But, Obama is not giving up on forcing his views on American’s, reducing their freedom (via Hot Air)

(ABC News) President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

Following President Obama’s speech at the retreat, a small group of Senate Democrats, mostly women, left the retreat early in order to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to counter the Republicans’ news conference today at which they called for the mandate to be overturned.

Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.

“It is our clear understanding from the administration that the president believes as we do, and the vast majority of the American women should have access to birth control,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said pointing out that 15 percent of women use birth control for medical issues. “It’s medicine, and women deserve their medicine.”

Yet, they do have access to contraception, regardless of whether their health insurance offers it or not. They can get a prescription from a doctor and pick up birth control pills. No one is stopping them. They can go down to the local pharmacy and buy condoms! Amazing, eh? And easy! They’re even available at grocery stores and small places like 7/11, WaWa, Kangaroo, and so on. By this same argument the Democrats are making, every plan should include, say, laser eye surgery. For free. No co-pays. Yet, most don’t even include a small discount. Government is not mandating. But, 1 in 4 American’s will need some sort of corrective eye implements by age 40.

“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”

As Allahpundit wrote Anyone want to field that question from ObamaCare supporter Kirsten Gillibrand? What about the Central Government’s power to decide? But, neither is deciding whether or not to use contraception, they are deciding whether it is in the health insurance plans. Government is mandating over the specific religious objections of Catholics, a clear violation of the 1st Amendment, along with the liberals own talking points about a “separation of Church and State.”

This is not a bug, though, nor a by-product. This is intentional. When you dig into ObamaCare, you see that one of the main points is to make sure private sector employers who offer health insurance drop their coverages. Central government would much rather have the private sector pay the $2,000 fine to the Central Government, rather than pay the $6-12 thousand per year per employee they are paying now, with the employees then joining the government health insurance exchange. With each company that ends up dropping their offers, the Democrats can demonize them and says “look how mean private sector companies are!”

If just one employee obtains insurance through the exchange, their company is responsible for paying the fine for every employee. In retail, there can be, roughly, 25% of the employees being part-time. Some companies offer insurance for them, but, none take it, because it is much more expensive. Some do not even offer to part time. Companies will not take the chance that just one obtains insurance through the exchange. They will drop their plans. And that’s beside the notion that the fine is cheaper than the out-lays.

Let’s not forget this from the other day

“Unless this rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences or drop health care coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so),” according to a letter from Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

“Drop health care coverage.” That’s the point. But, why Obama would want to pick this fight in a presidential election year is strange. Perhaps he thinks that no matter how shabbily he treats Catholics, they’ll still vote for him. Democrats treat lots of voter blocks poorly, and, yes, they are dumb enough to vote Democrats. Will this time be different? Perhaps Obama was trying to change the narrative, which is that he is incompetent, has no clue how to deal with the economy, and is against creating private sector jobs. Move the conversation away from Keystone XL, Solyndra and other failed “green” companies, the waste of Stimulus, and Fast and Furious. Or, perhaps, he just doesn’t know better, and made a whopper of a mistake in green lighting this agenda.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

I did not immediately comment on this because I thought it would be obvious to everyone — but apparently not. When Breivik last faced court over his massacre he gave a salute as he came into the courtroom. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said was ’some kind of Right-wing extremist greeting.’

It was not, of course. It was a COMMUNIST salute. The Communist salute is a clenched-fist salute while the Fascist salute is with an open hand.

What the significance is we can only speculate. While it is true that he mostly read and cited conservative sources in the buildup to his actions, that was rather inevitable given his dissatisfaction with Muslims. Only conservatives have the guts to call a spade a spade where Muslims are concerned. Breivik’s other ideas could perfectly well be Leftist.

And his desire to restore traditional Norwegian society is in keeping with that idea. Norway is a very Leftist place and it was only their failure to deal with the Muslim problem that caused the Social Democrats to lose votes in the last election. We may note, for example, that a doctor was recently denied employment at a Norwegian hospital because he did not believe in the Theory of Evolution. See here. Pretty extreme.

That it was Leftists whom Breivik killed makes no odds. Rival Leftist groupings have a long history of killing one-another. The ice-pick in the head that Trotsky got from Stalin is a case in point.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Why climate change will make you love big government

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission.

Look back on 2011 and you’ll notice a destructive trail of extreme weather slashing through the year. In Texas, it was the driest year ever recorded. An epic drought there killed half a billion trees,  touched off wildfires that burned 4 million acres, and destroyed or  damaged thousands of homes and buildings. The costs to agriculture,  particularly the cotton and cattle businesses, are estimated at $5.2 billion — and keep in mind that, in a winter breaking all sorts  of records for warmth, the Texas drought is not yet over.

That kind of whining about the weather, which is the fault of Barack Obama cruising the country in 17 car convoys, continues on for a bit longer. Because weather never happened before 1980 (until you cruise Real Science, and see the newspaper headlines from the past)

Such calamities, devastating for those affected, have important  implications for how we think about the role of government in our  future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state  for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder  of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our  survival.

In the past, people tended to rely on themselves. And there is nothing wrong with government helping out: it’s one of the reasons we have government. There is no need for a massive central government with a giant bureaucracy. Of course, that’s not the progressive narrative: to them, we need giant over-reaching and all powerful government for when the wind blows, it rains, and it snows….hey, remember when the NYC public sector unions slowed the snow cleanup in 2010?

Anyhow, the author goes on and on about how great big central government is, and why the private sector can’t do anything, ending with

In the face of an unraveling climate system, there is no way that  private enterprise alone will meet the threat. And though small “d”  democracy and “community” may be key parts of a strong, functional, and  fair society, volunteerism and “self-organization” alone will prove as  incapable as private enterprise in responding to the massive challenges  now beginning to unfold.

To adapt to climate change will mean coming together on a large scale  and mobilizing society’s full range of resources. In other words, big  storms require big government. Who else will save stranded climate  refugees, or protect and rebuild infrastructure, or coordinate rescue  efforts and plan out the flow and allocation of resources?

It will be government that does these tasks or they will not be done at all.

What would we do without Big Centralized Government taking charge? Just because they’ll need to take more and more money while imposing more and more regulations/restrictions on its citizens and businesses is Bo reason to poo poo the idea. Government is just here to help. Despite being incompetent and taking vastly too long to accomplish the most minor and mundane task is no reason to be concerned about Government. Just because the climate change movement is about fascism (for everyone else) is no reason to worry.

(Politico) The issue of race and American politics, never far beneath the surface during Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, is making a loud, overt and surprisingly early appearance in the 2012 presidential race.

And no one knows — least of all Obama himself — what impact the race card, always a wild card, will have on the president’s reelection prospects.

I’ll suggest it backfires, particularly if Team Obama and their sycophants attack Romney’s Mormonism.

In the past several months, Newt Gingrich has drawn sharp criticism for labeling Obama the “food stamp president” and for suggesting poor kids in New York’s majority-minority school system burnish their work ethic by picking up mops. First lady Michelle Obama bridled at the perception that she’s an “angry black woman.” Obama’s Chicago-based campaign has pushed back against stories that he’s more or less given up on the white vote.

Except, Newt wasn’t just talking about Black people: the majority of food stamp recipients are Caucasian. Michelle Obama is the one who brought up the angry black woman thing in order to create racial division. And Team Obama was the one who said they had given up on the white vote.

But nothing has illustrated the potentially explosive political impact of race — an issue that Obama has downplayed throughout his career — like the firestorm around the image of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger at the first black president of the United States.

If there were any illusion that 2012 would be the post-racial election most Americans hoped for, it vanished with that single shake of a finger and 30 seconds of sniping lost to history in the turbine roar of Air Force One.

Got that? The duly elected Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, is an evil racist simply because she wagged her finger in the face of a disrespectful half-black President. By that definition, we could call Obama a sexist, since he was disrespectful to Brewer and walked away.

But, what else does Obama have to run on? He certainly can’t run on his record. He doesn’t like to talk about his signature legislation, the Stimulus and Obamacare. He can play with the economic numbers all he wants, but people are hurting, and things are not getting better. The housing industry is still a major mess. Real world prices are rising. Disposable income is very low. Consumer confidence is low. There are historic numbers of people who have given up on the job market. The recession supposedly ended in June, 2009, yet, here in 2012, nothing seems to have changed.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Hat tip to Allahpundit that who says:

A constitution is as good as the political culture that surrounds it. Ginsburg would have been better off reminding Egyptian TV of that.

Please! This is one of the main reasons that you need to vote against Obama when it is time. I don’t want him to have the chance to appoint another justice as liberal as this one! Perhaps she should recuse herself from any rulings based on Constitutional grounds since she isn’t so fond of our Constitution. Or maybe she should move to South Africa!

Others: Jeff Goldstein

Skip ahead on the video to 9:28.

Barack Obama’s avalanche of needless regulations on coal-fueled power plants are going into effect and the net result will be the closing of hundreds of power plants all across the country just when our need for power is increasing. This will absolutely necessitate the cost of our power to skyrocket. But, this is exactly what he wants. He wants to rape us for our power. He said so from the beginning.

Well, now that he’s had the opportunity to put into place just some of the new rules and regulations he wants — and he’s only pushed through a tiny bit of what he really wants, indeed — we are already seeing the results of his attack on us.

Look to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland where six coal-fueled power plants are being shut down by FirstEnergy because the retrofitting the power plants will have to undergo to satisfy Obama’s whims is just too expensive to justify.

Company spokesmen say there is no help for it.

“This decision is not in any way a reflection of the fine work done by the employees at the affected plants, but is related to the impact of new environmental rules,” said James H. Lash, president, FirstEnergy Generation and chief nuclear officer. “We recently completed a comprehensive review of our coal-fired generating plants and determined that additional investments to implement MATS and other environmental rules would make these older plants even less likely to be dispatched under market rules. As a result, it was necessary to retire the plants rather than continue operations.”

Obama is forcing these new regs on the whole industry. Many thousands of jobs will be lost — this particular shut down will cause the loss of over 500 jobs initially — and the loss of the generating capacity will force a larger load on other plants necessarily causing costs to go up for all of us.

This isn’t just affecting out-of-date plants owned by FirstEnergy, either.

Douglas Gotham, director of the State Utility Forecasting Group, for instance, says that rates hikes are on the way in Indiana, as well, and all because of Obama’s onerous new EPA regulations.

“Due to the federal regulatory focus on emissions from coal-fired generators, Indiana is expected to experience larger price increases than projected on a regional or national level.”

This is exactly what Obama wanted. Remember in 2007 when he sat down with the San Francisco Chronicle and told us all that he wanted to bankrupt the coal industry and that our rates would “necessarily skyrocket”?

Well, his plans are succeeding. Prices are indeed “skyrocketing.” Worse, jobs are being lost. As Sean Harkbarth of the US Chamber of Commerce notes,

Utility MACT is only part of the assault on coal power plants. Last September, I wrote about how EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution rule cost 500 jobs in Texas. The Chamber’s senior vice president of Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Affairs, Bill Kovacs told Congressmen last summer that the “cumulative impact of regulatory action can be overwhelming” and is causing power plants to be taken offline and putting people out of work.

Hackbarth points to testimony of EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus who admitted last April that jobs are not part of their determinations.

So, Obama’s plans really are well on the way to fruition. But it’s just beginning. He very much wants to do far more damage than he has thus far.

(H/T Thurber’s Thoughts)

(BBC News) Growing inequality, environmental decline and “teetering” economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes.

Health and education must improve, it says. Subsidies on fossil fuels should end, and governments must look beyond the standard economic indicator of GDP.

The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability was established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

It was launched because fewer and fewer people where buying into the anthropogenic global warming guano.

It is being launched in Addis Ababa by its two co-chairs, Finnish President Tarja Halonen and her South African counterpart Jacob Zuma.

“With the possibility of the world slipping further into recession, policymakers are hungry for ideas that can help them to navigate these difficult times,” said Mr Zuma.

“Our report makes clear that sustainable development is more important than ever given the multiple crises now enveloping the world.”

See? It’s so simple, we’ll simply do away with GDP, redistribute wealth, and all sit around on farms reminiscent of the 5th century digging in the mud while our lords and masters sit in their castles deciding what is best for us.

Sustainable development is simply another version of the Left’s call for fascism, same as the climate change hoax is. I suppose we can also think about it in terms of Soviet style communism, where there was an all powerful central government full of the elites dictating everything, right down to whether you are allowed to have salt and trans-fats, how you can run your business, and how much bread will be available. People are docile when they are standing in food lines for hours. This is the kind of idiocy that creates worthless products like the Chevy Volt, which limits our ability to move around to a small area. These people are true “watermelons”: green on the outside, red on the inside

The report – Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing – includes 56 recommendations that would, if implemented in full, have profound implications for societies, governments, and businesses.

Governments would build the true environmental costs of products into the prices that people pay to purchase them, leading to an economic system that protects natural resources.

Goods would be labelled with information on their environmental impact, enabling consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.

And even more based on “environmentalism”, natch, climate change controls. They’d do away with all subsidies for fossil fuels, because they are eeeeeevil, and, magically, real world prices would stay low, but, hey, even if they rise exponentially, it’s for our own good. They Know Better.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Washington Post) Dozens of police maintained a late-night guard around City Hall following daylong protests that resulted in 300 arrests. Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into the historic building and burned a U.S. flag, as officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

That’s a whole lot of peace, isn’t it? And yet another in a line of flag burnings.

Saturday’s protests — the most turbulent since Oakland police forcefully dismantled an Occupy encampment in November — came just days after the group said it planned to use a vacant building as a social center and political hub and threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

Apparently, their copy of the Bill Of Rights says something about the “right of the people mostly peaceably to assemble, break and enter, trespass, and threaten”.

An exasperated Mayor Jean Quan, who faced heavy criticism for the police action last fall, called on the Occupy movement to “stop using Oakland as its playground.”

“People in the community and people in the Occupy movement have to stop making excuses for this behavior,” Quan said.

No, Liberals in the community need to stop making excuses for this behavior. They needed to do it from the get go. Except, liberals like you, Mayor Quan, put up with it from the get go. More on that in a moment.

The group assembled outside City Hall late Saturday morning and marched through the streets, disrupting traffic as they threatened to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and “destroying construction equipment” shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Peaceful.

Quan said that at one point, many protesters forced their way into City Hall, where they burned flags, broke an electrical box and damaged several art structures, including a recycled art exhibit created by children.

She blamed the destruction on a small “very radical, violent” splinter group within Occupy Oakland.

Who’s making excuses now, Mayor Quan?

Here’s the photo of the day for the protest

I have no idea the background of the photo, but, the KosKidz and the DUmmies seem to think that it is emblematic of the problems in America, and that it is shameful. At the DU we see

• Horrifying…What kind of orders are the police getting? Are we still a free people?
• Makes me want to drive up there and protect the kids- you too? It’s so horrifying to think this is happening in our country.

Well, gee wiz, are we a free country that sees riots that require tear gas, with parents bringing their kids to potential riots, needing gas masks? One DUmmy does mention that perhaps the parents should protect the kids by getting them the hell out of there. And some of the Kos Kidz get that bringing the child is a Bad Idea, but many others are on this wavelength

That photo of a child and her mother wearing…gas masks says it all about the current [disgraceful] state of American society.

That single iconic image should resonate sadly and profoundly with every American for a very long time.

D.C…. WAKE THE HELL UP!!

See, it’s not the fault of the mom who brought their child, knowing they would need a gas mask. It’s the fault of American society! And D.C.! They also blame the Oakland PD. Like this one

I don’t see an encampment. I see a mother and a child standing on the street, but since you never know when the police will attack the citizens, I guess it’s best to make sure you have your gas mask around the clock.

The police wouldn’t need to if you Leftists would stop rioting, breaking and entering, starting fires, etc. But, please, keep it up. Especially in Charlotte.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Jim Robinson:

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi who’s fighting to repeal ObamaCare appeared on Greta, tonight, defending RomneyCare. She says Romney’s health care plan is not the same as ObamaCare and, in fact, Romney’s plan reduces costs. She goes on to say that Romney wants all states to impose similar laws (including mandates) and that she and is all for it.

She went on to explain that she’s going to be on Romney’s Health Care Advisory Team when he’s president!

What this means is that while Romney may say he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he actually agrees with it. He believes that RomneyCare, ie, ObamaCare is a model health care plan and all states should impose similar plans.

RomneyCare and ObamaCare are the same thing. The only difference is that Romney’s was imposed at the state level where Obama’s was imposed nationally.

RomneyCare = ObamaCare = taxpayer funded abortion = death panels = socialism = government force = fascism = tyranny!!

So Romney and his co-conspirators in the GOP establishment are now planning a National Healthcare Task Force to impose top-down government run national healthcare on all 50 states!!

We all know what Reagan said about government by a group of elites and that socialism would be imposed on America through socialized health care. Well, welcome to the Socialist States Of America if Romney is elected.

If the GOP does this then the hell with them!!

The gauzy puffery that the Old Media slathers upon the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped keep most Americans in the dark about how nasty, how violent, how outrageous, and even how incredibly lacking in integrity this movement is. On the conservative blogs the truth is well known, of course, but the fact that few Americans seem to know how bad the OWSers are shows that as conservatives we are not effectively getting our message out there.

For the initial two years of its existence the Old Media spent its every waking moment destroying, maligning, and out right lying about the Tea Party movement. Even today you’ll see an occasional swipe at the Tea Patiers made by some hater from the left and the Old Media is happy to “report” the slander, naturally.

You might remember when Obama operative Anna Park tried to start a counter movement that she prosaically called “the Coffee Party” during the heyday of the Tea Party. You may also recall that those Old Media mavens, while daily lying and lambasting the Tea Partiers, fell all over themselves to play up the silly and quickly failed and forgotten “Coffee Party” effort.

Similarly, when the Occupiers hit the scene, the Old Media went into paroxysms of ecstasy over the whole thing. Even today, after conservatives have so effortlessly ripped away the veneer from the absurdity and essential anti-Americanness of the OWSers, the Old Media is still slathering OWS with unearned and illicit praise.

Most Americans are unaware that real communists and socialists and other anti-American groups form the core of OWS. Few Americans understand that these people are drug addicts and criminals that have indulged every imaginable crime at these events. From property destruction to child abandonment to rape to gun crimes, just about every crime imaginable from small to large have been committed at these events. People have even died at these things!

There is even a website dedicated to chronicling the arrests made at OWS events. As of the writing of this article they had noted 5,975 arrests at OWS events across the nation. And this is a left-wing hosted website, too. You see they are proud of these arrests.

Compared to the several years of Tea Party events, the OWS events have been a criminal’s paradise. Not only have the Tea Partiers never had any arrests, or fights, or criminality, at their events they’ve even left every park they used cleaner than they were when they started their events!

Just because the OWS movement is dying down right now — maybe only due to the winter cold — that doesn’t mean the outrages of the OWSers is slowing. Just recently a church that made the foolish mistake of helping these criminals found its facilities vandalized. A $12,000 baptismal fount was stolen along with laptops and other items. These creeps even urinated on Church property. There have been other churches that have been vandalized when they tried to assist the OWSers, too.

With all the criminality that has occurred at these supposedly peaceful events, the public should have long ago turned against OWS. Yet polls still show that Americans have not turned against OWS. Why? Because the Old Media has told them how great it all is and has made a concerted effort to hide the truth from people.

By contrast, the Tea Party’s image has been thoroughly battered with Americans. Is it any surprise with the near daily barrage of hate the Old Media bludgeons the Tea Party with?

If no other example is believable to show how the Old Media establishment is sold out to the far left, the difference in the way it has treated the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement is solid proof of that bias.

Sadly, even after we’ve exposed all the criminality at the OWS events in conservative media outlets from newspapers to TV to blogs, the fact that Americans still have not turned foursquare against the Occupiers shows that we have made little headway in reaching the country with the truth.