Rand Has No Confidence In Geithner

Let’s have a vote of “no confidence.” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has called on the Senate to pass a vote of “no confidence” in Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. “I see no reason and no objective evidence that any of his policies are succeeding,” Rand said. It would be interesting to get every member of the Senate on record on this question: especially with one-third of them facing re-election next year.
What do you call a group of congressmen? The English language has some very interesting ways to describe multiples of things. A group of geese is a “gaggle.” A bunch of fish is a “school.” Several sheep are a “flock,” while many cows are a “herd.” There’s also a “parliament” of owls and an “dole” of doves. But do you know what you call a group of baboons? Believe it or not, the correct word to use is a “congress.” That can’t be a coincidence, can it?
Don’t believe everything a friend says. Especially if they say it on Facebook or Twitter. USA Today reported that “nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults say they are not honest on social networking sites.” Only 31 percent said they were “totally honest.” Twenty-six percent said they “fib a little.” Even scarier, more than one in five, or 21 percent, confessed to posting a “total fabrication.” And another 22 percent said they wrote a “flat-out lie.” Hey, USA Today, what’s the difference between a total fabrication and a flat-out lie?
The high cost of bread and circuses. In today’s Straight Talk, I mention how costly Obama’s “stimulus” program has been. Figures released by the White House Council of Economic Advisers reveal that every new job it allegedly created has cost taxpayers $277,500. It turns out the “circus” part of our bread and circuses is getting mighty expensive, too. Cable channel ESPN just signed a $15.2 billion contract to win the rights to carry Monday night NFL games for another eight years. At least our amusements are paid for by private enterprise, not public tax money.

House Debates Bill To Legalize Gun Permits Across State Lines

Legislators in Washington, D.C., are considering a House bill that would grant Americans who have gun permits from their home State the right to carry firearms across State lines, Fox News reported.
Though many States have previously entered into voluntary agreements with each other in regard to these permits, a national law has yet to emerge that would grant these rights. A bipartisan bill that is co-authored by Representative Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Representative Heath Shuler (D – N.C.) seeks to change that notion, according to the news outlet.
Advocates for the bill have argued that this type of national legislation would be the only way to ensure that their 2nd Amendment rights were protected while crossing State lines, reported Fox News.
“It cuts across Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives — even President Obama’s base is strongly in favor of this legislation,” Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the National Rifle Association, said in a statement.
The Associated Press reported that a group of city mayors from left-leaning States are opposed to the legislation. They wish to retain control over firearms allowed in their States concerning firearms.

Future Tax Hikes In The Works In Proposed Jobs Plan

The jobs stimulus plan that President Barack Obama has put forth as a solution to the nation’s economic woes contains tax increases that begin in 2013, and may continue to last through the rest of the decade, according to The Washington Times.
After the White House submitted the bill to Congress on Monday, many Republican leaders noted that although the plan cuts taxes in the next couple of years. The measures are funded by raising taxes by more than $448 billion over the rest of the decade, reported the newspaper.
“This would literally be tax and spend. That’s what this is — literally raise $450 billion and spend it,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now runs the American Action Forum, told the Times. “It’s one thing to say they’re paid for. It’s another thing to say I’m going to spend it now and pay for it after the election.”
The initial proposal was well received, as a broad measure, but after the fine print of the legislation was examined, the tax hikes for wealthy Americans after 2013 came into light, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Obama’s Dishonest Jobs Infomercial

Did you listen to Barack Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 8? Remember? It had to be squeezed in after the Republican debate but before the start of the professional football season.
What, you decided to skip it? You weren’t alone. While I haven’t seen any stats from the various survey companies, I suspect Obama’s speech was one of the least-viewed Presidential addresses. When it comes to Presidential promises to revive the economy, I suspect the public mood has gone from “let’s hear what he’ll do” to “I don’t believe a word of it.”
The very first sentence in the lead story in The Wall Street Journal the next day referred to Obama’s peroration as “what might be the White House’s last chance to change its political fortunes before the 2012 campaign kicks into high gear.”
What a bunch of hooey. The President’s speech didn’t presage a campaign stump speech; it was a campaign stump speech. In fact, it was little more than a 50-minute infomercial — except without the attractive models or clever graphics.
Obama’s oration was a classic example of the misleading rhetoric we’ve come to expect from him. The most glaring example is the number of times the president lectured his captive audience on the need to “pass it now.” I’m not sure how many times he used that phrase or something close to it; I lost count at a dozen.
But the point is, there was nothing for Congress to pass. In their haste to get the promiser-in-chief in front of the TV cameras, White House staff members forgot one little item: Nobody had written the doggone legislation he was going to demand Congress approve.
Oh, they came up with a name for it: the American Jobs Act. There were plenty of elements its booster-in-chief could brag about. But, as far as a proposed piece of legislation that Congress could analyze, debate, modify and then vote on, there was no such thing. That pretty much made a mockery of Barack Obama’s stern enjoinders to “pass it now.”
Something else missing from the President’s remarks were words like “stimulus” and phrases such as “tax increase.” The brainy boys and girls who are in charge of massaging their master’s message realize the vast majority of Americans don’t like these words or the people who use them. So the word has gone out: From now on, don’t say “stimulus.” Use words like “investments” instead. In place of tax increases, talk about “revenue enhancements.” Or better yet, promise that something will be paid for by future spending reductions.
This last one has been a favorite of politicians since Rome first became a republic. Our current President didn’t hesitate to pull that ancient rabbit out of the hat again on Sept. 8. Why, if you believe him, more than $1 trillion in spending has already been slashed from the Federal budget!
Of course, if you believe that, you’re an idiot. What he’s talking about — what politicians always prefer to talk about — are reductions in spending that will occur sometime in the foggy future. After all, with increases of nearly $1 trillion a year already built into the Federal budget, if you promise to reduce the increases by just 10 percent — voilà! — you can claim that you will reduce spending by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s how the game is played, folks.
The High Cost Of Obama’s Jobs
But enough about what was missing from Obama’s speech. Were there any specific promises in the President’s address? Sure enough. Just as soon as Congress passes Obama’s jobs bill, the spending spigot will be turned on for another $447 billion.
What will we get for the money? You will not be surprised to learn that the lion’s share of it will go to three of the Democrats’ most popular and most powerful constituencies: teachers, labor unions and the unemployed. If you’re an unemployed teacher who belongs to a union, congratulations! You just hit the Federal trifecta.
The President wants to invest a few hundred billion dollars into repairing and building schools, bridges, highways, high-speed rail, solar power and a bunch of other things. Happily, there was no talk of “shovel-ready” projects, since we learned with the last stimulus package how misleading that description was.
Oh, and speaking of misleading, did you see the White House report on how effective the previous stimulus package was? I doubt it, since it was released by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers on a Friday afternoon, right at the start of the Fourth of July weekend. That’s what you do when you want to make sure a story receives absolutely minimal coverage.
Hey, these folks are no dummies; they knew the numbers didn’t look good. The Administration says the $666 billion it spent to create jobs “added or saved” some 2.4 million jobs in America. Since there is no way to substantiate the numbers (how do you prove you “saved” a job?), we’ll never know the actual number.
But even using its own figures, that works out to $277,500 per job. Think of it this way: If the government had simply sent a check for $100,000 to those 2.4 million people, they would have had the best payday of their lives. And we taxpayers would have saved $426 billion.
But $277,500 per job is cheap compared to Uncle Sam’s solar efforts. Just before Obama’s great jobs oration came the news that the government’s favorite solar subsidy, a solar-panel maker named Solyndra, was closing its doors. More than 1,000 employees lost their jobs when the company filed for bankruptcy. Since Solyndra was the beneficiary of some $527 million in federal loan guarantees, that works out to over half-a-million dollars per job.
On that basis, Obama’s newest jobs program is a great deal. Its supporters say that the $447 billion they want to spend will create 2 million new jobs. If my calculator is correct, that works out to $223,500 per job. By Federal standards, this is a bargain, folks.
News flash: As I added the paragraph above to this column, the White House proudly announced that it had a bill ready to submit to Congress. No one on the Hill has had a chance to read it, of course. But neither had anyone read the monstrosity that created Obamacare before it was rushed through the House and Senate.
I can confidently predict that the American Jobs Act will be a hodgepodge of half measures, none of which will make much of a difference to the massive unemployment (and underemployment) in the United States.
I’ll have more to say about all of this, including the President’s laughable promise that his various make-work projects won’t add a penny to the deficit, in future columns.
In the meantime, you and I know the best way to create more jobs: It’s for government to get the heck out of the way. Reduce regulations, lower taxes and reward people for taking risks. Let people keep more of the fruits of their labors, and you can bet on a bigger harvest. It’s that simple.
By the way, not only does that produce more jobs, but it also produces more tax revenue. Does anyone want to bet whether this White House will give it a try?

Obama Administration Downgrades Economic Forecasts

Although the Administration of President Barack Obama has tried to garner support for its economic plan, officials have said the forecasts that were put out could be wrong, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Administration officials noted the forecasts that were originally put forward could be too optimistic, and that a downgrade of these predictions would be necessary, signalling a further decline of the economy, according to the newspaper.
Early this year, the White House said 3.1 percent growth for the gross domestic product was likely. Officials now believe growth may be less than 2 percent. The same type of downgrade is applicable for the unemployment rate, reported the Times.
“Today’s report confirms that the president’s policies have failed to deliver on his promises of job creation, deficit reduction and much-needed economic growth,” Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said in a statement.
Although the numbers that were released from the White House have signaled that economic growth has slowed, officials from the Administration deny that the country is heading for a double-dip recession, according to Bloomberg.

Berkeley Course Demands Students Be Liberal

The biggest punch line in American higher education just got a whole lot funnier (or a whole lot more terrifying, depending on whether you have children approaching college age). One might fairly presume that at some point, churning out graduates who parrot leftist babble while lacking fundamental academic and societal skills will drag the University of California, Berkeley’s reputation lower than Vice President Joe Biden’s self-esteem after an hour at a Mensa meeting. If I took a spot as a senior administrator at Berkeley, I might even try to rescue the institution before it begins running late-night TV ads offering classes in TV/VCR repair.
Alas, I am not a senior administrator at Berkeley, and I am quite certain I won’t be showing up on their short list for hires anytime soon. Among other qualities which eliminate me from contention for future openings at what amounts to an incubator for the noisy brats who populate most left-wing whinefests, I am well aware of the old adage: “Those who can’t, teach.” Also, I bathe regularly.
Since I wield no influence over Berkeley’s curriculum, I cannot stop it from offering what may well be the first course which expressly demands students move up the grade curve by being as liberal as possible. Beginning this semester, Berkeley will offer students credits for course work in a class entitled: “Fighting to Learn, Learning to Fight: Building the Movement for Public Education and Equality.” According the syllabus, coursework includes “…an auto biography (sic) focused on one’s own poltical (sic) development.”
The course is conducted under the auspices of an ultra-liberal group named “BAMN.” BAMN is the spectacularly discursive acronym for the equally discursively-named The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrants Rights And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. As if someone outside BAMN is likely to mistake the “professors” — a pair of student instructors and a BAMN activist — for anyone in the English department (witness the above citation from the syllabus).
A perusal of BAMN’s website reveals standard Democratic Party rhetoric, albeit more grandiloquent than normal.  BAMN credits itself with “building the new civil rights movement.” Imagine the disappointment of the “old” civil rights movement. Among their predictable aims, BAMN supports the DREAM Act, which would grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Despite BAMN’s stated goal of opposing racism and some vague horror they call the “New Jim Crow,” it opposes California’s Proposition 209, meaning it subsequently supports racism and discrimination in public-institution admissions, which were rendered illegal by Proposition 209. BAMN even dedicates a section of its website to defaming former Berkeley regent — and BAMN opponent — Ward Connerly, even suggesting he is the “Spokesperson for the Campaign to Resegregate America.” Connerly is black, meaning BAMN is essentially calling him an “Uncle Tom.” Hey, maybe he’s the “New Jim Crow.”
I wouldn’t trust BAMN apparatchiks with walking a group of preschoolers through the adventures of Dick, Jane and Spot. The tykes would come home claiming Jane was running because Dick was trying to date-rape her, while Spot was the victim of animal cruelty. Yet BAMN is in charge of granting academic advancement to the kids whom Berkeley claims will “make key contributions to the economic and social well-being of the Bay Area, California, and the nation” at least until the illegal aliens sprung by the DREAM Act vacuum up all the paying jobs.
One hardly requires a MacArthur grant to recognize that higher education is rapidly falling victim to political indoctrination masquerading as instruction. And Berkeley has certainly earned its reputation as the ground zero of fatuous liberalism masquerading as intellect. To add insult to injury, according to the Berkeley website, close to 60 percent of the school’s nearly $2 billion revenue stems from State and Federal funding. Add to that the 18 percent derived from tuition and fees, and the taxpayers are footing more than three-fourths of the tab for nonsense like BAMN.
Unfortunately, “learning” to reflexively vote for Democrats isn’t the same as learning more worthwhile skills. At some point, Berkeley graduates will cease contending with the unemployment created by the ideological brethren of their professors and instead will contend with being simply unemployable.

Make Way For The Marco Rubio Birthers

My, my, look what we have here: Marco Rubio Birthers crawling out from under their collectivist rocks, sensing it’s payback time for the Birthers who have been challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility for more than three years.
But there’s a huge difference between these two Birther groups. Notwithstanding the insistence of even Fox News commentators to wave aside the question of Obama’s birth certificate, the reality is that to this day, no one has seen proof that Obama was born in the United States.
For a long time, I rated it about 75 percent to 25 percent that Obama was born in Kenya, for one reason and one reason only: If his citizenship were such an issue, there was no plausible reason for him not to do everything possible to make certain that representatives of all media outlets had access to his original long-form birth certificate. Instead, he stonewalled — hard — for nearly three years.
If you or I were President of the United States and millions of people were questioning our birth status, is there any doubt in your mind that we would demand that our birth certificates be made available for everyone to see in order to put the issue to rest once and for all?
But it got worse. When Obama suddenly decided, just a few weeks before Jerome Corsi’s book Where’s the Birth Certificate? was due out, to publish his long-form birth certificate on the Internet, my 75-25 odds shot up to 95-5.
That’s right, while many Americans embraced a “See, I told you so” attitude, I became more suspicious rather than less, because I asked myself: “Why the sudden urgency? Why did Obama choose this moment in time to make available what millions of people had been asking to see for three years?”
As to the dispute about whether the PDF image of Obama’s purported birth certificate is layered or was in any other way tampered with, I’m not hi-tech enough to opine on that issue. I’d prefer to just stick with the most obvious question: Why would Barack Obama not be eager to make a hard copy of his birth certificate available for all to see?
For whatever it’s worth, in April of this year, Barack Obama actually requested, and received, two certified copies of his original certificate of live birth from the Hawaii Health Department. I won’t speculate on the reason for this… just calling it to your attention.
Look, I’m neither a Birther nor a believer, but I am a skeptic whenever I smell smoke — and smoke is something that perpetually comes out of Obama’s mouth. Based on his track record of telling the biggest whoppers imaginable with a completely straight face, why should I believe anything he says?
Nevertheless, I’ll leave it on an even-handed note and admit that future investigations — perhaps years after you and I are gone — may prove that Barack Obama was a legitimate citizen of the United States or may prove that he pulled off the biggest scam in U.S. presidential history.
Now, back to the Marco Rubio Birther issue. Unlike Barack Obama, Rubio doesn’t have a mysterious past filled with unanswered questions. He has also been consistent in preaching the gospel of capitalism, entrepreneurship, low taxes, less regulation, less borrowing and the greatness of the American way of life.
In other words, Rubio has never even so much as implied that he wants to fundamentally change America. If anything, his words indicate he favors returning the United States to its founding roots.
Whether Rubio is eligible to be President of the United States gets down to a Constitutional interpretation, which is always a tricky issue. The problem is that the Constitution does not define the term “natural-born citizen.” Though both Bobby Jindal’s and Marco Rubio’s parents were legal residents of the United States at the time of their sons’ births, none of them became citizens until after their sons were born.
All this reminds me again why I believe the Constitution needs to be redrafted, for clarification purposes only, by Constitutional scholars, preferably strict constructionist constitutional scholars.
Among the items that need clarification are the general-welfare clause (Article I, Section 8, not to mention the use of the term general welfare in the Preamble to the Constitution), the 2nd Amendment (needs an “and” before “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”), and the 14th Amendment (clarifying that it was intended to cover the children of former slaves, not illegal aliens).
Realistically, however, this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and, if it did, I would be concerned about who would be doing the redrafting.
In the meantime, pundits and politicians will have a field day if Marco Rubio is selected as the Vice Presidential nominee for the Republican Party. And Chairman Obama might not be eager to see that happen, because it would, quite naturally, bring his own birth issue back into the limelight.
My hope is that Herman Cain will get the nod if he can’t win the nomination, which not only would put the Marco Rubio Birther issue on the back burner for now, but would surely be a fatal blow to Obama’s hopes to finish the job of fundamentally transforming America into a collectivist hell.
Hmm… why do I have this feeling that if Maxine Waters were to read this article, she would tell me, in that soft and gentle voice of hers, that I can go straight to hell? Probably just a bit of paranoia on my part.

9/11 Questions (Almost) Nobody’s Asking

Sunday will mark the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And although the official version of what happened that day has more holes than a Revolutionary soldier’s sock in Valley Forge, it is now accepted as fact and without question.
The reason for this goes back to what I wrote last week in Prima Facie. There is no inquiry by the American people. What their “leaders” feed them is automatically believed to be true.
Conventional wisdom has it that 19 hijackers of Middle Eastern origin — primarily Saudi Arabians — outwitted the vast United States intelligence network and the worldwide intelligence network for months while preparing to carry out the largest attack ever on American soil. The attack was planned from Afghanistan by a bunch of cave-dwellers and financed by the son of a Saudi billionaire who had an ax to grind with America for occupying Muslim holy ground.
The 19 hijackers conducted extensive training, including learning to fly — but not land — airplanes so they could pull off the attacks. The hijackers split into four teams and, armed only with box cutters, each overpowered the crew and a planeload of passengers and hijacked a plane. There weren’t 20 hijackers and four equal teams because one of the hijackers, Zacarias Moussaoui, was in jail in Minnesota on an immigration violation.
During the ordeal, passengers used cell phones and airplane seat-back phones to call loved ones to tell them of their plight.
After two of the planes struck the towers of the World Trade Center and erupted into huge fireballs, the passport of one of the accused hijackers was found, intact, lying on the sidewalk, virtually unsinged and undamaged but soaked in jet fuel. This “lead” put the FBI on the trail of the hijackers and their co-conspirators right away.
The fires resulting from the crash, fed by jet fuel, brought down the two towers within hours and even brought down an adjacent building that was undamaged by the planes and had sustained only minimal fire damage.
In a field over Shanksville, Pa., a group of passengers decided to overpower their hijackers and regain control of the plane. One of the passengers, Todd Beamer, uttered the now famous words, “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll,” according to a customer service representative Beamer had reached while using a credit card phone in the back of an airplane seat.
As the passengers wrestled with hijackers for control, the aircraft plunged into the ground in a field and disintegrated into millions of pieces, most of which were small enough to fit into a carry-on bag. The largest piece found at the site was a section of fuselage about the size of a car hood. A section of the engine was found more than a mile away, and debris from the crash was found as far as eight miles away, blown there by the prevailing 10-mph winds after being tossed into the air by the crash.
The fourth airliner crashed into the Pentagon’s wall, leaving an impact hole about 20 feet wide and only slightly higher. Again, only small fragments of the plane remained after the crash and ensuing fire.
Although the South Tower of the WTC was the second to be struck at 9:02 a.m., it fell first, pancaking down in its own footprint approximately 57 minutes after the plane flew into it between the 78^th and 84^th floors. About 29 minutes later the North Tower of the WTC collapsed. It came down at 10:28 a.m., one hour and 42 minutes after it was struck between the 94^th and 98^th floors. It also fell straight down into its own footprint.
The attacks killed 2,996 people: airline passengers, building occupants, rescue workers and the hijackers.
By 3:30 p.m. CIA Director George Tenet had fingered Osama bin Laden as the culprit (thanks to the miraculous find of the terrorist passport), telling President George W. Bush and his National Security team that a check of the passenger manifests had turned up the names of three known al-Qaida operatives.
At 5:20 p.m. WTC Building 7 collapsed. It had suffered only minimal fire damage, but the official word is that fire caused the building to come down.
Three days later, Bush was standing atop a pile of rubble at ground zero making a speech through a bullhorn. A rescue worker yelled out that he couldn’t hear Bush. Bush spontaneously replied, “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people—and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
On Oct. 7, less than a month after four hijacked airliners crashed into the WTC, the Pentagon and a field, the “War on Terror” began in Afghanistan with the purported goal of dismantling the al-Qaida terror network and finding and killing bin Laden.
On Oct. 26, 2001, Bush signed into law the Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorist Act of 2001; aka the USA PATRIOT Act. The Act passed the house by 357-66 and the Senate by 98-1.
On Nov. 27, 2002, a commission called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) was formed to “prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks.” It was also charged with looking into preparedness and response to the attacks.
The commission issued its final report and closed on Aug. 21, 2004. In a nutshell, it blamed failures on the part of the CIA and the FBI and said had the agencies acted more wisely and more aggressively, the attacks could have been prevented.
Case closed for the media and the vast majority of the American public.
But there are questions, many questions. And fewer and fewer are they who are asking.
In the months leading up to 9/11, the United States’ vaunted intelligence agencies lost track of 19 foreigners, most of whom had overstayed their visas, and could not catch up to them even though some of them were living with FBI informants and others were enrolling in flight schools where they sought to learn to fly — but not land — airplanes. They were living the high life and not showing any evidence of trying to hide. In July 2001, according to an article in Germany’s daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals through the Echelon spy network that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons against important symbols of American and Israeli culture. Yet we are told the attacks came as a complete surprise. How could this happen?
Recent papers released by WikiLeaks indicate that in the weeks before 9/11, American intelligence services were on the trail of another group of five men with terrorist ties who were staying in California. They slipped away in the days after 9/11. Were they a fifth team of hijackers who did not complete their mission for some reason? How were they able to escape the massive U.S. dragnet?
Two days before the 9/11 attacks, the “Lion of Panjshir,” Ahmad Shah Massoud Khayin, who was the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, was assassinated by two suicide bombers posing as journalists. In the early morning hours of Sept. 11, a van occupied by Middle Eastern men pulled up to The Colony Beach and Tennis Resort in Florida, where Bush was staying. They said they were there to interview the President, but didn’t have an appointment. They were turned away. Are these two incidents related?
Two hours before the planes slammed into the Twin Towers, two employees of the Israeli instant messaging service Odigo received messages warning of the coming attacks, according to the Israeli publication Haaretz. Who sent the messages and why? Who else was warned ahead of the attacks?
At 8:44 a.m., during a working breakfast on missile defense with Congressional leaders, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted a terrorist attack would come, saying, “Let me tell you. I’ve been around the block a few times. There will be another event.” Did he know about the attack in advance?
How did that passport of Satam al-Suqami survive the crash? The plane was exploded into a giant fireball upon impact with WTC 1. Yet the passport exited his pocket or luggage and fell unharmed to the ground near the tower, where it was spotted by a passerby and turned over to police despite the bedlam going on all around? How is it that his was the only identification found out of all the passengers on the plane?
At 8:50 a.m., four minutes after the first plane struck, Tenet was made aware of the crash and realized it was no accident. Yet there is no indication he made an effort to stop Bush from making a scheduled appearance at Booker Elementary School in Florida, despite the danger he may have been facing were a highly coordinated attack being carried out. Before entering the classroom, Bush paused to speak with then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Later, Bush said he learned of the first crash before entering the classroom when he saw the plane crash into the building on television. There was no video of the first crash until much later in the day, and the school principal said there was no television in the area that Bush could have seen anyway. Why this discrepancy? Was Bush lying?
According to media reports, a number of the passengers on the hijacked airliners supposedly used cellphones to call loved ones and authorities. But cellphone technology in 2001 didn’t allow the use of phones above 10,000 feet. How were the calls possible?
Witnesses reported seeing a white jet that looked like a fighter plane trailing United Airlines Flight 93, and a sonic boom was reported in the area over Pennsylvania. Was there a second plane? If so, where did it come from?
Some witnesses also reported seeing Flight 93 on fire before it crashed into the field. Why were these witnesses hushed up and why weren’t they allowed to testify for the 9/11 Commission? What was the plane they saw and did it shoot down Flight 93 upon orders from Vice President Dick Cheney?
If the plane flew into the ground intact, how did a large portion of the engine fall more than a mile away from the crash site? How did lighter debris wind up as far as eight miles away?
In the days following the attacks, at least 60 Israeli citizens were arrested and held secretly — some of them with ties to Israeli military and intelligence. Fox News’ Carl Cameron was the first mainstream reporter to break the news. It was weeks later before other mainstream news outlets picked up on it. His four-part series that provided evidence that the Israelis had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks has been scrubbed from Fox News’ website. Who were these Israelis, what did they know and what became of them? Why did Fox News scrub the stories?
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is tasked with protecting American airspace. Yet even though the Federal Aviation Administration notified NORAD of the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:38 a.m. and other flights in the minutes that followed, it wasn’t until long after the last plane hit the ground that NORAD planes showed up. Where were they and why did NORAD sit on news of the hijacked planes for several minutes (which NORAD admits to but won’t explain) before scrambling any fighters?
When the 9/11 Commission tried to get answers to these questions, NORAD stonewalled and its representatives lied. What were they covering up and why? Why do they continue to stonewall to this day?
Firefighters and reporters arriving on the scene of the WTC fires claim to have heard numerous explosions before the buildings collapsed. What caused the explosions? Were they deliberately set to bring down the twin towers?
How did fires cause two skyscrapers to fall? It’s the first time fire ever brought down a skyscraper, and it happened to three buildings in one day. Why did they pancake down as if in a controlled demolition? If fire weakened the support beams, as the official stories suggest, why didn’t the towers fall to one side or the other rather than pancake down as if in a controlled event? Many engineers and architects at AE911truth.org say it could not have happened as we’re told. Why are they being ignored? Better yet, if these architects and engineers are lying about their theories, ask yourself what they stand to gain from lying and what is their motive?
Traces of an explosive called thermite were found in the rubble of the WTC and melted steel was found beneath the columns. What is the source of the thermite and what caused the steel to liquefy? Burning jet fuel does not reach a temperature high enough to liquefy steel.
What caused WTC Building 7 to fall?
The maneuver required to fly an airliner at the trajectory of the one that hit the Pentagon would be difficult for an experienced pilot, and some of the air traffic controllers watching the flight believed it to be a military aircraft at the time. How did a terrorist with limited — and by all accounts very poor — flying ability pull off such a maneuver without crashing into the ground prior to reaching the Pentagon?
Why was the hole in the Pentagon wall too small to accommodate an airliner — both in width and height? Why were no identifiable parts of a Boeing 757 found at the crash site? Why was an engine turbofan from an A3 Skywarrior found at the crash scene? If Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon, what happened to it and its passengers and crew?
In the weeks and months after the attack, men alleged to have been the hijackers and supposed to have died in the attacks began turning up alive. At least seven of them have been seen since 9/11 and one was found to have died prior to 9/11 in an airplane crash. What is the explanation for this?
Why did Bush begin talking to cabinet members about attacking Iraq while the Afghanistan attack was being formulated?
If we attacked Afghanistan with the intention of defeating al-Qaida and killing Osama bin Laden, why are we still there? Al-Qaida is no longer in Afghanistan and bin Laden is reportedly dead.
Why did the Pentagon participate in a cover-up and attempt to mislead the 9/11 Commission?
Why do members of the 9/11 Commission believe there are still many unanswered questions regarding the events of that day? Why did Commission members say they believed the Commission was set up to fail? Why have there been no charges of obstruction filed against those who stonewalled and lied to the Commission?
Did someone or someones in government or within some shadowy quasi-governmental agency participate in or facilitate the attacks? Was it a coup against the Bush regime? Could that explain Bush’s seeming confusion and his trips crisscrossing the Southern portion of the U.S. before going back to Washington, D.C.? What other lies are we being told?
Why aren’t you asking some of these same questions?

Prima Facie

Prima Facie is a legal term that translates as “on its first appearance” or “at first sight.” This also means self-evident.
In other words, if something is prima facie, no inquiry is needed to further investigate. All evidence is contained on the face of a subject.
The American people see and interpret prima facie. They do not inquire beyond that which appears as “public” information.
The reality is that most information comes to us in layers. The truth is beneath the surface and beneath the written or spoken word. Information from the public media and from official and political sources comes in layers. The first layer is what our natural senses perceive and retain as fact. This is almost 100 percent deceptive.
However, inquiring beneath the first layer, or prima facie, brings us closer to reality and truth. The more layers peeled back and the more inquiry we make, the closer we come to reality.
Some people get through several layers. A few people get to the reality that all or almost all public information, as well as public education, is false and totally misleading.
Finally, a small number of people get through enough layers of information that they come to the shocking conclusion that government is organized crime and it is every man for himself.
Most people don’t inquire enough to get to the big shock. The ones who do rush their assets out of the country.
This is why propaganda is so effective against a population. It is human nature to see, hear and translate without inquiry or without question.
The world of most Americans is a cartoon, a fantasy or a mirage. This is the product of a controlled media and “public education.”
People control is a work in progress. The system attacks the population by dumbing the people down to the point where they have no inquiry. Everything is prima facie. Everything is what the system says it is. Our lives are prescribed and defined. We do not think our own thoughts. We have a Mickey Mouse mentality, and we dwell upon frivolity.
Dr. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the only sober voice in American politics. He repeatedly warns the American people about the evils of our monetary non-system and how fiat paper money is in the final stages of transferring the remaining savings and wealth of the American people to the money creators.
Few people are listening!
Paul has now drilled a chink in the armor of the elite’s 100-year tyranny and financial burden of the private Federal Reserve Bank. Paul teaches and explains daily about the evils of a debt money system that is in the final stages of destroying America and impoverishing its people.
How has this monster, masquerading as a central bank, survived and prospered in our midst for several generations since 1913? The answer is back to prima facie. We accept the propaganda of the Federal Reserve and its lackey banker stooges without inquiry. The Federal Reserve Bank is organized crime at its apex and perfection.
This private cartel is at this moment creating inflation and food shortages by stepped-up money printing. It is criminal but “legal.”
The American people have been well taught to trust the system, the politicians, the bankers and the bureaucrats. They are oblivious to crime at the highest levels of government and the crime of the money creators.
The United States Congress and the U.S. Presidents are scoundrels. They get elected and stay in office by promising something they don’t have. It’s made possible because of printing-press money.
President Andrew Jackson said: “If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.”
“Presidents Lincoln, Jackson and Kennedy tried to stop this family of bankers by printing U.S. dollars without charging the taxpayers interest…” (Quotes from “Bulletin” Feb. 1989 and 1991 issues, P.O. Box 986, Ft. Collins, Colo. 80522).
My friends, the sole purpose of the U.S. Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal nor reserve) is to transfer wealth from savers and producers to the non-productive creators of fiat money. We are in the final stages of the greatest wealth transfer in history, and precious few Americans are aware of it. This is a testament to how crime at the highest levels can operate for a century under the cover of prima facie. The people simply believe without inquiry what the system tells them.

We are out of time because governments in their last days engage in all kinds of tyranny and oppression under high-sounding and “patriotic” terms. Be warned and beware. As confidence collapses, aggression against the population intensifies

Arizona Challenges Voting Rights Act

Arizona is suing the U.S. government, questioning the Constitutionality of a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horn said the suit, filed Thursday, challenged a part of the law that requires Arizona and other jurisdictions — mainly in the South — to get permission, or “pre-clearance,” from the Justice Department for changes to voting procedures, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“The Voting Rights Act plays a vital role in our society by ensuring that every American has the right to vote and to have that vote counted,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “The provisions challenged in this case, including the pre-clearance requirement, were reauthorized by Congress in 2006 with overwhelming and bipartisan support.”
The lawsuit was filed in Federal court in the District of Columbia.
Horne said Arizona was subject to the Justice Department procedure even though the State demonstrated fairness to racial minority voters, according to NBC News.
“Arizona is still penalized for archaic violations that were corrected with the implementation of bilingual ballots prior to the 1974 elections,” Horne said, adding Arizona, in 1974, became the second State to elect a Hispanic governor.
The lawsuit claims the Voting Rights Act is unConstitutional, “because it suspects all changes to state election law, however innocuous, until pre-clearance is given by the federal government,” Horne said.

Obama Oversees The Most Rapid Increase Of Debt Under Any U.S. President

President Barack Obama has often noted that when he took office he inherited a huge national debt as a result of President George W. Bush’s two wars, his tax cuts and a prescription drug program that the country did not pay for, according to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller.
Despite the President’s claims, Knoller writes, the most recent numbers from the U.S. Treasury show that the Obama Administration will surpass in just one term the spending of Bush’s two terms.
“The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion,” wrote Knoller in a recent CBS News Political Hotsheet report. “The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. The debt now is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama’s four-year term.”
As the President and Congress continue with attempts to revive the suffocating economy with “super committees” and Federal Reserve money pumps, many believe that there is no end in sight to over-the-top government spending. The debt ceiling crises and subsequent credit downgrade over the past month prompted some to question the rhetorical caps on spending that do not actually stop Congress from spending money, according to a recent Fox News article.
“It is nothing but grandstanding for members of both parties to vote routinely for legislation that they know will create deficits and then profess shock and horror that the debt limit must be increased as a consequence,” Bruce Bartlett, an economic policy adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, recently wrote in response to Representative Jerrold Nadler’s (D-NY) proposal that the debt ceiling be done away with completely. Many Republicans agree with the idea that the ceiling is worthless if it does not serve the purpose of actually regulating spending, but have called for the definite need of a comprehensive plan if it were to be removed.
One thing remains constant in all media reports, the economy is not getting better any time soon. The “super committee” has been directed to make a plan for $1.2 trillion in debt reduction over the next 10 years, but many say the plan is too little too late in a time where nearly $5 trillion in debt can be incurred in a little more than two years.

Planet Of The Taxpayers

The remake of “Planet of the Apes” — the apes look real this time — purports to give the back story of how it is that the world came to be governed by primates while the handful of humans are caged and abused.
The story line is so conventional that you could make it up just sitting there. A private-sector biochemical corporation rushes to test a drug that is supposed to reverse Alzheimer’s. It is tested on apes, and the drug makes them strangely intelligent. But the same drug unleashes a killer virus among humans. The rest is science-fiction history.
The anti-capitalism is so familiar that it is not even as disturbing as it should be. The CEO struts around in super-fancy suits, always in a rush from place to place, and his main job is to look cool and bark at everyone. Several times he snaps that drug development is all about profits. He tells a research scientist (paraphrasing): “Don’t talk to me about risk. Develop the drug. Then you get famous and I make money. That’s the way it works.”
Ah yes, corporate management, as told by the movies.
Then there is the privately owned ape prison where the animals are enslaved in cages before being taken to the laboratory to be pumped full of experimental drugs. They are shocked with electric prods, hit with clubs, fed gruel and humiliated constantly by the jerk in charge.
How the viewer feels such deep sympathy for these poor creatures. And how satisfying once they plot their big break. Led by the most intelligent and strong among them — an ape learns to pick a lock — they reenact Bastille Day; they leap out the top of the ape prison and run wild on the city. But they don’t just kill people. No, they are compassionate and even humane. They only want to get back to their native habitat, where they can climb and leap from tree to tree.
Cheer the wonderful apes! How much they seem to embody our own plight!
How so? Well, if you get the ideological import of the film, we are all enslaved to reckless corporations and their relentless drive for profits. They experiment on us when they are good and ready and otherwise keep us in their cages and feed us gruel.
Not to put too fine a point on it: We are the apes!
What must we do about this? We must gain a new consciousness, come together and plot our escape! Let us find the key, outwit our corporate masters and run like hell until we find our paradise, which is surely somewhere where we can commune with nature and live without the corporate noose around our necks.
There’s just one problem: This has nothing to do with reality. Yes, corporations want profits. Surely those are better than losses. And how do they get them? By making stuff that we want to buy. If we don’t want the stuff, we need only not buy it. Refraining from spending is how we get the alleged noose off our necks.
The whole system in a free market operates not on a master/slave relationship but on an exchange nexus. All parties have to agree. If anyone is enslaved in this system, it is the corporation, which must slavishly try to extract money from us by giving us goods and services that we want. If they fail, they die. If they live, it is we who give them life.
“But there’s no need for any escape to anywhere. We are already home. It is the State that is the uninvited guest.”
The successful companies make profits because it turns out that we do want smartphones, good clothes at an affordable price, healthcare, cool home furnishings, laptops, food that doesn’t poison us, ice cream from time to time, fish from Vietnam, social-networking applications, fruit from Brazil, shoes from China, pianos from Germany and electronics from Japan.
What’s more, these companies are not hogging their profits. On the contrary, many are urging us to pay into an ownership stake with them in the hope that we will earn dividends, and the value of our ownership claim will rise as the company becomes ever more valuable.
Some noose!
And yet it is true that a form of slavery exists and thrives today, all over the world. We do live in cages. We are prodded by electrical shocks. We are fed gruel of sorts. And they do experiment on us. I’m speaking of the relationship of individuals all over the world to governments all over the world.
They live off us entirely, because governments produce nothing of their own. They extract 40 percent of our wealth in one way or another and use that money to build their castles and their power. In fact, that is our main value to them. Otherwise, we would have no value at all.
In the name of providing us welfare throughout life, they loot us throughout life. In the name of providing us security, they humiliate us and treat us all like animals — and then have the gall to say that this system is all about public service. They manufacture billions of laws that no one can possibly keep and yet put us in jail when they decide to catch us breaking them. They order us to kill each other in the name of patriotism, but they are the only winners in this game.
The states have organized the whole of humanity along political lines. I’m an American. You are Chinese. You are Russian. You are Nigerian. You are a Swede. But look at it: most of these political borders are wholly arbitrary and even artificial. The sea-to-shining-sea idea was a concoction of 19th-century elites, not of the Founders. There is nothing in history called “China” — the elites had to trample down historic regional dynasties to concoct the modern nation-state.
And with social networking and digital communication, we are discovering something extremely important. We all have closer connections — potentially more-profound relationships — with each other than any of us have with the individual states that rule us. The salient fact is that we are stronger together than apart. Together we are the overwhelming majority, and they the minority. As we’ve seen in the Arab Spring, we can come together to teach each other and plot and plan our future. Then we only need to act.
But there’s no need for any escape to anywhere. We are already home. It is the state that is the uninvited guest, the interloper who trashed the place, the invader who has distorted reality and violates our rights. We need only to assert our authority over ourselves and claim what is rightfully ours. They will be left to scramble, but their propaganda will have no effect, because we know the difference between the truth and their lies.
And what will we be left with? The freedom to serve each other, to cooperate with each other, to innovate and own. The result will be what Murray Rothbard called “anarcho-capitalism,” or what Hans Hoppe called the “natural society” without the state.
So, yes, there is a sense in which this movie has it all exactly right. We are the apes. But it makes one giant error in radically misconstruing the difference between friend and enemy in the cause of liberation.

America’s Boom Gone Bust

If you ask me, the Debt Crisis of 2011 is more a dog and pony show than real substance. The Democrats rightfully blame George W. Bush. The GOP points out that President Barack Obama’s spending makes Bush seem like a piker. I have news for both sides. Obama is the worst of a very long list of spenders that began with President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose spending habits President Richard Nixon was able to afford only by suspending the gold standard.
What is truly unique to the 21^st century is that we are running out of affordable crude oil, the fuel that propelled staggering economic growth during the previous 100 years. And while the wheeler-dealers in Congress can lift the debt ceiling with the stroke of a pen, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put oil back in the ground again.
It was the Petroleum Age that ushered in the last and most potent round of the Industrial Revolution. It was the very fuel that powered world growth. And it was ubiquitous.
The tremendous economic growth in the 20th century, which saw the standard of living leap by a bound greater than it had jumped during the previous 1,000 years, can be attributed to a single factor: cheap and plentiful oil.
Some economic models show that labor and capital account for less than 25 percent of the actual growth of the U.S. economy. Three-quarters of the increase is the result of energy and technology, with energy producing the lion’s share of the latter.
Up until the late 20th century, energy was becoming more and more efficient. Each kilowatt produced more work. That is, until 1996. Since then, the 100-year trend has peaked, and we are no longer getting a bigger bang for our barrel.
The graph below shows how significantly oil has contributed to world gross domestic product. It underscores that the good life has come not only from great men or great ideas, but from our economic lifeblood harvested from the ground.
Easy oil meant easy times. One of the periods of great growth was between 1980 and 2000. During that time, daily oil consumption rose from 15 million barrels per day to nearly 20 million barrels per day.
During this orgy, oil prices dropped from $36 per barrel to $20. In real terms the price of oil fell by 60 percent. (See the chart below.) It’s no coincidence that during this same span America’s GDP rose from $2.7 trillion to $9.6 trillion. It was one of the most impressive 20-year growth rates in the history of the United States, and it helped Washington get spending under control.
Right along with the growing economy was a booming stock market. In 1980, the Dow Jones industrial average lingered below 1,000. By 2000, it stood above 10,000.
Over the past decade, the U.S. economic engine slowed and finally stalled with the economic crisis of 2008. Even after a recovery of sorts, the Dow sits just 2,000 points higher than where it stood at the onset of the 21^st century. If you factor in an inflation-adjusted Dow, stock prices have actually declined 10 percent from when Bill Clinton was President.
Today, we face the prospect of not only higher oil prices, but a possible oil shock. With record demand and global production stagnant, the interruption of just 5 percent of the world’s oil supplies would likely create a 50 percent price spike. That would put crude oil prices at almost $150 per barrel in scant days and would push gasoline prices above $6 per gallon.
Make no mistake; petroleum is used to produce everything. Building the average car consumes approximately 27 to 42 barrels of oil. Constructing the typical desktop computer requires more than 10 times its weight in fossil fuels.
Cheap oil is essential not only for making things but in growing things as well. From making fertilizer, to powering the tractor and fueling trucks and trains to bring crops to markets, agriculture needs oil. More expensive oil makes everything more expensive.
As our dependence on oil grows, the availability of it is shrinking. The United States is currently producing less oil today than it was in the early 1950s. And you can’t find a single oil man who thinks global oil production will grow.
“Over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil equivalent have been produced since Edwin Drake drilled the world’s first oil well in 1859, reported Angel Research. “The world will need that same amount to meet demand in the next 25 years alone.”
And there is nothing on the horizon to replace petroleum. In fact, every four years, the United States consumes a cubic mile of oil. This has the energy equivalent of:

• Four dams equivalent to the Three Gorges dam, cranking out power for 50 years.
• More than 30,000 wind turbines, cranking for 50 years (at 100 percent capacity).
• 104 coal-fired electric plants, going full capacity for 50 years.
• 52 nuclear electric plants, running full-bore for 50 years.

The Crude Truth About America’s Future

The disaster building in energy means the arrest of the amazing economic growth enjoyed by the United States and the world over the past century. As oil prices go up, the cost of everything goes up — from the shoes you buy to the food you eat. That leaves less disposable income for luxuries and that means big-time profit slumps for companies of every ilk. It will be especially bad for the airline and automobile sectors, which will be hit not only by rising costs but also tumbling sales.
Of course, Obama doesn’t want America or the world to believe this inevitable truth. He hints that there is some Green Genie tucked away that will solve all of America’s energy needs. This is nonsense.
The last President that was honest about the nation’s energy predicament was Jimmy Carter. That was more than 30 years ago, and it played a role in his failure to be re-elected. Obama is determined not to make that same mistake — at least not until after the election. I expect over the next two years we will hear more baloney about the prospects for electric cars, high-speed rail systems and whatever else appeals to the President’s imagination and that he can still sell to the American people.
Yours in good times and bad,

RFID Chips Gain Popularity In Mexico

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that amid concerns of increasing incidents of kidnappings in Mexico, many residents of the country are turning to what the paper calls “under-the-skin” tracking devices for a sense of safety.
A Mexican congressional report that detailed a 317 percent increase in kidnappings in the country in the past five years has apparently driven Mexican citizens to seek new means of protecting themselves in a country where firearm ownership is heavily regulated. The article said that the Mexican company, Xega, which reportedly sells radio frequency identification (RFID) devices to the public and performs implantation procedures of the devices, has increased sales of the product by 40 percent recently.
“Unfortunately, it’s been good for business but bad for the country,” said Xega executive Diego Kuri, referring to the kidnappings. “Thirty percent of our clients arrive after someone in their family has already experienced a kidnapping.”
The article states that Mexican media have estimated that as many as 10,000 people in the country have elected to have RFID chips implanted into their bodies, at costs up to as much as $2,000 upfront and $2,000 per annum for tracking services.
According to the article, most American scientists doubt the abilities of the chips, which are about the size of a grain of rice, to communicate with GPS satellites without the use of a larger external transmitter.
RFID technology first made headlines in the United States around 2007 when the technology was considered for use by medical professionals in patients with diseases such as Alzheimer’s, despite screams of disapproval from privacy advocates. While the future of RFID technology remains murky, many people believe under-the-skin chips will one day become a fact of life for entire populations.
”Soon RFID tags will be in everything from pharmaceuticals to clothing. Exclusive clothiers are already using the tags to recognize customers as they walk in the door from what they are wearing,” reads a report on political radio host Alex Jones’ website, Infowars.com. The article predicts a future “cashless society” in which every individual is implanted with an RFID chip that would be linked to personal bank accounts, medical records and any number of personal identifiers.

Oklahoma Governor To Resist ‘Obamacare’

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin has rejected the multimillion-dollar Federal grant that comes with the acceptance of the Federal Health Plan, as she noted that accepting the money would lead to entangling regulations, The Washington Times reported.
The Governor decided to turn down the $54 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Services, noting that the move would allow Oklahoma to bypass a Federal exchange when the State sets up a system that would be governed by the private sector, according to the newspaper.
“You just told us you want us to have some leeway to develop innovative systems, but yet you’re tying our hands,” Fallin said during a meeting with officials in the Administration of President Barack Obama. “In the end, they’re going to have specific things we have to meet.”
Fallin has noted that she and several other GOP governors are waiting for the current healthcare law to be appealed, and possibly overturned by the Supreme Court, reported the Times.
While she has refused Federal funds for healthcare, Fallin has noted that the cuts that have been made in the recent weeks will negatively affect her State. Oklahoma may be severely hampered by the lack of money that has been designated for highway programs and education, according to Bloomberg.

Social Security Disability Insurance Program Overwhelmed

The Social Security’s disability program has been flooded with requests and benefit claims from laid-off workers and an aging group of baby boomers, helping to push the system toward complete insolvency, The Associated Press reported.
Applications to the program have increased up to 50 percent from over 10 years ago, as individuals with disabilities have struggled to find jobs in the current economy, according to the news outlet.
The current system will be unable to sustain itself at the current pace of applicants that are flowing in, adding to the backlog for the program that already exists. This problem has brought to light many of the inadequacies with the Federal organization, reported the AP.
New Congressional estimates lead experts to believe that the trust fund that provides money to the program will be bankrupt by 2017, something that may exacerbate the current situation, which has more than 700,000 more applicants for Social Security this year than in 2008, reported the news outlet.
There have been several measures enacted by the organization in an attempt to save money. For example, Social Security stopped mailing its statements to beneficiaries, something that could save the Federal program $30 million a year, The Boston Globe reported.

Representative Waters Making Waves With Comments

Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) made headlines across the country twice last week, first suggesting that President Barack Obama “get tough with Republicans” to create proposals that help the poor and African-Americans and later for calling out the Tea Party.
In a story published by The Daily Caller on Sunday, Waters was quoted urging Obama to fight Republicans: “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned — the Tea Party can go straight to hell.”
The Congresswoman, earlier in the week, spoke at a job fair in Atlanta about minority frustrations with the country’s first black president, according to The Los Angeles Times.
“There is a growing frustration in this country and in minority communities because the unemployment rates are so high,” said Waters. She also claimed that a rising number of home foreclosures and a “wealth gap” between blacks and whites have begun to create frustration and anger in the black community.
Waters’ has not only set her sights on Obama and the Tea Party as she slings angry rhetoric, but has taken offense even with fellow Democrats for not fighting harder against budget cuts in the highly politicized battle over the debt ceiling.
“We were basically held up in raising the debt ceiling, until they got all of those budget cuts they demanded,” Waters said, according to The Times. “We didn’t raise any revenue and they didn’t close any tax loopholes. I believe the Democratic Party and the president of the United States should not have backed down. We should have made them walk the plank.”
Unrelated to her recent public outbursts, Waters is currently being investigated by the House ethics committee since allegations emerged last year that she attempted to improperly obtain Federal bailout money for a bank in which her husband owned stock. Though she demanded a trial last year, a Daily Caller article last week reported that the Congresswoman’s lawyer has filed a motion to dismiss the case saying that because two committee lawyers communicated solely with Republicans, a fair trial “is impossible.”

The Getaway

For the amount of controversy it has generated, you might think President Barack Obama’s latest vacation involves 10 or so days in the sunny climes of Havana or Caracas, Venezuela. Everyone from Jon Stewart to Pat Buchanan has noticed the fact that if the President plays hooky one more time, he’s going to have to take a vacation from all the vacations he’s taking. Predictably, rather than suggest Obama hightail it back to the office and put in a little time culling the stack in the in-box, the Democratic spin machine is redlining the RPMs in response. Spend more than a few moments enduring the shrieking slander monkeys on MSNBC, and you will find yourself inundated with excuses for the President’s jaunt to the millionaire’s playground of Martha’s Vineyard (wedged in between comparing Republicans to every odious character in the annals of history short of Vlad the Impaler, of course).
However, while the President and his family enjoy their vacation time in “The Vineyard,” a retreat for New England blue bloods which is nearly as lily-white as Buckingham Palace on Boxing Day, I will refrain from joining in the chorus demanding Obama focus more on the welfare of the nation and less on saving par from the bunker. After all, Obama is highly unlikely to inflict further damage on the rest of us if he’s preoccupied with deciding which wine goes best with lobster. As long as Obama avoids doing his job, how much worse off can we possibly be?
In the past month alone, Standard & Poor’s downgraded our national sovereign credit rating to “at least you’re not Belarus.” The national debt, if expressed in dollar bills, would make a stack which stretches from here to the Oort Cloud. (For victims of teachers’ unions: That’s, like, totally mega far away! OMG!) The national unemployment rate is nearly five points higher than it was the day Obama took office. And the dollar has declined in value to somewhere between Charmin™ and coupons for 50 percent off your next meal at the local E-coli King.
Meanwhile, Obama has dealt a stunning blow to those who believe in the sovereign borders of the United States. Just before departing D.C., he announced a plan to suspend deportations of illegal aliens. His edict circumvents both the courts and Congress, a fiat decree of what amounts to general amnesty. The only upside to Obama’s decision to validate the illegal parking of the millions of illegals squatting within our borders involves cheaper landscaping for his Martha’s Vineyard cronies and extra votes for Democrats in Chicago.
In the Mideast, the so-called “Arab Spring” so roundly cheered by liberals has produced the very real possibility of an Islamofascist government takeover in the Arab world’s most populous country, Egypt. While Obama settled into his luxe Massachusetts digs, “someone” used Egyptian territory to launch a terrorist attack on Israel. Given Obama’s vague hostility toward our most redoubtable Mideast ally, perhaps it should come as no surprise that he didn’t react. Venturing deeper into the Muslim world, we find the Russians — whose President Putin termed the United States “a parasite” — negotiating to build more nuclear power plants in the Islamofascist regime of Iran.
Back on the home front, if the graffiti left on Ohio contractor John King’s car is anything to go by, the union thugs have stopped slashing tires, throwing bricks through windows and beating up old people. Instead, if the bullet lodged in King’s arm is anything to go by, they have started shooting. I suppose the Democrats’ aversion to the 2^nd Amendment was more of a guideline than an actual rule.
Even some of Obama’s most dedicated fans are showing signs of turning from parrots to boo-birds. The Godmother of the Rodney King riots, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, took a break last week from avoiding an ethics trial to exhort a crowd of disaffected black voters to “unleash us” to attack the President over the black unemployment rate, which is nearly double the national average. Granted, Obama need hardly sweat over the votes of people who consider Maxine Waters worthy of attention, but the fact that Waters publicly expressed dissatisfaction with “The One” is bad news for Barack.
Do us all a favor, Mr. President. Ignore the complaints. Stay on vacation. Work on your latest memoirs. Get a head start on the next chapter in your life. It’s going to start next year either way.

Is Evolution A Crazy Idea?

While making a point about how stupid Americans are, Bill Maher once mockingly said, “Sixty percent of people don’t believe in evolution in this country.” Perhaps Maher should consider supporting Jon Huntsman, who recently tweeted: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
You’re not crazy, Governor. In fact, I might just agree with you on both points. I, too, trust a lot of scientists on global warming, but they are the ones who have overwhelmed the scientific community with so much hard evidence against the theory of manmade global warming that the whole notion has become something of a joke.
As to evolution, we might have something in common there as well. I found it quite interesting to watch that shameless liberal mom in New Hampshire prompting her little boy to ask Rick Perry about evolution, to which Perry responded: “I hear your mom was asking about evolution. That’s a theory that is out there — and it’s got some gaps in it.”
I don’t have a religious dog in the evolution fight; so from a very young age, I came at the theory of evolution from an intellectual, commonsense point of view. Even though I was predisposed to believing in evolution, what I found when I began reading up on the subject was that virtually every book began with the premise that evolution was a fact. In other words, it appeared that the theory of evolution had been given a dispensation from the requirement to present evidence.
To my surprise, the more I read, the more evolution began to sound like something out of Aesop’s Fables. Inanimate matter “evolving” into an animal, and an animal evolving into a human being? It seemed to me to be an idea that required a size extra-large imagination.
As Guy Murchie pointed out in his book The Seven Mysteries of Life, an intellectual, long-standing argument for a random universe wherein a seeming miracle such as evolution could take place on its own is that, given enough time, anything — including the evolution of human beings from inanimate matter — is possible.
This argument, said Murchie, is based on the premise that if you could sit enough billions of chimpanzees in front of computers for enough billions of years, random chance would allow them to write all the great works of literature.
It’s a fascinating thought until you consider the mathematics involved. There are about 50 possible letters, numbers and punctuation marks on a computer keyboard, and there are 65 character spaces per line in the average book. Therefore, a chimp would have one in 50 chances of getting the first space on the first line correct.
Since the same is true of the second space on that line, the chimp would have one chance in 50 x 50, or 50², of getting both spaces right (meaning just the first two letters of the first word of just one of the great works of literature). For all 65 spaces on the first line, the figure would jump to 50⁶⁵, which is equal to 10¹¹⁰.
How big is 10¹¹⁰? According to physicist George Gamow, said Murchie, it is 1,000 times greater than the total number of vibrations made by all the atoms in the universe since the Big Bang!
Conclusion: It doesn’t matter how many chimpanzees or how much time you allow, not even one line of one great work could come into existence through pure chance. Given that you are infinitely more complex than a single line in a book, what are the odds that you, with all of your billions of precise, specialized cells, accidentally evolved from “primordial soup” over a period of a few billion years?
Thus, evolution in a random universe — i.e., a universe without a Supreme Power Source — would appear to be a mathematical impossibility. When sold on the basis of “natural selection,” evolution seems to require a leap of faith that takes the brash arrogance of a Bill Maher.
As with such phenomena as wind and gravity, it would seem that the only way evolution could have come into existence is through the work of a Higher Power that is beyond human understanding. Not an old man in the sky, as atheists like to mockingly portray this Power, but an invisible, conscious source of power that man can never hope to comprehend.
The coup de grace for me was when I read a book in the mid-1990s titled Ever Since Darwin, written by Stephen Jay Gould, who was one of the world’s leading paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. Like virtually all pro-evolution authors, in Ever Since Darwin Gould discussed evolution in an a priori fashion — i.e., stated as a fact rather than a theory — yet, when he reached the last page of his book, he felt compelled to state the following:

I hope that… Darwin’s own work will permeate more areas of evolutionary thought, where rigid dogmas still reign as a consequence of unquestioned preference, old habits, or social prejudice. My own favorite target is the belief in slow and steady evolutionary change preached by most paleontologists… The fossil record does not support it; mass extinction and abrupt origin reign [my emphasis].

Gould’s admission that all known evidence suggests that most, if not all, species have suddenly appeared on Earth suddenly stunned me and gave me a great deal of respect for his intellectual honesty. It supported the scientific findings that Cro-Magnon man suddenly and mysteriously appeared, about 40,000 years ago, and populated the Earth “like a bolt of lightning.”
But, Cro-Magnon man’s sudden appearance aside, even if the theory of evolution were ultimately proven to be true beyond a reasonable doubt, there is still the problem of the billions of chimpanzees pecking away at computer keyboards for billions of years; i.e., evolution in a random universe would still appear to be a mathematical impossibility.
That being the case, a religionist has no reason to fear evidence that supports evolution. For it is almost certain that evolution, if there really is such a thing, is not powered by randomness, but by a Supreme Power Source that we can never hope to understand.
This should come as no surprise; because over the past several decades, the chasm between theologians and scientists seems to be narrowing toward a middle-ground belief that science is not in conflict with God, but, rather, is a gift of God.
Having said all this, it is also possible that a Higher Power created both animals and man in pretty much their present forms. The truth is that no one knows, but, to paraphrase Guy Murchie, you are the most improbable collection of molecules in the Universe. Whether you’re an atheist or someone who believes in a Supreme Being, the one thing on which we can all agree is that man does, indeed, exist. That fact alone is either a figurative miracle or a literal miracle; take your pick.
Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I put on my flak jacket and prepare for the backlash that is sure to come from angry readers who either view belief in a Higher Being as a sign of an irrational mind or believe that I’m an apostate for not sticking more closely to scripture. Or, to borrow from Jon Huntsman, just call me crazy.

Obama Embarks On Midwest Bus Tour

President Barack Obama began a bus tour of the Midwestern United States to combat Republican assertions that have arisen from the first series of GOP debates, The Washington Times reported.
The President launched the tour in an effort to counter fears Americans have about the current state of the economy. Obama told the crowd that the debt debacle and several other problems facing the economy were caused by a lack of help from Republicans in Congress, according to the newspaper.
“I put a deal before the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, that would have solved this problem,” Obama said. “And he walked away. His belief was we can’t ask anything of millionaires and billionaires and big corporations. Think about that. I mean, that’s just not common sense.”
This attack on the Republican party came after Warren Buffett wrote to The New York Times about how the super-wealthy are coddled by Washington. The billionaire asserted that the rich should pay more taxes to help pull the country out of the recession, CNN reported.