Lowery said that when he was a young militant, he used to say all white folks were going to hell. Then he mellowed and just said most of them were. Now, he said, he is back to where he was.
Stay classy Rev.“I don’t know what kind of a n—– wouldn’t vote with a black man running,” said Lowery. “All that he did with the stimulus was genius. Nobody intelligent would risk this country with Romney…”
“There is a rumor — I want to be clear, it’s a rumor — that at least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down,” Gingrich said. “But they were a group in real-time trying to mobilize marines and C-130s and the fighter aircraft, and they were told explicitly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action. If that is true, and I’ve been told this by a fairly reliable U.S. senator, if that is true and comes out, I think it raises enormous questions about the president’s role, and Tom Donilon, the National Security Adviser’s role, the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who has taken it on his own shoulders, that he said don’t go. And that is, I think, very dubious, given that the president said he had instructions they are supposed to do everything they could to secure American personnel.”
If ever there was an example of the TWC governing board’s obsession with race, an editorial from October 21, 1981 is it. The members took great offense to an op-ed titled “Rebuilding Race Relations,” calling the article “racist, offensive, and inaccurate” for daring to question the group’s true commitment and to present a thesis on race relations counter to its own.“The word RE-building implies that race relations once existed and, for some mysterious reasons, fell apart … ,” the board wrote in a scathing letter to the editor. “We, on the other hand, believe that race relations have never been and still are not at a satisfactory level. We are not RE-building. We cannot RE-build something that never existed in the first place.”“Don’t hide behind excuses such as a lack of effort [to integrate with the Princeton campus] on our part,” the revealing letter added.“The bottom line is that white students on this campus are racist, but they may not realize it.”
Earlier this month the Washington Post's Carol Leonnig reported that the former vice president's wealth is today estimated at $100 million, up from less than $2 million when he left government service on a salary of $181,400. How did he make this kind of money? It wasn't his share of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor was it the book and movie proceeds from "An Inconvenient Truth."
Instead, as Ms. Leonnig reports, "Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks, part of President Obama's historic push to seed a U.S. renewable-energy industry with public money."
The Post story mentions one of the beneficiaries of Mr. Gore's investment acumen, Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, which won a $299 million award from the federal government in 2009 to make electric-car batteries. Here's how that worked out:
"The company has dramatically scaled back, after executives concluded demand for electric cars was far lower than the administration forecast. The factory outfitted with stimulus funds is nearly idle, and plans to build a second plant have been postponed."
When the history of this administration is written, maybe someone will note the dissonance between the president's hip persona and his retro ideology. Here was a man who promised a "transformative" presidency. Yet when transformation came, it amounted to a two-pronged attempt to impose, from one side, a version of European social democracy by way of ObamaCare, and from the other side a version of Chinese state-directed "capitalism" by way of the stimulus.
As a political matter it may have been Mr. Obama's good luck that the bankruptcy of both models became obvious only after he had gotten his way legislatively on both. Yet the president's sagging fortunes have everything to do with his buying into an ideological enthusiasm too late. In a different age, Mr. Obama would have been the guy who went out and bought an Edsel. In this age, Mr. Obama is the guy demanding that you buy an Edsel, too. That car is today called the Volt.
The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. His failure to do so may be due either to lack of natural ability—perfectly compatible with passing academic tests—or to inadequate teaching; and both cases will . . . occur more frequently as ever larger numbers are drafted into higher education and as the required amount of teaching increases irrespective of how many teachers and scholars nature chooses to turn out.The results of neglecting this and of acting on the theory that schools, colleges and universities are just a matter of money, are too obvious to insist upon. Cases in which among a dozen applicants for a job, all formally qualified, there is not one who can fill it satisfactorily, are known to everyone who has anything to do with appointments . . .All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into that social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator's typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions especially in a rationalist and utilitarian civilization.Well, here we have numbers; a well-defined group situation of proletarian hue; and a group interest shaping a group attitude that will much more realistically account for hostility to the capitalist order than could the theory—itself a rationalization in the psychological sense—according to which the intellectual's righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism simply represents the logical inference from outrageous facts. . . . Moreover our theory also accounts for the fact that this hostility increases, instead of diminishing, with every achievement of capitalist evolution.
The difference between Obama and the Wizard of Oz? The wizard was a fraud. Obama's a fraud and a vulgar bum.It’s a continuation of a process that began with the first debate, in which Obama tip-toed out from behind the curtain on the central stage of Oz, and showed us who he really is. Not a great leader, certainly not a messianic figure. Indeed, as we now see, he’s a bum. It’s a shock to lots of Americans, who previously were willing to grant that the president had his faults but was basically a good man, a nice guy, and a cultured gentleman. He showed them he was none of those things.I think that was a real shock to a meaningful chunk of the electorate, and it would not have been nearly so potent if it had come from a book or an oped. Its power comes from the fact that Obama showed it himself.It shouldn’t have been hard to foresee the consequences of his self-revelation. So why did he do it? He’s certainly capable of dissimulation. The One who won the presidency four years ago did not present himself this way. He and his acolytes very carefully portrayed him as a transcendent figure, a new kind of leader, the incarnation of elegance and brilliance. And that succeeded. So what’s up?I think he’s cracking, and the inner nastiness and vulgarity are on display. He’s losing, and he’s angry, and he can no longer sustain the pretense of elegance and coolness.Nobody ever said he was disciplined, did they?Moreover, he is the victim of his own myth, the “I have a special gift” legend that is the core doctrine of his powerful narcissism. He thinks he is so charismatic, and so wonderful, that if we see him in all his splendor, we will love him as he so loves himself.
The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.This version of events contradicts Mr. Panetta’s October 25 statement that General Ham advised against intervention. But so far there is nothing solid to back it up. Maybe Ham attempted to send a reaction force against orders, or maybe he simply said the wrong thing to the wrong people. Perhaps he gave whomever he was talking to up the chain a piece of his mind about leaving Americans to die when there was a chance of saving them. At the very least U.S. forces might have made those who killed our people pay while they were still on the scene. The Obama White House is famously vindictive against perceived disloyalty – the administration would not let Ham get away with scolding them for failing to show the leadership necessary to save American lives. The Army’s ethos is to leave no man behind, but that is not shared by a president accustomed to leading from that location.Oh, and the bullshit that Panetta threw out?The notion that we don’t send our forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on is patently absurd and false. Simply said, it’s a lie. We deploy Army Rangers to take control of air fields and landing zones in potentially hostile environments, for which we do not know all of the desired information; we deploy Marine infantry into situations of potentially unknown threats all of the time all over the globe; each and every time a patrol left the outpost at the Korengal in Afghanistan, they were deploying into potentially deadly situations without specific and detailed knowledge of the situation.
Soon after he took office, President Barack Obama began a process ultimately designed to reestablish full US diplomatic relations with Iran, including a reopening of embassies...
Based on information provided by my source and corroborated elsewhere, the official account by administration officials is a mosaic of lies that were necessary to cover the unpalatable truth of covert actions taking place in Libya, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The primary objective of our covert actions was to secretly arm anti-Assad “rebels” in Syria by funneling arms from Libya to Syria via Turkey, with other destinations that included Jordan and Lebanon. Regarding the threat to Stevens and the other murdered Americans, the truth will reformat the persistent question posed to government officials, from UN Ambassador Susan Rice to White House Spokesman Jay Carney and others from “how could you not have known” to “how could you have done these things?”First, it is important to understand that Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Dougherty and Tyrone Woods were not killed at a consulate office in Benghazi—as there is not such office there. They died at one of the largest CIA operations centers in the Middle East, which was located in Benghazi and served as the logistics headquarters for arms and weapons being shipped out of the post-Qaddafi Libya.Although the U.S. government insisted that Stevens was involved in securing and destroying the numerous caches of arms and weapons once under the control of Qaddafi, the operation was more complex than that. The visual accounts of weapons being destroyed were indeed real, but those weapons were not operational. The working weapons were actually separated and transported to holding facilities for their eventual use in Syria. Russia was fully aware of this operation and warned the U.S. not to engage in the destabilization of Syria, as doing so would endanger their national security interests. Deposing Assad, as despotic as he might be, and replacing him with a Muslim Brotherhood-led regime would likely lead to unrestrained Islamic chaos across the region.
As the White House and other agencies monitored intelligence in real-time, they faced a dilemma. They knew that the nation/state sponsored attack teams were lying in wait for U.S. rescue forces to arrive, which is the reason the fight did not conclusively end sooner. They did not know exactly where all of the attack teams were, but knew they were present based on signal communication intercepts. Could they risk such exposure by deploying a rescue team to Benghazi, only to end up with another Black Hawk down type scenario? In addition to that scenario, the entire operation now becomes exposed for what it is. Take another look at Panetta’s statement in that context. Does it now make more sense? Bad PR in an election year, no?As daylight approached with no response from the U.S. and no aid to the Americans under fire, the attack teams had to disperse into the cover of the remaining darkness, but not before their mission was accomplished. And sadly, it was.
I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.
1.) To whom did the president give the first of his "three very clear directives"—that is, "make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to?"
2.) How did he transmit this directive to the military and other agencies?
3.) During the time when Americans were under attack, did the president convene a formal or informal meeting of his national security council? Did the president go to the situation room?
4.) During this time, with which members of the national security team did the president speak directly?
5.) Did Obama speak by phone or teleconference with the combatant commanders who would have sent assistance to the men under attack?
6.) Did he speak with CIA director David Petraeus?
7.) Was the president made aware of the repeated requests for assistance from the men under attack? When and by whom?
8.) Did he issue any directives in response to these requests?
9.) Did the president refuse to authorize an armed drone strike on the attackers?
10.) Did the president refuse to authorize a AC-130 or MC-130 to enter Libyan airspace during the attack?
With 10 days until the election, Barack Obama's latest strategy is to claim that his opponent has developed "stage 3 Romnesia." Mitt Romney, the argument goes, is conveniently forgetting his real agenda, flipping his positions to better appeal to the electorate. Since Mr. Romney's conservative base would surely disagree, this raises the question of whether the president isn't himself suffering from a psychological malady that experts call "projection."
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"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program"—Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, June 2003.
"I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter"—President Obama, August 2009.
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"Leadership means that the buck stops here. . . . I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit"—Sen. Barack Obama, March 2006.
"It is not acceptable for us not to raise the debt ceiling and to allow the U.S. government to default"—President Obama, July 2011.
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"I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages"—Obama questionnaire response, 1996, while running for Illinois state Senate.
"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage"—Sen. Obama, November 2008, while running for president.
"It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married"—President Obama, May 2012.
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"We have an idea for the trigger. . . . Sequestration"—Obama Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew in 2011, as reported in Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics."
"First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed"—President Obama, October 2012.
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"If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election"—Sen. Obama, 2007.
"We've made the decision not to participate in the public financing system for the general election"—Sen. Obama, June 2008.
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"I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign"—Sen. Obama, June 2008.
"The way Bush has done it over the last eight years is . . . [he] added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back. . . . That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic"—Sen. Obama, July 2008.
"I don't remember what the number was precisely. . . . We don't have to worry about it short term"—President Obama, September 2012, on the debt figure when he took office ($10 trillion) and whether to worry about today's $16 trillion figure.
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"[Sen. Hillary Clinton believes] that . . . if the government does not force taxpayers to buy health care, that we will penalize them in some fashion. I disagree with that"—Sen. Obama, Jan 2008, opposing the individual mandate for health insurance.
"I'm open to a system where every American bears responsibility for owning health insurance"—President Obama, June 2009, supporting the individual mandate.
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"Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive"—President Obama, April 2009, in France.
"We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms"—President Obama, April 2009, in Trinidad and Tobago.
"Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing"—Barack Obama, October 2012, on whether he went on a global apology tour.
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"The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel"—Sen. Obama, September 2008.
"Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years"—President Obama, January 2010.
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"So if somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them"—Sen. Obama, January 2008, on his plans to financially penalize coal plants.
"Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution"—Sen. Obama, August 2008.
"Here's what I've done since I've been president. We have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years. Natural gas production is the highest it's been in decades. We have seen increases in coal production and coal employment"—President Obama, October 2012.
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"If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition"—President Obama, 2009.
"We've got a long way to go but . . . we've come too far to turn back now. . . . And that's why I'm running for a second term"—President Obama, October 2012.
Just one more word on Nobel Peace Fauxreate Michael Mann’s suit against NR for mocking his hockey stick (I’m plowing through the charge sheet in between a sick kid and other more pressing matters). As we have established, Dr. Mann enjoys passing himself off as a Nobel Peace Prize winner. That’s all harmless fun until you make the mistake of believing your own sad fantasy. Paragraph five of the official complaint against me and NR reads:It is one thing to engage in discussion about debatable topics. It is quite another to attempt to discredit consistently validated scientific research through the professional and personal defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.Accepting for the purposes of argument that there is such a crime in U.S. law as “defamation of a Nobel prize recipient”, don’t you have to be a Nobel prize recipient to be the victim of it?The Nobel Prize committee has no record of a Dr. Michael Mann ever receiving a Nobel Prize. He is a “Nobel prize recipient” only in the canyons of his mind – unless he paid $19.95 for a Nobel diploma from a prestigious online self-help academy in Kazakhstan or some such.
“I’m Norma McCorvey, the former Jane Roe of the Roe vs. Wade decision that brought ‘legal’ child killing to America.
“I was persuaded by feminist attorneys to lie; to say that I was raped, and needed an abortion. It was all a lie.
“Since then, over 50 million babies have been murdered. I will take this burden to my grave.
“Please, don’t follow in my mistakes. DO NOT vote for Barack Obama. He murders babies.”
Read the whole thing.Thanks to intrepid investigative reporting — notably by Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge at Fox News, Aaron Klein at WND.com and Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org — and information developed by congressional investigators, the mystery is beginning to unravel with regard to what happened that night and the reason for the subsequent, clumsy official cover-up now known as Benghazigate.The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.Once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, Stevens was appointed ambassador to the new Libya run by Mr. Belhadj and his friends. Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amount of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.Investigative journalist Aaron Klein has reported that the “consulate in Benghazi” actually was no such thing. He observes that although administration officials have done nothing to correct that oft-repeated characterization of the facility where the murderous attack on Stevens and his colleagues was launched, they call it a “mission.” What Mr. Klein describes as a “shabby, nondescript building” that lacked any “major public security presence” was, according to an unnamed Middle Eastern security official, “routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.”We know that Stevens‘ last official act was to hold such a meeting with an unidentified “Turkish diplomat.” Presumably, the conversation involved additional arms shipments to al Qaeda and its allies in Syria. It also may have involved getting more jihadi fighters there. After all, Mr. Klein reported last month that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”It gets worse. Last week, Center for Security Policy senior fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with the so-called “consulate” whose purpose has yet to be disclosed. As their contents were raided in the course of the attack, we may never know for sure whether they housed — and were known by the local jihadis to house — arms, perhaps administered by the two former Navy SEALs killed along with Stevens.
The result, though, was that he [Romney] could draw few distinctions to Obama on almost any foreign policy issue. The night went to the president — but given the esoteric nature of the subject, election day may be a different story.
For Romney, caution was clearly the byword. He has closed with Obama in the polls, and the last thing he needs is to rattle the electorate by ratting some sabers. That will not close the gap with women voters.
The October surprise is that the final presidential debate may be the last chance before the election to clarify who knew what, and when, about the role of an anti-Islam Internet video in the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. For weeks, instead of blaming organized Islamist terrorists, the Obama administration claimed this made-in-America video turned demonstrators into killers.
A timeline disproves the administration's story. The murder of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya and two Navy SEALs, happened on the anniversary of Sept. 11, but the relevant facts start earlier:
There is a distinct possibility that we are nearing the end of an age, an age most people are probably not even aware they have been living in:The Age of Unexpectedly.Never heard of it, right? Ah, but therein lies its beauty, the surpassing subtlety of it, as you shall see.It is, of course, as with all historical periods, difficult to pinpoint exactly when it began. Perhaps the earliest sign was a Reuters story dated May 19, 2009, which reported that "new U.S. housing starts and permits unexpectedly fell to record lows in April . . . denting hopes that stability in the housing market was imminent."It also took its time becoming manifest. The next sign was more than a month later, on June 30, 2009, when Reuters reported that "U.S. consumer confidence took an unexpectedly steep slide in June . . . suggesting the 18-month-long recession had yet to loosen its grip on the economy."The Associated Press did its turn as well in 2009, reporting that "sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly tumbled in September," that "the Consumer Confidence Index . . . sank unexpectedly to 47.7 in October," and that "the number of newly laid off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose" during the second week of December.
And should that happen, you may rest assured that the Age of Unexpectedly will come to an end. Good economic news, should it happen after the change of guard in January, will likely be taken for granted. And as for the bad news - well, what would you expect if there's a Republican in the White House?
Everyone who knew George McGovern will tell you—I heard this first from George Will many years ago—that McGovern was one of the most gentle, decent persons you’d ever encounter in American politics. “He comes on like Muzak,” James Jackson Kilpatrick wrote of him, “which descendeth like the gentle dew.” But McGovern’s name will always be associated, rightly, with the extreme leftward lurch of the Democratic Party.
Here are more unsettling statistics buried deep in the DOJ’s new crime report; there has been a large increase in the rate of violent victimizations for whites, Hispanics and younger people. That means white non-Hispanics and Hispanics experienced an increase in violent victimization rates, while the rate for black non-Hispanics was stable, according to the DOJ stats.Additionally, crime rate in the suburbs is growing much faster than in the cities or rural areas, the government figures show. In 2011 suburbanites suffered a 20% in violent victimizations, according to the DOJ. Keep in mind that the feds admit in their report that the figures are probably much higher since only about 50% of violent victimizations were reported to police.
"When Gov. Romney says that we should eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, there are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care, they rely on it for mammograms,” said Obama Oct. 16 during the second presidential debate.Planned Parenthood does not actually provide women with mammograms, but refers patients out to other facilities for the exam.“Call it for what it is … if you're not doing mammograms, don't say that you do them,” Kate Bryan, communications director for Live Action, told EWTN News Oct. 19.In response to the implication that the organization provides mammograms, the pro-life groups And Then There Were None and Live Action organized “Call Planned Parenthood to Schedule Your Imaginary Mammogram Day.”Bryan said the idea was generated by And Then There Were None, and that Live Action “thought it was a great idea, to get to the bottom of it and expose the truth.”Participants called the organization's national toll-free number to be connected to their local center, and were instructed to “tell Planned Parenthood you would like to schedule a mammogram,” according to Live Action's website.The event's Facebook page asserted that “President Obama, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, celebrities in Hollywood and countless Planned Parenthood supporters claim over and over that they” provide mammograms.It also showed that 1,975 persons confirmed that they were participating in the event to “call out” Planned Parenthood, a turnout that Bryan deemed “a great success.”In a February episode of The Joy Behar Show, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said that “ if this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, (but) to basic family planning. You know, mammograms, cancer screenings,” referring to a GOP-backed bill that would have cut funding to the organization.Bryan characterized Richards' and Obama's comments as claiming Planned Parenthood is “doing all these live-saving treatments,” and“taking credit for” mammograms.
Lagerfeld in an interview to the Spanish edition of Marie-Claire called Hollande -- who famously said he does not like the rich -- an idiot for imposing a 75 percent tax on incomes exceeding one million euros ($1.3 million) annually.Boot licking supporters of Hollande called for Lagerfeld to apologize.
"This idiot will be as disastrous as Zapatero," Lagerfeld said, referring to Spanish former prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero whose term witnessed the country's economic bust.
HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) - Workers at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium-ion battery plant heavily funded by taxpayers, tell Target 8 that they have so little work to do that they spend hours playing cards and board games, reading magazines or watching movies.They say it's been going on for months."There would be up to 40 of us that would just sit in there during the day," said former LG Chem employee Nicole Merryman, who said she quit in May."We were given assignments to go outside and clean; if we weren't cleaning outside, we were cleaning inside. If there was nothing for us to do, we would study in the cafeteria, or we would sit and play cards, sit and read magazines," said Merryman. "It's really sad that all these people are sitting there and doing nothing, and it's basically on taxpayer money."Two current employees told Target 8 that the game-playing continues because, as much as they want to work, they still have nothing to do. ..."There's no work, no work at all. Zero work," another current employee said. "It is what it is. What do you do when there's no work?" ...The plant all started with such great hope, and a presidential groundbreaking in July 2010.
"This is a symbol of where Michigan is going, this is a symbol of where Holland is going, and this is a symbol of where America's going," President Barack Obama told a crowd at the groundbreaking.
The U.S. Department of Energy provided a $151 million grant, part of Obama's Recovery Act....The company has spent $133 million so far, most for construction and equipment, records show. About 40% has gone to foreign companies -- mostly to Korea, a Target 8 analysis shows.The company also spent more than $533,000 of that federal grant for the groundbreaking, records show.A Target 8 analysis of federal records shows taxpayers spent $7 million to train workers and have paid more than $700,000 for workers' health and dental insurance.There's millions of dollars more at stake for LG Chem if it doesn't keep hiring, or if its job numbers fall. The state approved a $25.2 million job-creation state tax credit over 15 years, and a battery cell state tax credit worth $100 million over 4 years. Both are tied to job creation.The City of Holland created a Renewable Energy Renaissance Zone, allowing LG Chem to operate free of property taxes for 15 years -- if it reaches 300 employees within 5 years. That's another $48.5 million.
"You can only do nothing for so long. There were days, sitting around all day doing nothing. ... I didn't play a whole lot of cards," said the worker, who added, "I bailed out of a sinking ship."
In many ways this is still a post-9/11 world. The threat of Islamic terror, a depressed and failing economy, an unsure future for a troubled healthcare system, a genocidal-spewing Iran, an unbalanced Middle East- these are some of the problems which surfaced after that fateful September day and mutated afterwards in unexpected ways....
Contrary to the implications of Mr. Obama’s 2008 statement, Americans provided for the sick before his time; the rise of the oceans did not begin “to slow” and our planet did not begin “to heal”- not in a metaphoric sense and not in a real one.Mr. Obama’s unsatisfactory direction for America was rooted in untenable assumptions, fueled by arrogance, and promoted by divisiveness. We don’t need more of that.It is not only that Mr. Obama thus deserves to be a one-term proposition; it is that Mr. Romney is simply the better bet for our country.
