Conservative Rumblings

If you’ve watched television at all in the past three weeks, chances are good you’ve seen one of the new ’smart grid’ commercials. This is supposed to be the latest and greatest thing, this technology that makes our power distribution system all Skynet-ish, which is somehow “progress.”

I’m not convinced. This is just another way for the government to exert control and force treehugger policies down our throat.

Beyond that, however, are the apparent security issues that exist with the ’smart grid,’ which seems too dumb to defend itself from hacker attacks. Well done, idiots. You make an idiot savant power grid that can balance your checkbook while calculating your power usage and frying an egg at the speed of light, but some bored propeller head in his basement can hack into it and muck up the works. What happens when, oh, I don’t know, a terrorist organization tries this? Unless we have Bruce Willis on standby the fix it, well, we’re in trouble.

Obama’s plans to accelerate the development of an electrical “smart grid” could leave the nation’s power supply dangerously vulnerable to attacks by computer hackers, security analysts are warning.

The “smart grid” is projected to be a nationwide system of automated meters and advanced sensors that integrates new alternative-energy sources with traditional power plants.

I could spend hours explaining why this grid is simply another measure of control, a way for the government to intrude further into our lives and forcibly enforce liberal and “green” power consumption rules. But honestly, I can get to that later; this post is just to show how stupid this plan is from a pure security standpoint.

Obama’s economic stimulus package allocates $4.5 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity system and put smart-grid technology on the fast track.

But creating a two-way line of communication between homes and the grid — however “smart” it may be — has its risks, experts say.

“With smart grid, anybody with an eBay account and $80 can go and buy a smart meter, reverse-engineer it and figure out how to attack the grid,” said Josh Pennell, president and CEO of IOActive, a technology research firm in Seattle, who testified before the Department of Homeland Security last week.

Good call, idiots. “Ooooh, let’s make a smart grid that provides us with this great back and forth between the power system and the user! What? Oh, what if the USER tries to come back up the stream? Uhhh, well we hadn’t thought of that…umm…well…umm…Hope and Change?”

You guessed it: she has tax issues.

Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s nominee to become Health and Human Services secretary, said in a letter obtained by the Associated Press that she made “unintentional errors” on her taxes and has corrected her returns from three different years.

In the letter, which was sent to senators and dated today, Sebelius wrote that she had made changes related to charitable contributions, business expenses and the sale of a home, according to the AP.

The wire service reports that she and her husband paid just over $7,000 in back taxes, along with $878 in interest, for the years 2005-2007.

Tom Daschle, the president’s first HHS nominee, previously withdrew from consideration over tax issues, as did chief performance officer nominee Nancy Killefer.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, meanwhile, were confirmed despite issues related to their taxes.

This really means one of two things. Either Obama’s administration, after promising the toughest vetting process in history actually is far too incompetent to actually qualify these candidates, or (even worse) they knew about these issues and didn’t care.

Chicago politics have come to Washington! I apologize to the world on behalf of my state; I’ve lived all my life with the dark cloud of the corrupt Chicago machine 70 miles away, but now Obama has dragged it to D.C.

Blackbeard would not be proud.

Pirates who attacked a ship off the coast of Somalia got more than they bargained for when it turned out to be a naval vessel - from an international force against piracy, Nato said.

The pirates apparently mistook the FGS Spessart for a commercial merchant ship when they targeted it in the Gulf of Aden, between Somalia and Yemen.

The German supply ship pursued the pirate boat, joined by two other ships, a frigate, a helicopter and a plane.

A Nato spokesman said: “Poor judgment by the pirates turned out to be a real opportunity for seven nations representing three task forces to work together and strike a momentous blow for maritime safety and security.”

I’m sorry, but I just find this hilarious. I find the whole concept of a bunch of Somali pirates running around yelling “avast” and “scallywag” while wearing eye-patches awesome, but this would be akin to a pirate ship in the 1700s sidling up to a British patrol ship and demanding they surrender. Just amazingly stupid, and thus amazingly funny for us to witness.

Nice. Obama and his cronies wanted to make sure they had some nice softball questions to field. It wouldn’t look so good if the Messiah had to take a hard question and stuttered and stammered his way through it now would it?

But while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama’s campaign in 2008.

(emphasis added)

Change We Can Believe In? Sure it is: we’re combining the media and the government into one horrid, multi-tentacled freedom-sapping beast.

This I find hilarious. The liberals can’t say enough good things about the screwed up European Union, they of the mass-socialism variety. The Far Left loves the lack of borders, the standard currency, the nanny government and, of course, the complete and utter capitulation to the United Nations.

According to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), however, our debt levels wouldn’t even allow us to join the European Union, which is of course exceedingly ironic and thoroughly entertaining.

The United States wouldn’t even be eligible to enter the European Union if it wanted to because of its debt levels, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) claimed Thursday.

“We won’t even be able to get into the EU if we wanted to,” Gregg said this morning on MSNBC, “because our government is so large and so huge.”

The European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) adopted in 1997 requires a budget deficit to be less than three percent, and requires a national debt beneath 60 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“We’ve been lectured by France on the fact that we’re not fiscally responsible right now,” Gregg, the would-be commerce secretary, noted with incredulity.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the yearly budget deficit would fall well beyond that threshold in coming years.

Still, Gregg expressed resignation with the likelihood that the Obama administration’s proposed budget would emerge successfully from Congress.

Anytime we get lectured by FRANCE for being too socialist, well, we know there are some major issues we need to handle. Among others, the fact that we have a tax cheat in charge of our money, a demon running the House and a socialist as President are kind of big ticks in the “issues” column.

I wonder how many of the people in this Burger King were supporters of gun control?

And more importantly, I wonder how many changed their minds after a customer took matters into their own hands and took down the perpetrator.

An afternoon shootout at a busy Burger King restaurant in Miami left a potential robber dead and the customer who shot him seriously wounded.

The bloody event unfolded about 4 p.m. Tuesday at the restaurant at Northeast 54th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. It was a time, employees said, when it is usually crowded with schoolchildren and people getting out of work early.

The robber entered wearing a ski mask. He approached a clerk, showed his gun and demanded money, said Miami police spokesman Jeff Giordano. A customer eyed him and the two started arguing. The customer had a concealed-weapons permit and his gun — and the two exchanged gunfire.

The robber crumpled to the floor and was pronounced dead at the scene. The customer, with several gunshot wounds, was in serious but stable condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.

Absolutely awesome. Major kudos to the customer who stood up to the criminal and possibly saved some lives in the process. As writer Robert A. Heinlein put it: “An armed society is a police society.”

Judd Gregg was hailed by Obama as one of the smartest fiscal minds on the Hill when the latter was trying to get the New Hampshire Senator into his cabinet.

Now, Gregg has targeted his fiscal gaze at the White House…specifically, Obama’s absurd budget that Gregg says is not maintainable.

“The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States,” Gregg said of the Obama’s administration’s recently released budget blueprint. “There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals that are in this budget over the ten-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt, our dollar will become devalued. It is a very severe situation.”

Gregg, known as one of the keenest fiscal minds on Capitol Hill, also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that he thought it was “almost unconscionable” for the White House to continue with its planned course on fiscal matters with unprecedented actual and projected budget deficits in the coming years.

“It is as if you were flying an airplane and the gas light came on and it said ‘you 15 minutes of gas left’ and the pilot said ‘we’re not going to worry about that, we’re going to fly for another two hours.’ Well, the plane crashes and our country will crash and we’ll pass on to our kids a country that’s not affordable.”

So Gregg says we are going to go bankrupt, and now the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s budget is going to cost far more than he and his acolytes are saying, and what does the White House do? Forges ahead on a plan to destroy our economy, regardless of what anyone has to say.

What does Obama care about the experts anyway? After all, like he said, he won.

The outrage over AIG’s bonus distribution is reaching a fever pitch. Obama and his minions have been whipping the general public into a huge frenzy, trying to rally people as though he was staging a “get out the vote” effort. BHO wants people mad, and he wants them clamoring for the government to do something. What Barack Obama is doing is stirring up a disproportionate amount of rage over these AIG bonuses (which his own Treasury department protected).

The overall goal is not to “right the wrong” of AIG’s bonus distribution, however. No, no…that’s just a front. The real goal is to cap ALL pay in ALL businesses. Obama is using the AIG issue as a cudgel to wield against capitalism itself.

And it’s working. People are screeching for the government to step in and “fix” the situation, and Obama is more than happy to lay a comforting hand on your shoulder, smile slowly and say, “There, there, American people. Dear Leader is here to help you. Pay no attention to the stormtroopers marching in lockstep down the road behind me or the thought police breaking down your neighbor’s door. It’s all part of the plan.”

We need to think a little bit before we blindly wander down the road The Messiah points us toward. Chances are good we’ll end up walking the long walk of communism if we do.

Obama has gotten the stuffing beaten out of him in the press for trying to move the census into the White House under the direct control of Rahm “Dead Fish” Emanuel. So, now he has a new plan; let’s bring in some help to administer the census. Guess who?

ACORN, the organization whose voter fraud strategies, partisan antics and “stuff a bunch of homeless people in a van” get-out-the-vote efforts vaulted Obama into the presidency.

Quid Pro Quo, Miss Starling. Quid Pro Quo.

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year’s count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States — currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census “sell sheet,” an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN “play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful,” including by “help[ing] recruit census workers.”

Is anyone surprised by this? I know I’m not. I’ve been saying since before the election that Obama is a radical. Just wait til he gets to the Supreme Court. His fake “running on a moderate platform” has already been sent up the river in favor of radical, socialistic totalitarianism.

President Obama chose an Indiana judge with some bipartisan support for his first judicial nomination Tuesday, announcing he wanted to elevate U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

White House aides described Hamilton as a careful judge who follows the law and also shows “empathy for real people with real problems.”

“Real people and real problems?” Doesn’t that sound a lot like some sort of liberal drivel to explain away socialist tendencies?

I think it does. And I’m not the only one.

But within minutes of the White House announcement, a conservative legal group labeled Hamilton an “ultra-liberal” who was a “former leader of the Indiana chapter of the ACLU.”

The Judicial Confirmation Network, which rallied support for President George W. Bush’s court nominees, said Hamilton had issued “extreme rulings” — including a decision that barred overtly Christian prayers in the Indiana Legislature and another that blocked enforcement of part of an Indiana abortion law that required pregnant women to make two trips to a clinic before having an abortion.

Hamilton said the required advance visit to hear in person a warning about the risks of abortion amounted to an “undue burden” on the woman’s right. The 7th Circuit disagreed in a 2-1 ruling in 2002, and faulted Hamilton for delaying full enforcement of the law. It said waiting periods for abortion, including an advance visit, were constitutional.

The appeals court also set aside Hamilton’s ruling on prayers in the Legislature. It said the taxpayers who sued to stop the prayers as unconstitutional had suffered no real harm, and therefore had no standing to sue.

Hamilton “is no moderate, as the Obama White House is trying to spin him,” said Wendy Long, counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network.

The courts are the unsung rulers of our country. We must be vigilant and fight for our values as Obama tries to fill the seats with radicals, lest we join the ranks of countries rules in tyranny by a minority.