The U. S. Constellation

El Duce!

2012-01-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

The picture is incredible.

Probably, one of the best campaign portraits of all time.

One problem...okay, many problems.

Newsweek portrays itself as a journalistic work.

Journalism. Yellow.

Content. Insulting.

Think about it.

Mockery and satire are a political, social and humorous American past time.

This is neither.

From the pose to the title, the only mockery occurring here is the US flag on POTUS' lapel.

I didn't vote for the guy, I haven't purchased Newsweek in over a decade and I criticize him whenever possible.

I am not dumb.

This level of high school antics, blatant boot licking and outright hubris is remenisceint of times past - Hitler, Mousulini, Sadam.

Now I know the O is neither. So why do his supporters continue to treat him like a despot?

Interesting...

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The World's Largest Army

2011-09-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

True story and most people will never know it. Here’s an interesting side bar. After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started. The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River .

So, why did they not invade? After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question. Their answer…....they know that almost every home had guns and the Americans knew how to use them. The world's largest army... America 's hunters!

I had never thought about this.... A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion: There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin .. Allow me to restate that number. Over the last several months, Wisconsin 's hunters became the eighth largest army in the world. More men under arms than in Iran .. More than in France and Germany combined. These men deployed to the woods ! of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed. That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan 's 700,000 hunters,

All of whom have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world!.

The point?

America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower. Hunting -- it's not just a way to fill the freezer. It's a matter of national security. That's why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed. Food for thought when next we consider gun control.

-- ..."THEY THAT TURN THEIR GUNS INTO PLOW-SHARES; SHALL PLOW FOR THOSE THAT DO NOT"...

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Seal Team Six -

2011-08-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

Navy Seal Team 6

This is what the Navy Seal team looked like when they went in to get Bin Laden.

A couple of things to notice:

50 caliber sniper on the right.

Knee, knuckle and forearm protection.

Various plastic/wire ties.

Absolute identity denial to protect their families. Free choice of footwear.

Fourth from the right has three artillery simulators and CS gas grenades. On his belly. He's the 'shock and awe' guy.

Pretty cool stuff.

Commencement Address ( Texas A&M). Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008

2011-06-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

Neal Boortz is a Texan, a lawyer, a Texas AGGIE (Texas A&M), and now a nationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta. His commencement address to the graduates of this year's A&M class is far different from what either the students or the faculty expected.

His views are thought provoking:

"I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you'll have enough smoke blown up your bloomers today. And you can bet your tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty and administration. You may not like much of what I have to say, and that's fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.

This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You've heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.

By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn't mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot's license many years ago, he said, 'Here, this is your ticket to learn.' The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn't that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in.

Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast... including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will hear "I think." From the Liberals you will hear references to groups -- The Blacks, the Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives, I among them I might add, think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven't developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You're going to actually get a full time job!

You're also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn't going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn't want to share in your effort, but in your earnings.

Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing a strange and diverse group of people; an agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child; an agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist, but who just can't manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market.

Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills, but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent or tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit..

That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has.. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal power to use force, deadly force to accomplish its goals.

You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.

Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can't decrease its share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.

So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes ... a necessary evil, but dangerous nonetheless...somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

Now let's address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible.. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.

First is that favorite buzz word of the media and academia: Diversity! You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever - is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individual's abilities or character, but on a person's identity and status as a member of a group. Yes, it's that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individual's integrity, character or other qualifications.

Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on every single time you hear the word "diversity" you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess.

We also need to address this thing you seem to have about "rights." We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called "rights" in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.

You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right to a Beemer for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.

Forget it. Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are. You have a right to live free, and to the results of 60% -75% of your labor. I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, Hillary said so, didn't she? But you cannot receive healthcare unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time - his life - to you.. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that's his choice. You have no "right" to his time or property.. You have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.

You may also think you have some "right" to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoorsmen (that would be "homeless person" for those of you who don't want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.

The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn't cost anyone else either property or time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.

By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase "less fortunate" a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoorsmen? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll understand why.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is "less fortunate" is to imply that a successful person - one with a job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was "fortunate." The dictionary says that fortunate means "having derived good from an unexpected place." There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.

If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of "fortune" or "luck," then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This "success equals luck" idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as "people who have won life's lottery." He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It's not luck, my friends. It's choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled, "The Greatest Secret in the World." The lesson? Very simple: "Use wisely your power of choice."

That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, "Look! He did this to me!" than it is to look into a mirror and say, "You S. O. B.! You did this to me!"

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.

Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, the rich.

The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.

Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.

Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: "The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it." The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more "fair."

You have heard, no doubt, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor .. there's an explanation -- a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor.

Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor. So, you need to know that under our government's definition of "poor" you can have a $5 million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and a million in your checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as "living in poverty." Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening news.

How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income.

It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are 'living in poverty."

This isn't exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it? Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. Just remember all this the next time Charles Gibson tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.

Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of "poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.

I'm about to be stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my PhD. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you'll be unable to deal with life, or the truth, so get over it.

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

* You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.

* When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for President. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.

* Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the President of the country. If someone can't deal honestly with you, send them packing.

* Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

* Don't look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way.. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

* Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

* Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

* Finally (and aren't you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,

"1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.

2. Use wisely your power of choice.

3. Go the extra mile .. drive home in the dark.

Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can. Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get the hell out of here and never come back.

Class dismissed"

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The Only Person Standing, Is The One in the Wheelchair...

2011-05-28T00:21:00.000-07:00

WOW...

Remember and remind.

The cost of freedom is everything.

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The 28th Constitutional Amendment

2011-05-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

35 Governors are currently suing the federal government.

It takes 38 states to convene a constitutional convention.

There is talk, buzz around a new amendment:

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."

It seems amazing to me that this needs to be considered.

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Americans: We Are Different, We Are Exceptional

2011-04-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

She's not Sheen.

She's just somebody.

She will be your Huckleberry...

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2011-02-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

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New Congressman - Irag War Hero - Comments...

2011-02-01T08:55:00.000-08:00

Col. West was newly elected to congress this cycle. He is a republican from southern Florida, a bastion of the Democratic Party.

He won in a walk.

It is worth the viewing. This new Congressman was an extremely popular commander in Iraq. He was forced to retire because during an intense combat action a few of his men were captured. At the same time his men had captured one of the guys who were with the Iraqis who captured his men.

Knowing that time was crucial and his interrogators were not getting anywhere with the prisoner COL West took matters into his own hands. He burst into the room and demanded thru an interpreter that the prisoner tell him where his men were being taken. The prisoner refused so COL West took out his pistol and placed it into the prisoner's crotch and fired. Then the COL told the prisoner that the next shot would not miss.

So the prisoner said he would show where the American service members were being taken. The Americans were rescued. Someone filed a report on incorrect handling of prisoners. COL West was forced to retire. COL West was just elected in November 2010 to Congress from Florida. During the elections he was part of a panel on how to handle or how to relate to Muslims. You will see his answer here.

Here is one of the new congressmen from Florida explaining in just over a minute a view on Islam.

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A Relentless Enemy

2010-09-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

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Budweiser Best Superbowl Tribute 9/11

2010-09-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

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911

2010-09-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

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Calling SIX Times for Clearance to Fire: No Collateral Damage

2010-07-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

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Happy Fourth

2010-07-04T10:56:00.001-07:00

Most of us think or remember the latter part of the inscription that starts with, "...brint me your tired..."

But there is so much more.

Her story is one not of France giving us a nice statue, but a poke in the eye of europe and the "old ways".

A tribute to the American spirit and a snub to the ways of tyrany.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch
whose flame is imprisoned lightning,
and her name Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand glows
world-wide welcome;
her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor
that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands your storied pomp!"
cries she with silent lips.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

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2010-07-04T10:03:00.001-07:00

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Cars And Freedom

2010-06-18T23:28:00.001-07:00

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Memorial Day 2010 - Rolling Thunder and a Solitary Marine

2010-06-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

This lone Marine, stood in salute for three hours as the traditional Rolling Thunder drove by.

Watch the complete video - damn moving!

Remember a Vet today, and everyday. Fly the Flag.

However did we come to this point in history, when the commander-in-chief, ignores the Constitution, berates the citizenry, and openly loathes our military?

Somehow, Bush is hated - but that CINC met Rolling Thunder every Memorial Day - this year, the O, commanded in the rain...

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A Letter From the Obama Machine -

2010-06-07T15:17:00.000-07:00

Friend --

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 8th, voters across California will head to the polls to cast their ballots in this year's primary election.

Californians will cast their votes for the candidates who will represent them in state and local government and in the halls of Congress -- so it's crucial that as many voters as possible make their voices heard.

To make sure you're prepared, please click here to confirm your voter registration and the location of your polling place.

Polls are open on Tuesday, June 8th, from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. If this is your first time voting, please bring a valid ID such as any government-issued ID or recent utility bill or bank statement. If you have any problems voting, please call the California Democratic Party's voter protection hotline: 916-442-5707.

You can visit the website below for more information about voting:

http://ca.barackobama.com/CAVotes

Thanks,

Stacy

Stacy Cohen
California Field Director
Organizing for America

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

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Don't Blame Me, I Voted for The Old Guy and the Hottie...

2010-05-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

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Ollie North

2010-04-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

It was 1987.

Lt.Col. Oliver North was testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan administration.

There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning!

He was being drilled by a senator, 'Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?'

Ollie replied, 'Yes, I did, Sir.'

The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, 'Isn't that just a little excessive?'

'No, sir,' continued Ollie.

'No? And why not?' the senator asked.

'Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir.'

'Threatened? By whom?' the senator questioned.

'By a terrorist, sir' Ollie answered.

'Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?'

'His name is Osama bin Laden, sir' Ollie replied.

At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn't. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?' the senator asked.

'Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of', Ollie answered.

'And what do you recommend we do about him?' asked the
senator.

'Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth.'

The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that
was shown of the clip.

By the way, that senator was Al Gore!

Also:

Terrorist pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called 'political prisoners.'

However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands. The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, 'insisted' that all prisoners be released.

Thus Mohammad Atta was freed and eventually thanked us by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center . This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified.

It was censored in the US from all later reports.

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WhipLash: The RightPlace, RightTime, RightNetwork

2010-04-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

American Politics, indeed American Culture(yes, there is such a thing) is always moving, expanding, swinging from left to right.

And, like all things, the world we live in is slave to the laws of physics.

Every action has an opposite and equal, reaction - Newton's Third Law.

I've been saying this since Obama, "the whiplash is going to be monstrous" meaning when folks realize what they've gotten into, they will react in stunning manner.

Perhaps historic.

Until I read an article on Politico, I had never heard of the "RightNetwork".

But now I have.

I don't know if this new network will get off the ground, but I think this is the mostly likely time for their success.

Air America, who?

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USMC Silent Drill Platoon - Watch it All

2010-04-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

Hope Is a Moment Now Long Past: The Shadow of Death is The One I Cast

2010-04-01T23:55:00.001-07:00

"For God and Country, I'll End Your Life"

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Brown Shirts, Nazi's and Elderly Americans Speak their mind and get beat up

2009-10-12T01:43:00.000-07:00

The Real Barack -

BEWARE: What they accuse you of being or doing, is exactly what they are and will do.

SECOND AMENDMENT

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be
infringed.

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

-Obama, Colorado Springs, during the campaign.

From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'

From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about her that made me wary, a little too sure of herself, maybe and white.

From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself: the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'

And FINALLY, and most scary!

From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

What Will You Miss About America?

2009-10-06T14:51:00.001-07:00

We Americans are very unique - unique within the world, unique in history.

The greatest culture ever.

John Wayne and Ronald Regan are both gone and I fear, all they stood for symbolically and in life, went with them.

The generation of the 60's and their children are at the controls. These people who care not for the Constitution, for the Declaration of Independence for God.

What will I miss? I will miss Christmas.

2009-08-24T17:17:00.001-07:00

Cadillac of the Sky!

2009-08-24T02:02:00.000-07:00

Today, GM stands for "Government Motors" and "horsepower" is considered taboo.

In a time when efforts to "rebuild respect for America abroad..." include little roar, and much apologizing - it is nice to harken back to the days when we were winning a world war, when our enemies feared us, our Allies revered us, and both respected the United States of America.

When our foe, struggling to hold on to a false honor, sacrificed her young men for glory in little more then a box with and motor.

Theses Saki soaked boys, drunk and with just a few weeks of flight training behind them, sent to face our most powerful, must advanced, glimmering birds of prey - only to meet their doom.

Back when all the world knew "Cadillac" meant the best.

The embedded video a bit long, but well worth it.

From the Kamikaze, the choir boy, to American horsepower.

Enjoy and remember.

Patton - SoundTrack

2009-08-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

You Could Have Heard a Pin Drop

2009-08-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when DeGaule decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaule said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible..

Rusk responded "does that include those who are buried here?"

DeGuale did not respond.

You could have heard a pin drop

When in England , at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying,

'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims.

What does he intended to do, bomb them?'

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly:

'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities;
they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day;
they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day;
and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.

We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S. , English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies.

At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, 'Maybe it's because the Brit's, Canadians, Aussie's and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE...

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.

"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.

"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said, 'The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France !"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look.

Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop..
----

It's not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you've lived.
Click to email me.

Let's Go Back to Detroit: 2012

2009-08-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

Click to email me.

Obama Should Ban Any Pictures of Him and Steps...

2009-08-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

Notice how it is the fascist, racial profiling, stupid, white cop who assists down the steps, the black, disabled, and angry descedent of slaves, who has suffered as only a rich Harvard College professor black man living in America can suffer, while our compassionate messiah who knows all, cares for all, and is here to bring healing and enlightenment, steps boldly forward, blind to everything except himself and the news camera.

Clearly, this has become a teachable moment.

And then there is this:

I don't know what is better, The One with a, "...Damnnnn, girl you look good enough to eat..." expression on his face or the French Prime Minister's grinning, expression of "
sac le bleu!"

The Government Can!

2009-08-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Press Release COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

2009-08-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

August 4, 2009
WASHINGTON. D.C. – Following reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been orchestrating an effort to intimidate members of Congress and Governors who raise legitimate concerns regarding the effectiveness of the stimulus, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter to Emanuel saying “While this type of scare tactic may work In Chicago, it will not work to intimidate me or other Members of the United States Congress.”

“I and others have dared to bring these facts to the attention of President Obama, the Congress and the American people,” Issa wrote. “You’ve unfortunately reacted by once again resorting to the playbook of the Chicago political machine.”

Last month, Politico reported that Emanuel had “launched a coordinated effort to jam” Senator Kyl and other Administration critics… “[A]fter seeing Kyl and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) again paint the legislation as a failure on Sunday talk shows, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel directed that the letters from the Cabinet secretaries be sent to [Governor] Brewer, according to two administration officials.”

Issa noted, “The fact that the letters were coordinated by you to maximize the level of intimidation is supported by the timing, structure, and content of each letter. Not only were the four letters all sent the day following Senator Kyl’s remarks, but they were also remarkably similar in tone and sentence structure.”

Letter from Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation:

On Sunday, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren’t presently underway. I believe the stimulus has been very effective in creating job opportunities throughout the country. However, if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know [emphasis added].

Letter from Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior:

Some key Republican leaders in Congress have publicly questioned whether the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is working and suggested cancelling all projects that are not currently in progress. I believe they are wrong. The stimulus funds provided through the Recovery Act are a very effective way to create job opportunities throughout the Country. However, if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to Arizona, please let me know [emphasis added].

“At what point do you believe your practice of Chicago-style politics violates a public official’s right to speak out in favor of alternative policies,” Issa asks. “The American people have a right to know what role you played in developing the threatening letters to Governor Brewer and whether you intend to continue to engage in these tactics in the future.”

In order to assist the Committee with its investigation of this issue, please provide the following information by close of business on Tuesday, August 11, 2009:

1. Your response to Politico’s report that “White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel directed that the letters from the Cabinet secretaries be sent to [Governor] Brewer, according to two administration officials.”

2. A full and complete explanation of the development of the four July 13 letters from the cabinet secretaries to Governor Brewer, including but not limited to the role you or any other White House official played in writing the letters or encouraging the writing of the letters.

3. All records and communications between you and Secretary LaHood, Secretary Salazar, Secretary Donovan, and Secretary Vilsack referring or relating to the decision to send the July 13 letters to Governor Brewer.

4. A full and complete explanation of the role of the Democratic National Committee and the White House Office of Political Affairs in authoring, encouraging, facilitating, or directing the four July 13 letters from the cabinet secretaries to Governor Brewer.

2009-08-03T22:33:00.001-07:00

Welcome Home - the Lords of DC return to Serfdom for an Ear Full

2009-08-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

2009-08-03T10:54:00.001-07:00

Obama Victory - As Seen from Accross the Pond

2009-08-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Daily Mail ( UK ) wrote this editorial about Obama on 1/6/2009. (confirmation, Google " London Daily Mail Obama's Victory")

Obama's Victory--A British view

A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the US mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups.

A victory for Obama-worshippers everywhere.

A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality.

A victory for Hollywood , the most dysfunctional community in the world. Victory for Streisand, Spielberg, Soros, Moore, and Sarandon. Victory for those who prefer welfare to will and interference to independence. For those who settle for group think and herd mentality rather than those who fight for individual initiative and the right to be out of step with meager political fashion.

Victory for a man who is no friend of freedom. He and his people have already stated that media has to be controlled so as to be balanced, without realizing the extraordinary irony within that statement.

Like most liberal zealots, the Obama worshippers constantly speak of Fox and Limbaugh, when the vast bulk of television stations and newspapers are drastically liberal and anti-conservative. Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said that just as pornography should be censored, so should talk radio. In other words, one of the few free and open means of popular expression may well be cornered and beaten by bullies who even in triumph cannot tolerate any criticism and opposition.

A victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than the family, for those who prefer teachers' unions to teaching and for those who are naively convinced that if the West is sufficiently weak towards its enemies, war and terror will dissolve as quickly as the tears on the face of a leftist celebrity.

A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation. A victory for intrusive lawyers, banal sentimentalists, social extremists and urban snobs.

Congratulations America !

2009-07-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - They are all Americans. The last Cowboys.

2009-05-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

"So I said to him, "Barack, I know Abe Lincoln, and you ain't Abe Lincoln."

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

.....Abraham Lincoln

Border Patrol

2009-05-15T10:44:00.001-07:00

It's an Illegal Alien Clown Car!

Four Pounds of Anthrax through a Tunnel from Mexico -

2009-05-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

It isn't so much that there is some crazy spouting off like this, it's just that he gets applause from a crowd.

So who is this guy and who is he talking to and does it really matter?

He says, "...no dialogue with the Jews..." and thinks there are 300,000 RedNeck, anti-Americans...

Do You Sell for A Living ? We all Sell.

2009-04-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Copiers, printers, Blades, paper, toner, MPS, PM, managed services, paperclips - if you sell, keep selling, sell today, sell in a recession, sell in a depression, sell even though the gov't takes half, never stop.

You sell. You don't run from history.

You make it.

It's tough out here - but here we are.

Thing is, it can always be worse -

Superbowl, 2002. Just months after 911.

The nation was in mourning - we needed something to get ourselves back up. Soldiers were cool again.

Do you remember the Empty Sky's of 9-12? That was scary.

Superbowl, for us, represented something more than a football game - it meant we were still here, the US, we Americans were still standing.

Still here to do what we Americans do: watch football, buy music, dance in the frickin streets, flaunt those who hate us, those who would kill us, and to sell.

We were celebrating life while remembering those who went before us.

It took a few crazy Muslims to tear down the towers.

But a rock band from Ireland, it's lead crooner sporting goofy blue shades, helped us remember who we are and helped us tell the world, we weren't going anywhere.

Let the cube rats play in the dark. Let the sales manager who have forgotten their passion and left their soul somewhere in the corporate cafeteria, try to keep score.

Keep going, no matter who, no matter what gets in your way - don't let them win.

Not the congressmen we elect, not the fat, lazy, bureaucrats, not your covetous neighbors, not the terrorists or that overly pompous PA can keep you down. You know the score.

It can all end tomorrow, for them it will be a period at the end of an empty life.

For us, we who make things out of nothing, we will be complete.

Go Sell.

Mrs. Clinton got it Wrong - The World Did not come together to Defeat Pirates - Only the United States did...

2009-04-12T11:06:00.001-07:00

For hundreds of years, the greatest naval powers in the world paid tribute to the Pirates of the Barbary Coast - by the way, the pirates were "Radical Islam believers". It was, and to sum Islam still is, the correct treatment of "non-believers" - kidnap, enslave or ransom. The one way to "free yourself" was to revert to Islam.

Recently, Mrs. Clinton mistakenly stated that Morocco and the US "stood together" to end the scourge of piracy - this is not true, she is wrong.

The Sultan of Morocco commanded pirates, took hostages and demanded tribute from Great Britain, France and all the rest.

When the US broke away from Great Britain, she no longer was protected by the tribute paid by England, and soon after the revolutionary war, the "pirates" started capturing US trade ships and demanding ransom.

The US tried to work with the pirates, signing a few treaties. These treatise of course did not hold and William Bainbridge, an officer who was sent to pay tribute to the dey of Algiers in 1800, was later captured during the war along with his ship, the Philidelphia.

It was in the bay of Tripoli that under the command of Stephen Decatur US Marines recaptured the Philadelphia and sank the vessel - keeping it from being used by the pirates. Hence part of the first line in the Marine Battle Hymn, "...from the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli..."

It took the small American navy to once and for all rid the entire world of this type of piracy and paying tribute.

What is rarely known is that the United States of America successfully negotiated the end of ALL TRIBUTE - unilaterally, this small, upstart country and her newbie navy destroyed the practice of demanding tribute for the entire world.

It did not take a Village; it did not take a "United Nations"; it required men like Thomas Jefferson and Stephen Decatur men of action, men of the sword, Americans.

It is unfortunate that our current president does not see fit to mention or comment on the taking of a US ship and the rescue of a brave American.

Almost as tragic is the apparent ignorance of our Secretary of State.

Click to email me.

We All Sell. You Are a Capitalist, and that's OK.

2009-02-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, a few Americans, at great risk to themselves and family, disguised themselves as Indians, and dumped tea into the Boston Harbor - over a 4% tax hike.

Today, the California state budget(for last year) was passed. My taxes are going up - a great deal more than 4%.

One radio personality said on-air last night, "...I know how to change this, but there is an 11 day waiting period in California..."

This is not good.

Since September, regular people, business owners, and employees alike - Capitalists - have been scared. Not scared of competition from overseas, or down the block. They are not scared of losing customers or enhancing their customer experience.

The Russians, or the Taliban, or even Bin Laden don't give these people pause.

Today, millions of us are afraid of our own government.

Worse, some, as they witness failure and bad choices being rewarded - "mortgage bailouts" - are starting to fear success.

I have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us.

Death of The Copier: Today, I Had Drinks with a Hero...

2009-02-02T15:51:00.000-08:00

Death of The Copier: Today, I Had Drinks with a Hero...

A Great Editorial by Dick Morris - America the Socialists

2009-01-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

The Obama presidency: Here comes socialism
Posted: 01/20/09 06:12 PM [ET]

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.)

But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.

Obama’s record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly.

But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.

Will he raise taxes? Why should he? With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans.

In the name of stabilizing the banking system, Obama will nationalize it. Using Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to write generous checks to needy financial institutions, his administration will demand preferred stock in exchange. Preferred stock gets dividends before common stockholders do. With the massive debt these companies will owe to the government, they will only be able to afford dividends for preferred stockholders — the government, not private investors. So who will buy common stock? And the government will demand that its bills be paid before any profits that might materialize are reinvested in the financial institution, so how will the value of the stocks ever grow? Devoid of private investors, these institutions will fall ever more under government control.

Obama will begin the process by limiting executive compensation. Then he will urge restructuring and lowering of home mortgages in danger of default (as the feds have already done with Citibank).

Then will come guidance on the loans to make and government instructions on the types of enterprises to favor. God grant that some Blagojevich type is not in charge of the program, using his power to line his pockets. The United States will find itself with an economic system comparable to that of Japan, where the all-powerful bureaucracy at MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) manages the economy, often making mistakes like giving mainframe computers priority over the development of laptops.

But it is the healthcare system that will experience the most dramatic and traumatic of changes. The current debate between erecting a Medicare-like governmental single payer or channeling coverage through private insurance misses the essential point. Without a lot more doctors, nurses, clinics, equipment and hospital beds, health resources will be strained to the breaking point. The people and equipment that now serve 250 million Americans and largely neglect all but the emergency needs of the other 50 million will now have to serve everyone. And, as government imposes ever more Draconian price controls and income limits on doctors, the supply of practitioners and equipment will decline as the demand escalates. Price increases will be out of the question, so the government will impose healthcare rationing, denying the older and sicker among us the care they need and even barring them from paying for it themselves. (Rationing based on income and price will be seen as immoral.)

And Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination (until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans).

And he will enact the check-off card system for determining labor union representation, repealing the secret ballot in union elections. The result will be to raise the proportion of the labor force in unions up to the high teens from the current level of about 12 percent.

Finally, he will use the expansive powers of the Federal Communications Commission to impose “local” control and ownership of radio stations and to impose the “fairness doctrine” on talk radio. The effect will be to drive talk radio to the Internet, fundamentally change its economics, and retard its growth for years hence.

But none of these changes will cure the depression. It will end when the private sector works through the high debt levels that triggered the collapse in the first place. And, then, the large stimulus package deficits will likely lead to rapid inflation, probably necessitating a second recession to cure it.

So Obama’s name will be mud by 2012 and probably by 2010 as well. And the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power.

But it will be too late to reverse the socialism of much of the economy, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of healthcare by the government, the surge of unionization and the crippling of talk radio.

Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of Outrage. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com. To order a signed copy of their new best-selling book, Fleeced, go to dickmorris.com.

For Detroit, The Hits Just Keep Coming...

2008-12-29T15:50:00.000-08:00

Futile First: Lions 0-16 After 31-21 Loss to Pack. "No competitor wants to go through something like this," said Lions coach Rod Marinelli.

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) -The Detroit Lions own a distinction no team wants: worst in NFL history.

Facing one last chance to avoid their dubious destiny, the Lions lost Sunday's season finale to the Green Bay Packers 31-21 to complete the league's first 0-16 season. The 1976 expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-14) were the last NFL team to complete a season without a victory.

It didn't come without a fight. After falling behind 24-14 midway through the fourth quarter, Kevin Smith's 9-yard touchdown run put Detroit back within a field goal.

But Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers responded with a 71-yard touchdown pass to Donald Driver and the Lions' Dan Orlovsky threw an interception on fourth-and-27 with 3 minutes left, dooming Detroit to futility of historic proportion.

"No competitor wants to go through something like this," said Lions coach Rod Marinelli, who declined to discuss his future with the team. "This is not fun to go through, obviously. But there's people going through a lot worse than this."

The Lions were building toward this for years and now have lost 23 of their last 24 games. The 0-16 record will be a lasting testimony to the Matt Millen era. With Millen as president of the team from 2001 until he was fired on Sept. 24, Detroit won only 31 games - none this year, of course.

"It can't do anything but motivate you," Orlovsky said. "I don't ever want to be a part of this again. We haven't won since, November of '07, maybe? I don't even know the last time we won a game."

The Lions haven't won since Dec. 23, 2007, when they beat Kansas City. Green Bay is where this woeful streak began at the end of last season. Since then, the Lions have lost 17 straight and have been outscored 551-281.

Marinelli has gone 10-38 in three seasons. His future has not been announced, but team owner William Clay Ford has decided the leaders of the front office, Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand, will be back in some capacity.

"I am positive that every aspect of what we do as a football team has to be rethought and analyzed," veteran kicker Jason Hanson said.

Orlovsky was 22-of-42 for 225 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions for the Lions, whose bid to stay out of the record book came undone in large part due to a pair of ill-advised penalties.

Rodgers was 21-of-31 for 308 yards and three touchdowns for the Packers (6-10), and Ryan Grant and DeShawn Wynn rushed for 106 yards each.

Trailing 14-7 early in the third quarter, Lions punter Nick Harris pinned the Packers at their 10-yard line. Safety Kalvin Pearson then put a hard hit on Grant to cause a fumble, and recovered the ball at the Packers 11.

Calvin Johnson caught a pass from Orlovsky in the flat and broke three tackling attempts to score a tying 14-yard touchdown with 10:20 left in the third quarter.

But the Packers put together a 12-play, 62-yard drive for a 36-yard field goal by Mason Crosby. After a three-and-out by Detroit's offense, Lions linebacker Ernie Sims' penalty for a late hit out of bounds on Grant played a key role on a drive that ended with a 5-yard pass from Rodgers to fullback John Kuhn.

The Lions weren't finished, as Orlovsky used two long completions to John Standeford to set up Smith's touchdown with 8:34 left. After the ensuing kickoff, Rodgers reared back and threw deep to Driver, who blew past Lions cornerback Leigh Bodden and ran in for a touchdown.

Orlovsky led the Lions back into Packers territory, but a taunting penalty on Smith moved the Lions back near midfield and Orlovsky threw an interception to Nick Collins.

Detroit fell behind 14-0 as Orlovsky managed a measly 9 yards passing in the first quarter. But the Lions' defense showed some fight early on before allowing Wynn to score on a 73-yard touchdown.

Rodgers also threw a fade to rookie tight end Jermichael Finley in the end zone for a 14-0 lead.

Detroit scored early in the second quarter, a 9-yard touchdown from Orlovsky to Johnson on third-and-goal.

Ford Says, "Go Pound Sand..."

2008-12-19T22:22:00.000-08:00

The Model T, the Rouge Plant, and now...

Henry defined the auto industry - his idea to manufacture a product that his employees can afford to buy, was pure genius. And the employment of ex-cons to secure his family, turned into the downfall of his corporate legacy - maybe.

The last remaining American hope in the auto industry is Ford Motor Company - can it be a result of the Ford family beginning to buy back stock years ago?

Family owned.

Perhaps all the money the family saved with the Lions- will come in handy.

Let'sLighten Up - sorta

2008-12-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

It's Called a Free Market - Doesn't Mean Everything is Free of Charge

2008-12-18T19:16:00.000-08:00

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something..."

Bailouts are not Loans - did you read your mortgage documents? You did? Good, than you know what "ARM" stands for, correct?

There is a great post over at the Caskey blog, here it's about Free Markets, recession and "You, Incorporated."

Bill really got me going on the subject of whining and feeling sorry for yourself and how easy it is to become a "victim".

Granted, everybody wants to help a victim, even if the circumstances are self inflicted. But to be perfectly blunt, and a little cold, "victims" are never "winners". Victims become winners when they overcome their victimization.

The current atmosphere of "bailouts for all of your mistakes..." is nauseating. Because we are now rewarding those who make stupid decisions. We can't call their acts stupid, but we can call them "victims" - and victims are entitled to bailouts.

Problem is, Free Markets change, demand for skilled labor changes and Change is Painful - Do you still use buggy-whips? I imagine there were a few buggy whip manufactures who went out of business when Ford unleashed his Model T; and what about saddle makers, and feed stores?

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know..."that was different..." phut!

Like Bill, I am from the Detroit area - I grew up in suburbia, went to a local university and Ended up living and working in the high-tech industry all over the eastern side of the state. I have had many lunches at the eatery Jimmy Hoffa was last seen.

And I remember the "dark days" of the Seventies when Lee Iaccoca went to Washington for a LOAN not a bailout; a loan that Chrysler paid off early.

The Times, they are different...

But the whining, the "entitlements" and the blame has festered, grown and spread - there are far, far fewer "You, Inc." people today. No more "Rugged Individuals", very few purveyors of Yankee Ingenuity with a Can Do attitude...nope.

Tough Times - Wash Away Flotsam

I have often said, "I don't participate in recessions." I don't.

One shouldn't respond out of fear, but most do - and it isn't the sheep responding that are as bad as those who use this to manipulate the scared into believing they can do nothing without "a little help from my friends..." i.e., "the government".

Tough times build character - if you win a game after losing one the week prior, the victory is so much sweeter. Of course, this assumes you keep score - how many youngsters play football(or any other sport)today and do not keep score, in an effort to save the loser from humiliation? The ultimate bailout. By shielding the loser from the pain of loss, we steal and shame away the joy of winning. And we destroy the opportunity to win with grace or lose with honor.

If it doesn't matter, why should we recover to come back and fight another day?

The Times, they are different...We have all the Americans Gone?

This is a great tribute and yet very sad - I fear the Americans that Byron is talking about have all left. Today's American whines, and paints his nails with clear polish.

Today's American wants to be loved for being "nice" not for being firm.

Byron MacGregor - The Americans
Uploaded by DwightFrye

In Bill's article, he says about the You, Inc. mentality, "...You choose where to live, based on your means. You choose what career to pursue based on your interest and ability. You chose your friends. You choose whether you want to go into massive debt or not..."

I wonder how many "Americans" view these thoughts as elitist...

I wonder how many Americans see these words as treason...

The Case of The Shoe Flinger -

2008-12-15T09:30:00.001-08:00

Say what you will, George has got great reaction time...
I get the feeling the "O" would stand there like Sadat and take the shoe hits as they come.

Well, seems that reality is much better than fiction. In the last days of the Bush term, the Bush haters get one more "gafaw" and SNL writers get a complete week to write this in...

But once again, the world mistakes Bush as the One and Only American responsible - as do most Bush Bashers.

Bush is the President of the United States of America - when somebody attacks the President, with words, bullets or shoes, that person is attacking ALL AMERICANS - the holder of the office is an exact extension of the will of the People of The United States of America. Whoever the current resident is Clinton, Carter, Obama, or Bush.

And this is the world we need to understand more?

This is the world we need to work with?

Identify and empathize with?

This is part of the world we will be lowering our standards for - in a effort to be more "liked" - and the Soviet Union, I mean Russia has Naval ships in Cuba -

The World is Upside Down.

Santa is Dead - In Florida.

2008-11-26T04:19:00.000-08:00

Ho, ho, nope! FGCU to limit holiday decor
'Political correctness' cited as reason
by dave breitenstein • dbreitenstein@news-press.com • November 25, 2008

Christmas is just 30 days away, but Santa Claus won't be stopping by Florida Gulf Coast University this holiday.

He's not allowed on campus.

FGCU administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest, which is being replaced by an ugly sweater competition. In Griffin Hall, the university's giving tree for needy preschoolers has been transformed into a "giving garden."

The moves boil down to political correctness.

"Public institutions, including FGCU, often struggle with how best to observe the season in ways that honor and respect all traditions," President Wilson Bradshaw wrote in a memo to faculty and staff Thursday. "This is a challenging issue each year at FGCU, and 2008 is no exception. While it may appear at times that a vocal majority of opinion is the only view that is held, this is not always the case."

Bradshaw's directive struck a chord with FGCU employees. The Staff Advisory Council received 44 anonymous comments on the issue; all were against the ban on holiday decorations.

"It says people are very passionate about this," said council president Ruth Rodrigues, who also is director of auxiliary services. "The holidays are a joyous time, and they want to express themselves."

The council voted Monday to send administration a letter outlining employees' comments.

In Bradshaw's memo, he said the decision was not an "attempt to suppress expression of the holiday spirit." Staffers will be permitted to display holiday decorations on their desks, but not on their office doors or in common spaces. Traditional workplace Christmas parties are not an issue at FGCU.

"We don't generally have Christmas parties here," said Audrea Anderson, associate vice president for community relations and marketing. "There are end-of-the-semester parties or end-of-the-calendar-year parties. They are certainly not related to anyone's beliefs."

Bradshaw plans to convene a committee in 2009 to address future methods of sharing traditions throughout the year.

In 2001, then-President William Merwin lit the university's official Christmas tree, a 22-foot Colorado blue spruce. Children from the college's child care center and university choir performed traditional carols.

Junior Marilyn Lerner, a 20-year-old resort and hospitality management major from California, said she'll miss seeing Christmas trees in the Student Union.

"I think they're pretty," said Lerner, who is Jewish. "It's just a Christmas tree. I don't mind."

Neither does junior Stephanie Tirado, 20, an education major from New York.

"Christmas is no longer just a religious holiday. It's commercialized now," said Tirado, who is Wiccan. "Why don't they just add a menorah then?"

And Now We Have Killed ThanksGiving

2008-11-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

Claremont parents clash over kindergarten Thanksgiving costumes

Some say having students dress up as pilgrims and Native Americans is 'demeaning.' Their opponents say they are elitists injecting politics into a simple children's celebration.

By Seema Mehta
November 25, 2008

For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.

Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?

"It's demeaning," Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter's teacher. "I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."

Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca, wrote the letter upon hearing of a four-decade district tradition, where kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools take annual turns dressing up and visiting the other school for a Thanksgiving feast. This year, the Mountain View children would have dressed as Native Americans and walked to Condit, whose students would have dressed as Pilgrims.

Raheja, an English professor at UC Riverside who specializes in Native American literature, said she met with teachers and administrators in hopes that the district could hold a public forum to discuss alternatives that celebrate thankfulness without "dehumanizing" her daughter's ancestry.

"There is nothing to be served by dressing up as a racist stereotype," she said.

Last week, rumors began to circulate on both campuses that the district was planning to cancel the event, and infuriated parents argued over the matter at a heated school board meeting Thursday. District Supt. David Cash announced at the end of the meeting that the two schools had tentatively decided to hold the event without the costumes, and sent a memo to parents Friday confirming the decision.

Cash and the principals of Condit and Mountain View did not respond to interview requests.

But many parents, who are convinced the decision was made before the board meeting, accused administrators of bowing to political correctness.

Kathleen Lucas, a Condit parent who is of Choctaw heritage, said her son -- now a first-grader -- still wears the vest and feathered headband he made last year to celebrate the holiday.

"My son was so proud," she said. "In his eyes, he thinks that's what it looks like to be Indian."

Among the costume supporters, there is a vein of suspicion that casts Raheja and others opposed to the costumes as agenda-driven elitists. Of the handful of others who spoke with Raheja against the costumes at the board meeting, one teaches at the University of Redlands, one is an instructor at Riverside Community College, and one is a former Pitzer College professor.

Raheja is "using those children as a political platform for herself and her ideas," Constance Garabedian said as her 5-year-old Mountain View kindergartner happily practiced a song about Native Americans in the background. "I'm not a professor and I'm not a historian, but I can put the dots together."

The debate is far from over. Some parents plan to send their children to school in costume Tuesday -- doubting that administrators will force them to take them off. The following day, some plan to keep their children home, costing the district attendance funds to punish them for modifying the event.

"She's not going to tell us what we can and cannot wear," said Dena Murphy, whose 5-year-old son attends Mountain View. "We're tired of [district officials] cowing down to people. It's not right."

But others hoped that tempers would calm over the long holiday weekend, and the community could come together to have a fruitful discussion about Thanksgiving and its meaning.

"Its always a good thing to think about, critically, how we teach kids, even from very young ages, the message we want them to learn, and the respect for the diversity of the American experiences," said Jennifer Tilton, an assistant professor of race and ethnic studies at the University of Redlands and a Claremont parent who opposes the costumes.

Mehta is a Times staff writer.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

So It Begins - The Late Great United States of America

2008-11-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

Russian predicts the end of U.S. - "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all."

RUSSIAN ANALYST PREDICTS DECLINE AND BREAKUP OF USA
Tue Nov 25 2008 09:04:22 ET

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.

Somali pirates transform villages into boomtowns

2008-11-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer – Wed Nov 19, 10:16 am ET

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women — even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.

And in an impoverished country where every public institution has crumbled, they have become heroes in the steamy coastal dens they operate from because they are the only real business in town.

"The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them," said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Haradhere, the nearest village to where a hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude was anchored Wednesday.

These boomtowns are all the more shocking in light of Somalia's violence and poverty: Radical Islamists control most of the country's south, meting out lashings and stonings for accused criminals. There has been no effective central government in nearly 20 years, plunging this arid African country into chaos.

Life expectancy is just 46 years; a quarter of children die before they reach 5.

But in northern coastal towns like Haradhere, Eyl and Bossaso, the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from pirate ransoms that have reached $30 million this year alone.

In Haradhere, residents came out in droves to celebrate as the looming oil ship came into focus this week off the country's lawless coast. Businessmen started gathering cigarettes, food and cold glass bottles of orange soda, setting up small kiosks for the pirates who come to shore to re-supply almost daily.

Dahir said she is so confident in the pirates, she instituted a layaway plan just for them.

"They always take things without paying and we put them into the book of debts," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "Later, when they get the ransom money, they pay us a lot."

For Somalis, the simple fact that pirates offer jobs is enough to gain their esteem, even as hostages languish on ships for months. The population makes sure the pirates are well-stocked in qat, a popular narcotic leaf, and offer support from the ground even as the international community tries to quash them.

"Regardless of how the money is coming in, legally or illegally, I can say it has started a life in our town," said Shamso Moalim, a 36-year-old mother of five in Haradhere.

"Our children are not worrying about food now, and they go to Islamic schools in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon. They are happy."

Despite a beefed-up international presence, the pirates continue to seize ships, moving further out to sea and demanding ever-larger ransoms. The pirates operate mostly from the semiautonomous Puntland region, where local lawmakers have been accused of helping the pirates and taking a cut of the ransoms.

For the most part, however, the regional officials say they have no power to stop piracy.

Meanwhile, towns that once were eroded by years of poverty and chaos are now bustling with restaurants, Land Cruisers and Internet cafes. Residents also use their gains to buy generators — allowing full days of electricity, once an unimaginable luxury in Somalia.

There are no reliable estimates of the number of pirates operating in Somalia, but they must number in the thousands. And though the bandits do sometimes get nabbed, piracy is generally considered a sure bet to a better life.

NATO and the U.S. Navy say they can't be everywhere, and American officials are urging ships to hire private security. Warships patrolling off Somalia have succeeded in stopping some pirate attacks. But military assaults to wrest back a ship are highly risky and, up to now, uncommon.

The attackers generally treat their hostages well in anticipation of a big payday, hiring caterers on shore to cook spaghetti, grilled fish and roasted meat that will appeal to a Western palate. They also keep a steady supply of cigarettes and drinks from the shops on shore.

And when the payday comes, the money sometimes literally falls from the sky.

Pirates say the ransom arrives in burlap sacks, sometimes dropped from buzzing helicopters, or in waterproof suitcases loaded onto tiny skiffs in the roiling, shark-infested sea.

"The oldest man on the ship always takes the responsibility of collecting the money, because we see it as very risky, and he gets some extra payment for his service later," Aden Yusuf, a pirate in Eyl, told AP over VHF radio.

The pirates use money-counting machines — the same technology seen at foreign exchange bureaus worldwide — to ensure the cash is real. All payments are done in cash because Somalia, a failed state, has no functioning banking system.

"Getting this equipment is easy for us, we have business connections with people in Dubai, Nairobi, Djibouti and other areas," Yusuf said. "So we send them money and they send us what we want."

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt - MITT ROMNEY

2008-11-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times -

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.

First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was a candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination.

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Iraq Ends The War...

2008-11-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

Reported over at Think Progress - Iraq is "ending the War"...how nice of them...

Iraqi cabinet approves security agreement with firm 2011 withdrawal deadline.»

After nearly one year of negotiations, the Iraqi cabinet voted “overwhelmingly” Sunday to approve a security agreement requiring “coalition forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities and towns by the summer of 2009 and from the country by the end of 2011,” the New York Times reports. “An earlier version had language giving some flexibility to that deadline…but the Iraqis managed to have the deadline set in stone, a significant negotiating victory.”

Earlier this month, the Times reported that Barack Obama’s victory spurred the Iraqi political process toward finalizing a withdrawal agreement. In the words of one Iraqi politician:

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party.

“If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Georgia congressman warns of Obama dictatorship

2008-11-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

By BEN EVANS – 15 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.

Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.

A New Generation Takes Hold - And They Get 5 Days To Vote

2008-11-06T06:53:00.000-08:00

Armchair Quarterbacks -

The demographic of victory tells half the story - I could write it, but Carville says it here in his opinion piece:

"Exit polling indicates that Obama won two-thirds of those voting under 30 years old against 32 per cent for John McCain. Compare that with a 54-45 margin for John Kerry in 2004 and a 48-46 margin for Al Gore in 2000.

Consider this: if young people had voted for Democrats at about the same proportion of the overall electorate (52-46) as they had voted as recently as 2000 for Gore and for many cycles prior, Obama would not have won North Carolina or Indiana. Young voters also provided the margin of victory in key battleground states such as Florida, Virginia and Ohio. The youth vote expanded the map for Obama; it put him over the top in states not won by Democrats in decades.

Additionally, exit polling indicates young voters increased their share of the electorate to 18 per cent, which is no small feat. These numbers will be studied for years to come. But already it is clear that the importance of the margin by which Mr Obama and Democrats up and down the ballot won 18-29 year olds must not be understated..."

Carvillel's statements are fact - I add just this into the mix - not only is the result of this election one of the most historic because of who we elected and because of who voted, but how we were able to vote.

The mantra has been for the last election cycles, "...the younger vote is really behind, Gore, Kerry, ...but they never show up on election day." It seemed that the younger vote's passion for one candidate or another did not out weigh class time, movies, sleep or beer.

Not anymore.

When the dust settles, I am sure it will reveal not only a heavy preponderance of young voters casting for President elect, but that they took advantage of an "election week" - not day.

More state voters cast ballots before Election Day than on Election Day

Michael Crichton Dies of Cancer

2008-11-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (AP) - The family of Michael Crichton, the million-selling author of such historic and prehistoric science fantasies as "Jurassic Park," "Timeline" and "The Andromeda Strain," says the author has died in Los Angeles.

Crichton died Tuesday at age 66. He had been privately battling cancer, his family said.

"Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand," his family said in a statement.

Bush Congratulates Obama

2008-11-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

"No matter how they cast their votes, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made," Bush said.

"It will be a stirring sight to watch Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and their two beautiful daughters stop over the threshold of the White House," he said.

The president acknowledged "we are embarking on a period of change in Washington," and promised his "complete cooperation" in the transition over the next two months.

President Barack Huesien Obama

2008-11-04T23:47:00.000-08:00

Only in America

Today, The United States of America, jolted the world by electing Barack Obama - in stellar fashion.

Obama secured a popular mandate for Change. Within a country that is often accused, by its own citizens, as being routinely racist.

--- No More ---

No more Racism. When the son of a single mother, black father can take what little he has been given at birth, work his way around and through the system, get to Harvard and later become President, how can anyone say this country is racist? Who? How?

And in the midst of two wars with Radical Islamians, what country, what people have the savvy to look beyond a name/label(Hussein) and cast votes for a young, unproven Senator from a "fly over state"?

Americans, that's who.

This is a great big "poke in the eye" to the rest of the world - Just when you think you've got us figured, and you think we are down, we go and pull something as unconventional as this - "unconventional" to the others around the globe, but not here.

Every American should be proud - this country, although deeply divided in opinion, broke another seal and removed another taboo.

This is America, we are Americans, and we don't run from history, we make it.

Barack Obama's Kenyan family to celebrate by slaughtering bulls, chicken and goats

2008-11-04T13:43:00.000-08:00

Times reporter attends the Obama family victory feast in the village of Kogelo, Kenya, and brings along a live goat

There's only one thing to take to a Kenyan election victory feast: a goat. Preferably still breathing - “a sign of freshness“ - and with big testicles, apparently the sign of quality breeding.

"Congrats O" Messages Roll In From All over the Globe

Those Bush Years Really Sucked! - er...well..maybe not...

2008-11-03T21:00:00.000-08:00

Change is in The Wind...

Rafi - October 3, 2008 -

The Last 8 Years …. Hmmm let’s see

1. We’ve had 50+ months of unbelievable economic growth until the sub prime loan crisis.
(Sub prime Loan Crisis = Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and their kind forcing banks to give loans to people that wouldn’t qualify for a Block Buster Card.)

2. We took over Afghanistan and Iraq faster then the Clinton Administration took over the Branch Dividians in Waco.

Further more, were kicking their asses and killing Taliban Islamic Terrorists by the Thousands… and this is why my liberal friends, since September 11th (if you’re a lefty, I know history starts when you wake up in the morning so just Google “911”) you’ve been able to sit down at your little Starbucks coffee shop and bitch about “W” with out a worry or a thought of a Terrorist walking in and blowing up your Half Decaf Pumpkin Flavored Latte ….and I’m sure the conversation goes something like “War is Not the Answer”, “Blood for Oil” and of course my favorite “Bush Lied People Died”.

3. Bush also nominated 2 solid strict constructionist Judges in our courts, Alito and Roberts… and if bush only did that in the last 8 years I would say he did a great job. Oh, I’m sorry I was talking about the Supreme Court it’s 9 guys and girls that make big decisions in this Country…yes you can Google that also.

4. Our gun rights are still intact and for those who don’t know what I’m talking about Google the 2nd Amendment (hint.. it’s a part of the US Constitution, Hint #2 US = United States of America)

5. My favorite is the Patriot Act. I’m sure another favorite Starbuck Topic.

Conversation: “can you believe W is tapping cell phones of people that call Afghanistan and Iran and Syria… He’s listening in to our phone calls and invading our privacy”

And when you ask these “Stellar Students of Starbucks”, wearing a Che Guevara shirt, a simple question like “Has your phone ever been taped by the Bush Administration?” well…. Not me, but other peoples Phones have, and they’ve been arrested and water boarded.

Question #2 “Do you know someone close to you whose phone has been tapped and that person arrested and tortured and beaten and thrown in a cage in a secret mountain side next to the barrels of oil that “W” has been stealing from the middle east Via the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines?”

Answer: Well I don’t know of anybody personally but John Stuart said it and I saw the fat guy 911 movie that my college professor made me watch 18 times.

6. We have not been attacked since 2001 although there have been over 30 attempts have all have failed.

Is it possible that wire tapping helped?

Is it possible that we’re killing more Arab terrorist then Doritos can make Chips?

Is it possible that people like Momar Quadaffi said he wants nothing to do with chemical and or nukes when he saw his buddy Saddam get pulled out of a little spider hole in the ground looking like a half ape?

7. George W Bush is despised by the European Left.

I think that is one of his strongest points a definite positive. If a leader of the United States or soon to be leader goes to, Oh Lets say Germany and gives a speech and has 200,000 people cheering him on. I know I’m not Voting for that guy.

Example: Obama goes to Germany and states he is a citizen of the world and 200,000 people cheer. I conclude this man is not good for America. George Bush goes to Germany for a G7 meeting and no speech and he has 400,000 people wanting to kill him.

I conclude I vote for this guy.

Finally, I’ve been amazed but not surprised at the comments spewed from the Messiah about how atrocious it’s been the last eight years. But what is surprising is my friends regurgitating the same thing when were at a get together at there homes or driving to a bar to get a drink.

Let me define “Home and Car” that would be a $1.2 million home…. And BEHIND Garage number 1 …..A NEW Porsche 911 Convertible.

So the conversation goes something like this:

Them – “Oh my god, so good to see you…”

Me – “I’ve been calling you for over 2 weeks and can’t get a hold of you…”

Them – “We’ve been in Greece…. It was amazing…”

Me – “Oh, Nice….. Hey whose Porsche is that in you driveway…”

Them – “…that mine I just bought it right after the 2,000 square foot room addition…”

Me – “Oh very nice…”

Them – “Well were just glad to back just in time to vote, Oh god I hope Obama wins cause we can’t handle 8 more years of this…”

AMAZING

The Next 8 years ….. Hmmmm Lets See

Rafi

"Congrats O" Messages Roll In From All over the Globe

2008-11-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

Cuba - "Congratulations Comrade! Viva le Revolution!"

North Korea - "Congratulations Comrade! I'm so woan-ree,...or am I dead...I DON'T KNOW!"

China - "Congratulations Comrade! We shall send you 150 Metric tons of rice, baby food, and plastic children toys!"

Russia - "Congratulations Comrade! Da...tavarich...we are watching you..."

Kenya - "Happy Day! Tonight we celebrate by sacrificing our Bull! We were so happy to see Auntie Zeituni is coming home. See you at the next family reunion!"

Venezuela - "Welcome Comrade! We look forward to accepting your new ambassador, Mr. Ayers shortly."

Iran - "May God grant you a long and joyous life! Thank you for assisting in supplying our brothers with many rockets."

Hamas - "May God grant you a long and joyous life! Together, we shall rid the world of the Zionists!"

Hezbollah - "May God grant you a long and joyous life! Together, we shall rid the world of the Zionists!"

Taliban - "May God grant you a long and joyous life! ...the enemy of my enemy is my friend...and you are my friend"

Al Qaeda, Osama - "May God grant you a long and joyous life! At last! I can move out of this rotten cave."

Get Ready For the Draft

2008-11-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

With a disdain for the military, The One, The Mesaih, Dear Leader,Most Merciful, will be tested.

Military folks who can, will get the heck outta Dodge and not re-op; hence, the need for all "real citizens" to come to the aid of The One and pledge their lives in blood.

Not for oil.

Not for Freedom.

Not for Liberty.

Not for the American Way...

Not even for the Country...

Nope

Get in line and lay down your lives for The One.

"For it's 2,3,4...whatta fighten for?..."

Democrats Over Confident? No Says Susan Estrich

2008-11-02T23:38:00.000-08:00

Wow - even with the polls in their favor -

From her .com :

"Are Democrats in danger of being too confident? The short answer is no.

It's no because we've lost too many times when we were supposed to win. It's no because it's easier to convince people to go to a wedding than a funeral, to show up at a party instead of a wake. The California Democrats I've talked to, even the tired and cynical ones, are heading off to Colorado and Nevada and New Mexico, leaving nothing to chance, eager to be part of celebrations across the country..."

I find this statement incredibly pompous.

What do you mean, "when we were supposed to win..."?

How dare you. How dare you lose in such a poor sportsman like manner.

So now what, you are entitled to the Presidency? It's your turn?

She goes on,

"...The only way all these polls could be that far off is if people are lying in numbers never before seen in American politics.

Why would they do that?

You tell me it has nothing to do with race. I'll laugh. What else could it possibly be?"

This has got to be the biggest "hedge" in history - that if The One doesn't win, it's because of Race and Americans were lying to pollsters.

A Springsteen in every iPod!

2008-11-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

[Mark Steyn] Here.

Poverty redefined. Barack Obama speaking in Cleveland today:

"If you got a little money in your pocket, that means . . .
you can get on iTunes and get the latest Bruce Springsteen tune."

It's a start, but wouldn't it be fairer to nationalize Bruce Springsteen? And get him to make house calls. Or, if not him personally, then maybe thousands of HHS bureaucrats could be trained up to stand on your doorstep and perform Bruce's arrangement of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town".

So let me see if I follow the latest version of spreading the wealth: Joe the Plumber gets taxed to give money to people who don't pay federal taxes so they can get on iTunes and pay royalties to Bruce Springsteen so he'll have more time and money to donate to getting Obama re-elected to tax Joe the Plumber even more...

Earthquakes or Nukes in Iran...?

2008-11-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

(IsraelNN.com) A weekend 5.0 Richter earthquake in Iran was actually a nuclear bomb test, says an Iranian nuclear scientist claiming to be working on the project.

The report is an Israel Insider exclusive.

This past Saturday night, southern Iran experienced what was reported as a significant earthquake - a seismic event measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was just north of the strategic Straits of Hormuz, which separates Iran from Abu Dhabi and Oman and which is the gateway to the Persian Gulf. ---

We need proof.

For Hizballah...

2008-11-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

Of course they want missiles from Russia...

A Hizballah mission, which arrived in Moscow Tuesday, Oct. 28, was taken around Russian state of the art anti-tank missile factories, including KBP in the town of Tula southwest of Moscow, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources report. The Lebanese visitors were treated to a live fire demonstration of various types of missile. They then ordered 3,000 missiles of different types and returned home Saturday, Nov. 1.

Tehran is footing the bill.

Sources disclose that the hardware inspected by the Hizballah officers included 9M133 (Nato-coded Spriggan AT-14) which can be launched by helicopter and Kliver, which is an upgraded Kornet-E mounted on vehicles. The Lebanese Shiite terrorist shoppers also placed a large order for RPG-2 rocket-propelled grenades made by Bazalt. In the 2006 Lebanon war, the older RPG-29 used by Hizballah was responsible for most of the hits suffered by Israeli tanks.

Last month, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert traveled to Moscow to ask Russian leaders to refrain from selling arms to Syria and Iran, countries at war with Israel. Moscow only promised to reconsider weapons sales capable of upsetting the balance of strength in “sensitive regions” and then went right ahead to sign big arms deals with Damascus and Tehran – and now Hizballah.

Sunday, Nov. 2, defense minister Ehud Barak warned Syria that arming Hizballah with new anti-air weapons would force Israel to “consider its position.”

Several weeks ago, DEBKAfile reported that Syria had supplied the Shiite group with anti-air missiles supported by radar stations. They are already deployed on two Lebanese peaks, Mt. Sannine and Jebel Barukh, which Hizballah controls.

And Now, It's the Coal Industry

2008-11-02T20:20:00.001-08:00

"If somebody wants to build a coal power plant they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted," Barack Obama said to the San Francisco Chronicle in January.

Click to email me.

"We have a righteous wind at our back," the Democrat said Saturday.

2008-11-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Sturmabteilung!

Civilian National Security Force(Sturmabteilung) - "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded...

Ok Ok ok, where have I heard of this before?

Oh, I remember on Wikipedia.

"The Sturmabteilung (help·info), abbreviated SA, (German for "Assault detachment" or "Assault section", usually translated as "stormtroop(er)s"), functioned as a paramilitary organization of the NSDAP – the German Nazi party. This civilian national security force played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s..."

Well, at least Obama and The Minions are students of history. After all, the civilian national security force has been implemented and perfected by the following in history:

Abdullah of Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia 2005-present
Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah -- Kuwait 2006–present
Idi Amin -- Uganda 1971 - 1979
Hafez al-Assad -- Syria 1970 - 2000
Bashar Assad -- Syria 2000-present
Fulgencio Batista -- Cuba 1952 - 1959
Jean-Bédel Bokassa -- Central African Republic 1966 - 1979
Omar Bongo -- Gabon 1967-present
Leonid Brezhnev -- USSR 1968-1982
Nicolae Ceausescu -- Romania 1967 - 1989
Blaise Compaoré-- Burkina Faso 1987-present
Chiang Kai-shek -- China, Taiwan
Porfirio Diaz -- Mexico 1876 - 1911
Engelbert Dollfuss -- Austria 1933-34
François Duvalier -- "Papa Doc" - Haiti
Jean Claude Duvalier -- "Baby Doc" - Haiti
Francisco Franco Bahamonde -- Spain 1939 - 1975
Alberto Fujimori -- Peru 1990 - 2000
Klement Gottwald -- Czechoslovakia 1948 - 1953
Adolf Hitler -- Germany 1933 - 1945
Enver Hoxha -- Albania 1944-1985
Erich Honecker -- German Democratic Republic 1971 - 1989
Hu Jintao -- Peoples Republic of China 2002-present
Saddam Hussein -- Iraq 1979 - 2003
Kim Il-Sung -- North Korea 1948 - 1994
Wojciech Jaruzelski -- Poland 1981-1989
Kim Jong Il -- North Korea 1994 -
Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifah -- Bahrain 1999–present
Islom Karimov - Uzbekistan 1991-present
Ayatollah Khomeini -- Iran 1979 - 1989
Alexander Lukashenko -- Belarus 1994-present
Mao Zedong -- China 1949 - 1976
Ferdinand Marcos -- Philippines 1972 - 1986
Mengistu Haile Mariam -- Ethiopia 1977 - 1991
Ioannis Metaxas -- Greece 1936-1941
Hosni Mubarak -- Egypt 1981-present
Robert Mugabe -- Zimbabwe 1980-present
Pervez Musharraf -- Pakistan 1998-2008
Benito Mussolini -- Italy 1922 - 1943
Miklos Horthy de Nagybánya -- Hungary 1920-1944
Francisco Macías Nguema -- Equatorial Guinea 1968 - 1979
Teodoro Obiang Nguema -- Equatorial Guinea 1979-present
Denis Sassou Nguesso -- Republic of the Congo 1979-present
Manuel Noriega -- Panama 1983 - 1989
Juan Carlos Onganía -- Argentina 1966 - 1973
Henri Philippe Pétain -- France 1940 - 1944
Simon Petlyura -- Ukraine
Józef Pilsudski -- Poland 1926 - 1935
Augusto Pinochet -- Chile 1973 - 1990
Pol Pot -- Cambodia 1975 - 1978
Miguel Primo de Rivera -- Spain 1923 - 1930
Efraín Ríos Montt -- Guatemala 1982 - 1983
Gustavo Rojas Pinilla -- Colombia 1953 - 1957
Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi -- Libya 1969 -
Vidkun Quisling -- Norway 1940 - 1945
António de Oliveira Salazar -- Portugal 1932 - 1968
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna -- Mexico
Mobutu Sese Seko -- Zaire 1967 - 1997
Anastasio Somoza Debayle -- Nicaragua
Anastasio Somoza García -- Nicaragua
Luis Somoza Debayle -- Nicaragua
Joseph Stalin -- USSR 1924 - 1953
Alfredo Stroessner -- Paraguay 1954 - 1989
Suharto -- Indonesia 1968 - 1998
Sukarno -- Indonesia 1949 - 1968
Than Shwe -- Myanmar 1992-present
Jozef Tiso -- Slovakia 1939 - 1944
Josip Broz Tito -- Yugoslavia 1945-1980
Rafael Trujillo (Rafael Leonidas Trujillo y Molina)-- Dominican Republic
Todor Zhivkov -- Bulgaria 1954-1989
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom -- Republic of Maldives 1978-present
Ali Khamenei -- Iran 1989-present
General Zia-ul-Haq -- Pakistan 1976 - 1988

"Terror must be broken by terror"

What next? Civilian Interment Camps?

From Each According to His Ability, to Each According to his need

2008-10-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

Marx - The Big Re-Distributor...

From the original "Critique of the Gotha Program" by Marx:

"...In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs..."

The Obama Minions Chant, "Yes We Can..."

2008-10-27T04:27:00.000-07:00

Who else uses the same verse...?

Just about 500,000 illegal immigrants, back in May of 2006 - that's who.

"...Waves of supporters marched through the streets in support of immigrants’ rights, chanting “Sí se puede,” which is Spanish for “Yes we can!..."

Marching through the streets that "Have no Name" - carrying my flag upside down, demanding more rights from my government, thumbing their nose at American authority, ingenuity and The Constitution - just because of some myth - Aztlán.

And what did this batch of minions contribute to my country?

50 Million bad mortgages...
46% of the California prison population...the American Dream for some, living in prison as a gang member...
Dozens of Emergency Rooms closed...
Public Schools teaching English as a Second Language...and carrying a 69.4% graduation rate...

Wow - get ready for more...

The Last American President

2008-10-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Regan, and Barack Hussein Obama

- The One, Dear Leader, The Messiah, The Most Merciful -

I don't blame Obama for running a most effective campaign. For speaking eloquently and pacing his audiences. For reaching out to the younger, more "hip" demographic through Google Ads and slick internet sites.

I don't blame his speech writers and handlers for providing the correct words and multiple teleprompters.

I don't even blame the "media" for putting their feelings and beliefs out there and making the story about them instead of The One.

I blame the Minions.

I blame the victims of public education.

I blame the kids who get their news from Comedy Central, MTV, and comedians turned social/political "experts".

"If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education."
Thomas Jefferson

I blame the "adults" who look to everyone else for answers instead of the person in the mirror. Who look for others to blame and others to "enable" them to continue failing.

Ultimately, unfortunately, sadly, I blame us.

We have seen the enemy and they are us.

- We get the government we deserve.

ObamaNation - Get Ready...

2008-10-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

Bury the bus, stock up on the ammo, before the Obama, 10,000% tax on bullets hits and stop paying your mortgage...

Unless you are make less than $45,000.00 a year.

On the other hand, if you make over 45k, if you do NOT belong to a union, pay your taxes, read your mortgage papers BEFORE you signed it, and pay your credit cards - look out; the dems want to "spread" YOUR wealth.

Also, if you are in the military - get ready to come home, and be treated like crap. Get ready for "boondoggle" projects and blue helmets.

If you speak languages other then American English, the reduction in military assets will be off-set by the increase in the diplomatic corp - you can probably get a position translating. Start practicing phrases like, "We are sorry..."

The Perfect Storm -

If you remember the seventies, when Carter was elected - lines at the gas stations, 18% interest rates, crippled military, hostages, all as the country crawled out of a scandalous period in our history - the silver lining appeared in 1980 with Ronald Regan.

Today, economy, energy, and world financial markets are shuddering and taking front page - but the last shoe to drop is a military action of some sort.

When the US is perceived as "being down" or being governed by "weak and inexperienced" administration, the rats shall try to make a move.

And now with Biden saying that "The One" will face a major international incident in his first six months, I am not the only person seeing this possibility.

-"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."-
Joe Biden, October 20, 2008

Yoah!!!!

Wait a minute - if ANYONE used this logic before we went into Iraq, they would have laughed them out into the street!

Incredible.

The One in the White House, Pelosi in the House and Reid in the Senate - they aren't going after the Rich, they are going after those who achieve.

Nobody Said "Kill Him"

2008-10-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

While some in the media reported it, the Secret Service says it is "unfounded"

By Andrew M. Seder aseder@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

SCRANTON – The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Obama’s name a man in the audience shouted “kill him."

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

“I was baffled,” he said after reading the report in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.

He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than Singleton.

Slavoski said more than 20 non-security agents were interviewed Wednesday, from news media to ordinary citizens in attendance at the rally for the Republican vice presidential candidate held at the Riverfront Sports Complex. He said Singleton was the only one to say he heard someone yell “kill him.”

“We have yet to find someone to back up the story,” Slavoski said. “We had people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it.”

Hackett said he did not hear the remark.

Slavoski said Singleton was interviewed Wednesday and stood by his story but couldn’t give a description of the man because he didn’t see him he only heard him.

When contacted Wednesday afternoon, Singleton referred questions to Times-Tribune Metro Editor Jeff Sonderman. Sonderman said, “We stand by the story. The facts reported are true and that’s really all there is.”

Slavoski said the agents take such threats or comments seriously and immediately opened an investigation but after due diligence “as far as we’re concerned it’s closed unless someone comes forward.” He urged anyone with knowledge of the alleged incident to call him at 346-5781. “We’ll run at all leads,” he said.

"Joe The Plumber" - Will Who He Represents Matter?

2008-10-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

Joe Wurzelbacher, or Joe The Plumber, is like a great deal of us and his concerns about O's tax plan are valid, but will his argument sway people to vote one way or another?

With the Obama tax plan, individuals making more than $200,000 per year, or couples making more than $250,000 per year, would pay higher taxes on income, capital gains, and dividends.

Starting ten years from now, Obama supports an additional 2-4 percent tax on individual income above $250,000 per year to help shore up the Social Security system.

During his discussion with "The One", Joe The Plumber mentioned a Flat Tax - Obama dismissed the idea.

The problem O has with his tax plan is that most tax payers are not just fed up with paying more, we all know taxes can't be avoided, it's just that today US citizens are not happy with the Return On Investment on our tax dollar.

We are not getting what we are paying for, and we are pissed.
We see illegals filling up our emergency rooms and closing hospitals one after another.
We see a top heavy education system breaking down, pushing 8th grade educated high school grads into the fray.
We see our elected officials argue about mylar balloons while the budget gets left in the dust.
We see billions of dollars going to bail out idiots who didn't read their mortgage paperwork.
We see those same billions of our tax dollars injected into a corrupt system by those who created it in the first place.

So when we hear "increase" anything, our antennae sprout.

"I don't like it," said Wurzelbacher. "You know, me or -- you know, Bill Gates, I don't care who you are. If you worked for it, if it was your idea, and you implemented it, it's not right for someone to decide you made too much."

Biden takes a swipe at Joe The Plumber? I mean, come on...

OK - Now Who in the World is CODE PINK?

2008-10-15T09:28:00.001-07:00

This Is Not the Red Hat Club, and is That Woman Actually Smiling?

That's Hugo with some very american, Americans - and co-founder of CODE PINK - no worries here.

And here is Jodie utilizing her 1st amendment rights, at the RNC. Funny, I don't remember seeing any outbursts like this at the DNC.

But an interview now shown on You Tube explains how they were able to get in the convention.

Well, let's start with the leadership of Code Pink - Jodie Evans. She is what is referred to as a "bundler" - A bundler is a person that helps collect money for a specific campaign and according to Barack Obama's website, Evans is listed as one of Obama's bundlers.

Code Pink is an anti-War group who apparently has no qualms presenting insulting, tasteless banners as long as the shock value gets the attention. A classic "in your face" organization. They believe that the war is bad(duh!) and that the US deserves what it gets.

Off of their web site:

CODEPINK emerged out of a desperate desire by a group of American women to stop the Bush administration from invading Iraq. The name CODEPINK plays on the Bush Administration's color-coded homeland security alerts — yellow, orange, red — that signal terrorist threats. While Bush's color-coded alerts are based on fear and are used to justify violence, the CODEPINK alert is a feisty call for women and men to "wage peace."

Feisty - xlint. More -

CODEPINK rejects the Bush administration's fear-based politics that justify violence, and instead calls for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law. With an emphasis on joy and humor, CODEPINK women and men seek to activate, amplify and inspire a community of peacemakers through creative campaigns and a commitment to non-violence.

Code Pink meets with some of the "axis", Hugo and that guy from Iran.

The U.S. finally meets with Ahmadinejad -

That's him, on the right, with the headphones on.

Iran? Peace? Really?

Thank goodness for the gals from C-P!

Micky Mouse - Is Registered to Vote in FLA

2008-10-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

This is a voter registration card for Mickey Mouse, recruited by ACORN - does anyone see a problem with this?

Orange County elections officials rejected his application, which was stamped with the logo of the nonprofit group ACORN.

Obama Tells About His Tax Plan

2008-10-14T00:15:00.000-07:00

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too." - Obama Patriotism

Here.

Howard Stern - "Why Obama ? - in Harlem"

Really, you must listen to this, they use McCain's issues and tell them its what Obama believes...funny...

Happy Columbus Day

2008-10-13T13:40:00.001-07:00

Columbus Day was once a day of pride for America, a time for schoolchildren to honor a great explorer, and a reason for another really big parade.

Today, the day is celebrated less than Cinco Di Mayo...

Replace capitalism with Islamic financial system: cleric

2008-10-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

Muslims should take advantage of the global financial crisis to build an economic system compatible with Islamic principles, influential Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said on Sunday.

.

Read the article here.

This is the dirty secret regarding our and the world's current financial challenges: Economic weakness of your enemy is your friend.

With the perception of our military "stretched" all over the world, and our financial house in "ruin", the near future may look very opportune in terms of military action against the United States by our enemies.

This isn't a Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn novel, the events are real - more from the cleric:

"The Western system has collapsed and we have a complete economic philosophy as well as spiritual strength," he said at Sunday's opening of a conference on Jerusalem.

"All riches are ours... the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil and we have an economic philosophy that no one else has," Qaradawi said.

He urged Muslims to "profit from the crisis to bring about the triumph of the (Islamic) nation, which holds the spiritual and material resources for victory."

Keep an eye on this issue -

Who in The World is ACORN?

2008-10-11T12:01:00.001-07:00

Off of their site:

Who is ACORN?

ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country. Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter participation. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful players in our democratic system.

Community organizing: Each of the 1,200 local ACORN neighborhood chapters in 110 cities and 40 states brings neighbors together to work for stronger, safer and more just communities.

Issue campaigns: Each ACORN office carries out multiple issue campaigns. ACORN members across the country work to raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminate predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies; win the development of affordable housing and community benefits agreements; improve the quality of and funding for urban public schools; rebuild New Orleans; and pass a federal and state ACORN Working Families Agenda, including paid sick leave for all full time workers.

A recent study shows that our issue campaign victories have delivered approximately $15 billion in direct monetary benefits to our membership and constituency over the past 10 years.

Service delivery: ACORN and its allied organizations provide extensive services to our members and constituency. These include free tax preparation focusing on the Earned Income Tax Credit; screening for eligibility for federal and state benefit programs; and, through the ACORN Housing Corporation, first time homeowner mortgage counseling and foreclosure prevention assistance, and low income housing development.

Ballot initiatives: ACORN-backed ballot-initiative campaigns in 2006 helped raise the minimum wage in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Colorado, working with community-faith-labor coalitions on successful campaigns in each state.

Voter participation: Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote.

ACORN is a non-profit, non-partisan social justice organization with national headquarters in New York, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. To maintain independence, ACORN does not accept government funding and is not tax exempt.

-------
From the New York Post:

"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up.

I tell them I am already registered.

The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said.

-------
From Houston:

"All-in-all, a great person, a great woman, just a wonderful person" is how Alexis Guidry described her mother to Local 2 Investigates.

"As far back as I can remember, they've always voted in the election," Guidry said of her parents.

The March 2008 Primary was no exception. Voting records show Alexis' mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home.

"It was just very shocking, a little unsettling," said Alexis Guidry.

It's unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.

Texas Watchdog found 4,462 registered voters who appear to be deceased.

In 2000, George Bush won the presidential election by a mere 537 votes in Florida.

"We've never had any evidence there's a concerted attempt at fraud," Hammerlein told Local 2.

But there is evidence the state agency in charge of ensuring only eligible voters can vote is not.

The State Auditor's Office conducted an audit of the voter registration system at the Secretary of State's Office last November.

Auditors identified 49,049 registered voters state-wide who may have been ineligible to vote. Approximately 23,576 may have been deceased and another 23,114 were possible felons. And they found more than 2,359 duplicate records.

-------
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote.

"I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all."

"What intoxicating vanity"

2008-10-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

From the novel Jurassic Park, solely written by Michael Crichton.
-----------------
You Think Man Can Destroy the Planet?

"Let me tell you about our planet.

Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land.

Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval.

Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years.

Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety.

Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.

Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas.

Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing.

A million years is nothing.

This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye.

If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."

Here it read by Chuck Heston:

">here.

Click to email me.

N.O.W. Gals Rejoice ! You May NEVER Need a Man

2008-10-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

"Virgin shark got pregnant in Virginia aquarium."

Like something out of Jurassic Park, Parthenogenesis, is observed for the second time in sharks.

A female Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit produced a baby without a male. The shark had lived in an aquarium for eight, lonely years.

During a routine veterinarian exam, she died.

Autopsy revealed Tidbit was carrying a shark pup ready to be born.

"Demian Chapman, a shark scientist with the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University in New York state, performed DNA testing that showed the pup had no father. Virgin birth such as this is known as parthenogenesis."

Wow!

"It's a finding that kind of rewrites the textbooks a little," Chapman said -

Do you think? Just a little? Crazy stuff.

Anger Is Crowd's Overarching Emotion at McCain Rally

2008-10-11T08:02:00.001-07:00

And some reporter wants to have Palin "censored".

It's getting pretty bad when journalists are calling for someone, anyone to be censored, and yet that is exactly what one has done...check it out:

Sarah Palin should be censured By

Mary Mitchell

on October 7, 2008 2:29 PM

"During a campaign rally yesterday in Clearwater, Florida supporters turned on the media after Palin again blamed mainstream media for her shortcomings.

According to a published report in the Washington Post, Palin reporters turned on the press after she blamed the media for her inarticulate interviews. Some supporters used racial slurs, and at one point someone in the audience yelled: "Kill him."

It's just a post on her blog, wildfires are started with a single spark.

This from Dana Milbank, Washington Post:

"...Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

From Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr, Washington Post:

"I'm mad! I'm really mad!" another man said, taking the microphone and refusing to surrender it easily, even when McCain tried to agree with him.

"I'm not done. Lemme finish, please," he said after a standing ovation. "When you have Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run the country, we have to have our head examined.

"It's time that you two represent the rest of us. So go get 'em."

The crowd burst into loud chants of "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

So now...these words mean something...but others, of the media's choosing, do not?

----

The Liberal Intelligentsia (интеллигенция) and the liberal media (nearly redundant) don't like their ideas challenged, their bias and seedy friends exposed. And they don't like to be talked to or even yelled at by "commoners" - how dare we who cling!

It's because they know that Sarah is not "inciting" violence, she is providing a channel for decades of American frustration. To them, the first amendment only applies to folks with similar or harmless ideas? Is that it?

And citizens are not free to peaceably assemble and express views, eh? The freedom of the press out weighs the freedom of speech?

The "Sleeping Giant" is the American people - always has been.

The deep fear regarding this public backlash isn't what is being said, it's that it is being said at all.

Today, We the People are suppose to shut up, let Obama and his minions tells us what is right for us. We are suspect if we question the authority of Al Gore and his mammoth, inconvenient lies. We are to pay homage to those who "solve" the gargantuan problems, that they, themselves created.

Fortunately, our forefathers saw this possibility and wrote the Second Amendment for just such an occurrence, not so we could hunt for our dinner.

So if Obama walks from the capital to the White House, naked, those who point this out, will be shot, right?

ACORN - Back in Time, 2006

2008-10-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

Why is all this such a shock?

The Wall Street Journal was on this a while back:

"Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an "affordable housing trust fund" designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.

Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier."

"You have to wonder what's the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls," says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. "These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system."

Alleging fraud, authorities raid voter group

2008-10-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

"Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys,..."

ACORN's canvassers filled out forms with fake names, addresses, officials say

By ADRIENNE PACKER and MOLLY BALL
REVIEW-JOURNAL

State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities.

The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November's general election.

"Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys," Secretary of State Ross Miller said. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot."

Agents with the secretary of state and state attorney general offices served a search warrant on the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, at 953 E. Sahara Ave. shortly after 9 a.m. They seized voter registration forms and computer databases to determine how many fake forms were submitted and identify employees who were responsible.

They also sought information regarding current and past employees and managers.

"We don't know how many (falsified forms) are here; there may be two, or there may be thousands," said Bob Walsh, spokesman for the secretary of state's office.

Registration fraud typically stems from workers striving to meet their daily quota of submitted voter forms, Miller said.

Most organizations require their workers to sign up 20 voters a day. Fraudulent forms start filtering in when workers struggle to meet their quota and either fill in bogus names or accept documents with names that are clearly falsified, Miller said.

In a statement released by ACORN on Tuesday, Interim Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis said the group based in Clark County routinely flagged suspect applications and notified the Clark County Election Department. The group provided state and county officials with the names of individuals who submitted the falsified registration forms.

"Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act," Lewis said. "ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously."

In late July, election officials requested copies of the same documents that previously had been handed over by ACORN, Lewis said. In September, ACORN received a subpoena requesting information on 15 employees, whose names already had been turned in to election officials by the organization.

"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls," Lewis said.

Miller said that is not the case. He said the state's investigation began before ACORN submitted the forms referred to in Lewis' statement. In early July, investigators began looking through ACORN's registration forms. One canvasser turned in 17 applications; only four addresses existed, the investigators alleged.

According to an affidavit filed by the secretary of state, the canvasser was interviewed and told investigators that meeting the daily quota was difficult because it was hot outside and potential voters rejected her invitation to register.

Other canvassers hired by ACORN were residents at the Casa Grande Transitional Housing Facility, a Nevada Department of Corrections institution that offers convicted felons an opportunity to take part in work-release programs.

"It raises significant concerns that they hired prison inmates, some of whom have been convicted of identity theft," Miller said.

ACORN's field director in Nevada and the head of its voter registration effort, known as Project Vote, said the agency is cooperating fully with the investigation.

"We're proud of what we did here," Chris Edwards said. "We've got nothing to hide."

Tuesday morning's raid came on a day when ACORN had been planning a news conference and potluck lunch to celebrate the culmination of its voter registration drive, which the group said resulted in 90,000 new registrants since February, and to launch a get-out-the-vote push for the election.

The event went ahead around noon, starting with a pep talk of the group's staffers and volunteers, who stood to testify to the mission of the enterprise and who said they would remain undaunted.

"This is a great organization," Bonnie Smith-Greathouse, head organizer for Nevada ACORN, told a group of about 15 gathered in front of the organization's office. "We've done great things in the community, and we're going to do even greater things in the future."

Smith-Greathouse suggested that powerful interests were trying to squelch the voices of the poor that ACORN is trying to empower.

"Project Vote has been attacked all over the country because we registered at least 1.2 million voters," she said. "That could sway an election. You should be very proud. Something so significant in history has never happened in Nevada before."

Edwards stressed the mission of empowering those on society's lower rungs. "We don't go to Trader Joe's to register voters," he said. "We don't go to Macy's or Whole Foods. We sign people up to vote at welfare offices. We sign people up at post offices in poor neighborhoods."

ACORN's voter registration drive has consisted of recruiting people from off the street, many of them down-and-outers desperate for work, with the promise of $8 an hour for often grueling work. The canvassers were required to be on their feet, flagging down potential registrants, often in the 100-plus-degree heat of the Las Vegas summer.

Although they were not paid a set fee per registration form collected, which is illegal, they had to meet certain quotas of registrations each day, which is legal.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax, who has been speaking out about the fraudulent submissions and passing them along to the secretary of state's office for months, said under those circumstances, there was an obvious temptation for workers to duck into an air-conditioned library, for example, and start copying out of the phone book or off a sports roster.

"Anybody who decides they're going to pay people to go out and register voters is basically opening themselves up to that," he said. Lomax said he did not think there was a systematic attempt to submit phony forms.

Once turned in, the voter registration forms are subject to a verification process by Lomax's office.

People whose forms listed phony or business addresses would have been sent a letter advising them they would be voided if they didn't respond within 15 days. People who didn't list a driver's license or Social Security number that matched their name and address would be flagged on the voter rolls and required to bring photo identification to the polls to be allowed to vote.

Because of the safeguards, Lomax said he was confident no one will vote who shouldn't be allowed. "People don't need to fear for the integrity of this election," he said.

ACORN said it had a quality-control operation of its own in place to check registration forms before they were turned in. Joe Camp, who was in charge of the effort, said he would call the phone number the registrant had listed and ask whether the information on the form was correct.

"To my standards, to ACORN's standards, everything that was turned in to the Board of Elections was legitimate," said Camp, a 28-year-old Las Vegan who said he previously worked as a real-estate appraiser.

Lomax said he has seen some evidence of quality control on ACORN's part this year. The registration forms legally cannot be discarded or destroyed, and some would be turned in with a note saying that they appeared to be fraudulent and that the canvasser had been fired, but that was "by no means the majority" of the suspect forms, Lomax said.

ACORN is a nonpartisan organization, but it is affiliated with a political action committee that has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election. The Nevada authorities spearheading the investigation, Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, are both Democrats.

Obama's work as a community organizer in Chicago in the early 1990s was with Project Vote, but his campaign said it was not affiliated with ACORN at the time. Obama also was part of a team of lawyers representing ACORN in 1995 in a lawsuit that accused the state of Illinois of putting up barriers to poor people trying to register.

A spokeswoman for Obama's campaign would not comment on his past ties to the group but said the work ACORN is now engaged in is separate from the campaign.

"The Obama campaign is not affiliated with nor do we work with ACORN," Kirsten Searer said. "We have our own, separate voter registration campaign."

Republicans seized on the news of Tuesday's raid. The Clark County Republican Party issued a statement condemning voter fraud and calling for full prosecution of anyone responsible.

ACORN's other major activity is housing aid, for which it is eligible for federal grants from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under newly enacted affordable-housing provisions.

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, on Tuesday called for the suspension of the affordable housing funds because they might be going to "controversial groups like ACORN."

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, also a Republican, said the ACORN problem was evidence Nevada needs a law requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert, R-Reno, has proposed such a bill to be considered by the 2009 Legislature.

In the interim, Miller urged residents who registered with third parties to check the Nevada secretary of state's Web site to reaffirm their voting status. The deadline to register for the November election is Oct. 14. New registrations must be submitted in person at the Clark County Government Center or the Clark County Election Department.

Contact reporter Adrienne Packer at apacker@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919

Citizen Huessein

2008-10-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

"A Picture is worth a thousand words..."

Can you whisper, "Rosebud..."?

Obama Gets Money From the World

2008-10-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

Don't people get it?

October 6, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has raised about $3.3 million from contributors who did not list a home state or who designated their state with an abbreviation that did not match one of the 50 states or U.S. territories, according to records provided by the Federal Election Commission.

Most of those contributors did identify themselves as living abroad in foreign cities. Under federal law, foreign citizens cannot make political contributions, but U.S. citizens living abroad can.

The Republican National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday asking for an investigation of Obama's foreign contributions, among other things.

How is this going on without any attention?

I swear it is because of the "dumbing down" in the education systems - spewing out adults who can't spell, read or explain how M1 is calculated...

Pass the feather, the violin and smell the smoke...

Sing and Dance for Obama -

2008-10-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

No more Music class in schools but teachers have time to organize and stage this And folks around the world hurl...shoes..

Military fraternal organizations - yes, they do brand you during pledge:

The Americans...

2008-10-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

From the 70's, our friends from Canada

Byron MacGregor - The Americans
Uploaded by DwightFrye

When I first searched for this clip - I remember hearing it on the radio all the time when growing up outside of Detroit - I was expecting to feel the same way I did as a kid.

With all the bad times around back then, remember - the Auto industry was Detroit, not Tokyo or Germany - and it was getting killed.

Scandal, falling dollar, military aggression, oil embargo, high interest rates all contributed to the overall malaise -

Watch this, and listen, what is sad - the America that he speaks of is gone. The circumstances are almost the same, but today, the character, attitude and fortitude of we Americans, are lacking.

Denny for President!

2008-09-15T13:11:00.001-07:00

OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

2008-09-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.

Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.

According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.

Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."

Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

Sharia law is now legally binding

2008-09-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

It’s been described by one commentator as an example of Great Britain ‘surrendering’ itself...

Monday, September 15, 2008

It’s been described by one commentator as an example of Great Britain ‘surrendering’ itself and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was criticised for saying it will happen, but whatever the reaction, Islamic law now officially operates in the UK.

Whereas before rulings by sharia courts in Britain could only be enforced if all parties in a Muslim civil case agreed to abide by them, now what the courts say will be legally binding, backed by county courts or the High Court.

The five sharia courts are Birmingham, Bradford, London and Manchester with others planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. They will be run by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal whose Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi said: "We realised that under the Arbitration Act [1996] we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals."

Muslim tribunal courts have been running since August 2007, hearing cases of divorce, domestic violence and much more. Jewish Beth Din courts have been in the UK for over 100 years.

However, Siddiqi admitted that the courts can favour men, with several cases of domestic violence ending with husbands receiving little punishment other than being made to take an anger management course. In every case, the women later withdrew their claims.

Tory shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve was amazed that sharia law had been made legally binding. "If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so."

And Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: "I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state."

What's Wrong With This Picture

2008-09-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

Goofball Libs are spewing this all over the web...

Some think this picture should be viewed as a "negative" - they don't get it.

First off, if this is Palin, many men will vote for her just because of this picture.

Second, this may not even be Palin.

Whatever, I don't see any cigars in the room...do you?

Agent of Change and Outside the System

2008-09-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

"Pontius Pilate was a governor."

On the House floor Wednesday, Cohen said, "Barack Obama was a 'community organizer' like Jesus." The congressman then added, "Pontius Pilate was a governor." See it here.

Susan Serandon and Donna Brazile have repeated the exact same line - there must be some sort of "community organized activation" going on at night that alerts all these folks to each day's talking points.

In the arena of public expression - statements like this can be expected - but on the floor of the House of Representative of the United States??

AmericaCanadaMexico

2008-09-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

Would you like E. Coli with that taco?

Mexico to U.S.: No more beef, poultry shipments
5th September 2008, 09:53 pm

Editor: Bruce Meng
5 Sep 2008 08:44:18 GMT

WASHINGTON – The government of Mexico has voluntarily suspended shipments of meat and processed poultry to the United States after U.S. officials raised concerns about the quality of Mexican food processing and inspections, an Agriculture Department official said Thursday.