PHOENIX, AZ: Last Friday April 23rd we saw protestors in Phoenix hurtling water bottles and other projectiles at the police. The protestors in Arizona are all riled up because now if they get stopped speeding they have to show their driver’s license to proof they are in the country legally. This is the kind of rough-and-ready protest we have come to expect from the Left. Compare the Tea Party Grandmas who have the SWAT called out on them to this crowd and it makes you wonder why the media is all over Tea Partiers and give passes to the Left.

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Dangerous Tea Partiers Foiled by SWAT Police

QUINCY, IL: Yesterday Obama called out the SWAT team to deal with those pesky Tea Party protestors. It is clear why Dear Leader has called for the creation of a national police force. These ladies obviously are trouble makers.

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.  (Obama on video here)

Obama can harass Tea Partiers, but God forbid anyone mess with Democratic Hispanics in Arizona. More photos of these dangerous astroturfers can be found at Jim Hoft’s column at BigGovernment.com.

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WASHINGTON: A vote on HR 2499 is scheduled for today. This bill will eventually force Puerto Rico into statehood, giving Democrats 2 new senators and 6 or 7 new representatives. Glenn Beck explains the danger in this video from yesterday’s show. For an in-depth analysis of this issue, read today’s column by Jim Simpson. Call your representative today and protest. We need to flood their switchboards.

JAMES SIMPSON: Apparently there is to be a vote later today on a bill regarding Puerto Rican statehood. They are calling it “non-binding” but it is not non-binding! It is a trap. The bill makes eventual Puerto Rican statehood a virtual certainty. This is despite the fact that statehood has been voted down repeatedly.The Puerto Rican people don’t want it!

But since when has that stopped the Left from ramming what they want down people’s throats? And why do they want it? The same reason they want everything, to further entrench their power. Statehood would mean two new senators, six or seven new representatives, and a whole slew of new voters. As Examiner.com’s Robert Moon points out:

Due to its dense population of poverty-stricken minorities, Puerto Rico can be counted on to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and all their handouts, and their representation will also consequently outnumber that of 25 other existing U.S. states.

Meanwhile, with Puerto Ricans having an average income of less than half that of our poorest state, they will instantly become eligible for dozens of our welfare programs. Truckloads of taxpayer dollars will also have to be perpetually dumped into the territory, by federal law, to bring it up to American infrastructure and environmental standards.

Oh, and never mind us. We don’t get a say in this either. Puerto Rico, which doesn’t want statehood, is being forced to vote, while we American citizens, who have a vested interest in the outcome, will not be given the opportunity to vote! Simply incredible!

HR 2499, titled “A Bill, to provide for a federally sanctioned self-determination process for the people of Puerto Rico” follows a very devious, underhanded multi-step path to essentially force Puerto Rican voters to eventually adopt statehood. Here’s how. The bill first authorizes Puerto Rico to hold a vote where they are given the following two choices only: Read more…

Greek demonstrators scuffle with riot police. Photo AFP

ROME: Today Spain was added to the list of countries with severe debt problems. Standard and Poor’s cut Spain’s rating down from AA+ to AA. This step came just one day after S&P downgraded Greek debt to junk status, and Portugal was downgraded two levels. Today’s action spooked Italy’s investors enough to prompt a selloff in Italian government bonds.

European countries are faced with massive debts due to overspending on government entitlement programs and the result is general economic destabilization. Greece’s economic problems are spilling into the streets as a general default looms. Last week’s talks of EU and IMF bailouts have been met with resistance, and the result is an 80% chance of a Greek default this week. If so, French and German banks could suffer massive losses.

The NIP has warned repeatedly that overspending on government entitlements lead to unsustainable debt loads. The inevitable downgrades of the credit of sovereign states lead to civil instability. The US is not immune. Moody’s three warnings to the US signal a possible beginning of the end to US dollar strength and economic stability.

It’s time to throw out the politicians who buy votes with other people’s money. They are spending our countries into oblivion. Instead of putting their citizens to work, politicians all over the world support the unemployed with massive subsidies. Politicians care only for votes, not for the welfare of the countries they serve.

Obama Lectures Netanyahu

WASHINGTON: Obama’s willingness to offend our allies while coddling our enemies is doing tremendous damage to long-standing alliances that have been in place during both Democratic and Republican administrations. Obama highlighted his shift in Middle East policy in a news conference on April 13th:

It was just a phrase at the end of President Obama’s news conference on Tuesday [April 13th], but it was a stark reminder of a far-reaching shift in how the United States views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how aggressively it might push for a peace agreement.

When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a “vital national security interest of the United States,” he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests. Mark Landler and Helene Cooper, NY Times

Obama has placed restrictions on Israeli settlements as a precondition for Middle East peace talks. You may remember when candidate Obama cited his willingness to meet with any totalitarian regime without preconditions, he was rebuffed by Iran who insisted on conditions of their own, embarrassing the United States and winning prestige from the Arab world in the process.

In dealing with our allies Obama is not so generous, our allies must wish they were treated as well as our enemies. Obama wants to call the shots and dictate conditions over Israel’s own capitol city, and he gets mad when he doesn’t get his way. Apparently he’s vindictive and is not afraid to humiliate Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to prove a point. We here at the NIP wish he would be as bold with our enemies as he is with our friends. Read more…

ERIC CHESLEY: The country is at a crossroads and it’s time to make a choice. Choice A is that we grant the federal government greater power to control financial institutions in the hope that the feds posses the clairvoyance to see a meltdown coming and take appropriate action to prevent a crisis. Choice B is that we demand that the federal government restrain itself and allow financial companies that are “too big to fail” to do just that, fail. In the short term the choice appears simple, if failure can be prevented, why not do something about it? That’s the position Sen. Chris Dodd has taken with his financial reform bill “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.”

There seems to be bipartisan agreement that financial reform is needed, but Sen. Dodd’s attempt at reform misses the mark. Sen. Dodd’s bill includes a $50 billion bailout fund for big Wall Street firms, awarding some of those who created the problem in the first place. It creates yet another bureaucracy, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would duplicate existing regulatory agencies. And the bill puts a restriction on derivatives that are blamed for last year’s financial crisis, and, as a result of restricting derivatives, U.S. companies probably will seek foreign investment opportunities and moving capital outside of the U.S. But the most worrisome provision of the bill is found in Subtitle B Section 151-156 that creates the Office of Financial Research.

On its face, the new entity sounds rather benign. What is the threat of a federal agency doing a little financial research? The threat lies in the fact that this new office will have the authority to dig into any financial transaction that they like.

Karl Rove shed some light on this proposed agency while appearing on Fox news. He points out that the bill creates a super-regulatory agency with too much power:

It creates a new office and gives it a half a billion dollars a year and a huge start-up for computer systems in order to monitor every financial transaction in the United States and to use that data to arrive at policy recommendations about sensible regulation.

So they’re literally going to have the capacity to go through everybody’s brokerage account and everybody’s checking account and everybody’s credit card and everybody’s financial transactions and collect – sweep that information and then analyze it. Karl Rove, Fox News

Read more…