Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday said he thinks hog farmers are a greater threat to Americans than Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Kennedy, son of the the slain New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is an environmental law attorney who was testifying before a House Judiciary subcomittee when Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, asked him if a quotation attributed to him in 2002 about hog farmers representing a greater threat than the leader of al Qaeda was accurate.
"I don't know if that [quotation] is accurate, but I believe it and I support it," said Mr. Kennedy, who has been involved in a vigorous legal effort against the meat industry for some years, arguing that manure and other products associated with large livestock producers emit toxic wastes that threaten the environment.
COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.
Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.
It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King's moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?
If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else -- fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism -- then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.
Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.
Too many conservatives think we've seen all this before -- in 1964 and 1974 and 1992 -- and that we know how to handle it. Fly, meet ointment: We're not dealing with the same sorts of opponents. These New Alinskyites who are taking over the White House, combined with the most leftist congressional leadership in memory, will not let us play by the same rules under which conservatives recovered from those earlier debacles. They will try to drastically tilt the playing field, seed our side of the field with land mines and, in short, rig the process to make it next to impossible for the political right, or Republicans, to recover. And they are likely to succeed in at least some of these designs.
If you have a 401(k) or equivalent retirement plan, you've probably been watching nervously the past few weeks as your nest egg has shrunken owing to the current turmoil in the markets.
Well, it could be worse. But don't take heart, for what we mean is it could get worse. The market turmoil has some politicians on Capitol Hill eyeing the end of the 401(k) as we know it. Workforce Management reports on a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee earlier this month:A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered....
Under Ghilarducci's plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.
The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated....
"The majority - 60 percent - of coverage of John McCain has been negative since the Republican convention. He wins the most negative press coverage over Barack Obama, or any candidates from other parties in this election, according to a report released today by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan journalism watchdog organization."Read the rest of her piece.
Republican leaders want to defund and criminally investigate ACORN. Why should taxpayer dollars fund a "nonpartisan" organization that proclaims "Obama needs ACORN, and we need Obama."Read the rest of this piece | Listen to this piece
That the greatest attempt at voter fraud in the nation's history is being funded in large part at taxpayer's expense is more than a bit ironic. House Minority Leader John Boehner wants it stopped and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wants the group allegedly behind the fraud, ACORN, criminally investigated and prosecuted.
ACORN calls itself a "nonpartisan" group seeking to register minorities and the poor. But its political arm has endorsed Barack Obama, who both trained the group's staff and sued the state of Illinois on their behalf. And Obama's campaign has given ACORN affiliates $800,000 for a get-out-the-vote drive.
Like many others, we took it as another gaffe when Joe Biden said he expected Barack Obama to be "tested" shortly after taking office. But when he repeated it, we wondered: What's he trying to tell us?Glib, voluble and unscripted, Sen. Biden is liable to say anything on a given day. That's why it pays to listen carefully to what he repeats — because it's obviously something he's thought about.
"Mark my words," Biden said in San Francisco last Saturday. "With the next, first six months of this administration, if we win, they're going to — we're going to face a major international challenge. Because they're going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They're going to want to test him."
Then, the very next day in Seattle, he said: "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy . . . Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the metttle of this guy."
Now we know what Joe Biden was talking about.
Voters may dismiss such reports, but Haaretz is the MSM of Israel. This isn't alarmism --it is confirmation of what Joe Biden predicted Sunday and what ought to be turning the stomachs of voters who worry --rightly-- that if elected Obama's nickname would be "President Blink."
Now we know: 95% of Americans will get a "tax cut" under Barack Obama after all. Those on the receiving end of a check will include the estimated 44% of Americans who will owe no federal income taxes under his plan.Read the read of McGurn's article.
In most parts of America, getting money back on taxes you haven't paid sounds a lot like welfare. Ah, say the Obama people, you forget: Even those who pay no income taxes pay payroll taxes for Social Security. Under the Obama plan, they say, these Americans would get an income tax credit up to $500 based on what they are paying into Social Security.
Just two little questions: If people are going to get a tax refund based on what they pay into Social Security, then we're not really talking about income tax relief, are we? And if what we're really talking about is payroll tax relief, doesn't that mean billions of dollars in lost revenue for a Social Security trust fund that is already badly underfinanced?
The latest in the endless series of gaffes from Obama running mate Joseph Biden is his warning that our enemies would test a President Obama early on. We need a president they would fear to test.An early sign of the coming greatness of the Reagan presidency was that within an hour of the former actor's taking the oath of office, the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamofascist regime in Iran released the 52 U.S. hostages it had been holding for 444 days.
Somehow, Ronald Reagan's lack of foreign policy experience didn't give Tehran the impression it would be a good idea to find out what he was made of; the mullahs already knew.
So why does Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Biden think it's such a good idea to advertise that within months of taking office a President Obama would be faced with "a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy"?
Read the rest of this piece.
Scary is all I can say. Wait. I have something else that I can say. Vote McCain on November 4th.
Well, lookee here. The New York Times, of all places, reports on an internal assessment of ACORN’s shady relationships with its affiliates and its inextricable ties to Obama’s old employers at Project Vote. For months, ACORN watchers have laid out the incestuous ties between the two groups.Read the rest of Michelle's post.
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