What Really Happened : Detroit Auto Industry Collapse

Fascinating tail of greed, ignorance and an over powering attention to holding power. This is the fight between the auto industry and the unions that brought down the Detroit.

The problem now is the over reaching of the federal government to secure total power as seen by the White House taking over the industry by giving the UAW 56% of the total stock of General Motors. The actual stock holders were told that they would have to sacrifice their holdings to the union as they were awarded only 20% of the stock. The tax payers will pick up the difference, of course. Just how will this solve the problem of ignorance and mismanage of the industry?

Please tell me how this is Constitutional? By any interpretation of the actual meaning, this is fascism at it's ugliest.

Disaster waiting in the wings? You be the judge.

The Race To Failure

By MICHAEL MURPHY
Jan-29,10 WSJ

In the mid-1970s a small Japanese auto maker found growing success by exporting simple small cars to America. Its success did not escape the notice of Detroit: The Ford Motor Co. began negotiations to buy large quantities of Honda's four-cylinder engines to equip Ford's next generation of small cars. But the negotiations, although at first promising, were soon threatened by a hostile United Auto Workers Union—it balked at a possible loss of jobs—and finally killed off altogether by Henry Ford II, who declared that "no car with my name on the hood is going to have a Jap engine inside."

Rebuffed, Honda took what it thought was a riskier path and decided to build factories to mass-produce Honda cars in the U.S. itself. The long decline of Detroit's auto industry could be said to date from that moment. But of course a great deal else contributed to the ever deepening malaise, as Paul Ingrassia vividly shows in "Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster."

The story that Mr. Ingrassia tells is concise, enthralling and ultimately heartbreaking.



*Crash Course*

By Paul Ingrassia//(Random House, 306 pages, $26)

It begins with the industry's early days, when old-school industrialists like Alfred P. Sloan, Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler built the companies that became the Big Three. With the rise of such empires came the rise of the UAW: Its negotiations brought hundreds of thousands of factory workers into the American middle class.

Mr. Ingrassia, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his work covering the auto industry for this newspaper, recounts the postwar glory days with fondness and respect, reminding us of how Detroit created America's muscular auto culture, complete with tailfins and Olds Rocket engines. By 1965, General Motors spanned the globe, the largest industrial enterprise in the world. A generation or so later it would collapse into the shelter of the bankruptcy courts and beg for billions of dollars in government aid.

What happened? The tipping point was indeed the 1970s, when the Big Three, lazy and arrogant in their assumption that their pre-eminence would go unchallenged, allowed their budgets to bloat and their designs to stagnate, even as the price of oil rose and consumers, for a while at least, worried about the cost of gasoline. Meanwhile, the storied "car men" from the design labs and factory floors began to fade from power, and a new breed of financial engineers began their ascent within the industry's bureaucracies.

Washington stepped in as well, turning the auto business into an increasingly regulated arena, from safety standards to fuel-economy regulations.The hungry Japanese companies, as they moved into American markets, did more than make smaller, well-made cars: They fostered a culture of worker and management cooperation that was alien to Detroit's auto makers and the UAW. A few people understood the challenge. The saddest part of "Crash Course" describes the doomed reformers— Donald Elphin at the UAW, for instance—who tried to learn from the Japanese and create a more effective partnership of employee and employer.

Mr. Ingrassia rightly dwells on General Motors' ill-fated Saturn experiment in the 1980s, during which the company took a new customer-centric approach to selling cars and a less labor-costly approach to building them, winning over the union at the Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. Saturn enjoyed early success but ended in failure, mostly because a radicalized UAW leadership undercut the project from Detroit.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as Mr. Ingrassia relates, the auto companies ricocheted between huge SUV-driven profits and floods of red ink. The Daimler-Chrysler merger of 1998 was a disaster, thanks in part to the overreach of Daimler's empire-building CEO, Jürgen Schrempp. And the boardroom coup inside fortress GM, in 2000, forced out one company man only to replace him with another who could not change the culture. And little wonder. The Big Three and the UAW were locked a symbiotic race to failure.

The companies could not fathom taking a strong stand against the union: The price of conflict was too high. And the union's leaders lacked the vision to understand that, if they failed to help the companies succeed, they were cheating their own membership. As we know, the story ends in 2009 in Washington, where well-meaning people try to help Detroit but, as always, are pushed by the rules of politics against making tough choices.

A few remaining pieces of Chrysler are turned over to Fiat, whose canny CEO pulls off a deal that combines billions from the U.S. Treasury with little risk for his company. GM is cut down to a theoretically profitable size—though steady profits are hard to see in the near future at least. The pension costs of retired auto workers, in the meantime, are twisted into something else with a neat bit of financial engineering: Owed pension money becomes stock in the shaky new enterprises.

If this scheme fails, Detroit's pension liabilities will be the next enormous bailout-request stepping up to Treasury's pay window. Mr. Ingrassia is hard on GM's management, and his case is solid. But one can also look to the past few years in foreign markets, such as China, where Detroit's often maligned executives run operations that do as well or better than those of their Japanese competitors. The difference is a level playing field on labor costs. In the long accounting of Detroit's fumbles, the leadership of the UAW has almost always made things worse.

Alas, the triumphs abroad have been too little, too late.There is a bright spot in the gloom, however. Mr. Ingrassia notes that, while Ford suffered the same problems as GM and Chrysler, it chose a different course. Cuts were made early on, before government billions were needed. And there was leadership. The hero of the story is Bill Ford, the great-grandson of the company's founder. He ousted an ineffective CEO, took the job himself for a time and then, in a move alien to Detroit's executive suites, fired himself and reached outside the industry to find a CEO (Alan Mulally) with the skills needed to lead a painful but vital turnaround. Yesterday Ford announced $2.7 billion in profits for 2009./

Mr. Murphy is a screenwriter and political consultant in Los Angeles./Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A13

Politicians On The Dungheap : The Top Ten

Did you ever wonder just who the worst of the worst were in Washington? Well, wonder no more as Judicalwatch has listed the top most corrupt politicians.

This is a must read!!

http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2009/dec/judicial-watch-announces-list-washington-s-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-2009

Cat/Deer Friends Video : Stress Reliever - Beautiful!

Just when you thought you couldn't take another shot from the media or your nutjob friends, this video will take all of that stress away. This is some thing that we all should watch every day before we go to work or visit the inlaws.

How Bad IS The Economy? A Little Humor

Here is a little humor concerning just how bad our economy is - even though today saw a rise in the GDP that was bigger than expected. But don't be fooled, a 'jobless recovery' is not good and will in the end, doom us to a declining standard of living.

Just take a minute and think about this - with more and more people on unemployment and manufacturing producing with less manpower, just how does this bode well for the future expansion? Do we rely entirely on innovation and new technology to boost production?

Any increase in the GDP is a good thing, but it isn't time to throw off caution as the 'good times' haven't returned just yet.


(Author Unknown)

The economy is so bad that . . .

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I ordered a burger at McDonald's and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names.

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico ..

Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

Motel Six won't leave the light on anymore.

The Mafia is laying off judges.

Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Oh Great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!

And, finally....

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan , and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

American Citizen Patriots Go Unnoticed

Anyone with even the slights sense of what it takes to make a life in this world knew who Barack Obama was before the election and yet a majority of us decided that is was easier to read and listen and believe the main stream news organizations rather than listening to what Obama actually said.

Many of us did, of course, listen to what he said and voted against him. Unfortunately not enough of the population saw through the misinformation and managed news to stop the disaster that is unfolding before us today.

Fortunately there are many that believe in the American dream and live out their lives in that pursuit without being noticed. They are the foundation on which America was built starting some 234 years ago.

These people go about their daily lives without being noticed as they are too busy making a life for themselves and their family, and at the same time, being responsible members of the community in which they live.

Their lives revolved around a common sense rule of law, God given by our founding fathers, and proven to be the foundation of success. The following is from one of the unheralded patriots living among us and going unnoticed.

We will prevail!


Author unknown

“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency.

It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.

The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.

The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”

Married Couples to Expect Huge Increase In Health Care Premiums

More bad news for married couples coming from the ObamaCare health plan - the long arm of the Obama government reach to crush every aspect of American life.

MARRIAGE PENALTY IN HEALTH BILLS COULD COST MARRIED COUPLES THOUSANDS
Source: Sarah McIntosh, "Marriage Penalty in Health Bills Could Cost Married Couples Thousands," Heartland Institute, January 25, 2010.

Depending on what version of health care legislation survives the next few weeks, tying the knot could cost couples more than just their wedding expenses. Under either bill, married couples would face a health care "marriage penalty," says the Heartland Institute.

For example:

The penalty would hit low and mid-income couples who purchase their insurance through the new exchanges created in the bills. While those who receive employer-based insurance will not be affected, those in the exchanges could face premium increases of $2,000 or more.

The penalty results from the subsidy levels set in the bills:

Because the subsidies correspond to federal poverty guidelines, married couples with a combined income are limited in the subsidies they would receive in a way individuals are not.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, roughly 17 million people who would receive subsidies in 2016 under the House-passed legislation, including millions of married couples.
Estimates show the penalty for married couples will hit those whose incomes are between $58,280 and $86,640.

This will happen because once the couple's combined income reaches 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, there is no cap on premiums and their premiums are not subsidized, according to John LaPlante, editor of StateHouseCall, a nonprofit health care policy solutions site.
Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, believes the marriage penalty could affect millions of Americans if employers push their employees into health exchange plans in lieu of providing more costly employer-based insurance themselves.
"This is an example of how poorly conceived public policy can discourage activities beneficial to society," Herrick said. "Young couples will be adversely impacted in additional ways.

Insurance policies in the exchange will have modified community ratings that gouge young couples to offset costs for older -- often wealthier -- couples.

A better solution is to provide a uniform tax credit while allowing individuals to purchase the coverage that meets their needs."

Victory or Death - A Video by Newt Gringrich On America

What a powerful speech by Newt Gingrich on the state of our country and what we must do to rescue America from the grip of the new Progressive Socialists, better known as the liberal Democrats, that are infecting our government.

This is an outstanding video. A must watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtjfMjjce2Y

First Amendment Free Speech Wins Debate

This lays open the real meaning of the Supreme Court's decision to kick the McCain/Feingold election finance law to the curb. McCain/Feingold law is a restriction of our basic right to free speech. The government's true agenda is to stop debate, crush free speech.

It's like the "climategate" discussion - don't pay any attention to the guys behind the curtain, the debate is over, the science is settled. Not!

This from the Heritage Foundation and The Foundry - good stuff and a must read.


Citizens United v. FEC: A Landmark Decision in Favor of Free Speech
Posted January 21st, 2010 at 7:34pm in Rule of Law with 52 comments Print This Post

The “First Principles” on which this country were founded are the principles that the Heritage Foundation works to advance everyday. In today’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v. FEC, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court upheld some of the most important principles: the right to engage in free speech, particularly political speech, and the right to freely associate.

It is no surprise that these rights are in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The Founders, who had fought a long, hard war with the English crown to establish our independence, knew that the ability to associate freely (think the Sons of Liberty) and to engage in political speech without being censored by the government were fundamental rights crucial to our republic. That is why the Supreme Court’s decision throwing out a federal ban on independent political expenditures by corporations (including non-profits) is a return to, as the Court said, “ancient First Amendment principles.”

The Supreme Court overturned its prior decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and part of McConnell v. FEC. It rejected the very idea that the government can decide who gets to speak and that the government can actually ban some from speaking at all, particularly those doing their speaking through associations of members who share their beliefs.

Almost every one of the many associations we have in this country (no matter which side of the political aisle they are on), from the NAACP to the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association, are also corporations. Yet those corporate associations were prohibited under penalty of criminal and civil sanctions from expressing the views of their members in the political arena over which particular candidates should be elected to uphold the positions on important issues of public policy that their members believe in unless they complied with certain very restrictive, complex provisions.

For-profit corporations and labor unions were also prohibited from engaging in independent political activity even though their businesses and the jobs of their employees and members can be greatly affected, damaged, or even lost because of the actions taken by elected members of Congress. There is no rational reason why they should not be able to engage in independent political activity.

The Court, led by Justice Kennedy, held that the First Amendment stands against attempts to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content. In so doing, the Court declared that the government cannot impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers such as corporations.

The Court also found that free speech rights under the First Amendment do not depend on a speaker’s financial ability to engage in public discussion – the fact that some speakers may have more wealth than others does not diminish their First Amendment rights. Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption, the basis for upholding other campaign finance restrictions.

Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy and the means to hold officials accountable to the people. As such, political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it.

Those who criticize this decision have lost sight of a basic truth: the answer to speech they disagree with is not to restrict that speech, but to answer it with more speech. This decision will ensure that, as Justice Kennedy said twenty years ago in his dissent in the Austin case, there is no stifling of “the voices of some of the most respected groups in public life on subjects central to the integrity of our democratic system.”

The First Amendment specifically says that Congress shall pass no law abridging the right to speak. Justice Scalia properly addresses the applicability of this right to corporations (profit or nonprofit):

The Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speakers, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals…Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate.

First Amendment Rights Wins Over Politics of Denial - McCain/Feingold

Here is a summation of the Supreme Court ruling striking down a portion of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance law.

This from Michelle Malkin:


In a stunning reversal of the nation’s federal campaign finance laws, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that as an exercise of free speech, corporations, labor unions and other groups can directly spend on political campaigns.

Siding with filmmakers of “Hillary: The Movie,” who were challenged by the Federal Election Commission on their sources of cash to pay for the film, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that banned corporate and labor money. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the main opinion, which reads in part that there is “no basis for allowing the government to limit corporate independent expenditures.”“There is no basis for the proposition that, in the political speech context, the government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers,” he wrote. “The government may regulate corporate speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether.”

Dissenters included Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. “The notion that the First Amendment dictated [today's ruling] is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided,” Stevens wrote for the others.
“In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it,” he added.

The ruling is sure to send a jolt to political campaigns throughout the country that are gearing up for the 2010 midterm elections. It will also impact the 2012 presidential race and federal elections to come.

America Ranked As Only "Mostly Free"

Thanks to Obama and the rest of his crew of Progressive socialists, America is falling into the "also-rans" in the world. How do you feel about becoming a 'third world nation'? Having the rest of the world feeling sorry for us because we have lost our way. Does this make you feel proud?

I do not find it appealing at all - I find it heart sickening to know that we can now be proud that our leader has made it possible for the world tyrants and mass killers to love America.

WOW - change we can believe in!! America on it's knees.


Land of the 'Mostly Free'?

The Heritage Foundation has released our 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, and the results are alarming if not terribly surprising:

America is no longer ranked among the world’s free economies. Instead, for the first time, America ranks as only "mostly free" -- behind countries like Canada, Ireland and Switzerland.

The Index, published for the past 16 years as a joint project with The Wall Street Journal, analyzes the economic freedom of 179 countries and bases their scores on three categories:

*government burdens upon businesses and entrepreneurs;
*intrusiveness of government;
*and fundamental societal characteristics that support today's most prosperous economies.

Given the past year, it should come as no surprise that the United States' ranking has declined. After all, government spending has exploded and intrusion into the economy has increased, yet our government continues to raise its debt ceiling to allow for spending package after spending package.

Heritage Vice President Michael Franc explains:
The drop in rankings is notable as it comes in the same week that marks the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's inauguration. By any standard, Americans' overall wealth and prosperity has continued to decline...unemployment has skyrocketed and shows no signs of abating, government spending and debt are at unprecedented levels during peacetime, and our elected officials seem determined not only to ignore these alarm bells but to pursue policies...that will cause entrepreneurs to stay on the sidelines rather than take the risks that have led the United States out of previous recessions.

Americans are not happy about this. More and more of them are voicing their disapproval of big-government policies, which give way to more taxes and less freedom. On Tuesday, many of these Americans made their message loud and clear.

United Nations Climate Change IPCC - A Fraud

Little wonder the call from many in America to disband the United Nations is taking on real meaning. Over the years, it has become a mouth piece for left wing Marxist nations that have only one thing is mind and that is to stop the United States' influence in the world.

It has become apparent that for the tyrants of the world that want to crush freedom, they must first get rid of the only country that has the moral sense and the will to stop them.

The question now is why should we support, with our tax dollars, their effort to destroy us?


THE IPCC'S ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN
Source: Editorial, "The IPCC's Abominable Snowmen," Investor's Business Daily, January 21, 2010.

The scientists who said that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 have admitted the claim has as much credibility as sightings of the mythical Yeti. It's their fraudulent claims that are melting away, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body tasked with scaring us to death about global warming, has admitted that the claim in its 2007 report about the Himalayan glaciers disappearing was not based on any scientific study or research. It was instead based on one scientist's speculation in a telephone interview with a reporter.

The IPCC claimed: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of their disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the earth keeps warming at the current rate."

As it turns out, the earth hasn't been warming at all, at least not in the last decade, and reputable scientists have said it may continue to cool for decades to come.
Even if it was warming, glaciologists insist, the sheer mass of Himalayan glaciers made such a prediction laughable.

According to Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University: Even a small glacier, such as the Dokriani glacier, is up to 120 meters (394 feet) thick; a big one would be several hundred meters thick and tens of kilometers long.
The average glacier is 300 meters thick, so to melt one even at the rate of five meters a year would take half a century.

That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now, so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high; the current maximum observed rate of glacier melt worldwide is two to three meters a year.
Like the infamous "hockey stick" graph purporting to show sudden and man-induced warming, and the Climate-gate e-mails showing the efforts by researchers associated with Britain's Climate Research unit to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, the Himalayan glacier claim, like the IPCC report itself, is science fiction and not science fact, says IBD.

Integrity Once Lost Is Gone Forever

This is very appropriate for our times:

INTEGRITY - WHEN ONCE COMPROMISED, IS GONE FOREVER AND IS NOT REPLACEABLE.

Proverbs 10:9 :

"The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out."

Conformity IS Obama's "Fundamental" Change for America

Did you ever wonder what Obama had in mind when he said "We will fundamentally change America"?

I believe this article points out just some of the agenda that Obama is trying to institute in our country. Conformity is the very basis of socialism.

Everyone must be the same, except of course, our esteemed leaders. Remember how cool it was to be living in Eastern Europe during the cold war?


CONFORMITY KILLS
Source: Ronald Bailey, "Conformity Kills," Reason Magazine, February 2010.

"If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?" irritated parents everywhere asks when their kids argue that they should be allowed to do something just because "everyone else is doing it." A new paper in the journal, "Evolution and Human Behavior," suggests that societies may engage in such self-destructive conformity when they face unexpected environmental crises.

A model generated by Hal Whitehead, a biologist at Dalhousie University, and Peter Richerson, a professor of environmental science policy at the University of California at Davis, suggests:
That people tend to conform to what are perceived as socially successful strategies when they live in stable environments.

As a result, odd individuals become rarer and societies lose their ability to learn new coping skills.

Whitehead and Richerson speculate that political systems might become dominated by conformists and stifle the ability of individuals to make timely adaptations to changed circumstances. They cite the Norse communities of medieval Greenland and the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica as possible examples of societies that collapsed because of excessive conformity.

Whitehead and Richerson think their research is relevant to dealing with current global environmental problems, arguing that "the risk of population collapse may be reduced by promoting individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity."

Obama : We Voted For You - But You Lied To Us (A Video)

The bottom line - A majority of Americans voted for Obama because he said he would stop the nonsense in Washington - I knew he was lying because he told us during his campaign just what he was going to do and how he would do it.

Unfortunately many in this country couldn't see it then, but now it is clear for all to see. I wonder who will stand between Obama and the pitch forks?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZs8k4pJcyk

Obama Will Grab 401K's To Fund Deficit Spending

Will you be willing to fund the federal government's income redistribution agenda with your 401K savings account? Think about it. You have saved all your life but now the liberals want you to give your life's savings to others that didn't save a dime.

Doesn't this make you feel good kowning you will be making a heart felt contribution to the welfare of others. Oh, and you will be funding a new Mercedes for members of the Obama staff at the same time. It just can't get better than that, right?


Whiskey & Gunpowder
By Dan DenningJanuary 18, 2010
Melbourne, Australia

Will the Feds Fund Deficits with 401(k)s? The writing is on the wall for retirement assets held in conventional ways. A report last week in Business Week shows that the U.S. Feds have 401(k) assets in their sites.

“The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.
“Annuities generally guarantee income until the retiree’s death, and often that of a surviving spouse as well. They are designed to protect against the risk that retirees outlive their savings, a danger made clear by market losses suffered by older Americans over the last year, David Certner, legislative counsel for AARP, said in an interview.” Now ostensibly, the plan to offer an annuity option for 401(k) plans will seem sensible. But don’t be fooled.

This is the beginning of a money grab by the Feds for the $3.6 trillion in assets held by U.S. 401(k)s. The Feds need that money to finance the deficit. This is where some of the money to fund the deficits may come from, answering a question we asked earlier in the week. What you can’t take, you’ll have to print. But right now, the Feds can’t just take that 401(k) money. Well, they could. But it would crash stocks and infuriate the public, leading to some civic violence.

What’s more, it would feel like theft as well as looking (and being) like it. So they have to dress the plan up as something that’s better for savers. They’re trotting out the idea that a defined benefit pension plan is better than defined contribution plan (which is true, if it’s funded well). A defined benefit plan guarantees you income in your old age years.

A defined contribution plan (what we have now) just guarantees money flows into the stock market (which is good for the financial services industry, but don’t guarantee you’ll have any money when you really need it later in life).The U.S. Treasury Department and the Obama administration are exploring ways to encourage U.S. savers to buy more annuities or investment vehicles composed of “safe” assets. What constitutes safe?

Why 30-year U.S. government bonds of course! Thus, the government can encourage people to buy what the Chinese and the Japanese and most other U.S. creditors don’t want to touch any longer.

The trouble with an annuity or 30-year bond is that you get crushed by inflation. In principle, it’s not different that a zero coupon bond. You get your nominal investment back upon redemption. But you are not compensated for inflation and your money is tied up, instead of working harder for you elsewhere. It’s obvious what the Fed’s get out of this: a ready source of new funds to buy their bonds. This kicks the can of unsustainable deficit spending down the road a few months, or perhaps a few years. But it doesn’t change the fundamentally destructive path of U.S. fiscal policy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~Special~~~~~~~~~~~~“The Bailout Loophole!”How Congressional Mandate HR-3221 Could Pay You Up to $17,500 This Year Missed by millions of Americans, this little-known LEGAL “loophole” could easily pay you up to $17,500 in income this year and every year...For as long as it takes this market and the U.S. economy to recover! Get all the details here.

American Soup Lines : Obama's Agenda?

Does this make sense or are we looking at the future for all Americans? Government spoon feeding us what they think is best.

It's easier to take from others than being self sufficient. It is a learned behavior and the longer we allow it to continue, the further we will sink into total subsistency and it's happening right now.

Massachusetts Health Care System Total Disaster

Is the conclusion here any different than what we all know to be the conclusion of the coming "ObamaCare" bill now be hashed out behind closed doors?

Everyone knows this is a disaster - what other reason could there be given that they, the liberal progressives Marxists, have to hide what they are cooking up to ram down our throats? Yet and still a significant number of the population thinks we are going in the right direction. Of course, maybe that number is misleading as well. The polls can say anything they want given the right questions to answer.

HOPE AND DELUSION IN HEALTH CARE
Source: Rick Scott, "Hope and delusion in health care; Democrats imagine political victory in popular disgust," Washington Times, January 14, 2010.

Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans oppose the current health care bill, and Democrats don't seem to care, taking refuge by saying the opposite -- that poll after poll shows Americans want health care reform. The problem, of course, is that Americans don't want the health care reform Democrats are insisting on passing. What they do want is lower costs, more choice and higher quality care. Things the Democrats effort won't do, says Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights and a health care entrepreneur who started a chain of urgent care centers in Florida.

Similar policies to the Senate bill were passed in Massachusetts in 2006:

Residents of that state now pay the highest insurance premiums in the nation.
Exploding health care costs mean the state can't even pay hospitals enough to cover the care given to patients.

Waiting lists are growing, particularly in Boston, where some patients have to wait up to a year for routine visits to specialists.

All of these "reforms" in Massachusetts were passed just to extend health coverage to a tiny fraction of the state population, but even former supporters are admitting that the exploding costs of Massachusetts' health care reform is a serious concern:

According to the most recent Rasmussen poll, about 36 percent of the state's residents view reform as a failure, compared with just 31 percent who don't.
Another 31 percent say their health care costs have gone up, versus just 20 percent who say the opposite.

Every aspect of Massachusetts' reform has been an unmitigated disaster for families in that state, says Scott. The Senate health "reform" bill passed on Christmas Eve is very similar to the reform laws in Massachusetts, where an average family of four pays more than $13,000 in premiums -- the highest in the nation, and an increase of 40 percent since 2003, higher than the national average, says Scott.

Now all the talk out of Massachusetts is about government-imposed "cost controls." That means major cutbacks in services and payments to providers, which in turn means rationing, longer waits for care and denial of certain medications -- all of the lowlights of universal health care nightmares manifested in places such as Britain and Canada, says Scott.

Marriage Rules AND Rights of Passage From Kids

Author Unknown but who cares - these are cool and spot on.

RULES OF MARRIAGE - as described by kids

1. HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY?-You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.-- Alan, age 10-No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.-- Kristen, age 10

2. WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.-- Camille, age 10

3. HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF 2 PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.-- Derrick, age 8

4. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?Both don't want any more kids.-- Lori, age 8

5. WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?-Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.-- Lynnette, age 8 (isn't she a treasure)-

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.-- Martin, age 10

6. WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?-When they're rich.-- Pam, age 7-

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that.-- Curt, age 7-

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do.-- Howard, age 8

7. IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?-It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.-- Anita, age 9 (bless you child)

8. HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?-There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there?-- Kelvin, age 8

And the #1 Favourite is .............9. HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?-Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a dump truck.-- Ricky, age 10

Stimulus Fraud Estimates Top 100 Billion or More

The idea here is to establish an agency to go after those that want to defraud the system. Set aside funds from the allocation to hire more people to go after the bad guys.

Good idea - except once this money is set aside to fund the "anti fraud agency", what will happen when the "stimulus" money is gone? And what will be their job? Investigate themselves? Investigate state and local government agencies for misuse of funds? (heh)

Will the agency lay off the people or will the tax payers have to "fund" this agency forever?

Guess!!


HOW TO GUARD AGAINST STIMULUS FRAUD
Source: Daniel J. Castleman, "How to Guard Against Stimulus Fraud," Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2010.

The Obama Administration -- and state and local governments -- should brace themselves for fraud on an Olympic scale as hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars continue to pour into job creation efforts, says Daniel J. Castleman, a former chief assistant Manhattan district attorney, and current managing director at FTI Consulting.

Where there are government handouts, fraud waste and abuse are rarely far behind. The sheer scale of the first and expected second stimulus packages combined with the multitiered distribution channel -- from Washington to the states to community agencies to contractors and finally to workers -- are simply irresistible catnip to con men and thieves, says Castleman.

There are already warning signs:

The Department of Energy's inspector general said in a report in December that staffing shortages and other internal weaknesses all but guarantees that at least some of the agency's $37 billion economic-stimulus funds will be misused.
A tenfold increase in funding for an obscure federal program that installs insulation in homes has state attorneys general quietly admitting there is little hope of keeping track of the money.

Based on experience, the cost of fraud involving federal government stimulus outlays of more than $850 billion and climbing could easily reach $100 billion. Who will prevent this? Probably no one, particularly at the state and local level, says Castleman.

New York, for instance, has an aggressive inspector general's office, with experienced and dedicated professionals. But, it is already woefully understaffed -- with a head count of only 62 people -- to police the state's already existing agencies and programs. There is simply no way that office can effectively scrutinize the influx of $31 billion in state stimulus money, says Castleman.

There is a solution however, which is to set aside a small percentage of the money distributed to fund fraud prevention and detection programs. This will ensure that states and municipalities can protect projects from fraud without tapping already thinly stretched resources, says Castleman:

Meaningful fraud prevention, detection and investigation can be funded by setting aside no more than 2 percent of the stimulus money received. For example, if a county is to receive $50 million for an infrastructure project, $1 million should be set aside to fund antifraud efforts; if it costs less, the remainder can be returned to the project's budget.

Jobs ARE Waiting! Lower/Eliminate Minimum Wage

This is something that doesn't take much brain power to understand, but one will have to admit, the howling that will ensue can not be underestimated. Can you imagine hiring people to do a job that normally demanded $7.50/hr and now they will being the same job for $5.00/hr but have a job?

This is impossible you say given our desperate situation - maybe so as the person that is unemployed can make far more on unemployment. Again what if there wasn't any unemployment? Would the person take the job? I believe so.

I once, some years ago, was looking for someone to help me do some labor on the farm so I asked my neighbor if he wanted to help out as I knew he was unemployed. He said how much and I said $5 an hour. The job entailed shoveling sawdust for horse stalls. He said no as he wouldn't work for anything less that $8. He said he would rather just stay home and do nothing. He, by the way, was laid off from an union job. I offered cash but it still was a no-go.

I believe we are headed for a fork in the road. Those that see America as a place of opportunity will take one fork and the other direction will accommodate all the rest that see America as a place to rest while others do the heavy lifting. Who will win? From what I see happening at the "listening successions", opportunity is knocking.



THERE IS AN ENDLESS NUMBER OF JOBS

Source: Jarrett Skorup, "There Is an Endless Number of Jobs," Mackinac, January 13, 2010

Earlier in the week, the Obama Administration said it would be "unrelenting" in putting Americans back to work. Indeed, Congress has named this its "top priority." However our elected representatives don't understand that there are, in fact, countless jobs in an economy. The amount of jobs are endless, what's up for discussion is how much someone is willing to pay for that job and how much someone else is willing to do it for. This is known as "supply and demand," says the Mackinac Center.

The best thing Congress could do if it really cared about job creation would be to lower or eliminate the minimum wage, says Mackinac: A high minimum wage prices low-income and low-skilled workers out of the job market.

When an employer is forced to pay more, and doesn't believe an employee is worth that amount, the job is eliminated.

Frankly, this often hits minority workers (particularly in Detroit) at a much higher rate and is often the cause of the disproportionate amount of unemployed blacks.

In 1970, economist Paul Samuelson was asked about a proposal to raise the minimum wage from its then existing level of $1.45 an hour to $2.00 an hour. He answered: What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2.00 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?

Economists are in near-universal agreement: Raising the minimum wage, as Congress has done repeatedly the past few years, almost always causes higher unemployment and more harm than good, says the Mackinac Center.

.
For text:
http://www.mackinac.org/11892
For more on Economic Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=17

Media Elite's Agenda Is Class Warfare

Here is a great short article from the Investor's Daily discussing some interesting facts from Thomas Sowell's new book, "Intellectuals and Society".

Thomas Sowell has such a great insight into how the intellectuals manage information to maneuver thought in our country.

Luckily for us, the population is becoming aware of this agenda and fighting back. Also lucky for us we have the Investor's Daily and Thomas Sowell on our side.


HOW MEDIA MISUSE INCOME DATA TO MATCH THEIR PRECONCEPTIONS
Source: Thomas Sowell, "How Media Misuse Income Data To Match Their Preconceptions," Investor's Business Daily, January 12, 2010.

Many of the same kinds of data used to claim a widening income gap between "the rich" and "the poor" -- names usually given to people with different incomes, rather than different wealth, as the terms rich and poor might seem to imply -- have led many in the media to likewise claim a growing income gap between the "super-rich" and the "merely rich," says Thomas Sowell in his newest book, "Intellectuals and Society."

Under the headline "Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind," a front-page New York Times article dubbed the "top 0.1 percent of income earners -- the top one-thousandth" as the "hyper-rich" and declared that they "have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

Once again, the confusion is between what is happening to statistical categories over time and what is happening to flesh-and-blood individuals over time, as they move from one statistical category to another, explains Sowell:

Despite the rise in the income of the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers as a statistical category, both absolutely and relative to the incomes in other categories, as flesh-and-blood human beings those individuals who were in that category initially had their incomes actually fall by a whopping 50 percent between 1996 and 2005.

It is hardly surprising if people whose incomes are cut in half drop out of the top 0.1 percent.
What happens to the income of the category over time is not the same as what happens to the people who were in that category at any given point in time. But many among the intelligentsia are ready to seize upon any numbers that seem to fit their vision, says Sowell.

Behind many of those numbers and the accompanying alarmist rhetoric, says Sowell, is a very mundane fact: Most people begin their working careers at the bottom, earning entry-level salaries. Over time, as they acquire more skills and experience, their rising productivity leads to rising pay, putting them in successively higher income brackets.

These are not rare, Horatio Alger stories. These are common patterns among millions of people in the United States and in some other countries. More than three-quarters of those working Americans whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent of income earners at some point by 1991, says Sowell.
For text:

ObamaCare Underfunded - One Trillion Dollars!

This from the American Political Action Committee - good one! Guess who will pick up the tab for one, again?

Nationalized Healthcare Enforced By The IRS Is The Public Option

The health care reform bill deal would require the IRS to dole out taxpayer dollars -- subsidies -- to low-income Americans to help them pay for health insurance, administer tax credits to small businesses to help them offer health insurance to workers and collect billions of dollars in new taxes on employers, insurance companies and medical device companies.

The American Cancer Society and American Heart Association, say the Senate ObamaCare bill penalizes people for not losing weight, reducing their blood pressure or going to the gym. The ObamaCare compromise also seeks to force insurance companies to cut or eliminate profits and effectively becoming private federal agencies.

These and other details that are part of the compromise amount to nothing more than a backdoor deal for Nationalized Healthcare Enforced By The IRS and is nothing more than a Public Option socialized government run healthcare.

ObamaCare funding is more than $1 Trillion short and cannot be paid for without new taxes. Obama and Democrats in Congress are ignoring plan details and adding more than $3000/yr of debt to every American. Obama has lied again by pushing massive tax increases on every American earning less than $250,000/yr. Every Person will be hurt with increased costs of an out of control Government Run Health Care bureaucracy.

BUT -- did you know that, thanks to a parliamentary maneuver by Senate Republicans just before the recess... ObamaCare could be dead on arrival in the U.S. House of Representatives? IT'S TRUE -- but WE have to make sure that it DOES die!
TELL CONGRESS TO REJECT SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE -- BETTER KNOWN AS "OBAMACARE":

Government Control of Health Care : Financial Disaster for States

More financial problems for the states coming from the federal government in the form of demands that the states pay a higher rate for the federal mandates. This can not be done as most states are headed for bankruptcy now let alone have the burden of carrying thousands more people on the Medicaid and Medicare roles.

You be the judge - are our Representatives doing this on purpose? Common sense says anyone with even a basic knowledge of finance would know one can not demand more from nothing.

HEALTH CARE REFORM AND THE STATES

There's somewhat of a revolt brewing among the states over the pending health care bill. Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sharply criticized the legislation for the financial burdens it poses on his state -- and he's not alone, says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Time magazine reports there are four reasons why many states aren't keen on the bill, all involving how it will make the states' financial conditions worse:

Costs -- states will be forced to pay for part of the expansion of Medicaid.

Compliance -- states will be hard-pressed to implement and enforce new regulations.

Also:

Insurance Exchanges -- states, at least under the Senate version, will essentially be responsible for running them, a huge and complex task.

Federal Aid -- it will be uneven at best, depending on how much each state has expanded Medicaid on their own; those who "did the right thing" by making more citizens eligible for the program will be "punished" by receiving less aid.

Source: Kevin Ganster, "Health Care Reform and the States," U.S. Chamber of Commerce, January 8, 2010; and Kate Pickert and Karen Tumulty, "What Health Care Reform Means for the States," Time, January 8, 2010.

Snow In Saudi Arabia? Global Warming?? What Insanity!

Here is more proof of the insanity that is global warming, or climate change. Climate change is turly a religion and the members of the church are totally insane.

Global Warming? Don’t Tell the Brits

The headline in Britain’s Daily Express on Wednesday said it all: “Snow Chaos: And They Still Claim It’s Global Warming.”

As many regions of the U.S. battled bone-chilling temperatures and ferocious snowstorms this past week, Britain was also socked with horrendous winter weather. Unusually heavy snowfall — up to 16 inches in some places — closed highways, stranded hundreds of motorists, disrupted trains, and shut down schools and airports across Britain as the country suffered through its longest cold snap since 1981.

Temperatures at mid-week were well below freezing as far south as London.
“British winters are typically mild, and cities and towns are generally ill-equipped to deal with heavy snowfall,” according to The Associated Press.

But the Daily Express observed that climate experts say “blizzards, ice, and sub-zero temperatures that have gripped the U.K. for almost a month in a record deep freeze are not ‘robust’ indicators of global weather patterns.”

Unusually bad winter weather wasn’t limited to Northern Europe, however. Temperatures plunged to 10 degrees in parts of China and Beijing experienced its biggest snowstorm in 60 years on Jan. 3.

The cold claimed at least 157 lives in India during the week, and 30 died in Bangladesh.

Back in the U.S., a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com said in some areas this will be the “coldest winter in many people’s memory.”

Climate experts’ claims about global warming “come despite the fact that the rest of the northern hemisphere, from America to Europe and Asia, is suffering some of the worst winters in living memory,” the Daily Express noted.
Christopher Booker, author of “The Real Global Warming Disaster,” said, “It is amazing how this scaremongering from climate change lobbyists keeps arising even though they are constantly being proved wrong.

“Last year there was snow in Saudi Arabia and still they persist in saying the temperature is going up.”

Economic Stimulus 3 : Total Insanity

As usual, the Heritage Foundation is on the mark here. Spending other people's money to help those same people to get what they need to survive is only making the problem twice as bad. Our government is truly out of control but what is worse, I believe they really believe they are doing the right thing.

What is the definition of insanity? Doing what congress is doing right now - ' doing the same thing over and over but expecting different outcomes each time'.

This shouldn't be rocket science and it isn't. It's just common sense that we all have. We just have to use it more in our daily lives when making decisions that really matter.

Decisions like who to vote out of office next November.


January 8, 2010
By Amanda Reinecker

The Stimulus Myth

Despite the startling job figures released this week, there are signs that the nation's economy is finally starting to improve; the end of the recession may be in sight. But why is the economy improving, and is this improvement sustainable?

Many on the left are hailing the President's $787 billion "stimulus" package as the key behind the budding economic turnaround. These same folks support the President's proposal for a third stimulus spending package to give the economy a final boost into recovery. But they are missing one critical point: as Heritage Foundation economist Brian Riedl explains, "government spending does not stimulate economic growth."

In a new analysis, Riedl debunks liberal myths about stimulus spending, details the long history of failed stimulus packages and provides sound alternatives that offer real economic revitalization.

The Myth: Government can spend its way into prosperity

Stimulus advocates make what is, on the surface, a plausible argument. They often attribute recessions to a decline in production, which in turn results from a decrease in individual spending. Increased government spending, they argue, can make up for this shortfall in individual spending and prop up production levels.

But stimulus spending doesn't actually increase productivity. Instead, Riedl argues, it "often reduces long-term productivity by transferring resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive government."

Those who support government stimulus packages fail to ask one very important question: What money is the government actually spending? Riedl points out that "every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy."

It is not new money. It is money that is redistributed out of the private sector via taxes and into projects favored by politicians and bureaucrats.

Stimulus spending, in short, is like "removing water from one end of a swimming pool and pouring it in the other end." In the end, Riedl explains, "it will not raise the overall water level."

A consistent history of failure

"The idea that increased deficit spending can cure recessions has been tested repeatedly, and it has failed repeatedly," Riedl says. Here are just a few of the failed stimulus packages of the past.

1930s. New Deal lawmakers doubled federal spending—yet unemployment remained above 20 percent until World War II.

1990. Japan responded to a recession by passing 10 stimulus spending bills over eight years (building the largest national debt in the industrialized world)—yet its economy remained stagnant.

2001. President Bush tried to boost the economy out of a recession by "injecting" tax rebates into the economy, with little effect. In the end, it was the 2003 tax rate cuts that allowed the economy to recover.

2008. President Bush tried to head off the current recession with another round of tax rebates. The recession continued to worsen.

2009. The most recent $787 billion stimulus bill was intended to keep the unemployment rate from exceeding eight percent. In November, it topped 10 percent. In short, "the stimulus bill failed by its own standards."

The Solution: It's not a stimulus but it's sure to stimulate our economy

As December's job figures indicate, the recession is not over yet. But economic recovery is inevitable, with or without a stimulus package. Our economy contains built-in, self-correcting mechanisms that enable it to adjust naturally to market changes. However, our elected leaders should understand that government intervention can disrupt this process and stall recovery.

Legislators should consider policies, such as permanent tax rate cuts, to encourage more business investment and economic growth. "The only way to increase economic growth," argues Riedl, "is by increasing productivity and the labor supply."

Increasing the production of goods and services, not redistributing taxpayer money, is the key to economic recovery.

French President Sarkozy Not Happy with Obama

The French President doesn't understand that Obama is not interested in accomplishing any goals with respect to European unity. What Obama is interested in is accomplishing his own personal goals of total world respect for himself. And to do this he must destroy the United States as it is presently constituted.

He is on target to do just that.

France’s Sarkozy Now ‘Anti-Obama’

Soon after Barack Obama won the White House, French President Nicolas Sarkozy referred to him as “my friend” and strove to become the first European leader to meet with the newly elected American.

Now the honeymoon between the two leaders is over, according to The Financial Times.
Sarkozy has now shifted to "an anti-Obama position,” said Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, a spokesman for the opposition Socialists.

France turned down an American request to send more troops to Afghanistan, and Sarkozy has expressed frustration at what he perceives as Obama’s equivocation over Iran’s nuclear program and at the priority Obama has placed on the long-term goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons, the Times reports.

In a sharply worded speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Sarkozy alluded to Obama’s disarmament goals. “We are right to talk about the future, but before the future there is the present, and the present is two major nuclear crises,” he said, referring to Iran and North Korea. “We are living in a real world, not a virtual world.”

Jack Kelly wrote on the Real Clear Politics Web site that Sarkozy “was furious with Barack Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons” at a meeting Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council.

Sarkozy is reportedly still miffed over Obama’s refusal to attend an event with the French leader during his June visit to France to commemorate the D-Day landings, and has made disparaging comments about Obama’s decision-making and lack of prior government experience. “French frustration is aimed at Washington’s hesitancy or even weakness,” according to the Times.

But Sarkozy could be stressing his differences with the U.S. for domestic purposes, one senior French official disclosed, adding, “On the fundamentals we are much closer to President Obama than we were to President Bush.”

American Citizens : Lazy - Ignorant - OR Just Stupid?

This is something that I have been talking about for years - are Americans so satisfied with their personal lives that they refuse to acknowledge any outside influence that might change their status. Ignorance or stupidity?

It's easier for Americans to just ignore catastrophic events that will impact them directly on the grounds that if they just wait long enough someone else will fix the problem. That is, "don't bother me with details", I'm busy making a life. After all, this is America, we are special - bullet proof?

Will Americans wake up and read the fine print or will they wait until their lives are totally in the hands of others that don't care who or what you are? And don't forget, those taking control of your life might not be a foreign power, they might be domestic terrorists masquerading as religious leaders, politicians or your next door neighbors that have an agenda that is different then yours. What? Can't happen here? - guess again!

Wake up - Get up - make a difference!! This article is on the mark - a good read


Our Incompetent Civilization·
By BRET STEPHENS

When does a civilization become incompetent? I've been mulling the question in a number of contexts over the last year, including our inability to put a stop to Somali piracy, detain a terrorist who can neither be charged nor released, think rationally about climate change, or rebuild Ground Zero in an acceptable time frame.

But the question came to me again in Brussels on Sunday as I watched my children—ages six, four, and four months—get patted down before boarding our U.S.-bound flight. The larger-than-allowed bottle of cough syrup in my carry-on, however, somehow escaped our screener's humorless attentions. Yes, the screener in this case was Belgian, not American. Yes, terrorists come in any number of skin colors, and they aren't above strapping explosives to their own children. And yes, the Obama administration took a half-step toward sanity by ordering additional screening of passengers from 14 countries, including Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, home of Flight 253 would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

But here's a predictive certainty: Not one non-Muslim from any of these countries (or others such as Egypt or Jordan, which were oddly excluded from the list) will ever become a suicide bomber. The localized case of Sri Lanka's Tamils aside, suicide bombing is a purely Islamic phenomenon. Note that during the whole of the intifada there was not a single case of a Palestinian Christian blowing himself up, making a nonsense of the view that Israel's checkpoints and curfews and security fences were the main cause of the terror.

So as Homeland Security, TSA and the rest of the government's counterterrorism apparatus struggle to upgrade travel security in a way that doesn't involve freeze-drying passengers in their seats, it's worth noting that we have finally reached the outer bounds of a politically correct approach to airport security. To wit, the U.S. government is now going to profile Muslim passengers, albeit partially, indirectly and via the euphemism of nationality instead of religion.

Insofar as actual security is concerned, it would be both more honest and effective if it dropped the remaining pretense.The obvious rub is that profiling goes against the American grain. We shudder at the memory of previous instances of it, particularly the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s. Rightly so.

But a civilization becomes incompetent not only when it fails to learn the lessons of its past, but also when it becomes crippled by them. Modern Germany, to pick an example, has learned from its Nazi past to eschew chauvinism and militarism. So far, so good. But today's Multikulti Germany, with its negative birth rate, bloated welfare state and pacifist and ecological obsessions is a dismal rejoinder to its own history. It is conceivable that within a century Germans may actually loathe themselves out of existence.

In the U.S., our civilizational incompetence takes various forms. For instance: No country in the world collects more extensive statistical data about its own population than the U.S. And no country is as conflicted about the uses to which that data may or may not be put than the U.S. So what exactly is the point of all this measuring, collating and parsing?

Our deeper incompetence stems from an inability to recognize the proper limits to our own virtues; to forget, as Aristotle cautioned, that even good things "bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage."Thus we reject profiling on the commendable grounds that human beings ought not to be treated as statistical probabilities. But at some point, the failure to profile puts innocent lives recklessly at risk.

We also abhor waterboarding for the eminently decent reason that it borders on torture. But there are worse things than waterboarding—like allowing another 9/11 to unfold because we recoil at the means necessary to prevent it. Similarly, there are worse things than Guantanamo—like releasing terrorists to Yemen so they can murder and maim again (and so we can hope to take them out for good in a "clean" Predator missile strike). Put simply, we do not acquit ourselves morally by trying to abstain from a choice of evils. We just allow the nearest evil to make the choice for us.

And so it goes. We can be proud of how deeply we mourn the losses of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a nation that mourns too deeply ultimately becomes incapable of conducting a war of any description, whether for honor, interest or survival.

We rightly care about the environment. But our neurotic obsession with carbon betrays an inability to distinguish between pollution and the stuff of life itself. We are a country of standards and laws. [Slickster Highlite]

Yet we are moving perilously in the direction of abolishing notions of discretion and judgment. One of life's paradoxes is that we are as often undone by our virtues as by our vices. And so it is with civilizations, ours not least.

Write to http://webmail.hughes.net/webmail/driver?nimlet=deggetemail&fn=INBOX&page=1&degMid=12596&folderSelected=INBOX&uidValidity=null&sfield=Num&sorder=descending&reqReceipt=false#Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A15

Liberal Media Proclaim Limbaugh/Beck Dead - Wishful Thinking? Yeah!!

I can't imagine what would remain of the liberal agenda if hate were removed. Hate is the very basis of the liberal Democratic agenda. Without it, the left liberal Democrat would cease to exist.

I believe the very idea of not being able to character assassinate someone with lies and misinformation would totally enable the true liberal. The true believer, brainwashed with the liberal agenda, sitting in the front pew and drinking the cool aide hate on a regular basis, would become completely dysfunctional.

The liberal hate machine has changed the very DNA of their victims. Once changed, a true scientific marvel given the short time that it takes to make the change on some people, the new believer can most often never come back to reality. They are doomed to wonder for all eternity in the morass of fictional truths and managed fantasies.

But there is hope for some of the converted, once they are exposed to the bright light of reality of proven facts, and they have even a shred of conscience remaining in their souls, they will no longer be enslaved victims of the liberal agenda.

Keep the faith - the light of truth and freedom shines brightly on the darkness of liberalism.


Breaking from Newsmax.com
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck Rise from the Dead
By: Jim Meyers

Top-rated talk radio host Rush Limbaugh lives once again — and to paraphrase Mark Twain, “reports of his death are greatly exaggerated.”Rush’s Web site announced that he would return to his show on Wednesday, Jan. 6, one week after he was hospitalized with chest pains during a vacation in Hawaii.

Medical personnel at a Honolulu hospital found no signs of heart disease afflicting the 58-year-old conservative icon, clearing him to resume entertaining and informing the faithful listeners he calls “dittoheads.” But Limbaugh’s critics were apparently crestfallen about his good health news, after postings over the blogoshere this past weekend took glee in his possible heart attack, with some wishing or even reporting that Limbaugh had died from cardiac arrest.

For example, shortly after news broke that Limbaugh was hospitalized, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia updated his page and pronounced him dead: “Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (born January 12, 1951, died December 30, 2009) is an American radio host and conservative political commentator. He is the host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United States.”

The lie was quickly removed from the Web site. But that didn’t stop liberal bloggers from expressing disappointment that Rush did not in fact have heart disease — or from wishing him ill or even dead. A number of posts on the left-wing site Daily Kos spewed venom against Limbaugh, with offerings such as:

“If he gets well, so be it. If he gets worse, be it paralyzed, comatose, or dead, he’s earned it.”

“I hope he dies and I’m glad he’s sick.”“I’ll never apologize for hating Rush. Or wishing death and illness on him.”

A post on redstates.com read: “Dear Heavenly Father, Jesus, please take Rush Limbaugh for the sake of the country.”

And this vile offering appeared on TMZ.com: “Oh, please let him die! Preferably quickly and very painfully.”

News that Limbaugh did not in fact pass away may have left some in bad humor, but Rush has the last laugh — he’s alive and well. Ironically, soon after reports of Limbaugh’s hospitalization circulated, word surfaced that another vacationing conservative media voice had died — Glenn Beck. “While I was not in the hospital for any heart-related issues at all, and Rush Limbaugh was,” Beck said on his Monday radio program, “the day that I was writing Rush and saying, ‘Hey man, thoughts and prayers are with you,’ was the day that I got a phone call from my business partners that said: ‘You are alive, right?’”Beck said a “major news organization” called his business partner and said “we’d just like a statement on the fatal plane crash of Glenn Beck . . .

Apparently he was in a fatal plane crash and we just wanted a statement from you.”Beck added: “Needless to say, I am not dead.”Fans of the Rush and Beck online have hit back at the false and mean-spirited reports against Limbaugh and Beck, noting that if conservatives had posted such unseemly comments about Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other liberal icons, the major media story would have expressed outrage.

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Liberal Democrats Spend Trillions of Tax Dollars On Their Agenda

If you thought Bush was a spender of tax dollars, Obama has put him to shame. This article is very depressing in that it points out in black and white what we all suspected of our leaders in the House and Senate, but when you have to actually see it printed out, the stark reality of it makes your stomach turn and your anger rise to new levels, if that possible.

It doesn't help your blood pressure to find that the spending is mostly to other liberal Democrat supporters like state governments, unions and federal institutions that support liberal agendas like Fannie and Freddie.

I believe this can be turned around if we can all get together and vote these bums out next November, and I mean all of them. Every last Democrat or Republican that voted for this nightmare of insane spending. This has to be done or we are screwed.

Three more years of the liberal Democrat agenda will prove the destruction of our country.


Congress needs to curtail spending
By Deroy Murdock, Other Voices
Sunday, January 03, 2010

Where is Nelson Mandela when we need him? In the fine new film “Invictus,” South Africa’s first black president inspects his first official paycheck.“This is terrible,” Mandela says. He decides he earns too much and subsequently donates a third of his salary to charity.

Mandela’s humility and fiscal restraint would be as exotic in the nation’s capital as a giraffe atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Washington’s lavish self-aggrandizement and relentless march toward bankruptcy cruelly mock Mandela’s sacrifice. Today’s thoughtless and corrosive spend-o-rama began under a Republican Congress and the feckless Bush-Rove administration. Alas, a Democratic White House and Congress briskly outspend their predecessors.

In stunning contrast to Mandela’s example, Congress carpet-bombs taxpayer dollars on greedy federal bureaucrats — even as Americans struggle, and often fail, to pay their mortgages and rents. Between December 2007 and June 2009, USA Today reported on Dec. 10, federal employees earning more than $100,000 annually increased 46 percent to 382,758. Those making more than $150,000 rose 119 percent to 66,538. Only one Transportation Department employee scored more than $170,000 as the recession began. By last June, that number had soared to 1,690.

Federal indulgence and incompetence are too vast to catalog. But these illustrations are sufficiently maddening. After “Cash for Clunkers” gloriously shipped $3 billion chiefly to Tokyo — and Seoul-based automakers — the Obama administration concocted “Cash for Caulkers” — fresh subsidies to weatherize homes. This program could cost up to $20 billion, if House Democrats prevail. So far, Texas has spent $1.8 million in federal funds and has treated seven homes, averaging $257,000 each.

Congress sent President Barack Obama a $447 billion, 2,442-page omnibus spending bill on Dec. 14. It ballooned federal spending 12 percent while inflation inches along at 1.8 percent. This measure contained 5,224 pork-barrel projects worth $3.9 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

These included $700,000 for “Shrimp Industry Fishing Effort Research Continuation” in Silver Spring. Breaking the law that launched the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the House misallocated $154 billion in repayments by TARP-funded banks. That money legally must finance deficit reduction. House Democrats nevertheless flouted the law by turning this cash into America’s fourth economic stimulus package.

Even worse, political favoritism has infected stimulus spending. The free-market Mercatus Center discovered that the average congressional district has received $355 million from Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package. However, Democratic congressmen’s districts averaged $439 million (a 23.7 percent bonus), while Republican districts averaged just $232 million (a 35.6 percent penalty).

The typical district won 128 projects. Democratic districts averaged 152 such outlays (an extra 18.75 percent). GOP districts averaged 94 awards (26.6 percent fewer).

At the Copenhagen climate conference, Obama pledged to muster up to $100 billion annually for 10 years to help developing nations battle so-called global warming. This could equal $1 trillion in carbon-coated foreign aid. Even if other industrialized nations participate, it’s hard to imagine America in for less than $100 billion.

With a 1:08 a.m. procedural vote, the Senate’s 60-member Democratic caucus advanced a $2.5 trillion health reform that 61 percent of Americans oppose, according to CNN. Greased by Democratic leader Harry Reid’s taxpayer-funded bribes to wobbly Democrats, the bill’s final passage at dawn on Christmas Eve was engineered to approve the measure before senators faced pesky constituents back home who want to euthanize the bill.

The Treasury announced on Christmas Eve that it will give blank checks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the next three years. Estimated cost: Up to $400 billion.

“The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries,” warned Zhu Min deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, which kindly pays America’s bills these days. As he told Shanghai Daily: “The world does not have so much money to buy more U.S. Treasuries.”

One of 2010’s most intriguing questions will be whether the American people’s aggregated nausea by November triggers the peaceful overthrow of the U.S. government./

Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him athttp://webmail.hughes.net/webmail/driver?nimlet=deggetemail&fn=INBOX&page=1&degMid=12562&folderSelected=INBOX&uidValidity=null&sfield=Num&sorder=descending&reqReceipt=false#. <mailto:deroy.Murdock@gmail.com>/

Obama's Gov. Grows While Economy Tanks

Interesting article showing just how the liberal agenda of the Obama administration plans on taking over the population through the destruction of the private sector of this country. Once the private sector has totally collapsed, the people will have no choice but to turn to the federal government for support.

The problem with is the federal government won't have any money to support the people's needs. What's left is everyone fending for themselves. Read this as chaos.

As members of the Obama administration have indicated, " a crisis can not be wasted" so they will use it to enslave the population though force to cement their personal places in power. Will this happen in America, time will tell.

Public employees' flush new year
By MICHAEL BARONE/
Last Updated: 10:35 AM, January 4, 2010

It looks like a happy new year for you -- if you're a public employee. That's the takeaway from a recent Rasmussen poll that shows that 46 percent of government employees say the economy is getting better, while just 31 percent say it's getting worse. In contrast, 32 percent of those with private-sector jobs say the economy is getting better, while 49 percent say it is getting worse. Nearly half, 44 percent, of government employees rate their personal finances as good or excellent. Only 33 percent of private-sector employees do.

It sounds like public- and private-sector employees are looking at different Americas. And they are. Private-sector employment peaked at 115.8 million in December 2007, when the recession officially began. It was down to 108.5 million last November. That's a 6 percent decline. Public-sector employment peaked at 22.6 million in August '08. It fell a bit in '09, then rebounded to 22.5 million in November. That's less than a 1 percent decline. This isn't an accident; it's the result of deliberate public policy. About a third of the $787 billion stimulus passed in February 2009 was directed at state and local governments, which have been facing declining revenues and are, mostly, required to balance their budgets.

The policy aim, say Democrats, was to maintain public services and aid. The political aim, although Democrats don't say so, was to maintain public-sector jobs -- and the flow of union dues to the public-employee unions that represent almost 40 percent of public-sector workers. Those unions in turn have contributed generously to Democrats. Service Employees International Union head Andy Stern, the most frequent nongovernment visitor to the Obama White House, has boasted that his union steered $60 million to Democrats in the 2008 cycle.

The total union contribution to Democrats has been estimated at $400 million.

In effect, a big portion of the stimulus package can be regarded as taxpayer funding of the Democratic Party. Needless to say, no Republicans need apply. One must concede that there is something to the argument that maintaining government spending helps people in need and provides essential public services. Something, but not everything. For it's more difficult to cut waste and unnecessary spending from government agencies than from private-sector businesses. As Charles Peters, founder of the neoliberal Washington Monthly, noted years ago, when government is ordered to cut spending, it does things like closing the Washington Monument to visitors.

Tourists from the 50 states and 435 congressional districts quickly squawk to their Congress members, and the spending cuts are rescinded. When businesses must cut, they do so with an eye to profits -- which is to say with an eye to providing consumers with goods and services they need enough to be willing to pay for. They tend to lay off unproductive employees while striving to retain productive ones. Governments, restrained by civil-service rules and often by union contracts, don't have similar incentives.

As for the argument that maintaining government payrolls pumps money into the private-sector economy -- well, where does that government money come from? From private-sector employees and employers or from those who buy government bonds and who must be repaid by government in the future. At some point -- and this already has occurred in much of Western Europe -- public-sector spending tends to choke off private-sector growth. America's current high unemployment levels have been commonplace in much of Western Europe for the last 25 years.The question now is whether they'll become common in America in the decade ahead.

The decision by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress to hold public-sector employees in place while the private sector is gravely weakened has the potential to put us on that trajectory. The unemployment data show that this recession has had a much greater effect on private-sector workers than on public employees, on men than on women, on blue-collar workers than on white-collar ones. This seems not to have gone unnoticed.

Democrats have been surprised that so many downscale voters oppose their big-spending programs. Maybe many of those voters have noticed how much of that spending has gone to public-sector union members, leaving the rest of America with a less-than-happy new year.

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.

WOHA! Scientist Predicts Global Cooling - Again?

Oh, No - it's the 70's all over again. Remember when they said we would all die because the earth would be frozen over and we couldn't grow any food because of the ice? Well, get ready to die because here we go again.

Since the "warmers" have been shown to be frauds, the "coolers" figure it's their turn to take over and go for the big bucks. Now it will be " we are all going to die if we don't do something to stop global cooling and we must do something right now before it's too late." Ah, what they are saying is they need more money to do the research necessary to prevent global cooling.

- - sigh - -

Scientist Predicts 50 Years of Cooling

A university professor challenges the widely held notion that carbon dioxide is responsible for climate change — and says the Earth will continue to cool for the next half-century.
Rather than carbon dioxide, cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — already implicated in depleting the Earth’s ozone layer — are to blame for changes in the global climate, according to a paper by Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

CFCs are compounds once widely used as refrigerants, and cosmic rays are energy particles originating in outer space. Lu’s peer-reviewed paper, published in the prestigious journal Physics Reports, states: "My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century.

"Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming."

The total amount of CFCs decreased around 2000, Lu said, and “correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate."

Lu found that while there was global warming from 1950 to 2000, there has been global cooling since 2002, and his research indicates that the cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years.
Lu based his research on data from laboratory and satellite observations, according to the Insciences Web site. He previously published work on the ozone layer along with researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Same Sex Benefits Bill Discriminates Against Heterosexuals

What's the answer? It isn't that tough to figure out, if it discriminates, it isn't a good bill. Also it isn't enough that the federal employee doesn't have enough benefits already, they need more?

By the way, aren't the federal employees exempt from the new health care bill? You know the one that destroys are health care in favor of congress grabbing power and control over all of our lives. Well, except for some unions employees and the federals that is. Wait, is this more discrimination? Is this buying votes with our tax dollars?

Why is this even being discussed or voted on? hmmmm Maybe it's agenda driven? - nah!


Same-Sex Benefits Would Cost Taxpayers $900 Million

Taxpayers would have to foot an $898 million bill over the next decade to extend health insurance and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Committees in both the Senate and House have approved “domestic partners” legislation, and President Obama has voiced support for the bill.

Benefits for same-sex partners would include health insurance, survivor annuities, compensation for work-related injuries, disability, family leave, life insurance and dental benefits, according to CNSNews. “CBO estimated that enacting [the House version] would increase direct spending by $596 million through 2019,” a CBO report issued on Dec. 17 disclosed. “Over the same period, CBO estimates that discretionary spending would also increase by $302 million, assuming appropriation of the necessary funds.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman said after the bill cleared the Senate committee: “Will this measure add to the total cost of providing federal employee benefits? Yes, but only by a tiny fraction — less than five-hundredths of a percent — of the total pay and benefits for federal employees. And we will offset the cost with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget so the bill will be fiscally responsible.”
Lieberman did not specify where the cost offsets would come from.

The CBO assumes that about 0.33 percent of federal employees would register a same-sex domestic partner if given the opportunity. The CBO also estimates “that approximately 80 percent of individuals eligible under the proposal would move from single to family health coverage and that 85 percent would elect a survivor benefit for a domestic partner.”

Critics have charged that the proposal is an indirect attack on the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars the federal government from recognizing "same-sex marriages" and gives states the option to refuse to recognize such unions from another state.

They also assert that it would promote discrimination against unmarried heterosexual couples. The legislation would cover only homosexual partners, not unmarried heterosexual ones.
The bill awaits a vote on the floor of the Senate and House. But according to Federal Times, passage in the Senate is uncertain and perhaps unlikely due to opposition from conservative Republicans.

INTERPOL Granted Diplomatic Immunity In US by Obama Executive Order

How is this possible? This international organization is responsible to no one in this country. Is this the death of our Constitution? Where is this country head? Are we starting to look more like the old Soviet Union with the KGB ready to kick down our doors in the middle of the night?

Is this the "change" that Obama had in store for us all along? Is this the new vision for America that so many in this country seem to want?

Who are these people? Who voted for these people?


Obama Executive Order & Interpol – UPDATED

<http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/12/23/obama-executive-order-interpol/>Wednesday, December 23, 2009, 12:41 PMThe_Anchoress*I’m thinking that when Steve Schippert began his blog*, which he calls Threats Watch <http://threatswatch.org>, he never thought he would be tracking a threat from his own Executive Branch <http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2009/12/obama-executive-order-cedes-us-sovereignty-citizen-rights-to-interpol/> and Congress.Does that sound a bit out there?

Yes, I worry that it does. But this Executive Order, which Obama quietly signed while the world was distracted <http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=15655> by Tiger Woods and weather, sounds pretty out there, too <http://threatswatch.org/analysis/2009/12/wither-sovereignty/>:

December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.

By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. (The Slickster highlighted)

*Noisy Room* spells it out <http://noisyroom.net/blog/2009/12/22/of-executive-orders-and-trojan-horses/>: Here’s the text of 2(c), which this Executive Order now has applying to Interpol:*(c) Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.

*This now says that Interpol is no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Their premises or staff can no longer be searched either. Their files are not subject to legal subpoena or discovery. Our government could just hand documents and files over to Interpol and Americans would no longer have access to them. Interpol can legally keep files now on all citizens of the US with no right to redress.

/In reality, we have just handed over our sovereignty./ Interpol headquarters in the US is currently headquartered in the Department of Justice. /A ‘separate’ Interpol agency has been created in the DOJ/ – let that sink in for a moment. Interpol has been granted diplomatic immunity now by Obama – they have exemption from being subject to search and seizure by law enforcement, US taxes and immunity from FOIA requests, etc. This action could also be used to divulge American military secrets and a whole host of horrific practices having to do with going after our military. It’s the road to internationalism on steroids.*Rick hopes *it’s all some sort <http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/12/21/did-obama-give-interpol-more-power-last-week.php> of misunderstanding <http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/2009/12/this-needs-wider-play.html>.

*Color me cynical*. As we watch the tyrannical Harry Reid <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/The-impudent-tyranny-of-Harry-Reid-8665439-79935422.html> (and an apparently /fully-corrupted/ <http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/22/video-demint-objects-to-supermajority-protection-in-reids-obamacare-bill/>/ parliamentarian/) bribe <http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/12/dems-strike-down-gop-effort-to-strip-bribes-from-health-care-bill/>, lie and bully <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/_Shut-up_-is-a-favorite-Democrat-talking-point-8675353-79938422.html> his way to passage of a ruinous healthcare bill (with the reprehensible Mrs. Pelosi waiting to do exactly the same in the House), as we watch the elected leaders of this representative democracy try to inflict legislation upon us which can /never/ be rescinded <http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/22/demint-to-force-vote-on-constitutionality-of-mandate/>, I don’t think there is any /misunderstanding/, at all.

A few days ago, I wrote: the Democrats are /conspicuously unworried/ about upcoming elections <http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/12/21/wrapping-our-heads-around-the-world-at-christmas/>. Perhaps they are not worried because they know something that all the angry voters do not seem to understand: that /they no longer have to give a damn/ <http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/11/28/democrats-channel-rhett-butler/>; they will not have to worry about future elections; they will not have to care what anyone thinks of their governance <http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/202431>, and they have no worries about the press, either. There are no Woodwards or Bernsteins on their horizons.

*Socialism, like the Chicago fog*, creeps in on little cat feet <http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=515934>. That doesn’t make it less nefarious.

Yes, it is true that sometimes negatives must be allowed to happen, so that positives may occur. I’m trying to be philosophical about all of this, on one level. But I am not sure we’re supposed to sit around and do nothing as our nation devolves <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamacare-sparking-10th-Amendment-rebellion-79937187.html>.

*I have never understood why the Jews in Germany* and Poland and the Netherlands simply went along with what they were told to do by the Nazis: /Oh, okay, we’ll go get our yellow stars and we’ll comply with this law that we must wear them. Oh. We’ll endure public hate and discrimination. Oh, we’ll just clean up this broken glass. Oh, okay, we’ll get on these trains. Oh, yes, let us have a shower…/Civil Disobedience is a good thing, sometimes -a force for good- we learned that /from the very same spoiled-brat generation/ that now attempts to utterly corrupt our government, and our way of life, and who want us all to just sit down and shut up <http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/08/08/shut-up-he-explained/>, as they do it.

*I know it is very difficult to get anyone interested* in this Executive Order, because the dishonest <http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/12/page-148-of-health-care-bill.html> Obamacare bill is dominating the day. This is part of the problem: Obama and his team have started so many fires <http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/202031> that while one is being fought <http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/359xvtka.asp> in one place, another is taking hold <http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTMzYmVmNjU1Mjk0ZTExNWVjYWU0N2ViMGEyNDBkYmI>, elsewhere.

But the thing is, the fires are all connected, and they come from the same source.I’ve linked to it a few times, lately, but I am going to fully repost something I wrote 4 years ago, about how to recognize a coup <http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2005/10/29/the-art-of-the-painless-coup/> and stop it. If it is not too late, it is very nearly too late.

Yeah, file this under “remaking America.”*UPDATE*: Andy McCarthy wonders: Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law? <http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGY3MTI4YTRjZmYwMGU1ZjZhOGJmNmQ0NmJiZDNmMDY=>

*Ed Morrissey:* has more <http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/23/did-obama-exempt-interpol-from-same-legal-constraints-as-american-law-enforcement/>:. . .it appears to mean that Americans who get arrested on the basis of Interpol work cannot get the type of documentation one normally would get in the discovery process, which is a remarkable reversal from Obama’s declared efforts to gain “due process” for terrorists detained at Gitmo. Does the White House intend to treat Americans worse than the terrorists

The Art of the Painless Coup <http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/12/23/the-art-of-the-painless-coup-3/>Wednesday, December 23, 2009, 3:38 PMThe_Anchoress