Political Truth and Fact: June 2009

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June 2009

June 30, 2009

Tuesday's Web

The Day’s top political news:

Chaos and arm-twisting gives Nancy Pelosi a major win

Pelosi’s “Cap and Trade” is really a new tax on all Americans.

Pelosi and her top lieutenants spent hours whipping, cajoling, begging and browbeating undecided Democrats — and triple-checking their whip lists to decide who was a solid “yes” and who was prevaricating on the cap-and-trade legislation.

And whatever the fallout, aides say that both Pelosi and President Barack Obama now know that their majority can hold together — barely — when placed under withering pressure — which may bode well for the equally arduous trials on health care reform.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24364.html

Despite Majority, Obama to Be Tested

Diverse Ideology Cuts Democrats' Edge

After a series of early and relatively easy victories on Capitol Hill, the White House appears certain to face a more difficult road when Congress returns to work next week.

Obama and his aides have proved adept at navigating the politics and eccentricities of the legislative branch. But as lawmakers attempt to navigate much trickier and more contentious issues in the second half of the year, the narrow margin of Friday's energy vote served as a warning: The higher the stakes, the tougher the challenge in finding consensus within what has become a diverse Democratic majority.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062904175.html

The Rasmussen Tracking poll shows decline for Obama

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That matches the lowest level yet recorded

Fifty percent (50%) favor passage of the health care reform proposal being crafted by Obama and Congressional Democrats. Forty-five percent (45%) are opposed.

Overall, 54% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove. Eighteen percent (18%) say that Congress is doing a good or an excellent job.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Opinion:
Time to begin an honest evaluation

We’ve seen a lot of email traffic about the recent passage of Obama’s new tax bill. The traffic assaults the eight Republican turncoats. Had those eight followed Party direction and voted “no”, the infamous bill would have been defeated and American families would have been saved from seeing their taxes rise into thousands of additional dollars.

Less attention is being paid Blue Dog Democrats – Congressmen generally expected to vote with Republicans on bill such as this recent tax measure. Among these Blue Dogs who voted with Obama is Allen Boyd who represents the Second District of Florida.

His district votes up to 70% Republican in presidential elections, but Boyd has slipped in by a lack of viable Republican opposition. A woman from Tallahassee was the last contestant with an apparent ability for defeating Boyd, but she ran a less than effective campaign and lost. I live in Panama City – in the western edge of the district, and the female candidates campaign failed to do much of anything in this area. This despite my offering her pro bono help. My efforts were to have been underwritten by a conservative Congressman from another state.

Boyd is opposed this year, but I know nothing regarding his opponent.

Body comes to Panama City today and there is an effort being put forward by those who organized the April 15 tea party protest here. That protest was very unorganized and didn’t even have speakers to address the crowd.

I doubt much has been done about the protest slated for today beyond emails to those who signed up at the April 15 outing. We’ll see.

I am expecting no more than a handful of protesters. This poor showing will send a message to the Congressman that he is not being damaged by his pro Obama vote. The assumption is wron…very wrong.

However, it will make no difference given the predictable coverage and reporting of the media. The effort will damage the campaign of Boyd’s opponent and will leave a pallor over the tea party movement.

Normal America cant allow such poor showings.

We’ll see how the test works here.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/enough_of_the_fluff_already_gi.html

Obama's 'high crimes and misdemeanors'

According to the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to impeach and remove from office any President that is charged and found guilty of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' The term encompasses felonies and other unlawful acts that are not considered felonies.

Barack Obama has a truckload of problems on his hands. He has enacted policies that fit the description of impeachable offenses. He can be thankful that Congress is controlled by his partners-in-crime, or else he would be facing serious charges.

(NOTE: Obama has many things for which he should answer. Perhaps not to the degree this author suggests, but wrong headed things none the less. The birth certificate issue is just one such offense. If Obama has a real certificate proving his place of birth was Hawaii, fine. Present it and end the discussion. To date, Obama has not only failed to do so, but has spent a million or two for a herd of lawyers working overtime to hide whatever reality exists.)

Let's take a look at some of his offenses, shall we?

*He violated the law and the provisions of the Constitution by seizing control of GM and Chrysler without proper authorization from Congress. Although his unlawful cronies in Congress granted him the authority after the fact, his action to seize corporations was a violation of the law at the time it was implemented. The fact that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed this atrocity is no matter. Thomas Jefferson said it best when he articulated a key principle of liberty--any government that willfully violates the rule of law and encroaches on the rights of the people ceases to be a legitimate government. This government has violated the provisions of the 5th Amendment regarding due process and fair compensation at the very least.

*His use of ACORN as a campaign vehicle is a violation of the law. Entities such as ACORN are prohibited by the Federal Government from engaging in partisan political activity. It is clear to anybody with eyes and ears that this organization was an overtly pro-Obama entity, the goal of which was to do nothing but get out the vote for BO.

*His consistent and blatant pandering to America's sworn enemies in the Muslim world is tantamount to treason, the definition of which, according to the U.S. Constitution, is the aiding and abetting of America's enemies. Can there be any doubt that Obama should at least be charged with the offense, given his penchant for going out of his way to offend our allies such as Israel, Britain, France, and Germany, while implementing policies that favor Hamas, Iran, Egypt, Syria, and other terrorist hotbeds?

*He broke a law that he himself pushed and helped pass as a Senator that provides protections for Inspectors-General who do their jobs by investigating corruption, waste, and fraud in government programs. Yet when these government watchdogs get too close to the thuggery of Obama's friends, they get summarily fired for no good reason, such as Mr. Walpin.

*And then there are those who believe that Barack Obama has no valid U.S. birth certificate. At first such charges were dismissed as the musings of kooks. But increasingly many level-headed Americans are beginning to look closely, realizing that perhaps those who first broke this story are not kooks after all. So far, no valid copy of Obama's birth certificate has been produced, meaning that if he doesn't have one, he is not even eligible to serve, which can only point to yet another violation of the law--fraud.

*Several citizens have filed criminal complaints calling for the impeachment of Barack Obama based upon these and other issues. One of those issues is the illegal use of the military in Alabama to police the streets of a small town that had been hit with a crime wave.

Canada Free Press published an interview with one man who filed a criminal complaint against Obama based upon the illegal use of the military, his missing birth certificate, and his treasonous acts regarding America's enemies. Here is the reporter's introduction to the interview:

In light of the now almost daily bombardment of the US Constitution by the sitting US Commander in Chief, the question ‘is our Constitution still the law of the land?’ is increasingly being asked by We-the-People. The problem of Barack Hussein Obama seeming not to be a natural-born citizen is still an extremely salient issue—an issue that has led Obama to hire a team of lawyers to keep all information on his actual country of birth and all of his college records hidden. The latest estimate on the fees charged to do so is over $1Million.

This, coupled with Obama’s continued and strong apparent push to completely bankrupt the USA and turn it into his own personal totalitarian utopia has led to unprecedented actions by some US citizens.
Recently, retired Navy Commander Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III filed a criminal complaint of Treason against Barack Hussein Obama. This has prompted other individuals around the country to do the same. As our Republic now stands on the brink of complete collapse, I thought an interview of Commander Fitzpatrick was in order.

And here is an excerpt of this explosive interview:

Sher: For those who haven’t yet read the criminal complaint, please tell us what it entails.

Mr. Obama is named in the commission of the crime of TREASON by a commissioned officer in the U.S. military. TREASON is the only criminal act our Constitution records. Mr. Obama is described in the criminal complaint as a ‘foreign born domestic enemy and a traitor’. This simple declarative sentence is intended to state clearly Mr. Obama meets elements of the crime of TREASON by being an enemy of the United States and our constitutional form of government. It states also Mr. Obama adheres to other U.S. enemies and gives them aid and comfort (Obama’s criminal assistants).

Sher: After you filed the complaint against Obama, I understand that you were visited by the Secret Service. Can you tell me and my readers what transpired? And what legal reason did they give you as their justification to interrogate you?

Read the entire article to find out the conclusion of Mr. Fitzpatrick's 'visit' from the Secret Service.
The upshot of all of this is that a man occupies the White House who under normal circumstances would be facing impeachment hearings in Congress.

For more commentary on a variety of issues, please visit my blog, updated daily, at The Liberty Sphere.

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3684/87/

THE COST OF DIVERSITY AT ANNAPOLIS

Dr. Bruce Fleming

The Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced in Annapolis recently that "diversity is the number one priority" at the Naval Academy, where I have been a Professor of English for 22 years.

The Naval Academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, echoed him. Everyone understands that "diversity" here means nonwhite skins.

Fowler insisted recently that we needed to have Annapolis graduates who "looked like" the Fleet, where enlisted people are about 42 percent nonwhite, largely African American and Hispanic.

The stunning revelation last week was that the Naval Academy had an incoming class that was "more diverse" than ever before: 35 percent minority.

Sounds good, only this comes with a huge price tag. It's taxpayers who bankroll the military. Yet nobody has asked us if we're willing to pay this price. Instead we're being told there is no price to pay at all. If you believe that, you probably also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

(NOTE: Hmmm the Chief of Naval Operations says that "diversity is the number one priority" at the Naval Academy. It seems this Naval Officer needs to have the real mission of the Academy explained to him. The “Number one priority” of the Naval Academy should be producing top leadership for our Naval forces. “Diversity” the buzz word of the day for liberals, should play no part in this process. Certainly there should be no discrimination involved, but to suggest “diversity” in itself, is important, is beyond absurd. Seems we need a new Chief of Naval Operations – one who understands the real duties. If he is this stupid about the mission of the Academy, what other irresponsible decisions is he promoting?)

A "diverse" class does not mean the Naval Academy recruits violinists, or older students (they can't be 23 on Induction Day), or gay people (who are thrown out) or foreign students (other than the dozen or so sent by client governments).

It means applicants checked a box on their application that says they are Hispanic, African American, Native American, and now, since my time on the Admissions Board of the Academy, Asians.

Midshipmen are admitted by two tracks. White applicants out of high school who are not also athletic recruits typically need grades of A and B and minimum SAT scores of 600 on each part for the Board to vote them "qualified." Athletics and leadership also count.

A vote of "qualified" for a white applicant doesn't mean s/he's coming, only that he or she can compete to win the "slate" of up to 10 nominations that (most typically) a Congress(wo)man draws up. That means that nine "qualified" white applicants are rejected. SAT scores below 600 or C grades almost always produce a vote of "not qualified" for white applicants.

Not so for an applicant who self-identifies as one of the minorities who are our "number one priority." For them, another set of rules apply. Their cases are briefed separately to the board, and SAT scores to the mid-500s with quite a few Cs in classes (and no visible athletics or leadership) typically produce a vote of "qualified" for them, with direct admission to Annapolis. They're in, and are given a pro forma nomination to make it legit.

Minority applicants with scores and grades down to the 300s with Cs and Ds (and no particular leadership or athletics) also come, though after a remedial year at our taxpayer-supported remedial school, the Naval Academy Preparatory School.

By using NAPS as a feeder, we've virtually eliminated all competition for "diverse" candidates: in theory they have to get a C average at NAPS to come to USNA, but this is regularly re-negotiated.

All this is probably unconstitutional. That's what the Supreme Court said about the University of Michigan's two-track admissions in 2003.

Once at Annapolis, "diverse" midshipmen are over-represented in our pre-college classes, in lower-track courses, in mandatory tutoring programs and less challenging majors. Many struggle to master basic concepts. (I teach some of these courses.)

Of course, some minority students are stellar, but they're the exception. Despite being dragged toward the finish line, minorities graduate at about a 10 percent lower rate than the whole class, which of course includes them (so the real split is greater).

Don't want to believe me? Have a lawyer sit in on a year's worth of Admissions Board deliberations. Or better still, pray that one of the stellar white students rejected to give a seat to a "diverse" candidate sues us. That's the only way taxpayers will ever fully understand the price to them of "putting diversity first."

Dr. Bruce Fleming has been a Professor of English at the US Naval Academy since 1987. He is the author of 15 books, the latest being Annapolis Autumn.

http://neighbors.denverpost.com/blog.php/2009/06/29/more-blather-from-unlawful-immigration-advocates/

MORE BLATHER FROM UNLAWFUL IMMIGRATION ADVOCATES
Frosty Wooldridge

      “Near the Border, a trail of tears” 6/14/09
       Denver Post “New roadblock for immigration?” DP editorial 6/28/09
       Tina Griego “Westside to write its own story” Denver Post 6/23/09

As you can see by the aforementioned articles, the Denver Post publishes endless sympathy stories to support perpetual unlawful immigration. You might think the editors and journalists take their pay from Mexican sources.

Post editors support “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” without informing citizens of the mind-numbing costs estimated to be well over $3 trillion, the overpopulation ramifications of adding 100 million people to the USA in 30 years, and the destruction to our language, culture and sustainability as a civilization.

In other words, let’s try to pour three gallons of water into a one gallon pale. Let’s go on a six our flight over water with only three hours of fuel. Let’s dump endless third world poverty stricken immigrants into this society and pretend we can educate them, medicate them and thrust them into our first world culture—without any problems! One look at present day France, England or Holland might give you a clue as to how unworkable the concept of multiculturalism manifests.

You rarely see articles supporting America’s immigration laws or ‘tear-jerker’ stories how Coloradans suffer from unlawful workers residing in Denver. You hear Colorado suffers $384 million debt, but not a word as to causes!

(NOTE: Frosty Wooldridge is a major activist on immigration issues. From his home base in Colorado, Frosty wages and unrelenting assault on such issues. He is frequently published and quoted in the Denver Post and other publications.)

DRAMATIC PROBLEMS GET PRESS WHEN:

Unless, of course, an unlawful immigrant kills, rapes or runs over a Coloradan! At that point, the Denver Post cannot help but report on yet another unlawful immigrant act of carnage such as executing Denver Officer Don Young, or running over Dale Englerth, or two older women and a three year old boy mowed down by a drunk driving Francis Hernandez, or the unlawful worker Navi who dragged his girlfriend to death behind his pickup truck, etc.

The Denver Post hides the hidden costs of unlawful immigration at all costs. The Post does not want to upset the apple cart by exposing the expanding network of unlawful employers that break every law on the books. At the same time, we taxpayers subsidize this 21st century slave labor. We pay for their education, medication and incarceration at $1.1 billion annually. (Source: www.cairco.org)

I call on the Denver Post to publish stories on the devastating effects caused by unlawful immigrants and unlawful workers. I call on them to expose the big employers that thumb their noses at our laws. I call on the Denver Post to interview roofing companies, hotel and restaurant, landscape, meat packing, construction and fast food employers to see ‘how’ they avoid following our laws. Discover why ICE hasn’t made any busts on employers! Explore how landlords break our laws by renting to unlawful immigrants. Why and how to 700,000 unlawful immigrants maintain themselves in Colorado without fear of our laws?

Their actions break all federal laws found in USC 8, 1374, 274, 275, 276, 277 and other statutes: “It is against federal law to aid, abet, assist or in any way support, house or transport an illegal alien within the United States no matter what your personal convictions…at a fine of $2,000 to as high as $10,000 per illegal alien and up to five years in federal prison.”

Yet Tina Griego supports unlawful immigrants with every stroke of her quill. Chandra Russo, coordinator for “Colorado [illegal} Immigrant Rights Coalition” enjoys columns in the Post. Denver Post editorial writers beg for more Mexican workers.

Hey folks, we suffer 20 million unlawful aliens within our country already! Exactly how many more do we need? From Edwin Rubestein’s latest report, those unlawful immigrants cost taxpayers $346 billion annually. (Source: www.thesocialcontract.com, spring 2009, Contract Quarterly) And you folks down at the Denver Post want to import more to pick ‘cotton’?!

Russo sells us a ‘trail of tears’ but forgets that unlawful immigrants can stay in their own country to work out their own problems. We cannot continue as the “International Kleenex” for the world. Griego, Mexico’s biggest advocate for unlawful aliens—needs to get a life—instead of demeaning America’s laws with her sob stories about life on boring “Border Street.”

We suffer 15 million unemployed Americans. A whopping 32.2 million Americans subsist on food stamps in June 2009. We suffer 1.5 million homeless Americans and 13 million children live under the poverty line in the USA. Our nation drowns in $10.3 trillion debt. California hit $24 billion in debt last month, but no one exposes their $10.2 billion annual costs for unlawful immigrants running over four million.

How much worse does it have to become before the Denver Post allows and promotes our laws, our people, our English language and our American culture? What about our laws? Our people? Our way of life?

Frankly, I am sick and tired of sob stories for unlawful immigrants. They caused their own pain and their own problems by coming to our country unlawfully. It’s time they stop breaking our laws and change their own country for their own futures. They might start with birth control for a ‘better life’!

No, we don’t have to mass deport them. Just enforce ours. They will leave our country one by one just like how they arrived!

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 30, 2009 at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 29, 2009

Monday's Web

The day’s top political news:

High Court Rules for White Firefighters in Discrimination Suit

Ruling Reverses High-Profile Decision by Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

The Supreme Court has narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and others that had come to play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court.
The city had thrown out the results of a promotion test because no African Americans and only two Hispanics would have qualified for promotions. It said it feared a lawsuit from minorities under federal laws that said such "disparate impacts" on test results could be used to show discrimination. In effect, the court was deciding when avoiding potential discrimination against one group amounted to actual discrimination against another.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062901608_pf.html

Six Men Shot Dead In 24 Hours In Chicago

Several Others were shot or stabbed and wounded in the windy city.

The first shooting happened around 8:20 p.m. Friday, when Tijuan Edwards, 18, was talking to a 25-year-old man in the street multiple gunmen approached on foot and shot both men. Edwards was dead on the scene, and the 25-year-old was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with gunshot wounds to the left arm, chin and thigh, police said.

Later, others were wounded in shootings over the weekend, including a 9-year-old boy who was walking home with his family when was wounded during a Friday night shooting. Lawlessness in the land ruled by Obama’s own Democrat Machine.

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.weekend.violence.2.1063832.html

McConnell Says Time Needed to Review New Sotomayor Material

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the Senate needs more time to review the record of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor after new material surfaced from her time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Just a day or so ago, we discovered that there are 300 or so boxes of additional material that has just been discovered from her time working with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund,” McConnell said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The committee needs to have access to that material and time to work through it so we know all the facts before we vote on a person who is up for a lifetime job,” McConnell said.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/36363-1.html?type=printer_friendly

Opinion:
Obama’s Cap and Trade tax bill tives us an accurate count regarding Blue Dog Democrats normal Amerca can depend on.

Let us all stand and applaud those Blue Dog Democrats who stood with normal America against the tax scam known as Cap and Trade. Most will take serious heat from the liberal extremists of their own party.

Here is a list of Democrats who joined Republicans is standing up for America:

Altmire, Arcuri, Barrow, Berry, Boren, Bright, Carney. Childers, Costa, Costello, Dahlkemper, Davis (AL), DavisTN), DeFazio, Donnelly (IN), Edwards (TX), Ellsworth, Foster, Griffith, Herseth Sandlin, Holden, Kirkpatrick (AZ), Kissell, Kucinich, Marshall, Massa, Matheson, McIntyre, Melancon, Minnick, Mitchell, Mollohan, Nye, Ortiz, Pomeroy, Rahall, Rodriguez, Ross, Salazar, Stark, Tanner, Taylor, Visclosky, Wilson (OH)

However, there are one or two names who are not conservative at all – quite the contrary. Most notable is Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. Kucinich is radical left wing and voted against the bill because he didn’t think the bill went far enough!!!!

None the less, a tip of the hat and deeply felt salute to most of the above Democrats.

Not ALL Blue Dogs voted with America. Here is a list of Blue Dogs who voted with Obama.

Baca, Joe (CA-43) 225-6161
Bishop, Sanford (GA-02) 225-3631
Boswell, Leonard (IA-03) 225-3806
Boyd, Allen (FL-02) 225-5235
Cardoza, Dennis (CA-18) 225-6131
Chandler, Ben (KY-06) 225-4706
Cooper, Jim (TN-05) 225-4311
Cuellar, Henry (TX-28) 225-1640
Giffords, Gabrielle (AZ-08) 225-2542
Gordon, Bart (TN-06) 225-4231
Harman, Jane (CA-36) 225-8220
Hill, Baron (IN-09) 225-5315
Michaud, Mike (ME-02) 225-6306
Moore, Dennis (KS-03) 225-2865
Murphy, Patrick (PA-08) 225-4276
Peterson, Collin (MN-07) 225-2165
Sanchez, Loretta (CA-47) 225-2965
Schiff, Adam (CA-29) 225-4176
Scott, David (GA-13) 225-2939
Shuler, Heath (NC-11) 225-6401
Space, Zack (OH-18) 225-6265
Thompson, Mike (CA-01) 225-3311

Anthony G. Martin of the Columbia Conservative Examiner
Explains it;

Why bother to put forth such effort on cap and trade?

One thing is for sure, it is NOT a Republican or Democrat issue. It is a pocket book and jobs issue. And it is based upon an outright lie concerning 'climate change.'

Despite the outright lies of Al Gore, Barack Obama, Henry Waxman, and others on 'man-made carbon pollution' that supposedly leads to 'global warming,' hard science tells us otherwise. Gore and Obama claim that 'the science is settled.' Nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing settled in the environmentalist extremist wacko movement is the politics. The movement has nothing whatsoever to do with hard science.

http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m6d28-Tide-changing-on-cap-and-trade-fight-moves-to-Senate

Now the Senate is up to bat on this issue. I don’t have to worry about Alabama and Georgia’s Senators…but numbers heavily favor Obama and his new Cap and Trade Tax. Get those phones busy.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/06/25/obama-wants-to-let-those-pesky

Obama Wants to Let Those Pesky Geezers Die

Matthew Vadum

In a rare moment of candor, President Obama explained to an audience how government-run healthcare would work in America.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

(NOTE: Promoting denying treatments for seniors is not new among liberal Democrats. Former Democrat Governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm, is famed for saying seniors have an obligation to “die and get out of the way”.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

Obama said he has personal familiarity with such a dilemma. His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given less than nine months to live, he said.

She fell and broke her hip, "and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?" [...]

So, old people: screw you. In the future Uncle Sam will put you on an ice floe and let you float away to your heavenly reward. It gives new meaning to the Latin phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." (In English, How sweet and glorious it is to die for one's country.)

Medical decisions should be made by patients, their families, and their doctors, not by government bureaucrats, but that's ObamaCare for you.

Hmmm – when will America wake up?

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=671

Obama’s deadly hand revealed

Posted By Melanie Phillips On June 26, 2009 @ 4:16 pm In Daily Mail Jewish Chronicle, 26 June 2009
Among American Jews, a degree of ‘buyers’ remorse’ has been detected recently.

Almost 80 per cent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama as President. Those of us who warned that this man would endanger Israel were scorned.

How could that possibly be, said the secular, liberal American Jews. He’s a Democrat, he’s black and he’s pro-abortion. With this triple-lock of unassailable virtue, how can he be bad for Israel? Now some of them are getting an awful feeling that they may have made the biggest misjudgment of their lives.

As the world watched events unfold in Iran, Obama’s double standard over Israel was illuminated in flashing neon lights. How come he’s saying it is wrong for him to tell the Iranians what to do, people asked themselves, when he is dictating to Israel its policy on settlements?

Why was he so concerned not to antagonise the Iranian regime? Was it because he hopes to reach a Grand Bargain which would allow Iran to develop nuclear capability, provided it promises him ever so nicely it would never turn this into weapons — in exchange for which, Israel would be offered up on a plate?

(NOTE: Almost 80 per cent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama as President. Those of us who warned that this man would endanger Israel were scorned. “How could that possibly be?” said the secular, liberal American Jews? “He’s a Democrat, he’s black and he’s pro-abortion. With this triple-lock of unassailable virtue, how can he be bad for Israel?” Now some of them are getting an awful feeling that they may have made the biggest misjudgment of their lives.)

For the past six months, while Obama has been holding out the hand of friendship to Iran, he has been showing Israel a mailed fist.

Why, people asked themselves, was he singling out Iran’s putative victim for the heavy treatment while soft-soaping Tehran? Why had he torn up the Road Map which requires the Palestinians to dismantle their infrastructure of terror before anything else can happen, telling Israel instead that its stubbornness over the settlements was the main impediment to a Palestinian state?

Why didn’t he acknowledge the blindingly obvious — that the Palestinians’ continuing, explicit refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state was the fatal impediment?

And then there was the Cairo shocker of a speech. Even the American Jews could not ignore this. Obama stated falsely that the Jews’ aspiration for a homeland was rooted in the Holocaust and their tragic history.

Airbrushing out both the Jews 3,500-year connection to their ancient homeland and the central place of Jerusalem within the religion, he thus effectively denied that Jews are in Israel as of right.

Sanitising Islam through false claims about its historic achievements and selective and misleading quotation from the Koran, he declared that it was part of his responsibility to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

Why? Did this mean therefore that he would fight against any condemnation of the theologically based Jew-hatred pouring out of the Islamic world, not least in Egypt where he was making this speech?

Did he not have a similar responsibility to fight against the negative stereotypes of Jews or Zionists that are inciting terrorism, war and genocide in the Muslim world?

Through the use of a Koranic reference, he also subtly implied that Jerusalem would become Muslim while stating that it should be home equally to Christians, Muslims and Jews.

And he referred to the region as being where Islam was first revealed. This was a revealing word to choose, implying acknowledgement of divine revelation. ‘Revealed’ is the language of a believer.

None of this proves Obama is really a Muslim. But it does all suggest that America has a pro-Islamist President.

Doubtless as a result of his constant sniping at Israel, the percentage of American voters who say they support Israel has plummeted, according to the Israel Project, from 69 per cent last September to 49 per cent this month.

The US and Israel could be heading for the greatest disagreement between the two countries in the history of their relationship, as Middle East expert Robert Satloff recently told Newsweek.
Even now, though, despite the outbreak of buyers’ remorse, most American Jews still don’t realise what they have done — and probably never will.

The Wall Street Journal
The Climate Change Climate Change
The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.
KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
POTOMAC WATCH

Link to Column

U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

(NOTE: The Gloval Warming claims have been a major scheme and scam promoted by Al Gore. Obama and other liberals used threat of man made global warming as a motivating issue justifying Cap and Trade legislation. Now proof mounts those “scientific findings” were frauds. Seems the bill was – as I have maintained – just another Democrat conspiracy to raise the taxes of us all.)

In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence."

Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.
This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 29, 2009 at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 28, 2009

Sunday's Web

As always, we dhallenge any liberal Democrat to prove anything we post is not accurate, truthful, and quite factual.

The day’s top political news:

Dollar Falls Most in Month as China Urges New Reserve Currency

The dollar declined the most against the euro in a month and dropped versus the yen after China repeated its call for a new global currency.

The Swiss franc declined against the euro and dollar this week as foreign-exchange analysts said the central bank sold its currency three times to support the economy. The greenback fell against most of its major counterparts after the People’s Bank of China said yesterday the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ foreign-exchange reserves.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell the most since March as investors bet the Fed will keep interest rates close to zero for the rest of the year. The difference in yield, or spread, between 2- and 10-year yields decreased this week to 2.43 percentage points, near the narrowest level since May 20.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQ.zWVPnOYYg

Regulators shut 5 banks; 45 failures this year

Regulators on Friday shut down five small banks, boosting to 45 the number of failures this year of federally insured banks. More are expected to succumb in the prolonged recession.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the failed banks: Community Bank of West Georgia, based in Villa Rica, Ga.; Neighborhood Community Bank, located in Newnan, Ga.; Horizon Bank in Pine City, Minn.; MetroPacific Bank in Irvine, Calif.; and Mirae Bank in Los Angeles.

The two closures in Georgia brought to 14 the number of banks in Georgia that have failed since the beginning of last year, more than in any other state. Most of the failures have involved banks in the Atlanta area, where the collapse of the real estate market brought economic dislocation.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090627/D992S6D00.html

Boehner: Climate bill a 'pile of s--t'

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.

When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t." Using his privilege as leader to speak for an unlimited time on the House floor, Boehner spent an hour reading from the 1200-plus page bill that was amended 20 hours before the lower chamber voted 219-212 to approve it.

Liberals such as Pelosi touted the bill as promoting clean air. In truth, it was a massive tax bill that will cost every American family hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional dollars a year…expect gasoline prices to reach $5 a gallon by Fall.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/boehner-climate-bill-a-pile-of-s--t-2009-06-27.html

Opinion:

For Normal America, the Obama program gets worse and worse.

The problem is symbolized by a comment by an unidentified government official noting that no matter where Obama was actually born, determining it was not on US soil, and ousting Obama from the White House would mean racial violence. It is assumed Black voters would see it as a plot: ousting the first Black president on a legal technicality.

That "technicality" is the US Constitution.

Yet, in the rumored discussion of such an event it was predicted: "Cities would burn. Detroit, LA, Baltimore."

So we see a situation in which a viable, honest examination of a matter regarding a Constitutional provision, is avoided because of a threat of racial violence. It's a case of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on steroids.

I dont argue with the conclusion at all. The mainstream media -- a constituent element of "Team Obama" would whip up emotional response. They would be shameless in pumping up the reaction -- no matter how violent, destructive, or murderous. It would be worse than a radical Muslim mob offended by a cartoon.

This threat is only one element of the actions by and connected to extremism by today's Democrat party. Chris Dodd is clearly guilty of misconduct in his official capacity, as is Barney Frank. Frank, having lied about the real status of Freddy and Fannie Mae, is now promoting another low income scam -- this time focused on condos. Yet no one in the media blinks as "Ol' Barney" tries to (in his own words) "roll the dice again". The last time he did that, Barney Frank set in motion the actions thar resulted in the financial fiasco and crisis of the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, Democrats toast their victory in passing their infamous "Cap and Trade" bill. "Cap and Trade" were the liberal Democrat code words for "Huge new tax rape of American families". The media supported the tax increase and Democrats were so certain of their command of the situation, they slipped in 300 pages of secret provisions only hours before Pelosi and company shoehorned the new tax into passage. (Pelosi had to bribe 8 Republicans to gain passage:

Bono Mack (R - CA)
Castle (R - DE)
Kirk (R - IL)

Lance (R - NJ)

LoBiondo (R - NJ)
McHugh (R - NY)

Reichert (R - WV)

Smith (R-NJ)

Bribing is something else Democrats dont blink at. The wife of Democrat Congressional big shot John Conyers gave a guilty plea to charges she engaged in bribery...details of the deal will never be known, of course.

But, as TV pitchmen say: "That's not all".

In the wings is Obama's scheme and scam to handover our healthcare system to the government. Think of your doctor being directed by the same people who are now in charge of producing bad Buicks.

The healthcare issue is simple and straight forward -- its a choice between quality and cost. Obama offers healthcare on the cheap, the current, free enterprise system offers quality. If Government takes over healthcare -- quality will ebb, subside, then disappear completely. "Government" and "qualilty" are mutually exclusive.

Of course, even as Obama is selling his healthcare scam (he suggests it include witholding care for senior citizens -- suggesting they go ahead and die and quit using resouces) another liberal cause arises in the form of a bill providing amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens -- people who choose to make themselves criminals the moment their feet hit US soil.

Democrats refues to oppose or honestly try to stem the illegal wave -- after all, they intend to have Obama's own ACORN thugs register these folks to vote (whether they are citizens or not) since they will almost certainly vote Democrat.

This is the domestic issue picture -- legislative excess in overdrive. Normal America needs to quickly get beyond hugging their bibles and guns and get active in defeating Democrats in office...quickly.

Of course, we have foreign policy challenges as well -- North Korean missililes, Iranian Nukes, radical Islam in Holy War. Count on Democrats, let by Obama, to follow their traditional strategy for dealing with military challenges by our enemies: "cut, run, and surrender".

No wonder those who are paying close attention to issues are concerned.

No wonder the media is working over time to give liberal Democrats cover.

No wonder I am a Republican pleading with ALL normal Americans to hit the pavement and begin working to retake our country.

Buddy

Today’s Top Blogs:

Did Obama Say We Should Kill the Old Folks to Save Money Last Night?

Save money? I thought the left kept saying money doesn't matter with healthcare?
Warner Todd Huston (Profile)

I am wondering when the euthanasia folks are going to start touting this one? I mean, it sure seemed to me as if the most caring, most civil, most intelligent president evah just said that healthcare could be cheaper if we don’t give old folks and the infirm the full measure of care they now get. It appeared that Obama said we should just let them die or suffer because they aren’t worth the effort. Imagine if Bush had said something like this? The left wouldn’t have hesitated to call him any manner of names.

Obama said during the ABC Special on Wednesday night that a way to save healthcare costs is to abandon the sort of care that “evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve” the patient’s health. He went on to say that he had personal familiarity with such a situation when his grandmother broke her hip after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Obama offered a question on the efficacy of further care for his grandmother saying, “and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?”

But who is it that will present the “evidence” that will “show” that further care is futile? Are we to believe that Obama expects individual doctors will make that decision in his bold new government controlled healthcare future? If he is trying to make that claim it is a flat out untruth and he knows it.

(NOTE: Proposing to cut care for senior citizens is nothing at all new for liberal Democrats. Former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm led the parade of such cruel policy suggestions. Lamm didn’t mince words when he observed senior citizens HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO DIE AND GET OUT OF THE WAY. Now we see Obama echoing Lamm’s view. Cutting off care for Seniors will likely be subtle – a winnowing away of care. Failing to set future doctor visits, or beginning to reduce them more and more. Then a failure to prescribe new medicines even if such prescriptions might ease pain or result in short term recovery. Those who promote a socialized approach to healthcare are icily ready and prepared to make such decisions – after all, if they care about quality or patients, they would not support socialized medicine to begin with.)

Does your homebuilder negotiate with your city hall over whether you get a building permit, or does the permit get levied no matter what? Does a cop decide if you really broke the law, or does he simply arrest you and let the courts hash it out? Does your tax preparer negotiate with the IRS or is he supposed to just calculate your tax bill on their terms and have you pay the required amount?

Government does not work by negotiation. Government does not work from the bottom up. It works from the top down. This singular fact means that no doctor will be deciding if you are too old or infirm to get medical care. It will be a medically untrained bureaucrat that sets a national rule that everyone will have to obey. There won’t be any room for your grandma to have a different outcome than anyone else’s.

So, what will it be then? Who will decide when medical care is just too expensive to bother with? Who will be left to perish because they just aren’t worth the lifesaving effort? Well, for sure it won’t be any members of Congress or anyone that works for the federal government because they won’t be expected to suffer under the nationally socialized plan. It also won’t be Obama’s buddies in the unions who are about to be similarly exempted from the national plan, at least if Senator Max Baucus has his way.

Ah, but we are told that Obama’s ideas on healthcare are “evolving,” dontcha know? During the recent campaign for president (that was only 7 months ago, if you’ll recall) Obama insisted that he would never tax your healthcare benefits from work. He even ridiculed McCain for proposing such a plan.

Lately, however, he’s “evolved” toward saying that such a new tax is on the table. What about his stance against fining people and businesses that don’t join his UberPlan? He was against that sort of coerciveness before. Now he’s “evolved.”

Originally, he said it was “healthcare for all,” but as of Wednesday night, it seems he’s “evolved” to say that only those worth the bother should get healthcare. The rest should be left to died and/or suffer. If he does any more “evolving” we’ll all be finding just who is “worth” what as far as he and his Democrats are concerned. Somehow I’d guess that many of you reading this today won’t quite be worth as much as certain others!

Let’s hope none of us are ever in a position to find out if Obamacare deems our grandmothers worth saving.

And what ever happened to the left’s mantra that healthcare is a “right” and that money should never enter into a life or death decision? Now The One is saying it’s just too darn expensive to save the old and infirm? Will our friends on the left now disown Obama the “murderer”?

Posted by Warner Todd Huston on RedState.com

GOP urges more spending restraint in programs
WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Republicans concerned about the Obama administration's
big spending on economic stimulus, energy and health care are asking,
"Where are the jobs?"

"The president and Democrats in Congress claim this spending binge is
necessary to put Americans back to work," House Republican leader John
Boehner said Saturday in the Republican radio and Internet address.
"They promised unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if their
trillion-dollar stimulus was passed.

(NOTE: Boehner is wasting his breath, of course. Obama shows he doesn’t care about being caught lying to the American people. He passed a huge tax bill (“Cap and Trade”) that will reduce the family incomes of all Americans by thousands of dollars a year – forever. This is an arrogant violation of Obama promises that “no American making less than $250,000 a year will see a dime in additional taxes. Of course not – Obama tax load on ALL American families will be far far more than a dime.)

The administration was wrong, Boehner said. "Unemployment has soared
above 9 percent. And now the president admits that unemployment will
soon reach double digits.

"After all of this spending, after all of this borrowing from China,
the Middle East, our children and our grandchildren, where are the
jobs?" he said.

Since President Barack Obama's stimulus plan to trigger job creation
was passed, the economy has shed 1.6 million jobs. The administration
has focused instead on its estimate that the stimulus has created or
saved 150,000 jobs.

That estimate comes from a formula that uses government spending and
tax cuts to predict job growth. The formula has been used by
Republicans and Democrats alike, but was built to predict, not count
jobs. To count jobs, economists traditionally rely on Labor Department
data on unemployment, manufacturing and construction activity, and
county-by-county, state-by-state job reports.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said early this week that the
president expects the nation will reach 10 percent unemployment within
the next few months. In January, Obama's economic team predicted
unemployment would rise no higher than 8 percent with the help of a
$787 billion stimulus program. The unemployment rate in May reached a
25-year high of 9.4 percent. Obama aides have said that the economy
took a turn for the worse since their initial forecast.

Boehner has seized on the administration's revised forecast.

He predicted Democratic proposals on health care, stimulus and energy
would all be bad for the economy.

He said Republicans have proposed improvements to health care and
economic stimulus that are less intrusive and expensive than Obama's
plans. And he criticized Democratic efforts to pass an energy bill
that he described as "a national energy tax," which passed the House
Friday. He singled out proposed health care changes as a job killer.

"It's about to get worse for middle-class families and small
businesses," he said. "Democrats are pushing a government takeover of
our health care system that will cost at least a trillion dollars."

"The president has repeatedly claimed that Americans will be able to
keep their doctors under the Democrats' plan," Boehner said, adding
he's seen government reports that indicate millions will lose their
current health coverage and millions more will lose their jobs if the
Democratic plan is adopted.

Obama argues that health care changes will help the economy and scoffs
at predictions that his plans to offer a public plan as an alternative
will harm the private insurance industry. He says it's not logical
that private industry provides the best quality health care but can't
compete with a public plan.

Boehner said Democrats should abandon their determination to pass
measures without GOP cooperation. "We hope our Democrat colleagues
will abandon their failed go-it-alone approach and work with us to
make these reforms a reality," he said.

RED ALERT -- La Raza: "If the American people found out..."

"Suzanne", a female caller to Mark Levin's show on June 25th, revealed the ominous secret of the Democrat health care reform effort.

I want to tell you that last week I attended a conference on health care reform sponsored by La Raza. And I will tell you that what they had to say, Mark, is scarier than anything that's been said so far on the health care plan.

The kind of comments that were made and the notes that I took... the started the conference out by saying "America does not need health care reform, but Latino immigrants need health care reform."

And someone from Menendez' office [Ed.: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ] promised that he would make sure that "the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill" and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like "streamline"...

It was La Raza, the Childrens Defense Fund and Senator Menendez from New Jersey, a representative from his office...

...Yes [they said they would get free health care for illegal aliens], these are my notes, Mark. They actually got up and said "Latino children need health care more than whites". And then they would say things like "you must go out into your communities, use words like 'streamline', use phrases like 'all workers' and 'all families'," because they said -- and I quote -- "If the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it."

...One of the quotes they said was, "We want to make sure we take care of barriers like verification, but we can streamline programs to the more affluent" and, quote, "Useless treatments for the elderly can be gone because we don't need to spend money for people who are going to die anyway."

That's a direct quote from that meeting. They also said, "We are very concerned there will be an effort to include" the illegal immigrants in this argument, so "we must make sure that we focus this" to the American people that it's looking like we want "health care for everyone".

And they also said that 75% of the children who will be picked up in this will be non-citizens and that 44% of the uninsured are non-citizens and they can't possibly allow the American people to know this." [Ed: Oops!]

Menendez' office said that he's going to make sure that "a family of four that makes $66,000 a year or less will pay nothing at all for the new health care. And he was the one who said he was going to get rid of specifics like "citizenship status" and focus on, quote, "equity for all workers".

And he said he's going to make sure that the Latino immigrants are the focus of the health care reform.

And La Raza said if they get this, they don't even care about amnesty, because they've fixed it so that one family member can apply for all extended family members. And... Mark, if you think we have a problem with illegal immigration now, wait 'til you see the borders when this thing gets passed.

(NOTE: That Sorotomayor is a member in good standing with the extremist group La Raza, makes no difference in the debate over her confirmation. Obama can count on domination of voting in the Senate that will assure him that any nominee for the court he offers, will get a nod. If Obama gets more nominations, they will ALL be bad and offensive to the interests of normal America.)

"If the American people found out?"

Gee, what a surprise. A group that preaches racial superiority and divisiveness wants to enact a stealth illegal immigration bill -- not dissimilar to chain migration. The bill will reward illegal immigration to the direct detriment of all American taxpayers and especially the elderly.

Kind of puts Judge Sotomayor's membership in La Raza in a new light, doesn't it?

Groups like La Raza encourage the Balkanization of America. They promote mutually hostile political groups that do not form a "melting pot", that do not utilize a common language, and that do not share the principles of America's founding.

Fifty years from now, if La Raza gets its way, America will look more like Yugoslavia in 1993 than America.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Action: Contact Senator Robert Menendez at 202 224-4744, 973 645-3030 and 856 757-5353 and politey tell him we know what he's up to with this health care bill, that illegal immigration is not tolerated by most New Jersey citizens, and that we will expose him -- as the anti-American traitor that he is -- to the public.

As for those who belong to or support either La Raza or The Childrens Defense Fund, I would strongly encourage you to drop your membership and support. The racial divisiveness promoted by these outrageous groups is antithetical to America's civil society.

It's time to politically punish these cretins who are out to dismantle our country.

4.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102271

BORN IN THE USA?
For sale on eBay: Obama's 'Kenyan birth certificate'
Seller claims Mombasa document 'certified copy'

Bob Unruh

With dozens of lawsuits filed over access to Barack Obama's certified long-form birth certificate, many more lawyers working on his behalf to keep it secret and the validity of the U.S. Constitution hanging in the balance, guess where a "certified copy" of the original Mombasa "document" has been found?
On eBay.

Item No. 160344374585, at least as of today, is described as "a certified copy of President Barack Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate."

(NOTE: Given the extreme measures to which Obama and his handlers have gone to keep details of his birth and early years secret, we all know the answer. No matter where Obama may have been born, it was NOT on US soil. The second fact is that “it doesn’t matter”. Democrats are sneering at the Constitution and no one – even the Supreme Court – will call his hand. The fact that such doubt is allowed to spin for a year and a half is bad enough – it should be a crime in itself. Of course, as we see increasingly, being truthful and honest with the American people is not something about which Obama and his Chicago Democrat braintrust cares about at all.)

The seller, identified by the user name " colmado_naranja," states, "President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in The Coast Provincial Hospital at Mombasa in Kenya at 7:24 PM on August 4th, 1961."

The Climate Change Climate Change
The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere 700 scientists deny the claims by Al Gore and other extreme liberals

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

(NOTE: Al Gore’s Global Warming scam was at the center of liberal attempts to justify the huge tax included in the so-called “Cap and Trade” bill just passed by the House. Liberals claim the bill will save Americans from the ravages of Gore’s gloom and doom conspiracy. That claim is as valid and believable as Obama’s promise that no America making less than $250,000 a year will see a dime in higher taxes. “Cap and Trade” will cost EVERY American additional tax burdens – some say as much as thousands of dollars a year forever.)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html

As always, we dhallenge any liberal Democrat to prove anything we post is not accurate, truthful, and quite factual.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 28, 2009 at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 27, 2009

Saturday's Web

The days top political news:

House passes climate-change Tax bill

Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape.

No family will be spared – ALL will see significant increases in gasoline prices and will end up paying thousands of dollars in indirect taxation.

Al Gore’s discredited “Global Warming” scam is at the base of the conspiracy.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24232.html

Mounting Jobless Claims Force States To Borrow Funds

U.S. states obligated to pay benefits to the swelling ranks of jobless Americans are piling debt onto strained budgets.

Fifteen states have depleted their unemployment insurance funds so far, forcing them to borrow from the U.S. Treasury.

A record 30 of the country's 50 states are expected to have to borrow up to $17 billion by next year

http://www.cnbc.com/id/31565441

Unions’ Health Benefits May Avoid Tax Under Proposal

The U.S. Senate proposal to impose taxes for the first time on “gold-plated” health plans may bypass generous employee benefits negotiated by unions.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, the chief congressional advocate of taxing some employer-provided benefits to help pay for an overhaul of the U.S. health system, says any change should exempt perks secured in existing collective- bargaining agreements, which can be in place for as long as five years.

The exception, which could make the proposal more politically palatable to Democrats from heavily unionized states such as Michigan, is adding controversy to an already contentious debate. It would shield the 12.4 percent of American workers who belong to unions from being taxed while exposing some other middle-income workers to the levy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDvu77pZr7k4

Opinion:
Democrat schemes and scams

Make no mistake about it – Obama led the charge for yesterday’s “Cap and Trade” passage in the House. In so doing, he violated a pledge he made to the American people before and after his campaign.

Obama pledged with all the arrogant sincerity he could muster that no American making under $250,000 a year would see a dime of increased taxes from his administration.

Obama lied to the American people.

ALL Families will se an increase in costs rooted in onerous fees against coal producers and others as a result of this disgraceful legislation. Those extra costs are estimated to be in the thousands of dollars for each family.

As gasoline prices rise (along with all energy costs) never forget that increase is a result of this Democrat conspiracy.

The open act of betrayal should stand as an event of singular reversal by a political figure, especially an American President. Even LBJ didn’t stoop as low.

So arrogant (or desperate) were House Democrats under Nancy Pelosi, they managed to sneak in 300 pages of secret data just after 3 am before the start of this latest day “that will live in infamy”.

The bill claims it will force energy to “go green” – what it really does is cost many American families to “go broke”. Let’s not even get into the thousands of jobs this bill will cost – suffice it to say, this bill WILL cost tons of jobs.

While we are at it, these are the eight Republican turncoats:

Bono Mack (R - CA)
Castle (R - DE)
Kirk (R - IL)
Lance (R - NJ)
LoBiondo (R - NJ)
Smith (R-NJ)
McHugh (R - NY)
Reichert (R - WV)

Mark them well and keep this vote ever mindful when primary elections come along.

Now this infamous bill goes to the Senate, where very liberal Democrats dominate voting. It will require several Democrats to break ranks with their fellows, and vote FOR the American people. We’ll see if any do.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

Not many years ago ‘rationing & withholding’ would have meant NO MRI's, earlier it meant lobotomies instead of custodial care or incarceration. Tomorrow the decision will be up to a vast & far-flung bureaucracy that subsists on $$$ that today go into care. Harry Becker

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597492337757443.html

Obama's Health Future

Rationing, and not only withholding care from the elderly.

President Obama's TV health-care forum on Wednesday evening was useful, because revealing. Namely, Mr. Obama shared more than he probably intended about the kind of rationing that his health plan will inevitably impose.

At one point in the town hall, broadcast from the East Room by ABC news, a woman named Jane Sturm told the story of her 105-year-old mother, who, at 100, was told by an arrhythmia specialist that she was too old for a pacemaker. She ended up getting a second option, and the operation, for which Ms. Sturm credits her survival.

"Look, the first thing for all of us to understand that is we actually have some -- some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care," Mr. Obama replied. After discussing ways "we as a culture and as a society [can start] to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves," he continued that in general "at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

(NOTE: Consider the unfeeling, hardness, and cruelty that rings through Obama’s comment. He seems to be joining a Democrat mantra that began some years back with Democrat Governor Dick Lamm said old people have an obligation to die and get out of the way. That’s pretty much Obama’s position as well.)

What Mr. Obama is describing is his preferred health-care future.

If or when the Administration's speculative cost-cutting measures under universal health care fail to produce savings, government will start explicitly limiting patient access to treatments and services regarded as too expensive. Democrats deny this eventuality, but health planners will have no choice, given that the current entitlement system is already barreling toward insolvency without adding millions of new people to the federal balance sheet.

Earlier, a physician asked Mr. Obama if he would subject his own family to the restrictions of a national health plan, even if specialists recommended treatments that weren't covered. The President was noncommittal: "And you're absolutely right that, if it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care."

We suspect most Americans would agree.

Bachus Floor Statement on Waxman-Markey Bill

WASHINGTON –Congressman Spencer Bachus (AL), the top Financial Services Committee Republican, made the following statement during floor consideration of the Waxman-Markey bill.

(NOTE: Republican leadership, such as Congressman Bachus, did all they could to turn back Democrat efforts to pass this huge tax bill. Sadly, they lacked the necessary numbers to prevail and – incredibly – eight Republicans turned their backs on party loyalty and the welfare of America itself, and voted for the bill. Had they remained loyal, the bill would have lost.)

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill.

“This legislation creates a new multi-trillion dollar market for Carbon Allowance Derivatives overnight, all without one hearing before the Financial Services Committee. This continues a disturbing pattern of conduct of passing sweeping legislative proposals without consideration of the consequences and ramifications.

“While Congress and financial regulators continue to work to determine how best to oversee existing derivatives markets, it is ill-advised to rubber stamp the creation of a brand new, hard to price, and convoluted Carbon Allowance Derivative Market. The new market would be open to potential abuse because it will be difficult for regulators to understand and monitor.

“Under the Waxman-Markey bill the government would issue allowances (carbon allowance permits) that allow companies to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Companies that emit too much can buy allowances from companies that produce less than their limit. In addition to carbon allowances, there are carbon offsets which allow companies to emit greenhouse gases in excess of the federal cap or limit. They do this by investing in projects that cut emissions and it is anticipated that many of these projects will be in developing countries. C.F.T.C.

Commissioner Bart Chilton anticipates that overnight the bill will create a $2 trillion dollar market, which he describes as ‘the biggest of any commodities derivative product in the next five years.’ Robert Shapiro, a former undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration and a co-founder of the US climate Task Force warns that ‘we are on the verge of creating a new trillion dollar market in financial assets that will be securitized, derivatized, and speculated by Wall Street, like the mortgage-backed securities market.’ Mother Jones’s Rachel Morris warns that without strong financial regulation of the market you could have abuses, over leveraging and ultimately collapse of the market. Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman has described these offset projects as ‘fraught with opportunity for game playing, which will be fully exploited, I’m sure.’

“Many of these projects will be created in developing countries. A clean coal project in China or India could be used for carbon offsets, as could a tree planting project in Brazil or Borneo. As much as China needs to clean up their environment, should Americans pay for it? Should a tree planting project in Borneo allow the discharge of more pollution in America? Many of these remote projects will be notoriously difficult to confirm and monitor. Even in America with a well-established regulatory system we witnessed abuses in the subprime mortgage market. The derivatives market has the potential for even greater game playing in remote countries with questionable rule of law and little regulation.

“Michele Chan of Friends of the Earth says if not properly regulated the offset derivatives could become what she calls ‘subprime carbon’—futures contracts that promise emissions reductions but fail to deliver and then become toxic or worthless. Already the financial markets and speculators are planning how to slice and dice them and sell them to investors. It sounds altogether too familiar—a brand new, hard to price, vast convoluted market of carbon derivatives. And if these warnings are correct, one that certainly could pose a systemic risk in the financial markets.

“If you liked what Wall Street did with the securitization of subprime mortgages, you’ll love what they are going to do with carbon derivatives.

“Finally, ‘cap and tax’ will have a devastating impact on my home state of Alabama. The bias against coal and the renewable energy mandates will force consumers in Alabama to buy expensive ‘green power’ from other states, which will raise energy costs across the board. One study has projected that the typical family in Alabama could eventually see electricity bills rise by more than $1500 a year. Higher energy costs will make our manufacturers less competitive, and Alabama and the rest of our country will lose jobs to nations like China, Korea, and Mexico which have lower energy costs.

“This bill is bad for Alabama, bad for the U.S. economy, and doesn’t even begin to solve the serious energy challenges facing our nation.”

American Thinker

Obama, the African Colonial
L.E. Ikenga

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

(NOTE: The accuracy of this statement can be seen in Obama’s unceremonial rejection of things British by returning a White House bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. He continued insulting Great Britain by a tasteless gift to Prime Minister Brown just prior to their first meetings in Washington. Obama gave the almost blind Brown a sack of DVDs of old movies and a few Obama speeches. The movies will not play in England – the DVD systems are not compatible. Obama compounded his felony by later giving an Ipod to the Queen. Obama is Kenyan still and resents British rule. After all, his father was a member of the terror group, the Mau Mau.)

First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious.

Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa.

However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama's African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book -- from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of "progress". (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an "ancient loyalties".)

Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led -- oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you:

1. Convince the people that "clinging" to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of "unity". British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. "Tribalism" made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line.

Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many "educated" Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.

2. Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a "fair shake". Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.

3. Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today's Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can't find a job?

4. Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse. One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer "progress" (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60's. What will a post-Obama America look like?

5. Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons. This speaks for itself.

America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.

L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.

(Will Obama be America's Robert Mugabe?)

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 27, 2009 at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 26, 2009

Friday's Web

The Day’s top political news:

House nears vote on $550.4 billion defense bill

The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to approve a $550.4 billion defense authorization bill for fiscal 2010 that has drawn a veto threat from President Barack Obama because it contains money for fighter jets he does not want. The F-22 Raptor jet would assure the US os air superiority for decades.

The bill also authorizes $130 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fiscal year that begins October 1.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said it supported the overall bill but the president's senior advisers would recommend a veto unless some provisions were dropped. Liberal Democrats never support viable national defense.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090625/pl_nm/us_congress_defense_1

CBO Paints Dire Portrait of Long-Term Revenue, Spending

The nation's long-term budget outlook has darkened considerably over the past six months, and President Obama's plan to extend an array of tax cuts and other policies adopted during the Bush administration has the potential to "create an explosive fiscal situation," congressional budget analysts reported yesterday.

In a new report, the Congressional Budget Office found that extending the Bush administration tax cuts, reining in the alternative minimum tax and canceling a scheduled reduction in payments to Medicare doctors would dramatically slash tax collections at a time when federal spending would be "sharply rising." The resulting budget gap would drive the nation's debt over 100 percent of gross domestic product by 2023, the report says, and past 200 percent of GDP by the late 2030s.

Democratic lawmakers generally agree, and the budget resolution they adopted earlier this year assumes that many of the Bush tax cuts will be extended and future deficits will rise. Yesterday's CBO report highlights the cost of that trade-off.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062504299.htm

Carville: GOP Could Come Back Big in 2010

Democratic strategist James Carville has sent out an e-mail for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee warning Democrats that the GOP could rebound in 2010 and take over the Senate just as they did in 1994.

In 1994, Carville writes, "things were a lot like they are today. A young, exciting president. Big majorities in Congress. We figured we'd have plenty of time to build the America we wanted.

"Republicans are hoping 2010 is the new 1994. But heck, they don't need eight new senators. If they gain just one or two, it's going to be that much easier for them to scuttle vital legislation."

Opinion:
“Cap and Trade” another Democrat scam aimed at taxing us then lying out of it.

Make no mistake about it – the so-called “Cap and Trade” legislation that will be voted on shortly, is nothing more than a hidden tax. If passed, you and I will be forced to pay from somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 a year more, up to $3,000 a year more.

Democrats deny it’s a tax, but they are being disingenuous. It IS a tax by any fair measure.

I failed to mention the reason Democrats are using to justify this new tax – Al Gore’s “Global Warming” scam. Seems to me credible scientists have shot that farce full of holes. Naturally, Obama and others are shouting we need to pass this bill right now.

The fact the measure is sponsored by Henry Waxman, the loud little man with the stupid looking mustache from California, and Ed Markey, the liberal idiot from (where else) Massachusetts. Would you even buy a used car from that pair? Now they are demanding passage of a bill so large no one has read it. (Sound familiar?)

I think Neal Boortz scored the quotation of the month in his blog this morning:

“QUICK QUESTION

When is it not going to be "the moment" for Democrat legislation? I'm getting sick of being reminded by Barack Obama that if we don't seize this moment, these opportunities will be lost forever.

"Now is the time to pass climate change legislation ..."

"This is the moment to seize our chance to pass healthcare reform ..."

"This is the moment when the seas begin to subside ..."

"We cannot miss this opportunity to stimulate our economy ..."

I'll tell you when the moment passes. It's when (if ever) the American people wake up to see what's being done to them, their country and their freedoms.”

I think that sums up the challenge in today’s Congress. It should inspire normal Americans everywhere to rise up and end the madness on Capitol Hill.

Buddy

The day’s top blogs:

A dangerous solution
Politicians have no business deciding what's 'excessive' pay
Rep. Tom Price

Our commitment to market principles has created our nation's storied success. Yet some in Washington are disturbingly willing to abandon liberty and principle, and inject government control into private markets.

Perhaps nowhere is this desertion of principle more appalling than in the proposed limits and regulations on compensation for private citizens. Like most plans from this administration and Congress, this "solution" only compounds the problem.

(NOTE: When Republicans assail Democrat extremism in legislation, the defense mechanism of “what’s your alternative” kicks in. Democrats and their lap dog media challenge Republicans to provide another option. Let’s speak plainly. Given the extremism of many, if not most Democrat proposals today, the best answer, the obligatory response, is a simple “NO”.)

In our mature corporate market place, new rules to empower shareholders regarding executive pay are superfluous. Those investing in companies already possess the ability to weigh in on the salaries of executives. In addition to their vote for board members, most powerfully, shareholders retain the power to register their disapproval by moving their investment to a competitor.

Some suggest that firms bailed out by Washington have an obligation to limit pay. Perhaps if our goal is to exact retribution on employees of bailout firms, this may be so. Yet if our goal is to provide the most urgent economic growth possible, reining in pay from Washington dangerously confirms that America has traded in a market economy for an economy in which politicians wield unparalleled power.
Many compensation packages in the private sector might, in fact, be "excessive." But many are not. And who should decide? Politicians or people? Like all markets, the mechanism for determining compensation is self-correcting. The danger lies in replacing markets with politicians. Are we not but one step away from Washington regulating all private sector pay?

As with the ongoing demagoguery against capitalism, efforts to limit private sector pay have more to do with populist fervor than economic recovery. If Washington finds the compensation packages of bailout firms so atrocious, the solution is to return the bailout funds to their rightful owners: taxpayers.

This new found zeal for governmental intervention into every aspect of our lives and commerce is very dangerous. The debate is a stark reminder of the slippery slope of governmental intrusion into the private sector. Without principle, we are left with ever-changing rules and uncertainty that prolongs our economic despair.

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., is a member of the House Financial Services Committee and chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of House conservatives.

Waxman-Markey: Man-Made Disaster
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump.

Not since that misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.

The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact.

It's what Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, might call a "man-caused disaster," a phrase she coined to replace the politically incorrect "terrorist attack." But no terrorist could ever dream of inflicting as much damage as this bill.

Its centerpiece is a "cap and trade" provision that has been rightfully derided as "cap and tax." It is in fact a tax on energy everywhere it is consumed on everything it is used to make or provide.
It is the largest tax increase in American history — a tax on all Americans — even the 95% that President Obama pledged would never see a tax increase.

(NOTE stating this truth drives Democrats up the wall. On Fox and Friends this morning, designated cover man for this Cap and Trade bill was the hapless Steny Hoyer. When asked if this is really a tax, Hoyer acted as if someone was dropping obscenities into the conversation. Hoyer left the question unanswered – is he really that stupid, or is he simply doing Pelosi’s bidding and lying his head off to the American public?)

It's a political bill that could come to a vote now that a deal was struck with farm-state legislators concerned about the taxation of even bovine flatulence.

As part of the agreement reached Tuesday night and announced by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Beverly Hills, agricultural oversight for cap-and-trade was transferred from the Environmental Protection Agency to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Farmers hope the USDA will be less intrusive. The EPA has been tasked by a Supreme Court ruling to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from your nostrils to your lawn mower. This even covers the emissions of barnyard animals, including the methane from cows.

The American Farm Bureau warns that cap and trade would cost the average farmer $175 on every dairy cow and $80 for beef cattle. So farm-state politics trumped climate change.

We all know about farmers paid not to grow food. But now, American taxpayers apparently will be paying companies not to chop down trees. The Washington Times reports that as part of the legislation, the House will also be voting Friday on a plan to pay domestic and international companies around the world not to cut down trees.

Such offsets "would be a transfer of wealth overseas," said William Kovacs, vice president for environmental affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

So if a tree falls in a Brazilian forest, does a U.S. taxpayer make a sound?

As we've said before, capping emissions is capping economic growth. An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million.

Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once put it, by 90% adjusted for inflation. Inflation-adjusted gasoline prices would rise 74%, residential natural gas prices by 55% and the average family's annual energy bill by $1,500.

Hit hardest by all this would be the "95% of working families" Obama keeps mentioning as being protected from increased taxation. They are protected, that is, unless they use energy. Then they'll be hit by this draconian energy tax.

And what would we get for all this pain?

According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 — the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill — would reduce global temperature in 2050 by a mere 0.05 degree Celsius.

President Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming. During the campaign, he said: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

Soon we may not be able to. Other countries can just sit back and watch us destroy ourselves. Where will you be when the lights go out?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/when_did_the_lowbrows_take_ove.html

When did the lowbrows take over the culture?
James Lewis

I've been trying to grasp for a truth that is so obvious that all of us know it. But it's not a polite truth, so we don't talk about it. Yet I think it's important to say it out loud, because it is a truth that haunts our national discourse.

As a nation we are under the thumb of idiots. Not just indoctrinated, or wrong-thinking, or power-hungry, or manipulative, or even malevolent people. No, I mean real lowbrows, people who constantly fall for really stupid ideas. Neanderthals. (Look at the Governor of California just running the state budget into the ground. See what I mean? That's not just incompetence. It takes special stupidity, almost a deliberate, willful absence of real thinking.)

(NOTE: What else can we expect from liberals? They even take the idiocy of political correctness seriously. That alone marks them as fools. They judge education by the degree of “diversity” involved. Huh? With liberals in charge, up is down, wrong is right, and left makes sense. Nuff said.)

The Federal EPA is about to officially declare carbon dioxide to be a pollutant. That's not just false and unscientific; it's not just an excuse for taxing everything in sight, including breathing. It's not merely wrong. It's idiotic. It marks a low point in our national conversation. Scientists or engineers with a grain of sense shouldn't be taking the EPA seriously for a second. Forget the "climate experts," with their grossly inadequate computer models. Normally intelligent people should boggle at the EPA. They are bizarre. Only the truly ignorant could fall for this level of ignorance. Or those who just can't think.

Or look at Obama's unbelievable spending spree. No sane and sensible taxpayer could possibly believe that spending trillions and trillions of dollars on blue-sky fantasies makes any sense at all; the only reason Americans aren't in open rebellion yet is that half of them can't believe it's happening, and the other half are idiots. We haven't seen the effect (yet) on our pocketbooks. There's food in the stores still, and housing has gotten cheaper. But let Obama's budget affect our wallets directly and just watch the voters explode with rage.

The Democrats in Congress are trying desperately to put the brakes on Obama's egomaniacal ambitions because they can see themselves going over the edge in 2010. In a self-respecting, intelligent culture, the Obama budget would be dead on arrival. It's an insult to our national intelligence. (His foreign policy is more of the same.)

Or look at the global warming farce, still hotly pursued by the political classes in Europe and this country, although the Australians seem to be coming to their senses. China now has more millionaires than the UK, because they use all their resources, like coal, to fire their industrial plants. They will never sacrifice a single luxury car to the cap and trade fraud. Neither will India. China and India have been under the thumb of egomaniacal socialists (in the case of India) and communists (in the case of China). They've been there, done that, seen the suffering.

No wonder those Chinese college students fell all over themselves with laughter when Timothy Geithner assured them that Obama would never spend the United States into debt. What an idiot! They laughed because Geithner's stupidity or mendacity was too obvious for words.

That's how we should all react to the miserable frauds who are now in national office.

You have to dull your senses with drugs or endless propaganda to fall for it. I've sometimes wondered how many people must have killed off their critical thinking with alcohol and drugs. I know a walking few drug casualties myself, people who just burned out their brains. I'm sure they voted for Obama.

Or maybe there's such a thing as learned stupidity. How else can so many people be so idiotic? Our national IQ has dropped to about 75: Several standard deviations below normal.

Well, we have now voted in a President for the lowbrows. Yes, Obama himself is smart enough; even smart enough to say a few years ago that he didn't feel ready for the presidency. Well, now we can see why he said that.

But legions of idiots voted for a man who was plainly unqualified, even by his own estimation, and surrounded by a bunch of malignant sociopaths like Wright and Ayers and all the rest. How could he possibly win? Well, Obama cynically appealed to the idiots -- the young, the stupid, the naive, the silly, the rock idol worshippers, and probably the drug-addled masses, all the lowbrows in the land.

That includes the idiot savants of academia. Academics have a very narrow band of intelligence, something that satirists since Aristophanes have noticed and poked fun at.

The first philosopher in Western history was Thales of Elea; Thales featured in Greek folklore as a man who walked around at night gazing at the stars only to fall into a ditch. That's probably a folksy giggle at the absent-minded professor who is constantly bumping into walls. But there's a big element of truth in it. Academics can be incredibly ignorant and dumb outside of their small areas of expertise. Professors and media scribblers generally lack human smarts. They are sure suckers for all the con artists of the day.

Obama is a smooth-talking hustler who has specialized in charming academic liberals, like a smart graduate student who needs to impress his teachers with every word. They just dote on him, like a proud parent smiling on a favorite child. He's their dream, a black man who sounds so smart.

In his press conferences he hypnotizes all the ink-stained wretches of the media. It's a sight to behold. The man swats a fly and the suck-ups of the media go ga-ga with applause, and go back and write articles about it. That's not just a reflection on their (lack of) character and judgment. It's not just their childish immaturity. It's a reflection on their brains, or rather, on all that empty space between their ears. Our media stars are just not very bright. They're idiots. That single fact explains a lot. (And yes, they are also corrupt, easily seduced, haunted by deadlines, decadent in their values, and very prone to mob thinking. But if they had any brains it might be harder to manipulate them like this. The White House just pulls their strings and they dance.)

Obama's 22 White House czars. That's really stupid. As well as a violation of the Constitution. But it's a Chinese laugh line. It's so obviously wrong and power-mad that it's not worth debating.

Legalizing drugs. That's really stupid.

Obama's power-grab over the medical sector of the economy? It's profoundly stupid.

We can insure all the uninsured people in the country for a tiny fraction of all that money. We just need to fix the tire on our national car, and this guy tries to sell us a brand-new O-mobile, it can practically fly off the lot, all on credit, long-term payments, no money down. It's gonna be free! So what if you have to mortgage your wife and children? Even if we already have two national lemons in our garage, Medicare and Medicaid, which nobody likes. Now Obee is trying to sell us on a really, really expensive dream mobile that will fix our problems forever, plus it'll be cheaper than what we have now!

Can you believe it?

That sales pitch only works for idiots.

The rise to power and fame of the real lowbrows explains a lot. It even points to an answer of sorts. Because we've all been intimidated by the Cult of Nice not to contradict anybody who comes out with a really stupid, destructive idea. We can no longer call a really stupid idea what it is. I know that I censor myself all the time. We have been taught to keep our mouths shut when a word in time might make a real difference. We have allowed the national conversation to be dumbed down.

Here's my resolution for July Fourth: From now on I'm going to call idiocy idiotic. Not nastily, but as clearly as I can. It is high time for normal, intelligent common sense to become acceptable again. I'm happy to have a respectful argument with anyone who disagrees with me. But I'm going to start saying the magic words:

That's really dumb! That's really ignorant! You haven't thought about that much, have you? Have you ever considered another side of that batty idea?

I promise to be nice.

But honest.

Pass the word.

If we all start doing it we can change the world.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 26, 2009 at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 25, 2009

Thursday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Dems see agenda slipping

There is a growing sense among Democrats that they will not be able to accomplish the entire agenda leaders set for 2009, pushing major policy debates into the midterm election year.

Concerns over the cost of overhauling the nation’s healthcare system have served as a wake-up call to lawmakers.

They had planned for a busy summer of healthcare and climate change debate, a dozen spending bills, a defense authorization and hearings on President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) even promised to add a sweeping overhaul of immigration to that list.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-see-agenda-slipping-2009-06-24.html

Mississppi Governor, Haley Barbour takes over RGA

The Republican Governors Association announces Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour -- already "in line" to take the chairmanship of the RGA -- has assumed it.

Barbour replaces S Carolina governor Sanford who resigned as had of the RGA (Republican Governor’s Association) after admitting having an affair.

Barbour is also a 2012 contender and former National GOP Chairman.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Barbour_takes_over_RGA.html

Gore to Talk up His Climate Chang Scam With House Democrats

Senior Democrat leaders are whipping and cajoling skeptical lawmakers to side with them to approve the measure that could have significant economic impact on the energy bills of many Americans and even drive up the price of food.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is rolling the dice with her plan to lug the bill to the House floor without the full confidence that the legislation will pass.

Gore is well-known for his environmental scam. He's authored books on climate change and produced the Academy Award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2005

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/gore-talk-climate-change-house-democrats-thursday/

Opinion:
Liberals are staging an all out assault on Normal America these days.

I’ts going to be a rugged several days ahead…at least for normal America ns fearful liberal Democrats will be successful in a string of measures that are offensive and expensive while being hidden beneath labels intentionally designed to hide their true impact or reason.

Take the infamous “Cap and Trade” bill. Democrat liberals are working overtime to hide the fact the bill is actually a new tax that will cost almost all Americans a ton of money. For the record, Democrat proposal of that tax represents a direct violation of Obama’s pledge in which he solemnly promised that no American making less than $250,000 a year will see a dime in additional taxes.

We can assume Obama will defend his lie by claiming his bill wont result in “a dime” more in taxation – but a whole lot more! Obama lack of logic at work again.

Of course liberals claim this is an energy bill. It DOES cost coal companies and those using coal more money – but those companies will have to pass those new costs along to customers. If that’s not a tax, it will do until one comes along.

Of course, breaking promises and campaign pledges matters little to liberal Democrat politicians and they dominate things on Capitol Hill and the White House these days.

As a result, normal Americans have little with which to oppose the Democrat juggernaut. Supreme court nominee Sotomayor is a case in point – she is clearly racist, but it doesn’t matter. Obama dominates the Senate and can get anyone he nominates confirmed. Besides, even if Sotomayor was rejected, her replacement would be no better, maybe even worse from the standpoint of normal Americans.

Meanwhile, the ominous healthcare conspiracy over shadows Congress. Make no mistake about it, the issue in that debate is a question of quality healthcare versus healthcare on the cheap.

If you or a loved one falls seriously ill, only the very best quality care is “good enough” – under the Obama/Democrat plan, “the very best quality care” will not be available.

As an aside, it’s a certainty any Obama healthcare scheme will be another violation of his “not a dime in increased taxes” pledge to the American people. Obama even suggests there may be a tax imposed on healthcare benefits, with the exception of the benefits of union members.

Union members were major supporters of Obama in his campaign. Campaign corruption at play? Hush your mouth!!!

Liberal Democrats have the votes to destroy our healthcare system and impose new taxes on us all, but they are not finished. They are also threatening immigration reform.

Bet on amnesty being a major provision of any such plan…a pathway to make it easy for illegal aliens who have chosen to sneak into this country illegally – thus choosing to make themselves criminals the moment their feet hit US soil – to become citizens.

Guess how Obama expects the 12 million illegal immigrants already here to vote.

The amnesty bill conspiracy is simply one more politically-motivated scheme to getting more Democrat voters on the rolls. Of course, Obama has made his corrupt ACORN organization a key group within the census process.

What political impact does that scheme promote? What determines how Congressional boundaries are drawn? The Census. Expect massive Democrat gerrymandering and redrawing of district lines – lines designed to give Democrats an edge.

Shucks, all this in just Obama’s first six months!!

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Survival will require political activism on the part of all normal Americans. If this week on the Hill is not a call to arms for us all, there is no such thing.

Buddy

The top blogs of the day:

Rushing Energy Bill Is Risky and Unnecessary
Rep. Spencer Bachus (AL)

The Democrat leadership is preventing the public from learning important details about the cap and tax plan by bypassing several key committees.

As a Ranking Member on the Financial Services Committee, I called for hearings on the bill's creation of a massive trading scheme for carbon emissions.

It sounds altogether too familiar - a brand new, hard to price, vast convoluted market of carbon derivatives. And if these warnings are correct, one that could certainly pose a systemic risk in the financial markets. In addition, this bill provides for tree-planting projects to be used as carbon offsets. But the trees could be in Brazil or Borneo. If there is a tree-planting project in Brazil, worthy as that may be, should American taxpayers pay for it? In addition, such projects, particularly in remote or developing countries, are notoriously difficult to confirm and monitor. The legal description of the land could be changed and offsets securitized many times. We found that even in the U.S., with a established rule of law and well-established regulatory system, the subprime mortgage market was subject to countless different schemes and manipulation.

(NOTE: Congressman Spencer Bachus is the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee. He is having to hold the line against his counterpart – the top Democrat on the Committee – the infamous Barney Frank.)

My committee should be given time to review "green housing" mandates that could lead to stiff fines against owners and builders. Penalties for violating the act are $100 per day. A day! What effect does such a law have on home prices, on seniors trying to sell their home in a tough market, and builders struggling to sell their inventory of unsold homes?

I am very disturbed by the repeated pattern of the House leadership in rushing expensive legislation like cap and tax, the so-called stimulus package, and appropriations bills to a vote without adequate review or debate. It’s irresponsible to fast-track legislation that puts taxpayers on the hook for literally trillions of dollars.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580784452945093.html

Barney the Underwriter

The Wall Street Journal

Telling Fannie Mae to take more credit risk. Now there's an idea.

Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

You read that right. After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development.

(NOTE: Barney Frank’s record during the financial crisis is hardly a good one, nor is it believable. After all, weeks before Freddie and Fannie collapsed and triggered the money emergency, Barney had assured one and all the two entities were solid. Now he’s at it agaiin.)

Fannie and Freddie have restricted loans to condo buyers in these situations because they represent a red flag that the developments -- many of which were planned and built at the height of the housing bubble -- may face financial trouble down the road. But never mind all that. Messrs. Frank and Weiner think, in all their wisdom and years of experience underwriting mortgages, that the new rules "may be too onerous."

And in a display of the wit for which Mr. Frank is famous, the letter writers slyly point out that higher lending standards won't reduce taxpayer exposure to bad loans because the Federal Housing Administration has even lower standards for condos. "While the underlying goal may be to reduce taxpayer exposure relating to the current conservatorship of the GSEs [government sponsored entities], such a goal would not have such an effect if it merely results in a shifting of loans from the GSEs to the FHA." Tougher lending standards will merely shift market share from one government program to another, so what's the point in being cautious?

Fannie and Freddie have already lost tens of billions of dollars betting on the mortgage market -- with that bill being handed to taxpayers. They face still more losses going forward, because in the wake of their nationalization last year their new "mission" has become to do whatever it takes to prop up the housing market. The last thing they need is lawmakers like Mr. Frank, who did so much to lay the groundwork for their collapse, telling them to play faster and looser with their lending standards.
Fannie and Freddie have always been political creatures under the best circumstances. But we don't remember anyone electing Mr. Frank underwriter-in-chief of the United States.

HEAT OF THE MOMENT
EPA's own research expert 'shut up' on climate change
Government analyst silenced after he critiques CO2 findings

Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Environmental Protection Agency officials have silenced one of their own senior researchers after the 38-year employee issued an internal critique of the EPA's climate change position.

Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, or NCEE, submitted his research on the agency's greenhouse gases endangerment findings and offered a fundamental critique on the EPA's approach to combating CO2 emissions. But officials refused to share his conclusion in an open internal discussion, claiming his research would have "a very negative impact on our office."

His study was barred from circulation within the EPA and was never disclosed to the public for political reasons, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, a group that has accessed four internal e-mails on the subject.

CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman told WND, "His boss basically told him, 'No, I'm not going to send your study further up. It's going to stay within this bureau.'"

A March 12 e-mail to Carlin warned him not to have "any direct communication with anyone outside NCEE on endangerment."

Carlin, a researcher who earned his doctorate in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree in physics from California Institute of Technology, informed officials that two-thirds of his references were from peer-reviewed publications and defended his inclusion of new research on the topic.

"It is also my view that the critical attribute of good science is its correspondence to observable data rather than where it appears in the technical literature," he wrote. "I believe my comments are valid, significant and contain references to significant new research … They are significant because they present information critical to justification (or lack thereof) for the proposed [greenhouse gas] endangerment finding."

After nearly one week of discussion, NCEE Director Al McGartland informed Carlin on March 17 that he would not include the research in the internal EPA discussion.

"Alan, I decided not to forward your comments," he wrote. "… The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."

In yet another e-mail sent only minutes following the previous one, McGartland wrote, "With the endangerment findings nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate."

CEI charges that suppression of Carlin's study denied public access to important agency information, as court rulings have indicated that both "the evidence relied upon [by the agency] and the evidence discarded" must be included in the rulemaking record.

"They could come up with reasons to reject it, as I'm sure they're going to come up with reasons to reject the scientific objections that are coming in now from outside parties in the general public and from skeptical scientists," Kazman told WND. "But I'd say the real issue here is that this critique is coming from a career EPA insider, so it can't be dismissed as the work of someone in the pay of the coal-burning fossil-fuel industry. The fact that someone within the EPA was taking this approach is something that would be naturally embarrassing to the agency."

CEI also said the incident violated the EPA's commitment to transparency and scientific honesty.

Prior to taking office, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared, "As Administrator, I will ensure EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency."

Likewise, CEI reminds the EPA of President Obama's April 27 speech to the National Academy of Sciences in which he stated, "[U]nder my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over."

In a memo to the EPA, Kazman wrote, "Because of ideology, however, it was this back seat to which Mr. Carlin's study was relegated; more precisely, it was booted out of the car entirely."

"The irony of the president and Administrator Jackson talking about EPA's new transparency and commitment to scientific integrity, that's really incredible," Kazman said.

CEI is asking the agency to make Carlin's study public, extend or reopen the comment period to allow public response to his research and publicly declare that there will be no reprisals against Carlin for his research.

Kazman said the issue is "coming to a head" because the EPA's internal commentary period just closed, and the 1,200-page Waxman-Markey climate bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions is scheduled to come to a vote Friday on the House floor.

He believes Carlin's study could have implications on how lawmakers feel about the allegedly solid research behind the climate bill – especially if objecting analysts within the agency are being silenced.

"Any right-minded administrator would have said, 'Fine, put it in and we'll give our reasons for why we reject his contentions," Kazman said. "But instead, they shut the guy up."

Who's funding the Obamacare campaign? (OneNewsNow.com)

Who's funding the Obamacare campaign?
Michelle Malkin - Syndicated Columnist - 6/24/2009 9:40:00 AM

If you believe the White House, there are 30 million Americans who support a government healthcare takeover. But if you look at the funding behind the Obamacare campaign, it's the same few leftist billionaires, union bosses and partisan community organizers pushing the socialized medicine agenda. Let's connect the dots.

On Thursday, a national "grassroots" coalition called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) will march on Capitol Hill to demand universal healthcare. The ground troops won't have to march very far. HCAN, you see, is no heartland network. It is headquartered at 1825 K Street in Washington, DC -- smack dab in the middle of Beltway lobby land.

In fact, 1825 K Street is Ground Zero for a plethora of "progressive" groups subsidized by anti-war, anti-Republican, Big Nanny special interests. Around Washington, the office complex is known as "The Other K Street." The Washington Post noted in 2007 that "its most prominent tenants form an abbreviated who's who of well-funded allies of the Democratic Party....Big money from unions such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as the Internet-fueled MoveOn, has provided groups like those at 1825 K Street the wherewithal to mount huge campaigns."

MoveOn, of course, is the recreational political vehicle of radical liberal sugar daddy George Soros. The magnate's financial fingerprints are all over the HCAN coalition, which includes MoveOn, the action fund of the Center for American Progress (a Soros think tank), and the Campaign for America's Future (a pro-welfare state lobbying outfit).

(NOTE: Normal America must remain vigilant in the face of the continued conspiracies financed by George Soros. Soros is showing what bottomless political chests can accomplish. His intent certainly does not seem pro American.)

HCAN has a $40 million budget, with $10 million pitched in by The Atlantic Philanthropies -- a Bermuda-based organization fronted by Soros acolyte Gara LaMarche. Also in the money mix:

Notorious Democratic donors Herb and Marion Sandler, the left-wing moguls who made billions selling subprime mortgages and helped Soros fund his vast network of left-wing activist satellites. By their side is billionaire Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance, whose "Progressive Future" youth group has dispatched clueless volunteers armed with clipboards and literature bashing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to scare up support for Obamacare.

And two more left-wing heavyweights are joining the HCAN parade: the corruption-plagued SEIU (which has battled numerous embezzlement scandals among its chapters across the country while crusading for consumer and patients' rights), and Obama's old chums at fraud-riddled ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

ACORN and HCAN are linked by left-wing philanthropist Drummond Pike, who heads the nonprofit Tides Foundation/Tides Center. As the tax disclaimer for HCAN discloses, "HCAN is related to Health Care for America Education Fund, a project of The Tides Center, a section 501(c)(3) public charity." For decades, the Tides Center and its parent organization, the Tides Foundation, have seeded some of the country's most radical activist groups of the left, including the communist-friendly United for Peace and Justice, the jihadist-friendly National Lawyers Guild and the grievance-mongering Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Pike is the same philanthropist who assisted ACORN founder Wade Rathke after his brother, Dale, was caught embezzling nearly $1 million from the group. Wade Rathke sits on the Tides Foundation board of directors. In a conspiracy to cover up Dale Rathke's massive theft of funds, Pike volunteered to buy a promissory note worth $800,000 to cover the debt. These are the populist do-gooders supposedly looking out for you and your health.

Why do they want Obamacare? An internal ACORN memo I obtained from August 2008 makes the motives clear: "Over our 38 years, health care organizing has never been a major focus either nationally or locally for ACORN," wrote ACORN Philadelphia regional director Craig Robbins. "But increasingly, ACORN offices around the country are doing work on health care." The goal: "Building ACORN Power."

The memo outlines the ACORN/HCAN partnership and their strategy of opposing any programs that rely on "unregulated private insurance" -- and then parlaying political victory on government-run healthcare "to move our ACORN agenda (or at least part of it) with key electeds that we might otherwise not be able to pull off."

The objective, in other words, is to piggyback and exploit Obamacare to improve and protect their political health. The "grassroots" movement is not about representing Main Street. It's about peddling influence and power at 1825 K Street.

Michelle Malkin (malkinblog@gmail.com) is author of the forthcoming "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009).

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 25, 2009 at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 24, 2009

Wednesday's Web

The day’s top political news:

Obama's words about Iran get tougher

President Barack Obama described himself on Tuesday as being "entirely consistent" in his expressions of concern about the disputed Iranian election and the government crackdown that followed street protests. But his language clearly has gotten tougher since his first statement that the suppression of dissent was "of concern to me."

In his news conference, Obama was asked whether he had soft-pedaled his public reactions to postelection unrest in Iraq. The president correctly recalled that he had initially expressed deep concern about the election. And he has consistently made the point that he would not allow the Iranians to use the American government as a foil to undermine the legitimacy of the protesters.

Obama shifted some of his emphasis to condemnation of the violence. In a June 16 statement, for example, he said suppression of peaceful dissent "is of concern to me." On Tuesday he was more forceful, saying the U.S. is "appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments" of protesters. And he cited the "searing image" shown on TV of a female Iranian protester "bleeding to death on the streets."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090623/D990LE0G1.html

New All-Time Lows for Both CBS & ABC Evening Newscasts

Encouraging news for honest journalism and the American people.

TVNewser has learned the CBS Evening News has once again set an all-time low last week with 4.89 million Total Viewers and 1.42 million A25-54 viewers. But it was also the lowest (since records began in the 1991-'92 season) for ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. The Gibson program drew 6.42 million Total Viewers and 1.77 million A25-54 viewers. Both CBS's Katie Couric and ABC's Charlie Gibson were off last week.

Skepticism grows about over-the-air TV network news – especially with NBC having done its love-in with the White House and ABC surrendering its channel to sell Obama care.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/evening_news_ratings/new_alltime_lows_for_both_cbs_abc_evening_newscasts_119684.asp

Pelosi Flexes Her Muscles

The Speaker Uses Her Capital to Pass an infamous “Climate” Bill

Known as “Cap and Trade” the bill is only a dishonest maneuver through which liberal Democrats will impose a new tax on ALL Americans.

Passage of the bill would constitute another naked violation of an Obama pledge – the one in which he promised no American making less than $250,000 would see a dime in additional taxes. Cap an Trade will impose a tax on almost everyone.

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/54_151/news/36217-1.html

Opinion:

The real healthcare debate quality versus cost. Obama’s government care comes at a cost of quality medicine

Government healthcare will be unable to deliver healthcare with the quality we enjoy today.

Government cannot provide quality in anything. Socialized medicine proves that point in spades. “Quality” as an element also reflects availability. With universal programs,. The system cannot handle the volume. If it’s free, people will come – in droves.

Canada is a case in point. Physicians and medical facilities – especially here in Florida – see waves of Canadians flocking here to get medical attention they cannot get at home. The horror stories of patients having to wait more than a year for procedures are many.

The reasons are obvious – physicians today have an ambition to provide the best care possible because they are motivated by financial considerations – to be sure, they are in addition to honest and honorable instincts to heal the sick – but finance plays a large part in motivation.

Government will deny even the best doctors a fair return for their quality. We see the obsession with “equality” and “level playing fields” throughout the mantras of liberals. In fact, current news stories tell of very stupid (and very liberal – I repeat myself) officials in education concluding the position of Valedictorian should no longer be allowed. The liberal position expresses concern that rewarding one individual for outstanding accomplishment, hurts the feelings of those who don’t win.

Such incredibly stupidity would lead normal people to conclude liberals would see no reason for keeping score in sports during school recess. WAIT! Liberals don’t want competitive sports allowed at school recess. Cant have hurt feelings among those who lose.

Obviously, this sort of thinking is guaranteed to deprive us all of quality…which is the point I am making about government healthcare. Government healthcare is a liberal concept and as is the case with liberal concepts, it flies in the face of common sense.

We are not all equal – and we can thank God for the differences that give us an occasional genius or ace performer. (Of course liberals would also be offended with my mention of God – since they insist there is no God, or those who do believe in God, demand we treat atheists as if they are normal people too.)

The important bottom line of this discussion is the need to simplify and stress the real object of the healthcare debate.

We are choosing between good health care, and inferior health care. The issue is quality and quality cannot be attained by government healthcare operations.

That’s not a political claim, it’s a fact.

Some years back, at the behest of a Medical organization, I worked with George Gallup to determine thinking regarding healthcare. We chose to study the opinions of Floridians since Florida provides a unique mix of demographic groups. We took a position that holds Florida is a viable microcosm for the purposes of our study.

While I don’t recall the actual figures, the conclusion was plain enough to make precise figures unimportant. Overwhelmingly the Gallup study showed that, when given a choice, quality won out handily over cost. People were more concerned with maintaining quality than worrying about cost.

In fact, it led us to developing a theme: “when you or a loved one is seriously ill, only the very best care is good enough”.

I think that theme works today too.

We ought to use it and use it loudly. A trillion dollars wont buy quality. Quite the contrary. Don’t let liberal Democrats tell you otherwise.

Buddy

PS: About “Cap and Trade” – don’t be misled on that issue either. It’s a conspiracy by liberal Democrats to impose a new tax on all Americans. Dishonest, expensive, absurd.

The days top blogs:

10 Questions for the President on Health Care

Washington, DC – In light of today’s collaboration between ABC News and the Obama administration on the topic of health care reform, there are a few questions we’d like the President to answer.

(NOTE: It is time for straight talk on the liberal healthcare scheme. It’s a clear question of cost versus quality. “When you or someone you love is seriously ill, only the very best care is good enough”. Obama’s government care cannot meet that challenge – now or ever.)

Mr. President:

1) During the debate on the so-called stimulus package, your estimates on future unemployment and economic recovery proved to be wildly off-base. Why should Americans now believe you that they will not be forced out of the private coverage they enjoy, as basic economics would dictate?

2) Despite your assertions that health care reform will save money, the reality is that plans proposed by Democrats would cost taxpayers between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. How does this save money and how will you pay for this?

3) If, as you claim, a government-run option is essential to maintaining honest competition in the health insurance market, why is it not also true that we need a government-run competitor in the fast food industry, neighborhood babysitting, or Major League Baseball?

4) Proponents of a government-run option, you included, claim that it will compete on a level playing field with private insurance providers. In that case, will your government-run plan operate under a for-profit model and be forced to pay all applicable state, federal, and local taxes?

5) How do you expect to meet the growing need for physicians and medical professionals if the government-run plan pays lower than market rates to physicians while forcing them to participate or lose a majority of their patients and their livelihood?

6) If the government mandates that all Americans purchase health insurance, it must also define what qualifies as health insurance. Can you provide us your definition (with details please) and explain how this definition will not limit innovation and choice in health care?

7) According to the House Democrats’ plan, a family of four with an income of $88,200, four times the federal poverty level, would qualify for health insurance subsidies. In your view, is this a subsidy for low-income Americans or an effort to use taxpayers to put more health care under the purview of the federal government?

8) The new Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research is charged with determining what treatments should be offered to patients. Do you believe that these personal medical decisions should be made by patients in consultation with their doctors, or by unaccountable bureaucrats?

9) Why are there no actively practicing physicians included in the membership of the Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research?

10) If the final reform proposal is controversial enough that it will not receive the necessary 60 votes in the Senate, Democrats have left open the possibility of using a procedural move to pass it with only 51 votes. Do you believe massive changes to such a vital area of American life should be pushed through in this manner with only 51 votes?

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/

The Democrats' War on Poverty is nearly 50 years old, yet we're told there's too much poverty despite trillions in wealth transfers of every type.

The Democrats have run the education system for nearly 100 years -- with monopolies like the NEA and the AFT teacher's unions, yet we consistently hear that education is broken and that schools need more money.

Government was responsible for securing the southern border since the era of LBJ and it has intentionally failed in order to bolster the Democrat Party's voting base; this has led to the presence of as many as 20 million illegal aliens in the country thanks to Johnson's policies including "chain migration". It has helped result in bankrupted states like California as Democrat policies ensure a culture of dependency.

Democrats were responsible for implementing Medicare and Medicaid, which along with Social Security, are in ruins with approximately $55 trillion in debt. That's nearly a half million dollars for every household in America.

Democrats raped the Social Security Trust Fund -- there is no trust fund.
They raped the Medicare Trust Fund -- there's nothing left.
They raped the Highway Trust Fund -- it's empty.

I could go down a long list of things the government said it would do, but hasn't done. Because the Statist Democrats are liars. They even moved these massive expenditures "off the books" to conceal the damage they've done.

And now the Statist Democrats are launching the most massive attack on the American people in the history of government.

They promise health care for everyone, but they will not -- and they can't possibly -- deliver it.

(NOTE: as mentioned in other articles on this web site, Obama’s healthcare scam also will rob us of today’s quality healthcare. Government WILL take over our healthcare system if Obama has his way, and when it does, the quality of care will be inferior. Lives will be lost. This is not just another political issue – lives are at stake.)

While our health care system is certainly imperfect -- because all humans are imperfect, including doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance companies -- they are more perfect, more competent, more informed, more capable than all of the bureaucrats to whom they'll be forced to report: a bureaucracy that will make all decisions about your health care.

And it is easy to confirm the havoc that socialized medicine will wreak on American society.

All you need to do is to look at how Democrats are trying to ram home socialized medicine: they're doing it as fast as possible with as little debate as possible.

For the indigent and the poor, we already have programs like Medicaid and SCHIP and dozens of state programs. Yet we're told tens of millions of us must give up our private insurance and pay for a government-run program.

Democrats claim it will be more cost-effective and efficient. That's bulls***. The man who's had the least experience at running anything is going to unleash the most massive federal leviathan in history, nationalizing nearly 20% of the economy.

This has been the dream of the Statist Democrats since FDR: to force each and every one of you, whether you like it or not, into a strait-jacket form of health care. It controls you; the actual being, the person.

Nameless, faceless bureaucrats substituting their decisions for those of your doctor.

Deciding whether you will have an operation or not. Whether you will have an MRI or not. Whether you will receive a life-saving, life-extending drug or not.

And we know this, because this is what occurs in Canada and Britain and other centralized bureaucracies, where you simply can not have access to advanced health care, period.

Where will their new drugs come from, since we produce half of them?

Who will invent the new medical technologies for them, since we invent roughly three-fourths of them?

Who will run the hospitals and what will they look like when the government unions run them?

Who will be responsive in a massive federal bureaucracy, where no one takes responsibility for anything, and yet they're all-powerful decision-makers for your family's well-being?

And for what?

Why would anyone advocate dismantling our health care system for something that won't work and will further bankrupt our nation?

Because it's yet another payoff to the Union bosses and ACORN (but I repeat myself), who owe billions in health care benefits they don't want to pay.

Where will Barack Obama be in ten years, when the rest of us are struggling with a massive, out-of-control, federalized medical system that doesn't give a damn about individuals and is busy rationing?

He will be retired as a very young man; a very wealthy young man, who will have imposed his Marxist ideology upon this society and then walked away from it.

Meanwhile - - -

3.

How much information can the government demand from us?

Bookworm

When I was in law school, I went to a luncheon at which famed legal scholar Arthur Miller spoke. His topic, still a fresh one back in the mid-1980s, was the amount of private information floating around in computers. His target was American corporations. He felt that American corporations were collecting too much consumer data, and destroying the consumers' right to privacy.

I didn't agree with Miller -- or, at least, I didn't feel his paranoia. It was certainly true then, and it's more true now, that corporations track an enormous amount of consumer data. The fact is, though, we don't have to give corporations that data. We do so for our convenience. If I don't want a credit card company to track my spending habits, I can pay cash. If I don't want Safeway to track my product purchases, I don't have to have a membership number. I like the convenience of credit cards and I like the discounts that go with grocery store membership cards, but I can quit playing the game at any time to preserve my privacy.

The stakes are different, though, when the government is involved. When it's the government demanding your information, you have no leeway to say "no!"

I first became aware of this problem in connection with jury questionnaires. I've never been a juror, but I've certainly prepared such questionnaires and I've reviewed those prepared by other council. If you've been on the receiving end of such a questionnaire, it's a true horror. In theory, their purpose is to ask questions closely tailored to the case, so as to screen out true bias. For example, in a murder case, the questionnaire could logically ask whether anyone in the juror's family has been murdered or whether anyone in the family was convicted for murder. A positive answer to either question could hint at a bone-deep bias that might interview with a juror's duty to review the facts impartially.

The problem, though, is that jury questionnaires don't stop there. Each lawyer, fancying himself an amateur psychologist, includes dozens of questions aimed at determining just who you are. The questionnaires ask about your upbringing, your education, your lifestyle, your hobbies, your interests, your religious beliefs, your political beliefs, and on and on.

Nor do you have the choice, as you do in a commercial transaction, to say no to answering these questions. If the questionnaire is in front of you, it means that the judge has already put his imprimatur on the questionnaire. You are required to answer the questions or risk being in contempt of court. In a "heads I win, tails you lose" formulation, there's no benefit to you in answering the questions, but you can go to jail if you refuse to do so. (Although to be honest, I haven't heard of jurors being jailed for contempt. Either, sheep-like, they all answer those intrustive questions or, if a few object, the judge hears the matter in camera and just makes it go away.)

Jury questionnaires are a rather narrow, arcane example of governments demanding that people give them private information. Under the Obama administration, however, two much more serious issues are arising that place the government in a position in which it is demanding deeply private information, and in which the punishment for withholding that information can be severe.

The first situation is Obama's health care plan. We know that, not only will it be unbelievably expensive, it will also destroy private medicine for all but the wealthiest. Because the government will be the largest pot of money, that's where the care will go. And once it's in charge of health care for all Americans, the government will also be in charge of health data for all Americans. It will know if you're sick or well, if you have an "embarrassing" illness, if you're fertile or infertile, if you're vain, if you're stoic or weak, and anything else that used to be between you and your doctor, or between you and the insurance provider of your choice.

Under ObamaCare, you name it an area of physical or mental privacy, and the government will have huge databases with that information. And you can't opt out because there's nowhere else to go. The marketplace is gone. Your choices are bad and worse: Either be treated and give up your privacy, or give up treatment entirely.

Some are already voicing concerns that socialized medicine, aside from being an insanely bad idea in terms of purveying medical care, is also a deeply unconstitutional idea:

Obviously, the government does not have to pay for any and all services individual citizens may desire. And simply refusing to approve a procedure or treatment under applicable reimbursement rules, as under the government-run Medicare and Medicaid, does not make the system unconstitutional. But if over time, as many critics fear, a "public option" health insurance plan turns into what amounts to a single-payer system, the constitutional issues regarding treatment and reimbursement decisions will be manifold.

The same will be true of a quasi-private system where the government claims a large role in defining acceptable health-insurance coverage and treatments. There will be all sorts of "undue burdens" on the rights of patients to receive the care they may want. Then the litigation will begin.

Anyone who imagines that Congress can simply avoid the constitutional issues -- and lawsuits -- by withdrawing federal court jurisdiction over the new health system must think again. A brief review of the Supreme Court's recent war-on-terror decisions, brought by or on behalf of detained enemy combatants, will disabuse that notion. This area of governmental authority was once nearly immune from judicial intervention. Over the past five years, however, the Supreme Court (supposedly the nonpolitical branch) has unapologetically transformed itself into a full-fledged, policy-making partner with the president and Congress.

In other words, socialized medicine isn't just economically and practically foolish, it's truly un-American.

The other area in which privacy is an issue is the upcoming 2010 Census. The Census, as you know, is a Constitutional mandate and, in its original form, it's incredibly pure. All that the federal government is entitled to under the Constitution is numbers, and those numbers are necessary for only two reasons -- taxes and proportionate representation in the House of Representatives:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.

The United States Census Bureau, an historically non-partisan office, has long been charged with the responsibility for collecting census data.

Typical for bureacracies, the census has expanded and expanded until it bears no relationship to the original enumeration that the Constitution demands. Now, as the Census Bureau itself states, the myriad questions Americans must answer go far beyond the Constitutional purpose and are, instead, legislatively mandated in order to figure out to manage myriad federal programs.

In other words, in exchange for all Americans handing over their personal information to the federal government, some Americans will get a federal benefit. Please note how different this is from the marketplace situation in which a consumer willingly hands information out for a direct benefit to that consumer. With the government, consumers are forced to hand out information with no promise of any benefit at all.

I've never been a fan of the current nosy census form, but Barack Obama has just raised the ante by handing over to ACORN, a far left activist group, responsibility for collecting data. In other words, this ain't your father's (or, rather the Founding Father's) census anymore:

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States -- currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census "sell sheet," an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN "play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful," including by "help[ing] recruit census workers."

The bureau is currently employing help from more than 250 national partners, including TARGET and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to assist in the hiring effort.

But ACORN's partnership with the 2010 Census is worrisome to lawmakers who say past allegations of fraud should raise concerns about the organization.

"It's a concern, especially when you look at all the different charges of voter fraud. And it's not just the lawmakers' concern. It should be the concern of every citizen in the country," Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., vice ranking member of the subcommittee for the U.S. Census, told FOXNews.com. "We want an enumeration. We don't want to have any false numbers."

As you can see from the above article, the big concern about ACORN's involvement is fraud: Are ACORN operatives going to fake numbers that are helpful to the Church of Perpetual Obamatude? Will Republicans mysteriously vanish from the voter roles, while Democrats multiply exponentially? Will political fringe groups suddenly grow in number and power?

Representative Michele Bachmann has raised another concern, though, and that's one that ties in with the privacy issue in this post: Will ACORN's involvement mean that the information we hand over to the government (with no direct benefit to ourselves) falls into the hands of strangers who will use it for their own purposes?

Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household.

(NOTE: Bachnann’s concern is well grounded. ACORN – which is now operating under an assumed name – is known to be a conspiracy designed specifically to support liberal Democrats. It must be assumed that any and all census data they collect will be replicated on Democrat controlled computers for use in political schemes and scams.)

In an interview Wednesday morning with The Washington Times "America's Morning News," Mrs. Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, said the questions have become "very intricate, very personal" and she also fears ACORN, the community organizing group that came under fire for its voter registration efforts last year, will be part of the Census Bureau's door-to-door information collection efforts.

Having voiced her concerns, Bachmann has also drawn a Constitutional line in the sand:

"I know for my family the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home," she said. "We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that."

The U.S. Census Bureau, jealous of its turf, is warning of reprisals:

She [a Census Bureau representative] sent a portion of the U.S. legal code that says anyone over 18 years of age who refuses to answer "any of the questions" on the census can be fined up to $5,000.

So, if you're still with me, here's what we've got: The Founding Fathers mandated an enumerative census (meaning it's sole purpose is to count heads) in order to ensure proper taxes and representation among the several states. Over the years, and especially since the New Deal, Congress has expanded the federal government at a rate the Founders could never have imagined. To sustain that expansion, not only does Congress need numbers for taxes and representation, it also needs detailed personal information in order to fund favored groups. Handing over this information does not benefit most Americans and, with ACORN involved, can seriously harm them. It also likely violates Americans' constitutional right to privacy. Nevertheless, the government position currently is that, if Americans don't hand over this information, they can be fined significant sums of money.

All of which boils down to this question: Is Bachmann right that, while the Legislature may ask myriad personal questions, the nexus of the constitutional right to privacy and the extremely limited government right to a census means that Americans cannot be forced to provide more than numerical information? I'd like to think Bachmann is correct, but with the Supreme Court swiftly on the road to becoming just another wing of the Democratic White House, I wouldn't bet my $5,000 on that answer.

Bookworm is a crypto-conservative living in hostile territory, and proprietor of the website Bookworm Room.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 24, 2009 at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 23, 2009

Tuesday's Web

The day’s top political news:

White House to Abandon Spy-Satellite Program

The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security, according to officials familiar with the decision. Janet Napolitano strikes again.

The program came under fire from its inception two years ago. Democratic lawmakers said it would lead to domestic spying.

The program would have provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124572555214540265.html

S Carolina Governor Sanford taking a hike, governor's office says…he was missing for four days.

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff said late Monday that the governor is hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ending four days during which staff and state officials said they had not heard from him.

Neither Sanford’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford since he left the mansion Thursday in a black Suburban SUV assigned to his security detail.

The event, despite explanations, puts a cloud over Sanford’s credibility. Speculation will take center stage.

http://www.thestate.com/local/story/836552.html

Obama to hold desperate news conference: The GOP asks: What 2 Watch 4: Damage Control

As His Agenda Collapses On Capitol Hill, Obama Hopes For Press Conference Hail Mary Today

Americans feel “Sticker Shock” of Obama’s Government-run healthcare plan.

CBO Concludes Democrat Plan Increases Federal Deficit By $1 Trillion And Counting Over Next Decade.

http://www.gop.com/News/NewsRead.aspx?GUID=4a15a160-2ecb-443e-ae27-8f65751f6f5c

Opinion:
We know what’s wrong with Obama – what should Republicans do about it?

It’s time to begin gearing up for the 2010 election.

History suggests it should be a good Republican year if for no other reason than the party in power traditionally loses seats in Congress in the bye-year election. It will take more than historic patterns if Republicans are to turn back Democrat excesses. Obama knows this (or at least his handlers do) and he will act accordingly.

No wonder he is so desperate to get his socialized medicine bills passed right now. Obama always seem in a big hurry – haste led to passage of the “stimulus” scheme even though no one who voted on passage had read the legislation.

It begins now, with various people suggesting what Republicans should do to prepare for 2010.
Here is one idea. I agree with some of the planks, disagree with others. Read and decide for yourself.

Buddy

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/06/18/a-republican-platform-for-2010-emerges/

A Republican Platform for 2010 Emerges
Doctor Zero

A campaign platform for the Republicans in 2010 is taking shape. Much like the successful “Contract With America” of 1994, it has a catchy central theme: “What America Can No Longer Afford.” We can hope that, unlike the Contract With America, the Republicans stay focused on their campaign themes after riding them to victory, and make smart strategic choices while implementing them.
Here are some things America can no longer afford:

Politicians who sign bills they haven’t read, and do not understand: We can illustrate this point with clips of Joe Biden casually admitting he doesn’t understand the “stimulus” bill he was put in charge of implementing, and seeming untroubled by the notion of taxpayers getting ripped off by stimulus scam artists. Republicans should promise the voters to present clear, concise legislation, polished through robust debate, instead of sloppy billion-dollar spending binges shoved down congressional throats in a matter of days.

(NOTE: Republicans didnt read the bill because Obama prevented reading the "stimulus" bill by demanding passage in an accellerated manner. Republicans were powerless to slow the Obama wave because Democrats have dominating numbers.)

Bankrupting the future to pay for lunatic schemes: Mountains of debt are being piled onto our financial system, threatening to crash the bond market. We deserve better than ridiculous, unworkable spending fantasies from our leadership. Obama’s health care proposal isn’t a legislative agenda - it’s the ravings of a delusional madman, and it’s an insult to the taxpayers to suggest they should seriously consider it. Obama’s “plan” dumps another trillion dollars of debt onto an exhausted, stagnant economy, to fund a statist pipe dream that would increase costs, explode demand, and leave working Americans with less health insurance. This is no less insane than a penniless vagrant running into a luxury car dealership and loudly declaring his “plans” buy a new BMW with the lint in his pockets. Republicans can promise not to waste the voters’ time with expensive fantasies.

Abuse of the public trust: We don’t need “leaders” who spend their time slandering inconvenient investigators, or hiding their flagrant waste of precious taxpayer money behind secretive classifications. We don’t need lectures on the desperate state of the economy from a man who promises he can personally fix everything… right after he gets back from his million-dollar night on Broadway. Republicans should pledge both austerity and transparency to the voters. A government that demands huge amounts of our income, to resolve problems it helped to create, should address us as our humble and dedicated servants, not our feudal overlords. If we want to see glamorous airheads amass fortunes by feeding us ridiculous lies, then swank around in fabulous wardrobes for a swarm of adoring press sycophants, we can watch “Access Hollywood.”

Neurotic liberal obsessions: America has wasted billions of dollars respecting the primitive liberal religion of our elites. We have no more money to fritter away on global-warming witch doctors and multi-cultural palm readers. We have no loose change to squander on “green” shell games or “carbon credit” lottery tickets. Republicans should pledge to develop America’s natural resources, and begin a rational policy for implementing nuclear power. We’ve had enough of cavemen pointing at pictures of the hydrogen atom, or absurdly inaccurate weather models, and hooting in fear. Our offshore oil reserves will eventually be exploited. It’s just a question of whether the oil rigs will be flying American flags.

Political interference in the economy: We can no longer sustain the corrupt closed loop of Democrats rearranging the economy to enrich their favored constituents, who repay them with fat campaign contributions. Every American has been robbed by the United Auto Workers union, for more money than most of us have in our bank accounts, over the first half of this year. We can no longer afford to let power brokers meeting behind closed doors attempt to rewrite the laws of supply and demand, while pulling exorbitant fees from our bank accounts to pay for their “services.” We need government to disengage from the free market, in order to serve its proper regulatory purpose. We require professional economists with total commitment to capitalism and the free markets in our Treasury department, not political hacks who believe their job is to figure out how much cash they can siphon out of the market without killing it altogether. Republicans should pledge to respect the freedom, and collective wisdom, of the voters, and make it clear they see their role as enhancing the stability and security of the marketplace. Their job is to give businesses and consumers the confidence to build a more prosperous future, not design the future and force the populace into their appointed roles at gunpoint.

Silence in the face of tyranny: We are the defenders of freedom, not mute spectators to oppression. The peaceful future of the world hinges on the universal acceptance of every person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those words were not written for Americans to recite to each other. Our duty is to shout them into the darkness of communism, theocracy, and the other vicious systems men have designed to enslave each other. Our fathers defeated evil on a global scale, and we inherited a responsibility to call evil by its right name, wherever we see it. Republicans should pledge that no one struggling to raise their neck from beneath a tyrant’s boot will need to strain their ears to hear the voice of America.

Corruption of our electoral system: Americans have been asked to make painful sacrifices to address a frightening economic crisis. They have been told they need to sacrifice their freedoms, and mortgage their futures. They have the right to expect that every hand outstretched to take their money belongs to a fairly, honestly elected representative. Voter fraud and intimidation are unacceptable outrages, and Republicans should pledge to prosecute them aggressively and relentlessly. No organization under investigation for voter fraud should receive a single penny from the government.

Playing politics with national defense: In a time of war, we cannot afford to allow political hacks like Nancy Pelosi to smear our intelligence community. In a time of breathtaking victories against terrorism, our military leaders deserve better than to be treated like uppity peasants by Barbara Boxer. We have not forgotten Democrat leaders declaring defeat while our troops were still engaged in the field, hoping to demoralize the public for partisan political advantage. We have not forgotten prominent Democrats referring to American troops as Nazis. Republicans should pledge to keep petty politics out of national defense, and remember that civilian oversight of the military does not make civilian leaders better than the soldiers sworn to respect their authority. American soldiers do not enlist to become body servants, or convenient fall guys, for rich and powerful Democrat politicians.
Insanely expensive government: Bloated government fueled by economy-killing taxes produces nothing, except economy-killing regulations. Socialism is not a clever idea Barack Obama just came up with. It has been tried, and failed, around the globe, over and over again. Every socialist program in the history of the United States, from the “war on poverty” to public education, is a miserable failure with a staggering price tag. The most urgent imperative for the next Congress is to stop the runaway pork spending, dismantle government programs, and return money and freedom to the people, who will use it freely and productively. Republicans should strive to make the architects of the financial meltdown – people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd – household names, with their corruption a matter of water-cooler conversation around the country. They should stress that Big Government is inherently corrosive – no party can swim in trillions of dollars and remain clean, as the Republicans of 2004 to 2008 demonstrated. Their campaign should not be to take over the wheel of the nanny state, but to dissolve it with massive tax cuts, and privatization of failed government programs. Remind the voters that everyone knows where Barack Obama’s tired, bankrupt socialism leads. He isn’t taking us on a bold new path. He’s just repackaging the same old swindles and reselling them to us with slick new advertising… and huge new price tags.

Americans can’t afford to be fools for the Democrats any more. They’ve enriched themselves with a very lucrative forty-year run, but if there’s one service we can thank Barack Obama for – before we set about the urgent business of making him the lamest duck ever to float across the bottom two years of the presidential pond – it’s the way he’s made the absurdity of socialism too obvious for any thinking person to ignore any more. In a shower of soaring unemployment, crashing market values, mind-blowing deficit spending, embarrassing foreign policy, and breathtaking corruption, Obama has given Republicans a flowchart for demonstrating how unethical and unsustainable socialism inevitably becomes. I can only hope they have the courage to walk past a media that will be begging, then demanding, and finally screaming at them to put that flowchart down…

… because we can’t afford an ineffective, timid Republican Party, either.

The day’s top blogs:

1.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelBarone/2009/06/22/dodge_facts,_skip_details,_govern_chicago-style

Dodge facts, Skip Details, Govern Chicago-style
Michael Barone

We pundits like to analyze our presidents and so, as Barack Obama deals with difficult problems ranging from health care legislation to upheaval in Iran, let me offer my Three Rules of Obama.

First, Obama likes to execute long-range strategies but suffers from cognitive dissonance when new facts render them inappropriate. His 2008 campaign was a largely flawless execution of a smart strategy, but he was flummoxed momentarily when the Russians invaded Georgia and when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. On domestic policy, he has been executing his long-range strategy of vastly expanding government, but may be encountering problems as voters show unease at huge increases in spending.

His long-range strategy of propitiating America's enemies has been undercut by North Korea's missile launches and demonstrations in Iran against the mullah regime's apparent election fraud. His assumption that friendly words could melt the hearts of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been refuted by events. He limits himself to expressing "deep concern" about the election in the almost surely vain hope of persuading the mullahs to abandon their drive for nuclear weapons, while he misses his chance to encourage the one result -- regime change -- that could protect us and our allies from Iranian attack.

Second, he does not seem to care much about the details of policy. He subcontracted the stimulus package to congressional appropriators, the cap-and-trade legislation to Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, and his health care program to Sen. Max Baucus. The result is incoherent public policy: indefensible pork barrel projects, a carbon emissions bill that doesn't limit carbon emissions from politically connected industries and a health care program priced by the Congressional Budget Office at a fiscally unfeasible $1,600,000,000,000.

He quickly announced the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and now finds his administration begging the likes of Palau and Bermuda to take a few detainees off its hands. His acceptance of Arabist insistence that all problems in the Middle East can be solved by getting an Israeli-Palestinian settlement has put us in the absurd position of pressuring Israel not to expand settlements by a single square meter but pledging not to "meddle" in Iran.

Third, he does business Chicago-style. His first political ambition was to be mayor of Chicago, the boss of all he surveyed; he has had to settle for the broader but less complete hegemony of the presidency.

(NOTE: No wonder. Obama is purely a product of Chicago’s Democrat Machine – arguably the most corrupt political organization in the country. No wonder then, that Obama has such close ties to other corrupt group such as his ACORN – or whatever that vote fraud group is calling itself these days. Obama’s presidency was born in a nest of corruption – what else can be expected of it?)

From Chicago, he brings the assumption that there will always be a bounteous private sector that can be plundered endlessly on behalf of political favorites. Hence the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler to bail out the United Auto Workers, the proposal for channeling money from the private nonprofits to the government by limiting the charitable deduction for high earners and the plan for expanding government (and public employee union rolls) by instituting universal pre-kindergarten.

Chicago-style, he has kept the Republicans out of serious policy negotiations but has allowed left-wing Democrats to veto a measure upholding his own decision not to release interrogation photos. While promising a politics of mutual respect, he peppers both his speeches and impromptu responses with jabs at his predecessor. Basking in the adulation of nearly the entire press corps, he whines about his coverage on Fox News. Those who stand in the way, like the Chrysler secured creditors, are told that their reputations will be destroyed. Those who expose wrongdoing by political allies, like the AmeriCorps inspector general, are fired.

Obama entered the presidency with what seemed like supreme self-confidence. He had, after all, advanced from the Illinois state Senate to the presidency of the United States in just four years -- a steeper and more rapid ascent than any president since Woodrow Wilson. The success of his long-range campaign strategy seems to have made him confident that his long-range policy strategies would work, as well.

But transferring large segments of the American economy from the private to the public sector has proved to be tougher than winning Democratic primaries and caucuses. And Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il have proved to be harder to charm than American mainstream media.

It's generally good for American presidents to have long-term strategies. But in setting public policy, it's important to get the details right. And in guiding the nation in a dangerous world, it's vital to adjust to face hard realities and adjust to unexpected events.

Drenched in blood of slavery

It's Democrats who need to apologize

Editor's note: Roger Hedgecock's show streams live on WND from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern and then again in the following three hours on tape.

The U.S. Senate voted unanimously last week to adopt a resolution apologizing for slavery.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, lead sponsor of the resolution, said, "You wonder why we didn't do it 100 years ago. It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice."

Only after decades of public education ignoring and distorting U.S. history can such a huge lie be said with a straight face.

Senator, you didn't do it 100 years ago because 100 years ago you Democrats were enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws, poll taxes to keep blacks from voting, and riding around in sheets and pointy hats just in case blacks didn't get the message.

You say "It's important to have a collective response" because you want to bury the origins, purposes, and historical practices of your own party.

The worst part is, Republicans in the Senate let you get away with it.

Principled Republicans knowing their history would have authored a resolution reciting the facts that the Republican Party was formed, among other reasons, to oppose slavery and that the Republican Party and its first President Abraham Lincoln responded to Southern, Democrat-led secession with a successful war that preserved the union and freed the slaves.

After Lincoln's assassination (by a Democrat), the Republican-led Congress (over the objections of the Democratic Party minority) amended the Constitution to confirm the liberation of the slaves (13th Amendment: slavery abolished), and the 14th Amendment (freed slaves are citizens equal to all citizens) and the 15th Amendment (right to vote guaranteed to freed slaves).

Southern Democrats spent the next 100 years trying to keep freed slaves down with segregation laws, poll taxes to deny the right to vote, and lynching to enforce the social order. The KKK was formed by a Democrat; no Republican has ever been a member of the KKK. This is the heritage of the Democratic Party.

In fact, the Democratic Party was formed in the first place to defend and expand slavery.

(NOTE: The first federal effort to secure voting rights for Black Americans was generated by Ike’s administration in 1958. Democrats were still denying Black voters their rights at the ballot box way into the 1960s. NO Republicans involved. Of course Democrats try to promote the bald faced lie the GOP rise in the South was due to party switching by racist Democrats. Never happened. Strom Thurmond and Congressman Albert Watson, were the only two Democrats to switch parties, and neither switched because of civil rights. Yet, despite the facts of history, Black voter cast ballots for the party that discriminated to brutally against them by more than 90%. It is a waste of time for Republicans to campaign among Black voters.)

In 1840, the very first national nominating convention of the Democratic Party adopted a platform which read in part:

Resolved, That Congress has no power ... to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states ... that all efforts by abolitionists ... made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery ... are calculated ... to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union.

Got that, Sen. Harkin? Your party was born defending slavery as necessary for the happiness of the people and threatening secession and war if slavery were challenged.

The same party platform language was used in 1844, 1848, 1852 and 1856. In 1860, the Democrat commitment to slavery took a harsher tone.

The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress in 1850. This monstrous law provided that, since slaves were the personal property of their masters, runaway slaves must be returned to their owners. The law required all law enforcement officers to assist in the recapture of runaway slaves or risk a fine of $1,000 (about $100,000 in today's dollars)!

The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s in part as a political reaction to this unjust law.

In their national convention of 1860, Democrats harshly responded to certain Northern (Republican) states that were passing state laws to evade the Fugitive Slave Law by adopting a plank in the Democratic Party Platform which read:

Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.
Senator, your Democratic Party has much to be apologetic about on the slavery issue.

During the civil war, the Southern Democrats led the Confederacy out of the Union; Northern Democrats formed a separate party which opposed the war. The 1864 (Northern) Democratic Party platform adopted a "peace" plank which read in part:

... after four years of failure to restore the union by the experiment of war ... justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand ... a cessation of hostilities ... to the end that ... peace may be restored ...
Here is the origin of today's Democratic Party "Peace at any Price, Better Red than Dead, Why Can't we all just get Along" foreign policy.

The war was started by Democrat secessionists, and just as President Lincoln was on the verge of victory, the Northern Democrats wanted to save the South and slavery with "peace talks"! Voters knew better in 1864 and re-elected Lincoln.

But the Democrats weren't through. In 1868, Sen. Harkin's party condemned the Republican Party in its party platform as the "Radical Party," and condemned Reconstruction in these unforgettable words:

Instead of restoring the Union, it (the Radical Party) has dissolved it, and subjected ten states (the former Confederate states) ... to military despotism and negro supremacy.
And, senator, don't tell me this is all ancient history in a lame attempt to evade the true origins of your party.

As recently as 1964, when the Senate debated the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats (including Al Gore's father) voted no. While Northern Democrats voted yes, their votes were not enough. The deciding votes to pass this landmark bill were provided by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and the Republicans.

Republicans should be proud of their heritage of liberation of the slaves and civil rights voting record.

It's Harkin and the Democrats who should apologize and pay reparations.

ACORN drops tarnished name and moves to silence critics
KEVIN MOONEY
Examiner Investigative Reporter

Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) leaders are using the threat of a law suit to silence and intimidate critics, according to current and former members of the liberal activist group.
In a letter dated June 11 an attorney for ACORN advised top whistleblowers that their unauthorized use of the organization’s name could make them liable for monetary damages and injunctive relief.

ACORN executives have also changed their organization’s name, which was tarnished by investigations in at least 14 states of allegations of voter registration fraud during the 2008 presidential campaign, and charges by current and former members of financial mismanagement and misrepresentation.

(NOTE: ACORN may change its name and take other steps to hide the truth from American voters, but nothing changes the fact ACORN – by any name – Is steeped in voter registration fraud and the impact such fraud has on elective politics. ACORN is ALL Democrat…just as was the old KKK in its hey day.)

The new name will let ACORN leaders continue their operations without worrying about prior bad publicity, according to Marcel Reid of ACORN 8, a group of present and former members.

“We’ve known for many months now that the name ACORN is going to be retired,” Reid said. “The name has been so damaged to the point where the leadership knows it simply can’t go on as it has with the ACORN label out front and center, especially after all of the reporting.”

In fact, the process has already begun, she noted. Wade Rathke, who founded the organization, announced on his blog that ACORN International has officially changed its name to “Community Organizations International.”

Reid also said ACORN is in the process of dismantling Citizen’s Consulting Inc. (CCI), a New-Orleans based non-profit, which has been used to maintain centralized financial control, ACORN 8 activists claim. Tax records show that CCI is interlinked with several ACORN affiliates.

Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled almost $1 million from the organization in 1999 and 2000, while he was employed as the organization’s chief financial officer with the CCI affiliate. For almost a decade Wade Rathke and other staff members concealed the embezzlement from ACORN’s board of trustees, according to the criminal complaint ACORN 8 members filed against the organization.

ACORN’s national leaders withdrew a lawsuit Reid filed with fellow board member Karen Inman last October seeking access to internal financial records. Reid and Inman were also expelled from their board positions; a move they say was illegal. Reid and Inman then came together with six other colleagues to form ACORN 8.

“ACORN has to be decapitated,” Reid said. “The senior staff and current national board should be dismantled. The only way to have reform is for the current leadership to be removed completely. We also need a forensic audit.”

Arthur Schwartz, the general counsel for ACORN, has sent a “cease and desist” letter to Reid and Inman instructing them to discontinue using the name ACORN in a connection with their activities. This same letter threatens legal action if the ACORN 8 members do not provide written assurances that they will comply with this demand by the end of June.

“It is a violation of federal and state law for you to use the ACORN name and mark without the written permission of ACORN,” the letter states. “Should you continue to do so, you will be liable for monetary and injunctive relief.”

Reid told The Examiner that ACORN 8 will not comply.
“We have no intention of not using the name ACORN 8, it is not a trademark infringement,” she said. “This get tough attitude is part of larger attempt to silence people and shut them down. We are not going to be silenced.”

Meanwhile, ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate has filed suit against Anita MonCrief, a former employee, who has testified under oath on voter registration allegations. ACORN is currently under investigation in at least 14 states for electoral irregularities. The Project Vote suit claims that Anita MonCrief and an unidentified accomplice gained access into private e-mails from group executives and stole the group’s name without permission. It also accuses Moncrief of using a company credit card for her own purposes.

“ACORN is attempting to silence me, and the allegations in the lawsuit are false,” MonCrief said in statement emailed to The Examiner.
ACORN 8 has released its own statement on “whistleblower retaliation” through its national spokesman Michael McCray that expresses support for new protective legislation.

“On behalf of the national board of ACORN 8, we are all saddened by and express great concern due to ACORN’s court action filed against whistleblower Anita MonCrief,” the statement reads. “While we do not express an opinion on the merits of ACORN’s complaint; we as reform advocates decry the tactic of suing whistleblowers – especially, low to moderate income people who do not have the financial means to effectively fight back in courts of law. Moreover, this is yet another example of why congress must enact strong corporate, government and tax-payer funded whistleblower protection laws.”

ACORN 8 has endorsed H.R. 1507, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009.

The presidency at five months
Even Obama's supporters say the honeymoon is over
Tony Blankley

Last week, both David Broder, The Washington Post's venerable and authoritative political voice, and Chuck Todd, NBC's new important political voice, declared President Obama's honeymoon over.

Although almost every new American presidency is launched with renewed hope and optimism for both the president and the nation (Abraham Lincoln's being a conspicuous exception in 1861) a time comes when the public and the president's party both begin to assess whether had they made the right choice.

(NOTE: Obama not only benefits from the usual honeymoon period, but he swept into office on a wave of adulation by fans who saw in him an image of a non-politician. No one could have met those expectations, Obama has fallen short by a major factor. The tide is turning against him these days.)

Are the public's expectations of the new president being met? Are the many promises every candidate for president makes - and his apparent personal attributes - hanging together and beginning to form a potentially coherent and successful administration of government?

It is a commonplace of Washington politics that it is not news when the other party attacks, but it is noteworthy when there is opposition within a president's own party.

Last week, on two of his three major domestic legislative initiatives - health policy and financial re-regulation - strong Democratic Party congressional doubts (and, on some important details, opposition) emerged.

Abroad, the extraordinary and heroic rising of the Iranian people and the predictable but deeply disconcerting nuclear provocation of the North Korean regime are beginning the process of coloring in the public picture of the president's foreign-policy methods and effectiveness. Last week, public expectations and early presidential performance began to separate a little.

I don't think the Obama team would contradict me if I suggested that at the heart of Mr. Obama's winning campaign was his image as a 'progressive', idealistic, highly intelligent and masterfully competent man. Hopes for a "post-racial" society also motivated votes for Mr. Obama from both Democrats and Republicans. These images were projected by the campaign to contrast (in their view) with the incumbent Republican president.

In the weeks leading up to last week, the president disappointed many of his most intense supporters on the left by backpedaling on war, civil liberties and transparency-related issues, while Republican opposition increased as he made his first Supreme Court nomination on an identity-politics basis and advanced his intrusive industrial and regulatory policies.

His early predictions of unemployment rates have sadly been breached by events as the interest rates on Treasury notes needed to finance the president's proposed deficits are going up steadily - thus driving up mortgage rates and driving down housing recovery.

Those same left-of-center supporters last week were very disappointed with what they see as his excessive solicitude to big Wall Street interests in his financial deregulation proposal - while the financial institutions that contributed handsomely to his campaign see the proposed regulations as too burdensome and bad for a growing economy.

Mr. Obama responded to the Iranian regime's murderous suppression of its public with a defensible (although I strongly disagree with it) but Kissingerian realpolitik calculation. The purported logic of that position sits uneasily on the conscience of many of his liberal supporters - who previously had heard the president's high moral and idealistic tone - and many conservatives as well.

It is an unnatural and probably unuseful political act when a liberal Democratic White House cites the approval of its historic foreign-policy bete noire - Henry A. Kissinger - as justification for the president's policy plays on Iran.

But at the crux of last week's political consternations was the hard-to-avoid implication that the president's domestic agenda - particularly his signature health policy plans (which also have been the Democratic Party's signature domestic issue ) - was running headlong into both economically and politically intolerable deficits and national debt accumulation.

The Congressional Budget Office's preliminary cost and deficit calculations of the president's overall budget and specific health proposals have sent tremors through the Democratic Party establishment - and the White House is feeling the vibrations.

Not counting the estimated $1.6 trillion 10-year cost for part of the president's proposed health policy changes, the CBO predicts that the administration's budget proposal would increase the national debt by $9.3 trillion over 10 years - almost twice the total national debt from George Washington to George W. Bush.

Even the president's own Office of Management and Budget director, Peter R. Orszag, has stated that a continued deficit over 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is "unsustainable." (The president's is more than 4 percent.)

Moreover, to advance the president's climate-change legislation (the third of his big three legislative initiatives) Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has had to cut way back on its early-years revenue-raising provisions in order to induce more support among Democratic congressmen - thus further increasing future deficits beyond even the current budget proposal.

Though the president remains broadly admired, with his personal-approval polling numbers at about 60 percent, his policy proposals are becoming less popular with the public as they are emerging in more detail. And even those policies that are popular appear to be unaffordable, the president's Democratic senatorial allies are focusing more on their responsibilities as senators - and less on their party loyalties to a Democratic president.

Although the president is looking somewhat inconsistent and less effective while his policies are looking less plausible, it's early, and legislative success may yet be the president's this season. But it is not too early for Democratic Party nerves and their ending of the presidential honeymoon.

Tony Blankley is the author of "American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century" and executive vice president for global affairs of the Edelman public relations firm in Washington.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 23, 2009 at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 22, 2009

Monday's Web

The day’s Top political News:

Obama Job Approval Slips to 58 Percent

President Barack Obama's job approval rating fell to 58% in Gallup Poll daily tracking from June 16-18 -- a new low for Obama in Gallup tracking, although not dissimilar to the 59% he has received on four other occasions.

Thirty-three percent of Americans now disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president, just one point shy of his record-high 34% disapproval score from early June.

NOTE: These figures show a downward shift for Obama that is statistically unimportant. Basically, they are unchanged.

HOWEVER There is more, much more.

An un-scientific survey by AOL shows 58% of Americans say they have changed their opinion of Obama in “the past few months”. Even more troubling for Obama and his handlers are the figures on his job approval from that same group: 69% say they do not approve of the job Obama is doing. The sample is not random and likely is skewed greatly toward younger, more affluent, better educated people. Only members of AOL.. but almost 170,000 felt moved to vote.

The trend is against Obama among a group that supported him during the campaign. Almost 70% disapproval of the job being done is very bad news for any administration – including the Mullahs in Iran. It’s just a matter of our not having people in the streets of this country.

WAIT A MINUTE – arent Obama opponents planning street demonstrations July 4? Hmmm.

Meanwhile, from another source:

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -1. Today is the second straight day the President’s rating has been below zero.

Among those who are politically liberal, 64% Strongly Approve. So do 40% of moderates. However 61% of conservatives Strongly Disapprove (see other recent demographic highlights).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.

Most voters still place the blame for our nation’s economic woes on the Bush Administration, but a growing number say it’s Obama’s economy now. The number blaming Bush has fallen to 54%. That’s down eight points from a month ago.

Consumer confidence, while still up since the beginning of the year, has retreated to its lowest level in two months. For the latest polling updates on other topics in the news, please visit the Rasmussen Reports home page.

Overall, 54% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove. For more Presidential barometers, see Obama By the Numbers.

For the full Rasmussen story, go to:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

NY Governor Paterson To NY Senate: Work Together, Or Else

Governor Calls For Special Session, Threatens To Call Legislative Sessions Every Day Until Resolution Is Reached

Since two dissident Democratic senators teamed up with Republicans to form a coalition government and oust Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, angry Democrats have refused to take part in Senate sessions and have hidden bills and agendas from the coalition. Paterson threatened both sides that they'd better show up to the special session or he'll schedule sessions on weekends and holidays until they find a resolution.

While the governor can't force senators to vote on or debate bills, the New York Constitution grants him the power to call a special legislative session – and experts say he can even keep the senators in the state house with the help of state police.

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/senate.paterson.albany.2.1053517.html

N.Korea accuses Obama of nuclear war plot

North Korea has accused US President Barack Obama of plotting a nuclear war on the communist nation by reaffirming a US assurance of security for South Korea, the North's state media said.

In a first official response to last week's US-South Korean summit, the state-run weekly Tongil Sinbo said in its Saturday edition Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak "are trying to ignite a nuclear war".

NKorea is rumored to be planning a launch of a 4,500 mile missile July 4, and a N Korean ship suspected of carrying illegal nuke material is being shadowed by a US destroyer. Tensions are high.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.33b78ee19629f3815e9f9ef7e17315dc.281&show_article=1

Opinion:
Twitter, tweeter, and technology of communicating reality in the streets

I have been struck of late by the introduction of cell phone photos and Internet communications as the riots in Iran are being covered.

We are becoming accustomed to the grainy, shakey, badly focused images of people rushing up and down streets. The video clips are played over and over and over. I have watched one hapless Irani being cuffed and manhandled into a maroon van, for about seven times.

The turbaned Mullahs have shut down real coverage – a sign they don’t want the world to see what they are doing. Who can blame them.

Mullahs are accustomed to unquestioned obedience from their faithful – which may be one reason such nations accomplish very little in life. Strict and extreme governance by religious fanatics – no matter the selected Faith – never benefits the people. I suspect they don’t earn much in their after life either.

I’m not interested in becoming a martyr, but not because I am reasonably certain 72 virgins are not waiting. Even if they were -- at my age, what would I possibly do with such companionship? Maybe 50 games of chess while playing a dozen games of Mah Johng?

If I make it to that after life and am still at my present age, certainly nothing other than prim social activities would be of any interest. Talk about sad.

But I digress.

Given today’s Iran, we can count on none of what passes for news coming from that country. (Note I refrain from noting we get little we can believe from our own “mainstream” media as well.)

No matter, journalism will find a way – even if fact and truth are not a result.

We get these snippets from cell phones, email, and now these reports via Twitter et al. Imagine, ALL the word we are getting comes from amateurs with elementary tools, sending what they believe to be the story and the world is listening.

Consider the possibilities.

A conspiratorial dictatorship with evil intent, could shut down normal journalism and leave coverage to the sorts of crude devices we see coming from today’s Iran. How easy it would be for a group of PR types who possess real talent for sending false – but believable – information to the world. They could sit in a cloistered environment and crank out page after page of written propaganda, while staging riots in a back lot. Given the shaky images and blurred focus, the sets could be quite simple. Since the real world networks will run the same stuff over and over, the message seeps in.

In fact, a nation could be undergoing massive murder and oppression, and the world could see the violence as a product of the opposition. Or, a small group of anti government types could use the crack down to create rumors and phony reporting of their own.

Of course, even as I think long and hard about the threat the “new technologies” pose for journalism, I am forced to consider the even bigger issue: in today’s America, we have lost access to a believable and dependable array of media. Only the Internet gives us access to unfiltered information, and we have little ability to judge its accuracy.

After all, “Snopes” has a distinctly liberal bent and has been caught several times corrupting the truth. Too many regard it as the ultimate test for accuracy. It does not fill that position. It IS a source, but a source that must be viewed with skepticism.

(Sigh) gone are the days in which Journalism was an honored profession that could be trusted to bring us truth and fact. Almost all dailies are left wing corrupted, and ALL over-the-air TV news networks are corrupt. (I assume this week has erased any argument on that score)

At last, the only fair and balanced source of reporting is Fox News.

Wait a minute.

Fox still has Shepard Smith reporting. He blew it big time with his absurd assumptions voiced during his coverage of the Holocaust Museum murder. Smith lost credibility. Too bad. I had hoped a Mississippi lad, who had once even worked locally, would remain uncorrupted by the big city.

I was wrong – so is American journalism today.

Buddy

The day’s Top Blogs:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/who_really_inspires_violence_t.html

Who Really Inspires Violence, the Right or Left?

Selwyn Duke

Is the right responsible for inspiring murder, such as that of late-term abortionist George Tiller by Kansas native Scott Roeder? Some certainly seem to think so. For instance, the Friday before last Bill O'Reilly had as a guest on his show Joan Walsh, the editor of leftist news site Salon.com. She appeared because she had criticized O'Reilly for engaging in what she called a "jihad" against Tiller. Her thesis is that O'Reilly and, presumably, the rest of us who are passionately pro-life are culpable Tiller's death.

Of course, this isn't a novel idea among the left. If there is any kind of violent incident perpetrated by someone ostensibly a rightist, they blame their political opponents for stoking the fires of hatred. You can just count on it every time, be it an attack on an abortion center, a Timothy McVeigh, or . . . or . . . well, actually, there aren't really all that many, are there? But don't bother ideologues with the facts.

Now, Walsh, a woman of mediocre intellect and lacking moral fiber -- she has lauded Tiller "the baby killer" as a hero -- has been beating this drum hard. In fact, on June 10 she published a piece titled "Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?" In it, she seems to draw a connection between James von Brunn, the 88-year-old white supremacist who murdered security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Museum, and fairly benign commentary about the effects of political correctness. She wrote:

In a debate with Buchanan [Pat Buchanan] a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men -- he didn't give me any examples of lynching -- and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence? I don't know. I hope not, but I don't know.

No, Walsh doesn't know much. First, von Brunn isn't a rightist -- he is a "whitist." In fact, he is quite the opposite of a rightist many ways, as Bob Unruh reports at WorldNetDaily:

The Moonbattery blog revealed von Brunn advocated the socialist policies espoused by Adolf Hitler and used Darwinian theory to support his anti-Semitism.

(NOTE: It was revealing for Fox Newsman, Shep Smith, rushed to the absurd conclusion that von Brunn was a conservative. In the immediate wake of the attack on the Holocaust Museum, Smith was ranting and raving, suggesting those who question Obama’s place of birth and reaching an incredible extreme of contending the murder at the Museum validated the outrageous memo from the Homeland Security Department that targets those who disagree with Obama to be potential terrorists. Smith even brought someone from the extreme left wing conspiracy – the Southern Poverty Law Center – to join him in is very stupid conclusions. Both voiced a chorus claiming the murderer to be a conservative. Of course the opposite was true – but don’t expect Shep Smith and his fellow extremists to admit they were wrong – dead wrong in fact.)

In statements that later were stripped from an anti-religion website, von Brunn wrote, "The Big Lie technique, employed by Paul to create the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, also was used to create the HOLOCAUST RELIGION ... CHRISTIANITY AND THE HOLOCAUST are HOAXES."

This probably would come as such a shock to someone as ill-informed as Walsh that she'd scarcely believe it; it's just too contrary to her dogma. Yet I could have guessed it. Those who have actually studied the history of Nazism and the white supremacist movement know that, from Adolf Hitler in the 1930s to his fellow travelers today, its ranks have always harbored hostility toward Christianity. The reasons are simple: Whether you view Christianity as merely an outgrowth of Judaism or the fulfillment of it, it is the second part of Judeo-Christian. Second, like the ancient Romans, the Nazis viewed the faith of "turn the other cheek" (counsel which, mind you, is misunderstood) as an influence that militates against manly virtue. Lastly, a lie doesn't find much acquaintance with the Truth.

Instead, white supremacists much prefer ancient Germanic pagan religions and even Islam. Just consider Hitler, for instance, and his dislike for the heroic Frankish (Germanic) warrior Charles Martel. What was Martel's sin? He halted the Moslem advance into Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D. Paul Belien addressed this misguided passion of Hitler's in the Brussels Journal, writing,

"‘Had Charles Martel not been victorious,' Hitler told his inner crowd in August 1942, ‘then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world.'"

The Nazis' dislike for Christianity was so great that, not surprisingly, they sought to destroy it. Leftists may scoff at a notion so contrary to their prejudices, but the evidence of this fact is now overwhelming. And of this evidence, perhaps the most compelling was uncovered by a Jewish attorney named Julie Seltzer Mandel, a woman whose grandmother was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. I addressed her discovery in my piece "Hitler and Christianity," writing:

While a law student and editor of the Nuremberg Project for the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Mandel gained access to 148 bound volumes of rare documents - some marked "Top Secret" - compiled by the Office of Strategic Services (or O.S.S., the WWII forerunner to the CIA).

After scouring the papers, she published the first installment of them in 2002, a 120-page O.S.S. report entitled "The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches." Reporting on these O.S.S. findings in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward Colimore wrote: "The fragile, typewritten documents from the 1940s lay out the Nazi plan in grim detail: Take over the churches from within, using party sympathizers. Discredit, jail or kill Christian leaders. And re-indoctrinate the congregants. Give them a new faith -- in Germany's Third Reich." He then quotes Mandel: "A lot of people will say, ‘I didn't realize that they were trying to convert Christians to a Nazi philosophy.'... They wanted to eliminate the Jews altogether, but they were also looking to eliminate Christianity."

To this day nothing has changed. If you examine the writings of contemporary white supremacists, you will find much hatred for Christianity, affection for paganism and sympathy for Islam.

Now, I ask you: Which is better characterized by this description, the right or left? When answering, remember that those euphemistically-named censorship bureaucracies of the left, "human rights commissions," consistently silence those who dare criticize Islam, most notably Christians.

Getting back to von Brunn, we can ask a similar question: Given that he hated not only Jews but also George Bush and neocons in general, of whom is he more reminiscent, Newt Gingrich or, maybe, um, Barack Obama's buddy Reverend Wright? Bear in mind that Wright's serpentine tongue won him the spotlight again with that recent explanation we've all heard for why he is persona non grata in the White House. To wit: "Them Jews ain't going to let him [Obama] talk to me."

Now let's return to the matter of the impact of words. The Walshes of the world say that many of us rightists are responsible for inciting violence. In response, many on our side will say that there is only one person responsible for an act of violence, the perpetrator, be he Scott Roeder, von Dunn, Timothy McVeigh or someone else. As to these theses, the Walsh position is childish and contradictory; the rightist defense is incorrect and contradictory. Let's discuss the Truth.

In reality, virtually all of us understand that words can seduce, be they a lover's syrupy overtures or a hater's cynical appeals. This is why Edward Bulwer-Lytton said that "The pen is mightier than the sword." We treasure freedom of speech not because words are meaningless, but precisely because they're powerful. And we allow it despite and because of words' potential to inspire, for the pen of virtue remains eternally sharp, while the sword of vice's edge is always dulled by time.

So while we're right to deny responsibility for Roeder, it's not because, as many imply, that such a thing is impossible in principle; it's just that, in this case, we aren't responsible in the particular (I'll address the reason for this in a moment). And Walsh is right to imply that such things are possible in principle; her childishness lies in her silly implication that only the right is responsible for them in the particular.

Of course, it's quite reflexive for a person -- even a good one -- being tarnished by guilt by association to deny the reality of indirect culpability, but the reflexive is seldom beholden to reason It's also reflexive for dishonorable people such as Walsh to very cynically seize upon a violent event and use it to tarnish opponents, and, more ominously, to provide a specious justification for Fairness Doctrine-like legislation in the near future and hate-speech laws a bit further down the road. But whether or not the Walsh set actually believes their rhetoric depends upon the completeness of their detachment from reality.

To understand more deeply the fallacies here, consider the innumerable instances of leftist violence we've seen over the years. Would Moslem convert Carlos Bledsoe have murdered the army recruiter in Arkansas had he not been exposed to the anti-white, anti-Western and anti-Christian rhetoric that prevails in modern America? Would Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, have perpetrated his acts had he not been weaned on the environmentalist radicalism so prevalent today? Would all the domestic terrorists who firebombed fur stores and vandalized SUVs and research facilities have done so were it not for this ideological force? Would Colin Ferguson have targeted whites in the 1993 Long Island Railroad massacre had he not been assailed with anti-white rhetoric from the Reverend Wrights, Jacksons and Sharptons of the world?

Now, you can take issue with my examples; you can quibble about the particulars. But many other incidents could be cited, and the details aren't really the issue. The point is, would we really deny that the indoctrination people are subjected to influences their thinking? Are Palestinians born hating Jews? Do madrassah schoolboys have a gene dictating hatred for the West? As for Walsh, she may turn a blind eye to the violence authored by her ilk, but an affinity for relativism doesn't change reality.

Now we come to the crux of the matter: If rightist rhetoric can inspire others to violence just like the leftist variety, what determines culpability? Well, we must ask the only relevant question about that rhetoric:

Is it the Truth?

Sure, you may warn that a new resident in the neighborhood did time in prison for child molestation, and an angry mob may kill him. But did you do wrong? On the other hand, it's a different matter entirely if harm befalls someone after you wrongly and maliciously label him a child molester.

Thus, anytime you sound an alarm -- whether it contains the ring of Truth or that of lies -- it can serve as a call to violent action for some. But what should we do? Create a Fahrenheit 451 situation in which ideas are roundly suppressed and people are kept comfortably numb? No one wants that, and it wouldn't work anyway.

At the end of the day, one who speaks the Truth may inspire violence against livers of lies just as one who speaks lies may inspire violence against the tellers of Truth. But this isn't the fault of the Truth; it simply means that society needs more of it.

So the moral of this story is that we all can inspire violence with words, but not all of us speak inspired words. Evil may be done in the name of good or evil, but it is only those who speak the latter who have blood on their hands. Paging Joan Walsh.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/19/removal-of-an-inspector/?feat=article_top10_read

Removal of an inspector
A telltale sign of misrule

Bill Wilson

In firing AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin last week, President Obama probably thought he and his wife, Michelle, were the ones "sending the message."

After all, dispensing petty political retribution on behalf of one's crooked friends is the "Chicago way," is it not? And the firing of Mr. Walpin would no doubt have lasting benefits for the Obamas, too, seeing as inspectors general throughout the federal government would get the message that "FOBAMs" - or "Friends of Barack and Michelle" - were not to be touched in the future.

What Mr. and Mrs. "Hope and Change" failed to take into account was that when you circumvent the law to protect political hoodlums, you have a way of becoming political hoodlums yourselves.

As has been widely reported, Mr. Walpin was the lead federal investigator into financial abuses committed by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson - a major Obama backer caught misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.

(NOTE: Liberal Democrats are not big into judging their own, or in prosecuting criminals among their groups. Mr. Walpin broke the rule and pointed a finger or accusation at an Obama friend and supporter. Former Congressman William Jefferson – who had a huge wad of cash hidden in his freezer – remains free. Liberal perps get passes – and I will refrain from noting perjurer Bill Clinton was allowed to walk by corrupting the personal integrity of every single Democrat in the US Senate at the time.)

As a result of Mr. Walpin's investigation, the corporation that runs AmeriCorps agreed that Mr. Johnson should be barred from receiving any federal grant money in the future, while Justice Department officials began investigating criminal charges against him. Unsurprisingly, though, Mr. Johnson began receiving preferential treatment from the Obamas and their corrupt cronies almost as soon as the new president took office.

Despite Mr. Johnson's acknowledged misconduct, a new AmeriCorps leader and a new acting U.S. attorney began pushing for a settlement that would lift his suspension and free him from having to repay the money he stole from the taxpayers.

Their rationale? The city of Sacramento would be unable to receive federal bureaucratic bailout dollars unless Mr. Johnson's suspension was lifted - a fact Mr. Johnson deliberately deceived Sacramento voters about during his campaign.

Mr. Walpin opposed any such "deal." In fact, when it became clear Mr. Johnson's suspension would be lifted, he wrote to Congress explaining the horrible precedent that would be set by stripping inspectors general of their primary enforcement tool.

In response to Mr. Walpin's insistence that the law be followed, Mr. Obama set an even worse precedent. He fired Mr. Walpin.

In fact, the special counsel to the president for "ethics and government reform" was the Obama official who fired Mr. Walpin, giving him an hour to either resign or be terminated.

Mr. Obama - who made bales of political hay over former President George W. Bush's Justice Department firings - has now proven he's no different. Specifically, he has trampled all over the intent of the very law he co-sponsored last year, which requires the president to give Congress 30 days notice and an explanation of cause before firing inspectors general.

Apparently, shielding his political allies from the consequences of their actions wasn't enough - Mr. Obama had to take it a step further by bending the law to exact vengeance on an investigator who was merely doing his job. In true Chicago "gangster" fashion, getting his crony off the hook was merely a prelude to the larger operation - silencing future dissent.

Thinking he could do as he pleased, Mr. Obama's initial justification for this cool display of corruption was that he had "lost confidence" in Mr. Walpin. When Republicans and Democrats in Congress refused to be mollified by this explanation, the White House shifted into "plumbers" mode.

Now the Obama machine is engaged in an elaborate campaign to smear Mr. Walpin, accusing him of being "confused," "disoriented" and "unable to answer questions." We've seen this sort of behavior before - from a president who eventually had to give up his office.

The firing of Gerald Walpin is a chilling reminder that for all of Mr. Obama's talk of change - and sponsorship of legislation that appears to provide it - many of his actions are nothing more than glorified political thuggery, providing protection to his friends and retribution to his enemies. The only question is when conduct like this catches up with him.

Bill Wilson is president of Americans for Limited Government.

3.

The politicians don't last. But their policies live forever.

And in every successive election cycle, (Liberal) Democrats will use the health care system to bludgeon their opponents. They will use health care as a weapon, rewarding you by offering more benefits for your votes and punishing you with less benefits if you dare to vote against them.

So much power for a faceless set of bureaucrats who can't possibly have the best interests of your family in mind. And yet they're going to take those decisions away from you and your doctor. And they've been lying every day to justify what they're doing.

(NOTE: Stating the obvious – liberal Democrats cannot be trusted. On anything. They remain in perpetual denial of fact and truth. Liberals have given us the crisis we face today by their corruption of our judicial system, our public education, our media, and even our Churches – specifically all Churches who embrace and support the anti American positions of the National and World Councils of Churches.)

They've been lying about the number of people without health care. They've been lying about whether the public is satisfied with health care. They've been lying about every aspect of health care.

They unleashed the slip-and-fall lawyers on the medical system, causing untold higher costs for medical practitioners. They've attacked the health care system relentlessly, driving up costs just like they've attacked the energy industry and the automakers.

And even when they have complete monopolistic control of a system, like the educational system in America, they want more control. It's never enough. They want more money, more regulations. More. They need to "invest". They need to raise taxes. They need to repress. They need to compel.

Because the Statist cannot make the imperfect perfect, even though he says he can. The Statist is more imperfect than anyone else.

I ask you to consider something: what kind of persons can Obama and the Democrat leadership be, to think they can do these things when history tells them they can not?

What kind of a mind refuses to look at the evidence? What kind of person would refuse to look at Britain and Canada? Or engage in arm-twisting secretly, behind the scenes? And use brownshirts like ACORN and the SEIU to intimidate organizations and legislators alike?

They're going to rush socialized medicine through the system, without any debate or transparency... and it's going to be a complete disaster on multiple levels.

Call the so-called conservative Blue Dog Democrats now. Make your voice heard. Help us stop this rush to disaster.

http://mises.org/story/2454

Planned Chaos
Mises Daily by Ludwig von Mises
• •
[This book was published in 1947. The title comes from Mises's description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the Russian or German pattern. This important work was written decades after Mises's original essay on economic calculation and includes the broadest and boldest attack on all forms of state control.]

Introductory Remarks

"History will call our age the age of the dictators and tyrants."
The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars, and revolutions is its anti-capitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism is done for and that the coming of all-around regimentation of economic activities is both inescapable and highly desirable.
Nonetheless capitalism is still very vigorous in the Western Hemisphere. Capitalist production has made very remarkable progress even in these last years. Methods of production were greatly improved. Consumers have been supplied with better and cheaper goods and with many new articles unheard of a short time ago. Many countries have expanded the size and improved the quality of their manufacturing. In spite of the anti-capitalistic policies of all governments and of almost all political parties, the capitalist mode of production is in many countries still fulfilling its social function in supplying the consumers with more, better, and cheaper goods.

(NOTE Capitalism and the free enterprise concept offer the greatest degree of economic freedom – history proves that free men through free enterprise can achieve the ultimate in opportunity for economic freedom. Liberals have never grasped that fact and continue conspiring to rape the productive elements of society in order to give those created profits to those who don’t deserve them. It’s the leftist way of doing things and one major reason left wing societies can never compete in terms of quality of life and standards of living..)

It is certainly not a merit of governments, politicians and labor union officers that the standard of living is improving in the countries committed to the principle of private ownership of the means of production. Not offices and bureaucrats, but big business deserves credit for the fact that most of the families in the United States own a motor car and a radio set. The increase in per capita consumption in America as compared with conditions a quarter of a century ago is not an achievement of laws and executive orders. It is an accomplishment of business men who enlarged the size of their factories or built new ones.

One must stress this point because our contemporaries are inclined to ignore it. Entangled in the superstitions of statism and government omnipotence, they are exclusively preoccupied with governmental measures. They expect everything from authoritarian action and very little from the initiative of enterprising citizens. Yet, the only means to increase well-being is to increase the quantity of products. This is what business aims at.

It is grotesque that there is much more talk about the achievements of the Tennessee Valley Authority than about all the unprecedented and unparalleled achievements of American privately operated processing industries. However, it was only the latter which enabled the United Nations to win the war and today enables the United States to come to the aid of the Marshall Plan countries.

The dogma that the state or the government is the embodiment of all that is good and beneficial and that the individuals are wretched underlings, exclusively intent upon inflicting harm upon one another and badly in need of a guardian, is almost unchallenged. It is taboo to question it in the slightest way. He who proclaims the godliness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered as an impartial student of the social sciences. All those raising objections are branded as biased and narrow-minded. The supporters of the new religion of statolatry are no less fanatical and intolerant than were the Mohammedan conquerors of Africa and Spain.

History will call our age the age of the dictators and tyrants. We have witnessed in the last years the fall of two of these inflated supermen. But the spirit which raised these knaves to autocratic power survives. It permeates textbooks and periodicals, it speaks through the mouths of teachers and politicians, it manifests itself in party programs and in plays and novels. As long as this spirit prevails there cannot be any hope of durable peace, of democracy, of the preservation of freedom or of a steady improvement in the nation's economic well-being.

The Failure of Interventionism

Nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism. But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its "bourgeois" pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history. Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness. But the "progressives" blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint.

Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism. On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism. These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another. But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether......

(there is a great deal more @ http://mises.org/story/2454 and new articles (see full list) appear every day, by popular authors. You can receive the Mises Dailies in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.)

Harry Becker
By the way, Austrian economists are trained in the ways of the marketplace; Keynesians are trained in meeting the needs of government. Economists trained in the economics of the marketplace rather than financing government expenditures point out that little if any of a government spending program will ever positively impact the economy. From day one what government has is borrowed or taken in taxes from people who had it invested in the economy – or, worse yet – it’s just 'run off on the government printing press' & dumped into the economy devaluing the $ earned by those actually producing goods & services needed by the people or needed in the production of greater quantities and newly invented goods & services for the people & for government to protect them all from enemies. Harry Becker

5.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/stimulating_americas_decline.html

Stimulating America's Decline

Alan Aronoff

Barack Obama signed the Stimulus bill on Feb. 18, 2009 amid much fanfare. Proponents of the bill stated that it would save or create 3.5 million jobs. Now, four months have passed since the passage of the stimulus package, its time to take a first look at the stimulus.

By the president's own words, the stimulus should improve employment in America and make us more prosperous.

Prosperity can be measured as growth in GDP, growth in asset values such as real estate and stocks, and growth in personal income.

"I have every confidence that if we are willing to continue doing the critical work that must be done - by each of us, by all of us - then we will leave this struggling economy behind us, and come out on the other side, more prosperous as a people," - Barack Obama

The Stimulus spending allocated for 2009 is $140B. Of that amount, $40B has been spent, which is in keeping if the spending is linear over the course of the fiscal year.

(NOTE: The Obama strategy with the “stimulus” bill, was to rush it through to passage as quickly as possible to accomplish two specific goals: prevent legitimate consideration and analysis of the provisions --we’ll be finding horror stories hidden within for years to come – plus they are desperate to sneak through as many extreme bills as possible while Obama retains a large degree of popularity and support. The bloom will come off that rose, but not before a lot of damage is done. 2010 must produce a sea change in the make up of Capitol Hill.)

On the bright side, the continuing claims by people out of work for more than one week fell by 148,000 to 6,687,000. Obama's claim that the Stimulus created or saved 150,000 jobs is not only immeasurable but also not believable in the context of the current economic downturn. Jobs growth is a lagging economic indicator and does not improve until recovery is well under way. The government is hiring to fill jobs created by the Stimulus, and many of these jobs carry the title ‘czar'. This Administration has more czars than the Romanov family. The Stimulus is temporary, so the jobs created today in the government may not remain. Furthermore, the federal government's closing of 789 Chrysler dealerships and 1100 GM dealerships will result in the potential loss of 63,000 jobs. In keeping with the Obama administration being the most transparent administration in history, can we expect that these 63,000 lost jobs will be deducted from the jobs saved or created by the Stimulus?

According to the Case Schiller US home price index, the average American home fell 7.5% in value during the first quarter of 2009. Housing inventory is at 3.16 million units (existing homes) which at the current sales rate is a 9.3 month supply. Housing prices will not stabilize until the excess inventory is removed and the foreclosed or about to be foreclosed properties are placed in strong hands, that is, in the hands of people who can carry the property and take it off the market.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has already issued a report on mortgage modifications of mortgages in default, and the re-default rate on these modified mortgages is 65 %. With the administration plan to prolong the agony of the inevitable foreclosures, housing will be a negative for the US economy longer than need be. To make matters worse for the housing market, the Federal Reserve has not been able to keep mortgage rates down recently through its program of buying US Treasuries.

By buying Treasuries, the Fed is increasing the money supply since it has to print the money with which to buy the bonds. Countries such as China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia which hold a large amount of US treasuries are concerned about the value of the dollar declining. China, Russia, Brazil, and India are negotiating bilateral trade deals that will avoid the use of the US dollar for trade. These countries are concerned that the dollar portfolios they have will decline in value as the US is creating unprecedented deficits.

The GDP for Q1/2009 decreased at an annual rate of 5.7%. Economic growth is not just a function of the Stimulus, but will also be affected by Obama's efforts to restructure healthcare, impose a carbon tax, and his new call for PAYGO that requires every spending increase to be paid for with the notable exceptions of healthcare, the Stimulus that was passed, and the current entitlement behemoths of Medicare and Social Security. The themes for the future global economy are de-levering or debt reduction, more regulation, and reduced consumption according to Bill Gross, Managing Director, PIMCO Investments. Compound these factors with the government's reach into running automotive and financial companies, and healthcare, and growth rates as measured by GDP will not reach the 3% rate previously achieved in the US. As the US comes to look more and more like Europe, the US will see GDP growth and employment that looks like the Continent as well. As the table below shows the US has bested the EU 15 nations from the period of 2001 to 2005 in both GDP growth as well as employment growth.

Furthermore, when the BLS considers the aggregate unemployed, which includes marginally attached workers and workers employed part-time for economic reasons, the unemployment rate reached 16.4% in May 2009. Also reported for May, non-farm payrolls dropped by 395,000.

The Stimulus was passed quickly with the call that if something wasn't done quickly, unemployment would reach 8%. It is now 9.4% and rising. Furthermore, the actions taken by this Administration are driving up interest rates and driving down the dollar. Health care, carbon tax, the Stimulus, and the private industry bailouts are all actions that will reduce growth, delay the bottoming of the real estate market, and extend the economy's weak performance.

Obama should declare the Stimulus a success and immediately cancel future payments under this abominable legislation. Wisdom is being able to look at the results and change course as needed.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 22, 2009 at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 21, 2009

Sunday's Web

The day’s Top Political News:

Obama Closes Doors on Openness

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies.

One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure.

Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/202875

Obama Job Approval Slips to 58% for First Time

Lowest reading for Obama thus far in Gallup Poll Daily tracking

President Barack Obama's job approval rating fell to 58% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from June 16-18 -- a new low for Obama in Gallup tracking, although not dissimilar to the 59% he has received on four other occasions.

Thirty-three percent of Americans now disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president, just one point shy of his record-high 34% disapproval score from early June.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/121028/Obama-Job-Approval-Slips-58-First-Time.aspx

Obama calls on Iran to 'stop all violent and unjust actions'

Obama directly addresses the Iranian government for the first time after a day of violence in Iran.

As expected, Obama’s response has been weak and seems a result of indecision and confusion
Hillarys’ mythical phone call came to Obama in the wee hours of a morning, and, predictably, Obama has no idea of how to handle the emergency. He came to the Oval Office with no experience – a product of slick marketing by the most corrupt political organization in the country – Chicago Democrats.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Obama_calls_on_Iran_to_stop_all_violent_and_unjust_actions.html

Opinion:
Father’s Day – bigger than I appreciated over the years.

My father died 43 years ago this month. I still miss him.

We were close in a manner that only fathers and sons can be close. He taught me how to hunt – doves, rabbits, quail. He allowed me to smoke my first rabbit tobacco…I thought that was special because it was something we shared that I should tell my mother.

My father was a college professor. He taught forestry and in the summer took classes into the field for summer camp. For two summers, I went with him. The summer of 1950 was the best. That was the summer I awoke to the alarm radio news telling of the attack on South Korea by their Communist neighbors to the North.

I found it all very exciting – it brought back memories of my earlier days when the stories of World War Two made for great adventure movies and exciting stories of real American heroes.

There weren’t many heroes from the Korean War. There should have been. Major James Jebara became the first US Jet Ace and eventually shot down 15 Migs. They gave him a Distinguished Service Cross – they should have given him the Medal of Honor. But that’s a story for another day. Jabara was a personal hero – later, he would be an inspiration.

My WWII days seemed a lot of fun in retrospect, but no one was shooting at me and the fallen in the movies would always appear later in new movies, new roles, and new adventures. In war, casualties don’t get recycled.

I learned to drive that summer. The country back roads around a Georgia state park, “Hard Labor Creek” near the little town of Rutledge. I drove through that area a few years ago – wanting to show it to my two sons. Today much of it seems to be high end horse country – my son’s were distracted by comic books and other matters. They couldn’t share with me my memories shared with my father.

Two years later, I would be a student at Georgia myself. Fortunately, I made it into AFROTC and earned a commission as a prelude to becoming a pilot like Jabara. A dream was realized even if I didn’t get to shoot down 15 enemies.

My father was fearful of my flying career. Now that I have sons, I understand how he felt. True terror is being father to a teen aged son. Hillary’s Clinton’s mythical phone call at 3 am has nothing -- in terms of crisis -- on waiting for a teen aged son to get home at that sort of hour.

My father began having serious health problems after I graduated. The Air Force sent me to Kansas so I was not able to spend as much time with him as I should have. When I returned home, I ended up as a news director at a radio station in Columbus, Georgia. My mother and father could get a very bad reception of that station on a little Philco radio as they ate lunch in Athens (Ga). So we kept in touch…I now realize how important that must have been for my father and mother.

It was not much more complicated for my getting to Athens when I joined the news staff of a Montgomery television station. However, I chose to fly with the Alabama Air National Guard during that time – and I worked hard to keep my father from knowing I was flying jets again. I enjoyed flying the T-33, and even looked forward to moving up to the RF-84F unit aircraft. None of this could be shared with my father, of course, His fear of my flying never changed. My moving up to the unit aircraft came despite the fact the 84F was not a good aircraft. It was very slow on take off. The other pilot with whom I was going through the RF-84F check out, tried to take off too soon, stalled, and crashed into woods at the end of the runway. My news crew had film of his body being removed from the cockpit – naturally we didn’t use the film, but I got the message.

His fatal crash came the Tuesday after I checked out of the Alabama Air Guard on Sunday. Of course, I had to end my Air Guard experience because Governor George Wallace was standing in the doors of schools to prevent racial segregation and that was a national news story. As a newsman, I had to cover those stories and others involving the Civil Rights movement.

I tell myself I had to leave the Guard. My civilian career needed to be given the nod over other matters by then. My father’s health was getting worse.

I ended my TV career early in 1965 when Bo Callaway, the first Republican Congressman from Georgia – “since Reconstruction” – made me the head of his home based Columbus office. My father was proud.

The next year Callaway decided to run for governor. My father had a campaign button fastened to the pillow in his hospital room.

A few months later, I got the phone call we all dread – my father had a stroke and the prospects were dim. Dim indeed. He died before the week was out.

Years later, I have thought back on my relationship with my father. We were close. We enjoyed Georgia football games together – even if just listening on radio. Georgia home games were major family events. Friends, distant relatives, and others would congregate at our house in Athens. They were special days…always. They still are.

A big regret has surfaced in all this. As I have said, I felt very close to my father. We had that special relationship I mentioned earlier. But we never hugged. Never. It was just “not done” as an unspoken rule.

That occurred to me a little over a year ago, and I don’t plan to repeat that with my own sons. (I have never had such a problem with any of my daughters, we hug and kiss as natural reactions and sincere expressions of mutual love – in fact, moments ago, my youngest surprised me by coming in quietly and giving me a hug and kiss.)

So I have discussed my not exchanging fatherly hugs with my sons. We don’t shake hands when we arrive or depart any more. We hug and exchange simple kisses. I feel better about that. Much better. I hope someday my sons will be glad we did.

All of this seems appropriate for Fathers’ Day. I will spend it with my younger son, the 18 year old. It’s his birthday, after all. Eighteen years ago, he became my best Father’s Day present of all. Now he’s about to leave for College.

Which brings me back to memories of my Father, of course. In those days, months and years were longer. Today, they fly by and the intervening 18 years seem far fewer. But the same can be said of the almost twenty years since the birth of my eldest son.

The older son was born on a day in which I had to wrap up organization of a political group in Nashville, and hurry back to Miami to help deal with a campaign visit by the elder President George Bush…Bush the elder had hired me some years earlier to deal with Republican interests in the deep South.

When I called family upon landing in Miami, I got the news of my eldest son’t birth…somehow helping greet and provide for President Bush took a back seat…but the connection may have been one influence that has led him to become a politician.

I leave about noon to go play poker at a legal poker parlor with my number two son. It should be one of those father-son adventures not unlike my summers years ago. I hope my son sees it the same way.

Looking back on life, memories are the real profits. They are dear belongings no one can rob. They are good or bad depending on our actions at the time – thus becoming motivations for living a good life.

I have a lot of good memories. Many involved my father. Today is a good day for reflection – looking back I enjoy the special times with my father…the REAL Fathers’ Days. They didn’t all come in June. They were private observations – most we didn’t even recognize at the time.

Excuse me for this hiatus from my usual political comments. It’s Father’s Day after all, and I’m a Father. I get to do that. Obama and the liberals cant stop me and they cant tax the option either.

Buddy

The day’t top blogs:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1193941/North-Korea-plan-missile-launch-Hawaii-Independence-Day.html

Japan warns that North Korea may fire missile at U.S. on Independence Day
Mail Foreign Service

North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.

Intelligence analysts do not believe the device would be capable of hitting Hawaii's main islands, which are 4,500 miles from North Korea.

Details of the launch came from the Japan's best-selling newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun.

Both Japanese intelligence and U.S. reconnaissance satellites have collated information pointing to the launch, according to the report.

North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile which has a range of 4,000 miles.
Intelligence analysts do not believe it would be capable of hitting Hawaii which is 4,500 miles away.

(NOTE: But more than one intel sources is predicting the July 4 firing. Of course we can take heart from the consistent failures of the Korean missiles…and there are serious questions regarding the nuclear test N Koreans claim they carried out. The Communist state and its less than sane leader, is big on bluster, but if the west stands firm and insists on reasonable actions, N Korea will be forced to back down. Weak reactions by Hillary and Obama should be our biggest fear.)

It is understood the communist state is likely to fire the missile between July 4 and 8. A launch on July 4 would coincide with Independence Day in the States.It would also be the 15th anniversary of North Korean president Kim Il-Sung's death.

The Japanese newspaper also noted that North Korea had fired its first Taepodong-2 missile on July 4, 2006.

Officials had initially believed that North Korea might attempt to launch a similar device towards either Japan's Okinawa island, Guam or Hawaii.

But the ministry concluded launches toward Okinawa or Guam were 'extremely unlikely' because the first-stage booster could drop into waters off China, agitating Beijing, or hit western Japanese territory.

If the missile were fired in the direction of Hawaii, the booster could drop in the Sea of Japan.
News of the launch would put 'enormous military pressure on the United States,' the Yomiuri said, citing the ministry report.

A missile fired from North Korea would have to travel 4,500 miles before it reached the U.S. state of Hawaii.

A spokesman for the Japanese Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report.

South Korea's Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service - the country's main spy agency - said they could not confirm it.

Tension on the divided Korean peninsula has risen markedly since the North, led by Kim Jong-il, conducted two nuclear tests this year in defiance of repeated international warnings.

The first rocket, fired in April, was widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test. A second launch came on May 25.

U.S. satellite intelligence has shown that a missile launch pad had been erected at Dongchang-ri on North Korea's north-west coast.

General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the U.S. west coast.

The UN Security Council last week authorised member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy goods shipped that violate the sanctions against arms export.

On Saturday, in response to this declaration Pyongyang said it would bolster its nuclear programs and threatened war.

Growing tensions come as arms-watchdog the International Crisis Group (ICG) claimed North Korea has several thousand tonnes of chemical weapons it could mount on missiles.
The report from the non-government organisation said they believed the North's army have about 2,500 to 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons which include mustard gas, sarin and other deadly nerve agents.

ICG also also warned South Korea may become a target.

'If there is an escalation of conflict and if military hostilities break out, there is a risk that they could be used. In conventional terms, North Korea is weak and they feel they might have to resort to using those,' said Daniel Pinkston, the ICG's representative in Seoul.

The North has been working on chemical weapons for decades and can deliver them through long-range artillery directed on Seoul which is home to about half of South Korea's 49 million people and via missiles that could hit all of the country.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/conservatives_the_austrian_sch_1.html

Conservatives & The Austrian School of Economics (Part 2)
Lee Cary

Conservatives would do well to arm themselves for the debate over national economic policy by stocking up on ammunition from the Austrian School of Economics.

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) is the recognized founder of the Austrian School. His book Planned Chaos (1947) was first published over 60 years ago, but remains relevant today.

Here are several excerpts from it:

[Socialism vs. Interventionism] "The system of the hampered market economy, or interventionism, differs from socialism by the very fact that it is still market economy. The authority seeks to influence the market by the intervention of its coercive power, but it does not want to eliminate the market altogether. It desires that production and consumption should develop along lines difference from those prescribed by the unhindered market, and it wants to achieve its aim by injecting into the working of the market orders, commands, and prohibitions for whose enforcement the police power and its apparatus of coercion and compulsion stand ready." (p. 20)

By this definition, the Obama administration is engaged in aggressive and expanding interventionism, particularly in the auto industry, perhaps eventually in the health care industry. Interventionism, if left unchecked, morphs into full blown socialism.

(NOTE: Obama and liberal Democrats recognize their inability to impose socialism per se. They must be careful not to provide normal Americans with ammunition with which to oppose their efforts. But socialist approaches to our problems are coming with increasing regularity. “Socialism by seepage” has taken our auto industry and much of our financial community. There are encouraging signs they may not be able to impose socialism on our healthcare, but the fight will be a difficult one. Quality and available access to healthcare is a central issue.)

"Our age has to face great economic troubles. But this is not a crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of interventionism, of policies designed to improve capitalism and to substitute a better system for it."

The boundary between interventionism and socialism is only a measure of the range of intervention. Interventionism is to the adolescent as socialism is to the adult.

During his speech before the American Medical Association (AMA), President Obama implicitly ridiculed, by voice inflection, the notion that his Health Care plan represents socialism.

"Many advocates of interventionism are bewildered when one tells them that in recommending interventionism they themselves are fostering antidemocratic and dictatorial tendencies and the establishment of totalitarian socialism. They protest that they are sincere believers in democracy and opposed to tyranny and socialism. What they aim at is only the improvement of the condition of the poor. They say that they are driven by considerations of social justice and favor a fairer distribution of income precisely because they are intent upon preserving capitalism and its political corollary or superstructure, viz., democratic government.

What these people fail to realize is that the various measures they suggest are not capable of bringing about the beneficial results aimed at. On the contrary they produce a state of affairs which from the point of view of their advocates is worse than the previous state which they were designed to alter."

The following quote brings to mind the debate that centered around Joe the Plumber.

"The most absurd justification of interventionism is provided by those who look upon the conflict between capitalism and socialism as if it were a contest over the distribution of income. Why should not the propertied classes be more compliant? Why should they not accord to the poor workers a part of their ample revenues? Why should they oppose the government's design to raise the share of the underprivileged by decreeing minimum wage rates and maximum prices and by cutting profits and interests rates down to a "fairer" level?...

However, this mode of reasoning is entirely vicious. It takes for granted that the various measures of government interference with business will attain those beneficial results which their advocates expect from them....

The conflict between capitalism and socialism is not a contest between two groups of claimants concerning the size of the portions to be allotted to each of them out of a definite supply of goods. It is a dispute concerning what system of social organization best serves human welfare."

The current administration is provoking a choice in America. Obama would say we made that choice with his election. But 52% of the vote, particularly considering those who did not realize the full intent of his promise to bring change, does not signal a decided issue.

"Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. The state can preserve the market economy in protecting life, health and private property against violent or fraudulent aggression; or it can itself control the conduct of all production activities. Some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumers by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the government by compulsion." (p. 34)

3.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/che_guevara_the_counterinsurge.html

Che Guevara, the Counterinsurgent, Communist thug
Humberto Fontova

Last Saturday marked the day 81 years ago when Ernesto Guevara de la Serna y Lynch entered the world. As luck would have it, a PBS special titled "The 60's Experience" featuring former Animals' singer, Eric Burdon, sporting a humongous (as befits the quite rotund Burdon nowadays) Che Guevara T-shirt is recently making the rounds. Eric's tent-like covering shames both Carlos Santana's and Johnny Depp's Che shirts. It features an elegant collar, and a huge image of the gallant Che's face on both front and back. Naturally, Eric was belting out the Animals' classics, which featured his incomparable, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place."

EXACTLY, Eric!" I blurted at the TV. "That was the exact and desperate refrain from 6.3 million Cubans (Cuba's population in 1959) when your t-shirt icon imposed his liberation!" (Pre-Castro Cuba, by the way, took in more immigrants as a percentage of population than the U.S., mostly from Europe. People used to be almost as desperate to "get into that place" as they later became to quote Burdon's song.)

When your idiot professor and the idiots on The History Channel, etc. call Che a "guerrilla fighter" they're quite correct, but unwittingly.

(NOTE: “Che” t shirts are regular wear for young participants in demonstrations. I doubt few have any remote idea regarding what the real Che was. In short, he was a killer – a thug who enjoyed revolution. Fortunately for many people in Latin America and in areas of Africa such as the former Congo, Che was not all that good at revolutions. Cuba stands out as his singular success, and Fidel had more to do with that success than Che. To suggest “Che” is any sort of hero ignores the facts. But ignoring facts and truth is common in our colleges and universities these days.)

The term "Indian fighter" was used for cowboys who fought against Indians right? Well, did your history prof or The History Channel inform you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought - not by - but against Fidel and Che, and mostly by campesinos?

Didn't think so. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns, a few at first anyway. Had these rebels gotten a fraction of the aid the Afghan Mujahedeen got, the Viet Cong got -- indeed that George Washington's rebels got from the French -- had these Cuban rebels gotten any help, my kids would speak Spanish and Miami's jukeboxes today would carry Faith Hill rather than Gloria Estefan.

But JFK's Missile Crisis "solution" pledged to Castro and his Soviet sponsors that the U.S. pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.

Kennedy's deal with Khrushchev cut this lifeline.

The Cuban freedom-fighters working from South Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro and his Soviet patrons remained utterly unmolested as they consolidated Stalinism 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country.

This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from those illustrious Ivy League Academics. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."

Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in this slaughter, one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent.

Eighty percent of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," is how one of the lucky few who escaped described this desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che.

In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico city, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.

In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines.

He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits."

Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels.

These country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T.

So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped hundreds of thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba. I interview several of these "relocated" families too.

One of these Cuban redneck wives refused to be relocated.

After her husband, sons, and a few nephews were murdered by the Gallant Che and his minions, she grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills. She became a rebel herself. Cubans know her as La Niña Del Escambray.

For a year she ran rings around the Communist armies sweeping the hills in her pursuit. Finally she ran out of ammo and supplies and the reds rounded her up. Amazingly, she wasn't executed (Che must have taken that day off.) For years La Niña suffered horribly in Castro's dungeons, but she lingers in a Miami nursing home today, mentally shattered.

Seems to me her tragic story makes ideal fodder for Oprah, for all those women's magazines, for all those butch professorettes of "Women's Studies," for a Susan Sarandon role, for a little whooping up by Gloria Steinem, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary herself. If Sonia Sotomayor's is a Cinderella story La Nina's is Joan of Arc's.

Think about it: here's that favored theme for Hollywood producers and New York publishers - "the feisty woman." Well, they don't come much feistier than Zoila Aguila, her real name.

Had she been fighting, say, Somoza or Pinochet or Batista you can bet your last penny Hollywood and New York would be all over her story. Instead she fought the Left's premier pin-up boys.

So, naturally, nobody's heard of her.

Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com.

Posted by Norman Bishop on June 21, 2009 at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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