11 political myths and conspiracy theories that still persist

Sex, lies and murder. Americans seem to love conspiracy theories and too-good-to-be-true rumors -- type "George W. Bush IQ" into Google and watch what you get -- especially when it comes to politics.

Did you know that George Washington wasn't the nation's first president? The Mob killed JFK. And, oh yeah, President Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.

All fun to talk about. And all wrong or at least without proof.

CNN takes a look at 11 political conspiracies, myths and urban legends and helps you tell fact from fiction.

1) The myth: George Washington wasn't the first U.S. president.

The facts: Theorists say it was actually John Hanson, the president of the Continental Congress, who served as the nation's first president, not George Washington.

That claim is simply false.

The office of "President of the United States" was created under the Constitution in 1787, long after Hanson died.

2) The rumor: George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of all the presidents.

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An Incredibly Bullish Chart For The Shale Gas Revolution

A few years ago, America released stunningly high projections for shale gas reserves. Recently, China came out with even more stunningly high projections, and other countries have done the same.

ARC Financial's Peter Tertzakian believes the estimates and says the revolution is here (via Paul Kedrosky):

For reference, 1,000 TcF of gas is equivalent to 166 billion barrels of oil, or all the oil in Canada. Note also that countries like Russia and Iran haven't even tried to estimate their own vast reserves.

Tertzakian writes:

You don’t need to go to a conference any more to know that the world has massively abundant supplies of economical natural gas to power an energy-hungry world for a long, long time, centuries in fact. This fortuitous realization is emerging at a time when three major energy systems – oil, coal and nuclear power – are antagonizing one or more societal comfort zones relating to energy security, environmental sustainability, personal safety or affordability.

And yet the projections require a leap of faith, like in China where "technically recoverable" is 1400% higher than "proven." What this means is that shale gas might not really take off until other energy sources become prohibitively expensive.

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Happy Days are Here Again (If You Live in Washington’s Bubble)

While the national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate is 1.5 percentage points higher than during President George Bush’s last full month in office, life is surprisingly good for folks living near the Beltway. On an unadjusted basis and as of February 2011, the unemployment rate of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area was 3.6 percentage points lower than the national average. The gap between Washington’s local unemployment and the national rate is higher than it ever was during the Bush administration.

National Minus D.C. Metro Unemployment Rates (Not Seasonally Adjusted), Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

According to The Economist, the Washington D.C. metro area accounted for 6% of the nation’s job growth over the past year, in an area that holds just 2% of the country’s population. In the one-year period ending January 2011, the S&P/Case-Schiller Index of home prices fell nationally by 3% for 20 large cities, whereas it rose 3.6% for the D.C. metro region. In 2009, the region’s GDP grew at +2.2%, compared with the overall United States’ -1.7%.

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I Fear For My Country

In 2009 I wrote the following: “I fear for my country. America has gone from a vibrant capitalist society to a dying socialist society almost overnight. We have become an impotent sleeping giant sprawled across the globe whiling away our days dreaming of a socialist utopia that does not exist and never has. If anything, we among all, people are the most to be pitied. How pathetic we have become. We have traded our shining city on a hill for a government low-rent housing project. The worst of it is… we did it of our own free will!

Yes, democracy can be a dangerous way to govern a country as the German people learned when allied bombs were raining down on their cities. They chose the Furher of their own free will and they paid a price no nation should ever have to pay.

For democracy to exist, to thrive, and to survive, it is incumbent, it is REQUIRED, that the electorate is intelligent, learned, and knowledgeable people. Because it is they who decide, by their votes, whether democracy, in a free country, lives or dies.

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The left decides who gets lawyers

The left has predictably gone batty over the resignation of former solicitor general Paul Clement from the law firm of King and Spalding after the white-shoe firm backed out of its representation of the House of Representatives on the Defense of Marriage Act case. Greg Sargent interviewed a gay rights activist and got a remarkable admission: The left favors politically bullying to deter lawyers from representing clients it doesn’t like:

I just got off the phone with leading gay rights advocate Richard Socarides, who had led the charge against the firm, and he tore into the decision by Clement — the Solicitor General under George W. Bush — by pointing out that it’s folly to present this as a principled stance.

“He tries to make the case that lawyers should represent unpopular causes — but this is not merely an unpopular cause, this is an un-American cause,” Socarides said. “If a lawyer represents an unpopular client who’s defending an important principle, that is what the legal system is about. If the client is unpopular but the principle is important, then it’s important to do.”

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Gasoline Prices and Speculators: They Think You Are Stupid

It is with great interest that I read this past week about the President's initial response to rising gas prices. What or who was to blame? According to the President...speculators. Nameless, faceless speculators. They are to blame for the rising price of crude oil up and the accompanying price at the pump!

"The problem is...speculators and people make various bets, and they say, you know what, we think that maybe there's a 20 percent chance that something might happen in the Middle East that might disrupt oil supply, so we're going to bet that oil is going to go up real high. And that spikes up prices significantly."

Now this interested me because I worked in the petroleum industry and I studied energy law at law school, and I have taken a strong interest in macroeconomics in recent years. (I read Market Ticker and Zero Hedge, if you are wondering.) I'm going to disregard for this note the fact that higher gas prices are not objectionable at all to our President, despite the fact that they are connected to every product we buy. He doesn't have a problem with high gas prices, only wishing that they become high on a gradual basis. I'm also going to ignore the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf and general opposition to domestic exploration and production of petroleum by this Administration.

No, the main culprit here isn't the nameless, faceless "speculators" that are now the object of the President's scorn, but government policy itself, both with the Federal Reserve (monetary) and the budget deficits accrued in recent years (fiscal). What is going on is that the government is trying to deflect blame to these nameless, faceless speculators for their own disastrous fiscal and monetary policies.

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Don't Like a Weak Dollar? Might as Well Get Used to It

Weakness in the US dollar, which is causing everything to go up—including gas prices, food and stocks—is unlikely to go away soon as a selling frenzy hits the currency market.

CNBC.com

The greenback is approaching pre-financial crisis lows and threatening to smash through its all-time low when measured against the world's predominant national currencies.

A combination of factors accounts for the weakness, with the Federal Reserve's easy-money policies, huge national debts and deficits and the consequential possibility of a debt downgrade because of the financial mess in Washington leading the way.

In short, as trader Dennis Gartman noted Thursday, "the rout of the US dollar" is in full effect.

"Panic dollar selling is setting in," Gartman, a hedge fund manager and author of "The Gartman Letter," wrote in his daily commentary. "This may carry farther than any of us dream of or, worse, have nightmares of."

How low can it go?

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IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

IMF sees China topping U.S. in 2016

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. Brett Arends looks at the implications for the U.S. dollar and the Treasury market.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

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Otter Signs Order Banning Health Care Reform

BOISE, Idaho -- The so-called nullification bill that Republican state legislators worked so hard to pass is now dead.

Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter vetoed it in favor of his own executive order, which blocks portions of President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

The order says state agencies cannot implement or receive federal dollars for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Otter said the bill, HB298 was too strict of an interpretation.

"The bill went further than what the authors intended it to do," said Otter. "It basically said you couldn't plan anything that looks like 'Obamacare.'"

The governor said Idaho has been working on a health insurance exchange for the past five years to help consumers understand their options. House Bill 298 would have handed over control of that exchange to the federal government.

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Obama’s Proposed New Executive Order: Transparency or A Boot On The Throat?

What would you think if, before any government contracts could be awarded to private businesses, all bidders were required to reveal any and all political contributions made by the company, its executives and board of directors?

One could infer that such a rule might create the potential for the government to decide on who wins the contract based on the company’s political leanings or that of its officers, instead of getting the best company to do the job for the best price.

Additionally, such a requirement might allow the government to financially punish any company that makes donations to candidates considered to be in competition with their party’s agenda. This situation is very close to becoming reality as a draft of the order has been circulating around Washington, DC and raising quite a few eyebrows.

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Obama’s Young Mother Abroad

The photograph showed the son, but my eye gravitated toward the mother. That first glimpse was surprising — the stout, pale-skinned woman in sturdy sandals, standing squarely a half-step ahead of the lithe, darker-skinned figure to her left. His elas­tic-band body bespoke discipline, even asceticism. Her form was well padded, territory ceded long ago to the pleasures of appetite and the forces of anatomical destiny. He had the studied casualness of a catalog model, in khakis, at home in the viewfinder. She met the camera head-on, dressed in hand-loomed textile dyed indigo, a silver earring half-hidden in the cascading curtain of her dark hair. She carried her chin a few degrees higher than most. His right hand rested on her shoulder, lightly. The photograph, taken on a Manhattan rooftop in August 1987 and e-mailed to me 20 years later, was a revelation and a puzzle. The man was Barack Obama at 26, the community organizer from Chicago on a visit to New York. The woman was Stanley Ann Dunham, his mother. It was impossible not to be struck by the similarities, and the dissimilarities, between them. It was impossible not to question the stereotype to which she had been expediently reduced: the white woman from Kansas.

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5 reasons why S&P just guaranteed U.S. debt will lose AAA rating

By prodding Washington to agree on a debt plan, Standard & Poor’s might achieve just the opposite. Its dour take on Treasuries could inflame the debt-ceiling debate, leaving little energy for a grand budget compromise. And the severe austerity S&P desires would have few takers anyway. Consider the following:

1) Obviously the rating agency hopes its unnerving note will nudge lawmakers into reaching agreement on taxes and expenditures. Inaction until after the 2012 national elections risks an actual downgrade of America’s AAA bond rating.

2) But striking some mega-deal doesn’t have top priority on Capitol Hill. First up is the battle over raising the debt ceiling. Democrats want a clean vote on a bill, while Republicans are trying to tack on various debt reduction measures. The GOP quickly pointed to S&P’s statement as further justification of its bargaining position.

3) That the rating agency made no mention of the debt ceiling is irrelevant. Nor does it matter that Congress just released a report blaming S&P and its peers for triggering the financial crisis. Politicians take their friends where they can find them. And S&P’s warning is spurring Republicans to dig in. That helps ensure the negotiations will be arduous, requiring Capitol Hill’s nearly undivided attention until July and potentially pushing the country to the brink of default. There probably won’t be much chance to work on major changes to taxing and spending.

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Is Obama administration suppressing illegal immigration numbers by not arresting?

FOX News reports that Arizona Sheriff Larry Dever has received numerous calls and emails from border agents confirming that they have been told not to arrest illegal border crossers but to turn them back south.

“Upper management has advised supervisors to have agents ‘turn back South’ (TBS) the illegal aliens (aka bodies) they detect attempting to unlawfully enter the country… at times you even hear supervisors order the agents over the radio to ‘TBS’ the aliens instead of catching them,” one San Diego border agent wrote in an email to Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever.

Recently DHS secretary Janet Napolitano cited lower arrest numbers as evidence that the “border is as secure now as it has ever been”.

In early April Sheriff Dever disagreed with Napolitano’s assessment. Dever told CNSNews.com that:

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China urges US to be 'responsible' after S&P warning

BEIJING: China, the top holder of US Treasury bonds, urged the United States Tuesday to adopt "responsible measures" after ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut the outlook on US sovereign debt to negative.

S&P sent stocks plunging worldwide when it slashed its outlook from "stable" to "negative" Monday, pointing to doubts about Washington's ability to tackle looming debt and fiscal deficits -- concerns raised by Beijing in the past.

"US Treasury bonds are a reflection of US government credit and are important investment products for domestic and international institutional investors," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement.

"We hope the US government will earnestly adopt responsible policy measures to guarantee the interests of investors," he added.

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Obama’s $2 trillion stealth tax hike

Talk about fuzzy math. President Obama claims higher taxes will account for a mere third — $1 trillion — of his proposed $3 trillion debt reduction over 12 years, not counting less interest expense. Wrong. The actual number is probably around 50 percent of $4 trillion in savings — some $2 trillion — and could be closer to 60 percent. (More details below.) Instead of offering a template for a Grand Compromise, Obama seems to have created a Grand Obfuscation.

This is just one example among many that shows how Obama’s much-hyped new budget plan is actually neither new nor a budget nor a plan. To the extent that it’s even a “framework” — to grant the White House its preferred descriptor — it’s one whose ideas and goals are precariously fastened together by the chewing gum and sticky tape of rosy economic assumptions and fiscal opacity. Then again, the core purpose isn’t budgetary balance but political persuasion.

The Obama White House naturally wants the media to favorably compare his outline to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s 73-page “Path to Prosperity” which is highly detailed and has been scored accurate by the Congressional Budget Office. It brings the budget into balance and eliminates the national debt by cutting spending — not raising taxes.

And how does Obama’s “Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility compare?

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DeMint Threatens Filibuster on Debt Ceiling Vote

Throwing down the gauntlet, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint threatened Monday to block a vote in Congress on raising the U.S. debt ceiling unless he wins a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

The filibuster threat comes a day after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner suggested Republican leaders had offered private assurances to the White House that they ultimately would vote to raise the $14.3 trillion ceiling, regardless of whether a deal is reached on long-term spending cuts.

Publicly, Republicans say they will demand spending cuts as a condition for supporting a hike in the debt ceiling. They stood by that claim following Geithner's comments, and DeMint took their demands a step further.

"I will oppose any attempt to vote to raise the limit on our $14 trillion debt until Congress passes the balanced-budget amendment," the South Carolina conservative said. He first made the remarks to McClatchy, which his office confirmed to Fox News.

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That's pricey: 13 items that cost more, or will

Four-dollar gasoline is just a part of it. As most any shopper knows, prices are climbing for everything from coffee and chocolate to tires and toilet paper.

The Consumer Price Index has climbed 2.7 percent in the past 12 months, according to government statistics released Friday. That's the largest rise since 2009.

Price increases will continue in the months ahead as companies pass along the higher costs of raw materials, transportation and other expenses.

"When prices at the pump rise and wages don't, already strained budgets show the pain," says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago.

This creeping inflation doesn't yet alarm economists, who don't expect high inflation in the near future. That's because many businesses are still wary about boosting prices when workers are getting meager raises, if any, and unemployment remains near 9 percent.

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The Donald thinks the GOP is stupid

Trump has no real roots in the Republican Party. He has been both a registered Republican and a registered Democrat. He has made campaign contributions to Republicans such as John McCain and George W. Bush and to Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel.

“I go for the person, not necessarily the party,” he has said. “I mean, I vote for Republicans and I vote for Democrats.”

While not an unreasonable statement, it is not what Republicans usually look for in a GOP presidential nominee.

And while Trump’s personal life is not outrageous by today’s standards — he has been married three times and said in 2006, when he was 59, that his daughter, then 24, “does have a very nice figure; I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her” — it probably does not meet the definition of traditional Republican family values, even if those values are sometimes breached more than observed.

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Muslims Are Not a Minority

The most persistent myth of the Western Dhimmi narrative is that Muslims are a minority and must receive special protection and accommodation. But Muslims are not a minority. There are 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims worldwide, outweighing Catholics as the next largest religious faction at 1.1 billion and Hindus at 1 billion. They are still a minority of the overall population in Western countries, but a demographically trending majority.

In the UK more people attend mosques than the Church of England, that makes Muslims the largest functioning religious group there. Mohammed was the most popular baby name last year, ahead of Jack and Harry. In France, in this generation, more mosques have been built than Catholic churches and in southern France there are already more mosques than churches. Mohammed-Amine is the most popular double name, ahead of Jean-Baptiste, Pierre-Louis, Leo-Paul and Mohammed-Ali.

In Belgium, 50 percent of newborns are Muslim and empty Belgian churches are being turned into mosques. The most popular baby name is Mohammed and of the top 7 baby names, 6 were Muslim. A quarter of Amsterdam, Marseilles and Rotterdam and a fifth of Stockholm is already Muslim. The most popular baby name in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague is... Mohammed.

Europe's Muslim population doubled in the last generation, and is set to double again. By 2025, (a decade and a half away), a third of all births in the EU will be Muslim. The demographic writing is already on the wall. A third of Muslims in France and Germany are teenagers or younger, as compared to a fifth of the native population. A third of Muslims in the UK and Belgium are under 15 versus a fifth of the native population. Counting all age groups, they're a minority. But in generational demographics, Muslims are swiftly becoming a majority.

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EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Sheriff Cites Flood of Border Agents Confirming Feds' No-Apprehension Policy

An Arizona sheriff says he has been flooded with calls and emails of support from local and federal agents who back his claims that the U.S. Border Patrol has effectively ordered them to stop apprehending illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

“Upper management has advised supervisors to have agents ‘turn back South’ (TBS) the illegal aliens (aka bodies) they detect attempting to unlawfully enter the country … at times you even hear supervisors order the agents over the radio to 'TBS' the aliens instead of catching them,” one San Diego border agent wrote in an email to Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever.

“This only causes more problems as the aliens, as you know, don't just go back to Mexico and give up. They keep trying, sometimes without 10 minutes in-between attempts, to cross illegally,” continued the email, which was among a number of communications to Dever reviewed by FoxNews.com. “This makes the job for agents more dangerous. Not only are the aliens more defiant, they also begin to feel like they can get away with breaking our federal laws.”

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George Soros: U.S. dollar ALREADY losing reserve status!

History is repeating itself, and the consequences could be extremely profitable for you …

In July of 1944, 730 financial bigwigs from 44 nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire for a conference in which they recreated the economic world:

They established the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. They founded the International Monetary Fund. And they created the World Bank.

Now, 67 years later, another conference has just concluded that gives several observers flashbacks to Bretton Woods.

Like Bretton Woods, it was held at the Mount Washington Hotel. Also like the original, many of the financial world’s movers and shakers were invited.

The guest list is said to have included former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, Joseph Stiglitz.

The conference organizer? None other than George Soros — the internationalist and mega-investor who, in his own words, sees a pressing need to “rearrange the entire financial order.”

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5 Economic Issues That Doom Obama to 1 Term

As the old phrase about voter sentiment goes, “it’s the economy, stupid.” And like it or lump it, one of the reasons President Obama rode to victory in 2008 was a foot-in-mouth moment from opponent Sen. John McCain during the height of the market meltdown.

That famous gaffe was a quote from McCain that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” while the Dow Jones tanked 500-plus points or over 4% in a single day on Sept. 15, 2008.

Whether McCain’s words were taken out of context – the senator claimed he was waxing philosophical about the fundamental strength of the American economy and its workers – is irrelevant. In politics, it’s less about reality and more about what the America people believe and what the media chooses to focus on.

I don’t pretend to know what will happen with the economy or the stock market between now and November 2012. But as a former opinion page editor for a daily newspaper, I’d like to think I have a pretty good sense for the behavior of politicos and the mainstream press. And based on current trends, here are 5 issues I think that are going to be front and center in the coming months as the presidential contest comes into focus.

And as you’ll see, all five of these issues could work decidedly against Obama’s re-election.

The Fed

Personally, I believe that criticism of the Federal Reserve is overdone. Every sane economist agrees that an independent central bank is crucial to a functional economy, though intelligent people can and will disagree about the level of oversight necessary for such an important institution.

But people like to blame someone in hard times, and with the dual mandate of both fighting inflation and fighting unemployment the Fed is the perfect whipping boy. Gasoline prices are soaring and unemployment remains stubbornly high as the sheer enormity of the unemployed means the recent jobs added to payrolls is just a drop in the bucket.

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Stockpiling food against economic uncertainty

TOMS BROOK, Va. – The laundry room of Tamara Huffman’s split-level here in the Shenandoah Valley is filling up with cheese powder and freeze-dried ham, at the ready should her husband, Brian, lose his job anytime in the next 25 years. She carves a little bit out of their already tight budget every month to buy some more.

This sort of stockpiling was once the purview of survivalists preparing for Armageddon. But Huffman’s fear isn’t the end of the world so much as the $5 basket of grape tomatoes she bypassed the other day at her local supermarket.

“The price of everything is going up. I have no idea what’s going to happen,” Huffman says, assessing her growing collection of dehydrated and freeze-dried food in cans that look like house paint – pink is fruit, green is vegetables, blue is dairy, orange is grains – much of it with a shelf life that won’t expire until her second-grader, Chloe, is 32. Whatever she stocks at today’s prices her family can eat at tomorrow’s sure-to-be-higher ones.

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Study: Eliminating One Government Regulator Can Save $6.2 Million And 100 Jobs

The high cost of regulation:

In Regulatory Expenditures, Economic Growth and Jobs: An Empirical Study, the center finds that reducing the size of the federal regulatory budget by even modest amounts will have significant positive effects on both GDP and private sector growth.

“In particular,” the group says, “even a small 5 percent reduction in the regulatory budget (about $2.8 billion) would result in about $75 billion in expanded private-sector GDP each year, with an increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually.”

“On average,” the Phoenix Center says, “eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually. Conversely, each million dollar increase in the regulatory budget costs the economy 420 private sector jobs.”

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Privacy 'bill of rights' exempts government agencies

news analysis Two U.S. senators introduced sweeping privacy legislation today that they promise will "establish a framework to protect the personal information of all Americans."

There is, however, one feature of the bill (PDF) sponsored by senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that has gone relatively unnoticed: it doesn't apply to data mining, surveillance, or any other forms of activities that governments use to collect and collate Americans' personal information.

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., McCain said the privacy bill of rights will protect the "fundamental right of American citizens, that is the right to privacy." And the first sentence of the legislation proclaims that "personal privacy is worthy of protection through appropriate legislation."

But the measure applies only to companies and some nonprofit groups, not to the federal, state, and local police agencies that have adopted high-tech surveillance technologies including cell phone tracking, GPS bugs, and requests to Internet companies for users' personal information--in many cases without obtaining a search warrant from a judge.

Senators John Kerry and John McCain at press conference announcing privacy legislation.

(Credit: U.S. Senate)

"What's a bill of rights if it doesn't provide rights against the government?" asks Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute.

It also doesn't apply to government agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, the Census Bureau, and the IRS, which collect vast amounts of data on American citizens.

The Department of Veterans Affairs suffered a massive security breach in 2006 when an unencrypted laptop with data on millions of veterans was stolen. A government report last year listed IRS security and privacy vulnerabilities. The government of Texas yesterday revealed that it disclosed the personal information of 3.5 million citizens, including Social Security numbers. Even the Census Bureau has, in the past, shared information with law enforcement from its supposedly confidential files.

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Tax and Debt Bomb

We thought tax reform meant lowering rates and broadening the base by eliminating or cutting back on various deductions, credits, and loopholes. That’s what the Bowles-Simpson commission proposed. That’s what Paul Ryan and David Camp are working on. And that’s the pro-growth model.

But President Obama unveiled a much different tax-reform vision in his much-anticipated debt speech on Wednesday. He would raise tax rates on upper-income earners and small businesses. He also would eliminate deductions and credits, or so called “tax expenditures.” The president referred to these tax-expenditure reductions as “spending cuts.” In his context, they most certainly are not. They are more tax hikes.

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The Greediest Generation

Liberals of the Baby Boomer generation are fond of calling conservatives hypocrites. If a conservative sets a moral line with regard to sexual behavior, then falls short, Baby Boomer liberals point and shout and laugh with glee. If a conservative stands up against government spending, then has a home loan backed by Fannie Mae, Baby Boomer liberals suggest that the nefarious conservative doesn’t mean what he says. If a conservative says that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman, then gets divorced, Baby Boomer liberals shout that the conservative no longer has the right to argue for traditional matrimony.

When it comes to hypocrisy, however, it is Baby Boomer liberals who take the cake.

When they were young, Baby Boomers vocally advocated rebellion against their elders. “There was a reason why there was an antiauthoritarian bent to our generation,” explained television writer and actor Rob Reiner in The Boomer Century. “We always heard that expression, ‘Never trust anyone over thirty.’ The reason for that is the people over thirty were running the show, and they were lying to us.” Dr. Ken Dychtwald, another Boomer, expressed the viewpoint more succinctly: “Raised to think for ourselves, to question everything, we began to challenge all rules and conventions.”

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Are you a producer or a moocher?

“Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” which opens April 15th, is a movie unlike any other. Based on Ayn Rand’s novel, it dramatizes the fundamental conflict gripping our world: the battle between those who create value and wealth through their own efforts (the producers) and those who seek them through force (the looters and moochers).

With eerie accuracy, Rand’s novel depicted — in 1957 — the very struggle between these diametrical opposites that we’re witnessing today. This battle couldn’t be more important because the fate of civilization rests on the outcome. Since this conflict inescapably affects everyone, it’s crucial to know which side you’re on.

In Atlas Shrugged, producers like railroad executive Dagny Taggart and self-made steel titan Hank Rearden create new products and services, offer them in free trade, and consequently become rich. They are exploited by looters and moochers like Dagny’s brother James Taggart and steel executive Orren Boyle, who seek government intervention that favors them and thwarts their competition. In the story, the producers are vilified and their property expropriated, until they disappear. Without them, the country collapses.

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Yellowstone Supervolcano Bigger Than Thought

The volcanic plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. Yellow and red indicate higher conductivity, green and blue indicate lower conductivity. Made by University of Utah geophysicists and computer scientists, this is the first large-scale 'geoelectric' image of the Yellowstone hotspot. CREDIT: University of Utah. View full size image

The gigantic underground plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano might be bigger than previously thought, a new image suggests.

The study says nothing about the chances of a cataclysmic eruption at Yellowstone, but it provides scientists with a valuable new perspective on the vast and deep reservoir of fiery material that feeds such eruptions, the last of which occurred more than 600,000 years ago. [Related: Infographic - The Geology of Yellowstone.]

Earlier measurements of the plume were produced by using seismic waves — the waves generated by earthquakes — to create a picture of the underground region. The new picture was produced by examining the Yellowstone plume's electrical conductivity, which is generated by molten silicate rocks and hot briny water that is naturally present and mixed in with partly molten rock.

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The Rich Aren’t Getting Richer

Are the rich really getting richer? That’s a pretty standard line from the Left, a lament usually cited in the course of calling for higher tax rates. Robert Reich is particularly fond of this mode of attack: A recent post of his was headlined, “For 70 years, the wealthy have grown wealthier.” Professor Reich probably doesn’t write his own headlines, but it’s a common enough sentiment for him, and his prose is rich with phrases such as “the super-rich got even wealthier this year.”

He isn’t alone in employing this mode. Take this from an April 7 Salon article: “And surely the rich don’t need that 25 percent top rate in the way poor folks need programs like TANF and seniors need Medicare — about 90 percent of all American income gains since the 1970s have gone to the top 10 percent of earners.”

This is not true.

The numbers generally cited in support of this argument do not actually tell us much about what has happened to the incomes of wealthy households over time. That’s because the people who are in the top bracket today are not the people who were in the top bracket last year. There’s a good deal of socioeconomic mobility in the United States — more than you’d think. Our dear, dear friends at the IRS keep track of actual households (boy, do they ever!), and sometimes the Treasury publishes data about what has happened to them. For instance, among those who in 1996 were in the very highest income group isolated for study — the top 0.01 percent — 75 percent were in a lower income group by 2005. The median real income of super-rich households went down, not up. The rich got poorer. Among actual households, income grew proportionally more for those who started off in the low-income groups than those that began in high-income groups.

That wasn’t even an unusually good decade in terms of mobility. During the horrible, horrible Reagan years, as National Review noted back in 1991, the average income growth for actual households in the lowest income bracket was 77 percent over the course of a decade; income growth for actual households in the top group was only 5 percent during those same years. Of those who were in the poorest fifth in 1979, 85.8 percent had moved to a higher bracket by 1988, and 14.7 percent of them moved to the top bracket — which is to say, the poor of 1979 were more likely to be the rich of 1988 than to be the poor of 1988. The poor got richer, and some of them got a lot richer. Reagan’s record has not been matched — Ronald Reagan was the champion of the poor, as it turns out — but economic mobility has been pretty stable for the past 20 years: About 50 percent of U.S. households move from one income group to a different one every decade, and actual households initially in the low-income groups see proportionally more income growth than do actual households initially in the high-income groups.

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Make 70 the New 65

It’s time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn’t 70 be the new 65? The last time politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X–ers were all in diapers. Since then, American life expectancy has increased by half a decade and continues to rise — while the “traditional” retirement age (established eight decades ago) has only recently begun phasing up to 67 and the official “early” retirement age (established four decades ago) remains stuck at 62.

There is simply no good reason why 21st-century workers should operate under obsolete 1930s expectations and 1970s rules. We’re living longer, working longer, and, in general, holding down jobs that are far less physically taxing than those of previous generations.

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There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day—so dubbed by the National Committee for Pay Equity, which represents feminist groups including the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority, the National Council of Women's Organizations and others. The day falls on April 12 because, according to feminist logic, women have to work that far into a calendar year before they earn what men already earned the year before.

In years past, feminist leaders marked the occasion by rallying outside the U.S. Capitol to decry the pernicious wage gap and call for government action to address systematic discrimination against women. This year will be relatively quiet. Perhaps feminists feel awkward protesting a liberal-dominated government—or perhaps they know that the recent economic downturn has exposed as ridiculous their claims that our economy is ruled by a sexist patriarchy.

The unemployment rate is consistently higher among men than among women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 9.3% of men over the age of 16 are currently out of work. The figure for women is 8.3%. Unemployment fell for both sexes over the past year, but labor force participation (the percentage of working age people employed) also dropped. The participation rate fell more among men (to 70.4% today from 71.4% in March 2010) than women (to 58.3% from 58.8%). That means much of the improvement in unemployment numbers comes from discouraged workers—particularly male ones—giving up their job searches entirely.

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What actually happens if the U.S. hits the federal debt ceiling?

Are you just now recovering from the migraine induced by months of partisan feuding over the 2011 federal budget? Looking forward to a lengthy reprieve before Congress tackles next year's budget? Sorry, but you're in for a rude awakening. (And you might want to reach for some aspirin.) Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned Congress last week that the United States -- currently liable for more than $14 trillion of debt -- will collide with the federal debt ceiling around May 16. Once the government hits the current limit of $14.3 trillion it will be legally prohibited from incurring any additional debt; problematic since the U.S. only takes in around 60 cents for each dollar it spends.

Congress has raised the debt ceiling 74 times since 1962. Ten of those increases occurred in the past decade. It's a routine vote. However, the political calculus has shifted in the newly anointed "age of austerity." House Speaker John Boehner acknowledged that a failure to raise the ceiling could have calamitous implications. However, congressional Republicans appear unlikely to authorize an increase in the debt limit without significant Democratic concessions, setting up yet another high-noon scenario on Capitol Hill.

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‘Seven Days in May,’ the Middle East Version

I read the 1962 edition of Seven Days in May in 1963 or 1964. At the time I was a lieutenant on active duty in the US Army Ordnance Corps serving as an EOD officer and member of the DASA Nuclear Emergency Team. The plot of the book was so realistic that I still remember it. Later I saw the movie staring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, an excellent film that kept the essence of the book.

Tuesday, April 5th, I caught part of Glen Beck’s show. He was talking about Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Code Pink, and a gaggle of left-wing radicals from around the world participating in a new “Freedom Flotilla.” It will be a mid-May event planned by the “Free Gaza Movement,” human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups formed to challenge the Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms, known as iHH.

This year’s event, dubbed Freedom Flotilla II, will boast a fleet of fifteen ships -- twice the number that comprised the 2010 flotilla. The flotilla will carry participants from ten countries: Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Sweden, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, and Turkey -- eleven when the US radicals are included. The voyage scheduled for mid-May, is intended to commemorate “Nakba,” May 15, 1948, the birth date of the state of Israel; know by the Palestinian people as “The Day of Catastrophe.” Israel has launched a campaign to stop the flotilla.

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Michelle Obama's America: Chicago School Bans Bag Lunches to Protect Kids from Themselves

The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that one Chicago public school -- the Little Village Academy -- has banned bag lunches...to protect the kids from their own "unhealthful" food choices:

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," Carmona said. "It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception."

Carmona said she created the policy six years ago after watching students bring "bottles of soda and flaming hot chips" on field trips for their lunch. Although she would not name any other schools that employ such practices, she said it was fairly common.

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Safes, cash wash up on Japan shores after tsunami

OFUNATO, Japan – There are no cars inside the parking garage at Ofunato police headquarters. Instead, hundreds of dented metal safes, swept out of homes and businesses by last month's tsunami, crowd the long rectangular building.

Any one could hold someone's life savings.

Safes are washing up along the tsunami-battered coast, and police are trying to find their owners — a unique problem in a country where many people, especially the elderly, still stash their cash at home. By one estimate, some $350 billion worth of yen doesn't circulate.

There's even a term for this hidden money in Japanese: "tansu yokin." Or literally, "wardrobe savings."

So the massive post-tsunami cleanup under way along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of Japan's ravaged northeastern coast involves the delicate business of separating junk from valuables. As workers and residents pick through the wreckage, they are increasingly stumbling upon cash and locked safes.

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Redistributing from the 'Have Nots' to the 'Haves'

So, you thought all redistribution programs were created equal. Think again. For the Democrats, the budget battles in the states are not about establishing financial integrity for America. They are about establishing raw Democratic Party power and control over every level of government in America.

During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama had the famous off-teleprompter exchange with "Joe the plumber" (Joe Wurzelbacher). Letting his guard down, Obama said he wanted to "spread the wealth around."

Redistributing wealth usually means government taking (stealing?) money from the "rich" and giving it to the "poor." The government becomes Robin Hood. The events in Wisconsin, and many other states, have shed new light on the government as Robin Hood theme, however.

The Democratic Party and their union co-conspirators have been running a scam that takes the tax payments of the "have nots" and redistributes them to the "haves." Yes, that's right. The "haves" are actually being subsidized by the "have nots." Bye, bye, Robin Hood.

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Obama Puts Taxes on Table

President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for reducing the nation's deficit Wednesday, belatedly entering a fight over the nation's long-term financial future. But in addition to suggesting cuts—the current focus of debate—the White House looks set to aim its firepower on a more divisive topic: taxes.

In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.

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$38.5B Cuts in Boehner-Obama Deal Less Than 6 Percent of $653.4B In Debt Incurred Already This Fiscal Year

House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) and President Barack Obama agreed to deal late Friday evening to keep the government funded through the rest of fiscal year 2011, which runs through September.

Congress agreed to immediately pass a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government funded into next week and then pass another bill next week that would fund the government until Sept. 30.

The deal includes $38.5 billion in spending cuts. That equals just under 6 percent of the $653.4 billion in increased debt the government has already incurred this fiscal year, which started on Oct. 1, 2010.

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Fine print of spending deal ’still under negotiation’

Washington is busy anointing winners and losers in the 11th hour spending deal struck late Friday to avert government shutdown, but meanwhile the staffs of the House and Senate appropriations committees are busy at work negotiating the fine print.

“The agreement was on overall funding levels and some of the more controversial policy riders,” said Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, “the rest of the policy riders and funding levels for individual programs are still under negotiation.”

The issue is important because the House-passed spending bill, H.R. 1, included scores of policy riders – issues that remain unresolved even as the public views the deal with finality.

Hing said the committee staffs are “making progress” and hope to file legislative text reflecting the deal Monday night.

Among the policy riders on which we know were decided: National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting survived, funding for Obamacare survived, and Planned Parenthood survived, although Republicans get a guaranteed up or down vote on defunding that organization, America’s largest abortion provider, in the Senate.

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John Stossel - Leave Us Alone

AT&T Limits Internet Usage of Customers, Goes Against Advertising

AT&T is making a mad money grab by having a monopoly or duopoly in many of the areas they do business. By imposing a 250gb bandwidth cap starting next month they royally screw their customers, unless you want to get dinged with 10$ charge after 10$ charge for every 50gb you go over.

At 10mbps, it would take 2 Days 11 Hours 39 Minutes to download 250GB...

At 1.5mbps, it would take 16 Days 2 Hours 20 Minutes to downoad 250GB...

At 24Mbps, one of their services, it wouldn't take a day to use your cap.

From AT&T's own marketing.

• Why switch to AT&T U-verse—Compare AT&T U-verse to your current provider.
• U-verse Bandwidth—We don't limit your bandwidth to a particular amount.
• IPTV Technology—We use the Internet with computer networking to bring HD television right into your home.
• Fiber Technology—We use existing fiber to deliver all your entertainment to your television, computer and phone.
• 911 Service—We automatically include E911 service with your AT&T U-verse Voice service.
• U-verse Voice and Home Alarms—AT&T U-verse Voice will work with most types and brands of home alarms.
• Battery Backup—We make sure you have Voice service during a power outage.
• Terminal Backup—We ensure an uninterrupted power supply for your Optical Network Terminal.
• AT&T ConnecTech®—Extensive options for connecting your entertainment and communications hardware.

Cold winters cause global warming

From the Guardian:

UK greenhouse gas emissions rise

Cold winter leads to 2.8% rise in greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, figures show.

Greenhouse gas emissions rose by nearly 3% last year, according to government statistics released on Thursday. The increase was a result of the continuing recovery of the economy after the crash which followed the banking crisis of 2008.

Overall, emissions of the six major greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide were up 2.8% on 2009.

Previously, due in part to the recession hitting industry and energy use, 2009 had seen large falls in greenhouse gases (down 8.7% on 2008).

But the increase means that the UK’s target of cutting emissions by 35% by 2022 is now harder to meet. Campaigners warned that the rise showed that efforts to transform the UK’s economy on to a low-carbon footing were faltering.

Yes, the cold winter’s increase in greenhouse gas emissions — as people heated their homes — did make it more difficult to meet that arbitrary goal of reducing industrial, commercial and residential emissions of greenhouse gas.

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48% Say Their Views Closer to Tea Party Than Congress

In the ongoing budget-cutting debate in Washington, some congressional Democrats have accused their Republican opponents of being held captive by the Tea Party movement, but voters like the Tea Party more than Congress.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters say when it comes to the major issues facing the country, their views are closer to the average Tea Party member as opposed to the average member of Congress. Just 22% say their views are closest to those of the average congressman. Even more (30%) aren’t sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This shows little change from a survey in late March of last year.

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Ryan: Budget Fights Moral Decline as ‘Dependency and Passivity’ Weaken the Country

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan will warn at AEI today that the country is at a “tipping point” in its debt crisis that threatens to “curtail free enterprise” and lead to a “gradual moral-political decline as dependency and passivity weaken the nation’s character.”

The Wisconsin Republican detailed in today’s Wall Street Journal the magic numbers everyone has been waiting for: $6.2 trillion in cuts from President Obama’s budget over the next decade; $4.4 trillion in deficit reduction, as compared to Obama’s promised $1.1 trillion.

In his noontime AEI address, Ryan will argue that keeping the budget on the beaten path could “weaken our national identity in ways that may not be reversible.”

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CAIR chief's designs to 'run' U.S. revealed

The same national Muslim leader who's launched an "education campaign" to quell American fears over Shariah law once gave a full-throated speech to Muslims advocating an Islamic rise to power in America.

In a newly surfaced video of a 2000 speech to the Islamic Society of North America, Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad told his Muslim audience: "Muslims in America are in the best position to show Islam and to show action and to show vision – not only for a Muslim school, how it should be run, but for an entire society, how it should be run. Who better can lead America than Muslims?"

The Justice Department named both ISNA and CAIR unindicted co-conspirators in a criminal scheme to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.

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Hey, Whoopi: It's Not About Skin Color

Potential presidential candidate Donald Trump had to negotiate a whole lot of blind emotion as a recent guest on The View. Like Carrie Prejean, The Donald was handed a question he didn't ask for. And his answer also left the asker exasperated.

Joy Behar brought up Trump's recent words about Obama's mysterious childhood and asked him if he was "a birther." Birther is one of those identity words of the left meant to stigmatize opponents into silent fear. But Trump just spoke the language of common sense.

Trump's position essentially is one of "trust but verify," as Reagan used to say. Mr. Trump accepts Obama's claim of a Hawaii birth, but like millions of other Americans, he wonders, "Why doesn't the president show his birth certificate?" That's what Mr. Trump wondered out loud on the program. The Donald also stated the unspeakable but obvious conclusion: Obama is hiding something.

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