ledeagenda.com

From Foxnews:

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jackson, however, tried to strike a tone of cooperation in her address Wednesday, explaining that the EPA’s new powers to regulate greenhouse gases will be used to complement legislation pending in Congress, not replace it.

“This is not an ‘either-or’ moment. It’s a ‘both-and’ moment,” she said.

But while administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.

And it won’t be pretty.

“If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area,” the official said. “And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s formal declaration Monday that greenhouse gases jeopardize public health paves the way for federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from refineries, chemical facilities and power plants - even if Congress rejects climate change legislation.

The EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide endangers the public also will give President Obama political ammunition when he goes before world leaders in Copenhagen next week to promise U.S. emissions cuts as part of international climate change negotiations that started Monday.

Although the EPA’s formal declaration does not directly impose new carbon dioxide caps, it establishes the framework for regulating carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Monday’s action satisfies a legal hurdle for the EPA to finalize the first-ever national limits on tailpipe emissions, proposed earlier this year. Industry and EPA lawyers say the vehicle emissions rule and the endangerment finding would compel the agency to regulate - under the Clean Air Act - the heat-trapping gases released from industrial operations and other stationery sources, possibly by next spring.

Do not say that Libertarians and the Freedom and Liberty movement didn’t warn you. We did- loudly.

Tyranny is about to be imposed on us and it will forever change the way our freedoms, commerce, life and our culture operate. There is no mandate for these changes, but is being advanced and imposed by a scientific dictatorship that has carefully presented and cultivated a view of life that a free humanity is the problem. A free humanity that operates under Nature’s Law and Nature’s God. A free humanity that operates in accordance with our inalienable rights. All of this is about to be stripped from us under the auspices of fighting climate change.

Please do not be surprised when they- the government- come out and say the increasing amount of regulations, fines, fees and taxes they will impose as a result of this mandate is doing nothing to combat ‘global climate change’. Please do not be surprised when those said regulations, fines, fees and taxes increase in severity and amount year after year. Please do not be surprised when the climate data they present to you shows no net improvement of our overall global climate.

It is time to get prepared now- a huge underground and secondary economy is about to spring up. The free market will never be defeated- it will just be driven underground and taken off the ‘official’ books and tax records. Barter, trade and exchange will become the new norm in the face of increasing government burden. Given what we will be facing, it only makes sense that economy and production will have to be done out of the eyes of government.

We can only hope that the act of just being born, and society’s cultural respect for it, will be able to ward off the social and economic penalties that the scientific dictatorship will seek to impose.

“Hope and Change” rhymes with “More of the same”.

This just came from the Campaign for Liberty:

October 20, 2009

Dear Friend of Liberty,
 
Earlier today, Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Bob Corker (R-TN) introduced “The Federal Reserve Accountability Act,” an attempt to kill HR 1207/S 604 by passing a bill that prevents a full audit and full transparency from America’s secretive central bank.
 
While language in this bill would permit a limited audit of the Fed’s actions in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and similar high profile bailouts, it would not allow an audit to review the Fed’s inflation of the money supply or its agreements with foreign central banks, among other shortcomings.
 
Additionally, the names of the institutions who received the funds would not be available until one year after each “emergency” program ended, and you know how quickly the federal government likes to end programs.
 
Click here to get the contact information for your senators and urge them not to support this attempt at stopping our historic effort to force the Fed into a full scale audit.
 
You see, you and I have the FED and their internationalist supporters in the Senate running scared.
 
We’ve seen it time and time again in recent months.
 
Now, this is how they will fight back — by having establishment senators who oppose a full audit the Fed, proposing watered down compromises in an attempt to sabotage our real goal.
 
We knew this moment would come.  Now you and I must fight back.
 
Seventy-five percent of the American people, over two thirds of the House of Representatives, and over a quarter of the Senate support Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed legislation.
 
With those historic levels of support, there is no excuse for settling for anthing less than a full Audit the Fed bill.  Anything less is merely an attempt to stop our efforts as we get closer to passage of a real bill.
 
The freedom movement will not back down on requiring transparency and accountability from an institution that has helped to destroy our economy.  This is another test of our strength and will.
 
Let’s finish what we’ve started.  Take action to stop this dangerous attempt to stop the real Audit the Fed bill TODAY!
 
Find contact information for your senators here and read more at CampaignforLiberty.com.
 
Let your senators know you expect them to support the American people’s demand for full transparency, not some watered down measure designed to stop a full audit!

In Liberty,

John Tate

President

From WaPo, of all places:

People can, and undoubtedly will, argue for some time about whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, though, there’s a simpler and more immediate question: Does the Constitution allow him to accept the award?

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, the Emolument Clause, clearly stipulates: “And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.”

The award of the peace prize to a sitting President is not unprecedented. But Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson received the honor for their past actions: Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War and Wilson’s work in establishing establish the League of Nations. Obama’s award is different. It is intended to affect future action. As a member of the Nobel Committee explained, the Prize should encourage Obama to meet his goal of nuclear disarmament. It raises important legal questions for the second time in less than 10 months — questions not discussed, much less adequately addressed anywhere else.

The five-member Nobel commission is elected by the Storting, the Parliament of Norway. Thus the award of the peace prize is made by a body representing the legislature of a sovereign foreign state. There is no doubt that the Nobel Peace Prize is an “emolument” (”gain from employment or position,” according to Webster).

An opinion of the U.S. Attorney General advised, in 1902 that “a simple remembrance,” even “if merely a photograph, falls under the inclusion of ‘any present of any kind whatever.’ ” President Clinton’s Office of Legal Counsel, in 1993, reaffirmed the 1902 opinion, and explained that the text of the clause does not limit “its application solely to foreign governments acting as sovereigns.” This opinion went on to say that the Emolument Clause applies even when the foreign government acts through instrumentalities. Thus the Nobel Prize is an emolument, and a foreign one to boot.

I think main-stream institutions are having a hard time understanding exactly what is going on it voters heads these days. Rep. Joe Wilson is just another example in how far faith in congress has fallen, and how deep the undertones of hostility are to this brave new world.

From the Washington Post:

As President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, the nation’s rapidly deteriorating discourse hit yet another low.

It happened at 8:40 pm, just after the president vowed to lawmakers that his health-care reform proposals would not provide benefits to illegal immigrants. As millions of Americans watched from home, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted at the president from his fifth-row seat: “You lie!”

Murmurs of “ooh” filled the stunned chamber. Nancy Pelosi’s chin dropped. Obama moved on to the next sentence in his speech, about how no federal money would be used to fund abortion. “Not true!” came another shout.

We have reached that moment of desperation. The moment of desperation where all protocol, manners and civility are thrown out and nothing, no matter the sacristy or grandeur, stand in the way.

Rep. Joe Wilson was absolutely right to call Obama out- such forceful displays of contempt and patriotism are needed in an era were muttering opposition to socialism makes you a racist because of the race of our President. Why is the administration and representatives holding speeches, townhalls, and congressional address’s if they cannot face the voters? Why the fuss over these comments if the national health plan plan is as good as you say it is?

Probably because they know critics of  HR.3200 are at least partially right- this bill does appear to force taxpayer funded abortions and will take away free-market choices (IE only “plan approved” policies). Yes, there is language in the bill to restrict services to illegal immigrants, but given the current enforcement level of our immigration laws this provision might as well be entirely and wholly removed from the bill as it will, in time, disappear down the memory hole.

“You Lie”, “Not True”.

These are words for our times.

Is Obama hinting to our children that, yes indeed, he is passing on today’s debt problems as a burden they must address by political revolution?

From whitehouse.gov:

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that - if you quit on school - you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

…

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

I find the context of his speech terribly interesting. Conservatives are complaining about Obama indoctrinating our students with a single speech- too bad they are the ones that passed the No Child Left Behind act which put the Presidents initiatives front and center of our nations educational policy. Did they not think that possibly, someday, we might elect a liberal Democrat? Does it really matter if it’s Obama or the Department of Education that is giving the marching orders?

But I digress.

Reading between the lines he is admitting that none of today’s under-the-table problems will be solved. He seems to be suggesting that the establishment powers of the left-right paradigm are vacant and void of any new ideas or talent and that it will take a social revolution on our part to overcome these obstacles.

Another interesting take: this speech seems to fully move Obama from the ‘change’ candidate to the establishment leader. He is admitting that ingenuity still needs to yet come at a future date. He is admitting that today’s problems will still need to be addressed by some future leader. He is essentially stating- I campaigned on change, but instead will complete the political process of statism handed down to me. I am here now and realizing that I will be incapable addressing ideas that affect everyone. We will do whatever it takes to educate and support you so that you have the best chances of being able to tackle what we could not.

I encourage everyone to read Obama’s speech. Try to find the context and the meaning. You may just come away stunned the profoundness and candor of the message.

Today’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll from Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 28% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13.

This is reflective of national trends. Voters who strongly approve of the President are falling, while voters who are lining up in opposition are growing. Of course, we would have to ask if any of those ’strongly approve’ voters were ever actually there, given Obama’s ties to the voter-fraud group, ACORN.

Obama is starting to get desperate. Will he use the Swine Flu to force Nationalized Eugenics Health Care on the unaccepting American public? Or will Obama use some other tactics to prop up his support? Let us hope that these voters against Obama are more robust in their resolve than the infancy of their awareness.