2012-09-30
1001 Reasons to Vote Against Barack Obama: Complete Edition
- Candidate Barack Obama publicly promises to go "line by line" through legislation to remove wasteful earmarks.
- Obama stimulus gave $200,000 to teach Siberian lawmakers how to engage Russian policy makers in Moscow.
- Stimulus funding of $250,000 went to bug storage for an insect museum at North Carolina State University that gets 44 visitors a year.
- Gave $500,000 to put microchips in recycling bins to check up on the recycling efforts of senior citizens.
- $5 million to create a geothermal energy system for the Oak Ridge City Center shopping mall in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.
- Provided $712,000 spent on a project by researchers at Northwestern University to develop "machine-generated humor."
- Buses in Winter Haven, Florida that average two riders per hour got $2.4 million so that the two riders per hour would have brand new buses to ride on.
- A Georgia Tech assistant music professor got $760,000 so he could jam with "world renowned musicians" to "create satisfying works of art."
- The California Academy of Sciences got $2 million dollars to send people to the Indian Ocean to photograph ants. "Everyone has run into ants … now we need to listen to them," one ant photographer said.
- The University of North Carolina received $762,000 to create a YouTube dance application.
- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.
- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York.
- $3.4 million to create an underground turtle tunnel, or eco-passage, in Lake Jackson, Florida.
- About a half-million dollars to give smartphones to people trying to quit smoking so they could "contact their quitting support groups by text message or phone calls to prevent relapses."
- Almost $300,000 to study how Yoga might reduce menopausal hot flashes.
- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.
- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles.
- $700,000 to Oregon crab fishermen to help recover lost crab pots.
- $1.5 billion for a Carbon Capturing Contest.
- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
- SUNY Buffalo received $390,000 to study young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke marijuana.
- Montana received $2.2 million to install skylights in their state-run liquor warehouse.
- $800,000 given to John Murtha Airport to repave a back runway used by about 20 passengers a day. This was in addition to millions given to this airport over the decades.
- $1 million was given to a Chicago dinner cruise company to "combat terrorism."
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
- The Coast Guard gets $572 million to create 1,235 new jobs. This comes to $460,000 per job.
- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Oklahoma.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minnesota.
- Millions spent on signs advertising the "American Reinvestment and Recovery Act."
- Barack Obama carries out much of the $700 billion TARP program. Obama forces banks to take money, and evenrefuses to accept repayment in some cases to wield control over them.
Countdown to Obama’s Defeat | The Moral Liberal
The same kind of idiots that loudly booed the Democratic Party plank reinstating God andJerusalem as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa agonized through three votes until he decided "in the opinion of the chair" that the yeas were shouting just a tad louder than the nays. It would have more accurate if he had said "in the opinion of the chair, the Marxists have lost."
Then there is the popular video going around in which DNC delegates were asked if it was a bad idea for corporations and other businesses to make a profit and most of them said—wait for it—yes. This is Obama's base.
Over the years I have grown less confident of polls taken in the run-up to Election Day. This is especially true when they suggest that only a few points separate one candidate from another. A successful incumbent President should have a recognizable margin of approval and, if he doesn't, that's usually a sign he's in trouble.
http://www.themoralliberal.com/2012/09/13/countdown-to-obamas-defeat/Quick and easy rebuttals to Obama's false narratives | The Daily Caller
Thomas Sowell: Obama Versus Obama: Part III
the gullible believe what they want to believe. Most of what Barack
Obama says sounds very persuasive if you don't know the facts — and
often sounds like sheer nonsense if you do. But he is not trying to
convince skeptics, nor worried about looking ridiculous to informed
people who won't vote for him anyway.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell092712.php3
2012-09-24
Fwd: tax
'According to calculations by FOX News analysts James Farrell and Mitch Kweit, taxing millionaires at 100% would now run the federal government for two and a half to three months.
Specifically, the analysts took a crack at this question: "If you took all the adjusted gross income of all millionaires, how many months of federal spending would this pay for?"
Here's what Farrell and Kweit found, based on IRS tax return and Treasury Department data:
* 2009: For calendar year 2009, taking all the adjusted gross income of filers making $1 million or higher would have paid for 20.67% of all federal spending during calendar year 2009 – approximately 75 ½ days, or 2 ½ months.
* 2010: For calendar year 2010, taking all the adjusted gross income of filers making $1 million or higher would have paid for 24.11% of all federal spending during calendar year 2010 – approximately 88 days, or nearly three months.
Year Total federal outlays Total AGI of all millionaires
2009 $3.52 trillion $726.91 billion
2010 $3.48 trillion $839.58 billion '
2012-09-23
Fwd: Refugees
'The tragic fate of Palestinian Arab refugees has always loomed over the Middle East conflict. The descendants of those who fled the territory of the newborn state of Israel in 1948 have been kept stateless and dependent on United Nations charity rather than being absorbed into other Arab countries so as to perpetuate the war to extinguish the Jewish state. The refugees and those who purport to advocate for their interests have consistently sought to veto any peace plans that might end the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. They have refused to accept any outcome that did not involve their "return" to what is now Israel, an idea that is tantamount to the destruction of Israel. The Palestinian have gotten away with this irresponsible behavior because they retained the sympathy of a world that saw them as the sole victims of Israel's War of Independence. But the historical truth is far more complex.
Far from 1948 being a case of a one-sided population flight in which Palestinians left what is now Israel (something that most did voluntarily as they sought to escape the war or because they feared what would happen to them in a Jewish majority state), what actually occurred was a population exchange. At the same time that hundreds of thousands of Arabs left the Palestine Mandate, hundreds of thousands of Jews living in the Arab and Muslim world began to be pushed out of their homes. The story of the Jewish refugees has rarely been told in international forums or the mainstream media but it got a boost today when the first United Nations Conference on Jews expelled from Arab Countries was held at the world body's New York headquarters. While Palestinian refugees deserve sympathy and perhaps some compensation in any agreement that would finally end the conflict, so, too, do the descendants of the Jews who lost their homes. As Danny Ayalon, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister rightly said today:
We will not arrive at peace without solving the refugee problem – but that includes the Jewish refugees. Justice does not lie on just one side and equal measures must be applied to both.
The truth about the Jewish refugees is something that foreign cheerleaders for the Palestinians as well as the Arab nations who took part in the expulsion have never acknowledged, let alone refuted. As Ron Prosor, Israel's UN ambassador pointed out in his speech at the conference, what occurred after Israel's birth was nothing less than a campaign aimed at eliminating ancient Jewish communities. Arab leaders "launched a war of terror, incitement, and expulsion to decimate and destroy their Jewish communities. Their effort was systematic. It was deliberate. It was planned."
Indeed, not only did Jews lose billions of dollars in property but were deprived of property that amounts to a land mass that is five times the size of the state of Israel'
Fwd: China
From: larry.r.trout
'In 1910 the British journalist Norman Angell published a book called "The Great Illusion". It's thesis was that the integration of the European economy, and by implication the global economy too, had become so all-embracing and irreversible that future wars were all but impossible. The book perfectly captured the zeitgeist of its time and fast became a best seller.
In some respects, the early 20th century was a period much like our own – one of previously unparalleled global trade and exchange between nations. Human beings appeared largely to have outgrown their propensity to mass slaughter, and everyone could look forward to to a world of ever increasing prosperity. War, Angell compellingly argued, was economically harmful to all, victors and defeated alike. Self interest alone could be expected to prevent it happening again.
Young men read the book in their thousands, mostly agreed with it, and then willingly marched to the fields of Flanders to take part in the most destructive conflict the world had ever known. When the First World War failed to resolve matters, they did it all over again in a second one.
So when people argue, as they often do, that globalisation makes the great regional conflicts of the past unimaginable in today's world, think of Norman Angell and his Great Illusion. Free trade, it seems, is no guarantor of worldly peace. None the less, it plainly helps, which is one of the reasons why the present outbreak of protectionist posturing and backdoor trade restrictions so desperately needs to be countered…
The historical parallels should not be stretched too far, of course, but the sabre-rattling from China over the disputed Senkaku islands contains some worryingly familiar themes. Sabre-rattling is hopefully all it will amount to. With the Chinese economy slowing fast, and a difficult leadership transition still to navigate, the frenzy of anti-Japanese feeling very much fits Beijing's domestic purposes. In a land without state-sponsored religion, nationalism is the new opium of the people.
Even so, territorial disputes such as these have a nasty habit of spinning out of control. We've already seen some extreme positions adopted by both sides. In a number of Chinese regions, the military has been put on "combat readiness", while the Chinese Academy of International Trade has been vocal in calling for economic retaliation. The Chinese government says a breakdown in trade between the two countries would do Japan a lot more harm, adding that Japan relies on China to keep its economy afloat and to counter "irreversible" decline.
As it happens, it's far from clear that the Chinese are right about this. The fall off in global industrial production that took place in the wake of the Japanese tsunami is powerful evidence of just how vital to the global supply chain Japan still is. Much of the Chinese electricals and automotive industry would grind to a halt without access to Japanese components.'
2012-09-19
Everything Is Illegal In America - SHOCKING VIDEO !
2012-09-16
Global Public Square
What we don't understand about them, I think, is that this does affect a kind of core sense of their dignity and it affects their sense of whether or not we respect them.
But I think at the end of the day, the West is in the right here. The United States is in the right. It is entirely inappropriate under any circumstances to use violence as a response to freedom of speech.
The way you counter bad speech is with good speech. Let them make a great movie about Prophet Mohammed. That's the way you do it, not by killing people, not by burning people.
2012-09-14
2012-09-13
2012-09-12
2012-09-11
2012-09-10
Charles G. Koch: Corporate Cronyism Harms America - WSJ.com
So why isn't economic freedom the "default setting" for our economy? What upsets this productive state of affairs? Trouble begins whenever businesses take their eyes off the needs and wants of consumers—and instead cast longing glances on government and the favors it can bestow. When currying favor with Washington is seen as a much easier way to make money, businesses inevitably begin to compete with rivals in securing government largess, rather than in winning customers.
Is Obama cruising to re-election? He seems to think so - baltimoresun.com
striking new initiatives suggests that his chief strategists believe
that, despite tight polling numbers nationally, he is on a course to
re-election in November.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-witcover-obama-20120909,0,2741093.story
Nuclear Mullahs - NYTimes.com
The prevailing view now is that a nuclear Iran cannot be safely contained. On this point bothPresident Obama and Mitt Romneyagree. They can hardly say otherwise; to even hint that a nuclear Iran is acceptable would undermine the efforts aimed at preventing that outcome. But I tend to think they mean it.
However, there are serious,thoughtful people who are willing to contemplate a nuclear Iran, kept in check by the time-tested assurance of retaliatory destruction. If the U.S. arsenal deterred the Soviet Union for decades of cold war and now keeps North Korea's nukes in their silos, if India and Pakistan have kept each other in a nuclear stalemate, why would Iran not be similarly deterred by the certainty that using nuclear weapons would bring a hellish reprisal?
Two More Months | The Weekly Standard
Although Obama has expanded the government more than any president since Lyndon Johnson, and arguably since Franklin Roosevelt, none of the prime-time speakers at the Republican convention labeled him "liberal."
That's odd.
Cutting the Deficit, Compassionately - Economic View - NYTimes.com
A crude rule of thumb is that every $100 billion of deficit reduction will cost close to a million jobs in the near term. If that isn't a reason to move gradually, what is? But if you need another, just look at Europe.
iPhone or Android? 6 questions to ask yourself before deciding (updated)
http://heresthethingblog.com/2012/02/09/iphone-android-6-questions/
Fwd: one-term proposition
From: larry.r.trout
"You know, a year from now, I think people are going to see that we're starting to make some progress but there is still going to be some pain out there. If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition."
"No one could have repaired all the damage he found in just four years,"
http://durangoherald.com/article/20120906/NEWS01/120909935/Clinton:-4-years-not-enough-to-fix-mess
Fwd: Euro
'The ESM is not only patently in breach of the German constitution, it also violates every relevant provision of the EU treaties. Article 123 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) – which replaced the EC treaty – forbids the use of the printing press to bankroll governments and public authorities, makes it unlawful for them to borrow from the ECB or the national central banks, and expressly prohibits the sale of government bonds to the ECB.
The ESM would create a parallel "bad bank", which would be allowed to do everything the ECB is ostensibly prevented from doing under the treaties: to buy government bonds directly, to lend to national government, to grant such loans without any prescribed limit, and to rescue insolvent banks. Once the ESM runs out of money, it can borrow directly from the ECB – which will print the funds needed.
Moreover, the ECB president, Mario Draghi, has already indicated that he would take bond buys by the ESM as a green light that the ECB is no longer bound by the restrictions of article 123. At present the ECB has about €220bn in sub-standard Greek and other southern European government bonds on its balance sheet, in addition to much a higher sum of "shaky" government debt instruments deposited by banks as "securities" for ECB loans. Draghi refuses to disclose the breakdown of government debt on the ECB's books or their credit rating. The ESM treaty effectively provides for the mutualisation of national debt within the EU with no upper limit. Save for eurobonds, there could be no more flagrant violation of the "no bail" clause of article 125…
Yet, despite the ESM breaching German law and EU treaties, few observers expect Germany's constitutional court to say so, although many think it may ask for minor changes.
If implemented, the ESM will reverse the greatest 19th-century political achievement in Europe: the transfer of the power to determine taxation and expenditure from unaccountable monarchical governments to formally accountable parliaments. The eurocratic transformation will have taken place through systematic disregard by the EU institutions and its member states of practically all legal and constitutional safeguards put in place to prevent precisely the disaster that has befallen the eurozone now.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/09/germany-serfdom-save-euro-court
2012-09-07
2012-09-06
Fwd: Spending
'Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley summed up this worldview succinctly, in a question to Republican nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: "How much less, do you really think, would be good for our country? How much less education would be good for our children?" When you are unbounded by spending restraints, government budgets can be boiled down to a simple question: How much, at long last, do you care?
What makes last night's fiscal denialism even more appalling was that many of the speakers themselves have had to fight tooth and nail with public sector unions over compensation and work rules. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel outraged police and fire unions by tackling pension reform and pointing out that "city government is not an employment agency." Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former labor leader, has called teachers unions an "unwavering roadblock to reform." Newark Mayor Cory Booker has been there as well. Needless to say, such talk was absent from the podium last night.'
http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/05/denialist-democrats
2012-09-05
Fwd: Plumber
White house Plumbers?
I hope Obama doesn't have to say " I am not a crook"
'The Secret Service said Wednesday it is investigating the reported theft of copies of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's federal tax records during a break-in at an accounting office in Franklin. Someone claiming responsibility demanded $1 million not to make them public.
An anonymous letter sent to Romney's accounting firm and political offices in Tennessee and published online sought $1 million in hard-to-trace Internet currency to prevent the disclosure of his tax filings, which have emerged as a key focus during the 2012 presidential race…
The data theft was claimed in letters left with political party offices in Franklin and disclosed in several Tennessee-area newspapers. Jean Barwick, the executive director of the Williamson County Republic Party, said employees in the GOP office found a small package on Friday with a hand-written address. The package contained a letter and a computer flash drive, she said.
An anonymous posting on a file-sharing website said the returns were stolen Aug. 25 from the accounting firm's office. After "all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied," the posting said, flash drives containing encrypted copies of his pre-2010 tax records were sent to the firm and to Republican and Democratic party offices.'
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-09-05/secret-service-probing-theft-of-romney-tax-records
Fwd: Changing polls
'According to the poll, Romney gained 7 points in favorability among women voters in the week following the GOP convention. Mr. Obama, by contrast, has seen his favorability rating among women fall by 11 points since April.'
Fwd: Euro
'European Central Bank President Mario Draghi's bond-buying proposal involves unlimited purchases of government debt that will be sterilized to assuage concerns about printing money, two central bank officials briefed on the plan said.
Under the blueprint, which may be called "Monetary Outright Transactions," the ECB would refrain from setting a public cap on yields, according to the people, and a third official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plan will only focus on government bonds rather than a broader range of assets and will target short-dated maturities of up to about three years, two of the people said…
Draghi told the European Parliament this week that the ECB needs to intervene in bond markets to wrest back control of interest rates in the fragmented euro-area economy and ensure the survival of the common currency. Policy makers will start deliberating on the plan later today and Draghi will announce whether it has been agreed to at a press conference tomorrow.'