"Parroting a Load of Poppycock From Van Jones"

Funny this article should have been written. I have been wondering for over a year how the fawning media can call this man so intelligent. He seems to have no idea what he is doing. Either that or there's something more nefarious - like he knows exactly what he's doing and his goal is to ruin America. Here is a very good article by Mr. Howard expressing everything I've felt but much more eloquently. This is part of the article which can be read at IBD.

...Sharp presidents do not dive into lose/lose situations with such gusto.

How is Obama's foreign policy working out? The U.S. needs strong allies to defeat monstrous enemies. Dissing the British, scolding Israel, canceling the missile shield in Eastern Europe and groveling to foreign royalty do not bode well. Our enemies, from Iran to Venezuela, smell weakness and timidity. Ignoring cold reality and dreaming that personal charisma is the solution to international tensions is probably on the daft side of the intelligence continuum.

The "4 million green jobs" mantra espoused by the president is a canard when examined closely. Renewable energy technology exists only due to huge government subsidies. Ethanol is inefficient, raising the prices of gasoline and corn. Wind farms produce intermittent power that flummoxes the grid and requires conventional power plants to run continuously as backup. The net carbon reduction is miniscule.

Both schemes are massive misallocations of resources better used elsewhere. An astute president would inform himself on both sides of the issue rather than blatantly parrot a load of poppycock from the Van Jones crowd.

A Republican president who parties far more than he works would be trashed by every media outlet in the land. But Obama is a Democrat who enjoys the media's deep support. He escapes any serious questions about his busy golf schedule, multiple vacations, endless fundraising and campaigning, constant banquets and concerts in the White House, and his obvious detachment from the people he supposedly leads.

He appears more of a dilettante than a leader. A smart fellow would move to de-emphasize his privileged lifestyle instead of flaunting it in front of a nation mired in a recession.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe Obama is smart. Then again, Jimmy Carter was intelligent but proved to be the worst president of our lifetimes — up to now.
READ the complete essay here: "How Brilliant Can President Obama Be?" by Jeffrey S. Howard at Investor's Business Daily.

"Will We Become Zimbabwe or Will We Be Japan? by Merle Hazard

This guy is a financial advisor and gives us some comic relief from these depressing, government induced troubled times.

Listen to Bill whittle's Impassioned Speech on Why We Must Not Be Cowards Before Islamic Terrorism

Are you bewildered and sick of mealy mouthed politicians who won't stand up and do what's necessary to defend America and the ideas we stand for? Have you been wondering how a New York Mayor can defend the building of a hugh mosque in the middle of 9/11 New York? Are you perplexed why we stand idly by as Iran build nukes? Who does Washington think these nukes are intended for? America wake up before World war II will look like a walk in the park. Listen to Bill here.

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=4031

A Tyranny Excercised for the Good of its Victims

Think "the Left" as you read this quote by C.S. Lewis.

"A tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will, torment us without end, for they do so for the approval of their own conscience."

C. S. Lewis

We Lose Money Every Time Congress is in Session: Let's Tell Them to Go Home and Stay Home!

If you're over 35 years old you probably know this fact: that when the politicians hightail it out of Washington for one of their recesses the markets do well. When they're in Washington taxing and legislating the markets do poorly. Read the article below.

With Congress out of session for its August recess, one innovative fund manager is busy making money for clients who share his view that an inactive government is good for the stock market. Armed with data and a successful track record, Eric Singer is using his unique strategy to make profits and a point about avoiding the most dangerous element in any investment decision: political risk.

Singer’s Congressional Effect Fund takes its name from the phenomenon he helped prove: when Congress acts, markets suffer. In 1992 while working for a New York investment firm, Singer noticed a recurring pattern of exceptional stock performance. The “January effect,” was followed by stock market “rallies” during the summer, at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It occurred to him that in each boom period Congress was out of session.

So, he looked at the data to see if there was a correlation. Going back to January 1, 1965, Singer studied the performance of the S&P 500 Index on days when at least one house of Congress was in session compared to when neither house met for business. The results confirmed his intuition. On days when at least one house was in session, the S&P 500 had an average annualized price gain of +.94%. Alternatively, the Index gained +16.04% when neither house was in session.

The explanation is simple. Investors fear government action because it always involves change. Changes in rules and regulations cause uncertainty. That uncertainty leads to risk-averse behavior like banks reducing lending, landowners refusing to develop real estate and employers refusing to hire more staff. By driving wealth creators to the sidelines, government action makes the nation poorer.

Though intuitive to most business owners, the “congressional effect” is hardly conventional wisdom with financiers or academics. When Singer first published his findings a team of experts tried to disprove him.

They ended up making an even stronger case for Singer’s position.

In a 1997 study titled, “The Congressional Calendar and Stock Market Performance,” three university professors and a private financier concluded:

“Almost the entire advance in the market since 1897 corresponds to the periods when Congress is in recess. This is an impressive result, given that Congress is in recess about half as long as in session. Furthermore, average daily returns when Congress is not meeting are almost eight times greater than when Congress is in session. Throughout the year, cumulative returns during recess are thirteen times that experienced while Congress is in session.” ...READ "Investment Funds Show that Betting Against Congress is a Great way to Make Money" at Center for Individual Freedom.

Doctors Are Starting to Speak Out Against Obamacare - Hurray!

Perhaps there is hope afterall of getting America back to being America which means getting back our "life, liberty and happiness" which we have lost ever since Obama got into office.

Facing a nationwide backlash, Democratic congressional candidates have a new message for voters: We know you don't like ObamaCare, so we'll fix it.

This was the line offered by Democrat Mark Critz, who won a special election in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district after expressing opposition to the law and promising to mend it—but not to repeal it. As a doctor I know something about unexpected recoveries, and this latest attempt to rescue ObamaCare from repeal needs to be taken seriously.

For Democrats who voted for ObamaCare, this tactic is an escape route, a chance to distance themselves from the president with a vague promise to fix health-care reform in the next Congress.

To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a "Dear Patient" letter in our waiting rooms.

"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."... Read Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare WSJ.

Desperately Seeking Obama to Stand Up for the Iranian Green Movement

Looks like Iran which is led by a bunch of loonies is cracking up. The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece describing how this nation, led by a bunch of Cuckoos may be falling apart. Khamenei who is NOT much beloved by his people, and the always incoherent Ahmadinejad are doing a fine job of destroying this country and convincing the people of the Green movement that it's time for them to go. Where is Obama? He has not reported for duty.

…That opposition is fed by enduring social and economic crises. Unemployment last month reached 15% and is as high as 45% in some regions. In Tehran, health officials warned pregnant women and mothers of young children not to drink the water. Electrical failures are widespread. Taxi drivers have been striking around the country this summer, some because of the long lines at gas stations and others because of a shortage of compressed natural gas. The sanctions seem to be having an effect.

As these pressures have mounted, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—against whom Iranians chant "Death to the Dictator!" at public gatherings and nightly from their rooftops—has sought to reaffirm his authority. Late last month he issued a fatwa declaring that his opinions had a status equal to those of the prophet Mohammed. The fatwa caused such consternation that it was removed from his website, then quietly returned a few days later.

…President Ahmadinejad has also tried to buttress his popular support, first by claiming that "stupid Zionists" were trying to kill him, and then by putting out a story—which few in Iran took seriously—of an assassination attempt on his motorcade. As usual, the "report" went through various iterations: first it was a grenade, then a firecracker, then nothing at all.

…These various debacles have strengthened the Green Movement, and opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi continue to launch serious verbal attacks on the regime. When the head of the powerful Guardian Council recently accused the Greens of receiving money from the Saudis and the Americans, Mr. Karroubi gave him the back of his hand: "If I am a conspirator because I object [to the rigged presidential election], then you are a partner of those who stole this nation's vote and are disloyal to the nation."

…Challenges to the regime now come even from prisoners. When Mr. Ahmadinejad challenged Barack Obama to a debate this month, a Green Movement website reported with grim admiration that five journalists in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison had invited Mr. Ahmadinejad to come to jail and debate them.

Very little of this news reaches a mass Western audience, and one wonders to what extent Western governments understand what's going on. If they do, their failure to support the democratic revolutionaries is all the more lamentable. READ at WSJ: Cracks in the Iranian Monolith By Michael Leeden

Sulayman, Feisal Rauf, Bin Talal and the Muslim Brotherhood Involved in the Future of Ground Zero

We have two fronts that honest people will have to fight against in order to preserve our modern way of life: The dishonest climate warming crowd and the invasion of Islamofascists ideals (and their goal to spread Sharia worldwide) in America. And the Saudi's are right in the middle of the second threat.

Islamofascism: New dots are emerging from the probe into who's behind the Ground Zero mosque, and the radical Muslim Brotherhood is coming into view.

While a couple of U.S. nonprofits — the Cordoba Initiative and its sister, the American Society for Muslim Advancement — are coordinating the New York project, they hardly give the full picture. A Saudi charity has sunk more than $300,000 into ASMA. It's called the Kingdom Foundation — headed by Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince whose 9/11 relief check was rejected after he blamed the attacks on U.S. foreign policy.

Bin Talal is a major financier of Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. His foundation is run by Saudi hijabi Muna Abu Sulayman, who appears on ASMA's Web site as one of its "Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow."

"Her work," according to her official bio, "focuses on increasing understanding between Islam and the West through establishment of academic centers and programs, both in the Middle East and the United States."

Sulayman, who spends much of her time in the U.S., happens to be the daughter of Dr. AbdulHamid Abu Sulayman, "one of the most important figures in the history of the global Muslim Brotherhood," according to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.

So? The Egypt-based Brotherhood is the parent of Hamas and al-Qaida and the source of most of the jihadi ideology and related terror throughout the world today. Citing its secret U.S. archives, prosecutors say the Brotherhood has a plan to "destroy" America "from within," and is using its agents and front groups in the U.S. to carry out that strategy. Like the mafia, it's highly organized, and uses shells and cutouts to launder money...READ at IBD " Mosque's Saudi Patron".

Maybe Obama Should Read Thomas Jefferson and Learn What is Good Government

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” - Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” 1801 -

"Otherwise free to regulate their OWN pursuits of industry and improvement"

"Rise Up" by Jeremy Hoop

The Survival of The West

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes a very interesting piece regarding how the West is declining in power and how Islam is exploding demographically while China is becoming an economic giant. While we have a President and congress that are taking us to the poor house the rest of the world is observing the weakness in America today and positioning themselves for the future ... and Obama (preceded by Bush) is drowning us in debt, controversy and excess.

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the "Clash of Civilizations," particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

Huntington's argument is worth summarizing briefly for those who now only remember his striking title. The essential building block of the post-Cold War world, he wrote, are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization.

The West's universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations...READ at WSJ - "How to Win the Clash of Civilizations".

"Government workers have incomes --30% higher and benefits 50% more costly on average than those received by equivalent private-sector workers"

Ayn Rand told a story over 50 years ago that forewarned us what would happen in America if we allowed politicians to run amok. That story is called "Atlas Shrugged" and it is amazing in its parallels with today's events. If you haven't read it - you should.

...This shift of wealth from the productive private sector to the unproductive public sector is stickier today than it was in "Atlas Shrugged" because government is now a union shop, with pay having little to do with performance. Unionized government cannot be downsized easily, and its employees have effectively become the country's most powerful entitlement special-interest group.

Thus, government-run schools controlled by the teachers unions can fail decade after decade without consequence or substantive reform. The government takeover of the health care industry — aka "ObamaCare" — was a high priority not because it was good for the majority of Americans, but because the ruling elite want to expand unionization, entitlement and dependency.

The media chase scandal and sensationalism but largely ignore the most consequential story of our time: the Obama administration's drive to shift wealth and power from the productive private sector to the nonproductive public sector. Rand calls this appropriation of wealth by the government nothing less than looting.

For her, the primary source of social good is in ingenuity and hard work that produce wealth in the form of invention and technological breakthrough. Crony capitalism and forced redistribution of wealth by faceless government bureaucrats is anything but virtuous.

Rand warns us that government policies that engender entitlement and cause business owners to go on strike and withhold their capital are detrimental to the economy. What compounds this problem today is that an out-of-control profligate government that enlarges dependence also sets us up for a greater economic crisis than the last one.

Fortunately, the catalyst for course correction is around the corner. Ironically, President Obama can be thanked for making this midterm election an overdue referendum on liberalism. Average Americans are now more informed and engaged than they have been in generations, and they are highly motivated to vote... READ at Investor's Business Daily- "Atlas Shrugged: The CliffNotes Today".

The Elites Drive the Little People Like Cattle - We Must Not Let Them

These words were written by Ayn Rand about socialism decades ago. Has anything changed? Still there are men who would tell us how to live our lives. We the "little people" must be driven like cattle to live according to the "elite" classes. And so it has been ever since the history of man has been written. It is only the men of princple who understand what freedom is and how the government can corrupt this idea who can defend us. One of these few people is Ayn Rand. Here's a sampling of what she has written.

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good. (For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand).

The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in "society as a whole," i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government.

The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia-or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases is the same.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure-terrifying, that is, if one's motive is men's welfare.

Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly. ("The Monument Builders" in The Virtue of selfishness by Ayn Rand).

Hypocrisy and the Disconnect Between The Obama's and The Little People

As we little people struggle to keep our lives together and on track with our 401k's crashing, the value of our homes plunging and the possibility of good jobs for our children in the trash for the foreseeable future it is amazing how the Obama's and other political hucksters in Washington don't get it. With Marie Antoinette...oh I mean Michelle (read) dashing from one vacation to another in tow with her numerous friends and staying at hotels (costing $2400/night!) and crooked politicians like Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters being investigated for dipping into "the peoples" coffers what are we to think about this administration? Not only are they selling America down the river by dismantling all we stand for but they assume they are God's gift to mankind and our saviours while they have their hands in the till the whole time! Look what Judicial Watch writes about Nancy Pelosi:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): Last year House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the "most corrupt" list for sneaking a $25 million earmark for her husband into a $15 billion Water Resources Development Act passed by Congress. This year, Pelosi ran afoul of federal election law by participating in an illegal advertising campaign funded by Al Gore's non-profit Alliance for Climate protection. The advertisement featuring Pelosi ran at least 300 times nationally, including in the House speaker's district, during campaign season, representing an illegal in-kind contribution to her campaign. Perhaps more disturbing than this incident, however, is the fact that Speaker Pelosi has allowed corruption to run rampant in Congress and has ignored serious incidents of crooked behavior within her own party. Pelosi promised a new era of ethics enforcement during the 2006 campaign and she has failed to deliver. Instead, she continues to protect the worst of the worst of political corruption in the House of Representatives.

Also read this at New York Daily News -

Sacrifice is something that many Americans are becoming all too familiar with during this economic downturn. It was a key theme in President Obama's inaugural address to the nation, and he's referenced it numerous times when lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.

But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns—or forgoing them altogether—the Obamas don't seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two....

The Obama modus operandi is becoming clear. From lavish trips to Spain to reportedly flying Bo, the President's Portuguese water dog, on a separate aircraft to vacation with them in Maine, to a date night in New York City that perhaps cost nearly $100,000, their idea of austerity is really just the lap of luxury, at least for ordinary folks....

I don't begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime—the First Family included. It's the extravagance of Michelle Obama's trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama's demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders. (http://www.tiadaily.com/)

The Enemy Living as Americans Within Our Borders

We now have the enemy within our borders and Washington is doing nothing ....Let's remind ourselves why we have a government in the first place - NOT to hand out goodies to every moocher that comes with a calling card to Washington but to fight our enemies. If President Obama is not up to the task then what can Americans do? What should we do...

If al-Qaida looks and sounds different as we approach 9/11's ninth anniversary, it's because it's under new American management. No fewer than four U.S. citizens and a permanent U.S. resident have risen to senior leadership posts.

These five English-speaking leaders are actively planning or facilitating attacks against their countrymen, while recruiting and radicalizing other American turncoats to carry them out.

By remaking itself into an American enterprise, al-Qaida is now more lethal than ever. Its new generation of leaders understands the way America works, having lived here for decades. They have a better sense of our security blind spots. They also know which kinds of attacks will produce both mass panic and maximum economic damage.

Al-Qaida's indigenous rebirth, moreover, befogs our military strategy. We're no longer at war with just a foreign enemy, but fellow Americans recruited by the enemy. They're supplied, in turn, by a seemingly endless stream of homegrown foot soldiers, fed by a native Muslim population once believed quiescent and nonthreatening.

Shockingly, the War on Terror has morphed into a mini-civil war, and it's posing major new challenges to its prosecution. We're now battling our own citizens. How do we deal with wartime traitors? Can the CIA assassinate them? Can it spy on them? What about their civil rights?

This muddies an already muddy war — and it's all part of al-Qaida's plan.
After 9/11, the group vowed to convert our own people against us, something once thought impossible. But it's managed to groom a startling number of American citizens and residents and install them in top leadership slots, including:

• Adnan Shukrijumah: The long-time Florida resident, who obtained a green card while living in the U.S. for more than 15 years, has replaced 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as chief of al-Qaida's terror operations...READ "Under New American Management Al Qaida Now Poses Inner Threat" by Paul Sperry at IBD.

Sign up For PJTV - You Won't Regret It

PJTV is an online news and commentary venue which you can subscribe for as little as $5.00 a month. They have great interviews and guests, they discuss the middle east, American culture and policy and Obama. A great value and you'll learn something to boot. For example they have a new segment called Minority Report, or Trifecta where they discuss hot-button issues and much, much more.

As This Administration Continues to Ruin Our Economy The Rest of The World Drills

As Americans must contend with an administration that is patently against America's interests we can look on as other countries laugh at our stupidity as they buy the rights to use scarce, deep water drilling rigs to get more oil for their countries. Has the US become a looney bin? Or a 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland? Or an insane asylum? The Wall Street Journal explains it.

...The Obama Administration is sticking by its ruinous deepwater drilling moratorium, when it would be better to take a hint from the rest of the world's oil-producers. Their response to the Gulf disaster? Learn from it, and drill on.

Norway, run by the very model of modern environmentalists, announced a deep-water drilling halt until the spill is done. However, its ban applies only to new drilling, unlike the Obama Administration's total ban.

Norway also announced it's moving ahead with a deep water push into the Barents and Norwegian Seas, putting up 94 new blocks for drilling leases. Minister of Petroleum and Energy Terje Riis-Johansen made clear he views the stoppage as temporary.

Brazil is accelerating its drilling pace, announcing it would spend some $200 billion the next five years to tap newly discovered offshore reserves at depths to 23,000 feet. State-controlled Petrobras, the world's biggest deep water producer, recently struck oil three miles under Brazil's sea—a reserve that could yield 380 million barrels of oil and natural gas.

Australian Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has offered 31 new leases off his country's coast that allow for wells at twice the depth of the BP Macondo. As recently as 2000, Australia was self-sufficient in oil and gas but its import costs are rising. The new leases reverse that trend.

"There is no intention by the government to scale back the development of the oil and gas industry in Australia," Mr. Ferguson said. "It is important in terms of the nation's energy security, jobs and the overall economy." READ at WSJ "The World Drills On. There's no ban in Norway, Brazil, Australia, Canada . . ."

Obama in Wonderland

Obama's Vision of NASA: Improving relations with the Muslim world.
"Silly me. I thought America's unparalleled space program (before the present administration began dismantling it) was a triumph of American ingenuity, technology, vision and boldness. Instead, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says its 'foremost mission' is not returning to the moon, or completing a mission to Mars; rather it is improving relations with the Muslim world. Bolden says President Obama told him he also wants NASA to encourage children to study science and math, but isn't that best done by applying science and math to a robust space program?

"Obama is boldly going where no president has gone before. It is a continuation of the president's subjugation of himself (bowing to foreign leaders) and the country he is charged with leading by obsequiously kowtowing to a people for whom advancement to the Middle Ages would be a step up." Cal Thomas, Syndicated Columnist.

Federal Spending and National Debt
"In one of President Obama’s many prissy little sermonettes, complete with finger-wagging, he has declared: 'Next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits step up. Because I’m calling their bluff.'

"There is already a bipartisan commission set to provide political cover for the Democrats’ wild spending, which has increased the national debt from 63 percent of the country’s GDP in 2004 to 83 percent in 2009— and official estimates of more than 90 percent this year, with more increases in sight.

"Why Republicans join such transparent attempts to rescue the Democrats from the political consequences of their own actions is one of the many unsolved mysteries of human nature in general and the Republican party in particular." Thomas Sowell, Syndicated columnist

Read more at Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF).

“He uses clear language, he doesn’t mince words, he’s funny, and he says what he thinks.”

So said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute describing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and reported in The New York Times. He has been relentless, ruthless and a welcome type of politician that is honest and does what needs to be done to get the budget balanced and live within their means. Hopefully he will continue to be the man he is today: honest, courageous, and blunt.

“The most important thing in public life, in a job like governor, is for the people you’re representing to know exactly where you stand,” Mr. Christie said in an interview on Friday. “People who disagree with me on things at least have a sense of comfort in knowing where I’m coming from.”

In a mostly blue state where Democrats control the Legislature, Mr. Christie, a Republican, won election last year mostly because of the deep unpopularity of his opponent, Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Mr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor known for aggression rather than deal-making, took office to predictions that his hard-charging style would not work in the labyrinth of Trenton, where factions of party, region and interest group would slow him down.

Instead, he confronted the powerful public employees’ unions and won, cutting future pensions and benefits, and persuaded voters to defeat hundreds of local school budgets. He got nearly everything he wanted in the state budget, making the deepest cuts in generations. And the Assembly is expected this week to give final passage to one of his cherished goals: a cap on local property taxes.

The governor has repeatedly used his powers more confrontationally than his predecessors, wading into school budget fights, freezing the actions of semiautonomous public authorities and breaking with tradition by refusing to reappoint a State Supreme Court justice.

“I think we all underestimated his political skill coming in,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “You can’t deny that he’s been a tour de force in Trenton. He has managed to control the legislative agenda more than other governors, despite having a Legislature controlled by the opposite party".

"New Jersey Governor Defies Political Expectations" By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA; Published: July 11, 2010

"In Questions of Powers...Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the changes of the Constitution"

Thomas Jefferson

Tracincski at TIADaily.com and The Intellectual Activist has done a marvellous job putting together Thomas Jefferson's thoughts a writings regarding how HE WAS very adamant about the limited powers of the central government and the liberties of the citizenry. For the Left to say today that our Fathers were not specific as to the limited powers that politicians and government have is an outright lie.

A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.1 What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?2

Our grievances we have [set forth] with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art.3

Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid.4

Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. The idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right.5

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater [degree] are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose a man has less right in himself than one of his neighbors or all of them put together. This would be slavery and not that liberty which the Bill of Rights has made inviolable and for the preservation of which our government has been changed.6

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers.7

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice, [our representatives], to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism—free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.8
I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.9

When we consider that this government is charged with the external and mutual relations only of these states, we may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices or officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily. Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it may never be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, government shall itself consume the residue of what it was instituted to guard.10

[In short,] we [must] prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them.11

The earth belongs to each generation during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. [Thus], no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.12

We are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium.13 Paper is poverty. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.14

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.15

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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.16
A little patience, and we shall see the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.17 Here will be preserved a model of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization constantly subject to his own will.18

The kind invitation to be present at [your] celebration of the anniversary of American Independence is most flattering. In the bold and doubtful election we [made] between submission or the sword, [it is] a consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be—to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all—the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that that mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.19

The flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.20

For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.21

1. Letter to James Madison, 1787, 2. Letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787, 3. A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774, 4. Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816, 5. Letter to Francis W. Gilmer, 1816, 6. Letter to James Monroe, 1782, 7. Opinion on Creating a National Bank, 1791, 8. Kentucky Resolution, 1798, 9. Letter to William Ludlow, 1824, 10. First Annual Message to Congress, 1801, 11. Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1802, 12. Letter to James Madison, 1789, 13. Letter to Abbe Salimankis, 1810, 14. Letter to Edward Carrington, 1788, 15. Letter to John Taylor, 1798, 16. First Inaugural Address, 1801, 17. Letter to John Taylor, 1798, 18. Letter to William Plumer, 1815, 19. Letter to Roger C. Weightman, 1826, 20. Letter to John Adams, 1821, 21. Letter to Roger C. Weightman, 1826.

For the sake of readability, ellipses are not marked where cuts have been made in the original quotation, but additions made for the sake of flow and comprehension have been marked with square brackets. VISIT ROB TRACINSKI'S "THE INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST' AND TIADaily.com

Kagan Could Endanger Our Beloved Constitution

Another liberal like Kagan on the Supreme Court is a danger to the Founding Principles of America. You should be afraid --very afraid.

Barack Obama revealed his goal for the Supreme Court when he complained on Chicago radio station WBEZ-FM in 2001 that the Earl Warren Court wasn't "radical" enough because "it didn't break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution" in order to allow "redistribution of wealth."

Now that Obama is president, he has the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who will "break free" from the Constitution and join him in "fundamentally transforming" America. That's the essence of his choice of Elena Kagan as his second Supreme Court nominee. She never was a judge, and her paper trail is short. But it's long enough to prove that she is a clear and present danger to the Constitution.

When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she presented a guest speaker who is known as the most activist judge in the world: Judge Aharon Barak, formerly president of the Israeli Supreme Court.

The polar opposite of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "all legislative powers" are vested in the elected legislative body, Barak has written that a judge should "make" and "create" law, assume "a role in the legislative process" and give statutes "new meaning that suits new social needs." READ "Constituion is Endangered if Kagan OK'd" at IBS.

"The Destruction of Capitalism in the Very Country that Created it."

Don't know much about Perdie, but it seems he's walking across America to find out for himself what makes America tick. He started this to bring attention to governments massive deficit spending and its massive expansion of power. I take my hat off to this courageous young man. Support him by watching his videos on YOUTUBE and leaving comments and. I'm not sure if he's asking for donations?

Do You Mean It When You Say "The Pledge of Allegiance"?

Words, Words and Words...Obama Is the Master of Uttering the Wrong Words and Giving the Wrong Signal to our Enemies

If you think that words don't matter in politics and the world stage you should read this essay by Victor Hanson "(Even a Few) Words Matter to Bad Actors" at IBD. In this article Mr. Hanson lists some of the remarks, comments and quips that have been made in history and the signals these utterances give to those who are threats to our liberty. History is filled with the consequences of the wrong words at the wrong time. Obama and his minions seem not to be aware (or are doing it on purpose) that what comes out of their mouths is interpreted with great care. And if the thugs of the world see that Obama and his administration will not carry a stick then they will have their their way.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was ecstatic after the Munich Conference of 1938. He bragged that he had coaxed Adolf Hitler into stopping further aggression after the Nazis gobbled up much of Czechoslovakia.

Arriving home, Chamberlain proudly displayed Hitler's signature on the Munich Agreement, exclaiming to adoring crowds, "I believe it is peace for our time. ... And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds."

But after listening to Chamberlain's nice nonsense, Hitler remarked to his generals about a week later, "Our enemies are little worms, I saw them at Munich." War followed in about a year.

Sometimes deterrence against aggression is lost with just a few unfortunate words or a relatively minor gesture.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a comprehensive address to the National Press Club in early 1950. Either intentionally or by accident, he mentioned that South Korea was beyond the American defense perimeter. Communist North Korea, and later China, agreed. War broke out six months later.

Well before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and sent aid to communist rebels in Central America, President Jimmy Carter announced that America had lost its "inordinate fear of communism."

In 1981, Britain, as a goodwill gesture in the growing Falkland Islands dispute, promised to withdraw a tiny warship from the islands. But to the Argentine dictatorship, that reset-button diplomacy was seen as appeasement. It convinced them that the United Kingdom was no longer the nation of Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington and Winston Churchill. So Argentina invaded the Falklands... (READ at IBD) Read what Obama has said so far to make this world a more dangerous world by what comes out of his mouth.

"I will Make No Pledges This Week Other Than This One" bla bla bla

"I will make no pledges this week other than this one," Kagan said, "that if confirmed, I will remember and abide by all these lessons: I will listen hard, to every party before the court and to each of my colleagues. I will work hard. And I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle, and in accordance with law."

Rob Tracinski at TIADaily.com has a very good analysis - the congress basically rolls over and plays dead. Let's be sure not to put anyone on the Supreme Court who would defend our Constitution and what America stands for - let's pack the court with leftists so that we can foist one over the people as we wish.

Vapid? A repetition of platitudes?

To the extent that Kagan is saying anything, we also seem to be seeing a case of what some commentators have named "confirmation conversion," in which a Supreme Court nominee suddenly discovers the merits of, say, sticking to the original meaning of the Constitution, and holds to that view for the duration of the hearings—and not a moment longer.

For example, take Justice Sotomayor's confirmation conversion on the Second Amendment, in which she seemed to affirm an individual right to gun ownership—only to join, in the most recent gun rights case, a dissenting opinion which flatly denied such a right.
Or consider Kagan's failure to answer a question intended to get her to commit on the idea that there are some limits—any limits—to the powers that can be claimed by Congress under the Interstate Commerce Clause.

If this pattern sounds familiar, it is because Obama has basically nominated a less telegenic version of himself to the Supreme Court. All of the characteristic are there: a glib talker with an ingratiating manner; a thin resume that features plenty of stints at prestigious institutions, but few actual accomplishments and no "paper trail" of specific positions taken on controversial issues; a maddening vagueness, even in response to direct questions, about where she actually stands.

Add to this another crucial ingredient: a press that confuses glibness for "brilliance" and limits itself to soft-focus scrutiny because they think that the nominee will advance their own political agenda.

Oh, yes, and we will soon see one other hallmark of Obama-era politics—not the politics of his campaign, but the politics by which he has governed. The Democrats will ram through Kagan's confirmation by the raw power of a congressional majority, without even a pretense at persuading opponents or the American people of her merits

"Our Disarmer In Chief" Guess Who...

The Leader of the free world is no leader of the free world. He is making it a more dangerous place for freedom loving people to live in. It is difficult to grasp that we elected a man that has so much antipathy for America and her allies....and it's terrifying in a world of nukes.

National Security: The administration is ready to sign a treaty stripping us of our ability to defend ourselves against enemy nuclear missiles, including Iran's and North Korea's. In space, no one can hear you surrender.

On Monday, the ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, part of the U.S. missile defense shield, successfully shot down a ballistic missile launched from a ship's deck off Kauai, Hawaii. The test simulated an Iranian SCUD launched from the deck of a ship off the U.S. coast, which, if armed with a nuke, could devastate the American heartland.

The simulated Scud was launched from the deck of the decommissioned 603-foot amphibious assault ship Tripoli. U.S. Army soldiers of the 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss, Texas, successfully intercepted it with a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor.

Missile defense, the dream of President Reagan, is a successful reality. With a layered system of ground-based, long-range interceptors, the sea-based Aegis system and theater systems such as the Patriot and THAAD, we can defend against — rather than just avenge — a ballistic missile attack.

Yet our disarmer in chief, President Obama, stands ready to strip us naked before our enemies by signing a treaty designed to demilitarize space. Since interceptors such as THAAD are designed to hit their targets on the edge of space and can be modified to kill satellites, such a treaty would effectively ban their use.

Almost simultaneously on Monday, the Obama administration unveiled a new space policy that reverses the Bush administration policy of unrestricted access to and operations in space. The Bush policy, released in August 2006, said it "rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space." We had a right to defend ourselves.

That right will be surrendered unilaterally by a new space policy under which the U.S. will "consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies."

Such fairness is in the eyes of the beholder, and this administration does not have a good track record of enhancing the national security of the United States. For example, it has cut the number of ground-based interceptors planned for Alaska and Hawaii, both within range of North Korea's Taepodong-2.

It has also betrayed our Polish and Czech allies by scrapping plans for a similar system in Europe. And it has scrapped tested and ready systems like the Air Force's Airborne Laser (ABL), a modified Boeing 747-F that can be deployed anywhere in the world, loitering off an enemy's coast to destroy its missiles in their vulnerable boost phase. And it's reusable ...READ
"Dropping the Shield" at IBD.

The Nightmare of the Obama's Leadership

More evidence keeps pouring in regarding the corrupt, inept Obama administration. While other countries are cutting spending, we increase spending. While other countries are drilling for more oil, Obama takes 78 days to respond to the BP disaster and then has the gall to place a moratorium on more drilling in the gulf. While other countries are making their government shrink (Canada and Australia), our government threatens to gobble all of us up and spit us back out. Our only way out of the nightmare of Obama's leadership is the November elections.

The administration's stimulus program has failed. Growth is slow and unemployment remains high. The president, his friends and advisers talk endlessly about the circumstances they inherited as a way of avoiding responsibility for the 18 months for which they are responsible.

But they want new stimulus measures—which is convincing evidence that they too recognize that the earlier measures failed. And so the U.S. was odd-man out at the G-20 meeting over the weekend, continuing to call for more government spending in the face of European resistance.

The contrast with President Reagan's antirecession and pro-growth measures in 1981 is striking. Reagan reduced marginal and corporate tax rates and slowed the growth of nondefense spending. Recovery began about a year later. After 18 months, the economy grew more than 9% and it continued to expand above trend rates.

Two overarching reasons explain the failure of Obamanomics. First, administration economists and their outside supporters neglected the longer-term costs and consequences of their actions. Second, the administration and Congress have through their deeds and words heightened uncertainty about the economic future. High uncertainty is the enemy of investment and growth. READ "Why Obamanomics Has Failed" Uncertainty about future taxes and regulations is enemy No. 1 of economic growth- The Wall Street Jr.

America Continues Dithering While Iran Goes Nuke

With all our other problems being made worse by our incompetent White House, now we have to hear that Mr. Panetta's agency reported falsely way back in 2007 that Iran had halted work on their nukes. Did you believe it at the time? So thugs are going to have the capability to nuke us and we sit and dither...it's unbelievable.

...Mr. Panetta buried for good the discredited and politically motivated 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which claimed that Iran halted work on nuclear weapons in 2003. Now the agency, which helped put together that report, believes the Iranians are close to acquiring multiple bombs.

"We think they have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons," Mr. Panetta said. "They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable." He said Iran also continues to develop missiles and warheads.

The Obama Administration spent its first year extending a hand to Tehran. Rebuffed, this spring Washington went to its weapon of apparent last resort, sanctions. The U.N. Security Council adopted a set of weak sanctions this month, and the U.S. and Europe have followed with others of their own. Cue Mr. Panetta: "I think the sanctions will have some impact. . . . It could help weaken the regime. It could create some serious economic problems. Will it deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not."

So the U.S. now thinks Iran stands barely two years from an atomic bomb that could target Israel, Europe and beyond, and sanctions "probably" won't stop it. No wonder the world—and not least Tehran—is concluding that the real Obama Administration policy is to learn to live with the inevitability of an Iranian bomb. Read "Panetta's Bomb" at Wall Street Jr.

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).