June's Conservative Voice

Obama’s Unjust Remarks- STATE OF UNION ADDRESS

2010-03-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

That union address was that sucker l-o-n-g. If I were to dissect every bit of deceptive rhetoric in it, this column would be even longer. That’s not going to happen. But there was one section that I found particularly outrageous. Before I get to it, however, I want to mention the folks who were sitting behind our Dissembler in Chief. Every time the camera showed Obama, there was Vice President Joe Biden behind his right shoulder and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi behind his left. Those two got to spend the entire evening staring at the President’s back. What fun. I have to say Joe was the absolutely ideal audience. Every single expression that crossed his face—his smiles, his frowns, his chuckles, his glee—seemed perfectly timed to match to the script Obama was following. It was almost as though the Veep was an audioanimatronic creation of the Disney imagineers. Joe, you were perfect! I can’t say the same thing about Madame Speaker, though. For much of the President’s speech, Nancy Pelosi looked as though her mind was elsewhere… and she wished her body was, too. I had to wonder what thoughts were troubling her stern visage. Maybe she knows that her dreams of presiding over the socialization of America are over. Maybe she realizes her record and her reputation are heading straight for the dumpster. Whatever the reason, she looked nervous to me. Good. Now, on to the speech itself. Anyone expecting a milder, more conciliatory approach from the president had to have been disappointed. There were very few mea culpas in his 70-minute address. Instead, his basic message seemed to be that anyone who doesn’t support his programs just doesn’t understand them. So he’s going to ‘splain it all again. It reminded me of Desi talking to Lucy, but without the Cuban accent. The weekend before SOTU (that’s an abbreviation of State of the Union, in case you saw the acronym and wondered what it meant), Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s top advisers, appeared on Meet the Press. Asked if losing a super-majority in the Senate would change the president’s strategy, she replied, “He is going to fight for what he’s always been fighting for… We’re not hitting a reset button at all.” Even more telling was the president’s decision to bring David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign manager, into the White House. Plouffe immediately said that he’d be working to pass healthcare reform legislation “without delay.” His message for his fellow Democrats? “[Let’s] prove that we have the guts to govern. Let’s fight like hell.”
Doesn’t sound very conciliatory, does it? It’s got to be tough to be a conservative back-bencher at one of these performances. All of the president’s allies fill the first half of the House chamber. And by tradition, they’re supposed to cheer like crazy for every rhetorical flourish that comes out of his mouth, no matter how wrong or ridiculous it is. But the group I really felt sorry for this time were the six members of the U.S. Supreme Court who were in attendance. There they were, dressed in those flowing black robes and seated front and center, directly below the president. By tradition, the members of this august body are supposed to sit there looking straight ahead. They are not supposed to show any expression, no matter what the president says and no matter what the sycophants in the audience do. Under the best of circumstance, it’s got to be tough to sit there for an hour-plus without moving a facial muscle. But these weren’t the best of circumstances, because right in the middle of his speech the president lambasted them. The justices had to have been absolutely stunned to hear the president say: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.” Even before he finished urging Congress to right this terrible wrong, hundreds of Democratic senators, congressmen and cabinet officers had jumped to their feet, cheering and applauding the president’s remarks. Talk about being blind-sided. As law professor Randy Barnett observed in The Wall Street Journal, “the head of the executive branch ambushed six members of the judiciary, and called up the legislative branch to deride them publicly.” But there was something worse than the president’s bad manners. It’s that his remarks weren’t true; the Supreme Court ruling had done no such thing. Yes, in a landmark case known as Citizens United, the Court had the previous week reversed a 1990 ban against political advertising by domestic corporations and labor unions. But it left standing a 100-year-old ban on foreign entities doing so. Yes, Barack Obama—an honored graduate of Harvard Law and one-time professor of Constitutional Law—had his facts wrong. Apparently, among the several dozen people who vetted the State of the Union Address, not a single one bothered to check the facts of the matter. While that’s awfully hard to believe, it’s better than the alternative—that Obama knew what he would say was false, and he just didn’t care. The television coverage of that part of his speech got played over and over again on national TV. In numerous broadcasts, the scene was darkened so only one face showed clearly—that of Justice Samuel Alito. As the camera slowly focused on him, he could be seen shaking his head from side to side and mouthing the phrase, “not true.” But it could have been worse. He could have emulated Joe Wilson and shouted, “You lie!”

Barack’s Ignoble Award

2010-03-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

Barack Hussein Obama won the highest honor that the elitists of the international left can bestow on one of their own. His very own Nobel Peace Prize. Imagine that! And what has our president done to deserve this lofty honor? Why, in the words of an infamous “Saturday Night Live” sketch, nothing, absolutely nothing. I’ll come back to that hilarious skit in a moment. But first, let’s look a little closer at the curious timing of Obama’s award. Did you know that the Nobel Committee’s own regulations require that all nominations be postmarked by Feb. 1? This means that—if the rules were followed—Barack Obama was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize a mere 12 days after he was sworn into office. Twelve days in office and he’s already being considered for a Nobel Peace Prize? Give me a break! Does anyone anywhere really believe that this is how it actually happened? Let me suggest something that strikes me as incredibly obvious: The Nobel Committee broke its own rules to give Obama the award. Can’t you imagine a committee meeting with someone shouting the Norwegian equivalent of “Rules? Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules.” And of course it’s true. When it comes to honoring one of their own, and advancing the cause of their dubious socialist schemes, the elitists of the international left don’t need no stinkin’ rules. They can do whatever they want. That’s why they hate the very idea of being bound down by the chains of a constitution. These power-hungry sycophants always and everywhere love monopolies and dictatorships, so long as it’s one of their own who is in charge. That’s why they are so enraptured with the United Nations. But I digress. The plain and simple fact is that this year’s selection was rigged. This is far from the first time that the noble idea of a “peace prize” was prostituted to serve the ignoble ambitions of the left. Do you remember in 1994, when the Nobel Committee gave the honor to a thief and murderer named Yasser Arafat? It’s true that Arafat shared the award with the then-prime minister and foreign minister of Israel. But still, giving a “peace” prize to the father of modern terrorism? Arafat gloated about using the most heinous murder of innocent civilians to advance his aims. Oh, by the way, he also stole tens of millions of dollars from the very Palestinians he supposedly led to finance a life of luxury on the French Riviera and various world capitals. In a sane world, he would have been tried for murder and executed. Instead, he was the most frequent visitor to Bill Clinton’s White House among all so-called world leaders. What a travesty.
If that wasn’t enough to make you rush to the nearest vomitorium, how about the winners in 1973? In case you’ve forgotten, that’s when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Lu Duc Tho shared the award for negotiating the Vietnam peace accords. If you remember that Communists describe “peace” as “when all opposition has been eliminated,” then you’ll have to admit the committee got it right: Kissinger and gang made sure all opposition to a communist takeover of South Vietnam got slaughtered. Way to go, Mr. Secretary. But you don’t have to be a mass murderer, or even open the door to it, to be honored by the Nobel Committee. Slavish devotion to the left’s latest cause is often enough. How else would you explain the selection two years ago of former Vice President Al Gore? Even if you bought into all the skewed science and deliberate deceptions in “An Inconvenient Truth,” can you really contend with a straight face that he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize? Well, okay, I’ll grant you. He has done more to earn it than our Teleprompter-in-Chief. But that’s not saying much. By an extraordinary coincidence, two days before the award was announced, “Saturday Night Live” opened its Oct. 3 show with a skit skewering Barack Obama for accomplishing “nothing, absolutely nothing” since Inauguration Day. In case you missed it, the sketch featured actor Fred Armisen portraying the president and delivering a very sober speech to the American public. Here’s just part of that delicious put-down: “There are those on the right who are angry. They think that I’m turning this great country into something that resembles the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. But that’s just not the case. When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I’ve done so far—and that is nothing. Nada. Almost one year and nothing to show for it.” As he spoke, a checklist of promises appeared on the screen—global warming, immigration reform, gays in the military, limits on executive power, torture prosecutions, closing Guantanamo Bay, withdrawing from Iraq, healthcare reform, and so on. Armisen, as Obama, admitted very honestly how little his administration had accomplished. “Remember,” he said. “I can do whatever I want. I have a majority in both houses of Congress. I could make it mandatory for all gays to marry, and require all cars to run on marijuana. But do I? NO!” He then closed with this wonderful admission: “So looking at this list, I’m seeing two big accomplishments: JACK and SQUAT!” You’ve got to admit, sometimes the liberals get it right. Until next time, keep some powder dry.

A GREAT DAY IN UTAH

2010-03-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

I’m hearing from more and more people that last night was a truly great night for conservatives in Utah as Bob Bennett’s supporters were largely denied delegate spots to the State Convention. Across Utah, in most major areas, Bob Bennett’s supporters were shut out. In Provo, Bennett was able to come in first, but barely edged out Mike Lee. I’m getting reports from across the state, north to south, east to west, that Bob Bennett had a very, very bad night in Utah. He’s now going to have to jockey for position with the others in the race. Here’s the key though — we need to rally around a guy like Mike Lee who appears to have done well. We don’t want Bennett trying to cut deals with the others. Let’s hold their feet to the fire. Remember, Mitch McConnell said conservative dissatisfaction with Republican leadership is “not relevant.” We have the power to prove him wrong by tossing incumbent Republicans and more importantly this year rejecting the candidates the Washington Republicans have picked for us. At the end of the day, who do you think the NRSC backed candidates will be loyal to — the GOP leadership in DC or you?

PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON SAYS

2010-03-25T12:25:00.001-07:00

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

U.S. Pushes Pro-Abortion Language at U.N.

2010-03-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

The United States Mission to the United Nations is being accused of pressuring pro-life countries to sign onto a document on maternal mortality that stresses abortion and birth control. Peter Smith with the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and Jeanne Head of the National Right to Life Committee say the U.S. delegation, at the direction of the Obama administration, is pressuring other countries to drop their objections to pro-abortion language in the document. “We were told by different people that the U.S. was applying pressure to these countries who were pro-life,” Smith said. Head agreed: “Some were not allowed to put things in; they were pressured not to put things in. I would say it was pressure by stealth.” Measures to reduce maternal mortality have been known and practiced in the West for decades. They include blood transfusions, antibiotics for infection and treatment for high blood pressure. Life advocates are quick to add they do not include abortion.

The Real Cost of Health Care Reform

2010-03-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Tax increases are likely to top $500 billion over 10 years. The enactment of health care reform marked the beginning of one of the biggest tax hikes in American history. And families will pay the price. president Barack Obama signed the reform into law Tuesday and ushered in a massive tax increase for the American people. Democrats touted the plan as a way to reduce the deficit, but a closer inspection by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) shows a cost in new taxes of more than $500 billion over 10 years. Such numbers will have a chilling effect on an economy that is already struggling. "You can’t take $500 billion out of the economy and not have anybody notice it," said Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at ATR. "There’s going to be quite a lot of pain." Robert Book, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said nearly all Americans will be affected. "There are a number of taxes in the bill designed to pay for health care," he said. "Most of these taxes are broad-based taxes that apply to pretty much everybody." And that means American families will ultimately pay a steep price. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that insurance premiums for a family of four will increase by $2,100 a year. FOR MORE INFORMATION Don't miss Thursday's Focus on the Family radio broadcast, in which Tom Minnery will discuss the fiscal impact of health care reform. You can also listen to special messages from Tuesday and today. What do pro-life Americans do now that Congress has passed a health care bill that includes federal funding for abortion? Stuart Shepard gets insights from Tom Minnery on what to do next.

ROY BECK CRIMINALLY ASSAULTED

2010-03-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

Roy Beck was criminally assaulted Sunday, March 21, on Washington's National Mall by opponents of free speech coordinated by the Service Employees International Union. Roy was there to cover the pro-amnesty march. S.E.I.U. is the pro-illegal immigration union connected in media accounts with political intimidation and assaults in recent years. What happened Sunday continues S.E.I.U.'s and its allies' months-long strategy of dogging Roy's every public appearance, trying to shout him down or hounding event organizers to bar him from speaking. We have never tried to deny them their freedom of speech. But this time the S.E.I.U. went much further. It sent a team of attorneys dressed as "mimes" and S.E.I.U. employees to stalk, push, shove, harass and whistle down Roy and his TV crew for several hours. It was very aggressive, including incitement of the crowd toward violence. Roy filed criminal assault charges against the mimes and their S.E.I.U. organizers, who spent hours trying to block our webcast. (All of this can be seen and heard on the homepage of NumbersUSA.com.) When the Federal Park Police finally ordered the S.E.I.U. agitators to move away from Roy and our TV crew, one of the "mimes" took the confrontation to a new low by falsely accusing one of our colleagues of assaulting her -- some three hours after it supposedly took place! The Park Police, acting on the word of the agitators, hand-cuffed and arrested our colleague on the National Mall. (We got him out of custody before the night was over, but he still must fight the pending criminal charge in court!)

+ + + defend our wronged colleague to the hilt, including paying all his legal fees;
+ + + prosecute the opponents of free speech who assaulted Roy and tried to prevent our message from being heard;
+ + + stop physical violence and intimidation by our opponents by all legal and peaceful means. We are exploring appropriate remedies against the S.E.I.U.

For complete details of everything that happened on Sunday, go to the NumbersUSA.com homepage. It is explained at length in Roy's blogs and can be seen and heard on video clips.

+ + + Are we going to stand by and let our leader Roy Beck be constantly stalked -- even assaulted -- without adequate response?
+ + + More personally, are YOU willing to allow those who are already DEMANDING AMNESTY for 11 - 19 million illegal aliens to SILENCE NUMBERSUSA AND YOU about the subject?
+ + + Will you stand with us to stop physical violence against those who speak out against amnesty?
+ + + Will you help us defend our colleague and prosecute those who assaulted Roy?

This is a declaration of war. Remember me talking about the $30 million that our opponents have raised to shove an illegal alien amnesty down America's throat this year? Well, they are spending the money--big-time. And we've got to get ready. A week from Sunday, on March 21, our opponents will be busing as many as 100,000 pro-amnesty protestors to Washington, D.C., to march on the Capitol and demand an immediate amnesty for (in many cases) themselves and other illegal aliens now residing in America, taking our jobs and drawing our benefits. Did you read that carefully? 100,000 pro-amnesty protesters! Remember the illegal alien marches of three years ago. American flags being burned. Angry speeches and ugly scenes. They are not asking for an amnesty, they are demanding one.
Starting a week from Friday, we're going to throw everything we've got against them. We've got a very, very aggressive 4-day plan to counter their efforts we're calling "S.T.O.P. Amnesty." The "S" in STOP stands for Speak Out. The "T" stands for Teach. The "O" stands for Organize. And the "P" stands for Protect U.S. Workers. This thing is going to be big. VERY big, as you'll read below. So big, in fact, that it may bust the bank. AND THAT'S WHY I'VE GOT TO ASK TO BUST YOUR PIGGY BANK THIS MONTH AND MAKE YOUR FIRST CONTRIBUTION TO NUMBERSUSA. 100,000 angry, demanding, in many cases illegal demonstrators are coming here to Washington to DEMAND amnesty. WWill we let them pressure Congress into folding on this issue? I say "NO" Here's our plan. On FRIDAY, March 19, we will send our Local Power Teams to visit the local, district offices of every member of Congress. (You will have your own invitation to be part of this effort in other emails.) Did you read this carefully? We're going to visit the local, district offices of every Member of Congress! Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted by us before. UPDATE: NumbersUSA members visited over 400 Congressional district offices with over 7,000 activists last Friday!
These visits will demonstrate one huge difference between the opposition and us. THEY'VE got millions of bucks and rented buses. Just like a labor union or a military dictatorship, they can turn out a giant crowd to wave flags and shout slogans in whatever language is known by them.What WE have is Voters. Almost a million voters who are members of NumbersUSA. An additional million who've signed a one of our petitions or asked to be sent updates. These people are U.S. citizens. They all vote. In every election. They are all politically involved. One Saturday, March 20, we concentrate on teaching our members and faxing your Members of Congress and preparing to understand and respond to what's coming the next day. UPDATE: Faxes actually sent over four days -- 149,216!
Sunday, March 21, is D-day. Thousands of chartered buses roll into Washington. We will have continuous LIVE REPORTING from the National Mall, covering the protest on the home page of NumbersUSA all day long. We ask that you STAY GLUED. Using new technology, NumbersUSA will be televised to you computer screen all day long. So turn up your speakers, gather round your neighbors, and take in our unique and exhaustive coverage. We are embedding our video reporters right into the crowd at the protest. And in a very unique and bold move, NumbersUSA president Roy Beck debate any and all comers at the protest who want to discuss immigration numbers, amnesty, the future of America, and other issues. THIS WILL ALL BE COVERED LIVE. You will see and hear this on your computer. All day long, you'll be able to participate by typing in your comments and questions on the home page. Comments and questions will be instantly read and responded to. UPDATE: Viewers of our special website coverage over the four-day S.T.O.P. Amnesty campaign -- 90,000 on our website with over 60,000 watching live on Sunday. On Monday, March 22 we have a very special panel of immigration experts, including Members of Congress, discussing the realities of immigration and amnesty (as opposed to the ridiculous claims our opponents will have been making the day before).

America Rising An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

2010-03-22T10:30:00.001-07:00

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Gimme Back My Bullets - Support the American Republic

2010-03-22T10:26:00.001-07:00

The Philosophy of Liberty

2010-03-22T10:23:00.001-07:00

Obamacare

2010-03-22T10:21:00.001-07:00

Health Care Insurance is NOT A RIGHT - Part 1 of 2

2010-03-22T10:17:00.001-07:00

Health Care is NOT A RIGHT - Part 2 of 2

2010-03-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ronald Reagan on Socialism & Liberalism

2010-03-22T10:11:00.001-07:00

Heritage Foundations Response

2010-03-22T09:51:00.001-07:00

March 21, 2010 Is A Date That Will Live In Infamy

2010-03-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

America suffered an atrocity of catastrophic proportions last night and it’s not clear if the nation will ever recover.On Sunday a few hours after Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and his voting bloc sold out their country in order to advance legislation that nationalizes the healthcare industry, the infamous bill overwhelmingly opposed by the American people barely passed the House of Representatives on a vote of 219 to 212. Not a single Republican voted for the bill. (The screen grab above shows the moment, 10:45 p.m. Eastern, the 216-vote threshhold needed for passage was reached.) Because the measure was already approved by the Senate it goes straight to President Obama’s desk for his signature. Democrats expect the Senate bill will soon be amended to get rid of the corrupt giveaways in it (Sen. Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback and Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana Purchase) but they may be in for a rude shock because the Senate is under no obligation to accede to their wishes, but that’s a story for another day…
Slowly but surely medical doctors will become civil servants (and those who don’t will leave the profession), rationing boards (or death panels if you prefer) will decide who gets care and who doesn’t, hospitals will become like the DMV, and quality of care will suffer. Government healthcare kills so it is axiomatic that the legislation approved Sunday will end up killing people. In a sense March 21, 2010, may end up rivaling Sept. 11, 2001, in terms of its ultimate death toll. People will get on waiting lists and they will languish and die as they do in every country that has socialized medicine. If you get sick you better hope your illness is considered politically important enough to be treated or you won’t get treatment. If your disease has a strong enough lobby in Congress, then maybe you’ll live. If not, tough luck. Unless by some miracle this abominable legislation is reversed, historians will mark March 21, 2010, as the date on which America’s slide into impotence and irrelevance began as it prepared to take its place among the social(ist) democracies of Europe. After surviving four decades since its first suicide attempt, also known as the 1960s, America first issued a cry for help in November 2008 when the nation elected Barack Obama, a known leftist radical preternaturally comfortable in the presence of America-haters and terrorists, but the nation began to regain its senses a few months later and its will to live was restored. A Tea Party movement loosely modeled after the revolutionary protests that paved the way for America’s independence from Britain has helped America regain its will to live in the face of relentless statist and collectivist assaults. Let’s hope it’s not too late for America.

Obama Care...Pelosi Care..Democrat Care... Arent We Lucky!

2010-03-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

The President was right about one thing: The vote on Obamacare last night was a historic one. The Democratic Party has in the course of the nine-month health care debate revealed itself to be an anti-democratic Party and an anti-liberty party. It is a party that has demonstrated its contempt for the Constitutional framework, for the democratic process, and for the expressed will of the American people. Its brazen contempt for the compact that holds the diverse factions of this country together has initiated a political war at home that will extend not only into the next elections but into the next generations that will be encumbered with the trillions in debt and oppressive government controls that the socialist majority in Congress has demonstrated that it is intent on inflicting on this country.The people of this nation are still sovereign, and their voice will be heard. Last night’s vote was lost but it is not the end of the battle. It is the beginning. I want my country back! It seems like the ultra-liberals have been able to bribe and coerce enough congress-scumbags to pass the Obamacare. And as I said before, there would be hell to pay for this monstrosity. Obamacare is the very definition of unlimited government - the threat of which was forwarned by the Founding Fathers more than two centuries ago. The federal government, which is up to its neck in debt and unfunded liabilities, decided to launch the biggest entitlement of all times – the medical care for all. The spending on this new entitlement will surely dwarf many if not most of Federal programs and will make the bankruptcy of federal and state governments inevitable. The time of reckoning is at hand, brothers and sisters. Obamacare is the last breath of the liberal order – and it’s time to take America back from the party of thieves and looters. From now on, there is no coming back for the liberal elites, no talk of compromise and middle-ground. Today, it is abundantly clear that we either will live in Obama-America or America that our Founding Father envisioned. You cannot have both. The November elections will be the most important elections in our lifetime. If you don’t vote for America in November – you don’t deserve to be called an American. This is an outrage of a bill passed by liars, thieves, and whores. This cannot, and will not stand. Americans who value freedom will stand up to this, use any means necessary to fight and repeal this terrible action. I encourage everyone to start recall campaigns for against all the Democrats who voted for this thing, as it is clear that they have usurped their power. This November, We, the People must send every incumbent home to face the voters in their individual states. I intend to question my state government about bringing charges against each one of them for failing to uphold their oath of office. You have lived the nightmare of lost freedoms, we are near living that nightmare in what was formerly the "Shining light on a Hill". God Bless..............

CHICAGO ON THURSDAY JUST AS BO WAS ARRIVING

2010-03-12T22:37:00.000-08:00

Indoctrinate U pt.2/10

2010-03-12T14:51:00.001-08:00

The Obama Deception HQ Full length version

2010-03-12T14:39:00.000-08:00

POWER OF "0"

2010-03-12T14:37:00.001-08:00

MOON TALKS WELFARE

2010-03-12T14:27:00.001-08:00

OBAMA AT THE BAT

2010-03-12T14:06:00.001-08:00

RAHM EMANUEL INSPECTS ERIC MASSA IN 2006 (candid)

2010-03-12T14:05:00.001-08:00

Open Letter to President Obama About Rationing

2010-03-12T14:02:00.000-08:00

"CBS radio news this morning ran a clip of one of your recent speeches. In it, you criticize insurance companies because they “ration coverage … according to who can pay and who can’t.”

My first thought was “not exactly; coverage is rationed according to who pays and who doesn’t.” Ability to pay isn’t the same thing as actually paying, and what insurers care about is the latter. Many folks – especially young adults – have the ability to pay but choose not to do so. They get no coverage.

But further pondering of your point leads me to look beyond such nit-picking to see fascinating possibilities. Not only insurers, but all producers who greedily refuse to supply persons who don’t pay should be set aright. Now I’m sure that you don’t ration the supply of the books you write according to any criteria as sordid as requiring people actually to pay for them. But our society is full of people less enlightened than you.

For example, the typical worker rations his labor services according to who pays and who doesn’t. That must stop. Oh, and supermarkets! Every single one rations groceries according to who pays. Likewise with restaurants, clothing stores, home-builders, furniture makers, even lawyers! You name it, rationing is done according to who pays. Indeed, my own county government has been corrupted by this greedy attitude: if I don’t pay my taxes, the sheriff takes my house – effectively booting me out of the county merely because I didn’t pay for its services.
Preposterous!

I look forward to your changing this selfish and unfair system of rationing that for too long now has kept Americans impoverished.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux, Professor of Economics
George Mason University

IF DEMOCRATS PLAYED MONOPOLY

2010-03-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

Quotes from our Heroes

2010-03-12T13:53:00.000-08:00

Abraham Lincoln

"Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality."
"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.""Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."

Abigail Adams

"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."
“If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
"I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic."

Benjamin Franklin

"The idea of what is true merit should also be often presented to youth, explained and impressed on their minds, as consisting in an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one's country, friends and family; which ability is (with the blessing of God) to be acquired or greatly increased by true learning; and should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning." "I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.... I think also, that general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than from the exhortations of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented [in youth] than cured [in adults]. I think, moreover, that talents for the education of youth are the gift God; and that he on whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as strongly called as if he heard a voice from heaven…."

George Washington

"A primary object ... should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing ... than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?" "The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it." "We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience."

Henry Adams

"Teachers touch eternity. They never know where their influence stops." "They know enough who know how to learn."

James Monroe

"Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties." "What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?" "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Samuel Adams

"If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security."

Thomas Jefferson

"An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second." "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."

GUN CONTROL

2010-03-12T13:40:00.001-08:00

GOVERNMENT CHART RIGHT AND LEFT

2010-03-12T13:34:00.001-08:00

JIMMY CARTER TO VISIT UC MERCED

2010-03-12T13:31:00.001-08:00

WILL YOU STAND WITH ME?

2010-03-12T13:28:00.001-08:00

OPEN BORDERS

2010-03-12T13:20:00.001-08:00

JOBS

2010-03-12T12:59:00.001-08:00

History of Communism and Facism Part II

2010-03-12T11:55:00.001-08:00

History of Communism and Facism Part I

2010-03-12T11:38:00.005-08:00

BLACK RACE ANNIALATION BY PLANNED PARENTHOOD

2010-03-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

They were stolen from their homes, locked in chains and taken across an ocean. And for more than 200 years, their blood and sweat would help to build the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever known.
But when slavery ended, their welcome was over. America's wealthy elite had decided it was time for them to disappear and they were not particular about how it might be done. What you are about to see is that the plan these people set in motion 150 years ago is still being carried out today. So don't think that this is history. It is not. It is happening right here, and it's happening right now.

I'm a white father of a black child (adopted) and I'm angry at what this country has done to children and parents of children like my son. EVERYONE needs to see this film and take action to stop the farce called 'Planned Parenthood

This film is mandatory viewing for everyone concerned with the future of Black Americans and all people. African Americans are just the beginning. If you think the eugenicist Planned Parenthood agenda will end with the Black race you're mistaken. Witness? Oregon's physician assisted suicide law! Maafa21 a well done thoroughly researched production. Buy it, shout it, show it!

Businesses don't pay taxes

2010-03-11T12:24:00.001-08:00

Secretary Sebelius: whatever taxes you levy on insurance companies are not “ultimately” paid by those companies. Not one red cent of them. Those taxes are paid by people in four groups:

Policyholders who pay for insurance directly or in lieu of wages if provided by employers – via higher premiums and/or reduced benefits.
Employers buying health insurance for workers, who must then raise prices on goods and services, including milk and diapers – also known as inflation.
Wage earners who see jobs eliminated or full-time jobs replaced with part-time positions without benefits, and wages frozen or cut back – also known as unemployment and under-employment.
Shareholders and investors whose capital is essential to the stability of the entire industry (Every extra $1 you take from them in taxes is $1 taken out of private capital markets and poured into the bottomless pit of the trillions-sized deficit.)
You need to stop selling the public this despicable fairy tale. No insurance company can be taxed. Ever. It can be made to collect taxes from others and put them in a box and ship them to Washington. But it can’t be forced to pay taxes. Whatever tax you aim at insurance companies misses by a country mile and lands squarely in the laps of every working American.
Any such tax actually taxes every consumer of anything and everything – and not just those earning over $250,000.00. It’s not a something-for-nothing gift of health care from a government that merely grabs money from evil, heartless, rich insurance companies. It is sneaky, sleazy theft from everybody but insurance companies. Be ashamed.
If you’re spinning such nonsense out of honest ignorance, please, sit down with the owner of any business, large or small, and ask him to draw you a little picture. He’ll help you understand who pays your taxes and who doesn’t; who is punished and who can’t be punished with taxes. He can use little stick figures and different colors.
If you aren’t this ignorant, but are a knowledgeable liar, why? Are you really the kind of person to set aside any shred of integrity in order to push forward Obama’s fiction? Again, why?
It’d be nice to see somebody besides Sen. Judd Gregg refuse to be used as pawns and poster-children and lying weasels by the president. It’d be nice to see a “journalist” ask a tough, direct question, too.

HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK WE ARE?

2010-03-10T11:28:00.001-08:00

FREE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES

2010-03-10T11:26:00.001-08:00

We, the Free Citizens of the United States, do hereby resolve that the currently elected government of the United States, comprised at this time of both the Executive Branch (Obama Administration) and the Legislative Branch (111th U.S. Congress), have knowingly and willfully violated their sworn oath,

“…to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

We the People have closely considered the matters at hand, and find, therefore, that

1. War On Free Speech. The President has sought to silence the voices of free American citizens properly engaged in the exercise of their First Amendment rights. He has improperly utilized the power and influence of his High Office to intimidate his political opponents as they have expressed their lawful and legitimate concerns over his policies. Among many examples to be cited he has publicly declared, “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking…I want them to just get out of the way so we can clean up the mess…I don’t mind cleaning up after them…but don’t do a lot of talking!”

2. War On American Commerce and American Global Economic Leadership. The President and his Administration have proposed, and then vigorously pursued, the enactment into law of onerous new limitations over the lives and freedoms of all Americans in order to exert enormous and expensive new governmental bureaucracies designed to restrict the rightful freedoms of private Americans, and cap the production and distribution of the nation’s essential energy supplies.

3. Raiding The United States Treasury. The President and the Congress have committed the nation to massive new deficit spending bills by passing into law $787 Billion in new deficits – without ever having read the legislation before it was voted and passed

4. War On The Individual. The Administration has increasingly elevated and pursued its own concepts of “Diversity” rather than the ideals of individual liberties – in so doing it has failed to protect the equal Constitutional rights of all free American citizens.

5. War On Private Property. The President has proposed and willfully participated in the seizure of private property, violated the individual property rights of free Americans, and bypassed long-established U.S. legal precedent and procedure – as in the cases of the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler. In so doing, he has circumvented the laws of the United States and trampled on the rights of individual American shareholders and creditors. He has assumed dictatorial powers by intervening in the operational control over private companies, unilaterally firing the Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, in order to appoint his own handpicked successor. He has confiscated the assets and the substantial financial remains and resources owned and controlled by creditors and shareholders of these private companies, in order to pass such assets to his friends and political allies in labor unions, in grave violation of centuries of United States law and legal precedent.

6. War On The Unborn. Beginning with his first official act, The President has removed governmental restrictions which serve to protect the lives of innocent Americans. In so doing, he has forced all tax-paying American citizens to equally participate, many against their will, in financing the forced destruction of human life, thereby denying millions of our fellow American citizens the nation’s most sacred guarantees of “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

7. War On The U. S. Constitution – Executive Branch. The President has appointed officials not answerable to the Congress or to the People known as Czars, many with questionable backgrounds and philosophies at odds with traditional American principles of freedom and individual liberty. Not answerable to the people.

We hereby find the above mentioned officials, and their official bodies, to be sitting in violation of their sworn oaths.

We therefore resolve that all such aforementioned Executive and Legislative actions taken by these officials and their official bodies – including any and all regulations and/or legislation issued by such persons or institutions relative to the aforementioned grievances – are found to be without merit, and lacking legal force under the laws of the United States of America.

The Citizens Constitutional Congress does therefore declare and intend that all such referenced official acts and decrees of the United States government have been found by this Congress to be unlawful and are hereby rendered null and void.

– OFFICIAL SUMMONS –

The Citizens Constitutional Congress is required, from time to time, to issue Summons or subpoenas for testimony in cases which come before the Congress. The Citizens Constitutional Congress shall issue appropriate fines or other penalties to those persons ignoring such Summons to appear or offer testimony.

Any government official, whether directly elected by the People, or appointed to their official position by such a duly elected official, who is found to be in violation of his or her sworn oath, “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” or any other person who fails to appear before this Congress when properly issued this Summons to appear, shall be found to be in contempt of The Citizens Constitutional Congress.

WHO IS THE AL-QAEDA 7

2010-03-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

WE THE PEOPLE

2010-03-10T10:23:00.001-08:00

How the Old Media Deliberately Censored New Media Scoops in 2009

2010-01-25T18:08:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration was embarrassed by a series of revelations about its most radical actions, assumptions, and associations in 2009. While Fox News and the conservatives on talk radio and the Internet broke and developed these stories, Americans following only the "mainstream" media would never have heard these reports. Instead of acting as government watchdogs holding the people in power accountable, the nation’s broadcast news networks deliberately suppressed and de facto censored embarrassing scoops – at least until President Obama or Congress took action and made them impossible to ignore.

In many cases, this resistance to real news extended even to newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, which are supposed to be more substantive and thorough than highly-paid TV news talking heads or unpaid bloggers. A Media Research Center study of four such stories highlighted by the New Media in 2009 that were damaging to the Obama "brand" found that the news was not only slow in arriving, it was fast in disappearing:

# Van Jones. On September 3, blogger Jim Hoft reported that Obama "green jobs" guru Van Jones had signed a petition in 2004 demanding a probe into charges the Bush administration "deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur." Fox News Channel jumped on the story. But it didn’t draw a single story on ABC or NBC until after Jones resigned his office at the very start of September 6. CBS filed one, and ABC five. NBC never devoted a single full story to Jones (just mentioned him as a distraction in eight pieces). They noticed a few outrageous Jones remarks like suggesting a black child would never shoot up a school, but never noticed Jones calling himself a communist. Even the newspapers were stubborn in their avoidance: the Washington Post failed to publish a story until the morning before Jones resigned, and the New York Times failed to publish a story until after he resigned.

# ACORN. On September 10, the website Big Government exposed with shocking hidden-camera footage how the leftist Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in Baltimore advised a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute how to shelter their illegal income from taxes, even as they claimed they were bringing in under-age girls from Latin America to be their sex workers. While the video aired heavily on Fox News, the broadcast network evening news shows stayed silent for five days until Congress moved to deny the group’s millions in federal funding. (ABC broke the network blackout on Saturday morning, September 12 to briefly note the Census Bureau cut off ties to the group.) While the journalists kept releasing videos from ACORN offices – in Washington D.C., Brooklyn, and San Diego – in the end, ABC and CBS aired only one full story, NBC three. As the rest of the country was laughing at Jay Leno ACORN skits, the networks didn’t find it a laughing proposition when President Obama claimed to George Stephanopoulos: "Frankly, it’s not something I've followed closely," adding he had not been aware that ACORN received much federal money. None noted the comment or Obama’s long relationship with the group in Chicago, working as an ACORN trainer and even as ACORN’s attorney in court.

# Obama’s Aide and Mao. After White House communications director Anita Dunn slammed Fox News Channel as either "the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party" in October, Glenn Beck’s FNC show unearthed video of her speaking at a 2009 graduation where she lightly declared that mass-murdering Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong was "one of my favorite philosophers." This speech clip was completely ignored by ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, Time, Newsweek, USA Today, and the New York Times.

# Climategate. In late November, the New York Times reported that hacked e-mails from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia in England exposed how the scientific experts cited so often by the media on global warming called their opponents "idiots," proposed censoring them from scientific journals, and twisted scientific data to support their policy agenda. This would be a bombshell if the hacked e-mails came from an oil company manipulating data, calling their opponents idiots, and proposing they be censored. The scandal threatened to ruin President Obama’s campaign to push for drastic energy-reduction goals at a summit in Copenhagen. The networks ignored it for two entire weeks, and then when they decided to cover it, ABC, CBS, and NBC each only gave these revelations two full stories, which denigrated the scandal’s political or scientific importance. Compared to those six stories, the Big Three devoted 57 full stories and interviews during the same two weeks to the less substantive White House "gate crasher" scandal after the first Obama state dinner.

The report concludes that the Old Media are in danger of losing even more audience members as long as they refuse to acknowledge news until after Democrats in Congress or the White House decide it’s news. As much as the Old Media has suggested the New

Blow Out Congress

2010-01-22T17:46:00.001-08:00

www.BlowOutCongress.com

Muslims Taking Over World

2010-01-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

The Second American Revolution

2010-01-06T16:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Obama

2010-01-06T16:05:00.001-08:00

Freedom Ain't Free

2010-01-06T15:53:00.001-08:00

We The People Again

2010-01-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

We The People

2010-01-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

Rich in Excuses

2010-01-06T15:38:00.000-08:00

America has gone from the land of personal responsibility to the land of pathetic excuse-making, from top down, bottom up; and worse, to accepting of excuses – and the entire thing should be a cause for visceral disgust. The ‘culture of excuse acceptability’ has led us to this point, and if we don’t reverse it, it will doom us. Examples are everywhere: A whole clown car full of government incompetents damn near got 200+ people blown out of the sky on Christmas Day and not one has stepped up to say, “I screwed up, and I resign – and I’m giving back my pay for the past year as I go out the door, my head hung in shame.” The watchdogs that for years let Madoff go on defrauding people of millions all have. Why haven’t they all been fired? Or had the honor to throw themselves on their swords? And when will something – anything – be Obama’s responsibility? (An Associated Press report in the Sunday newspapers says that the Democrats’ mid-term 2010 strategy will be to blame Bush. Maybe by the end of Obama’s third term, he’ll take ownership of something. The media goes along with all this rather cheerfully. I believe I’ve caught talking-heads on every network pondering the Christmas terrorist’s motivations. He comes from an affluent family, he has a good education; why, oh why, would he hate us so? What have we done to him? Well, perhaps he just wasn’t held enough as a child.
How ‘bout all those folks who bought homes they couldn’t possibly afford by taking out mortgages without bothering to read or make sure they understood the documents? Well, that’s the bankers’ fault, of course. And the obese waddling about? Fast food industry devils. People who knew the industry in which they were employed was shrinking and inevitably dying, and who had years to prepare themselves financially, educationally and professionally to adapt are just the victims of evil out-sourcers. I cringe even when my local TV news describes somebody assaulted at 3:00 A.M. in a dark public park known as a drug dealing mart, across the street from a night-club famous for after-hours violence, as a “victim.” Seems to me he was more of a “volunteer.” And we all might be better served by identifying him as such.
We desperately need more honest public discussion. Calling acts of terrorism and war against America, intended to mass-murder us “man-caused disasters” is embarrassing. Arguing over the merits of extending government run health care to illegal immigrants is insane; what part of the word “illegal” is incomprehensible or ambiguous? Extending some version of “the Twinkie defense” for every imaginable act of irresponsibility is not helping us at all. Somali pirates aren’t at fault; they’re poor, and deserve our compassionate understanding. At what point do we raise the matter of personal responsibility?A report in my Sunday paper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, says 1 in 8 Americans receive food stamps – 1 in 8. Liberals would say it is shameful for America, the richest nation on earth to permit 1 of every 8 of its citizens to live in such poor conditions. We need to say it is shameful for many of these food stamp recipients to be in such a situation and to continue relying on hand-outs. We need to ask them what they are doing to remedy their situation, to improve their circumstances. I am not insensitive to those in temporary trouble; when I was young, my parents were on food stamps for about two months. I know trouble can arrive uninvited. But I also know that, among these 1 in 8, are huge numbers of long-term losers not exerting the slightest effort to fix their problems and get off the dole. And we have methodically removed the shame and stigma, even the inconvenience of getting the hand-out; it is electronically deposited to food-stamp cards on the 1st of each month – a time that Wal-Mart reports a sales surge. There’s no shame in being broke. There is shame in staying broke, in this, the richest-in-opportunity nation on earth. So far it looks like the new decade, even more than the last, will be one of tolerating, sanctioning, accepting – even celebrating – entitlement, victimhood, and abdication of personal responsibility. It’s an unsustainable philosophy for the nation. If it is accepted as norm, financial and moral bankruptcy will inevitably follow. If we are rich in excuses, we’ll be rich in nothing else.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Bonus's

2010-01-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

The network news media cheered when Obama called for restrictions on CEO pay or bonuses that, according to reporters, exemplify the Wall Street “greed” that toppled the American economy.
But when $42 million in cash compensation packages were announced on Christmas Eve for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, the networks couldn’t muster any anger toward the highly connected groups. Although Fannie and Freddie were two government-sponsored enterprises whose excessive risk taking contributed significantly to the housing crisis, the networks barely reported the story at all.But since the Christmas Eve announcement of millions in salaries and bonuses and the Obama administration’s pledge of “unlimited financial assistance” to the mortgage giants, ABC and CBS offered a total of three brief mentions totaling 175 words about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. NBC hasn’t mentioned them at all.Not a single one of those reports used the word “bonus” or mentioned the decision to extend the credit line of both government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), which already required more than $100 billion from taxpayers.

Defend Your Healthcare

2009-08-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Obama says: "But keep in mind - I mean this is something that I can't emphasize enough - you don't have to participate. If you are happy with the health care that you've got, then keep it."

THE TRUTH: The health bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.

Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these "qualified plans." If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year "grace period" to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you'll have less time.

And as soon as anything changes in your contract - such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year - you'll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).

When you file your taxes, if you can't prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you'll be fined thousands of dollars - as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size - and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).

It's one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone's consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.
Obama says: "I want to start by taking a new approach that emphasizes prevention and wellness so that instead of just spending billions of dollars on costly treatments when people get sick, we're spending some of those dollars on the care they need to stay well, things like mammograms and cancer screenings and immunizations, common-sense measures that will save us billions of dollars in future medical costs."
THE TRUTH: The truth is that the second most prevalent disease of aging -- cancer -- is largely linked to genetics and unknown causes. It's occurrence increases with age. Your risk of being diagnosed with cancer doubles from age 50 to 60 according to the National Cancer Institute.

The risk of some forms of heart disease can be reduced through healthy living. But other forms are linked to genetics. Shifting resources from treatment to prevention will leave patients who become sick inadequately cared for. In addition, virtually all studies show that prevention saves lives but not money. Eighty percent of preventive interventions add to medical costs. The reason is simple. Most people who take cholesterol lowering drugs or get mammograms wouldn't get sick anyway. The evidence is so conclusive that the only people who claim prevention saves money are politicians.

Obama says: "Nobody is talking about reducing Medicare benefits. Medicare benefits are there because people contributed into a system. It works. We don't want to change it."
THE TRUTH: The Congressional majority wants to pay for its $1 trillion health bills with a $500+ billion cut to Medicare. This cut will come just as Medicare enrollment increases by 30%. Less money and more patients will necessitate rationing.

The assault against seniors began in February with the stimulus package, which slipped in comparative effectiveness research, generally a code for limiting care based on the patient's age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of a treatment is divided by the number of years that the patient is likely to benefit. In Britain, the formula leads to denying treatments for older patients who have fewer years to benefit from care than younger patients.

In a 7/17 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, White House budget chief Peter Orszag urged Congress to delegate its authority over Medicare to a newly created body within the executive branch. This measure is designed to circumvent the democratic process and avoid accountability to the public for cuts in benefits.

Betsy McCaughey Exposes Obama Healthcare Lies

2009-08-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

OBAMACARE CALLED 'EUTHANASIA BILL'

2009-08-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

Alert: The Democrats' proposed national health insurance plan would dictate medications, treatments and mental health services; determine coverages individuals are allowed to have; and operate with real-time access to personal bank accounts, according to a new analysis.

And it's worse, a critic said, than China's mandatory one-child policy."In the same way that the bill pushes elderly or the sick toward euthanasia, it is a pill that would cause economic suicide," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. "It's a euthanasia bill for America." Congress members have admitted they have not read the more-than-1,000-page bill, and Staver's organization is one of the first to go through it and offer an analysis.In the Liberty Counsel analysis, Staver notes that under Section 163, the government would be allowed to have real-time access to individuals' finances, including direct access to bank accounts for electronic funds transfers.Under Section 1308, the analysis finds, the government will dictate marriage and family therapy as well as mental health services, including the definitions of those treatments.

Will the elites control life itself? 'The Emerging Brave New World' documents the battle against the sanctity of life ethic Under Section 1401, a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research would be set up, creating a bureaucracy through which federal employees could determine whether any treatment is "comparatively effective" for any individual based on the cost, likely success and probably the years left in life.

It also, according to Staver, "covers abortions, transsexual surgeries, encourages counseling as to how many children you should have, whether you should increase the interval between children." The plan would allow, in Section 1401, for the collection of information about individuals' health records, both "published and unpublished," and recommend policies for public access to data. "It reflects a repressive regime worse than China's one-child policy," Staver told WND. "It's going down the road for a government that manages the most intimate matters of your life regarding health and safety."

Further, the plan is created to be the "only game in town," he said. And as people age or get sicker, it includes mandatory "consultations" offering suggestions on how to end life sooner, he said. The Liberty Counsel staff that did the research was "astonished" by what they found. J. Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs for Liberty Counsel, said in a commentary the bill reflects the influence of those who now surround President Obama.

"His choice of Harvard professor and self-styled 'neo-Malthusain' John Holdren as 'science czar' provides the latest and perhaps most troubling example of just how bad America really muffed it last November," Barber wrote. "In the name of population control, Holdren has advocated both forced abortion and compulsory sterilization through government-administered tainting of the water supply. In a book he co-authored, entitled 'Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,' Holdren calls for a 'Planetary Regime' to enforce mandatory abortions and limit the use of natural resources," he wrote. Staver pointed to some of Holdren's outrageous suggestions, such as implanting sterility capsules in girls at puberty and extracting them only when they obtain government permission to have children. For men, he has suggested putting additives in the water system to cause sterility.
Barber wrote that Holdren has affirmed he believes there is "ample authority" under the U.S. Constitution for population growth to be "regulated." "Even ... laws requiring compulsory abortion … could be sustained under the existing Constitution," Holdren suggested.

Nina May, founder of Renaissance Women, added to the arguments. She cited a 1948 Hitchcock movie about murder in which the victim's body is hidden in plain sight.
"The health care bill that Obama proposes has this theme at its core and has in its crosshairs the Baby Boomer engine that is pulling the derailed economy as it takes its final lap toward retirement. In less than two years, Baby Boomers will begin retiring in multitudes, expecting to reclaim the hard earned money they have been paying into Social Security. But this Health Care Bill, HR3200, has other plans for them," she wrote."Those 65 and older will be required to undergo mandatory 'end of life' counseling to determine if they are worthy to continue to not only live, but take much needed resources from those who are younger and more worthy to receive them. Counselors will be trained to discuss how to end life sooner, how to decline nutrition and hydration, how to go into hospice, etc.," she said.

"This will not be done without coercion. For those who have amassed assets enough to take care of themselves in their old age will have these assets confiscated in the name of fiscal responsibility, because by this time, every citizen will be entered into a national database under the guise of improved efficiency. This database will be run by a type of 'star chamber,' appointed by the president, that will determine whether or not you deserve the much needed operation your personal doctor thinks you need," she said. The Liberty Counsel analysis also pointed out the government would be allowed to ration health care procedures, prevent "judicial review" of its decision, tell doctors what income they can have, impose new taxes for anyone not having an "acceptable" coverage, regulate whether seniors can have wheelchairs, penalize hospitals or doctors whose patients require "readmission," prevent the expansion of hospitals and set up procedures for home visits by health care analysts.
Under Section 440, Liberty Counsel said, the government "will design and implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids and families that expect children." And Section 194 provides for a program that has the government "coming into your house and teaching/telling you how to parent," LC said.

WND reported earlier when Betsy McCaughey, the former New York state officer, told former presidential candidate Fred Thompson during an interview on his radio program the health care plan includes consultations for seniors on how to die. "One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session," she said. "They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner." The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend "palliative care and hospice" for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death. The measure requires "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available." (WND)

Captain's Criticism and the Crews Response

2009-07-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

There's an old sea story in the Navy about a ship's captain who inspected his sailors, and afterward told the chief boson's mate that his men smelled bad.

The captain suggested perhaps it would help if the sailors would change their underwear occasionally.

The chief responded, "Aye, aye sir, I'll see to it immediately!"

The chief went straight to the sailors berth deck and announced, "The captain thinks you guys smell bad and wants you to change your underwear. "Pittman, you change with Jones; McCarthy, you change with Witkowski; and Brown, you change with Schultz. Now get to it!!!"

THE MORAL: Someone may be promising "Change"; but don't count on things smelling any better!!

Tax the rich....if there are any left....

2009-07-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

A Boston.com article describes in ugly detail the dire revenue predictions for the state coffers. Read it here: http://www.boston.com/news/loc... I don't know if I have ever heard such ugly descriptions of the state's economic situation."State Revenues are continuing to collapse", "Every day it gets worse and worse", "The state treasury could be depleted of all its funds by the end of the year", "Its fallen of the cliff, literally fallen off the cliff" are some of the frightening comments made from state Senators, the State Treasurer and taxpayer groups.

In the meantime, a solidly liberal state legislature feels that part of the remedy is to tax the sales of goods in Massachusetts at a higher rate than before. Most people realize that we live in a state that neighbors other states with lower/no sales tax, which provides opportunity for out of state retailers to steal business from border town residents that don't want to pay the additional tax. If the sales tax does rise from 5% to 6.5% it would create a major price difference on large ticket items. A $100 radio bought in Nashua costs $100, but that same radio bought in Massachusetts will cost $106.50. In today's economy will people travel to Nashua to save $6.50? Maybe or maybe not, but if they are going to Nashua to save a couple bucks on a radio they may as well stay and shop some more and save money on tools, housewares, home decor, auto parts and everything else they can fit in the car before their ride home. I would like someone to calculate the lost business from every Massachusetts resident that travels to Nashua to shop. Is every car driving north equal to a loss in MA retail business of $250 or more?

Then there is discussion of an increase in income tax. "Those people who can afford to pay more should do so" we hear from the left. "Tax the rich" is the siren song of the liberals. It sounds good somehow because nobody considers themselves rich - until the tax gets approved. The increase in income tax and other taxes such as restuarant taxes and local options taxes are like little mice eating away at your income and savings.

Here is a hint to our friends in the legislature. There are huge numbers of people out of work. The people that are working are not spending money freely because they don't feel financially safe. State revenues are down in part because of losses sustained on Wall Street. People who lose money on investments don't pay tax on losses.

So where are the rich? Who among us is doing so well that they can afford to pay more? Our state leaders should have learned long ago that drops in state revenues is a direct reflection of poor taxpayers. In the last year the average 401k plan has lost about 40 percent. The average home has lost about 30 percent of its value. 3.5 to 4.0 million Americans have lost jobs. Somehow the Massachusetts state legislature thinks this is a good time to reach into your pockets and take a lttle more than before. The pockets are empty... I listen as people talk about trying to find part time jobs to keep up with their spending. They have cut back spending so deeply that they are not sure kids can stay in college, not sure mortgages will be paid, not sure they can afford healthcare. The consensus in the room was that jobs in the industry would not return for 12 to 18 months. So where are the rich? Haven't the rich lost their jobs as well? Haven't the rich lost 40% of their 401k as well? Haven't the rich got themselves upside down on mortgages like so many others? I know lots of people that are still working, but have taken a pay cut to stay employed. I consider them lucky...

My point is this, we need deep cuts in state spending. We need to start cutting the jobs left and right in order to stop the losses. Massachusetts taxpayers have been partners all along and suffered with broken promises of 'temporary' tax increases and loads of other bullsh*t thrown at us from lying legislators. They can't give any more. The rich are gone. Massachusetts needs real reform in how their state government works. No sales tax inrease. No income tax icrease. No more taxes.....

Swine Flu Quiz

2009-07-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

1 - As of Mothers Day, 2009 (May 10) how many US residents have died of the dreaded, deadly Swine Flu Pandemic?
A) 3
B) 3,000
C) 3,000,000
D) 300,000,000
E) Global Warming

2 - How many people die of the 'ordinary' flu each year?

A) 3
B) 3,600
C) 36,000
D) 36,000,000
E) Global Warming

3 - As of May 6, How many schools were temporarily closed across the nation due to Swine Flu?

A) 7
B) 725
C) 7,250,000
D) 725,000,000,000,000
E) Global Warming

4 - Which major party wanted to cut $900,000,000 from pandemic emergencies from the federal budget, and were ridiculed for jeopardizing public safety?

A) Republicans
B) Democrats
C) Arlen Specter
D) Global Warming

Answers below:

1 - # of deaths Swine Flu = 3
2 - # of deaths ordinary Flu = 36,000
3 - # of schools closed = 725
4 - Which party cut spending = Republicans.

Last thoughts - 3 people have died and had the $900 million dollars been left in the budget it would have meant and average of $300,000,000 per fatality. The GOP was ridiculed by liberal bloggers for playing politics while making the budget cuts. Meanwhile hundreds of schools were closed, an estimated 54,000 students were forced to stay home during the 'crisis' and the death rate is miniscule compared to an ordinary flu season. Only God knows how much money has been spent on this silly Swine Flu, but I would estimate in the billions...

All that, and the federal government thinks it can manage our healthcare system. Good F'in luck with that Barack Obama....

Babies Born to Unwed Mothers on the Rise

2009-07-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Here are the statistics from the latest research. And I should apologize up front for the harsh nature of this post, but this really burns my ass. These kids deserve better from their parents.

More than 1,700,000 children born to unmarried women in the US in 2007. That represents a 26% increase from 2002. It also represents a 100% increase from 1980.

Unmarried women giving birth now represents 39.7% of all births, which is up from 34%in 2002.

The federal report did not examine the cause of this trend. Which makes me wonder why bother doing the research if you are not going to determine a cause. (Actually, I think they know the cause and don't want to say it)

So in a nutshell - more children in the United States are bastards! I know that word is ugly, but it is accurate. And those children will be more likely to grow up to produce more bastards than before due to the lessening social stigma of childbirth out of wedlock. I remember a guy named Dan Quayle that predicted this very thing due to Hollywood's sensationalizing of a woman named Murphy Brown. Of course having a bunch of slutty moronic actresses running around Hollywood having kids out of wedlock doesn't help things any.

This is a classic example of how moderate social values will conflict with conservative economic values. These kids will far more likely need to be supported by government programs. The mothers are also far more likely to be supported by government programs. The children will be far more likely to face incarceration, fewer job prospects, quit school, etc.

It looks to me like the liberals in Washington have the bastard factories in full swing... Soon enough it will be time to harvest the generation of Americans that have spent their entire life on government subsidy programs.

300,000-people-killed-by-climate-change-each-year

2009-07-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Or so says the latest report from former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. This report details that about 300,000,000 people are directly and seriously affected by the 'silent crisis', but he is so concerned about the 300,000 that die each year, mostly in 3rd world countries. Read some details here: http://news.aol.com/article/cl...

Speaking to CNN's Becky Anderson in London on Friday, Annan said the migration of people from newly uninhabitable areas presents a security issue that needs to be addressed by the United Nations Security Council. "This is one of the reasons why I've described climate change as all encompassing," he told CNN. "This threat to our health, this threat to food production, this threat to security. It raises political tensions, it will have people on the move -- and they are on the move -- and many more which will bring tensions." Newly uninhabitable areas are causing people to move in order to survive and this is what is causing the deaths!

Let me tell you what I know about this situation. First, Kofi Annan comes from a family of criminals and if you don't believe that then please Google 'Food for Oil Scandal' and see read about his son's and brother's involvement with scandalizing a UN program to provide food to poor people. Second, the primary reason people in these 3rd world countries are moving is not because of climate change, but rather because they are generally nomadic tribes that are constantly and historically on the move. These nomadic cattle herdsman must move by definition of being herdsmen. Their cattle must eat and constantly be fed, which requires moving from location to location across the African continent. It is the grazing process that kills the vegetation and everntually strips off the topsoil causing it to wash away. This is called desertification, it is not climate change.

If you don't believe me then please read this article regarding the ongoing trouble in Africa caused by the nomadic lifestyle and inconsistent rainfall over the last 40 years. http://www.faqs.org/minorities...

Here is a great website defining desertification: http://alliance.la.asu.edu/mod...

Nomadic tribes, who inhabit the Sahel, raise herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. Since the nomads depend upon the Sahel for grazing their livestock, they travel across the Sahel in search of grasslands. Unfortunately, due to rapid population growth and recent droughts, the fragile vegetation of the Sahel is being destroyed by the practice of overgrazing. Overgrazing occurs when nomadic herders allow too many animals to graze on the land for an extended period of time. This causes the natural grasses to die out. Without plant life, there is nothing left to hold down the precious topsoil, the layer of nutrient-rich soil that enables plants to grow. Dry winds then blow away the naked topsoil and sand from the Sahara's fringes overtakes the land. This "spreading of deserts" into once productive grasslands is called desertification and it is occurring at an alarming rate in the Sahel. But, never underestimate Kofi Annan's desire to rip off suckers like the ones currently running our federal government. He will tap into the 'global warming' psychosis plaguing America and get billions for his little report. The beauty is that the US gets to feel guilty about hurting poor little African kids and we get to hand over our hard earned money to help. It's a win-win for every moonbat across the country....

People, global warming/climate change is crap. This idea about the earth burning up is crazy and it is increasingly being used to pry our hard earned money from our hands by a government that loves feeling guilty about being big and strong. Kofi Annan should be in jail, not writing bullsh*t reports that will be used to cripple our economy, destroy our jobs and reduce us to one of the 3rd world countries.

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSO. opposes Obama's health care plan....

2009-07-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

The American Medical Association, a physicians organization with 250,000 members has informed the Obama administration that it strongly opposes the public health care plan being put forth by the current legislature and Obama administration.
The AMA feels that a public healthcare option would be implemented using a low cost feature subsidized by the federal government. This public option would under-price the private options causing a flood of customers to drop the private care options and enroll in the public option, thus driving costs ever higher and beyond the nation's ability to keep pace.

If private insurers are pushed out of the market, the group said, "the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers."
Also important in the AMA argument is that physicians do not want to be forced into the program. But, any Doctor that accepts Medicare payments for treating patients would be forced to join the program.

Under a proposal favored by many Democrats, doctors who take Medicare patients would also have to participate in the new public plan. Democrats say that requirement is needed to make sure the public plan can go into business right away with a large network of doctors. The medical association said it "cannot support any plan design that mandates physician participation." For one thing, it said, "many physicians and providers may not have the capability to accept the influx of new patients that could result from such a mandate."

"In addition," the A.M.A. said, "federal programs traditionally have never required physician or other provider participation, but rather such participation has been on a voluntary basis." Here is what bothers me right now: The Obama administration has been developing precedent for this very thing. Let's use the auto industry as an example, shall we? The Obama administration makes the claim that the industry is falling apart and without government intervention will be bankrupt. They force an infusion of federal monies into the system and then demand adherence to the later imposed regulations. This is the exact same argument they will make for health care. They will claim that the system is broken and can't wait any longer. They will force federal monies into the system and demand adherence to new policies put forth after the infusion of monies.

The camel already has its nose under the edge of the tent by allowing the federal government to demand adherence through the use of Medicare funding. So Doctors are being presented with the option of 'joining' the plan or 'losing valuable customers'. In other words, it is 'Obama's way or the highway". Once the Doctors are in the system then they will be forced to take pay cuts as mandated by the "Pay Czar" that is new in town.

Folks, Obama is the real deal. He is determined to bring us to socialism and he has the recipe that will work. We are watching a scary moment in time as our capitalist system gets rewired for socialism. Obama has nationalized our banks, our auto industry and very soon our health care system. This has all happened in the first 150 days of his administration.

My Advice to Sgt. Crowley

2009-07-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

My advice to Sgt. Crowley

My advice is this: Stand Strong.

Over the last 24 to 48 hours dramatic changes have occurred in the coverage of the Gates vs Crowley incident. Suddenly everyone is talking about getting them to sit and talk. The Boston Globe wants to know what it would take to get Gates and Crowley to sit down and talk about how each made a regrettable mistake. 'Why can't we just give peace a chance?'.

This is not a sign that we have suddenly found the ugly smell of racism intolerable and we all now want to talk of harmony. No indeed. It is not about harmony at all.
When this story first broke the headlines were definitive. It was clear to the mainstream media what had happened. An angry white cop arrested a distinguished Harvard scholar in his own home simply for being black. Without knowing the facts Governor Deval Patrick called the situation "Every black man's worst nightmare" and President Barack Obama chimed in with "the Cambridge police acted STUPIDLY". There was immediate talk of lawsuits, civil rights activists coming to town, police resignations and retraining for the ignorant masses behind the badge.

The sides had seemingly polarized and Sgt Crowley's side seemed outnumbered. The mainstream media had him labeled as a 'white cop'. That was all we seemed to know about Crowley. He was white and he was a cop. On the other side we had the renowned Harvard Professor. His academic achievements were listed and news reports touted his close associations with Governors, Harvard University, Radio, television and even the President of the United States. He was described as an intellectual giant, noted historian, author and pioneer in the study of black heritage. All of which is true by the way. We had a David and Goliath scenario painted for us by a media anxious to rekindle the embers of white versus black.

But then things changed. People began to examine the facts. Crowley wasn't an angry white cop looking to knock some sense into a black man's head with a club. Crowley was a good cop. His professional history was praised by Police Unions and his superiors. Support for Crowley began to increase and we realized that not only is Crowley not racist, and never was, but he volunteers time to train new officers in the avoidance of racial profiling. He is a father of three, loving husband, good friend and not at all the racist he was described as by Gates.

Further facts begin to surface as people read the official police reports. Gates was arrested but not 'in' his house as many reported. He was outside. He wasn't arrested for being black, he was arrested for being a disturbance, which is supported by the witnesses. Gates wasn't cooperative as first reported, but outright refused to provide identification. Now the recorded 911 call and Sgt. Crowley's call to headquarters are being reviewed as they may offer physical evidence supporting Crowley - not Gates.

The tide has turned and wildly so into Crowley's favor. Gates is going to lose this public campaign to label Crowley a racist. We will find that Gates was just as belligerent as Crowley described him to be. We will find that the charges should not have been dropped at all.

The liberal response - get out now with as little damage as possible. The media and political talking heads are now speaking of a sit down meeting between the two so each can admit they were wrong. My advice to Crowley - don't. A sh*t sandwich has been served up by professor Gates and the left wants you to eat half of it. Don't bite. You did nothing wrong. When all the facts are revealed we will learn what many of us already suspected - Gates was tired, exhausted and just wanted to get home to his living room after a long trip. But, Gates was also disturbed that a white, working class cop should question him while casting a shadow on his prestigious doorstep. How dare a white cop question him! Gates felt he was beyond reproach - after all, just look at all the college degrees. Gates was acting like an opportunist in order to avoid arrest.

The charge of racism is severe. I am glad the charges against Gates were dropped and my advice is for Gates to walk away and perhaps even apologize to Crowley. Then we will know we have reached equality in this world.

The Truth About the Homosexual Rights Movement

2009-07-28T13:19:00.001-07:00

This is one of the most powerful articles we've seen on this subject. At the very least, every state legislator should read this.

There was a "gay" bookstore called Lobo's in Austin, Texas, when I was living there as a grad student. The layout was interesting. Looking inside from the street all you saw were books. It looked like any other bookstore. There was a section devoted to classic "gay" fiction by writers such as Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and W.H. Auden. There were biographies of prominent "gay" icons, some of whom, like Walt Whitman, would probably have accepted the homosexual label, but many of whom, like Whitman's idol, President Lincoln, had been commandeered for the cause on the basis of evidence no stronger than a bad marriage or an intense same-sex friendship. There were impassioned modern "gay" memoirs, and historical accounts of the origins and development of the "gay rights" movement. It all looked so innocuous and disarmingly bourgeois. But if you went inside to browse, before long you noticed another section, behind the books, a section not visible from the street. The pornography section. Hundreds and hundreds of pornographic videos, all involving men, but otherwise catering to every conceivable sexual taste or fantasy. And you would notice something else too. There were no customers in the front. All the customers were in the back, rooting through the videos. As far as I know, I am the only person who ever actually purchased a book at Lobo's. The books were, in every sense of the word, a front for the porn.

So why waste thousands of dollars on books that no one was going to buy? It was clear from the large "on sale" section that only a pitifully small number of books were ever purchased at their original price. The owners of Lobo's were apparently wasting a lot of money on gay novels and works of gay history, when all the real money was in pornography. But the money spent on books wasn't wasted. It was used to purchase a commodity that is more precious than gold to the gay rights establishment. Respectability. Respectability and the appearance of normalcy. Without that investment, we would not now be engaged in a serious debate about the legalization of same-sex "marriage." By the time I lived in Austin, I had been thinking of myself as a gay man for almost 20 years. Based on the experience acquired during those years, I recognized in Lobo's a metaphor for the strategy used to sell gay rights to the American people, and for the sordid reality that strategy concealed.

This is how I "deconstruct" Lobo's. There are two kinds of people who are going to be looking in through the window: those who are tempted to engage in homosexual acts, and those who aren't. To those who aren't, the shelves of books transmit the message that gay people are no different from anyone else, that homosexuality is not wrong, just different. Since most of them will never know more about homosexuality than what they learned looking in the window, that impression is of the greatest political and cultural importance, because on that basis they will react without alarm, or even with active support, to the progress of gay rights. There are millions of well-meaning Americans who support gay rights because they believe that what they see looking in at Lobo's is what is really there. It does not occur to them that they are seeing a carefully stage-managed effort to manipulate them, to distract them from a truth they would never condone.

For those who are tempted to engage in homosexual acts, the view from the street is also consoling. It makes life as a homosexual look safe and unthreatening. Normal, in other words. Sooner or later, many of these people will stop looking in through the window and go inside. Unlike the first sort of window-shopper, they won't be distracted by the books for long. They will soon discover the existence of the porn section. And no matter how distasteful they might find the idea at first (if indeed they do find it distasteful), they will also notice that the porn section is where all the customers are. And they will feel sort of silly standing alone among the books. Eventually, they will find their way back to the porn, with the rest of the customers. And like them, they will start rooting through the videos. And, gentle reader, that is where most of them will spend the rest of their lives, until God or AIDS, drugs or alcohol, suicide or a lonely old age, intervenes.

Ralph McInerny once offered a brilliant definition of the gay rights movement: self-deception as a group effort. Nevertheless, deception of the general public is also vital to the success of the cause. And nowhere are the forms of deception more egregious, or more startlingly successful, than in the campaign to persuade Christians that, to paraphrase the title of a recent book, Jesus Was Queer, and churches should open their doors to same-sex lovers. The gay Christian movement relies on a stratagem that is as daring as it is dishonest. I know, because I was taken in by it for a long time. Like the owners of Lobo's, success depends on camouflaging the truth, which is hidden in plain view the whole time. It is no wonder The Wizard of Oz is so resonant among homosexuals. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" could be the motto and the mantra of the whole movement.

No single book was as influential in my own coming out as the now ex-Father John McNeill's 1976 "classic" The Church and the Homosexual. That book is to Dignity what "The Communist Manifesto" was to Soviet Russia. Most of the book is devoted to offering alternative interpretations of the biblical passages condemning homosexuality, and to putting the anti-homosexual writings of the Church Fathers and scholastics into historical context in a way that renders them irrelevant and even offensive to modern readers. The first impression of a naïve and sexually conflicted young reader such as myself was that McNeill had offered a plausible alternative to traditional teaching. It made me feel justified in deciding to come out of the closet. Were his arguments persuasive? Frankly, I didn't care, and I don't believe most of McNeill's readers do either. They were couched in the language of scholarship, and they sounded plausible. That was all that mattered.

McNeill, like most of the members of his camp, treated the debate over homosexuality as first and foremost a debate about the proper interpretation of texts, texts such as the Sodom story in the Bible and the relevant articles of the Summa. The implication was that once those were reinterpreted, or rendered irrelevant, the gay rights apologists had prevailed, and the door was open for practicing homosexuals to hold their heads up high in church. And there is a certain sense in which that has proved to be true. To the extent that the debate has focused on interpreting texts, the gay apologists have won for themselves a remarkable degree of legitimacy. But that is because, as anyone familiar with the history of Protestantism should be aware, the interpretation of texts is an interminable process. The efforts of people such as McNeill don't need to be persuasive. They only need to be useful.

This is how it works. McNeill reinterprets the story of Sodom, claiming that it does not condemn homosexuality, but gang rape. Orthodox theologians respond, in a commendable but naïve attempt to rebut him, naïve because these theologians presume that McNeill believes his own arguments, and is writing as a scholar, not as a propagandist. McNeill ignores the arguments of his critics, dismissing their objections as based on homophobia, and repeats his original position. The orthodox respond again as if they were really dealing with a theologian. And back and forth for a few more rounds. Until finally McNeill or someone like him stands up and announces, "You know, this is getting us nowhere. We have our exegesis and our theology. You have yours. Why can't we just agree to disagree?" That sounds so reasonable, so ecumenical. And if the orthodox buy into it, they have lost, because the gay rights apologists have earned a place at the table from which they will never be dislodged. Getting at the truth about Sodom and Gomorrah, or correctly parsing the sexual ethics of St. Thomas, was never really the issue. Winning admittance to Holy Communion was the issue.

Even as a naïve young man, one aspect of The Church and the Homosexual struck me as odd. Given that McNeill was suggesting a radical revision of the traditional Catholic sexual ethic, there was almost nothing in it about sexual ethics. The Catholic sexual ethic is quite specific about the ends of human sexuality, and about the forms of behavior that are consistent with those ends. McNeill's criticism of the traditional ethic occupied most of his book, but he left the reader with only the vaguest idea about what he proposed to put in its place. For that matter, there was almost nothing in it about the real lives of real homosexuals. Homosexuality was treated throughout the book as a kind of intellectual abstraction. But I was desperate to get some idea of what was waiting for me on the other side of the closet door. And with no one but Fr. McNeill for a guide, I was reduced to reading between the lines. There was a single passage that I interpreted as a clue. It was almost an aside, really. At one point, he commented that monogamous same-sex unions were consistent with the Church's teaching, or at least consistent with the spirit of the renewed and renovated post-Vatican II Church. With nothing else to go on, I interpreted this in a prescriptive sense. I interpreted McNeill to be arguing that homogenital acts were only moral when performed in the context of a monogamous relationship. And furthermore, I leapt to what seemed like the reasonable conclusion that the author was aware of such relationships, and that I had a reasonable expectation of finding such a relationship myself. Otherwise, for whose benefit was he writing? I was not so naïve (although I was pretty naïve) as not to be aware of the existence of promiscuous homosexual men. But McNeill's aside, which, I repeat, contained virtually his only stab at offering a gay sexual ethic, led me to believe that in addition to the promiscuous, there existed a contingent of gay men who were committed to living in monogamy. Otherwise, Fr. McNeill was implicitly defending promiscuity. And the very idea of a priest defending promiscuity was inconceivable to me. (Yes, that naïve.)

Several years ago, McNeill published an autobiography. In it, he makes no bones about his experiences as a sexually active Catholic priest -- a promiscuous, sexually active, homosexual Catholic priest. He writes in an almost nostalgic fashion about his time spent hunting for sex in bars. Although he eventually did find a stable partner (while he was still a priest), he never apologizes for his years of promiscuity, or even so much as alludes to the disparity between his own life and the passage in The Church and the Homosexual that meant so much to me. It is possible that he doesn't even remember suggesting that homosexuals were supposed to remain celibate until finding monogamous relationships. It is obvious that he never meant that passage to be taken seriously, except by those who would never do more than look in the window -- in others words, gullible, well-meaning, non-homosexual Catholics, preferably those in positions of authority. Or, equally naïve and gullible young men such as me who werelooking for a reason to act on their sexual desires, preferably one that did not do too much violence to their consciences, at least not at first. The latter, the writer presumed, would eventually find their way back to the porn section, where their complicity in the scam would render them indistinguishable from the rest of the regular customers. Clearly, there was a reason that in the earlier book he wrote so little about the real lives of real homosexuals, such as himself.

I don't see how the contradiction between The Church and the Homosexual and the autobiography could be accidental. Why would McNeill pretend to believe that homosexuals should restrict themselves to sex within the context of monogamous relationships when his life demonstrates that he did not? I can think of only one reason. Because he knew that if he told the truth, his cause would be dead in the water. Although to this day McNeill, like all gay Christian propagandists, avoids the subject of sexual ethics as if it were some sort of plague, his life makes his real beliefs clear. He believes in unrestricted sexual freedom. He believes that men and women should have the right to couple, with whomever they want, whenever they want, however they want, and as often as they want. He would probably add some sort of meaningless bromide about no one getting hurt and both parties being treated with respect, but anyone familiar with the snake pit of modern sexual culture (both heterosexual and homosexual) willknow how seriously to take that. And he knew perfectly well that if he were honest about his real aims, there would be no Dignity, there would be no gay Christian movement, at least not one with a snowball's chance in Hell of succeeding. That would be like getting rid of the books and letting the casual window-shoppers see the porn. And we can't have that now, can we? In other words, the ex-Fr. McNeill is a bad priest and a con man. And given the often lethal consequences of engaging in homosexual sex, a con man with blood on his hands.

Let me be clear. I believe that McNeill's real beliefs, as deduced from his actual behavior, and distinguished from the arguments he puts forward for the benefit of the naïve and gullible, represent the real aims and objectives of the homosexual rights movement. They are the porn that the books are meant to conceal. In other words, if you support what is now described in euphemistic terms as "the blessing of same-sex unions," in practice you are supporting the abolition of the entire Christian sexual ethic, and its substitution with an unrestricted, laissez faire, free sexual market. The reason that the homosexual rights movement has managed to pick up such a large contingent of heterosexual fellow-travelers is simple: Because once that taboo is abrogated, no taboos are left. I once heard a heterosexual Episcopalian put it this way: If I don't want the church poking its nose into my bedroom, how can I condone it when it limits the sexual freedom of homosexuals? That might sound outrageous, but if you still believe that the debate is over the religious status of monogamous same-sex relationships, please be prepared to point out one church somewhere in the U.S. that has opened its doors to active homosexuals without also opening them to every other form of sexual coupling imaginable. I am too old to be taken in by "Father" McNeill and his abstractions anymore. Show me.

A few years ago, I subscribed to the Dignity Yahoo group on the Internet. There were at that time several hundred subscribers. At one point, a confused and troubled young man posted a question to the group: Did any of the subscribers attach any value to monogamy? I immediately wrote back that I did. A couple of days later the young man wrote back to me. He had received dozens of responses, some of them quite hostile and demeaning, and all but one -- mine -- telling him to go out and get laid because that was what being gay was all about. (This was a gay "Catholic" group.) He did not know what to make of it because none of the propaganda to which he was exposed before coming out prepared him for what was really on the other side of the closet door. I had no idea what to tell him, because at the time I was still caught up in the lie myself. Now, the solution seems obvious. What I should have written back to him was, "You have been lied to. Ask God for forgiveness and get back to Kansas as fast as you can. Auntie Em is waiting."

In light of all the legitimate concern about Internet pornography, it might seem ironic to assert that the Internet helped rescue me from homosexuality. For twenty years, I thought there was something wrong with me. Dozens of well-meaning people assured me that there was a whole, different world of homosexual men out there, a world that for some reason I could never find, a world of God-fearing, straight-acting, monogamy-believing, and fidelity-practicing homosexuals. They assured me that they themselves knew personally (for a fact and for real) that such men existed. They themselves knew such men (or at least had heard tell of them from those who did). And I believed it, although as the years passed it got harder and harder. Then I got a personal computer and a subscription to AOL. "O.K.," I reasoned, "morally conservative homosexuals are obviously shy and skittish and fearful of sudden movements. They don't like bars and bathhouses. Neither do I. They don't attend Dignity meetings or Metropolitan Community Church services because the gay 'churches' are really bathhouses masquerading as houses of worship. But there is no reason a morally conservative homosexual cannot subscribe to AOL and submit a profile. If I can do it, anyone can do it." So I did it. I wrote a profile describing myself as a conservative Catholic (comme ci, comme ça) who loved classical music and theater and good books and scintillating conversation about all of the above. I said I wanted very much to meet other like-minded homosexuals for the purposes of friendship and romance. I tried to be as clear as I knew how. I was not interested in one night stands. And within minutes of placing the profile, I got my first response. It consisted of three words: "How many inches?" My experience of looking for love on AOL went downhill rapidly from there.

When I first came out in the 1980s, it was common for gay rights apologists to blame the promiscuity among gay men on "internalized homophobia." Gay men, like African Americans, internalized and acted out the lies about themselves learned from mainstream American culture. Furthermore, homosexuals were forced to look for love in dimly lit bars, bathhouses, and public parks for fear of harassment at the hands of a homophobic mainstream. The solution to this problem, we were told, was permitting homosexuals to come out into the open, without fear of retribution. A variant of this argument is still put forward by activists such as Andrew Sullivan, in order to legitimate same-sex marriage. And it seemed reasonable enough twenty years ago. But thirty-five years have passed since the infamous Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York, the Lexington and Concord of the gay liberation movement. During that time, homosexuals have carved out for themselves public spaces in every major American city, and many of the minor ones as well. They have had the chance to create whatever they wanted in those spaces, and what have they created? New spaces for locating sexual partners.

There is another reason, apart from the propaganda value, that bookstores like Lobo's peddle porn as well as poetry. Because without the porn, they would soon go out of business. And, in fact, most gay bookstores have gone out of business, despite the porn. Following an initial burst of enthusiasm in the 1970s and 80s, gay publishing went into steep decline, and shows no signs of coming out of it. Once the novelty wore off, gay men soon bored of reading about men having sex with one another, preferring to devote their time and disposable income to pursuing the real thing. Gay and lesbian community centers struggle to keep their doors open. Gay churches survive as places where worshippers can go to sleep it off and cleanse their soiled consciences after a Saturday night spent cruising for sex at the bars. And there is no danger of ever hearing a word from the pulpit suggesting that bar-hopping is inconsistent with believing in the Bible. When I lived in the United Kingdom, I was struck by the extent to which gay culture in London replicated gay culture in the U.S. The same was true in Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Homosexuality is one of America's most successful cultural exports. And the focus on gay social spaces in Europe is identical to their focus in America: sex. Cyberspace is now the latest conquest of that amazing modern Magellan: the male homosexual in pursuit of new sexual conquests.

But at this point, how is it possible to blame the promiscuity among homosexual men on homophobia, internalized or otherwise? On the basis of evidence no stronger than wishful thinking, Andrew Sullivan wants us to believe that legalizing same-sex "marriage" will domesticate gay men, that all that energy now devoted to building bars and bathhouses will be dedicated to erecting picket fences and two-car garages. What Sullivan refuses to face is that male homosexuals are not promiscuous because of "internalized homophobia," or laws banning same-sex "marriage." Homosexuals are promiscuous because when given the choice, homosexuals overwhelmingly choose to be promiscuous. And wrecking the fundamental social building block of our civilization, the family, is not going to change that.

I once read a disarmingly honest essay in which Sullivan as much as admitted his real reason for promoting the cause of same-sex "marriage." He faced up to the sometimes sordid nature of his sexual life, which is more than most gay activists are prepared to do, and he regretted it. He wished he had led a different sort of life, and he apparently believes that if marriage were a legal option, he might have been able to do so. I have a lot more respect for Andrew Sullivan than I do for most gay activists. I believe that he would seriously like to reconcile his sexual desires with the demands of his conscience. But with all due respect, are the rest of us prepared to sacrifice the institution of the family in the unsubstantiated hope that doing so will make it easier for Sullivan to keep his trousers zipped?

But isn't it theoretically possible that homosexuals could restrict themselves to something resembling the traditional Catholic sexual ethic, except for the part about procreation -- in other words, monogamous lifelong relationships? Of course it is theoretically possible. It was also theoretically possible in 1968 that the use of contraceptives could be restricted to married couples, that the revolting downward slide into moral anarchy we have lived through could have been avoided. It is theoretically possible, but it is practically impossible. It is impossible because the whole notion of stable sexual orientation on which the gay rights movement is founded has no basis in fact.

René Girard, the French literary critic and sociologist of religion, argues that all human civilization is founded on desire. All civilizations have surrounded the objects of desire (including sexual desire) with an elaborate and unbreachable wall of taboos and restrictions. Until now. What we are seeing in the modern West is not the long overdue legitimization of hitherto despised but honorable forms of human love. What we are witnessing is the reduction of civilization to its lowest common denominator: unbridled and unrestricted desire. To assert that we have opened a Pandora's Box would be a stunning understatement. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, it looks to be a bumpy millennium.

When I was growing up, we were all presumed to be heterosexual. Then homosexuality was introduced as an alternative. That did not at first seem like a major revision because, apart from procreation, homosexuality, at least in theory, left the rest of the traditional sexual ethic in tact. Two people of the same gender could (in theory) fall in love and live a life of monogamous commitment. Then bisexuality was introduced, and the real implications of the sexual revolution became clear. Monogamy was out the window. Moral norms were out the window. Do-it-yourself sexuality became the norm. Anyone who wants to know what that looks like can do no better than go online. The Internet offers front row seats to the circus of a disintegrating civilization.

Take Yahoo, for example. Yahoo makes it possible for people sharing a common interest to create groups for the purpose of making contacts and sharing information. If that conjures up images of genealogists and stamp collectors, think again. There are now thousands of Yahoo groups catering to every kind of sexual perversion imaginable. Many of them would defy the imagination of the Marquis de Sade himself. People who until a few years ago could do nothing but fantasize now entertain serious hopes of acting out their fantasies. I met a man online whose fondest wish was to be spanked with a leather wallet. It had to be leather. And it had to be a wallet. And he needed to be spanked with it. Old-fashioned genital friction was optional. This man wanted a Gucci label tattooed across his backside. He could imagine no loftier pinnacle of passion. And he insisted that this desire was as fundamental to his sexual nature as the desire to go to bed with a man was for me. Furthermore, he had formed a Yahoo group that had more than three hundred members, all of whom shared the same passion. There is no object in the universe, no human or animal body part, that cannot be eroticized. So, is the desire to be spanked with a leather wallet a "sexual orientation"? If not, how is it different?

There was a time when I would have snorted, "Of course it is different. You can't share a life with a leather wallet. You can't love a leather wallet. What you are talking about is a fetish, not a sexual orientation. The two are completely different." But the truth is that all the gay men I encountered had a fetish for naked male skin, with all the objectification and depersonalization that implies, that I now consider the distinction sophistical. Leather is skin too, after all. The only real difference between the fellow on the Internet and the average gay man is that he preferred his skin Italian, bovine, and tanned.

Over the years, I have attended various gay and gay-friendly church services. All of them shared one characteristic in common: a tacit agreement never to say a word from the pulpit -- or from any other location for that matter -- suggesting that there ought to be any restrictions on human sexual behavior. If anyone reading this is familiar with Dignity or Integrity or the Metropolitan Community churches or, for that matter, mainline Protestantism and most of post-Vatican II Catholicism, let me ask you one question: When was the last time you heard a sermon on sexual ethics? Have you ever heard a sermon on sexual ethics? I take it for granted that the answer is negative. Do our priests and pastors honestly believe that Christians in America are not in need of sermons on sexual ethics?

Here is the terrifying fact: If we as a nation and as a Church allow ourselves to be taken in by the scam of monogamous same-sex couples, we will be welcoming to our Communion rails (presuming that we still have Communion rails) not just the statistically insignificant number of same-sex couples who have lived together for more than a few years (most of whom purchased stability by jettisoning monogamy); we will also be legitimizing every kind of sexual taste, from old-fashioned masturbation and adultery to the most outlandish forms of sexual fetishism. We will, in other words, be giving our blessing to the suicide of Western civilization.

But what about all those images of loving same-sex couples dying to get hitched with which the media are awash these days? That used to confuse me too. It seems that The New York Times has no trouble finding successful same-sex partners to photograph and interview. But despite my best efforts, I was never able to meet the sorts of couples who show up regularly on Oprah. The media are biased and have no interest in telling the truth about homosexuality.

I met Wyatt (not his real name) online. For five years he was in a disastrous same-sex relationship. His partner was unfaithful, and an alcoholic with drug problems. The relationship was something that would give Strindberg nightmares. When Vermont legalized same-sex "marriage," Wyatt saw it as one last chance to make their relationship work. He and his partner would fly to Vermont to get "married." This came to the attention of the local newspaper in his area, which did a story with photos of the wedding reception. In it, Wyatt and his partner were depicted as a loving couple who finally had a chance to celebrate their commitment publicly. Nothing was said about the drugs or the alcoholism or the infidelity. But the marriage was a failure and ended in flames a few months later. And the newspaper did not do a follow-up. In other words, the leading daily of one of America's largest cities printed a misleading story about a bad relationship, a story that probably persuaded more than one young man that someday he could be just as happy as Wyatt and his "partner." And that is the sad part.

But one very seldom reads about people like my friend Harry. Harry (not his real name) was a balding, middle-aged man with a potbelly. He was married, and had a couple of grown daughters. And he was unhappy. Harry persuaded himself that he was unhappy because he was gay. He divorced his wife, who is now married to someone else, his daughters are not speaking to him, and he is discovering that pudgy, bald, middle-aged men are not all that popular in gay bars. Somehow, Oprah forgot to mention that. Now Harry is taking anti-depressants in order to keep from killing himself.

Then there was another acquaintance, who also happened to have the same name as the previous guy. Harry (not his real name) was about 30 (but could easily pass for 20), and from a Mormon background, with all the naïveté that suggests. Unlike the first Harry, he had no difficulty getting dates. Or relationships for that matter. The problem was that the relationships never lasted more than a couple of weeks. Harry was also rapidly developing a serious drinking problem. (So much for the Mormon words of wisdom.) If you happened to be at the bar around two in the morning, you could probably have Harry for the night if you were interested. He was so drunk he wouldn't remember you the next day, and all he really wanted at that point was for someone to hold him.

Gay culture is a paradox. Most homosexuals tend to be liberal Democrats, or in the U.K., supporters of the Labour Party. They gravitate toward those Parties on the grounds that their policies are more compassionate and sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden and oppressed. But there is nothing compassionate about a gay bar. It represents a laissez faire free sexual market of the most Darwinian sort. There is no place in it for those who are not prepared to compete, and the rules of the game are ruthless and unforgiving. I remember once being in a gay pub in central London. Most of the men there were buff and toned and in their 20s or early 30s. An older gentleman walked in, who looked to be in his 70s. It was as if the Angel of Death himself had made an entrance. In that crowded bar, a space opened up around him that no one wanted to enter. His shadow transmitted contagion. It was obvious that his presence made the other customers nervous. He stood quietly at the bar and ordered a drink. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him. When he eventually finished his drink and left, the sigh of relief from all those buff, toned pub crawlers was almost audible. Now all of them could go back to pretending that gay men were all young and beautiful forever. Gentle reader, do you know what a "bug chaser" is? A bug chaser is a young gay man who wants to contract HIV so that he will never grow old. And that is the world that Harry left his wife, and the other Harry his Church, to find happiness in.

I have known a lot of people like the two Harrys. But I have met precious few who bore more than a superficial resemblance to the idealized images we see in Oscar-winning movies such as Philadelphia, or in the magazine section of The New York Times. What I find suspicious is that the media ignore the existence of people like the two Harrys. The unhappiness so common among homosexuals is swept under the carpet, while fanciful and unrealistic "role models" are offered up for public consumption. There is at the very least grounds for a serious debate about the proposition that "gay is good," but no such debate is taking place, because most of the mainstream media have already made up their (and our) minds.

But it is hard to hide the porn forever. When I was living in London, I had a wonderful friend named Maggie. Maggie (not her real name) was a liberal. Her big heart bled for the oppressed. Like most liberals, she was proud of her open-mindedness and wore it like a badge of honor. Maggie lived in a house as big as her heart and all of her children were grown up and had moved out. She had a couple of rooms to rent. It just so happened that both the young men who became her tenants were gay. Maggie's first reaction was enthusiastic. She had never known many gay people, and thought the experience of renting to two homosexuals would confirm her in her open-mindedness. She believed it would be a learning experience. It was, but not the sort she had in mind. One day Maggie told me her troubles and confessed her doubts. She talked about what it was like to stumble each morning down to the breakfast table, finding two strangers seated there, the two strangers her tenants brought home the night before. It was seldom the same two strangers two mornings running. One of her tenants was in a long-distance relationship but, in the absence of his partner, felt at liberty to seek consolation elsewhere. She talked about what it was like to have to deal on a daily basis with the emotional turmoil of her tenants' tumultuous lives. She told me what it was like to open the door one afternoon and find a policeman standing there, a policeman who was looking for one of her tenants, who was accused of trying to sell drugs to school children. That same tenant was also involved in prostitution. Maggie didn't know what to make of it all. She desperately wanted to remain open-minded, to keep believing that gay men were no worse than anyone else, just different. But she couldn't reconcile her experience with that "tolerant" assumption. The truth was that when the two finally moved out, an event to which she was looking forward with some enthusiasm, and it was time to place a new ad for rooms to let, she wanted to include the following proviso: Fags need not apply. I didn't know what to tell Maggie because I was just as confused as she was. I wanted to hold on to my illusions too, in spite of all the evidence.

I am convinced that many, if not most, people who are familiar with the lives of homosexuals know the truth, but refuse to face it. My best friend got involved in the gay rights movement as a graduate student. He and a lesbian colleague sometimes counseled young men who were struggling with their sexuality. Once, the two of them met a young man who was seriously overweight and suffered from terrible acne. The young man waxed eloquent about the happiness he expected to find when he came out of the closet. He was going to find a partner, and the two of them would live happily ever after. The whole time my friend was thinking that if someone looking like this fat, pustulent young man ever walked into a bar, he would be folded, spindled, and mutilated before even taking a seat. Afterwards, the lesbian turned to him and said, "You know, sometimes it is better to stay in the closet." My friend told me that for him this represented a decisive moment. This lesbian claimed to love and admire gay men. She never stopped praising their kindness and compassion and creativity. But with that one comment she in effect told my friend that she really knew what gay life was all about. It was about meat, and unless you were a good cut, don't bother coming to the supermarket.

On another occasion, I was complaining to a lesbian about my disillusionment. She made a remarkable admission to me. She had a teenage son, who so far had not displayed signs of sexual interest in either gender. She knew as a lesbian she should not care which road he took. But she confessed to me that she did care. Based on the lives of the gay men she knew, she found herself secretly praying that her son would turn out to be straight. As a mother, she did not want to see her son living that life.

A popular definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. That was me, the whole time I was laboring to become a happy homosexual. I was a lunatic. Several times I turned for advice to gay men who seemed better adjusted to their lot in life than I was. First, I wanted confirmation that my perceptions were accurate, that life as a male homosexual really was as awful as it seemed to be. And then I wanted to know what I was supposed to do about it. When was it going to get better? What could I do to make it better? I got two sorts of reactions to these questions, both of which left me feeling hurt and confused. The first sort of reaction was denial, often bitter denial, of what I was suggesting. I was told that there was something wrong with me, that most gay men were having a wonderful time, that I was generalizing on the basis of my own experience (whose experience was I supposed to generalize from?), and that I should shut up and stop bothering others with my "internalized homophobia."

I began seeing a counselor when I was a graduate student. Matt (not his real name) was a happily married man with college-age children. All he knew about homosexuality he learned from the other members of his profession, who assured him that homosexuality was not a mental illness and that there were no good reasons that homosexuals could not lead happy, productive lives. When I first unloaded my tale of woe, Matt told me I had never really come out of the closet. (I still have no idea what he meant, but suspect it is like the "once saved, always saved" Baptist who responds to the lapsed by telling him that he was never really saved in the first place.) I needed to go back, he told me, try again, and continue to look for the positive experiences he was sure were available for me, on the basis of no other evidence than the rulings of the American Psychiatric Association. He had almost no personal experience of homosexuals, but his peers assured him that the book section at Lobo's offered a true picture of homosexual life. I knew Matt was clueless, but I still wanted to believe he was right.

Matt and I developed a therapeutic relationship. During the year we spent together, he learned far more from me than I did from him. I tried to take his advice. I was sharing a house that year with another grad student who was in the process of coming out and experiencing his own disillusionment. Because I had been his only gay friend, and had encouraged him to come out, his bitterness came to be directed at me, and our relationship suffered for it. Meanwhile, I developed a close friendship with a member of the faculty who was openly gay. When I first informed Matt, he was ecstatic. He thought I was finally come out properly. The faculty member was just the sort of friend I needed. But the faculty member, as it turned out, despite his immaculate professional facade, was a deeply disturbed man who put all of his friends through emotional hell, which I of course shared with a shocked and silenced Matt. (I tried to date but, as usual, experienced the same pattern that characterized all my homosexual relationships. The friendship lasted as long as the sexual heat. Once that cooled, my partner's interest in me as a person dissipated with it.) It was not a good year. At the end of it, I remember Matt staring at me, with glazed eyes and a shell-shocked look on his face, and admitting, "You know, being gay is a lot harder than I realized."

Not everyone I spoke to over the years rejected what I had to say out of hand. I once corresponded with an English ex-Dominican. I was ecstatic to learn that he was gay, and was eventually kicked out of his order for refusing to remain in the closet. He included an e-mail address in one of his books, and I wrote him, wanting to know if his experience of life as a homosexual was significantly different from mine. I presumed it must be, since he had written a couple of books, passionately defending the right of homosexuals to a place in the Church. His response to me was one of the last nails in the coffin of my life as a gay man. To my astonishment, he admitted that his experiences were not unlike mine. All he could suggest was that I keep trying, and eventually everything would work out. In other words, this brilliant man, whose books had meant so much to me, had nothing to suggest except that I keep doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. There was only one reasonable conclusion. I would be nuts if I took his advice. It took me twenty years, but I finally reached the conclusion that I did not want to be insane.

So where am I now? I am attending a militantly orthodox parish in Houston that is one of God's most spectacular gifts to me. My best friend Mark (not his real name) is, like me, a refugee from the homosexual insane asylum. He is also a devout believer, though a Presbyterian (no one is perfect). From Mark I have learned that two men can love each other profoundly while remaining clothed the entire time.

We are told that the Church opposes same-sex love. Not true. The Church opposes homogenital sex, which in my experience is not about love, but about obsession, addiction, and compensation for a compromised masculinity.

I am not proud of the life I have lived. In fact, I am profoundly ashamed of it. But if reading this prevents one naïve, gullible man from making the same mistakes, then perhaps with the assistance of Our Lady of Guadalupe; of St. Joseph, her chaste spouse; of my patron saint, Edmund Campion; of St. Josemaría Escrivá; of the blessed Carmelite martyrs of Compiégne; and, last but not least, of my special supernatural guide and mentor, the Venerable John Henry Newman, I can at least hope for a reprieve from some of the many centuries in Purgatory I have coming to me.

So, what do we as a Church and a culture need to do? Tear down the respectable façade and expose the pornography beneath. Start pressuring homosexuals to tell the truth about their lives. Stop debating the correct interpretation of Genesis 19. Leave the men of Sodom and Gomorrah buried in the brimstone where they belong. Sodom is hidden in plain view from us, here and now, today. Once, when preparing a lecture on Cardinal Newman, I summarized his classic Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine in this fashion: Truth ripens, error rots. The homosexual rights movement is rotten to the core. It has no future. There is no life in it. Sooner or later, those who are caught up in it are going to wake up from the dream of unbridled desire or else die. It is just a matter of time. The question is: how long? How many children are going to be sacrificed to this Moloch?

Until several months ago, there was a Lobo's in Houston too. Not accidentally, I'm sure, its layout was identical to the one in Austin. It was just a few blocks from the gas station where I take my car for service. Recently, I was taking a walk through the neighborhood while my tires were being rotated. And I noticed something. There was a padlock on the door at Lobo's. A sign on the door read, "The previous tenant was evicted for nonpayment of rent." The books and the porn, the façade and what it conceals, are gone now. Praise God.

Do You Know About The Hidden Agenda

Behind the incessant discussions about homosexuality at school is a purpose that reaches beyond tolerance. The real goal is forced enthusiastic acceptance of homosexual acts and frankly, of the elimination of distinctions between the genders. This includes acceptance of cross-dressing and cross-gender identification among students and teachers (“transgender” people).

Material from the influential school activist group, GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) defines “hate,” “homophobia” and “discrimination” as including even simple statements expressing personal disapproval of homosexuality for moral or religious reasons. As schools pass non-discrimination policies covering “sexual orientation,” these policies are being used to silence the voices of people who believe homosexuality is wrong.
Unjust stereotyping and references linking traditional views with “hatred” and even with violent acts are now a normal part of public school teaching in multi-culturalism and “anti-bias” lessons. In such an environment, children quickly learn to self-censor. No one wants to be one of "those" hateful bigots, right? They remain silent if they have been taught homosexuality is wrong at home. Over time, this silence will change to acceptance, and the enemy will become the parents, grandparents and churches that don’t support the brainwashing and propaganda. There will remain no obstacle to young teenagers’ total acceptance of, and in some cases, experimentation with morally and physically dangerous practices.

What is aiding this agenda to take firm root in the schools and in the minds of our children? The silence of adults. We can bring a halt to this nonsense and reverse the trend, or we can remain silent and the values of our children--and of society itself--will be deeply and tragically altered.

Google Deletes This Website

2009-07-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

www.massresistance.blogspot.com

The citizens of Massachusetts have had enough! End judicial tyranny, homosexual "marriage", and homosexual activist recruitment of our children in the public schools! Preserve our Judeo-Christian heritage, the Culture of Life, and free speech! CAUTION: We deal openly and graphically with the Culture of Death. R-rated subject matter.

Google has finally given its reason for blocking the MassResistance blog, but it took a call from Fox News in New York to get it. And it seems to be more political - and frightening - than anything else.

Since 2005 the MassResistance blog has been hosted on Google's blogspot blogging site with few problems. For the last several weeks Google has been blocking the MassResistance blog with a warning screen alleging "objectionable content", and requiring readers to click through to get in. The block was put on almost immediately after researcher Amy Contrada posted some articles and photos from transgender and gay-pride related public events, in preparation for the July 14 transgender bill hearing. Several news outlets, including WorldNetDaily, have covered this incident.

WorldNetDaily: Google blocks blog exposing homosexual agenda; "Actions represent trial balloon for government censorship of 'hate' speech"
Fox News gets involved
Earlier this week FoxNews.com in New York called the MassResistance office asking about Google blocking our blog. Fox reporter Josh Miller said they were interested in the story and could see that given Google's huge power it could lead to censorship issues across the Internet. We discussed the details with him. Later that day Miller called us back and said that Fox finally got through to Google headquarters in San Francisco about this. Google told him that we had violated their terms of service regarding content by posting "nudity", and therefore they had put an "interstitial" (i.e., block) on our blog.

Not "nudity" by any rational standard - this is political
This is a completely absurd definition of "nudity." They are referring to our June 27 posting on "gender expression" - a political issue. You can go to the blog page HERE (just click through their warning page) and judge for yourself.
First, the photos they object to are of homosexual and transgender activists doing bizarre things at public events on public streets, where uniformed police were present. Why weren't any of the people arrested for obscenity, one might ask, if Google finds it so offensive?

Second, none of the pictures show genitals or fully "nude" people. Interestingly, they are mostly pictures of women who have amputated their breasts to "become" men, and who are marching shirtless as a statement of their "masculinity". (Ironically, according to Google's own absurd transgender-support policies these women would be considered "men" anyway since that's their "gender identity"!)

Google clearly knows that these are photos of public political events, not Playboy pinups or pornography. And, of course, Google certainly knows what happens at homosexual-related events because Google participates in them. Google is a frequent participant in Gay Pride events around the country, including the ones in San Francisco and New York which are particularly obscene. Furthermore, Google's blogspot site also hosts some of the most obscene, hateful and outrageous homosexual blogs. It's hard to believe that people would even write some of that stuff. Somehow they don't get flagged by Google for anything "offensive". Most people around the country who see this have agreed that this is viewpoint censorship: unquestionably a political act by Google, not an "anti-pornography" move. And as we said to Fox News - it's MassResistance now, but later it could be you.

“A Dispute Over Obama’s Birth Lives on in the Media”

2009-07-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

7/25/2009
Daily Telegraph says “Barack Obama and the CIA: Why does President Pantywaist Hate America So Badly?”
Filed under: Obama @ 4:27 pm
Gerald Warner at the Daily Telegraph:

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself.

Read the rest, it’s quite a good editorial.
“A Dispute Over Obama’s Birth Lives on in the Media” New York Times says, disapprovingly. Filed under: Communist, Socialist & Nazi , Demonrats , General , Obama @ 4:21 pm Wow, of all places this has hit the New York Times. But what obedient Obamanots they are. Refusing to give questioning the President’s legitimacy because he doesn’t qualify under the constitution as natural-born, Brian Stetler does little justice to the missing birth certificate subject as an “objective reporter”. He toes the ‘media matters’ line like another of Obama’s synchophants; almost to the degree of the ever emptiheaded Meatbrain at Thinkingmeat.net; who also relies on leftist sources for his one-liners and insults.

This is going to be fun.
The conspiracy theorists who have claimed for more than a year that President Obama is not a United States citizen have found receptive ears among some mainstream media figures in recent weeks.

That’s right, those wacky “birthers” are all nuts, according to Stetler, and true to Saul Alinsky’s rules for radicals, deserve little more than ridicule. In case you didn’t notice, or didn’t click on the link, “birther” is inside the link to the New York Times article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/business/media/25birther.html?_r=1

That’s their favorite name for the people who are questioning Obama’s natural-born status as a U.S. citizen; “birther”. Sort of like “truther”. So how exactly does asking for Obama’s long form birth certificate and asking Obama to prove he met the requirement of being a natural-born citizen automatically make a person a “conspiracy theorist”? He doesn’t answer that question in the article, just uses that broad brush to paint media pundits that recognize it as a possible issue as more than a little bit “off”.

Of course, someone who comes into this with contempt and scorn for “birthers” is hardly an objective observer.

We read further:
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.” Lou Dobbs of CNN said that Mr. Obama should do more to dispel the claims. Larry King, also of CNN, asked guests about it. Chris Matthews debated it with guests on MSNBC, and “NBC Nightly News” even did a segment debunking the theory..

Where is this “ample evidence”, one might ask? The “ample evidence” he refers to hasn’t been produced, even after months of seeking it - THROUGH THE COURTS. Obama has, in fact, spent over $1 million avoiding answering the birth certificate question. And with whose money has he done that?

Cable news is often stretched for news in the summer, but the birth certificate case has been fueled by the combustible combination of luck, compelling video, media-savvy doubters — and an outlandish topic.

Wow it’s a short news day! They’re manufacturing news because it’s summertime!

The theory that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, his father’s homeland, first took root among some staunchly conservative elements. In response, the Obama campaign scanned the candidate’s “certification of live birth” from Hawaii’s department of health and published it on the Internet. Numerous third parties have examined and confirmed the birth certificate and concluded that it met the requirements for citizenship.

The “theory” was confirmed by his own grandmother in Kenya who said she was present in the delivery room when Obama was born there. A Kenyan official went so far as to say they are considering celebrating his birthplace there, but needed to wait to do so until the American elections were over. And contrary to Stetler’s desire to ‘blame Bush’ or ‘blame conservatives’-it didn’t take root among staunchly conservative elements; the one who’s been at this through the courts the longest is a lifelong Democrat, Phil Berg. You can see a lot of the history on it on his site, Obama crimes.com! Another group that gave this quite a bit of airplay are PUMAs (who are disgruntled Hillary supporters). The people questioning why Obama won’t reveal his past and keeps running from it-is a diverse collection of people; just like the tea parties are a diverse collection of people; from all walks of life; from many different political positions who’ve joined together to demand an answer to the legitimate question, and it’s not going away. “Numerous third parties have examined and confirmed the birth certificate”? Oh really? Like who?

Factcheck.org, which is run by Annenberg? The Daily Kos? The Huffington Post? Why doesn’t the New York times do a little research? Because they’re clueless moonbats, that’s why. There is a difference between an original birth certificate and a “certification of live birth”, which is what they’ve used again and again as undeniable “proof”. Lou Dobbs is not asking about the “certification of live birth” that libs are touting as “proof” of Obama’s natural-born status, he’s asking about the original LONG birth certificate. Interesting, too, is the fact that Obama and his sister can’t get their stories straight and have said that he was born in two different Hawaiian hospitals, which is simply impossible. And what about all the other documents that he has refused to release?

“This smear was thoroughly debunked during the election,” said Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization.

Oh now there’s an objective source: “Media Matters for America”. Debunked how? Because the Daily Kos explained it away with an obvious fake document? Nowhere has the long form birth certificate been produced; and although it exists, no one has been allowed to see it. It just keeps getting more and more curious-And you can bet they’re going to continue fighting answering the question.

According to published reports, Barack Obama’s legal team has been paid over one million dollars, so far, to STOP anyone from seeing ANY of his actual identification documents, in addition to many other documents. According to the United States Justice Foundation which has also taken up this cause, there is quite a list of documents that would help Americans understand why Obama has been so cagey about his past:

•Actual long-form birth certificate (NOT an easily-forged electronic copy of a short-form document that is not even officially accepted in Hawaii)
•Passport files
•University of Chicago Law School scholarly articles
•Harvard Law Review articles
•Harvard Law School records
•Columbia University records
•Columbia University senior thesis, “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament”
•Occidental College records, including financial aid that he may have received
•Punahou School records, where Mr. Obama attended from the fifth grade until he finished high school
•Noelani Elementary School records, where Barack Obama attended kindergarten (according to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate to register — but parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country)
•Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
•Obama’s client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard Illinois State Bar Association records
•Baptism records
•Obama/Dunham marriage license
•Obama/Dunham divorce documents
•Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
•Soetero/Dunham Adoption records
“By the way”, says the United Justice Foundation in an email, “the issue of the Occidental College records is especially pertinent. The United States Justice Foundation (USJF) served officials at Occidental College with a subpoena to produce records concerning Barack Obama’s attendance there during the 1980’s, because those records could document whether he was attending as a foreign national. You see, Mr. Obama attended the school on a scholarship — and there are questions as to whether the financial aid he received was reserved for foreign students. The Obama attorneys have bent over backward to block us. He doesn’t want anyone to see those records. He’s STILL trying to hide them; those financial records STILL have not been released.”

It sure would be good to know some of this, but don’t worry, with guys like Stetler at the New York Slimes, the Obamessiah’s propaganda machine won’t stop churning out propaganda to cover for him and to attack and ridicule his political opponents - no matter what group they identify with.

But advocates of the issue, who are sometimes termed birthers, called attention to themselves through frequent calls to talk radio shows, e-mail messages to news organizations and a videotaped question at a Congressional town hall. Since mid-July, Mr. Dobbs has discussed it repeatedly on his radio show and on TV, emphasizing that he believes Mr. Obama is a citizen, while wondering in particular why Mr. Obama has not provided a fuller copy of his birth certificate so that “all of this nonsense goes away.” Mr. Dobbs’s coverage has been criticized by Media Matters and other organizations.

Oh good, I’m glad to see we didn’t miss the actual “birther” smear in this article, it somehow makes it complete for me in terms of the ideology of the writer. Oh that evil Lou Dobbs and those evil conservatives are so wrong for keeping this alive; they, like Sarah Palin, should just SHUT UP!

Well of course he’s been criticized by Media Matters - that’s what they’re there for - criticizing their political opponents and derailing people from looking at the facts! Read about Media Matters at Discover the Networks! Media matters is one of Meatbrain-the clueless’s main sources; and Meatbrain is an admitted socialist.

In an e-mail message to Mr. Dobbs’s producers on Thursday, Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic networks, wrote that “it seems this story is dead — because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”

Is that so? That might be true for people who want to rewrite the constitution, but it’s not true for regular folks who believe in it. Obama has gone out of his way spending over a million dollars avoiding answering the birth certificate/natural-born question. A law firm connected with Obama spent three years before he ran for president, researching how they were going to deal with this issue. The fact is, being natural-born is one of the requirements of a United States Presidential candidate; and if in fact it is proven that he is not a natural-born citizen, he isn’t a citizen at all if he didn’t go through naturalization, which means he wasn’t eligible to be a Senator or to serve in Springfield, either. This is a huge can of worms which, understandably, they’re trying to diffuse with deceptive smears–and the more they continue avoiding the issue, the more it’s going to be a major concern. Blaming conservatives for this is like blaming Bush for today’s economic problems…it doesn’t past muster. All kinds of people are interested in this; not just conservatives.

In an interview Friday, Mr. Klein said the e-mail message should not be interpreted as an order to stop debating the subject. He defended Mr. Dobbs’s broadcast, saying that “what we do here all the time is dig into the truth about all kinds of controversial issues.”

Hamburg, Pennsylvania Billboard sign reads “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”

The only place where this can be solved is through the courts as far as I can tell. But with today’s activist judges, the Constitution is the last thing on their minds. Contrary to what the judges so far have ruled; every American citizen has standing to question this. WorldnetDaily’s petition to see Obama’s birth certificate as of this writing has 425,000 people signed onto it. The billboard campaign “where’s the birth certificate” has gained quite a bit of steam, too. (click here to donate to this worthwhile campaign)

The claims about Mr. Obama’s citizenship have percolated on the Internet and on right-leaning radio talk shows for months. But from more mainstream outlets, “the coverage has been minuscule” until this month, said Philip J. Berg, a lawyer who has challenged Mr. Obama’s citizenship in a number of lawsuits, unsuccessfully to date..

Yeah it’s all on the internet and from rightwingers. Who’d you get that from, David Axelrod?

Why no mention of all the court cases besides Berg’s? Here’s a list from Bob Unruh’s column from July 13, 2009 at WorldnetDaily “Eligibility Arguments To Get Court Hearing: For 1st time, we have a judge who’s listening” discussing the case the Orly Taitz filed in California on the behalf of Alan Keyes and others, charging Obama is a “usurper”. Here are some of the other court cases Unruh cites:

•New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn’t properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.
•Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg has three cases pending, including Berg vs. Obama in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a separate Berg vs. Obama case alleging he wasn’t qualified even to be U.S. senator and Hollister vs. Soetoro a/k/a Obama, (now dismissed) brought on behalf of a retired military member who could be facing recall to active duty by Obama.
•Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama’s dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.
•Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut’s secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.
•Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state’s 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case is pending, and lawyers are seeking the public’s support.
•Chicago lawyer Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama’s vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.
•Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama’s eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama’s citizenship. His case was denied.
•In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.
•Also in Ohio, there was the Greenberg v. Brunner case which ended when the judge threatened to assess all case costs against the plaintiff.
•In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama’s citizenship. The case was denied.
•In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama’s birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia’s secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.
•California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters. She also has brought forward several other cases and has conducted several public campaigns to generate awareness of the issue.
•In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.
•In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.
•In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.
•In Washington, L. Charles Cohen vs. Obama.
•In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.
In addition, other cases cited on the RightSideofLife blog as raising questions about Obama’s eligibility include:

•In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.
•In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.
•In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.
•In Washington, L. Charles Cohen vs. Obama.
That’s not even a complete list, but it gives you an idea as to the outrage that’s growing on this one issue - and we’re not even talking about his policies.

Mr. Berg added: “If I could file a lawsuit against the national media, including The New York Times, I would do that, because I think you’ve all done an injustice by not covering Obama.”

He is so right, add this to the long list of items that the NYT has reported with a partisan view and you’ve got the reason why they’re losing readers and subscribers. They are virtually state-run media, and all they seem to be able to talk about is how “cool” he is, and how anyone who disagrees is a racist. I’m actually waiting for the NYT and other failing media to receive stimulus bailout money to keep them afloat; and that would make it official.

Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said the week’s recurrent cable news coverage was set off by two back-to-back events: the introduction of a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate (it has nine sponsors in the House and one in the Senate), and the video of a town hall held by a Republican representative that turned into a hearing on Mr. Obama’s citizenship.

You can just feel him fuming at those ignorant redneck “republicans” here. Of course, Obama’s followers don’t care what he does; they made it clear when Larry Sinclair was on his “take it to the streets” tour. They didn’t care when they heard about Obama smoking crack in the back of a limo in 1999 with Larry and had homosexual sex - WHILE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN SPRINGFIELD. Obama hasn’t released his phone records or his calendar for that week in early November 1999.

And notice how quickly he distanced himself from his mentor of 20 years, Reverend Wright. There are questionable connections between Obama, Reverend Wright and the murdered gay choir director of Trinity United Church of Christ, Donald Young. Common sense has been replaced for many people by blind adulation; but that doesn’t mean normal people should stop asking questions.

At the town hall in late June, the representative, Michael N. Castle of Delaware, was angrily questioned by a woman who said of Obama, “he is not an American citizen, he is a citizen of Kenya.” Members of the crowd applauded, and Mr. Castle was heckled when he said Mr. Obama was indeed an American citizen.

That’s because the American people know what’s going on and are disgusted.

It took more than a week for the incident to receive widespread attention but since then, “there’s been a vast uptick,” in mainstream coverage, Mr. Berg said. One notable exception is the Fox News Channel, which has hardly addressed the controversy this week.

A number of MSNBC shows, mostly in mocking tones, have covered the birthers’ claims in recent days. On “Hardball” Thursday evening, the radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy asserted that Mr. Obama may be an “illegal alien,” leading the host Mr. Matthews to hand Mr. Liddy a photocopy of the birth certificate..

Mr. Griffin said the claims were legitimate to cover “in that there’s a segment of our population that believes this and keeps bringing it up.”

“It’s racist,” Mr. Griffin said. “Just call it for what it is.

LOL! Sure it is. It’s racist to ask Obama to prove he was natural-born and is qualified to be our President. How ridiculous.

A lot of journalists “live with this issue; we get e-mails, we get asked about it,” Brian Williams, the anchor of the “NBC Nightly News,” said on Wednesday’s broadcast.

He showed an excerpt from the YouTube video in a segment about the birthers that he said were “spreading lies” about Mr. Obama.

.And Obama and his followers are purveyors of truth?

“So many conspiracy theories, so little time,” he concluded.

.Hey Stetler - that was a real piece of crap example of journalistic integrity which is yet another reason why the NYT is nothing short of fish wrap.

From what I gather, one of Obama’s own relatives signed onto one of these lawsuits to reveal that long form birth certificate...yet the media continue with their campaign of ridicule.

The Perfect Solution to Senior Health Care

2009-07-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

While discussing the upcoming Universal Health Care Program with my friend the other day, I think we have found the solution. I am sure you have heard the ideas that if you ’re a senior you need to suck it up and give up the idea that you need any health care. A new hip? Unheard of. We simply can't afford to take care of you anymore. You don't need any medications for your high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, etc. Let’s take care of the young people. After all, they will be ruling the world very soon.

So here is the solution. When you turn 70, you get a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives. Of course, you will be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head and all the health care you need! New teeth, great! Need glasses, no problem. New hip, knee, kidney, lung, heart? Well bring it on. And who will be paying for all of this. The same government that just told you that you are too old for health care. And, since you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income tax. And if we all do our part we can end up in the same prison and have one heck of a social life. I really think we have found a Perfect Solution! Bring it onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

Poll Shows Majority of Americans Think Country Is Heading In Wrong Direction

2009-07-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

Washington (AP) - That was fast. The hope and optimism that washed over the country in the opening months of Barack Obama's presidency are giving way to harsh realities.

An Associated Press-GfK Poll shows that a majority of Americans are back to thinking that the country is headed in the wrong direction after a fleeting period in which more thought it was on the right track. Obama still has a solid 55 percent approval rating -- better than Bill Clinton and about even with George W. Bush six months into their presidencies -- but there are growing doubts about whether he can succeed at some of the biggest items on his to-do list. And there is a growing sense that he is trying to tackle too much too soon. The number of people who think Obama can improve the economy is down a sobering 19 percentage points from the euphoric days just before his inauguration. Ditto for expectations about creating jobs. Also down significantly: the share of people who think he can reduce the deficit, remove troops from Iraq and improve respect for the U.S. around the world, all slipping 15 points.

On overhauling health care, a signature issue for Obama, hopes for success are down a lesser 6 points. Add it all up, and does it mean Obama has lost his mojo? Has yes-we-can morphed into maybe? "I think it's just reality," said Sandy Smith, a 48-year-old public relations worker from Los Angeles. "He's not Superman, right?" Indeed, it's not unusual for approval ratings to slide once presidents actually get to work. They're pulled down by things going on in the real world, by people who don't agree with the ways they're addressing problems, by criticism from political opponents. In Obama's case, the problems he's confronting domestically and internationally are legion, and his ability to blame them on his predecessor is fading. Challenges still abound in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unemployment, at 7.6 percent in January, hit 9.5 percent in June and is expected to keep rising well into next year. Almost 4 percent of homeowners with mortgages are in foreclosure, and an additional 8 percent are at least a month behind on payments -- the highest levels since the Great Depression. The president is deep into the debate over how to overhaul the nation's health care system, and people are nervous about how their own insurance could be affected. Obama's critics are accusing him of conducting a risky "grand experiment" that will hurt the economy and could force millions to drop their current coverage. It's all taking a toll on expectations. The number of people who think it's realistic to expect at least some noticeable improvement in the economy during Obama's first year in office dropped from 27 percent in January to 16 percent in the latest survey.

There's been slippage, as well, in how people view the president personally, although he's still well regarded. About two-thirds now think he understands the problems of ordinary Americans, down from 81 percent in January. Sixty-nine percent think he's a strong leader, off from 78 percent before the inauguration. "He doesn't know enough about any of this," says Michelle Kelsey, a 37-year-old student in Breckenridge, Mo., who gives Obama a three for leadership on a 10-point scale. But then again, Kelsey says, "Nobody could have done better." "I just feel like people haven't given him enough time. It's going to take longer for the economy to come around." In an interview aired Tuesday on "The CBS Evening News," Obama linked high poll numbers to inaction. "The easiest way to keep your poll numbers up, and to garner good press, is to do not that much here in this town, and not to cause a lot of controversy. And there's some people who would probably advise that that's the approach you should take. But that's not why the American people sent me here. They sent me here to solve problems," he said. It's not just Obama who's feeling the drag. Approval of Congress -- already low -- has gotten lower, slipping 6 percentage points to 32 percent. Overall, the number of people who think the country is going in the wrong direction hit 54 percent in the latest AP-GfK poll, up from 46 percent in June. That's not necessarily surprising. In years past, the public has tended to be more pessimistic than optimistic about the country's future. Recent exceptions have been short-lived, at the start of the Iraq war, after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, after the capture of Saddam Hussein and late in the Clinton administration. Perhaps most troubling for Obama may be where he is losing ground. His approval rating was down 9 points among Americans overall but 20 percent among independents. Similarly, the increase in those who think the country is headed in the wrong direction came mostly from independents and Democrats. Dissatisfaction among independents grew disproportionately on Obama's handling of a range of issues, including the economy, taxes, unemployment, the environment and more. Independents are "the ones to watch," according to Professor Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University expert on public opinion. "The Republicans were more pessimistic from the outset. The Democrats are going to be more resistant to negative information."

Overall, Obama still can feel good about a 55 percent approval rating, Shapiro said, but "the fact that it is on the downswing is something to be concerned about. That's going to affect how members of Congress, and in particular people in his own party, may respond to him." The AP-GfK Poll was conducted July 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. It involved interviews on landlines and cell phones with 1,006 adults nationwide. The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points

Save the air, but not the babies

2009-07-23T09:29:00.001-07:00

Liberals have the market corned on complaining about 'legislating morality'. They'll use that line when conservatives want to do something crazy like save babies who survive botched abortions. 'Don't shove your religious beliefs down my throat, if I want to kill a baby it's my right' they'll argue (in terms not exactly like those). But, there are times when liberals, without detecting any hint of irony, decide it's high time to tell people it's their 'moral duty' to go along with a bill. What is it?

Dancing with the Czars!

2009-07-23T09:27:00.002-07:00

The really American tradition of 'czars' is taking off under the Obama administration. He's got a whole slew of them at his side now, and they are just great. And who said we didn't have to pay attention to Obama's associations -- they were so right! It's not like President Obama is appointing Czars at will who believe in things like forced abortions, putting sterilants in the drinking water, giving livestock and other animals the right to sue, determining the value of each human using some formula. Ignore all that, and come Dancing with the Czars!

Global Warming...55 million years ago?

2009-07-23T09:27:00.001-07:00

Another little nugget of information for you:
SUV's (allegedly) did not exist 55 million years ago BUT, according to scientists, they've found that there was indeed massive global warming 55 million years ago here on Earth. This little revelation prompted one scientist to wonder if all the current climate models are completely wrong. Time for Al Gore to fire up the propaganda machine and discredit another scientist!

Universal Health Care helps kill UK man

2009-07-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Just a little nugget of information for you to noodle as Universal Healthcare is being rammed down our throats. In the UK, where they have Universal Health, a 22 year old man was denied a request for liver treatment and died soon after. The reason he was denied? Because he couldn't prove he could stay sober (he had a drinking problem). Despite having checked into AA and wanting to get better -- he couldn't prove it, so -- let him die! Let the rationing begin here in the US!

Healthcare is a glaring example of how common sense is all but dead in America -- we are pursuing an inferior policy in the name of 'change.' What's the real agenda?

Chris Matthews Wrong on Obama Birth Certificate

2009-07-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

MSNBC's Chris Matthews got into a heated exchange with a congressman on his show Tuesday as he revisited the question of President Barack Obama's birth certificate — or lack of one.

Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., is a co-sponsor of the so-called "birther bill," which would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificates. “Birthers” are those who believe Obama is not qualified to be president, based on a belief that he was not born in the United States. Campbell is not a “birther” and never has claimed that Obama was born outside the United States or should be disqualified from being president.

On the show, Matthews seemingly undermined claims by some that Obama never has released his birth certificate, producing what Matthews said was a true copy of it. But Matthews made a false claim. Obama never has released his actual birth certificate. He has released another document, which state authorities often provide in lieu of a birth certificate, called a certificate of live birth. Matthews on Tuesday said Campbell was "playing to the crazies" by supporting the "crazy" bill, and the congressman shot back that it was all about "putting the matter to rest."
Matthews also accused Campbell of "feeding the wacko wing of your party," and held up what he called a copy of the supposed Obama birth certificate. Case closed?
The indisputable fact is that Obama has not released his birth certificate, which the state of Hawaii issues for all citizens born there.

Instead, his campaign has released only his certification of live birth from the state of Hawaii, which is a document that offers a summarized version of the birth certificate. During the 2008 presidential campaign, GOP nominee Sen. John McCain quickly released his birth certificate when liberal bloggers raised questions about his eligibility to be president. McCain was born at a military hospital in Panama.
Obama likewise could put the matter to rest by releasing his actual birth certificate, which would show, among other things, the place of his birth and the doctor who performed the birth procedure. This information is not provided on the certificate of live birth. As it stands, Obama is the only president in history whose birthplace is unknown to the public – a fact that would be stated on the actual birth certificate. Interestingly, his family has mentioned two different hospitals in Hawaii as the place of birth. The fact that Obama has refused to release his actual birth certificate does not mean conspiracy theorists are right when they claim he was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to be president. Investigators who have reviewed the claims have found no evidence Obama was born outside of Hawaii. But Obama’s refusal to release his birth certificate does mean that Obama remains one of America’s most mysterious and opaque presidents ever.
Obama, for example, has not released many other documents regarding his public and private life. Many of these documents were sought by reporters, who easily acquiesced when Obama said he would not release them – though most presidential candidates release them as a perfunctory matter. Among the key documents that Obama continues to shield from the public:
Obama released just one brief document detailing his personal health. McCain, on the other hand, released what he said was his complete medical file, totaling more than 1,500 pages.
Obama refused to offer his official papers as a state legislator in Illinois. Nor did he produce correspondence, such as his schedules of appointments or letters from lobbyists, from his days in the Illinois state Senate.
Obama did not release his client list as an attorney or his billing records. He maintained that he performed only a few hours of legal work for a nonprofit organization with ties to Tony Rezko, the Chicago businessman convicted of fraud in June 2008 but did not release billing records that would prove this assertion.
Obama ignored requests for his records from Occidental College, where he studied for two years before transferring to Columbia University.
Obama’s campaign refused to give Columbia, where he earned an undergraduate degree in political science, permission to release his transcripts. Former President George W. Bush and presidential contenders Al Gore and John Kerry all released their college transcripts.
Obama did not agree to the release of his application to the Illinois State Bar, which would have cleared up intermittent allegations that his application may have been inaccurate.
Obama did not release records from his time at Harvard Law School.
During the presidential campaign, McCain’s campaign released a full list of all online donors. Obama’s campaign still has not released the names of those who donated at least one-third of the $750 million he raised.
Ironically, Obama accused the Bush White House of being "one of the most secretive administrations in our history," and chided then-Sen. Hillary Clinton for not releasing her White House schedules.

Chris Matthews, get your facts straight and demand full disclosure — that’s the best way to keep an honest government

Freedom

2009-07-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

The American Medical Association has weighed in on the new Obama health care

2009-07-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

The Allergists voted to scratch it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves. The Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve.

The Obstetricians felt they were all laboring under a misconception. The phthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted. Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the Pediatricians said, "Oh, Grow up!"

The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it. Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the whole thing. The Internists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow, and the Plastic Surgeons said, "This puts a whole new face on the matter...."

The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea. The Anesthesiologists thought the whole idea was a gas, and the Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no.

In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the
assholes in Washington.

Great Googley Moogley

Nurse Describes Obama's Effort to Stop Born Alive Law

2009-07-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

A Historian's Urgent Warning..

2009-07-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is a lengthy, but vital read. As one who holds degrees in history and political science, I concur with every point the highly accomplished Dr. David Kaiser makes in this vital wake-up call.

David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C., Albany, New York, and Dakar, Senegal. He attended Harvard University, graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.

He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College and has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University. Kaiser’s latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.

“History Unfolding”

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x ten… And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why? I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning..As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In those times, the “savior” was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative “losers” read it right now.

And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course.

How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and …. . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It’s all there in the history books.
So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.

Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me..

I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.

David Kaiser
Jamestown, Rhode Island ,United States

The Future of Health Care Rationing

2009-07-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

A look at the future under Obamacare! The House has given us another 1000 page-plus nightmare we are laboriously reading now. Trillions of dollars for euthanasia, abortion and NO choices despite Obama’s lies that you can choose to keep your current health plan if you want to. (See pages 14-16). Investors Business Daily caught it too…

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

More Fallout From Uncle Sam’s Heavy Hand

2009-07-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

From the article, “Money is Scurrying Away From the Dollar,” I touched on the radical lurch to the left that our nation is experiencing as Congress and the Obama administration proceed in their piece-by-piece dismantling of our capitalist system.

As any student of history could have predicted, this trend toward a more socialistic system of government is having a number of unintended consequences. The most immediate of these, of course, has been the growing disdain for the U.S. dollar (and a corresponding growth in affection for gold) among the world’s investors and savers.

But more repercussions are now becoming evident. The recent selloff in U.S. Treasuries sent rates spiking higher and pushed the yield curve to its steepest slope in history.

The problem is that traders have had to sell Treasuries to hedge against rising rates in mortgages. But now that selling in Treasuries is rippling into the mortgage market. That is sending rates higher and endangering the fragile healing process in the nation’s housing market.

The Fed simply cannot allow this to happen. But again, there’s a problem: The Fed has been buying mortgages and Treasuries through their quantitative easing program to keep rates low. Now, they’re going to have to ramp up that program, to a very large degree, to keep rates at levels conducive to an economic recovery.

“You can’t have a spike in interest rates in the long end without it impacting the economy,” warned Brian Edmonds, head of interest rate trading at Cantor Fitzgerald. “That’s why the Fed has been a supporter of the quantitative easing. They have a choice. They could walk away from it or they could increase it to the point where it’s meaningful. The $300 billion is not effective….You’ve got to start to talk trillions.”

The end result, of course, will be double-digit inflation rates, a collapse in the dollar, and a correspondingly large increase in the value of gold. There will be other unintended consequences of this new, more socialistic America. The most frightening of these will be the significant erosion of our individual rights. We need to prepare for these events, not only as investors, but as American citizens. Brien Lundin

The Fed Must Be Stopped

2009-07-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

Our country currently finds itself in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and, as during all economic crises, people search for the answer as to why this has happened. Not only have large financial firms been affected, but also mainstays of American industry such as GM and Chrysler, all the way down to the Mom & Pop stores on Main Street. The easy way out is to blame the traditional scapegoats: foreign governments, fraudulent businessmen, and greedy speculators. But the real villain is far more sinister; the organization entrusted with maintaining a stable dollar and touted as the guarantor of economic stability – the Federal Reserve. In the United States, monetary policy has been the domain of the Federal Reserve since its inception in 1913. Since that time we have had a number of cyclical recessions, each one following a boom caused by the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy. The problem with the Federal Reserve is that it interferes with market pricing functions. Interest rates are a price just like any other and arise because of the fact that people prefer to consume in the present rather than in the future. The extent to which people defer present consumption is reflected in interest rates, which in a free market are determined by the spontaneous interactions and decisions of millions of people. Fed intervention to set prices throws markets and interest rates out of equilibrium. When the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates below what the market rate would be, everyone wants to borrow money for long-term projects. Shortages of loanable funds would occur, except that the Federal Reserve has the ability to create bank balances out of thin air. The Fed can create a bank ledger on paper, or on a computer, establish a balance of millions or billions of dollars, and then spend these dollars out into the economy. Loans become cheap, and the result of these lower interest rates is an economic boom which eventually manifests itself as a bubble. Beginning in 2001, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates to as low as one percent, which after adjusting for inflation meant that the real interest rate was negative, so businesses were actually making money by taking out loans. This was the fuel for the housing bubble and the reason there are 19 million empty houses today. Because of this awesome power to create money out of thin air, the Fed has jumped in to stabilize ailing financial firms by pledging over $7 trillion through various guarantee programs and credit facilities. This is equivalent to over half of the entire nation's GDP. Over $1 trillion of this is already in play, propping up banks and other institutions that should be allowed to fail. All of this has taken place with no oversight by Congress. The Fed was created by Congress, and it is unconscionable that we have allowed it to act in such a way without our oversight. Currently the Federal Reserve's credit facilities, open market operations, and agreements with foreign governments and central banks are all exempt from any sort of audit or oversight. Earlier this year I introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207, that would remove all restrictions on Federal Reserve audits and call for a f ull audit of the Federal Reserve System to be completed by the end of 2010. At this writing, 245 of my fellow Congressmen have cosponsored this bill and we hope to have hearings in the near future. In the Senate, Republicans Jim DeMint, Mike Crapo and David Vitter have cosponsored S. 604, companion legislation introduced by Bernie Sanders. I am very encouraged by the tremendous growing momentum on Capitol Hill. Our Founding Fathers never intended for a single entity such as the Federal Reserve to have this much power. In fact, there is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to create a central bank, to enact legal tender laws, or to print paper money. The Tenth Amendment is quite clear that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The states themselves are prohibited from emitting bills of credit, i.e. paper money, arising from the Founders' negative experiences with paper money during the Revolutionary War. Cheap, un-backed, easily counterfeited paper money nearly lost the Revolution, until the government returned to minting gold and silver coins. Unfortunately, like too many other lessons learned by the Founders, the painful experiences of paper money have been forgotten by those living in the pres ent. We even ignore the experiences of Germans in the 1920s, Argentines in the 1980s, and Zimbabweans over the past decade. The Fed doubled the monetary base last fall in a matter of months, and God help us if any of this high-powered money begins to make its way through the economy. An audit of the Fed is only the first step towards returning to where our Founders intended this country to be. The Founders knew that paper money could ruin a country, and drafted the Constitution in such a way that they thought would ensure sound, commodity-backed currency. Unfortunately, the Constitution was dispensed with long ago, and we find ourselves now suffering under an unconstitutional regime of un-backed paper money. Until we abolish the Federal Reserve and return to a stable currency that is not able to be manipulated to create boom and bust cycles, we will continue down the path of economic ruin. Congress Ron Paul serves the fourteenth district of Texas and is honorary chairman of Campaign for Liberty. His new book, End the Fed (Grand Central Publishing) will release on September 16th and is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Socialized Medicine in a Wealthy Country

2009-07-09T12:36:00.001-07:00

With the Democrats taking charge in Congress, we will surely hear talk of mandatory national health insurance, more spending for health care for the poor and elderly, and more taxes on individuals and business to pay for the whole scheme. This is admittedly not that different from what Republicans have been doing since taking over. In some ways, some Republicans maybe even worse, driving us to socialism in the name of market reform and other sloganeering. Either way, we are stuck with a system that is moving the health sector ever more into the hands of the state. There are two popular images of socialized medicine. I don't think either captures what the reality is in our prosperous and largely capitalistic country. The first image is that held by the delusional left. They imagine that if most health care were publicly provided and administered by the state, people of all social classes, age groups, and races and sexes, would have equal access. Enlightened public bureaucrats would make the essential decisions about health priorities. Leftists imagine that this will save money in the long run because people will be prevented from doing things that cause them to get sick and die prematurely, such as smoke, eat fast foods, and fail to go on long nature walks. Mostly the left-wing view is of the negative sort. It makes them crazy, and offends their moral sense, that the rich can afford better health care than the poor. They believe that it violates a sense of fairness that the rich have the means to live longer, healthier lives, than the poor, who are left to the mercy of life's exigencies. But let's say that we can show that under a capitalist health market, the poor will be better off in absolute terms. I doubt very seriously that this will satisfy the true socialist. What bothers him is not so much bad health as the unequal access to good health. For the same reason, the socialist is not persuaded by the argument that the poor will be richer under capitalism because they are aware that inequality will continue to exist under capitalism. It is more important to them to reduce the well-being of the rich than it is to improve the lot of the poor, so long as the poor still constitute an identifiable class within the population. It is because of these normative assumptions that left-socialists can rightly be called the party of envy, for their desire to destroy and expropriate is more intense than their desire to uplift. That is to say, they are more interested in equality than general prosperity. The second view of socialized medicine sees the problems with socialism, that it leads to building up a state apparatus that has life-and-death control over the population. Because bureaucrats have no strong incentive to see to the well-being of people, they make decisions based on politics. And because entrepreneurs are cut out of the picture, innovations cease to be brought to the health-care market in a way that makes them accessible. We end up with a bureaucratically controlled nightmare in which no class in society receives the level of medical attention it would receive in a marketplace. So far as stated, this critique is a good one. But the opponents of health-care socialism also have in their minds a vision of what life would be like under socialism. Mostly these visions are drawn from experiences under socialist countries that have been driven into poverty by state ownership of the means of production. The state in these cases does not have much money. There is no private store of wealth to speak of, and no private business that has the motivation or the means to provide customer service. What happened in these countries is entirely predictable. There was an under-supply of medical services just as there was an under supply of everything else. Yuri Maltsev tells harrowing stories of how people would suffer relentlessly in the USSR. When the death rate per hospital would grow so as to embarrass the state, the state would simply order the rate to be lowered, just as they ordered grain production to be higher. The hospitals would respond in perverse ways. Instead of providing better care, they started rolling people out the door if the personnel suspected that the patient was near death. The result was a decline in per-hospital death rates, but an overall increase in deaths. One thing that the state has not been able to lie about is vital statistics. The Soviet state did its best to keep them from being revealed. But once the data were collected, the truth came out. Between 1971 and 1986, the Soviet state faced a calamity. Life expectancy decreased. Infant mortality increased. In fact, the Soviet state stopped collecting data again. But later, once the truth was revealed again, it turned out that infant mortality was on the increase, in some cases as much as 58 percent between 1971 and 1986. A similar experience was repeated in every socialized state. Health declined. Vital statistics did not keep up with capitalistic standards. It is a great irony that Marx had thought socialism would be the next stage of history, following capitalism just as capitalism followed feudalism. And yet socialism itself had been systematically driving these countries back to feudal-era forms of health care that were increasingly deprived of modern technology. Not that these countries didn't invest in scientific medical research. People from the old Soviet Union said that sometimes it seemed like every fifth person had a medical degree. Indeed, no societies in human history ever invested more in science than socialist countries did. But they kept sinking further into the abyss. Why? The problem was economic rather than technical. You can put 10,000 government medical scientists in a gigantic cushy building, pay them all a million dollars a month, give them access to every journal and all the equipment they need, and let them invent whatever they want. But the population will still be without. Inventions and scientists might be a necessary condition for popular access to medical goods and services. But they are not sufficient. We need an economic system that can calculate the best use of resources. It requires the division of labor and a complex capital structure for products to reach a general market. What's more, not every innovation needs to go to market. There must be a way for consumers to transmit information about their most urgent needs to producers, and there needs to be a means for producers to decide among alternative uses of resources. In other words, there must be a system of profit and loss, which in turn must be based on private property exchange. In short, without capitalism, medical services cannot reach the multitudes. The experience of socialism reinforces what the theory would suggest. We might raise the question about why it is necessary that consumers themselves be in a position to pay economically rational prices for the medical services they consume. Wouldn't it be better if everyone could just consume all the services and drugs and surgeries that they needed? Mises pointed out that that there is no clean division between sickness and health. We ourselves are capable of making misjudgments on this matter, believing ourselves to be sick and even making ourselves sick if we so will it. The will to health is an important determinant of our well-being. But socialism, by pricing all services at zero, destroys the will to health and thereby generates sickness. Here is Mises from 1922, in a passage that was criticized for decades as being completely outlandish: "By weakening or completely destroying the will to be well and able to work, social insurance creates illness and inability to work; it produces the habit of complaining.... It is an institution which tends to encourage diseases, not to say accidents, and to intensify considerably the physical and psychic results of accidents and illnesses. As a social institution it makes a people sick bodily and mentally or at least helps to multiply, lengthen, and intensify diseases.... We cannot weaken or destroy the will to health without producing illness." Note that he said this 42 years before the US created just such a situation. We can observe this to some extent in the way disability law has been misused in this country. After the Americans With Disability Act was passed, millions of Americans found that they were themselves disabled. So too with poverty. The welfare state actually succeeded in driving people to adapt their life conditions to the make themselves eligible. I'm quite sure that if the government were to institute a Good Samaritan Office, we would find the streets strewn with people who had been beaten and robbed. It is the nature of a government program to multiply the problem rather than solve anything. I find it striking that after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, virtually no effort was made to privatize health services. To be sure, there are now private health services in these countries, but the official systems of socialized medicine still exist. This fact is a testament to the reigning orthodoxy. The world seems to understand that it is a mistake to nationalize agriculture and factory production. No one advocates a Department of Software Development, even if there are far more interventions in this sector than there should be. And yet health care, all over the world, is assumed to be a normal function of government. In this area, as in many others, the former socialist countries - under US advice, bribes, and pressure – took social democratic economies as their models. So they not only created a panoply of new regulatory departments, and imposed a series of destructive taxes, they also did not question the assumption that health-care provision cannot be left to the market alone. This is despite the vast number of stories we hear about English and Canadian health care socialism, mostly having to do with a lack of innovation and a grim shortage of medical, surgical, and emergency services. In these countries, there is much that mirrors the former Soviet experience, except in one area: their governments are not as poor. This changes the incentive structure. The government has incentives to spend money. Indeed, governments win from passing money around, and that can mean making more money available rather than less, unlike in the Soviet system. To understand this point is to add an additional factor to the way we understand socialist medical care. It's time that we change our expectations concerning what socialism will look like in our future, though we have it partially now. The key problem with socialism is that it misallocates resources, and when applied to the U.S. medical sector, this means a vast over consumption of medical services as well as artificially high prices. The system is carefully structured in a mercantilist way to socialize losses and privatize profits. In this way, the largest players in the market benefit and a small group of semi-private cartels are insured against financial failure. Let's take a closer look. First, there are severe limits on the number of service providers, as there have been for a century. We brag about the specialization we have among doctors, but what we do not have is a range of choices among levels of training. When we want our car fixed, we can go to the dealer or we can go to another 40 places with a range of mechanics, some of whom have had extensive training and some of whom have not - a fact which may or may not reflect on the quality of their work. In medical economics, however, we are supposed to believe that physicians are a class set apart like ordained priests with special powers. You are either ordained to practice medicine or you are not. The limits on the numbers - which are built into the cartel of medical schools as well as the licensure system - are nothing but a mercantilist effort to increase prices and incomes. Of course every profession has its licensure system, but the medical one has been uniquely successful in making the barriers to practice incredibly high. This sad situation began in the states in the 19th century, and nationally in 1910. Originally, our medical sector was nearly 100% free. It would have been inconceivable that the federal government should have ever intervened in this critical area of life. Then came the Progressive Era, with its fashion for central planning. The medical sector came under mercantilist control during the same period in which we got the income tax, the Federal Reserve, the direct election of Senators, the Federal Trade Commission, and US entry into World War I. An important part of this medical cartelization was the suppression of homeopathy and other non-allopathic schools of treatment. As an offshoot of this monopoly, we still live under the absurd system whereby doctors must give prescriptions for the drugs we want to buy. The pharmacy industry and the doctors cling to this system for life support. But it is an insult to consumers and a ripoff of the sick. In a free market, you should be able to consume whatever medications you want, official or alternative, purchased in ways that accord with market demands, not government dictates. Second, we have a third-party payment system whereby insurance companies, contracted by businesses working within government mandates, are paying the bills for services. So the insurance company, not the patient, is the customer, with the doctor responsible to those paying him. The mandatory aspect of the program led to a cartelization of the medical insurers, who stopped behaving like insurers and began acting like a cartelized payment system. Hospitals were paid on a cost-plus basis. Thus the vast artificial boom in this sector. The insurers paid for routine and not unexpected services. The risk pool was cobbled together in a way that had nothing to do with the actual risks. These features all led to a vast overuse of the system that benefited the medical industry. These features all became part of the 1960s welfarization of medicine with Medicare and Medicaid. And the inevitable huge increases in costs have led to ever more government price caps, and patch-work interventions to keep the system afloat and its customers from engaging in political revolt. It has also caused a general overmedicalization of the population, especially older people under institutionalized care. Everyone has horror stories to tell of how aging people are treated by our medical system. What strikes me as strange is how the financial incentives of hospitals and insurers are rarely considered to be a factor in the medical decisions made on their behalf. We are all supposed to believe that our medical establishment is purely interested in human welfare. But if we understand the financial incentives at work, we have a new window into why it is that so vast a percentage of medical resources are used to treat people in the last months of their lives. Think of the entire field of medical ethics that has become particularly important when technology has permitted an ever greater control over the time and circumstances of death. Everyone speaks as if the resources that are required to sustain life beyond its natural term belong to all of us to spend how we as a society have decided. Think of the debate over Terry Schiavo, for example. Not once in the public clamor over this tragic case was the issue of who was paying brought up. This is a very dangerous trend. There is no getting around the fact that the institution that is the source of funding will ultimately make the decisions on how resources are used. The more that programs like Medicare and Medicaid pay for life extension, the more the government will be in a position to decide when a person's life must be sustained and when it must end. Now, many people have written about the coming meltdown of these programs. But not many are willing to speak about the true origins of the payment-system mess. The medical insurance cartel got its biggest boost in World War II, when wage controls caused business to compete based on benefits rather than pay. Here we see a direct connection between the warfare state and the welfare state. As usual, they work hand in hand. Third, innovations in official and alternative treatments are very seriously shackled by the FDA, an institution that overrides patients' freedom to choose their own treatments, and constructs its approval process to favor only the largest pharmaceutical companies. So we face a peculiar situation in which there is an overuse of approved drugs and nonuse of needed but unapproved drugs and other remedies. The way around this problem is to leave it to the market, but that is a solution hardly anyone wants to consider. You might be able to argue that in past ages, a government bureaucracy was necessary to collect and assess information about a drug, and finally approve it, on grounds that consumers did not have the information to make their own decisions. I don't happen to think that argument is correct, given the universal efficiency of markets over government. But in these times, the case for bureaucracy is even more obviously incorrect. Consumers have more medical information from more sources at their fingertips than at any time in human history. The people who need specialized but unapproved treatments are aghast to find that the FDA is withholding approval. Increasingly, we see cases where a manufacturer doesn't even bother to file for approval in the US. In this context, too, we need to raise the subject of medical patents, which are nothing but government privileges given to an innovative company to prolong the period of profits that come from being the first firm to gain approval for the drug. Patents have no justification in a free market. There is no patent given on recipes for food, and yet that has not inhibited innovation nor diminished the quality of food at restaurants. The high profits flowing to pharmaceutical companies from patents, combined with increasing government subsidies, have led to an untenable situation. The prices of prescription drugs have soared by 50% in the last 10 years. Non-prescription drugs have gone up by 6%, which in real terms means falling prices. I suggest to you that this data set tells us pretty much all we need to know. Recently, Wal-Mart made the remarkable announcement that it would begin making generic drugs available at its stores for $4. This program has been a phenomenal success. People wonder how they can do this. It might be true that Wal-Mart is using drugs as a loss leader, trying to get people in the store who might otherwise be going to smaller drug outlets. If this is what they are up to, I say it's all to the good. The fact is that in any market exchange, both parties benefit and human welfare improves. The very existence of the program has pushed prices down in competitive businesses. This is the way the market is supposed to work. Wal-Mart has helped solve some of the problems that had been generated by the prescription drug benefit program by the Bush administration. This may cost far more than the Clinton medical reform might have cost, many people have found the program itself to be a bureaucratic headache. But with Wal-Mart we once again discover how the market comes to the rescue. The striking fact of all of human history is how the market works around government's failure to solve human problems and, indeed, the market finds the way to correct for human problems that the government itself has created. To watch the flow of history is to observe two great streams of activity. In the private sector, we find innovation, efficiency, cost cutting, human service, dynamism, and problem solving. In the public sector we find stagnation, bureaucracy, inefficiency, cost overruns, human coercion, and problem creating. If the government alone had been in charge for the last 500 years, our world would look very different. Indeed, we might have no civilization to speak of. But fortunately the market - meaning innovating and cooperating human beings - seems to find a way around the problems that government has created. This is nowhere more true than in the medical sector. It is thanks to the market that there is more medical information available today than ever before in history, more life-saving techniques, more access to services, and more choice. Ideally, we would have radical reform so that government programs would be abolished, medical cartels smashed, and medical service provision wholly privatized. But what if that doesn't happen? It could be that 50 years from now, the competitive private sector, with its dazzling capacity for finding ways around every barrier, will be completely dominant in the medical industry, and those sectors that have lived off government largess will be reduced to near insignificance. For the sake of our health and prosperity, let us hope for this as a 2nd best solution to the complete separation of health and state. Ideally we would come to see health and medicine the way it's been seen in the whole of human history prior to the century of socialism. At every level and in every sector, it should be subject to market discipline. The money we use to purchase medical services should be private money, whether out of our own bank accounts or from charitable sources. We need to rethink the meaning of medical insurance, which, if it exists at all, should only apply to catastrophic cases to cover life contingencies over which we have no control. And of course we need freedom for all schools of treatment. The path for progress here, as in every aspect of economics and civilization, lies with privatization, the elimination of restrictions and welfare, and freedom itself. The critical problem we face today is the same one all mankind has faced: the state, those monopolists who claim the right to break the laws that they make and enforce. How to restrain them is the critical problem of all sound political thinking. Making matters worse, this gang now has a monopoly on the money and the ability to print it, and they are abusing that power at our expense. The President Obama does not want to do anything. On the contrary, he wants to make it worse. This is for a reason. The state owns the “democratic process” as surely as it owns the Departments of Labor and Defense and uses it in ways that benefit the state and no one else. On the other hand, we do have the freedom not to vote. No one has yet drafted us into the voting booth. I suggest that we exercise this right not to participate. It is one of the few rights we have left. Nonparticipation sends a message that we no longer believe in the racket they have cooked up for us, and we want no part of it. You might say that this is ineffective. But what effect does voting have? It gives them what they need most: a mandate. Nonparticipation helps deny that to them. It makes them, just on the margin, a bit more fearful that they are ruling us without our consent. This is all to the good. The government should fear the people.

Global Financial Crisis and Currency Collapse

2009-07-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

After nearly 30 years of unprecedented prosperity, the U.S. economy is now in shambles. Millions of Americans have lost their homes… their life savings… and their jobs. While the U.S. military remains the most powerful force in the world, the most immediate threats America now faces are closer to home:…failing banks… …soaring government spending that will lead to Hyperinflation……runaway taxes……an increasingly totalitarian government that believes in illegal surveillance of law-abiding citizens……older citizens no longer able to retire and live what used to be known as “their golden years.” America’s biggest banks are running to the Federal government for emergency loans and bailouts. Hundreds could end up failing. Yet the FDIC has only $19 billion in insurance funds to cover an estimated $4.4 trillion in deposits.The government tells YOU that everything is just fine, not to worry… but that’s NOT what it tells the bankers.“Without substantial amounts of additional assessment revenue in the near future, current projections indicate that the (FDIC) fund balance will approach zero or even become negative,” FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair wrote in the letter to the chief executives of the nation’s 8,305 federally insured banks and thrifts. The truth is, when a bank fails, the Feds close it down without advance notice. It’s policy. You show up at the bank to make a withdrawal and the doors are locked shut. There is usually a notice on the door instructing depositors how they can gain access to their money. That’s what happened to depositors at Colorado National Bank in March 2009. The bank issued a notice telling depositors that their money had been transferred to Herring Bank of Amarillo, Texas. There are usually few delays in gaining access to your money—usually but not always. And do you really want to take that chance? When IndyMac Bank of Pasadena, Calif., failed in July 2008, the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, angry depositors lined up around the block trying to get their money. Many were turned away. Police threatened anxious customers to remain calm or they would be arrested. It was estimated that 10,000 depositors had as much as $1 billion in uninsured IndyMac accounts. For American investors worried about the safety of U.S. banks, it will soon be too late to seek an alternative.That’s because the new Democrat-controlled Congress has plans to make it virtually illegal for an American citizen to open a bank account in another country—even for legitimate business purposes. It’s already very difficult. Many foreign banks no longer will do business with Americans due to the onerous reporting requirements of the U.S. Patriot Act. Led by Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the Democrats believe foreign bank accounts allow ex-pats and others to avoid income taxes—at least $100 billion worth—and they are determined to collect it. In March 2009, Levin proposed new draconian rules to make it almost impossible for a U.S. citizen to open foreign bank accounts. What worries economists is that a large number of bank failures could overwhelm the FDIC and result in significant delays for depositors in gaining access to their savings. If that were to happen, many Americans would be unable to pay their bills or their mortgages. What’s more, widespread bank failures are quite possible. In the 1980s and 90s, more than 700 savings and loan institutions failed or were taken over by Federal regulators. The total cost to taxpayers was estimated at $130 billion. Some depositors had to wait years to get their money. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) covered accounts up to the maximum of $50,000. But depositors with large accounts often had to wait—and some never did get their money back. Bank officials have been informed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that all safety deposit boxes will be seized in the event of a national disaster. As occurred sporadically during the Great Depression, Federal agents will examine all safety deposit boxes and determine which items may be returned to bank customers. No weapons, cash, gold or silver will be allowed to leave the bank—only paperwork will be given to its owners. Bank officials have been instructed not to reveal this policy to bank customers, even if asked. Bottom line: Only use safety deposit boxes for family documents you don’t mind being inspected by Federal agents. Never use them to store valuables. For one thing, the current crisis doesn’t just affect small savings and loans in Middle America but the largest banks in the world—banks like Wachovia, Citibank, Bank of America and Washington Mutual. They have all been forced to get large loans from the Federal government to cover bad debts worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The size of these bad debts, known as derivatives, are difficult to imagine. Derivatives are investments that are “derived” from IOUs like mortgage loans, corporate bonds and credit card debts. Investment bankers take these bundles of debts and then sell them as investments. According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, banks in the U.S. currently hold more than $180 trillion in derivatives. The Bank of International Settlements estimates the total worldwide to be a staggering $683.7 trillion. That’s why, in March 2009, New York University economist Nouriel Roubini predicted that the banking crisis has just begun. He said that “many” banks will end up being nationalized because the government’s $750 billion TARP program does little more than help the banks meet their current obligations. It does nothing to address the underlying problem of bad debts (so-called “toxic assets”) the banks are carrying on their books.
Hyperinflation is not as rare as governments would like you to believe. Whenever a government spends far more than it takes in, the risk of Hyperinflation is there. It wipes out the value of accumulated savings, leaving even affluent people penniless. For example: In 2008, Zimbabwe: The socialist dictatorship of Robert Mugabe has created an annual inflation rate of 11,250,000%, resulting in currency that is basically worthless. At independence in 1980, 1 Zimbabwean dollar was worth approximately $1.25 in U.S. dollars. By mid-2008, one U.S. dollar was worth 688 trillion pre-August 2006 Zimbabwean dollars. 2007, Turkey: Turkey has suffered from chronic inflation for decades. In 1980, one U.S. dollar was worth 90 Turkish lira. By 2004, a U.S. dollar was worth 1.3 million Turkish lira. As a result, in 2007 the government simply declared a revaluation of the Turkish lira. One million Turkish lira would hence forth be worth only 1 lira. 2005, Romania: In 1998, the highest denomination in Romania was 100,000 lei. By 2005, it was 1 million lei. The Romanian government then devalued its currency, declaring that 1 new leu would be worth 10,000 old lei. 2001, Argentina: Overspending by the Argentine government resulted in massive inflation in the 1980s and 90s. By 1992, one new peso was worth 100 billion pre-1983 pesos. (Had you stuffed cash in your mattress during one of Argentina’s many recessions, not trusting their shaky banks, you would have ended up with nothing.) 1994, Russia: Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new Russia saw annual inflation of between 2,500% and 8,500% a year. The value of the ruble declined from 40 rubles to the dollar in 1991 to 30,000 rubles to the dollar by 1999.
In the past few months, prices have been falling. Real estate is down. Prices for some commodities have declined. But don’t be fooled! The current, temporary period of deflation will soon be followed by massive INFLATION. That’s because Barack Obama and his allies in Congress have embarked on the biggest government spending spree in history. This socialistic expansion of government will inevitably lead to a devaluation of the U.S. dollar (hyperinflation) that could wipe out your life savings. Imagine a world of $20 per gallon of gasoline… $30 hamburgers… and housing rentals costing $10,000 a month or more. The economic stimulus package alone (estimated at $850 billion) is nearly DOUBLE what the U.S. spent on FDR’s New Deal in inflation-adjusted terms. It’s 8 times more than the U.S. spent on the Marshall Plan rebuilding Europe after World War II. It’s more than we spent on NASA, the Race to the Moon or the Iraq, Vietnam or Korean Wars. And the stimulus plan is only the tip of the iceberg! When you add in the bailout lending for Citigroup and skyrocketing federal deficits, the U.S. government is spending $10 trillion it doesn’t have over the next few years. Whether the government borrows it or prints it, an increase that big in the money supply is going to do only one thing: Send inflation through the roof! The last time the U.S. government tried to spend its way out of a recession, in the 1970s, the inflation rate increased by 500%—from a 70-year average of only 2.5% to a high of 13.5% in 1979. But government spending in the 1970s is practically ZERO when compared to what the U.S. government is spending today. In the past 12 months alone, the U.S. government (both Republicans and Democrats) have promised to spend $7.4 trillion in bailouts. According to Bloomberg.com, this includes……$1.8 trillion in Net Portfolio Commercial Paper Funding through the Fed……$1.4 trillion in FDIC Liquidity Guarantees……$900 billion in the Term Auction Facility (TAF)……$540 billion in the Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF)……$700 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)… 300 billion in the Hope for Homeowners program run by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)……$200 billion for the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout……$128 billion for the American Insurance Group (AIG) loans……$250 billion for Term Securities Lending……$139 billion loan guarantee for General Electric (GE)Currency depreciation (inflation) robs retirement pensions and all savings, but most people don’t notice because it is gradual up to the latter stages when it is already too late. The U.S. Constitution protects citizens against “unlawful search and seizure.” U.S. courts have long insisted that police agencies must have “probable cause” that a crime has been committed before they can search through your home, subpoena your bank records, tap your private telephone calls and so on. But in the name of catching terrorists and “tax cheats,” all these constitutional protections are being flagrantly (often illegally) ignored by many government agencies. Laws that were designed to catch terrorists are now being used instead for domestic spying in the U.S…. illegal investigations of political organizations… monitoring of bank accounts and credit card companies… routine scanning of private emails and web browsing… tracking vehicle movements… and lots more. Both liberal and conservative organizations are outraged at the current scope of government surveillance—which now far exceeds anything George Orwell imagined in his chilling, anti-authoritarian polemic, 1984. Worst, the U.S. Patriot Act now requires tens of thousands of private businesses—from banks and brokerages to credit card companies and precious metals dealers—literally to spy on their customers for the government. In the name of catching money launderers and terrorists, the government forces private businesses to report any “unusual” activity involving transactions over $3,000—and all the data is fed into a massive government supercomputer known as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). What’s more, if employees of these businesses warn their customers about these spying activities, they could go to prison. If you think the election of Barack Obama will end illegal government surveillance of its citizens, you haven’t been paying attention. One of Obama’s first acts as president was to file a brief in federal court siding with the former Bush Administration and insisting that the government should be allowed to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. Privacy advocates insist Americans will have just as much to fear from Democrat spies as they had from the Bush Administration—perhaps more. That’s because, while George W. Bush and the Republicans trounced on civil liberties and used warrant-less wiretaps in the pursuit of global terrorists, Barack Obama and his Democrat allies are going to use the same spying technologies… on U.S. taxpayers! “Hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes are owed to the government each year but are not being collected,” warned Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat from New York and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, himself investigated for criminal tax evasion. According to the New York Times, the kinds of “tax cheats” Obama and the Democrat-congress plan on targeting include “…self-employed painters and plumbers, small family businesses (from local florists and dry-cleaners to restaurants) and the growing legions who sell things over eBay and other Internet auction sites.” “Tax cheats come in all shapes and sizes,” explained Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Levin is pushing through a bill in Congress that would make offshore bank accounts virtually illegal. “This bill contains innovative and powerful measures that could strike an immediate and strong blow against these tax dodges,” he said in 2008. “These provisions would recover billions that could help pay for health care, education, manufacturing support, aid for wounded warriors and more.”In the eyes of power-mad government bureaucrats, ordinary citizens are guilty until proven innocent—and they’re pushing for NEW, expanded police powers that will include mandatory fingerprinting, iris scans and DNA sampling of all citizens, national biometric ID cards, transponder tracking of vehicles (for mileage taxes!), even geographical tracking of citizens through microchip implants. The potential for abuse and illegal snooping is massive—and is already occurring. Two years ago, the U.S. Senate held hearings about possibly revoking the Patriot Act because of revelations that the FBI was routinely and illegally gathering telephone, email and financial records of ordinary Americans without proper authorization. Fortunately, there are now steps you can take—100% legal steps routinely used by Hollywood celebrities and the super-wealthy—to shield yourself from government snoops and identity thieves who want to illegally invade your privacy. For example…A 100% legal way to move money offshore without violating U.S. reporting requirements. Federal law now requires that you report every bank or brokerage account you have outside the U.S. if the combined total in such accounts exceeds $10,000—or you face up to five years in prison and a fine of $500,000. However, the wealthy have long used an investment vehicle that is exempt from such reporting requirements— offshore life insurance policies. A life insurance policy purchased from a foreign carrier is NOT considered a “foreign bank, security or other financial account” and therefore not subject to U.S. reporting laws. What’s more, offshore insurance policies are “invisible” to the asset tracking services used by private investigators and government snoops in the U.S. They allow you to take advantage of tax-advantaged investments and offshore funds not accessible to U.S. investors. They also enable you to diversify into non-U.S. dollar assets that may gain in the event of future declines in the U.S. dollar, economy or markets. Best of all, offshore life insurance policies often have lower premium costs… better asset protection than their U.S. counterparts… zero tax on policy earnings… and the same provisions for tax-free borrowing and tax-free receipt of death benefit as ordinary U.S. insurance policies. In a word: They are the perfect investment vehicle for those who want to escape the illegal prying of U.S. government snoops and predatory lawyers. You may think an offshore annuity sounds complicated, but it’s not. It's quick and easy. All it takes is one phone call, fax or email and the people handling the accounts all speak excellent English. www.boblivingstonletter.com for more details

Gitmo General Speaks Out About Closure, Detainees

2009-07-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

The deputy commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay tells Newsmax that "a good number" of detainees who have been released have gone on to commit terrorist acts.
However, Brig. Gen. Rafael O'Ferrall, Deputy Commander General for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, would not say if he disagrees with President Barack Obama's plan to close down the facility by next year.
See Video: Brig. Gen. Rafael O'Ferrall, Deputy Commander General for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, discusses watching over some of the world’s worst terrorists -
Referring to earlier media reports of harsh interrogation techniques used on some terrorist suspects, Newsmax.TV's Kathleen Walter asked the general how interrogations are handled now at Guantanamo.
"Interrogations are basically what you and I are doing now," he responded. "It's a conversation."
The difference, he said, is that the detainees can have "some special food that they might want" during questioning.
"They have their milkshakes . . . or a big meal. So that's the way we do intelligence collection. We are doing it in a humane, safe, and legal manner."
Asked if Americans should be concerned about the possible transfer of Guantanamo detainees to prisons in the U.S., O'Ferrall — who assumed his present position last December — would say only "that is something that is out of my command right now."
He also declined to give a direct answer when asked if agreed with Obama's plan to close down the Guantanamo by January, saying "that's another area of expertise" and "I don't have the potential to say yes or no."
But he did say that as an officer, he would carry out any order issued by his commander in chief.
Asked if any of the 520 detainees released from Guantanamo so far have committed terrorist acts, O'Ferrall told Newsmax: "We have known of several. The exact number I cannot tell, but yes, there's a good number that have been recidivists in the war on terror."
O'Ferrall also said some detainees cannot be returned to their native countries for fear they will be suspected of revealing sensitive information during their interrogations, and "we have the responsibility to make sure they are well treated wherever they go."
Some detainees get "hyper. They do their protests. They go on hunger strikes," the general said.
"When we are releasing them, that is when they get the opportunity to assault our guards with — we call them body fluids. They throw it at the guards. They hit them. They spit at them and do all kinds of things."
But morale among the troops at Guantanamo remains high, even though they work a grueling schedule consisting of 12-hour shifts, four days on, two days off, according to O'Ferrall.
"It's difficult for my young troops and service members," he said, adding that the soldiers are "unbelievable" and are "people we should be very proud of in America."
See Video: Brig. Gen. Rafael O'Ferrall, Deputy Commander General for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, discusses watching over some of the world’s worst terrorists -
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Give Terrorists Constitutional Rights, Says Obama Administration

2009-07-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – US administration officials said Tuesday that terror suspects tried before military commissions can claim some constitutional rights, including protection against evidence obtained through coercion.
The commissions, Assistant Attorney General David Kris said, should only allow evidence from detainees' voluntary statements or else risk having convictions thrown out on appeal in higher courts.
"It is the administration's view that there is a serious risk that courts would hold that admission of involuntary statements of the accused in military commission proceedings is unconstitutional," Kris told the Senate Armed Services Committee in written testimony.
Adding the safeguards upholding "due process" principles in the US Constitution would help commission convictions stand up on appeal, Kris told the panel.
His comments, echoed by the Defense Department's general counsel, Jeh Johnson, reflected a debate within the administration and in Congress over how to prosecute detainees under revised rules for the controversial military tribunals.
Republican Senator John McCain questioned the Justice Department official's view, saying he was surprised to hear that terror suspects at Guantanamo, the US naval base in southern Cuba where 229 "war on terror" detainees remain, enjoyed constitutional protections.
"I did not know, nor know, of any time in American history where enemy combatants were given rights under the United States Constitution," McCain said.
The US Navy's judge advocate general, Vice Admiral Bruce McDonald, told the senators he rejected the Justice Department's opinion.
The admiral argued that the legal principle of voluntary statements from the accused made sense in ordinary criminal cases but was impractical for the military commissions, which he said were handling suspects picked up on the battlefield.
Instead, McDonald proposed a list of "considerations" to be taken into account by the presiding judge, including whether a statement was taken on the battlefield or in subsequent detention.
For detainees at the controversial prison camp facing possible prosecution, much of the evidence against them comes from "involuntary" statements in interrogations, legal analysts say.
The Senate hearing focused on a proposed bill, which McCain helped draft, that would introduce new rules for the commissions designed to make trial procedures resemble courts-martial.
In May, President Barack Obama said he would keep the military commissions set up by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to prosecute detainees at Guantanamo but pledged to reform the system.
Human rights groups sharply criticized Obama over his decision to retain the commissions and to allow for the possible indefinite detention of terror suspects.
The latest proposed changes to the commissions amounted to "tinkering," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said.
"The military commissions are fatally flawed and no amount of tinkering will fix them," ACLU senior legislative counsel Christopher Anders said in a statement.
"The system is set up to ensure convictions, not give defendants an impartial hearing."
One of Obama's first acts after taking office in January was to order a four-month suspension of the commissions.
Obama also promised to close the prison camp by January 2010.
At the hearing, administration officials said they were not ready to predict how many of the remaining detainees would be tried in federal courts, military commissions or held indefinitely.
© 2009 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

Jerome Hudson, a Black Republican

2009-07-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

While attending a black fraternity party, I recently learned it’s a bad idea to profess one’s affinity for Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity.

Worse, according to current polls, it appears I may be the only black 22 year old in America who will be voting for Sen. John McCain.

It’s not that I was unaware that being a black conservative Republican puts me in the ultimate “minority.” After all, Shelby Steele’s classic article “ The Loneliness of the Black Conservative” has become an article of faith that I’ve all but committed to memory.

But I guess I had made the mistake of buying into all that liberal yammering about being “open minded” and supporting “diversity” that I’d deluded myself into believing that a civil, discussion about the herd-like ideological mentality of so many of my contemporaries suffer from was possible.

Boy, was I wrong. Big time! My official “Negro” card got stripped away. I instantly lost my “blackness.” And now, consequently, I now am greeted with this: “Hey, y’all, here comes The Black Republican.” And that’s when I think to myself, Hmmm…so this is how it feels to be an "Uncle Tom."

Still, being labeled “The Black Republican” is undoubtedly a promotion from: "Hey, why are you dressed so nice? You got a job interview or something?" Or, worse, “Man, why are you talking like that? You sound white? Who do you think you are? A conservative Kanye West?”
But my path to ideological emancipation began where all the most important things always begin—with my father and mother. Growing up, my Army drill sergeant father was a firm believer in tough love. My parents instilled in us Christian values. But I believe that first part—having an involved mother and father—was critical. With 70% of all black babies being born out-of-wedlock, it’s no wonder black poverty remains entrenched, welfare has become a way of life, and that many of my fellow young black male counterparts choose gangsta life over college.

But it wasn’t until college that I realized I had been ensnared in what John McWhorter calls the “Cult of Victimology.” One of my professor’s pointed me toward a world of literature I’d never been introduced to: Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Star Parker, Angela McGlowan, Larry Elder, Walter Williams—they obliterated the Leftist foolishness that floods my community.

It was then that my eyes were opened to the truth, a truth that my father was willing to give his life for, a truth that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have paid the ultimate price to pass on to future generations. And that truth is this: America remains the greatest country that God gave to man.

So imagine me, a member of various organizations that largely consist of young black Americans, most of whom are womb to the tomb Democrats and liberals, speaking openly about the many opportunities and blessings we enjoy in our great nation and refuting Michelle Obama’s supposition that America is a “downright mean place..” Can you say…..social suicide? "So Jerome,” the partygoers asked, “you’re REALLY a Republican?!" Duh! Of course I’m a Republican! And your great grandparents were too!

Yes, I’m a member of the Anti-Slavery Party, the party responsible for: the 13th (abolished slavery), 14th (gave former slaves full citizenship rights), the 15th Amendment (gave slaves voting rights), the Civil Rights Act of 1871(protecting southern blacks from the Ku Klux Klan), the Reconstruction Acts, and the 1866, 1875, 1957, 1960, and 1964 Civil Rights Acts.

And no, my brothers and sisters, yesterday’s southern Democrats are NOT today’s Republicans! If so, former Klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd—the highest ranking senate Democrat and President Pro-Tempore of the Senate—apparently didn’t get the memo and forgot to switch parties.

But it’s more than just the history. I’m proud to stand for self-empowerment, personal responsibility, strong family values, small government, low taxes, free markets, a strong military, and individual achievement etc.

And don’t even get me started on which side stands up for the precious 1.4 million unborn children (32% of whom are black), who will be casualties in the war inside the womb. When I see these so-called “black leaders” bashing conservatives for “racist policies,” I wonder how they justify cheering on the political team who proudly defends the annihilation of 13 million black children since 1973. And conservatives don’t care about black people? I don’t think so!

No, I think I’ll ride with the team who says enough with the welfare cancer that has destroyed people’s innate desire to achieve. Yes, I’ll ride with the folks who respect me enough to consider me their equal and not insult me with Affirmative Action racism. Yeah, I’ll ride with the gang who would rather create effective policies than emotional “feel good” symbolism that robs individuals of their desire to aspire.

So while it may take a little getting used to walking into college parties where I’m known as “The Black Republican,” I now realize I am a newly inducted member of a rich tradition of ideologically emancipated black conservatives. And guess what? I’m more than cool with that. I’m proud, actually. “The conservative Kanye West”?
Hmmm…. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Jerome Hudson is a sophomore at Tallahassee Community College with plans to transfer to Florida A&M University in the fall.

More Tales From The Crypt

2009-07-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

A search is on for the source of a maggot infestation in the operating theaters of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Aberdeen. The discovery has caused the closure of three operating rooms, and postponement of procedures.

Two “decontamination cleans” have been carried out, and surgical procedures are scheduled to go ahead on Monday and Tuesday.

The general manager of child health services, said: (bureaucratic language alert!) “I can reassure parents that at no time were any children at risk of coming into contact with the maggots.”…

“Clearly infestation of this kind is very unpleasant, and our advisers will continue to try throughout the day to identify the source. I am satisfied this is not a reflection on staff or standards of cleanliness in the hospital.”

Yes, this is a scare story from the United Kingdom. But in spite of the theater of Mr. Obama’s Health Care town halls, he and his advisers are already talking about rationing. Old people nearing their statistical life expectancy should not expect anything expensive. There is a reason why the “town halls” are filled with Obama supporters, the questions are submitted in advance, no dissent or criticism or unpleasant questions are allowed.

President Obama talks about saving money, better care, everyone insured, but this is nonsense, once again. A major way to reduce costs is to bring some sanity to medical liability. Doctors’ costs for liability insurance are astronomical. The cost is high because of “pain and suffering” awards. That is, if a doctor, for example, cuts off the wrong leg, ordinary damages should make the victim of malpractice whole.

“Pain and suffering” damages, which supposedly recompense you for your unhappy feelings, are where trial lawyers make their outrageous fees and where they earned their sleazy reputations. A limit on the amount of such awards might stop trial lawyers from “channeling dead children” to arouse sympathy.

Much of President Obama’s financial support comes from trial lawyers. There will be no limits on trial lawyers. Which is why Obama was booed at his American Medical Association speech

2009-07-08T11:43:00.001-07:00

Moviemakers are always dreaming up new catastrophes. We have had giant asteroids headed for earth; the end of days; raging seas sweeping across Manhattan; Manhattan again, empty, the population felled by a mysterious virus; Manhattan populated only with zombies; aliens from outer space in giant ships arriving over Los Angeles; alien ships from outer space arriving all over the world all at once; pod people; and an earth inexorably warming, the seas rising, hurricanes increasing, polar bears drowning — oh wait…

The big sticking point that keeps people from understanding what a fraud Al Gore’s movie was, is the idea that there is a “scientific consensus.”

But in the real world, there is no such thing. The scientific method involves observing a phenomenon, and from careful observation developing a hypothesis. Then testing the hypothesis trying to disprove it. If the hypothesis stubbornly resists being disproven, it may be true. So continue testing.

If a “consensus” of scientists fervently believe in a different hypothesis, it doesn’t matter. There is no “consensus” in science, only what evidence shows to be true, and that continues to be open to further questioning and proof. The idea that ulcers were caused by acid stomach, pointed out Professor Ian Plimer, was accepted by everyone until two Australian scientists demonstrated that ulcers were caused by bacteria, and easily treated.

“Weather” is what you experience when you go outside. “Climate” consists of worldwide averages and is a statistic. The two should not be confused.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a benign, odorless, colorless gas caused by burning carbon and organic compounds and by respiration. It is not a pollutant.

Carbon is the chemical element of atomic number 6, a nonmetal that has two main forms (diamonds and graphite) and that also occurs in impure form in charcoal, soot and coal. Carbon is a solid. Carbon Dioxide is a gas.

The objective is to link CO2 with coal, for coal is seen as truly evil. It is mined, disturbing mother earth. Mining is evil. Coal is loaded on long trains, called “death trains” by uber greenie NASA scientist and activist James Hansen. Burning coal to create electricity is evil because it creates the “pollutant” CO2. But if CO2 is NOT a pollutant — which it isn’t— then the whole thing falls apart.

Take a few minutes to watch the interview with Professor Ian Plimer, Australia’s most renowned earth scientist, linked above. Each of the three segments is only about 9 minutes, and very worth your time.

2009-07-08T11:40:00.001-07:00

“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”

Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States of America

Global Warming "Consensus" Claim Doesn't Hold Water

2009-07-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

Journalists increasingly are reporting that scientists have reached a consensus on global warming. Close examination of the evidence cited to support these claims, however, reveals that such claims simply don't hold water:

Claim: Scientists agree that failing to respond to the threat of global warming now could prove disastrous for some parts of the globe.
Fact: A survey of over 400 German, American and Canadian climate researchers conducted by the Meteorologisches Institut der Universitat Hamburg and the GKSS Forschungszentrum found that 67% of those surveyed either disagreed or were uncertain about the proposition that global warming will occur so quickly that lack of preparation could prove disastrous.

Claim: Thousands of scientists have signed letters and petitions alerting the public to the dangers of global warming.
Fact: One of the letters often cited to support this claim was issued by Ozone Action. A close examination of that letter revealed that only 10% of the letter's signatories had backgrounds in climate science. Worse, landscape architects, a gynecologist, and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine are among the signatories.

Claim: 2,500 United Nations-sponsored scientists have concluded that human greenhouse gas emissions are warming the temperature of the planet.
Fact: This claim is based on the fact that the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report suggesting a "discernible human influence" on climate change. While several thousand scientists were consulted in crafting the report, not all of them agreed with its conclusions. As Dr. John W. Zillman, one of these scientists noted: "[The IPCC was] meticulous in insisting that the final decision on whether to accept particular review comments should reside with chapter Lead Authors... Some Lead Authors ignored valid critical comments or failed to... reflect dissenting views..." The report was therefore the result of a political rather than a scientific process.

Claim: The majority of scientists believe global warming is a process underway and that it is human-induced.
Fact: A 1992 Gallup survey of climatologists found that 81 percent of respondents believed that the global temperature had not risen over the past 100 years, were uncertain whether or not or why such warming had occurred, or believed any temperature increases during that period were within the natural range of variation. Further, a 1997 survey conducted by American Viewpoint found that state climatologists believe that global warming is largely a natural phenomenon by a margin of 44% to 17%.

Sources: National Policy Analysis Paper #177 (The National Center For Public Policy Research) and Eco-Sanity (The Heartland Institute). Talking Points on the Economy: Environment #38, published by The National Center for Public Policy Research, February 8, 1998

Heritage Foundation

2009-07-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

By cloaking his domestic agenda in terms of economic recovery, President Obama and his team of liberals have been able to pass the largest spending bill in history, repeal welfare reform, set us on the course to socialized healthcare, advance a very costly energy policy, impose high costs on productive people, and enact unprecedented expansions of governmental power.

Furthermore, by cutting the defense budget and ordering the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the President demonstrates his complacency toward national security and undermines our ability to respond to future attacks.This must stop.

Through our expert analyses of Obama White House proposals, daily meetings with policymakers, and partnerships with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Heritage is tirelessly advancing conservative alternatives to millions of Americans. And the rapid increase in our membership rolls -- we now count 430,000 members -- indicates that The Heritage Foundation is needed as never before, and never has your support been more important. Go to www.myheritage.org

Is FOIA any better under Obama? An anecdote today, data later

2009-07-07T22:34:00.000-07:00

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding “secret energy meetings” with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s “clean coal” policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged “presidential communications.” The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig’s office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure.

Obama's Top 10 Apologies

2009-07-07T22:15:00.000-07:00

1. Apology to Europe: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe‘s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

2. Apology to the Muslim world: Interview with Al Arabiya, January 27. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”

3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas: Address to the Summit of the Americas, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, April 17. “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”

4. Apology at the G-20 Summit of World Leaders: News conference in London, April 2. “I just think in a world that is as complex as it is, that it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions.”

5. Apology for the War on Terror: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”

6. Apology for Guantanamo in France: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In dealing with terrorism, we can’t lose sight of our values and who we are. That’s why I closed Guantanamo. That’s why I made very clear that we will not engage in certain interrogation practices. I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values. And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure.”

7. Apology for America before the Turkish Parliament: Speech to the Turkish Parliament, Ankara, Turkey, April 6. “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.”

8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: Editorial “Choosing a Better Future in the Americas,” April 16. “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”

9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: Remarks to CIA employees at Langley, Va., April 29. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.”

10. Apology for Guantanamo: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”

2009-07-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

“Collectivism is the doctrine that the social collective — called society, the people, the state, etc. — has rights, needs, or moral authority above and apart from the individuals who comprise it. We hear this idea continually championed in such familiar platitudes as ‘the needs of the people take precedence over the rights of the individual,’ ‘production for people, not profits,’ and ‘the common good.’
“Collectivism often sounds humane because it stresses the importance of human needs. In reality, it is little more than a rationalization for sacrificing you and me to the desires of others.” — Jarret B. Wollstein in The Causes oof Aggression

“Don’t forget that pure democracy is a form of collectivism — it readily sacrifices individual rights to majority wishes. Since it involves no constitutional bill of rights, or at least, no working and effective one, the majority-of-the-moment can and does vote away the rights of the minority-of-the-moment, even of a single individual. This has been called ‘mob rule,’ the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and many other pejorative names. It is one of the greatest threats to liberty, the reason why America’s founding fathers wrote so much so disparagingly of pure democracy.” — Bert Rand

A social system is a code of laws which men observe in order to live together. Such a code must have a basic principle, a starting point, or it cannot be devised. The starting point is the question: Is the power of society limited or unlimited?
“Individualism answers: The power of society is limited by the inalienable, individual rights of man. Society may make only such laws as do not violate these rights.
“Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.” — Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism

“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. [...] When men began to be indoctrinated once more with the notion that the individual possesses no rights, that supremacy, moral authority and unlimited power belong to the group, and that a man has no significance outside his group — the inevitable consequence was that men began to gravitate toward some group or another, in self-protection, in bewilderment and in subconscious terror. The simplest collective to join, the easiest one to identify — particularly for people of limited intelligence — the least demanding form of “belonging” and of “togetherness” is: race. [...] It is thus that the theoreticians of collectivism, the ‘humanitarian’ advocates of a ‘benevolent’ absolute state … led to the rebirth and the new, virulent growth of racism in the 20th century.” — Ayn Rand in “Racism
“Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to “society,” to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force — and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism.” — Ayn Rand
“STATISM is that particular form of collectivism in which individuals are forced to be subservient to government (as distinguished, if possible, from a religious or cult leader, roving invader or local gangster). Anyone in government who wants to extend his power, or anyone else (who has political influence) with agendas to advance, monopolies to secure, axes to grind or revenge to take — can make claims that certain governmental actions would be in the national, state, society or even family interest and must ‘therefore’ take precedence over any individual interests whatsoever. With this ‘justification’ the people in government can proceed to enforce such claims, often enthusiastically, sometimes brutally, but always with impunity.” — Rick Gaber

2009-07-01T15:14:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin

2009-07-01T15:06:00.001-07:00

Goldman Sachs Drools Over Cap And Trade

2009-07-01T14:36:00.000-07:00

The revolving door between the world’s most powerful investment bank, Goldman Sachs, and the government has long twirled round. The firm has provided most of the personnel for the Treasury department and the Federal Reserve…and has come out smelling like a rose in the financial meltdown which has decimated many of its’ competitors.

Obama’s insane energy plan, Cap and Trade, will be another bonanza for the uber-rich and oh-so-lucky firm that has it’s tentacles entrenched at the highest levels of power in our country. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino/scam that’s been kind to Government Sachs, except it has one nifty new feature: If the plan goes forward, the rise in prices of carbon credits will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game! It will be rigged in advance.

Matt Taibbi explains in this month’s Rolling Stone:
Here’s how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.

The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the “cap” on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand-new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison’s sake, the annual combined revenues of an electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.

Goldman wants this bill. The plan is (1) to get in on the ground floor of paradigm-shifting legislation, (2) make sure that they’re the profit-making slice of that paradigm and (3) make sure the slice is a big slice. Goldman started pushing hard for cap-and-trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues. (One of their lobbyists at the time was none other than Patterson, now Treasury chief of staff.) Back in 2005, when Hank Paulson was chief of Goldman, he personally helped author the bank’s environmental policy, a document that contains some surprising elements for a firm that in all other areas has been consistently opposed to any sort of government regulation. Paulson’s report argued that “voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate-change problem.” A few years later, the bank’s carbon chief, Ken Newcombe, insisted that cap-and-trade alone won’t be enough to fix the climate problem and called for further public investments in research and development. Which is convenient, considering that ‘Goldman made early investments in wind power (it bought a subsidiary called Horizon Wind Energy), renewable diesel (it is an investor in a firm called Changing World Technologies) and solar power (it partnered with BP Solar), exactly the kind of deals that will prosper if the government forces energy producers to use cleaner energy. As Paulson said at the time, “We’re not making those investments to lose money.”

The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utah-based firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There’s also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in green-tech … the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot. Will this market be bigger than the energy-futures market?

“Oh, it’ll dwarf it,” says a former staffer on the House energy committee.

Well, you might say, who cares? If cap-and-trade succeeds, won’t we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe - but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it’s even collected.

Cap and Trade Wont Save The Earth

2009-06-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

The Biggest Tax Increase In US History

2009-06-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Democrats off-loading economics to pass climate change bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done…

Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman’s co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.

For starters, the CBO estimate is a one-year snapshot of taxes that will extend to infinity. Under a cap-and-trade system, government sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally; companies then buy or sell permits to emit CO2. The cap gets cranked down over time to reduce total carbon emissions.

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO’s analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035…

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won’t pinch wallets, behind the scenes they’ve acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain’s Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can’t repeal that reality.

As this editorial notes, the Waxman-Markey would cost the US economy $161 billion in 2020, which works out to $1,870 for a family of four.

As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number will rise to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

And, of course, it isn’t just the hike in taxes that is the problem.
This chart, from the US Chamber of Commerce, maps out the regulatory process and implementation of H.R. 2454, the ‘American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.’

‘Cap And Trade’ will impose 397 new federal regulations and 1060 new mandates. It will mean that much more unwanted and unnecessary control over our lives and liberty.

It is tempting to let the Democrats run completely amok and pass this bill and the upcoming Obama healthcare program. The resulting destruction to our economy would almost certainly destroy the Democrat Party for generations.

But the problem is that our country and our lives will also be destroyed.

These bills simply cannot be allowed to pass.

A Lame Liberal Media Response to a Lame EPA Response to Cover-up Allegations (Updated)

2009-06-30T15:47:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, in Obama's EPA Makes a Mockery of Due Process, I commented on an accusation by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that the EPA may have suppressed the results of an internal climate study to further the green agenda. And while not directly to me, the EPA has nonetheless responded – and the response was pitiful.

It seems that Thomas Fuller at the Examiner also questioned the EPA’s actions, although ostensibly driven more by fear that such subterfuge unearthed might besmirch the names of fellow alarmists than any particular sense of outrage. His motives notwithstanding, Fuller rightly decided to give the EPA an opportunity to respond to CEI’s charges and received this email response from EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy:
“This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed Endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter agency review was conducted. In this instance, certain opinions were expressed by an individual who is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue.

Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar. The individual was also granted a request to join a committee that organizes an ongoing climate seminar series, open to both agency and outside experts, where he has been able to invite speakers with a full range of views on climate science. The claims that his opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false.”

The inanity of this reply is surpassed only by that of Mr. Fuller’s decision to accept it as a basis for redacting his entire article. More on that later -- first to the substance (or, more fittingly – lack thereof) of Mr. Andy’s response.

In three consecutive sentences the spokesman states first that “a broad array of voices were heard,” then, dismissively, that Carlin’s emanated from “an individual who is not a scientist” and finally that several of this non-scientist’s opinions and ideas “were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding” nevertheless. Outstanding.

For the record: Carlin is indeed listed as an “EPA author and contributor” on a number of supporting documents, including the final Technical Support Document for Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act [PDF]. But, as stated in the CEI complaint, Carlin’s own report was never allowed entry to the docket of the proceeding.

But it gets lamer. Andy asserts that Carlin’s “manager” (EPA National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) Office Director Al McGartland) allowed Carlin’s “general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar.” Yet, while this is totally contradicted by the email exchange attached to the CEI letter of complaint, at no point does Andy challenge the authenticity of those emails. Not even the one in which McGartland directly ordered Carlin not to discuss matters concerning endangerment outside the NCEE or directly contact the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation (OAR), which directs EPA’s climate change program.

And while Andy speaks of a committee Carlin was allowed to join that “organizes an ongoing climate seminar series,” he never addressed the principal issue at hand: Why, despite Carlin’s insistence that his comments were significant as they “present information critical to the justification (or lack thereof) for the proposed endangerment finding,” did his superior make the seemingly unilateral decision not to forward them to OAR?

As I said – pitiful.

And now to the matter of Mr. Fuller’s explanation for his effective retraction and conclusion that Andy’s assertions cause CEI “a serious problem,” potentially leaving “their credibility in tatters.” He writes: [my emphasis]
“The analyst in question is Alan Carlin, an economist who has been with the EPA since 1972. Although this has been presented as if his report was skeptical of the received wisdom regarding climate change, a report found on his website (Why a Different Approach Is Required if Global Climate Change Is to Be Controlled Efficiently or Even at All), suggests that he is not a skeptic at all, but rather advocates geoengineering as opposed to limits on greenhouse gases. Some of his opinions differ from the IPCC consensus and most probably differ from the EPA proposal to treat CO2 as a pollutant. But the idea that Carlin is a skeptic whose ideas are being suppressed is probably far from the truth.”
Mr. Fuller’s interpretation of CEI general counsel Sam Kazman’s letter [PDF], and thereby the matter at hand, is completely back ass-wards, even for a self-professed “Lib Dem.” It’s Carlin’s skepticism of Endangerment, not climate change, at play here.

One read no further than the letter’s opening paragraph to understand that neither Mr. Carlin’s general nor his report’s specific position on “the received wisdom regarding climate change” are at issue: [my emphasis]
“CEI is submitting a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of EPA’s position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed. The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.”

So the accusations stand, unanswered and only pathetically challenged: EPA Senior Operations Research Analyst Carlin felt his comments essential to the EPA’s final decision on CO2’s endangerment. These comments were quashed by his superior as they were unfavorable to both the agency’s and the “days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over” Obama administration’s predisposition in the matter.

It’s that simple -- read the unchallenged emails attached to Kazman’s letter.

Shortly after this piece was posted, Fuller announced in an update that he “may have to apologise to Competitive Enterprise Institute, based on conversations with a source inside the EPA that has confirmed the essential elements of Alan Carlin's story.” His follow-up piece appeared shortly thereafter, and tells the story of the unnamed source, who first appeared in the comment section of Watts Up With That under the name “Anonymous.” And while Fuller’s quick 180 makes for interesting reading, the back-story now being discussed at WUWT is fascinating.

Nonetheless -- while it’s nice that an anonymous commenter finally brought Fuller around, the fact remains that he completely dropped the ball after receiving the lame EPA response – utterly misinterpreting CEI’s point, redacting his entire article on the subject and suggesting that CEI acted irresponsibly.

And let’s not forget that Fuller’s real concern over the allegations was that they might help “skeptics” and “conservative Republicans” squash Waxman-Markey. From the redacted article:
“As someone who supports President Obama's energy policy, I can only say the stupidity of this move beggars belief, if it turns out to be true. On a smaller scale, global warming activists have engaged in the suppression of information by withholding source code from scientists who wish to check their work, but to have national policy be essentially misdirected because information is awkward to holders of a specific policy position verges on the criminal.

If the reports are true and the EPA is forced to re-evaluate their determination--and if the reports are true, I think today's events mean they should--and if it delays consideration of Waxman Markey, and it changes the composition of President Obama's energy program, the time and money wasted will be considerable. The sense of open communication and transparency that President Obama has been seeking to establish will be tarnished, if not destroyed. It will fuel suspicions of skeptics and of conservative Republicans. It will lower the credibility of the administration among its supporters.”

Let’s be careful out there.

The Climate Change Climate Change

2009-06-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

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

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

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

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

No Global Warming.....

2009-06-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

Sunspot activity is way, way down. NASA has a website series of photos to show you from 2000 to 2009 how the sun's activity has slowed down. It is cooling off all over the planet.

There is no global warming. Temperatures have not risen in the last nine years in an appreciable way and this legislation is not going to lower temperatures. It's not going to do anything they claim it's going to do. Nobody is going to have fully read this. There are over a thousand mandates, meaning limits on freedom, over 1,300 pages. Even the chairman of the committee, Henry Nostrilitis Waxman doesn't know what's all in it. It doesn't matter to him what all is in it. Yesterday I think that I heard there was something like 17,000 or 20,000 calls to Congress opposing this. It's going to take a lot more than that to stop this. Yesterday it looked like this thing is going to go down to defeat. But at 3 or 4 this morning they offered a 300-page amendment that nobody's read. But they told the farmers, the Democrats from farm states, agriculture states, yeah, we're going to take care of you. We're going to take out some of these punitive things to get their votes. This is signature legislation and it would be very embarrassing if this goes down in defeat. They're going to have a tougher time in the Senate with it. But it would be best to shut it down in the House of Representatives today, and that's the vote, and I'm told we're going to need six to seven votes, it looks like, whereas a couple days ago it seemed to be a slam dunk. So six to seven votes on either the Republican or Democrat side to stop this.

Let me tell you something else that's happened. I read about this in a lot of different places today. What I have here is a piece from the Competitive Enterprise Institute which summarizes it pretty well. They are making public an internal study on climate science, which was suppressed by the EPA and Lisa Jackson. "Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide." There's a defector, there's somebody in the EPA who put together a report: Wait a minute, temperatures are not rising. We can't prove that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. He cited evidence from around the country; he cited scientific data. By the way, the consensus on climate science that you've always heard about on global warming, it's falling apart. It's falling apart. Scientists from Australia and two or three other countries have defected from the so-called consensus. That's what this guy's report was about. They told him to shut up. They suppressed his report and they said don't you dare talk about it. They fired him. They said don't you dare talk to anybody about this.

The point is the Environmental Protection Agency, Obama Administration, they don't care about the truth in any of this. This is not about global warming. It is not about climate change. It's about nothing but taxes. It's taxing everything they can get their hands on. It's revenue generation. Obama yesterday even had the gall to call this a jobs bill. Well, I'll tell you what green jobs did to Spain. George Will wrote about it yesterday. The stimulus bill was supposed to be a jobs bill and it didn't turn out to be a jobs bill, and this is not a jobs bill. This is a jobs-killing bill. Why would our government come up and do something? I know it's hard to understand that we've elected somebody who is willingly, purposely setting out to deplete the capital in the private sector, to destroy the US economy. I know it's hard to understand. Most of you don't have, most of us -- I'll include myself in this -- most of us don't have this concept of that kind of power; of wanting it, wanting to use it for our own personal fun, frolic, frivolity, whatever. We can't imagine that we have elected somebody who really doesn't like the United States as it was founded, but that's what's happened. This is exactly what we've done here. Now, this is not being reported widely in the United States, but it's happening in Australia and Japan and Europe. It's happening there and the reason it's not being reported here is because, of course, our star is Al Gore and the United Nations. The media goes out and they smear any dissenters. After listing scientists from all over the world who are skeptical of manmade global warming, Kimberley Strassel writes this: "The collapse of the 'consensus' has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon," and they're deciding around the world they don't have the desire and it makes no sense to put even more stress on their economies to reduce carbon when there's no evidence that more carbon is harming anything, bottom line.

Our official climatologist here, Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, sent me a note last night. Let me find it in the stack here. It's about fish. They're finding that fish ears are growing because of carbon dioxide in the ocean. Remember all the horror stories that we have seen over the years about deformed frogs at birth and we have been told this is due to global warming and their ecology all out of whack. We find out that that's not the case, and the left-wing BBC is nonetheless the source: "Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs' legs. Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution.
However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause. The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers started getting reports of numerous wild frogs or toads being found with extra legs or arms, or with limbs that were partly formed or missing completely. The cause of these deformities soon became a hotly contested issue."

It had to be caused by global warming, this and that. And people said, no, no, this is happening naturally. They were debunked and then called deniers and so forth. But they have now proven that these deformed frogs are simply nature taking its course. Nothing to do with man. Nothing to do with us. The cap-and-trade bill will probably tax dragonflies once they learn about this.

One thing that you need to know about this test vote that the AP, the State-Run Media is talking about all over is the test vote is designed to make you think it's all over. The test vote is designed to make you say, "Oh, it's too late now! I can't do anything about it." That's not true. This thing is still up for grabs. I've got two different lists here of Republicans and Democrats on the fence. One's from Red State and I don't know where the other one's from. But they're a little different from one another. And there are too many names here to give out. Let's go with the short list, the Republicans. Here are the last names of the Republicans on one of the list.

This is nothing to do with saving anything. This is nothing to do with global warming. It is nothing to do with saving the climate or saving the planet or saving the polar bears. It is nothing to do with that. The problems that this legislation claims to address do not exist. Well, to the extent that some problems exist, they are not caused by us. Regulating our behavior, changing our behavior, limiting our freedom will not have any effect on whatever climate changes are or are not taking place out there. It's just that simple. So we can argue about this. We can debate the merits of it all day long, but just in an ideological or philosophical way, this is a no-brainer, a non-starter. It is unnecessary. It is a pure power and money grab by the same people in Washington who have been grabbing power and money since Obama was inaugurated.

Now, according to the Washington Post: Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota -- he's the agricultural committee chairman -- "said he was not sure what the offset program would look like: 'The truth is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work.'" This is a Democrat chairman of the Ag Committee talking about cap and trade. Nobody knows how it's going to work! Nobody's read the full thing. Waxman has admitted he doesn't know what's all in it. All they know that's in it that matters to them is tax increases, limitations on liberty and freedom and Washington regulating more and more of the behavior of the American public. That's what's attractive. Here are some Republican names on the short list that I'm told are on the fence. Buchanan in Florida. Gerlach in Pennsylvania. Johnson in Illinois. Ehlers in Michigan. Kirk in Illinois. Frelinghuysen in New Jersey and Smith in New Jersey. Those are the Republicans on the short list of on the fence. The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations' 2007 'Fourth Assessment' report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those [new] developments include a continued decline in global temperatures..."

And you know by virtue of your own life global temperatures are not rising. If you live in the Northeast, you live in Chicago, you live in the upper tier of states, you know you're barely... You haven't seen summer yet and it's June 26! "Rush, you can't use this anecdotal stuff." BS! Reality is reality. Global warming is not happening. The polar ice caps are not shrinking! At any rate, "developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense..." We know that. We've had fewer hurricanes since that bad year of including Katrina. New findings are that "water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature." The point is that this old "consensus" we've all heard about for all these years, "A consensus of scientists agree global warming is appearing..."

You can have no consensus in science. It's not up for vote, it's not up for an opinion. That consensus was so-called preferred scientist software even falling apart now. "All of this demonstrates EPA should independently analyze the science, rather than just adopt the conclusions of outside organizations." Now, this is what the Competitive Enterprise Institute writes. "EPA should independently..." The science is irrelevant to the EPA! They don't want to analyze the science. It's not that they're accepting science from outside sources; they're accepting a political conclusion from outside sources. This whole issue is nothing but politics and it has been nothing but politics since I first heard of it in 1980. Back in 1984 -- I've told you the story -- I was watching This Week with David Brinkley and there was some global warming alarmist on named Oppenheimer. "We've got 20 years, George!" he said to George Will.

"We've got 20 years. If we don't get in gear fast the oceans are going to rise." Twenty years? Well, 20 years was 2004. It's 2009 and everything's hunky-dory. All of this is just absurd. The EPA is not relying on science. Everything that Barack Obama has taken control of is pure politics. It is purely political, 100%. So to ask the EPA to look at different science? They just suppressed an internal report from one of their own employees. It says, "What you guys are doing is wrong. They said shut up. Don't tell anybody about this," and they fired the guy. "Shut up. You're not going to get out there." Anything that contradicts the political desire -- and the political desire here is power, control, regulation of human behavior, the weakening of the US economy all for the benefit of the creation of more power for Obama and his minions. So, it's down-to-the-wire time on all this. And again here's the short list of Republican Congressmen and women who are on the fence on this the legislation H.R. 2454.

Buchanan in Florida. Gerlach in Pennsylvania. Cao in Louisiana. Johnson in Illinois. Ehlers in Michigan. Kirk in Illinois. Frelinghuysen in New Jersey. Smith in New Jersey. Now, there's a lot of Democrats on the fence, way too many to name here. Heath Shuler from North Carolina is one. But he's not on both lists. Here's the short list of Democrats. Altmire from Pennsylvania. Bright from Alabama. Dahlkemper from Pennsylvania, Driehaus from Ohio. Ellsworth from Indiana. Kissell, North Carolina. Kratovil, Maryland. Paul Kanjorski, Pennsylvania. Minnick in Idaho. And Teague from New Mexico. That's the short list of Democrats apparently on the fence. That test vote you're hearing about, if you have heard about it, it was 217 to whatever it is. They need 218 to pass this. That's the majority. The test vote's designed to make it look like they've got it and to dispirit people from opposing it. That's not the case.

2009-06-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

The Truth about American Investment Overseas
Currently, American companies that do business overseas add $2.5 trillion to our economy, and support more than 20 million jobs, either directly or indirectly. The proposed tax increase on these companies would weaken American competitiveness, threaten American workers, and jeopardize the American economy.
Download Issue Summary Overseas Investment Strengthens the Economy
For every dollar that U.S.-owned businesses invest in overseas operations, $3.50 is invested here at home. Find out more about the importance of preserving the competitiveness of American companies operating overseas.

Get the Facts: Overseas Investment Strengthens the Economy
Higher Corporate Taxes Equal Slower Economic Recovery
Adding nearly $200 billion to the tax burden of American companies doing business overseas will ultimately cripple our economic recovery and cost the U.S. much-needed jobs. Find out how this harmful tax increase will disadvantage American workers and their communities.

Get the Facts: Higher Corporate Taxes Equal Slower Economic Recovery
Overseas Operations Benefit American Workers
U.S. investment overseas helps create high-quality, high-paying jobs here at home. Our tax policy should encourage economic growth, not stifle it. Find out more.

Get the Facts: Overseas Operations Benefit American Workers
American Consumers Bear the Real Burden for Higher Taxes
Corporations don’t pay taxes; people do. Raising corporate taxes during a time of worldwide economic hardship will lead to higher prices for goods and services. Learn more.
Get the Facts: American Consumers Bear the Real Burden for Higher Taxes