$737 Million Green Jobs Loan to Pelosi's Brother-In-Law

Despite the growing Solyndra scandal, yesterday the Department of Energy approved $1 billion in new loans to green energy companies -- including a $737 million loan guarantee to a company known as SolarReserve:

SolarReserve LLC, a closely held renewable energy developer, received a $737 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee to build a solar-thermal project in Nevada.

The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nevada, will use the sun’s heat to create steam that drives a turbine, the agency said today in a e-mailed statement. SolarReserve is based in Santa Monica, California.

On SolarReserve's website is a list of "investment partners," including the "PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC." As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, PCG's number two is none other than "Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives."

But wait... there's more! One of SolarReserve's other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity:
(CONTINUES HERE)

NYT: Palin ‘on the Verge’ of a Decision

Sarah Palin has been quiet recently. Surprisingly quiet.
Ms. Palin, a one-time Alaska governor, is reportedly just days away from deciding whether to run for president.

In the meantime, her Twitter feed and Facebook page have gone silent for the last 10 days. Her Web site has not been updated recently. And Ms. Palin has not appeared on Fox News for a week, since before the last Republican presidential debate.

In a letter to donors late last week, Tim Crawford, the chief of her political action committee, wrote that Ms. Palin was “on the verge of making her decision of whether or not to run for office.”

Mr. Crawford noted that “someone must save our nation from this road to European socialism,” and asked for money as a way of demonstrating support if she throws her hat in the ring. He gave no clue to her decision, though he added that time is “running out.”

In fact, the political clock is ticking away. Ms. Palin now faces serious deadlines in October that, if missed, could keep her name off the presidential primary ballot.

The first of those comes on Oct. 15. By that date, Ms. Palin’s election team must deliver a letter of candidacy to the secretary of state in Utah if she wants her name to appear on that state’s ballot.

Utah is by no means a critical primary state, especially in a race that features two Mormon candidates, not to mention the former governor of the state. Ms. Palin could decide that she does not need her name to appear.

But Florida comes next. By Oct. 31, that state’s Republican Party must deliver to state officials the list of candidates who are running for president there. It is a ballot she has to be on if she wants the Republican nomination.  (Continues here)

Obama’s jobs plan isn’t top priority for Reid

President Obama still is pressing Congress to pass his jobs stimulus bill immediately, but his own party leaders in the Senate, where Democrats have a majority, have pushed that vote off yet again.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said Monday night that when the Senate returns from a weeklong vacation, the chamber will work instead on a bill that would push to label China a currency manipulator, which would make retaliatory steps in order.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade,” Mr. Reid said.
Late Monday, before he closed down the Senate, Mr. Reid locked in an early test vote for when senators return next week.

Mr. Obama two weeks ago sent Congress legislation he said would create jobs by extending and expanding temporary tax cuts and boosting infrastructure spending, which he offset by increasing taxes over the long term.

The president has been traveling the country demanding that Congress act immediately, but even his own party has not been keen to rush the legislation.
Mr. Reid is the Senate sponsor of the measure, but he said there are other priorities.

“We’ll get to that, but let’s get some of these things done that we have to get done first,” he said. (Continues here)

Obama healthcare law headed for Supreme Court

A Justice Department spokeswoman said it decided against asking the full U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit to review the August ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that found the requirement unconstitutional.

The decision not to seek review by the full appeals court will likely speed up consideration of the matter by the high court in its 2011-12 term that begins next week. A ruling could come by late June, in the middle of the presidential campaign.

The Supreme Court has long been expected to have the final word on the legality of the individual mandate, a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's healthcare law. A big uncertainty has been over when the court would decide the issue.

The law's fate before the nine-member court, closely divided with a conservative majority and four liberals, could come down to two Republican appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, legal experts have said.

The law, adopted by Congress in 2010 after a bruising battle, is expected to be a major political issue in the 2012 elections as Obama seeks another four-year term. All the major Republican presidential candidates oppose it. (Continues here)

Palin Sends Letter to Crown/Random House, Warns Not to Destroy Docs Ahead of Potential Suit

Attorneys representing former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have written to Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, serving notice of possible litigation for defamation in connection with Joe McGinniss’s recent anti-Palin biography, and warning the company not to delete or destroy relevant documents.

The letter reads, in part:

Enclosed is an e-mail by your author Joe McGinniss. In this e-mail, Mr. McGinniss admits that your own lawyers instructed him that “nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip.”….Indeed, Mr. McGinniss admits that the allegations are false unless he can find someone or something to show they are true. We know from the final book that he was unable to do so.

It is malicious for your company to publish a book wherein it, and the author, admit that they were fully aware the statements in the book were false, intended to be false, and were intended to harm…

Accordingly, since both your company, and the author, clearly knew the statements were false, admitted they had no basis in fact or reality, but decided to publish in order to harm Governor Palin’s family, you and Mr. McGinniss have defamed the Palins. This letter shall serve as written notice under AS.09.30.070 (b) that a claim may be brought against you, your company and Mr. McGinniss for knowingly publishing false statements.

In the interim, please take note of the following:  It is unlawful to delete emails or destroy records upon being notified of the need of business records for litigation purposes. In addition, courts may impose civil sanctions against a defendant that destroys emails and other documentation.  Please immediately provide notice to your employees to save and back up all records pertaining to the Palins and the book “The Rogue.”…

 Sep 26, 2011 6:30pm

ABC: Sarah Palin Threatens to Sue ‘Rogue’ Book Publisher

Sarah Palin’s family attorney John Tiemessen has written a letter to Maya Mavjee, the publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, that Palin may sue her, the company, and the book’s author Joe McGinniss “for knowingly publishing false statements” in his book released last week, “The Rogue,” ABC News has learned.

READ THE ENTIRE LETTER HERE

The book was widely panned by critics for using unnamed sources to criticize Palin and her family. Tiemessen cites an email they have access to in which McGinniss writes that attorneys from Crown Publishing told him “nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip. The proof is always just around the corner, but that is a corner nobody has been able to turn” and that McGinniss “ran out of time” to sufficiently source the book.

A source close to the Palins tells ABC News that the “Palins are fighting back and demanding answers from Random House.”

“Random House is at the top of the food chain and published a book based upon acknowledged unsubstantiated gossip,” the source said. “The revealing email is key as evidence of this defamatory approach to politics through proxies.”

Tiemessen writes in the letter that the email “clearly describes the fact that Mr. McGinniss researched and investigated many false and scurrilous allegations, and concluded that there was absolutely no evidence anywhere backing these allegations.”

Palin’s attorney writes that it is “malicious” for Crown to publish the book when it has proof McGinniss and Crown “were fully aware the statements in the book were false, intended to be false, and were intended to harm.”

“The final work that was published contains most of the stories that Mr. McGinniss complains were nothing more than ‘tawdry gossip’ that amounted to the wishful fantasies of disturbed individuals,” Tiemessen writes. “Since both your company, and the author, clearly knew the statements were false, admitted they had no basis in fact or reality, but decided to publish in order to harm Governor Palin’s family, you and Mr. McGinniss have defamed the Palins.”

Tiemessen ends the letter by warning the publishing house not to “delete emails or destroy records” that may be used in the suit.

The email Tiemessen cites in his letter to Mavjee came to light last week when conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted an email between McGinniss and liberal Alaskan blogger, Jesse Griffin. In the email posted on Breitbart’s site without explanation for how they got access to it, McGinniss writes, “Legal review of my manuscript is underway and here’s my problem: no one has ever offered documentation of any of the lurid stories about the Palins.” (Continues here)

 

Obama went a bridge too far & got 3 Pinocchios

Obama’s strained symbolism at an Ohio River bridge By Glenn Kessler 

The public schedule for the bridge, which can be found here, has the environmental approval scheduled for July 2012, just four months later than the administration’s “could” time frame. Construction is not slated to start until 2015, while the president’s jobs bill would spend most of its money in its first year.

But even if we grant the administration this tenuous connection between the bridge and the jobs bill, the larger issue is that Obama pointed to this bridge and suggested that Republicans are blocking its reconstruction with their opposition to his legislation. (“Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge. . . . Pass this bill.”)

Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a long history of bipartisan support for action to fix this bridge, such as this 2009 study announced by Rep. Geoff Davis (R-Ky.) and then-Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) to highlight the benefits of the bridge project.

Indeed, the biggest issue in starting the bridge reconstruction is not various approvals, but obtaining the nearly $3 billion needed to complete the reconstruction. There is not enough money under current highway formulas for the two states to do this by themselves. Davis, whose district contains the bridge, testified before Congress earlier this year about the need to solve the funding problem. “The Brent Spence Bridge is one example of a transportation mega-project that is critical infrastructure to the American economy,” he said.

The Pinocchio Test

This is symbolism run amok. The president certainly could have used the bridge to highlight the infrastructure crisis facing the United States. But he went a bridge too far by repeatedly suggesting that his jobs bill would immediately bring construction crews to this particular project — and that Republican lawmakers who long have pleaded for federal help on the bridge are now callously thwarting its repair.

Three Pinocchios

(FULL STORY HERE AT WaPo)

New! Obama Gaffe at CBC

Oops! … Obama says: “You Don’t want Billionaires to pay the same tax rate as JEWS… I mean Janitors”

Thanks to Gateway Pundit for bringing this up

PALIN TO SOUTH KOREA

Sarah Palin will visit South Korea for the first time to speak at a Seoul forum in October, in a move that will fuel speculation that she could be considering joining the race for Republican nomination for the presidency. (continues)

Sarah Palin’s added another trip to her roster: She’ll head to South Korea in October to headline the World Knowledge Forum, which runs from Oct. 11 to 13.

The organizers of the annual conference of business leaders said Thursday that the former Alaska governor is expected to discuss US leadership in the midst of global economic turmoil. Other speakers include former British prime minister Gordon Brown and Larry Summers, ex-director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council.

Herman Cain wins Presidency 5 straw poll & responds to Morgan Freeman

ORLANDO — In a stunning upset Saturday, Herman Cain won Florida's Presidency 5 straw poll, a vote of 2,657 Republican activists that in past years has predicted the party nominee.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza who charmed the three-day Republican conference's delegates, took 37.1 percent of the vote, with Texas Gov. Rick Perry second with 15.4 percent.

The rest of the results: Mitt Romney, 14 percent; Rick Santorum, 10. 9 percent; Ron Paul, 10.4 percent; Newt Gingrich, 8.4 percent; Jon Huntsman, 2.3 percent; and Michele Bachmann, 1.5 percent.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced the results to a roaring crowd at the Orange County Convention Center.  (Continues)

Herman Cain, GOP presidential candidate, hits back at Morgan Freeman for calling Tea Party 'racist'

Herman Cain is hitting back at Morgan Freeman for calling the Tea Party racist.
The Republican presidential candidate called the Oscar-winning actor’s eyebrow-raising remarks “short-sighted” on Friday.  "Most of the people that are criticizing the Tea Partiers about having a racist element, they have never been to a Tea Party," Cain told Fox News.

Freeman, who endorsed Obama in 2007, created a firestorm when he told CNN’s Piers Morgan earlier this week that conservative opposition to the President has enflamed racism in America. He added the Tea Partiers have the mentality of "Screw the country, we're going to do whatever we can to get this black man out of here…It is a racist thing."

Read more

Chuck Heath, Jr., Palin's brother, responds to McGinniss, Random House: ‘One Lie After Another’

Chuck Heath, Jr., brother of Gov. Sarah Palin, has provided the statement below to Big Government and Big Journalism:

The McGinniss book is filled with one lie after another. The final straw for me was when I learned that he used me as a source for his lies about my sister and brother-in-law’s marriage. He included in his book comments falsely attributed to me by one of his unnamed sources. Neither McGinniss nor Crown/Random House reached out to me to verify, or even comment on, this alleged hearsay from an unnamed source. They just ran with it, and as a consequence, the tabloids picked it up and used it to fuel false rumors about my sister getting a divorce. All of this is a total lie, and I’m sick of seeing my sister, her family, and our extended family being trashed by smear-merchants like Joe McGinniss and his publisher.

Fox News/Google GOP debate most-watched of the year -- on TV & Web

The partnership between Fox News and Google/YouTube for the latest GOP presidential debate Thursday night proved very popular with both TV viewers and Web users.

Fox News racked up the largest ratings for a GOP debate yet this year, with 6.1 million total viewers, and 1.7 million in the target demographic: adults 25-54.

That's a big bump up in total viewers and in the advertiser-approved demo from the last debate, a partnership between CNN and the Tea Party Express on Sept. 12. That one gathered just under 3.2 million total viewers, and just over 1.1 million in the demographic.

It also doesn't hurt Fox that a new Pew survey on news media had 19% of the public choosing Fox News as the top source of TV news, besting local news (16%) and CNN (15%).  (Read full story here)

Obama waves in UN group photo blocking Mongolia's President's face!

President Obama's hand accidentally blocked the face of the President of Mongolia, when Obama waved while a photo was being taken at the United Nations. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

Vandals strike Obama's LA campaign office

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Vandals have struck President Barack Obama's campaign office in Los Angeles, police said late Thursday.

BB-gun pellets were shot and an unknown object was thrown into the office, police spokeswoman Sara Faden said.

No one was in the office at the time of the incident, she said.

The police have no one in custody and no description of the vandal or vandals. (Continues here)

Marist Poll: Palin Leads Obama 47-43 Among Independents

 
 
 See Complete Poll Here

David Brooks: I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.

When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.

I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.

It recycles ideas that couldn’t get passed even when Democrats controlled Congress. In his remarks Monday the president didn’t try to win Republicans to even some parts of his measures. He repeated the populist cries that fire up liberals but are designed to enrage moderates and conservatives.

He claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)

This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible.

Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around.

But remember, I’m a sap. The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach. (Continues here)

Mike Tyson Disgraces Himself With Sarah Palin

Mike Tyson has some opinions about Sarah Palin. The following audio probably needs little more introduction for one familiar with the contents of Joe McGinniss‘s new book The Rogue, and yet no description could do the astronomical levels of insult in this clip justice. Attempting to compliment alleged Palin paramour (of several decades ago) NBA star Glen Rice as a “wonderful man,” Tyson found said tryst hilarious, and suggested Dennis Rodman as a more suitable mate for Palin instead. It only went downhill from there.

Tyson was a guest on the KWWN program “Gridlock,” where the hosts cackled and guffawed in harmony at Tyson’s every deplorable comment. “You want her to be with someone like Rodman,” Tyson “joked,” making several graphic descriptions of sex involving “guts” and wombs and various other organs that will make you nauseous at even the thought of sex for several months to come. He then made an Important Point About Race In America™: “Most of these girls– most of them in life in general… every white girl, uppity middle class [say] ‘get me a black man before I get into this white world.’” He then noted that the end of racism will come when “we keep having sex with each other until we all start looking like one another.”

Tyson did conclude that “Sarah, she’s so cool,” but then continued to make gross jokes about sex using the sort of crass, nonsensical middle-school humor that makes Tucker Max sound like George Carlin.

There’s a lot to lament in this audio– first and foremost that a legendary boxing champion of Tyson’s caliber could be reduced to Charlie Sheen-levels... Continues here

Solyndra Gets Daily Show's Stewart Treatment. Watch!

How do you know if a presidential scandal is picking up steam? When it gets an eight-minute segment on “The Daily Show” — watch out!

Jon Stewart, the host of the Comedy Central program, makes every attempt to offer a humorous defense of the Obama administration’s decision to provide a solar panel maker up to $535 million in loan guarantees.

But at every turn, Mr. Stewart finds himself shaking his head.
He played a clip of Mr. Obama praising the company, Solyndra, which recently went out of business amid charges that White House officials pressed federal analysts to rush approval of the loan guarantees.

The next image was of Mr. Obama standing in front of a lectern, with a picture of the burning Hindenburg behind him. (Continues here at NYT)

Palin defended by the Media?

They kicked her around, victimized her, tried to destroy her. But all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.

Faced with a barrage of negative portrayals — a much-hyped investigative book, a Levi Johnston memoir and a new movie — Palin is finding support in the unlikeliest of places. Film reviewers have slammed the British documentary “Sarah Palin: You Betcha!”

Newspapers have refused to run comic-strip excerpts of Joe McGinniss’s rumor-mongering tome “The Rogue.” Johnston’s accusations have been consigned to the gossip pages. And none other than The New York Times has angrily taken Palin’s side in a brutal takedown of the McGinniss book.

Reviewer Janet Maslin called “The Rogue” a work of “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip,” accusing its author, who rented a house next door to the Palins for a time, of sloppiness, attention seeking and a lack of neighborliness.

“‘The Rogue’ is too busy being nasty to be lucid,” Maslin concludes, describing its many accusations as “indefensibly reckless.”

In a statement issued through a PR representative, Todd Palin trumpeted the Times review, pointing to it as proof that the book was so reprehensible that “even The New York Times” disdained it.

But it wasn’t the first time in recent weeks the Palins have found the Times — the print voice of East Coast intellectualism — in their corner. The Gray Lady also recently published an op-ed praising Palin as a person of ideas and calling for her to be taken seriously.

The column by Anand Giridharadas — impeccably credentialed as an Aspen Institute fellow and Cambridge, Mass., resident — accused the media of “ignoring the ideas [Palin] unfurled” in her recent speech at an Iowa tea party rally. “Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism,” he wrote.  (Continues here)

Bombshell

With the White House already reeling over the Solyndra collapse, a new scandal may have erupted today that could make the disappearance of $535 million in taxpayer funds look like a paperwork glitch.  Eli Lake starts off his new gig at The Daily Beast with a huge bombshell — an accusation made to members of Congress from a four-star Air Force general that claimed the White House pressured him to change his testimony to boost a big donor to the Democratic Party:

The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

The episode—confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee—is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers.

Continues here

New Poll: Obama slips with Jews

President Barack Obama’s support among Jews has dropped, new data shows.
Four out of 10 Jewish Americans currently disapprove of Obama, according to polling data provided to POLITICO by Gallup, which has yet to post the numbers on its website.

This 40 percent disapproval rating is 8 percent higher than the 32 percent disapproval rating among Jewish Americans that was last reported by Gallup in June.

While Obama still remains popular with Jews, the data is the latest concrete indication that the president is facing worsening problems among a key group.

Obama’s approval rating among Jewish Americans is also down to 55 percent - a five point drop from his approval rating in June, which stood at 60 percent.

Together, the rise in disapproval and dip in approval ratings are a net negative 11 point downturn for Obama among Jews.  (Continues here)

Chicago Tribune Editorial: The Solyndra saga

We know the Obama administration can't get enough of renewable energy. We know it can't get enough of "shovel-ready" projects for soaking up its taxpayer-funded economic stimulus handouts. Now a colossal green stimulus failure has put Democrats on the defensive and raised the prospect of an ugly scandal.

Solyndra Inc. was a California-based maker of advanced solar panels. Its executives talked a good game, and the company attracted substantial private investment. It also caught the fancy of the Obama administration just as a pile of money came available from the $787 billion stimulus legislation of 2009.

Before you can say, "Let the sun shine in," Solyndra was basking in the limelight. The federal government backed loans of more than $500 million to the company. President Barack Obama toured its manufacturing plant. He touted its plans to hire 1,000 new workers and embraced its fuzzy math about producing enough solar panels in its expanded facility to replace the power from eight coal-fueled electricity plants. "It's here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way to a bright and prosperous future," the president declared at the time.

Fast forward to the not-so-bright and prosperous present: Solyndra is bankrupt, its factory shut down and its workforce on the street. The FBI raided its headquarters earlier this month, presumably suspecting fraud. Its top executives failed to appear Wednesday at a hearing on Capitol Hill where Republicans were itching to grill them.

A series of emails between White House officials and Office of Management and Budget watchdogs suggests that Solyndra got its federal guarantees prematurely, under pressure from the Obama administration, which wanted to stage an event featuring Vice President Joe Biden announcing the guarantees at a ground-breaking ceremony. A perfect example of shovel-ready stimulus! (Continues here)