US retail sales in unexpected jump - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Hey, did anybody hear this economic report last week? Maybe we won't be needing that "stimulus." Maybe Obama may not have to save us from Armageddon after all. I think this somewhat positive economic trend was under-reported and downplayed.

US retail sales in unexpected jump - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

"There has been a slight glimmer of economic hope in the US, with an unexpected jump in retail sales.
Sales jumped 1 per cent last month. Most economists had been forecasting a drop of the same amount.
The increase followed six straight months of falling sales and has been put down to heavy post-Christmas discounting.
Petrol sales also increased strongly as a result of falling prices at the pump.
Individual retailers have reported a drop in sales over January, and many have been forced to sack workers to stay profitable.
Separate figures show new claims for jobless benefits have fallen slightly, but still remain above 600,000."

A trillion here, a trillion there ...

FrontPage Magazine: "At the cost of more than $800 billion, the just -passed stimulus bill stands as the largest single outlay item in history. So great is the amount involved that it exceeds the GDP of even such economies as Australia, Saudi Arabia and Argentina."

50 De-Stimulating Facts

50 De-Stimulating Facts by Stephen Spruiell & Kevin Williamson on National Review Online: Chapter and verse on a bad bill.

By Stephen Spruiell & Kevin Williamson"

VARIOUS LEFT-WINGERY
Summary:
$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
$380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program
$300 million for grants to combat violence against women
$2 billion for federal child-care block grants
$6 billion for university building projects
$15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24
$1 billion for community-development block grants
$4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”
$650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”

POORLY DESIGNED TAX RELIEF

Summary:
$15 billion for business-loss carry-backs
$145 billion for “Making Work Pay” tax credits
$83 billion for the earned income credit

STIMULUS FOR THE GOVERNMENT
Summary:
$150 million for the Smithsonian
$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
$500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities
$44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters
$350 million for Agriculture Department computers
$88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building
$448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters
$600 million to convert the federal auto fleet to hybrids
$450 million for NASA (carve-out for “climate-research missions”)
$600 million for NOAA (carve-out for “climate modeling”)
$1 billion for the Census Bureau

INCOME TRANSFERS
Summary:
$89 billion for Medicaid
$30 billion for COBRA insurance extension
$36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
$20 billion for food stamps

PURE PORK
Summary:
$4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
$850 million for Amtrak
$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship
$1.7 billion for the National Park System
$55 million for Historic Preservation Fund
$7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”
$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
$150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”

RENEWABLE WASTE
Summary:
$2 billion for renewable-energy research ($400 million for global-warming research)
$2 billion for a “clean coal” power plant in Illinois
$6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
$3.5 billion for energy-efficiency and conservation block grants
$3.4 billion for the State Energy Program
$200 million for state and local electric-transport projects
$300 million for energy-efficient-appliance rebate programs
$400 million for hybrid cars for state and local governments
$1 billion for the manufacturing of advanced batteries
$1.5 billion for green-technology loan guarantees
$8 billion for innovative-technology loan-guarantee program
$2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects
$4.5 billion for electricity grid

Al Gore Debates Global Warming

Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Stimulus

Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Stimulus -- FreedomWorks.org: "As with medicine, the first rule of law making should be first, do no harm. The “stimulus” bill fails this test spectacularly." <<< go to the link!

Call the capitol switchboard at 1-866-928-3035 and ask to be connected to your legislator.

Also, fill out the form to send Washington a message:
http://www.capwiz.com/freedomworks/issues/alert/?alertid=12566041

From FreedomWorks: "Liberals are trying to ram through a "stimulus" package totaling more than $1.1 trillion, which means it will cost each American family over $10,000 a year. Or, another way to think of the massive size of this legislation – its cost is greater than the economies of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined.

Unfortunately, big-government advocates had the numbers they needed to pass this horrific spending bill in the House. But now it moves on to the Senate and if every Republican votes against the stimulus package – just like what happened in the House – it will fail!

Time and time again, the Republican leadership in Congress has pledged that its party will embrace a limited government agenda and support fiscally responsible policy. This trillion dollar debt package is a critical test of this pledge.

I am writing today to urge you to lead the fight against the trillion dollar debt plan being passed off as a "stimulus." Keynesian economics does not work, and the American people want to see leadership from conservatives who are willing to kill this bill in the Senate".

The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam | KUSI - News, Weather and Sports - San Diego, CA | Coleman's Corner

It amazes me how a scam can be propagated on such a massive and large scale on a citizenry that is largely un-skeptical and willing to dispense with so much of their freedom for the benefit of left-bent central planners in capitals around the world, some oligarchs and a slew of corporations that seek to benefit from this government-mandated and manipulated windfall. I guess the ozone-hole scare (amazing how we don't hear about that one anymore) was just the test-run for another government-run hoax and scare on a much more massive scale.

The following was written by John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel. It worth going to the link and reading the whole piece.

The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam: "So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.

We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.

And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.

Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a highjacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history."

Financial crisis shows why we should admire Freidrich Hayek - Philip Booth

Financial crisis shows why we should admire Freidrich Hayek: "The crash gives many more indications that Freidrich Hayek was right. Hayek argues that unregulated markets develop institutions that ensure that trust and reputation become valuable commodities. But who cares about trust and reputation when we believe that everything will be looked after by the regulators or by deposit insurance?

As far as a company is concerned, compliance with regulation has become more important than trust. The market has been allowed to generate crude economic efficiency, but trust has been crowded out by regulation.

Hayek suggests, too, that booms and busts are the product of poor monetary policy. Central banks hold interest rates too low. People consume too much and invest in business projects that would not be profitable at higher levels of interest rates. Resources then get mis-allocated. And then the whole things goes bang and we get a recession (in this case accompanied by a banking crisis)."

Required Reading: The Road to Serfdom. (Here is the Reader's Digest Condensed version)
Also, Socialism, by Ludwig Von Mises

The irony, is that government, in all its magnanimous desire to turn the rules of economics upside down by providing the illusion of a safety net and maestro, is prescribing the very poison that got the U.S. and global economy in this mess in the first place: meddling in markets, and eliminating the consequences of poor economic business decisions.

No Stimulus!

No Stimulus!

We are powerless, right? Left-wing extremist Democrats control the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Now that they have the opportunity, they will steamroll every wished-for liberal dream over the last 50 years. I know it is a small gesture, but I did my small part to counter this radical tsunami by signing the web petition above. Now do your part!

Here are my remarks (perhaps a bit over-dramatic or hyperbolic?):

This is not about jobs or stimulus. It is a power grab. It is a tax increase. It is stealth burden on the American worker. It will devalue the currency. And this is just the beginning. Most importantly, this bloated debt spending frenzy is, in truth, a patronage machine designed to keep Leftist/Liberal/Communist/Socialist/Democrats in power for decades, or permanently, as they seek to transform American culture and life into their egalitarian utopian "workers paradise." Bankrupt the American economy? All the better, because the ensuing hoped-for catastrophic crisis will make it all too easy for those currently in power to usurp the already weakened Constitution, and make the desperate nation swallow the revolutionary pill.

Here are some FACTUAL talking points, from the website; not mind-numbed disinformational ones that liberal talking heads are so good at getting repeated endlessly in the mainstream media:

The so-called “Stimulus Package” is being sold to taxpayers as an investment in useful infrastructure like roads and bridges. But the facts prove otherwise.

Only 3.6% of the scheme’s $825 billion price tag would actually go to real, practical infrastructure projects--roads and bridges.

Most of the other 96.4% would go to special interest pet projects, and to cramming years’ worth of radical policy changes into the single largest spending and debt scheme in history.

Why are our nation’s leaders doing this? Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel was strikingly honest when he said "Never let a serious crisis go to waste...it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Exactly what fringe policies are big-government politicians attempting to ram through with this colossal bill?

Under the auspices of a “Federal Health Board,” the package heavily funds the first steps towards the socialization and government-mandated rationing of health care. [See WSJ's "Democratic 'Stealth' Care"] And this is just one of many government power grabs being shoehorned into the so-called “Stimulus Package.”

In fact, even by the most charitable estimates, the bill would force taxpayers to foot the bill for at least 600,000 new government bureaucrats. That’s six tenths of a million more people on the government payroll -- adding little or no value to our economy and being paid with billions upon billions of your hard-earned tax dollars.

And just what sort of special interest giveaways and wasteful government spending are included in the so-called “Stimulus Package”? To name just a few...

- $4.19 billion in slush funds for ACORN, the left-wing advocacy group best known for allegations of voter fraud during the 2008 presidential campaign

- $600 million to buy brand new cars for government bureaucrats

- $335 million for adult sex workshops (one of the few line items which could conceivably deliver "stimulus" )

- $150 million for honeybee insurance

- $2.8 billion for the US Department of Agriculture in a misdirected program more likely be spent to build unnecessary broadband internet services in urban areas than in the rural areas that lack service.

This is too funny! Algore, The Oracle

Dana Milbank - With Al Due Respect, We're Doomed: "The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.

What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that 'would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth -- and this is within this century, if we don't change.'"

Please Mr. Obama, Don't kiss this guy's butt

Iran demands an apology...tell me this would never happen!!! Please.....

I think they are drafting the letter right now ...

The Real Che Guevara -- a KGB fiction

The next time you see someone with a Che Guevera t-shirt on, ask them if they really know who this hateful thug was. Read this article, arm yourself with the facts, and help them to understand that "Che" was a KGB fiction, a pure tool for propaganda to foment the Marxist revolutions in the Western Hemisphere.

Don't see "Che"!: "Soderbergh’s Che is a fiction once created by the KGB community, including my Romanian espionage service, the DIE, and at that time that placed me squarely in the picture. The real Che was an assassin who presided over communist firing squads and founded Cuba’s ghastly gulag system. He was also a coward who called upon others to fight to the death for the communist cause and sent to the scaffold hundreds who did not do that, yet he surrendered himself to the Bolivian army without a fight even though he was armed to the teeth. “Don’t kill me,” Che begged his captors. “I am worth more to you alive than dead.”[3] Soderbergh’s movie omitted this part—it would have demolished his Che."

History will show that George W Bush was right - Telegraph

History will show that George W Bush was right - Telegraph: "The American lady who called to see if I would appear on her radio programme was specific. 'We're setting up a debate,' she said sweetly, 'and we want to know from your perspective as a historian whether George W Bush was the worst president of the 20th century, or might he be the worst president in American history?'"

The reporter couldn't even squeeze in "mediocre?"

The Obama presidency: Here comes socialism, by Dick Morris

TheHill.com: "2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation."

Obama Sworn In Again, sans Holy Bible

Obama Sworn In Again, With Right Words: "After flubbing his one role on Inauguration Day -- administering the oath of office to Obama -- Roberts traveled to the White House to re-administer the oath.

Just to make sure.

'We decided it was so much fun . . .,' Obama joked while sitting on a couch in the Map Room. Obama stood and walked over to make small talk with pool reporters as Roberts donned his black robe.

'Are you ready to take the oath?' Roberts asked.

'I am, and we're going to do it very slowly,' Obama replied.

After a flawless recitation that included no Bible and took 25 seconds, Roberts smiled and said, 'Congratulations, again.'

Obama said, 'Thank you, sir,' and then added: 'All right. The bad news for the [reporters] is there's 12 more balls.'

A president is required by the Constitution to say, '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.'

At the inauguration, Roberts instead said: 'that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.'

In a statement, White House counsel Greg Craig said the oath was re-administered 'out of an abundance of caution.'

'We beli"

Rove: Bush Was Right When it Mattered Most

Rove: Bush Was Right About Iraq - WSJ.com