The Source

Wasting Resources

The Obama Administration’s plan to fight the Taliban by fighting their drug production appears to be a practice in futility. Obama points at the poppy plant and its use for opium trade as the major resource for the Taliban’s cash flow. To address this, he has redirected a portion of the military effort to focus solely on the drug trade in Afghanistan.

Although this seems like a noble cause, it actually takes away from the more imminent threats in and around Afghanistan. Recent government statistics suggest that the Taliban receives at least as much from foreign donors as it does from opium sales. Close to 75% of its funding comes from legitimate business enterprises secretly owned by the group and from donations from foreign charitable foundations and individuals.

We need to focus our forces on the far graver problems occurring in and around Afghanistan. We need to discover the foundations and individuals aiding this terrorist group. We need to find out what businesses the Taliban owns and how they retrieve funds from them.

We cannot afford to waste resources on campaigns that will not directly help us win this war. It will be essential to take hold of the drug trafficking problem in Afghanistan once the war is over. Until then, let’s focus on discovering terrorists networks, protecting our American soldiers, and defeating the Taliban.

Broken Teleprompter could spell big problems for Obama....

While in Colorado addressing graduating Air Force cadets, one of Vice President Joe Biden’s Teleprompters fell over. Biden then joked, “What am I gonna tell the president when I tell him his Teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?”

That’s what we are wondering. What will Obama do? Obama can barely finish a speech without his signature two Teleprompters beside him. The last time it malfunctioned he fumbled his words until someone fixed it. He even depends on it for remarks on the stimulus package that he’s repeated for the past few months.

When the Irish Prime Minister visited two months ago, Obama stood up to the podium and read the Prime Minister’s remarks and inevitably thanked himself for inviting everyone over.

When former President George Bush made a mistake during a speech, every news station and newspaper had covered it. The media never hesitated to put up videos of Bush and calling him an idiot, but when Obama messes up, it appears as though it never happened.

See what happens to Obama when a Teleprompter goes out

Conflict Be Gone...

On May 8th, 2008 The Source questioned the conflict of interest that went unnoticed by our great Missouri Media (especially the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) concerning Russ Carnahan and his wife Debra’s connections to Planned Parenthood. Debra was a
national Planned Parenthood Board Member and Russ was busy putting the rubber stamp on Planned Parenthoods’ abortion on demand policies by racking up a 100% voting record and funneling hundreds of thousands of federal dollars towards their radical agenda. Of course, The Source was the only blog to question this arrangement.

Carnahan’s Conflicts of Interest Go Unquestioned

Now we have learned that Debra identifies herself as a past Planned Parenthood Board Member.

Past Board Member

Debra must read The Source, and finally decided that instead of unethically and potentially illegally lobbying her husband for federal dollars as a board member for Planned Parenthood (Russ has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood according to Project Vote Smart) that she would step-aside from her board position.

Maybe Debra and Russ read national political polls as well. As we all know, a majority of American’s are now pro-life. Russ and Debra must have taken a pass on the last Planned Parenthood cocktail hour and instead decided they would take a more behind the scenes approach on their abortion on demand advocacy.

Barack Obama’s Take on Capitalism

GM is an important industrial business that is vital to the American economy. During the recent economic woes, it has faced the possibility of bankruptcy. In order to save this ailing automaker, the Obama administration has invested over 20 billion taxpayer dollars into the company. Despite having close to a 70% stake in GM, the president vows that the government is not in the business of running the company.

Unfortunately, that has hardly been the case for GM. Rather than allowing those closest to the company put forth a plan for its reemergence, the government has been the guiding hand in GM’s decisions. From setting deadlines to firing top executives, the Obama administration has hardly stuck to their role as advisors. These are not the capitalist ideals that the Founders intended.

This is not to argue the merits of the GM bailout; it may have been the only act that saved the company. But the U.S. government has been involved with bailouts many times before this recent crisis without controlling the companies. We are wondering why the government is no longer focused on regulation but rather on direct interference. Government is supposed to support those it governs, not control them.

This is not the first time that important American industries have faced bankruptcy and it will not be the last. The GM intervention is a frightening change from hands off support from the government to direct control of the government. We hope this is not a trend subsequent governments repeat. If it is, the capitalist ideals that made this country great may disappear forever.

Stimulus money going to...dead people?

Well, the stimulus package money is being out to good use - it’s going to foreigners……….and dead people.

Romolo Romonini received his stimulus check in the mail recently. What a surprise for his daughter to open that up and realize it wasn’t for her, but instead for her father, who died in Italy in 1975. Or there is Rose Hagner, who died in 1967, but still received her portion of the stimulus package.

This is where our money is going? 10,000 checks that totaled millions of dollars were sent to people that had been dead for 50 years. Social Security claims that these checks were mistakenly sent out because they didn’t have record of these people’s deaths. Romolo Romonini left the United States for Italy in 1933, two years before Social Security was even enacted, so how was a check even sent to him?

How much more of our money is Obama’s faulty stimulus package going to waste? We could send it overseas, where it will really benefit Americans.

2.6 million dollars is headed to China to teach Chinese prostitutes how to drink less while working. 2.6 million dollars to fund a study researching why Chinese prostitutes have unprotected sex when drunk.

Or how about we spend $400,000 dollars for a study in Buenos Aires figuring out why gay men “engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk” and how we can fix it.

Here’s the answer: it’s because they’re drunk, tell them not to drink alcohol. We’re spending 3 million dollars for an answer most of us could figure out for nothing?

With the way our money is being spent, is the stimulus package really going to boost our economy?

Freedom From Scrutiny: Sotomayor's Supreme Court Nomination

Few would argue about the astounding life story of Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor. Similarly, her successes, both in the private and public sectors are impressive. Unfortunately, however, her nomination cannot be challenged based on her judicial and philosophical merits. Those who oppose her nomination cannot question her interpretation of the constitution.

Sotomayor is a Hispanic female. Based on those attributes, any skepticism or challenge to her nomination will immediately be labeled as an attack on both women and the Hispanic population as a whole. Despite the fact that she believes that the court is where policy should be made, her belief in the judicial system cannot be questioned.

Let us know when we can return to the time when our Supreme Court Justices are chosen based on their interpretation of the constitution. Let us know when we stop considering the ‘historic significance’ in selecting those that lead our nation. Let us know when we can get back to selecting the right person based solely on job at hand.

For Better or Worse, Biden Was Right

Early on in the presidential campaign, Obama was justifiably challenged on his ability to handle an international crisis. The media and the republicans used his lack of experience as a major attacking point during the election. Even his vice president, Joe Biden, guaranteed that Obama would be challenged: “Mark my words. It will not be more than six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking on.”

As recent events in Iran and North Korea suggest, Biden was absolutely correct. Obama’s ability to handle an international crisis is being tested. Now we’ll find out if his campaign platform of ‘diplomacy over military intimidation’ can succeed.

Before Obama’s election, he argued that the lack of bi-lateral negotiations between the U.S. and places such as Iran and North Korea gave the U.S. no leverage over an explosive situation. Now we shall see if Obama can interact in bi-lateral talks with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il in order to end their advancing efforts of nuclear proliferation.

Thus far, it seems unlikely that Obama can follow through with his campaign promises. Despite his partiality to bi-lateral diplomacy, he has already made the impotent steps of asking for the UN, rather than the U.S., to respond to these growing threats. North Korea and Iran are unlikely to alter their course of action if the Obama administration continues with their policies of appeasement.

If it took Obama and his administration almost a week to decide to take out a ragtag group of Somali pirates in order to save American lives, what kind of response can we expect for this far more potent and grave threat? Now we find out if he can take a stand to protect America or if he is only concerned with pleasing the international community. For better or worse, Biden was right and we shall soon discover Obama’s stance American safety.

Neutral Pick?

A 2005 video of Supreme Court Justice Nominee Sonia Sotomayor recently surfaced saying “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”

Obama claims Sotomayor will “interpret the law, not advocate from the bench.” Based on that quote, obviously she doesn’t feel that way.

What kind of person are we appointing? Sotomayor has also been quoted as saying “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” which completely dismisses Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s notion that that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.

Okay, so I thought we were supposed to look past race, ethnicity and gender when making these types of decisions. I thought the law was supposed to be applied, not race or gender. A white male making a statement saying something like that would be blasted by the media as racist and sexist.

Seems to me Sotomayor will not be neutral pick, but instead favor certain groups over others.

Obama Scared of Cheney?

Cheney’s speech last night was delayed for 48 minutes last night due to President Obama’s extremely mature decision to hold off on his speech until the exact time Cheney was starting his.

Obama must be scared by what Cheney had to say by trying to schedule and steal all of the media coverage for a speech on the same night and time on the same issues right after Cheney scheduled his. Obama must have known that Cheney was going to be addressing some issues that would further the growing concern on his policies for him to have rebut them before they were even said.

Obama even introduced his defense secretary Robert Gates as William Gates. A little nervous maybe?

After all of the hoopla in Obama’s speech about waterboarding, Cheney confirmed in his that only three people were waterboarded, and one was the mastermind behind 9/11, who also bragged that he beheaded Daniel Pearl. These men had crucial information about possible future attacks that we needed to know. Does Obama not think that’s important? And where are the documents detailing what attacks we DID avert using those tactics? OH WAIT! Cheney addressed that too, Obama DIDN’T RELEASE THEM.

Cheney said, “Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.”

Wow. If we are going to release some of the information, why not all of it? Maybe because after the public got a hold of that information, Obama’s carefully crafted attack on the Bush administration would crumble.

Dem's Leftover Takes Over as ED...

Congratulations Missouri Democratic Party! We never thought we’d say it.

We are very excited by their latest pick to be Executive Director, Brian Zuzenak.

Since he was rejected from the Nixon administration, they had to put him somewhere. The Nixon Administration is so easy to work for even Kansas City Star reporters got jobs there; Zuzebak worked for a Missouri politician and was completely discarded by them. How ironic that they put a man in charge of the Democratic Party when he’s lost every race he’s ever worked on.

After only seeing defeat in Missouri, he worked in Nashville for five years, during which the Democratic Party lost the majority of the House and Senate for the first time in 140 years.

Just as the Titanic was headed towards the iceberg, he jumped ship in time to return to Missouri and run Judy Baker’s race for Congress, an awful campaign in a swing district in the best year for democrats since Watergate.

Even with outside groups giving Baker two times more money than Luetkemeyer, he still couldn’t pull out a win.

Since he can’t manage a win with all the pieces lying out in front of him, his pathetic attempts to build up the collapsing Democratic Party in Missouri can only make them worse off.

We look forward to Brian’s year and a half here before he moves on to another state to wreck their electoral fortunes.

For Republicans, this looks like a good pick.