www.change.gov smells like a fund-raising front
Government domain names (“.gov”) for websites are supposed to be restricted to eligible government organizations and programs.
Does Barack Obama’s transition website, www.change.gov — which is basically a souped-up version of his campaign site — qualify? As Ed Morrissey pointed out yesterday, “The incoming administration technically has no status as a government organization or program until January 20, 2009. The “Office of the President-Elect” doesn’t exist within the government.”
The primary goal of the transition site seems to be to collect e-mail addresses and personal information — for future fund-raising and political organizing projects. More on that in a moment.
Did the GSA, which administers the rules governing .gov websites, vet this site? One industry exec doesn’t think so, and has sent a complaint:
To whom it may concern,
Recently a new .gov domain name was registered. The name of this domain was http://www.change.gov. This appears to be a violation of the Domain Naming Conventions Summary located at https://www.dotgov.gov/dnc.aspx. The domain does not appear to meet the criteria outlined on that page. It is my belief that the name was granted without the proper review, due to the current political climate and may in fact have been a political favor which is a clear violation of federal law.
What is the process to file a complaint regarding improper use of the .gov TLD?
Thank you for your time and cooperation.
Charles Wyble
Chief Technology Officer
Known Element Enterprises – Corporate
Let’s look at who’s operating Obama’s .gov site. It’s being run by Blue State Digital, the left-wing Internet fund-raising company that presided over the credit card fraud-friendly Obama campaign site. A tipster traced the IP address:
CustName: Blue State Digital
Address: 1000 Vermont Avenue, NW
Address: Suite 1000
City: Washington
StateProv: DC
PostalCode: 20005
Country: US
RegDate: 2007-11-21
Updated: 2007-11-21NetRange: 69.25.74.128 – 69.25.74.191
CIDR: 69.25.74.128/26
NetName: INAP-BSN-BLUESTATE-17797
NetHandle: NET-69-25-74-128-1
Parent: NET-69-25-0-0-1
NetType: Reassigned
Comment:
RegDate: 2007-11-21
Updated: 2007-11-21RTechHandle: INO3-ARIN
RTechName: InterNap Network Operations Center
RTechPhone: +1-877-843-4662
RTechEmail:Blue State Digital (BSD) is a leader in online fundraising, advocacy, social networking, and constituency development programs for nonprofit organizations, political candidates and causes, and corporations. Since our founding in 2004, we’ve delivered successfully on the promise of the Internet to over 200 satisfied clients, including Obama for America, Wal-Mart Watch, the Alliance for Climate Protection, and the Communications Workers of America, raising over $200 million in contributions to date and generating tens of millions of online signups and actions.
Walks, talks, and smells like a fund-raising front to me.
Meantime, readers have been sifting through the site. Here are screenshots of two creepy items to keep an eye on. America Serves…or else!
The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.
“NEED CONTENT.”
Unofficial motto of Obama-Biden ’08.
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Categories: Barack Obama,Web 2.0
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Michelle,
I’d like to know when any pressure is placed on your reporting , your blog, or your free speech. The first attack by commies is on the free press. Once free press is gone, we are in the dark.
Do you need body guards?
Isn’t his oldest daughter, Malia, 12? That’s getting near the time for her to be drafted as an unpaid serf in middle school. Oh wait! This draft is probably only for public schools, therefore she will be exempt.
Look, even when these programs are done by the States they are objectionable. They get to decide what qualifies and how many hours count toward the credits needed to reach the 100 hours of forced volunteerism.
It is an outrageous intrusion into our personal liberty to require this time served, and interferes with their school work and other activities like pursuing athletics, music, or anything else that takes a tremendous amount of time and dedication to excel.
If forced to be a political prisons guard or to transport political prisoners, I promise to earn the worlds record for most prisoners escaping on my watch.
I guess we will find out soon enough what happens when we refuse to obey. My daughter, who is 12, said she isn’t going to do it. I told her she didn’t have to. Then I thought, what if we refuse and the school (which is also going to be involved) doesn’t pass her? That’s the only way they can force children and their parents to submit.
That’s exactly what I thought when I saw this on hotair – there is no President-elect at this time. How did they get away with a .gov domain?
I apologize – it’s racist to ask this.
His website almost looks like a money laundering front…weird I mean ya don’t stop being a crook.
I’d like to see 100 hrs compulsory community service as a pre-requisite to becoming a member of the White House press corps. Trouble is, they’ve already met that requirement by repeatedly kissing our president-to-be between the cheeks.
If you refuse, you can be sure that the Dept. of Child Welfare will be all over you for “abuse”, and Homeland Security will have you in a Gulag for disobeying a Presidential “directive”.
Pray unceasingly for our Country.
Correctemundo.
Nativeaz08,
Who would want a diploma from a brainwashing communist school anyways. Having a college education isn’t going to mean a thing. Uneducated people will replace you and many people in the not to distant future will be unemployed. If Obama abolishes term limits for presidents, educated people will be a threat to him and they will be eliminated. No worry to get upset about getting “passed”. Getting passed will depend on how many folks she can turn in to the reeducation camps and how well she can shoot a AK-47.
Aren’t underprivileged kids disadvantaged enough?! Do we have to deny them fair and equal access to an appropriate education – their only means of lifting themselves out of futures filled with poverty and deprivation – by staffing their schools with unprepared and inept teachers?
I wonder if we’ll have enough money to cross the border into Mexico and apply for asylum at the Australian consulate?
Boy, all those “victims”, sitting on their fat butts with their hands out, in this “mean” country, are going to be screaming their bloody heads off when the boys in black with their billy clubs, show up at their foreclosed home to shuttle them off to do community service. You asked for it, you got it!
I’ll be at my front door with a shotgun. Lock and load, people. this IS NOT Nazi Germany!
Term Limits-
1 more Obama justice, and then Lynne Stewart and Ramsey Clark can write the brief that convinces the SCOTUS that the 22nd Amendment is itself unconstitutional.
DBNinKY,
You are missing the point, Kids are gonna eat this stuff up. The Classroom Corp is there to brainwash children and to make the current teachers toe the party line. Education is very important in the communist mantra.
Just say no to the Blackshirts.
If this is the way that Obama wants to go, then he will have to move fast and hard.
post #59 said “Requiring volunteerism…”
Huh?
My kids have 1.5 and 2.5 years of high school left. If this comes to pass while they’re still in school, I’ll homeschool for the remainder.
As for college, they can go and take classes and not do the community service. They won’t have the piece of paper, so what. Most colleges are only a degree in sex and drinking anyway.
Sonofdy,
All preplanned 20 years ago with the likes of Ayers and friends. This entire election was preplanned. How do I know this… Look at Hillary’s defeat and how quiet she has been. Doesn’t resemble the Clintons that I know. I think Obama is the Manchurian canidate. He has hoodwinked the Democratic party and has used the freedoms of the United States of America to be exactly where he wants to be. I think this man, under the guise of “Race Mongering”, is more sinister than anyone knows….maybe even the anti christ….
Too many people dislike him for that.
emphasis mine.
I presume he will come out and address the black population to make amends with whitely and vice a versa. Everything will turn up roses and make everyone happy. He will be loved by all !
“whitey”
Yeah, like the black population will be all over that! They won’t do a thing for this creep until he pays them what he owes them for helping him on his campaign.
If anybody calls me raccissssttt!!!! OMG!
OT
90 mph Hurricane Paloma about to hit Grand Cayman (should be 105 mph by landfall), may hit East Central Cuba as a 115 mph Cat 3.
I believe the black population would jump off a cliff is Obama told them so.
“if”
I can’t believe someone actually approved his campaign slogan turned into an official government site.
And they’re going to get away with this?
Absolutely they will get away with this. Where have you been for the past 30 years?
You ain’t seen NOTHING yet.
Well a dictatorship would be “change” Not quite the change they were talking about.
You betcha! They will soon OWN the government and do everything in their power to make sure the Republican party, and any other political party, remains a minority party, eventually eliminating the competition altogether, aided and abetted by the activist judges they already have and will have once Obama starts cranking out the appointments.
great idea…
This weasel is not now nor will ever be my president!
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ” W. Churchill
From change.gov:
“Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today”
From St. Louis, June, 2008
“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”
Talk about minimizing expectations, LOL.
My mother said we are all moving to Australia…sounds good to me….
On November 7th, 2008 at 10:10 am, thetoysurgeon said:
DBNinKY,
Agreed: I just gag at the thoughts of it happening. If the Republicans don’t – not can’t, because I believe only their own incompetence would prevent it – take back both Houses in 2010, this nation will be Europe incarnate.
Change is what we make of it! The Constitution has ways and means to address this type of garbage if and when the people rise up and demand that something be done to stop the idiocy!
OK, time to seriously consider a cash only business. Now let’s see:
Laundromat
Car wash
Vending machines
Ice cream stand
Thirteenth Ammendment to the US Constitution
I think its gonna be much worse than europe because the world and our minorities wants the USA to really pay for their arrogance. don’t depend on the republicans. They will never be powerful again! The opposition will be really quick to point out the “Bush” term and how he ruined America. No one will want to vote for “republicans ” again. Forget the republicans. They had their chance many times and blew it. We need a third party with the people behind it. All of this reminds of the classic Star Trek show about the “Coms and the Yangs”.
Unfortunately, activist judges have ways and means to reinterpret or ingnore the constitution and continue the idiocy. Obama and the Dems will see to it every vacant seat will be quickly filled with another activist judge to aid and abet their actions.
Been there, done that. It’s got a lot to recommend it, but if you don’t like taxes, bedlam in the public school classrooms (fortunately private schooling is strong), mucho expensive real estate, revoltingly leftist mid-stream media, atrocious infrastructure, and even more taxes, you won’t like Australia.
Oh, and did I mention corruption at all levels of gov’t, and taxes?
Damn…Scratch Australia
I have a feeling even leftie Rudd’s Australia will be a paradise compared to National Socialist Obama’s America…
On November 7th, 2008 at 9:37 am, FruNobulux said:
“I have no idea how they think they can “require” service, especially from high school kids. It will be interesting to see if they enforce classroom attendance as vigorously as they enforce “participation” in their little Comsomol.”
Having been a juvenile corrections officer, let me explain how it’s done. The precursor for this is already in place in the juvenile corrections system. Launched as the “Becca Bill”, it is used by the juvenile court to classify problem children under 18 as an ary(at risk youth), CHINS(child in need of services), and truants.
Under the truancy law, the schools are now given the power to go before a juvenile judge or probation officer to issue a warrant of arrest for truant juveniles.
Parents can request ary paperwork to file with the court if they deem their child incorrigible, a runaway, or uncontrollable. The parent will then be given a court date at which time they will bring their child before a judge where conditions will be set and an order will be signed by the judge and issued to the child. Failure to follow the conditions results in the parent notifying the court and a either a warrant for arrest is issued(if the child is not present) or they are taken into custody (if they are present).
CHINS petitions are filed for children with no parents present, abuse, or neglect.
The foundation that put this bill in place has requirements for a juvenile court to get funds to implement this program. The main requirement is, that none of these juveniles be housed within an area that houses juvenile felons. I imagine that, like the facility I worked in, after a while those requirements cannot, or refuse to be implemented. As a result, we had runaways and truancies housed with thieves, druggies, and sex offenders and murderers.
These kids generally spent more time incarcerated than the felons.
So, there is nothing to prevent “forced community service” from being added to this program. Be a good kid or go to detention, go to school or go to detention, community service or go to detention.
I apologize for the length of this comment, but this program always was a sore spot with me because of the overwhelming number of kids that came in as a truant or a runaway and eventually returned as a felon because of being housed with the general population.
I’ve been intoxicated on adult beverages in Freemantle and Perth in Western Australia, and it sort of reminds me of San Diego, except the Mexican restaurant wasn’t very good.
There was an Italian-Australian community in Perth, so good Italian food is available.
I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that you might be right, but I’ve been trying to put on a happy face
I can just see Obama on Inauguration Day in mirrored sunglasses, a chest full of medals and gold braid, flanked by his thug thizzle, Idi Amin style. Anybody remember Idi Amin?
REQUIRING COMMUNITY SERVICE SOUNDS ALOT LIKE S L A V E R Y TO ME.
I am Idi Amin DA Da of course I do…and what happened to him?
Sydney rocks as a tourist destination. There are lots of Medi’s (Italians, Greeks, Lebanese) from post-WWII migration, and lots and lots of Asians (as an amateur statistician, I completely rejected the gov’ts claims of only a small minority of Asians, but didn’t really care because, by and large, the Asians were a huge asset). So what you frequently find in restaurants is food that’s kind of a Mediterranean-Asian fusion. And copious good wine. The “Australian” wine we get here in the US is just the big commercial stuff, not the yummy boutique wines that you can find in the wine shops.
I have fond memories of sitting on the picnic benches at Sydney’s Fish Markets in the fall, eating fresh Sashimi and chili-octopus, with a bottle of crisp, cold Chardonnay and some fresh, crusty bread from the Italian bakery.
I guess the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is one of those provisions B. Hussein Obama isn’t too keen on:
As a point of comparison, I found the website for the Bush/Cheney transition. They did not use a dot.gov domain, but used: bushcheneytransition.org an entity of the Bush-Cheney Presidential Transition, Inc.
A fascimile of the website can be found archived here
Note that the GSA, who had to have approved Obama’s use of the dot.gov domain is the same GSA who refused to allow Bush/Cheney to begin their transition until December 14, 2000.
Well, he did appoint himself Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas. I don’t know about you, but do you see the creepy parallel to “the moment the planet began to heal…?”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/55350.html
Posted on Wed, Nov. 05, 2008
How will President Obama deploy his Internet army?
Frank Greve | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: November 05, 2008 06:56:53 PM
WASHINGTON — A powerful new lobbying force is coming to town: Barack Obama’s triumphant army of 3.1 million Internet-linked donors and volunteers.
In a mass e-mail thanking them, written moments before his Grant Park victory speech, Obama put them on notice. “We have a lot to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next,” he wrote.
Many are eager. “I’m going to be sitting at the phone, asking, ‘What do you want me to do next? I’m ready,’ ” said volunteer Courtney Hood, 37, a mother of three from Owings, Md.
How Obama will use his ardent laptop-armed cadres is unclear. So is the extent to which they’ll rally behind his priorities, press him for their own or both.
Joe Trippi, the Internet politics guru whose computer geeks made Howard Dean a contender in 2004 and who went on to design Obama’s socially networked campaign machine, offers a provocative and educated guess.
Trippi predicted that Obama would use his forces, first and foremost, to intimidate congressional foes of his agenda, rally his allies and forge “one of the most powerful presidencies in American history.”
Certainly, Obama reaches the White House with the biggest, best organized, fastest-acting grass-roots army in the history of presidential campaigning.
Moreover, because his Internet operation was miles ahead of Republican John McCain’s, Obama’s liberal-to-libertarian electronic activists are in a position to dominate the new political medium much as conservative Republicans dominate talk radio.
As for political utility, many thousands of volunteers such as Hood will be deployable within hours, with great precision and at almost no cost, thanks to the campaign’s state-of-the-art information-management systems.
The president-elect’s political operatives know, for example, the ZIP codes and hence the congressional districts of each of Obama’s million most active campaigners, those who volunteered via his Web site mybarackobama.com. It’s a social network that the campaign set up to communicate needs, events and assignments to volunteers.
The profiles that Obama campaigners submitted to the site also reveal which supporters in each district are environmentalists, concerned about health care or keen on government reform.
Moreover, because the so-called “MyBO” site quantified volunteers’ participation and fundraising totals digitally, there’s a numeric score for each participant’s success. It’s even adjusted to give more credit for recent help.
“We really know who Obama’s community leaders are,” issue by issue, said Thomas Gensemer, the managing director of Blue State Digital, the Washington-based mobilizer of online communities created by four Dean campaign veterans.
Instead of e-mailing members of Congress, Gensemer continued, Obama’s most effective supporters will meet with them in their district offices and press them at local town hall meetings.
Trippi offered a more dramatic scenario: “Obama will be able to say these are the 10 members of Congress standing in our way on health care. Basically, it’ll be the president and the people united, with some members of Congress in between, which won’t be a very comfortable place to be.”
A million Obama activists nationwide translate to an average of nearly 2,300 for each of 435 congressional districts. “And if someone in my district had a list of them with e-mail addresses and a lot of good will, I’d pay a lot of attention to them,” said Scott Lilly, a senior staffer for Democrats in the House of Representatives for nearly 30 years.
One question, Lilly continued, is whether Obama’s activists are concentrated in liberal urban Democratic districts, where Obama needs no help, and not much of a presence in conservative ones, where resistance is most likely.
For example, Lilly wondered how numerous Obama supporters are in, say, Panama City, Fla. It’s a hub of Florida’s 2nd Congressional District, in the state’s conservative Panhandle and represented by Allen Boyd, a Blue Dog Democrat.
Asked that question in late October, Alvin Peters, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Bay County, which includes Panama City, responded with shock and awe: “I’ve never seen so much political energy in this district ever,” he said. “It’s 10 to 20 times more than Kerry — maybe 1,400 in little Panama City alone — and it’s all local!”
That’s great news for Obama, whose legislative fate may depend most on his ability to persuade conservative Democrats.
What his supporters will accomplish in Republican districts is another uncertainty.
“If they’re networked into PTA meetings and barbershops and call-in talk shows, they can let people know that their guy isn’t doing what we want him to do. That could be an extraordinarily powerful tool,” Lilly said.
He and others presume that Obama will pass on his activist database to the Democratic National Committee and/or a new nonprofit that takes direction from the Obama White House. That’s permitted under MyBO’s privacy policy, which says that its names and data may be turned over to “organizations with similar political viewpoints and objectives, in furtherance of our own political objectives.”
The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to step in, said Washington lawyer Jan Baran, who’s a specialist on federal election law, ethics and lobbying. “The FEC has generally laid off regulating Internet-based activity by political organizations and individuals,” Baran said.
Reform advocates who see the Internet as a tool want to reduce Washington’s grip on power by providing universal Internet access to more government deliberations and records. It’s an idea that appeals to lots of Obama activists, who can be expected to push for it.
Obama has promised to create a “transparent and connected White House.” He’s also promised to appoint a Cabinet-rank chief technology officer to promote openness in federal agencies and help the new president communicate with the electorate. More generally, Obama supports expanding high-speed broadband Internet access, which roughly half the nation lacks.
An easy and popular step toward transparency would be for Obama to reverse the Bush administration’s secretive policy on Freedom of Information Act requests for government records. That could be done by declaration, without congressional involvement, noted John Wonderlich, the program director of the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, which promotes transparency.
Visionaries in the realm of Internet politics, several of them well-known among Obama activists, would like to see Obama go further and use Internet social networks for ideas and collaborative problem-solving.
Maybe I need to dig up that real estate book about the Cayman Islands again.
Anyone know anything about living there on a temporary basis?
A 105 mph Hurricane will hit Grand Cayman this afternoon.
But they’ll get better. America won’t for at least four years.
I imagine those nasty militant homophobes of the Boy Scouts of America will be folded into the Obama
JugendYouth…God forbid people help each other. I went to a private high school where we were REQUIRED to complete a certain amount of hours of community service each year (the same was true of almost all the private schools in the state — and friends who went to Andover, Choate and Exeter told me that there are similar programs there). For most of us, it was a humbling learning experience.
And really, if you don’t want to give funds or your email…don’t visit the site. Easy enough; problem solved. This desperate need to feel victimized is just ridiculous.
I….will not be assimilated.
See Nyk, you CHOSE to go to that school. It was your choice, and you knew what you were getting into. There’s big difference in selecting and being forced to do something.
We as Americans are very charitable and many of us volunteer to help society as it is.
It should never be forced upon to do so.
And Obama shouldn’t use the guise of a .gov website as a campaign re-election medium.
problem solved
Go to change.com and you’ll forget about … something …
Stupid webmaster – you have to go to http://www.change.com
I would strongly suggest that you escape with them….
I blame woman for this whole debacle. They are the majority of voters. They put B.O. in office. They put Bill Clinton in office.
Most women used to be strong and patriotic. They cared about our country and had common sense. Thanks to the feminists it’s all about feelings and being selfish.
Women today care more about their right to kill an unborn child and save a dolphin than they do protecting our country, the rights of the unborn and ensuring their children have values.
Sure, let the enemies of the world continue to build their armies against us. Let politicians tax us to no end and take our freedoms. Allow the children to be indoctrinated daily at school. As long as they can use abortion as birth control nothing else matters.
This is why they hate Sarah Palin so much. She is what women once were in this country. Strong, fearless and dedicated to something other than their own selfishness.
The Oprah-fication of our country has led us to this point. Where will it end?
BAL, Touchey feelies always want the others to do what they think is correct. They cannot comprehend that free will exists and some don’t want to participate. America
iswas a free country. God help us now!Ha. I’m a girl so it didn’t have quite the soothing impact it probably had on you but…thanks for sharing. I did get a laugh out of it, though…
This is how I see this going. When first enacted, all charities and community service will be eligible. Then some Christian students will want to use their hours in service to the church as their hours for this program. We’ll have furious people trying to outlaw that basing it on separation of church and state. I’m undecided as to whether Muslims will still be able to serve their Mosques since it will be deemed a tenet of their religion. We must be sensitive, of course.
Then only select service will be allowed. And soon after, they will bus the kids off to “camp” where this service takes place.
All subtle steps, but it will lead to what they want – brainwashing. But it must be performed in a subtle way as to not raise any alarms.
NYK: The problem I have with it is that it is politicaly based. You need to read up on what hitler did after coming to power, so far obama is following his play book.
On November 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am, nyk said:
God forbid people help each other. I went to a private high school where we were REQUIRED to complete a certain amount of hours of community service each year (the same was true of almost all the private schools in the state — and friends who went to Andover, Choate and Exeter told me that there are similar programs there). For most of us, it was a humbling learning experience.
GFY! You don’t sound very “humble” at all, but I digress.
I too went to an elite Northeastern prep school, but in my day American History, not Leftist indoctrination 101, was the focus of the curriculum.
If you were properly educated you’d know that it was not The Founders’ intention to force its citizens to “volunteer” as part of a “National Civilian Security Force”, and you would also recognize how Orwellian it is to call such involuntary service “voluntary”.
You’d also know that conservatives are far more generous of their time and resources than liberals (that’s a fact, Jack!).
You are at liberty to volunteer or donate to whom ever you wish. However, if we were to tell you that it was compulsory to work as a “volunteer” foot soldier for the Bush Administration I’d expect you to revolt against this tyranny, and it would be right and proper for you to do so.
LMAO….
Well.. get used to Obama doing whatever the hell he wants to do. Zero accountability.
He has no right to a .gov domain name.
My great fear-
There are still a couple of Senate races not decided, Coleman, for example, and the more recounts and more time the DNC’s lawyers have, the better the chance that they can give it to Franken.
The GOP has only a couple of votes to spare on holding the filibuster on the most important toxins Pelosi and Obama will try to pass.
There are three major RINOs, Lindsay, although not as big a RINO as either of Maine’s two women senators.
Obama is rumored to be offering Homeland Security to Collins. If she goes, Governor Baldacci can fill her seat with a Democrat. The other Senator, Olympia Snowe, got into politics serving out her Republican husbands term in the state senate when he died, and has always been very unreliable. Either could decide they’d like a committee chair, and decide to caucus with the Democrats. Then you’d be in a situation that any one of the remaining RINOs, or at least Republican-Lite, like Graham, McCain or Specter can decide not to support a filibuster, and it is all over.
According to Senator Kyl, (On Hugh Hewitt) if the Republicans don’t have the number to block cloture, they can slow, but not stop, any Marxist legislation moving through the Senate, through procedural rules. Things like requesting bills being brought to the floor be read for the entire chamber. He says it will take legislation that could clear the Senate in 1 or 2 days, and make it take 2 or 3 days. But it can’t stop it.
Even with 41 votes to maintain a filibuster, there is the ‘nuclear option’ discussed when the Dems were filibustering Republican judges that could be used to end a filibuster without cloture.
From http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/i/filibuster.htm
The parties would be reversed, of course:
The Senate moves to vote on a controversial nominee (Ed- or legislation).
At least 41 Senators call for filibuster.
Majority Leader Frist raises a point of order, saying debate has gone on long enough and that a vote must be taken within a certain time frame. (Current Senate rules requires a cloture vote at this point.)
Vice President Cheney — acting as presiding officer — sustains the point of order.
A Democratic Senator appeals the decision.
A Republican Senator moves to table the motion on the floor (the appeal).
This vote – to table the appeal – is procedural and cannot be subjected to a filibuster; it requires only a majority vote (in case of a tie, the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote).
With debate ended, the Senate would vote on the nominee; this vote requires only a majority of those voting. The filibuster has effectively been closed with a majority vote instead of a three-fifths vote.
So, it is far from a certain deal that the Senate minority can do more than slow down Marxist poison being passed as law, especially if a Senator jumps caucus or accepts a position in the Obama administration and allows a Dem governor to fill her seat.
I find it extremely ironic, funny, sad, and downright frightening that while Obama campaigned on the slogan “change”, his entire staff will be made up of career politicians who were all former staff members of other democratic presidencies.
The american populace is stupid and was sold a bill of goods that only a few of us saw through. Change my a$$.
nyk makes readable posts, but…she’s never been one to care about the truth of things. She’s just like most other liberals. Good for me, but not for thee. If her party says the sky is purple, well…then it absolutely cant be blue anymore, can it?
These grapes just get more sour by the day. You’re as bad as the Gore-bots in 2000, and you don’t even had a Supreme Court ruling to complain about. I guess it really stings to have your collective @$$ handed to you by an unqalified, terrorist-palling SNOBody with no plan for anything except taking away all your toys and giving them to the poors.
I dug into the numbers a little further. This is what Chairman O’s proposals would cost:
- Expand Medicaid to cover 47 million uninsured Americans: ~$400 Billion (annually)
- Global Poverty Relief: $85 Billion
- Five Million “Green Jobs”: $500 Billion over five years
- Renewable Energy: $15 Billion (Annually)
- Tax Welfare: $85 Billion (Annually)
- Infrastructure Stimulus: $100 Billion (Annually)
- Universal Pre-K: $4 Billion Annually
- Other proposed Education spending: $6 billion annually
$795 billion in proposed new spending. And I didn’t even include everything. Throw in college tuition subsidies, bailouts for cities and states, and who knows what else… we could be looking at a trillion, easily.
Increasing taxes on the top 5% of wage earners might raise 189 billion (optimistically). Full scale retreat and withdrawal from Irag gets another $90 Billion… but Chairman O has promised to increase warfighting in Afghanistan, so call it $45 billion and split the difference.
Either way, that’s a hole of about $500 billion dollars. And no Obamunist yet has answered my challenge about how to pay for it.
And of course, Ann Coulter sums it up best;
As far as I am concerned, this new “community service” idea is a violation of the 13th amendment. If it does come to pass, I may do something I haven’t done since my “anti-war” days…join a protest. I thought I would never get involved in a protest again (I’m getting old here), but this…this…well, where’s my cardboard and ink? Time to go back to D.C. (as a conservative) and march down Connecticut Avenue. “No, No, we won’t go!!!”
I’m not an Obamunist, and I can’t give you an answer, but I can give you a hint: Robert Mugabe.
Gee, I guess there really is an Office of the Preseident-Elect. Check out the picture that is on Drudge: http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20081107/i/r2506297813.jpg
huggy bear, he isn’t just takin’ my toys, but yours, too. come back in 2 years and we’ll see what you feel about your O-Savior.
when you are paying your clinton tax rate (cause he’s gonna take away the bush tax cut and go back to clinton’s rates). i do not make a lot of money, but i was looking at those tax brackets and i am going to have an extra 200-300 a paycheck gone to the IRS. you go back to the tax books from 1999 and check your AGI for last year then check and see how much you owe the IRS in the tax bracket that relates to that AGI. It ain’t pretty! You are gonna be shocked. As for me, I have lived through Jimmy Carter; and, so I can make it through Obama no problem. But, we’ll see where you are in two years when you ‘dont’ see those dollars after taxes on your paycheck anymore!
I really don’t understand why nobody has labeled Obama as a fascist. Sure, he has been careful not to speak specifically about a “third” way, but it appears that he has modeled himself upon Mussolini. Look at most of his photos and he is striking a pose that is reminiscent of Il Duce with his chin in the air. He has the beginnings of his own Obama youth corps albeit he did not recruit them, but neither has he corrected those who did, he speaks about the need for change and service to the nation, but never tells us what specifically he is speaking about and now we have the proposed mandatory service requirements for our children and the militarization of volunteer service with all of his proposed “corps.”
What’s next, the Black Panthers as Obama’s Fascisti? They were present at some of the voting precincts during the election and they had armed themselves with nightsticks. Why did they feel the need to be present at all and why were the nightsticks necessary? Questions without answers and now he is inventing government offices and establishing URLs with a .gov domain. Obama and his people need to be watched very carefully lest we tread the same road as the Italians and Germans once did.
#169 Bite me. Not all women are feminists. Some of us actually are patriotic and can think for ourselves. I can now proudly call myself a PUMA. Presidental Unity My A$$.
MM and everyone, this thought came to me rather late today and I’ve either hit on something or I’m totally off.
I went to the census bureau website to gauge how many college students we have right now. The best I could find is a table for 2007 describing Educational Attainment for ages and educational levels.
In ages 18 to 24, both sexes, some college, no degree, I found 9,876,000 students. This seems to be the category closest to what I was looking for. It seems to cover students who are in college now but have not yet achieved a degree. I may be “close but no cigar” but it gave me a number to work with and this is what I did . . .
I rounded the number of students to 10,000,000 to simplify things. I assumed 2000 to be an estimated number of annual hours worked per person (8 hours per day times 5 days per week times 50 weeks per year — ok, I work in an office).
10 MILLION STUDENTS working 100 HOURS EACH is 1 BILLION HOURS TOTAL. 1 billion hours divided by 2000 hours in a work-year is 500 THOUSAND WORK-YEARS. All this in 1 (and presumably each) calendar year where this program is in effect.
Did I miss something? Even if my assumptions are off, these are big numbers. That’s a lot of effort with no compensation. From Obama’s point of view, it would be manna from heaven. If he believed in heaven.
I apologize if somebody else thought of this first and ran the numbers better than I did. What can I say? It just hit me.
No worries. Does anyone have any idea what “community service” is for criminal activity? From the people I spoken to over my years, it is mostly a sham.
Getting a kid to do homework or detention is hard enough, but having them do compulsory service that their parents dont even have approve for… hmmmm gotta see that in action.
One point I think everyone is missing here: Hopey-Changey can do whatever he wants. We can flail our arms, fax and email and write our representatives when he starts his power grab.
He has the military behind him. He has the guns.
I fear those of us who are smart enough to arm now will be the only ones who will have the ability to fight.
Don’t count out those current and past military servicemen who vow to protect the country and the constitution from all enemies, foreign and ‘domestic.’
It may sound paranoid, but I would not put anything past The Commander in Thief.
well he’s change the site a bit…too much pressure their dear leader…
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
This is just so creepy in so many ways.
What is The One doing? He’s (has been?) acting “presidential”.
Don’t cults work by “forcing” their members to work long hours and by depriving them of sleep?
By collecting email addresses, etc., is an army of followers being assembled to “blast” out warning messages to “uncooperative” senators and representatives when they “drag their feet” on supporting more controversial issues of the Obamessiah’s Administration? (Think the Free Choice (Abortion) Act and “card check” to name but a few.)
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Ignorance, our most costly commodity – paraphrased from Rush Limbaugh.