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PIG
NEWS DIGEST
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NOVEMBER 2008
Quote of the Week Chucky Schumer, a braying Demoncrat Jackass, spouts off about the fairness doctrine. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday defended the so-called Fairness Doctrine in an interview on Fox News, saying, “I think we should all be fair and balanced, don’t you?” Schumer’s comments echo other Democrats’ views on reviving the Fairness Doctrine, which would require radio stations to balance conservative hosts with liberal ones. Asked if he is a supporter of telling radio stations what content they should have, Schumer used the fair and balanced line, claiming that critics of the Fairness Doctrine are being inconsistent. “The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.” OCTOBER 2008
Quotes of the Week Samuel Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher serves up PIG-worthy wisdom on Messiah Barry. "What worries me is that he is deciding that $250k is rich right now, but what's to stop him from changing his mind? As we all know, politicians change their minds at the drop of a poll. Personally, I think it will have to go lower. How else will he pay for all he wants big government to do?" "Whether or not his tax plan, as he states it today, would help me, it still comes down to principles. I don't want someone else's hard-earned money. How can you be sure they're not going to change their minds and decide you make too much money and want to take more of it to 'spread' to someone else?" (Washington Times) [Joe’s last quote was prophetic, because, since Messiah Barry cited a $250,000 lower limit for ‘rich’, he, and his minions, have subsequently lowered it to $200,000, then $150,000 and at last report, $120,000.] Michael Steele sees a tough road ahead for his Elephant Clan, after they abandoned such core beliefs as ‘low taxes, fiscal control and small government’. "After George W Bush was elected we became the party of big government. It's anathema to grow government by 40 per cent, as we have, and to grow a $10 trillion deficit, as we have. No wonder people look at us cockeyed now when we talk about lower taxes and small government." Michael Steele sounds off on his Melanin-Enriched homeboy, Messiah Barry Obama. "I am proud of Barack as an African-American but I am doing everything in my power to defeat him. Let's be fair and honest, he is a great speaker. But what changes for me as a black man if he wins this election? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What changes for me as an American? Everything, because his philosophy will harm my business, my family and me personally." (London Telegraph) Walter Williams paints a bull’s-eye on a politically expedient economic theory which he calls ‘wackonomics’. "For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues." "Speaking of CEOs, there's the "unconscionable," "obscene" salaries they receive, in some cases over $10 million a year. Wackonomics has an easy answer for these high salaries: it's greed. However, CEOs don't have the corner on greed. There are other greedy people we don't scorn but hold in high esteem. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list, Oprah Winfrey receives $275 million, Steven Spielberg gets $130 million, Tiger Woods $115 million, Jay Leno $32 million and Dr. Phil $40 million. I need to talk to these people and learn their strategy. I've been making every effort to get that kind of money. I go to bed greedy, dream greedy dreams, awaken greedy and proceed through the day greedy. Despite my heroic efforts, it's all been for naught; I earn a pittance by comparison. Wackonomics can help us understand what some people call the income distribution. The logical extension of wackonomic thought is that the unequal or unfair distribution of income is the handiwork of a dollar dealer who distributes dollars. The dollar dealer might deal one person a million dollars a year while dealing most others a mere pittance like $10, $20 or $30 thousand a year. Thus, the reason why some people are wealthy while others are poor is because the dollar dealer is a racist, sexist, a multi-nationalist, or just plain mean. Economic justice requires a re-dealing of the dollars, income redistribution or spreading the wealth, where the government takes the ill-gotten gains of the few and returns them to their rightful owners. Wackonomics might have a greed-based explanation for income inequality. There is a pile of money called income and greedy people got there first and took their unfair share. Similarly, economic justice requires a redistribution of income." "Wackonomics isn't all bad. There's an upside to it. It spares people the bother of having to understand the complexities of the world." Victor Davis Hanson tries to set "Obama won’t be that bad", Palin-phobic ‘conservatives' straight. "Why do so many conservatives think that an Obama-elect might be prove a centrist, and so why do they use phrases like “I pray” or “I hope” that Obama might turn out, well, not to be Obama? Jimmy Carter did exactly what he promised: raised taxes, grew the government, told the world he had no inordinate fear of communism, trashed our allies as retrograde right-wing authoritarians—and we got the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage-taking (have we forgotten that the “Great Satan” originated as a slur against Nobel laureate Carter?), communism in Central America, the Cambodian Holocaust, and spikes of 12% inflation, 18% interest, and 7% unemployment. For his first two years (until 1994 Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’ revolution, and Dick Morris’s ‘triangulation’), Bill Clinton, as promised, raised taxes, raised spending, tried to ram through socialized medicine, and by fiat wanted to force the military to accept those openly gay. So why would any conservative think that Obama—friend of Ayers, Khalidi, Meeks, Pfleger, and Wright, veteran of mysterious campaigns in which rivals in 1996 and 2004 simply dropped out or were forced out, erstwhile advocate of repealing NAFTA, controlling guns, stopping new drilling and nuclear plants, zealot for bringing all troops home by March 2008, advocate of a trillion dollars in new spending, and raising the tax burden on the 5% who now pay 60% of the aggregate income taxes, supporter of more oppression studies and racial reparations—would not likewise try to govern as he has lived the last 20 years? Why would anyone think that an Obama would not wish to enact the visions of those who first backed him—the Moveon.org crowd, ACORN, The Huffington Post, Sen. Reid, Rep. Pelosi, a Chris Dodd or Barney Frank—rather than the late pilers-on like Colin Powell or Scott McClellan? We should remember that, unlike the cases of Carter and Clinton, Obama would have both houses of Congress, and a (Republican) precedent of the federal government intervening into the free market, in the manner of 1932." Snippets Halloween History
Unwilling to tolerate such pagan fun and games, the Holy Rollers tried to steal the holiday the same way they did Easter and Christmas:
Halloween won’t put tykes on the highway to hell. In 21st century America, it has shed its pagan roots and devolved into another commercialized speed bump on the calendar. Halloween is about kids playing dress up and having a good time. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing sinister, or demonic, about that. Obamanomics in Action A Councilman in Albany, New York has come up with a way for those government bureaucrats making less money to get a raise. Are you ready for his plan?
All he wants to do is spread the wealth. What's wrong with that? Required Reading Nick Gillespie cites three memorable memes to come out of the "Great Bailout Bonanza". What are the great memes and motifs to come out of the bailout brouhaha? There are too many to list, but here are three top ones that you can look forward to seeing again and again. They share an antipathy toward anything remotely considered the free market and a belief that government intervention is a wise and prudent course. At least this time, because everything is different in the here and now. And because the government has promised to vamoose from the economy once its job is over (just like in Iraq). 1. All past, present, and future economic "crises," real or imagined, are the result of deregulation and uncontrolled "market forces." "For 30 years," begins a New York Times story titled "Both Sides of the Aisle See More Regulation," "the nation's political system has been tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules. But that is about to change, now that the government has been forced to intervene in the once high-flying financial industry to avert an economywide crash." Never mind that the financial industry is one of the very most regulated sectors of the economy here and abroad. Never mind that the two mega-corporations at the very center of the recent market meltdown, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were massively regulated government-sponsored enterprises that were doing the bidding of the politicians to whom they gave cash so lavishly. Indeed, never mind that the Times story above features a chart showing that George W. Bush increased regulatory spending far more than any president since Richard Nixon (by some measures, Bush even routs Nixon). Forget about deregulatory successes in airlines, interstate trucking, and telecom. The culprit is now and will always be deregulation. And the answer will always be more regulation. 2. Corporate welfare is a good and decent thing, just like the New Deal was. Pity the poor bond trader and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's former (and likely future) colleagues at Goldman Sachs. Bailing out investment banks and other off-balance giants of the once great American economy (the Big 2.5 automakers; the airlines after the 9/11 attacks) makes sense, especially in a global economy where everything is connected and competition is so much tougher, and a butterfly flapping its wings in Antarctica can cause a bank run in Pyongyang. "America Needs a New New Deal," argues The Nation, in a view that is no longer just the province of the hard left. Now that Wall Street has been bailed out in what is routinely and unconvincingly dubbed "the worst economic crisis since the 1930s," look for Main Street to start rattling its own tin cup, too. Government at all levels already shovels tons of direct subsidies, individualized tax breaks, and more to everything from farmers to professional sports franchises. Only a sucker wouldn't start playing the me-too game. And no politician worth his or her salt is going to turn away from constituents in distress, especially if they can claim their dry cleaning chain of quick-lube joint is vital to the local economy of Anytown U.S.A. There's strong logic here: If Wall Street sharks deserve grease, why not every business in peril? Or every family with a mortgage in peril (John McCain has already announced a plan that decrees all mortgages above 5 percent are rip-offs; during the vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden claimed the right to renegotiate the principal of mortgages)? Forget that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by seven or so years according to new research by UCLA economists. Forget about the insights of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and others who warned of limitless hubris in the limited minds of planners and tweakers. Hank Paulson set the new tone when he told The Los Angeles Times editorial board that the proper job of the Treasury secretary is to make sure that prices, especially house prices, never go down again. Anything else is "market failure." 3. History is bunk, especially when it comes to economic indicators and downturns. One of the most stunning elements of the bailout moment is its virtually complete lack of historical context. The easiest reach has been, as a recent Time magazine cover featuring an image of a '30s-era soup line shows, is to call the global credit crunch "The New Hard Times" and simultaneously invoke the Great Depression and halfheartedly distance yourself from that very claim ("No, this isn't Depression 2.0" reads Time's cover line.). Any comparison with the Depression, which featured an unemployment rate of 25 percent and a contraction in GDP of over 33 percent at its worst moments, strains credulity. But where are the discussions of previous Wall Street manias and panics, of booms and busts (even the relatively recent tech-bubble bust is largely missing from news accounts that tag the current moment as a black period)? Or recessions (as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which charts this sort of thing)? Americans have never been big on history, but discussions of the stock market and finance are particularly unburdened by even a quick Google search for precedents. Instead, readers are treated to stories touting the Dow's "biggest one-day loss in history" that only get around to expressing losses and gains in more accurate percentage terms in the final paragraphs. None of these memes bodes well for "Free Minds and Free Markets" over the short term. But they can be countered by a small measure of interest in the past. And the near future, when this latest panic has receded into barely remembered history like the sock puppet from Pets.com. (Reason Magazine) Quote of the Week Messiah Barry Obama finally says something that I’m willing to stand up and salute:
Quoted out of context? I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you, devilish details obsessed Sparky. Quotes of the Week Steve Chapman sounds off on the financial flame-out - uh, bailout - in a Reason Magazine commentary. ‘...[T]he effort to restore confidence and stabilize markets turned out to be, pardon the expression, a bust. After the bailout was signed into law on Friday, Oct. 3, investors had all weekend to contemplate its tonic properties but found none. On Monday, the stock market looked like it had been pushed out of an airplane. The Federal Reserve was so alarmed by the credit situation that it decided to take the radical step of lending directly to businesses. By then the rescue package was a fading memory. Instead of being safely contained, the turmoil intensified and spread far beyond Wall Street—to financial markets in Europe, Asia, and South America. Said a Tuesday news story in The New York Times, "Three days after the plan was approved, it looks like a pebble tossed into a churning sea." The feds had decided to fill the markets with enough cash to burn a wet mule—only to see it have no apparent impact whatsoever. But we could have had no impact whatsoever for a lot less money. You may remember that when the House of Representatives voted against the original rescue plan, it was blamed for the subsequent 778-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This stomach-turning development was clear proof of the urgent need for the bailout. But if a stock market's performance is the test of a policy, this one has failed. At best, the passage of the measure did no evident good. At worst, it backfired...’ ‘...Instead of stimulating productive activity by removing doubt, it has impeded it by multiplying doubt. It has also encouraged lenders to hold off dealing with their bad debt in hopes of getting a better deal from the Treasury than they can dream of getting from anyone else. But postponing the banks' rendezvous with reality will not speed recovery. The sheer size and unprecedented nature of the intervention generates a different kind of uncertainty—about how extensively the federal government will immerse itself in the economy from now on. The spectacle of Washington nationalizing private assets is bound to dishearten millions of investors who think that generally, the most helpful economic role for government is staying out of the way. The rescue surrenders an important principle: that private sector mistakes should be borne by the people who make them. If the bailout means we may all get the bill anytime a company implodes, it will undermine the critical incentives of the market. In the long run, that will not strengthen the economy but weaken it...’ Neal Boortz paints a ‘he’s nuts’ bull’s-eye on Barney Frank. Slowly but surely, Republicans are growing the globes to criticize the Democrat party for its role in the mortgage crisis ... the fact that it was the Clinton administration that pushed for subprime loans through the Community Reinvestment Act; the fact that Barney Frank was sleeping with a Fannie Mae executive while pushing Congress to deregulate Fannie Mae; the fact that it was Democrats in 2005 who voted against reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a party-line vote. On Monday, Barney Frank said that Republicans are motivated by race in their "veiled attack on the poor." Just gag me ... there's that race thing again. Barney is trying to make you believe that the only reason the Republicans are pointing fingers at the Democrats is because the "GOP is appealing to its base." He can't actually refute the charges, so he pulls the race card. Here's what Barney Frank said, "They get to take things out on poor people ... Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people." Reading Assignment In her e-mail newsletter, the ‘E-Blast’, Laura Ingraham dares to ask the burning, bailout blight, questions. Eight Bailout Questions How many times over the last few days have we heard politicians, talking heads and other self-proclaimed "experts" tell us the reason the $700 billion bailout is so wildly unpopular is that we just don't understand it. The economy is complicated. Just trust Congress, President Bush and his royal highness, Hank Paulson. They'll fix it. Don't worry about that $700 billion number. It only sounds high. Well. If that's the case - if we're really too dumb to understand what's happening - perhaps Congress can show us how much they know. To start, here are some questions I'd like answered. 1) Since the White House introduced the bailout last week, a number of alternative ideas have been proposed. For one, Michigan Republican Thaddeus McCotter wrote a 10-point plan that carries no cost to taxpayers. Others, like George Soros', are significantly less expensive and, in his estimation, likelier to be effective. Can you explain why this bill is the best option, despite being the most expensive? 2) We're told the bailout could actually turn a profit for taxpayers. Assuming that's true, how can we be sure the money actually ends up back in taxpayers' hands? For years the Social Security system took in more money than it paid out, yet instead of putting the surplus revenue toward future benefits, Congress snatched that extra cash for general expenditures. Likewise, Fannie and Freddie's "profits," were used for congressional pet projects. With this track record, how can we trust that this program will be any different? 3) The McCain campaign yesterday pointed out that the most recent housing bill gave the government nearly $1 trillion to purchase mortgages. If this is true, why exactly does Congress need to pass this monstrous legislation? 4) Does the latest version of this bill still "allow the government to purchase troubled assets from pension plans, local governments, and small banks that serve low- and middle-income families"? Americans are having a hard enough time swallowing the idea of a bailout for irresponsible home, car, and student lending. The notion that we'll be on the hook for insolvent pension plans administered by awful, union-controlled lawmakers in cities like Detroit and New York is simply insane. 5) Does the bill's preamble still proclaim that the law "provides authority to the treasury secretary to ... ensure the economic well-being of Americans?" Does anyone know if there are limitations to this seemingly unbridled authority? Otherwise, what prevents the Treasury secretary from becoming a de-facto dictator? This strikes me as especially worth discussion. 6) Are there still no meaningful curtailments of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Does the bill contain anything even hinting at accountability? 7) What concrete assurances do taxpayers have that the turmoil's provenance - Carter and Clinton-era social-engineering dictums that upended safe-lending practices in favor of higher minority home ownership - will forever be outlawed? How do we know taxpayers won't be asked to finance another $700 billion bailout in 10 years? What has Congress learned from its past mistakes? 8) After Enron's collapse, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, then-CEO Ken Lay, and then-CFO Andrew Fastow, were called to testify before Congress. According to the Business and Media Institute, Fannie's and Freddie's overstated earnings were 19 times larger than Enron's fake numbers. So when can we expect Congress to call Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and the rest of Fannie's and Freddie's enablers to testify before Congress? At the end of the day, we're not being asked to bailout Wall St. so much as we are the Democratic Party. For $700 billion, answers to the questions above are the least Congress can do in return. SEPTEMBER 2008
Required Reading In his Bloomberg commentary, Kevin Hassett spells out how, in 2005, Congress muffed an opportunity to prevent the current financial debacle. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally. Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves. In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home. The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them. Turning Point It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end. Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even ``on the page'' of allowable interpretations. Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a ``world-class regulator'' that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe. Greenspan's Warning The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.'' What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets. Different World If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed. But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. Road Rage On Steroids A bonkers Brit butthead, Serena Sutton-Smith, took road rage to dizzying heights, and, in the process, had her human gene pool improvement application stamped ‘approved’ in record time. The incident started, when another Brit woman, Paula Small, strayed into this rage-a-holic’s zone of insanity, while driving along a country road. Unwilling to share the road, Serena came flying up a side road, forcing Paula to swerve off the road and into the grass to avoid a collision. Eager to discuss it with Serena - a very bad idea - Paula got back on the road and pulled ahead of the rage-a-holic. It was, as things turned out, a fatal idea. When Paula stopped and started to get out of her car, Serena smashed into the back end of Paula’s Fiat Punto. From there, events spiraled into the Twilight Zone. Losing her mind, utterly and completely, Serena kept her foot on the accelerator, making her wheels spin until one of her front tires disintegrated. When the wheel started grinding on the road, it sent up a shower of sparks, setting Serena’s car on fire, after the brake fluid ignited. Did Serena, take a hint and bail out of her car? Nope, but for that part of the story, we serve up this eyewitness report:
Unable to get Serena out of her burning ride, Nicholas ran to his workshop for a fire extinguisher. Despite his best efforts, and those of another citizen with a fire extinguisher, the inferno raged on, putting Serena out of her misery. Parting shot: Was Serena nuts? That depend on your definition of ‘nuts’. She was, the inquest reported, bipolar in the worst way, and subject to legendary bouts of rage. Bipolar? Towering rages? I should hope to spit, if her anger could completely snuff out a basic human drive as powerful as the survival instinct. How pissed do you need to be to refuse to leave a burning car? Off the scale, PIGsters. Off the scale. Required Reading Amir Taheri sets off a bomb shell in his New York Post commentary (09/16/08) about Messiah Barry’s antics in Iraq. WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview. Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion." "However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says. Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate. While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined. Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet. Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America. Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years. A Pajamas Media columnist, Bob Owens, provided this thoughtful analysis of Messiah Barry’s antics. Did Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama attempt to dally in U.S. foreign and military policy during his first trip to Iraq in July? According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in Amir Taheri’s op-ed in Monday’s New York Post, Obama used his trip to privately lobby Iraqi government officials to delay an agreement that would reduce the number of American soldiers in Iraq, while at the same time publicly calling for a unilateral withdrawal. The delay was a “key theme” of his discussions with Iraqi leaders according to Zebari, and Obama reportedly asked those leaders to delay an agreement until after the U.S. presidential election. Zebari claimed that in doing so, Obama attempted to argue that it was not in Iraq’s interest to negotiate with the current adminstration, and insisted that the U.S. Congress should be involved. During the same visit to Iraq, Obama may have also tried to convince a series of American commanders, including General David Petraeus, to offer a “realistic withdrawal date” to pull soldiers out of Iraq. All commanders reportedly declined. But before we begin to dissect these claims, and to be completely fair to Senator Obama, it is important to note that the author of the Post article is Iranian-born writer Amir Taheri. Taheri has had significant credibility problems in the not too distant past, claiming in a Canadian newspaper that Iran was implementing a system of color-coded badges that religious minorities would have to wear, evoking imagery of the Nazi Party in Germany more than six decades ago. That claim turned out to be completely false. In his current article in the New York Post, however, Taheri directly quotes a named Iraqi government official, lending the claim at least the appearance of more credibility. If the claims in Taheri’s article are accurate, then Senator Obama is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game. It would mean Barack Obama attempted to pressure American military commanders to make a declaration that he would have used as a political tool during his presidential campaign to undermine both his opponent and the current president, perhaps undermining the credibility of the U.S. military as an apolitical group loyal to the United States instead of political parties. It was wrong to attempt to put American commanders at war in such a predicament, where their words could be used against their sitting commander-in-chief as a political bludgeon. Either Obama did not think of that, or he was simply untroubled by the thought of abusing the careers of American commanders for political gain. [PIGish last word: So far, nobody has been able to pin this one down. Amir Taheri has been caught spewing whoppers in bygone days, so he’s far from credible. On the other hand, as Bob Owens points out, Amir is citing an Iraqi official, by name. Also, other than a feeble attempt at ‘nothing to see here’, Messiah Barry’s disciples haven’t seen fit to comment on this one. Since the Messiah hasn’t denied it, we can’t say it never happened. We can ask the burning question: why isn’t this one a much bigger story?] Pajamas Media columnist, Frank Furedi sounds off on free speech in the 21st century. Censorship has a long history. Back in Roman times two magistrates — or “censors” — were charged not only with counting the population but also with the supervision of public morals. Although in the 19th and 20th centuries censorship was frequently driven by a political imperative, its aim remained essentially the policing of moral behavior. Twenty-first century censorship continues this tradition of moral enterprise. Today censorship is not simply the project of state or religious authorities. Advocacy groups, educators, media organizations, and professionals are actively engaged in rhetorical crusades to ban certain words and/or to promote their own favored ones. In modern times there has never been an era such as ours where language is so carefully regulated and policed by both private and public institutions. The main reason for this development is the ascendancy of the belief that words can hurt far more than we previously suspected and that people have the right to be protected from them. It is a sign of the times that acts of censorship are not interpreted as what they really are — the coercive regulation of everyday communication and the repression and stigmatization of certain ideas. Instead, they are often represented as enlightened attempts to prevent offending people or as a sensible way of minimizing conflict. Words are frequently depicted as weapons that can traumatize and psychologically damage its targets. Consequently, the right to free speech often competes with the right not to be offended. From this perspective, censorship is not perceived as a form of authoritarian intrusion but as an enlightened measure designed to protect the vulnerable from pain. The idea that language offends is not new. But the notion that because offensive speech has such a damaging consequences on people that it needs to be closely regulated represents an important departure from the way it has been conceptualized in previous times. Such an orientation has as its premise a radical redefinition of human subjectivity. It assumes that people lack the intellectual resources to deal with competing ideas. Consequently, the public that lacks independence of thought or moral autonomy it needs to be protected from making the wrong choices in the marketplace of ideas. In such circumstances, ideas can be very dangerous and their suppression can be represented as an act of public service. The aspiration to protect individuals and people from painful words is underwritten by powerful cultural forces. Consequently, in contemporary times there is only a feeble cultural affirmation for free speech. Indeed, one often gains the impression that academics and public figures are more interested in criticizing the ideal of free speech than in upholding this right. Fat Cave Nightmare This News Max article pokes some sizeable holes in Messiah Al’s Global Warming Gospel. If, as seems likely, solar activity is one of the primary forces behind Earth’s natural warming and cooling cycles, Messiah Al will be forced to re-tool his alarmist screed for - GASP - global COOLING. Here are some relevant facts that tell us where we are, and where we’re going when it comes to Earth’s climate. World Meteorological Organization Easterbrook, who has written eight books and 150 journal publications, predicts that temperatures will cool between 2065 and 2100 and that global temperatures at the end of the century will be less than 1 degree cooler than now. This is in contrast to other theories saying that temperatures will warm by as much as 10 degrees by 2100. In March, Easterbrook said he was putting his “reputation on the line” by predicting global cooling. “The average of the four main temperature measuring methods is slightly cooler since 2002 [except for a brief el Niño interruption] and record breaking cooling this winter. The argument that this is too short a time period to be meaningful would be valid were it not for the fact that this cooling exactly fits the pattern of timing of warm/cool cycles over the past 400 years,” Easterbrook wrote on March 1. Added to his assertion was the WMO revelation that the first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years and that the rest of the year almost will certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average. The global mean temperature to the end of July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, Britain’s Met Office Hadley Centre for climate change research said Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000. (News Max) Farmer’s Almanac "Numb's the word," the almanac’s 2009 edition says, adding that at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures, with only the far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings. "This is going to be catastrophic for millions of people," the almanac's editor, Peter Geiger, told The Associated Press, noting that the frigid forecast combined with high prices for heating fuel is sure to compound problems households will face in keeping warm. The almanac predicts above-normal snowfall for the Great Lakes and Midwest, especially during January and February, and above-normal precipitation for the Southwest in December and for the Southeast in January and February, the almanac states. Also, the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic regions can expect an unusually wet or snowy February. Institute of Geophysics at Mexico’s National Autonomous University Predictions of a gradual increase in temperatures called global warming are erroneous, Velasco Herrera told a conference at the Centre for Applied Sciences and Technological Development regarding predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC models and forecasts are wrong because they are based only on “mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity," he said. The phenomenon of climate change should include other kinds of factors, both internal, such as volcanoes and human activity, and external, such as solar activity, he said. "In this century, glaciers are growing," as seen on the Perito Moreno mountain in the Andes; on Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada; and on Franz-Josef Glacier, New Zealand, Velasco Herrera said. Satellite data indicate that a period of global cooling may have begun in 2005, he said. Messiah Al Recommended Reading Neal Boortz minion, Cristina Michelle Gonzalez, sounds off on the MSM’s frontal assault on Sarah Palin. At the age of 23 I have resigned myself to the fact that I can no longer be president. Once upon a time, I wore a bikini at the beach. Back in the day, I enjoyed wearing hoop earrings. And I, too, have worn a miniskirt. But the real problem? There are pictures to prove it. In the wake of media coverage following John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his VP, I have thrown in the towel. I have little faith the media will accept a woman who hasn't patronized their circles; a woman whose "scandalous" pictures are tame compared to my generation. Case in point: her own daughter. I am not a feminist. I have never known gender to be an issue in my life, and I will not vote for Sarah Palin based on the fact that she is a woman. But we are currently experiencing a new kind of media era faced with a 21st century family ... one that has yet to be vetted by Washington or Meet the Press. One that has not sealed its documents in the shadows of library shelves or surrounded itself with PR aides, shaping the perfectly crafted picture. The Palin's are a new kind of American family that older generations are going to have to face – the MySpace/Facebook generation – like it or not. Just five years ago I was a freshman in college. Few people had heard of the word "blog." Facebook was only available to a handful of universities and the ability to post pictures was well over a year away. By the end of my college career, I was taking a full credit class on blogging. Student staff at my university could be fired for "trashy" pictures posted on networking sites. This happened within four years. This is not an excuse, but it is reality. And for the first time, a presidential campaign will have to deal with it. Bristol Palin's pregnancy has been "breaking news" for days, emphasizing this fact – the private information of our lives is now for public consumption. There is a reason for this: we've allowed it. The people who are not caught up in this personal sharing phenomenon cannot understand it just like I cannot fully comprehend what it means for things to be better than the Jimmy Carter years. My disillusionment does not lie with the coverage of Bristol Palin's pregnancy. Sex sells in this information overload, celebrity worship culture. The media would rather cover Bristol's pregnancy than Barack Obama's ties to terrorist Bill Ayers because the people understand sex. This is why callers who can't even identify that Sarah Palin is a governor (no longer a mayor) feel that they have the authority to comment on her parenting skills. I have resigned myself to the fact that most people are this shallow. "The most disheartening argument is that Sarah Palin should be putting her "family first." The people who buy into this line are patching up the cracks in that glass ceiling, intentionally or not. As a young woman, I worry how I will one day do what people say is possible – be a mother and have a career. Apparently this motto does not apply to Washington, and this disgusts me. It should disgust other young women who would rather pick up a US News and World Report on a news stand than an US Weekly. The fact that people wouldn't vote for Sarah Palin because they can Google an image of her in a bathing suit disgusts me. The fact that people wouldn't vote for Sarah Palin because "she has a lot of doctors' appointments to go to" disgusts me. The liberal media is jealous ... they are scared that America might actually like a woman who isn't of their own making. And they don't know how to handle it. Instead, they resort to 1950's rhetoric and shallow coverage. I can't blame them entirely; after all, it's what the people want. Today is the day I have finally let the system get the best of me. It only took 23 years and a bank of vapid phone calls to do it. AUGUST 2008
Required Reading Thomas Sowell addresses the Oval Office Derby finalists, directly: Barack Obama, you are a fine public speaker. You are also an extremely liberal Senator from the State of Illinois, which has a long and rich history of political corruption of the first magnitude. You are indeed a child of that system. Worth Remembering Howlin’ Howie Dean got tired of well-deserved obscurity and let fly with a verbal bitch slap at the Elephant Clan. According to Breitbart TV, Dean told a group of Democrats “Our party has a been no-majority party for a long time … the Democratic Party is made up of lots of different people and we're all minorities in our party. That's the way it's been for a long, long time - we are the party of opportunity, so the demographic trends favor the Democrats because we are an inclusive and accepting party. If you look at folks of color - even women - are more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white -- excuse me [giggles] -- in the Republican Party." (News Max) Burt Prelutsky paints a bull's-eye on Messiah Barry. Liberals have tried to convince me that Obama is brilliant. I find that odd because he has said that there are 57 states, that JFK got the Russians to remove their missiles from Cuba by sitting down and chatting with Khrushchev, and that Iran doesn’t really constitute an actual threat because they don’t spend as much money on weaponry as we do. Funny, but “brilliant” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. But what do liberals know? They were also convinced that Jimmy Carter was intelligent. As if Obama’s lack of smarts weren’t bad enough, he compounds the problem with his arrogance. The way he’s forever tilting his head as if he were posing for a statue and employing the royal “we,” I’m never sure if he thinks he’s campaigning to be president of the United States or the Queen of England. Frankly, I’m always surprised when, every four years, the candidate with the (D) after his name is able to muster tens of millions of votes. When you realize that the party has become increasingly Marxist, I find it mind-boggling that the Democrats can consistently fare better than the Greens or the Libertarians in a national election. If you listen to Obama, you’d get the idea that we’re a third world nation, tottering on the edge of poverty. Every word out of his mouth suggests that America is being ground down by corporations when every sane member of the middle class is well aware that the Democrats, who have never met a tax increase they didn’t love or an illegal alien they didn’t see as a potential vote, and who promote class and race warfare as party policy, pose more of a threat to this country than the Soviet Union ever did. Obama and his fellow left-wingers keep parroting the line that all the other nations of the world hate us, but I’ve noticed that they never name names. And who can blame them? They’re not likely to mention that they’re referring to the likes of Iran, China, Yemen, Venezuela, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and North Korea, just as they’re not likely to mention that England, France, Germany and Italy, have all elected conservative leaders in the past few years, while dumping the leftist likes of Mitterand and Schroder along the way. Because the MSM adores Obama, they continue to promote the notion of Obama as a great orator, but he is actually no more silver-tongued than your average radio announcer reading ad copy for baby wipes. The fact is that when asked a direct question, the man turns into a blithering idiot, even though you would imagine that by this late date he would have memorized the appropriate lines. Perhaps the problem is that this new-style politician is so driven by polls that from moment to moment he’s not sure exactly how he feels about the 16-month deadline in Iraq, the surge, offshore drilling for oil, election financing or dividing the city of Jerusalem. Heck, he even changed his opinion about Reverend Wright overnight. On one notable occasion, during the primaries, he was heard to ask if he could just have a moment to finish his waffle. We all thought he was referring to his breakfast. But apparently that wasn’t the case because the man hasn’t stopped waffling yet. Recommended Reading George Will kicks ass and takes names, in the wake of the Ruskie invasion of the Republic of Georgia. Russia supports two provinces determined to secede from Georgia. Russia, with aspiring nations within its borders, generally opposes secessionists, as it did when America, which sometimes opposes secession (e.g., 1861-65), improvidently supported Kosovo's secession from Russia's ally Serbia. But Russia's aggression is really about the subordination of Georgia, a democratic, market-oriented U.S. ally. This is the recrudescence of Russia's dominance in what it calls the "near abroad." Ukraine, another nation guilty of being provocatively democratic near Russia, should tremble because there is not much America can do. It is a bystander at the bullying of an ally that might be about to undergo regime change. Vladimir Putin, into whose soul President George W. Bush once peered and liked what he saw, has conspicuously conferred with Russia's military, thereby making his poodle, "President" Dmitry Medvedev, yet more risible. But big events reveal smallness, such as that of New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson. On ABC's "This Week," Richardson, auditioning to be Barack Obama's running mate, disqualified himself. Clinging to the Obama campaign's talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama's zest for diplomacy, and that America should get the U.N. Security Council "to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint." Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the U.N. for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto. This crisis illustrates, redundantly, the paralysis of the U.N. regarding major powers, hence regarding major events, and the fictitiousness of the European Union regarding foreign policy. Does this disturb Obama's serenity about the efficacy of diplomacy? Obama's second statement about the crisis, in which he tardily acknowledged Russia's invasion, underscored the folly of his first, which echoed the Bush administration's initial evenhandedness. "Now," said Obama, "is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint." John McCain, the "life is real, life is earnest" candidate, says he has looked into Putin's eyes and seen "a K, a G and a B." But McCain owes the thug thanks, as does America's electorate. Putin has abruptly pulled the presidential campaign up from preoccupation with plumbing the shallows of John Edwards and wondering what "catharsis" is "owed" to disappointed Clintonites. McCain, who has called upon Russia "to immediately and unconditionally ... withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory," favors expelling Russia from the G-8, and organizing a league of democracies to act where the U.N. is impotent, which is whenever the subject is important. Pajamas Media’s Mike Shelton, sounds off on Mexifornia’s Nanny State nitwitdom. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger found time in his busy day, away from multiple wildfires and runaway budgets, to [1] sign bill AB97, forbidding restaurants from using trans fats by 2010 and banning that substance from all baked goods by 2011. In the minority voting against the bill was Assemblyman Paul Cook, who raised the pregnant questions: “How much are we going to regulate people’s diets? What’s next, a bag of potato chips? Coffee? Soda?” About the same day came the ruling by the Los Angeles City Council. Councilwoman Jan Perry has worked for six long years in the wilderness, but now her time has come. Awaiting a signature from the mayor, the council [2] unanimously declared a moratorium, essentially a ban, on all new fast food outlets in south LA. Existing fast food restaurants cannot expand or remodel. This ban covers a 32-square-mile area containing 500,000 residents. If the poor want a burger and fries, the message depends on who you’re listening to. It’s either “your salvation draws near” or “your days are numbered.” Activists pushing the ban called it an end to “food apartheid,” saying there is one kind of food in south LA but a different and better kind elsewhere. A hoped-for consequence of the ban is a growth in non-drive-through, sit-down restaurants with food choices the activists would agree with. When you cut through the empty rhetorical support for slimming the fat off children, you get to the real issue: the reduction of freedom on multiple levels. How is a business supposed to operate when it can’t renovate or expand without proving to the city it’s a hardship case? Freedom flies away as the business owner and the private citizen’s right to buy and sell and work are restricted. If I’ve wanted Popeye’s Chicken to move into my neighborhood and it can’t because the city council said “no,” the city council has interfered with my freedom of choice. No one is stopping “Jane’s Healthy Choice Eatery” from moving in. This local government wants to dictate movement away from a taste for Popeye’s independent of market forces. When these residences voted with their dollars for fast food, the LA council’s position is they’ve voted wrong. They need to be escorted back to the voting booth and instructed how to vote. In the words of the progressives, “they need to be better educated.” Kwame Plays Chicken Motor City Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, played chicken with Judge Ronald Giles and lost. Already up to his eyeballs in trouble, with 8 felonies hanging over his head, Kwame tested Judge Giles’ patience once too often, when he made an unauthorized trip to Windsor (Canada), on city business. His departure didn’t go unnoticed, and it landed him back in front of a seriously pissed Judge Giles. Kwame tried to talk his way out of it:
Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor, Robert Moran, didn’t buy this Kwame crap for a second:
Judge Giles didn’t buy Kwame’s crap either, so he blistered the mayor, before revoking the mayor’s $75,000 bond and sending him to the special mayoral suite at a local graybar hotel:
Will Kwame finally learn his lesson? We doubt it. Stayed tuned for the next thrilling Kwame adventure. Holy Stool Pigeons, Batman! Her name is Mary Lou McFate and she was a player in the gun control movement. For the past few years, while lurking in Pennsylvania, she became an unpaid board member of CeaseFirePA and another group called States United to Prevent Gun Violence. After building her gun control credentials as federal legislative director for States United - this included trips to lobby congresspunks in the nation’s capitol - Mary Lou tried - and failed - twice, to land a spot on the board of the USA’s largest gun control group, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. There’s one more thing you need to know about Mary Lou McFate. According to a bombshell article in Mother Jones magazine, Mary Lou McFate served as a paid spy for the National Rifle Organization. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer shares these tidbits about Mary Lou:
This isn’t Mary Lou’s first undercover gig:
The most interesting entry on Mary Lou’s resume isn’t ‘spy’, or even ‘flight attendant’. It’s ‘sex counselor’. Now that she’s busted and is a spring chicken of 62 years, Mary Lou needs to sit down and write her memoirs. I’m smelling a best seller. She’s going to have ample time for the task, now that CeaseFirePA is getting ready to dump her from the board post she held for the past seven years. Parting shot: I like the attitude of Phil Goldsmith, president of CeaseFirePA: "I feel flattered that the NRA would feel that they would have to infiltrate CeasefireofPA." JULY 2008
Required Reading Pajamas Media editor/writer, tells the rest of the story about Messiah Barry’s recent world spanning victory lap. There are several legacies of the Obama trip that will linger long after the pictures fade from memory. Unfortunately for him (and his media cheerleaders), none is positive. First, he put himself, with a bit of help from interviewers Charlie Gibson, Terry Moran, and Katie Couric, in an awful ideological bind. The surge has worked despite Obama’s predictions. Indeed, his trip helped publicize just how startling has been the transition in Iraq from chaos to fledgling democracy. Rather than join the victory celebration he continued to declare his opposition to the surge and bemoan that the money wasn’t used on domestic spending (or alternatively in Afghanistan, where the same enemy lurks and Obama suggests we employ the very same surge concept). Each of the interviewers, to one degree or another, expressed incredulity and frustration. Why wouldn’t he concede the surge had worked and he was wrong? It is, after all, not everyday that a presidential candidate says he still believes we shouldn’t have pursued a path to victory. The second impact of the trip stems from Obama’s mistake in assuming international acclaim and media adoration would impress the folks back home. Watching tens of thousands of Germans listen to his worldly appeal that “this is our [who is “our” exactly?] time,” voters back home may not be impressed. And poll numbers suggest they aren’t. The blatant appeal to international world opinion (why exactly was he giving a campaign speech to tens of thousands of non-voting Europeans?) may not be the recipe for success. And finally, Obama’s mega-gaffe in snubbing the wounded troops in Germany (with the excuse he wouldn’t want to use campaign funds for such a visit) left even the MSM scratching their heads. There could be no perfect example of the argument McCain has been making: this is a callow man whose ego blinds him to the sacrifice of military service. Coming on the heels of news that Obama is already planning his White House transition, it seemed to put new emphasis on the question the McCain camp has been implicitly asking, “Who does he think he is?” A McCain minion takes dead aim at Messiah Barry’s brainfart on the economy. Carly Fiorina, a key lieutenant to McCain and former boss of computing giant Hewlett-Packard, said a recession triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash became a depression through the imposition of higher taxes and trade barriers. "The reality is when an economy is slowing, if you raise taxes and you curtail free trade through isolationist policies, bad economic times become worse," she told reporters. "We know this from history... and that is precisely the proposal that Barack Obama is making," Fiorina said. "And that is why I say as a businesswoman, I hope Barack Obama continues to consult with experts because I think his understanding of the economy leaves a great deal to be desired." (AFP) Quotes of the Week Demoncrat Elected Tormentor spills the beans on developing our proven, domestic oil reserves. In an interview with Bloomberg TV's "Money and Politics"..., Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., explained Democrats don't want to increase supplies of oil and gasoline because they want to wean Americans off of petroleum products. Asked point-blank if Democrats in the Senate would consider how increasing the supply of oil would lower the prices that are pinching U.S. consumers, Cantwell replied: "Oh, we definitely want to move beyond petroleum. And so there will be a supply side offered by the Democrats and it will include everything from battery technology to making sure that we have good home domestic supply, and looking, as I said about moving faster on those kind of things like wind and solar that can help us with our high cost of natural gas." In other words, no. The point was underlined by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who said Democrats are not even permitting debate on legislation and amendments designed to increase the supply of oil and gasoline to U.S. consumers. "Today, the appropriations markup that was going to include amendments that would open up the outer continental shelf and maybe even shale in Colorado and Utah was canceled," she told the same Bloomberg interviewer. "It wasn't postponed, it was canceled. So that indicates to me that the majority is not going to try to have an open debate, but I hope I'm wrong. If they have an open debate, and we're allowed to have amendments, and we have a balanced plan that includes production in all the sectors, then I believe we can meet this problem in a bipartisan way, and that's what we should be doing for America." (World Net Daily) Our Elected Tormentors hate Juan McCain’s federal gas tax holiday. Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, opposed the idea from the beginning and the White House gave it a cold shoulder. Depriving the 52-year-old Highway Trust Fund of $9 billion at a time when it is heading into the red doomed the notion of a gas tax holiday in Congress. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. James Oberstar, and the chairman of the highway subcommittee, Rep. Peter DeFazio, presented fellow lawmakers with a list of how many jobs and how much money each state would lose. It ranged from $30 million and 1,000 jobs in Vermont to $664 million and 23,000 jobs in California. "Because the trust fund is already looking at a looming shortfall, it would have moved project cancellations into the construction season," DeFazio, D-Ore., said in an interview. He said it was "highly unlikely" that oil companies would have passed savings along to consumers. Quotes of the Week Ex-Messiah Al, escapes his Fat Cave and spouts more mindless, Globally Warmed-Over drivel. "I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that's emerging now," Gore told The Associated Press in an interview previewing a speech on global warming he was to deliver Thursday in Washington. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand. "This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over," Gore said. "It's an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels." "I hope to contribute to a new political environment in this country that will allow the next president to do what I think the next president is going to think is the right thing to do," Gore said. "But the people have to play a part." He likened his challenge to Kennedy's pledge in May 1961 to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. To meet his 10-year goal, Gore said nuclear energy output would continue at current levels while the nation dramatically increases its use of solar, wind, geothermal and so-called clean coal energy. Huge investments must also be made in technologies that reduce energy waste and link existing grids, he said. Messiah Barry sells out America to Border Jumping scumbags. "When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids," Obama said, "when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it." The crowd, quietly listening before Obama began his tirade, reacted immediately to the sentiment that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are terrorizing communities. Applause, shouts and cheering swelled through the audience as Obama characterized atrocities allegedly committed by government officials. On the touchy issue of immigration, Obama referenced an estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. when he said, "Yes they broke the law, and we should not excuse that, we should require them to pay a fine, we should require them to learn English. They should go to the back of the line for citizenship … but we should not have 12 million people in the shadows." Obama promised a "pathway to citizenship" for current illegal aliens living in the U.S. and said, "Nation of immigrants and a nation of laws – we can do both." (World Net Daily) Messiah Barry outlines a daring plan for his own Gestapo/KGB in America. If we're going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn't this rather a big deal? I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together? Are we talking about creating a police state here? The U.S. Army alone has nearly 500,000 troops. That doesn't count reserves or National Guard. In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean? (World Net Daily’s Joseph Farah) Spike Lee shoots off his mouth about Messiah Barry, plus Je$$e’s colorful, Messiah Barry prose. Lee predicted Obama would be elected in November. "When that happens, it will change everything. ... You'll have to measure time by ‘Before Obama' and ‘After Obama,'" Lee said during the panel. "It's an exciting time to be alive now." "Everything's going to be affected by this seismic change in the universe," he said Asked if there was any validity to [Je$$e’s] criticism of Obama, Lee replied: "No. Here's the thing: I don't know why people are questioning whether Barack Obama is black enough. For me, that's an ignorant statement. There are middle-class, educated black people who speak the way he does. ... We have to try to move away from this so-called image of what black is, which is largely influenced by rap and that type of stuff," Lee said. Required Reading Mike McNally sounds off on the Black Helicopter Club adding a fourth ‘R’ to government schools: "UNICEF — the United Nations Children’s Fund — now wants British toddlers to take lessons on human rights and multiculturalism, in between finger-painting sessions and nap time. The UK branch of UNICEF is extending its Rights Respecting Schools scheme from primary schools to nursery school classes. According to UNICEF, the scheme “promotes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the basis for enhancing teaching, learning, ethos, attitudes, and behavior.” If you’re wondering exactly what that means in practice — or just what it means — then you’re probably not alone. The scheme’s [1] website is replete with such NGO-speak:
According to the UK’s [2] Telegraph, the project “will see teachers explaining to children as young as three that people across the world live different lives but everyone has a right to food, water, and shelter.” What the scheme actually appears to entail is an awful lot of poster-making. The report adds:
Parents reading about this new obsession with teaching “rights” could be forgiven for thinking that schools should focus on doing a better job of teaching the existing three R’s before adding a fourth to the syllabus. Because, while a decade and more of bar-lowering by Labour has led to more British pupils leaving school with more paper qualifications every year, anecdotal evidence from universities and employers suggests that educational standards are plummeting." "UNICEF has some nerve lecturing children, or anyone else, on rights that it has neither the will nor the ability to protect. But then the UN has long been more concerned with posturing and declaiming on human rights than with doing very much to uphold them. And in that regard, Rights Respecting Schools is the very model of a UN initiative — lots of talking and some nice artwork, but very little in the way of substance. If UNICEF wants to make the scheme more relevant, they might want to start by providing teachers with some guidance on how to answer a child who puts their hand up and asks why, with the rights of thousands of children to food and security being so blatantly infringed in Zimbabwe, the UN isn’t doing something to help them. Shrinkage It’s called ‘shrinkage’ and it’s happening at a grocery store near you. The way it works is very simple. Unwilling, unable, to absorb the relentless increase in energy prices, food manufactures are coping in a devilishly clever way. The package you see in the store is the same size it has always been, and the price, in most cases, hasn’t changed. But, you’re getting less bang for your buck these days, because the amount of food inside that package has been reduced. * Breyers Ice Cream - was 1 3/4 quarts, now contains 1 ½ quarts. * That ‘pound’ of coffee has shrunk to 10 ounces. * Kellogg - maker of Froot Loops, Cocoa Krispies, and Apple Jacks has the same box, same price, less cereal. * Cheerios cereal - was 10 ounce in that box, now it’s 8.9 ounces. * Hellman’s Mayonnaise was 32 ounces, now it’s 30 ounces. |