America is a Values Producer - Most Countries Are Values Destroyers

I got this in the email from a friend. I thought I'd answer it. Here's the email (followed by my answer).

IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.
IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET SHOT.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO A POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.

IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET: A JOB, A DRIVERS LICENSE, A SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE, FOOD STAMPS, CREDIT CARDS, SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE, A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON AND IN MANY INSTANCES YOU CAN VOTE! WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?>

My answer: I'd say the picture is of desperate people fleeing from persecution, hunger, torture and death. That Americans are a freedom loving, values producing and benevolent people and have always welcomed the downtrodden. If you count you'll realize that most countries around the world have governments that destroy freedom and the capacity of people to seek values to promote their lives--this always results in wars, deaths, famines and misery.

Yes people come to America to find freedom - they do not go to Cuba, Russia or China because what they are looking for is exceptional and unprecedented in the history of mankind - a country whose government leaves the people alone to get on with their lives as they see fit. This is why we must protect the values and ideas of our Founding Fathers who knew and understood the history of mass slaughter of people throughout the ages were caused by the elite or ruling class or government. They explicitly stated that America was to have a LIMITED government - But this is not what we have today or for the past 100 years as we are more and more moving toward statism (government control of our lives - in other words socialism). It's time for a movement to return to our founding roots - LIMITED GOVERNMENT.

If We Can Move Toward a More Rational Society We Could Unleash Unprecedented Growth

Ayn Rand describes how wealth creation comes from man's mind not government edict, stimulus packages or bailouts. Government has the power to destroy that which is good-we as Americans must never forget this, more so now that we see our economy tanking because of government meddling. As we move ever closer to socialism (government control of the economy and our lives) let's learn the lesson once and for all: In order to survive man must create values or he dies. When government intervenes and takes that which one has produced then survival becomes increasingly difficult in proportion to the interference of government. Surely the Berlin Wall and it's eventual fall showed this clearly to the world. The government's proper role was defined by our forefathers and proven by Ayn Rand in her numerous writings. In the following quote she describes what caused the Industrial Revolution.

If you want to prove to yourself the power of ideas...the intellectual history of the nineteenth century would be a good example to study. The greatest, unprecedented, undreamed of events and achievements were taking place before men's eyes...I am speaking of the industrial revolution, of the United States and of capitalism...The creative energy, the abundance the wealth, the rising standard of living for every level of the population were such that nineteenth century looks like a fiction-Utopia...If life on earth is one's standard of value, then the nineteenth century moved mankind forward more than all the other centuries combined.

Did anyone appreciate it? Does anyone appreciate it now? Has anyone identified the causes of that historical miracle? (Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World in Philosophy Who Needs It?)

Andrew Bernstein writes in The Capitalist Manifesto: (page 157 in the chapter titled: The Mind as Man's Instrument of Survival).

That period's commitment to the practical efficacy of reason was a foundational principle of the new republic, one that to the present day informs numerous American institutions. The more obviously practical an endeavor, the more vociferously enthusiastic was American support. For example, although the Humanities always flourished in the new country in the creation of a superb national body of literature and other forms, it was in the fields of theoretical and applied science, technology and industry that the American genius achieved its full flowering. The Americans recognized the practical value of applied science in the way the Greeks recognized philosophy. The American commitment to the material improvement of human life by means of applied mind power has never been equalled by any other civilization. It is one key to understanding the unprecedented standard of living reached in the United States.


The other, related key is political-economic freedom. A cultural commitment to applied thought obviously necessitates an equal commitment to the freedom of the thinkers applying their thought. America's pioneering minds were free to conceive new ideas, to experiment and invent, to develop new products and methods, to start their own companies, to bring their new products to the marketplace, to convince the customers that the new ways were superior to the old, and to make a fortune. It was the freedom of the 19th century American society that enabled it to become a seething hotbed of revolutionary ideas and products, all leading toward higher living standards and increased success and happiness for countless millions of human beings.

Acorn, ClimateGate, and the United Nations of Terrorists

I thought you'd like to catchup on all the sleaze here in America and abroad on this Thanksgiving weekend.

On PJTV, I found out that Breitbart will release more Acorn tapes if Eric Holder does not hold a trial against this corrupt organization (where Obama worked by the way). Listen here at PJTV

If you want to take a quiz and learn about the greatest scandal this year maybe of the decade, take this quiz to test your knowledge of the "climategate" affair which broke early in November.

How well do you know your climate science? Check your knowledge of the leaked correspondence from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia as your reference - try this quick quiz:

1. Why did CRU Director Phil Jones make changes to temperature data for a diagram he was submitting for publication?
a) To correct some errors
b) To clarify some ambiguities
c) To show a different perspective
d) To hide the decline in temperature.
(Answer) (go to Asian Correspondent: So You Think You Know Climate Science? -The Quiz)

- Read about United Nations and what they've done about terrorism eighth years after 9/11 at Eye On The UN (EyeOnTheUN.org)

"Government is not reason; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master - George Washington

When government meddles in the economy, businesses don't know how to rationally predict the future. This is clearly shown in this Wall Street Journal article about Big Pharma. The article "Big Pharma Sells Out" describes how Jeffrey Kindler the CEO of Pfizer has decided to play the Washington game in an attempt to protect its own skin. George Washington once said:

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

When the government is meddling in every aspect of our lives, the people, have no recourse because the government uses force to make us submit. Businesses want to survive and if they are targeted by government they can submit or stand up to government and pay the consequences. So we have the specter of businessmen making decisions not based on the market place but on what the government will do to them if they choose their own path and not the government's path. Yes we have the power of the vote - for now....but our liberties are being chipped away year by year.

...In other words, the industry is trashing the very Senators who stand the best chance to rescue it from government control. Instead, the drug CEOs are making themselves complicit with the Washington mentality of seeing only the costs of medications, not benefits like longer lives or fewer hospitalizations. They are ensuring that they will always be a political target and making the extortion easier in the bargain.
The shame is that there be will fewer resources for the research and development that drives innovation, particularly for the smaller biotech companies that are the future of cutting-edge medicine. When it takes about a decade and a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market, a CEO of a smaller drug company told us recently, most firms are "living on the edge of extinction."


...The irony is that if business began to educate the public about what the current bills will mean for U.S. health care, it might be able to defeat them and force a more modest, sensible reform. National Journal's composite of all health polling finds that 50.9% of the public now opposes health reform in general, up from about 15% in February. Only 43.9% are in favor. The most recent polls put support even lower: Just 35% from Quinnipiac, 38% from Rasmussen.

A Washington Post-ABC poll found that 52% of the public believes ObamaCare will increase their personal health costs and that 37% expect their quality of care will deteriorate. They're right. A survey of registered voters by Public Opinion Strategies found that the more people hear about the plan, the less they like it, and that voter hostility is higher now than it ever was for HillaryCare.

Yet now this son of HillaryCare is headed toward passage, and when shareholders start griping about lousy returns, Mr. Kindler and his fellow executives will be long gone. It's one more reminder that when it comes to protecting economic freedom, you can never trust big business. The biggest losers will be patients, who lack the millions to lobby Congress and in the future will have fewer innovative medicines. READ at WSJ

America - The Land of The Free and The Brave Will Rise Up Again

For all the trouble this beloved country finds herself currently in, I can only marvel at her wondrous existence over the past 233 years - an existence of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - just as our Founders promised us. Of course the promise was based on the premise that Americans would continue to honor the blood, sweat and tears that the early Patriots shed fighting for this America; an America to be built on the pedestal of the curious idea of liberty for all. What a notion at the time!

I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and aesthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the ONLY moral country in the history of the world. (Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand)

There's only one person who could have ever said the above with that full conviction, for she escaped from the killing fields of Soviet Russia - Ayn Rand. She understood the miracle that was her adopted country. Throughout her life she defended America from attacks both from the left and right-attacks bent on destroying this island of sanity in the midst of a sea of irrational, murderous regimes of the 20th century. She clearly understood how special The United States of America was and still is.

But today we run a great risk. One can ask are our children, poorly educated and ignorant of our humble and at the same time heroic beginnings, capable of confronting the myriad attacks against us? I hope so.

Since the golden age of Greece, there has been only one era of reason in Twenty-three centuries of Western philosophy. During the final decades of that era, the United States of America was created as an independent nation. This is the key to the country-to its nature, the development, and its uniqueness: the United States is THE NATION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT. (The Ominous Parallels by L. Peikoff)

The Scam of Global Warming Is Out - Finally!

It has finally happened! The truth of so called "Climate Change" has shown it's true face and it is very ugly. The story is coming out that these climate scientists had data opposing their so called evidence of human caused climate change. What did they do with this data? Did they look at the data without bias and as any scientist should look at data - by looking at the evidence with reason and truth? No, they tried to hide it because it opposed their ideology. This is a blow to the integrity of scientists and science all over the world.

Phil Jones, the center of the "climate change" meltdown should resign or be fired for the fraud that he is. Go to this two link to read more.

Climate scientist at centre of leaked email row dismisses conspiracy claims
Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia denies emails provide evidence of collusion by climatologists to fix data

Then you have a writer for Guardian.co.uk, George Monbiot, writing as if the leaked emails were just innocent email exchanges and not the hiding of data that it really was. Instead he accuses the people who demanded data proving that there was manmade global warming to show the DATA!! (READ at Guardian).

...It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"...

...The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline. They appear to have no idea what they're up against or how to confront it. Their opponents might be scumbags, but their media strategy is exemplary.

Even the New York Times writes about the "tricks" these climate warming scientists use to fudge the data:

In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide the decline” in temperatures.

Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem, “and not something secret.” (Read at New York Times).

Washington Must Get Out of Our Lives So We Can Work and Produce Again

The uncertainty caused by this administration is what will hold back the great American engine of productivity. We the people don't know what to expect in the near and long term future what with looming dual monstrosities of the Health Care Bill and the Cap and Trade bill with its carbon tax, not to mention looming inflation, that are poised to siphon off our wealth. This uncertainty causes paralysis resulting in people hoarding their money (those that still have jobs) instead of investing and buying. The good thing is that we're learning the lesson that savings are important. At the same time, an economy that doesn't move forward because of political uncertainties can be disastrous for a nation. Our politicians have to GET OUT OF THE WAY and leave us alone to work, invest, purchase and save as we deem appropriate for our own life - not based on politicians' expediency of the minute decision. WSJ has a good piece about our "hangover".

The panicked Democrats' biggest problem is that Congress and the President have erected the biggest overhang of economic policy uncertainty that anyone can remember.

One big difference between Washington and private markets is that politicians think everything they do is free-standing. Markets, however, combine all the potential costs of Washington's policies and then decide whether to invest, or not. Consider what private decision-makers see in their future:

A 2,074-page, trillion-dollar health-care bill to redesign 17% of the U.S. economy. A carbon tax—cap and trade—that remains an Obama priority ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit next month. A falling dollar and gyrating commodity prices, with no idea where those prices will go next.

Democratic liberals are talking about an income tax surcharge to pay for any commitment in Afghanistan. Card check, to expand unionization of the private economy, remains a priority. Domestic discretionary spending in fiscal 2010 is set to rise at 12.1%, with inflation near zero.

Nurturing a fragile economic recovery into a durable expansion requires policies that restore public confidence and reassure investors, risk-takers and employers. The Democratic agenda is doing precisely the opposite, which is how you get subpar growth and fewer new jobs. (READ AT WSJ)

Monkton and CEI Challenges Gore to Debate "Climate Change"

Lord Monkton and CEI.org (Competetive Enterprise Institute) asked Al Gore to debate the issue on "global warming". Mr. Gore has steadfastly refused to debate anyone yet earns zillions of dollars promoting what by all accounts has been show to be a farce - GLOBAL WARMING (in the 1970's it was called global cooling). CEI has even gone to such lengths as to sweeten the pot by offering the Gore moneymaking machine dollars for his participation in this debate. Now that would make a very spicy debate indeed! Come on Gore - put your money where your mouth is.

Bolivia Has New Type of Dictatorship: The Narcodictatorship

To end the new year we have the spectacle of another dictator in South America. This time it' s Bolivia run by the soon to be dictator Evo Morales. He rose to power promising to protect the coca business. His base are the people who grow cocaine and he uses terror to consolidate his power...surprise, surprise. I think we will see more of this in South and Central America because power lusters there view Obama as weak and ineffective in the world of global politics. Mary Anastasia O'Grady as always has a good article describing the depressing history of Morales' rise to power and how he is using thug tactics (what else?) to gain total control of the political structure. By the way he's very buddy buddy with who else? The thug from Iran.

A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim.

This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule.

While the U.S. and the Organization of American States have been obsessing over Honduras's legal removal of an undemocratic president, Mr. Morales has been fortifying his narco-dictatorship. He's also made friends with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will make another visit to La Paz tomorrow. Read the rest at WSJ.

The Empty Suit In The White House (Part 1)

"Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con Coughlin."

It says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even if we reached the Oval Office, there would be no one willing to take Britain’s call.

For weeks now, President Obama has been deliberating over what the Afghan strategy should be — and how many troops to send. If there is confusion in Washington, then Britain’s strategy is not much clearer. Gordon Brown has staged a recent flurry of activity on the subject, from writing misspelt letters to grieving mothers to demanding that an exit strategy be established for the withdrawal of British forces. Yet among our top brass, the general perception is that the Prime Minister has little interest in the war. Read at Spectator.

"Move over, Bernie Madoff. Tip your hat to a trillion-dollar scam,"

So "said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., likening the bill's supporters to the imprisoned investor who fleeced millions."


My previous post was about the existential threat of the West by Islam. As if that weren't enough, there is a twin threat from within that we have to face. These threats are just as insidious for our democracy because the Americans who are hell bent on a future under a government run health care plan and the Cap and Trade Bill will cause the decline of this great country: The United States. Both of these incredibly intrusive bills will demand we sacrifice our health and money to government bureaucrat dictates and our wealth to the God of CO2. Here is an article about the first threat and the bribery offered to get politicians to sign their names to a bill that will take America still further down the road to statism and oblivion (like so many other great civilizations in the past).


Government of, by and for the people has apparently become a quaint concept to the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. Ramming socialized medicine through now comes down to cash payoffs.

Jonathan Karl of ABC News has exposed what may be the biggest taxpayer-funded bribe in the history of the Republic. Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has been skeptical of her party's proposed radical transformation of the U.S. health system.

"I'm not at all surprised that the public option's been sold as free health care," she told MSNBC last month, for instance. "But there is no free lunch."

But will this "conservative" Democrat end up exchanging her vote for the biggest slab of bacon in congressional history?

As Karl reports, a two-page section of the Senate's monster 2,074-page overhaul package tries to use gobbledygook to hide what could be described in less than one line: "$100 million for Louisiana."
The Bayou State is never mentioned. Instead, the legislation refers to "a State that is one of the 50 States or the District of Columbia, for which, at any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President has declared a major disaster ... and determined as a result of such disaster that every county or parish in the State warrant individual and public assistance ... ."

Has it ever been clearer that politicians consider those who gave them their jobs to be fools, to be bamboozled whenever possible?

At last count, Americans for Tax Reform found 18 major tax increases in the Senate health bill. They include: READ AT IBD

The Existential Threat to the West

"Can You Spell Politician?"

I'm sure this is just a small sample of all the taxes that we, as Americans, pay so we don't get thrown in jail. If anyone has anymore taxes not shown here please send them on.

Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration T ax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...
And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?
Can you spell 'politicians!'

America's Decision: To be Ruled by the Constitution or by a 2074 page Health Care Bill

Glenn Beck had a good way to show us the road to oblivion we are travelling so quietly on. He has stacked on his desk today the 2074 senate bill for the abominable Health Care plan and the 1999 page bill from the House. You can just see Glen Beck's neck and face above these two stacks. Then he pulls out the 17 page Constitution and asks us: Which one do you want to rule your life? Good Question. This is the title of an article at ABC News on Nov 16th. Note that even this left leaning news organization is starting to balk.

Health Care Reform Likely to Include More Taxes for Many Americans
Despite Vow from Obama, Middle-Class Americans Could See Higher Taxes

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama had one central message to middle-income Americans: no new taxes. And since taking office, the president has repeatedly pledged not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.

But as a massive health care reform bill inches closer to reality, middle-class Americans, as well as high income earners, can expect some sort of increase in what they pay into government coffers, say Republican critics and some fiscal watch dog groups.

The Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill, which could hit the Senate floor as early as this week, would impose new taxes on insurance companies, drugmakers and medical device manufacturers.
It would also impose a 40 percent tax on the portion of insurance premiums exceeding $8,000 a year for individuals and $21,000 a year for family plans. That tax would be imposed on insurance companies, though it would likely be passed on to consumers, including many middle-income families, say experts...READ HERE

How We Got To The BlackHole We're In Today - Expanding Government

The April 2009 issue of The Intellectual Activist has a very good article, called "Counter-Revolution - The Return of the Old Left" - explaining what happened to our tanked economy and why. Robert Tracinski starts out by writing that we are headed to repeating all of the mistakes of the 20th century but that hopefully it's the last time and that we will learn once and for all the moral superiority of capitalism versus the disaster of socialism. All we have to do is look at history and decide as a nation to defend freedom which above all includes freedom in the sphere of economics. The only economic system that has proven itself to be the engine of wealth creation and the only way for man to pursue his own happiness is capitalism.

The bailouts for the banks and automakers make no sense from a purely economic standpoint. Instead, one must understand their political purpose: they are a laboratory. The bailouts created a special zone of the economy in which the government has an excuse - as the provider of bailout funds-to exercise dictatorial control over private businesses. This is a laboratory for the kind of economic dictatorship the left would like to exert in every area of the economy.

In the case of the auto bailouts, we can see quite clearly the uses to which capital will be diverted under this regime. It will be used for a favorite cause of the Old Left - propping up the labor unions-and for the central cause of the New Left: environmentalism...

...The same is true of the $787 billion economic "stimulus" bill passed in Congress in February. The spending in that bill is also an attempt, not to stimulate actual economic production, but to divert more money into the agendas of the Old and New Left-a combination of welfare statism and environmentalism.

...It is now a central premise of contemporary economic theory to refuse to consider the long-term consequences of the government's actions.

Can America Remain Prosperous With Kids Who Can't Do Math?

Don't know much about geography

Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know that one and one is two

And if this one could be with you

What a wonderful world this would be

So goes the famous song by Sam Cooke...but it won't be a wonderful world - if it's filled with dummies. We'll actually be back in the dark ages, won't we! For an advanced technologically driven society to prosper it needs highly educated people. Our American schools are not producing the goods...

When I went to school I learned math the old fashioned way: step by step from basic concepts to higher level math in a logical progression. We took rigorous exams which tested whether we knew the concepts. Now it seems that educators are bent on damaging the minds of the young. I know many people in their twenties who cannot add or divide in their heads...they must out with the calculator. "City Journal" describes this disturbing trend in America...which can only mean less prosperity if we don't turn things around (Read the whole article here.)

The statistics on U.S. math performance are grim. American eighth-graders ranked 25th out of 30 countries in mathematics achievement on the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which claims to assess application of the mathematical knowledge and skills needed in adult life through problem-solving test items...

...A form of mathematics stripped of much of its intellectual content has obvious repercussions for higher education and the American economy. Hung-Hsi Wu, a Berkeley mathematician, expressed the view of many of his peers when he wrote in 1997 that the brand of mathematics purveyed by the NCTM’s 1989 report “has the potential to change completely the undergraduate mathematics curriculum and to throttle the normal process of producing a competent corps of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.” And Larry Faulkner, the panel’s chair and past president of the University of Texas in Austin, warns that if national policy doesn’t ensure the development of a large domestic workforce with first-rate technical skills, we risk “technological surprise to our economic viability and to the foundations of our country’s security.” If the bleak math statistics in the United States don’t change soon, such “surprise” may well be imminent. The math wars, which started in debates about pedagogy, may end in questions about the long-term prospects for American prosperity. READ HERE.

Dear Senator XY and Z - Regarding the Climate Bill - You Know The One That Will Bankrupt Us?

I urge you to consider your vote on the so called Cap and Trade Bill. This is nothing more than a way to control America from abroad. Hundreds of Climate scientists have signed a document declaring that there is nothing different today compared to any other time in earth's long history. Climate happens. But are we as Americans willing to allow a foreign body to dictate to us how to live our lives? Please vote no on this bill and vote against the loss of sovereignty.

If Obama Signs That Disgraceful Climate Bill He will Surely Go Down In History As the Man That Lost Us Our Freedom

Are Americans going to allow our sovereignty to be turned over to some two-bit power-lusting political hack? I can't believe we're going to allow this treaty...I just can't believe it. As Lord Monckton says "Thank you America, you have been the beacon of freedom for the world but..." listen to this speech and take action at the 11th hour. We must rise up and demand that Obama NOT sign this hideous treaty which will rob us of our sovereignty.

The Religion of Environmentalism- pssss It's All About Power and Control Over Us

If you still think politicians are worried about the so called global warming...I mean global cooling....I mean global climate change...read this article "The Coming Climate Dictatorship" and make your voice be heard or else you will be bowing down and scraping before the Climate Change know it alls who will dictate to you where you can live, eat, vacation(huh what's that?), what kind of house you can buy, what source of energy (if we have one left) you can use, what car you can drive...etc. etc. This is serious folks. This will be a biggest power grab even than the hoax of the Universal Health Care bill making its rounds as we speak in Washington. Scary stuff.

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency." As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee.

As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points out, the Kerry-Boxer bill requires the declaration of a "climate emergency" if the concentration of carbon dioxide and other declared greenhouse gases in the atmosphere exceeds 450 parts per million (ppm). It was at about 286 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and now sits at around 368 ppm.

What figure was picked out of a hat because the warm-mongers believe that's the level at which the polar ice caps will disappear, boats can be moored on the Statue of Liberty's torch and dead polar bears will wash up on the beaches of Malibu.

...Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar Chris Horner says "this agenda transparently is not about GHG concentrations, or the climate. It's about what the provision would bring: almost limitless power over private economic activity and individual liberty for the activist president ...

Writing in the Financial Times recently, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, author of the book, "Blue Planet, Green Shackles," said: "As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not communism."

Klaus, who has challenged Al Gore to a debate and has rejected Europe's embrace of Kyoto, told the Cato Institute recently that "environmentalism is a religion" that accepts global warming on faith and seeks to exploit it to reshape the world and economic order. Continue reading at IBD.

Reagan's Courage in Calling Out The Evil of The Berlin Wall

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," George Orwell.

Many times in history it takes hindsight to realize that a great moment in history had occurred - a teachable moment. One of those teachable moments was the fall of the Berlin Wall - that hideous symbol and prison that entombed half of Berlin with the power-lusters of Communism. The starkness of the contrast between the moderate freedom of West Berlin and the total lack of freedom of East Berlin was too in your face even for mushy leftists to deny. Today however, in America, we have experienced slow creeping toward socialism (which is communism light) for the past 100 years. But, under Obama, we are at galloping speed. There won't be cement walls built separating Americans from Americans but there will be the stultifying drabness of existence that comes about when your options have been shorted because government rules, regulations and insane laws rule your life. Petty, small bureaucrats making decisions about how much you can earn, what taxes you will pay, where you can live, what you can eat, what you can express and how you can express it, on and on and on.

We need another revolution BACK to our Founding Principles. We need to look at our history and realize that the war fought against the British was to unshackle ourselves from excessive taxation and no representation. To do this we must see through, as the WSJ writes, the propagandists, the moral equivocators and diplomatic finessers and simply look at the Wall - the figurative wall we have today that is made up of Washington politicians. Will we have the courage to make our "wall" of political schemers and power-lusters crumble?

...There was Mikhail Gorbachev, who made it clear that the Soviet Union would not violently suppress people power in its satellite states, as it had decades earlier in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. There were the heroes of Poland's Solidarity movement, not least Pope John Paul II, who did so much to expose the moral bankruptcy of communism.

And there was Ronald Reagan, who believed the job of Western statesmanship was to muster the moral, political, economic and military wherewithal not simply to contain the Soviet bloc, but to bury it. "What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history," he said in 1982, to the astonishment and derision of his critics. Now, there was the audacity of hope.

...To know what the West stood for during most of those years, one merely had to go to Berlin, see the Wall, consider its purpose, and observe the contrasts between the vibrant prosperity on one side of the city and the oppressive monotony on the other.

Those contrasts were even more apparent to the Germans trapped on the wrong side of the Wall. Barbed wire, closed military zones and the machinery of communist propaganda could keep the prosperity of the West out of sight of most people living east of the Iron Curtain. But that wasn't true for the people of East Berlin, many of whom merely had to look out their windows to understand how empty and cynical were the promises of socialism compared to the reality of a free-market system. Read "Why The Berlin Wall Fell" at WSJ.

Are We to Bow and Scrape Before Washington Politicians?

"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant." George Washington

Ayn Rand wrote something profoundly pertinent to today's degradation of our economic system and the increasing loss of our freedoms by caused by government. She reminds us of what our basic right is and that without it there can be no other rights.

"The right to life is the source of all rights - and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."

"To violate man's rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two - by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first." (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal - pg 322-23).

What the government has been doing for the past 100 years but at an alarmingly rapid rate today is destroying our right to our own lives. How? By denying us the right work, earn our money as we see fit and to keep it. In so many ways today the government dictates to us where we can live (zoning laws), how much we can earn (minimum wage laws and now denying industry leaders the right to set the terms of their salaries), using our tax dollars to fund the lives of anointed or favorite groups, forcing us to send our children to public schools that actually turn out damaged goods, and on and on. Let's face it we do NOT live in the "LAND OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE". We live in a quasi controlled economy which every day gets closer and closer to totalitarianism.

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago. But my question is - are we building our own Berlin Wall? The wall between those that comply and curry favor with the government and those that stand tall and free...there are fewer and fewer of the latter because we don't truly understand the ideal that our country was founded on.

We slave and toil to pay tribute to Big Government in Washington, to our state capitals and to our local governments. And there is no end in sight unless we do something about it. Our politicians act like the Lords and Ladies of yesterday, demanding tribute - our bowing and our scraping (Madame Pelosi comes to mind). And there's no end in sight...When will enough be enough? Are we so comfortable that we have no more will to defend our principles? I hope not.

Two Anniversaries Highlight America's Philosophic Failures

by Joseph Kellard (The American Individualist)

This month marks 30 years since the Iranian hostage crisis began and 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell.

What must Americans understand about these milestones, the rise of Islamic totalitarianism and the collapse of communism, to understand why these forces continue to threaten our lives and freedoms today?

After three decades, the Iranian regime that initiated war against America on Nov.4, 1979, having stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American hostages for 444days, has since emerged as the world’s premier sponsor of terrorism, murdering and maiming thousands of Americans from Beirut in 1983 to Afghanistan today. This has happened because our appeasing, timid leaders, both Democrats and Republicans alike, have all along refused to put even a scratch on Iran’s ruling ayatollahs and mullahs.

And two decades after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and, soon after, Soviet Russia, we are witnessing the resurgence of socialism -- at home. This phenomenon is due, in large part, to the so-called defenders of capitalism, the Republicans-conservatives, who have resigned themselves to accept the welfare state that brought us our now bankrupt Medicare and Social Security systems, rather than mount a principled, moral defense of capitalism.

How essentially did we get to this point?

Note that with the rise of socialism in the early 20th century, age-old religion took a back seat as communists promised unprecedented material prosperity wherever they brutally spread their ideology. Yet, in reality, communism was no more than a secularization of religion. Communism adopted religion’s altruist ethics that commanded men to sacrifice their lives to God’s will and substituted him with demands to sacrifice to society and the state instead. The Berlin Wall came to represent the communism’s universal slave state, crushing its citizens’ fundamental rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, and those who tried to escape to freedom were shot dead, treated like common criminals going over a prison wall.

Long before the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, communism had demonstrated its anti-life impotence and evil, failing miserably to produces any semblance of a “workers paradise” on earth, with widespread poverty and deprivations and mass death -- an estimated 100 million people slaughtered from Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China to Castro’s Cuba.

When in 1991 Soviet Russia collapsed, some hailed it as “the end of history,” as if capitalism had triumphed and America faced no other enemies. But there stood religion, both at home and abroad, already filling the void with its promises of paradise in a mystical afterworld. As communism-socialism wasted away, Iran’s Islamic revolution emerged in 1979 as the latest enemy of the West and religion was resurrected in America.

Like the communists, the Islamics watched America become an unprecedented superpower, both economically and militarily, based on fundamental premises antithetical to their own: reason, individualism, individual rights and the selfish pursuit of happiness. Like communism, the religionists preach faith and obedience to something allegedly higher than the individual. While communists extolled sacrifice to an all-powerful proletariat state, the religionists demand submission to an all-powerful god. Thus, to Iran’s ruling clerics -- who properly viewed America as an essentially secularist, this-worldly nation – called her “the Great Satan,” and since the hostage crisis have made “death to America” their mantra.

Meanwhile, at home, Ronald Reagan and his supporters ushered in religious revival, declaring America a nation based on Judeo-Christian values. And although Reagan rightfully identified Soviet Russia as an “evil empire,” he nevertheless held arms negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev, who threatened this nation with nuclear annihilation, and Regan did nothing when Iranian-backed terrorists murdered 241 U.S. Marines at barracks in Beirut in 1983.

When the Soviet Union expired, the terrorists lost their main resource. Suddenly, life-long terrorist Yasir Arafat played peaceful with Israel, and the post-Ayatollah Khomeini regime posed as “moderates.” Al Qaeda, however, who proceeded to build on Iran’s Islamic revolution and bombed American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen. Next came September 11, 2001.

The born-again Christian George W. Bush responded by downplaying the terrorists as representing “a fringe form of Islamic extremism” who otherwise pervert “a religion of peace.” Thus Bush was unable to identify our enemy as motivated by religion’s essence of faith and force, and so he failed to properly frame the war as Islam vs. Western Civilization. Instead of destroying the enemy, he turned to nation-building campaigns to bring Iraq and Afghanistan “democracy,” that is, mob rule. All the while, Bush allowed those nations to adopt Islam as a cornerstone of their constitutions, and left the Iranian regime still intact to build nuclear weapons. Today the Obama administration, which is holding America’s first open diplomatic talks with the Iranians since the hostage crisis, is pursuing the same appeasing, timid policies.

America is at this point, in part, because conservatives have only offered religion as an answer to communism-socialism and Islamic totalitarianism. Through its support of faith-based welfare programs, expansion of socialized medical programs and bank bailouts, Bush laid the groundwork for the Obama administration to swiftly push for an explicit socialist agenda in finance and automobiles, and now looks to do the same in the medical and energy industries. Meanwhile, Obama makes nice with Palestinian terrorists and socialist like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, as White House communications director Anita Dunn praises communist mass murder Mao Tse-tung.

This week and next, as we watch images of the freedom-lovers who took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall 20 years ago and the Iranian thugs who blindfolded their American hostages 30 years ago, we must recognize that the forces of communism-socialism and Islamic totalitarianism continue to threatened our freedoms and lives. And to weaken and finally stamp them out, we must uncompromisingly champion and practice not faith but reason, not collectivism but individualism, not the all-powerful state but individual rights, not force but voluntary trade, not self-sacrifice but rational selfishness. Nothing less will save this great nation.
READ MORE by Joseph Kellard at The American Individualist

Britain's Got Talent-Shaun Smith Brings Relief From Politics

I'm tired of politics and thinking about the dismal future of this great country - The United States of America. Enjoy this 17 year old kid and his incredible voice and the particular song he chose to sing at the Britain's Got Talent competition.

Britain's Got Talent 2009 - Shaun Smith - Watch today’s top amazing videos here

Is America Dying A Slow Death By Sacrifice?

Study the table on the left published at Investor's Business Daily today. I mean study it....United States leads in reserves of fossil fuel resources...Why is OUR GOVERNMENT prohibiting us from getting these reserves out of the ground? For the Polar Bear. For climate "change". For the polar Ice Caps. Anything is deserving of our sacrifice except man himself. What's killing America is the philosophy of sacrifice. Man must sacrifice for everything under the sun except he must never live for himself.

...As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything?

One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy…

Actually, it's not, according to a new report produced by the Congressional Research Service, hardly an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy or on the payroll of Big Oil. The report says that if all our energy resources are added up and converted to a barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), the U.S. has the largest reserves in the world.

According to the CRS, the U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) if you combine its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves. Russia is close behind with 1,248 billion barrels BOE. Other energy-producing nations, including many that export oil to the U.S., lag behind.

Of course, much of our world-leading reserves are off-limits by government edict. We recently commented on the federal government designation of 200,541 squares miles off the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for the abundant polar bear, effectively killing hopes to exploit the vast energy riches of the American Arctic. Read the rest at IBD

Gore, Killing Us Softly With His Gloom and Doom

Ahhhh...Al Gore....Why doesn't he go back to his environmentally uncool house and give it a break? Look, he's made enough money to live three lives...why does he continue to peddle his lies when they've been shown to be unfounded gibberish? GO AWAY AL GORE!

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments.

'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen.

In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar- and Nobel Prize-winning former vice president writes: "Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. 'Our Choice' will answer that call."

The book's cover depicts one of the hurricanes Gore still claims are increasing in frequency and intensity. What has happened in the past three years is that such claims have been thoroughly debunked as the earth has cooled, possibly for decades hence.

For example, a recent study by researchers at Florida State University determined that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years. Read at IBD

Taking From Some To Give To Others

Economic Recovery Without Economic Growth by Dr. Hurd

Somebody needs to tell the President that it's not economic "growth" if the money is taken from those who produced it and given to the more politically favored who did not produce it. For example, taking money from a hard working business person or a successful corporation and giving it to, say, ACORN, is not economic growth. The continuing high jobless rate demonstrates this all the more. There can only be economic growth when new wealth is created. Wealth is not being created in America. It's being taken from those who earned it and doled out to those who didn't. Capitalism creates wealth. Socialism moves it around. You'd think by now that America would have learned the difference. READ DRHURD.com

Altruism: The Justification For All Rights-Violating Laws & Institutions

Craig Biddle at The Objective Standard (Fall 2009) wrote a great article called "The Creed of Sacrifice vs The Land of Liberty". I have pulled out the number of ways government abuses our freedom from his article, followed by the first few paragraphs of his essay. You can read the whole essay at the link below.

1. The Federal Reserve prints fiat money which debases our savings
2. This fiat money finances welfare programs, bails out banks, rescues bankrupt car companies
3. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) violates taxpayers rights by forcing us to insure the bank deposits of strangers.
4. Social Security violates the rights of younger Americans who have to fund retirees.
5. National Labor Relations Act violates the rights of businessmen like automakers by forcing them to "contract" with labor unions...
6. Medicare and Medicaid violate the rights of taxpaying Americans by forcing them to fund the care of the aged and "destitute".
7. The Community Reinvestment Act violates the rights of bankers by forcing them to provide loans to people whom they regard as too risky for business.
8. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) violates the right of taxpayers by forcing them to purchase bad debt from failing financial institutions.
9. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) violates the rights of Americans by expanding the extent to which they are forced to fund welfare programs, unemployment benefits, gov run education, and the health care of others.
10. Federal, State and municipal government violate our rights in thousands of other ways as well. (From "The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty - The Objective Standard, Fall 2009, Page 40.

The proper purpose of government, wrote Thomas Jefferson, is to “guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”1 The government “shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”2

In accordance with this view of the purpose of government, the founders established a republic in which the government was constitutionally limited to the protection of individual rights—the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. In this new republic, men were free to think, to produce, and to trade in accordance with their own best judgment; thus, they were free to thrive in accordance with their intelligence, their ability, their initiative. The result was astounding.

Nineteenth-century America was a land of unparalleled innovation and prosperity—and further political achievement. In addition to countless inventions that sprang up—including the steamboat, the cotton gin, vulcanized rubber, the telephone, the incandescent light, the electric power plant, the skyscraper, and the safety elevator—and in addition to the vital industries that arose or were revolutionized—such as the railroad, oil, and steel industries—19th-century America witnessed the end of slavery, which was recognized as a violation of the basic principle of the land.

Between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century, America came as close to being a fully rights-respecting society as any country has ever come. Men were essentially free to live their own lives, by their own judgment, for their own sake.

Unfortunately, although the Land of Liberty was a great success, it would not and could not last.
The founders established America on the principle of individual rights, but neither they nor the thinkers who followed them identified the deeper philosophic foundation on which this principle depends, namely, the morality of egoism—the idea that being moral consists in pursuing the values on which one’s life and happiness depend. In the absence of this foundation, Americans have embraced philosophical ideas that are contrary to individual rights.

Over the past century, Americans have increasingly accepted the morality of altruism—the notion that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others—and they have increasingly applied this morality to the realm of politics. Consequently, our government is no longer committed to “restrain men from injuring one another [and] leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” Rather, our government regularly—and increasingly—“take[s] from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” and redistributes that bread to those who have not earned it. CONTINUE READING AT The Objective Standard