Hugo Chavez's Book Gift to Obama : The 'Idiot's Bible'

With this book to Obama from the Communist tyrant Chavez on Obama's "I hate my country" tour of Latin America, Chavez hopes that Obama will see how he can turn the United States into another Venezuelan nightmare.

I have news for Hugo Chavez, Obama doesn't need his help to drive this country into "third world status" - we are on the way right now - 250 years of history destroyed in one year. How cool is that -

As I have stated many times, the general public in this country is ready to subservient to an oppressive government. The majority of the American public has no problem with limited freedom or no freedom at all as they have no idea what that means.

As the saying goes " When ignorance is bliss, it's folly to be wise".

Keep the faith -

Book Chavez Gave Obama Called ‘Idiot’s Bible’

Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez may have been trying to give President Barack Obama a history lesson when he handed him a copy of the book “Open Veins of Latin America” at the recent Summit of the Americas.

But a political commentator and columnist intimately familiar with the book — written by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano and first published in 1971 — says all of the book’s major assertions have by now been proven wrong.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute — an Oakland-Calif.-based think tank — co-authored the “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot” a decade ago.
The book devoted a chapter to “refuting the historical and ideological fallacies contained in Galeano’s tract, which we called the ‘idiot’s bible,’” Llosa writes in The New Republic. “Everything that has happened in the Western Hemisphere since the book appeared in 1971 has belied Galeano’s arguments and predictions.” In his book, Galeano makes the case that Europe, and later the United States, plundered Latin America’s resources and helped create widespread poverty and wealth disparity.

Llosa addresses several of his points:

Galeano wrote that the average income of U.S. citizens is “seven times that of a Latin American and grows 10 times faster.” Llosa points out that in recent times many “poor” nations have seen their income gap with the U.S. narrow dramatically.

Galeano claimed that for years “the endless chain of dependency has been endlessly extended.” Llosa writes: “The story now is that the rich depend on the poor. That is why the Chinese have $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds!”

In his book Galeano declared that raw materials from Latin America destined for rich countries benefit the rich nations more than the producing countries. Llosa notes: “The story of this decade is that Latin America has made a killing sending exports abroad — the region has had a current account surplus for many years.”

Galeano predicted that in the year 2000 there would be 650 million people in an overpopulated Latin America. In 2000, the region’s population was 30 percent smaller than that, according to Llosa.

He also observes that in the past six years alone, 40 million people in Latin America have been lifted out of poverty, and economic growth per person has been four times higher in developing nations than in rich nations.

Nevertheless, sales of Galeano’s “idiot’s bible” skyrocketed after Chavez gave a copy to Obama — the paperback English language edition published in 1997 shot to No. 1 among all nonfiction books on Amazon.com.

Remember September 11, 2001 : Enhanced Interrogation

This, I believe, is all we need to convince a nation that "Enhanced Interrogation" is a useful tool for our protection in a hostel world. How can we forget this so easily?

Or maybe we just don't care anymore what happens as long as it happens to someone else. You be the judge.

The Obama Adminstration's Revenge Politics : Politics of Hate

Revenge politics is the politics of hate, deep soul rotting hate that is the driving force in some peoples lives, nothing else matters. Is this something new or has the left always been this way? The leftist knows nothing but hate, hate for everyone and everything that stands in their way to dominate.

The Obama administration has started down this slippery slope as a means to crush any type of opposition to terrorists or tyrants that might want to attack us or anyone else that they want. Is this just a means to create more chaos in our society as an excuse to take more power from us and in the end us it to destroy or way of life?

What other reason would Obama use to justify attacking those that defended our country? As I have said many times before, this is about taking power and keeping, Soviet style. He has willing participants in the congress on both sides of the aisle that will have no problem siding with this socialist and his tactics of political and economic terror.

Again, the saddest and the most tragic part of this scenario, is that so many people have no idea what is happening to them or their country. They trust our president to do the right thing and go about their business. Waking up one morning to find themselves in chains will have little effect as they will still not understand that they, by their short sightedness, ignorance of history and inability to comprehend the environment in which they live, have just given up the greatest gift of all, their freedom.

Like the song goes " freedom means having nothing else to lose". And when it's gone, getting it back will be nearly impossible. Believe it or not, a lot of people in this country are ready to give up their freedom to others.

Keep the faith - we will defend the Constitution.

PROSECUTING PATRIOTS
By RALPH PETERS
April 23, 2009 --

WITH the ugly sanctimony of those who never had to make hard decisions, the American left demands show trials of those who kept us safe after 9/11. Wrapping themselves in repugnant self-righteousness, the MoveOn.org set wants political prosecutions. Should President Obama acquiesce, he won't be furthering the rule of law, but dismantling it.

Show trials have long been popular with leftists. Those who don't conform to each jot of doctrine become "enemies of the people." From Stalin down to Putin, and from Mao to Castro, vengeance disguised as law has been a mega-hit. Those on the left don't want justice. If they did, they'd be protesting the murderous torture prevalent in Iran, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and Russia. Instead, our leftists want us to show the leaders of those terror states more respect.

The left is out for revenge.

It always is. Hatred of those who think differently is the left's unifying principle. Leftists don't need God, but they see devils everywhere. When President-for-Life Hugo Chavez called President George W. Bush "el Diablo," our leftists agreed. Hatred of the last administration grew so irrational that any terrorist, no matter how monstrous, became no more than a victim of Bush-Cheney.

Now the left wants an Inquisition for heretics who failed to share its worldview. Men and women who, in their capacity as public servants, wrestled with difficult legal issues in the course of our battle with terrorists are now to be tried and shamed because the left disagreed with their legal opinions and actions.

No matter that most Americans wouldn't view the methods of our interrogators as torture when applied to hardened terrorists (despite the media's ceaseless effort to convince us otherwise).

No matter that foreign leaders championed by the left use vastly more brutal techniques.

No matter that interrogators differ on the utility of "harsh" methods or that the information gleaned indisputably saved American lives.

No matter that our system of government functioned as it was designed to.The left just didn't like the results the system produced. Law has nothing to do with this cry for vengeance. This is purely about political differences.

During the Bush administration, leftists warned repeatedly that actions they didn't like put our country on a "slippery slope." Well, once we initiate show trials of government officials who did their best to protect us, we'll have skipped the slippery slope and leapt to the bottom.

If Obama agrees to any form of show trial, he and his own team will live to regret it. His party won't always be in power, and he'll have set a hideous, un-American precedent. If the Obama administration fails to keep us safe and our citizens are attacked at home or abroad, shall we then prosecute those who dismantled our safeguards and gutted our intelligence effort?
As countless leftists learned in the course of the 20th century, today's witness for the prosecution is tomorrow's enemy of the people.

The rule of law is paramount.

When we pervert the law for political ends, we attack our deepest foundations. Where would such show trials stop? Will we try Supreme Court justices for issuing legal opinions with which a future administration disagrees? There are plenty of genuine crimes worth prosecuting in Washington, DC. Corruption abounds. Not a few members of Congress -- from both parties -- should be in jail. But corruption isn't taken seriously. Politics are.

If the left gets its People's Court to destroy the lives of patriots who did their human, imperfect best to defend us (and who succeeded in that effort for seven years), we will do more damage to the United States than all the dictators our president longs to embrace could do together.

The left has nothing against torture. It just wants to choose the victims.

Meanwhile, that great bogeyman beloved of left-wing propagandists and Hollywood (sorry for being redundant), Sen. Joseph McCarthy, is grinning from ear to ear in hell: He's become the left's new role model.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble."Home

Heritage Foundation : A Survey for Survival

Here is a survey from the Heritage Foundation that speaks to us all - take a few minutes and tell the Heritage what you think and believe to be the most important aspects of American life for the future.

The Heritage does great work and people in power do listen to them.

Keep the faith.


Please fill out the survey now, and help us wage this fight with your financial support.

America Fails Under Global Surge in Carbon Emissions

Long article but to the point and well worth reading - Huber points out just how foolish global warming is and how the environmental insanity will drive us all into an economic disaster from which we may never recover. Can't happen here you say? Wrong! It's already started.

Keep the faith while reading to dispel ignorance.

Bound to Burn
Peter W. Huber

Peter Huber is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and the coauthor, most recently, of The Bottomless Well. His article develops arguments that he made in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate in January.

Humanity will keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere, but good policy can help sink it back into the earth.Spring 2009Like medieval priests, today’s carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness—about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too—because they’re not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you’d best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can’t possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, Barack Obama was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington’s power to bankrupt almost anything—in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That’s another whole United States’ worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.Cut to the chase.

We rich people can’t stop the world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can’t even make any durable dent in global emissions—because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we’re foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.We don’t control the global supply of carbon.Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves—about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon—almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal.

They also control most of the planet’s third great carbon reservoir—the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that’s all they’ve got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won’t—not any time in the foreseeable future.We no longer control the demand for carbon, either. The 5 billion poor—the other 80 percent—are already the main problem, not us. Collectively, they emit 20 percent more greenhouse gas than we do. We burn a lot more carbon individually, but they have a lot more children.

Their fecundity has eclipsed our gluttony, and the gap is now widening fast. China, not the United States, is now the planet’s largest emitter. Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and others are in hot pursuit. And these countries have all made it clear that they aren’t interested in spending what money they have on low-carb diets. It is idle to argue, as some have done, that global warming can be solved—decades hence—at a cost of 1 to 2 percent of the global economy. Eighty percent of the global population hasn’t signed on to pay more than 0 percent.Accepting this last, self-evident fact, the Kyoto Protocol divides the world into two groups. The roughly 1.2 billion citizens of industrialized countries are expected to reduce their emissions. The other 5 billion—including both China and India, each of which is about as populous as the entire Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—aren’t.

These numbers alone guarantee that humanity isn’t going to reduce global emissions at any point in the foreseeable future—unless it does it the old-fashioned way, by getting poorer. But the current recession won’t last forever, and the long-term trend is clear. Their populations and per-capita emissions are rising far faster than ours could fall under any remotely plausible carbon-reduction scheme.Might we simply buy their cooperation? Various plans have circulated for having the rich pay the poor to stop burning down rain forests and to lower greenhouse-gas emissions from primitive agricultural practices.

But taking control of what belongs to someone else ultimately means buying it. Over the long term, we would in effect have to buy up a large fraction of all the world’s forests, soil, coal, and oil—and then post guards to make sure that poor people didn’t sneak in and grab all the carbon anyway. Buying off people just doesn’t fly when they outnumber you four to one.Might we instead manage to give the world something cheaper than carbon? The moon-shot law of economics says yes, of course we can. If we just put our minds to it, it will happen. Atom bomb, moon landing, ultracheap energy—all it takes is a triumph of political will.Really? For the very poorest, this would mean beating the price of the free rain forest that they burn down to clear land to plant a subsistence crop.

For the slightly less poor, it would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.And with one important exception, which we will return to shortly, no carbon-free fuel or technology comes remotely close to being able to do that. Fossil fuels are extremely cheap because geological forces happen to have created large deposits of these dense forms of energy in accessible places. Find a mountain of coal, and you can just shovel gargantuan amounts of energy into the boxcars.Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms.

Meeting New York City’s total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses.

What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance about how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.It’s often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller—and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.This is why the (few) greens ready to accept engineering and economic reality have suddenly emerged as avid proponents of nuclear power.

In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident—which didn’t harm anyone, and wouldn’t even have damaged the reactor core if the operators had simply kept their hands off the switches and let the automatic safety systems do their job—ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power’s heyday.

Nuclear power is fantastically compact, and—as America’s nuclear navy, several commercial U.S. operators, France, Japan, and a handful of other countries have convincingly established—it’s both safe and cheap wherever engineers are allowed to get on with it.But getting on with it briskly is essential, because costs hinge on the huge, up-front capital investment in the power plant. Years of delay between the capital investment and when it starts earning a return are ruinous. Most of the developed world has made nuclear power unaffordable by surrounding it with a regulatory process so sluggish and unpredictable that no one will pour a couple of billion dollars into a new plant, for the good reason that no one knows when (or even if) the investment will be allowed to start making money.

And countries that don’t trust nuclear power on their own soil must hesitate to share the technology with countries where you never know who will be in charge next year, or what he might decide to do with his nuclear toys. So much for the possibility that cheap nuclear power might replace carbon-spewing sources of energy in the developing world. Moreover, even India and China, which have mastered nuclear technologies, are deploying far more new coal capacity.Remember, finally, that most of the cost of carbon-based energy resides not in the fuels but in the gigantic infrastructure of furnaces, turbines, and engines. Those costs are sunk, which means that carbon-free alternatives—with their own huge, attendant, front-end capital costs—must be cheap enough to beat carbon fuels that already have their infrastructure in place. That won’t happen in our lifetimes.Another argument commonly advanced is that getting over carbon will, nevertheless, be comparatively cheap, because it will get us over oil, too—which will impoverish our enemies and save us a bundle at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

But uranium aside, the most economical substitute for oil is, in fact, electricity generated with coal. Cheap coal-fired electricity has been, is, and will continue to be a substitute for oil, or a substitute for natural gas, which can in turn substitute for oil. By sharply boosting the cost of coal electricity, the war on carbon will make us more dependent on oil, not less.The first place where coal displaces oil is in the electric power plant itself. When oil prices spiked in the early 1980s, U.S. utilities quickly switched to other fuels, with coal leading the pack; the coal-fired plants now being built in China, India, and other developing countries are displacing diesel generators. More power plants burning coal to produce cheap electricity can also mean less natural gas used to generate electricity. And less used for industrial, commercial, and residential heating, welding, and chemical processing, as these users switch to electrically powered alternatives. The gas that’s freed up this way can then substitute for diesel fuel in heavy trucks, delivery vehicles, and buses. And coal-fired electricity will eventually begin displacing gasoline, too, as soon as plug-in hybrid cars start recharging their batteries directly from the grid.

To top it all, using electricity generated in large part by coal to power our passenger cars would lower carbon emissions—even in Indiana, which generates 75 percent of its electricity with coal. Big power plants are so much more efficient than the gasoline engines in our cars that a plug-in hybrid car running on electricity supplied by Indiana’s current grid still ends up more carbon-frugal than comparable cars burning gasoline in a conventional engine under the hood. Old-guard energy types have been saying this for decades. In a major report released last March, the World Wildlife Fund finally concluded that they were right all along.But true carbon zealots won’t settle for modest reductions in carbon emissions when fat targets beckon. They see coal-fired electricity as the dragon to slay first. Huge, stationary sources can’t run or hide, and the cost of doing without them doesn’t get rung up in plain view at the gas pump. California, Pennsylvania, and other greener-than-thou states have made flatlining electricity consumption the linchpin of their war on carbon. That is the one certain way to halt the displacement of foreign oil by cheap, domestic electricity.The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil—but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now.

The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.The other 5 billion are too poor to deny these economic realities. For them, the price to beat is 3-cent coal-fired electricity. China and India won’t trade 3-cent coal for 15-cent wind or 30-cent solar. As for us, if we embrace those economically frivolous alternatives on our own, we will certainly end up doing more harm than good.By pouring money into anything-but-carbon fuels, we will lower demand for carbon, making it even cheaper for the rest of the world to buy and burn. The rest will use cheaper energy to accelerate their own economic growth. Jobs will go where energy is cheap, just as they go where labor is cheap.

Manufacturing and heavy industry require a great deal of energy, and in a global economy, no competitor can survive while paying substantially more for an essential input. The carbon police acknowledge the problem and talk vaguely of using tariffs and such to address it. But carbon is far too deeply embedded in the global economy, and materials, goods, and services move and intermingle far too freely, for the customs agents to track.Consider your next Google search. As noted in a recent article in Harper’s, “Google . . . and its rivals now head abroad for cheaper, often dirtier power.” Google itself (the “don’t be evil” company) is looking to set up one of its electrically voracious server farms at a site in Lithuania, “disingenuously described as being near a hydroelectric dam.” But Lithuania’s grid is 0.5 percent hydroelectric and 78 percent nuclear. Perhaps the company’s next huge farm will be “near” the Three Gorges Dam in China, built to generate over three times as much power as our own Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. China will be happy to play along, while it quietly plugs another coal plant into its grid a few pylons down the line.

All the while, of course, Google will maintain its low-energy headquarters in California, a state that often boasts of the wise regulatory policies—centered, one is told, on efficiency and conservation—that have made it such a frugal energy user. But in fact, sky-high prices have played the key role, curbing internal demand and propelling the flight from California of power plants, heavy industries, chip fabs, server farms, and much else (see “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism,” Spring 2008).So the suggestion that we can lift ourselves out of the economic doldrums by spending lavishly on exceptionally expensive new sources of energy is absurd. “Green jobs” means Americans paying other Americans to chase carbon while the rest of the world builds new power plants and factories. And the environmental consequences of outsourcing jobs, industries, and carbon to developing countries are beyond dispute. They use energy far less efficiently than we do, and they remain almost completely oblivious to environmental impacts, just as we were in our own first century of industrialization. A massive transfer of carbon, industry, and jobs from us to them will raise carbon emissions, not lower them.

The grand theory for how the developed world can unilaterally save the planet seems to run like this. We buy time for the planet by rapidly slashing our own emissions. We do so by developing carbon-free alternatives even cheaper than carbon. The rest of the world will then quickly adopt these alternatives, leaving most of its trillion barrels of oil and trillion tons of coal safely buried, most of the rain forests standing, and most of the planet’s carbon-rich soil undisturbed. From end to end, however, this vision strains credulity.Perhaps it’s the recognition of that inconvenient truth that has made the anti-carbon rhetoric increasingly apocalyptic. Coal trains have been analogized to boxcars headed for Auschwitz. There is talk of the extinction of all humanity.

But then, we have heard such things before. It is indeed quite routine, in environmental discourse, to frame choices as involving potentially infinite costs on the green side of the ledger. If they really are infinite, no reasonable person can quibble about spending mere billions, or even trillions, on the dollar side, to dodge the apocalyptic bullet.Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the “Zero-Infinity Dilemma.” The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable—but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn’t be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn’t melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor.

But that’s a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion.To judge by actions rather than words, however, few people and almost no national governments actually believe in the infinite rewards of exorcising carbon from economic life. Kyoto has hurt the anti-carbon mission far more than carbon zealots seem to grasp. It has proved only that with carbon, governments will say and sign anything—and then do less than nothing. The United States should steer well clear of such treaties because they are unenforceable, routinely ignored, and therefore worthless.If we’re truly worried about carbon, we must instead approach it as if the emissions originated in an annual eruption of Mount Krakatoa.

Don’t try to persuade the volcano to sign a treaty promising to stop. Focus instead on what might be done to protect and promote the planet’s carbon sinks—the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it—that’s the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago. At present, almost all of that plant-captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by animal consumers. North America, however, is currently sinking almost two-thirds of its carbon emissions back into prairies and forests that were originally leveled in the 1800s but are now recovering. For the next 50 years or so, we should focus on promoting better land use and reforestation worldwide. Beyond that, weather and the oceans naturally sink about one-fifth of total fossil-fuel emissions. We should also investigate large-scale options for accelerating the process of ocean sequestration.

Carbon zealots despise carbon-sinking schemes because, they insist, nobody can be sure that the sunk carbon will stay sunk. Yet everything they propose hinges on the assumption that carbon already sunk by nature in what are now hugely valuable deposits of oil and coal can be kept sunk by treaty and imaginary cheaper-than-carbon alternatives. This, yet again, gets things backward. We certainly know how to improve agriculture to protect soil, and how to grow new trees, and how to maintain existing forests, and we can almost certainly learn how to mummify carbon and bury it back in the earth or the depths of the oceans, in ways that neither man nor nature will disturb. It’s keeping nature’s black gold sequestered from humanity that’s impossible.If we do need to do something serious about carbon, the sequestration of carbon after it’s burned is the one approach that accepts the growth of carbon emissions as an inescapable fact of the twenty-first century.

And it’s the one approach that the rest of the world can embrace, too, here and now, because it begins with improving land use, which can lead directly and quickly to greater prosperity. If, on the other hand, we persist in building green bridges to nowhere, we will make things worse, not better. Good intentions aren’t enough. Turned into ineffectual action, they can cost the earth and accelerate its ruin at the same time.

Military and Police Snipers : Now Heroes For America

Good news for America - men that put themselves on the line for others to win the day against tyrants and mass killers. What worries me is this seems like something that Barack Obama will want to get rid of. He can't have anything that will protect this country from our enemies.

Really, how will he be able to control the domestic population in America if we can control our enemies and stop them from attacking us? He needs chaos and fear on a continuing bases to strip away our rights and freedoms. So far he is doing just that as we speak.

SNIPERS: THE NEW SUPERHEROES
By BEN WALTERS

/April 19, 2009/ – New York Post

For five days, the massed firepower of the US war machine, embodied by the colossal destroyer Bainbridge, seemed helpless -- unable to do anything against three Somali pirates in a lifeboat.

Instead, it was the smallest of powers -- three men, three guns, three shots -- which ended the standoff and rescued American Captain Richard Phillips.

In recent years, the sniper has taken on an increasingly privileged position in both military strategizing and the popular imagination -- a shift last weekend's successful operation has only helped to cement. "Nobody would have considered using a sniper team 20 years ago," says Richard Venola, editor of Guns and Ammo magazine. "But commanders' appreciation of how a sniper team can be a workhorse in the combat zone has changed. And the public opinion has changed too. Sniping is today what being a Green Beret was in Vietnam, or a Navy SEAL commando."

A wealth of pop culture testifies to this, from video games like "Sniper Elite," to Kathryn Bigelow's forthcoming Iraq war movie "The Hurt Locker" and Stephen Hunter's series of novels about sharpshooter Bob Lee Swagger. And America's current wars have demonstrated, in Venola's words, "how a sniper team can control 'real estate' cheaply and effectively without being in people's faces."They're also more and more integral to civilian policing. "

Any town of more than 50,000 people probably has a SWAT team nowadays, including police snipers, and the Sheriff's department would have snipers too," says John Plaster, a retired Special Forces major, founder of a sniper school, and author of the seminal training manual "The Ultimate Sniper." Plaster compares the rise of the sniper to the development of the National Football League. "Just like you had to have high school teams and college teams to produce the expertise to make a league, you had to have a bedrock of qualified instructors with mastery of their weapons and understanding of tactics [to train another generation]."Precisely what equipment the Navy SEALs used last Sunday has not been confirmed, though it might have been the SR-25, a semiautomatic rifle that combines substantial power with fast follow-up capabilities. Barrett .50 caliber ammunition, which could maintain its trajectory after piercing the lifeboat's fiberglass hull, might also have been used.

The Navy declines to confirm or deny such speculation. In fact, it declines to discuss any aspect of sniper training or practice. "Our preference is that folks not talk about it," says Naval Special Warfare Command spokesman Commander Greg Geisn. "Any time techniques and procedures are revealed, it gives opportunities for our foes to counter those techniques, and in high pressure situations where lives are on the line, it's important we have every edge available to us."Nor could Barrett confirm whether their ammunition was used, though Bob Gates, the company's vice-president of business development, points to a wide range of sniping applications for .50 caliber bullets.

"You can penetrate armor, lightly-armored vehicles, pick out a Scud missile, a generator, a radar device, or a person at 2,000 meters. The equipment is far superior to what was available in the Vietnam era."Since then, there have also been improvements in shockproofing -- the smallest knock to a rifle's sight in transit could make all the difference to that crucial first shot -- and in night vision and thermal scopes. "In Vietnam, there was very little night vision," Gates says. "Now we see in the dark, and that's why we own the dark."Today's snipers can also use specialty long-range sights -- such as the Horus Vision, which can fix targets across more than 2,500 yards (about one-and-a-half miles) -- or computerized sights, like Barrett's BORS, which adjusts for elevation, temperature and barometric pressure.

Plaster notes that a well-trained marksman, "without being lucky or exceptional, can hit a cigarette packet two football fields away. In the past, as a commander, you would not have expected someone in your unit to be able to do that with consistency. The Achilles heel used to be that commanders didn't appreciate what snipers can do or know how to use them. Now it's been proven as a concept. After Iraq and Afghanistan, they want more."

Also, as Gates notes, "they're trained to a much higher degree now than they were 30 years ago. They're not just handed a rifle with telescopic sights, they get up to 18 weeks training. And it's not just the shooting and the use of cover and concealment. They put them through psychological evaluations to see what their mind is like. It takes a certain kind of person. Not just anyone can pull the trigger."Plaster agrees. "That was within their capabilities," he says of the 100-yard shots that killed the Somali pirates. "But just placing the shot is one thing. Having the guts to be on the fantail of a bobbing ship, someone's life hanging on your ability to get that one shot -- how many people can take that kind of pressure?""It demands an extraordinary amount of inner calm and self-discipline," Venola says. "You don't have someone telling you what to do, and you're letting insects walk across your face, baking in the sun. They're introspective.

Most of the people who are top-flight marksmen wouldn't be on your A-list for parties."Snipers have proven to be exceptionally well-suited to current conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Bad guys are wearing civilian clothes, using human shields," Plaster notes. "Commanders know, more than ever, the value of being able to place a shot with precision under circumstances where other troops are not even allowed to engage. The primary kinds of conflicts we're looking at for the next decade or so are insurgencies and terrorism, where there are always going to be a lot of civilians around. You can't let loose with artillery. But you can designate snipers."

Plaster expects the proven strategic and tactical success of sniping to lead to even greater technological development. "The world record today for .50 caliber was 2,700 yards in Afghanistan. That was exceptional, and they probably fired four rounds and missed three, but they did connect against a Taliban leader. If you can develop that as a basic capability, expectations will follow."

Gates also describes ongoing research into laser weaponry, "the phaser, the proton torpedo -- everything they've talked about for years on television." The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is currently developing EXACTO, a "guided projectile" or smart bullet. Gates doesn't expect to see results soon, but believes "it will probably go the route of most DARPA projects. They normally don't start things they can't finish. It will reach fruition some day and it will revolutionize long-range shooting.

"Today's sniper, then, is both more capable and more respected than his predecessors. "It hasn't always been viewed as a glamorous position," Gates says. "For many years, if you were a sniper, you weren't fighting fair because you weren't in the open field. But since Desert Storm and the recognition that they can turn the flow of battle, their position has been enhanced. They're not just shooting someone from behind a tree. They're changing the battlefield."
Home http://www.nypost.com/

Echoes From South African History : America Is Next?

Will America be the next disaster - is it possible for America to fail? Can America become a socialist nightmare where 250 years of history is lost in a single year? I never thought a liberal congress and a Kenyan socialist could completely destroy our economy for the next two generations in just 90 days, but it has happened.

I can't begin to comprehend such a catastrophe - and I think most people think all we have to do is wait for others to fix the mess and life will go on as usual. But when they finally awake and find all they have worked for all of their lives is lost, what will they do? It can't happen here. Too late - it begun.

This article might be a future look into how America will be structured and how the population allowed it to happen.

A Warning for Americans: A Message from a South African
Robbie Noel Can be Reached at EaglesUp.com

People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay* rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveals trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly Western, not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressman -- that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you've created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability.
But woe to you if -- or more likely, when -- the rules change. White Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game -- violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves -- Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.
That is exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.
Faced with revolution in the streets, strikes, civil unrest and the sheer terror and murder practiced by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC), the white government simply capitulated in order to achieve "peace." Westerners need peace. They need order and stability. They are builders and planners. But what we got was peace of the grave for our society.
The Third World is different -- different peoples with different pasts and different cultures. Yet Westerners continue to mistake the psychology of the Third World and its peoples. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are perfect examples of those mistakes. Sierra Leone is in perpetual civil war, and Zimbabwe -- once thriving, stable Rhodesia -- is looting the very people (the white men) who feed the country. Yet Westerners do not admit that the same kind of savagery could come to America when enough immigrants of the right type assert themselves. The fact is, Americans are sitting ducks for Third World exploitation of the Western conscience of compassion.
Those in the West who forced South Africa to surrender to the ANC and its leaders did not consider Africa to be the dangerous, corrupt, and savage place it is now in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those Western politicians now have a similar problem on their own doorsteps: the demand for power and treasure from the non-Western peoples inside the realm.
It is already too late for South Africa, but not for America if enough people strengthen their spine and take on the race terrorists, the armies of the "politically correct" and, most dangerous of all, the craven politicians who believe "compassionate conservatism" will buy them a few more votes, a few more days of peace.
White South Africans, you should remember, have been in that part of Africa for the same amount of time whites have inhabited North America; yet ultimately South Africans voted for their own suicide. We are not so very different from you.
We lost our country through skillful propaganda, pressure from abroad (not least from the U.S.A.), unrelenting charges of "oppression" and "racism," and the shrewd assessment by African tyrants that the white man has many Achilles' heels, the most significant of which are his compassion, his belief in the "equality of man," and his "love your neighbor" philosophy -- none of which are part of the Third World's history.
The mainline churches played a big role in the demise of Western influence throughout Africa, too; especially in South Africa. Today's tyrants were yesterday's mission-school protégés. Many dictators in Africa were men of the cloth. They knew their clerical collars would deflect criticism and obfuscate their real aims, which had nothing whatever to do with the "brotherhood of man."
Other tyrants, like the infamous Idi Amin, were trained and schooled by the whites themselves, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. After receiving the best from the West, they unleashed a resentful bloodlust against their benefactors.
From what I have seen and read thus far, I fear Americans will capitulate just as we did. Americans are, generally, a soft lot. They don't want to quarrel or obstruct the claims of those who believe they were wronged. They like peace and quiet, and they want to compromise and be nice.
A television program aired in South Africa showed a town meeting in Southern California where people met to complain about falling standards in the schools. Whites who politely spoke at the meeting clearly resented the influx of Mexican immigrants into their community. When a handful of Chicanos at the back of the hall shouted and waved their hands at them, the whites simply shrunk back into their seats rather than tell the noisemakers to shut up. They didn't want to quarrel.
In America, the courts are still the final arbiters of society's laws. But what will happen when your future majority refuses to abide by court rulings -- as in Zimbabwe? What will happen when the courts are filled with their people, or their sympathizers? In California, Proposition 187 has already been overturned.
What will you do when the future nonwhite majority decides to change the names of streets and cities? What will you do when they no longer want to use money that carries the portraits of old, dead white "racists" and slave owners? Will you cave in, like you did on flying the Confederate flag? What about the national anthem? Your official language?
Don't laugh. When the "majority" took over in South Africa, the first targets were our national symbols.
In another generation, America may well face what Africa is now experiencing -- invasions of private land by the "have-nots;" the decline in health care quality; roads and buildings in disrepair; the banishment of your history from the education of the young; the revolutionization of your justice system.
In South Africa today, only 9 percent of murders end up in jail. Court dockets are regularly purchased and simply disappear. Magistrates can be bribed as can the prison authorities, making escapes commonplace. Vehicle and airplane licenses are regularly purchased, and forged school and university certificates are routine.
What would you think of the ritual slaughter of animals in your neighbor's backyard? How do you clean up the blood and entrails that litter your suburban streets? How do you feel about the practice of witchcraft, in which the parts of young girls and boys are needed for "medicinal" purposes? How do you react to the burning of witches?
Don't laugh. All that is quite common in South Africa today.
Don't imagine that government officials caught with their fingers in the till will be punished. Excuses -- like the need to overcome generations of white racism -- will be found to exonerate the guilty.
In fact, known criminals will be voted into office because of a racial solidarity among the majority that doesn't exist among the whites. When Ian Smith of the old Rhodesia tried to stand up to the world, white South African politicians were among the Westerners pressuring him to surrender.
When Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe murders his political opponents, ignores unfavorable court decisions, terrorizes the population and siphons off millions from the state treasury for himself and his friend, South Africa's new President Thabo Mbeki holds his hand and declares his support. That just happened a few weeks ago.
Your tax dollars will go to those who don't earn and don't pay. In South Africa, organizations that used to have access to state funds such as old age homes, the arts, and veterans' services, are simply abandoned.
What will happen is that Western structures in America will be either destroyed from without, or transformed from within, used to suit the goals of the new rulers. And they will reign either through terror, as in Zimbabwe today, or exert other corrupt pressures to obtain, or buy votes. Once power is in the hands of aliens, don't expect loyalty or devotion to principle from those whose jobs are at stake. One of the most surprising and tragic components of the disaster in South Africa is how many previously anti-ANC whites simply moved to the other side.
Once you lose social, cultural, and political dominance, there is no getting it back again.
Unfortunately, your habits and values work against you. You cannot fight terror and street mobs with letters to your Congressmen. You cannot fight accusations of racism with prayer meetings. You cannot appeal to the goodness of your fellow man when the fellow man despises you for your weakness and hacks off the arms and legs of his political opponents. To survive, Americans must never lose the power they now enjoy to people from alien cultures. Above all, don't put yourselves to the test of fighting only when your backs are against the wall. You will probably fail.
Millions around the world want your good life. But make no mistake: They care not for the high-minded ideals of Jefferson and Washington, and your Constitution. What they want are your possessions, your power, and your status.
And they already know that their allies among you, the "human rights activists," the skillful lawyers and the left-wing politicians will fight for them, and not for you. They will exploit your compassion and your Christian charity, and your good will.
They have studied you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and they know your weaknesses well.
They know what to do. Do you?
"When the Cambrian measures were forming, they promised perpetual peace, They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed they sold us and delivered us bound to our foe.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 'Stick to the Devil you know.' .......Kipling

Marines Come Home From Makin Island : A Video

This video seems to hurt so much more now in light of how our Commander and Chief has decided that America is not a great or even a good country. How he has decided to side with those that hate American cuts all of us to our very souls.

We ask, 'how is this possible'? How can our own president turn against us, against hundreds of years of history and hundreds of thousands of those that died to sustain our way of life. Has Barack Obama taken upon himself and decided that all this was wrong? Can one man do this while we all do nothing?

Edmund Burke said" for tyranny to succeed, all it takes is for good men to do nothing".

Keep the faith and ask yourself just what is important in America and why!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6f_FvZpm3g

A Video - A Citizen Armed - Ready - Willing and Able

This is great video on why it's important to stand fast in the face of threats to your personal safety - fight back, don't just surrender - don't allow yourself to become a victim. This guy is special in that he was of one mind, in that he knew it was more important to who he was as a person to not succumb to external threats and become a victim. It was more important to him than his personal safety.

Not everyone can do this as they are not sure just who they are and what they are capable of in a situation like this. Still we all must evaluate our selves to see just how far and to what extent we are willing to go to prepare for such a future event.

Watch this video and be ready to make the right decision when the time comes to act.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkWgp2abM2w

Home Land Security's Napolitano Attacks American Citizens

The Obama administration's hired thugs are taking the forefront in attacking our country - the Department of Home land Security has decided that "Right Wing Terrorists" could be a big problem if things get out of hand, that is, if the people of this country finally take a stand against the insanity that is Barack Obama. What kind of thinking is this? Who are these people? They can't be Americans at least not the ones that I have known for the past sixty years.

Chief among these 'right wing terrorist', are the returning military vets. The liberal thugs that infest our government have every intention of stopping all debate or any kind of opposition to the Obama over-throw of the Constitution. Military vets have the background to attack the liberal left like some unthinking robots. And what is really driving this screed is the fear of the morally bankrupt and physical cowardice that is the liberal, which would have to defend themselves against people that they truly loath is incomprehensible.

These vets are our neighbors for goodness sakes!! They love their country - They volunteered to defend this country!!

Want more proof? Witness the abuse of the Tea Party participants by the 'drive by media' and members of our liberal socialist government.

The question now will we allow it to happen. Keep the faith and watch for more Tea Parties. Stay active on the phones and letters - Internet as well.


VET 'THREAT
'By RALPH PETERS
April 16, 2009

HOLLYWOOD and countless professors warned us: Military vets are drooling trailer-trash who beat their wives and, at best, wind up as homeless street people -- at worst, as homicidal psychos deformed by war.

Now, thanks to our ever-vigilant Department of Homeland Security, the full extent of the danger has been revealed: Our so-called "war heroes" are rushing back to join right-wing-extremist hate groups to overthrow our government. Full Report

There is a Complementary left-wing Assessment Let's not quibble about little things like evidence. The Obama administration just knows that vets are all racist, Jew-hating crazies waiting to explode. Thank God, DHS has a fearless leader, Janet-from-another-planet Napolitano, who isn't afraid to call white trash "white trash."

In this administration's published opinion, those who've served in our military are a menace to society and the state. And DHS's racist, bigoted implication is that the only danger comes from white, Christian vets (there's not a whisper about minority violence). Thanks for bringing us together, Mr. President. Racism is racism.

The left-wing propaganda document published officially by your government under the title "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" may be the shabbiest US Government publication of our time.The report warns that "the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists . . . carrying out violent acts."

The document's evidence? None. It contains no hard data, no statistics. It's nothing but a racist, anti-military opinion column that might pass muster in The New York Times, but shouldn't be issued by our government.The report adds that "rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans" who "possess combat skills." The point? Our hayseed, uneducated, unskilled, wacko vets aren't able to think for themselves and will be patsies for right-wing fanatics. Guess that's how things look from Harvard.

Then the report warns us that "a prominent civil-rights organization reported in 2006 that 'large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces.' "Which civil-rights organization? The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's? Why not name it? Why accept this bigoted hearsay? Where's the proof? Where's the data?And where are those "large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis," anyway? Last time I checked, American Nazis had trouble mustering a couple dozen overweight losers in Halloween costumes.

Of course, Timothy McVeigh is invoked. Repeatedly. He's the sole example of a violent anti-government vet the report's drafters could produce. And there's no mention of the fact that, when he tried to join Special Forces, McVeigh promptly washed out and soon found his butt on the street. No, McVeigh will serve as eternal evidence that a homicidal nut lurks within every former soldier.

In just 8½ pages of text, the report manages to link our veterans to anti-Semitism, racism, economic failure and those dangerous citizens who think illegal immigration's a bad idea. Oh, and vets can't be trusted with firearms.Your tax dollars at work.

But never fear: Obama's commissars at the Department of Homeland Security have already responded that DHS simultaneously issued a report on extremist danger from the left. It's title? "Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade."Get the point? Left-wing extremists aren't violent (and right-wingers are too stupid to understand computers). Timothy McVeigh can be invoked, but let's not mention Bill Ayers, our president's good buddy (until he became inconvenient) or his murderous wife.

Left-wing fanatics might make a little online mischief, but, hey -- kids will be kids. Read both reports. You'll find that those on the political right (not just vets) are unable to cope with the stress of economic hardship, the real-estate crisis or job loss. Not a word about those issues driving leftists to extremes. They're just defending animal rights and the environment (honest -- read the reports).Narco gangs aren't a threat, either. And the real and present danger from Islamist fanatics resident in our country goes unmentioned -- even though there's plenty of data on that threat.

The only anti-government violence DHS fears comes from crackers with carbines. And from chumps so dumb they joined the military.We're the threat to our fellow citizens. You and me.

Our first minority president just took a giant step toward creating the most bigoted administration since that of arch-segregationist Woodrow Wilson.

Apologize to our veterans, Mr. President. And send Ms. Napolitano back to the minors.

Ralph Peters is so stupid he served in our military for almost 22 years.

Obama Finds Christian Symbols Offensive

Who exactly voted for Barack Obama? Certainly not a Christian or a Jew. Right? With Obama's connection to the Arab world, demostrated by his full bow to the Saudi king, it isn't a stretch to believe he would not defend Israel if attacked, and now he has decided that Christianity is also on his hit list.

We are a Christian nation. This nation was founded on Christian principals and they have made this country strong. With the Obama agenda of crushing the America economy and then it's dream of personal freedom already on the move, is it any wonder Obama would want to attack this countries basic strengths. And where, by the way, is the media on this? Where's the outrage!!

How do you think the media would have treated George Bush if he had demanded that church symbols be covered before he entered?


Missing Jesus Symbol at Obama Speech Raises Questions
Thursday, April 16, 2009 1:46 PM
By: Dan Weil

The White House had a monogram that symbolizes the name of Jesus hidden from the backdrop of a speech President Obama gave at Georgetown University Tuesday.
The letters IHS are an ancient monogram for the name of Jesus Christ, according to the online Catholic Encyclopedia. They stand on a wooden archway above the dais where Obama gave his speech.

The White House requested that all university signs and symbols behind the stage be concealed, said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Jesuit-founded school in Washington, D.C.
"The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they've done for other policy speeches," Bataille told The Washington Times.

"Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn't high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal, and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context."

The Catholic University of America, also in Washington, might have handled the situation differently. "I can’t imagine, as the bishops’ university and the national university of the Catholic Church, that we would ever cover up our religious art or signage for any reason,” Catholic University spokesman Victor Nakas told The Times, “Our Catholic faith is integral to our identity as an institution of higher education,” he said.

But the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown, advanced a more relaxed approach.
“It is more for camera quality than anything else," he told The Times. "They don't want distractions that would make the eye wander. I don't think this is motivated by theology, but by communications strategy."

Obama drew some criticism from the left when he chose conservative Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes : Everyone!

Great article - the bottom half of this work force should not have a free ride - the liberals are always taking about who should or must pay taxes so why not everyone.

Good idea - everyone according to their income but everyone must pay into the system.

Keep the faith -

Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes

It's bad for our democracy to exempt half the country.
April 12, 09 WSJ
By ARI FLEISCHER http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=ARI+FLEISCHER&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND

If you thought Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme was bad, wait until you hear about the inverted pyramid scheme the federal government is working on. While Mr. Madoff preyed on people who trusted him with their money, the federal government has everyone's money, and the implications of its actions are worse.[Commentary]David Gothard

Picture an upside-down pyramid with its narrow tip at the bottom and its base on top. The only way the pyramid can stand is by spinning fast enough or by having a wide enough tip so it won't fall down. The federal version of this spinning top is the tax code; the government collects its money almost entirely from the people at the narrow tip and then gives it to the people at the wider side. So long as the pyramid spins, the system can work. If it slows down enough, it falls.It's also what's called redistribution of income, and it is getting out of hand.

A very small number of taxpayers -- the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year -- pay 72.4% of the nation's income taxes.

They're the tip of the triangle that's supporting virtually everyone and everything. Their burden keeps getting heavier. As a result of the 2001 tax cuts enacted by a bipartisan Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, the share of taxes paid by the top 10% increased to 72.8% in 2005 from 67.8% in 2001, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. He reduced the bottom tax rate to 10% from 15% and increased the refundable child tax credit to $1,000 from $500 per child, both cuts that President Barack Obama says we should keep. In so doing, millions of lower income taxpayers were removed from the tax rolls, shifting the remaining burden to those at the top, even after their taxes were cut.

According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 -- 60% of the country -- paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation's income.When you make almost 26% of the income and you pay only 0.6% of the income tax, that's a good deal, courtesy of those who do pay income taxes.

For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation's income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion. Today, Mr. Obama and many congressional Democrats want the "wealthy" to pay even more so there is more money for them to redistribute.

The president says he wants the wealthy to pay their "fair share." Who can argue with that? But he never defines what that means. Is it fair for 10% to pay 70% of the income tax? Does he believe they should pay 75%, or 95%, or does fairness mean they should pay it all? It's clever politics to speak like that, but it is risky policy.

Mr. Obama is adding to this trend with his "Make Work Pay" tax cut that means almost 50% of the country will no longer pay any income taxes, up from a little over 40% today. A certain amount of income redistribution in a capitalistic society is healthy, but this goes too far. The economic and moral problem is that when 50% of the country gets benefits without paying for them and an increasingly smaller number of taxpayers foot the bill, the spinning triangle will no longer be able to support itself. Eventually, it will spin so slowly that it falls down, especially when the economy is contracting and the number of wealthy taxpayers is in sharp decline.

In addition to exempting almost 50% of the country from income taxes, today nearly every other social cause is given a loophole -- or a preference -- in the tax code. Want to buy a hybrid vehicle? You get a tax break. Do you own a solar water heater? You get a credit. Want to give to charity? You get a deduction. Own a house? There's another tax deduction for you. How about college savings, certain medical costs, and retirement savings? Yes, yes, and of course yes. Did you move, pay alimony, or "provide housing to a Midwestern displaced individual"? More deductions, credits and exemptions there too, if you qualify.

Everyone now has a sacred cow in the tax code. For my money, the most sacred thing of all is our country and its growth, but the sacred cows have turned into a pack of wolves. On both the spending and the tax side, the wolves are devouring our children's future.Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) wants to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the president's budget, but that's small potatoes given the size of the deficit. The debt problem is so big and hopeless, Congress's normal nips and tucks won't work. Something more fundamental needs to happen.

It's time to create an Economic Growth Code whose purpose is to fix and grow the economy, not redistribute massive amounts of wealth. A new tax code that creates growth and reforms our entitlement system is the only way to dig our way out of the hole we're in.

Under an Economic Growth Code, everyone in American would pay income taxes -- everyone. Such a system would be designed to foster broad-based growth for all, in contrast to the loophole-ridden system we have today. Not only is the current code flawed from top to bottom, it is used by politicians to divide the public along class lines and fails to promote prosperity.

Growth is the key to keeping the pyramid spinning, and to keep spinning the pyramid's tip needs to be broadened. Otherwise a country that was raised to believe that national bankruptcy happened elsewhere may have to think again. Given the state of the economy and trillion-dollar deficits projected as far as the eye can see, we need to return to an era of more conservative, fiscal discipline.

Congress should start by refusing to go along with Mr. Obama's promise to cut taxes for 95% of the country. With the government running an almost $2 trillion deficit, no one should have their taxes cut -- no one. Given the size of the deficit, fiscal responsibility demands nothing less. Republicans in Congress need to develop their own version of an Economic Growth Code, an alternative tax code that directly targets the current mess and helps us to grow our way out of it. Republicans should not doodle in the margins -- they should use their minority status to launch the next big movement in policy and politics. Nothing creates revenue like growth and that's where Republicans should make their mark.

I favor the abolition of all Social Security, Medicare and estate taxes. In their place, we should create a simple income tax system that has no deductions or credits at all. The result would be a progressive, multitiered income tax in which everyone pays. The bottom 50% won't be excused from paying the cost of government and top earners will no longer have the loopholes they're used to. The middle-class, whose wages have stagnated, will benefit from economic growth.

Social Security and Medicare will be funded from income taxes, ending the myth that these programs are supported through government trust funds and payroll taxes. The tax base will broaden dramatically, allowing rates to fall and helping to foster what's most important -- economic growth. I'd also create a mechanism so tax rates go up or down for everyone -- no more dividing the country by lowering taxes for some or raising them only for others. A revenue system whose purpose is to pay the government's bills should apply fairly to one and all. If Congress wants to raise or cut taxes, it should do so for everyone.

Another benefit is that such a system will create an environment in which spending programs receive the scrutiny they deserve. It's funny what happens when everyone pays the bills; Americans may want less spending so they can pay fewer bills.

*Mr. Fleischer, a former press secretary for President George W. Bush, is president of Ari Fleischer Communications.*Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum .

GM's (Gov't Motors) Concept Car for America

As if we thought this would be the right way to go - no matter what the government does, it will be a failure especially when the liberals are behind it. Hey, they know it will fail but it's just another way to get our money for themselves and crush the free market at the same time.

WOW Isn't socialism great!

1stcar.wmv

Fannie and Freedie Oversight Blocked by Liberals : A Video

We have covered this questions many times in the past but here is a great video from the Canadians, no less, on who is responsible for the housing financial disaster. We know who is responsible but so many in this country have this fixation on the Bush administration, but they are the one that tried on many occasions to install oversight to prevent the very disaster that took place. As the video shows it was blocked by every Democrat.

This isn't just one country that has been affected by this mess in housing and the banks that gave the by loans but many countries that bought into the bad loans that were sold everywhere in the world. Those foreign banks and others that bought these bogus offerings were encouraged by the fact that the United States would back them. OOPS!

Watch this video and learn just who is responsible and how the majority voter in this country just reelected these same criminals again to lead our country.

Keep the faith



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1

The Real Reason for Financial Crisis : The Price of Crude Oil

Good article on how we got blamed for the world financial crisis when it started long before it got here - and, of course, our great president agreed with the euro bunch - just another excuse for him to strike another stake into the heart of our country and raise more taxes.

Keep the faith

IT DIDN'T START HERE
By ALAN REYNOLDS/

Alan Reynolds is a Cato Institute senior fellow and the author of "In come and Wealth/

/April 9, 2009/ --

AT the recent meeting of G-20 nations in London, officials from many nations agreed on one thing -- that the United States is to blame for the world recession. President Obama agreed, speaking in Strasbourg of "the reckless speculation of bankers that has now fueled a global economic downturn."One problem with this blame-game is that last year's recession was much deeper in many European and Asian countries than it was in the United States.

By the fourth quarter of 2008, as the nearby table shows, real US gross domestic product was just 0.8 percent smaller than it had been a year earlier. The contraction was twice as deep in Germany and Britain and much worse in Japan and Sweden. In February, US industrial production was 11.8 percent lower than a year before -- while Singapore was down by 22.4 percent, Sweden by 22.9 percent and Japan by 38.4 percent.

What was the mechanism by which US problems were supposedly spread to other countries? It wasn't international trade. The dollar value of US imports didn't start to fall until August 2008, and imports of consumer goods didn't fall until September -- many months after Japan and Europe fell into recession.

Indeed, most of the economies that fell first and fastest were /not/ heavily dependent on exports to the United States. Even Japan accounted for just 6.6 percent of US merchandise imports last year, compared with 15.9 percent for both Canada and China -- whose economies fared relatively well.

Even if all of the weakest European and Asian economies could plausibly blame all their troubles on the relatively stronger US economy, how could anyone possibly blame /banks?/ There were /no/ bank failures last year in Japan, Sweden, Canada or any other country on this list except Britain. And US and British banks didn't fail until September-October -- at least nine months /after/ the Japanese and European recessions began.

Yet it's clearly US/UK banks being fingered as the villains. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, for example, criticized an "Anglo-Saxon" attitude in America and Britain that encouraged risky lending and investment practices because of "an exaggerated fixation on returns." But Germany's GDP and industrial production was down 19.2 percent for the year ending in January -- versus an 11.4 percent decline in Britain and a similar US drop. Are we supposed to believe that German (and Japanese) firms are /more/ dependent on US and UK banks than American and British firms?

Another problem with blaming the United States is that the timing is all wrong. If the US recession had simply spread to other countries like a mysterious infection, shouldn't the US economy have been the first to start contracting? Yet US industrial production only started to decline from its peak after January 2008 -- long /after/ production began to slow in Canada (July 2007), Italy (August 2007), France (October 2007) and the Euro area as a whole (November 2007).

Aside from a one-month uptick in February 2008, Japan's industrial production peaked in October 2007. By January 2008, when both the US and European recessions are said to have begun, the OECD leading indicators were lower by nearly 0.8 points from a year before in the US -- but down 2.3 points in Sweden, 2.8 points in Japan, 2.6 points in Korea and 4.1 points in Ireland. Those leading indicators correctly anticipated much deeper recessions in the latter four countries. And the most famous leading indicator -- monthly stock prices -- peaked in October 2007 in the US and UK, four months /after/ stocks had peaked in Japan and the Euro area.

What did all the contracting economies have in common? Not all had housing booms -- certainly not Canada, Japan, Sweden or the other countries at the bottom of the economic-growth list. What really triggered this recession should be obvious, since the same thing happened before every other postwar US recession save one (1960).

In 1983, economist James Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego showed that "all but one of the US recessions since World War Two have been preceded, typically with a lag of around three-fourths of a year, by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum." The years 1946 to 2007 saw 10 dramatic spikes in the price of oil -- /each/ of which was soon followed by recession.

In The Financial Times on Jan. 3, 2008, I therefore suggested, "The US economy is likely to slip into recession because of higher energy costs alone, regardless of what the Fed does."In a new paper at cato.org, "Financial Crisis and Public Policy," Jagadeesh Gokhale notes that the prolonged decline in exurban housing construction that began in early 2006 was a logical response to rising prices of oil and gasoline at that time. So was the equally prolonged decline in sales of gas-guzzling vehicles. And the US/UK financial crises in the fall of 2008 were likewise as much a /consequence/ of recession as the cause: Recessions turn good loans into bad.

The recession began in late 2007 or early 2008 in many countries, with the United States one of the least affected. Countries with the deepest recessions have no believable connection to US housing or banking problems.The truth is much simpler: There is no way the oil-importing economies could have kept humming along with oil prices of $100 a barrel, much less $145. Like nearly every other recession of the postwar period, this one was triggered by a literally unbearable increase in the price of oil./."

Alan Reynolds is a Cato Institute senior fellow and the author of "In come and Wealth/Home ------------------------------------------------------------------------NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COMare trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.Copyright 2009

Obama Bow To Saudi King : One Muslim to Another

I don't know why this is a 'shock' to the general public as this is only customary behavior between two Muslims, especially when one of them is a king and leader of millions of other Muslims.

Did you ever wonder what training Obama got in his first 14 years in Kenya, living with Muslims and being taught by Muslims? Why would anyone think Obama would become a Christian while all of his childhood, and most of his adult life, was infected with Muslim doctrine?

If he was a real Christian, why would he sit through twenty years of Rev. Wright's sermons of hate and bigotry? And what about all those hoards of sobbing and fainting worshipers? Oh, wait, I guess when you sit in the front pew of the church of Obama you don't have to have any thoughts about reality, only thoughts that fit the agenda that is in the hymnal or the sermon from preacher. You will happily, willing and mindlessly do or say anything that you are told. It's so easy and makes live simple and uncomplicated.

Soldiers of Marxist socialism. The grave yards of history are full of them. But the grave yards of history are also full of those that put them there.

Keep the faith - many are joining the battle.

Obama Bow to Saudi King Labeled 'Shocking'
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
By: Jim Meyers

In what's been called a "shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate," President Barack Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia at the Group of 20 summit meeting in London.
"The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation," The Washington Times observed in an editorial on Tuesday.

"Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for U.S. presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals," the editorial said.
Obama offered King Abdullah a deep and prolonged bow from the waist when he met him at the summit, which brought together the leaders of the world’s largest economies on April 2.

The story about Obama’s unusual gesture has gotten scant media coverage in the United States, but a Spanish TV broadcast was picked up on blogs and has created an Internet stir.
"No Americans of any station are required to bow to royalty," the Times stated. "It is one of the pillars of American exceptionalism that our country rejected traditional caste divisions."

The Times editorial also opined that Obama’s bow "to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not help his image with those who believe he is secretly a Muslim, and why he chose to bow only to the Saudi king and not to any other royal remains unexplained."

For instance, Obama did not bow to Queen Elizabeth when he first met her last week in London. Subjects of the crown may bow to the monarch but are not required to do so.
First lady Michelle Obama also broke protocol during the Obamas’ trip abroad when she put her hand on the queen’s back. The move caused a bit of tempest in the British press, but was quelled when the queen put her hand on Michelle in what a Buckingham Palace spokesman described as a "mutual and spontaneous display of affection and appreciation."

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Friends Without Limits or Demands

In the end, all you really need are some ture friends to carry you though the hard parts of life.

Obama Wants to Help Banks? : He Wants CONTROL!

Is there any part of our lives that will not be effected by Obama and the liberal Democrats. or should I say Marxists socialists. It appears Obama is not just a socialist but something far worse and this begs the question, how did he get elected? What did the majority use as information to make the decision to vote for him - ?

Good article from the Wall Street Journal on Obama's continuing effort to strangle the life from America.

Keep the faith - the battle rages.

Obama Wants to Control the Banks
April-4-09 WSJ

There's a reason he refuses to accept repayment of TARP money.
By STUART VARNEY
http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=STUART+VARNEY&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration's thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road. If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash -- which was often forced on them in the first place -- the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That's what's happening right now.

Here's a true story first reported by my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano (with the names and some details obscured to prevent retaliation). Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can't a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can't special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions?

Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit -- until now.Which brings me to the Pay for Performance Act, just passed by the House. This is an outstanding example of class warfare. I'm an Englishman. We invented class warfare, and I know it when I see it. This legislation allows the administration to dictate pay for anyone working in any company that takes a dime of TARP money. This is a whip with which to thrash the unpopular bankers, a tool to advance the Obama administration's goal of controlling the financial system.

After 35 years in America, I never thought I would see this. I still can't quite believe we will sit by as this crisis is used to hand control of our economy over to government. But here we are, on the brink. Clearly, I have been naive.

*Mr. Varney is a host on the Fox Business Channel.*Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=5630.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A9

Mexican Weapons Traced to Latin America : Hillary Wrong Again

Who would have thought, just a decade ago, our government would deliberately lie about a situation to further it's political agenda to the extent that they want to fundamentally change our Constitution? It's beyond our comprehension as Americans - that's impossible.

This is the struggle that many Americans are facing today on almost every aspect of our government. The media and governmental agencies, working together, have refined this form of population control to a science. It's called 'miss information' - that is sprinkle some truth in what a majority lie to make it sound and look legitimate.

Good article here on how several major players in our government twist information to make a situation fit their agenda - an agenda that is not in the best interest of the United States. Why would they do this? Where do these people come from?

Keep the faith - show yourself on the 15th in a Tea Party.

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

While the 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
FOXNews.com Thursday, April 02, 2009·

Photos Mexico Border ViolenceFILE:

In this Nov. 7, 2008, photo a soldier stands guard during the presentation in Mexico City of arms, captured in the largest seizure of Gulf drug-cartel weapons to date, about 288 assault rifles, 500,000 rounds of ammunition, numerous grenades and several .50-caliber rifles

(AP).powered by Baynote http://www.baynote.com/welcome.php?source=guide

*EXCLUSIVE:*

You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one: It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S. What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the /traced/ firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S."Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,"

Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.*Video:*Click here to watch more. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/* A Look at the Numbers*In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S. But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes. In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.-- Russian crime organizations.

Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.--

The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.--

Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

*'These Don't Come From El Paso'*

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S."These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala."Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

*Boatloads of Weapons*

So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa? Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.

The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S. In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from."Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment.""The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"

But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico."Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."

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