Bush Tax Cuts Favors Middle Class : Obama Liberals Misinform

This article by Investor's Business Daily is just another nail in the coffin of the insane rants of the liberal left that the middle class is suffering. The deception and out right lies that we see everyday in the main stream media concerning the plight of the middle class is just another effort to split the country into warring camps.

The liberals see this as a device to gain political advantage by convincing large segments of the population that the 'rich' are taking advantage of them, and if they vote for the Democrats they will in turn punish the rich by taxing them at a higher rate. That is, taking money from the productive members of our society and giving it to those that really deserve it, like the poor middle class. Read this as those that voted Democrat. This is "income redistribution", a foundation philosophy of Marxist socialism.

Sadly, many amongst us believe this to be a just cause. They don't see the 'forest for the trees' as it is the rich that provides the jobs that we all need to survive, corporations and small businesses.

But thinking about the overall well fare of the general population is not the most important factor in the agenda of the liberal left. The most important factor is getting and keeping power. This is the single most important plank in the liberals play book. The liberal call to arms is 'we must destroy America to make her better. America be damned.

Keep the faith, never give up the fight!

Middle Class Got Tax Cut Under Bush

Barack Obama's campaign pledge to "rebuild the middle class" by giving tax breaks to 95 percent of workers and their families surely won him votes.

But an analysis by Investor’s Business Daily found that the middle class already got a large tax break under President George W. Bush.

Citing data from the Congressional Budget Office, IBD disclosed that the
effective tax rate on the middle fifth of households fell from an average of about 17.1 percent under President Bill Clinton to 14.4 percent under Bush. That's a
16 percent tax cut for the middle class.

As for the oft-heard claim from the left that middle-class incomes are stagnant or shrinking, a study last year by the Minneapolis Fed concluded that "incomes of most types of middle American households have increased substantially over the past three decades."

Real household income did grow just 18 percent over the past 30 years. But after correcting for distortions in the data, Terry Fitzgerald, a Fed senior economist, found that "median household income for most household types . . . increased by 44 percent to 62 percent from 1976 to 2006." And per-person income surged 80 percent.

IBD observes, “Yes, many Americans are suffering in this recession, including the middle class. But the last thing we need is another general in a phony class war telling people how bad they have it.”

Don't Shop In Detroit - Go On Line - It's Safer

ChristmasshoppinginDetroit.wmv

This is really good - illustrates how things are changing in the 'motor city' - It isn't any wonder that Detroit is now a "third world" city as it has been run by liberal Democrats for the past twenty years or more.

If you are still not convinced - think New Orleans. That city has been run by Democrats for more than six decades and still has Ray 'school bus' Nagan for a mayor.

Political Correctness A liberal Hammer On America

This is just one more of the knifes that the liberal left uses to cut the heart out of our freedoms, even our most basic freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. Our elected officials are, as of now, working to legislate away the American dream. This fact - never believe that our congress has our best interests at heart

Will this be how Obama govern? Will this be the agenda of the Marxists that dominate our congress?

From where I stand, the future is not bright - but we must 'hope' for the best when the pressure is on "the one" Keep the faith - we can win!!


http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2008/12/video-political-correctness-vs-freedom-of-thought/

Political Correctness Vs. Freedom Of Thought - The Keith John Sampson Story

For those of you that follow these things, you might remember the story of Keith John Sampson, the college student who was branded a racist by the PC police on his campus, for doing nothing more than silently reading a book on his work break.

Keith’s African American co-workers filed racial harassment charges against him after they saw him reading a book entitled “Notre Dame vs. The Klan”. It seems that they felt the images of the Klan on the cover of the book were racist, and that Keith was harassing them by reading the book in their presence.

Despite the fact that the book was an anti-Klan book (not that it should matter) IUPUI found him guilty of racial harassment, and instructed him not to read the offending book again!

A finding of racial harassment is no small matter. Once that is in a student-employee’s permanent record, it can follow them around forever. Even though Keith was completely exonerated of any wrong doing and the university apologized to him, that is small consolation considering a Google search of his name immediately returns links to this whole sordid mess. Certainly more than one of Keith’s future employers might take the time to perform a Google search. That should make for some interesting job interviews.

Over the last several months, I was lucky enough to meet with many of the main characters of this scholastic melodrama, and this video is the result of our conversations. Hopefully in some small way, this video will help repair the damage IUPUI has done to Keith John Sampson’s reputation, as well as raise awareness of this all too common phenomenon being reported on college campuses nation wide.

Liberal Democrats Responsible for Financial Disaster : An Itimized List

Here is the head count for those that are responsible for the disaster that is our financial system.

Like I have posted in the past if this was a conservative problem Nancy Pelosi would have them all in orange jump suits and 'perp' walked into the committee chambers for all the world to see. She would grill them for weeks and the media would destroy them and their families with lies and fabrication.

This something to keep posted on the kitchen wall or on your refrigerator and memorize it so you can use it against the idiots on the left.

Keep the faith - itemized responsible



THANK 'BEST & BRIGHTEST' FOR CRISIS

By RAY KERRISON - New York Post
December 23, 2008

AN elderly neighbor of mine asks, "Have you noticed that the worst
economic crisis of our lifetime was set off by people with the highest
education? If they're all so smart, how come they're so dumb?"

I hadn't thought of it that way, but he has a point.

The meltdown began with the subprime-mortgage folly, when the political
establishment pushed the real-estate industry and its bankers to grant
mortgages to buyers who couldn't afford them.

The chief architects of the disaster were the officers at Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, urged on by politicians and monitored by negligent regulators.

Here's a list of some of the main players and their academic credentials:

*James Johnson*: He was Fannie Mae's chairman and CEO from 1991 to 1998,
boasting that the company was doing well and "serving a public function
at no cost."

It was then discovered that Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200
million in expenses, allowing Johnson and his cronies to walk away with
huge bonuses. Johnson took down $21 million.

His credentials: A master's in public affairs from Princeton University,
later a member of its faculty.

*Franklin Raines*: Served as Fannie's chairman and CEO from '98 until he
took "early retirement" in '04, when he was accused of promoting massive
accounting shenanigans enabling him and others to earn huge bonuses.

Raines left with a $90 million payout. He set in motion the subprime
avalanche resulting in charges of "pervasive and willful" earnings
manipulation, lax controls, perverse incentives, unjust bonuses.

Raines is a graduate of Harvard Law and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

*Jamie Gorelick*: Vice chairman of Fannie from '97 to '03, serving
alongside Raines. In an interview with Business Week in 2002, Gorelick
said, "We believe we are managed safely. Fannie Mae is among the handful
of top-quality institutions." A year later, regulators accused Fannie of
a $9 billion accounting scandal, of which she was a prime beneficiary.

She walked away with $26 million.

Gorelick's education: A BA (magna cum laude) from Harvard and a JS (cum
laude) from Harvard Law.

*Richard Syron*: Chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac until he was terminated
on Sept. 6. Like the rest, he made a killing while the ship was sinking
beneath him. In 2007 alone, he took home $19 million in cash, stocks and
other compensation.

Four years ago, Syron was warned by his own risk officer that Freddie
Mac was embracing too much risk underwriting shaky mortgages. He brushed
it aside.

Syron graduated from Boston College with a BA and earned advanced
degrees in economics (can you believe it?) from Tufts University.

*Rep. Barney Frank*: One of Fannie and Freddie's biggest boosters in
Congress. In 2003, when the Bush administration recommended tighter
regulation of the two companies, Frank rejected the idea out of hand,
saying: "They are not facing any kind of financial crisis." Famous last
words.

Frank graduated from Harvard.

*Sen. Chuck Schumer*: Second only to Frank in the Congress in his
unwavering support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Three years ago, when Fed chief Alan Greenspan warned of problems with
the two institutions, Schumer replied, "Fannie and Freddie have
problems, and there are ideologues who want to undo it. But there are
ways to fix the problems . . . When the sink is broken, you don't want
to tear down the house."

Last July, Schumer raised an alarm on the solvency of a mortgage bank,
IndyMac, setting off a panic among depositors, who withdrew $1.3 billion
from the bank. Financial analyst Jerry Bowyer charged that Schumer had
set off "the second largest bank failure in US history."

Schumer got his BA at Harvard and JD at Harvard Law.

*Sen. Chris Dodd*: The No. 1 recipient in Congress of campaign funds
from Fannie and Freddie. When they were about to crash with a thud heard
round the world, Dodd said, "They are fundamentally sound and in good
shape. To suggest they are in major trouble is not accurate."

Dodd has a BA from Providence College and a JD from the University of
Louisville.

The question arises: How could so many learned men and women, endowed
with so many honors from America's highest institutions of learning, set
in motion the financial catastrophe that now grips the nation?

Conclusion: The evidence here is overwhelming that a superior education
can certainly rake in big money - tens of millions of dollars, in fact -
but sadly it is no guarantee of competence, judgment, prudence, trust or
integrity.

Especially in politics.

Ray Kerrison has been a Post columnist for 20 years.

Problems with Blogger

There seems to be some problems with the network these days so posting will be hit and miss for awhile - please bear with me until this problem is resolved.

It appears that Blogger is like the rest of the country - in a state of flux -

Thanks - The Slickster!

Good Advice for Living : Enjoy it Now

Good Advice!

A friend of mine opened his wife's underwear drawer and picked
up a silk paper wrapped package:
"This," he said, "isn't any ordinary package." He unwrapped the
box and stared at both the silk paper and the box. She got this

the first time we went to New York , 8 or 9 years ago.
She has never put it on, was saving it for a special occasion.

Well, I guess this is it."

He got near the bed and placed the gift box next to the other
clothing he was taking to the funeral house.... his wife had
just died. He turned to me and said:
"Never save something for a special occasion.
Every day in your life is a special occasion."

I still think those words changed my life.
Now I read more and clean less.
I sit on the porch without worrying about anything.
I spend more time with my family, and less at work.
I understood that life should be a source of experience to be lived up to,
not survived through. I no longer keep anything.
I use crystal glasses every day...I'll wear new clothes to go to the
supermarket, if I feel like it.
I don't save my special perfume for special occasions, I use it whenever I
want to. The words "Someday" and '"One Day" are fading away from my
dictionary. If it's worth seeing, listening or doing, I want to see,
I listen or do it now....

I don't know what my friend's wife would have done if she knew she wouldn't
be there the next morning, this nobody can tell.
I think she might have called her relatives and closest friends.
She might call old friends to make peace over past quarrels.
I'd like to think she would go out for Chinese, her favourite food.
It's these small things that I would regret not doing, if I knew my time had come..

Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.
Live for today, for tomorrow is promised to no-one.

Major Media Misinforms Public : A Biased Agenda

More facts from a good source, Investor's Business Daily, that proves the main stream media is on the wrong side of the truth. The truth, be it known, is that the media doesn't want the general public to know the truth about who was responsible for our tragic financial mess.

The main stream media is wholly invested in defending the far left liberal agenda of big government and less freedom of thought. Little wonder why the liberal agenda includes crushing talk radio, the "fairness doctrine", favored in Obama's new socialist reforms.

The media is a large part of the problem in solving this mess as it doesn't allow the public to become informed. WOW - silly me - not allowing the public become inform is the whole point of the media. It appears the media makes sure that misinformation is the rule rather than facts. Who Knew?

Keep the faith, the battle goes on to defend our right to free speech and the entire Bill of Rights, maybe even the very Constitution itself.


The Subprime Lending Bias
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, December 19, 2008

Media:* If, as they say, it's journalists who write history's first
draft, then future texts will be riddled with errors about the origins
of the subprime disaster, teaching future leaders the wrong lessons.

Just how did Americans come to lose $10 trillion in real estate and
stock wealth? And why are our children and grandchildren on the hook for
as much as $8 trillion in federal bailout money? These are some of the
most important questions of our time. Yet the mainstream media, plagued
by monopartisan bias, are not providing the public honest answers.

Take, for instance, a recent front-page article in the Washington Post,
under the headline, "How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed the Crisis." The piece
correctly fingers HUD for helping fuel risky lending at Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac. But the newspaper starts its analysis in 2004 (in fact, the
first sentence begins, "In 2004 . . . "), making it seem as if the Bush
administration crafted "affordable housing" policy and created the
subprime market.

The Post knows better. The Bush HUD merely continued a politically
correct policy launched by the Clinton administration. For the first
time, President Clinton ordered HUD to set quotas for Fannie and Freddie
to buy huge portions of Community Reinvestment Act loans and other
low-income mortgages made to borrowers with poor credit. The Post failed
to mention this key fact.

By 2000, fully half of the mortgage giants' portfolios consisted of
these risky loans, most of them subprime mortgages. In effect, the
Clinton HUD set a time bomb that would explode years later with the
collapse of home prices, which happened to occur on Bush's watch.

At the same time, HUD pressured the federally subsidized giants to lower
their loan-to-value ratios and other underwriting requirements to
accommodate minority borrowers. HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo even admitted
that the administration was mandating a policy of "affirmative action"
lending (his words, not ours).

And it was Clinton who initially spread the subprime rot to Wall Street.
To help Fannie and Freddie reach their "affirmative action" lending
quotas, HUD in 1995 let them get affordable-housing credit for buying
subprime securities that included loans to low-income borrowers.

Less than two years later, Freddie partnered with Wall Street investment
banker Bear Stearns to issue the first securitizations of low-income CRA
loans.

There's even a press release still available on the Web that
memorializes the historic deal, which dumped hundreds of millions of
dollars in the risky loans on the market — a down payment on the
hundreds of billions that were to follow.

The Post left all of that out of its story, even though the deal marked
the beginning of the boom in subprime securities.

Of course, providing such background to readers would ruin the
impression that Bush and Republicans were responsible for the crisis, an
impression the Post and other liberal media elites hope will stick in
the public's mind and become conventional wisdom. And conventional
wisdom, once galvanized, is a powerful thing in Washington. Whole
agendas and coalitions are built around it.

The Post also provided just one side of the data in its story. The paper
said that Bush "ratcheted up" the affordable-housing goal for Fannie and
Freddie, from 50% to 56%. But it left out the fact that the previous
president, the liberal Democrat, institutionalized the quota and
ballooned it up to 50%. Which move do you think had a greater impact on
the subprime market?

A recent story in the Associated Press was equally tendentious. It
blamed Bush for not cracking down on loose lending standards that had
become the norm in the mortgage industry, while completely ignoring the
systematic dismantling of those standards during the previous decade
under Clinton.

"The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of
its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the
value of government intervention in the economy," wrote AP Washington
correspondent Matt Apuzzo.

Reality check: "Government intervention" is what planted the seed to
this whole crisis. As we've noted, Clinton in 1995 revised CRA
regulations to pressure banks into adopting "flexible" lending standards
to increase minority homeownership. In a 1,389-word story, AP cited that
easily verifiable fact not a single time.

Make no mistake: It was Clinton who forced banks — most importantly,
Fannie and Freddie — to go into the subprime market to serve the
targeted populations that HUD and other Clinton banking regulators
wanted them to serve.

In effect, the media are blaming Bush for Clinton policies. Whoever
controls the debate in Washington controls the truth. Right now, it's
Democrats and their press courtiers. And so far, they've managed to
shade the truth about the root causes of this epochal financial crisis.

Terrorist William Ayers to Speak At Florida State University

How cool is this - a known terrorist is awarded a special place audience at the University of Florida to lecture students on education. My question is will he have his flags with him and will he wear his brown shirt with the his traditional arm bands?

Many Oppose William Ayers' Upcoming Visit to FSU

Posted: 7:42 PM Dec 9, 2008
Last Updated: 7:42 PM Dec 9, 2008
Reporter: John Rogers
Email Address: john.rogers@wctv.tv


In the 1970s, William Ayers co-founded Weather Underground, a group
responsible for placing bombs in the Pentagon and the US Capitol.

The Chicago-Sun Times reports that charges were later dropped, and today
Ayers is an expert on education reform.

John Marvel, Co-Director of FSU's Institute for Liberal Studies says,
"He was awarded Chicago's Citizen of the Year 1997 for his work with the
Chicago Public Schools."

FSU's Institute for Liberal Studies invited Ayers to speak about
inequality in education, but this is being met with controversy.

On the Internet, many are opposing his visit.

More than 30 people have signed a petition on a blog to keep Ayers away.

"There has been a little protest but that's from a very small vocal
minority," Marvel says.

Most students want people to keep an open mind.

FSU Freshman Faith Doyle says, "I feel like having William Ayers here
will just be really good for discussion."

"We talk about the first amendment, we talk about freedom of speech,"
says FSU Senior Eddy Bouza.

FSU Freshman Chase Bentley says, "I don't support his beliefs but if you
don't want to hear him talk then you shouldn't come to FSU and listen to
him."

The institute for liberal studies paid $5,000 for his visit.

Officials say the money came from the student government, and the
university administration had nothing to do with the decision.

Organizers will not allow signs at the event, and if anyone boos,
they'll be escorted out.

Ayers will speak in the University Ballroom on January 12th at 7:30 p.m.



Related Video

China's Culture of Music Still Connected to West

Good article on how China's focus on music is trying to change the way they think about education in general - is there carry-over to other disciplines such a mathematics and the sciences? Maybe, but there is no evidence now to prove this - and maybe never will be -

Still the point here is that all disciplines require focus and dedication to a fault, and does Western culture have the necessary will and focus to compete? For now, it seems so, but we will have to wait for future developments in both cultures to make any kind of decision on results.

Keep the faith

*China’s six-to-one advantage over the US

By Spengler 12-2-08

America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates.
[1] In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.

[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding. It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss.

That is a bit of anexaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history."Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League,” wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/19637504.html.

The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers. Whether this will happen for good, evil or neither is impossible to predict. Classical music is beautiful, but it is not necessarily good.

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

Germany had the world’s best musicians in 1939, but put them in service of an evil cause, as can be seen in this Nazi propaganda newsreel of Germany’s best conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, performing for weapons-industry workers under a giant swastika. It is encouraging that China has even more Christian converts than pianists (Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia Asia Times Online, August 7, 2007.)

There is little doubt that classical music produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields. Academic studies show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds.

[3] Elite American families still nudge their children toward musical study. At Brearley, New York’s most exclusive girl’s school, playing in the orchestra is a requirement. American medical schools accept more undergraduates who majored in music than any other discipline (excepting pre-med).

Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music. Perhaps the only pursuit with comparable benefits is the study of classical languages. It is not just concentration as such, but its content that makes classical music such a formative tool.

Music, contrary to a common misconception, does not foster mathematical ability, although individuals with a talent for one often show aptitude for the other. Western classical music does something that mathematics and physics cannot: it allows us to play with time itself. It is a commonplace that our perception of time depends upon the pace of events (so that time in graduate school seems to proceed slower than time in prison). Classical music, though, gives the composer the tools to extend or elide time in the service of beauty and irony.

Take any popular song and compare it to any aria by the Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), for example. Bellini expands and elides musical phrases, so that the musical content breathes in a different time frame than the verse. This seems simple but takes great skill to accomplish. In fact, Bellini was one of Frederic Chopin’s favorite composers. Far more complex is Mozart, who writes what seems to be an irregular phrase structure on the surface, which transforms a hidden regularity. Mozart keeps the listener continuously off-balance; he is an imp and trickster, the patron saint of practical jokes, as it were.

Few musicians nowadays get Mozart's jokes, but one of them is China's most famous musician, Lang Lang. The 26-year-old virtuoso has an undeserved reputation for mugging. "Like a hammy actor," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini on November 27, Lang Lang "has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations".

Another way to look at the matter is that Lang Lang gets the joke, and Tommasini does not. Deadpan seriousness is a tradition among Western performers (the great pianist and teacher Josef Hoffman told his students to evoke the memory of emotion rather than emotion itself). But whatever makes Lang Lang so beloved among audiences, in a field where thousands of other pianists evince perfect technique, surely includes his own enjoyment of what he does. He is not the greatest interpreter of Mozart, surely no Murray Perahia or Radu Lupu. But he is an engaging personality whose connection to the music is manifest.

A case in point is Lang's reading of Mozart's C Minor Concerto K 491, with Long Yu conducting the China Philharmonic, available on Youtube ). This work presents a famously enigmatic theme that immediately chases itself into a chromatic sequence, only to be interrupted by yet another chromatic sequence in a different voice, before it stumbles into a concluding cadence. Underneath this, the informed listener senses, there must lurk the familiar four-bar phrase of popular music, but Mozart never once spells this out. He leaves us off-balance at every point. It is a romping-ground for musical surprise, an enchanted forest of tricks and track-backs in which the true path always is obscure.

When the Mozart C Minor Concerto is performed properly, there shouldn't be a dry seat in the house. In the version available at Youtube, Lang Lang smiles and sometimes grimaces in appreciation of Mozart's jokes. One may fault him for losing the comedian's dead-pan, but surely that is preferable to not getting the jokes at all. The pianist is beset by a sense of wonder at Mozart. That is a very good thing, because the Chinese nation that looks to Lang Lang as one of its heroes is learning the high culture of the West with a collective sense of wonder.Something more than the mental mechanics of classical music makes this decisive for China.

In classical music, China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms. Even the best Chinese musicians still depend on Western mentors. Lang Lang may be a star, but in some respects he remains an apprentice in the pantheon of Western musicians. The Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots.

Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require. China's commitment to classical music will have effects that are at once too subtle and too powerful to categorize easily. It is not that classical music helps to train good scientists, for example. Music and the sciences are different disciplines to begin with. Mathematicians who learn music, though, are more likely to cast an ironic eye upon their craft, and look for flaws and opportunity in its cracks and crannies. It is not Mozart's sense of order, but his sense of irony that refines the mind of the mathematician.

Mozart goes unerringly toward what is not mathematical in music, but instead is asymmetrical, strange and ambiguous. He can be inspiring, or frightening. Years of instrumental practice, knowledge of repertoire and study of theory are necessary to approach this sort of genius.

It is hard to explain what is important about something that most people never will understand. That is what makes America's music gap with China so difficult to remedy. Except in a vague way, one cannot explain the uniqueness of Western classical music to non-musicians, and America is governed not by musicians, but by sports fans (the lone recent exception was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is both). Hearing music is a skill somewhat like understanding a foreign language, and to appreciate music is like getting jokes told in a foreign language. Rare is the listener who can do this without having been reared in the language.

American musical education remains the best in the world, the legacy of the European refugees who staffed the great conservatories, and the best Asian musicians come to America to study. Thirty to 40% of students at the top schools are Asian, and another 20 to 30% are Eastern European (or Israeli). There are few Americans or Western Europeans among the best instrumentalists. According to the head of one conservatory, Americans simply don't have the discipline to practice eight hours a day.

As a practical matter, though, American policy-makers might think about it this way. Until now, the West has tended to dismiss China's scientists as imitators rather than originators. As a practical matter, China had little incentive to innovate; an emerging economy does not have to re-invent the wheel, or the Volkswagen, for that matter.This was not true in the remote past, of course. China invented the clock, the magnetic compass, the printing press, geared machines, gunpowder, and the other technologies that began the industrial revolution, long before the West. When it comes time to develop the next generation of anti-missile radar, or electric car batteries, Chinese originality may assert itself once again.

Chinese who have mastered the most elevated as well as the most characteristically Western forms of high culture will also think with originality. Anyone who doubts this should watch Lang Lang's performance of the Mozart C Minor Concerto once again.

BailOut Out of Control - Stuck On Stupid?

Good Stuff from Heritage Foundation - clear and to the point - as was the rest of the information in past posts.

December 15, 2008
Time to End the TARP Bailout Program
by Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D.
WebMemo #2174

Last week the Bush Administration tried to find ways to use the funds available in the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to bail out the Detroit automobile companies. That decision is just the latest of weekly, and sometimes daily, Administration reinterpretations of the TARP program's purposes. And no doubt the incoming Administration will continue this creativity and TARP will increasingly become a White House fund for politically sensitive companies.
With $15 billion of TARP funds still immediately available, and another $350 billion available if congressional action does not block access to the money, it is time to end this program by canceling further Treasury authority to allocate funds. To the extent that new financial crises materialize, recent experience suggests that the Federal Reserve Board is best able to handle them and would do so while resisting political pressure. If additional steps are needed in the future, the White House should request new congressional programs or authority with far greater clarity and restrictions on the uses of money. It is time to end the continued use and abuse of TARP funds.
Why TARP Should Be Ended