Scott Brown Open Thread

I thought it would interesting to talk about tonights very important election in Mass. Let the games begin…

The candidate for the people.

A proud SEIU supporter. The candidate for special interests!

Gio-

Green Fight – Green Fight

Four Ecofascists found frozen to death in the VolksWagon Van during the climte summit at Copenhagen. Scientists all agree that Global Warming is to blame for their deaths.

Andy Revkin over at the NYT’s must be getting desperate. My guess is that not only has he lost readers on his NYT sponsored blog, but people have stopped believing anything he says. Copenhagen and the hacked emails has shown that people in his profession had better find another career. So maybe, just maybe, this is his last desperate attempt to get anyone to listen to him. Have fun with this one, especially the title. LOL x 20!

One other thing, Andy is trying to be-little Anthony Watts of www.whatsupwiththat.com in this article because Mr. Watts is one of the most trusted in this fight. He has this redeeming quality of telling the truth. Hansen on the other hand is a jerk! Nuff said.

Gio-

Why Cold Weather Actually Means A Warmer Climate

Hansen and Watts Agree: Cold Weather, Warm Climate

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

As the ice that formed on the Hudson River during the recent cold snap begins to break up (see my video snapshot below), it’s perhaps a good time to close the case on  unusual cold spells in an unusually warm world.

Anthony Watts runs a Web site that has become perhaps the most popular portal for climate news and opinion of interest to people aiming to rebut warnings that humans are poised to disrupt climate. James E. Hansen of NASA has long been the most prominent scientist advocating sharp and prompt cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases to avoid a climatic calamity.

In the last few days, a notable conjunction occurred when these two men essentially agreed on something: that the planet — despite a lot of very cold patches — is unusually warm.

On his nongovernmental Web site, Dr. Hansen posted “If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?” (pdf) — a draft article, written with several colleagues, setting the current cold conditions in global (warming) context.

Mr. Watts posted a piece in what he called “the weather is not climate department,” highlighting satellite measurements showing that January, and particularly Jan. 13, were unusually warm (for the 30-year satellite period). It centered on Lubos Motl’s analysis of satellite temperature data by the University of Alabama, Huntsville, hardly a hotbed of global warming alarm.

Some critics said this was simply  Mr. Watts’s trying to cover for his earlier posts on unusual cold and to appear moderate amid all the strident charges that global warming is an outright hoax.

But to my mind, given the depth of the gulf between the perception of climate held by many people and the scientific realities, this is a moment of accord worth noting.

Religion and MLK Jr.

Please sit down before reading the rest of this paragraph. Ok, now that you are seated, let me tell you something that I never thought I would admit to… The Religion Editor at the Huffington Post has won my respect. This guy, Paul Raushenbush may be the only level-headed person in the entire Huffpo operation. However, I’m afraid he may be burned at the stake once the loons at HP read this piece, so before he gets taken-out I would like to congratulate him on his honesty concerning Dr. King and religion.

Gio-

Is Progress Possible? The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul Raushenbush

Religion Editor for the Huffington Post

Once a year our nation focuses on, well really just glances at, the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. We play recordings of his famous address in Washington, and school children draw pictures of what it means to have a dream. This is all for the good. It reminds us of the civil rights struggle of the past and hopefully brings us into the questions of continued racism in the present. For the more radical of us, remembering Martin includes his commitments against militarism and his opposition to the Vietnam war; and his deep questions about our nation’s economy which leaves so many millions poor – questions that earned King the label of communists by some. But perhaps the greatest legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is his profound religious belief that God’s will on earth was one of justice for all people and peace among nations, and King’s conviction that in doing’s God will we can progress and that our world can become a better place.

Now this last statement will disturb two kinds of people. The first are those who wish to rid King of any annoying religious influence, and to sanitize the civil rights movement of God, Jesus or church. The second are those Christians who believe that social progress is not possible and not part of the mission of the church, but rather a distraction from saving souls. Both of these groups have a serious problem on Martin Luther King, Jr. day as they are at odds with understanding who King was and his message of hope today.

Celebrating MLK day without acknowledging religion is like admiring the exterior of the car without understanding the fuel and engine that makes it go. King was a Christian minister who had faith that God cared not only about the souls of the people but also cared about their bodies and the conditions in which they lived. King said: “The gospel at its best deals with the whole man. Not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well being but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”

To understand King’s concern for the conditions of people here on earth we have to go through the black church. Martin’s grandfather, the Rev. AD Williams was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with its congregation of black Americans struggling with the Jim Crow oppression in Atlanta. Like most black churches, his parish was a community center of sorts that cared for both the spiritual and physical wellbeing of his congregation. Rev. Williams followed the leadership of both Booker T. Washington as well as the more radical WEB Dubois. He realized that the uplift of the black people was part of his Christian calling, and in 1917, Rev. Williams helped to form the NAACP chapter in Atlanta. Rev. Williams was followed at Ebenezer by his son in law Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., also known as Daddy King who continued on the family pastoral and justice tradition. Following in his family’s footsteps, Martin Luther King, Jr. already had a visceral understanding of racism, and knew that the church was a viable means of confronting societal oppression. At seminary he was introduced to Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr. King called upon Rauschenbusch’s social ethic of love, Niebuhr’s understanding of power and Gandhi’s means of non-violence to be a leader of the civil rights movement for the dignity and full equality of black Americans. This is not to say that King only worked with Christians, he appreciated the vision off Gandhi and Jews such as Rabbi Heschel, and many other kinds of people were crucial in support of the movement. But to understand King, we need to acknowledge his deep Christian commitments and religious impulse.

Yet there were and are many Christians who look at effort’s such as King’s at improving life on earth as a waste of time, and who look forward to the apocalypse when God cataclysmically usher in the great new kingdom. This world view tends to draw people inward, towards personal piety and to ignore or reject efforts to reform the world. We see this in the popular Left Behind series that actually associates international efforts at peace with the anti-christ (and which neatly associated him with President Obama in last year’s election) For these people, Martin Luther King’s hope for progress here on earth was misguided and perhaps even demonic. And many Christians resisted the civil rights movement and after the civil rights movement forced the integration of schools, suddenly a great many “Christian Academies” sprung up which was a legal way to segregate as these academies were largely for white families who did not want to integrate.

So we come down to the real question that King poses to us – is progress possible? I have been asked this question many times by people who think progressives are deluding ourselves and that things can never change or that it is better to conserve things as they are. But I do not, and as a Christian, cannot believe that. I believe that the true importance of King and the history of race, slavery and the civil rights movement is to testify that we can progress, and that while there will always be setbacks, that God’s will is that we move forward and continue the slow painful process of justice and freedom.

In 1865, four months after the civil war ended, an abolitionist named Henry Ward Beecher addressed a black church in Charleston South Carolina offering this word of hope about God’s kingdom of justice:

“What is God doing in this World? By day and by night, in light and in darkness, by good and by evil, by his friends and by his enemies, God is building up a kingdom among Men…This kingdom is building very slowly. It meets with great opposition – so great that sometimes you can not tell whether it is going backward or forward. But God is building this great kingdom, though on account of its magnitude, it is slowly advancing, but it is advancing surely.”

One hundred years later, Martin Luther King would say: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

And fifty years after that, America would elect its first African American president.

The legacy of King is not that progress is inevitable, but that it is possible. The legacy of King is that through struggle sustained by a faith in God who loves justice and freedom, we can become a more perfect union, and a more perfect world. Now that is something to celebrate.

March for Life

A message to all members of Team Sarah

Join us at the March for Life this Friday, January 22nd! Team, The 37th Annual March for Life is this coming Friday, January 22nd.  Every year, thousands of Americans march on Washington for the Annual March for Life.  Most news outlets give it little air time, if any.  With the focus on health care reform this year, it will be interesting to see how coverage will be handled.  New this year, organizers of the March have added a “Mini-Rally” in front of the White House to the event agenda. Visit www.MarchforLife.org. If you are a member of Team Sarah and you are planning on attending the March or any of the associated events, please be sure to check out the following information: TEAM SARAH MARCH FOR LIFE GROUP: http://www.teamsarah.org/group/teamsarahmarch4life2010 You will find a summary of everything there, plus links to the event pages. Updates and information will be emailed through the group, so if you plan on attending, please be sure to join the group. THE EVENTS: The Convention:  http://www.teamsarah.org/events/team-sarah-the-march-4-life The White House Mini-Rally: http://www.teamsarah.org/events/team-sarah-march-4-life-white TS Meet-Up Breakfast: http://www.teamsarah.org/events/team-sarah-the-march-4-life-1 THE MARCH: http://www.teamsarah.org/events/team-sarah-march-4-life-2010 The Rose Dinner: http://www.teamsarah.org/events/march-4-life-28th-annual-rose In the group, we also have links for the March for Life site, the Metro, the March Route, and the Ronald Reagan Building For more information or any questions contact: Debi in VA (TS-TL), Billy (TS-TL), or Marta We hope to see you there! Best, The Tiny Team behind the Team teamsarahhq@gmail.com Support Team Sarah at http://teamsarah.kintera.org

Lord Forgive Me

As you know, I get updates from hard-core lefty organizations so I can keep an eye on them. Today, on MLK jr’s day of celebration, the one org that I despise the most (People for the American Way) comes out with an email update that uses his memory as a political tool. The email is posted below, but in a nutshell this is what it says… Liberal good – Conservative bad.

Any and all editing done by me in the color red. 

Gio-

************* PFAW People for the Un-American Way

Dear Giovanni,

This morning I awoke with a heart full of thankfulness and a mind in deep reflection. It is the national holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a day of remembrance for the spokesman for civil and human rights, the advocate for an end to discrimination, the preacher, teacher, prophetic voice lost in August 1968 to one who believed he (or they) could silence a vision, a people, a movement, a dream.

Dr. King spoke of many social and political concerns facing the nation and the world at the time — war, morality, disenfranchisement, the “unchecked cancer” called hate , “the curse of poverty” — (we still struggle with all of these today) that were best summed up on August 28, 1963. That day in Washington, DC, before hundreds of thousands from all walks of life, he called for racial equality, for “judgment” based not upon the color of our skin but by “the content of [our] character.” The speech, called “a speech of rhetoric” by conservatives past and present, established a benchmark for the country if we were to truly become united. It would have been nice if the jerk that wrote this had left a few examples of those supposed Conservatives past and present that called it a speech of rhetoric. All the Conservatives I have known in my life live by the notion that you judge a person by their character, not color.

As I consider the hurtful words spewed by Pat Robertson last week regarding the earthquake in Haiti and subsequent loss of thousands of human lives (words not far removed from those he spoke of with regard to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005), I am profoundly more aware of how far we have come as a nation, and how much further we still have to go. Ok, we all know Pat Robertson let’s his mouth take over his brain at times, so why is anyone on the left pretending to be shocked by him any longer. And if you look at it from the perspective of Mr. Robertson and his religious beliefs, it makes all the sense in the world that he would see evil playing a part in this. Making a deal with the devil has that effect on some people. 

When I was a child we use to say “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” But as I became older and conscious of the world around me, I learned that was not true. One word however that communicates both power and oppression is freedom. Freedom is a core value written in many documents and a key component of various sacred texts. While sometimes misused, it is a word and a principle I love. If this is true, then why do you want to elect people that would take some of our freedoms away? 

Freedom is religious liberty, freedom is a right to love and to marry whomever one chooses, freedom is a livable wage. Dr. King once wrote, “There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom.” Dr. King had it right, you have it wrong. You and the organization you work for
seem to be under the impression that someone else is trying to force religion on you. I would like to know who that person is. And we already have the right to marry whom we choose. You only have a problem with it being a man and a woman that is traditionally allowed to marry. Without knowing every detail of Dr. King I would bet good money that he would be completey against same sex marriage. You always conveniently forget that he was a Preacher and was a good Christian man. And where in the world did you find the silly quote of “freedom is a livable wage”? My guess… out of some Marxist pamphlet being handed out at a University function.

The images ingrained in my memory from early childhood of the violent deaths of Dr. King and the Kennedy brothers taught me the price that could be paid by those who believe in freedom so deeply that they live on the front line in the fight to secure that precious gift and blessing for others. No argument here. 

Today, as I celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am also aware of the approaching one-year anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s 44th president and the first African American holder of the country’s highest office. I remember the celebration of that landmark and the genuine happiness shared by most Americans. But this new picture of America in the 21st century was met with fear and resentment by the political and religious leaders who use race, hate, homophobia and xenophobia to advance a narrow, manipulative “wrong winged” agenda. And I wish you lefty Marxists would stop it! 

I remain hopeful, and thankful, for the opportunity to fight for change… for freedom. As a favorite song of mine goes, “It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come. Oh yes it will.” Considering how Americans are starting to wake up to the leftist shenanigans, change is most definately coming!

One day we will all be judged by the content of our character. In the meantime, I thank those who carry on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy in the fight for freedom, justice and equality for all. As the late Senator Edward Kennedy once said, “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” Happy Birthday Dr. King!  I’m so glad that you didn’t try to turn this into a political piece. Oooops, my bad, you already did that!

Thank you, and Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Amen!

Sincerely,

Leslie Watson Malachi, Director of African American Religious Affairs Hmmm, I wonder who put you in charge of all Black religions?

Monday Morning Reminder

 

 

Gio-

In Honor Of A Great Man

I would like to use this thread as an Open Forum/Thread and have people talk about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Here’s a starter… What is your favorite remembrance or quote of/from Dr. King?

Dr. King would be proud to see a man of color in the White House, but he would not be happy with the man of color that occupies it now.

 

 

 

Please take the time to tell the world that you are NOT a racist!

Go here… www.iamnotaracist.wordpress.com

Mass Suicide Pact

Obama has yet to tell his Democrat supporters in the House and Senate that he is asking many of them to commit political suicide. The strange part is… for the most part, Dems are happily being led to the self inflicted slaughter. Can they really be this dumb???

Gio-

Democrats consider backup plan for health care reform

CNN - Dana Bash, Ed Henry - ‎40 minutes ago‎

(CNN) — Faced with the once-unthinkable prospect of losing the Massachusetts Senate race, Democratic officials on Capitol Hill are quietly talking about options for passing health care reform without that critical 60th Senate vote.

Top White House aides insist they are not engaging in any talk of contingency plans, because they believe Democrat Martha Coakley will beat Republican Scott Brown in Tuesday’s crucial Senate battle.

“We are not having any discussions like that,” White House spokesman Bill Burton told CNN. “We believe she is going to win.”

Asked about potential contingency plans as Air Force One returned to the Washington area after President Obama’s Sunday campaign rally for Coakley in Boston, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted to reporters the plan is to still pass health care reform with 60 votes. “We think Coakley will win this race,” Gibbs said.

But Democratic sources on Capitol Hill say “what-if” discussions are taking place about how they could proceed with health care if Coakley is defeated, and they privately admit none of their alternatives is very good. According to senior Democratic congressional officials, here are options under discussion:

Pass health care reform before Scott Brown is seated.

But multiple Democratic sources say this is unlikely. Even if House and Senate Democrats could reach a deal to meld their bills and pass them in the next couple of weeks — a big if — there would be a huge outcry from not only Republicans, but also an increasingly distrustful public.

For that reason, one senior Democratic source says some Democratic lawmakers who voted yes last time have already warned they would vote no if health care is voted on in advance of any swearing in of Brown.

The House passes the Senate health care bill.

Democratic sources also call this extremely unlikely, because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi likely wouldn’t have the votes to pass it. Many House Democrats have major differences with several provisions in the Senate bill, especially the way the Senate structured a tax on high-cost insurance plans.

Revisit the idea of trying to push health care through the Senate with only 51 votes, a simple majority.

But to do that, Democrats would have to use a process known as reconciliation, which presents technical and procedural issues that would delay the process for a long time, and Democrats are eager to put the health care debate behind them and move onto economic issues such as job creation as soon as possible this election year.

Try once again to get moderate Maine Republican Olympia Snowe’s vote.

They could try for a compromise health reform plan with the independent-minded Republican, but multiple Democratic sources say they believe that is unlikely now.

Their health care overhaul dies.

Although some Democrats are not ruling out this possibility, numerous top Democrats say not passing a health care bill for the president to sign is unthinkable after he put so much political capital into passing a reform bill, and congressional Democrats spent much of last year working on it.

Obama’s Bank Tax Deception

Dan Scott hits another Home Run while he unmasks the deception of Obama and the Bank Tax.

Gio-

Obama’s Tax On The Banks

Obama dreaming about how to best destroy our free market economy. His first idea.... Kill off the banks!

President Obama and his advisors announced they were asking Congress to pass a tax on banks to loosely as he put it, pay back every dime of TARP funds used to save them. His condescending announcement blaming the banks was laughable ignorance at best and deceitful at worst. He further went on to imply that the banks should desist from sending lawyers and lobbyists to Washington and just do the responsible thing as though the banks have been shirking this financial obligation. This is great populist sloganeering, however, like most liberal assertions; they are falsehoods just waiting to be exposed. So is this a simple case of ignorance on President Obama’s part or was he lying for some ulterior motive?

The facts are: all the banks except Citicorp and Wells Fargo have paid back every dime of TARP money they in some cases were forced to accept from the government lest CEOs be removed from their positions. Both of these two banks are working diligently to pay this money back. Why? Self-interest, they don’t want to be under the government’s control. Which begs the question, didn’t Obama appoint a czar to “regulate” the salary and bonus issue of TARP borrowers that he is railing about? It wasn’t until the banks publicly complained and the Taxpayers (Tea Party Protesters) demonstrating in the streets against spend thrift behavior that the government relented to allow these institutions to pay back the TARP funds. In the liberal world apparently this was all done for the benefit of these institutions when many of them didn’t want a dime of government money in the first place, then the banks had the audacity of still turning a profit and paying bonuses to employees who’s activities made that profit possible. You see, since the banks are turning a profit and paying bonuses during the very same period they received TARP funds, then clearly they never needed the money in the first place thus conflicting with the liberal narrative, “it was a crisis, they had to do something.” The reality was, what they did wasn’t necessary much less proper, most Americans already knew this intuitively, the banks just proved it in black and white on their financial statements. Liberals really hate those pesky facts.

Under Obama’s proposal, the government controlled TARP borrowing entities of Freddie Mac ($50.7 billion), Fannie Mae ($59.9 billion), GM ($50.7 billion) and Chrysler ($12.8 billion) will not be paying this tax or fee. Now why would that be? Coincidentally, GM claimed it would pay back $1 billion (but hasn’t), Freddie and Fannie paid back some $4.3 billion and Chrysler has not paid back any TARP money nor are they ever going to do so and worse, the government, i.e. the taxpayers are going to have to throw more good money after bad back into GM, Freddie and Fannie. Why? To save jobs, you know whose jobs, the unions who financially supported the Obama election campaign. The unions by the way never took a pay cut to save their fellow worker’s jobs. Why Fannie and Freddie? Well, who is going to loan money to people who can’t and shouldn’t be borrowing money for a home? By the way, the executives at Freddie and Fannie got bonuses for moving more bad loans in 2009, so how’s that pay czar doing? The truth is, Obama needs to cover up the fact that these failed entities are financial losers, and once again the government bureaucrats in their infinite stupidity chose poorly. The only way all the TARP funds can ever be fully paid back is to confiscate the money via a tax or fee from those who are successful, namely those companies who never wanted the money in the first place. In Obama’s world, it’s not fair that his choices failed and others succeeded!

The tax or fee is going to be levied on institutions whose assets exceed $50 billion and engage in what is deemed financially risky behavior, you know like creating financial instruments that package home loans (Collateralized Debt Obligations), or insure bondholders against catastrophic financial loss or leveraged buyouts for growth and acquisition. This is not just banks but also includes insurance companies. The point of insurance is to transfer risk for a fee; hence any insurance by definition is “risky behavior”. Companies like AIG not only sell derivatives to insure against bond default, they also sell life insurance, car insurance and property insurance. The upshot here is all taxes or fees imposed by the government will be passed on and borne by the consumer in the form of higher prices for things such as: life insurance, car insurance, property insurance, mortgage insurance, all manner of business insurance policies, and loans. If demand drops off or any particular “risk” becomes uneconomical, fewer companies will offer such products thus reducing the pressure of competition to hold down prices. In other words, you, the taxpayer will pay back every dime to Barack Obama for him to spend on some other vote worthy cause.

Now when the Whitehouse thinks it’s going to claw back $90 billion over ten years time they are basing this on a failed static model which doesn’t account for the consumer’s reaction to higher prices. How many times have liberals gloated about all the money they will make in taxes only to find out later they vastly over estimated the take? Apparently, liberals believe everything will go on as before with no consequences. They want you, the taxpayer, to believe it because the implication and reality is a reduction of economic activity is the inevitable result of a tax increase.

But let’s come to the heart of Barack Obama’s false assertions, which is the rationalization for levying the tax to pay back TARP funds because some didn’t. Barack Obama blames the banks for causing the financial meltdown. A bald faced lie. It was he, Barack Obama (ACORN attorney suing banks to make liar loans), Rahm Emanuel (CEO of Freddie Mac) and Franklin Raines (CEO of Fannie Mae) who lowered the lending standards for zero down loans and the cadre of corrupt politicians like Chuck Schumer, Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank and others (Sen. Barack Obama among them in 2005) who repeatedly blocked any possibility of reforms from 2001 onwards to prevent the financial meltdown. Remember, the Democrat party line was any attempt at reforms of Freddie and Fannie were firstly unnecessary and secondly racist.

The involvement of the banks in the meltdown came in the form of one, issuing home loans under Freddie and Fannie guidelines to be purchased by them and two, packaging tranches (name for bundled loans) of loans to be sold on the open market and investing in many of those tranches themselves, all which fueled the housing bubble. Apparently, the guilt of the banks was in participation with easy loan scheme. Let’s be clear what happened here, Rahm Emanuel (President Obama’s current chief of staff) and Franklin Raines LIED to or misled the bond rating agencies into believing all loans held or packaged and sold for Freddie and Fannie had the full faith and credit of the US Government, thus giving them AAA bond status, this was in fact NOT TRUE. They also set the terms under which Freddie and Fannie bought loans from the banks and the banks loaned money under those guidelines. Both Rahm Emanuel and Franklin Raines are close friends of President Barack Obama. AIG and other insurance companies based on the erroneous AAA ratings of the bonds issued insurance instruments (now deemed risky behavior) to protect the bondholders. Insurance companies selling bond insurance for AAA rated issues was like selling hurricane insurance in Montana, the premiums were dirt-cheap since no one ever believed an AAA rated bond would default. When the defaults mounted, both the bondholders (many large banks) and the insurance companies (like AIG) were set to take catastrophic financial losses. The only way for the banks to be made whole was for the government to give money to AIG who in turn paid on the insurance policies issued on those tranches (bonds) held by the bondholders.

Why did the government feel it was necessary to keep the banks whole? Well, whose money was it that the banks used to buy these tranches? Hint, the business of a bank is to aggregate smaller depositors savings (you and me), pay them interest and then loan out that money at an interest rate which covers the depositor’s interest rate, keeps the lights on at the bank and return a profit. Had the banks not been kept whole, the FDIC would have been bankrupted in trying to meet their insurance obligations to the small depositors. And because they kept the banks whole, they also had to be consistent and keep all the other bondholders with the same insurance like China whole as well. So we see Congress had no choice but to bail out AIG and other insurance companies but on the other hand, they had no need to bail out most of the banks. The exceptions to the banks needing money were Bank of America and Wells Fargo, in this case, the government regulators came to them to arrange a shotgun wedding with failing banks, and they lied to the bank officers as to the degree of insolvency. You do remember Mr. Lewis, the CEO of B of A testifying government officials threatened him if he didn’t approve the merger or withhold damaging information about Merrill Lynch?

Given the facts, now we can see why Barack Obama lied to the American people about the need for this so called “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee.” He had to lie, how else could he deflect and not take the blame himself for he and his friends failed policies? Barack Obama is using the tried and true liberal ploy of “projection” blames other people for thing he himself was guilty of doing. As long as he is pointing the finger, it’s not pointed at him, the perpetrator. Whether you believe the facts point to President Obama being grossly ignorant (meaning he is incompetent) or lying (meaning he is corrupt), neither defect is worthy of being the leader or representative of the US. I propose a different solution, vote the scoundrels out!

Sources

 

 

 

Companies That Have Refunded Bailout Money

Dividends and Interest Paid on Bailout Investments

Taxing Banks for the Bailout

Citi, Wells to Repay Bailouts

Handicapping The Odds For Obamas TARP Tax

Insurers win access to bailout money

Why are big banks like Citigroup rushing to pay back TARP funds?

Corporatism, Corruption and Fascism

Collateralized Debt Obligations, The CDO Menace

The Fiduciary Trust

UVR Must Not Live!

It was only recently that I had even heard the term “Universal Voter Registration”, let alone know anything about it. Thanks to one of Giovanni’sWorld members known as FS, my suspicions were dead-on. Everyone and their Granny needs to read this article so make sure you pass this one around. The entire country needs to know just how damn corrupt the Democrat party is. And lets not forget the GOP either. If they had any guts they would be standing on tables in front of cameras telling the people of this great nation all about UVR. 

Gio-

How to Lock Democrats in Power

By James Simpson

A variety of moves being undertaken by Democrats are designed to ensure their permanent hold on power through engineering a new electorate.
In a recent article, we discussed the possibility that Democrats will introduce universal voter registration (UVR) legislation this year, and we offered that as an explanation for their seeming carelessness in the face of plummeting poll numbers. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, who originally brought this item to public attention (saying it would be proposed in January), has reiterated his belief that UVR will be proposed sometime this year, although it will await the outcome of the health care bill still under consideration.

Fund asserts that UVR will open the nation up to massive vote fraud. The reasons are straightforward and many. Among them, (1) registering people using existing government databases will result in many duplicates, (2) many of the lists contain names of illegal immigrants; and (3) the list could be expanded to include felons currently ineligible to vote.

Like most leftist agenda items, the notion of universal voter registration has been a long time in the making, but it has been flying beneath the radar for all but those paying close attention. As a result, most of us are behind the curve. The left can thus present universal voter registration as a much-needed “reform,” with talking points and ready answers to objections all lined up, while the rest of us struggle to assess the damage it will do. But it will do damage — potentially permanent damage to our representative republic.

Voter Registration and Registration Fraud

Most of the calls for UVR cite the fact that about thirty percent of eligible voters remain unregistered. (In the last election cycle, 29 percent were not registered.) The radical left Nation magazine effuses:

It doesn’t have to be this way. Registration rates in other countries frequently run upwards of 90 percent (both Canada and France hit that mark, for example, while Venezuela stands at roughly 94 percent, and Russia about 97).

Venezuela and Russia. How has voter registration worked out for them? They’re not exactly the role models for democracy if you ask me, but then, for the folks at Nation, they’re all of a piece. Just ask Bill Ayers.

These folks also argue that UVR will prevent voter registration fraud. If the feds do all the registering, they reason, groups like ACORN that have been tied to rampant registration fraud — not to mention all their other illegal activities — will be disenfranchised.

But a look at who is supporting the idea gives the lie to that one. An article appeared last year on Alternet.org, a leftist website run by former Mother Jones publisher Don Hazen. Titled “Consensus Builds for Universal Voter Registration,” the byline was Project Vote. This is the same Project Vote where Barack Obama cut his teeth organizing for the Senate election of communist-sympathizer Carol Moseley Braun. Project Vote is at the forefront of the voting rights movement. It is also an ACORN subsidiary.

In 1993, Bill Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act into law. Commonly known as Motor Voter, the law allows for people to register to vote at welfare offices, motor vehicle departments, and other government agencies. These agencies are required to provide necessary forms and even promote voter registration. Democrats billed Motor Voter as a method to make it easier for “disenfranchised voters” to become registered. Note that there was nothing except their own inertia preventing eligible people from registering to vote before this was passed, but the Democrats are all about saving the “poor and oppressed,” especially when most of those poor and oppressed will be guaranteed Democrat voters.

A 2008 Project Vote report titled “Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act 1995-2007″ claimed that “40 percent of voting-aged citizens from households earning under $25,000 were unregistered.” The report further complains that “Thousands of eligible low income voters could be brought fully into the democratic process every day if states fully complied with the NVRA.” Once again, these people are perfectly capable of bringing themselves into the “democratic process” if they so choose, but that’s not good enough for Democrats. The report also observed that twenty percent of qualified citizens making $100,000 or more remain unregistered, but that didn’t seem to bother them.

Motor Voter was anticipated to create a massive potential for voter registration fraud. Events since its passage seem to have borne that out. And while supporters of the law claim that vote registration fraud does not necessarily lead to vote fraud, the danger is clearly there, especially from absentee ballots and in states where only minimal identification is required. It also creates opportunities for voting activists to challenge elections. If the registration process is flawed, they argue, why not the election process itself?

The Motor Voter law was the brainchild of socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Inventors of the Cloward/Piven Crisis Strategy, these two radical activists spent a lifetime dreaming up ways to wreak havoc upon our government, hoping that the crises they fomented would ultimately lead to its collapse. ACORN has been the main vehicle for this strategy. Therefore, the filing of excessive and fraudulent voter registrations may be an end in and of itself. It certainly has created chaos and undermined the integrity of our voting system.

It also could be the pretext upon which the left intended to base their push for universal voter registration. And while there is little doubt, given the current condition of federal and state databases, that such a move would create all kinds of duplication, Democrats would achieve their goal of getting all of those unregistered fellow travelers on the rolls. Then all they’d have to do is get them to the polls. No longer having to sully itself with fraudulent registrations, maybe ACORN could turn its attention more fully to get-out-the-vote activities the ones it illegally conducted for the Obama campaign in 2008.

Illegal Immigrant Voting

Critics fear that universal voter registration will allow many illegal immigrants to register and vote. UVR proponents will dismiss the “illegal immigrant” objections by countering that such individuals either won’t be counted or could be weeded from voter rolls depending upon the methodology used to register voters. Congressional opponents of UVR will of course seek amendments making sure illegals and felons are excepted. But that is a throwaway for the left. They have something else in mind.

Separate and distinct from UVR legislation, Congress intends to move forward once again on immigration “reform.” According to Reuters, the Obama administration has already signaled its intention to push for this in 2010, including “a path to citizenship for the 12 million immigrants living here illegally.” There are probably more than 12 million at this point. During the health care debates, the Democrats reduced their estimates of people needing coverage from 47 million to 30 million to subtract out illegal immigrants. This suggests that they believe the current number to be 17 million.

Getting the illegal immigrant vote is key for Democrats in 2010. While registering low-income people to vote will guarantee more Democrat voters, it may not in and of itself provide the winning margins Democrats need to overcome their growing unpopularity. And while amnesty would provide Democrats with a huge pool of potential new voters, without UVR, the logistical problem of getting them registered to vote in time for the 2010 elections would remain. UVR would solve this problem, guaranteeing these people to be registered to vote the minute they achieve citizenship.

But it doesn’t end there. Once again, separate and distinct from UVR, legislators are contemplating granting felons the right to vote. A bill, S. 1516, was proposed by Democrats in the Senate last summer. While the Senate bill deals only with felons who have served their time, don’t expect it to end there. An organization called ProCon.org claims that in 2004, there were 5.2 million felons “disenfranchised” from voting. That’s a lot of potential Democrats.

This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Washington state law banning felons from voting. Fortunately, saner heads still exist, and the state of Washington has asked the Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit ruling. The Obama administration likely agrees with the 9th Circuit, however, having appointed felon-rights advocate Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

So look to Congress to propose both immigration reform and felon “voting rights” legislation. For all this to work, however, Congress needs to propose universal voter registration first. That way, they can pretend that illegal immigrants and felons will not be included. This may be why John Fund was so confident that UVR will be proposed sometime in January 2010.

But it doesn’t end even there. Expect to hear calls for abolishing the electoral college and moving toward direct presidential elections. That’s in the works, too. It can be accomplished without a constitutional amendment. State legislatures can vote to give all their electors to the winner of the popular vote. Direct elections will become law when enough state legislatures have passed legislation to make up a majority of the electoral vote (270 of 538). Only five states holding 61 electoral votes — Hawaii, Washington, Illinois (go figure), New Jersey, and Maryland — have signed on to this so far, so it will take longer to accomplish. But if they get it done, direct elections will be the last nail in the coffin for our beloved Republic.

Add to this the deliberate sabotage of our economy with unprecedented deficit spending, stimulus bills that stimulate only Democrats while unemployment rises to Depression-era levels, cap-and-trade legislation that threatens devastating tax increases justified by a hoax, a health care bill that will make us all sick while dramatically ramping up costs, and all the other garbage legislation designed to keep us distracted, distraught, and demoralized, and you have the prescription for an unprecedented takeover of our country from which we may never recover.

I had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this. But if it is the Democrats’ agenda to use UVR, illegal immigration, and felon votes to steal the 2010 election — and I believe it is — then they need to know that we are going to do everything within our power to stop them. They represent gangster government, a radical cabal aiming to consolidate power once and for all by duplicitously using our own institutions against us. If they attempt this, then they have lost the legitimate right to lead, and those institutions, by definition, will have been corrupted beyond repair. It will be left to us to get rid of them, and it will be our right to do so by any means at our disposal.

Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst.

Important Read

H/T goes out to Nick Fortune for this one.

The author of the following article, Kitty Werthmann, grew up in Austria and lived through the Hitler regime both before and after WWII, and the suppression of human rights and freedom by the Nazi Party. She moved to the USA and became a citizen in 1962.  She is 83 years old and lives in Pierre , South Dakota where she has written and spoken extensively about the danger of loosing our freedoms.  The following article is one of many that she has written.  You can check out this info for yourself on the Internet by going to Google and searching for “Kitty Werthmann”.

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World.
Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away!

By: Kitty Werthmann (An Austrian who witnessed what took place under Hitler)

What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or read in history books.

I am an eyewitness to history. I can tell you that Hitler did not take Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.  We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote.  I’ve never read that in any American publications.  Everyone thinks Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.

In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression.  Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed.  We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates. Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily.  Young people were going from house to house begging for food.  Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need.  Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other.  Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna , Linz , and Graz were destroyed.  The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.

We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany , where Hitler had been in power since 1933.  We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise..  We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria .

 

We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family.  Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later everyone was employed.  The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women.  Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home.  An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family.  Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.

Hitler Targets Education–Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:

Our education was nationalized.  I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang “Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,” and had physical education.

Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance.  Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum.  They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time.  The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.  The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports.  As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free.  We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent.  I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful.  There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.  I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it.  Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing.  Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me.  They lived without religion.  By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.  It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly.  As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

Equal Rights Hits Home:

In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established.  All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps.  At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

Soon after this, the draft was implemented.  It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps.  During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys.  They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps.  After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.  When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.  Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack.  I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

Hitler Restructured the Family through Daycare:

When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers.  You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children.  There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology.  By this time, no one talked about equal rights.  We knew we had been had.

Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care.  Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone.  Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.  If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn.  There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine.  Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income.  Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household.  We had big programs for families.  All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized.  Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

We had another agency designed to monitor business.  My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables.  Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners.  Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar.  He couldn’t meet all the demands.  Soon he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished.  We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

“Mercy Killing” Redefined:

In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps . The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated.  So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded.  When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work.  I knew one, named Vincent, very well.  He was a janitor of the school.  One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van.  I asked my superior where they were going.  She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade and to read and write.  The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months.  They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death.  The villagers were not fooled.  We suspected what was happening.  Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months.  We called this euthanasia.

The Final Steps – Gun Laws:

Next came gun registration.  People were getting injured by guns.  Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns.  Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms.  Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns.  The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech.  Anyone who said something against the government was taken away.  We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly. It took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria . Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism.  Now our only weapons were broom handles.  The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria . Women were raped, preteen to elderly.  The press never wrote about this either.  When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn’t destroy, they burned.  We called it The Burned Earth.  Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses.  Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized.  Those who couldn’t paid the price.  There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians.This is an eye witness account.

It’s true….those of us who sailed past the Statue of  Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away

After America , there is no place else to go!

Pelosi Disgusts Me!

H/T to GiovanniWorld member FS.

I heard something briefly about this, but had no idea it was this bad. Every damn one of our politicians need to have their a**es handed to them. This “I’m entitled to it” behaviour HAS GOT TO STOP! And the only ones that can stop it is “WE THE PEOPLE”!

How The Left Views Haiti

Los Angeles Times (blog) - ‎Jan 15, 2010‎

Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan broke down Thursday as he talked about a woman who lost all five of her children…

****************

Steve Harrigan has seen some of the worst tragedy a human can witness. What he saw in Haiti was no exception.

I was surfing through the Huffington Post to see how the left was viewing what was going on in Haiti. Hoping to be shocked by the Marxists on the left, but I ended up reading exactly what I have read for the past 30 years. Anotherwords, nothing shocking, just the same old – same old. The same old scum-bags that is!

The snip above from the LA Times lets you know the subject. Below are comments left about the subject. Get ready to feel the LOVE!

“watching the news reporter getting choked up was shocking and confusing. I didnt know anybody from fox news had any feelings for anybody, especially for black people.

Fox needs to send its new star Sarah Palin to Haiti to offer some common sense solutions and show the poor Haitian people how a “real” American handles a crisis.

I would think fox news reporters would be busy blaiming the haitian people for the earthquake, and telling everybody how uneducated and undiciplined the hatian people are (as if that caused the quake).
I guess if the Hatian people all had masters/PHD degrees the quake would’nt have happenned to them.

I’d wish they send Gleen Beck, Sean Hanitty, or Billo to Haiti so some humanity could rub off on them.

I READ SOMETHING AFTER KATRINA. A REPORT SAID THAT THERE ARE SOME SCIENTISTS WHO ARE PURPOSELY MESSING WITH CAUSING STORMS (HURRICANES) TO WIPE OUT CERTAIN CULTURES.

If it weren’t for Shep they wouldn’t be covering this – instead we get three days of Palin ! S*rew you Fox !

Q. Why do Faux correspondents always cry on air?

A. Because they’re being forced to have to rub elbows with little poor brown people.

OBSERVATION:  Your comments are really inappropriate. There is nothing political about the agony of a mother who has lost 5 children in an earthquake nor in a reporters very human reaction to that tragedy.

RESPONSE TO OBS:  tell that to the repugs

RESPONSE TO OBS:  I’ll bet they don’t part with one thin dime for the people of Haiti.”

 

David Brooks Wants To Adopt Haiti

I remember seeing a comment made about 3 weeks ago by a Liberal/Progressive concerning David Brooks. Or more to the point, a David Brooks article. The progressive said, and I quote, “Mr. Brooks is my kind of Conservative“. Let me be the first to state the obvious, “Mr. Brooks ain’t no Conservative“. And, if you have to fit someone else’s idea of what a Conservative is, there’s a really good chance that you have no clue as to what a Conservative is. By reading through Brooks’ latest article on Haiti you get the very same sense… David Brooks has no idea what a real Conservative is!

Wait til you get to the part in the article where David floats the idea of paternalism, and how it would be a great way to re-build Haiti. He makes it sound so innocent and peachy-keen, while at the same time he forgets how many times we have tried paternalism around the globe, only to have the people of the country rise-up and tell us to get the hell out. If you want the left to come completey unglued, suggest that we take over Haiti and call it ‘Paternalism’. Oh, but wait a minute, the left wants us to help Haiti so maybe they would be ok with taking over this one little country. You know, for the betterment of the people of Haiti. Yeah right! Within 5 years the Marxist left will be screaming that we have no right to tell the Haitian government what to do and demand that we leave.

Enjoy reading the nonsense written by David Brooks, another one of our infamous Progressive Republicans.

Gio-

The Underlying Tragedy

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”

The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.

The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.

Another Dem Bites The Dust

As each day passes, “we the people” are being heard all across the country. However, there is still one place in this country where politicians refuse to listen to “we the people”. And I’m betting that they will soon pay dearly for their arrogant attitude. Tea-Party people are the best!!!

Gio-

Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) announced his retirement today, mixed–but mostly dire–news for Democrats, who were hopeful that he could hold on and defeat his likely, scandal-tainted GOP opponent Tim Griffin. One of the possible reasons for the retirement? A poll conducted by SurveyUSA, paid for by the progressive blog Firedoglake, which tested negative messages about the health care reform bill and whether it made voters sour on Snyder. A sample question:

Under one proposal, if a person does not carry health insurance from a private insurance company, they would be fined up to 2% of their income. Is this fair, or unfair?

The poll found that Snyder, already losing badly to Griffin, was four points further behind if he backed the bill.

The question, raised by Nate Silver and others: Is Firedoglake trying to scare vulnerable Democrats into retirement in order to kill health care reform? All indications point to “yes.” I’m hearing that FDL will conduct more polls in vulnerable Democratic districts, based largely on this chart of the “top 20 Democrats who could lose their seat over health care vote[s]. Snyder was at the top of that list, posted by FDL’s Jane Hamsher on Jan. 6. (One irony: Snyder is a fairly progressive member of Congress, and not a member of the Blue Dogs.)

Tension between FDL and some other progressive sites has increased since the Senate’s health care compromise took shape–Hamsher has campaigned aggressively to “kill the bill.” A month ago she predicted that “left/right populist outrage” would do so, and she hasn’t slowed down since.

Charles Manson Beats Obama

The header above makes me laugh everytime I read it. Better yet, the original header below that goes with the following article has the same effect. The guy who wrote this headline is a genius, but the rest of his writing is in-

line with the rest of the liberal media that we have become accustomed to. The only difference is.. this guy is a Brit working for the BBC.

Gio-

‘Even Charles Manson could beat him now’

Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky ­towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this part of America has become a routine part of life.

More than a quarter of the families in Prestonsburg live in poverty; half of the children in Floyd County, where it is situated, are on food stamps. This ­Appalachian coal mining area has never been rich. But no one can remember when it has ever been this poor either. It sits on the old Route 23 – the country music highway of which Dwight Yoakam (a Floyd Country native) sang in Readin’, Rightin’, Route 23. It was the road that took people north to factory jobs in places such as Detroit and Cleveland and “the good life they had never seen”. Now those cities are broke and there’s nowhere left to go.

“We’re getting more and more ­people coming here as time goes by,” says Tom Price, who helps administer the church’s Feed My Sheep pantry. “The bottom’s just fallen out of it all.” He blames it on Barack Obama. “Is there a direct correlation [between Obama's victory and the region's bad times]? I don’t know. But I do know a lot of people are hurting.”

A week may be a long time in politics. But a year has not been enough for the Democratic president to meet the expectations of his candidacy, deal with the situation he inherited or defuse the barbed charges of his detractors. For many the change that Obama promised when he was inaugurated a year on Wednesday has ended up being a change for the worse. Unemployment is rising, houses prices are falling, unpopular wars are still raging. After 100 days only Ronald Reagan had higher approval ratings for his first few months in office than Obama. But as his first year draws to a close nobody has had lower ratings at this stage since Dwight Eisenhower.

Keith Bartley, Floyd County’s Democratic chairman, says one key reason why Obama’s such a tough sell here is because of the effect of his cap and trade policy on the coal industry. Lt Governor Daniel Mongiardo, the Democratic frontrunner in Kentucky’s senatorial race later this year, says he would not want Obama to come and stump for him on the campaign trail, particularly because of his environmental policies. “With some of the positions he has taken, especially on coal, no. He certainly can’t come into eastern or western Kentucky and help. Nor would I want him to.”

But the disenchantment goes beyond one region or one industry. The official narrative of Obama’s inauguration – the fairytale most of the US media told itself and that the international community wanted to believe – was that after a ­rancourous campaign a divided country came together to celebrate the historic election of its first African-American president. The reality was always quite different. The editor of the Grayson County News Gazette in Leitchfield, a small town 230 miles west of Prestonsburg, recalls that the day after the election much of the area wore sombre faces. The week he was elected gun sales across the country leapt about 50% compared with the same period the year before.

For all of his aspirations for bipartisanship, after the first three months Obama had the most polarised early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The gap between how Democrats and Republicans rated him at this stage was greater than George Bush Jr’s in 2001 and twice as high as Richard Nixon’s during the height of the Vietnam war in 1969. This was partly because Democrats loved him so much – but it was also because so few Republicans were willing to give him a hearing. Obama didn’t create that partisan divide, he inherited it. Not only has he not been able to cure it, but his presence seems to have exacerbated it.

Truth be told they never really liked Obama much in Floyd County. He won only 5% of the vote against Hillary Clinton’s 94% in the primaries. But until recently they did love Democrats. In the 2004 election John Kerry won the county with a 25-point margin. In 2008, John McCain took it by 2 points – the first time a Republican had won Floyd in living memory. That’s to say following hurricane Katrina, the failure in Iraq, the collapse of the economy and the unravelling in Afghanistan, a sizeable portion of Floyd’s voters took a look at Obama and decided that this time, for the first time, they would turn their back on the Democrats.

Back at the Feed My Sheep food ­pantry Cindy Hernandez has just picked up her groceries and is rifling through the secondhand clothes. She has no doubts about why Obama struggled in a county that is 98% white.

“That’s because Obama was black. Let’s get real,” she says with a laugh.

“You mean people are prejudiced in eastern Kentucky?” asks Tom Nelson, the church’s pastor who seems genuinely upset by what she said.

“You do not believe that?” replies Hernandez.

“I know some are, but not altogether,” says Nelson. Fearing I should get the wrong impression Nelson suggested I talk to Price.

“I voted for McCain,” says Price. “Because, well I voted for the old white guy. At least he’s American.” A few days earlier, the chairman of the Republican party in Jackson County, Arkansas, insisted electing Obama is destroying America in the same way electing Nelson Mandela destroyed South Africa. “Handing it over to the wrong people.”

To ask where racism ends and politics begins in all of this is to set up a false dichotomy – America’s politics has always been steeped in race and racism is a political force. The psychic scars of centuries are not removed in one election or as a result of one person. Indeed they may be deepened and made even more raw as a result of them.

The movement that has emerged to oppose him is almost exclusively white. In Little Rock, Arkansas, a city that is 40% black in a state that is 80% white, an anti-tax Tea party rally of several hundred had not one black attendee – apart from an anti-abortion speaker. The doubts they have cast about his Christianity and his birthplace (some claim Obama wasn’t born in America) are really proxies for race – a bid to cast him as the ultimate “other”. At an anti-healthcare reform rally in Washington in September several racist placards were spotted. One bore a picture a lion and the words, “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African”; another said “‘Cap’ Congress and ‘trade’ Obama back to Kenya”.

But while racism might inform the intensity and shape the nature of the attacks on Obama they do not drive them. Obama’s administration has raised taxes on the rich, expanded public spending, pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq and argued – if only halfheartedly – for universal healthcare. Conservatives have good reasons to be against him that have nothing to do with race.

“It’s hard to specify a single source for the opposition,” says Rev Wendell Griffin, a Baptist pastor and judge in Arkansas. “Part of the opposition to Obama is philosophical. There is in every society a strand of thought that glories in the myth of rugged individualism [and] he challenges that notion. He believes that the idea of a government is to have a concern not just for the individual but for the society as a whole. Some people don’t like that.” Griffin went on to list racism, economic desperation and the fact that he is no longer an underdog as other reasons.

His rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective. They have a populist message that excoriates Bush and the bank bailouts as well as Obama and a TV channel – Fox News – to which they are devoted and which is happy to promote their work. A recent poll showed that if the Tea party – a ­protest movement set up earlier this year to rally opposition to the stimulus bill and “big government” – were a party it would be beat the Republican party.

Every week a “9/12″ group meet at the non-alcoholic All Bar None in Lexington, Kentucky. This was an initiative started by Fox presenter Glenn Beck, in order to return America to the values of patriotism and godliness that he says America embraced the day after 11 September. Fourteen showed up the night I was there. A straw poll revealed that none of them blamed Obama exclusively for America heading in the wrong direction, with all preferring to blame the entire political establishment. Half believed Obama is a Muslim, just one thought he’s a Christian and the overwhelming majority thought he was a communist, socialist and Marxist. None believe that he was born in America; most said they did not know.

“A lot of information about Obama’s background is missing,” says Abigail Billings. “The media in America is not doing any research. They’re not asking any questions. They’re not reporting any longer. They’re now opinionated talk shows. They’re no longer offering factual news coverage.” They all watch Fox News.

Many on America’s left are also ­disgruntled with Obama. They believe the healthcare reform, without a public option, will be inadequate, that the war in Afghanistan will unravel, the stimulus bill was insufficient to kick-start the economy and that his economic team is being run by Wall Street. But unlike the right they have so far failed to turn their disillusionment into a potent political force.

“I’d have thought in the past that if Charles Mason ran against a Republican in Floyd County he would win,” says Bartley. “But Charles Manson could beat Barack Obama here right now. Thousands of miners out of work, the entire local economy in the tank. But he’s got a couple of years where he could turn this round. If he does that he could win. If he doesn’t, Charles Manson could come in and win.”

Part one of Gary Younge’s documentary Opposing Obama will air 1 February on BBC World Service at 10am, 3pm and 8pm GMT

Danny Glover Proves His Low IQ

This is funny in a Progressive/Marxist actor sort of way! Enjoy.

Gio-

Danny Glover – Haiti Caused by Failure of Copenhagen Summit

Gaia is Very, Very Angry

According to blogger Tim Blair, people calling themselves Christian like Pat Robertson are not the only ones who can say crazy, insensitive things about Haiti. Danny Glover, the actor/activist, is pretty sure that global warming caused the Haiti earthquake.

Actually it was our failure to respond to global warming at the Copenhagen Summit. Danny Glover said, “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?” 

Danny Glover’s suggestion that the Earth itself somehow decided to erupt and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of black Haitians because a bunch of mainly white people couldn’t figure out a way to deal with global warming is mind blowing, to say the least. What Pat Robertson said in his smear about the people of Haiti and a pact with the devil is bad enough, but at least there was a kind of twisted cause and effect going on there. According to Danny Glover, the Earth is such a vicious bitch that she decided to kill a bunch of people who had nothing to do with what seems to be irritating her.

In other words, Danny Glover, Gaia worshiper, believes that his goddess is a sociopath. That is reason enough, one supposes, to want to become a space colonist and go live on a more friendly planet, like Mars.

One need not belabor the notion that man made global warming is largely a myth, concocted by corrupt scientists based on fixed data. If the revelations of the leaked emails at the University of East Anglia are not convincing enough, then the more recent story of similar shenanigans going on at NASA should be.

One also need not belabor yet again the spectacle of a talented actor saying appalling things about which he knows nothing. Recent history is replete with examples of Hollywood types who are somehow under the impression that just because they get paid for pretending to be someone else, that their opinions matter. The few examples of actors actually making sense (say, like Tom Hanks on space exploration and American history) really proves the rule.

Haitian Open Thread

So many people feel helpless concerning the tragedy that is Haiti, and the tragedy that has happened to Haiti, so I thought I would just let everyone talk about Haiti and discuss how they are going to help. If you know of some honest charities helping in Haiti that we can donate to, please share with all of us. Also, I’m a curious as to how people feel about Pat Robertsons comment about Haiti making some deal with the devil.

I leave you with a few pics. Click on each image to enlarge.

This last photo will tear your heart out. Do NOT enlarge unless you have a very strong stomach.

.

Global Warming Is Here

Those of you that know me are going to have a whip-lash reaction to my header above, for that I am sorry.

Living in the Mountains of western N.C. is difficult enough, but when you add in winter it can be down-right perilous. In the past however, our winters have been rather mild, which is just one of the reasons why I moved here. Normally we get a cold snap and it may last for a few days, then the good Lord does us a huge favor and lets the temperature go up into the low 50′s. Same thing whenever we get a snowstorm. It would snow hard for a day, but be almost melted away 3-4 days later due to a warm-up.

This winter is different and we can blame Global Warming. At least that’s what the nut-jobs that were once called Scientists say. We still have snow on the ground, although not much, from the snow we got over 4 weeks ago. There was some melting yesterday when we got up into the mid-40′s. But today Global Warming arrives for real as we are looking at having temps in the low-50′s. If we could keep the temps around 50 for the rest of the winter I would happily tell the world that Gore was right after all. NOT!

One last item… I was tired last night when I saw an entry on another site about the Earthquake in Haiti and how it was caused by…. Yep, you guessed right… GLOBAL WARMING. I thought I had saved the link but cannot find today, so try google and you may find it.

Time to put on some shorts and Sun-screen and get back outside. Later…

Gio-

Manhattan Declaration.org

 Please look into this, its important.

Gio-

 

Dear colleague, Thank you for your support of the Manhattan Declaration.                                                     It is off to an amazing start – over 370,000 signers and growing. And it is indeed historic: Evangelicals, Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox Christians uniting to give common witness to the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage, and religious liberty for all persons. But we need your help: our goal is one million signatures. The marketing pros tell us we will never get to a million signatures without expensive advertising. But we want to prove them wrong. And we can: just think if each person who has signed the Declaration were to get just two others to sign. That would be one million people standing arm in arm in defense of the most vital moral truths in our society. Remember, too, we are not just collecting signatures; we seek a movement of people defending the truth in the public square. We are already witnessing signs of this: Christians in Mobile, Alabama called us 13 days before Christmas to tell us they were planning a large ecumenical gathering for the 23rd of December. I (Chuck Colson) agreed to speak. At 6:00 AM on December 23, 2,000 citizens, led by clergy from all over the city, gathered in a packed hall in the Convention Center for a rousing rally. Seldom have I seen so much excitement in one room – and all of this was accomplished just by word of mouth with only 11 days to organize! Just ten days ago, Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishop Wuerl of Washington, DC, Archbishop Dolan of New York and Archbishop Kurtz of Louisville reached out to all of their brother Catholic bishops asking them to spread this document throughout their dioceses and encourage their clergy and faithful to study it and join as signatories. The Archbishop of Detroit has planned a grassroots effort throughout his archdiocese. The Bishop of Phoenix has already organized a grassroots effort there. We are also receiving many reports of evangelical gatherings in a number of areas – and many evangelical pastors referring to the Manhattan Declaration in their sermons. This bold and exciting movement needs to reach 100 or 200 cities in America. Why not? Can you help? We are urging you to encourage your pastors and community leaders to do what these other cities are doing. Organize ecumenical meetings organized around the Manhattan Declaration; get other concerned citizens to join the effort. Get on the internet or phone and ask friends to join you. If you let us know you want to organize something we can help link you up with others in your area. As with any grassroots movement, the strength and energy has to come from the people. We have no staff and limited budget. We’re people who care passionately and deeply about life, marriage, and liberty. So here’s what we are asking you to do. Pray fervently. Great movements of faith have always spread on the wings of prayer. Know the issues. If you study this Declaration – and a study guide is available on our website – then you can winsomely explain and defend it to your neighbors and friends. The document itself makes a great apologetic defense for these moral truths. Look for resources on this website as we’re able to post them, and search the websites of the Christian organizations that offer resources in these three areas. You can see the names of the various leaders who have signed the Declaration and then visit their websites. Of utmost importance, get your own church involved. As pastors preach, the movement will spread. Prayer meetings and Bible studies on the Declaration are being conducted in many churches, which is a great step. Make full use of Facebook, Twitter, and all the devices available today for social networking. Or just go to gatherings in your own community and speak out on this issue. Cultures are changed over the backyard fence, the barbeque grill, and in hair salons – always from the bottom up. Do everything you can possibly do to educate others. Organize local gatherings like the one in Mobile. If you want an audio or video of Chuck Colson’s talk at the event, you will be able to see it on the website in the next few days. You can also read a firsthand report on how they did this. If you are a pastor or ministry leader let us know if you would like to be added to the Additional Signers list on the website. Just think what might happen in our land if one million courageous Christians declared their uncompromising allegiance to Jesus Christ and to biblical faithfulness on some of the most urgent moral issues of our day. May God give us the strength to do what He is so clearly calling us to do. From our perspective, this is a cause worth giving every last ounce of effort and energy we have. Dr. Robert George Dr. Timothy George Chuck Colson ManhattanDeclaration.org