Crickets

Napolitano’s TSA wants to fondle you

Janet Napolitano, appointed by the Obambastic as the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, is a member of the Democrat party, that group who gave us Political Correctness so many years ago.

Those who adhere to the PC doctrine are deathly afraid of hurting the feelings of any group of people you care to name. This includes Muslims who stand together in silence while their brothers wage their Holy War against Western civilization, especially the United States, Great Britain and a handful of other European nations.

Because of liberal-born PC, leadership from the Democrat Party has reached a state where they prefer to engage in ruthlessness against our own citizens before they even begin to think about applying that ruthlessness against our enemies.

As a matter of fact, once they capture an enemy, they let them go to be “repatriated” only to have them rejoin the militant army from which they came so that they may again have an opportunity to kill us.

So, the next time you go through TSA’s screening process, as I have, remember this; none of the human-based incidents, such as the so-called Christmas underwear bomber, originated in the United States. Furthermore, Al Quaeda has modified their tactics, relying more upon inserting bomb material into cargo flights originating outside of the United States.

At the end of the day, the bombing attempts come very close to succeeding while the TSA fondles U.S. citizens.

Maybe one day our nation’s leadership will grow up and begin to profile.

On Tuesday We’ll Deliver a Message But They Still Won’t Understand

Two short years ago, with the election of Barack Obama securing the White House, and having already gained control of the Congress in 2006, the Democrats were absolutely giddy.

The defeat of the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 were seen with a sense of finality. There were some that even suggested that conservatism was dead. I thought such an analysis was ridiculous given the fact that John McCain had lost to Barack Obama by a mere 6% of the popular vote in a year when the odds were so heavily against the Republicans. Nonetheless, there was much talk about the Republican Party being in complete disarray.

Read the rest at Caffeinated Thoughts

The French pension system. Is it a right or a privilege?

French Citizens take to streets to protest Sarkozy’s pension reform bill

In May and June of 2010, France’s public sector unions demonstrated against proposed legislation for pension reform.

On October 22, 2010, riot police moved in to break up a strike at an oil refinery outside Paris less that 24 hours after President Nicolas Sarkozy employed combative language in a pledge to see his pension revision to term.

French take to streets to protest pension reform... sometimes violently.

One of France’s wealthiest cities and more commonly associated with fine-dining than riots, Lyon has seen the worst violence of this week’s street protests as clashes injured two dozen people and scores more were arrested.

On Wednesday, police in the southeastern city tear-gassed about 300 youths in groups around the central Bellecour square after calling in 800 extra officers to put down what one local official called “urban guerrilla warfare.”

Youths booed and insulted Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux who visited the city to back up police trying to contain the violence that first erupted last Thursday.

Disturbances in the Paris suburb of Nanterre have also marred otherwise peaceful street protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the ages for minimum and full retirement to 62 and 67 respectively, something he says is vital to rein in a soaring pension shortfall

Property damaged during protests

The need for reform threatens citizens

Martine Durand from the OECD Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate to explains the basic reasons for the reforms and the protests.

Like most other OECD countries, France is facing rapid population ageing because of low fertility and longer life expectancy. This means the dependency ratio of older people – those aged 65 and over as a proportion of those aged 20-64 – will rise from 25% at present to 50% by 2050. In other words, there will be more older people, but fewer people of working age to support them.

These demographic trends are putting tremendous pressure on the French pension system, which is based on what we call a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) distributive principle; people who are currently working pay the pensions of those in retirement. Everybody agrees that reform is necessary; if nothing is done soon, public deficits could rise by some 5% of GDP over the next 30 years. And public debt could more than double. So, without reform now, our children and grandchildren will pay the price.

There are two ways to put the PAYG system on a sounder financial footing. The first is to increase total contributions; the second is to reduce pensions. Virtually no one in France favours cuts, so we are left with raising contributions. This in turn can be achieved in two ways: by increasing the number of people at work or by raising the rate of contributions currently levied on labour, and perhaps taxes on capital too. The disagreement in France has mainly been on which path to take: the government’s reform plan puts the emphasis on extending working lives (which is one way of raising employment), while some unions have argued in favour of paying higher contributions.

France already has a high tax burden by international standards. Raising taxes or social contributions further would have a negative effect on job creation and growth, which in the end would be unhelpful to solving the pension problem. An overall strategy is needed to get more people into work. France is rather unique in the OECD as it combines both very low youth and older worker employment rates, with above average rates for prime age workers. Raising youth employment rates would help relieve the pensions burden. But a longer working life must be part of the solution. This means introducing both later retirement and reducing early retirement.

Fortunately, there is room to manoeuvre on both fronts. The current official retirement age is 60, which is one of the OECD’s lowest, yet, France also has one of the OECD’s highest life expectancies. And at 36%, France’s employment rate for 55 to 64 year olds is also one of the lowest in the OECD, whose average is 48%. Abolishing financial disincentives towards retirement beyond the legal age, while aligning the mandatory contribution periods of public servants to (the longer) private sector period, seems to me a sensible way of raising the employment rate of older workers.

The most urgent step is progressively to eliminate provisions that subsidise early withdrawal from active life – first and foremost, early retirement schemes. Too often in the past, these schemes have been used to make people redundant, while at the same time helping to reduce unemployment figures. A number of OECD countries have already taken this step, but experience shows that it is not enough. In many cases, the actual retirement age still remains two or three years below the official retirement age, because there are other provisions, such as disability benefits, that also encourage people to stop working early.

Older workers cannot be expected to hang on in the labour market if they can’t find work. Moreover, those jobs would have to be of high enough quality to encourage them to stay on. This requires a real change in attitudes all round: governments must adapt their employment policies; public employment services must meet the specific needs of older workers; measures that reduce benefit dependency and facilitate the integration of older workers in the labour market should be taken.

Employers, both private and public, must learn to view older workers as a genuine asset. They will need to eliminate discrimination against them, invest in their training, and adapt working hours and conditions to fit their needs.

But workers must also understand that early retirement is not a right, and that, unless they can afford otherwise, they must get used to working a longer career.

She had this to say about realistic expectations regarding change in their attitudes about early retirement “rights”. This change in expectations is the root of the final solution to unsustainable social programs such as government pensions.

Yes, there are some interesting recent experiences out there. Finland’s National Programme for Ageing Workers is one attempt to improve the status of older workers, with encouraging early results. More time will be needed to assess it properly, though.

In the meantime, businesses are taking initiatives of their own, with companies in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK starting to recruit and train older workers. Even in France, a number of large firms have introduced major changes in their production processes to adapt working conditions to the particular needs of older people, making production lines more ergonomic and so on. As it turns out, these workplace improvements have also made these jobs more attractive to young people too.

How Great Britain sees it

In England, analysts look on with interest as they assess the reasons and impact of the protests. The UK’s Guardian had this to say about France’s pension system.

There is a broad consensus, and has been for at least seven years, that the French pension system is bust. In a pay-as-you-go system, too few active workers are paying for too many pensioners.

As the number of pensioners is set to increase from 15 million in 2008 to nearly 23 million in 2050, the ratio of active workers to pensioners will reduce still further. Depending on both the rate of long-term unemployment and labour productivity, the deficit in the state pension system, currently running at €32bn or 1.7% of GDP, could explode in the next decade to reach something more like 3% of GDP. That is a lot for any state to pay on pensions.

The issue is not whether this system should be reformed but how. Who is to share the pension burden? Do low-paid manual workers, women, and the disabled take an extra hit as they would under Sarkozy’s formula, or should employers and big business pay more? Why does someone who starts work at 18 have to work for longer – 44 years – before reaching the full entitlement than someone who enters the labour market at 22 with higher qualifications? The age that matters is not 62, when retirees can start drawing their pensions, but 67, when the benefit reaches its maximum. Why should poorer workers, who have shorter life expectancies, lose a higher proportion of their retirement years? Whether you are a refinery worker from Grandpuit or a dinner lady in a Marseille primary school, this is an issue worth coming out on to the streets for. Nor should this debate be wholly alien to anyone who has been following events in Britain this week. It, too, is about fairness and social justice.

President Sarkozy is hoping that a combination of a swift vote in the senate and the forthcoming All Saints’ Day national holiday will douse passions more effectively than the water cannons of his riot police. But thus far he is losing the battle for public opinion. Public support has curiously risen after a week in which fuel refineries and ports were blockaded, with 70% backing industrial action. Unions who have resisted calls for a general strike have vowed that there will be two more days of national action. And their chief demand, that the government must negotiate the reform rather than ram it through on to the statute books, is a reasonable one. With riot police yesterday behaving ever more violently with union pickets, the risk of death or serious injury on the picket lines rises by the day. Both sides could lose control, which would both weaken the unions’ case and be catastrophic for the government.

The French are not just being French. France has a lower level of inequality than most OECD countries, and is one out of only five which saw inequality decrease over the two decades to the mid-2000s. As the basic provisions of the welfare state are being rolled back all over Europe, in the name of protecting triple-A credit ratings, a cause is being fought in France which we in Britain would do well to watch carefully. The same fight could be coming here soon.

Is France heading for ruin?

International media headlines often give the impression of a country wracked by industrial conflict, driven by people complaining about threats of lost privileges who already have more privileges than those in other countries. The view is these people are going to bring France’s economy to its knees which causes some to question whether France – a world champion in strikes – is heading for ruin.

Here’s what the figures show:

Strikes: The world leader in days lost in strikes in 2009 was … Canada. Its score was 2.2 million, according to the UK journal The Economist. Next came South Africa with 1.5 million. France came third with 1.4 million. France comes top of the European league table for the period 2005-2009, according to the European Foundation for the improvement of Living and Working Conditions. But in 2008 its efforts were dwarfed by Denmark, thanks to a strike wave, one of whose demands was a 35-hour working week. The damage to the economy is not as high as might be expected, judging by statistics from 2005 when a three-week strike cut 0.05 of a point from the growth rate, according to the Finance Ministry.

Hours worked: French workers work an average of 1,453 hours a year, well below the OECD group of developed nations’ average of just over 1,700 hours a year but above Germany and Norway (1,337), Sweden (1316) and the Netherlands (1309). South Koreans work the longest hours in the OECD at 2,390 per year.

Retirement: At present French women can retire at the same age as women in Italy, South Korea, Hungary, the UK, Greece and Poland but earlier than Turks and Czechs. Men have the lowest minimum retirement age in the OECD. The government’s proposals will bring them in line with Czechs and Hungarians and raise the age that retirees can claim the full pension to 67, provided they have paid over 40 years of contributions.

GDP: France’s Gross Domestic Product has doubled in the last 20 years. It was over 2000 billion euros in 2009, according to the IMF and the World Bank. That puts it fifth in the world league table, behind the US, Japan, China and Germany and just ahead of the UK. Over the same period, there has been a 10 per cent shift of the share of GDP from salaries to profits.

Productivity: French workers’ productivity has risen five times since 1960. Although it has fallen slightly over the last two years thanks to the recession, it is expected to double again over the next 20 years. GDP per hour worked is lower than in the US and Ireland but higher than in many countries, including the UK, Germany and Japan.

Debt: France has the sixth highest public deficit in Europe in percentage terms, at 8.2 per cent. The US’s deficit reached 12.5 per cent in 2009. The debt of French households was 89.1 per cent of income in 2006, according to the OECD. In Britain and the United States that ratio stood at 168.5 percent and 139.7 percent respectively.

Unemployment: French unemployment stands at 10 per cent, the average for the eurozone. As in other industrialised countries, the figure has been pushed up by the recession but was already relatively high at 8.2 per cent in 2001. US unemployment stood at 9.6 per cent in June 2010.

France’s problem exists in America as well

The Social Security program in America faces many of the same problems facing France. Many so-called “boomers” are heading for retirement as the workforce grows older. These social programs rely upon a continual influx of new participants to pay for the benefit load and correct demographics are probably one of the most important aspects to its sustainability. There should be questions about the wisdom and long term sustainability of social programs such as France’s pension system and America’s social security system.

These systems share characteristics common to any pyramid scheme, which are often called Ponzi schemes. Bernie Madoff was sentenced to prison for 150 years for conducting what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history, but governments who operate systems of their own on behalf of its people are immune to such judgment. Apparently, if you’re open about the nature of the scheme, it’s legal.

The argument for such systems is simple. They are in place to reduce or remove the economic burden an unemployed and aging population would otherwise place upon society. The irony here is that while it is believed an economic bullet can be dodged with such systems, the prospects of creating a fiscal monster are soon realized. In an attempt to avoid one fiscal burden, government creates another and perhaps an even bigger one.

The final solution

Our belief government is here to help us is our bane. In the end, it only works to enslave us to a life of government servitude.

America’s social security system should be phased out and here is one way it could happen.

First, let’s describe what we have today. For the sake of discussion, if the average American works from age 20 up to age 65, they will have been contributing to Social Security (SS) for 45 years. Since it is a pay as you go system, their benefits reflect their degree of participation. If they’ve been unemployed for 10 of those years, their benefits will reflect that.

To phase out this system, existing retirees will continue to get the same benefits they already realize. Those in the system who will retire in 10 years will realize SS benefits from 35 years of involvement. The rest of their retirement benefits will come from 10 years of investing the normally determined amount for SS which is instead applied by the future retiree into private investments structured to be similar in nature to 401k’s. The key here is that the citizen is directly (and emotionally) involved in how that money is invested.

Back to the basis for the existence of the system in the first place, in the case of bad times which causes investment yields to fall below an acceptable level which have been set for the sake of a “healthy society”, the government steps in to shore up the portfolio yield. It’s sort of like a citizen’s FDIC or a bailout system for us common people instead of the banksters. This satiates the socialists living among us and helps to ensure the goal of the system. It is highly likely this scenario represents the exception and not the rule.

In the event the participant dies before retirement, the amount in the participant’s program is passed to the program belonging to the spouse or next of kin. If no spouse or relative, it stays in the system to be applied to other participants who cannot work (prisoners, disabled, etc.) In the event the retired participant dies before the benefits are exhausted (if designed properly, the amounts will be sufficient enough to outlast the participant) the balance is divided among the members of the immediate family and placed into their pension plan’s central money pool to be invested, but they cannot otherwise use that money until retirement.

If you’re incarcerated and therefore cannot participate in the system, well, you’re screwed, just like today. You should have had the brains to stay out of trouble in the first place. Seriously, benefits can come from the scenario described in the previous paragraph. As a sidebar, I believe prisoners – all of them – should be in an on-going military boot camp environment with the goal of true reform based upon behavior modification, character and skill building after which, sentence permitting, they are released back into “the wild”.

For those who genuinely cannot work, perhaps because of mental health reasons or some other disability, benefits can come from insurance, as they do today. If family exists, it might make sense for portions of their program allocations to be applied to the investment program of the patient or disabled. Amounts can also come from participants who have died before retirement and who have no families, or who have died after retirement and who have no family to which the balance of their retirement funds would otherwise go.

For citizens who have amassed a certain level of wealth or who are just obnoxiously wealthy, well, they forfeit their deposits which are to be used to take care of those who cannot care for themselves.

Over time, government’s participation and the level of dependence upon government by each citizen should decrease. Each participant has sufficient emotional buy-in to maintain due diligence.

The Government is here to help

The belief that government is here to help always and consistently proves to be a mistake. We can look to the current economic situations of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain for evidence to that fact.

After only a few generations of receiving benefits from social programs, a populace will believe it is their birth right to have those benefits. Over time, they will want more and more and will reach a point of engaging in violent protests against the government’s reduction of benefits for any reason, but usually when its in the interest of its citizens.

For evidence to that fact, we only have to look to France, whose citizens already enjoy a 35 hour work week and who took to the streets to riot against their government’s decision to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 to maintain the sustainability of their pension system.

Government never produces wealth. It always uses wealth produced by the private sector and in this case of retirement programs, it redistributes that wealth.

What America needs is a SS system which allows for its citizens to keep the wealth they have created for themselves, with just enough help from the government to take the worry out of retirement .

So take a minute and imagine a country which has the long term goal of building wealth for its citizens who can keep that wealth for themselves and which can be passed on to their future family.

Islam, Violence, O’Reilly, and “The View”

For several weeks my friend and fellow Caffeinated Thoughts contributor David Shedlock has been after me to write a piece on the nature of Islam, and with the recent flap between Bill O’Reilly and the ladies of The View being something of a news media sensation, I thought perhaps now would be a good time to address the subject…

Read the rest at Caffeinated Thoughts

On Equality and Stupidity

“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise”

Thomas Jefferson

I came across this quote on a popular social bookmarking site where left liberal, atheist, unemployed twenty-something year old males are the main demographic. It isn’t uncommon to stumble across a quote like this, often phrased in such a way to be an authoritative statement that must mean something. I could make up my own example to show what I mean. Imagine a post like this on a site like Digg or Reddit:

“Barack Obama is a great president because he has accomplished most of his agenda and done some amazing things for this country.”

Then I could list forty or so legislative “accomplishments” ranging from the health care debacle to the blunders in Afghanistan if I wished to go further. However, my statement conveys an authoritative tone: I am right because I make a definitive statement in a confident manner, ending it with a period. If I post this on a website where most people would agree with me, my sense of pride in my statement goes up and it makes it harder for me to change my mind in the future. After all, everyone agrees with me, who dares to oppose me?

This is the problem of the “hivemind”, a geeky word used on most websites frequented by unemployed, over educated white males. Going back to the quote by Thomas Jefferson, I found a post extolling the virtues of progressive taxation. Sure enough, most of the comments were in favor of the idea. The opposition was more or less non-existent and was stifled by cries of: “You’re like Glenn Beck, screaming ‘Marxist!!’ at every person who is in favor of business regulation!” Despite considering themselves freethinkers and above petty political differences, they tow a party line that truly is reminiscent of Marx, Lenin, and Castro.

Thomas Jefferson’s quote was one of emotional anguish. If you take the time to read the entire letter, you will see him describing the horrors of pre-Revolution France. It was not the best of times for those in the peasant class. France’s monarchy had long ceased to be effective at controlling itself and was in the beginning stages of choking the life out of itself. After all, what is a monarchy if you simply treat your country like you’re a petty dictator? A dictatorial system of government is further from monarchy than we tend to think. This is largely due to the way history has been taught since the French Revolution and Marx came on the scene. But I digress.

Jefferson probably knew better than to be an advocate for progressive taxation. Given that he steeped deep in debt, I do not think he would have written such a silly statement after realizing he was writing under emotional distress about this woman and the political-economic situation in France at the time. After all, Jefferson was consistently against taxes in nearly every form. To consider him some sort of socialist god as the users do at the website I visited is incorrect. Jefferson would be better fit for the free market system’s founder in America (as opposed to Hamilton, but that is a tale for another day).

In the following quote, Jefferson shows us where his passions truly lie:

Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

History shows us that Jefferson was fond of the ‘republican’ form of government with a ‘republican’ people: no big cities, lots of small farms and towns, and a people clamoring for liberty. Given that economic thought was severely underdeveloped during this period (Adam Smith had only just published On the Wealth of Nations), it is no surprise that Jefferson saw progressive taxation as a way to free up the landed system. In America, progressive taxation did not occur in most places until the twentieth century. This allows us to see what happens in a country with progressive taxation: Corporations can still buy the government, a huge portion of the tax burden is placed on the middle class (not the rich alone), and many rich people can escape paying taxes altogether through loopholes in the tax system. All the while, the poor benefit from economic “equality” by receiving benefits and producing nothing.

This is real equality, and it is stupid.

Jefferson’s vision of the poor cultivating farms was rooted in them doing actual work. It was not based on their receiving subsidies for simply living and being unproductive the rest of their lives. Oh, I’m sure that the average socialist will quickly negate my claim, saying that they will be productive once they have jobs, but evidence shows otherwise.

The only way to have real equality in this country is to eliminate equality laws and destroy taxation completely. Equality is about being free from government and being treated no differently by the government–it has nothing to do with economic standing, success, or opportunity. Once again, a Founding Father of this country has been taken out of context without correct economic thought providing a reason for the perceived conflict in his letter.

The socialists should try harder next time.

Richard Blumenthal rambles on

This is from the Connecticut race for U.S. Senate a couple of nights ago.

While I am no fan of McMahon, she knew the right response to her own question. Blumenthal is a prime example of the sleazy American politican: an elite bureaucrat that has to campaign to keep his position. He has no concept of how the market works. Jobs are, to him, some sort of campaign promise to people so that he can keep his job that relies on taking money from the tax payer to fund his lavish cocktail parties.

Shock: Race Relations Worse Under Race Baiting President

According to a Rasmussen poll, voters are less optimistic about race relations than they were a year ago. And there is plenty of blame to go around for that. Only 36% believe relations between blacks and whites are getting better, down from over 60% last summer. Those who believe relations are getting worse are up.

For whites, there are obvious reasons to think that race relations are getting worse. The commander and chief claimed that local police “acted stupidly” when arresting a black Harvard professor last year. The Department of Justice has swept under the rug a complaint about voter intimidation, where the offender was black. A prosecutor believes that the DoJ is no longer race neutral.

On the flip side it is no wonder that blacks think race relations are going downhill. The media is full of talking heads claiming there is a racist under everyone’s bed. And that gosh darned Tea Party is just too white for comfort. I’m sure Andrew Breitbart’s stunt against Shirley Sherrod did not help either.

Oddly enough, it would seem that liberals, who like to think of themselves as those who support improved race relations, may actually be making them worse, by overusing the accusation of racism to the point where it no longer has much meaning. But as noted above, there are plenty of culprits responsible for the current trend.

The Myth of the Fiscally Conservative Blue Dogs

Sort of like the myth of the pro-life Democrat. When push came to shove everyone was free to observe where Stupak and his crew really stood. If no one remembers, Stupak added anti-abortion language to the health bill in the Stupak-Pitts amendment. It passed the House but was taken out in the Senate version. He opposed the new bill until promised an … executive order.

Club for Growth has now exposed the myth of the fiscally conservative Democrat, or blue dog. The National Taxpayers Union scores members of Congress on their votes. Since 1995 the blue dog’s scores have been dropping noticeably. In 2007 when the Democrats took control of Congress their scores were a meager 10%.

Here is their voting record on various debt and deficit disasters:
Fannie & Freddie Bailout 100%
TARP 63%
2009 Stimulus 91%
Cash for Clunkers 85%
2009 Obama Budget 74%
Auto Bailout 73%
ObamaCare 54%

You can find out more at the site Club for Growth has put up for this.

Lame Ducks And Retirement

Some people, mostly Republicans, are worried about the upcoming “lame duck” session of Congress in November and December when, presumably, the Democrats will be looking forward to a much smaller majority, if not a minority in the House. But the fact that any politician would consider changing their vote/stance on an issue on their way out the door is just another clear example of the ruling class at work. Senator Menendez is hoping to get some of these people on board:

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said Sunday that he introduced an immigration bill just before Congress’ midterm elections break so he could get “lame-duck movement” on the legislation after Nov. 2.

“A lot of senators are retiring and might be willing to look at the issue,” Menendez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We need something to jump off from if we’re going to go into it in the early part of the next Congress.”

Why would retiring suddenly make a senator “look at the issue”? Because they are no longer beholden to the country class to keep their jobs. Therefore they could, in theory, just do what they really want to do. If they are true ruling class that means spending, amnesty for illegals, and liberal/progressive “reforms”.

Under normal circumstances they would pretend to be tough on an issue to keep their job. Especially when they go home to their district and deal with the lesser folk at election time. When they get kicked out they are free to show off their ruling class creds to their cohort and pass garbage policies that people don’t really want.

When they do this in a non-lame duck session the results are generally disastrous. Many Americans want health care reform repealed and replaced with something that is tweaked, and hopefully better. According to a CNN poll 80% of voters say health reform is an important issue for them in the midterms. The deficit is also an important issue to voters. This is not good for Democrats at all. Another poll suggests that the desire for repeal crosses party lines to include 25% of Democrats!

That is what happens when you are out of touch and your only solutions involve government intervention. But once the lame duck is here the losers no longer have to stick to the desires of their constituents (like they were ever good at that anyways). Be free, corrupt politicians!

The left liberals can’t leave it alone

This group of people might as well have created a golden image of Barack Obama and prostrated themselves before him in worship.

Rick Sanchez OUTRAGED He Isn’t Considered Top Tier

Even when he has a point, Rick Sanchez just looks like an idiot. Recently he ranted against the media establishment for considering him second tier and not top tier in the media world. The reason for this? Because he’s Cuban, of course!

Righties aren’t the only racists, but also the “elite, Northeast establishment liberals” that “deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.”

What an arrogant buffoon to think there is a racist conspiracy to keep him off the “top tier”. Especially considering he is demonstrably the biggest idiot on television with many classics, including (but not limited to) some of these:

The Volcano Incident: “When you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii and long words like that. You don’t think of Iceland. You think it’s too cold to have a volcano there”.

Two things, either Sanchez’s vocabulary is made up of very short words, or he misspoke and meant to say “weird” or “foreign” sounding words like “Hawaii”. Second, I don’t know anyone who thinks a volcano can’t or shouldn’t be located on iceland. In fact it’s quite logical to think that since volcanoes sometimes CREATE islands, just like … uhm … Hawaii. Also, of course, surface temperature is irrelevant since volcanoes are related to boiling lava below the surface.

Can’t Find Hawaii: During CNN’s earthquake coverage Sanchez botched a very easy geography reference. Apparently Hawaii is much farther south … like … around South America, or something.

Metric System Gaffe: During the same tsunami coverage Sanchez brought in an expert and then asked them the following –
SANCHEZ: Nine meters. By the way, nine meters in English is?
FRANKEL: Oh, about 27 feet.

Meters are English, not only in language but also the system that English people use. Also it is a relatively easy conversion to guesstimate, you multiply by three, which is what the expert does, then he says “around 30″ because it isn’t a perfect 3:1 conversion.

Getting History Wrong: I may be nitpicking now but when referencing the Nixon/Kennedy television debate he was off by two years, saying 1962, and then going broader and saying “early 60′s”. If you don’t know what year it was, then why say a specific year to begin with?

Yes Rick, it must be the Jewish racist conspiracy keeping you from the top tier.

Amnesty for Law-Abiding Law Breakers

Rupert Murdoch appeared before Congress and advocated a “path to citizenship” for all … illegal immigrants who are … law abiding. Perhaps Mr. Murdoch needs a reminder as to what “illegal” means, and I am here to help:

1. forbidden by law or statute.
2. contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, etc.:

As he says so himself in his testimony:

“Path to citizenship … for responsible law-abiding immigrants who are in the U.S. today without proper authority”

A law-abiding illegal immigrant is an oxymoron. It’s a smart failure, a jumbo shrimp, a happy sadness. An illegal immigrant by definition is not law abiding, as they knowingly broke the official laws of the United States.

There are two lines of argument that people use to defend the practice of giving amnesty, referred to by themselves as a path to citizenship.

It isn’t cost effective to deport all those people.

Since there are so darned many of them, it isn’t cost effective to remove all the non-citizen foreign lawbreakers. This is pure nonsense, as we have seen with the reaction to Arizona’s immigration law. When they know strict measures are coming a lot of them move back to Mexico or somewhere with less strict regulations.

So in a way you wouldn’t be tracking down all of them, it would be almost a self-regulatory process. Sure, there would be quite a few deportations anyways, but that is the risk when you knowingly break the law in another country. Also, the idea that the sheer number of people means it shouldn’t be enforced is another fallacy. You wouldn’t hear such logic to say that if 12 million murders, rapes, bank robberies, assaults, or shoplifts happened we shouldn’t deal with it.

Legalizing them all has some sort of economic benefit.

So says Charlie Crist of Florida, trying to win a senate seat by telling seniors that social security is stable. And he will accomplish this by passing amnesty for illegal immigrants because that will add a lot of people to the tax base. Rupert Murdoch said pretty much the same in his testimony. There is a new issue with this as well: you’re creating another boom for social security to deal with later a la the baby boomers. Legalizing tons of mostly youthful immigrants is just delaying issues for later. That seems to be a popular tactic. How do you think we got to 12-20 million illegal immigrants anyways?

All the powers that be, both Democratic and Republican, have tunnel vision on this issue where the only outcome can be a “path to citizenship” — even though it isn’t the right thing to do.

Where To, Tea Party?

As the Tea Party folk continue to push for a major Republican victory in November, we need to realize that the direction the Tea Party is coming from has eerie similarities to the movement that got Obama elected. Before I start on criticizing the Tea Party, let me say that I do not hold them in general as unintelligent or as obtuse as most of the “Yes We Can!” crowd, but it is painfully obvious there is no cohesive ideology behind the Tea Party.

Less government and less taxes works fine, but the ruling class in D.C. is not going to let the wave of Republican newcomers in Congress change much. They will resist. There are thousands of bureaucrats, judges, and safe Congressional seats to ensure the sustainability of the ruling class through this tough time. Think of it as a delayed economic recession for many of them–high unemployment.

I don’t think it will be a permanent problem for them.

The Tea Party activists say they are committed, but why should we believe them? Their ‘ideological’ leaders have largely turned out to be the same ones who have failed the Republican Party and conservatism time and time again. The most prominent failure of all is Newt Gingrich, who is riding the wave so high he actually would have a chance at winning the Republican nomination. Sarah Palin is another leader in the movement, yet she is no ideologue. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are less Tea Party-ish, but still viable candidates that most conservatives can vote for.

The saddest but most true part of Angelo Codevilla’s article about the ruling class is the end: once total victory is achieved, how do we dismantle the state without (1) angering a huge part of the population by removing entitlements and (2) get rid of the ruling class without acting like the ruling class. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Lord Acton once said. I believe this will prove true again as the Republicans take over Congress this fall.

Let us not be without a glimmer of hope, however.

One advantage that the Republicans have is the actual disdain for Obama throughout the population. While people did not like Clinton’s politics, he was such a likeable character to so many people that it was hard to hate him. Obama, on the other hand, clearly has it out for America and everything it represents. The pressure on the Republicans to oppose Obama will greater than it was in 1995 when Bill Clinton was in office.

Hopefully, we will see a resurgence of conservatism in the Republicans for the next few years. I am not going to pretend that this new group of Tea Party backed candidates is something it isn’t, though. Remember that gaining power is the staple trademark of a politician and a political movement like the Tea Party is just a new vehicle for getting elected.

Muslim writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to Islamic “totalitarianism”

A group of 12 writers have put their names to a statement in French weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo warning against Islamic “totalitarianism”.

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

Recent events, prompted by the publication of drawings of Muhammad in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values.

This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field.

It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism between West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarian ideologies, Islamism is nurtured by fear and frustration.

Preachers of hatred play on these feelings to build the forces with which they can impose a world where liberty is crushed and inequality reigns.

But we say this, loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies choosing darkness, totalitarianism and hatred.

Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present.

Its victory can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: men over women, fundamentalists over others.

On the contrary, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or those discriminated against.

We reject the “cultural relativism” which implies an acceptance that men and women of Muslim culture are deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secularism in the name of the respect for certain cultures and traditions.

We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatisation of those who believe in it.

We defend the universality of the freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can exist in every continent, towards each and every maltreatment and dogma.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits in every country that our century may be one of light and not dark.

Signed by:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Chahla Chafiq

Caroline Fourest

Bernard-Henri Levy

Irshad Manji

Mehdi Mozaffari

Maryam Namazie

Taslima Nasreen

Salman Rushdie

Antoine Sfeir

Philippe Val

Ibn Warraq

Catholicism Was a Political System Too

At least, according to the Know Nothing Party in the 1800′s:

The Know-Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values and controlled by the Pope in Rome.

It was an anti-American political system that would hand over all power to the Pope in Rome!

How Far We’ve Come in Afghanistan

We’re nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq to set up Western-style democracies. In many ways we’re encouraging them to be just like us. And today there is great news on that front: Afghanistan’s Kabul Bank is getting bailed out by their citizens .. just like their American counterparts! They even got into the mess in a similar manner, corruption and risky real estate by the banksters:

The panic began last week when the Central Bank ousted the chairman and the chief executive officer of Kabul Bank, after discovering that the bank had acted recklessly, lending tens of millions of dollars to allies of President Hamid Karzai and pouring money into risky real estate investments in Dubai.

$300 million dollars of Afghanistan’s sovereign funds have been withdrawn from foreign central banks to pay for it. They say that no American taxpayer dollars are going to be used for Afghanistan bailouts, but you never know.

The Critical Thinkers of the Left and “The Party of No”

A full year and a half after watching the left demonstrate their inherent inability to engage in critical thinking and to look beyond the campaign hyperbole of our now community organizer for president, we are now starting to see their inability to stick to their own principles, flawed as they are.

We watched in amazement as the left, whipped into a froth by a national media which has resembled Pravda or Tass for for some time, rushed like lemmings to the voting booths to elect a shallow orator into the most powerful position on the planet.

Now we watch in disgust as the Obama supporters come out of their drunken-like stupor and sober up to the truth the rest of us already know; socialism is repressive and it doesn’t work to provide the conditions needed for a successful society. It never has. It never will.

But the left demonstrate another inability. They can’t recognize truth when it stares them in the face. As young college students, their minds have been corrupted by the liberal and socialist ideologies which have been pumped into their soft, mushy heads by professors and other corrupted elements coming from the left side of the political spectrum.

Now these legions of liberal minded graduates which some call “progressives” are now captains of industry. They are media moguls, teachers and politicians and for several decades they have been very busy subverting our institutions and the core values of our country. It’s no wonder our country is in shambles today, a product of their “sick-think” which turns traditional values and thinking on its ear by their belief that our country is broken and only they can fix it. The A.C.L.U. and activist judges are their tools.

Think about this one; California’s fiscal crisis is the product of a generation of leadership produced by the ’60s. If there was any era which represented a wholesale rejection of traditional values, it would be the ’60s. Barbara Boxer, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman among other politicians come from that generation. Collectively, their policies have made a shambles of California. In Washington, D.C., they’re well on their way to applying their sick-think to make a wreck out of our nation.

The liberal loves to label the Republican Party as “the party of no” which is to suggest the Democratic Party is “the party of yes.” Based upon their lack of convictions when it comes to traditional values, patriotism and national sovereignty, one might agree. They have established a clear record of saying –

• “yes” to same-sex marriages,
• “yes” to open borders,
• “yes” to granting constitutional rights to non-citizens, especially to our enemies,
• “yes” to tax policies creating economic uncertainty for businesses and denying economic freedom of consumers all of which lead to stagnant economic conditions and double digit unemployment rates,
• “yes” to spending policies creating debt levels which threatens our national security,
• “yes” to granting illegal immigrants the right to vote, especially when it benefits the Democrat party,
• “yes” to a national media which advances their agenda
• “yes” to emaciating our military
• “yes” to embracing tactics to promote voter fraud
• “yes” to large government
• “yes” to policies reflecting those of socialism i.e. nationalizing large corporations and majority ownership
• “yes” to allowing heads of foreign states the opportunity to address congress and then giving them standing ovations when they speak about how wrong we are to want to preserve our sovereignty by incarcerating and deporting immigrants who have come into our country illegally,
• “yes” to blaming Republicans and conservatives alike for the affects of their failed policies administered by their own, such as Barney Franks, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and who clearly don’t give a rat’s ass about the will of the people or democratic process,

Clearly, this list could go on for a long time, but the above items serve to illustrate the destructive characteristics of their belief systems which they embed into their policies and laws, all of which conservatives and those in the Republican party disagree with, leaving them labeled as belonging to “the party of no”.

However, it’s easy to see those of the left haven’t got a clue about what it means to do the right thing for our country, which is to say those on the right actually belong to “the party of know”.

Questioning Obama’s Integrity

A TIME magazine poll released today details a few interesting facts about Obama and how the country views him. A large portion of this country sees Obama as a Muslim. Why is this? Surely the mainstream media would understand—but they don’t.

Delving into this a little more you begin to find a few reasons that a growing number of Americans believe Obama adheres to the Middle-Eastern faith. In an interview with Nicholas Kristoff in 2007, Obama made the political mistake of describing the Islamic call to prayer one of the “prettiest sounds on earth.” Much to my dismay, the interview in the New York Times is no longer available freely on their website. In fact, it takes a little search engine sleuthing to discover that the Times restricted access to the story. Parts of it are found here and there, like on the Obama campaign website.

Twenty four percent of the country believe Obama is a Muslim. Almost a third believe that Muslims should be barred from holding the office of president. Another 24 percent don’t know what religion he belongs to. What does this tell us? Not that our country has a problem, but that Obama does.

I don’t know if Obama is actually Muslim or not. I don’t really care. What is disturbing is the way he likes to hide the truth on the issue. Sure, he’s said he’s a Christian. I don’t think he’s lying. Most of the country does, though, because he’s leading us in a bad direction. The economy is in shambles. Obama and his family are going on expensive vacations at the public largess. Health care was passed despite most Americans not wanting it. Obama isn’t doing anything to help his image, and when people find out he’s in support of the “Ground Zero mosque”, that he finds the Muslim call to prayer one of the “prettiest sounds on earth” and can recite the first lines of the Arabic call to prayer with a “first rate Arabic accent”, he isn’t going to be considered as a great Christian by a large portion of the population.

What I do know is that Obama has made a lot of mistakes that are going to cost him dearly in the 2012 election. While most Democrats and independents are not going to care too much about his religion or his birth certificate, there are some ‘on the fence’ or unlikely voters who just might be persuaded to cast their ballot against the current president when they start thinking there is a possibility that he’s secretly allied with the radical extremists that flew planes into the World Trade Center in 2001.

Obama’s refusal to properly address all the issues surrounding his birth certificate and his religion (saying you’re Christian during election season doesn’t count to most people) can only hurt him. The people who were going to vote for him already have—his biggest problem is keeping people from turning on him in the next election, as well as those already mentioned unlikely voters coming out of the woodwork to vote against him.

A few lessons to learn: don’t talk in an Arabic accent and recite the Islamic call to prayer, if a loud underground movement gets started requesting to see your birth certificate then show it to them, and if people doubt your faith so much, prove it to them. There is an old saying that “actions speak louder than words”. Obviously Obama has never heard it before.

John Bolton: The Ultimate Broken Record

Out: Telling Israel how many months or years they have to bomb Iran.

In: Telling Israel how many days they have to bomb Iran.

Yes, the window is still closing on Israel’s chance of survival, and it’s now down to only eight days! (Update: He has since revised it to three days!)

I don’t think there is a more pathetic fearmonger in the world than John Bolton, he makes a living writing/reporting the same thing over and over: bomb them soon!

He was running around doing the same thing in early March, in an interview with WND reporter Aaron Klein:

“Right now we know about the facilities. … We know where they are,” he said. “We know exactly what their dimensions are, and I think they are susceptible to an Israeli attack.”

Bolton said an Israeli military option “isn’t there forever. … If Israel is going to use military force, it needs to use it sooner rather than later.”… “Since I don’t see any possibility that the Obama administration will use military force, I think what that means – to cut to the chase – is this comes down to a decision by Israel whether or not it will use military force against Iran’s program.”

Bolton said he believes there is no doubt Israel possesses the military capability to hit Iranian nuclear sites, but he said the Jewish state would need to act soon.

“I think the problem is that the military option is declining day by day,” he said. “Every day that goes by is another day where the Iranians can build alternative facilities for uranium conversion, uranium enrichment weaponization, that are in unknown locations that are deeply buried or hardened and that Israel’s capabilities just can’t reach.”

In 2009 Bolton wrote a column for the Washington Post titled “Time for an Israeli Strike?” Apparently not as no strike occurred last summer either.

Rewind even further to June 2008 when Bolton, in his infinite wisdom, said Israel was sure to attack Iran between the time of the November election and when the new president was sworn in.

Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The “optimal window” for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.

“The Israelis have one eye on the calendar because of the pace at which the Iranians are proceeding both to develop their nuclear weapons capability and to do things like increase their defences by buying new Russian anti-aircraft systems and further harden the nuclear installations .

“They’re also obviously looking at the American election calendar. My judgement is they would not want to do anything before our election because there’s no telling what impact it could have on the election.”

The new excuse is that the radioactive fallout from the atomic plant will hurt civilians. I’m sure John Bolton would lose sleep over that. What he fails to mention is that an Israeli strike, even if it were to avoid civilian casualties, would likely bring chaos to the region and would lead to the deaths of both Iranian and Israeli civilians.