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/

Years earlier, Captain James Cook had discovered the Eastern Coast of this Continent on his voyage of discovery and exploration in 1770.

This vast continent was already populated with indigenous people, but when Phillip claimed the land, this was the first time a foreign Nation had come here to settle this vast land.

I have Posted a series on the discovery and settlement and the early days of Australian settlement, and the links to each of those five separate Posts are at the bottom of this Post.

The image shown is of the Australian Coat Of Arms. It shows a Kangaroo and an Emu, animals native only to Australia. They are holding a shield, and on that shield are the coats of arms of the six States that make up Australia.

This is in effect our National Day. It is a declared Public Holiday, and all across the Country there are public celebrations to commemorate the Day.

Each year I have Posted on this special day, explaining what it is all about, and why we have it on this specific day. The links to those previous Posts are as follows.

Australia Day 2009

Australia Day 2010

Australia Day 2011

On each of those occasions I have posted a music video, with iconic Australian songs from iconic Australian artists, and for today, I have selected the song by the Australian band Men At Work, that song being ‘Down Under’, a huge Worldwide hit for the band in 1981.

This clip for today is the song with an overlay of images from around Australia.

This video was posted at You Tube by brades

Also on this day, a number of Australians are honoured for the selfless work that they do for the Community and also the Country. This award is known as the Order Of Australia, and there are three Award dates each year, the largest of which is on Australia Day. Today, 439 people were honoured with the Award of this Order of Australia, which has four levels, Companion, Officer, Member, and the Medal. (All with the suffix Order of Australia) Members of Australia’s armed forces are also awarded medals on this day as well for their service, as are members of some branches of the Public Service.

Also on this day, the Australian of the year is announced. Each of the six States nominates someone, and from that short list, that Australian of the year is selected.

This year that prestigious honour was bestowed on actor Geoffrey Rush for his service to the Arts here in Australia and in the wider World. Rush is an Academy Award winner, and he started his long career here in Australia his homeland.

So, while ANZAC Day (April 25th) is perhaps the most solemn day on the Australian calendar, Australia day is the day we, as a collective Nation, celebrate our relatively long heritage.

Links to the five earlier posts on the early settlement of Australia.

Part 1. Australia (Part One) The Genesis

Part 2. Australia (Part Two) Germ Of An Idea

Part 3. Australia (Part Three) Arrival

Part 4. Australia (Part Four) The Early Years

Part5. Australia (Part Five) Young Men In Boats

Julia Gillard claimed her carbon tax was not putting us ahead of other countries and the United States was taking “similar steps”:

The fact sheets show the Gillard Labor Government’s move to put a price on carbon follows similar steps in many countries, with others planning or in the process of introducing similar arrangements.

For example, Australia’s top five trading partners—China, Japan, the United States, the Republic of Korea and India and another six of our top twenty trading partners have implemented or are piloting carbon trading or taxation schemes….

Australia is not going it alone on climate change …

No? Here’s the only mention of climate change in Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech this week:

The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well tonight, I will. I’m directing my Administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes. And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history – with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

Not the slightest sign of the US matching Gillard’s carbon tax, even under Barack Obama.

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/

If the video doesn’t work, click on the following link:
Thank You, Joe Paterno, R.I.P

The Foundation

“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” –Benjamin Franklin

The Demo-gogues

Obama thinks the only problem with America is that we don't realize how awesome he is.

To sum up the SOTU: “I went … I know … My … My … I took office … I’m president … I will work … I intend … I will oppose … I want to speak … I took office … I refused … told me … My message … Send me … I’ll sign … I set … I signed … I will go … I will not stand … It’s not fair … I’m announcing … I promise you … I also hear … I want … Join me … My administration … I want to cut … I call on … I spoke … let me put … I believe … my administration … I took office … I will sign … I’m directing … my administration … I’m requiring … I will not walk away … I will not walk away … I will not cede … I will … I’m directing … I’m proud … Send me … I will sign … I’m sending … I’ve approved … my presidency … I’ve ordered … I guess … I’m confident … I will not back down … I will not back down … I will not go back … I will not go back … I’m asking … fair play … So do I … I told … I’m prepared … fair share … my fair share … I get tax breaks I don’t need … I recognize … I bet … I’ve talked … Send me a bill … I will sign … I ask the Senate … I’ve asked … I’m a Democrat … I believe … my education reform … I will keep taking … I can do … I have no doubt … I will take … I’m president … I intend … I have proposed … I have already … I’m proposing … brings me … my proudest … I sat … I look at … I’m reminded.” –BO

The speech also sounded a lot like last year’s.

Bailouts are awesome: “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. … Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. … We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back.” –Barack Obama

Bailouts are terrible: “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.” –Barack Obama, later in the same SOTU

Policy based on envy: “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” –Barack Obama

Conciliatory blame throwing: “The state of our union is getting stronger. And we’ve come too far to turn back now. As long as I’m president, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.” –Barack Obama

Deciding how much money you can make: “[W]e 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. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. … On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up.” –Barack Obama

Elsewhere, in race bait land: “The point I was making is that black people hold the president in such high esteem, that they would not dare march on the White House even though unemployment is at 15 percent and higher and if there was a white president we would do that because we’ve had white presidents since George Washington.” –Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)

Belly laugh of the week: “[T]his president has reached out as seriously and sincerely as any president with whom I’ve served over the last 30 years, to work together in a bipartisan fashion. No president with whom I’ve served over those last 30 years has spent as much time working with Republicans and Democrats in the room, exchanging ideas, evidencing a willingness to compromise as President Obama has.” –House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

Secrets: “[Newt Gingrich is] not going to be president of the United States. That’s not going to happen. Let me just make my prediction and stand by it, it isn’t going to happen. There is something I know. The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him that’s their prerogative. I don’t even think that’s going to happen.” –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

A Note on the SOTU From Mark Alexander

There was not ONE SINGLE free-market economic remedy mentioned in Obama’s entire teleprompted rhetoric last night — every “solution” was government engineering by way of intervention, regulation or redistribution. Obama ended his recitation asserting, “We should all want a smarter more effective government.” Indeed, on this we should all agree, and to that end, work tirelessly to defeat Obama and his socialist regime.

Read a full analysis from Alexander in tomorrow’s “The State of Disunion.”

Editorial Exegesis

“President Obama delivered a State of the Union address Tuesday night that by the account of his own advisers is more campaign document than a plan for governing. … Normally a President at the start of his fourth year would be running on his record, accentuating the legislation he’s passed. Mr. Obama can’t do that with any specificity because the economic recovery has been so weak and the legislation he has passed is so unpopular. So last night he took credit for the shale gas revolution he had nothing to do with and proposed new policies to ‘spread the wealth around’… Once the Reagan recovery got cooking, in 1983, growth stayed above 5% for 18 months and never fell below 3.3% for 13 consecutive quarters. In the Obama recovery, growth has never exceeded 4% in any quarter and fell off markedly in mid-2010 through the third quarter of 2011. … As he runs for re-election, Mr. Obama is trying to campaign as an incumbent who is striving to help the economy but has been stymied at every turn by Congress. … For two years he had the largest Democratic majorities in Congress since the 1970s and achieved nearly everything he wanted. … Mr. Obama clearly has a spring in his step these days, figuring that the public hates Congress and thinks Republicans run it, that the GOP will field a weak presidential candidate, and that he can fool the public into believing only Mitt Romney’s taxes will rise if Mr. Obama wins a second term. He has only one big obstacle: his record.” –The Wall Street Journal

Upright

“If you want a good distillation of this president’s wrongheaded view of the United States of America, look no further than this rhetorical bit from the end of tonight’s State of the Union address: ‘No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs.’ Unity is central to American identity, but not the way Obama envisions it. E pluribus unum is not Latin for, ‘Hey, bro, let’s invest in some infrastructure together.’ The notion that this nation is one big team that acts collectively toward shared goals set by the state would be completely foreign to the men who founded it. But that is Obama’s concept of America.” –columnist Andrew Cline

“Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? Last night, during his State of the Union address, he promised ‘a blueprint for an economy.’ But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their material circumstances. It can’t even be diagrammed, much less planned. And any attempt at it will come to grief. Politicians like Obama believe they are the best judges of how we should conduct our lives. Of course a word like ‘blueprint’ would occur to the president. He, like most who want his job, aspires to be the architect of a new society. But we who love our lives and our freedom say: No, thanks. We need no social architect. We need liberty under law. That’s it.” –columnist John Stossel

“If you wonder why unemployment is so high in the U.S., check out the brain-dead economics in the SOTU address. People with high incomes pay lower taxes because an optimal tax policy taxes consumption not income. While our code is not optimal, it tilts in that direction. I doubt that Warren Buffett understands that the ‘Buffett Rule’ is economically illiterate, and marks him for all of history, after posterity forgets his billions, as an ignorant rube who pushed the U.S. toward inefficient tax policy. I doubt that President Obama understands that the academic community that previously embraced him will have a hard time maintaining the fiction that he is a significant intellectual when he decides to jettison decades of academic literature in favor of a populist Hail Mary pass that is indefensible.” –American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett

“By many measures, Barack Obama has left the State of the Union in tatters, but the liberal media, led by the highly rated Big Three network (ABC, CBS, NBC) news shows, have attempted to cover up those holes in the Union by mostly ignoring the Obama administration’s greatest failings. From record numbers of people on food stamps, to the administration’s support of failed energy companies while rejecting an oil pipeline that would result in thousands of jobs, the Big Three networks haven’t told their viewers the full story of Obama’s pathetic track record.” –Media Research Center’s Geoffrey Dickens

Insight

“Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money — only for wanting to keep your own money.” –columnist Joseph Sobran (1946-2010)

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.” –English playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Dezinformatsia

Missing the point: “There’s a tremendous amount of cynicism in Gingrich’s use of food stamps because of what he actually knows that his Republican debate audiences do not know. His Republican audiences do not know that most people on food stamps are white.” –MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell

The BIG Lie: “George W. Bush had more people on food stamps, not this president.” –MSNBC’s Martin Bashir

Twisted question: “Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that — I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest — and you’ve got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped and was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion — would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father?” –CNN host Piers Morgan to GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum

Gun Grabbers: “[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 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. Mr. Obama last year delivered his State of the Union just weeks after the Tucson massacre and in the presence of victims’ family members. Yet he, like so many politicians intimidated by the gun lobby’s muscle, could not muster a single word about the need for reasonable gun control measures to ward off such violence in the future. Perhaps he will find the courage to speak up this year, as Ms. Giffords looks on during her last State of the Union as a member of Congress.” –Washington Post editorial

Newspulper Headlines:

It Had to Happen Eventually: “The End of ‘Inevitability’” –the American Spectator website

We Blame George W. Bush: “Obama on Keystone XL: Blame Hillary!” –WeeklyStandard.com

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Voters Know Gingrich Talks a Good Game, but Can He Dance?” –Washington Times website

Breaking News From 2009, 2010, 2011: “Obama Hurting With Swing Voters, Poll Shows” –Politico.com

Bottom Story of the Day: “Obama Plans Three-Day Campaign Trip After State of the Union Speech” –DailyCaller.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Energy = crime: “Our children and grandchildren will judge those who have misled the public, allowing fossil fuel emissions to continue almost unfettered, as guilty of crimes against humanity and nature. But the eventual conviction of these people in the court of public opinion will do little to ease the burdens that will have been created for today’s young people and future generations.” –James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Dodge City: “[T]he president’s background as a community organizer is well documented in the president’s own books, so his experience in that field obviously contributed to who he is today. But his experience is a broad-based one that includes a lot of other areas in his life.” –White House spokesman Jay Carney

Embellishment: “[T]he president’s commitment to job creation has been amply demonstrated by the policies that he has pursued, that he has signed into law, that have contributed considerably to the creation of 3.2 million private sector jobs.” –Jay Carney

“We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.” –Michael McFaul, Obama’s new U.S. ambassador to Russia, when asked about democracy in Russia

Short Cuts

“Pittsburgh medical researchers discovered Tuesday that a person’s adult stem cells could possibly be used to make them grow younger. Many doctors have been tinkering with it. Ron Paul has used it on his supporters for years and now they all look twenty-five.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“Warren Buffett now says that his offer to help pay down the national debt was merely ‘symbolic.’ Ah … sorta like an Obama ‘stimulus’ program.” –Fred Thompson

“[E]very President’s SOTU speeches follows a very predictable pattern: 1. The State of the Union is strong. 2. Applause. 3. It’s stronger because I’m up here and you’re not. 4. Applause. 5. Attack the Supreme Court [Obama only]. 6. Here’s why my political party is awesome. 7. Applause from one side of room. 8. Here’s why the other party is a bunch of doody-heads. 9. Applause from the same side of the room. 10. Here’s a program I want you to pass. 11. Applause. 12. Here’s an Ordinary Average Guy whose story should convince you to pass my program. 13. Television shot of Ordinary Average Guy. 14. Applause. 15. Repeat steps 6-14 about 874 times. 16. Here’s a couple more reasons why I’m awesome. 17. Applause.” –blogger Ed Morrissey

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

I guess what follows shouldn’t be a total surprise, given that the Obama administration was perfectly comfortable ruining hundreds of thousands of perfectly good cars during the Cash For Clunkers program in 2009.

The video which follows from CBS News in San Francisco last Thursday (full transcript here) tells viewers what is happening to valuable parts at the main manufacturing plant of the now-bankrupt Solyndra. At the risk of belaboring what longtime readers here already instinctively know, it’s not news based on searches on the company’s name at at the Associated Press and the New York Times.

Here’s the video:

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com . http://www.bizzyblog.com/

Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters

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

Amil Imani ~

For many years, Amil Imani has stood against the brutal and patently evil onslaught of Islam which continues to attack the population of his former country Iran—and now the world.  Early on, Amil realized the inherent dangers associated with Islam.  He and his family were able to flee the country after the Islamic revolution that was foisted upon Iran and in a recent phone conversation, Amil advised me that Iran had—culturally and historically—never been a Muslim nation until they were invaded by Islam…which was largely due to former Democrat US President Jimmy Carter He also very correctly advises his audience that the Left and Islam are part of the same insidious cabal.

Amil Imani (partial) Biography

“Amil Imani is an Iranian-American writer, poet, satirist, novelist, essayist, literary translator, public speaker and political analyst who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam both in America and internationally. He has become a formidable voice in the United States against the danger of global jihad and Islamization of America. He maintains a website at http://www.amilimani.com. Imani is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and a new book “OPERATION PERSIAN GULF.

“Amil’s numerous articles have appeared in many newspapers and magazines around the world as well as in thousands of Internet magazines, websites and blogs. He is a regular commentator on Iranian issues on BBC World News. He is also 2010 honoree of EMET: “the Speaker of the Truth Award” at the Capitol Hill.”

The Interview

Sher: Thank you so much for your time, today, Amil. I’d like to jump directly into the subject matter and ask the reasons for your decision to stay in the United States after completing your education. Wasn’t it your initial plan to return to Iran?

Amil: Thank you, Sher, for having this interview with me. I left Iran in the midst of the radical Islamic revolution of 1978/79 to continue my education abroad, but never envisioned that Islamist extremists would take over our very modern and prosperous country. Most likely, I would not be alive today if I had stayed in Iran.

In 1979, the U.S. government (notably Jimmy Carter and Company), with the help of allied forces, created the greatest Islamic terrorist nation on the face of the earth and this spurred the rise of Islamofascism elsewhere. In fact, Jimmy Carter, by his interference in another country, betrayed the most valued friend to the West, the late Shah of Iran.

In reality, there was not a country for me to return to. Many of my friends were either killed in Iran-Iraq war or simply disappeared for standing up for their rights. Overnight, we lost everything. My battle with the forces of darkness started when evil (Ayatollah Khomeini) landed in Iran and unleashed his wrath on thousands upon thousands of Iranians who in the beginning, believed this “holy” man was their savior. But, he turned out to be the “evil” that our ancient prophet Zoroaster had warned us about.

Ayatollah Khomeini, with his cultural revolution, intended to de-civilize a very rich and civilized nation.

For the past 33 years, the Iranian people have been kept hostage in their own county by a group of barbaric savages who despise anything Iranian and are slowly purging any remnant left of pre-Islamic Persia, as well as Persian textbooks. These pro-Arab invaders are not Iranians by any means. “Iranian” is defined by a state of mind, not by a place of residence. The barbaric mullahs and their mercenaries presently ruling Iran are not Iranians. They are Islamofascists who have enlisted themselves in the service of a most oppressive, discriminating, and demeaning ideology.

To most Iranians, including myself, the name of the Ayatollah Khomeini was unheard of until the Western policymakers decided to remove the Shah (the best friend of the West) and install the Ayatollah Khomeini and carelessly forced the Shah of Iran to leave his homeland. After 33 years, the U.S. is still making the same mistakes with respect to its policy regarding Iran.

Sher: When we talked a few days ago, you told me that prior to Iran’s ‘Islamic Revolution’ it had never been a Muslim country and that—until recently—Islam had never truly been part of Iran’s historical and traditional culture. Before the sudden and swift rise of Islam, what were the true cultural aspects of Iran and its people?

Amil:  A quick answer: Iranians are Muslim in name only. We have a saying in Persian that the way you take your first step, points your path for the rest of your journey. To elucidate this, please allow me to elaborate and give a brief account of Islam.

Islam’s very first step was that of violence aimed at decimation of any people that stood in its path of conquest. It all started with Muhammad when his own Quraysh tribe chased him out of his hometown of Mecca. He was a troublemaker that earned the “crazed poet” epithet. He escaped from Mecca and settled in Medina where a large tolerant Jewish community lived. There he found enough peace to start his campaign of gathering a bunch of thugs with the promise of booty in this world as well as eternal pleasures of a sensual paradise if people followed his edict.

The rest is history. One of the very first things he did was to turn on the Jews of Medina – an easy and convenient target to kill, loot and enslave. Being amply rewarded for this thuggery, his followers expanded their range. To this day, the goal is the same. Destroying any and all people who refuse to surrender everything they are and have to this creed of savagery and slavery.

Nearly 1400 years ago, the followers of Muhammad from across the scorching Arabian Desert conquered Iran (Persia), the greatest empire known in the history of man. With that, they almost destroyed one of the most benevolent and beautiful religions of all humanity, Zoroastrianism, often called the mother of all revealed religions.

Originally, Iranians were forced to accept Islam to save their lives from the Arab invaders, but deep within the heart of every single Iranian alive today, exists a burning resentment of the Arab-Islamic invasion of their homeland and culture. The events in history have toughened present day Iranians. They have become great pretenders. But the totality of 1400 years of Islamic barbarity and savagery must and will end. Iranians no longer need to pretend that they are practicing Muslims; when in fact, they are not.
Before the Islamic invasion of 1979, most Iranians were unaware of true nature of Islam. But, the 1979 Islamic invasion quickly changed that. Nowadays, masses of Iranians are irreparably alienated from a corrupt and oppressive Islamic rule. The rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is crumbling. The previously solid edifice, or at least the appearance of it, is finally showing many cracks that continue to grow. There are just too many fault lines to list here. Many consider this, an era of Iranian awakening or Iranian renaissance. Islam has always been in contrast with Persian values as it is evident by the glorious pre-Islamic Iranian festivities and celebrations.

Sher:   Every day now, we’re hearing more and more chatter from strategic military experts that Obama is actually planning to take the USA into a war with Iran. Others have said that he plans to affect the war this year, in order to ensure his remaining in office. What do you make of this and what, if anything, are you hearing?

Amil: When you ask me about President Obama, you touch a very sore point. This man is an enigma. Every chance he gets he sings the praises of Islam. He calls it a great religion. It has been reported that some of his closest White House advisors are Muslims. At times, he seems to be a weak and indecisive politician who doesn’t seem to firmly believe in the ideals of democracy and liberty. He, as a most powerful political leader, unfortunately doesn’t always champion democracy. At best, he seems to be a strict pragmatist with a focus on the short-term results.

Some critics of Obama’s Iran policies argue that Obama’s weak stance, and his politicizing of the issue because of his 2012 re-election bid are creating a dangerous situation in the Middle East. Critics also point out that the developing Iranian crisis is due to Obama’s weak response to Iranian aggression, which has emboldened the regime. In my opinion, both assertions are accurate. Obama had a golden opportunity in 2009, to help those millions of Iranians who were shouting in the streets of Tehran “Obama: Are you with us or against us?”  President Obama decided to work against them.

What remains an enigma is this: Why did the Obama administration support regime change in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya but not in Iran?

Sher: We know that Obama has appointed multiple members of the Muslim Brotherhood to high levels within the US government. We also know that some—if not many—of these appointments have actually been in the area of US national security! As the Brotherhood is the parent organization of al-Qaeda and Hamas—to name only two terrorist organizations—what in the world could Obama be thinking? Do you see Obama working to establish the USA as part of the burgeoning Marxist Islamic Caliphate?

Amil: It is chancy thing to guess people’s motive. What is more telling is the person’s actions and the consequences of the actions. We see that Obama has been steering the country toward more government, greater redistribution of wealth, and more dependency on government micromanaging people instead of serving them to realize their own highest potential. Obama ‘s actions clearly show his drive to remake the U.S. into a socialist state.

As for his actions relating to Islam, we can go back and revisit in utter disbelief and watch him bow to the Saudi king, the titular head of Islamdom.

Furthermore, on numerous occasions he has spoken effusively of Islam, has allowed the mullahs to keep on racing to become a nuclear state and oftentimes berated Israel. Obama’s actions in both fronts, socialization of the country and promotion of Islam, are encyclopedic and cannot be covered in this brief statement. But, to label the president as such, to utter, “Obama is a Marxist,” is to open yourself to ridicule. People would rather dismiss than hear the truth, would rather live a lie and suffer its consequences than puncture their self-affirming facade.

We must allow all the facts, which speaks volumes: Didn’t President Obama go around the Muslim heartland and sing the praises of Islam at every stop? Didn’t he bow with great deference to the King of Islam in Saudi Arabia? Didn’t he proudly proclaim Islam as the faith of his dear and near kindred? Didn’t he, time and again, tell us that Islam is indeed the religion of peace? Didn’t he with his captivating oratory skills cite passages from the Quran to show how reverent he was toward this religion? Didn’t he appoint a raft of “devoted” Muslims to sensitive and high posts in government?

In his Cairo speech, didn’t he blatantly mislead the world on how “Islam has been a part of America from the very beginning……….” misleading again about “Islam’s magnificent history, its contributions to art, architecture, math, science etc.” Didn’t the Obama administration pull back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive? Paving the way to exonerate Islam of any wrong doing, e.g. Maj Nidal Malik Hasan’s jihadist directed murder of 13 U.S. service personnel at Ft. Hood characterized as ‘workplace violence’? Didn’t he eliminate traditional National Day of Prayer, yet throws a lavish dinner marking the end of Ramadan in our White House?

It is said that you can tell a great deal about people by the company they keep. And who have been President Obama’s close associates and mentors for many years, a partial list is given below and we will let people make up their own minds:

1. Tony Rezko, a convicted political fundraiser. Senator Clinton called him “slum landlord”. He was an activist who raised money for both U.S. political parties. He is charged with at least eight counts, including fraud, attempted extortion, money laundering and aiding bribery. Rezko was one of Obama’s first campaign contributors when Mr. Obama first ran for the Illinois state senate in 1996. The Sun Times implied that Senator Obama could possibly go down with Tony Rezko, sooner rather than later
2. Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ who came under fire for his anti-American, racist and “inflammatory rhetoric
3. Louis Farrakhan is the black leader of the Nation of Islam and a prominent figure on the extremist scene by asserting hateful statements targeting Jews, whites and homosexuals. Mr. Farrakhan, in his address to the world at Saviors’ Day 2008, said: “Brothers and sisters, Barack Obama to me, is a herald of the Messiah. Barack Obama is like the trumpet that alerts you something new, something better is on the way,” the Muslim leader declared. “Would God allow Barack to be president of a country that has been so racist, so evil in its treatment of Hispanics, Native Americans, and Blacks? Would God do something like that? Yeah. Of course he would.” William Ayers was part of the “domestic terrorist group” and a former leader of the Weather Underground. Ayers and Mr. Obama were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. Moreover, Ayers contributed money to Obama’s re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported in State Board of Elections
4. Bernardine Rae Dohrn, a domestic terrorist and the wife of William Ayers.
5. Frank Marshall Davis was Obama’s childhood mentor and was a communist. Obama had a relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Mr. Obama developed a close relationship with Frank Davis, almost like his son, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. In his books, Obama confesses attending “socialist conferences” and coming into contact with Marxist literature.
6. Rashid Khalidi is an Arab-American historian. Khalidi, like Ayers, held a fundraiser for Obama at his home. A New York Sun editorial criticized Khalidi for stating that there is a legal right under international law for Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation. LA Times reported, “In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund’s board of directors”
7. Father Michael Pfleger is a controversial Roman Catholic priest, a pastor of St. Sabiana Church in Chicago, the largest African-American Catholic Church. “He gave Obama’s campaign $1,500 between 1995 and 2001, including $200 in April 2001, about three months after Obama announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs”
8. George Soros, a controversial billionaire, “a major Democratic Party donor and anti-Israel crusader, has been a generous contributor to Barack Obama.” How Soros Financed Obama’s Campaign, Lyndon LaRouche, a Political Action Committee explains in detail.

It appears that President Obama is perfectly willing to continue doing what he has done for the last three years to the United States and her citizens under the rubric of hope and change. He seems to believe that the US under an Islamic Caliphate is the choice he is making and gladly so…putting the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in key positions seems his aim. Also don’t forget Obama and Bill Ayers were key members on the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge…an Annenberg Foundation charity whose stated goals were for educational improvement in the public school system.

Sher: Do you see a way—other than another American Revolution—for the American people to fight against Obama’s dark plan for us and our country?

Amil: The Tea Party seems to be following methods Americans in the past have used to make those in power understand our grassroots dissatisfaction with what politicians have wrought in Washington DC. And that’s all Obama has been to the American people; someone we saw who portrayed himself as a Messiah but wasn’t. Who for all practical purposes lied about who and what he was. For now, the only way we can make our representatives in Congress understand the Obama/Democrat way is the wrong way is at the ballot box. We vote out those who refuse to acknowledge us both Republican and Democrat on both a local and a national level to get our point across. For some years now, the American people have been asleep. It is long past time to wake up and slowly but surely, they are finally waking up to the facts on the ground.

Sher: You have two outstanding books out: Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and Operation Persian Gulf. I understand you’re working on a third book, also. Would you tell us where we can purchase copies?

Amil: Thank you. Obama meets Ahmadinejad is a fictional dialogue between the two world leaders, taking place at the Iranian “fascist’s” palace in Tehran. The momentous, history-making meeting unfolds as an astonishing conversation that might not be far from the truth in what would occur if Obama actually took up Ahmadinejad on his invitation.

“Operation Persian Gulf”is an exhilarating action thriller, hair-raising suspense with heroic characters and a tale of mystery, love and adventure. It ranks with seminal works of fiction that ably portray reality: writings and movies such as those of The Heroes of Telemark, Where Eagles Dare, the television series Mission Impossible and biological terrorism thriller, Without. From a command post in California, a group of highly motivated Iranian-Americans determine that the Islamic Republic must be stopped from developing an atomic reactor and nuclear bomb at any cost. Both books can be purchased from amazon.com.

I am currently working on another book called “ Islam was not for me” I expect to release this book in the summer of 2012.

Sher: Thanks, again, for your time Amil. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Amil: Thank you very much, Sher.

Amil Imani maintains a website at www.amilimani.com  and he is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and his new thriller Operation Persian Gulf.

Read more from Amil Imani at his blog site Amil Imani Journal.    http://amilimani.com/

Amil Imani also contributes Posts at FamilySecurityMatters.org where he is a Contributing Editor. Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and a pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Amil Imani is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and the upcoming thriller Operation Persian Gulf.

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

Topics in today’s show:

– Obama goes to Disney World.

– Newt Gingrich wins South Carolina Primary.

– Sarah Palin says that she would have voted for Newt Gingrich if she lived in South Carolina.

– NBC finishes at 8th place in TV ratings, behind several cable channels.

– More news about the Italian cruise ship.

– President Obama sings a few bars of an Al Green song at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, and is now hoping perhaps for a Nobel Prize for Music.

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/

Alan Caruba ~

It’s a comment I hear all the time these days. “The voters are stupid.”

I am not sure that those saying it mean literally that the voters have a low level of intellect or academic achievement, but rather that they mean voters seem prone to making their choices based more on emotion than on a serious examination of the candidate’s qualifications and character.

The best example of this was the 2008 campaign in which a candidate was presented in much the same way companies seek to “brand” their product or service, repeating the same message (Obama’s was hope and change) until it becomes part of the consumers’ decision-making process. It’s why we buy a particular brand of cereal or car. We have come to associate values with it that go beyond the taste or the look.

Barack Obama had served barely two years in the U.S. Senate before he made an unprecedented leap from there to the White House. He was, for all intents and purposes, an unknown quantity with a legislative record—if anyone bothered to check—that was a straight Democratic Party line vote.

In his earlier incarnation as an Illinois legislator, he had voted “present” so many times it was clear he was avoiding taking any position he regarded as politically dangerous; a vote that would come back to haunt him and very few did. The media cooperated in this, avoiding calling attention to anything that might be deemed controversial.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton, whether you liked her or not, was a candidate with a full cart of baggage from her years as the former governor’s and president’s wife, and her years as a U.S. Senator who served, not from Arkansas where she first came to notice, but from New York where liberals thrive. The process of campaigning wore her out and, being the first women to seriously contend to be president, she had even more of a challenge to overcome. Her raw ambition tended to make people afraid of her.

What elected Obama had nothing to do with the slim qualifications he put forth. Few candidates had less to offer. He had never met a payroll. All information regarding his academic records was sealed from view. The press made no effort to ask what passport he had traveled on to Pakistan at one time and did not raise any question about his Social Security number, issued in Connecticut where he had never lived or worked. Famously, he released a “birth certificate” that anyone in Hawaii could attain for the asking, not the “long form” which is deemed credible.

The voters have paid a fearful price for electing Obama; increased unemployment, a huge national debt, a hollowed-out military, billions wasted on “Green” energy, unprotected borders, a Congress in near total gridlock, and a world beyond our shores that perceives an America made weaker by Obama’s three years in office.

I have worked as a public relations counselor for most of my life with earlier years spent as a journalist. I know something about how a product, a service, or an individual is “packaged” to present a positive “image.” What we have all learned since 2008 was that Obama was superbly “packaged” and that the image of an articulate, highly intelligent, well informed candidate was without substance. His inability to speak publicly without a TelePrompter swiftly became a joke.

So, to say that those who voted for him were “stupid” is to misread the new era of politics, one that has more to do with “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” than with the serious selection of the leader of the nation and the free world.

As they say in advertising, voters bought the sizzle, not the steak.

We are seeing this process continue as the Republican candidates vie for votes. The Gingrich “surge” in South Carolina came after he had two successful debates. It is true that Gingrich is a good debater, but the real question is whether he would be a good president. Questions about his character remain.

Gingrich has been comfortable sharing a couch with Nancy Pelosi to advocate the bogus global warming “theory” or taking money from Freddie Mac.. Now he is trying to appear to be a “real” conservative as opposed to Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the quixotic Ron Paul.

While his judgment on issues has been called into question, Romney’s character never has. There has never been a hint of scandal in his life. In terms of policy, he was the Governor of one of the most liberal states and he did support Romneycare there. Politics is rarely pretty and even New Jersey’s fire-breathing Governor, Chris Christie, has taken some extraordinarily liberal positions and made some questionable appointments.

There might have been a time when Gingrich was, indeed, a bona fide conservative, but his long years in Washington, D.C., have taught him that “to get along you have to go along” In the end, even his colleagues in the House, for reasons of policy and personality, could no longer support him as Speaker.

From the days of Bush41 until the 2010 elections the Republican Party looked so much like the Democratic Party, voters had an increasingly hard time telling them apart. The Tea Party movement changed that. They and the “independents” are going to decide the 2012 elections that are currently making history with endless debates.

The debates are proving to be a succession of sound bites and vitriol between the candidates. They increasingly demonstrate how the mainstream media, the debate sponsors, are visibly seeking to influence the outcome of the election and they demonstrate that many voters are easily swayed by matters that have little to do with actual policies and issues.

There has been less and less substance with each debate.

I fear that too many Republican voters are having too many mood swings, relying on a moment or two from the most recent debate than on a serious examination—I repeat myself—of the candidate’s qualifications and character. Romney is carefully scripted and a tad robotic, but Gingrich could become the GOP nominee simply because he is entertaining.

Without doubt, President Obama and the Democrats are enjoying the Republican free-for-all and, without doubt, they have concluded that the voters are stupid.

© 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

Well, this news in Queensland is a surprise to some warmists:

DOZENS of people have been evacuated from their homes, hundreds of streets closed and Australia Day celebrations cancelled as drenching rain continues to fall across the state.

Conditions are expected to worsen with creeks already breaking their banks, sending floodwaters into homes and businesses.

More surprises in NSW:

Widespread rainfall of 50-150mm has caused major flooding in parts of NSW… These very high rain totals have led to major flooding on the Bellinger River at Thora, with river levels continuing to rise this morning.

Still more surprises:

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed 2011 was Australia’s third-wettest year on record and the wettest year since 1970.

And, look, no real shortage of rain anywhere:

How strange. I mean, remember the claims that we faced a “permanent drought”, thanks to man-made global warming? Here’s just some of those warnings:

Greens leader Bob Brown in 2006:

From melting polar ice to the spectre of permanent drought in previously productive farmlands, the (World Meteorological Bureau’s) report makes clear that climate change is not just a future threat, it is damaging Australia now.

Brown in 2008:

Already, (Rudd government adviser Ross Garnaut’s) daunting data of a 10 per cent chance of no flow at all in the Murray-Darling river system in future years is being overtaken by data indicating that drought is the new norm across Australia’s greatest food bowl.

The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008:

This drought may never break

IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones….

“There is a debate in the climate community, after … close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back….”

Jones to the University of East Anglia in 2007:

Truth be know, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it. Almost everyone of our cities is on the verge of running out of water and our largest irrigation system (the Murray Darling Basin is on the verge of collapse…

The Age in 2009:

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change…

‘’It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,’’ said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal.

‘’In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.’’…

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery in 2007:

Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused “a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas” and made the soil too hot, “so even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems … “.

But here’s the rainfall data from the Bureau of Metereology:

And rainfall data for the supposedly stressed Murray Darling River Basin:

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/