Obama has decided that our safety as a nation is to be given up to the Gods of power lust for its sake alone. He has decided to control our economy instead of being the commander in chief of America's security. He does not care about the safety of Americans but how to control our lives. We have no leader in Washington but a small man with small ideas and with the goal of decreasing our liberties. Fouad Ajami writes:
With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was of a piece with that retreat in American power.
In the absence of an overriding commitment to the defense of American primacy in the world, the Obama administration "cheats." It will not quit the war in Afghanistan but doesn't fully embrace it as its cause. It prosecutes the war but with Republican support—the diehards in liberal ranks and the isolationists are in no mood for bonding with Afghans. (Harry Reid's last major foreign policy pronouncement was his assertion, three years ago, that the war in Iraq was lost.) ...
...History and its furies have their logic, and they have not bent to Mr. Obama's will. He had declared a unilateral end to the "war on terror," but the jihadists and their mentors are yet to call their war to a halt. From Yemen to Fort Hood and Detroit, the terror continues.
But to go by the utterances of the Obama administration and its devotees, one would have thought that our enemies were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, not the preachers and masterminds of terror. The president and his lieutenants spent more time denigrating "rendition" and the Patriot Act than they did tracking down the terror trail and the latest front it had opened at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. Our own leaders spoke poorly of our prerogatives and ways, and they were heard the world over.
Under Mr. Obama, we have pulled back from the foreign world. We're smaller for accepting that false choice between burdens at home and burdens abroad, and the world beyond our shores is more hazardous and cynical for our retrenchment and our self-flagellation. (Read "A Coldblooded Foreign Policy" No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue.at WSJ)
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. Professor Richard Lindzen
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
"The People No Longer Fear"
The Iranians are revolting against religious authoritarianism and for a democracy. It's about time. An older man screamed to the police “Aren’t you ashamed to beat and kill your own people?” But where is Obama? The leader of the greatest democracy on the earth and he's AWOL on the most important rebellion against tyranny at least of the decade. Who are you? What do you stand for?
...Analysts heralded the start of what could be a bloody endgame as hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters poured on to the streets of Tehran and other cities and fought running battles with the security forces. Opposition websites claimed that some policemen had refused to fire on demonstrators.
Foreign journalists have been banned from Iran but Western newsrooms were inundated with mobile telephone footage of astonishing scenes: jubilant demonstrators attacking riot police and Basij militiamen, protesters gleefully setting light to a police station, Basiji building and motorbikes being captured from the security forces, detained protesters being freed from a police van while colleagues are carried away with blood pouring from gunshot wounds. Dozens were injured and more than 300 arrested. “The gloves are off. There is no question about that,” said one analyst. Ali Ansari, Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, said: “No one can now doubt that change is coming.”...
A leading opposition activist claimed: “The regime is on borrowed time. The entire country is beginning to rise.” ... Read at Times Online.
...Analysts heralded the start of what could be a bloody endgame as hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters poured on to the streets of Tehran and other cities and fought running battles with the security forces. Opposition websites claimed that some policemen had refused to fire on demonstrators.
Foreign journalists have been banned from Iran but Western newsrooms were inundated with mobile telephone footage of astonishing scenes: jubilant demonstrators attacking riot police and Basij militiamen, protesters gleefully setting light to a police station, Basiji building and motorbikes being captured from the security forces, detained protesters being freed from a police van while colleagues are carried away with blood pouring from gunshot wounds. Dozens were injured and more than 300 arrested. “The gloves are off. There is no question about that,” said one analyst. Ali Ansari, Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, said: “No one can now doubt that change is coming.”...
A leading opposition activist claimed: “The regime is on borrowed time. The entire country is beginning to rise.” ... Read at Times Online.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
News Alert to Madam in Charge of Homeland Security: Terrorists Are NOT Routine Criminals
Really the only thing today between American Citizens and terrorists are brave individuals like the the man that fought to prevent the blow-up of Northwest flight 253 flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day. Napolitano had nothing to do with it even though she appears to shamelessly be taking credit for it. They are going to treat this case as a routine criminal case when it's actually and everyone else knows it, a terrorist case. This makes it harder to prosecute and gives more protection to the terrorist. Why is the Obama administration doing this? Why is every evil coddled and protected by this administration? Why? Napolitano says that the system worked...amazing the chutzpah of this woman. No, you are wrong Janet and you know it. It was only because of the passengers and one in particular that thwarted the plan of a killer.
A U.S. government that has barred the phrase "war on terror" has nonetheless acknowledged that a failed Christmas day bomb attack on an airliner was a terrorist attempt. Can we all now drop the pretense that we stopped fighting a war once Dick Cheney and George W. Bush left the White House?
The attempt by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab follows the alleged murders in Ft. Hood, Texas by Islamist-inspired Major Nidal Hasan in November. Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don't seem to like Americans any better because we're closing down Guantanamo.
This increasing terror tempo makes the Obama Administration's reflexive impulse to treat terrorists like routine criminal suspects all the more worrisome. It immediately indicted Mr. Abdulmutallab on criminal charges of trying to destroy an aircraft, despite reports that he told officials he had ties to al Qaeda and had picked up his PETN explosive in Yemen. The charges mean the Nigerian can only be interrogated like any other defendant in a criminal case, subject to having a lawyer present and his Miranda rights read. READ The Terror This Time: Janet Napolitano says the system worked. No we were lucky and brave. Wall Street Journal.
A U.S. government that has barred the phrase "war on terror" has nonetheless acknowledged that a failed Christmas day bomb attack on an airliner was a terrorist attempt. Can we all now drop the pretense that we stopped fighting a war once Dick Cheney and George W. Bush left the White House?
The attempt by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab follows the alleged murders in Ft. Hood, Texas by Islamist-inspired Major Nidal Hasan in November. Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don't seem to like Americans any better because we're closing down Guantanamo.
This increasing terror tempo makes the Obama Administration's reflexive impulse to treat terrorists like routine criminal suspects all the more worrisome. It immediately indicted Mr. Abdulmutallab on criminal charges of trying to destroy an aircraft, despite reports that he told officials he had ties to al Qaeda and had picked up his PETN explosive in Yemen. The charges mean the Nigerian can only be interrogated like any other defendant in a criminal case, subject to having a lawyer present and his Miranda rights read. READ The Terror This Time: Janet Napolitano says the system worked. No we were lucky and brave. Wall Street Journal.
Standing Up Against Evil Appears Not To be In Obama's Playbook - It May Cost Him Dearly
As Obama refuses to meet with any and all liberty seekers and continues to bow to any and all tyrants we can hardly comprehend what this man is all about. It strikes us as strange and we gasp at his lack of understanding that Americans hate tyrants from Chavez to Putin to the Chinese government cracking down on dissidents. We stare unbelieving at his amazing lack of response to the brave uprising against tyranny in Iran. It leaves us bewildered, aghast and wondering - WHO IS THIS MAN LIVING IN OUR CHERISHED WHITE HOUSE? We don't know completely yet but I think a picture is forming as it does slowly when a negative is developed in the dark room. The form is slowly being etched out. And the final proof will not be a man of much substance...maybe even a man with no principles but with an exceptional power lust.
...The December headlines remind us that we have no shortage of these nasty regimes. In China, the government sentences Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for writing a letter calling for legal and political reforms. In Iran, security forces fire on citizens marching in the streets. In Cuba, pro-government goons intimidate a group of wives, mothers and sisters of jailed dissidents—with President Raul Castro characterizing these bullies as "people willing to protect, at any price, the conquests of the revolution."
In all these cases, the cry goes up: Where is the president of the United States?
For a man whose whole appeal has been wrapped in powerful imagery, President Obama appears strikingly obtuse about the symbolism of his own actions: e.g., squeezing in a condemnation of Iran before a round of golf. With every statement not backed up by action, with every refusal to meet a leader such as the Dalai Lama, with every handshake for a Chavez, Mr. Obama is defining himself to foreign leaders who are sizing him up and have only one question in mind: How much can we get away with?...
One of the leading critics of President Ford's decision was Ronald Reagan. In his own time as president, Reagan met with dissidents. He quoted Solzhenitsyn often. And when he so famously upset the establishment by referring to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," Reagan no doubt recalled that night in 1975 at the AFL-CIO dinner—when Solzhenitsyn had referred to the Soviet Union as "the concentration of world evil."
Reagan set a tone that hit the Soviets in their most vulnerable spot: their lack of moral legitimacy. In retrospect, we can more easily see that Reagan's willingness to give voice to freedom-loving dissidents only increased his leverage as president as he dealt with the Soviets and their allies. (Obama Puts The Dis In Dissidents - WSJ)
...The December headlines remind us that we have no shortage of these nasty regimes. In China, the government sentences Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for writing a letter calling for legal and political reforms. In Iran, security forces fire on citizens marching in the streets. In Cuba, pro-government goons intimidate a group of wives, mothers and sisters of jailed dissidents—with President Raul Castro characterizing these bullies as "people willing to protect, at any price, the conquests of the revolution."
In all these cases, the cry goes up: Where is the president of the United States?
For a man whose whole appeal has been wrapped in powerful imagery, President Obama appears strikingly obtuse about the symbolism of his own actions: e.g., squeezing in a condemnation of Iran before a round of golf. With every statement not backed up by action, with every refusal to meet a leader such as the Dalai Lama, with every handshake for a Chavez, Mr. Obama is defining himself to foreign leaders who are sizing him up and have only one question in mind: How much can we get away with?...
One of the leading critics of President Ford's decision was Ronald Reagan. In his own time as president, Reagan met with dissidents. He quoted Solzhenitsyn often. And when he so famously upset the establishment by referring to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," Reagan no doubt recalled that night in 1975 at the AFL-CIO dinner—when Solzhenitsyn had referred to the Soviet Union as "the concentration of world evil."
Reagan set a tone that hit the Soviets in their most vulnerable spot: their lack of moral legitimacy. In retrospect, we can more easily see that Reagan's willingness to give voice to freedom-loving dissidents only increased his leverage as president as he dealt with the Soviets and their allies. (Obama Puts The Dis In Dissidents - WSJ)
Monday, December 28, 2009
Doctors Should Go On Strike!
What would happen if Economic freedom was lost? In her novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand showed what happens to a society that allows its government to go down the road of National Socialism: over taxation of the successful to support the poor and taxation of all people to support an assortment of government bureaucratic programs none of which are allowed under the United States Constitution, and the support of inefficient businesses in the name of saving jobs and the overburdening of the more efficient with rules and regulations.
Rand demonstrates that in this kind of atmosphere the only way to “flourish” is by businessmen becoming corrupt in order to seek profits. To do this, of course, they must manipulate crooked politicians on the take. Sound familiar to anything happening today?
The Health Care bill which seems likely to pass after reconciliation between the Senate and House versions will almost certainly take us, by a giant leap, to socialism by turning our doctors into slaves of the state. Think what this will do to the quality of young men and women who decide to become doctors. Who do you think will sign up to train for 10-15 years of grueling study and hardship in order to practice a profession where the majority under the best of circumstances makes an OK living? For the most part it will not be the best and the brightest but the ones who can “work the system” as Rand showed in her novel. In a sense there will be a strike by the doctors - the best, brightest and honest ones will NOT become doctors.
Rand’s novel depicts a scenario where the men of the mind go on strike. Brilliant bankers, engineers, financiers, doctors and nurses, all decide to withdraw their minds from the market place. Hundreds go to a secret town in the mountains to start a new society based on individual rights and economic freedom. They do this as a declaration of their right to think, live and exercise their profession as they see fit.
Maybe the beginning of the 2nd decade of the 2nd millennium is the time for a showdown between statism and freedom, Socialism and Capitalism, and between the chained mind and the free mind. It’s time for Americans to learn what Capitalism is and what huge benefits and riches it has provided those few nations that follow even partially its principles, and we must learn that governments exist to PROTECT rights….not to violate them as ours has for the past century in ever increasing amounts.
“Capitalism, the system of individual rights, has brought increased freedom to men all over the world. In Europe, capitalism ended feudalism…In America... the principle of individual rights impelled the British colonists to throw off the rule of the monarchy and establish history’s freest nation – and the logic of the country’s founding principles led, in less than a century, to the abolition of slavery…”
“Capitalism is the system of freedom…”
“Capitalism is the system of wealth…” (The Capitalist Manifest by Andrew Bernstein; University Press of America)
Rand demonstrates that in this kind of atmosphere the only way to “flourish” is by businessmen becoming corrupt in order to seek profits. To do this, of course, they must manipulate crooked politicians on the take. Sound familiar to anything happening today?
The Health Care bill which seems likely to pass after reconciliation between the Senate and House versions will almost certainly take us, by a giant leap, to socialism by turning our doctors into slaves of the state. Think what this will do to the quality of young men and women who decide to become doctors. Who do you think will sign up to train for 10-15 years of grueling study and hardship in order to practice a profession where the majority under the best of circumstances makes an OK living? For the most part it will not be the best and the brightest but the ones who can “work the system” as Rand showed in her novel. In a sense there will be a strike by the doctors - the best, brightest and honest ones will NOT become doctors.
Rand’s novel depicts a scenario where the men of the mind go on strike. Brilliant bankers, engineers, financiers, doctors and nurses, all decide to withdraw their minds from the market place. Hundreds go to a secret town in the mountains to start a new society based on individual rights and economic freedom. They do this as a declaration of their right to think, live and exercise their profession as they see fit.
Maybe the beginning of the 2nd decade of the 2nd millennium is the time for a showdown between statism and freedom, Socialism and Capitalism, and between the chained mind and the free mind. It’s time for Americans to learn what Capitalism is and what huge benefits and riches it has provided those few nations that follow even partially its principles, and we must learn that governments exist to PROTECT rights….not to violate them as ours has for the past century in ever increasing amounts.
“Capitalism, the system of individual rights, has brought increased freedom to men all over the world. In Europe, capitalism ended feudalism…In America... the principle of individual rights impelled the British colonists to throw off the rule of the monarchy and establish history’s freest nation – and the logic of the country’s founding principles led, in less than a century, to the abolition of slavery…”
“Capitalism is the system of freedom…”
“Capitalism is the system of wealth…” (The Capitalist Manifest by Andrew Bernstein; University Press of America)
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Obama's Anti-Business Personality
Obama is not pro-entrepreneur - it's all fog and mirrors. America was the land of entrepreneurs but China and India have liberated their entrepreneurs while Obama is wrapping ours in chains. This may be one of the numerous sides of his anti-business personality that sinks his Presidency.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Looting of Taxpayers by Big Pharma and Big Government
An excellent review of how the Pharmaceutical industry is committing suicide by giving up its principles for illusory gains by collaborating with the government to extort money from the taxpayers and how it inevitably will lead to the death of this industry and jobs.
Pharmaceutical industry executives are frequently accused of greedily putting “profits before patients” (as if drug companies could profit by means other than serving patients). This accusation would be unjust if these executives were after profits. Unfortunately, however, today’s pharmaceutical executives are not after profits. They are after loot. They seek to gain, through legislation, money coercively taken by the government from American citizens. But, unbeknownst to these executives, their looting is self-destructive. In fact, by aiding and abetting the government in its violation of individual rights, the pharmaceutical industry is committing suicide. To see why, let us begin by examining some of the ways in which the industry calls for the violation of rights and receives loot as a result. Then we will turn to the reasons why this practice is killing the pharmaceutical industry.
Consider the industry’s support for the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA).
The MMA expanded Medicare to include coverage of prescription drugs for Americans over the age of 65 and was the largest expansion of welfare in America since the creation of Medicare itself.1 When the Act took effect in 2006, it made the U.S. federal government the single largest purchaser of prescription drugs in America.2
In 1999, years before this bill had been conceived, Alan Holmer, then president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry’s lobby group, made clear in a trade journal the industry’s view that “the question is not whether, but how, to expand Medicare coverage of prescription drugs.”3 In 2000, Holmer testified before the Senate Finance Committee that at “some point in the not-too-distant future, a Congress will pass, and a President will sign, legislation to expand drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries. . . . Expanded drug coverage for seniors will be a positive development.” Holmer emphasized:
The pharmaceutical industry strongly supports . . . expanding Medicare coverage of prescription medicines. . . . Medicare beneficiaries need high-quality health care, and prescription medicines often offer the most effective therapy for them. We believe that the best way to expand prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries is through comprehensive Medicare reform.4
The pharmaceutical industry got its desired “reform,” and when the MMA became law, the government not only began dictating the terms by which private insurers would provide prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries, it also began spending tens of billions of dollars annually to subsidize that coverage.
From where does the U.S. government get this money? The government does not create wealth; it does not produce anything. Every penny the government spends on drugs (or anything else) comes from taxpayers. The government gets this money by taking it under threat of force from hard-working Americans (or by printing or borrowing it, which is deferred taxation). This is legalized theft; the money taken by force is loot. And when the government spends this loot on prescription drugs for the elderly, the loot is passed on to the pharmaceutical industry.
Now, merely receiving loot from the government does not in and of itself constitute the moral crime of complicity in the government’s coercion. But the pharmaceutical industry is not merely receiving money from the government as a result of the MMA. The industry advocated this socialist scheme of forced wealth redistribution from the start, supported it at every stage of development, and is now receiving the loot as planned. Although the industry exchanges drugs for the loot, the entire arrangement on the part of taxpayers whose money is taken by force to buy the drugs is involuntary. Taxpayers do not choose to fund the industry in this way; they are forced to do so—by a law that the pharmaceutical industry enthusiastically helped to create.
When Congress and President George W. Bush—with the eager support of the pharmaceutical industry—expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry gained millions of new customers, customers whose payments are made with loot. And we are talking about a lot of loot:... In 1999—before the MMA was made law—this age group composed 13 percent of the population but consumed 30 percent of all prescription drugs sold in the country.5 Thus, the pharmaceutical industry stood to increase its revenues immensely when taxpayers were forced to fund expanded drug coverage for seniors. By 2008, the federal government was spending $44 billion annually on Medicare prescription drug coverage.6
In supporting the MMA, the pharmaceutical industry supported a massive violation of individual rights. It aided and abetted the U.S. government in a scheme that forcibly and continually transfers wealth from American taxpayers to pharmaceutical companies.
Not content with the billions in annual loot that it gains through the MMA, the pharmaceutical industry is now after more... READ at The Objectivist Standard: "Pharmacide: The Pharmaceutical Industry's Self-Destructive Effort to Loot America" by Cassandra Clark.
Pharmaceutical industry executives are frequently accused of greedily putting “profits before patients” (as if drug companies could profit by means other than serving patients). This accusation would be unjust if these executives were after profits. Unfortunately, however, today’s pharmaceutical executives are not after profits. They are after loot. They seek to gain, through legislation, money coercively taken by the government from American citizens. But, unbeknownst to these executives, their looting is self-destructive. In fact, by aiding and abetting the government in its violation of individual rights, the pharmaceutical industry is committing suicide. To see why, let us begin by examining some of the ways in which the industry calls for the violation of rights and receives loot as a result. Then we will turn to the reasons why this practice is killing the pharmaceutical industry.
Consider the industry’s support for the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA).
The MMA expanded Medicare to include coverage of prescription drugs for Americans over the age of 65 and was the largest expansion of welfare in America since the creation of Medicare itself.1 When the Act took effect in 2006, it made the U.S. federal government the single largest purchaser of prescription drugs in America.2
In 1999, years before this bill had been conceived, Alan Holmer, then president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry’s lobby group, made clear in a trade journal the industry’s view that “the question is not whether, but how, to expand Medicare coverage of prescription drugs.”3 In 2000, Holmer testified before the Senate Finance Committee that at “some point in the not-too-distant future, a Congress will pass, and a President will sign, legislation to expand drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries. . . . Expanded drug coverage for seniors will be a positive development.” Holmer emphasized:
The pharmaceutical industry strongly supports . . . expanding Medicare coverage of prescription medicines. . . . Medicare beneficiaries need high-quality health care, and prescription medicines often offer the most effective therapy for them. We believe that the best way to expand prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries is through comprehensive Medicare reform.4
The pharmaceutical industry got its desired “reform,” and when the MMA became law, the government not only began dictating the terms by which private insurers would provide prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries, it also began spending tens of billions of dollars annually to subsidize that coverage.
From where does the U.S. government get this money? The government does not create wealth; it does not produce anything. Every penny the government spends on drugs (or anything else) comes from taxpayers. The government gets this money by taking it under threat of force from hard-working Americans (or by printing or borrowing it, which is deferred taxation). This is legalized theft; the money taken by force is loot. And when the government spends this loot on prescription drugs for the elderly, the loot is passed on to the pharmaceutical industry.
Now, merely receiving loot from the government does not in and of itself constitute the moral crime of complicity in the government’s coercion. But the pharmaceutical industry is not merely receiving money from the government as a result of the MMA. The industry advocated this socialist scheme of forced wealth redistribution from the start, supported it at every stage of development, and is now receiving the loot as planned. Although the industry exchanges drugs for the loot, the entire arrangement on the part of taxpayers whose money is taken by force to buy the drugs is involuntary. Taxpayers do not choose to fund the industry in this way; they are forced to do so—by a law that the pharmaceutical industry enthusiastically helped to create.
When Congress and President George W. Bush—with the eager support of the pharmaceutical industry—expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry gained millions of new customers, customers whose payments are made with loot. And we are talking about a lot of loot:... In 1999—before the MMA was made law—this age group composed 13 percent of the population but consumed 30 percent of all prescription drugs sold in the country.5 Thus, the pharmaceutical industry stood to increase its revenues immensely when taxpayers were forced to fund expanded drug coverage for seniors. By 2008, the federal government was spending $44 billion annually on Medicare prescription drug coverage.6
In supporting the MMA, the pharmaceutical industry supported a massive violation of individual rights. It aided and abetted the U.S. government in a scheme that forcibly and continually transfers wealth from American taxpayers to pharmaceutical companies.
Not content with the billions in annual loot that it gains through the MMA, the pharmaceutical industry is now after more... READ at The Objectivist Standard: "Pharmacide: The Pharmaceutical Industry's Self-Destructive Effort to Loot America" by Cassandra Clark.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
"Health Care Not In Constitution"
A good article at The Wall Street Journal. Our Constitution is what it is and no politicians can make us the people pretend to think that such a travesty as this "healthcare plan" can pass the test of being constitutional. We know it and you Mr. Politician know it as well.
The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.
Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."
He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.
One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.
Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused and distorted beyond all meaning. The Commerce Clause was intended for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production distribution or consumption of commodities. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity. (READ at WSJ)
The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.
Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."
He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.
One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.
Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."
Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused and distorted beyond all meaning. The Commerce Clause was intended for the regulation of economic activity across state lines that involves the production distribution or consumption of commodities. One does not go to a doctor to engage in commercial activity. (READ at WSJ)
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Uighurs Try To Flee China Despotism and Fail
The Uighurs are a minority group in China who left to seek refuge in Cambodia. Cambodia betrayed these 20 people and returned them to China because they feared losing Chinese aid and investments. But doing the right thing is always right isn't it...The Uighurs have nowhere to go. America should accept them as we have accepted other people from around the world. This would show that we are still the home of oppressed and downtrodden and that we stand for FREEDOM!
On Saturday night under cover of darkness, a special Chinese plane departed from the military section of the Phnom Penh airport carrying 20 Uighur asylum seekers. For this group of men, women and children, this was the end of their failed effort to seek freedom from the Chinese regime.
Cambodia's decision to deport the asylum seekers, who were in the process of applying for refugee status at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is a reminder that Beijing's oppression of the Uighurs does not stop at China's borders. The Uighurs are a predominantly Turkic, Muslim people who live in East Turkestan (also knows as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region). For decades they have been the victims of systemic human-rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government...
...Beijing leaned hard on Phnom Penh to secure the deportation of these Uighurs, because once free they would no doubt contradict the official version of the events of July 5, when security forces cracked down violently on Uighur protestors and unrest spread through the city of Urumqi...
...The Cambodian government must be held accountable for its act of complicity with the Chinese government. Cambodia is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, but turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the U.S. and other democratic countries on behalf of these Uighur asylum seekers. Phnom Penh's decision was no doubt influenced by enormous Chinese pressure, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and a reported $1 billion in foreign direct investment... Read "The Long Arm of China".
On Saturday night under cover of darkness, a special Chinese plane departed from the military section of the Phnom Penh airport carrying 20 Uighur asylum seekers. For this group of men, women and children, this was the end of their failed effort to seek freedom from the Chinese regime.
Cambodia's decision to deport the asylum seekers, who were in the process of applying for refugee status at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is a reminder that Beijing's oppression of the Uighurs does not stop at China's borders. The Uighurs are a predominantly Turkic, Muslim people who live in East Turkestan (also knows as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region). For decades they have been the victims of systemic human-rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government...
...Beijing leaned hard on Phnom Penh to secure the deportation of these Uighurs, because once free they would no doubt contradict the official version of the events of July 5, when security forces cracked down violently on Uighur protestors and unrest spread through the city of Urumqi...
...The Cambodian government must be held accountable for its act of complicity with the Chinese government. Cambodia is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, but turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the U.S. and other democratic countries on behalf of these Uighur asylum seekers. Phnom Penh's decision was no doubt influenced by enormous Chinese pressure, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and a reported $1 billion in foreign direct investment... Read "The Long Arm of China".
Will Free Enterprise or Socialism Prevail in South America?
The situation in South America is at a crossroads and the choice is freedom, entrepreneurship, and growth or socialism, government run economy and stagnation. Chile will be the next country that must choose between; a free economy run by millions of people making billions of decisions or a few politicians making the decisions for everyone; individualism and the free mind or statism and the inability to use your mind. Let's hope Chileans having lived under both systems will know that freedom is better than chains. Mary O'Grady covers Latin America and always does a remarkable job showing us the issues in that part of the world.
...Yet lurking just beneath the surface there may be other more powerful factors at work, not the least of which is Chile's declining productivity under four successive Concertación governments, and a growing sense that for the first time in 20 years, economically speaking, life for Chileans is no longer getting better. Mr. Piñera, who got 44% of the vote to Mr. Frei's 30% in the first round, has promised to reverse these trends.
This matters to all of Latin America. Chile is the region's poster child for success through openness, competition, sound money, limits to government and equality under the law. Should the model begin to produce mediocre results, enemies of liberty will use it to discredit freedom.
...One of the most dramatic changes was the privatization of the pension system. Another key reform gave the central bank independence, ending the curse of hyperinflation.
It is often said that the modernization of the Chilean economy under Pinochet was so successful that even the left, once in power, didn't dare undo it...
...What is certain is that if Chile continues to emphasize the politics of redistribution over entrepreneurship, it will lose its edge. (Another Test for the Chilean Model - Read at WSJ).
...Yet lurking just beneath the surface there may be other more powerful factors at work, not the least of which is Chile's declining productivity under four successive Concertación governments, and a growing sense that for the first time in 20 years, economically speaking, life for Chileans is no longer getting better. Mr. Piñera, who got 44% of the vote to Mr. Frei's 30% in the first round, has promised to reverse these trends.
This matters to all of Latin America. Chile is the region's poster child for success through openness, competition, sound money, limits to government and equality under the law. Should the model begin to produce mediocre results, enemies of liberty will use it to discredit freedom.
...One of the most dramatic changes was the privatization of the pension system. Another key reform gave the central bank independence, ending the curse of hyperinflation.
It is often said that the modernization of the Chilean economy under Pinochet was so successful that even the left, once in power, didn't dare undo it...
...What is certain is that if Chile continues to emphasize the politics of redistribution over entrepreneurship, it will lose its edge. (Another Test for the Chilean Model - Read at WSJ).
Sunday, December 20, 2009
"Happiness Depends on Being Free, and Freedom Depends on Being Courageous"
Guess when this was written and by whom?
Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses...I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person, and do this, moreover, the exceptional grace and exceptional versatility....You should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard...Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
Pericles - an excerpt from his famous "Funeral Oration" of 430 BC when he eulogized Athenians who had died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Athens, at the time, was the first and only city-state that allowed freedoms to its people. And America is the receiver of this inheritence. Are we going to throw away our inheritance because of the lies of "global warming"? Are we going to stop using oil because of a crowd of people who hate humans and progress and want to watch us return to nature? These are important and crucial questions facing humanity. Will we continue to embrace progress based on the free use of our minds to create, invent, discover and explore or will we allow ourselves to drown in the muck of stagnation which comes from government controls and people of little imagination and little minds.
Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses...I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person, and do this, moreover, the exceptional grace and exceptional versatility....You should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard...Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
Pericles - an excerpt from his famous "Funeral Oration" of 430 BC when he eulogized Athenians who had died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Athens, at the time, was the first and only city-state that allowed freedoms to its people. And America is the receiver of this inheritence. Are we going to throw away our inheritance because of the lies of "global warming"? Are we going to stop using oil because of a crowd of people who hate humans and progress and want to watch us return to nature? These are important and crucial questions facing humanity. Will we continue to embrace progress based on the free use of our minds to create, invent, discover and explore or will we allow ourselves to drown in the muck of stagnation which comes from government controls and people of little imagination and little minds.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
How a Hockey Stick Graph and Russian Tree Rings Gave Us Global Warming Fraud
Facts are stubborn things. And when you get to global warming those darn facts can sure ruin a days work of reworking the data to fit your ideology. But because facts are facts a lie built on lies will eventually be found out and that is what is happening to the global warming mythology. Investors.com reports on the dishonesty of climate change scientists. Note that the hockey stick theory of rising temperatures in the 1900's was outed as a lie in 2005! My question is why has this farce been tolerated for so long?
...Chutzpah has been redefined.
As Ronald Reagan used to say, facts are stubborn things. The fact is that imminent man-made climate disaster has been shown to be a massive fraud driven by manipulated data and deliberate suppression of facts to the contrary.
The latest Climate-gate shoe to drop is the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) accusation that the Hadley Center of Britain's Meteorological Office deliberately relied on a carefully selected 25% of Russia's weather stations that fit its theory of global warming.
By ignoring those that don't, the Russians say, the CRU overestimated warming in the country by more than half a degree Celsius.
Russia accounts for 12.5% of the earth's land mass and has weather stations throughout, so ignoring vast swaths of it can greatly skew any analysis. The IEA says CRU ignored data covering 40% of Russia, preferring data from urban centers and data that showed a warming trend. On the final page of the IEA report is a chart that shows the CRU's selective use of Russian data produced 0.64C more warming than using all the data would have done.
...The hockey-stick graph was produced in 1999 by Mann using these manipulated tree ring data. The graph supposedly proved air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century. Mann et al. had to make the Medieval Warm Period (A.D. 800 to 1400) and the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1600 to 1850) statistically disappear.
McIntyre, who with fellow Canadian researcher Ross McKitrick exposed the hockey-stick fraud, says the evidence from only one Siberian tree, known as YAD061, seemed to show a hockey-stick pattern. If they look hard enough, the CRU can probably find a tree that shows evidence of elves making cookies. (READ To Denmark From Russia With Lies)
...Chutzpah has been redefined.
As Ronald Reagan used to say, facts are stubborn things. The fact is that imminent man-made climate disaster has been shown to be a massive fraud driven by manipulated data and deliberate suppression of facts to the contrary.
The latest Climate-gate shoe to drop is the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) accusation that the Hadley Center of Britain's Meteorological Office deliberately relied on a carefully selected 25% of Russia's weather stations that fit its theory of global warming.
By ignoring those that don't, the Russians say, the CRU overestimated warming in the country by more than half a degree Celsius.
Russia accounts for 12.5% of the earth's land mass and has weather stations throughout, so ignoring vast swaths of it can greatly skew any analysis. The IEA says CRU ignored data covering 40% of Russia, preferring data from urban centers and data that showed a warming trend. On the final page of the IEA report is a chart that shows the CRU's selective use of Russian data produced 0.64C more warming than using all the data would have done.
...The hockey-stick graph was produced in 1999 by Mann using these manipulated tree ring data. The graph supposedly proved air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century. Mann et al. had to make the Medieval Warm Period (A.D. 800 to 1400) and the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1600 to 1850) statistically disappear.
McIntyre, who with fellow Canadian researcher Ross McKitrick exposed the hockey-stick fraud, says the evidence from only one Siberian tree, known as YAD061, seemed to show a hockey-stick pattern. If they look hard enough, the CRU can probably find a tree that shows evidence of elves making cookies. (READ To Denmark From Russia With Lies)
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Greatest Resource on Earth: Human Intelligence
As America moves ever closer to government takeover of the economy and with it our personal lives, it is crucial to reflect on how we got to be the greatest country in the world. We can do this by looking at a tiny city really...Hong Kong and what happened to that city/state when freedom was allowed to thrive. Sometimes it's easier to "see" when an example is used that is outside our immediate experience.
Imagine the horror of the anti-capitalist, socialist mentalities if it was said to them: what if there were a country in which the government stays out of the economy? One with no tariffs or other legal restrictions on international trade - with no regulatory agencies, no minimum wage laws, no price or wage controls. Imagine, it is said to them, that the government limits neither investment coming in nor profit going out. There's no capital gains tax, no interest tax, no sales tax and a pittance in corporate bailouts for companies that fail to compete on a free market. This imaginary country has a 15 percent flat tax, enabling its citizens to retain the preponderance of their earnings. Further, it extends no unemployment benefits, enacts no labor legislation and provides no Social Security, no national health insurance and scarcely any welfare. The welfare statist would recoil in horror from such a proposal; he would drown his interlocutor with dire warnings regarding the misery of the numberless poor and exploited who would be the inevitable victims of such a heartless, callous system. But, in fact, that country exists, it is real; it's Hong Kong, one of the wealthiest nations of history. (The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein).
The hero of the story of Hong Kong is John Cowperthwaite a disciple of Adam Smith (need we say more?). He was sent by Britain to Hong Kong as its financial secretary as "Britain itself moved toward socialism". But Mr. Cowperthwaite moved Hong Kong toward laissez-faire Capitalism. As Bernstein writes: "He kept taxes low, he imposed no tariffs, he eliminated bureaucracy and made it easy to start a business....enforces laws against crime, ....upholds contracts. In short provides a rule of law that protects honest individuals".
The moral of this fact of history is that people do not necessarily need to have a wealth in natural resources. What people around the world desperately need is FREEDOM, low taxes, and the rule of law...laws that protect property rights and the rights of honest individuals to live their lives as they see fit. But what is coming down the pike for America are more intrusions into our lives, higher confiscatory taxes and mandates that will kill productivity and usher in the decline of our great country. The reason shoving Universal Health Care and Cap and Trade down our collective throats is a naked attempt by government and their psycophants to continue the takeover of our economy and dictate to us how we should live our lives.
If there ever was a hoax perpetrated on the entire globe it is the environmentalist crusade against "global warming". There is a reason for this. They don't care if it's true...they only care about controlling human beings. According to my knowledge of history that is called FASCISM and it's coming from the left. Unfortunately, the right has long ago lost it's "raison d'etre" ---it's reason for being.
Imagine the horror of the anti-capitalist, socialist mentalities if it was said to them: what if there were a country in which the government stays out of the economy? One with no tariffs or other legal restrictions on international trade - with no regulatory agencies, no minimum wage laws, no price or wage controls. Imagine, it is said to them, that the government limits neither investment coming in nor profit going out. There's no capital gains tax, no interest tax, no sales tax and a pittance in corporate bailouts for companies that fail to compete on a free market. This imaginary country has a 15 percent flat tax, enabling its citizens to retain the preponderance of their earnings. Further, it extends no unemployment benefits, enacts no labor legislation and provides no Social Security, no national health insurance and scarcely any welfare. The welfare statist would recoil in horror from such a proposal; he would drown his interlocutor with dire warnings regarding the misery of the numberless poor and exploited who would be the inevitable victims of such a heartless, callous system. But, in fact, that country exists, it is real; it's Hong Kong, one of the wealthiest nations of history. (The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein).
The hero of the story of Hong Kong is John Cowperthwaite a disciple of Adam Smith (need we say more?). He was sent by Britain to Hong Kong as its financial secretary as "Britain itself moved toward socialism". But Mr. Cowperthwaite moved Hong Kong toward laissez-faire Capitalism. As Bernstein writes: "He kept taxes low, he imposed no tariffs, he eliminated bureaucracy and made it easy to start a business....enforces laws against crime, ....upholds contracts. In short provides a rule of law that protects honest individuals".
The moral of this fact of history is that people do not necessarily need to have a wealth in natural resources. What people around the world desperately need is FREEDOM, low taxes, and the rule of law...laws that protect property rights and the rights of honest individuals to live their lives as they see fit. But what is coming down the pike for America are more intrusions into our lives, higher confiscatory taxes and mandates that will kill productivity and usher in the decline of our great country. The reason shoving Universal Health Care and Cap and Trade down our collective throats is a naked attempt by government and their psycophants to continue the takeover of our economy and dictate to us how we should live our lives.
If there ever was a hoax perpetrated on the entire globe it is the environmentalist crusade against "global warming". There is a reason for this. They don't care if it's true...they only care about controlling human beings. According to my knowledge of history that is called FASCISM and it's coming from the left. Unfortunately, the right has long ago lost it's "raison d'etre" ---it's reason for being.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
"We Must Change Our Traditions. We Must Change Our History." Michelle Obama
What? Change our traditions and history? What is it you want to change exactly, Michelle? The fact that England and America destroyed slavery? Or the fact that anyone can come to this country and build a life and be successful? Or how about this one. Maybe you want to change our freedoms - you know (or maybe you don't) our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... maybe you want to change them to the right to health care, the right to a job, the right to confiscatory taxes. Of course a right to health care means someone HAS to provide them to you - gee last I heard that was slavery. Do you want to enslave the doctors? Is that the change you want? Folks start listening to what these people are saying. They mean it! They meant it during the campaign and they certainly mean it now that the left is in the majority.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Clean Water Act Is the Largest Government Land Grab in US History
As if taking over 1/6 of our economy with that socialist Health Care bill isn't enough the commissars on Washington also is poised to take over control of even more land than it already "owns". Wake up America we're headed for such a loss of freedom that it will leave you dazed and wondering what hit you. I'll tell you what hit you - 100 years of incrementally moving to the left and today the pace is at a gallop.
Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres.
The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another.
Outraged over that ruling and a series of recent efforts by government to wield greater control over private property, citizens are fighting back. Fox News' Shannon Bream takes a fair and balanced look at the controversy in a three-part series. read here
Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres.
The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another.
Outraged over that ruling and a series of recent efforts by government to wield greater control over private property, citizens are fighting back. Fox News' Shannon Bream takes a fair and balanced look at the controversy in a three-part series. read here
Thomas Jefferson Quotes on the Dangers of Government
Here are some of Thomas Jefferson's warnings to us across the generations regarding the dangers of government run amok.
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.” 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.”
As Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the "general Welfare" clause:
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, June 19, 1808
The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.
Thomas Jefferson, 1796
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781
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.” 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.”
As Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the "general Welfare" clause:
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, June 19, 1808
The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.
Thomas Jefferson, 1796
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Bandito Scientists Made the US Spend 30 Billion Dollars and Waste 20 Years
The media is starting to catch on that all this time, money and effort we've wasted listening to this big climate cooling...I mean warming...I mean change has all been for nothing. It's all hooey. Investors.com lays it all out.
The classic confrontation between Humphrey Bogart and Alfonso Bedoya in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is being reprised, featuring banditos from East Anglia, Penn State, Washington and the U.N.
"We're Federales," they tell us. "You know, climate police. Evidence? We ain't got no evidence. We don't need no evidence. We don't have to show you any stinkin' evidence."
The U.S. alone has spent over $30 billion on alarmist "climate science" the past 20 years — plus $35 billion on renewable energy — based on the banditos' tales of a global warming catastrophe if we don't slash fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.
Instead of solid, scientific evidence, the bandito scientists have offered speculation, assertions, hockey-stick graphs, computer models and worst-case scenarios — purporting to demonstrate that CO2 causes planetary warming that will be cataclysmic.
Their reports were "peer reviewed" by networks of fellow alarmists who tied every weather and temperature anomaly to global warming and carbon dioxide — then stonewalled requests from experts who wanted to examine the raw temperature data, computer codes and analyses. READ the rest at Investors.com.
The classic confrontation between Humphrey Bogart and Alfonso Bedoya in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is being reprised, featuring banditos from East Anglia, Penn State, Washington and the U.N.
"We're Federales," they tell us. "You know, climate police. Evidence? We ain't got no evidence. We don't need no evidence. We don't have to show you any stinkin' evidence."
The U.S. alone has spent over $30 billion on alarmist "climate science" the past 20 years — plus $35 billion on renewable energy — based on the banditos' tales of a global warming catastrophe if we don't slash fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.
Instead of solid, scientific evidence, the bandito scientists have offered speculation, assertions, hockey-stick graphs, computer models and worst-case scenarios — purporting to demonstrate that CO2 causes planetary warming that will be cataclysmic.
Their reports were "peer reviewed" by networks of fellow alarmists who tied every weather and temperature anomaly to global warming and carbon dioxide — then stonewalled requests from experts who wanted to examine the raw temperature data, computer codes and analyses. READ the rest at Investors.com.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
There is NO Such Thing As a Right to Health Care
How Our Rights Are Destroyed
by Richard Ralston
The most effective means of destroying the rights of individual Americans is by replacing those rights with new powers for the government. Then, instead of the right to the pursuit of happiness, the political class declares that everyone has the right to be supplied with happiness by the government, which must then be granted new power to define, seize, control, regulate and provide us with whatever happiness it decides we should want. Thus the clear intent of the founders and writers of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is reversed and thwarted.
At the moment this ideological corruption is most blatant in the claim that health care is a right. Advocates of such a right actually mean that no one has the right to any health care at all unless they get it from the government or on terms completely controlled by the government. Citizens then lose all right to decide for themselves how to pursue and utilize the best health care they can find. That becomes entirely the prerogative of government.
The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created for the express purpose of limiting the powers of government. "Congress shall make no law" is the key phrase, not "citizens are not allowed" or "first get permission from Congress."
Freedom of speech means that you can say what you want. It does not mean that you have a "right" to be given something to say or a "right" to be supplied with an audience. At least not yet, although we may not be far from the point when political "correctness" or a "fairness" doctrine in broadcasting will instruct us about who can speak to whom and where, and what they will be allowed to say. The speech police will then undoubtedly tell us that their powers are based on providing us with our right to speak.
...Nor does freedom of the press mean that we have a "right" to be published, or that the government must force others to print or broadcast what we say. That obviously would be the destruction of freedom of the press.
...The function and purpose of rights is to protect individuals from the encroachment of government in their lives. If new powers, spending, controls, administrators and authorized use of force enable government to take things from some people to supply to others with a "right" to them, then no real rights are left to us...
Richard E. Ralston is Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. (Go to Americans For Free Choice in Medicine)
by Richard Ralston
The most effective means of destroying the rights of individual Americans is by replacing those rights with new powers for the government. Then, instead of the right to the pursuit of happiness, the political class declares that everyone has the right to be supplied with happiness by the government, which must then be granted new power to define, seize, control, regulate and provide us with whatever happiness it decides we should want. Thus the clear intent of the founders and writers of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is reversed and thwarted.
At the moment this ideological corruption is most blatant in the claim that health care is a right. Advocates of such a right actually mean that no one has the right to any health care at all unless they get it from the government or on terms completely controlled by the government. Citizens then lose all right to decide for themselves how to pursue and utilize the best health care they can find. That becomes entirely the prerogative of government.
The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created for the express purpose of limiting the powers of government. "Congress shall make no law" is the key phrase, not "citizens are not allowed" or "first get permission from Congress."
Freedom of speech means that you can say what you want. It does not mean that you have a "right" to be given something to say or a "right" to be supplied with an audience. At least not yet, although we may not be far from the point when political "correctness" or a "fairness" doctrine in broadcasting will instruct us about who can speak to whom and where, and what they will be allowed to say. The speech police will then undoubtedly tell us that their powers are based on providing us with our right to speak.
...Nor does freedom of the press mean that we have a "right" to be published, or that the government must force others to print or broadcast what we say. That obviously would be the destruction of freedom of the press.
...The function and purpose of rights is to protect individuals from the encroachment of government in their lives. If new powers, spending, controls, administrators and authorized use of force enable government to take things from some people to supply to others with a "right" to them, then no real rights are left to us...
Richard E. Ralston is Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. (Go to Americans For Free Choice in Medicine)
Friday, December 11, 2009
PJTV - PJTV Daily - Sen. James Inhofe: President Obama, Climate Scientists & the U.N. Are Attacking Our Sovereignty
PJTV - PJTV Daily - Sen. James Inhofe: President Obama, Climate Scientists & the U.N. Are Attacking Our Sovereignty: "Sen. James Inhofe: President Obama, Climate Scientists & the U.N. Are Attacking Our Sovereignty"
The Government Plans to Regulate Everything Financial That We Do
We must know our history. We've been down this road before with FDR, Nixon, Bush and now the worst perpetrator of command and control from Washington - Obama. When government goons control our economy people cannot make rational decisions and we stop investing and buying. It's as simple as that. People wake up and demand that Obama stop what he promised during the campaign when he said:
"We are five days away from fundamentally transforming America."
Oh yea...America the beautiful will be transformed alright - into a socialist paradise of poverty, unemployment and decay.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. House lawmakers Friday approved legislation that would make historic changes to the government's oversight of U.S. financial markets and would revolutionize the way businesses and consumers deal with financial products.
A year after a cataclysmic financial crisis threatened to take down world economies, House lawmakers voted 223-202 to pass the largest overhaul of securities laws since the New Deal. The package of regulatory changes would give regulators broad new authority to identify and respond to systemic risks, break up or wind down the riskiest firms, and crack down on abusive lending practices.
The vote is the result of months of debate, negotiations and lobbying and is a legislative victory for the Obama administration, which has made changing the rules for Wall Street a centerpiece of its economic policy agenda. The action now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers are moving a parallel piece of legislation. Capitol Hill aides have said the chance of a bill becoming law in the first half of 2010 appear to have improved just in the last few days.
If enacted, the bill would transform the landscape for everything from the largest mega-banks to the smallest mortgage lenders. Firms that offer credit cards, home loans and other products to consumers would face scrutiny from a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, while hedge funds and other private pools of capital would for the first time be required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission...READ AT WSJ
"We are five days away from fundamentally transforming America."
Oh yea...America the beautiful will be transformed alright - into a socialist paradise of poverty, unemployment and decay.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. House lawmakers Friday approved legislation that would make historic changes to the government's oversight of U.S. financial markets and would revolutionize the way businesses and consumers deal with financial products.
A year after a cataclysmic financial crisis threatened to take down world economies, House lawmakers voted 223-202 to pass the largest overhaul of securities laws since the New Deal. The package of regulatory changes would give regulators broad new authority to identify and respond to systemic risks, break up or wind down the riskiest firms, and crack down on abusive lending practices.
The vote is the result of months of debate, negotiations and lobbying and is a legislative victory for the Obama administration, which has made changing the rules for Wall Street a centerpiece of its economic policy agenda. The action now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers are moving a parallel piece of legislation. Capitol Hill aides have said the chance of a bill becoming law in the first half of 2010 appear to have improved just in the last few days.
If enacted, the bill would transform the landscape for everything from the largest mega-banks to the smallest mortgage lenders. Firms that offer credit cards, home loans and other products to consumers would face scrutiny from a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, while hedge funds and other private pools of capital would for the first time be required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission...READ AT WSJ
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Copenhagen - The Self-flagellation Orgy
This Copenhagen reunion of leftist, power-lusting bozos is nothing more than a front to take down the most CAN-DO country ever in the history of mankind - The United States. Here's an article at Investors.com describing these craven busy bodies that want to outlaw CO2 what most living creatures breaths out.
Economy: The 16,000 delegates to the two-week-long orgy of self-flagellation known as the Copenhagen Climate Conference want to shrink global output of CO2 not because of hard science, but out of envy.
Even as Climate-gate suggests that sham science lies behind global warming, delegates are swarming into the Scandinavian city to push for steep cuts in carbon dioxide output by industrialized nations.
We'll let others comment on the hypocrisy of those who, while trying to force the rest of us into an ever-smaller carbon footprint, will employ more than 1,200 limousines and 140 private jets while producing 880 pounds of CO2 per attendee at their conference.
Or the even-worse hypocrisy of Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.'s global warming guru, who in one 19-month period flew 443,243 miles — including trips to have dinner at Washington's Brookings Institution and one memorable overnighter to attend a cricket match — but now wants the rest of us to be forced into a "carbon allowance." READ AT IBD
Economy: The 16,000 delegates to the two-week-long orgy of self-flagellation known as the Copenhagen Climate Conference want to shrink global output of CO2 not because of hard science, but out of envy.
Even as Climate-gate suggests that sham science lies behind global warming, delegates are swarming into the Scandinavian city to push for steep cuts in carbon dioxide output by industrialized nations.
We'll let others comment on the hypocrisy of those who, while trying to force the rest of us into an ever-smaller carbon footprint, will employ more than 1,200 limousines and 140 private jets while producing 880 pounds of CO2 per attendee at their conference.
Or the even-worse hypocrisy of Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.'s global warming guru, who in one 19-month period flew 443,243 miles — including trips to have dinner at Washington's Brookings Institution and one memorable overnighter to attend a cricket match — but now wants the rest of us to be forced into a "carbon allowance." READ AT IBD
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
"President Obama’s Foreign Policy: An Assessment" by John Bolton
October 2009 John BoltonFormer U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The following is adapted from a speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2009, in the “First Principles on First Fridays” lecture series sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.
I THINK it is important, on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, to take a look at our foreign policy and to judge whether or not we’re on a path to becoming safer. In doing so, we should not be intimidated by those who say that criticism of foreign policy—criticism that suggests we’re less safe as a consequence of certain policies—is somehow disloyal or hyper-partisan. It is the essence of political debate over foreign policy to judge whether the interests of the United States are being protected and advanced. If we believe they are not, it is our responsibility to speak out.
For the last eight months, we’ve had a different kind of president than we’ve had in the past. Barack Obama is the first post-American president. And by this I don’t mean he’s anti-American. What I mean by post-American is suggested by a response the president gave to a reporter’s question during a recent trip to Europe. The reporter asked about his unwillingness to discuss American exceptionalism—the notion that the United States has a unique mission, that it’s “a shining city on a hill” as Ronald Reagan liked to say (echoing our pilgrim fathers). Mr. Obama responded that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way that the British believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. Given that there are 192 member countries in the United Nations, I’m sure he could have gone on naming another 189 that believe in their own exceptionalism. But in any case, the idea that all countries believe themselves to be exceptional in the same way leads to the unmistakable conclusion that none are truly exceptional. In other words, the president’s response reflects his belief that America is not so different from other countries.
Mr. Obama’s supporters in the mainstream media share this view. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, for example, delivered this revealing comment when previewing the president’s speech on the anniversary of D-Day last June:
Reagan was all about America . . . . Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something—I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world. He’s sort of God.
This image of President Obama standing above his country and above the world sums up the post-American way of thinking. The practical point it makes is that America’s interest is no different or better than any other country’s interest. But is that true? Is America’s interest not superior to Sudan’s or Cuba’s or Zimbabwe’s?...Read the rest at IMPRIMIS
I THINK it is important, on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, to take a look at our foreign policy and to judge whether or not we’re on a path to becoming safer. In doing so, we should not be intimidated by those who say that criticism of foreign policy—criticism that suggests we’re less safe as a consequence of certain policies—is somehow disloyal or hyper-partisan. It is the essence of political debate over foreign policy to judge whether the interests of the United States are being protected and advanced. If we believe they are not, it is our responsibility to speak out.
For the last eight months, we’ve had a different kind of president than we’ve had in the past. Barack Obama is the first post-American president. And by this I don’t mean he’s anti-American. What I mean by post-American is suggested by a response the president gave to a reporter’s question during a recent trip to Europe. The reporter asked about his unwillingness to discuss American exceptionalism—the notion that the United States has a unique mission, that it’s “a shining city on a hill” as Ronald Reagan liked to say (echoing our pilgrim fathers). Mr. Obama responded that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way that the British believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. Given that there are 192 member countries in the United Nations, I’m sure he could have gone on naming another 189 that believe in their own exceptionalism. But in any case, the idea that all countries believe themselves to be exceptional in the same way leads to the unmistakable conclusion that none are truly exceptional. In other words, the president’s response reflects his belief that America is not so different from other countries.
Mr. Obama’s supporters in the mainstream media share this view. Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, for example, delivered this revealing comment when previewing the president’s speech on the anniversary of D-Day last June:
Reagan was all about America . . . . Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something—I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world. He’s sort of God.
This image of President Obama standing above his country and above the world sums up the post-American way of thinking. The practical point it makes is that America’s interest is no different or better than any other country’s interest. But is that true? Is America’s interest not superior to Sudan’s or Cuba’s or Zimbabwe’s?...Read the rest at IMPRIMIS
Monday, December 07, 2009
"The Future of Western War" by Victor Davis Hanson
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered by Victor Davis Hanson at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency. It is also in print in Imprimis (Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Michigan).
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients—these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theorists—human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change—and I submit to you that human nature is a constant—then war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systems—which can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weapons—will of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is water—the same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.
Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain—as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere. Read the rest at Imprimis here)
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients—these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theorists—human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change—and I submit to you that human nature is a constant—then war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systems—which can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weapons—will of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is water—the same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.
Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain—as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere. Read the rest at Imprimis here)
Sunday, December 06, 2009
We Relive The Times Of Galileo-The Religion of Human Caused Climate Change Shuts Down Discourse
Just as religious authority tried to shut down Galileo and his support of the Heliocentric view which placed the sun at the center of the universe (for which he was denounced to the Roman Inquisition) so Climategate scientists are trying to shutdown truth and discussion about the so-called climate warming/cooling/change that they say is occurring today. This is not science but a religion, the religion of "climate change caused by humans" theory. Once again the truth is being shut down to promote a religion by barring free and open discourse about the evidence. Shame on these so called scientists giving science a bad name. It is time for all honest scientists to take a stand - THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT HUMANS ARE CAUSING ANY SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE CLIMATE.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Government Get Out of Our Economy - Let Us Alone and We'll Fix it
I love the title of this article at The Wall Street Journal -
"A Jobs Sigh of Relief"
"A better stimulus plan: Have Congress adjourn until 2011" NOW THERE"S an IDEA!!!
...The news of a better job market couldn't have come at a better time politically given that Congress seems ready to waste more money on more government job creation. The same folks who planned the last stimulus now want to spend a few hundred billion on public works jobs, more aid to states, and another round job of jobless benefits. In some states, workers can now get paid for 18 months for not working. This will give many of them an incentive to postpone a job search even as their hiring prospects improve.
Meanwhile, the White House is thinking about paying home owners to weatherize their homes. Cash for caulkers, we suppose. Now, that'll put millions back to work.
The real message of the November report is that the job market is healing on its own, if Washington will simply let it happen. If Democrats want faster job creation by next November, they'll do nothing at all. Stop imposing new taxes on estates, payrolls, insurance, device makers, drug makers, small business, you name it. Start over on health care. Adjourn for the year, spend December with the family, come back in 2011. And watch Congress's approval rating rise. (Read the whole article at WSJ)
"A Jobs Sigh of Relief"
"A better stimulus plan: Have Congress adjourn until 2011" NOW THERE"S an IDEA!!!
...The news of a better job market couldn't have come at a better time politically given that Congress seems ready to waste more money on more government job creation. The same folks who planned the last stimulus now want to spend a few hundred billion on public works jobs, more aid to states, and another round job of jobless benefits. In some states, workers can now get paid for 18 months for not working. This will give many of them an incentive to postpone a job search even as their hiring prospects improve.
Meanwhile, the White House is thinking about paying home owners to weatherize their homes. Cash for caulkers, we suppose. Now, that'll put millions back to work.
The real message of the November report is that the job market is healing on its own, if Washington will simply let it happen. If Democrats want faster job creation by next November, they'll do nothing at all. Stop imposing new taxes on estates, payrolls, insurance, device makers, drug makers, small business, you name it. Start over on health care. Adjourn for the year, spend December with the family, come back in 2011. And watch Congress's approval rating rise. (Read the whole article at WSJ)
Thursday, December 03, 2009
The Church of the Global Warming Crusaders
The mountain of lies regarding the so called global warming is melting in a puddle of lies, deceits and raw data destruction by scientists devoted to this ideology. This global warming stuff is a religion with some and with others it was always about control of the people and money - and Al Gore and others got lots of it. Science is based on data and arriving at a truthful conclusion not made up lies. These scientists have dealt a blow to science by being deceitful in their attempt at trying to fit the data to their world view. It is a crime and a waste of our time, money and energy. Go home Al Gore - go home to your wife.
Joe Hicks of PJTV, a FORMER leftist, speaks of how even in the face of a mountain of evidence that man does not affect climate change the true believers will march on - proof that this is a religion NOT science.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Climate-Gate: Follow the Money, Find the Power, Expose The Lies
Go to this link for an interesting discussion about CLIMATEGATE at PJTV.
Al Gore sharing a jail-cell with Bernie Madoff for the biggest hoax perpetrated on mankind?
Al Gore sharing a jail-cell with Bernie Madoff for the biggest hoax perpetrated on mankind?
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
The Father of The US Constitution
"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."
- James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and considered to be the "Father of the US Constitution"
- James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and considered to be the "Father of the US Constitution"
I would add that all men in government should be forced to follow our Constitution. There is not one word about the President or congress taxing the people so that they can "create" jobs, hand out welfare checks, be in charge of Health Care or give out so called stimulus checks which is a naked attempt at buying votes. Our Founding Fathers tried to assure that we would have a LIMITED GOVERNMENT but they failed to the disgrace of the American people.
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