Outside the Beltway - The People's View - Colorado Primary

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A new feature of the Coltons Point Times is local election analysis from local people who are not partisan hacks. These are real people far removed from the Washington beltway.

Our first analyst is Ed O'Connor from Northern Colorado and his analysis was given just before the primary yesterday. Ed was one of the record setting Colorado voters to vote by mail. He is a retired fighter pilot from the Air Force and retired commercial pilot from Northwest Airlines.

All photos are from Ed and the plane is one he built and flies throughout the country.

His analysis and predictions follow:

Hey Jim: I live in Weld County, a very conservative area of Colorado. Did I mention we have a lot of water that Denver wants here in Colorado.


From a political viewpoint, just about everyone I associate with is conservative and a Republican and is pretty unhappy with the present congress, the President and the state officials. That being said:


The Republicans have a golden opportunity to gain back some of the losses from the last election but as usual, egos and money have really screwed things up. Not to mention some charges made against the candidates for Governor and Ken Bucks inability to realize he is never off the record when he speaks.


I am a big believer in Party trumps individuals in a two party political system. There is no substitute for being in the majority. If your party is not in control of the majority you really have nothing. You do not control the agenda, the committees, the bills nor the votes. So it really pisses me off to see the Republicans blow an opportunity to take back the statehouse. Ritter has been a disaster to the state.


I listen to these politicians make statements that if they are elected they will do certain things which any one with a brain knows that unless they are in the majority, they stand no chance to accomplish any of what they say.

So I fail to understand people like Trancedo who just make it more difficult to gain a conservative majority in the state regardless of who it is.


At present, I think Ken Buck (who is from Weld CO) will win the Republican Senate race and will beat any Democrat running, Bennett, or Romanoff.


The Governors race is harder to call because of the Republican bickering, Trancedo in the race who draws all of his support from Republicans. As of now Hickenlooper looks like he may win because of the split vote for the Republican or Constitutional Party Candidate


And I think Markey will be defeated as no one in this district is happy with her except the Democrats and this is a Republican district.


Of course I have been wrong in the past so who knows.

[Note from Publisher - Results showed Ken Buck did win as Ed projected. He will oppose Bennet in the general election. Ed said it was too close to call the GOP governor's race and with most precincts reporting the race between Maes and McInnis is 50% each with Maes, the surprise outsider, about 3,000 votes ahead. It looks like it is headed for a recount. Ed is right again. His final predictions about Hickenlooper and Markey concern the general election and will not be known until November 2. Way to go Ed - a perfect record so far!]

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Obama & Pelosi New Democratic Campaign Strategy - Bush Babble

Our president who promised to champion change starting with eliminating the polarization of politicians and the partisanship in Washington, not to mention the adoration toward special interests and dependence on campaign contributions, seems to have forgotten all those promises.

Now we see that our president, the one who is supposed to serve all Americans including Independents, Republicans, Democrats and the Disinterested, has returned to the campaign trail with a whole new Democratic strategy called the Bush Babble attack mode.

I suppose when you don't have a leg to stand on any old Bush will do.

Obama just might be the first president in modern history to conclude after just two years in office it is easier to be against everything Bush than to learn the art of compromise and work with those you were elected to serve.

His new image is quite a contrast from the slick, intelligent, pre-packaged, self-assured Ivy League image he tried to convey when he got elected. Those days of the consummate elitist are gone it seems, replaced by the tough talking, slang slinging Bush basher he has become on the fall campaign trail.

Here we thought two years ago we had put Bush behind us with the election of Obama. He was not running against Bush two years ago and he sure is not in 2010 but when your legislative initiatives have passed and still no one understands them or has seen any evidence of what good they will do for us, you are in desperate need of a straw man to blame for your misfortunes.

So Obama and Pelosi have instituted the Bush Babble strategy and so far about the only thing it has achieved for them is to bring them one step closer to oblivion as far as their political power and careers. No presidents have bashed their predecessor like Obama has bashed Bush. I mean Clinton even worked with George Bush senior and George Bush junior worked with Clinton on highly successful charitable causes.

Such unabashed Bush bashing as Obama undertakes daily from the bully pulpit is demeaning to the office of president and much more in tune with the bully politics of Chicago than the dignity of the office of president.

How can the nation have hope when our leader is too busy tearing people down and pointing fingers to set an example for the world? Of all the empty promises we heard during the election none are missed more than the promises of an experienced healer to lead the nation.

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Pelosi Delivers Congress to Teacher's Union - Assures Long Term Financial Chaos

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Once again Obama Administration tramples all over state's rights!

Only in America could the Speaker of the House call Congress back in session from vacation to pass a bill designed to pay back the teacher's union for millions in campaign contributions to Obama and the House Democrats who are running for their lives in the fall elections, and have the audacity to call it a "jobs bill".

It sounds good, hiring back 160,000 teachers about to be let go because states have failed to balance their budgets. But if Pelosi, Obama and the Democrats were being honest they would give the money to the governors and let them decide who to keep and who to fire. Don't they trust the governors to act in the best interests of the public they serve?

You see, Pelosi thinks up to 140,000 policemen and firemen may also be saved from unemployment. Yet I fail to see the logic of forcing the governors to hire 160,000 teachers when our educational system is a disaster, then saying the governors could hire some additional police and firemen with the left over money.

First of all, governors don't hire teachers, policemen or firemen, that is done by local governments and most local governments are being held hostage by unions such as the teachers union that already has the most expensive health and pension payments in the nation, far higher than our policemen and firemen.

Union health and pension benefits already broke the auto industry and cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. Why is Pelosi forcing governors to hire the most expensive public employees possible, the teachers, thus increasing the state and local budgets for future health and pension costs? You see the teachers work for local school boards but the state is responsible for health and pension costs.

Better yet, since the states now know Obama and Pelosi will give them whatever they need to keep union jobs, then Congress will have to spend $26 billion every year, meaning the $26 billion is now going to be $130 billion just for the next five years. And it does nothing to reduce the health and pension benefits in which some states pay 100% of the health care cost for life. Do you have a health care program with no matching or co-pay requirements on your part? Do you have a health care program that pays every dollar of cost for the rest of your life?

This is really an issue of the federal government again usurping state's rights not because it is fair or cost effective or even needed but to protect the unions as a payback for the millions in campaign funds they already gave to the Democrats. If there was an honest bone in the congressional leadership they would vote on a five year bill because that is the least it will really cost, $130 billion not $26 billion.

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New Look and New Sophistication for the Coltons Point Times

By now those of you who are regular readers have probably noticed a few things different about the CPT starting with the photo at the top of this story I took looking across the Potomac River here at Coltons Point toward Virginia.  That view extends the length of our little village and the river is about two miles wide at this view.  A mile downriver near the St. Clement's Museum the river grows to seven miles wide and the view is sill breath taking.

Interestingly, the photo includes the Virginia riverside locations of the birth of two famous people in our history, President George Washington, father of our nation, and Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army.  As a surveyor Washington used to walk the lands of Coltons Point before leading us through the Revolution while Lee is recognized as the greatest soldier in American history and a friend of Abraham Lincoln whose army he fought to defeat.  Not many people know Lincoln offered to name him commander of the Union army but he could not give up his loyalty to the South.

I am considering using the photo as background for the title of the paper at the top of the page.  I would likwe to hear what you think about it.  Of course we want first and foremost to look like a newspaper so this idea might be too radical.  Let me know what you think.

I have made a few changes to the paper which I hope you enjoy.  In addition, we now have worked out all the bugs for RSS feeds of the CPT headlines.  If you click on the symbol pictured in this story that you should find on your toolbar above the CPT you can subscribe for free to the headlines and have them fed to your own computer to see the latest stories we publish.  If the story is of interest you can click on it and it will automatically link to the CPT.

If you don't have the RSS icon on your toolbar you can scroll to the bottom of the paper and you will find a "Subscribe" button.  This will also enable you to access the RSS feed.  Big things are planned as we prepare for the fall elections and you will be the first to know the news.

Finally, at the end of each story you have the option of sharing the story on a social site like Facebook.  There are several sites you can choose from and I would hope you might find some stories worth sharing.

For an update on activity, we have passed 250,000 visitors the past year.  Readers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as from over 100 foreign countries access the CPT.  Please tell all your friends about the CPT as word of mouth remains our best and only form of advertising.

We take pride in being an independent voice bringing you the truth behind the news and the stories you are not being told by the media.  Your comments are always welcome.  I thank you for checking us out and hope you enjoy our improvements.

Jim Putnam, Publisher    
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Today in Obamaville - August 6

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Liberal Environmentalists Condemn Mother Earth for Gulf Oil Clean Up

The liberal environmentalists have condemned the amazing job done by Mother Earth to cleanup the mess caused by people in the Gulf BP oil spill. The release by the White House of a detailed scientific analysis of the status of the oil spill, in which government scientists and private environmental consultants admit 75% of the oil is now gone from the Gulf, has enraged the far left environmentalists who will not get years of government subsidies to study the long term effects of no oil on the Gulf.

The report says 25 percent of the spill has been recovered or removed, another 25 percent has been dispersed, and another 25 percent has been evaporated or dissolved. Mother Earth has microbes in the oceans that dissolve much of the junk mankind dumps as well as takes care of accidental or natural oil leaks in the waters of the world. She has been doing this for millions of years. When the water temperature gets warmer more microbes eat away at the waste.



Right now the Gulf is at record high temperatures thanks to the heat wave provided by Mother Earth. Simple logic says high temperatures create more microbes that eat more oil. It is just as likely that even more than 25 percent of the leak was dissolved by Mother Earth, far more than mankind has done.

The leak has been sealed, now it is time to let nature take her course with a little help from continued clean up by BP. What the people of the Gulf need is people telling the world that they should be going to the beaches, eating Gulf seafood and be happy that thanks to the stunning efforts of Mother Earth the doom and gloom forecasts will not happen.



MSNBC Features Donny Deutsch - New Cast Member for Jersey Shore?

Our favorite hotbed for liberal media propaganda, MSNBC, allowed advertising bad boy Donny Deutsch back on the Morning Joe Show after twice jerking the legend in his own mind off the air for mindless bad taste. His new image of tight tee shirts to show off his bulging muscles in order to make this wannabe cast member for the Jersey Shore more desirable to the women of MSNBC just doesn't work.



As he continues to fight the midlife crisis, he is 53 and not a Hamptons playboy anymore, he pumps iron, continues to insult women and has gone from Armani suits to painted on tee shirts. His first effort to be the TV star he knows he is, was a show on CNBC that promptly got cancelled. It was just the beginning of controversy for the bionic tongue.

On February 22, 2010, Deutsch, a self-described Democrat, called Florida's Cuban-American Senate candidate Marco Rubio the racially derogatory term "coconut" on The Joy Behar Show. On April 27, 2010, MSNBC suspended him from appearances on their programming for including MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz in his Angry Americans special.

Deutsch began appearing on MSNBC programs again on June 4, 2010 but weeklong anchoring stint on MSNBC by Donny ended abruptly when he made unflattering mention of that channel’s No. 1 anchor and liberal, Keith Olbermann. Mr. Deutsch had labeled his hour on MSNBC “America the Angry,” and Mr. Olbermann was shown briefly in a series of clips of media figures during a segment that pondered what role the media plays in fomenting the public’s anger.



Just a couple of weeks ago on the "Morning Joe." show he was the only panelist to decry Sarah Palin's inspiring new video designed to galvanize conservative women for the midterm elections, an act that puzzled even his liberal colleagues. New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin and Time magazine's Mark Halperin interjected to refute Deutsch, but the determined advertising guru just talked over them: "Listen to me! The American public wants more than 'I protect my cubs' ''.

As described in other media at the time, "With all the subtlety of an air horn, Deutsch revealed the source of his visceral antipathy for Palin: "I'm a Democrat, I really hope she's going to do Iowa and she's going to win South Carolina and she's the party's candidate because she's unelectable."

My advice to NBC in their continuing efforts to figure out what to do with him to keep his ad clients buying network spots is to get him a role as a mentor on the Jersey Shore cast where the sizzling lip from current cast may silence him once and for all. Maybe the kids on Jersey Shore will teach him to finally grow up.



Obama Travels to Ford Factory to Declare Ford Success due to his Auto Bailout

Yesterday President Obama finally made it to a Ford plant, I mean Ford is the most successful auto company in America, and tried to take credit for Ford's success as a result his multi billion dollar auto bailout. Did the president forget that Ford refused to take any bailout money from Obama for the auto bailout, which really was a union bailout that left the union and federal government owning GM and Chrysler?



No financial analyst in the world attributes Ford's dramatic success to not taking Obama's bailout money yet the White House does. I doubt anyone on Main Street will buy the twisted logic either but the Obama gang continues to think the America public is just plain stupid and that is a huge mistake. All he had to do was talk about the success of Ford, their executives, the productivity of their workers, the concessions of their unions and their new product lines and avoid trying to politicize a good thing, but avoiding partisan politics is not on Obama's teleprompter.



New Economic Report can't find Stimulus from the Stimulus

Today's employment report showed that the billions being thrown into so called Obama stimulus has failed to stimulate much of anything in the economy as unemployed went up, the unemployment rate did not go down, the stimulated banks aren't doing anything to stimulate the economy, the government laid off 202,000 while the private sector hired 71,000. After over a trillion dollars in stimulus spending it seems the economy has been pumped full of Valium and remains in a stupor. Maybe the Democrats should try something else?



Elena Kagan Approved for Supreme Court - Harvard wins Again

In yet another example of the Harvard stranglehold on the Obama government Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was approved by the Senate as the next member of the Supreme Court. It is the first time three women have served together on the court.

Kagan is the fifth Harvard law school grad currently serving, while Yale has three and Columbia has one although the Columbia grad, Ginsberg, also attended Harvard law school. I suppose Harvard will say there are 5 1/2 justices from Harvard. One might note that this gives the three Ivy League schools total control of the Supreme Court.



The Supreme Court reflection on religion in America is just as dramatic as gender and the Ivy League law schools. America is the citadel of religious freedom in the world. There are now about 4,200 different types of religion and over 100 major religions in the world.

There are now 6 Catholics and 3 Jews on the Supreme Court. Of course Catholics are the largest religious denomination in America and the world and the Jews are one of the smallest and since the Catholics are a direct offshoot of the Jews about 2,000 years ago I suppose it is no wonder all 9 came from the same religious lineage.

The CPT was the first newspaper to endorse Kagan long ago because she was a female, has a great sense of humor, she smiles more than all the rest put together, and she has a great softball swing.

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News Headlines of the Day in Obamaville

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Pelosi and her Swamp

When Nancy Pelosi was swept into her House Leadership position four years ago she promised to "drain the swamp" in Washington of corruption. Four years later the only swamp that was drained was two top Democratic party leaders Rangel and Waters, both members of the Congressional Black Caucus, so Nancy has had to redefine what she meant by draining the swamp.

In a burst of pre-election insight she now says she meant, "The swamp was described in the press as a 'criminal syndicate' operating out of the Republican leader's office." Now that is a pretty major charge for the Leader of the House and a person a heartbeat away from being president.

Of course after four years of her witch hunt for criminal syndicate Republicans none have been charged with anything while her own party leaders have been charged and are going to trial so one might say Ms. Pelosi is playing politics with ethics and is delusional with the facts. It's no wonder just 11% of the people have a favorable opinion of Congress.



Obama's Birthday

Today is Obama's 49th birthday and he is celebrating it with the boys in California while his wife, Michelle scheduled a last minute junket to a posh resort in Southern Spain along with 30-40 $2,000 rooms at a Spanish resort for her family and friends. Why is the First Family halfway around the world spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars instead of celebrating with the President at home? Rumor has it she is fed up with Barack's emulation of Clinton's presidential style, at least the parts not involving Clinton's bi-partisan work with Republicans.



BP Oil Leak

The Obama administration has defied liberal environmentalists once again and trial lawyers for the first time by releasing a report today that 75% of the oil that leaked into the Gulf is gone and the rest is widely dispersed and no longer a threat to cause cataclysmic environmental destruction. That does not bode well with the environmentalists who claim the Gulf was destroyed by the spill and that we must allocate billions of dollars for future research by them to find the missing oil.;

Nor does it sit well with the Trial lawyers, the largest special interest contributor to Obama's presidential campaign, who expected to make billions of dollars in legal fees suing BP and everyone else for the disaster. Since Obama already protected them during the acrimonious health care debate by refusing to limit excessive medical malpractice legal fees and fines, they expected a better return on their investment in Obama.



Will Obama Oil Drilling Ban be Lifted?

As the weeks roll on and nothing has been done to resolve the Obama ban on deep sea drilling, that has also literally blocked all offshore drilling, and the Obama administration's own scientific report says the environmental damage is far less severe than previously claimed, there is growing distress in the Gulf states who stand to lose thousands of jobs that are going to other countries where offshore drilling is encouraged.

Alternative energy advocates have held the drilling ban hostage as a way to block oil production and get federal approval for the massive energy cap and trade legislation Obama wants that will force a huge increase in taxes and in the cost of gasoline and all other oil products. Of course Al Gore and Goldman Sachs, also big Obama campaign backers, are poised to make billions of dollars from the cap and trade initiative and are desperate to protect heir investment.



State's Rights versus Obama Centralized Government

Arizona has been joined by 19 other states in fighting the Obama Justice Department efforts to deny states the right to protect their citizens from illegal immigration costs and crime.



Virginia and Michigan are pursuing separate court challenges to the Obama health care experiment saying it is unconstitutional for the federal government to force their citizens to buy health insurance against their will, especially if they have the ability to pay for it.

As Obama moves closer and closer to the massive federal government he has advocated in order to pursue his often stated goals of redistribution of wealth and expanded control over all sectors of the economy and banking system expect more and more challenges by the states to protect their Constitutional rights.

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Obama Stops Being President - The Secret Harvard Strategy to Keep Yale from Regaining the Presidency?

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Since the Democrats can't hold town hall meetings anymore because they cannot control what the people say and the people are mad as Hell, Obama is leading the way by making excursion after excursion to safe havens around the country in a feeble attempt turn the clock back to 2008 when he was running for president against George Bush.

It is as if the President can wave a magic wand and make us all forget that for the last four years the Democrats have controlled the House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi, and that Barack Obama has been president for nearly two years.



In the process of trying to polarize the nation and turn citizens against citizens in hopes that a fragmented public will give these Democrats a better chance to win, it is a campaign that must have come out of the bowels of Harvard because it sure hasn't worked in real life politics ever since Yale took control of the presidency 20long years before Obama stopped the Yale control streak and won for Harvard in 2008.

For those who are not into tracking Ivy League control of our political institutions let me remind you that George Bush senior (1988-1992), Bill Clinton (1993-2000) and George Bush junior (2001-2008) were all Yale graduates while Obama is the first Harvard educated president since John Kennedy.



Throughout our history there have been 8 presidents from Harvard and 5 from Yale although the recent string of 4 from Yale closed the gap considerably. Of course only one president graduated from both Harvard and Yale, Bush junior, which might shock a few people out there in America. That means Obama has taken the drastic step of attacking a fellow Harvard grad who was president.

In the last 50 years Harvard has controlled the nation for just 5 years, Yale for 20 years, and the rest of America for 25 years. That, of course, is why Harvard thinks the nation is in deep trouble. But if you look back at the entire history of the nation there have been 44 presidents, 12 from Harvard and Yale since George junior can only be counted once, which means 32 presidents have not been from the most elite of the elitist Ivy League schools.



Thus the law of averages says Harvard and Yale should only have about 1 out of every 3 presidents. Since 1960 Harvard and Yale have had 5 of our 10 presidents. Perhaps our over-dependence on Harvard and Yale the last 50 years, in which 50% of the presidents were super-elitists, while over our 234 year national history only 27% were super elitists, has more to do with the sorry state of affairs and the fact Obama has had to stoop so low as to attack a fellow Harvard grad to save face.

I mean what is the problem here Obama? Don't attack fellow alumnus Bush, he gave us wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which you continued. To both of your credit you two and fellow elitist Bush senior have given us the only wars with no draft, thus making sure all the students in Harvard and Yale did not have to serve in the military.

Bush paved the way for your economic stimulus with the bank bailout, which you also supported. If it weren't for his deficits you wouldn't have been able to bailout the auto unions, AIG, more banks, the crooks in housing, even Wall Street and the health care industry where many of the companies were run by your fellow Harvard and Yale grads.

More important, his deficits enabled you to advance your social or socialist agenda, your transfer of wealth and your massive expansion of big government. So what if the American public does not agree, they are entitled to their silly opinions while you are in control.



Most important, Bush caused such discontent that it allowed you to quietly move ahead with the New World Order agenda to replace all governments of the world while blaming everything on the Republicans and Bush. Amschel Rothschild, founder of the House of Rothschild, would be proud of the progress you have made to carry out his dream.

Now Mr. President, don't you think you owe fellow Yale/Harvard alumni George Bush an apology, okay you can make it in secret, and you should agree in the interest of elitist etiquette to stop jeopardizing donations to the Harvard and Yale endowment funds with your inter-ivy league attacks?



Just remember you still have to be taken care of when you are no longer president which may be sooner than you think. Proper elitist etiquette could make you as successful in retirement as Bill Clinton and Al Gore, both earning over $100 million since leaving public office.

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Sarah Palin Remains Top Media Draw and Fox News gets Benefit from Liberal Palin Obsession

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Sarah Palin, now news commentator on Fox News, continues to baffle the liberal media who are forced to report on her if they want to get daily ratings and hits on the liberal web sites like Huffington Post, Salon.com and other Palin haters. This weekend her appearance on Fox News was reported in all three New York papers, the New York Times, Post and Daily News, the Washington Post (three different articles from the same Fox appearance), numerous daily newspapers, the liberal media (MSNBC, CNN, NPR, Public Broadcasting Network) network television and who knows who else.

Now in the days of journalistic integrity no self-respecting news media outlet would be stealing the story from a competitor but in today's news environment of hijacking and distorting stories by the media they have to swallow their integrity and report on public enemy number 1, Fox News to get the increased hits and views Palin power can deliver.



No one in the liberal camp delivers ratings like Sarah Palin just like no one in politics dominates Main Street media like Sarah Palin and since Palin knows better than to let the liberal media distort her message by granting interviews and giving them stories, they have to steal them from Fox News, Sarah's Facebook or Twitter postings.

Speaking of the liberal media, last week we reported on the liberal media conspiracy to manufacture the news about Palin starting with her nomination as VP by John McCain. The liberal plot, Journolist, was exposed by the Daily Caller and one of the tactics the unethical jerks of the liberal elitists did was to plant a story about her son Trig.



The media plotted to spread a rumor that Trig's mother was actually Bristol Palin, the former Alaska governor's daughter, and the rumor ran rampant among the liberal haters of the internet during the presidential campaign. Of course neither Obama or Biden did anything to discourage the liberals who were supporting them from spreading the rumor. The journalists also urged co-conspirators to used the reference to "Palin's Downs child" along with other negative terms of deception.



In response Palin wrote "There is a sickness and darkness in today's liberal media."

Sickness indeed and it goes much farther with the campaign hacking of her private emails to the incident last week on Facebook where her call to not build the Moslem mosque just two blocks from ground zero in NYC was deleted by Facebook from her Facebook page just because a Palin hater started a campaign to label her racist, yet another old liberal tactic. There are a lot of Jewish and other families who lost loved ones on 9-11 who agree with Palin on this issue. Facebook had to reinstate the comments and apologize to Palin for the un-American censorship, something we should all be concerned about.



As more and more truth comes out about the insidious plot to discredit Palin with lies, rumors and jokes, by many members of the liberal media, and the facts behind the exchange of these lies between the liberals in order to coordinate the deceit between news outlets, the more it becomes obvious the real victims were the people.

We trusted the news media to report the news and they did not. Many people formed unfavorable opinions of Palin because of what was reported, and now we know much of what was reported were lies. Honest Americans should reconsider their attitude about Sarah Palin in light of the plot that was exposed to smear her, a plot that continues to this day.



One wonders why the Obama campaign or White House don't condemn the acts. If President Obama really wants to stop the lies, polarization and partisanship that he and his followers set in motion he can help by stopping the liberal media from flaming the fires of hatred with lies about Sarah Palin and others. I mean they are his supporters.
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Arizona versus White House - States Rights versus Big Government - You Decide!

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It is a classic battle in the history of America and one that began with the debate over the original Constitution by our Founding Fathers. Do we want a centralized federal government or a government where state government is the primary instrument of the people with the federal government doing only what states could not do?

Time and again the argument has been settled by the people deciding that a centralized federal government was no what the people wanted as it would always be a threat to the Bill of Rights, the individual freedoms of the people and the system of capitalism that has made America great, and yes different, than the rest of the world.

After failing to push a centralized, socialist agenda in the 1700's the post depression period of the 1930's and Franklin Roosevelt's aggressive New Deal added fuel to the debate with a dramatic increase in power and control by the federal government. In time the state's rights advocates finally got a number of New Deal initiatives shot down by the courts and an uneasy balance between encroaching socialism and individualism was maintained.



Then came the 1960's period of social unrest fueled by the unpopular Viet Nam war and President Johnson and his Great Society again pushed the socialist, centralized agenda. Almost as soon as it was approved it started to lose the faith of the people and along came President Nixon and then President Reagan pushing New Federalism, a reversal of federal centralization and return to state's rights.

I was involved in both efforts and was a member of the New Federalism Task Force under Nixon that the New York Times called the most successful effort since Roosevelt's New Deal to reverse the balance of government power and return control to the states.

Now along comes President Obama and once again he is pushing the agenda of central government control and domination over all aspects of our lives, a thinly disguised effort to resurrect the socialism of the last century. Such a mindset centered upon the principle of redistribution of wealth along with the elimination of individual rights and initiative long ago proved to be ill-designed and unsuccessful over the long term as experiments in Europe, Russia and other parts of the world have proven.



Two recent actions by Obama have confirmed his commitment to the federal social management underlying his agenda of change for America. The Obama administration has blasted the state of Arizona for passing their own immigration bill to protect their own border and citizens and then went to federal court to deny Arizona their right to protect their people.

This action was taken by the administration in spite of the universal acknowledgment by everyone, friends and foes alike, that our federal immigration laws do not work. At least 13 million illegal immigrants are in our country using services and taking jobs meant for our own citizens. Arizona has suffered more than any other state because of this federal failure yet Obama challenges one of our own states.

Ironically, numerous other states have entered the case as a friend of Arizona while numerous other foreign countries have entered the case as a friend of the Obama administration. One wonders why only foreign governments agree with Obama while our states, and the general public according to all polls, agree with the state of Arizona.



The second case is the oil drilling moratorium Obama imposed on the Gulf, claiming it only impacted on the deep water drilling like the BP oil leak. Well he was wrong as the issuance of all oil drilling permits in the Gulf have been slowed down, including shallow water drilling permits, because the Obama administration is obsessed with proving a point and has focused all resources on stopping the exploration for oil.

As for the merits of the case, the action was thrown out by the federal courts as unjustified and a gross over-reaction by the Administration. Remember, it was the Obama administration that approved the permit and emergency plans for the BP well so who was really at fault for the disaster? After the court action Obama filed another moratorium to block the drilling and ignore the court action.



The state of Louisiana and other Gulf states say the drilling ban is unnecessary, is blocking legitimate shallow water drilling, and is causing the loss of thousands of jobs in the Gulf Coast for no reason. Well there is a reason, it is called ignoring the courts and congress and pushing a socialist centralized agenda.

So the administration has taken action to strip the states of their ability to protect the public safety and jobs as well as the future economic health and development of our states. More important, these actions have been taken in spite of the refusal of congress to agree and the actions of the courts to reject the actions of the administration.



In America we have three branches of the federal government with equal powers to act as a check and balance on each other. No more. In America the rights of the states have been protected by the congress and the courts for 234 years, but not any more.

Maybe the public needs to send another message to Washington. Maybe the White House does not understand that governors know a lot more about local problems than the federal government. Maybe the Administration needs to be reminded that creeping socialism is still socialism and long ago we made clear that America is the land of the free, not the home of those who reject individual and states rights in order to implement the new look of a socialist system where everone looks and acts the same.

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