Conservatively Speaking June 22, 2010

· Nebraska Town Passed Tough Immigration law

· Top Afghan General McChrystal Shattered After Blasting Barrack

· California: Greece of the Pacific

· Losing Mexican Border Battle

· Split Supreme Court Blocks Aiding Of Terror Groups

· Hillary More Qualified as President and Any Top Republican

· BP Payment Taxable Says IRS

· Senator Kyl Embarrasses Obama Over Immigration.

· Oliver Stone’s Movie Lionizing Hugo Chavez Flops

· California Redistricting Commission Process Moves Glacially

Sixty-seven percent of voters in Fremont, Nebraska, population 25,000, OK’d a new law forbidding the employment of or renting property to an illegal alien. Fremont is 1,100 miles from the Mexican border.

Similar measures have passed elsewhere and remain embroiled in lawsuits and challenges. Fremont has very low unemployment and little or no problems with illegal immigration and local say they want to keep it that way.

A Federal judge overturned Obama’s moratorium on Gulf oil drilling It will likely be appealed.

McChrystal’s career was shattered after being called to White House woodshed Wednesday for making dismissive remarks about Obama, his administration and its fumbling foreign policy. General David Patreaus who is now head of Central Command will take over for McChrystal. McChrystal resigned his post but not from the U. S. Army.

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The brouhaha erupted when this week’s Rolling Stone magazine published an article titled “Runaway General” citing critical even harsh comments by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and staff members. Last year Obama put McCrystal in charge of his Afghan policy,

McChrystal and other senior officers are quoted, among other things, as:

· calling national security adviser James Jones a “clown,” and

· referring to Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s senior envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as “a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous”;

· on U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, McChrystal is quoted as having said: “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’ ” and

· saying Eikenberry thinks Afghan President Karzai is “untrustworthy”

Reportedly McChrystal also questioned if Obama “knows what he’s doing.”

The magazine hits newsstands tomorrow and could be posted online earlier. The Washington Post received an advance copy and wrote the explosive story.

McChrystal said in a statement issued Tuesday morning. “It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and it should have never happened.”

McChrystal’s civilian press aide, Duncan Boothby, submitted his resignation Tuesday apparently for setting up the boneheaded interview.

A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said she had no immediate comment on the article.

The story features an exchange in which McChrystal and some of his aides mocked Vice President Biden, who opposed McChrystal’s troop surge recommendation last year and instead urged instead a more focused emphasis on counter-terrorism operations.

Obama has conflicted with McChrystal before when Obama called him to a quick meeting aboard Air Force One while on the ground in Copenhagen while Obama failed to get an Olympic bid for Chicago.

U.S. lawmakers and senior officials from NATO allied countries are asking increasingly sharp questions about the U.S.-led war strategy.

Dutch and Canadian troops are scheduled to pull out within the next year. And the White House has said it will start drawing down U.S. forces next July. Obama’s announced withdrawal 2011 deadline has not been well received in the U. S. or elsewhere. Critics say the 2011 withdrawal date is more about Obama’s reelection campaign than military strategy. In fact the Taliban has been leafleting Afghans telling them they are being bamboozled and will soon be adbandoned by the U. S. and allies. The Birish, who have suffered 300 killed are increasingly restive.

Over a thousand Americans have been killed in Afghanistan in what is now the nation’s longest war. Violence has increased and surface to air missiles have recently appeared among enemy forces there. The watershed moment in Russia’s defeat in Afghanistan was when the CIA armed the Mujahadeen with anti-aircraft missiles.

McChrystal is also facing criticism from some of his own troops, who have grown frustrated with new rules that force commanders be extraordinarily judicious in using lethal force.

Britain’s special representative to Afghanistan has resigned and the British government is reviewing whether to fill the job.

The Kandahar offensive will take months longer than originally planned.

It’s hard to disagree with McChrystal’s assessments but even more difficult to understand why he made them public in such a hare brained, foolish way.

The final tally for the federal takeover of the failed quasi-government Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could hit $1 trillion assuming a 20 percent loss on the companies’ more than $5 trillion in loans and guarantees, similar to what other big mortgage companies, like Countrywide Financial, suffered. Both started approving billions in bogus loans at the insistence of the Clinton administration despite dire warnings of exactly what is happening now actually occurring.

Think of it as Greece on the Pacific: A place with beautiful scenery where the government spent so far beyond its means that mass layoffs, welfare reductions that leave a million children and the poor and elderly without needed services and failing infrastructure are now the norm.

California’s fiscal hole reportedly is now so large that the state would have to free 168,000 prison inmates and permanently close 240 university and community college campuses to balance its budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“We are on the verge of system failure,” Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, told the Globe and Mail.

“We have to get some federal money,” Ross says. “It would be bad for the U.S. and, arguably, bad for the world to do the shock-therapy approach.”

Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, calls this a classic American dilemma.

“Americans expect a lot of their government,” Dreier says. “But politicians have convinced them they’re not getting what they want.”

Budget analysts say Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has no choice but to ask Washington for bailout funds, and that Washington has no choice but to agree because not bailing out the Golden State could put the entire U.S. economy at risk.

It seems that California — which at one time had the third-largest economy in the world — is like the biggest U.S. banks: Too big to fail.

Neither Democrat Jerry Brown nor Republican Meg Whitman has offered details in their campaigns to become the state’s next governor about how to close this year’s $19 billion budget deficit or handle next year’s anticipated $37 billion deficit, the Mercury News reports. Copyright Moneynews.com

The ever ascerbic and usually profane Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job after the November midterm elections having grown tired of the “idealism” of Barack Obama’s inner circle. That is code talk for Obama is not listening to him while he turns the air blue and as Obama popularity has gone down the toilet.

Americans are losing the battle along the border with Mexico—apparently without a fight. As proof, a swatch of Arizona 80 miles wide that runs from the Mexican border about three counties deep into the state (encompassing about 3,500 acres) has been ceded to heavily armed Mexican drug and human smuggling gangs..

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Fox News that armed paramilitary elements control a portion of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and other parts of Arizona. But rather than try and reclaim it, signs have been posted marking the area as off limits to Americans.

It was closed in October 2006, due to human safety concerns, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The signs read: “Danger- Public Warning. Travel Not Recommended.”

The squad-sized (in American military parlance a squad refers to two teams of four or five soldiers each) armed paramilitary elements Babeu referred to are drug smugglers and human traffickers out of Mexico. And violence there has increased the last fourth months.

He conceded that neither he nor other local sheriff’s departments and city police forces had the manpower to take the area back. It’s going to take the U.S. military, he said, and that’s why Babeu, his fellow law enforcement heads and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently asked Obama for 3,000 National Guard troops.

Obama responded by promising Arizona Governor Jan Brewer he’d get back to her. He hasn’t. But it has been announced Obama will sue Arizona over its effort to proect itself from illegal immigration and coincident drugs and human trafficking nd infiltration of al Qaeda related terrorists.

The GOP is arguing that Governors’ races in the heavily Democrat, unionized, and economically hard hit rust belt states of Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania will be the harbinger for 2012 Unless Republicans do well chances for dumping Obama in 2012 are lessened. Stay tuned.

With liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting the Supreme Court has upheld a U.S. law that bars “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting a free speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups.

The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

Material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion.

It seems likely that Obama nominee Kagan would have joined the dissent if she had been seated on the high court.

Food safety zealots are proposing a safer hotdog that will have six cuts along its length leaving a core to help prevent choking by leaving breathing spaces. should one aspirate a chunk blocking ones windpipe. Many think this is a tempest in a teapot since one child chokes on food every five days in America (73 a year) and no one seems to know how many of those choke on a hotdog. Others are insisting on hotdog safety labeling like the labels warning on football helmets.

U.S. voters think Hillary Clinton is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama, but most believe that both Democrats are more fit for the White House than three top Republicans interested in the job.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 57% of voters feel Clinton is qualified to be president, but 34% disagree and say she is not.

As for President Obama, 51% say he is fit for the job. However, 44% say he is not qualified to be president, even though he has now served 17 months in the job.

Nearly as many (49%) say former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, an unsuccessful candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, is qualified to be president of the United States. Thirty-two percent (32%) say Romney is not qualified, but another 20% are not sure.

Just 35% of voters say former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is qualified to be the nation’s chief executive. Nearly half (48%) say Gingrich is not fit for the office. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

As for Sarah Palin, ex-governor of Alaska and the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, only 26% feel she is qualified to be president, but 61% do not. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

President Obama is losing support from his own party over his handling of the Gulf oil spill. Jimmy Carter even compared him to Jimmy Carter — Leno

The IRS wants a piece of checks from BP.

Now he’s among the people up and down the Gulf Coast reeling from the oil spill disaster who are surprised — and frustrated — to find out the Internal Revenue Service may take a chunk of the payments BP is providing to help them stay afloat.

Many were already angry about how long the oil giant took to cut the checks. So when they got the money — generally about a few thousand dollars each so far — they spent it fast.

“If they’re going to pay you a lump sum, like for a year, then bam, take the taxes out of the check,” said Pellegal, of Boothville, La. “But a little bit at a time, they shouldn’t.”

Accountants have been trying to nail down the implications for thousands of taxpayers after Obama said BP would create a $20 billion disaster fund and provide another $100 million for oil workers who lose their jobs because of the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama is reportedly ready to grant blanket amesty by “Executive Order” to all 10-14 million illegals aliens in the country automatically making them. They can then register to vote (for him in 2012). His so-called comprehensive immigration bill is stalled in the U. S. Senate where Republicsns can filibuster it.

Senator John Kyl (R) Arizona triggered a firestorm this week by reporting that Obama privately told him he couldn’t or wouldn’t close the border because Republicans wouldn’t be motivated to pass a comprehensive immigration bill.

The White House immediately denied Obama said that but, Kyl insist it is true. Most say this is potboiling by Obama to force “comprehensive immigration report” that many see as amnesty granting American citizenship to millions and then registering them as new Democrats to support Obama and his agenda.

Mexico has filed a lawsuit against the Arizona and its Immigration law claiming it must do so to protect its citizens from prejudicial treatment. Legal expert disagree about whether or not Mexico has legal standing to do so. Ironically Americans could see Obama’s Attorney general standing beside Mexico’s lawyers arguing against Arizona and in fact other American citizens.

White House budget director Peter Orszag has decided to leave the Obama administration, likely in the next few weeks, a Democrat familiar with his plans said Monday night. His departure would make him the first member of President Obama’s Cabinet to leave the White House.

As head of the Office of Management and Budget, Orszag has been one of Obama’s top lieutenants on two of the president’s signature legislative efforts: the stimulus bill, passed early in the administration, and the health care overhaulpassed this year.

He also generated some headlines of his own, with the news that he had fathered a child with ex-girlfriend Claire Milonas, a Greek shipping heiress, and that he had become engaged to ABC News reporter Bianna Golodryga. Their wedding is planned for September.

The exact timing of when Orszag would leave the administration remained unclear, the Democrat said, speaking on condition of the anonymity to avoid souring relations with administration officials. Orszag’s plans to quit have been rumored for months in Washington, particularly once he wrapped up budget planning for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

OMB spokesman Kenneth S. Baer said late Monday that “Peter’s focused on his work, not on Washington speculation.”

Many past budget directors have left the job after two years, and news of Orszag’s wedding plans only increased speculation about whether he would stay on.

Orszag, 41, has been at the center of some of the most fierce and contentious Washington debates for more than three years: He was head of the Congressional Budget Office for two years under President George W. Bush before joining the Obama administration.

The White House is preparing the administration’s next budget, which would necessitate a speedier timetable for nominating a replacement at the OMB. The position requires Senate confirmation, which could spark a confrontation with Republicans over the administration’s economic policies.

Persnickety (puhr-SNIK-i-tee) adjective:1. Fussy about minor details.2. Snobbish.
3. Requiring keen attention to detail, as a job. Etymology variant of pernickety (the spelling still used in the UK). Of unknown origin

Oliver Stone’s movie “South of the Border” that lionizes the autocrat Hugo Chavez is a flop. During the first 12 days of the movie’s release, it brought in only $18,601 on 20 screens, according to Global Rentrak. That’s what Venezuelans refer to as La Bomba.

Beleaguared Venezuelans must be tired of being fed a constant diet of Chavez who fancies himself a latter day mixture of Simon Bolivar, Joseph Stalin and Jesus Christ

Stone shouldn’t worry too much, though. “South of the Border” is sure to be a big hit with Marxist professors, socialist union bosses, and the handful of people who still tune in to MSNBC.

The Whitman vs. Poisner “Battle of the Billionaires” has becomes a tussel over million dollar homes with Whitman living in $3 million digs and Brown ensconced in a $1.8 million custom designed spread with spectacular views. That puts Brown’s carefully crafted frugal image at risk — when he was Governor in the 80s he rejected the Governor’s mansion in favor of a one bedroom apartment and beatup Plymouth

The 620 remaining applicants for seats on the state’s new redistricting commission are mostly affluent white male Democrats, according to a new statistical study.

Vladimir Kogan, a refugee from the Soviet Union who later became a journalist and political science scholar, reviewed the on-line profiles of all 620 to create his demographic and political profile. He is a researcher on governance issues for the Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University and a doctoral candidate at the University of California,San Diego.

Kogan found that 67.6 percent of those on the list are non-Latino whites — roughly comparable to the proportion of the electorate that’s white but more than 25 percentage points higher than the white non-Latino proportion of the overall population.

His analysis also determined that 53.3 percent are Democrats — about nine percentage points higher than Democratic voter registration statewide — and just 28.9 percent are Republicans, about two points below GOP registration.

Kogan determined that 63.2 percent of the remaining applicants are male, even though the electorate is divided almost evenly by gender, and that over 75 percent have incomes of $75,000 a year or higher.

The state auditor’s office received 4,547 complete applications for the redistricting commission, created when voters passed Proposition 11 in 2008. The commission will draw new legislative and Board of Equalization districts based on the 2010 census numbers that will be released next April.

Later this year, the selection panel will narrow the 620 remaining applicants on the list to 60 — 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans and 20 independents or minor party registrants — before turning those names over to the Legislature.

Legislative leaders can strike up to 24 of those names. The names of those left will go back to the auditor’s office to be narrowed again by a random drawing to eight members, who will choose the remaining six members of the 14-person commission from other applicants still in the pool.

That complex selection process, however, could be altered by measures on the November ballot. One, which has already qualified, would extend the commission’s authority to congressional districts. Another, still pending signature verification, would abolish the commission altogether and return redistricting to the Legislature.

A 2006 sexual assault case against former VP Al Gore has been dropped by Portland police. No charges were filed. Allegedly Gore paid $550 to a woman for a massage in a hotel room where she says the sexual assault occurred.