The chairman of First Solar, a company that received approximately $3.1 billion in federal loan guarantees under President Obama’s green energy initiative, said Wednesday that the majority of the jobs created by the company have been overseas.
Speaking at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, First Solar chairman Michael Ahearn admitted that most of the company’s full-time jobs are held overseas.
“In sheer numbers, most of our full-time employees are outside the U.S,” Ahearns said.
In stark contrast to prior Obama administration statements, Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez told The Daily Caller that he and the National Council of La Raza were deeply involved in the crafting and implementation of a controversial Obama administration memo that many conservatives believe amounts to a policy of amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
President Obama, Gutierrez said, told him in December 2010 that comprehensive immigration reform could not be achieved legislatively because of fears Democrats would lose future elections. Instead, he said, the president suggested exploring administrative options to accomplish their mutual goals. [...]
Gutierrez, speaking exclusively with The Daily Caller following that event, said Obama’s declaration motivated him to draft a plan of action for the White House.
“I begin to write a ‘prosecutorial discretion’ memorandum,” Gutierrez said. “We take that prosecutorial discretion memorandum and take it to the White House. We meet with Bill Daley. Then we take it to the president.”
Barack Obama is the worst jobs president since the Great Depression and does not intend to change his position anytime soon…
The Obama Administration is set to pass new rules and regulations to limit the fracking industry, slow production, and kill jobs. MyFOXNY reported, via Free Republic:
The Obama administration will soon issue sweeping new environmental safety rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land, setting a new standard that natural gas wells on all lands eventually could follow.
The rules, which are likely to be unveiled by the Interior Department within days, are designed to address concerns that the method of extracting natural gas known as “fracking” can contaminate groundwater. Among other things, they create new guidelines for constructing wells and treating waste water, according to a draft of the proposed rules reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
At the same time, the department loosened a proposed requirement for companies to disclose the chemicals they use to extract natural gas from the earth, after the industry complained an earlier version would slow drilling too much.
The change, which disappointed environmentalists, is a fresh sign that the administration is heeding industry concerns after Republican complaints of over-regulation.
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the industry two years to comply with new air quality standards for oil and natural gas wells after the industry complained it would be difficult to meet new standards. Initially, the department wanted energy companies to specify in advance which chemicals they put into fracking fluids.
Under the draft rules, they would instead have to identify the chemicals after they have already put them into the ground. In the weeks leading up to the proposal of the rules, several oil and natural gas companies, including Exxon Mobil and Apache Corp. met with top White House officials to weigh in on possible changes.
Apache declined to comment. ExxonMobil declined to comment.
The Natural Resources Defense Council praised the administration for reducing the potential for contamination under the new rules but said it was disappointed the department had loosened the chemical disclosure requirement.
LAREDO – Testimony taken from open court suggests Mexican drug cartels are setting up training camps on both sides of our border.
Five days of testimony in the trial of alleged hitman Gerardo Castillo Chavez offered a rare glimpse into cartel operations. Sworn witnesses admitted to knowing of Zeta training camps in Mexico and the United States.
“On both sides of the border, you have these large ranches; we’ve known for years the criminal organizations will buy these ranches so they can pass contraband or use them as staging training places,” says Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for geo-political intelligence-based agency STRATFOR. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some training here,” says Stewart.
He’s seen videos shot by the Mexican military. A remote ranch just a 90-minute drive from the Valley served as staging and training grounds for the cartel. “Some of them are quite large. Often they locate them in ranches that they’ll purchase or squat on and drive off the legitimate owners,” says Stewart. Stewart admits it isn’t as easy to get away with operating a training camp on this side of the border. “They have to be more careful operating in the U.S. because of law enforcement,” says Stewart. He says the possibility exists. Testimony also suggests the cartel uses paintball guns for training. It’s very similar to what law enforcement uses on this side of the border.
Don’t freak out. But the Russian and Chinese militaries just joined forces — at least for a week, for a major exercise at sea. At least two dozen warships from both nations spent the last week conducting anti-piracy and “joint escort” operations, search and rescue and “firing hundreds of shells at surface, underwater and air targets,” according to local press reports.
The cooperation between Russia and China’s sailors could be a foreboding sign for the U.S. Navy, which is turning its sights to the Pacific. Or it could be a relatively isolated event — a very temporary alliance between two second-tier powers that still have all sorts of reasons to mistrust one another. And that’s if the ships are even capable of holding up over the stress of prolonged exposure at sea.
The exercise, variously named Naval Interaction or Maritime Cooperation 2012, took place in the Yellow Sea near the eastern Chinese coastal city of Qindao. On the Chinese side: two submarines and 16 surface warships, among them destroyers like the DDG-112 Harbin and five frigates like theChzhoushan and Suyzhow, among auxiliary and support vessels. On the Russian side: the Pacific Fleet flagship cruiser Varyag (not to be confused with a defenseless ex-Russian aircraft carrier that was sold to China and renamed the Shi Lang) along with destroyers Admiral Vinogradov, Marshal Shaposhnikovand the Admiral Tributs.
That’s a considerable amount of firepower. But it’s peanuts compared to the 2005 “Peace Mission” exercise — the first time Russia and China ever held a joint military exercise at sea. That one included five times as many ships, plus scary force-projecting amphibious assault operations. This exercise involves more anti-submarine operations, which are notable on their own, particularly for the U.S. Navy. But it’s difficult to compare the two.
“To date China has not used its navy the way we think of it,” Jim Holmes, an associate professor of strategy at the Navy War College, tells Danger Room. “In a sense the U.S. Navy is at sea, and at war, all the time. The only real difference between wartime and peacetime conditions is whether live or exercise rounds come out of the barrel when we fire our weapons during exercises.”
China is different. Sure, they’ve built a whole slew of new “ship-killer” missile boats and diesel-powered submarines. But there’s a big difference between building a Navy — and using it. “If China wants to be a serious naval power,” Holmes adds, “it has to take ships to sea, both to test out its shiny new hardware and to let PLA Navy mariners hone their skills and build up some esprit de corps.”
What’s undeniable are the short-term and provocative political implications. The exercises also take place with heightened anxiety over a North Korea rocket test — which dunked into the Yellow Sea earlier this month — and a possible impending nuclear test. Joint U.S. and South Korean exercises, and the U.S. sending the George Washington into that same Yellow Sea, raised hackles in Beijing. Now these joint operations might be tit-for-tat.
“This exercise is a political message,” e-mails Abe Denmark, with the National Bureau of Asian Research. “China in recent years has expressed disapproval of [U.S.-South Korean] joint exercises in the Yellow Sea, especially those that involve an aircraft carrier. Chinese officials object to the proximity of American air and naval power to their economic and political centers, and want to make the case (especially to Seoul) that these exercises are uncomfortable when they’re just off your shores.”
Of course, these are shores that the U.S. Navy wants to spend more time around. The President and the Pentagon have declared that American forces are pivoting to the Pacific, in part to counter a rising China. That job could get a lot tougher, if Beijing and Moscow start to collaborate more often.
For the moment, though, that doesn’t seem to be happening. “In political terms, I don’t see this exercise as a harbinger of things to come in the Western Pacific,” says Holmes. “It’s a lot easier to list things keeping Beijing and Moscow apart than it is to list things tending to unite them in some sort of seagoing entente or alliance.”
His approval rating is in the toilet. His re-elect numbers are abysmal for an incumbent President at this point in his term. He has stated that he is giving up on white, working class Americans. The economy, regardless of how he tries to talk it up, is lethargic at best. His “foreign policy” consists of repeating the line “ (fill in name of country) is one of our best allies and punches above its weight.” Independents are deserting him in droves. Obamacare is still unpopular and his numbers will fall even farther after it is declared unconstitutional.
Of course the Obama attack machine (campaign and left wing media) will immediately go to town after the Supreme Court announces its decision and try to whip up the base with frightening rants about the end of Roe v Wade being just one vote away. Even if this ploy works, independents will not be pulled over to his side in big enough numbers to stop the slide. The Catholic Church has taken off the gloves over BO’s attempt to force them to provide insurance that includes coverage for abortion inducing drugs. They are attacking him from the pulpit and with a television commercial that is as hard hitting as anything produced by James Carville.
Romney (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)
Romney can capitalize on this and hopefully remember that the election is about one thing and one thing only – Obama. He can fashion a campaign to remind Americans of BO’s Operation Fast and Furious, the policy of selling automatic weapons to the Mexican drug cartels. Romney can play the President’s laudatory comments about the Occupy Movement while showing its members defecating on police cars.
Oh yeah, Romney can also show the clip of Leon Panetta telling Congress that the administration doesn’t think it needs to ask for Congressional approval to send troops into conflict – just that of the United Nations and/or NATO.
Hopefully BO’s completely unconstitutional, unilateral declaration of amnesty for millions of illegal aliens will be, at least referenced in the campaign, although I doubt if Romney or the RNC has the guts to play this one out. And if all this isn’t enough, a Super Pac could just keep showing Obama, when he thought his mike was cold, lean over to Dimitry Medvedev, a Russian politician, and explain that after the election he will be more “flexible.” Medvedev then promises to deliver that message to Putin, the former head of the KGB.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP (Obama pleads with Russian president Medvedev for space in reelection bid)
Now you might ask, doesn’t the headline of this article indicate it is about how Obama can win the election? I have indeed, painted a pretty gloomy picture of his re-elect possibilities and we can all pray that a majority of Americans still have the ability to smell a rat when the odor is so strong. However, we must remember that it doesn’t matter what a majority of Americans think when it comes to presidential elections.
These elections are uniquely determined by the votes of the Electoral College. All anyone needs to become President of the United States is to collect 270 electoral votes. Just ask George Bush who became President although he was 500,000 popular votes behind Al Gore. Of course you could also ask John Kerry. He knows that if a mere 60,000 votes had switched in Ohio; he would have been President even though Bush was ahead of him by almost four million popular votes!
So with this in mind, the Obama “Justice” department is working overtime to aid voter fraud everywhere possible. They are suing states that have passed voter id laws because the President’s re-elect strategy is based on winning those deep blue states and enough “battle ground” states to get to 270. His campaign believes that he has 196 electoral votes from 16 reliably blue states. There are 13 swing states and if he takes just five – Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida he wins. That’s why the push is on to get as many illegal alien and phantom votes tallied in the big cities in those swing states. These cities are usually Democrat strongholds with large immigrant and welfare recipient populations. They are the folks BO’s team is counting on to tip the balance and deliver their state’s electoral votes to Obama.
Then, we will all be able to watch in horror at just how “flexible” our unconstrained dictator-in-chief will be in his second term. Then he will be able to finish work on the pledge he made when he leaned over to a Russian politician to “thoroughly transform America.”
And suddenly this morning’s Weekly Address calling on the GOP to lower interest rates for student loans becomes twice the crock of fish than at first sight.
(Information Week) — Despite President Obama’s recent call for companies to “insource” jobs sent overseas, it turns out that the federal government itself is spending millions of dollars to train foreign students for employment in some booming career fields — including working in offshore call centers that serve U.S. businesses.
The program is called JEEP, which stands for Job Enabling English Proficiency. It’s available to college students in the Philippines through USAID. That’s the same agency that until a couple of years ago was spending millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to train offshore IT workers in Sri Lanka — until I reported that inconvenient truth in this story. The ensuing uproar led to the Sri Lanka initiative’s termination.
A JEEP document published by USAID notes that the program “is classroom based, and focuses on the specialized English skills required by employers in areas such as: nursing and allied healthcare; maritime services; travel and tourism services; business process outsourcing (BPO), and other areas of international employment.” Students — there are about 23,000 in the Philippines currently enrolled — commit to undertake 400 hours of training during two years of study.
It’s the BPO (another name for call center operations) part of the curriculum that’s troubling for U.S. offshoring opponents. When I informed Congressman Tim Bishop (D-New York) about the program on Tuesday, he called it “surprising and distressing.” Bishop, who was instrumental in getting USAID to end its Sri Lanka program, recently introduced a bill that would make companies that outsource call centers ineligible for government contracts.
The U.S. “has lost five hundred thousand call center jobs in the last five years,” Bishop noted during a phone interview.
Talk about a “War on Women”: this past week, the White House welcomed members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist organization whose Freedom and Justice Party won the largest number of seats in that country’s parliamentary elections and which may take the Egyptian presidency as well.
The Brotherhood remains staunchly anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Christian, anti-Jew — and anti-woman. In an interview posted today by Kerry Picket of the Washington Times, a member of the Brotherhood’s delegation confirmed that sharia, or Islamic law, would guide all lawmaking in Egypt under his party’s rule.
Since its origins in Egypt in the 1950, the Muslim Brotherhood has established branches throughout the Middle East, and contacts in the West as well. It has carried out and supported countless acts of terror and murder, and spread the radical Islamist ideology that sustains public support for terrorism.
Al Qaeda itself was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and its leaders. The current leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, began his terrorist career in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood. There are alarming connections between the party taking over in Egypt and the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
Yet President Barack Obama has decided that the United States should “engage” the Brotherhood, apparently believing that doing so will deter the Brotherhood from its radical course, and grant the United States a voice in the new Egyptian government–as it once had in the dictatorial regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, the man Obama abandoned during the so-called Arab Spring. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision; Obama was always pro-Muslim Brotherhood, going out of his way in February 2009 to finagle invitations for them to his Cairo speech.
Obama clearly has a soft spot for the Brotherhood. When Iranians took to the streets in 2009 and nearly overthrew their government, President Obama remained on the sidelines, effectively protecting the regime. When it came to the Muslim Brotherhood, however, the Obama administration didn’t hesitate in intervening in Egypt’s internal power struggle, even though there is no sign that American intervention would be any more popular in Egypt than it is in Iran.
Today, President Obama addressed a women’s forum at the White House; later this month, he will convene a “National Women’s Issues Conference” — all an attempt to distract from his economic failures, and retain wavering supporters through a divide-and-rule strategy that he hopes will carry him through the November election.
Obama and the Democrats have fabricated a Republican “war on women” — an incredible and effective political reversal, considering Obama’s own attempt to force religious institutions to provide abortion drugs and contraceptives to employees. However, Obama has made no mention of the actual war on women waged every day and night by the Brotherhood.
The Obama administration does not need to “engage” the Brotherhood. It has other means of influence — not least of which is the generous foreign aid Egypt receives from the U.S. each year.
But President Obama’s foreign policy seems driven by the desire to be loved by America’s rivals in the Islamic world and elsewhere. This is doomed to fail — and worse, to harm American interests in egregious fashion. As Machiavelli once observed, it “is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.” Appeasement has a long and ignominious history of catastrophe.
The Brotherhood has projected a pragmatic image, both to Egyptians and the outside world, as it has cunningly taken advantage of Egypt’s post-Mubarak transition. Yet it ultimately responds to a religious hierarchy and a core constituency that is willing to sacrifice foreign alliances and bread-and-butter concerns to ideological priorities.
In the 2008 election, Gov. Sarah Palin was attacked repeatedly by the left and the mainstream media for accusing Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” It turns out that Palin’s description was, if anything, understating the case — Obama doesn’t only pal around with terrorists, he actively supports them in an attempt to exalt himself and humble the United States.
Trevor Loudon, author of Barrack Obama and the Enemies Within, is the foremost researcher of the Progressive Movement, a broad group of anti-capitalists that includes Democrats, Republican Moderates, Socialists, Communists, “Peace” Activists, the Religious Left, most organized Labor and Envrionmentalists. His research has formed the basis for explosive news stories about America’s radical Left and has been cited extensively in books and articles by Aaron Klein, Brannon Howse, Jerome Corsi and many others. Trevor’s diligent efforts have also provided the background material for many of Glenn Beck’s ground breaking TV and radio exposés.
Trevor Loudon, who was first in exposing the Obama administration’s “Green Jobs Czar,”, Van Jones, as a self-described communist, leading to Jones’s expulsion from the White House. It was Trevor who first discovered that the “Frank” mentioned in Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father was in fact the Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis. It was Trevor who exposed Obama’s early membership in the New Party, a communist spin-off group. Trevor has so many “firsts” they are impossible to list
Spanning over twenty-five years, Trevor has researched the Progressive movement like few others, reading mind-numbing treatises and out-of-print journals, examining the Left’s own reporting on its many conferences, seminars and organized celebrations, and traveling the nation to unknown libraries erected by the Left to celebrate its obscure heroes. His articles provide a treasure trove of information unavailable anywhere else. He is an unsung her0 for the cause of American freedom.
Via: James Sampson’s foreword in Barack Obama and the Enemies Within.
Trevor Loudon spoke in Golden, Colorado last Friday, March 16, in front of 200 patriots to promote his book and give a wonderful presentation of the many ties to anti-capitalists that includes Democrats, Republican moderates, Socialists, Communists, “Peace” Activists, the Religious Left, most organized Labor and Environmentalists in the White House.
Nov 29, 2011- 5:04 - Former Rep. Tom Tancredo on the importance of border security and how the candidates will approach the issue.
BASHIR: STOP GINGRICH’S FOOD STAMP RHETORIC BEFORE SOMEONE GETS KILLED
MSNBC host Martin Bashir rarely misses an opportunity to dramatize and string-together current Republican happenings with obscure incidents from the past. Example. On Friday Bashir made the arguably far-fetched comparison linking the murder of a black British teenager in 1993 to Newt Gingrich calling President Obama “the most effective food stamp president in American history.”
Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo discusses the extent of the investigation into the Department of Justice.
Recent Comments