ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Illegal Immigration

Illegal Immigration Is Great For the Economy

By: Elmer Williams

In the past, people who were not citizens didn’t want everyone to know. Most
immigrants worked diligently on becoming citizens. The tides have turned
because the teachers can see who is and isn’t an American citizen by logging in
on their school websites. They know we are educating other countries’ citizens.
We give these law-breakers free lunch, free health care, and a free education.
I’m thinking about quitting my job since the government is promoting failure
and handouts.

I can’t blame the illegal aliens. I blame all the wimpy politicians and lawmakers
for not having the guts to stop the invasion. And if the police stop someone
who may be illegal, they can’t ask if he or she is a citizen because they may
be sued for being racist. According to the Center for Immigration Studies in
Los Angeles, some ([i]) “ruthless Salvadoran prison gang members have snuck back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, shootings, and drug trafficking.”

I’m not talking about shoplifting and jaywalking. Some of these individuals are
committing violent crimes. And get this: police officers know who they are and
know that their mere presence in the country is a felony, but no officer dares
arrest these felons because there are laws in place, such as the sanctuary
policies, that prevent any officer from reporting immigration violations. Think
how ridiculous that sounds. It’s almost as if the government is trying to get
us all killed.

What makes anyone think terrorists don’t have the idea to cross through Mexico
and try to kill us all? It’s as if the world has gone mad. This wouldn’t make
any sense even to a ten-year-old, so we must ask why the government allows this
to take place. Again, political correctness is one of the problems because
these spineless politicians can’t stand the pressure from the Hispanic
organizations. They don’t have the backbone, courage, or fortitude to stand up
and do the right thing. We give them free healthcare and welfare assistance and
some people say it’s great that we can help the disenfranchised.

I have a question for you: how is it fair for citizens of this country to work
their whole lives, pay taxes, put money into social security, and save in their
401K plans just to see someone who hasn’t followed the laws and paid taxes get
free stuff? How about we take half of all Congress salaries and pensions and
half of the salaries of people who believe this is a great idea and donate them
to the poor and downtrodden to help these lawbreakers? This can be a little
annoying to hardworking taxpayers who are constantly being told that we can’t
afford tax cuts.

They say, “Don’t you have compassion for people? They love their families and want to make a better life for them.” Guess what? They don’t love their families any more than most Americans love theirs. Isn’t it the representatives’ job to protect each American’s right to the pursuit of happiness? They were elected to represent the people of this
country but they do a better job of representing people from other countries. Think
about how much money we’re spending on taking care of people from other counties.

Lynn M. Struter wrote an article on newswithviews.com that details the cost of illegal aliens. The article says ([ii]) we spend “$11 billion to $22 billion on other forms of welfare programs.”  “Another $2.2 billion on food assistance programs such as WIC food stamps and free lunches.” “$2.5 billion a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.” “$12 billion a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally.” “$17 billion a year is spent on education for American-born children of illegal aliens.” And “$3 million is spent a day to incarcerate illegal aliens.”

Struter goes on to discuss the over one million sex crimes per year committed by illegal aliens. Just because some of them want to make a better life for their families, twelve Americans a day die at the hands of illegal immigrants. Some politicians hope that if they legalize these immigrants, they will feel indebted enough to keep voting them into their sacred positions.

George W. Bush thought the guest worker program was a good idea. First of all, the illegal aliens are not guests because a guest is an invited person or party. They are lawbreakers who have not followed the laws of the land, so the guest worker program is a contradiction in itself.

Now that Barack Obama is taking over the country—and I mean literally taking over—he has shoved health-care down our throats and has tried to force us to pay for other people’s children. He wants to start the process of legalizing all the lawbreakers by giving them full citizenship. We don’t have the money to pay for all these wonderful ideas, but who cares as long as we feel good? I have never seen so many people work so hard to try to legitimize people who insist on breaking the law. I’m sorry, but
we are not saving any money on the cheap labor or the jobs that Americans don’t
want to do. Americans on welfare can be taken off food stamps and government assistance and be given these jobs. If we tell them we are going to help them get on their feet while they work, one of the requirements is that they must work. We are going to teach them life skills so they will learn how to fish and not always depend on someone else.

From The Book “Whatever Happen To COMMON SENSE”
By: Elmer Williams

[i] Crime & the Illegal Alien: The Fallout from Crippled Immigration Enforcement. By Heather Mac Donald June 2004 @ Center for Immigration Studies, http://www.cis.org/IllegalAliensCrime

 [ii] Seattle Times Soft on Illegal Alien Criminals- By
Lynn Stuter- April 15, 2008. on NewsWithViews http://www.newswithviews.com/Stuter/stuter123.htm

 

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A 16 year old atheist girl wants prayer removed from the wall

What a JACK ASS

Whatever Happen To Common Sense”

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion.

In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

 

“I was amazed,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation, which is based in Wisconsin and has given Jessica $13,000 from support and scholarship funds. “We haven’t seen a case like this in a long time, with this level of revilement and ostracism and stigmatizing.”

Written by seventh grader
The prayer, eight feet tall, is papered onto the wall in the Cranston West auditorium, near the stage. It has hung there since 1963, when a seventh grader wrote it as a sort of moral guide and that year’s graduating class presented it as a gift. It was a year after a landmark Supreme Court ruling barring organized prayer in public schools.

“Our Heavenly Father,” the prayer begins, “grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful.” It goes on for a few more lines before concluding with “Amen.”

For Jessica, who was baptized in the Catholic Church but said she stopped believing in God at age 10, the prayer was an affront. “It seemed like it was saying, every time I saw it, ‘You don’t belong here,’ ” she said the other night during an interview at a Starbucks here.

Since the ruling, the prayer has been covered with a tarp. The school board has indicated it will announce a decision on an appeal next month.

A friend brought the prayer to Jessica’s attention in 2010, when she was a high school freshman. She said nothing at first, but before long someone else — a parent who remained anonymous — filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union.

That led the Cranston school board to hold hearings on whether to remove the prayer, and Jessica spoke at all of them. She also started a Facebook page calling for the prayer’s removal (it now has almost 4,000 members) and began researching Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious freedom.

Last March, at a rancorous meeting that Judge Ronald R. Lagueux of United States District Court in Providence described in his ruling as resembling “a religious revival,” the school board voted 4-3 to keep the prayer. Some members said it was an important piece of the school’s history; others said it reflected secular values they held dear.

The Rhode Island chapter of the A.C.L.U. then asked Jessica if she would serve as a plaintiff in a lawsuit; it was filed the next month.

New England is not the sort of place where battles over the division of church and state tend to crop up. It is the least religious region of the country, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. But Rhode Island is an exception: it is the nation’s most Catholic state, and dust-ups over religion are not infrequent.

Just last month, several hundred people protested at the Statehouse after Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, lighted what he called a “holiday tree.”

In Cranston, the police said they would investigate some of the threatening comments posted on Twitter against Jessica, some of which came from students at the high school. Pat McAssey, a senior who is president of the student council, said the threats were “completely inexcusable” but added that Jessica had upset some of her classmates by mocking religion online.

“Their frustration kind of came from that,” he said.

Many alumni this week said they did not remember the prayer from their high school days but felt an attachment to it nonetheless.

“I am more of a constitutionalist but find myself strangely on the other side of this,” said Donald Fox, a 1985 graduate of Cranston West. “The prayer banner espouses nothing more than those values which we all hope for our children, no matter what school they attend or which religious background they hail from.”

Brittany Lanni, who graduated from Cranston West in 2009, said that no one had ever been forced to recite the prayer and called Jessica “an idiot.”

“If you don’t believe in that,” she said, “take all the money out of your pocket, because every dollar bill says, ‘In God We Trust.’”

Raymond Santilli, whose family owns one of the flower shops that refused to deliver to Jessica, said he declined for safety reasons, knowing the controversy around the case. People from around the world have called to support or attack his decision, which he said he stood by. But of Jessica, he said, “I’ve got a daughter, and I hope my daughter is as strong as she is, O.K.?”

Jessica said she had stopped believing in God when she was in elementary school and her mother fell ill for a time.

“I had always been told that if you pray, God will always be there when you need him,” she said. “And it didn’t happen for me, and I doubted it had happened for anybody else. So yeah, I think that was just like the last step, and after that I just really didn’t believe any of it.”

Does she empathize in any way with members of her community who want the prayer to stay?

“I’ve never been asked this before,” she said. A pause, and then: “It’s almost like making a child get a shot even though they don’t want to. It’s for their own good. I feel like they might see it as a very negative thing right now, but I’m defending their Constitution, too.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46160046/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/#.TyL3dIGZMmF

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Obama Declares more Communism in State of The Union

I want stop until I get all of your money

“The Buffet Rule Is A Joke”

By: BEN FELLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Declaring the American dream under siege,
President Barack Obama delivered a populist challenge Tuesday night to shrink
the gap between rich and poor, promising to tax the wealthy more and help
jobless Americans get work and hang onto their homes. Seeking re-election and
needing results, the president invited Republicans to join him but warned,
“I intend to fight.”

 

In an emphatic State of the Union address, Obama said
ensuring a fair shot for all Americans is “the defining issue of our time.”
He said the economy is finally recovering from a deep and painful recession and
he will fight any effort to return to policies that brought it low.

“We’ve come too far to turn back now,” he
declared.

Obama outlined a vastly different vision for fixing the
country than the one pressed by the Republicans confronting him in Congress and
fighting to take his job in the November election. He pleaded for an active
government that ensures economic fairness for everyone, just as his opponents
demand that the government back off and let the free market rule.

Obama offered steps to help students afford college, a plan
for more struggling homeowners to refinance their homes and tax cuts for
manufacturers. He threw in politically appealing references to accountability,
including warning universities they will lose federal aid if they don’t stop
tuition from soaring.

Standing in front of a divided Congress, with bleak hope
this election year for much of his legislative agenda, Obama spoke with voters
in mind.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking
number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get
by,” Obama said. “Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a
fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set
of rules.”

A rare wave of unity splashed over the House chamber at the
start. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, survivor of an assassination attempt one year
ago, received sustained applause from her peers and cheers of “Gabby,
Gabby, Gabby.” She blew a kiss to the podium. Obama embraced her.

Lawmakers leapt to their feet when Obama said near the start
of his speech that terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, killed by a raid
authorized by the president, will no longer threaten America.

At the core of Obama’s address was the improving but deeply
wounded economy — the matter still driving Americans’ anxiety and the one
likely to determine the next presidency.

“The state of our union is getting stronger,”
Obama said, calibrating his words as millions remain unemployed. Implicit in
his declaration that the American dream is “within our reach” was the
recognition that, after three years of an Obama presidency, the country is not
there yet.

He spoke of restoring basic goals: owning a home, earning
enough to raise a family, putting a little money away for retirement.

“We can do this,” Obama said. “I know we
can.” He said Americans are convinced that “Washington is
broken,” but he also said it wasn’t too late to cooperate on important
matters.

Republicans were not impressed. They applauded infrequently,
though they did cheer when the president quoted “Republican Abraham
Lincoln” as saying: “That government should do for people only what
they cannot do better by themselves — and no more.”

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, offering the formal GOP
response, called Obama’s policies “pro-poverty” and his tactics
divisive.

“No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder
than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by
castigating others,” Daniels said after the president’s address.

In a signature swipe at the nation’s growing income gap,
Obama called for a new minimum tax rate of at least 30 percent on anyone making
over $1 million. Many millionaires — including one of his chief rivals,
Republican Mitt Romney — pay a rate less than that because they get most of
their income from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate.

“Now you can call this class warfare all you
want,” Obama said, responding to a frequent criticism from the GOP
presidential field. “But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as
his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

Obama calls this the “Buffett rule,” named for
billionaire Warren Buffett, who has said it’s unfair that his secretary pays a
higher tax rate than he does. Emphasizing the point, Buffett’s secretary,
Debbie Bosanek, attended the address in first lady Michelle Obama’s box.

Obama underlined every proposal with the idea that hard work
and responsibility still count. He was targeting independent voters who helped
seal his election in 2008 and the frustrated masses in a nation pessimistic
about its course.

In a flag-waving defense of American power and influence
abroad, Obama said the U.S. will safeguard its own security “against those
who threaten our citizens, our friends and our interests.” On Iran, he
said that while all options are on the table to prevent Iran from acquiring a
nuclear weapon — an implied threat to use military force — “a peaceful
resolution of this issue is still possible.”

With Congress almost universally held in low regard, Obama
went after an easy target in calling for reforms to keep legislators from
engaging in insider trading and holding them to the same conflict-of-interest
standards as those that apply to the executive branch.

With the foreclosure crisis on ongoing sore spot despite a
number of administration housing initiatives over the past three years, Obama
proposed a new program to allow homeowners with privately held mortgages to
refinance at lower interest rates. Administration officials offered few details
but estimated savings at $3,000 a year for average borrowers.

Obama proposed steps to crack down on fraud in the financial
sector and mortgage industry, with a Financial Crimes Unit to monitor bankers
and financial service professionals, and a separate special unit of federal
prosecutors and state attorneys general to expand investigations into abusive
lending that led to the housing crisis.

At a time of tight federal budgets and heavy national debt,
Obama found a ready source of money to finance his ideas: He proposed to devote
half of the money no longer being spent on the U.S. military in Iraq and
Afghanistan to “do some nation-building right here at home,” to help
create more jobs and increase competitiveness. The other half, he said, would
go to help pay down the national debt.

Obama also offered a defense of regulations that protect the
American consumer — regulations often criticized by Republicans as job-killing
obstacles.

“Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the
rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that do the
same,” Obama said. “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to
bottom: No bailouts, no handouts and no cop-outs. An America built to last
insists on responsibility from everybody.”

Obama will follow up Tuesday night’s address with a
three-day tour of five states key to his re-election bid. On Wednesday he’ll
visit Iowa and Arizona to promote ideas to boost American manufacturing; on
Thursday in Nevada and Colorado he’ll discuss energy, and in Michigan on Friday
he’ll talk about college affordability, education and training.

Polling shows Americans are divided about Obama’s overall
job performance but unsatisfied with his handling of the economy.

The speech Tuesday night comes just one week before the
Florida Republican primary that could help set the trajectory for the rest of
the race.

Romney, caught up in a tight contest with a resurgent Newt
Gingrich, commented in advance to Obama’s speech.

“Tonight will mark another chapter in the misguided
policies of the last three years — and the failed leadership of one man,”
Romney said from Florida.

http://start.toshiba.com/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9SFMK4G1%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1018

 

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The Media Is to Blame

Don't Let My Pretty Face Fool You

By: Elmer Williams

From The Book: “Whatever Happen To COMMON SENSE” Chapter 22

I believe that the media is one of the primary reasons that politicians can get away with the lies and deceptions they propagate to the general public. I further believe that the only reason that so-called illegal aliens can be seen as victims is because of our corrupt media. They are supposed to report the news and let us decide what our opinions are about a particular story.

I think George W. Bush made a lot of mistakes when he was in office. I believe we should have gone to war withIraq, but I don’t think we should have fought the war in a way that would get a lot of our young men killed when it could have been avoided.

If George W. Bush was black and had a D (Democrat) in front of is name, he would not have received such flack over the war. I have heard a lot of people say after the facts that we went to Iraq for the oil and that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). I don’t know if that is the reason we went to war or not, but what I do know is that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he was defeated. He signed a resolution stating that he would allow inspectors to come in and check for WMDs. After Saddam had ignored the seventeen or eighteen UN resolutions, it was clear that he had no intention of doing the right thing. We know for a fact the Saddam used WMDs on his own people. If we had not attacked this terrorist, he would probably have WMDs today.

I don’t care if they found WMDs or not. He made a promise to allow the inspectors into his country to carry out their work. The inspectors were given the run around and the planes attempted to fly over for inspection were shot at repeatedly. George W. Bush’s first mistake was that he let the media into Iraq to cover the war. What moron decided that it was a good idea to inform the enemy about some of our activities? You might as well put GPS on your tank trucks. The second mistake he made was refusing to let our young men kill the enemies even though they were trying to chop our men’s heads off. While he was president, we even court marshaled some of our soldiers for killing terrorists. And what did the media report about some of these stories? They showed sympathy toward the enemies and made our army out to be the bad guys.

I am curious as to why we haven’t been hearing about the wars since the Messiah came into office. President Obama gets a free pass on his warmongerings. Where are all the tree huggers and the antiwar protesters now? If George Bush were black and had a D in front of his name, he would not have been criticized for going to war. All I hear now is deafening silence from these hypocrites. They pretend they care about the rights of citizens in other countries, but we know that to be a big, fat lie.

Compare the casualties in Afghanistan under George W. Bush over eight years and Barack Obama over three and a half years. There is a chart from iCasualties.org that shows the casualties under Obama have surpassed those under Bush. The scoreboard for Bush from 2001 to 2008 is 630. The scoreboard for Obama from 2009 to 2011 is 1203. It is a blowout, Obama wins running away.

If the facts were clearly in favor of our first black president, anti-war movement would be out in full strength. They love to play the race card whenever they are losing an argument. The casualty scoreboard reads Obama: 1203 and Bush: 630. I’m not that smart, but when I was in school, 1,203 was a higher number than 630. I know times have changed and we are constantly redefining words, so I suppose numbers might as well come under attack also.

Where are CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the other media outlets on these casualties? I thought they wanted to protect our men and women from oppressive warmongers. I thought they wanted to protect the citizens of other countries. Is it our job to protect other counties? Why are we still in Afghanistan and Iraq? You don’t need a PhD in common sense in order to see what’s going on. Obama is a black Democrat. Most news outlets on television are liberal and progressive, so they are compassionate toward democrats. They do not want to be perceived as racist.

This is the insanity of the politically correct crowd. They would rather drive off the side of a mountain before being viewed as judgmental. They voted for Obama in the hopes that he would deliver them from their troubles.

They hoped he would lead them to the promised land of nirvana. They hoped we would become one big Communist party. I have learned that liberal whites are shocked that all blacks don’t like Obama’s politics, and liberal blacks are appalled by fellow blacks who don’t support him. It’s an incredible achievement for a black man to have become president. Liberal blacks believe he should be blindly supported.

Never mind that he constantly contradicts himself and acts as if George W. Bush is at fault for everything that’s wrong. When he ran for office, why didn’t he tell us that almost four years into his term, he wasn’t going to be able to fix anything because of George W. Bush? He and the media should have been clear that George W. Bush messed things up so badly that Obama can only make it worse. If I am not mistaken, his election theme was change without partisan politics. Are you freaking kidding me? All he has done is partisan politics. The only changes he has made have been for the worse. If you are black and don’t agree with the black president, you must be an Uncle Tom.

Perhaps you have been brainwashed by the Tea Party or some other conservative group. I always find it funny when people refuse to talk about the facts and focus on race, saying things like, “You are just jealous of the man.” Should I vote for Obama because he’s black? Should I like him because he’s black? I don’t like a lot of my own black relatives, so I will certainly not like a man based solely on his skin color. How uninformed can you be, to vote for a man based purely on race?

Where are the media, especially the conservative media, on defending Michael Savage from being banned from Britain? I have not heard one media outlet say it is preposterous for a talk radio host to be banned from a country. I have not heard any mention that a top-selling author should not be on the same list as a terrorist. Where is Fox News? Where is Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh? If these people were real journalists and seekers of truth, they would report this story.

I believe the media is one of the primary reasons that Americans have become so portentous about ignoring the truth. The media plays fast and loose with the facts every night. When we joined NATO to start a war inLibya, the media would have us believe we were justified in our actions.

Muammar Qaddafi might not be a saint, but why are we invading Libya? We are still at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The economy is horrible yet we have decided to spend millions on a war against Libya. A CNN story posted online on July 17, 2011, says, “The Western alliance has been bombarding Libya since late March a U.N. mandate to protect civilians from forces loyal to longtime strongman Muammar Gaddafi, who is attempting to put down a revolt against his nearly forty-two-year rule.”

Notice that according to CNN, the only reason we invadedLibyawas because of a “mandate to protect civilians.” Is that a good reason to go to war? If we are going to fight to protect a country’s citizens, we should declare war on many other countries. As soon as I heard the story about NATO forces taking down the evil dictator, I was very suspicious about why we would go to war with a man who wasn’t a threat to anyone outsideLibya. The media made us think Gaddafi was the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

Eight NATO members are involved in the air strike crusade, including the USA United States led by our antiwar leader Barack Obama (I thought he was against war when George W. was in office); France, (which never wants to fight); Canada (do they have an army?); Denmark (It must have stop raining long enough to send help); Belgium (I hope they bring some Tapestry); Italy; Norway (what a joke); and Britain, which can’t stop the riots in its own cities. A Huffington Post headline read, Libya Says NATO Bombed Residential Area in Tripoli, Killed Civilians. In this story, Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, the commander of the anti-Libya operation, is quoted as saying, “NATO regrets the loss of innocent civilian lives and takes great care in conducting strikes against a regime determined to use violence against its own citizens.”

The media has no shame. I wonder why these purveyors of justice didn’t side with the United Stateswhen we attacked Saddam Hussein, who, may I add, used WMDs on his own citizens. I think the people of Libyashould play the race card against the NATO forces. They should say that the only reason they are being attacked is because of their skin color and because they are Muslims. We have not fought the wars in Iraqor Afghanistan correctly under Bush or Obama. If we had, we would have killed the enemy and not wasted taxpayer money.

From The Book: “Whatever Hapeen To COMMONS SENSE”

 

 

 

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Obama Rejects Pipeline which kills jobs

 

By: Robert J. Samuelson

President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from
Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often
that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond
the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it.
All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through
some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental
supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory,
environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the
development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed;
therefore, there will be little effect on global-warming emissions. Indeed,
Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to
the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker
will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama’s decision hurts the United States.
For starters, it insults and antagonizes a strong ally; getting future Canadian
cooperation on other issues will be harder. Next, it threatens a large source
of relatively secure oil that, combined with new discoveries in the United
States, could reduce (though not eliminate) our dependence on insecure foreign
oil.

Finally, Obama’s decision forgoes all the project’s jobs.
There’s some dispute over the magnitude. Project sponsor TransCanada claims
20,000, split between construction (13,000) and manufacturing (7,000) of
everything from pumps to control equipment. Apparently, this refers to “job
years,” meaning one job for one year. If so, the actual number of jobs would be
about half that spread over two years. Whatever the figure, it’s in the
thousands and thus important in a country hungering for work. And Keystone XL
is precisely the sort of infrastructure project that Obama claims to favor.

The big winners are the Chinese. They must be celebrating
their good fortune and wondering how the crazy Americans could repudiate such a
huge supply of nearby energy. There’s no guarantee that tar-sands oil will go
to China; pipelines to the Pacific would have to be built. But it creates the
possibility when the oil’s natural market is the United States.

There are three things to remember about Keystone and U.S.
energy policy.

First, we’re going to use lots of oil for a long time. The
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that U.S. oil consumption
will increase 4 percent between 2009 and 2035. The increase occurs despite
highly optimistic assumptions about vehicle fuel efficiency and bio-fuels. But
a larger population (390 million in 2035 versus 308 million in 2009) and more
driving per vehicle offset savings.

The more oil we produce domestically and import from
neighbors, the more we’re insulated from dramatic interruptions of global
supplies. After the United States, Canada is the most dependable source of oil
— or was, until Obama’s decision.

Second, barring major technological breakthroughs, emissions
of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, will rise for similar reasons. The
EIA projects that America’s CO2 emissions will increase by 16 percent from 2009
to 2035. (The EIA is updating its projections, but the main trends aren’t
likely to change dramatically.) Stopping Canadian tar-sands development, were
that possible, wouldn’t affect these emissions.

Finally, even if — as Keystone critics argue — some Canadian
oil were refined in the United States and then exported, this would be a good
thing. The exports would probably go mostly to Latin America. They would keep
well-paid industrial jobs (yes, refining) in the United States and reduce our
trade deficit in oil, which exceeded $300 billion in 2011.

By law, Obama’s decision was supposed to reflect “the
national interest.” His standard was his political interest. The State
Department had spent three years evaluating Keystone and appeared ready to
approve the project by year-end 2011. Then the administration, citing
opposition to the pipeline’s route in Nebraska, reversed course and postponed a
decision to 2013 — after the election.

Now, reacting to a congressional deadline to decide, Obama
rejected the proposal. But he also suggested that a new application with a
modified Nebraska route — already being negotiated — might be approved, after
the election. So the sop tossed to the environmentalists could be temporary.
The cynicism is breathtaking.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rejecting-the-keystone-pipeline-is-an-act-of-insanity/2012/01/19/gIQAowG6AQ_story.html

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Gingrich Fights back asking about his Ex

Focus On The Issues

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich slammed CNN host John King for asking about an explosive ABC News report claiming the White House hopeful asked his former wife for an “open marriage” before they later divorced.

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run of for public office and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich accused CNN host John King of poor taste for bringing up the issue. “John — John, it was repeated by your network. You chose to start the debate with it. Don’t try to blame somebody else. You and your staff chose to start this debate with it.”

“Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife, and make it two days before the primary a sign question in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine,” Gingrich said.

ABC News reported Thursday that Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, says the GOP presidential candidate asked her for an “open marriage” after he became involved with the woman who became his third and current wife. Gingrich said the claim is false.

Marianne Gingrich told ABC News that Gingrich wanted the then-Callista Bisek, his current wife, as his mistress while keeping Marianne Gingrich as his wife. She said he admitted at the time to a six-year affair with Callista.

Gingrich proceeded to attack the media for being biased against Republican candidates.

“I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans,” he said. “They would like to attack any Republican.”

The audience responded with a standing ovation and the other three candidates on stage did not touch the issue.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said “John, let’s get on to the real issues. That’s all I have to say.”

ABC aired the interview with Marianne Gingrich this evening shortly after the debate ended but little else was revealed.

Gingrich’s two adult daughters, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman, sent a letter to ABC news in defense of their father and scolding ABC for airing the interview.

“The failure of a marriage is a terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved,” they write. “We will not say anything negative about our father’s ex-wife.”

Rick Santorum was asked by King about the accusations against Gingrich. Santorum failed to defend or disparage Gingrich. “I thank God for forgiveness,” he said. “But the bottom line is those are — those are things for everyone in this audience to look at.”

Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign issued a statement before the debate was over agreeing with Gingrich that CNN should not have opened the debate with questions about his ex-wife.

“Our problem with Newt Gingrich is not that he lied to his wife but that he lied to the American people,” Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57362440-503544/gingrich-slams-cnn-for-asking-about-ex-wife/