RadioActive with Steve Mitton: April 2010

Friday, April 30, 2010

Poor Leadership in the 1970s handcuffed the CIA for decades to come

A man who once parachuted into Nazi-occupied France for Operation Jedburgh, former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer John K. Singlaub is eminently qualified to answer questions about the historical precedent of prosecuting intelligence officers during a time of war. If he or his men had been captured by the enemy, they would have been tortured and executed. Many of his friends suffered that fate. NOw a retired Army major general, Singlaub's career in intelligence began before the CIA or many of its officers were even born. Recently questioned about the idea of prosecuting agents during wartime, he paused and said, "If we prosecute anyone, we need to go after Jimmy Carter and his appointee to head (the) CIA, Adm. Stansfield Turner. (No one) has done us more harm. Turner gutted covert-action capabilities when he reduced the Directorate of Operations by a thousand experienced officers in 1977, and exposed the United States to crises which continue to haunt us 30 years later: Afghanistan and Iran."

It was a loaded question. I already knew there was no precedent for the steps Attorney General Eric Holder had taken in reopening in 2009 a criminal investigation of CIA operations. Eugene Poteat, the President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), himself a 30-year CIA man, had already set me straight. "Nope, there is no precedent," he explained. "Even the worst mistake in CIA history, the Bay of Pigs invasion under President Kennedy, had no criminal investigation. Men were fired, including my boss, but no one was tried as a criminal."

A “recovering progressive” friend on Twitter apologized to me recently for the offensive behavior of fellow leftists who called in and left hateful messages at the headquarters of the conservative group FreedomWorks in Washington, D.C.

My response to the embarrassed liberal? “I don’t believe in collective guilt.”

This man did not need to apologize to me. He had done nothing wrong. The responsibility for the reprehensible behavior is squarely on the shoulders of the base, unimaginative, hate-spewing individuals who left the messages. Were they representative of the left generally? Well, you don’t see a great hue and the cry in the press today, do you? Had this situation been reversed, on the other hand …

But that’s not the point.

In a free society, an individual bears sole responsibility for his actions. A whole race, gender, or generation does not bear guilt for the sins of some or even of many in that group of people. It’s unfair and wrong.

But liberals don’t believe this. For example, a white person carries the shame of slavery even if his family members never owned slaves and even if he himself worked to free those in bondage. White equals guilt. Or, as another example, “society” is guilty for creating the psychosexual environment in which frustrated men must rape in order to feel dominant. And then there are the more mundane things like “if she weren’t poor, she wouldn’t be compelled to steal that Ralph Lauren dress.”

A criminal wouldn’t be a criminal if he were loved more and society supported him, therefore it’s society’s fault that he is committing the fill-in-the-blank crime.

So who is to blame, then, when a black man rapes a woman? Would it be the rapist? No.

What follows is the harrowing and cognitively dissonant account of a woman’s rape at the hands of a black man she considered a friend. Her name is Amanda Kijera and here is her story:

Two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, I started to write what I thought was a very clever editorial about violence against women in Haiti. The case, I believed, was being overstated by women’s organizations in need of additional resources. Ever committed to preserving the dignity of black men in a world which constantly stereotypes them as violent savages, I viewed this writing as yet one more opportunity to fight “the man” on behalf of my brothers. That night, before I could finish the piece, I was held on a rooftop in Haiti and raped repeatedly by one of the very men who I had spent the bulk of my life advocating for.

It hurt. The experience was almost more than I could bear. I begged him to stop. Afraid he would kill me, I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. Overpowered, I gave up fighting halfway through the night.

FACTBOX-U.S. deficit commission members

April 27 (Reuters) - The bipartisan panel created by President Barack Obama to recommend ways to tackle the skyrocketing U.S. budget deficit holds its first meeting on Tuesday.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility is to report its recommendations by December. The 18 members have been chosen separately by Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Here is some information about members of the commission.

ERSKINE BOWLES, co-chairman

Bowles, the president of the University of North Carolina since 2006, started his business career at Morgan Stanley in New York and later founded an investment banking firm.

Former President Bill Clinton named him to lead the Small Business Administration in 1993, and Bowles became the president's chief of staff from 1996 to 1998. In that position, he helped negotiate the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 with Republican congressional leaders, producing the first balanced U.S. budget in nearly 30 years.

ALAN SIMPSON, co-chairman

Simpson was the No. 2 Republican in the Senate for a decade. His chief legacy in the Senate was the overhaul of U.S. immigration law that was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 after intense lobbying by special interest groups.

Simpson was also known as a strong voice for fiscal balance, voting in favor of the 1990 bipartisan deficit reduction agreement, a U.S. official said.

Salazar appoints Dem donors to advisory board

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appointed 12 new members to the National Park System Advisory Board, describing them as “highly accomplished men and women whose creativity and wisdom will help us prepare for the challenges of the National Parks Service’s second hundred years.”

Apparently, Salazar’s definition of “highly accomplished” includes “major Democratic donor.”

The newbies include Washington consultant Leonore Blitz, New Mexico attorney Paul Bardacke, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, World Resources Institute board member Gretchen Long, California administrator Belinda Faustinos, former Alaska governor Tony Knowles and University of Maryland professor Rita Colwell.

Republicans Win ‘Too Big to Fail’ Concessions on Dodd Wall Street Bailout Bill

Senate Republicans have agreed by consent to let the Democrats’ partisan finance bill come to the floor for debate after winning important concessions on some more contentious areas of the bill.

Democrats must still reach a 60-vote threshold to end debate before any final vote on the bill could be taken.

“Chairman Dodd has assured me that he will address a number of concerns I have expressed with respect to ending bailouts,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), top Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. “I take him at his word.”

Concessions included killing the $50 billion slush fund Democrats desired for the government takeover of firms deemed “too big to fail.” Language in the partisan bill authored by Dodd does not require failing firms to wind down once seized by the government. The language in Dodd’s bill instead uses loophole terminology of a “strong presumption” that the slush fund would be used for liquidation purposes.

Republicans were also assured that creditors of the distressed companies would not receive recoupment in excess of payments that creditors would receive under the normal course of a bankruptcy proceeding.

AIG creditor Goldman Sachs got a backdoor bailout of 100 cents on the dollar courtesy of the American taxpayer. The normal recoupment rate in a bankruptcy proceeding is less than 50 cents on the dollar.

Shelby said Democrats were unwilling to make any reasonable changes to their proposed so-called consumer protection bureau.

“This bill still contains a sprawling new consumer protection bureau that will find and force its way into facets of our economy that had nothing to do with the housing crisis,” Shelby said. “This massive new bureaucracy would have unchecked authority to regulate whatever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants. I am aware of no other arm of the federal government this powerful, yet so unaccountable.”

Mexico acknowledges migrant abuse, pledges changes

MEXICO CITY – Amnesty International called the abuse of migrants in Mexico a major human rights crisis Wednesday, and accused some officials of turning a blind eye or even participating in the kidnapping, rape and murder of migrants.

The group's report comes at a sensitive time for Mexico, which is protesting the passage of a law in Arizona that criminalizes undocumented migrants.

The Interior Department acknowledged in a statement that the mainly Central American migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States suffer abuses, but attributed the problem to criminal gangs branching out into kidnapping and extortion of migrants.

Rupert Knox, Amnesty's Mexico researcher, said in the report that the failure by authorities to tackle abuses against migrants has made their trip through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world.

"Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses," Knox said.

Central American migrants are frequently pulled off trains, kidnapped en masse, held at gang hideouts and forced to call relatives in the U.S. to pay off the kidnappers. Such kidnappings affect thousands of migrants each year in Mexico, the report says.

Many are beaten, raped or killed in the process.

One of the main issues, Amnesty says, is that migrants fear they will be deported if they complain to Mexican authorities about abuses.

At present, Article 67 of Mexico's Population Law says, "Authorities, whether federal, state or municipal ... are required to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country, before attending to any issues."

The Interior Department said the government has taken some steps to combat abuses and Mexico's legislature is working to repeal Article 67 "so that no one can deny or restrict foreigners' access to justice and human rights, whatever their migratory status."

NHS: here's the unpleasant truth

Over the 40 plus years of my medical career there has been progressive evolution of clinical services. The management of cardiac surgery, stroke rehabilitation, transplantation, joint replacement and IVF have all developed at the behest of medical science. The costs of these services have been added to the "bread and butter" responsibilities of trauma, obstetrics, cancer and emergency surgery, and the management of medical disorders such as pneumonia and heart attacks. While paediatric workload has diminished thanks to better obstetric care, there has been a necessary explosion of services in geriatric medicine and mental health care.

In 1997 the NHS employed nearly 1 million people. It now employs 1.35 million. The cost of the service represents 9 per cent of GDP, an increase of 3 percentage points in real terms since the Millburn/Blair takeover of policy. However, the electorate has been short-changed.

Medical students of my generation knew that they were joining a profession where the time of day, or day of the week had no bearing on the level of service one was required to provide, whether in general practice or as a specialist. That concept is now to all intents and purposes dead, a casualty of the "new" contract for GPs in 2004 that allowed them to opt out of providing ''out of hours'' care, and of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD), which limits the number of hours hospital doctors can work in a week. As a result, there is a large and increasing cohort of young medics unfamiliar with the concept of continuous responsibility for a patient.

(CNSNews.com) – A new government report says global warming could lead to an increase in both cancer and mental illness worldwide, and it calls for more federally funded research to determine how that might happen.

The report, A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change, was published by the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health – a combination of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NIH, State Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Agriculture, the EPA, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The report's overall thrust is for more federally funded research to investigate the alleged links between global warming and public health, including the potentially negative effects from warming and the potentially negative side-effect of green technologies.

While the report touches on, for example, the health effects of unclean water and respiratory ailments, it also deals with two other types of health issues not normally associated with global warming: cancer and mental illness.

Cancer

While the report does not claim that global warming will cause new types of cancer, it says that “higher ambient temperatures” caused by global warming will have an effect on cancer rates, probably pushing them higher.

Arizona: Progressivism's Waterloo?

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person…" — the essential clause in Arizona's new immigration law

There are many reasons to be thankful that Arizona has passed a sensible law to combat illegal immigration, but one of the most important ones is this: the bankruptcy of the progressive worldview and the utter abdication of anything resembling journalistic integrity by their media enablers is strutting itself across the national stage.

And absolutely nothing is better than both entities revealing their true colors to the American public.

It is impossible to measure the hypocrisy. The same media which has strained itself looking for any shred of negativity they could hang around the necks of the Tea Party movement, is apparently deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to the unruliness, overt racism and uncontrolled anger of the pro-illegal demonstrators who have branded ordinary Arizonans Nazis and racists for daring to defend themselves against an onslaught of illegal interlopers.

How bad is it ? A Catholic Cardinal, Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, has claimed Arizonans "are reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques." San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, leaders in Mexico, and civil rights huckster Al Sharpton all called for a sweeping boycott of the state of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses. Opponents of the law used re-fried beans to create swastikas and smear them on the windows of the state capitol building. President Obama called the law "misguided" and has asked the Justice Dept. to review it for a possible legal challenge. Several other entities, including the ACLU, are also pursuing the possibilities of lawsuits to overturn the law.

All of this is framed by three realities that opponents of the law willfully choose to ignore: 1. Arizona is currently the primary gateway for illegal aliens to enter America; 2. the estimated number of illegal aliens in Arizona is 460,000 in a state with a population of 6.6 million people — meaning nearly 7% of Arizona's entire population is comprised of non-citizens in the country illegally; 3. 70% of Arizonans are in favor of the law.

(CNSNews.com) – A new national poll shows support for repealing President Obama’s health care reform law has not abated in the month since its passage, and actually ticked up.

“Support for repeal of the recently-passed national health care plan remains strong as most voters believe the law will increase the cost of care, hurt quality and push the federal budget deficit even higher,” said the new release from the polling firm Rasmussen Reports.

Fifty-eight (58) percent of likely voters said they would support an effort to repeal the legislation, as Republicans have given consideration to campaigning on such a promise. Just 38 percent communicated opposition to such an effort.

The percentage who support repeal efforts are up 3 percent from the week just after the bill passed, when President Obama made several campaign-style stops in support of the bill.

The ranks of those who believe the bill will be “bad for the country” have also increased from 49 to 52 percent over the same time period, while the percentage of likely voters who believe reform will be “good for the country” has inched down from 41 to 39 percent.

The overall negative perception of the bill seems to stem from the belief of an overwhelming portion of respondents that the bill’s effects will include diminishing the quality of health care, running federal deficits higher, and increasing general health care costs.

Consider the Source

I'm in my third decade of following politics and media and I thought I had seen it all, but I must say that I was taken aback by the national reaction to SB 1070--how could the reaction to the bill have been so widespread while the information about the bill was so utterly wrong?

The two are obviously connected. The media portrayal of the bill made it sound like Kristallnacht and naturally the rest of the country reacted when they thought that Arizona was implementing a bill that violated the constitution on several fronts.

I've been trying to figure out the exact point at which incorrect information went national and I think I found it here.* E.J. Dionne--arguably the most influential political reporter in Washington--used his "Post Partisan" column to decry Arizona's "Shameful" immigration bill.

It is nothing short of astonishing that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Friday signed a bill that could make it dangerous just to look Hispanic.

Based on what he knew, Dionne had the right to be astonished and the national media soon descended on Arizona. Later President Obama himself would blast Arizona's "irresponsible" actions.

However, most of the factual information that E.J. Dionne used in his analysis was simply wrong. What was the source of these errors? Dionne made it clear that he got his information from an April 22nd Arizona Republic editorial--Dionne included a link as well as a large block quote from the editorial. Unfortunately, ALL of the facts about the bill that Dionne used as the basis of his column--a column that lit a national fire and ended with the President singling out Arizona for ridicule--were wrong.

I've copied the block quote (in blue) that Dionne used and will analyze the statements line by line, but rather than just trusting my analysis of the bill, please refer to the sidebar in the article in today's paper that the Republic itself used to describe the bill. It seems that once the Republic had time to analyze what the bill actually did, they described the bill in dramatically different terms than the editorial.

Here's the first "fact" that E.J. Dionne picked up from the Republic

The broad anti-immigrant bill passed by the Legislature this week makes it a crime to be in the country illegally

Family wins school lunch case over son's table manners Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2951040#ixzz0mL4mXk3K

Luc, now 11, said he was reprimanded by a school hall monitor for eating his lunch by breaking up the food with a fork and pushing it onto a spoon, a traditional Philippine way of eating

A Quebec Filipino family has won a human-rights fight against a Montreal school board that allegedly discriminated against a seven-year-old student by reprimanding him for eating "like a pig."

The Quebec Human Rights Tribunal is ordering the Marguerite Bourgeoys School Board to pay Maria-Theresa Gallardo and her son, Luc Cagadoc, $17,000 in moral and punitive damages in a claim of racial and ethnic discrimination.

"We are overwhelmed and happy that this is finally over and we got the justice we were looking for," Ms. Gallardo told the National Post yesterday.

WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden had no idea the U.S. would hit al-Qaida as hard as it has since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a former bin Laden associate tells WTOP in an exclusive interview.

"I'm 100 percent sure they had no clue about what was going to happen," says Noman Benotman, who was head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in the summer of 2000.

"What happened after the 11th of September was beyond their imagination, " says Benotman, who adds that al-Qaida thought the U.S. was a "paper tiger."

Sitting on the floor at bin Laden's compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan during a meeting the summer before the attacks, Benotman shocked bin Laden and more than 200 other international jihadist leaders by telling the al-Qaida leader his jihadi strategy was "a total failure."

Benotman, a highly regarded associate of bin Laden's at the time, says he surprised him again by rebuffing a plea for help.

"He asked for my help. Bin Laden asked me personally, you know. I responded immediately on the spot ...'No. I'm not going to help you.'"

Bin Laden was stunned.

"Because he used to like to sit next to me, you know. My right hand side," Benotman says.

The seating location meant he was someone bin Laden respected.

Why Left Talks about "White" Tea Parties

Opponents of the popular expression of conservative opposition to big government, the tea party, regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration.

But there are two other facts that are far more troubling:

The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers.

It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender and class rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong.

One of the more dangerous features of the Left has been its replacement of moral categories of right and wrong, and good and evil with three other categories: black and white (race), male and female (gender) and rich and poor (class).

Therefore the Left pays attention to the skin color -- and gender (not just "whites" but "white males") -- of the tea partiers rather than to their ideas.

One would hope that all people would assess ideas by their moral rightness or wrongness, not by the race, gender or class of those who hold them. But in the world of the Left, people are taught not to assess ideas but to identify the race, class and gender of those who espouse those ideas. This helps explain the widespread use of ad hominem attacks by the Left: Rather than argue against their opponents' ideas, the Left usually dismisses those making the argument disagreed with as "racist," "intolerant," "bigoted," "sexist," "homophobic" and/or "xenophobic."

You're against race-based affirmative action? No need to argue the issue because you're a racist. You're a tea partier against ever-expanding government? No need to argue the issue because you're a racist.

As a Leftist rule of thumb -- once again rendering intellectual debate unnecessary and impossible -- white is wrong or bad, and non-white is right and good; male is wrong and bad, and female is right and good; and the rich are wrong and bad, and the poor right and good. For the record, there is one additional division on the Left -- strong and weak -- to which the same rule applies: The strong are wrong and bad, and the weak are right and good. That is a major reason for Leftist support of the Palestinians (weak) against the Israelis (strong), for example.

Tobacco Tyrants Turn Attention To Salt

Here's how my June 14, 2006, column started: "Down through the years, I've attempted to warn my fellow Americans about the tyrannical precedent and template for further tyranny set by anti-tobacco zealots ... .

"In the early stages of the anti-tobacco campaign, there were calls for 'reasonable' measures such as non-smoking sections on airplanes and health warnings on cigarette packs. In the 1970s, no one would have ever believed such measures would have evolved into today's level of attack on smokers, which includes confiscatory cigarette taxes and bans on outdoor smoking. The door was opened, and the zealots took over."

Once A Tyrant

What the anti-tobacco zealots established is that government had the right to forcibly control our lives if it was done in the name of protecting our health. In the Foundation for Economic Education's Freeman publication, I wrote a column titled "Nazi Tactics" (January 2003):

"These people who want to control our lives are almost finished with smokers, but never in history has a tyrant arisen one day and decided to tyrannize no more. The nation's tyrants have now turned their attention to the vilification of fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, charging them with having created an addiction to fatty foods.

"In their campaign against fast-food chains, restaurants and soda and candy manufacturers the nation's food Nazis always refer to the anti-tobacco campaign as the model for their agenda."

America's tyrants have now turned their attention to salt, as reported in the Washington Post's article "FDA plans to limit amount of salt allowed in processed foods for health reasons" (April 19, 2010).

Obama seeks to 'reconnect...young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women' for 2010

The Democratic National Committee this morning released this clip of the president rallying the troops, if rather coolly, for 2010. Obama's express goal: "reconnecting" with the voters who voted for the first time in 2008, but who may not plan to vote in the lower-profile Congressional elections this year.

Obama speaks with unusual demographic frankness about his coalition in his appeal to "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again."

A Plague of ‘A’ Students

Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the left. Nancy Pelosi needs a session on the ducking stool, of course. But everyone with an ugly divorce has had a Nancy. She’s vexatious and expensive to get rid of, but it’s not like we give a damn about her. Harry Reid is going house-to-house selling nothing anybody wants. Slam the door on him and the neighbor’s Rottweiler will do the rest. And Barney Frank is self-punishing. Imagine being trapped inside Barney Frank.

The secret to the Obama annoyance is snotty lecturing. His tone of voice sends us back to the worst place in college. We sit once more packed into the vast, dreary confines of a freshman survey course—“Rocks for Jocks,” “Nuts and Sluts,” “Darkness at Noon.” At the lectern is a twerp of a grad student—the prototypical A student—insecure, overbearing, full of himself and contempt for his students. All we want is an easy three credits to fulfill a curriculum requirement in science, social science, or fine arts. We’ve got a mimeographed copy of last year’s final with multiple choice answers already written on our wrists. The grad student could skip his classes, the way we intend to, but there the s.o.b. is, taking attendance. (How else to explain this year’s census?)

America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects. This is why good businessmen have always adhered to the maxim: “A students work for B students.” Or, as a businessman friend of mine put it, “B students work for C students—A students teach.”

It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq war, and to hell with what happened to the Iraqi Class of ’03 after they’d graduated from Shock and Awe.

The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15 we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

Caterpillar: The Rest Of The World Is Coming Back Fast, But Boy, America Is Horrible

Shares of Caterpillar (CAT) are up 3% pre-market after the earth-moving company reported strong earnings and raised its outlook.

The numbers seem to be providing a lift to the overall market, but check out the internal numbers, and you see a WIDE disparity between what's going on globally, and what's going on domestically.

Not surprisingly, Caterpillar loves Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Here's Asia-Pacific:

Asia/Pacific – Sales increased $469 million, or 40 percent.

Sales volume increased $356 million.
Price realization increased $94 million.
Currency increased sales by $19 million.
Dealers reported higher inventories compared with year-end 2009. In the first quarter of 2009, dealers reduced inventories. These changes in dealer inventories contributed to higher sales volume. Inventories were well below a year ago in both dollars and months of supply. Months of supply were below the historical average.
Asian economies, particularly China and India, were the quickest to recover from the worldwide recession. Better economic conditions enabled dealers to report higher deliveries to end users than the first quarter of 2009.
China accounted for most of the increase in sales as reported deliveries reached a record high. The government's stimulus program and a 26-percent increase in lending led to a 33-percent increase in both residential and nonresidential construction.
India's record-low interest rates contributed to industrial production rising nearly 16 percent, leading to a large increase in sales.
Sales increased slightly in Australia. Residential construction improved, and higher metals and coal prices caused mines to increase output.

But now look at North America:

North America – Sales decreased $326 million, or 15 percent.

Guest commentary: New ‘rights’ are wrong

Brent Batten was absolutely correct in his column of March 25 when he stated there is no right to “the fruits of another group’s labor.”

The Declaration of Independence holds that rights are “self-evident.” However, it is the failure to grasp the true nature of rights which has brought this country to its current condition. It remained for the 20th-century philosopher Ayn Rand to explicitly identify rights as “moral principle(s) defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” Rights pertain only to “freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. ... Rights impose no obligations on (others) except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating (your) rights.”

The source of all rights is the right to life, and its sole implementation is the right to property, the right to use the products of your efforts to sustain your life. The rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the rights to enjoy your life and use your property. Rights are an objectively necessary requirement of human life, principles which apply equally to all persons and at all times. In sum, rights are freedoms for rational beings to take the actions necessary to fulfill and enjoy their lives. Any alleged “right” which violates these rights is not a right, but an excuse for a crime.

The only way to violate individual rights is through the initiation of force. A person who initiates force against you is attempting to negate your means of survival by forcing you to act against your judgment as to what your life requires. The only moral use of force is in retaliation against those who initiate its use. The sole proper purpose of government is to protect its citizens’ rights by banning the initiation of force and placing its retaliatory use under objective control. The purpose of the U.S. Constitution was, and is, to establish and maintain the supremacy of individual rights over our society and our government.

Lawsuit imminent to stop AZ immigration law

I'm not a betting man, but if I was, I'd put down at least 5 bucks that sometime this morning a lawsuit will be filed seeking an injunction against Arizona's new immigration law.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation Friday, giving law enforcement in her state the right to question and detain anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. The lawsuit surely will argue that Arizona is usurping the federal government's role to legislate and enforce immigration laws. And it will contend that the measure will lead to civil rights abuses and racial profiling.

The consequences of Arizona's tough stand against illegal immigrants have already been significant.

It clearly has awakened President Barack Obama, who took the unusual step of criticizing a state law. Now immigration reform suddenly seems urgent again.

In addition to lawsuits, expect energized marches -- similar to what happened in spring 2006 after the Sensenbrenner bill ignited the masses.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and other activists are comparing Arizona's law to apartheid, Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South. The New York Daily News quotes Sharpton saying they will bring "freedom walkers" to that state.

Meanwhile, some churches are saying they will refuse to help enforce the law.

Satellites to issue speeding tickets from space

UK drivers had better stay under that speed limit, because the traffic authorities are watching… from outer space. According to The Telegraph, an American company called PIPS Technology has developed a system that uses two cameras on the ground and one mounted on a satellite in orbit to catch speeders.

The system - called “SpeedSpike” - figures your average speed between two points, captures an image of your license plate and reports you if you’re going faster than the law allows. Oh, and if you’re hoping Great Britain’s notoriously gray weather will save you, you’re out of luck; the system works even when it’s cloudy or dark.

http://www.becomingmighty.com/Excerpts/3BB8B922-E818-4E23-8852-4C77F6E91284_files/Intimidation.png

On the first Tuesday in November, two uniformed men arrived at a voting place and took up positions by the entry doors. In the hours that followed, they harassed voters and election officials, hurled racial epithets and physically blocked persons of other races who sought to cast their votes for president of the United States. One of the men brandished a nightstick.

Bartle Bull, a civil rights movement veteran, was there. He says it was "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s." The crimes Mr. Bull witnessed that day were not committed in 1960s Mississippi, however. Those crimes took place in 2008 in Philadelphia.

It is regrettable that on the day when the United States elected its first black president, two thugs in Philadelphia perpetrated acts of race-based voter intimidation of the type that marred elections in segregation-era America. It also is inexcusable that President Obama's Justice Department refuses to fulfill its duty and bring those racists to justice. Led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., political appointees at the Obama Justice Department overruled career federal prosecutors and dropped voter-intimidation charges against the men.

The Justice Department obtained only a narrow, meaningless injunction against the man who taunted voters with the nightstick. He has been enjoined from brandishing a weapon within 100 feet of the entrance to any polling place (an act which was illegal to begin with) but only until November 2012.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."

For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT.

"I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn't something that the president had under consideration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters shortly before Obama spoke with CNBC.

After the interview, White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said nothing has changed and the White House is "not considering" a VAT.

Many European countries impose a VAT, which taxes the value that is added at each stage of production of certain commodities. It could apply, for instance, to raw products delivered to a mill, the mill's production work and so on up the line to the retailer.

In the CNBC interview, Obama said he was waiting for recommendations from a bipartisan fiscal advisory commission on ways to tackle the deficit and other problems.

When asked if he could see a potential VAT in this nation, the president said: "I know that there's been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax. That is something that has worked for some countries. It's something that would be novel for the United States."

"And before, you know, I start saying 'this makes sense or that makes sense,' I want to get a better picture of what our options are," Obama said.

He said his first priority "is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that, you know, we have a baseline of the core services that we need and the government should provide. And then we decide how do we pay for that."

Are you prepared to go from the supermarket to the black market for your bacon?

The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to lower the boom on sodium content in American food. And companies are scrambling to lower the salt levels in their products in advance of the new rules.

The target is not really your BLT, but instead the huge piles of sodium that are used to make otherwise inedible processed food pass for something good to eat.

It is cheaper for the food industry to fool your palate with flavor additives than use good ingredients. So, for example, the Nature Valley granola bar you feel so good about tucking into Junior's lunch bag contains three quarters as much salt as a strip of that crispy but still chewy bacon that he could have had instead.

And because the average American eats so much processed junk, he is eating way too much salt-- about 50 percent more than dietitians recommend.

Don't worry about adding a few grains of Morton's kosher salt to your scrambled eggs, but do read the back of that Starbucks Frappucino you bought at the convenience store (7 percent of your daily sodium).

In the end, the salty and the sweet will be carted off in Michelle Obama's great food roundup. The rules are being worked out with the producers so that consumers won't notice any big shift, but one day it will be illegal to sell food that exceeds federal standards for saltiness.

http://www.goodgreentips.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/green-earth-going-green-products.jpg

The green movement would be a lot funnier if it didn't have access to our pocketbooks. Unfortunately, devotees of "alternative energy" have harnessed the greatest of all sources of renewable power - government taxation - to fulfill their fantasies. The results are as tragic as they are comic.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a $300 million Department of Energy program designed to promote commercial products that boast fashionable "green" credentials. A team of GAO investigators with an uncharacteristically fine sense of humor submitted 20 bogus products to the department and walked away with Energy Star certification for 15 of them, including a gasoline-powered alarm clock. GAO deserves credit for illuminating the careless attitude that sets in when the greens start spending other people's money. After all, when it's being done in the name of the environment, liberal thinking is that there's no need to measure a policy's costs against the alleged benefits.

It appears that gasoline generators are at work pumping energy into Spain's heavily subsidized solar panels. Of the 6 billion euros in government aid to the electricity market, 2.3 billion is lavished on electricity that is supposed to be produced by the sun's rays, generating a mere 2 percent of the nation's power needs. Under the profligate plan, anyone installing a solar panel can collect a check for 436 euros for each megawatt of power returned to the electrical grid. Several solar farms have sprung up as a result. As the newspaper El Mundo reported last week, at least 6,000 megawatts of purported solar electricity were generated during the dark evening and early-morning hours over three months. The decidedly nongreen use of generators helped the enterprising fraudsters walk away with at least 2.6 million euros.

Don’t talk about Muhammad or you’re dead

We already know the culture and passion of Islamic radicals, fundamentalists and Jihad experts. They want an international caliphate going back to the 1920s. That means they want to control the world and have it run by Sharia law, all other Religions and people submitting to Islam.

It has always amazed me just how shrill Islamic fundamentalists and leaders are. Criticism, challenges, humor against or for is just not allowed. By all means don’t you dare tell the truth about Muhammad or analyze his own words and life. You might just die for that. We all remember Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered in 2004 after putting out a documentary on violence against Muslim women.

Even though it was an exceptional and honest film highlighting the regular beatings Muslim women endure, it was not allowed to shed any light on the huge elephants running through the bloody and bruised room. Naturally, van Gogh had to be punished so he was murdered.

Now, ‘South Park’ creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s lives are being threatened because they dared to include a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit. They were displaying typical, South Park, off the wall humor as they usually do, but this time they dared to touch the untouchable….Muhammad and Islam.

Christianity and Jesus Christ is shredded, made fun of, slandered, mocked and lied about practically on a daily basis

The unbelievable thing in all this is that Christianity and Jesus Christ is shredded, made fun of, slandered, mocked and lied about practically on a daily basis. When people drop something on their foot and swear it is never ‘Oh Muhammad.’ It is always ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘GD.’

http://blog.beliefnet.com/faithfunnies/carbon_footprint.gif

As a psychotherapist, I try my best to calm down my anxious clients. But in this case, I inadvertently triggered a panic attack.

My twenty-something client Emma, a survivor of the Berkeley public schools, had a coughing fit during our session. I helpfully got up to get her some water. When I handed her a cup, she looked at it, incredulous.

Her voice quivering, she asked, "Is this Styrofoam?"

I said yes. She stared at the cup, mesmerized by this forbidden fruit. When she finally found her words, she said, "I've never seen Styrofoam before. We learned in school that it kills baby birds."

Worried that Emma would bolt, I quickly defended the contraband, "Actually, I bought the cups years ago, and still have a few left."

When Emma returned the next week (thankfully), I asked about her reaction. She flooded me with stories about indoctrination by teachers. One of her earliest memories was singing songs on Earth Day, prayerfully, when she was five.

A sensitive soul, Emma became terrified that her beloved Earth would perish, and that she'd be culpable. Starting in third grade, she became an environmental fanatic. Emma went ballistic on her disabled grandmother when the old woman threw a bottle in the trash.

After school, she and her friends would sift through other people's garbage to root out recyclables. While Berkeley has plenty of homeless folks going through trash, Emma and her friends were out to save the world.

The poor thing would even sob in her car when she had to drive more than a few miles. She envisioned the pollution burning up the rain forests and asphyxiating polar bears.

A year into our therapy/cult deprogramming, I asked Emma about her fixation with all things ecological. She replied, "I'm over it."

Emma hasn't morphed into a consumer-glutton. But she's not making herself a stress case anymore. Emma even told me, with obvious pride, that for the first time in her life, she took a road trip.

How did I help Emma snap out of her trance? I simply imparted truths that someone should have communicated years ago, like the following:

Emma, you're a wonderful, good-hearted person. You deserve to be here. Your life is a blessing. It's OK to drive your car or to take a bag from the store. You deserve all these things and more. Besides, the earth has been here for millions of years and will be here long after your great grandchildren are gone.

Now, if the planet is not about to crash and burn, why turn children like Emma into eco-warriors? Why condition them to take three-minute showers and lambaste their elders?

Obama and the New Civility

It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse — another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our new bipartisan protocols, which will go something like the following.

It will be considered childish to caricature a stressed president for mangling his words, whether “nucular” or “corpseman.” If, from time to time, the commander-in-chief flubs up and says something stupid like Bush’s “Is our children learning?” or Obama’s “Cinco de Quatro,” we have learned to accept that such slips are hardly reflective of a lack of knowledge. The old “gotcha” game is puerile and, thankfully, is now a thing of the past.

Nor should we ever refer to any elected administration as a “regime” — that unfortunate habit of the likes of Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, and various talk-radio hosts. Thank God, we in 2010 all recognize the pernicious effects of such near-treasonous rhetoric.

At last there is a return to civility. If we were confused in recent years as to whether “hate” was a permissible word in public discourse — as in the outburst of Democratic national chairman Howard Dean, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,” or the infamous essay by The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait that began, “I hate President George W. Bush” — we now accept that such extreme language in the public arena is not merely uncivil, but is an incitement to real violence. The use of the word “hate” at last has become “hate speech.”

With Rep. Joe Wilson’s improper outburst to President Obama — “You lie!” — we also have at last come to appreciate that those in Congress have a special responsibility not to use incendiary language to defame our government officials. That’s why we now lament Rep. Pete Stark’s slur of George W. Bush from the House floor as a “liar” — the same Rep. Pete Stark who said of our troops that they had gone “to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

RAHN: Could the U.S. become Argentina?

A century ago, if you had told typical citizens of Argentina (which at that time was enjoying the fourth-highest per capita income in the world) that it would decline to become just the 76th richest nation on a per capita basis in 2010, they probably would not have found it believable. They might have responded, "This could not happen; we are a nation rich in natural resources, with a great climate for agriculture. Our people are well educated and largely descended from European stock. We have property rights, the rule of law and an open free-market economy."

But the fact is, Argentina has been going downhill for eight decades, and it has the second-worst credit ranking in the entire world - only Venezuela has a lower ranking. Argentina, despite its natural resources and human capital, has managed to throw it all away. Argentina did not become relatively poor because of having been involved in destructive conflicts. It became poor because it has had a series of both democratically elected leaders and non-elected dictators who never missed an opportunity to make the wrong economic decisions. It is, once again, trying to renege on paying the principal and interest on Argentine government bonds to foreign bondholders, and hence New York state (where many of the bonds are serviced) may take further action against Argentina, including fines and asset seizures.

In the 1930s, the Argentine government increased its interventions in the private economy. Juan Peron took over in 1946 and ended up nationalizing the railroads, the merchant marine, public utilities, public transport and other parts of the private economy. For much of the past half-century, Argentina has engaged in a series of erratic monetary policies, often resulting in periods of very high inflation and economic stagnation. Because of their political power, the unions have been coddled, resulting in unsustainable wage-and-benefit programs. Excessive government spending has caused recurrent fiscal meltdowns, where both foreign and domestic debt-holders have lost many of their investments.

According to the Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report (published by the Fraser Institute in cooperation with the Cato Institute and others), Argentina ranks 105 out of 141 countries surveyed. Similarly, the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal) ranks Argentina 135 out of the 179 countries surveyed. (The U.S. is No. 8 and falling.)

The U.S. has a per capita income of about $47,000 per year, while Argentina's is just $14,000 on a purchasing-power parity (PPP) basis. A hundred years ago, Argentina's per capita income was about 80 percent of that in the U.S. If Argentina had done as well relatively as the United States, it would have a per capita income of about $38,000 today. Countries can become wealthy in a few decades, as have South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland, by following the correct economic policies. They also can become relatively poor, as have Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela, by doing the wrong things.

KFC's Double Down -- the bacon sandwich where two pieces of fried chicken replace the bread -- has been catching a lot of flack lately; much of it deserved. But a quick comparison of the nutritional (for want of a better word) info between the Double Down and some items on the menus at other fast food joints shows that the "warped creation of a syphilitic brain" might not be as bad for you as a salad at Wendy's.

According to KFC, the Original Recipe Double Down has 540 calories, 32g of fat and 1380mg of sodium.

With just a quick peek at the websites for Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's, I had no trouble finding 10 items with higher calorie and fat (and in almost all cases, sodium) counts than the Double Down:

BURGER KING
Triple Whopper:
1160 calories
76g fat
1170mg sodium

Tendercrisp Garden Salad:
670 cals
45g fat
1740mg sodium

Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich:
800 cals
46g fat
1640mg sodium

Original Chicken Sandwich:
630 cals
39g fat
1390mg sodium

Data continues to pour in from a variety of sources indicating that faith in government is at a record low. Pew Research Center's latest survey found that only 22 percent of those polled trust the federal government "almost always or most of the time." In the Harris Poll's long-running measure of public attitudes, only 8 percent have confidence in Congress. The problem is not limited to Washington, however, as the Gallup Poll's annual measure of public confidence in state government has also taken a nose dive in recent years, dropping below 50 percent in every region except the South.

This deep lack of public trust in government is so serious that National Public Radio -- a government-created and -supported news organization -- is devoting much of its programming to the issue this month, including an in-depth series exploring the root causes. Don't expect NPR to reverse the tide, though, since its description of the series includes this perplexing assertion: "While much of the year-long struggle wound up restraining the role of government in the new health insurance system, the perception of a governmental takeover of the entire system remains strong." It's difficult to understand why anybody would describe nationalization of one-sixth of the U.S. economy as "restraining the role of government." Will NPR next tell us that the government's takeover of General Motors and Chrysler was a step toward deregulation?

Actually, it's not hard to understand why public faith in government is at rock bottom: People lose trust when the officials either ignore the public will, or, worse, do the opposite of what they promised voters they would do. President Obama, for example, promised a "net spending cut" during the 2008 presidential campaign. He has instead delivered the biggest explosion in federal spending in American history, with a result that the annual federal deficit and the national debt are now at levels nobody envisioned even a few years ago.

The New Front in the War on Wealth

With the current and projected level of unsustainable spending and the determination to control the day-to-day activities of the American people, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress will do anything to expand revenue to the Treasury, the consequences (unintended or otherwise) be damned.

The United States under the current governing regime continues to move toward a powerful central government. As a step in that direction, the Congress and the White House recently granted the Internal Revenue Service more police power to not only collect taxes, but within that process, to negate the legal rights of the people to petition the courts and to control the behavior of American and non-American taxpayers.

On March 18, 2010, President Obama signed yet another stimulus act ($17.5 billion) using the innocuous-sounding title of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (cynically abbreviated to H.I.R.E.). This bill was touted as another step in helping job creation. In reality, it does the opposite.

Hidden within the bowels (page 27) of this so-called jobs legislation is an unreported (in the once-mainstream media) provision known as Foreign Account Tax Compliance. Apparently, the congressional leadership did not want attention focused on this as a standalone bill, so it was hidden within a much more popular-sounding jobs bill. The justification for passing this provision was ostensibly to crack down on so-called tax evaders.

In summary, this bill requires that foreign banks and financial institutions disclose the full details of American account-holders to the IRS -- and to withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows into those accounts if the IRS (not the courts) deems the account-holder "recalcitrant." These requirements would also apply to non-American citizens living in the United States or to foreigners having investments and paying taxes within the country.

Tim Nicholson claims his firm discriminated against his environmental views.

Tim Nicholson, 42, was made redundant in July 2008 from his £77,000-a-year post as head of sustainability with Grainger, the UK’s biggest residential landlord.

He was preparing to sue his former employer, alleging that his redundancy was a direct result of his green opinions about the dangers of climate change - which put him at odds with other senior executives within the firm.

At a preparatory hearing last year, a judge ruled that his belief in climate change was legally akin to a religious belief and should be protected from discrimination.

Mr Nicholson, who worked in the firm’s office in Putney, south west London, demanded £756,615 in compensation.

The claim against the firm included £587,925 for loss of earnings, £141,080 for loss of pension rights and £20,000 for injury to feelings.

Jim Rogers: Next Recession Is Coming and It Will Be Much Worse

The Great Recession that may have just ended will amount to nothing compared to the next one, says commodities expert Jim Rogers.

The huge fiscal and monetary stimulus is what will cause the crisis, he says. Rogers notes that the United States suffers a recession every four to six years on average.

“When it (the next one) comes, it’s going to be much worse, because Washington can’t quintuple its debt again,” he told Newsmax.TV Money.

Video — Rogers: Next Recession Will Be Much Worse

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is a big part of the problem, says Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings. “Mr. Bernanke can’t print much more money again. The world is going to run out of trees.”

Rogers recommends that we abolish the Fed, because it’s causing the problems. “We’ve had three central banks in American history. The first two disappeared. This one will too,” he predicted.

That’s thanks to the mistakes made by Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

“They’ve taken on gigantic amounts of debt that you and I are now responsible for. The central bank is making it worse,” Rogers said.

Bernanke’s low interest rate policy is a terrible mistake, Rogers says. “He’s essentially ruining the U.S. economy in the long run and ruining the U.S. dollar as well.”

The dollar’s safe for now, Rogers says, noting that he owns it himself. “But in the longer term, the dollar is a terribly flawed currency.”

Inflation already is here, he says.

“We know that prices are going up, whether it’s insurance, entertainment, education or fuel. The price of everything is going up, and it’s going to get worse because Mr. Bernanke and the people in Washington are spending gigantic amounts of money that we don’t have.”

GLOBAL WARMING FANATICS BECOMING DESPERATE

The latest volcano eruption in Iceland is now being used as an example by the Global Warming fanatics of how thinning ice caps can actually cause volcanoes to erupt. The latest is how thinning ice caps in Iceland are releasing pressure on the ground and creating liquid magma. Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a vulcanologist at the University of Iceland, goes on to say that melting ice caused by Global Warming can influence magmatic systems as seen from the increasing volcano activity at the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago apparently because as the ice caps melted, the land rose.

Carolina Pagli, a geophysicist at the University of Leeds in England warns of the risk of volcano eruptions in other ice covered areas such as Antarctica and Alaska because the decrease in pressure on the ground from decreasing ice caps can have effects in deep areas where magma is produced.

Pagli and Sigmundsson wrote a 2008 paper in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters about possible links between global warming and Icelandic volcanoes.

Their report said that about 10 percent of Iceland's biggest ice cap, Vatnajokull, has melted since 1890 and the land nearby was rising about 25 millimetres (0.98 inch) a year, bringing shifts in geological stresses.

They estimated that the thaw had led to the formation of 1.4 cubic km (0.3 cubic mile) of magma deep below ground over the past century.

At high pressures such as under an ice cap, they believe that rocks cannot expand to turn into liquid magma even if they are hot enough. "As the ice melts the rock can melt because the pressure decreases," she said.

Sigmundsson said that monitoring of the Vatnajokull volcano since 2008 suggested that the 2008 estimate for magma generation was "probably a minimum estimate. It can be somewhat larger." They also state that fossil fuel created Global Warming can have effects on geology.

This story is a prime example of the desperation Global Warming alarmists are in today, and how they will stop at nothing to get the world to believe in their fantasy. Such articles should not even be allowed in the news section, and at best printed in the comic section.

Recently the stories on Global Warming have taken the reader on an odyssey into the unbelievable such as the claim that satellite images have proved that New Moore Island off the coast of Bangladesh disappeared under rising ocean levels due to Global Warming. This was laughable because this island appears and disappears on a regular basis concurring with high and low tides due to it being only a few feet above sea level in a delta similar to that of the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana.

Another story was of their concern of escaping Methane Gas from melting ice in Siberia.

This latest claim of increasing volcano activity due to decreasing pressure from melting ice caps is the biggest load of horse manure yet, not to mention the fact that they slipped up in saying the ice caps have been melting since, 1890 which would predate the world's industry having anything to do with Climate Change in the first place.

Geologically speaking, it would take a drastic melt off of the world's ice caps in a matter of only a few years to influence magma at such depths. The 10.000 ft. ice cap covering Antarctica would have to be reduced to around 3000ft. to bring about enough release in pressure to geologically change the situation at the depths which magma is formed.

The Global Warming fanatics are using the rising temperatures of the planet beginning with the end of the Ice Age now rather than over the last few decades because it is the only concrete evidence to show warming since we have been in a cooling period for the last ten years or more.

The Global Warming fanatics relied on most people not investigating their claims and taking their research as gospel. However many have cared to find out for themselves, and did their detective work to find that the numbers did not support the claims. Far from it as evidence clearly shows a global cool down rather than any warming.

Aside from many of these scientists and researchers who desperately want us to believe in their scam because of their investments into alternative energy methods and sources the main objective of this whole Global Warming farce is to bring the nations of the world together as one in fighting a threat to us all for the common good.

White House Caught Altering Stimulus Baseline Projection by 7 Million Jobs

The number of jobs in the U.S. is currently 129.7 million. So to justify the Administration’s current claim of 2.8 million jobs “created or saved” by stimulus, they need to also claim that without that stimulus there would be only 126.9 million jobs. That’s exactly what they do, displayed as the “baseline projection” level in the graphic below from an April 14, 2010 report:

An inconvenient truth, at least for the Obama Administration, is that once upon a time, in their January 2009 Romer/Bernstein Report they told America that without their stimulus there would be 133.9 million jobs. That’s right, in order to make it look like their stimulus has “created or saved” 2.8 million jobs, the Obama Administration first had to whack 7 million jobs from their previous estimates.

Here’s the math:

Step 1: How many jobs does the Administration currently claim there would be, without stimulus?

129.7 million Current number of U.S. jobs

- 2.8 million Jobs currently claimed to be “created or saved”

126.9 million Jobs the Administration currently claims there would be without stimulus

Step 2: How does that compare with the number of jobs the Administration used to say there would be without stimulus?

133.9 million January 2009 projection of jobs without stimulus

- 126.9 million Current claim of jobs without stimulus

= 7 million Jobs removed from the Administration “baseline” to justify their latest stimulus job creation claims

How feminism and pop culture saved Earth from getting too crowded -- and are helping to avert planetary catastrophe

By Margaret Eby

People have been worrying about the world’s pending overpopulation for more than two centuries. Robert Thomas Malthus sounded the alarm in 1797 with "An Essay on the Principles of the Population," which predicted mass starvation and went on to influence the likes of Charles Darwin and Margaret Sanger. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," forecast a similar fate; if the population kept rising unchecked, Earth’s resources would buckle. Many of today’s environmental thinkers, such as broadcaster (and "Planet Earth" narrator) David Attenborough, have called for drastic measures to limit the planet’s population before it’s too late.

But according to the veteran environmental writer Fred Pearce, they’re all wrong. In his latest book, "The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet's Surprising Future," Pearce argues that the world’s population is peaking. In the next century, we’re heading not for exponential growth, but a slow, steady decline. This, he claims, has the potential to massively change both our society and our planet: Children will become a rare sight, patriarchal thinking will fall by the wayside, and middle-aged culture will replace our predominant youth culture. Furthermore, Pearce explains, the population bust could be the end of our environmental woes. Fewer people making better choices about consumption could lead to a greener, healthier planet.

Salon called Fred Pearce in his London office to talk about the reasons behind our population peak, the high cost of our aging world, and how TV helped save the planet.

Why write about the population debate now?

I’ve noticed an upsurge in interest in the topic. When I’m giving a lecture on climate change or water, I’ll get a question from somebody that says, "Yes, what about population? If we don’t solve the population problem, then we can’t solve any of these issues." The way that some environmentalists discuss population transfers the blame for global environmental issues onto poor people in countries where they’re still breeding a lot. It becomes a problem of overbreeding Indians or Africans rather than overconsuming Europeans or Americans. It troubled me ethically, and I wondered, "OK, is this true?"

Well, is it true?

Libertarians, Independents, and Tea Parties

David Kirby and I have an op-ed in today’s Politico on libertarians as the “leading edge” of the independent vote:

Who are these centrist, independent-minded voters who swung the elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts to Republican candidates and are likely to be crucial in races this fall?…

Libertarians seem to be a leading indicator of this trend in centrist, independent-minded voters, based on an analysis of many years of polling data. We estimate that libertarians compose from 14 percent to 23 percent of voters nationally. They are among the few real swing voters in U.S. politics.

We note that libertarian voters started to swing against the Republicans in 2004, before most Republicans did. Then independents swung hard to the Democrats in 2006 and 2008. By 2008, though, libertarian voters had apparently recoiled against the prospect of an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government at a time of financial crisis. By November 2009 and January 2010, a majority of independents had followed the libertarians in turning against the Democrats’ big-government agenda. We go on to say:

So, if many of these centrist, independent voters are indeed libertarians, why aren’t libertarians better recognized?

First, the word “libertarian” is still unfamiliar — even to many who hold “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” views. Pollsters rarely use it….

Second, libertarian voters have traditionally been less likely to organize.

In the past three years, however, libertarians have become a more visible, organized force in politics — particularly as campaigns move online. Ron Paul’s campaign demonstrated that libertarians can organize and raise large sums of money on the Internet.

Meanwhile, tea party protests showed that libertarian-inspired anger can boil over into spontaneous, nationwide rallies. On Sept. 12, 2009, more than 100,000 people marched on Washington to protest federal spending and the growth of government — many carrying nerdy, libertarian-inspired signs such as “I Am John Galt,” referring to the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”

Libertarians are emerging as a force within U.S. politics. While political leaders such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and media stars like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are icons to a “conservative base,” it is not yet clear what political leaders might represent these libertarian voters.

But with candidates working to capitalize on voter angst in the 2010 midterms, there are sure to be many politicians angling to lead this libertarian vote.

Arizona passes tough illegal immigration law

(Reuters) - Arizona lawmakers passed a controversial immigration bill on Monday requiring police in the state that borders Mexico to determine if people are in the United States illegally, a measure critics say is open to racial profiling.

U.S.

Lawmakers in the Arizona Senate voted 17 to 11 to approve the bill, widely regarded as the toughest measure yet taken by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration.

The state's House of Representatives approved the measure last week. Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, has five days to veto the bill or sign it into law.

Immigration is a bitterly fought issue in the United States, where some 10.8 million illegal immigrants live and work in the shadows, although it has been eclipsed in recent months by a healthcare overhaul and concern over the economy.

The law requires state and local police to determine the status of people if there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are illegal immigrants and to arrest people who are unable to provide documentation proving they are in the country legally.

It also makes it a crime to transport someone who is an illegal immigrant and to hire day laborers off the street.

"I believe handcuffs are a wonderful tool when they're on the right people," said Russell Pearce, the Republican state senator who wrote the bill.

Brussels Declares Vacation Time a Human Right

An overseas holiday used to be thought of as a reward for a year's hard work. Now Brussels has declared that tourism is a human right and pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidized by the taxpayer.

Under the scheme, British pensioners could be given cut-price trips to Spain, while Greek teenagers could be taken around disused mills in Manchester to experience the cultural diversity of Europe.

The idea for the subsidized tours is the brainchild of Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, who was appointed by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.

The scheme, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is intended to promote a sense of pride in European culture, bridge the north-south divide in the continent and prop up resorts in their off-season.

Tajani, who unveiled his plan last week at a ministerial conference in Madrid, believes the days when holidays were a luxury have gone. "Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life," he said.