Code Pink Protesters Try Witchcraft at Anti-Marine Rallies

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley's controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center. The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "Witches, clowns and sirens day," the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day. "Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war," Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

[a little wisdom: win ]

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Kansas Voters Could Change the Way Judges Are Selected

Kansas will have a proposition on the November ballot that could send shock waves into the tenure of state court judges. The voters in Kansas' Johnson County will vote on the right to elect their 10th judicial district court judges instead of having them chosen by the lawyers.

We hear a lot in the media about bringing democracy to the world. Citizens in this suburban Kansas City county are asking for more democracy in the middle of the United States...

[here-here, past time. We've activist judges (galore) because they're largely unaccountable to the American people. "Independent Judiciary" was meant to mean independent from the other branches of government only - never the people - we need remind the black robe society on who's sufferance their jobs rightly depend. Recommended > ]

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Will Media Question False Economic Statistics?

For months, we've been warning readers of the likelihood that media will adopt the 1992 Clinton playbook of regularly depicting the economy as being far worse than it really is. On Sunday, the Democratic National Committee released a new television advertisement ... [snip]

"Household Income Down $1000"

Where did the DNC get that figure from? The ad doesn't say.

Maybe more important, the statistics DON'T come CLOSE to supporting this claim. Let's look first at the most recent Census Bureau data.

According to an August 28, 2007, press release, "Real median household income in the United States climbed between 2005 and 2006, reaching $48,200." In 2000, this number was $42,148. That's a six-year increase of $6,052.

The same question can be asked of this offering:

"1.8 Million Jobs Lost"

Really? Based on what? According to the Labor Department, there are currently 137.846 million non-farm employees in the nation. In December 2000, this figure was 132.485 million (both figures seasonally adjusted). This represents a greater than 5.3 million increase. [snip]

With this in mind, will press outlets this campaign season investigate the economic claims being made by the candidates and their supporters, or allow inaccuracies present in this ad (embedded video [at source]), and likely others in the months to come, to go completely unchallenged?

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Obama's Plan for NASA

After 2010, the Shuttles are gone. The Constellation project will provide the vehicles for the next big step in space exploration. That is unless Barack Obama becomes our 44th president. The last paragraph in his 15-page "Plan For Lifetime Success Through Education" reads:

The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years...

Something interesting happens in the Obama campaign document entitled "Barack Obama's Plan For American Leadership in Space." The "something" is that there's nothing in there about "American leadership in space." It states,

"As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform [CEV] to ensure that the United States' reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period."

And for how long does the U.S. postpone a new space transport capability? Obama's answer is the "minimum possible time period." In the meantime, the U.S. space program sits on the tarmac.

So there it is. The Global Social Worker aims to shift funds from space exploration to federal pre-schools. All this suggests the most poignant irony of this entire campaign season.

Barack Obama, the candidate who has often been portrayed by some in the media as Kennedyesque, would leave the space exploration legacy of JFK sitting idle on the beach.

[and exposing us to a growing threat from China in space, by making us reliant on other nations for or lift capacity (needed to maintain, say, military and communication satellites). What will other nations do when China tells 'em not to lift our stuff, threatening economic warfare against them if they don't comply (which, we must never forget, as a totalitarian nation it's capable of doing). This is extraordinarily foolish.]

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Congressional Problem Creation

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 [remember its name], whose provisions were strengthened during the Clinton and Bush administrations, is a federal law that mandates or intimidates lenders to offer credit throughout their entire market and discourages them from restricting their credit services to high-income markets, a practice known as redlining.

The Community Reinvestment Act encouraged banks and thrifts to make so-called "no doc" and "liar" loans to customers who had no realistic ability to pay them back. A decade of monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve Bank, contributing to the housing bubble, encouraged lending institutions to take risks they otherwise would not have taken.

Government actions created the subprime crisis and now government-proposed "solutions," such as foreclosure holidays, bailouts and yet more regulation of financial institutions, to the problems they created will create more problems...

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THE LOOPHOLE FACTORY

[Congressional Problem Creation - the sequel...]

Congress is becoming a tax loophole production factory for the powerful, says the Wall Street Journal. For example:

• The "Foreclosure Prevention Act" passed the Senate last week and contains $25 billion in tax subsidies for home builders and industry interests hurt by the housing crunch.
• Builders will be able to offset current losses against taxes paid in the past three years, which will mean billions of dollars of tax rebate checks from Uncle Sam.

This giveaway came only a few weeks after the National Association of Home Builders threatened to suspend their PAC contributions to Congress "until further notice" -- meaning until they saw more return on their political investments. With this loophole factory open for business on Capitol Hill again, business lobbies are spending more money than ever to curry Congressional favor:

• The real-estate industry may be in dire financial straits, but housing industry PACs have already contributed $56 million to political campaigns this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
• Forty new business lobbying firms have registered since January to represent the likes of concrete makers, home builders, Freddie Mac and the Realtors, reports Politico.com.

[this legalized bribery scheme is how special interests run rough shod over the average American - when are we going to put a stop to it?']

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Closing tax loopholes one way to fix state budget

California

A recent Los Angeles Times poll found that just 11 percent of Californians support closing the deficit with new taxes, while 48 percent said it should be addressed only with spending cuts. But Democratic legislators in California want to raise taxes to close a whopping state budget deficit, as they denounce Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initial proposal to slash spending.

Democrats such as Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez sidestep questions about raising personal or corporate income taxes or sales taxes. Instead, they say such things as this statement from Núñez: "Revenue sources from closing tax loopholes and credits must be on the table." But Núñez, et al., are very vague when it comes to specifics. [snip]

Allowing homeowners to deduct mortgage interest on their state income taxes is a $4.9 billion-a-year tax break that, according to a study by the Legislature's budget analyst, flows largely to more affluent taxpayers because they are most likely to own homes and itemize their tax deductions.

The second-largest tax "loophole" is exempting most food from sales taxes, which was scored at $4.7 billion a year. While its benefits flow more evenly to all income groups, it, too, is a longstanding and highly popular tax break. That's also true of the No. 3 tax break, the $4.5 billion income-tax exemption given to pension contributions by employers, and No. 4, the $4 billion tax exemption for employer-supplied health care benefits.

[ loopholes? deducting interest paid while paying taxes on interest earned? food?? ...... they think it's their money]

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MISSISSIPPI'S TORT REFORM TRIUMPH

Four years ago, Mississippi transformed itself from judicial hell hole to job magnet, a story that is instructive for other states trying to attract jobs in turbulent economic times. The lessons here are especially timely, because the pro-growth tort reform trend that was once spreading across the country may soon reverse course... [snip]

Shortly after winning the gubernatorial election in 2003 by running on a tort-reform platform, Haley Barbour (R) stitched together a coalition of doctors, business groups, taxpayers and even unions to roll back the trial lawyer lobby. The law that eventually passed capped awards for noneconomic damages and preventing a plaintiff's attorney seeking to bring a class-action from venue shopping. Almost overnight, the flow of lawsuits began to dry up and businesses started to trickle in:

• Federal Express invested $1 billion in a new facility in the state.
• Toyota chose Mississippi over about a dozen other states for a new $1.2 billion, 2,000-worker auto plant.
• Since the law took effect, medical malpractice lawsuits have fallen by nearly 90 percent, which in turn has cut malpractice insurance costs by 30 percent to 45 percent.

Other benefits of Mississippi's tort reform:

• The state unemployment rate is down to about 6 percent from nearly 9 percent.
• Last year, Mississippi's per capita income growth was 6.7 percent, third highest of the 50 states.

Source Stephen Moore, "Mississippi's Tort Reform Triumph," Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2008.

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Carbon 'cap and trade' policies immoral

The carbon "cap and trade" policies advocated by Al Gore and John McCain are an immoral solution to a non-existent problem. So says Britain's Lord Christopher Monckton, and he backs this statement up with scientific fact and analysis. See this paper.

I wish Lord Monkton could achieve a higher profile in the US since he is very articulate, passionate and on-top of all the scientific, economic and moral facts to debunk the Global Warming Hoax. It you're not familiar with him, he successfully sued the UK educational establishment and forced them to acknowledge that An Inconvenient Truth is riddled with scientific errors.

He pursued this suit into the teeth of the Labor Gov't and Judicial establishment and only succeeded by highlighting the absurdity of their positions both legal and scientific. We could use him to champion the truth here.

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The Leaker Shield Act

There is something unique about what has come to be called the War on Terror. In this conflict, as the U.S. government struggles to defeat the enemy and keep our people safe, it is up against not only those who overtly and unambiguously seek to destroy us. It also confronts those who are prepared to reveal classified information and programs, even when doing so makes it harder to vanquish our foes and protect this country. [snip]

It is imperative to consider these four categories as the U.S. Senate prepares to consider legislation with the unobjectionable-sounding name of the “Free Flow of Information Act (FFIA) of 2007.” The bill, S. 2035, is better known as the “media shield” law. It would be more accurate to call it the “Leaker and Other Enemies Shield Act"...

[read it, then do as your conscious dictates]

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“S. 2035: Free Flow of Information Act (FFIA) of 2007.”
US President president@whitehouse.gov comments@whitehouse.gov
YOUR Senator http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

UNDERSTANDING AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

America is indeed exceptional by any plausible definition of the term and actually has grown increasingly exceptional over time, say Peter H. Schuck and James Q. Wilson, editors of "Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation."

• Three-quarters of Americans say they are proud to be Americans; only one-third of the people in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan give that response about their own countries.
• Two-thirds of Americans believe that success in life depends on one's own efforts; only one-third of Europeans say that.

Schuck said that Understanding America casts a new light on American exceptionalism by examining it at a micro level. He identified several overarching themes that connect the essays:

• American culture is different; its patriotism, individualism, religiosity and spirit of enterprise make it different.
• American constitutionalism is unique in its emphasis on individual rights, decentralization and suspicion of government authority.
• Our uniquely competitive, flexible and decentralized economy has produced a high standard of living for a long time.

Lastly, America has been diverse throughout its history, say the authors. The percentage of non-native English speakers in the United States was actually greater in 1790 than it was in 1990...

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Australian seniors take up fencing
The group at Melbourne's Catholic Homes Corpus Christi, most of whom are retired priests and nuns, have spent the past nine months studying swordplay and are learning to leave their walking sticks behind and lunge like Zorro.
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