One has to ponder the future of California given the number of people that are living there without any visible means of support - that is illegal aliens. The number grows by the day and the tax payer will have to keep footing the bill.
Where will this end is any one's guess - the one thing that I know is, it can only get worse given it is a liberal enclave. This entire state looks a lot like New Orleans. Another 60 year liberal bastion of liberal Democrat socialism. An ongoing nightmare.
Keep the faith -
Just One State
(from the L.A. Times)
This is only one State...............If this doesn't open your eyes nothing will !
1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County ( L. A. County has 10.2 million people)are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illega aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal , whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish. (There are 10.2 million people in L. A. County . )
(All 10 of the above are from the Los Angeles Times)
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare. Over 70% of the United States ' annual population growth (and over 90% of California , Florida , and New York ) results from immigration.
29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens. We are a bunch of fools for letting this continue HOW CAN YOU HELP ? Send copies of this letter to at least two other people. 100 would be even better.
Friday, August 08, 2008
AIDS Infection Underreported by CDC in the US
Political correctness has struck again, and in this case, we can call it "political science". The Center for Diease Control has always been biased in it's reporting of anything that has any connection to a liberal socialist cause.
A good example of this is gun control - they came out with facts and figures that indicated deaths by accidental shootings, in the home, in the United States, were far higher than what the FBI gave in their annual reports. As we all know, gun control is a big part of the liberal agenda. da - Big government is socialism.
Little wonder then the facts that the CDC has been giving out for the number of new AIDS cases are not correct, that is, under stated, due to pressure in the past by the gay community. Now that the funding has been reduced as a result, the gay community is demanding that with this new report we must increase funding to stem the rise in new cases. But not to worry, congress in on it. Our socialist brothers and sisters in congress will solve the problem with new taxes.
It's amazing isn't it that the liberal socialists can always have it both ways and nobody cares. The old saying holds here, " what goes around, comes around".
Keep the faith and watch where you step on the battle field, there are traps everywhere.
CDC Criticized for Delays in Release of AIDS Data*
Activists Say Chance Was Lost to Counter Impact of More Cases**
By MARILYN CHASE August 4, 2008
MEXICO CITY -- Activists voiced anger over delays in the release of a report that the number of people infected with AIDS in the U.S. each year is likely 40% higher than previously estimated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a conference here that 56,300 people in the U.S. are likely infected with AIDS each year, up from previous estimates of 40,000.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December, citing researchers and officials, that the CDC was likely to report a jump in the number of estimated infections. But the agency at the time declined to comment. Citing a need for peer review of the study, the CDC waited to publish its report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.The data underscore that the AIDS epidemic isn't over anywhere in the world, said Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
He expressed disappointment in the delay over releasing the CDC figures, adding, "timely information is important for prevention."Activists note that any rise in AIDS infections should be met with stepped-up prevention, testing, counseling and community outreach to at-risk groups.
They bemoan the delay in the release of the findings, noting that during this time, budgets could have been raised and programs launched."Science-based AIDS prevention means having access to accurate data about how many people are becoming infected," said Kate Krauss, a spokeswoman for Physicians for Human Rights in Cambridge, Mass. "Without it, we are shooting in the dark. "The figures underscore that it is "imperative" to redouble prevention and testing efforts to relieve the "particularly devastating" burden of AIDS on minority youth, said Donna Futterman, director of the adolescent AIDS program at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, N.Y.
Public-health and gay-community leaders have warned that modern treatments for the HIV virus have lulled the young to let down their guard. "The new HIV meds are so good [that] the result is less caution when having sex," said New York activist and playwright Larry Kramer.
Higher infection rates were discovered by the CDC's new blood-test technology, which can distinguish new infections from older ones based on changes in the kinds of antibodies, or natural infection fighters, that the human immune system makes to battle the virus.
Kevin Fenton, director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention, said the higher infection rate wasn't believed to reflect a sudden spike, but apparently has smoldered for a decade undetected by older testing and sampling methods. Dr. Fenton defended the timing of the report, which was finished in October and submitted to JAMA in November. "This is breakthrough technology," he said. "This wasn't a simple editorial."About 33 million people world-wide are living with HIV and AIDS. The U.S. total of 1.2 million people -- estimated in 2003 -- will likely swell with the rising tide of new infections. About a quarter of Americans with HIV still don't know they are infected, despite a push by CDC to make testing a routine for Americans of ages 13 to 64 years.
The latest CDC report says African-Americans suffer seven times the risk of infection that whites do, because of poverty, gaps in care, drug use, incarceration and a stigma in the community that discourages testing and treatment. Hispanic Americans have three times the risk that whites have, Dr. Fenton said.
The U.S., while increasing its multiyear commitment to helping control AIDS abroad to an unprecedented $48 billion, has flagged in its commitments at home, critics in Congress said."The HIV epidemic within our own borders is even worse than we had believed," said U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D., Calif. Yet, he said, the CDC's prevention budget has shrunk 19% since 2002 when adjusted for inflation, and has been "hindered by politics and ideology.
"The Bush administration -- while surpassing its predecessors in overseas AIDS funding -- has promoted abstinence as a centerpiece of prevention. Many AIDS researchers have said this is unrealistic in places where poverty and cultural coercion or violence force premature intimacy.
Dr. Fenton argues that the U.S. approach to prevention includes more than abstinence, with programs, for instance, targeting the spread of the disease through hookups arranged on the Internet by offering online notification of partners. The new CDC figures, Dr. Fenton said, "are a wake-up call, to reflect the crisis in our midst, and bring it to an end within our lifetime."
He said the latest study was based on a new methodology called Starhs (serological testing algorithm for recent HIV seroconversion), which uses a novel blood test known as BED to sample antibody patterns made by newly infected people.
*Write to *Marilyn Chase at marilyn.chase@wsj.com^1**
A good example of this is gun control - they came out with facts and figures that indicated deaths by accidental shootings, in the home, in the United States, were far higher than what the FBI gave in their annual reports. As we all know, gun control is a big part of the liberal agenda. da - Big government is socialism.
Little wonder then the facts that the CDC has been giving out for the number of new AIDS cases are not correct, that is, under stated, due to pressure in the past by the gay community. Now that the funding has been reduced as a result, the gay community is demanding that with this new report we must increase funding to stem the rise in new cases. But not to worry, congress in on it. Our socialist brothers and sisters in congress will solve the problem with new taxes.
It's amazing isn't it that the liberal socialists can always have it both ways and nobody cares. The old saying holds here, " what goes around, comes around".
Keep the faith and watch where you step on the battle field, there are traps everywhere.
CDC Criticized for Delays in Release of AIDS Data*
Activists Say Chance Was Lost to Counter Impact of More Cases**
By MARILYN CHASE August 4, 2008
MEXICO CITY -- Activists voiced anger over delays in the release of a report that the number of people infected with AIDS in the U.S. each year is likely 40% higher than previously estimated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a conference here that 56,300 people in the U.S. are likely infected with AIDS each year, up from previous estimates of 40,000.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December, citing researchers and officials, that the CDC was likely to report a jump in the number of estimated infections. But the agency at the time declined to comment. Citing a need for peer review of the study, the CDC waited to publish its report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.The data underscore that the AIDS epidemic isn't over anywhere in the world, said Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
He expressed disappointment in the delay over releasing the CDC figures, adding, "timely information is important for prevention."Activists note that any rise in AIDS infections should be met with stepped-up prevention, testing, counseling and community outreach to at-risk groups.
They bemoan the delay in the release of the findings, noting that during this time, budgets could have been raised and programs launched."Science-based AIDS prevention means having access to accurate data about how many people are becoming infected," said Kate Krauss, a spokeswoman for Physicians for Human Rights in Cambridge, Mass. "Without it, we are shooting in the dark. "The figures underscore that it is "imperative" to redouble prevention and testing efforts to relieve the "particularly devastating" burden of AIDS on minority youth, said Donna Futterman, director of the adolescent AIDS program at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, N.Y.
Public-health and gay-community leaders have warned that modern treatments for the HIV virus have lulled the young to let down their guard. "The new HIV meds are so good [that] the result is less caution when having sex," said New York activist and playwright Larry Kramer.
Higher infection rates were discovered by the CDC's new blood-test technology, which can distinguish new infections from older ones based on changes in the kinds of antibodies, or natural infection fighters, that the human immune system makes to battle the virus.
Kevin Fenton, director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention, said the higher infection rate wasn't believed to reflect a sudden spike, but apparently has smoldered for a decade undetected by older testing and sampling methods. Dr. Fenton defended the timing of the report, which was finished in October and submitted to JAMA in November. "This is breakthrough technology," he said. "This wasn't a simple editorial."About 33 million people world-wide are living with HIV and AIDS. The U.S. total of 1.2 million people -- estimated in 2003 -- will likely swell with the rising tide of new infections. About a quarter of Americans with HIV still don't know they are infected, despite a push by CDC to make testing a routine for Americans of ages 13 to 64 years.
The latest CDC report says African-Americans suffer seven times the risk of infection that whites do, because of poverty, gaps in care, drug use, incarceration and a stigma in the community that discourages testing and treatment. Hispanic Americans have three times the risk that whites have, Dr. Fenton said.
The U.S., while increasing its multiyear commitment to helping control AIDS abroad to an unprecedented $48 billion, has flagged in its commitments at home, critics in Congress said."The HIV epidemic within our own borders is even worse than we had believed," said U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D., Calif. Yet, he said, the CDC's prevention budget has shrunk 19% since 2002 when adjusted for inflation, and has been "hindered by politics and ideology.
"The Bush administration -- while surpassing its predecessors in overseas AIDS funding -- has promoted abstinence as a centerpiece of prevention. Many AIDS researchers have said this is unrealistic in places where poverty and cultural coercion or violence force premature intimacy.
Dr. Fenton argues that the U.S. approach to prevention includes more than abstinence, with programs, for instance, targeting the spread of the disease through hookups arranged on the Internet by offering online notification of partners. The new CDC figures, Dr. Fenton said, "are a wake-up call, to reflect the crisis in our midst, and bring it to an end within our lifetime."
He said the latest study was based on a new methodology called Starhs (serological testing algorithm for recent HIV seroconversion), which uses a novel blood test known as BED to sample antibody patterns made by newly infected people.
*Write to *Marilyn Chase at marilyn.chase@wsj.com
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Solar Power in Our Future a Reality
This new research looks very promising and exciting for our energy needs in the future. This is the very thing that we need to get people excited about new sources of energy that we can depend on when our immediate needs for energy are brought under control.
I believe solar power is the best bet for our future as it has the potential to be unlimited and mostly labor free - wind is not a viable alternative as it is totally unpredictable, just think about the weather and how often the forecasters are right. Also think about all the moving parts and how difficult it is to reach something sixty to eighty feet in the air and, always rmember, the cost of labor and how it will increase in the future.
Keep the faith in the American spirit of free enterprise. The battle goes on.
*Solar Energy, All Night Long*
Jonathan Fahey, Forbes Mag. July 31, 2008
MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has long been jealous of plants. He desperately wanted to do what they do--split water into hydrogen and oxygen and use the products to do work. That, he figures, is the only way we humans can solve our energy problems; enough energy pours down from the sun in one hour to power the planet's energy needs for a year.
In January, only a month after reevaluating his methodology in the face of a frustratingly slow process, he finally found a way. "For six months now I've been looking at the leaves and saying 'I own you guys!'"Nocera's discovery--a cheap and easy way to store energy that he thinks will be used to change solar power into a mainstream energy source--will be published in the journal /Science/ on Friday.
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited--and soon."Plants catch light and turn it into an electric current, then use that energy to excite catalysts that split water into hydrogen and oxygen during what is called photosynthesis' light cycle.
The energy is then used during the dark cycle to allow the plant to build sugars used for growth and energy storage.
Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, focused on the water-splitting part of photosynthesis. They found cheap and simple catalysts that did a remarkably good job. They dissolved cobalt and phosphate in water and then zapped it with electricity through an electrode. The cobalt and phosphate form a thin-film catalyst around the electrode that then use electrons from the electrode to split the oxygen from water. The oxygen bubbles to the surface, leaving a proton behind.
A few inches away, another catalyst, platinum, helps that bare proton become hydrogen. (This second reaction is a well-known one, and not part of Nocera and Kanan's study.) The hydrogen and oxygen, separated and on-hand, can be used to power a fuel cell whenever energy is needed.
"Once you put a photovoltaic on it," he says, "you've got an inorganic leaf."James Barber, a biochemistry professor at Imperial College London who studies artificial photosynthesis but was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," he said. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated. "Nocera's discovery arose from frustration. Disappointed with the pace of his lab's progress, Nocera and his team decided in December to question some of the basic assumptions they had made in setting up earlier experiments. Chemists, it turns out, are always worrying about the stability of their catalysts and end up doing backflips to try to synthesize materials that won't corrode.
Photosynthesis, though, is so violently reactive that the catalysts involved break down every 30 minutes. The leaf has to constantly rebuild them. Maybe, thought Nocera, instead of fighting corrosion, he should work with it. "It's a bias a lot of scientists have. We want something to be structurally stable. But all it has to be is functionally stable."This thinking led Nocera to try his cobalt-phosphate mixture. He knew it wouldn't hold together, but he thought it might still work. Sure enough, Nocera's catalyst breaks down whenever the electricity is cut, but it assembles itself again when electricity is reapplied. Nocera's discovery is still a science experiment. It needs plenty of engineering before it can be a useful device. The cobalt and phosphate at the center of Nocera's work is cheap and plentiful, but the hydrogen reaction uses platinum, which is rare and expensive.
The electrode needs to be improved so the oxygen-making process can speed up. And the system needs to be integrated into some kind of electricity-producing device, ideally powered by solar or wind on one end and a fuel cell on the other. But splitting the oxygen away from the water was the hard part, and Nocera has done it. "Now we can start thinking about a totally distributed solar [photovoltaic] system," he said. "We couldn't have a solar economy unless it could produce energy 24/7. Now we can.
"His hope is that because unlike traditional electrolysis devices, which are expensive and require toxic alkaline solutions, his system is so cheap, simple and benign that scientists and engineers around the world will be able to improve it quickly.
For his part, Nocera says he will work to understand and improve both sides of his new discovery. His lab will try to learn every detail about just how his catalyst is making the oxygen. And he is going to work with his engineering colleagues at MIT to try to integrate his storage device into systems that he hopes one day will power homes and cars all day and all night.
I believe solar power is the best bet for our future as it has the potential to be unlimited and mostly labor free - wind is not a viable alternative as it is totally unpredictable, just think about the weather and how often the forecasters are right. Also think about all the moving parts and how difficult it is to reach something sixty to eighty feet in the air and, always rmember, the cost of labor and how it will increase in the future.
Keep the faith in the American spirit of free enterprise. The battle goes on.
*Solar Energy, All Night Long*
Jonathan Fahey, Forbes Mag. July 31, 2008
MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has long been jealous of plants. He desperately wanted to do what they do--split water into hydrogen and oxygen and use the products to do work. That, he figures, is the only way we humans can solve our energy problems; enough energy pours down from the sun in one hour to power the planet's energy needs for a year.
In January, only a month after reevaluating his methodology in the face of a frustratingly slow process, he finally found a way. "For six months now I've been looking at the leaves and saying 'I own you guys!'"Nocera's discovery--a cheap and easy way to store energy that he thinks will be used to change solar power into a mainstream energy source--will be published in the journal /Science/ on Friday.
"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited--and soon."Plants catch light and turn it into an electric current, then use that energy to excite catalysts that split water into hydrogen and oxygen during what is called photosynthesis' light cycle.
The energy is then used during the dark cycle to allow the plant to build sugars used for growth and energy storage.
Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, focused on the water-splitting part of photosynthesis. They found cheap and simple catalysts that did a remarkably good job. They dissolved cobalt and phosphate in water and then zapped it with electricity through an electrode. The cobalt and phosphate form a thin-film catalyst around the electrode that then use electrons from the electrode to split the oxygen from water. The oxygen bubbles to the surface, leaving a proton behind.
A few inches away, another catalyst, platinum, helps that bare proton become hydrogen. (This second reaction is a well-known one, and not part of Nocera and Kanan's study.) The hydrogen and oxygen, separated and on-hand, can be used to power a fuel cell whenever energy is needed.
"Once you put a photovoltaic on it," he says, "you've got an inorganic leaf."James Barber, a biochemistry professor at Imperial College London who studies artificial photosynthesis but was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," he said. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated. "Nocera's discovery arose from frustration. Disappointed with the pace of his lab's progress, Nocera and his team decided in December to question some of the basic assumptions they had made in setting up earlier experiments. Chemists, it turns out, are always worrying about the stability of their catalysts and end up doing backflips to try to synthesize materials that won't corrode.
Photosynthesis, though, is so violently reactive that the catalysts involved break down every 30 minutes. The leaf has to constantly rebuild them. Maybe, thought Nocera, instead of fighting corrosion, he should work with it. "It's a bias a lot of scientists have. We want something to be structurally stable. But all it has to be is functionally stable."This thinking led Nocera to try his cobalt-phosphate mixture. He knew it wouldn't hold together, but he thought it might still work. Sure enough, Nocera's catalyst breaks down whenever the electricity is cut, but it assembles itself again when electricity is reapplied. Nocera's discovery is still a science experiment. It needs plenty of engineering before it can be a useful device. The cobalt and phosphate at the center of Nocera's work is cheap and plentiful, but the hydrogen reaction uses platinum, which is rare and expensive.
The electrode needs to be improved so the oxygen-making process can speed up. And the system needs to be integrated into some kind of electricity-producing device, ideally powered by solar or wind on one end and a fuel cell on the other. But splitting the oxygen away from the water was the hard part, and Nocera has done it. "Now we can start thinking about a totally distributed solar [photovoltaic] system," he said. "We couldn't have a solar economy unless it could produce energy 24/7. Now we can.
"His hope is that because unlike traditional electrolysis devices, which are expensive and require toxic alkaline solutions, his system is so cheap, simple and benign that scientists and engineers around the world will be able to improve it quickly.
For his part, Nocera says he will work to understand and improve both sides of his new discovery. His lab will try to learn every detail about just how his catalyst is making the oxygen. And he is going to work with his engineering colleagues at MIT to try to integrate his storage device into systems that he hopes one day will power homes and cars all day and all night.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Barack Obama's Economic Plan Born of Socialism
Well here we go with a little economics 101 on how Barack is going take what we have earned and spend it on those that haven't earned anything, that is, the unproductive. You know, leveling the playing field. Socialism
He says his plan is to take from the very rich only because they make way to much money, big oil, big tobacco, and big anything that makes any kind of 'profit'. Profit is bad according to the socialists - it isn't fair that someone makes a profit while others don't - If we take even more from the rich that are already paying thirty percent of all taxes, how will the rich build new factories to create new jobs that puts money in our pockets?
How will anyone become productive with no incentives? Socialism at it's best.
The scary part of this whole plan is Barack Obama has no idea what he is taking about but the power that lurks behind the curtain does - the Democrat National Committee. They are running the show and they are not nice people. They are Marxist socialists - they have no intention of doing anything that will benefit the general public without taking their share off the top.
Witness Obama, Reid and Pelosi refusing to address the catastrophic problem of energy - they went home for five weeks while the entire nation suffers. They do not care!! - da - It's about power - It's about control of the electorate to get what they want any way they can.
I have said this time and time again and the Democrats prove me right time and time again. The biggest question of all is why do they continue to be reelected?
Keep the faith, the battle field changes every day.
Obamanomics Clarified
By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN August 4, 2008; Page
Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession. I was among the many who took Barack Obama's statements that he would "end the Bush tax cuts for the top incomes" too literally. I interpreted this to mean a return to the pre-Bush tax rates of 39.6% on ordinary income and 20% on capital gains.
The Obama campaign has now clarified that he proposes to do this for labor earnings, but not for capital gains and dividends. I am told that Mr. Obama declared last year that he would raise these rates to "no more than the Reagan rate," by which he apparently means to 28%, from the current 15%. Mr. Obama would thus raise the tax rate on capital gains by about three times as much as President Bush cut it, but he'd preserve at least some of the Bush reduction in the double-taxation of dividends./(Continued below.)/[Obamanomics Clarified]
The 28% rate on capital gains was the price President Ronald Reagan paid to pass the 1986 Tax Reform Act that lowered the top marginal tax rate on ordinary income (including dividends) to 28%. The capital gains rate was cut to 20% in 1997 under President Bill Clinton, and again to 15% in 2003 under President Bush.
However, Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the top marginal rate on wages (also interest, rent and royalties, etc.) more than 40% above the corresponding Reagan rate of 28%.
Mr. Obama would thus give us the worst of both worlds: tax rates on ordinary income 40% higher than Reagan and on capital gains 40% higher than Clinton. Raising the rate on capital gains to 28% would greatly reduce the ability of firms to minimize double taxation by returning cash to their shareholders through repurchases.
As for dividends, the Obama plan would nearly double the tax to 28% from 15%.I have revised the table that accompanied my op-ed showing the negative effects on the after-tax returns on investments to reflect the clarification. It is also available at http://www.stanford.edu/~boskin/
I'm glad to hear that Mr. Obama is willing to retain at least a portion of the Bush tax cuts on dividends. But nearly doubling the tax rates on capital gains and dividends to 28% is a terrible idea that would damage fragile financial markets and the economy.
*Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; he was chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in the George H.W. Bush White House. (The Journal has frequently invited the Obama campaign to explain its tax plans in our pages, and we gladly repeat the invitation publicly here today.)*
He says his plan is to take from the very rich only because they make way to much money, big oil, big tobacco, and big anything that makes any kind of 'profit'. Profit is bad according to the socialists - it isn't fair that someone makes a profit while others don't - If we take even more from the rich that are already paying thirty percent of all taxes, how will the rich build new factories to create new jobs that puts money in our pockets?
How will anyone become productive with no incentives? Socialism at it's best.
The scary part of this whole plan is Barack Obama has no idea what he is taking about but the power that lurks behind the curtain does - the Democrat National Committee. They are running the show and they are not nice people. They are Marxist socialists - they have no intention of doing anything that will benefit the general public without taking their share off the top.
Witness Obama, Reid and Pelosi refusing to address the catastrophic problem of energy - they went home for five weeks while the entire nation suffers. They do not care!! - da - It's about power - It's about control of the electorate to get what they want any way they can.
I have said this time and time again and the Democrats prove me right time and time again. The biggest question of all is why do they continue to be reelected?
Keep the faith, the battle field changes every day.
Obamanomics Clarified
By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN August 4, 2008; Page
Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession. I was among the many who took Barack Obama's statements that he would "end the Bush tax cuts for the top incomes" too literally. I interpreted this to mean a return to the pre-Bush tax rates of 39.6% on ordinary income and 20% on capital gains.
The Obama campaign has now clarified that he proposes to do this for labor earnings, but not for capital gains and dividends. I am told that Mr. Obama declared last year that he would raise these rates to "no more than the Reagan rate," by which he apparently means to 28%, from the current 15%. Mr. Obama would thus raise the tax rate on capital gains by about three times as much as President Bush cut it, but he'd preserve at least some of the Bush reduction in the double-taxation of dividends./(Continued below.)/[Obamanomics Clarified]
The 28% rate on capital gains was the price President Ronald Reagan paid to pass the 1986 Tax Reform Act that lowered the top marginal tax rate on ordinary income (including dividends) to 28%. The capital gains rate was cut to 20% in 1997 under President Bill Clinton, and again to 15% in 2003 under President Bush.
However, Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the top marginal rate on wages (also interest, rent and royalties, etc.) more than 40% above the corresponding Reagan rate of 28%.
Mr. Obama would thus give us the worst of both worlds: tax rates on ordinary income 40% higher than Reagan and on capital gains 40% higher than Clinton. Raising the rate on capital gains to 28% would greatly reduce the ability of firms to minimize double taxation by returning cash to their shareholders through repurchases.
As for dividends, the Obama plan would nearly double the tax to 28% from 15%.I have revised the table that accompanied my op-ed showing the negative effects on the after-tax returns on investments to reflect the clarification. It is also available at http://www.stanford.edu/~boskin/
I'm glad to hear that Mr. Obama is willing to retain at least a portion of the Bush tax cuts on dividends. But nearly doubling the tax rates on capital gains and dividends to 28% is a terrible idea that would damage fragile financial markets and the economy.
*Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; he was chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in the George H.W. Bush White House. (The Journal has frequently invited the Obama campaign to explain its tax plans in our pages, and we gladly repeat the invitation publicly here today.)*
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Environmental Fascism : The Coming Nightmare
As always, Walter Williams produces powerful insight for the nightmare in our future. I have posted on this disastrous fraud that is 'global warming' many times in the past, but we can never be remained too many times of it dangers to our country.
Unfortunately both of the presidential candidates have professed a belief in this scam in one form or the other, but both agree we have to do something to stop man made green house gases that are destroying our planet. What nonsense!
Both want to tax us more for everything we eat and do to solves a non problem. This absolutely crazy. That is, they want to reduces our economy, and our way of life, to something similar to what is was 100 years ago. Of course this is impossible, but it doesn't matter to those sitting in the front pew of the church of man made global warming - They believe no sacrifice is to great for others to bear to save the planet. Those in the pew never see themselves having to endure sever hardship to bring about the changes they believe are necessary.
Never forget, and I have said this on many occasions, 'global warming' is a religion and not just a collective movement. These people refuse to debate or discuss their personal belief as being in anyway misguided or just plain wrong.
Remember Jim Jones from years back? 900 people drank the 'coolaid' and died strictly on the say so of their religious leader, Jim Jones. The global warming fanatics are similar in their mindless pursuit to eliminate carbon dioxide from our world. They are truly insane.
How is this similar, easy, we, and all animals, breath out CO2 and their is no hard science that points to CO2 as being a problem. None! Did you ever wonder why Al Gore refuses to debate the subject? I wonder if Jim Jones opened the floor to debate before he told his folk to drink up?
This is serious business as it effects us all now and in the future - we must stay vigilant and conscience of what is best for ourselves and our offspring as the November election arrive. What we do then will dictate how America will look and feel in the coming years.
Keep the faith - we have to power of the vote as a weapon in the battle for freedom.
A Country At Mercy Of Environmentalists
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS
Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 WSJ
Let's face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it's a different story with groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy.When they speak, Congress listens.
Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman's worse nightmare. Their political and economic success has been a near disaster for our nation.
For several decades, environmentalists have managed to get Congress to keep most of our oil resources off-limits to exploration and drilling. They've managed to have the Congress enact onerous regulations that have made refinery construction impossible. Similarly, they've used the courts and Congress to completely stymie the construction of nuclear power plants. As a result, energy prices are at historical highs and threaten our economy and national security.
What's the political response to our energy problems? It's more congressional and White House kowtowing to environmentalists, farmers and multibillion-dollar corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland. Their "solution," rather than to solve our oil supply problem by permitting drilling for the billions upon billions of barrels of oil beneath the surface of our country, is to enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This Act mandates that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline.
Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that diverting crops from food to fuel use would raise the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as pork, beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereal. Ethanol production has led to increases in the prices of other grains, such as soybean and wheat. Since the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter, higher grain prices have had a huge impact on food prices worldwide.
Congress and the environmentalists aren't through with us. If you're bothered by skyrocketing food and energy prices, wait until Congress reintroduces its environmentalist-inspired Climate Security Act, so-called cap and trade. Cap and trade is deceptively peddled as a free-market solution to the yet-to-be-settled issue of man-made climate change. Under its provisions, companies would be able to emit greenhouse gases only if they had a government allowance.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 15% cut in emissions would raise the annual average household's energy cost by $1,300. Since energy is an input to everything we use, we can expect everything to become costlier, resulting in a reduction in economic growth.There's a hateful side to cap and trade that's revealed by asking the question: How will it be decided who received how much allowance to emit greenhouse gases?
Congress could sell the allowances and/or give them away to favorite constituents. You can bet the rent money that a new army of lobbyists, with special pleadings, will descend on Washington to lobby Congress. And you can be sure that campaign contributions and favoritism will play an important role in the decision of who receives what allowances.
Much worse than that is the massive control government would have over our economy and lives. Congress might decide that since tobacco use is unhealthy, it might not issue allowances to tobacco companies.While many Americans might applaud that, how many would like Congress to refuse to issue allowances to companies that produce food that some people deem unhealthy such as french fries, sodas, canned soups and potato chips?
Congress might deny, or threaten to deny, allowances to companies that in its opinion didn't hire enough women and minorities. The possibilities for control over our lives would be endless and could include nuisance-type edicts such a requiring us to buy a permit to barbecue in our backyard.
The thirst to wield massive control over our economy helps explain the near religious belief in man-made global warming and the attacks on scientists and others who offer contradictory evidence.
Unfortunately both of the presidential candidates have professed a belief in this scam in one form or the other, but both agree we have to do something to stop man made green house gases that are destroying our planet. What nonsense!
Both want to tax us more for everything we eat and do to solves a non problem. This absolutely crazy. That is, they want to reduces our economy, and our way of life, to something similar to what is was 100 years ago. Of course this is impossible, but it doesn't matter to those sitting in the front pew of the church of man made global warming - They believe no sacrifice is to great for others to bear to save the planet. Those in the pew never see themselves having to endure sever hardship to bring about the changes they believe are necessary.
Never forget, and I have said this on many occasions, 'global warming' is a religion and not just a collective movement. These people refuse to debate or discuss their personal belief as being in anyway misguided or just plain wrong.
Remember Jim Jones from years back? 900 people drank the 'coolaid' and died strictly on the say so of their religious leader, Jim Jones. The global warming fanatics are similar in their mindless pursuit to eliminate carbon dioxide from our world. They are truly insane.
How is this similar, easy, we, and all animals, breath out CO2 and their is no hard science that points to CO2 as being a problem. None! Did you ever wonder why Al Gore refuses to debate the subject? I wonder if Jim Jones opened the floor to debate before he told his folk to drink up?
This is serious business as it effects us all now and in the future - we must stay vigilant and conscience of what is best for ourselves and our offspring as the November election arrive. What we do then will dictate how America will look and feel in the coming years.
Keep the faith - we have to power of the vote as a weapon in the battle for freedom.
A Country At Mercy Of Environmentalists
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS
Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 WSJ
Let's face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it's a different story with groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy.When they speak, Congress listens.
Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman's worse nightmare. Their political and economic success has been a near disaster for our nation.
For several decades, environmentalists have managed to get Congress to keep most of our oil resources off-limits to exploration and drilling. They've managed to have the Congress enact onerous regulations that have made refinery construction impossible. Similarly, they've used the courts and Congress to completely stymie the construction of nuclear power plants. As a result, energy prices are at historical highs and threaten our economy and national security.
What's the political response to our energy problems? It's more congressional and White House kowtowing to environmentalists, farmers and multibillion-dollar corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland. Their "solution," rather than to solve our oil supply problem by permitting drilling for the billions upon billions of barrels of oil beneath the surface of our country, is to enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This Act mandates that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline.
Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that diverting crops from food to fuel use would raise the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as pork, beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereal. Ethanol production has led to increases in the prices of other grains, such as soybean and wheat. Since the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter, higher grain prices have had a huge impact on food prices worldwide.
Congress and the environmentalists aren't through with us. If you're bothered by skyrocketing food and energy prices, wait until Congress reintroduces its environmentalist-inspired Climate Security Act, so-called cap and trade. Cap and trade is deceptively peddled as a free-market solution to the yet-to-be-settled issue of man-made climate change. Under its provisions, companies would be able to emit greenhouse gases only if they had a government allowance.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 15% cut in emissions would raise the annual average household's energy cost by $1,300. Since energy is an input to everything we use, we can expect everything to become costlier, resulting in a reduction in economic growth.There's a hateful side to cap and trade that's revealed by asking the question: How will it be decided who received how much allowance to emit greenhouse gases?
Congress could sell the allowances and/or give them away to favorite constituents. You can bet the rent money that a new army of lobbyists, with special pleadings, will descend on Washington to lobby Congress. And you can be sure that campaign contributions and favoritism will play an important role in the decision of who receives what allowances.
Much worse than that is the massive control government would have over our economy and lives. Congress might decide that since tobacco use is unhealthy, it might not issue allowances to tobacco companies.While many Americans might applaud that, how many would like Congress to refuse to issue allowances to companies that produce food that some people deem unhealthy such as french fries, sodas, canned soups and potato chips?
Congress might deny, or threaten to deny, allowances to companies that in its opinion didn't hire enough women and minorities. The possibilities for control over our lives would be endless and could include nuisance-type edicts such a requiring us to buy a permit to barbecue in our backyard.
The thirst to wield massive control over our economy helps explain the near religious belief in man-made global warming and the attacks on scientists and others who offer contradictory evidence.
Monday, August 04, 2008
History Records Events of 2010 : A Bad Year to be President
I don't know who wrote this but it certainly could be a look into our future. It is an interesting perspective on the upcoming elections and the consequences of making bad decisions based on wishful thinking and out right false information.
I believe it is imperative we take a long look at our candidates without our 'rose colored glasses'. If you want to take a peek at an article on senator Obama, the Investor's Daily had a good one that I posted a few days ago, "Who is Barack Obama, Really?"
Keep the faith while you learn the rules of battle.
Introduction: Welcome to Toastmasters, June 13, 2033.
That's right: 2033. Today, Rick Campbell, one of our senior members at age 87, is here to reminisce a bit and give us a history lesson. He says he is so old that he learned to drive an internal combustion engine car (remember those) with a manual transmission. He once owned a typewriter. He remembers when bicycles had one speed, phones had two-party lines, and cameras had something called film.
As incredible as this may seem, he says that when he was young, it was common for people to smoke in restaurants and public places. He is from a different time; almost a different world. I'm sure all of us are far too familiar with the tragic events of 2010, so Rick is not going to plow that fertile field again. Instead, he is going to give us a personal look back at the conditions which led up to that fateful year, in a speech titled "2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President."
"2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President" Yes, 2010 was long ago and far away. As we look back on history, it appears that some Presidents had an easy ride - times of growth and stability. Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton come to mind. Those were good years to be President.
Others were elected just when the Republic was facing terrible crises: Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush. They rose to the occasion, even though they were controversial and widely hated while in office. Not such good years to be President.
Just a few years prior, in 2008, the country began foundering. We were in the sixth year of the Iraqi Occupation, and the economy was flat. The mainstream press clearly wanted a Democrat elected. Although we didn't know it until some years later, oil producing nations had colluded to secretly buy their own oil on the open market, driving oil prices to shocking levels above the true demand price - reaching a high of $162 a barrel in October, 2008, just before the general elections. Their purpose was simple: to effect regime change in the United States . And, of course, the U.S. economy was already in a real estate slump and also suffering the curse of stagflation: slow growth and high inflation.
There were a million home foreclosures. Independent truckers went under by the thousands. Airlines failed. Airlines with names now long-forgotten: United, Delta, Northwestern, American. All now merged, of course, into the one lone U.S. carrier we love so much: Southwest.
Against this backdrop of weariness of the war on terror and economic distress, the American people were ripe for a demagogue, and they certainly got one in Barack Hussein Obama. He and his running mate Kathlene Sibelius inspired them with vague notions of hope and change; of a world in which diplomacy settled all international problems, of free universal health care, of abundant alternative energy, of peace and love. It was a vision too good to resist. The Republican nominee, a name you probably haven't heard in years, anyone? Yes, it was John McCain, an obscure Senator from Arizona , who had no clue how to run a national campaign and a platform nearly as liberal as Obama's.
The selection of Condoleeza Rice as his running mate looked brilliant at first. Unfortunately, black voters viewed her as white, and women voters viewed her as one of the guys. Even so, the McCain/Rice ticket would have won the election if it weren't for the fact that 16 percent of conservative Republicans that didn't vote for anyone, remember? That's right, Bob Barr, another name that's a footnote in history.
After Obama's narrow win, thanks to recounts in Broward County , Florida , the country was positively giddy. A Democrat house, senate and president. It was an end of gridlock in Washington, Camelot!
When Congress convened in January, 2009, the 44th President of the United States did something unique in history: he made good on his campaign promises. Certainly most Americans never really thought he was serious during the campaign. But whether because of inexperience, idealism, or simply incompetence, he followed through.
In Obama's first One Hundred Days, the Congress passed his initiatives, and he signed them into law as he said he would. He repealed the Bush tax cuts and increased capital gains taxes. He enacted a windfall profits tax and instituted price controls on gasoline and diesel fuel. He passed universal health care, which added an additional 10 percent tax increase on all working Americans. He signed the Immigrant Amnesty bill which created 12 million new citizens instantly, each with entitlements.
He closed the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and summarily released all the detainees. He repealed the Patriot Act and cut funding for espionage and eliminated all terrorist listening and wiretaps. Most important, he began the complete and immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. He ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to retain bases in Kuwait and Qatar .
Instead, he went with the recommendation of Secretary of Defense Dennis Kucinich and ordered all troops back to U.S. soil. Viola! In One Hundred Days, by May of 2009, it was all done, and the vision was complete. He did exactly what he said he would do. And so it was in the summer of 2009 that things began to unravel for Obama.
Of course, the economy needed a tax cut, not an increase, and unemployment quickly rose to 12 percent. Even attorneys and economists were put in the bread lines. Hard times. Price controls on gasoline immediately led to shortages and gas lines.
The global cooling trend we have seen for the past 25 years first became obvious in 2009, exposing the CO2 global warming fraud. People were justifiably angry. Federal deficits increased massively because thousands of baby boomers, facing job loss and much higher taxes, simply gave up and took Social Security.
Although the superb U.S. health care system was thrown into disarray, the bright spot was the creation of the Federal Department of Health Care, and the immediate hiring of 250,000 administrators, inspectors and auditors, the only job growth in any economic sector in 2009.
By February 2010, the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq was complete. It was a very expensive undertaking. And then in March, the gradual Shiite insurgencies from Iran turned into a true Iraqi civil war. In May, Iranian tanks crossed the border and quickly took Baghdad . Although the exact number is not known, at least 230,000 Sunni Iraqis died as we stood by.
Iran also quickly moved into undefended Kuwait . President Obama did exactly what he said he would. He sent Secretary of State Maria Cantwell to Tehran to meet with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. After two weeks of high level talks, the United States agreed to allow Iran to retain Iraq and Kuwait to create stability in the Middle East, with the understanding that Israel would not be disturbed.
Cantwell returned to Washington and explained the agreement in her famous speech, in which she proudly noted that the Obama administration had finally achieved "peace in our time" in the Middle East . So there was some surprise at the rocket attacks on Tel Aviv on August 14th. President Obama said, "This is not the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew."
The Obama administration decided it would be de-stabilizing to take sides in the conflict and approximately 29,000 Israeli civilians died during the summer and fall. American Jews were appalled at the inaction. Yes, in 2010 most American Jews were Democrats, but because of 2010, they are solid Republicans today.
As awkward as it was, everything might have turned out all right for the Obama administration going into the fall mid-term elections of 2010, if it hadn't been for the dirty bomb in the Port of Long Beach . The administration had cut funding for the inspection of containers, because they felt it showed a "lack of trust" in the international trading community. It wasn't really a very big bomb, and thank goodness, not a real nuclear device, but nonetheless it contaminated some expensive real estate - Newport Beach , Palos Verdes Estates- and ultimately caused the death of 14,000 Americans. People were especially annoyed that Disneyland had to be closed for decontamination.
And so, in the midterm elections, Republicans regained control of both the House and Senate, and the rest is history. The impeachment proceedings against President Obama for "failure to protect and defend" were swift and nearly unanimous. Vice President Sibelius resigned. Newly-elected Speaker of the House, J.C. Watts, became the 45th President of the United States . But you know the rest of the story well. Republicans finished the war on Islamic fundamentalists, largely by aiming ICBM's at Mecca and Medina .
No Democrat has been elected President since. Republicans have held both Houses of Congress. History of Western Civilization and Economics are now taught in all public schools, and in English only. Marriage is defined as one man and one woman. And there are border fences, north and south.
We old codgers remember the ancient Confucian curse: "May you live in interesting times." Well, 2010 was an interesting year, but it was not a good year to be President
I believe it is imperative we take a long look at our candidates without our 'rose colored glasses'. If you want to take a peek at an article on senator Obama, the Investor's Daily had a good one that I posted a few days ago, "Who is Barack Obama, Really?"
Keep the faith while you learn the rules of battle.
Introduction: Welcome to Toastmasters, June 13, 2033.
That's right: 2033. Today, Rick Campbell, one of our senior members at age 87, is here to reminisce a bit and give us a history lesson. He says he is so old that he learned to drive an internal combustion engine car (remember those) with a manual transmission. He once owned a typewriter. He remembers when bicycles had one speed, phones had two-party lines, and cameras had something called film.
As incredible as this may seem, he says that when he was young, it was common for people to smoke in restaurants and public places. He is from a different time; almost a different world. I'm sure all of us are far too familiar with the tragic events of 2010, so Rick is not going to plow that fertile field again. Instead, he is going to give us a personal look back at the conditions which led up to that fateful year, in a speech titled "2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President."
"2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President" Yes, 2010 was long ago and far away. As we look back on history, it appears that some Presidents had an easy ride - times of growth and stability. Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton come to mind. Those were good years to be President.
Others were elected just when the Republic was facing terrible crises: Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush. They rose to the occasion, even though they were controversial and widely hated while in office. Not such good years to be President.
Just a few years prior, in 2008, the country began foundering. We were in the sixth year of the Iraqi Occupation, and the economy was flat. The mainstream press clearly wanted a Democrat elected. Although we didn't know it until some years later, oil producing nations had colluded to secretly buy their own oil on the open market, driving oil prices to shocking levels above the true demand price - reaching a high of $162 a barrel in October, 2008, just before the general elections. Their purpose was simple: to effect regime change in the United States . And, of course, the U.S. economy was already in a real estate slump and also suffering the curse of stagflation: slow growth and high inflation.
There were a million home foreclosures. Independent truckers went under by the thousands. Airlines failed. Airlines with names now long-forgotten: United, Delta, Northwestern, American. All now merged, of course, into the one lone U.S. carrier we love so much: Southwest.
Against this backdrop of weariness of the war on terror and economic distress, the American people were ripe for a demagogue, and they certainly got one in Barack Hussein Obama. He and his running mate Kathlene Sibelius inspired them with vague notions of hope and change; of a world in which diplomacy settled all international problems, of free universal health care, of abundant alternative energy, of peace and love. It was a vision too good to resist. The Republican nominee, a name you probably haven't heard in years, anyone? Yes, it was John McCain, an obscure Senator from Arizona , who had no clue how to run a national campaign and a platform nearly as liberal as Obama's.
The selection of Condoleeza Rice as his running mate looked brilliant at first. Unfortunately, black voters viewed her as white, and women voters viewed her as one of the guys. Even so, the McCain/Rice ticket would have won the election if it weren't for the fact that 16 percent of conservative Republicans that didn't vote for anyone, remember? That's right, Bob Barr, another name that's a footnote in history.
After Obama's narrow win, thanks to recounts in Broward County , Florida , the country was positively giddy. A Democrat house, senate and president. It was an end of gridlock in Washington, Camelot!
When Congress convened in January, 2009, the 44th President of the United States did something unique in history: he made good on his campaign promises. Certainly most Americans never really thought he was serious during the campaign. But whether because of inexperience, idealism, or simply incompetence, he followed through.
In Obama's first One Hundred Days, the Congress passed his initiatives, and he signed them into law as he said he would. He repealed the Bush tax cuts and increased capital gains taxes. He enacted a windfall profits tax and instituted price controls on gasoline and diesel fuel. He passed universal health care, which added an additional 10 percent tax increase on all working Americans. He signed the Immigrant Amnesty bill which created 12 million new citizens instantly, each with entitlements.
He closed the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and summarily released all the detainees. He repealed the Patriot Act and cut funding for espionage and eliminated all terrorist listening and wiretaps. Most important, he began the complete and immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. He ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to retain bases in Kuwait and Qatar .
Instead, he went with the recommendation of Secretary of Defense Dennis Kucinich and ordered all troops back to U.S. soil. Viola! In One Hundred Days, by May of 2009, it was all done, and the vision was complete. He did exactly what he said he would do. And so it was in the summer of 2009 that things began to unravel for Obama.
Of course, the economy needed a tax cut, not an increase, and unemployment quickly rose to 12 percent. Even attorneys and economists were put in the bread lines. Hard times. Price controls on gasoline immediately led to shortages and gas lines.
The global cooling trend we have seen for the past 25 years first became obvious in 2009, exposing the CO2 global warming fraud. People were justifiably angry. Federal deficits increased massively because thousands of baby boomers, facing job loss and much higher taxes, simply gave up and took Social Security.
Although the superb U.S. health care system was thrown into disarray, the bright spot was the creation of the Federal Department of Health Care, and the immediate hiring of 250,000 administrators, inspectors and auditors, the only job growth in any economic sector in 2009.
By February 2010, the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq was complete. It was a very expensive undertaking. And then in March, the gradual Shiite insurgencies from Iran turned into a true Iraqi civil war. In May, Iranian tanks crossed the border and quickly took Baghdad . Although the exact number is not known, at least 230,000 Sunni Iraqis died as we stood by.
Iran also quickly moved into undefended Kuwait . President Obama did exactly what he said he would. He sent Secretary of State Maria Cantwell to Tehran to meet with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. After two weeks of high level talks, the United States agreed to allow Iran to retain Iraq and Kuwait to create stability in the Middle East, with the understanding that Israel would not be disturbed.
Cantwell returned to Washington and explained the agreement in her famous speech, in which she proudly noted that the Obama administration had finally achieved "peace in our time" in the Middle East . So there was some surprise at the rocket attacks on Tel Aviv on August 14th. President Obama said, "This is not the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew."
The Obama administration decided it would be de-stabilizing to take sides in the conflict and approximately 29,000 Israeli civilians died during the summer and fall. American Jews were appalled at the inaction. Yes, in 2010 most American Jews were Democrats, but because of 2010, they are solid Republicans today.
As awkward as it was, everything might have turned out all right for the Obama administration going into the fall mid-term elections of 2010, if it hadn't been for the dirty bomb in the Port of Long Beach . The administration had cut funding for the inspection of containers, because they felt it showed a "lack of trust" in the international trading community. It wasn't really a very big bomb, and thank goodness, not a real nuclear device, but nonetheless it contaminated some expensive real estate - Newport Beach , Palos Verdes Estates- and ultimately caused the death of 14,000 Americans. People were especially annoyed that Disneyland had to be closed for decontamination.
And so, in the midterm elections, Republicans regained control of both the House and Senate, and the rest is history. The impeachment proceedings against President Obama for "failure to protect and defend" were swift and nearly unanimous. Vice President Sibelius resigned. Newly-elected Speaker of the House, J.C. Watts, became the 45th President of the United States . But you know the rest of the story well. Republicans finished the war on Islamic fundamentalists, largely by aiming ICBM's at Mecca and Medina .
No Democrat has been elected President since. Republicans have held both Houses of Congress. History of Western Civilization and Economics are now taught in all public schools, and in English only. Marriage is defined as one man and one woman. And there are border fences, north and south.
We old codgers remember the ancient Confucian curse: "May you live in interesting times." Well, 2010 was an interesting year, but it was not a good year to be President
Israel and America Forge Battle Plans Against Iran
Israel refuses to take a back seat to the threat of an Iranian nuclear attack. While the presidential candidates pontificate on how they will side with Israel against any external threat to it's sovereignty, the Israelis know Obama will not lift a finger to help in a war were Arabs are fighting Jews as he is a Marxist socialist, and McCain says he will help but it's anyone guess what he will really do while seating on the 'left' side of the isle in Congress continuously looking to be bipartisan. Remember the gang of fourteen?
The fact of the matter is, the Israelis have to make their move before Bush leaves office or they are on their own. Other wise, if they wait until after the election in November, the middle east will become a nuclear waste land while the United States and the free world wring their collective hands over how they can help but not become involved. The best way may be starting a sincere dialogue. Understanding the problem.
Of course, Europe will wait for the US to lead the way, but as we all know, given the two presidential candidate's philosophies, neither will have the guts to take a stand. Therefore all will be lost including 53% of the know world oil reserves which will drive the oil price through the roof.
And guess who will be blamed for the entire mess by the liberal Marxist Democrats and their media lap dogs? That's right, the Republicans and Bush! The general public will believe every word is gospel.
The Investor's Daily here lays out the scenario that many others have only hinted at for months.
keep the faith, the battle is taking a turn for freedom.
A Darkening Mideast
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, August 01, 2008
*War On Terror:*
A "breakthrough" in Iran's nuclear program, a shipment of advanced U.S. anti-missile radar destined for Israel and word of a secret Iranian bomb factory. Are these signs Iran soon will be under attack?
A top contender to succeed Ehud Olmert as Israeli prime minister says that Tehran is poised for a "major breakthrough'" in its nuclear program, one that is "unacceptable" to the state of Israel.
Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Institute for Near East Policy in Washington that a nuclear-armed Iran is "an existential threat." The former army commander added: "We don't want war; we want peace, but we will not let the second Holocaust take place . . ."The high-ranking Mofaz is certainly in on whatever plans Israel has been making to strike Iran, which lends credibility to his somewhat mysterious statement. Indications from Israeli officials suggest Iran may be attacked before year's end.
Another leading candidate to lead Israel's Knesset, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, recently told her fellow Cabinet members: "The Iranians have no intention of halting their nuclear program."Some Israeli pollsters currently view the reputed former Mossad terrorist hunter as likely to win out in an election against the hawkish Likud Party leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She and Mofaz both belong to the Olmert's Kadima Party, founded by ailing former prime minister Ariel Sharon.
But whether Israelis choose Mofaz, Livni or Netanyahu, it seems certain that Iran will be faced by a government of the Jewish state more than willing to bomb its widely dispersed nuclear facilities to smithereens.
Another sign of how seriously both Israel and the U.S. take the Iranian threat comes in a Pentagon report that we'll be giving a high-tech detection and tracking radar system to the Israelis. The technology reportedly can tell the difference between missiles and decoys and is expected to be in operation by early next year.The Pentagon spoke of supporting "additional defensive capabilities for Israel," and the U.S. already has agreed to provide tens of billions of dollars to the country in aid.
Add to that a report last week from a Kuwaiti daily, denied by Iran, of construction of a secret nuclear weapons construction site in the Al-Zarqan region near the city of Ahwaz in the southwestern area of the country near the Iraq border. If true, this would be a development completely unnoticed by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran insists the facility is a power station that has existed at that location for 40 years.
In his latest book, "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War," columnist Pat Buchanan makes much of Winston Churchill's love of war, charging that the British statesman was more like a pagan of the Roman Empire than a Christian Englishman. But vanquishing a great evil requires a warrior who fights to win.
Israel seems set to place someone in power who understands that well, as what Churchill called a "gathering storm" repeats itself in the Middle East.
The fact of the matter is, the Israelis have to make their move before Bush leaves office or they are on their own. Other wise, if they wait until after the election in November, the middle east will become a nuclear waste land while the United States and the free world wring their collective hands over how they can help but not become involved. The best way may be starting a sincere dialogue. Understanding the problem.
Of course, Europe will wait for the US to lead the way, but as we all know, given the two presidential candidate's philosophies, neither will have the guts to take a stand. Therefore all will be lost including 53% of the know world oil reserves which will drive the oil price through the roof.
And guess who will be blamed for the entire mess by the liberal Marxist Democrats and their media lap dogs? That's right, the Republicans and Bush! The general public will believe every word is gospel.
The Investor's Daily here lays out the scenario that many others have only hinted at for months.
keep the faith, the battle is taking a turn for freedom.
A Darkening Mideast
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, August 01, 2008
*War On Terror:*
A "breakthrough" in Iran's nuclear program, a shipment of advanced U.S. anti-missile radar destined for Israel and word of a secret Iranian bomb factory. Are these signs Iran soon will be under attack?
A top contender to succeed Ehud Olmert as Israeli prime minister says that Tehran is poised for a "major breakthrough'" in its nuclear program, one that is "unacceptable" to the state of Israel.
Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Institute for Near East Policy in Washington that a nuclear-armed Iran is "an existential threat." The former army commander added: "We don't want war; we want peace, but we will not let the second Holocaust take place . . ."The high-ranking Mofaz is certainly in on whatever plans Israel has been making to strike Iran, which lends credibility to his somewhat mysterious statement. Indications from Israeli officials suggest Iran may be attacked before year's end.
Another leading candidate to lead Israel's Knesset, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, recently told her fellow Cabinet members: "The Iranians have no intention of halting their nuclear program."Some Israeli pollsters currently view the reputed former Mossad terrorist hunter as likely to win out in an election against the hawkish Likud Party leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She and Mofaz both belong to the Olmert's Kadima Party, founded by ailing former prime minister Ariel Sharon.
But whether Israelis choose Mofaz, Livni or Netanyahu, it seems certain that Iran will be faced by a government of the Jewish state more than willing to bomb its widely dispersed nuclear facilities to smithereens.
Another sign of how seriously both Israel and the U.S. take the Iranian threat comes in a Pentagon report that we'll be giving a high-tech detection and tracking radar system to the Israelis. The technology reportedly can tell the difference between missiles and decoys and is expected to be in operation by early next year.The Pentagon spoke of supporting "additional defensive capabilities for Israel," and the U.S. already has agreed to provide tens of billions of dollars to the country in aid.
Add to that a report last week from a Kuwaiti daily, denied by Iran, of construction of a secret nuclear weapons construction site in the Al-Zarqan region near the city of Ahwaz in the southwestern area of the country near the Iraq border. If true, this would be a development completely unnoticed by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran insists the facility is a power station that has existed at that location for 40 years.
In his latest book, "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War," columnist Pat Buchanan makes much of Winston Churchill's love of war, charging that the British statesman was more like a pagan of the Roman Empire than a Christian Englishman. But vanquishing a great evil requires a warrior who fights to win.
Israel seems set to place someone in power who understands that well, as what Churchill called a "gathering storm" repeats itself in the Middle East.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Just For The Fun - On the Lighter Side
What with the socialists Democrats always doing everything in their power to render our country into 'third world' status, and send us all into poverty, I think it's time to take a break from the stress of doing battle.
Enjoy
Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with those expensive double-pane energy-efficient kind. Yesterday, I got a call from the contractor who installed them.
He was complaining that the windows had been installed a whole year ago and I hadn't paid for them yet. Now just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid. So I told him just exactly what his fast-talking sales guy had told ME last year. Namely, that in just ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves!
Helllooooo!' I told him, 'It's been a year!'There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up. He hasn't called back, probably too embarrassed about forgetting the guarantee they made me. Bet he won't underestimate my intelligence again.
Enjoy
Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with those expensive double-pane energy-efficient kind. Yesterday, I got a call from the contractor who installed them.
He was complaining that the windows had been installed a whole year ago and I hadn't paid for them yet. Now just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid. So I told him just exactly what his fast-talking sales guy had told ME last year. Namely, that in just ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves!
Helllooooo!' I told him, 'It's been a year!'There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up. He hasn't called back, probably too embarrassed about forgetting the guarantee they made me. Bet he won't underestimate my intelligence again.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Who is Barack Obama, Really? : Now We Know!
Okay, now we have the whole story. I wonder why it has taken this long for someone to pull all this information together?
I have been aware of Obama's early background with his father, and I knew his early years were steeped in a socialist agenda, but I was never aware of his extensive associations with committed communists.
I really can't add much to this article - this is the most informative piece on Obama that I have ever come across, especially from a reputable source. This is a must read and then saved for future contemplation. The Investor's Business Daily is to be appalled.
Keep the faith, we are fighting the battle on all fronts for freedom.
Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, July 28, 2008
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati. Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval. It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism. In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all). Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor. Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't. That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike. You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress. But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion. The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment."They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America. The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground.
Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters. After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale.
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.
With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa. As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all.""Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote.
"I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer." He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington. Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words. Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
I have been aware of Obama's early background with his father, and I knew his early years were steeped in a socialist agenda, but I was never aware of his extensive associations with committed communists.
I really can't add much to this article - this is the most informative piece on Obama that I have ever come across, especially from a reputable source. This is a must read and then saved for future contemplation. The Investor's Business Daily is to be appalled.
Keep the faith, we are fighting the battle on all fronts for freedom.
Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, July 28, 2008
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati. Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval. It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism. In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all). Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor. Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't. That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike. You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress. But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion. The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment."They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America. The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground.
Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters. After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale.
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.
With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa. As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all.""Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote.
"I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer." He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington. Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words. Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Democrats Prove Their Duplicity - "Drill Bill" a Fraud
Again, as this article points out, the Democrats are firmly against lowering gas prices for the American public.
It never ceases to amaze me how the liberal Democrats, socialists, can stand up and say they are doing everything they can to help America become energy independent while at the same time doing everything they can to prevent us for doing so. This 'Drill Bill' is proof how they operate in the shadows and fine print. They believe the general public is easily duped. I hope they are wrong. duplicity
It is almost impossible to understand why the Democrats are doing this - what in the Democrat agenda dictates they must do everything they can to harm this country? The only thing that I can see why they have this need to stand in the way of anything that looks even remotely like progress is the need to gain power, and therefore control of the general population through confusion and conflict.
What it comes down to with the liberal socialist Democrats is 'anything goes', no matter how harmful to this country, as long as they gain political advantage.
Little wonder why the Democrats have a history of being known as moral and physical cowards, that is, their defeatist attitude on the war and continuing efforts to stop American industrialisation.
Bottom line, they are not like the rest of us who want America to succeed, they are dedicated to America's destruction. They do not care what happens to this country. They prove it every day.
So keep the faith in our country and never, ever, quit the battle.
The Democrats' Energy Charade*
By MICHELE BACHMANN July 29, 2008
Earlier this month the House of Representatives voted on an energy bill called the Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands (Drill) Act. The good news, for those of us who actually want to do something to lower gas prices, is that it failed. The bad news is that Democrats will try again before the November elections.
We can expect more legislation that claims to increase production, but in reality offers a framework of heavy regulation, litigation and union rules that could prevent new energy supplies from getting to market. And we can expect legislation that would likely hamper current oil and gas exploration.
Consider the details of Drill. It would not have opened new lands to energy exploration. Instead, it would have increased the number of lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's (ANWR's) sister territory on Alaska's North Slope -- from one lease sale every two years to one every year. The problem here came in the fine print. The bill would have mandated that leasing be done in an undefined, "environmentally responsible" way.
We know from experience that such ambiguous language leads to lawsuits and delays. Further, the bill authorized the construction of new pipelines, but would have mandated that they be built in an "environmentally responsible manner" using labor agreements that earmarked all the work for labor union members.The Democrats' focus on the National Petroleum Reserve is also striking.
While it contains comparable known reserves to ANWR -- 10.6 billion barrels compared to an estimated 10.4 billion barrels in the wildlife refuge -- its fields are spread over 23 million acres. The portion of ANWR territory that should be opened to exploration covers a mere 2,000 acres.
The National Petroleum Reserve's fields are a little over 250 miles from the current pipeline infrastructure, while ANWR is only 75 miles away. To top it off, currently there is no production in the National Petroleum Reserve because of ongoing litigation.
By focusing on a patch of Arctic tundra more spread out than ANWR, a greater distance from current pipelines, and subject to lawsuits not addressed by the legislation, the Democrats chose to respond to American cries for expedited drilling in such a way that would have made it harder to produce energy.There's more.
The Drill Act included "use it or lose it" restrictions that prohibit the federal government from issuing new exploration or production leases anywhere, unless the applicant can certify that every lease currently held is being "diligently developed" (again, to be defined later by lawyers) to produce oil or natural gas.
Any lease not meeting the yet-to-be-determined standards would have to be relinquished.Yet federal law already requires lease holders to produce within a set number of years, and energy companies have no incentive to let leases (paid for with up-front bonus fees and annual rent payments regardless of production) go idle.
The "inaction" decried by some Democrats overlooks the exploration on these lands that is expensive, ongoing and time consuming. In the real world, forcing companies to "use" their leases immediately or lose them means making exploration more cost-prohibitive. It will ensure that less exploration will take place. It's akin to forcing a pharmaceutical company to develop a cure for cancer in some arbitrary number of years or else lose the ability to seek the cure.
Unfortunately, the Drill Act is likely to be the first of many phony bills offered to the public this year. They will be aimed at giving the appearance of wanting to increase energy supplies. But in reality they will undermine efforts to increase domestic oil production.
Perhaps the Democratic majority will change course in the months ahead, and choose to join with Republicans to adopt commonsense proposals to unlock vast American energy reserves. But that will only happen if the American people make it clear that they know when they are being had.
*Ms. Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, recently returned from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.*
It never ceases to amaze me how the liberal Democrats, socialists, can stand up and say they are doing everything they can to help America become energy independent while at the same time doing everything they can to prevent us for doing so. This 'Drill Bill' is proof how they operate in the shadows and fine print. They believe the general public is easily duped. I hope they are wrong. duplicity
It is almost impossible to understand why the Democrats are doing this - what in the Democrat agenda dictates they must do everything they can to harm this country? The only thing that I can see why they have this need to stand in the way of anything that looks even remotely like progress is the need to gain power, and therefore control of the general population through confusion and conflict.
What it comes down to with the liberal socialist Democrats is 'anything goes', no matter how harmful to this country, as long as they gain political advantage.
Little wonder why the Democrats have a history of being known as moral and physical cowards, that is, their defeatist attitude on the war and continuing efforts to stop American industrialisation.
Bottom line, they are not like the rest of us who want America to succeed, they are dedicated to America's destruction. They do not care what happens to this country. They prove it every day.
So keep the faith in our country and never, ever, quit the battle.
The Democrats' Energy Charade*
By MICHELE BACHMANN July 29, 2008
Earlier this month the House of Representatives voted on an energy bill called the Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands (Drill) Act. The good news, for those of us who actually want to do something to lower gas prices, is that it failed. The bad news is that Democrats will try again before the November elections.
We can expect more legislation that claims to increase production, but in reality offers a framework of heavy regulation, litigation and union rules that could prevent new energy supplies from getting to market. And we can expect legislation that would likely hamper current oil and gas exploration.
Consider the details of Drill. It would not have opened new lands to energy exploration. Instead, it would have increased the number of lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's (ANWR's) sister territory on Alaska's North Slope -- from one lease sale every two years to one every year. The problem here came in the fine print. The bill would have mandated that leasing be done in an undefined, "environmentally responsible" way.
We know from experience that such ambiguous language leads to lawsuits and delays. Further, the bill authorized the construction of new pipelines, but would have mandated that they be built in an "environmentally responsible manner" using labor agreements that earmarked all the work for labor union members.The Democrats' focus on the National Petroleum Reserve is also striking.
While it contains comparable known reserves to ANWR -- 10.6 billion barrels compared to an estimated 10.4 billion barrels in the wildlife refuge -- its fields are spread over 23 million acres. The portion of ANWR territory that should be opened to exploration covers a mere 2,000 acres.
The National Petroleum Reserve's fields are a little over 250 miles from the current pipeline infrastructure, while ANWR is only 75 miles away. To top it off, currently there is no production in the National Petroleum Reserve because of ongoing litigation.
By focusing on a patch of Arctic tundra more spread out than ANWR, a greater distance from current pipelines, and subject to lawsuits not addressed by the legislation, the Democrats chose to respond to American cries for expedited drilling in such a way that would have made it harder to produce energy.There's more.
The Drill Act included "use it or lose it" restrictions that prohibit the federal government from issuing new exploration or production leases anywhere, unless the applicant can certify that every lease currently held is being "diligently developed" (again, to be defined later by lawyers) to produce oil or natural gas.
Any lease not meeting the yet-to-be-determined standards would have to be relinquished.Yet federal law already requires lease holders to produce within a set number of years, and energy companies have no incentive to let leases (paid for with up-front bonus fees and annual rent payments regardless of production) go idle.
The "inaction" decried by some Democrats overlooks the exploration on these lands that is expensive, ongoing and time consuming. In the real world, forcing companies to "use" their leases immediately or lose them means making exploration more cost-prohibitive. It will ensure that less exploration will take place. It's akin to forcing a pharmaceutical company to develop a cure for cancer in some arbitrary number of years or else lose the ability to seek the cure.
Unfortunately, the Drill Act is likely to be the first of many phony bills offered to the public this year. They will be aimed at giving the appearance of wanting to increase energy supplies. But in reality they will undermine efforts to increase domestic oil production.
Perhaps the Democratic majority will change course in the months ahead, and choose to join with Republicans to adopt commonsense proposals to unlock vast American energy reserves. But that will only happen if the American people make it clear that they know when they are being had.
*Ms. Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, recently returned from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.*
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