Author Archives: Admin

Mitt Romney at RNC: ‘President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans…My promise is to help you and your family’

Staff Report

Mitt Romney cast President Barack Obama as a man of grandiose promises he couldn’t keep in his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday.

Romney’s acceptance speech hit hard on the “disappointments of the past four years” without making it personal or uncivil, turning the tables and putting President Obama suddenly on the defensive. And after nearly an entire week of Republicans loudly proclaiming “We Built That!” at the GOP convention, Romney finally delivered and told millions of Americans how he plans to build a better future for the nation.

In the rousing finale to the GOP convention, which some analysts said would define his entire campaign, Romney explained that he understands why Obama’s promise of “hope and change” was enticing, but added “there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had, was the day you voted for him.”

The Republican presidential nominee then laid out an extremely ambition plan to bring 12 million jobs to the United States. Meanwhile, he said, the president’s plans will outsource jobs and eliminate American jobs.

“And unlike the president, I have a plan…It has 5 steps,” Romney quipped. You guessed it, another standing ovation. Here is that plan, according to Romney:

  1. Make North America energy independent by 2020 by tapping America’s oil and coal, gas and nuclear and renewables.
  2. Give American citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow by improving schools
  3. Forge new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences.
  4. Cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.
  5. Reduce taxes on business, simplify regulations, repeal and replace Obamacare.

“President Obama has promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family,” Romney continued.

Click here for more from The Blaze.

Report finds hundreds of millions in overlapping government payments

Staff Report

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) released the following statement today regarding a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found during 2010, 117,000 individuals received overlapping Social Security Disability Insurance (“SSDI”) and state Unemployment Insurance (“UI”) cash benefit payments totaling more than $856 million.  Of those individuals receiving benefits from both programs, GAO found 1,500 individuals received more than $40,000 from both programs in just one year. 

The report was done at the request of Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations, Carl Levin (D-MI), Subcommittee Chairman, and Committee members Tom Carper (D-DE) and Scott Brown (R-MA).

“Double-dipping government assistance undermines programs for those who are truly in need while burdening future generations with unnecessary debt.  This report shows that Congress has failed to hold agencies accountable,” said Dr. Coburn.

While the GAO investigation found that many individuals were receiving both payments based on applicable laws, at least a few were improper payments to fraudsters.  For example, one individual qualified for disability benefits due to a back disorder, but at the same time worked construction jobs and collected UI payments in four different states over a four year period.  During that four year period, this individual received $107,000 in disability and unemployment payments, despite appearing neither disabled nor unemployed.

Job data shows disability rolls are growing faster than employment.  For instance, between April and June 2012, an estimated 246,000 individuals left the American work force and were added to Social Security’s disability insurance program.   In the same time frame, only 225,000 American jobs were created.

To read the full report, click here. For highlights of the report, click here. 

James Inhofe: “You can’t run this machine called America without fossil fuels”

Staff Report

Fossil fuels might be finite, but, at this point in the development of the United States, they’re indispensable. Support for private research and development of alternative energy sources makes sense, then, but outright opposition to fossil fuels — especially now, when new methods of extraction and energy-efficient products promise to extend the life of limited resources — is implausible. Voluntarily limit production? Intentionally drive prices higher, unintentionally testing the limits of the American family household budget? Why?

As Sen. James Inhofe said in a recent interview with OCPA, "You can’t run this machine called America without fossil fuels." Maybe, Inhofe suggests, it’s time we stopped trying to do just that and took advantage of our incredible mineral assets instead.

"When you stop and think that here we have in America the largest recoverable reserves of any country in the world and yet we have a policy in Washington to be the only country in the world that doesn’t export its reserves, it’s unthinkable," Inhofe said. "We are creating a shortage that we don’t have to create."

Click here to read more from OCPA with video of the interview. 

Honobia Big Foot Conference & Festival expands

Staff Report

What was once just a dream or an idea is rapidly manifesting into a reality.  A large piece of property is being developed into a facility designed specifically to host the annual Honobia Big Foot Conference and Festival.  Event planner Darryl Williams of Honobia has announced that the new site will not be limited to facilities designed for religious gatherings or community meetings, but in fact designed with Big Foot in mind, there will also be other events held throughout the year.  But this In-Gathering of tents and pavilions will be the main focus.

Wind Walker Sound has managed the Honobia Big Foot Festival entertainment program since 2009 and Sound Design Manager, Logan Williams says "There will be bigger shows and better entertainment each year as we progress."

After a minor setback when the original organization announced that the festival would be dropped, the Honobia Big Foot Conference Committee, led by Troy Hudson has worked long and hard to produce a more “Information Filled Conference” than ever before. The event scheduled for October 5, 6, & 7, 2012 was earlier planned to be held at the old Honobia Community Center where the Festival first began.  But due to expansion, concern for the privacy of many Senior Citizens living in close proximity to the center and much negative input from local residents, the new site was launched

Promotion Chairman for the past three years, Mary Lee Williams, Editor of the Honobia Big Foot PRINT, a monthly entertainment newspaper said; “The Interest shown in the event this year is phenomenal.”

The new facility will be located on Moon Dog Ranch 67545 Williams Lane, just 5.8 miles east of down town Honobia.  This year will be a “Little Primitive” but a whole lot more Big Footy.

For more INFO you can check out http://www.HonobiaBigFootPRINT.com or call 580-244-3013 or 580-244-7323.

Photo Caption: “A Native American Roadman calls for a blessing from “All That Is” on the new site for the Honobia Big Foot Conference & Festival.”

Saturn, Titan reflect true colors

NASA News

Posing for portraits for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Saturn and its largest moon, Titan, show spectacular colors in a quartet of images being released today. One image captures the changing hues of Saturn’s northern and southern hemispheres as they pass from one season to the next.

A wide-angle view in today’s package captures Titan passing in front of
Saturn, as well as the planet’s changing colors. Upon Cassini’s arrival
at Saturn eight years ago, Saturn’s northern winter hemisphere was an
azure blue. 

Now that winter is encroaching on the planet’s southern
hemisphere and summer on the north, the color scheme is reversing:  blue
is tinting the southern atmosphere and is fading from the north. 

The images can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org.

The other three images depict the newly discovered south polar vortex in the atmosphere of Titan, reported recently by Cassini scientists. Cassini’s visible-light cameras have seen a concentration of yellowish haze in the detached haze layer at the south pole of Titan since at least March 27. Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer spotted the massing of clouds around the south pole as early as May 22 in infrared wavelengths. After a June 27 flyby of the moon, Cassini released a dramatic image and movie showing the vortex rotating faster than the moon’s rotation period. The four images being released today were acquired in May, June and July of 2012.

Some of these views, such as those of the polar vortex, are only possible because Cassini’s newly inclined — or tilted — orbits allow more direct viewing of the polar regions of Saturn and its moons.    

Scientists are looking forward to seeing more of the same — new phenomena like Titan’s  south polar vortex and changes wrought by the passage of time and seasons  — during the remainder of Cassini’s mission.

“Cassini has been in orbit now for the last eight years, and despite the fact that we can’t know exactly what the next five years will show us, we can be certain that whatever it is will be wondrous," said Carolyn Porco, imaging team lead based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
 
Launched in 1997, Cassini went into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. It is in its second mission extension, known as the Solstice Mission, and one of its main goals is to analyze seasonal changes in the Saturn system.

"It is so fantastic to experience, through the instruments of Cassini, seasonal changes in the Saturn system," said Amanda Hendrix, deputy project scientist, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Some of the changes we see in the data are completely unexpected, while some occur like clockwork on a seasonal timescale. It’s an exciting time to be at Saturn."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.