Washington Times - Gasoline up 100% under Obama

Inflation is raising its ugly head, as Obama and the EPA fiddle with inefficient green energy that is not ready for prime time. Their goal. $7 per gallon.

Excerpt: Feeling pain at the pump? Gas prices have doubled since Mr. Obama took office. According to the GasBuddy gasoline price tracking web site, the price of a gallon of regular gas was around $1.79 when Mr. Obama took office. Today the national average is $3.58. The lowest average price in the continental United States is $3.31 in Tulsa Oklahoma, the highest is $4.14 in Santa Barbara, CA. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has arrived on average throughout California, and a number of other states are headed in that direction.

Consumer price index (CPI) figures from February show an unadjusted 12 month gasoline inflation rate of 19.2%, but in the last month alone prices jumped 6.8%, probably because of oil price increases due to instabilities in the Middle East. If the trend continues, gas prices would double again within a year. 100% gasoline price inflation is nothing to brag about, but imagine Mr. Obama going into the 2012 election having to explain why gas costs $7.00 a gallon. I'm sure the White House would spin it as one of their "Green" initiatives.

Washington Times

Is Medicaid Real Insurance?

Whenever the government gets involved in the private sector, there are always unintended consequences. In a 2000 page bill, my guess is that they had no idea what was going to happen, except that they would gain control over 1/6th of our economy. They built it so complicated to ensure failure so that the only alternative would be for a total takeover by the Federal government.

Repeal is our only hope to preserve our freedom to receive the health care we deserve.

Excerpt:
As governors across the land struggle with fiscal pressures and pepper the federal government with requests to scale back Medicaid – many people are losing sight of the fact that health care reform (what some call ObamaCare) requires a huge expansion of Medicaid.

In fact, in just three years the nation is expected to start insuring about 32 million uninsured people. About half will enroll in Medicaid directly. If the Massachusetts experience is repeated, most of the remainder will be in heavily subsidized private plans that pay providers little more than Medicaid does.

That raises an important question: How good is Medicaid? Will the people who enroll in it or in private plans that function like Medicaid get more care, or better care, than they would have gotten without health reform? The answer to that question is not obvious. In fact it's probably fair to say that we are about to spend close to $1 trillion over the next 10 years insuring the uninsured and we really don't know what we expect to accomplish by spending all that money.

Here's a stab at an answer. The 32 million newly insured may not get more health care. They may even get less care – because of difficulties getting a doctor. And even if they do get more, odds are that low-income families as a group will get less care than if there had never been a health reform law in the first place. The reason: the same measure that insures 32 million new people also will force middle- and upper-middle-income families to have more generous coverage than they now have. As these more generously insured people attempt to acquire more medical services they will almost certainly outbid people paying Medicaid rates for doctor services and hospital beds. To make matters worse, the health reform law (following the Massachusetts precedent) did nothing to increase the supply side of the market to meet the increased demand.

Bottom line: after we get through 10 years of spending our $1 trillion under ObamaCare, there is no convincing reason to believe that the bottom half of the income distribution will have more care, better care, or better access to care than they have today.



Read full Kaiser Health News article here.

BLACK ACTIVIST CONFRONTS BILL AYERS WITH FACTS

Obama, The Great Mystery

Saw this on a Townhall comment regarding Obama's energy speech yesterday.

Does this make you wonder?

The great mystery..............

Ever wonder why no one ever came forward from President Obama's past saying they knew him, attended school with him, was his friend, etc. ?? Not one person has ever come forward from his past.

VERY, VERY STRANGE..

This should really be a cause for great concern. To those
who voted for him, you may have elected an unqualified, inexperienced shadow man. Reminds me of The Manchurian Candidate....

Let's face it. As insignificant as we all are .. someone whom we went to school with remembers our name or face ... someone remembers we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us .

George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the same thing during the 2008 campaign. He questions why no one has acknowledged the president was in their classroom or ate in the same cafeteria or made impromptu speeches on campus.

Stephanopoulos also was a classmate of Obama at Columbia -- the class of 1984. He says he never had a single class with him.

While he is such a great orator, why doesn't anyone in Obama's college class remember him? And, why won't he allow Columbia to release his records?

NOBODY REMEMBERS OBAMA AT COLUMBIA !

Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400
Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but none remembered him.

Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at
Columbia who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. EVER!

Nobody recalls him. Root adds that he was also, like Obama,
"Class of '83 political science, pre-law" and says, "You don't get more exact or closer than that." Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack! And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was.

The guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him."

Obama's photograph does not appear in the school's yearbook and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia.

NOTE: Root graduated as Valedictorian from his high school,
Thornton-Donovan School, then graduated from Columbia University in 1983 as a Political Science major in the same class that Barack Hussein Obama was supposed to have been in.

Some other interesting questions..

Why was Obama's law license inactivated in 2002?

Why was Michelle's law license inactivated by Court Order?

It is circulating that according to the U.S. Census, there is
only one Barack Obama but 27 Social Security numbers and over 80 aliases .
WHAT!! ??? The Social Security number he uses now originated in Connecticut where he is never reported to have lived.

No wonder all his records are sealed!

The Truth About Muhammad And the Quran

Census Says: Blacks Are Voting With Their Feet

The following two articles examine the flight of educated blacks away from the liberal bastions of the North and California and to the more conservative suburbs and South. The liberal policies of the blue states, fashioned to keep liberal politicians in office, are burying them in red ink and forcing the educated to flee the inner cities. Results of the recent census show just how drastic this flight is.

Excerpt: The latest published data from the 2010 census show how people are moving from place to place within the United States. In general, people are voting with their feet against places where the liberal, welfare-state policies favored by the intelligentsia are most deeply entrenched.

When you break it down by race and ethnicity, it is all too painfully clear what is happening. Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the liberal, welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy.

Whites are also fleeing the big northeastern liberal, welfare states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as the same kinds of states in the midwest, such as Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Detroit is perhaps the most striking example of a once thriving city ruined by years of liberal social policies. Before the ghetto riot of 1967, Detroit's black population had the highest rate of home-ownership of any black urban population in the country, and their unemployment rate was just 3.4 percent.

It was not despair that fueled the riot. It was the riot which marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit to its current state of despair. Detroit's population today is only half of what it once was, and its most productive people have been the ones who fled.

Treating businesses and affluent people as prey, rather than assets, often pays off politically in the short run-- and elections are held in the short run. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy.

As whites were the first to start leaving Detroit, its then mayor Coleman Young saw this only as an exodus of people who were likely to vote against him, enhancing his re-election prospects.

But what was good for Mayor Young was disastrous for Detroit.

There is a lesson here somewhere, but it is very doubtful if either the intelligentsia or the politicians will learn it.

Read full Thomas Sowell article here.

Another article excerpt: “The notion of the North and its cities as the promised land has been a powerful part of African-American life, culture and history, and now it all seems to be passing by,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. “The black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.” [bold italics added]

When whites leave failing blue cities and states, the pundits call this racism: all those white Californians fleeing Nancy Pelosi’s utopia for less ambitious jurisdictions where ordinary people can do things like get jobs and buy homes are clearly pathetic trailer trash hicks too dumb, too selfish and above all too racist to understand the gloriously multicultural blue beauty of California today.

So what are we going to call the young, educated Blacks making similar choices? Dumb cracker racists?

All the social welfare bureaucracies, diversity counselors and minority set-asides can’t make up for the colossal failure of blue social policy to create sustainable lower middle class prosperity in our cities.

Most Blacks of course still vote blue at the ballot box, but more and more of them are voting red with their feet. They are betting in massive numbers that southern Republicans will do a better job of helping their kids get good educations, police their communities more fairly (see this article, where NYT columnist Charles Blow blames the Black flight from New York on the racist police), offer more affordable housing and create a better business climate. Over time, this is going to affect the balance of power in Black politics and pull the Democratic Party (and the national consensus) to the right. Reapportionment is already pulling political power toward the South; New York today has fewer electoral votes than it did at the start of the Civil War and it is going to lose two more House seats in the next division.

Read full The American Interest article here.

Energy - New dawn for Biofuels | Echofrog

Energy - New dawn for Biofuels | Echofrog

Political Fail Blog: Garden As If Your Life Depended On It, Because It Does

Political Fail Blog: Garden As If Your Life Depended On It, Because It Does

Beware of Homeland Security Training for Local Law Enforcement

This is an article written by an 18 year law enforcement veteran who has seen major changes in training, away from local control to control by the Federal government. Education of any type can be used, by those intent on indoctrinating our citizens, to further their agenda. This is just another attempt by the progressive establishment to lessen the influence of Constitutional conservatives.

Excerpt: I’ve been in law enforcement for the past 18 years. I have attended a variety of training over those years. During the 1990s, most training I attended was community-oriented, sponsored by local agencies or private companies specializing in police training. Themes common to training of the past included topics such as Constitutional rights, community partnerships, youth-oriented programs and problem-oriented policing.

During the past several years, I have witnessed a dramatic shift in the focus of law enforcement training. Law enforcement courses have moved away from a local community focus to a federally dominated model of complete social control. Most training I have attended over the past two years have been sponsored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), namely the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

No matter what topic the training session concerns, every DHS sponsored course I have attended over the past few years never fails to branch off into warnings about potential domestic terrorists in the community. While this may sound like a valid officer and community safety issue, you may be disturbed to learn how our Federal government describes a typical domestic terrorist.

So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist? Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:

Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)

Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)

Survivalist literature (fictional books such as "Patriots" and "One Second After" are mentioned by name)

Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)

Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)

Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)

Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government

Homeschooling

Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties

Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

One course I attended used the example of a person employed as a plumber being the target of a search warrant. In this example, the officers were told how to use his employment as a plumber as further evidence of terrorism. The suspect’s employment would be described as an elaborate scheme to justify possessing pipes and chemicals so as to have bomb making materials readily available. Based on this example, all plumbers are potential pipe bomb makers. All gun dealers are plotting to provide arms to gangs or terrorists. All pest control companies are preparing mass poisonings. By using this logic, simply having the ability to do something criminal automatically makes the person guilty of plotting the crime. With all the various methods of manufacturing methamphetamine, it would also be easy to claim that a disassembled clandestine drug lab was located during the search. In other words, it is easy to frame anyone for possessing bomb making materials (or other crimes) if the officer knows what items to list in the report and how to link these items to terrorism.

There are several things that we, the patriotic, self-sufficient defenders of liberty can do to counter this effort. First, get involved in local elections. Elect county sheriffs who will not fall for such propaganda nor go along with oppressive federal agendas. Elect city council members who will not tolerate such behavior by their city police department. Elect state representatives who will hold state agencies accountable for participating in such tactics. Bring these issues up during elections, demand a public statement on their position on such propaganda and a promise to stand against these efforts while in office.

Second, get to know your local law enforcement officers. It is much more difficult for DHS to brainwash officers against people they personally know. When you are viewed as a neighbor, friend or fellow Christian, these officers are far less likely to submit your name to a terrorist watch list or view you as a potential terrorist. We want local officers to be personally offended when they hear members of their community slandered in such ways.

Third, always be friendly and courteous when speaking to your local officers. Even if that officer has fallen for this propaganda, be sure not to resemble the negative stereotypes labeled to us. After the fifth, sixth or maybe tenth time he deals with one of us, he or she may come to realize we are of no threat to law enforcement or anyone for that matter. Eventually, the officer may attend one of these training sessions, hear the propaganda and say to himself, “This isn’t true, I’ve dealt with many people like this, they are God-fearing, liberty loving Americans, they are not the enemy!”

Read full article on SurvivalBlog.com here.

Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags

Last Friday I wrote about the rising cost of food and related it to the gasoline price increases. Of course that was only one factor. Corn sweeteners, used in a large number of products in the supermarket, have been rising in cost ever since the environmentalists managed to convince Congress to mandate the injection of ethanol into every gallon of gas sold. Whenever government interferes in the American economy, calamity cannot be far behind.

Many of your food products come in plastic containers. Plastics are made from oil, the same oil that Obama and his EPA has stated must be priced out of existence to preserve our environment.

With costs rising, in order to survive, manufacturers are electing to reduce the content of their packages. Maybe now is the right time to go on that New Year's resolution diet you have been putting off for so long.

Excerpt: Chips are disappearing from bags, candy from boxes and vegetables from cans.

As an expected increase in the cost of raw materials looms for late summer, consumers are beginning to encounter shrinking food packages.

With unemployment still high, companies in recent months have tried to camouflage price increases by selling their products in tiny and tinier packages. So far, the changes are most visible at the grocery store, where shoppers are paying the same amount, but getting less.

Most companies reduce products quietly, hoping consumers are not reading labels too closely.

But the downsizing keeps occurring. A can of Chicken of the Sea albacore tuna is now packed at 5 ounces, instead of the 6-ounce version still on some shelves, and in some cases, the 5-ounce can costs more than the larger one. Bags of Doritos, Tostitos and Fritos now hold 20 percent fewer chips than in 2009, though a spokesman said those extra chips were just a “limited time” offer.

Trying to keep customers from feeling cheated, some companies are introducing new containers that, they say, have terrific advantages — and just happen to contain less product.

Kraft is introducing “Fresh Stacks” packages for its Nabisco Premium saltines and Honey Maid graham crackers. Each has about 15 percent fewer crackers than the standard boxes, but the price has not changed. Kraft says that because the Fresh Stacks include more sleeves of crackers, they are more portable and “the packaging format offers the benefit of added freshness,” said Basil T. Maglaris, a Kraft spokesman, in an e-mail.

With prices for energy and for raw materials like corn, cotton and sugar creeping up and expected to surge later this year, companies are barely bothering to cover up the shrinking packs.

“For indulgences like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips, consumers may say ‘I don’t mind getting a little bit less because I shouldn’t be consuming so much anyway,’ ” said Professor Gourville. “That’s a harder argument to make with something like diapers or orange juice.”

Read full NYT article here.

Pakistani Actress Defies Mullah Accusing Her of Immoral Behavior on an Indian Reality TV Showt

Is Media Matters breaking the law in its 'war' on Fox News?

If the far left cannot win with the facts, they turn to deception and untruths. The Soros backed hatchet organization intends to attack FOX News, and FOX employees along with Beck and the owners of News Corp in an attempt to discredit them in the public eye. They tried this once before threatening Beck's advertisers and it succeeded for a short period of time.

The original article in POLITICO was written by Ben Smith who appears to have no problem with the tactics proposed.

Good luck in getting the Obama IRS to rescind Media Matters' 501(C)(3) status.

Excerpt: Media Matters, the George Soros-backed legion of liberal agit-prop shock troops based in the nation's capital, has declared war on Fox News, and in the process quite possibly stepped across the line of legality.

David Brock, MM's founder, was quoted Saturday by Politico promising that his organization is mounting "guerrila warfare and sabotage" against Fox News, which he said "is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

To that end, Brock told Politico that MM will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests ..." Murdoch is the founder of Fox News and a media titan with newspaper, broadcast, Internet and other media countries around the world.

There is nothing in the Politico article to suggest that Brock, who was paid just under $300,000 in 2009, according to the group's most recently available tax return, plans to ask the IRS to change his organization's tax status as a 501(C)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation.

Under Brock's definition of Fox News, it appears he is setting MM on a course of actively opposing all Republican candidates. Brandon Kiser at The Right Sphere blog argues that this new statement of MM's mission means it must change its tax status.

Beyond the partisanship issue, explicitly declaring that your purpose as a tax-exempt non-profit public foundation is to interfere with the commercial interests of somebody else's legal business enterprise falls nowhere within the scope of purely educational activities.

Read full Washington Examiner article here.

Chinese Professor - Citizens Against Government Waste

Michele Bachmann "Thomas Jefferson Said He Could See Into The Future" pt.1

Inexpensive Cancer Cure (DCA) Being Tested In Canada

Checked Wikipedia and trials are now in process.

DOJ Memo Confirms Terrorists Have Crossed the Border

This article gives a number of instances where our borders have been breeched by terrorists. It is time we secured our borders.

Excerpt: ..prosecutors admit that Dhakane, who ran a human smuggling ring based in Brazil for the Somali Al-Shabaab terrorist group, transported “violent jihadists” into the country. He stated that "he believed they would fight against the U.S. if the jihad moved from overseas locations to the U.S. mainland.”

During our testimony before the Arizona legislature on Wednesday, Lt. Col. Myers will be discussing the nexus between the South American drug cartels and Islamic terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. With cartel violence already spilling across the border, and U.S. Border Patrol agents armed with beanbags being gunned down in the field by smuggling operatives, when might we see terrorist groups attempting to open up a new front against the U.S. across the vast stretches of our unguarded border?

Today we will be discussing what states might be able to do to confront this problem in the absence of federal attention to the border and exactly who might be on our side of the border ready to help terrorist groups. As DOJ has admitted in the Dhakane case, terrorist operatives are already inside the U.S. and are prepared to go operational at the command of their leadership. If the issue of homegrown terrorism is already keeping Attorney General Eric Holder awake at night, why aren’t similar concerns being translated into action to defend Americans from cross-border terror threats?

Read full Pajamas Media article here.

Singing Dog At Piano

Courageous Teller Asks Bank Robber for Two Forms of ID

Courageous Teller Asks Bank Robber for Two Forms of ID
By Lisa Johnson Mandell


A Dallas Wells Fargo bank teller risked her life and thousands of dollars on a bet that a robber at her window would be stupid enough to comply with her request that he show two forms of identification.

But sure enough, her bet paid off! The robber, 49-year-old Nathan Wayne Pugh of Sachse, Texas, actually took the time to search through his pockets and wallet to produce the IDs -- which turned out to be his Wells Fargo debit card and a state ID card. Then the teller stalled even more by very slowly copying the information.

Thanks to her efforts, authorities had ample time to arrive on the scene.

Pugh was apprehended when he tried to flee the bank with $800. He was later found guilty of bank robbery and sentenced to an eight year prison term. He was already on parole for two other aggravated robberies.

There's no word on whether or not the teller was rewarded for her savvy risk. Regardless, she gets bragging rights and a great story to tell her kids.

This article came from AOL.

Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy

It was no accident that Obama cited UN authority for our air invasion of Libya, totally disregarding the US Constitution and failing to gain Congressional approval. Obama, a Soros protege, is a proponent of "the New World Order" and is intent on bringing the US economy and influence down to a level where it is not the preeminent leader of the world. Why else would he and the progressive Democrats spend us into bankruptcy and travel the world speaking ill of the US policy toward other nations?

Excerpt: Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.

On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."

The event is bringing together "more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders' to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new 'multilateral system," or an economic system where America isn't so dominant.

More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks "the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat" is taking no chances.

The speakers include:
Volcker is chairman of President Obama's Economic Advisory Board. He wrote the forward for Soros's best-known book, 'The Alchemy of Finance' and praised Soros as "an enormously successful speculator" who wrote "with insight and passion" about the problems of globalization.

"Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council,' he wrote. 'That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals."

Soros emphasized that point, that this needs to be a global solution, making America one among many. "The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters."

The Soros empire is silent about this new Bretton Woods conference because it isn't just designed to change global economic rules. It also is designed to put America in its place - part of a multilateral world the way Soros wants it. He wrote that the U.S. "could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form."

That's what this conference is all about - changing the global economy and the United States to make them "acceptable" to George Soros.

Read full Business & Media Institute article here.

Increasing Food Prices - Price Of Gas The Culprit

Heard yesterday in the supermarket that we should expect food prices to increase significantly in the weeks to come because of the increase in gas prices.  The management of these stores are scrambling to find local sources to mitigate the effect on you, the consumer.  It is obvious that these price increases are not restricted only to food, but also to every item that must travel a long distance to reach you, the buyer.


The world is in chaos today, with natural disasters in Japan and man made turmoil in the Mideast, and this is putting great pressure on our energy needs.  Disruption of Libya's oil production, a major source of the world's supply, and the nuclear accidents in Japan with  the related political fallout, have added to the energy shortages that have been building for years.


Recognizing our vulnerability to the uprising in the Mideast, President Obama went to Brazil and spoke in support of its development of two of the largest oil fields in the world.  Aided by Obama's drilling moratorium in the Gulf and the subsequent relocation of oil rigs to Brazil, and a $2 billion loan guarantee by the IMF to Petrobras, the Brazilian oil consortium, Brazil seems to be well on its way to becoming the next world oil giant.


Unfortunately, none of this has to do with reducing gasoline prices here in the USA.  Here, at home, the President's agenda is more political.  Obama has said it himself in his campaign for President. For him to accomplish his clean energy goals, energy prices will have to increase significantly. How do you do that? By restricting the supply of normal energy sources. 


For some reason, oil sourced domestically is harmful to the environment, and oil sourced in Brazil is AOK. His EPA has delayed issuance of drilling permits, both offshore and in Alaska, for years, 


We can be energy self sufficient.  The US has more oil reserves than all the countries in the Mideast combined and with current technology, it can be recovered efficiently.  The Bakken discovery stretches from Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.  According to the U. S. Geological Service, there is enough recoverable oil there to make the U.S. self sufficient for thousands of years.  This, along with the untapped reserves in Alaska, whose pipeline is running on half empty and awaiting more drilling, could help solve many of our current ills.


Thousands of permanent jobs would be created.  Hundreds of billions of dollars currently flowing into Mideast countries would remain here at home and be reinvested for the benefit of the American people. The need for military options to protect our national interests would lessen.  A more robust economy would reduce our deficit.


And most of all, gas would be at $2 again and food prices would revert to normal levels.

Chevy Volt And Nissan Leaf: Battery Technology Not There Yet

This is what happens when a pseudo professor, with no practical experience, takes over a car company and places his cronies and unions in charge. Out comes a useless, unwanted vehicle that will cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars and insure the future failure of the American automobile industry. I only wonder how the usually astute Japanese fell for all this hype.

Excerpt, I believe from the WSJ: Consumer Reports doesn’t have good early reviews for Chevrolet’s flagship entry into electric vehicles. A top editor from the publication said the Chevy Volt, which has both a plug-in battery and a gasoline engine “isn’t particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it’s not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy.” He concluded that it just “doesn’t make an awful lot of sense.”

He’s right when you consider the cost and performance of PEVs, starting with the batteries, which require major breakthroughs before they will be ready for prime time. A battery for a small vehicle like the Nissan Leaf can cost about $20,000 and still only put out a range of 80 miles on a good day (range is affected by hot and cold weather) before requiring a recharge that takes eight to 10 hours. Even then, those batteries may only last six to eight years, leaving consumers with a vehicle that has little resale value.

Detroit’s Liberal Nightmare

Auto unions killed the industry in Detroit and the teachers union still has the schools in a vise. Liberal policies simply do not work.

Excerpt: Detroit, once known as “the great arsenal of democracy,” has made headlines of late for its notorious fall from grace. The “Big Three” automakers are no longer the biggest, falling behind their overseas rivals, and the Michigan economy lost 450,000 manufacturing jobs over the past 10 years all while Detroit lost population. And while the Motor City suffers unemployment from a decimated automotive industry, it suffers crime, high taxes, poor city services, plummeting home values, and a public education system in shambles with a $327 million budget deficit and a 19 percent dropout rate. Is it any wonder people are leaving in droves?

But to understand why folks are really leaving Detroit, it’s worth looking where they’re headed. As Detroit suffered a population loss, its neighboring suburban counties with lower crime, better schools and an improving economic outlook saw their population increase. One former Detroiter told The Detroit News, “Detroit just got too messy for me … I was not getting the benefits of those tax dollars. The city services are poor and I could not use the school system. And you look at the cost of living and the corruption, we had to leave.” In other words, bad government drove her out, and she’s seeking greener pastures elsewhere.

For the record, Detroit has been under liberal leadership for decades. And the city’s big problem today is that its road forward is blocked by the very same political machine that helped deliver it to its state of ruin. Case in point: the state’s powerful teachers unions. In 2003, a philanthropist pledged $200 million for the creation of 15 charter schools in the city. Despite the city’s tragic public school system, the plan failed and the offer was withdrawn following protests by the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Little has changed, eight years later. A state-appointed emergency financial manager has proposed sweeping changes to the city’s public school system, including a plan to convert 41 of the city’s schools to charter schools. Guess who’s opposed to the reforms? That very same union.

Read full Heritage Foundation article here.

Vicente Fox: Mexico at 'War,' Obama's Approach a Failure

I posted a blog some time ago "Drug Decriminalization - Has It's Time For Discussion Arrived?" that ties right in with Vicente Fox's stand here. John Stossel, with his libertarian viewpoint, has also had segments on his show discussing the same subject. My previous post refers to two articles, one by AOL News and a study by the CATO Institute, that discuss the benefits of legalization.

My thoughts about decriminalization are in line with former President Vicente Fox of Mexico and the CATO Institute. Our drug laws are the same as prohibition, they don't work.

Pres. Fox is right. The US is the major market for drugs, and therefore a major reason Mexico is at war. It is time the profit incentive is taken away from the drug cartels.

Excerpt: Former Mexican President Vicente Fox says his nation is at "war" with drug cartels, and he offered sharp criticism of the Obama administration for failing to assist its beleaguered neighbor.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV on Tuesday, Fox said President Barack Obama's administration has failed to grapple with the deteriorating situation in Mexico.

“Obama is thoroughly mixed up with all these things he’s got," Fox said, adding: "He’s got to solve Libya. He’s got to solve Afghanistan. He’s everywhere. And this nation, I don’t know why it’s not showing the leadership and capacity to attend different issues at the same time.

Recently, Fox has called for legalizing and decriminalizing drugs in the United States to throttle the demand for narcotics, which he argues is the root cause of his country's civil unrest.

"The United States has to think very profoundly how it is going to solve this problem of excess in the consumption of drugs, excess in building a market that is very profitable to the criminals," he said.

He continued: “I think the best move is to take away the business from criminals and put it in the hands of businessmen and producers, farmers, distributors.”

He compared the situation with illegal drugs to Prohibition in the United States, which enriched mobsters who provided alcohol just as the drug trade is now enriching the cartels.

“We are never going to eradicate drugs,” he added. “They will always be there. It is a free choice” to consume them.



Read full Newsmax.com article here.

Reagan's Legacy and the Current Malaise

As evidenced by the collapse of the Soviet Union back in the Reagan days, a government controlled economy is doomed to fail. The Democrats in Congress during the latter Bush years and now with Obama at the helm have, in four short years, inserted the government into our economy to an extent once thought impossible. Major inroads into our auto industry, housing market, financial and health care systems have brought our economy to a standstill.

As Steve Forbes points out in this WSJ article, Reagan and Art Laffer had the right idea. Get government out of the way and the ingenuity of the American people will solve the problem.

Excerpt: Reagan came into the White House facing an economy as troubled as ours—one that had even higher unemployment, catastrophic interest rates (18% for mortgages) and a stock market that in real terms had fallen 60% from its mid-1960s levels. When he left office eight years later, the U.S. had become an economic miracle: 18 million new jobs had been created; Silicon Valley had blossomed, becoming a global symbol for innovation; and the stock market was experiencing a bull run that, despite dramatic ups and downs, didn't end until the turn of the 21st century, after the Dow had expanded 15-fold. The expansion of the U.S. economy exceeded the entire size of West Germany's economy, then the world's third-largest.

How did this happen? You could make the case that Reagan's economic miracle had its origins at a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 1974. That December night, 34-year-old University of Chicago professor, Art Laffer, scribbled a single—and now legendary—curve on a cocktail napkin to illustrate to a group of President Ford's advisers why a proposed plan to raise taxes would not increase government revenues. Mr. Laffer posited that deep cuts in existing tax rates would stimulate the economy and ultimately lead to far higher government revenues. Conversely, increase the tax burden and government receipts would fall below expectations because of a weaker economy.

Reagan aggressively embraced free-market, supply-side principles that empowered the American people to rebuild and creatively expand our economy and standard of living. In contrast, the Obama administration has expanded the powers of government over us and our economy on a scale never before seen in peacetime American history. President Reagan understood, and fervently believed in, the American spirit of free enterprise. So far, President Obama hasn't shown that he does.

Mr. Obama still has time to learn the real lessons of Reagan's success. Will he?

Read full Steve Forbes WSJ article here.

Allen West Impersonates Harry Reid

I like this guy.

Steve Lerner Of SEIU - Rolling Out Campaign To Destabilize The US Financial System

If you think what the unions are doing in Wisconsin is reprehensible, listen to what is planned in NYC by SEIU.

The leaders of the unions are consciously following the teachings of Alinsky and Cloward-Piven for the destruction of our way of life: "The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."

In this case they are planning an attack on Wall Street and our banking system, which will require more bailouts by the government and taxpayers. This helps no one but the unions seeking a socialist utopia and its resultant power grab.

Armed Beauty Queen Fatally Shoots Intruder in Florida Home Invasion

This lady was lucky she had someone living with her who was able to distract the intruder long enough for her to find her pink 38. Potential victim 1, intruder 0!

Excerpt: When a burly ex-convict forced his way into a posh Florida home last week, he had no idea what awaited him -- a 25-year-old beauty queen with a pink .38-caliber handgun.
Meghan Brown, a former Florida pageant queen, shot and killed 42-year-old Albert Franklin Hill during a home invasion March 12 at the 2,732-square-foot house she shares with her fiance in Tierra Verde, Fla.

Hill barged into the home at around 3 a.m. after Brown responded to a knock at the front door, according to a police report. He allegedly grabbed the 110-pound Brown around her nose and mouth and dragged her to an upstairs bedroom.

The woman’s fiance, Robert Planthaber, said in an interview that he was quickly awakened by the altercation and ran to Brown’s side.

"I attacked him and took a severe beating to the head," Planthaber told FoxNews.com. "But I got him off of her long enough for her to scramble to the room where she keeps her pink .38 special.”

Brown, who reigned as the 2009 Miss Tierra Verde, snatched her gun from a nearby bedroom and shot the suspect several times – hitting him in the chest, groin, thigh and back, her fiance said. Hill was pronounced dead at the scene.

Read full FOX News article here.

White House Insider: "Obama Understands None of It"

Excerpt: Regarding Rahm and the election – the mayoral race. I know you already did some work on this – good work. People…not enough people, were really paying attention to what was going on with that race. It was so very clear to those who were paying attention just how forceful the Obama White House, and when I use that term I basically mean to say Valerie Jarrett – how forceful Valerie Jarrett was attempting to remove Rahm from the ballot. Burt Odelson was the attorney who was the main guy, the one who was putting up the strongest legal challenge, right? The same Burt Odelson who is the legal extension for one of Chicago’s most powerful labor unions – #134. He also played a hand in trying to get Obama’s good buddy Alexi elected to Obama’s former Senate seat. I know you covered some of this- but it’s worth repeating here now. Alexi of course is Broadway Bank. The Broadway Bank. A failed bank with ties to the mob. A failed bank that housed Obama’s own campaign financing back in the day. A failed bank that magically had the feds give a pass most recently regarding some very odd accounting practices.

So we have this very politically connected – very labor union connected, attorney attempting to work the system to prevent Rahm Emanuel from even getting on the ballot. Now think about that move. Who did a very similar thing not so long ago to secure an election? Removing opponents from the ballot? Who is already well practiced in that kind of thing? Barack Obama. It is exactly how he won the election in 1996 – he removed opposition from the ballot. Was it any coincidence that the very same thing was being used against Rahm Emanuel? Valerie Jarrett and the unions came after Rahm. Rahm won. They lost. I guarantee you the White House is not sleeping so soundly because of that.

Read full Ulsterman report here.

AAG Loretta King Behind Holder's DOJ Racially Motivated Decisions

When even the Dayton NAACP believes a DOJ decision is ridiculous, you know there is a problem. Loretta King appears to be a person that believes in equal results rather than equal opportunity. The Department of Justice is no place for such thinking. What more proof does it take for Congress or Holder to relieve her of her lofty racist perch?

Excerpt: Attorney General Eric Holder may be the face of the Justice Department, but behind the scenes, a little-known assistant attorney general named Loretta King (no relation to Martin Luther King, Jr.) has been the driving force behind the DOJ’s recent, most questionable racially motivated decisions.

Neck-deep in the more divisive civil rights cases of the past several years — most notably the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and the recent Dayton, Ohio police department’s testing standards issue — the Obama appointed assistant attorney general has many wondering whether her guide is the law or racial politics.

“Some of the most outlandish policies of the Holder Justice Department over the last two years flow directly from Loretta King’s worldview,” J. Christian Adams, who worked with King while serving as a voting rights attorney at the Justice Department, told The Daily Caller.

According to Adams, race-based decision making has been a consistent staple of King’s actions and resume.

Last week, reports came out of Dayton, Ohio that the DOJ, led by King, is compelling the Dayton Police Department to lower their test standards to make the equivalent of an “F” a passing grade. The reasoning behind this: the DOJ believes that not enough African Americans are passing the test.

“Through our agreement with Dayton, we will limit the exclusionary effect of the city’s test while enabling the city to meet its urgent hiring needs and identify qualified candidates through individualized interviews,” DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa explained in an e-mail to TheDC. “The city’s hiring process doesn’t stop at the test; they will have the opportunity to interview all applicants from the broadened pool who also pass a background check.”

The Dayton ABC affiliate reports that even the Dayton chapter of the NAACP believes this goes too far.

“The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed,” said Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward. “If you lower the score for any group of people, you’re not getting the best qualified people for the job.”

According to some who know her, King simply won’t allow even Supreme Court decisions to get in the way of her pushing race-based policies.

“I know [King]. I worked with her, and look, she is somebody who believes in racial quotas and she is not going to allow a Supreme Court decision, like Ricci, prevent her from what she wants to do,” said Hans Von Spakovsky, former counsel to the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, explaining why King has continued to push forward with cases like Dayton.

Read full Daily Caller article here.

Wisconsin Unions Turn Violent - Ignored By MSM

Here's hoping that the law abiding people of Wisconsin have enough common sense to filter out the garbage and see the union tactics for what they are, a power play, using all means available to them with no regard for common decency.

Excerpt: "Are you wearing a bulletproof vest?"

Click. Michael Hintze's phone line went dead -- the caller never identified himself. A prominent Wisconsin Tea Party leader, Hintze is the latest recipient of anonymous death threats.

Maybe you thought it was finally over in Wisconsin. Walker overcame the liberal blitzkrieg, elected Republicans decided that there's no moderate stance between bankruptcy and prosperity, the bill was passed and signed, and the fourteen Democrats gave up their life on the run.

But there's more. Though chapter one undeniably ended with a resounding victory for Walker, the next part may easily become a forgotten chapter among thousands in the left's annals of Alinsky-style combat.

Wisconsin has become the latest setting for organized liberal activism. Pro-union forces are setting out to execute the power-plays of leftism: divide, intimidate, and conquer. Community organizers are working tirelessly to increase the opposition through lies and distortion in the hope of building cold-blooded hatred for Walker and his allies.

This is the new norm in Wisconsin: an unrivaled, systematic assault is leveled against anyone who refuses to carry the union's water. It's a war zone where the left seems driven by Saul Alinsky's motto: "The end justifies almost any means."

Democrats and their union allies are making their agenda clear: retain power at all costs. If they can raise enough money, silence enough foes, recall enough senators, intimidate the opposition, and strong-arm enough businesses, they believe that they will ultimately win.

Read full American Thinker article here.

Franklin Graham: World’s Christians in Grave Danger

For those of you who think Islam is not a violent religion, all you have to do is look at the Shiite dominated countries and their lack of tolerance for the Christian religion. Now Obama is embracing Muslims and even using them to formulate policy decisions for the US. If he is not a Muslim, as he says he is not, he sure acts like one. We should all have learned by now, don't listen to what he says, look at what he does.

Excerpt: The Muslim Brotherhood, with the complicity of the Obama administration, has infiltrated the U.S. government at the highest levels and is influencing American policy that leaves the world’s Christians in grave danger, warns internationally known evangelist Franklin Graham

“The Muslim Brotherhood is very strong and active here in our country,” Graham tells Newsmax. “We have these people advising our military and State Department. We’ve brought in Muslims to tell us how to make policy toward Muslim countries.

“It’s like a farmer asking a fox, ‘How do I protect my hen house?’"

That same Muslim Brotherhood is fomenting much of the rebellion and the deteriorating social order roiling the Middle East, forcing millions of Christians to flee for their lives, says Graham, son of beloved evangelist Dr. Billy Graham, and founder of The Samaritan’s Purse international charity.

“Under [Egypt’s Hosni] Mubarek and [Jordan’s] King Hussein and other moderate leaders, Christians had been protected,” Graham says. 11 million Christians live in Egypt and I fear for them, because if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power, you’re going to see a great exodus of Christians. Same thing in Tunisia and Lebanon. I fear for the church because the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be a very terrible thing.”

Read full Newsmax.com article here.

The $4-Per-Gallon President

Two approaches to our dependency on fossil fuels could not be more at odds with one another. On the one hand, there is the recognition that our economy and well being is fueled by an abundance of cheap energy sources. On the other, our economy and well being is being held hostage by a minority of people, environmentalists, who, based on unproven global warming, now global climate change, science, care more about their agenda and control than they care about jobs, and people and their quality of life.

Ms. Palin, in this article, lists the ways the Obama administration is intentionally blocking every chance we have for energy independence and, in the process, dooming our economic recovery.

Excerpt: Is it really any surprise that oil and gas prices are surging toward the record highs we saw in 2008 just prior to the economic collapse? Despite the President’s strange assertions in his press conference last week, his Administration is not a passive observer to the trends that have inflated oil prices to dangerous levels. His war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.

Taken altogether, it’s hard to deny that the Obama Administration is anti-drilling. The President may try to suggest that the rise in oil prices has nothing to do with him, but the American people won’t be fooled. Before we saw any protests in the Middle East, increased global demand led to a significant rise in oil prices; but the White House stood idly by watching the prices go up and allowing America to remain increasingly dependent on imports from foreign regimes in dangerously unstable parts of the world.

This was no accident. Through a process of what candidate Obama once called “gradual adjustment,” American consumers have seen prices at the pump rise 67 percent since he took office. Let’s not forget that in September 2008, candidate Obama’s Energy Secretary in-waiting said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” That’s one campaign promise they’re working hard to fulfill! Last week, the British Telegraph reported that the price of petrol in the UK hit £6 a gallon – which comes to about $9.70. If you think $4 a gallon is bad now, just wait till the next crisis causes oil prices to “necessarily” skyrocket. Meanwhile, the vast undeveloped reserves that could help to keep prices at the pump affordable remain locked up because of President Obama’s deliberate unwillingness to drill here and drill now.

Hitting the American people with higher gas prices like this is essentially a hidden tax and a transfer of wealth to foreign regimes who are providing us the energy we refuse to provide for ourselves. Like inflation, higher energy prices are a hidden tax on Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. And these high gas prices will be felt in the form of higher food prices due to higher transportation costs. Energy is connected to everything in our economy. Access to affordable and secure energy is key to economic growth, which in turn is key to job growth. Energy is the building block of our economy. The President is purposely weakening that building block and weakening our country.

Read full text of Sarah Palin's article here.

Islam 101

If you want to learn about Islam, Islam 101 is the place to start.

Excerpt: Islam 101 is meant to help people become better educated about the fundamentals of Islam and to help the more knowledgeable better convey the facts to others. Similarly, my book and documentary are meant to serve as concise explanations of the major moving parts of Islam and their implications for Western society. Islam 101 is a condensation of the book and documentary with the aim of lending clarity to the public understanding of Islam and of exposing the inadequacy of prevailing views. All should feel free to distribute and/or reproduce it.

Table of Contents

1) The Basics

a) The Five Pillars of Islam
b) The Quran -- the Book of Allah
c) The Sunnah -- the "Way" of the Prophet Muhammad
i. Battle of Badr
ii. Battle of Uhud
iii. Battle of Medina
iv. Conquest of Mecca
d) Sharia Law

2) Jihad and Dhimmitude

a) What does "jihad" mean?
b) Muslim Scholar Hasan Al-Banna on jihad
c) Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of War
i) Taqiyya -- Religious Deception
d) Jihad Through History
i) The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
ii) The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
e) The Dhimma
f) Jihad in the Modern Era

3) Conclusion

4) Frequently Asked Questions

a) What about the Crusades?
b) If Islam is violent, why are so many Muslims peaceful?
c) What about the violent passages in the Bible?
d) Could an Islamic "Reformation" pacify Islam?
e) What about the history of Western colonialism in the Islamic world?
f) How can a violent political ideology be the second-largest and fastest-growing religion on earth?
g) Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?
h) What about the great achievements of Islamic civilization?

5) Glossary of Terms

6) Further Resources

Read the full treatise on Islam here.

Obama's Unfinished Bracket

The Beck Show - MSNBC Bashes Bible

U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Soon to Be #1 - Jobs Are Leaving USA

Democrats have never seen a tax they didn't like and they drool over taxing big bad corporations. But what are corporations. They are employers, they pay for a significant portion of medical care in the US, they provide the medical care, they provide investment growth for pensioners and those saving for a better life, they innovate and provide advancements in our standard of living, they put food on our tables, provide utilities to light, warm and cool our homes, they provide the majority of our goods and services.

Government is a sponge that stifles innovation and provides little in return.

Why is it that businesses relocate overseas? Because they can't compete on the world market. Other countries have recognized the need to reduce corporate taxes. The US has not. Why? Liberal Democrats, that is why.

Excerpt: American Businesses Falling Behind while Policy Stands Still

Washington, DC, March 11, 2011-The U.S. corporate tax rate will soon become the highest in the industrialized world, and is already in its 20th year of being above the average for similar economies, according to a new analysis by the Tax Foundation. As other nations enact reforms and rate cuts, the U.S. corporate rate will continue to stand out as a hindrance to economic growth and competitiveness unless lawmakers move to lower the tax burden for businesses.

The combined federal and state rate of 39.2 percent of corporate profits is exceeded only by Japan, whose rate stands at 39.5 percent. When Japan enacts planned cuts next month, however, the United States will have the highest rate of all of the economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the group of 34 advanced countries with economies most comparable to the U.S.

"Of course, OECD nations have not been the only countries reducing their corporate tax rates to remain competitive," said Tax Foundation president and study author Scott A. Hodge. "Since 2006, some 75 nations have cut their rates, many multiple times."

While many lower-tax nations have achieved their enviable business environments by lowering their rates in recent years, the U.S. is poised to achieve the dubious honor of being the highest-taxed through a lack of action. Between 2000 and 2010, nine countries cut their corporate tax rates by double-digit figures: Germany, Canada, Greece, Turkey, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Iceland, and Ireland. All nine fell considerably in the OECD rankings of high-tax countries.

Read full Tax Foundation article here.

Dane County judge halts Wisconsin's collective bargaining law

In reading the article, it appears that the 24 hour notification rule was not followed. I wonder why, in such a high profile case, the Republicans would take aim and shoot themselves in the foot.

The simple answer to this is, post a notification and vote on it again. This would save all the court costs for the taxpayers. After all, that is what the bill was intended to do, cut the state budget.

Excerpt: Madison -- Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued a temporary restraining order Friday, barring the publication of a controversial new law that would sharply curtail collective bargaining for public employees.

Sumi’s order will prevent Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law until she can rule on the merits of the case. Dane County Ismael Ozanne is seeking to block the law because he says a legislative committee violated the state’s open meetings law.

Sumi said Ozanne was likely to succeed on the merits.

"It seems to me the public policy behind effective enforcement of the open meeting law is so strong that it does outweigh the interest, at least at this time, which may exist in favor of sustaining the validity of the (law)," she said.

The judge’s finding – at least for now – is a setback to Republican Gov. Scott Walker and a victory for opponents, who have spent weeks in the Capitol to protest the bill.

Asst. Atty. Gen Steven Means, who was part of the state's legal team, said after the ruling that "we disagree with it."

"And the reason they have appellate courts is because circuit court judges make errors and they have in this case."

Read full Journal Sentinel article here.

Palin Doctrine Emerges as Arab League Echoes Her Demarche on Libya

For those of you who are cooling on Sarah Palin, The writer of this article, Benyamin Korn, director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, thinks she knows more about foreign policy, the Mid East and energy independence than our current Commander in Chief.

The main criticism of Palin is her lack of international experience. It appears she is doing her homework.

Excerpt: On the Libya crisis, she proposed a no-fly-zone to protect the armed and un-armed opposition to the Qaddafi regime. Mrs. Palin’s formulation had been blogged about for nearly a week when it was echoed by the man who, before the Iraq war, had led the Iraq democratic movement in exile, Ahmed Chalabi.

A long-time foe of Saddam Hussein who has emerged as a leading figure in Iraq’s democratically elected legislature. Mr Chalabi recounted in the Wall Street Journal how President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 call for a popular uprising against Saddam had been heeded by the Iraqi people, only to have Saddam then murder some 30,000 of them from helicopter gunships while the Western world stood by.

Not again, Mr. Chalabi pleaded in his essay, and explicitly demanded a Libyan no-fly-zone. But it now it seems Qaddafi will be allowed to repeat a Saddam-style repression, even as President Obama, and the rest of what he likes to call the international community, is “watching carefully.”

Mrs. Palin also continues to link America’s energy policy — a realm in which she has experience — and U.S. foreign and anti-terrorism policies. She recognizes that the ongoing transfer of billions of U.S. petro-dollars to unstable or even hostile Mideast regimes has, since the formation in 1973 of the Organization of Petoleum Exporting Countries, been an drain on U.S. financial resources.

In a critique of Mr. Obama’s energy policies published yesterday at about the same time the Arab League was adopting her prescription for a Libya no-fly-zone, Mrs. Palin laid out how the president’s “war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.” Nor is Gov. Palin’s insight into complex international issues limited to areas of her immediate expertise.

Mrs. Palin’s address in India will be another step in the growing outline of what might be called The Palin Doctrine. It contrasts sharply with the foreign policy being conducted, if that is the word, by President Obama, who is perplexing not only the Arab world, to which he reached out in his Cairo speech at the start of his presidency, but even his own supporters in the liberal camp, and many in between, who are upset by what might be called his propensity for inaction. It’s an inaction that suggests the Arab League won’t be the only institution that might find itself surprised by the logic of the alert Alaskan.

Read full New York "The Sun" article here.

GAS $5 A GALLON? You better be sitting down when you read this ! !

Received this email today.

AND THEY THOUGHT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WOULD NEVER FIND THIS OUT!? [VKD]
-----------------------------------------------------------

OIL---you better be sitting down when you read this ! !

You "will" pay $5 a gallon + again and you won't complain loud enough to make a difference, RIGHT!

Here's an astonishing read. Important and verifiable information :

About 6 months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest. The host said to Forbes, "I am going to ask you a direct question and I would like a direct answer; how much oil does the U.S. have in the ground?" Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, "more than all the Middle East put together." Please read below.

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana ..... check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5...3 trillion.

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

"This sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' It stretches from Northern Montana , through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves..... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006!

U.. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World

Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this mother load of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia

- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait

- 22-times as much oil as Iran

- 500-times as much oil as Yemen

- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.
Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

Got your attention yet? Now, while you're thinking about it, do this:

Pass this along. If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you complain about gas prices - by doing NOTHING, you forfeit your right to complain.

Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book.

By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!!
GOOGLE it, or follow this link. It will blow your mind.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

THE CAR FROM ATLAS SHRUGGED MOTORS - The Chevy Volt

This article and Michaels' one in Forbes pretty much confirm that college professors and intellectuals cannot run a railroad. Uhhh, car company.

Excerpt: Michaels notest that "sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February." There seems to be a trend here.

Michaels adds that GM has announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years and asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: "Who is going to buy all these cars?"

But wait! Keep hope alive! There is a positive answer to the question. Jeffrey Immelt's GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars. Here the case study opens onto the inevitable politcal angle:

Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.

Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board?

But of course.

Michaels includes this hilarious detail in his case study:

In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (My [GM] engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.)

It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg. A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the Volt's 4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.

Read full Power Line article here.

US backing for world currency stuns markets

The DOW went down 240 points yesterday. Tim Geithner and Obama, with their "new world order" views don't really care what they do to the US economy and the investments of many Americans, both retired and working.

We won't be safe until we have someone in the White House that believes the USA is a beacon of freedom and good in the world.

Geithner's comments here border on "stupid".

Excerpt: US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner shocked global markets by revealing that Washington is "quite open" to Chinese proposals for the gradual development of a global reserve currency run by the International Monetary Fund.

The dollar plunged instantly against the euro, yen, and sterling as the comments flashed across trading screens. David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the apparent policy shift amounts to an earthquake in geo-finance.

"The mere fact that the US Treasury Secretary is even entertaining thoughts that the dollar may cease being the anchor of the global monetary system has caused consternation," he said.

Read full UK Telegraph article here.

Teachers Unions Explained (Video)

Thomas Sowell - Blacks And Republicans

I have made the point in previous blogs that it is incomprehensible to me that minorities vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Have so many generations of the poor been dependent on the government for subsistence that they have forgotten the feeling of self determination and freedom.

I once had a boss in NYC that had come from an old SC family, whose past generations had been slave owners. After slavery ended, many of the blacks remained on the property, working as free men. Two things amazed me. One was the truly caring nature this gentleman, (a Republican), had toward those that took care of his "plantation", and the other was, that the blacks were still doing the same jobs they had done prior to their emancipation.

The Democrats remind me of the old slave owners. By redistribution of wealth, they provide welfare, food stamps, medical care, and cell phones to the poor, not to help them dig their way out of poverty, but to retain their political base.

In this article Thomas Sowell adds a few other reasons that blacks should not vote for liberal Democrats.

Excerpt: At one time, housing prices in San Francisco were much like housing prices elsewhere in the country. But the building restrictions-- and outright bans-- resulting from the political crusades of environmentalist zealots sent housing prices skyrocketing in San Francisco, San Jose and most of the communities in between. Housing prices in these communities soared to about three times the national average.

The black population in three adjacent counties on the San Francisco peninsula is just under 3 percent of the total population in the 39 communities in those counties.

It so happens that these are counties where the voters and the officials they elect are virtually all liberal Democrats. You might be hard pressed to find similarly one-sided conservative Republican communities where blacks are such small percentages of the population.

Certainly that would be hard to find in states with a substantial total population of blacks. In California, a substantial black population has simply been forced by economics to vacate many communities near the coast and move farther inland, where the environmental zealots are not yet as strong politically, and where housing prices are therefore not yet as unaffordable.

With all the Republican politicians' laments about how overwhelmingly blacks vote for Democrats, I have yet to hear a Republican politician publicly point out the harm to blacks from such policies of the Democrats as severe housing restrictions, resulting from catering to environmental extremists.

If the Republicans did point out such things as building restrictions that make it hard for most blacks to afford housing, even in places where they once lived, they would have the Democrats at a complete disadvantage.

It would be impossible for the Democrats to deny the facts, not only in coastal California but in similar affluent strongholds of liberal Democrats around the country. Moreover, environmental zealots are such an important part of the Democrats' constituencies that Democratic politicians could not change their policies.

Although Republicans would have a strong case, none of that matters when they don't make the case in the first place. The same is true of the effects of minimum wage laws on the high rate of unemployment among black youths. Again, the facts are undeniable, and the Democrats cannot change their policy, because they are beholden to labor unions that advocate higher minimum wages.

Yet another area in which Democrats are boxed in politically is their making job protection for members of teachers' unions more important than improving education for students in the public schools. No one loses more from this policy than blacks, for many of whom education is their only chance for economic advancement.

But none of this matters so long as Republicans who want the black vote think they have to devise earmarked benefits for blacks, instead of explaining how Republicans' general principles, applied to all Americans, can do more for blacks than the Democrats' welfare state approach.

Read full Townhall.com article here.

Rubio And McCain Introduce The Debt Buy-Down Act Of 2011 In The Senate

Is it just me, or do most people think that the Democrat politicians would take only a few days to figure out how to defeat the law. After all, this has to be put into "legalese" and everyone knows the staff lawyers incorporate loopholes in every bill.

I guess they could pass it and see how it works. My guess is that even if it gets through the Senate, Obama will veto it.

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the Debt Buy-Down Act of 2011, which would require the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to include a check-off on tax forms providing taxpayers the flexibility to voluntarily designate that up to 10 percent of their tax liability be put toward debt reduction – this bill does not ask taxpayers to sign away any part of their potential federal refund. Senator McCain has introduced the Debt Buy-Down Act in previous Congresses and a companion bill has been introduced in the House as well.

“At a time when too many of our congressional leaders are unwilling to deal with the debt crisis, and our President is absent from the debate, this will give individual Americans the chance to deal with it themselves. This is the type of innovative solution we need in Washington to empower taxpayers when too many politicians would rather focus on the next election than a $14 trillion debt spiraling out of control,” said Senator Rubio.

Under the Debt Buy-Down Act of 2011, Congress would have an opportunity to pass spending reductions equal to the amount of debt reduction designated by taxpayers. If they fail to do so, the spending reductions are gained via an across-the-board cut in program spending levels – with exceptions for Social Security benefits, benefits for the uniformed services, and payments for net interest.

In order to ensure that those taxpayer-generated reductions in the debt are protected, the bill also requires an equal amount of permanent reductions in federal spending. And it establishes a trust fund in which to put those funds pending their use to retire debt obligations.

In 2010, as part of his 12 simple ways to cut spending in Washington, Senator Rubio said he would support proposals to put a check-off box on the federal tax form allowing taxpayers to designate up 10 percent of their existing tax bill to go toward paying down the national debt.

Betsy's Page: Wisconsin Democrats give the public employees one last chance to squeeze the taxpayers

Betsy's Page: Wisconsin Democrats give the public employees one last chance to squeeze the taxpayers

White House Insider: Valerie Jarrett Ran The White House

This White House insider doesn't think much of Obama or those surrounding him. It appears that Rahm Emanuel could become a liability to Obama as he gains power in Chicago.

Excerpt: Well, Rahm…Rahm Emanuel is a classic DC operative at the highest level. A proven commodity. The guy is tough, smart, and very-very good at working the system. And I say that with absolute respect. Now you gotta understand something here – he was Chief of Staff at the Obama White House. Now that is a very powerful position, right? Serious-serious power. The kind of power Rahm enjoys having. That’s not saying anything derogatory against him – he enjoys power, and there are few positions in this country more powerful than the one he held at the Obama White House. Problem is, that position had all but been cut off at the knees by Jarrett. Rahm’s job was reduced almost entirely to acting as a liaison between the White House and Congress. He quickly became Jarrett’s messenger between Pelosi, Reid, and Jarrett. Axelrod was in the mix too, but he was secondary. He was already preparing an exit for himself by that time – most people don’t know that, but that’s what he was doing. He had come to the realization that Obama was a great candidate but a lousy leader.

Anyways, I guess what I’m getting at here is that what led Rahm to pursue politics back in Chicago had nothing to do with helping Obama out. Nothing. It had everything to do with Rahm wanting out of the Obama administration, and the administration doing everything it could to see him gone. Jarrett was pushing him out, as was the First Lady, and ultimately, Rahm let them do it. He no longer wanted to fight for a White House he saw as a growing internal disaster. “These people are –expletive- clueless.”

So now Rahm has the keys to Chicago, keys that can unlock a lot of things very…uncomfortable to Obama, Jarrett, Michelle – the whole lot of them. Rahm is no friend to the Obama White House. I
want to make that very-very clear to you. The president all but mocked Emanuel as he left. The Chicago unions fought against Rahm. A lawyer close to the Obama machine fought against Rahm. I am certain Organizing for America monies were spent against Rahm in those fights. The Obama people were and still are, crawling all over Chicago. They did not want Rahm Emanuel as Mayor of Chicago. No way in hell did they want that – but that’s what happened now isn’t it?
Rahm Emanuel didn’t go back to Chicago to help protect Barack Obama. Rahm Emanuel went back to Chicago to have the power to help destroy the whole myth of Barack Obama – or even more importantly, to destroy Valerie Jarrett and her entire collection of kooks that is the Obama White House. The bodies buried in Chicago…it’s time for somebody to start digging them up don’t you think? Who better to do that than Rahm Emanuel…

Read full White House Insider article here.

3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation

Democrats and environmentalists want to wean us off carbon based energy sources and use the global warming scam, that is based on flawed, manipulated data, to scare the uninformed public into accepting their premise. I believe that very few Democrats in Congress are true environmentalists. They make it appear that they are adopting green strategies, while all along looking for control of another major portion of our economy; energy. Even Obama has said that to realize his energy agenda, electricity prices would necessarily increase substantially. If he can't get Congress to pass Cap & Tax legislation, he is going to proceed to implement the same policies through the EPA and administrative edicts.

We are currently seeing the Middle East erupting and hove no idea which Muslim sect will gain power. Continuation of the flow of oil from these countries is a question mark. In any event, billions of U.S. dollars are paid to these less than friendly countries each year.

At the same time the Democrats have stalled and stalled our development of our own resources, which are plentiful. This U.S. Geological survey names just a few of our oil resources. ANWR in Alaska is another untapped region. In addition, our natural gas resources are immense. When will the Democrats get some common sense and release the choke hold they have on the American people and set us on the road to energy independence?

Excerpt: North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.

New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.

The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.

The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.

Read full U.S. Geological Survey report here.

The Day the Dollar Died - Fiction, But Could It Happen?

Rep Don Young Urges Producing American Energy & Opening ANWR

This Congressional video was in 2008 but nothing has changed since then. You can read an article in Investors Business Daily citing overwhelming support for domestic production. Still the Democrats and environmentalists are holding all US citizens and the US economy hostage to their failed ideology.

Public Unions, Wisconsin and the Right to Work

Throughout history, unions have served to elevate the living standards of the American working man. In times of limited government, the only recourse workers had was to band together and fight for what they thought was right. Conditions are no longer such that workers are alone. Government has grown to a point where its regulations are strangling businesses and unions have become overzealous to a point where companies are either closing down or moving to more friendly and receptive areas of the country.

If it weren’t for government bailouts, which are continuing today, the mighty US auto industry, would no longer be the force it once was on the world stage. Thanks to the unions, a new non-unionized Boeing plant is being built in Charleston, SC to produce its new 787 Dreamliner, which Everett, Washington so desperately wanted. For decades the northwest has been the hub of aircraft manufacturing; why now the change? The production of the Dreamliner is two years behind schedule due, in part, to crippling strikes by the union machinists. Boeing is willing to spend a $Billion to build a plant and train new workers to remove themselves from the high cost and crippling strikes caused by unions. Right to work laws have benefited the South.

Twenty-two states, including South Carolina, have "right to work" laws "which prohibit agreements between trade unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues or "fees" a condition of employment". Union membership in these states have plummeted. This tells you that when government doesn’t dictate, unions have a difficult time justifying themselves to the worker.

Wisconsin is not a "right to work" state, and is suffering from aggressive public labor unions, with high salaries, benefits and suffocating work rules. FDR once wrote, “all Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management”

If you are a Republican, and a government union employee, you see much of your dues going to Democrat candidates who do not share your beliefs. These same Democrats vote to increase the power of the unions.

The Wisconsin unions, with the support of Obama's campaign organization, not being able to compete with reason, have resorted to intimidation, death threats and thuggery to advance their cause. Democrat legislators fled the state, refusing to honor their commitment to the voters to represent them.

Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican legislature, having campaigned and won overwhelmingly, would have been negligent if they had not heeded the will of the voters and reined in the power and costs of the public unions.