RadioActive with Steve Mitton

Gingrich Threatens to Skip Debates if Audiences Can’t Participate

2012-01-26T15:10:00.004-07:00

Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, on Tuesday morning threatened not participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case on Monday, when Brian Williams of NBC News asked the audience of about 500 people who assembled for a debate in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks.

In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment campaign, Mr. Gingrich blamed the media for trying to silence a dissenting point of view.

“I wish in retrospect I’d protested when Brian Williams took them out of it because I think it’s wrong,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And I think he took them out of it because the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate.”

Mr. Gingrich soared to victory in the South Carolina last week after back-to-back debates in which he took on the moderators with as much zeal as he took on his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. The audiences, which were far larger and encouraged to participate, cheered him on as he pushed back. First he lashed out at Juan Williams of Fox News for suggesting that Mr. Gingrich’s comments about blacks and welfare were offensive. Then he snapped at John King of CNN for opening the debate with a question about accusations that he had asked an ex-wife for an “open marriage.”

Mitt: Yes, He Can

2012-01-26T15:10:00.003-07:00

When asked about his electability, Newt invoked Ronald Reagan, who was once thought unelectable — his first invocation of Reagan during the debate last night. If Mitt Romney were a yard dog, he might have fired back, “Hey, Newt, whose record are you running on — yours or Ronald Reagan’s?”

Mitt Romney is not a yard dog. But he did a damned good job at the debate anyway, turning in a winning performance after his abysmal one in South Carolina. He laid several gloves on Newt, and Newt — who wore a nasty facial expression most of the night — knew it. There were some good policy moments, but this show was mostly the Newt–Mitt faceoff to try to determine the outcome in Florida.

While Romney couldn’t get by with a line like “pious baloney,” he was nevertheless effective, persistent, and impressive in painting Gingrich as an “unreliable leader” (the theme of Romney’s new ad campaign), twice noting that Gingrich had left the House “in disgrace.” Romney also scored when he pointed out that the just-released contract for one of the years Gingrich was paid by Freddie Mac was negotiated by the lobbying department — and that the word “historian” was nowhere to be found in that document. Romney said that Newt may claim Freddie was paying him for his historical insights, but “I call it influence-peddling.”

Eleven ‘Stunning Revelations’ From a Confidential Economics Memo to Obama

2012-01-26T15:10:00.001-07:00

Columnist Ryan Lizza’s in-depth New Yorker article (“The Obama Memos”) is an in-depth examination of the Obama administration’s handling of the U.S. economy. But unlike most op-eds, his column involves more than just speculation and conjecture. Lizza uses a 2008 “sensitive and confidential” memo written by the economist Larry Summers as one of the article’s chief resources.

For those unfamiliar with the memo’s author, Larry Summers is the former Director of the United States National Economic Council for President Obama. And although he resigned from this position in November 2010, as the White House’s chief economist he “played a leading role in crafting the administration’s interventions in the economy,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Summers’ influence being understood, this 57-page memo helps explain why certain economic strategies and initiatives have been adopted, and in many cases maintained, by the Obama administration. But it does a little more than that: the memo also sheds some light on why the administration has failed to revive the economy.

George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War

2012-01-23T14:15:00.001-07:00

You know George Soros. He’s the investor’s investor—the man who still holds the record for making more money in a single day’s trading than anyone. He pocketed $1 billion betting against the British pound on “Black Wednesday” in 1992, when sterling lost 20 percent of its value in less than 24 hours and crashed out of the European exchange-rate mechanism. No wonder Brits call him, with a mix of awe and annoyance, “the man who broke the Bank of England.”

Soros doesn’t make small bets on anything. Beyond the markets, he has plowed billions of dollars of his own money into promoting political freedom in Eastern Europe and other causes. He bet against the Bush White House, becoming a hate magnet for the right that persists to this day. So, as Soros and the world’s movers once again converge on Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum this week, what is one of the world’s highest-stakes economic gamblers betting on now?

He’s not. For the first time in his 60-year career, Soros, now 81, admits he is not sure what to do. “It’s very hard to know how you can be right, given the damage that was done during the boom years,” Soros says. He won’t discuss his portfolio, lest anyone think he’s talking things down to make a buck. But people who know him well say he advocates making long-term stock picks with solid companies, avoiding gold—“the ultimate bubble”—and, mainly, holding cash.

Meet the ‘Preppers’ — The Americans Stockpiling Food & Water for a Possible Collapse

2012-01-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

The world’s a scary place. Wars, famines, corrupt politicians, terrorism, imploding economies — the list goes on. There are plenty of issues worth fearing, which is why a subset of the nation is preparing for what they see as impending calamity.

These individuals, dubbed “preppers,” are stocking up on food, guns, water and other items that they may need should the economy erupt or a massive natural disaster strike. With so many possibilities for problematic occurrences, these individuals want to ensure that they can live beyond any tragically defining moments.

Most preppers are fearful of the prospects of no governmental structure — something that some see as a possibility amidst economic woes and political strife. Back in 2009, a Newsweek report described this phenomenon:

Mitt Romney Sent Millions to Mormon Church

2012-01-19T17:28:00.001-07:00

Underscoring the prominent, if little discussed role that Mitt Romney played as a Mormon leader, the private equity giant once run by the GOP presidential frontrunner carved his church a slice of several of its most lucrative business deals, securities records show, providing it with millions of dollars worth of stock in some of Bain Capital's most well-known holdings.

Romney has always been a major donor to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which requires that members "tithe," or give 10 percent of their income to the church. His family charity, called the Tyler Foundation, has given more than $4 million to the church in the past five years, including $1.8 million in 2008 and $600,000 in 2009. But because Romney, whose fortune has been estimated at $250 million, has never released his personal tax returns, the full extent of his giving has never been public.

Newly uncovered stock contributions made during Romney's Bain days suggest there is another dimension to Romney's support for the church -- one that could involve millions more than has been previously disclosed.

Hostess Unions Resist New Rules And Equity

2012-01-19T17:27:00.002-07:00

Talks to restructure Hostess, the maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, are expected to start distastefully, The Post has learned.

The company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection Jan. 11 due in part to high labor costs, will ask its 20,000 mostly unionized workers to accept stiff concessions, which may include new rules that will force drivers to load their own trucks, adding a couple of hours to the work day and having workers pay more for health insurance.

Those concessions don’t seem to be too "stiff" if it is that or have no job.

There could also be demands for thousands of layoffs, including some in the New York metro area.

How many will be laid off forever if the company folds?

A person close to the situation who would like to see the union members accept serious concessions says he believes there is only a 50 percent chance that they will. The unions did not accept a somewhat similar proposal last year from Hostess — prompting last week’s bankruptcy filing…

They sure showed management!

Who are the 1 percent?

2012-01-19T17:27:00.001-07:00

Who really makes up the so-called “1 percent”?

To the extremists of Occupy Wall Street, the nation’s wealthiest are all Wall Street vultures — hedge-fund managers and venture capitalists who make millions in a day by picking apart troubled companies and casting vulnerable workers aside.

The reality, according to a surprisingly eye-opening piece in the normally pro-OWS New York Times, is quite different.

The paper studied those with incomes in the top 1 percent of selected regions around the country.

More Insane Rules

2012-01-19T17:24:00.002-07:00

I had to read it a few times and then contact the officials who required it to discover that the only point of the sign is: it's illegal to not have it. Is this some bureaucrat's idea of a practical joke?

The Florida Department of Revenue lists the law on its website. We called them and asked if there was a reason for the law.

Spokeswoman Renee Watters responded: "A vending machine operator that does not place the notice on the machine presumably is not in compliance with the other requirements such as registration and payment of the tax."

So there is a reason, after all: If a businessman fails to notice the regulation - it's conveniently located in Rule 12A-1.044(4)(b) of the Florida Administrative Code, by the way - it's a tip-off to the authorities that he might have failed to follow some of their other confusing regulations.

Rick Santorum's Tragic Yearbook Photo

2012-01-19T17:24:00.001-07:00

Lots of candidates have embarrassing things in their past that they'd hate to have flare up in the middle of a presidential campaign. I think we can safely conclude that we have found Rick Santorum's! At the right, cast your eyes upon the tragedy that is Santorum's high school year book photo--specifically, Carmel High School in Mundelein, Illinois, in 1976. (The picture is from Chris Good's compilation of high school year book photos of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates--it's not pretty, although I recommend clicking through.)

A quick office straw poll here at The Atlantic, conducted amidst uproarious laughter, confirms that this is, in fact, the single worst year book photo that most of us have ever seen. An outright disaster. I suppose it's Santorum's misfortune to have been in high school during this era. I'm pretty sure that 1976 wasn't too kind to anyone. But still. Wow--he looks like McLovin in polyester. I have yet to meet the political consultant talented enough to spin this one. My condolences to Santorum. Brave of him to have struggled through this and made something of this life.

Race, Poverty and Abortion

2012-01-18T04:13:00.003-07:00

How are the number of annual abortions in the United States distributed by race? And how does that compare to the distribution of the potential child-bearing (Age 15-44) population of the United States by race? Or for that matter, how does that compare to the racial distribution of the poor in the United States, as measured by enrollment of the non-elderly in Medicaid?

Our chart below provides the demographic snapshot of what we found in answering each question asked above, for the years spanning 2008 through 2010:

Greed is good, and so is Mitt Romney’s record as a capitalist

2012-01-18T04:13:00.001-07:00

When I heard Michael Douglas, portraying Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street,” deliver the line, “Greed is good,” my date that evening was horrified. I, on the other hand, wanted to stand up and cheer. I totally understood what he was saying. Greed is good.

Last week, when Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Jonathan Huntsman ganged up on Mitt Romney for being a predatory capitalist during his tenure at Bain Capital, I assumed the posture of my date of 25 years ago; I was horrified.

When I use the term “greed,” I don’t mean the unfettered greed of Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” I’m talking about controlled greed -- greed that’s bridled by moderate, sensible regulation and (here’s that word again) the greed of free-market consumers and competitors. I submit that in order for the free market to function smoothly, greed isn’t just good -- it’s necessary.

Greed regulates capitalism, resulting in the availability of quality goods and services at reasonable prices. Greed is nothing more than self-interest. It’s in a business’ self-interest to charge as much as possible for its product. This desire is tempered by its consumers’ self-interest to spend as little as possible, as well as the self-interest of competitors to grab a share of the market by offering the same product at a lower price. Competing interests result in equilibrium.

The Hyphen that Destroyed a Nation

2012-01-18T04:12:00.004-07:00

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.

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The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.

There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

Myrtle Beach Debate Post-Game

2012-01-18T04:12:00.003-07:00

When political professionals get together to discuss things like ads, campaign tactics, and debates they know the only thing that matters in the end is: "Did it move votes?"

That's the question I was asking myself as I watched the five-man Fox debate last night from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Did it move votes?

Let's look at the individual candidates.

Mitt Romney: Romney got into a withering discussion on voting rights for felons with Rick Santorum. It was an exchange that helped both of them. It showed Santorum had the backbone to challenge Romney, and it showed Romney was not afraid to trade rhetorical punches with an opponent. Romney rallied when he was challenged on Bain Capital. "If someone wants a person who knows how the economy works, having worked in the real economy, I'm the guy." ?As the debate wore on, Romney found his rhythm and ended up with a pretty good night. ?Neutral Votes??

In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year

2012-01-18T04:12:00.001-07:00

Tonight's stunning financial piece de resistance comes from Wyatt Emerich of The Cleveland Current. In what is sure to inspire some serious ire among all those who once believed Ronald Reagan that it was the USSR that was the "Evil Empire", Emmerich analyzes disposable income and economic benefits among several key income classes and comes to the stunning (and verifiable) conclusion that "a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year." And that excludes benefits from Supplemental Security Income disability checks. America is now a country which punishes those middle-class people who not only try to work hard, but avoid scamming the system. Not surprisingly, it is not only the richest and most audacious thieves that prosper - it is also the penny scammers at the very bottom of the economic ladder that rip off the middle class each and every day, courtesy of the world's most generous entitlement system. Perhaps if Reagan were alive today, he would wish to modify the object of his once legendary remark.

From Emmerich:

You can do as well working one week a month at minimum wage as you can working $60,000-a-year, full-time, high-stress job.

My chart tells the story. It is pretty much self-explanatory.

Stunning? Just do it yourself.

Strait of Hormuz in Greater Context

2012-01-18T04:11:00.000-07:00

In 2011 Congress pressured the Obama administration to take a tougher stance on Iran than President Obama has been willing, this time against Iran's Central Bank. Publicly Iran remains defiant and claims that sanctions will have no effect. Privately, however, the regime is panicked and has mobilized its lobbyists and apologists to persuade the international community to delay implementation of the sanctions claiming the restrictions will hurt diplomatic attempts to engage Iran. We must see through the IRI and its lobbyist' propaganda.

For the past 33 years, the ideologically-driven regime has violated every international norm. From storming of the US embassy and taking American hostages, mass executions and assassinations of Iranian opposition groups, bombing of synagogues and embassies, funding of terrorist groups, involvement in 9/11, and plot to assassinate a foreign diplomat, arrests, torture, rape, and the execution of peaceful demonstrators, to the pursuit of nuclear weapons, mullahs criminal activities continue.

Recently, the Islamic regime has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, in response to U.S. and European Union moves to apply sanctions on Iran's oil industry. Many so-called Iranian experts with known affiliations to the regime have warned about an upcoming and imminent war. Deceptively however, they have accused the US and Israel of war mongering. In fact, just the opposite is the case. It is in the interest of many of the hardliners and Islamist zealots within the IRI to instigate some type of attack on Iran in order to raise the price of oil, quell popular agitations, and repair internal fractures at home.

Conservatives feud over Santorum endorsement

2012-01-17T04:43:00.003-07:00

In an evolving power struggle, religious conservatives are feuding about whether a weekend meeting in Texas yielded a consensus that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is the best bet to stop Mitt Romney’s drive for the Republican presidential nomination.

A leading evangelical and former aide to President George H.W. Bush said he agreed with suspicions voiced by others at the meeting of evangelical and conservative Catholic activists that organizers “manipulated” the gathering and may even have stuffed the ballot to produce an endorsement of Mr. Santorum over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Santorum, who nearly upset Mr. Romney in the Iowa caucuses, won the first ballot ahead of Mr. Gingrich in Saturday’s Texas meeting but the margin was too slim for organizers to claim a consensus. It was not until the third ballot, taken after many people had left to catch flights back home, that Mr. Santorum won more than 70 percent of those still in attendance and claimed the endorsement.

The Truth About Bain and Jobs

2012-01-17T04:43:00.001-07:00

Mitt Romney and his GOP rivals are engaged in a fruitless argument in South Carolina over whether private equity creates more jobs than it destroys. The debate is fruitless because voters and politicians don't believe jobs should ever be destroyed.

The American voter is not about to become sophisticated about the place of private equity in American life. But the American voter can become inured to it. So let backers of Newt Gingrich's flaming candidacy run a "King of Bain" video savaging Mr. Romney's leveraged buyout career on South Carolina TV.

All such productions are but poor reprises of a story that appeared in this paper on May 16, 1990, written by a reporter named Susan Faludi, later to become famous as an angry feminist author.

Obama’s One-Man Rule

2012-01-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Of course President Obama is not concentrating on campaigning, White House press spokesmen assured us — as the president headed off to Chicago for three fundraisers and a drop-in at his campaign headquarters, two days after a high-roller fundraiser choked off traffic five blocks from the White House, with the assistance of a score of D.C. police cars.

No one, or at least no one who is paying attention, is fooled. It’s standard presidential procedure to say you’re not absorbed in campaigning even as you go out to raise money every other day. Bill Clinton, in my view, spent an undue amount of time fundraising, George W. Bush spent more, and Barack Obama makes them both look like pikers.

Top 10 Threats of 2012

2012-01-10T05:00:00.001-07:00

On Dec. 18, 2010, a police slap of a vegetable-cum-fruit peddler in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid triggered an "Arab Spring" that no one had forecast and that quickly spawned a long, dark Arab winter.

Before the end of January 2011, violent unrest had spread to Egypt. By Feb. 11, after 18 days of riots, the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak ended. Less than a week later, Libya exploded. And on Oct. 20, Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's dictator for 42 years, was mauled and killed by angry revolutionaries.

The top military man in Tripoli is Abdelkrim El Haj, the former al-Qaida operative in Libya who was captured during Gadhafi's regime, turned over to the United States, renditioned to, and tortured by, Thai authorities. He now says he isn't holding the United States accountable but expects "those responsible to be brought to trial."

Former close U.S. ally Egypt will soon fall under the sway of an Islamist Parliament (40 percent Muslim Brotherhood, 25 percent Salafist, or Muslim extremist). Liquor is already out of Cairo stores and can now only be sold to foreigners from locations yet to be determined. Tourism, once 15 percent of national revenue, is down to 5 percent.

So what if America is the most religious nation?

2012-01-10T04:59:00.004-07:00

Polls consistently tell us that America is the most religious nation in the industrialized world. More that 90 percent of our population say they believe in God, and that they pray regularly. The figure may even be higher when adding the majority of Americans who claim to be atheists but pray, one-third of them often, according to a Baylor University survey.

A Rice University study of 275 scientists at 21 “elite” research universities in the United States found that while 61 percent declared themselves atheists or agnostics, 17 percent have attended church services. Whether genuine devotees, just hedging their bets or doing it for the children (as some say), there’s little doubt that America is a religious nation.

Obama facing uphill re-election battle: economist

2012-01-10T04:59:00.003-07:00

ara Johnson, senior research director at the Lexington, Mass.-based firm, said that the model has been wrong only twice in the past 16 presidential races.

In a presentation Friday at the American Economic Association meeting, Johnson said that the high unemployment rate is the biggest factor hurting Obama’s re-election chances. Another factor is the slow growth in real per-capita disposable income, Johnson said.

The model does not account for a third-party challenger. It measures the percentage of a two-party presidential vote for the incumbent party.

If Obama receives only 43% of the vote in November, it would be the lowest for an incumbent since Jimmy Carter in 1980, Johnson noted.

The model was wrong only when it predicted that Hubert Humphrey would defeat Richard Nixon in 1968 and that Gerald Ford would defeat Carter in 1976.

Carbon emissions 'will defer Ice Age'

2012-01-10T04:59:00.001-07:00

Human emissions of carbon dioxide will defer the next Ice Age, say scientists.

The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago, and when the next one should begin has not been entirely clear.

Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one.

In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years - but emissions have been so high that it will not.

Fed seen unveiling QE3 bond plans by summer

2012-01-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

A growing number of economists, analysts and bond investors think the Federal Reserve will announce another massive bond-purchase plan by the middle of the year, if forecasts for persistently high unemployment and slowing inflation come to fruition.

While a report Friday showed the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.5% in December, the job market is not expected to improve quickly enough for Fed policy-makers, who are looking for a much bigger drop in the jobless rate to support solid economic growth.

There’s debate about how such a program from the Fed will work, but the market’s sense is that someone needs to do something, and the U.S. central bank seems to be the only institution in the country willing and able to take steps to support the economy.

Money managers and strategists say the Fed will have enough reasons — domestic sluggishness, lack of action from Congress and the White House,simmering debt problems in Europe — to begin a third round of quantitative easing, dubbed QE3

Why the Left Fears You

2012-01-04T15:26:00.001-07:00

Obama is a cuckoo's nestling, a little gift from the obsessively anti-American left, who has been dropped deceptively into our mainstream politics. Cuckoos are called "brood parasites" because they drop their eggs into strangers' nests, to leave the hard work of incubating and raising the young bird to a deceived mother bird. Deception happens all the time in the animal kingdom, like all the times my cat fakes me out by mewing at the door, only to stand there and sniff the air when I get up and open up for her. Cuckoos have deception built into their genes.

Obama is himself a grand deception. He used to look arrogant beyond belief, but now he's humble, wearing Jimmy Carter sweaters, sitting all alone in a baseball stadium munching a hot dog, and leaning back on his "family couch" next to Michelle, with the television cameras taking a narrow angle as if they're sitting crowded together in a double-wide trailer. (Like the rest of us).

The only trouble with Obama's phony humility is that narcissists like him rarely change. The Norwegians gave him a Nobel Peace Prize just for getting elected, but they should have given him an Academy Award. This is world-class conmanship. Behind the scenes he's more arrogant than ever.

Iowa: The revenge of Hooterville

2012-01-04T15:25:00.002-07:00

Once upon a time in America, there was good wholesome television. Lawrence Welk. My Three Sons. Red Skelton. Family Affair. And Paul Henning’s trio of sitcoms: Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.

Then in 1970 or so, advertisers noticed that these highly rated shows were watched by rubes. Advertisers wanted those sophisticated young urban professionals — Yuppies — and the like.

Apparently the rubes were not buying the stuff that was advertised but the sophisticated people were.

So CBS, ABC and NBC dumped them in favor of Yuppie-friendly shows.

Obama Signs Bill that Kills Bill of Rights

2012-01-04T15:25:00.001-07:00

In 9 Things to Say Goodbye To, I lamented on the loss of privacy and free speech.

Unfortunately, the situation is much worse, thanks a huge group of senatorial cowards that wrote and passed a "defense" bill that allows US citizens to be arrested, detained, even sent to Guantanamo, Cuba without being charged with any crimes.

On New Year's Eve Obama Signed Defense Bill Despite 'Reservations'

Obama's Blatant Hypocrisy

The "reservations" Obama has are of his own making. Please consider this skewering of President Obama by Rachel Maddow.

Link if video does not play: Rachel Maddow Skewers Obama

The bill is a clear and direct attack on the Bill of Rights.

10 Questions To Find Our Next President (Part 1)

2012-01-04T15:24:00.001-07:00

Whom should we nominate to represent the GOP in a fight against President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election?

I believe the name of the candidate that fills the majority of the answers in the following 10 questions (in no particular order of importance) deserves your vote.

Based upon the GOP candidates' character and track records:

10) Who is most committed to follow and lead by the U.S. Constitution?

It's one thing to take the presidential oath of office, but who has the strongest track record of citing and standing by the Constitution?

Why You’d Never Know There Was A Mouse In Your Soda

2012-01-04T15:23:00.002-07:00

Pepsi is being sued by a Madison County, Illinois man who claims he found a mouse in his Mountain Dew. Ho-hum, right? But wait, Pepsi came up with the greatest defense ever: you'll never know you're drinking mouse!

A little back story. In 2009, Ronald Ball says he bought a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine at work. The soda made him violently ill, and he began throwing up he claims. He poured the soda in a styrofoam cup, and, well, there was a mouse. Or so he says.

And then, purported subterfuge!

What Is a Caucus and How Does It Work?

2012-01-04T15:23:00.001-07:00

The most-hyped presidential contest in the country also is among the most confusing.

The Iowa caucuses do not follow the conventional course of a traditional primary -- where, like in any standard election, residents walk into a polling site to cast their vote and walk out in a matter of minutes, crowd permitting.

By contrast, a caucus is a much more public and time-consuming affair.

Here's a guide to what Iowan caucus-goers will experience on Tuesday.

Where Are the Caucuses? All over the state. There are 1,774 precincts in Iowa, meaning 1,774 churches, libraries and other buildings where caucus-goers will converge Tuesday starting at 7 p.m. central time.

Obama Will Govern Without Congress

2012-01-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Leaving behind a year of bruising legislative battles, President Barack Obama enters his fourth year in office having calculated that he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda and may even benefit in his re-election campaign if lawmakers accomplish little in 2012.

Absent any major policy pushes, much of the year will focus on winning a second term. The president will keep up a robust domestic travel schedule and aggressive campaign fundraising and use executive action to try to boost the economy.

Partisan, down-to-the-wire fights over allowing the nation to take on more debt and sharply reducing government spending defined 2011. In the new year, there are almost no must-do pieces of legislation facing the president and Congress.

The one exception is the looming debate on a full-year extension of a cut in the Social Security payroll tax rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Democrats and Republicans are divided over how to put in place that extension.

H.R.1540 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

2012-01-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2012 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.

Version	Word Count	Changes From Previous Version	Percent Change
Introduced in House	29,542	n/a	n/a
Reported in House	190,720	1,848	96%
Engrossed in House	230,298	966	49%
Referred in Senate	229,177	5	0%
Engrossed Amendment Senate	190,924	6,591	93%
Enrolled Bill	245,071	5,456 Show Changes	83%

I'm allowed to kill infidels, man tells judge

2011-12-30T04:41:00.002-07:00

ABU DHABI // A mentally disturbed man who stabbed a witness to death in court told an appeals court judge yesterday that as a Muslim he was entitled to kill "infidels".

The judge told BAM, an Egyptian, that he should exercise his rights by using the law, "and not go around killing people".

BAM first appeared in court last year, accused of causing a permanent injury to a Nepalese man, LK. Released on bail, he then stabbed LK to death in his room.

Later he took the murder weapon to court and killed another Nepalese man who was giving evidence on behalf of LK.

War Imminent in Straits of Hormuz? $200 a Barrel Oil?

2011-12-30T04:41:00.001-07:00

The pieces and policies for potential conflict in the Persian Gulf are seemingly drawing inexorably together.

Since 24 December the Iranian Navy has been holding its ten-day Velayat 90 naval exercises, covering an area in the Arabian Sea stretching from east of the Strait of Hormuz entrance to the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden. The day the maneuvers opened Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told a press conference that the exercises were intended to show "Iran's military prowess and defense capabilities in international waters, convey a message of peace and friendship to regional countries, and test the newest military equipment." The exercise is Iran's first naval training drill since May 2010, when the country held its Velayat 89 naval maneuvers in the same area. Velayat 90 is the largest naval exercise the country has ever held.

The participating Iranian forces have been divided into two groups, blue and orange, with the blue group representing Iranian forces and orange the enemy. Velayat 90 is involving the full panoply of Iranian naval force, with destroyers, missile boats, logistical support ships, hovercraft, aircraft, drones and advanced coastal missiles and torpedoes all being deployed. Tactics include mine-laying exercises and preparations for chemical attack. Iranian naval commandos, marines and divers are also participating.

Even the Warmists Don't Believe In Global Warming

2011-12-30T04:40:00.001-07:00

Much was written about the most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was held in Durban, South Africa November 28 through December 9 of this year. However, most commentators gave short shrift to the most important—in a sense, the only—outcome of the meeting. This was, of course, the agreement to hold yet another conference in yet another nice location (Qatar) about a year from now.

The Durban conference was the seventeenth conference of its kind. They have been held annually since 1995 in places such as Geneva (in July 1996) and Bali (in December 2007). Don’t hold your breath for one to be held in Newark, New Jersey, or Fargo, North Dakota.

The meeting in Durban provided an opportunity for Progressives to make their latest argument that ordinary people should surrender their freedom and hand all money and power over to unelected, unaccountable “experts” like, well, the people at the conference. This is, of course, in order to “save the planet” from “climate change”. (The issue that had for years been called “global warming” was rebranded as “climate change” when the most recent decade’s worth of data proved uncooperative.)

Public workers' perkhits taxpayers

2011-12-30T04:39:00.002-07:00

Government workers in 21 states are using an obscure perk to retire early or to boost their annual pensions by thousands of dollars, which can cost taxpayers millions more in payments to retirement funds, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The practice, called buying "air time," lets state, municipal and school employees pay to add up to five years to their work history so they are eligible to retire and collect a lifetime pension. Workers already eligible for retirement can buy extra years to boost a pension by up to 25%.

It's called "air time" because workers buy credit for non-existent work, in contrast to policies that let workers buy credit for military service or government jobs in a different state.

Dan Pellissier, a former adviser to California's previous governor, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, paid $75,000 in 2004 for five years of work credit. When he turns 55 in 2015, he will get a California pension of $61,536 a year -- nearly $13,000 more than if he hadn't bought air time. That's $320,000 extra by the time he is 80.

Throw Out the Entire D.C. Establishment

2011-12-30T04:39:00.001-07:00

Crony capitalism is the most serious current danger to the American community, a threat not simply to government or the economy, but to our very way of life. It is the worst such threat since the trusts and monopolies of the early 20th century, and in much the same way. Cronyism is one of the major forces behind the establishment of the corrupt pseudo-aristocracy that has been taking shape in this country over the past two decades, a synthetic privileged class made up in large part of politicians, hustlers, and hangers-on who have become expert in exploiting the rest of us.

The legacy media, for some obscure reason, tends to bury discussions about this group. While the reportage on discrete incidents is there -- see the parade of stories on Solyndra, Goldman Sachs, and MF Global for examples -- we find little effort to pull it all together. Academics, with the single exception of Angelo Codevilla, who sounded the alarm two years ago in The Ruling Class, appear oblivious, as if they had no idea what's going on, which may well be the case.

The customary watchdogs having remained asleep, we need to rely on independents. Chief among these in Peter Schweizer, whose latest book Throw Them All Out (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) gives us the clearest picture we've yet had of the activities of the new crony class.

Enbridge’s Bakken pipeline approved

2011-12-28T04:25:00.004-07:00

Enbridge Inc. has received regulatory approval for its Bakken Pipeline project, adding much needed capacity out of the prolific and pipeline-constrained U.S. play.

The $180-million pipeline will move crude from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in Montana and North Dakota to Cromer, Man., via a new pump station at Steelman, Sask.

“We’re pleased to receive the board’s approval of our Canadian Bakken project and to be able to move forward with this component of our broader expansion plans in the Bakken in both Canada and in North Dakota,” Perry Schuldhaus, Enbridge vice-president of regional pipeline development, said today. “The growth potential in the region is tremendous – with our existing infrastructure, and the proximity of our main line system, Enbridge is well positioned to capture opportunities created by increasing production. ”

It’s the Math, Stupid!: Seven Devastating Facts About 2012

2011-12-28T04:25:00.003-07:00

As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts:

Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.
The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.
Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.
College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.

EXCLUSIVE: Ron Paul in 2009–‘I Wouldn’t Risk American Lives’ to End the Holocaust

2011-12-28T04:25:00.001-07:00

On the evening of Sept. 16, 2009, I was invited to a function for Rand Paul’s U.S. Senate campaign at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform.

I had been invited by a friend of mine via Facebook who was a passionate supporter of Ron Paul. Within minutes of arriving, I saw Rep. Paul enter the room, followed by an entourage of several college students.

I immediately walked up to Paul and introduced myself, and Paul smiled at me and shook my hand. I told him that I had always wanted to ask him a question, and that it was a hypothetical question, but I would appreciate his answer nonetheless. Paul smiled, and welcomed the question. At this point there were about 15 people surrounding us, listening.

WaPo Faith Section: 'Christmas Means the Redistribution of Wealth'

2011-12-28T04:24:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post On Faith section came to Christmas with a political agenda. To be specific, “Catholic America” blogger Anthony Stevens-Arroyo saw Christmas as an occasion to drag out the hidebound Marxism of “liberation theology” and then pretend that Pope Benedict has favored it, when in fact he has condemned it for years.

The Christmas Eve article was headlined: “Christmas means the redistribution of wealth.” The holy day certainly should lead us to share what we have, but socialists always mistake individual giving with government taking. Stevens-Arroyo lobbed this bomb: “Christmas 2011 comes on the eve of an election year when Catholic America is confronted with an escalation in society’s class divisions and a concentration of wealth worse than under the Roman Empire.”

Stevens-Arroyo cited the Huffington Post, which talks of economic theory in between the articles on celebrity centerfolds, and unloads the usual socialist claptrap about “society’s structural sin” as if it was implicit in the New Testament:

The concept of society’s structural sin that is suggested in Pauline teaching was crystallized in the theology of liberation when it appeared among Latin American theologians after the II Vatican Council. Based on a socio-economic secular analysis of history in secular academia, theologians like Father Gustavo Gutierrez spoke of structural sin. Upholding an unjust political and economic system would only perpetuate injustice, they argued. Good people could be trapped into a web of doing bad things because society fostered a way of acting that normalized immoral behavior...

Evidence of market manipulation in the nancial crisis

2011-12-22T16:06:00.001-07:00

Evidence of market manipulation in the nancial crisis

Vedant Misra, Marco Lagi, and Yaneer Bar-Yamy

New England Complex Systems Institute

238 Main Street Suite 319, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, US

(Dated: December 15, 2011)

Abstract

We provide direct evidence of market manipulation at the beginning of the nancial crisis in

November 2007. The type of market manipulation, a \bear raid," would have been prevented by

a regulation that was repealed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2007. The

regulation, the uptick rule, was designed to prevent market manipulation and promote stability

and was in force from 1938 as a key part of the government response to the 1928 market crash and

its aftermath. On November 1, 2007, Citigroup experienced an unusual increase in trading volume

and decrease in price. Our analysis of nancial industry data shows that this decline coincided

with an anomalous increase in borrowed shares, the selling of which would be a large fraction of the

total trading volume. The selling of borrowed shares cannot be explained by news events as there

is no corresponding increase in selling by share owners. A similar number of shares were returned

on a single day six days later. The magnitude and coincidence of borrowing and returning of shares

is evidence of a concerted e ort to drive down Citigroup's stock price and achieve a pro t, i.e., a

bear raid. Interpretations and analyses of nancial markets should consider the possibility that the

intentional actions of individual actors or coordinated groups can impact market behavior. Markets

are not su ciently transparent to reveal or prevent even major market manipulation events. Our

results point to the need for regulations that prevent intentional actions that cause markets to

deviate from equilibrium value and contribute to market crashes. Enforcement actions, even if

they take place, cannot reverse severe damage to the economic system. The current \alternative"

uptick rule which is only in e ect for stocks dropping by over 10% in a single day is insu cient.

Prevention may be achieved through a combination of improved transparency through availability

of market data and the original uptick rule or other transaction process limitations.

Return of bird flu: Hong Kong slaughters 17,000 chickens after H5N1 virus is discovered at city market

2011-12-21T18:33:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong health authorities have slaughtered more than 17,000 chickens after three birds were found to have died from the H5N1 bird flu strain in the past week.

The city is on high alert having raised its flu warning system level to 'serious' after a chicken carcass found at a bustling market tested positive for the virus.

It follows the discovery earlier this week of the bodies of an oriental magpie and a black-headed gull, both found at Hong Kong secondary schools, which also tested positive for the virus.

US asks scientific journals to censor bird flu studies

2011-12-21T18:32:00.001-07:00

The US government has asked the scientific journals Nature and Science to censor data on a laboratory-made version of bird flu that could spread more easily to humans, fearing it could be used as a potential weapon.

The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity asked the two journals to publish redacted versions of studies by two research groups that created forms of the H5N1 avian flu that could easily jump between ferrets - typically considered a sign the virus could spread quickly among humans.

The journals are objecting to the request, saying it would restrict access to information that might advance the cause of public health.

Ron Paul Says Accused Traitor is a Patriot

2011-12-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

As homosexual Army soldier Bradley Manning’s treason trial continues at Fort Meade, Maryland, the support he has received from Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has been curiously ignored by the major media, now touting Paul as someone who could win the January 3 Iowa Republican Caucuses. Paul has called Manning, a crossdresser with acknowledged mental problems, a “hero” and “patriot” for stealing government secrets and providing them to WikiLeaks.

Manning, who served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, is charged with one of the most spectacular and damaging leaks of classified information in this country’s history. The death penalty has been strangely ruled out in his case, but he could still face life in prison.

Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the “irresponsible posting of stolen classified documents by WikiLeaks puts lives at risk and gives adversaries valuable information.”

The Ron Paul 2012 website shows a young Ron Paul in a military uniform and as someone who would pursue a “pro-America foreign policy.” It says, “As an Air Force veteran, Ron Paul believes national defense is the single most important responsibility the Constitution entrusts to the federal government.”

What you do in bedroom private? Not to Obama

2011-12-12T16:48:00.002-07:00

Want a job with the federal government?

You may want to list your sexual orientation – preferably one of the alternative lifestyle choices – to enhance your chances.

That's after an executive order signed by President Obama makes it a goal to hire people who reflect his ideals of "diversity and inclusion."

Presidential Executive Order 13583, signed without fanfare on Main Street, has since been touted as an effort to strengthen America. It's described by the administration:

A commitment to equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion is critical for the federal government as an employer.

By law, the federal government's recruitment policies should "endeavor to achieve a work force from all segments of society.

CURL: Election 2012 by the numbers (take 2)

2011-12-12T16:48:00.001-07:00

Just how big a hill do the Republicans have to climb to win the White House in 2012? Consider this: In 2008, Barack Obama beat John McCain in the electoral vote by a tally of 365-173. So, if, on Election Day next year, Mr. Obama loses Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Indiana and New Mexico — a whopping 95 electoral votes from states he carried in 2008 — he would still win.

Just barely, with a right-on-the-button 270, but he’d win.

That’s how big a hill.

The NLRB's Boeing Sham

2011-12-12T16:47:00.004-07:00

What a sham, or scam, or choose a synonym. On Wednesday, the International Association of Machinists approved a new contract with Boeing in which the company agreed to make its 737 Max jet with union labor in Washington state. Yesterday, after getting the machinist all-clear, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped its lawsuit against Boeing's investment in South Carolina.

Has there ever been a more blatant case of a supposedly independent agency siding with a union over management in collective bargaining?

Boeing says the new contract wasn't tied directly to a settlement of the NLRB complaint, and that it always made sense to build the 737 Max in Renton, Washington because its work force has experience on the current 737 and offers natural efficiencies.

But it's hard to resist the conclusion that Boeing felt obliged to make the agreement to save its more than $1 billion investment in South Carolina, where it is building 787s. Boeing might have won a legal battle in the end, but first it would have to run through an administrative law judge, then the politicized and Obama-stacked NLRB, and only then would it get to an appellate court. Meanwhile, its investment was in jeopardy and its legal bill was rising.

Statist Delusions

2011-12-12T16:47:00.003-07:00

The president of the United States came to Osawatomie, Kan., last week to deliver a speech of such fascinating awfulness archeologists of the future sifting through the rubble of our civilization will surely doubt whether it could really have been delivered by the chief executive of the global superpower in the year 2011.

“This isn’t about class warfare,” declared President Obama. Really? As his fellow Democrat Dale Bumpers testified at the Clinton impeachment trial, “When you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about sex,’ it’s about sex.” The president understands that “Wall Street,” “banks,” “fat cats,” etc. remain the most inviting target and he figures that he can ride the twin steeds of Resentment and Envy to reelection and four more years of even bigger Big Government. His opponents, he told us, “want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess . . . . And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules . . . . It doesn’t work. It has never worked.” He blamed our present fix on “this brand of ‘you’re on your own’ economics.”

The Differences between Corporate Greed and Government Greed

2011-12-12T16:47:00.001-07:00

As the country continues to suffer from joblessness and excessive federal deficit spending, the Occupy Wall Street protesters continue to aggressively chant that the lack of job growth and national debt are due to a simple cause: corporate greed. Corporations are wealthy and should be paying higher taxes, they maintain. And corporations are responsible for the lack of jobs; they are allegedly sitting on trillions of dollars of cash, and their only goal in life is to take more money from hardworking Americans.

This "corporate greed" rhetoric must be put into perspective. The American people are not told that there are two kinds of social domination: 1) class domination, due to the fact that some people are wealthier than others, and 2) political domination, due to the fact that some people gain political office and government jobs¹. These are the political elites. Media and the Democrats tell us only about the first "class warfare" kind of domination, and never the second kind -- i.e., exploitation by those in public office².

There are two recent examples of exploitation of working people by political elites. Both come from states that have been dominated by Democrats for decades: California and Illinois. It is important to keep in mind that the longer a political party remains in control, the more time its political elites have to form strategies and partnerships in corruption. The simple fact is that while it is easy to state that "both parties are the same," the great majority of big cities in the Midwest and Northeast have been controlled by Democrats since FDR. And since 85 percent of people live in cities, Democrats have controlled most of the country's population for the past eighty years. These facts are not widely known, simply because then Democrats would have to be held accountable for their mismanagement of budgets (deficits) and corruption. All of the states suffering huge deficits are run by Democrats. These deficits create future debt for the 99 percent who work for a living.

Report: Inequality Hasn’t Changed in 25 Years

2011-12-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

I’ve written before about the myth of sudden inequality. While income inequality has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, it’s declined since 2007 and wealth inequality is actually lower than it was in 1995 – raising questions about the link between inequality and the current unemployment rate.

: Associated Press

A new report puts an even finer point on changes in inequality.

“Basically,” the report finds “income inequality hasn’t changed in 25 years.”

The study, by Ronald M. Schmidt, of the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration University of Rochester, challenges the recent CBO report that found that income inequality expanded dramatically between 1979 and 2007. That report said the incomes of the top 1% grew by 275% over the period, while incomes for most Americans grew by 40% or less.

George Soros: Global Financial System In 'Self-Reinforcing Process Of Disintegration'

2011-12-08T04:34:00.001-07:00

Billionaire investor George Soros says that the global financial system is on the brink of collapse.

Developed countries are falling into a "deflationary debt trap," in which consumer spending falls, products become more expensive, tax revenues drop, and sovereign debt grows, Soros said last week, according to the Wall Street Journal. As a result, he said, the global financial system is in a "self-reinforcing process of disintegration."

"The consequences could be quite disastrous," Soros, who was born in Hungary, said at the tenth anniversary of the International Senior Lawyers Project.

Concern is mounting that the eurozone may break up because of market pressure on European sovereign debt, which could plunge Europe into a depression and the world into a recession. Observers are already worried that Europe could suffer a recession and subsequent slow growth for several years even if it averts a eurozone breakup, since products would remain expensive in the euro, making consumers more hesitant to buy them and forcing governments to curtail budgets even more as consumer spending falls.

If You Have A Lot Of Groceries You Might Be A Terrorist

2011-12-08T04:33:00.001-07:00

During the floor debate over a defense re-authorization bill that contained a provision extending the battlefield in the war on terror to the American homeland, and thus the government’s authority to treat American citizens like enemy combatants, Senator Rand Paul ran through some of the criteria the government uses to determine who might be a terrorist.

Provisions like…having guns. Having more than seven days of groceries. Missing fingers on your hands.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong necessarily wrong with the government finding a certain things like stockpiling weapons, etc. to be suspicious activity. But in civilian courts, the government must prove that such suspicious are evidence of an actual crime and they must prove that beyond a reasonable doubt in an environment where the defendant is entitled to certain rights.

Hillary Clinton: ‘Religious Beliefs’ Are ‘Standing in the Way of Protecting Human Rights of LGBT People'

2011-12-08T04:24:00.003-07:00

Religious beliefs and cultural values do not justify the failure to uphold the human rights of homosexuals, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday.

"Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs," Clinton said.

Her speech at the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations and its Human Rights Council (HRC) was delivered ahead of Human Rights Day on December 10, the anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Full Letter From Merkozy To Van Rompuy

2011-12-08T04:24:00.001-07:00

And so the hope that anything real can be done on Friday fades with every confirmation that when it comes to simple math, there is no solution.

Mr President,

To overcome the current crisis, all necessary measures to stabilize the euro area as a whole will have to be taken. We are confident that we will succeed.
We are convinced that we need to reinforce the architecture of Economic and Monetary Union going beyond the indispensable measures which are urgently needed to cope with immediate crisis resolution. Those steps need to be taken now without further delay. We consider this as a matter of necessity, credibility and confidence in the future of Economic and Monetary Union.

The current crisis has uncovered the deficiencies in the construction of EMU mercilessly. We need to remedy those deficiencies. To build a lasting Stability and Growth Union which allows us to preserve our unique European model combining economic success and social responsibility, we have to substantially reinforce the foundations of EMU. Alongside the single currency, a strong economic pillar is indispensable, building on enhanced governance to foster fiscal discipline as well as stronger growth and enhanced competitiveness. In order to achieve these objectives, we need a renewed contract between the Euro area Member States. This conviction is the driving-force behind our proposal.
***
We need more binding and more ambitious rules and commitments for the Euro area Member States. They should reflect that sharing a single currency means sharing responsibility for the Euro area as a whole. They should pave the way for a new quality of cooperation and integration within the Euro area.
We propose that those new rules and commitments should be enshrined in the European Treaties as. Alternatively , the Member States whose currency is the Euro will have to go ahead. In that case, we would ensure that those Member States willing and able to do so would be able to join and the European institutions would play an important role. We would also work towards bringing this new agreement into the framework of the European Union as soon as possible.
The main building blocks of the new Stability and Growth Union are:

A strengthened institutional architecture

2011-11-30T09:25:00.002-07:00

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

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

2011-11-19T11:03:00.001-07:00

"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

2011-11-19T11:02:00.003-07:00

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)

House Approves Concealed Firearm Permit Bill

2011-11-19T11:02:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-16T17:02:00.002-07:00

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

2011-11-16T17:02:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

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.

22 Signs That The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Starting To Disappear

2011-11-16T17:00:00.001-07:00

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?

2011-11-16T16:59:00.005-07:00

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

2011-11-16T16:59:00.003-07:00

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.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Shifting to College Campuses

2011-11-16T16:59:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-16T16:57:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-13T14:09:00.002-07:00

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

2011-11-13T14:09:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-10T04:59:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-10T04:57:00.004-07:00

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

2011-11-10T04:57:00.003-07:00

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

2011-11-10T04:57:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-09T04:36:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-09T04:35:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-09T04:34:00.004-07:00

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

2011-11-09T04:34:00.003-07:00

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!

2011-11-09T04:34:00.001-07:00

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

2011-11-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-04T04:50:00.003-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:50:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:49:00.002-06:00

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.

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

2011-11-04T04:49:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:48:00.000-06:00

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.

NYC arrest records: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury

2011-11-04T04:47:00.004-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:47:00.003-06:00

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'

2011-11-04T04:47:00.001-06:00

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."

Judge Economic Policies By State's Credit Ratings

2011-11-04T04:45:00.000-06:00

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."

A New Declaration of Independence

2011-11-04T04:44:00.004-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:44:00.003-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:44:00.001-06:00

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.”

Obama: Campaigning Like It's 1936

2011-11-04T04:43:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-04T04:43:00.001-06:00

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.

How Did Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' Predict an America Spinning Out of Control?

2011-11-04T04:42:00.002-06:00

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?

What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

2011-11-04T04:42:00.001-06:00

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.”

What a One-World Government Looks Like

2011-10-27T14:37:00.004-06:00

The Dutch government will fall unless the crisis is solved. So will the Italian government. So will the entire EU, according to Alan Greenspan. "At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999," Greenspan said, "it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn't. Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe's excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits." In short, said Greenspan, the countries comprising the EU are incompatible. "The effect of the divergent cultures in the eurozone has been grossly underestimated."

Lennon's one-world concept was a communist one. "Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can / No need for greed or hunger / A brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world." Lennon got his wish in soft form in the creation of the European Union. The result: class warfare in the extreme -- a racial powder keg ready to blow -- and full-scale bankruptcy. Now the EU will revert to what it has always been: a loose agglomeration of nations, often in conflict with one another. That's the way the world works. That's the way the world will always work. And that is not a bad thing. Better that some nations stand for individualism, freedom and entrepreneurialism than that we all stand for redistributionism and the spineless multiculturalism that results in destruction of standards.