "pass this bill now," he slides past the point that Democrats control the Senate and were never prepared to move immediately, given other priorities. Senators are expected to vote Tuesday on opening debate on the bill, a month after the president unveiled it with a call for its immediate passage.

To be sure, Obama is not the only one engaging in rhetorical excesses. But he is the president, and as such, his constant remarks on the bill draw the most attention and scrutiny.

The disconnect between what Obama says about his jobs bill and what stands as the political reality flow from his broader aim: to rally the public behind his cause and get Congress to act, or, if not, to pin blame on Republicans.

He is waging a campaign, one in which nuance and context and competing responses don't always fit in if they don't help make the case.

For example, when Obama says his jobs plan is made up of ideas that have historically had bipartisan support, he stops the point there. Not mentioned is that Republicans have never embraced the tax increases that he is proposing to cover the cost of his plan.

Likewise, from city to city, Obama is demanding that Congress act (he means Republicans) while it has been clear for weeks that the GOP will not support all of his bill, to say the least. Individual elements of it may well pass, such as Obama's proposal to extend and expand a payroll tax cut. But Republicans strongly oppose the president's proposed new spending and his plan to raise taxes on millionaires to pay for the package.

The fight over the legislative proposal has become something much bigger: a critical test of the president's powers of persuading the public heading into the 2012 presidential campaign, and of Republicans' ability to deny him a win and reap victory for themselves.

"He knows it's not going to pass. He's betting that voters won't pick up on it, or even if they do they will blame Congress and he can run against the 'do-nothing Congress,'" said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.

John Sides, political science professor at George Washington University, said Obama's approach on the jobs bill is "more about campaigning than governing."

"He's mostly just going around talking about this and drawing contrasts with what the Republicans want and what he wants and not really trying to work these legislative levers he might be able to use to get this passed," Sides said. "That just suggests to me that he is ready to use a failed jobs bill as a campaign message against the Republicans."

The president's opponents aren't exactly laying it all out, either.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tried to force a vote on the bill last week, innocently claiming that the president was entitled to one. McConnell knew full well that the result would be failure for the legislation and an embarrassment for Obama.

House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, claimed that Obama has "given up on the country and decided to campaign full-time" instead of seeking common ground with the GOP. But Boehner neglected to mention that Obama's past attempts at compromise with Republicans often yielded scant results, as Obama himself pointed out.

The approach for Obama, who is seeking a second term in a dismal economy, is far different than the one he took when running for president. He criticized the GOP then, but talked about ending blue-state and red-state America, replacing it with one America, fixing the broken political system, and fundamentally changing Washington.

That ended up being change he could not bring about, and now analysts say Obama may have little choice but to campaign more narrowly by attacking opponents rather than trying to bring people together.

Obama's attempts at compromise with the GOP on the debt ceiling and budget won him little in the way of policy, instead engendering frustration from Democrats who saw him as caving to Republican demands.

The new, combative Obama isn't looking for compromise. He's looking for a win. And if he can't get the legislative victory he says he wants, he has made clear that he's more than willing to take a political win.

It is, he acknowledges, a result his campaign for his jobs bill is designed to achieve.

Talking up the bill in an appearance last month with African-American news websites, Obama said: "I need people to be out there promoting this and pushing this and making sure that everybody understands the details of what this would mean, so that one of two things happen: Either Congress gets it done, or if Congress doesn't get it done, people know exactly what's holding it up."

In a stunning shift, Cain leaps 20 pts ahead of nearest Republican competitor

2011-10-07T16:43:00.001-04:00

International Business Times - Herman Cain holds an astounding 20-point lead over Mitt Romney in a poll of Republican primary voters released Thursday, and he is in a statistical tie with President Obama.

The Zogby Poll, which was conducted from Oct. 3-5, found that 38 percent of Republicans would vote for Cain, a Georgia businessman, if the primary elections were held today. Mitt Romney had 18 percent support, and Rick Perry and Ron Paul were tied with 12 percent support each.

The rest of the candidates were in the low single digits, with Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman claiming 4 percent support each, Michele Bachmann 3 percent, Rick Santorum one percent and Gary Johnson less than one percent.

Cain received 46 percent to Obama's 44 percent in a hypothetical matchup. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, making the race a statistical tie.

The poll reflects a seismic shift since the last debate on Sept. 22. Before that debate, Perry led almost all polls, and Romney was consistently in second place.

But voters were angered by Perry's statement that the children of illegal immigrants should be eligible for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities in Texas, and especially his harsh characterization of anyone who disagreed with that stance: "I don't think you have a heart."

In polls conducted since then, support for Perry has dropped by more than 10 percentage points. His fall made Romney the frontrunner by default, but Republican voters have been far from passionate about the former Massachusetts governor, so they began to look for another alternative.

And so Cain surged from the back of the field to the first tier. First, a Fox News poll showed him in third place, behind Romney and Perry. Then, on Tuesday, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed him tied with Romney for first place. And on Friday, the Zogby poll came out with him 20 points ahead.

"Cain really picked up a lot of those that were leaning Perry," Corry Schiermeyer, the senior vice president for corporate relations at Zogby, told IBTimes. "With Cain actually being reported on more, his profile has risen over the past few weeks, and the more people have learned, the more they have gone toward him.

Schiermeyer attributed the difference between the Zogby results and the results of other recent polls to the fact that Zogby polled only "self-identified likely Republican voters." Some polls include Republicans who may not be likely to vote, or both Republicans and independents, which leads to different numbers.

To say Cain's lead is impressive would be an understatement, but his popularity in national polls may not be indicative of his chances of winning the nomination, David Paleologos, the director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston, Mass. said in an interview with IBTimes.

"We don't have a national Republican primary, [but] when you look at a national Republican primary poll, a state like Texas, where Cain is showing more strength, is going to have much more weight than states like Iowa and New Hampshire," Paleologos said. "I think that can be deceiving, given that the early primaries have so much more media attention and really get a chance to springboard a candidate into the national spotlight."

Cain has not been campaigning much in Iowa or New Hampshire, and Paleologos said that polls he and his colleagues at Suffolk University conducted showed Cain doing poorly in those states, which hold the first votes of the primary season.

Meteoric rises are nothing new in this race, and many candidates who have risen quickly, like Perry and Donald Trump, have faded just as quickly.

Cain is clearly a stronger candidate than he was a few weeks ago, but at the same time, Republican voters have been fickle, jumping on a new candidate's bandwagon and then jumping back off.

"Many in the Republican Party are just not overly excited about all of their choices, so when they have something it seems like they're excited about, they latch onto them," Schiermeyer said. "I wouldn't discount Romney just because this week's poll came in with Cain ahead 20 percent."

Paleologos added, "I think what Republicans are probably going to be looking at is staying power and who has been competitive throughout. Is Romney going to be the turtle of the race, and you're going to have all these rabbits running ahead and falling behind?"

redstate: Mitt has to convince us that he's not Mitt

2011-10-06T16:25:00.001-04:00

Jon Stewart offers the critique of Mitt Romney that most of us at RedState have been offering since 2007. Politically, he was at home in Massachusetts and I believe if he wins the GOP nomination — and I take it as a given that if he wins the nomination he will will the presidency — he will do more damage to conservatism than any president in the modern era. This is not to say I won’t vote for him but I will do so because the damage to my political cause pales beside the damage Barack Obama is doing to my country.
- redstate.com

Occupy Hypocrisy

2011-10-06T16:22:00.000-04:00

Biden: "Country is not moving in the right direction"

2011-10-06T16:12:00.000-04:00

Joe Biden, speaking at a conference earlier today, said what a lot of Americans have on their minds. "A significant majority of the American people believe that the country is not moving in the right direction," Biden said. "That is never a good place to be going into reelection whether it’s your fault or not your fault. It’s almost sometimes irrelevant."

Poll: ANY republican: 47%, Obama: 41%

2011-10-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

A generic Republican now holds a six-point advantage over President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 match-up for the week ending Sunday, October 2.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds the generic Republican earning 47% support, while the president picks up 41% of the vote. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

Last week, the generic Republican and the president were essentially tied. Since weekly tracking began in early May, the Republican has earned 43% to 49% support, while the president has picked up 40% to 45% of the vote.

Rasmussen Reports will provide new data on this generic matchup each week until the field of prospective Republican nominees narrows to a few serious contenders.

President Obama leads most of the current GOP hopefuls aside from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is not running, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who he’s essentially tied with. For a complete listing of all the most current matchups, click here.

Rasmussen Reports has launched a new subscription service providing have access to more than 20 exclusive stories each week. It’s just $3.95 a month or $34.95 a year. Check it out with a three-day free trial subscription.

The survey of 3,500 Likely Voters was conducted September 26-October 2, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

So far this year, the president’s overall job approval, measured in the Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, has ranged from a low of 42% to a high of 51%. If the election were held today, a president’s approval rating is a good indicator of how much support he would receive. Any incumbent earning under 50% of the vote is considered politically vulnerable.

The generic GOP candidate leads among male voters by 13 points and runs even with the president among female voters.

Voters under 30 continue to favor Obama, while their elders like the Republican better.

Greece has gone on strike to protest the shabby condition in which it finds itself

2011-10-05T15:38:00.002-04:00

Riot police fired teargas at stone-throwing youths in central Athens on Wednesday as thousands of striking Greek state sector workers marched against cuts the government says are needed to save the nation from bankruptcy.

Youths broke up marble paving slabs in central Syntagma Square and hurled the chunks at police in full riot gear. The police responded by firing teargas grenades and chasing the protesters through the square and into surrounding streets.

Flights were grounded, schools shut and government offices closed in Greece’s first nationwide walkout in months.

Labour leaders call it the start of a campaign to derail emergency austerity steps launched last month by a government that has already imposed two years of tax hikes and wage cuts. The government now says the economy, which was to have resumed growth next year, will instead shrink by another 2.5 percent.

Greece’s worsening debt crisis poses a risk to the euro currency and the international financial system. Reforms to Greek finances took on a new urgency this week after the government announced it would miss its 2011 deficit target.

Thousands of state workers, pensioners and students had gathered peacefully, beating drums and waving banners reading “Erase the debt!” and “The rich must pay”. They marched into the square outside parliament where lawmakers were debating holding a referendum on the response to the fiscal crisis.

Reuters saw one bare-chested man covered in his own blood, rescued by bystanders after clashing with demonstrators. Protesters tried to storm an Economy Ministry building, shattering heavy glass at the entrance.

Sporadic scuffles between baton-wielding police and stone-throwing youths continued for several hours.

Police said at least two police and two civilians were hurt and 12 people detained. Violence was far milder than in June, when more than 100 people were injured in battles between demonstrators and police in Syntagma Square.

The strikes forced hospitals to run on emergency staff and the closure of some state schools. Trains were halted, and more than 400 flights were cancelled at Athens airport. The Athens Acropolis and major museums were shut.

Despite its new measures demanded by the EU and IMF, the government was forced to announce this week it would still fall short of its 2011 deficit target by nearly 2 billion euros, rattling global markets. Polls show nearly four of five Greeks expect a default on the massive national debt within months.

“We want this government out. They deceived us. They promised to tax the rich and help the poor, but they didn’t,” said Sotiris Pelekanos, 39, an engineer and one of the striking workers gathered in central Athens. “I don’t care if we go bankrupt. We are already bankrupt.”

Greece’s main labour unions ADEDY and GSEE expect hundreds of thousands of people to walk off the job.

“They are not trying to save Greece. They are just killing workers,” ADEDY Vice President Ilias Vrettakos said in a rally speech. “They should get the money from the rich, not from us.”

Private sector workers did not participate in the strike but will take part in a bigger general strike on Oct. 19. Many in the Greek private sector resent perks of state workers, who are protected from layoffs by the constitution.

Scramble to protect banks

Greece’s announcement this week that it would not meet its 2011 deficit target has put in doubt the viability of a 109 billion euro bailout agreed in July—the second huge bailout in two years. If that deal must be renegotiated, European banks that hold Greek debt could suffer a heavy blow.

EU officials are scrambling to protect banks from a repeat of the crisis that froze the world financial system in 2008.

They have postponed until mid-November a decision on whether to approve the next 8 billion euro ($10.7 billion) tranche of bailout loans, giving negotiators more time to press the government to enact promised reforms.

A senior official from the “troika” of EU, IMF and European Central Bank negotiators in Athens since last week, told Reuters the tranche would probably be approved, but only if the government proves first it can enact reforms.

In more bad economic news on Wednesday, Greece’s statistics agency produced revised numbers showing that recession began nearly four years ago, a year earlier than previously thought.

Issa to Holder: Admit you knew

2011-10-05T15:24:00.002-04:00

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is turning up the heat on Eric Holder, demanding the attorney general “come forward and at least admit” he knew about Operation Fast and Furious long before he told Congress he learned about the gun program.

The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Wednesday that Holder “failed” to properly answer questions during a May House Judiciary Committee hearing about when he first learned about the controversial gun program.

“He may or may not have perjured himself, but he certainly failed to answer my questions and [Rep.] Jason Chaffetz’s questions about what did he know — he implied he knew nothing when in fact he at least knew something,” Issa said on Fox News. “We certainly would like to believe that he was disingenuous but not lying. The fact is, the people who are making those statements on his behalf are lying on his behalf, period.”

The California Republican insisted that Holder “had to know” about Fast and Furious from his weekly briefings, citing at least seven separate memos that he said included information about the program. In addition, Holder’s “number two and number three” at the DoJ were “intimately involved,” Issa argued.

“This is a man … who, carefully, if he doesn’t like the question, answers it the way he wants to,” he said. “He had every obligation to say, ‘I may not have known about all the details but of course I knew about Fast and Furious because I was briefed somewhat on it weekly.’ He needs to come forward and at least admit that because right now, what he said is untrue and he needs to clarify before the committee.”

Repeatedly during the interview, the congressman invoked Brian Terry — a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was gunned down in December 2010 by a weapon later linked to the botched gun program — saying his family deserves closure.

“They need to know that the people responsible for Fast and Furious, all the way to the top, have to be held accountable. This was a phony, stupid operation that led to 2,000-plus weapons getting in the hands of the worst of the worst,” Issa said.

A DoJ official told POLITICO on Wednesday that Holder’s testimony to Congress earlier this year was “consistent and truthful,” noting that the attorney general admitted to becoming aware of the “questionable tactics employed in Fast and Furious” in early 2011.

The weekly briefings presented to Holder “provide general overviews and status updates on policy and legislative issues, public events, news clips, ongoing cases and investigations as well as key filings, hearings and expected rulings,” and none of them referenced the “controversial tactics” used in the guns program, the official said.

They added: “None of the handful of entries in 2010 regarding the Fast and Furious suggested there was anything amiss with that investigation requiring leadership to take corrective action or commit to memory this particular operation prior to the disturbing claims raised by ATF agents in the early part of 2011.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called on President Barack Obama to appoint a special counsel to determine if Holder had “misled” Congress during his testimony.

“Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel,” Smith said.

Issa suggested Wednesday that the process of appointing a special counsel would take too long.

“One of the challenges … is if they say they want a special counsel and then the Justice Department stonewalls the special counsel the way they have us for almost a year, what ends up happening is they push it until after the election and then perhaps we really never get our justice,” he said, “for this wrongdoing that led to Brian Terry and others dying on both sides of the border.”

Half-Mil Tab for Michelle & Crew for Africa trip

2011-10-05T14:33:00.002-04:00

Q: How much does it cost taxpayers to fly First Lady Michelle Obama, her two daughters and her mother, a niece and a nephew, a hairstylist and makeup artists to South Africa and Botswana to give a few speeches, meet Nelson Mandela, and enjoy a safari on a private game preserve?

A: Nearly half a million dollars, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) concerning Obama's June 21-27 journey.

Judicial Watch said the U.S. Air Force provided a C-32 - a Boeing 757 modified by the military for the purpose of flying big-wigs around the world - to fly the First Lady and her entourage to and from Africa, at a cost of $424,142. Another $928.44 was listed as the cost of providing meals for the 21 people who made the trip

The Obama daughters were listed on the manifest as "senior staff."

“This trip was as much an opportunity for the Obama family to go on a safari as it was a trip to conduct government business,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This junket wasted tax dollars and the resources of our overextended military."

No wonder they had to sue to pry loose this information.

The costs documented by Judicial Watch do not include costs for security, transportation, etc. - those are extra.

Van Jones on America's Uprising: It's Going Be an Epic Battle

2011-10-05T13:44:00.001-04:00

As the grassroots sit-ins and marches that originated as Occupy Wall Street spread to other cities, Van Jones, lead evangelist for the American Dream movement, took the stage Monday at a Washington, DC hotel where organizers of the institutional element of the progressive movement converged at Take Back the American Dream. Jones voiced his support for the spontaneous Wall Street uprising (which he spearheaded & organized) and for the U.S. Marines who agreed, he said, to protect the protesters while wearing dress blues.

Jones said that after he left the White House, where he served as a green jobs adviser to President Barack Obama, he occupied his time studying how the Tea Party movement came into existence and marshaled its power. Jones had been a target of Tea Party ire, stoked by Glenn Beck on his Fox News Channel platform, back when Beck served as the de facto community organizer for media baron Rupert Murdoch, before Beck fell out of the mogul's favor.

Jones explained the Tea Party's "leaderless" model to the activists with a PowerPoint presentation showing how the instigators of the Tea Party movement -- leaders of groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity -- didn't so much create a top-down organization as they did a network that fostered the development of local Tea Party organizations by local activists, who then took ownership of their own corners of the movement. "The Tea Party is an open-source brand," Jones explained, "that 3,528 affiliates use; none of them own it."

Van Jones: if you can't beat em, join em

2011-10-05T13:43:00.001-04:00

Speaking at the beginning of the three-day “Take Back the American Dream” conference in Washington, Jones said liberals should follow the tea party example because following Obama’s election, liberals “went from hopey to mopey” and now have “low self-esteem.”

“We have the wrong theory of the presidency. . .[while tea party groups] are very adult about charisma and leadership,” he said.

The Wall Street protests, Jones said, are a good beginning for a liberal movement, but need to work on a more cohesive message and organized approach.

Jones suggested a movement of his own to fill that hole, a progressive “support center”called “Rebuild the Dream” he modeled after the tea party’s support centers.

Van Jones: steal TP strategy

2011-10-03T13:47:00.001-04:00

Making no secret of his disdain for Tea Party ideals and ideas, ex-White House adviser Van Jones on Monday nonetheless urged liberal activists to "steal" the Tea Party's playbook.

The former "green jobs" adviser, speaking at the top of a three-day conference in the nation's capital designed to galvanize liberal activists, spoke interchangeably in harsh and glowing terms about the Tea Party movement. He described their cause as "the worst" and "silly" and other unflattering adjectives. At the same time, he said progressives can learn from what the Tea Party has accomplished, as he tried to steer the crowd toward his own umbrella group which he's been working on since the summer.

Using the pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps tone President Obama has employed in recent days, Jones pointed to the Tea Party movement as an example of grassroots activism done right. He suggested liberals have relied too much on one person, Obama, to fix everything.

Only instead of taking to the streets in the name of lower taxes and less regulation, he urged the crowd to model its own Tea Party-style movement in the name of the middle class.

"If we can just be as warm and sharing and kind as the Tea Party, we might be able to do something for our country," Jones said Monday.

Tea Party backs Mourdock for senate

2011-09-29T13:51:00.000-04:00

The Tea Party has placed a target on Indiana Senator Richard Lugar. A national Tea Party organization endorsed Lugar primary opponent Richard Mourdock today but this is all about Lugar.

The Tea Party Express, a national organization, sent representatives from California and Georgia to give Richard Mourdock a $2500 check. But they had little to say about the Mourdock candidacy. "We are going to work to retire Dick Lugar from the U.S. Senate," said spokesperson Amy Kremer.

Instead their focus, much like that of Indiana Tea Party members who endorsed Mourdock on Saturday, is the incumbent Senator Lugar. They think he's not conservative enough. "One of the things about Senator Lugar is he has continuously kicked us in the teeth," says Kremer, "kicked this Tea Party movement in the teeth. I think he thinks we're going to go away, thinks we’re just the little people that he knows better than us."

Mourdock still doesn't want to be called a Tea Party candidate but he'll take the endorsement no matter how it's presented. "This is a national race," he said. "That's again why this endorsement is important. Senate races are national races."

The Lugar campaign, meantime, accuses the Tea Party of spreading misinformation and downplays its endorsement. When asked if they would rather have the Tea Party endorsement, spokesman David Willkie said, "Oh, you'd rather have everybody's endorsement as well but that's not always the case and certainly in a case like this, there are many flavors of tea that are out there." This flavor will provide Richard Mourdock not only with money but also with volunteer help and some independent advertising.

The Lugar campaign also announced an endorsement today and it also helps solidify his position as the establishment candidate. It comes from former Secretary of State George Schultz who, in a statement, compares Lugar to Ronald Reagan calling him tough and sensible at the same time.

Tea Party conservative blocks pipeline regulation bill

2011-09-28T13:52:00.001-04:00

Tea Party conservative Sen. Rand Paul is blocking pipeline legislation intended to regulate natural gas pipelines like the ruptured San Bruno line.

Paul, a first-term Kentucky Republican whose father, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. is running for president, is using his prerogative as a senator to stymie action because he is opposed in principle to adding regulations and expanding the federal government.

"Sen. Paul doesn't think new regulations and the creation of dozens of bureaucratic positions should be swept through without sufficient debate and vote," said his spokeswoman, Moira Bagley.

Paul has used his Senate privileges to put a hold on the Pipeline Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011, which blocks further action on the bill despite nearly unanimous bipartisan support in Congress for toughening federal regulations.

The Tea Party's distributed model

2011-09-28T13:48:00.001-04:00

Without question, the tea party movement has more passion and energy than any other force in American politics today. But it also has no coherent central organization or plan, raising questions about its potential impact on the 2012 elections.

"They are the most powerful emotional force in American politics," said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, "but they're disorganized and have no long-term strategy."

Tea party loyalists proudly concede that they're a diffuse, diverse bunch who are bound by a commitment to smaller, less intrusive government. They abhor government authority that's too big and dictatorial. They even recoil at the notion of any hierarchical structure controlling their own effort.

"That's part of the beauty of the movement," said Vincent Harris, a Republican consultant who's also based in Austin.

There are three prominent national organizations that pledge allegiance to the tea party _Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots — as well as dozens of local groups that may or may not be affiliated with any of them.

There's little evidence that these groups want to band together to elect like-minded candidates. They seem to include too many folks like Jeff Luecke, a co-organizer of the Dubuque (Iowa) Tea Party.

"We don't follow any of those national groups," he said. "We like the fact that we're not taking orders."

Boehner to get 2012 Tea Party challenger

2011-09-20T13:50:00.000-04:00

Tea Party leaders who have been pushing for a primary opponent against House Speaker John Boehner in 2012 for not keeping a campaign promise to cut more federal spending are getting their wish.

Tea Party activist David Lewis, a 26-year-old married father, announced Friday that he will challenge the Ohio Republican. But Lewis is mounting a protest candidacy on a single issue: Boehner’s support of a federal budget that provided funding to Planned Parenthood.

Lewis plans to unveil graphic anti-abortion ads on his website Monday.

“I’m not delusional. I don’t know if I have a chance at beating the speaker of the House,” Lewis told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “But what I can do is show the Ohio voters that Boehner has a box full of empty rhetoric. He doesn’t really vote for his convictions. He’s an establishment Republican. He doesn’t believe in the Tea Party. He doesn’t really believe in the pro-life issues.”

Lewis doesn’t live in Boehner’s district now; he lives in Rep. Jean Schmidt's district. But he told the newspaper that he would move there if he wins the primary.

Boehner’s office declined to comment to the newspaper on Lewis’ candidacy.

Deval Patrick balks at attributing racism to Tea Party

2011-09-16T13:54:00.000-04:00

Deval Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts and a close friend of the first black president of the United States, would not say today if he felt, like famed African-American actor Morgan Freeman, racism is motivating Tea Party opposition to Barack Obama.

“I can tell you that it’s clear from the evidence that the, ‘To heck with the interests of the common good, whatever we need to do to derail this presidency,’ has characterized some if not all Tea Party behavior in the United States. There’s no doubt about it,” the governor said this morning during his monthly appearance on WTKK-FM.

When co-host Jim Braude pushed to see if Patrick attributed that behavior to racism, the governor added: “Whatever the reason. I remember, I don’t know if it was a year, or a year-and-a -half ago, and I described some of this behavior as ‘seditious.’ Remember that? Because, to me, no matter who the president is, at a time of crisis, our job as patriots is to come together and figure out how to help each other out of this crisis. And the notion that the singular focus of the hard right today is to defeat this president, even if there is an idea he puts forward to help – that they used to support – is incredibly worrisome to me and a very different political climate, I think, than we’ve been dealing with for a long time.”

Asked again if it betrayed racism, Patrick said: “I don’t know. I’ve told you before that one of the curses of racism in this country is that you’re always asking yourself if the stuff that goes wrong is on account of race. I hope it’s not.”

Patrick served as the Justice Department’s chief civil rights officer during the Clinton administration.

Freeman played apartheid opponent and former South Africa President Nelson Mandela in the movie “Invictus.”

Appearing last week on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” Freeman said of the Tea Party movement: “Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we can to get this black man outta here.”’

When Morgan suggested the Tea Party’s motivations may be more political than racial, Freeman replied: “It is a racist thing.”

The actor also said the Tea Party agenda “just shows the weak, dark, underside of America. We’re supposed to be better than that.”

WashPost: What is the tea party? A primer

2011-09-15T13:57:00.000-04:00

Washington Post
Tuesday night's Republican primaries reaffirmed the strength of the "tea party" movement. But what is the tea party? It's harder to define than it sounds.

The movement began in February of 2009 as a reaction against the bailout of Wall Street banks and President Obama's stimulus package. Many say CNBC's Rick Santelli helped spark the organized protests with a televised rant against against government spending, but conservative activists had already been organizing around the "tea party" idea online. Supporters say the first nationwide Tea Party protest took place on February 27, 2009, with small, coordinated events occurring in more than 40 cities. August. They were inspired by the Boston Tea Party, but many participants also used the word TEA as an acronym standing for "Taxed Enough Already."

The protests continued through the year. On April 15, 2009 (the income tax filing deadline), there were more than 750 protests across the country. Fox News personalities promoted the events in advance and then covered them extensively. FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group run by lobbyist and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, helped fund the protests. The Web site Tea Party Patriots encouraged supporters to be aggressive at Democrats' town hall meetings that summer.

Also that summer, the bus tour Tea Party Express (TPE) was launched, backed by longtime Republican operatives. The tour's sponsors were the Our Country Deserves Better PAC (formed in 2008 to oppose Obama), and Americans for Prosperity (launched by oil and manufacturing billionaire David Koch). Americans for Prosperity also provided tea party activists with lists of elected officials to target and helped them with strategy, online coordination and training.

There was some friction between TPE and Tea Party Patriots; the latter did not want to be considered a Republican-backed group. "As an organization, we do our best to be completely nonpartisan," said Mark Meckler, a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. "That's one of things that's allowed us to survive when we were called Republican tools. Tea Party Patriots are very dissatisfied with the Republican Party -- we have nothing against Our Country Deserves Better PAC, but they raise money for Republicans." However, Rolling Stone linked Tea Party Patriots to Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, which they also tied back to Republican campaigns against health-care reform under President Clinton.

On September 12, 2009, tea party groups from around the country converged on Washington for a massive protest. While counts were controversial, ABC News estimated the crowd size at 60,000 to 70,000. Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck had instigated the idea of a 9/12 rally back in March, with the launch of "the 912 Project." Tea Party Patriots was a co-sponsor.

A defining moment for the tea party was the special election in New York's 23rd congressional district on November 3, 2009. Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, aided by TPE and by Sarah Palin, knocked moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava out of the race in October. (Hoffman went on to lose to Democrat Bill Owens, who got Scozzafava's endorsement.)

Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that has been supporting conservative candidates for the past decade, joined with the tea party to back Hoffman. They also endorsed hard-line conservative Sharron Angle in Nevada, helping her win the Republican Senate primary. Group members told The Post their goal was to capitalize on the movement, although their roots are decidedly elite.

In January, tea party activists helped Republican Scott Brown win a special election for the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in traditionally blue Massachusetts. Tea Party Express spent about $350,000 in Massachusetts to help Brown win. (He has since angered some tea party activists by supporting President Obama's financial reform.)

On February 4, 2010, 600 tea party activists gathered in Nashville for the first Tea Party Convention, organized by the Web site Tea Party Nation. Palin was the keynote speaker.

Republican leaders began trying to use the party to rally opposition to health-care legislation and generate support for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in particular has embraced the tea party. But some Republicans remain wary, worried that tea party candidates could prove hard to manage if they are elected.

In March of 2010, conservative lawmakers held a rally on the Capitol against the health-care bill. Tea party protesters were accused of spitting on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) and using racist and homophobic slurs.

Partly in response to the negative coverage, tea party groups formed a federation in April 2010 to better organize and coordinate publicity. "It's an evolution," tea party activist Mark Skoda told the L.A. Times. "Not an organization. We're not co-opting a movement. We're not creating a new leadership structure."

In advance of another round of April 15 protests, some tea party organizers wrote a new "Contract from America," culled from online submissions with the help of Dick Armey.

Palin and the Tea Party Express had another major victory in August of 2010, when Joe Miller beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski to secure the Republican Senate nomination in Alaska.

The group put $600,000 into "Liberal Lisa" radio and television ads, which helped define Miller's opponent. And while Palin did not campaign for Miller, she and former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman recorded effective 11th-hour robocalls for him.
Delaware's primary on Tuesday split tea party groups, with some urging supporters to think about electability as well as conservative ideology. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe said his organization decided to stay out of that primary because "we're not convinced that Christine O'Donnell can win." "We're not sure what she stands for," said David Keating, executive director of Club for Growth. And in New Hampshire, Palin endorsed former attorney general Kelly Ayotte, who on Tuesday beat out a tea party conservative to claim the GOP nomination in the Senate race.

A TPE spokesperson told Salon an e-mail list of more than 400,000 reliable conservative donors has helped them raise over $5 million this cycle.

Domain Name Roulette

2011-09-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

There’s no hotter name in politics right now than the Tea Party. But anyone seized with a desire for smaller government who visits teaparty.com won’t find angry activists in tricorn hats spouting Thomas Jefferson. Instead, they’ll land on the website of a Canadian rock band of the same name that pioneered a style of Middle Eastern fusion known as “Moroccan roll” and broke up six years ago. This causes endless confusion for the millions of people who Google “Tea Party” each month. It’s no picnic for the band members, either. “So much damage has been done to our name by the political movement that we’re considering selling,” says Stuart Chatwood, The Tea Party’s bassist.

He and his band mates may feel a little better about the rise of the right wing if they put the domain name up for auction. With so many Presidential candidates, political operatives, and interest groups vying to capitalize on the Tea Party brand, there could be a bidding war. “Last cycle, Barack Obama raised $500 million online,” says Warren Adelman, president of GoDaddy.com, the domain registrar and Web hosting company. “If you look at the money being talked about this time around—campaigns raising $1 billion—it’s easy to expect teaparty.com to go for well over $1 million.”

That would be a handsome reward for a name chosen largely on a whim when the group got together in 1990. “Tea Party was a euphemism the Beat poets used for getting high and writing poetry and vibing with each other,” Chatwood says. The band registered the site in 1993 and kept it through eight albums and several world tours. In 2005 the lead singer split (“creative differences”), and the site has mostly been dormant since.

Then last year the band started to receive an increasing number of offers to buy the domain, mostly from obscure political groups and investors. The site has a lot to offer: It appears high in Google’s (GOOG) rankings even though it is rarely updated. It’s the obvious destination for direct-navigation traffic—typing a URL directly into a browser’s address field—believed to constitute as much as 15 percent of all Net traffic. The site has what those in the industry call great “mindshare.”

A sum of $1 million would put the musicians in elite company. Only a few dozen domain names have sold for that much or more, including sex.com ($13 million), vodka.com ($3 million), and poker.com ($1 million). The key to a big payday is marketing and timing. “Domain names are Internet real estate,” says Marc Ostrofsky, author of Get Rich Click! and an entrepreneur who bought Business.com for $150,000 in 1995 and sold it four years later for $7.5 million. “A good way to think about them is like tenants in a shopping mall. You’ve got your anchor tenants like Business.com and mutualfunds.com, and then you’ve got seasonal guys who come and go like teaparty.com.” Ostrofsky cites the cautionary tale of birdflu.com, worth a fortune when fears of contagion peaked several years ago. The owner didn’t sell, and the value plummeted when public attention moved on.

Teaparty.com is probably approaching its maximum value. The good news for the band is that there is no shortage of potential suitors: the Republican Presidential candidates; conservative political action committees; a wealthy Tea Party backer (the Koch brothers, perhaps?); a mischievous Democratic group. “The timing of this sale couldn’t be more brilliant,” says Stephen K. Bannon, the former Goldman Sachs (GS) investment banker who directed a trilogy of films about the Tea Party (including this summer’s Sarah Palin biopic) and is considering acquiring teaparty.com. “It could cause a lot of trouble if it fell into the wrong hands.” And that’s just in the world of politics. “If you had guts and worked in the marketing department at Lipton Tea (UN),” Adelman suggests, “you could take advantage of the interest to drive a huge marketing campaign.”

Aware that opportunity is fleeting, the band is mulling whether to sell, rent, or partner with someone to develop teaparty.com. One factor complicating the decision: The Tea Party temporarily reunited for a successful 11-city tour this past summer. In February they’ll kick off another run in Australia. “These musicians have a great opportunity to cash out,” Adelman says. “And if they ever decide to reunite for good, they can always just mildly alter their domain name—and enjoy their profits in the meantime.”

The band members also are trying to figure out how much their own politics should factor into the decision. “We’ve considered lending the name to Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart to have them dispel some of the stuff that the Tea Party says,” says Chatwood. “As Canadians we’re somewhat sensitive to all the criticism of socialized medicine.” An ideal outcome, he suggests, would be for George Soros or Arianna Huffington to swoop in with a strong offer. But it seems likelier that the top bidders will be looking to develop an invaluable fundraising portal for a Republican candidate or political group. Nothing has been ruled out. “We’ve got families,” Chatwood says.

CNN Poll: Perry on top when it comes to electability

2011-09-12T13:55:00.001-04:00

Hours before the start of the first-ever CNN/Tea Party Republican debate, a new national survey indicates that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is maintaining his lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

And according to a CNN/ORC International Poll, what appears to be Perry's greatest strength - the perception among Republicans that he is the candidate with the best chance to beat President Barack Obama in 2012 - seems to be exactly what the GOP rank and file are looking for.

On Monday, Sept. 12th, CNN will broadcast the "Tea Party Republican Debate," live from Tampa, Florida at 8 p.m. ET. Follow all the issues and campaign news leading up to the debate on CNNPolitics.com and @cnnpolitics on Twitter.

The survey, released Monday morning, indicates that 30 percent of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP support Perry for their party's nomination, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 18 percent. Romney, who's making his second bid for the White House, had been leading the list of Republican candidates in the national polls, but since Perry launched his campaign a month ago he's jumped ahead of Romney to capture the top spot.

The poll's Monday morning release comes a few hours before CNN teams up with the Tea Party Express and tea party groups from all 50 states to put on a presidential debate that will be held at the Florida State Fairgrounds just outside Tampa.

"Perry's support comes mostly from Republicans who support the tea party movement, although he has a statistically insignificant edge among non-tea party Republicans as well," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

According to the survey, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is at 15 percent. The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has flirted with a presidential bid, but hasn't taken any concrete steps to launch a campaign.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who's making his third run for the White House, is at 12 percent. Every other candidate is in single digits.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who was at 10 percent in the last CNN poll, now stands at four percent.

With Palin out of the running, the headline stays the same: Perry 32 percent, Romney 21 percent, Paul 13 percent and all other candidates, including Bachmann, in single digits.

"Perry doesn't simply have the most support in a hypothetical ballot - he also tops the list of GOP candidates on every personal quality tested," adds Holland.

Thirty-six percent, for example, see him as the strongest leader in the field, with Romney second at 21 percent. According to the poll, 35 percent say Perry is the Republican candidate most likely to get the economy moving again, with Romney in second at 26 percent.

Nearly three in ten say that Perry is the candidate who is most likely to fight for his beliefs, with Palin in second place at 23 percent and, significantly, Romney in a distant tie for fourth at just 11 percent.

But Perry's biggest strength may be the electability factor, with 42 percent saying he has the best chance of beating Obama next year. Some 26 percent say Romney has the best chance of defeating the president.

"That may go a very long way toward explaining his rise in the polls, since three-quarters of all Republicans say they would prefer a candidate who can beat President Obama over one who agrees with them on major issues," says Holland.

Obama's Failed Gamble

2011-07-12T12:02:00.000-04:00

The Financial Times of London

Amid disturbing signs that the US recovery has stalled, President Barack Obama took a huge gamble in his approach to the debt-ceiling talks last week. Believing he had an understanding with John Boehner, leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, he declared he wanted a $4,000bn “grand bargain” on the budget. Barely a day later, Mr Boehner said the deal was off. By Sunday evening, with talks about to resume at the White House, the president’s gambit appeared to have failed.

[NOTE: "$4,000bn" is English terminology for US $4 Trillion. This article appeared in an English paper. - Scott A.]

The weak economy makes a budget breakthrough all the more urgent. Jobs figures released on Friday were shockingly bad. They show that the US unemployment rate has risen again, to 9.2 per cent. In June, net job creation all but stopped. Even if uncertainty over the fiscal outlook is not the main reason for the setback, it certainly is not helping.

Quite what Mr Obama was thinking – and where things go from here – is unclear. Was his intervention a tactical feint, to weaken his Republican opponents? Was it a sudden conversion to the case for fiscal consolidation? What did the president expect to achieve?

Whatever else the policy was, it was new. Until recently Treasury officials had believed that the big fiscal issues could not be resolved with the debt-ceiling clock running down. After standing aside for months, Mr Obama took the opposite approach: nothing short of a grand bargain would work. He even promised to veto a stopgap measure. Liberal Democrats were stunned, because savings of more than $4,000bn cannot be found without changing Social Security and Medicare, which the party wants to keep off-limits. Mr Obama was offering these programmes up for cuts.

In return, he demanded movement from Republicans on revenues. This appeased few Democrats, much as they want to see taxes rise as part of a long-term budget solution, because the president was ready to settle for a ratio of three dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of extra revenue. These are proportions that a moderate Republican might prefer, if there were any such thing as a moderate Republican.

Many Democrats concluded that Mr Obama was preparing to reward the enemy, yet again, for its obduracy. With no shred of intellectual justification, and controlling just one house of Congress, the Republicans say, “No tax increases, ever” – and Mr Obama, instead of resisting, moves three-quarters of the way toward their position. Merely for the sake of appearing to take charge, he all but surrenders.

Then what happened? Mr Boehner’s House Republicans tell their leader they will settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender. The modest revenue increases envisaged by Mr Obama are still too much. The president tried for a bold solution that would have reflected well on both him and Mr Boehner. Liberal Democrats and, most crucially, rank-and-file Republicans in the House, were having none of it. For the moment, the president and the speaker of the House look equally impaired.

Could Mr Obama’s calculations have been more devious than this? Could this breakdown have been the White House plan all along? A theory to this effect is circulating. Maybe the president decided that the debt talks were going to fail anyway, and his main concern was to make sure that Republicans got the blame when they did.

Perhaps Mr Obama was pulling what Paul Krugman of the New York Times called an anti-Corleone: make them an offer they can’t accept. This tactic always had a fair chance of succeeding, because of the GOP’s mulishness on taxes. There was a fair prospect that the Republicans would reject even modest extra revenues, regardless of the spending-cut prize – even defying their own leaders to do it. And so they have.

But there is a catch, of course, even if the plan is working out: the cost of blaming a debt-ceiling breakdown on Republicans is a debt-ceiling breakdown. I doubt you could call plotting such an outcome, if that is what the president is doing, responsible leadership.

I think it more plausible that the president was sincere – far too late, but sincere nonetheless. By intervening in the budget talks and staking his own reputation on a dramatic new proposal, he hoped to break the stalemate. He knew he risked his party’s anger by putting entitlement reform, which is necessary, on the table. By doing so, he hoped to force Republicans to soften their resistance to tax increases, which are also necessary. A more balanced approach to long-term fiscal restraint would be possible – and if all went well, Mr Obama would get the credit.

It was too little leadership, too late. To make this strategy succeed, Mr Obama needed the pressure of public opinion to force Republicans to compromise. That pressure is still too weak, and the time to fix this is running out fast. Mr Obama has infuriated much of his party – again. And he has failed to budge a pathologically intransigent Republican party – again. He has come to a moment that could settle the fate of his presidency.

Does he press on for the big deal, fighting for public support at this absurdly late hour, risking even more? Or does he climb down from his threat to veto a smaller measure, settle on terms dictated by the GOP, and look still further diminished? Neither choice looks promising. Meanwhile, the debt-ceiling clock runs down.

Author: clive.crook@gmail.com

Defense Secretary Gates: Libya Did Not Pose Threat to U.S., Was Not 'Vital National Interest' to Intervene

2011-03-29T12:30:00.001-04:00

By JOSHUA MILLER, ABC News

3/28/2011

White House Says Nobody Knows When U.S Military Operation in Libya Will End

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Libya did not pose a threat to the United States before the U.S. began its military campaign against the North African country.

On "This Week," ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, "Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?"

"No, no," Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, their first since the Libya operation began. "It was not -- it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about. The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake."

Gates explained that there was more at stake. "There was another piece of this though, that certainly was a consideration. You've had revolutions on both the East and the West of Libya," he said, emphasizing the potential wave of refugees from Libya could have destabilized Tunisia and Egypt.

"So you had a potentially significantly destabilizing event taking place in Libya that put at risk potentially the revolutions in both Tunisia and Egypt," the Secretary said. "And that was another consideration I think we took into account."

During his campaign for the presidency, in December, 2007, Barack Obama told The Boston Globe that "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Earlier in 2007, then-Senator Hillary Clinton said in a speech on the Senate floor that, "If the administration believes that any -- any -- use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority."

Tapper asked Clinton, "Why not go to Congress?"

"Well, we would welcome congressional support," the Secretary said, "but I don't think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago."

"I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling," Clinton said.

Earlier in the interview, which was taped on Saturday afternoon, Gates extrapolated the White House's timeline on Libya.

"Some NATO officials say this could be three months, but people in the Pentagon think it could be far longer than that. Do you think we'll be gone by the end of the year? Will the mission be over by the end of the year?" Tapper asked

"I don't think anybody knows the answer to that," Gates said.

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for almost ten years, at war in Iraq for almost eight years and at war in Libya for nine days.

"For all practical purposes, the implementation of a no-fly zone is complete," Gates said. "Now it will need to be sustained, but it can be sustained with a lot less effort than what it took to set it up."

On the humanitarian side, the defense secretary said significant progress has been made.

"We have prevented the large scale slaughter that was beginning to take place, has taken place in some places. And so I think that we are at a point where the establishment of the no-fly zone and the protection of cities from the kind of wholesale military assault that we have seen certainly in the East has been accomplished and now we can move to sustainment," he said.

Regime Change?

President Obama has called for Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's departure, but regime change is not one of the goals of the United Nations-led military operations. Tapper asked about this seeming inconsistency.

"So why not have, as part of the mission, regime change, removing Gadhafi from power?" Tapper asked the Secretary of Defense.

"Well, first of all, I think you don't want ever to set a set of goals or a mission -- military mission where you can't be confident of accomplishing your objectives," he said. "And as we've seen in the past, regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission."

Clinton Cites Rwanda, Bosnia in Rationale for Libya Intervention

Clinton emphasized the humanitarian rationale for the U.S. military intervention in Libya, recalling instances from recent history when a lack of U.S. intervention had left hundreds of thousands dead.

Clinton said that the United Nations-backed military intervention in Libya "is a watershed moment in international decision making. We learned a lot in the 1990s. We saw what happened in Rwanda. It took a long time in the Balkans, in Kosovo to deal with a tyrant. But I think in what has happened since March 1st, and we're not even done with the month, demonstrates really remarkable leadership."

Clinton played out a hypothetical of what non-intervention by the United States might have looked like.

"Imagine we were sitting here and Benghazi had been overrun, a city of 700,000 people, and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands had fled and, as Bob [Gates] said, either with nowhere to go or overwhelming Egypt while it's in its own difficult transition. And we were sitting here, the cries would be, why did the United States not do anything?" she said

"Why -- how could you stand by when, you know, France and the United Kingdom and other Europeans and the Arab League and your Arab partners were saying you've got to do something," Clinton told Tapper.

Saudis threaten Obama on Mubarak

2011-02-10T12:06:00.001-05:00

Saudi Arabia has threatened to prop up embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak if the Obama administration tries to force a swift change of regime in Egypt, The Times of London reported Thursday.

In a testy personal telephone call on Jan. 29, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah reportedly told President Obama not to humiliate Mubarak and warned that he would step in to bankroll Egypt if the U.S. withdrew its aid program, worth $1.5 billion annually.

America's closest ally in the Gulf made clear that the Egyptian president must be allowed to stay on to oversee the transition towards peaceful democracy and then leave with dignity.

"Mubarak and King Abdullah are not just allies, they are close friends, and the King is not about to see his friend cast aside and humiliated," a senior source in the Saudi capital told The Times.

Two sources confirmed details of the King's call, made four days after the people of Egypt took to the streets.

The revelation of Saudi concerns sheds new light on America's apparent diplomatic paralysis and lays bare the biggest rift between the nations since the oil price shock of 1973.

The tough line from Riyadh is driven by concern that Western governments were too eager to shove aside Mubarak when the uprising began, without proper consideration of what should follow him.

"With Egypt in chaos, the kingdom is Washington's only major ally left in the Arab world and the Saudis want the Americans to remember that," said a source in Riyadh.

The White House declined to comment on the reports Wednesday, saying that the administration did not divulge what other leaders said to Obama.

Tuesday News

2010-12-14T15:20:00.002-05:00

The Democrats are still freaking out over the compromise that Obama worked out with the Republicans, and former president Clinton stepped up to the mic to chime in for Obama.

The Senate is voting to pass the measure, leaving the House to either stand around looking petulant, or go along with it and look as weak as Obama does. Not an easy choice.

And Canadian police and military teams were working today to rescue about 300 people stranded after what a local official termed the most brutal storm to hit the Ontario region in 25 years. The rest of North America is experiencing temperatures far below the normal for this time of year.

Obama's Ranking Slips Below Bush's

2010-12-06T16:37:00.001-05:00

George W. Bush’s job approval rating as president has spiked to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. That’s 1 point higher than President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a poll taken the same week.

This is the first time Gallup has asked Americans to retrospectively rate Bush’s job performance.

And it was a stunning turnaround from his low point of 25 percent in November 2008. The 47 percent number is 13 points higher than the last Gallup poll taken before Bush left office in 2009 and the highest rating for him since before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Assange In Hiding

2010-12-01T13:05:00.002-05:00

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in hiding over growing international problems, and added to the list is an allegation of 'sex crimes' for a rape in Sweden. Assange released piles and piles of classified, often blush-inducing diplomatic cables from scores of nation states, and in turn has been condemned by pretty much every western government.

When you embarrass the governments of almost every modern country in the world, you should expect to receive no refuge. Leftist-run Ecuador has said he's welcome to show up there anytime.

Interpol is probably the least of his worries. He's probably a bigger target for spooks and their tricky car bombs. Someone's going to go all Jason Bourne on this guy.

RIP, Shirley

2010-11-30T10:47:00.002-05:00

Leslie Nielsen died, and most of America made a "Don't Call Me Shirley" joke when they heard the news.

Wikileaks & the State Department

2010-11-29T12:42:00.003-05:00

The US government is freaking out because the Wikileaks guys released a boatload of documents from past diplomatic ventures, some of which failed, and some of which reveal how the world governments treat each other - and what they say about each other behind closed doors. It's kind of like someone's AIM conversations being made public ... with that someone being the United States, or North Korea.

Post-T-Day

2010-11-26T16:55:00.000-05:00

Americans are eating leftovers.

T-Day

2010-11-25T16:54:00.001-05:00

America gives thanks in its National "Thanksgiving" Day holiday. Also, they ate a lot.

News of the Daily Day

2010-11-25T16:52:00.002-05:00

One person was killed and more than 40 wounded after hundreds of Christian protesters clash with riot police in Cairo, Egypt. Seven were killed and three injured in the rough landing of a Mi-8 helicopter in the Omsk region of Siberia, Russia.

North Korea warned that it will launch further attacks on South Korea if they don't stop with the military posturing. South Korea said it's North Korea who's posturing.

Korea keeps on fighting while Europeans think they got it bad

2010-11-24T16:29:00.001-05:00

The bodies of two people killed in the Koreas attack were discovered on Yeonpyeong. South Korea has suspended flood aid to North Korea following the attack.

Workers in Portugal are holding a general strike to protest against proposed cuts to wages. Ireland unveiled a 15 billion euro austerity package to secure a bailout from their financial crisis. And University students throughout England and Wales staged a day of demonstrations against increases in tuition fees and cuts to higher education funding.

29 miners in a New Zealand mine were killed in two explosions. The number of cases in the 2010 Haiti cholera outbreak could reach more than 200,000 in the next three months. Brazilian police shot dead at least thirteen people in Rio de Janeiro following a wave of violence by suspected drug traffickers.

North Korea & South Korea Getting Warlike

2010-11-23T12:44:00.002-05:00

North Korea got really P.O.'d at South Korea running a military exercise too close to the border, so they started shelling a SK island in the Yellow Sea. There are civilians on the island, but there are probably military targets there, too.

Then the two states started REALLY getting angry.

The Better Daily: Beating Rupert to the Punch

2010-11-22T10:24:00.002-05:00

I saw this article this morning about Rupert Murdoch's experimental web-only mega-paper, the Daily, set to go-live at the end of November:

Rupert Murdoch creates 'iNewspaper' - with the help of Steve Jobs
News Corp reportedly set to launch iPad news publication exclusively via download

News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert The iPad 'newspaper' – a joint project between Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch – will be a 'game changer', the latter believes.

Rupert Murdoch, head of the media giant News Corp, and Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, are preparing to unveil a new digital "newspaper" called the Daily at the end of this month, according to reports in the US media.

The collaboration, which has been secretly under development in New York for several months, promises to be the world's first "newspaper" designed exclusively for new tablet-style computers such as Apple's iPad, with a launch planned for early next year.

Intended to combine "a tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence", the publication represents Murdoch's determination to push the newspaper business beyond the realm of print.

According to reports, there will be no "print edition" or "web edition"; the central innovation, developed with assistance from Apple engineers, will be to dispatch the publication automatically to an iPad or any of the growing number of similar devices.

With no printing or distribution costs, the US-focused Daily will cost 99 cents (62p) a week.

I guess my first thought is, why should he have the only good online paper out there? And, why can't any blogger do the same?

To answer my own question, I'm sure Murdoch would say it's his top-flight writing and editing staff (i.e., professional journalism elite) that makes the difference between the Daily and your run-of-the-mill blog. To which I say: why?

So today we present The Better Daily - your better news source. Although I suspect most folks will continue to read their previous news source of choice

NYT: Tea Party Comes to Power on an Unclear Mandate

2010-11-02T14:15:00.000-04:00

By KATE ZERNIKE - NEW YORK TIMES

The Tea Party movement set the agenda in its first midterms, its energy propelling the Republican sweep in the House and capturing the mood of a significant chunk of the electorate, with a remarkable 4 in 10 voters in exit polls expressing support for the movement.

But in the Senate, the effect was exactly what establishment Republicans had feared: While Tea Party energy powered some victories, concerns about Tea Party extremism also cost them what could have been easy gains — most notably in Nevada, where the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, survived a challenge from Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite.

Now, as it tries to make the transition from a protest movement to a power on Capitol Hill, the Tea Party faces the challenge of channeling the energy it brought to the election into a governing agenda when it has no clear mandate, a stated distaste for the inevitable compromises of legislating, and a wary relationship with Republican leaders in Congress.

For many voters the Tea Party has been a blank screen on which they have projected all kinds of hopes and frustrations — not always compatible or realistic.

To many in the movement, the singular goal is to stop an expanding government in its tracks, to “hold the line at all hazards,” as Jennifer Stefano, a Tea Party leader in Pennsylvania, put it.

But the movement is also animated by a belief that the entire political system has become disconnected from the practical needs and values of Americans, suggesting that its voting power stemmed as much from a populist sense of outrage in a tough economic moment as it did from ideology. What many of its adherents want as much as anything is for the two parties to come together to solve problems.

That sometimes conflicting mandate was neatly captured by two interviews in Searchlight, Nev., hometown of Mr. Reid, who became the Tea Party’s biggest target. “I want to see gridlock,” said Ronald Hanvey, who supported Ms. Angle. “I don’t want to see any more laws.”

A few months earlier on nearly the same spot, Jeff Church, arriving at a Tea Party rally against Mr. Reid, complained equally about the state’s Republican senator, John Ensign, and yearned for bipartisanship. “Why can’t they get along and make some common-sense solutions?” Mr. Church asked.

In the Senate, the Tea Party carried to victory Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul in Kentucky. Still, it cost the Republicans some seats that they had once counted as solid, including one in Delaware, where Christine O’Donnell, who beat an establishment candidate in the primary thanks to strong Tea Party support, lost to Chris Coons, a Democrat once considered a long shot.

Even more painful for Republicans was the result in Nevada. Mr. Reid, once considered the most vulnerable Democrat, fought off Ms. Angle, who had made headlines for her controversial and sometimes eccentric remarks.

House races showed the same win-loss effect.

Looking ahead, the immediate focus for the movement will be on the big legislative issues facing Congress. But as attention inevitably shifts to 2012, the Tea Party will also have the chance to exert potentially substantial influence on the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with a variety of potential candidates, including Sarah Palin and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, maneuvering to lead it into the next election.

For the Republican Congressional leaders, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the question is whether the passion of the Tea Party translates into an agenda that can drive legislative progress in a divided capital, or whether it becomes a prod to block Mr. Obama and his party at every turn. They want to keep the movement’s energy alive through the next presidential election — but not fall captive to it.

A year spent observing the contours of Tea Party America revealed an uneasy alliance within it, between those who came to the movement with unswerving ideology, generally libertarian, and those who say they came to it more out of frustration and a desire to feel that they were doing something to move forward when the country seemed stuck.

The much-mocked sign at a health care town hall last summer, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” suggested how many Tea Party supporters had come to the movement without thinking through the specifics. While the more ideological Tea Party supporters embrace ideas like phasing out Social Security and Medicare in favor of private savings accounts, most do not.

And just as Tea Party supporters do not always agree on what the agenda is, most Americans disagree with many of the goals proclaimed by Tea Party candidates.

While incoming Tea Party lawmakers like Mr. Paul have advocated sharp across-the-board cuts in federal spending, a Pew Research Center poll last week found that a plurality of Americans disapproved of a proposal to freeze all government spending except the part that goes to national security. A majority disapproved of permanently extending the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes greater than $250,000.

A New York Times/CBS News poll last month similarly found opposition to raising the retirement age or reducing Social Security or Medicare benefits for future retirees. And a plurality of voters disagreed with what is perhaps the Tea Party movement’s most widely supported goal: repealing the health care overhaul passed in March.

Even where the public agrees on parts of the Republican-Tea Party agenda, there are important qualifiers. A slight majority in the Pew poll approved of changing Social Security to allow private accounts, but only by the same margin as when President George W. Bush advanced the cause in 2005, only to see it fail when people read the fine print.

The most ardent Tea Party activists expect Republicans to hew to their desires.

Even before polls closed Tuesday, FreedomWorks, the libertarian advocacy group that has helped shape the movement from its earliest hours, put out a press release declaring, “The success of the G.O.P. will not merely benefit from the Tea Party vote, it will depend on it.”

David Adams, a Tea Party activist in Kentucky who ran Mr. Paul’s primary campaign, said, “I’m hoping for a lot of fireworks in Washington over who takes control of who.

“If Republican leaders think for a minute that they’re going to suck us in and continue business as usual,” he said, “they’re wrong.”

Like many other Tea Party supporters, Mr. Adams said the biggest goals are to balance the budget and reduce the national debt. And on those, it was unclear where he was willing to compromise. He expects lawmakers like Mr. Paul who campaigned on a promise to balance the federal budget within a year and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to put forward proposals to do so. It would not be enough, Mr. Adams said, to reach an agreement to, say, balance the budget over five years.

Mr. Adams’s list also includes changing Social Security and Medicare, cutting the military budget, replacing the income tax with a flat tax — all ideas that have been raised and voted down, firmly, before. As for repealing the health care legislation? “I can’t imagine much compromise there,” he said.

“You look at what the Tea Party has done over the course of this last year, we’ve changed the shape of the debate,” he said. “We have major candidates who are winning races by large margins by talking about making government smaller. We’re getting very, very close to put-up-or-shut-up time.”

There was not much room for compromise on Ms. Stefano’s list, either. She wants the health care bill and the estate tax to be repealed, and the Bush-era tax cuts to be made permanent.

She warned Republicans not to read too much into the Tea Party support for Republicans. “They should not see it as a mandate for their agenda,” she said. “It is a repudiation of the president and Nancy Pelosi’s view of America. As far as I’m concerned, as of Nov. 3, the Republicans are on probation.”

But as much as the Tea Party allowed the Republicans to win in enthusiasm, it will still have a relatively small caucus in the House and the Senate. With control of Congress split, Republicans will have to work with Democrats to get things done. Tea Party lawmakers who refuse to go along may find they become irrelevant — certainly not the goal of all the noise and passion of the last two years.

Baghdad Nancy

2010-10-21T15:46:00.001-04:00

Tea Party Impact Assessment

2010-09-20T14:08:00.001-04:00

Whatever the outcome of the Nov. 2 elections, you can be certain that commentators around the country will be fixated on the impact of the Tea Party movement. If Republican candidates do well on Election Day –- and particularly if Tea Party-backed candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sharron Angle of Nevada win their races -– the Tea Party will be credited with having revived a moribund Republican Party. But if the Republicans fail to live up to expectations — and expectations are exceedingly high –- the Tea Party will be blamed for curbing the Republicans’ ability to capitalize on historic levels of voter dissatisfaction.

These headlines are unlikely to do justice, however, to a complex movement that is hard enough to define, let alone to evaluate.

At the nucleus of the Tea Party is disquiet over the direction of the country, and antipathy toward what is seen to be profligate levels of spending and governmental involvement in the economy. The Tea Party, however, has little formal organizational infrastructure. Some groups -– like FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Express, and the Tea Party Patriots –- claim to speak for it, as do some individuals like Glenn Beck and Jim DeMint. But they do not always agree on things as basic as which candidates to endorse. FreedomWorks, for instance, declined to endorse Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, fearing she was unelectable, while many of the other groups did.

Nor does the Tea Party have any official platform. And there seems to be little interest among members of the Tea Party at forming a political party proper; instead, most of its stakeholders are seeking to reinvent the Republican Party’s brand.

Any effort to assess the impact of Tea Party needs to keep this context in mind. Moreover, there are several distinct dimensions along which the Tea Party might be evaluated -– and they lead to some relatively complex conclusions about its effects.

Dimension 1: Tea Party’s impact on specific races
This first dimension -– how a Tea Party candidate has affected Republican chances of winning a particular Congressional or gubernatorial seat — has probably been the most widely examined, perhaps because it is relatively tangible. We can evaluate, for instance, the impact of Tea Party candidates on specific United States Senate races.

There are 10 Republicans who have made it into the November ballot for the Senate this year that enjoy the endorsements of most (although not necessarily all) Tea Party affiliated groups: Sharron Angle of Nevada; Ken Buck of Colorado; Jim DeMint of South Carolina; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; Mike Lee of Utah; Joe Miller of Alaska; Christine O’Donnell of Delaware; Rand Paul of Kentucky; Marco Rubio of Florida; and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

In two cases, the selection of a Tea Party-backed candidate has come at the direct expense of another candidate who appeared to be more electable:

In Delaware, Republicans have come as close as possible to giving away a Senate seat. Ms. O’Donnell is now almost a 95 percent underdog in her race, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model, whereas her opponent in the Republican primary, Mike Castle, would have been a 95 percent favorite, according to the same formula.
In Nevada, Ms. Angle now has about even odds of prevailing in her race against Harry Reid. What is less clear is how either of the so-called establishment alternatives -– Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian -– might have done. Ms. Lowden, for instance, once held leads of as many as 15 points over Mr. Reid in the polls. But, after a number of miscues by Ms. Lowden, Mr. Reid had closed his deficit and drawn the race closer to even by the time of the primaries in Nevada on June 8. My working assumption is that Ms. Lowden or Mr. Tarkanian would probably have been about 70 percent favorites to defeat Mr. Reid -– but there is some guesswork involved here.

In two states, a Tea Party candidate may have harmed the Republicans by triggering an establishment Republican to defect from the party and run as an independent.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent, has seen his numbers fade, and the Tea Party backed Mr. Rubio is now about an 80 percent favorite to win his race against Mr. Crist and the Democrat, Kendrick B. Meek. But had Mr. Crist been matched up directly against Mr. Meek, he would probably have been favored by a still-larger magnitude; polls had him about 14 points ahead of Mr. Meek at the time he exited the Republican primary under pressure from Mr. Rubio.
In Alaska, Joe Miller’s primary victory has triggered a write-in bid by Senator Lisa Murkowski, whom he defeated. Ms. Murkowski’s chances are not easy to assess, but the political futures market Intrade now gives Mr. Miller about a 60 percent chance of holding the seat for Republicans. Although I think Intrade’s assessment of Mr. Miller’s chances is too pessimistic, this nevertheless reflects a downgrade for Republicans, who would have been almost certain to win the seat had Ms. Murkowski been in a one-on-one matchup against the Democrat, Scott McAdams.

One case is hopelessly ambiguous:

Mr. Toomey of Pennsylvania, who entered the Republican primary as a conservative alternative to Arlen Specter, probably forced Mr. Specter to defect to the Democratic Party, where he cast a number of important votes on behalf of the Democrats. Mr. Toomey is now a clear favorite against the Democrat in the race, Joe Sestak, who defeated Mr. Specter in the Democratic primary. What sort of chances the Democrats would have had if Mr. Specter had remained in the Republican Party and had been the nominee is unclear.

There is one case in which the Tea Party candidate seems to have improved Republican chances:

In Wisconsin, the businessman Ron Johnson, who seems to have found his inspiration to run for office from the Tea Party, has made the race against Senator Russ Feingold competitive; indeed, Mr. Johnson led the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll there by 7 points. Although I’d urge caution on characterizing the race, which has been inadequately polled, he seems to have placed the Republicans in a stronger position than his opponent in the Republican primary, Dave Westlake, who had trailed Mr. Feingold in all polls.

In the other four states, the Tea Party candidate has had little obvious impact. Mr. Lee of Utah upended a Republican incumbent, Senator Robert Bennett. But Mr. Lee is almost certain to defeat the Democrat, Sam Granato, as Mr. Bennett would have been. Mr. DeMint of South Carolina, an incumbent, was under no real threat of losing either the primary or the general election. Mr. Paul of Kentucky, and Mr. Buck of Colorado, were not doing obviously better or worse in general election polling than the establishment alternatives at the time they won their primaries, and both are now favored to win their races.

Other than in Delaware, then, the immediate impact of Tea Party candidates upon electoral outcomes is therefore somewhat more ambiguous than you might think (although it has probably been harmful to the Republicans on balance). Delaware, however, counts for a lot, having significantly reduced Republican chances of taking over the Senate. Whereas early in the political cycle, the Tea Party had largely avoided directly undermining the potential for Republican electoral gains, it elected Ms. O’Donnell in the face of clear warnings from the Republican establishment.

Dimension 2: Tea Party’s impact on voter enthusiasm
The contours of this election are unusual. While the Democratic Congress has become very unpopular, and the Democratic president somewhat so, views of the Republican Party remain highly negative, and have not improved appreciably from the damaged condition following George W. Bush’s two terms as president. And yet, Republicans appear poised for large electoral gains.

One reason may be, as I have argued several times, that the Tea Party has provided a vehicle by which fiscal conservatism, which has never gone out of style, has been liberated from the Republican brand. In addition, the Tea Party has probably contributed toward higher levels of enthusiasm among conservative-leaning voters. And it may have played a key role in souring public opinion on Democratic initiatives like health care and the stimulus.

One possible course for these midterms was a low-turnout election, with voter apathy toward both major parties. The Democrats might still have lost quite a few seats in Congress –- simply because they were the incumbent party and had more of them to lose — but the losses would probably not have been catastrophic. The Tea Party, however, has made some conservatives feel as though they have a real alternative -– something new and fresh and different — to Democratic governance. The impact of this is hard to evaluate, but it could easily outweigh the loss of a Senate seat or two in specific cases like Delaware.

Dimension 3: Tea Party and perceptions of Republican “extremism”
After several victories by Tea Party candidates, like Mr. Paul’s in Kentucky and Ms. Angle’s in Nevada, there has been something of a feeding frenzy on liberal blogs (and to some extent, political media outlets in general), which have sought to unearth whatever uncouth statements, or unorthodox policy positions, the candidate has in his or her background. This process is still underway with Ms. O’Donnell in Delaware. What liberals seem to be banking on is that candidates like these will pollute the Republican brand by being poor standard-bearers. Indeed, the White House is considering formalizing the strategy, according to reporting by The Times.

Although the risks are perhaps greater to Republicans with Ms. O’Donnell than with the previous candidates, so far it is unclear that the strategy has worked. Mr. Paul, for instance, has seen his standing improve in Kentucky since his primary win there in May, and meanwhile, the Republicans have somewhat strengthened their position nationally.

One problem may be that, if the Tea Party appears extreme to some voters, the Democratic agenda does to others. Arguably, in fact, the Tea Party — by normalizing extremely conservative viewpoints — makes mainstream Democratic views seem more extreme by comparison.

Also, many Republican candidates are not of the Tea Party. What does pointing toward the extremism of Ms. O’Donnell, or Ms. Angle, do to perceptions of a boring ol’ establishment Republican candidate like Rob Portman of Ohio? In some ways, does it not represent an implicit endorsement of Mr. Portman for “not being one of the crazy ones”? It is not clear how much good this type of messaging will do for Democratic candidates outside the borders of Delaware, or Kentucky, or Nevada.

Dimension 4: Tea Party and conservative policy objectives
In January, once the new Congress is sworn in, it will get down to the business of legislating. Granted, business is likely to be halting, particularly if the majorities in each chamber of Congress are narrow (as is likely), or if one party controls the House but not the Senate (as is also somewhat likely). Still, one positive for conservatives is that Tea Party candidates will more reliably oppose the Democratic agenda, and will more reliably support something like an attempt to repeal the health care bill.

Dimension 5: The Tea Party and the Republican “big tent”
The Tea Party also presents longer-term risks to the Republicans. It’s one thing to mount primary challenges in states like Utah and Alaska, which can support (very) conservative Republicans. A party that cannot also support moderates like Mike Castle of Delaware, however, or Rick Lazio of New York –- states with long traditions of moderate Republicanism –- would seem to have limited upside in the majority.

What must someone like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who is under great threat of a Republican primary challenge when she comes up for re-election in 2012, be thinking right now?

Democrats, when they were ascending in 2006 and 2008, had little trouble nominating moderate candidates who were appropriate for specific states or Congressional districts. Some of those candidates, having won office, have since become targets of some on the left, since they do not always support the Democratic agenda. But, at least, Democrats waited until they were in power before the infighting began.

Republicans, however, may be in for a long two years –- even or perhaps especially if they take control of one or both chambers of Congress.

The struggle between establishment and insurgent Republicans will not have been resolved –- instead, it will continue against the background of the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, which is almost certain to be combative. Meanwhile, Republicans may be given relatively more responsibility for the condition of the economy, which may not show much improvement over the next two years. And their efforts to pass legislation may be stymied by a (barely) Democratic Senate and –- where necessary -– by President Obama’s veto pen. If Tea Party supporters are expecting their candidates to facilitate a repeal of the health care bill, or a radical reduction in tax rates, they may be disappointed.

In some ways, the Tea Party represents an end-around for Republicans -– it may help to facilitate large electoral gains for them in November in spite of a party brand which is badly damaged. Although it may have done harm to Republicans in a few specific races, like Delaware, this may be outweighed by the good it has done them elsewhere in the country.

But there is one fundamental Republican problem that the Tea Party has not resolved: the brand remains extremely unpopular among large segments of the public. In fact, the Tea Party is in some ways a reaction to this: particularly after Delaware, we should probably take the Tea Party at its word that stands in opposition to the Republican and Democratic establishments alike.

How loyal will voters who were inspired by the Tea Party remain to the Republican Party -– and how loyal will Republicans remain to the Tea Party? The relationship is to some extent one of convenience. The Tea Party has candidates full of energy and chutzpah and some fresh-seeming ideas, but it lacks, on its own, the infrastructure to get these candidates elected. The Republican Party, meanwhile -– while short on popular ideas and popular leaders -– has access to money, voter lists, and experienced strategic hands. To some extent, the Tea Party is renting the Republicans’ electoral infrastructure.

But once some Tea Party candidates are in power, what need will they have for the skeleton of the Republican establishment? And how much will the Republican establishment, sensing this, default into self-preservation? Meanwhile, how effectively might the Tea Party differentiate itself from the establishment in the eyes of voters, once it becomes part of the establishment? If the Republican Party is not adroit at navigating these problems, then it is probably in for more punishment from voters –- whether in 2012 or in the future.

What the Tea Party may have helped to ensure, however, is that Democrats will get their punishment first.

Tea Party gaining strength, flexing muscles

2010-09-20T14:07:00.000-04:00

What’s most striking about the trauma the Tea Party inflicted on the Republican establishment in the Senate primary season that ended last week is how much worse it could have been.

Sure, the Tea Party base managed to dethrone two sitting senators, Utah’s Robert Bennett and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, and to scare another senator, Arlen Specter, and a governor, Charlie Crist, out of the party. And it knocked off establishment favorites in a handful of key states, like Delaware and Colorado, while scaring the bejesus out of others, like New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte (who survived her primary by 1,600 votes).

But when it came to this year’s primaries, the Tea Party’s momentum was late-starting. It wasn’t until Aug. 24, when Joe Miller stunned Lisa Murkowski in an upset absolutely no one saw coming, that its potential became clear. As soon as the result came in, the Tea Party Express, which had quietly dumped $600,000 into Miller’s effort, turned its focus to Delaware, another state that was on no one’s radar. That support, along with the media’s sudden interest, transformed right-wing gadfly Christine O’Donnell into a player, and three weeks later she was declaring victory over Mike Castle, a nine-term congressman and fixture in Delaware politics.

It made you wonder what would have happened if the Tea Party had waged this focused an effort earlier in the year. For instance, Rep. Mark Kirk, a moderate congressman from just north of Chicago, won the GOP Senate nomination in Illinois on Feb. 3. He beat his closest competitor by 37 points, but he only finished with 56 percent of the vote — jarringly low when you consider the unanimous backing he received from state and national GOP leaders and his overwhelming financial and name-recognition advantages.

In hindsight, Kirk may have dodged a big bullet. The field was crowded, with multiple candidates claiming chunks and bits of Tea Party support. A clear challenger to Kirk never emerged, and the kind of national investment that the Tea Party Express made in Alaska and Delaware was missing. But what if Illinois’ primary had been scheduled for Sept. 14 — after Alaska? Kirk would have made an awfully ripe target for the emboldened Tea Party movement. The same probably goes for Roy Blunt, the ultra-establishment former House GOP whip who somehow escaped the Tea Party’s notice in his Aug. 3 primary in Missouri.

As it is, though, the Tea Party is out of Republican targets for 2010. But 2012 is just around the corner, and the Tea Party may pick up right where it left off when the next round of Senate primaries convenes..

This, at least, is what history suggests. The last time there was this much upheaval within the GOP was in the late 1970s, in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s challenge to President Gerald Ford in the 1976 primaries. While Reagan fell just inches short in that race, the writing was on the wall: The GOP’s demographics were changing and the conservative wing that Reagan represented would soon dominate; Ford’s win would be the Rockefeller crowd’s last stand.

After ’76, New Right activists set out to purge the remaining liberal Republicans from the party — a task that only took on more urgency when liberal Republican senators provided critical votes for Jimmy Carter’s Panama Canal treaty in 1977. To the right, this represented a blatant sellout of American sovereignty. In the 1978 midterms, the right organized several high-profile primary challenges. In New Jersey, they united behind a Reagan aide named Jeffrey Bell and took out an icon of liberal Republicanism, four-term Sen. Clifford Case. In Massachusetts, they rallied around a radio talk-show host and anti-busing crusader named Avi Nelson and nearly knocked off Sen. Ed Brooke, the only black Republican ever elected to the Senate. There was no collective name for the movement that did this, but in spirit and style, it was very much the Tea Party’s precursor.

And the movement didn’t stop in ’78 — not with Reagan running again in 1980, and not with liberal Republicans still roaming the halls of Congress. Down went Sen. Jacob Javits, Herbert Lehman’s literal and ideological Senate heir, in New York’s ’80 GOP primary, felled by a then-obscure Al D’Amato. Only after Reagan’s election did the purge mentality cease.

If that model holds, the Tea Party will be just as thirsty for GOP blood in ’12 as it is today — still enraged by TARP votes the way the New Right was still infuriated by the Panama Canal treaty in ’80.

Because only 10 GOP-held Senate seats will be up in ’12 — a consequence of the party’s drubbing in 2006 and weak showing in 2000 — only three incumbents seem at obvious risk of becoming the next Bennett or Murkowski: Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar.

Of the three, Snowe — at least for now — faces the most peril. A PPP poll last week found that 63 percent of Maine Republicans say they’d prefer a new, more conservative senator to Snowe in ’12. Her approval rating among self-identified conservative Maine Republicans is just 26 percent. And in a head-to-head trial heat with Chandler Woodcock, the party’s 2006 candidate for governor, she trails by 5 points, 38 to 33 percent.

Snowe’s offenses are lifelong; she’s the closest thing left to a Rockefeller Republican. So it’s hard to imagine her undergoing some kind of magical ideological transformation in time for ’12. That said, she could still conceivably save her seat, since the Maine electorate is unusually friendly to independent candidates. Her popularity remains strong and deep outside of the GOP base, so she could plausibly leave the party and wage a successful third-party bid.

Hatch is more conservative than Snowe — far more conservative. But he also voted for the first TARP bill, back in the fall of 2008, and with 34 years of senatorial experience, he pretty much personifies the Washington wing of the Republican Party. Already, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a House freshman with strong grass-roots appeal, has toyed with the idea of challenging Hatch for the GOP nomination. And as Bennett’s example this year showed, ousting an incumbent in Utah can be easy: Without 40 percent of the vote at the party’s right-wing-dominated states convention, candidates can’t appear on the primary ballot. Bennett, another TARP supporter, failed to reach this threshold — and there are signs that Hatch could have trouble clearing it, too.

Indiana’s Lugar, at least on paper, is safer — if only because the most obvious Tea Party-backed challenger, state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, is likely to win a House seat this fall and might now want to risk it after one term. Stutzman came out of nowhere to wage a credible bid for the GOP Senate nomination, finishing 10 points behind Dan Coats in the May primary — a performance that led Red State to brand him a “rock star.”

Still, Lugar has run afoul of the right with his TARP votes and his more recent support for Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination — and he reeks of Washington insiderdom just as badly as Hatch. Who knows, maybe Stutzman will challenge him anyway? Or maybe it won’t even take Stutzman to make Lugar sweat.

Snowe, Hatch and Lugar are just the most obvious targets. Bob Corker and Jon Kyl also cast “yes” votes on TARP, and all are up in ’12. For various reasons, they seem less likely to attract the Tea Party’s ire in a primary, but nothing is impossible. (The scandalized Jon Ensign, who also voted for TARP, will be up for reelection, but few believe he’ll actually run.)

Some believe that a poor showing by some of this year’s Tea Party candidates will give the GOP base pause about embracing more of them in 2012 Senate primaries. If O’Donnell and Sharron Angle lose, the thinking goes, a chastened GOP electorate will be more careful when it comes to balancing purity and electability.

But that thinking is flawed. Just remember: After he kicked Clifford Case to the curb in 1978, Jeffrey Bell lost by 10 points in the general election. But that didn’t slow the New Right down at all, just as a loss or two this fall won’t slow the Tea Party. In other words, what we saw last Tuesday in Delaware was both an exclamation point on this year’s primary season and a preview of what’s to come two years from now.

2010-08-22T17:22:00.001-04:00

Removing a Colt 1911 Series 80 firing pin assembly

and how to disassemble and reassemble your 1911 pistol

Verision History

Original Draft: Jan 15 2006

Update: Mar 12 2006 (add more photos, clarify)

Update: May 20 2006 (add warning to not remove safety on carry guns)

Disclaimers

I guess I should say at the outset all the legal mumbo jumbo about removing safeties, just to make any future lawyer I may retain happy, "I am not liable for any foolishness you bring upon yourself, up to and including anything you do to your pistol." There, I said it.

Safety Warning

Be absolutely certain that the gun you are working on is unloaded. Visually inspect the chamber, remove the magazine, and visually inspect the chamber AGAIN. If lighting is poor, use a finger to manually verify that the chamber is empty. With guns, there are no "do-overs."

Background

In 1981, Colt introduced the Series 80 firing pin safety. This design uses a plunger next to the firing pin, which prevents forward movement unless a lever pushes the plunger up out of the way. The plunger is located on the underside of the slide, and pushes up into the firing pin channel. This system is often blamed for poor trigger feel, although I did not notice that with my gun. It is, however an engineering misfit: it has been called a solution in search of a problem.

About those safety concerns

In my opinion, if you remove the firing pin safety on your Series 80 Colt 1911, you are simply returning it to a pre-Series 80 configuration, with the following exceptions:

A hole is left behind in the slide where the firing pin plunger was.
A slot will be left behind in the frame where the lever was, even after installing the gap-filling shim.

Additionally, the Series 80 hammer has a different half-cock notch than the pre-Series 80 design. The half-cock notch on a hammer catches the hammer from falling to the firing pin if you inadvertently let the it slip from your thumb while manually cocking the gun. On the original design, the half-cock notch is "captive" - that is, it has a little lip on the edge of the shelf that catches the sear. If you try to pull the trigger on an pre-Series 80 hammer set to half-cock, the hammer will not fall. On the Series 80 hammer, the half-cock notch is NOT captive. If you pull the trigger on a Series 80 hammer set to half-cock, the hammer WILL fall. Theoretically, the impact on the firing pin could be strong enough to light a primer and cause the gun to fire. The distance the hammer travels when falling from half-cock on a Series 80 gun is approximately 1/8" and is (supposedly) not enough to ignite a primer. You go first, I'll watch.

Is this lack of a captive half-cock notch on the Series 80 hammer a concern? Possibly. The secondary nature of the half-cock notch is demonstrated by virtue of the factory making it non-captive. The gun already has more safeties than most people already realize:

The grip safety blocks the rearward movement of the trigger until disengaged
The thumb safety blocks sear movement.

If the lack of a captive half-cock notch on the Series 80 still makes you nervous, then either do NOT make the modification as described in this article, or replace the hammer and sear combination with a pre-Series 80 design, which contains the captive half-cock notch.

Purpose

Many will ask, "Why???" To that I answer that this is one way to make the gun closer to John Browning's original design.

Okay, an there is an additional reason. I bent my Series 80 lever, racking the slide into the lever arm. I was faced with the prospect of either replacing the bent part, or taking the opportunity to remove the Series 80 parts altogether. I chose to purchase the shim from Brownell's and try to remove the series 80 parts. I succeeded, and this document outlines my process.

NOTE: I eventually decided that I want to use the Colt for concealed carry. I do NOT recommend carrying a gun with a deactiviated safety. Not because the gun is not safe - I think it is - but because, if you ever have to use the gun to defend yourself, you are just giving away tactical advantage... in the courtroom. If you are charged with a crime, or if you are sued by your assailant (or their family), you have given them one more thing to try to sway the (gun-ignorant) jury with. So, to make this a carry gun, I did go ahead and order a replacement Series 80 part from Brownell's and put the gun back to the way it was when I bought it.

This document will outline how to remove the Series 80 parts and replace them with the Brownell's shim. If you decide to carry the gun after doing so, that is your decision, but it is against my recommendation.

Thanks

Before we get started, let me take a little bit of space to thank a few people who made this article even better:

Dave Sample, of Prescott, Arizona, for his knowlege and encouragement
Jerry Kuhnhausen, for his book The Colt .45 Automatic, the Bible of 1911 repair and customization
The kind folks at Glock Talk and the 1911forum.com
My pals Jay, Doug, Wulfenite, Miss Maggie, HiddenEyes, DanH, El_Ron1, Lonnie, psenior, and Mike (engineer151515), who went to a lot of trouble to proofread this article for me

Procedure

Here we have a beautiful new Colt model O1991 pistol, made in 2005. This is a shining example of John Moses Browning's timeless design. The O1991 is a bare-bones blued-steel 1911A1 model, without all the "modern" upgrades found on many contemporary versions. Ironically, the O1991 is more like a traditional 1911 than modern 1911s are.

I purchased this Colt 01991 online, from Bud's Gun Shop in Paris, Kentucky for $625.

In this article, we are going to REMOVE the superfluous Series 80 system and replace it with a "Frame Slot Filler" that you can order from Brownell's (Item 876-011-780).

NOTE: Each section of text describes the photograph that follows underneath it.

First up, let's take the grips off of the frame, so that we don't hurt them while we're working.

Okay, that's done! (Seriously, be careful removing the grip screws. Use a screwdriver that fits. Marred screws are an outward indicator of poor craftsmanship.)

We disassemble the pistol the way you do anytime you want to clean it. First, rotate that barrel bushing clockwise...

Be careful, you don't want an eyeful of recoil spring plug! This sucker is under a LOT of pressure, so capture it with your hand before it hits you.

You take out the barrel bushing by rotating it counter-clockwise once the spring and plug are out.

Pull the slide backwards until the slide lock lever lines up with the smaller notch...

...and pull it up, wiggling it a little if necessary.

Okay, this is the firing pin stop being removed. You use a punch to push the firing pin IN first, then slide the stop out. Careful, the firing pin can also launch out at you. It's under a lot of pressure. I have gotten into the habit of just wearing safety glasses when removing these spring-loaded parts. A friend of mine named Walter who lives in Georgia actually shot himself in the eye with the recoil spring plug, detaching his retina. Just wear your safety glasses.

Also, the series 80 plunger will need to be depressed before the firing pin will go forward enough to allow the stop to come out.

Now we can remove the first of our 3 Series 80 items, the plunger/spring assembly. This is one piece that will be removed, out of three parts.

Here is a view of the Series 80 "lever" ... mine is bent, as you can see. It should not be bent like this. This is the item that pushes up on the plunger that we just now removed. This lever is coming out, too. It is held in place by the hammer pin.

Remove the thumb safety like you always do: wiggle it up and down, while pulling it out. You might notice that I put one of my daughter's hairbands around the grip, it keeps the grip safety from flying out when the thumb safety is removed... see, the thumb safety serves as the pin that holds in the grip safety.

Now, this is important: lower the hammer slowly by pulling the trigger & holding on to the hammer at the same time. DON'T let it batter against the frame! This can result in warped or misshapen metal on the frame (called peening), and that can cause problems with slide/frame mating.

You are raising the hammer because it takes pressure off the mainspring, which sits inside the mainspring housing, and you are about to remove the mainspring housing! So let's get the pressure off before removing it, okay?

Note the nifty blue bench block, which has holes for punching through pins.

Use your punch to LIGHTLY drift the hammer pin out from right to left. It won't take much force, so go easy.

As you lift out the hammer and its strut, the pesky Series 80 lever will come free. Don't look for it in this picture, I don't know why I did not put it in there. It would be just behind the hammer in this picture.

Pull the hammer and its strut on out, all the way, and set it aside.

Now, drift the mainspring housing pin out from left to right, with a punch.

Slide the mainspring housing down and out.

Mainspring housing is down and out!

Here's a good look at the rear of the frame with the grip safety out and the mainspring housing out. You can see the three prong leaf spring, just laying there in its place. If you turn the gun upside down it will fall right out. Just pull that three prong leaf spring right on out.

Here is the three-prong spring, which is responsible for providing tension to the trigger, the sear, and the grip safety. Amazing invention.

Okay, let's carefully drift the sear pin from right to left. This is the smaller of the three pins in this area, and it holds the sear and disconnector in the frame.

You can see me pulling the sear/disconnector pin out from the left hand side once I got it started. You can also see the sear and disconnector laying in place .. those are the bare-steel colored items.

Pulling the sear and disconnector out together. The sear is the top part, and the disconnector is the one underneath.

Okay, here we are at the meat of the matter. What we see here is the sear and disconnector laying together, and the Series 80 lower lever and upper lever. They are pinned together the way they would be sitting in the gun. These two parts are being removed from the gun, and we need to fill the gap they left with a "Frame slot filler" from Brownells.

This is the parts bag from Brownell's

Our pal Johnny T. wrote to me to say:

Somethin' for you to keep an eye on with your de-lawyered Series 80s...The blank fillers are dead soft,blank fillers are dead soft, and weren't designed...nor intended...to be long-term replacements for the frame levers. Their original purpose was for gunsmiths to keep from having to fiddle with the levers while doing trigger jobs. I use the spacers in my Series 80s, since all I use'em for is range duty...because it makes the guns easier to strip and reassemble for detail cleaning. Since I shoot a lot...upwards of 3,000 rounds a month through four different pistols, they save me a lot of time.

The problem? The pinholes get pretty heavy flances around'em within a couple thousand rounds, effectively incrreasing the thickness of the spacers. If the flanges aren't dressed before they reach the point of touching the sear and hammer, they can cause problems with free hammer movement and sear reset. I first noticed it as hammer followdown that a quick tweak of the sear spring didn't cure. When I stripped the gun, I found the flanging. Dressed it flush with the spacer, and the problem stopped. I've taken to hittin'em a light lick with a smooth mill file and a stone on every detail strip, and replace'em after 5-6 dressings...or when the holes begin to egg-shape.

One day, I'll get around to makin' up a few from 1020 steel and case-harden'em...if I can ever find the time.

Okay, I slid the frame slot filler (I'm just going to call it a shim, okay?) into the frame. You can see where it will be held in place, and I used a couple of punches to hold it in place where it will be installed (just for the photograph, the punches are not going to be there.)

Another view of the shim sitting in its new home. By the way, I marked the shim sides with a R and a L to help keep me straight which way it goes in.

Reassembly

Put the sear and disconnector back into the gun, next to the new shim. The disconnector is forward in the gun and the sear is rearward in the gun. It is easy to remember which way the sear faces: the curve in the sear matches the curve in the grip. Slide the disconnector up into its tunnel, heading up toward and out of the top of the frame. This diconnector rides along the middle rail on the bottom of your slide, and the gun can only fire when the diconnector is in its up position. As the slide travels backwards, the diconnector is depressed downwards and the firing mechanism is 'disconnected.'

The leaf spring is easier to install than most people think it is; just put the bottom tab into that slot you see near the bottom of the pistol and then lay the spring on top of the sear/disconnector assembly. It does not fit underneath anything. Just lay it in.

Put the hammer and strut back in, and put the hammer pin in from left to right, catching the new shim on the way in. Note that the hammer strut is on the outside of the leaf spring, not caught underneath anything. The hammer strut is going to go down into the mainspring housing. Also, be sure that when the new shim from Brownells is installed, you function check the traditional safeties, and that the hammer is not grinding or dragging against the shim. If it is, inspect to make sure it is installed correctly, and modify the cheaper part (the shim, not the hammer) if necessary.

Replace the grip safety and mainspring housing. Putting the mainspring housing in halfway holds the leaf spring in place while you get the grip safety into place. Do these with the hammer forward, so that there is less tension on the mainspring (the hammer strut is going to push into the mainspring housing, and compress the mainspring. It's what makes the hammer fall and make the gun go boom.

A view from the top of the pistol, showing the new shim in its new place (where my bent lever used to be).

Holding the gun upside down makes it easy to line up the hammer strut with its hole in the mainspring housing. This is crucial. If you don't get the hammer strut to push into that hole, you will not get the mainspring housing onto the gun without bending the strut or breaking the pin that pins it to the hammer.

Replacing the mainspring housing pin (WITH THE HAMMER FORWARD, REMEMBER?) You actually have to hold the mainspring housing in with pressure while you get the pin started, then the pin will hold the housing while you drive the pin in. It takes a little bit of practice but you will quickly see how it works with the parts in your hand. This is not a difficult step, so if you are experiencing MAJOR problems, stop and see if the strut is in the mainspring hole, or if something else is wrong.

Replace your thumb safety by inserting it into the frame, pinning the grip safety on the way in, and wiggle it down. You need to make sure the plunger and spring that rides along the face of the thumb safety (forward of the safety) is depressed. A little wooden or plastic tool is often used to hold the plunger and spring depressed while the thumb safety is wiggled into place.

Reassemble your slide, depressing the firing pin forward with a punch while you slide in the firing pin stop (marked in this photo with a '1' into its slot.) You also need to slide the stop into the groove cut into the extractor, so you might need to manipulate the extractor from the front end (the claw end) to allow it to enter.

Put your grips back on and you are done.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!! Congratulations on a successful disassembly and reassembly of your 1911, and a safe removal of the Series 80 firing pin safety mechanism. Now you need to function-test and then test-fire your gun at a safe location.

Stay safe!

Speaking Truth to Power

2010-07-23T14:12:00.002-04:00

Obama's thuggery is useless in fighting spill

2010-06-21T14:11:00.001-04:00

Obama's thuggery is useless in fighting spill
By: Michael Barone, Washington Examiner
June 20, 2010

Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's Gulf oil spill.

Take Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's remark that he would keep his "boot on the neck" of BP, which brings to mind George Orwell's definition of totalitarianism as "a boot stamping on a human face -- forever." Except that Salazar's boot hasn't gotten much in the way of results yet.

Or consider Obama's undoubtedly carefully considered statement to Matt Lauer that he was consulting with experts "so I know whose ass to kick." Attacking others is a standard campaign tactic when you're in political trouble, and certainly BP, which appears to have taken unwise shortcuts in the Gulf, is an attractive target.

But you don't always win arguments that way. The Obama White House gleefully took on Dick Cheney on the issue of terrorist interrogations. It turned out that more Americans agreed with Cheney's stand, despite his low poll numbers, than Obama's.

Then there is Obama's decision to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf. This penalizes companies with better safety records than BP's and will result in many advanced drilling rigs being sent to offshore oil fields abroad.

The justification offered was an Interior Department report supposedly "peer reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." But it turned out the drafts the experts saw didn't include any recommendation for a moratorium. Eight of the cited experts have said they oppose the moratorium as more economically devastating than the oil spill and "counterproductive" to safety.

This was blatant dishonesty by the administration, on an Orwellian scale. In defense of a policy that has all the earmarks of mindless panic, that penalizes firms and individuals guilty of no wrongdoing and that will worsen rather than improve our energy situation. Ineffective thuggery.

And what about the decision not to waive the Jones Act, which bars foreign-flag vessels from coming to the aid of the Gulf cleanup? The Bush administration promptly waived it after Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration hasn't and claims unconvincingly that, gee, there aren't really any foreign vessels that could help.

The more plausible explanation is that this is a sop to the maritime unions, part of the union movement that gave Obama and other Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle. It's the Chicago way: Dance with the girl that brung ya.

Or the decision to deny Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's proposal to deploy barges to skim oil from the Gulf's surface. Can't do that until we see if they've got enough life preservers and fire equipment. That inspired blogger Rand Simberg to write a blog post he dated June 1, 1940: "The evacuation of British and French troops from the besieged French city of Dunkirk was halted today, over concerns that many of the private vessels that had been deployed for the task were unsafe for troop transport."

Finally, the $20 billion escrow fund that Obama pried out of the BP treasury at the White House when he talked for the first time, 57 days after the rig exploded, with BP Chairman Tony Hayward. It's pleasing to think that those injured by BP will be paid off speedily, but House Republican Joe Barton had a point, though an impolitic one, when he called this a "shakedown."

For there already are laws in place that insure that BP will be held responsible for damages and the company has said it will comply. So what we have is government transferring property from one party, an admittedly unattractive one, to others, not based on pre-existing laws but on decisions by one man, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.

Feinberg gets good reviews from everyone. But the Constitution does not command "no person . . . shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law except by the decision of a person as wise and capable as Kenneth Feinberg." The Framers stopped at "due process of law."

Obama doesn't. "If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so," write the editors of the Economist, who then suggest that markets see Obama as "an American version of Vladimir Putin." Except that Putin is an effective thug.

Progressives criticize White House, Democrats as "too timid, too willing to compromise"

2010-06-08T11:48:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON – Progressive activists who helped elect Barack Obama president complained on Monday that the administration and congressional Democrats have been too timid and too willing to compromise.

Even though Obama's major first-term achievement — an overhaul of the nation's health care system — passed without a single Republican vote, progressive leaders who gathered in Washington criticized the president for failing to create a government-run insurance option to compete with private industry.

They faulted Obama for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the slow pace in repealing the ban on gays serving in the military and last year's economic stimulus package, which they described as inadequate at $787 billion. They also criticized his handling of the Gulf oil spill.

"The White House has been an uncertain trumpet," said Robert Borosage, a co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a progressive organization. "The administration's reforms were too often too timid from the start and too readily compromised along the way."

Although leaders still spoke with admiration for Obama, it was clear he's not as popular with unions, bloggers and other progressives.

Democrats already face an angry electorate this November. The frustration among the party's liberal base could make the midterm elections even more difficult for Democrats and Obama's own re-election bid.

Although no one seriously suggested a primary challenge to Obama, activists said they would take on congressional incumbents and they cited Arkansas, where the Progressive Congressional Campaign Committee has sent $250,000 to Lt. Gov. Bill Halter's bid against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, which will be decided in a runoff Tuesday.

Activists say they would rather have "good Democrats" — in the words of DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas — than moderates who don't advance a progressive agenda.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in his first 500 days in office, Obama "has fulfilled his commitment to bring the change we need to Washington" with a health care overhaul, education reforms that will help strengthen the economy and steps to reduce the influence of special interests.

Many of the activists said Obama cannot blindly be trusted to make good on his many campaign-era promises.

"It's clear that hope is not enough," said Arianna Huffington, the founder of the online Huffington Post. "We need Hope 2.0."

Progressive organizations became emboldened during President George W. Bush's tenure, rallying against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Republicans' agenda. They helped elect Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2006 and rallied behind Obama's presidential bid.

But with Obama in the White House and Democrats leading both chambers of Congress, the political environment changed. It was far easier to campaign against GOP governing than to influence their allies running Washington.

"We thought that an election was a victory. What we forgot is that candidates don't deliver change, that they become part of the system," said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins of Green for All, an organization that pushes for environmentally friendly jobs for low-income residents.

"While I voted for Barack Obama — and I would again — he is not enough."

Tea party movement draws competing agendas, strategies

2010-04-13T14:10:00.002-04:00

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to gather this week for another round of flag-waving, fist-shaking, sign-carrying "tea party" protests, demanding less government, lower taxes and more freedom.

But as they celebrate the first birthday of what they now proudly call a movement, tea partiers concede they face a crucial challenge:

What do you do AFTER the tea is dumped in the harbor?

"You really can have only a couple of these rallies before people are like, 'All right, now why are these angry people just out demonstrating?' " said Andrea Plunkett, an organizer of last year's Kansas City tea party at the Liberty Memorial.

"We can have these fun events where the pictures look good -- or we can get to work."
Defining the tea party movement is difficult. There are thousands of tea partiers and hundreds of tea party groups, many with different goals and approaches to changing the government.

Plunkett's approach is Americans for Conservative Training, which she formed last year to move tea partiers away from rallies and toward helping right-of-center campaigns in other ways.

But trading a protest placard for a business card is viewed with deep suspicion by some tea party activists and other conservatives. One year after the first major tea party protests, they're worried the movement may be hijacked by mainstream politicians -- perhaps helping Republicans at the polls, but alienating tea partiers distrustful of Democrats and the GOP.

"I would describe tea party people as fiercely independent, and that's good," said Paul Hamby, a libertarian from Maysville, Mo., who spoke at last year's Kansas City tea party. "It can't be from the top down."

The tea party is a decentralized grassroots movement, said Karl Rove, a former adviser to President George W. Bush who spoke to conservatives and tea partiers Saturday in Kansas City.

"These people are very cautious -- and I think it's absolutely correct -- about being swept up by somebody else," he told The Kansas City Star.

The tea party movement, which began as a series of loose protests in the winter and spring of 2009, caught the popular imagination last April -- on tax day -- with colorful protests at courthouses and city squares across the nation.

Alex Poulter has formed his own local tea party-related group, Political Chips, which is sponsoring Kansas City's biggest tea party rally on Thursday, tax day this year, at CommunityAmerica ballpark in Kansas City, Kan.

"I don't like to hear people say, 'We're the tea party leader,' " he said. "In other parts of the country you have legal tea party candidates. I have no desire to do that."

Tension between those who would organize the tea party movement and those who want to keep it disorganized may be growing -- and may reflect one of several challenges (and opportunities) tea partiers face in the coming year.

Some tea partiers are taking their disputes to court.

Lawsuits have been filed in several states challenging use of the "tea party" label, or the establishment of an official "Tea Party." A lawsuit was filed late last month in a dispute between a conservative fundraiser and the organizer of a national Tea Party convention in Nashville.

The Tea Party Patriots recently expelled one of its leaders for working with the Tea Party Express -- not to be confused with Tea Party Nation, or Leadership Tea Party, or TeaParty.org or dozens of other tea party-themed groups, each with its own agenda and tactical approach.

"The tea party seems united only in some kind of inchoate anti-government anger that has little to hold it together," said University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis.

But tea party enthusiasts say the disputes simply reflect the growing pains of groups formed by people new to the political process and committed to their mission.

"We just see a need and go do it," said Tonganoxie tea partier Greg Ward. "We're tired of waiting on everyone else to do stuff . . . so we just step up to the plate and say it."

And almost two dozen tea party groups said last week that they plan to form a National Tea Party Federation to help coordinate communication among tea party groups and counter suggestions that the tea party movement is unfocused.

Polls show the tea party message is being heard, despite the internal disagreements.
A Rasmussen poll released last week showed 48 percent of Americans said their political views were closer to those of the tea party movement than to those of President Barack Obama, who got 44 percent support.

A similar Gallup poll said 28 percent of Americans consider themselves supporters of the tea party movement, while 26 percent are opposed. Tea party supporters overwhelmingly describe themselves as conservative or moderate -- 92 percent -- and the same number, 92 percent, say they're either Republicans or independents.

Some analysts credit the tea party movement with Republican Sen. Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts, as well as the retirement of Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, announced Friday. GOP Senate primaries in Arizona and Florida, where mainstream Republicans face tea party-like opponents, could also provide a measure of the tea party's electoral impact later this year.

"The movement is a problem for all politicians who are not working to reduce spending, keep taxes low and respect the individual rights of its citizens," said former Kansas GOP director Christian Morgan.

Even as the movement picks up mainstream support, though, some tea partiers and conservatives worry about the potential impact of fringe elements -- tea partiers whose biggest concern is Obama's citizenship, for example, or who use inflammatory language and images.

"It's like any new political movement, whether it's the civil rights movement or the pro-life movement or the Second Amendment rights movement or the anti-war movement," Rove said.

"You draw new people into the political spectrum, they're sort of raw and unsophisticated . . . the tea party movement needs to make sure it distances itself from the birthers and the 9/11 deniers and the conspiracy nuts so as not to give its opponents something that can undermine its credibility."

Some critics have accused tea partiers of uglier motives and deeds.

"The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches," wrote columnist Joan Walsh at Salon.com, comparing tea partiers to supporters of former Alabama governor and one-time segregationist George Wallace in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tea partiers strongly reject the label.

"Just because you have one nutcase (at a rally), it doesn't automatically equate that you've got an organization that espouses (racism) as a sane belief," said Timothy Johnson of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a black conservative group.

Tea party critics -- including some conservatives -- have also attacked attempts to turn tea party anger into profit. Several tea party groups criticized the $549 cost of a ticket to February's national tea party convention in Nashville.

Local organizers scoff at the idea that they're trying to make money from the tea party movement.

"That is not our intent at all," said Norm Rasmussen of Preserving American Liberty, the group sponsoring former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's May 1 appearance at the Independence Events Center. "We're just hoping to cover our costs."

Tickets for the Palin speech cost $50 and $75, with $250 tickets available for a reception with the former vice presidential candidate. If the event -- which organizers say is nonprofit -- sells out, it could gross more than $250,000.

But a spokeswoman for the event said last week that the group expects to sell around 1,500 tickets, which would yield considerably less.

Campaign reports show Preserving American Liberty had $1,953.50 in the bank at the end of last year.

"We aren't really a tea party group," Rasmussen said. "We wanted to be able to say, 'Hey, let's really discuss these issues in a way that might make a difference,' rather than develop additional agitation."

He would not say how much Palin will be paid for her appearance here, although she has reportedly earned as much as $100,000 for a single speech.

Promoters of Saturday's "Taking Our Country Back" rally at the Sprint Center also deny any profit motive. Tickets were offered for $45, $75, $100 and $125. On Saturday, the Sprint Center, which seats roughly 18,000 people, appeared to be about 30 percent occupied.

"It's absolutely, 100 percent not about the money," said Tony Holden, a one-time boxing promoter from Tulsa who partnered with musician John Rich to help set up the event. "We've been giving the proceeds to fallen or wounded veterans' foundations."

Promoters said the rally was not a tea party event, although tea partiers were encouraged to attend.

The speakers were paid, although Holden and Rove declined to say how much.

"They get compensated, but it's not anything that's mind-boggling," Holden said. "These guys want to do this show."

Admission to the tea party rally at CommunityAmerica ballpark Thursday is free, although donations will be accepted.

Some political consultants think they've seen the tea party movement before.

"It looks a lot like the (Ross) Perot voters of the 1990s -- frustrated, independent and focused largely on the size and scope of government and government spending," said local political consultant Patrick Tuohey.

Perot received 19 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election. Now his Reform Party has all but disappeared, in part because Perot dropped his political ambitions -- and his financial support.

Some tea partiers say they can avoid a similar fate by avoiding connections with specific candidates and campaigns.
"The day there's an organized Tea Party in Wisconsin is the day the tea party movement dies," said Mark Block, a rally organizer in that state.

Added Nevada tea party activist Gia Gallegos: "I've already been involved in party politics. I don't want another party."

That talk worries some mainstream conservative politicians. If tea party voters stay home, or support independent candidacies, they say, Democrats will win by default.

"I understand what they're angry about," said GOP consultant Ken Khachigian, a former presidential adviser. "But . . . movements don't have an effect until they have some cohesion behind them."

Local radio talk show host Chris Stigall, an enthusiastic backer of most things tea party, says tea partiers will have to make their views count on Election Day by casting votes that matter.

"It's not enough to agitate and pout," he said. "If you're going to . . . protest, that's beautiful, that's wonderful, that's American.

"But to sit it out, and throw a childlike fit, without ever taking the proactive step of voting, then shame on you."

Outside of influencing November's elections, though, the future impact of the movement remains unclear.

In fact, one year after their movement started, it's still difficult to say exactly what tea partiers want -- it's a movement that's defiantly leaderless, with no universally accepted agenda.

Some are worried about the erosion of gun rights. Others are angry about health care reform, or the bank bailout, or changes in immigration law. Federal deficits and debt are also a huge concern.

Ward said tea party disputes over issues and personalities may be unavoidable -- but that tea partiers will ultimately find they have more in common than they have apart.
"The glue is the people," he said. "The people . . . recognize a movement that has some cohesion, and they're the ones pushing the movement together."

Neville and Bart

2010-03-22T15:23:00.001-04:00

Wait for it ...

2010-01-12T10:57:00.001-05:00

Smells like victory

2010-01-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

30,000 Troops - what can we learn from England and Russia?

2009-12-05T12:18:00.000-05:00

Racism Goes Both Ways

2009-11-20T10:56:00.002-05:00

Anytime you say that one people group collectively does any one thing or feels any certain way, it's racism. People are individuals, and each person has the capacity to make their own decisions.

Sparta

2009-11-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

Never say Never

2009-11-16T14:54:00.004-05:00

That's got to hurt a little bit

2009-11-14T10:49:00.000-05:00

Pot-Committed

2009-11-10T10:19:00.001-05:00

TP Strategy in NY

2009-11-07T12:36:00.002-05:00

The Tea Party wing of the Republican Party had the perfect strategy for upstate New York's 23rd congressional district:

1. Support a preferred candidate over local Republican machine choice, Dede Scozzafava.

2. Condemn machine cogs who had picked the moderate Scozzafava as being “insiders.” And have the finger-pointers be Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

3. Focus on national issues.

4. Have Palin make sweeps through upstate New York, spreading the message of Tea Party values.

Good News

2009-11-06T15:18:00.002-05:00

If freepatriot were a webcomic, what would it look like?

Tea Party Test in NY

2009-11-02T14:02:00.000-05:00

With conservative activists having forced Republican Dede Scozzafava from the congressional special election being held tomorrow in upstate New York, the race is suddenly a big national story. And the tea partiers have even more reason to be celebrating now, as it looks as if their chosen candidate — independent Doug Hoffman — may be poised for victory.

A new poll, conducted by Siena Research Institute, shows Hoffman leading Democrat Bill Owens, 41-36. Six percent of respondents said they’re still supporting Scozzafava, who will be on the ballot despite her decision to drop out.

WH Aide: TP 'Wrong, Fringe'

2009-09-13T13:42:00.000-04:00

A top White House aide said Sunday that the thousands of conservative “tea party” demonstrators who marched in Washington on Saturday were “wrong” because they represent only a fringe section of society.

“I don’t think it’s indicative of the nation’s mood,” David Axelrod, the president’s top adviser, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “My message to them is, they’re wrong.”

A major catalyst of the rally — as well as the many protests staged at congressional town hall meetings nationwide last month — was President Obama’s push for health care reform, which conservatives have blasted as an egregious example of government expansion and intrusion.

“I don’t believe that some of the angriest, most strident voices we saw during the summer were representative of the thousands of town hall meetings that went on around the country that came off peacefully, that were constructive,” he said.

Mr. Axelrod vowed that the administration would not be “distracted” by those railing against its health care reform proposal.

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

2009-06-15T16:18:00.003-04:00

Percentage of “liberals” higher this decade than in early ’90s

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

These annual figures are based on multiple national Gallup surveys conducted each year, in some cases encompassing more than 40,000 interviews. The 2009 data are based on 10 separate surveys conducted from January through May. Thus, the margins of error around each year's figures are quite small, and changes of only two percentage points are statistically significant.

To measure political ideology, Gallup asks Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. As has been the case each year since 1992, very few Americans define themselves at the extremes of the political spectrum. Just 9% call themselves "very conservative" and 5% "very liberal." The vast majority of self-described liberals and conservatives identify with the unmodified form of their chosen label.

Party-Based Ideology

There is an important distinction in the respective ideological compositions of the Republican and Democratic Parties. While a solid majority of Republicans are on the same page -- 73% call themselves conservative -- Democrats are more of a mixture. The major division among Democrats is between self-defined moderates (40%) and liberals (38%). However, an additional 22% of Democrats consider themselves conservative, much higher than the 3% of Republicans identifying as liberal.

True to their nonpartisan tendencies, close to half of political independents -- 45% -- describe their political views as "moderate." Among the rest, the balance of views is tilted more heavily to the right than to the left: 34% are conservative, while 20% are liberal.

Gallup trends show a slight increase since 2008 in the percentages of all three party groups calling themselves "conservative," which accounts for the three percentage-point increase among the public at large.

Thus far in 2009, Gallup has found an average of 36% of Americans considering themselves Democratic, 28% Republican, and 37% independent. When independents are pressed to say which party they lean toward, 51% of Americans identify as Democrats, 39% as Republicans, and only 9% as pure independents.

Ideological tendencies by leaned party affiliation are very similar to those of straight partisan groups. However, it is worth noting the views of pure independents -- a group usually too small to analyze in individual surveys but potentially important in deciding elections. Exactly half of pure independents describe their views as moderate, 30% say they are conservative, and 17% liberal.

As reported last week on Gallup.com, women are more likely than men to be Democratic in their political orientation. Along the same lines, women are more likely than men to be ideologically "moderate" and "liberal," and less likely to be "conservative."

Still, conservatism outweighs liberalism among both genders.

The pattern is strikingly different on the basis of age, and this could have important political implications in the years ahead. Whereas middle-aged and older Americans lean conservative (vs. liberal) in their politics by at least 2 to 1, adults aged 18 to 29 are just as likely to say their political views are liberal (31%) as to say they are conservative (30%).

Future Gallup analysis will look at the changes in the political ideology of different age cohorts over time, to see whether young adults in the past have started out more liberal than they wound up in their later years.

Bottom Line

Although the terms may mean different things to different people, Americans readily peg themselves, politically, into one of five categories along the conservative-to-liberal spectrum. At present, large minorities describe their views as either moderate or conservative -- with conservatives the larger group -- whereas only about one in five consider themselves liberal.

While these figures have shown little change over the past decade, the nation appears to be slightly more polarized than it was in the early 1990s. Compared with the 1992-1994 period, the percentage of moderates has declined from 42% to 35%, while the percentages of conservatives and liberals are up slightly -- from 38% to 40% for conservatives and a larger 17% to 21% movement for liberals.

Survey Methods

Results are based on aggregated Gallup Poll surveys of approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, interviewed by telephone. Sample sizes for the annual compilations range from approximately 10,000 to approximately 40,000. For these results, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Tea Party Makes Good Point, Encourages Participation

2009-04-16T14:18:00.001-04:00

The Tax Day Tea Party at Heritage Landing in downtown Muskegon and a similar event at Grand Haven City Hall Wednesday were excellent reminders of Americans' right to debate the actions of their government.

Some in attendance were protesting recent government spending by the Obama administration through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the economic stimulus package. Others saw it as a way to protest the influence of special interest groups on the spending of tax dollars or to comment on Michigan's dismal economy and tax system.

Still others saw it as a way to simply talk politics with like-minded individuals -- perhaps the most important reason of all.

The impetus for the Michigan Tea Parties was provided by Michigan FairTax Association, an organization that wants to reform the state tax system by eliminating the current income tax and various business taxes and replacing them with a 9.75 percent sales tax.

Roger Buchholtz, the Kalamazoo businessman behind the organization, claims his proposal serves state workers and businesses instead of politicians and lobbyists. He describes his plan as so simple, politicians are afraid taxpayers will understand it. He says that it does what the founding leaders of this country intended, makes the true tax burden visible.

It all remains to be debated. His point is well-made, the state needs reform. With the sea change in the auto industry, the state's economy will never be the same and neither will its tax base or spending.

Regardless of who sponsored the event, it reminded us of our responsibilities as citizens of this great nation. Living in a democracy is hard work. Learning about and debating issues takes time and effort. It's easy to let someone else do it.
But, it's not the American way.

Tea Party Emerging as Strong Element

2009-04-15T14:03:00.002-04:00

Tax Day, 2009 - Chants like "Give me liberty, not debt" and "Our kids can't afford you" were heard across several U.S. cities Wednesday as anti-tax "tea party" protesters took to the streets to voice their opposition to big government spending.

Thousands of protesters -- some dressed in colonial wigs with tea bags hanging from their eyeglasses -- showed up in states from California to Kentucky to Massachusetts, holding signs and reading speeches lambasting the Obama administration's tax-and-spend policies.

"I have two little kids and I know we are mortgaging their futures away," one protester at a rally in Austin, Texas told FOX News. "It makes me sick to my stomach."

The demonstrations are part of a larger grassroots movement against government spending called Taxed Enough Already, or TEA -- giving name to the Tax Day Tea Parties -- and come more than 235 years after the original Boston Tea Party revolt against taxes.

Protesters gathered in cities across the country.

Shouts rang out from Kentucky, which just passed tax increases on cigarettes and alcohol, to Salt Lake City, where many in the crowd booed Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman for accepting about $1.5 billion in stimulus money. Even in Alaska, where there is no statewide income tax or sales tax, hundreds of people held signs and chanted "No more spending."

"Frankly, I'm mad as hell," said businessman Doug Burnett at a rally at the Iowa Capitol, where many of the about 1,000 people wore red shirts declaring "revolution is brewing." Burnett added: "This country has been on a spending spree for decades, a spending spree we can't afford."

In Boston, a few hundred protesters gathered on the Boston Common -- a short distance from the original Tea Party -- some dressed in Revolutionary garb and carrying signs that said "Barney Frank, Bernie Madoff: And the Difference Is?" and "D.C.: District of Communism."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up a tea party at Austin City Hall with his stance against the federal government, as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, "Secede!"

But unlike many events around the country, politicians were not allowed to speak at a separate rally in San Antonio.

"They are welcome to come and listen to us, for a change," organizers said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Obama seized the opportunity to defend his tax policy Wednesday, saying, "Make no mistake: this tax cut will reach 120 million families and put $120 billion directly into their pockets, and it includes the most American workers ever to get a tax cut. This will boost demand, and save or create over half a million jobs."

"I know that April 15 isn't exactly everyone's favorite date on the calendar. But it is an important opportunity for those of us in Washington to consider our responsibility to the people who sent us here and who pay the bills," he said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also defended the president's promise to cut taxes.

"If anybody involved looks at the facts, they'll find out that this president promised and this president delivered on putting more money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans, cut their taxes, made it more affordable to buy a home, made it more affordable to send their kids to go to college, provided tax incentives for businesses to create jobs through things like clean energy," Gibbs told reporters during an afternoon press conference.

"I'll let the organizers of whatever these are speak to their motivations," he said.
Earlier in the day, poor weather and permit problems threatened crowd turnouts at protests in Washington, D.C.

One million tea bags delivered to Lafayette Park were reloaded and sent away because tea party organizers did not have the proper permit, protest organizer Rebecca Wales told FOX News.

And a D.C. rally scheduled to take place outside the Treasury Department was cancelled when the U.S. Secret Service prevented protesters from gathering outside for lacking a permit.

The latest round of protests started yesterday when about 200 people gathered at the Missouri state capitol.

The movement has attracted prominent Republicans, some considering a 2012 presidential bid.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich address a tea party in a New York City park Wednesday night. His advocacy group, americansolutions.com, has partnered with tea party organizers to get word to the group's members.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, another likely 2012 GOP presidential hopeful, planned to attend tea parties in Columbia and Charleston. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal sent an e-mail to his supporters, letting them know about tea parties taking place throughout the state.

There were several small counter-protests, including one that drew about a dozen people at Fountain Square in Cincinnati. A counter-protester held a sign that read, "Where were you when Bush was spending billions a month 'liberating' Iraq?" The anti-tax demonstration there, meanwhile, drew about 4,000 people.

In Lansing, Mich., outside the state Capitol, another 4,000 people waved signs exclaiming "Stop the Fiscal Madness," "Read My Lipstick! No More Bailouts" and "The Pirates Are in D.C." Children held makeshift signs complaining about the rising debt.

More than 1,000 protesters gathered outside a downtown federal building in Salt Lake City despite the rain and snow. Kate Maloney held a cardboard sign that read "Pin the tail on the jacka$$" with a picture of Obama on a Democratic donkey.

Other protesters also took direct aim at Obama. One sign in the crowd in Madison, Wis., compared him to the anti-Christ. At a rally in Montgomery, Ala., where Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" blared from loudspeakers, Jim Adams of Selma carried a sign that showed the president with Hitler-style hair and mustache and said, "Sieg Heil Herr Obama."

Still others talked of their children's futures. In Washington, D.C., Joe Hollinger said he took the day off to attend the protest with his 11-year-old daughter.

"I'm concerned about the incredible amount of debt Congress is going to put on our children," Hollinger said, pointing to his daughter's sign, which read, "Congress get your hand off my piggy bank."

"Across our nation, thousands of Americans are participating in taxpayer tea parties today for one simple reason: overtaxed families and small businesses have had enough," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday.

"They've had enough of Democrats forcing taxpayers to pick up the tab for more wasteful spending instead of working together to make the tough fiscal decisions Americans are forced to make each and every day. They've had enough of seeing their hard-earned tax dollars wasted on pork-barrel spending that won't create jobs, rebuild their savings, or get our economy moving again. And they've had enough of Congress and the White House mortgaging our children and grandchildren's future by saddling them with mountains of debt destined to bankrupt our country," Boehner said.

We Made "The Sight!"

2006-10-02T16:58:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the Mullah El_Ron for pointing it out to me:

The famous handgun website "The Sight1911M1" has included us as a featured link in their "Assembly/Disassembly" references.

Thanks, guys!

Sermons and Messages

2005-05-19T23:35:00.000-04:00

Please take some time to read through some of these articles I've written on the Christian faith:

A New Neighbor

Punishment, Discipline, and Submission to Authority

Dreams for the worship team

Jezebel!

American Idol and the Church

The Stairway to Heaven

Prophetic Worship

Why Worship?

For Whom the Bells Toll

The scottauld.com Domain Name Odyssey

2005-05-19T23:19:00.001-04:00

Or, how I lost my domain name to incompetence and treachery

5/18/2005

This is a long story. Feel free to ignore it. My pal Mike asked me, "Whatever happened to your scottauld.com name?" I replied with the following tale, and it was the first time I had actually written out the entire story. So, in the hopes that it will someday help someone else, here goes:

In 1997, a company called websolo.com was offering to register domain names for you and host the files for the site for $10/month. At the time, this was a very good deal because it was normally $200 to register a domain name. Do you remember $200/year? I do.

You see, websolo.com was a registrar, which meant they could register domain names on a DNS server and propogate the name to the world. In order to get lots of hosting clients, they offered to register your domain name for you on their own DNS servers if you would sign up for a year of hosting at $10 /year. I jumped at it.

scottauld.com as it appeared in 1999

They registered my domain name, scottauld.com, on their DNS servers, and that propogated around the world in 48 hours, like it was supposed to do. The whole world's DNS servers quickly learned that scottauld.com should point to websolo.com's hosting servers. And my files lived happily on those servers for six years, with me paying $10 / month for the priviledge...

I used the scottauld.com name to host the "Macintosh Compendium," a home for Apple Computer-centric wallpapers and other material. We got quite a few visitors over the years.

Fast forward to 2003.

I had begun registering my domain names at GoDaddy.com for $8 / year. Great price, i

(this is an aside:)

possible because the registrar monopolies had been broken up sometime around 1999. That's when Verisign lost their mopopoly (which they had attained by buying the big registrar in the world. Many new companies became registrars and started allowing you to register names much, much cheaper.

Okay, I digress. Anyway, I had bought several names from GoDaddy.com for $8 / year. I wanted to consolidate my scottauld.com name over to GoDaddy. I was willing to keep hosting the files on websolo.com (now known as Aplus.net) with the same ten bucks they were already making off of me. I merely wanted to move where the name was held.

But aplus.net told me I couldn't move the NAME (which they always had stated that I owned) to another server. In other words, even though they said I owned the name, they wouldn't relinquish the name to another DNS server on another company.

If you know how domain names are administered, then you know that each domain name has three "contacts": Registrant contact, Administrative contact, and Technical contact. What websolo had done was to place my name as Registrant and Administrative, but their own name as Technical. That prevented me from moving the name, because you have to get permission from the contacts to move a name.

After multiple emails and calls, head games and shenanigans, and an improper say/do ratio, I finally gave up on them. I cancelled the service with websolo.com/aplus.net, told them to stop billing me and to let the domain name die. I never told them my new email address, never told them where the site was being rebuilt (freepatriot.com) and basically told them I was disconnecting from the internet forever and to consider me dead.

Now, they never removed the entry for scottauld.com from their hosting servers. You already know that a webserver has entries for names that it hosts, and if that server gets a request for scottauld.com it knows which directory to load. That's what they still have configured on their name servers. But they have deleted me from DNS, and that change (deletion) propogated around the world, which is why that name no longer works in a web browser.

freepatriot.com today

Maybe someday I'll buy the name (it's free now) and just point the people to my real site. Or maybe someday I'll have to move this site to another name, since Spam eventually catches up with you and is the bane of all domain name owners. Only time will tell.

If you are interested in what the site (or any other website) looked like over time, visit archive.org for a look back in time.

UPDATE 7/28/08: an Australian racecar driver named Scott Auld owns the name now. Bummer.

Vertical Drop of a Projectile

2005-03-24T16:59:00.000-05:00

In response to some questions about ballistics that I posed to my pal Tony, a math whiz if ever there was one, I received the following letter:

Scott,

I created a table and graph for you regarding the vertical drop (in feet) of a projectile based on it's velocity and distance traveled. Do note that the values in the table are feet, not inches. For example, a bullet traveling at 900 ft/sec will drop over 7 feet after traveling horizontally 600 feet (200 yds).

Two assumptions were made: the projectile was fire horizontally (obviously) and air resistance was neglected. Accounting for air resistance would affect the results - all vertical drops would increase. By how much? I can only guess at this point - could be a little, could be a lot. Naturally, the farther the target, the greater the difference between the numbers I calculated and the "real-life" numbers. We could figure it out if we know how much longer it takes for the bullet to reach the target. But none-the-less, these values do give you a rough idea of how much the projectile will drop.

I used two very simple formulas:
d = vt
s = 1/2at^2

I'm going to rewrite them just a bit:
Dx = vt
Dy = 1/2at^2

Now, I'm going to "massage" the formulas a bit:
t = Dx/v
Dy = 16t^2

Now, for a little substitution:
Dy = 16(Dx/v)^2

The formula above is what you asked for. It addresses your question, 'how to calculate the answer to a question like "calculate the amount of drop at 50 yards, 100 yards, and two hundred yards for a bullet fired horizontally at 1000 fps."'

In English, the formula states, "To find the vertical drop, in feet, of a projectile, divide the horizontal distance to the target by the velocity of the projectile, square this value, then multiple by 16." Not overly complicated, but then again, not exactly the easiest numbers to crunch out in the field. Just identify your distance to the target and your muzzle velocity and you can get a good idea of the vertical drop in feet (neglecting air resistance).

Enjoy,
Tony

2003-11-25T10:34:00.000-05:00

I am sending this from the future

Physicists Are Looking At How We Might Take A Trip Through Time
Wall Street Journal ^ | 21 November 2003 | SHARON BEGLEY

Ronald Mallett hadn't even heard of physics when he read H.G. Wells' 1895 classic, "The Time Machine," just a few months after his father died at age 33.

The 10-year old assumed that to build such a device, and see his father again, he should go into electronics, his dad's field. It was only during his stint at the Strategic Air Command that he learned that it was physicists who were discovering seeming impossibilities: that space can bend, time can slow, particles can be waves and waves, particles. It was physics, he realized, that offered the hope of making Wells' fiction -- and his boyhood hope -- a reality.

"But I was astute enough not to tell people I was interested in the physics of time travel ," says Dr. Mallett, a professor at physics at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. "I chose black holes as my cover story, and didn't come out of the time-travel closet until 1998."

The closet is emptying fast. Ever since Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity in 1915, describing gravity as dips and curves in the single entity called space-time, researchers have been finding hidden gems in its equations. Those equations permit numerous "solutions," or particular shapes of space-time -- from deep wells to gentle waves. One solution, for instance, implies the existence of black holes; at first only theorized, black holes have since become, through astronomical observations, members in good standing of the cosmic menageries. Now physicists are taking seriously the newest solutions, those that imply geometries of space-time that actually allow travel to the past.

Prof. Mallett theorized in 2000 that if a powerful laser light were bent into a ring, it would create a region at its center where space-time curves back on itself so severely that someone proceeding into the future would wind up back when he started, in his own past. In 1991, Princeton University astrophysicist J. Richard Gott theorized that cosmic strings, thinner than an atomic nucleus but infinitely long and more massive than a galaxy, could warp space-time enough to create these paths to the past, called closed timelike curves.

But it is a 1989 discovery, by Caltech's Kip Thorne and colleagues, that has done the most to get the physics of time travel into reputable scientific journals. They theorized that general relativity permits wormholes -- tunnels that cut across a curved region of space-time, connecting here to there and now to then. Earlier calculations suggested that wormholes don't stay open long enough to serve as practical time machines, but Prof. Thorne showed that, with enough negative energy, they can be propped open.

That's how the heroes of "Timeline," in theaters next week, travel back to the 14th century (and immediately plunge into nonstop sword-wielding, horse-galloping mayhem). In the film, scientists accidentally discover a wormhole, one end of which is anchored in 1357 France. That gets a thumbs up from physicists: If wormholes and closed timelike curves exist, they are going to be found, not created. You'd have to settle for whatever endpoints they have.

Just because wormholes emerge from general relativity doesn't mean they emerge in reality, of course. But physicists take them seriously because of their experience with black holes, which were first only theoretical, too. Maybe wormholes, too, will move from theory to reality.

"In physics," says physicist Michio Kaku of the City College of New York, "that which is not forbidden is mandatory. If you want to forbid some bizarre phenomenon, you have to kill it by showing that a law of physics prevents it."

No one has yet done that with wormholes or time travel . The energy needed to prop open a wormhole is about what you would get by converting the mass of a large star into energy through E = mc2. But that is a practical, not a fundamental, objection. British cosmologist Stephen Hawking once proposed a "chronology protection conjecture" that would forbid time travel as a result of the laws of physics, but has since retreated.

That has brought a sea change in physics. "A dozen years ago, if you talked about time travel your name would be mud," says Prof. Kaku. "But now we feel that by exploring the possibility of time travel , we are testing the extremes of the laws of physics, which may lead to new physics."

If new physics is lurking anywhere, a good place to check is the sub-subatomic world of "quantum foam." In this roiling microworld, space itself is holey, and wormholes and black holes 100 billion times smaller than a proton constantly pop into existence (as the blip that became our universe probably did) only to quickly disappear (as our universe didn't). But it might be possible to pump enough energy into an otherwise transitory wormhole it to keep it around.

Physicists even have the engineering specs for how to then turn a wormhole into a time tunnel. Anchor one mouth in the present -- say, Nov. 21, 2010. Drag the other mouth through space at nearly the speed of light, until Nov. 21, 2011. Moving objects age more slowly than stationary ones, according to relativity. If you hop inside the wormhole, therefore, you could travel to any point in time in-between, back to 2010.

And there's the rub. Time travelers could never reach a time earlier than when a wormhole was engineered. No wonder none have visited us.

2003-11-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

The Downside to Gun Control

There is a downside to gun control, and it is not inconvenience to hunters, and it is not inconvenience to people who want to buy a gun for the purpose of target shooting. The downside to gun control is genocide.

The downside of gun control is mountains of corpses. In each of the seven major genocides in this century in which over 56 million people were murdered, including millions of children, there was, on the books, prior to the onset of the genocide, at least one and in most cases several gun control laws. You cannot have genocide without having gun control.

In some countries, the people have not yet wrested control of their destiny from tyrants, and America has become the adopted home of many of the world's oppressed people. That's why the Founders wrote the first ten articles of our Bill of Rights to remind the government of the freedoms that all people have merely by drawing breath. They knew firsthand what can happen when the government, its standing army, and the police have too much power. They wrote the Bill of Rights as a reminder to the government of where it had no authority. Nine of those ten articles were promises to the people.

The other one was the Second Amendment, and it wasn't a promise. It was the guarantee that backed up all the promises. The guarantee was and is very simple. Every citizen over sixteen is a member of the militia, and the founders wanted every one of us to have the same basic weapon as a soldier in a modern military. In 1775, that basic weapon was a flintlock musket. In 1925, it was a bolt action rifle and a BAR. In 1945, it was a BAR and a semiautomatic Garand, and today it is an M16A2.

The army may have cannons, mortars, and explosive shells, but if every citizen has the basic infantryman's rifle, no army, foreign or domestic, can ever prevail. That was true in the eighteenth century when the cannons fired round balls and the bombs were filled with black powder, and it's true in the twentieth century when the cannons shoot twenty miles and the bombs carry nuclear warheads.

Anyplace on earth where the citizens have the same small arms as the soldiers to defend their freedoms, you will find a free nation.

Anywhere there is tyranny you will find that the people were first disarmed.

2003-08-09T12:05:00.000-04:00

Yeah, so I've been transferring everything over here to freepatriot.com.

I decided that I'm not gonna host anything on scottauld.com anymore. There's no reason to keep a page named after myself. There are too many creeps on the internet... identity thieves, freaks, spammers, etc.

I'm going to let scottauld.com run out (whatever's left on the hosting expiration) and then we'll see where it goes from there.

Until then, this is the place to be.