AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
Article II
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Section 1.
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No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
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Born in the U.S.A.
August 21, 2008
Updated: November 1, 2008
The truth about Obama's birth certificate.
Summary
In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Update, Nov. 1: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu.

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2010-2014 2010-2019

SPIN METER: Saving federal money the easy way
SPIN METER: Obama's latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime's worth of difference
Andrew Taylor and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writers
Monday April 20, 2009, 6:30 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.

Obama made his push for frugality the subject of his first Cabinet meeting, ensuring it would command the capital's attention. It also set off outbursts of mental math and scribbled calculations as political friend and foe tried to figure out its impact.

The bottom line: Not much.

The president gave his Cabinet 90 days to find $100 million in savings to achieve over time.

For all the trumpeting, the effort raised questions about why Obama set the bar so low, considering that $100 million amounts to:

--Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.

--4 percent of the military aid the United States sends to Israel.

--Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.

--7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

--1/10,000th of the government's operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Obama only asked his Cabinet secretaries to identify waste in their annual operating budgets, which total a little over $1 trillion. He's leaving out war costs, the economic stimulus measure, the Wall Street bailout and benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.

THE SPIN:

"He will challenge his Cabinet to cut a collective $100 million in the next 90 days," said a White House news release. "Agencies will be required to report back with their savings at the end of 90 days."

"I'm asking for all of them to identify at least $100 million in additional cuts to their administrative budgets," Obama told reporters afterward. "None of these things alone are going to make a difference, but cumulatively, they would make an extraordinary difference because they start setting a tone."

THE FULLER STORY:

Obama's marching orders to the Cabinet on Monday were less than meets the eye. Many of the savings he asked them to achieve are already under way and are included in the calculation.

To be sure, this is an extra effort, on top of an agency-by-agency review of programs and proposed multibillion-dollar cuts in weapons programs. But it is decidedly marginal.

"It's always a good sign when the president is talking about savings," said Marc Goldwein, policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that advocates fiscal discipline.

"It's valuable as a symbol," he said, "but $100 million is just not going to cut it."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs defended the $100 million target, saying it's not the full extent of Obama's cost-cutting efforts. He called it "a short-term goal ... to identify further administrative savings" and added: "$100 million may not be a lot to people in this town, but I think it's a lot to people who live in this country."

Republicans were quick to point out that borrowing costs for February's stimulus package will on average cost almost $100 million a day over the next decade.

In large measure, the examples of economizing given by the White House were of the painless, seemingly commonsensical variety. They were not the program cuts that people feel and that budget-watchers say are essential to make a meaningful difference in the exploding deficit.

Some of them will take many years to play out.

The Agriculture Department, for one, will move 1,500 employees from seven leased locations into one place in early 2011, saving $62 million over 15 years.

Some are hard to quantify.

Will buying multipurpose office equipment, such as a combined copier, printer, fax and scanner all in a single unit instead of separate units, really save the Homeland Security Department $2 million a year over five years?

Some are microscopic. The White House estimates savings of tens of thousands of dollars from freeing up warehouse space stashed with obsolete equipment that had been used by a federal entity few people have heard of, the Bureau of Information Resource Management.

And some raise eyebrows at wasteful practices of the former administration.

The White House says Homeland Security, the third largest federal department, has not been buying most of its $100 million a year in office supplies in bulk.

The administration thinks it can save $52 million over five years with bulk-buying bargains at the department.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SPIN-METER-Saving-federal-apf-14976290.html?.v=1

Seems like it wasn't more than a few weeks ago that the Obama disciples were defending his breaking his promise to eliminate earmarks.

Now, yesterday Congress sent me the final part of last year's budget; a piece of legislation that rolls nine bills required to keep the government running into one, a piece of legislation that addresses the immediate concerns of the American people by making needed investments in line with our urgent national priorities.

That's what nearly 99 percent of this legislation does -- the nearly 99 percent that you probably haven't heard much about.

What you likely have heard about is that this bill does include earmarks. Now, let me be clear: Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts, and that's why I've opposed their outright elimination. And I also find it ironic that some of those who rail most loudly against this bill because of earmarks actually inserted earmarks of their own -- and will tout them in their own states and their own districts.

But the fact is that on occasion, earmarks have been used as a vehicle for waste, and fraud, and abuse. Projects have been inserted at the 11th hour, without review, and sometimes without merit, in order to satisfy the political or personal agendas of a given legislator, rather than the public interest. There are times where earmarks may be good on their own, but in the context of a tight budget might not be our highest priority. So these practices hit their peak in the middle of this decade, when the number of earmarks had ballooned to more than 16,000, and played a part in a series of corruption cases.

In 2007, the new Democratic leadership in Congress began to address these abuses with a series of reforms that I was proud to have helped to write. We eliminated anonymous earmarks and created new measures of transparency in the process, so Americans can better follow how their tax dollars are being spent. These measures were combined with the most sweeping ethics reforms since Watergate. We banned gifts and meals and made sure that lobbyists have to disclose who they're raising campaign money from, and who in Congress they send it to. So we've made progress. But let's face it, we have to do more.

I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it's necessary for the ongoing functions of government, and we have a lot more work to do. We can't have Congress bogged down at this critical juncture in our economic recovery. But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change.

"I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it's necessary for the ongoing functions of government, and we have a lot more work to do. We can't have Congress bogged down at this critical juncture in our economic recovery. But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change."

Yes the omnibus bill was necessary, but where was ANY effort on his part to ask Congress to remove the 'unnecessary' and 'most offensive' spending initiatives in it? He admitted that they added on a lot of 11th hour stuff before they passed it.

Earmarks, individual appropriation items slipped into spending bills by members of Congress " usually without debate or oversight " have been the subject of corruption scandals over the years and debate regarding fiscal responsibility. The bill signed into law by President Obama contains 8,570 earmarks estimated to cost $7.7 billion, according to the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

In his remarks, Obama said that, “Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts, and that’s why I’ve opposed their outright elimination.

“But the fact is that, on occasion, earmarks have been used as a vehicle for waste and fraud and abuse,” he said. “Projects have been inserted at the 11th hour, without review, and sometimes without merit, in order to satisfy the political or personal agendas of a given legislator, rather than the public interest.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/Public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=44902

But the fact is that on occasion, earmarks have been used as a vehicle for waste, and fraud, and abuse. Projects have been inserted at the 11th hour, without review, and sometimes without merit, in order to satisfy the political or personal agendas of a given legislator, rather than the public interest. There are times where earmarks may be good on their own, but in the context of a tight budget might not be our highest priority. So these practices hit their peak in the middle of this decade, when the number of earmarks had ballooned to more than 16,000, and played a part in a series of corruption cases.

Yes the omnibus bill was necessary, but where was ANY effort on his part to ask Congress to remove the 'unnecessary' and 'most offensive' spending initiatives in it? He admitted that they added on a lot of 11th hour stuff before they passed it.

You can weasel around it by saying his remarks weren't specifically addressing THAT bill, but it was THAT bill he was talking about when he made the remarks.

You're entitled to a different opinion

For this president to act as a moral authority on wasteful spending is akin to a Sumo wrestler acting as an expert on dieting.