Congressional District Changes in Texas

As a result of the 2010 census, and the accompanying growth in population, Texas has gotten four extra Congressional districts (#33-#36).

Here's how Houston is changing:

Old Map

New Map

The Fast and the Furious

Botched sting? No way! No one is so stupid to sell guns to cartels to "track them."

Their goal was to "find the guns later" and then "show how they were getting them from the US." Gun control has little support in Congress. The only way that the leftist Obama regime could take away guns from law abiding citizens was to manufacture a crisis.

Rahm Emmanuel said "never let a crisis go to waste." Holder doubles down an manufactures the crisis to not let go to waste. Of course, it backfired on them and now a border agent is dead.

What did Holder and Napolitano know, and when did they know it?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration announced on Tuesday a major shake-up of the U.S. agency that botched an attempt to track weapons smuggled to drug cartels in Mexico after guns were allowed to flow freely over the border.

Kenneth Melson, who has been acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives since 2009, was reassigned after admitting mistakes in the sting operation meant to try to crack down on weapons reaching violent drug gangs from U.S. gun stores.

In further fallout from the operation, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, has resigned effective immediately after acknowledging mistakes in the operation. The lead prosecutor on the case, Emory Hurley, has also been reassigned, an Obama administration official said.

Another administration official said the shake-up at ATF was a chance for a "fresh start given everything they've gone through lately."
The sting operation, dubbed "Fast and Furious," has spawned congressional and internal Justice Department probes and put the Obama administration on the defensive about whether dangerous weapons were knowingly allowed to cross the border.

Authorities had hoped they would be able to follow the guns to cartel leaders, but ATF agents did not track the weapons after they were transferred from the initial buyer to others who smuggled them across the border. Some agents have testified that they were not allowed to continue the pursuit.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Melson both issued statements but steered clear of any comments about the controversy. Holder has referred the entire matter to the department's inspector general for an investigation.

Beyond Bias

BEYOND BIAS!




The Yahoo headline says "Bachmann: Hurricane is God's message to politicians", but the actual article indicates that she is clearly joking.

Someone reading the headline is not going to see that she is joking, and it portrays her as a "bible thumper".

I used to call this bias, but it is beyond bias. It is actively and intentionally trying to destort what a candidate says in order to harm that candidate. Yahoo should fall under the regulation of FEC, because they are clearly in Obama's pocket.
 
 

S&P Head Out - Timing and Replacement Quite Suspect

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- The president of Standard & Poor's is stepping down, an announcement coming only weeks after the rating agency's unprecedented move to strip the United States of its AAA credit rating.

 

The McGraw-Hill Cos., the parent of S&P, said late Monday that Deven Sharma will be replaced by Douglas Peterson, now the chief operating officer of Citibank N.A., Citigroup Inc.'s chief banking arm.

 

Sharma, 55, "was ready for new challenges" after helping S&P separate its data, pricing and analytics business from its ratings business, McGraw-Hill said in a statement. The company unveiled that restructuring at S&P late last year. Peterson, 53, will take over the helm of S&P starting Sept. 12.

 

 

 

Timeline:

• 2009-2011: Citigroup receives $476B in bailout money (the most of any bank)
• Aug 5, 2011: S&P downgrades US debt rating
• Aug 10: Obama investigates S&P (but not Moody's or Fitch)
• Aug 23: Head of S&P stepping down
• Sep 12: VP of Citigroup to be head of S&P

How independent do you think the S&P will be now? Wait for this headline:

• Nov 1, 2012: S&P upgrades US debt rating

Obama's Path to Economic Failure

I'm on the edge of my seat. Obama says he will unveiling a new economic plan.


Obama says his plan will:

1) Increase infrastructure spending
2) Reduce deficit even more than promised
3) Not raise taxes

How will he spend more (another "stimulus") and cut the deficit without raising taxes? Obamath is why we are in this mess.
If the Trillion Dollar stimulus failed the first time, how will it succeed the second time? Do we need to gamble another trillion dollars?


If Obama wants to help the economy, he should reverse everything he's done in the past few years. Obama policies are failures:


1. Obamacare hinders hiring. Companies dont' know what's fully in it, so they hesitate.
2. The National Labor Board will sue you if you open a plant in a right-to-work state (like it is doing to Boeing)
3. The EPA's policies are shutting down manufacturing and preventing new ones from opening due to many burdensome regulations.
4. Dodd-Frank bill hurts small businesses from getting loans.
5. The ban on oil drilling forced thousands out of work.
6. There is tax uncertainty beyond 2012, with Obama saying he wants to raise taxes (which will effect small businesses, not just millionares)
7. The stimulus did nothing but funnel money into slush funds, payback supporters, and hire more bureaucrats, but it left the country with a $1T in more debt to pay.
8. Obama's crony capitalism: government subsidizing certain industries gives those industries an unfair competitve advantage. Companies receiving your taxpayer dollars will funnel some back to Obama's reelection.

The Spin on China's Ugly One-Child Policy

So the one child policy is a "boon for girls", but 43 million girls have "disappeared" in China due to gender-selective abortions? How is massive prevalence of gender-selective abortions result in a news title that describes the policy as a good thing?

Of course, the bad stuff is buried at the bottom of the article, while the puff-piece on the one gender policy is at the top. That way the writer can say she is neutral, but knowing that most people only read the first couple of paragraphs.

To liberals, murder is okay so long as someone gets an IPad. Eugenics is "progress" for the liberals at the AP. This type of warped thinking would be akin to the AP saying in 1944 that Final Solution was great because it was lowering the cost of food due to reduced demand.

BEIJING (AP) — Tsinghua University freshman Mia Wang has confidence to spare.

Asked what her home city of Benxi in China's far northeastern tip is famous for, she flashes a cool smile and says: "Producing excellence. Like me." A Communist Youth League member at one of China's top science universities, she boasts enviable skills in calligraphy, piano, flute and pingpong.

Such gifted young women are increasingly common in China's cities and make up the most educated generation of women in Chinese history. Never have so many been in college or graduate school, and never has their ratio to male students been more balanced.

To thank for this, experts say, is three decades of steady Chinese economic growth, heavy government spending on education and a third, surprising, factor: the one-child policy.

...... (buried at the bottom of the article) ... With the arrival of sonogram technology in the 1980's, some families no longer merely hoped for a boy, they were able to engineer a male heir by terminating pregnancies when the fetus was a girl.

"It is gendercide," said Therese Hesketh, a University College London professor who has studied China's skewed sex ratio. "I don't understand why China doesn't just really penalize people who've had sex-selective abortions and the people who do them. The law exists but nobody enforces it."

To combat the problem, China allows families in rural areas, where son preference is strongest, to have a second child if their first is a girl. The government has also launched education campaigns promoting girls and gives cash subsidies to rural families with daughters.

Still, 43 million girls have "disappeared" in China due to gender-selective abortion as well as neglect and inadequate access to health care and nutrition, the United Nations estimated in a report last year.

Yin Yin Nwe, UNICEF's representative to China, puts it bluntly: The one-child policy brings many benefits for girls "but they have to be born first."

My take on satire: 

Yahoo/AP, 1943 Headline: FINAL SOLUTION BOON TO GERMANY

"Low food prices are abound in Germany thanks to the final solution that has eliminated many Jewish mouths to feed. With reduced demand, lower food prices were enjoyed by all of Germany. Wilhem Huebner has struggled to provide enough food for his family due to high prices. Often, little Heidi Huebner, 4, had gone hungry every night. However, ever since the final solution was implemented, prices have come down due to reduced demand. and little Heidi is hungry no more.........(several paragraphs down)... The decreased food prices come at a cost, says Michael von Faulhaber, and he further states that "several millions Jews have disappeared, never to be seen again. Inquiries into their location have been met with official silence." Still, for Heidi, that full stomach at night is a great feeling."

Scott Walker Leads the Way

Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, led the state to pass some modest reforms of public sector unions. Democrats and unions attacked hard. Walker (and the legislature) didn't back down. Democrats tried recall elections, but the Republicans survived.

This should be a lesson to all weak kneed Republicans who think by placating the left, it will make them more popular. John McCain found out in 2008 how quickly one could go from media darling for his opposition to Bush, to "Bush's Third Term."

WSJ - The larger lesson here is that you can attempt major, meaningful government reform and live to tell about it. Amid the winter brawling, some conservative fainthearts had joined the media in declaring that Mr. Walker had "exceeded his mandate" by taking on the monopoly bargaining power of public unions.


But unions would hardly loathe him any less had he and the GOP aimed lower, or blinked when the opposition got tough. With state government no longer automatically collecting dues for unions, many rank-and-file members will choose not to provide dues for political purposes. Union monopoly power will diminish. Taxpayers will benefit

.

Shooting the Debt Messengers

The Democrats and the media are now conspiring to kill the messengers:


Yesterday, the tea party was to blame
Today, its the S&P

The US won't default as it can always print money. But what good is a dollar if its purchasing power is halved through rapid inflation? If you buy a 10 year T-bill paying 3%, but inflation rises to 5% next year and every year afterwards, you will effectively get a negative return at the end of the 10 years.

Yahoo: Days after Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' credit rating, a powerful backlash has set in against the move. Washington leaders of both parties, as well as investors, have seemed to shrug off the ratings agency's verdict--and some analysts have even raised questions about S&P's basic competence and credibility.


On Friday, S&P lowered its rating for long-term debt issued by the U.S. Treasury by one notch, from Triple A--its highest rating--to AA+. Explaining the move, it said Washington hadn't done enough to reduce the long-term deficit, and expressed doubt about the ability of political leaders to work together to solve the problem.

Poll Pushing by the Times (shocked!)

Poll BIAS!!




Not mentioned in the article, but the poll overweighted Democrat respondents.

If you go and find the numbers of poll (link), which are not listed in the article.  the poll asked 960 people, of which 247 are Republicans, 321 Democrats, and 392 Indepedents.

Ignoring independents, there are 30% more Democrats asked than Republicans. With that type of polling, of couse the NY Times is getting the answer it wants.


Of course, the article itself is filled with bias. Regarding the underlined below, it is written to influence you to think the tea party is "outside the mainstream." Not mentioned is that spending is at unprecedented levels. The underlined could have also read: "without reining in unsustainable spending levels."
 

Yahoo : ...Not all the anger is necessarily aimed at Washington, however. Public perception of the tea party movement, which many see as the driving force that kept Republicans from voting to raising the debt ceiling without implementing unprecedented spending reductions, is at a record low. In a New York Times/CBS poll released Friday, 40 percent of respondents said they held an "unfavorable" view of the movement, up from 29 percent before the debt negotiations began in April, and higher than any number since pollsters started asking the question last year. One in five respondents said they approved of the tea party, down from 26 percent a few months ago.


Congress, as usual, fared the worst. The legislative branch almost never gets high marks from the public, but never before has it earned this level of disapproval. Eighty-two percent in the poll said they disapprove of how members of Congress are doing their jobs--the highest such rate since 1977, when the poll was first taken.

President Obama, on the other hand, was the only one to really escape the negotiation process without deeply damaging blows to his perception, the poll suggested. Almost half (48 percent) said they approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, a number that has remained stable since late 2009.

 

Government Raising the Cost of Healthcare

This move is designed to further increase the cost of insurance, in order to gain support for a complete government takeover of healthcare. You'll see more of this.

 

The left's plan is:

1. Burden the insurance industry with required coverage of unnecessary items.
2. Continue frivilous lawsuits which increase premiums (legal fees, awards, defensive medicine)
3. Complain about the rising cost of healthcare
4. Blame greedy insurance company executives,
5. Say that a government takeover is the only solution to control costs.

Back to liberals and their false advocacy of choice. (The only time they care about choice is when it comes to abortion). You now CANNOT get a plan that doesn't include birth control pills, but you are paying for it. Why do they want to take away choice from the consumer.

  

 

..WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says health insurance plans must cover birth control for women with no copays.

 

The requirement, affecting most insurance plans, is part of a broad expansion of women's preventive coverage. Breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual "well woman" physical, counseling on how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and other services will also be covered at no cost to the patient.

 

The new benefits won't take effect for at least another year, Jan. 1, 2013, in most cases. Insurers are expected to pass the cost on to their customers through slightly higher premiums.

 

The rules issued Monday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius include a provision that would allow religious institutions to opt out of offering birth control coverage.

 

 

 

..

Ron Paul on the Debt Debate

Well said:
The Hill: One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.
No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the "cuts" being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family "saving" $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.
The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith and credit of the United States is being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever, in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family's income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.
In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of "cuts" that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to "cut". It would only take us 5 years to "cut" $1 trillion, in Washington math, just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.
A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply returned to that year's spending levels, which would hardly be austere, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending, and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.
We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn't have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.
In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger "cut" than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.