November 5, 2012

NEWSMAX

Obama Campaigns with Celebs as Sandy Devastation Continues
by Newsmax Wires
November 4, 2012

As President Obama closes out his presidential campaign on Monday with stops featuring A-List celebrities like rapper Jay-Z and rocker Bruce Springsteen, many of the victims of Hurricane Sandy are still waiting for federal, state and local assistance.

Almost a week after Superstorm Sandy pummeled New York and New Jersey, scenes of increased desperation — residents wielding bows and arrows against possible looters, tempers flaring in long gasoline lines, and impassioned pleas to officials for help — are highlighting what has become an uneven recovery from the storm.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, President Obama flew to assess the situation with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

But with over 2 million New Jerseyans and New Yorkers still without power, gas lines snaking for miles and as many as 40,000 people displaced from their homes -- some are seeing Obama's visit as nothing more than a photo op.

While power has been restored to many parts of New York City and most subway lines are up and running again, there is a palpable void in the New York/New Jersey region between those in need of help and those whose lives are returning to normal.

“I’m still waiting for the guard, FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, Red Cross to set up shop in Rockaway and start helping people back to a life. I’m not seeing it,” Brian Kelly, a retired FDNY firefighter from Belle Harbor, Queens, told the New York Daily News.

“Listen, I was a firefighter,” he told the paper. “I know relief doesn’t happen overnight. But we’re four days out now. I’m staying with relatives in Staten Island. I drive back to Rockaway every day because I’m afraid of my house getting robbed. In that time I haven’t seen any help in Rockaway. There are some city cops. I saw just two city garbage trucks. I saw the National Guard drive by a few times.”

Some critics allege that federal and state authorities failed to pre-position resources and rescue teams before the Hurricane came ashore.

Now, many are without shelter and electricity -- and it's getting cold, very cold.

Temperatures are plunging into the 30s overnight as some 700,000 homes and businesses in New York City, its northern suburbs and Long Island still lack electricity six days after the storm.

As a result, many homes are becoming uninhabitable, leaving tens of thousands without a place to stay.

On Staten Island, destruction and devastation were visible everywhere.

Out of the 41 deaths in New York City for Hurricane Sandy, 22 of them were on Staten Island.

Federal and local authorities have been slow to respond to New York's "forgotten borough."

Read more: http://goo.gl/ubQZz

AMERICAN THINKER
Obama: A Man Without a Conscience
by Daren Jonescu
November 5, 2012

For a long time, intrepid critics of Barack Obama have described him, accurately, as a pathological liar. The Benghazi affair must force even the most circumspect among us to recognize that the problem is even more serious: the president of the United States has no conscience.

Most men do bad things during their lives. But most men know when they are doing a bad thing, and, more importantly, they feel bad about it. This is why, for most of us, bad behavior has its limits. There is a point beyond which we simply will not go, even for a greatly desired advantage. Our minds will not let us do it. We say things like "I couldn't live with myself if I did that."

This principle seems to extend very far down through the depths of human weakness, even to the actions of criminals. A "crime of passion" is so named in part because we presume that the criminal, had he not been momentarily overruled by a violent emotion, would have stopped himself short of committing the crime. This conception also implies that once the violent emotion has passed, the criminal will feel remorse, and probably also shame.

If a sane man lacks this capacity for stopping or rebuking himself -- not merely in a moment of extreme passion, but in calm moments, in long-anticipated situations, or in prepared statements -- then we say he has no conscience. Barack Obama has long been a candidate for inclusion in the category of the conscienceless. Benghazi seals his fate.

Have you ever told a lie? I do not mean a "white lie," of course, which is usually intended not to harm others, but to bring about a long-term good. I mean a lie to advance yourself in a context in which your falsehood could hurt another person. Children and young adults are prone to such acts, because their still-developing character, or their fear of failure, sometimes gets the better of them. One hopes, however, that even while committing these offenses, a young person knows he is doing wrong and is ashamed of blaming his friend for the broken window, or of telling his parents he was at the library.

One of the ways we judge maturity is by observing whether a man has overcome that childish fear and weakness and is now willing to deal plainly with others, even in situations wherein his own advantage or reputation is at stake. The development into healthy adulthood is, in part, the transition from good behavior with occasional violations to good character that naturally refrains from such violations.

What if, on the other hand, the opposite transition occurs? What if the self-serving lies and other improprieties, with their consequent harm to others, become so habitual that they gradually carve a deep and wide gutter in one's adult character, a tributary into which one's deliberative processes are consistently directed by the soul's own gravitational forces? Self-serving manipulation then becomes not merely a childish temptation, but a normal part of one's code of conduct. And here is where a real danger begins.

As we have known since the Greeks, a man of good character chooses the right thing not out of a desire for external reward or approval; he chooses it because doing what is right has become his nature. In other words, choosing what is best, for its own sake, makes him happy.

It is possible to become such a man in spite of a poor upbringing and bad influences; the odds, however, do not favor it. And with each passing year, as one's behavior inclines ever farther toward the illicit side, the mind chips away continually at the natural reserves of shame and revulsion that are meant to be the soul's weathervane as it journeys toward adult morality. At last, if this devolution is left unchecked, and worse yet, if practical circumstances provide this person the greatest possible latitude for his inclinations and the fewest possible restraints -- i.e., if he feels rewarded for and empowered by his amorality -- the corruption becomes complete. The man has learned to pursue self-serving ends by any available means, and to dismiss potential harm to others, without any regrets or pangs of conscience.

In short, he has developed into a textbook case of what Plato so aptly identifies as a "tyrannical soul":

When such men are only private individuals and before they get power, this is their character; they associate entirely with their own flatterers or ready tools; or if they want anything from anybody, they in their turn are equally ready to bow down before them: they profess every sort of affection for them; but when they have gained their point they know them no more.

"When they have gained their point they know them no more." Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods,and Glen Doherty can attest to that. As can, in a different way, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Frank Marshall Davis.

Read more: http://goo.gl/z1V7s

HOTAIR
Obama EPA second term agenda revealed
by Jazz Shaw
November 4, 2012

If you thought the War on Coal and various other job dampening EPA initiatives over the past few years were bad, apparently that was only a skirmish compared to what’s in store after this Tuesday. At the Examiner, Conn Carroll has the inside scoop on how Santa’s little elves at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency have been very busy lately. But you might not care for the presents they have in mind for us all.

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA.
More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants. Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA’s greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion.

Carroll goes on to speculate that the mad dash is a result of panic at the agency over the possibility that Obama may lose the election. They would, in that case, have to rush out a bunch of regulations which, “would then be very hard for a President Romney to undo.”

I don’t tend to agree with that. It’s certainly possible that they could roll out some regulations in the next seven weeks, but shortly after President Romney is sworn in and put his own people in place at the agency, those could pretty well be swept aside at the stroke of a pen. (Or so I understand it, anyway.) I tend to think that this is preparation for a roll-out in the coming months in the event of an Obama second term, which is pretty much the analysis of Larry Bell at Forbes.

Titled “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013: Numerous Obama EPA Rules Placed on Hold Until After the Election Spell Doom For Jobs and Economic Growth”, it lists and describes new rules concocted over the past year ranging from additional restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, tougher water guidelines and tightening of the ozone standard. Taken together, they will further drive up pump prices, impose construction bans on local communities, and cripple oil, natural gas and coal production. 

As the Washington Post notes, the report puts a spotlight back on the Obama EPA which has earned a “reputation for Abuse”, serving as a stark reminder that “President Obama has presided over a green team administration that works every day to “crucify” oil and gas companies and make sure that “…if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem.”

Coal miners and coal powered plants already have a big problem, as we have pointed out repeatedly. But it looks like those problems may grow by several orders of magnitude in the coming months if the current White House occupant remains in office. The President has already been seen to bristle at criticism from his own Left flank over how he hasn’t done enough for the environmentalists who can’t understand why the oil companies are still in business four years later. Unrestrained by the need to win another election – having a lot more “flexibility,” as you might hear from Vladimir – these folks can really run amok.

Read more: http://goo.gl/pqzvZ