Saturday, August 1, 2009

Why You Can Never Believe A Congressman ...what's worst is you can't believe the people who voted for the liars...their your friends!

Today, House Committee Showed Why You Can Never Believe A Congressman Without Verification

By Roy Beck, Friday, July 31, 2009, 11:07 PM

Congressmen lie. Congressmen deceive. Congressmen think the voters in their District are either idiots or too apathetic to notice.

Today's vote on health care for illegal aliens is such a perfect example. The vote was a farce that will be used by many Congressmen to defend themselves against charges that they promote illegal immigration, when in fact their action today just encouraged more of it.

Many Congressmen were stung by the intense phone calls and other outrage from their constituents after they successfully voted on Thursday to kill the "Deal amendment" that would have required verification to keep illegal aliens from getting any new federal health care.

So, they came back today to introduce another amendment that said illegal aliens couldn't get the health care.

HOWEVER . . . .

. . . . the amendment today provided for no verification. And actually reaffirmed other decisions of the last three years to include illegal aliens in various taxpayer-supported benefits.

Our allies in the committee pointed out the deception but the amendment passed on a voice vote.

Expect this to happen:

When you criticize any of the Members who voted against the Deal Amendment, you can expect that they will point to this amendment today that they really did oppose rewards for illegal immigration.

I say in my video blog today that you should never trust anything any Congressman ever says about immigration until you have verified it with NumbersUSA. That is why we keep track of every action every Member takes. Come to our Report Cards and Vote Profiles to check on any claim.

NumbersUSA is running millions of impressions of internet ads in the areas of some of the Congressmen, exposing their role in helping Speaker Pelosi expand the benefits to illegal aliens.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

What a croc!

Baby croc scares plane passengers

A baby crocodile caused panic on a flight from Abu Dhabi to Cairo when it escaped from a passenger's luggage, Egyptian airport officials say.

Passengers screamed as the crocodile, measuring about 30cm (1ft), made its way down the cabin before eventually being captured by crew members.

All passengers on the Egypt Air flight were questioned about the reptile, but none admitted taking it on board.

The crocodile was handed to local authorities when the plane landed.


Reports said it will be donated to a local zoo.


An Open Letter to Senator Lamar Alexander (since I cannot vote for you, I'll help you OUT by spreading this letter around!)

Source: The Grouch At Right Truth

An Open Letter to Senator Lamar Alexander

I sent this to the senator's website this morning.....I'm seething!

Dear Senator Alexander,
I am dismayed by the report that you have decided to vote FOR Sonya Sotomayor for associate Supreme Court Justice.

This woman is a racist pure and simple. If you or any other white man had said they would make a better judge because of your rich white experience, you would have been crucified.

That aside, this woman is a radical left wing liberal who will not defend the constitution but will rather use her position on the court to "make policy". She said so senator.

I voted for you when you ran for governor and also senator. I am angry that I will have to wait until 2014 until I can vote you out of office, but I will not forget what you have done, senator. Rest assured, when 2014 approaches, I will be speaking out and sending letters, reminding all my friends and colleagues what you have done.

The time for bipartisan nonsense in Washington is over, senator. As the left wing Barack Obama tries to destroy our healthcare system and take over a fifth of our economy with government run programs and as he tries to drive the remainder of our economy into the ground with nonsensical cap and trade, we no longer need wimpy Republicans who compromise and cross the aisle. We need strong conservatives who will stand up for what is right. You have failed, senator. You should have looked Sonya Sotomayor and Barack Obama in the eye and said, "Not no, but hell no!" We need Republicans who are not afraid to bloody the noses of the Democrats whenever they can. You are not that man, senator.

Since I cannot vote you out until 2014, I would invite you to resign. If you won't do that, then I would invite you to change parties. If you're going to act like a Democrat, you should be one. At least your colleague, Senator Corker voted the right way, this time.

The next time the Republican party calls my number begging for money, I'll tell them that as soon as they give me Republicans that will act like Republicans, I'll consider contributing. Rest assured, your name will be mentioned.

Thomas Hamilton MD.
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Why all the secrecy?

Of all the news I've read today, this one bothered me the most. There is something sinister going on here that could affect us all... I think it already has! As Shakespeare might say, "There's definitely something rotten in Denmark." Betcha the judge is a left wing nut job! (No, I'm not imagining things.) ~ Norman E. Hooben
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Judge Rules Against Fox On Fed Records

Friday, July 31, 2009 10:28 AM


A U.S. judge on Thursday denied a bid by Fox News Network LLC seeking details from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve about the central bank's loans to companies affected by the financial crisis.

The owner of the Fox Business cable network made an initial request for documents in November last year under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) about the companies and funds they received between August 2007 and November 2008.

Both parties had filed motions with U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan federal court to rule in their favor after Fox filed its request to the court in January.

"I rule that one document, which the Board determined is not a record, is indeed, a record. The Board shall identify this document and either produce it or claim an exemption," Hellerstein said in a written order.

"In all other respects, I grant the Board's motion and deny Fox's motion, finding that the Board performed an adequate search and that Exemption 4 permits the Board not to disclose the documents that Fox seeks."

Under Exemption 4 of the FOIA, an agency must demonstrate that the information sought is a "trade secret" or "commercial or financial" in character and "obtained from a person" and "privileged and confidential."

The Fed has been a critical player in financial rescue packages for companies. It also opened up its discount window to a wider range of entities in an attempt to provide more liquidity to the financial sector.

Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp

The case is Fox News Network LLC v Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 09-272 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan)

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The Enemy Within...gets a break from the enemy within !

Click on picture to enlarge.
The enemy within prison gets a break from the enemy within the White House

The Surrender to the Jihad Continues . . . [Andy McCarthy]

source: National Review

Better have something to bite on before you start reading the intrepid Debra Burlingame's Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning — your teeth are going to be gnashing big-time.

Unbelievably, the Obama Justice Department has withdrawn the "special administrative measures" (SAMs) imposed at the federal supermax prison in Colorado against "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid (the jihadist who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with nearly 200 people on board). As Debra explains, the "SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when 'there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury' to others."

Why abandon the SAMs? Because they were a violation of Reid's First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of his religion, of course. So the would-be suicide bomber went on a hungar strike and got results: a cave-in from the Obama Justice Department — which works closely with the "human rights" Left (some Obama DOJ lawyers are recruited from this faction; other top Obama DOJ lawyers aligned with it while they were in private practice, volunteering their services to enemy combatants held at Gitmo).

Exactly what was the First Amendment problem here? Debra explains:

In a hand-written complaint, [Reid] asserted that he was being illegally prevented from performing daily “group prayers in a manner prescribed by my religion.” Yet the list of Reid’s potential fellow congregants at ADX Florence [i.e., the supermax prison] reads like a Who’s Who of al Qaeda’s most dangerous members: Ramzi Yousef and his three co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui; “Millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam; “Dirty bomber” Jose Padilla; Wadih el-Hage, Osama Bin Laden’s personal secretary, convicted in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing that killed 247 people.

The human-rights Left is already incorporating their fabulously successful smear-Gitmo strategy in their attack on our civilian prisons. Even Reid's hungar-strike is page one in the Gitmo playbook. Here's Debra again:

In January, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado issued a statement saying that conditions at supermax are “simply another form of torture” worse than Gitmo which “make a mockery of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’” Last month, the ACLU filed a civil lawsuit mirroring Reid’s religious rights claim on behalf of two terrorism inmates held at the Communications Management Unit inside a medium security prison in Terre Haute, Ind. One of those inmates is Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen serving a 10-year sentence for diverting Muslim charity money to militant Islamic groups in Bosnia and Chechnya. The other, Randall Royer, is serving 20 years for his role recruiting young Muslims in the “Virginia Jihad Network,” a group that used paintball games in 2000-2001 to train for holy war.

Sure it's nuts, but as I detailed a couple of weeks ago, detainee policy in the Obama/Holder Justice Department is now being shaped by former Human Rights Watch lawyer Jennifer Daskal, who thinks incarceration is tantamount to torture (recall her complaint that one jihadist, "a self-styled poet," was being subjected to severe mental trauma: He "found it was nearly impossible to write poetry anymore because the prison guards would only allow him to keep a pen or pencil in his cell for short periods of time").

In my last column, I related the story of Mamdouh Salim, the al-Qaeda chieftain who maimed a prison guard and used the constitutional rights we gave him to try to kidnap his court-appointed lawyers in an escape attempt. The incident sits uneasily with Holder's bold claim that "the Justice Department has a “history of securely detaining and successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal-justice system.” What I didn't point out — but Debra shows in spades — is that to have any chance of securely detaining terrorists in civilian prisons, the SAMs need to be imposed and aggressively enforced.

Yet, even as Holder is making the "securely detaining" argument out of one side of his mouth, he's abandoning the SAMs out of the other. And all the while, Obama is pushing to close Gitmo and bring scores of these trained terrorists into the civilian prison system. It's madness.

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"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor* moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies in the heart of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.

The traitor is the plague......" Marcus Tullius Cicero, speech to the Roman Senate.

* Barack Husein Obama

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It doesn't get any stranger than this...sex with a horse!

Source: Charlotte Observer

Police: SC Man Charged With Having Sex With Horse

[Video Report ]

By JEFFREY COLLINS
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. A South Carolina man was charged with having sex with a horse after the animal's owner caught the act on videotape, then staked out the stable and caught him at shotgun point, authorities said Wednesday.

But this wasn't the first time Rodell Vereen has been charged with buggery. He pleaded guilty last year to having sex with the same horse after owner Barbara Kenley found him in the same stable and was sentenced to probation and placed on the state's sex offender list.

Kenley said she noticed several weeks ago her 21-year-old horse Sugar was acting strange and getting infections again. She noticed things in the barn had been moved around - dirt piled up and bales of hay stacked near the horse's stall at her Lazy B Stables in Longs, about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach.

"Police kept telling me it couldn't be the same guy," Kenley said Wednesday. "I couldn't believe that there were two guys going around doing this to the same horse."

She spent several nights at the stables, which are about four miles from her home, but didn't find anything. So she installed surveillance cameras, and when she reviewed the footage from July 19, she couldn't believe she was seeing the same man doing the same thing to her horse.

Kenley didn't call police because she was certain the man would come back to the stable, and she wanted to make sure he was arrested. So she staked out the barn and caught Vereen inside Monday night, chasing him to his truck and holding him with her shotgun until police came.

"He said he wasn't there to do anything, and I said, 'I know you were. I have you on tape.' And then he said he was sorry if he hurt me," Kenley said.

Vereen, 50, was first charged with trespassing, but police added a buggery charge after watching the surveillance tape. He faces up to five years if convicted. Vereen was already on probation after pleading guilty to buggery last year and was sentenced to three years of probation, ordered to stay away from the Lazy B Stables and declared a sex offender. He remains in jail, awaiting a hearing Monday to determine if he violated his probation.

Officials said they did not know if he has an attorney.

Vereen has had mental problems for several years, but seemed to get better after getting court-ordered treatment last year, said his brother, the Rev. James Vereen, who lives just down the street from his brother and the stables.

"He's done all right when he was on the medicine. I don't know if he is still taking it," said James Vereen, who added his brother has kept to himself a lot in the last few months.

Horry County police don't often investigate animal sex allegations, spokesman Sgt. Robert Kegler said. In fact, he said the last person charged with buggery in the county was Rodell Vereen in late 2007.

Kenley said she caught him then too. She stopped by her stable on Thanksgiving Day and found a man asleep in the hay by her horse, who had been locked in her stall, a mound of dirt and a stool behind her.

She said she thought about shooting Vereen both times, but didn't want to go to prison.

"Everyone around here has horses," Kenley said. "And they all said the same thing. You should have shot him."

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Roylaty In The White House...and Czars everywhere!

----- Original Message -----
From: (Link Removed)
To: (Link Removed)
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:07 PM
Subject: UNBELIEVABLE!.. Royalty occupies the WH!!!!

The Obama's are a disgrace. She has 22 attendants costing the US taxpayer over $1,700,000 a year.

"In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much," she said. "See, that's why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, " Michelle Obama

No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn't perform any official duties. But this hasn't deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.
How things have changed! If you're one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michelle are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:

Note: This does not include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49, and "First Hairstylist" Johnny Wright, 31, both of whom travelled aboard Air Force One to Europe.

1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)

2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)

3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)

4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)

5. Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)

6. $90,000 - Medina, David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)

7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)

8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)

9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)

10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)

11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)

12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator For The First Lady)

13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady)

14. Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)

15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary To The First Lady)

16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide To The First Lady)

17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence For The First Lady)

18. Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)

19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)

20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)

21. Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)

22. Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)


There has never been anyone in the White House at any time that has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady's social life. One wonders why she needs so much help, at taxpayer expense, when even Hillary, only had three; Jackie Kennedy one; Laura Bush one; and prior to Mamie Eisenhower social help came from the President's own pocket.
_________________
end of message
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Personnally I'd rather see her ...
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And what about the following...

Obama’s 32 Czars

By Eric Cantor

Thursday, July 30, 2009

“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States.” — Sen. Barack Obama, March 31, 2008

The LAST paragraph from this article: The point here is not that President Obama’s reliance on czars is illegal (although it does raise significant, unresolved constitutional issues). Nor is it that these czars are bad people. It’s that we have not been able to vet them, and that we have no idea what they’re doing. It’s that candidate Obama made a pledge to keep Congress in the light. Yet less than six months after his inauguration, the president appears intent to keep Congress more and more in the dark. Dozens of czars at a time.

Read more here ...

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Obama's Managed Health Care (really IS managed death care)...Will it be a Constitutional 'right'?

Sometimes we refer to things that go amok has "fallen through the cracks" and we tend to feel sorry for the ill fated who may have suffered some from the slippage. Then we have some major screw-up and everybody is dumbfounded as to what the heck happened. Now we have a United States Congressman who not only has fallen through the cracks but has become a major screw-up. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers wants to (or rather is going to) introduce a constitutional amendment that would establish health care as a "right" for all Americans. Now if this does not place you in the dumbfounded group, nothing will! Imagine that...health care as a 'right'...you got to be kidding me! But no, this joker is not kidding! When you claim that health care is a 'right' then you must take away someone else's 'rights' to pay for it. Sorry, but I'm not giving up any of my rights for somebody that's too lazy to buy their own insurance.
If the Constitution needs amending we ought to have a 'Dopey Politician Clause'...we can even name it after Conyers! Your rights...we tried to con-yours! (get it...Conyers, con yours)
On another note: Don't you think that Obama's managed health care bill should be renamed, "MANAGED DEATH CARE", for that's what it's all about anyway...to see who lives and who dies based on the needs of society. ~ Norman E. Hooben

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MESSAGE TO SGT CROWLEY ...DON'T GO! YOU WILL LOSE ALL CREDIBILITY! and he will USE you!

Crowley, the smartest thing you can do right now is refuse to go to the White House and play games with the racist-in-charge... He's using you! Don't let him!


Now here's a guy that knows how to think before he speaks which is more than I can say for Obama or Gates. (I think I would rather have this guy for a professor than the so-called professor Gates)

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

O'Reilly, Are You Crazy? The people want to know...don't you get it?

O'Reilly, If you claim to have seen these documents then let the rest of America see them! What's the big secret? OBama was born in Africa! Every honest person believes this to be true!
Why is Obama hiding it? Why did he make a law forbidding people to ask or seek this information? Obama's aunt was present at his birth in Africa...now tell me this isn't true! It seems as though you are taking sides in an issue that won't go away because those of us who want to know are not allowed... Why are you so privileged to have seen these documents? If they are the same documents that are already on the Internet then you are the fool...those are not official nor authentic...Why is such a simple request made so difficult by so many? Obama is an imposter and most of us out here know that for certain...prove us wrong...we are waiting!

Is this a teaching moment for Matt Lauer? He obviously does not know a racist scum bag when he sees one!

The scum bag? Oh, that would be Obama! ... AND, his racist wife!

When is Matt going to stop making excuses for this anti-American?

HR 3200 "We don't want to just do it quickly..." WHAT? Obama lies again!

And the lies just keep pouring in!!!!!!

"We did give them a deadline, and sort of we missed that deadline. But that's OK," Obama said. "We don't want to just do it quickly, we want to do it right."
We don't want to do it quickly... Just what do you mean Obama? just a few days ago you were in a big rush. Wasn't it recently asked by the media, "What's the rush?"
And when the president says we have to pass major, transformative legislation in the next few days because of a political timetable, it's most definitely time to take a breath.
ABC News Health Care Debate: What's The Rush (video) July 22, 2009
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) bemoaned that any health care proposal which taxes wealthy Americans and small businesses will "kill a lot of jobs" on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday."I don't follow why we have got to spend another one-and-a-half to two trillion dollars . . . on top of the two trillion we are already spending in this country . . . and then still by one estimate have 33 million people without health insurance," Hatch said. Read more here ...
"I just want to put everybody on notice, because there was a lot of chatter during the week that I was gone: We are going to get this done...Inaction is not an option. And for those naysayers and cynics who think that this is not going to happen, don't bet against us." ~ Obama, on health care reform legislation wending its way through Congress
I don't like your stinking dictatorial message Obama. Since when is it your business how my health care is managed? You or any part of the government has no right controlling the health care of anyone! Just what part of the Constitution says otherwise? ~ Norman E. Hooben
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House Blue Dogs Strike Healthcare Deal

Source: NewsMax.com

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 4:07 PM



After weeks of turmoil, House Democrats reached a shaky peace with the party's rebellious rank-and-file conservatives Wednesday and cleared the way for a vote in September on sweeping health care legislation.

Bipartisan Senate negotiators reported progress, too, on a bill to extend coverage to 95 percent of all Americans without raising federal deficits. "We're on the edge, we're almost there," said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican involved in the secretive Senate talks.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Finance Committee, said preliminary estimates from congressional budget experts showed the cost of the emerging Senate plan was below $900 billion and would result in an increase in employer-sponsored insurance — conclusions that may reassure critics who fear a bloated bill that prompts businesses to abandon the coverage they currently provide.

Across the Capitol, House Democratic leaders gave in to numerous demands from rank-and-file rebels, so-called Blue Dogs from the conservative wing of the party who had been blocking the bill's passage in the last of three committees.

The House changes, which drew immediate opposition from liberals in the chamber, would reduce the federal subsidies designed to help lower-income families afford insurance, exempt additional businesses from a requirement to offer insurance to their workers and change the terms of a government insurance option.

At their core, both the House bill and the plan under negotiation in the Senate are designed to meet President Barack Obama's goals of spreading health coverage to millions who now lack it, while slowing the skyrocketing growth in health care costs nationally.

Obama has placed the issue atop his domestic agenda, and as recently as two weeks ago was pressing the House and Senate insistently to pass separate bills by the end of July or early August.

The White House issued a statement praising the development in the House, and with appearances in North Carolina and Virginia, the president sought to minimize the significance of the slippage in his timetable.

"We did give them a deadline, and sort of we missed that deadline. But that's OK," Obama said. "We don't want to just do it quickly, we want to do it right."

In his appearances, Obama stressed that any legislation he signs will include numerous consumer protections, including a ban on insurance company denials of coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions.

Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, a leader of conservative and moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats, said the changes agreed to by the leadership would cut the cost of the House bill by about $100 billion over 10 years.

While Baucus reported the Senate Finance measure carried a price tag of under $1 trillion, congressional officials said it included only the cost of the first year of a 10-year, $245 billion program to increase doctor fees under Medicare. House Democrats used a similar sleight of hand, excluding the entire $245 billion when claiming their measure wouldn't add to the deficit.

The House deal was worked out over hours of talks that involved not only the chamber's leaders but also White House officials eager to advance the bill. It was unclear, though, what commitments Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the administration may have made to support the agreement once the bill advances to the floor this fall.

As word of the agreement spread, liberals fired back. "We do not support this," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., head of the Progressive Caucus. "I think they have no idea how many people are against this. They can't possibly be taking us seriously if they're going to bring this forward."

Whatever the longer-term ramifications, Democrats said the way was now clear for the Energy and Commerce Committee to approve its portion of the legislation, the last step before it comes to the floor for a vote.

"We're hoping to get a bill out before we leave ... this week," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, the panel's chairman.

In the Senate, Baucus, Grassley and two other senators from each party have been negotiating for weeks in hopes of agreeing on compromise legislation. Both men face considerable pressure from their respective parties — Baucus not to stray too far from Democratic objectives, Grassley not to hand the president a political victory.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has given Baucus months to see compromise across party lines is possible, and he told reporters during the day he expects a bipartisan plan to emerge.

The pace of decisions appears to have accelerated in recent days, with negotiators all but settling on a tax on high-cost insurance plans to help pay for the bill, as well as a new mechanism designed to curtail the growth of Medicare over the next 10 years and beyond.

More problematic from the Democrats' point of view is a tentative agreement to omit a provision in which the government would sell insurance in competition with private industry. In its place, the group is expected to recommend non-profit cooperatives that could operate at the state, regional or even national level.

Nor is any bipartisan recommendation likely to include a requirement for large businesses to offer insurance to their workers. Instead, they would have a choice between offering coverage or paying a portion of any government subsidy that non-insured employees would receive.

Like the House bill, the bipartisan proposal under discussion would expand eligibility for Medicaid to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

It provides for federal subsidies for individuals and families up to 300 percent of poverty, less than the 400 percent in the House measure.

Even if the negotiations succeed before the Senate's vacation, it is not clear when the Finance Committee would vote.

The proposal would have to be blended with a more liberal measure that was approved last month by the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee. It would then go to the Senate floor, where Democrats have 60-40 majority rather than the 3-3 lineup that Baucus and Grassley have led for months.

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Stimulus Plan Quote(s) Of The Day

"The stimulus package is a failure because it can't succeed. You can no more stimulate an economy by transferring resources from one group of people within the economy to others than you can receive a blood transfusion by taking blood from a vein in one arm and injecting it into a vein in the other arm."
"What's especially disturbing is that President Obama has said that the stimulus bill has worked as intended. If that's true, the president must have been lying back in January about his intentions." *

"Stimulus spending sucks money out of the private sector, where it's needed for the investments that will help the economy emerge from its lingering slump."
"Socialists see capitalism as an evil economic system founded on the concepts of profit, individualism, private property, private business, freedom to buy and sell products and services, etc. Indeed, a working definition of capitalism is “the peaceful and free exchange of goods and services without theft, fraud, and breech of contract.” Capitalism is tailored to individual initiative rather than groupthink or community initiative. Nearly all inventions that have furthered the capitalistic enterprise and blessed humanity in the process have been the result of individual initiative rather than committee, group, or government activity."
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*He was! (lying, that is) ~ N.E.H.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

In case you missed it, "The 'Something' Government Should Do"

"...the Roosevelt holocaust" Boy does that have a nice ring to it! It's about time someone came up with the proper description! ...but don't tell a Democrat!

Whatever you get out of this is more than you had before you started. The least you should know is, never trust an economist from Yale! Their thinking has not changed since Irving Fisher lost it all in the 1930's...he died a pauper and Yale thought he was the greatest. (Come to think about it, Yale thinks Obama is the greatest.) Harvard doesn't offer much in the way of predictions either. Best bets are..."Never send your children to dopey schools!" Just because Harvard and Yale are famous does not mean they produce smart people...politicians maybe, but smart people...some of them make their way through on their own merit with no thanks to the faculty. ~ Norman E. Hooben

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The 'Something' Government Should Do

Source: Strike At The Root

by George F. Smith

October 30, 2008

Sometime soon George Bush may want to review Herbert Hoover’s 1932 acceptance speech and pluck phrases from it that might calm angry Americans. In rationalizing his interventionism, Hoover said:

nothing has ever been devised in our history which has done more for . . . “the common run of men and women.” Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom . . . . We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter-end liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction. [p. 187]

Had Hoover followed the advice of the “bitter-end liquidationists,” one of whom was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, the economy would likely have recovered by 1932, and we might’ve been spared the Roosevelt holocaust. Mellon, though ever the interventionist during the 1920s, at least understood that a bust should be allowed to break. In stark contrast to the current secretary, Mellon correctly wanted to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate” to “purge the rottenness” from the system.

But Hoover overruled Mellon, and backed by other members of his administration, intervened heavily into the economy. Hans Sennholz describes Hoover ’s so-called “laissez-faire” approach:

[ Hoover ] prodded the Federal Reserve to renew many of the money illusions of the 1920s. The New York Federal Reserve Bank soon lowered its discount rate, 1/2% at a time, from 4 1/2% on February 6, 1930 , to 2% by the end of 1931. It cut its buying–rate for ninety-day acceptances to 1 3/4%. Trying desperately to reignite the boom, the System bought government securities on a grand scale, $729.467 million in 1930 and $816.96 million in 1932. [pp. 11-12]

Hoover also engaged in massive deficit spending, curtailed foreign imports, and pressured businessmen to maintain price and wage rates. Out of concern for “the common run of men and women,” Hoover ’s policies left 25 percent of them out of work by August, 1932.

Bush won’t have as many unemployed calling for his head, but others have reason for concern. Since the DJIA reached an all-time high on October 9, 2007 , $8.4 trillion has disappeared from the value of U.S. stocks, and $2 trillion has evaporated from the nation’s retirement accounts.

Stable prices and booms

Though Hoover was a pioneer among presidents in getting the government to “do something” about a depression, he was no maverick. He had the support of distinguished court economists who promoted the idea that stable prices were the key to lasting prosperity.

Common sense tells us that if we walk into a store and find prices consistently lower than they had been, we are better off, other things equal, because our money buys more. As Rothbard wrote, “Increased productivity tends to lower prices (and costs) and thereby distribute the fruits of free enterprise to all the public, raising the stand of living of all consumers. Forcible propping up of the price level prevents this spread of higher living standards.” [p. 40]

While the concept “stable price level” may not sound menacing, the mechanism for achieving it was. The theory’s proponents, which included such economics luminaries as Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, weren’t too concerned with price stability when prices tended to rise during a boom, especially if prices were rising on the stock market where they were heavily invested. The price stability priests were mostly concerned with falling prices during a bust, and for that they relied on government’s creature, the central bank. Falling prices, in fact, were regarded as the cause of depressions. Using enlightened “monetary policy,” central banks needed to keep prices from falling to keep economies from collapsing.

Yale and Harvard go boom and bust

Yale professor Irving Fisher helped popularize the view that the “new era” economy of the 1920s would last indefinitely. With the exception of stocks and real estate, prices were fairly level, and since the mainstream definition of inflation was and still is “a general and progressive increase in prices,” the 1920s were and still are said to be a period of inconsequential inflation. Rothbard tells us that

Fisher was particularly critical of the minority of skeptical economists who warned of overexpansion in the stock and real estate markets due to cheap money, and even after the stock market crash, Fisher continued to insist that prosperity, particularly in the stock market, was just around the corner. [p. 449]

Beginning in 1923 Fisher wrote a syndicated column, carried by leading newspapers, in which he discussed relevant economic issues of the day. Fisher’s column was Yale’s answer to the Harvard Economic Service. An NBER research paper says that Fisher’s

predictions in the period before and after the crash, were no closer to the mark than those of his Harvard brethren.

“In two months I expect to see the stock market much higher than today,” Fisher said on October 15, 1929 . Economist Hernán Cortés Douglas tells us that

Days after the crash [on October 29], the Harvard Economic [Service] informed its subscribers: "A severe depression such as 1920-21 is outside the range of probability. We are not facing a protracted liquidation."

After repeated forecasts of optimism, the Harvard Economic Service folded in 1932. Fisher’s professional reputation gradually collapsed. Fisher’s son estimates his father lost $10 million during the Depression (roughly $140 million in 2008 dollars). Yale had to buy Fisher’s house and rent it back to him to keep him from being evicted. When he died in 1947 he left an estate so small it wasn’t even taxed.

Interestingly, the authors of the NBER paper applied “modern statistical techniques” to analyze the data Fisher and the Harvard service used in their forecasts. The result: “The statistical findings mirror the verbal pronouncements' systematic overprediction of economic activity.” Translated: Today’s economics mainstream is equally clueless about booms and busts. Both Fisher and Harvard were correct in being wrong, the paper concludes.

Keynes was no less a forecasting bungler. An avid speculator, he saw nothing but good times ahead during the boom:

He met the Swiss banker, Felix Somary and was begging Somary to give him some great stock picks. When Somery said he couldn't recommend any stocks right now because he was expecting a crash, Keynes responded infamously, "We will not see another crash in our lifetimes."

(Somary once said, correctly: “the state alone is responsible for inflation: inflation without government . . . is impossible.”)

Keynes lost a fortune but went bargain-hunting in the early 1930s, putting aside his loathing of the barbarous relic and buying up gold stocks and managing money for insurance companies. He recovered handsomely until he was wiped out again when an incipient recovery collapsed in 1937. When he died of a heart attack in April, 1946 he had once more accumulated an impressive fortune.

“The injection of fiat funds falsifies interest rates”

Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek were among the few economists to forecast the Crash. Their crystal ball was the economic theory they had developed, known today as the Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle. It says bank credit expansion based on money created out of nothing generates booms that eventually go bust. Activities that were profitable when money was made cheap are revealed as unsustainable when low-interest loans are no longer available. Roger Garrison explains:

Mises showed that an artificially low rate of interest, maintained by credit expansion, misallocates capital, making the production process too time-consuming in relation to the temporal pattern of consumer demand. As time eventually reveals the discrepancy, markets for both capital goods and consumer goods react to undo the misallocation [p. 8].

The market reaction is the bust phase of the business cycle, as producers attempt to bring production in alignment with actual consumer demands. Hans Sennholz has written,

Economic booms and busts occur in every case of fiat expansion, whether the expansion is one percent or hundredths of a percent. The magnitude of expansion . . . merely determines the severity of the maladjustment and the necessary readjustment.

Even if most prices should decline while monetary authorities expand credit at a modest rate, the injection of fiat funds falsifies interest rates and thereby causes erroneous investment decisions.” [p. 38]

“Credit expansion” is another name for a policy of inflation. Inflation creates “the illusion of profits,” as Mises noted in Socialism; inflation “discourages saving, and thereby prevents the formation of fresh capital.” It is this “rottenness” – inflation – that must be extirpated along with all the bad bets, but since Fisher and Keynes, it is considered the cure. Hayek, Joseph Salerno tells us, “placed the blame for ‘the exceptional severity and duration of the depression’ squarely on central banks' . . . ‘experiment’ in ‘forced credit expansion,’ first to stabilize prices in the 1920s and then to combat the depression in the early 1930s.”

Government has tried countless ways to sustain its Fed-induced booms and avoid the painful but necessary corrections. Its track record has been an unmitigated disaster, unless inflating the economy out of a crisis for a bigger one later is regarded as success. Yet the idea persists that intervention works, that if a mountain of facts show otherwise it’s always possible the intervention was too little, too late.

From the Establishment’s perspective, the fatal flaw of Austrian economics is the job it accords government, which is none at all. But free markets are markets free from intervention, which means today’s government not only has a job, but a crucial one: It should bow out of our economic lives altogether. That’s the “something” government should do.

In the beginning

In his 1874 book, A History of American Currency, William Graham Sumner notes that in early America certain tribes on Long Island Sound had a circulating medium, and this fact marked their superiority to other tribes known to the settlers. The circulating medium consisted of polished beads of two kinds, one white, made from a periwinkle shell, and the other black, made from a clam shell. “They regarded one black bead as worth two white. This money was called wampumpeag, or wampum, or peag.” For these tribes, it was the perfect money. Like other commodity monies, it “was a product of labor, and subject to demand and supply.”

The colonists used wampum to trade with the Indians. Then they used it to trade with each other. Then, to mark their superiority, they began to counterfeit it – which brings us to the beginning of our current crisis.

Book Review - Our future looks grim at best...or does it?

Politically Incorrect Guide To The Great Depression And The New Deal

Myths about the Great Depression were once a mere annoyance. Now they have become a source for tyranny. The Bush-Obama response to the meltdown proves that one thing is certain: until we get the history of the 1930s right, liberty will be under threat of those trying to repeat the drama.

Thank goodness Robert Murphy has come along to straighten out the mess in a way that everyone can understand. In this hard-hitting book, we find the most accessible and most truth-telling book about the Great Depression and the New Deal that has ever been written.

Free-market economists have been working for decades to make the record of the calamity clear. This book may just be the magic bullet we've been looking for to kill off the myths before they kill us.

He puts together in one easy package the research of hundreds of scholars, showing that it was not capitalism that failed in 1929 but the boom times created by Fed credit expansion. Murphy takes aim at the Chicago School economists and the Keynesians who continued to be in denial on this central point.

A particularly great feature here for Austrians dealing with monetarist myths: Murphy explains that the deflation in the 1930s didn't have to be somehow devastating. It was not egregious by historical standards, and was fully compatible with economic growth. In fact, the Fed tried but failed to flood the economy with money in the 1930s. Here Murphy provides a very compelling explanation of fractional-reserve banking and its effect on the supply of money.

He further shows that Hoover was not a free-market president. His policies were so statist that he might as well have been a Soviet agent. His biggest critic, who blasted him for his spending and centralization, was none other than FDR. But once FDR came to power, he enacted the longest string of cockamamie, prosperity-killing measures of any president in American history.

The economy still hadn't recovered going into World War II, a war that didn't help the economy or get us out of the Great Depression. It prolonged the government-made pain.

Murphy dissects the real history here with facts, analysis, clear prose, suggestions for further reading, fantastic quotations from all the main players, and even when he is discussing complicated data, he never leaves the reader behind.

Murphy concludes his book by recounting what led to the current crash. And wraps it all up with an excellent criticism of Bush-Obama and predicts that their policies will prolong problems.

This book appears as part of Regnery's "Political Incorrect Guide" series but, in fact, this account is not biased in any particular direction. It is just good history, accurate history, truth-telling history that we have to know to navigate the treacherous waters of today's economic and political environment.

Capitalists everywhere should have this on their bookshelf and in their briefcase.

272 pages, paperback, 2009 ISBN: 9781596980969

More like this: The 'Something' Government Should Do

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Ace In The Hole...any which way you can!

Now I was never into golf...I actually played the game three times! I never had the patients to learn to hit the ball properly. But even with a lot of chops and swings I managed to score a 93 the very first time out (you don't want to know the other scores, but they did have three digits). I guess it was in the putting that made up for long shots. My overall opinion of the game is that it seems that it is more luck than skill. Now some of you avid golfers out there will totally disagree with me on this, and that is, the guy with the hole-in-one in this video should not deserve it...it was pure luck any which way you look at it. If it was skill then the ball should have went into the hole without the help of another ball.


...did ya catch that birdie?

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Legal Immunity to “unin­tended con­se­quences” means Sibelius expects you (or somebody like you) to die.

Swine Flu: Pigs to fly soon?


Posted By Patrick Wood On July 28, 2009 @ 11:26 am In Featured Stories 1 Comment

By Patrick Wood, Editor

On April 28, 2009, this writer asked:

“Are glob­alist fear-mongers dri­ving the media to panic the public into uni­versal health care solu­tions? Or federally-mandated vac­ci­na­tions?” (See Pan­demic Non­sense: Flying Pig Flu)

In the three months since, not one gov­ern­ment offi­cial or main­line jour­nalist has asked any tough ques­tions. Instead, they have con­tinued their para­noid stam­pede to a) make the out­break a world cat­a­strophe and b) pre­pare to force immu­niza­tion vac­cine shots on hun­dreds of mil­lions of unsus­pecting people.

This is a for­mula for health dis­aster, but when it comes to the bottom line profit of Big Pharma, who stand to gain bil­lions from vac­cine sales, a few casu­al­ties are accept­able as long as the greater good is being served.

This is the same fuzzy logic pop­u­lar­ized by the TV series 24: Acci­den­tally snuffing a few inno­cents is accept­able if it leads to the saving of thou­sands more lives. Of course, the latter is only a pos­si­bility and no other options are offered. Somehow, star Jack Bauer always comes through to save the day, but the viewer is left agi­tated and frustrated.

World­wide, there have been only 311 deaths directly attrib­uted to Swine Flu, and in many of those cases, there were other cir­cum­stances that cre­ated com­pli­ca­tions. The global total of 70,893 reported and con­firmed cases is itself sus­pect, because it’s dif­fi­cult to tell one virus from another.

The scene is being set up.

Asso­ci­ated Press reported on July 17 that Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices Kath­leen Sibelius recently signed an order granting legal immu­nity to vac­cine makers who might be sued over “unin­tended con­se­quences” that arise from their vaccines.

A top gov­ern­ment sci­en­tific adviser in Eng­land is also a paid member (£116,000) of the board of direc­tors of Glax­o­SmithK­line. Pro­fessor Sir Roy Anderson was one of the first “sci­en­tists” who cried “Pan­demic!” in April. Since then, he has been working TV and radio to tout the effec­tive­ness of anti-virals to fight Swine Flu (but not dis­closing his finan­cial arrange­ment with GSK, of course.)

Baxter Labs, a major vac­cine maker, for­tu­itously filed a patent for their H1N1 vac­cine (see page 4 of appli­ca­tion) on August 28, 2008. That’s right, 2008, months before the first known outbreak!

Big Pharma lob­by­ists have been busy working up sup­port in gov­ern­ments around the world to imple­ment manda­tory gov­ern­ment vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams to stop the pan­demic. In France for instance, it was recently leaked that Pres­i­dent Sarkozy had launched a secret plan to set up manda­tory vac­ci­na­tion for all res­i­dents of France.

In the U.S., Sibelius has already urged school super­in­ten­dents around the country to spend the summer preparing for a mas­sive Swine Flu vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram this fall. For the first time in his­tory, the Feds are rec­om­mending three vac­cine shots that will include two extra ones for Swine Flu.

Then, there is the mys­tery of the virus itself. My friend, Dr. Rus­sell Blay­lock, who con­tributed to my orig­inal article in The August Review, writes

“This virus con­tinues to be an enigma for virol­o­gists. In the April 30, 2009 issue of Nature, a virol­o­gist was quoted as saying,‘Where the hell it got all these genes from we don’t know.’ Exten­sive analysis of the virus found that it con­tained the orig­inal 1918 H1N1 flu virus, the avian flu virus (bird flu), and two new H3N2 virus genes from Eurasia. Debate con­tinues over the pos­si­bility that swine flu is a genet­i­cally engi­neered virus.” (see Vac­cine May Be More Dan­gerous Than Swine Flu)

If this was an episode of 24, what would Jack Bauer do next?

(Hint: don’t take the vaccine.)

David Joly says:

Hello Patrick, I have been a long time fan of yours. Keep up the good work!

I have been fol­lowing this ‘pan­demic’ since it began and it is obvi­ously a con. They better not come at me with a needle. I’ll take Blaylock’s advice and load up on vit­amin D.

How­ever, I was exam­ining the Baxter patent appli­ca­tion and noticed they didn’t specif­i­cally men­tion H1N1. They did men­tion “espe­cially vir­u­lent forms of influenza, such as H5N1 strains,…” (page 4). I sup­pose that could include H1N1 as well.

I am not a virol­o­gist, so someone please cor­rect me if I am wrong, aren’t the two dif­ferent viruses alto­gether? That is, H1N1 has its own strains and H5N1 has its strains (and the pos­si­bility of cross-mutations between the two). Also, the patent appears to be for the pro­duc­tion process and not an indi­vidual vac­cine. Looks like Baxter wants to be the only sup­plier in town.

What makes little sense to me is the rhetoric coming from the media. Sup­pos­edly Big Pharma will have loads of swine flue vac­cine to pre­vent us from get­ting sick this Fall/Winter. Yet, at the same time, they’re saying this thing could mutate. Wow! Wouldn’t that render your vac­cine useless?

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Columbia To Assist U.S. Forces In Afghanistan...Why?

The following video from CBS News depicts highly trained combat forces that are about to assist U.S. forces in Afghanistan. My question is, "Why?". We have had American forces in Columbia for I don't know how long but I know from previous readings that we were not in country simply to train an elite fighting unit. There's something more to this story that somebody is not telling us...so we will just have to wait and see but I personally believe we may be in for an undesirable surprise. - Norman E. Hooben



Watch CBS Videos Online

I added the following video only because I read John Perkins, "Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man" where he identifies much of what is going on in Columbia behind the view of CBS News.

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