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PORTLAND, Ore. – How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.
But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.
With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working — even if that means stretching the facts...
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Thursday, August 6, 2009
SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs
Labour's Lies Have Brought the UK to Ruin
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Labour's rhetoric on immigration is a colossal exercise in deceit. Ministers are fond of talking tough, endlessly boasting of “crackdowns” and “robust new rules” on entry. But in reality they have presided over the wilful collapse of our borders and the destruction of our British identity.
Over the past 12 years, the Government has been engaged in a vicious cultural war against the concept of British patriotism...
[Are we paying attention?]
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Current House Committee Chairs are More to the Left Than Any Time In History
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In a Democratic caucus that is to the left of America, the most powerful committee chairmen in the House - just like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) - are to the left of the majority of Democrats.
This study by RealClearPolitics shows that the current House committee chairmen are more liberal than the Democratic rank and file than at any time in history.
Time and partisan drawing of districts have elevated a group of liberal congressmen, who were first elected over 30 years ago in response to Watergate and the Vietnam War, to the most powerful positions in the House.
- Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was elected to Congress in 1975.
- Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the all-powerful House Ways and Means Committee, entered Congress in 1971.
- Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), chairman of the health subcommittee of Ways and Means, was elected in 1971.
- And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has been in Congress since 1981.
That's why they attacked the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats for objecting to the high taxing, big government provisions of the House health care bill.
And it's why they are pressuring President Obama not to compromise now.
They have power and they have clout. And if America is telling President Obama to slow down and reconsider his health reform plans, these powerful House committee chairmen are telling him to go full speed ahead, never mind what the people think.
President Obama faces a choice.
At American Solutions we stand ready to help develop a bipartisan, pro-small business economic growth plan that could be passed when Congress returns in September.
At the Center for Health Transformation we stand ready to develop a bipartisan, market-based health reform plan that delivers more choices of high quality health care at a lower cost - without raising taxes.
Will President Obama hear the message of the American people and work with centrists -- even though it will cause his leftwing to attack him?
Or will he listen to Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and ram through the programs that have the support of the Left but are opposed by the country?
It's his choice.
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Seven Time Mag Covers Since Election for Obama
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Time magazine's August 10 edition with President Barack Obama on the cover (“Paging Dr. Obama”) brings to seven the number of issues the magazine's cover has featured Obama just since November's election -- make that eight for the First Family if you add in June 1's genuflecting “The Meaning of Michelle.”
The frequent cover appearances led even Jon Stewart, a Bush-hater who was thrilled by Obama's election, to quip Thursday night on his Comedy Central show:
“Time magazine is like O magazine, like Obama has to be on the cover -- it is like Oprah magazine. I think he's been on like thirty times this year.”
Well, not thirty, at least not yet, though at about once per month Time will hit thirty Obama covers well before the 2012 vote...
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Stunt Goes Boldly Where No Green Vandals Have Gone Before
.Greenpeace and Canadian-born actor William Shatner joined forces against Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) and accused the company of "breaking green promises" for not producing products completely free of PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants. Activists from the radical environmental group painted a giant message on the roof of Hewlett-Packard's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. that read "Hazardous Products."
And in addition to the rooftop graffiti, Greenpeace set up an automated message to dial HP employee's numbers and then play them a recorded message from Shatner.
A representative from HP told the Business and Media Institute
"The unconstructive antics at HP's headquarters did nothing to advance the goals that all who care about the environment share, ... HP has recycled one billion pounds of electronic products from 1987-2007..."
Go green[er] or have your private business robocalled and vandalized.
HP declined to comment on the possibility of pressing charges against Greenpeace.
READ MORE
[A case of children (not yet) raised on two Spocks; Mr. Spock & Dr. Spock.
Seriously, we know why Shatner's out of work
but can't any of these Greenpeaceniks find constructive employment?]
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Obama refuses to release data on 'cash for clunkers'
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The Obama administration is refusing to release U.S. government records on its "cash for clunkers" rebate program that would substantiate -- or undercut -- claims of the car purchase program's success.
President Barack Obama wants $2 billion more to boost car sales just days after the first $1 billion was made available for the program. Obama has promised greater transparency for his administration, but transportation officials say they do not have time to turn over sales data car dealers have provided that would shed light on the program.
The information released so far shows most buyers are not picking Ford, Chrysler or General Motors vehicles, and six of the top 10 vehicles purchased are Honda, Toyota and Hyundai.
The Associated Press has sought release of the data since last week.
[A new era of transparency.]
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POLL: 54% Oppose More Money for ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program
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Fifty-four percent (54%) of Americans oppose any further funding for the federal "cash for clunkers" program which encourages the owners of older cars to trade them in for newer, more fuel-efficient ones. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 33% of adults think Congress should authorize additional funding to keep the program going now that the original $950 million allocated for it has run out.
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Reid: 'Shall Pass' Clunker Extension Before Recess
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he has votes to extend "Cash for Clunkers," ensuring that the popular program will receive a $2 billion extension before Congress leaves for the recess.
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Made in the USA Jihad
Everything the sociologists are saying about terrorists is wrong
This week's arrest of seven North Carolina residents, including Daniel Boyd and his two sons, on charges of supporting terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder abroad, showed how the problem of homegrown Islamic terrorism is far more rampant than the media or the public is aware of. Just look at the major cases in the past year alone:
- The convert from Long Island who joined al Qaeda (disclosed this past week) and gave the group information about Long Island trains and New York City's subways.
- The plot to blow up two synagogues and a National Guard plane in upstate New York by prison converts (scheduled to go to trial).
- The plot to kill hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix by assimilated American Muslims living here 25 years (all convicted).
- The plot to operate a terrorist training camp in Oregon (pleaded guilty).
- The plot to blow up buildings by the Liberty City 7 (all convicted).
- The sweeping conviction of Hamas officials for conspiring to support terrorism overseas.
- The cases of young Somali teenagers raised in the U.S. going overseas to become suicide bombers.
The Boyd family was white, had a middle-class existence, and had the economic opportunities afforded all Americans—just like most of the terrorists cited above—and yet chose to engage in jihad to the point that Daniel Boyd was willing to send his two kids on suicide missions to Israel.
In the end, the mainstream media refuses to recognize that the "mainstream" Islamic groups are actually radical organizations that teach and imbue their followers with a hatred of the United States and Israel.
These groups front as civil-rights groups, but in fact are radical Islamic groups whose constant message disseminated to the millions of Muslim followers is that the U.S. is an evil country engaged in a war against Islam.
Once that message takes hold—and after all, these groups control the mosques, the Islamic newspapers, the Islamic schools, and the Islamic leadership from which American Muslims and converts get their ideas about the world—it is not a huge leap for some of them to become committed to violent jihad.
And it is up to all of the citizens of the U.S. to admit that yes, there is a problem of Muslim terrorism right here in our country and to call it by its proper name.
That the FBI stopped all these plots is amazing, but they will never continue to bat a thousand. One of these days, the jihadists will succeed.
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CIA Documents Will Show Enhanced Techniques Worked
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The ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence told CNSNews.com that releasing Central Intelligence Agency documents describing the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA used on a few high-level terrorist detainees would show that these techniques worked.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R.-Mich.) said that he had called several months ago for these documents to be released, a proposal that has been pushed by former Vice President Dick Cheney.
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The Religion of Peace
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Hamas launches 'virtue campaign' in Gaza
Shopkeepers in the Gaza Strip have been ordered to remove lingerie from their windows as part of a ''virtue campaign'' launched by Hamas.The Islamic group has also told female lawyers to wear headscarves in court and teenagers have been ordered to stop playing ''suggestive'' modern music.
.....Hamas have been patrolling the beach asking men to cover up bear chests and separating groups of single people congregating together...
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Nigerians count cost after uprising by Islamic sect
Maiduguri, Nigeria - Samuel Yunana's father, Fayam, was taken from his home, stabbed in the side of the stomach and told to convert to Islam. When he refused, his throat was slit.
.....Fayam was among more than 700 people killed in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri during an uprising last week by a radical Islamic sect which wants sharia (Islamic law) imposed across Africa's most populous nation...
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Hizbullah TV network gets okay to air in Australia
Hizbullah-sponsored TV network Al-Manar TV has been granted permission to broadcast in Australia, after having been banned on two occasions.
.....Dr. Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, said the decision Friday by the Australian Communications & Media Authority that Al-Manar TV did not violate government anti-terror laws was ' ''regrettable, if unsurprising''...
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Clinton's Unwise Trip to North Korea
John Bolton
Former president Clinton was met at Pyongyang's airport by notables led by Kim Kye Gwan, the North's long-time chief nuclear negotiator, an unmistakable symbol of linkage. In Pyongyang's view, the two reporters are pawns in the larger game of enhancing the regime's legitimacy and gaining direct access to important U.S. figures.
The reporters' arrest, show trial and subsequent imprisonment (twelve years hard labor) was hostage taking, essentially an act of state terrorism. So the Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea, whether or not he carried an official message from President Obama.
Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so.
While the United States is properly concerned whenever its citizens are abused or held hostage, efforts to protect them should not create potentially greater risks for other Americans in the future.
Yet that is exactly the consequence of visits by former presidents or other dignitaries as a form of political ransom to obtain their release. Iran and other autocracies are presumably closely watching the scenario in North Korea.
With three American hikers freshly in Tehran's captivity, will Clinton be packing his bags again for another act of obeisance? And, looking ahead, what American hostages will not be sufficiently important to merit the presidential treatment?
The point to be made on the Clinton visit is that the knee-jerk impulse for negotiations above all inevitably brings more costs than its advocates foresee. Negotiating from a position of strength, where the benefits to American interests will exceed the costs, is one thing.
Negotiating merely for the sake of it, in the face of palpable recent failures, is something else indeed...
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LEAVE SWISS BANKS ALONE
Swiss financial privacy laws respect the privacy of citizens, unlike the "Orwellian" systems in places like America
In Switzerland, financial privacy laws are a foundation for individual dignity and basic property rights.
Unfortunately, the confidentiality that is the hallmark of Swiss banking is coming under increasing pressure. The global economic crisis has led some governments to intensify efforts to seek tax revenue abroad -- and Switzerland, which accounts for nearly 30 percent of all offshore private wealth, is a natural target. Earlier this year:
- Switzerland was put on a "gray list" by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and threatened with financial sanctions, leading the government to provisionally renegotiate tax agreements with a dozen countries so far.
- Most of those agreements would require Switzerland to hand over individuals' financial information for tax purposes in accordance with the organization's standards.
- The United States Justice Department went even further and filed a lawsuit against UBS, seeking the names of 52,000 account holders suspected of hiding money from the Internal Revenue Service.
Today, Swiss citizens continue to vote on any tax increases in referendums (and sometimes even accept them). These healthy curbs on government contrast with the Orwellian concept of the "transparent citizen" whose every act is known to government.
[Again and again: liberal-progressive governments think it's their money...]
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Dad fined for belting man wooing his child
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A Blenheim father has been convicted and fined $1000 for assaulting a man who wanted to have sex with his 13-year-old daughter.
Defence lawyer Michael Hardy Jones told the Blenheim District Court yesterday that the May 5 assault occurred after the defendant and his wife had tried other ways of keeping the man away from their daughter.
[We've a legal crisis in this country.]
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Could bar stools be next?
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Could bar stools and pool cues be next to be banned from Queensland pubs and clubs, following the State Government's decision to replace glass with plastic cups in some bars.
In March, Treasurer Andrew Fraser said some Queensland licensees had taken voluntary action to make '''glass alternatives''' available to patrons...
[It doesn't stop until stopped.]
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AP Finally Discovers 'Head-Snapping' U.S. Receipts Dive
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Well, it only took them about 3-1/2 months.
Yours truly and others have since April noted a precipitous and likely historic dive in Uncle Sam's monthly collections. Year-over-year declines actually began last summer. The degree of monthly fall-offs has gotten "progressively" worse since then.
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Higher Costs Spur Rise in Spending
[Credit where due; from the NYT {even a blind squirrel...}]
The broader economy may be testing the bottom, but for American consumers, there appears to be no end yet in sight for falling wages and higher living expenses. That was the picture painted Tuesday by the government’s monthly report on personal incomes and consumer spending.
While consumers spent more in June, they did so because prices of food and energy were rising, and not because they were ready to spend freely again...
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Green Jobs: Fast-tracking Economic Suicide
The sobering real world economic realities for "countries like Spain, Germany and Japan" who "surged ahead"
It's a shame that members of the US Congress that voted for the recent Cap and Trade Climate Bill did not bother to check up on the economic realities which are causing European states to back away from expensive alternative energy commitments and the ‘green job' creation schemes associated with them by inserting all manner of substance-emptying ‘get-out' clauses into EU cap and trade plans.
Germany's Angela Merkel has already insisted on major exemptions for German heavy industry come December's ‘definitive' global climate summit in Copenhagen. Bizarrely, for a so-called ‘Green Chancellor', Merkel's government is also supporting the building of 26 new coal-fired power plants across Germany.
Italy also rocked the EU climate boat by insisting on exemptions for its own energy-intensive industries at the turn of the year. Most significantly, it is an exemption that requires the EU to renegotiate Europe's entire climate policy after the UN summit in December -- effectively, giving Italy a veto. [and after the US has signed up to lunacy without such veto clauses]
In June, deputy head of Poland's Solidarity trade union, Jaroslaw Grzesik, estimated that the EU's climate policy would cost 800,000 European jobs. The think-tank Open Europe has already estimated that the same policies will cost the UK $9 billion a year, leaving an additional 1 million people in poverty by 2020.
Cited as a role model nation by President Obama in Januaray 2009, Spain is the only country to have produced an in-depth analysis of the impact of renewables on the jobs market.
The Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources was published by a team at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in March, 2009, and though largely ignored by the mainstream press [but not the amateur press*], its findings were damning. Here are just a few:
- "Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) ‘green jobs' policies ... Spain has created a surprisingly low number of jobs."
- "Since 2000 Spain has spent €571,138 ($800K) to create each ‘green job', including subsidies of more than €1million ($1.4million) per wind industry job."
- "The programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy or 2.2. jobs destroyed for every ‘green job' created."
- "Each ‘green' megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics (solar), 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro."
The report concludes, "Policymakers must recognize that because of government action, other jobs are not created." And, most significantly for international consumption, "These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain's approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."
If Obama & Co. were to remove their green-tinted glasses for just a moment and take a long hard look at the European experience they profess to cite as ‘proven', they would discover those glasses have been rose-tinted all along.
[Ah, but saving mother Gaia isn't really their objective...]
READ MORE
*FLASHBACK >
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Spain’s green jobs boondoggle
Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job,
HEALTH "REFORM" THAT ISN'T
Despite the rhetoric, health care costs will rise under the President Obama's "reform"
The health care conundrum involves a contradiction that the administration steadfastly obscures: in the short run, government cannot both insure the uninsured and rein in health spending:
- The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) judges that the cost would be $1 trillion over the decade; of that, $239 billion would add to the budget deficit.
- Worse, the costs would rise faster than the sources of financing, including a tax on the wealthy; in 2019, the deficit would be $65 billion.
- Assuming that deficit rises four percent a year, the cumulative shortfall in the second decade would total $800 billion.
But because the president is so well spoken, he has the ability to make misleading statements sound reasonable or sophisticated... [and go unchallenged by our professional media]
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Alinsky-in-August Offensive
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Alinsky Rule #13:Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Nancy Pelosi, last Thursday:"It's almost immoral what they are doing," Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. "Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure," she said, adding, "They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening."
On Friday, The Hill intercepted a top-secret, Dem communiqué that spelled out the battle plan for the Alinsky-in-August MediCoup offensive, echoing Imperious Nancy's salvo at the insurance companies, the now-to-be targeted "villain."
The Democrats' war strategy is simple and, of course, it's pure Alinsky. Target the insurance companies and make them out to be reprobate wretches of the most vile, greedy, Simon-Legree sort imaginable. We are sure to be treated to ads, which feature purely hair-raising "robber-baron-rips-off-Harry&Louise" tales of insurance company bad guys.
Setting up the battle lines, Pelosi told the NYT what the so-called enemies of the little people will do in August:"This is going to be carpet bombing," she said. "Carpet bombing, slash and burn, shock and awe - anything you want to say to describe what the insurance companies will do to hold on to their special advantage, which exploits the patients and holds the American consumer at the mercy of the insurance company."
But, so far, none of the Democrats' tactics has worked all that well in convincing a wary public to just trust them to know what's best for all our healthcare.
When 83% of Americans are quite happy with the healthcare they have, then convincing them to let go of it for the obviously-fools-gold "public option" is an up-hill battle, as the Dems have finally figured out.
So, they will employ their usual politics-by-fear, and fill the airwaves with individual stories about evil insurers denying coverage, and plant the fear that the same will happen to you without the MediCoup solution... [snip]
When every single Democrat Congressperson and their President signs a pledge to be the first enrollees in their "public option" health insurance scheme, then, and only then, will we be willing to talk about reform. Because, at the moment, we -- Harry & Louise Q. Citizens -- are the only ones with any skin in this game and we're feeling mighty burned.
Besides, it's hard to trust an insurance salesman who hasn't even read the policy, now isn't it?
[And according to Gibbs yesterday, has no intention of ever reading what Congress eventually asks for his signature on.]
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Obama Joker Poster Popping Up In Los Angeles
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Have you seen this poster?
Apparently, it's beginning to appear in odd places in Los Angeles, but nobody seems to know who's responsible for it.
Radio host Tammy Bruce posted some pictures of this odd creation at her blog Saturday morning (h/t Pamela Geller) leading me to investigate further.
At this point, all I could find on the subject was an April 25 article from Bedlam Magazine:
A poster of Barack Obama in Heath Ledger-style Joker make-up with the legend 'Socialism' beneath it has been popping up recently on surfaces around L.A. It does not appear to be in the same category as the many benign take-offs on the Shepard Fairey 'Hope' poster, such as the one by Australian James Lillis (more of a straightforward spoof that merely substituted a Shepardized image of Heath Ledger as Joker on the Obama poster).
The ObamaJoker poster has also been seen in Hollywood.
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Obama Joker Poster Stirs Outrage, Bush Joker Poster Not So Much
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Not surprisingly, the Obama Joker Poster reported by NewsBusters Saturday is already drawing some outrage.
According to a television station where the posters have been spotted,
"Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous."
Hmmm. I wonder where the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable was when Vanity Fair published this last July:
And where was their outrage when the Village Voice published this on the cover of its October 26, 2004, issue:
In reality, if I wanted to, I could likely produce hundreds of disgusting drawings of Bush, Cheney, and others in their Administration plastered at publications across the fruited plain the last eight years.
That was acceptable commentary and political satire - back then.
Now that Obama is in the White House, it's called "mean-spirited and dangerous"??
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‘jOker’: When the Left’s Scared They Scream ‘Racist’
Naturally those who enjoyed (and created) all the “art” and pop culture used to demonize and dehumanize George W. Bush (whoops!) are now crying “racism” with the turning of the tables. They’re worried, and this hollow cry is all they got because who knows better the power of this kind of imagery than those who have been using it for decades to further their goals of enslaving entire populations under the cruel yoke of Big Government.
Yesterday, when the “L.A. Weekly” went all crybaby over the Obama-Joker poster, they must have known that they themselves had published a cover portraying Bush as a blood-thirsty vampire. But all’s fair in love and war and this is ideological war where hypocrisy is a weapon, not something to be ashamed of.
The Left wants Obama-Joker nipped in the bud, and their goal is to stigmatize it as something racist before it shows up on t-shirts all over the country — before it catches fire.
Like Zorro with his “Z,” this artist strikes anonymously — and who can blame the desire for anonymity. No one even knows who this person is (he or she might be an Obama fan who thinks the posters are cool), and already the “R-Word” has been thrown about. Imagine if this individual is found to be anti-Obama.
Remember Politico digging up dirt on a private citizen who merely asked Obama a question; the coordinated attack on Sarah Palin’s family courtesy of Hollywood and the media? Hell, Carrie Prejean agreed with Obama on gay marriage and look what they did to her. No, anonymity is probably a good idea.
Here’s another reason to stay in the shadows — a political reason:
When Obama has no one to attack, he must address the issue of his socialist policies directly, instead of attacking critics (or more accurately, using the media to do it for him). Personally, I hope the artist is a little, old, African American lady from Compton.
Personally, I hope the first person to give me a hard time over my Obama-Joker t-shirt is wearing something Leftist-approved, like something found here.
That kind of irony doesn’t come along every day.
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The Great Lie: ‘Americanism’ Doesn’t Sell Overseas
If you think the national news media is biased, spend some time rummaging through the world of entertainment news.
Today’s L.A. Times piece about the marketing of “G.I. Joe” has an especially priceless whopper:
"Yet overseas, where big action films often earn 60% or more of their ticket sales, rah-rah American sentiment doesn’t play well."
The Great Lie told by Leftist Hollywood and the media who shill for them is that in order to make money the likes and dislikes of an “international” audience must be considered, and international audiences loathe Americanism.
Let’s see how that’s working out with some overseas numbers for a few “big action films.”
To excuse the stripping of Superman’s Americanism (and masculinity), a lot of fanfare was made over the need for “Superman Returns” to appeal to the foreign box office, and yet the film bombed both here and abroad, making only $191 million overseas.
Compare that to the international box-office for Sam Raimi’s ”Spider-Man” trilogy, which never shied from its hero’s unique Americanism or an iconic shot of the stars and stripes:
Spider-Man: $418 million [ *-all]
Spider-Man II: $410 million
Spider-Man III: $554 million
Here’s the international box-office for some “big action” films from the last fifteen years unafraid, and in some cases proud, of their Americanism:
National Treasure: $174 million
National Treasure II: $237 million
Pearl Harbor: $251 million
Armageddon: $352 million
Independence Day: $511 million
I Am Legend: $329 million
Hancock: $396 million
At best, Leftists can argue “pro rah-rah” is a box-office wash outside the states, but “anti-rah-rah” has zero appeal to international audiences, and yet Hollywood refuses to stop making them.
Here are the overseas numbers for those with so-called “bankable” stars attached:
Lions for Lambs: $43 million
In the Valley of Elah: $22 million
Rendition: $17 million
Stop-Loss: $291 thousand
Body of Lies: $75 million
A Mighty Heart: $9 million
Grace is Gone: $887 thousand
Don’t confuse my argument here. I am not saying ”rah-rah American sentiment” does sell overseas What I’m arguing is that it’s wholly dishonest for anyone to flatly and matter-of-factly state it does not.
This myth about international box-office was created to give Hollywood a “business” excuse when they refuse to portray America in a positive light or turn Superman into a flying symbol of United Nations conflicted meterosexuality.
The unquestioning entertainment media jumps right on board because it’s yet another way for them to spread dishonest propaganda regarding America’s unpopularity overseas.
It’s a win-win - except at the box office...
[*Links to all revenue claims at source.]
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Fixing Government's Health Care Mess With Our Money
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It is instructive to watch President Obama talk to the American people using center-right language about choice and incentives. But he is talking not about choices and markets but about a comprehensive and mandatory administrative program of staggering complexity. It will not deliver choice and efficiency; it will not deliver more health care for more people with less money. It will further rigidify and constrain health care options and, where it subsidizes use of health care resources, run up the costs.
And the whole exercise is a classic demonstration of government trying to get out of a jam caused by administrative compulsion and subsidy -- with, what else? more compulsion and subsidy.
Most likely the president will get some sort of a bill out of Congress and declare victory. And then a few months later the think tanks will report that the Medicare unfunded liability is now the ObamaCare unfunded liability, and it just doubled from $30 trillion to $60 trillion.
Hey. It's just your money.
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Wyden-Bennett bill merits debate
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The health care reform proposal that Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett co-sponsors with Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, known as the Wyden-Bennett plan, has mostly been ignored on Capitol Hill ... until recently.
We think it's time for Congress to take a close look at the senators' Healthy Americans Act. It has enough innovative ideas that merit consideration.
The Wyden-Bennett plan has two advantages:
- * It is a real bipartisan health care reform bill that has not achieved "bipartisanship" through tortorous, lobbyists-influenced negotiations.
- * Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is scored by the CBO -- which, remember is nonpartisan -- as having no adverse effect on the budget deficit.
In a nutshell, the Wyden-Bennett plan would allow workers to move away from employer plans and into national or state health insurance exchanges. The pools of health care insurance options would drive down costs. Employees who moved out of a worker health plan would get a pay increase that matched the cost of their new, outside plan.
There is tough medicine in the plan. It would end the tax exemption for employer-paid insurance. But that may be a reality to face if we want a health care system that can pay for adding the uninsured to health care insurance rolls. Wyden-Bennett also promises to provide legitimate competition in public insurance. That has real potential to drive down costs. Its incentives to shop for health care coverage would spur much-needed competition in the industry.
We're not offering an endorsement of the Healthy Americans Act. Given the realities of what politicians have the courage to vote for, the entire bill remains a longshot. However, it would be wise to start thinking about the Wyden-Bennett bill before final legislation lurches out of Congress.
To see a PDF draft of the Healthy Americans Act, go to:
http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Healthy%20Americans%20Act/HAA_How_It_Works.pdf
full draft >
http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Healthy%20Americans%20Act/HAA_Section_by_Section.pdf
[Not perfect, but perhaps the path to - in that nothing will ever be fixed about the run-away costs of health care until we undo the disastrous separation of paying customer (employers) and consumers (employees). Only a truly free market with folks spending their own money on care can provided the honest leveling that needs to take place - it's past time we start the job. This bill seems to be that first step toward providing individual insurance competition just as we already have for auto insurance - it's the right {only} long term solution that can't be 'gamed' by special interests at our expense.]
READ MORE
then >
"DEBATE Wyden-Bennett 'Healthy Americans Act'"
Whitehouse: mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
CBS Sees ‘Runaway Success’ in Failing ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program
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Reporting on the Obama administration’s ‘Cash for Clunkers’ car buying program running out of money, CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes offered a mixed message:
"‘Cash for Clunkers’ has been such a runaway success....The program is so popular...word spread it would be suspended...because of fears that sales would soon swallow up the $1 billion for rebates the government had set aside."
In her report, Cordes cited one new car salesman who happily remarked:
"People are loving it. It’s wonderful. It’s a great stimulus package."
However, she later concluded that the failing program let:
"a lot of car sales and cash hang in the balance. So the two big questions for lawmakers and the administration today. Number one, how could they have so vastly overestimated how long this money would last? And number two, where will they find the cash infusion to keep ‘Cash for Clunkers’ going?"
ABC’s Good Morning America provided the most comprehensive and critical report on the program. Unlike CBS and NBC, the ABC morning show highlighted major problems with the government website design to handle rebate requests. Consumer correspondent Elizabeth Leamy reported:
....The computer crashes have caused a backlog. As many as 25,000 transactions that dealers have made, but the government hasn't yet officially approved....Now, dealers are worried they'll be stuck holding the bag....Some dealers are actually now making people sign something, saying they will return their shiny, new car, if the government reneges on the deal...
[They can't manage a 1 billion dollar program. One Trillion $ Health Care anyone?]
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Police foil suicide plot to storm Australian Army base
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(Sydney) Several Australian men have been arrested in a series of counter-terrorism raids across Melbourne after police uncovered a plot by Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda to mount a suicide attack on an Army base.
Authorities believe the group, of Somalian and Lebanese background, was at an advanced stage of preparing to storm an Army barracks in retaliation for Australia’s military involvement in Muslim countries...
[GWOT]
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Thinking the unthinkable
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When the 9/11 Commission issued its report, it complained that federal agencies had a colossal “failure of imagination.” Nobody could accuse Newt Gingrich of suffering from that shortfall.
When he delivered a major address on national security last week, the former House speaker went after Defense Secretary Robert Gates for planning for the future the Pentagon wants, rather than dealing with the many serious problems it may actually face.
Gingrich mentioned one challenge that many find too terrible to contemplate — which is why our government should spend a lot more time doing exactly that...[snip]
EMP is not normally addressed when talking about nuclear attack because most strikes are planned as low-air bursts where most of the energy, EMP included, goes straight into the ground. A deliberate EMP attack, however, would be different. If, for example, an enemy detonated a nuclear weapon carried on a ballistic missile 200 miles or so above Earth, people on the ground might never know an attack occurred.
But if the explosion happened high enough over North America, the blossom of EMP might cover the entire United States... [snip]
The entire U.S. electrical grid might be gone and all the instruments of daily life that depend on electrical power useless. Just keeping modern-day America fed would be virtually impossible without working transportation or communications systems. Water-pumping and sewage-treatment plants would be offline. Modern medical care would be virtually nonexistent. Even if the rest of the world mustered the largest humanitarian mission in human history, the suffering would be unprecedented.
EMP attacks are often thought off of as attacks against the U.S. infrastructure. But the truth is a large-scale one would be an instrument of genocide... [snip]
Washington, D.C. is truly out to lunch on this one. Homeland Security doesn’t even include an EMP as one of their disaster-planning scenarios. As for the Pentagon, Gates just cut 10 percent of the missile-defense budget — the best weapons we have to prevent EMP attacks. Congress is equally in la-la land. Having commissioned the EMP report and accepted its findings, last week the Senate joined the House in rubber-stamping Gates’ missile-defense cuts.
The idea that someone would attack the U.S. with jet airliners once seemed unthinkable...
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US urges Iran reply by September
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US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has urged Iran to respond to US diplomatic overtures by September. His Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak indicated that military action remained an option on Iran, following talks with Mr Gates in Jerusalem.
Senior US officials are engaged in a drive to breathe new life into faltering regional peace moves. On Monday, Mr Gates said the US offer to Iran was ''not open-ended''...
[Ok, we're 'urging'. Terrific.]
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It's Crunch Time for Israel on Iran
After years of failed diplomacy no one will be able to call an attack precipitous
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Legions of senior American officials have descended on Jerusalem recently, but the most important of them has been Defense Secretary Robert Gates. His central objective was to dissuade Israel from carrying out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Under the guise of counseling “patience,” Mr. Gates again conveyed President Barack Obama’s emphatic thumbs down on military force.
Mr. Obama has no new strategic thinking on Iran. He vaguely promises to offer the country the carrot of diplomacy—followed by an empty threat of sanctions down the road if Iran does not comply with the U.S.’s requests. This is precisely the European Union’s approach, which has failed for over six years...
Under the worst-case scenario, Iran will continue improving its nuclear facilities and Mr. Obama will become the first U.S. president in history to tie the issue of Israel’s nuclear capabilities into negotiations about Iran’s.
Relations between the U.S. and Israel are more strained now than at any time since the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. Mr. Gates’s message for Israel not to act on Iran, and the U.S. pressure he brought to bear, highlight the weight of Israel’s lonely burden.
Absent Israeli action, prepare for a nuclear Iran.
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2,000-year-old ritual cup found in Old City of Jerusalem
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U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem...
[Anyone still buy the 'Palestinian narrative' that it's Jews that are interlopers/squatters in that part of the world? {Sadly, you'll find many who answer 'yes' in the UN and, now, the US State Department}]
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Islam just isn't into us
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“I have the highest respect for the religion of Islam, and recognize the heroic efforts of many religious leaders in contemporary Iran to stand up to the repressions wrought by the ruling system,”
says Jewish human rights activist Irwin Cotler as preface to his main point;
Dear fellow Jews, what is so hard to understand about “we hate your guts, and will continue to kill and maim you”?
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The Religion of Peace
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On Saturday, a frenzied mob of three thousand Muslims stormed the tiny Pakistani Christian village of Gojra . Enflamed by (unconfirmed) charges that a Christian had burned pages of the Qur’an, the mob burned down fifty homes, burned eight Christians alive, and wounded twenty others. Thousands of Christians fled the area.
Last Thursday, enraged by the same report of blasphemy, another Muslim mob torched seventy-five Christian homes, along with two churches, in Koriyan, a village near Gojra.
On July 18, Muslims in Alexandria , Egypt kidnapped a sixteen-year-old Christian girl, Amira Markos, while she was on her way to work. Shortly thereafter her mother received a phone call:
“At 10 o’clock of the same morning someone called me and asked if I was Amira’s mother. He introduced himself as Sheikh Mohammed, and said that my daughter is fine and will convert to Islam. When I cried and begged him to let me have my daughter back, he said he would let me see her again after her conversion to Islam, and ended the call.”
Amira’s mother went to a local mosque, where matters got even worse. A Muslim sheikh told her:
“Listen, mother of Amira, I am warning you not to report the abduction to the police or do anything, the price will be your son Meena [a nine-year-old boy] being slaughtered in front of your own eyes. I am not threatening, I’m talking seriously. Listen, your daughter Amira will convert to Islam next Friday, and we are now preparing her for that. Now go home and stay indoors until everything is quietly over.”
This is nothing new... [snip]
Yet these incidents have received only scant attention in the mainstream media.
And not only the international media, but also the human rights establishment and the United Nations, continue to take no notice. In their conceptual framework, only Westerners can do evil, and Christians cannot possibly play the role of victim.
The sooner the world casts off these Leftist/jihadist fantasies, the better off we’ll all be. But there are no signs that such an awakening will take place anytime soon, if ever.
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BTW: the NYT's title for a story on the same atrocity?
"Hate Engulfs Christians in Pakistan"
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EU warns Georgia, S.Ossetia against raising tension
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Brussels - The European Union urged Georgia and South Ossetia Monday not to raise tensions around the rebel territory, calling for ''unrestricted access'' for EU monitors to both sides of its administrative boundary..
[Hypocritical EUnuchs.]
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THE NATIONALIZATION OF YOUR BODY
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Health care is a game-changer. The permanent game-changer.
The pendulum will swing, and one day, despite their best efforts, the Republicans will return to power, and, in the right circumstances, the bailouts and cap-&-trade and Government Motors and much of the rest can be reversed. But the government annexation of health care will prove impossible to roll back. It alters the relationship between the citizen and the state and, once that transformation is effected, you can click your ruby slippers all you want but you’ll never get back to Kansas.
Government-directed health care is a profound assault on the concept of citizenship. It deforms national politics very quickly, and ensures that henceforth elections are always fought on the left’s terms. I find it hard to believe President Obama and his chums haven’t looked at Canada and Europe and concluded that health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture... [snip]
Ultimately, it’s not the nationalization of health care but the nationalization of your body.
Right now, if you want an MRI, it’s between you and your doctors. In a government-run system, if you want an MRI and you can’t get one, it’s the government’s fault. And the government should do something about it. Not give you the MRI, of course (that’s too obvious, as well as too expensive), but at least introduce a new Patient’s Bill of Rights, as Gordon Brown’s just done, promising every Briton the “right” to hospital treatment --- within 18 weeks...
[Are we really this foolish?
Long-ish - Highly Recommended > ]
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Biggest revenue drop since 1932
The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab. The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression...
[But they keep - on - spending...]
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NBC, CBS Skip Study on Massive New Obama Spending
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Of the three network morning shows, only ABC highlighted a new study by the Heritage Foundation that reported how the federal government's massive spending will average almost $34,000 per household in 2009, up $8000 from last year.
On Monday, Good Morning America news anchor Chris Cuomo also appeared amazed at wasteful, bureaucratic errors:
"Seventy two billion dollars spent by our government to the wrong people in either double payments or mispayments."
The report explained,
"The 2009 version of ‘Federal Spending by the Numbers’ shows spending and deficits surging at a pace not seen since World War II."
NBC’s Today and CBS’s Early Show have, thus far, not reported on the Heritage study.
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Decline in GDP 'Hopeful Sign' for NY Times -- Yet Gain During Bush Years Meant Recession
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Is there a double standard in how the struggling economy is being portrayed during the Obama presidency vs. the Bush administration?
Saturday's lead story by Catherine Rampell and Jack Healy focused on the Gross Domestic Product figure issued by the Commerce Department, showing a 1% contraction in the U.S. economy in the second quarter of 2009. The Times portrayed it in positive terms in a triple deck of headlines: "In Hopeful Sign, Output Declines At Slower Pace -- Economy Contracts 1%"
In fact, Friday's figures mark the first time in decades that the economy has contracted for four straight quarters. But the Times buried that finding in the 21st of 25 paragraphs:
"The economy withered during each of the last four quarters, its longest string of declines in at least 60 years."
By contrast, one year ago, the Bush administration released GDP figures showing the economy had grown 1.9% in the second quarter of 2008, a substantial increase [doubling] from 0.9% in the first quarter of 2008.
Did the Times celebrate that uptick in growth during a Republican administration?
Hardly. The headline over Peter Goodman's August 1, 2008 story:
"More Arrows Seen Pointing to a Recession"
[What bias?]
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THE DANGERS OF HOT AIR
The real purpose of the Waxman-Markey climate bill is to vastly expand the scope, power and authority of the federal government...
The Waxman-Markey climate emissions bill is one of the oddest and most far-reaching pieces of legislation ever advanced. Though it passed the House by a slim margin, a 219-212 vote, most of America's states and communities didn't like the bill.
No wonder, for it would regulate many things -- energy, wages, imported goods, corporations, states, cities, buildings and houses. It would be without question the biggest expansion of federal government control over our economy since the 1930s. According to the Heritage Foundation:
- The bill would reduce America's real gross domestic product by $400 billion each year -- a cumulative loss of $9.4 trillion by 2035 -- leading to almost 2.5 million job losses, and raise inflation-adjusted electricity rates by 90 percent.
- For a household of four, it would cost on average $2,979 annually and in 2035 the total family cost would be over $4,600 for everything, including power, food, supplies, gasoline and transportation.
- The federal government would have full control over global-warming matters; states would not be permitted to create their own cap-and-trade programs, but could be given emission allowances by which they could sell to generate funds for clean energy programs.
- The federal government would also have control over the carbon permit process.
- It would give away 85 percent of the permits to utility companies, refineries and other politically connected businesses, and these no-cost permits could be used by companies to continue to crank out historically high CO2 emission levels, or be sold to other companies for real money.
- Next would come the expansion of American protectionism that would end up hurting American businesses.
[We've been warned.]
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White House Science Adviser Advocated 'De-Development' of the United States
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President Obama’s top science adviser, John P. Holdren, advocated the ''de-development'' of the United States in books he published in the 1970s.
'
'A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,''
Holdren wrote in a 1973 book the need for ''de-development'' of the United States demanded a redistribtuion of wealth...
[The kids are truly dangerous in their extreme radicalness]
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Britain To Put CCTV Cameras Inside Private Homes
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As an ex-Brit, I’m well aware of the authorities’ love of surveillance and snooping, but even I, a pessimistic cynic, am amazed by the governments latest plan: to install Orwell’s telescreens in 20,000 homes. £400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens.
Why?
To make sure the kids are doing their homework...
[Government run 'education']
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