Obama Snith site

Obama: If you love me, pass my jobs bill

Obama: If
you love me, pass my jobs bill

Sep 14
01:54 PM US/Eastern

US President Barack Obama told
fired up supporters Wednesday that if they loved him, they must help pass his
jobs bill, injecting more urgency into his push for key legislation.Obama hit another key 2012 electoral swing state, North Carolina, to hike
pressure on Republicans over his $447 billion American Jobs Act which is
designed to jolt the economy and ease 9.1 percent unemployment.

One supporter from the raucous crowd shouted to Obama that they loved him,
and in a standard response from his 2008 campaign he replied “I love you back”
then added a new twist.

“If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill,” Obama said, repeating
the line to more cheers.

Obama’s appeal may work with his supportive political base, but will cut
little ice with Republicans seeking to exploit his diminished job approval
ratings which are at 44 percent in a RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.

The president, on the latest leg of what aides say will be a months-long tour
to promote the bill, also complained that some Republicans were against the
legislation because they wanted to deprive him of a political victory.

“Give me a win? Give me a break” Obama said, during his pared down stump
speech which is peppered with demands that Republicans “pass this bill.”

Republicans however are increasingly dismissing the jobs plan as a political
stunt, complaining Obama proposes to finance it by reducing itemized deductions
for Americans earning over $200,000 a year and closing corporate tax breaks.

They have said that they are interested in some aspects of the bill which is
weighted towards payroll tax cuts and includes infrastructure spending, but may
pass those pieces separately, not in the whole bill as Obama demands.

 

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Congressman says goal for $535 million was photo-op

‘I see no reason for the taxpayers to have any confidence funds could be  spent wisely’

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Posted: September 14, 2011
8:35 pm Eastern

By Bob  Unruh
© 2011 WND

http://connect.facebook.net/rsrc.php/v1/yK/r/RIxWozDt5Qq.swf

 

Solyndra  project in France

A member of Congress today essentially accused Barack Obama of rushing more  than half a billion dollars out the government’s door and into the account of a  private company that later collapsed into bankruptcy in order to set up a  favorable photo-op for the administration.

“The review process took a back seat to the need to set up a photo-op for the  vice president and other administration officials,” Rep.  Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said today after a hearing into the more than half a  billion dollars in federal loan guarantees granted to the  California-based Solyndra, which had some major Obama supporters as private  investors.

His statement on the hearing found that the “Obama administration rushed to  get money out the door for political photo-ops.”

See  the nation’s new state of affairs, in “Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the  New Washington Thugocracy.

That’s even though witnesses today from the administration all claimed that  due diligence was applied to the decision-making process that addressed the $535  million, and they are stumped as to what eventually went wrong.

Stearns, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s  subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, made clear the issue is far from  over.

(Story continues below)

“Solyndra was the first loan guarantee issued by the Obama administration  using stimulus dollars and administration officials held out the company as a  glowing example of how stimulus dollars were creating jobs – now 1,100 Solyndra  workers are out of work, the firm is bankrupt and raided by the FBI, and  taxpayers are likely out $535 million,” he said.

“I look forward to hearing from the Solyndra executives at our hearing next  week,” he said.

The company, which made “innovative cylindrical solar systems for commercial  rooftops,” announced at the end of August that it was suspending operations and  firing 1,100 fulltime and temporary employees.

It said it could not achieve “full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete  in the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers. This  competitive challenge was exacerbated by a global oversupply of solar panels and  a severe compression of prices that in part resulted from uncertainty in  governmental incentive programs in Europe and the decline in credit markets that  finance solar systems.”

CEO Brian Harrison was quoted in the company announcement at the time saying,  “We are incredibly proud of our employees, and we would like to thank our  investors, channel partners, customers and suppliers, for the years of support  that allowed us to bring our innovative technology to market. Distributed  rooftop solar power makes sense, and our customers clearly recognize the  advantages of Solyndra systems.”

However, the half a billion dollars lost by taxpayers wasn’t mentioned.  Stearns’ spokesman said that’s where the investigation has to begin, with just  exactly what was paid to or on behalf of the company, by whom, and for what  purpose, officials said.

At today’s hearing, Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of  Management and Budget, and Jonathan Silver, a manager in the Department of  Energy Loans Program Office, claimed “all due diligence” was used in approving  the loan, even though some analysts were warning about the company’s future  already at that point in 2009.

Then the administration restructured the loan and put the security of private  investors ahead of taxpayers – an apparent violation of federal law as well as  the intent of Congress – in order to attract more outside investors, the report  from Stearns office confirmed.

According to Zients, “DOE ultimately provided information and analysis to OMB  to show that the loan was in imminent default, and that the restructuring  proposal was expected to be less costly to taxpayers than other options,  including liquidation.”

But another attempt to restructure in just the past few weeks was rejected,  and the company turned itself into a vacant warehouse, after apparently “burning  through” the $535 million in about two years.

“It is clear that in a rush to spend $8 billion in stimulus funds for this  loan guarantee program, this administration failed to review properly Solyndra’s  viability in the global market, which is very disconcerting given that $10  billion remains to be spent by the administration before the end of this month,”  said Stearns.

“I see no reason for the taxpayers to have any confidence that these funds  could be spent wisely and it should be returned to the [U.S.] Treasury to reduce  our debt,” he said.

During the hearing, members of Congress pointed to internal emails suggesting  that there was a strategy in place to rush the loan approval in order to meet  the schedule timeframe for a photo-op for the administration.

One such note said, “We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed  approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end  of the week). … We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence  reviews and have the approval set the date for the announcement rather than the  other way around.”

However, White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed such concerns, explaining  the request for an approval date was only for “scheduling.”

Solyndra had been hailed by Obama as an innovative company that would use  taxpayer money to hire workers. Instead, it fired most of its 1,100 employees  Aug. 31 when it shut down.

Just days later, agents with the FBI and Energy Department’s inspector  general inspected the company headquarters for records that might provide the  basis for further investigation or charges.

Stearns had pointed out that the record reveals “numerous red flags”

A  commentary from Bruce Krasting at Business Insider said it was of special  interest that no witnesses so far have been scheduled for the main owner of the  company, Argonaut Ventures, a family investment vehicle for George Kaiser, a  major Obama supporter.

“George Kaiser could step up in a bankruptcy court and offer to put $300  [million] into S. The proceeds would be used to substantially pay down the  government IOU. The balance of the debt would be converted into common stock. If  S were around in 5-7 years, the government might get the rest of its money  back,” he suggested. “That’s my challenge to George Kaiser. Step up and fix this  problem.”

A commentary  that appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune noted that when Obama was promoting  renewable energy projects, and working to grant money for the work, he visited  the California company and stated, “The future is here.”

But the commentary noted that by now, FBI agents have visited the company’s  offices, and have taken what they want. They also have visited officials’ homes  for related reasons.

“Obviously, everyone should reserve judgment as to whether there has been any  wrongdoing, criminal or otherwise. But it’s not too early to draw some policy  lessons from Solyndra’s ignominious downfall,” the commentary said. “The first  is that government is no better than the private sector at picking industrial  winners – and usually worse. Solyndra’s novel solar-panel design was supposed to  produce electricity more efficiently than more traditional panels, offsetting  its higher production costs. Many private analysts questioned that business  model, especially given modest global demand for solar power and competition  from China’s heavily subsidized producers. But the Energy Department swiftly  approved Solyndra’s loan guarantee anyway. The department has also placed large  financial bets on electric vehicles and related battery technology, despite  private forecasts that the market for that technology is not ripe.”

In response to a request from from  the Wall Street Journal, FBI spokeswoman Julianne H. Sohn declined to  comment on much of what is going on.

But the report said two of the company’s founders were taken off the payroll  just last year because the company “was burning through cash and had to rein in  costs.”

Read more: Congressman says goal for $535 million was photo-op http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=345121#ixzz1Y1v9uhrk

Would Obama Retaliate against a Nuclear Attack?

By Rabbi
Aryeh Spero

What if a Muslim country, such as Iran, launched a
nuclear attack against us, or if agents aligned with Pakistan using dirty bombs
were to attack America?  Would Barack Hussein Obama retaliate with nuclear
force, as has been our stated policy since the 1950s?  Would he even unleash a
barrage of non-nuclear shock and awe that would level those countries so that
they’d be incapable of striking a second time?

When queried in
Japan in November 2009, Mr. Obama declined to defend President Harry Truman’s
nuclear attack on Hiroshima, despite it having saved hundreds of thousands of
American soldiers who would have otherwise died trying to defeat the
recalcitrant Japanese.  Many on the left and in academia have gone so far as to
characterize it as a display of American racism, questioning if we would have
done so had the victims been British.  They ignore the efficacy of how that
one-time use of a nuclear weapon spared this country from ever being a victim of
nuclear attack.

This is a question the president needs to be asked,
given how he is a proponent of a doctrine labeled Responsibility to
Protect, “R2P.”  The question is, though, what is Mr. Obama’s conceptual
understanding of the term “responsibility” and how will it influence the manner
in which he wages war?

The past may be a guide.  As with all references to
“responsibility,” domestic or foreign, Obama sees responsibility as a type of
sacrifice by the more powerful to those less powerful, be it
redistribution of wealth or sacrificing one’s optimal protection when weighed
against how it effects those he considers innocent.  A nuclear response to a
nuclear attack on us, or even a devastating shock and awe campaign, would
certainly kill many non-combatants Obama would consider
innocent.

The assumption that, as with all presidents, Mr. Obama
would do what is best for America and Americans cannot be taken for granted.
We’ve never before had a president who sees himself primarily as a citizen of
the world and initiates policies not always in the best interests of America but
in the interest of more important (to him) global goals: loans to Brazil for
their offshore drilling, hundreds of millions to Palestinian Arabs and Muslim
countries — increasing an already unbearable debt on Americans to do so.  Not
to mention how he has tried every which way to stop Arizonans (Americans) from
protecting themselves from murder, rape, thievery, and destruction of their
property from mobs cascading into our open borders — doing so, as he always
does, by invoking some universalist “morality” and mission that, in his mind,
supersede our parochial needs.  He has reneged on our commitment for a
space shield for our allies in Eastern Europe while offering it to Russia, a
threat to America.

Indeed, Obama has spent much time traversing the globe
apologizing to all those countries that he claims have been the target of
“arrogant” American military power.  Would he, then, be inclined to use the
essence of American military power, its nuclear force?  Many around the world
will not be deterred from going nuclear against us unless it is unequivocally
understood that they will be annihilated if they do so.

None of this is remotely to imply that the president
would be sanguine if our country were attacked; rather, one wonders if he has
the stomach to retaliate overwhelmingly against the attackers, especially since
he could rationalize his reluctance in terms of a “higher morality” that says:
we can’t bring back our dead by killing citizens elsewhere who did not pull the
trigger against us.  His dilemma will be compounded if a dirty bomb or EMP were
launched against us not by a government per se but by a group of terrorists
independent of a government which nonetheless gives them sanctuary.  After all,
the Arab/Muslim cause has been very adept and successful in demanding that its
territories and people be spared retaliation by claiming that terrorism is the
work of individuals and not a particular state or government — and Mr. Obama is
part of that chorus.

Furthermore, are we certain that Mr. Obama considers
American life more important than, say, Iranian life, or that there is something
exceptional about America that warrants choosing it and its people over the
exceptional nature he has equally granted other countries and peoples?  Forget
all these assumed notions that a president will always do what is best for
Americans — it boils down to Mr. Obama’s moral compass.  If he thinks the way I
think he does, he may likely consider it immoral to kill Pakistanis in order to
save Americans, or Canadians.

The question becomes more acute if the attack comes
from a Muslim source.  And that is because Mr. Obama demonstrates an unbreakable
political and ethnic simpatico (though not necessarily religious) with Muslim
causes and Muslim
people to a degree not seen in any Western leader today or before.  What
president designates an entire government agency, NASA, to forgo its intrinsic
purpose and changes it to Muslim
Outreach?

Be it bowing to Saudi kings, funneling billions to
Muslim
causes around the world, ordering expanded immigration of Muslims
into this country, waxing poetic about the “holy” Koran, instituting White House
Ramadan Dinners, and re-writing American history to pretend some type of
significant early historical relationship with Islam, as well as maneuvering to
transform ancient Jerusalem, the Jewish spiritual capital, into an Islamic
capital — all of this shows a man whose identity and heart are very tied up
with things Islamic.  There is something operating within the bosom of Obama
beyond so-called political even- handedness.  It is a love
affair.

Obama the Christian made his feelings clear in his
book, The Audacity of Hope (pg.261), that if
elected he would stand with Islam, no matter the prevailing winds against it.
And why not?  His family back in Africa is Islamic.  In his Cairo speech he said
America will never be at war with Islam and that he sees his duty as president
of the United States to fight against any type of stereotyping of Islam, no
matter where.  Would he be willing, then, to use nuclear armaments against a
society he endlessly keeps telling us is peace-loving and full of compassion and
justice?

Deep down, Obama may consider such wholesale
retaliation as racist, since its victims are of a darker skin color than
Anglos.  One cannot minimize the extent to which Obama and the left have
expanded the definition of racism and how averting “racism” has become the
centerpiece of all decision-making, overshadowing and surpassing even needs for
defense.  Even now, Obama leaves the country vulnerable to jihadist plans with
his refusal to ever mention the name Islam or Islamic when forced to comment on
the many attacks by young Islamists on this country during the past few years.
He has done nothing to stop Iran from engineering its nuclear bomb and seems to
be standing in the way of those who would like to protect us from a future
nuclear inferno. Addressing the Manhattan Institute last week, former Attorney
General Michael Mukasey warned of an Obama administration that implements
policies that sacrifice an optimal protecting of Americans for what it considers
even more important: making sure that there is no domestic backlash against Muslims.

There are those who point to his willingness to fight
in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But Obama’s new “rules of engagement,” designed to
save Muslim
lives and honor Muslim sensitivities, have resulted in many unnecessary American
deaths.  This itself should prove the inverted priorities and danger inherent in
his version of warfare — it is American life which is sacrificed in the name of
responsibility.  Truth be told, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has not taken on
Islamic governments, rather the Taliban,
which he considers an enemy of Islamic regimes.  It is unclear, however, if he
would actually go to war against an actual Islamic regime or government when the
need to do so is specifically American and does not accrue to the benefit of the
Islamic world.

Can we rely on his constitutional obligation to defend
America?  He may very well consider the defense of America to be better served
through threats of retaliation but not retaliation itself, or he may prefer
negotiation as the better route to defense, more “consistent with our values,”
as he often intones.  Nowhere is it written that he must constitutionally defer
to his predecessors’ notion of what constitutes an appropriate response.
Perhaps he will bypass the Constitution, as he has so often done in domestic
affairs, under the rationale that he inherited these problems from Bush.  Will
our military have to wait for a second round of attacks while the president
wavers or consults with Samantha Power?

Campaigns provide that one season and window where a
president can’t hide in the White House and be shielded from the tough
questions.  But it only happens if his opponents raise the issues publicly since
the media seem unwilling to make Mr. Obama uncomfortable.

Our candidates should pose this very question. And
this time we need direct, clear answers — no Obamaspeak, no bureaucratic mumbo
jumbo. America needs to know, and so does the world.

Rabbi Spero is president of Caucus
for America and can be reached at
(212)252-6861.

Obama Officials Royally Lambasted At Solyndra Hearing

http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_nr6vglto/uiconf_id/5590821Video VIA ABCNEWS.com

FoxNews.com

Obama administration officials on Wednesday defended a $528 million loan to a solar-panel company that went bankrupt this month, claiming the firm fell victim to global economic trends but that federal investment in alternative energy must continue.

The testimony came as Republican and Democratic lawmakers raised sharp questions about the decision that ultimately left taxpayers on the hook for millions, and as newly released emails show administration officials were raising doubts about the loan proposal to Solyndra months before it was finalized.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said the program was “shrouded in secrecy and uncertainty,” questioning whether the loan represented “one bad bet” or the “tip of the iceberg.”

Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the White House budget office, acknowledged that Solyndra’s bankruptcy will “limit the government’s recovery of funds.” He called the outcome “very unfortunate.”

But at a hearing Wednesday, he said administration officials provided a “thorough examination and analysis” of the loan proposal and said a “challenging global solar market” has made business harder for companies like Solyndra.

Jonathan Silver, director of the Energy Department’s energy loan office, also said a combination of factors — namely China flooding the marketplace with cheap solar panels and the European buying market tightening as a result of their economic troubles — has caused solar-cell prices to plummet.

“These changes were particularly damaging to Solyndra,” he said.

Silver said Solyndra’s projects were considered “advanced” dating back to 2008. “In 2009, Solyndra appeared to be well-positioned to compete and succeed in the global marketplace,” Silver said.

But emails released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee show that the relevant credit committee decided “not to engage in further discussions with Solyndra” in the final days of the Bush administration. After the change in administration, officials restarted the loan review process for Solyndra.

“A half a billion dollars that was not supported in January under the Bush administration was … conditionally recommended in March,” Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, pointed out.

Asked whether political influence played a role in the loan being approved, Silver said, “I don’t believe so