Obama's "Cap and Tax" Bill Agenda : America In 1867

According to Obama himself, his 'cap and tax' bill will "necessarily cause energy rates to skyrocket". These are his words before the election. Those of us that were paying attention knew this. It has been reported that in ten years our electric bills will increase by $200 to $300 a month. Just who can afford this?

It seems the rest of the population, those that fell on their faces as 'the one' entered the room and voted him in, didn't care what he said, it was enough that he promised them he would take care of them. But to Obama it was "just words" as he said on many occasions.

And he was telling the truth on this one though, he really is taking care of them and us. We are all headed into bankruptcy. All of our life's savings will be gone if they aren't already.

What's the answer to all this, I not sure except we have to vote out the liberals and vote in people like Paul Ryan. People with clear heads for finance and the future of a free America.


BAM'S CLIMATE RX: ALL PAIN, NO GAIN
Source: Patrick J. Michaels, "Bam's Climate Rx: All Pain, No Gain," Cato Institute, June 21, 2010

The cap-and-trade bill that the House passed last summer aims to force Americans to reduce carbon emissions by 83 percent in less than four decades -- to the same per-capita level as 1867. Yet, the bill would do nothing to stop global warming, and simply drives up the price of fossil-fuel based energy so high that the nation will have to somehow get along with only 17 percent of the gasoline and fossil-fuel-powered electricity that it uses today, says Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.

The median guess from the United Nations (UN) is that, if we do nothing to change our ways, the average world surface temperature will rise about 5 degrees Fahrenheit this century.
If only the United States changes its ways, by adopting something like the House bill, we would prevent about two-tenths of a degree of that warming, according to the UN's climate calculator.
That is, the temperature in 2100 gets reduced to what it would otherwise be in 2096.

In other words, the bill would be all pain and no gain, says Michaels.

Why would such drastic action on the part of America, Europe and Japan do so little to change the world? Because the older industrial nations are fast becoming bit players when it comes to global CO2 emissions. America has been stagnant in the last decade -- while China's emissions have been staggering. In eight years, China's annual totals will be equal to what they emit now plus everything we emit. So if we stopped emitting completely, China completely counters our effort, explains Michaels.

Add to that a simple fact which no cap-and-trade bill admits: That legislation would push even more of our industry into migrating to China, India and other nations that have no intention of reducing emissions by making energy more expensive, says Michaels.
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Obama Democrats Crush Family Businesses With Higher Taxes

If there is some way that the liberals can raise taxes on everyone and everything, they will, no matter how much destruction they will cause. It's as though people mean nothing. It's all about taking from others by any means possible to fulfill an agenda based on redistribution of wealth.

Socialism or worse.

The Obama Democrats are making history - the most destructive party in our nations history.

THE FAMILY BUSINESS REVENUE ACT
Source: Observers, "The Family Business Revenue Act," Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2010.

Carried interest is a share of any profits that the general partners of private equity and hedge funds receive as compensation, despite not contributing any initial funds. This method of compensation seeks to motivate the general partner (fund manager) to work toward improving the fund's performance. Democrats want to raise carried interest taxes from the current 15 percent rate to the top income tax rate, scheduled to hit 39.6 percent on January 1.

The sales pitch is that this will only whack hedge fund managers and other unsympathetic types. Yet Democrats wrote the law so broadly that it may sweep up millions of Americans in family partnerships, says the Wall Street Journal.

For example:

This would be a huge hit to the estimated 6.5 million folks invested in real estate partnerships, who own assets ranging from a local house to a commercial shopping center. The legislation also potentially hits any partnership invested in certain specified assets, including families who own, say, an auto dealership, fishing boat, construction company or securities.

These family entities have little ability to escape this new tax, says the Journal: Partnerships are the most common form of business structure for family operations, since they limit personal liability from claims against an asset or business.

To retain that liability protection, but also escape the higher taxes, families would have to sell a portion of their company to an outsider to manage the family affairs.

Mark this down as one more example of how the Democratic scramble for revenue will hurt millions of Americans who are far from wealthy, says the Journal.

Democrats are rewriting a half century of partnership tax law with no hearings, no analysis and little debate. And they wonder why businesses are creating so few jobs.

Obama Energy Bill to Control All Energy Generation

And the hits just keep coming - more regulation by a totally incompetent government that causes harm everywhere it is instituted.


THE ENERVATING EFFECTS OF THE KERRY-LIEBERMAN ENERGY REGULATION BILL
Source: Pete du Pont, "Generation Gap; The Kerry-Lieberman energy bill would enervate America," Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2010.


A year ago the Waxman-Markey energy regulation bill passed the House. Now before the Senate is the Kerry-Lieberman energy regulation bill, which includes many of the same damaging provisions -- government control of many aspects of energy generation, distribution and prices, says Pete du Pont, chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis and former governor of Delaware.

The Kerry-Lieberman bill is a bit less bad than the Waxman-Markey legislation, but only a bit, says du Pont:

It would provide loan guarantees and encourages a speedier licensing process for new nuclear plants, one of the safest and best electricity generation options we have; America has 104 such plants today and needs to build many more to reduce pollution.

It would support carbon capture in coal plants by providing $2 billion of research funding for clean coal, which -- if it works -- might help reduce domestic pollution at some point in the future.
Before the Gulf explosion, it would have significantly encouraged offshore drilling (Waxman-Markey never mentioned offshore drilling); but it has now been amended to give Atlantic and Pacific coastal states a veto over any offshore drilling plans that officials believe might cause environmental or economic harm.

And still tucked away in the bill is a protectionist measure that Sen. John Kerry's summary calls a "border adjustment mechanism." It would apply if "no global agreement on climate change is reached." In that case, there would be U.S. taxes on goods imported from countries "that have not taken action to limit emissions." The same bad idea is in the Waxman-Markey bill, says du Pont.

The Kerry-Lieberman bill also includes a national cap-and-trade system similar to Waxman-Markey's. Electricity generation utilities would have a limited allotment of greenhouse gas emissions, and there would be penalties for heavy-polluting industries. It may be a bit better than the House bill, but either version would add huge new bureaucracies and huge new regulations of energy, says du Pont.

Government Health Care Doomed : Census Costs Up 15,800%

WOW - Just think how this will affect all things government. The oil spill is another case where the government was said to be in charge. The post office. Immigration. Fannie and Freddie. The Justice Department. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid.

And we are supposed to believe that they can run 1/6th of the entire economy? We are supposed to believe that 154 different departments that it will take to make this happen will actually work and cost less???

Big government must be stopped now. Your vote in November for less government and common sense will make the difference.


RUNAWAY CENSUS COST IS FRIGHTENING PREVIEW OF TRUE OBAMACARE PRICE TAG
Source: Gregg Opelka, "Runaway Census Cost Is Frightening Preview of True ObamaCare Price Tag," Big Government, June 5, 2010.

Counting heads is a relatively simple procedure. So if the costs of a relatively simple administrative procedure like taking the decennial census have a history of spiraling wildly out of control, what is the graph of runaway ObamaCare costs going to look like? Imagine the price tag of having the government in charge of keeping Americans healthy -- compared to just counting their noses, says playwright Gregg Opelka.

According to Jason Gauthier's 2002 study entitled "Measuring America: The Decennial Censuses from 1790 to 2000," the cost to perform the census has risen over the decades at a rate staggeringly higher than the rate of the growth of the population itself. What does this mean? Simply put, that bureaucracy is obese, says Opelka.

For example:

The census cost was a little more than 60 cents per person in 1950 ($91.4 million).
It is projected to cost nearly $47 per person in 2010 ($14.5 billion), a whopping 7,822 percent increase in cost per person.

During the same time, the population rose by 100 percent (i.e., doubled) from 150 million to over 300 million. But the overall cost of counting it (the census) rose by 15,800 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was used by the Obama administration to lend imprimatur to its incredible claims of lowered health care costs in order to hoodwink legislators into passing and the public into accepting this massive entitlement. If you think ObamaCare looks expensive now, just massage the CBO's risibly unrealistic projections with a little reality from the census's actual costs over the decades. The census cost spiral demonstrates that in no time at all ObamaCare will grow so obese it'll have to be pushed around in a wheelchair, says Opelka.

Christianity and America Under Fire : Hate Unbounded

We are becoming divided in America along political, religious and ethnic lines like never before. Many of us wonder how or why this is happening. We stand by, motionless, both physically and mentally, while the hate driven members of our population drive the wedge deeper.

The bright spot in this nightmare is many of us are finally coming to realize what is happening and taking action to stop it. Also, I believe, it is not a generational thing as many of the young are very active in the battle to save the soul of America.

Many conservative, religious youth groups are standing up and professing their faith in America and her heritage. We can witness this on many college campuses where the hate for all things conservative and religious are most pronounced.

It is therefore imperative that we all who believe that this country is God given and must be defended at all costs, speak out and get out the vote against those that want to destroy our way of life. We are fighting unbounded hate for all things Christian and American at it's core.

This can be done. This is not the first time this has happened in this country, but maybe the most dangerous to our selves and our children.

Never believe all is lost. The spirit that built this country is still deeply ingrained and will not die an easy death. Rise up, speak up and get out the vote to stop this catastrophic movement of hate that wants to destroy our country.

(This article is from The American Thinker - links were deleted as they would not allow publishing - I apologize for this deletion.)

Deliver Us from Evil
*By* *Robin of Berkeley*

It's funny how trivial events somehow get seared into your brain. This one is from years ago, when I was enjoying a yogurt on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Suddenly, a large exotic bug appeared and started dancing around. Its iridescent colors caught the sun and glistened like a rainbow. A crowd formed to watch its antics in shared delight.

Out of nowhere, a lunatic pushed through the crowd. I'd seen this guy before -- paranoid, menacing. His rage toward the bug slit me like a knife. The insect was getting attention, people were happy, and he was out for revenge. The man bolted through the crowd, possessed. He jumped on the bug, over and over and again. People gasped. A child cried. And then, as quickly as it began, it was all over. Silently, numbly, the crowd dispersed. The man, now triumphant, smiled hideously. I threw away the yogurt, which was now rendered tasteless.

I'll never forget the look of blind hatred on that man's face. It communicated this: "I want what you have."And: "If I can't have it, I'll destroy it."

This random experience flashed in my mind recently when I was in a Berkeley bookstore. With my newfound interest in religion, I wanted to peruse that section. After hunting down a clerk to unearth the tiny religion area, I perused the shelves. In actuality, the area should have been called the Anti-Christianity Section. While there were respectful tomes on the other religions, the Christianity section was a virtual pillorying of Jesus. Every book denounced him, mocked him, or reinvented him as something entirely new. There were books debunking the Gospel, with each author sounding gleeful, like a wicked child.

Now, I understand that some people reject religion. But why the venom? The contempt, the need to torpedo Christ? This campaign against Christianity isn't confined to an obscure Berkeley bookstore. And it didn't begin with Obama. There's been an active crusade for decades to try to destroy Jesus with Alinksy-like tactics: freeze the subject, humiliate, marginalize.

But while demonizing Christianity is nothing new, it's reached a fever pitch since Obama came on the scene. It's no wonder: Obama sent out clear messages from the start. Obama's first interview as president was for an Arab broadcaster. Then he covered up a cross at Notre Dame and was a no-show on the National Day of Prayer.

In the past I would simply put on my therapist cap with people like these. I'd probe their childhood for evidence of maltreatment. I'd label them as narcissists and antisocial personalities. But now I have a different worldview, one that goes much deeper than just the psychological. Now I understand that this world is infused with the Divine. And that there is a competing force, one that is the polar opposite.

I now have a word for that creepy feeling deep down in my gut. And I finally understand the source. Now I see what's really behind the campaign to banish religion; it's to render us utterly helpless. Because after all, without God, what protection is there in this brutal world?

Sadly, grievously, I look out on my country. I see the corruption and undoing. I witness the ever-growing tsunami of hate that threatens everyone in its path. And I see citizens oblivious to the dangers because they're mired in the slime of moral relativism. They have no language, no hiding place, no possible way to shield their children in the deep and darkest nights.

And I see that lunatic, the one with the crazy, hollow eyes. But he's not just on Telegraph Avenue. He's far and wide: in the hallowed halls of Congress, in the institutes of higher learning, in basement rooms where small men troll.

If you listen closely, you can hear that same diabolical cry: "I want what you have.And if I can't have it, I'll destroy it."The lunatic is on the grass.

The lunatic is on the grass.
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.
The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more.
And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon. (from "Brain Damage" by Pink Floyd)

States Go Bankrupt : The Coming Crisis

Be ready to take a shot to the belly on this one as we all will suffer if our states head south. But given the big picture of living in a socialist country, it's better to suffer now and clean up the mess our selves than to pass down to generations to come a mad dog government of hateful socialists.

The decision is in our hands - vote this November for common sense and freedom. It's the freedom to chose one's own destiny. The alternative is beyond comprehension.


THE NEXT BIG ECONOMIC CRISIS
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on June 22, 2010

Many say that the situation in Greece is a harbinger of what is coming to the United States. They are right. But first it will come to states like New York, California and Michigan that are stretched way beyond their means and deeply in debt.

Until now, the problems in these states have been papered over by federal aid. Essentially, Washington has relieved these states (and the local governments they fund) of their constitutional obligations to balance their budgets by giving them welfare checks in the nick of time.

Obama now seeks to pass $50 billion in additional welfare to the states. But since these federal funds are not necessarily recurring -- and the jobs and obligations they fund are -- they simply enlarge each year's deficit hole and enable the states to go more deeply into the red.

As these deficits mount -- particularly if a newly elected Republican House and/or Senate refuse to fund them -- bondholders will get more and more nervous. Eventually, they will realize that the less solvent states are bankrupt and will refuse to buy their debt. Eyes in Sacramento, Lansing and Albany will turn helplessly to Washington to guarantee their debt, just as Athens turns to Berlin.

Republicans, if they control either or both Houses, should stand firm and insist that these states sink or swim on their own. America's taxpayers will not take kindly to having to bail out other states -- or even their own -- to pay for years of reckless spending. Americans will swarm to the GOP and will hail its stand.The time is long past when a local newspaper can generate sympathy -- even from its own readers and the state's own citizens -- with a headline like "Ford to New York: Drop Dead."

Now people in other states (and even in the affected state) would stand up and cheer should the Republicans take so strong a position.There is currently no legal procedure for a state government to go bankrupt. Congress, especially if it is Republican in 2011, should pass a mechanism that permits states to discharge in bankruptcy their collective bargaining agreements and contracts with municipal unions. Of course, this procedure would have to let school boards and local governments do likewise. Obama will veto this bill and a stalemate will ensue.

On the left will stand Obama, the unions and the Democrats demanding bailouts for the states and, truly, an end to our federal system of government. Once Washington guarantees state debt and spending, there will be no more state governance, only national rule.

On the right will stand a Republican Congress refusing to do so unless the states declare bankruptcy and cleanse themselves of the union agreements that got them into trouble in the first place. The GOP will point out that state funding is leaking as surely as the Deepwater Horizon oil well and polluting our nation's balance sheet as badly in the process.

The money will run out.

States, school boards and localities will stop sending out checks. Emergency state funding may keep schools open, prisons locked and police and fire services running, but otherwise all hell will break loose. Something will give in this national game of chicken. If it is the states and Obama that blink first, we will free our local governments of the grip of municipal unions, their rigid work rules and their unaffordable pensions.

If the Republicans blink first, they will forfeit their right to represent the American people, having backed down from the challenge of our times.This Armageddon looms in 2011, presenting us with either an opportunity to reform our government in fundamental ways or to set in stone our path to an Athens-esque meltdown.
Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!

Obama's Cap and Trade bill a Scam : Who Knew?

This is just a 'cut out' of a larger article but it still give you a eye opening reality check on what "Cap and Trade" will do to all of us. I do not know the author but he/she seems to know a thing or two about scams.

Chapter 5 _Power Grab Picking Your Pockets for Political Payola__ _

Politicians create constituencies from corporations and ad hoc coalitions and then bribe them with confiscated wealth. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) scam is a campaign to limit the availability of energy in the name of “saving the planet”. The media portrays the flagrant collaborations and corruption between government and big business as unimaginable “valiantly and selflessly working together”, against dire emergencies, rather than the scandals they really are.Enron’s Ken lay saw the enormous financial potential in joining anti-growth anti-people organizations. Enron was the early ringleader of the AGW scam, developing a carbon trading system, working with enviro groups, and donating millions seeking international control of CO2. Enron strongly supported Kyoto to create windfall profits transferring billions from consumers, ratepayers and taxpayers.

Corporations including BP and GE have leveraged their power funneling tax money to themselves and the government to support hundreds of millions in lobbying, advertising and politics. These corporations provide financial and political cover for Obama, expecting huge payoffs now and into the future. John Rowe, CEO of the Chicago based utility Exelon, hired Rahm Emanuel to help broker the 8.2 billion deal creating Exelon from Unicom and Peco. Emanuel was paid 16.2 million over 2 years to create “The President’s Utility”. Exelon hopes to reap a billion a year in windfall profits from carbon legislation.

Lobbying for legislation is like a capital investment with the added plus of having the ratepayers foot the bill for increasing their rates. American Electric Power is also on-board with this “beautiful scheme” passing on billions to ratepayers while taking a little off the top for themselves. Exelon gains simply because carbon becomes more expensive – with no capital investment (except for lobbyists) – so revenues rise but costs do not change creating a handy profit. Exelon is the largest nuclear power in the US. Nuclear energy producers are poised to receive billions from carbon legislation even though they incur zero carbon compliance cost.

Americans face billions in forced wealth transfers from the public to well placed lobby interests that will produce no climate improvement…Obama refuses to answer what this legislation will do, at what cost and in who’s interest.AGW took off only after big money interests adopted it as a vehicle to lock in profits and to disadvantage small business and other competition. The collaboration between government and business to transfer wealth and power to the state was in practice with the Progressives 100 years ago.

Early in the 20^th century business-government collaborations locked things up for themselves eliminating competition and free markets in the telephone, oil, steel and meatpacking industries with consumers and taxpayers footing the bill. “Climate rent-seekers” like Duke Energy and Exelon oppose deregulation and competitive markets and are pushing for a government-big business alliance to secure billion in windfall profits at ratepayer expense. Enron led a select few peers at the vanguard of inventing AGW as a policy matter in the United States.Today greens and their pals in banking and finance seek to institutionalize the carbon offset racket through legislation. And once created such taxes are nearly impossible to dismantle.Lawrence Solomon, "The financial stakes are enormous in the global warming debate-many oil, coal and power companies are at risk should carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases get regulated in a manner that harms their bottom line. The potential losses of an Exxon or a Shell are chump change, however, compared to the fortunes to be made from those very same regulations."

Barbara Boxer "There's so much revenue that comes in from a cap-and-trade system that you can really go to a person in a congressional district and get enough votes there by saying, 'What do you need? What do you want?' You can really help them”"There's so much revenue" from the biggest tax increase in American history, most of which is given away to big business for the first decade-yet somehow, as the administration and its congressional, green group, and industry allies calmly tell us, it won't cost anything.Phil Kerpen “This disastrous bill, which will send energy prices skyrocketing while having no discernible impact on global average temperature, will only get worse as even more special interests are bought off at the expense of taxpayers. It's a scam, an enormous tax-and-spend bill concealed in a cloak of green political correctness.

The real purpose of the plan is to dramatically enhance the power of Washington politicians by giving them control over vast swaths of the U.S. economy.”It would "centralize an inordinate amount of power in Washington and "generate vast fortunes for people with friends in high places .... Because the credits will be distributed by the government, the key question is who will decide who gets them. As we have seen recently with the stimulus bill, Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailouts, the automotive fiasco and the federal budget generally, only those with friends in high places will have a place at the trough. Those with pull will profit; those without will be run out of business.""Under cap-and trade, we will soon see the rise of the carbon oligarchs. These people will make vast fortunes on this legislation by trading influence and

Democrats/Environmental Activists Plan Total Oil Shutdown

It's amazing what politicians will say when they believe it will be to their personal advantage, no matter what the consequences are. Environmental activists and liberal Democrats that see only chaos and how they can use it to their advantage, are a national security risk.

I would like to know what the average citizen can do to hold politicians responsible for what they say and do, plus no matter how far into the future. Bad ideas and decisions, ones that are totally without common sense, that put our nation at risk should have consequences.

Voting is one thing but politicians that want chaos must be stopped before they do us real harm. Recall them if they fall short? I like that idea.

THE "PARALYZING" PRINCIPLE
Source: Editorial, "The 'Paralyzing' Principle," Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2010.

The Gulf oil spill is having all sorts of nasty consequences well beyond damage to the regional environment and economy. Not least, the resulting political panic seems to be rehabilitating the thoroughly discredited theory of regulation known as the precautionary principle, says the Wall Street Journal.

This principle holds that government should attempt to prevent any risk -- regardless of the costs involved, however minor the benefits and even without understanding what those risks really are.

Developed in the late 1960s, this theory served as the intellectual architecture for the Environmental Protection Agency, which is still required to eliminate certain environmental risks no matter how expensive or pointless the effort is.

This same mentality is now prompting not merely tighter safety standards, but President Obama's moratorium on all new deep water drilling, shutting down dozens of Gulf and Alaskan projects, maybe permanently, says the Journal:

Last month, 26 Democrats demanded that the government fold up BP's other major Gulf operation, Atlantis, "to ensure that the explosion and mishap of the Horizon platform are not replicated."

Meanwhile, Governor Charlie Crist and other Florida politicians want a Gulf drilling ban unto eternity, and the California, Washington and Oregon Senate delegations want one for the West Coast too.

"Without a permanent ban on drilling off our shores," said Dianne Feinstein, "there is no guarantee whatsoever that this will not happen again."

In other words, the precautionary principle is back with a vengeance, says the Journal.

Pelosi Exposed As "Horrible Woman" On CNN

This is a must watch from CNN, of all places, as they are 'in the tank' for Obama and the liberals-
Nancy Pelosi is exposed as a "Horrible Woman" by CNN and rightly so.

This is old news, as we in the new age of alternate media know. We were on top of this months ago but it never hurts to bring the truth back time and time again to make important points to save our country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=A6_xgKWzhRw

Government Should Guide Not Direct

Who takes responsibility for their own actions? Who demands that we all take responsibility for our actions? Is it the mentality of so many in our society to just not care what happens because there is always someone else that will take the responsibility to see to it that the irresponsible are cared for. hmmmm

The Nanny State - Enter the socialists - prepare for reduced living standards and no future.


IN CONN., 40 PERCENT USING MEDICAID SMOKE


A new study says nearly 40 percent of Connecticut's Medicaid recipients smoke, and urges the state to offer smoking cessation programs to those residents. According to researchers at the Connecticut Public Health Policy Institute: The state pays about $507 million yearly for smoking-related health care for its Medicaid clients.

Massachusetts has cut smoking among its Medicaid population by 10 percent yearly since it started offering smoking cessation help in 2006 to those recipients. Further, smoking rates in Connecticut are the highest among veterans, people diagnosed with mental illness and substance abuse problems, and those with less education and lower incomes.

Source: Study, "In Conn., 40 percent using Medicaid smoke," Boston Globe, June 6, 2010; based upon: Judith Cooney et al., "Examining Tobacco Use, Consequences and Policies in Connecticut: Smoke and Mirrors?" Connecticut Public Health Policy Institute, April 28, 2010.

Municipal Debt : Back Yard Financial Crisis

Another wake up call on how we are taxed locally to finance politicians reelections and pet projects in our own back yards. I'm sure there are a lot of projects in our local communities that are this bad, and maybe worse, that we don't know a thing about them.

Time to start going to our local town meetings to see just what these people are doing to us. If we don't take control then who will?


AMERICA'S MUNICIPAL DEBT RACKET
Source: Steven Malanga, "The authority that runs the new Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey is $830 million in hock," Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2010.

New Jersey officials recently celebrated the selection of the new stadium in the Meadowlands sports complex as the site of the 2014 Super Bowl. Absent from the festivities was any sense of the burden the complex has become for taxpayers, says Steven Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Nearly 40 years ago the Garden State borrowed $302 million to begin constructing the Meadowlands. The goal was to pay off the bonds in 25 years. Although the project initially went according to plan, politicians couldn't resist continually refinancing the bonds, siphoning revenues from the complex into the state budget, and using the good credit rating of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition authority to borrow for other, unsuccessful building schemes, says Malanga:


Today, the authority that runs the Meadowlands is in hock for $830 million, which it can't pay back. The state, facing its own cavernous budget deficits, has had to assume interest payments --about $100 million this year on bonds that still stretch for decades.

This tale of woe has become familiar in the world of municipal finance. Governments have loaded up on debt, stretched out repayment times, and used slick maneuvers to avoid constitutional borrowing limits.

While the country's economic troubles have helped expose some of these practices, a sharp decline in tax revenues has prompted more abuse as politicians use long-term debt to kick short-term fiscal problems down the road, says Malanga.


Taxpayers are only slowly realizing that their states and municipalities face long-term obligations that will be increasingly hard to meet. Rick Bookstaber, a senior policy adviser to the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently warned that the muni market has all the characteristics of a crisis that might unfold with "a widespread cascade in defaults." If that painful scenario materializes, it will be because we have too long ignored how some politicians have become addicted to debt, says Malanga.

Naoolitano/Obama Appoint Muslims to Home Land Security

Is this a problem? I believe it is as I haven't heard any devout Muslims stand up and say they are Americans and they will defend this country against all foreign and domestic attacks. Where do the American Muslims stand on our/their Constitutional rights? Is there silence a sign of 'to get along we go along'?

Well, where do we go from here? Each day we are brought closer to the edge of oblivion - What? How can this happen in America, of all places on this earth, why here? hmmmm

Maybe we have become to fat and need to have a wake up call as to what we will lose if we don't understand what we have inherited. Something to think about.



(author unknown)
Well, boys and girls, today we are letting the fox guard the hen house. The wolves will be herding the sheep! Obama appoints two devout Muslims to home land security posts.

Obama and Janet Napolitano Appointed Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore-in Kareem Shora, a devout Muslim, who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).

NOTE: Has anyone ever heard a new government official being identified as a devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout Protestant...? Just wondering.

Devout Muslims being appointed to critical Homeland Security positions? Doesn't this make you feel safer already?? That should make our home land much safer, huh!!

Was it not "Devout Muslim men" that flew planes into U.S. buildings 8 years ago? Was it not a Devout Muslim who killed 13 at Fort Hood?


Snopes documents it's true:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/dhs.asp

Obama's Russian Friends Hark Back To KGB Times

No wonder Obama favors the Russians - this is how he wants America to be run. Make no mistake.


RUSSIA PARLIAMENT VOTES TO STRENGTHEN KGB SUCCESSOR
Source: Reuters, "Russia parliament votes to strengthen KGB successor," Kyivpost, June 11, 2010.

Russia's parliament on Friday voted to boost the powers of the successor to the Soviet KGB, allowing it to summon people it believes are about to commit a crime and threaten jail for those who disobey its orders. Rights groups said the proposed regulations could be used by the FSB security service to detain opposition activists and independent journalists and undermine President Dmitry Medvedev's promises to foster civil rights.

"It's a step toward a police state," said Vladimir Ulas, a member of the opposition Communist Party. "It is effectively a ban on any real opposition activity."

The bill, which would allow the FSB to issue a legally binding summons to anyone whose actions it considers as "causing or creating the conditions for committing a crime," was passed in the first of three required readings in the State Duma. All 313 members of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party present voted in favor, while the Communists joined the smaller pro-Kremlin parties, Fair Russia and the Liberal Democrats, in opposing the bill.

Gennady Gudkov, whose Fair Russia party rarely opposes government-backed legislation, described it as "a leftover order from the Soviet Union." He said he would lobby for changes to the bill before the second reading. It also needs approval by the United Russia-dominated upper house and Medvedev's signature.

The bill would set a penalty of up to 15 days in prison for anyone who "disobeys a legitimate order" from an FSB agent. Rights groups say the changes taken together could allow the FSB to detain anyone it likes without any judicial process.

"A warning sounds benign, but under Russian law it can have serious consequences," said Allison Gill, Moscow director of New York-based Human Rights Watch. "It is a significant increase in power for the FSB."

Palin to Meet With Margaret Thatcher : Two Unbounded Conservatives

Goodness - now Palin is going to meet the 'Iron Lady' in London. Good news for Sarah as she continues to stick it to the liberal elites with her 'down home' conservatism.


Palin to Visit Thatcher in London
Monday, 14 Jun 2010 03:32 PM

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is planning a trip to visit former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, according to Politico.

In a Facebook post scheduled to go up Monday, Palin writes: “I have received an invitation for a visit to London, and part of that invitation included the offer of arranging a meeting between myself and one of my political heroines, the ‘Iron Lady,’ Margaret Thatcher.”“I would love to meet her and hope I'll be able to arrange the trip in the future,” Palin writes.“As I wrote last year when I offered her birthday wishes, Baroness Thatcher’s life and career serve as a blueprint for overcoming the odds and challenging the ‘status quo,'”

Palin continues. “She started life as a grocer's daughter from Grantham and rose to become Prime Minister — all by her own merit and hard work. I cherish her example and will always count her as one of my role models. Her friendship with my other political hero, Ronald Reagan, exemplified the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.”

Trade Deficit Linked to Budget Deficit

Each day brings new revelations of Obama's incompetence on all aspects of government. This man has no clue - but if he does know what he is doing, then his agenda is one of destruction and not construction.

THE TRADE DEFICIT WIDENS, AS IT MUST
Source: Robert McTeer, "The Trade Deficit Widens, As It Must," Forbes, June 10, 2010.

It was announced yesterday that the goods and services trade deficit widened to $40.29 billion in April with both exports and imports declining.

The decline in exports and imports is a sign of a weak or weakening world economy. The arithmetic, however, makes our growing trade deficit inevitable as long as our budget deficit is growing. They are not independent of each other. They are two parts of a zero-sum relationship, says Bob McTeer, former President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a current Distinguished Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

According to McTeer:

Business and personal saving are not sufficient to offset the negative public saving, as measured by the budget deficit. Those three forms of national saving fall short of national investment and have to be supplemented by an inflow of foreign saving. Either that, or domestic investment must decline to match the lower national saving.

The necessary counterpart to an inflow of foreign capital is a deficit in the current account -- the largest component of which is trade in goods and services. This is why the growth in dis-saving as measured by the budget deficit necessarily draws in foreign saving to make up the difference.

In effect, the inflow of foreign capital is not financing our trade deficit; our trade deficit is financing the inflow of foreign capital necessary to make up for the growing budget deficit, explains McTeer.

What's the good news? Shrinking the budget deficit will help shrink the foreign trade deficit and vice versa. Don't look for a smaller foreign-trade deficit to reduce the budget deficit any time soon, however, since the recent appreciation of the dollar will tend to widen the foreign deficit from the trade side. A strong dollar right now is good for our pride, but bad for our economic recovery, says McTeer.

Obama's Foreign Policy Agenda : A Discrace

Again, and I have stated this on many occasions, who voted for this guy? Will the majority vote for Obama again? hmmmm - it looks like the answer is no right now, but then we have a lot of people that are so detached from reality they just walk and vote in lock step.

I find it astounding, these people appear to be totally brain dead - I have spoken to many of them, as I'm sure many of you have, and was amazed at what I heard. It's as though they just arrived here from a different planet.

In the end when all is lost, the first thing this voter will do is look for someone to blame for their personal problems, and rest assured, it won't be the person that they see in the mirror.


London Daily Telegraph on Obama

Posted under Baby Boomers, Domestic, Foreign Policy and International, Politics, The Rest of the World

Remember Obama was going to repair our relationships with our allies?
For unknown reasons, voters actually BELIEVED that a liberal nutso-anti-American president with no understanding of anything outside the classroom other than what he’d read from Alinsky could actually “repair” international relationships - or any other kind. I mean, heck, he’s already set-back American race relations 40 years, and he’s only been in office 16 months!

One could make the case this is a result of liberal-union-mal-education of two generations of American voters, but I have made that case so many times I am tired of repeating myself. Do be aware, however, that unless teacher unions are outlawed, each succeeding generation of Americans will be less-well-educated than the preceding generation for the first time since the invention of printing. This certainly is true of Boomers - they are far less-educated than their parents, and of all generations subsequent to the Boomers - Gen X, Gen Y, etc.

THIS is a heckuva legacy for “progressives” to leave as we become a third-world nation of babies electing empty suits and spending money that won’t be earned over the next century, if ever.

Yes, adults with brain cells understood this to be folly all along - that’s why we didn’t vote for the man. And now, a word from one of the leading opinion-makers in that international scene Obama was going to repair:

“Let me be clear,” writes Alex Singleton, XXXX of the London Telegraph, ” I’m not normally in favour of boycotts, and I love the America people. I holiday in their country regularly, and hate the tedious snobby sneers against the United States. But the American people chose to elect an idiot who seems hell bent on insulting their allies, and something must be done to stop Obama’s reckless foreign policy, before he does the dirty on his allies on every issue.”
–London Daily Telegraph editor — Alex Singleton, April 11.

One of the most poorly kept secrets in Washington is President Obama’s animosity toward Great Britain, presumably because of what he regards as its sins while ruling Kenya (1895-1963).

One of Barack Hussein Obama’s first acts as president was to return to Britain a bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office since 9/11. He followed this up by denying Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on his first state visit, the usual joint press conference with flags.
The president was “too tired” to grant the leader of America’s closest ally a proper welcome, his aides told British journalists.

Mr. Obama followed this up with cheesy gifts for Mr. Brown and the Queen. Columnist Ian Martin described his behavior as “rudeness personified.” There was more rudeness in store for Mr. Brown at the opening session of the United Nations in September. “The prime minister was forced to dash through the kitchens of the UN in New York to secure five minutes of face time with President Obama after five requests for a sit down meeting were rejected by the White House,” said London Telegraph columnist David Hughes. Mr. Obama’s “churlishness is unforgivable,” Mr. Hughes said.

The administration went beyond snubs and slights last week when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsed the demand of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, a Hugo Chavez ally, for mediation of Argentina’s specious claim to the Falkland Islands, a British dependency since 1833. The people who live in the Falklands, who speak English, want nothing to do with Argentina.

When, in 1982, an earlier Argentine dictatorship tried to seize the Falklands by force, the British — with strong support from President Ronald Reagan — expelled them.
“It is truly shocking that Barack Obama has decided to disregard our shared history,” wrote Telegraph columnist Toby Young. “Does Britain’s friendship really mean so little to him?” One could ask, does the friendship of anyone in the entire world mean anything to him?

“I recently asked several senior administration officials, separately, to name a foreign leader with whom Barack Obama has forged a strong personal relationship during his first year in office,” wrote Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, on Monday. “A lot of hemming and hawing ensued.” One official named French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but his contempt for Mr. Obama is an open secret. Another named German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But, said Mr. Diehl, “Merkel too has been conspicuously cool toward Obama.”

Mr. Obama certainly doesn’t care about the Poles and Czechs, whom he has betrayed on missile defense. Honduras and Israel also can attest that he’s been an unreliable ally and an unfaithful friend. Ironically, our relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have never been worse. Russia has offered nothing in exchange for Mr. Obama’s abandonment of missile defense. Russia and China won’t support serious sanctions on Iran. Syria’s support for terrorism has not diminished despite efforts to normalize diplomatic relations. The reclusive military dictatorship that runs Burma has responded to our efforts at “engagement” by deepening its ties to North Korea. And the Chinese make little effort to disguise their contempt for him.

For the first time in a long time, the President of the United States is actually distrusted by its’ allies and not in the least feared by its’ adversaries. Nor is Mr. Obama now respected by the majority of Americans. Understandably focused on the dismal economy and Mr. Obama’s relentless efforts to nationalize and socialize health care, Americans apparently have yet to notice his dismal performance and lack of respect in the world community.

They soon will.

Justice Dept. Unprepared for WMD Attack : No Leadership

There shouldn't be any surprise here as this is just a reflection of the White House under Obama. There is no leadership in the White House so why should there be any anywhere else? After all, just think back to Katerina and how the city officials in New Orleans handled that mess.

Sixty years of liberal Democrat control in that city and hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the dikes with no results except huge banks accounts for city officials like Ray Nagan. Ever wonder why Ray got the nick name "school bus Nagan"?

Oh wait, the governor and state representatives are Democrats too. Remember William
Jefferson? Little wonder why the state was a total failure.


"WE ARE TOTALLY UNPREPARED"
Source: Peggy Noonan, "We Are Totally Unprepared," Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2010

The Justice Department is not prepared to ensure public safety in the days or weeks after a terrorist attack in which nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are used, according to the report from the department's Inspector General.

The Department of Homeland Security is designated as first federal responder, in a way, in the event of an attack using weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but every agency in government has a formal, assigned role, and the crucial job of Justice is to manage and coordinate law enforcement and step in if state and local authorities are overwhelmed, says columnist Peggy Noonan.

So how would Justice do, almost nine years after the attacks of 9/11? Poorly:

"The Department is not prepared to fulfill its role... to ensure public safety and security in the event of a WMD incident," says the 61-page report. Justice has yet to assign an entity or individual with clear responsibility for oversight or management of WMD response; it has not catalogued its resources in terms of either personnel or equipment; it does not have written plans or checklists in case of a WMD attack.

A deputy assistant attorney general for policy and planning is quoted as saying "it is not clear" who in the department is responsible for handling WMD response. Workers interviewed said the department's operational response program "lacks leadership and oversight."

An unidentified Justice Department official was quoted: "We are totally unprepared." He added. "Right now, being totally effective would never happen. Everybody would be winging it."

The Inspector General's staff interviewed 36 senior officials involved in the department's emergency response planning and summarized the finding: "It was clear that no person or entity is managing the overall Department's response activities." You could almost see them scratching their heads and saying, "No one's in charge here."

There is one bright spot in the Inspector General's report: the FBI, which was highlighted for its organizational seriousness about WMD readiness, including holding regular exercises and training sessions, and having an actual response plan with clear lines of responsibility.
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Defense Spending Needs Cutting : Sen. Coburn - What?

I find this interesting that given the amount of money spent on bail-outs and other domestic problems that haven't shown any results, this senator thinks it a good idea to cut the military.

I agree that those with the responsibility for military procurement have their own agenda, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with national security or common sense, but will spend other peoples money on items that benefit themselves and their friends, not what the military wants or needs. A lot of generals are on board with this as well.

On the other hand, congress can't find some places to cut in the domestic arena as well? What?

SEN. COBURN TACKLES RUNAWAY DEFENSE SPENDING


The largest driver of the long-term federal budget gap is entitlement spending that is slated to grow faster than the economy. But a second key driver -- growth in security spending -- often gets short shrift. That national security is important does not mean that the Pentagon should be exempt from fiscal oversight or off the table when we talk about balancing the federal budget. This is especially true because higher defense spending does not always make us safer, says Josh Barro, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

For instance:

From the end of the Vietnam War through the end of the Cold War, national defense spending typically ran between 5 percent and 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
With the Soviet threat eliminated, the "Peace Dividend" allowed a reduction in defense spending as a share of the economy, bottoming out at 3 percent of GDP in 1999 and 2000.

This restraint was one of the key drivers of the budget surpluses of the Clinton-Gingrich era.
Since the September 11th attacks, the trend has reversed:

In 2010, defense spending will again reach 4.9 percent of GDP, the same level as in 1980.
About half of this increase has been driven by specific costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rest by faster growth in base military spending than economic growth.
With deficits expected to run in the range of 4 percent of GDP over the next decade, a 2 percent of GDP rise in defense spending is a huge deal.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) made these points last month in a letter to the chairmen of the president's deficit commission. Coburn, who sits on the commission, puts a spotlight on rapid, inflation-adjusted growth in military spending and the lack of oversight at the Pentagon as that money is spent:

In his letter, Coburn notes that inflation-adjusted base Pentagon spending (that is, the figure excluding the additional costs for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) rose from $407 billion in 2001 to $553 billion -- a 36 percent increase -- by 2011.
"Supplemental" spending to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will add a further $159 billion in 2011.

Coburn's letter gives reason to believe that we can find significant savings in military spending -- though perhaps not as much as 1.4 percent of GDP -- just by increasing accountability and making wiser spending choices. Given our overall fiscal situation, we can hardly afford not to, says Barro.
Source: Josh Barro, "Sen. Coburn Tackles Runaway Defense Spending," Real Clear Markets, June 8, 2010.

Foreign Policy of Appeasement Means Disaster for US

This is a must read if you want to get to the bottom of our 'head in the sand' policies that Obama has trotted out on his overseas ventures. By dumping on our allies and kissing up to our enemies will not work to solve world problems - this has never worked as history can attest. Millions upon millions have died as a result of trying to appease those that want total power.

So the question remains, why is Obama doing this?

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/06/08/goo-goo-genocidaires-the-blood-is-dripping-from-their-hands/

Public Education Under Fire in NY City : Charter Schools Loom Large

Excellent article on how the teachers unions in NY city are fighting the charter schools. The film will be a great source for debate. It appears here that job and union protection is the most important thing in this debate - it seems the union organization is the most important aspect and, not just in NY but ever where in this country, real education be damned.

Make no mistake - this is about power to have control over others. If it were not so, why not debate?

Storming the School Barricades
A new documentary by a 27-year-old filmmaker could change the national debate about public education.

By BARI WEISS

'What's funny," says Madeleine Sackler, "is that I'm not really a political person." Yet the petite 27-year-old is the force behind "The Lottery"—an explosive new documentary about the battle over the future of public education opening nationwide this Tuesday.

In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York's biggest lottery. It wasn't the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city's best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren't subject to union rules)."I was blown away by the number of parents that were there," Ms. Sackler tells me over coffee on Manhattan's Upper West Side, recalling the thousands of people packed into the Harlem Armory that day for the drawing. "I wanted to know why so many parents were entering their kids into the lottery and what it would mean for them."

And so Ms. Sackler did what any aspiring filmmaker would do: She grabbed her camera.Her initial aim was simple. "Going into the film I was excited just to tell a story," she says. "A vérité film, a really beautiful, independent story about four families that you wouldn't know otherwise" in the months leading up to the lottery for the Harlem Success Academy. But on the way to making the film she imagined, she "stumbled on this political mayhem—really like a turf war about the future of public education." Or more accurately, she happened upon a raucous protest outside of a failing public school in which Harlem Success, already filled to capacity, had requested space.View Full ImagewinterweissZina Saunderswinterweisswinterweiss

"We drove by that protest," Ms. Sackler recalls. "We were on our way to another interview and we jumped out of the van and started filming." There she discovered that the majority of those protesting the proliferation of charter schools were not even from the neighborhood. They'd come from the Bronx and Queens."They all said 'We're not allowed to talk to you. We're just here to support the parents.'"

But there were only two parents there, says Ms. Sackler, and both were members of Acorn. And so, "after not a lot of digging," she discovered that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) had paid Acorn, the controversial community organizing group, "half a million dollars for the year." (It cost less to make the film.)Finding out that the teachers union had hired a rent-a-mob to protest on its behalf was "the turn for us in the process." That story—of self-interested adults trying to deny poor parents choice for their children—provided an answer to Ms. Sackler's fundamental question: "If there are these high-performing schools that are closing the achievement gap, why aren't there more of them?"The reason is what Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Harlem Success Academy network and a key character in the film, calls the "union-political-educational complex." That's a fancy term for the web of unions and politicians who defend the status quo in order to protect their jobs.

In the course of making "The Lottery," Ms. Sackler got to know the nature of that coalition intimately. "On day one, of course, I was very interested in all sides. I was in no way affiliated." From the beginning, she requested meetings with then UFT President Randi Weingarten, or anyone representing the union position. They refused. Harlem's public schools weren't much more accessible. "It was easier to film in a maximum security prison"—something Ms. Sackler did to interview a parent—"than it was to film in a traditional public school."Viewers still get a sense of the union's position, but it comes from the mouths of some unsavory New York pols.

Take, for example, a scene from the film featuring a City Council hearing on charter school expansion. "The UFT was exposed at this particular City Council hearing," she says, "because they were caught giving out scripted cue cards with specific questions for City Council members to ask charter representatives in the city." Unlike many of the politicians, who came and went from the chamber during the seven-hour hearing, Ms. Sackler remained. And she watched as the scripted questions were repeated and repeated and repeated."It was just a colossal waste of time," she says. "And it was incredibly frustrating as a citizen to be sitting there. Out of all the things they could be talking about—like the fact . . . that at the majority of schools in Harlem kids aren't passing the state exams—instead of talking about this stuff, they were cycling through those questions."'Evasion is one tactic. So is propagating myths about Harlem Success—that it only succeeds because it has smaller class sizes; or that its children's test scores are so high because it gets more money.

The truth is that the school gets superior results with the same or slightly bigger class sizes and less state money per pupil. In 2009, 95% of third-graders at Harlem Success passed the state's English Language Arts exam. Only 51% of third graders in P.S. 149, the traditional public school that shares the same building, did. That same year, Harlem Success was No. 1 in math out of 3,500 public schools in New York State.

The unions and the politicians also play on Harlemites' fears by alleging that charters divide the community and are a "tool for gentrification." This canard only holds up if you think uniforms and longer school days are a sign of cultural imperialism. In a particularly cringe-inducing exchange captured on film, Councilwoman Maria Del Carmen Arroyo of the Bronx accuses Ms. Moskowitz of lying when the charter school leader talks about being a parent in Harlem (the neighborhood where she grew up, where she attended public school, and where she is raising her children, who attend the charter).

The subtext, of course, is that Ms. Moskowitz is white and well-off. This is par for the course, Ms. Sackler tells me. Harlem Success Academy is "protested more than any other charter school in this city—and there are some bad charter schools. So you would wonder why that would be."Those wondering why need look no further than 2002, the year that Ms. Moskowitz, then a Democratic City Council member, became chair of the city's education committee. "She held a lot of hearings on the union contract—and the custodian contract, and the principal contract," says Ms. Sackler.

New Yorkers learned that the teachers' contract is hundreds of pages long and littered with rules mandating every detail of how teachers will spend their workday.The union was not pleased. So when Evil Moskowitz, as she was dubbed, ran for Manhattan borough president in 2005, the UFT campaigned hard for her opponent, Scott Stringer, who won. Ms. Moskowitz, who confirmed in an interview that she has mayoral aspirations, was surely disappointed by the defeat. But her loss was Harlemites' gain. As one mother says of Ms. Moskowitz at a town hall meeting in Harlem, "She's our Obama. She brought change to our kids, okay?"

Some parents in the film do not know what exactly a charter school is. And the truth, as the film implicitly points out, is that such technical designations don't much matter. What these parents know is that they desperately want their children to have the best possible education, and to have opportunities that they themselves could only imagine. Winning a spot in Harlem Success Academy—or another high-performing school—is critical to reaching that goal."

Going into it one of the goals was to expose one myth . . . which is that some parents don't care," says Ms. Sackler. "The reason for telling the parents' stories is that I never thought that was true."In "The Lottery," we are introduced to Eric Roachford, who, like his father, works as a bus driver. As an MTA employee, Mr. Roachford is a "union man, but at the same time, we want our child to learn." He believes that going to college "is the difference between a job and a career." That's why his wife, Shawna, has taken time off to home school their two young sons.

Nadiyah Horne, a single mother who is also deaf, is raising 5-year-old Ammenah. "If others don't like this school, I don't care," she says, using sign language. "I want my child to get the best education." So does Emil Yoanson, who is raising his son Christian alone, and who prays to God that his name will be drawn."Being a single mom is very, very hard" says Laurie Brown-Goodwine, who has applied to several charters for her son, Gregory Jr. Her husband is serving 25 years to life in prison for a third-strike felony.

These are parents who don't have the means to move to a richer neighborhood with better public schools, so instead they have to rely on luck. When demand for a charter school exceeds supply, the random drawing is required by law. Some schools inform parents by mail, but Harlem Success holds a public lottery. "Harlem Success is very explicit about why they do it," Ms. Sackler says. They want to show demand. "I've heard them say to parents 'We hope that you'll come and show that this is something that you want. Because if you don't, we're not going to get more schools.'"

In the film, Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker says he can't go to lotteries anymore because they break his heart. "A child's destiny should not be determined on the pull of a draw." Nothing drives home this point more than seeing the parents and kids, perched at the edge of their chairs, hoping their names flash on the big screen.

Critics of "The Lottery" will probably contend that the absence of anti-charter voices hurts its credibility. But the scene Thursday night at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater, where the film was screened, underscored the film's fundamental point about parents' apolitical dedication to educating their kids. After the documentary played, the film's parents took to the stage to answer questions from the theater's packed audience. Their message: Research options early and ignore labels—all that matters is the school's results. It's the same message, the parents said, that they now regularly share in neighborhood grocery markets and libraries.

Harlem Success, meanwhile, is trying to keep pace with parents' demand. Right now the network has four schools, but in 10 years it hopes to operate 40, with some 20,000 kids enrolled. Even then, there would be more work ahead: This year, some 40,000 New York kids will end up on charter school waiting lists.

"The public education system is at a crossroads," Ms. Sackler says. "Do we want to go back to the time when children are forced to attend their district school no matter how underperforming it is? Or do we want to let parents choose what's best for their kids and provide a lot of options? Sometimes those options might fail. But . . . I don't see how you could choose to settle for what we've been doing for half a century when it's been systemically screwing over the same kids—over and over and over."/Ms. Weiss is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal./

Obama's Trust Factor? : Trust Begets Truth

Here is a saying that I believe defines why we, as a nation, do not believe Obama has our best interests at heart.

TRUST BEGETS TRUTH

From the latest polls, nearly 60% of the general public do not trust the president of our country to do the right thing. This will grow as each day goes by and Mr. Obama mindlessly orates more meaningless information about all the crisis that plaques our nation.

It is not lost on most of us that what he says and what he does are two completely different things. I believe this is not by chance but purposeful. He used this during the campaign to get elected and it worked, the majority bought it, so why not continue to use it now.

Do you buy his line of rhetoric? Does he still command the majority? hmmmmm This Tuesday will begin the story of how much the general public has thought this through as the primary elections unfold.

Murder Rate Higher In Major US Cities Than Iraq?

Update Note : According to a "fact checking site" these figures are incorrect - 6/9/2010 Still, getting out of DC is a good idea especially given the current nightmare that exists there.

If these figures are correct, which I can't substantiate at this point, then our major American cities are more dangerous that the most third world countries and even war zones like Iraq. And are the figures that we are given the real totals? Why should we believe anything that comes out of these cities?

Even when the figures come from the FBI, I question their validity - just like all government institutions these days, why wouldn't the FBI be saturated with liberal Democrats that have to support their political agenda?

This begs the question, who is running these cities? If the truth be known, the ten most dangerous cities in this country are all controlled by liberal Democrats. Little wonder then why the country is going down the tubes under Obama and the liberal Democrat controlled congress.


(Author Unknown)

An interesting letter in the Australian Shooter Magazine this week, which I quote:

"If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the past22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington, DC is 806 per 100,000 for the same period. That means you are about 13 times more likely to be shot and killed in the US capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the US, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: "The US should pull out of Washington."

Tea Party Member Sings 4th Verse of Star Spangled Banner

This is fantastic - the 4th verse of the Star Spangled Banner sung by a tea party member - this is a must viewing and taken to heart.

God Bless America!!

http://salesianity.blogspot.com/2010/06/tea-party-member-stuns-crowd.html

Muslim Suicide Bombers Go On Strike In Britain

The suicide bombers union, B.O.O.M, have a difficult task ahead of them in that their members don't have any 'recourse' in there trade. Being a one way street, the reward has to be taken on faith for blowing themselves up - apparently there is some spiritual gaps in their contracts.

But the real problem here is that the members have discovered that the good looking virgins are all gone, so now the union members have to due with ones that look like Helen Thomas or Janet Reno. Little wonder they are on strike.

Muslims On Strike Over Virgins Left in Afterlife

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda have so far failed to produce an agreement.

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 25% this February from 72 to only 54. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bombers' union, the British Organization of Occupational Martyrs, (B.O.O.M.), responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action. General Secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this is like a kick in the tooth."

Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands in which he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained, "We sympathize with our workers' concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are not accepting the realities of modern-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace." "Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like cutting pension benefits, but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."

Spokespersons for the union in the Northeast of England , Ireland , Wales and the entire Australian continent stated that the strike would not affect their operations as "There are no virgins in our areas anyway." A strike may not be necessary, however, as the number of suicide bombings has been decreasing lately. This has been attributed to the emergence of the Scottish singing star, Susan Boyle. Now that Muslims know what a virgin looks like, they are not so keen on going to paradise.

Jews Are Liberal Democrats Because - - ?

Excellent review of Podhoretz's book "Why are Jews Liberals?" Rush Limbaugh had and interview with Podhoretz in a past publication of the Limbaugh Letter which was a real eye-opener to me.

This phenomena of why Jews vote overwhelmingly liberal has always puzzled me. But now it has become clear from this book review, and the Limbaugh Letter article, for this voting block.

Still, questions arise as to why the Jews persist in the face of so much evidence of liberal Democrat agenda that wants to crush the Jewish community. Maybe the Jewish community can't come to grips with the realization they have been 'taken for a ride' by the Democrats all these years, refusing to acknowledge such trickery by continuing to support the liberal agenda.

It will be interesting to watch how the Jews vote in November given how Obama treated Bibi Netanyahu when he visited the White House this Spring, not to mention how he has completely sided with the Palestinian terrorists against Israel.


BOOK REVIEW: WHY ARE JEWS LIBERALS?
A Book Review By DICK MORRIS

Why Are Jews Liberals? By Norman Podhoretz
Published on DickMorris.com on June 5, 2010Printer-Friendly Version



It is the question that sooner or later baffles every political pundit, consultant, expert, or observer. Why do American Jews persist in their adoration of the Democratic Party? Why, like an abused spouse, do they tolerate Israel-bashing, support for the Palestinians and Democratic softness on terrorism and still return for more? As the richest demographic group in our population, why do they still vote for Obama and donate money to him when he specifically proposes to raise the taxes on those making more than $200,000 per year?

Why do they let liberal politicians embrace the likes of Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Jeremiah Wright and still support them on Election Day? I don´t have an answer and have never heard a satisfactory one from any leader of an American Jewish or pro-Israeli organization.
But Norman Podhoretz does and he explains his ideas in his brilliant book Why Are Jews Liberals?

American Jews, Podhoretz explains, grew up in liberal homes heavily influenced by the ideology they inherited from their Eastern European ancestors. There, in Russia and Germany, you either followed the Kaiser´s or the Czar´s line or were a Communist. Reacting to their exclusion and the pogroms that harassed them, these ghetto Jews readily embraced Marxism. Indeed, Marx was, himself, born a Jew and the majority of the first Bolshevik Politburo in 1917 were Jews.


When Hitler railed against Jews and Communists, he often felt no need to distinguish between the two. In the New World, communism morphed into socialism in the early years of the twentieth century when Eugene V. Debs won a million votes (almost 10%) on the Socialist Party ticket for President.


Finally, under the more benign influence of FDR and the New Deal, this leftist impulse settled into the cozy niche of liberalism where it has remained ever since.

Zionism, also, closely identified itself with socialism and the Labor Party of Golda Meier and David Ben Gurion, which dominated Israel´s early years, pushed its ideological agenda. Kibbutzim were formed with communal living as a Fabian or utopian socialism took root in the holy land. So leftist were the early Israelis that Russia recognized the state of Israel even before the United States did in the hopes that it could become a socialist ally.


The political majority which underscored this leftist bent was based on Jews descended from the ghettos of Europe -- Ashkenazi Jews. In the U.S. Jews stayed in the liberal camp not just out of conviction but also from fear of the Christian right. When fundamentalism reared its head in American politics, they feared that anti-Semitism would not be far behind. And, as the anti-communism of the McCarthy era targeted the Jewish intellectual establishment, their dependence on Democrats only increased.


It came as a shock to America´s Jews that first Nixon, then Reagan, and finally Bush-43 emerged as Israel´s strongest supporters. (The tepid backing Bush-41 gave the Jewish state was more in line with what they expected from the GOP). And it came as a total shock when the religious right became Israel´s strongest backer based on its biblical conviction that God had promised the Holy Land to the Jewish people.


But, by then, religion and even Israel had weakened their holds on American Jewish hearts. They attended religious services less than half as frequently as establishment Protestants and only one-third as often as Catholics or Evangelicals. Most Jews, Podhoretz notes, attended synagogue "four times a year" on the high holy days.


Meanwhile, in Israel, the socialist Ashkenazi-based Labor Party (led by Shimon Peres) fell to the campaigns of Menachem Begin and Bibi Netanyahu. Both had as their base the Sephardic Jews who came, not from Europe, but from Africa or the Middle East. They had no heritage of socialism, much less Marxism and had a healthy disrespect for their long term neighbors in the Arab world.


To American Jews, they looked racist and embarrassed them in front of their liberal friends. When Obama accuses Netanyahu of "intransigence", he echoes what liberal Jews themselves often think of the Israeli right-wing. But Podhoretz´ book, written before Obama manifested such an anti-Israel bent, leaves unanswered the question of whether the pro-Palestinian bias of the current administration, not to mention its war on prosperity, will drive Jews away from their liberal moorings.


The answer probably lies more with events than within Jewish thinking. As it becomes apparent that Israel faces a holocaust-like threat from Iranian nuclear weapons and the disastrous results of Obama´s socialist project become evident, Jews will likely gradually wean themselves away from the liberal Democratic Party.

As it becomes more anti-Israel and anti-wealth, the Party will leave the Jews before the Jews realize it has left and themselves leave the party. Norman Podhoretz, former editor of Commentary Magazine, and long a leading voice of the neo-con movement, has diagnosed the Jewish addiction to liberalism and helped us to understand why it still dominates their thinking. He has solved the mystery. Now let's see what we conservatives and Republican Jews can do with the knowledge he has given us.

Obama White House Bribes Have Kick-Backs

It seems that the White House has no limit to how corrupt they can get to cement their agenda. The question remains - will the people accept the corruption or take a stand against it.

History is being made in this country.


WHY THE WHITE HOUSE BRIBED ROMANOFF TO DROP OUT OF COLORADO SENATE RACE
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on June 3, 2010Printer-Friendly Version

We now know that Obama's Deputy Chief of Staff, called Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in September, 2009, to offer him one of three enumerated jobs if only he would drop out of the Democratic Senate primary in which he was challenging appointed Senator Michael Bennet. But the question is why?

In the case of the Spector/Sestak bribe, the answer is obvious: The Obama Administration wanted the Pennsylvania Senator to switch parties so that they would have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. To persuade him to switch, the White House had to do its utmost to clear the field and assure him a safe path to the Senate nomination in his new political party.

So, Rahm Emanual asked former President Bill Clinton to dangle positions in front of Sestak to get him to drop out of the race. But Michael Bennet was no great friend of the White House. Having never been elected to a statewide position, he lacked a political base and was never a particularly strong candidate. He only got the Senate seat as an appointment to fill the seat vacated by Senator Ken Salazar who gave up the seat to become Secretary of the Interior in the Obama Administration. So why was the Obama Administration trying to clear the field for Bennet and assure him of the nomination?

The answer likely lies in the politics of health care. Bennet had been a question mark from the beginning of the health care debate. The Huffington Post reported, on November 22, 2009, that he was willing to lose his Senate seat if he had to in order to back health care reform. The Post reported that his dramatic announcement ended months of silence on the subject and relieved White House concerns that he was not going to back the bill. Funny how Bennet's announcement came less than two months after Romanoff was offered a job to drop out of the race!

If a connection can be documented between the offer and the vote (no other motivation seems credible) the transaction becomes particularly sickening.

Trading a job for a vote is the crassest and most obvious form of bribery.

But what else can account for Bennet's sudden morph from being on the fence over health care to an ardent supporter who would lose all rather than see it die? In any case, we need to help Jane Norton, Colorado's former Lt Governor, beat either Bennet or Romanoff in the general election in the fall. She holds a lead and we need to throw this kind of horse trading bribery politics out of office.

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ObamaCare Costs WILL Go Higher and Higher

This does not come as a surprise - most of us knew this all along even before the bill was ever passed. Why would any one, with half a brain, believe costs would be reduced?

Look at how the government has handled the oil spill - that is exactly how they will handle health care.


YOUR HEALTH CARE COSTS, GOING HIGHER

Source: Carrie Lukas, "Your Health Care Costs, Going Higher," Townhall.com, June 1, 2010.

How much will ObamaCare cost, asks Carrie Lukas, vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum. That was a matter of particular dispute during the debate of the Patient Protection and Affordability Act. The bill's authors monkeyed around with the numbers, delaying some benefits, creating new revenue raisers, and pushing off known, needed reforms, so that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) could come up with a score below the $900 billion target.

Only the most naïve failed to recognize that those numbers were meaningless: Ultimately, they would have no relationship to how much the legislation would add to taxpayers' burdens and bloat the federal budget.

CBO has since been revising its estimates upward:

Another $115 billion for additional administrative costs associated with ObamaCare.
In addition, Congress now struggles to pass a change to the Medicare reimbursement rates, which will cost $23 billion just to patch the problem for two years.

Taxpayers must be warned that these are just the first of many upward revisions by CBO, says Lukas. As Congressman Paul Ryan pointed out during the health care debate, the CBO score was based on 10 years of increased taxes and Medicare cuts, and only six years of benefits.

Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin just released his own analysis of ObamaCare and found that, far from reducing the deficit as President Obama and Congressional proponents promised, it will add more than $500 billion to the deficit during the first ten years and another $1.4 trillion in the decade after that.

Yet the program's cost for taxpayers are just a small part of the costs that will be borne by American citizens, says Lukas. Several large companies reported that they would suffer multi-million dollar losses due to ObamaCare's new taxes. Companies are also noting the incentives created by the law to drop insurance coverage for their employees.

According to Holtz-Eakin:

Caterpillar recently noted that it could save 70 percent on health care costs by dropping coverage and paying the penalties.

AT&T's $2.4 billion cost of coverage would drop to just $600 million for penalties.

Altogether, Holtz-Eakin estimates that as many as 35 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored health insurance.

Obama Liberal Democrats : Eyes Wide Shut

It's the little things in life that make the difference - this is just a simple illustration of how an agenda or a philosophy is perceived.

FREE KITTENS
A pretty little girl named Suzy was standing on the sidewalk in front of her home. Next to her was a basket containing a number of tiny creatures; in her hand was a sign announcing FREE KITTENS

Suddenly a line of big black cars pulled up beside her. Out of the lead car stepped a tall, grinning man."Hi there little girl, I'm President Obama. What do you have in the basket?" he asked."Kittens," little Suzy said."How old are they?" asked Obama.Suzy replied, "They're so young, their eyes aren't even open yet.""And what kind of kittens are they?""Democrats," answered Suzy with a smile.

Obama was delighted. As soon as he returned to his car, he called his PR chief and told him about the little girl and the kittens. Recognizing the perfect photo op, the two men agreed that the president should return the next day; and in front of the assembled media, have the girl talk about her discerning kittens.

So the next day, Suzy was again standing on the sidewalk with her basket of "FREE KITTENS," when another motorcade pulled up, this time followed by vans from ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN. Cameras and audio equipment were quickly set up, then Obama got out of his limo and walked over to little Suzy."Hello, again," he said, "I'd love it if you would tell all my friends out there what kind of kittens you're giving away.""Yes sir," Suzy said. "They're Republicans."

Taken by surprise, the president stammered, "But... but... yesterday, you told me they were DEMOCRATS."Little Suzy smiled and said, "I know. But today, they have their eyes open."

Liberal Democrats Attack Free Speech Rights : Stop the Truth

When an organization can't win in the arena of ideas they must turn to other means of stopping the debate. With liberal hate organizations stepping up their attacks on talk radio and cable news, it's a sure sign that hate is losing to the truth. This is the good news. The liberal Democrats believe this is bad news and must not be tolerated. The liberals believe if they are to succeed in their quest of total take over of the American dream, they must be stamped out the truth as soon as possible.

With the coming elections it is imperative that the liberals must stop the truth from influencing the outcome of the November election. Liberals have always relied on lies, misinformation and election fraud to gain seats in congress. There is no reason to believe this year will be any different.

Therefore, given the importance of the coming elections, it is a necessity, the liberals believe, to have all sources of information in the control of liberal socialist Democrats. They already have print media and nearly all television outlets. The only outlets for the truth left for the general public is talk radio and cable news. Little wonder why they are on the attack now to stop these organizations.


Liberal Groups Want FCC to Police Talk Radio, Cable News
Wednesday, 02 Jun 2010 03:14 PM
By: Jim Meyers

A coalition of more than 30 mostly liberal organizations has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to monitor “hate speech” on talk radio and cable news networks. The groups assert in the letter that “hate, extremism and misinformation have been on the rise . . . as the media has focused on Arizona’s passage of one of the harshest pieces of anti-Latino legislation in this country’s history.”

The organizations include the Center for Media Justice, the Rainbow Push Coalition, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, and Common Cause.“As traditional media have become less diverse and less competitive, they have also grown less responsible and less responsive to the communities that they are supposed to serve,” the letter states.

“In this same atmosphere hate speech thrives, as hate has developed as a profit-model for syndicated radio and cable television programs masquerading as ‘news.’”The coalition did not mention any specific media outlets.

The groups also argue that the Internet has made it more difficult for the public to separate “the facts from bigotry masquerading as news,” The Hill newspaper reports.

The Internet “gives the illusion that news sources have increased, but in fact there are fewer journalists employed now than ever before,” according to the coalition.“Moreover, on the Internet, speakers can hide in the cloak of anonymity, emboldened to say things that they may not say in the public eye.“For these reasons, as the Commission deliberates how the public interest will be served in the digital age, it should consider the extent of hate speech in media, and its effects.”

Obama And Bush Address Marines : Compare/Contrast

Great video on how the Marines received George Bush before a speech and then how they appreciated who and what he was after the speech.

Also, this is compared and contrasted to how Obama, Berry, was received and how they knew who and what he is!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIHz5tevLAw

Obama's Presidency Understood : Free Ice Cream

There are probably other explanations for his being elected but this one is at or near the top of the list. emaculation

THE COW AND THE ICE CREAM

THE BEST EXPLANATION I HAVE SEEN ON
WHY OBAMA WON THE ELECTION

From a teacher in the Nashville area. "We are worried about 'the cow' when it is all about the 'Ice Cream.' The most eye-opening civics lesson I ever had was while teaching third grade this year.....

The presidential election was heating up and some of the children showed an interest. I decided we would have an election for a class president.
We would choose our nominees. They would make a campaign speech and the class would vote.
To simplify the process, candidates were nominated by other class members.

We discussed what kinds of characteristics these students should have. We got many nominations and from those, Jamie and Olivia were picked to run for the top spot.
The class had done a great job in their selections. Both candidates were good kids.

I thought Jamie might have an advantage because he got lots of parental support.
I had never seen Olivia's mother. The day arrived when they were to make their speeches.

Jamie went first.

He had specific ideas about how to make our class a better place. He ended by promising to do his very best. Everyone applauded and he sat down.

Now it was Olivia's turn to speak.

Her speech was concise. She said, "If you will vote for me, I will give you ice cream." She sat down.

The class went wild. "Yes! Yes! We want ice cream..." She surely could have said more, she did not have to.

A discussion followed. How did she plan to pay for the ice cream? She wasn't sure.
Would her parents buy it or would the class pay for it?. She didn't know. The class really didn't care. All they were thinking about was the ice cream.

Jamie was forgotten. Olivia won by a landslide.

Every time Barack Obama opened his mouth he offered ice cream and 52 percent of the people reacted like nine year olds. They want ice cream. The other 48 percent know they are going to have to feed the cow and clean up the mess."

This is the ice cream Obama promised us!



Remember, the government cannot give anything to anyone -- until they first take it away from someone else.