The Future of Our Country Is "At Stake"

American Crossroads:

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Tags: At Stake, America, America's future, Clint Eastwood, American Crossroads, election 2012 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Americans Heart Israel

Princella Smith

Princella Smith, Contributing Author: Roy Ashton might be considered a "typical southern male" in the United States. He is a Mississippi resident, a father, and a husband who attends church regularly and considers himself to be patriotic. Although active in his church, he was not particularly interested in traveling to the Middle East. In fact, the only countries that his church mentioned when speaking of missions work were Asian countries in the Far East. But, like many church-going American southerners, Roy eventually became informed of the importance of Israel's security to the pro-democratic free world and to America's national security, as well as the biblical significance of protecting Israel, and he had a change of heart. He decided to travel to Israel and to learn about how he could help Israelis to handle emergency situations.

I met Roy this past week in Jerusalem when I was invited to attend a training session of the Emergency Volunteers Project. EVP was founded in 2007 with the purpose of training individuals and groups to assist and support Israeli emergency service organizations in times of emergency, as there invariably are here.

EVP's main headquarters is in Jerusalem, and perhaps what's most special about the EVP is the number of non-Israelis who are recruited to participate. A majority of those non-Israeli participants are Americans.

During a counterterrorism conference a couple of weeks ago, I witnessed the incredulousness of a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt as he expressed disdain and skepticism about America's position toward enforcing red lines on Iran and preventing them from attaining a nuclear weapon.

Despite America's history of pro-Israel policies, a surprisingly growing number of Israelis feel the same as the ambassador, and it is unfortunate that the Obama administration's lackluster performance on the issue has exacerbated this feeling.

Israel's security and America's defense of it has long been a non-partisan issue in America. Both Democrats and Republicans have long maintained that America should remain an unyielding ally to Israel. Yet, the Obama administration has attempted to make that issue just as partisan as tax policy and entitlement reform. The Democratic National Convention actually erupted over whether to include a policy plank claiming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and it was only changed to include it once President Barack Obama and his operatives feared the media exposure and pro-Israel backlash within their own party.

However, the EVP's recent training event can be seen as more representative of how Americans feel about the protection of the State of Israel as a whole and more deeply, about the heart that Americans have toward individual Israelis. The attendees traveled to Israel on their own American dime to learn how to assist Israeli emergency personnel in case of a crisis, but why? Why would citizens of one country spend their own money to help another country solve its problems?

I had to ask — although I already knew the answer. It is commonly said that "America stands with Israel," but this is deeper.

Americans love Israelis.

This extends beyond public and international policy. Many Americans — especially Christians — feel a moral obligation, a sense of honorable duty to band together and pray for the safety and well-being of Israelis as a people.

It's more than facts and figures. It's more than the concept of Israel being our "haven of democracy in the Middle East." For many Americans, it's biblical. Not only is there the element of Israel as a Holy Land, but there is the unwavering conviction that this Holy Land is inhabited by God's chosen people. This means that Israeli life should be cherished and the population viewed as individual precious people and not figures on a map.

This sentiment can't be measured on a Republican and Democrat scale. It's heart-deep. So, no matter how much Obama snubs Israel and disrespects Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Americans at their core will always stand with the people of Israel.

I observed hours of the first day of training with the EVP and caught up with a few of the Americans there. Gail Giaramita of Lake Cormorant, Mississippi is a nurse and a Christian who joined the EVP because she "… love[s] Israel and stand[s] with Israel." She passionately explained that she is a member of a group that prays for the protection of Israeli citizens weekly.

That is the same group that Charlotte Bridgewater of Southaven, Mississippi is a part of. She came to Israel "… not for a vacation but to help." Both ladies met Mark Cox, also of Southaven, Mississippi, during the trip. When asked why he spent money to travel to Israel for EVP training, he said, "I always had a heart toward Israel. I couldn't afford it, but God opened the [financial] door, so I felt I was assigned to it. I am deeply concerned about the situation that I see Israel in. The imminent events will likely be catastrophic."

Catastrophic indeed as echoed by Eitan Charnoff, the 22-year-old EVP spokesperson and representative for the EVP to the United States.

Eitan is a Jewish American who was raised in Potomac, Maryland, but sojourned to Israel for a deeper connection with his Jewish heritage. He recently completed his undergraduate studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and will be drafted into the Israeli army in a few months.

The name Eitan means "strong" and it is fitting for the young man. One five-minute conversation with the athletic Eitan is enough to make me believe I am speaking with a future prime minister. "Israel is facing a very complex situation," said Eitan. "The largest is from Iran with the most obvious threat coming from their [potential] development of nuclear weapons but also the geopolitical situation that has occurred from the Arab Spring. So, one of the potential threats is a result from the deterioration in Syria and the potential that their chemical and biological weapons can fall into the hands of terrorists. Another threat is that [Lebanon's] Hezbollah will attack Israel to distract the world from what's happening in Syria. There are over 50,000 rockets pointed at Israel — many of which are pointed directly at the center of the country. It is this increasing threat and uneasiness that re-emphasizes the importance of Israel's security not militarily but in terms of protecting the civilian population."

And how will EVP aid this effort? They recruit, train and prepare anyone around the world with the heart to help, so that if Israel is ever in another dire situation, people all over the world are immediately equipped to work with Israeli services to save lives.

The problem, according to Eitan is that "Israel has some of the best emergency services in the world, but because it is such a small country, there aren't enough of them." Thus, the need for volunteers from other countries, and the ripe opportunity to pick people from the American field of "true believers" who are eager to protect Israel.

EVP CEO Adi Zahavi co-founded the organization on this concept. Zahavi, who comes from a family of ambulance drivers, began driving ambulances when he was only 15 years old. During the Second Intifada and particularly the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Zahavi noted the lack of manpower among Israeli relief forces.

"I saw the [situation] through the eyes of emergency personnel and noted the need for help from outside of Israel in case of war. We needed volunteers ASAP who were actually trained ... I looked to the U.S. first because I knew that we needed people who were pro-Israel for this kind of [undertaking]."

People like Patricia Del'Marmol of Sacramento, California, who saw the kiosk to sign up for the EVP when she attended this year's Christians United for Israel summit in Washington, D.C. "I've previously volunteered for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and picked grapes in Har Bracha and Shiloh as a volunteer. I saw this as an opportunity to help the people of Israel."

American firefighters and ambulance personnel travel to Israel to learn how to work in those fields under the Israeli system so that they are ready at a moment's notice.

At the same time, the Patricia Del'Marmols, Charlotte Bridgewaters, Mark Coxes, Gail Giaramitas, Roy Ashtons, and other "every day" American citizens are trained by qualified officials such as Ty Flewelling, the medical attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Israel. "The U.S. Embassy supports EVP and disaster preparedness plans," said Flewelling. We're involved from a grass-roots level up to the highest levels of government in Israel in disaster preparedness."

This grass-roots effort includes training to be a first responder; in first aid; spotting suspicious activity; and in search, rescue, and recovery, including digging bodies — both alive and dead — from rubble; as well as working in shelters to provide food and clothing to disaster victims whose homes and possessions have been destroyed.

As much talk as there is in America about the Obama and Romney campaigns' grass-roots operations to get out the vote in the upcoming November election, I wonder how much thought either of them has given to the type of grass-roots operation Charnoff, Zahavi and Flewelling are preparing for?

One thing is certain: Whether the presidential candidates have noted the efforts of the EVP, they should start now because the heart of Americans is and always will be toward a safe and secure Israel.
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Princella Smith is a conservative advocate. She was a former communications staffer to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and has also served as a communications director on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. She is currently a graduate student at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy & Strategy of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. She is a contributing authors to the ARRA News Service and an American freelance contributor for Israel Hayom where this article first appeared.

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Tags: Princella Smith, Americas, Heart Israel, Israel, Israel Hayom To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Socialism is Not the Answer for America

by Arkansas Lt. Governor Mark A. Darr: The other day I saw a commercial on television that struck me. A man named Thomas Peterffy was telling his story about growing up in Hungary when it was a socialist country. He came to the United States and lived the American Dream, becoming a citizen and an incredibly successful entrepreneur. But, he hasn’t forgotten where he came from – the place that he left. In socialist Hungary, he said that there was “no hope, no freedom, no pride in achievement.” He said that he believes we are on a slippery slope and he sees it happening here. “America’s wealth comes from people striving for success,” he continued. The incentives for success in this country are receding. It seems that because the government has sought to do so much for so many, we are now incentivizing people not to work.

This election, we find our country is at a crossroads. I never thought it would come to this in America.

When Ronald Reagan was president, our country stood against socialism. All over the world, American effort and treasure was spent trying to defeat it. Now we are seeing this encroaching ideology infect our own political and economic system. We must continue to defeat it or it will consume our nation.

Too many people now think that it is the job of the government to provide whatever they need. Where has American optimism and individualism gone? Where is that sense of being independent and self-sufficient? Many of our neighbors do need help and I understand that. Many other Americans are simply losing hope. Thousands of people have left the workforce. Dependence on government social programs is skyrocketing.

The path we are on is unsustainable. Look at what is happening in Europe. Decades of government growth and socialist policies are bankrupting their countries. Greece and Spain are key examples. Cuts in programs that people became dependent on have led to violence in the streets. Why would we go down a road that we know leads to failure?

These past few years, we have seen demonstrations all across our own country, representing a level of American unrest that I’ve never seen before. America’s “silent majority” is no longer silent. Millions have turned out in non-violent protests to say that the government is doing too much, rather than not enough.

President Nixon, during the Vietnam War, called for the country to be “united against defeat.” He said, “North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” We cannot allow our country to be defeated and humiliated from within. The path to socialism will lead to that end.

Free enterprise, hard work, and American entrepreneurialism – that is what works. That is what has made our economy the envy of the world. Government should encourage that, not squelch it.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground." We see it before our own eyes.

We must preserve our nation as that “shining city on a hill”. We can’t allow it to grow dim.
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View Thomas Peterffy video, Freedom To Succeed, about growing up in socialist Hungary.

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Tags: Arkansas, Lt. Governor, Mark Darr, America, socialism, not the answer, free enterprise, hard work, entrepreneurs, Thomas Peterffy To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Romney Leading Among Independent Voters

The battle is engaged.  Remain engaged.  Encourage others to vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket.  Vote!

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Tags: poll, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, independent voters, 2012 election, Romney-Ryan, Obama-Biden To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Help Denied DURING Benghazi Attack!

Editor's Note: Regarding the link referenced by Gary Bauer to the attack on Rev. Billy Graham and value voter, the event took place on CNN News. The CNN commentator asks her guest if Graham's privately funded ad asking Christians to vote for candidates supporting life and traditional marriage was partisan. When did standing for Christian values become partisan. The liberal democrat Rev. Markel Hutchins attacks the mental stature of Rev. Billy Graham by stating, "I think one of the things that we know is that Reverend Graham is at a very seasoned and elder stage of his life so we have to wonder how much of this is genuinely coming from Billy Graham and how much is being fed to him and propositioned and heaped upon him by those who are around him. For example, his ultraconservative son, the Reverend Franklin Graham." He then went on to bash Mormons. Shouldn't the CNN anchor have called him on being partisan since he was challenging people based on their "religion"?

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Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Fox News broke an extremely disturbing report this morning. If the facts are accurate, this could be Barack Obama's "Desert One debacle" -- Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages.

According to the report, officials at a CIA annex in Benghazi requested military support multiple times during the attack on the consulate. Each time they were turned down. When they requested permission to assist the consulate staff, they were told to stand down.

Frustrated by the lack of response, former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, along with two other individuals, ignored the order to stand down and went anyway. They found Sean Smith but could not find Ambassador Stevens. They returned to the CIA annex, but it too came under attack. Again they requested military support, and it was inexplicably denied. Consider this excerpt of the Fox report:
"Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty … were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the Consulate began -- a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations."For seven hours our men were under attack and got no help from Washington! We already knew that the embassy staff had repeatedly requested more security months prior to this attack. They were repeatedly denied. Now we are learning that CIA operatives on the ground repeatedly asked for reinforcements during the attack and they were denied!

This should be a huge story! Will the other networks pick up on it? I'm skeptical because of the potential damage it could do to Obama's reelection chances. But if this story gets legs, the White House will no doubt blame it on the CIA. Don't fall for it.

After four years, any administration has had sufficient time to establish its control over every agency in Washington. Most of the bureaucrats are sympathetic to Obama anyway. But after four years of bowing to radical Islam, even those who are professional civil servants know what decisions could end their careers.

Obama's Disgusting New Ad - It is hard to imagine the Obama campaign stooping any lower after yesterday's outrageous insults toward Billy Graham and values voters. But somehow they managed it.

In a new ad, a young "hip" woman compares voting for Barack Obama to losing her virginity. So the president now wants to seduce young women by asking them to 'do it' -- vote-- for the first time with him.

I hope parents will talk to their daughters and tell them about the sweet-talking men who promise girls the world in order to have their way with them, only to abandon them the next morning, when the girls realize that the empty promises were just part of the seduction.

In my view, this ad and the renewed focus on abortion reflect the growing desperation in the Obama campaign. They are trying -- too hard -- to energize young female voters who just aren't that into Obama anymore.

Don't Mess With Texas! - U.N. observers are coming to the United States to make sure our elections are fair. Seriously? With all the problems in the rest of the world, the U.N. is sending observers here? The "blue helmets" may get a warm welcome in San Francisco, but Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is warning they could be arrested.

Yesterday, Abbott sent a letter to Hillary Clinton telling her that nothing in the Texas election laws permits U.N. "representatives to enter the polling place and nothing in a document that may govern" their conduct "has any impact … on the conduct of elections in the State of Texas." The U.N. monitors have reportedly met with activist groups opposed to voter ID laws.

When the group went whining to Hillary that threats of arrest were "unacceptable," Abbott tweeted, "Bring it!" God bless Texas!
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Gary Bauer is is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families where his articles are also shared.

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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Barack Obama, Help Denied, Benghazi, attack, Billy Graham, disgusting ad, 2012 election, Texas, Un Observers, Don't mess With Texas To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

ABC Shields Obama on Libya

L. Brent Bozell III, President, Media Research Center: ABC World News gave a dismissive 20 seconds of lip service to a blockbuster report that revealed State Department emails showing that the White House knew on September 11 that the Benghazi consulate attack was a terrorist attack.

The emails documented that within two hours of the attack, the State Department had told the Obama administration that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for this terrorist attack. The revelation proves that President Obama and his spokesmen repeatedly lied to the American people. For days, falsely claiming it was a “video."

The story broke Tuesday night on CBS Evening News. Since then, according to a Media Research Center analysis, ABC has almost completely refused to report the email evidence, giving it a scant 25 seconds on Good Morning America and 20 seconds on World News yesterday.

Good Morning America skipped the story entirely this morning, but did commit nearly 2 minutes to the capture of a monkey in Florida.

In response, I just released the following public statement.“Every other broadcast news network has produced at least one major story on the release of emails related to the attack in Benghazi that killed our ambassador and three other brave Americans. While not enough, in some cases, it’s something. From ABC News, it’s nothing.

“ABC is aiding and abetting the Obama administration's cover-up of their deceitful response to the Benghazi terrorist attack. There is no bigger story than Obama's Benghazi lie, and ABC, a so-called "news network", has absolutely no excuse for hiding the truth from the American people.

“The questions are simple: what did President Obama know? And when did he know it? These emails prove that either Obama knew it was a terrorist attack and lied about it for weeks, or his administration is historically incompetent. Either way, it's major news and demands more than mere seconds of total coverage from one of the three major broadcast networks.

“ABC has been shielding Obama from the Benghazi fallout for weeks in order to help him win re-election, but the American people see right through it. Their corruption is as obvious as it is unforgivable."

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Tags: Media Research Center, Brent Bozell, Benghazi consulate attack, terrorist attack, Libya, failed reporting, ABC, NBC, CBS, News To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Horses and Bayonets

by William Warren:

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Tags: Barack Obama, Horses, Bayonet,Obama's Rhetoric, Obama's Record, William Warren, political cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

4 Pinocchios For Obama Whopper Saying Congress Came Up With Sequester

Following President Obama’s claim Monday that the defense sequester is “not something that I've proposed” and Obama Chief of Staff Jack Lew trying to claim it was the idea of Republicans in Congress, The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler decided to fact check these assertions today. Kessler writes, “[I]n the final presidential debate, Obama sought to toss the hot potato of sequestration — the process that is forcing those defense cuts and reductions in domestic spending — into Congress’s lap. Fortunately, there is a detailed and contemporaneous look at the debt ceiling deal that led to the current budget crunch: Bob Woodward’s ‘The Price of Politics.’ The book clearly had the full cooperation of top White House and congressional officials. With the help of our colleague, we took a tour through the relevant sections in order to determine the accuracy of the president’s statement.”

Kessler reprints the relevant portions of Woodard’s book and summarizes them: “The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with [White House national economic council director Gene] Sperling calling it an ‘automatic sequester’ . . . . [House speaker John] Boehner was ‘nervous’ about using it as a budget tool. . . . Once tax increases were off the table, the White House staff came up with a sequestration plan that only had spending cuts and sold Harry Reid on the idea. . . . [There is a] third reference to the White House putting together the plan for sequester. Granted, they are using language from a congressional law from a quarter-century earlier [Gramm-Rudman-Hollings], but that seems a thin reed on which to say this came from Congress. In fact, Lew had been a policy advisor to then House Speaker Tip O’Neill from 1979 to 1987, and so was familiar with the law.”

Kessler concludes, “Woodward’s detailed account of meetings during the crisis, clearly based on interviews with key participants and contemporaneous notes, make it clear that sequestration was a proposal advanced and promoted by the White House. In sum: Gene Sperling brought up the idea of a sequester, while Jack Lew sold Harry Reid on the idea and then decided to use the Gramm-Hollings-Rudman language (which he knew from his days of working for Tip O’Neill) as a template for sequester. The proposal was so unusual for Republicans that staffers had to work through the night to understand it.

“Oddly, Lew in Tampa on Thursday, publicly asserted the opposite: ‘There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger…. [It] was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure at the end.’ This prompted Woodward to go over his notes and interviews once again, to make sure he had gotten it right. ‘After reviewing all the interviews and the extensive material I have on this issue, it looks like President Obama told a whopper,’ Woodward said.  ‘Based on what Jack Lew said in Florida today, I have asked the White House to correct the record.’

“We had been wavering between Three and Four Pinocchios. But in light’s of Lew’s decision to doubledown on Obama’s claim, we agree it’s a whopper. Four Pinocchios.”

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Tags: Four Pinocchios, Obama Whopper, lied, The Washington Post, Sequester To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

What happens in Benghazi stays in Benghazi…

A.F. "Tony" Branco:

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Tags: Barack Obama, Benghazi, Libya, coverup, Americans, killed, political Cartoon, A.F. Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Reflecting on Poverty

by Kerby Anderson, Point of View: Why is there so much poverty in the world? A recent study by economists at the Frasier Institute and the Cato Institute suggest a link between poverty and the lack of freedom. They looked at 141 countries around the world and found a significant difference in poverty based upon the country’s economic freedom.

Countries with economies that rely on free markets, free trade, and private property grow faster than those that do not enjoy the same economic freedom. And these higher growth rates usually translate into higher incomes. Nations that are listed in the top fifth of the economic freedom index have an average income that is nearly seven times as great as those in the bottom fifth.

What about the plight of poor citizens in those countries? The economists also found that the average income of the poorest tenth of the population in the freest countries was eight times higher then the poorest tenth in the least free countries. John Goodman argues in a recent column: “If you are poor, it pays to live where capitalism is less hobbled.”

That is certainly true in this country. Robert Rector (Heritage Foundation) explains what poverty in America looks like. In his study “Understanding Poverty in the United States, he found that 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning, nearly three-fourths have a car or a truck, and more than half have one of more computers. The average poor American has more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France, or the U.K.

Walter Williams turns the question about poverty around. He reminds us: “Poverty has been mankind’s standard fare and remains so for most of mankind. What is unusual and challenging to explain is affluence—namely, how a tiny percentage of people mostly in the West, for only a tiny fraction of mankind’s existence, managed to escape the fate that befell their fellow men.”

This latest study demonstrates that one factor in removing or reducing poverty is economic freedom. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.
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Kirby Anderson is an author, lecturer, visiting professor and radio host and contributor on nationally syndicated Point of View" and the "Probe" radio programs.

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Tags: Kerby Anderson, Point of View, poverty, economic freedom, war on poverty, graph To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

How Long Are The Obamacare Regulations?

Fairfax, VA — Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson commented on the release of the following info-graphic highlighting the length of Obamacare’s regulations.

“Our Counsel John Vinci has noted that Obamacare’s regulations are now 2,864,094 pages long. That’s about 700,000 pages more than when last reported at the end of February.  This is 620 times the length of the U.S. Constitution.

“If Obamacare is not repealed it threatens to strangle America’s economy with so much red tape that no small businessman could ever comply.  While a boon for lawyers it is disastrous for the 23 million people who hope to find a job in the years ahead. Repeal must be job No. 1 in January.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson or Counsel John Vinci.

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Tags: ObamaCare, Obamacare Regulation, length, government bureaucracy, Americans for Limited Government To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

The Electoral College & More

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: The Electoral College - I have received a number of questions lately about why some states are seemingly more important than others in winning the White House. The answer is the Electoral College.

In a time when there is so much focus on popularity, the Electoral College seems out-of-date to many. But the Founding Fathers had very legitimate reasons for creating the Electoral College.

In cobbling together the new nation from very diverse states, one issue that frequently arose was the concern that the large states would dominate the new country. So compromises were reached.

One of which was a Congress with two houses -- one house with representation based on population (the House of Representatives) and another house where each state had equal representation (the Senate).

Another compromise involved the election of the president, and it borrowed heavily from the concepts that led to the creation of Congress.

The Electoral College was also designed to prevent large states from dominating the election. Each state is awarded votes in the Electoral College based on its total representation in Congress -- the number of House members plus its two senators.

So California with 53 House members plus two senators has 55 votes in the Electoral College. Delaware with one at-large representative and two senators has three votes. It takes 270 votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency.

The Race To 270 - In the race for 270, Barack Obama has the advantage. He starts out with a solid base of Blue states like California and New York, which gives him 201 Electoral votes. Governor Romney's Red state base has 191 Electoral votes.

There are approximately 10 "purple," or swing, states with 130 Electoral College votes that will decide the election: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), New Hampshire (4), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13) and Wisconsin (10).

The most likely scenario for Governor Romney to win involves carrying Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio, plus one more state. The first three states are leaning in his direction, while Ohio is a toss-up. Thus all the focus on Ohio.

If he loses Ohio, he must flip another state like Pennsylvania, where I am today rallying values voters. And he must still carry an additional state, most likely Colorado. By the way, today's Time poll finding Obama up five points in Ohio is garbage.

Why You Must Vote - There is one last point I want to emphasize: You must vote! Just because you live in a liberal Blue state like California and New York does not mean your vote doesn't matter.

While the Electoral College results usually mirror the popular vote, on rare occasions a candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the right combination of states to reach 270 Electoral College votes. This last occurred in 2000 when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore despite losing the popular vote.

There is growing speculation that Barack Obama could lose the popular vote this year, but still eke out a win in the Electoral College. If that happens, it will be impossible for him to claim a mandate for his left-wing agenda, having just lost the popular vote. That's why every conservative must vote no matter where they live.

But more importantly, if there is a strong conservative turnout, it is far more likely that Mitt Romney will prevail in the key swing states, and we will end the Obama nightmare on November 6th!

Whom Do You Trust? - Barack Obama's latest pitch to voters is trust. Seriously. Here's what he told a crowd in Ohio yesterday: "There's no more serious issue in a presidential campaign than trust. Trust matters. You want to know that the person who's applying to be your president and commander in chief is trustworthy, that he means what he says, that he's not just making stuff up depending on whether it's convenient or not."I don't have enough space in this report to list all the ways Obama has misled the American people. But how about Obama's deception on marriage? How about Obama's repeated lies about Obamacare? And can you really trust this commander-in-chief when it comes to Benghazi?

Democrat Voter Fraud - Whenever Republicans push ideas like voter ID laws to make our elections more secure, Democrats http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/2012/10/voter-fraud-son-of-controversial.htmlalmost always respond by saying that voter fraud is a myth and conservatives are just trying to suppress minority turnout. How quickly (and conveniently) they forget the ACORN scandal.

Last month a Democrat House candidate in Maryland dropped out after it was learned that she was also registered to vote in Florida and had voted twice in 2006 and 2008.

Yesterday news broke that Patrick Moran, the son of a Democrat Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), was busted in an undercover sting operation by Project Veritas. Moran was caught on tape explaining how utility bills could be easily forged in order to cast 100 fraudulent ballots.

Yes, voter fraud is real and the Democrats are the ones doing it!

But, again, this only reinforces why it is so important that every conservative votes. Cheating only works in close elections. That's why we need every conservative to vote so that we win in a landslide!
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Gary Bauer is is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.

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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, electoral college, election 2012, polls, voter fraud, voting, vote To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama: "Absolutely" Doesn't Regret Focusing On Obamacare Over Economy"

Discussing President Obama’s interview with the Des Moines Register yesterday, The Wall Street Journal editors write, “[T]he larger reason to be skeptical [about Obama’s promises for the future] concerns Mr. Obama's answer to another Register question: Whether he regrets pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy. ‘Absolutely not,’ Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. ‘Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that's not speculation.’ Whoaaaa there, big fella. Mr. McConnell was then and still is the Senate Minority Leader, and in 2009 he had all of 40 votes. Mr. Obama could have pursued any agenda he wanted, and the Des Moines editors wanted to know why he didn't focus on the economy first. Yet Mr. Obama's instinctive reaction is to blame Republican obstructionism that never happened. . . . By spring 2009, when Minnesota's Al Franken was seated, the White House had 60 votes and a GOP-only filibuster wasn't even possible. ‘We have the votes. F—‘em,’ declared then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, according to the first-100-days chapters of Bob Woodward's new book.”

Further, the WSJ editors explain, “The President is also missing the larger import of the Register's question. As Mr. Obama likes to remind voters now, in 2009 the economy had suffered a financial heart attack and needed to be nurtured back to health. That required careful management and attention to reviving consumer and business confidence. Yet rather than work with both parties to fashion a growth agenda, he went all-in for a Keynesian spending blowout and subcontracted the details to House Democrats. And rather than wait to see how strongly—and even whether—the economy then recovered, he dove headlong into fighting to pass 40 years of pent-up liberal social policy.”

The most effort there, of course, went to President Obama’s massive, unpopular health care law. And as Republicans warned before the law was passed by the Democrat-run Congress, Obamacare is only harming the economy. The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson explains some of this in an important column from earlier this week: “Just recently, the Internal Revenue Service issued an 18-page, single-spaced notice explaining how to distinguish between full-time and part-time workers under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). The difference matters, because the act requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health insurance for those workers. At the same time, no company has to buy insurance for part-time employees, defined as those working less than 30 hours a week. . . . In September, 34 million workers, about a quarter of total workers, were part-time, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the bureau defines part time as less than 35 hours a week; Obamacare’s 30 hours a week was presumably adopted to expand insurance coverage. There are now 10 million workers averaging between 30 and 34 hours a week. To the bureau, they are part-time; under Obamacare, they’re full-time.”

Why is this important? Samuelson points out, “Employers have a huge incentive to hold workers under the 30-hour weekly threshold. The requirement to provide insurance above that acts as a steep employment tax. Companies will try to minimize the tax. The most vulnerable workers are the poorest and least skilled who can be most easily replaced and for whom insurance costs loom largest. Indeed, the adjustment has already started. As first reported in the Orlando Sentinel, Darden Restaurants — owners of about 2,000 outlets, including the Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains — is studying ways to shift more employees under the 30-hour ceiling. . . . The financial stakes are sizable. Suppose Darden moves 1,000 servers under 30 hours and avoids paying $5,000 insurance for each. The annual savings: $5 million.”

He concludes, “[Obamacare] creates powerful pressures against companies hiring full-time workers — precisely the wrong approach after the worst economic slump since the Depression. There will be more bewildering regulations, more regulatory uncertainties, more unintended side effects and more disappointments. A costly and opaque system will become more so.”

Thus, President Obama’s decision to set the struggling economy aside and focus instead on passing his 2,700 page health care law not only took our eye off the ball at a critical time, it has also made things worse economically by creating uncertainty, piling on regulations, mandates, and taxes, and discouraging employers from hiring more workers.

By the way, Sen. Mitch McConnell's response to Obama's accusation is already on record, “Far from putting us on a path to recovery, it’s now obvious that President Obama’s policies have made a bad situation worse. Secretary Geithner was right to say that the President’s policies were having an effect on the economy. He was clearly wrong to conclude they were anything approaching a lasting, positive effect. On the contrary,  . . . the policies of the President’s first two years in office put us decidedly on the wrong path. . . . They act like an additional $5 trillion dollars in debt isn’t affecting people’s anxiety about the nation’s future. They act like a trillion dollar health care bill that hammers the private sector isn’t affecting business activity. They act like the President’s perpetual threats to raise taxes aren’t impacting investment. They act like somehow the President’s attacks on free enterprise aren’t putting a chill on risk-taking. They act like a barrage of new regulations isn’t keeping businesses from hiring and expanding. . . . The President’s policies have clearly made it harder for Americans to find a job and keep it.  If the President wants to cast blame for the economic mess we’re in, he should look no further than his own policies.”

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Tags: Barack Obama, Obamacare, the economy, jobs, decreased hiring, Obama's policies, fails o translate To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Voter Fraud: Son of Controversial Democrat US Rep. Jim Moran Caught on Film

UPDATE: After this story was published, Patrick Moran announced his immediate resignation from the  Moran for Congress campaign. View Details.
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by Art Moore,  WND: The son of Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va. – who serves as the field director for his father’s campaign – has been caught on video advising an undercover reporter how to fraudulently cast ballots in the name of registered voters by forging utility bills and relying on the assistance of Democrat lawyers.

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, known for its hidden-camera probe of the controversial national community organizing group tied to Obama, ACORN, carried out the investigation and provided the video . . . [which is available online and below].

Jim Moran

Jim Moran, 67, a controversial figure in Congress, has been criticized for his collaboration with Islamic leaders with ties to terrorism. In 2003, Moran, then a regional whip in the House of Representatives, was punished by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi after he suggested Jews were responsible for the push for war against Iraq.

His son, Patrick Moran, was videoed by the undercover reporter Oct. 8 at the Cosi Restaurant in Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital.

The Project Veritas video shows the undercover reporter posing as a citizen concerned that the Democratic Party might lose power in the upcoming Nov. 6 elections. The reporter explains to Moran that he had been apolitical but got his girlfriend pregnant and was concerned about the political threat to the funding of “reproductive services.” . . .

In Virginia, a new law requires identification but allows a broad range of forms of verification, including utility bills, bank statements and library cards.

Moran suggests creating fake utility bills to serve as voter ID. But he warns that there will be “a lot of voter protection” at the polling places to enforce the identification laws.

“So, if they just have the utility bill or bank statement – bank statement would obviously be tough … but faking a utility bill would be easy enough,” Moran says.

The reporter asks: “How would you do that?”
“I mean, I would just find, I don’t know,” Moran replies. “I guess. …”

“Microsoft Word and type it up,” offers the reporter.
“Yeah, something like that,” says Moran.

Moran emphasizes that the poll workers will be “trained up” on the new law to protect voters and “be cracking down.”

If there’s any trouble, he says, an Obama for America lawyer, or another Democrat lawyer, will be on hand to provide help, he said.

“You’ll have somebody in house, that if they feel that what you have is legitimate, they’ll argue for you,” Moran says.

But he warns the reporter that the utility bill has “got to look good.”

Later, at the Arlington County Democratic Party office, Moran advises the reporter to contact the registered voters on the list to make sure they don’t plan to cast a ballot Nov. 6. He suggests obtaining the information by posing as a pollster. . . .    [Read Full Article]

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Tags: Arlington, Virgina, voter fraud, forging utility bills, Representative, Jim Morgan, son, Patrick Moran, videotaped, video, Project Veritas To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Recession-level Housing Numbers Nothing To Applaud

Fairfax, VA - Americans for Limited Government Bill Wilson today issued the following statement commenting on today's report by the U.S. Census Bureau showing 389,000 new home sales:

"To call 389,000 of new home sales annualized the 'highest since April 2010' is a lot like saying 7.8 percent unemployment is the lowest since January 2009. It tells you nothing about how such numbers compare to a healthy economy. In September 2003 - when home values were roughly where they are today - new home sales annualized was more than 1.1 million.

"Put another way, new home sales are about 66 percent below what one would consider healthy in a robust recovery. Home values are still 31 percent below their April 2006 highs. All this talk of a housing recovery is like going to a car dealer and saying you got a great deal on a four-wheel drive vehicle that only has first and second gear because two out of five gears ain't bad. Meanwhile, the dealer assures you by saying at least it's not stuck in reverse.

"We're applauding the housing market hitting the recession levels of spring 2010, a time when everyone was saying that the weak market was still a major drag on economic growth. We're scraping the bottom here. Those enthusiastic about today's housing report are grasping at straws. We still have a long way out of this mess."

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Bill Wilson is President of Americans For Limited Government

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Tags: Recession, Housing, home sales, American for Limited Government, Bill Wilson To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Cuts We Can't Afford in The Military

Heritage Foundation: During the foreign policy debate, President Obama surprised the audience with the statement that sequestration "will not happen." Either this was a gaffe or he pulled off the next deft move in the political/legislative sequestration battle. Find out why these cuts would be devastating to our military: heritage.org/ProtectAmerica

There are efficiencies that can be wrung from the defense budget, but the sequestration cuts are not the right way to get them. The inordinate cuts (47 percent of the total cuts under sequestration come from defense, which is less than 20 percent of government spending) should be offset with cuts to other spending.

For example, entitlement programs are by far the largest and fastest-growing portion of the budget, yet they are essentially untouched by the Budget Control Act and sequestration. Most other spending has grown across the board and should also be brought under control. In short, there are plenty of places that need reductions. But harmful tax hikes are not the answer, regardless of how much Obama and Reid want them.

An adult answer should be developed through a real bipartisan effort to address the needs of the nation for the common defense and for fiscal health. Thus far, there has been much political, verbal, and public relations maneuvering but little willingness on the part of the White House and Senate leadership to have a productive discussion.

The President seems to want to have his cake and eat it, too. His flipping during the debate—and flopping back as soon as the microphones are off — is unhelpful.

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Tags: U.S Military, Budget Control Act, sequestration, cuts we can't afford, President Obama, the military, Heritage Foundation To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Will President Obama Fire Hillary?

Bob Morrison and Ken Blackwell

Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison, Contributing Authors: Bing West’s column on National Review Online is hard reading. It is must reading for every American. We are more than a month into one of the worst foreign policy debacles in our history. Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were brutally murdered in the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. That consulate is American sovereign territory. It is as if the Libyans came across the border into San Antonio and killed American citizens on American soil.

In fact, when the Mexican bandit leader Pancho Villa came across the border into New Mexico in 1916 and killed fourteen U.S. soldiers and ten American civilians, President Woodrow Wilson took action. In an election year, no U.S. President could be seen doing nothing when violent mobs screaming “Death to Americans” shooting, killing, looting, and setting fire to our property.

Wilson was virtually a pacifist. But even his invertebrate administration recognized the need for action. The Wilson administration did not try to evade responsibility for this outrage by stalling, conducting an investigation, and promising to “get to the bottom of all this.”

The candidates were probably right in Monday night’s foreign policy debate not to get into this Benghazi tragedy too deeply. It is a rapidly developing story with startling new revelations almost daily.

Still, Bing West’s column details how everything that happened in our doomed consulate was being recorded in real time by a drone. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has claimed “responsibility” for this debacle. But that is an empty gesture if she does not immediately resign.

Madame Secretary’s feckless conduct brings to mind the last time an American Secretary of State presided over the violent seizure of a U.S. diplomatic outpost. In 1979, Sec. Cyrus Vance was similarly unflappable when Muslim militants took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. He maintained his cool, professional demeanor, as our Marines and Embassy staff were subjected to beatings and to mock executions.

Sec. Vance was finally stirred to action five months into the hostage crisis when President Jimmy Carter’s rescue mission failed. Several of the rescue aircraft collided and crashed in what would forever be known as “Desert One.” America was further humiliated to see turbaned Iranian mullahs surveying the wreckage of our military aircraft.

The action Cyrus Vance took was to resign as Secretary of State. He resigned not because the rescue attempt had failed. He resigned because it had been made. He was so committed to “soft power,” diplomatic back-and-forth, that he considered it wrong for Americans to use force to defend American lives.

This is the same mindset we see operating in the skies over Benghazi, Libya. What can be more revealing than the fact that this administration had a drone in the air recording the deaths of four brave Americans?

The lesson to U.S. diplomats and consular personnel is obvious. You put your lives on the line for your country, and if the natives get restless, if they overrun your embassy and kill you, the Secretary of State will “accept responsibility” and the president will make nice comments about you on the Comedy Channel.

President Obama should fire Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. There is no other way to demonstrate that this administration takes its responsibilities seriously. Failure to do that will only guarantee that they continue kicking the can down the road, hoping that they can get past the election before we “get to the bottom of everything.” And a terrible milestone will have been passed.

In these same streets over two hundred years ago, captured American seamen were sold into slavery. “Christians are cheap today!” was the cry of the slave auctioneer. We thought we had come far since that time. President Jefferson then fought the Barbary Pirates to stop their preying on American ships and American lives. But once again, we are showing that the lives of our people are cheap today.
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Ken Blackwell is a conservative family values advocate. Blackwell is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a visiting professor at Liberty University School of Law.   Bob Morrison is a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council. He has served at the U.S. Department of Education with Gary Bauer under then-Secretary William Bennett. Both are contributing authors to the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Ken Blackwell, Bob Morrison, President Obama, fire, Hillary Clinton, Libya, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Woodward: Obama "Not Correct" On Sequester . . .

The Truth: Obama Admin Came Up
With Sequestration, Not House Republicans

. . . Obama's Statement "Is Refuted By The People Who Work For Him"

Monday night, President Obama declared, “[T]he sequester is not something I proposed, it’s something that Congress proposed. It will not happen.”

But Politico reported yesterday, “Bob Woodward says President Barack Obama got some of his facts wrong on sequester at Monday night’s debate. Woodward’s book ‘The Price of Politics’ has been the go-to fact check source for the president’s answer, in which he claimed the idea of using deep, automatic, across-the-board domestic and defense spending cuts to force Congress to address the nation’s burgeoning federal deficit originated from Congress, not from the White House. ‘What the president said is not correct,’ Woodward told POLITICO Tuesday. ‘He’s mistaken. And it’s refuted by the people who work for him.’ . . . Woodward reports in his book that White House Office of Management Director Jack Lew and Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors took the proposal for sequestration to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and then it was presented to congressional Republicans.”

So, the first part of Obama’s statement is clearly wrong. Why? President Obama should have his facts straight and not be playing politics and offering untruths to the public. Maybe he is just incompetent not lying. But the second part of his statement also raises questions. If Obama is determined that the sequester and accompanying huge defense cuts “will not happen,” he has yet to do anything to prevent this outcome. Both situation evidence, Obama is not and has not been presidential.

Back in July,  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Just as the next President will take the oath on inauguration day, we too take an oath as Senators. We have the responsibility to raise and support Armies and provide and maintain a Navy. If we let sequestration as currently written go forward and do not act we will have failed. And that’s why I am so disappointed with the President’s failure of leadership on this issue, and that of Senate Democrats. Both House and Senate Republicans have offered proposals to replace the savings from sequestration with more thoughtful and targeted spending cuts. Both of those proposals also either eliminated or reduced the sequester on non-defense programs. . . . It is simply outrageous that this President and Senate Democrats are missing in action on this issue.”

Agree completely with McConnell's final statement! Obama is AWOL - failing as President and thus Commander-in-Chief - and he remains in office without a reasonable excuse.

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Tags: Sequester,Sequestration, President Obama, AWOL, Bob Woodward, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

EPA, Justice Impose Regulations Through Court Settlements

The Obama Administration's EPA and the Justice Department are using “a sue-and-settle” strategy used by environmental groups to force cities to spend billions on water and sewers when their efforts are already being effective.

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by Sheryll Poe, Free Enterprise Institute: There’s a new Aquaman and Aqualad dynamic duo out there, but instead of fighting crimes, they are fighting cash-strapped cities and mayors, according to this item in the Wall Street Journal.

“The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency have taken enforcement actions against 25 cities over the last four years for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act, and there are another 772 on their list. In addition to imposing millions of dollars in penalties, the feds have forced these cities into consent decrees that will cost their local taxpayers $21 billion. The decrees spell out in detail what capital upgrades they must undertake—everything down to the size of their pipes.”

Consent decrees work a lot like the sue-and-settle strategy employed by environmental and advocacy groups -- use the federal regulatory process to force overly burdensome regulations onto business.

Only this time, it's the federal government using the regulatory process on cities. From Alaska to Florida, cities and municipalities are paying millions in legal fees fighting a federal lawsuit only to be forced into a consent decree with the agencies. As the Alaska Dispatch reports:

The consent decree, which avoids a trial, requires the city to spend tens of millions of dollars on new water and sewer facilities, and will require a steep increase in utility rates paid by property owners.

One town in Kentucky has had to get a $1 million loan. In Unalaska, Alaska, the city council is considering asking voters to approve a 1% increase in the local sales tax to pay for the upgrades. Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. is trying to figure out how to pay for his new federally-imposed upgrade obligations, according to WLBT.com:

"It's a lot of money and a rate increase concerns me. It concerns people who are in the system, but we're trying to do all we can to make sure that we don't dig any deeper into the pockets of ratepayers," said Mayor Johnson.

As the Wall Street Journal points out,many cities are already making big improvements to their infrastructure in ways that are more efficient than what the EPA is mandating:

Many cities have already taken concrete steps to reduce such overflows by developing "green infrastructure" (i.e., permeable pavements, rain gardens, catch-basins) that soaks up and diverts storm-water. Such solutions are easier and less expensive to implement than reconstructing their underground systems as the EPA wants them to do....

Cities are spending twice as much on water treatment as they did in 1995 and have reduced the contaminants they discharge into waterways during dry weather by 85%. Even so, the EPA says they need to spend at least $300 billion more on maintenance and upgrades to meet the agency's ever-stricter standards.

Maybe we need a new superhero called Unfunded Mandate Man.

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Tags: EPA, Environment Protection Agency, DOJ, Justice Department, sue-and-settle” strategy, environmental groups, force cities, spendng billions, water and sewers To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Share This! - The Five Winning Numbers For Conservatives

By Ned Ryun: With the three presidential debates in the books and the campaign rhetoric reaching a fever pitch, it’s tempting for us to over-complicate the conservative message and respond to every liberal talking point.

My advice? Don’t. Americans need to put aside the commercials, surrogate talking points, and the torrent of blast emails from political groups, and look at this election in terms of five simple numbers that define where we are as a nation.

23 million — the number of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. This election is about jobs, plain and simple.

$16 trillion — the size of our national debt, which has increased by more than 50% under President Obama. That number says it all. Americans are sitting around the kitchen table making tough decisions about their family budgets while President Obama has borrowed and spent more money in less time than any president in history.

$3,000 — the increase in healthcare costs for the average American family. Despite the President’s $2 trillion healthcare plan and his claim that it will lower costs, healthcare premiums will rise under Obamacare, particularly for middle class families.

$833 billion — the latest estimate of the stimulus bill’s cost. The so-called stimulus bill has been an abject failure. Taxpayer dollars for what were sold as “shovel ready” projects have gone into a black hole of special interests, pet projects and other uses.

250 years — that’s a low-ball estimate of the number of years’ worth of oil, gas, and coal we have here in the U.S. Instead of stonewalling the Keystone Pipeline and championing Solyndra and the Chevy Volt, our next president should work toward making domestic energy cheaper and America energy independent.

We all need to do our part to highlight these five numbers when talking to our friends, family, neighbors and colleagues over the next two weeks. By doing so, we will paint a clear picture of this administration’s failures.

Keep America Free!
Ned Ryun, CEO and President, American Majority Action
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If you need more info, read Ned Ryun's article in the Daily Caller: Five numbers: How Romney can control the post-debate message.

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Tags: election 2012, conservatives, share this, Five Winning Numbers, facts, Ned Ryan, American MajorityTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama Says Defense Sequester His WH Created "Will Not Happen" . . .

. . . But He Has Done Nothing To Prevent It! Barack Obama attempted to denigrate Mitt Romney's opposition to defense cuts which have place placed America at risk. Obama said, "we have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military's changed." More on this later in the article.

Sequester:
Reuters writes today, “Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress expressed surprise and doubt on Tuesday about President Barack Obama’s comment in debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney that the automatic spending cuts set for the new year ‘will not happen.’”

Obama said, “First of all, the sequester is not something I proposed, it’s something that Congress proposed. It will not happen.”

There are two major problems with this: first, the idea for sequestration featuring massive cuts to our military actually came from Obama’s White House. Second, the president has done nothing to prevent these cuts over the last year, and presented no plan to avoid them.

Last month, Politico reported, “The book ‘The Price of Politics,’ by Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward, makes it clear the idea for the draconian spending cuts originated in the White House – and not in Congress. . . . Then-OMB Director Jack Lew, now the White House chief of staff, and White House Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors pitched the idea to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Woodward writes.” In the book, Woodward wrote, “Lew and Nabors went to the Senate to meet with Reid and his chief of staff, David Krone. ‘We have an idea for the trigger,’ Lew said. ‘What’s the idea?’ Reid asked skeptically. ‘Sequestration.’” Speaker Boehner even has a picture of this passage from the Woodward book on his website today.

But if President Obama has suddenly decided that he opposes the draconian defense cuts that were proposed by his White House, he’s made no move to stave them off. Politico asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for his reaction: “I was astonished, I almost fell out of my chair when the president said, ‘Don’t worry, sequestration won’t happen.’ We’ve been begging the president to sit down with us to avoid what his own secretary of defense said would be a devastating blow to our national security. He just said, ‘Don’t worry, sequestration won’t happen.’”

Reaction from the House was similar, according to Politico. “‘It is a nice line, but for more than a year the president hasn’t lifted a finger to avert the crisis,’ said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) ‘Instead, his policies and positions have increased uncertainty for our troops and the men and women who support them. The effects of sequestration can already be felt. Jobs have already been lost. The president and his party in the Senate have failed to offer even a single real solution that could resolve sequestration. If the president is determined that these cuts won’t happen, why has he drug it out this long?’”

As a spokesman for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told Reuters, “[W]e were all surprised by the President saying that the sequester ‘will not happen’ given that he still hasn’t presented a plan to make sure it ‘will not happen.’ While the Republican-led House has already taken action, Democrats in the Senate haven’t even passed a budget, and the President has presented no plan to prevent the defense cuts.”

Horses and bayonets:
As for horses,  they returned to the forefront of being used in the war in Afghanistan after not being used since 1942.  Commander-in Chief Obama once again appears oblivious.  Obama and his staff should have kept with their Huff Post subscription.  On the same date of the debate at 11:41 AM EST,  Huff Post ran the article: "Horse Soldier' Statue Near One World Trade Center Honors U.S. Troops Who Led Afghanistan Invasion." 

The statue was first dedicated by Vice President Joe Biden on Veteran's Day.  Snark: Maybe Obama skip golf that day and visited the Tomb of the Unknown Solder.   Which brings us to the topic  to bayonets which the military use as an attachment for their rifles. Some photos below which belie Obama's understanding of the military:

Moe Lane, Red State:  "Not the equipment used here.
I mention this because I know the President’s been there at least once;
apparently, Obama simply didn’t give a tinker’s dam."

Damn: What is that "pointy thing" on that "should I say it" - weapon?
Checkout this video of the Marines' Week 3: Bayonet Assault Course

What are those four legged creatures carrying our military?

Dishonoring the Military:
Obama continues to stumble over his responsibility as Commander in Chief.  Honorable commanders do not steal the valor of the military men serving under them.  It is bad enough that you can send a military person in harms way, but to take credit for their efforts in unfathomable except for maybe a politician.  Commanders should honor their service, acts of bravery,   and the death.  And, much more which is not being shared here.

Mr. President, you should not be claiming credit for "killing anyone" unless you strap on the weapon and go to the battlefield and do it yourself.  And then the world can consider if the event was murder or justified as with combat troops. If as president, you continue to go down that road claiming to be responsible for killing one man,   then you are also responsible for "killing" a  multitudes of men, women and children in other countries and for the deaths of our armed forces.   Stealing valor is serious and often an act of desperation  and / or an effort to be what one is not.

And after four years, Mr. President you should know that you do not "greet" the caskets of our fallen comrades.  You "meet" them and show respect to the fallen and to the families and to their comrades their to meet and to care for their comrades remains and family.  And you don't get credit for doing this responsible duty; you only get discredit when you do not do it.   It is time to stop playing a child's game of taking credit for something which you did not do and cannot do! However, it is time for you to take credit for the failures of your administration because you did appoint those people and did "build that" team!

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Tags: Barack Omama, the military DOD, sequester, bayonets, horses, climing credit, stealing valor To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!