The Sorry Record of a Community Organizer and his False Drama

Like the Greek Gods and their amusing crisis and drama Obama is forever making a bad situation into a crisis. We are currently living in a never ending Obama drama. Victor David Hanson, the noted historian and classicist, looks over Obama's record and shows us that it is not a pretty one. Mainly, he is a man without experience and man who has not kept to not one of his campaign promises. He has confused all of us some of the time and some of us all of the time. He is a man who does everything the exact opposite of what would be reasonable. We all question his motives...but can there be any doubt? He holds anti-American values. Read Hanson's -

Obama Drama Is Classic Tragedy: Would-Be God Heading For A Fall
...But now the once-enthralled electorate is starting to tire of the hope-and-change platitudes, and even of the easy blame-gaming of his predecessor, mostly because almost everything Obama once demagogued in weird fashion is coming back to haunt him.
Obama easily damned everything from Guantanamo Bay to Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq, only to adopt those policies and more from Bush.

He sermonized about the morals of a corrupt Republican Congress, only to keep quiet about earmarks, lobbyists and the sins of Democratic cronies such as Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Charles Rangel. Deficits were once supposed proof of Bush's out-of-control spending. What does far-greater red ink say about Obama?

If only swaggering George W. Bush could have been smart enough to reach out to Cuba, Iran and Syria. Then Obama did just that, only to make bad things even worse.

And remember the Obama comment about an arrogant Bush turning off our allies? Why, then, does an aloof Obama seem to alienate them even more?

The reality of Barack Obama is that he was an inexperienced community organizer with an undistinguished record as a Senate newcomer. A perfect storm of popular anger at eight years of George W. Bush, a lackluster John McCain campaign, Obama's landmark candidacy as an African-American, a disingenuous campaign promising centrist and bipartisan governance, and the financial meltdown in 2008 got the relatively untried and unknown Obama elected.

Most mortals in Obama's position would have treaded lightly. They would have kept promises, steered a moderate course and listened more than lectured until they won over the public with concrete achievement.

But headstrong tragic figures do not do that. They neither welcome in critics nor would listen to them if they did. They impute their unforeseen temporary success to their own brilliance — and expect it to continue forever. So would-be gods set themselves up for a fall far harder than what happens to the rest of us.

That's about where we are now, with our president playing a character right out of Greek tragedy, who, true to form, is railing about the unfairness of it all. Read the rest here.

"Stop the Obama Administration's Grab for Arbitrary Power"

As Obama grabs more and more power Americans must rise up in protest and proclaim our detestation of this capricious and dangerous administration. It must end now - and we the people must continue battling against tyranny and be alert constantly for deeds and actions that betray our Constitution. If you are fuzzy on our unique and great history a great place to start is to watch Glenn Beck on Fox News at 5 pm Eastern time. He does an excellent job of presenting the facts of our past and interviewing Historians and people who KNOW American history. The following is part of Rob Tracinski's The Intellectual Activist Daily. Click on the link below his commentary.

3. Arbitrary and Capricious

The "escrow fund" Obama squeezed out of BP was not only outside of any legal authority. Experts on these sorts of cases are also saying that it is a "magnet for fraud," precisely because it bypasses the usual legal requirements, such as actually having to appear in court to make your case that the plaintiff owes you damages.

But the big story about Obama's mismanagement of the Gulf disaster is his six-month moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling, an arbitrary measure that threatens to shut down oil exploration for years as drilling rigs—and the investment capital behind them—go where they are more welcome and face less political risk.

The damages has already been done—once political risk rears its ugly head, it takes a long time for investors to regain a sense of safety, even if the moratorium is lifted. But it is a very good sign that a federal judge has declared the moratorium to be unconstitutional, on the grounds that it is literally an arbitrary act, one based on no arguments, reasoning, or legal procedure, and is therefore a violation of the right to due process.

This is good news, because this case is about much more than a drilling moratorium. It's about whether there is any part of the American system of government that is willing to stand up to stop the Obama administration's grab for arbitrary power. The judiciary is the only place left to look for such action, and it's good to see that there is at least one judge who is up to the job.

But as if to underscore its contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, the administration immediately declared, not just that it would appeal the ruling, but that it would immediately issue a new, slightly reworded ban within a few days—in effect, ignoring the judge's ruling and trying to circumvent it.

Perhaps President Obama will borrow a notorious statement of presidential lawlessness attributed to Andrew Jackson: "Mr. Feldman has made his decision, now let him enforce it." Read and Join TIADaily.com.

"An Ugly Mood and an Unhappy Electorate"

Obama just keeps on taking and taking as his approvals keeps on diving and diving.

Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the country and less confident in President Barack Obama's leadership than at any point since Mr. Obama entered the White House, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

.The survey also shows grave and growing concerns about the Gulf oil spill, with overwhelming majorities of adults favoring stronger regulation of the oil industry and believing that the spill will affect the nation's economy and environment.

Sixty-two percent of adults in the survey feel the country is on the wrong track, the highest level since before the 2008 election. Just one-third think the economy will get better over the next year, a 7-point drop from a month ago and the low point of Mr. Obama's tenure.

Amid anxiety over the nation's course, support for Mr. Obama and other incumbents is eroding. For the first time, more people disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance than approve. And 57% of voters would prefer to elect a new person to Congress than re-elect their local representatives, the highest share in 18 years.

The results show "a really ugly mood and an unhappy electorate," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "The voters, I think, are just looking for change, and that means bad news for incumbents and in particular for the Democrats."

.Support for Mr. Obama and his party is declining among centrist, independent voters. But, more ominous for the president, some in his base also are souring, with 17% of Democrats disapproving of Mr. Obama's job performance, the highest level of his presidency.

...Approval for Mr. Obama has dropped among Hispanics, too, along with small-town residents, white women and seniors. African-Americans remain the firmest part of Mr. Obama's base, with 91% approving of his job performance. ..READ more - "Confidence Waning in Obama, US Outlook" at WSJ.

Elections in Colombia Casts Not Only Chavez but Hopefully Obama Into Irrelevance

As America goes down the sewer of Socialism, Colombia has chosen capitalism by electing Mr. Santos President, a pro-capitalist and fighter of the FARC. But Colombia is surrounded by countries that are turning to freedom as well. Only the idiot Chavez is hell bent on turning Venezuela to the left and by definition poverty. As we speak he has seized around 80,000 tons of food and left it to rot. Why? Because that is what leftists do. They control power brute power and taking away the means of making a living from the people.

Democracy: After vowing war on Colombia if Juan Manuel Santos were elected president, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is singing soprano. Santos' big win Sunday is part of a wave of free market leaders sneaking up on him.

It was almost comical to see Venezuela's dictatorship put on its best manners and offer congratulations to Colombia's new conservative president, who won the election in a 69%-27% landslide.

...Truth is, Santos and his pro-free-market plans pose a threat to Chavez, whose socialist failures are mounting. His sudden sweet words signal a recognition that he is being outnumbered in a hemisphere he seeks to rule, amounting to an admission of defeat.

Venezuela in fact is now being encircled by nations that are electing responsible leaders who place their hopes for the future on free markets. Those markets will inevitably succeed and dominate the continent in coming years, leaving Chavez as irrelevant as Cuba in bringing prosperity and winning the hearts and minds of voters.

For Santos, that means supporting "the market as far as possible" and reliance on the state only "to the extent necessary."

That echoes what leaders up and down the Pacific coastline say, all of whom have shown a private-sector orientation. Sebastian Pinera of Chile, Alan Garcia of Peru, Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, Porfirio Lobo of Honduras, Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Stephen Harper of Canada have all acted on their free-market instincts and shown above-average economic growth as a result.

But Santos is probably most dangerous for Chavez, because Colombia's rags-to-riches success story is so dramatic — showing that any beat-up nation can drag itself out of misery through markets — and because Venezuela and Colombia are such close neighbors. Word gets out about how well things are going in Colombia and it spreads fast in Venezuela. Santos need never fire a shot at Venezuela to slay Chavez's revolution because the power of the markets will do it for him.
Santos as president now targets 6% growth rates for Colombia, single-digit unemployment, tax cuts, privatization, free trade and other market-oriented instruments that are known to work.

He's also planning something that is likely to give Chavez — and for that matter, President Obama, something to think about — a forging of a more assertive Pacific alliance with free-market Chile and Peru, as well as the nations of the Pacific Rim. Given Obama's dithering on free trade — and the fact that Canada on Tuesday, has just finalized its pact, and it's obvious Colombia is going to prosper with or without its friends or enemies.

Chavez knows he can't beat these growing numbers of free-market leaders in the hemisphere, nor the building success of their programs. He can only hunker down and pretend to play nice. But the reality is, they are casting him into irrelevance.
READ AT IBD Colombia's Success.

"Are All Airplanes a Danger Because One Was?"

Look. Obama's moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling is his door to close on this source of energy and the door he wants to open is the door to windmills and solar panels. Can you imagine panels to run a super economy? Well that's the problem isn't it...he wants to take us back to the Pleistocene and don't forget the power and money thing. Apparently, there's money to be made in the Brazilian Petrobras oil company as these expensive oil drilling platforms move to other shores with oil - like Brazil. Don't know if Obama has money invested in Petrobras but the multimillionaire guy George Soros does and he's part of the Obama circle of friends.

A federal judge Tuesday overturned the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on new deepwater oil and gas drilling, handing a major victory to the oil industry and delivering a stinging rebuke to the White House.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday the administration would immediately appeal the decision. "Continuing drilling at these depths without knowing what happened" in the April 20 explosion that triggered the spill "does not make sense."

U.S. District Judge Martin L.C. Feldman, in siding with the industry, said the administration had trivialized the economic impact of the moratorium. He added that the plaintiffs "have established a likelihood of successfully showing that the Administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium."

"An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country," Judge Feldman wrote.

In his ruling, Judge Feldman said the moratorium "does not seem to be fact-specific" and did not account for the safety records of the many companies that operate in the Gulf.

"Are all airplanes a danger because one was?" the judge wrote. "All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed, and rather overbearing."... Read at WSJ "Judge Blocks Offshore Drilling Ban".

Restraining and Reforming Goverment

The Conservatives HAVE lost their way. And it's time they find it. The way is paved with economic and political freedom. With a leftist government set on driving us to socialism maybe it's time for us to educate ourselves about our history and the uniqueness of what America stands for-individual freedom with a government that knows its place-subordination to the idea of limited government.

...But that's no excuse to conflate reform, which is often necessary to advance the cause of political liberty, with the progressive interpretation of it. Indeed, conservative reform will very often involve devising policies to limit government in the face of relentless progressive pressure to expand its reach and responsibilities.

Conservative reform is particularly necessary today. Revolutions in telecommunications and transportation continue to transform business, the family and the environment. The threat of transnational terrorists employing biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber weapons demands greater resourcefulness and agility at all levels of government, as well as greater cooperation among federal, state and municipal officials. And the vast expansion of the federal government undertaken by President Barack Obama and the Democrats has focused the electorate on government's cost and role in a way not seen since Ronald Reagan ran for president.

Unfortunately, over the past decade, conservatism in America has squandered the reputation for reform that it earned in the 1980s and 1990s. President Reagan led the way with his signature tax cuts, which launched two decades of stunning economic growth. Gov. John Engler in Michigan (1991–2003) and Gov. Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin (1987-2001) gained national prominence for the benefits they brought to their states by cutting taxes, promoting school choice and renovating welfare. The 1994 Republican congressional campaign's Contract with America, which drew on President Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address to propose concrete legislation to make the federal government more transparent and accountable, promised a new era of conservative reform. ..Read "Conservatism and the Spirit of Reform" at WSJ

Australia and America - Led by Leftist Power Lusters

Obama has a clone in Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Every other country is ditching the "global warming" line but the United States and Australia march to the tune of outright lies and distortions. Spain is turning away from green technology because of the expense but America's leaders are shoving us into this ravenous money pit. But don't worry, Brazil is going to drill baby drill while we go down the tubes. READ the article below by Tom Minchin posted at Rob Tracinski's TIADaily.

Australia's Obama
The Rise and Fall of Kevin Rudd—and What It Implies for Obama and the Oil Spill

by Tom Minchin

Barack Obama and Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd both belong to a new class of leftist leaders: postmodern ones. This distinguishes them from either the Old Left or the New Left. The Old Left (led by men like Franklin Roosevelt) were class-warfare-focused but claimed to believe in economic progress: they said they wanted a modern world with the government in control of the means of production. The New Left (the hippies and their contemporary descendants, the Greens) witnessed the failure of that socialist/fascist ideal in every country it was tried and, in bitterness, threw economic progress overboard to adopt a policy of living at the mercy of nature.

Unsurprisingly, the New Left failed to attract wide support. Its contempt for human survival was too apparent. Thus the postmodern left was born. The postmodern left combines a thirst for an ever-growing centralized government power with cunning levels of disguise to appear to be all things to all men. Hostility to science is wrapped in the language of science (global warming theory). The shackling of capitalism is dressed up as saving it (the stimulus packages). Hostility to US predominance is dressed up as a desire for a new world order in which US strength is "restraint." In fact, under all its disguises, the postmodern left believes in nothing but power for itself and the weakening of the institutions of the West. The common denominator of its policies: ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, the takeover and regulation of big business, internationalism, isolation of Israel, fawning over enemies and taking tough lines against their allies, is: Western disempowerment.

This is why Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd are both dynamite on their respective nations but greatly strengthen foreign enemies.

The protection for their agenda has been its sheer unbelievability. Few Western citizens thought postmodern leaders intended to persist in their destructiveness once the drawbacks of their programs were pointed out. How many thought Obama would continue with his health care program against overwhelming public resistance and in the face of the loss of Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat—an effective referendum on his policy? But he did. In Australia, Prime Minister Rudd was no sooner crushingly defeated on one means of shackling the Australian economy (cap-and-trade) than he singled out the most efficient industry in Australia—mining—to hit with a brand new 40% tax on Super Profits—a "Super Profit" being defined as any profit above a 6% return. (It is no accident that the term "Super Profit" was coined by Lenin.)

But the power of Obama and Rudd has peaked and is now in sharp decline. Both have gone from approval ratings around the 70% mark to the 40s. It is worth understanding why.

In the first place their irrationality and economic wastefulness has galvanized the pro-freedom side of politics. In America it is the Tea Party movement. In Australia it is the supporters of capitalism and the best of the media (Andrew Bolt and The Australian newspaper) who are leading an increasingly successful resistance. While seeing clearly the flaws in the right-leaning opposition party (the Liberal-National parties in coalition) they are relentless in exposing the Rudd government's lies, deceptions, and failings. See Andrew Bolt's 2-million-hits-a-month blog for evidence.

Yet ironically it will probably not be the people who saw through Obama and Rudd right from the start who bring them down. What may be the undoing of both leaders is the disillusionment of those who believed in them most, in the area of their biggest lies: the environment. As Rob Tracinski has pointed out, a US president has no business micro-managing the cleanup or even the prevention of an oil spill. Yet Obama, like Rudd over his Emissions Trading Scheme, has raised his supporters' expectations. Obama is the man who claimed he could, just by his nomination, cause the oceans to lower. Now he can't even prevent them from carrying the spill of a single oil rig.

The bubble is bursting for him not because he has disappointed real expectations but because he dealt in unreality all along, and his followers are betrayed because the unreal is the unreal and never had any value.

So it is with Kevin Rudd. He claimed to believe more than anyone in human-caused global warming. He called it the "great moral challenge of our age." Yet he has abandoned it because he hasn't had the guts to carry out his threat of dissolving both houses of parliament to pass bitterly opposed legislation—knowing he would fail. Now it is his most ardent supporters who are abandoning him. Take the leading climate alarmist Tim Flannery who will be a model for many an Obama supporter. As the Australian News website reported:

Tim Flannery, a former Australian of the Year, said he was unlikely to vote Labor again after Mr Rudd shelved plans for an emissions trading scheme.

"It's a profound betrayal of the person I voted for,'' Professor Flannery said at a conference in Canberra.

"Politicians only have one thing that they trade in, which is trust ... unfortunately my trust in the party's been corroded."

Rudd, like Obama, depended on a mystique. He was the leader who could do anything. Now his loss of confidence is causing all of his actions to have a touch of panic and he is floundering without support. The opposition to his big mining tax is growing daily.

Obama has gone one step further. He has promised a world where the government can control everything. Like Rudd since the failure of cap-and-trade, he will not even be able to control his own followers when the truth of his impotence over the Gulf oil spill stands fully revealed.
Tom Minchin is a writer, researcher, and businessman in Melbourne, Australia.

GO TO TIADaily.com

Solomon's Mine

Ah, Afghanistan. The prehistoric land of a trillion dollars worth of minerals. All the Kings Horses and all the Kings Men, couldn't put the Middle East back together again. One thing for sure - it will be fun to watch other nations jockeying for a part of that wealth - a fable like Solomon's Mine.

Revelations that Afghanistan may be sitting on $1 trillion worth of untapped minerals pose a quandary straight out of the pages of "The Hobbit," of all things.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy, the eponymous hero overcomes multiple obstacles to reach a treasure hoard guarded by a dragon. But the hobbit then almost succumbs to defeatism when the cunning monster asks him how, even if he gets his hands on the gold, he will actually carry it all home?

Reuters Afghan boys ride on a bicycle in the old city of Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, in August 2007. The region that could be holding $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits.
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Useful as mineral wealth might someday prove to be for Afghanistan, commodities analysts need not adjust their supply forecasts just yet.

Oil offers a lesson here..READ

Mr. President - Protect America

Peggy Noonan writes about how unprepared and nonchalant we are about WMD's and that's what I've been thinking about lately. Iran probably has a couple of nukes already and is just waiting for an opportunity to use them with that kook in power... and Obama and our congress fiddles while Rome burns. I REPEAT AGAIN HERE: THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO PROTECT ITS CITIZENRY! Obama doesn't seem to know how to resolve the BP mess in the gulf - how can we expect him to defend Americans and our homeland? READ "We are Totally Unprepared".

...No one wants to think about it. I don't want to think about it. But you have to make plans. You have to imagine, you have to think about the worst case, and then you have to plan for it—literally. We've had enough time, nine years since our unforgettable reminder that history is, among other things, and some of them quite wonderful, a charnel house.


Our eye is off the ball. The public, in spite of what it knows in the day to day, assumes the government is on the case. And certainly the government is on the case with regard to prevention: Not being hit again since 2001 means something, and our antiterrorism professionals, intelligence and law-enforcement agents, do impressive work. In New York the past week they picked up two apparent would-be terrorists who won't be playing jihad anytime soon. But public awareness of prevention success gives the impression the government is similarly capable in terms of readiness and response.

You can see a certain air of complacency even on government websites. On the front page of the House Committee on Homeland Security site there's a picture of Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, then, below, an area devoted to something called "Business Opportunities Model" and an area for "DHS Business Opportunities." On the Homeland Security Department's website, the priorities seem equally clear: "Find Career Opportunities," "Use the Job Finder." There's little sense of urgency; it's government as employment agency, not crisis leader.

A few days before the report on the Justice Department, Henry Kissinger spoke before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. His testimony ...Read the rest at Wall Street Journal.

Would You Allow a Bust of a Mass Murderer in Your Town?

Do you know who this man is? Are Americans that dumb that they would put up a bust of this killer in their town? A man who murdered 50 million people by most estimates, more than double what the article below states, is extoled by art? This is so beyond the pale and must indicate one of two things - either these people don't know their history or they actually admire this butcher!

The small town of Bedford, Va., is home to 21 men who sacrificed their lives on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is now also the home of one of the world's few public memorial busts of communist dictator Josef Stalin.

Local citizens and organizations have expressed their outrage over the installation of the bust at the National D-Day Memorial, which honored the 66th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy over the weekend. The bust of the Soviet Union's wartime leader was unveiled last week to accompany existing busts of U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as well as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

"Having Stalin in our backyard, people are really upset about that," said Karl Altau, the managing director at the joint Baltic American National Committee that has helped in movements against the Stalin bust.

A Facebook page with more than 2,000 members as of Monday afternoon has been set up to protest the statue. In an online poll from the Bedford Bulletin, the town's local newspaper, 94.8 percent of 429 respondents said a bust of Stalin should not be placed at the National D-Day Memorial as of Monday afternoon.

Lee Edwards, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, another organization involved in the protests against the statue, said he and others thought the prospect of a bust of Stalin was a joke when they first heard about it.

It was "too misplaced and ill-timed," he said.

But confusion soon gave way to frustration. "The National D-Day Memorial Foundation knows it made a monumental mistake by including Stalin in its memorial," he said...READ "Stalin Bust has Town Red Faced".

Keeping Tabs on Those People in Government - Still No Reforms of Fannie in Sight

This is how Michigan Representatives voted on reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack - Not to abolish this government run and mismanaged entity but to reform it. That's a laugh. You can get your state and how your reps voted HERE.

Reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Savings estimated at $30 billion.
Since taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government sponsored mortgage-backing companies, taxpayers have injected over $145 billion into the two companies. Yet Congress still has not considered proposals to reform these companies and recoup taxpayer funds. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that absent reform, costs to taxpayer will continue to grow. Taking action to reform these companies now (as opposed to delaying action as some have proposed) by ending their government conservatorship, shrinking their portfolios, establishing minimum capital standards, and bringing transparency to taxpayer exposure could generate savings of up to an estimated $30 billion. Go HERE for your state.

John Dingell NO District 15
Dale Kildee NO 5
Sander Levine NO 12
Thaddeus McCotter NO 11
Gary Peters NO 9
Mark Shower NO 7
Bart Stupak NO 1
John Conyers NO 14


Fred Upton YES 6
Dave Camp YES 4
Vernon Ehlers YES 3
Candice Miller YES 10
Pete Hoekstra NO VOTE 2
Mike Rogers YES 8

The Unbearable Lightness of Living in Venezuela

Venezuela started from behind already when Chavez was "voted" President a few years ago. But America has been on the road to socialism for several decades maybe even since the early 1900's. It might be a good idea to look at Venezuela - the biggest producer of, of, of, ....NOTHING. Is that where we want to go? Let's rediscover capitalism and freedom from big government and we'll unleash the can do spirit of Americans. Read this informative piece by the great writer and reporter on South American Politics, Mary Anastasia O'Grady.

This is the busiest crossing along the 1,375 mile Venezuelan-Colombian border. It is also the best place to observe what happens when the commanding heights of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian revolution collide with real life—aka, the market economy.

Crime—kidnapping, robbery and extortion—is a big risk for travelers here and so is dealing with Mr. Chávez's National Guard, which is notoriously corrupt. It has hundreds of highway check points throughout the country and every Venezuelan I talk to is uneasy about its arbitrary power. But I've come to see how Venezuelans are able to get by under price and capital controls, the slow suffocation of the private sector, a skyrocketing crime rate and a variety of shortages. I also want to better understand how people in the provinces feel about their government.

Ironically, a bizarre form of market economics may be playing a key role in Mr. Chávez's survival. Venezuela imports nearly everything it consumes, and Colombia has long been one of its major suppliers. But in a fit of pique last year, when Colombia agreed to allow the U.S. to use its air bases for drug surveillance, Mr. Chávez announced that he would restrict trade with his neighbor.

Food imports are now denied health-department permits, and expiring import permits for some other goods are not being renewed. Mr. Chávez says that the country can get what it needs from allies like Brazil, Argentina and Nicaragua.

Yet there is a long line of trucks waiting to enter Venezuela. A partial explanation is that some of these trucks are carrying goods produced outside of Colombia. Venezuelan ports have deteriorated so much under Mr. Chávez's rule that importers are increasingly offloading in Colombian ports and using overland transportation to the final Venezuelan destinations. This theory is supported by a recent report in the Colombian daily El Tiempo that said 50,000 tons of food had spoiled in Venezuela's northern Puerto Cabello because of government mismanagement...Read "Chavismo Meets the Market" at WSJ

Leon Uris' Novel "The Haj" and its Relevance Today

One of the great books I've read, "The Haj", is about the conflict in Palestine between the Arabs, Jews and the British after the end of WWII. The following is the response from Gideon, a Jew and one of the main characters in the book to a British officer as the battle between the Arabs and Jews erupts into all out war in Palestine. The British have started their withdrawal from those lands, abandoning the few thousand beleaguered Jews to the millions of Arabs arming themselves to wipe them out. Gideon warns the British officer that Islam is on the march. This book was written in 1984 and here we are 16 years later...with a President that does not seem to realize the dangers we confront or maybe doesn't care.

I always think that we get the President we deserve because of the way we don't consistently uphold the founding principles of this great nation. It's time to change that and realize that we live in a dangerous world with nuts on the loose governing countries that have nukes. Americans have to accept this danger and the idea that the only way we can continue on is to recognize our Founding values of small government and our individual rights to life and liberty. By making our government focus on its primary mandate - the protection of our homeland and American lives, we will have the resources to defend our land against the evil that abounds in certain places on this beautiful earth.

"Strange, isn't it, that we Jews are once again stuck with a dirty job no one else wants? You and all your snide friends in all the foreign offices know in your hearts the cruelty, the evil that emanates from the Moslem world. But you are afraid to hold Islam up to the light and tell your people, 'Look, this is what we have to live with.' No, let the Jews do it. We once again man the barricades alone, berated by our smug, so-called allies of the Western democracies. Islam is going to turn this world upside down before this century is out and you'd better have enough guts to deal with it. It's lonely here, Brompton. It's lonely." Page 213 from "The Haj" by Leon Uris (Bantam Books, the paperback edition).

Is Greece a Mirror for the Fate of America?

Arthur Brooks hit it on the head with his article of "Slouching Towards Athens - The Obama Agenda and the Europeanization of America". I had been thinking about the American can do and stick to it spirit being eroded by a bloated, overreaching, hypocritic, paternalistic government ever since Obama became President. This article by Brooks says it all. Will our children have the American spirit when they grow up? Will America become another European birth to cradle welfare state? Are we for all intents and purpose already there? Can we reverse this creeping socialism which Obama is rapidly now forcing down our throats? Only time, which we don't have anymore, will tell. But as Americans we must fight this insidious socialism which is nothing but slavery to the state.

...Why are citizens rioting and striking in Greece? Despite the worst economic crisis in decades, labor unions and state functionaries demand that others pay for the early retirements, lifetime benefits and state pensions to which they feel entitled. In America, however, the tea partiers demonstrate not to get more from others, but rather against government growth, public debt, bailouts and a budget-busting government overhaul of the health-care industry.

In other words, the tea partiers are protesting against exactly what the Greeks are demanding. It is an example of American exceptionalism if there ever was one.

Instead of celebrating this ethical populism, however, many political leaders here denounced the legitimacy of the tea party protesters. "It's not really a grass-roots movement," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed after the tax day tea party protests in April 2009. "It's 'astroturf' by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich."...

...The increasing size of the federal work force is an early indication of what lies ahead. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the last year the federal government added 86,000 permanent (non-Census) jobs to the rolls. And high-paying jobs at that: The number of federal salaries over $100,000 per year has increased by nearly 50% since the beginning of the recession.

Today, the average federal worker earns 77% more than the average private-sector worker, according to a USA Today analysis of data from the federal Office of Personnel Management. To pay for bigger government, the private sector will bear a heavier tax burden far into the future, suppressing the innovation and entrepreneurship that creates growth and real opportunity, not to mention the revenue that pays for everything else in the first place.

If these trends are not reversed, it is hard to see how our culture of free enterprise will not change. More and more Americans, especially younger Americans, will grow accustomed to a system in which the government pays better wages, offers the best job protection, allows the earliest retirement, and guarantees the most lavish pensions. Against such competition, more and more young, would-be entrepreneurs will inevitably choose the safety and comfort of government employment—and do so with all the drive that is generally thought to be "good enough" for that kind of work. Read "Slouching Toward Athens" at the Wall Street Journal

The Global Warming "Debate" is Falling Apart

Rob Tracinski at TIADaily.com has a great piece describing how the Climate Warming "debate" is falling apart.

"..And best of all is the story below, about a debate at the venerable old Oxford Union, in which prominent skeptics defeated alarmists in a vote by the students—and by a good margin. Intellectual climate change is possible, and it is only a matter of time before it comes, in full force, to the US."

Tracinski will have his Daily blog free for a while so take advantage and read his excellent analysis of the events of the day from an Objectivist's point of view. Read below.

For what is believed to be the first time ever in England, an audience of university undergraduates has decisively rejected the notion that "global warming" is or could become a global crisis….

Last week, members of the historic Oxford Union Society, the world's premier debating society, carried the motion "That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change" by 135 votes to 110….

Mr. James Delingpole, a blogger for the leading British conservative national newspaper The Daily Telegraph, seconded the proposition, saying that–politically speaking–the climate extremists had long since lost the argument. The general public simply did not buy the scare stories any more. The endless tales of Biblical disasters peddled by the alarmist faction were an unwelcome and now fortunately failed recrudescence of dull, gray Puritanism. Instead of hand-wringing and bed-wetting, we should celebrate the considerable achievements of the human race and start having fun….

Lord Monckton repeatedly interrupted Lord Whitty to ask him to give a reference in the scientific literature for his suggestion that 95% of scientists believed our influence on the climate was catastrophic. Lord Whitty was unable to provide the source for his figure, but said that everyone knew it was true. Under further pressure from Lord Monckton, Lord Whitty conceded that the figure should perhaps be 92%. Lord Monckton asked: "And your reference is?" Lord Whitty was unable to reply. Hon. Members began to join in, jeering "Your reference? Your reference?" Lord Whitty sat down looking baffled.

Lord Leach of Fairford, whom Margaret Thatcher appointed a Life Peer for his educational work, spoke third for the proposition. He said that we no longer knew whether or not there had been much "global warming" over the 20th century, because the Climategate emails had exposed the terrestrial temperature records as defective….

Lord Monckton, a former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the UK, concluded the case for the proposition. He drew immediate laughter and cheers when he described himself as "Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, scholar, philanthropist, wit, man about town, and former chairman of the Wines and Spirits Committee of this honourable Society". At that point his cummerbund came undone. He held it up to the audience and said, "If I asked this House how long this cummerbund is, you might telephone around all the manufacturers and ask them how many cummerbunds they made, and how long each type of cummerbund was, and put the data into a computer model run by a zitty teenager eating too many doughnuts, and the computer would make an expensive guess. Or you could take a tape-measure and"–glaring at the opposition across the despatch-box–"measure it!" "Oxford Union Debate On Climate Catastrophe" at The SPPI Blog .

EPA's Policies Have Stymied Innovations

The EPA is one of the most retarded and useless agencies we have. For example they have refused to allow the genetic engineering of bacteria and fungus that might have been able feed on the oil and change it thereby to something less noxious for the environment. Why do we even have an Environmental Protection Agency if it's not to PROTECT the environment? Seems like an oxymoron.

I dislike President Obama's style and substance. A whiner and left-wing ideologue, he is remarkably slow-witted when out of range of speechwriters and teleprompters. I'll say one thing for him, though: He brings a sense of irony to government.

The latest example is the incomprehensible choice of William Reilly, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to co-chair the presidential commission to investigate the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

During Reilly's tenure, the EPA implemented policies that prevented the development of a high-tech method to mitigate the effects of the oil washing onto the magnificent beaches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.

During the 1980s microorganisms genetically engineered to feed on spilled oil were developed in laboratories, but draconian federal regulations discouraged their testing and commercialization and ensured that the techniques available for responding to these disasters remain low-tech and marginally effective.

They include methods such as deploying booms to contain the oil, spraying chemicals to disperse it, burning it and spreading absorbent mats.

At the time of the catastrophic 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, there were great expectations for modern biotechnology applied to "bioremediation," the biological cleanup of toxic wastes, including oil. Reilly, who at that time headed the EPA, later recalled:

"When I saw the full scale of the disaster in Prince William Sound in Alaska ... my first thought was: Where are the exotic new technologies, the products of genetic engineering, that can help us clean this up?"

Reilly should have known: Innovation had been stymied by his agency's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques. The regulations ensured that biotech researchers in several industrial sectors, including bioremediation, would continue to be intimidated and inhibited by regulatory barriers. Those policies remain in place today, and the EPA's anti-technology zealots show no signs of changing them...READ: Obama Slips Up on Oil Spill Panel" at IBD editorials.

It's Time To Take a Stand and Fight Big Government

For those of you who are concerned about big government getting into every aspect of our lives the time has come to do something. You don't know what to do or how to get started? Read below then go to TIADaily.com

The passage of the health care bill has made the current political environment more serious and urgent than ever before. The vote on that bill demonstrated that it is not enough to mobilize massive public opposition to statism—that the Democrats will push it through anyway, with contempt for the views of the governed. They will do it because they regard opposition to their agenda as passing, temporary, and ultimately ineffectual. They believe they can shove through this legislation—and more, in whatever time they have remaining—and that once it is in place, it can never be rolled back. ..

If we don't prove them wrong, we are in very big trouble.

Just how big is demonstrated by the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, because she brings to the forefront the main issue of Barack Obama's presidency. As I wrote in the May 13 edition of TIA Daily:

This year, we are called upon to decide the most important political issue there is: are they any limits on the power of government?

We saw this in the health care debate, when Democratic congressmen were quizzed on the constitutionality of the law and answered with a collective shrug of indifference….

And now, with Elena Kagan, we discover that even the First Amendment is not safe, that Congress may also claim the power to censor our speech, should the "general welfare" dictate that the benefits of our freedom are outweighed by the "costs to society."

If there is a single theme to Obama's term in office so far, it is his attempt to break the last of the bonds that used to limit the power of government.

At the same time, however, there is also a lot of reason for hope. The primaries and special elections that have been held so far this year have been a bloodbath for incumbents, for the party establishment—of both parties—and especially for the appropriators, the politicians who are on the committees most directly responsible for runaway government spending...

It's time to get educated and to take a stand against BIG GOVERNMENT. Do you want to be told how to live your life from birth to death? Will you accept the high rate of taxation that is coming down the pike to pay for all this government intervention in our lives? Do you want to send most of your money to Washington for them to spend on welfare programs? You can start educating yourself at: Read the rest at TIADaily.com.

Dear Mr. President - Please Stay Out of the BP Oil Spill Mess

As Obama blunders from one intrusion into our economy to another we should remember that the American Presidency was set up with limited powers ON PURPOSE. And that was to avoid an over-reaching powerful executive that could thwart the progress of the citizens. Now tie this to the BP oil spill and the one thing we don't need is Obama grabbing more power for the White House. We drill for oil with the understanding that it is a tough, difficult and costly enterprise. Accidents will happen but that doesn't mean that our Presidents (Bush or Obama) need to get involved in every catastrophe. They are not God nor our father. Accidents like the Gulf coast oil spill or Alaska's oil spill should be handled by the people involved. We need the brains of competent people resolving these types of accidents - not politicians. Rob Tracinski writing at The Intellectual Activist makes some good points.

...Since when is the president responsible for managing the response to every industrial accident, from mine collapses to oil-rig blowouts? Since when is it any of his business?

It is British Petroleum's business. It is their responsibility to cap the well (as they now seem to be doing), to do whatever they can to mitigate the spill, and to pay for the damages and the cleanup. The courts should be involved in adjudicating the exact extent of the damages and of BP's responsibility, but that is really the whole of the federal government's legitimate involvement.

The federal government, in our political system, was designed to do very little: to provide for the national defense and to adjudicate a delimited set of legal cases that involve interstate actions. Even the police, which are a legitimate function of government, are not really a federal responsibility. And "industrial accident cleanup" is definitely not among the enumerated powers granted to Congress in Article I.

But nobody cares about the Constitution any more. Under the novel theory of government we've been living under for most of the past century, there is nothing that is not the business of the federal government. And so even as he is being criticized for making an unconvincing show of being "engaged" on the oil spill problem, President Obama has been trying to use that very failure as an excuse for further expansion of the government's role. His response to every criticism has been the same as the response given by Wesley Mouch—the flailing central planner in Atlas Shrugged—when his interventions fail: "I need wider powers."

And so Obama has said that his biggest mistake was to trust the oil companies to handle the spill—rather than putting the government in charge right away. And he has issued a moratorium on new permits for offshore oil exploration, until a new federal commission can convene and come up with a plan for more restrictions and taxes to impose on oil companies...

..When asked about the top achievements of his administration, he replied: "I minded my own business." So should President Obama. ... (The Intellectual Activist - "Mine Your Own Business")

"Government is Instituted to Protect Property of Every Sort" James Madison

When we have government that is bent on taking more than half of what we own it is time to refresh ourselves with the writings of one Founding Father who understood the proper role of government - that it should be limited and that their main raison d'etre is to protect the individual's right to HIS property. Visit TAKING LIBERTY.

James Madison, Property

29 Mar. 1792Papers 14:266--68

This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the oeconomical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.


The Founders' Constitution
Volume 1, Chapter 16, Document 23
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html
The University of Chicago Press

Walid Shoebat on Islam

Pamela Geller's Powerful Entreaty For Us to Fight Against the Encroachment of Sharia in the US

For more of Pamela Geller and her courageous fight against the invasion of Islamic Sharia in America go to http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/atlas-articles/

Why Won't Liberals Do What It Takes to Protect America and Americans?

You know what? It's time for us as Americans to demand that our government, so intent on taking us to the poorhouse, do what it's supposed to be doing; the reason why we have a government - Protect us from religious fanatics bent on world domination and wiping out the only truly free country the world has EVER seen: America. The question is why won't the left work to free us from radical Islam? Why? Why? Why?

The more we learn about failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, the stranger the initial reporting about him becomes. The liberals’ rush to downplay any possible connections to Islam and label him a “homegrown” terrorist were blatant attempts to freeze the story before the truth was known. Now, the facts about Shahzad are showing a liberal establishment that can’t face a reality it created.

First there was New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg dismissing the then-unknown suspect as “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill (i.e. ObamaCare)” to Katie Couric. Shortly thereafter, MSNBC personality Contessa Brewer was “hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country” because “[t]here are a lot of people who want to use terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.”

So instead the liberal chattering class indulged in updated bigotry. After two terrorist attacks on New York City landmarks in 1993 and 2001 by Islamists, the current mayor of the city immediately points to the most likely culprit in 2010: Tea Party activists upset with the government takeover of healthcare. But why, Mayor Mike, would people angered by federal overreach target a local tourist site like Times Square? The symbolic value would be lost. Then again, maybe attention to constitutional distinctions between different levels of government is the kind of “political agenda” motivating “mentally deranged” people these days. ..Read at Center for Individual Freedom - " The Fact About The Failed Times Square Bomber: Why the Liberal Establishment Can't Face Reality".

Obama Perfects The Game of Divide and Conquer

It's bad enough that the Obama Administration is taking us to the edge of financial ruin with his profligate spending of money we DON'T have, but to bad mouth Arizona for trying to defend their state against Mexican thugs who are enriching themselves because of American drug addicts is beyond the pale. READ THE BILL! This is nothing but a means of pitting American against American. Hitler chose the Jews for everyone else to hate - Obama has to do it piecemeal and Arizona is his test case...Beware of more to come.

Members of the Obama administration, who soundly condemned Arizona's new immigration law, are now admitted that they have never even read it. Could President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón find themselves in the same boat based on comments they made today at their joint appearance on the White House lawn?

Let’s review. The first person who had to admit he had never read the Arizona law Attorney General Eric Holder made his admission last week. On Monday, it was Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's turn. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley revealed that he, too, had not read the bill, despite commenting on it. Given how inaccurate these officials have been in their descriptions of the law, maybe members of President Obama’s team simply had no option but to plead ignorance.

After all, how do you take a law that clearly states the following: "A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, or town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin,” and then claim that it is racist or could lead to racial profiling? Not only that but other parts of this very short law also include additional safeguards against racial profiling. For example, the law requires that the police may only ask for ID if they have “lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest” and that authorities must have "reasonable suspicion" that a suspect is an illegal alien.

Failure by members of President Obama’s administration to read the four page text of Arizona's law is no a small matter, since some on his team managed to create quite a stir in various appearances on Sunday talk shows by bringing up concerns about racial profiling and racism.

Take, for example, Ms. Napolitano's warning on "This Week" on May 2: "Unfortunately, I think it [the law] does and can invite racial profiling." If these various "news" shows had been doing their job, they would have challenged Napolitano and other officials on these claims. Even just reading parts of the law -- verbatim -- to Ms. Napolitano or other administration officials during their appearance on the program would have been enough to force them to admit their ignorance. (READ "Mr. Obama, Please Read Arizona's Immigration Law" by John Lott.

The brave and historical speech of Malalai Joya in the LJ

The Bravest Woman in Afghanistan - Malalai Joya

"A new survey shows many British think relations with the U.S. have deteriorated since the president took office."

Obama needs to keep our friends close and our enemies far - not the other way around.

...A new survey of British public opinion reveals chastened hopes for close ties with the United States. The poll, conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Legatum Institute and the Royal United Services Institute, carried out between May 10 and 12, finds that overall public support for the relationship remains strong. Some 66% of those surveyed hold a favorable view of the U.S. and 62% agree that America is Britain's most important ally.

Moreover, a full 82% of Britons want their nation's relationship with the U.S. to stay as close as it is or even be strengthened. New Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg might take note of this in light of his previous plea for the British to "release ourselves from the spell of default Atlanticism."

As much as the British people still feel a commitment to the special relationship, they also feel that their love is unrequited. An overwhelming 85% believe that Britain has little or no influence on U.S. policies, and 62% think that America does not consider British interests. The Obama administration has reinforced these perceptions over the past year.

In stark contrast to the stratospheric hopes that Mr. Obama would dramatically improve America's relations with the world in general and the U.K. in particular, a full 74% of the British people now think that their relationship with the U.S. has stayed the same or even worsened since Mr. Obama's election... Read: "Obama and the 'Special Relationship' " at WSJ.

Europe, IMF and the European Central bank Admit Quietly that Government Healthcare is Unsustainable. Surprise!!!!

So the cat is out of the bag. Europe admits that government run healthcare is UNSUSTAINABLE. Are you surprised? Of course not. Most Americans know that government run anything leads to bankruptcy, failure and mediocrity. Let's take back America for Americans before it's too late for us. Let's learn the lesson of Greece and go back to Capitalism, the system which is "based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned." ("What Is Capitalism?" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand). Read "Guess What Greece Has to Jettison" by

Policy Failure: Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe's welfare state model.

The requirement, part of a deal arranged by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central bank, is a tacit admission that national health care programs are unsustainable. Along with transportation and energy, the bailout group, according to the New York Times, wants the Greek government to remove "the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors."

This is not some cranky or politically motivated demand. It is a condition based on the ugly reality of government medicine. The Times reports that economists — not right-wingers opposed to health care who want to blow up Times Square — say liberalizing "the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe."

Of course most of the media have been largely silent about the health care privatization measure for Greece, as it conflicts with their universal, single-payer health care narrative.

The public health system in the Hellenic Republic is operated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, where centralized decisions and rules are made.
It provides free or low-cost treatment through what is essentially a single-payer system established in 1983 when the Socialist Party was in power. Family members and retirees are also covered. Like the systems in Britain and Canada, it has agonizingly long waiting lists...READ the rest here at IBD.

I Don't Recognize America Anymore - Do You?

As the Government payroll gets larger and larger and Obama is looking to add more people on the dole - I mean on the Union payrolls Americans have to sit down and take a good long look at what we are becoming. A reflection of socialist Europe. We must fight this cancer creeping through our society spreading ever faster as Washington is changing the meaning of our country. Read this excellent commentary by Bill Frezza, "Are the Greek Riots a Picture of Our Future?"

...Wake up America! How many million unionists are we expected to carry on our public payrolls? How long can we keep government employees on defined-benefit pension plans while the rest of us scramble to fund our 401(k)s ? How many more people are we going to drop from the income tax rolls as we lean on a smaller and smaller slice of citizens to carry an ever greater percentage of the load, leaving the rest free to vote for tax increases? How large a swath of our population can we pretend to keep supplied with newly manufactured economic rights like free healthcare as Social Security and Medicare careen toward insolvency? How much more do we think we can borrow from the Chinese to fund day-to-day government operations? How long do we think we can afford to police the world?

What the world's political leaders and those who elect them need most right now is a shocking example of the only possible outcome of trying to practice redistributive justice on a national or even global scale. Rescuing Greece is a mistake. What they deserve is a good hard dose of exactly what they are asking for - unvarnished socialism.

Throw Greece out of the European Union. Let them default on their debts. Teach buyers to beware before they invest in sovereign bonds. Dare Greece to print Drachmas by the wheelbarrow. Put the whole country on the public payroll then challenge them to demonstrate what a truly egalitarian society looks like. Maybe a dramatic spectacle of what a workers paradise looks like under the media's glare will teach us what's in store if we don't change our ways.

Democracy is broken. You can't mix Freedom and Free Lunch. One or the other has got to go.

Protecting Free Speech Also Means the Speech of Corporations Who Are Made Up Of People

The most important job of the Supreme Court is to protect the free speech of Americans. And they did that recently. This is a major victory of all of us. So what is a corporation? Are they made up of sheep? Cows? Dogs? No! Corporations are made up of people that have a right to voice their opinion...regardless of whether Washington likes it or not. We must be ever vigilant of our rights as individuals, groups, or corporations. If we allow one type of speech to be regulated we will all lose our rights to free speech eventually.

...The court's opinion earlier this year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission said that politicians could not enact limits on independent campaign contributions targeting corporations or unions. President Barack Obama famously chided the justices for this opinion during his State of the Union Address.

Congress is considering a bill that would again specify who could no longer speak freely, including companies that received Troubled Asset Relief Program funding (meaning the key banks) and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-based companies. The same restrictions would not limit the speech of unions with large foreign activities. Political parties would get discounts on broadcast advertisements to respond to corporations or unions.

Citizens United has been viewed as a case about campaign reform, but it's better read as a broad, 21st-century primer on free speech....

...Citizens United is part of a line of cases beginning in the 1940s that protected the rights of unions to endorse candidates in print and through television broadcasts. Justice William O. Douglas wrote in one such case that the Constitution required "no point of view be restrained or barred," so that voters "have access to the views of every group in the community."

Speech rights are the same whether exercised through pamphlets or the Web, and whether by individuals or through associations of individuals, incorporated or not. "When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought," the justices warned in Citizens United. "This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves." Read at WSJ "Tech-Savvy Justices Protect Free Speech".

"The Morally Corrupt and Economically Foolish"

Now the President feels he needs to cap our salaries. He will decide what is an adequate salary not the marketplace. Look folks, do you still have any doubts that this man is against free markets and allowing us to run our lives the way we see fit? The article below should help you along the road to understanding that what we have in our beloved White House is an anti-American values President.

Freedom: In voicing his feelings Wednesday about earned wealth, President Obama shone a bright light into the thought recesses of the far left. And what a dark and ugly place it can be.

During a two-day swing through Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, the president went off teleprompter and blundered into another Joe the Plumber moment, that unguarded instant during the 2008 campaign in which he told a potential small-business owner that he planned to spread the wealth around.

"Now, what we're doing, I want to be clear, we're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned," Obama said in Quincy, Ill. "I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

Remarks prepared for the occasion reportedly don't include the president's thoughts about how much money he'd let Americans make. But without the help of a teleprompter to carefully steer him away from his gut feelings, he wandered into a Marxist bramble.

It takes a certain kind of person to think he or she has — or should have — the moral authority to cap other people's incomes. Especially when that person and his wife somehow made $5.5 million in the first year of his presidency, a job that pays $400,000 a year.

In a free society, it's not the president or any other government official or branch that decides when someone has "made enough money," even if liberties are being lost in that free society...READ "Obama's Salary Cap" at IBD.

The ObamaCare Future

Like any other country that has socialized medicine - this one will deliver poor quality care to Americans. Socialism is socialism everywhere it is practiced. You can't turn a rat into a thorough-bred even if you are the annointed one.

President Barack Obama's health care bill aims to achieve universal coverage while at the same time reducing costs. In reality, this contradictory strategy will ensure that Americans enjoy less health care, of poorer quality, and from fewer doctors.

And while the full effects of ObamaCare might not be felt until Tax Day 2014, the promise of free health care to millions of Americans will begin to prove hollow long before then...

...America's primary care system is already under stress. Low reimbursement rates, bureaucratic paperwork and long hours are driving family physicians out of medicine and pushing new doctors into specialized practices. Half a century ago, one in two doctors practiced general medicine. Today, 7 in 10 specialize.

And the gap is growing. A mere 1 in 12 medical-school graduates now head to family medicine. In 2009, the American Academy of Family Physicians warned that we'd be short 40,000 family doctors in a decade, if present trends continued. Today, medical schools produce one primary care doctor for every two who are needed.

ObamaCare will add strain to an already burdened system. The new bill seeks to increase the load on family doctors while holding the line on costs by putting price controls on government insurance plans. In due course, price controls on private plans will be inevitable.

...The combination of increased coverage and emphasis on primary care, experts say, will increase demand for primary care docs by as much as 29%, or 44,000 doctors, over the next 15 years.

But just as demand is increasing, doctors are making plans to exit. A 2009 survey by medical recruiters Merritt Hawkins found that 10% of respondents were planning to leave medicine within three years.

Another poll of physicians conducted in 2009 by Investor's Business Daily found that 45% of doctors would consider early retirement if ObamaCare passed. Read "Sign of Times with Obamacare: 'The Doctor is Out Permanently'".

Now It's a Takeover of Our Financial Sector? When Will The Destruction Of Our Economy End?

Misgovernance: Barely a month after the 2,600-page health care bill became law, Congress has teed up another landmark piece of legislation: a 1,600-page financial overhaul. So what's the big hurry?

As with the health care measure, no one seems to know exactly what's in this massive new bill. And what we have seen leaves a lot to be desired.

Legislation that radically changes the way we conduct our daily lives is usually subject to long deliberation and thorough debate before a decision is reached. But not in this Congress.

The financial reform that Sen. Chris Dodd has put forward contains little if any input from opposition Republicans. With their 59-41 majority in the Senate, Dodd and his Democrat colleagues are convinced they no longer need to compromise.

In his speech on financial reform last Thursday in New York, President Obama made his case and invited Americans to "debate" it. But that very day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to the surprise of nearly everyone, announced there could be a vote on Dodd's bill as early as Monday. Read: "Why No Debate" at IBD.

An Iranian Missile Strike in US by 2015?

While Obama and minions are trying to figure out how they can separate us from our money and turn our economy into a third world nation Iran is building nukes and they are not for North Korea or Russia. They are intended for America. It is without question that Obama's stance and demeanor, words and actions have emboldened thugs like Ahmadinejad. We the people must wake up and see this existential threat for what it is. Obama must do his principle job! The job we voted him to do! It's NOT to meddle in our economy and take us down the road to the poor house. IT IS TO PROTECT AMERICAN LIVES AND PROPERTY!

...If only we were working as hard to defend ourselves as they are to destroy us.

In any discussion of the Iranian nuclear threat, the assumption is always that Tehran's target is Israel. Iran's quite mad president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has pledged to wipe Israel off the map as part of his grand scheme to usher in the age of the 12th Imam. Tehran may have a bigger fish that it wants to fry, namely us.

"With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States by 2015," said the 12-page Defense Department report, released Monday, on the "Military Power of Iran," a copy of which Reuters obtained.

There is no shortage of such assistance. A recent report by the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center said production of medium-range missiles remains one of Tehran's "highest priorities" and that China, North Korea and Russia are all helping
Iran produce such missiles.

Iran has long worked with North Korea, particularly on intercontinental ballistic missiles... Iran's cooperation with North Korea began in the 1980s…

A country capable of orbiting a satellite is capable of putting a warhead anywhere on this planet. We forget that such a missile wouldn't have to be accurate. A single nuclear warhead detonated over the American heartland would emit an electromagnetic pulse that would fry our technological infrastructure and catapult America and its economy back to the 18th century.

Iran has long been testing the in-flight detonation of its Shahab series over the Caspian Sea. Such tests would make no sense unless the Iranians were planning for the day when an Iranian missile with a nuke would detonate high over an Iowa cornfield and devastate the American nation...READ at IBD "Tehran's Other Target: America 2015"

"A Republic If You Can Keep It"

In 1787 as the Constitutional Convention was closing, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government we would have with our new Constitution. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

No one can deny that what occurred at that most famous of conventions was the birth of perhaps the most astounding idea in human history-truly the most radical in history.

And we were the inheritors of that idea. But have we "kept it"? That is the question of the moment and my assessment is that that is what we are fighting for today. Surely one must thank Obama for putting the stakes so high - for crystallizing that we as Americans have been derelict in our duty to preserve our republic as our Founding Fathers envisioned it: Small government and many liberties for the people.

It's time for each of us who love America to stand up and defend the idea of America - that is Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness with a government that is strictly circumscribed by the Constitution. Let's do it. It can be done - we just have to put our mind to the task of taking back our Republic.

Obama Will Continue To Tax Us Till Our Dying Breath

I seem to remember that our forefathers fought the British for excessive taxation by the King. It seems so quaint - their taxation problems compared to ours. It's time to lower taxes on the portion of Americans who have to carry the burden of runaway government and it's time for government to curtail its heavy handed intervention in our economy. Leave us ALONE!

...A recent Rasmussen survey reported that 66% of Americans believe the nation is over-taxed. There's a reason. Under President Barack Obama taxes are going up—a lot.

House Ways and Means Committee Republicans have issued a summary of the 25 tax increases signed into law by Mr. Obama so far. They total $670 billion over the next 10 years, including 14 tax hikes (including an annual tax on every insurance policy and an annual tax on brand-name drugs) that break Mr. Obama's solemn 2008 campaign pledge never to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.

Many of these taxes are part of the ObamaCare monstrosity. New levies on investment, drugs, medical devices and insurance policies eventually will hit ordinary Americans, and the public knows it. A late March Fox News poll asked, "If major health care reform legislation is passed, do you think your taxes will increase, decrease or stay about the same?" Seventy-five percent think their taxes will increase.

Tax concerns will hurt congressional Democrats. In rural areas, their opposition to repeal of the death tax antagonizes farmers and ranchers. Then there are America's 32 million small-business owners, who feel put upon by the administration's tax everyone-and-everything philosophy.

Families, especially in the suburbs, are pressed by rising property, sales and state income taxes in addition to the federal tax increases. And don't forget the 53 million investors whose battered accounts are only now recovering. There's a new 3.8% surtax on certain kinds of investment income for high earners, but it is not indexed for inflation, so it will bite an increasing number of people over time... Read "Why Republicans are Winning On The Tax Issue" at WSJ

Toyota's Problem Is NOT For The Government To Solve - It Properly Belongs In the Free Market Arena

The fact that our government is intervening now in every aspect of our daily lives should be a major cause for concern for every American who is dedicated to individual freedom and rights. An excellent article at WashingtonExaminer.com explains how the government intervenes in affairs it has no business in interfering with - private enterprise. Posturing and meddling by politicians and pressure groups is not the American way and results in only group warfare and a degradation of everyone's freedom. We must get the government out of our private enterprise system - let the Market determine consequences and rewards NOT government.

...But pressure groups are only a symptom. The cause is the government’s power to intervene in the market to pick winners and losers. In the auto industry alone, the government controls everything from whom car companies can hire (unionized employees) to what kind of vehicles they must build (hybrids).

And elsewhere it decides which businesses are “too big to fail,” which industries “deserve” massive subsidies, and which unproven technologies warrant billions of taxpayer “investment.” That’s a recipe for pressure group warfare.

This is not what Madison and Jefferson had in mind. Their vision was of a strictly limited government, which would perform one basic function, guard individual rights. Its role was to protect the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property from infringement by thugs and frauds, while otherwise leaving people free to produce and trade in a free market.

In the original American system, it’s the job of the market to pick winners and losers, and the job of the courts, not Congress, to arbitrate disputes, such as that between Toyota and drivers harmed in accidents.

The truth is Toyota’s troubles should not be a political issue. On a free market, Toyota would have to address the real or alleged problems with its cars and work to restore its reputation with consumers, or suffer the consequences.

And if the company were proved in a court of law to be guilty of negligence, it would be held accountable. In any case, there would be no need for the circus now taking place, with all its sordid political posturing and favor-trading.

So here’s a proposal. Make Washington come up with a plan to disentangle government from the economy. It might even start with a congressional investigation. (Read the article by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins - What's Really Driving the Toyota Controversy?)

America is Exceptional - Obama Must be Joking! Right?

Although our President is very obviously anti-American, we the people are not. This article shows why American exceptionalism is true and our President is wrong.

In yet another example of this administration's rejection of American exceptionalism, science adviser John Holdren says the U.S. can't be expected to always be on top. How uninspiring. How wrong.

A little more than a year ago, the president himself said much the same thing at a NATO conference. "I believe in American exceptionalism," Barack Obama said, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, America might think it's special, but so do other countries. And there's no reason to believe they're wrong. It's all relative.

...In no nation, however, have the people had the freedom we have. No other nation has ever worked so hard for justice, so long for equality and so earnestly for openness. No nation has ever been as welcoming to foreigners or as protective of dissenters. None has ever been as selfless and charitable.

Nowhere on this planet is upward mobility as unencumbered as it is here. Opportunity is woven tightly into the American fabric. From the world over, people arrive at our door wanting what we have. Many of them are dumbfounded when those of us who've been here since birth don't realize how fortunate we are.

America is indeed exceptional, and those who say it isn't are guilty of an ugly form of wishful thinking. (READ at IBD "America The Also-Ran")

Nations That Persecute It's Rich Is a Nation That Will Fail

There has never been a nation on this earth that has prospered while its politicians persecuted and badmouthed the rich. Never. I don't know who wrote this but read it and pass it on.

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Americans Must Wake Up and Save America

Obama's Socialized Medicine Plan is Deserving of One Action: REPEAL

Maybe there is still hope that the Republicans will do the right thing: Repeal this monstrosity and anti-American piece of legislation - Obamacare. The American people do not want this!

The same day that President Obama signed health-care reform, Sen. Jim DeMint introduced legislation to repeal it. “This fight isn’t over yet,” vowed the South Carolina Republican. “The American people cherish their freedom and will defend it this November.” His bill, which has 14 other Senate co-sponsors, may seem quixotic; it obviously won’t pass anytime soon, and the GOP is divided on how exactly “repeal” would work. Yet the broader movement that DeMint has championed may play a significant role in the 2010 elections.

Back in mid-January, well before the House of Representatives approved Obamacare, the free-market Club for Growth (CFG) began asking federal lawmakers, candidates, and ordinary citizens to pledge their support for a repeal-and-replace strategy. As of Thursday afternoon, 67 incumbent House and Senate members had signed the CFG’s online “Repeal It” pledge, along with 287 official candidates. None of them are Democrats (no surprise there), but the Republican signatories include moderates and conservatives alike.

...The language for candidates reads as follows: “I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.” (Read at National Review Online "Pledging to Repeal").

The Allies and Friends of America are Now to Be Dissed

Obama and Hillary turn on our friends and coddle up to dictators, middle Eastern thugs out to build a nuclear bomb and invite to our White House all sorts of leftists and socialists. What's going on? Here is another report to depress you by Charles Krauthammer.

What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America?

If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown — the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One.

Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

Perhaps it was the State Department official who last year denied there even was a special relationship between the U.S. and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.
And then there was Hillary Clinton's astonishing, nearly unreported (in the U.S.) performance in Argentina last month. She called for Britain to negotiate with Argentina over the Falklands.

For those who know no history — or who believe it began on Jan. 20, 2009 — and therefore don't know why this was an out-of-the-blue slap at Britain, here's the back story:

In 1982, Argentina's military junta invaded the (British) Falkland Islands. The generals thought the British, having long lost their taste for foreign lands, would let it pass. Besides, the Falklands have uncountably more sheep than people. They underestimated Margaret Thatcher (the Argentines, that is, not the sheep). She was not about to permit the conquest of a people whose political allegiance and ethnic ties are to Britain. She dispatched the navy. Britannia took it back. READ AT IBD "Administration Not Interested In Old Friends".