Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Nobel Dynamite
Subject: txt 1st lbrty owg bdd hstry -
"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."- Nobel Peace Prize Committee of the Norwegian Parliament
announcing the award to Barack Obama of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace.
The unambiguous message of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee of the Storting, Norway's parliament, is candidly stated in the public announcement of the Prize.
It is the dream of a world in which the role of the United States of America in all respects is vastly diminished.
That's the message of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
Through our history, the success and survival of the American Experiment have depended on the approval of no potentates, pundits, philosopher-kings, or peoples chained to the old orders. They have resented us for it, but they have been able to do nothing about it, because America's fate was in the hands of the American people, and the Americans knew, understood, treasured, and defended their heritage of constitutional liberty.
Until now.
Are Americans still revolutionaries, free and brave, determined to go our own way, the benighted "values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population" be damned?
Do we still "yearn to breathe free"? Or have we sold our birthright for a mess of pottage, of the cradle-to-grave "security" that is promised, in varying visions, by those old men in power in Oslo, Teheran, and Beijing?
It's not about Barack Obama.
It's about the United States of America and its role in history and in the world.
It's is about us.
[Recommended > ]
READ MORE
Robert Reich Reveals Brutal Health Care Truths; MSM Snores
Subject: txt 1st hcare msm -
Paging Congressman Alan Grayson! Here is a quote that validates what you said about those EVIL Republicans:
"We're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."
So it turns out that Grayson was right when he said "Republicans want you to die quickly." Only one "little" problem here. That quote did not come from a Republican. In fact it came from the very liberal former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who is now an economics adviser for Barack Obama.
READ MORE
THE LESSON OF STATE HEALTH CARE REFORMS
The major provisions of ObamaCare already have been tried and they've led to increased costs and reduced access to care
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously envisioned the states serving as laboratories, trying "novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." And on health care, that's just what they've done, says Peter Suderman, an associate editor at Reason magazine.
The results have been dramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health care costs, and reduced access to care. In other words: The reforms have failed. New York is exhibit A:
- In 1993, the state prohibited insurers from declining to cover individuals with pre-existing health conditions ("guaranteed issue").
- New York also required insurers to charge those enrolled in their plans the same premium, regardless of health status, age or sex ("community rating").
- The goal was to reduce the number of uninsured by making health insurance more accessible, particularly to those who don't have employer-provided insurance.
- In 1994, there were just under 752,000 individuals enrolled in individual insurance plans, or about 4.7 percent of the nonelderly population.
- This put New York roughly in line with the rest of the United States.
- Today, that percentage has dropped to just 0.2 percent of the state's nonelderly.
- In contrast, between 1994 and 2007, the total number of people insured in the individual market across the United States rose to 5.5 percent from 4.5 percent.
READ MORE
POLL: Most Oppose Penalty for Not Buying Health Insurance
ubject: txt 1st hcare -
Anew Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 55% of U.S. voters oppose that proposal. Just 32% of voters think young and healthy Americans should be forced to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure.
Among voters ages 18 to 29, 29% favor the provision, known as “the individual mandate,” while 57% are opposed to it.
READ MORE
CBS: ObamaCare 'Would Reduce the Deficit,' Yet 'Republicans STILL Oppose It'
[Meanwhile, in our professional media...]
Instead of explaining the skepticism toward how the massive additional spending could lead to less spending, reporter Nancy Cordes touted how “the new numbers give health care reform a much-needed boost” and credulously recounted the spending would be offset by fees, taxes “and trims to Medicare.” When Republicans proposed a reduction in the rate of increase of Medicare spending the media screamed about “cuts.” Now a $400 billion change is merely a “trim.”
And who really believes the CBO's PRELIMINARY 'estimate' - made without actual legislative language (i.e., no details whatsoever - only descriptions of what Democrats say they'll eventually put in it)??
[Think about that: what the Senate passed through committee yesterday was essentially a 'pre-approved' legislation, with the details to be added later.]
READ MORE
Obama's plan? what plan?
Despite his claims, the president has no Afghan strategy
Throughout last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama lambasted the Bush administration for fighting “the wrong war” in Iraq and ignoring the right one in Afghanistan. Iraq was a “war of choice,” Obama claimed, while Afghanistan was a “war of necessity.”
Repeatedly, he claimed that, if elected president, he’d unveil a new “stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy.”
In March, in one of those solemn-looking occasions in which he excels, Obama said that the new strategy, which he did not elaborate, was already in place. He speeded up the troop buildup ordered by the Bush administration, and a few weeks later named a new commander for Afghanistan.
That commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lost no time in revealing that the Obama administration had no specific strategy and that his first task was to work one out... [snip]
One can only imagine the general’s surprise when President Obama, asked to comment on the leaked report, said he wouldn’t allow himself to be rushed into sending more troops, as requested by McChrystal, pending the development of a [new] “new strategy”...
[Meanwhile, Americans die...]
READ MORE
Fallen Marine's father wants change
txt gwot heroes -
NEW PORTLAND, Maine - It was the last way John Bernard would have wanted his voice to gain prominence in the national debate over the war in Afghanistan.
The retired Marine had been writing to lawmakers for weeks complaining of the new rules of engagement he believed put U.S. troops at unacceptable risk in the insurgency-wracked country. He got little response... [snip]
Then Bernard's only son, 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard — a Marine like his dad — was killed in an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, the latest victim of a surge in U.S. combat deaths... [snip]
Bernard's criticism is aimed at new rules of engagement imposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, five weeks before Joshua Bernard was killed. They limit the use of airstrikes and require troops to break off combat when civilians are present, even if it means letting the enemy escape.
Under those rules, John Bernard said, Marines and soldiers are being denied artillery and air support for fear of killing civilians, and the Taliban is using that to its tactical advantage. In a letter to his congressman and Maine's U.S. senators, Bernard condemned
"the insanity of the current situation and the suicidal position this administration has placed these warriors in."[More, all of it disgusting.]
READ MORE
FLASHBACK >
The rules murdering our troops
When enemy action kills our troops, it's unfortu nate. When our own moral fecklessness murders those in uniform, it's unforgivable.
READ MORE
[Then ...
"LET OUR TROOPS FIGHT"
Whitehouse: mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
House-Pelosi: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...
Cooperation Rises between Iran and Taliban
txt gwot iran - intl israel -
The ancient city of Herat is Afghanistan's best-kept secret. For years, it has enjoyed 24-hour electricity and a booming economy, reports CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan. But it's not thanks to U.S. efforts - it's all because of Iran. The city lies right on Afghanistan's border with Iran, (Snip) A soldier from 7th Group Special Forces finds rocket propelled grenades in a hard-core Taliban village that he knows from experience, are made
READ MORE
ElBaradei says nuclear Israel number one threat to Mideast
[HT:NR]Subject: txt israel owg gwot -
'Coup' Brought No Chaos to Honduras
Subject: txt intl - DeMint:
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he is mystified at the hostility the Obama administration is showing to Honduras since that long-time U.S. ally removed President Manuel Zelaya and replaced him with Vice President Roberto Micheletti.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the South Carolina senator recounts how the White House revoked the U.S. travel visas of Micheletti, his government, and private citizens — refusing to talk to the government in Tegucigalpa.
“It's frozen desperately needed financial assistance to one of the poorest and friendliest U.S. allies in the region,” DeMint argues. “It won't release the legal basis for its insistence on Mr. Zelaya's restoration to power. Nor has it explained why it's setting aside America's longstanding policy of supporting free elections to settle these kinds of disputes.”
Bottom line: DeMint wants the administration to lighten up.
“America's Founding Fathers — like the framers of Honduras's own constitution — believed strong institutions were necessary to defend freedom and democracy from the ambitions of would-be tyrants and dictators,” he writes. “Faced by Mr. Zelaya's attempted usurpations, the institutions of Honduran democracy performed as designed, and as our own Founding Fathers would have hoped.”
READ MORE
Obama has found his oppressor
Why would President Obama openly challenge the highest rated news channel in existence?
Obama's poll numbers are dropping, his policies are running into serious problems even though his own party has a super majority, and even his personal appeal has failed him. Many in the media are scratching their heads trying to figure out why a sitting President would do something so foolish.
The answer is simple. Obama's stock and trade when he was a community organizer was peddling a victimization mentality that blames all manner of bogeymen but never looks at the culture of failure that created the conditions he railed against. For a every victim our community organizer needs an oppressor. Finding an oppressor when you're the President of the most powerful country in the world isn't easy. It appears President Obama has formerly decided that Fox News will be his oppressor and has sent out his aides to tell the world. Obama has decided to play role of the victim.
Playing the victim accomplishes a few things;
- Openly challenging FoxNews takes up a news cycle or two among the talking heads and serious issues won't be explored. Every time the public starts to examine Obama policies closely the lower the President's poll numbers go, so, distractions are viewed as good for Obama and his policies.
- It plays to the storyline that the committed left lives by and believes. This helps keep the leftist base active, which is important for a left of center President trying to govern in a center right country.
- Playing the victim absolves Obama of the responsibility among his supporters if things don't go his way. If the public option doesn't make it into health care reform, you can bet it will be Foxnews' fault. We saw similar rhetoric from the left in the lead up to the war in Iraq.
The American people expect the President to perform. Unlike Annenberg, the Illinois State Senate, and the US Senate, Obama will actually have to accomplish something by leading.
Obama forgets that his is the leader of a center right country, he's not in the leftpdominated halls of academia anymore. Whining may score points with the base, but a vast majority of Americans prefer to choose not to be a victim, and as a country we don't like whiners.
READ MORE
Baltimore Sun Critic Praises Fox News For Giving Obama the 'Tiny Bit of Scrutiny' He Faces On TV
Subject: txt msm fnn -
[This from the B-Sun!?!]
David Zurawik, a TV critic for The Baltimore Sun, has called for the
“TV press...to step back and question how it is covering President Barack Obama.”
Referring to a CNBC interview where President Obama complained that "one television station is entirely devoted to attacking" his administration, Zurawik gives a laudatory nod to Fox News for its balanced coverage of the President:
“I hesitate to write these words, but good for Fox. It must be doing something right, if it has the President complaining about the tiny bit of scrutiny he gets on TV.”
[Ah, there it is; somehow 'hesitant' to give credit to a news organization for actually doing its job because it's FOX. Why?]
READ MORE
Benanke's bomb
[HT:MM]Subject: txt mny -
At least one rising congressman, Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, is raising an alarm about the Federal Reserve's ability to protect the dollar and maintain the Fed's own inflation-fighting capacity. At the root of his concern, he says, is the Fed's new role as "one of the largest bondholders in the world."
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been piling up purchases of "mortgage-backed" securities to keep money flowing into the housing market. Though the Fed recently said it would slow its buying, the central bank now sits on a giant portfolio worth $650 billion.
Here's the problem: If the Fed decides to raise interest rates to combat inflation, even a small hike would likely knock billions of dollars off the value of the Fed's holdings.
Mr. Kirk estimates that if rates go up two percentage points -- a plausible scenario given short-term rates are near zero now -- the Fed could lose $100 billion from its own balance sheet. The danger is that the mere existence of such a concern could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the markets doubt the Fed would endanger its own financial welfare to fight inflation.
[The predictable consequences of letting the government into the business of business.]
READ MORE
Global Warming Alarmist Appeared in 1978's 'The Coming Ice Age'
Subject: txt grn -
Stanford University's noted global warming alarmist and Al Gore advisor Stephen Schneider appeared in a 1978 television program warning Americans of a coming Ice Age.
For those that have forgotten, "In Search of..." was a televised documentary series from 1976 to 1982 that was normally narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
One climate expert cited was Stephen Schneider, a climatologist working for the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the time who was asked to address some of the possible solutions being discussed to stop the coming Ice Age... [snip]
DR. STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: Can we do these things? Yes. But will they make things better? I'm not sure. We can't predict with any certainty what's happening to our own climatic future. How can we come along and intervene then in that ignorance? You could melt the icecaps. What would that do to the coastal cities? The cure could be worse than the disease. Would that be better or worse than the risk of an ice age?
Now, thirty years later, Schneider is INDEED predicting what's happening to our climatic future by using models, and advocates government intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent global warming.
Now that Schneider's appearance on "In Search of..." has been uncovered, will journalists - always concerned about presenting all sides of the story - report this video and its implications or bury it for fear that it might impact pending legislation to cap and tax carbon dioxide emissions?
READ MORE
The Times Waddles in on Another Big Story
Subject: txt grn engry msm -
The New York Times ran a story that has been big news across the blogosphere for quite a while but not, until yesterday, fit to print: global temperatures have been steady for the past decade, not rising inexorably toward a climatic Armageddon. Many scientists even think they will decline over the next few years.
Today, the Times is at it again, running an above-the-fold story on how this has been a banner year for oil exploration. Major strikes have been found in Iraq, Australia, Ghana, Brazil, Russia, Norway, and Sierra Leone. BP has hit what may turn out to be the largest field yet found in the Gulf of Mexico, currently estimated at 4 billion to 6 billion barrels. Even Israel has struck oil, in the Dead Sea area.
Indeed, oil companies have found more oil in the past two years than they have extracted - ever. So much for the we’re-inevitably-running-out-of-oil-and-soon meme so popular on the Left... [snip]
Naturally, the Times, still the Paper of Record for the liberal elite if not many others, remains adamantly opposed to oil exploration—even just finding out if the oil is there, let alone extracting it—in most of the most promising areas in the world: the United States and its offshore waters...
[Everyone but U.S.]
READ MORE
DISENFRANCHISING CITIZENS
If the Obama Administration succeeds in counting 12 million illegal immigrants in next year's census, it will effectively disenfranchise an equal number of U.S. citizens
Next year's decennial census is rife with opportunities for a major power grab by the president's party, says Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
The White House has made very clear that their intention is to put extra effort into counting illegal immigrants in the next Census. It wants to make sure that all 12 million illegal immigrants are counted, a task that's not easy given the desire of most people who are illegally in the United States to avoid detection:
- Estimates are that if illegal immigrants are counted in the 2010 census, California will keep two seats it would otherwise lose (since that state has been losing citizen residents at a rapid rate) and Arizona and Texas will each pick up seats.
- The big loser will be the Midwest, however, with a loss of six seats among five states, according to a study by the Connecticut State Data Center.
The real issue is what this will mean to individual voters in districts that are made up mostly of citizens. Their votes will, in effect, be diluted by the votes of citizens who live in districts where large numbers of illegal immigrants live.
This change has the potential to dramatically alter the meaning of representative democracy...
READ MORE
Protesters Rail Against Obama Song In N.J. School
Subject: txt edu msm bias bdd -
A New Jersey elementary school is under scrutiny after students were seen on tape singing a song in praise of President Barack Obama. On Monday, dozens of protesters chanted outside the school, saying the children are being brainwashed.
"Educate, don't indoctrinate; Educate don't indoctrinate,"
The demonstrators protested across the street from the "B" Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township....
[Funny thing about the protesters and demonstrators - ALL of those interviewed turned out to be parents. Yet, except to identify their quotes, "parents" isn't otherwise used - even once, whereas protesters and demonstrators repeatedly alternate throughout the piece.
Ah: It's by local CBS TV News professionals.]
READ MORE
Will Media Help Sell the New Obama American Flag?
Subject: txt msm bias sclm bbro - lbrty -
There's a new American flag available on the Internet that has a picture of President Obama in the corner where the stars representing our fifty states normally reside.
Given how our media have assisted in selling Obama paraphernalia since Inauguration Day, one has to wonder what their position will be on the attractive keepsake pictured right.
(larger picture of flag below the fold, h/t Atlas Shrugs):
READ MORE
Sunshine scares academic-labor complex
Subject: txt edu crpt -
It is not uncommon to find tax exempt and state-supported academic institutions hosting labor study centers that conduct research and offer training programs for unions. Because unions are highly partisan political powerhouses, the possibilities for abuse are endless, in effect funneling public money into politics (as may have been the case with ACORN). The left's dominance on most campuses only increases the hazzards.
Accordingly, The Landmark Legal Foundation has filed information requests and complaints with 11 academic institutions. Sunshine is as much anathema to the left-labor cozy campus arrangements as it is to Dracula. The American Association of University Professors, which is a labor union more than an academic organization is outraged, crying that academic freedom is at risk... [no news there - snip]
The AAUP statement reads in part:
Thus far, to our knowledge the most serious complaints, which threaten academic freedom, appear to have taken place at UC Berkeley and Evergreen, where the foundation seeks to restrict the work of the centers, in terms of who they serve and what they do.
At Berkeley, among other charges, that the Labor Center provides services for private (union) benefit rather than for public benefit.
The letter from Landmark went on to say that "Rather than a valid public purpose, the Center's activities are designed to promote a particular political ideology."
Academics are accustomed to zero public accountability for their use of public funds. In the leftist hothouse on campus, serving the cause of the left is often seen as a question of simple morality. The doctrine of academic freedom has been perverted into lack of accountability.
Academics often defend labor centers on the ground that they offer a counterbalance to business schools and economics departments. This is nonsense. Business is commerce and industry, activities upon which human welfare depends. It is the stuff of life, not of politics.
Labor unions, on the other hand, exist only to enrich their members, and monopolize the supply of labor in a particular employment relationship. They are legalized cartels, operating for the benefit of their members, and they survive at the expense of the majority by devoting a substantial portion of their extorted income to political donations.
READ MORE
Pulitzer Winner Likens Rush Limbaugh to Plantation Owner
Subject: txt bdd vals msm -
One of the most damaging accusations you can level at opponent is call that individual a racist in one form or another. And that's the tactic MSNBC and others left-wing opponents of Rush Limbaugh are taking to thwart his bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams.
During a segment on MSNBC on Oct. 13, former Pulitzer Prize winner Karen Hunter appeared to voice her opposition to the Limbaugh's NFL bid. She made one of the most outrageous - likening Limbaugh's ownership of an NFL team to being a plantation owner, a metaphor that invokes the image of antebellum South during the 19th Century, when slavery was rampant.
"I can just see the visions of plantation grandeur dancing in his head as we speak,"
[Yet it's always the Left that always inject race - in this case, what she sees in someone else's head.]
READ MORE
It's Safer When We're Packing
Subject: txt lbrty gdd guns -
"Allowing more people to carry concealed handguns in densely populated cities, on crowded subways, on buses and in sports stadiums, is a recipe for disaster."- The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Source: US Dept. of Justice.
Number of states allowing "shall issue" or unrestricted concealed carry;
In 1988: 10.
In 2006: 39.
[Better manners, too. Wait for the below graphic to go active...]
SOURCE
NBC’s Williams Derides Blogosphere as ‘Comic Element of Our Society’
READ MORE
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”Mahatma Gandhi
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
