Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Why So Much Corruption?

Corruption originates in basic human moral weakness, and is transmitted, not genetically, but through the culture. Cultures arise from their religions and are shaped by them. Of all cultures, those based on Protestant Christianity are the least corrupt.

Here is a list of the most and least corrupt countries from Real Clear Politics: Most Corrupt: Somalia, Afganistan, Mayanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Chad, Usbekistan, Turkestan, Iran, Haiti.  Least Corrupt: New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Iceland.  In the list of the 10 least corrupted countries, 9 were countries with cultures based on Protestant Christianity. Of the 10 most corrupt countries, 7 were countries with cultures based on Islam.

Countries affected by Islam seem especially prone to severe corruption. The Spanish culture was also heavily influenced by Islam during the 800 years of occupation by the Muslims. The Spanish language is full of Arabic words, for instance. Latin American Spanish culture, begun about the time the Muslims were ejected from Spain, still retains things like some of the Arabic treatment of women. The chaperone system was still common in Mexico City in the 1960s, for instance, when I was doing research there. Latin American cultures also have some of the dysfunction of the “honor” systems reminiscent of those of the Arabs, more cruel, vengeful and volatile than Anglo cultures. But more hopefully, also more centered on the extended family.

There is also the fact that countries based on Catholic cultures are notably more corrupt than those based on Protestant Christian cultures. That reflects their attitudes toward the Bible in the 15th century. Catholics did not encourage ordinary people to read the Bible. But Protestants did. They promoted literacy too, so more people could read the newly-available cheap printed Bibles. So Protestants had the advantage of more wide-spread literacy, especially in the Bible. More Bible-reading caused ordinary Protestants to try harder than ordinary Catholics to be more moral people. The result was less than normal corruption in Protestant cultures. That was good for business and for more-democratic government. But it came from the inside of individuals rather than arising from any form of government.

The Christian-based culture of the West is the foundational determinant of its being less corrupt. The founders of the American republic did warn us that without “a religious and moral people” their republic would not work. That makes sense. If something on the inside of people does not tell them corruption is wrong, there can never be enough policemen in the world to diminish or stop corruption.

Many efforts have been made to transplant the less-corrupt democracy of the Anglo cultures to non-democracies. Whether it can be done on a permanent basis is still to be seen. Without also transplanting Protestant Christianity, the basis for transplanting a lasting democracy may be doubtful.

It may well be that what is needed to spread non-corrupt democratic governance is more missionaries and more domestic evangelists in the long run. Without that, the transplants may not survive.

In fact, the question for the West is whether having lost so much of its own Christianity, can it hold onto its own waning relatively non-corrupt democracies, or even survive?

The Peace Prize - EU's Bid to Re-Colonize U.S.

By Dick Morris, at http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2009/10/09/the-nobel-prize-to-obama-europes-bid-to-re-colonize-america/ :

Whether it was rewarding Jimmy Carter for criticizing the Iraq War or supporting Al Gore in his crusade against global warming, the Norwegian Parliament - which chooses the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize - has sought to use the award as a political tool to influence American politic s.   Its prestige and moral power make the prize a potent weapon with which to help steer the direction of the colossus beyond the seas that controls a quarter of the world's economy and most of its military power.

Now, the Norwegians have weighed in to support Barack Obama in his bid to reshape America so it looks more like, well, Norway, or at least like Europe.

European socialism cannot succeed without conquering the United States. 

If the European Union has high taxes and the US keeps its levies low, business and brains will flow to America.  If the EU's labor standards require long vacations, high benefits, and proscribe layoffs and ours' do not, employers will migrate across the ocean to do their business in the States.  If the Old World curbs ambition by taxation, regulation, and social opprobrium, the ambitious will flock to the New World as they have done for four hundred years.

So, Lenin was right.  Socialism cannot exist in just one country - or one continent.  It must dominate worldwide or wealth and power will flow to those who remain committed to the free market.  Europe realizes this reality and it makes Obama's election as president of the United States all the more welcome.

The Nobel Prize is really Obama's payback for disciplining the unruly United States and taming it to be a member of the European family of nations.  Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding.

Does the United States let its entrepreneurs run wild, coming up with fanciful new ideas and making billions from them?  Obama will regulate and subdue business just like they do in Europe.  Do U.S. businesses compete by slashing prices, aggressively pursuing markets, and jockeying for market share?  Obama will make them behave themselves and stay in line just like European companies do.  Do Americans work hard and push aggressively to make as much money as they can?  Obama will raise taxes, emphasize community values, and narcotize their ambition by offering government largesse. 

And does the United States still believe in a sloppy, contrarian democracy in which ordinary people can directly affect their government, states have powers, and courts can reel in executive authority?  Obama will use his rubber stamp majority in Congress to pass new laws regardless of public opinion and make us obey.

In foreign policy, is the United States still willing to stand up, alone if necessary, to protect human rights in Bosnia, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan?  Obama will curb this unruly independence and mold it within the fabric of appeasement that has dominated Europe for the past half a century.      

All this heavy lifting, this conversion of America into a European state, deserves a reward.  And what is a more fitting one than to give Obama than the Nobel Peace Prize?  He obviously doesn't deserve the award for economics or, given his health care ideas, for medicine.  But the Peace Prize expresses Europe's longing:  to take back the nation its overly ambitious and uppity children founded.

4000 UK Women Give Birth In Hallways

The Daily Mail, today tells of the plight of UK women who have so few maternity beds available that over 4000 have had to give birth in hallways, restrooms, closets and offices in England.  A good story that cautions us against the drawbacks of government-controlled healthcare systems.

Mark Steyn comments on the UK "10-month waiting period for a maternity bed" by calling for "Birth Panels."

Cheney on CIA Documents/Investigation

Statement from former Vice President Dick Cheney to the Weekly Standard Monday night:

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions. President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security.

Health Care Bill Allows No Appeals to Rulings

From a commenter at Belmont Club

71. Mad Fiddler:

My brother has been applying his obsession for detail to the Health Care bill HR 3200, after tracking down a pdf file. One thing that he’s finding throughout is that there are numerous explicit passages which deny any possibility of appeal to any other authority whatsoever for the decisions handed down by the panels, bureaucrats, officials, clerks, commissioners, et cetera. This stinking hogwallow of a document creates a swarm of new bureaucracies not answerable to anyone in the public, with absolute powers to make life and death decisions on your health, and sets the whole thing up so that there is NO APPEAL  (Emphases added)

Aug 18, 2009 - 2:20 pm

The Plain Truth About Medical Insurance

From a commenter at Belmont Club:

22. Tcobb:

Please–the whole thing about health care is distorted by warped expectations.

For most working people the plain fact is that they could afford medical insurance that would live up to their expectations, but it would mean they would have to cut back on their current lifestyle to afford it.

The poor, contrary to misrepresentations, do get health care. Its illegal to turn anyone away from an emergency room in the US, and an “emergency” is pretty much whatever the person coming into the ER claims it to be.

The national shame is that everyone expects “someone else” to have to pay for their health care. What the middle class doesn’t seem to get is that if there is any shift in the payment arrangement that creates jobs for a multitude of (oxymoron) federal workers, they are still going to be stuck with the bill, and it will probably be a lot higher than anything they have now.  (Emphasis added.)

Aug 17, 2009 - 8:45 pm

_____

(See "Fed. Govt. Wastes More Than Business, Charities", the post right before this one.)

Fed. Govt. Wastes More Money Than Business or Charities

This is based on a comment from a long-time federal government employee.  It was his job to know the "cost" of government programs.  When Congress allocated money to any purpose, he had to know how much of the money actually got to that purpose, and how much stayed behind in bureaucracies as "administrative costs."  That was called the "burden" of the money.

He found that the "burden" or administrative cost was from at least 35% to 55% for most federal government programs.  So if Congress allocated, say, $40 billion for a new airplane, only $18 to $26 billion would actually go to make the plane.  The other $14 to $22 out of that $40 billion would go to the government bureaucrats who would oversee, mandate, make rulings, enforce compliance and do any other kinds of paperwork.

How does that compare to administrative costs for private business?  The business average is 20%.

What about the administrative costs of private charities?  The charities average 13% to as low as 0.5%! 

(Hint - but the more government grants charities apply for or get, the more their administrative costs go up.  Applying for, and compliance with, government grants can be very expensive.)

What does that mean for some legislation such as, say, the Health Care bill?  Just that for every $100 billion allocated for health care, only $45 - $65 billion will ever actually get to consumers.

But if the same $100 billion went through private business providers instead of the government, at least $80 billion of health care would actually reach consumers.

And if that $100 billion went through charities, some $87 - $99.5 billion would actually reach consumers.

That means sending any money through the federal government for any purpose costs 15% - 99.5% more than sending it through private business or a private charity - to buy the same thing! 

The cost-savings alone could be the very best reason to get our health care from private business or charities, not government. 

_______
See original comment at Belmont Club .  Also see linked article by the same commenter at The Jacksonian Party .

It's All A Death Panel

President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But they all miss the point.  Even without a “death panel”, Obamacare will still ration care to the point that it would lead to the same result.  That is because of 2 of Obama’s decisions:

(1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget

(2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people.

Simply put, Obama plans to pay for insuring the 50 million new people with money taken from Medicare for the elderly – and at a time when the number of retired people is growing sharply.

 Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients,

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:

 * Expanding the patient load by full coverage for 50 million more (including "Americans" like illegal immigrants) 

 * The Federal Health Board will set standards and protocols for the system.  All insurers and providers will have  to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.

 * The Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system will be fostered. Under QARY, they would try to "amortize"        the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.

Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

___________

*from the New York Post: "The Truth About Obamacare", Dick Morris, Eileen McGann, 8-17-09

Corruption In the U.S.

From a commenter at Belmont Club:

11. luddy barsen:

tossing this in as an aside;
i saw a mind-boggle yest w/ Glenn Beck & Democratic pollster Pat Cadell. Wanting to link to it, i found a transcript on a website. Here below that is, plus the link to the video:

(open quote)

Glenn Beck Exposes Rahm Emanuel’s Root and Corruption in the Obama Administration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAkePgf8hkA

So, I took pity on those of you who have dial-up, and sat there with DVR remote in hand and painstakingly played, rewound, and wrote over and over again. Here goes:

Glenn has on Pat Caddell – former Democratic Pollster and Fox News contributor.

Pat tells Glenn- Rahm, after leaving the Clinton administration as their “bag man,” Bill Clinton gets him a job – puts him on the board of Freddie Mac. Salary $250K.

Glenn asks what qualifications did Rahm have for this job.
Pat says, he had no qualifications for this – he studied BALLET in college.
(You can see Glenn holding back a wise-crack on this). Pat says, “Rahm was there when they were cooking the books at Freddie Mac.”

His second job was with Wasserman-(Pearl or Perla ??) (I couldn’t understand the last half of the name), in their Chicago office and made $16M in less than 2 years.

He made the $16M on one large deal. He was advising SBC (which Edmund Whiteacre was the Chairman) which later grew into the new AT&T. The guy who helped make the SBC deal, took a loss. (They had to sell because they bought another phone company – Ameritech. They had to get rid of a security company called Security Link – it was a billion-billion and a half dollar investment.) He sold it to an investment group being led by Emanuel for about $500M. 6 months later, the investment bank that bought it, sold it for a billion dollars.

The current administration appointed Edmund Whiteacre as the new Chairman of GM – who announced the day of his appointment, “I know nothing about the car business.”

Bill Daley, brother of the Mayor of Chicago, was the person pulling the strings in the Obama campaign. One of Bill’s closest firends/enemies is a person named Jim Johnson. Jim Johnson was the Chairman of Fannie Mae. His qualifications to manage one of the largest mortgage companies in the world was that he was Walter Mondale’s campaign manager.

Glenn asks: WHY IS NO ONE CONNECTING THESE DOTS?

Pat says: That’s what drives me crazy. Corruption is killing this country. There is corruption on the Republican side and there is corruption on my side of the aisle with the Democrats. It is a cancer on society. NO ONE WILL TOUCH THIS STORY! Nobody has made this connection in the media because they’ve decided they have a new role. Both these parties are in deep trouble.

End

Kudos to Glenn for having the kahonas – amid threats to him and his family, as well as having sponsors bullied into pulling their advertising from his show, – to shine a light on the gutter rats that helped layer on corruption.

(end quote from tree of liberty)

Aug 14, 2009 - 8:21 am

And:

16. luddy barsen:

gaffe, if you missed this, it’s still excellent.

An update would include that among the vulture investors who bought up shattered Wachovia assets (and have already scored fat on ‘em) was George Soros, friend of the Sandlers at Golden West, the designers of the worst of the garbage mortgages.

Another update would be that the Wachovia CEO who made the wacovia-suicidal 2006 (’top o the market’) deal with Golden West was sent packing as soon as the shareholders caught on to what had been done to their property. Soros has always made his big scores by placing, or recruiting, “moles at the controls” of his targets.

This Wachovia swindle is small potatoes now as far larger government/corporate attacks upon the resources of the middle class begin to emerge –but it is instructive on several levels:

One, it’s tight enough to understand, and small enough to see whole. Two, that these crimes –the dreams of investigative journalism as recently as, uh, the previous admin –have been simply buried if there’s any hint at connection with the Obama admin.

the MSM ignoring a story like this (and the dozens of other stories like this) is far worse than a naughty party-line shenanigan.

on the basis of the MSM’s ‘understood’ deal with the people, it amounts to a conspiracy to defraud the entire nation –and world. An immorality almost too massive to comprehend. A financial demi-Holocaust.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/how_allies_of_george_soros_hel.html

Aug 14, 2009 - 10:25 am

Will Obamacare Mark U.S. End?

From a comment at Belmont Club :

81. Mongoose:

Well, the bottom line is simple: will America reject socialism, or not? If we will reject it, then the next question is when? Then the next question is one of by how much we will reject it?

I rather doubt that there will be a flat-out rejection at the ballot box next year. There are just too many of the State’s clients around, there is literally no major opposition to it at the level of the national parties and the whole intellectual and propaganda machinery of the Left will have this.

So the question becomes one of what will it take to undo it all once it is in? Given that we are still struggling with the New Deal programs yet today, It does not look good for the opponents of socialism. I think that the fate of social security is the model. I should point out that CRA is still in place and Fannie and Freddie are still in business. Eventually if this path is taken the USA must decline as a power and a force for light, liberty and freedom. That would seem to be the point. I personally believe that that is a very real intent of the Democrat Party.

It is a much more complicated issue than health care: The root of it is the monstrous intrusion of government into our lives. Either the state is beholden to us, or we are to them. Either we are a nation where individuals struggle to be free–and this of course means economic freedom, and self employment–or we are a nation of serfs beholden to the State. There are no two ways about it.

I imagine that it cannot be turned around until the last Baby Boomer is in her grave. If the 1960’s was the first “boomer revolution” this is the second. As this cadre ages it will just get worse.

All this may seem so obvious that it's like beating a dead horse, but this is really the truth of the matter.

They will get their health care “reform”, it will be a disaster. It will be hard to undo. Conservative must be in it for the long haul, as it will take many years and much national humiliation and ruin to turn it around.

America could well look like Mexico, Brazil or the UK in a handful of years.

I have to wonder if we could even magically place the electorate in some sort of time machine and momentarily transport them to this future, if they would turn from it upon their return.

Perhaps. Of course the politicians have to move fast. It is as clear as it could be, as is their treason.

We live in a time when the vast majority of “people in power” are wholly irresponsible, and willfully so. They mean to undo all that this country has been, is and should be. The greatness of America is too much for them; it humiliates them.

They must destroy it. They cannot live up to its great history.

What is to stop them?

“The People”. Well one has hopes, but the tea party people better get ready for some real oppressive tactics and not just misrepresentations and slander by the likes of CNN. “Our betters” mean to rule us as a new “Nomenklatura” and a new “Ancien Regime”. Have no doubt about it.

For a great many of us the future will be one of returning to 19th century conditions (or even earlier) but this time without the traditional American frame work there to facilitate self improvement.

Historians generations hence will just be befuddled by this all. How did a nation at the height of her success come to decide to immolate herself? Why did we choose suicide when faced with the best of worlds?

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

The answer is buried somewhere in the New Deal, the Cold War and the boomer generation.  (Emphases added.)

Aug 4, 2009 - 4:05 am

U.S. Deficit Soars $181 billion in July. Why?

From "Deficit Grows by $181 Billion in July" by Walter Alarkon for The Hill, 08/09/09*

Due to the recession, tax receipts are down by 17%.  Meanwhile bailouts and the stimulus packages added to the deficit.  These

...drove the deficit to a record $1.3 trillion in July, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO)... Falling tax receipts and increased spending on bailouts for auto companies and the financial sector and for the economic stimulu*s package added to the deficit, according to CBO.

Spending through July has grown by $530 billion.  Half of this increase came from bailouts of banks, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Unemployment benefits have more than doubled, Medicaid spending has grown by a quarter and Medicare spending has increased by 11 percent.

Tax revenue for the first three quarters of 2009 has fallen by approximately $350 billion, or 17 percent compared to the same period last year, due mostly to the effects of the recession.... A third of the decline is due to tax breaks in the stimulus, including the middle-class tax cut that President Obama campaigned on during last year's election.

The deficit is projected to reach $1.8 by the end of the fiscal year on September 30.  The 2008 deficit was $455 billion, a record.  

Meanwhile,

...Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing for healthcare reform criticized by Republicans as too costly... Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said that Democrats in Congress aren't doing anything to address the record deficit and are instead pushing ahead with “wildly expensive” healthcare legislation.

____________

* At http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/deficit-grew-by-181-billion-in-july-2009-08-09.html

Time for Negative Thinking

From J.R. Nyquist at Investor's Business Daily on 7-31-09 in "The Power of Negative Thinking."

We seem to have come to the logical end of Dr. Benjamin Spock's reasoning.  He told the Greatest Generation how to raise their kids, today's Boomers who are the former Hippies of the 60s.  What did he tell them?  To say "Yes" to their kids at every opportunity, so as not to damage their little psyches.  They did, and manufactured a generation of Hippies in the process.  Now we seem to be viewing the end of that process as we view the culture after they worked it over.  What did it bring us?  Nyquist has his usual unique view.  All wrong, he says.  We need to get back to "No!"

Here are Nyquist's major points:

1.  If you don't want socialism, your answer is "No we can't!"
2.  "Shut up and sit still."
3.  Guilt is a virtue
4.  You're Not So Special
5.  Fear and Worry Can Save You
6.  Suffering Can Save You
7.  Realize What an Idiot You Really Are  ("The more clever you seem to yourself, the more likely you are nearing some hard object about to strike you upside the head.")

Nyquist concludes: "The power of negative thinking is real power.  And remember, the magic word is 'No.'"

 

Why No Health Care "Grandfather Clause"?

The Obama Health Care plan is in big trouble.  As senior citizens become aware that it will be paid for by taking $500 billion annually from Medicare, they are deserting the Democrats in droves.  But they are an important part of the coalition that keeps the Dems in power - blacks, latinos, single women, young people, gays and seniors.  Without them, the possibility of rule by the Democrats would probably be gone.

Yet there is a way to neuter much of the hostility of seniors to Obamacare.  The Dems could simply do what Bush did when he tried to reform Social Security.  He offered a "grandfather clause" to the seniors.  He pledged that his new Social Security changes would not apply to anyone who was then 55 or older.

That made a lot of sense.  Those 54 and younger would have had 12-13 years or more before retirement to build up retirement funds.  Those 55 or older - who notoriously have a lot of trouble getting jobs after all - could still have the old retirement system.  They would be "Grandfathered In."

If Obama made a similar Grandfathered-In pledge to those 55 or older, that however much government-controlled health care systems might change, that their group would not be affected, but would continue on as before, it could make a huge difference.

It would mean the system would cost more at first, true.  But it would also keep the costs from falling mostly on those who are already elderly.  And it would give younger people more time to prepare for whatever a new system might be like.

The proposed Obamacare is already so unpopular that it might not be saved even with such a change.  But it would doubtless have a much better chance.  And the Democrats might have a better chance to get back into the good graces of senior citizens and keep their coalition together.

Kaiser Permanente as Health Care Model

From a comment at the Belmont Club:

39. Batman:

Sythianeedle @ 38 The Kaiser system initially worked because they were living in a “fool’s paradise” in which all their subscribers were employed and therefore among the healthier part of the population. As their population aged, and as they opened enrollment to others, their balance sheet stopped looking so great.

They make money by denying or delaying care. For years they did not offer epidural anesthesia for child birth because it was too expensive. Now they have a system in which you have to go through your primary doctor to get referred to specialists, frequently with a long waiting period.

On the other hand, things got better at Kaiser because starting about a decade ago, their physician salaries were equal or greater than what many doctors could earn in PPO medicine. So whereas it used to be that the best doctors went into private practice, lately many excellent doctors prefer to work at Kaiser. Furthermore, life style for the Kaiser doctor is easier. When you walk out the door you hand responsibility over to the next doctor, unlike the way things used to be with private practice.

Kaiser monitors each doctor’s utilization of services. If you are deemed a renegade physician who does too much for your patients, you can get in trouble with the administration. Just imagine how things would be if it were the government that was in charge of monitoring all services rendered and disciplining doctors who do “too much” for their patients.

And regarding the general topic of this post, yes, I believe Obama is trying to move us to a single payer system. And yes, some diluted version of his plan will probably pass this calendar year. And yes, in the years to come we will slide slowly but surely into the quicksand of single payer. (Emphasis added.)

Aug 3, 2009 - 11:12 am

Obamacare As Spoils for Obama Coalition

This comes from a comment at the Belmont Club , below:

60. whiskey:

The goal of the Obamacare proposals is to:

1. Provide political patronage, particularly to the “talented tenth” (per WEB Dubois) and Hispanic elites, via Affirmative Action pressure to vastly increase the number of Black and Hispanic Doctors. [Currently, according the AMA website, 4% of all US Doctors are Black.]

This patronage will not help, say, Joe Average in South Central LA, but will allow, say, Henry Louis Gates daughter to attend Medical School in a free ride, with lower standards for grades, MCATs, and of course board certification.

2. Provide pork patronage by creating lucrative middle-men positions for oversight, and so on, keeping a vast amount of Democratic interest groups (ACORN, etc.) employed to “oversee” (i.e. dole out care to political specifications to politically connected groups i.e. Blacks, Hispanics, etc.) and thus provide a permanent financial advantage for the racially-based hard left. Ayers, Obama, and Axelrod, in other words. Plus a heaping helping of Farrakhan and Wright, who no doubt will be in on the pork.

What is interesting is that Keith Ellison, aka Keith X, a protege of Farrakhan and the only (Black) Muslim in Congress, faced a hostile and nearly all-Black crowd in Minnesota when he returned post-Break to address the (supposedly friendly) crowd. He was asked directly if he would enroll his family and himself in the public plan instead of his “Cadillac” plan. He evaded the question (No). That got a very hostile response.

Poor Blacks receive no patronage opportunities. Even ACORN types need a middle class background to take advantage of the traditional spoils that Obama plans. What we are seeing, as we saw with White Women (who figure Obamacare = greatly increased probability of death by Breast Cancer), is the fracturing of the spoils-coalition that existed from around 1965 to 2008.

Just like the thieves in “the Big Knockover” by Dashiell Hammett, the coalition succeeded in looting the treasury (by winning the election.)  But the fact remains the same.  The fewer the people in the cut, the more money for the rest.

Since Dubois’ Time, back in the early 20th Century, Blacks have embraced his arguments that “the talented tenth” i.e. a Black Aristocracy, will act as their tribunes, agitate for concessions and wealth transfers to Blacks, from a racially oppressive White society (which in fact, it was, and then some) and provide both political and economic power. That model has broken down: Whites are by and large no longer racist (it’s taboo to even express such sentiments in public among an all-White group.)  They don’t feel guilt, are tired of accusations and finger-pointing, and just as importantly, with capture of the White House by a member of the Talented Tenth, poor Blacks feel they are getting the shaft in the cut. This does not mean that Blacks will vote Republican (ever), but does mean diminished support. Obama’s coalition was fragile, as Joel Kotkin suggested.  It was constructed mainly on the very explicit notion of transferring wealth from Red to Blue America. To the extent it’s occurring, only the Talented Tenth and Ayers-like allies are getting a taste of the money.

This is basically why Obama’s power and polling is collapsing.

Aug 3, 2009 - 3:22 pm

Who Is Pushing This Health Care Reform

Here is what a doctor says about that, at Belmont Club.    Here is his comment there:

53. Blindman:

I am a physician. I would like to add to this post and enlighten the debate. I would like to be able to say what the problem is. I would like to tell you how it can be fixed.

Alas it is not really about medical care but more so about the best way to pay for medical and social problems that are lumped together under the rubric ” Health and Human Services”. As such it is a political debate. This is what it should be and always has been.

It’s OK to characterize the poles as big government and small government. It’s OK to define one’s moral high ground as the right choice. In the end though it’s about your money and somebody else using it or your money and you using it.

You should be able to buy reasonable insurance but you can’t buy a ticket to the moon for 4,000 dollars. You should not have to buy insurance for someone else. A modest safety net should do the trick.

Most of us buy into equal opportunity but draw a line at the right of equal income. That is the goal of those who push these health agendas. It isn’t about health care but health care is a wedge. It is a potent intellectual weapon for the vanguard of those who want to take us to their vision of the society that the 1960’s painted in their radicalized prophecies.

Sorry but I don’t want to get on their bus. At least I know who they are and what they want. They are not patients,physicians,or families; but like Hamas they hide behind the innocents and naively misguided. They are lawyers, politicians,and bureaucrats of all stripe and make. They are just continuing their game of the culture wars. They are now on level 5 and want to get to level 6. It’s a game to the worst of them and the worst of them are those who are the most desperate to win at any cost.  (Emphasis added.)

Aug 3, 2009 - 12:40 pm

A Top Summary of Health Care Situation

If you are not confused about the Health Care legislation before Congress, you must not be paying attention.  There is a bill of over 1000 pages.  No member of Congress has read all of it.  Many have read none of it.

Now Congresspeople are going home to explain to their Districts what is in the bill.  But they don't know.  Or if they do know, some would rather not say.

So they must face people who know things about the bill and are angry about it.  Mostly all they can say is "I haven't read it" but "trust me."  Or they may deny that what is actually written in the bill is there.  The public is losing patience with that approach.

What Americans need to know is what the situation is in regard to health care in the U.S., now and in the future.  They want the truth, not propaganda, not lies, and not being lectured by people who don't know.

Here is an excellent article by an intelligent doctor, at daylights mark .  He hits all the bases - insurance companies, the uninsured, medicare, medicaid, government mandates, socialized medicine, what other countries do, plans that would work better than what the government wants, the Daschell-Dole plan, and more  

(Sorry about any problems.  We were affected somehow by the massive Twitter crash.)

Health Care Bill - What It Has, On What Page

Here is the list of what is in the Health Care Bill, and the page number where each one is found.

Obama Health Care Plan Details

HR 3200 currently under consideration in the House of Representatives

  
Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit the books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!

Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get

Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED!!!

Pg 42 of HC Bill - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your benefits for you. You have no choice!

Pg 50 Section 152 in HC bill - HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise

Pg 58HC Bill – Gov’t will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID Health care card will be issued!

Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Govt will have direct access to your banks accts for electronic funds transfer.

Pg 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community orgs (ACORN).

Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC Exchange to bring priv HC plans under Govt control.

Pg 84 Sec 203 HC bill - Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private Health Care plans in the Exchange

Pg 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!

Pg 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill - Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. 

Example - Translation for illegal aliens.

Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan

Pg 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs of Ben Levels 4 Plans. #AARP members - Your Health Care WILL be rationed

Pg 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill - Medicaid Eligible Individual will be automat.enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.

Pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue Govt on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Govt Monopoly.

Pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - Doctors/ #AMA - The Govt will tell YOU what you can make.

Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public opt plan. NO CHOICE

Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.

Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Employer w/ payroll 400k & above who does not prov. pub opt. pays 8% tax on all payroll

Pg 150 Lines 9-13 Biz w payroll btw 251k & 400k who doesnt provide public opt pays 2-6% tax on all payroll Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesnt have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Pg 170 Lines 1-3 Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay).

Pg 195 Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans financial and personal records.

Pg 203 Line 14-15 HC - “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax” Yes, it says that.  Pg 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid.  Seniors, low income, poor affected.

Pg 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill - Doctors, it does not matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same.

Pg 253 Line 10-18 Govt sets value of Dr’s time, prof judg, etc. Literally value of humans.

Pg 265 Sec 1131Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries.

Pg 268 Sec 1141 Fed Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

Pg 272 SEC. 1145. Treatment of certain cancer hospitals – Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!

Page 280 Sec 1151 The Govt will penalize hospitals for what Govt deems preventable readmissions. (Incentives for hospital to not treat and release.)

Pg 298 Lines 9-11 Drs, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a readmission-Govt will penalize you.

Pg 317 L 13-20 PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Drs. what/how much they can own.

Pg 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3 PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.

pg 321 2-13 Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input required. Can you say ACORN?!!

Pg335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339 - Govt mandates established of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.

Pg 341 Lines 3-9 Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans (Part B), HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan.

Pg 354 Sec 1177 - Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people!

Pg 379 Sec 1191 Govt creates more bureaucracy - Telehealth Advisory Committee. HC by phone/Internet?

Pg 425 Lines 4-12 Govt mandates Advance [Death] Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life.

Pg 425 Lines 17-19 Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of atty. Mandatory!

Pg 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 Gov’t provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death.

Pg 427 Lines 15-24 Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Gov’t has a say in how your life ends.

Pg 429 Lines 1-9 An “adv. care planning consult” will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates.

Pg 429 Lines 10-12 “adv. care consultation” may incl an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOV

Pg 429 Lines 13-25 - The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.

PG 430 Lines 11-15 The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life

(NOTE FROM RJ: The above really does give the government the authority to determine who lives and dies, and when. A government bureaucrat really will be making this decision for you and your loved ones.) 

 

Pg 469 - Community Based Home Medical Services=Non profit orgs. Hello, ACORN Medical Svcs here!!?

Pg 472 Lines 14-17 PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORG. 1 monthly payment to a community-based org. Like ACORN?

Pg 489 Sec 1308 The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. They will insert Government into your marriage.  Pg 494-498 Govt will cover Mental Health Svcs including defining, creating, rationing those svcs

PG 502 Sec 1181 Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research Established. – Hello Big Brother – Literally.

Pg 503 Lines 13-19 Gov’t will build registries and data networks from YOUR electronic med records.

Pg 503 lines 21-25 Gov’t may secure data directly from any depart or agency of the US including your data.

Pg 504 Lines 6-10 The “Center” will collect data both published & unpublished (that means public & your private info)

PG 506 Lines 19-21 The Center will recommend policies that would allow for public access of data.

PG 518 Lines 21-25 The Commission will have input from HC consumer reps – Can you say unions & ACORN?

PG 524 18-22 Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund set up. More taxes for ALL.

PG 621 Lines 20-25 Gov’t will define what Quality means in HC. Since when does Gov’t know about quality?

Pg 622 Lines 2-9 To pay for the Quality Standards, Govt will transfer $$ from to other Govt Trust Funds. More Taxes.

PG 624 “Quality” measures shall be designed to assess outcomes & functional status of patients.

PG 624 “Quality” measures shall be designed to profile you including race, age, gender, place of residence, etc

Pg 628 Sec 1443 Gov’t will give “Multi-Stake Holders” Pre-Rule Making input into Selection of “Quality” Measures.

Pg 630 9-24/631 1-9 Those Multi-stake holder groups incl. Unions & groups like ACORN deciding HC quality.

Pg 632 Lines 14-25 The Gov’t may implement any “Quality measure” of HC Services as they see fit.

PG 633 14-25/ 634 1-9 The Secretary may issue non-endorsed “Quality Measures” for Physician Services & Dialysis Services.

Pg 635 to 653 Physicians Payments Sunshine Provision – Gov’t wants to shine sunlight on Docs but not Govt.

Pg 654-659 Public Reporting on Health Care-Associated Infections – Looks okay.

PG 660-671 Doctors in Residency – Gov’t will tell you where your residency will be, thus where you’ll live.

Pg 676-686 Gov’t will regulate hospitals in EVERY aspect of residency programs, incl. teaching hospitals.

Pg 686-700 Increased Funding to Fight Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. You mean like the Gov’t with an $18 million website?

PGs 701-704 Sec 1619 If your part of HC plan isn’t in Gov’t HC Exchange but you qualify for Fed aid, no payment.

PG 705-709 SEC. 1128 If Secr gets complaints (ACORN) on HC provider or supplier, Gov’t can do background check.

PG 711 Lines 8-14 The Secretary has broad powers to deny HC providers/ suppliers admittance into HC Exchange. Your doctor could be thrown out of business.

Pg 719-720 Sec 1637 ANY Doctor who orders durable med equip or home med services MUST be enrolled in Medicare.

PG 722 Sec 1639 Gov’t MANDATES Doctors must have face to face with patient to certify patient for Home Health Svcs.

PG 724 23-25 PG 725 1-5 The same Gov’t certifications will apply to Medicaid & CHIP (your kids)

PG 724 Lines 16-22 Gov’t reserves rt to apply face to face certification for patient to ANY other HC service.

Pg 735 lines 16-25 For law enforce. proposes the Secretary-HHS will give Atty General access to ALL data.

PG 740-757 Gov’t sets guidelines for subsidizing the uninsured (Thats your tax dollars people)

Pg 757-762 Fed gov’t will shift burden of payments to Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH) to States. (Taxes)

Pg 763 1-8 No DS/EA hospitals will be paid unless they provide services without regard to national origin

Pg 765 Sec 1711 Gov’t will require Preventative Services including vaccines. (Choice?)

Pg 768 Sec 1713 Gov’t – Nurse Home Visitation Svcs (Hello union paybacks)

Pg 769 11-14 Nurse Home Visit Svcs include-economic self-sufficiency, employ adv, school-readiness.

Pg 769 3-5 Nurse Home Visit Services - “increasing birth intervals between pregnancies.” Govt ABORTIONS anyone

Pg 770 SEC 1714 Fed Gov’t mandates eligibility for State Family Planning Services. Abortion & State Sovereign.

Pg 789-797 Gov’t will set, mandate drug prices, controlling which drugs brought to market. Bye innovation.

Pgs 797-800 SEC. 1744 PAYMENTS for graduate medical education. The government will now control Drs’ education.

PG 801 Sec 1751 The Govt will decide which Health care conditions will be paid. Say RATION!

Pg 810 SEC. 1759. Billing Agents, clearinghouses, etc req. to register. Gov’t takes over private payment sys.

Pg 820-824 Sec 1801 Govt will identify individ. ineligible for subsidies. Will access all personal financial information.

Pg 824-829 SEC. 1802. Govt Sets up Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund. Another tax black hole.

PG 829-833 Gov’t will impose a fee on ALL private health ins. plans incl. self insured to pay for Trust Fund!

PG 835 11-13 fees imposed by Gov’t for Trust Fund shall be treated as if they were taxes.

Pg 838-840 Gov’t will design & implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids & families expect kids.

PG 844-845 This Home Visitation Prog. includes Gov’t coming into your house & telling you how to parent!!!

Pg 859 Gov’t will establish a Public Health Fund at a cost of $88,800,000,000. Yes that’s Billion.

Pg 865 The Gov’t will MANDATE the establishment of a National Health Service Corps.

PG 865 to 876 The NHS Corps is a program where Drs. perform mandatory HC for 2yrs for part loan repayment.

PG 876-892 The govt takes over the education of our Med students and Drs.

PG 898 The Govt will establish a Public Health Workforce Corps to ensure supply of public health prof.

PG 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of civilian employees of the U.S. as Secretary deems.

PG 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of officers of Regular & Reserve Corps of Service.

PG 900 The Public Health Workforce Corps includes veterinarians.

PG 901 The Public Health Workforce Corps WILL include commissioned Regular & Reserve Officers. HC Draft?

PG 910 The Govt will develop, build & run Public Health Training Centers.

PG 913-914 Govt starts a HC affirmative action program thru guise of diversity scholarships.

PG 915 SEC. 2251. Govt MANDDATES Cultural & linguistic competency training for HC professionals.

Pg 932 The Govt will estab Preventative & Wellness Trust fund- initial cost of $30,800,000,000-Billion.

PG 935 21-22 Govt will identify specific goals & objectives for prevention & wellness activities. Control YOU!!

PG 936 Govt will develop “Healthy People & National Public Health Perform.  Standards” Tell me what to eat?

PG 942 Lines 22-25 More Gov’t? Offices of Surgeon General -Public Health Svc, Minority Health, Women’s Health

PG 950- 980 BIG GOV’T core pub health infrastructure including workforce capacity, lab systems; health info sys, etc

PG 993 Gov’t will establish school based health clinics. Your kids won’t have a chance.

PG 994 School Based Health Clinic will be integrated into the school environment. Say GOVT Brainwash!

PG 1001 The Govt will establish a National Medical Device Registry. Will you be tracked?


 

Mathew D. Staver*                           
Founder and Chairman Dean and Professor of Law
Liberty Counsel  Liberty University School of Law
Offices in Florida, Virginia and the District of Columbia, Lynchburg, Virginia
(800) 671-1776 - Telephone      (434) 592-5300 - Telephone
www.LC.org                                                                            
www.law.liberty.edu 

*Licensed in Florida and the District of Columbia

(Hat Tip to Fred and Gene Hannah)

Obamacare Will Gut Medicare

The new $1 - $1.5 trillion health care program now in Congress would finance free care for presently-uninsured people by $500 billion in new taxes, and by $500 billion worth of cuts in Medicare.  Since Medicare recipients should grow by 10% in the next few years, that means even more cuts.  These big cuts fall almost entirely on the elderly.  For details, listen to:

Click here: Fred Thompson: Interviews

More information at www.defendyourhealthcare.us

(Hat Tip to Michelle Hollon)

Questions for Obama Speech Tonight

Tonight, President Barack Obama will address the nation in a press conference about his proposal for the federal government to takeover America’s health care system. Below are five questions Sen. DeMint has put forward that he hopes President Obama will finally answer tonight. 

“We would all like to believe the president’s grand promises about health care. Unfortunately, we keep finding that his policies don’t match his promises," said Sen. DeMint. "Tonight, I hope we hear more than just rhetoric and straw man arguments, because Americans deserve real answers to the troubling facts we are learning about his plan to take over health care. Independent studies of his actual plan conclude that it would raise costs, increase the deficit, ration care, force more than 80 million Americans out of their current plans and force pro-life Americans to fund abortions with their tax dollars.” 

Below are the top five questions Sen. DeMint would like the president to address:

1. If the major provisions of the health care bills will not kick in until 2013, four years from now, why the rush to pass a thousand-page bill before the August recess, a bill you admit that you haven’t fully read yourself? 

2. You have said your health care bill will cut costs and not increase the deficit. But, independent analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office contradicts both claims, saying it will raise costsand increase the deficit by $240 billion in the first ten years. What independent analysis will you provide that supports your claims and refutes CBO’s? 

3. You have repeatedly said that your health care bill allows any American who likes their current employer-based plan to keep it. But the most comprehensive independent analysis available, by the Lewin Group, contradicts your claim and found your bill will force over 80 million Americans to lose their current coverage. Will you provide independent analysis to refute this study? 

4. Your own record in the Senate reveals you spent years voting against nearly every reform to make health care more affordable and accessible, but this week you said that opponents of your plan are “content to perpetuate the status quo, [and] are, in fact, fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests.” Which specific elected officials will you cite that have proposed to keep the status quo, and is that how you characterize the opposition of the 52 Blue Dog Democrats in the House and the moderate Democrats in the Senate? 

5. Yes or no question: Will you guarantee pro-life Americans that, under your plan, they will not beforced to subsidize elective abortions?

Health Care Bill Outlaws Private Insurance

At www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332548165656854   On page 16 of the 1002 page document, it is spelled out that no one can get new private health insurance after the Health Care bill passes.

That would mean if someone changed jobs, they could not take their health care insurance with them.  If a new child was born after that deadline, new health care insurance could not be bought for them.  Etc. 

What this means is that if the bill passes, private insured health care is on its way out.  There would soon be no way out of the system.  Eventually, there would be no more possibility of private health care outside the government program.  It would be whatever was offered then in government care, or nothing.

But read it all for yourselves.

Obama's Kenya Birth Certificate?

For more than a year, there have been allegations that Barack Obama is not what the Constitution requires a President to be.  That is "a natural-born American citizen."  Obama has not helped by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep much of his paper trail documents sealed off from the public - including various documents bearing on the details of his birth.

But McCain got very different treatment.  He was required to produce a valid birth certificate, and to literally obtain an Act of Congress to verify that he met the "natural-born American citizen" requirement, because of being born in a U.S. military hospital in Panama.  But no one has made such a requirement of Obama.  Why the difference?

Now a certified Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama has surfaced, for sale on eBay!  That story surfaced on Saturday June 27 on WND at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102271.  That was followed by postings at daily Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/27/747403/-and-the-shippings-free., then at Free Republic at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2280617/posts  and #222 at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2280528/posts?page=226#226.  Now that copy has been wirhdrawn twice from eBay and re-listed.  The seller seems to be upping the ante in order to up the price.

There are also video copies of an interview with Obama's Kenyan grandmother, in which she says clearly that Obama was born in Kenya, in a hospital in Mombasa, during a visit by his mother and father.  See at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlFc4wCpvSo&NR=1 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OirvxsUsxb0&NR=1/

Obama's campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on a website, but there are unanswered questions about it, and some problems.  It is the "short form", not the "vault copy," a longer form with more details, such as the attending doctor and nurse.  But Obama will not release his vault copy.  That raises the question as to whether there even is a vault copy.  Hawaii gave short copies - like that on his website - to people not born there, but whose parents lived there and asked for such a certificate.  That might be what his posted short-copy birth certificate is.  If not, he could quickly put that question to rest by merely releasing the Vault Copy.

In addition, there are claims that even the short-copy birth certificate is a forgery.  (See video at at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QdyLOUHz-A&NR=1.)

What does all this mean?  If it turns out that Obama did not meet the requirements of being "a natural-born American citizen", his election would be invalidated and he could no longer be President.  In fact, he should not even have run for the office.

Such a very weighty matter should be investigated promptly,  until it is either disproved - settling the question in his favor - or proved.  We are in a Constitutional limbo until one or the other happens.  The very least Obama should do is to cooperate fully, speedily producing all requested documents he is presently withholding.  Since they will evenrually be discovered whether he does or not, that would do the most to prove his honest intentions and preserve his reputation.

Canadian-Style Health Care for U.S.

Canada has government-run health care.  Here are some of the problems:

* A 16% higher cancer death rate in Canada
 
* An eight week wait for radiation therapy for cancer patients
 
* 42% of Canadians die of colon cancer vs. 31% in the US
 
* Cutbacks in diagnostic testing
 
* The best meds for chemo therapy are not available
 
* No way out of the system; you can't even pay for services yourself

Why is health care so bad north of the border?  Because there are too few doctors to treat everybody and cost savings -- which slice medical incomes -- drive doctors out of the profession.  When Obama calls for a 21% cut in Medicare fees to physicians and a $2500 cut in health costs per capita, that is exactly the kind of downward spiral in medical care quality he will bring to the United States.   By making too few doctors cover too many patients, he will cut the quality of care to everybody.
 
As Obama's proposals make their way through Congress, it is vital to get up to speed on what is happening in Canada, so we can stop it from happening here. 

_______

Taken from Dick Morris' newsletter June 25, 2009.  See www.dickmorris.com .

Iran - New Leader May Emerge

Two views about what is about to happen in Iran are developing so far.  George Friedman, head of Stratfor, makes a strong case that nothing much will change in Iran because of the protests, at www.stratfor.com.  The other view is that whatever happens on the streets, the leadership will change, perhaps drastically. 

One proponent of that view is Richard Fernandez, who was involved in the insurrection against dictator Marcos in the Philippines in his youth.  He maintains that whether they want to or not, the leaders of Iran will be changed by the protests, in unexpected ways .  (He hosts the excellent Belmont Club blog at http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/)

More support of Fernandez' view comes in fresh news from Al Arabia in Dubai, at http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/06/21/76567.html. 

Here is a quick summary of the two opposing views as to whether or not Iran will change.

Friedman notes that for a revolution to be successful, first, an aggrieved part of the population must take to the streets of a major city, usually the capitol, and be joined by protestors in other cities.  That has happened.  Second, when the regime responds, it must be hard and must use "outsiders", troops not sympathetic to the protestors.  That is happening now.  A third requirement for success, however, has not happened.  That is that other classes need to join the class that started the protests.  The protestors are mostly young, relatively prosperous, "modernized," with many students.  Other classes have not joined them in any significant numbers so far.  So by accepted standards, the green "revolution" will likely fail.  Friedman does add, however, that such events put the rulers under great tension, and that significant changes could result.

The news from Dubai, however, indicates that great changes are brewing at the top in Iran.  Rafsanjani, head of the Council of Experts, is pushing to get rid of the post of Supreme Leader.  This would oust Khameni.  This movement is supported by a large number of Ayatollahs, including the most influential of all, Ayatollah Sistani from Iraq.  Rafsanjani is also pressing to depose Ahmadinijad.  There is a reasonable chance that these changes will happen.  (Read the story at http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/06/21/76567.html.)

At any rate, there is hidden turmoil at the top in Iran.  Huge changes are being attempted as a result of the turmoil in the streets.

Please - pray for Iran.

California Is Collapsing

Well-known nvestment advisor Martin Weiss warns that California is about to collapse.  If California goes, the effect on the U.S. will be tremendous.  California's economy is 1/8 of the total U.S. economy.  A collapse would have a huge effect on the country's economy.  (See at http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/california-collapsing-34271.)

“Our wallet is empty.
Our bank is closed. And
our credit is dried up.”

So said Governor Arnold Schwarzenager before a joint session of the California legislature.  The state faces a stunning $24.3 billion budget deficit.  There seems to be no chance of a federal bail-out.  Large cut-backs in the state payroll are coming, which will add to the 11.5% California jobless rate.  Education and welfare programs will be slashed.

Meanwhile, downgrades are coming in California's credit rating, which is already lowest of all U.S. states.  Moody's announced Friday it may have to cut California's rating by several points in one fell swoop. 

The big problem: Once downgraded, California's rating is likely to fall below the minimal level legally required for most money market funds, forcing these funds to dump California paper posthaste....

It's obvious its debt merits a junk bond rating from every Wall Street rating agency.  And it's equally obvious that the ratings agencies are artificially inflating the rating, stalling downgrades, and grossly understating the risk to investors.  (Emphasis added)

Weiss recommends getting out of all California paper now, saying that waiting until after their credit ratings fall could be too late.

He also urges his investors to consider dumping all tax-exempt bonds, in case California defaults.  That could set off a chain reaction of bond price plunges and defaults throughout the municipal bond market.  He warns:

Don't underestimate the impact California's depression is having — and will continue to have — on the rest of the U.S. economy. At $1.8 trillion, the state's GDP is so large, any further deterioration could wipe out every so-called "green shoot" in the national economy seen to date.  

Stay safe, with a big portion of your nest egg in cash, tucked away in short-term Treasury bills ... and with a very modest portion in gold, as an insurance policy against a dollar decline.  (Emphasis added.)

___________

used by permission:

This investment news is brought to you by Money and Markets. Money and Markets is a free daily investment newsletter from Martin D. Weiss and Weiss Research analysts offering the latest investing news and financial insights for the stock market, including tips and advice on investing in gold, energy and oil. Dr. Weiss is a leader in the fields of investing, interest rates, financial safety and economic forecasting. To view archives or subscribe, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com.

The Importance of Iran

Iran has been wracked by huge street demonstrations of those protesting the election results that seemed to show that Presidetn Ahmadinijad was massively re-elected.

Could the protestors cause a change in government?  It is still possible, depending on such things as whether parts of the armed forces come over to their side.

What difference might that make?  The world's major flash points right now center around North Korea and Israel.  Iran is a major player in both.  Iran works closely with North Korea to spread nuclear bomb-making capacity.  Iran also finances and directs Hisbollah, the major threat to Israel from Lebanon, and Hamas, the major threat to Israel from the west.  Also the current president, Ahmadjinidad, has been promising to destroy Israel.

A new government might see changes in all of these.  So what happens in Iran in the next few days is of the greatest importance.  We need to watch closely, and to pray.

Should the U.S. Break Up?

There is a growing drive to do that, described in the Wall Street Journal.*  

Many states now are trying to take back the rights given them by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.** 

To do that, a majority of State legislatures have now passed legislation declaring "State sovreignty" and reclaiming the rights of the States usurped by the U.S. Congress.  That movement is thriving and may have some success.  Its aim is to take back much power from the powerful central government, and give the people more control by bringing government closer to them.

But what the WSJ article describes, however, it not that, but a movement in some States to secede from the U.S.  That is different, and more drastic.  It says not to imagine a revolution, but a "devolution":

Imagine this instead: a devolution. Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society.

There might be an austere Republic of New England, with a natural strength in higher education and technology; a Caribbean-flavored city-state Republic of Greater Miami...and maybe even a Republic of Las Vegas...California? America’s broke, ill-governed and way-too-big nation-like state might be saved, truly saved, not by an emergency federal bailout, but by a merciful carve-up into a trio of republics that would rely on their own ingenuity in making their connections to the wider world.

The article argues this would be faithful to post-industrial realities as well as correcting the "creeping centralization of power in Washington."

In a new time when new currents favor the little over the big, the U.S. may be too super-sized for the 21st century,  Right now, the U.S. federal government is in the process of growing still more, trying to collect even more power in its hands.  But that could be making it into a dinosaur.  And a lot of folks are getting more and more uneasy and upset about what looks like a federal power grab.

A backlash is growing outside Washington D.C.

In April, at an anti-tax “tea party” held in Austin, Governor Rick Perry of Texas had his speech interrupted by cries of “secede.” The Governor did not sound inclined to disagree. “Texas is a unique place,” he later told reporters attending the rally. “When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.”

Such sentiments resonate beyond the libertarian fringe. The Daily Kos, a liberal Web site, recently asked Perry’s fellow Texas Republicans, “Do you think Texas would be better off as an independent nation or as part of the United States of America? It was an even split: 48% for the U.S., 48% for a sovereign Texas, 4% not sure. Amongst all Texans, more than a third—35%—said an independent Texas would be better.

From conservative Alaska to liberal Vermont, states are talking secession.

The philosophical tie that binds these otherwise odd bedfellows is belief in the birthright of Americans to run their own affairs, free from centralized control. Their hallowed parchment is Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, on behalf of the original 13 British colonies, penned in 1776, 11 years before the framers of the Constitution gathered for their convention in Philadelphia. “The right of secession precedes the Constitution—the United States was born out of secession,”

These devolutionists trace their case back to the anti-federalists, which included Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.  They felt the union gave too much power to the center at the expense of the rest.

But the anti-federalist case took a dark turn 150 years ago when the Confederacy used it to secede over the issue of slavery.  Since then, anti-federalism has had to defend its motives.  Now, after 150 years, after the death of slavery, and after the demise of the large industrial economy that contributed to the triumph of the North over the South, there is a new model.  Just as we got used to "the new industrial state," led by a master-planned economy, things changed.  Looking back at our system now, we see problems as far as the eye can see.  And that's not all.

In a globalized economy transformed by technological innovations hatched by happily-unguided entrepreneurs, history seems to be driving one nail after another into the coffin of the big, which is why the Obama planners...may be doomed to fail. No one anymore expects the best ideas to come from the biggest actors in the economy, so should anyone expect the best thinking to be done by the whales of the political world?

Diplomat and historian George Kennan, one of the very few who predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, suggested the U.S. might be too big too:  In 1993, he wrote that the U.S. had also become a 

“monster country,” afflicted by a swollen bureaucracy and “the hubris of inordinate size,” ...in his 1993 book, “Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy.” Things might work better, he suggested, if the nation was “decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.”

Kennan’s genius was to foresee that matters might take on an organic, a bottom-up, life of their own, especially in a society as dynamic and as creative as America.

Other mega-unit states might also benefit from more smallness, including India with its 1.2 billion people and the EU.  Even small England is splitting up as Scotland breaks off.  Even China may eventually split up.  Remember - the tiny city-state of Singapore won the international ranking as "the most innovative country."  There are benefits to smallness.

Should Americans decide to decentralize, they could

...draw on their natural inventiveness and democratic tradition by patenting a formula for getting the job done in a gradual and cooperative way. In so doing, geopolitical history...would be made. 

So why not America as the global leader of a devolution? America’s return to its origins—to its type—could turn out to be an act of creative political destruction, with “we the people” the better for it.

—Paul Starobin is the author of After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age, recently published by Viking, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

(Hat Tip to Charlie Meek at www.faithfacts.org.)

_______________

* At http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204482304574219813708759806.html 

** Amendment XX: "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." 

Miranda Rights Now Read to Battlefield Terrorists

                         (Image from weazelzippers.net)

Now the FBI is stationed in Afghanistan, reading captured enemy combatants their "Miranda Rights" before they can be questioned.  That gives them the right to be silent, and the right to a lawyer.  This is effectively the end to our best source of intelligence, and therefore a new risk to our safety.  It also is a constitutional issue, as it gives rights to foreigners that have been given only to our own citizens before - without any act of Congress.  It also goes against the accepted laws of war.

Yesterday the Weekly Standard wrote:

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

...But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. “When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up.”

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. “The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people – ‘Take the option. You want a lawyer.’”

Rogers adds: “The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”

One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, “I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people.” (All emphases added.)

From the Weekly Standard at http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/miranda_rights_for_terrorists.asp

Posted by Stephen F. Hayes on June 10, 2009 02:05 PM

Obama "Sort of God" - Evan Thomas, Newsweek

           Newsweek's Evan Thomas         

        (Image from newsbusters.org)

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said Friday on Chris Matthew's Hardball show on MSNBC, "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God," Sounding more like a cult-follower than a respected newsman. 

(See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37B_nOdRTAA)

Matthews had been praising Obama's speech, saying "I think the President's speech yesterday was the reason we Americans elected him. It was grand. It was positive. Hopeful...But what I liked about the President's speech in Cairo was that it showed a complete humility...The question now is whether the President we elected and spoke for us so grandly yesterday can carry out the great vision he gave us and to the world."

Matthews discussed Obama’s upcoming speech marking the 65^th anniversary of D-Day and compared it to that of Ronald Reagan. He then turned to Thomas and asked: "Reagan and World War II and the sense of us as the good guys in the world, how are we doing?" Thomas replied: "Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial."  (At http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/06/05/newsweek-s-evan-thomas-obama-sort-god.)

But it should be noted, however, that Thomas was wrong about the U.S. being viewed as the good guys during Reagan's time.  On the contrary, there were massive anti-U.S. protests in Europe during Reagan's time, calling for a "nuclear freeze," and opposing our placing missiles in Europe to protect it from a Russian attack.  Europeans did not look at the U.S. as the "good guy" then.

The real difference between Reagan's time and now is that there were more U.S. citizens then who viewed the U.S. as "the good guys."  This change is something we did to ourselves, under the teaching of the mainstream media and the Left..

U.S. Entitlement Programs Broke Sooner Than Expected

                              (Image from 3.bp.blogspot.com)

Professor Bainbridge writes that government entitlement programs will crash sooner then we thought, at  http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2009/05/entitlement-program-insolvency.html

As the Obama administration continues to plan the biggest expansion of entitlements in American history via health care "reform," comes a report from his own administration that key existing entitlement programs are very nearly insolvent:

The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The new projection, in an annual report from the programs’ trustees, says that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2017, just a year after President Obama would leave office if re-elected to a second term. Last year the trustees said they expected the fund to last until 2019.

The trustees also said that Social Security’s reserves now face depletion in 2037, four years sooner than the previous projection of 2041. The projections assume that there are no changes in current benefits, policies and tax rates. ...

The darker picture facing the two programs will complicate the president’s spending plans and policy ambitions; just Monday, the administration raised its estimate of the federal budget deficit this year to $1.84 trillion, the largest on record.

The time is past when Obama could just shrug this sort of news off as fallout from the prior administration. He owns this deficit. It's his budget. He has responsibility for entitlement reform, especially since his party controls both houses of Congress. Yet, he plans to open the federal tap even wider. It makes no sense.

The Obama administration wants you to believe, as Andrew Biggs observes, that:

... the real culprit is rising per capita health care costs – called "excess cost growth" – which push up spending even if the population doesn't get older. ... Under [this] view, only comprehensive health care reform – meaning, reform of private sector health provision in addition to government health plans – can stop rising prices. ...

[In fact, however,their own data]  shows is that aging will be the largest driver of entitlement cost growth out through 2040 and likely beyond. ... Over the next 30 years, population aging is our main entitlements problem and it makes sense to seek solutions that are based on the problem we have, not the problem we want to have. Without downplaying healthcare funding issues, which are significant today and will grow even more so in the future, I can't help but think that some on the left have latched onto this new view because it promotes a policy outcome they happen to favor: increased government control over private sector health care provision for working-age people. I suspect that many of these folks would favor more government control even if health care costs weren't rising.

In other words, we're going to socialize 17% of the economy and it won't solve a...thing. This has to be the issue of the 2010 election cycle.

(All emphases added)

As the Obama administration continues to plan the biggest expansion of entitlements in American history via health care "reform," comes a report from his own administration that key existing entitlement programs are very nearly insolvent:

The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The new projection, in an annual report from the programs’ trustees, says that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2017, just a year after President Obama would leave office if re-elected to a second term. Last year the trustees said they expected the fund to last until 2019.

The trustees also said that Social Security’s reserves now face depletion in 2037, four years sooner than the previous projection of 2041. The projections assume that there are no changes in current benefits, policies and tax rates. ...

The darker picture facing the two programs will complicate the president’s spending plans and policy ambitions; just Monday, the administration raised its estimate of the federal budget deficit this year to $1.84 trillion, the largest on record.

The time is past when Obama could just shrug this sort of news off as fallout from the prior administration. He owns this deficit. It's his budget. He has responsibility for entitlement reform, especially since his party controls both houses of Congress. Yet, he plans to open the federal tap even wider. It makes no sense.

The Obama administration wants you to believe, as Andrew Biggs observes, that:

... the real culprit is rising per capita health care costs – called "excess cost growth" – which push up spending even if the population doesn't get older. ... Under [this] view, only comprehensive health care reform – meaning, reform of private sector health provision in addition to government health plans – can stop rising prices. ...

[In fact, however,their own data]  shows is that aging will be the largest driver of entitlement cost growth out through 2040 and likely beyond. ... Over the next 30 years, population aging is our main entitlements problem and it makes sense to seek solutions that are based on the problem we have, not the problem we want to have. Without downplaying healthcare funding issues, which are significant today and will grow even more so in the future, I can't help but think that some on the left have latched onto this new view because it promotes a policy outcome they happen to favor: increased government control over private sector health care provision for working-age people. I suspect that many of these folks would favor more government control even if health care costs weren't rising.

In other words, we're going to socialize 17% of the economy and it won't solve a...thing. This has to be the issue of the 2010 election cycle.

(All emphases added)

California Will Run Out Of Money By June 16

                     (Image from theage.com)

See this video of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenager's speech before the California State Legislature yesterday, at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83eJEaTAJE8.  Notice how he proposes to cut their spending.

 

 

U.S. Government Owes $63.8 TRILLION

             (Image from christianpf.com)

U.S. household debt has jumped to an average of $668, 621 this year.  That counts not ony the $121,000 personal debt of the average household, but also their share of the national debt, which is $546,668 per household.  So says  Dennis Cauchon at USA TODAY, at http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-05-28-debt_N.htm

Just in the past year taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments...from an explosion of federal borrowing...plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security...

The latest increase raises federal obligations to a record $546,668 per household in 2008, according to the USA TODAY analysis. That's quadruple what the average U.S. household owes for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt combined.

"We have a huge implicit mortgage on every household in America — except, unlike a real mortgage, it's not backed up by a house," says David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, the government's top auditor.

The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion.

The numbers measure what's needed today — set aside in a lump sum, earning interest — to pay benefits that won't be covered by future taxes.

Congress can reduce or increase the burden by changing laws that determine taxes and benefits for programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Here are the crucial federal obligations:

• Social Security...will grow by 1 million to 2 million beneficiaries a year from 2008 through 2032, up from 500,000 a year in the 1990s...Average benefit: $12,089 in 2008.

• Medicare. More than 1 million a year will enroll starting in 2011 when the first Baby Boomer turns 65. Average 2008 benefit: $11,018.

•Retirement programs. Congress has not set aside money to pay military and civil servant pensions or health care for retirees. These unfunded obligations have increased an average of $300 billion a year since 2003 and now stand at $5.3 trillion.

(All empnases added.)

U.S. Capitalism Gone With A Whimper - Pravda

                  (Image from dealbreaker.com)

Pravda, the dominant Russian newspaper, said on 4-27-09 at http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Then Pravda described how this came about..

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger ...than for their constitutional rights. Then they...lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blinds the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches...were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks... were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting...If this keeps up another year...America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

Finally Pravda accuses American politicians of being no better than Russia's own thieves.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look like little more than ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in sheer volume. Should we congratulate them?

But read the whole article for yourself.

Servicemen Can't Speak at Faith-Based Events

  Sergeant 1st Class Greg Stube, Highly Decorated U.S. Army Green Beret                       

                              (Image from covingtonleader.com)

This is from Charlie Stokes, about Obama's new ruling that Servicemen and women are not allowed to speak at faith-based events:

"I wanted to give ya'll some disturbing information on our wonderful president. 

"I work with the Catch-A-Dream Foundation (www.catchadream.org) which provides hunting and fishing trips to childen with life-threatening illnesses.  It is a great program needless to say.   

"This past weekend we had our annual banquet/fundraiser event in Starkville, MS.  As part of the program, we had scheduled Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube, a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret and inspirational speaker who was severely injured while deployed overseas and didn't have much of a chance for survival.  Greg is stationed at Ft. Bragg  and received permission from his commanding officer to come speak at our function. 

"Everything was on go until Obama made a policy that NO U.S. SERVICEMAN CAN SPEAK AT ANY FAITH-BASED PUBLIC EVENTS ANYMORE.  Needless to say, Greg had to cancel his speaking event with us. 

"Didn't know if anyone else was aware of this new policy.  Wonder what kind of news we all will receive next?"

Charlie Stokes
Area Agronomy Agent/County Director
MSU Extension Service
517 Hwy. 145 N. Ste. 1
Aberdeen, MS 39730
Phone: 662-369-8683
Fax: 662-369-3682
E-mail: charlies@ext.msstate.edu
"Remember, Freedom Isn't Free"

(Hat tip to Fred and Gene Hannah from Parker Lane United Methodist Church, Austin, TX)

David Broder, WaPo - "The Size of Obama's Gamble"

David Broder, Washington Post

David Broder , Liberal Journalist, the "Dean" of liberal pundits presiding at the Washington Post itself, has seen what he did not see before about Obama and his team.  He writes:

The size of the gamble that President Obama is taking every day is simply staggering... putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington.*   (read the rest of the article at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/obamas_selfconfidence_propels.html) 

Another commenter adds:

I've come to believe that the Obama crowd is naive to the point of stupidity. They are very intelligent, mind you...But intelligent people are often deeply stuck in their fix-the-world fantasies, which makes them idiot savants. 

These people have never accomplished anything but suckering the voters --- and each other...

They seem to have no concept of the economy... making Monopoly money and forcing energy-using corporations to pay for it. They have no concept of productive investment compared to a wild spending spree on feel-good ideas, or on kickbacks to their buddies in Chicago .

After all the "community organizer" hoo-hah they still learned nothing from the welfare fiasco that was inflicted on Black families by LBJ's War on Poverty, --- by way of family breakdown, helpless dependency, drugs, and gang warfare. They've just abolished Bill Clinton's version of welfare reform, which was forced upon him by the Gingrich Congress, and which has ended up really helping people, not hurting them.

Conclusion: These folks are arrogant and ignorant. Intelligent, yes, articulate, yes, and utterly persuasive to millions of suckers, yes. But reality has a harsh way with fools.  (Read the rest at http://www.sodahead.com/blog/48842/the-size-of-the-gamble-that-president-obama-is-taking.)

Obama - "We're Out Of Money"

On Saturday May 23, President Obama told C-SPAN host Steve Scully, "We are out of money."*

C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president. Here are some bits from the interview:

"SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

"OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now...So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

"So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare." 

Then Scully brings up General Motors and California:

"SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” your reaction?

"OBAMA: Well, you know...we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. et out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...

"SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

"OBAMA: No." 

_________________

* http://www.drudgereport.com/flashocs.htm

Trying to Grasp the Coming Disaster

                       (Image from mises.org)

There is a strange reason I have not posted for a month.  I have simply been unable to comprehend,  to really grasp, what is about to happen to this country and to the world.  It has not been from lack of trying.  I spend my days reading, researching, probing into what is coming and why.  But it scarcely seems real.

Why?  Everything still looks so normal!  I look out over the city and nothing seems to have changed.  Yet I know it is coming, and already partly here.  It has been something like being on a coast and awaiting a tsuname wave that is coming within an hour.  It might not seem real, because everything would look so normal while we wait.  We would look around at the streets and houses,  and try to comprehend that what we were looking at would shortly be replaced by smashed houses floating in swirling water.  We might even know that afterward, it would be hard to imagine the "normal" that we had been seeing before the disaster.  But before it fully arrived, it would not seem real.  Just as now there is a comprehension gap, even though so much of the future is becoming clear.  I suspect many are struggling, as I am, to really believe all that is happening.  It keeps coming, faster and faster.

                       (Image from Drexel.edu)

Not that it's the end of the world.  But it is the end of an era, the end of living as we have, and likely the end of the U.S. as we have known it.  For all the world, a Great Depression.  Most countries will suffer more than we will.  In the U.S., add inflation to the mix of falling incomes and unemployment.   With our national debt finally coming due, the government will no longer be able to borrow its way out of trouble.  Retirement, medical care, all government programs are at risk.  And there is more, much more.

Then there is the swelling effect on world security.  The Pax Americana is being challenged, and if we continue cutting the military - now at the lowest percentage of national income in 60 years - and standing back from every provocation, there soon will be more wars in the world.  Our own security is also under new challenges.

As things develop, I will try to do better at posting regularly.  Grasping the seriousness and shape of our new landscape will be all too unavoidable soon enough.  No time left for feelings of unreality.

Take The Money Back!

                     (Image from thisislondon.co.uk)

In the last few months our economic future has been turned upside-down.  The national debt we have piled up for decades is beginning to come due.  The debt is being made worse fast, by government spending on a scale we have never seen before.  The government deficit for this year alone will easily top 3.5 trillion - more than the debt of the last several presidents combined.  In addition, the Federal Reserve has been printing money hand over fist - which also is adding more trillions to the debt

But that's only the beginning.  We have known for years that much bigger financial crises are coming.  Social Security.  Expanded Medicare.  Now Welfare has been resurrected from the dead, and will be a huge expense in future years.  In addition, other countries are no longer willing to carry much of our trade debt.  Current estimates of U.S. national future debt top $1.5 quadrillion.*  (A quadrillion is 1000 trillions or a million billions.)  The interest on our national debt alone will be larger than our national production in the lifetime of some of those already born.

So what is our government doing?  Spending like drunken sailors.  More every day.  Living in who knows what dream world.

Now some banks want to repay the taxpayers' bail-out money that they got.  But the Obama administration does not want to take it.  What is going on?  Here is what the Wall Street Journal says:**

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration's thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.

If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash -- which was often forced on them in the first place -- the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That's what's happening right now.

Do American citizens have anything to say about this?  It is their money, after all.  Maybe tomorrow's "Tea Parties" will help them make their voice heard.

_________________

* See http://actindependent.org/G20.pdf.  Also, just Google "$1.5 quadrillion U.S. debt."

** http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879833094588163.html

U.S. Negotiator Holbrooke - Special Deal for Bosnian War Criminal?

U.S. Envoy Holbrooke (from thewashingtonnote.com)

Former Bosnian leader Karadzic (from google.com)

Today the NY Times published this story at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/world/europe/22hague.html?em.

Everytime he is brought to the international court, Karadzic, once leader of Bosnia, claims that he should not be in court.  He claims that Richard Holbrooke, then Clinton's envoy to Bosnia, promised him immunity from any trial if he would step down as President.    (Holbrooke is presently Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan.)

Holbrooke has always denied his claim.  But now a Purdue University study has found witnesses to Holbrooke's actually agreeing with Karadzic in 1996 that he would be given immunity if he stepped down.

(Holbrooke has also been accused of providing assistance to the Indonesian government in its genocide in East Timor.  See one version at http://www.counterpunch.org/frank01272009.html, another at http://www.democracynow.org/features/east_timor.  Many other such accounts can be found with a web search.)

Is This The End of America?

(Image from howtoboilafrog.com)

So asks the editor of Canada's Financial Post at http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/03/financial-post-editor-asks-is-this-end.html.  Below is the article. 

The] Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?

...Reform of health care, environmental policy, education, energy, banking, regulation — every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy has been put on alert for major change. Expansion of government spending, plunging the U.S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U.S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.

...The total monetary base, already at astronomical levels, is now expected to take another big hit with the new Fed policy of buying up U.S. longer-term treasury bills in a bid to drive down long-term interest rates... For the rest of the world, however, the worry is that America is at risk of becoming the fountainhead of a new inflationary outburst. The U.S. dollar is now in decline, gold is moving sharply higher, and new global currency turmoil is on the horizon...

...A paper just published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, source of the chart above, says that the Fed will have to be prepared to absorb all the excess money it has poured into the U.S. economy. It will be a technical and political challenge unlike any central bank has ever undertaken. The future of America is at stake.

'Manchurian Candidate' Starts War on Business

                                  (Image from tc.umn.edu)

So goes the title of a piece by Kevin Hasset today in Bloomberg News.*  He is not claiming that Obama is a "Manchurian Candidate."**   Rather, he asks what a "Manchurian Candidate" might do to destroy the U.S. from the inside if he were elected President.  It is a startling article.  And you should read it all.  But here are some of his main points. 

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.

It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

He might propose a rescue plan, but never actually have one - to scare private capital away from the financial sector.  Then...

...the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

He might raise taxes on whatever business was still standing.  But he would use subterfuge, using...

...sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”

He might insure against long-term recovery by discouraging innovation.  That could block...

...something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.

He might try to get as much of the population as possible into entitlement programs.  They are...

...difficult to change once enacted...should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.

A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.

Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.

Then he gets started on the real gist of this fine article.  Read it at the link below.  He is barely getting started in the part quoted above.

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* at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=amhpOT5rlR1Y

** From the movie by that name

Former Separatist-Activist to Head Civil Rights Division

                            (Image from fulldisclosure.net)

From Investor's Business Daily at http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=321150134875960. 

Thomas Saenz was formerly " a top lawyer for a radical Hispanic group that wants to cede California to Mexico."  He was also an attorney for a radical group pushing for more "rights" for illegal immigrants.  Now that Obama has made him head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, what will he do?

It Is Worse Than We Think

                     (Image from static.travelmuse.com)

It is worse than we think.

Fewer young people every year are conservative.  That means conservatism is closer to dying out every year.  We cannot win this struggle unless conservatism quickly regains a majority.  And stays a majority.  But unless that majority includes a majority of each oncoming cohort of young people, it will be overthrown in just a few more years.  If we are already too late, this is why.  So what can we do?

We have to take back our kids!  They are leftist mostly because of the leftist indoctrination of the government schools.  (Sure, because of the media and entertainment too, but mostly the schools.)

We’ve been trying for 30-odd years to fix that.  We’ve tried running for school boards and changing things from there.  But as soon as we were voted out, it just changed back again.  We even learned not to do it politically, because it can all be lost at the next election – including the next PTA election.  We tried public charter schools.  We tried home schooling.  We tried vouchers.  And these have gone a long way.  But it has not been on a big enough scale.  Neither has it had staying power.

The best answer I see is church-based schools.  Churches, first and foremost, are not the government!  There are about 350,000 of them, scattered all over.  They have staying power.  Churches last a long time, even through many changes of members and staff. They have facilities that are mostly unused during weekdays.  Also, most churches are hard to control from above and hard to take over.  Besides, motivating them to each have a school is not terribly hard.  They just need the money.

It is an option that can start quickly, given the right motivation.  This year!  Many kids could be pulled from the government schools THIS YEAR and put into hastily-started church-based Christian schools.  There is so much fine curriculum out there, so many great models!  No re-inventing the wheel here. 

If we could ever get about half of all our kids into church-based schools, using scholarships for poor kids, the country would change permanently like you would not believe!  In about 15 years.  Big time!

We should not be surprised.  The Founders said that our new constitution and nation would work “only for a religious and moral people.”  Doh.  Such people make up the great base of the conservative movement.  The bigger that group gets, the more democracy and public common decency we have.  The smaller it gets, the less.  Unless it gets bigger, and stays bigger, we are lost.  Oh, we might win a bit here and there, for awhile.  But we couldn’t keep it.

We conservatives look back to the Constitution, as we ought.  But we have forgotten about its essential foundation on the Judeo-Christian tradition, massively followed by the population of that time. 

Without it, we have been skating on thin ice.  It had to start cracking sometime.   

(See Niall Ferguson’s thoughts on this, even though he is a “materialist.” At http://www.gerrycharlottephelps.com/2005/07/christianize_fa.html .)

World Has Never Seen Such "Freezing Heat"

ByChristopher Booker, November 16, 2008, in the UK Telegraph.*

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

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*At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml  

Hillary Would Have Beaten McCain By Wider Margin

              (Image from committedtoromney.com)

At http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/11/12/politics/horserace/entry4596620.shtml?source=search_story.

This CBS article examines exit polls and finds that if the election had been between Hillary Clinton and John McCain:

• 52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama’s 7-point margin over McCain. :
• 16 percent of McCain voters said they would have voted for Clinton
, the Democrat, if she had been her party’s nominee.
• These voters valued experience over change. 47% said experience was their top candidate quality and 32% said a candidate who shares their values. Just 10% picked change. But like voters overall, the economy was the top issue for these voters.  (All emphases added.)

While 85% of Obama voters said they would have voted for Clinton had she been the Democratic candidate, 13% would not have supported her including 6% who said they would have backed McCain and 7% who said they would not have voted.

But you should see the whole article.

Election Map Shows America Still Conservative

This NewsMax county-by-county election map shows that America is still a conservative country.  At http://images.newsmax.com/misc/2008_Election_Map.jpg.

"The Treatment of Bush Has Been A Disgrace"

AP

At http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html, Wall Street Journal, 11-5-08, by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro;  "What Have Our Enemies Been  Thinking?"

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

Dems Will Turn Meltdown Into Catastrophe

                          (Image from meidner.com)

With scant elegance, nuance or tact, this "bird's-eye view" is a rough picture of what will happen if we go over this particular cliff at this, "our moment" in history, and why we may never regain what will be lost if we do.

The problem is not only with the presidency.  Increasingly, Congress is the problem.  Congress has much more power than the President now.  If the Democrat majority grows, it will have still more power over the new President, whether Obama or McCain.  What will that mean for the future, and especially for this meltdown?

Remember how this meltdown started.  It was from the Democrat party, and from their mis-handled compassionate desire to help minorities and poor people own their own homes.  The motive was laudable.  The result was ruinous.  We need to assess blame in order to know what not to do, and who not to put in charge next time.

To recap:  President Carter started the CRA, which pushed banks to make sub-prime mortgages to people who could not afford them.  ACORN pushed banks into making sub-prime mortgages that they were forbidden to make, by law and by prudent practice.  ACORN pushed Congress into forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into accepting more of such mortgages than they wanted.  Then Congress forced Fannie/Freddie to make 50% of all its mortgages be sub-prime mortgages.  Then President Clinton's Justice Department under Janet Reno actively threatened any banks who did not comply.  (Clinton has recently acknowledged his mistake.)* 

Madness!  The house of cards started its free-fall when the price of housing started down, and the "housing bubble" burst.  But that house of cards was built, first to last, by the Democrats.  To understand our future, that fact must be remembered at every turn.  Because we must move from Left to Right to have any semblance of a good future.

Why?  Because this meltdown will take years to work out, even if we do everything right.  (Much worse, if we do not do everything right.)  That is because this meltdown is a "perfect storm."  More than one crisis is going on, and more will come.  They will be worse than this one, because this one, at least, has some underlying equity behind the bad debt in the form of property.  The oncoming crises do not.  And these crises will all feed on each other.

The housing crisis will be followed quickly by the Social Security crisis and the Medicare crisis.  It Democrats are elected this time, there will also be the nationalized health care crisis.

Why will they be crises?  Because they are all Ponzi Schemes.  None of them are sustainable.  Each one is a bubble, waiting to burst.  Each one is built on debt.  Sooner or later, debts have to be paid.  If not, there is default on the debts.  Then the bubble bursts.  Then there is a meltdown, like this one - or worse.

Each of these future meltdowns will rapidly become international, world-wide.  Why?  Because the U.S. has become the lynchpin, the cornerstone, that keeps the world economy functioning.  Why?  It is the major market in the world.  Everyone wants to sell to the U.S.  It is also the major "safe haven" for investment money.  Why?  Because money is less likely to be stolen or lost here than anywhere else.  And because it is the U.S. military  - supported by U.S. prosperity - that is the primary guarantor of however much safety and stability there is in the world.

Another more long-term, underlying trend must be factored in.  It is demography (population studies.)  All countries have had declining birth rates for several decades now.  At the same time, life-expectancy and life-spans have also been increasing in all countries.  This has caused a "gray overhang."  That is, the older population percentage has been growing while the younger population percentage has been shrinking.  This means there are fewer and fewer young workers to support more and more older non-workers.  This will ruin retirement schemes all over the world.  Not to mention universal health-plans, which are heavily impacted by the old.  This trend also invisibly underlies many other economic/political problems and will help drive them into crises.  Now that the retirement of the huge Boomer generation has arrived, these crises will not delay long.

But what of the prosperity we have had since WWII?  It cannot last, without drastic changes - toward the Right.  Our prosperity has mostly been based on debt - the promise to pay in the future what we borrow and spend today.  Such promises eventually must be paid, or see the whole system collapse.  The Asian countries save money.  The West saves little.  The U.S., nationally, does not save at all.  Everything, all our prosperity, is based on debt.  (For instance, our Social Security has no "lockbox".  There are no funds, no actual savings there.  Congress spends every dime, in "off-budget" spending.  This "Ponzi  Scheme" has assumed that taxes from younger workers would always pay retirement for the older non-workers.  Our declining birth rates and growing survival rates have destroyed that possibility.)

All over the world, savings from retirement plans have been invested  in the U.S. for security and safe returns.  So when we crash, they crash too.  And we will crash, because we are built on debt.

What can we do?  First, when we are in a hole, we have to stop digging.  So for a long time, we have to stop electing Democrats.  Why?

Democrats want to help people.  At least, some of the people. And they want to do it on a new, much larger scale  To do that, they want to use force.  That is, they want to force part of the population to support the other part.  With what force?  Government.  Government is defined primarily as the ultimate coercive power - the highest power that can force people to do things.  And Democrate, bless them, want to help people in the only way they know - through government.

To spend what they must in order to do what they plan, they must build government debt to great new levels.  Why?  Because there is no way they can spend that much out of current U.S. income.

What can we do?  Don't let them spend what they plan.  How can we stop them?  Don't elect them.  Don't vote for them.

Whatever other preferences we may have doesn't change the equation.  We cannot afford the Democrat way.  We cannot survive this, and the other coming crises, by making it worse.

I'm truly sorry.  And I do realize and acknowledge that the Republicans have many, many problems of their own.  But voting Democrat, at this time and probably for a long time, is to say "Bring it on!" to catastrophe.  I'm sorry.  But I can't argue with facts anymore than you can.**

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* Congress is pushing mightily to shift blame from itself to Wall Street fat cats - who are not without fault here.  But the truth is that it was Democrats in office who pushed Wall Street (through the banks who were forced into making bad mortgages) into accepting toxic debt.  This meltdown belongs to Democrats in office.

**Helping the poor and disadvantaged must not be abandoned.  But we must find ways to help them apart from government.  Fortunately, there are many other ways, with good, less-ruinous track records.

Hockey Moms And Capital Markets

              (Image from extrememortman.com)

By Spengler on 10-7-08 in Asian Times at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JJ07Dj07.html.

Why do Asian investors depend on American capital markets? Given the near breakdown of key sectors of the American market, one might expect Asians to bring their money home. Quite the opposite has happened:..Asian capital markets cannot absorb Asia's savings.

What does America have that Asia doesn't have? The answer is, Sarah Palin - not Sarah Palin the vice presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin the "hockey mom" turned small-town mayor and reforming Alaska governor. All the PhDs and MBAs in the world can't make a capital market work, but ordinary people like Sarah Palin can. Laws depend on the will of the people to enforce them. It is the initiative of ordinary people that makes America's political system the world's most reliable.

America is the heir to a long tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that began with jury trial and the Magna Carta and continued through the English Revolution of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th. Ordinary people like Palin are the bearers of this tradition.

Outside of the United States, the young governor of Alaska has become a figure of ridicule - someone who did not own a passport until last year and who quaintly believes that her state's proximity to Russia gives her insights on foreign policy. How, my European friends ask, was it possible for such an an ignorant bumpkin to become a candidate for America's second-highest office? They don't understand America.

Provincial America depends on the initiative of ordinary people to get through the day. America has something like an Education Ministry, but it has little money to dispense. Americans pay for most of their school costs out of local taxes, and levy those taxes on themselves. In small towns, many public agencies, including fire protection and emergency medical assistance, depend almost entirely on volunteers. People who tax themselves, and give their own time and money for services on which communities depend, are not easily cowed by the federal government or by large corporations.

Palin's career may look like a poor imitation of a Preston Sturges script, but films such as Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) struck a chord with Americans precisely because the character type of the ordinary man or woman who takes on entrenched interests is instantly recognizable in America.

Palin really did take on the American oil companies and turn the scoundrels out of office. Her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to the state oil and gas commission in the apparent belief that a small-town mayor and former beauty queen would rubber-stamp corrupt deals between the state and the Big Oil companies.

Shades of Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin ran against Murkowski and took his job. That does not qualify her to be president, to be sure, but it does show cunning and strength of character. Palin is qualified for high office by temperament if not by education, and is preferable to candidates whose education has made no improvement on their characters.

The fact that ordinary people safeguard their rights and have the means to challenge established interests does not exclude the possibility of fraud on a grand scale.

Asian investors were cheated by a conspiracy of the financial industry and the ratings agencies, which sold them ostensibly low-risk securities that turned out to be toxic. The just-approved US$700 billion support package for American banks sets America back to a regime of oligarchy, according to New York Times columnist David Brooks. Despite this fraud and its attendant humiliation, and despite the deterioration of governance in American markets, Asian investors are putting more rather than less money into America, judging from the decline of Asian currencies against the dollar in the course of the crisis.

One doesn't see demonstrations by wronged peasants in the small towns of America. There never were peasants - American farmers always were entrepreneurs - and the locals avenge injury by taking over their local governments, which have sufficient authority to make a difference. At the capillary level, school boards, the Parent Teachers' Association, self-administered religious organizations and volunteer organizations incubate a political class entirely different from anything to be found in Asia. There are tens of thousands of Sarah Palins lurking in the minor leagues of American politics, and they are the guarantors of market probity.

"Hockey Moms," to be sure, may not be the optimal promoters of America's future. One for one, the "Piano Moms" of China are cleverer people and produce smarter offspring. China's 30 million students of classical piano are one of the two great popular movements in the world today: the other is the House Church movement in Chinese Christianity. Children who play hockey will grow up to get coffee for children who study piano. As a pool of talent, nothing compares with the educated segment of the East Asian population that has embraced and mastered Western culture. Nonetheless, Asia still can't invest its own money at home, and seems farther than ever from that objective.

It is true that Asian economies depend on American consumers and an American recession is bad for Asian currencies. But why don't Asians consume what they produce at home? The trouble is that rich Asians don't lend to poor Asians in their own countries. Capital markets don't work in the developing world because it is too easy to steal money. Subprime mortgages in the US have suffered from poor documentation. What kind of documentation does one encounter in countries where everyone from the clerk at the records office to the secretary who hands you a form requires a small bribe? America is litigious to a fault, but its courts are fair and hard to corrupt.

Asians are reluctant to lend money to each other under the circumstances; they would rather lend money in places where a hockey mom can get involved in local politics and, on encountering graft and corruption, run a successful campaign to turn the scoundrels out. You do not need PhDs and MBAs for that. You need ordinary people who care sufficiently about the places in which they live to take control of their own towns and states when required. And, yes, it doesn't hurt if they own guns. Popular gun ownership places a limit on the abuse of state power. 

...That is why Asia's retirement money must look for a home overseas...The trouble (is that)...the derivative securities created out of the inedible scraps of the mortgage market - were subject to monstrously large demand from a world of aging savers (see The monster and the sausages, Asia Times Online, May 20, 2008). (All emphases added.)

CNN's Anderson Cooper On Obama-Ayers Issue

See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvROBLortBQ or YouTube.com>   6 minutes.  You may be surprised at how seriously he takes the strength of the linkage between Obama and Ayres.

                   (Image from cnn.com)