It appears that the Obama Administration is funding IT training in
Sri Lanka, specifically to help them in landing outsourcing contracts
from the U.S., to the tune of $22 million. The training will include
programming in Java EE, as well as teaching skills in business process
outsourcing, call center support, and English language proficiency.

This certainly adds to The One’s previous, well-documented
efforts at slowing down or reducing IT outsourcing. < sarcasm off > This
funding of direct competition for U.S. technical workers puts the lie
to all he has said about reducing “off-shoring” or “best shoring”, and
the bashing of the previous administration for creating tax incentives
for moving jobs overseas. This training will facilitate more movement
of tech jobs offshore.

You can read the full article here (in Information Week). (By the way,
the comments are entertaining…)

The funding is through USAID (United States Agency for International
Development), headed by Czar Rajiv Shah, and coming through this agency,
the money cannot be used domestically. But this begs the question: why
in the world are we (our own government!) training foreigners to take
jobs from us? We have approximately 10% official unemployment (maybe
more than 20% real unemployment) in this country! Perhaps those funds
(even the piddling amount of $22 million) could be put to better use here
at home… or, heaven forbid, perhaps we could even cut taxes a bit?

Why, in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great
Depression, we are continuing to send our tax money out of the country,
is beyond me. Just one more reason to think seriously about your vote
in the upcoming fall elections…

I saw this article on the Free Republic forum and couldn’t believe my eyes. The original article is here on World Net Daily.

The gist is this: the Obama Administration is actively negotiating with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority: not as a middle man, but on behalf of the PA. The sources for this are a senior PA negotiator (unnamed) and unnamed sources in the Israeli government.

… rather than act as an intermediary, the U.S. has been negotiating with Israel on behalf of the PA, assuming all Palestinian positions and bargaining with Israel from the Palestinian side.

The Obama Administration negotiating with an ally and friend, on behalf of a terrorist organization, taking the side of the terrorist organization… I don’t even know how to think about this, much less what to think. To know that our country is now actively taking the side of a despicable, blood-thirsty, cowardly, terrorist group that has nothing in common with us and our way of life, against a long-time ally, friend, with which we have a common cultural heritage and linked interests, literally takes my breath away.

This just keeps getting better and better….

I received an email today from a relative berating Sarah Palin for hunting wolves from airplanes, and was urged to not vote for McCain/Palin because of this. (There are a lot of emotional Democrats in my family: I think that I am the only Republican, unless someone is keeping their mouth shut…)The link to the video is here:

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund video

Other than the obvious issues related to this sort of email, curiousity got the better of me and I searched around for a more balanced view of this. I found this rebuttal:

Kswatcher’s Weblog

Although I abhor such hunting, especially for predators (my wife and I are dog breeders, so I have a soft spot for wolves and other wild canines) I suspected that there might be more behind this than was included in the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund video. There was…

Read More →

After hearing the convention speech of Sarah Palin, it slowly became
apparent to me that if (God willing) John McCain is elected President,
he will be a transitional President, bridging the gap between the “old”
Republican Party of the ’80s and ’90s, and the “new” Republican Party
of the future. Sarah Palin is just one representative of the new public
face of the Republican Party, along with Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty,
and others yet to be seen on the national scene. All of these “new”
Republicans are of the post-baby boomer generations, and as such, are
untainted by the turmoil, effluvia, and mentality of the the late
’60s and ’70s.

By his choice of Sarah Palin as Vice-President, he has
opened the door for these new faces of the Republic Party to be seen, in
spite of the MSM. If he can continue to pull these sorts of politicians
into the government once he is elected, I think it is possible to start
a real transformation of the Federal government, that can really start
to take off once McCain’s term is complete, if all goes well.

It appears that this “new” Republican Party will tend to be more socially
conservative; more fiscally responsible; less tolerant of the corrosive
Left (socialists, communists and their ilk); more overtly religious
(but at the same time not judgmental or “preachy”); more willing to
identify and target true evil in the world; more appreciative
of the uniqueness and greatness of the United States; and overall just
more like the bulk of us “normal” people. In a word: conservative.

I think I now have more reasons to be optimistic for the direction our country
now has the opportunity to take. Now, if only people will sit back and
think before they pull the lever in the November election…