I just don’t see how Nancy Pelosi could possibly continue lying about this when the funding of abortion is pretty much the entire reason this awful bill can’t pass. How stupid do they think we are? Wait. Don’t anwer that.
Doug Johnson of National Right to Life wrote:
Speaker Pelosi has her own idiosyncratic dictionary, one in which federal agencies can pay for abortion on demand without spending “public funds” or “taxpayer funds” for abortion. In ordinary English, however, this is deceptive claptrap.
Kathleen McKinley at Right Wing News said:
Every version of the health-care bill has contained multiple pro-abortion mandates and federal subsidies for abortion, except for the version that was fixed by adoption of the Stupak-Pitts amendment. But Obama and Reid kept that provision out of the Senate bill. It had been used to get Stupak and other pro life Democrats (I love typing that..pro-life Democrats- music to my ears ) votes in the House, but then quickly dropped to satisfy abortion lobby. The final bill is the most pro-abortion piece of legislation since Roe v. Wade. It would result in direct federal funding of abortion through Community Health Centers, tax subsidies for private plans that cover abortion, and pro-abortion federal administrative mandates. When Obama said that no federal funds would be used to fund abortion, he was either flat out lying or he changed his mind. He should admit that now.
I think that the Democrats have had the media in their pocket for so long that they’ve believed that they can lie with impugnity and never get called on it. But it’s our job as bloggers and new media types to continue getting the word out that the people are being lied to.
Yet another news agency spreads misinformation about Obama’s birth certificate. Today Sky News did a story about “birthers” and falsely claimed Obama’s paper birth certificate was burned in a fire that destroyed many state records. There are four problems with this.
1. The Obama people claimed this happen
2. The media reports it as fact.
3. In Obama’s book Dreams of my father he writes he has the birth certificate in his possession.
4. The media Doesn’t seem to put two and two together and see that Obama lied, or they are ignoring this huge lie about the birth certificate being destroyed in a fire.
Glenn Beck compares birthers to terrorists. You see, Obama has been very very good to Beck. If not for Obama, Beck wouldn’t be where he is today. Getting to the bottom of Obama’s birth certificate would get Obama thrown out sooner. Beck, along with Fox News wants to milk this presidency for all its worth. Beck and O’Reilly just repeat things that have been proven false for 2 yrs now and wouldn’t dare look into any of it himself.
Feb 26 it was posted in Post Mail Blog they have received pdf files from Hawaii showing the Hawaiian birth index has no record of Obama listed. This does not surprise me at all. After all, there is no record of Obama or Obama’s mother ever being admitted into any hospital in Hawaii…ever.
The media wonders why they are becoming irrelevant. Well its because every day people are doing the media’s job while they sit there spinning the news, protecting terrorists, covering up stories, and calling every day Americans names.
Kadıköy Cumhuriyet Savcılığı, Üsküdar Cumhuriyet Savcılığı,Sultanahmet,Büyükçekmece Cumhuriyet Savcılığı,Eyüp Cumhuriyet Savcılığı,Edirne Cumhuriyet Savcılığı,Ankara Cumhuriyet Savcılığı’nda Moris (Maurice) Mitrani hakkında açılmış ve hazırlık aşamasında olan , bir çok suç duyurusu(dava)’na rağmen Mitrani dolandırıcılığa doymuyor. Bazı finans ve iş çevrelerine göre yatırımcıların kayıpları dahil edildiğinde mağdurların zararlarının milyon doların üzerine çıktığı ileri sürülüyor.
Nitelikli dolandırıcılıktan sabıkalı olan Moris (Maurice) Mitrani ; yanında yerli ve yabancı düzmece avukatlar barındırıp ,finans sağlama işini profosyonel bir şekilde tüm dünya genelinde yaptığını iddia ederek,paraya ihtiyacı olan iş adamlarının ,sahte avukatlarının yardımı ile önce güvenini kazanıp ,daha sonra ‘’expertiz bedeli’’ adı altında dolandırıyormuş.Mitrani’nin kurduğu düzmece şirketin isminin ise ‘’BENA INTERNATIONAL’’ oldugu ancak şirketin hiçbir ticari faaliyetinin olmadığı belirtildi.
Adli kaynaklara göre, İddianamelerde ; Mitrani,kendisinin Alaton ailesinin akrabası ,Nesim Malki’nin yiğeni ,adı Galataport ihalesi ile gündeme gelen İsrailli işadamı Eyal Ofer’in temsilcisi olduğunu ve Sabancı ailesine ait olan SASA’nın mali danışmanlığını yaptığını ileri sürerek işadamlarını ve bazı kurumları kandırıp dolandırmak sureti ile kanunlara aykırı biçimde ciddi gelirler elde ederek suç işlediği iddialarına sıkça yer verilmiş. Nitelikli dolandırıcılıktan sabıkalı olan Mitrani , basit yalanı aşmış ve mağdurların karar verme yetisini engelleyecek derecede hile ve göz boyamalarla,kişi ve şirketlere finans sağlayacağını vaat edip expertiz bedeli adı altında haksız kazanç elde etmiş.
Bilindiği üzere Türk Ceza Kanunu’nda,Bir kişiyi veya kurumu kandırabilecek nitelikte hile ve desiseler yaparak hataya düşürerek veya mağdurda esasen varolan hatadan hile ve desise kullanmak sureti ile yararlanarak onun veya başkasının zararına ,kendisine veya başkasına haksız bir menfaat sağlamak dolandırıcılık suçunu oluşturur.Moris (Maurice) Mitrani ve suç ortaklarından Nedim Beneroya’nın, ‘’kişiyi içinde bulunduğu zor şartlardan kurtarmak bahanesi suretiyle dolandırıcılık’’(finans sağlamak bahanesi) yaptığı tespit edilmekte olup,cezalarının da bu nedenlerden dolayı ağırlaşacaği(nitelikli dolandırıcılık) finans çevrelerinde büyük yankı uyandırdı.
Çok yakında,Moris Mitrani ve suç ortaklarından Nedim Beneroya’nın ,Savcılıklarda yer alan suç bilgilerini ve iddianame detaylarını ,okurlarımızla paylaşacağız.
You’re sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door. Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows.
One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you’re in trouble. In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered…
Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.
When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.
“What kind of sentence will I get?” you ask.
“Only ten-to-twelve years,” he replies, as if that’s nothing. “Behave yourself, and you’ll be out in seven.”
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you’re portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can’t find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both “victims” have been arrested numerous times. But the next day’s headline says it all: “Lovable Rogue Son Didn’t Deserve to Die.”
The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.
Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he’ll probably win. The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you’ve been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.
A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven’t been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man. It doesn’t take long for the jury to convict you of all charges. The judge sentences you to life in prison.
This case really happened.
On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.
How did it become a crime to defend one’s own life in the once great British Empire?
It started with the Pistols Act of 1903.
This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license.
The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns. Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.
Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.
The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of “gun control”, demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.
For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens.
During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.
Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, “We cannot have people take the law into their own hands.”
All of Martin’s neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.
When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn’t were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn’t comply. Police later bragged that they’d taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.
How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?
WAKE UP AMERICA; THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.
“…It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds…” – Samuel Adams
If you think this is important, please forward to everyone you know.
You had better wake up, because your new president is going to do this very same thing over here if he can get it done. And there are stupid people in congress and on the street that will go right along with him.
I am very pleased to announce the newest feature for NZNRL – Celebrity NZNRL Report.
Each week (depending on celebrity availability, I will be bringing you an mini interview with worldwide celebrities and present their take on the current events in both the NRL and the NZNRL!
The first few have been completed and will be unleashed in the very near future.
"Coming Soon - Celebrity NZNRL Report
So if there are any celebrities you would like me to conatct for this feature, please let me know and I’ll do my best to have it done…
The Progressives who believe that the government can spend its way out of the current recession typically justify the huge expenditures with one of the follow arguments.
1. If the goventment didn’t do the Stimulus Package, more serious economic calamities would occur. And/or,
2. When the private sector is not spending at a certain level, the government has to jump in to make up the difference, a classic Keynesian view.
Neither argument stands up to reasonable scrutiny. The first one, heading off more serious calamities, is no different than the one George W. Bush used in fighting terrorism. His argument was that we needed to give the government additional powers to avoid unseen calamities caused by terrorists. It is remarkable that the Progressives were able to see Bush’s power grab, but not Obama’s. It all boils down to the glasses one sees through.
The second argument, that government spending can make up for private sector shortfalls, requires a belief in alchemy. First, some rhetorical questions. When is the last time any major governmental spending program achieved the stated goal? For example, has the trillions spent on anti-poverty over the past 40 years eliminated poverty or even put a dent in it? How many broken government promise does it take for us to finally get it?
More to the point, to assume governmental spending can make up for private sector spending shortfalls requires that the spending benefits be greater than the negative impact of the tax increases required to pay for the spending. This is where alchemy comes in; we aren’t paying for the spending, ….. yet. We just keep barrowing, ignoring the fact that some day it has to be paid back. Sort of reminds me of the sub-prime mortgage mess, but on a governmental scale.
The above logic should be enough to conclude that the Stimulus Package could not work and future ones will not work. But, for those that require more empirical data, I suggest an Op-ed from the Wall Street Journal on February 23 by Dr. Robert Barro, professor of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. I have posted some of Barro’s comments below, as well as a link to the entire article. His reasoning is sound and may help explain why clear-thinking senators like Evan Bayh have decided to call it a day.
We need to ask whether the government’s spending reduced or enhanced private spending and whether public-sector hiring lowered or raised private hiring.
I estimate a spending multiplier of around 0.4 within the same year and about 0.6 over two years. Thus, if the government spends an extra $300 billion in each of 2009 and 2010, GDP would be higher than otherwise by $120 billion in 2009 and $180 billion in 2010. These results apply for given taxes and, therefore, when spending is deficit-financed, as in 2009 and 2010. Since the multipliers are less than one, the heightened government outlays reduce other parts of GDP such as personal consumer expenditure, private domestic investment and net exports.
Christina Romer, the chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, and her husband, David, have been major contributors to research on tax multipliers. Their results, which rely on the history of U.S. tax legislation since 1945, show tax multipliers of larger magnitude than the one I found. (So my conclusions here—based on the coming increases in taxes—would be strengthened if I switched to their estimates.)
How attractive this short-run deal looks depends on how much one values the added governmental activity. If it’s considered useful public investment—such as building a needed highway or, more modestly, fixing potholes—it might look good. If it’s wasteful spending in a hastily constructed and highly political stimulus package, it looks bad.
But these calculations are not nearly the end of the story, because the added $600 billion of government spending leads to a correspondingly larger public debt. These added obligations must be paid for sometime by raising taxes (unless future government spending declines below its 2008 level, an unlikely scenario).
Thus, viewed over five years, the fiscal stimulus package is a way to get an extra $600 billion of public spending at the cost of $900 billion in private expenditure. This is a bad deal.
The Stimulus Evidence One Year On – By Robert J. Barro
The New York Times reports that a top Justice Department official has concluded that “poor judgment” is not professional misconduct, reversing an earlier O.P.R. finding:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Department lawyers showed ”poor judgment” but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to usewaterboarding and other harsh tactics at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism, an internal review released Friday found.
The decision closes the book on one of the major lingering investigations into the counterterrorism policies of George W. Bush’s administration. President Barack Obamacampaigned on abolishing the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding and other tactics that he called torture, but he left open the question of whether anyone would be punished for authorizing such methods.
An initial review by the Justice Department’s internal affairs unit found that former government lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have cost them their law licenses. But, underscoring just how controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice Department’s top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed.
”This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda,” Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a memo released Friday.
Margolis, the top nonpolitical Justice Department lawyer and a veteran of several administrations, called the legal memos ”flawed” and said that, at every opportunity, they gave interrogators as much leeway as possible under U.S. torture laws. But he said Yoo and Bybee were not reckless and did not knowingly give incorrect advice, the standard for misconduct.
…
The Office of Professional Responsibility, led by another veteran career prosecutor, Mary Patrice Brown, disagreed.
”Situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the client wants to hear,” her team wrote in a report that criticized the memos for a ”lack of thoroughness, objectivity and candor.”
In God and Whose Army?, I note the flawed logic of the torture memos and conclude that their advice was reckless if not outright gleefully malicious:
This is demonstrated pointedly in the leaked torture memos, which were labyrinthine in their attempts to provide a legal shadow of doubt for torturers. For example, page 16 of the Bybee-Rizzo memo holds that an action only constitutes torture if there is a “specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering.” Further, the intent must be express (stated openly), and cannot be predicated on a “good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering.” What constitutes a good faith belief? One that is honest, but not necessarily reasonable. What constitutes an honest belief? One that is based on the “advice of experts” (advice which was routinely twisted by the Justice Department–see for example the citation of a sleep study by James Horne as proof that extreme sleep deprivation was not torture. Horne later expressed his outrage that the results of his experiments, which restricted themselves to controlled environments with subjects who experienced no additional stress factors, were misrepresented to justify 11 day non-controlled sleep deprivation periods). Read narrowly, the memos argue that it is possible to simulate drowning on an individual in one’s custody while believing (neither reasonably nor expressly, but at the same time based upon so-called “expert advice”) that the panicked, drowning detainee at one’s thrall is not suffering severely.
It must finally be asked if any such torturer could be said to have acted in good faith, provided they have read the memos, which concede that a court may object to their actions? Is it possible to read and understand a legal argument which sidesteps the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment by pointing out that such a prohibition was directed against convicted individuals and not detainees who have not even been charged with a crime, accept this as adequate justification for committing torture, and remain a morally exempt agent of the state? An individual who fully digests the memos’ slipshod legal reasoning and maintains a good-faith belief in spite of it is highly devout or dangerously uneducated–perhaps too devout or uneducated to be placed in a position which allows him or her to hold such extensive power over another human being. Neither can one cannot remain a “good faith” actor if he or she is aware that the “enhanced interrogation” program was being used to ferret out a confession to substantiate a manufactured link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, in order to justify an act of aggression (one of the victims of torture who provided such a link, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, later recanted his confession and committed suicide–allegedly–in a Libyan prison). In reality, the only good faith actors were the few who refused to take part in torture, legally sanctioned or otherwise.
For further evidence of this, see the following exchange between Yoo and an O.P.R. official (source):
Yoo was asked how to explain how the torture statute would interfere with the President’s war making abilities, and gave the following answers:
Q: I guess the question I’m raising is, does this particular law really affect the President’s war making abilities…
A: Yes, certainly.
Q: What is your authority for that?
A: Because this is an option that the President might use in war.
Q: What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? … Is that a power the President could legally –
A: Yeah. Although, let me say this. So, certainly that would fall within the Commander-in-Chief’s power over tactical relations.
Q: To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?
A: Sure.
Sure! Elsewhere in the O.P.R. documents is the following reasoning:
On one of the interrogation videotapes, CIA OIG investigators noted that a [REDACTED] interrogator verbally threatened Abu Zubaydah by stating, “If one child dies in America, and I find out you knew something about it, I will personally cut your mother’s thoat.” [REDACTED] commented, in its review of CIA OIG Report, that the threat was permissible because of its conditional nature.
The Margolis decision underscores a major inconsistency in American law: the myth of the good faith actor. This ties in to the plea of superior orders defense (“just following orders”), but is used here in a far more twisted manner to exonerate a high-level official, one who could be thought of more accurately as a order-giver (or order-facilitator) rather than order-follower.
It is time to admit that the memos were written with the winking assumption that the executive was essentially untouchable. Margolis’ reversal (and Obama’s unwillingness to support the prosecution of any involved individuals) is the culmination of this illicit hubris. How is this “good faith”? In order to conclude that Yoo and Bybee were not acting with malicious intent, one must be uncritical to the point of slavering fanaticism, and a constant danger to those nearby–or, at the very least, to a distant village which has found itself within the President’s cross-hairs. Margolis claims to not endorse the particular legal reasoning of the memos, but there is a surfeit of evidence that the insidious reasoning which exonerated them (that the attacks of September 11th were unprecedented and created a hectic atmosphere in which sloppy legal reasoning–adopted under explicit pressure from Washington, especially from Cheney and Addington, by the former’s own admission–could be forgiven–or that there is a “war exception” to the Constitution) is still being honored in Washington.
Margolis’ memorandum repeatedly references the September 11th attacks. Indeed, the panic of September 11th, incredibly, is used as an excuse in both Yoo and Bybee’s memos and in Margolis’ exoneration of Yoo and Bybee. September 11th is as well-traveled an excuse as anyone is likely to find–a boon for the hateful bureaucrats who no longer even attempt to hide their contempt for the law. Are they too good faith actors?
People are always telling me the US’s health care system ranks #37 in the world just above Cuba at #39 using the United Nations 2000 World Health Report. What they don’t realize is this report according to the United Nations has an 80% uncertainty level in their data and none of the five criteria included actual health outcomes, such as cancer or heart attack survival rates. All of the report is skewed toward countries that have government health care already, so they automatically get a better rating. The WHO statistics are flawed because the authors incorporated their own biases into the statistics’ construction.
The rankings are based on general health of the population, access, patient satisfaction and how the care’s paid for.
Including the mode of payment when measuring the system’s performance is assuming what you’re trying to prove. (socialized medicine is superior)
Here’s an article that explains most of how the UN tabulates it’s report. Hold on to your hat.
What’s Not Wrong with Health Care in the U.S.
by Dr. Roger Stark
Health Care Policy Analyst
January 2009
Change is coming to the health care system in this country. At $2.1 trillion per year, or 17% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), cost should be the driver for this movement to reform our current system.
As the debate continues on in the next few months, however, a number of other arguments will be used to indict our present mix of public and private programs. Many of these arguments are based on a faulty presentation of the facts, so let’s look at the actual data and see what is not wrong with our health care system.
First of all, we hear a lot about how terrible the infant mortality rate is in the United States, with supposedly the worst in the civilized world. Is this true? Not really. U.S. health officials count all live births, while many other countries only count full-term births or infants who live at least 28 days. Obviously, premature infants, who are counted in the U.S., but not in other countries, have a much higher risk of mortality.
Second, it is repeatedly said that people in the U.S. do not live as long as in other countries. Again, this is true. However, deaths from homicide and accidents distort the picture. When the data is adjusted for these categories, life expectancy in the U.S. is as high as in other countries. Homicide and trauma certainly reflect a country’s social problems, but they tell us little about a country’s health care system.
Third, we hear that each year there are nearly 100,000 unnecessary hospital deaths in the U.S., a clear indictment of our health care quality. A panel of physicians reviewed the hospital data, however, and found that the great majority of these deaths occurred at the end of the patient’s natural life, when the outcome would have been the same regardless of what hospital staff did or did not do. In other countries, these older, desperately ill people might not even be sent to a hospital, dying instead at home, and are thus not included in national medical statistics.
A comparable study in Canada, adjusted for population size, found 200,000 “unnecessary” hospital deaths, even though political activists regularly push Canadian-style health care for the U.S.
Fourth, we hear people are often forced to declare bankruptcy because of medical bills. It turns out advocates count any bankruptcy case involving even a single medical bill, whether or not health costs had anything to do with causing the bankruptcy.
Also, people ages 55 to 65, who have more personal control over their health coverage, are less likely to declare bankruptcy, while people over 65, who are on government-run Medicare, have seen a doubling of their bankruptcy rate. In the case of the elderly, tax-funded health care has not reduced financial problems for older Americans.
Fifth, what about the 45.7 million uninsured? Who are they, and are medical costs and availability the reasons they don’t have health insurance? If we look at the actual numbers, it turns out that one-third of these people are eligible for existing government programs (Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, etc.) but haven’t applied. Half of this 45.7 million are transitioning between jobs, and nearly one-fourth of the total are not U.S. citizens.
It turns out advocates count anyone who was without health coverage at any time during a calendar year.
Out of the entire 45.7 million, only about 8 million are chronically uninsured. This represents less than 5% of our total population. While an important number, it is arguably not large enough to be the primary motivator for an entire government overhaul of our health care system that would impact the other 95% of our population.
Last we are told we rank 37th in health care compared to other countries. This figure comes from the U.N.’s World Health Organization. Three of the five criteria to rate nations were biased in favor of nationalized, single-payer systems, and the U.N. admitted they had an 80% uncertainty level in their data. Amazingly, none of the five criteria included actual health outcomes, such as cancer or heart attack survival rates.
Because the U.S. does not have total, nationalized health care, our system was severely disadvantaged before the study began. Any health study that ranks Greece (#14), Columbia (#22), and Morocco (#29) ahead of the U.S. clearly has serious methodological problems.
Any debate about how to improve health care needs serious research honestly presented, not skewed data or false comparisons with other countries. Using the arguments discussed above only serves to shift our focus away from the real problems – overregulation and high costs. Only when the system re-connects patients with control of their own health care dollars, and when decisions about care are made by doctors talking with patients, not by government program managers, will we be in a position to control costs and extend coverage to the chronically uninsured.
Fox News host Glenn Beck, armed with his trademark chalkboard, blamed “progressivism ” for America’s problems Saturday in his keynote speech that brought the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to a close.
The chalkboard, a prop that he uses frequently on his top-rated show, brought the audience to its feet. Beck wrote “Progressivism” on it to underscore his belief in what America is suffering from.
When Beck asked what America is suffering from, someone shouted “President Obama,” though Beck, an outspoken critic of the president, said it’s “not that simple.”
read more Fox News host Glenn Beck, armed with his trademark chalkboard, blamed “progressivism ” for America’s problems Saturday in his keynote speech that brought the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to a close.
The chalkboard, a prop that he uses frequently on his top-rated show, brought the audience to its feet. Beck wrote “Progressivism” on it to underscore his belief in what America is suffering from.
When Beck asked what America is suffering from, someone shouted “President Obama,” though Beck, an outspoken critic of the president, said it’s “not that simple.”
A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful. Michel Chossudovsky, who’s from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war.
Posted By Jamie Glazov On February 19, 2010 @ 12:00 am In . Positioning, Column 2, Lifestyle, Middle East, Sex, World News | 38 Comments
The Saudis really need to get an infomercial out there — and the Nation magazine and other leftist sites that apologize for Islamic gender apartheid [1] can feature it on their webpages. It would go something like this:
A Saudi sheikh dressed slickly in Saudi garb would be sitting confidently in a chair, looking into the camera with an excited smile. He would then begin asking, with earnestness and an encouraging tone:
Are you a pedophile? Do you like underage girls? Would you like to rape one of them — or several? And get away with it? Even have it legally sanctioned? Then Saudi Arabia is for you.
The screen then shifts to a shopping mall filled with niqab-covered women (only the slit of the eyes showing) walking up and down in front of stores. It remains unclear what message this is supposed to denote, but the camera stays focused on these shrouded women for about ten seconds. Then a warning appears that all infidels who are interested must first convert to Islam. This is followed by a phone number appearing over a black background, indicating a contact person who can be reached. A voice then explains that this person lurks within the Saudi religious police and that he will connect interested parties to Saudi fathers intent on selling their underage girls into marriage — a standard practice in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi fathers, you see, they know what’s up: it’s better to sell one’s daughter at a very young age to get raped under the sanctioning of Islamic law than to risk her getting older and bringing shame to the family — which can happen in a million ways in Saudi Arabia (i.e., she might go outside without permission or attempt to run out of a burning building unveiled [2]). This all gets too needlessly complicated — as you then have to kill her. So why go through all the trouble when you can make some cash while she’s young and get rid of the problem?
After the phone number is flashed on the screen, the infomercial ends with a little talk from Jasem Muhammad al-Mutawah, Saudi Arabia’s infamous “expert” on Islamic “family matters.” He’s holding one of his favorite rods [3] and begins to explain and gleefully demonstrate with it how a husband should use it to beat his wife — as he has done on Saudi instructional TV programs on wife beating [3] on Iqraa TV.
These kinds of Saudi infomercials could really capitalize on a grotesque, barbaric, and nightmarish reality within the kingdom — to which the international community responds with a deafening silence and shameless paralysis. The other day, for instance, a typical news report emerged out of Saudi Arabia: a 12-year-old girl was sold [4] by her father into marriage with an 80-year-old man. The Saudi father sold her to his cousin, who had previously married three other young girls, for the equivalent of $22,600 U.S. currency.
After the “wedding,” the girl was taken to the hospital because of horrible physical injuries she sustained in the rape that followed the “festivities” — which involves the “wife” and all women forced into a closet and the men “celebrating” in a large room, spending most of the time staring into each other’s eyes. If an outsider was present at this function and didn’t know the “culture,” he would definitely think that a gay wedding, of one form or another, was underway. But not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Eman Al Nafjan, a Saudi blogger and women’s rights advocate, is one of the few courageous voices speaking out against this vicious injustice of child rape in Saudi Arabia. Her voice fills the void left by the shameless silence of the “progressive” left in the West, which dares not speak a word of criticism against Islam, lest doing so might put its anti-Americanism and solidarity with jihadists [1] into jeopardy.
Eman Al Nafjan comments on the case [4] in her blog:
Where else in the world can a man openly say that he is in a polygamous marriage with four underage girls and not get arrested? At this rate we might as well start a tourism industry to attract rich Muslim pedophiles.
Well, yes indeed, and the industry, which really already exists in one way or another, would get the backing of Saudi judges and religious clerics. In April of last year, after all, a Saudi judge refused to grant a divorce to an eight-year-old girl who had been forced into marriage by her father with a 47-year-old man as part of a loan repayment [4] agreement. In August, a 10-year-old “bride” ran away [4] from her 80-year-old husband, seeking safety at her aunt’s house. After several days, she was forcibly returned to her rapist by her father.
Saudi religious leaders obviously come to the vehement defense of these child “marriages.” How could they not, when they have the conduct of their own prophet to serve as a shining example? Indeed, the founder of Islam married Aisha when she was six [5] and “consummated the marriage” with her when she was nine (Bukhari 7.62.88 [6]).
But, alas, perhaps I have gone too far. These aren’t really politically correct things to talk about or to condemn in our society. In our mainstream culture, in which the boundaries of discourse are set by the liberal-left, it’s legitimate to endlessly deride and dehumanize Sarah Palin with sinister insults founded on misogynist hate, but to utter even the slightest criticism of Islamic gender apartheid — and its mass crimes against humanity — is really going overboard. Who are we, after all, as my leftist feminist colleagues explained to me for over a decade in academia, to judge other cultures and see them through the eyes of the Western cultural lens? Surely there is no universal standard to judge anyone on anything. Cultural relativism is the way to go. Well, except, that is, when it comes to judging Western civilization in general and American society in particular. That’s when cultural relativism really needs to go out the window.
So don’t be looking for any particularly harsh judgments, let alone even a mentioning, in our liberal-left media about 80-year-old Saudi men raping 12-year-old girls. But do look for lots of insults to be directed at me from leftists who will be more indignant about this article than about the horrific reality it describes — and because I wish to have something done about it (i.e., rescue and protect real suffering innocent little girls). For the left, acknowledging the vicious nature of Islamic misogyny — and coming to the defense of its victims — is unthinkable, since it leads to a recognition of the pernicious nature of adversarial cultures and religions. This, in turn, by necessity leads to an acknowledgement of the superiority of Western civilization and, therefore, most horrifyingly of all, of the legitimacy of defending it. For the left, this is simply anathema [7].
The Nation magazine, therefore, with its writers like Naomi Klein, who dreams of Muqtada al-Sadr’s killing fields [8] coming to New York, is not the place to search for a condemnation of the rape of underage girls in Saudi Arabia — and of the Islamic theology that institutionalizes and sanctions [9] it. The left’s long tradition is to sacrifice human lives on the altar of its utopian ideas [1], and so suffering Saudi women and the rest of the millions of Muslim women who are brutalized under Islamic gender apartheid must, tragically, be a part of that heartless and hypocritical progressive ritual of hate.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-saudi-pedophile-chronicles/
URLs in this post:
[1] that apologize for Islamic gender apartheid: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FUnited-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror%2Fdp%2F1935071602%2F&tag=pajamasmedia-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
[2] attempt to run out of a burning building unveiled: http://www.globalpolitician.com/21879-saudi
[3] one of his favorite rods: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1091.htm
[4] a 12-year-old girl was sold: http://www.inquisitr.com/58451/saudi-girl-12-married-off-to-80-year-old-man/
[5] married Aisha when she was six: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/11/spencer-muhammad-and-aisha-a-love-story.html
Back in October, 2008, I printed this blog opining about how far left Obama was, that he was even left of a self-described Socialist and that it didn’t take too much research into his radical Chicago neighborhood to reckon “Primary Obama” was the truth and “General Election Obama” was the lie.
Now that he has spent more money than anyone in human history (even more than the Soviet and Chinese Communists), now that his war on free markets (capitalism) has sent investors running for the exits (and reduced our net worth by trillions of dollars) and now that he has decided to spike our energy costs (with Cap & Trade), despite all the pain it will cause in a depressed economy – I can officially declare, unfortunately, I was right, Obama was left – far left.
In his first 100 days, with millions losing their jobs, Obama still wants to spend much of his time, and hundreds of billions of dollars of our money, attempting to advance his progressive-socialist agenda rather than focus on the financial and housing crisis. At last night’s press conference the President said, “I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by me trying to figure out how we’re going to fix the economy”.
Really? If he’s been working so hard at fixing the economy, why has he only filled one (Secretary Geithner) of the 18 open slots at Treasury that require Senate confirmation? There is no Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, yet Obama is making tax policy. There is no Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets – no wonder Obama totally mismanaged the AIG mess. Why didn’t he clear his calendar in the first week in office and fully staff these Treasury positions to help turn this economy around?
Even supporters are stunned that, instead of focusing on the economy, Obama has found time to close Gitmo, give $3 billion to ACORN, cut defense spending while troops are still fighting and dying, support a plan to take away a worker’s right to a secret ballot, add millions more to federal health insurance plans, implement an extreme environmental agenda, raise taxes, suspend trials for terrorists, make wounded warriors pay for their combat injuries, fly to California to insult disabled Americans on late night television, research what teams should be in this year’s NCAA college basketball brackets and laugh on 60 Minutes about the bad economy.
This is reckless and sad – nothing funny about it.
This is one of those moments where it is useful to see why some of us conservatives were warning America about Obama back when America still had a chance to chose a different path. Contrary to the popular Democratic/Media narrative at the time, we were not alarmists – conservatives were dead-on accurate, and deserve the credibility that comes with being dead-on accurate.
Here’s what I said back in October, 2008 about how far left Obama was and why:
More Liberal Than A Socialist
Many people have heard that the National Journal rated Barack Obama the Most Liberal Senator in 2007. Obama’s could have picked anyone to be his running mate, and he chose Senator Joe Biden – the 3rd most liberal.
What you may not know is that one of my Vermont Senators, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was rated 5th most liberal and is a self-described Socialist.
That makes Obama left of a Socialist.
Before you tune me out because I used the “S” word, do a little research. Invest a little bit of time learning about:
Saul Alinsky – the father of community organizing. Clinton wrote her senior thesis about Alinsky. Obama learned Alinsky’s methods so well that he taught them to others.
Weather Underground – radical group known for bombing the Pentagon, the NY Police HQ and the Capitol. Co-founded by Bill Ayers.
Bill Ayers – co-founder of Weather Underground who hosted a party to launch Obama’s political career in his living room.
Bernardine Dohrn – Bill Ayers’ wife, convicted for Weather Underground activities, unrepentant in her support for Marxism-Leninism, now an adjunct professor of law @ Northwestern.
Black Panther Party – Ayers and the Weather Underground declared war on the U.S. Government after the death of a Panther Fred Hampton.
Haymarket Riot – An event that seemed to have started it all.
Rashid Khalidi – former PLO spokesman & Obama family friend.
Tony Rezco – a huge Obama fundraiser convicted of fraud and bribery.
ACORN – The nation’s largest radical organization and Chicago ACORN it’s most radical chapter. They played a big part in pushing sub-prime loans that crippled our financial system and committing voter fraud in several states.
Just Obama’s ties to ACORN should disqualify him from running for office. Add in all the rest and the prospect of an Obama Presidency is truly frightening.
I have no doubt in my mind that Obama is a socialist and, with a little education, you will know that too.
Generally speaking, bi-partisan commissions are a bad idea, with just a few exceptions. Those being when something is being investigated–such as the 9/11 Commission or the current Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The debt reduction commission, set to be unveiled today by President Obama, falls into the bad idea category, and for the usual reason.
Bi-partisan commissions are nothing more than a refuge for gutless politicians who are more concerned with the next election than the next generation, and who don’t want to go on the record with votes on controversial issues which might hurt their re-election chances. And there are no issues more controversial than what must be done if we hope to make any serious attempt at reducing the national debt. And I don’t mean re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic with so-called “spending freezes” on areas of the budget which amount to less than 20% of all spending.
Serious debt reduction has to take on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which together make up about 40% of the budget. And for the two biggest expenditures–Social Security and Medicare– there are only 3 options–raise taxes, reduce benefits, or raise the eligibility age.
Serious debt reduction has to cut spending across the board, no exceptions and no exclusions, including the Pentagon. The 2009 budget for the Department of Defense was north of $700 billion, which is roughly equivalent to the rest of the world’s military spending combined.
Serious debt reduction has to include tax increases. We, as a country, have been living on a credit card for the last 30 years–it’s time to start paying the bill.
Tough decisions all, and decisions we pay members of Congress to make, not shove off on “bi-partisan commissions” with no authority to do anything other than make recommendations.
OK, I’m not a “birther” and wanted to get that out-of-the-way really fast. I have seen the newspaper articles that announced the birth of baby Obama in Hawaii. However, after seeing this sign, I had to post this picture.
*Cough* Birthplace?
Guess the folks down in Kenya are the true “birthers” huh?
Every time I see former Vice-President Dick Cheney interviewed on any news program, national or otherwise, I think to myself, ‘Why is this man here and not facing a war crimes tribunal?’ Cheney made a remark during an interview with Jonathan Karl Sunday on ABC’s This Week, a remark made almost in passing, that once again brought that question to mind:
KARL: Did you more often win or lose those battles, especially as you got to the second term?
CHENEY: Well, I suppose it depends on which battle you’re talking about. I won some; I lost some. I can’t…
KARL: … waterboarding, clearly, what was your…
CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that…
KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding?
CHENEY: Yes.
It never ceases to amaze me, although it’s not the first time it has happened and undoubtedly won’t be the last, that a former vice-president of the United States of America can openly and brazenly confess to something which the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture recognize as torture, something for which members of the Japanese military were punished after World War II. Torture, a punishable offense under U.S. Code 2340A by imprisonment or death. And he can do so without any fear of reprisal, thanks to the ‘look forward, not back’ policy of the Obama administration.
Shameful.
Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish calls on Attorney General Eric Holder to take action or be considered an accessory, also a punishable offense:
“…the attorney general of the United States is legally obliged to prosecute someone who has openly admitted such a war crime or be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture. For Eric Holder to ignore this duty subjects him too to prosecution. If the US government fails to enforce the provision against torture, the UN or a foreign court can initiate an investigation and prosecution.
These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn’t. Cheney’s clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.
Cheney himself just set in motion a chain of events that the civilized world must see to its conclusion or cease to be the civilized world. For such a high official to escape the clear letter of these treaties and conventions, and to openly brag of it, renders such treaties and conventions meaningless.”
On Sunday Vice President Joe Biden made it on to a political talk show to chat for a while. Before his handlers wrangled him back into the home where he attends to the important business of making sure the Stimulus (ARRA) money isn’t wasted (He’s doing a great job with that. As the President says “Nobody messes with Joe”, Uncle Joe spent his time claiming that former Vice President Cheney was doing exactly what he was trying do – rewrite history. When it comes to re-writing history, no one is going to outclass the Obama Adminstration. Uncle Joe will see to that. (And no one messes with Uncle Joe!)
I couldn’t bring myself to actually watch it, or read the transcript, but I’m pretty sure at one point (of oh so many, I’m sure – It’s Uncle Joe, after all.) he was trying to make the case that it was right for the UnderWear Bomber to be read his Miranda Rights so he could be tried in a civil court. Did he Uncle Joe also go ahead and declare him guilty before the trial starts, like he (and most of the Adminstration) has with KSM?
Remember when the New York Times (think collectively) accused the Bush administration of abusing executive power? Today The Times writes,
“with much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities.”
(The italics in the quote, of course, mine.)
The next sentence is even more incredible:
“Mr. Obama has not given up hope of progress on Capitol Hill, aides said, and has scheduled a session with Republican leaders on health care later this month. But in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign.”
The best line of the piece, which you can read in its entirety here, is,
“White House officials said the increased focus on executive authority reflected a natural evolution from the first year to the second year of any presidency.”
Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove, and others must have collectively said, after reading that this morning, “huh?”
Further Republican nihilism from once respectable senators like Orrin Hatch are ruining this nation. By doing absolutely nothing since January 20, 2009, the Republican Party is poised to gain seats in 2010.
I would like to repeat that: By doing absolutely nothing since January 20, 2009, the Republican Party is poised to gain seats in 2010.
I would like to repeat that again: By doing absolutely nothing since January 20, 2009, the Republican Party is poised to gain seats in 2010.
It is time for Democrats to push this narrative harder and stronger. But, it was also time for Democrats to pass a large and overwhelming stimulus package, pass a climate change bill, enact universal health care, end the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, close Guantanamo, tackle financial regulations, and pass EFCA. Tall order to take on Republicans.
For more than 20 years the federal government had been building a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Built deep underground, the facility was never popular with Nevadans who didn’t want it “in their back yard”. Haven’t heard of Yucca Mountain? Not surprising that you wouldn’t have, unless you’re a true news junkie as nuclear fuel storage isn’t something a great many think about on a daily basis. Or are concerned about for that matter.
Yet nuclear storage was then, and is even more so now, of grave importance. The United States has 65 Nuclear power plants, with 104 reactors. Each of those reactors use nuclear fuel that must be exchanged every so often with fresh fuel. The old fuel is highly radioactive and must be stored in special containers in a secure environment for protection of the surrounding communities, but also to protect it from terrorists that would love to get their hands on it. Federal law requires the Federal government to provide a permanent storage for the used fuel, which will take thousands of years to become inert. But they’ve never done that, as Yucca Mountain has been mired in politics for all of that twenty year period. So the spent fuel is stored at each of the Nuclear power plant facilities in make-shift storage areas. Instead of one centralized location which can be guarded the country must instead deal with 65 separate storage sites that are near communities.
President Obama campaigned on shutting down Yucca Mountain, and instead of treating this like all of his other broken promises, he’s actually followed through. He shut down Yucca Mountain. Yet we as a country are too dependent on foreign oil, and the vast majority of our power plants are coal fired, which are rather dirty by nature. Coal fired plants also produce fly ash, which is cancerous and if not disposed of properly, can allow heavy metals to leech into ground water and soil. It’s no wonder many have wanted to re-emphasize nuclear power in the United States, but because of 3-mile island have not been able to since the late 1970’s. However that is beginning to change with the uptick in the price of oil over the past two years.
Today comes notice that the Obama administration is moving forward with loan guarantees for building of new nuclear power plants. Hurrah, except the problem with the permanent storage of the spent nuclear fuel. Ignoring the problem does not make it go away Mr. President. And it certainly doesn’t make it less risky for those communities either.
People have been right to criticize the Republicans and their political posturing and obstructionism. Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and others were right to openly mock the way Republicans have seemingly overnight changed their views on historic planks of their platform just because Obama was putting forward those ideas. Obama was correct to plead with them with calm, reasoned explanations on how they were politically shooting themselves in the foot in the long term and freezing the work that needed to get done in this country. It was right to speak of Republican Senators that had absurd and asinine holds on Obama’s nominations as holding the government “hostage”. In short, it has been right to describe Republicans as “obstructionist”, and not for principle, but for politics. I personally resonate more with historic “conservative” visions of the government, but I have been disgusted by the abhorrent politicking that Republicans have been doing merely in the name of re-election. As Obama put it, far more concerned with their own job security than ours.
We have been right to cry out, editorialize, mock, rally against, be shocked by, and call for the end of these Republican political antics that have no basis in reason, discourse, or benefit to the American people or process.
But, how should we respond when those we disagree with “come back to the fold” a bit? What do we do when they finally relent their madness for the sake of principle? When reasoned discourse sways them a bit more toward sanity? We do not respond, I contend, in the way that the Huffington Post did with a recent Politico article that they aggregated at HuffPost did. As shown in the picture above, this article was the major banner front page article at HuffPost all last night. I think this is just as shameful and just as much of an example of trying to win political points at the expense of political progress as anything the Republicans did.
The article, by Mike Allen of Politico, tells the story of how after Obama talked to Republican leadership, mainly Mitch McConnell, they removed the hold they had over many of the 60+ nominations, thereby allowing 27 confirmations to occur in one session. They relented. The responded appropriately to the reasoned words of Obama. They acted responsibly in light of their childish antics being exposed. They finally put the priorities of the American people in the right place, even if it was in the briefest of moments. They should be treated with grace. They should be applauded. They should be encouraged to continue this trend to get more done. They should be given the respect they deserve for doing even the little bit they have done.
But no. Allen writes: “Democrats say that McConnell blinked. Republicans contend that the list [of approved nominees] shows they’re not obstructionist.” The Huffington Post takes this quote and build an entire sensationalist gloat by plastering the phrase “GOP Blinks” accompanied by dopey-looking pictures of Mitch McConnell all over their site last night. This perpetuates a certain kind of “we were right, you were wrong”-type atmosphere that does not invite further progress by the GOP. McConnell should be praised and thanked for stopping at least some of the political games. True, the nominees were only released from their hold in a deal to keep Obama from doing recess appointments, and they still have holds on nearly 40 more nominees, but this is still a start. It should be lauded.
Many times, when we are in an argument and we at some point realize we are wrong, that twist of pride we feel in our stomachs isn’t so much over being wrong, but rather over the potential gloating and derision that may follow from our opponent. This can cause stalemates to last infinitely longer than needed. If the Huffington Post was as interested in civil discourse and progress as they seem to be, they would continue to mock and call out when politicians don’t act in our best interest, but would begin to applaud and act with gratitude toward them when they did act in our best interest. This would be the kind of reporting that would serve the purpose of the media.
So, in short, be biased — don’t hide it. But give credit where credit is due. This is the heart of true diplomacy.
Brokaw, to make light of McClellan’s charges, also declares that “all wars are based on propaganda.” He even mentions World War II. For Brokaw, who has embraced the notion of that being the “good war,” to put the Iraq invasion in the same class is outrageous. There is a huge difference between admitting that there is a propaganda element to every war – and pointing out that certain wars are mainly based on propaganda and that a country has been misled, or lied, into war.
Me: I would go further and say that much of the American political debate is based on propaganda. Health care ‘debate’, the bank bailout, it’s getting nigh on impossible to get a decent rational discussion going in this society.
And that will be part of the ruin of our society — devolving into a bunch of uneducated pissed off people screaming at each other led by fools like Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. I can’t wait, we’re almost there.
AP is reporting today that the new Jobs Bill that Obama is trying to put together is not likely to have much effect beyond adding another $33 billion to the deficit. Obama is hoping that the bill will provide a bi-partisan solution to our economic woes and will buy him back some of the credibility he once enjoyed. The main highlight of the bill is a tax credit for the 6.2% employer portion of Social Security on payroll for hiring someone who has been unemployed for 60 days.
The problem is that once again Obama is addressing the symptoms but not the real problem. Who is going to hire someone, pay them salary, health insurance and other benefits for a 6.2% tax credit just so that person can sit in their office and play solitaire while the phone stays silent? The reason people aren’t hiring is that there isn’t work. The issue isn’t that employers are drowning in work but can’t afford the payroll taxes. And with Obamacare, Cap and Trade, and the end of the Bush tax cuts on the horizon, no employer is going to hire someone they don’t need for a credit on their payroll taxes.
The bill is considered bi-partisan because it extends about $33 billion in popular tax deductions that Democrats let expire while fighting each other over health care. Republicans might consider voting for the $33 billion in ineffective payroll tax cuts in order to reclaim the $33 billion in tax deductions for state sales tax, teachers buying school supplies, tuition, etc.
The other reason Republicans might vote for the bill is because the Democrats, who complained for six years about the Patriot Act, have re-authorized it in this jobs bill. It will be interesting to see if the Left actually notices.
Obama and his progressive lunatics have attempted to blame Bush for just about everything. One of Obama’s favorite lines is to claim that when he came into office, Bush left him with a $1.3 trillion dollar deficit. It was so bad that Bush made Obama spend $1.4 trillion in 2009 and another $1.6 trillion in 2010. But, Obama’s spending is not Bush’s fault…its Obama’s
The Washington Times reports:
Even more staggering than the mountains of snow in the capital are the deficits the Obama administration plans for the next decade. Huge spending increases will add about $12 trillion to the national debt for budget years 2009 to 2020. The scariest part is that these deficits are based on unrealistic budgeting assumptions; the real fiscal outlook is much bleaker.
In the proposed 2011 budget, the White House defensively attacks the “irresponsibility of past” deficits. For example, the 2009 budget deficit of $1.4 trillion is blamed on the George W. Bush administration as if President Obama’s $862 billion stimulus package and more than $400 billion supplemental spending bill had nothing to do with it. Mr. Obama’s planned 2010 budget deficit rises to an even higher record level of $1.6 trillion. By comparison, all of Mr. Bush’s deficits from 2002 to 2008 – the seven years during which his team had the most control over the budget – produced a combined deficit of $2.1 trillion.
Hey lefties…did you see that last line? Obama has spent more in 2 years than Bush did in 7 years. Obama’s BIOB (Blame it on Bush) defense just won’t work anymore.
The media is buzzing in anticipation of the impending launch of Operation Moshtarak in Marja, Afghanistan. It will be the biggest military operation of the war so far, and, in many ways, the first fruit of President Obama’s repeated choices to add more troops and firepower to the mess that is the Afghanistan war. Marja is fairly densely populated area in Afghanistan: 85,000 in Marja proper and about 45,000 in the surrounding region. Missteps or neglegence on the part of the military could be tragic, to say the least. U.S. commanders are talking out of both sides of their mouths, promising the revelation of the oft-promised humane war while promising to rain death on our enemies.
What’s got me the most worried is the spadework being done for some sickeningly familiar hand-washing. One could announce one is about to attack a given location to reduce civilian casualties. One can also give said announcement if one plans on taking the gloves off–that way when innocent people die, you can say, “They were warned. They should have left when they had the chance.” The most vulnerable victims can fall into your trap of moral exculpation.
Marja. Fallujah. New Orleans.
Recall Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004:
Before the second Fallujah offensive, Willingham remembers seeing American planes drop flyers ordering citizens to leave the city.
“The flyers let them know we were getting ready to start bombing the city, (and) anyone who stayed we assumed was an insurgent,” Willingham said.
The Fallujah attacks created more than 200,000 internally displaced people and thousands of civilians were killed (predictable, considering that everyone remaining inside the city was treated as an insurgent). Estimates of the dead vary widely. Some exceed 6,000 people. Dispute the exact numbers if you like. The Fallujah operations were a fiasco. The coalition forces devastated the city. They killed many innocent people. Remember that. That’s what happens when you give an evacuation order to a populated area and then treat those left behind as if it’s their fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Remember New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Katrina. Remember that residents were warned to flee. Remember that despite notice of the oncoming storm, some couldn’t leave.
The world watched helplessly as thousands of New Orleanians were caught in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. While some blamed public officials for not responding soon enough, others blamed the victims for not evacuating when they knew the hurricane’s arrival was imminent. One fundamental insight of social science is to understand the illogic of blaming the victim (Ryan 1976)…
New Orleans is a city in which 27.9 percent of residents live below the poverty line, 11.7 percent are age 65 or older, only 74.7 percent are high school graduates and 27.3 percent of households do not have cars. Furthermore, a larger than average percentage of residents have disabilities: 10.3 percent of 5-20 year olds, 23.6 percent of 21-64 year olds, and 50.1 percent of those age 65 and older have disabilities according to the 2000 U.S. census. In addition, 77.4 percent of New Orleans residents were born in Louisiana and have lived most of their lives there. These statistics alone go far to explain why tens of thousands of the 500,000 residents of New Orleans did not evacuate; in so many ways they were more rooted in place than the average American. …New Orleanians’ plans for evacuation were strongly shaped by their income-level, age, access to information, access to private transportation, their physical mobility and health, their occupations and their social networks outside of the city. These social characteristics translated into distinct evacuation strategies for different sectors of the population.
…
Low-income residents had fewer choices with respect to how to prepare for the imminent arrival of Katrina. Since the storm was at the end of the month and many low-income residents of New Orleans live from paycheck to paycheck, economic resources for evacuating were particularly scarce. …[L]ow-income New Orleanians are those who are least likely to own vehicles, making voluntary evacuation more costly and logistically more difficult. …Although most of these residents joined the flow of traffic out of the city on Sunday, many remained in their homes hoping for the best, and others headed to the Superdome rather than taking the few city buses available to out of town shelters (Filosa 2005).
…Not everyone can evacuate the city, even in a mandatory evacuation. Doctors, nurses, hospital employees, police officers, and other essential city and state employees remained in the city to perform their jobs. …As hospitals closed down and evacuated patients, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff were often stranded. Some of these workers were evacuated from the Superdome and Convention Center, while others managed to get back to their homes and cars and drive out of the city. …Accounts from this group of people are harrowing and heroic and go far to explain why a total evacuation of the city was impossible.
…People living in social isolation and poverty, especially the elderly, the disabled, and those with chronic diseases, have scarce economic resources and social networks that are more locally concentrated and connect them to people in similar socioeconomic circumstances. Therefore, they are less able to use these social networks to evacuate before a hurricane or recuperate their losses after such an event.
Now, consider the poverty of Afghanistan. The country is one of the ten poorest in the world. GDP per capita is about $425 per year, and more than a third of that meager sum is consumed by corrupt officials demanding bribes, to say nothing of the illicit taxes the Taliban levy on goods. The adult literacy rate is just over 28 percent. We like to say Afghanistan is a “tribal” society, but in reality it is an atomized society, with geographically isolated social networks having been pulverized by decades of war. If many in New Orleans found it hard to evacuate, the residents of Marja will find it doubly so.
Judging by the L.A. Times article on the upcoming operation in Marja, the U.S. commander is saying all the right words when it comes to the issue of insulating the non-combatants from the carnage:
…[I]n the weeks leading up to the imminent offensive to take the Helmand River Valley town of Marja in southern Afghanistan, the Marines’ commander, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, sat with dozens of Afghan tribal elders, drinking endless cups of sweet tea and offering reassurances that his top priority will be the safety of Afghan civilians.
“In counterinsurgency, the people are the prize,” Nicholson said in an interview at Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. base in central Helmand province that is the main staging ground for the offensive.
That would be reassuring if Nicholson weren’t talking out of both sides of his mouth:
US Second Marine Expeditionary Force commander Larry Nicholson said that the evacuation of most civilians would give commanders leeway to use air-to-ground missiles, declaring that he was “not looking for a fair fight.”
ABC News quotes Nicholson explaining some truly worrisome logic:
Nicholson underscored the point saying a heavy handed approach will reduce the chance for civilian casualties.
“Our feeling is if you go big, strong and fast, you lessen the possibility of civilian casualties as opposed to a slow methodical rolling assault. You go in and you dominate. You overwhelm the enemy,” he said.
Okay, let’s put these two things together. Nicholson is telegraphing he’s letting the air strikes off the chain and that he intends to use rapid, furious attacks in Marja, and somehow that is supposed to lead to reduced civilian casualties. Well, that would be great if we didn’t already know that the single greatest cause of U.S.-caused civilian casualties was airstrikes in support of troops involved in intense firefights.
Now, one should give people the benefit of the doubt. Nicholson is gearing up for a fight, and when he speaks, he’s got at least two audiences: the Afghan public and his troops. So, one could just write this off as (pardon my French) a little bit of dick-swinging machismo meant to get his troops fired up and his enemies scared. But the problem is that he’s talking trash about using the tactic most responsible for U.S.-caused civilian casualties in a densely populated area, and if he follows through on his swagger, lots of people not a party to the conflict will be torn to pieces by U.S. munitions.
Oh, and “leaflets have been dropped in the Marja district, urging residents to get out of the area.” In a country with 28 percent literacy rates.
As residents flee Marja in advance of this operation, some that remain behind will be members of armed opposition groups like the Taliban. They will be mixed, however, with the poor, the elderly, the sick and the heroic who stay behind to help them.
Members of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, for God’s sake, remember Fallujah. Remember New Orleans. Remember who is really in those buildings. Remember that many of them are trapped, and that many of the trapped got there through a life of misery. Love your neighbor as yourself. Remember the least of these. And as for your enemies, remember, with God watching you, that you must love them, too.
For those of us here in the United States – remember those who are in the path of the hurricane. And remember that the hurricane is us.
As I watched some of C-SPAN’s coverage of the Tea Party Convention last night, I was disturbed by references again questioning the legitimacy of President Obama’s birthplace. Here is a clip exemplifying this (starting around 4:23):
As posted before, this conspiratorial thinking is not good for the cause of conservatives and libertarians. Once this dubious issue is brought up by Obama critics, anything else they say is often ignored — and maybe rightfully so. Despite facts debunking the claims of these “birthers,” this conspiracy theory is still alive and well.
Obama critics would do well to stick to legitimate criticism of Obama’s policies (of which there are many) and avoid this type of conspiratorial thinking that is typical of the misleading half-truths and outright lies often found in chain emails. If something sounds too good to be true, it often is.
David Weigel at TWI is reporting on the Palin speech to the “Tea Party Convention” in Nashville. I’ve dvr’d it and have only listened to the first fifteen minutes and will either update this post or write more expansively tomorrow.
For now I’ll just say that she is putting the capstone on the merger between the so called tea party — or parties — and the Republican party. It was obvious anyway, but now they’re not even trying to put up a facade. Still, I think that’s a a move that will diminish their outsider credibility and spark various internal skirmishes.
Also, by defending the Bush administration and adopting, in the first fifteen minutes at least, a combative tone reminiscent of some of her really odious posturing during the campaign, it seems that she is giving quite a gift to the administration and congressional Democrats.
En av de sämre idéerna som George W Bush genomförde under sin tid som president var Department of Homeland Security. Han bemannade det med över hundra tusen byråkrater. President Obama är ju en av världens få riktigt stora beundrare av George Bush och han är extra förtjust i just detta departement. Han tycker dock det är futtigt med bara hundra tusen byråkrater när man kan ha tvåhundra tusen byråkrater där. Två är ju dubbelt så mycket som en och alltså dubbelt så bra!
Obama tror dessutom på det där som John Maynard Keynes lärde ut om att staten kan spendera landet till rikedom. 48 miljarder dollar är DHC:s budget under 201, och den kommer inte skydda amerikanerna ett dugg. Men det är väl å andra sidan inte meningen.
It seems that President Obama has come to his senses!
The moon - quite a long way away? Courtesy NASA
Bush started a programme in 2004 known as Constellation – it was costed at $104bn!
Whilst the original moonshot in the 1960’s when Kennedy galvanised the western world I cannot see why mankind would want to spend £65 billion on proving we can go to the moon – again? Or have I missed the point? As a kid I was fascinated by space and the Apollo missions – Buzz Aldrin sounded just great! But that was then… the world has moved on. We have other priorities.
We may have learned a lot as a result of the work NASA did but there are myths about how they ‘invented’ new products – velcro for example. That was invented by George de Mestral
But that diverts the argument. Imagine what we could do with £65bn. We could probably wipe out ‘homelessness‘. We could train doctors to eradicate many of the worlds diseases – especially in the third world.
I know the money won’t go to such causes. Perhaps Obama will use it to sort his health reforms?
President Obama continues to SAY he will demand deficit neutral legislation from Congress. He continues to PREACH a message of fiscal responsibility. BHO continues to BLAME the Bush administration for every bad piece of economic news released in the wake of Democrats’ unprecedented socialization of the American economy in 2009.
For the first six months of his term, Obama got almost 100% of everything he demanded of his Democrat dominated Congress.
He demanded his $787 billion “porkulus” bill be passed to avoid 10% unemployment and the loss of millions more jobs.
It passed along party lines and now we have 10% unemployment and millions more lost jobs.
He demanded his record budget be passed.
Democrats voted for it, Republicans against, and we now have record deficits.
He seized control of General Motors and Chrysler claiming it was necessary to make them profitable again.
Now the US government and the UAW own the two behemoths. They both remain unprofitable, but their American competitor that DID NOT take a government bailout posted a profit last year.
He demanded TARP be expanded so banks would lend money to get the economy moving again.
Democrats agreed, the banks got our money, and the credit markets largely remain frozen.
He demanded new legislation to stem the flow of home foreclosures.
Democrats obliged and now we continue to see record numbers of people losing their homes.
Though President Barack Hussein Obama continues to blame former President George Bush for all the evils in the world, the current President’s solutions have been implemented and solved absolutely nothing!
Now, Democrats in the US Senate have voted to increase the federal debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion to $14.3 trillion from the current $12.4 trillion. The US House will soon vote to do likewise. And today we have yet another reminder of the utter failure of Obama’s economic policies.
According to the US Treasury Department, the federal debt will reach the current debt ceiling of $12.3 trillion by month’s end! No wonder Obama’s in a hurry to raise the limit.
If Congress refuses to allow the President to borrow more, BHO will run out of OUR money to spend! He’ll no longer be able to mortgage our children’s future to buy a few votes. He’ll no longer be able to fund his goon squads at ACORN, SEIU, and the New Black Panther Party! He might even have to slow down his jet setting around in Air Force 1 if the US line of credit becomes maxed out.
Write, call, and email your US Representatives and demand they NOT increase the debt limit. If the President won’t voluntarily cut spending, if he’s going to keep saying one thing and doing another, let’s cut up his credit card and send him the message that it’s time he learn to get by the way ordinary Americans do when times are tough.
We’ve been tightening our belts! It’s time Uncle Sam pulled his a couple of notches tighter.
O Banco Central irá aumentar o controle nos pagamentos de bônus e salários dos executivos de bancos nacionais, como forma de evitar que eles adotem práticas “agressivas” que visem lucros no curtíssimo prazo em detrimento da saúde financeira das instituições onde trabalham.
A medida não prevê limitação de valores. No entanto, os ganhos vão depender mais do desempenho dos bancos no média e longo prazo. As regras, que entram nesta sessão em audiência pública para receber sugestões, seguem recomendações do G-20.
A notícia é um dos principais destaques nos jornais e cadernos de economia desta terça-feira (2). Veja também as demais manchetes referentes a economia e finanças que são ou poderão ser assunto no mercado:
O Estado de S. Paulo B1 – Belo Monte vai custar mais R$ 1,5 bilhão;
B4 – BC propõe regras para remunerar executivo de bancos;
B6 – País tem déficit de US$ 116 milhões;
B7 – Remessas de lucros crescem 277% sob Lula;
B8 – Paulson culpa governo inglês pela crise;
B11 – Cosan e Shell se unem para tornar o etanol um combustível global;
B12 – Braskem compra Sunoco e já mira novas aquisições;
B13 – Bradesco é a nona marca de banco mais valiosa.
Folha de S. Paulo Dinheiro – BC quer mais controle sobre ganho de executivo de banco;
Dinheiro – Ajuste deve dar R$ 1,6 bilhão a mais de lucro ao BB;
Dinheiro – Bancos: marca Bradesco vale mais que JPMorgan, Credit Suisse e UBS;
Dinheiro – Cosan-Shell impulsiona etanol no mundo;
Dinheiro – Ibama exige R$ 1,5 bilhão em obra para liberar Belo Monte;
Dinheiro – Importação de carros pesa, e balança tem déficit de US$ 166 milhões;
Dinheiro – Proposta de Orçamento de Obama prevê déficit recorde;
Dinheiro – Retração: economia russa se contrai mais do que na crise de 1998;
Dinheiro – Braskem faz sua primeira aquisição no exterior.
O Globo Economia – Remuneração de executivos de bancos é alvo de ofensiva também lá fora.
Jornal do Brasil Economia – Obama propõe orçamento que leva a déficit recorde.
Valor Econômico A3 – Ibama libera Belo Monte com 40 exigências;
A8 – Pesquisa traz Dilma empatada com Serra;
A9 – EUA preveem déficit recorde, mas prometem queda rápida;
B6 – Cosan, com Shell, traça planos ousados;
B8 – Braskem começa nova corrida nos EUA;
C1 – Oi suspende debêntures de R$ 2,3 bilhões;
C8 – BC quer regular ganho de executivo de banco;
D3 – Valor das companhias abertas brasileiras recua R$ 126 bilhões em janeiro;
D4 – CVM chinesa critica preços “irresponsáveis” em ofertas públicas.
It seems Haiti and America have much in common. If we compare America to the current situation in Haiti we can come up with a workable solution for both countries.
Haiti had a horrific disaster, a 7.0 Earthquake. It caused much human devastation.
America is in the middle of a disaster of it’s own, our banking system almost collapsed. This has caused economic devastation.
Haiti needs immediate Medical assistance. Haitians have no Medicine, no Doctors, and no Hospitals.
America has many who need Medical assistance. America has Medicine, Doctors, and Hospitals, but no Insurance and no money to buy it.
Haitians have no homes. An earthquake destroyed them, and people are homeless.
Many Americans have no homes. They have been foreclosed upon and people are homeless.
Haitians have no food. Supplies are on the way; Port-O-Prince has a small airport damaged by the earthquake, and only so many planes can land in a day, but at least food and supplies are on the way.
America grows much food and has many people on Food Stamps because they can not afford to buy food.
Haitians are the poorest of poor countries and not many are educated.
Until recently America was one of the richest of rich countries and law requires education of the young.
Haiti has 1 million who are unemployed and much rebuilding to do.
America has 18 million who are unemployed and no work to do.
Haiti has a very small government and many Haitian Government officials have left Haiti to come to Florida, leaving no one in charge to run their country.
America has a very large government and many Americans are not happy, we have too much government trying to be in charge, and there is no one left to really run the country.
So, Mr. President, I have an idea:
During the Iraq war our government gave a no bid contract to Halliburton to build a Tent city for our soldiers in Iraq. It had sleeping quarters, a mess hall, latrine and recreational area. This can be done again, but in Haiti.
During your State of the Union Address, you said you were going to concentrate on JOBS this year. The stimulus money last year was mostly spent on JOBS that lasted anywhere from a week to maybe 5 months. When I think of Stimulating the Economy I think long term, not just for a week, a month or 5 months. Garage type sales like Cash for Clunkers, just does not do the JOB. America needs JOBS that turn into Careers. We need innovation. We need entrepreneurs. We need to manufacture again.
I have heard that many Haitian government officials have left the island and are now in Florida. Well, I started thinking to whom are we going to hand all this donated money over to? Why not pay American Volunteers, along with any supplies or equipment they may need and send them to Haiti to help rebuild the country and use Stimulus money to pay them? America can handle the money disbursements from our country, instead of handing $167 Million over to some new self-appointed leader in Haiti, who will squander the money by building himself a Palace and buying a grand life-style on our tax dollars, or should I say China’s dollars. Considering how long it will take for us to pay China back, I want some bang for our tax dollars.
We need long term JOB Stimulus. Americans don’t want borrowed, Stimulus money to the tune of $700+ Billion to be used for very short term, basically minimum wage or very close to minimum wage jobs. Americans want long-term work. They want careers. At least for the Volunteers we could create JOBS that last for a few years, and they can send the money home to their families to be spent, thus creating or should I say Stimulating the Economy.
My plan, if you so chose to do this, would be to get some bids from companies that specialize in rebuilding disaster areas, like we did in Iraq and send them to Haiti. Give the contract to one or even two companies and let them go to work. They can build maybe 3-4 fully equipped Tent cities.
Use the Internet and TV, and run PSA (Public Service Announcements) asking for Volunteers; unemployed, born in America, experts only, in the fields of Demolition, Construction, Fire Fighting, Police, Medicine, Cooks, Day Care and Education.
Out of 18 Million unemployed Americans we should be able to rustle up a few thousand Volunteers who are willing to go to Haiti and help re-build Port-O-Prince for these people. It would not be much different than joining the Army. All Volunteers must have clean records, and FBI background checks before being hired.
1) This would be a long-term JOB. Haiti will not be rebuilt in a day, week, month or year. It could take a few years to rebuild Port-O-Prince.
2) Give each American Volunteer, a Health Insurance Policy (slight injuries or non-serious illness can be taken care of in Haiti, with no need for Insurance) but for serious injuries or illnesses the American Volunteers will need to return to the US and the Health Ins. can be used there. The insurance policy will be paid for by the government, (right up your alley) until the employee is done with his JOB or finished with treatment for any major injuries or illness received while on the JOB. If continued medical treatment is needed, then he will keep the insurance until he is healthy again.
3) Each American Volunteer will have a $250,000 Life Ins. Policy, paid for by the government, in case of death, while on the JOB. This too will be for the duration of the JOB and then cancelled.
4) All American Volunteers will be transported by US military planes to and from the US and Haiti.
5) American Volunteers can get a ride on US military planes back to the US every 6 months for a week and then return to Haiti (the JOB).
6) They will be paid the going rate for their type JOBS from Stimulus money and the donated money will pay for equipment and supplies.
7) Equipment from the USA will be transported by American military to Haiti.
8) Haitian men can be hired as paid employees and assist the US workers.
9) First, well-planned Tent cities will be built outside of town, and laid out properly for long-term use. This will be home for the Haitians until Port-0-Prince is rebuilt.
a) Sleeping quarters, Large Mess Hall areas Latrines, Day Care areas Schools and Recreational areas for the young, and a Medical center should be established at each tent city. All Tent cities will also have a Police Post.
b) A Shower area will be built, running water, and electrical should also be setup and/or re-connected.
c) An area for washing clothes will also be needed.
d) Haitian men will help with building the tent village and then the rebuilding of the city, to keep them busy and out of trouble.
e) Mess Halls can have cooking pits, and Bar-b-Q’s made from oil drums, ovens and running water etc.
f) Haitian women can help in the Mess Hall, with cooking and food preparation.
g) Haitian women can run Day Care facilities and Orphanages
h) There will be Police Protection for all, and especially for the women.
i) There could be a school and church area built in each Tent city also.
Though long term, but not permanent (1-5yrs.), the Tent City will need to be professionally built by experts.
10) Does anyone realize that Haiti is an Island? Haiti is surrounded by Water loaded with Fish (protein). This Fish is FREE food and in an unending supply. We can hire Deep Sea Fishing boats from Maine and the East coast fishing area, that have been basically put out of business by all the importing America is doing, and pay them to come to Haiti and catch fish. They too, get the Health Ins. Policies, and Life Insurance.
11) If the ports are damaged from the earthquake, then US transport Helicopters can pick up containers filled with fish and dry ice right off the boats, and drop them near Mess Halls in each Tent city. They can then return the containers to the boats to be refilled with fish. Haitians can help clean and prepare the fish.
12) American Volunteers can set up large garden areas to grow food for the Tent cities and Haitian workers can run it.
These tent cities are a necessity so that the Haitians will have a place to live until the job of rebuilding their Capitol is done. There will be a need for more than one Tent city considering how many people are homeless.
Housing for the American Volunteers will also be necessary.
An American Volunteer group could go to Haiti and begin building the American Volunteers Tent City, which needs to be separate and at a distance from the Haitian Tent Cities.
I understand Euro countries have donated $500 Million dollars. They too can send unemployed workers and join the US. Globalization at it’s best.
America could actually end up with a department in let’s say Home Land Security, for trained American Volunteers, starting with unemployed workers who will go to disaster areas around the world on an on going basis. They can be called the Rescue & Recovery Volunteers of America all paid for by Stimulus money and any donations for now and in the future the money the USA usually donates to such disasters can go directly to America’s R&R unit. At least we will know what the money is being spent on.
This, in my opinion, is a win-win situation. This will be a win for the unemployed Americans, who would like nothing more than to have a job to go to everyday. Americans will have the satisfaction of helping those who cannot help themselves. While helping Haitians rebuild their country and their lives, Americans will be helping to rebuild America and American lives. Americans will be able to turn a hopeless situation into one of HOPE, not only for Haitians but for Americans too.
Without sounding too self-righteous, I don’t want to hear that it can’t be done; I just want to know when America can get started? Remember people from around the world have risked their lives, for years, to come to this Country, the land where, they think, all things are possible. So, please do not tell this American that it is impossible, because I know that this is not true. I have NOT seen nor heard of a better idea coming out of Washington yet that will create JOBS, Stimulate the Economy and actually help put America on the Road to Recovery. This plan will work. My idea is detailed and transparent.
This plan will let the World know that America is a Country that does not give up. America may be down for the count but our people ALWAYS find the will to go on, ALWAYS find the strength to stand up, dust ourselves off and begin anew. Here is America’s chance to show the world that the Power behind the engine (America’s People) is fired up and ready to go.
I recall how the Haitians stood up and yelled “USA-USA” when after many days, rescue workers pulled someone out from under the rubble who was still clinging to life. Unlike some other countries, Haitians actually want America there to help them. How can we not?
Hillary Clinton was right, many years ago, when she said, “It takes a Village”. It will take a lot of people to rebuild Haiti’s Capitol.
This would definitely be a game changer for the White House and this administration. It would be a bold move on your part Mr. President, and it’s an original idea. Something we sorely need in this country.
I can see the Headlines now. America shall Rise Again