The term "bully pulpit" stems from President Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the White House as a "bully pulpit," meaning a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. Roosevelt often used the word "bully" as an adjective meaning superb/wonderful.
The Bully Pulpit features news, reasoned discourse, opinion and some humor.
(By Larry Kudlow, Townhall.com) - In the hours following the Supreme Court’s decision to ratify Obamacare, Romney got $4.6 million in donations from 47,000 individuals. The tide is with him. The Supreme’s are a game changer.
But Romney has to make the case. He needs to link the anemic jobs and economic situation to the Obamacare tax, spend, and regulate fiscal drag. And he has to add to that mix the dangers to our freedoms embodied in Justice John Roberts’s expansion of the power to tax our personal behavior.
Scott Rasmussen says the idea of Obamacare repeal has held steady at around 54 percent ever since its passage in March 2010. This reveals the dynamic political opportunity that Governor Romney has. Again, it’s a three-pronged attack: The anemic economy, the Obamacare costs that are stifling the economy, and the John Roberts expanded power of taxation that will bring us more mandates, more entitlements, and less personal freedom, all of which will further cripple the economy.
(By Caroline May, The Daily Caller) - While spending on the food stamp program has increased 100 percent under President Barack Obama, the government continues to push more Americans to enroll in the welfare program.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has embraced entire promotional campaigns designed to encourage eligible Americans to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.
A pamphlet currently posted at the USDA website encourages local SNAP offices to throw parties as one way to get potentially eligible seniors to enroll in the program.
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The Dallas chapter of the NAACP wants to stop seeing low income Texans pumping money into the state lottery by putting it out of business.
In poorer communities, though, the lottery seems to offer the chance at a life otherwise out of reach.
A study paid for by the Texas Lottery Commission says the people most likely to play Pick 3 are those making $20,000 a year or less –– below the poverty line. And people who are unemployed are more likely to buy scratch-off tickets than those who have jobs or retirees, the study found.
(By Alicia M. Cohn, The Hill) - Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has raised $4.2 million since the Supreme Court ruled President Obama's healthcare law is constitutional.
Romney started raising funds immediately after the decision, and in a post on Twitter his campaign spokeswoman said he had raised $4.2 million from 42,000 donations.
(By Jim Geraghty, National Review Online) - Back during the Obamacare debate, President Obama vehemently insisted that the fees penalizing those who do not have health insurance were not a “tax increase.”
(By Devin Dwyer, ABC News) - Vice President Joe Biden today offered a blunt assessment of the plight of the unemployed, telling supporters at a campaign rally in Iowa that the economy remains “a depression for millions and millions of Americans.”
“The unemployed are in real trouble,” Biden said in a speech on the banks of the Mississippi River in Dubuque. “My grandpa used to say, from Scranton, he’d say, ‘Joe, when the guy in Dunmore…is out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law is out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.’”
“It’s a depression for millions and millions of Americans,” he said.
(By Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner) - Justice Anthony Kennedy and three conservative justices denounced the majority opinion declaring the individual mandate as a tax, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, as an effective rewrite of the Obamacare legislation that accepted “feeble” arguments from President Obama’s attorneys.
“[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it,” the dissenters — Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy — wrote, adding that “legislators must weigh the need for the tax against the terrible price they might pay at their next election.” He then suggested that Congress intentionally avoided passing the mandate as a tax in an effort to avoid that election disaster. “We have no doubt that Congress knew precisely what it was doing when it rejected an earlier version of this legislation that imposed a tax instead of a requirement-with-penalty.”
Roberts conceded the point that the mandate was not obviously written as a tax. “The most straightforward reading of the mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance,” Roberts wrote, but he added that the mandate “can be read” as a tax. “Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A, and that 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax.”
(By Meghann Evans, The Stokes News) - With a Saturday deadline looming, the Stokes County Board of Commissioners met for five hours Tuesday before approving a budget by a 4-1 vote.
The approved budget for fiscal year 2012-13 includes no tax increases, instead using around $1.7 million from the fund balance to fill budget holes. The tax rate remains 60 cents for the general fund and four cents for school and community college construction. The budget sticks with the county manager’s original school allocation proposal and includes a $400 bonus for full-time county employees.
Commissioner Jimmy Walker was the only member to vote against the budget, stating that it was a “fairly good product” but that he thought it could use a little more work. The county had to approve a budget by Saturday, as the new fiscal year begins Sunday, July 1. The commissioners have held numerous budget meetings over the past month.
What matters is the progressive intent — not some supposed objective truth.
(By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online) - A sign of an undisciplined mind is serial lapses into self-contradiction, or blurting out a thought only to refute it entirely on a later occasion. For a president to do that is to erode public confidence and eventually render all his public statements irrelevant. That is now unfortunately the case with Barack Obama, who has established a muddled record of confused and contradictory declarations.
(By Meghann Evans, The Stokes News) - A round of applause followed the Stokes County Board of Commissioners’ unanimous decision to approve a resolution in opposition of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for natural gas.
The vote was taken at the end of the board’s Monday afternoon meeting. Several citizens attended the meeting to hear the vote. The resolution will now be sent to leadership of the N.C. General Assembly and the county’s legislative delegation.
The resolution states that “the Stokes County Board of Commissioners urge the North Carolina General Assembly to take no action and pass no legislation that would legalize hydraulic fracturing or horizontal drilling in North Carolina before it is fully demonstrated that North Carolina public health, waters, land, air, economy, and quality of life can be fully protected from the impacts of allowing shale gas development in the State.”
(By Keith T. Barber, The Stokes News) - By a vote of 3-1, the King City Council adopted a $5.28 million budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year during a special called meeting on Monday.
Council members Charles Allen, Dillard Burnette and Brian Carico voted in favor of the finalized budget, while councilman Wesley Carter voted against it.
During a public hearing, King resident Carolyn Newsom thanked the council for “not taking the easy way out,” by not raising property taxes. She addressed the significant cuts made to the King Police Department. She said she agreed with the city council’s approach of taking a “top down” approach to cutting the department’s budget.
Newsom was the only resident who signed up to speak at Monday’s hearing.
(By Meghann Evans, The Stokes News) - The Town of Walnut Cove has informed former town manager Homer Dearmin that his request for a copy of a 2004 report regarding an investigation by Dixon Hughes has been denied.
At the board’s meeting on May 1, Dearmin requested a copy of the report issued to the town in April 2004 by Dixon Hughes, Certified Public Accountants and Advisers. Dearmin said he believed this document is a public record “as it details the practices of the police department with regard to record-keeping and handling of finances.”
The report was commissioned by the town board at the time at a cost of $19,403.05, according to information provided by Town Manager Byron Ellis in an email last month. He said the figure was obtained by calling the accounting firm, since the town no longer has the paid invoice.
(By Alex Alvarez, Mediaite) - Although former president George H.W. Bush has remained relatively quiet and out of the spotlight since his time in office, he’s agreed to open up about his thoughts and experiences in 41, a new documentary airing this weekend on HBO. Among the topics a usually reticent President Bush spoke candidly (if somewhat hesitantly) about is his former rival, Ross Perot.
(By John Hinton, Winston-Salem Journal) - James Douglas, the general manager of King's Crab Shack and Oyster Bar in downtown Winston-Salem, says state Rep. Earline Parmon's campaign for N.C. Senate District 32 owes his business and two other local restaurants $722 for food they provided for a fundraising event that Parmon staged in late April.
Douglas said he received a phone call from Parmon's campaign on April 25, saying that its original caterers had backed out of an arrangement to provide food to feed 200 people who would attend a fundraiser later that day at the Rhodes Art Center on Spruce Street.
Douglas said he agreed to provide the food for the event, which Gov. Bev Perdue attended. King's Crab Shack, Willow's Bistro on South Liberty Street and Finnigan's Wake Irish Pub and Kitchen on Trade Street prepared the food.
"We dropped off the food, and apparently there was a miscommunication because they thought it was a donation," Douglas said. "That wasn't the case."
(By Meghann Evans, The Stokes News) - For the second time in the past few months, extra chairs had to be brought in to accommodate the crowd at a Stokes County Board of Commissioners meeting, and many people were there to address environmental concerns.
The Tuesday night meeting began with County Manager Rick Morris presenting his proposed budget to the commissioners. When the public comment session rolled around, hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” was addressed again by several people. But there is also another topic of environmental concern gaining attention in the county.
A few people were present to speak about a proposed land farming/bio-remediation facility near Big Creek. Kent Fulp has requested a special use permit for property located on the north side of Frye Road for a dedicated soil treatment facility. With the process of bio-remediation, microbes in the soil break down petroleum-based products in contaminated soil. Some residents fear the process could contaminate nearby water supplies.
(By Jonathon M. Seidl, The Blaze) - I’m going to get out of the way here and just let NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg explain to you the logic behind his proposed ban on sugary drinks over 16 ounces. Because really, once he starts admitting it‘s his government’s role to “force” people to do things, he kind of buries himself.
“The idea here is, you tend to eat all the food in the container in front of you,” Bloomberg said on MSNBC Thursday afternoon. “If it’s a bigger container, you eat more. If somebody put it in a smaller glass or plate or bowl in front of you, you would eat less.”
And then there’s this: “We’re not taking away anybody’s right to do things, we’re simply forcing you to understand that you have to make the conscious decision to go from one cup to another cup.”
Breitbart TV: Jimmy Carter Agrees With The Muslim Brotherhood On Israel
Democracy Now: The Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, who’s widely expected to be in the runoff, has said that he would reexamine the Camp David Accords that you brokered in 1978, and saying that Israel has not fully respected the agreement. What are your thoughts?
JIMMY CARTER: "Well, I’ve talked to him at length about this. And you have to remember, there are two parts of the Camp David Accords. One was a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, and that cannot be changed without approval or agreement with Israel. And I don’t think that will happen. I don’t think that that would be violated. The second part, though, was the rights of the Palestinians. And the rights of the Palestinians have not been honored, as agreed by Israel, by Anwar Sadat in Egypt, and by me in the United States. And in the past, I think President Mubarak has been willing to accept this attitude by the Israelis and the Americans—that is, not to give the Palestinians full honor of their rights. And I would guess that in the next Egyptian government, both the president and the parliament, that they will be much more attuned to Palestinian rights. So, the peace treaty will be kept intact. There will be more attention by Egypt now on Palestinian rights."
CHARLOTTE, NC (By John Roberts, FoxNews.com) – In less than 100 days, Democrats will gather in Charlotte, N.C., for their presidential nominating convention.
The city was a natural choice after President Obama in 2008 turned a reliably red state to blue for the first time since Jimmy Carter won it in 1976.
