MyAmerica
Home of Constitutionalists Exiled in Plain Sight
All articles ©2011 MiamiSteve's MyAmerica, Steve Konicki. Constitution graphic ©2006 Bonnie Jacobs.
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| Steve Konicki MyAmerica Home of Constitutionalists Exiled in Plain Sight All articles ©2011 MiamiSteve's MyAmerica, Steve Konicki. Constitution graphic ©2006 Bonnie Jacobs. |
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 Now that we have flushed that billion dollars down the drain, Obama jokes about shovel-ready projects and asks Congress to increase the debt limit. (Below left) CAMPAIGN
2012
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This World The Wal-Mart Case Claims of Sex Discrimination Thin as Thinnest Onion Skin June 22, 2011 It is confusing that so many who literally cheer for massive, lumbering government boo and hiss at large corporations, which by their nature die if they are not nimble enough to detect demand and meet it. It seems some believe so strongly that large means bad in private enterprise but good in bureaucratic molasses, that any allegation against a major corporation is automatically given a huge amount of weight, regardless of the facts of the case. The three women who brought this massive class action sex discrimination suit against Wal-Mart attempted to roll 1.6 million current and former female employees of the retail giant into their own, very weak, allegations of a systematic denial of pay raises and promotions. They argued what sounds like a very *public employees union* argument -- that because local Wal-Mart managers were permitted to exercise discretion within limits when granting pay increases and promotions that some have taken as prima facie (on its first appearance, or at first sight) proof that all women employees are the victims of discrimination. Public employees argue that managers and supervisors must not have a say in pay raises because there is a chance for discrimination and other evils. Therefore bad teachers continue as bad teachers, lazy road workers remain lazy road workers, and shady bureaucrats remain shady. Many of us would argue that given local managers such discretion allows them (men and women) to reward hard working employees while withholding such rewards from the lazy or unreliable. For example, Betty Dukes concedes she violated company policy and was demoted after a series of disciplinary actions didn't phase her. Christine Kwapnoski claims she was yelled at. Edith Arana failed to follow the chain of command, as advised, in seeking a promotion but feels she should have been promoted anyway. A lack of good work habits, an unsubstantiated claim that a manager was disrespectful, and a claim that a woman's ambition for promotion was unfairly forced to end because she chose to not make a phone call to a district manager, and then failing to comply with established company policy, does not create even the illusion that as a class women are or were discriminated against by Wal-Mart. These are taken from the opinion of the Court: Betty Dukes began working at a Pittsburg, California, Wal-Mart in 1994. She started as a cashier, but later sought and received a promotion to customer service manager. After a series of disciplinary violations, however, Dukes was demoted back to cashier and then to greeter. Dukes concedes she violated company policy, but contends that the disciplinary actions were in fact retaliation for invoking internal complaint procedures and that male employees have not been disciplined for similar infractions. Dukes also claims two male greeters in the Pittsburg store are paid more than she is. Christine Kwapnoski has worked at Sam’s Club stores in Missouri and California for most of her adult life. She has held a number of positions, including a supervisory position. She claims that a male manager yelled at her frequently and screamed at female employees, but not at men. The manager in question “told her to ‘doll up,’ to wear some makeup, and to dress a little better.” The final named plaintiff, Edith Arana, worked at a Wal-Mart store in Duarte, California, from 1995 to 2001. In 2000, she approached the store manager on more than one occasion about management training, but was brushed off. Arana concluded she was being denied opportunity for advancement because of her sex. She initiated internal complaint procedures, whereupon she was told to apply directly to the district manager if she thought her store manager was being unfair. Arana, however, decided against that and never applied for management training again. In 2001, she was fired for failure to comply with Wal-Mart’s timekeeping policy. Environmentalists' Protest Major Oil Find in the Gulf Means Enough Fuel for U.S. for Decades June 13, 2011 John Bryson, President Obama’s nominee to be the next Secretary of Commerce, founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. That group has filed suit to keep Shell Oil from exploiting a major oil field newly discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists want to exploit the fact that BP -- and the federal government -- failed to respond quickly enough or aggressively enough to last year's gulf oil spill. They chant that there is no such thing as drilling in the gulf that is safe for the environment. These groups overlook the fact that the BP oil spill was the only one like it in the history of U.S. offshore drilling and that for decades oil companies other than BP have successfully produced great amounts of oil from wells in the gulf. The Wall Street Journal reports that ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Shell and Chevron have invested $1 billion to create the Marine Well Containment Co. to build a spill containment system that will be permanently placed in the Gulf starting next year. The companies are attempting to apply the lessons from the BP fiasco, and their expectation is that the system would be able to handle a blowout as if it were a contained well at depths of up to 10,000 feet. The fact is that the administration has invested U.S. taxpayer money in Brazilian oil drilling and that an uncontained spill there could contaminate waters along the east and gulf coasts of the U.S. Though Brazil would doubtless attempt to ensure that any spill there would be contained, the U.S. government has no control over those efforts. When a well is drilled in offshore waters of the U.S., the government can demand immediate and aggressive action. We learned from the gulf oil spill that the technology, including effective chemical dispersants, exists to contain even a serious oil spill in our waters. That technology was, simply put, applied too late to save many precious wetlands on the coast of Louisiana. That was due, partly, to federal red tape and a lumbering bureaucracy. BP added to the problems by waiting too long to take strong action to contain the spill and presenting evidence that the dispersants are not harmful to the environment. Now comes Obama's avowed anti-drilling nominee for Secretary of Commerce, John Bryson. Families and small businesses and large businesses are already spending money needed for essentials in order to pay for gasoline and diesel fuel. How much worse must the recession and inflation get before Obama stops appointing ideologues to regulatory agencies who then work to promote an extreme so-called environmental agenda? This is yet another reason to ponder long and hard who should be the President of the United States after 2012. Pulling The Wool Poor Grandma, Bad Math, Distortion, Lies, Health, Medicare May 3, 2011 If we keep Medicare taxes and benefits at current levels and nothing else changes, Medicare goes bankrupt in 2021 according to the Congressional Budget Office or 2024 according to commonly accepted accounting standards. Not long from now, under an Obama plan, a panel of 15 bureaucrats will decide the dollar amount doctors are paid for seniors' health care. Each doctor will receive the same payment for the same treatment for each patient. This panel will decide when to cut the amount doctors and hospitals are paid. Despite the recession and higher costs of materials transport, and costs they add for medical care providers, Medicare reimbursement has been cut for the second year in a row. Many hospitals and doctors are already losing money on Medicare recipients and, mostly, they pass along their unreimbursed costs to patients who are covered by insurance. Nobody says Medicare is fiscally sound. Nobody thinks this can go on much longer. The framers of Medicare law foresaw a day when this might happen. Federal law requires the president to come up with a formal plan to fix Medicare if more than 40% of its cost comes from federal general revenue for two years or more. Now enters politics. The president has not come up with a viable plan to fix Medicare. No Democrat federal legislator has come up with any plan to fix Medicare. One Republican, Congressman, Paul Ryan, has come up with a plan. His plan, about 20 years from now, would provide vouchers for seniors and the disabled they would use to shop for doctor and hospital services. Such a plan would be administered by private insurance companies, not the gigantic government bureaucracy that now runs Medicare. You read that right. In about 20 years. Ryan's plan would change Medicare in this way. But in just 10 years, according to the CBO, Medicare as we know it will technically be bankrupt. Democrat demagogues are pretending that Ryan's privatization would take place tomorrow and that heartless insurance companies are lying in wait, ready to pounce. The health insurance companies that would buy into Ryan's idea of Medicare are the same insurance companies that do health insurance business now. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll shows that 80% of Americans are satisfied with the quality of health care they receive. Nearly 75% said they're happy with their overall health care coverage. Republicans, who generally support Ryan's plan, are scrambling to ward off Democrat political attack dogs who claim Republicans just want to kill grandma and enrich insurance companies. This allegation is groundless and preposterous. It is intended as a scare tactic, primarily to worry current Medicare recipients that Republicans want to keep them out of the doctor's office and the hospital when they need medical care. Benefits for seniors and the disabled have been used as a political ping-pong ball for decades. This time is no more savory than the others. This short column cannot detail all that you need to know about Medicare, and you, and the Ryan plan, and the lack of a Democrat plan. It must be sufficient to say that the Ryan plan is workable with some adjustments now being considered in the U.S. House and others that will doubtless be made as public input is received back home by Republican members of Congress. Democrats repeat their vow that they will save millions of dollars by eliminating fraud and waste. Bear in mind that the president and Congressmen and Senators have declared for years that they would save millions by eliminating fraud and waste and duplication. Yet, no such savings have ever been realized and little fraud is detected before the money is gone. Where there is duplication, Democrats can be counted on to do nothing if a single federal job hangs in the balance. Democrats see government jobs as guaranteed votes. Think about it for a moment. Government already has the power, and uses it, to mandate what kind of care will be covered by health insurance policies. Privatizing Medicare would not change that. If, in 20 years, Medicare became privatized, insurance companies would find a way to provide mandated levels of coverage and still make a profit. Instead of draining taxpayers dry to pay for a huge government program, Medicare would provide needed care and return profit to the stakeholders and the shareholders -- many of which are pension plans offered by employers like yours. More than anything else, Medicare privatization would decrease the cost of medical care. Insurance companies would never build a huge administrative structure--like the one Medicare has now--to run a money-losing enterprise. Democrats declare that insurance companies would make cold, uncaring decisions about patient treatment. Isn't that exactly what Obama's 15-member panel of bureaucrats is being set up to do? Rather than being the cold, calculating provider, government needs to be the independent watchdog, to make sure that health insurance companies provide the levels of care that they promise when making a sale. EdwardsGate Former Dem Presidential Candidate To Face the Music $925,000 Worth June 3, 2011 It is, of course, no surprise that a federal grand jury indicted two-time Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards on six felony charges, including conspiracy. Edwards allegedly used the money to cover up the existence of his baby by a mistress, notably at a time when Edwards' wife was dying of cancer and Edwards was running for president. 
 John Edwards, Bernie Madoff. A study in How To Create Distrust What is surprising is that, while some among Democrats are understandably distancing themselves from Edwards, others seem to be attempting to explain why it is less a crime for Democrats to break these laws than it is for Republicans. For example, one commentator recently wrote that Edwards was not a traditional "family values" politician, therefore he is not much of a hypocrite for violating his marriage vows. However, Edwards was promising squeaky clean, family values style government at the same time he was maintaining mistress hideouts, denying a baby, and spending $925,000 in cash donated by believers. Edwards now goes from golden boy of Democrat presidential politics to being a man who applied his own public moral standards to others he felt violated them while not living up to those standards himself. That is the personification of hypocrisy. Golden boy exposed. If Edwards is found guilty he deserves the same kind of punishment received by Bernie Madoff, the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff bilked investors of millions by abusing their trust. Some with limited understanding of the American economy hold up Madoff as an example of what is wrong with capitalism. Madoff is merely a crook, caught and imprisoned, nothing more. Edwards, by the misuse of this million dollars, bilked voters and taxpayers of not only money, but their belief in the political system, their confidence that men and women of good will and good character are elected to high office. If these charges are true, and Edwards was willing to plead guilty to some according to news accounts, he acted as a mini-Madoff and should be held up as an example of what is wrong with any politician, whatever ideology, who thinks his or her ambitions are more important than the will -- and the good will -- of the people. WeinerGate We Know You Wanna See It Twitter Photo Intrudes on Politics June 2, 2011 We know you want to see the Anthony Weiner picture that has called into question his future in the Democrat Congressional leadership. Weiner will not say if it is him or not. He simply says his Twitter account was hacked. <Here is the photo> Notably, Weiner is one of the Democrats who takes delight in pointing out the moral trepidations of Republicans when needed. In this case, Republicans do not seem to be piling on in any great number, but oddly enough the political media is. Not just the part of the media that will give voice to conservatives. Nearly all the political media is tittering to this golden faux pas. It is indeed a shame that Weiner's dirty laundry is on display for all to see (assuming that is him in his laundry, we mean). Still, holding a Democrat to his own standard generally reserved for his opponents is rare enough that it is good to see. The sex scandal is on the other foot when you combine Weiner's problems with what he wants us to think is a joke about his name with the potentially illegal use of campaign funds by John Edwards. The allegation is Edwards, once a golden boy of Democrat politics, used campaign funds to pay off his mistress and the mother of one of his children. So far it seems Weiner has broken no law, but just as importantly it is clear his statements, and what he will not say, do strain credibility. FEMA Disaster Response Senator Blasts Homeland Security In Wake of the Devastation in Joplin May 27, 2011 Joplin, Missouri is as hometown America as hometown gets. Good folks who work hard, contribute to their community and show pride in their nation. That nation is letting them down, according to Missouri Senator Roy Blunt. Photos of Joplin before and after the tornado <here>The lawmaker is calling on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pick up 100% of the cost to local governments of the search and rescue effort and the cleanup after a tornado smashed parts of Joplin into rubble. FEMA has agreed to pay 75%. Whether the agency picks up more of the material costs or not, this little city in this great state needs help. FEMA needs to dicker less and step up more. But that is an old story. FEMA failed after Hurricane Andrew smashed South Florida in 1992. It failed again in 2005 after Katrina turned parts of New Orleans into swamp. The bumbling of bureaucrats then and now could fill volumes. Either the feds need to build a nimble, responsive agency from the hulking mess that is now FEMA or stop collecting federal taxes for it. It may be that the job of cleaning up after natural disasters is best left to local authorities who know what they need, and the tax money to do exactly that needs to remain in local government coffers and in local taxpayers' paychecks. Big government is not always the best answer. Israel Responds No 1967 Borders for Israel Netanyahu Makes It Clear May 20, 2011 Obama's pointing finger not withstanding, sitting face to face with the U.S. president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Obama's call for a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders. As well he should. Israel depends on the land won when Arabs and Palestinian Arabs attempted to drive Israelis into the sea in 1967, a brief but furious war of survival. That land is a buffer between hostile Palestinian terrorists and Israel. Obama, the rookie foreign policy president, called yesterday for the withdrawl of Israel to the pre-1967 borders as a peace offering. It was proposed as a peace offering to the terrorist group Hamas and the anti-Israel forces among Palestinians, including Hezbollah. Netanyahu's meeting today with Obama was much anticipated throughout the middle east, the United States and the world. Obama's skills as a world leader were to be tested. It is a test he has failed. He has attempted to throw Israel to the dogs. Israel, our greatest ally in the middle east, the nation we can rely on whenever others turn their back. Obama attempted to shove them around like a playground bully. Sooner or later, bullies face the smaller, smarter opponent. Today that smarter opponent was Netanyahu. Israel and Palestine Obama Auctions Israel Borders in Name of Peace in Region May 19, 2011 President Obama has called on Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders in order to offer an olive branch to the Palestinians who continue to attack Israeli cities, kill Israeli men, women and children and protest the existence of Israel itself. It is true that the violence has lessened, but it remains a reality that Hamas -- on behalf of the new Palestinian state -- has quite recently lobbed missiles into Israeli cities. Just this month, Hamas attacked an Israeli school bus and bombed a Jerusalem bus stop killing a 59-year-old woman and injuring 30 civilians. The borders and security of Israel are not Obama's to offer, to bargain with, or to trade away. Those borders were established after Israel was attacked by Arabs and Palestinians and are now used as a buffer between Israel and the fledgling Palestinian state. Perhaps in the long run, Israel might choose to withdraw to the 1967 borders as a true peace is established and Palestinians, and surrounding nations, recognize Israel's right to exist and make peace the reality of life rather than a long-sought goal beyond the limited reach or vision of those in power. Israel is not just another middle eastern nation for the Obama administration to provide limited insight and wisdom. Israel is a mature nation and as such understands how its self-interest meshes with the interests of the United States and other western nations and how it does not. In the case of the Israeli borders, it may serve the interests of the west for Obama to urge Israel to rush into the past, but it is up to Israel to decide whether to do so or when. Obama on the Attack As the Campaign Heats Up Obama Blames Everyone But Himself and His Policies 5-14-2011 Obama jokes that residents of the Arizona-Mexico border must want "moats and alligators" to cut off the drug runners and illegal aliens that are blamed for forcing them into the homes of friends or Red Cross shelters for the second year in a row. On Sunday, a massive fire broke out in Horseshoe Canyon, about 50 miles north of the Mexico border, which residents and law enforcement say was started by criminal illegal aliens. Last year, a fire in the same location caused more than $10 million in damages. Also last week, Obama attacked American companies, as hard hit by the recession as moms and dads buying groceries for their kids. In his recent jobs speech, Obama lashed out at the vague category of "companies," asserting that now that he has fixed up the economy and all, and things are so rosey, companies are raking in the cash and not giving back. "American taxpayers contributed to that process of stabilizing the economy. Companies have benefited from that, and they're making a lot of money, and now's the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products," President Obama said in a pre-taped town hall with CBS News. If things were that simple all Americans corporations and all Americans would be rich beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world. Well, wait. Americans ARE rich beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world. The most impoverished Americans are likely to have cell phones, color TVs, enough food to eat, and adequate medical care. In other articles this site has explored many of these facts. What Obama is not saying is that in the United States, companies are REQUIRED to make a profit for their shareholders. It is a fact of life that unprofitable companies fire their CEOs and lawsuits often ensue. Foundering companies are acquired in mergers, acquisitions and hostile takeovers. The ones that remain unprofitable for too long simply close. Companies do not and cannot hire simply for the sake of hiring. Companies only hire new employees when orders simply cannot be fulfilled by existing employees, and that condition does not exist in this economy. Obama criticized American companies for trying to get more out of the employees they have, rather than hiring more people. He seems unaware that since the begining of business, particularly since the industrial revolution, American companies have been trying to get more out of employees, rather than hiring more. A benchmark was reached in the 1970s when robots replaced a great many auto workers at a Chrysler factory on Jefferson in Detroit. That signaled the death of the big labor movement in private industry. When the cost of business becomes too high in America, including the cost of labor, companies move overseas. This jobs drain has been a major issue in the economy for decades. After an outstanding show of leadership in ensuring the U.S. forces that killed Osama bin Laden would be given what they needed, Obama is now wobbling again. He is again engaging in more name calling than leading. In one week, in full attack mode, Obama has accused the Republicans of abandoning families of kids with autism and Down syndrome. His secretary of health and human services said that the Republican plan to cut the deficit would make old folks “die sooner.” On the attack, day after day. It's election season, and forgotten by the man who gave it is the stunning, eloquent speech delivered in Tucson after the mindless shootings at a meet-and-greet between Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents. Obama called for civility above all things in political discourse. And now he speaks insultingly of anyone who disagrees with him, including those who live the immigration nightmare and drug war on the Mexican border and companies and corporations that have not been patriotic enough to hire as many workers as Obama thinks they should have regardless of profit. National Review writer Charles Krauthammer puts it this way: "Looks like the Tucson truce — no demonization, no cross-hairs metaphors — is officially over. After all, the Republicans want to kill off the elderly, throw the disabled in the snow, and watch alligators lunch on illegal immigrants." This is where Obama shows what a rookie he is: The economy, domestic issues. He just does not understand what it is to live in Arizona, particularly along the border with Mexico. He does not listen to the citizens and the border sheriffs. He never even worked in a company let alone run one. His anti-company jobs speech was preaching to a terribly biased choir. This particular speech was given before a hand-picked CBS News audience which nodded its head enthusiastically throughout. It was then reported as news. With all due respect to CBS, that network is no unbiased news source. Its news operation has long leaned toward liberal Democrats. It is struggling to stay alive in a competitive market and is set to jettison anchor Katie Couric in an attempt to get a prettier face of one kind or another on the air. One fact has always been true: Bias runs throughout the body politic at election time. A recent and strangely slanted poll by the Associated Press purported to show that the president's job approval has soared to 60 percent since the killing of Osama bin Laden. What is biased about the poll is who was asked. Generally, political polls attempt to get the views of equal numbers of Conservatives, Liberals and non-party affiliated likely voters. Not this poll. Those asked by AP were 35% Democrat and 18% Republican. The others did not identify their party affiliation. Other polls show that Obama got a temporary surge in approval of his handling of foreign affairs, but that increase in popularity has faded and his overall job approval rating is in the dismal category, where it has hovered for nearly all of his presidency. Obama has good intentions. Good intentions, though, pave the path to hell. Americans need better than Obama has delivered. The economy requires a shot in the arm. A good place to start would be lower taxes for business and individuals. Obama and the Democrats are calling for higher taxes, more government spending and an increase to the nation's debt limit. Only once the economy begins to prosper can this nation pay off the massive deficit, and only then can we emerge from this recession. For the economy to prosper, companies need a business environment in which they can make money. They need to make real profits and see a real increase in demand before they can hire more. Obama speaks of profits as if they are a gift from the government, when the fact is that profit is a hard-won product of hard work and smart thinking. Our president needs to remember that when times get tough for American companies, it is no time for more hiring. In fact, we seem to be losing more jobs. The unemployment rate is above 9 percent again. Operational procedure for a sound company is the last hired are the first fired. It's a fact of business this president clearly does not understand. Safety Net A Rational Look at Issues Will End Fear of Change 4-26-2011 We cannot shred the social safety net when it's most needed. It's long past time to require the super wealthy to pay their fair share. -- Liberal activists This liberal call to action is noble, understandable in a time of great turmoil in the world and in our nation, and presumes far too much. There is no proposal to shred the safety net. Instead, there is a proposal to save this nation. Our credit standing in the world is questioned. Our ability to repay is in question even within our own borders. Unemployment, recession, inflation, and uncertainty have frozen the growth of the economy. Businesses that once supported the Obama administration are considering moves outside our country. Our fiscal irresponsibility for the past four years has drenched our taxpayers in a molasses of debt. This much is true: Proposals to slash the budget would change entitlement programs as well as implement many of the debt commission's recommendations, the president's debt commission. Some fear -- and some fear mongering -- concerns proposals to privatize Medicare and to raise the retirement age. What actually is being proposed is far from fearsome. As usual in Washington, demagoguery is taking the place of rational discussion. There is territory is to be defended, power to be saved, campaign war chests to consider, damn these proposals. The current GOP Social Security reform package would raise the retirement age solely for those not yet 56. It would gradually raise the retirement age to 70 and cut benefits for the wealthy. It would provide benefits for retired and disabled persons to pay for their own doctors, and dismantle a huge federal bureaucracy that is fraught with duplication, waste and unable to cope with fraud. In the days of civility, not so long ago, Democrat House Speaker Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. was a leading opponent of policies advocated by president Ronald Reagan. Reagan himself said in his memoirs they were friends "after 6 p.m." They played golf together. Together they forged a compromise that saved Social Security from insolvency, as well as tackling many other issues of that day in a gentlemanly fashion. Of course they differed. Of course they acted in the best interests of the people of the United States. That was expected. That was a given. Such cooperation is almost unknown today except for a group of liberal and conservative Congressmen termed the gang of six. Silly name calling was limited to the uninitiated in Washington in those days. Many now look to the gang of six to restore Washington D.C. to a spirit of democracy. There is hope that the spirits of president Reagan and Tip O'Neil will pervade the great halls of Congress and the Senate. Otherwise bitterness will continue to rule--and in the name of power, not sanity. Tea Party Bad? Islamists Good? Liberals Hate Tea Party Love Islamists Instead © 4-6-2011 MiamiSteve's MyAmerica I surround myself with good people, men and women who work hard, think deeply and love well. I can go fishing and hunting with them, attend concerts with them, go to dinner with them and discuss politics -- Democrat or Republican. But those other liberals? You can't talk Tea Party or Islamists with them. These liberals spit out the words "Tea Party" as if it were the name of a group of maniacs headed for hell. They are outraged when a conservative speaks the word Islamist, as if the holy name of God had been taken in vain at a Baptist convention. It only worsens when anyone points out that Islamist Muslims are responsible for thousands of recent terrorist events around the world, including the 9-11 murders at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in that Pennsylvania farm field. London is the target of Islamist bombs. Spain is. France is a land now making all Muslims less welcome due to the fact that some Islamists have turned areas of Paris and other cities into a bloodbath of honor killings and Sharia law. Germany is the same. Look it up. In the cacophony of shouting voices, little is resolved, tensions build and Democracy is denied.I know a man from Iran. In fact, I saw him this evening. My friend returns to Iran every year, sometimes more often. Another Muslim man was there, too. He prayed with us. He has love for God no matter what we name him. This is the first time I've met this man. I know nothing more about him, except he prayed with me, and I with him. Though my Iranian friend is decades younger than me, we are good friends. We'll have coffee some time later this week. I bluntly told him I wanted to talk a while again about Iran. He banged me on the shoulder and said, "No problem, bro." I like being around this guy. I listen to his words and watch his face. He doesn't try to hide what he knows. At least in part what he knows is why he is in the U.S. The young people who tried to create revolution in Iran last summer are his friends and relatives and neighbors. "They have tried for five years, bro. This could be six," he said. He tells of the pain endured by his generation in Iran, the generation that attempted revolution last summer. The generation that was failed by American liberals with a liberal president. My friend says Iran will not stop until defeated or until they have bathed the world in blood and their brand of Sharia law is established across the globe. He says the calls for holy war, jihad, are serious threats, not talking points. His is a personal voice, a Muslim face I can see and do about half the days of a week. Jihad is a relentless wish of Islamists, my Iranian friend says. Islamists want an end to democracy. Some American Muslims who teach at great American Universities say it. I knew Christian Arabs and Muslims in Detroit. Some of them say the same thing now. Other significant Muslim voices in the United States say the same thing. The leaders of England, France and Germany say it. Some so-called Islamist holy men here and in the Middle East say it, and history says it. All these voices ...
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Of Note Uhh .. No Yellow Snow Jokes Because a 21-year-old man was caught on a security camera urinating into a city reservoir, Oregon's biggest city is sending 8 million gallons of treated drinking water down the drain. Portland officials defended the decision Monday, saying they didn't want to send city residents water laced, however infinitesimally, with urine. Urine is sterile in healthy people, Public health officials say, and the urine in the reservoir was so diluted - perhaps a half pint in millions of gallons - that it posed little risk.Some people in the city, in the suburbs and around the world called the flush an overreaction, especially since animals such as ducks contribute waste routinely and, sometimes, die in the water. "More than 1 billion people worldwide do not have reliable access to clean drinking water, and here we are tossing away nearly 8 million gallons of water just to appease the ignorant residents who believe their tap water will otherwise turn yellow," read one comment posted on The Oregonian's Website. The Early Bird Gets the Worm The administration is shutting down a program that has provided 1,433 exemptions from Obamacare for many employers and labor unions offering bare-bones insurance coverage to workers. The waiver program allowed what is termed "mini-med" for labor unions, and a health insurer, which offer less than the minimum health coverage mandated by last year's overhaul. Obamacare sets the maximum benefit per person in a benefit year at $750,000. The waivers permit a maximum benefit level of $10,000. Companies that already have exemptions from the mandate will be able to continue. In the wake of the $750,000 limit, many companies are already dropping health insurance for employees with thousands of others considering such action. But We All Know That Wal-Mart ... Even though uncounted thousands knew, just knew somehow deep in their soul, that Wal-Mart is a greedy corporate creep and cheats its female employees, the U.S. Supreme Court today blocked class action status in a lawsuit against the retail giant. "The plaintiffs' claims were worlds away from showing a company-wide discriminatory pay and promotion policy," reads the court's opinion in the case, which was decided by a unanimous vote. The suit claimed the company routinely discriminates against women in promotions and pay. The attorneys who filed the suit wanted all female employees of Wal-Mart, as well as past employees, to be automatically included as being among those who were allegedly harmed. More than more than one million women would have been included. Two women who brought the suit are free to pursue their personal claims but their cases will not affect any other women employed by Wal-Mart. The Early Bird Gets the Worm The administration is shutting down a program that has provided 1,433 exemptions from Obamacare for many employers and labor unions offering bare-bones health insurance coverage to workers. The waiver program allowed what is termed "mini-med" for labor unions, and a health insurer, which offer less than the minimum health coverage mandated by last year's overhaul. Obamacare sets the maximum yearly benefit per person at $750,000. The waivers permit a maximum benefit level of $10,000. Companies that already have exemptions from the mandate will be able to continue. In the wake of the $750,000 limit, many companies are already dropping health insurance for employees with thousands of others considering such action. Where Public Health is Done Right There is an option to Obamacare that can and does work. The Miami Herald reports Sunday: Eddie Colon, 47, is the kind of patient likely to cost any public hospital huge sums. He’s an unemployed pipefitter with a chronic disease, hepatitis C. With no health insurance, he long avoided seeing a doctor. In Miami-Dade County, many such cases result in worsening symptoms until the patient is rushed to a Jackson Health System public hospital for expensive treatment funded by taxpayers. Not Colon. He lives in Tampa, which has a half-penny sales tax for healthcare. Miami-Dade does, too, but there’s a difference. In Miami-Dade, all the local tax money goes to Jackson. In Tampa’s Hills-borough County, the money goes to a health plan for the uninsured that allows county residents like Colon to get free care from doctors and clinics, where primary care is far cheaper than a hospital stay. In Colon’s case, he joined the county plan eight months ago, received an ID card and began regular visits to a Tampa General clinic, where he received free meds. The result: No expensive ER visits. Worsening Greek Debt Crisis Sinks Stocks, Euro Stocks plunged Wednesday as unrest in Greece threatened to further destabilize global financial markets. Major indexes had their biggest drop since June 1. Yikes, Batman, They Made It Worse Doug Powers likes to say: "Global warming may well end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a greenhouse gas problem didn’t exist going in, it sure might after Al Gore & Company are finished saving the world from it." Examples: Biodegradable products: Bad for the environment?The Politics of Addition Faith and Freedom Coalition Ralph Reed says he isn't overly concerned that tea partyers and evangelicals would balk at supporting a nominee they considered insufficiently conservative, because of their desire to defeat Obama. He did say the GOP would be in trouble if it did not find a way to make inroads among younger voters, women, Latinos, African Americans, Asians and other minorities. To win in the future, Republicans must practice "the politics of addition, not subtraction, and grow the pie," Reed told a gathering of the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. Jon Stewart Weiner Satire No words will suffice. See the video and the criticism of usually-cutting comedian Jon Stewart for being a weenie when it comes to Weiner. Illegal Slays New Mexico Man? New Mexico businessman, Larry Link, was murdered Tuesday on his property on the southwest side of the state near the Arizona border. Sources are reporting that the rancher was responding to an alleged illegal alien on his property at Stein’s Ghost Town, a shuttered tourist attraction, when he was gunned-down. The area has recently been a hotbed of illegal drug trafficking, with bales of drugs dropped out of airplanes along I-10. Reports say illegal aliens gather the drugs and transport them to U.S. traffickers. State police are not commenting on a possible motive or whether there are suspects. U.S. Dept of Ed Raid Goes Bad The U.S. Dept. of Education recently purchased 27 Remington Brand Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns. How do they use that in a program of reading, writing and arithmetic? Well, here is an example: They kicked down the door of an innocent California man, knocked him to the floor, held his three elementary school age children in a government law enforcement car for hours and haven't even paid to have his door fixed, yet. All in the name of collecting overdue college student loans from a woman who was not there, his estranged wife. That's education with a bang! <More here> History of Sex Scandals Sex scandals aren't new in American politics, and they never are cause for celebration by either political party. Recently, the Republicans have forced their members to resign immediately. The Democrats instead stand strong behind their man until there is no longer room at the edge of the cliff and get out of the way.  The Weiner Photo Any notion that (as was said of John F. Kennedy) that great, charismatic leaders will inevitably cheat is excuse-making. Read up <here> on ways that the natural urge contributed to otherwise soaring political careers crashing back to earth. It's the Economy, Stupid Nearly six in 10 Americans say the economy has not started to recover, regardless of what official statistics may say. Nine in 10 continue to rate the economy in negative terms, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Most who say the economy has improved say the recovery is weak. Significantly, by 2 to 1, Americans say the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track. <Washington Post> Jill Lapore on Paul Revere, Hyperbole And 'Hyperlore'  Of thee I jabber QUOTE After a couple of years of defending and trying to make sense of Sarah Palin, it is time for Republicans to say enough. Sarah Palin had a chance to come out and say she messed up. Sarah was too arrogant to do so. Perhaps it is time that we Republicans simply admit we messed up in backing Palin and move forward. Liberals are not afraid of Sarah Palin. That is wishful thinking to say the least. They pray for her nomination. -- Rodney Southern, a Republican, posted on Yahoo <bio here> UNQUOTE Weiner Did It and Lied New York Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted being a liar and did his mea culpas before live TV cameras this afternoon. He admitted he sent the underwear photo that has transformed into a whirlwind sex scandal. His admissions call into question his credibility, his faithfulness to his wife and his constituents, and his dedication to serving the nation. Also questionable is the judgment of a man, a powerful Congressman, who would spam a 21-year-old Seattle woman on Twitter with such an unwanted photo and then lie about it. This lie exposed her to unwanted attention from by the media which included some so-called examination of her character. "I have exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years," Weiner said. He is refusing to resign. The Tom Speaks "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson Voters Not Surprised It's This Bad The government announced Friday that the nation's unemployment rate rose to 9.1% in May, dashing high-level hopes of an economic recovery in the near future. But most Americans aren't surprised. Key Rasmussen polls last week found that nearly one-out-of-three adults (31%) predict that the unemployment rate will be even higher a year from now. That’s the most pessimistic attitude toward the jobs market since June 2010. Most voters continue to feel that tax cuts and decreases in government spending help the U.S. economy, but they don’t expect either to happen any time soon. Sixty-six percent (66%) of Americans, in fact, are at least somewhat worried that the U.S. government will run out of money, including 38% who are very worried. Pelosi: The Nation is Breathless to Have Her Back Charge of Congress Nancy Pelosi has put forth the argument that the United States was a better nation with her in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives. On the other hand, many Democrats blamed Pelosi directly for Democrat Congressional losses in the 2010 midterm election. No politician in recent memory has been as polarizing as Pelosi, the shrill California Democrat who labeled Tea Party activists not a grass roots movement but an "Astro Turf" movement. She also called Tea Party activists Nazis and various other names. There is no knowing for sure, but we'd bet few Americans are in any hurry to see Pelosi return to being the chief spokesman of the Congress. What names would she think up next for opponents of her policies and Obama's if that happens? Racist, Gramma Killing GOP Again the nastiness resumes, just in time for the slugfest that will be the rest of the 2012 election season. Democrats have already polished off their claims that only racists would oppose Obama policies, and that GOP federal legislators want to kill gramma in the name of Medicare and entitlement reform. There is one difference this time. As Democrats fight in favor of tax increases and fight against any kind of budget cuts and that would have a real impact, 54% of likely U.S. voters think, generally speaking, tax cuts help the nation’s economy. That finding has ranged from a low of 50% to a high of 63% since early July 2008. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows only 21% believe tax cuts hurt the economy, while 13% say they have no impact. Pelosi Says GOP House Wasn't Serious' About Debt Limit Vote House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrat leaders on Tuesday charged Republicans with pursuing an unserious and even misleading proposal to increase the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion. OK, given Obama's plans for increased spending, he would need $2.4 trillion just to keep up. What Republicans did is hold a straight up or down vote. It included no amendments or unrelated language and nobody rammed it through without U.S. Reps or taxpayers getting a chance to read it. That's right. Before 2011, the Democrats ramming legislation down the throats of America without any chance for an advance reading is what they consider serious. 6-2-2011 When Herman Cain Speaks, Listen! Former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, Herman Cain is raising a lot of cain among GOP faithful and raising a lot of eyebrows among those who do not yet know him. The Washington Post profile of today tells just why, and tells you a bit about his rivals. QUOTE Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. - Robert Fisk, the Independent. UNQUOTE Shut Them Down, Most Voters Say About Companies that Hire Illegals Most voters support having a law in their own state similar to the Arizona law cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld the legality of the Arizona law. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% of likely U.S. voters favor a law in their state that would shut down companies that knowingly and repeatedly hire illegal immigrants. Just 21% oppose such a law, and another 18% are undecided. Happy Memorial Day  Red Skelton's Pledge of Allegiance Red explains the meaning of each word in the pledge from his television show in 1969. The poster wrote: "WOW! Just think, he said this on his television show in 1969." Back to the 70s ... Carter Era Income Tax Proposed If the Democrats' millionaire surtax were to happen—and were added to other tax increases already enacted last year and other leading tax hike ideas on the table this year—this could leave the U.S. with a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%. That's more than double the highest federal marginal rate of 28% when President Reagan left office in 1989. Welcome back to the 1970s. - Wall Street Journal Chrysler Bailout Costs Part II Vicki Denton died several years ago after the airbag in her 1998 Dodge Caravan minivan failed to deploy during a head-on collision in the Georgia mountains. In 2009, a jury found Chrysler responsible for her death because of a manufacturing defect, awarding her surviving son and other relatives $2.2 million. The family was near collecting those damages on the eve of Chrysler's government-brokered bankruptcy. Now, two years removed from a $12.5 billion bailout, Chrysler Group LLC still hasn't paid the damages, and doesn't have to. The reason: The company's restructuring allowed it to wash away legal responsibility for car-accident victims - Wall Street Journal The 10 Most Polluted Places on Earth; Nope, None are in the U.S. Here is a list of the ten most polluted places on the earth. None of them are in the United States. It's Not Quite Jell-O Wrestlng Shrimp But it's Doggone Close it Seems Taxpayer money has gone to fund Jell-O wrestling at the South Pole, testing shrimp’s exercise ability on a treadmill and a ‘robot hoedown and rodeo.’ That's not all. You have paid for a YouTube rap video, a review of event ticket prices on stubhub.com, a laundry-folding robot. and a virtual recreation of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. The most concrete result of all this money spent on so-called science might be that government scientists found sick shrimp “did not perform as well and did not recover as well from exercise as healthy shrimp.” These gems are contained in a senate report titled, "The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope." Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is looking into other ways the NSF has misspent tax money. Immigrant Checks OK for Business U.S. Supremes Rule in Az Case The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Arizona may require all businesses to make sure their employees are in the country legally. It gives the state the right to enhance federal immigration law. The next test is the Arizona law that says if a motorist is stopped for a traffic offense officers may check immigration status. Global Warming Guru Al Gore “I think it's time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly it's not going to happen.” - Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, May 20, 2011, referring to Obama's call for a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders. Facebook PoliticsObama And 1967 Israel Borders Jewish State Says No Pull Back 5-20-2011 L.C. - This must be posted as a complete betrayal. This will result in certain war and attempted destruction of Israel without the buffer the '67 borders provide. <More> Obamacare Too Tough for Harry Reid's Own State The Entire State of Nevada can forget about Obamacare for now. The Health and Human Services Department announced late Friday that Nevada had secured a statewide waiver from certain implementation requirements of the Obama administration's health care law, because forcing them through "may lead to the destabilization of the individual market." Democrat Senate leader Harry Reid just happens to be from Nevada, and Reid just happens to have been one of the Democrat federal legislators who strong-armed Obamacare into law. Only two other states have received compliance requirements under the health care bill. Nevada's Insurance Division appealed to the feds to reduce the federal requirement that health plans serving people who buy insurance on their own must spend at least 80 percent of the money they collect on medical expenses. Under the national rule, companies that don't spend that percentage of revenue on medical costs have to cut policyholders rebate checks starting this year. 5-20-2011 Peter Fonda calls Obama 'traitor' The Cannes film festival is a hotbed of hot babes, hot films and hot tempers (usually political) and this year's is no exception. U.S. actor Peter Fonda chose this foreign setting to bash Obama for allowing "foreign boots on our soil telling our military -- in this case the coastguard -- what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do'." The reason for this Fonda wrath is the president's handling of the BP oil spill. Fonda appears in the documentary, "The Big Fix," trying to get onto Louisiana beaches to assess the impact of the spill, only to be turned away by BP clean-up personnel. <Read more> Those Kids At the Obama Campaign Never a campaign to miss an opportunity for mirth, merriment or to rake in a few bucks, the Obama campaign handlers have released t-shirts and mugs with the prezz's long form birth certificate emblazoned across the front. QUOTE "No amount of closed-door meetings, commissions, or summits will change the basic fact that in order to move forward the White House and the Democrat Senate must put forward an honest plan that ends the Washington spending spree instead of raising taxes to pay for it." - Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee UNQUOTE Newt For Fed Mandates Or Against? Newt Gingrich himself has clearly called for federal health coverage mandates in one form or another. Perhaps this is a case of a politician who tries to support all viewpoints ending up in double-talk. (Elsewhere on this page) Light Summer Reading It's Not The new book AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen published in May. It is the first book based on interviews with the scientist, pilots, and engineers—74 in total—who provide a unprecedented and sometimes horrifying look into a critical, secret chapter in American history. Hint. Not about aliens from space. Osama bin Laden Goes to Hell -- Jim Morin Cell Phones Caused Worldwide Bee Deaths Dr. Daniel Favre, a former biologist with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, finds that cell phones caused a worldwide die-off of honeybees that threatened agriculture. Code is Beautiful Writing Code, Not So Much Some really smart guys over at Windows Secrets got their new website up and running this week after some time beta testing it with users. This a great site, I have been a subscriber for years. But that's beside the point. If getting things right is so tough for them, and some website designers are remarkable, imagine what it is like for a guy who wants to write ... not code. Anyway I hope I get the kinks worked out here this week, the disappearing photos and the broken links. If you see something that needs fixing up, please write: Steve@MiamiSteve-MyAmerica.com How Do You Spell Perfect? Minnesota Twins' Francisco Liriano tossed a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox. That's how HE spells perfect.  Uncle Sam Wants You Top 10 things that will inevitably happen now that Osama Bin Laden is dead | The Sarcasmist Ryan Budget Plan and Where It Stands With Voters As of today, voters do not know enough about Congressman Paul Ryan’s long-term budget-cutting plan to decide whether to support it. Fourty percent of likely voters say they are still listening. Thirty-nine percent oppose the plan. Twenty six percent favor it. Ryan continues his discussion <video here>. 5-3-2011 The 9-11 Song
Todd Beamer's father urges us all to send one hour of pay to the 9-11 memorial in New York City and the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, PA.  Todd Beamer Beamer is the passenger on Flight 93 whose last audible words were "Are you guys ready? Let's roll" to his fellow passengers. They retook their airliner from the 9-11 terrorists and ran it into a field rather than allow it to be used as a missile aimed at the White House or the Capital. Bin Laden Killed by U.S. Americans took to the streets, to the parks, to the center of universities to celebrate the killing of the terrorist. Chants echoed off the buildings near Ground Zero and the streets at the White House filled with chanting young and old and American flags. Terrorist Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, marking the end of the worldwide manhunt that began nearly a decade ago. President Obama announced late Sunday that bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, marking the end of the worldwide manhunt that began Sept. 11, 2001. 5-1-2011 Wave the Flag There is never a need to wait for a holiday to wave the flag. There is never a need to wait for a holiday to pray for the men and women who serve our nation, defend our freedom. God bless America. Wisconsin Witch Hunt - Malkin On May 1, left-wing vigilantes will target companies across the country that have committed a mortal sin: sending donations to GOP Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Rest assured, such intolerable acts of political free speech will not go unpunished by tolerant Big Labor activists. They're calling for both a national boycott of Walker's corporate donors and a coordinated sticker vandalism campaign on GOP-tainted products. -- Michelle Malkin |
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| EuroZone Cannot Last Great European Socialist Experiment Is Not Working and Does Not Work A few years back, Europe embarked in a grand social experiment -- combine the economies of all Western and some Eastern European nations. There was to be a single European currency, the euro, a single ruling body would govern commerce between all member nations. Some were excited at the prospects, some expressed grave concerns. Those who had lived through various socialist experiments shook their heads in disbelief and remembered that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Essentially, socialism in such a broad form, where panels of bureaucrats make decisions for all local business and governments, is an unworkable mess. Greece, and to a lesser extent Portugal, Spain, Iceland, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belgium and Ireland. It is true that some largely socialist governments seem to succeed, at least for now: for example Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Those, however, are such small nations that they can hardly serve as proof that socialism works on a broad scale. Now comes the impending bankruptcy of Greece. United Kingdom Treasury ministers have confirmed that the coalition government is dealing with potential plans for a Greek bankruptcy after warnings by Jack Straw that the euro could not last. Straw, the former foreign secretary, warned that the euro “is going to collapse,” and said, “Is it not better that this happens quickly rather than a slow death?” Straw, a Labour party member, delivered this message after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the world economy would be destroyed if IMF members did not aid the Greeks. Speaking at the parliament, Straw said, “What the Government should do instead of sheltering behind the complacent language -- weasel words that ‘it is not appropriate, we should not speculate’ -- s recognize that this Eurozone cannot last. “And it is the responsibility of the British Government to be open with the British people now about the alternative prospects.” A lesson is to be learned here. The troubled European Union nations each has had a tax and spend economic policy based in the idea that the rich should pay the way for the poor. Over years many of the rich have fled to less punishing nations, taking their money with them. The burden has fallen largely to the middle class to carry the water for those who do not work, and in many cases will not work. The French economy is in a shambles because of bizarre work rules and overly-high taxation with socialist underpinnings. The parallels in U.S. society and government are easy to see. About 50% of jobholders in American do not pay any amount of federal tax. Yet, many do receive tax refund-like cash -- Earned Income Credits --which essentially is a pure redistribution of the wealth. This is not to say the 50% who do not pay federal tax are freeloaders. They are not. They work and spend and contribute to local business and their communities. Still, the federal tax and spend spigot that feeds the nanny state has been open in far too many ways for far too much of this century. No political party stands blameless. Nor does any president. It is this spigot that independents and Tea Party members argue must be closed. This economy and wealth killing federal hand-out spigot. Ron Paul's Point Printing More Money is a Tax On All Consumers in America June 15, 2011 Ron Paul is right. Obamanomics is not working. Raising the debt limit to borrow more money from the Chinese and others, and then printing more money to pay for it all. That's nothing but a backhanded tax on consumers. When the government prints more money, with no new revenue to back it, it devalues the dollars already in circulation. The Chinese recently noted that fact in declaring that the U.S. is already partly in default on the loans we have received from them. Now that we have flushed that billion dollars down the toilet, Obama and the Democrats push to increase the debt limit.The long and the short of it is that Obamanomics has not worked. When he took over as president two-and-a-half years ago, he promoted a $1 billion stimulus program that has done little if anything to create or save jobs. The height of idiocy of the stimulus program is that every feel-good program and every useless subsidy that Washington Democrats had kept in their file cabinets for years was pulled out and funded. "We were told this was going to be a massive infrastructure spending program," Veronique De Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, told US News. She argues that the bill overflowed not with needed infrastructure spending, but with hundreds of billions in left-wingery and plain old pork. Obama promised the projects would all be “temporary, timely, and targeted.” Mostly we were told that "shovel-ready" projects would be funded, bridges and roads and sewers. Obama himself admits that mostly never happened. He joked the other day that "Shovel-ready" was not as shovel-ready as we expected. The White House says that was a joke. If that Obama comment was a joke, the joke must be on us, the taxpayers. Lots of Republicans and independents are fuming. Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate, pulled a Democrat trick on the Democrat and said Obama's remarks are "insensitive" to the 20 million unemployed and underemployed Americans.To business owners, this $900 billion stripped from the economy is no joke. It is being paid for by new government fees and charges that they must pass along to consumers. It is a hidden tax. On you. Here are just a few items that were funded by the stimulus: Studies of pigs and why they stink. Eco-friendly golf carts. A ski lodge snowmaking and maintenance facility. $4 billion for programs “to develop rural communities." A variety of tax credits for desired behavior. $88 million to cover fit-out and moving costs, including office furniture, for the General Accounting Office. $200 million to design and furnish the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. $98 million for a "polar icebreaker" that will supplement the three already there. $2 billion for “other activities” (a slush fund of sorts). Now that we have flushed that billion dollars down the toilet, Obama and the Democrats push to increase the debt limit. No burgeoning business pumping additional dollars into the economy and adding millions to the federal coffers. Just more borrowing. That atop the already massive $1.6 trillion in borrowing just this year. As the U.S. Debt Clock ticks, consider this: As gasoline prices increase, as food prices increase, as electricity costs more, everything you buy is increasing in price. That is a hidden tax on you, courtesy of the Obama government. Media on Tour “It’s like following Princess Diana” Reporters Do Not Like Her Speed May 6, 2011 Reporters are speeding, tailgating, cutting off other cars and passing on the right in an effort to keep up. They say it's all her fault. They say they have no other choice. Poor media, poor media, poor media. In Boston, two SUVs that are used for minor events drove the winding and sometimes harrowing streets of the city's North End. Then a tour bus joined them. The bus barely made it through some yellow lights, the last vehicle in the entourage ran a red light or two, and so did the media, resulting in what one reporter termed "a traffic jam for the locals." Politico reports "a rolling menace careening up the East Coast in hot pursuit of" their prey. The story goes like this: Sarah Palin is on a tour of some kind. It's at minimum part book tour and part politics -- rallying support for the issues she believes in and possibly for her as-yet unannounced run for the presidency. Along the way, she will be signing books somewhere, or joining a political rally. News outlets are assuming it's all about politics, therefore all about them. In campaign reporting, reporters always want to know everything about the campaign stops. Sometimes reporters think they make the rules. Sometimes they do make the rules. But, Palin argues, she is not a candidate so she does not report to the media. Talking about making the media angry ... On this journey, reporters and photographers never know what Sarah Palin’s up to or where she’s headed — and aides typically won’t tell them anything. Though they probably would rarely cover her if it were a declared campaign, the media follow her from town to town and state to state like she is a teenage heartthrob on the way to a sold out show. Once they’re on the road, reporters are filing updates by phone and taking roadside bathroom breaks. Politico reports that a few days ago, one reporter pulled over to relieve himself on the side of the highway going from Gettysburg, Pa., to Philadelphia. That reporter was reportedly noticed by Palin aides and the rest of the traveling press. “It’s like paparazzi,” said one who followed Palin to the Thursday evening clambake. “It’s like following Princess Diana.” OK, just for one moment, let's get real. The media which so mocked Palin, who so attacked her when she ran on John McCain's ticket, the media who so lambasted her and her children, the media who accused her of not being the real mother of her own child, the media who hammer her still now that she is a more or less private citizen, THAT media is whining that Palin is not playing by their rules. Boo hoo! <Read Politico's report here> Facebook Politics Economic Stimulus for Taxpayers Just What the Funny Bone Ordered May 31, 2011 This was posted May 31, 2011 on Facebook. Names have been removed. The poster notes it is not entirely accurate, but it is pretty funny & hits on more than a few points. This site thanks Linda and Susie and Facebook and IBM for the concept of the cheap personal computer that lets you actually do things like Facebooking. Sometime this year, we taxpayers will again receive another Economic Stimulus payment. This is indeed a very exciting program, and I'll explain it by using a Q & A format: Q. What is an 'Economic Stimulus' payment ? A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers. Q. Where will the government get this money ? A. From taxpayers. Q. So the government is giving me back my own money ? A. Only a smidgen of it. Q. What is the purpose of this payment ? A. The plan is for you to use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy. Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ? A. Shut up. Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the U.S. Economy by spending your stimulus check wisely: * If you spend the stimulus money at Wal-Mart, the money will go to China or Sri Lanka . * If you spend it on gasoline, your money will go to the Arabs. * If you purchase a computer, it will go to India, Taiwan or China. * If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala .. * If you buy an efficient car, it will go to Japan or Korea. * If you purchase useless stuff, it will go to Taiwan. * If you pay your credit cards off, or buy stock, it will go to management bonuses and they will hide it offshore. Instead, keep the money in America by: 1) Spending it at yard sales, or 2) Going to ball games, or 3) Spending it on prostitutes, or 4) Beer or 5) Tattoos. (These are the only American businesses still operating in the U.S. ) Conclusion: Go to a ball game with a tattooed prostitute that you met at a yard sale and drink beer all day! Any excuse to take a hooker to a ball game. ;) Speaking of Targets in Politics Newt Gingrich Shoots Self in Foot No Modern Republican Would Dare May 17, 2011 Newt Gingrich’s future as a presidential candidate is more the debate today than his views on Obamacare or the Republican plan for reducing the deficit and slashing taxes. Commentator Charles Krauthammer puts it simply: “Newt Gingrich is done.” No modern Republican would dare to speak against the Republican congressional plan to reduce the deficit and government spending. It is supported by all but four Republicans in the U.S. House. Their futures are in doubt. The various Tea Parties continue to drive the message home: Cut taxes and spending. The prolonged recession combined with inflation reinforces that message. In case you are too bored with politics to keep up with the ins and outs of candidates for the Republican nomination, Gingrich called The Republican congressional budget plan "radical" and "right-wing social engineering" and then went back on his proclamation that there should be no federal mandate that all Americans must have health insurance. Gingrich himself has clearly called for federal health coverage mandates in one form or another. Perhaps this is a case of a politician who tries to support all viewpoints ending up in double-talk. The mandates in Obamacare are themselves little more than an experiment in left-wing social engineering. They require all taxpayers to have health insurance by 2014. Though proponents of Obamacare claimed the cost of health coverage would go down, other mandates are a major reason health insurance prices are already going up. Insurers are adjusting their rates to take into account that all policies must adhere to minimum federal standards -- such as no exclusions for pre-existing conditions for anyone. Nearly 2 million private companies and labor unions have applied for special permission to ignore some provisions of Obamacare, at least for the foreseeable future. Congress and the Senate still have not chosen to live with health care coverage that adheres to Obamacare rules and regulations. Birthers and Idiots New Slanders Begin In a Time When Calm, Reasoned Thought Needs to Consume Our Days May 6, 2011 Any hope the "birthers" would calm down and let the birth certificate do the talking left town on the first bus. A new round of emails, a new round of slanders, sound like this: " ... no classmates, not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him ... I just dunno about this fellow. Who was the best man at his wedding? Start there. Then check groomsmen. Then get the footage of the graduation ceremony. Has anyone talked to the professors? It is odd that no one is bragging that they knew him or taught him or lived with him." I am tempted to act badly, to say, OK, buddy, you show yours and we'll show ours. What is your wife's name? Your kids' names? Your address? Your phone number? We know his. Instead, if you really want to know about this man, here is a primer, sir. <Wikipedia on Obama> We are voters. Here is how most of us vote: Enough. Enough. Enough. This crap has to end. The issues have to mean everything, the junk nothing, or we are not America. This is the nation with the most experimental and successful government in history. A democratic republic. Never tried before. One founded on the concept that government may never dictate to the individual concerning certain inalienable rights. Obama has those same rights. Sure. Democrats sling crap at Republicans. Idiots sling crap at idiots. Birthers sling crap at a guy who is as responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden as the bullet that punched his eye out the back of his skull. Thank you Mr President. It is true that political attacks and idiocy have always been with us. The great Thomas Jefferson slandered the great John Adams to win the presidency. But such tactics have never won our hearts for long. Adams and Jefferson died true friends, both of them on July 4, 1826. They loved America as we do today. And they birthed this nation, they and a few others who risked dead or worse at the hands of the British. Scholars, blacksmiths, lawyers, shop keepers, inventors, great statesmen. This one particular email says there is no humanizing fact known about Obama. I know three, to start with. He has two children. Malia Anne who was born in 1998 and Natasha "Sasha" who was born in 2001. Here are some more: When Obama and his wife look at one another there is a quiet softness, a peace, a love. It's like they both know they have found the right one. When the Obamas look at their children they spark life from their eyes, joy. They are tender, guiding. The girls are brilliant, just like their father and mother. To this writer that seems humanizing, especially considering I have a son born in 1995 and I'd take a bullet to my own eye to protect his brilliant light. This email writer also says: "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." Uh. They called him Barry, sir. He was liked by a few, just like most of us Americans. He kept with those he liked, just like we do. In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year and president of the journal in his second year. "not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him ..." Columbia? This writer knows people who were graduated from Columbia. None of them explains himself or herself to idiots, either. Now, sir, I myself did not vote for Obama. I considered John McCain a true hero of the Vietnam War and an unlikely winner of the presidency. I am not enamored of the Obama presidency. At this time in history this man should not be president. At another time, he would be a brilliant president, I think. More on that another time. I know this and so does most of the rest of America. Obama has proved himself a motivator, a fine, honorable man, a true American, a father, a husband and a guy who wanted Osama bin Laden dead as badly as nearly anyone alive. Many of us admire those human characteristics far more than we admire diplomas. And none of us admires idiots at all, sir. The Race is On Politics is Finally Politics Again Americans Can Focus on Issues May 4, 2011 Osama is dead. Americans can breathe. Republicans will stage a debate Thursday night. Democrats will argue. Juan Williams has a great wrap up of that. Democrats will stage a debate. Republicans will argue. Williams' wrap up of that will come in time. It's great to be an American. The economy. President Obama has done the right thing a lot lately but the economy is not one of them. Gas prices, grocery prices, tolls, taxes, taxes. It almost seems there is a tax on taxes. This is where the war will be fought. The astroturf will fight against the wicked witches of the west and east and north and south. Well maybe if we are lucky they will be civil. President Obama gave his Tucson speech calling for civility and the next morning some members of the party he leads seemed more interested in pointing fingers than in living up to the challenge. Some Republicans played along and snarfed back. Hell with those politicians. This is time to get serious. If they won't get serious in your congressional district, throw the bums out. Your mayor too, if she or he won't get serious about your pocket and pocketbook. We did it in Miami, you can too. OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT
April 15, 2011 To: Americans Re: Vote for me November 2012 Fm: That guy up there PARTY none PLATFORM a chicken for every pot, a baby for every mother CAMPAIGN WARCHEST the least of our problems SLOGAN if nominated I will not accept if elected I will serve CAMPAIGN POSTER yes, eventually CAMPAIGN BALLOONS yup CAMPAIGN PROMISES not yet WHAT I'LL DO anything anything that's right Budget: New Brew
Obama Proposes Tax and Spend and Cut and Slams GOP on Budget Proposal Let's lay this out: Obama says the Republican plan for the 2010-11 budget "would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we've known certainly in my lifetime." That's right. It will be a fundamental change, perhaps the better term would be profound change. He will fight the Republicans with all he has in him. At one point in a speech today he pronounced "that's not going to happen as long as I'm president." Republicans have outlined their budget plan. They will fight, too, with all they have. Republicans demand change. Obama will fight it with all he has in him as long as he is president. It is good that you understand the deal, Mr. President. Either Obama is right or these Republicans are right. This profound change is right or it's not. Obama says if Republicans are wrong "our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can't afford to fix them." We built bridges without you Mr. President. In the 1950s when his father groomed Democrat John F. Kennedy for the presidency we built bridges without you. He says if Republicans are wrong, "there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can't afford to send them." Very talented poor and minority men and women went to college without Congress, without the Senate, and without the President for all four centuries in which this nation has existed. Obama says, the Republican plan is "a vision that says America can't afford to keep the promise we've made to care for our seniors." That promise is already broken. In the 1950s, the 1960s the promises government made to seniors were clear. The promise was that the dollars a working family made and paid for Social Security would not be spent by any president as if they were pennies. But politicians raided the Social Security system. The lock box was not a lock box. That promise was broken. Congressman Paul Ryan wants to make seniors buy insurance subsidized by government. Obama is right. Ryan's proposal would mean fundamental change. Exactly what we need. Private insurance would be far more cost-effective for taxpayers than government Medicare. Insurance companies make money. Insurance company investors get paid by insurance companies. pay more taxes when they make more. It's automatic. It should work that way. Those shareholders are the people Obama wants to tax more. They are your mom and pop. They are you. It should not work that way. Before the real estate bust, the years a man made $225,000 he paid less in taxes than if his investments rode the government-caused real estate bubble. Say he made $700,000 the next year and $3 million the next. That was an American success story. It's now an American failure. An American government failure. The subprime mortgage mess that drove the insanity of the real estate bubble bursting was government born and bred. Obama wants only to hike taxes on the middle class, upper middle class, not rich, nearly rich, rich and very rich. He calls these people "the most fortunate among us." We are. We are also the people who create jobs, create businesses, create significant corporations, create major corporations and give to the poor. We are the people who refuse to accept American failure. We are America. Period. Democrats openly profane us for being against their programs. We voted them in. We will vote them out. Obama says more taxes on us, these people, will increase employment, fix Social Security, and ensure Medicare and Medicaid. With all due respect, how absurd. It will give us more of what we already have. A polite term for it, and one often used at one time is stagflation. Obama called the Republican plan "deeply pessimistic." But listen to them on TV for a few minutes, those Republicans. They are ecstatic. They are convinced every word will cost Obama reelection in 2012. Obama had more good news. He said his taxes and his cuts will save $300 billion from entitlement programs over the next decade. That is chump change. Government is increasing debt $5 billion today, $1,825 billion a year. <Debt Clock> He predicted $1,770 billion in savings over the next 12 years through non-security discretionary cuts and cuts in defense. Ryan says his proposal will cut deficits by $4.4 trillion over the next decade. Obama apologized the other day. He was wrong to oppose the debt increase in 1996. He wants a debt increase. Now he is against change. Three years later. Three years years after his campaign signs said "CHANGE." He will bank his presidency on opposing it. The transposition doesn't escape him. But he is afraid it doesn't escape voters. He says the plan to cut spending without raising taxes would be cutting services to seniors and poor children. "That's not going to happen as long as I'm president, he says. House Speaker John Boehner says it won't happen while he is Speaker. It is good that you understand the deal, Mr. President. It's down to this: The deal is whether you do or do not win the presidency again. Finally
a 2010-11 Budget
The Sky Did Not Fall After All Now for 2011-12, the Debt Ceiling 4-9-2011 Only four or five months after it was due, a 2010-2011 budget agreement has been reached by the Congress and the Senate. Do not yet put away your fretting hat. Budget mess 2011-2012 begins before the bat of an eye. After all, this is theater, this is drama, this is power politics, this is the presidential campaign season. In her piece titled, Demonizing the GOP, losing the budget battle, Washington Post opinion writer Kathleen Parker sets up the punching bag you know she is going to smash: "So why do Republicans hate art, the elderly and children? Hint: Same reason parents hate their children when they say, 'No.' We could just leave it at that, but this is too much fun." Parker points out that all manner of liberals and loonies have engaged in "the demonizing of Republicans for trying to seriously address our desperately ailing economy." She points out that liberals accuse the GOP of all manner of sins that they are decidedly not committing including trying to kill the arts. There is no such sin as trying to kill the arts. When did the Van Goghs and Goughans of today, the Mozarts and Beethovens, or even the Jim Dines and the Andy Warhols, the Simons and Garfunkels and Aretha Franklins, need government meddling to help them create their masterpieces? Government arts subsidies, by and large, go for programs that only the rich can attend except for an occasional public school outing. Why can't taxpayers afford opera tickets if taxpayer support for art houses and art companies is so good for us all? Parker notes that one nitwit compared Republican arts program cuts to an "old miserly man snatching a crayon out of a baby's hand." I bought my own son's crayons, thank you. And baseball equipment and guitars and iPods and Android cell phone and so did his mother. It has gotten to the point where we are planning to buy his college education, too. It's called life. Parker writes: Everyone is calling for adults these days. President Obama insisted that Congress "act like grown-ups," adding that we don't have time for games. I'm not sure where these adults are going to come from since almost no one seems to want to be one." You are urged to read more <here> For political junkies, present company included, this budget battle has been the best of times. It is the great Thomas Hitman Hearns vs. the equally great Sugar Ray Leonard , or Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Only in this match, it's the taxpayers of the U.S. sick to death of Washington's sugar binge on their paychecks vs. the entrenched bureaucracy and liberals who have a different vision.  Washington in spending shape The taxpayers won the first round last November. Friday night, they won the second round. They won the bout when Republican House Speaker John Boehner deftly dodged a roundhouse blow of rhetoric that had Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trying to land every tired liberal cliche known to man while his cornermen recited tired liberal death chants. Reid occasionally urged on his supporters sounding like like a beer drinking Nevada cowboy song about his opponent but with lyrics about momma, cancer screenings, and woman-hating. In the end, $38.5 billion was sweated out of the Democrats by the Republican House. Late Friday night, to give themselves time to tie up loose threads on the budget, the Senate and House both agreed to a short term budget extension that nicked another $2 billion off the swollen budget. Boehner had held together his supposedly fragile coalition of Republicans, Tea Party activists and other fiscal hawks. The Democrats claimed credit for the cuts while they geared down for a weekend of polishing off other over-used insults and teary complaints for the budget fight to come for 2011-12 and increasing the federal debt ceiling. And with the presidential campaign underway, there are still Senate seats to lose out there for Democrats in those pesky states. Though the budget making process this year has been great fun, it also is desperately serious business. American prosperity hangs in the balance. Every nickel of increased taxes means a taxpayer who can't get her kids his own crayons. Every government burden and add-on fee for small, medium and large business means jobs not created.  Democrats in agony Going into the presidential election, will the Democrats continue to tax and spend, tax and spend, threaten and cry fake tears? Or will taxpayers, sick of government waste and misuse of their money overcome Washington politicians seeking sugar rushes of power? This time, again, the good guys won. The taxpayers. Welcome To 2011
This Budget Mess Is ALL Democrat Doing, Every Bit of It 4-7-2011 This budget mess, the budget mess and the fight and the name calling are 100% the fault of Democrats. It is a political sin so large even radicals out there in left-wing land should be outraged and repudiate these Washington Democrats. NOTE: Fear not. As this site noted earlier, Obama chooses whether to shut down the government in a government shutdown. The administration has announced that all but things like IRS handling of paper returns and the Smithsonian would continue as normal. Democrats could have prevented every word spoken in this budget debate. They should have. Period. But they didn't. It's not that it was right or wrong. It was just stupid. In 2010, Democrats had control of the House, Senate and the White House. They did not pass a budget in October 2010, before the midterm elections. That's because they were afraid it would further inflame voters to run Democrats out of office. OK, this isn't new. This isn't different. Both parties would do that. It's politics as normal. True to conservative predictions, Democrats flat lost the midterm. They suffered the largest and most devastating midterm election loss in 70 years. What is absolutely political sin is that they did not pass a budget in the lame duck session after the midterm election New Year's Day 2011. They coulda, they shoulda, and they didn't. Anyone with any political sense would have. Maybe then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was too busy pulling her foot out of her mouth to be paying attention. Interestingly, Republicans in the lame duck session were very conciliatory to Republicans. Who knows why that is. That was stupid, too. Republicans then might not even have raised a ruckus over a budget that merely held the line on spending. No Democrat has made a halfway sensible case for increased spending in a shrinking tax base, a shrinking economy, a recession that wants to go double-dip and stagflation ravaging the budgets of the poor and the middle class. Democrats and Republicans were in Washington anyway. That's what a lame duck session is, a session before a new congress and senate take office. Were they too dern busy with blaming Republican for their woes to make sure the nation kept running in the next year? The president had pens, in case any of them wondered. But they did not act in 2010 to pass the budget for 2011. And what they did not realize then was it wasn't really their Republican colleagues during that lame duck session that they had to fear. It would be the conservatives and Tea Party activists and others selected by voters to do exactly what John Boehner and this Republican Congress are doing right this minute. Now, what do Democrats do? They whine. They moan. They point fingers. They want to fist-fight, one might think. They sell wolf tickets, a decades-old term for threats so empty they are but howls in the night. They refuse to budget in real ways. The government lives week to week. Democrats still attack the people who create jobs, small, medium and large business. Democrats still propose even more taxes on the poor and the middle class. They still claimed until the other day (Monday) that the recession, the housing collapse, the barely shrinking number of new unemployment claims each week are all Bush's fault. What comes next? What comes next? Blaming Bush for the lack of brainpower in the Democrat leadership? Now, only three months into the year Obama claims to be the only man in the nation strong enough and wise enough to lead us into 2014 and beyond. He is an embarrassment to this nation. He is what? So strong he can't whip problems George Bush created? What a terrific platform for reelection. Yet Democrats still rant and rave that Republicans are almost traitors for wanting to slash subsidies for rich opera goers, subsidies for a radio station that hates conservatives and liberals who are not liberal enough, a birth control program that also provides abortion and counsels pimps and hookers on how to get away with child prostitution. Yeah, it's sure barbaric to withhold taxpayer funds for THAT noble stuff. |
Obama
vs. Republicans It Comes to This: Hope and Change Vs. Renewal of American Values June 21, 2011 As it turns out, Obama's message of "Hope" and "Change" resonated with voters in 2008. This time? Pretty much the same. Obama's team is assembling a campaign based again on hope and change. This time, though, he faces voters who by and large hope there is a better candidate, one who will change the headlong rush toward bankruptcy that is the hallmark of the Obama years so far. Every poll in the nation shows that Obama has outlived his usefulness and that voters are awaiting a Republican candidate they hope will provide Change We Can Believe In. Republicans love that. They view high unemployment across the nation as Obama’s biggest vulnerability. No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term when the employment rate has topped 7.2 percent on Election Day. It is currently 9.1 percent, after two months of increases. “We don’t have to worry about anything else that goes on except for that one number,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who lost to Obama in 2008. The number of new unemployment claims has been above 400,000 for 10 straight weeks, evidence that the job market is weak compared to earlier this year. The GOP has stepped up criticism of the president’s failed efforts to resuscitate the economy, chiefly the $800 billion stimulus. Obama himself fed the fire by admitting that the shovel-ready projects the stimulus was supposed to fund just were not there. The stimulus money was spent anyway, instead going to pork and pet Democrat projects that had been shelved for many years. Only occasionally does Obama "own" even a small part of the poor economy, spiraling national debt and relentless partisan rancor in Washington. For the first two years of his presidency he had carte blanche, with a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate and House, to do whatever he wanted, whatever he thought would put the country right. Now, in June 2010, 25% of voters Strongly Approve of Obama’s job performance, with those who strongly disapprove at 36%. The chant for Republican campaigners might just be "Renewal." The major candidates are all fiscal conservatives, believe that we have fallen off the tracks mapped out by generation after generation of Americans, and their supporters have all shown willingness to vote for whichever presidential candidate Republican primary voters choose. That's a big deal. The Grand Old Party seems to have cemented itself along economic lines, rather than dividing itself along the fractures of anti-abortion and Christian and anti-gay marriage values. Battle of the Extremes Obama vs Far Right; Obama vs Romney and Fiscal Conservatives June 7, 2011 For the first time, voters feel the agenda of congressional Republicans is nearly as extreme as that of Democrats in Congress. Some 43% of voters believe the GOP congressional agenda is extreme while 47% view the agenda of congressional Democrats as extreme. There is a lesson for politicians in the latest numbers from Rasmussen Reports. The survey shows that 39% of likely U.S. voters say the agenda of Republican Congress members is mainstream. Thirty-seven percent (37%) see the Democrats’ agenda as mainstream. That may explain why Obama would lose if the election were held today between him and Mitt Romney. By a margin of 49% to 46% Obama would be sent to an early retirement, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll. Romney is no darling of the various Tea Parties, but leaders of the major Tea Party movements say they would support him if he were the Republican nominee. Romney sparks interest among many voters because he is a fiscal--not social or religious--conservative, somewhat right of center with generally traditional conservative Republican views. His attempt as Massachusetts governor to run medical care from the governor's office may lose him some votes now among those who oppose Obamacare. But he has made it clear he would repeal Obamacare. In its place, Romney would back options that provide health care for under-served Americans while preserving the lower cost and human benefits of a system run by the private sector, where medical decisions are primarily the business of patients and physicians. Obama and Middle East Obama Is Weak Amidst Calls for Democracy; Al Qaida Grows 5-31-2011 President Obama represents the strongest single entity on the planet, the leader of the United States of America. In the past, the world may have judged the U.S. to be correct in some of our actions, or incorrect. Certainly we have been both. But this nation has had a reputation since we were forced into World War II of carefully considering the facts, weighing possible actions and then taking strong action to be a force for the better in the world, though not always the perfect. Always since World War II the president has been seen as the most powerful man on the planet. Until now the presidency has been an office whose resident has most always ready to act when necessary. But no longer. Increasingly the world sees the U.S., under the leadership of Barack Obama, as weak, uncertain, irrelevant, even blind. The U.K. Independent writer Robert Fisk writes that May 2011 marked "the lowest prestige of America in the (Middle East) since Roosevelt met King Abdul-Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945." That meeting between the United States and the founder of Saudi Arabia is considered the beginning of the friendship between the Saudi government and the U.S. Saudi Arabia had been coveted by the Nazis and their allies, the Axis, during World War II primarily for their oil. The Nazis had conquered Egypt and Libya. Defeat of the Nazis meant liberation for Egypt and Libya and preserved independence for many nations, including Saudi Arabia. Fisk continues: "While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama groveling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed." So when Fisk writes that Obama has driven the prestige of the U.S. to the lowest level since Roosevelt met King Abdul-Aziz, it is no small matter. It is a historic change that indicates America no longer is to be seen as a liberator and a powerful voice of reason in the Middle East, but as a nation that quarrels publicly with our friends on behalf of our friends' historic blood enemies. Indeed Obama calls for an impossible return to the past. In the case of Libya, the world saw a weak president afraid to act until France declared it was going in, then the U.K. Obama has relegated the U.S. military to a role supportive of France and the U.K. in a so-called NATO action which many NATO member nations refuse to be associated with. Unfortunately, that is the president we have. He said little and did nothing as the Iranian Islamist thug government killed students in the streets of Tehran two summers in a row. He has said even less and failed to act or even call for action as President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemen dictator, began the slaughter in that nation's streets. The situation in Yemen is difficult. There is no simple solution, that must be said. Al Qaida in Yemen is attempting to co-opt the democracy movement in that nation as it continues its sweep across the Middle East. Yemen is already al Qaida's stronghold, having been driven from Afghanistan. If Yemen is lost to al Qaida the U.S. will be forced one day to take it by force, just as we were forced to take Afghanistan after years of inaction. The current leadership of Yemen is unpredictable and unreliable. President Saleh, the dictator, has agreed three times to step aside for different leadership. Each time he has failed to keep that promise, recently arguing that al Qaida would take over in the power vacuum. Many have been killed. More than 50 pro-democracy demonstrators have been killed in the southern Yemeni city of Taiz since Sunday, the UN says. Some were Islamists -- al Qaida in Yemen. Others were bystanders. This much is clear: the U.S. holds great sway over President Saleh. We must either support him, help him crush the al Qaida Islamists, and demand, nay require, him to cease the killing of pro-democracy demonstrators or admit to the world that we will not stand in the way of him or al Qaida, and do not stand for democracy in Yemen. Again the world is watching Obama's response to the violence and calls for change in Yemen, and it is weak. Al Qaida gains in strength. Our nation has mostly stood by -- only complaining -- as the thirst for democracy has grown in the Middle East. Our nation's complaints mean nothing except that we permit al Qaida to win the hearts and minds of Yemenis while the citizens of that nation beat back the president by force. It appears the thirst for democracy will not be denied in the middle east -- Obama or no Obama. Pocketbook Politics Ahhhh, the Sweet Smell of Politics Obama: Drill Baby Drill 5-14-2011 With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon for regular, it looks like the president is now seeing them as a political liability in this election season. Obama says annual lease sales will be conducted in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and leases extended in Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. Efforts will be also be sped up for off-shore drilling in the South and Mid-Atlantic. Who'da thunk that Obama would be chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill" about this time in his administration? Run Adam Run Here Comes The Slasher Taking On Dems and Repubs 4-27-2011 A hot new video has hit the internet that depicts one of the Marco Rubio generation of Florida politicians determined to start right where they sit -- in the cushy seats of government. Adam Hasner earned his stripes cutting the salaries of elected officials. He helped slash spending by billions of dollars. When term limits sent him home, he advocated for one idea more than others: The same old crowd of politicians won't get the job done. He plans to carry that message to Washington. In running for Congress, Hasner is taking on the state's old guard politicians, the Charlie Crists, the Bill Nelsons, the George LeMieuxs -- the regular faces in politics. This concept is spreading like wildfire. A once beloved Republican mayor was run out of office in Miami-Dade earlier this year. He raised property taxes to fund raises for selected county employees. In a Republican town in an old guard Democrat state, Republicans dumped one of their own. Politicians are on notice that Floridians have stopped voting for favorite sons and started voting for common sense. Watch this race. This is no single issue candidate. He thinks he's beholden only to the United States of America, to those who live here, who work here, who came here from anywhere they came from. This guy is no free lunch wagon driver. He just might be us. Sci-fi-Movie in Libya Gaddafi's Loyal Fighters Seen In Al Jazeera Web Video Program 4-10-2011 The forces of Libyan murderer Muammar Gaddafi are rarely seen. <This> is a rare look through the lens of an unknown camera operator in mid-March before NATO air strikes began, according to the English language Al Jazeera. What the video shows is strong confirmation of what the rebels have claimed -- a band of thugs closely resembling the renegades in the old Mel Gibson Mad Max trilogy of sci-fi movies. The video seems to confirm Western allegations that Gaddafi fighters used common pickup trucks and other vehicles. It shows military trucks carrying tanks headed for Ajdabiya. Young men are taken into custody and beaten up by Gaddafi loyalists as government forces roam the streets. The reported slaughter of civilians is not documented. What is clear since this video was shot is that the air strikes are working. Such bands of armed thugs are now met by a renewed rebellion that gives hope civilians will no longer be slaughtered at the whim of a machine gunner. Libya indeed is a humanitarian war. Questions still remain about why Obama waited so long to act, what our goals truly are, what our exit plan is to be. The world saw a weak president afraid to act until France declared it was going in, then the U.K. Unfortunately, that may be the president we have. Libya Call Obama on Action Plan, Goals, Exit Strategy 4-1-2011 It's time to shut up about whether we should have gone into Libya or not. We are there with no clearcut plan of action that is known to American citizens and taxpayers. And no exit strategy. Our CIA operatives are on the ground. The Obama vow was broken that no American boot touches a grain of Libyan sand. He doesn't bother to deny that it is so well known. It is true that hundreds, probably thousands of Libyans of every age were being slaughtered by Gaddafi. Obama's claim he launched a humanitarian war are noble speech. But we have not intervened in Iran where hundreds were killed by the Islamist government last summer. He cannot turn away from the fact that he trembled in the face of Iran. Yes that nation may be a primitive nuclear power. All the more reason to hit them then now. Waiting while Iran advances technologically is insane. It may be that Israel, whom Obama alternately shuns and warms to slightly, will have to do this work for us, again. He has not intervened in other nations where religious or secular leaders--Islamists and royals and dictators alike--are slaughtering their own people. He spoke loudly and carried no stick concerning Egypt and the tyrant Mubarak. He says no humanitarian crisis requiring U.S. military action exists in Yemen and Syria and other Middle East Nations. A consistent, strong leader is needed in these times. Obama fails on both counts. He is a weak, trembling head of state. It appears that calls for him to be a one-term president are justified by that fact alone. Why Did We Go Against Libya And Not Syria or Egypt or Others? Clinton Says Mass Killings of Libyan Civilians Led To War 3-28-2011 Hillary Clinton has launched the administration's first salvo in a barrage intended to convince American voters that Obama was right in send the U.S. Military against Gaddafi in Libya. From "Kinetic Military Action" to "Turd Sandwich." That's the latest from an administration source on Obama's Libya war."There's a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities [like Libya], than police actions which frankly have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see," she said. She is correct, there is a difference. And yet, the difference is slight in the case of Syria and Egypt and other nations. The real difference seems to be that France told the U.S. they would go it alone if the U.S. and other nations would not become involved. It may be that to make the U.S. worthy in European eyes was Obama's goal, more than protecting the innocent. He was adamant during the campaign that he would "restore" the stature of this country around the world, especially France. He even mentioned that all Americans should learn to speak French. If that is the case, it disappoints. But if the outcome is some innocents were protected from a dictator's sword, so be it for now. The election comes in November 2012. American voters will decide then if Obama's reason was good enough to send our military men and women into harm's way. What Tales They Tell Obama Lied When He Said 'Not One American Boot Touches A Grain of Libyan Sand.' Thank God 3-24-2011 As it turns out, Obama lied. WE should be thankful. For the truth. This very moment there are American boots all over Libyan sand. Yes, that is contrary to Obama's promise that not one American boot would touch a grain of Libyan sand. We are not in the business of breaking news here, and that's not what this piece is about. Instead it is about how grateful we should be for a military that sneaks in specially trained men called military ground controllers, trained to blend in over there. In the dark of night they "paint" Libyan targets with laser beams. The pilots of military jets use those laser beams and GPS satellite to guide their missiles exactly into targets that can be very near innocent civilians without threat to those civilians. Any viewing of military video of such a strike shows that they are the definition of precision and that the pilot can be sure there is no civilian on the ground that will be harmed by a missile. Only then does the pilot pull the trigger. Two men who claim to know and should know are Col. David Hunt and Lt. Col Tony Shaffer. Hunt has more than 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in special operations, counter terrorism and intelligence operations. <more> Shaffer is a retired Army intelligence officer known for his claims about mishandled intelligence before the September 11 attacks and for the censoring of his memoirs. <more> Both are respected military consultants for the news media and other paying customers. Tonight on the Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor both said that their sources tell them the U.S. has had so-called ground controllers, or military air controllers, on the ground in Libya for weeks in anticipation of our attack on the Gaddafi government. Other military personnel have been at work identifying probable targets. Which brings us to why we should be grateful and relieved. Our military, the best in the world, was preparing for this war weeks ago. I suppose that should not come as a surprise, but I forgot for this short time that our military always goes prepared. It is in preparation that our military saves the lives of our military personnel. And it is in preparation that our military saves the lives of civilians. If you hate the word God, turn away. Thank God for our military. Steve@MiamiSteve-MyAmerica.com Power to the Foreigners Control of U.S. Military by Foreign Allies is Now Obama Plan for Libya 3-22-2011 There is talk of the Arab League, or the French, or the Brits taking control. Plans are not set in stone. But one thing is known, Obama plans to turn over control of U.S. military forces involved in Libya operations to some form of foreign leadership "within days, not weeks." Former UN Ambassador John Bolton calls this a "massive failure of leadership." In other words, this is not just weakness. This is abdication of the role and responsibilities of the office of the President of the United States. Nothing Obama ever said while running for office tipped Americans off to the notion that he would start a war and then abandon leadership for it to someone in a foreign land, to some foreign power. This we cannot abide. U.S. Should Stay the Course in Libya Despite Calls for an End To Coalition Action 3-21-2011 The chief of the Arab League, which asked the U.S. to take action in Libya, now threatens to withdraw its request for the U.S. and Europe to stop the slaughter of civilians by the dictator Gaddafi. What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," the Arab League's secretary general, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media. His threat apparently comes after Libya's command and control center, often used by Gaddafi was bombarded late yesterday. The center is in Gaddafi's large compond not far from the infamous Bedouin tent tent where he is said to sleep. It would now be the easiest path for the U.S. to land our military jets on our aircraft carriers, sail into the Mediterranean and simply state that the U.S. warned the Arab League and the world that securing the safety of civilians and revels would require a full-fledged military operation.Fox News confirmed early this morning that British submarines fired 2 missiles at Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli as coalition forces begin enforcing the U.N.-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya. Fox reported a military source said Gaddafi was not targeted and neither was his residence. Aljazeera reported that Gaddafi spokesman Mussa Ibrahim called it a "barbaric bombing" but said no one had been hurt. He declined to tell the network whether Gaddafi himself was inside the compound. Other news sources say he has been in hiding in Libya. The military coalition is bombarding Libyan military positions--precisely what U.S. defense secretary Robert M. Gates said publicly many times would be required in order to establish a no-fly zone and to protect civilians and rebels. Gaddafi, the man who kills his own nation's civilians in cold blood, claims the coalition has caused civilian casualties in Libya. The U.S. military says there is no evidence of that. The U.S. was actively involved in two wars in the Middle East before responding to the Arab League's request for our intervention. Until late last week, Obama said the U.S. military would not become involved in Libyan strife. As the situation grew worse by the hour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN ambassador Susan Rice convinced the administration that U.S. action would be required. Yet, only after a UN Security Council resolution said all necessary action should be taken to stop the dictator Gaddafi's slaughter of his own people did Obama agree to U.S. military action. The U.S., France, Britain and unnamed Arab nations were to form a coalition. Qatar became the first Arab nation to actually join the coalition when it sent fighter jets Sunday. Obama backed off of his call for regime change in Libya. Obama has taken a lot of heat here at home about his on-again, off-again call for regime change in Libya and yet taking no real action to bring that about. In agreeing to heed the calls within the U.S. and from the Arab League to take action, Obama ordered that no U.S. military boot would touch a grain of Libyan sand. U.S. defense secretary Gates warned weeks ago that solely to establish a no-fly zone would require taking out Libya's Military aircraft, their air defenses, their artillery and their command and control. Missile strikes late yesterday did take out what has been identified by reporters in Libya as the military command and control center. The 22 nations in the Arab League have their own military hardware, yet they did not act. Saudi Arabia owes much of its military might to the U.S. Kuwait owes its existence to us--American blood won back Kuwait's independence from Iraqi strongman Saddam Husein. It would now be the easiest path for the U.S. to land our military jets on our aircraft carriers, sail into the Mediterranean, and state simply that the U.S. warned the Arab League and the world that securing the safety of civilians and rebels would require a full-fledged military operation. Many of us in the U.S. were concerned what would happen the first time there actually were civilian casualties. Now, it appears the unsubstantiated claim of civilians killed was enough to turn the Arab League against the coalition. The U.S. already looks weak to the world due to Obama's waffling on the failure to aid rebels last summer in Iran, on the removal of Egypt's dictator this winter and on our lack of support for freedom lovers in other Middle East nations. For the U.S. to quit the Libyan operation now, with our tail appearing to be tucked between our legs, would make us an international political laughing stock. "I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again." --Anne Frank, 1929-1945. |
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| Henrik Stigell |
