RadioActive with Steve Mitton: November 2011

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

This will be the final year I post this. It's 5 years in a row, but I'm still getting requests for it.

It's that time of year...enjoy and pass it on if you wish
How the Grinch Stole Christmas

...Part Duex

2011

EVERY WHO DOWN IN WHOVILLE LIKED CHRISTMAS A LOT,

BUT THE GRINCH, WHO LIVED JUST NORTH OF WHOVILLE, DID NOT.

THE GRINCH HATED CHRISTMAS THE WHOLE CHRISTMAS SEASON

NO ONE KNOWS WHY, NO ONE KNOWS QUITE THE REASON.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN THAT THE GRINCH WAS JEW,

BUT HE WASN’T THE GRINCH SIMPLY HATED EACH WHO.

HE HATED THEM ALL SINCE THEY ALL SEEMED SO HAPPY

AND THE GRINCH’S POOR LIFE WAS COMPARATIVELY CRAPPY.

THE GRINCH WAS AN ATHEIST, GAY, AND A COMMIE

(SOMETHING HE’D LEARNED FROM HIS DAD AND HIS MOMMIE).

HE DIDN’T MIND WINTER SOLSTICE OR KWANZAA

BUT THE “CHRIST” NAME IN CHRISTMAS DROVE THAT GRUMPY GRINCH GONZA.

BECAUSE JESUS TAUGHT LOVE, GOODNESS, MORALS, AND SUCH

THINGS THAT THE GRINCH DIDN’T PRACTICE THAT MUCH.

BUT YOU KNOW THAT OLD GRINCH WAS SO SMOOTH AND SO SLICK

THAT HE THOUGHT UP A PLAN AND HE THOUGHT IT UP QUICK.

THIS YEAR NO SANTA SUIT, NO TASTY ROAST BEAST

NO TRUSTY DOG MAX OR CRASHING THE FEAST

NO MORE BROODING IN SILENCE, NO CINDY LOU WHO

NO…. THIS YEAR THE GRINCH WOULD CALL the ACLU .

SO THE GRINCH GRABBED HIS CELL PHONE, HE GOT ON THE HORN

AND CALLED ON THE MOST VILE LAWYERS E’ER BORN.

ATTORNEYS AMORAL, AGGRESSIVE AND MEAN

WHO WORK IN THE WHOLE “HATE AMERICA” SCENE.

AND YES ALL THESE LAWYERS WERE ALL CLOSET COMMIES

(SOMETHING THEY’D LEARNED FROM THEIR DADDIES AND MOMMIES).

AND THOUGH THEY WERE BAD FROM SHOELACES TO FACES

THEY’D ALL BECOME RICH ON A CONTINGENCY BASIS.

THEN HE CALLED MICHAEL NEWDOW, WHO REALLY HATES GOD

AND SOME MUSLIM LAWYER NAMED TAWFIQ HADAD.

WITH HIS DEVILS IN PLACE AND READY TO SUE

THE GRINCH NOW WAS READY TO SCREW EVERY WHO

ALL THE WINDOWS WERE DARK, QUIET SNOW FILLED THE AIR

ALL THE WHOS WERE ALL DREAMING SWEET DREAMS WITHOUT CARE.

WHEN HE CAME TO THE BRIGHT LIGHTS RIGHT THERE ON THE SQUARE.

THE GRINCH SAID, “THIS BANNER SIMPLY MUST GO

IT SAYS ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ IT CLEARLY SAYS SO.

I DON’T BELIEVE IN THIS JESUS CHRIST FELLOW.”

THEN THE ACLU GUYS ALL STARTED TO BELLOW,

“THIS BANNER’S ILLEGAL, INTOLERANT, INTRUSIVE.

THE WHOS MUST REPLACE IT WITH SOMETHING INCLUSIVE.”

SO THE BANNER CAME DOWN AND THE WHOS HAD SOME MEETINGS

AND PUT UP A NEW ONE THAT SAID “SEASONS GREETINGS.”

WITH THE BANNER NOW HISTORY, THE GRINCH STARTED ON

THE SWEET MANGER SCENE ON THE CITY HALL LAWN.

THE ACLU GUYS SAID, “THIS TOO MUST GO.

PUT A KWANZAA DISPLAY UP RIGHT THERE IN THE SNOW!”

MIKE NEWDOW THEN SAID,"WE'VE GOT THESE WHOS OVER BARRELS,

SO IN ALL THE WHOS SCHOOLS WE'LL ELIMINATE CAROLS!

AND WHILE ALL THIS WAS HAPPENING WHAT DID THE WHOS DO?

WHY THEY DID NOTHING BUT CRY BOO-HOO-HOO

WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY. WE DON’T HAVE THE TIME.

THE COURTS ARE AGAINST US. IT’S SUCH A TOUGH CLIMB.

I GUESS WE’LL JUST LUMP IT. THIS MUST BE OUR FATE.

AND THEY CRIED AND THEY WHINED UNTIL ALL WAS TOO LATE.

THEN THE GRINCH AND THE LAWYERS RAN RAMPANT THROUGH TOWN.

TEARING EVERY REFERENCE TO JESUS CHRIST DOWN.....
............

NOW ITS MANY YEARS LATER AND CHRIST IS ALL GONE

AND THE WHOS ARE ALL WONDERING WHERE DID WE GO WRONG.

OH, SURE, SANTA'S STILL THERE WITH HIS REINDEER AND ELVES

BUT AS THE WHOS SNOOZED THEY LOST PART OF THEMSELVES.

WITH CHRIST GONE FROM CHRISTMAS THE SPIRIT LEFT, TOO

AND LEFT A BIG, GAPING HOLE IN EACH SOUL IN EACH WHO.

AND WHAT OF THE GRINCH, NO, HE, STILL IS UNHAPPY

BUT IT MAKES HIM FEEL BETTER NOW THAT EVERYONE’S CRAPPY.

SO, NOW CHRISTMAS TIME’S JUST A MEM’RY FOR WHOS

WHO LET IT ALL GO TO THE ACLU’S.

by

Steve Mitton

With apologies to Dr. Seuss

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The next financial crisis will be hellish, and it’s on its way

"There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner," says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, "because we haven't solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis."

We're raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management.

Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world's major banks are tangled up.

Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius' guess of 10 times the world's annual GDP. "Are the derivatives regulated?" asks Mobius. "No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes."

The Dawn of Zuccotti New World Order

Even in the accumulated debris, there’s a miracle for the masses to be found in the formation of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) ongoing revolution.

Information of origin is everything.

As well jackbooted as any army marching through history, OWS was put in the parks to pave the last road leading to New World Order (NWO)—a fact revealed by one of its primary masters, former Soviet Union chief Mikhail Gorbachev.

To a mostly non-listening world, Gorbachev sent out his message last month before a standing ovation crowd of 3,600 at Lafayette College in pastoral Easton, Pa.; the first promised Progressive change made manifest before an unsuspecting world. (lafayette.edu)

A state permit to carry a concealed firearm would be valid in almost every state in the country under legislation the House passed Wednesday.

The first pro-gun bill the House has taken up this year and the first since Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was severely injured in a gun attack in January, it had the National Rifle Association's backing and passed by a comfortable margin. The vote was 272-154, with only seven Republicans voting against it and 43 Democrats supporting it.

The Democratic-controlled Senate has no parallel bill. But two years ago, GOP Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and David Vitter of Louisiana nearly succeeded in attaching a similar measure to a larger bill.

Income Inequality and the Founding Fathers

What did America’s founders say about economic inequality? Rather than unload statistics about the reality of inequality in America today, which we have done on other occasions, this post considers inequality based on the economic principles on which our republic was founded. These principles remind us why economic inequality is not necessarily an injustice, but rather a necessary component of any prosperous society.

Property Rights

Far from the notion of merely owning physical property, the founders understood property rights to include “natural rights.” In an essay on property rights in 1792, James Madison wrote:

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them…Conscience is the most sacred of all property…the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.

Property rights, therefore, include utilizing our faculties to acquire property, which precedes the ownership of physical property.

Obama Pushing Shooters Off Public Lands

Gun owners who have historically been able to use public lands for target practice would be barred from potentially millions of acres under new rules drafted by the Interior Department, the first major move by the Obama administration to impose limits on firearms.

Officials say the administration is concerned about the potential clash between gun owners and encroaching urban populations who like to use same land for hiking and dog walking.

"It's not so much a safety issue. It's a social conflict issue," said Frank Jenks, a natural resource specialist with Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 245 million acres. He adds that urbanites "freak out" when they hear shooting on public lands. [Read about the subpoena issued as a result of Operation Fast and Furious.]

Report: Israel to Strike Iran by December

British intelligence chiefs have warned that Israel will launch military action to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons development efforts as early as Christmas, according to a report in The Telegraph.

The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency this week confirmed that Iran is developing a nuclear warhead that could fit on an existing missile.

“Sources say the understanding at the top of the British government is that Israel will attempt to strike against the nuclear sites ‘sooner rather than later’ — with logistical support from the U.S.,” The Telegraph reports.

Vanderbilt poll explains why Romney’s flip-flopper label sticks; Political scientist says anti-Mormon bias finds cover

Bias against Mitt Romney’s religion is one of the reasons that the tag “flip-flopper” sticks with the former Massachusetts governor but not his Republican opponents, according to Vanderbilt political scientist John Geer. “There is no question that Romney has changed his positions on some issues, but so have some of the other candidates,” Geer said. “Why does the label stick to Romney but not his opponents? At least some of the answer lies in Romney’s Mormon beliefs.”

Geer and colleagues Brett Benson of Vanderbilt and Jennifer Merolla of Claremont Graduate University designed an Internet survey to assess bias against Mormons, how best to combat it and its potential impact on the nomination process and general election campaign.

“We find that of those who accuse Romney of flip-flopping, many admit it is Romney’s Mormonism and not his flip-flopping that is the real issue,” Benson said. “Our survey shows that 26 percent of those who accuse Romney of flip-flopping also indicate that Mormonism, not flip-flopping, is their problem with Romney.” Benson noted that the pattern is especially strong for conservative Evangelicals. According to the poll, 57 percent of them have a bias against Mormons.

In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner. Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character. There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along. For decades, a "false prosperity" that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America. But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear.

Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society. We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities.

Our nation is breaking down on every level. If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them.

60 Minutes: Are Members of Congress Trading Stocks on Inside Information?

Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information – but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it’s time for the law to change.

Most former congressmen and senators manage to leave Washington – if they ever leave Washington – with more money in their pockets than they had when they arrived, and as you are about to see, the biggest challenge is often avoiding temptation.

Peter Schweizer: This is a venture opportunity. This is an opportunity to leverage your position in public service and use that position to enrich yourself, your friends, and your family.

Peter Schweizer is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. A year ago he began working on a book about soft corruption in Washington with a team of eight student researchers, who reviewed financial disclosure records. It became a jumping off point for our own story, and we have independently verified the material we’ve used.

Supreme Court will hear health care case this term

The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear arguments next March over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — a case that could shake the political landscape as voters are deciding if Obama deserves another term.

This decision to hear arguments in the spring sets up an election-year showdown over the White House's main domestic policy achievement. And it allows plenty of time for a decision in late June, just over four months before Election Day.

The justices announced they will hear an extraordinary five-and-a-half hours of arguments from lawyers on the constitutionality of a provision at the heart of the law and three other related questions about the act. The central provision in question is the requirement that individuals buy health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a penalty.

In the modern era, the last time the court allotted anywhere near this much time for arguments was in 2003 for consideration of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. That case consumed four hours of argument. This argument may spread over two days, as the justices rarely hear more than two or three hours a day.

Goodbye, city park, hello, college green.

As city officials around the country move to disband Occupy Wall Street encampments amid growing concerns over health and public safety, protesters have begun to erect more tents on college campuses.

“We are trying to get mass numbers of students out,” said Natalia Abrams, 31, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and an organizer with Occupy Colleges, a national group coordinating college-based protesters.

Connecting the Obama-Communist Dots

The young, hard-nosed conservative blogger and WABC radio talk show host Aaron Klein is back on bookshelves with a fresh installment of his highly praised tattle-tale-brand muckraking.

In 2010, Klein's The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Anti-American Extremists blew the whistle on United States President Barack Obama's connection to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a highly controversial and corrupt American NGO, as well as President Obama's ties with the Nation of Islam and the dogged antiwar activist-turned-terrorist, Bill Ayers. The book brought Mr. Klein much critical acclaim, landing him and co-author Brenda J. Elliot a spot on the New York Times Bestsellers List.

Klein's second-most recent journalistic attack on President Barack Obama also paved the way for the follow-up: The Red Army: The Radical Network That Must Be Defeated To Save America, which was released in November on Broadside Books, an imprint of Harper Collins.

The Red Army is Klein's second full-length book, co-authored with anonymous blogger and historian Brenda J. Elliot, and the fourth literary installment from Klein's journalistic notes to date. Klein chose to work with Elliot, he says, because he "was greatly impressed with her work and her research capabilities."

Fannie & Freddie bonuses three times the size of AIG bonuses

Remember the outrage from the administration over hefty bonuses paid to AIG executives in 2009? Back then, shortly after AIG was bailed out by American taxpayers, the company went through with already planned bonuses to top executives.

The bonuses, which totaled $165 million, sparked a hot national debate over how much freedom private companies should have to pay large bonuses after they had become dependent on taxpayers. The House and Senate passed measures calling for the taxing of executive bonuses for bailed-out companies to the tune of 70-90 percent.

The president reacted forcefully: “”[I]t’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”

Union President Gives Congress Emails Backing Testimony: ICE Ordered Agents Not to Arrest Illegals

Chris Crane, president of the union that represents the nation’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, has provided the House Judiciary Committee and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) with what Crane says are internal ICE emails that back up testimony he gave in July and October that ICE headquarters had verbally ordered officers in the field not to arrest illegal aliens who did not have prior criminal convictions--even if they were fugitives evading deportation orders or were individuals who had illegally re-entered the United States after being deported and were thus committing a felony.

“Increasingly, ICE headquarters leadership refuses to put directives to supervisors, agents and officers in the field regarding law enforcement operations in writing,” Crane told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration in written testimony submitted on July 26.

DAVID AXELROD'S PATTERN OF SEXUAL MISBEHAVIOR

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago.

So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod.

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O'Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain's personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

Romney and Gingrich Shine; Perry Doesn’t

No one touched Romney. He was unflappable and knowledgeable. He again showed the right political instinct to want to address the struggles of the middle class, although his tax plan doesn’t do it. His China-bashing will probably play well in the Midwest, although it’s foolhardy on the merits. He consistently got applause. I remember one of the early debates when Romney was flying above the other candidates and Pawlenty — I think — attacked him and he declined to reply, saying “that’s fine.” He said the same thing tonight when Santorum went after him. After all the churning in the race, Romney is in the same basically comfortable place he was in several months ago.

Gingrich was on his game from the beginning when he let loose a ringing anti-Bernanke, anti-food stamps, anti-Alinsky answer. This was the Newt everyone thought we’d see before he got in the race. I thought he was much too irritable with the moderators, but a GOP audience probably doesn’t mind and Maria Bartiromo matched him unpleasantness for unpleasantness. The narrative about his rise will continue.

Iran prepping for missile attack on Israel

Iran has been preparing Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon to retaliate in the case of Israeli strikes against Tehran's nuclear sites, according to Egyptian security officials speaking to WND.

The security officials said Tehran was convinced the Jewish state was going to attack its suspected nuclear sites in September, prompting Iran to hold joint military drills with Gazan jihad groups in August, including with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Similar drills were held in August with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Numbers Games

One of the things that has struck me, when I have gone on luxury cruise ships, is that most of the passengers look like they are older than the captain -- and luxury cruise ships don't have juveniles as captains.

The reason for the elderly clientele is fairly simple: Most people don't reach the point when they can afford to travel on luxury cruise ships until they have worked their way up the income ladder over a long period of years.

The relationship between age and income is not hard to understand. It usually takes years to acquire the skills and experience that high-paying jobs require, or to build up a clientele for those in business or the professions.

But those in the media and in politics who are currently up in arms, denouncing income inequalities, seldom mention age as a factor in those inequalities.

Cash For Clunkers: The Rosetta Stone of Obamanomics Failure

A group called Resources For the Future, billing itself as “a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research – rooted primarily in economics and other social sciences – on environmental, energy, natural resource and environmental health issues,” recently released a study confirming what everyone already knew: President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program was among his many expensive failures:

“Cash-for-Clunkers” was a $3 billion program that attempted to stimulate the U.S. economy and improve the environment by encouraging consumers to retire older vehicles and purchase more fuel efficient new vehicles. We investigated the effects of this program on new vehicle sales and the environment.

Using Canada as the control group in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the program increased new vehicle sales by about 0.36 million during July and August of 2009, implying that approximately 45 percent of the spending went to consumers who would have purchased a new vehicle anyway.

Unions: Good for bad teachers, bad for kids

A just-retired public school principal writes me after my special:

You nailed the problems and issues in today's public education... with the current teacher unions, textbook companies, and especially teacher TENURE... teacher "tenure" is all but stopping 21st Century educational reform all over the United States.

Tenure is bad. Some teachers are more effective than others - yet the union frowns on giving the best teachers extra pay for excellence. They even frown on paying lousy teachers less. They snarl at the idea of ever firing a teacher. Public school teachers typically get tenure once they've taught for about 3 years. After that, the union and civil service protection make it just about impossible to fire them. They basically have a job for life.

In Patterson, NJ, it's ex-police detective Jim Smith's job to investigate claims against bad teachers and to try to go through the union-created, insane process of trying to fire REALLY bad ones. He says it's so hard to fire anyone that it took years to fire a teacher who hit kids. "It took me four years and $283,000. $127,000 in legal fees plus what it cost to have a substitute fill in, all the while he's sitting home having popcorn," said Smith.

AP Exclusive: Accuser filed complaint in next job

A woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain in 1999 complained three years later at her next job about unfair treatment, saying she should be allowed to work from home after a serious car accident and accusing a manager of circulating a sexually charged email, The Associated Press has learned.

Karen Kraushaar, 55, filed the complaint while working as a spokeswoman at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Justice Department in late 2002 or early 2003, with the assistance of her lawyer, Joel Bennett, who also handled her earlier sexual harassment complaint against Cain in 1999. Three former supervisors familiar with Kraushaar's complaint, which did not include a claim of sexual harassment, described it for the AP under condition of anonymity because the matter was handled internally by the agency and was not public.

Gingrich big winner at key Iowa event

For days, there's been talk of a Newt Gingrich boomlet in the Republican presidential race here in Iowa. After Friday night's Reagan Dinner at Hy-Vee Hall in downtown Des Moines, that Gingrich boomlet talk might turn into talk of a Gingrich boom.

Five candidates -- Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul -- addressed a crowd of about 1,000 GOP faithful at the state Republican party's biggest fundraiser of the year. In brief interviews after the dinner -- the only question was which speaker did the best job -- audience members were unanimous: Gingrich, Gingrich, Gingrich.

"It was Newt," said Chad Kleppe of Waukee, Iowa. "I think he's the smartest one in the field."

"Gingrich knocked it out of the park," said Earlene Nordstrom of Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Occupy Wall Street and the Founding Fathers

They claim to represent 99% of Americans, but as Democratic pollster Doug Schoen has shown, the protest group Occupy Wall Street is anything but representative of a vast swath of the public. At best, the protesters represent a far-leftward slice of American political thought: they pine for the redistribution of wealth and generally reject the free enterprise system.

Yet, this stubborn fact hasn't stopped the media and left-wing pundits from serenading the movement with praise. One writer has even argued that "our founders would ... be standing on the front lines of the Occupy Wall Street movement ... were they around today."

Is the Occupy Wall Street protest our generation's version of the Boston Tea Party? Would George Washington, if he were alive today, eschew Mount Vernon in favor of a tent in Zuccotti Park?

Not a chance.

An inside look at the base where Iran is developing nuclear weapons

Iran is pursuing its nuclear weapons program at the Parchin military base about 30 kilometers from Tehran, diplomatic sources in Vienna say. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to release a report this week on Iran's nuclear activities.

According to recent leaks, Iran has carried out experiments in the final, critical stage for developing nuclear weapons - weaponization. This includes explosions and computer simulations of explosions. The Associated Press and other media outlets have reported that satellite photos of the site reveal a bus-sized container for conducting experiments.

Parchin serves as a base for research and development of missile weaponry and explosive material. It also has hundreds of structures and a number of fortified tunnels and bunkers for carrying out explosive experiments.

Fellow Black Conservative Thanks Herman Cain

I wish to thank Herman Cain for his courageous decision to run for president as a conservative Republican. I am sure he anticipated opposition from the left. But no one could have possibly anticipated the current level of intense hatred and vitriolic desire to politically tie a rope around his neck and drag his bludgeoned black carcass through the streets in the mud. Wow! Lord help us.

I thank Cain because his decision to run is much bigger than he is. At a time when something has gone terribly wrong in the black community (70% black high school dropout rate and 73% out-of-wedlock births), black youths need to see a man such as Cain -- one of character and self reliance.

Cain's remarkable life story equals a nuclear bomb of truth being thrown into the black community. His success derails the "you cannot succeed without us and our programs" rhetoric Democrats have been selling to blacks for the past 50 years. Desperate and frantic, the Democrats' clarion call to their minions and the liberal media is, politically, Herman Cain must be eliminated!

Green Energy: Damn the Facts, Full Speed Ahead!

In 2008, a group of more than 31,000 scientists signed a petition dissenting from the position of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that man-made CO₂ emissions are destroying our planet. More than 9,000 of them have Ph.D. degrees in fields like atmospheric science, climatology, earth science, and environmental science. That's fifteen times more Ph.D. scientists than are involved in the IPCC campaign.

One of the group's leaders, the late Professor Frederick Seitz, said:

The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds. ... This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.

Seitz was a first-rate scientist who served as president of Rockefeller University and president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Seitz was also a recipient of the National Medal of Science. The agreement to which he referred is the Kyoto Protocol.

KUHNER: The liberal lynching of Herman Cain

Liberals are determined to destroy Herman Cain. The Republican presidential candidate is tied or ahead of the presumptive front-runner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He has been run- ning an anti-establishment, insurgent campaign that champions sweeping tax reform and a pro-growth agenda. He is a Southern populist who touts his private-sector experience. He also is an authentic black conservative. For this, he is being politically lynched by liberals in the media. All that’s missing is the noose and the tree.

It started several weeks ago. Bill Maher, along with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and Thomas Friedman, a columnist at the New York Times, mocked Mr. Cain on HBO for being “too dumb” and “stupid” to be taken seriously. MSNBC host Martin Bashr, a virulent British leftist, asked on his program whether Mr. Cain even knows “how to spell Iraq.” Mr. Cain has indeed made mistakes on the campaign trail, such as stumbling on abortion and failing so far to articulate a coherent foreign policy. Yet he is a successful businessman, who also had a popular radio talk show and writes a syndicated column. He certainly is not stupid. The left is deliberately promoting a vicious racist smear: The black man has nothing between his ears.

Peaceful Occupy protests degenerate into chaos

A day of demonstrations in Oakland that began as a significant step toward expanding the political and economic influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ended with police in riot gear arresting dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way.

"We go from having a peaceful movement to now just chaos," said protester Monique Agnew, 40.

The far-flung movement of protesters challenging the world's economic systems and distribution of wealth has gained momentum in recent weeks, capturing the world's attention by shutting down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports toward the end of a daylong "general strike" that prompted solidarity rallies across the U.S.

About 3,000 people converged on the Port of Oakland, the nation's fifth-busiest harbor, in a nearly five-hour protest Wednesday, swarming the area and blocking exits and streets with illegally parked vehicles and hastily-erected, chain-link fences.

Third Cain accuser emerges, 2 others thrived later

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain faces accusations from a third woman, who considered filing a complaint against him over sexually suggestive remarks and gestures.

The allegations are similar to accusations of unwanted behavior that led to separate settlements in the late 1990s with two other women who went on to pursue successful careers after leaving the organization Cain once headed.

The latest allegations come from a woman who said in interviews with The Associated Press that Cain was aggressive and inappropriate with her, even extending a private invitation to his corporate apartment when she worked with him at the National Restaurant Association. The woman said Cain's behavior occurred at the same time two co-workers had settled separate harassment complaints against him while he was leading the association.

Facts are optional

When you consider that, more than a decade ago, Herman Cain settled some unspecified sexual-harassment claims, you also need to consider that the only things you need to file a lawsuit are the filing fee and a printer. Facts are optional.

Maybe Cain did harass some employees. But the dirty little secret among lawyers that defend business people from lawsuits -- and among those lawyers who bring them -- is that an enormous percentage of such claims are frivolous, if not flat-out lies.

Concepts like “truth” and “justice” have little meaning in the world of big-money litigation. Thanks to ravenous plaintiffs’ lawyers empowered by the politicians they buy with campaign contributions, every business person is in the crosshairs.

Stacked deck: Most sexual-harassment charges, like those against Herman Cain, are settled out of court.

Lawsuits are so expensive to defend that it makes good business sense to settle even the most frivolous cases. And businesses do.

TV and movies would have you believe that most lawsuits end up with a jury hearing the evidence and rendering a verdict. That almost never happens. Close to 97 percent of civil cases never see a courtroom. The vast majority settle, with the business paying good money to end the nightmare -- money that could have gone to hiring struggling young people, buying new equipment or expanding.

You Want More Equality? Support More Capitalism

A person can't go but a few clicks on the Internet these days without tripping over some shocking item about the "explosion" of income inequality that has, like the dark smog of capitalistic excess, been choking the life out of this unjust nation. And when it comes to inequality, there is certainly only one vital question we must ask ourselves: Who cares?

If the wealthy get wealthier, no one has to become one penny poorer. This childish idea that the economy is a zero-sum game might appeal to the populist sentiments of the so-called 99 percent -- or to the envious nature of some others or to the emotions of many struggling through this terrible economy -- but in the end, it doesn't stand up to the most rudimentary inspection.

Not to mention, tales of runaway income disparity destroying the American middle class have been repeatedly debunked. James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute recently pointed out that new Congressional Budget Office "data show real median after-tax household income (half of all households have income below the median, and half have income above it) grew by 35 percent over the past three decades."

Yes, ObamaCare Will Eliminate Some 800,000 Jobs

From my article “ObamaCare–The Way of the Dodo” in Virtual Mentor, a journal of the American Medical Association:

The CBO projects the law will eliminate an estimated 800,000 jobs. The fashionable retort is to note that this effect “primarily comes from workers who choose not to work because they no longer have to work at jobs just for the health insurance.” That defense fails for two reasons. First, a “job” is when Smith and Jones exchange labor for money. It doesn’t matter whether Jones withdraws the money or Smith withdraws the labor. Either act eliminates a job. Second, it’s an odd defense of a law to say it encourages people to consume without producing.

Emphasis added; citations embedded as hyperlinks.

Many “Occupy Wall Street” protesters arrested in New York City reside in more luxurious homes than some of their rhetoric might suggest, a Daily Caller investigation has found.

For each of the 984 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in New York City between September 18 and October 15, police collected and filed an information sheet recording the arrestee’s name, age, sex, criminal charge, home address and — in most cases — race. The Daily Caller has obtained all of this information from a source in the New York City government.

Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States.

Feinstein Uses 'Fast and Furious' to Make Case for National Gun Registration

Making a case for national gun registration, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said “perhaps mistakes were made” in the botched gun-walking program known as Fast and Furious, but she said trying to assign blame misses the larger problem.

“This is a deep concern for me. I know others disagree, but we have very lax laws when it comes to guns,” Feinstein, an advocate of gun control, said during Tuesday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism.

“My concern, Mr. Chairman, is that there’s been a lot said about Fast and Furious, and perhaps mistakes were made,” Feinstein said. “But I think this hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem. And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything.”

Illinois' Budget: From Worst to 'Worster'

What could be worse in Illinois right now? It's November and ‘Da Bears' are barely above .500, while the hated Packers are undefeated and the Lions (the Lions?!) are positioning themselves for a playoff run.

Here's what could be worse. Illinois' state budget, filled with gimmicks, constructed for years on promises for which there were no revenues, and sustained by borrowing of the type that would make even a loan shark blush, is in serious meltdown mode. Less than a year after the state raised taxes by some $7 billion in the face of a fiscal crisis, legislators in Springfield, whose government qualifies as the fiscal bad-boy of states, have done little to address Illinois' long-term spending and borrowing problems.

Even while the state's vendors wait up to a year for money they are owed, Gov. Pat Quinn is making sure that favored insiders get paid. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Illinois exaggerated in bond offerings the savings it claims it will get from last year's largely cosmetic pension reforms, which did little to fix the worst state pension problem in the country. And now the governor is actually proposing the state borrow even more, up to $5 billion, to clear up some of those back bills, which prompted an editorial from the Chicago Tribune under the simple headline: "No. More. Borrowing."

The Tenth Amendment and America's federalist structure give the states the right to be "laboratories of democracy" — each with the opportunity to implement unique public policies within the confines of their borders.

Writing for the dissent in an early 1932 Supreme Court case, Justice Louis Brandeis celebrated this right, declaring:

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

The following document is the result of the Salon staff's brainstorming; we're incredibly grateful to Alex Pareene for crafting it into a coherent piece. We hope you'll add your own thinking in the comments section below.

Here’s where we are in the course of human events right now: 14 million Americans are jobless and millions more are underemployed. Those still working have seen wages fall after 30 years of stagnation. The 1 Percent of top wage earners could buy and sell the rest of us without so much as a low balance warning on their checking account apps. The tenth-of-1 Percent earns millions more every year in barely taxed capital gains and derivatives while everyone else struggles to pay down trillions of dollars of debt. Massive, growing income inequality is now belatedly acknowledged by political and media elites, but many of them seem befuddled as to its cause and importance.

Google: We Want Net Neutrality to Redistribute Your Wealth to Us

We have often discussed the incredible peril Network Neutrality poses when placed in the hands of government — it’s the incredible economic and First Amendment damage that can (and will) be done by the federal Leviathan once it gets its Net Neutrality tentacles around the World Wide Web. Nearly as pernicious, are the private big companies who benefit from big government generally – and the incredible Big Government power grab that is Net Neutrality specifically.

We’ve heard a little about Netflix – the gigantic pro-Net Neutrality Internet movie delivery company. Netflix is pro-Net Neutrality because Netflix wants grandmothers to pay more to email their grandchildren so that they can continue to use tons and tons of Internet bandwidth to make tons and tons of money – and not pay for it. This is one of the terrible things Net Neutrality does: It prevents Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – the people who spend billions of dollars building and perpetually bettering the highways and byways of the World Wide Web – from charging people who use more bandwidth more money.

‘It Seems Embarrassing’: Failed Doomsday Preacher Harold Camping Offers an Apology…Sort of

Harold Camping made headlines throughout 2011. First, the famed radio broadcaster promised that the world would come to a chaotic end on May 21. When it didn’t, he then switched the date to October 21 (after all, miscalculations happen). Again — nothing.

According to CNN, when his latest prediction failed to come to fruition, Camping’s followers gathered for a Sunday fellowship meeting in Oakland, California. They questioned whether they had been left behind, according to Brandon Tauszik, a documentarian who has been attending meetings out of interest (he never believed the world was poised to end, though). Now his adherents know: They weren’t left behind; their leader was simply wrong once again.

“Numbers were a bit down, for the first time I had ever seen, but people showed up much like they did after May 21,” Tauszik said. “People were coming together, speaking outside, asking where we went wrong.”

While Republican presidential candidates are looking forward by proposing variations of a flat income tax, President Barack Obama’s tax-the-rich campaign strategy is looking backward—to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 reelection campaign. FDR won his reelection, but the American people lost: Roosevelt’s new taxes on business and the “economic royalists” gave us the “Roosevelt recession” of 1937-38.

By August of 1935, Roosevelt had achieved some of his signature pieces of legislation: a new entitlement program known as Social Security, banking reform, pro-union reform, infrastructure expansion and massive transfers of wealth to the poor and middle classes. Sound familiar?

Piggies at the trough

Ah, to live the lush life of a teachers’ unionist in the Empire State.

Specifically, the life of New York State United Teachers honcho Richard Iannuzzi.

NYSUT is, among other things, the parent organization of the UFT; it represents teachers upstate and in the suburbs -- and it’s back in the news.

Turns out that even as the national economy was tanking in 2009 -- and his own union was moving deeper and deeper into the red -- Iannuzzi managed to wrangle an 18 percent increase in his total compensation package -- to an impressive $345,987.

And he’s not the only NYSUT official doing well: Some two dozen union staffers get total compensation above $200,000.

Richard C. Iannuzzi

Nice work if you can get it.

Now, the union disputes those figures, saying changing IRS rules make the actual increase much smaller; that a lot of it was in pension and other benefits, rather than salary (as if that doesn’t count); that the big increase came long before New York teachers were being laid off -- and, besides which, why should anyone care?

Actually, there’s good reason to care.

NYSUT, again, is the parent organization of the UFT, which, by its own admission, has become one of the key components of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew has been a frequent visitor to Zuccotti Park, along with his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, who now heads the national American Federation of Teachers.

Nearly thirty years after her death, Ayn Rand’s novels continue to be wildly popular—"Atlas Shrugged" alone is selling more today than it did when it was first published in 1957 -- more than one million copies have sold since the 2008 elections.

Especially among Tea Partiers, Ayn Rand is being hailed a prophet. How could she have anticipated, more than 50 years ago, a United States spinning out of financial control, plagued by soaring spending and crippling regulations?

How could she have painted villains who seem ripped from today’s headlines?

BETTER to be lucky than good, the adage goes.

And maybe that’s true — if you just want to be merely good, not much better than average. But what if you want to build or do something great? And what if you want to do so in today’s unstable and unpredictable world?

Recently, we completed a nine-year research study of some of the most extreme business successes of modern times. We examined entrepreneurs who built small enterprises into companies that outperformed their industries by a factor of 10 in highly turbulent environments. We call them 10Xers, for “10 times success.”