Saturday, March 30, 2013

Autocracies in global ascendancy | Charles Rowley's Blog

Autocracies in global ascendancy | Charles Rowley's Blog

Western promoters of democracy have no cause for complacency. The autocrats are now on the march into territories once viewed as entirely safe for democracy.

Moonbattery » The History of Political Correctness

Moonbattery » The History of Political Correctness

Confused as to why driving the herd into accepting the sick blasphemous farce of homosexual “marriage” is so important to the hardcore leftists who determine the government–media’s agenda? This history of political correctness makes the one-sided Culture War comprehensible. Long but worth watching:

Radio Derb Is On The Air: The Powerball Winner Who Can't Speak English | VDARE.com

Radio Derb Is On The Air: The Powerball Winner Who Can't Speak English | VDARE.com

Still I have to ask Mr. Quezada: The U.S.A. has been sensationally good to you. Could you not have spoken to us in our own language? After living in this country for 26 years, can it really be the case that you do not know enough of our national language even to say "Thank you"? I also have to ask my own fellow citizens: What kind of country have we become, when you can live for 26 years in an American town, having arrived at age 19 when your mind is still nimble, and yet need to have simple English questions translated for you?

Brutally Honest: "Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian morality..."

Brutally Honest: "Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian morality..."

Society is paying a price for the ever escalating war against traditional Christian morality.  A price we're paying arguably because too many of us have abandoned the fight. Tragic for our kids... and their kids.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Study: Government policy primarily the reason for sub-prime mortgage meltdown | Questions and Observations

Study: Government policy primarily the reason for sub-prime mortgage meltdown | Questions and Observations

Despite the attempt by government and particularly Democrats, to blame the financial meltdown we’ve endured on banks and unscrupulous investment companies, the buck stops with them according to a new study just released:

Thursday, March 28, 2013

A nation suckered - NYPOST.com

A nation suckered - NYPOST.com

In 2009, the Government Accountability Office catalogued examples of waste, fraud and abuse in just about every federal do-gooder program, including school lunches ($1.4 billion), children’s health insurance ($800 million, or roughly 15 percent of the total), the Earned Income Tax Credit ($12 billion), plus housing subsidies, child-care, unemployment insurance . . . You name it, and some sizable chunk of it is a scam. In all, the cost to the taxpayers is estimated at some $100 billion a year.And things are only likely to get worse.

We will be judged by our silence

We will be judged by our silence

The Progressive homosexual agenda is a tool of those who are seeking the destruction of America. The activists hypnotized by the illusion of equal rights are nothing more than pawns duped into believing they are fighting for tolerance and inclusion, while the end game scenario leaves no room at the proverbial table for them. What is taking place today is the systematic destruction of a nation from within, and is insidious in nature and effectiveness by its simplicity. It is a tactic that uses the pretext of tolerance to break down our cultural standards of morality. You might be surprised to learn that presenting homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy” was identified as one of the goals of the Communist agenda for the takeover of America as read into the United States Congressional record on January 10, 1963 by Rep. A. S. Herlong of Florida. Of course, the mere mention of such an inconvenient truth will earn you the title of conspiracy nut within the corporate media.

The Captain's Journal » Guns, Shame And Obama

The Captain's Journal » Guns, Shame And Obama

Let’s recast that shame in a more truthful light.  Shame on you Obama for surrounding yourself with the props of hurting mothers in order to pass your Fascist measures.  Shame on you for lying to the gullible American people and claiming that any measure you take would have changed the outcome of a dedicated person bent on doing harm.  Shame on you for deceiving the public into thinking that this has anything to do with school shootings. Shame on you for inferring that any change you make to the laws governing law abiding people has any affect on criminals.  Shame on you for pushing measures more suited to communist China (who supports your gun control efforts) than a free America (I can recall such a thing, although many youth today cannot).  And finally, shame on you for nurturing a Fascist ideology that would turn our freedoms on their head and focus power in the hands of ruling elites who confiscate not only firearms but wealth too.  Shame … shame … shame. God will soon condemn you, and your empty philosophies of liberation theology and warmed over Fabian Socialism won’t be able to save you on that awful day of judgment.

WyBlog -- The real purpose of same-sex "marriage" is to persecute and marginalize Christians

WyBlog -- The real purpose of same-sex "marriage" is to persecute and marginalize Christians

The left now has the cudgel with which they will try to smash religion. Our religious freedom is incompatible with their distorted view of civil rights. Their hostility to religion puts paid the notion that everyone has the right to be treated with respect. In the land of same-sex "marriage," Christians will be exiled. Which of course is the point.

Sultan Knish: The Deconstruction of Marriage

Sultan Knish: The Deconstruction of Marriage

The left's greatest trick is making things mean the opposite of what they do. Stealing is sharing. Crime is justice. Property is theft. Each deconstruction is accompanied by an inversion so that a thing, once examined, comes to seem the opposite of what it is, and once that is done, it no longer has the old innate value, but a new enlightened one. To deconstruct man, you deconstruct his beliefs and then his way of living. You deconstruct freedom until it means slavery. You deconstruct peace until it means war. You deconstruct property until it means theft. And you deconstruct marriage until it means a physical relationship between any group of people for any duration. And that is the opposite of what marriage is. The deconstruction of marriage is part of the deconstruction of gender and family and those are part of the long program of deconstructing man. Once each basic value has been rendered null and void, inverted and revealed to be random and meaningless, then man is likewise revealed to be a random and meaningless creature whose existence requires shaping by those who know better. The final deconstruction eliminates nation, religion, family and even gender to reduce the soul of man to a blank slate waiting to be written on.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Are We Equal? | Right Wing News

Are We Equal? | Right Wing News

Soft-minded and sloppy-thinking academics, lawyers and judges harbor the silly notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we’d be proportionately distributed by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes. There is absolutely no evidence anywhere, at any time, that proportionality is the norm anywhere on earth; however, much of our thinking, many of our laws and much of our public policy are based upon proportionality’s being the norm. Maybe this vision is held because people believe that equality in fact is necessary for equality before the law. But the only requirement for equality before the law is that one is a human being.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

The Economist Indicts Corn Ethanol | Via Meadia

The Economist Indicts Corn Ethanol | Via Meadia

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. The details of this farce can be confusing, but the Economist does an excellent job of clearly and succinctly explaining the story. They get all the facts right, and their recommendation is clear: Kill the corn ethanol mandate. Now.

Sequester And We're Still Funding Planned Parenthood?! | Restoring Liberty

Sequester And We're Still Funding Planned Parenthood?! | Restoring Liberty

When it comes to the latest round of budget cuts, there’s one big problem that should bother everyone: Washington’s continued funding of Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion chain.

Obama Pursues Royal Prerogative as MSM Remains Silent

Obama Pursues Royal Prerogative as MSM Remains Silent

The mainstream media's protection of President Obama's budget hypocrisy in denying access to the White House to thousands of American school children while authorizing the latest international vacation for the First Daughters is but the latest example of the most troubling transformation of all--that of the watch dog media into fawning royal courtiers.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

In First Diplomatic Address, Pope Francis Decries 'Tyranny Of Relativism' | Restoring Liberty

In First Diplomatic Address, Pope Francis Decries 'Tyranny Of Relativism' | Restoring Liberty

On Friday, the newly elected pontiff expressed serious concern for the “spiritual poverty” of the world as represented by a rejection of both God and objective standards of morality.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Standing Up for the Conservative Cause

Standing Up for the Conservative Cause

I want to thank the 104 patriots of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) who courageously stood for their “Back to Basics” budget this week. By proposing sweeping entitlement reforms and by limiting Obamacare, the “Back to Basics” budget would have balanced our country’s federal budget in just four years. Washington has an awful spending problem, and those Representatives who voted for the RSC budget truly recognize this fact and are willing to cast the tough votes necessary to deal with it.

Friday, March 22, 2013

NoisyRoom.net » Blog Archive » The Balance of Powers Act – How People Are Destroyed For Lack of Knowledge

NoisyRoom.net » Blog Archive » The Balance of Powers Act – How People Are Destroyed For Lack of Knowledge

Our own Ignorance is destroying us. Mark Twain wrote in his autobiography: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” That is what has been going on in our Country for a very long time. Our “intellectuals” can’t think; our “scholars” parrot each other; the self-educated fixate on idiotic theories; no one studies original source writings; and The People jump on every bandwagon that rolls by.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Demise of Congressional Deliberation: Willmoore Kendall - The Imaginative Conservative

The Demise of Congressional Deliberation: Willmoore Kendall - The Imaginative Conservative

The one teaching of Willmoore Kendall’s toward which all his early thought tended and from which radiated all his later thought was this: America’s vindication of the capacity of men for self-government rests upon its devotion to the idea of a virtuous people, under God, determining national policy by the deliberations of a supreme legislature composed of representatives who should reflect the moral beliefs of the people and should deliberate under conditions free, open, rational, and accountable. How does that teaching fare today, and how might it serve to guide us in our present predicament? The time is seasonable for a reassessment of the grounds of our trust in representative democracy for we have cause to feel concern that recent alterations in the way Congress conducts its business have corrupted its ability to deliberate and threaten to erode the very foundations of rule of law.

Power and control « Bob Owens

Power and control « Bob Owens

Both of this nation’s political parties operating at the federal level have far more in common with each other than they do with you and I. The polimedia—the revolving door between the mainstream media, the consultant class, bureaucrats and elected officials—has no more in common with you, than you have with a Moro tribesman, and if your idealism and insistence upon clinging to your Constitutional rights gets in the way of their desire for power and control, they have little moral objection to treating you the same way. Their goal is to exert their influence over you, using laws and regulations in such a way as to bring themselves both power and financial advantage. It is human nature that great power leads inevitably to great corruption, and it is no coincidence that the counties surrounding Washington DC are among the wealthiest in the nation.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Courage to be Christian - The Imaginative Conservative

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Courage to be Christian - The Imaginative Conservative

In these dark days in which the power of secular fundamentalism appears to be on the rise and in which religious freedom seems to be imperiled, it is easy for Christians to become despondent. The clouds of radical relativism seem to obscure the light of objective truth and it can be difficult to discern any silver lining to help us illumine the future with hope.

Government Is The Liberals Religion | Flopping Aces

Government Is The Liberals Religion | Flopping Aces

They told us if we voted for Romney he would impose his bizarre religious beliefs on us…so why is the left imposing THEIR bizarre religious beliefs on us instead?

Mark Levin: "The Republican Party Is Going To Split, And There's Going To Be Two Parties" | RealClearPolitics

Mark Levin: "The Republican Party Is Going To Split, And There's Going To Be Two Parties" | RealClearPolitics

On the Monday night broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Mark Levin warned the Republican party will split unless RNC chairman Reince Priebus and House Speaker John Boehner are thrown out.

Mexican, U.S. Media Too Scared To Cover Border Crime | Judicial Watch

Mexican, U.S. Media Too Scared To Cover Border Crime | Judicial Watch

Violence along the southern border has gotten so out of control that both Mexican and American journalists have stopped reporting it out of fear that drug cartels will retaliate against them and their families.

Creative Minority Report: Little Girl Stumps Legislature By Asking, "Which Parent Do I Not Need?"

Creative Minority Report: Little Girl Stumps Legislature By Asking, "Which Parent Do I Not Need?"

“Since every child needs a mom and a dad to be born, I don’t think we can change that children need a mom and a dad. I believe God made it that way. I know some disagree, but I want to ask you this question: Which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?”

Brutally Honest: "Pure sophistry is pitted against reason. Reason is losing."

Brutally Honest: "Pure sophistry is pitted against reason. Reason is losing."

The atmosphere at these events (I’ve also testified elsewhere) seems tinged with unreality—almost a carnival-like surrealism. Natural law, tradition, religion, intellectual curiosity, and free inquiry no longer play a role in deliberations. Same-sex marriage legislation is defended solely on grounds of moral relativism and emotions. Pure sophistry is pitted against reason. Reason is losing.

GOP Post-Mortem Is Largely Defeatist, Conceding Liberal Dominance - Investors.com

GOP Post-Mortem Is Largely Defeatist, Conceding Liberal Dominance - Investors.com

It has become crystal clear that a growing number of liberals in positions of power have little or no respect for what remains of the Republican Party and even less fear of its waning power and influence.

Progressive Democrats Gained Control Through The Welfare State - Investors.com

Progressive Democrats Gained Control Through The Welfare State - Investors.com

One other pillar of the liberal Democrats' systematic takeover genuinely was a conscious conspiracy — no conspiracy theory — and has even received belated recognition recently. If you are old enough, you can remember Democrats such as Ted Kennedy, in their rare candid moments, rhapsodizing that someday, when they could get 50% of the U.S. population plus one receiving a government check of some kind, they would never again lose a national election! The notorious but true 47% cited by Mitt Romney apparently is close enough.

We Need a Back to the Basics Budget | American Clarion

We Need a Back to the Basics Budget | American Clarion

Never before has the debate in Washington, D.C. been as clear. The choice of whether to continue to grow government under the notion that America is too big to fail, or pull our nation away from a debt cliff that history has proven always ends in economic disaster for the nation that goes over it with catastrophic consequences for the people.

Commonsense & Wonder: Obama's war on America

Commonsense & Wonder: Obama's war on America

America has made a grievous error in electing and then reelecting a leader who hates the country he’s leading. Everyone who loves the U.S. — its history, traditions, and a free-market, voluntary exchange economy — is profoundly disheartened by what’s going on before their eyes. Barack Obama is doing profound and long-lasting damage to the United States. He will continue to do so until people finally recognize who the real Obama is.

Will Christianity Survive?

Will Christianity Survive?

Today the Christianity, which with Judaism and Greek philosophy are the cornerstones of our civilization, is not only neglected in college courses but as Tim Larsen noted in 2010, it is dangerous for students seeking good grades to even source or quote the Bible.

Corn Ethanol Fuels Riots | Via Meadia

Corn Ethanol Fuels Riots | Via Meadia

The UN urged the US to cut its ethanol mandates last August to help ease spiking world food prices. The Obama administration needs to end this biofuel boondoggle and consider funding R&D (not subsidies) for alternative biofuels like cellulosic ethanol, as RCE suggests (and as we have suggested too). If not for the sake of emissions, efficiency, or the world’s starving poor, then for a more stable geopolitical landscape.

The Simplicity of Sound Money - Patrick Barron - Mises Daily

The Simplicity of Sound Money - Patrick Barron - Mises Daily

In a sound money environment everyone understands monetary theory. Money is like any other desired commodity, except it is not consumed. It is a medium of indirect exchange, which traders accept in order to exchange for something else at a later time. This is easily understood, whether the trader is a child, a parent, a company, or a nation. One either has money or one does not. The money can be a money substitute, a bailment, with which one can demand the redemption of the real money—gold. Money issuers must keep one-hundred-percent reserves against their money substitutes in order to abide by normal commercial and criminal law. No special agencies or monetary authorities are necessary to make the system work. The system emerges naturally and is regulated via the normal commercial and criminal legal system. This is the system that government does not want us to have, because it provides no special favors for enhancing state power. Sound money shackles the government to the will of the people and not vice versa. As Ludwig von Mises stated in The Theory of Money and Credit: It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.

Monday, March 18, 2013

The Thinking Housewife › A Religion Without Churches or Sunday School

The Thinking Housewife › A Religion Without Churches or Sunday School

There is nothing improper in making this claim. Every society must have some sort of (at least unofficial) state religion because a religion is primarily a system of thought that describes reality, and leaders must always have a way of thinking to guide their decisions. Furthermore, the majority of the population needs to approve of the reasons the leaders give for their decisions, or at least to find those reasons tolerable. Therefore it is no insult to liberalism to call it a religion. On the contrary, this is to take it seriously. It is not its status as a religion that makes liberalism illegitimate; it is the specific doctrines of liberalism that make it a menace. What is the evidence that liberalism is our state religion? Ask yourself, What system do most teachers, professors and even, God help us, many clergy, teach? What way of thinking is taught as (or assumed to be) true by most journalists? What ideas are portrayed as true, good and beautiful by most artists? What ideas are assumed true by most politicians? If you answered anything other than “liberalism,” you have not been paying attention. You may use another name than liberalism, but the substance is the same. And what system of thought do most of our leaders use to make their important decisions? When the Supreme Court says that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional even though the Constitution says nothing about homosexuality, when the President signs legislation outlawing incandescent light bulbs, and when a state governor signs legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, they are following the dictates of liberalism. And in a sense they have no choice in the matter, at least most of the time: If America’s intellectual leaders mostly say liberalism is true, and if America’s populace mostly agrees (or at least doesn’t openly disagree), then America’s political leaders must generally go along with liberalism or risk the wrath of the people. [cont.]

Homosexual Marriage, Parenting, and Adoption The Chief Rabbi of France says what we often forget to say.

Article | First Things

A great many of our fellow citizens see demands for homosexual marriage as just one more step in the democratic struggle against injustice and discrimination, a continuation of the fight against racism. It is in the name of equality, of open-mindedness, of being progressive and right-thinking that we are asked to accept this challenge to the foundations of our society. It seems, moreover, on the basis of public opinion polls, that this challenge is already accepted by a majority of our fellow citizens and thus the question of its establishment as a matter of law has not provoked a debate worthy of the momentous issues at stake. I believe, on the contrary, that it is a matter of the greatest importance to make clear the true implications of the negation of sexual difference and to debate publicly what is at stake rather than falling back on principles, such as equality, that flatter those who set themselves up as their standard bearers, even though the way these principles are invoked to justify the homosexual-marriage agenda does not stand up to critical scrutiny. This subject deserves better than the court of political correctness, whose authority, advocates of homosexual marriage hope, will prevail until the law is voted on—a tribunal they defend by means of disqualifying caricatures against anyone who dares to question their project and their motives.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Doug Ross @ Journal: What the Democrat Party Told Me

Doug Ross @ Journal: What the Democrat Party Told Me

Well, I'm here to tell you: Everything they told me was a lie. Everything they told me was wrong. Intentionally, diabolically, criminally wrong. And if we don't begin to turn back the tide of centralized government, if we don't politically obliterate the Democrat Party, this beautiful Republic, this magnificent country, this bastion of free enterprise and private property rights, this shining city on a hill... well, it will be finished.

CPAC: Pat Caddell eviscerates the inept Republican consultants who gave us Romney and brought the GOP to the brink of extinction | Conservatives4Palin

CPAC: Pat Caddell eviscerates the inept Republican consultants who gave us Romney and brought the GOP to the brink of extinction | Conservatives4Palin

For the past four years or so, I’ve written numerous posts condemning the inbred society of Republican “insiders” and “consultants” who tell their candidates that they need to become Democrat light to win elections. These Washington denizens, I’ve argued are more interested in a candidates willingness to spend huge amounts of money for their services than their ideology or electability. That’s why they’ve consistently tried to marginalize real conservatives who see them for what they are: parasitic mercenaries who’ve become rich dispensing bad advice since about the time Reagan left office. They are scared to death by conservatives with core convictions who, thus, don’t need them such as Governor Palin. In a post on the eve of the 2010 mid-term elections, I listed several reasons why it was in their interest to make sure Governor Palin wasn’t the 2012 nominee because they had, in Mitt Romney, the perfect candidate for their narrow self-interest:

Health Insurers: Huge Obamacare Premium Hikes Are Coming - Guy Benson

Health Insurers: Huge Obamacare Premium Hikes Are Coming - Guy Benson

Throughout the healthcare debate (and his first campaign), President Obama promised that premiums would fall by an average of $2,500 annually per family.  He also pledged that overall healthcare costs would decline, not increase. Wrong, and wrong.  There's a reason why Republicans are still fighting like hell to repeal and defund this monstrosity.   The Associated Press runs through a few of the reasons behind the looming cost spikes:

A Swelling Education Bureaucracy Declares War On Children - Investors.com

A Swelling Education Bureaucracy Declares War On Children - Investors.com: "Zero Intelligence: What is happening these days in education? Children are being demonized and expelled from public schools for "crimes" associated with plastic army men or gun-shaped cookies. A monster is growing.

Ever since the Department of Education took in more than $100 billion in 2009 stimulus cash to "improve education" the incidents of petty tyranny traumatizing children from its bureaucrats and teachers unions has grown exponentially in schools."

'via Blog this'

Spending $50 Mil For TSA Uniforms Shows How Out Of Control DC Is - Investors.com

Spending $50 Mil For TSA Uniforms Shows How Out Of Control DC Is - Investors.com: "Just when you think it can't get any crazier, the Washington politicians go another step higher on the lunacy scale.

With the automatic spending cuts, known as the sequester, cutting only 2 cents per dollar out of the bloated federal budget, a budget that's grown 71% faster than inflation over the past two decades, the federal scaremongers are rushing around putting padlocks on control towers at the nation's airports.

We're supposed to think a measly 2 percent cut in spending, something most any business or household could handle if their spending was out of control and unsustainable, makes it impossible for the government to launch an aircraft carrier or operate control towers.

"

'via Blog this'

Moonbattery » The Sickness Spreads

Moonbattery » The Sickness Spreads: "Now that liberals have fundamentally transformed California from the definitive land of opportunity into an overtaxed, overregulated, illegal alien–overrun hellhole, they are setting off for greener pastures, leaving behind a deliberately imported welfare-dependent underclass to ensure that their soiled nest will never be clean again. Most escaped Californians bring with them the same failed ideology that destroyed the erstwhile Golden State."

'via Blog this'

For America, Decline is a Choice

For America, Decline is a Choice: "“In reality, decline is not a foregone conclusion but a deliberate political choice that builds from a failure to define what matters most to the nation.”

"

'via Blog this'

Gay Marriage: Kids Need Married Moms and Dads

Gay Marriage: Kids Need Married Moms and Dads: "What we do know, reliably and conclusively, is that married biological moms and dads matter to children. As the brief states:
It is not simply the presence of two parents…but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support children’s development.… Experts have long contended that both mothers and fathers make unique contributions to parenting.
The professors present a great deal of scholarship showing that mothering and fathering are different. The mother plays a critical role in a child’s neural development, communication, sense of security, problem solving, understanding and responding to feelings, and social ties to both friends and family.
The father’s involvement is linked to positive outcomes in education, physical health, and avoidance of juvenile delinquency. Children who “roughhouse with their fathers” learn that certain violent behavior is unacceptable. Fathers encourage exploration and discourage boys from “compensatory masculinity where they reject and denigrate all that is feminine and instead…engag[e] in domineering and violent behavior.”"

'via Blog this'

Democracy Is Not the Answer

Democracy Is Not the Answer: "Classifying ideologies as democratic or undemocratic has blinded us to their content and gives our enemies an easy way to take power while leaving the champions of democracy voiceless. Too many Republicans were flailing after the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in Egypt; unable to articulate a reason why the United States should not support a democratically elected government.

Democracy was once viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a form of American Exceptionalism. But reducing that exceptionalism to open elections misses the point. It isn’t open elections that make Americans special; it’s Americans who make open elections special. Instead of looking to systems, we should look to values. Instead of looking to governments, we should look to peoples.

"

'via Blog this'

Thursday, March 14, 2013

f | Economic Liberty

f | Economic Liberty: "It seems obvious to me now—though I was slow coming to the conclusion—that the institution of private property, the dispersion of power and importance that goes with it, has been a main factor in producing that limited amount of free-andequalness which Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution.

— Max Eastman
The most materially and spiritually depressing systems of social organization are those that embrace the mechanistic and degrading premise of collectivism. Mankind has, for thousands of years, suffered under these most oppressive and dreary social systems. In its political manifestation, it provides society with a herd-oriented image. Perhaps it is genetic memory—certainly not pragmatism—that is recapitulated in the appetites of so many moderns for collective systems."

'via Blog this'

Trevor Loudon's New Zeal Blog » Marxism in Education – The Infiltration of Our School Systems by the Common Core Standards

Trevor Loudon's New Zeal Blog » Marxism in Education – The Infiltration of Our School Systems by the Common Core Standards: "Today, I caught Glenn Beck on The Blaze and his excellent showcasing of Obama’s Common Core Standards that are now in 45 states, including my state of Idaho. Common Core is Marxism for children. It is state run propaganda and is meant to dumb down and control our little ones. It is evil and it has been a long time coming. Obama pushed it through slyly and quickly after coming into office, but I can tell you, this has been brewing since at least the 1990s.

"

'via Blog this'

Obama resists simple fixes for sequestration cuts | Conservative News, Views & Books

Obama resists simple fixes for sequestration cuts | Conservative News, Views & Books: "The little secret of sequestration is that the Obama administration could fix much of the problem pretty quickly. But it doesn’t want to.
Congress tells executive branch agencies how much money they can spend and how they should spend it. Sometimes the instructions are broad, and sometimes they are quite detailed. Cabinet secretaries and lower-downs are bound to work within those congressional directives.

"

'via Blog this'

Vox Popoli: The corruption that encompasses

Vox Popoli: The corruption that encompasses: "What you should understand is that everything that has happened since 2008 related in any way to the financial crisis is a lie.  Absolutely everything. It begins with the banks, but it doesn't end there, the mainstream media and the government are in collusion with them to hide how bad the global situation is and how criminally corrupt the behavior of the banks and their enablers was that created this ongoing debacle:
"

'via Blog this'

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Affordable Care Act Is Unaffordable And Onerous

Affordable Care Act Is Unaffordable And Onerous: ObamaCare: Does anyone remember hearing that one of the blessings of health reform would be doing your taxes a second time? Filling out fifteen pages and paying $1 trillion in taxes are just the latest ObamaCare surprises. '1040" is not most Americans' lucky number. Yet hardly as unlucky as the digits in ObamaCare. The latest is that a three-person family is going to have to fill out a 15-page form to enjoy health benefits, with 21 steps to go

Free-Market, Hunger Groups Ask EPA to Revisit Ethanol Decision

Free-Market, Hunger Groups Ask EPA to Revisit Ethanol Decision:
WASHINGTON, MAR. 13, 2013 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute and ActionAid USA, an anti-hunger group, have petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its claim that its ethanol fuel programs do not reduce global food supplies. The groups filed a formal Request for Reconsideration with the agency on Monday.
In October 2011, CEI and ActionAid USA filed a complaint with EPA under the Data Quality Act that contended the agency had incorrectly downplayed the effect of its ethanol fuel programs on world hunger. The complaint was based on a 2011 study which found ethanol fuel programs worldwide had led to nearly 200,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, because of the diversion of grain stocks to ethanol fuel production. This diversion removes corn from the food cycle, which causes grain prices to increase worldwide. But as the CEI/ActionAid USA petition points out, EPA’s website materials claim its ethanol programs have only a minimal impact on food prices and consumers.
EPA’s Data Quality rules give the agency 90 days to act on such petitions, but EPA sat on the matter for 14 months before denying the petition in December 2012.
“EPA seems interested only in serving the ethanol lobby and in polishing its own image, rather than acknowledge the devastating impact of these programs on world hunger,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel for CEI. “And EPA’s 14-month delay in responding is beyond belief. EPA has become expert at diverting not only corn but honesty as well. It’s all the more ironic that our reconsideration request was filed during Government in the Sunshine Week.”
Wed, 2013-03-13
Sub Title: 
Agency Refused Earlier Request to Measure Mandate's Effect on Food Supply

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Farm Subsidies Must Die

Farm Subsidies Must Die:
Expert Commentary


On January 2, President Barack Obama signed a bill designed to avert the fiscal cliff. At the same time, to slightly less fanfare, he averted the “milk cliff.” By extending the 2008 farm bill another nine months, he prevented the automatic revival of a 1949 law requiring the federal government to buy dairy products under certain circumstances, effectively setting a floor for the price of milk. While the actual fate of milk prices was far from clear, the milk cliff provided cover to continue the practices of subsidizing wealthy farmers, to the detriment of just about everyone else.
In 2012, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) spent $22 billion on subsidy programs for farmers. Introduced in the 1930s to help struggling small family farms, the subsidies now routinely draw condemnation from both left and right as wasteful corporate welfare. While the number of farms is down 70 percent since the 1930s—only 2 percent of Americans are directly engaged in farming—farmers aren’t necessarily struggling anymore. In 2010, the average farm household earned $84,400, up 9.4 percent from 2009 and about 25 percent more than the average household income nationwide.
What’s more, a handful of farmers reap most of the benefits from the subsidies: Wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton have always taken the lion’s share of the feds’ largesse. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that “since 1995, just 10 percent of subsidized farms—the largest and wealthiest operations—have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments. 62 percent of farms in the United States did not collect subsidy payments.”
The good news is that our fiscal problems have made these subsidies politically unsustainable. As a result, the farm bill currently under consideration by Congress is set to terminate them. But attempts to wean farmers from the federal teat have proved disastrous in the past.
Take the $4.1 billion the federal government spent on direct payments in 2011. Created in 1996 as a way to get farmers off their addiction to price guarantee programs, these supposedly temporary direct payments are still around. In 2013, a new farm bill, even with the elimination of direct payments, would be a similarly hollow victory. Lawmakers would compensate farmers by expanding another unjustifiable farm subsidy program: crop insurance.
Like most businesses, farms buy insurance policies to protect from potential losses, such as poor yields or declining prices. Unlike most businesses, they can count on the government to pay about two thirds of the premiums, at a cost of $7 billion annually. The proposed “shallow-loss program” would send money to farmers in the event of small drops of revenue that are not typically covered by crop insurance.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) claims that the extension would save taxpayers money, swapping $3 billion in new payments in exchange for eliminating $4 billion in direct payments. But the crop insurance scheme is likely to cost twice as much as estimated, according to a 2012 American Enterprise Institute study by the economists Vincent H. Smith, Barry K. Goodwin, and Bruce A Babcock. History tells us that it won’t be long before the program resembles the direct payments it was supposed to replace. That’s because, if implemented, these subsidies will kick in at relative low level of losses. Given that prices will surely come down from their current record levels, most farmers will wind up receiving a payment every year.
Direct payments and crop insurance are not the only farm programs in need of termination. Price support programs such as marketing loans are a serious waste of taxpayer money, as are the conservation subsidies that pay farmers not to farm on their land. So are export subsidies, which aid farmers in foreign sales, and countercyclical payments, which compensate for drops in crops’ market prices.
In addition to the direct cost to taxpayers, these subsidies cause enormous economic distortions. Consider the domestic sugar industry. The USDA protects its producers against foreign competitors by imposing U.S. import quotas, and against low prices with a no-recourse loan program that serves as an effective price floor. As a result, the University of Michigan economist Mark Perry reports, Americans have had to pay an average of twice the world price of sugar since 1982.
That’s just one of many government interventions that have hurt the poorest Americans by increasing the price of food. The food stamp program—an $80 billion initiative designed to help poor Americans offset the high price of buying food—is embedded in the very farm bill that keeps those prices so high.
Farm subsidies also hurt young farmers through their impact on land values. Almost half of the country’s farmland is operated by someone other than its owner. Those renters—especially young farmers who generally have higher borrowing costs to start with—face increases in both the price of renting and the cost of buying. On the other hand, farmers near retirement age, who own land through inheritance or length of tenure, reap the benefits of higher land values induced by the subsidies. In 2010 some 90,000 direct payments went to wealthy investors and absentee land owners in more than 350 American cities, according to an EWG report.
“It’s no accident that the average age of farmers is nearing 60 years old,” a friend who runs a farm wrote in a recent email to me. “We’ve drastically increased barriers to entry through subsidy programs, at huge social and economic costs. If I’m a 30-year-old farmer, as my sons-in-law are, I should mightily resent the fact that the landowner whose land I need receives government subsidies while I’m forced to compete against those subsidies to secure enough land to have a viable farm business.”
Farm subsidies benefit the rich and hurt the poor. They are massively expensive and hugely wasteful. They must end.

Anarcho-Tyranny in NYC

Anarcho-Tyranny in NYC:
An irony of a collapsing society is that even as citizens lose their liberty, they also lose the protections afforded by rule of law. For example, the liberal dystopia of New York City, ruled over by a mayor and a governor who are arguably the two most nakedly tyrannical figures in contemporary American politics, is descending into anarchy:
A vigil for a teenager fatally shot by cops turned into a riot in Brooklyn last night, as a mob of outraged thugs ransacked stores, broke car windows and assaulted residents in East Flatbush.
The chaos erupted after about 200 people gathered to mourn 16-year-old Kimani “Kiki” Gray, a reputed Bloods gang member who was shot after pulling a gun on police Saturday.
At about 9 p.m., a splinter group broke off from the main ceremony and ran wild, causing havoc in several stores, including a Rite Aid.
“They poured in here, like 40 or 50 of them. They pulled the registers off the counter. They flipped over everything. They punched me in the face, several of them did, not just one. It was insane,” said Lorenzo Evans, 56, manager of the Rite Aid.
Evans also said a guard and two customers were roughed.
The gang also destroyed a bodega, ripped up trash bags, threw fruit and bottles at police officers and even pummeled residents.
They destroyed a CD-DVD store on Church Street.
“They damaged my store,” said Mamadou Bah, 31, owner of Hallmark African Movies.
“They knocked on my door, broke the glass, and ran in. They were throwing the DVDs around.”
That’s what you get for “acting white” by engaging in capitalism.
Mayor Bloomberg is enraged because a judge delayed his dictate regarding how large a cup of soda can be served. Yet here is the official response to mobs of hooligans ripping down his city:
Cops reported one arrest for disorderly conduct.
Society could put a stop to this. But there isn’t the will even to disapprove of it.
Al Sharpton used to make his living setting off riots like this. He got people killed at Crown Heights and Freddy’s Fashion Mart. He was rewarded with a presidential friendship and his own show on MSNBC.
In coordination with the flame of liberty, the flame of civilization is guttering low. Imagine the chaos when welfare checks start bouncing.
rite-aid-vigil-kiki-gray
What the “vigil” did to a Rite Aid.
On tips from Mickey Shea and Sean C.

Thomas Sowell on the fallacy of equal outcomes

Thomas Sowell on the fallacy of equal outcomes:
From Thomas Sowell’s column today:
There are so many fallacies about race that it would be hard to say which is the most ridiculous. However, one fallacy behind many other fallacies is the notion that there is something unusual about different races being unequally represented in various institutions, careers or at different income or achievement levels.
Yet some racial or ethnic minorities have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in many nations. These have included the Chinese in Malaysia, Lebanese in West Africa, Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Britons in Argentina, Indians in Fiji, Jews in Poland, and Spaniards in Chile — among many others.
Not only different racial and ethnic groups, but whole nations and civilizations, have had very different achievements for centuries. China in the 15th century was more advanced than any country in Europe. Eventually Europeans overtook the Chinese — and there is no evidence of changes in the genes of either of them.
Among the many reasons for different levels of achievement is something as simple as age. The median age in Germany and Japan is over 40, while the median age in Afghanistan and Yemen is under 20. Even if the people in all four of these countries had the same mental potential, the same history, the same culture — and the countries themselves had the same geographic features — the fact that people in some countries have 20 years more experience than people in other countries would still be enough to make equal economic and other outcomes virtually impossible.
Add the fact that different races evolved in different geographic settings, presenting very different opportunities and constraints on their development, and the same conclusion follows. Yet the idea that differences in outcomes are odd, if not sinister, has been repeated mindlessly from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court.

The Gruesome Reality of Racist South Africa

The Gruesome Reality of Racist South Africa: For decades, the country of South Africa was the focus of an international rallying cry against the injustices of apartheid. On June 17, 1991, South Africa’s Parliament abolished the legal framework for the practice of racial persecution. In 1994, Nelson Mandela and his Marxist African National Congress (ANC) assumed the reins of power. The international community looked away, satisfied that justice had prevailed. They continue to look away, even as South Africa has degenerated into another racist pit, best described by an Afrikaner farm owner: “It’s politically correct to kill whites these days.”

Is the GOP about to be co-opted by the Democrats … again

Is the GOP about to be co-opted by the Democrats … again:
It all starts with what could be described as a very simple act – the acceptance of a premise.   As soon as one side accepts the premise of the other side, the other side has won.  It simply becomes a matter of how bad the damage is.
In this case, the premise that seems to have been accepted by the “old ladies” of the GOP leadership is that some sort of federal “gun control” legislation is necessary  because of “mass killings” and our “children”.  From Ammoland:
You might think that with Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives there would be no way ANY gun control legislation could reach the floor.
But sadly we are already beginning to see so-called “conservative champions” folding to pressure from the anti-gun media to sell-out gun owners.
Former Vice Presidential candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan, has stated that he would support legislation that bans private sales at gun shows.
In the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, along with the help of Rep. Scott Rigell (VA), Patrick Meehan (PA) and others, have stated openly that they will work together with anti-gun Democrats from Maryland and New York to tighten restrictions on private firearms sales and expand background checks.
Possibly even more upsetting has been Senator Tom Coburn’s willingness to work alongside anti-gunner Chuck Schumer (NY) to propose “bi-partisan” anti-gun legislation in the Senate.
Make no mistake, so-called “expansion” of background checks is little more than a blatant attempt by anti-gunners to register all firearms and gun owners in America.
That is why Representatives Steve Stockman (TX-36) and Paul Broun (GA-10) have drafted a letter to Speaker Boehner and the Republican leadership urging them to require the support of the majority of Republican members in the House before bringing any anti-gun bills to the floor.
This so-called “Hastert Rule” would mean that 117 Republicans would have to support a particular bill before it had any chance of getting a floor vote, not just the support of the anti-gun elitist in leadership.
So the premise seems to have been accepted by the GOP leadership if this report is accurate.  And, if it is accurate, then they’re going to try to fashion some sort of gun control legislation to address a problem that the type of gun control legislation they’ll propose won’t effect.  What it will do, however, is create a new law that will put legal gunowners in criminal jeopardy if they desire to sell their firearms and don’t follow the new rules to a ‘t’ (and, my guess is the new rules will likely be mostly unenforceable – they’d only be enforced retroactively if a gun involved in a private sale that wasn’t “background checked” was used in a crime).
The criminals?  Those who are likely to commit mass killings?  Yeah, they’ll comply.
Meanwhile, if you believe that Congress has no right to “infringe” on 2nd Amendment rights, prepare to be sold down the river by the GOP.  They’ve already accepted the need and the premise, it’s now just a matter of figuring out what the “compromise” will be.  What should be clear, however, is that if anti-gun legislation does get passed, it will be your 2nd Amendment rights that will be compromised and the GOP will be complicit.
~McQ

Whoops! Green Cars Not So Green

Whoops! Green Cars Not So Green: I, and others, have posted material showing that electric cars and hybrids are not exactly environmentally nor hotcoldwetdry friendly. Here’s another in the Wall Street Journal (h/t Dana)
Bjorn Lomborg: Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret
Electric cars are promoted as the chic harbinger of an environmentally benign future. Ads assure us of “zero emissions,” and President Obama has promised a million on the road by 2015. With sales for 2012 coming in at about 50,000, that million-car figure is a pipe dream. Consumers remain wary of the cars’ limited ...

Educational Rot

Educational Rot:
American education is in a sorry state of affairs, and there’s enough blame for all participants to have their fair share. They include students who are hostile and alien to the education process, uninterested parents, teachers and administrators who either are incompetent or have been beaten down by the system, and politicians who’ve become handmaidens for teachers unions. There’s another education issue that’s neither flattering nor comfortable to confront and talk about. That’s the low academic preparation of many teachers. That’s an issue that must be confronted and dealt with if we’re to improve the quality of education. Let’s look at it.
Schools of education, whether graduate or undergraduate, tend to represent the academic slums of most college campuses. They tend to be home to students who have the lowest academic achievement test scores when they enter college, such as SAT scores. They have the lowest scores when they graduate and choose to take postgraduate admissions tests — such as the GRE, the MCAT and the LSAT.
The California Basic Educational Skills Test, or CBEST, is mandatory for teacher certification in California. It’s a joke. Here’s a multiple-choice question on its practice math test: “Rob uses 1 box of cat food every 5 days to feed his cats. Approximately how many boxes of cat food does he use per month? A. 2 boxes, B. 4 boxes, C. 5 boxes, D. 6 boxes, E. 7 boxes.” Here’s another: “Which of the following is the most appropriate unit for expressing the weight of a pencil? A. pounds, B. ounces, C. quarts, D. pints, E. tons.” I’d venture to predict that the average reader’s sixth-grader could answer each question. Here’s a question that is a bit more challenging; call your eighth-grader: “Solve for y: y – 2 + 3y = 10, A. 2, B. 3, C. 4, D. 5, E. 6.”
Some years ago, the Association of Mexican American Educators, the California Association for Asian-Pacific Bilingual Education and the Oakland Alliance of Black Educators brought suit against the state of California and the CaliforniaCommission on Teacher Credentialing, charging that the CBEST was racially discriminatory.
Plaintiff “evidence” was the fact that the first-time passing rate for whites was 80 percent, about 50 percent for Mexican-Americans, Filipinos and Southeast Asians, and 46 percent for blacks. In 2000, in a stroke of rare common sense, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found CBEST not to be racial discriminatory.
Poor teacher preparation is not a problem restricted to California. In Massachusetts, only 27 percent of new teachers could pass the math test needed to be certified as a teacher. A 2011 investigation by Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News found that more than 700 Georgia teachers repeatedly failed at least one portion of the certification test they are required to pass before receiving a teaching certificate. Nearly 60 teachers failed the test more than 10 times, and one teacher failed the test 18 times. They also found that there were 297 teachers on the Atlanta school system’s payroll even though they had failed the state certification test five times or more.
Textbooks used in schools of education might explain some teacher ineptitude. A passage in Marilyn Burns’ text “About Teaching Mathematics” reads, “There is no place for requiring students to practice tedious calculations that are more efficiently and accurately done by using calculators.” “New Designs for Teaching and Learning,” by Dennis Adams and Mary Hamm, says, “Content knowledge is not seen to be as important as possessing teaching skills and knowledge about the students being taught.” Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar’s text “Methods that Matter” reads, “Students can no longer be viewed as cognitive living rooms into which the furniture of knowledge is moved in and arranged by teachers, and teachers cannot invariably act as subject-matter experts.” The authors explain, “The main use of standardized tests in America is to justify the distribution of certain goodies to certain people.”
With but a few exceptions, schools of education represent the academic slums of most any college. American education could benefit from slum removal, eliminating schools of education.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Phony Unemployment Numbers for a Phony Recovery

Phony Unemployment Numbers for a Phony Recovery:
Supposedly “unemployment” is down today, which is an utter joke. Only a President and media that calls spending increases “cuts” would pay attention to this number we call “unemployment.” This quote from CNN Money explains why:
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dipped to 7.7%, as 12 million workers were counted as unemployed. The drop was partly because more people said they got jobs, but also because 130,000 people dropped out of the labor force.
This is the same kind of genius logic that causes people like Paul Krugman to declare that World War II got us out of the Great Depression. Take your best, most able-bodied workers, and ship them all overseas — millions of them — and voila! they are no longer unemployed! (Problem is, the same phony GDP numbers they cite to show a “recovery” during the war also show a deep depression during the incredibly prosperous year of 1946.) When you can play with your denominators at will, it doesn’t matter so much what your numerators are, does it?
The number that matters is this: what percentage of the population is working? James Pethokoukis has the chart, along with some incisive analysis, and it’s not pretty:

I have said for a while now: we are going to get a phony “recovery” before the big crash. Today’s numbers help prop up the Phony Recovery Narrative. If you want to get suckered by it, that’s your business.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Right to Self Defense Isn't Negotiable

The Right to Self Defense Isn't Negotiable:
In all the noise caused by the Obama administration's direct
assault on the right of every person to keep and bear arms, the
essence of the issue has been drowned out. The president and his
big-government colleagues want you to believe that only the
government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of
this debate is about obedience to law.
To those who have killed innocents
among us, obedience to law is the last of their thoughts. And to
those who believe that the Constitution means what it says, the
essence of this debate is not about the law; it is about personal
liberty in a free society. It is the exercise of this particular
personal liberty -- the freedom to defend yourself when the police
cannot or will not and the freedom to use weapons to repel tyrants
if they take over the government -- that the big-government crowd
fears the most.
Let's be candid: All government fears liberty. By its nature,
government is the negation of liberty. God has given us freedom,
and the government has taken it away. George Washington recognized
this when he argued that government is not reason or eloquence but
force. If the government had its way, it would have a monopoly on
force.
Government compels, restrains and takes. Thomas Jefferson
understood that when he wrote that our liberties are inalienable
and endowed by our Creator, and the only reason we have formed
governments is to engage them to protect our liberties. We enacted
the Constitution as the supreme law of the land to restrain the
government. Yet somewhere along the way, government got the idea
that it can more easily protect the freedom of us all from the
abuses of a few by curtailing the freedom of us all. I know that
sounds ridiculous, but that's where we are today.
The anti-Second Amendment crowd cannot point to a single
incident in which curtailing the freedom of law-abiding Americans
has stopped criminals or crazies from killing. It is obvious that
criminals don't care what the law says because they think they can
get away with their violations of it. And those unfortunates who
are deranged don't recognize any restraint on their own behavior,
as they cannot mentally distinguish right from wrong and cannot be
expected to do so in the future, no matter what the law says.
When the Second Amendment was written and added to the
Constitution, the use of guns in America was common. At the same
time, King George III -- whom we had just defeated and who was
contemplating another war against us, which he would start in 1812
-- no doubt ardently wished that he had stripped his colonists of
their right to self-defense so as to subdue their use of violence
to secede from Great Britain. That act of secession, the American
Revolution, was largely successful because close to half of the
colonists were armed and did not fear the use of weaponry.
If the king and the Parliament had enacted and enforced laws
that told them who among the colonists owned guns or that limited
the power of the colonists' guns or the amount of ammunition they
could possess, our Founding Fathers would have been hanged for
treason. One of the secrets of the Revolution -- one not taught in
public schools today -- is that the colonists actually had superior
firepower to the king. The British soldiers had standard-issue
muskets, which propelled a steel ball or several of them about 50
yards from the shooter. But the colonists had the long gun --
sometimes called the Kentucky or the Tennessee -- which propelled a
single steel ball about 200 yards, nearly four times as far as the
British could shoot. Is it any wonder that by Yorktown in 1781, the
king and the Parliament had lost enough men and treasure to
surrender?
The lesson here is that free people cannot remain free by
permitting the government -- even a popularly elected one that they
can unelect -- to take their freedoms away. The anti-freedom crowd
in the government desperately wants to convey the impression that
it is doing something to protect us. So it unconstitutionally and
foolishly seeks, via burdensome and intrusive registration laws,
laws restricting the strength of weapons and the quantity and
quality of ammunition and, the latest trick, laws that impose
financial liability on law-abiding manufacturers and sellers for
the criminal behavior of some users, to make it so burdensome to
own a gun that the ordinary folks who want one will give up their
efforts to obtain one.
We cannot let ourselves fall down this slippery slope. The right
to self-defense is a natural individual right that pre-exists the
government. It cannot morally or constitutionally be taken away
absent individual consent or due process. Kings and tyrants have
taken this right away. We cannot let a popular majority take it
away, for the tyranny of the majority can be as destructive to
freedom as the tyranny of a madman.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Feds spend $31,000 per household, but 1 in 5 programs fail

Feds spend $31,000 per household, but 1 in 5 programs fail:
Paul Bedard
Uncle Sam is on par to spend about $31,000 per household in America this year, but a report finds that 22 percent of the federal government's programs don't work and should be junked.
The failed programs cost American taxpayers $123 billion, said the Senate Republican Policy Committee, but there has been little success killing them.

Read more on WashingtonExaminer.com

Words of wisdom

Words of wisdom:
Austerity is the result of countries’ democratic decisions to wait until the last minute before acting, under the pressure of the markets, mainly by raising taxes rather than implementing long-waited reforms. Denying this, by claiming that austerity has been imposed on countries – rather than self-inflicted – and looking for scapegoats, is the biggest threat to democracies going forward.
That is from Lorenzo Bini Smaghi.  I would put it this way: the higher the “multiplier,” the more we should be asking: why doesn’t the private sector want to reemploy these people?

Stossel: The Sequester Is Not Even A Cut

Stossel: The Sequester Is Not Even A Cut:

Photo Credit: Human Events
If you’re reading this, you’ve survived the “sequester” cuts!
That may surprise you, since President Obama likened the sequester to taking a “meat cleaver” to government, causing FBI agents to be furloughed, prosecutors to let criminals escape and medical research to grind to a halt!

The media hyped it, too. The NBC Nightly News said, “The sequester could cripple air travel, force firefighter layoffs — even kick preschoolers out of child care!” The truth is that the terrifying sequester cuts weren’t even cuts. They were merely a small reduction in government’s planned increase in spending. A very small reduction.
After a decade, the federal government will simply spend about $4.6 trillion a year instead of $4.5 trillion (in 2012 dollars).

And still members of Congress, Republicans included, look for ways to delay the cuts, like spreading them out over 10 years instead of making any now. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked, “If we cannot do this little bit … how are we ever going to balance the budget?” Actually, we don’t even need to balance the budget. If we just slowed the growth of government to 1 or 2 percent a year, we could grow our way out of unsustainable debt.
Read more from this story HERE.
Stossel: The Sequester Is Not Even A Cut

ObamaCare simply isn’t affordable; it will impose huge new burdens on consumers and business

ObamaCare simply isn’t affordable; it will impose huge new burdens on consumers and business: ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With unemployment stubbornly high and economic growth shrinking, it is clear the economy is headed in the wrong direction.  And ObamaCare is a major cause.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Brit Hume: Time For Obama To ‘Put His Big Boy Pants On’

Brit Hume: Time For Obama To ‘Put His Big Boy Pants On’:
Racist, obviously.
“The president seems prepared to let the public suffer almost as much as possible, as long as he can blame somebody else. This is not what we expect of presidents,” Hume said. “Presidents, in the end, are supposed to be the people who put their big boy pants and prepare to shoulder the responsibility. And if they’re criticized for using that responsibility, or authority, so be it. But that’s what you expect of presidents.”
Hume added that Obama was “more inclined to let the chips fall where they may” as long as he could blame Republicans.
You know who also needs to put her bog boy pants on? Janet Napolitano.
Ms Napolitano said today that major airports were seeing lines “150 to 200 per cent as long as we would normally expect” as result of the federal spending cuts that went into force on Friday.
“We’re already seeing the effects at some of the ports of entry, the big airports, for example. Some of them had very long lines this weekend,” she told a breakfast event organised by Politico.
When pressed for specifics she cited Chicago’s O’Hare, Atlanta’s Hartfield-Jackson and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), adding: “I don’t mean to scare, I mean to inform.”
However, when contacted by The Daily Telegraph, spokespeople for both O’Hare and LAX, as well as representatives from the travel industry, denied that airports had been hit by delays.
“We haven’t had any slowdowns at all,” said Marshall Lowe, a spokesman for LAX. Mr Lowe said that he had been on duty over the weekend and received no reports of unusual security delays.

Barack Obama’s Defective Public Character

Barack Obama’s Defective Public Character:
Sequestration, for all its problems–and I consider it to be an abdication of responsible governance–is helpful at least to this extent: it captures, in a single, still-unfolding act the problematic character of the president.
To understand why, let’s update our effort to follow the bouncing Obama ball. Here’s some of what we know.
(a) The president and his administration are responsible for the sequestration idea. (b) Before that fact became widely known, Mr. Obama misled Americans of that fact in a debate with Mitt Romney–and his aides did the same thing in the aftermath of the debate. (c) Thanks to Bob Woodward’s The Price of Politics, the White House has now been forced to admit that, as top White House adviser Gene Sperling put it on Sunday, “Yes, we put forward the design of how to do that [implement sequestration].” (d) Over the last several weeks, the president vilified sequestration as a brutal, savage, and inhumane idea. (e) At a press conference last Friday, when sequestration cuts began and the world as we know it did not end, the president began to moonwalk away from his scorching rhetoric, saying, “Just to make the final point about the sequester, we will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said.” (f) Since the sequestration idea was first signed into law by President Obama in 2011, House Republicans have twice passed legislation to make the cuts more reasonable–and Democrats have refused to act on it. (g) In the last week, Republicans have tried to give the president greater authority to make more reasonable cuts–but he has refused it, allowing unnecessary pain to be inflicted on Americans in order to blame Republicans.
To summarize, then: The president has spoken in the harshest possible terms about an idea he and his White House originated and signed into law. He has used apocalyptic language leading up to the sequestration–and then, as the sequestration cuts began, lectured us that “this is not going to be an apocalypse” as “some people have said.” And Mr. Obama has warned about the devastating nature of the cuts even as he has opposed efforts to make the cuts less devastating.
That’s quite a hat trick.
Will the president pay a political price for this fairly remarkable (and empirically demonstrable) record of dishonesty, inconsistency, and hypocrisy, to say nothing of inflicting unnecessary pain on the country he was elected to serve? I would think so, but I really don’t know.
What I do know is that the sequestration fight has once again shown us that Barack Obama has a defective public character and a post-modern attitude toward truth. He simply makes things up as he goes along. It looks to me that there are few things he will not do, and fewer things he will not say, in order to undermine his opponents and advance his progressive cause. That is something that is deeply injurious to American politics and America itself.

Monday, March 4, 2013

How to Revive the GOP

How to Revive the GOP:
Attempts to remake the GOP in the wake of 2012 have thus far been discouraging. Most recently, CPAC, a conservative confab attended by some of the biggest names in the GOP, made headlines for snubbing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and banning a pro-gay rights group. For a movement that needs to gain support from independents and the young, banishing a Republican with bipartisan appeal and barring one side of a social issue that many young conservatives support doesn’t seem like a winning formula.
Arthur Brooks, president of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has put his finger on a strategy to fix this problem that is both morally right and politically smart:
Some say the solution for conservatives is either to redouble the attacks on big government per se, or give up and try to build a better welfare state. Neither path is correct. Raging against government debt and tax rates that most Americans don’t pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.
Instead, the answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools. […]
With this moral touchstone, conservative leaders will be able to stand before Americans who are struggling and feel marginalized and say, “We will fight for you and your family, whether you vote for us or not”—and truly mean it. In the end that approach will win. But more important, it is the right thing to do.
We don’t think the GOP is going extinct anytime soon, but it will have many more losing elections if it can’t connect voters with the ways its policies can help the vulnerable. Fortunately, the GOP has its share of policy successes to point to, and Brooks offers a strategy to highlight these achievements in a way that will resonate with many who have turned their backs on the party. Read the whole thing here.
[Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com]

Liberal Education – Rotten To The Core

Liberal Education – Rotten To The Core:
Liberal Education – Rotten To The Core
Have you ever stopped to wonder why conservative ideology is having such a hard time gaining traction with our younger generations? Many of you will know where I am headed with this, but I believe it is time we took a long and hard look at the education system in this country. Could it be we have abdicated our rights as parents and leaders of our community to educate our children as we see fit? It may be happening in places where we would least expect it.
Let us take a look at an example from Michelle Malkin, in the most unlikely of states.
(Human Events) Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists “freedom fighters” and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as “terrorists”?
Here’s the dirty little secret: Despite the best efforts of vigilant parents, teachers and administrators committed to academic excellence, progressive activists reign supreme in government schools.
That’s because curriculum is king. The liberal monopoly on the modern textbook/curricular market remains unchallenged after a half-century. He who controls the textbooks, teaching guides and tests controls the academic agenda.
That is how the propagandistic outfitting of students in Islamic garb came to pass in the unlikely setting of the conservative Lumberton, Texas, school district. As Fox News reporter Todd Starnes noted this week, a 32-year veteran of the high school led a world geography lesson on Islam in which hijab-wrapped students were banned from using the words “suicide bomber” and “terrorist” to describe Muslim mass murderers in favor of the term “freedom fighter.”
Madelyn LeBlanc, one of the students in the class, “told Fox News that it was clear her teacher was very uncomfortable lecturing the students. ‘I do have a lot of sympathy for her. … At the very beginning, she said she didn’t want to teach it, but it was in the curriculum.’”
But the headline-grabbing injection of moral equivalence into social studies and American history is just the tip of the education iceberg.
Liberal EducationI have at least two regular readers who live in Texas and are very proud of their state, as they should be. I am very interested in hearing their perspective on this issue. This post is not a slam to Texas, but rather a word of warning to the wise. The liberals have bragged about how they intended to turn Texas from red to blue, or at least purple. Many have laughed at that suggestion, but given that  the education system is being taken over by progressives who are as liberal as they come, it may not be so far-fetched. I would urge you to read the entire article by Michelle Malkin. What she reveals is disturbing and troublesome. It should serve as a warning to those of us who believe our states are immune from the disease of liberalism.
Our two daughters were homeschooled. It was not an easy task, especially for my wife, as she was the one who did most of the teaching. We are not, however, sorry for the choice we made to keep our daughters out of public school. Even here in Oklahoma, in a small town where you would think conservative values would reign supreme, liberalism was already advancing its agenda. Our small public school was full of homosexuals and other perverted behaviors and we wanted our daughters to have nothing to do with such things. That’s one of the main reasons we taught them ourselves.
This is also one of the main reasons why it is so important for parents and grandparents to become involved on the local level. We may believe we are safe from the advance of liberalism, but that isn’t necessarily the case. If we do not hold watch over the small things that are controlled locally, we can not hope to stop the big things that slip in and are controlled from Washington. It is also why it is so important for local parents, teachers, etc., to exert control over what happens in the public schools and why the Department of Education should be closed down permanently. Liberal bureaucrats in Washington have no business telling us what our children should be taught.

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Jeff Sessions for President

Jeff Sessions for President:
We found a leader, but hardly anybody noticed. Never mind Rubio and Ryan, or people named Bush. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is the best we’ve got, and he’s plenty good. In fact, his words on the Senate floor when he implored his colleagues to reject the nomination of Jack Lew for Treasury secretary are as good as it gets. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything as elegant, compelling, honorable, and philosophically coherent as Sessions’ speech on the 27th of February.
You probably missed it, what with all the excitement of the epic gladiatorial combat between Bob Woodward and the White House, and the Hagel confirmation carnival, and the Rodman diplomatic mission to Pyongyang.
Sessions laid out Lew’s incredible record of catastrophic budget proposals, which, as Sessions noted, had been unanimously rejected by Congress and decimated in scholarly and editorial analyses. But all that, terrible though it was, and quite sufficient to disqualify anyone from running Treasury, was in a way the least of it. The worst was Lew’s nonchalance in lying to the Senate.
I have discussed his repeated, knowing, and deliberately false statements about those budget plans—most notoriously his claim that “Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore; we’re spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt.”
All false, knowingly and deliberately false. Sessions refused to sit for it. He moved into more philosophical territory, urging the rejection of Lew not only because the man himself is unworthy of the office, but to “defend the integrity of the Senate, to defend the right of our constituents to hear the truth from government officials, and to defend the idea, the very concept, of truth itself.”
Because if you vote for Lew, you’re refusing to stand up for the truth, not just about this one nomination, but about what’s happening to America. About what President Obama is doing to us. Sessions put it so clearly that even the proverbial blind man could see it: whereas the president has repeatedly said that he had a plan to “pay down our debt,” he doesn’t. It’s totally false. The proof? “This is the 1,400th day since Senate Democrats passed a budget.”

Sunday, March 3, 2013

The Unbearable Cluelessness of Republicans

The Unbearable Cluelessness of Republicans:
 Mitt Romney was interviewed by Fox News Sunday:
The chief weakness of his effort, he said, was that "we weren't effective in taking our message to minorities, to Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans. We did well among the majority population. But that was our failing."

Jeff Sessions | Why Jack Lew Is a Disaster for Our Country

Jeff Sessions | Why Jack Lew Is a Disaster for Our Country:
Jeff Sessions | Why Jack Lew Is a Disaster for Our Country

The Founders: Right Then, Right Now

The Founders: Right Then, Right Now:
religious_freedomObamaCare is an abomination to the American way of life in many ways.
It violates Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution (our nation’s highest law) which lists the powers granted to the federal government; nowhere in them is found the authority to create or administer a health care system, wealth redistribution system or system of charity.
The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution further affirms the Article 1 Section 8 limit of federal authority, as well as the lack of authority of the federal government to create or administer a health care system, wealth redistribution system or system of charity:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
ObamaCare also attacks the most basic and instinctive of freedoms: the freedom to buy what one wants, or not buy what one wants.
It is also an assault on our first and most dear freedom articulated in the Bill of Rights: religious freedom.
Many groups, organizations, companies and people across the nation are getting engaged in fighting this monstrosity.
Will you stand with them–and with the founders who established our nation–and do everything within your power to resist and overthrow this socialist tyranny?