The Foundation

“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” –George Washington

Poisoning the well of political rhetoric

Political Futures

“The Republican candidates’ circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual ‘last man standing’ turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet — and he may be a pushover for Barack Obama in the general election, thanks to fellow Republicans. Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, this is a very serious and historically crucial time for the United States of America. … ‘The politics of personal destruction’ — as Bill Clinton called it, and as he himself practiced it — is not the way to solve the nation’s problems. It has already poisoned the well of political discourse this season and claimed Herman Cain as its first victim, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations by women with checkered pasts of their own. Whether Herman Cain was good, bad or indifferent as a candidate, and whether his chances of winning the Republican nomination were substantial or non-existent is not the issue. Nor is this the issue as regards Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney or any other candidate. Poisoning the well of political discourse may be one of the reasons why we see such unsatisfactory sets of candidates for political office in both parties, not only this year but in previous election years as well. … The time is long overdue to get serious.” –economist Thomas Sowell

For the Record

“What it appears we are seeing is a new iteration of the age-old split between the grassroots and a perceived GOP establishment. It is like the split between the Goldwater forces and the Rockefeller wing of the party in the 1960s. It is an update of the split between the Buchanan brigades and the establishment in 1992. It is the old True Conservative versus Ambivalent Accomodationist split. Actually it’s more a wound than a split, and the only one who healed it in our time was Ronald Reagan. He did it in three ways. He did it by being definitive: We believe in this and this, not that. He healed it by winning: Two landslides told everyone in the party who’d resisted him what time it was. And he healed it by governing well: By 1989, everyone who’d fought him within the party had to look at the results of what he’d done — the comeback of the U.S. economy, the fall of the Berlin Wall — and admit that it worked. The healing lasted roughly a quarter-century, until the second Bush administration, when everything began to come apart again. The GOP was now a party split on spending, immigration, a dozen other issues. It was rocked even more than it knew by the crash of 2008, and further sundered. The question now is whether the old split, the old wound, is tearing open in a deeper and more definitive way, in the first real presidential contest since the great healing went fully by the boards.” –columnist Peggy Noonan

Opinion in Brief

“Newt [Gingrich] has committed himself to a lunar colony by the end of his second term, and, while pandering to an audience on Florida’s ‘Space Coast,’ added that, as soon as there were 13,000 American settlers on the moon, they could apply for statehood. … There are times for dreaming big dreams, and there are times to wake up. This country will not be going to the moon, any more than the British or French do. Because, in decline, the horizons shrivel. The only thing that’s going to be on the moon is the debt ceiling. Before we can make any more giant leaps for mankind, we have to make one small, dull, prosaic, earthbound step here at home — and stop. Stop the massive expansion of micro-regulatory government, and then reverse it. Obama has vowed to press on. If Romney and Gingrich can’t get serious about it, he’ll get his way.” –columnist Mark Steyn

Essential Liberty

“The president began [his State of the Union address] with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory — he killed Osama bin Laden! — and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep. … What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but Spartan exceptionalism. … Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. … The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President. … This nation isn’t great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

The Gipper

“How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future, after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen, we cannot, must not, and will not turn back.” –Ronald Reagan

Re: The Left

“As the country’s first African-American president, Barack Obama had the chance to lead poor African-Americans out of poverty by encouraging them to embrace the principles that would allow them to become self-reliant instead of stoking envy of the successful. He had that responsibility. He has failed to live up to it. That is a tragedy, not only for him, but for those he left behind. Envy has never created a single job, put a family back together, encouraged a man to provide for his children or endowed young women with the kind of self-regard that would encourage them not to create children they too often neglect. The state of many poor African-Americans remains how it has been for years — too many fatherless children, too many uneducated, hopeless women and too many men in prison. President Obama might have done something about that beyond more government programs and handouts. … Addicting more and more people to government and the view that others owe them a living is the worst form of covetousness. In case the president missed it in Jeremiah Wright’s church, there’s a commandment against coveting your neighbor’s property.” –columnist Cal Thomas

Insight

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.” –Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Faith & Family

“The official Republican response to the President’s State of the Union Address was fine — as far as it went. But Gov. Mitch Daniels missed a golden opportunity to put before the American people a better vision of family, faith, and freedom. … [G]ov. Daniels could have noted that the policies of the Obama administration are the most antagonistic to the family of any administration in history. This is a fact. With 42% of American children born out-of-wedlock, a tragedy of fatherlessness is being visited on millions of homes. Bill Bennett rightly calls this ‘the broken hearth.’ And broken hearths lead to broken hearts. Does the president address this in his budget? No. Instead, he gives hundreds of millions to Planned Parenthood, the world’s leading trafficker in abortion. … Yet, President Obama has told Speaker Boehner that any cut in federal funds for Planned Parenthood is ‘a non-starter.’ President Obama has relentlessly pushed abortion at home and abroad. Obamacare is the most massive expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. Under Obamacare, health care coverage will include abortion. Thus, we will all be forced to pay for the killing of unborn children. … To the fires of social discord this administration is adding fuel. To those on the lower rungs of life’s ladder, asserting their God-given right to rise, this administration is breaking the first rungs.” –columnist Ken Blackwell

Reader Comments

“Thank you for putting up with (enduring) the president’s SOTU address (propaganda and blame game tirade) to produce Obama’s State of Disunion. I could not bring myself to listen to his lies, propaganda and spin-doctoring to hoodwink the people (those sheeple that will listen anyway). Either he is incompetent or he is decidedly trying to destroy America and freedom and capitalism. You cannot have it both ways: It is one or the other. Either way, he must go this year and should have been impeached already.” –Rod

Editor’s Reply: Suffice it to say, it is very difficult to tolerate just seconds of Obama’s rhetoric, but somebody had to do it!

“I left Cuba in 1961 because an undercover leftist communist lied to very smart people and duped them into getting him to power. As with all revolutions, once in control it ate its children.

Now I listen to Obama and when I talk to ‘very smart’ people that voted for him and ask them if they still believe that he is ‘THE ONE,’ they are too ambivalent to admit that they made a mistake. If we do not get rid of him and his cronies in November the damage to this our beloved country may be irreversible.” –Juan

Editor’s Reply: Viva la revolución 1776!

“I am amazed that this publication would bash the president. I am for people paying their fair share of taxes. I am the middle class that gets burned every time a Republican gets into office so you misguided people need to read up on the issues and see just what policies were in place before Obama got elected that the Republicans are blaming him for I will sit down and debate any American on Republican views and how out of touch you really are.” –Judy

“Judy you need to lighten up on the Kool-Aid!” –R.K.

“The only ‘fair tax’ rate is a flat tax rate. Any other ‘progressive’ tax scale is a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Why should anyone pay a higher or lower rate than anyone else? Aren’t we constantly being lectured on everyone being treated equally?” –Major Stu

“Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas is now among my heroes. If only more people would let this president know how unpopular he truly is … well, I guess it would make no difference to the narcissist.” –Walt

The Last Word

“[I] suppose most of you have heard about the policy recently introduced in Washington, D.C., mandating that exterminators treat rats as if they were an endangered species, and transport them painlessly to a different location. When I first heard the news, I threw my hat in the air and hollered ‘Hurrah!’ The letdown came a few minutes later when I found out they were talking about actual four-legged rodents and not Harry Reid and his cronies in Congress. Although it is difficult to understand why D.C. politicians would create such a goofy program, I suspect the answer lies in the old joke about the reason that sharks never attack lawyers swimming in the ocean; namely, professional courtesy.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

*****

(Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families — especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

Read more informative articles at The Patriot Post

Alan Caruba ~

Going back to the 1980s I have worked professionally with elements of the pest control industry providing public relations services  The process of educating the public is necessary because new generations must be informed of the threats pests pose to health and property.

Back when it was still known as the National Pest Control Association, I even received a beautiful certificate of appreciation that hangs in my office. At some point several years ago, it and state organizations changed their name to “Pest Management” presumably to divest themselves of the image of actually killing the creatures that annually spread disease and do millions in property damage.

In past years environmental organizations devoted a lot of time and money to convince the public that the real problem was the pest controllers, not the pests. If they all changed their profession next Monday, the entire nation would be totally over-run with roaches, termites, rats and mice in a month. The work is not glamorous, but it is utterly essential to society.

A case in point is bed bugs that have emerged in a few short years into a full-fledged pest problem from coast to coast. Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, the lack of pesticides registered to exterminate them has facilitated this new plague. There is, I believe, only one.

I have watched as the EPA has, since its founding, insanely strip pest control professionals and consumers of access to pesticides that formerly had protected their parents and grandparents, as well as their homes and businesses.

When you take away the pesticides, all you have left are the pests.

The modern pest control industry had its beginnings in the Middle Ages with the emergence of “rat catchers”, men who had developed a variety of poisons to rid homes and other properties of the ubiquitous rodent. Even the kings and queens of England had a royal rat catcher.

They were such a part of life in those times that the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has been passed down to us. It was, of course, the combination of rats and fleas that spread the Black Plague in the Middle Ages, killing a third or more of the population of Europe.

So why, one must ask, have the burgers of Washington, D.C., responsible for passing the laws, passed the truly insane one titled the “Wildlife Protection Act” that requires pest control operators to not only capture rats in a fashion that does not harm them in any way, but to transport them twenty-five miles away to be set free?

As Dr. Don Boys noted in a recent Canada Free Press article, “Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s Attorney General, said D.C.’s new rat law is ‘crazier than fiction’ because it requires vermin not be killed but rather captured, preferably in “families”, and transferred to a ‘wildlife rehabilitator’”, presumably living in Virginia!

Here are a few facts about rats:

# Rats have a life span of approximately nine months.

# Rats are ready to breed within three months. Their gestation period is 22 days and they have an average little of eight. An average female rat will provide 20 offspring.

# A single pair of rats has the potential, mathematically, of producing 359 million descendents in three year’s time.

# The average overall length of a rat is l6 inches, with a body measuring 9 inches and a tail of 7 inches. The average weight of a rat is l ¼ pounds. Their color can range from reddish brown to black.

# A rat’s sense of smell is excellent, as is its sense of taste. They are particularly suspicious of food. This results often in “bait shyness.” Rats will leave a poisoned bait untouched for almost a week. Other members of the pack will avoid food not eaten by other members and often warn other rats away by sprinkling it with their urine or feces.

# Rats can gain access to virtually any structure. They can climb 15 feet up a rough, surfaced vertical wall. They can jump vertically one foot from a flat surface and they can easily traverse telephone wires and ropes. They are, in addition, good swimmers.

Virginia and other states contiguous to Washington, D.C. do not want the District’s rats. They have plenty of their own. They also have a complete host of other rodents and wildlife that require the ministrations of pest control professionals.

There are a host of very good reasons why every American city and town has extensive laws regarding the control of insect and rodent pests, as well as wildlife that, in my home state of New Jersey, includes raccoons, opossum, squirrels, turkeys, coyotes, deer, and bears!

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that rats must be killed to protect people and property, but not the idiots on the Washington, D.C. city council who were more intent on protecting the rats than their constituents.

A lot of Americans have concluded they need protection from Washington, D.C. and its incessant and insane production of laws and regulations that pose the greatest threat of all to our personal freedoms and to the nation’s economy, security, and future.

© Alan Caruba, 2011   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

President Obama used his State of the Union address Tuesday to outline his idea of fairness. To put it simply, that means redistributing wealth by raising taxes on the most successful Americans.

“If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes,” Obama declared. He added: “Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

Heritage’s Curtis Dubay challenged Obama’s characterization of the so-called “Buffett Rule.” Dubay said it was a fallacy.

“The President can claim success on this one even before he ends his speech tonight because the Buffett Rule is already soundly in place,” Dubay wrote in response to Obama’s speech. “According to the CBO, the top 1% of income earners pay 30 percent of their income in all federal taxes.”

This week’s chart reveals the top 10 percent of income earners paid 70 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. Remarkably, 49 percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.

Rob Bluey leads the Investigative Reporting Unit at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/  and he is also a Director at their Center for Media and Public Policy.

Read more informative articles at Heritage – The Foundry . http://blog.heritage.org/

Gregory D. Lee ~

This week, the New York Times breathlessly reported in its New York Region section that the New York Police Department had committed a politically incorrect felony by using a film, The Third Jihad, to train its officers on the hidden agenda of many Muslims residing in the U.S. That hidden agenda is the destruction of the United States.

Apparently, the Times doesn’t realize that some Muslims in and out of this country want to harm New Yorkers and other Americans. The article says about the film: “Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”

Apparently the reporter at the Times didn’t know about it either. What is apparent is that the NYPD felt it was important to educate its officers and to give them insight into the goals of some radical Muslims residing in this country. Obviously, the NYT lacks insight because it’s blinded by political correctness.

Never mind that the FBI and NYPD have uncovered plots by radical Muslims to kill soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, blow up Times Square, kill soldiers at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, shoot up the Pentagon and Marine Corps museum in Virginia, attack soldiers at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, set off a bomb at Ft. Hood, blow up spectators at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon, and attack several sites in Tampa, Florida. These are examples of the scores of incidents perpetrated by immigrant and native-born Muslims living in this country.

The Times headline described the film as “a dark film on U.S. Muslims,” and reported that the film has been “shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.” Can you imagine a big city police department training its officers about the perpetrators of actual and potential future terrorist attacks?

The Times reporter gleefully wrote that once “the news broke” last January that the NYPD had shown the film to its officers, a “top” police official originally denied it. However, the Times was on the case to uncover the extent of the training, and find out how many other politically incorrect conspirators it could identify. An NYPD officer said the department received the DVD documentary from the Department of Homeland Security. When the Times reporter interrogated an unnamed DHS spokesman, the official said a DHS “contractor” might have provided it because the documentary is not part of its curriculum.

Under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the relentless Times reporter discovered to his horror that 1,489 officers had viewed the film, and not just a “couple of times” by mistake, as originally stated by a unnamed NYPD official. The reporter makes it seem that anyone who views the film will catch a fatal disease so it must be reported.

Never once in the article was the accuracy of the film questioned.

Instead of reporting what radical Muslims say or write about plotting to destroy American and Western culture, the newspaper chooses to attack the NYPD, which is doing its best to prevent terrorism within the city limits.

According to The New York Times, being politically incorrect is a far greater crime than any crime a Muslim has committed or is plotting to commit.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Gregory D. Lee is a retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the author of three criminal justice textbooks. While on DEA diplomatic assignment in Pakistan, he was involved in the investigation of several notable terrorism events and arrests. He recently retired after more than 39 years of active and reserve service from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Chief Warrant Officer Five Special Agent for the Criminal Investigation Division Command, better known as CID. In 2011 he completed a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan while on special assignment to the Special Operations Command Europe.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters . http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

Andrew Bolt ~

The inconvenient truth cannot be ignored much longer:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years…

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

This is definitely not what global warming scientists and their models predicted:

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid…

I’m not sure how much longer that refusal to admit to flaws in their theory can be maintained:

 Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

Indeed, scientists researching the impact of the sun on temperatures warn we could be in for cooling – which is far more dangerous to human prosperity than warming:

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

This video was posted to You Tube by holysnappingarsehole

In the mid 60′s Normie Rowe was pop music royalty here in Australia. He was at the absolute zenith when that popular music ‘explosion’ started. Australia had it’s Johnny O’Keefe, Col Joye and others who were in on the ground floor of rock and roll here is Australia, but as the new music started to break, it all shifted. There were the huge early acts from that era, and Normie Rowe was at the top of that tree.

He had hits all across Australia, and his concerts were full of young and usually screaming girls.

The song featured today is actually a song from one of the very popular George and Ira Gershwin operas, first staged as early as 1935, Porgy and Bess. However, not one of those screaming girls could have cared less about Porgy and Bess, had never even heard of it, and could not care less that this song was popular probably even before their parents were their age.

This was Normie Rowe, and he could sing anything and they would scream.

Airplay in those days consisted of playing the 45 on your turntable or AM radio, and with transistor radios just starting to become the rage, loud music from small boxes that these transistor radios were was all the rage, and AM radio was King, well, there was no FM radio in those days.

Some radio stations were huge in cities that had anything up to 10 Stations. In Melbourne, nothing was bigger that ‘The Greater’ 3UZ (For fun) and they had the supreme DJ of that time in Melbourne, Stan (The Man) Rofe. His regular time slot was probably listened to by a larger audience than all the other stations added together.

Stan ‘made’ acts either by recommendation or playing their singles. He heard Normie Rowe at a music school concert, where Normie, still only a young teenager was the lead vocalist. Stan was impressed by the young boy’s talent, and got him further work in and around Melbourne. He appeared with a couple of bands before settling on his regular backing band The Playboys.

After High School Normie got a regular job, and as the ‘long hair’ rage started to take hold with young men at the time, he finally left after ultimatums to cut his hair, and Normie decided to become a professional entertainer.

At the suggestion of his mentor Stan Rofe, Normie and his band selected today’s featured song from Porgy and Bess, ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So.’

It became a huge hit for Normie and the band, and he was soon at the top of the tree for Australian Popular Music Royalty, a position he held for a number of years.

The song was actually not played by some radio stations because of the doubts expressed in it about some of the things said in the Bible. In fact, this banning, as has nearly always been the case, only served to make the song more popular, and to sell more singles.

Hot on the heels of this song first played in early 1965, he released more singles, and each song went into the Top Ten, most of them in fact in the Top Five, with 2 Number One smash hits on the National Charts. He had nine successive Hits, and then, like most Australian acts, he left to try and ‘crack it’ in the UK.

He had a minor career in the UK for a year and a half, and his songs released there sold better in Australia than the UK.

That all ended in 1968 when Normie’s number was drawn out of the ballot to be conscripted into the Australian Army, in those days called National Service.

While it may seem similar to what happened to Elvis, this was an entirely different thing here in Australia, because this was at the time of the Vietnam War, and everyone knew that was the end result of Normie Rowe’s stay in the Army.

He got a lot of respect from Military people for not using his high profile status in an attempt to get out of doing his duty, and was happy to go into the Army.

His was a high profile induction training in the Army as all the media eyes concentrated on his every move.

He did end up doing a full tour of duty in South Vietnam.

This ended the career of Normie Rowe.

He served for four years, and in that time, popular music royalty shifted to newer and current stars.

When he came back from Vietnam, he tried to recover his career at the top, but things had changed.

In fact, as with most returning soldiers from Vietnam, they were treated as pariahs, and just because his name was Normie Rowe, well that made no difference whatsoever.

Normie however used his music background before he became a ‘star’, and he moved into the quite lucrative club scene, where he was quite well received.

Normie Rowe never tried to hide the fact that he was anything but proud to have served his Country, and even though it ended his huge career, he never complained.

In fact Normie Rowe became a high profile person in the move to have Vietnam Veterans become less than the pariahs they were treated as.

Because this song is from a time well before music video clips became what they were, there are no clips of him doing this somg live or even for a music video of any sort.

This song today is just the single being played with images of Australia.

Normie Rowe is a man who deserves respect, not because of his huge career in popular music, but for putting his Country before himself, even though it cut short that career.

I’m still willing to bet that there are women out there still, women who were once those screaming girls, who do not know, nor could even care that this song had a thirty year history before it was sung by the King of Australian popular music, Normie Rowe, a huge hit here in Australia, done differently than perhaps George and Ira Gershwin might have thought, but a nice treatment of the song anyway.

Alan Caruba ~

The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.

Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 as the starting point, noting, for example, that “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”

“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”

“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s…” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”

The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had done on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out that “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”

“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”

The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams—not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”

Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”

“As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.” That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.

They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.

To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”

“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.

“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of communism.

Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.

Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down; a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”

The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates, all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with liberal members of Congress.

It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.

© Alan Caruba, 2011   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

~

Recent developments, according to the (Irish) Independent:

Dozens killed in attacks on Nigerian Christians
“A FRESH wave of violence against churchgoers in Nigeria has left at least 27 people dead and heightened fears over security in Africa ‘s most populous country.The religiously motivated massacres — three since last Thursday — targeted Christians in Mubi and Gombe, towns in the north-east where a state of emergency was declared by President Goodluck Jonathan last week. Some 17 other deaths have been reported in other regions .

There is growing concern that the government’s inability to tackle the rising levels of sectarian violence, blamed on radical Islamic group Boko Haram , may result in hundreds of people fleeing their homes.

The group is now carrying out weekly attacks on churches and police stations in northern and central areas.

Islamic clerics who speak out against the violence have been assassinated.”-more

And from Ecumenical News International there’s this:

Sudan churches encounter more hostility after independence

Christians and churches in Sudan are facing increased restrictions and hostility, since the secession of the southern part of the country six months ago, according to some church leaders.

The leaders are highlighting arrests and abduction of Christians and threats directed at clergy, while warning of more challenges when the country implements Sharia (Islamic law).

“Restrictions in Sudan are not new, but we are worried things are getting harder since the secession of the south. With Sharia law we expect things to get even harder,” the Rev. Mark Akec Cien, the Sudan Council of Churches, deputy general secretary of the told ENInews on Jan. 20 in a telephone interview.”-more

Read More by Yaakov Kirschen at Dry Bones . http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman ~

As much as I love democracy, Western Liberal Democracy, this institution has a dark side. There are problems with our own American democracy; even more troubling are democracies such as that of Russia, and worse, democracy in the Muslim world. Why is democracy so under assault?

Liberal Democracy is a system in which people do have choices, but there are also rules that keep the “people’s will” from becoming tyranny. Voting is the last step of building a democracy, with other institutions coming first: a genuinely free press, independent judiciary not cowed by public opinion, separation of the dominant church from the state, and law enforcing the equality of men and women. If all of these factors are in place, the final thing to guarantee is a free and fair election process with no intimidation at the polls.

United States. As our democracy becomes ever more populist, we will lose the “liberal” part of our republic. When judges are voted for in popular elections, the independent judiciary is harmed. When the public puts initiatives on the ballot with neither vetting by an elected legislature nor provision for funding, we substitute “popular” for “representative” in government. Our forefathers wisely opted for a republic after watching the popular democracy of the French Revolution lynching opponents at will. Our presidents and representatives (and some judges) need so much money to run for office that corruption is inevitable. And as we move toward “pushbutton democracy” (voting from home on line), we may find our democracy ruined beyond repair.

Russia. Although Vladimir Putin tries to take over the reins of Russia (again) for the next 12 years, we can see that the brief glimmer of democracy following the collapse of the Soviet Union is still alive. People are in the streets and a new candidate has surfaced. Despite Putin’s   seeming advantage in the election, he still found it necessary to win this election through blatant fraud and ballot box stuffing. To his surprise, voter support has dropped from 64% to 49%. Sadly, the vibrant free press (the first that Russia has ever had) is melting away. Russia may take the prize for murder of journalists, along with Mexico. But in Mexico, the drug cartel is doing it, not the government.

Middle East. As secular dictatorships fall, we are watching the rise of future new dictatorships: this time, Islamic theocracies. Although the educated elites and the small Christian populations are afraid, they are outvoted by the illiterate masses who feel more comfortable with a religious dictatorship. When the overwhelming popular culture is authoritarian at home, authoritarian at school, and authoritarian in the   mosque, and hostile toward granting equality to women, why would they not want their kind of authoritarianism at the top?

In all these cases, there is a problem that all elections today must have universal suffrage. Universal adult suffrage arose in the west gradually, each new group of voters added over a long time. But today, only such a country as Finland can have genuine liberal democracy because everybody is well educated, everybody shares the same cultural values, and their system has produced an overwhelmingly middle class population. Not so for the rest of us. We have a huge gulf between thinkers and the ignorant.

Today, the really educated are few in number compared with the masses of essentially conservative populations that fear change, distrust science, and want somebody to rule that can make them feel “safe” and “superior.” Both ancient Greece and Rome lost their democracy because of corruption. In both countries, elections were increasingly bought by the wealthy. As for the Muslim world, voting in Islamists will destroy their freedoms. Even Turkey, the one country that had a pretty good democracy for 75 years, may well be losing their democracy to creeping Islamism. The Economist is wrong-headed in calling Turkey’s Islamist government “mildly Islamist.” There is no such thing.

Democracy is a fragile flower that will not bloom everywhere in today’s world. We are delusional to think so, and had better see to our own.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters . http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

Alan Caruba ~

Believe it or not, there was a time when, if you turned 65 and retired, you could expect to live in reasonable comfort. Social Security covered a portion of your expenses; your savings account yielded a modest amount of interest, and, if you had made investments, stock dividends provided a safety cushion. Not so anymore.

“More Elderly Find They Cannot Afford Not to Work” was a January 21 headline of an article in The Wall Street Journal, noting at one point that an 87-year-old woman who had retired in 2003 was now earning $7.25 an hour, four hours a week, collecting tickets at a movie theatre in my former New Jersey hometown. I had lived there for 62 years.

Thanks to ever-rising property taxes, I sold my home before prices plunged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. I parked the money in an annuity.

I am fortunate that there is no age limit on the ability to write for a living. The writing trade has always been a tough one. The former market for magazine articles is a shrinking pool paying little for one’s labors. Self-published books, particularly fiction, have flooded the marketplace and mainstream publishers rely on older, established authors with a following. As often as not, bestselling non-fiction is written by people who anchor television news or have some other form of celebrity.

As the Wall Street Journal article noted, “In 1981, Social Security paid 52% of the average worker’s pre-retirement earnings, according to the Social Security Administration.” I turn 75 this year and my Social Security is little more than “grocery money.” Interest on my savings account is a joke.

For too many of my fellow senior citizens, not working is not a choice The Wall Street Journal notes that “The unemployment level among Americans 75 and older—measuring the number of people seeking work—is relatively low but twice what it was five years ago. The rate was 5.6% last year…compared with 2.5% in 2006.”

When I was born in 1937 it was in the depths of the Great Depression. I have lived long enough to be swept up along with everyone else in the Great Depression 2.0.

Naively, I and many others of my generation thought the years of economic growth that began in the 1950s would go on forever. We survived a number of investment “bubbles” and predictable, but short-lived recessions, but this one is different. It has been exacerbated by an ever-growing federal government, job-killing “environmental” regulations, and burdened by “entitlement” programs whose cost understandably keep increasing along with the nation’s growing population of older Americans.

“”Federal spending on Social Security and Medicare is rising,” said the Journal article. “both in total dollars and percentage of the budget. Social Security made up 20% of the federal budget in the 2010 fiscal year, up from 13% in 1962. Combined spending on Social Security and Medicare represents 9% of GDP and is projected to grow to 12% in 2035.”

The nation’s debt now equals its Gross Domestic Product. The U.S. is broke and so are Europe’s nations with the exception of Germany. That is simply not sustainable—something the Congressional “super committee” discovered when it punted on any solution to the nation’s fiscal woes.

Part of the problem is the nation’s aging population. No one anticipated that health care would improve to the point of extending people’s life expectancy from 65 in the 1930s to an average of 78 years today. As it is, both my parents lived into their 90s, I have an older brother in his 80s, and a nephew in his late 40s who just became a father again.

We can thank short-sighted “social justice” programs such as Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s appalling “sub-prime mortgage” programs and “bundled assets” that sank banks from sea to shining sea. The U.S. taxpayer has had to bail out these two “government sponsored entities” to the tune of billions and they keep coming back for more.

In the space of just three years, President Obama has increased the nation’s debt by five trillion in horribly misspent, wasted dollars. Since 2010 when control of the House was returned to Republicans, they have fought against pressures to raise taxes that would suck more money out of the economy and have put forth sensible plans to restructure Social Security and Medicare. Naturally, they have been accused of being heartless.

Any senior citizen who votes for Obama or a Democratic Party candidate is putting themself at further risk of having to work until they die or seeing their savings eaten by illness or other rising costs before that occurs.

Editor’s Note: The author’s editorial services site is here.

© Alan Caruba, 2011   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Lachlan Markay ~

The president’s energy agenda took a hit on Thursday, as yet another stimulus-backed energy company filed for bankruptcy. Videos have surfaced since then showing both Obama and Vice President Biden praising the company’s promise, drawing the attention of congressional investigators.

As Scribe reported yesterday, Ener1 submitted a pre-packaged bankruptcy plan as part of a refinancing agreement after suffering numerous setbacks late last year. Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel received a $118 million grant from the Energy Department to produce its lithium ion battery technology.

The president singled out EnerDel for praise during a speech in Elkhart County, Indiana, during which he announced $2.4 billion in stimulus spending on battery technology for hybrid and electric cars. Stimulus grants such as the one given to EnerDel, the president claimed, would “create tens of thousands of jobs all across America.”

Biden, during a visit to Ener1′s Indianapolis factory, said “Enron1 [is] leading the way” in battery technology, apparently confusing the company’s name with the notorious energy firm that filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The stimulus, Biden said, was “not just creating new jobs, but sparking whole new industries that will ensure our competitiveness for decades to come — industries like electric vehicle manufacturing.”

House Republicans seized on the Vice President’s verbal flub, calling it “a seemingly unintentional but ultimately prescient reference to the collapse of the energy giant Enron,” in the words of a House Energy and Commerce news release.

That panel’s lead investigator, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who has also led the investigation into bankrupt solar company Solyndra, lamented the addition of Ener1 “to the growing list of failed companies that went belly up after hundreds of millions of dollars in administration backing.”

Then there was this, added by Mike Brownfield, also from The Foundry

Yesterday, President Barack Obama rolled through Las Vegas to push for federal investment in clean energy vehicles, making his pitch at a UPS plant, escorted by a motorcade of 22 fossil fuel-burning vehicles. We haven’t seen anything this ironic since Al Gore hopped on a private jet to promote his global warming flick “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Kudos to our friends at the Nevada Policy Research Institute who captured the moment on video.

Lachlan Markay works to advance  The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/  policy solutions by breaking hard-hitting investigative news stories as a reporter for the think tank’s Center for Media and Public Policy.

Read more informative articles at Heritage – The Foundry . http://blog.heritage.org/

Topics in today’s show:

– Obama goes for huge venue to accept the Democrat nomination.

– Liberals in Congress target oil company profits.

– President Obama claims that the media is responsible for his cold and aloof image, marking the first time in his Presidency he hasn’t blamed something on Bush.

– Gas expected to hit $5 a gallon in summer.

– China is being asked to bail out the European Union.

– Kobe Bryant’s wife looks to get 3 mansions and $75 mil in divorce settlement.

Starring: Jodi Miller
Director: Bruce Roundtower
Executive Producer: Matthew Sheffield

See more videos at the NewsBusted video channel . http://www.youtube.com/user/newsbusted

See and Read more Quality Material at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

The lack of warming casts yet more doubt on the global warming theory, warn 16 prominent scientists and engineers in an open letter:

 Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2…

Why is there so much passion about global warming… ? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet….

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

And yet the Gillard Government is leading the world with exactly such uneconomic and unjustified policies to stop a warming that stopped – or paused – a decade ago.

The signatories to this letter:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

I remember well how prominent journalists in Australia heckled and literally looked away rather than hear the world wasn’t warming as they believed:

When journalists refuse to even listen to what prominent scientists say are the facts about the flaws in global warming theory, what hope for an informed debate?

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

The Foundation

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” –Thomas Jefferson

Government & Politics

Class Warfare Dominates Tax Debate

As the week wore on, we couldn’t help noticing a common theme: Mitt Romney’s taxes, Warren Buffett’s taxes, Warren Buffett’s secretary’s taxes. In fact, Barack Obama built his entire State of the Union address around envy, virtually declaring it the long-lost, ultimate American value and pointing to the aforementioned supposed tax disparity as proof. The tax code is indeed a glaringly obvious problem. It pits every constituency against the rest, and Leftists are especially adept at exploiting that to wage class warfare.

Obama’s tired refrain is that the rich don’t pay their “fair share” — not even as much as their secretaries. The president trotted out the secretary of billionaire Warren Buffett to “prove” his point. He claimed that she pays a rate higher than her boss, despite the obvious income disparity (Buffett says she earns about $60,000 a year). Facts, as usual, are the first casualties. For starters, he compared apples and oranges by contrasting her total tax burden with Buffett’s rate on federal income taxes.

Furthermore, the top 1 percent pays their “fair share” of 36 percent of income taxes while the bottom 50 percent pays next to nothing. That disparity only increased with the Bush tax cuts, contrary to Democrat rhetoric. Obama used his ruse to demand that those earning more than $1 million per year pay at least 30 percent in taxes. “You can call this class warfare all you want,” he challenged. “But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, however, the top 1 percent already pays 29.5 percent when all federal taxes are accounted for, while the middle class pays 15.1 percent. If Obama were referring to the capital gains rate, 30 percent would be the highest since 1978.

Leftists also found a bludgeon in Mitt Romney’s taxes. By any measure Romney is wealthy, with income of more than $20 million in each of the last two years (the only years for which he released returns). Yet because his income is almost entirely capital gains and the like, his tax rate was around 15 percent. Unnoticed, however, is that most of that money was taxed already at the corporate rate of 35 percent before it was ever paid to him. Democrats decried Romney’s unfairly low burden, although when John Kerry paid only 13 percent in 2004, their silence on the issue was deafening.

Back to the SOTU, the president also called for “reforming” the tax code — by making it more complicated. He wants to remove tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. The only problem is that no such breaks currently exist — unless he means that other nations have tax rates roughly half that of the U.S. thus causing companies to leave for other shores. Obama also wants to offer special breaks to alternative energy companies and manufacturing (read: unions), while sticking it to “Big Oil.”

Real reform would lower the corporate rate to, say, 15 percent for all industries and simplify deductions. It would also lower rates for individuals, rather than raising them as if the natural order of things is a top rate of 43 percent. Furthermore, it would keep capital gains rates low. History proves that lower rates increase economic activity, and with last quarter’s underwhelming 2.8 percent growth, most of which was inventory expansion, we need it. Besides, even if Obama confiscated all the wealth of the “rich,” he couldn’t fully pay for his agenda.

Charitable giving sheds some light on the rationale behind the Left’s demands. Mitt Romney gave more than 19 percent of his income to various charities, including the Mormon Church, in 2011 — that’s more charitable giving than taxes paid. The Obamas, on the other hand, gave just 1 percent of their income to charity between 2000 and 2004, increasing that to 5 percent by 2007. Joe Biden gave $369 — three hundred sixty-nine dollars — the year before becoming VP, and just $5,350 in 2010. A reasonable conclusion is that because “liberals” are so miserly with their money, they think the only way to “spread the wealth” around is through forced taxation.

Not only are these hypocrites stingy, but they don’t even pay what they owe. The IRS reports that 36 of Obama’s executive office staff owe some $833,970 in back taxes, and thousands of federal employees owe back taxes totaling $3.4 billion. Obama declared in his speech, “We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.” Good thing his staff doesn’t have to worry about that.

Quote of the Week

“I make a mistake, you know, every hour, every day.” –Barack Obama

The BIG Lie

“We don’t begrudge financial success; we admire it.” –Obama, class warrior

News From the Swamp: The Senate Budget Abdication

Tuesday, Jan. 24, was not only the day of Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, but it also marked the 1,000th day that the Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a budget. Whenever the president or the media rails against the unproductive and unpopular Congress, they always take pains to place blame on the Republicans. In fact, Obama is making this the cornerstone of his re-election bid. The truth, however, isn’t nearly so convenient. This gross dereliction of duty falls squarely on Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and it goes to the heart of Washington’s fiscal problems.

Reid actually has called passing a budget “foolish,” relying instead on continuing resolutions to address one spending problem at a time, and not very well at that. Democrats can have it both ways — federal spending has skyrocketed while they are saddled with an overarching budget to set long-term goals and priorities. Since April 29, 2009, the last date the Senate passed a budget, the federal government spent more than $9 trillion, nearly half of which was deficit spending. The current debt total is more than $15 trillion, with interest payments on that bill running $200 billion per year. The long-term damage created by this continued intransigence will be nothing short of catastrophic. By 2050, entitlement spending will more than triple, and the debt will hit 344 percent of GDP. These are all important points to keep in mind when going to the polls this November.

New & Notable Legislation

We recently reported on the growing opposition to legislation that would give the federal government virtually unchecked power to regulate the Internet in the name of combating online piracy. The House and Senate bills, SOPA and PIPA, respectively, have been shelved — but not killed — after a major backlash by the public and protests from several major Internet sites. Now, with the arrest and indictment of the people behind the website Megaupload, the big question is whether SOPA and PIPA were ever needed in the first place.

Megaupload possessed vast quantities of music and video files that were in many cases pirated from the legitimate owners. Last week, the FBI led a coordinated effort with law enforcement agencies in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Germany, the UK, Canada and the Philippines to arrest Megaupload’s senior staff and seize their servers and assets. The company had been a thorn in the side of copyright holders for years, but after building a case, the government was able to act decisively by applying laws already on the books. The successful takedown of Megaupload, using the proper tools that law enforcement already has at its disposal, exposes SOPA and PIPA for what they are: overkill and another unwarranted power grab by the federal government.

Giffords Steps Down

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) announced this week that she is stepping down from Congress to focus on her recovery. Giffords was among 19 people shot on Jan. 8, 2011 at a constituent rally in Tucson when a deranged gunman opened fire. Giffords was hit in the head, and six of the 19 were killed, including Judge John Roll and Giffords’ chief of staff Gabriel Zimmerman. Miraculously, Giffords survived and spent the past year learning again to walk and talk. Considering the extent of her injuries, her progress is remarkable. Her district is expected to be competitive this year, and although she expressed interest in returning to public service, doing so in the midst of a tough election campaign was not considered to be in her best interests. The shooter, Jared Loughner, remains in custody awaiting trial.

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“[I]t would be a disservice to [Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's] life and that of the others directly affected by [the Tucson tragedy], and tragedies like it, to ignore the factors that precipitated the violence: the easy access to guns; the availability of accessories such as extended clips [sic] that make deadly weapons all the more lethal; and a porous and shoddy regulatory system that too often fails to keep these weapons out of the hands of dangerous or dangerously unstable individuals.” –Washington Post editorial

Second Amendment: Feds Go Silent While States Take Lead

The federal government is certainly taking its time getting to the bottom of what went wrong during Operation Fast and Furious. Part of the problem stems from people in the know at the federal level clamming up about their role in the operation. Patrick Cunningham, who heads up the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Arizona, isn’t talking before Congress about his role. According to his attorney, Cunningham will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights rather then testify, because he’s worried about a future indictment. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the head of the House Oversight Committee, rightly worried “that the Justice Department’s motivation for refusing to hand over subpoenaed materials is a desire to shield responsible officials from criminal charges.”

Meanwhile, Arizona, a target of the White House for its stance on immigration law, is opening its own investigation to ascertain the facts of Operation Fast and Furious and determine whether federal agents violated any state laws in conducting the botched sting operation.

Other states are also making their own way and daring the federal government to stop them. In Kansas, two legislators are trying to make that state the latest to pass a Firearms Freedom Act, which would make it a criminal offense for federal authorities to enforce federal regulations on covered weapons and ammunition, defined as items manufactured and used within the state. Similar laws are already in effect in eight other states, mostly in the West, but also in our native Tennessee.

Judicial Benchmarks: Court Rules GPS Tracking Must Have Warrant

It’s unanimous. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that police violated the Constitution when they attached a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker to a suspect’s vehicle without a valid search warrant. How the Supremes got there is a different story. They split 5-4 over the scope of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said that as conceived in the 18th century, the Fourth Amendment’s protection of “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” would extend to private property such as an automobile. Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

The concurring minority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, a former prosecutor usually known for his law-and-order views, who would have gone further than his conservative brethren. He argued that limiting Fourth Amendment protections to forbidding trespassing property as understood in 1791 “is unwise” and “highly artificial” and that the search violated an individual’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” To Alito, with rapidly advancing technology such as GPS, the majority’s approach left open “particularly vexing problems.” Joining Alito were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan — a rather strange split.

The Scalia side looks at the issue as a question of invasion of property, while the Alito camp considers it one of privacy. No matter what the rationale, the result is the same — the police acted unconstitutionally. Do they still teach law enforcement trainees about their oath to support and defend the Constitution?

Economy

Regulatory Commissars: Oil Production and ‘Reasonable Profits’

Despite fervent attempts by the Obama administration to stall, stunt and stop domestic oil exploration, U.S. oil production is actually on the increase. While the U.S. Energy Information Administration says that projected daily oil production will top six million barrels by 2020, according to research firm IHS-CERA, total U.S. production for oil and related liquids could hit 10.2 million barrels a day by 2020, far above the low point of just 7.6 million barrels daily in 2008. Lest this increase be construed as a giant step toward energy independence, however, consider that even the forecasted supply falls far short of demand, which is projected to be more than 19 million barrels daily by 2020. One big way to help would be to build the Keystone XL pipeline — but Obama just rejected that.

He did announce the sale of drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico this week, and his campaign arm, the Associated Press, says that was “a response to critics who say his policies have stifled domestic energy production.” Only later in the story do we discover that the sale merely fulfills part of an offshore drilling plan put in place by President George W. Bush. Don’t expect Obama to share any credit, though. In reality, Obama’s dishonest “response to critics” is finally getting around to selling leases he should have sold long ago.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to confirm that for them the phrase “energy independence” really means independence from oil production. Just last week, six House Democrats actually proposed legislation to establish a “Reasonable Profits Board” that would hit oil and gas companies with a windfall tax of up to 100 percent of all surplus earnings that exceed “a reasonable profit.” Even more outrageous (if that’s possible), the bill leaves the standard for what constitutes such a profit to the arbitrary will of three presidentially nominated board members. It’s “Atlas Shrugged” come to life. Who is John Galt?

This Week’s ‘Braying Jenny’ Award

“Twenty thousand jobs [created by the Keystone XL pipeline] is really not that many jobs and investing in green technologies will produce that and more.” –Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

Income Redistribution: No Bailouts … Except This One

Another retread idea Barack Obama offered in his State of the Union address was more help for refinancing mortgages. He claims that a federal program to help people do so would save them an average of $3,000 a year. The problem is that it will take major tax dollars to make it happen because home values are down 32 percent from 2006. Interestingly, in spite of historic low rates — averaging below 4 percent — and low prices to boot, new home sales in 2011 were lower than at any time since 1963. We don’t think a costly federal subsidy is going to suddenly turn around the market.

It’s ironic too that Obama railed against bailouts in his speech — “no more bailouts, no more handouts,” and “it’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom” — only to proceed to offer program after program of bailouts and handouts. Did anyone proofread the speech?

Speaking of handouts, yet another federally subsidized alternative energy company, Ener1, announced that it is filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Its subsidiary, EnerDel, received a $118 million grant from the Department of Energy in 2010 to make lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. Vice President Joe Biden even singled out Ener1 as a stimulus success. Such companies were, he said, “not just creating jobs, but sparking whole new industries that will ensure our competitiveness for decades to come.” Obama likewise touted his “investment” in alternative energy in the SOTU. Uh, oops.

Security

EU Sanctions on Iran

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Iran’s lunatic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Iran is ready to resume nuclear talks with the UN. But Iran is simply employing a tried and true stall tactic, one it has used successfully since 2004: pretend to want to talk; agree only that further talks are needed; agree on a framework for still more talks; and eventually walk away having given up nothing, while running another 12 or 15 months off the clock. The reason for Iran’s latest use of the stall? The European Union, which includes UN Security Council permanent members France and the UK, passed sanctions against Iran’s oil industry on Monday although they will not go into effect for six months. With nations around the world talking seriously about alternate sources of oil, Iran’s leaders undoubtedly want to dissuade the UN from passing similar sanctions.

Iran is also employing over-the-top rhetoric intended to remind the world of the economic importance of the Strait of Hormuz. A senior member of the Iranian Majles (the rough equivalent of Congress) warned that Iran “would definitely close the Strait if an EU embargo disrupts Iran’s oil exports.” Not mentioned in news coverage of this statement is the March 2 general election for Majles seats and the need for hard-liners to prove their bona fides with such statements. To wit, Iran plans to conduct a large, showy naval exercise meant to demonstrate its military ability to close the Strait. Look for Iran’s Guard Corps Navy to do so in the coming days, using real and staged footage of ships, boats and weapons and an all-out media campaign to maximize the propaganda value of the exercise. We also expect China and Russia to drag their feet at every opportunity and generally to protect Iran from additional UN sanctions.

Sen. Paul Meets the TSA

The Transportation Security Administration’s theater of the absurd continues. On Monday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), son of presidential candidate Ron Paul, set off a scanner at the Nashville airport, supposedly because of an anomaly around his knee. Paul offered to go back through the scanner or show agents his knee, but being the good brown shirts they are, the TSA agents told the senator that he would now have to go through the TSA’s full-body pat down. Paul refused, whereupon the TSA detained him long enough to cause him to miss his flight. He was allowed to board another flight eventually, and the second time through the scanner was clean. Paul believes that the first scanner never detected an “anomaly” at all but was set to go off and pick random passengers for that extra-personal government inspection. The next senatorial TSA budget hearings should be fun.

The incident raises several issues, not least of which is the seeming utter lack of common sense among TSA agents. “It’s in the manual” is the standard defense. No, senators should not be treated differently from normal citizens, but for crying out load, just let him walk through the scanner again. And of all senators, it’s ironic that it was the libertarian. Additionally, as a sitting senator on his way to Washington, Paul is exempt under the U.S. Constitution from law enforcement detention and arrest, but again, when has the Constitution stopped this outlaw government?

Naturally, the Obama regime came to the defense of their TSA, with regime propaganda minister Jay Carney refusing to even call Paul by his name, instead referring to him only as that nameless automaton, “the passenger.” That’s a perfect reflection of this regime’s philosophy — that we nameless citizens can all be treated badly as long as we’re all treated equally.

Warfront With Jihadistan: Haditha Saga Comes to a Close

Accused of having “killed in cold blood” by the late Rep. John Murtha and convicted in the court of public opinion, the last of the eight Marines originally implicated in the 2005 deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, reached a plea agreement to finalize his case. While they were tried and convicted in the media, the final count for the Marines in the legal venues that mattered: six had charges dismissed, one was acquitted, and SSgt. Frank Wuterich pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count last week.

For this single count of negligent dereliction of duty, Wuterich was sentenced to 90 days confinement and demotion to private, the Marine Corps’ lowest rank. The news of the plea deal outraged Haditha residents who expected the squad leader to be convicted of the nine counts of manslaughter he faced. He took the deal, however, because not only did witnesses for the prosecution contradict the accounts given to investigators, but also because, in the words of his lawyer, he “believed this was the right and honorable thing to do.” A contrite Wuterich also apologized in court to the citizens of Haditha for his squad’s actions, saying that “even with the best intentions, sometimes combat actions can cause tragic results.”

Culture

Hope ‘n’ Change: ObamaCare’s Assault on Religious Liberty

The Obama administration’s disregard for religious freedom is well documented, so it should come as no surprise that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is, via ObamaCare, ramming abortion down the throats of religious people. Last August, Sebelius offered for public comment an “interim final rule” that would require private health care companies to provide certain “preventive services” without a deductible or co-pay. These services include sterilization and contraceptive drugs, such as Plan B and Ella. This may not seem a big deal to some companies, but to religious entities, it is a major affront.

Proponents of the rule claim that these entities would be exempt. However, while this may be technically true, the term defines “religious institution” so narrowly that it would not apply to most faith-based schools, hospitals or charities. These institutions now face the prospect of forced provision for services that contradict their beliefs. To add insult to injury, those that do fit into the religious institution exemption must refer their insureds to other places (e.g., Planned Parenthood) for contraceptive and sterilization services.

Although several religious leaders are bringing suit, Sebelius has refused to broaden the definition. Instead, she gave them an extra year — until August 2013 — to “adapt.” This is a slap in the face, but again, it’s nothing new. All we can do is hope that by that time we will have a new administration, one that seeks to rebuild and maintain this country’s institutions instead of tearing them down.

Faith and Family: March for Life Draws Little Media Coverage

This past Sunday was Sanctity of Life Day, and pro-life advocates, as is their custom, took to the streets of Washington, DC, and other cities to affirm life and protest the slaughter of more than one million innocents each year. The march drew at least 100,000, but the Leftmedia once again ignored it. Newsbusters reports, “For the fifth year in a row, there was no story in the [New York] Times print edition on the annual March for Life. … The Times is far more eager to publicize protests in support of liberal causes, no matter how puny. When four protesters marched in support of the doomed Dream Act to grant amnesty to illegal immigrant students, the Times marked the occasion with a 780-word story.”

As Hot Air’s Tina Korbe points out, “Believe it or not, it gets worse. The NYT has a special standing feature on its blog, The Caucus, to document ‘Happenings in Washington’ and not even that included a reference to the March.” We have news for the news media: Ignoring life issues won’t make advocates go away.

Village Academic Curriculum: Eat Your Veggies

The official federal nanny, Michelle Obama, is once again giving instruction to hoi polloi. This time, it’s school meal nutrition standards. The new regulations, required by a 2010 bill increasing funding for school meals and now finalized by the Department of Agriculture, were announced by the First Lady this week. Schools now must provide fruits and vegetables every day, increase offerings of whole grains, limit milk choices to only fat-free or low-fat, restrict calories based on the child’s age and reduce saturated fat, trans fats and sodium in food. The Agriculture Department wanted more but Congress weakened the proposed regulations in last month’s spending bills. The standards bear a price tag of $3.2 billion over five years.

Obviously, healthy eating is key to healthy living, and we don’t object at all to having children eat better food. What we do object to is the constant go-to play of this administration — top-down federal interference in the daily lives of citizens. As the government takes over more of our health care, this sort of thing will spread beyond schools.

Boston Tea Partier Skips Date With Obama

It’s become an American sports tradition: The team that wins a major sports championship also gets a date with the president after the season. A week after the St. Louis Cardinals enjoyed the privilege for having won the World Series, the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins got an insider’s look at the White House. But one key player, who was one of just two Americans on the Cup-winning team, took a pass.

Tim Thomas, the team’s goaltender and MVP of the Stanley Cup series, said in a statement that he was “exercis(ing) his right as a Free Citizen” in not visiting the White House. Thomas also noted, “I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the people. … This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country.”

Needless to say, Thomas’s absence drew the ire of sportswriters and others who believed he was selfish by putting his political leanings over a team event, overshadowing the experience. Yet the goalie, who played for Team USA in the 2010 Olympics, stands firmly by his political beliefs — a Tea Party supporter, his goalie mask features a Gadsden flag logo. It’s rather appropriate that he plays in Boston. Mr. Obama: Don’t tread on Tim Thomas.

And Last…

From the “Endorsements You Don’t Want” files comes a rather inconvenient statement from erstwhile presidential also-ran Bob Dole. A former Senate majority leader, Dole secured the GOP nomination for president in 1996 only to lose badly to Bill Clinton. Yesterday, Dole announced, “[Bob Dole has] not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.”

There are two rather humorous aspects of this that can’t be missed. First, the Romney campaign released the statement as part of an endorsement from Dole. Maybe we’re missing something, but a perceived establishment guy who touts the endorsement of another establishment guy isn’t likely to broaden his base of support. Second, the statement might actually help Gingrich. If a onetime presidential also-ran gives Newt the shaft, perhaps today’s Republican voters won’t be so hard on him. Indeed, they might ultimately rise up on Newt’s behalf. In any case, Dole might want to stick to doing those, uh, Pepsi endorsements.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

(Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families — especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

Read more informative articles at The Patriot Post

Alan Caruba ~

The late Israeli scholar and diplomat, Abba Eban, (1915-2002) said, “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

Similarly, Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” In Churchill’s case, he was referring to the U.S. reluctance to become involved in another war in Europe, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 changed that overnight. By 1945, along with our allies, the wars in Europe and Asia were over.

Sixty-seven years ago, on January 27, 1945, elements of the Soviet army came upon the Auschwitz concentration camps to discover a Nazi killing machine, one of several such camps created to exploit forced labor and to systematically kill Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, clerics, prisoners of war, and anyone else deemed an enemy of the Nazi state, right down to children and infants.

The Nazis killed people on such a scale that it is almost incomprehensible. It happened within my lifetime and that of many others, some of whom are among the fortunate survivors. And yet, today, the denial of the Holocaust and the millions of other Nazi victims is an article of faith among Arabs in the Middle East and countless others around the world.

A January 25th Agence France-Presse article reported that “One in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp, a poll released Wednesday showed, two days ahead of Holocaust memorial day. Although 90 percent of those asked did know it was a concentration camp”, the Stern magazine poll revealed “that Auschwitz meant nothing to 21 percent of 18-29 year olds.”

It is essential that people in their respective nations know their own and other’s histories. A hallmark of the former Soviet regime in Russia was the way it rewrote history and, in George Orwell’s classic “1984”, a work of fiction about communism, there was a Ministry of Truth in which history was rewritten.

In the United States, since around the 1960s, strenuous efforts have been made to alter the teaching of the nation’s history. The Founding Fathers are often portrayed as slaveholders to downplay their devotion to liberty.

Even they knew that slavery was an abomination, but their task was to create a new nation, one dedicated to liberty. The U.S. Constitution was approved by twelve state delegations in 1787, but in 1861, barely 74 years later it would take a Civil War to put an end to slavery and another hundred years to end the exclusion of African Americans from access to their full rights under the Constitution.

Several generations of Americans have passed through our school systems—literally controlled by the federal government after the creation of the Department of Education in 1979 after being transferred from the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a legacy of Jimmy Carter’s single term. All curriculum taught in the schools comes from the DOE thanks to its control over a national, one-size-fits-all testing system introduced with the “No Child Left Behind” program championed by George W. Bush.

To not know about Auschwitz, whether one is German, American, or any other nationality is a failure on a grand scale because it means that it can be repeated. To not know America’s epic struggle to fulfill its promise of liberty leaves new generations at a disadvantage, as in the case of a fifth of young Germans today, ignorant of their nation’s past.

In today’s world, many worry about the fate of Israel, surrounded by hostile nations and openly threatened by an Iran seeking nuclear weapons. Its independence was declared in 1948, barely three years after the end of World War II. Its first task was to absorb, not only the survivors of the Nazi regime throughout Europe, but those who were forced to flee Arab nations in the wake of the war. Its independence was greeted with the first of several wars against it. The general hostility to Jews that preceded the Holocaust by centuries is a stain on humanity.

So there is cause for concern when one in five young Germans have no idea what went on in Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps.

It is a concern when the Syrian dictatorship has already killed 5,000 of its own people to maintain itself.

It is a concern for Iraq, already falling back into an internal conflict after decades of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the end of the U.S. occupation.

It is a concern for an Iranian dictatorship on the cusp of creating its own nuclear weapons.

It is a concern for Venezuela, held in the grip of Hugo Chavez’s dictatorship, an acolyte of Communist Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

It is a concern for Europeans whose political experiment, the European Union, threatens the financial stability of its member nations with the sole exception of Germany.

It is a concern for Americans who witnessed the unilateral limited nuclear disarmament of the nation and the huge reduction of its military power by the Obama administration, less than the lifetime after the end of World War II.

The world remains a dangerous place. That is the lesson of history.

© Alan Caruba, 2011   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Yogi Bear lived in squalor in an urban park picking fights with the cops, urinating in public, and vexing local coffee shop owners and patrons.

But Washington Post Metro columnist Robert McCartney today romanticized the average Occupy DC squatter as reminiscent of “one of [his] childhood heroes,” Yogi Bear.

“Like Yogi, the activists live cheerfully in national parks They regularly get away with breaking the rules. Most of all,they drive the authorities batty,” McCartney noted in a January 26 column spurred on by Tuesday’s House subcommittee about the National Park Service’s laissez faire approach whereby the Park Police are not enforcing a ban on camping in McPherson Square, an urban park in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C.

Closing his column, McCartney hailed how “several McPherson demonstrators” have said they are open to a “compromise” if the Park Service would accept 24-hour vigils but ban tents and sleeping.

“If they did, I think it would show that, like Yogi, they’re ‘smarter than the average bear,’” McCartney closed his column.

The Post has certainly done its share to paint Occupy D.C. in a favorable and romanticized light (pun intended with that link) while burying news items critical of the squatters camp. Just yesterday, for example, coverage of the House hearing into Occupy D.C. was shuffled to the bottom of page A19.

Ken Shepherd is the Managing Editor for NewsBusters.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Prime Minister Gillard and Tony Abbott being rushed to their car to escape the riot.

So this is what reconciliation looks like on Australia Day, after so many concessions over so many useless years.

Reconciliation means Prime Minister Julia Gillard being trapped by furious Aboriginal protesters inside a Canberra building yesterday for half an hour.

It means Gillard and guests at the Australia Day function being heckled and abused as racists.

It means Gillard, fear on her face, being monstered and falling in the melee as police rushed her to her car for safety, one shoe lost in the crowd.

It means Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also being bundled into Gillard’s car to protect him from assault.

It means protesters trying to block the car with its terrified occupants.

It means them fighting police and vilely abusing them.

Yet here are some concessions we’ve made to a reconciliation movement that now destroys the cause it preaches.

We’ve allowed a shambolic Aboriginal tent embassy to despoil public space in Canberra for 40 years, when we wouldn’t tolerate a (non-Aboriginal) Occupy Melbourne protest for 40 days.

We’ve formally apologised to stolen generations despite not being able to identify even 10 of the tens of thousands of Aboriginal children said to have been stolen just to breed out the colour.

We’ve held Sorry Days and marched over bridges.

We’ve (quite properly) granted Aborigines land rights, and also rights to block mining projects of huge economic benefit to all Australians.

We’ve spent billions to try to lift Aborigines out of poverty, even if an absurd fear of seeming mean has stopped us from doing what’s most needed.

We hold welcome-to-the-country ceremonies and pay respects to Aboriginal elders at government and sporting events to show our good hearts.

We’ve introduced what seems to me apartheid justice, with Koorie Courts, and had judges show extraordinary leniency to Aboriginal offenders on the grounds of their culture. (Even yesterday, ACT police assured reporters that none of those behind yesterday’s riot would be arrested.)

And now we have a government-formed committee of experts recommending new clauses in the Constitution to recognise Aborigines as a race with prior claim to this country, and offering special protections for their culture and their feelings.

Some of these things you may well support. Some you may not, because they seem to you purely tokenistic moves likely to divide us on the grounds of race, and to leave no one but activists better off.

Whatever. But ask: After all these changes hailed by the Left, why this disgraceful riot yesterday?

Why did the Prime Minister have to run for her life? Why all this fury? Protesters yesterday blamed Tony Abbott – but of course. He’d said the tent embassy perhaps should move on since a lot has changed for the better since it was set up – a perfectly rational opinion that any citizen should be free to express without needing police protection.

Indeed, all of us – me included – should be freer to speak about these matters without fear of either physical or legal attack. And this article shouldn’t have needed such cautious vetting by lawyers.

Yet one of the protesters, Michael Anderson, yesterday told the crowd that what Abbott had said amounted to inciting racial riots. Which some of the others promptly made a self-fulfilling claim by staging exactly that.

This is not reconciliation. This is instead a warning that the wrong path has been taken, leading us to deeper divisions, entrenched by laws, and with dissent punished in courts or on the streets. It means each concession, no matter how extreme, is feeding a hunger for yet more.

Let’s learn from yesterday’s shame and say no. No to the race-baiters. No to laws dividing us by race. No to those who want to shut down debate on all this.

And let’s say yes to judging each other not by the colour of our skin or the race of our ancestors, but by the content of our character. As individuals.

That means the reconciliation movement must end. It’s just too dangerous.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

AKA, ‘State of the Campaign’

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” –Article II, Section 1, Constitution of the United States

On Tuesday, Barack Hussein Obama recited what I hope will be his last tele-prompted State of the Union address. In attendance was a room half full of his Leftist sycophants, inebriated on their lust for power and hanging on every word from their “dear leader.”

As anticipated by all parties present, there was not one solitary free market economic remedy mentioned in his entire diatribe. Every “solution” was predicated on government engineering via intervention, regulation or redistribution — consistent with his dogmatic Democratic Socialist ideology. Predictably, he peppered his prose with populist appeals and classist rhetoric focused on “fairness.”

BO’s classist message was contradicted by his wife’s iridescent cobalt blue dress. I’m told it came from the Barbara Tfank Resort Collection, but at $2,400, I doubt Michelle picked it up on one of those photo-op trips to Target. The two Obamas act like trailer trash who won the lucky lotto in 2008, and they’ve now elevated their station to the bourgeoisie.

What follows are two assessments of Obama’s SOTU, one brief and the other more comprehensive.

The short version: “I went … I know … My … My … I took office … I’m president … I will work … I intend … I will oppose … I want … I took office … I refused … me … my … my … me … I will sign … I set … I will go … I will not … I promise … I hear … I want … me … My … I want … I am … I spoke … me … I believe … my … I took office … me … I will sign … my … my … my … I will not … I will not walk … I will not cede … I will … I’m directing … my … I will sign … I’ve … my … my … I’ve ordered … I guess … I will not … I will … I will not … I will … my … I told … my presidency …me … my … I get … I don’t … I recognize … I bet … I’ve … me … I will … I ask … I’ve … me … I believe … my … my … I can … I have … I will take … I mean … I intend … I’ve … I’ve … I’ve … I’m a Democrat me … I believe … I began … my … I sat … me for president … me … I look … I’m (Applause.)”

Amazingly, there wasn’t a single “uh” in the entire speech, which is to say that he gave the Obamaprompter his undivided attention — except for his failed attempt to appear unscripted with that strange “spilt milk” bit.

And now, for a rebuttal analysis, I’ve excerpted key points from Obama’s comments with parenthetical remarks for proper context.

“Think about the America within our reach. (Think quickly, because it’s disappearing before our eyes.) The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. (Indeed it is!) An [America] where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. (By “fair share,” Obama means that it is not fair for Americans who pay no taxes to bear the burden of all those who do pay taxes. And, by whose “set of rules”?) What’s at stake aren’t Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. (Correct.)”

“Let’s remember how we got here. In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. (It’s still Bush’s fault) … It was wrong. It was irresponsible. It plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work, saddled us with more debt, and left innocent, hardworking Americans holding the bag. (And he rode that collapse into office.)”

Obama devoted a significant part of his speech to blame-shifting, particularly suggesting that the near-economic collapse in 2008 was precipitated by the “irresponsible” private sector, which was solely accountable for all the problems that plague both our economy and his re-election bid.

In fact, the collapse was largely attributable to government interference in the free market — specifically Democrat manipulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending practices, which spread across the entire mortgage banking industry — leading to a real estate boom and bust, which Obama blames on “my predecessor” and Wall Street.

So, let’s “remember how we got here” — and do a bit of fact-checking along the way. Here is a brief overview of the catalyst that really collapsed “the house of cards.”

In 2003, the Bush administration upgraded its concerns about Fannie and Freddie, requesting much stronger oversight. According to testimony by then Treasury Secretary John Snow, “We need a strong, world-class regulatory agency to oversee the prudential operations of the GSEs and the safety and the soundness of their financial activities.” The New York Times reported that the administration’s plan was “the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago,” and “an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken.”

But Democrats would not support additional oversight or restrictions. Former House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank declared in congressional hearings: “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the federal government does not bail them out.”

Frank insisted, “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafety [sic] and unsoundness than, in fact, exists.”

And roll the dice they did!

In the Senate, Charles Schumer objected to concerns raised by Sen. John McCain, about the solvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: “My worry is that we’re using the recent safety and soundness concerns … as a straw man to curtail Fannie and Freddie’s mission.” The “mission,” as amended by Democrats, was to reach out with home loans to millions of marginal or unqualified “customers” — thus fueling the real estate boom.

In 2004, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified: “What we’re trying to avert is we have in our financial system right now two very large and growing financial institutions [which subsidize loans and] that prevents the markets from adjusting appropriately, prevents competition and the normal adjustment processes that … creates stability. … [By] enabling [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] to increase in size … we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk. If we fail to strengthen GSE regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency in crisis.”

In 2006, Sen. McCain again went to the Senate floor warning, “The GSEs need to be reformed without delay.” However, every Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee voted against regulatory reforms. That year, housing prices peaked and started to reverse.

In 2008, amid eroding consumer confidence, the entire economy began spiraling toward collapse. Even Bill Clinton admitted, “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress … to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

(For a more comprehensive examination of “how we got here,” read “Crisis of Confidence.”)

Now, Obama says, “I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.” This is the Big Lie he’s been telling ever since he became a failed president. In fact, his policies are all about government intervention and manipulation of the economy.

Returning to excerpts from his SOTU: “There are fewer illegal [border] crossings than when I took office. (There are fewer jobs than when he took office.) Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship. I will sign it right away. (That law already exists — Obama’s administration has ignored it.) We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years. (That was in reference to his administration.) Our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be… (out of business.) The payoffs on these public investments… (taxpayer-funded union votes.)”

“Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home. (I think he meant “take the debt we’re no longer spending,” and for “nation-building here”? more like “nation wrecking.” For the record, since the ratification of our Constitution, the 43 presidents that followed added, $4.16 trillion in debt. Since taking office, the 44th president has added more than $4.6 trillion in additional debt.) We’ll run out of money. (We already did.) Government can’t fix the problem on its own. (Government IS the problem!) We need smart regulations to prevent irresponsible behavior. They make the free market work better. (Yes, a regulated free market.) When it comes to the deficit, we’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. (Not really.)”

“Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. (OK, it is class warfare.) We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. (Just drink the Kool-Aid.) I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right about now. (When will this guy shut up?!) Can you blame them for feeling a little cynical? (Nope.)”

“I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust. (In fact, you increased it exponentially.) I’ve asked this Congress to grant me the authority to consolidate the federal bureaucracy. (More centralization?) We should all want a smarter, more effective government. (We should all want a smaller more irrelevant government.) America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. (Even sitting down for a beer summit?) Working with our military leaders, I’ve proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world … gay or straight. (You knew where that was going, didn’t you?)”

Remember when Obama proclaimed he was going to oversee “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America”? Well, he did. “How this incredible transformation will end remains uncertain,” he said in his address. “But we have a huge stake in the outcome.”

Indeed, we do have a huge stake in the outcome, as does our posterity. Patriots have staked our ground on the the side of Liberty.

Obama concluded, “Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” Anyone who does not think America is in decline, must be a socialist or profoundly ignorant — but then I repeat myself.

(For a thorough breakdown on “how we got here,” see the detailed analysis prepared by our colleagues at Heritage Foundation.)

Next election will be either a Sunrise or Sunset on Liberty. From across the nation, American Patriots must rise up, band together and expel through the ballot box Obama’s socialist regime. We must replace him with a president who will, first and foremost, abide by his oath to “Support and Defend” our Constitution.

(A footnote about all the Republican intra-party bickering: Obama may well change the dynamics of this election cycle by announcing a new Vice Presidential running mate in the run-up to the Democrat National Convention in September (Jon Huntsman comes to mind), and unity among conservatives, starting right now, is critical to victory. Obama has a vast campaign advertising budget, and will spend it running intra-Party criticism to foment disunity.)

*****

(Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families — especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

Read more informative articles at The Patriot Post

Alan Caruba ~

It seems like a bizarre notion, but does Barack Obama want to lose the election in November?

I think he does!

One is struck by the way Obama has visibly aged in the job. He may well have grown weary being POTUS.

By any rational standard, one would say he wants a second term, but Obama has always operated in a fantasy world where mere words are supposed to translate into reality. And he has repeatedly talked about being a one-term president.

He is, after all, his own invention; the author of two memoirs of a life that had little achievement to point to other than getting elected first to the Illinois legislature and then to the Senate where he lingered a bare two years before running for president.

I raise the question because Obama seems to be deliberately irritating the very people who are supposed to be his “base”; the hard core liberals, the Hollywood crowd, youth, and unions, among others. His partisanship has put Congress into total gridlock.

When members of the Occupy movement showed up in Washington, D.C., one of them threw a smoke bomb onto the White House lawn. Others who have been camped out in a park there are likely to be tossed out if for no other reason than the place is overrun with rats and has become a public health hazard.

The decision to stop the Keystone pipeline is a deliberate offense to the unions that have contributed millions to his campaign. Why? It pleased the environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Americans, however, understand the pipeline represented both jobs and oil, two things they deem worth having.

Then there are all the vacations Obama and his family takes. They have one thing in common. They are ostentatiously expensive. Obama or Michelle always seem to be going on vacation or returning from one. The characterization may be unfair, but perception is everything.

Americans are very keen on their military and, of all the government programs Obama could have chosen to trim, he’s had the knives out for the Pentagon since he took office. While a war-weary public was likely pleased when he withdrew troops from Iraq (neither Bush, nor Obama had a choice as the Iraqis made it clear they wanted U.S. troops out), the fact remains that the main news out of Iraq these days are bombings as the Sunni versus Shiite conflict has returned. Afghanistan remains a millstone.

Even in the face of a clear threat, it is unlikely that Obama would respond militarily between now and Election Day. The most likely scenario, however, would be an Israeli decision to strike at Iran before it becomes a full-fledged nuclear threat. It must be said, however, that Obama and other NATO nations have positioned some military assets in the Persian Gulf, but would he pull the trigger? It’s doubtful.

The most obvious problem Obama faces is unemployment. It’s variously set at anywhere from 11% to 20% depending on the part of the nation you’re discussing. It still is far too high everywhere and he gives every impression of being, if not indifferent to it, at least in no hurry to address it. Most certainly none of his programs have reduced it. His alleged “stimulus” was little more than a political slush fund that added billions to the national debt and failed.

Every President is subject to “events” and the likely default of Greece and financial troubles of several European nations are likely to impact the national election as Americans try to sort out what effect it will have here. Obama has already presided over the first downgrade of America’s debt rating and we shall surely be reminded of that in the months ahead.

The other event will be the Supreme Court hearing of the case against Obamacare in March. They may not issue a decision right away or they might issue one just before November 6th.

There are two lines of thought about the forthcoming national election. Past Presidents were relieved to leave office despite its power and prestige. (1) Obama may not like being President and (2) he has concluded that he will be defeated. He gives the impression of not caring about public opinion anymore.

The only people publicly defending him seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder. Either they haven’t paid attention to what a disaster his term has been thus far or they just don’t think it’s his fault.

I think he will go through the motions, but I also think a majority of voters no longer believe a word he says anymore.

© Alan Caruba, 2011   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Nicolas Loris ~

Nicolas Loris is a Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/  Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. Loris researches and writes about energy, environment and regulation issues such as the economic impacts of climate change legislation, a free market approach to nuclear energy and the effects of environmental policy on energy prices and the economy.

Read more informative articles at Heritage – The Foundry . http://blog.heritage.org/