Welfare’s Devastating Effects

FrontPage Magazine: "It can be demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the modern ‘cultural trends’ which we lament have an economic cause, and are a direct result of state intervention. The Left do not see economic necessity as a proper reflection of actual human relationships, but some capitalist carbuncle. It’s clear now that in removing economic necessity from people’s lives (which is what welfare does), we risk sinking into barbarism."

How Obama Got Elected... Interviews With Obama Voters

It is probably even worse than this. Do we blame the uninformed populace, or a corrupt, unscrupulous media who not only FAILED to do their job for the American voter but were basically propagandists for a major political party.

Star Trek (2009) - Official Trailer 2

Being an avid childhood Star Trek fan (one of my earliest TV memories), it is my duty to post the latest movie trailer of the franchise.

How the Party of Defeat Lost Fallujah

FrontPage Magazine: "The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion – Coalition victory. But Fallujah was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle...The effects of media coverage, enemy information operations, and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations.

Specifically, the report mentioned false claims of civilian casualties, singling out Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiyah footage. “Children were shown bespattered with blood; mothers were shown screaming and mourning day after day.” Leaked anonymously on the internet, the United Press International (UPI) news service reports that it has confirmed the Army report’s accuracy. It confirms the thesis of the book David Horowitz and I wrote together, Party of Defeat: that the most effective efforts against the war have emanated from American politicians and journalists."

My comment:
The anti-U.S. hacks in our government, educational institutions and the journalism profession cannot be that inept, dumb or gullible. Their strident anti-Americanism, in the early stages of a war, can only be explained in the context that they were operating not only to discredit and harm our military, and consequently the commander-in-chief, but in the larger global military-political theatre: These "useful idiots," or more accurately, enemy recruited "assets," seem to have been working for the very aims of our enemies worldwide, be it the worldwide socialist movement or it's like-minded brethren in the Islamo-fascist global jihad movement.

SteynOnline - THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN IDEA

SteynOnline - THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN IDEA: "If you went back to the end of the 19th century and suggested to, say, William McKinley that one day Americans would find themselves choosing between a candidate promising to guarantee your mortgage and a candidate promising to give 'tax cuts' to millions of people who pay no taxes he would scoff at you for concocting some patently absurd H.G. Wells dystopian fantasy. Yet it happened. Slowly, remorselessly, government metastasized to the point where it now seems entirely normal for Peggy Joseph of Sarasota, Fla., to vote for Obama because 'I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage.'"

Ex-KGB gives America stern warning, in 1985

Yuri Bezmenov
by onmyway02

America - The last great hope, "the last country of freedom and possibility." If America falls, "you have have nowhere to defect to." Here, he explains the world-wide Marxist strategy: Demoralization(20 years) - Destabilization(2-5 years) - Crisis(6+ weeks) - Change of Power-Normalization. Aired in 1985, I still feel it is relevant today. Most disturbing, the idea of "ideological subversion" and "psychological warfare." A great brainwashing process. Forget about espionage and secret agents. 85% of KGB budget was propaganda warfare. KGB sought out and recruited those who could formulate and influence public opinion. Self-important, cynical ego-centrist liars are the most recruit-able targets. Ardent leftists, or "useful idiots," were ignored, as a strategy. (These he says, are the first executed after revolution, doomed to execution.) Isn't this the state of American media, education and government today?

Fall 2

Fall

How The Mortgage Crisis REALLY Happened

Leftist Liberal Democrats want you to believe that the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act is what caused this year's cataclysmic financial meltdown, whose effects are spreading worldwide. They want you to believe that, because then they can make a feeble attempt to pin it on Republicans, and by association in the 2008 election, John McCain. (Even though Bill Clinton and a huge majority of Democrats supported the bill.) This false connection will also aid in their attempts to "re-regulate" the mythical "laissez-faire" financial sector. To me, McCain's political posture on this issue was perhaps the greatest mis-step of his campaign. It allowed the economy to be the number one issue, and gave voters the perception of Republican financial incompetence, when in fact it could have been, and should have been, a Democratic albatross. McCain played defense on this issue, and appeared too bipartisan and reveling in Wall Street bashing, which made him sound exactly like the opponent he was trying to distinguish himself from.

Please read this October Investors Business Daily article posted below, and draw your own conclusions. Then read this handy American Thinker summary, also published at the world-class website, ibdeditorials.com . [Why The Mortgage Crisis Happened]


Dems Blame Gramm Act For Crisis; Experts Disagree

BY SEAN HIGGINS
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/6/2008

These are awkward days for former Rep. Jim Leach. The Iowa Republican crossed party lines to endorse Barack Obama. But now Democrats, including Obama, say a bill he co-authored is responsible for the mortgage crisis.

"We cannot expect to be on the (same) wavelength on everything," Leach told IBD. Leach, now a visiting professor at Princeton, blames lax oversight of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Securities and Exchange Commission's 2004 move to ease leverage limits. Bank
regulation isn't the issue, he says.

"This problem relates to the housing industry, to mortgage instruments," he said. "The grave congressional and legislative error is on Fannie and Freddie. The great two executive branch aspects are the securities regulators' failure and insurance regulators' failure."

But for many Democrats, the credit crisis has a simple villain: the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. They think the GOP-authored 1999 law caused the meltdown — and they want voters to see it that way too. That's what has happened so far. Recent polls show a swing to Democrats, even though they spent years blocking any curbs on Freddie and Fannie. If they win big, they'll have a mandate to heavily regulate financial firms their way.

In a September release, Obama's camp said the 1999 law put too little effort into "modernizing supervision of the financial industry. "Nearly a decade later, our financial markets — and everyday Americans—are paying the price."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said last month that ex-GOP Sen. Phil Gramm, "was responsible for deregulation in the financial services industries that paved the way for much of the (current) crisis."

Pinning the blame on Gramm not only tars Republicans and free markets, but John McCain, R-Ariz. Gramm was a campaign adviser. But experts see scant evidence it had anything to do with the crisis. Many say it's helped limit the fallout by letting commercial banks like JPMorgan Chase buy ailing investment banks like Bear Stearns. But with voters looking for scapegoats, Republicans and deregulation are under fire. A recent CBS poll found 45% of respondents said the government regulates too little. Just 21% said too much.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking. U.S. banks had urged the change, noting their European peers faced no such curbs. The new law allowed banks to become financial supermarkets, with a full array of products. Most investment banks stayed independent. The bill was passed 90-8 in the Senate and 362-57 in the House. President Clinton signed it and defends the act to this day.

Latter-day critic Reid voted yes. Obama wasn't in the Senate. But his vice presidential pick, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., voted yes. Neither Reid's nor Obama's office responded to requests for comment.

There is no link between Gramm-Leach-Bliley and recent bank failures, said Pete Wallison, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "All of the investment banks and securities firms that have gotten into trouble . . . were independent banks," he said. "So the elimination of Glass-Steagall had absolutely nothing to do with their financial problems." Wallison pins commercial bank failures on bad mortgages, not on any brokerage arm.

Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, says the bill deserves some blame for today's crisis. "(The crisis) is mostly derivative instruments — (the act) just made it harder for the SEC to regulate those instruments," he said. Yet Baker admits the SEC showed little interest in regulating derivatives under Clinton or Bush.

National Civilian Security Force?

Jeff, you'll like this one. Future Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, discussing the plan for Mandatory Civil Service in 2006 ...

Paglia on Palin

She likes her; she really really likes her!

Salon.com | Obama surfs through: "Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views."

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

We Blew It

We Blew It: "Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park."

The Commissars Of Climate Change

The Commissars Of Climate Change - Forbes.com:

"It's not just income taxes that might trash the dreams of Joe the Plumber.

Ready or not, Joe and the rest of us are also about to get mugged by the commissars of climate change. On this, I've got a bipartisan beef, since both John McCain and Barack Obama have bought into the panicked Al Gore storyline that the earth has a man-made 'fever.' Both candidates are promising to meet it with dramatic and costly new forms of government control."

It is my hope, that Americans are not duped into the biggest power grab in history, simply because it is wrapped in the veil of saving Planet Earth from the one-hundreth percent (.01) increase in the amount of man-made carbon-dioxide emissions. As Rossett states ..."[It] is a road map to state meddling in every aspect of daily life."

What my daughter is probably subjected to in her school

Ashville N.C. School teacher browbeats student over being a McCain supporter...