The Sunday 'Report;' 05/08/2011

What The National Pamphleteers Don't Report:
Obama administration floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile
By Pete Kasperowicz - 05/05/11
    The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.  The plan is a part of the administration's Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.  The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.
    “This is not an administration proposal," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. "This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”  News of the draft follows [....]
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/159397-obama-floats-plan-to-tax-cars-by-the-mile

Did Your "Guy" Win?  Mine Didn't!!
    My "Guy" was Carl Edwards (#99) who ultimately was the runner-up to victory lane at the 'Showtime' Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, Darlington, S.C.   Regan Smith was the winner; he stayed out, rather that pitting with 18 laps to go.  Smith held off all challengers for his first Sprint Cup win, winning a purse of just under $273,000 (U-u-u!! owe-bama ain't gonna like that!!).
http://msn.foxsports.com/nascar/cup/results

The Waterboarding Trail to bin Laden
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said that as late as 2006 fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from harsh interrogations.
    Osama bin Laden was killed by Americans, based on intelligence developed by Americans. That should bring great satisfaction to our citizens and elicit praise for our intelligence community. Seized along with bin Laden's corpse was a trove of documents and electronic devices that should yield intelligence that could help us capture or kill other terrorists and further degrade the capabilities of those who remain at large.
    But policies put in place by the very administration that presided over this splendid success promise fewer such successes in the future. Those policies make it unlikely that we'll be able to get information from those whose identities are disclosed by the material seized from bin Laden. The administration also hounds our intelligence gatherers in ways that can only demoralize them.  Consider how the intelligence that led [....]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703859304576305023876506348.html

Man with no arms and legs inspires people

Posted: May 05, 2011
KENNEWICK, Wash. - He has no arms or legs but it's not stopping him from inspiring people all across the world.  28 year old Nick Vujicic was born in Australia and Wednesday night he met with business professionals at Kennewick High School to share his story. His disability came without any medical explanation - a rare occurrence called Phocomelia but it didn't stop him from living his dreams. In fact, in his young life he's  [....]
http://www.kndo.com/story/14576056/man-with-no-arms-and-legs-inspires-people

[**While dated, this pre-election information is still timely, important!**]
Longtime Friend And Supporter

Obama has named his longtime friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett to be his White House senior adviser.
Jarrett, who hired Michelle Obama for a job in the Chicago mayor's office years ago, is one of the president-elect's closest friends and advisers. Her name has been floated for several top administration jobs. But Obama settled on the senior adviser role, said a person close to the president-elect and willing to speak only on background because the decision has not been officially announced.  A White House senior adviser can handle a range of duties. President George W. Bush's top political aide Karl Rove held the title in the current administration. 
    Jarrett has a background in real estate and politics in Chicago and is linked to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin "Tony" Rezko.  According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis, Obama's former boss. Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis.  As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama's former [....]
http://www.theobamafile.com/_associates/ValerieJarrett.htm
[This site is invaluable in researching the owe-bama mindset] http://www.theobamafile.com/
 
Defense: Federal agent coerced teen to violence

    Defense lawyers for a Somali-American teen charged with trying to detonate a bomb at a holiday tree-lighting ceremony say a federal agent tried to coerce him into violence.  Attorneys for Mohamed O. Mohamud said in a filing Friday that emails from an agent known only as "Bill Smith" prove the teen's innocence and show the federal government is not playing fair with the evidence it is supposed to provide.  "The correspondence between Bill Smith and (Mohamud) demonstrates that Smith was acting as an agent provocateur, attempting to encourage (Mohamud) to engage in violent activity in this country," the defense team wrote.  Prosecutors had said in a filing April 7 that the emails did not relate to the facts of the case, and acknowledged that the agent was working for the government, but that the contact was brief.  Mohamud, 19, has pleaded [....]http://townhall.com/news/us/2011/05/08/defense_federal_agent_coerced_teen_to_violence

DNC Whacks The Weekly Standard, Calls Obama Gloating Story Bogus

First Posted: 05/ 6/11
WASHINGTON -- The Weekly Standard put up a blog post on Thursday questioning why, at a time when the White House was pushing for humility following Osama bin Laden's death, the website gutsycall.com was suddenly redirecting to the president’s campaign site.  The post, which speculated that the page was created by the president’s “campaign team (or some of his ardent supporters),” got a link on the Drudge Report, from which it, naturally, drew many more eyeballs.  There was one hitch. The Democratic National Committee insists the website wasn’t created by its team, or the Obama campaign apparatus. A DNC official told The Huffington Post that neither entity bought the URL in question, nor do they have a clue -- as of Friday morning, at least -- who did.  The creator of the website, indeed, appears to have cloaked the registration details, making him or her completely anonymous. The server is located in Scottsdale, Arizona (which says little about the website itself) and was purchased from GoDaddy.com.  The misinformation (if, in fact, this isn’t a DNC site) may seem like small potatoes, far overshadowed by the news of bin Laden’s death. But the DNC took the incident seriously enough to [....]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/dnc-weekly-standard_n_858562.html

Democrats, Republicans edge closer on debt deal

By Alister Bull and Andy Sullivan
Fri May 6, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The outlines of a deal that would allow the United States to avert a debt default emerged on Thursday as top Republican and Democratic lawmakers held their first meeting aimed at cutting the bloated U.S. deficit.  Republicans edged toward a White House plan that would cut some spending now and set long-term deficit reduction targets, but said more difficult decisions on taxes and healthcare spending would have to wait until after the 2012 election.  A top Republican lawmaker, Paul Ryan, said there would be no immediate "grand slam" agreement on tackling the budget deficit, expected to reach $1.4 trillion this year and a major worry for Americans and investors.  If both parties [....]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-usa-budget-idUSTRE7440UB20110506

Free the Federal Lands for States to Develop
By Samuel J. Mikolaski
May 08, 2011
    When the United States was formed the Congress owned no lands. It is time to establish the right of land ownership for every state in the union.  Heavy handedness by the White House restricting drilling in the Gulf and Alaska, combined with the day-by-day rise in gasoline prices, have focused public attention as never before on the enervation of local economies by federal bureaucrats and the emasculation of the power of states to create opportunity for their citizens.  Add to that the attempt by the National Labor Relations Board to force Boeing to halt assembly of Boeing's Dreamliner in South Carolina and to transfer that 30% of production to union-controlled plants in Washington State. We have now reached the point where individual industries will be run by federal government bureaucrats. Jobs are being lost [....]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/free_the_federal_lands_for_sta.html
 
Obama’s Blame of Speculators, Forming of Gas Task Force Misguided

Posted April 22nd, 2011    Maybe President Obama should start investigating John F. Kennedy’s shooting in his spare time, because he’s not going to find a satisfying conspiracy in gas prices.  Better yet, he could pick up an economics textbook and turn to the chapter on Supply and Demand.  His finger-pointing at speculators and formation of a gas task force to investigate prices at the pump ignore the real cause of rising gas prices. Further, President Obama’s blame of speculators is a costly barrier to fixing bad government policy that restricts oil and gas exploration onshore and offshore here at home.
    Oil futures markets can affect prices at the pump by changing the amount of gasoline delivered to gas stations. If producers anticipate higher prices in the future, they might take some oil off the market today and wait to sell it later. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.  Speculators could marginally increase the price of gasoline if [....]
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/04/22/obama%E2%80%99s-blame-of-speculators-forming-of-gas-task-force-misguided/

The Obama presidency remains in decline, despite the killing of Osama bin Laden

By Nile Gardiner
May 8th, 2011
    For the past week Americans of all political stripes have celebrated the historic killing of a mass murdering terrorist, the butcher of 9/11. Osama bin Laden’s death has brought much needed cheer to a deeply divided nation, still haunted by the memory of the 2001 Islamist attacks on New York and Washington that claimed nearly 3,000 lives. The brilliant Navy Seals operation deep inside Pakistan was a spectacular display of US military might and a severe blow to al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. Without a doubt this will go down as one of the greatest moments in recent US history, when the world’s only superpower acted decisively against a figure of monumental evil who had escaped justice for nearly a decade.
    But the brilliance of the military operation, carried out on the foundations of a painstakingly constructed war on terror built by President Bush and largely continued by his successor, has been a rare moment of success for a presidency that remains in deep trouble with the American electorate. And the bungling by the White House of the aftermath of bin Laden’s killing, including confusion over the release of photographs and the muddled delivery of conflicting accounts of the raid on Bin Laden’s compound, has served as a stark reminder of an administration that has all too often looked inept and poorly managed. For this is a presidency that remains in an overall state of decline, overwhelmingly distrusted [....]
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100086957/the-obama-presidency-remains-in-decline-despite-the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden/

"Turbo-Tax Tim" Geithner to Grads: Work for the Government!
By Matt Cover
May 06, 2011
    Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that his advice to young professionals would be that they take time away from their careers to work for the federal government.  Speaking to a gathering of mutual fund advisors in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Geithner was asked what his advice would be to young professionals entering the work force.  He said, “I guess what I’d say is learn about the world; make sure you try to understand the basics of economics and finance because it’s critical to everything; and at some point come try to work for your country for some time.”
    Geitner explained that the economic challenges the country confronts depend both on politicians making difficult choices and federal employees with the knowledge and skills to handle them.  “[T]he economic challenges we face as a country depend a lot on getting a better understanding of economics and finance so you can get better policy outcomes from your government,” he said.  “And that depends on getting politicians willing to make tougher choices but also people in these jobs who are talented and willing to come and give part of their life – you don’t need to spend your entire life doing it – but it’s good for the country to try and attract people to do this and I hope you do that,” said Geithner.  The Treasury Department secretary [....]
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-cover/2011/05/06/tim-geithner-grads-work-government
Until Next Sunday....