In the old days at Officer Candidate School, the "tac officers," snapping and snarling, would circle a hapless would-be lieutenant:
"You're lost, Candidate."
"You're confused.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Make a decision! Make a decision!"
That cherished image of the bewildered victim of calculated harassment fits President Obama perfectly, when it comes to the shambles he's made of foreign policy in record time.
Around the globe, our enemies -- immediate and potential -- are testing Obama to see how far they can go. Thus far, he hasn't set a limit anywhere. Not a single dictator or terrorist leader got a single time-out.
Last week, North Korea nuke-mooned him, then spit missiles in multiple directions. Our president admonished Pyongyang. Words solve everything in Obama-World.
The Master of the Teleprompter didn't seem to grasp the basics: Like spoiled brats, the North Koreans were demanding attention (and got it); Pyongyang never honors agreements; and, above all, this isn't our problem to solve -- it's China's. We just need to worry about nuke exports and keep our Navy gainfully employed.
Instead, we've let ourselves be set up as the bad cop, with Beijing as the good cop. We get the responsibilities, Beijing gets the benefits.
Until Beijing decides to get tough on North Korea, nothing happens. China keeps North Korea on a lifeline, viewing the famine-plagued land of routine horrors as a potential economic slave-state, once the Kim dynasty disintegrates. Beijing's been confident that it's ultimately in control of the neighborhood nukes.
Now the Chinese are having second thoughts: By allowing North Korea to go nuke, Beijing made a mistake similar to our own in backing the worst Islamist elements against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
We thought we could manage the Mujaheddin. China thought it could control the North Koreans. Now the dark-suited men in Beijing aren't so sure.
Toss them the football. We've got enough to do.
A pervasive flaw in Obama's approach to all foreign-policy problems is his chattering-class conviction that individuals and states will behave rationally in a crisis. History suggests otherwise (does Kim Jong-Il look rational to you?). But Obama lives in a world of contractual relations, the realm of the Harvard Law Review.
Our opponents view the world as a zero-sum game. And calm demeanors aren't their strong suit.
Iran's also defiant, plowing ahead with its nuclear-weapons program. As it turns out, Tehran has plenty of reasons to be confident that Obama won't act against the regime: the administration has yanked -- hard -- on Israel's military leash while engaging in murky dealings with Iran.
I'd love to know how Obama really feels about Israel.
Then there's Hugo "Embraceable You" Chavez, who's almost done dismantling Venezuela's once-robust democracy. Elected officials from the opposition are beaten, jailed, locked out or driven into exile. Media freedom's nearly dead. A once-vibrant economy's a disaster. Corruption and demagoguery reign. And Chavez wants nukes, too.
Out of words, for once, Obama has nothing to say.
What does democracy matter, anyway? Ballots and human rights are so Bush-Cheney. In the next few days, Obama will rush to embrace the authoritarian regime in Egypt before crawling to Saudi Arabia. (How deep will his bow to the king go this time? Will photographers be kept away?)
Al Qaeda's just a symptom. Wahhabism, sponsored globally by the Saudis, is the disease. And don't Obama's swooners-in-sweatpants care about the rights of Muslim women?
Sorry, I mis-wrote. Muslim women don't have rights. Rights are for college-educated Western BFFs who trade tips on day-spas and where to get the best price on organic cat food.
(Then there's Speaker Pelosi, who worried so terribly about the human rights of a handful of terrorists at Gitmo, but didn't dare whisper one criticism of Beijing's abuses of a billion Chinese during her recent pilgrimage to Beijing.)
And don't overlook Russia, where we "hit the re-set button." Well, the button must've been made in China, because it not only doesn't work -- it's poisonous. Putin continues to menace his neighbors, suppress dissent (murderously, when necessary), and undercut every effort we make in the region.
Obama's so desperate to get an arms treaty that he's offering huge, unbalanced cuts in our nuclear arsenal. Feel safe yet?
While everything else is falling down around our president, the Obama Doctrine stands: Every enemy is a friend, or can be made into one. Let's talk about it.
Meanwhile, Obama's so far out of his depth that the only role-model he can turn to for Afghanistan is LBJ. Don't have a clue what to do? Send more troops.
In Vietnam, we at least had secure supply lines and sensible rules of engagement. But, then, why feel sorry for our soldiers? Obama's supporters know that those in uniform are all expendable losers. Since the change in administrations, we haven't heard many chants of "Support our troops, bring them home!"
The hypocrisy's inexhaustible.
Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, our border with Mexico . . . Gitmo . . . better order some back-up teleprompters.
Source...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Iran and North Korea are Making a Mockery of Obama
Don't you feel like everything is under control and will work itself out now that we have the crack foreign policy team of Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton handling Iran and North Korea?
They Never Said That!
You can misquote me on this: "Too much fact checking has ruined many a good news story." ~ Gags (Evaluation)
The misstep was probably inevitable, given the many comparisons made between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln. With seven weeks to go in Obama's presidential campaign, the young candidate from Illinois inadvertently committed one of the most common sins in American politics—he used a phony Lincoln quote.
"Abraham Lincoln once said to one of his opponents," then-senator Obama asserted, "'If you stop telling lies about me, I'll start telling truth about you.'"
William Randolph Hearst, who ran for governor of New York in 1906, also liked that line. But it was Republican senator Chauncey Depew, another prominent New Yorker, who is actually the first person known to employ a version of the phrase to bash his opponents back in the 19th century.
June is the month to celebrate the graduating class. It is also a month when bogus quotations flourish like spring flowers. For that we can thank commencement speakers, lazy speechwriters, partisan politics, and the Internet—that most powerful engine of misinformation. But special thanks should be reserved for American heads of state. Once a president misstates a quote, it's especially hard to kill it.
John F. Kennedy was a repeat offender. In a 1963 speech, he misquoted Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, warning Chinese leaders that in the event of a nuclear war, "the survivors would envy the dead." Kennedy twice gave Dante credit for the idea that "the hottest places in hell" are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis. But he made perhaps his most resounding misquote in a 1961 speech, when he credited British statesman Edmund Burke with saying, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Politicians—including presidents Ford and Reagan and, just this past year, Florida governor Charlie Crist—have repeated it ever since.
In fact, the "good men do nothing" line was voted the most popular quote of modern times by the editors of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. One Canadian minister even says the line inspired him to launch a charity devoted to stopping the slaughter and mutilation of Tanzanian albinos. But hold on—there's no evidence that Burke ever uttered these words. The Oxford editors have since fixed this error, sort of. They list the quote under Burke's name, along with the notation "attributed (in a number of forms) to Burke, but not found in his writings."
As for Kennedy's "Khrushchev" quote? It's from writer Herman Kahn's 1960 book On Thermonuclear War. And while Dante wrote about hell, he did not say anything about reserved seating for moral neutralists.
Why don't we check before repeating others' words? Why is it that when we do, we can no longer be sure that even the reference books are correct? What motivates speakers—presidents, college professors, actors, and everyday Americans—to blithely misquote, miscredit, and fabricate?
Reader's Digest has a particular interest in these questions, which we may as well get out of the way now. In The Yale Book of Quotations, published in 2006, editor Fred Shapiro sleuthed commonly misused quotes to their original sources. On numerous occasions, his search ended with a misattributed quote in our magazine. In recent decades, we've employed a diligent fact-checking team. But as penance for past sins, we offer the following handy guide.
Just as an exercise, go to your computer's search engine and type in four words: lie, truth, boots, and world. You will get thousands of references to variations of the following quote: "A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on." Most will cite Mark Twain as the author of this aphorism. Al Gore has given Twain credit for it. So has Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.
But Twain didn't say it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon did, in 1855, and he attributed the wisdom to "an old proverb." Spurgeon was a mid-19th-century British pastor, as famous in his time as Rick Warren and Billy Graham are today in the United States. But that's the thing about fame: It can be fleeting.
"The voters have spoken—the bastards" is a frequent laugh line at political dinners, usually attributed to Morris Udall. The witty Arizona congressman may well have said it after losing the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries, but Dick Tuck said it first, in 1966 (though his exact words were "The people have spoken—the bastards"). Who is Dick Tuck? Precisely. For the record, he's a now-retired political prankster.
"This suggests [a] key reason for getting quotations wrong," notes wordsmith Ralph Keyes, "the need to put them in familiar mouths." In his book on frequently misused sayings, The Quote Verifier, Keyes calls this phenomenon flypapering—because quotes stick to people like Twain and Churchill like flypaper. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics," for instance, is often given to Twain, but Twain himself gave credit to British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, who was so famous in his day—even in America—that quotes attributed to "a wise statesman" were assumed to be Disraeli's. But times change.
Regardless of the slogan on T-shirts and beer council ad campaigns, Benjamin Franklin never said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
What he did extol was wine, while making a larger point about the miracles of springtime. "We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle," Franklin wrote (in French!) in a 1779 letter to his friend the Abbé André Morellet. "But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine—a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."
Try putting that on a T-shirt.
Keyes calls this process bumper-stickering. It's the process that renders Churchill's "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" into "blood, sweat, and tears." And turns baseball manager Leo Durocher's "The nice guys are all over there—in seventh place" as the pithier "Nice guys finish last." A full word is saved by saying "Beam me up, Scotty," although the actual Star Trek line is "Beam us up, Mr. Scott."
President Reagan certainly fit Ernest Hemingway's definition of courage—"grace under pressure" (yes, Hemingway really did say this)—when he told first lady Nancy Reagan, "Honey, I forgot to duck," after he was shot. This may have been spontaneous, but it wasn't original. Jack Dempsey said it to his wife after losing the heavyweight boxing title to Gene Tunney in 1926. The president perhaps assumed that everyone would know the reference. Nonetheless, it is often attributed to Reagan.
The past couple of years, as the federal budget has ballooned out of control, Washington wags have been reprising a line usually attributed to former Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen, who served on Capitol Hill from 1933 to 1969: "A billion here, a billion there—pretty soon you're talking about real money." Actually, it's an old Depression-era line; a variation of the quip was once even attached to Herbert Hoover. But Dirksen was more popular than Hoover. Who wants to hear from the politician most closely associated with the Great Depression? So the line caught on with Dirksen's name attached.
Many of the sayings often attributed to Ben Franklin were ones he actually appropriated and put into the mouth of Richard in his Colonial-era guide to life, Poor Richard's Almanack. Franklin didn't pretend his sayings were original: "Why then should I give my Readers bad lines of my own," he asked in his 1747 Almanack, "when good ones of other People's are so plenty?" Thus, "A word to the wise is sufficient" and "Early to bed, early to rise …" are Franklin's—but not originally.
As a flypaper figure, Franklin is also given credit for words uttered by his contemporaries, such as: "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." If this was said at all, it was most likely by Richard Penn, the governor of Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.
There is an old newsroom saying, "too good to check"—meaning, if it's too good to check, it probably isn't true. Conservatives may wish that Dwight D. Eisenhower, when asked if he thought he'd made mistakes as president, had replied, "Yes, two, and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court." It captured his frustration with the liberal tendencies of Earl Warren and William Brennan. But the oft-repeated story is unsourced. True, Eisenhower once told a Republican leader privately that appointing Warren was "one of the two biggest mistakes I made in my administration," according to an oral history at the Eisenhower library. But the quip itself has been attributed to other presidents and is probably apocryphal.
This kind of thing has gotten worse in the era of the Internet. Surely, liberal activist and singer Barbra Strei sand thought she was being profound at a 2002 fund-raising concert for the Democratic Party when she read what she thought was a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor … When the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry … How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Streisand was trying to allude to George W. Bush, but this was no more Shakespeare than it was Dr. Seuss. It was an Internet hoax, which Streisand was forced to acknowledge.
Another Web story involves Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson, Texas's first woman governor. Someone suggested that the new Spanish-speaking immigrants might benefit from classes taught in their native language. Furious, Ma picked up the King James Version of the New Testament and shouted, "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for Texas!"
Ma has been credited with this goofy statement by New York Times columnist William Safire and Texas humorist Kinky Friedman, among others, none of whom has ever cited a source. Of course, that would be difficult. Ma Ferguson was a college-educated progressive, and it's highly unlikely she said it. The yarn, in fact, dates to at least 1881, when Ferguson was six.
Republican president Calvin Coo lidge's most famous line is "The business of America is business." To this day, Democrats won't give it a rest. Just last October, West Virginia senator Robert Byrd quoted it on the floor of the Senate. Did Coolidge really make the remark about the primacy of profit? The answer is, not really.
In a 1925 speech, Coolidge did utter these words: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." But he was building to a different point—the opposite one: "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. We want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism."
There's another American trait that competes with idealism—and that's our desire to sound hip and not overly sentimental, especially about our politics. Wasn't it Harry Truman who casually dismissed his critics by stating that if you really want a friend in Washington, you should buy a dog? Actually, no. The line is fake, even though it's often attributed to Truman. But President Obama still used it himself, although mercifully without blaming poor Harry. Appearing on The Tonight Show in March, the president said, "You know, they say if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."
Yes, "they" do say that. But perhaps what they ought to say is, "If you want to help a friend in Washington, get him a reliable quote book." That's Ben Franklin.
Well, no—but it could have been.
Source...
Saturday, May 30, 2009
A Test For Alzheimer's
This is a real test. Not too easy, but it does not take long to do.
Sit comfortably and be calm. This is a serious test, not a joke..
Put your thinking process aside - i.e. put your brain in neutral gear.
1 - Find the C below. Do not use any cursor help.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
2 - If you already found the C, now find the 6 below.
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
6999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
3 - Now find the N below. It's a little more difficult.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
This is NOT a joke. If you were able to pass these 3 tests, you can cancel your annual visit to your neurologist. Your brain is great and you're far from having a close relationship with Alzheimer's.
Oh One more test....
Find the 44th President of The United States of America.
Sit comfortably and be calm. This is a serious test, not a joke..
Put your thinking process aside - i.e. put your brain in neutral gear.
1 - Find the C below. Do not use any cursor help.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
2 - If you already found the C, now find the 6 below.
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
6999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
3 - Now find the N below. It's a little more difficult.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
This is NOT a joke. If you were able to pass these 3 tests, you can cancel your annual visit to your neurologist. Your brain is great and you're far from having a close relationship with Alzheimer's.
Oh One more test....
Find the 44th President of The United States of America.
Rush Limbaugh: How Do You Get Promoted in the Obama Administration? By Hating White People
Rush Limbaugh on Sonia Sotomayor: "How do you get promoted in the Barack Obama Administration? By hating white people."
Rush is right! Ditto!
Rush is right! Ditto!
Barack Obama (D-Kenya) Learns About One of His Intelligence Agencies During a Burger Run
How many states are there again? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
On his trip to get a burger with Brian Williams at Five Guys this afternoon, the President appears to have learned of the existence of a Defense Department intelligence arm, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, from an agency employee also at the burger restaurant.
"So explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial..." Obama said, after the worker mentioned his employer, according to a video of the event.
"We work with, uh, satellite imagery," the worker, Walter replied.
The transcript:
Obama: What do you do Walter?
Walter: I work at, uh, NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Obama: Outstanding, how long you been doing that?
Walter: About six years
Obama: Yea?
Walter: Yes.
Obama: You like it?
Walter: I do, keeps me...
Obama: So explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial...uh...
Walter: Uh, we work with, uh, satellite imagery..
Obama: Right
Walter: [unintelligible] ...support systems, so...
Obama: Sounds like good work.
Walter: Enjoy the weekend.
Obama: Appreciate it.
According to the Defense Department:
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a Department of Defense combat support agency and a member of the national Intelligence Community (IC). NGA develops imagery and map-based intelligence solutions for U.S. national defense, homeland security and safety of navigation.
NGA provides timely, relevant and accurate geospatial intelligence in support of national security objectives. The term "geospatial intelligence" means the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. Geospatial intelligence consists of imagery, imagery intelligence and geospatial (e.g., mapping, charting and geodesy) information.
Guess they're not getting much airtime in the President's Daily Brief.
Source...
Friday, May 29, 2009
Glenn Beck - ACORN History
This is the first part of a segment on ACORN on the Glenn Beck Show on 05/28/09. This is a brief history of ACORN and Obama's possible association with them.
Craig T. Nelson Talks To Glenn Beck About Not Paying Taxes Ever Again
Craig T. Nelson (Coach) says he is not going to pay anymore income tax and he is tired of funding bailouts and allowing the government to steal from him.
U.S. Army Starts Testing 'Judge Dredd' Weapon
Because the U.S. Military doesn’t kick enough ass!
The U.S. Army is set to start testing a computerized, high-tech projectile launcher that can take out bad guys hiding around corners and in caves or trenches, even if they're out of the soldier's line of sight.
Some experts call it the "Judge Dredd" gun, after the Sylvester Stallone movie. The Pentagon calls it the XM-25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, which uses a laser rangefinder to precisely measure the distance to a target, then primes a fuse on a timed grenade so that the projectile explodes exactly where it should.
"The way a soldier operates this is you basically find your target, then laze to it, which gives the range, then you get an adjusted aim point, adjust fire and pull the trigger," deputy program manager Richard Audette told Army News Service. "Say you've lazed out to 543 meters ... when you pull the trigger it arms the round and fires it 543 meters plus or minus a one-, two- or three-meter increment, then it explodes over the target."
A squad trying to neutralize an enemy fighter wouldn't have to wait until he showed himself — instead, they could just aim to a spot near him, then use the XM-25 to have a grenade explode directly there.
"For example, in Iraq we had many instances where there was a sniper firing from a rooftop and you have a squad trying to engage that target, but the soldiers couldn't get to him with the weapons they had, so they'd call in the Air Force to drop a JDAM (joint direct attack munition)," said Audette. "We can take out the target at $25 per XM round as opposed to a $20,000 to $50,000 JDAM."
With a range of 750 meters — nearly half a mile — the XM-25 would also be very effective in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters often hide behind rocks and in caves.
In addition to precision-timed grenades, the gun is also built to fire armor-piercing, door-breaching, anti-personnel and less-than-lethal rounds.
Source...
Why You Shouldn't Mug a Conservative
I was the white guy with the black Burrberry jacket that you demanded I hand over shortly after you pulled the knife on me and my wife. You also asked for my wife's purse and earrings. I hope you somehow come across this message. I'd like to apologize.
I didn't expect you to crap your pants when I drew my pistol after you took my jacket. Truth is, I was wearing the jacket for a reason that evening, and it wasn't that cold outside. You see, my wife had just bought me that Kimber 1911 .45 ACP pistol for Christmas, and we had just picked up a shoulder holster for it that evening. Beautiful pistol, eh? It's a very intimidating weapon when pointed at your head, isn't it?
I know it probably wasn't a great deal of fun walking back to wherever you'd come from with that brown stinking sludge flopping about in your pants. I'm sure it was even worse since you also ended up leaving your shoes, cell phone, and wallet with me. I couldn't have you calling up any of your buddies to come help you try to mug us again. I took the liberty of calling your mother, or "Momma" as you had her listed in your cell, and explaining to her your situation. I also bought myself some gas on your card. I gave your shoes to one of the homeless guys over by Vinnie Van Go Go's, along with all of the cash in your wallet, then I threw the wallet itself in a dumpster.
I called a bunch of phone sex numbers from your cell. They'll be on your bill in case you'd like to know which ones. Alltel recently shut down the line, and I've only had the phone for a little over a day now, so I don't know what's going on with that. I hope they haven't permanently cut off your service. I was about to make some threatening phone calls to the DA's office with it. Oh well.
So, about your pants. I know that I was a little rough on you when you did this whole attempted mugging thing, so I'd like to make it up to you. I'm sure you've already washed your pants, so I'd like to help you out. I'd like to reimburse you for the detergent you used on the pants. What brand did you use, and was it liquid or powder? I'd also like to apologize for not killing you and instead making you walk back home humiliated. I'm hoping that you'll reconsider your choice of path in life. Next time you might not be so lucky. If you read this message, email me and we'll do lunch and laundry. Peace!
Joke Of The Day
A young man married a beautiful woman who had previously divorced 10 husbands. On their wedding night, she told her new husband to Please be gentle; I'm still a virgin.What? said the puzzled groom.
How can that be possible if you’ve been married ten times.?
Well, husband#1 was a Sales Representative; he just kept telling me how great it was going to be.
Husband #2 was in Software Services; he was never really sure how it was supposed to function; but he said he would look into it and get back with me.
Husband #3 was from Field Services; he said that everything checked out diagnostically but he just couldn’t get the system up.
Husband #4 was in Telemarketing; even though he knew he had the order, he didn't know when he would be able to deliver.
Husband #5 was an Engineer, he understood the basic process but he wanted three years to research, implement, and design a new state of the-art method.
Husband #6 was from Administration; he thought he knew how but he wasn’t sure whether it was his job or not.
Husband #7 was in Marketing; although he had a product, he was never sure how to position it.
Husband #8 was a Psychiatrist; all he did was talk about it.
Husband # 9 was a Gynaecologist; all he did was look at it.
Husband #10 was a Stamp Collector; all he ever did was … God I miss him.
But now that I’ve married you, I’m so excited.
Wonderful, said the husband, but why?
To which she replied,Your with the GOVERNMENT. This time I know I'm gonna get SCREWED!
National Sales Tax Being Considered
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't that be a Tax increase for 100% of the American people?
Where is your Messiah now?
Where is your Messiah now?
With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.
Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.
At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.
"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform," Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. "I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."
A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.
Liberals dispute that notion. "You could pay for it regressively and have people at the bottom come out better off -- maybe. Or you could pay for it progressively and they'd come out a lot better off," said Bob McIntyre, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a health financing plan that targets corporations and the rich.
A White House official said a VAT is "unlikely to be in the mix" as a means to pay for health-care reform. "While we do not want to rule any credible idea in or out as we discuss the way forward with Congress, the VAT tax, in particular, is popular with academics but highly controversial with policymakers," said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for White House Budget Director Peter Orszag.
Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book "Health Care, Guaranteed." Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.
"Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we're going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate," said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. "It's common to the rest of the world, and we don't have it."
Seeking New Revenue
The surge of interest in a VAT is testament to the extraordinary depth of the nation's money troubles. While some conservatives have long argued that a consumption tax would provide a simpler and more efficient alternative to the byzantine U.S. income tax code, this time it's all about the money.
The federal budget deficit is projected to approach $1.3 trillion next year, the highest ever except for this year, when the deficit is forecast to exceed $1.8 trillion. The Treasury is borrowing 46 cents of every dollar it spends, largely from China and other foreign creditors, who are growing increasingly uneasy about the security of their investments. Unless Congress comes up with some serious cash, expanding the nation's health-care system will only add to the problem.
Obama wants to raise income taxes for high earners and impose new levies on business, but those moves would not generate enough cash to cover the cost of health care, much less balance the budget, and they have not been fully embraced by Congress. Obama's plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions could raise trillions of dollars, but again, Congress is balking.
Key lawmakers are considering other ways to pay for health reform, including new taxes on sugary soda, alcohol and employer-provided health insurance. The last proposal could raise a lot of money -- nearly $1 trillion over the next five years, according to White House budget documents. But options on the table would raise a fraction of that sum. And while it might pay for health care, it would barely dent deficits projected to total nearly $4 trillion over the next five years and to grow rapidly in the future, as baby boomers draw on Social Security and Medicare.
Enter the VAT, one of the world's most popular taxes, in use in more than 130 countries. Among industrialized nations, rates range from 5 percent in Japan to 25 percent in Hungary and in parts of Scandinavia. A 21 percent VAT has permitted Ireland to attract investment by lowering its corporate tax rate.
The VAT has advantages: Because producers, wholesalers and retailers are each required to record their transactions and pay a portion of the VAT, the tax is hard to dodge. It punishes spending rather than savings, which the administration hopes to encourage. And the threat of a VAT could pull the country out of recession, some economists argue, by hurrying consumers to the mall before the tax hits.
A VAT's Bottom Line
What would it cost? Emanuel argues in his book that a 10 percent VAT would pay for every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid to enroll in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal copayments. In his 2008 book, "100 Million Unnecessary Returns," Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz estimates that a VAT of 10 to 14 percent would raise enough money to exempt families earning less than $100,000 -- about 90 percent of households -- from the income tax and would lower rates for everyone else.
And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.
Sales Tax Gains Momentum
Burman, who helped House Democrats craft an unsuccessful 2007 plan to repeal the alternative minimum tax, said he's received a number of phone calls from lawmakers interested in his idea, though "they can't quite imagine how to make it happen politically." Burman said the 25 percent rate has caused some sticker shock, and he's trying to figure out how to bring it down.
Graetz's proposal drew an endorsement from Volcker, who last year called it "a sensible plan for reform." (Volcker did not respond to a request for comment.) It also has piqued the interest of Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee chairman who argues that it could be modified to accommodate Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on families who make less than $200,000 a year.
"I think interest is quietly picking up," Graetz said. "People are beginning to recognize that the mathematics of the current system are just unsustainable. You have to do something. And a VAT has got to be on the table if you want to do something big and serious."
Still, the Senate Finance Committee declined to include a VAT among the options it is considering to pay for health reform. And even VAT supporters doubt the tax will find a place among the tax-reform proposals the Volcker panel has been asked to produce by Dec. 4.
Though the nation's fiscal outlook is grim, Burman said "the situation will have to get more desperate" before lawmakers are likely to consider a new levy aimed directly at the pocketbooks of every one of their constituents.
Most lawmakers are still looking for "a painless source of revenue" to overhaul the health-care system and dig the nation out of debt, Burman said. "Who knows?" he added. "Maybe the tooth fairy will bring that to them."
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Obama: The Constitution Was Written 20 Centuries Ago
Yes... this is the same genius that said we have 57 states.
What if President Bush had said this?
What if President Bush had said this?
Government Motors Presents the Chrysler Genericus!
A look at the future of Chrysler, and GM, and your future options as a car buyer.
If I were you, I'd change oil regularly and keep the old jalopy maintained!
Source...
If I were you, I'd change oil regularly and keep the old jalopy maintained!
Source...
Thursday, May 28, 2009
20 Hypocrisies Of Liberalism
Everybody is guilty of being hypocritical sometimes. It’s just part of being human; however, modern liberalism has taken this concept to stunning extremes. The entire liberal belief system, from top to bottom, is a series of logical blind alleys, bottlenecks, and jaw-dropping contradictions.
To be a politically active liberal is to a be a person whose life is steeped in hypocrisy from the time he gets up until the time he goes to bed -- and that's despite the fact that many libs take morally abhorrent positions just so they can't be called hypocrites if they ever get caught doing something degenerate.
That being said, I will freely acknowledge that every liberal isn't guilty of all the hypocrisies that are on this list and that conservatives can be contradictory, too. Now, let's see if that actually prompts some self-reflection on the Left as opposed to cries of "Here's something conservatives are hypocritical about" and "I don't believe this one." (Sure it will. ha! ha! ha!)
Liberals believe that...
1) ...it's impossible to come to any sort of reasonable compromise with conservatives on anything, but that we can fix our problems with nations like Iran and North Korea by just sitting down and talking things out.
2) ...they're the most compassionate people in society. Yet, in study after study, you find that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals.
3) ...they're not racist despite the fact that they consistently support policies that have been several orders of magnitude more devastating to black Americans than the Ku Klux Klan.
4) ...we've all got to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint to save the planet. Yet, liberals like Al Gore live in big mansions and fly around in private jets while still maintaining their credibility with their fellow environmentalist libs.
5) ...they're the people who are really looking out for women, but they strongly support sexual predators like Bill Clinton and they regularly hurl grotesque sexist insults at feminist role models like Sarah Palin who don't toe-the-liberal-line.
6) ...we definitely need to have higher tax rates in this country. Yet many of Obama's nominees and cabinet members, including the Secretary of the Treasury, don't pay their taxes as is -- and liberals are okay with that.
7) ...guns should be banned! Yet, while they want to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans who live in dangerous neighborhoods, they believe liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell should be able to hire armed bodyguards.
8) ...they're the ones who really care about educating children; yet time and time again, they support policies that hurt our kids, but help their political allies in the teachers’ unions.
9) ...running deficits are bad! After all, liberals ceaselessly took credit for the budget being balanced during the Clinton years and attack Bush for his profligate spending, right? Yet, despite the fact that Obama is running an unsustainable deficit so large that it threatens the future of the country, liberals are perfectly fine with it.
10) ...college campuses are supposed to be places of learning and intellectual openness, but they tacitly approve of conservative speakers being attacked and shouted down.
11) ...they're gay-friendly even as they work to out gay Republicans and they often accuse the Republicans they hate the most of secretly being gay.
12) ...they're the ones who are champions of free speech, but liberals want to silence their most effective critics on talk radio via the Fairness Doctrine.
13) ...they're the ones who really want to stick to the Constitution. Yet, liberals buy into a "living Constitution," which is nothing more in practice than substituting your personal opinion for what's actually in the Constitution.
14) ...it was terrible for George Bush to detain terrorists indefinitely, to use extraordinary rendition to send them to other nations, and to withhold more photos of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- but, when Obama did the exact same things, few liberals had anything to say about it.
15) ...we have to move away from sources of energy like oil, coal, and nuclear power towards what they believe are more eco-friendly power sources like wind power. Yet, whenever anyone tries to build a wind turbine, it's almost always a liberal that attempts to stop it -- just as Ted Kennedy did because he was afraid his yachting view might be spoiled if the ideas he championed were put into practice.
16) ...they're courageous for speaking out against Republicans while Hollywood and the media cheer them on, but when the time comes to speak out against the abuses of radical Muslims, they're terrified into silence.
17) ...when someone despises America, we need to ask, "What have we done to make him hate us?" -- but, when someone despises liberals for what they're doing to the country, they conclude that person must be ignorant, bigoted, or evil.
18) ...it's morally abhorrent to put a serial killer to death, but that a mother killing her baby via abortion is merely a "choice."
19) ...we have to count every vote, except for members of the military serving overseas, most of whom are denied their right to vote because Democratic politicians deliberately delay in sending out their ballots until it's too late for them to be returned in time.
20) ...when they looked at information from our intelligence agencies and concluded that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, they were just mistaken -- but when George Bush looked at the same info and drew the same conclusion, he was lying.
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
A Time For Choosing Again?
This is our must read of the day. Even though Reagan's gave his speech in 1964, so much of it applies today. Truer words were never spoken and we need to heed them now more than ever.
Ronald Reagan's 1964 speech, "A Time for Choosing," arguably, was the pivotal moment when Reagan became the Reagan America knows. He gave "the speech," as he often referred to it, not long after switching from FDR's Democratic Party to the Republican Party of Lincoln. The theme of Reagan's speech was that Americans had to choose between up versus down, freedom versus servitude, self-government versus bureaucratic fiat.
"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people," Reagan explained, "and they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose." So, he concluded, "we have come to a time for choosing."
Reagan became Reagan by studying the political science of the American founding, without which he could not have ushered into American politics a new kind of conservatism, Reagan conservatism. Reagan sought to reign in government by recovering the authority of the Founders' Constitution and the principles that informed it. He believed nothing less would save freedom in America.
Reagan's challenge was to remind Americans of the importance and goodness of constitutional government in a time of constitutional darkness, a time when virtually all the leading intellectual and political lights in America had come to ignore or twist beyond recognition the meaning of the Constitution.
In this way, Reagan's statesmanship paralleled that of Lincoln, who tried to preserve the principled ground of constitutional self-government — the idea that each human being is endowed by the Creator with equal, unalienable, natural rights — at a time when that idea was denied and ridiculed by most prominent minds in America.
Today, the lights of the Constitution have again grown dim, as the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats unfold what is amounting to be the most massive government budgetary and regulatory expansions in American history.
Everyone seems fixated on the costs associated with Obama's corporate bailouts, universal healthcare, environmental regulations, and other items on his liberal to-do list. But few people, in or out of government office, ask whether these policies are constitutional. The reason, sadly, is that few people care.
Our challenge today of recovering the authority of the Constitution is greater than Reagan's and perhaps even greater than Lincoln's was. Since Roosevelt launched the New Deal in the 1930s, several generations of Americans have grown up knowing nothing but big, paternalistic government.
The feisty independence and healthy suspicion of government power that characterized the founding generation of Americans — think of the people who defiantly flew the flag with the coiled-up snake announcing, "Don't Tread on Me" — is now mainly the stuff of boring history textbooks.
It's no exaggeration to suggest that the Constitution itself has become radical. Most Americans today probably cannot imagine what truly constitutional government might look like—virtually the entire federal bureaucracy, for example, would need to be eliminated. That's why the Constitution cannot be used as a club to smash unconstitutional proposals and programs, because no one cares. If you doubt it, ask Ron Paul how much success he's had waving his pocket Constitution at every unconstitutional policy.
Still, the extravagant spending and regulating and interfering with the private sector economy happening in Washington DC today forces upon us a choice: Either we allow it to continue, or not. Either we choose to remove all limits on government power and scope in exchange for promised socialized security, or we choose a government that operates within certain limits and we accept certain responsibilities for ourselves. This is again a time for choosing.
If we do the former, if we trade freedom and limited government in the hope that bureaucratic "experts" can govern and provide for us better than we can govern and provide for ourselves, then let us be honest about what we are choosing. And let us acknowledge openly what Reagan and Lincoln and the Founders understood, that a government of unlimited power is less likely to provide security for us, more likely to threaten us.
If, however, we choose to limit our government, we need not even agree right now on what the limits are. Reasonable minds can differ on where the line should be that separates government power from private freedom. But if we can agree in principle that limited government is the only kind befitting a free people, then we can begin asking how we might limit government's power.
A constitution, if recognized and obeyed, is a useful means for limiting government. And if well designed, a constitution can also help us identify and enjoy the ends of political society—justice, domestic tranquility, security from foreign and domestic threats, prosperity, freedom, all within the framework of a more perfect union. Indeed, a constitution is what we need most today. The good news is that we already have one. Let us choose to understand and defend it.
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Charles Krauthammer Reacts to Sonia Sotomayor Pick
Charles Krauthammer provides a good analysis of what the Sotomayor nomination means for the court and the identity politics of the Left.
Obama Does the Impossible: Makes European Men Seem Manly
Barack Obama is married to Michelle.
Nicolas Sarkozy is married to Carla Bruni.
Who’s the manlier man? ~ RichInOC (Free Republic)
Nicolas Sarkozy is married to Carla Bruni.
Who’s the manlier man? ~ RichInOC (Free Republic)
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Barack Obama. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu rejected President Pantywaist’s settlement freeze proposal. Bibi told Bam Bam that his government was not amenable to putting limitations on building Jewish settlements in the capital of Israel. Obama responded by offering to immediately freeze all US settlements in Washington, DC as a goodwill gesture toward Hamas.
Still stinging from Netanyahu’s rebuff, Obama made the harebrained decision to challenge Dick Cheney to a debate on, of all things, foreign policy. Someone on Team O was astute enough to realize that TOTUS would not be well served by being the second act to Cheney, whose speech at AEI had been planned for weeks. Instead, the chaos president scrambled to seize some time immediately preceding the former Vice President’s speech. In an excruciatingly transparent attempt to run out the clock, Obama began late and dragged his speech out for approximately sixteen hours.
Had no one on the O Team reviewed the Cheney/Edwards match up before the 2004 election in which the picayune Edwards was lambasted effortlessly by Mr. Cheney? Cheney always makes pummeling liberals look easy.
Obama, petulant at being challenged, took twenty eight shots at the former administration and blathered about some middle way in dealing with terrorists. Compromise and middle ground are efficacious strategies at PTA meetings; less so with rogue dictators plotting to wipe us off the map.
Wimpy liberals are violently opposed to the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques unless practiced on members of the Bush administration. The thought of putting a caterpillar in a cell with a barbarian who would gladly saw our heads off shocks the liberal conscience. The left deems water boarding to be a vile form of torture, despite the fact that millions of us water board ourselves every morning with a Neti pot and some SinuCleanse®.
Now that his first official Disgrace to America tour is over, confidence in our Commander in Chief is waning across the pond. When the Europeans start calling you “President Pantywaist”, don’t expect to be taken too seriously by merciless crazy men with nukes.
Benjamin Netanyahu was once a captain in an elite IDF commando force. Community organizer Bambi failed to get asbestos removed from all of the units in the government subsidized housing project, Altgeld Gardens.
Despite the contemporary allure of androgyny, (how else can we explain Johnny Depp), Americans still like Real Men. In fact, the more Dick Cheney talks, the better we like him.
We cheered for Captain “Sulley” Sullenberger who saved the lives of passengers and crew by landing a disabled jet on the Hudson River. We couldn’t get enough of the humble and courageous Captain Richard Phillips who was held hostage by Somali thugs while the Wuss in Chief wobbled.
All sane Americans were proud when our magnificent Navy SEALS finally were unleashed to do what they do as only they can.
Ann Coulter unravels it: liberals have canonized single moms, disregarding how badly their kids keep turning out. Sit com fathers have become dispensable buffoons. One sperm donor per child is becoming chronic.
Unintentionally proving Ann’s point, I Village offers up some advice for single moms raising boys. Presumably, it was not meant to be satire when Andrea Engber assured single mothers that their boys can grow up to be emotionally healthy men, citing a few examples, including: Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton! Engber goes on to offer more sapient advice: “Be a little creative in helping your child learn guy stuff. For instance, many single mothers report concern over their son’s using the potty while sitting, or playing with their makeup.”
It is irrefutable that single moms have the manifest advantage when it comes to teaching their sons how to apply guy liner correctly. How many Oprahfied little boys will grow up to join the military? We’ve got a future national security crisis.
The unavoidable by-product of the Cheney/Obama joust was the demonstration of dissimilarity between a Real Man and the Metro Sexual in Chief. In his characteristic low key style, Cheney recited weighty fact after weighty fact. Obama groused about how burdensome it is to be Obama always having to battle imaginary enemies. The president’s ineptitude and narcissism were on exhibit.
It’s not unusual for boys raised by single moms to become narcissists (see Clinton, William J). The metro sexual male is defined by narcissistic traits, most notably, an over concern for his appearance that we don’t see in Real Men. Sure, they will dress up when the occasion demands, but not without some obligatory grumbling. Liberals didn’t learn from Clinton’s wussified approach to Islamic terrorism that putting a narcissistic pantywaist in the White House doesn’t make terrorists love us after all. Clinton sat on his hands while terrorists attacked us repeatedly:
Mogadishu, the USS Cole bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, please forgive me if I overlooked any others. There was his indefensible refusal to capture bin Laden when the terror leader was offered up to him. Clinton hobbled our military when there were clear opportunities to take the savage barbarian out before 9/11.
Real Man, John Bolton, started shouting from the rooftops about a week before Memorial Day that the North Koreans were about to run a nuclear trial.
As Bolton had presaged, the North Koreans celebrated our Memorial Day by detonating a large nuclear bomb. As expected, Obama responded swiftly with a stern warning to Pyongyang that further Nagasaki- caliber bomb explosions could result in a tersely worded letter from the UN.
The North Koreans have been launching missiles approximately every five minutes ever since. Our president put North Korea on notice by speaking briefly at Arlington on Memorial Day and then summoning the intestinal fortitude to hit the links for the rest of the day.
Obama has eschewed building up US missile defense preferring instead to pursue a senseless disarmament program that would debilitate the United States in the hope that beneficent tyrants like Li’l Kim and Ahmedinejad will be so bedazzled by our good will that they’ll abandon their nefarious machinations.
Sensing that perhaps our current Commander in Chief is somewhat lacking in mettle, part time Columbia professor and rabid Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad dispatched six warships to international waters, including the Gulf of Aden, to celebrate Iran’s successful test firing of a new ballistic missile.
Deploying his weapon of choice, the politics of distraction, the president responded to nuclear threats from maniacal dictators by rolling out his newest fountainhead of commotion: his execrable appointee for the US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, who is precisely the kind of whacky activist judge that weak willed liberals and terrorists can applaud.
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Gerald Celente: Fed Inflates Bailout Bubble
As the Federal Reserve throws more and more money at the economic crisis and holds interest rates down at historic lows, it could be inflating a devastating bailout bubble, Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute, told CNBC.
Redneck Poem: Susie Lee Done Fell In Love
Susie Lee done fell in love;She planned to marry Joe.
She was so happy 'bout it all
And she told her Pappy so.
But Pappy said, 'Susie, gal,
You'll have to find another
I'd just as soon ya Ma don't know,
But Joe is yo' half brother.'
So Susie put aside her Joe
And planned to marry Will.
But after telling Pappy this,
He said, 'There's trouble still ..
You can't marry Will, my gal
And please don't tell your Mother,
But Will and Joe and several mo'
I know is yo' half brother.'
But Mama knew and said to her,
'My chile, do what makes ya happy.
Marry Will or marry Joe,
You ain't no kin to Pappy.'
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Is Obama Another Jimmy Carter?
It is hard to believe but Obama may be worse than Jimmy Carter. Obama is an ideologue and much more dangerous than Carter. Carter was just totally incompetent.
During the U.S. Presidential primaries last year, I had expressed my misgivings that Barack Obama might turn out to be another Jimmy Carter, whose confused thinking and soft image paved the way for the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
The subsequent Iranian defiance of the U.S. and Carter's inability to deal effectively with the crisis in which Iranian students raided the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and held a number of U.S. diplomats hostage led to disillusionment with him in sections of the U.S. and to his failure to get re-elected in 1980. The strong line taken by him against the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet troops towards the end of 1979 did not help him in wiping out the image of a soft and confused president.
The defiant action of North Korea in testing a long-range missile with military applications last month, and its latest act of defiance in reportedly carrying out an underground nuclear test on May 25, can be attributed--at least partly, if not fully--to its conviction that it will have nothing to fear from the Obama administration for its acts of defiance. It is true that even when George Bush was the president, North Korea had carried out its first underground nuclear test in October 2006. The supposedly strong policy of the Bush administration did not deter it from carrying out its first test.
After Obama assumed office in January, whatever hesitation that existed in North Korea's policy-making circles regarding the likely response of U.S. administration has disappeared, and its leadership now feels it can defy the U.S. and the international community with impunity.
A series of actions taken by the Obama administration have created an impression in Iran, the "Af-Pak" region, China and North Korea that Obama does not have the political will to retaliate decisively to acts that are detrimental to U.S. interests, and to international peace and security.
Among such actions, one could cite: the soft policy toward Iran: the reluctance to articulate strongly U.S. determination to support the security interests of Israel; the ambivalent attitude toward Pakistan despite its continued support to anti-India terrorist groups and its ineffective action against the sanctuaries of Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistani territory; its silence on the question of the violation of the human rights of the Burmese people and the continued illegal detention of Aung San Suu Kyi by the military regime in Myanmar; and its silence on the Tibetan issue.
Its over-keenness to court Beijing's support in dealing with the economic crisis, and its anxiety to ensure the continued flow of Chinese money into U.S. Treasury bonds, have also added to the soft image of the U.S.
President Obama cannot blame the problem-states of the world--Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar and North Korea--if they have come to the conclusion that they can take liberties with the present administration in Washington without having to fear any adverse consequences. North Korea's defiance is only the beginning. One has every reason to apprehend that Iran might be the next to follow.
Israel and India have been the most affected by the perceived soft policies of the Obama administration. Israel is legitimately concerned over the likely impact of this soft policy on the behavior of Iran. South Korea and Japan, which would have been concerned over the implications of the soft policy of the Obama administration, had no national option because they lack independent means of acting against North Korea.
Israel will not stand and watch helplessly if it concludes that Iran might follow the example of North Korea. Israel will not hesitate to act unilaterally against Iran if it apprehends that it is on the verge of acquiring a military nuclear capability. It will prefer to act with the understanding of the U.S., but if there is no change in the soft policy of the Obama administration, it will not hesitate to act even without prior consultation with the U.S.
India, too, has been noting with concern the total confusion, which seems to prevail in the corridors of the Obama administration over its Af-Pak policy. Some of the recent comments of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about alleged past incoherence in U.S. policy toward Pakistan--and about the part-responsibility of the U.S. for the state of affairs in the Af-Pak region--have given comfort to the military-intelligence establishment and the political leaders in Pakistan.
Obama's new over-generosity to the Pakistani armed forces and his reluctance to hold them accountable for their sins of commission and omission in the war against terrorism have convinced the Pakistani leaders that they have no adverse consequences to fear from the Obama administration. India would be the first to feel the adverse consequences of this newly found confidence in Islamabad vis-a-vis its relations with the U.S.
Jimmy Carter took a little over three years to create the image of the U.S. as a confused and soft power. Obama is bidding fair to create that image even in his first year in office. The North Korean defiance is the first result of this perceived soft image. There will be more surprises for the U.S. and the international community to follow if Obama and his aides do not embark on corrective actions before it is too late.
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Monday, May 25, 2009
The American Press Mainstream Treachery
Must read of the day.
Honest unbiased reporting in the American news room has been so absent for so long that most Americans now seek information elsewhere. Americans no longer trust the free press to be their eyes and ears, to keep them abreast of the facts needed to make intelligent decisions about daily life or politics. Sadly, at this moment in history, even Russia has a more reliable free press than America. If Americans don’t read foreign news sources, they have no clue what is going on in their own country, much less the world.“The American people continue to remain, for the most part, blissfully unaware of catastrophe looming before them and continue to believe the litany of Orwellian lies being poured upon them by their propaganda media organs, never once raising any objection to trillions of dollars that have been stolen from them and which continues to flow the pockets of their political and corporate overlords intent upon destroying, forever, their once great Nation and which the US Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman stated brazenly before the US Congress that she has “no idea” where $9 Trillion of US taxpayer has gone, or who got it.” - Bilderberg Group orders destruction of US Dollar?—A pretty important story for U.S. readers I’d say, but it remains unreported by the U.S. press!
As a result of horrific news reporting, talk radio and the Internet have largely replaced the daily newspaper, and that’s why leftists currently running Washington DC are very focused on “bailing out” their friendly propaganda rags, while gaining editorial control over talk radio and the Internet.
Thanks to the Internet, one can access news reports from all over the globe, like this story also unreported by the American press, Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation—which reads like a Hitler social engineering horror story.
From the story, “The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.”
This story is not about the billionaire Bilderberg meeting in Europe, but a similar meeting of anti-American billionaires which took place in America during the same time frame, attended by none other than America’s biggest leftist heroes, Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Jr., Warren Buffett, George Soros, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey. The Times UK reported it, but what American press room ran with the frightening headline?
Something VERY evil this way comes, and nobody in the American press wants to investigate or report a single word of it!
Beyond the No. 1-ranked Fox News Channel, few bother watching an overtly leftist mass propaganda system which has become little more than an outlet for leftist talking points. From every alphabet network news desk to every network morning show, and now even the late night comedy hours, TV media is full-tilt off the charts and hard left in their presentation. They have taken a side in the social engineering of America, indeed the world, and everything they produce today is designed to push an anti-American agenda for tomorrow.
Fox is the only news outlet in the entire country that is accused of being a mouthpiece of “the right.” This charge is leveled on the basis that Fox is the only electronic news outlet that even makes an attempt to offer both sides of every story, in a nation where all other electronic media outlets offer only left-wing talking points.
But even Fox News must now be questioned about its integrity as an honest and unbiased outlet for news. The biggest stories in modern political history remains completely unreported in the American mainstream press, including at Fox.
The Ticking Time Bomb
Every American journalist knows the constitutional qualifications for the Oval Office that have existed for more than 200 years. Every journalist knows that Barack Obama has spent nearly $1 million dollars keeping proof that he meets those requirements under lock and key. Every journalist knows that Barack Obama may or may not have been born a natural citizen of the United States, that he certainly was adopted as a citizen of Indonesia in his youth, which at the time did not allow dual citizenship, that he traveled under an Indonesian passport during his college years, and may have even received foreign aid as a foreign student while at Occidental, Columbia or Harvard.
Not one of the mainstream journalists, including at “right-wing” Fox News Network, has taken up an investigative journalist interest to get to the bottom of what is slowly but surely becoming the most explosive story in recent political history.
Alphabet journalists rush to scoop the latest on Lindsay Lohan, American Idol, CIA interrogation procedures, Gore’s Global Warming Swindle, and a laundry list of nonessential tabloid stories. But not one has accepted the challenge of breaking what promises to be a political story that could make Watergate look like a story on the joys of watching paint dry.
This is nothing new… When Bill Clinton accepted $300,000 in illegal Red Chinese campaign money, bagman Johnny Chung became a household name and eventually went to prison for illegal campaign contributions, which coincidentally resulted in the US sharing of nuclear technology and permanent favored nation trade status with Communist China.
But the press never asked the first question about the people who benefited from those illegal campaign contributions, the Clintons. The press was systematically MIA on every story of Clinton corruption, except the sexy stained blue dress story of course, which provided a much-needed distraction from the more important headlines gone missing during the period.
No Place to Run This Time
But the issue of Obama’s constitutional eligibility is such a huge powder keg, the idea of someone tricking congress, the Supreme Court, the news media and the American people into electing someone completely and fundamentally ineligible for office, leaves the press room no place to hide from such an overt act of treachery.
A man whose résumé is limited to a laundry list of ill-advised associations, a missing birth certificate and sealed college records, with no background of leadership anywhere, is the current president of the United States and not one single mainstream journalist has any interest in how this was possible.
However, in the end, there will be no place to run and no place to hide from the truth. Sooner or later, the truth will be known.
A Complicit Press—an uncommon Treachery
Americans have come to expect crime and corruption from their politicians. But they once expected their free press to hold the guilty accountable for their actions.
Today, the press is a complicit party to that crime and corruption. The press is overtly engaged in treachery. They are not ignoring the biggest story in US political history; they are actively working to keep it under cover.
Obama ran a 2-year campaign for leftist power and not one American journalist broke the story about how the man who would become president was in no way qualified for the position. More than six months after the election, still not one American journalist has investigated the growing charges that Obama fails the constitutional requirements for the Oval Office.
Their answer to public inquiry?—They checked it out at Snopes or FactCheck.org, both of which are propaganda tools owned and operated by the pro-Obama left, for benefit of the anti-American take over of the greatest free nation ever known to mankind, and they are satisfied.
Hogwash! Even Republican members of congress have used Internet postings by alleged “truth keepers” run by MoveOn.org or Code Pinko types, to escape their responsibility to properly vet a candidate for the most powerful office in the land, out of fear that someone in the press will label them a “racist” or “right-wing extremists” for asking the most obvious and pertinent question of our time.
Where’s the Birth Certificate?
Because the American press is MIA on the most important issue of our day, a very real constitutional crisis has left the American people to their own imaginations and devices. If Obama is constitutionally eligible, he can prove it. So why won’t he?
It is a very simple fundamental query, and it is entirely fair. Yet not a single member of the press, Congress or courts will ask the question, or allow any American to ask it, and Obama has spent $1 million bucks to keep all of his files Top Secret on the matter. Why?
The American press is entirely complicit in what will likely turn out to be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people; one that in the end, has all the potential of destroying everything America has ever been.
To be complicit, “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, esp. with others; having complicity,” in the case of the American press, is an overt act of treachery, a “violation of faith; betrayal of trust; treason.”
Quite frankly, when the final truth is known about whom and what Barack Obama really is, every member of the press, Congress and courts who complicity refused to ask the question, should go down in flames with every member of the DNC who orchestrated the hoax from day one.
It is quite clear now that Obama’s agenda is in no way an American agenda for benefit of American interests of freedom and liberty for all. The notion that anyone needs to list all of the anti-American steps of the new president at this late date, just to prove that point, is beyond childish. If you don’t already know it, then you don’t know anything about America.
But the outright treachery of the American press is also wholly unacceptable. The decisions the people make can never be any better than the information used to make those decisions. The press is directly responsible for making certain that the American people are working with false or incomplete information, driven only by their overt leftist bent.
Since the outcome of their collusion with anti-American leftists will likely be not only a true constitutional crisis, but one of catastrophic magnitude, the press must be held accountable for their role in the destruction of the greatest nation on earth.
I pray that one mainstream journalist somewhere in the US will grow the patriotic backbone to ask the right people the right questions before it is too late. If the American people want somewhere to focus all of their anger, I suggest they focus it upon the traitorous press who has worked so diligently for so long to keep every American citizen of every political stripe in the dark, as their nation was being systematically raped and plundered by secular socialists. The TEA Party should be held on the front steps of every major news network, shutting down the American press until the news room is forced to report honest news again.
God Bless America and May God bless at least one American journalist with the honesty and courage to do the job entrusted to them by our Founding Fathers. They are either the unbiased eyes and ears of a trusting American populace under siege by political fraud, or they are an active participant in that fraud. There is no middle ground on a story this obvious and important.
God may forgive them for what they have done, but the American people never will!
The American people need just ONE mainstream journalist to step forward and accept the calling of their chosen profession, to make sure that the American people have access to the truth. Does any such journalist still exist today?
Source...
Gird Your Lions - North Korea Claims Second Successful Nuclear Test
Don't you feel safe knowing that the Community Organizer in Chief is in power? Maybe all North Korea needs is a good Obama apology.
North Korea announced Monday that it successfully carried out a second underground nuclear test, less than two months after launching a rocket widely believed to be a test of its long-range missile technology.
North Korea, incensed by U.N. Security Council condemnation of its April 5 rocket launch, had warned last month that it would restart it rogue nuclear program, conduct a second atomic test as a follow-up to its first one in 2006, and carry out long-range missile tests.
On Monday, the country's official Korean Central News Agency said the regime "successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of measures to bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense."
The regime boasted that the test was conducted "on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control."
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency security session. His spokesman, Lee Dong-kwan, confirmed that a North Korean nuclear test was possible.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Andy Laine said: "At this point, we've seen the reports and we're trying to get more information, but we're not able to confirm at this time."
Seismologists from the U.S., South Korea and Japan reported activity shortly after 9:50 a.m. in a northeastern area where North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006.
The Japan Meteorological Agency measured the seismic activity at magnitude-5.3. Quake expert Gen Aoki noted that its depth was "very shallow."
"The area is not active seismically so it is highly possible that it could be an artificial quake," Aoki said in Tokyo.
In Seoul, the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources reported seismic activity in Kilju in North Hamgyong Province—the same area where North Korea carried out a nuclear test in October 2006.
Seismological measurements back North Korea's claim that the test was far stronger than in 2006.
At the Chinese border city of Yanji, 130 miles (200 kilometers) northwest from the test site, an emergency siren sounded shortly before 9 a.m. when officials thought an earthquake occurred. A receptionist at Yanji's International Hotel said she and several hotel guests felt the ground tremble.
An official at Yanji's government seismological bureau, who declined to give his name, said his agency confirmed that some type of explosion occurred, "but it is hard to say what kind of blast it was."
North Korea's 2006 test measured magnitude-3.6, an official at the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
Monday's test raises the stakes in North Korea's standoff over its nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006, drawing widespread international condemnation and drawing stiff sanctions from the U.N. Security Council.
The Security Council demanded that North Korea eliminate its nuclear weapons and ordered countries to prevent Pyongyang from importing or exporting any material for weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles.
The surprise nuclear test prompted five nations to pressure the North to agree to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for energy aid and other concessions—a pact Pyongyang signed in February 2007. North Korea began disablement in November 2007.
That process came to a halt in July 2008.
South Korean troops were on a high alert but there was no sign North Korean troops were amassed along the heavily fortified border dividing the two Koreas, according to an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing agency policy.
North Korea is believed to have at least a half-dozen atomic bombs. However, experts say North Korean scientists have not yet mastered the miniaturization technology for mounting a nuclear device onto a long-range missile.
Source...
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Detroit City Councilwoman (Democrat) Pays Only $68 in Property Taxes a Year on 'Nonexistent' House
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Gee, what a surprise... A wealthy Democrat in a position of power is taking advantage of the system and tries to claim ignorance when she's caught.
Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson paid only $68 in property taxes this year because city records say her well-kept, brick Tudor-style home doesn't exist. Although the home has occupied its west-side plot since 1926, city records have classified the parcel as an empty lot for the past decade.
Watson said she was unaware of the discrepancy until the Free Press contacted her. She said the change came before she was elected to City Council -- and without her involvement.
"I pay the taxes. All I know is I had a big drop when my house got hit hard by a tornado," she said. "We had great damage."
Watson said she could not recall the specific date the tornado hit, saying it might have been 2002, or perhaps 1993.
She acknowledged, however, that she never reported the incident. National Weather Service meteorologists said the last tornadoes to hit Detroit occurred in 1996 and 1997 -- before Watson says her taxes were reduced because of what she called "the natural disaster."
Watson, who said she receives her property tax bill separate from her mortgage bill, said she never questioned why her taxes dropped -- or why they didn't increase after she repaired her home.
"If it's an amount that's been determined by the people who are in the business of assessing ... and you pay that, then what's the issue?" she asked.
Watson's neighbors in comparable homes pay $2,000 to $6,500 in taxes. "My house has always been there," she said.
On Friday morning, Watson entered the city tax assessor's office and asked for a review of her tax bill.
Neighbor: 'Wow! I'm shocked'
Since joining the City Council six years ago, insisting that Detroit get its fair share has been one of Watson's signature issues.
On Sept. 29, for example, Watson was the only council member to vote against a tax break for General Motors Corp. in return for building the Chevrolet Volt at its Poletown assembly plant.
As recently as Tuesday, Watson blasted state officials who she said have cut $130 million from the city's portion of revenue sharing over the years. "They owe us," she said during a City Council meeting, demanding that the state pay the money to help Detroit through its financial crisis and reduce its deficit.
Watson's failure to realize she was paying significantly less than she should is noteworthy because she occasionally admonishes city officials for not being more diligent in collecting outstanding property taxes. She says the city needs that money to reduce its deficit, which recent estimates put at close to $300 million.
Watson, who is paid $81,000 a year and gets a city-owned Ford Crown Victoria, said her taxes are paid in full. She said it never occurred to her that her tax bill was a fraction of what it should have been.
"I am paying what the assessor assessed," Watson said, expressing dismay when the Free Press informed her Thursday of the discrepancy.
She blamed the error on a tornado that she said struck her home several years ago. Just when is not exactly clear. She has guessed that it hit as recently as 2002 or as long ago as 1993. The National Weather Service says the last tornadoes to hit Detroit came in 1996 and 1997.
Watson bought the home on a land contract in 1990. She agreed to pay $40,000. A year earlier, city assessors pegged the home's value at about $37,000.
Currently, assessors calculate the property's value at $1,658 because they consider it a vacant lot.
Watson said she noticed the drop in her property tax bill, which she handles herself, but assumed it was because the tornado left a hole in her roof and damaged the home's foundation.
How assessors would have known that is unclear.
Linda Bade, the city's chief assessor, did not return messages Friday.
Watson said she did not call city officials or file an insurance claim. She also said she did not seek a reduction in her property taxes. Watson said that when the lower bill arrived, she simply paid it and did not ask any questions.
"I came to the natural conclusion my house isn't worth much any more," she said. "This assessment dropped because of something that had nothing to do with me."
Watson, who was elected to the City Council in 2003, said she was not a city official at the time the taxes dropped.
She said she did not rejoice in the tax break.
"In fact, I was kind of insulted," she said, adding that she feared the value of her home had plummeted.
However, in 2002, as she prepared to run for City Council, Watson obtained a $60,000 mortgage.
To obtain the loan, Watson acknowledged that her property was appraised. But she said that appraisal did not prompt her to think that her home had regained value and, consequently, would merit an increase in her property tax bill.
She said she assumed the appraisers "used their financial wizardry" to help her get the loan on her home.
When Free Press reporters questioned Watson about her property taxes, she said she would go to the assessor's office Tuesday and say: "Are you aware you're charging me for a lot and I live in a house?"
If correcting the error generates a bill for back taxes, Watson said she will be "happy to pay it. I pay my bills."
Watson instead went to the assessor's office Friday morning, arriving just after 9.
A clerk confirmed that the property was listed as vacant.
The councilwoman said, no, there was a home on the lot, and told her about the tornado.
Watson asked how soon her property could be reassessed.
"I don't want special treatment," she said. "I want someone to look at it."
The exchange was completed in about 10 minutes. The clerk reviewed her 2002 mortgage. And she gave Watson a form to request an assessment.
"I'll bring it back," Watson said, smiling.
One of Watson's neighbors, informed Friday of Watson's tax bill, was incredulous.
"Wow! I'm shocked," Natalie Solomon told the Free Press.
Solomon, who lives across the street from Watson, said, "I know my property taxes.
"That's not fair."
Source...
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