Some interesting articles to read:

George Will says that the best way to save Detroit is to let it go bankrupt. Here here!

The big news of the week: The Obama girls will have to wait until after they move into the White House to get a dog.

Bush is going to leave half of the $700 billion bailout for Obama to decide what to do with it. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders wants to make sure Bush sticks with that plan.

John McCain and Barack Obama sat down to talk yesterday. They say that they are going to work together in the coming years. Work together for what? Did anyone bother to ask that question?

Here’s the latest on our Georgia Senate run off. You knew this one was coming - Jim Martin admits that he will be Barack Obama’s dog washer. Add those duties to being Harry Reid’s sock puppet and Martin will be a very busy man indeed …. Unless, that is, you actually show up at the polls.

Howard Kurtz explores the current pop-culture fascination with Barack Obama. Come January 20th, expectations become reality.

Rupert Murdoch says that the media has dug itself into a hole because it has failed to maintain the readers’ trust.

Mayors across the country are looking for Barack Obama to implement FDR-style public work projects to help their cities get back on their feet.

Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware says that there should be significant consequences for Joe Lieberman, who supported John McCain for president.

This statistic should astound you (then again … maybe not): Since 2000, government spending has increased by more than55%.

A sign of the times from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Are you an idiot to keep paying your mortgage?”

There is an Irish film out there challenging the current global warming hysteria.

Apparently it is “Green Week” on the Today Show so you can see first-hand the affects of climate change. I’m sure this is must-see television.

A church in Kansas refuses to remove a sign saying “America we have a Muslim president. This is sin against the Lord.” Sigh.  If you goto church, you need to stop doing that.  Religion is for weak minded people.

A great article by John Stossel:

When so many politicians speak with one voice in support of the biggest act of government intervention in the economy in generations, I cringe.

Everybody talked about the “freeze” in the credit markets, but why, I wonder, were the cable news programs that repeated the credit-freeze mantra, pausing for commercials from companies trying to lend me money? Ditech and LendingTree still hawk mortgages at under 6 percent. Some credit freeze.

Economist Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute looked at the credit numbers kept by the Federal Reserve. He writes: “Although certain financial institutions are undeniably in deep trouble — difficulties of their own making … — credit markets in general have not ceased to operate. Moreover, lenders are extending credit in historically great amounts.”

Maybe this is why CNN business reporter Ali Velshi broke ranks when reporting on “dried up” credit and said, “When I say ‘dried up,’ I don’t mean there’s no money. But you’d better have good collateral and good credit.”

What’s wrong with that?

To those who say that, without banks, nobody can borrow, economist Steven Landsburg offers this response: “Banks don’t lend their own money; they lend other people’s (their depositors’ and their stockholders’). Just because the banks disappear doesn’t mean the lenders will. Borrowers will still want to borrow, and lenders will still want to lend.

Read the full story.

The veto — Latin for “I forbid” — was not always such an expansive tool of presidential power. Early presidents used it sparingly, only when they believed Congress had violated the Constitution.  Violated the Constitution?  Hmmm…I wonder how many times our recent government has violated the Constitution? Or maybe, the Democrats and Republicans don’t even know that the Constitution even exists

Bill Clinton would be the first president to use the line item veto. But in 1998, the Supreme Court decided that the line-item veto was unconstitutional.  It ruled that Congress did not have the the authority to hand that power to the president. In the 1970s and 1980s many opponents of the line item veto accused fiscal conservatives of supporting the measure only as a partisan power grab because Republicans had generally controlled the White House, and Democrats had long controlled Congress. The 104th Congress proved these allegations to be wrong.  We will get back to the line item veto later.

George Washington issued two vetoes; John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, none. When James Monroe exercised his first and only veto, rejecting a bill imposing tolls on the Cumberland Road because he believed a constitutional amendment was required, he issued a 25,000-word explanation along with it.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt rejected or failed to sign 635 bills during his 12 years in office, using his veto power to keep Congress — run by his fellow Democrats — subservient. Harry S. Truman vetoed 250 bills; Dwight D. Eisenhower, 181.   George Bush senior vetoed 44 bills and Bill Clinton used one of 37 vetoes (not including the line item veto) to reject a law banning a particular type of abortion.

Now getting back to President Clinton and the line item veto.  First, and most critical, is the question of whether the line item veto worked to reduce wasteful spending. In 1997 President Clinton used this new budget cutting tool 82 times to delete unnecessary expenditures in 11 spending bills. The total savings have come to nearly $2 billion over five years. True, in a $1.8 trillion annual budget, this is not a huge sum. But $2 billion is not an insignificant level of savings–even by Washington standards. Moreover, as Gene Sperling, the President’s chief economic adviser has noted, “You have to use the line item veto a few times before its deterrent power sinks in.”

In 1998, President Clinton used the veto to eliminate funding for a $600,000 solar aquatic wastewater treatment demonstration project in Vermont; a $2 million Chena River dredging project in Fairbanks, Alaska to benefit a single tour boat operator; a $1 million corporate welfare grant to the Carter County Montana Chamber of Commerce; $900,000 for a Veterans Admin. cemetery the VA says it doesn’t need; $1.9 million for dredging a Mississippi lake that primarily serves yachts and pleasure boats; $500,000 for the Neabsco Creek Project in Virginia for removal of creek debris; and other such absurdities.

Congress approved the line item veto and the public demanded it, precisely to purge the budget of these kinds of white elephant projects. So, yes, on balance the line item veto works as intended.

Second, did the President abuse the power of the line item veto as was feared? The answer to this question is, on balance, no. Of course, many complaints have been made about Bill Clinton’s use of the line item veto. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, complained that Clinton’s line item vetoes have been a “raw abuse of power.”  Ted Stevens says “raw abuse of power”?  How about his abuse of power in the senate and all the pork projects he was associated with?  Anyways, Robert Livingston, the Republican House Appropriations Committee Chairman charges that Clinton is used the veto to “threaten and intimidate” members of Congress. It is also true that there was one incident reported by The Wall Street Journal where the administration reportedly offered to withdraw a threatened line item veto of a $1.5 million cemetery expansion in Rep. Sonny Callahan’s (R-AL) district in exchange for his support of IMF funding. Such political horse trading constituted an abuse of the item veto.

As their lists of unproductive federal spending demonstrates, we need the president to have the line item veto authority; but, we also need a president who is not reluctant to wield this power.

President Bush went more than five years without exercising his veto power simply because he did not have to: the Republicans who controlled Congress gave him everything he wanted.

But Mr. Bush has also found ways of exercising control over (or circumventing) Congress without using the veto. When Bush wanted to empower federal authorities to monitor the international communications of suspected terrorists, he did so by issuing a secret executive order, avoiding a possible legislative battle — and the potential veto that might go along with it.

And when Congress last year passed a legislative amendment barring cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees in American custody, Mr. Bush — who had threatened a veto but ultimately backed down — tacked a “signing statement” onto the measure, asserting that he could interpret the amendment as he deemed fit with his constitutional authority as commander in chief.

“President Bush has vetoed things without vetoing them,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Boston University. “He’s kind of found alternative ways in which he can basically say no to Congress without publicly saying no, or publicly having the confrontation.”

The Bush administration says it has issued 141 such threats since taking office. Some involved disputes over federal spending, an area where Mr. Bush has used veto threats to force compromise with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Yet some in the party, irate over the federal deficit, say they wish Mr. Bush had exercised his veto power sooner.

In 2002, the president came close to vetoing a $190 billion farm bill that expanded subsidies for growers.

“I think he should have vetoed the farm bill, because it was a lousy bill that perpetuated a really bad system,” said Nicholas E. Calio, who was then Mr. Bush’s assistant for legislative affairs. “But some people convinced him that discretion was the better part of valor.”

That is why Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, advises presidents not to follow Mr. Bush’s veto path.

“I tell every president or adviser, take one of the first 10 bills that come to you, pick it at random and veto it,” Mr. Ornstein said. “You want to get it out of the way, otherwise the first veto takes on an enhanced importance, and you’ve got to explain and justify why this one and not all the others.”

Barack Obama wants Congress to approve $50 billion for the auto industry. He also wants to appoint a czar or board to “oversee the companies.” This would be the person or committee in charge of restructuring the auto industry.

Since when is it the government’s job to restructure the auto industry? The auto industry got itself into this mess, and it doesn’t need government or the tax payers to get it out of this mess.  That’s how capitalism works people.  If a company has made bad executive decisions, that means that they should file for bankruptcy and not have the taxpayers try to bail them out.  Also, there will always be another company their to either purchase it or pick up the slack.   And besides, what makes the auto makers believe that government could do a better job of restructuring their industry? Politicians aren’t in the industry … let the companies that once enjoyed such great success build on the ingenuity that made them great. The only guarantee you will have from government is mediocrity.

In the mean time, all three automakers will be hoping their lobbying efforts pay off, though none of the companies is on track to spend much more than they did last year–perhaps another indicator of their dire financial situation.

Through September, DaimlerChrysler has spent $5.3 million on federal lobbying, GM has spent $10 million and Ford has spent $5.8 million. Next week executives from the three manufacturers are set to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, whose members have received $1.5 million, collectively, from transportation sector PACs this election cycle. Ford and GM have both given slightly more money to Democrats this election cycle than to Republicans, marking the first time Ford has done so since the 1990 election cycle (and if GM has ever done so, it was before 1990, when CRP started tracking contributions by industry). Chrysler has given just a little more money to Republicans in 2008 (51 percent to 49 percent), indicating a strategic change from the last election cycle, when the company gave Republicans 63 percent of its total. So far the Bush administration seems set to reject the $25 billion in aid, and if that happens, GM, at least, might be forced to file for bankruptcy.

UAW is planning to ask the government for an additional $25 million to cover a union-run trust to take over the car companies’ retiree pensions and health benefits. UAW has reported spending about $1.2 million on lobbying efforts so far this year.

Information was obtaind from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Some interesting articles to read:

Chuck Schumer says that the Republicans are deliberating meddling in the Minnesota Senate race.

Tired of getting felt up by some TSA guy every single time you fly commercial. Well check out this new screening system.

Al Gore says that he does not want to be Barack Obama’s “Climate Czar.”

The Democrats are planning on investigating George Bush and his administration once he leaves the White House. Didn’t they do this to the Romanovs?

George Soros wants Barack Obama to regulate hedge funds and to tax hedge fund managers at higher rates.

Obama will officially resign from his Senate seat over the weekend, paving the wave for the likes of Jesse Jackson Jr.

The GOP is going to file federal lawsuits to repeal McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations.

Want to work in the Obama administration? All of you folks who claim you have that phony ADD, there is no way in hell you could sit still long enough to fill out this application.

Sarah Palin addressed fellow GOP governors yesterday in Florida and she is not too happy about the growing list of industries lining up at the government teat for a bailout.

Vladimir Putin discusses Georgia onions with Nicolas Sarkozy.

When a bus driver hits three pedestrians, what would be your first thought? Fire the SOB. Not according to the union that thinks it is “unfair” to fire someone for killing pedestrians.

A government school student did a little experiment. She wore an Obama t-shirt to school one day and a McCain t-shirt another day … you can imagine the reaction from fellow students AND teachers.

A Marine put pumper stickers on his car with sayings like “Islam=Terrorism” and “We Died, They Rejoiced.” His car is then banned from all federal installations. So he drives his car to Arlington National Cemetery to visit his son’s grave and guess what happens

The Postal Service isn’t doing too well … what did you expect? It’s a government operation.

It seems we have less idiots wandering around these days … the number of adult smokers has dropped below 20%.

A US company is being accused of gender discrimination in Sweden because of an advertisement that says wives will get beauty treatments if their husbands buy power tools.

John McCain will be in Atlanta today to campaign for Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. Things are looking bad for Norm Coleman in Minnesota .. the Democrats are working their magic on the vote totals. Saxby Chambliss may turn out to be the most important man in the U.S. Senate.

From Chuckie Schumer and Barney Frank … screw the economic stimulus, let’s make sure we bailout the auto industry. There are unions to be rewarded!

Georgia Congressman Paul Broun says that he is sorry for comparing Barack Obama to Hitler. When’s the last time you heard a liberal apologize for constant Hitler and Nazi references to conservatives?

John Stossel says that the excitement surrounding an Obama presidency is good but it is also scary because of “the assumption that all progress comes from Washington.”

Barack Obama did in fact appoint Henry Rivera to head the team that will select the next FCC chairman. This man is not a fan of freedom in broadcasting.

Businesses are asking Congress to relax requirements from a 2006 law that requires companies to meet new pension fund levels … considering the current stock market.

So much for Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to “govern from the middle” … her new House leadership team is even more liberal than before.

The Supreme Court has lifted restrictions on Navy sonar training, ruling that national security trumps environmental concerns for whales.

Even though it probably won’t matter under an Obama presidency, the Interior Department is closer to opening waters off the Virginia coast for oil and gas drilling. As soon as they do the environmental socialists will step up with their lawsuits.

For those of you who care, Mark Foley has decided to speak.

You are going to love this. Studies now say that parents who have kids with that phony ADHD are more likely to get divorced. I would guess that is because one parents (the one who doesn’t buy this ADHD stuff) thinks the other parent (the one who does) is a moonbat.

The latest victim of the economic times … your office holiday party.

Typical mentality of an Obama supporter. “Housin’ is a human right.”

Some interesting articles to read:

The Al Franken / Norm Coleman recount debacle continues in Minnesota. Read this story and tell me you don’t think something stinks up there.

Energy independence? Check this out! We have more oil than we ever imagined in the Bakken Formation .. and it is inside this country! The environmental groups had better get busy before we actually start recovering this stuff!

Iran thought it would be a lot of fun to test a new type of missile near the Iraqi border.

So .. waddaya think? Will the Obama’s send their children to government schools? Are you freaking kidding me? Government schools are for YOUR children, not the Obama’s!

America lurches left … Mark Steyn. Lefties hate this guy .. all the more reason you should read this.

Gotta love P.J. O’Rourke. He says conservatives “blew it.” Golly, ya think?

It looks like Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, will probably be running for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.

What is shaping up to be trouble for president-elect Barack Obama, Cuban president Raul Castro is going to visit Russia next year.

The polls show that Jesse Jackson Jr. is the favorite to replace Barack Obama in the Senate.

The FEC will not be auditing the Barack Obama campaign because it doesn’t want to conduct a messy audit of a sitting president. Meanwhile, there is a rigorous audit of the McCain campaign going on.

Obama wants Congress to accelerate the confirmation of his top appointees. Something tells me that won’t be a problem.

How about Secretary of State Al Gore?

More talk of the Fairness Doctrine from Democrats. One Democrat Senator says that he believes technology has moved beyond our ability to regulate things. Well isn’t that comforting.

Here’s something for you to consider … Google is teaming up with the government in order to help federal officials “track sickness.”

The latest from Time Magazine on Barack Obama: “Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope…”

According to CNN, 59% of Americans think that Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country.

Gas prices are falling so guess what happens … people start buying SUVs again! Amazing how that happens.

As you read this story, I want you to think about all of the people employed by this ski resort rather than the wealth envy: Ski resort for super rich files for bankruptcy.

A local paper in Oklahoma didn’t report that Barack Obama won the election. The paper says it’s because the story isn’t local news. Other people say it’s racist!

You might get a kick out of this … Where whiteness meets race: The Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere — yes it’s real — tackles the notion of white privilege and white people’s responsibility to challenge racism, but can it help move people beyond race?

Visit boortz.com

Some interesting articles to read:

A Georgia Republican Congressman is warning of a possible Obama “dictatorship.” How I would like to just laugh this off … but I can’t.

It looks like the great Obama Agenda for his first term has suddenly disappeared from the Obama website! They say they are retooling the site. Yeah. Or … now that he’s elected the old agenda is no longer operative?

The Republicans have been beaten badly in two straight elections. Time for some big changes. Are they up to it?

From the Wall Street Journal: (D.) for Vendetta.

From George Will: Obama and the Founder’s Intent.

How do you define the push by the unions to end the secret ballot in union elections? Well, “creepy” would work.

We have a new warning from Osama bin Laden about a new al Qaeda attack that will “outdo by far” September 11th.

All hail the age of the intellectuals!

For you global warming nut-jobs out there, take a look at this map. The areas in blue all experienced below-normal temperatures for 2008. Yeah, we really need to deal with this global warming threat.

Barack Obama plans to have his cabinet set and ready to “rule” by the end of this month.

From David Limbaugh: “The most unnerving aspects about the Democrats’ sweeping victory Nov. 4 are their intolerance for dissent and their willingness to censor and otherwise suppress their opponents.”

But there are some Bush appointees that will remain in power as Obama transitions to the presidency.

Now American Express is in trouble. Evidently one of the ways to help them out is to turn them into a bank holding company. I’m just wondering … now that there is so much talk of government bailouts for so many companies, is it possible that people think they can get away with not paying their debts now?

Some sad news to report … Howard Dean is stepping down as DNC chair. Arrrrhhhhhgggggggg!

There is in-house fighting between Democrats over who will be the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee … right now Henry Waxman wants his grubby little paws on the chairmanship. Waxman, in case you don’t know, is generally anti-business. Just the guy we need on the Commerce Committee.

Did anybody doubt that the Bush’s were going to be friendly to the Obama’s as they visited the White House yesterday? People seem shocked by this. Bush has class. Much more than Clinton … and we’ll see about Obama.

There’s a lot of talk right now about who will emerge as a leader in the Republican Party for 2012 … and the person on a lot of people’s minds is Newt Gingrich.

Reuters has declared that media bias was largely unseen in the US presidential race. Yeah…. Right.

Here’s a statistic that shouldn’t shock you. Almost 90% of Muslims voted for Barack Obama in the election.

There is no doubt that Barack Obama will change our relations with Cuba. This could mean lifting the embargo and having direct talks with the Castro brothers.

How much would you pay to attend Barack Obama’s inauguration? The asking price could be over $20,000. But don’t worry, Dianne Feinstein is already drafting legislation that would make it illegal to sell tickets.

This should tell you something … for the first time in history the Postal Service is going to lay off workers.

How much of your tax dollars are spent on your town’s Christmas decorations? Some things are about to change.

A man in the UK was taken to court because his trash can fell over and the government fined him for “incorrectly placed his rubbish bags beside his collecting receptacle.”

A Boeing 737 flying in Europe had to make an emergency landing after it was attacked by birds.

The world’s ugliest dog has died.

U.S. labor unions, having helped Barack Obama win the presidency, entertain high hopes he will enact their agenda to bolster their negotiating power with employers and increase their numbers after decades of decline.

A cornerstone of labor’s agenda is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act that unions argue restores balance to its negotiations with employers, but is described as “Armageddon” by a leading business group.

Here’s the way union organizing works under the current law. Union organizers circulate a petition among employees. Employees are asked to sign a card saying that they would like to be represented by a union in their workplace. If a majority of the workers sign the cards the employer has the option of immediately recognizing the union and allowing them to organize the workplace. More often the employer will call for an election – an election using secret ballots. Every employee will be given the opportunity to express their desire to join or not to join a union by secret ballot. Their co-workers will not know how they voted. They can prance around the workplace touting their support of unionization all they want in order to impress their fellow workers, especially those who are trying to organize the union, but then vote “no” on the secret ballot if that’s how they truly feel.

But with the Employee Free Choice Act, two major provisions would let prospective members sign union cards instead of waiting to hold secret ballot elections to unionize workers at a company, and call for a government arbitrator if a newly created union and the employer did not reach a contract within 120 days.

One-third of the time that a union succeeds in organizing a company’s workers, it never reaches a contract with the employer, and the union often disbands at the company.

Both labor and business say passage of the law could mean unionization rates will soar. Unions have arrested a decades-long decline and have roughly 13 million members, or just 7.5 percent of the nongovernmental work force. That is down sharply from the mid-1950s when U.S. union membership reached 36 percent of the labor force.

How do Democrats feel about the secret ballot in union elections? Check out this letter signed by 16 House Democrats dated August 29, 2001. The letter was written on the letterhead of California Congressman George Miller, a Democrat representing the 7th District of California.  Story concludes below the letter.

That brings us to piece of legislation designated as H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act. Would you care to guess just what H.R. 800 does?  It will eliminate the secret ballot in union recognition elections. You got it! The Democrats (it’s their bill) have decided to really do something nice for the union bosses that support them year after year, and they’re going to do away with secret ballots. When H.R. 800 gets passed … and trust me, with Barack Obama (he’s a sponsor of the Senate version) in the White House, this thing will become law. Then the union organizers will visit all of the workers, perhaps even visiting some of them in their homes, and “urge” them to sign the card calling for a union. I can hear it now: “Mrs. Smith, wouldn’t you and your children want your husband to be represented by our union at his job?” Now put yourself in the worker’s place! Are you going to say no? This organizer is sitting in your living room looking at you and your wife and saying “You do want to be represented by our union in your workplace, don’t you?” And you’re going to tell him no?

Are you getting the big picture here? This is nothing less than the Democrats legitimizing union intimidation in the workplace. If you don’t see that, then there is virtually no hope for you when it comes to understanding basic politics. It’s payback the unions time .. pay them back for all of that financial support and all of those volunteer hours. Besides … the more union members there are the more union dues the union bosses have to spread to Democrats as campaign contributions.

But – we’re saved, right? After all, we have those 16 Democrats who signed that letter to Mexico. What was it they said: Oh yeah: ” … we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise chose.” So these 16 Democrats will certainly put up a spirited defense of secret ballots in union organizing elections, right?

Well, maybe not.  You see, four of these congressmen (Dooley, Sabo, Evans and Coyne) are no longer in the Congress. One of the signers, Bernie Sanders, is now a Senator. That leaves 11 of the 16 signees in still in the house to defend the principal of the secret ballot.

I’m afraid we have a small problem though. It seems that every one of the 11 remaining signees is now a sponsor of H.R. 800. In fact, the so-called Employee Free Choice Act was actually introduced by none other than George Miller – the very California Democrat on whose letterhead that letter to Mexico was written. Bernie Sanders is a sponsor of the same legislation in the Senate. No surprise.

On the one hand we have these Democrats writing a letter extolling the virtues of a secret ballot in union organizing elections, and then they sponsor a bill eliminating those very secret ballots! So what changed between 2001 and 2007? What happened that made these 12 Democrats go from believing that a secret ballot in a union election was “absolutely necessary,” to introducing a bill eliminating those “absolutely necessary” secret ballots? Control of congress; that’s what changed. In 2001 the Republicans ran the show. In 2007 it was the Democrats … and it was time to return some favors to union bosses. Do you know what you’re seeing here? You’re seeing just how much power unions have over Democrats and the Democrat party.

Read the full bill here.

Read the full story here.

Visit boortz.com