Holy cow, batman - you know things are going bad when even the worst news channel in the world, one that is left of Marx or Lenin, starts to rip on the "One". WOW - even the socialists think he is worthless.
Hmmm - I always thought being worthless was how liberal Democrats got ahead in the party.
Turning Point: Couric Rips Obama
Katie Couric may be best known for her unflattering interview with Sarah Palin. But her nightly news broadcast this past Monday night may be an indicator that the big liberal media are now turning their guns on Obama.
Couric said on “CBS Evening News” that Americans are growing “disenchanted” with Obama and are openly questioning his credibility.
“Is the honeymoon over?” anchor Couric said at the beginning of her correspondent’s report.
“Although President Obama has been in office less than a year, many Americans are growing disenchanted with his handling of the enormous problems he and the country are facing, from healthcare to unemployment to Afghanistan.
“His poll numbers are sliding, and at least one poll shows his job approval rating has fallen, for the first time, below 50 percent.”
Correspondent Chris Reid chimed in: “The president is getting battered on everything from the economy to foreign policy. Some polls show Americans are increasingly questioning his credibility.”
The report asserted that while Obama talks about dealing with unemployment, which is over 10 percent and expected to rise, he has developed “no new ideas” for dealing with the problem.
CBS also cited a poll showing that only 14 percent of Americans believe Obama’s claim that healthcare reform won’t add to the budget deficit, and only 7 percent believe that the stimulus has created any jobs at all.
The report also criticized the president for being “indecisive” on Afghanistan, and for returning from his recent Asian trip “with little to show for it.”
An expert was quoted as describing his trip as the “amateur hour,” as he did not line up agreements with foreign countries before venturing abroad.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Liberals Manufacture Crisis For Power Grab - Cloward-Piven Strategy
If you never gave much thought to what Obama has in mind for the rest of us, this article will give you some idea as to where he wants to go with his vision for America. I find it an 'eye opener' in that the Cloward - Piven agenda, as stated here, matches that of our new president and his people.
It didn't start with Obama, as we can witness the Barney Frank, Chris Dodd stand on the housing crisis with the full support of the liberal Democrats for the past fifteen years. Did they plan this as far back as Jimmy Carter and kicked into high gear by Clinton but then implemented now by Obama? You be the judge.
Cloward-Piven Government
*By* *James Simpson* <http://www.americanthinker.com/james_simpson/>
November 23, 2009
It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker <http://www.americanthinker.com/> published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis <http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html>. Part of a series <http://truthandcons.blogspot.com/2009/03/links-to-all-three-manufactured-crisis.html>, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967> for destroying our economy and our system of government.
Since then, the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O373c7Up4KQ&feature=player_embedded>, Bill O'Reilly <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juVCmOYJWgI&feature=player_embedded>, and now Mark Levin <http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1595814&spid=32364>.
The methodology is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and we can all be grateful to David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/> for originally exposing and explaining it to us. He describes it as:/The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. /The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were two lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America who taught sociology at Columbia University (Piven later went on to City University of New York).
In a May 1966 /Nation/ magazine article titled "The Weight of the Poor," they outlined their strategy, proposing to use grassroots radical organizations to push ever more strident demands for public services at all levels of government. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."
They implemented the strategy by creating a succession of radical organizations, most notable among them the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with the help of veteran organizer Wade Rathke. Their crowning achievement was the "Motor Voter" act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him. As we now know, ACORN was one of the chief drivers of high-risk mortgage lending that eventually led to the financial crisis.
But the Motor Voter law was another component of the strategy. It created vast vulnerabilities in our electoral system, which ACORN then exploited. ACORN's vote registration scandals throughout the U.S. are predictable fallout. The Motor Voter law has also been used to open another vulnerability in the system: the registration of vast numbers of illegal aliens, who then reliably vote Democrat. Herein lies the real reason Democrats are so anxious for open borders, security be damned.
It should be clear to anyone with a mind and two eyes that this president and this Congress do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emmanuel said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."The /real/ goal of "health care" legislation, the /real/ goal of "cap-and-trade," and the /real/ goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control.
Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power. They and will make matters much worse, for /that is their design/. This time, in addition to overwhelming the government with demands for services, Obama and the Democrats are overwhelming political opposition to their plans with a flood of apocalyptic legislation. Their ultimate goal is to leave us so discouraged, demoralized, and exhausted that we throw our hands up in defeat. As Barney Frank said, "the middle class will be too distracted to fight."
These people are our enemies. They don't use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined, and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II.
It is time we fully internalized and digested this fact, with all its ugly ramifications. These people have violated countless laws and could be prosecuted, had we the political power. Not only are their policies unconstitutional, but /deliberately so/ -- the goal being to make the Constitution irrelevant. Their spending is off the charts and will drive us into hyperinflation, but it could be rescinded, had we the political power. These policies are toxic, but they could be stopped and reversed, had we the political power. Their ideologies are poisonous, but they could be exposed for what they are, with long jail sentences as an object lesson, had we the political power.
Every single citizen who cares about this country should be spending every minute of his or her spare time lobbying, organizing, writing, and planning. Fight every initiative they launch. It is /all/ destructive. If we are to root out this evil, it is critical that in 2010 we elect competent, principled leaders willing to defend our Constitution and our country. Otherwise, the malevolent cabal that occupies the government today will become too entrenched. After that, all bets are off.
*/Businessman and /**Examiner.com* <http://www.examiner.com/x-25466-DC-Independent-Examiner>/* columnist Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. You may read more of his articles on his blog, */*Truth and Consequences* <http://truthandcons.blogspot.com/>*.**Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/clowardpiven_government.html* at November 23, 2009 - 07:56:35 PM EST
It didn't start with Obama, as we can witness the Barney Frank, Chris Dodd stand on the housing crisis with the full support of the liberal Democrats for the past fifteen years. Did they plan this as far back as Jimmy Carter and kicked into high gear by Clinton but then implemented now by Obama? You be the judge.
Cloward-Piven Government
*By* *James Simpson* <http://www.americanthinker.com/james_simpson/>
November 23, 2009
It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker <http://www.americanthinker.com/> published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis <http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html>. Part of a series <http://truthandcons.blogspot.com/2009/03/links-to-all-three-manufactured-crisis.html>, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967> for destroying our economy and our system of government.
Since then, the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O373c7Up4KQ&feature=player_embedded>, Bill O'Reilly <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juVCmOYJWgI&feature=player_embedded>, and now Mark Levin <http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1595814&spid=32364>.
The methodology is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and we can all be grateful to David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/> for originally exposing and explaining it to us. He describes it as:/The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. /The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were two lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America who taught sociology at Columbia University (Piven later went on to City University of New York).
In a May 1966 /Nation/ magazine article titled "The Weight of the Poor," they outlined their strategy, proposing to use grassroots radical organizations to push ever more strident demands for public services at all levels of government. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."
They implemented the strategy by creating a succession of radical organizations, most notable among them the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with the help of veteran organizer Wade Rathke. Their crowning achievement was the "Motor Voter" act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him. As we now know, ACORN was one of the chief drivers of high-risk mortgage lending that eventually led to the financial crisis.
But the Motor Voter law was another component of the strategy. It created vast vulnerabilities in our electoral system, which ACORN then exploited. ACORN's vote registration scandals throughout the U.S. are predictable fallout. The Motor Voter law has also been used to open another vulnerability in the system: the registration of vast numbers of illegal aliens, who then reliably vote Democrat. Herein lies the real reason Democrats are so anxious for open borders, security be damned.
It should be clear to anyone with a mind and two eyes that this president and this Congress do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emmanuel said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."The /real/ goal of "health care" legislation, the /real/ goal of "cap-and-trade," and the /real/ goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control.
Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power. They and will make matters much worse, for /that is their design/. This time, in addition to overwhelming the government with demands for services, Obama and the Democrats are overwhelming political opposition to their plans with a flood of apocalyptic legislation. Their ultimate goal is to leave us so discouraged, demoralized, and exhausted that we throw our hands up in defeat. As Barney Frank said, "the middle class will be too distracted to fight."
These people are our enemies. They don't use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined, and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II.
It is time we fully internalized and digested this fact, with all its ugly ramifications. These people have violated countless laws and could be prosecuted, had we the political power. Not only are their policies unconstitutional, but /deliberately so/ -- the goal being to make the Constitution irrelevant. Their spending is off the charts and will drive us into hyperinflation, but it could be rescinded, had we the political power. These policies are toxic, but they could be stopped and reversed, had we the political power. Their ideologies are poisonous, but they could be exposed for what they are, with long jail sentences as an object lesson, had we the political power.
Every single citizen who cares about this country should be spending every minute of his or her spare time lobbying, organizing, writing, and planning. Fight every initiative they launch. It is /all/ destructive. If we are to root out this evil, it is critical that in 2010 we elect competent, principled leaders willing to defend our Constitution and our country. Otherwise, the malevolent cabal that occupies the government today will become too entrenched. After that, all bets are off.
*/Businessman and /**Examiner.com* <http://www.examiner.com/x-25466-DC-Independent-Examiner>/* columnist Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. You may read more of his articles on his blog, */*Truth and Consequences* <http://truthandcons.blogspot.com/>*.**Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/clowardpiven_government.html* at November 23, 2009 - 07:56:35 PM EST
Monday, November 23, 2009
Attorney General Holder Plans Nation Wide Gun Registration
It's just one more plank in the Marxist agenda to establish control of all aspects of our lives - make sure the general population is defenceless and then attack them where they live, literally. To have the government kick down your door in the middle of the night to arrest you because you posses a fire arm is not out of the question in Obama's New America.
People are actually frightened of the government in America. How can this happen here?
Is this like Europe in the thirties? You decide.
Attorney General Holder Reveals Aggressive Gun Control In Response to Ft. Hood Terror Attack
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire
Before the Senate Judiciary Committee November 18th, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed a stunningly broad and aggressive anti-gun agenda.
"The President of the United States asked that politicians not use the Ft. Hood attack to engage in 'political theater.' It appears those committed to attacking gun owners and the Second Amendment simply can't help themselves and are engaged in blaming guns and gun owners on the heels of this terrorist attack. Sadly it looks like 'politics as usual,'" said LEAA's spokesperson, Ted Deeds.
After explaining and defending his decision to give enemy combatants constitutional protections and the right to public trial in civilian courts, Attorney General Holder revealed his support for a national gun owner registration scheme and authorizing the government to ban firearm possession for any person by merely adding that person's name to the terror watch list.
Drawing reasonable conclusions from what Holder publicly said, we now know:
Holder wants a national, permanent gun registration system administered by law enforcement.
A registration of honest citizens that have cleared the federal background check for gun purchases with those records permanently retained by and shared among law enforcement.
Holder wants new federal authority to prohibit any person on the federal watch list (reported to be 400,000 names) from buying guns and supports confiscating guns from those on the list who possess them.
Transcribing General Holder: "The position of the Administration is that there should be a basis for law enforcement to share information about gun purchases." "... [It's not] inconsistent to allow law enforcement agencies to share that kind of information, for that information to be retained and then to be shared by law enforcement." "It seems incongruous to me that we would bar certain people from flying on airplanes because they are on the terrorist watch list and yet we would still allow them to posses weapons." {Emphasis added}
LEAA's Executive Director Jim Fotis said, "Those behind the badge don't believe more restrictions on honest gun owners is a reasonable, practical or constitutional response to acts of terrorism. As a retired officer, I know that America's men and women in blue want to fight terrorism, to stop terrorists; not waste time keeping records on innocent gun owners!"
www.leaa.org
SOURCE Law Enforcement Alliance of America
People are actually frightened of the government in America. How can this happen here?
Is this like Europe in the thirties? You decide.
Attorney General Holder Reveals Aggressive Gun Control In Response to Ft. Hood Terror Attack
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire
Before the Senate Judiciary Committee November 18th, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed a stunningly broad and aggressive anti-gun agenda.
"The President of the United States asked that politicians not use the Ft. Hood attack to engage in 'political theater.' It appears those committed to attacking gun owners and the Second Amendment simply can't help themselves and are engaged in blaming guns and gun owners on the heels of this terrorist attack. Sadly it looks like 'politics as usual,'" said LEAA's spokesperson, Ted Deeds.
After explaining and defending his decision to give enemy combatants constitutional protections and the right to public trial in civilian courts, Attorney General Holder revealed his support for a national gun owner registration scheme and authorizing the government to ban firearm possession for any person by merely adding that person's name to the terror watch list.
Drawing reasonable conclusions from what Holder publicly said, we now know:
Holder wants a national, permanent gun registration system administered by law enforcement.
A registration of honest citizens that have cleared the federal background check for gun purchases with those records permanently retained by and shared among law enforcement.
Holder wants new federal authority to prohibit any person on the federal watch list (reported to be 400,000 names) from buying guns and supports confiscating guns from those on the list who possess them.
Transcribing General Holder: "The position of the Administration is that there should be a basis for law enforcement to share information about gun purchases." "... [It's not] inconsistent to allow law enforcement agencies to share that kind of information, for that information to be retained and then to be shared by law enforcement." "It seems incongruous to me that we would bar certain people from flying on airplanes because they are on the terrorist watch list and yet we would still allow them to posses weapons." {Emphasis added}
LEAA's Executive Director Jim Fotis said, "Those behind the badge don't believe more restrictions on honest gun owners is a reasonable, practical or constitutional response to acts of terrorism. As a retired officer, I know that America's men and women in blue want to fight terrorism, to stop terrorists; not waste time keeping records on innocent gun owners!"
www.leaa.org
SOURCE Law Enforcement Alliance of America
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Global Warming Fraud Exposed - Again AND Again
Here is a great website for information on climate change, ah formally global warming. This will give a person some balance to the insanity that is Al Gore and those sitting in the front pew.
Lord Monkton has answers to the misinformation from the Gore power grab.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/blog_watch/and_then_what_happens_.html
Lord Monkton has answers to the misinformation from the Gore power grab.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/blog_watch/and_then_what_happens_.html
Friday, November 20, 2009
Corporations Moving Overseas - Why? - Hostile Environment
Here is more proof that we are headed into a 'third world' environment. If you think we can escape this coming nightmare by believing our Marxist socialist leader will save us, you are truly living in a dream world. He is doing this for a reason and it is not to make us better. He wants to 'change' America forever into a socialist dung heap.
It's the same dream world the majority used when they voted this 'hope' and 'change' disaster into office just one year ago. Now it is time to come awake and take a stand for our country.
Call your Representatives in Washington and demand they stop this slide into a economic pit that we will never get out of.
We can do this but we all have to get off our collective butts and start moving to save our country. Call now and vote these guys out next November.
Chasing Corporations Out Of The U.S.
By ROBERT J. HERBOLD AND SCOTT S. POWELL <http://www.investors.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?source=filterSearch&Ntt=ROBERT+J.+HERBOLD+AND+SCOTT+S.+POWELL&Nr=AND%28Author%3aROBERT+J.+HERBOLD+AND+SCOTT+S.+POWELL%29>Posted 11/16/2009 06:16 PM ET
Unemployment is foremost on everyone's mind today. Yet jobs can continue to leave the U.S. because of the threat of new taxes, the convergence of technology, the ease of digital collaboration and ready access to abundant foreign engineering talent. Multinational corporate executives may have to move R&D, product development, management and manufacturing overseas when there is no longer a comparative advantage to staying in the United States. A shocking thought for sure, but it's the new reality.
After Japan, the U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate, and there is seemingly no willingness by Washington to bring rates down. In fact, the Obama administration recently proposed taxing the foreign profits of U.S.-based multinationals even when those profits were not repatriated, but backed away when executives threatened to move offshore. Obama aides acknowledge that the administration has set aside the idea for now, but plans to revisit it in a broader tax overhaul sometime next year.
This ambiguity and the threat of new taxes from Washington, such as cap-and-trade, have already prompted 11 major U.S. companies to move offshore in the past year. Tyco International, Foster Wheeler, Weatherford International, Nabors Industries, Noble Corp., TransOcean International, United America Indemnity, Cooper Industries, Covidien, Ingersoll-Rand and Accenture have all completed or taken steps to change their domicile of incorporation, with Switzerland and Ireland as the most popular relocation destinations. Commenting on his company's decision, an Accenture board member asked, "What shareholder would ever vote to incorporate in a country that taxes your worldwide income?"
But it is not just taxation that is chasing corporations out of America. Another top consideration is access to talent. The U.S. now spends more per capita on public education than any other OECD country, but its students test in the bottom decile. The U.S. Government's National Assessment of Educational Progress generates the "Nation's Report Card" annually. For the last 10 years, less than 25% of American high school seniors achieved a rating of "proficient" in either math or science.
In August 2009, the ACT test service announced that only 23% of this year's high school graduates tested adequately in reading, writing, math and science to succeed in college. This is a national embarrassment. Everyone understands teacher quality is the key determinant of academic success. However, teachers' unions don't allow performance appraisals and merit pay. So, many top-performing teachers get frustrated and opt out, leaving behind the less competent who keep the bar low.
Washington forms commission after commission to find solutions, but nothing much happens. Why? Because no one wants to take on the teachers' unions, which are a major source of re-election campaign dollars.
With the scarcity of technical talent in the U.S. resulting from failing schools, many corporations try to recruit foreign students. But with anti-immigrant regulations and sentiment imposed by Washington, many corporations find the easier course is to just hire abroad. Recently, Bank of America, among others, had to rescind job offers to dozens of foreigners because it had received federal bailout money.
Another major concern for American multinational executives is the increasing political risk in the United States. They now worry about the high cost of uncertainty associated with excessive government activism and a hostile culture. A culture that turns a blind eye to government failure, but is quick and unrelenting to blame society's ills on business, will naturally and subliminally embrace socialist solutions.
The problem is that when one intervention fails, the government attempts to fix its errors with yet more intervention — a sort of creeping socialism that results in a compounding of waste and inefficiency. So the nationalization of General Motors was followed by Cash for Clunkers and successive bailouts of GMAC. The TARP rescue of banks was followed by government micromanagement, wage controls and punitive salary caps for highly paid talent. Unfortunately, this kind of populist government meddling in our financial sector is sure to drive talent offshore. In fact, Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann recently commented "we can't wait to get our hands on all that top talent."
Americans must realize that the geese that lay the golden eggs can take flight. Most U.S.-born multinational board members and executives want their native country to be successful. On the other hand, their fiduciary duty requires that they face reality and respond to global competitors who increasingly have an edge in taxation, access to educated talent and a more supportive political and cultural climate.Taking no action and losing out to the competition breaches their duty to shareholders.
It's the same dream world the majority used when they voted this 'hope' and 'change' disaster into office just one year ago. Now it is time to come awake and take a stand for our country.
Call your Representatives in Washington and demand they stop this slide into a economic pit that we will never get out of.
We can do this but we all have to get off our collective butts and start moving to save our country. Call now and vote these guys out next November.
Chasing Corporations Out Of The U.S.
By ROBERT J. HERBOLD AND SCOTT S. POWELL <http://www.investors.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?source=filterSearch&Ntt=ROBERT+J.+HERBOLD+AND+SCOTT+S.+POWELL&Nr=AND%28Author%3aROBERT+J.+HERBOLD+AND+SCOTT+S.+POWELL%29>Posted 11/16/2009 06:16 PM ET
Unemployment is foremost on everyone's mind today. Yet jobs can continue to leave the U.S. because of the threat of new taxes, the convergence of technology, the ease of digital collaboration and ready access to abundant foreign engineering talent. Multinational corporate executives may have to move R&D, product development, management and manufacturing overseas when there is no longer a comparative advantage to staying in the United States. A shocking thought for sure, but it's the new reality.
After Japan, the U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate, and there is seemingly no willingness by Washington to bring rates down. In fact, the Obama administration recently proposed taxing the foreign profits of U.S.-based multinationals even when those profits were not repatriated, but backed away when executives threatened to move offshore. Obama aides acknowledge that the administration has set aside the idea for now, but plans to revisit it in a broader tax overhaul sometime next year.
This ambiguity and the threat of new taxes from Washington, such as cap-and-trade, have already prompted 11 major U.S. companies to move offshore in the past year. Tyco International, Foster Wheeler, Weatherford International, Nabors Industries, Noble Corp., TransOcean International, United America Indemnity, Cooper Industries, Covidien, Ingersoll-Rand and Accenture have all completed or taken steps to change their domicile of incorporation, with Switzerland and Ireland as the most popular relocation destinations. Commenting on his company's decision, an Accenture board member asked, "What shareholder would ever vote to incorporate in a country that taxes your worldwide income?"
But it is not just taxation that is chasing corporations out of America. Another top consideration is access to talent. The U.S. now spends more per capita on public education than any other OECD country, but its students test in the bottom decile. The U.S. Government's National Assessment of Educational Progress generates the "Nation's Report Card" annually. For the last 10 years, less than 25% of American high school seniors achieved a rating of "proficient" in either math or science.
In August 2009, the ACT test service announced that only 23% of this year's high school graduates tested adequately in reading, writing, math and science to succeed in college. This is a national embarrassment. Everyone understands teacher quality is the key determinant of academic success. However, teachers' unions don't allow performance appraisals and merit pay. So, many top-performing teachers get frustrated and opt out, leaving behind the less competent who keep the bar low.
Washington forms commission after commission to find solutions, but nothing much happens. Why? Because no one wants to take on the teachers' unions, which are a major source of re-election campaign dollars.
With the scarcity of technical talent in the U.S. resulting from failing schools, many corporations try to recruit foreign students. But with anti-immigrant regulations and sentiment imposed by Washington, many corporations find the easier course is to just hire abroad. Recently, Bank of America, among others, had to rescind job offers to dozens of foreigners because it had received federal bailout money.
Another major concern for American multinational executives is the increasing political risk in the United States. They now worry about the high cost of uncertainty associated with excessive government activism and a hostile culture. A culture that turns a blind eye to government failure, but is quick and unrelenting to blame society's ills on business, will naturally and subliminally embrace socialist solutions.
The problem is that when one intervention fails, the government attempts to fix its errors with yet more intervention — a sort of creeping socialism that results in a compounding of waste and inefficiency. So the nationalization of General Motors was followed by Cash for Clunkers and successive bailouts of GMAC. The TARP rescue of banks was followed by government micromanagement, wage controls and punitive salary caps for highly paid talent. Unfortunately, this kind of populist government meddling in our financial sector is sure to drive talent offshore. In fact, Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann recently commented "we can't wait to get our hands on all that top talent."
Americans must realize that the geese that lay the golden eggs can take flight. Most U.S.-born multinational board members and executives want their native country to be successful. On the other hand, their fiduciary duty requires that they face reality and respond to global competitors who increasingly have an edge in taxation, access to educated talent and a more supportive political and cultural climate.Taking no action and losing out to the competition breaches their duty to shareholders.
Washington needs to wake up and see the big picture. Now more than ever, it is all about keeping and creating jobs. We can't afford to chase multinational corporations out of the United States.
• Herbold is the retired chief operating officer of Microsoft Corp. and managing director of the Herbold Group.• Powell is managing director of Alpha-Quest and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Both live in Bellevue, Wash.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Giuliani Stands Against Obama Monkey Trial In New York
Giuliani is saying what most Americans are saying - this is crazy and irresponsible. But yet Obama is going ahead. Many in this country believe this is also a way to attack Bush and Chaney for what they did to protect our country from another attack. That and to try and destroy any opposition from the Right to his planned agenda of 'changing' America into a socialist nightmare.
This seems to sum up what Obama's entire administration is based on. The wanton destruction of the Constitution and the American way of life.
Giuliani: 9/11 Trials in NYC Will Lead to More Terrorism
Friday, November 13, 2009 10:09 PM
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani blasted the Obama administration on Friday for its decision to try five Sept. 11 suspects in New York, saying that such a trial would only encourage terrorists to target the city once again.
Earlier Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba would be transported onto U.S. soil to face justice in civilian court.
"After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for that attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice," Holder said. "They will be brought to New York – to New York – to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”
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Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the attacks, slammed the decision during an appearance on Fox News. “I think this is a very dangerous decision, and an irresponsible one. And one that is absolutely unnecessary. Meaning, if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed couldn't be tried anywhere else but in New York, then of course New York would handle it and do it,” he said.
“New York is already a target for terrorists – we announce that every day and talk about it every day. To add something unnecessary to that makes no sense, and the president has made, I believe, an irresponsible decision.”
Other Republicans, like Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, and Rep. Peter King of New York, agreed with Giuliani, who said 9/11 “was an act of war. And one of the things I thought we learned from Sept. 11 was that we were in a state of denial before Sept. 11. We went through this once before – 1993. We had people, terrorists, attack the World Trade Center. We did not recognize it as an act of war. We tried them in the Southern District of New York. It did no good.
We were attacked in Africa, we were attacked at those embassies in Africa, we were attacked on the USS Cole and then we had the worst attack in our history. “And I hoped and prayed from that day on it would be the last Islamic terrorist attack in our history. And it was not the last, because a week ago we had another Islamic terrorist attack on our soil,” said Giuliani, referring to the shooting spree at Ford Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead.
Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the attack, reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar!” (Arabic for “God is great!”) as he started shooting.
“Why this administration has trouble figuring that out when the man yelled out 'Allahu akbar' when he was murdering people – as a former prosecutor I find frighteningly incompetent,” Giuliani said.
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
This seems to sum up what Obama's entire administration is based on. The wanton destruction of the Constitution and the American way of life.
Giuliani: 9/11 Trials in NYC Will Lead to More Terrorism
Friday, November 13, 2009 10:09 PM
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani blasted the Obama administration on Friday for its decision to try five Sept. 11 suspects in New York, saying that such a trial would only encourage terrorists to target the city once again.
Earlier Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba would be transported onto U.S. soil to face justice in civilian court.
"After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for that attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice," Holder said. "They will be brought to New York – to New York – to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”
Special: Get Sarah Palin’s New Book – Incredible FREE Offer – Click Here Now.
Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City at the time of the attacks, slammed the decision during an appearance on Fox News. “I think this is a very dangerous decision, and an irresponsible one. And one that is absolutely unnecessary. Meaning, if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed couldn't be tried anywhere else but in New York, then of course New York would handle it and do it,” he said.
“New York is already a target for terrorists – we announce that every day and talk about it every day. To add something unnecessary to that makes no sense, and the president has made, I believe, an irresponsible decision.”
Other Republicans, like Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, and Rep. Peter King of New York, agreed with Giuliani, who said 9/11 “was an act of war. And one of the things I thought we learned from Sept. 11 was that we were in a state of denial before Sept. 11. We went through this once before – 1993. We had people, terrorists, attack the World Trade Center. We did not recognize it as an act of war. We tried them in the Southern District of New York. It did no good.
We were attacked in Africa, we were attacked at those embassies in Africa, we were attacked on the USS Cole and then we had the worst attack in our history. “And I hoped and prayed from that day on it would be the last Islamic terrorist attack in our history. And it was not the last, because a week ago we had another Islamic terrorist attack on our soil,” said Giuliani, referring to the shooting spree at Ford Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead.
Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the attack, reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar!” (Arabic for “God is great!”) as he started shooting.
“Why this administration has trouble figuring that out when the man yelled out 'Allahu akbar' when he was murdering people – as a former prosecutor I find frighteningly incompetent,” Giuliani said.
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Al Gore's Green Energy Plan : Pure Fantast AND A Fraud
Al Gore knows his plan for clean energy is a fraud but his last effort to extort the world of billions will land him tens of millions in his bank account. His new plan for us is based on the same principle that brought him so much success and millions, lie to the public about how great it will be to be energy independent and all we have to do is pay him millions. He will make it happen. Worse, the public that bought into the last fraud will buy into this one as well, and he knows it!
Biggest problem here is that none of us will have any money to give him as we will not have any jobs as he kills off all production of energy to run our factories. Al, of course, will have plenty of everything to sustain his life style including all of our money.
Oh, and by the way, Al won't debate this global warming thing - he just proclaims the 'facts' and that is good enough.
I hope you do realize that this plan of Al Gore's is all about making him rich. It has nothing to do with green technology or energy independence. It is about money, our money, in Al's pockets as he laughs all the way to the bank. What fools they are.
Clean Energy is Pure Fantasy
November 18, 2009
by John Myers
(Part one of a three-part series on energy)
Barack Obama must be thrilled with fellow Nobel Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore and his just-published book, Our Choice, A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. In it, Gore sings the liberal refrain that big government can save the world. Gore, who is making the rounds touting his book this month, argues there are economic as well as political reasons to be green.
"There is a common thread running through the discussion of climate, (national) security, and the economic crisis, and that is our ridiculous dependence on foreign oil and coal," Gore said.
In other words, clean energy will bring us peace, prosperity and respite from that “End of Days” scenario known as global warming.
Gore thinks we can have peace because America will no longer be dependent on Middle East oil. As a result we can pull out of the region lock, stock and no barrel. That will save hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on Arab oil. Best yet, that money can be invested into clean technologies—a super-grid to capture and transport wind and solar power.
Gore’s vision is for America to become a world leader in clean technology and export it around the world, correcting one last annoyance—our staggering trade deficit.
Gore’s utopia is green. Soon we can sleep easy in our lavish solar homes with our electric cars plugged in.
If it sounds too good to be true there is a reason for that—it is.
Jousting at Windmills
If you have ever been to Palm Springs, Calif., and driven west you can’t help but notice the forest of wind turbines that pockmark the desert landscape. As we drove along Interstate-10 years ago my wife Angela said, “How come the windmills aren’t turning?”
“No wind,” I said. That sums up the problem with wind power, a system that currently produces about 1 percent of America’s energy needs.
When the wind blows you get electricity but when it doesn’t blow you get nothing. That is because it is impossible with current technology to store alternating current. Direct current wind power can’t be stored in batteries. As a result consumers need redundant power plants.
Then there is a question of cost and space.
Last year in England, former Industry Secretary and current Labour MP John Hutton announced the British government should build a huge array of giant windmills to meet the country’s future energy needs. The Energy Tribune said Hutton’s plan would literally change the face of Britain. That’s because Hutton wants the government to build 7,000 turbines—or one every half-mile around the entire coast of Britain.
It’s interesting that as much as the greens hate to spoil the environment they embrace wind power. Turbines not only kill tens of thousands of birds but also use up more space per unit of capacity than any other power source.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy each wind turbine requires 40 acres.
Physicist Howard Hayden at the University of Connecticut sums up the situation: “Imagine a one-mile swath of wind turbines extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles. That land area would be required to produce as much power around the clock as one large coal, natural gas, or nuclear power station that normally occupies about one square kilometer.”
And wind turbines don‘t come cheap.
One commercial 2 megawatt turbine costs about $3 million installed.
According to Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), “At a time when America needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power. We need lower prices; wind power raises prices.”
Biggest problem here is that none of us will have any money to give him as we will not have any jobs as he kills off all production of energy to run our factories. Al, of course, will have plenty of everything to sustain his life style including all of our money.
Oh, and by the way, Al won't debate this global warming thing - he just proclaims the 'facts' and that is good enough.
I hope you do realize that this plan of Al Gore's is all about making him rich. It has nothing to do with green technology or energy independence. It is about money, our money, in Al's pockets as he laughs all the way to the bank. What fools they are.
Clean Energy is Pure Fantasy
November 18, 2009
by John Myers
(Part one of a three-part series on energy)
Barack Obama must be thrilled with fellow Nobel Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore and his just-published book, Our Choice, A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. In it, Gore sings the liberal refrain that big government can save the world. Gore, who is making the rounds touting his book this month, argues there are economic as well as political reasons to be green.
"There is a common thread running through the discussion of climate, (national) security, and the economic crisis, and that is our ridiculous dependence on foreign oil and coal," Gore said.
In other words, clean energy will bring us peace, prosperity and respite from that “End of Days” scenario known as global warming.
Gore thinks we can have peace because America will no longer be dependent on Middle East oil. As a result we can pull out of the region lock, stock and no barrel. That will save hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on Arab oil. Best yet, that money can be invested into clean technologies—a super-grid to capture and transport wind and solar power.
Gore’s vision is for America to become a world leader in clean technology and export it around the world, correcting one last annoyance—our staggering trade deficit.
Gore’s utopia is green. Soon we can sleep easy in our lavish solar homes with our electric cars plugged in.
If it sounds too good to be true there is a reason for that—it is.
Jousting at Windmills
If you have ever been to Palm Springs, Calif., and driven west you can’t help but notice the forest of wind turbines that pockmark the desert landscape. As we drove along Interstate-10 years ago my wife Angela said, “How come the windmills aren’t turning?”
“No wind,” I said. That sums up the problem with wind power, a system that currently produces about 1 percent of America’s energy needs.
When the wind blows you get electricity but when it doesn’t blow you get nothing. That is because it is impossible with current technology to store alternating current. Direct current wind power can’t be stored in batteries. As a result consumers need redundant power plants.
Then there is a question of cost and space.
Last year in England, former Industry Secretary and current Labour MP John Hutton announced the British government should build a huge array of giant windmills to meet the country’s future energy needs. The Energy Tribune said Hutton’s plan would literally change the face of Britain. That’s because Hutton wants the government to build 7,000 turbines—or one every half-mile around the entire coast of Britain.
It’s interesting that as much as the greens hate to spoil the environment they embrace wind power. Turbines not only kill tens of thousands of birds but also use up more space per unit of capacity than any other power source.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy each wind turbine requires 40 acres.
Physicist Howard Hayden at the University of Connecticut sums up the situation: “Imagine a one-mile swath of wind turbines extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles. That land area would be required to produce as much power around the clock as one large coal, natural gas, or nuclear power station that normally occupies about one square kilometer.”
And wind turbines don‘t come cheap.
One commercial 2 megawatt turbine costs about $3 million installed.
According to Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), “At a time when America needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power. We need lower prices; wind power raises prices.”
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Health Care That Works For Everyone
This all seems so simple and straight forward - everyone is covered and the market place is allowed to make things better. Why then this absolutely destructive disaster that the Democrats are shoving done our throats?
Easy, it isn't about health care.
FUNDAMENTAL, COMMONSENSE HEALTH CARE REFORMS
Republicans and Democrats agree that health care reform is a critical issue for the nation's future. But the Democrats have developed deeply flawed, partisan reforms that expand coverage without fixing any of the system's underlying problems. Unless they chart a new, bipartisan course soon their rush to declare victory will result in a national tragedy, say Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Paul Howard, director of the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute.
There are several fundamental, commonsense reforms that will cost less, improve health care quality and expand coverage, say Holtz-Eakin and Howard.
End the tax exclusion for health care and replace it with a standardized tax credit or tax deduction:
Economists from (Obama adviser) Jason Furman to Martin Feldstein know that the tax exemption for employer-provided insurance is regressive (the rich benefit more), arbitrary (why tie insurance to employment?) and drives up health care inflation.
End it -- the largest tax break in the code -- and use the proceeds to expand private insurance.
Expand existing state high-risk pools to address pre-existing conditions:
Today, 35 states have high risk pools that they use to subsidize coverage for Americans who might go without coverage because they have pre-existing health conditions that make coverage very expensive or unavailable in the individual insurance market.
Federal dollars should go to states that embrace model high risk pools offering affordable premiums and disease management plans that help keep beneficiaries in better health.
Create real interstate insurance competition through a transparent national market:
The president and Congress talk a lot about competition, but forcing consumers to choose among three or four expensive government designed plans -- bronze, silver, gold or platinum, stacking the deck in favor of public plans, and hamstringing private insurance isn't real competition.
Congress should allow interstate sale of insurance, but mandate transparency and standardized coverage descriptions so that consumers always know what they are buying and can easily compare different coverage options.
Source: Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Paul Howard, "Why Tragedy Will Be Result of Dems Rush to Victory on Health Reform," FOXNews.com, November 13, 2009.
For text:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/11/13/douglas-holtz-eakin-paul-howard-pelosi-health-care-sink-economy/
For more on Health Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
Monday, November 16, 2009
Obama's Gesture For America : The Rigid Digit!!!
It's becoming very clear to anyone that is willing to hear or see that Obama is out of control and will destroy us all if given enough time.
Stay awake and vote next year to remove all Democrats that are running for office. We must take back the congress to slow the destruction of our country. I still find this all most impossible to believe this is happening in our country.
Paul Rahe: Obama's gestures, part 4
<http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024916.php>Power Line Blog: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul MirengoffNovember 9, 2009 Posted by Scott at 5:39 AM
Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe writes on the celebration <http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-11-09-voa3.cfm> of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today from which President Obama has chosen to be absent:
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To those in my generation, this seemed an almost miraculous event. Berlin had long been the flashpoint in East-West relations. It was with regard to Berlin that Josef Stalin first tested our resolve, breaking the Four-Power agreements with regard to that city, which was located deep in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany, and cutting off access from the West by road and rail.
Our response, under Harry Truman, was the Berlin Airlift, which delivered food and other supplies by air to those isolated within the American, British, and French Zones in that city. This was the first clear, undoubted sign that we would not stand idly by while the Soviet Union took over western Europe. Its historic importance cannot be overstated.
The second Berlin Crisis took place in August, 1961 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and his Easter German counterpart Walter Ulbricht took up a suggestion publicly floated by Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (and privately supported by John F. Kennedy) and built the Berlin Wall. This, too, was a breach of the Four-Power agreement, which specified that Berlin be an open city. Khrushchev and Ulbricht built the wall because it had become the practice for young people in East Germany, especially those with marketable skills, to travel to East Berlin, cross over to the West, and fly on to West Germany to start a new life.
One consequence was that, prior to August, 1961, East Germany was not economically viable. J. William Fulbright and some in the Kennedy administration entertained hopes not unlike those entertained by the Obama administration with regard to Iran. If the Russians found themselves unthreatened in Eastern Europe, they reasoned, they would relax and be more amenable to working out a /modus vivendi/ with the West. They soon learned that they had blundered -- for our failure to send in the bulldozers to knock down the wall, which Harry Truman urged that we do, led to a crisis of confidence within the western alliance, and it was this crisis that occasioned John Kennedy's dramatic flight to Berlin and the speech in which he said, "Ich bin ein Berliner."
It did not matter that this meant, in German, "I am a jelly donut." No one expected linguistic competence from an American. Everyone understood that he meant to say, "Ich bin Berliner: I am a Berliner."It would be a while, however, before the Kennedy administration would recognize the full consequences of its display of weakness. As a consequence of such foolishness, the United States would soon be faced with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Obama administration can expect to be rewarded in a similar fashion by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union, chastened, gave up its policy of brinksmanship and sought by indirect means to bring about the collapse of the West. The event that took place twenty years ago signaled the fact that we had outlasted the Soviets. We have much to be proud of. Never in human history has there been a sustained conflict over four decades between two great power blocs in which no great war took place and one of the two won a decisive victory resulting in the dismantlement of the rival alliance and even the dismantlement of the country that led it.
We made mistakes in the course of the Cold War, but -- despite partisan divisions -- we managed to maintain a more or less consistent policy of containment and, after a time, strategic engagement. We -- and the world -- owe a great debt to the Cold War presidents: especially, to Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, who were the most stalwart. This was arguably America's finest hour.
It is, I think, significant that Barack Obama chose not to join the other heads of state and heads of government who have gathered in Berlin today to celebrate what was a remarkable and blessed event.
Back in June, in two separate posts on Power Line - here <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023779.php> and here <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023934.php> -- I drew attention to our current president's propensity for communicating different messages to different audiences by means of gestures of one kind or another. Here is what I then wrote: Barack Obama has a history of belittling his adversaries [by indirection]. In April, 2008, he was caught on tape during a debate with Hillary Clinton, rubbing his hand across the right side of his face and extending his middle finger in an obscene gesture that many in the audience could see it but she could not, and when this provoked laughter on the part of his supporters he responded with a knowing smile.
Later, after accepting his party's nomination, he did precisely the same thing during a debate with John McCain; and, after Sarah Palin remarked at the Republican National Convention that the only difference between a pit bull and a soccer mom was lipstick, he observed at a rally that a pig with lipstick is still a pig. Again, many in the audience caught the dig and they, too, were rewarded with a knowing smile.
Obama is, in fact, a master of the insulting gesture. There is no other construction that one can put on his conduct towards Gordon Brown when the British prime minister paid him a visit shortly after his inauguration. First, in an ostentatious manner, he returned to the British embassy a bust of Winston Churchill that had been loaned to his predecessor. Then, when Brown presented him with a pen made from timber used in a British ship once involved in putting down the slave trade, he gave him in return a stack of movies on DVD which could not be played on machines sold in Europe.
Were Obama a yokel, one might be able to explain this away. But a yokel he is not, and there are State Department protocol officers who are highly sensitive to the proprieties. It is no accident that, at about the same time, the White House press secretary intimated in the presence of members of the British press that there was no special relationship between the United States and Great Britain. Obama's gesture was a calculated insult--meant to be understood only by those to whom it was directed.
If we are to comprehend what is going on, we must pay close attention not only to what Obama says but to what he conveys in other ways. His tone is nearly always moderate but what he hints at and what he intimates by way of body language often convey the opposite.
Witness his warm embrace of Hugo Chavez. Behind the thin veneer of politeness, there is, I suspect, something ugly lurking. In the first of the autobiographies that he claims to have written, Barack Obama frequently speaks of himself as being in the grips of rage. We would do well to take him at his word. If we are to stop him from doing great damage to this country and to our friends and allies, we must take every opportunity that comes our way to unmask the man.
In a later post, which can be found here <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024565.php>, I added: We now know - thanks to events in the Honduras - the meaning of Obama's gesture with respect to the Venezuelan dictator, and I would suggest that we must regard in a similar light the timing of Obama's announcement of his administration's shift in policy regarding missile-defence in Europe. For it can hardly be an accident that he chose the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland as the occasion.
We must keep in mind the fact that Obama is not a yokel and that the State Department is there to prevent an ill-informed president from unnecessarily stepping on toes. What happened last Thursday was a deliberate gesture. It was aimed at our allies in eastern Europe and at Russia, and it was recognized as such in Poland, the Czech republic, and Russia. Vladimir Putin spoke of Obama's decision as a courageous act. Our friends in eastern Europe would not have used that adjective.
A signal has been given, and they know the meaning.
We are living in a dangerous time. It seems highly unlikely that Barack Obama will get his way in domestic affairs. The Democrats may control Congress, but they now fear a rout in 2010, and they are likely to tred with caution from now on. In foreign affairs, however, presidents have a relatively free hand, and this president has ample time to do damage to a country that, there is reason to suspect, he deeply hates.
President Obama chose not to go to Berlin for a reason. Once again, he is signaling that his administration is in the process of turning its back on our erstwhile allies in Europe. He has thus far persistently made it his practice to embrace our enemies and to stiff our friends. We should not for a moment underestimate the significance of this. It means that he believes our policy in the Cold War wrong-headed, and it means that he intends to line us up now with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It is by no means an accident that the man in the State Department now in charge of our policy towards Iran is on the board of Iran's main front-organization in the United States.
Ed Lasky's report <http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_new_iran_man_at_the_state.html> regarding this matter is well worth reading.Addendum: There is an exceptionally good discussion of the Kennedy administration and the building of the Berlin Wall in "Weak will, high wall" <http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Weak-will--high-wall-4306> by Donald Kagan, in the current issue of /The New Criterion <http://www.newcriterion.com/>/.Paul A. Rahe <http://www.paularahe.com> holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College <http://www.hillsdale.edu>. He is the author, most recently, of /Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic/ <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300141254?tag=paara-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0300141254&adid=0SSD70NECM6HFA1X64DE> and of /Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern P/ <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030014492X?ie=UTF8&tag=paara-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=030014492X>
Stay awake and vote next year to remove all Democrats that are running for office. We must take back the congress to slow the destruction of our country. I still find this all most impossible to believe this is happening in our country.
Paul Rahe: Obama's gestures, part 4
<http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024916.php>Power Line Blog: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul MirengoffNovember 9, 2009 Posted by Scott at 5:39 AM
Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe writes on the celebration <http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-11-09-voa3.cfm> of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today from which President Obama has chosen to be absent:
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To those in my generation, this seemed an almost miraculous event. Berlin had long been the flashpoint in East-West relations. It was with regard to Berlin that Josef Stalin first tested our resolve, breaking the Four-Power agreements with regard to that city, which was located deep in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany, and cutting off access from the West by road and rail.
Our response, under Harry Truman, was the Berlin Airlift, which delivered food and other supplies by air to those isolated within the American, British, and French Zones in that city. This was the first clear, undoubted sign that we would not stand idly by while the Soviet Union took over western Europe. Its historic importance cannot be overstated.
The second Berlin Crisis took place in August, 1961 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and his Easter German counterpart Walter Ulbricht took up a suggestion publicly floated by Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (and privately supported by John F. Kennedy) and built the Berlin Wall. This, too, was a breach of the Four-Power agreement, which specified that Berlin be an open city. Khrushchev and Ulbricht built the wall because it had become the practice for young people in East Germany, especially those with marketable skills, to travel to East Berlin, cross over to the West, and fly on to West Germany to start a new life.
One consequence was that, prior to August, 1961, East Germany was not economically viable. J. William Fulbright and some in the Kennedy administration entertained hopes not unlike those entertained by the Obama administration with regard to Iran. If the Russians found themselves unthreatened in Eastern Europe, they reasoned, they would relax and be more amenable to working out a /modus vivendi/ with the West. They soon learned that they had blundered -- for our failure to send in the bulldozers to knock down the wall, which Harry Truman urged that we do, led to a crisis of confidence within the western alliance, and it was this crisis that occasioned John Kennedy's dramatic flight to Berlin and the speech in which he said, "Ich bin ein Berliner."
It did not matter that this meant, in German, "I am a jelly donut." No one expected linguistic competence from an American. Everyone understood that he meant to say, "Ich bin Berliner: I am a Berliner."It would be a while, however, before the Kennedy administration would recognize the full consequences of its display of weakness. As a consequence of such foolishness, the United States would soon be faced with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Obama administration can expect to be rewarded in a similar fashion by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union, chastened, gave up its policy of brinksmanship and sought by indirect means to bring about the collapse of the West. The event that took place twenty years ago signaled the fact that we had outlasted the Soviets. We have much to be proud of. Never in human history has there been a sustained conflict over four decades between two great power blocs in which no great war took place and one of the two won a decisive victory resulting in the dismantlement of the rival alliance and even the dismantlement of the country that led it.
We made mistakes in the course of the Cold War, but -- despite partisan divisions -- we managed to maintain a more or less consistent policy of containment and, after a time, strategic engagement. We -- and the world -- owe a great debt to the Cold War presidents: especially, to Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, who were the most stalwart. This was arguably America's finest hour.
It is, I think, significant that Barack Obama chose not to join the other heads of state and heads of government who have gathered in Berlin today to celebrate what was a remarkable and blessed event.
Back in June, in two separate posts on Power Line - here <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023779.php> and here <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/06/023934.php> -- I drew attention to our current president's propensity for communicating different messages to different audiences by means of gestures of one kind or another. Here is what I then wrote: Barack Obama has a history of belittling his adversaries [by indirection]. In April, 2008, he was caught on tape during a debate with Hillary Clinton, rubbing his hand across the right side of his face and extending his middle finger in an obscene gesture that many in the audience could see it but she could not, and when this provoked laughter on the part of his supporters he responded with a knowing smile.
Later, after accepting his party's nomination, he did precisely the same thing during a debate with John McCain; and, after Sarah Palin remarked at the Republican National Convention that the only difference between a pit bull and a soccer mom was lipstick, he observed at a rally that a pig with lipstick is still a pig. Again, many in the audience caught the dig and they, too, were rewarded with a knowing smile.
Obama is, in fact, a master of the insulting gesture. There is no other construction that one can put on his conduct towards Gordon Brown when the British prime minister paid him a visit shortly after his inauguration. First, in an ostentatious manner, he returned to the British embassy a bust of Winston Churchill that had been loaned to his predecessor. Then, when Brown presented him with a pen made from timber used in a British ship once involved in putting down the slave trade, he gave him in return a stack of movies on DVD which could not be played on machines sold in Europe.
Were Obama a yokel, one might be able to explain this away. But a yokel he is not, and there are State Department protocol officers who are highly sensitive to the proprieties. It is no accident that, at about the same time, the White House press secretary intimated in the presence of members of the British press that there was no special relationship between the United States and Great Britain. Obama's gesture was a calculated insult--meant to be understood only by those to whom it was directed.
If we are to comprehend what is going on, we must pay close attention not only to what Obama says but to what he conveys in other ways. His tone is nearly always moderate but what he hints at and what he intimates by way of body language often convey the opposite.
Witness his warm embrace of Hugo Chavez. Behind the thin veneer of politeness, there is, I suspect, something ugly lurking. In the first of the autobiographies that he claims to have written, Barack Obama frequently speaks of himself as being in the grips of rage. We would do well to take him at his word. If we are to stop him from doing great damage to this country and to our friends and allies, we must take every opportunity that comes our way to unmask the man.
In a later post, which can be found here <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024565.php>, I added: We now know - thanks to events in the Honduras - the meaning of Obama's gesture with respect to the Venezuelan dictator, and I would suggest that we must regard in a similar light the timing of Obama's announcement of his administration's shift in policy regarding missile-defence in Europe. For it can hardly be an accident that he chose the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland as the occasion.
We must keep in mind the fact that Obama is not a yokel and that the State Department is there to prevent an ill-informed president from unnecessarily stepping on toes. What happened last Thursday was a deliberate gesture. It was aimed at our allies in eastern Europe and at Russia, and it was recognized as such in Poland, the Czech republic, and Russia. Vladimir Putin spoke of Obama's decision as a courageous act. Our friends in eastern Europe would not have used that adjective.
A signal has been given, and they know the meaning.
We are living in a dangerous time. It seems highly unlikely that Barack Obama will get his way in domestic affairs. The Democrats may control Congress, but they now fear a rout in 2010, and they are likely to tred with caution from now on. In foreign affairs, however, presidents have a relatively free hand, and this president has ample time to do damage to a country that, there is reason to suspect, he deeply hates.
President Obama chose not to go to Berlin for a reason. Once again, he is signaling that his administration is in the process of turning its back on our erstwhile allies in Europe. He has thus far persistently made it his practice to embrace our enemies and to stiff our friends. We should not for a moment underestimate the significance of this. It means that he believes our policy in the Cold War wrong-headed, and it means that he intends to line us up now with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It is by no means an accident that the man in the State Department now in charge of our policy towards Iran is on the board of Iran's main front-organization in the United States.
Ed Lasky's report <http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_new_iran_man_at_the_state.html> regarding this matter is well worth reading.Addendum: There is an exceptionally good discussion of the Kennedy administration and the building of the Berlin Wall in "Weak will, high wall" <http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Weak-will--high-wall-4306> by Donald Kagan, in the current issue of /The New Criterion <http://www.newcriterion.com/>/.Paul A. Rahe <http://www.paularahe.com> holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College <http://www.hillsdale.edu>. He is the author, most recently, of /Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic/ <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300141254?tag=paara-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0300141254&adid=0SSD70NECM6HFA1X64DE> and of /Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern P/ <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030014492X?ie=UTF8&tag=paara-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=030014492X>
Saturday, November 14, 2009
CNN Too Biased For Lou Dobbs : "I Quit"
The question remains, why did it take so long for him to leave CNN given the far left agenda that CNN has always had. They are completely in the tank for Obama and where totally biased in their reporting of the Obama presidential campaign.
They had no problem managing the news to show Obama was something other than he actually was. And now we all know who Barack is and just where CNN finds it's news.
Why Dobbs Quit CNN: Birthers, Politics
Friday, November 13, 2009 5:27 PMBy: Jim Meyers
Lou Dobbs walked away from CNN — and $9 million — under pressure to tone down his rhetoric as the network seeks a more centrist position among the cable news channels.
Dobbs announced his resignation from "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on the air Wednesday night following months of friction between the veteran newsman and CNN brass.
The beginning of the end, the New York Post is reporting, came in July when CNN President Jonathan Klein told Dobbs' staff in a memo to stay away from so-called "birther" stories about doubts that Barack Obama was really born in the United States.
"It seems this story is dead because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef," Klein said in the memo. Dobbs and Klein have been at odds ever since, according to the Post.
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama released a shortened version of his birth certificate, sometimes called a certification of live birth. However, he has yet to release his long form birth certificate, which would indicate the actual place of his birth. This has given rise to Internet rumors that Obama was born outside the United States. Officials in Hawaii have looked at the long form and have stated that he was, indeed, born in the state.
CNN apparently doesn’t like the controversy and is seeking to position itself as a middle-of-the-road news source between conservative Fox News and left-leaning MSNBC, and Dobbs reportedly had been resisting pressure to soften his stance on immigration and other issues.
Dobbs still had one and a half years on his five-year, $35 million contract, which was back-loaded, and he would have earned another $9 million before the contract ended in mid-2011.
Post columnist Cindy Adams had high praise for Dobbs following his departure.
"Ahead of the curve, the man predicted the fiscal crisis," she wrote on Friday.
"Raised the hammer on corporate profiteering at the expense of the middle class. Pointed out flaws in the bank-bailout bill. Waged war on border security, exposing how the feds have lost track of visas, and five years later the subject of immigration became mainstream dialogue.
"His interminable fight on behalf of border agents Ramos and Compean? Remember how the U.S. government subsequently commuted their sentence?"
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were jailed for shooting and wounding an illegal alien who was smuggling drugs from Mexico into Texas in 2005.
Dobbs, Adams wrote, "analyzed. He predicted. He never saw an argument that wasn't a fight. Lou Dobbs is brilliant. Fearless. Determined to go how he wants to go. He takes sides."
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
They had no problem managing the news to show Obama was something other than he actually was. And now we all know who Barack is and just where CNN finds it's news.
Why Dobbs Quit CNN: Birthers, Politics
Friday, November 13, 2009 5:27 PMBy: Jim Meyers
Lou Dobbs walked away from CNN — and $9 million — under pressure to tone down his rhetoric as the network seeks a more centrist position among the cable news channels.
Dobbs announced his resignation from "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on the air Wednesday night following months of friction between the veteran newsman and CNN brass.
The beginning of the end, the New York Post is reporting, came in July when CNN President Jonathan Klein told Dobbs' staff in a memo to stay away from so-called "birther" stories about doubts that Barack Obama was really born in the United States.
"It seems this story is dead because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef," Klein said in the memo. Dobbs and Klein have been at odds ever since, according to the Post.
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama released a shortened version of his birth certificate, sometimes called a certification of live birth. However, he has yet to release his long form birth certificate, which would indicate the actual place of his birth. This has given rise to Internet rumors that Obama was born outside the United States. Officials in Hawaii have looked at the long form and have stated that he was, indeed, born in the state.
CNN apparently doesn’t like the controversy and is seeking to position itself as a middle-of-the-road news source between conservative Fox News and left-leaning MSNBC, and Dobbs reportedly had been resisting pressure to soften his stance on immigration and other issues.
Dobbs still had one and a half years on his five-year, $35 million contract, which was back-loaded, and he would have earned another $9 million before the contract ended in mid-2011.
Post columnist Cindy Adams had high praise for Dobbs following his departure.
"Ahead of the curve, the man predicted the fiscal crisis," she wrote on Friday.
"Raised the hammer on corporate profiteering at the expense of the middle class. Pointed out flaws in the bank-bailout bill. Waged war on border security, exposing how the feds have lost track of visas, and five years later the subject of immigration became mainstream dialogue.
"His interminable fight on behalf of border agents Ramos and Compean? Remember how the U.S. government subsequently commuted their sentence?"
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were jailed for shooting and wounding an illegal alien who was smuggling drugs from Mexico into Texas in 2005.
Dobbs, Adams wrote, "analyzed. He predicted. He never saw an argument that wasn't a fight. Lou Dobbs is brilliant. Fearless. Determined to go how he wants to go. He takes sides."
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Rupert Murdoch On Glenn Beck's Comment Obama IS Racist
With a look back on what went before the shooting at Fort Hood we can see that the treatment of Obama's comments got from the main stream media, relating to the Skip Gates and with white cop, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand how "Political Correctness" ruled the day in both cases.
PC still controls the media now as they are doing everything they can to cover for the shooter that killed 14 people. They refuse to acknowledge that he was a Muslim convert and that this was a terrorist act.
The saving grace here is that there enough people outside of the mindless media outlets that still have some common sense to look at a situation and come up with common sense answers. And who would have thought all of the common sense is coming from Conservatives. Yikes!
Murdoch: Glenn Beck Right on Obama 'Racist
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 3:28 PM
In an interview with his own Sky News Australia, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch said he agreed with Glenn Beck's view that President Barack Obama's has made racist comments.
“He did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites, etc, which, he said in his campaign he’d be completely above,” Murdoch told the interviewer. “And, that was something which perhaps shouldn’t have been said about the president. If you actually assess what he (Beck) was talking about, he was right.”
Special: Get Sarah Palin’s New Book – Incredible FREE Offer -- Click Here Now.
Beck made the comments in July after the arrest of Obama’s close friend, the scholar Henry Louis Gates, by a white Cambridge police officer. Beck was making the larger point that instead of letting the facts speak for themselves, Obama immediately drew the most sinister interpretation of the police officer’s motives.
"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," Beck said. "I don't know what it is."
"I'm not saying he doesn't like white people," Beck said. "I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist."
On Wednesday, a News Corp. spokesman stressed to Politico that Murdoch “does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist.”
The video of the interview:
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
PC still controls the media now as they are doing everything they can to cover for the shooter that killed 14 people. They refuse to acknowledge that he was a Muslim convert and that this was a terrorist act.
The saving grace here is that there enough people outside of the mindless media outlets that still have some common sense to look at a situation and come up with common sense answers. And who would have thought all of the common sense is coming from Conservatives. Yikes!
Murdoch: Glenn Beck Right on Obama 'Racist
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 3:28 PM
In an interview with his own Sky News Australia, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch said he agreed with Glenn Beck's view that President Barack Obama's has made racist comments.
“He did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites, etc, which, he said in his campaign he’d be completely above,” Murdoch told the interviewer. “And, that was something which perhaps shouldn’t have been said about the president. If you actually assess what he (Beck) was talking about, he was right.”
Special: Get Sarah Palin’s New Book – Incredible FREE Offer -- Click Here Now.
Beck made the comments in July after the arrest of Obama’s close friend, the scholar Henry Louis Gates, by a white Cambridge police officer. Beck was making the larger point that instead of letting the facts speak for themselves, Obama immediately drew the most sinister interpretation of the police officer’s motives.
"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," Beck said. "I don't know what it is."
"I'm not saying he doesn't like white people," Beck said. "I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist."
On Wednesday, a News Corp. spokesman stressed to Politico that Murdoch “does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist.”
The video of the interview:
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Divorce Agreement : Conservative/liberal Separation
This has appeared before but it still has a ring to it that I like - I can imagine what the liberal side of this agreement would look like in only a few years if that long.
Subject: Divorce Agreement
THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT'S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms.
We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way. Here is a model separation agreement: Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens.
We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood ..
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters.
When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya, or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot.
Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheehan, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.
P. S. S. And we won't have to press 1 for English.
Subject: Divorce Agreement
THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT'S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms.
We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way. Here is a model separation agreement: Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens.
We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood ..
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters.
When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya, or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot.
Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheehan, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.
P. S. S. And we won't have to press 1 for English.
Media Ignorance/Duplicity Saved Lives At Fort Hood
The Two weapons used by the terrorist in Fort Hood are identified here and how the media's ignorance saved lives in this horrific tragedy. Duplicity and ignorance is a way of life for the Marxist media in our country.
The main stream media refuses to acknowledge the killings at Fort Hood was the work of a Muslim terrorist. This also happens to be the agenda of the Obama White House. According to the liberal socialists there is no such thing as terrorism - it call "human created violence" or some such thing. Muslims have no part in this??
Tragical the reason for these omissions of facts is that a majority of the main stream media is wholly owned by the liberal Democrats. They, the media, make no move without approval from the Democrat National Committee and the Obama White House.
So much for journalism.
*Thank Goodness for ‘Cop Killer’ Weapons
*Posted By _Bob Owens_ On November 9, 2009 @ 12:14 am In _. Column2 04_, _Uncategorized_ _71 Comments <http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thank-goodness-for-cop-killer-weapons/?print=1#comments_controls>_
Authorities have identified the weapons U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan used to carry out his murderous assault at Fort Hood as a FN Five-seveN <http://www.fnhusa.com/le/products/firearms/family.asp?fid=FNF003&gid=FNG001&cid=FNC01> ^[1] pistol and an older model Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.
Initial accounts indicated that only the Five-seveN was used. Hasan fired an estimated 100+ times in the five-minute span from the start of the shooting spree until a civilian police officer at the base put him down with four shots from her own weapon.
Thirteen died and 30 were wounded Hasan’s Nov. 5 attack. It was the worst attack ever on a stateside military base. Predictably, media in the United States <http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cop-killer-gun-thought-ft-hood-shooting/story?id=9019521> ^[2] and overseas <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6519392/Fort-Hood-shootings-gunman-used-cop-killer-weapon-in-massacre-at-US-Army-base.html> ^[3] have reacted with breathless horror at the news Hasan used a weapon they’ve deemed a “cop killer” and “an assault rifle that fits in your pocket. <http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/11/07/1107gun.html> ^[4] ”
Few things could be further from the truth. What’s the truth? It may not come as a surprise that the media is wrong yet again, but the reason why may be surprising. Ironically, more of the wounded soldiers are possibly alive today because of Hasan’s media-hyped choice of weapons. The Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN Herstal) Five-SeveN pistol chosen by Hasan for his assault was produced for the first time just over a decade ago as a companion to the FN P90 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_P90> ^[5] , a unique personal defense weapon first produced in 1990 and chambering a new 5.7×28mm cartridge. The SS190 5.7×28mm cartridge shared by the P90 carbine and Five-seveN pistol was specifically designed to be more effective than the pistol caliber rounds used for most of the previous century by using a small-diameter, high-velocity, armor-piercing bullet that could penetrate the soft body armor increasingly being used by enemy soldiers, terrorists, and criminals.
The Five-SeveN pistol was released to the U.S. civilian market in 2004. Shortly thereafter, the Brady Campaign and a trio of anti-gun law enforcement organizations made the claim <http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/626> ^[6] that the gun was a “cop killer.”
This claim was based upon a misrepresentation of marketing materials discussing the pistol’s capabilities using SS190 armor-piercing ammunition and non-certified “tests” that were contradicted by more stringent and controlled testing done by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).
Though the SS196SR and later SS197SR ammunition available to the public was verified by government testing of being unable to penetrate the soft body armor worn by police, the media seized upon the “cop killer” claim and used it with reckless abandon.
As a result of the inaccurate branding, the Five-seveN became attractive as a status symbol for some criminal elements of society. They became particularly popular among drug cartels in Mexico that had previously been partial to 1911-style pistols chambered in .38 Super <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_3_47/ai_70650308/> ^[7] , based upon similar claims regarding its ability to penetrate vehicles and crude “body armor.” The Five-seveN is used by both government forces and the cartels in Mexico’s ongoing drugs wars. The not uncommon practice of cartels obtaining some of their firearms and ammunition directly from corrupt officials means that in Mexico some Five-seveN pistols serving the cartels are loaded with armor-piercing ammunition issued by the government.
That brings us back to the shootings at Fort Hood.
ABC News and the /Telegraph/ (and, yes, even Brady once again <http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1194> ^[8] , recycling the term and misleading claims they did so much to create) are once again reveling in articles shouting about the evil power contained in Major Hasan’s “cop killer” gun. But the simple fact of the matter is that there is good reason to believe that at least some of those wounded in Thursday’s shooting are alive today because of the 5.7 cartridge’s dubious capabilities. It may seem counterintuitive to many, but the high velocities that enable the Five-seveN’s .22 bullet to drive through soft body armor are thought to be mostly wasted on unarmored targets.
The 5.7 is a relatively new cartridge with limited distribution and so actual “real world” ballistic performance is anecdotal at best, but high-velocity pistol bullets like the .38 Super noted earlier and the 7.62×25 Tokarev <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62x25mm_Tokarev> ^[9] have been around almost 80 years. Their established track record is that of bullets with excellent penetration characteristics but with questionable stopping power. The 5.7 round uses a far lighter bullet at higher velocities and the high velocity gives the bullet the distinct possibility of fragmenting. But even then, a high-velocity bullet that only weighs 40 grains (as does the legal SS197SR bullet Hasan used) is at a distinct disadvantage when compared to other pistol cartridges. Instead of dumping the bullet’s energy into the body of the person shot, these high-velocity rounds typically stab a long narrow wound channel completely through a human-sized target, or they erupt into fragments that cause narrow wound channels.Slower, heavier bullets such as those found in the .40 S&W and .45 ACP hollow point cartridges favored by American law enforcement dump most if not all of their energy in the human body.
The difference between a wound from a 5.7 bullet and a .45 ACP is not dissimilar to the difference between the wound from an ice pick and the wound from a sledgehammer. The ice pick will penetrate far deeper, but the sledgehammer will cause far more traumatic injuries.No rational person would ever wish for our soldiers to be attacked, but the simple fact of the matter is that Hasan’s reliance on a gun the uneducated media told him was a powerful “cop killer” quite possibly saved lives at Fort Hood.
If the same victims had been hit with 155-180 grain .40 S&W or 185-230 grain .45ACP hollow points, their wounds would likely have been far more severe than the wounds they suffered from even a fragmenting 40 grain VMAX bullet in the most commonly available 5.7 cartridge.The American media has a long and ignoble history of firearms ignorance often based upon the propaganda of anti-gun organizations.
Finally, if but for once, that ignorance and fact-free hype may have served to actually save lives.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: *http://pajamasmedia.com*
The main stream media refuses to acknowledge the killings at Fort Hood was the work of a Muslim terrorist. This also happens to be the agenda of the Obama White House. According to the liberal socialists there is no such thing as terrorism - it call "human created violence" or some such thing. Muslims have no part in this??
Tragical the reason for these omissions of facts is that a majority of the main stream media is wholly owned by the liberal Democrats. They, the media, make no move without approval from the Democrat National Committee and the Obama White House.
So much for journalism.
*Thank Goodness for ‘Cop Killer’ Weapons
*Posted By _Bob Owens_ On November 9, 2009 @ 12:14 am In _. Column2 04_, _Uncategorized_ _71 Comments <http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thank-goodness-for-cop-killer-weapons/?print=1#comments_controls>_
Authorities have identified the weapons U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan used to carry out his murderous assault at Fort Hood as a FN Five-seveN <http://www.fnhusa.com/le/products/firearms/family.asp?fid=FNF003&gid=FNG001&cid=FNC01> ^[1] pistol and an older model Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.
Initial accounts indicated that only the Five-seveN was used. Hasan fired an estimated 100+ times in the five-minute span from the start of the shooting spree until a civilian police officer at the base put him down with four shots from her own weapon.
Thirteen died and 30 were wounded Hasan’s Nov. 5 attack. It was the worst attack ever on a stateside military base. Predictably, media in the United States <http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cop-killer-gun-thought-ft-hood-shooting/story?id=9019521> ^[2] and overseas <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6519392/Fort-Hood-shootings-gunman-used-cop-killer-weapon-in-massacre-at-US-Army-base.html> ^[3] have reacted with breathless horror at the news Hasan used a weapon they’ve deemed a “cop killer” and “an assault rifle that fits in your pocket. <http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/11/07/1107gun.html> ^[4] ”
Few things could be further from the truth. What’s the truth? It may not come as a surprise that the media is wrong yet again, but the reason why may be surprising. Ironically, more of the wounded soldiers are possibly alive today because of Hasan’s media-hyped choice of weapons. The Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN Herstal) Five-SeveN pistol chosen by Hasan for his assault was produced for the first time just over a decade ago as a companion to the FN P90 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_P90> ^[5] , a unique personal defense weapon first produced in 1990 and chambering a new 5.7×28mm cartridge. The SS190 5.7×28mm cartridge shared by the P90 carbine and Five-seveN pistol was specifically designed to be more effective than the pistol caliber rounds used for most of the previous century by using a small-diameter, high-velocity, armor-piercing bullet that could penetrate the soft body armor increasingly being used by enemy soldiers, terrorists, and criminals.
The Five-SeveN pistol was released to the U.S. civilian market in 2004. Shortly thereafter, the Brady Campaign and a trio of anti-gun law enforcement organizations made the claim <http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/626> ^[6] that the gun was a “cop killer.”
This claim was based upon a misrepresentation of marketing materials discussing the pistol’s capabilities using SS190 armor-piercing ammunition and non-certified “tests” that were contradicted by more stringent and controlled testing done by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).
Though the SS196SR and later SS197SR ammunition available to the public was verified by government testing of being unable to penetrate the soft body armor worn by police, the media seized upon the “cop killer” claim and used it with reckless abandon.
As a result of the inaccurate branding, the Five-seveN became attractive as a status symbol for some criminal elements of society. They became particularly popular among drug cartels in Mexico that had previously been partial to 1911-style pistols chambered in .38 Super <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_3_47/ai_70650308/> ^[7] , based upon similar claims regarding its ability to penetrate vehicles and crude “body armor.” The Five-seveN is used by both government forces and the cartels in Mexico’s ongoing drugs wars. The not uncommon practice of cartels obtaining some of their firearms and ammunition directly from corrupt officials means that in Mexico some Five-seveN pistols serving the cartels are loaded with armor-piercing ammunition issued by the government.
That brings us back to the shootings at Fort Hood.
ABC News and the /Telegraph/ (and, yes, even Brady once again <http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1194> ^[8] , recycling the term and misleading claims they did so much to create) are once again reveling in articles shouting about the evil power contained in Major Hasan’s “cop killer” gun. But the simple fact of the matter is that there is good reason to believe that at least some of those wounded in Thursday’s shooting are alive today because of the 5.7 cartridge’s dubious capabilities. It may seem counterintuitive to many, but the high velocities that enable the Five-seveN’s .22 bullet to drive through soft body armor are thought to be mostly wasted on unarmored targets.
The 5.7 is a relatively new cartridge with limited distribution and so actual “real world” ballistic performance is anecdotal at best, but high-velocity pistol bullets like the .38 Super noted earlier and the 7.62×25 Tokarev <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62x25mm_Tokarev> ^[9] have been around almost 80 years. Their established track record is that of bullets with excellent penetration characteristics but with questionable stopping power. The 5.7 round uses a far lighter bullet at higher velocities and the high velocity gives the bullet the distinct possibility of fragmenting. But even then, a high-velocity bullet that only weighs 40 grains (as does the legal SS197SR bullet Hasan used) is at a distinct disadvantage when compared to other pistol cartridges. Instead of dumping the bullet’s energy into the body of the person shot, these high-velocity rounds typically stab a long narrow wound channel completely through a human-sized target, or they erupt into fragments that cause narrow wound channels.Slower, heavier bullets such as those found in the .40 S&W and .45 ACP hollow point cartridges favored by American law enforcement dump most if not all of their energy in the human body.
The difference between a wound from a 5.7 bullet and a .45 ACP is not dissimilar to the difference between the wound from an ice pick and the wound from a sledgehammer. The ice pick will penetrate far deeper, but the sledgehammer will cause far more traumatic injuries.No rational person would ever wish for our soldiers to be attacked, but the simple fact of the matter is that Hasan’s reliance on a gun the uneducated media told him was a powerful “cop killer” quite possibly saved lives at Fort Hood.
If the same victims had been hit with 155-180 grain .40 S&W or 185-230 grain .45ACP hollow points, their wounds would likely have been far more severe than the wounds they suffered from even a fragmenting 40 grain VMAX bullet in the most commonly available 5.7 cartridge.The American media has a long and ignoble history of firearms ignorance often based upon the propaganda of anti-gun organizations.
Finally, if but for once, that ignorance and fact-free hype may have served to actually save lives.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: *http://pajamasmedia.com*
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Health Care Defined : Goodbye Real Healthcare!
This from the Heartland Institute - this lays out just what is going on with the heatlhcare that the Marxists socialists in congress what to jam down our throats. Don't be mislead by the main stream media, Marxists rags all, this will destroy our health care in America and our economy at the same time.
But wait, there's more - the "Cap and Tax" energy bill that is on the way is even worse for our economy as it will raise energy cost by 40%. Hey, who cares right, if Obama wants to destroy us, we have to go along as he is "The One".
Ask any Democrat and they will tell you it is all George Bush's fault that we will become a 'third world' nation in a matter of months. It took 234 years to get us to this point in our history, but it took Obama only one year to destroy it all.
Don't forget to vote Democrat next year as we still need to suffer more to gain the respect of the world.
Dear Policy Patriots -
Jeanette Nordstrom
National Center for Policy Analysis http://www.ncpa.org/
Want to hear a little good news? Thanks to the efforts of Policy Patriots just like you, we've sent more than 210,000 letters to Congress in the last three weeks against government run health care.
In this public policy war of attrition, a sustained campaign - in the form of hundreds of thousands of letters and a petition supported by 1.34 million Americans - is what will ultimately win the fight against government-run health care. Thanks for your continued support and let's keep up the fight!
Poll Deaf. If you feel ignored by the House of Representatives, you're not alone. A Rasmussen Reports poll this week reaffirmed that more Americans oppose (52%) health care legislation than favor (45%) it. Nevertheless, as last Saturday's legislative spectacle attests, Speaker Pelosi is still singing the health care tune.
Go Directly to Jail. As you know, in the 1,990-page bill that squeaked (220-215) out of the House on Saturday there's plenty of bad policy to fill this letter (and several more). What you may not know is that failing to comply with the new requirements in this legislation could land you in jail - for up to five years!
The most appalling effect of the Affordable Health Care for America Act is the extent of control which the federal government would exercise over individual health care decisions. The legislation requires you to purchase health insurance, whether you need it or want it, and dictates the parameters of your policy.
What's more, failure to purchase insurance would result in a slew of fines and, as this letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation makes clear, failure to pay the fines would result in criminal penalties including "a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years."
AARP: Abandoning Seniors, Advancing AARP. In apparent disregard for the interests of senior citizens, the AARP supported the House health care bill, including the following provisions:
$500 billion in overall budget cuts for Medicare.
$170 billion in budget cuts for Medicare Advantage-the program's entire budget-leaving 12 million American seniors with fewer health care options.
A 20% cut in doctor's pay, forcing doctors to take on more patients and spend less time with each person in their care.
Why would the AARP endorse legislation which so clearly hurts the interests of senior citizens? You decide! For facts on how you will be affected by this legislation, click on this link to get the facts.
FIGHT BACK! The next stop on the runaway train known as ObamaCare is the floor of the United States Senate. Help us derail Ms. Pelosi's health care legislation by writing your Senators.
The American people deserve better than what's coming down the tracks and you can help put a stop to it. Click on the link below and send a letter to Congress telling them to JUST SAY NO to health care legislation.
http://www.capitolconnect.com/freeourhealthcarenow/
Already sent a letter? No problem - a new letter is on the website, ready for your signature!
The NCPA maintains a wealth of educational and resource material including better alternatives to government-run health care:
John Goodman's Health Care Plan:http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/health_plan112007.pdf
Health Care Solutions: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Health_Care_Solutions_072909.pdf Five Steps to a Better Health Care System:http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Five_Steps_to_a_Better_Health_Care_System_Web.pdfDr.
John Goodman's Blog - Current, up-to date information on the debate:http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/Heartland Institute's Health Care Solutions: http://www.chcchoices.org/
Thank you again for your support of the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" and for fighting against government-run health care. This is a fight worth fighting and a fight we can win!
But wait, there's more - the "Cap and Tax" energy bill that is on the way is even worse for our economy as it will raise energy cost by 40%. Hey, who cares right, if Obama wants to destroy us, we have to go along as he is "The One".
Ask any Democrat and they will tell you it is all George Bush's fault that we will become a 'third world' nation in a matter of months. It took 234 years to get us to this point in our history, but it took Obama only one year to destroy it all.
Don't forget to vote Democrat next year as we still need to suffer more to gain the respect of the world.
Dear Policy Patriots -
Jeanette Nordstrom
National Center for Policy Analysis http://www.ncpa.org/
Want to hear a little good news? Thanks to the efforts of Policy Patriots just like you, we've sent more than 210,000 letters to Congress in the last three weeks against government run health care.
In this public policy war of attrition, a sustained campaign - in the form of hundreds of thousands of letters and a petition supported by 1.34 million Americans - is what will ultimately win the fight against government-run health care. Thanks for your continued support and let's keep up the fight!
Poll Deaf. If you feel ignored by the House of Representatives, you're not alone. A Rasmussen Reports poll this week reaffirmed that more Americans oppose (52%) health care legislation than favor (45%) it. Nevertheless, as last Saturday's legislative spectacle attests, Speaker Pelosi is still singing the health care tune.
Go Directly to Jail. As you know, in the 1,990-page bill that squeaked (220-215) out of the House on Saturday there's plenty of bad policy to fill this letter (and several more). What you may not know is that failing to comply with the new requirements in this legislation could land you in jail - for up to five years!
The most appalling effect of the Affordable Health Care for America Act is the extent of control which the federal government would exercise over individual health care decisions. The legislation requires you to purchase health insurance, whether you need it or want it, and dictates the parameters of your policy.
What's more, failure to purchase insurance would result in a slew of fines and, as this letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation makes clear, failure to pay the fines would result in criminal penalties including "a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years."
AARP: Abandoning Seniors, Advancing AARP. In apparent disregard for the interests of senior citizens, the AARP supported the House health care bill, including the following provisions:
$500 billion in overall budget cuts for Medicare.
$170 billion in budget cuts for Medicare Advantage-the program's entire budget-leaving 12 million American seniors with fewer health care options.
A 20% cut in doctor's pay, forcing doctors to take on more patients and spend less time with each person in their care.
Why would the AARP endorse legislation which so clearly hurts the interests of senior citizens? You decide! For facts on how you will be affected by this legislation, click on this link to get the facts.
FIGHT BACK! The next stop on the runaway train known as ObamaCare is the floor of the United States Senate. Help us derail Ms. Pelosi's health care legislation by writing your Senators.
The American people deserve better than what's coming down the tracks and you can help put a stop to it. Click on the link below and send a letter to Congress telling them to JUST SAY NO to health care legislation.
http://www.capitolconnect.com/freeourhealthcarenow/
Already sent a letter? No problem - a new letter is on the website, ready for your signature!
The NCPA maintains a wealth of educational and resource material including better alternatives to government-run health care:
John Goodman's Health Care Plan:http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/health_plan112007.pdf
Health Care Solutions: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Health_Care_Solutions_072909.pdf Five Steps to a Better Health Care System:http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Five_Steps_to_a_Better_Health_Care_System_Web.pdfDr.
John Goodman's Blog - Current, up-to date information on the debate:http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/Heartland Institute's Health Care Solutions: http://www.chcchoices.org/
Thank you again for your support of the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" and for fighting against government-run health care. This is a fight worth fighting and a fight we can win!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Our Government IS Broke : Another Entitlement HR 3200?
Who knew our government was totally out of control and yet we want to give them over power over us with government run healthcare - we are doing this on purpose?
This should be read and understood by all Americans... Democrats..., Republicans, EVERYONE!!To President Obama and all 535 voting members of Congress
* The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775 You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke. entitlement
* Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
* Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
* War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
* Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
* Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
* The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??
We are all aware that Any Government run program is like giving YOURSELF a transfusion from your left arm into your right arm....and SPILLING most of it on the way over!
This should be read and understood by all Americans... Democrats..., Republicans, EVERYONE!!To President Obama and all 535 voting members of Congress
* The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775 You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke. entitlement
* Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
* Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
* War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
* Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
* Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
* The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??
We are all aware that Any Government run program is like giving YOURSELF a transfusion from your left arm into your right arm....and SPILLING most of it on the way over!
HR 3200 WILL Destroy Our Constitution
It is time to wake up and take action. Our government is on the move to take our freedom away and then use their new power to bring us all to our collective knees. Not a pretty thought but we must come to the realization it is happening right now with the Obama/Pelosi Healthcare Bill HR 3200!!
With the passage of the House Bill 3200, this is the first step in the destruction of our Constitution and our way of life. This travesty must be stopped in the Senate or we all will be subjected to the whims of federal bureaucrats.
But there is bigger story here as well. Without America as an anchor for freedom world wide, what is stop tyrants from destroying all the hope of enslaved peoples for that one chance for freedom. The world always could rely on America to stand firm against mass killers and freedom crushing tyrants. Well that is about to come to an end with this bill and the rest of the Obama agenda.
I know, you say it can't happen here - right? Guess again! We are now ready to give up all chances that our children might have to a life of freedom in this country.
What scares me the most is that the majority of people in this country are ready to be dominated - they are ready to be subservient. Where did we go wrong? How can this be? How can this happen in America, "Land of free and home of the brave"?
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HEALTHCARE BILLS
by Michael Connelly
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of Government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.
This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed "acceptable" to the Choices Administrator" appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a "tax" instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the "due process of law.
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn't stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;" The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea.
This is not about health care;
it is about seizing power and limiting rights.
Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation" to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable. For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
Read at least the cites I have made, then you can see exactly what we are about to have taken away from us. If you value your freedom, best you get busy now!
Michael Connelly, Retired Attorney & Constitutional Law Instructor Carrollton , Texas
http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/
With the passage of the House Bill 3200, this is the first step in the destruction of our Constitution and our way of life. This travesty must be stopped in the Senate or we all will be subjected to the whims of federal bureaucrats.
But there is bigger story here as well. Without America as an anchor for freedom world wide, what is stop tyrants from destroying all the hope of enslaved peoples for that one chance for freedom. The world always could rely on America to stand firm against mass killers and freedom crushing tyrants. Well that is about to come to an end with this bill and the rest of the Obama agenda.
I know, you say it can't happen here - right? Guess again! We are now ready to give up all chances that our children might have to a life of freedom in this country.
What scares me the most is that the majority of people in this country are ready to be dominated - they are ready to be subservient. Where did we go wrong? How can this be? How can this happen in America, "Land of free and home of the brave"?
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HEALTHCARE BILLS
by Michael Connelly
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.
However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of Government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.
This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed "acceptable" to the Choices Administrator" appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a "tax" instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the "due process of law.
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn't stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;" The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea.
This is not about health care;
it is about seizing power and limiting rights.
Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation" to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable. For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
Read at least the cites I have made, then you can see exactly what we are about to have taken away from us. If you value your freedom, best you get busy now!
Michael Connelly, Retired Attorney & Constitutional Law Instructor Carrollton , Texas
http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/
Never Forget Our Fallen Heros : A Video
We must never forget all those that gave the full measure of their existence to preserve our Republic and the American Dream.
We are under attack in this country by those that can not see America as the symbol of freedom for all nations around the world. They want to end the continuing quest for freedom that has dominated this country since it founding over 234 years ago.
Now it is up to us, the common citizen in this country, to make sure that all those that are serving on the battle field for us and those gave their full measure have not done so in vain.
Find out who wants America to fail and vote them out of office. This is our duty, here in America, to fight the good fight while our solders engage the enemies of freedom overseas.
Keep the faith - We must not fail in this our finest hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WzL2Lu6ecE&NR=1
We are under attack in this country by those that can not see America as the symbol of freedom for all nations around the world. They want to end the continuing quest for freedom that has dominated this country since it founding over 234 years ago.
Now it is up to us, the common citizen in this country, to make sure that all those that are serving on the battle field for us and those gave their full measure have not done so in vain.
Find out who wants America to fail and vote them out of office. This is our duty, here in America, to fight the good fight while our solders engage the enemies of freedom overseas.
Keep the faith - We must not fail in this our finest hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WzL2Lu6ecE&NR=1
Monday, November 09, 2009
Obama Bribes AMA / AARP In Pelosi Bill
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, it does. Our government is trying to destroy our way of life in America. How is this possible? Who are these people? Who voted for these people? And why are they all liberal Democrats?
Please supply some answers to these questions.
Obamacare Endorsements: What the Bribe Was
Sunday, November 8, 2009 10:39 AM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the '09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these – and the other endorsements – his package has received are all bought and paid for.
Here are the deals:
The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5 percent to 6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill...or else!
Special: Get Sarah Palin’s New Book – Incredible FREE Offer -- Click Here Now.
The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off.
But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.
Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage.
The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)
The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.
Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don't buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn't go along with Obama's blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.
So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.
© 2009 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Please supply some answers to these questions.
Obamacare Endorsements: What the Bribe Was
Sunday, November 8, 2009 10:39 AM
By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the '09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these – and the other endorsements – his package has received are all bought and paid for.
Here are the deals:
The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5 percent to 6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill...or else!
Special: Get Sarah Palin’s New Book – Incredible FREE Offer -- Click Here Now.
The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off.
But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.
Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage.
The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)
The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.
Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don't buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn't go along with Obama's blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.
So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.
© 2009 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Global Warming Found To Be A Fraud, AGAIN!
Good update from the Heritage Foundation on the insanity of global warming - watch the video "Not Evil, Just Wrong"
October 20, 2009 By Amanda Reinecker
Debunking the Left on global warming
More than 6,000 groups in 27 different countries tuned in Sunday to watch The Heritage Foundation's premiere of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a feature-length documentary countering global warming hysteria and explaining the dangerous consequences of the Left's environmental policies.
» Learn more about the film and watch the two-minute trailer.
Not Evil, Just Wrong illustrates on film what Heritage experts have been telling lawmakers, the media and the American people about global warming legislation: these new regulations will impose a huge burden on the economy. New Heritage research drives the point home. Writing on Heritage's blog, the Foundry, Heritage expert Nick Lorris details important new studies finding that "far more jobs would be destroyed than green jobs created, households will lose income, and the economy as a whole will be operating $9.4 trillion under its potential from 2012-2035 -- all because of cap and trade."
The documentary puts a human face on the widespread job losses resulting from climate change legislation, which would pummel critical American industries that depend on traditional energy sources. And it sheds light on the harmful policies that burden people and industry in exchange for little or no environmental benefit.
Joining the expert panel at the Heritage premiere, director Ann McElhinney explained why she sought to counter the Left with Not Evil, Just Wrong:
They don't allow us to teach religion in the public schools of America . . . but there is a religion being taught and it's not based on anything factual. It's a green religion . . . This is not good. It's a religion that hates America . . . and anyone who ignores it is ignoring it at their own peril.
The panel discussion, moderated by journalist Andrew Breitbart, also included MIT meteorology researcher Richard Lindzen; medical researcher Donald Roberts; and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund.
» Watch a video of the panel discussion on MyHeritage.org.
While each panelist offered a different perspective, each defended the same, sound conclusion: "There's a right way and a wrong way to protect the environment. Americans are completely capable of being good stewards of the environment without the government telling us how or why."
Instead of undermining American prosperity and free enterprise by enacting radical environmental regulations, Congress should work to diversify our energy sources. These new sources include expanded domestic oil production, nuclear energy, coal and renewable fuels. Heritage experts argue that lawmakers should craft "policies that will lower gas and electricity prices rather than raise them. When government impediments are lifted, America's energy entrepreneurs can develop innovative and market-driven solutions to our energy needs."
October 20, 2009 By Amanda Reinecker
Debunking the Left on global warming
More than 6,000 groups in 27 different countries tuned in Sunday to watch The Heritage Foundation's premiere of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a feature-length documentary countering global warming hysteria and explaining the dangerous consequences of the Left's environmental policies.
» Learn more about the film and watch the two-minute trailer.
Not Evil, Just Wrong illustrates on film what Heritage experts have been telling lawmakers, the media and the American people about global warming legislation: these new regulations will impose a huge burden on the economy. New Heritage research drives the point home. Writing on Heritage's blog, the Foundry, Heritage expert Nick Lorris details important new studies finding that "far more jobs would be destroyed than green jobs created, households will lose income, and the economy as a whole will be operating $9.4 trillion under its potential from 2012-2035 -- all because of cap and trade."
The documentary puts a human face on the widespread job losses resulting from climate change legislation, which would pummel critical American industries that depend on traditional energy sources. And it sheds light on the harmful policies that burden people and industry in exchange for little or no environmental benefit.
Joining the expert panel at the Heritage premiere, director Ann McElhinney explained why she sought to counter the Left with Not Evil, Just Wrong:
They don't allow us to teach religion in the public schools of America . . . but there is a religion being taught and it's not based on anything factual. It's a green religion . . . This is not good. It's a religion that hates America . . . and anyone who ignores it is ignoring it at their own peril.
The panel discussion, moderated by journalist Andrew Breitbart, also included MIT meteorology researcher Richard Lindzen; medical researcher Donald Roberts; and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund.
» Watch a video of the panel discussion on MyHeritage.org.
While each panelist offered a different perspective, each defended the same, sound conclusion: "There's a right way and a wrong way to protect the environment. Americans are completely capable of being good stewards of the environment without the government telling us how or why."
Instead of undermining American prosperity and free enterprise by enacting radical environmental regulations, Congress should work to diversify our energy sources. These new sources include expanded domestic oil production, nuclear energy, coal and renewable fuels. Heritage experts argue that lawmakers should craft "policies that will lower gas and electricity prices rather than raise them. When government impediments are lifted, America's energy entrepreneurs can develop innovative and market-driven solutions to our energy needs."
Pelsoi HealthCare Bill Adds 113 million People : No Doctors
Well the bill passed in the House last night but we had all pray that the Senate will dump this piece of garbage of the far left into the nearest dumpster. It has been reported that this is the worst bill to ever come out of the House of Representatives. EVER! And yet it passed, a close vote, but still it passed.
You have to ask how this can be as most of the voting members never read the thing and you know if they had they wouldn't have understood what it had to say. It is so long and complicated, by design, no single person could possible know what it actually has in store for the general public and yet they voted for the monster.
Remember, with nearly 70% of the public satisfied with their current heath care programs and only 3% of the entire population that needs some sort of comprehensive care plan, these Marxists that call them selves our leaders voted to take heath care away from 70%, about 250 million people just to give 9 million heath care, heath care that they already had through the emergency room care. Now all the rest of us will lose our heath care plans while establishing another huge entitlement that will cost trillions of tax payer dollars.
This is about power and control of the population and nothing else. Progressive liberal Democrats are on the move.
This article from the Wall Street Journal addresses only one aspect of the coming problems that this bill has for all of us.
THE COMING SHORTAGE OF DOCTORS
Wall Street Journal
None of the health care reform proposals advancing in Congress addresses a fundamental problem that will soon face this country: a critical shortage of doctors, says Dr. Herbert Pardes, president and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital.
There were reform ideas put forward in Congress that would have addressed this problem. Most notably, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) have proposed training an additional 4,000 new physicians to add to the 25,000 entering the profession each year. But their proposals haven't made it into the bills on which congressional leaders hope to vote.
If the doctor shortage is not addressed and health care reform is signed into law, millions of Americans will likely find themselves able to obtain insurance for the first time -- but may be unable to find a doctor without a long delay. Why? Because expanding the number of insured patients but not the number of doctors will only increase the demand for services that already must meet the demands of an aging population. We must make sure there are enough health professionals to meet those new demands, says Dr. Pardes.
Even in the absence of health care reform, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the United States will face a shortage of at least 125,000 physicians by 2025.
We have about 700,000 active physicians today. One factor driving this shortage is that the baby-boomer generation is getting older and will require more care.
By 2025 the number of people over 65 will have increased by about 75 percent of what it is today -- to 64 million from 37 million today.
Doctors are also aging, says Dr. Pardes: By 2020, as many as one-third of the physicians currently practicing will likely retire.
If health care reform adds millions of people to the health care market, the shortage of doctors will be even greater than it is projected to be now.
It is important to note that the shortage the country will soon face isn't just of primary care physicians. It is true that there aren't enough primary care doctors and nurse practitioners. But it is also true that we need more cardiologists, neurologists, general surgeons, pediatric subspecialists, urologists and other highly trained specialists, says Dr. Pardes.
Source: Herbert Pardes, "The Coming Shortage of Doctors," Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009.
You have to ask how this can be as most of the voting members never read the thing and you know if they had they wouldn't have understood what it had to say. It is so long and complicated, by design, no single person could possible know what it actually has in store for the general public and yet they voted for the monster.
Remember, with nearly 70% of the public satisfied with their current heath care programs and only 3% of the entire population that needs some sort of comprehensive care plan, these Marxists that call them selves our leaders voted to take heath care away from 70%, about 250 million people just to give 9 million heath care, heath care that they already had through the emergency room care. Now all the rest of us will lose our heath care plans while establishing another huge entitlement that will cost trillions of tax payer dollars.
This is about power and control of the population and nothing else. Progressive liberal Democrats are on the move.
This article from the Wall Street Journal addresses only one aspect of the coming problems that this bill has for all of us.
THE COMING SHORTAGE OF DOCTORS
Wall Street Journal
None of the health care reform proposals advancing in Congress addresses a fundamental problem that will soon face this country: a critical shortage of doctors, says Dr. Herbert Pardes, president and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital.
There were reform ideas put forward in Congress that would have addressed this problem. Most notably, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) have proposed training an additional 4,000 new physicians to add to the 25,000 entering the profession each year. But their proposals haven't made it into the bills on which congressional leaders hope to vote.
If the doctor shortage is not addressed and health care reform is signed into law, millions of Americans will likely find themselves able to obtain insurance for the first time -- but may be unable to find a doctor without a long delay. Why? Because expanding the number of insured patients but not the number of doctors will only increase the demand for services that already must meet the demands of an aging population. We must make sure there are enough health professionals to meet those new demands, says Dr. Pardes.
Even in the absence of health care reform, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the United States will face a shortage of at least 125,000 physicians by 2025.
We have about 700,000 active physicians today. One factor driving this shortage is that the baby-boomer generation is getting older and will require more care.
By 2025 the number of people over 65 will have increased by about 75 percent of what it is today -- to 64 million from 37 million today.
Doctors are also aging, says Dr. Pardes: By 2020, as many as one-third of the physicians currently practicing will likely retire.
If health care reform adds millions of people to the health care market, the shortage of doctors will be even greater than it is projected to be now.
It is important to note that the shortage the country will soon face isn't just of primary care physicians. It is true that there aren't enough primary care doctors and nurse practitioners. But it is also true that we need more cardiologists, neurologists, general surgeons, pediatric subspecialists, urologists and other highly trained specialists, says Dr. Pardes.
Source: Herbert Pardes, "The Coming Shortage of Doctors," Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Old Indian Saying About Government/Daylight Savings Time
Does it take an old Indian to tell us our government is on the ropes and is more than willing to destroy the country to stay in power?
hmm - maybe so - well what ever it takes I hope it works as we are headed to ruin with these monster that are in control of our lives.
hmm - maybe so - well what ever it takes I hope it works as we are headed to ruin with these monster that are in control of our lives.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Detroit's Socialist Agenda : America's Nightmare Future?
Stansberry writes about the changing of America into a socialist nightmare. We have many examples of how this will turn out and all of them are examples of how the liberal Democrats think and work their magic.
The 10 worst cities in the United States for crime and economic chaos are run by liberal Democrats. Is this what we have to look forward to when Obama says he wants "Hope and Change" for all of us?
Keep the faith - call your Representatives and tell them NO on HR3200 or what ever bill that the liberals want to destroy us all with.
Detroit’s Socialist Nightmare Is America’s Future
by Porter Stansberry
One of the most important things to remember about socialism — or coercion of any kind — is it fails eventually because human beings have an innate desire for liberty and a strong need for personal property rights. In fact, the origins of government lie in the need of agricultural communities to protect themselves from violence and theft. So it is particularly ironic that in more recent times, it is government itself that has more frequently played the role of bandit. When you start taxing people at extreme rates to pay for socialist “benefits,” when you start telling them which schools their children must attend, when you start giving jobs away to people based on race instead of ability... you quash human freedom, which bogs down productivity... and if continued for long enough, leads to social collapse.
I find it perplexing that only 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West continues to implement laws that mimic all of the failed policies of our former “communist” foes. In fact, our current president won the election by promising to “spread the wealth around.” But... truth be told... we don’t have to look to Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to find a society destroyed by coercion, socialism, and the overreaching power of the State.
We could just look at Detroit... In 1961, the last Republican mayor of Detroit lost his re-election bid to a young, intelligent Democrat, with the overwhelming support of newly organized black voters. His name was Jerome Cavanagh. The incumbent was widely considered to be corrupt (and later served 10 years in prison for tax evasion). Cavanagh, a white man, pandered to poor underclass black voters. He marched with Martin Luther King down the streets of Detroit in 1963. (Of course, marching with King was the right thing to do... It’s just Cavanagh’s motives were political not moral.)
He instated aggressive affirmative action policies at City Hall. And most critically, he greatly expanded the role of the government in Detroit, taking advantage of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Model Cities Program” — the first great experiment in centralized urban planning. Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on Johnson’s task force. And Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which attempted to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a “model city.” More than $400 million was spent trying to turn inner cities into shining new monuments to government planning. In short, the feds and Democratic city mayors were soon telling people where to live, what to build, and what businesses to open or close. In return, the people received cash, training, education, and health care.
The Model Cities program was a disaster for Detroit. But it did accomplish its real goal: The creation of a state-supported, Democratic political power base. The program also resulted in much higher taxes — which were easy to pitch to poor voters who didn’t have to pay them. Cavanagh pushed a new income tax through the state legislature and a “commuter tax” on city workers. Unfortunately, as with all socialist programs, lots of folks simply don’t like being told what to do. Lots of folks don’t like being plundered by the government. They don’t like losing their jobs because of their race. In Detroit, they didn’t like paying new, large taxes to fund a largely black and Democratic political hegemony. And so, in 1966, more than 22,000 middle- and upper-class residents moved out of the city.
But what about the poor? As my friend Doug Casey likes to say, in the War on Poverty, the poor lost the most. In July 1967, police attempted to break up a late-night party in the middle of the new “Model City.” The scene turned into the worst race riot of the 1960s. The violence killed more than 40 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless. One of the first stores to be looted was the black-owned pharmacy. The largest black-owned clothing store in the city was also burned to the ground. Cavanagh did nothing to stop the riots, fearing a large police presence would make matters worse.
Five days later, Johnson sent in two divisions of paratroopers to put down the insurrection. Over the next 18 months, an additional 140,000 upper- and middle-class residents — almost all of them white — left the city. And so, you might rightfully ask... after five years of centralized planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government decide to do with its grand experiment, its “Model City”? You’ll never guess.... Seeing it had accomplished nothing but failure, the government endeavored to do still more. The Model City program was expanded and enlarged by 1974’s Community Development Block Grant Program. Here again, politicians would decide which groups (and even individuals) would receive state funds for various “renewal” schemes. Later, Big Business was brought into the fold. In exchange for various concessions, the Big Three automakers “gave” $488 million to the city for use in still more redevelopment schemes in the mid-1990s.
What happened? Even with all of their power and all of the money, centralized planners couldn’t succeed with any of their plans. Nearly all of the upper and middle class left Detroit. The poor fled, too. The Model City area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units from the inception of the program through 1990. Even today, the crisis continues. At a recent auction of nearly 9,000 seized homes and lots, less than one-fifth of the available properties sold, even with bidding starting at $500.
You literally can’t give away most of the “Model City” areas today. The properties put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York’s Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area the size of Boston — Detroit properties in foreclosure have more than tripled since 2007. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a Democrat. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1974 has been black. Detroit has been a major recipient of every major social program since the early 1960s and has received hundreds of billions of dollars in government grants, loans, and programs. We now have a black, Democrat president, who is promising to do to America as a whole what his political mentors have done to Detroit.
Those of you with a Democratic political affiliation may think what I’ve written above is biased or false. You may think what you like. But there is no way to argue that what the government has done to Detroit is anything but a horrendous crime. You may think what I’ve written above is merely a political analysis. Perhaps so, but politicians drive macroeconomic policy. And macroeconomic policy determines key financial metrics, like the trade-weighted value of a currency and key interest rates.
The likelihood America will become a giant Detroit is growing — rapidly. Politicians now control the banking sector, most of the manufacturing sector (including autos), a large amount of media, and are threatening to take over health care and the production of electricity (via cap and trade rules). These are the biggest threats to wealth in the history of our country. And these threats are causing the world’s most accomplished and wealthy investors to actively short sell the United States — something that is unprecedented in my experience.
Regards,Porter Stansberry
The 10 worst cities in the United States for crime and economic chaos are run by liberal Democrats. Is this what we have to look forward to when Obama says he wants "Hope and Change" for all of us?
Keep the faith - call your Representatives and tell them NO on HR3200 or what ever bill that the liberals want to destroy us all with.
Detroit’s Socialist Nightmare Is America’s Future
by Porter Stansberry
One of the most important things to remember about socialism — or coercion of any kind — is it fails eventually because human beings have an innate desire for liberty and a strong need for personal property rights. In fact, the origins of government lie in the need of agricultural communities to protect themselves from violence and theft. So it is particularly ironic that in more recent times, it is government itself that has more frequently played the role of bandit. When you start taxing people at extreme rates to pay for socialist “benefits,” when you start telling them which schools their children must attend, when you start giving jobs away to people based on race instead of ability... you quash human freedom, which bogs down productivity... and if continued for long enough, leads to social collapse.
I find it perplexing that only 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West continues to implement laws that mimic all of the failed policies of our former “communist” foes. In fact, our current president won the election by promising to “spread the wealth around.” But... truth be told... we don’t have to look to Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to find a society destroyed by coercion, socialism, and the overreaching power of the State.
We could just look at Detroit... In 1961, the last Republican mayor of Detroit lost his re-election bid to a young, intelligent Democrat, with the overwhelming support of newly organized black voters. His name was Jerome Cavanagh. The incumbent was widely considered to be corrupt (and later served 10 years in prison for tax evasion). Cavanagh, a white man, pandered to poor underclass black voters. He marched with Martin Luther King down the streets of Detroit in 1963. (Of course, marching with King was the right thing to do... It’s just Cavanagh’s motives were political not moral.)
He instated aggressive affirmative action policies at City Hall. And most critically, he greatly expanded the role of the government in Detroit, taking advantage of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Model Cities Program” — the first great experiment in centralized urban planning. Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on Johnson’s task force. And Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which attempted to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a “model city.” More than $400 million was spent trying to turn inner cities into shining new monuments to government planning. In short, the feds and Democratic city mayors were soon telling people where to live, what to build, and what businesses to open or close. In return, the people received cash, training, education, and health care.
The Model Cities program was a disaster for Detroit. But it did accomplish its real goal: The creation of a state-supported, Democratic political power base. The program also resulted in much higher taxes — which were easy to pitch to poor voters who didn’t have to pay them. Cavanagh pushed a new income tax through the state legislature and a “commuter tax” on city workers. Unfortunately, as with all socialist programs, lots of folks simply don’t like being told what to do. Lots of folks don’t like being plundered by the government. They don’t like losing their jobs because of their race. In Detroit, they didn’t like paying new, large taxes to fund a largely black and Democratic political hegemony. And so, in 1966, more than 22,000 middle- and upper-class residents moved out of the city.
But what about the poor? As my friend Doug Casey likes to say, in the War on Poverty, the poor lost the most. In July 1967, police attempted to break up a late-night party in the middle of the new “Model City.” The scene turned into the worst race riot of the 1960s. The violence killed more than 40 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless. One of the first stores to be looted was the black-owned pharmacy. The largest black-owned clothing store in the city was also burned to the ground. Cavanagh did nothing to stop the riots, fearing a large police presence would make matters worse.
Five days later, Johnson sent in two divisions of paratroopers to put down the insurrection. Over the next 18 months, an additional 140,000 upper- and middle-class residents — almost all of them white — left the city. And so, you might rightfully ask... after five years of centralized planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government decide to do with its grand experiment, its “Model City”? You’ll never guess.... Seeing it had accomplished nothing but failure, the government endeavored to do still more. The Model City program was expanded and enlarged by 1974’s Community Development Block Grant Program. Here again, politicians would decide which groups (and even individuals) would receive state funds for various “renewal” schemes. Later, Big Business was brought into the fold. In exchange for various concessions, the Big Three automakers “gave” $488 million to the city for use in still more redevelopment schemes in the mid-1990s.
What happened? Even with all of their power and all of the money, centralized planners couldn’t succeed with any of their plans. Nearly all of the upper and middle class left Detroit. The poor fled, too. The Model City area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units from the inception of the program through 1990. Even today, the crisis continues. At a recent auction of nearly 9,000 seized homes and lots, less than one-fifth of the available properties sold, even with bidding starting at $500.
You literally can’t give away most of the “Model City” areas today. The properties put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York’s Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area the size of Boston — Detroit properties in foreclosure have more than tripled since 2007. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a Democrat. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1974 has been black. Detroit has been a major recipient of every major social program since the early 1960s and has received hundreds of billions of dollars in government grants, loans, and programs. We now have a black, Democrat president, who is promising to do to America as a whole what his political mentors have done to Detroit.
Those of you with a Democratic political affiliation may think what I’ve written above is biased or false. You may think what you like. But there is no way to argue that what the government has done to Detroit is anything but a horrendous crime. You may think what I’ve written above is merely a political analysis. Perhaps so, but politicians drive macroeconomic policy. And macroeconomic policy determines key financial metrics, like the trade-weighted value of a currency and key interest rates.
The likelihood America will become a giant Detroit is growing — rapidly. Politicians now control the banking sector, most of the manufacturing sector (including autos), a large amount of media, and are threatening to take over health care and the production of electricity (via cap and trade rules). These are the biggest threats to wealth in the history of our country. And these threats are causing the world’s most accomplished and wealthy investors to actively short sell the United States — something that is unprecedented in my experience.
Regards,Porter Stansberry
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