RadioActive with Steve Mitton: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Taking back Constitution piece by piece

It is an immutable fact that the Constitution is the law of the land, but the law of the land should not be presumed to be immutable.

It isn’t.

No artifact of the human mind can be maintained intact like a formalin-preserved insect on a pin. No matter how much comfort it would give us to have predictability and certainty in our law, the elements of human curiosity and cussedness would always give rise to unpredictability and chaos.

This introduces the possibility of improvement, whether through design or through accident, but it also raises the spectre of decline, whether through stupidity or sabotage.

Improvements have come in the form of amendments that accomplished the abolition of slavery and giving women the right to vote. Those were both long overdue by the time they passed.

Obama, Democrats got 88 percent of 2008 contributions by TV network execs, writers, reporters

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

Disclosure of the heavily Democratic contributions by influential employees of the three major broadcast networks follows on the heels of controversy last week when it was learned that media baron Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. contributed $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.

Obama Wants Change to Allow Thousands of Illegals to Stay in US

PHOENIX – A shake-up in immigration policy may lead to deportation proceedings being dropped for thousands of aliens who entered the United States illegally but are applying to stay in the country, officials said on Friday.

They said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) seeks to end deportation proceedings against detained illegal immigrants who have applications pending to become legal U.S. residents, if agents determine they have no criminal history and do not present a security threat.

The policy shift emerged from an internal memorandum ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton sent last week to the agency's principal legal adviser and a director of enforcement and removal operations.

The memo was published by the New York Times on Friday and confirmed to Reuters by officials.

Destroying the Notion of Good and Evil: the Core of the Homosexual Offensive and Justice Walker’s Prop 8 Ruling

Justice Vaughn Walker’s ruling that California’s Prop 8 amendment—declaring marriage to be between a man and a woman—is unconstitutional is a serious challenge to the results of victorious referenda in 31 American states and an important step in the ongoing Cultural War against Christianity. Consequently, its analysis is important for all who stand for traditional marriage and the natural moral law.

Same-Sex “Marriage” is Not the Ultimate Goal of the Homosexual Lobby
First of all, we should take note how Judge Walker’s ruling reveals how wrong we are to believe that the homosexual movement will be content and disband, once it imposes same-sex “marriage” on the nation.

The movement will neither stop nor be content, just as it was not satisfied in those states where it secured legalization of “domestic partnerships” and “civil unions.” Once the notion of the ultimate purpose of the sexual act and marriage is destroyed, a breach is opened through which all the demands of the so-called “sexual minorities” come charging through.

Morgan Stanley Says Government Defaults Inevitable

Investors face defaults on government bonds given the burden of aging populations and the difficulty of increasing tax revenue, according to a Morgan Stanley executive director.

“Governments will impose a loss on some of their stakeholders,” Arnaud Mares in the firm’s London office wrote in a research report today. “The question is not whether they will renege on their promises, but rather upon which of their promises they will renege, and what form this default will take.” The sovereign-debt crisis is global “and it is not over,” he wrote.

Rather than miss principal and interest payments, governments may choose a “soft” default in which they pay back debts with devalued currencies resulting from faster inflation or force creditors to take lower returns, Mares said in an interview.

Borrowing costs for so-called peripheral euro-region nations from Greece to Ireland surged today, resuming their ascent on concern that governments won’t be able to cut their budget deficits. Standard & Poor’s lowered Ireland’s credit rating yesterday on the rising cost of supporting nationalized banks.

Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession: Rosenberg

Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression, Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg said Tuesday.

Writing in his daily briefing to investors, Rosenberg said the Great Depression also had its high points, with a series of positive GDP reports and sharp stock market gains.

But then as now, those signs of recovery were unsustainable and only provided a false sense of stability, said Rosenberg.

Rosenberg calls current economic conditions "a depression, and not just some garden-variety recession," and notes that any good news both during the initial 1929-33 recession and the one that began in 2008 triggered "euphoric response."

"Such is human nature and nobody can be blamed for trying to be optimistic; however, in the money management business, we have a fiduciary responsibility to be as realistic as possible about the outlook for the economy and the market at all times," he said.

The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

The Real Radio Hatemongers

The so-called “news” media have spent much of the past two decades demonizing the rhetoric of conservative radio talk show hosts as mean-spirited, divisive or a menace to civil discourse. But these same journalists — who gleefully castigate Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and other conservatives — are silent about the vile and vicious rhetoric that spews from the Left’s leading radio talk show hosts.

Since late 2007, the Media Research Center has collected numerous examples of the outrageousness of left-wing radio hosts. And, unlike the Left — which attempted to smear Rush Limbaugh with phony quotes — readers can find an audio or video of every one of these quotes posted at our Web site: www.MRC.org.

This report includes examples of over-the-top rhetoric from left-wing hosts Mike Malloy, Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, Ron Reagan, Jr., Ed Schultz and Montel Williams, all of whom currently or at one time broadcast to a national audience on either the Air America network or via XM and/or Sirius satellite radio. Among the lowlights:

The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History

There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama's stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that's a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent). Only one third of either political leaning thinks government policies have done a great deal or a fair amount for the poor.

There is another instinctive conclusion among the American people. It is that the national deficit, and the debts we have accumulated, are of critical political importance. On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to describe; it is hard to describe an elephant, but you know one when you see one. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable.

Who could be surprised since millions of voters have discovered that for themselves? As one realizes the morning after the night before, there is an unavoidable penalty for excess. It is unnerving to wake up and learn that you have a mortgage on your home that exceeds the value of the property. Or, and too often both, you have a credit card line that you cannot repay and the issuer has you on the rack for ever bigger compound interest on the debt. The lesson has been well and truly learned that debt catches up with you. Millions understand that they are just going to have to find a way to live within their means—and then still eke out some savings to pay down debt. And there are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job, so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?

All for the love of Tajima cows

When you hear the term, "Kobe beef," a few things are likely to come to mind: the velvety, fatty richness of the meat, the extraordinarily high price of a steak and the lavish lifestyle of the cattle. The pampering these cows receive is renowned and the image of beer-chugging bovines has been seared into the popular imagination.

Sirloin steaks from Nakanishi's farm show the fat-marbling that Kobe beef is famous. YOSHIMITSU SOTOIKE PHOTO

But it turns out that the imagination is where such tales belong. So says Yoshinori Nakanishi, a Kobe cattle farmer who's been in the business for nearly 40 years. "Neither I nor any beef farmer I know would ever dream of giving cows beer," he says.

Nakanishi, 56, explains that what Kobe beef really comes down to is love for the highly sensitive creatures, proper care and feeding them the right blend of grains and grass. The rest is taken care of by nature, which does a fine job of turning out a meat whose level of quality is in the stratosphere.

A relative newcomer to Japanese cuisine, beef didn't become part of the diet until a little over 100 years ago. Till then, cows native to Japan, called wagyu, had been used only as work cattle. Of wagyu's four varieties, the one that's risen to international stardom because of Kobe beef is Tajima, which belongs to the Kuroge Wagyu (Japanese Black) breed, hailing from Hyogo Prefecture. Yet there's always been a fair amount of confusion about what exactly Kobe beef is.

Cutbacks force police to curtail calls for some crimes

Budget cuts are forcing police around the country to stop responding to fraud, burglary and theft calls as officers focus limited resources on violent crime.

Cutbacks in such places as Oakland, Tulsa and Norton, Mass. have forced police to tell residents to file their own reports — online or in writing — for break-ins and other lesser crimes.

"If you come home to find your house burglarized and you call, we're not coming," said Oakland Police spokeswoman Holly Joshi. The city laid off 80 officers from its force of 687 last month and the department can't respond to burglary, vandalism, and identity theft. "It's amazing. It's a big change for us."

The apparent anti-Muslim assault on a New York city cabbie by a man shouting “Assalamu Alaikum. Consider this a checkpoint" produced an immediate roun

The City of Bell has become the poster child for bad government. Exorbitant salaries, lavish pension benefits, a looming default on $35 million in city bonds, and illegal property taxes have all come to light recently. And as a result, taxpayers across California are focusing new scrutiny on their own local officials.

The biggest long-term threat to taxpayers and budgets is the pension crisis. Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo was raking in a salary of nearly $800,000, and a total compensation package of more than $1.5 million that included benefits such as 28 weeks worth of vacation and sick time. That puts taxpayers on the hook for over $600,000 a year for Rizzo’s pension—for the rest of his life—when he retires.

The Bell scandal is a microcosm of a new class struggle—in California and across the nation—between taxpayers and government employees. Government employees have become the new privileged class.

Alleged anti-Muslim attacker works at pro-Park51 group

The apparent anti-Muslim assault on a New York city cabbie by a man shouting “Assalamu Alaikum. Consider this a checkpoint" produced an immediate round of recriminations over its connection to opposition to a New York Islamic Center and an apparent rising tide of Islamophobia.

But as often at the intersection of politics and violent crime, the story doesn't appear to fit any easy stereotype: The alleged assailant, Michael Enright, is — according to his Facebook profile and the website of the left-leaning media organization Intersections International — a student at the School of Visual Arts and a volunteer for Intersections, which recently produced a statement of support for the Park51 project and is funded by the mainstream, liberal Collegiate Church of New York.

Intersections did not respond to two messages, and the group does not appear to be picking up the phone. Enright did not respond to a message through his Facebook account.

From an Actual Moderate Muslim, a Memo to the MSM on Imam Rauf

As I write, nearly two thousand protesters are gathered outside the location of the future mosque — some having stood in the rain for hours — providing a clear indication that the campaign to stop this project is intensifying. The pollsters tell us that nearly 70 percent of all Americans oppose the structure, yet its sponsors say the edifice will somehow promote “interfaith dialogue” and “mutual understanding.” They must certainly realize at this stage in the process that the mosque will do no such thing, but will instead act as a permanent provocation to a huge segment of Americans who deem it completely inappropriate — if not outright sacrilege.

Let us remember that the project organizers themselves created this controversy by announcing that the groundbreaking would take place on the ten-year anniversary of the attack, and that the exact site was selected because of its proximity to Ground Zero. Given that fact, the current media meme that this is not a “Ground Zero mosque” is dishonest spin.

Even more dishonest — and dangerous to this country — is the outrageously biased work in Time, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Newsweek, and on NPR, PBS, MSNBC and CNN that has consistently portrayed popular opposition to this mosque and several other mosques around the country as evidence of bigotry and so-called “Islamophobia.” This is mass libel by these media institutions.

The mainstream media has deliberately ignored the fact that there is legitimate basis for fear of mosques — as it is a demonstrable fact that mosques and Muslims have been disproportionately connected to terrorism in this country and around the world, a fact that the media won’t report. Moreover, in the examples of opposition to specific mosques chosen by the media as evidence of popular “bigotry,” the media has selectively ignored the openly available evidence showing unambiguously that these mosques or their officials are connected to or supportive of the radical Muslim Brotherhood (the parent of al-Qaeda), Hamas, and other radical Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

Why have these media institutions not investigated these ties? Why does the media investigate American charities that support settlements in the West Bank, but refuse to investigate the militant and terrorist ties to mosques and Islamic groups here at home?

Open Thread: America Is Becoming The Soviet Union Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/08/22/open-thread-america-becoming-sovie

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: America is becoming the Soviet Union!

Is he right?

The Point of No Return

The warnings of Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln have never been more relevant.

How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but also very different values and ways of governing?

Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.

Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the institutions set up by the Constitution are enough to ensure the continuance of a free, self-governing nation. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what members of the Constitutional Convention were creating, he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

U.S. Saw Drill Ban Killing Many Jobs

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn't trust the industry's safety equipment and the government's own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region's economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.

Mexican Police Help Murder Their Own Mayor

The murder scarred a part of Mexico that was supposed to be reasonably safe from violence and crime. Santiago is a picturesque town of waterfalls, colonial churches and holiday homes for the rich. Its mayor Edelmiro Cavazos was a blue-eyed 38-year old, educated in the United States. But it seems that no corner of the country is shielded from the relentless rain of drug-related bloodshed.

The killers came for Mayor Cavazos in the early hours of Aug. 16 when seven SUV's rolled up and men in police uniforms descended on his palatial home. Servants stood back terrified, as their boss was forced away at gunpoint. On Aug. 18, his corpse was dumped on a nearby road. There was a mercy of sorts in the manner of his killing - shot dead with two bullets in the head and one in the chest, and spared the mutilation and rape inflicted on so many other victims. The following day, hundreds of residents wept over his coffin in Santiago's central plaza, lining the stairs up to the church with candles and holding signs calling for peace. (See pictures of Culiac[a {a}]n, the home of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry.)

Then on Aug. 20, more disturbing news broke. State agents arrested six of the mayor's own police officers and said they confessed to involvement in the murder. The suspects had been working for a drug cartel that is fighting a bloody turf war with its rival throughout northeast Mexico, state prosecutors said. Another four alleged gunmen were arrested with automatic rifles and grenade launchers in their possession and accused of being involved in the plot. The revelation had very concerning implications: in Mexico's drug war, officials are now killing officials.

When David Plouffe, President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign manager, wrote recently that his former boss was "not concerned with his re-election", there was predictable scepticism.

After all, it has long been a truism that every politician wants to cling to power and a reality that presidential campaigns are planned years in advance. Pronouncements about not looking at polls and concentrating on getting things done are, moreover, standard fare from poll-driven, election-obsessed politicians and their apparatchiks.

In this case, however, Plouffe may inadvertently be onto something. Almost everything Obama does these days suggests that he doesn't care much about being re-elected. Strange as it might seem, perhaps he wants to be a one-term president.

Obama was elected in 2008 at an extraordinary moment in American politics. Suddenly, this charismatic figure, elected to the Senate without serious opposition in 2004 and without any executive experience, was catapulted into the White House.

Used Car Prices Up As Much as 30%

If buying a used car is among your cost-cutting measures...be prepared to pay up to 30-percent more than you did last year.

It is a simple case of supply and demand.

Trouble is...there are fewer used cars.

The cash-for-clunkers program took a bunch off the market.

Plus, Edmunds Senior Editor Bill Visnick says 5-million fewer new cars were sold last year...which pares down the used car supply even more.

Yes Folks, Hindenburg Omen Tripped Again

The Hindenburg Omen reared its ugly head late last week, signaling more doom and gloom as stocks plod along amid the dog days of summer.

The Omen, a technical indicator which uses a plethora of data to foreshadow a stock-market crash, was tripped again on Friday, marking the second time since Aug. 12 it has occurred. (It also came close on Thursday, but one of its criteria fell short.)

The latest trigger has prompted the Omen’s creator, Jim Miekka, to exit the market. “I’m taking it seriously and I’m fully out of the market now,” Miekka, a blind mathematician, said in a telephone interview from his home in Surry, Maine. “I would’ve probably stayed in until the beginning of September,” depending on how the indicators varied. “That was my basic plan, until the Hindenburg came along.”

The Omen has been behind every market crash since 1987, but significant stock-market declines have followed only 25% of the time. So there’s a high likelihood that the Omen could be nothing more than a false signal.

But that isn’t stopping Miekka from taking any chances, especially as September, typically the market’s worst-performing month, sits only one week away.

Iraq: The War That Broke Us -- Not

The Iraq War ends this month. The last combat brigade left August 19. Operation Iraqi Freedom, which began in 2003, will end August 31. September 1 marks the beginning of Operation New Dawn. Now that it's over, what did the Iraq War cost?

Here are examples of what some people had been saying about Iraq War costs.

"It was under Mr Bush that the deficit spiralled out of control as we fought an unnecessary and endless $3,000bn war in Iraq..."
- James Carville, the Financial Times.

"The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home."
- Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Washington Post.

"First, the facts. Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars..."
- Christopher Hayes, The Nation.

The correct answer to my question, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is $709 billion. The Iraq War cost $709 billion. Why Carville, Bilmes, and Nobel-winning economist Stiglitz thought the answer was $3 trillion is anybody's guess. But what's a 323% error among friends?

The CBO breaks that cost down over the eight calendar years of 2003-2010. Below is a picture of federal deficits over those years with and without Iraq War spending.

Rauf: a moderate?

In the Ground Zero mosque debate, de fenders of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf have pointed out that in 2003 the FBI brought him in to help train its agents -- so how radical could he be?

The first problem is that Rauf's "help" turned out to be worse than worthless. The bigger problem is that the FBI has a rotten record when it comes to identifying moderate Muslims -- as opposed to ones who are happy to feed non-Muslims the pabulum they're willing to swallow.

Start with Rauf and the FBI. He was brought into the New York field office to give at least four sessions of sensitivity training.

Questionable emissary: The State Department trusted Feisal Abdul Rauf (center) and sent him to the Arab Gulf last week as a goodwill ambassador, but the record raises doubts.

Speaking for about two hours each time, "he gave an overview of Islamic culture and some of the differences between what fundamentalist terrorist groups say are the teachings of the Koran and what he believes, as a student of religion, the Koran actually says," FBI New York office spokesman James Margolin told me back then.

For example, Rauf asserted that the Koran "certainly doesn't counsel terrorism, murder or mayhem," Margolin says. And he said terrorists have misinterpreted jihad to mean violent, or armed, struggle against nonbelievers. Rauf assured agents it means internal struggle.

Now, it's tricky for outsiders to say what the Koran "really" says. But Rauf's claim definitely isn't mainstream. Respected Koranic scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, for example, confirms in his venerable translation and interpretation of the Muslim holy text that jihad means advancing Islam, including by physically fighting Islam's enemies.

Yes, Rauf's mistaken interpretation matters: For starters, the false belief that terrorists have a wildly different reading of the Koran than most Muslims would make it far harder for FBI agents to understand the subtle, step-by-step radicalization process -- a process not well described by US law enforcement until the NYPD's landmark 2007 report, "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat."

Editorial: Private union pensions the next bailout?

For years another potential multibillion fiscal catastrophe has been brewing, obscured by higher-profile storms created by taxpayer bailouts of Detroit and Wall Street and the looming crash of underfunded public employee pension plans.

For the first time, taxpayers may become responsible for the nongovernmental pension liabilities of union collective bargaining contracts in construction, trucking and other industries in which workers move from one employer to another. Some estimate that these multiemployer pensions are $165 billion short of committed obligations for paying retirees' defined benefits.

It's not a new problem, but it has been under the radar for years as it's worsened. In 2004, the libertarian Cato Institute's Richard A. Ippolito warned that underfunded private-sector pension funds increased the likelihood of a taxpayer bailout.

Defined-benefit pension plans arguably suffer more than 401(k)-type funds from stock market losses and the prolonged recession because the amounts they must pay retirees can't be reduced. Moreover, the federal program to back private pensions, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., has its own $21 billion deficit.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

TIME Poll: Majority Oppose Mosque, Many Distrust Muslims

Opponents of the planned Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan have public opinion firmly in their corner. According to a new TIME poll, 61% of respondents oppose the construction of the Park51/Cordoba House project, compared with 26% who support it. More than 70% concur with the premise that proceeding with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Opposition to the project appears to derive largely from the conviction that the proposed site of the project — just two blocks from Ground Zero, in a building that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory outlet — is so close to "hallowed ground," as President Obama put it.

Yet the survey also revealed that many Americans harbor lingering animosity toward Muslims. Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim. In all, just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim. (See TIME's photo-essay "Muslim in America.")

If Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012, she'll have the building blocks of a coalition that extends beyond her star power - and even Democrats have taken notice.

From her list of endorsements, to her Mama Grizzlies' campaign-style video in July, to her Facebook message Wednesday commemorating the 90th anniversary of women's suffrage, Palin is courting female voters, the so-called "soccer moms" that have swung to Democrats in recent campaign cycles. The former Alaska governor is already eliciting responses from Democrats, who, through a series of initiatives this week, revealed some fear that she might be making an impact.

On Tuesday, EMILY's List launched a new effort, "Sarah Doesn't Speak for Me." A press release announcing the launch warned, "Sarah Palin has predicted a rising tide of mothers and women voters will support her so-called ‘Mama Grizzly' candidates. Today, we call upon women - and men! - to let their voices be heard and to reject Palin's reactionary candidates and backward-looking agenda. We're asking Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans who have no home - to join us in our new campaign." On the same day, the Democratic National Committee blasted an e-mail to supporters noting the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and reminding voters all that Democratic lawmakers have contributed to the women's movement.

Why is Illinois so often corrupt?

If Rod Blagojevich serves jail time, he will be the fourth Illinois governor since 1960 to be sent to prison on corruption charges. Why are officials from Illinois and its largest city, Chicago, so often shady?

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Click to play

Rod Blagojevich: "I've told the truth from the very beginning"

Political corruption and Chicago go together like fashion and Milan or surfers and Sydney: the association is deep, and it has shaped the city.

Most Illinois historians date the corruption back to 1869, when three county commissioners were convicted of fraudulently awarding a contract to paint City Hall with expensive long-lasting paint.

The contractor instead used whitewash, and split the handsome price difference with the three commissioners.

And then it rained. Suddenly the gleaming white City Hall didn't look so spiffy.

Judging by the Blagojevich trial, although he was convicted on only one of 24 charges, not all that much has changed in a century.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad unveils new 'ambassador of death' unmanned drone bomber

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday inaugurated the country's first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an "ambassador of death" to Iran's enemies.

The 4-meter-long drone aircraft can carry up to four cruise missiles and will have a range of 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), according to a state TV report — not far enough to reach archenemy Israel.

"The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship," said Ahmadinejad at the inauguration ceremony, which fell on the country's national day for its defense industries.

Saving: The Most Fundamental Element of Wealth

Everything in wealth management begins with savings. All wealth comes from producing more than you consume. Unfortunately, most Americans are better at consuming than producing.

Have you ever met people who always have enough money to do what they want? Their peace of mind and confidence is no accident. Nor is it luck. It comes by carefully planning their spending and savings. They deny themselves some desires now in order to enjoy financial security later.

The character Mr. Micawber from Charles Dickens’s novel “David Copperfield” offered a kernel of wisdom learned the hard way, now popularly known as the Micawber principle. He said (numbers updated), “Annual income $50,000, annual expenditure $48,750, result happiness. Annual income $50,000, annual expenditure $51,250, result misery.”

Surplus income is wealth. Deferred consumption is the textbook definition of wealth, which can be used as a capital investment to produce additional wealth. Although by itself money certainly does not guarantee happiness, wealth can enable us to accomplish many goals in life. Without such a surplus we experience Micawber’s misery.

Mr. Micawber is memorable for trusting that “something would turn up” to solve his financial problems. Americans are perennial Micawbers. The savings rate in America is abysmally low, and those who do try to acquire wealth are chastised by a punitive tax code. Micawberism, in contrast, has been rewarded so much, it is considered patriotic to shop until you drop simply to boost the economy.

Unfortunately, economics doesn’t really work that way.

Most families who become mired in credit card debt do so because they fail to plan for emergencies. These unexpected events swamp their cash flow, and they have to resort to plastic. But cars break down. Roofs leak. And children need braces. We recommend saving 10% of your take-home pay just to meet these unanticipated expenses.

Saving fuels the financial engine that makes the rest of wealth management possible. Whatever your life goals, saving is most likely required to achieve them.

Posted: This Fishing Hole Now Under Federal Jurisdiction

When I was a kid long, long ago, before time began, or anyone had thought of why time ought to begin, or what it might be good for, I lived in rural King George County, Virginia. The county bordered on the Potomac River and was mostly woods. Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, on which my family lived, sloped down to Machodoc Creek, perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide.

Things were looser then. When I wanted to go shooting, I put my rifle, a nice .22 Marlin with a ten-power Weaver, on my shoulder and walked out the main gate. At the country store outside the gate I’d buy a couple of boxes of long rifles, no questions asked, and away my co-conspirator Rusty and I went to some field or swamp to murder beer cans.

Today if a kid of fifteen tried it, six squad cars and a SWAT team (in all likelihood literally) would show up with sirens yowling, the kid’s parents would be jailed, the store closed and its proprietors imprisoned, and the kid subjected to compulsory psychiatric examination. Times change.

In King George if a buddy and I wanted to go swimming, we might go to the boat dock, which was for public use, and jump in. We did this by day or night. Almost never were there other people around, certainly no lifeguard. Or we might take my canoe, bought with paper-route money, and paddle out into the nighttime water and glory in being young and free and jumping overboard to swim. No one thought anything of it. It was what kids did.

Today, unsupervised swimming is everywhere forbidden. Worse, swimming at night, hundreds of yards from shore. In a canoe without floation devices approved by the Coast Guard. No supervising adult? No proof of having taken a governmentally approved course in how to paddle a canoe? Impossible in these over-protected, vindictively mommified times.

Israel's Netanyahu Poised to Take Out Iran's Nuclear Sites

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's belief that stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to "put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn't defend himself — a perfect victim."

Today's Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.

After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, "the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people." But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that "Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense."

nion Member Fired by Union for… Organizing a Union?

Now, this story is a bit confusing (he says tongue in cheek). We have our friend Mr. Jim Callaghan who works — or used to work, anyway — for the United Federation of Teachers, America’s biggest teachers union. Yet, this happy union organizer was fired by the UFT this week. Why was he fired? Because he was organizing a union.

Ah, but it’s not as cut and dried as it seems because Mr. Callaghan wasn’t just organizing any old union, he was trying to organize a new union comprised of the nonunion workers at the UFT headquarters.

So let’s get this straight. Mr. Callaghan was a union member working for the union at its headquarters and he was fired for trying to organize the nonunion workers that work at the union headquarters?

In the real world — one not connected with Democrats or unions — we call that hypocrisy.

Callaghan says he’s never gotten any bad reviews and was given no notice or reasons for his firing. But he notes that his firing did occur only two months after he informed his bosses that he was trying to help the nonunion workers organize their own little union.

Cash strapped park officials in China are putting the wind up lazy bums who loaf on their benches for too long - by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer.

If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat.

Park bosses got the idea from an art installation in Germany where sculptor Fabian Brunsing created a similar bench as a protest against the commercialisation of modern life.

CIA forms new center to combat nukes, WMDs

WASHINGTON (AP) - The CIA is opening a counterproliferation center to combat the spread of dangerous weapons and technology, a move that comes as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new nuclear power plant.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the new unit would place CIA operators side by side with the agency's analysts to brainstorm plans to "confront the threat of weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical and biological."

The center would formalize the collaboration between the agency's analysts and operators, a close working relationship that CIA spokesman George Little said already has yielded intelligence successes.

Little cited their work in last year's revelation of the "discovery of the Syrian covert nuclear reactor and Iran's undeclared uranium enrichment facility near Qom." That Iranian city is the ideological center of Iran's Shiite rulers.

Paul Brannan, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security, said another CIA success was the slowing down of Iran's nuclear centrifuge operations at Natanz. The agency, he said, sneaked "faulty parts into Iran's nuclear supply chain."

That operation, Brannan said, "is an example of where you'd need both analysts to tell you what type of parts would Iran need that you could inject, and the operations side to work with trading companies to try to get the parts in there."

The CIA's new center goes into effect just as Iran's Bushehr power plant gets stocked with fuel rods provided by Russia. Uranium fuel will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Saturday, beginning a process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities, Russian and Iranian officials said.

Brannan said the Bushehr site is not a proliferation threat since Iran does not have the ability to reprocess the spent fuel into nuclear weapons-grade material.

How Obama Is Locking Up Our Land

Have you heard of the "Great Outdoors Initiative"? Chances are, you haven't. But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land. It's another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life.

In April, President Obama issued a memorandum outlining his "21st century strategy for America's great outdoors." It was addressed to the Interior Secretary, the Agriculture Secretary, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The memo calls on the officials to conduct "listening and learning sessions" with the public to "identify the places that mean the most to Americans, and leverage the support of the Federal Government" to "protect" outdoor spaces. Eighteen of 25 planned sessions have already been held. But there's much more to the agenda than simply "reconnecting Americans to nature."

The federal government, as the memo boasted, is the nation's "largest land manager." It already owns roughly one of every three acres in the United States. This is apparently not enough. At a "listening session" in New Hampshire last week, government bureaucrats trained their sights on millions of private forest land throughout the New England region. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack crusaded for "the need for additional attention to the Land and Water Conservation Fund -- and the need to promptly support full funding of that fund."

The Tax Cut We Can Afford

UNLESS Congress and President Obama act soon, Americans’ taxes will increase in 2011, when the cuts enacted under President George W. Bush are due to expire. Almost everyone agrees that this makes little sense given the economy’s fragility. But consensus ends there. The president supports permanently extending the current tax rates for all except the highest-income households, while Congressional Republicans want the entire basket of cuts to be made permanent. The prudent middle ground would be to forestall any tax increases in 2011 and to phase in higher rates on upper-income households in 2012, when the economy will be on firmer ground.

The president’s plan would be taking an unnecessary gamble with the struggling recovery. Businesses have only recently begun to add jobs, and they appear to be a long way from hiring fast enough to reduce unemployment. Even under the best of circumstances, the unemployment rate will remain near 10 percent well into next year. The high rate of joblessness has cast a shadow on the collective psyche that will only worsen with higher taxes, raising the already uncomfortably high odds that the economy will suffer a double-dip recession.

In most times, raising taxes on the wealthy by such a modest amount has had little impact on the economy. But these aren’t most times. The well-to-do appear unusually sensitive to changes in their finances, probably because their nest eggs are significantly smaller with the drop in stock and housing prices. Only the top 3 percent of households would have to pay higher taxes if the president got his way, but this rarefied group currently accounts for a fourth of consumer spending. If they pull back, even a bit, the recovery could be derailed.

Would a Payroll Tax Holiday Stimulate the Lame Duck?

The White House is stuck.

There's no reason for consumer spending to grow now, demand for financial instruments is high, businesses won't lend, the official unemployment rate remains short of 10 percent, and the White House seems to have run out of big ideas. After November, Democrats and Republicans will debate the wisdom of extending the Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthy. But no other major policy proposals are percolating. The economy is job one, but the tool box is empty.

The administration worries that economic growth will remain anemic for years but feels boxed in by a political atmosphere that considers government spending to be toxic. The Federal Reserve acted tepidly this week, recognizing that the economy needs more money but that enough Fed governors remain worried about rapid inflation to prevent any drastic action by the monetary policy body. There will be no large Fed purchases of Treasury bonds or securities. As demand is further crimped by expectations turning to deflation, inflation of some sort is desperately needed.

Officials are dipping into already appropriated pools of money, like overflow from the TARP bailout, to expand programs aimed at fixing mortgages and keeping people from losing their homes. In the lame duck session, Democrats will try to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000, resulting in a tax increase for those earning more. But the market, and corporations, already expect these measures, and their hiring and employment forecasts aren't getting sunnier. Centrist Democratic money types believe that businesses won't begin to hire until policy-makers provide certainty about deficit reduction. President Obama's task force won't report its recommendations until the end of the year.

Jobbed In America

Jobs: Obamanomics has done more than just keep unemployment high during a modest recovery. It may also be keeping high joblessness permanent by raising the costs to businesses of hiring new workers.

July's 9.5% unemployment level was bad enough. But the real problem is that the private-sector jobs machine, which is usually going full tilt at this point in a recovery, now seems to be broken.

To many, it's becoming clear that if President Obama's radical job-killing agenda stays in place, job growth will be nonexistent.

One of America's great advantages has always been its flexible, private-sector labor markets. From 1985 to 2008, U.S. unemployment averaged 5.6%. For the six largest economies in the European Union, the average rate was 34% higher, at about 7.5%.

Yet many of those countries now have jobless rates lower than ours. Why? They've been dropping Keynesian stimulus as a strategy and moving more toward cutting spending and, in some cases, cutting taxes.

Federal Government is Lucrative "Industry"

The Bureau of Economic Analysis latest release of industry compensation levels shows that the average federal worker ranks up at the top along with employees in the finance and energy industries.

The BEA presents compensation data for 72 industries that span the U.S. economy. Figure 1 shows the 20 industries with the highest levels of average compensation, which includes wages and benefits. It also shows the average for all U.S. private industries and the average for the industry with the lowest compensation. (The names of the industries have been simplified in some cases).

Federal civilian workers have the sixth highest average compensation of the 72 industries:

As yesterday’s post showed, federal employee compensation has exploded over the course of the decade. Figure 2 shows that this federal employee compensation growth has been the fifth highest of the 72 industries measured by the BEA:

American Taxpayer, Financial Jihadist

It is “financial jihad,” explained Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s sharia compass — and the man Feisal Rauf, the brains behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque, admires as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” It was 2002 and Qaradawi, who endorses suicide bombing and the targeting of American personnel operating in Islamic countries, was giving a lecture on the need to use the international financial system to support Islamist goals — like Hamas’s war to destroy Israel.

The financial jihad has now achieved its greatest coup so far: It has co-opted the U.S. government as a partner. In fact, if you would like to see a contributor to the jihad, have a look in the mirror. Thanks to the Obama administration, every one of us is complicit. The bailout bonanza made each of us an owner of American Insurance Group (AIG). Under the stewardship of its real CEO, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, AIG proudly runs the world’s most lavishly funded sharia-compliant insurance business — and it is desperately trying to convince a federal court in Michigan that no one should have a problem with that.

Sharia-compliant finance (SCF) is now a thriving American industry. Sharia is Islam’s authoritarian legal framework. It aspires to control not merely spiritual life but all aspects of society, including economic matters. The purpose of SCF is to advance that mission in two important ways.

CNSNews.com Even the Poor Are Abandoning Obama, According to Gallup Poll Data

In every week of his presidency until now, Barack Obama has enjoyed a majority approval rating in the Gallup Poll from people earning less than $2,000 per month. But that changed in the Gallup survey conducted from Aug. 2-8, when only 49 percent of Americans in that income bracket said they approve of the job Obama is doing.

This marks the first time since Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, when Americans in all four of the income brackets reported in Gallup’s weekly survey of presidential approval gave Obama less than 50 percent approval.

For the week of Aug. 2-Aug. 8, only 42 percent of Americans earning $7,500 per month or more said they approve of the job Obama is doing. Forty-four percent of those earning between $5,000 and $7,499 said they approve of the job he is doing. And forty-six percent of those earning between $2,000 and $4,999 said they approve of the job he is doing.

Click to play

Cloned meat - from lab to plate

Some of the cattle cloned to boost food production in the US have been created from the cells of dead animals, according to a US cloning company.

Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal's meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass.

US scientists are using a variety of techniques to assess which animals have exceptional qualities.

These attributes include meat quality, productivity or longevity.

“The notion behind what we are doing is to find that animal that created that great steak - and once we have it, we want to reproduce it”

End Quote Scott Simplot JR Simplot Company

These exceptional animals are cloned to be used as breeding stock, with the aim of raising the quality of herds on beef, dairy and pig farms in the US.

Israel has '8 days' to hit Iran nuclear site: Bolton

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

"Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network.

"So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days."

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, "Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor."

But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.

The heatwave has caused forest and peat fires across Russia

July 30, 2010

By Ashley Cleek

As Muscovites suffer record high temperatures this summer, a Russian political scientist has claimed the United States may be using climate-change weapons to alter the temperatures and crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries.

In a recent article, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote, "At the moment, climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and may be used to provoke droughts, erase crops, and induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries."

The article has been carried by publications throughout Russia, including "International Affairs," a journal published by the Foreign Ministry and by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

Chicago Congresswoman Brings Her Thugs To Townhall Meeting

If this wasn’t so serious, it would almost be funny. Illinois Congresswoman, Melissa Bean, hosted a public townhall meeting and brought her own thugs to act as the “Question Police.” Each time someone persistently asked a question, a large bald man would make his way across the room and stand threateningly over the person asking the question. Repeatedly the Congresswoman and her thugs insisted the cameras be turned off in the room- I’m sure to prevent exactly this reaction from the public. I’m so thrilled that her constituents in the audience refused to back down but I’d like to know who this thug is and who he works for…just to get his name out in public and be held accountable for his bullying. I guess this is Chicago-style politics in action

If anyone is interested in contacting her offices and leaving a direct but polite comment, feel free:

1701 East Woodfield Road, Suite200
Schaumburg, IL 60173
Phone: (847) 517-2927
Fax: (847) 517-2931

A Tea Party Manifesto

On Feb. 9, 2009, Mary Rakovich, a recently laid-off automotive engineer, set out for a convention center in Fort Myers, Fla. with protest signs, a cooler of water and the courage of her convictions. She felt compelled to act, having grown increasingly alarmed at the explosion of earmarks, bailouts and government spending in the waning years of the Bush administration. President Barack Obama, joined by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, was in town promoting his plan to spend a trillion dollars in borrowed money to "stimulate" the economy.

Mary didn't know it, but she was on the front lines of a grass-roots revolution that was brewing across the nation. More than 3,000 miles away, Keli Carender, a young Seattle school teacher and a member of a local comedy improv troupe, was feeling equally frustrated. She started to organize like-minded citizens. "Our nation's fiscal path is just not sustainable," she said. "You can't continue to spend money you don't have indefinitely."

View Full Image

Associated Press

People hold signs and wave flags during the "Uni-Tea" Tea Party rally.

Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos.

Mostly Free Is Partly Shackled

RALEIGH – If you believe that all human beings deserve individual freedom – either as a natural or God-given right or as a matter of practical necessity – then you can’t help but celebrate the advance of human freedom anywhere on the globe.

Such magnanimous feelings of celebration are consistent, however, with patriotic envy. As an American, I am more than a little envious – and frustrated – about the fact that the United States is no longer rated as one of the world’s freest countries.

For more than a decade, the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal have published the Index of Economic Freedom. It compares scores for 183 countries on 10 different dimensions of economic freedom: business, trade, fiscal policy, government spending, monetary policy, investment, financial policy, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor policy.

The scores on these 10 different dimensions are then combined to create the index. Countries scoring between 80 and 100 are considered “free.” Countries scoring between 70 and 79.9 are “partly free.” Scores between 60 and 60.9 earn the label “moderately free,” with 50-59.9 rated as “mostly unfree” and countries below that rated as “repressed.”

Few countries earn their way to “free” status. Until this year, the United States was one of them. But no longer. Driven in part by Washington’s worsening relative performance on spending and free trade, the U.S. scored a 78 in the 2010 ranking. With an 80.4, Canada ranked higher in economic freedom. As Terry Miller and Kim Holmes write in a July piece following up on the findings of the 2010 study, “the U.S. suffered the largest decline in economic freedom among the world’s 20 largest economies.”

U.S. judge bans planting of genetically engineered beets

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday banned the planting of genetically modified sugar beets engineered by Monsanto Co in a ruling that marks a major setback for the biotech giant.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled in 2009 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had approved Monsanto's genetically modified sugar beets without adequate environmental study.

Sugar beets account for over half of the nation's sugar supply. But conventional sugar beet seeds remain widely available and environmentalists filing suit said the judge's decision should not significantly affect sugar production.

White's decision on Friday to impose the ban did not apply to crops already planted or harvested. It stems from a lawsuit brought by environmentalists over Monsanto sugar beets engineered to be resistant to the weed-killer Roundup.

Roundup is also manufactured by Monsanto and was sold to farmers together with the genetically altered sugar beet seeds.

"It's a victory for farmers, for the environment and for the public," said George Kimbrell, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Food Safety, plaintiffs in the case.

Environmentalists have argued that the "Roundup Ready" crops have increased the use of herbicides and herbicide- resistant weeds.

Chamber economist: Obama tax increase would be 'bullet in the head' of recovery

U.S. Chamber of Commerce economist Martin Regalia on Monday said the tax increases advocated by President Obama would essentially kill any chance for an economic rebound.

"That's what you're suggesting, is a corporate bullet in the head," Regalia said. "That is going to be a bullet in the head for an awful lot of people that are going to be laid off and an awful lot of people who are hoping to get their jobs back."

Regalia made the comment at an American Petroleum Institute event on the tax increases proposed by the Obama administration. Much of the discussion focused on tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush that are slated to expire at the end of the year.

Obama has suggested continuing the breaks that benefit the middle class and most small businesses while allowing tax cuts for wealthier entities to expire. Regalia said that plan will fail to boost economic demand.

"The thing [the administration] sees the least about the economy are the synergies," he said. "Many of these small businesses sell into big business. ... Saying 'I'm going to stimulate the small part of the economy and not the big part of the economy' is a fool's error. It's almost impossible to do."

Rediscovering "The Key of Liberty" And The Hand That Turns It

It is a crucial time in American history. Deep political and philosophical differences divide

the fabric of American society, threatening the stability of the nation. The federal

government is increasingly pitted against its own member states. The foundational rights

of individual freedom progressively become subordinate to unclear, untested federal

regulation. And the monetary system upon which commerce is reliant reveals itself as

flawed, bereft of moral strength.

At the root of the crisis is a dispute over the Founders’ intent for our federal

Constitution and the scope of its government. But it is not 2010 I’m talking about; it is

1798. And the common sense belief of one Massachusetts patriot then can teach us a great

deal about how to navigate a similar crisis now.

William Manning (1747–1814) was a semiliterate farmer who wrote in his 1798

treatise The Key of Liberty that “when the war began betwen Brittan & Amarica I was in the

prime of Life & highly taken up with Liberty & a free Government. I See almost the first

blood that was shed in Concord fite & scores of men dead, dying & wounded in the Cause of

Libberty, which caused serious sencations in my mind.”

EDITORIAL: Tax dollars to build mosques

The State Department is sending Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf - the mastermind of the Ground Zero Mosque - on a trip through the Middle East to foster "greater understanding" about Islam and Muslim communities in the United States. However, important questions are being raised about whether this is simply a taxpayer-funded fundraising jaunt to underwrite his reviled project, which is moving ahead in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Rauf is scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar, the usual stops for Gulf-based fundraising. The State Department defends the five-country tour saying that Mr. Rauf is "a distinguished Muslim cleric," but surely the government could find another such figure in the United States who is not seeking millions of dollars to fund a construction project that has so strongly divided America.

By funding the trip so soon after New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission gave the go-ahead to demolish the building on the proposed mosque site, the State Department is creating the appearance that the U.S. government is facilitating the construction of this shameful structure. It gives Mr. Rauf not only access but imprimatur to gather up foreign cash. And because Mr. Rauf has refused to reveal how he plans to finance his costly venture, the American public is left with the impression it will be a wholly foreign enterprise. This contradicts the argument that a mosque is needed in that part of New York City to provide services for a burgeoning Muslim population. If so many people need the mosque so badly, presumably they could figure out a way to pay for it themselves.

Joseph Silverman/The Washington Times The same H Street block in the District's Northeast, seen Tuesday (below), has been converted into a parking lot. The neighborhood was a major social hub before the riots, but struggled with crime and poverty for subsequent decades.

There is plenty blame to go around for the financial crash. Yet, there is a distinct odor of the shadowy Cloward-Piven strategy as the taproot of abusive practices that triggered the crisis. The strategy's goal is to bring about the fall of capitalism by overloading and undermining government bureaucracy.

Its supporting tactics include flooding government with impossible demands until it slowly cranks to a stop; overloading electoral systems with successive tidal waves of new voters, many of them bogus; shaking down banks, politicians in Congress, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for affirmative-action borrowing; and, now, pulling down the national financial system by demanding exotic, subprime mortgages for low-income Americans with little hope of repaying their loans. These toxic mortgages are an important source of the foul smell engulfing the entire financial bailout.

Developed in the mid-1960s by two Columbia University sociologists, Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, much of their strategy was drawn from Saul Alinsky, Chicago's notorious revolutionary Marxist community organizer. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) succeeded the National Welfare Rights Organization in the execution of the Cloward-Piven grand tactics of using the poor as cannon fodder to tear down the capitalist system. It was low-income, mostly black and Hispanic people, who were used by ACORN guerrillas to take subprime toxic mortgages.

From Hollywood: to Hitler with love (Stalin, too)

Why am I not surprised that a leading Hollywood director is bemoaning poor, misunderstood Adolf's place in history?

Oliver Stone says his upcoming Showtime documentary series Secret History of America will put the 20th century's star butchers Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin "in context."

Hitler and Stalin

That Hollywood would glorify Stalin is hardly a shock to anyone. If you go back to many Cold War-era movies, you will find tortured excuses — even fulsome praise — for Mother Russia.

Only Nazi Germany was allowed to appear on the screen as evil incarnate. For decades, Hitler has been the perfect role model as villain — right out of "central casting." The highest-priced Hollywood talent scout could not have given the movie moguls a better gift. Funny mustache, silly goose-step, the "Sieg Heil" salutes, a "Master Race" theory, his evil shouting speeches. And that's before we even learned about the gas chambers and the Holocaust.

Stalin was smarter about his evil. He murdered millions — but — he did not shout himself hoarse in public. He kept his mouth shut, and just did it. A good Hollywood producer can't do as much with that. Hitler, by contrast, was in the world's face as he committed mass murder.

While Der Fuehrer's endless oratory was a worldwide turnoff, Stalin earned the "Good Old Joe" and "Uncle Joe" accolades from two U.S. presidents (Roosevelt and Truman), as he sat serenely puffing his pipe while virtually allowing his sucker allies to beg him to accept their offers of half of Europe and ultimately much of Asia.