And that kind of spending is actually against not only the law as defined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act but also an executive memorandum sent out by President Obama himself.

Section 1604 of the ARRA reads explicitly:

None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by any State or local government, or any private entity, for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool.

And a March 20th, 2009 memo sent out by the Obama administration reads, in part:

Funds under the Recovery Act shall not be committed, obligated, or expended by any executive department or agency, and shall not be used by any State or local governmental or private grantee or awardee, to support projects of the type described in section 1604 of Division A of the Recovery Act, which states that “[n]one of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by any State or local government, or any private entity, for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool.”

But according to a letter sent by Rep. Darrell Issa to Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, the stimulus money has gone to fund projects that represent every single example listed in section 1604 and Obama’s memo as being projects that weren’t supposed to be funded.

Casino: In February 2009, AARA funds were provided to students “at Fortune Bay Resort & Casino to get hands on experience in various departments within the resort and casino at our Career Expo Day.”

Aquarium: In July 2009, AARA funds were awarded to Northwestern University for scientific research on fish. Part of the funding was used for “novel outreach projects (that) will expose the broader public to the results of research, including an art installation concerning the electric fields emitted by these fish and proposed enhancements to the electric fish displays of the Shedd Aquarium.”

Zoo: In September of 2009, $25 million in ARRA funds were awarded to the Smithsonian for projects including the “completion of various projects at the National Zoo.”

Golf Course: AARA funds were awarded to the Forest Hills Golf Course through a U.S. Department of Education grant to the Oregon Department of Education. The award funds a program that allows students in Oregon’s Forest Grove school district to use Forest Hills to learn to golf as part of the physical education curriculum.

Swimming Pool: In July 2009, AARA funds were awarded to Northwestern University to provide “salary an wage compensation for individuals directly involved in AARA-funded projects” including “Pool Lifeguard.”

Not only is the stimulus a complete failure as an economic rescue, the Democrats can’t even seem to follow their own rules in applying it. Or manage the bill from an accountability and transparency perspective.

Either that or maybe they just didn’t know these prohibitions were in the bill they voted for. After all, it’s not like they read it.

Here’s the recap for this morning show, which Chris Berg was kind enough to guest host for me while I was covering for Scott Hennen:

Johnathan Blake from the Minnesota Freedom Foundation:

Johnathan spoke about the involvement of the Minnesota public employee unions in influence the state’s elections and contrasted that with the left’s concerns over corporations influencing the political process.

Dr. Tom Woods:

Dr. Woods talked about his new book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century and the importance of the states standing up to the federal government and invoking the 10th amendment. He also previewed his appearance alongside Barry Goldwater Jr. at the upcoming Free Market Forum. If you want to get tickets for the event, get them now as they’re going fast!

On The Next Show: On Monday we’ll have some repeats of some of the best interviews from the Say Anything Morning Show for the holiday, and on Tuesday Mitch Berg from Shot In The Dark will be on for a discussion about the latest headlines in Minnesota politics. Also, Jeff Strant from the Environmental Integrity Project will be on to discuss his group’s concerns over coal ash in North Dakota. Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk will be on as well to respond.

To get downloads for the entire show, please subscribe to the podcast. And remember, you can always listen live on AM1100 WZFG, online at AM1100.tv or right here on Say Anything.

Which means that the media’s endless focus on Levi as some sort of embarrassment for the Palin family is, well, backfiring monumentally.

Levi Johnston may be attempting a run for public office but a new Public Policy Polling survey in Alaska suggests his political career might be short-lived.

Just 6% of Alaskans have a favorable view of Sarah Palin’s almost son-in-law while 72% have an unfavorable view. He is reviled pretty universally across the board but he’s a little more popular with Democrats (15/61) than he is with Republicans (4/76) or independents (4/74).

Key point: “It’s hard to muster a favorability rating lower than 6% — that’s about where the average person off the street we polled on a lark would be — so Johnson may hold this dubious distinction for a long time.”

I’ve long said that the media have done more harm than good to their cause when it comes to discrediting Sarah Palin by focusing on the sort of mean-spirited, tabloid-style reporting such as that which has surrounded Levi Johnston.

By being so unfair to Palin, by being so mean spirited in their coverage of her I think they’ve driven a lot of people to defending her reflexively. If they’d been more fair in their criticism (and there is, admittedly, a lot of areas where Sarah Palin is susceptible to criticism) I think they’d have been more successful in marginalizing her as a political force.

Not that the ostensibly objective media should have had any such goal in mind anyway.

I’m loathe to give Earl Pomeroy advice, because there’s nothing I’d like more than to see him put out to pasture this election season, but if he were smart he’d recall the political operatives he has following Rep. Rick Berg around with video cameras. Because the voters aren’t reacting well, and Berg is capitalizing on it politically.

Today I spent some time at the Minot Republican Victory Office where Rick Berg stopped by on his tour across the state. Berg was a little bit late getting to the office, so I had plenty of time to chat with some of the other people there who read the blog and listen to the radio shows. A lot of them were asking about Pomeroy having sent out trackers to follow Berg around, and I said it was true. Readers/listeners from some of Berg’s other events had been emailing saying that they saw the trackers and this morning Berg himself confirmed to me on the radio that he was being followed.

They were amazed. Even more so when Berg himself showed up at the office with Pomeroy’s operative in tow. Here are a couple of shots of said operative whose name, I believe, was Brendan:

For what it’s worth, Berg was extremely gracious with the kid even offering him some of the food that was laid out for volunteers (Brendan turned it down). But during his address, Berg also encouraged attendees to talk into Pomeroy’s camera and communicate to the incumbent some of their concerns. It was a brilliant move that left Pomeroy and his operative looking a little foolish.

Now, these sort of trackers are hardly new to politics. We all remember how Senator George Allen’s promising political career was derailed when he said the word “macaca” at one of these operatives. But while they may be standard operative procedure in politics in many parts of the country, it’s a fairly new concept here in North Dakota.

At least, the operatives being this brazen about their presence is a new concept, and I don’t think North Dakota voters are going to take kindly to it.

Nor, I think, does it reflect well on Pomeroy. Already he’s flooding the state’s airwaves with a negative ad campaign targeting Berg. Already he’s been caught pulling petty antics such as trying to get a booth put up by the NDSU College Republicans shut down. Now he’s got his operatives out following his opponent around?

I think it comes off as…desperate. And the attack ads and attack on the College Republicans seem more than a little shrill.

Earl Pomeroy is a nine-term incumbent, and even given the fact that he’s trailed in every single public poll done in the state this election cycle, you’d expect a bit more competence and confidence from his campaign.

Politico has a piece on the dilemma Obama faces on this coming September 11th: How to commemorate the day?

Every year it’s a challenge for the White House: how to commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This year is especially awkward, given the controversy around President Barack Obama’s remarks in support of an Islamic cultural center and mosque planned for a neighborhood near ground zero in lower Manhattan.

The White House has not yet announced the president’s plans for next week, though a source familiar with the matter was doubtful Obama would travel to New York.

Our Commander-in-Chief’s record on this has not been sterling, even given his short time in office. Remember last year, when he proclaimed the Labor Day weekend to be days of “Prayer and Remembrance” As I posted on Sept. 7th, 2009 Obama’s 9/11 Chutzpah:

Instead of commemorating 9/11 on say…9/11, the White House has proclaimed Friday, September 4, through Sunday, September 6, as National Days of Prayer and Remembrance. Did you get that? Have you even heard of it before now? The last three days are when you are supposed to remember 9/11.
Missed it? Too bad! Obama’s got other things planned for the real 9/11!

He then tried instituting some “National Day of Service” for 9/11. (Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Day of Service on Labor Day, remember 9/11 on 9/11?)

And now, having stepped in it on the question of building the Ground Zero mosque by occupying exactly both sides of the fence, what does Obama do for Act II?

It is clear from his actions last year, that he does not have a sincere desire to elevate this remembrance in the eyes of the nation. It’s a little late for him to show up at Ground Zero with a bullhorn and rally the citizens of the land he is entrusted to lead.
And after his flip flops on the Ground Zero mosque, I doubt that anything he might say would be accepted as either sincere or heartfelt.

What’s a President to do? Hide in the White House? Go golfing?? Personally, I think he will sneak off to Camp David with Michelle and the kids so that he can avoid reporters and leave it to Robert Fibbs to put some kind of spin about his “private reflections of the day”.

H/T Memorandum

Cross posted at Proof Positive

Charlie Cook is perhaps one of the most respected political prognosticators in the country. Previously, most political observers up to and including Cook were cautious about the possibility of Republicans taking over the Senate. The House, probably, but the Senate has always been a long shot.

But now Cook notes that the political atmosphere is worsening for Democrats, and that taking over the Senate too is very much a possibility for Republicans.

Looking first at the five open seats – Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Ohio – that the GOP is defending, the Republican challenger holds the lead in each race… Suffice it to say that Republicans have a good shot of holding all their seats…

Turning to the Democratic-held seats, the open seats in Delaware, Indiana, and North Dakota are pretty much goners, and it appears increasingly remote that Sen. Blanche Lincoln can make a successful comeback in Arkansas. This would bring Democratic losses to four.

If I had to make a wager today, I would bet that the open seats in Illinois and Pennsylvania will also fall to Republicans, although both races remain quite competitive and are hardly over. If my hunch is correct, Republicans would gain six seats.

That brings us to Democratic incumbents Michael Bennet (Colorado), Barbara Boxer (California), Russell Feingold (Wisconsin), Patty Murray (Washington), and Harry Reid (Nevada), who are all roughly even-money bets. Boxer, Murray, and Reid have statistically insignificant leads over their challengers, while Bennet and Feingold trail their opponents by similarly insignificant margins.

In Connecticut, where the seat is open, Democrats are watching their once huge lead erode rapidly. Some Republicans are also eyeing the West Virginia open seat, noting that President Obama’s job-approval ratings in the Mountaineer State are among his lowest in the country, and they speculate it could get interesting as Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin pivots from state issues to more polarizing and ideological national ones.

With this many races in play, Democrats may have to perform triage and focus their resources on those that remain winnable. That means giving up on the rest…

The point is that the more Senate races Democrats have to spend time, money and resources on defending the more competitive all races throughout the country become.

Republicans have the momentum, and that momentum is growing but as a caller told me on the radio this morning Republicans need to turn the corner and start telling us what they’re going to do if they win this election.

It’s not enough to stand around and tell us they aren’t going to be Democrats.

We noticed:

Both the behavior of the American government and the Federal Reserve makes one thing clear: They do not see the solution to the US’s economic woes in a return to traditional American virtues. Obama is not calling for the unleashing of market forces, as Ronald Reagan once did during an equally critical period in the early 1980s. On the contrary: Obama, driven by his own convictions and advised by economists who believe in government intervention, has taken a path that leads far away from those things that catapulted America to the top of the world in the past century.

The Obama administration’s current policies rely on more government rather than personal responsibility and self-determination. They are administering to the patient more, not less, of exactly those things that led to the crisis.

The entire column is worth a read.

Put another way, what Obama’s policies represent is a rather low-opinion of the American electorate. He doesn’t believe that we Americans can, individually, use our liberty to pursue prosperity and happiness in a fruitful manner. He believes that prosperity is something that must be bestowed upon the electorate by the government.

That’s wrong. Prosperity comes from individual endeavor, not government largesse. Because everything the government has is what we gave to them.

A future Obama voter, no doubt:

An 18-year-old Dover High School student who was shocked so severely this April that his heart stopped is suing the school, his teacher and the city, saying he suffered brain damage. …

During class on March 11, Kyle Dubois willingly placed an alligator clamp on one of his nipples while a second student placed one on his other nipple and a third student plugged in a cord providing electricity, sending an approximately three-second jolt through Dubois.

If you have to be told that running electrical current through your nipples isn’t a good idea, the brain damage was probably a pre-existing condition.

On a related topic, this is just another example how we as a society have lost all sense of personal responsibility. It’s always someone else’s fault, right?

Sigh…

WILLISTON, N.D. — Trinity Health in Williston is getting $5.5 million in federal stimulus money to build a medical services building.

Rural Development State Director Jasper Schneider says the booming energy industry has led to a growing population in the region, and the new facility will provide better access to medical services.

Schneider is right. The energy industry is booming, and demand for medical services in the Williston area is no doubt high.

So why, then, do Americans need to subsidize the building of a new clinic there? The economy in the Williston area is on fire. Why can’t Trinity use private investment to build a clinic and meet that increased demand for services?

No doubt it’s because Trinity has good political connections, and politicians like Jasper Schneider and others like to hand out our money with big smiles as though they were giving us cash from some rich benefactor and not, in fact, deficit-spending our tax dollars.

By the way, nearly a year ago I called that former state legislator Jasper Schneider’s new job would be little more than smiling while he handed out big checks as his party grooms him for higher office. As you can see, I was exactly right.

Yeah, yeah. Conservatives are racist. Blah, blah, blah.

Yawn.