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

Don't know much about geography

Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know that one and one is two

And if this one could be with you

What a wonderful world this would be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are We to Bow and Scrape Before Washington Politicians?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Anniversaries Highlight America's Philosophic Failures

by Joseph Kellard (The American Individualist)

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

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

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

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

How essentially did we get to this point?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is America Dying A Slow Death By Sacrifice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gore, Killing Us Softly With His Gloom and Doom

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking From Some To Give To Others

Economic Recovery Without Economic Growth by Dr. Hurd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama's Version of Big Brother for Americans

From from czars to plans to prop up dying newspapers to serve the party line, to government "medical experts" deciding who will live and who will die to school children singing the praises of our "dear leader" are we prepared for a "Big Brother" America? Thomas Sowell speculates based on the evidence we have so far from this administration.

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50% or 90%?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — to create a situation where some papers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get lifesaving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life-and-death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving schoolchildren material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries...READ at IBD "Dismantling America - Piece By Piece"

The Noose Around the Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs

It's not often I agree with Peggy Noonan's kind of mushy observations on our culture, economy and government. But today she hits it pretty much on the nail. We are being run by a bunch that have no idea how their actions hurt ordinary Americans...How their meddling is ruining the goose that laid the golden egg, OUR PRODUCERS. By taking away our freedom and tightening the noose around the goose they are laying waste to our beloved America. Without Atlases, the men who hold up the world - the producers, inventors, creators, and titans of Industry, the rest of us will languish with a bleak future. These atlases should throw down their tools and build a Galt's Gulch - then the big mouthed Washington politicians can do see what they can do without giants to disparage, rob and abuse.

...When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

I think I know part of the answer. It is that they've never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don't have the habit of worry. They talk about their "concerns"—they're big on that word. But they're not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa's lap.

They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice. READ at WSJ

Madam Pelosi: Let's Talk Constitution

As Americans go through our Public School system, we are ever more and more relegating our Constitution to the back burner because our teachers and administrators are derelict in their duty to inform us of our history. Our Founding Fathers envisioned a document that would provide guidance for Americans regarding the protection of individual liberties. Written mostly by James Madison it is well worth our effort to read this document, understand it and then hold our politicians accountable when they try to diminish our liberties.

Listen as Pelosi squirms her way out of answering the all too infrequently asked question to politicians as to "where specifically does the Constitution grant congress the authority to enact an individual Health Insurance Mandate"? Pelosi's NON-answer and clearly she is squirming - is truly disgusting.

Lies and Hypocrisy Of Pelosi and Reid

Watch as Pelosi and Reid vilify an industry because of their profits! America IS the land of Can Do and Profits! Figures that power-lusting politicians and rich ones at that would come out with this anti-American stand. To cap this off the insurance companies are way down the list in terms of profit margins! This is nothing but scapegoating and down-right lies to pass the Health care reform bill come hell or high water.

Politicians Out Of Touch With The Idea of FREEDOM

Daniel Henninger wrote a great piece at the WSJ commenting on how Obama and the old, craggy, ancient politicians are out of touch with today's world. They are out of touch all right - out of touch with the principles upon which this nation was founded: LIFE, LIBERTY and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

...The culture still believes the U.S. has a hipster for president. But the Obama health-care bill, and maybe this whole administration, is starting to look totally out of sync with the new zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

Everything about the health-care exercise is looking very old hat, starting with the old guys working on it. Max Baucus, Patrick Leahy, Pete Stark—all were elected to Congress in the 1970s, and live on as the immortals in Washington's Forever Land. But it's more than the fact that Congress looks old. The health-care bill is big, complex, incomprehensible and coercive—all the things people hate nowadays.

It's easy to make jokes about how insubstantial the millions of people seem to be who are constantly using technologies like Twitter. But these new digital and Web-based technologies, which have decentralized virtually everything, now occupy most of the average person's waking hours at work or at home. Mass media is struggling to stay massive in a world whose people want to break up into many discrete markets.

The one lump that won't change is government. Government in our time is looking out of it. It'd be one thing if government were almost cool in an old-fashioned way, but it's not. When everyone else's job gets measured by performance, its hallmark is malperformance—whether in Congress, California or New York. READ "Obama and The Old Hat People".

The Latest Villain - The Insurance Companies - When Will This Witchhunt Stop?

You want the truth? The insurance companies are an industry which offers a product. The reason they are getting more and more screwed up is government control. Will the takeover of our economy by bureaucrats in Washington ever end? And MORE IMPORTANT - when are we going to demand they stop!

Washington's latest target is America's "fat cat" health insurance companies. A closer look reveals a vital but vulnerable industry, not the greedy, profiteering image pushed by health reformers.

We've seen "Big Oil" dragged to Capitol Hill to be slandered by power-hungry senators and congressmen for finding, extracting and refining the lifeblood commodity of the global economy. We've seen the pharmaceutical industry drawn and quartered for doing what it takes to discover, make and market lifesaving and life-enhancing drugs.

The latest villain in the politicians' demagogic fantasyland is private health insurance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused private insurers of making "immoral profits." And they're a prime target for taxes to pay for the health care revolution Congress and the White House have planned.

But in fact, as we pointed out recently in these pages, this is an industry that actually lags many others in the U.S. economy. Plenty of other sectors of private industry are doing far better.

And some of the things Washington has planned — in particular a "public option" — would leave private insurers bankrupt.

As the Associated Press recently reported, the health insurance industry's profit margins tend to be in the 6% range, not impressive at all when compared with other areas of insurance. Margins shrank to 2.2% last year, with health insurers ranking 35th on the Fortune 500 list of industries. As a result, the credit ratings of some leading insurers have been downgraded to negative. READ at IBD

Government - ENOUGH WITH THE SPENDING

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."--

Thomas JeffersonThe Third President of the United States1743 ~ 1846

Change banking establishments for government and his words are still true. Go to this link to see all the money we owe...and it's going to come out of the hide of our children and their children. Enough with the spending!!!

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Brother Do You Have a Dime?

Mr Reid....if there's anything broken about our health care system it's due to government meddling! Millions of Americans have health care insurance provided by their employers and we all see wonderful, diligent, smart doctors that give us the best care IN THE WORLD! Now we have a President who is taking us down the road of servitude (socialism) and politicians so craven and mealy mouthed that they grovel in front of the "anointed one" instead of defending our liberties! Which is why we vote in the first place! The depression of the early 1900's will be peanuts compared to what's coming.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced today he is including in the Senate's health care bill a government-run health insurance plan, or "public option," from which states could opt out.

"I think it's the fairest way to go," Reid said in a press conference. "A public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system."

Reid is submitting to the Congressional Budget Office a number of different variations on health care legislation that bring together different elements of the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee's bill. Whichever version is chosen, however, will have the public option, Reid said.

As to whether a bill with a public option could win the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster, Reid said that as soon as the CBO provides a cost estimate, "we clearly will have the support of my caucus to move this bill and start legislating."