US Debt Explained

Doctor shortage threatens U.S.

In 1977, Congress feared there would be a glut of doctors, so they froze the number of residencies at 110,000 nationwide. This is another incidence of the government interfering with our economic natural selection process and creating a cure that is becoming worse than the bite. Unintended consequences? Who knows what our government intends anymore?

Excerpt: Dr. Atul Grover, chief advocacy officer of the medical colleges association, pointed to several reasons for the current and anticipated problem:

• There has been a cap on slots in medical schools and residency training programs for the last 34 years as the U.S. population grew by 31 percent. Federal money now helping to pay for graduate medical education could be slashed by Congress.

• The elderly population nationwide is expected to double in the next decade. Adults in this age group use health services more than twice as much as younger folks.

• One-third of physicians now in practice nationwide are expected to retire in the next 10 years. About 21 percent of Ohio's doctors are now 60 years or older.

• As many as 30 million people currently without insurance are expected to be pulled into the system as federal health care reform rolls out in 2014.

Grover emphasized that the nation is in need of doctors in every specialty from family medicine to heart surgery.

Doctors won't be the only solution to keeping up with patient demand and more accessible care, Ohio State's Lucey said. "We need to think creatively and work with our colleagues in nursing, pharmacy and business."

Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove said he sees more midlevel practitioners, such as physician assistants and surgical technicians, used to improve efficiency in hospitals.
Changes already are occurring in Northeast Ohio.

Some doctors are using a group approach in which they direct care and focus on complicated cases while their team -- consisting of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, dietitians, social workers and pharmacists -- covers preliminary exams, patient counseling and follow-up care.

Another approach is corporate health care. University Hospitals, for example, has been expanding its program by working with companies like Lincoln Electric to provide employees with on-site nurse practitioners to provide easy access to care for minor illnesses and to manage chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

Both the Cleveland Clinic and UH are staffing health clinics in grocery stores and drugstores with nurse practitioners in an effort to make primary care more accessible to the public.

The Clinic, MetroHealth and UH have established medical homes and community centers that blend services of doctors, nurse practitioners, nurse educators and case managers.

Such wellness efforts -- growing in Ohio and across the country -- reduce the burden on doctors and the need for expensive care down the road.

"If you get someone in a state of good maintenance," Connors said, "then they are less likely to get severely sick and less likely to end up in the emergency room."

Read full article here.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa) Rant Against Big Government And Inaction

David Horowitz: Obama 'Systematically Destroying Our Liberties'

Horowitz should know, he was one of them along with Bill Ayers. These are my thoughts exactly. Obama can't be that stupid. He has to have a plan that is showing itself as the destruction of our freedoms and society. His view of America are the same as Jeremiah Wright's.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama is the most dangerous president of modern times, intent on turning the country into a second-rate power because “he basically despises America,” conservative activist and author David Horowitz tells Newsmax.TV.

Obama is a radical of his (Horowitz’s) generation and actually is a product of the worst part of the 1960s, he said. Obama was a close political ally of 1960s radical and later education professor Bill Ayers, who Horowitz knows very well given his own background as a former leader in the New Left.

“I don’t think Obama cares about this country and I think he is intent on bankrupting it and diminishing our military to the point where we are a second-rate power,” he said. “He is already the most dangerous president we’ve had in modern times.”

Horowitz charged that Obama has surrendered the Middle East to the Muslim Brotherhood.

“There will be a war there soon and he’s responsible and that’s because he basically despises America and wants us to lose in these global conflicts,” he said.

Horowitz also believes that American exceptionalism is in danger under Obama.

“We are a unique country,” he said. “The left under Obama is destroying that uniqueness. The Obamacare is not even a disguised plan to turn this into a socialist country and make everyone a dependent of the state. In history we are really unique where we have been a nation of individualists, distrustful of government, jealous of our liberty, and the Obamaites are systemically destroying our liberties.”

Read full Newsmax article here.

Tort Reform: Perry, The guy the sharks fear

Although a non-brainer for us common folks, legislatures, whose makeup tilt heavily toward the legal persuasion, are slow to act when it comes to tort reform. It will take a strong executive and the replacement of many lawyers in Congress, to enact meaningful legislation restricting the "ambulance chasers", what we use to call these lawyers that are so proud of themselves today.

Excerpt: Which is why, adds Politico, “among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred — and fear — as Perry.”

Since 2003, Texas has become a model for national tort reform. That year, the state enacted a $250,000 cap on medical liability for non-economic damages.

That reform in particular helped free Texas from excessive medical-malpractice insurance premiums that had driven many physicians out of state (a problem, by the way, now bedeviling New York and New Jersey).

Other reforms include expedited class certification; ensuring that defendants pay only their proportionate responsibility; liability limits for good Samaritans, volunteer firefighters, etc., and reformed product-liability laws, so that local retailers are not on the hook for manufacturers’ mistakes.

And he continues to push a loser-pays system to discourage frivolous lawsuits, barring judges from finding new causes of action from the bench and expediting trials for litigants with legitimate claims.

No wonder the tort bar is quaking. And what an encouraging sight to see so much agitation.
Of course, the litigators may end up regretting any effort to make this a major campaign issue. (Word to the wise: You’re nowhere near as popular as you think you are.)

Read full NY Post article here.

Gibson Guitar Jobs Killed By Holder's Justice Department - Politicizing Justice?

This appears to be an overreach by the Holder Justice Department, one that will make no sense to the majority of Americans.  Why our government would spend millions of dollars to enforce an obscure Indian law that even the Indian government refuses to enforce, leads any sane person to question the intent of our liberal Democrat administration.  Not only are jobs being killed, but our freedom is being systematically destroyed by Obama/Holder.  They are greasing that slippery slope our founding fathers warned us about.


Excerpt: Press Release: The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants.

The fact that the government would issue warrants based on their interpretation of another country’s laws is laughable–and scary–in and of itself, but that they would demonize an American, non-unionized (coincidentally, I’m sure) company for something that isn’t even a crime (especially not in the American lawbooks) is a gross misjustice. Keep in mind that the Indian government itself wasn’t involved in the Gibson warrants and raid.


This unfortunate event begs the question, Why Gibson?

Putting aside the presumably misguided motivation to enforce another sovereign nation’s laws, why would a homegrown American company be the target of the Department of Justice in the first place?

It’s worth pointing out that Henry E. Juszkiewicz, Gibson’s Chief Executive Officer, is a donor to a couple of Republican politicians. According to the Open Secrets database, Juszkiewicz donated $2000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN07) last year, as well as $1500 each to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Juszkiewicz also has donated $10,000 to the Consumer Electronics Association, a PAC that contributed $92.5k to Republican candidates last year, as opposed to $72k to Democrats. (The CEA did, however, contribute more to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle.)


When warrants as ridiculous such as these are issued and executed, there appears no other reason than because the company or individual at hand is being targeted, not because there is any sort of wrongdoing. As a company, Gibson is a legendary. They’ve done nothing wrong, except, apparently, deigning to have a Republican CEO

Read full article here.

Gary Hubbell: The Redneck tree hugger says Obama is savior of America's future

Read the entire article and you will feel the same as I do. It is time to stop our country from falling off the Liberal cliff and bring us back onto firm Constitutional ground.

Excerpt:
Barack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America's future. He is the best thing ever.

Despite the fact that he has some of the lowest approval ratings among recent presidents, history will see Barack Obama as the source of America's resurrection. Barack Obama has plunged the country into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; his efforts to nationalize health care have been met with fierce resistance nationwide; TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace.

That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America.

Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure the America that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world. Immigration laws were ignored on the basis of compassion. Welfare policies encouraged irresponsibility, the fracturing of families, and a cycle of generations of dependency. Debt was regarded as a tonic to lubricate the economy. Our children left school having been taught that they are exceptional and special, while great numbers of them cannot perform basic functions of mathematics and literacy. Legislators decided that people could not be trusted to defend their own homes, and stripped citizens of their rights to own firearms. Productive members of society have been penalized with a heavy burden of taxes in order to support legions of do-nothings who loll around, reveling in their addictions, obesity, indolence, ignorance and “disabilities.” Criminals have been arrested and re-arrested, coddled and set free to pillage the citizenry yet again. Lawyers routinely extort fortunes from doctors, contractors and business people with dubious torts.

We slowly learned to tolerate these outrages, shaking our heads in disbelief, and we went on with our lives.

But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.

Literally millions of Americans have had enough. They're organizing, they're studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they're reading history and case law, they're showing up at rallies and meetings, and a slew of conservative candidates are throwing their hats into the ring. Is there a revolution brewing? Yes, in the sense that there is a keen awareness that our priorities and sensibilities must be radically re-structured. Will it be a violent revolution? No. It will be done through the interpretation of the original document that has guided us for 220 years — the Constitution. Just as the pendulum swung to embrace political correctness and liberalism, there will be a backlash, a complete repudiation of a hundred years of nonsense. A hundred years from now, history will perceive the year 2010 as the time when America got back on the right track. And for that, we can thank Barack Hussein Obama.

Read full Aspen Times article here.

Why The Poor Need The Marketplace

One of the reasons that those below the poverty level have so many "things", is that the poverty level is measured before any governmental assistance. Look at your own income and imagine how much you spend for food (no food stamps), medical insurance, co-pays and deductibles (no medicaid or other free care), housing (no public housing), cell phones (no Federal subsidies), taxes (no taxes). That $20,000 of poverty level disposable income isn't looking so bad anymore, is it?

Excerpt: The political left is convinced that certain goods and services — especially health care and education — should be provided free of charge by the government rather than sold in the marketplace (see Uwe Reinhardt, for example).

The reason: in the marketplace distribution will be determined by ability to pay and poor people, by definition, are least able to pay. Only free provision by the state can result in equal access for all.

The left, by the way, has largely won this debate. About 90% of schoolchildren attend public schools. And most people who are poor or near poor can enroll in Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) or take advantage of free care at community health centers and the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals. On the other hand, most other goods and services have been left to the marketplace.

So what has been the result of this grand experiment? If left wing political theory is true, we should expect to see huge inequalities in the ownership of goods sold in the market, but fairly equal consumption in health care and education. But there’s the irony. The exact opposite of this prediction has been borne out!

More than 30 million Americans are living in “poverty,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s one out of every seven people. But what does it really mean to be “poor” in America?

A Heritage Foundation report by Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield finds there is more here than initially meets the eye. To most Americans, the word “poverty” implies significant material deprivation, including inadequate food, clothing and shelter. The actual living conditions of America’s poor are very different, however. According to the government’s own survey data, in 2005:

The average household defined as poor lived in a house or apartment equipped with air conditioning and cable TV.

The family had a car (a third of the poor have two or more cars).
For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, a DVD player and a VCR.
If there were children in the home (especially boys), the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.

In the kitchen, the household had a microwave, refrigerator, and an oven and stove.
Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone and a coffeemaker.

The home of the average poor family was in good repair and not overcrowded. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average (non-poor) European, the Heritage scholars note. When asked, most poor families stated they had had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.

Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias says the Heritage report leaves out three things: housing, education and health care.

Over the past 50 years, televisions have gotten a lot cheaper… Consequently, even a low-income person can reliably obtain a level of television-based entertainment that would blow the mind of a millionaire from 1961. At the same time, if you’re looking to live in a safe neighborhood with good public schools in a metropolitan area with decent job opportunities you’re going to find that this is quite expensive. Health care has become incredibly expensive.

But what do these three sectors have in common that’s missing from the market for television sets and video games? Government.

Read the full NCPA article here.

Obama is ‘Ready to Sign Off On’ Jobs-Creating Pipeline Project

Let's see. Billions in loans to Brazil and Columbia and now supporting this pipeline from Canada. How does any of this help our goal of energy independence? The only reason this looks good to him is that it helps to pay back the unions for their contributions to his re-election campaign and will be a talking point in his campaign. I'm sure any agreement will require union labor. He cares nothing about our energy independence, our balance of payments, or carbon emissions. I surmise this by using logic. Does Brazil, Columbian,and Canadian oil emit less CO2 than US Oil? I think not.

Excerpt: President Obama “is ready to sign off on” the Keystone XL pipeline which aims to carry crude oil from Alberta, Canada to Port Arthur, Texas, an American Petroleum Institute (API) manager told CNSNews.com.

API refining issues manager Cindy Schild made the comment after an Aug. 18 conference call involving API and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), which are together promoting the project.

Asked how many jobs would be created through the international project, Schild told CNSNews.com that TransCanada Corp., the project owner, “estimates 20,000 jobs that can be created from the pipeline itself over the two-year project development period.”

“There’s other jobs associated with development of the resource in Canada that have impacts, economic impacts, on U.S. employment as well,” she added. “So, depending where your interests lie, there’s other data there as well on the economic benefits.”

In response to a question about the importance of this project, Schild replied, “Certainly in a time with over nine percent unemployment, you know, even listening to Obama on his bus tour this week, this is something you know he is ready to sign off on – projects that are going to create jobs. And this is unquestionably the single-handed largest shovel-ready project available.”

The Keystone XL project has drawn protests from environmentalists, who have held protests at the White House and elsewhere. The Natural Resources Defense Council says it undermines a U.S. commitment to a “clean energy economy.”

“There’s been an environmental assessment for nearly three years,” Schild said Thursday. “It’s been an open process. There’s been ample opportunity for public engagement; the State Department has been consulting with dozens of agencies from a local state and federal level.

“And it’s been a thoughtful process so at this point, it’s time to move the project forward,” she added. “Hopefully we’re going to see a decision that is favorable to determine that it’s in the national interest and we’ll be able to put these workers to work.”

CNSNews later asked Schild about the partnership between industry and labor in support of the project.

“I think you’re looking at a situation where the unions want work,” she replied. “You’ve got 20,000 potential jobs there. You’ve got workers that are standing there – they’re ready, they’re already contracted and ready for work. So what you’re hearing from the unions is encouragement.”


Read full CNS News article here.

Tea Party at Harvard to Discuss Constitutional Convention

There have been a number of petitions by the States for a Constitutional Convention to be convened, but, so far, Congress has refused to follow through. I believe it is an idea whose time has come.

Excerpt: The group plans to discuss this topic on Sept. 24 and 25 — specifically how feasible it would be to hold a constitutional convention. The event will include experts who will discuss “their interpretations of Article V, their understanding of how the Founders viewed the provision and how a Constitutional Convention would operate today,” according to a release.

“The Founders included the Amendment process for the states to resist federal overreach and a convention would give states the chance to exert their authority and overturn unconstitutional laws,” said Mark Meckler, a national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, who said the group isn’t yet supporting the idea of a convention, but is merely interested in exploring it. (29 percent of voters say tea partiers are terrorists)

“It is an idea that deserves reasoned discussion without the partisan or ideological underpinnings,” he said.

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig said, “From the Tea Party Right to the Progressive Left, there is agreement that something fundamental has gone wrong,”

“The solution to that disagreement is democracy,” Lessig said. “We should begin the long discussion about how best to reform our democracy, to restore its commitment to liberty and a Republic, by beginning a process to amend the Constitution through the one path the Framers gave us that has not yet been taken — a Convention.”

Read full Daily Caller article here.

White House Insider: The Obama Plan – Part Three

Again, I don't know how valid this White House Insider is, but it is well worth the read of this third in a series report.

Excerpt: Insider: No…what I will say is that those are two of the three tactics we are engaging in against Barack Obama’s re-election – continuing to push Eric Holder out of the DOJ, securing a primary challenger, and the other thing…it relates to a staffing issue. The loss of a critical member of the Obama staff. A resignation that will further the growing perception that the Obama White House is a place of internal disarray – which it absolutely is. And this event will also be a signal to those in the Democratic Party that Barack Obama’s re-election is not in their best future interests. It is time we cut our losses and begin the rebuilding process sooner rather than later. And I’m not just talking about the Democratic Party – I’m talking about the country. All of us. All of us need to correct this mistake, and that’s what the election of Barack Obama was. At its core, that’s what it really was – a huge mistake.
…But we’re makin’ it right.

Read full Insider report here.

Andrea Bocelli and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir - The Lords Prayer

Sportsrisq - Golf Trick Shots

Glenn Beck to Gov. Rick Perry: You Could Be a Real Problem for America

China Threatening U.S. Space Superiority

I am fairly sure that the US has a substantial lead in the "weapons" in space race, but the Chinese, with all the money we have been pumping into their economy, have been doing a phenomenal catch-up. With all the cyber-hacking the Chinese have been doing in the past few years, who knows what secrets and what "weapons" of ours they now have? Obama would rather spend money for a "bridge to nowhere" or an airport for a now deceased Democrat politician, than for space exploration. Thankfully, most of the money for our weapons systems is hidden away in the Defense and other Departments' budgets and, hopefully will not be drastically cut.

Excerpt: But as NASA sends its shuttles to museums, China is making great strides in its space program—with preparations under way for the launch of a Chinese spacelab in the next few weeks. These advances are beginning to threaten U.S. space superiority and America’s ability to support its friends and allies and to deter aggression.

In a new paper, China’s Space Program: A Growing Factor in U.S. Security Planning, The Heritage Foundation’s Dean Cheng explains the advances in China’s space program and how America must respond.

In the past several years, China’s space efforts have become increasingly prominent. Recent Chinese achievements have included the third manned Shenzhou mission and a space walk, expansion of the indigenous Chinese Compass satellite navigation system, and deployment of a range of new remote sensing satellites, such as the Yaogan series . . .

China’s space efforts are not simply the actions of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or efforts at political signaling to obtain a space arms control treaty, as some have posited. Rather, these actions occur within a particular strategic and military context.

The PLA has concluded that the high ground of space is essential to the information gathering, transmission, and exploitation necessary to fight and win future wars. And China’s efforts to secure space dominance will entail hard-kill and soft-kill measures aimed at satellites, ground facilities, and data links and will incorporate active and passive defenses for its own space facilities. Cheng also explains that it remains unclear how the Chinese look at military space operations during a crisis, particularly given the poor Chinese track record in crisis management. But the potential for inadvertent escalation is real.

All of those factors point to a need for the United States to increase its understanding of China’s space capabilities and space decision-making system, while maintaining a robust military space capability. Cheng writes:

An increasingly important part of national security, including deterrence, depends on space capabilities. For the United States, the ability to secure space superiority, which has not been an issue since the end of the Cold War, is integral to its ability to fight wars in the American way. For the PRC, the ability to secure space dominance and to deny it to an opponent will likely become an increasingly important part of their national security planning.

Read the full Foundry article here.

How Obama Spent His Summer Vacation- Day One: Kill Power Plants, Kill Jobs

It looks like the coal producers in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia will be out of jobs when the EPA gets done with them. It is a shame that "clean coal" is not good enough for the Obama posse, since we have an abundance of coal reserves here in the USA. You would think that, since the global warming scientists have been proven to be fudging the stats for monetary reasons, and global warming, if at all, appears to be more of a natural cycle rather than man made, the wing-nuts at the EPA might relax a little on the job killing, economy strangling regulations. But no, that would be using common sense and a modicum of caring, which has no place at the EPA or in Obama's government.

Oh, did I mention the brownouts that will occur when the coal plants close with no viable replacements because of the impossible rigorous schedule and low balled estimates of the EPA's regulations. See Global Warming.Org.

Excerpt: Prepare for your electric rates to go up, Chevy Jolt drivers.

Under new interpretations of old rules, the EPA will shortly be forcing the shutdown of about 20 percent of coal-generated electric capacity in the United States. Since coal generates about half the electricity demanded in the US, the country will have to find other, more expensive ways of making up about ten percent of electric capacity at a time that the administration wants electric to be the clean fuel of choice.

Maybe Obama doesn’t understand that he can’t import electricity from Brazil.

In addition to the loss of generating capacity, the Commerce Department estimates that the new rules could kill up to 60,000 jobs, says Heritage, while an industry trade group says that the rules will cost $129 billion, according to the Washington Post.

During the 2008 presidential campaign then-Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden both claimed that if elected they would institute policies that make it cost prohibitive for coal-fired plants to operate in the United States.

Looks like this is one promise they’ll keep.

In short, the coal group got it right in November 2008.

President Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short- sighted, inexperienced politician willing to do anything, saying anything and pay anything to get a vote.
Even while on vacation, day one.

Read full Townhall article here.

Defend Western Civilization

While much of this article deals with the multiculturalism in Britain, it highlights the problems we are having in the good ole USA. What is interesting and educational is the key of the article in distinguishing between culture and civilization. Whereas certain aspects of an immigrant's culture can and should be maintained in their new country, their civilization must be left behind.

Excerpt: People who choose to live in America should be welcome to keep many of the attributes of the culture they or their ancestors left behind. It adds to the color and vibrancy that make America a wonderful and interesting place in which to live. By all means, bring your culture — your art, your songs, your literature, your food. America will take it all and integrate it into a greater and ever more distinctively American culture.

But leave your civilization behind.

Although the terms culture and civilization are often used interchangeably, there is a distinct difference. Within Western Europe, for instance, there are dozens of distinct cultures (Italian, French, Irish, etc.), but all of them reside within a single Western civilization. Similarly, the vast American melting pot is home to hundreds of intermingled cultures. What allows these myriad cultures to coexist on generally peaceful terms is that most of their adherents accept the basic tenets of Western civilization. When this is lost, everything else goes.

Foremost among these tenets is respect for the rights, freedoms, and property of all individuals. Although last week’s riots in Britain were not blamed on any one cultural group, they did represent a general fraying of civilization’s social compact. I am not going to try to explain what caused Britain’s riots. There are thousands of sociologists only too eager to offer explanations for the indefensible behavior of thousands of British youths. What is obvious, however, is that the spread of multiculturalism has weakened the governing classes’ ability to cope with attacks on the very underpinnings of our civilization. Convinced that no culture is superior to another, they are equally convinced that no civilization is better than any other. It is but a short step from this point to seeing nothing worth defending in the civilization that has nourished us to greatness.

In any viable civilization the state has one function that supersedes all others: to protect the rights, property, and lives of its citizens. If it cannot accomplish that task, it has no reason to exist. The British government, which spends about half of the nation’s entire GDP, appears ready to undertake every task except the one for which it was created. It now does so much of the trivial that it is incapable of accomplishing the most basic task of any government: to defend its citizens. In some regards we in America are not far behind. Our government is willing to regulate the minutest details of our daily lives, but is incapable of producing a budget that will not bankrupt the nation.

As I see it, the reason the British elites and the country’s ruling class failed to act was that too many of them are convinced that their civilization is no longer worth defending. They have made a serious mistake in accepting that an equality between cultures holds true for civilizations too. Personally, if given a choice between classic Irish pub tunes and the music of an Arab bazaar, I will pick the pub tunes. This is a matter of taste and upbringing, and I fully accept that those brought up to appreciate the music of the bazaar have every right to enjoy it. I do not, however, accept that anyone living in the United States has a right to choose between the American Constitution and sharia law. This is a matter of civilization, and it should never be the subject of serious debate within our borders.

The West has endured thousands of years of war, misrule, genocide, and a multitude of other trials. Out of these tribulations evolved a political system that places respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual at its center. It is not a perfect system, but it is far superior to what can be found anywhere else. It deserves to be defended, and must be defended. Any person choosing to come to America (or Britain, for that matter) from a non-Western country must give up the tenets of whatever civilization he was raised with. In its place must be substituted a strong belief in unfettered democracy (of the people, by the people, and for the people), human dignity, equal rights, and the freedom of the individual.

Read full National Review article here.

Transform America? What Right Does Obama Have?

This Judi McLeod article asks a simple question, What right does Obama have to try to transform a nation that has led the free world and its fight for freedom for decades? It was a nice campaign slogan, but did many of those who voted for him have any idea what he intended to change? If he had come right out and said he was going to kill the capitalist system, double or triple the size of government, force a system of government health care on us, increase the cost of energy and food and encourage and mandate job killing unionization throughout the nation, would he have been elected? I think not.

Excerpt: Why do we take it as gospel that Barack Hussein Obama gets to fundamentally transform America just because he makes the bold claim that’s what he’s going to do?

Why do decent, rational, American-loving people let Obama get away with saying he will “fundamentally transform America”?

How did the promise to fundamentally transform America ever go unchallenged in Obama’s long narrative?

It must be treason to want to fundamentally transform America against the wishes of the majority.

The West, which counts on the freedom of the United States of America, needs this burning question answered: Who is Obama to come along, trash the Constitution, ridicule America from foreign shores, and put into hateful, spiteful words his insane vision for the fundamental transformation of America?

Some call Obama a Marxist on a take-down America mission. Talking heads define him as stupid, incompetent, even as a man child. Yet aside from two books, many claims of which were never proven, all personal details of Obama’s life before his Second Coming to the Oval Office are locked away from public view.

For all we know Obama’s may have been the lowest IQ of any among students attending his school in Indonesia and the U.S.A. For all we know, Obama may have been banned from practicing law because of criminal activity. For all we know he even may have spent time behind bars for crimes committed.

Why would someone with absolutely nothing significant to prove his intelligence; absolutely nothing to recommend him, in terms of work place experience be able to promise in the most menacing of ways to transform a country that got on exceedingly well without him for 234 years?

Who really believes it is possible for one man to accomplish the fundamental transformation of America? Barack Hussein Obama.

There is no magic in the stridently anti-American couple who currently occupy the White House. They are just two people who led the sort of charmed lives that got them ahead not through their own efforts or hard work, but via contacts in high places of Chicagoland power. They are two people living the high life off of the avails of the people who voted one of them into office, and whose almost 3-year long uninterrupted power tripping has likely left them mentally deranged by now.

Sitting around smoke-filled campus coffee shops talking about the Revolution works when you’re green and only 20. When you’re talking the same way at age 50, it’s time for a sanity check.

The best way to fight Obama is to make reality count. The power of his office notwithstanding, Barack Hussein Obama cannot fundamentally transform America. Not only did anyone that matters ever ask him to, he has not the right.

Read full Canada Free Press article here.

Obama: Promoted GE's Immelt While Destroying Jobs, IBM's Palmisano Snubbed On Health Care Offer

Received an email today about the difference between GE and IBM, and how they have been treated by Obama and his cronies. The portion about GE:

General Electric is planning to move its 115-year-old X-ray division from Waukesha, Wis., to Beijing. In addition to moving the headquarters, the company will invest $2 billion in China and train more than 65 engineers and create six research centers. This is the same GE that made $5.1 billion in the United States last year, but paid no taxes-the same company that employs more people overseas than it does in the united States.


So let me get this straight. President Obama appointed GE Chairman Jeff Immelt to head his commission on job creation (job czar). Immelt is supposed to help create jobs.


I guess the President forgot to tell him in which country he was supposed to be creating those jobs.


If this doesn't show you the total lack of leadership of this President, I don't know what does.

Because Immelt has supported Obama's Cap & Tax agenda, only because GE leads in many of the alternative energy fields and is positioned to rake in billions of dollars from EPA and Dept of Energy edicts,  he gets a leadership position at the job creation table.  While at the table, he does what most businesses will do when faced with the onerous regulations spewing forth from our government, move the jobs to more receptive venues.

Now we go to the portion of the email about IBM:

What if I told you that the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, approached President Obama and members of his administration before the healthcare bill debates with a plan that would reduce healthcare expenditures by $900 billion? Given the Obama Administration's adamancy that the United States of America simply had to make healthcare (read: health insurance) affordable for even the most dedicated welfare recipient, one would think he would have leaned forward in his chair, cupped his ear and said, "Tell me more!"


And what if I told you that the cost to the federal government for this program was nothing, zip, nada, zilch?


And, what if I told you that, in the end and after two meetings, President Obama and his team, instead of embracing a program that was proven to save money and one that was projected to save almost one trillion dollars - a private sector program costing the taxpayers nothing, zip, nada, zilch - said, "Thanks but no thanks" and then embarked on passing one of the most despised pieces of legislation in US history?


Well, it's all true.


Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman of the Board and CEO for IBM, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that he offered to provide the Obama Administration with a program that would curb healthcare claims fraud and abuse by almost one trillion dollars but the Obama White House turned the offer down.


Mr. Palmisano is quoted as saying during a taping of The Wall Street Journal's Viewpoints program on September 14, 2010:


"We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down."


A second meeting between Mr. Palmisano and the Obama Administration took place two weeks later, with no change in the Obama Administration's stance. A call placed to IBM on October 8, 2010, by FOX News confirmed, via a spokesperson, that Mr. Palmisano stands by his statement.


Speaking with FOX News' Stuart Varney, Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, said, "It's a little bit puzzling because I think there is a huge amount of both fraud and inefficiency that American business is a lot more comfortable with and more effective in trying to reduce. And this is certainly true because the IBM people have studied this very carefully. And when Palmisano went to the White House and made that proposal, it was based upon a lot of work and it was not accepted. And it's really puzzling. These are very, very responsible people and don't have a political ax to grind.


In Mr. Obama's shunning of a private sector program that would have saved our country almost $1 trillion in healthcare expenditures, presented to him as he declared a "crisis in healthcare," he proves two things beyond any doubt: that he is anti-Capitalist and anti-private sector in nature and that he can no longer be trusted to tell the truth in both his political declarations or espoused goals."



Makes you wonder if the President really cares about any of the citizens of the US, whatever color.  He has an agenda, and that agenda is not to build our country's economy and increase the well being of it's citizens.  It is to install in our Nation, a "New World Order" that borders on Socialism.

Video Johnny Cashless Sings, "Obama's Prison Blues"

Just having a little fun.

Secret Service Secrets

Ron Paul On Kudlow Report: What The FED Does Is Morally Equivalent To Counterfeiting

English Warning To Americans: DONT GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!

This is where the New World Order, the UN, the liberal establishment, Hillary and Obama want to take us. Protect our Constitution and Bill of Rights; don't end up like Great Britain.

Thomas Sowell: Social Degeneration and Mob Violence

You can count on one hand the number of black columnists and personalities that would take on their own and tell it like it is, Thomas Sowell, Bill Cosby, Star Jones, Walter Williams and now, the mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter. I'm sure you can name others, but the point that I am making is that the subject has been made toxic by the liberal establishment, and even well meaning, intelligent blacks that raise the subject are few and far between. A white mayor would not be able to withstand the heat.

When you read further into the article, you will see that the MSM, and now Obama, hold considerable blame in fomenting this violence with their encouragement of class warfare. For us to rebuild our Nation, we have to reform our liberal press and vote out the extreme left from our halls of government.

Excerpt: Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race.

After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence -- as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and other places -- Philadelphia's black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who did such things.

"Pull up your pants and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt," he said. "If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy," the mayor said. He added: "You have damaged your own race."

While this might seem like it is just plain common sense, what Mayor Nutter said undermines a whole vision of the world that has brought fame, fortune and power to race hustlers in politics, the media and academia. Any racial disparities in hiring can only be due to racism and discrimination, according to the prevailing vision, which reaches from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Just to identify the rioters and looters as black is a radical departure, when mayors, police chiefs and the media in other cities report on these outbreaks of violence without mentioning the race of those who are doing these things.

All around the country, people in politics and the media have been tip-toeing around the fact that violent attacks by blacks on whites in public places are racially motivated, even when the attackers themselves use anti-white invective and mock the victims they leave lying on the streets bleeding.

This is not something to ignore or excuse. It is something to be stopped. Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia seems to be the first to openly recognize this.

Read full Thomas Sowell article here.

Read part 2 of Thomas Sowell's article here.

Obama Judge Rules Against Obama Energy Obstruction Agenda

The rule of law has won out in this one. Obama says he is for the development of our energy resources, but the actions of his Department heads speak the opposite. This court, at least, did not let him get away with it.

Excerpt: On Friday, a US District Judge, appointed by Obama, decided that the administration wasn’t playing fair.

In October 2010, the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), representing more than 400 independent natural gas and oil producers in the western states, filed a law suit against the federal government to force action on oil and gas leases that companies had already paid for. The leases had been purchased at Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lease sales. But because of environmental protests and uncertainty over endangered species, the BLM has a backlog of leases needing additional examination.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 encouraged domestic energy development by allowing wells drilled from a site that had been used within the last five years, and already had a full environmental analysis, to proceed without repeating the expensive, time consuming, and redundant studies. Additionally, in areas with extensive energy development—and therefore environmental impacts have been fully evaluated, permits could be expedited. Extraction and jobs could happen more quickly—helping America’s debt.

In May/June 2010, in response to an environmentalist lawsuit, the BLM/Forest Service (FS) adopted new rules for interpreting the Energy Policy Act. The rules were aimed at slowing down development by increasing environmental oversight of drilling on federal lands.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled that the BLM and FS had failed to follow the correct procedures when they issued a memorandum and letter, respectively, changing the application of the 2005 Energy Policy Act. She threw out the 2010 rewrite of Section 390 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and reinstated expedited oil and gas drilling.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman ruled that the Obama administration was acting in contempt, stating that regulators acted with “determined disregard” by lifting the offshore ban and then reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling.

Read full Townhall.com article here.

Obama's Regulatory Agencies Usurp Congress' Authority

For years now, the Office of the President has been bypassing Congress and creating legislation, called Executive Orders or regulations, that in effect, are laws that we, the peons have to obey. Congress has gone along with this theft of their Constitutional responsibilities without a whimper. Where does this violation of the Constitution change our form of government from a Republic to a Dictatorship? Our economy is being destroyed by these regulations. It is about time our elected representatives put a stop to this usurpation of their power.

Excerpt: In the last session of Congress, members of both the Senate and House spoke loudly and clearly through their actions on various pieces of legislation, including the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA). EFCA would have eliminated the secret ballot in union organizing elections and given to government arbitrators the authority to determine wages and other terms and conditions of employment. Even though this anti-worker, job-killing legislation was introduced, it was never called to a vote because it lacked the support of the American people.

Yet, Big Labor is undeterred. Despite a weakened economy that could slip into a double dip recession, 14 million Americans seeking work and credit rating agencies downgrading for the first time in modern history the nation’s rating, union bosses continue to seek “payback” for their political support of the Obama Administration, without regard for the consequences. President Obama’s regulatory agencies are more than willing accomplice

Currently, there are three principal threats to the rights of employees and employers which are being undertaken by the NLRB and the Department of Labor (DoL). They will do for Big Labor what EFCA would have accomplished: dramatically increase the power of unions and make organizing easier.

The first threat is a rule that the NLRB announced it was considering in a case called Specialty Healthcare. The new rule would allow “micro-units” in unionized American workplaces, meaning collective bargaining units as small as two people who are doing the same job in the same location. It would be a dramatic and significant departure from long-standing Board law under which a collective bargaining unit can be all the employees or something smaller such as a plant, department or craft. It is inconsistent with a workers’ right to be in a unit with sufficient collective bargaining strength to negotiate with their employer. However, in certain circumstances it could be used by organized labor to get an easy foothold into a business through a tiny group which, though small, is critical to the employer’s operation. With such a unit, the union can extort concessions from the business which it would not otherwise have made and which it may not be able to afford. Micro-units threaten a proliferation of units and a balkanization of the workplace as different unions with dissimilar goals seek to represent the employees. This will result in less harmony and more work-stoppages as employees are drawn into conflicts in which they have no interest. And employers will experience ever-increasing labor relations costs curtailing business growth because they will have to negotiate and apply multiple collective bargaining agreements.

Next on the NLRB’s docket is “quickie” or “ambush” elections. In a recently announced proposed rule – once again undoing decades of precedent – the Board proposed shortening the period of time for union elections from a median of 38 days to as little as 10. Its unstated goal is to achieve for Big Labor what card check would have accomplished. It will limit, if not eliminate, an employer’s ability, protected by the National Labor Relations Act, to express its views on unionization and its employees’ right to hear those views and make an informed choice. The only story the employees will have an opportunity to hear is the union story. The proposed rule also includes other outrageous measures that will cause the entire election process to be tilted against employers. For example, the employer will now have to identify all pre-election issues and participate in an adversarial hearing just seven days after the union files it petition. This will decrease the number of elections – 92% in 2010 – that proceed in a far less adversarial process by agreement of the parties and increase employer, as well as agency costs. And another provision violates the privacy rights of employees. The employer will be required to provide union organizers with a list of all employees in its proposed unit. Under current law, the list need only include the employee’s last known address. Under the proposed rule it will include the employee’s home and cellular telephone numbers, as well as personal e-mail addresses.

Micro-units and quickie or ambush elections will enormously increase the power of unions to the detriment of legitimate employee and employer rights and interests, and our struggling economy will suffer. They threaten an increase in work stoppages, workplace disharmony and employer labor relations costs.

Lastly, the DoL is undertaking an effort which threatens to limit the availability of legal advice employers receive during a union organizing campaign. Such advice is very important in this complicated area of the law to avoid making inadvertent and unintentional mistakes. Attorneys and the employers who retain them for such advice will be required under the rule to disclose privileged information, which includes financial statements, client lists and other documentation. It is widely anticipated that many attorneys and some law firms will stop offering such advice if the proposed “gag” rule is implemented. As a consequence, many employers will be restrained from addressing their employees and having the free and open debate on the question of unionization that the law intended. The Department of Labor is led by Hilda Solis, a well-known defender of union bosses and supporter of EFCA.

The above efforts by unelected government bureaucrats on behalf of union bosses will accomplish for Big Labor by regulatory fiat much of what it wanted to achieve through EFCA. In short, the Executive Branch of government, which is charged with enforcing laws, is now writing new ones not supported by the American people.

Read full Townhall.com article here.

White House Insider: The Obama Plan – Part Two

Still not quite sure of the validity of this "Insider", but the whole article is an interesting read.

Excerpt: Ulsterman: How? What’s the plan? What’s going to be different from all the other campaigns?

Insider: You’ve already seen it. A taste of it. Race. The race card. Racism. Race-race-race. It’s all they fucking got to run on these days.

Ulsterman: Race? Hasn’t Obama played that one out already? It’s become a joke.

Insider: Played it out? No, not…you might think so but no…his people are going to raise the issue of race to a level this country hasn’t seen since the Civil Rights Movement. White guilt got Barack Obama the nomination. White guilt got Barack Obama into the White House. At least it was a big part of it…they are not sure they can run on the economy by summer of 2012.

Motivation is way down – the people on the ground. Many of them will be sitting this one out. The campaign conducted over five internals in the last few months. Each time the one issue that came back favorably for the president was the color of his skin. People are now comfortable…white people are not comfortable going against a person of color. At least not a whole lot of them. Those studies – those kinds of studies…they were first incorporated by the Hillary campaign back in 2007 and 2008. It scared the hell out of her – she was so afraid of being called a racist. So she attacked Obama on his lack of experience, she just touched on some of the Chicago garbage…but in the end, she race issue kept her from really engaging in all out political war. The Clinton machine was handcuffed. When Obama used race to get America to forgive the fact the spent some 20 years sitting the church of a proven anti-American fascist fucking racist – what could they do? It was game over. I told you a bit of that already…at the start of all this. Right?

Ulsterman: Yes – how you were stunned Obama survived the Jeremiah Wright scandal.
Insider: Nobody should have survived that. No candidate…I don’t care how good…nobody survives something so – they had the videos for fuck’s sake!

Ulsterman: But he did survive it – and rather easily. He gave that speech, and the media praised him for it and the issue was dead.

Insider: EXACTLY. Don’t you understand it then? How race – that very thing that pulled his ass out of the fire back in 2008 – that’s the plan for 2012. But even more of it. They got an entire plan to utilize it. Targeting certain states. A media campaign. Use it as a weapon against prospective opponents – the Romney people better be ready because he’s gonna get his ass kicked with the race issue and he won’t even see it coming. They better have their boy prepared for that…

White guilt is very real. I’ve used it-done it myself… countless times in an election campaign. And for Barack Obama…his re-election team – they are banking on it bringing victory in 2012. Even if it means the threat of race riots. They are willing to go that far – go down that road if need be. If the Obama team can’t guilt enough of White America into voting for them in 2012 – they are just fine with trying to scare the shit out of them to do it.

Read full White House Insider report here.

Queen of the Tea Party The presidential campaign of Michele Bachmann

If you're interested in knowing your candidates, this article is a detailed chronology of Michele Bachmann's life. Read it all and you will see how strong she really is.

Excerpt: What Bachmann lacked until recently was mainstream credibility. And the skepticism was bipartisan. Democrats loathed her—and still do—because she’s about as far from an apologetic conservative as you can get. But plenty of Republican officials and consultant types also didn’t like Bachmann. Republican elites muttered that she was a show horse, not a work horse. Her fame alienated colleagues. One congressman recently told me that Bachmann had been upbraided during a House GOP conference meeting for undermining the leadership’s message on fiscal issues. Bachmann’s tendency to shoot from the hip is said to limit her appeal. “I think Bachmann’s chances of landing on Jupiter are higher than her chances of being nominated,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy told me in an April interview for Washingtonpost.com.

Well, get ready for an interplanetary expedition. Bachmann is a far more serious candidate for the Republican nomination than her reputation would suggest. She’s a talented fundraiser who raised $13.5 million for her 2010 reelection campaign. She’s a television star who appropriately tailors her message to her audience. Her combativeness will delight conservatives eager to fight Barack Obama. Her movement credentials—she founded the House Tea Party Caucus—put her at the cutting edge of right-wing politics. And in a primary campaign where authenticity counts, no other candidate has Bachmann’s unique history: an Iowa native who put herself through law school, raised her five children and took in 23 foster children, and has never lost an election for state or federal office.

Since 2009, millions of Americans have attended rallies, joined Tea Party groups, and become involved in politics. They’re scared for the future of the country, and they want to stop America’s decline. Many of these activists are parents or grandparents who simply weren’t political before government policies drove them into the arena. Michele Bachmann is uniquely positioned to speak to these voters—because she’s one of them.

Read full Weekly Standard article here.

Inflation: The Other “Tax”

I read an article the other day that said the Fed wants to keep inflation around 3%. How they will do this, while all along printing trillions of dollars of unsupported currency, (QE1 =$1.7 Trillion and QE2 = $.6 Trillion), I do not know. Many economists predict higher and higher inflation as other countries are now coming to realize the sad state of the US economy.

While investments tend to lessen the effect of inflation, those of you who like to remain financially liquid or “safe”, trusting in Treasuries, bank deposits, low interest CD's or coffee cans in the backyard, the 3% is a direct tax on those savings.

The government, however, pays off their fixed debt with deflated dollars. The Federal Income Tax is sometimes called a social control tool rather than the primary source of financial support for the government. Inflation is another source.

Let's see, 3% of $14,609,000,000,000 (current national debt), is $438,270,000,000 saved each year by the government. Of course that comes out of the pensions and other investments you have that are invested in Government obligations and other fixed dollar “investments”. Over the years that could add up to real money.

I just checked the value of the dollar in the year I was born, 1940. The calculator came up with this: $1.00 in 1940 had the same buying power as $16.12 in 2011. Annual average inflation over this period was 3.99%. With all the money being printed by a Federal Reserve that is beholden to no one, what will your current savings, pensions, 401Ks, IRAs, college funds, be worth in the future when needed?

Dave Light

Quantitative Easing Explained

Doorbell

US Debt Crisis Video - 2012 is only for America

Gingrich Won Debate, 'It's Over' for Pawlenty

I found Bret Bozell's analysis, of the debate last night, the closest to my feelings. Pawlenty was too negative with his attack on Bachmann. Bachmann didn't impress me as strong. Obama wouldn't stand a chance in a debate with Newt, who was obviously the most knowledgeable about the inter-workings of Congress.

Excerpt: Gingrich: The winner. Wasn't even close. Showed why Obama would pee in his pants having to debate this man.

Santorum: Also a winner. Showed most passion, and took on and beat up other candidates. But was it enough to keep him alive?

Romney: Draw/Win. Played not to lose and in that sense succeeded. Didn't accomplish anything, but no one laid a hand on him either.

Bachmann: Draw. Up in that she very successfully deflected attacks. Down in that she came out with plastic speeches when asked to "speak from the heart."

Cain: Draw. Answered some questions well, others not so well. In the end it wasn't enough to save him.

Paul: Loser. Time to go home, Ron. His attacks on the US vis-a-vis Iran were insulting.

Pawlenty: Like the boxer told in the 12th round that he needed a knock-out, Pawlenty threw wild punches everywhere -- and never scored. It's over.

Huntsman: Who?

Go to NB article here.

Obama - Ignorance, Stupidity or Connivance?

Obama's attack on corporate jets is class warfare, pure and simple, and has been put out there for political purposes only. Obama is the President of the whole of the US, not just the Democrats, unions and their supporters. While he is in office, he should spend his time being the President, not just a political hack.

This article by Walter E. Williams points out the folly of Obama's ways.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama has called for a luxury tax on corporate jets as a means to generate revenue to fight federal deficits. The president's economic advisers ought to be fired for not telling him that doing so is unwise and counterproductive. They might have already told him so, only to have the president say, "Look, I know you're right, but I'm exploiting the public's envy of the rich!" Let's look at what happened when Obama's predecessor George H.W. Bush signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 and broke his "read my lips" vow not to agree to new taxes.

When Congress imposed a 10 percent luxury tax on yachts, private airplanes and expensive automobiles, Sen. Ted Kennedy and then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell crowed publicly about how the rich would finally be paying their fair share of taxes. What actually happened is laid out in a Heartland Institute blog post by Edmund Contoski titled "Economically illiterate Obama, re: Corporate Jets" (7/12/2011).

Within eight months after the change in the law took effect, Viking Yachts, the largest U.S. yacht manufacturer, laid off 1,140 of its 1,400 employees and closed one of its two manufacturing plants. Before it was all over, Viking Yachts was down to 68 employees. In the first year, one-third of U.S. yacht-building companies stopped production, and according to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, the industry lost 7,600 jobs. When it was over, 25,000 workers had lost their jobs building yachts, and 75,000 more jobs were lost in companies that supplied yacht parts and material. Ocean Yachts trimmed its workforce from 350 to 50. Egg Harbor Yachts went from 200 employees to five and later filed for bankruptcy. The U.S., which had been a net exporter of yachts, became a net importer as U.S. companies closed. Jobs shifted to companies in Europe and the Bahamas. The U.S. Treasury collected zero revenue from the sales driven overseas.

Back then, Congress told us that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft and jewelry would raise $31 million in revenue a year. Instead, the tax destroyed 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing and 1,470 in the aircraft industry, in addition to the thousands destroyed in the yacht industry. Those job losses cost the government a total of $24.2 million in unemployment benefits and lost income tax revenues. The net effect of the luxury tax was a loss of $7.6 million in fiscal 1991, which means Congress' projection was off by $38.6 million. The Joint Economic Committee concluded that the value of jobs lost in just the first six months of the luxury tax was $159.6 million.

Congress repealed the luxury tax in 1993 after realizing it was a job killer and raised little net revenue. Why did congressional dreams of greater revenues turn into a nightmare? Kennedy, Mitchell and their congressional colleagues simply assumed that the rich would act the same after the imposition of the luxury tax as they did before and that the only difference would be more money in the government's coffers. Like most politicians then and now, they had what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world, a fancy way of saying they believed that people do not respond to price changes. People always respond to price changes. The only debatable issue is how much and over what period.

Here's my question for you: Is it likely that in the two decades since 1990, American human nature has changed? If Congress imposes a luxury tax on corporate jets and other luxury items, will Americans behave differently this time? In other words, can we expect federal tax revenues to rise and unemployment to fall as a result of Obama's tax proposal?

I don't believe that Obama is dumb enough to believe that a tax on corporate jets would be a revenue generator. His agenda is to inspire envy and resentment against wealthy Americans as a tool in pursuit of his higher-tax agenda.

Read full Townhall article here.

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters

This article was posted after the riots in London and reflects what many of us see here in the US. Teen mobs in Chicago, Philadelphia and Wisconsin have shown that our culture here is in grave danger of sinking to the levels we see elsewhere.

Excerpt: A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.
He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’
I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.

It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed ‘the rich’ and the police that ‘we can do what we like’.

If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.

They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.

They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.

Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.
This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.

It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion which modern society finds unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything different or better.

A key factor in delinquency is lack of effective sanctions to deter it. From an early stage, feral children discover that they can bully fellow pupils at school, shout abuse at people in the streets, urinate outside pubs, hurl litter from car windows, play car radios at deafening volumes, and, indeed, commit casual assaults with only a negligible prospect of facing rebuke, far less retribution.
A century ago, no child would have dared to use obscene language in class. Today, some use little else. It symbolises their contempt for manners and decency, and is often a foretaste of delinquency.

If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.
So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.

They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.

They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.

They are an absolute deadweight upon society, because they contribute nothing yet cost the taxpayer billions. Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential.

Most of us would say this is nonsense. Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline — tough love — which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.

Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people.

Read full UK Mail article here.

'Amazing' therapy wipes out leukemia in study

This is a little bit away from my usual posts, but any potential good news in the fight against cancer is well worth noting. The researchers are excited, not only for potential applications against leukemia, but also pancreatic, ovarian, prostate and brain cancers.

Excerpt: NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia - turning the patients' own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells.

They've only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: Two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third patient is improved but still has some cancer. Scientists are already preparing to try the same gene therapy technique for other kinds of cancer.

"It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did," said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "We're just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last."

He led the study, published Wednesday by two journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.

It involved three men with very advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. The only hope for a cure now is bone marrow or stem cell transplants, which don't always work and carry a high risk of death.

Scientists have been working for years to find ways to boost the immune system's ability to fight cancer. Earlier attempts at genetically modifying bloodstream soldiers called T-cells have had limited success; the modified cells didn't reproduce well and quickly disappeared.

June and his colleagues made changes to the technique, using a novel carrier to deliver the new genes into the T-cells and a signaling mechanism telling the cells to kill and multiply.

That resulted in armies of "serial killer" cells that targeted cancer cells, destroyed them, and went on to kill new cancer as it emerged. It was known that T-cells attack viruses that way, but this is the first time it's been done against cancer, June said.

For the experiment, blood was taken from each patient and T-cells removed. After they were altered in a lab, millions of the cells were returned to the patient in three infusions.

Penn researchers want to test the gene therapy technique in leukemia-related cancers, as well as pancreatic and ovarian cancer, he said. Other institutions are looking at prostate and brain cancer.

Dr. Walter J. Urba of the Providence Cancer Center in Portland, Ore., called the findings "pretty remarkable" but added a note of caution because of the size of the study.

"It's still just three patients. Three's better than one, but it's not 100," said Urba, one of the authors of an editorial on the research that appears in the New England Journal.

Read full AP article here.

QUOTE OF THE DECADE

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr.Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

Is Obama Smart? A case study in stupid is as stupid does.

The MSM has cast Obama as one of the "intelligentsia". His actions and TV appearances in the past couple of years refute that premise. His lack of common sense and inability to lead reflects his total lack of any kind of experience in preparation for the position of leader of the free world. Younger supporters of Obama in 2008, many of whom are currently unemployed, should re-evaluate their support for a younger, more charismatic pretender, and go with a more seasoned and experienced candidate for President in 2012. As this article says, "stupid is as stupid does", and we have seen our share of "stupid" during Obama's short tenure.

Excerpt: "I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," he reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."

On another occasion—at the 2004 Democratic convention—Mr. Obama explained to a Chicago Tribune reporter that "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play at this level. I got game."

Of course, it's tempting to be immodest when your admirers are so immodest about you. How many times have we heard it said that Mr. Obama is the smartest president ever? Even when he's criticized, his failures are usually chalked up to his supposed brilliance. Liberals say he's too cerebral for the Beltway rough-and-tumble; conservatives often seem to think his blunders, foreign and domestic, are all part of a cunning scheme to turn the U.S. into a combination of Finland, Cuba and Saudi Arabia.

I don't buy it. I just think the president isn't very bright.

Socrates taught that wisdom begins in the recognition of how little we know. Mr. Obama is perpetually intent on telling us how much he knows. Aristotle wrote that the type of intelligence most needed in politics is prudence, which in turn requires experience. Mr. Obama came to office with no experience. Plutarch warned that flattery "makes itself an obstacle and pestilence to great houses and great affairs." Today's White House, more so than any in memory, is stuffed with flatterers.

Much is made of the president's rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama's big speeches that didn't amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a "Triple-A country." Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.

Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent. At the height of the financial panic of 1907, Teddy Roosevelt, who had done much to bring the panic about by inveighing against big business, at least had the good sense to stick to his bear hunt and let J.P. Morgan sort things out. Not so this president, who puts a new twist on an old put-down: Every time he opens his mouth, he subtracts from the sum total of financial capital.

Then there's his habit of never trimming his sails, much less tacking to the prevailing wind. When Bill Clinton got hammered on health care, he reverted to centrist course and passed welfare reform. When it looked like the Iraq war was going to be lost, George Bush fired Don Rumsfeld and ordered the surge.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, appears to consider himself immune from error. Perhaps this explains why he has now doubled down on Heckuva Job Geithner. It also explains his insulting and politically inept habit of suggesting—whether the issue is health care, or Arab-Israeli peace, or change we can believe in at some point in God's good time—that the fault always lies in the failure of his audiences to listen attentively. It doesn't. In politics, a failure of communication is always the fault of the communicator.

Much of the media has spent the past decade obsessing about the malapropisms of George W. Bush, the ignorance of Sarah Palin, and perhaps soon the stupidity of Rick Perry. Nothing is so typical of middling minds than to harp on the intellectual deficiencies of the slightly less smart and considerably more successful.

But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.

Read full WSJ article here.

Investors flee stocks for bonds on U.S. downgrade

Fear is a horrible thing, and fear is what this is all about. We can fix our credit problems if only we elect the right people to Congress and the Presidency. Many people now believe that Obama is following the teachings of Alinski and Cloward-Piven and is intentionally destroying the American economy so that it can be reinvented as a country where all wealth is distributed by the government equally.

Looking at the results for the past two and a half years and the Democrats refusal to cut spending and bring our finances in order, it is hard to visualize them being on the side of fiscal responsibility and order.

Excerpt: U.S. stocks plunged on Monday, racking up their biggest losses in almost three years as investors fled to the safety of gold and bonds after the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's stoked fears the country is powerless to stop another recession.

Wall Street ended down more than 6 percent while European stocks hit a two-year low as investors saw no solution to the twin debt crises on both sides of the Atlantic.

A favored gauge of investor anxiety spiked to its biggest one-day gain since February 2007, a sign investors are afraid of more declines to come. The CBOE Volatility Index .VIX surged 50 percent to end at 48.

The selling came in heavy trading, with volume of 17.5 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, the busiest since the day after last year's "flash crash."

Ironically, investors took shelter in the one asset that was directly affected by the downgrade -- U.S. government bonds. Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes, held widely for their perceived high quality, rallied, the yield dropping to 2.32 percent.

Investors struggled to discern the effects of the U.S. credit rating downgrade to AA-plus from AAA, which could hit various components of the vast U.S. financial sector, from mortgage lenders to municipal issuers and insurers.

"It is a panic, and almost by definition it doesn't have an issue. It wouldn't matter what it was," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, with over $340 billion in assets under management.

Read full Reuters report here.

Neal Boortz-Turn around our economy? It's not really that hard

A great list to start our recovery and regain our AAA rating:

Excerpt: OK .. I hear you. “All you ever do is complain, Boortz. What great ideas do YOU have to get our economy going again?” Well, as a matter of fact, I’m glad you asked … I do have some ideas. I’m going to help turn things around right here. And to make things more difficult, I’m going to do this without cutting spending or raising taxes … and I’ll do it backwards and in high heels.

Ready? Here we go; step-by-step.

1. Do you have any idea how much one trillion is? The average human life span is around 2.8 billion seconds. If someone was just now approaching their one trillionth second of life they would have been born in 29,000 BC. NOW do you have a grip on a trillion? Good --- because first we need to address the trillions of dollars of American-owned wealth that are legally resting in overseas accounts where they are safe from American confiscatory taxation. Declare a tax amnesty. Allow that money to come home to work in our economy without taxing it. Can you imagine what a few trillion dollars pumped into the private sector and not into political vote-buying schemes might do for our economy?

2. Thanks to generations of government education most Americans don’t realize that corporations and businesses don’t pay taxes. They collect taxes from customers, employees and shareholders and merely pass them on to the federal government. All wealth in this country is held by individuals, and all taxes are paid by individuals. So let’s get smart and reduce business income taxes immediately --- especially corporate income taxes. To do otherwise is to operate on the belief that the federal government would do a better job of spending this money (shrimp on treadmills?) than would the people who actually did the work and earned it.

3. We’re currently wasting around $100 billion a year on the Department of Education. There has not even been a hint of an improvement in government schools since this useless support system for teacher’s unions was created. Abolish the Education Department and send that $100 billion to the states with the mandate that it be used specifically for education programs to prepare young adults for employment upon graduation from high school and not for college prep. We have far too many English, social studies, LGBT and history majors running around now whose workdays consist of endless repetitions of the phrase “would you like French fries with that?

4. End the hideously expensive war on drugs. At the state and federal level we are spending over $1,700 per second in drug war costs. There’s over $15 billion a year to be saved here. Studies have shown that treatment is a more effective means of reducing drug usage than criminalization and incarceration. Bonus: We reduce crime and make our streets safer.

5. Repeal Davis-Bacon. Allow governments to pay prevailing private sector wages, not inflated union wages, on public works projects. The tax money set aside for these projects would go a lot further, more people would be hired, and the more work could be done.

6. Repeal ObamaCare and the Chris-Dodd consumer finance reform act. Both of these hideous pieces of legislation have been shown to be jobs killers. There is no right to health care, and caveat emptor should still mean something.

7. Immediately halt all regulatory rule-making processes at the federal level. We have enough regulations now to get the job done. More than enough. Businessmen aren’t hiring or expanding because they don’t know what the rules are going to be. Would you obligate yourself for a mortgage if the lender told you they would just fill in the terms later? Yeah … some of you probably would; especially Obama voters.

8. Eliminate capital gains taxes. Too many of us are sitting on investments that have pretty much maxed out, but we won’t cash out because we don’t want to pay the tax. Eliminating these taxes would allow a free flow of investment capital that would enable countless new business startups … and that means new jobs.

9. Make every state a right-to-work state. Completely outlaw compulsory unionism. Nobody should ever have to join a union in order to work.

10. Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. It’s another jobs killer and inhibits corporate growth and profitability. Google it.

11. Institute loser pays at the federal level and urge states to do the same. This means that if you file a lawsuit against someone and you win, good for you. If you lose, you pay the other side’s legal fees. I used to be a member of the American Trial Lawyer’s Association, (now called The American Association for Justice --- bwahahahahah), and I can tell you that many trial lawyers look at filing a lawsuit as comparable to buying a lottery ticket. Not much to lose, but a lot to gain. Put some risk into this equation.

12. Eliminate most business and professional licensing requirements. Why should you need the state’s permission to braid hair or to match pillows with drapes? And while we’re at it find that loon in Florida who said that ending the licensing of interior designers would cost 80,000 lives a year and put her in a glass cube in the Museum of Idiocy. If there isn’t such a museum, start one. It will have to be a huge facility.

13. Send a balanced budget amendment to the states. Most states have to operate under just such a restriction, and they’ll be more than happy to see to it that the federal government does as well.

14. Last – but certainly not least – set a date certain for the expiration of our current tax code. That will force congress to come up with a better plan. I happen to have some ideas along those lines as well.

More ideas? Of course I have more ideas. But they won’t give me any more room here. Stay tuned.

Read full Townhall.com article here.

Dear Members of Congress

Dear Members of Congress,

From a joke e-mail: The last decade I mismanaged my funds, and this year my family and I cannot decide on a budget. Until we have come to a unified decision that fits all our needs and interests, we will have to shut down our checkbook and will no longer be able to pay our taxes. I'm sure you will understand. Thank you very much for setting an example we can all follow.

Small businesswoman's rant against Obama's disastrous economic policies