This is the second part about USA. Again, It ain’t pretty to say the least!
Where the same absurd Alice in Wonderland economic and political farce is playing out in the USA. And as in Europe it is, as usual, the common people who are paying the price.
And as in Europe, the US crisis is anything but over regardless of what the political elites are trying to tell the people in USA. In USA the role of ECB is played by the FED (the Federal Reserve), which creates money out of “thin air” to support the gigantic and increasing debt. And to keep the stock market going and lower the price of the dollar.
So that the federal US government can spend your tax money like a drunken sailor.
In USA, Goldman Sachs and the other investment banks, plus the big Hedge Funds, are pushing leverage to ridiculous and dangerous extremes.
If you read the Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of National Banks, report for the second quarter 2012 “Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities”, you get utterly horrified of the totals of the open derivatives positions in the US market.
Four of the largest U.S. banks are walking an extreme tightrope of risk, leverage and debt when it comes to derivatives. Below you are going to find just how utterly exposed they are.
But first what is leverage?
Most people do not understand “leverage” and what it actually means. If they did, they would not sleep at night knowing what’s going on right now.
To put it simple: leverage means that these banks etc use a leverage of say 1:50 or 1:100 in their speculations. Which means that they only put up 1 of their own dollars for an investment worth 50 or 100 dollar. Their dollars are “worth” 50 or 100 times more than they actually are.
It ALSO means that IF “things” goes wrong way they LOSE 50 or 100 dollars for every dollar they invested in that trade or position. Or much, much more.
And usually when things goes wrong, it goes very fast when it comes to trading with these kind of leverages. So very quickly, these sums get astronomical. In a couple of days they can literally lose ALL their capital and more.
This has happened time and time again. Just to mention a few:
– Lehman Brothers (was the 4th largest inv. bank in the US).
– Bear Stearns
– American International Group
– Northern Rock (a medium-sized British bank)
– Washington Mutual
– American Savings and Loan
– Landsbanki and Glitnir
– Barings Bank
– Société Générale
– JP Morgan Chase & Co
– Morgan Stanley
– Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM)
As I said before, this is JUST A VERY SHORT LIST
This would not per se be a problem if this were a truly free and capitalist market. Because then these banks would go bankrupt and the owners and investors would lose their money. As they are supposed to do if the do bad business or trades.
But as we all know,this is NOT a free and capitalist market. Our “dear” politicians have “decided” that these banks with all their wild speculations are too important or to big, to be allowed to fail.
So instead, they have used taxpayer’s money and put whole countries at risk and in extreme debt just to bail out these banks.
And the banks knows that whatever speculations they do, REGARDLESS of how much or bad they speculate, and as you can see below their speculations are horrific, the politicians are going to bail them out with our tax money.
JP Morgan Chase
Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)
Citibank
Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)
Bank Of America
Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)
Goldman Sachs
Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)
To sum up – TOTAL EXPOSURE TO DERIVATES for ONLY these four banks:
TOTAL ASSETS for these four banks: 4,720,464,000,000TRILLION DOLLARS
So they can “cover” 2,27 % of the Total Exposure with ALL their Assets!
So who is going to pay for the “rest”: 202, 654, 622, 000, 000 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!! if anything goes wrong?
Well, we know the answer to that doesn’t we. So far, it’s the common people, i.e. the taxpayers, who had to cover for all the banks bad speculations thanks to our dear politicians.
Take another look at those figures for Goldman Sachs. If you do the math, Goldman Sachs has total exposure to derivatives contracts that is more than 364 times greaterthan their total assets!
That is utter insanity, but everyone just keeps pretending that the emperor actually has clothes on.
And why are “our” politicians SO EAGER to protect these speculators?
To put these GIGANTIC sums into perspective lets compare with the GDP from USA and all of EU from 2011
There a lot of different way to calculate GDP and the figures for each year. Add to that exchange fluctuations, conversion rates etc. So the figures below comes from the same source (IMF) to make the comparison easier. And it is their conversion.
GDP USA 2011 – 15,094,025 billion US dollars
GDP EU 2011 – 17,610,826 billion US dollars
Total GDP for EU and USA 2011: 32,704,851 billion US dollars.
Lets compare these 32,704,851 billion US dollars with TOTAL EXPOSURE TO DERIVATES for these four above mentioned banks:
32,704,851 billion US dollars in COMBINED GDP of EU and USA
Anyone see any problem???
Problem solved all right. So just move on, nothing to notice here or worry about.
Because according to out “dear” politicians, bankers and political elites from EU and USA there is NO SERIOUS PROBLEM HERE. The problems in USA and EU are more or less solved etc.
So the ones that put as in the mess in the first place, very “reassuringly” tells us: “We take care of it”.
Yeah sure!
Let’s move on to another “bright spot” –the federal budget and debt. The figures are based on the 2012/2013 data:
2012 US Tax Revenue: $2,469,000,000,000
2012 Federal budget: $3,796,000,000,000
2012 Budget deficit: $1,327,000,000,000
US Federal Debt as of January 22, 2013: $16,471,084,067,491
Total interest paid on the debt in 2012: $359,796,008,919
Budget INCREASE between 2012 and 2013: $38,500,000,000
To make these gigantic sums understandable here is how these figures would look like for a “normal” family:
Annual family income: $24,690
Annual family expenses: $37,960. 154%of the annual family income.
Annual family shortfall borrowed from friends/neighbors etc: $13,270. 54%of the annual family income.
Total interest the family paid last year: $3,598 (at near 0% interest). Nearly 15% of the annual family income
Total family debt (mortgage, auto, credit card): $164,471.This is 666% of the annual family income.
Change in family spending this year: an increase of $385
This looks like a very responsible family wouldn’t you say?
And do you think this family would get any loans from the banks?
When you look at it this way, it really seems absurd. Yet it’s true… a slow motion train wreck. That any person with more than one functioning brain cell can see coming miles away. Except our “dear” politicians. They are in ACTUAL FACT increasing the spending AND the debt.
Here’s another way to look at the debt ceiling I found in a paper. It’s very symptomatic:
Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood… and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do?
Raise the ceilings, or remove the crap?
Well, or “dear” politicians are franticly at an increasing speed trying to raise the ceiling at the same time as the “sewage” is increasing EVEN MORE.
Yeap, there you have politicians in a nutshell.
Why fix the problem that they themselves caused, when the politicians can pretend that they are the giver of all gods and bearer of all gifts to all the people all the time.
And it doesn’t cost anything for anybody. It’s ALL free forever. And they all lived happily ever after.
It is a very sad day indeed to see a people voluntarily decide to throw themselves and their country over the cliff.
Let’s look at the economy (the figures are from the Congressional Budget Office):
In the Fiscal Year 2011, the federal government collected $2.303 trillion in tax revenue. Interest on the debt that year totaled$454.4 billion, and mandatory spending totaled $2,025 billion. In sum, mandatory spending plus debt interest totaled $2.479 trillion –. exceeding total revenue by $176.4 billion.
(Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid. Congress in practical terms do not see this money, it is automatically deducted.)
For the Fiscal Year 2012, which just ended 37 days ago, that deficit increased 43% to$251.8 billion.
In other words, they could cut the entire Federal Government’s discretionary budget – No military, SEC, FBI, EPA, DHS, IRS, etc.- and they would still be in deficit by a quarter of a trillion dollars.
(Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related to government- the US military, the Department of Homeland Security, IRS, EPA etc.)
The only thing showing any growth in the US, besides the debilitating regulatory burdens, is the national debt. It took over 200 years for the US government to accumulate its first trillion dollars in debt. It took just 286 days to accumulate the most recent trillion (to $16 trillion).
Last month alone, the first month of Fiscal Year 2013, the US government accumulated nearly $200 billion in new debtin just 31 days.
And the numbers will only continue to get worse. 10,000 people each day begin receiving mandatory entitlements. Fewer people remain behind to pay into the system. The debt keeps rising, and interest payments will continue to rise even more. In addition, the dollar is going to decline.
The result, the US government is legally bound to spend more money on mandatory entitlements and interest than it can raise in tax revenue. It will not make any difference how high the federal, state or local government raise taxes, or even if they cut everything.
Another effect of Obama economics is that the poor are getting poorer, especially the black. Under Obama the poorest Americans has suffered the single largest drop in income ever.
And the Black Americans in the same lowest income quintile have suffered almost double as the average American in the same quintile under Obama:
The drop is– 11.58% in one year(2010) and is at the lowest level ever.
That’s what I call “change”!But I would not call it “hope”.
And the number of people classified as poor are getting larger and larger.
Then on top of that, we have the equally disastrous foreign policy. Where the Obama administration systematically have thrown their former allies (Eastern Europe, Britain, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc) under the bus, and helped parties like the Muslim Brotherhood that hate everything that USA and the western world stands for, to power.
See my 19 posts on Syria etc as some examples of that disastrous foreign policy:
I could go on with many more examples but I think I will stop here.
But as the old saying goes (Joseph de Maistre in a letter from St Petersburg August 1811): a country has the politicians/government that they deserve. So enjoy!
In addition, this quote from a reader’s commentary in The Prager Zeitung in March 2010 (translated from Czech) sums it up quite well really:
“Multitude of Fools
The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.
It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.“
P.S. If you are wondering about the title, see this video with music by Spike Jones. There is another long story behind the lyrics but that you have to find out yourself. D.S.
“But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. And it is a threat to the very future of this country if that—we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.“
An excellent summary by democrat Pat Caddell on the very sad state of “journalism” in America. And the utter betrayal by the mainstream media (press, TV and radio) of their role as journalists and protector of the first amendment.
Pat Caddell is a lifelong democrat and worked for the McGovern campaign. He also worked on the Jimmy Carter campaign, for Gary Hart, for Joe Biden, and Jerry Brown.
He was their election strategy and pollster man.
Pat Caddell is also the founder of Cambridge Survey Research, a public opinion pollster, and an expert in analyzing public opinion.
He has also worked as a consultant to various movies, TV shows, and documentaries etc.
And this is nothing new. We have seen so many different examples of this betrayal of journalist in their role as journalist. In this blog, I have given many examples when it comes to the Global Warming Hysteria.
Where the “journalists” and the mainstream media ACTIVELY choose to become propagandists and his master’s voice. Even worse, they ACTIVELY became attack dogs and tried to suppress and oppress EVERY dissenting voice and protest.
This is the ultimate betrayal of ALL what journalism is supposed to be. And the role they are supposed to play in a “free society”. Goebbels, and Ilya Ehrenburg (his soviet counterpart), would be REALLY PROUD of these men and women!
As I have told you before, I am a former journalist. But I quite in disgust because of what was going on. And this was way back. And compared to now it was as kindergarten then.
And to confirm the total incompetent Romney campaign, including the republican party establishment handling of it, Romeny said on Wednesday:
As if to prove this point, Mitt Romney has now told Jan Crawford of CBS News that the major media are not in the tank for Obama and that he has no plans to challenge liberal media bias.
“Later, Crawford asked Romney if the mainstream media is ”in the tank for President Obama,” as many conservatives allege.
”Well, I think we have a system of free press, people are able to provide their own perspective based on their own beliefs, I think there’s some people who are more in my camp, there’s a lot of people who are more in his camp, and I don’t worry about that,” Romney responded.”
And the headline for this news story: is ironically – Romney: Obama engaged in ”character assassination”
But Romney is not worried
Well, it is no surprise since one of the chief architects of the strategy behind the campaign is Karl Rove. The strategy is to be “nice”, to be cautious, no attacks and no confronting the biased media.
In the meantime, Romney is being slaughtered in crucial states by the “not so nice” attack ads and a merciless campaign by Obama.
If you look at the key 11 swing states (hold 146 Electoral College votes) won by President Obama in 2008 and thought to be competitive in 2012. In 2008, Obama won these swing states by a combined margin of 53% to 46%, virtually identical to his national margin.
In one month from the beginning of September until today, Obama has gone from 44-45% to 50-51%.
Romney has gone from 46% to 45%.
From roughly even to a 5-6% lead by Obama according to the Rasmussen Daily Swing State Tracking Poll. That’s the biggest lead Obama has had in a long time. We have to go back to the end of February this year to find similar figures when Obama topped at 50%.
I will not bother you with a lengthy analysis of the incompetent Romney campaign, and the republican party establishments hiring of the wrong people.
Just two quick examples:
Ed Gillespie, who Pat Caddell talked about, is a senior advisorto the Romney campaign. He started a lobbying firm with former Clinton White House counsel Jack Quinn, responsible for the pardon of Marc Rich, among other things.
Gillespie will make money no matter what happens on this Election Day. Or the next election. Etc. So do you think he is very much concerned about the media bias problem and who is really winning the race?
Another is his communications director and longtime aide Eric Fehrnstromon. Now famous for his comment to CNN in March, saying that Romney was in realty an “Etch A Sketch” man.
Implying that he has no firm believes, policies and positions. You can take whatever he says and you can shake it up and it will be gone and he is going to draw a completely new picture.
With “senior advisers” like this who needs enemies.
As a side not, the Swedish government has invited this Karl Rove several times for political and election advice.
They really know how to pick them!
In addition, they pay big (taxpayers) bucks for it too.
Pat Caddell September 21– “The Audacity of Corruption”
The text of the speech:
Thank you. Glad to be with you. This could take a long time, but we don’t have that, so let me just get right to this. I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not. You know, when I first started in politics – and for a long time before that – everyone on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, despised the press commonly, because they were SOBs to everybody. Which is exactly what they should be. They were unrelenting. Whatever the biases were, they were essentially equal-opportunity people. That changed in 1980. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It changed—an important point in the Dukakis-Bush election, when the press literally was trying to get Dukakis elected by ignoring what was happening in Massachusetts, with a candidate who was running on the platform of “He will do for America what he did for Massachusetts”—while they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Also the change from evening news emphasis to morning news by the networks is another factor that’s been pointed out to me. Most recently, what I call the nepotism that exists, where people get jobs—they’re married to people who are in the administration, or in politics, whatever. But the overwhelming bias has become very real and very dangerous. We have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was the job—so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process of which there was no checks and balances. We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances. The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling—somehow allowing—people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak, and has been for some time. It is now creating the danger that I spoke to.
This morning, just this morning, Gallup released their latest poll on the trust, how much trust—the Congressman [Lamar Smith] made reference to an earlier poll—when it comes to reporting the news accurately, fairly, and fully, and it’s the highest in history. For the first time, 60% of the people said they had “Not very much” or “None at all.” Of course there was a partisan break: There were 40% who believed it did, Democrats, 58% believed that it was fair and accurate, Republicans were 26%, Independents were 31%. So there is this contempt for the media – or this belief—and there are many other polls that show it as well. I want to just use a few examples, because I think we crossed the line the last few weeks that is terrifying.
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece which was called “The Audacity of Cronyism in Breitbart, and my talk today is “The Audacity of Corruption.” What I pointed out was, that it was appalling that Valerie Jarrett had a Secret Service detail. A staff member in the White House who is a senior aide and has a full Secret Service detail, even while on vacation, and nobody in the press had asked why. That has become more poignant, as I said, last week, when we discovered that we had an American ambassador, on the anniversary of 9/11, who was without adequate security—while she still has a Secret Service detail assigned to her full-time, at a massive cost, and no one in the media has gone to ask why.
The same thing: I raised the question of David Plouffe. David Plouffe, who is the White House’s Senior Advisor—and was Obama’s campaign manager last time, he and [David] Axelrod sort of switched out, Axelrod going back to Chicago for the campaign—and just after it was announced that he was coming, an Iranian front group in Nigeria gave him $100,000 to give two speeches in Nigeria. Now, let me tell you: There’s nobody that hands—no stranger gives you $100,000 and doesn’t expect something in return, unless you live in a world that I don’t. And no one has raised this in the mainstream media. He was on with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, a couple of weeks ago, and they were going through all these questions. No one asked him whatsoever about that. He was not inquired. George Stephanopoulos, a former advisor to Bill Clinton—who every morning, while Rahm Emmanuel was Chief of Staff, had his call with Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, and the three of them have been doing it for years—and he is held out as a journalist.He has two platforms. I mean, he’s a political hack masquerading as a journalist. But when you don’t ask the questions you need to ask of someone like David Plouffe, who’s going in the White House—when we’re talking about Iran. I just finishedsurveys , some of you may have seen, with John McLaughlin this week, with Secure America Now , and found out just how strongly Americans are concerned with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, what’s happening in the Middle East, and cuts in defense spending. This is not the place for that, but it strikes me as the American people identify, in the polling we’ve done over the last year, Iran as the single greatest danger to the United States. And here’s a man who’s being paid by an already named front group for that—for a terrorist regime, and is not asked about it, or queried about it!
The third thing I would say is that—then there’s of course [National Security Advisor] Tom Donilon, who I know very well from years back, who I caused a little bit of a stir over a few months ago when I said he was the “leaker-in-chief.” I mean this ridiculous running around—“How did these secrets get out?”—when it is clear he has no credentials for foreign policy; who has been in the White House; who was a political operative for Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and others;who was known to have, in my opinion, to be just the most amoral person I know in politics; and who is using and orchestrating national security. In Mr. [David] Sanger’s book [Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power], as a reviewer at [The New York Times] said, “The hero of this book, and the clear source of it, is Tom Donilon”—but let me just make a point. Neither does—and I would say this to the Congressman—“You know, all the Republicans have to do”—you know, I talk often about the “Corrupt Party” and the “Stupid Party,”but the Stupid Party couldn’t be stupider when it comes to things like this. They could have called Tom Donilon and other people down to the Congress, put them under oath, and asked them if they had leaked. Instead you have Eric Holder, who runs the most political Justice Department since John Mitchell—only in John Mitchell’s administration we had Justice Departments that were so politicized and so corrupted by politics—and he appoints someone who gave two people to do a study on the leaks, sometime in the next century will come out, and one of them is a, was a contributor to Barack Obama when he was a state Senator. That’s a really unbiased source! And the press, of course, won’t look into this. It will not ask the question. But the Republicans could have called them down. Yes, the President could have extended Executive Privilege, but let him say “I will not answer that question, sir” on the question of “Did you leak these secrets that Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman, the Democratic Chairman, of the Senate Intelligence Committee said were endangering national security and American lives?” As she said when she read Sanger’s book, “My God, every page I turn I learn something that I don’t know!” I mean, these are serious matters but in Washington they’re playful, and the press does not pursue any of them.
Peter Schweizer has done a study talking about corruption. 60%, or 80% —it’s closer to 80% I think, now—of the money given under the stimulus to green energy projects—the President and this administration’s great project—has gone to people who are either bundlers or major contributors to Barack Obama. But nobody says a word. Of course Republicans don’t raise it because in Washington, they simply want to do it when they get back in power. And, of course, the press doesn’t because they basically have taken themselves out of doing their job.
When we see what happened this week in Libya—and when I said I was more frightened than I’ve ever been, this is true, because I think it’s one thing that, as they did in 2008, when the mainstream press, the mainstream media and all the press, jumped on the Obama bandwagon and made it a moral commitment on their part to help him get elected in a way that has never happened, whatever the biases in the past. To give you an example of the difference, I’ll just shortly tell you this: In 1980, when [Jimmy] Carter was running for reelection, the press—even though 80% of them, after the election, reporters said they voted for Carter over [Ronald] Reagan, or 70% percent of them, a very high percentage—they believed, so much, that the Carter campaign and the Carter White House had abused the Rose Garden against [Ted] Kennedy that they made a commitment, as they discussed, that they would not serve as the attack dogs on Reagan for the Carter White House because they thought it was unfair and they weren’t to be manipulated. I totally disagree with their analysis, but that was when you actually had a press corps. Whatever their own personal feelings, they made judgments that were, “We’re not going to be manipulated.” This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and President, led by people like Ezra Klein and JournoList, where they plot the stories together. The problem here is that no one will name names.
But I want to talk about this Libyan thing, because we crossed some lines here. It’s not about politics. First of all we’ve had nine day of lies over what happened because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack, and the press won’t push this.Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya. Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack. None of that is on the national news. None of it is being pressed in the papers. If a President of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified! It would have been—it should have been the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment. But nothing was said at all, and nothing will be said.
It is one thing to bias the news, or have a biased view. It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know, and I choose right now, openly, and this is—if I had more time I’d do all the names for it—but The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the most important papers that influence the networks, ABC, NBC, and, to a lesser extent—because CBS has actually been on this story, partly because the President of Libya appeared on [Bob Schieffer’s Face the Nation] and said, on Sunday, while [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.] Susan Rice was out—the U.N. Ambassador has no portfolio on this matter—lying, said of the Secretary—you know why, notice the Secretary of State wasn’t out there doing this—was on national television, lying and promoting the White House line while the Libyan President, the very same moment, is saying “This is a premeditated attack.”Nobody has asked that question. This morning—take a look at The New York Times this morning, it’s a minor reference. Oh, now we’ve decided that it was a terrorist incident. But this is—that would have changed, that should change the politics.
This is not without accomplices, because the incompetence of the [Mitt] Romney campaign, which I said a week ago is the—my God!—the worst campaign in my lifetime, and the Republican establishment in general’s inability to fight, has allowed these things to happen in part because they don’t do it. But I want to go through two other quick points.
[Mohamed] Morsi and Egypt: The President of Egypt, we find out now, that his whole agenda has been getting the “Blind Sheikh” [Omar Abdel-Rahman], who’s responsible for the bombings of the WorldTradeCenter in 1993, out of jail. Prison. I’ve been told specifically, by a member of the intelligence community that the White House and State Department are negotiating that now. They have now come out and denied it, but [Morsi] comes out, that they ordered—he’s the head of the Muslim Brotherhood! The American people know what they think of the Muslim Brotherhood: They are against them eleven to one, all right? And he’s the president of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving $2 billion to United States. He tells them—we had advance warning because they had said they were gonna do this, attack our embassy. The President—after the incident, after 48 hours, Mr. Morsi does nothing and says nothing—picks up the phone, calls him, and demands that they call it off. On Friday—last Friday, a week ago today—there was supposed to be a big demonstration. We thought that would be the big day—no, it disappeared, because Morsi called it off. But no press person has investigated this, just as no press person will go and ask the most obvious questions, when there are really good stories here, good media stories, and good news stories. They are in the tank and this is a frightening thing.
Another example has been the polling, which everyone wants to talk to me about. Look: There is no doubt that Romney is blowing an election he could not lose, and has done everything he can to lose it. But the bias, the polling, it’s very complicated. Some of it is error, some of it is miscalculation, but some of it is deliberate, in my opinion—to pump up the numbers using 2008 base to give a sense of momentum to the Obama campaign. When I have polls that have the preference of Democrats over Republicans higher than it was in 2008, which was a peak Democratic year, I know I am dealing with a poll that shouldn’t be reported. And yet they are being done, and they are being done with that knowledge and with that basis for some people, and the answer, as I said, some of it is incompetence, some of it is they just don’t know, really know, how to handle it, and some of it is on purpose, and it’s purposeful. But all of it is just to serve a basic point, just as JournoList was—Mr. Klein’s JournoList—but as I said there is no pushback. We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on it, where the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of blockers, and nobody says anything. The Republicans don’t. The reason you will lose this battle is for one reason. Despite organizations like AIM and others who are pointing this out, and the fact that 60% of the American people are in on the secret here—I mean, they’re no idiots—Republicans and those candidates who are not the candidates of the press refuse to call them out. If I were the Romney campaign I would’ve been doing this for months! I’d have been looking at individual reporters! I would be telling the American people, “They’re not trying to stop me; they’re trying to stop you! And they are here to do this!”And I would have made the press themselves an issue because, until you do, what happens is, they are given the basic concession of authenticity and accuracy, or that they are credible, by not doing that.
Now too many reporters, too many political people in the Republican party in this town, want to maintain their relationships with the press. This is how Sarah Palin got handed over to Katie Couric and to ABC before she was ready—because Steve Schmidt and others want to preserve their view, their relationships with the press. You know, people have their own agendas, and often it’s not winning. But this not-pushing-back is a problem, and they don’t do it. And, you know what this is a different era: The old argument of “You don’t attack someone in the press”—or “You don’t get in a pissing match with someone who buys ink by the barrel”—doesn’t apply anymore. There are too many outlets, too many ways to do it, and the country doesn’t have the confidence in the press that they once had.
But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. And it is a threat to the very future of this country if that—we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about. And so that’s as much as I can do in twenty minutes. So then we—we have a few moments for questions. Yes, sir?
ARONOFF: Let’s get a few questions here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER : Yes, I wanted to offer my interpretation for why this dynamic is happening. I’d like your reaction. I think that the media is working with the government, because the government hands out so many freebies—
CADDELL: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: —you know, for market share, and, therefore, they have to work in sync with them in order to ensure the good graces. I think, also, the advertisers who generate the revenue for the newspapers are also getting those freebies, and so they can then influence the media—
CADDELL: The corruption in this town is so great. Everybody in Washington seems to almost be on the take—with the exception of everybody in this room, and the assistants here. But, I swear to God, it’s so—the idea that I should get something, you know—the reason, when you have firms that have Ed Gillespie in business with Jack Quinn, who was the counsel for Bill Clinton, and responsible for the pardon of Marc Rich, among other things, is because everybody in this—those people on K Street, in both parties, are about arrangements and money. Everyone in the press is. We have stimulus money being given. We have people who, as I said, the relationships, when people are making contracts, and their husbands and wives are getting—Jay Carney’s wife works in the government! Now he works—he was the head of the Time Magazine! He was a liar then, and a liar now, apparently! You know—and nobody says there’s anything wrong with this. And you’re right: Everybody’s on the take here, and everybody’s cutting up their stock. That’s why, what used to be one of the best and most important things for the press, which was the investigative journalism of corruption and money, the stealing of the taxpayers, the looting of the Treasury, isn’t an issue, and why no one speaks of it in this town. Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Pat, just a quick question. Is it in violation—can it be seen as a violation of their charter for the major networks to demonstrate such obvious bias? I mean, is that a violate their FCC license agreements?
CADDELL: Well, their license agreements only go to their stations. They don’t really go to the networks themselves. But I—you see, that’s why we’re at this slippery slope. This is what scares me. Because you start saying, “Well, somebody should do something about this.”
My argument, when I speak to the press, is very simple: One day you’re going to get my combination of George Wallace and Huey Long running for public office. He’s going to get up and say how—he’s going to point out “How the press is going to get me, and let me tell you what they’re going to say about me, because they want to stop me,” and he’s going to say, “You know what? We’ve gone too far with this First Amendment stuff. We need to make them serve the people.” We’re sliding toward a system by establishing the fact that the press, in fact, has prostituted themselves in the service of a political party, or a political candidate, and once you go down this road and say, “That’s happening,” then people say, “Why do we need a First Amendment? Why should we protect them? They’re not protecting us.” That’s the threat here. That’s the danger that I worry about, because we desperately need a real free press, whatever its faults, that protects the people. And soon, they will be owned by the people—we’re getting very close to that. Watching the coverage of this stuff, in the last ten days, on Libya, and the press corps and the networks serving as nothing but offshoots of the White House Press Office, is really scary. We’re going to get to this question, because that is down that road. These people are going to destroy freedom in America. I don’t care about their partisan preferences, I care that, in the end of the day, somebody’s going to say, “Enough of this!” And somebody will carry the day, and that’ll be that. Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Thank you. You—thank you! Incredibly good twenty minutes! I agree with everything you said! I am very concerned about Romney’s poor campaign, combined with the media bias the way it is. Is there anything that Romney can do at this point?
CADDELL: Well, he should’ve been out there already! He should’ve been out there pushing back—and so should the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment, as I said, in this town—I mean, all they seem to be in the business, to me, a lot of the establishment, is getting a lot of money to line their pockets, and not fighting or doing things that are effective. Why aren’t they out there challenging this? Why isn’t Romney himself getting up and saying, “I’m running against two organizations: I’m running against the Democrats and the President, and I’m running against the mainstream media, which will not tell you the truth”? Now let me tell you something: You want to liven up some of your rallies? That’ll do it. But they don’t do it because this man dares to be cautious. He’s going to dare-to-be-cautious himself right out of a race that was his to lose, and he’s losing it.
ARONOFF: One last question. Anybody? Go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Are there no patriots in the media who—
CADDELL: Oh, yes, there are! There are some.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Do they not see where—
CADDELL: Well, the problem is—let me say this—because nobody raises the question, because no one raises from the viewpoint that I’m raising it from. To raise it from the viewpoint where Republicans or conservatives “We don’t like what you’re doing to us,” only makes them dismiss that. What is not to be dismissed is what this is doing, and what it is in terms of the specifics of challenge. These individual reporters—let me tell you something about the press: Reporters become reporters and don’t enter the political fray because, basically, they can’t stand the heat. That’s my experience. You ever watch reporters under attack in a public venue and so forth? They wilt like—they melt like ice on the equator. The fact is that they need to be called out. Their organizations need to be called out. Ezra Klein still writes for The Washington Post? I mean, this is unbelievable!They had a secret operation group, “Journo” group, online, coordinating how they would promote Obama, and how they would attack Republicans—and he’s still there? But nobody calls out the publisher, or the editor, or whatever—there is no effort here—or calls him.
The fact is, if I were out there, if I were doing one of these campaigns, I wouldn’t let one of these guys by with anything. I would make the fact that the American people, already expressed in the Gallup poll, say—I would give them all the evidence they need to confirm their beliefs. I would change the dialogue here. But until that happens, you’re gonna have two teams—your whole team has an echo chamber of support—attacking you. How do you ever expect to win? Really? I mean, you can when it’s the national tide, 1980. We have a different press now. They have now made the decision they will control the political process. They are serving—with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the networks and these newspapers are, in effect, contributing—in-kind contributions to candidates in the Democratic Party. That’s the legal issue that I would have been exploring. I mean, I would begin to put the heat on.
But the Republicans never said a word. When Comcast, which bought out the administration—they’re my cable company in Charleston, they’re just so bad, I guess every cable company is awful, but they’re the worst—buys a network, is allowed to buy a network—the Justice Department allowed this—no Republican stood up and said, “This should be stopped!” I mean, really! You get what you ask for. So, anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go do TV.
Senator Rand Paul on Consumer Choice in Energy Committee Hearing. He questions why Kathleen Hogan, US deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency, takes away consumer choice, again and again, in their Legislation.
Which they force on us regardless of we like it or not. Even if we say that the whole idea is idiotic and is not going to work. And it is going to be extremely costly and counterproductive.
Why? Because these ideological driven bureaucrats, administrators, government officials think we, the people, are stupid and don’t understand “important” things. But they do. And they know best.
So they force us by taxes, regulations, fines or law.
We are treated like serfs even if they are supposed to “work for us”. And in unguarded moments you really can see their disdain for us and how “superior” they think they are. (Ron Schiller NPR anyone?)
So therefore it is refreshing to see Rand Paul let them taste their own medicine.
This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms – this time from the start of the recession. This is by far the worst post WWII employment recession.
This graph shows the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers). A very high level.
This graph shows the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more. The level is extremely high.
The first Tsunami wave is just rolling in over the Washington establishment.
Sitting here late at night (02:35 am) and watching the American election drama unfold minute by minute via a lot of different channels; I just want to say one thing – it is an honour to see a democracy in action where the common people are sending a very strong and clear message to the political elite. And are actually throwing them out.
And folks, this could NOT happen in Europe. So you should be really proud of yourself.
And remember, this is just the first wave!
This is a picture of the first early results in the house in the states where the polling stations have closed:
And this is a picture of the first early results in the senate in the states where the polling stations have closed:
I am going to finish this 10 part series in the same way as I started it: YOU MUST VOTE!
So go and vote for some you can trust (yeah I know it’s hard), some one that upholds the constitution and knows what it actually means (yeah, there are not many left), some one that want to rein in the Big Government Agenda and REALLY means it (yeah I know, there are many turncoats), and some one that want to protect YOUR liberty, freedom and the American way of life (yeah, that’s another hard one).
There is in the end only one way you can judge them – By their actions.
Your vote REALLY MATTERS! This time more than ever!
Sooo much is at stake this time – The constitution, the American way of life with freedom and free markets. America is at a crucial crossroads.
Do you want a government for the elites, of the elites and by the elites?
Or a government for the people, of the people and by the people?
It is YOUR CHOICE! A very clear choice! You have to get out and flood the voting booths November 2.
And if you don’t choose, it’s going to be the former.
The turnout of voting-age population in the mid term elections 2006 – 37,1%, and 2002 – 37.0% was pathetic and a joke. 63 % of the voting age population apparently doesn’t care what is happening to their country.
If you don’t wake up now when will you ever do? You have to stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American dream become a nightmare.
”All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826.
America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.
The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.
It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people.
Perhaps you’re having a tiny last minute qualm about voting Republican. Take heart. And take the House and the Senate. Yes, there are a few flakes of dander in the fair tresses of the GOP’s crowning glory—an isolated isolationist or two, a hint of gold buggery, and Christine O’Donnell announcing that she’s not a witch. (I ask you, has Hillary Clinton ever cleared this up?) Fret not over Republican peccadilloes such as the Tea Party finding the single, solitary person in Nevada who couldn’t poll ten to one against Harry Reid. Better to have a few cockeyed mutts running the dog pound than Michael Vick.
I take it back. Using the metaphor of Michael Vick for the Democratic party leadership implies they are people with a capacity for moral redemption who want to call good plays on the legislative gridiron.They aren’t. They don’t. The reason is simple. They hate our guts.
They don’t just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody’s guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class.
Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats.
Whence all this hate? Is it the usual story of love gone wrong? Do Democrats have a mad infatuation with the political system, an unhealthy obsession with an idealized body politic? Do they dream of capturing and ravishing representational democracy? Are they crazed stalkers of our constitutional republic?
No. It’s worse than that. Democrats aren’t just dateless dweebs clambering upon the Statue of Liberty carrying a wilted bouquet and trying to cop a feel. Theirs is a different kind of love story. Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love. Politics is merely a way to power’s heart. When politics is the technique of seduction, good looks are unnecessary, good morals are unneeded, and good sense is a positive liability.Thus Democrats are the perfect Lotharios. And politics comes with that reliable boost for pathetic egos, a weapon: legal monopoly on force. If persuasion fails to win the day, coercion is always an option.
Armed with the panoply of lawmaking, these moonstruck fools for power go about in a jealous rage. They fear power’s charms may be lavished elsewhere, even for a moment.
Democrats hate success. Success could supply the funds for a power elopement. Fire up the Learjet. Flight plan: Grand Cayman. Democrats hate failure too. The true American loser laughs at legal monopoly on force. He’s got his own gun.
Democrats hate productivity, lest production be outsourced to someplace their beloved power can’t go. And Democrats also hate us none-too-productive drones in our cubicles or behind the counters of our service economy jobs. Tax us as hard as they will, we modest earners don’t generate enough government revenue to dress and adorn the power that Democrats worship.
Democrats hate stay-at-home spouses, no matter what gender or gender preference. Democratic advocacy for feminism, gay marriage, children’s rights, and “reproductive choice” is simply a way to invade -power’s little realm of domestic private life and bring it under the domination of Democrats.
Democrats hate immigrants. Immigrants can’t stay illegal because illegality puts immigrants outside the legal monopoly on force. But immigrants can’t become legal either. They’d prosper and vote Republican.
Democrats hate America being a world power because world power gives power to the nation instead of to Democrats.
And Democrats hate the military, of course. Soldiers set a bad example. Here are men and women who possess what, if they chose, could be complete control over power. Yet they treat power with honor and respect. Members of the armed forces fight not to seize power for themselves but to ensure that power can bestow its favors upon all Americans.
This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order. Power has been trapped, abused and exploited by Democrats. Go to the ballot box and put an end to this abusive relationship. And let’s not hear any nonsense about letting the Democrats off if they promise to get counseling.
P. J. O’Rourke, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, is the author of a new book, Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards (Atlantic Monthly Press).
Twenty months ago, on February 19, 2009, business reporter Rick Santelli of CNBC took to the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to deliver his famous rant against government bail-outs, and call for “a Chicago tea party.”
Santelli may have sparked the Tea Party movement. But he only tapped into outrage that had been growing in many of us for decades.
For too long, you and I have watched helplessly as a clique of politicians, intellectuals, activists, and bureaucrats from both parties have tried to obliterate our Constitution, our capitalist system, and our personal liberty. This “bipartisan Ruling Class”—as scholar Angelo Codevilla describes it—sees itself as a moral, cultural, and intellectual elite. Codevilla says that “Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits.”
Oozing sanctimonious arrogance, viewing the rest of us as coarse, unsophisticated rubes who cling bitterly to guns and bibles, this class seeks to impose its own supposedly superior values and visions upon the rest of us, by force of law.
As we know too well, the ultimate goal of our Ruling Class is power. They exist—not to produce, not to invent, not to create—but to manipulate and master others.Ronald Reagan memorably summed up the Ruling Class’s governing outlook this way: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
By contrast, the rest of us Americans seek power over circumstances, but not over each other. We acquire our personal sense of identity and self-esteem through productive work—not through imposing our will, values, and visions on our neighbors. We accept a “live and let live” philosophy.
This is the spirit embodied in our “Declaration of Independence.” That document was more than a declaration of political independence from our European rulers; it was a declaration of the moral independence of every human being. It was a declaration of each individual’s moral right to his own life, his own liberty, his own pursuit of happiness.
This is the vision enshrined in our Constitution. That governing framework grants to public officials only specific, enumerated, and narrowly limited powers. As James Madison and the other Framers made explicitly clear, the Constitution was intended—for the first time in human history—to bridle the authority of politicians and bureaucrats, and thus to protect the moral right of Americans to go about our lives without interference.
So, the Constitution imposes upon government officials a host of constraints: separations of powers, checks and balances, the Bill of Rights. By constraining government, citizens enjoy the fruits of freedom.
Which explains why, since the early twentieth-century Progressive Era, Ruling Class power-seekers have targeted the Constitution for annihilation. The regimes of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt subjected constitutional limitations on power to systematic, bipartisan attack. So did the “New Deal” of Franklin Roosevelt and the “Great Society” of Lyndon Johnson.
In our time, the clamor against individual rights and constitutional constraints on power has risen to a crescendo. And that is why we’re here. Today’s Ruling Class consists of the intellectual heirs of the earlier progressives. From Obama to McCain, from Arianna Huffington to David Gergen, from George Soros to Michael Bloomberg, our Beltway grandees continue to impart their wisdom and good taste upon us by law—telling us what to eat, what our children should learn and in what kind of schools, what vehicles we should travel in, what fuels should power them, where we should live, where our thermostats should be set, what we should grow, how we should use our land, with whom we should engage in business, what we should sell and at what prices, what portion of our earnings we may be allowed to keep, what “good causes” we must support, what language we must use in conversations about “sensitive” topics ranging from race to romance to religion, what medical coverage we must have, who must provide it, and at what price, and on, and on, and on.
It goes on without limit, because our Ruling Class accepts no limits, legal or moral, on its power to “do good” to us. We are mere mortar and bricks for their social engineering.Like missionaries visiting primitive tribes, they view us as savages, whom they must cage and civilize.
We see their boundless arrogance in Barack Obama, who tells his fellow Ruling Class members that “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” with his nose held so high in the air that any passing rainstorm would waterboard him. We see it in Senator John Kerry when, like some monarch, he refers to himself in the third person. We see it in Barney Frank, the only human on the planet who is able to strut even while sitting. We see it in Harry Reid, who told us the other day that, “But for me, we’d be in a world-wide depression.” We see it in Nancy Pelosi, who—when asked where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to order us to buy health insurance—replied: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Never mind that the Ruling Class and its progressive policies have failed miserably to achieve their announced objectives. For more than a century, countless government programs have plundered untold trillions of dollars from taxpayers, then redirected them, supposedly to eradicate poverty, to end unemployment, to prevent disastrous business cycles, to put everyone in his own home.
But what do we see? Record levels of people on food stamps; soaring unemployment rates; a recession longer and deeper than any since the 1930s; a debacle in the housing market. Yet, what does the Ruling Class do in response? It demands more power to enact more of the same.
They say that a sure sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different outcome. By that criterion, progressives are bat-crap crazy.
But then, what are we, if we re-elect them?
Bad as this is, it is even more sickening to watch ambitious young men and women trying desperately to enter the Ruling Class, then rise through its corrupt ranks, in their lust for power and position. For an example, look no farther than our freshman congressman in Maryland’s First District. In his disgustingly dishonest campaign ads, as well as his voting record, Frank Kratovil has demonstrated that he’ll eagerly sell his soul for a seat at a Ruling Class table.
Mr. Kratovil has spent most of his campaign running away from his voting record—even from his party affiliation. From his ads, you would think he’s running as an “Independent,” not a Democrat. He demonstrates this independence by voting with his party 84.6 percent of the time—then accepting well over a million dollars in campaign contributions from party coffers.
Consider his votes on ObamaCare. Like Hamlet, Mr. Kratovil spent a year in anguished public indecision. This waffling persisted all the way to the last week before the final vote, while Nancy Pelosi collected the backing she needed to pass the bill. Then, after Pelosi had lined up enough support to let him off the hook, Kratovil first voted for ObamaCare to proceed to a final vote, then announced he would vote against the final bill on the floor. But since then, he has refused to back a bill to repeal ObamaCare.
Doing John Kerry one better, Kratovil was for ObamaCare before he was against it, before he was for it once again. This, he says, demonstrates his independence from the Democratic party line.
On the other big bills of the past two years—namely, the “stimulus” and “cap and tax” bills—this self-described “fiscal conservative” voted to add more than one-and-a-half trillion dollars to the government credit card. The stimulus boondoggle poured billions of tax dollars into pork projects for public-employee unions. Meanwhile, cap-and-tax was designed to clobber the oil, coal, and natural-gas industries, and to raise your energy costs $1600 per household. Kratovil voted for other earmarks and pork projects, too.
Two years ago, Frank Kratovil boarded a flight headed into Ruling Class territory. He’s well on his way—unless you cancel his flight on November 2nd.
Happily, I think that will happen. And it will happen to many other members of the self-appointed elite. Signs are everywhere that people are, at last, wising up and fighting back. Your presence here today is one of those signs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been paying close attention to politics since I was a teenager in the 1960s. I’ve never been so optimistic about America’s future—and you are a major reason for that. For nearly half a century, I wrote and preached about our lost liberties and endangered rights, feeling like a lonely voice in the wilderness. But now, millions of voices are carrying that message.
However, we can’t stop on November 2nd. Our next task must be to transform the Republican Party into something more than an auxiliary chapter of the Ruling Class clique. The GOP has pretended for decades to be the party of freedom, capitalism, and limited government. And it has betrayed those principles repeatedly.
But we have not just a political party, but a cultural legacy, to reclaim—a legacy often described as American individualism. From our nation’s earliest days, when our pioneer ancestors blazed trails through forbidding frontiers, we Americans havenever viewed ourselves as victims of circumstances. Fiercely self-assertive, proudly independent, we, more than any other people on earth, view ourselves as masters of our fates, as captains of our souls.
The spirit of American individualism, and the moral quest for personal liberty, motivated the Foundersto pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause. It is a cause for which many have fought and died, so that we don’t have to.
So, let us win a peaceful victory for that cause on November 2nd—and then, in the words of Washington, let us continue in the months and years ahead to raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know.
Together with all the people in congress who voted for this bill. This is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with this bill. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
I, and many, many others told you so before the Obama Care “reform” was rammed through at all costs against the will of the American people.
We where told by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it”
Well, we REALLY did find out a lot of things, and remember it’s just the beginning:
It’s going to ruin states, it’s going to be ENFORCED by IRS, close hospitals, fewer doctors, rationing (the new government agency, the Medicare Advisory Board, Section 3403 of the senate bill, that is going to decide (ration) what kind of Medicare you are going to receive), cuts in Medicare, increase the health care costs for companies by billions (and who do you think is going to pay for that?), etc. etc.
And then there were ALL these kickbacks, bribes and pork barrel spending in there to get the bill through at ALL COST.
And worst of all, the blatant hypocrisy from this new nomenklatura:
President Obama declared that the new health care law ”is going to be affecting every American family.” Except his own, of course.
The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well.
Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
And remember – They DELIBERATELY PULLED THE TRIGGER ON THIS LOADED GUN knowing fully well “most” of the consequences.
Here are just a few articles:
Lost in Taxation – The IRS’s vast new ObamaCare powers..
“The reality is that voters who oppose ObamaCare are far more knowledgeable about the law and its consequences than most Congressmen who voted for it.”
“..the top actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid revealed that millions of American seniors will have to pay increased out-of-pocket health care costs next year for “less generous benefit packages” as a direct result of Obamacare.”
“Last month, a Kaiser Family Foundation report showed that family health care costs are up by 14 percent in 2010 – with even larger increases forecast for future years, again as a result of Obamacare.
“Health reform mandates new levels of coverage that will increase employers’ costs at least until 2014,” a Kaiser analyst noted.
Beyond higher costs, “Obamacare” is already reneging on government promises regarding prescription drug plans – another benefit that never should have been subsidized by taxpayers. According to a study released earlier this year by Avalare Heath, as many as 3.7 million seniors could be forced out of their prescription drug coverage under the new law next year – ostensibly so the government can provide them with “more meaningful choices.”
All across the country, Obamacare’s costly new mandates are driving Americans out of their existing coverage and forcing them to pay increased out-of-pocket expenses – perpetuating the worst inefficiencies of government-run health care.
“This much is clear: If the law with its expensive mandates remains on the books, millions of Americans are going to lose the health care plans they have now — plans the president repeatedly promised they could keep,” Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote recently.”
Rasmussen’s final pre-election poll on the repeal of Obamacare shows that independents favor repeal by the colossal margin of 45 points (70 to 25 percent).
“Eighty-four percent (84%) of voters who have health insurance rate their coverage as good or excellent. Only two percent (2%) describe it as poor. Among voters with health insurance, 60% favor repeal of the health care law.”
“As has been the case since the health care debate first began to heat up in September 2009, there is a large divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters.Seventy-six percent (76%) of Mainstream voters favor repeal of the health care law, while 76% of the Political Class are opposed.
Seventy-nine percent (79%) of voters in the Political Class say the law will be good for the country. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Mainstream voters disagree.“
“Voters now rank health care secondon a list of 10 important issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The economy continues to be the most important issue on voters’ minds. “
Health Care: The more we know about ObamaCare, the more we find out it wasn’t designed to cut costs but to eventually eliminate private insurance coverage and create a government-run system.
Provisions of the Democrats’ health care overhaul started to become law only a month ago, yet the list of companies dropping medical benefits for their employers is piling up.
Mega-firms such as AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon are among those that are either considering ending coverage for their employees or have already chosen to do so.
It’s not just the big companies eliminating benefits, either. Smaller employers are doing the same. Larry M. Elkin, president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, wrote Thursday in the Business Insider: ”For 15 years, I have taken pride in paying the full cost of health insurance for every full-time PalisadesHudson employee who wanted it. This month marks the last time I will do that.”
Elkin said that every one of his employees has the option of staying on the company plan. But those who choose that route ”will have to pay the entire cost — ranging from $574 to $683 per month — themselves, through payroll deductions.”
And where will those who don’t opt for staying on the company plan go? Maybe they end up leaning on the government along with the 46 million or so other uninsured Americans the Democrats are trying to cover.”
“As the debate over ObamaCare raged, Americans were assured by the president himself that those of us who like our insurance plans would be able to keep them. But workers will not only lose their employers’ plans due to their employers’ increasing costs under the law, they will also be losing coverage because carriers are dropping some of the policy options they offer.
WellPoint, Cigna, CoventryOne, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna and Golden Rule have, for instance, announced that they will no longer sell child-only policies under the Democrats’ health care regime.”
In some cases — the Principal Group and its 840,000 customers is one example — carriers are dropping out of the health insurance market entirely.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s and 29 other companies told Washington that ObamaCare was going to force them to drop insurance coverage for some workers. Had those companies not been granted federal waivers from the requirement that they raise the minimum annual benefits of their low-cost health plans, roughly 1 million Americans would have been added to the rolls of the uninsured.
Don’t think it can’t get worse, because under the Democrats’ ill-thought-out plan, it will. Large pieces of ObamaCare that will make the system painfully expensive and increase federal intrusion still haven’t become law. The next Congress needs to get focused fast on stopping the march toward costly, substandard care.”
Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf on Obama Care: ObamaCare includes work disincentives likely to shrink the amount of labor used in the economy.
Factoring in additional demand for workers in health care and insurance, CBO estimates that “the legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent,” he said. (For perspective, half a percent of current payrolls is 651,000 jobs, though the impact would show up in both fewer jobs and fewer hours worked.)
“Perhaps the most comprehensive critique can be found in ”Fresh Medicine,” a new book by Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat. In a year in which he isn’t even running for re-election, Mr. Bredesen pulls few punches. ”Congress and the Obama administration have just added over 30 million people into an obsolete and broken system and done little to address the underlying problems; in multiple ways, they’ve made them worse,” he wrote. ”Worse” is an understatement. Lower quality health care, higher costs, more complexity and more regulations would be Obamacare’s legacy.
The American people have a chance to stop it from happening. Just as the drubbing of congressional Democrats in 1994 in the wake of the Clinton gun ban has kept overt gun-control measures out of the national spotlight, the 2010 drubbing could kill the desire for health care nationalization once and for all. Already, 71 percent of voters in Missouri have approved a ballot measure that will block implementation of Obamacare at the state level. Big votes tomorrow on similar constitutional amendments in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma will make it clear once and for all that Obamacare is not long for this world.”
“We now know that federal employees across the nation owefully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
As in, 1,000 times one million dollars.”
“Now, back taxes have been a problem for the Obama-Biden administration. You may recall early on that Tom Daschle was the president’s top pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. But it turned out the former Democratic senator, who was un-elected from South Dakota in 2004, owed something like $120,000 to the IRS for things from his subsequent benefactor that he just forgot to pay taxes on. You know how that is. $120G’s here or there. So he dropped out.
And then we learned this guy Timothy Geithner owed something like $42,000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, which is one of the agencies that he’d be in charge of as secretary of the Treasury.The fine fellow who’s supposed to know about handling everyone else’s money. In the end this was excused by Washington‘s bipartisan CYA culture as one of those inadvertent accidental oversights that somehow never seem to happen on the side of paying too much taxes.”
“But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama’s very own White House owe the government they’re allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.
In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS’ parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis’ husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System’s board of governors owe $1,076,733.
Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.
Then, we come to the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who preferred to call terrorist acts ”man-caused disasters.” Homeland Security is keeping all of us safe by ensuring that a Dutch tourist is aboard every inbound international flight to thwart any would-be bomber with explosives in his underpants.
Within that department, there reside 4,856 people who owe the tax agency a whopping total of $37,012,174.”
2010 Congressional Pig Book Summary. An exposé of pork-barrel spending. The Pig Book revealed 9,129 earmarks worth $16.5 billion.
Sixty percent (60%) of U.S. voters say most members of Congress don’t care what their constituents think, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Our latest interview with the White House Insider reveals a Democratic Party civil war, with growing opposition to the Obama White House.
“So who do you place the most blame for the Democratic Party’s troubles today? President Obama and his administration -without a doubt. The Obama White House has been a political train wreck from day one, and it isn’t getting any better at the moment. You already know my feelings on that.
Previously you stated that Obama could be re-elected in 2012, and that if he improved himself on the job – that if he took a more active and responsible role as President, that you would support him. Do you still feel that way? Is that what I said? (shakes head) Well…(pauses) Ok, I’ll just come out and say what is already underway, and to hell with the possible consequences to me. I will not support Barack Obama in 2012. That possibility has left the table for me. Based on what I know, what I have been told, what I have seen in recent weeks…no, I cannot support the President for a second term. My concern for the party , for the country…my conscience does not allow me that option any longer. Obama is not fit to be president. He simply does not possess the inclinations necessary to lead the country. And I don’t like saying that. I helped the man get elected. I was in the trenches day after day from city to city helping things get done in 2008…I take no pleasure in saying I was a part of that. And I take no pleasure in saying Obama should not be re-elected in 2012.
That is a very strong statement – anything recent that causes you to now say you will not support Obama in 2012? (Long pause – question is repeated) There is much I have been told, some I know, some more that will probably develop in the coming weeks and months. But you want specifics, right? I understand that…I’ll give you an example of why President Obama is not right for America. He sure as hell has not been right for the party. Not long ago, the president took a meeting. He’s late, which apparently is becoming more and more common with him. The meeting was almost cancelled. In strolls the president, joking with an aide. He plops down on a sofa, leans over and claps another guy on the back asking how he’s been. Apologizes for being late, says he was “held up”. He laughs some more. The meeting begins. After just ten minutes, during which time the president appears to almost totally withdraw into himself, an aide walks in and whispers something to the president, who then nods and quickly stands up, shakes a few hands and tells another aide to update him later on the rest of the meeting. As the president is walking out he is laughing at something yet again. He asked no questions of those at the meeting – not one. He left after just ten minutes, coming in laughing and leaving laughing. His behavior during that brief time he was there was described as “borderline manic”.
Ok, you have already stated previously that the president doesn’t show much interest in the day to day business of being president – why is this example so bad, or different? Care to know what that particular meeting was about on that day?
Certainly. Afghanistan. That meeting was an update on Afghanistan, and the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, could give a -expletive-.
Were you actually there to witness this? No, I was long gone from the White House by then. It was told to me though by someone who was. They were there. First hand. They were also left to apologize to the ones left in the room after the president left. Some of these were military. They were not happy. No…that is not accurate. They were pissed. They didn’t say much at the time, but word got back. They were in shock at the president’s behavior. The country had just lost a number of soldiers the week prior, the public opinion on the war was falling…and the president didn’t seem to care. He arrives late, leaves early, appears to emotionally shut down during the actual discussion, and to then start laughing once again as he is leaving…how does someone reconcile with that kind of behavior? I can’t. It turns my stomach. I didn’t want to believe what I was being told, but I had seen similar kinds of behavior from the president myself, and I can’t dispute the credibility of the source. They have no reason to lie.
So is that one example the real tipping point for you in no longer being willing to support Obama in 2012? Or do you have any others you wish to share? Oh, I have others, though I cannot share all of them at this point because they involve some still in range of potential White House retribution. Then again, I suppose I am still in range of such retribution myself.
What do you mean by retribution? Punishment. Political punishment, and even personal punishment. The powers of a president extend far beyond the Oval Office – you know that. I make my living, and it has been a very good living, working within the system of politics. A president can create considerable…pressure if you will, to limit or even destroy my place in that system. Working with a president is an extraordinary and terrifying thing. In regards to my experience with Obama, it became far less extraordinary and far more terrifying. And it’s getting worse.
Terrifying? Yes, terrifying. To see one’s expectations so disappointed. To see a figure who wields such great power and influence fall so short of the responsibilities of that power and influence…that is terrifying to witness. Initially I developed great fear for my party – for the Democrats whose political careers were being destroyed by this administration and party leader ship. Now I sincerely fear for my country.
– The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001
– The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.
– The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
– As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
– Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
– In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
– Dell Inc. has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
– Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
– If our trade deficit with China increases at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
– As of the end of July, the trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
– The Census Bureau says 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
“So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.
If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you. If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.
America is in deep, deep trouble folks. It is time to It is time to wake up.”
18 Iconic Products That America Doesn’t Make Anymore
Rawlings baseballs, Etch-a-sketch, Chuck Taylors shoes, Stainless steel rebar, Mattel toys, Minivans, Vending machines, Levi jeans, Radio Flyer’s Red Wagon, Televisions, Cell phones, Railroad parts, Dell computers, Canned sardines, Incandescent light bulb, Forks, spoons, and knives.
”Buying American” used to be a popular political gesture. But these days it’s becoming impossible. “
Is this the end result if present political and economic trend continues? “Why do great nations fail?…. They all make the same mistakes. .. He He Now they work for us.”
Chinese Professor
79% of Private Sector Job Growth Over Last 5 Years Has Been in Texas
“In total, over 2 million jobs have been eliminated, in contrast to the over 3 million more jobs Americans were promised if Democrats’ 2009 stimulus plan passed. The only place in America that has exceeded its projected job growth following Democrats’ stimulus is Washington, D.C.”
“The study, ”The Adult Recession: Age-Adjusted Unemployment at Post-War Highs,” adjusts the current unemployment rate to account for demographic differences and finds that the unemployment rate has not fallen below 10.8 percent in the last 12 months. During the worst episode of the recession of the 1980s — the second half of 1982 and the first half of 1983 — unemployment passed 10 percent for 7 months.
The analysis notes that the population is older today than it was in the 1980s, which has the effect of lowering today’s unemployment rate relative to the past. Since they change jobs more frequently and are more likely to move in and out of the labor market, Young people have a higher unemployment rate than older workers. Adjusting for this older workforce shows that the United States is experiencing the weakest labor market since the Great Depression.”
60 Minutes Shock Report: National Unemployed and Underemployed 17.5%; California 22%
”When you take into account the underemployed as well as the unemployed, the national rate hits 17% and California a staggering 22%.
To put a face on the realities of the underemployed in America under Obamanomincs, reporter Scott Pelley spoke with a fiber-optics engineering manager who has been looking for work for over a year. He just took a job working at a Target. 20% of the unemployed in America have college degrees.
According to the report, 1/3 of the unemployed have been out of work for over a year. This hasn’t happened since the Great Depression.”
Licensing to Kill
A new study showshow city regulations harm small business.
“When most people think of occupations requiring fingerprints and police reports, corner bookshop owners don’t spring to mind. Try telling that to Los Angeles,where many used booksellers are required by law to get a police permit and take a thumbprint from every 40-something trying to offload his collection of French poetry.
That’s one scene from a study to be released this week by the Institute for Justice, which has collected dozens of examples of regulations choking economic growth by taxing and over-licensing small businesses. In a survey of eight major cities, the study found that entrepreneurs routinely face obstacles …”
“While Republicans have been taking aim at Democrats voting record, including their backing a $787 billion stimulus that failed to produce the promised jobs and a $500 billion cut to Medicare for Seniors, Democrats have gotten mean with ad hominen attacks.”
”It’s a political game played by both sides of the aisle in every election, of course. But there are indications the midterm election of 2010 is emerging as one of the dirtiest races ever with most of the mud flying from Democratic ramparts.”
“The Democrats are wary of trying to brag about anything, given the bad mood and the recession,” said Eugene Kiely, an official with the FactCheck.org watchdog. ”So they have done relatively few positive ads.
”It’s been attack from the beginning,” he told The Huffington Post.”
New York Times: Democrats Backing Fake Tea Party Candidates
“Increasingly desperate and fearful of a GOP takeover of Congress, the Democratic Party is secretly supporting fake tea party and other third-party candidates in the hopes of diverting votes from Republican contenders.”
“Seeking any advantage in their effort to retain control of Congress, Democrats are working behind the scenes in a number of tight races to bolster long-shot third-party candidates who have platforms at odds with the Democratic agenda but hold the promise of siphoning Republican votes.
The efforts are taking place across the country with varying degrees of stealth. And in many cases, they seem to hold as much risk as potential reward for Democrats, prompting accusations of hypocrisy and dirty tricks from Republicans and the third-party movements that are on the receiving end of the unlikely, and sometimes unwelcome, support.“
In Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for a suburban Philadelphia House seat, Bryan Lentz, admitted this week that his volunteers helped Jim Schneller — a prominent skeptic of President Obama’s citizenship — collect petitions to run against Mr. Lentz and his Republican opponent, Pat Meehan.
“It is one of the dirtiest moves,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, a vice chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It’s not as though the Democrats are playing to compete against the third party — they’re helping to build the third party up to make those votes not count.” Calling it “a concerted effort,” Mr. McCarthy added, “In Congressional races, it could steer the tide for the majority.”
“In other efforts, Democrats have tried to keep a lower profile, though they have not always succeeded.
Democrat Dirty Tricks: A Primer on Stealing Elections
“Democrats are desperate to stop the red tide spreading from the heart of the nation and heading toward the coasts. They are eager to preserve and protect their liberal agenda and extend it in the years to come. They fear that Republican ascendancy in the House might lead to the defunding of several elements of ObamaCare and thus put it on life support until they can deliver the coup de grace in 2012 under a veto-proof majority or a new president.
Democrats are reaching into their bag of tricks. They are going beyond garden-variety tactics such as push polls and misrepresenting their own records, positions, and even identities (including stripping their party designation, the Scarlet D, from ads; hiding the fact that they are incumbents; denying one’s paternity, as in the case of Harry Reid’s son, who went the way of Cher during his campaign and used just his first name, Rory; running away from Barack Obama and their own votes on ObamaCare and the stimulus; pledging to vote to repeal ObamaCare and extend tax cuts for one and all; misrepresenting the views of their opponents; and portraying themselves as Blue Dogs despite being Pelosi Lapdogs). And, of course, they are postponing ethics trials of prominent Democrats until after November 2. “
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we are beginning to see the Democrats start to rely on ”dirty tricks” to spoil the fun (because if you have to run from the policies that are destroying your party’s popularity, you have to resort to all means, fair and foul — and mostly foul — to win). Politics is war by another means, and when the Democrats are led by the CookCounty Gang that could not play straight, all sorts of tactics will emerge.
Let’s take a tour across the political landscape and catch some highlights:
The Department of Justice, The Secretary of State Project, Smear Campaigns, Death to the Tea Party, False Flags”
“False, misleading or fraudulent claims have long brought the wrath of juries, judges and government agencies down on perpetrators. So have substandard manufacturing practices.
Who could oppose following the rules, making quality products and being honest? But shouldn’t these values apply where far more is at stake than a few companies, pills, baseball records or bad role models? Shouldn’t we demand that these rules apply to people and actions that have unprecedented impact on lives, livelihoods, liberties and communities throughout the country?
Can we afford to continue having double standards that let government officials violate basic standards of honesty and accountability that they apply “vigorously” to citizens and companies?Why should legislators, regulators and investigators be exempt from rules they devise and impose on everyone else? Shouldn’t we teach our kids that government officials mustn’t lie to us, either?
“Military voters from the land of Lincoln could be shut out of the midterm election after the Justice Department reached an agreement with Illinois that gave the state ”a pass” for violating federal election law, an advocacy group warned Monday. “
“Eric Eversole, a former Justice voting section attorney who runs the nonprofit Military Voter Protection Project, told FoxNews.com the deal effectively lets wayward Illinois election officials off the hook and does little to ensure the state’s military voters get their ballots in time.
”For at least 29 counties, there were absolutely no consequences,” he said. ”Illinois is precisely the reason why you can’t wait until a week before the election to try and resolve a clear violation of military voting rights.”
“Washington, D.C. – Nearly six weeks after receiving a waiver of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which allowed New York to mail absentee ballots to our troops no later than October 1, 2010, the New York State Board of Elections admitted on Tuesday that New York City and several counties failed to meet the deadline and still have not mailed their absentee ballots. [Read more: http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/ny_delivery_cert.pdf%5D With only 25 days before the election, thousands of New York military voters now stand on the brink of having their voices silenced in the upcoming elections.”
The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights of American democracy. It has been defended for well over 200 years by the sacrifices our men and women in uniform. Yet, when it comes to their right to vote—our military members’ right to choose the next Commander in Chief or their elected representatives—their voices have long been silenced by an electoral process that has failed them. That silence was most evident in the 2008 when thousands of absentee military ballots never received by the military voter or received after the election. The MVP Project is here to defend our military members’ right to vote and to provide them with the very right that they defend
Mayor Bloomberg Slams Board of Elections for Failure to Mail Military Ballots
“Bloomberg told Fox News. ”We send our young men and women overseas to fight and to die for us and we don’t care enough to make sure they get the right to exercise their franchise ? That’s what they’re over there fighting for as much as anything else.”
“Not only did Maryland fight like crazy to deprive soldiers of their constitutional right to vote for state candidates, they might appeal today’s victory for military voters against Maryland. I wonder if the Baltimore Sun will FOIA how much it is costing the taxpayers to litigate so as to avoid mailing ballots to military voters. But Maryland doesn’t seem to be a state that places high priority on military voters. They are more interested in registering 16 year olds to vote and where you can hunt ducks.More on Maryland’s unfortunate position. “
At DOJ, Military Voting Rights Hang in the Balance
“Eric Holder’s DOJ isn’t interested in making sure our military members’ votes are protected and counted, so PJM is gathering evidence to ensure that problems are reported properly and will be fixed.
Pajamas Media is asking military voters who had problems getting their ballots to send their stories to story@pajamasmedia.com. Why? Because the MOVE Act may likely be rewritten next year, and information about problems you experienced will be essential to get it right in 2012.”
”Sixteen states and territories, at least, blew it and didn’t mail ballots on time. The Maine secretary of state, amazingly, told Fox News last week that compliance has been “pretty impressive.” I’d hate to see what he thinks is pretty “awful.”
”But the Eric Holder Justice Department deserves enormous blame. As far back as February, a manager at the Voting Section told state election officials that the new law was vague and the DOJ didn’t really want to sue anyone. State election officials were flabbergasted and acted accordingly. They assumed compliance with the new law wasn’t a big deal to the DOJ, the agency charged with enforcement.
Then things really got bad. In the spring, the DOJ never provided the Pentagon waiver guidance despite the Pentagon’s repeated requests. And how many lawsuits did the DOJ file despite the multiple states that were facially out of compliance with too-late primary elections? Zero. The summer dribbled away with analysis, talk, and chatter instead of action.”
Disgrace: DOJ Fails to Protect Military Voting Rights
“In 2008, some 17,000 servicemen and servicewomen mailed home completed ballots that were never counted. The DOJ barely lifted a finger to prevent or prosecute this travesty. What will happen in 2010?”
”Election ’10: The president’s home state gets a pass from the Justice Department on ensuring its soldiers overseas can vote. An administration obsessed with gays in the military doesn’t care about voting rights for GIs.
You can call it a tragedy of errors, a perfect storm of incompetent and uncaring bureaucrats, or you can call it a deliberate attempt to steal what looks to be a close race for both governor and U.S. senator in President Obama’s home state by disenfranchising its servicemen overseas, votes likely to tilt Republican.”
“Meanwhile, the Chicago Board of Elections hand-delivers ballots to inmates in CookCounty Jail. The board doesn’t even wait for the inmates to apply — it brings the applications with the ballots! More than 2,600 inmates have cast ballots — strikingly similar to the 2,600 soldiers who will likely not receive a ballot for Tuesday’s election.”
Holder puts felons over soldiers. The Justice Department obstructs military voting rights
“Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad. The senator is right to raise a ruckus.
Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before the election. Yet, as former Justice Department lawyer Eric Eversole first reported in The Washington Times last week, the department seems to be encouraging states to apply for waivers so they won’t have to follow that law. More than 17,000 Americans serving overseas were denied the vote in 2008 – but, presumably because military personnel are thought to lean conservative, the liberal Obama administration is in no hurry to correct the situation.
The Justice Department is so unenthusiastic about military voting that its website still lists the old requirement for a shorter 30-day military voting window, rather than the current law mandating 45 days. On the other hand, the Justice Department has no legislative mandate whatsoever to involve itself with helping felons to vote, but its website devotes a large section – 2,314 words – to advising felons how to regain voting privileges.”
You can help fight the vote fraud and rigging of the election: There’s an app where you can report about voter fraud, intimidation, or other irregular election activity. Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ireport2010/id398437175?mt=8
“We’re looking for citizen journalists/poll watchers from across the country to help us report on cases of voter fraud, intimidation or other voting misconduct. Sign up using the form below to get involved.” Sign up here: http://pajamasmedia.com/voter-fraud-watch-2/
“Election watchers True the Vote have found disturbing amounts of fraud in Harris County, Texas. Rather than support their important work, the Texas Democratic Party (among others) is suing them. “
“Talk about denial! A group of liberal activists is making the media rounds, assuring reporters and editors that election fraud is a fairy tale. Nothing serious, they assert, nothing to see here. Too bad for them that citizens in Houston, energized by the Tea Party movement, have formed a group called True the Vote. Their hard work has demonstrated that, in some parts of the country at least, our election system is still infested with problems.”
“True the Vote reports that at least four noncitizens have been registered to vote in Harris County. The group provided Justice with the actual voter registration forms where applicants marked “NO” to the question: “Are you a U.S. Citizen?” The group also provided the voter registration numbers of these confessed noncitizens. Yes, astonishingly, HarrisCounty registered them to vote anyway. They are now on the rolls and able to participate in the upcoming midterm elections.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was supposed to stop this from happening. But this federal legislation is only as good as the Justice Department’s willingness to enforce it. If Harris County is registering noncitizens, then it is violating numerous provisions of federal law, including those that prohibit the registration of foreigners to vote in federal elections.
True the Vote uncovered other types of fraud as well. The group forwarded to DOJ seven voter registration forms with applicant names different from the signature name. For example: Ta’mackayn Harrison’s application was signed by “Bra Kelly.” Jason King’s was signed by “Jemma Noel.” Yet HarrisCounty inexplicably approved all of these applications. Jason King, aka Jemma Noel, is now on the voter rolls in Houston.
The citizens group also found multiple registrations for individual voters. For example, True the Vote provided the Justice Department government documents showing that at least four persons, including Jose Gomez and Victor Nickerson, had registered to vote multiple times successfully.
These problems were found by True the Vote in just a small sampling of the county’s voter registration list. How many other, similar problems would turn up in a comprehensive review? Don’t forget: every vote counts. Which also means that every legitimate vote cancelled out by a fraudulent vote should be a concern to anyone interested in fair elections and protecting the right to vote.”
Stunner. AZ Group Accused of Massive Voter Fraud Is Offshoot of SEIU
“What the Yuma Sun did not tell you is that over 65% of these last minute registrations were invalid due to the registrant not being a citizen, a wrong/invalid address, or a false signature.”
Raul Grijalva fakes “terrorist attack” to cover up Yuma voter fraud story
“Here is a perfect example of political cynicism from the gangster Congressman in Arizona’s 7th District.
Just hours after the Yuma Sun reports that 3000 voter registrations had been dumped at the Yuma County Recorder’s Office by a group affiliated with the SEIU (with most of them subsequently found to be fraudulent), Raul Grijalva’s office received a suspicious package covered in swastikas with a white powder inside.
Now the story about the suspicious package — the “terrorist attack” as Grijalva puts it — has gone national, and the voter fraud story has gone unnoticed by the mainstream media. How convenient, right?
Raul Grijalva part-time staffer Emily Romero has repeatedly bragged to Democratic insiders that the campaign concocts these threats to take attention away from bad publicity. In this case, the campaign decided to fake a “terrorist attack” on themselves to cover up the story of voter fraud that had just broken. “
Watch this video of a poll watcher’s story about what she has seen during early voting in Houston, Texas. This is eyewitness testimony to voter fraud in the form of poll worker casting votes on behalf of voters,
Tea Partiers Outraged Over Democratic Tea Party Plant’s Fraudulent Google Ads
“Tea Party groups in New Jersey are outraged over ads that have mysteriously surfaced in support of a supposed Tea Party candidate. The sponsored ads on Google are being served up all over the web, in places like BlogTalkRadio, in support of one Peter DeStefano, and direct viewers to the website of njteapartycoalition.org.
The problem is, the NJ Tea Party Coalition, the owners of that website, did not purchase any such ads.
It’s one thing to use dirty Democratic tricks to get on the ballot in an effort to siphon votes away from the Republican candidate, former NFL football player Jon Runyan. But it’s another to fraudulently represent yourself as another existing Tea Party organization in online advertising campaigns, even using that group’s URL to make it seem as though that group has endorsed your fake candidate.
So, the latest question still remains. Who is fraudulently using the NJ Tea Party Coalition’s website address in Google advertisements?”
See also
Tea Party candidate Peter DeStefano was backed by John Adler campaign
“Do you remember when Barack Obama said: “The SEIU Agenda Is My Agenda”?
The same SEIU offshoot group that is accused of turning in thousands of bogus voter registrations in Arizona has come under fire in Colorado.Mi Familia Vota is accused of turning in 6,000 bogus voter registrations in Colorado.”
Rule Of Law: Suspicious voting-machine malfunctions and cheating candidates are the stuff of banana republics, not America. With Democrats about to suffer historic losses, is our election’s integrity in question?
‘It can’t happen here,” most Americans would say about the chances of voting one way and seeing your votes recorded the opposite. But that’s what happened in early voting in North Carolina’s unfortunately named Craven County last week.
Voter Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern found that ”an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended,” the New Bern Sun Journal reported.
Laughinghouse ”pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked,” the local paper reported. ”He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result.”
Election personnel eventually straightened it out, but clearly a less observant Republican voter would have inadvertently voted for every Democrat on his ballot. Chuck Tyson, chairman of the Craven County Republican Party, told the Sun Journal he ”got two or three calls” from voters experiencing the same problem and is not satisfied with state election officials’ efforts to fix it.
In Boulder City, Nev., meanwhile, where voters use computer screens, another disturbing episode was reported by Fox News. When voter Joyce Ferrara and her husband went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, they — and several others, according to Ferrara — found that Democratic incumbent Harry Reid’s name was already checked. The county registrar’s explanation: The high-tech voting screens are sensitive.
The Nevada case is especially disturbing because the seat of the most powerful Democrat in the Senate is at stake.”
“Power is hard to give up, but when those in power compromise campaign and election rules, we cross a sacrosanct threshold.”
The union SEIU controls voting machines in Clark County, NV and the ballots are pre-marked for Harry Reid. What a coincidence wouldn’t you say? Especially since SEIU are spending $44 million of their member’s fees (and the members have no say in this) on helping democrats. How reassuring that the same people are in charge of the voting machines.
They have also spent $225,000.00 of their member’s fees to fight Sharron Angle (R).
“According to Joyce Ferrara who was an eyewitness to this strange ballot ordeal, the problem was widespread, “One person that’s a fluke. Two, that’s strange. But several within a five minute period of time — that’s wrong.”
It is particularly troubling that Clark County has put the uber left-wing SEIU Local 1107 in charge of their voting machines.”
Ballots In Nevada Are Cast For Reid Before Voters Vote
Notice, this video was first published on January 3 2010 long before the Obama Care bill was passed
America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians
”America elected you on a promise of hope and change. We trusted you. So we elected you. We regret it. So in 2010…. You Will Lose Big. No more taxes. No more spending. No more socialism. We tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen. So now you will pay.We’re taking our country back. From radical leftists and liberals. We’re coming after you.
Blue collar democrats, libertarians, independents, and conservatives. We love our country. We are proud of our founders. And we will fight for our traditions. We don’t want your revolution! “
America Rising Part 2- A Call for the Republican Party to Join!
This is your last chance, Republican Party, to prove to the American voter that you are serious and mean what you say. No more co-opting freshmen to model them to stooges. (read John Trent (R) in WP July 18: “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them”)
Frank Caprio (D) Gubernatorial candidate for Rhode Island:
“I never asked for President Obama’s endorsement. You know, he can take his endorsement and shove it as far as I’m concerned. The reality here is that Rhode Islanders are hurting. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. We had one of the worst floods in the history of the United States a few months back. And President Obama didn’t even do a flyover of Rhode Island like President Bush did when New Orleans had their problems. He ignored us, and now he is coming into Rhode Island and treating us like an ATM machine.”
“Another laugh at Mr. Obama’s expense came when he was responding to a line of questioning from Mr. Stewart that encapsulated the liberal critique of his presidency; namely, that he hasn’t done enough to bring about the promised ”fundamental transformation” of America. For the left, there is a widening audacity gap. Would Mr. Obama have to change his slogan, ”Yes, we can?”the president began. ”I think what I would say is ‘yes, we can, but … .’ ” At that point, Mr. Stewart and the crowd began laughing. The president dude looked a little foolish. Hope and change died with that ”but.”
Is America Really A 50-50 Nation? Not Even Close, New Polling Finds
“Here’s a well-kept secret: Americans are in overwhelming agreement on social issues. Here’s a not-so-well-kept secret. Many in the media and politics have absolutely no idea.”
Campaign’s Big Spender
Public-Employees Union Now Leads All Groups in Independent Election Outlays
“The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections, thanks to an 11th-hour effort to boost Democrats that has vaulted the public-sector union ahead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a flock of new Republican groups in campaign spending.
The 1.6 million-member AFSCMEis spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats’ hold on Congress. Last week, AFSCME dug deeper, taking out a $2 million loan to fund its push. The group is spending money on television advertisements, phone calls, campaign mailings and other political efforts, helped by a Supreme Court decision that loosened restrictions on campaign spending.
”We’re the big dog,” said Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME’s political operations. ”But we don’t like to brag.”
A recent Gallup poll piled on bad news for President Obama. At the beginning of 2010 the president enjoyed support from 69% of Hispanics. By May that number was down to 57%. Now just 55% of Hispanics support the president and his liberal agenda.
But what’s going on behind the numbers could possibly be a harbinger of doom for Obama’s re-election in 2012. Across the country conservative Latino organizations are springing up as fast as illegal immigrants are streaming across the border. And these organizations are not content to just conduct meetings and complain about the liberal takeover in Washington. Some are taking action. In Dallas, Amigos de Patriots is launching an online and TV ad campaign called “Vote your Values, Vote Conservative.” The idea is to remind Hispanics that their ancestors fled countries where prosperity was killed by left-wing regimes. The 30-second spots also take on social issues like abortion, a practice that is dear to liberals and Democrats but that the Latino community at large finds offensive.
“In 2006, 17 categories favored Democrats, which helped them take control of the House and Senate from Republicans. Democrats picked up six Senate seats and 30 House seats.
In the Pew Poll, 23 of the 28 categories of voters now favor Republicans. What’s more, 22 of the 28 categories support the GOP by 49 percent or more. There are only four categories of voters that are under 40 percent: those making less than $30,000 a year, at 39 percent; voters who are unaffiliated with a religion, at 37 percent; black voters, at 10 percent; and Democrats, at 8 percent.
What is most remarkable is how far some categories have swung away from Democrats and toward the GOP.
Democrats have lost a significant advantage with women voters, who supported Democrats by a 48 to 41 percent margin in 2006, but who have now flipped to supporting the GOP by 49 to 43 percent.
Voters over 65 years old were for Democrats by a 48 to 42 percent margin four years ago. They now favor Republicans by 52 to 38 percent. That’s a 20 point swing.
Perhaps most damaging for Democrats, they have suffered huge losses among Independents. Democrats were up 7 points in 2006, by 42 to 35 percent. They now are down 19 points, 49 to 30 percent. That’s a 26-point swing.
”The first: the tea party is not a ”threat” to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn’t remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.
In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. (According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, four million more Republicans voted in primaries this year than Democrats, the GOP’s highest such turnout since 1970. I wonder who those people were?)
Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph.
The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration’s spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: ”We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!” They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.
And they not only freed the Washington establishment, they woke it up. That establishment, composed largely of 50- to 75-year-olds who came to Washington during the Reagan era in a great rush of idealism, in many cases stayed on, as they say, not to do good but to do well. They populated a conservative infrastructure that barely existed when Reagan was coming up: the think tanks and PR groups, the media outlets and governmental organizations. They did not do what conservatives are supposed to do, which is finish their patriotic work and go home, taking the knowledge and sophistication derived from Washington and applying it to local problems. (This accounts in part for the esteem in which former Bush budget chief and current Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is held. He went home.) “
On a personal note: The material for this post ended up being nearly 60 pages full of quotes, facts, figures, links, videos, reference material etc. Why? Because this is an important subject – directly for the future of the American people and your way of life, indirectly for the rest of the world. But this is way too much to make a meaningful and readable blog post. So I had to drastically cut it down and split it up. My only hope is that I got it reasonable right, you are the judge of that.
So I split this post into different parts: You must vote, The campaign, The voter fraud, Dirtiest election ever, Some points on the economic situation, The Government, All these lies about Obama Care, The speech by Robert Bidinotto and the article by P. J. O’Rourke
You must vote
So go and vote for some you can trust (yeah I know it’s hard), some one that upholds the constitution and knows what it actually means (yeah, there are not many left), some one that want to rein in the Big Government Agenda and REALLY means it (yeah I know, there are many turncoats), and some one that want to protect YOUR liberty, freedom and the American way of life (yeah, that’s another hard one).
There is in the end only one way you can judge them – By their actions.
Your vote REALLY MATTERS! This time more than ever!
Sooo much is at stake this time – The constitution, the American way of life with freedom and free markets. America is at a crucial crossroads.
Do you want a government for the elites, of the elites and by the elites?
Or a government for the people, of the people and by the people?
It is YOUR CHOICE! A very clear choice! You have to get out and flood the voting booths November 2.
And if you don’t choose, it’s going to be the former.
The turnout of voting-age population in the mid term elections 2006 – 37,1%, and 2002 – 37.0% was pathetic and a joke. 63 % of the voting age population apparently doesn’t care what is happening to their country.
If you don’t wake up now when will you ever do? You have to stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American dream become a nightmare.
Five quotations come to mind. All apply describing the present situation:
”All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826.
”No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) from her book ”This Is My Story”, 1937.
”It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedomthat it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.” Etienne de la Boetie’s (French judge, writher, philosopher and “politician” during the16 century), The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin 1706–1790, was written sometime shortly before February 17,1775 as part of his notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly.
”Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom”. – Albert Einstein
“President Obama, one of the men behind the Biggest Heist in American History – Cap and Trade, and who at ALL COSTS want to ram through the cap and trade bill, has now put in place an administrative system that allows him, at will, to totally bypass Congress.
After the EPA, Health care bill and now the financial bill, they can sneak it trough in big chunks through administrative orders. Not the whole cap and trade bill at once, but in two, tree maybe four steps.
America, your whole system has been hijacked, and you have done nothing, so far, to stop it. What the Obama administration has done during the last one and half year makes a mockery of your constitution and the principle of separation of power.”
These are the “representatives” that rammed through the Obama Care, the financial bill, etc., against the will of the people. They don’t care about the constitution, and they don’t know the difference between the declaration of Independence and the Constitution; and they don’t care that they don’t know. (see for example my post Obama Care 30)
The people in congress who voted for these bills, this is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND INTENDED with these bills. But to get it through Congress they gladly and willfully lied through their teeth and ears, they even gladly put their lies in writing.
Why? Because they are ramming through their political agenda which they have been waiting and planning so long for to be able do.
As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism.And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda.It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.
All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.
And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money.
While they at the same time preach austerity, frugality and sacrifice from us, the taxpayers.
This blatant hypocrisy is so mind numbing that it would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these people have the power to force us to obey them.
They are a truly parasitic class in the sense that Karl Marx wrote about it.
How ironic that today most of this parasitic class is leftists and so called “liberals”.
In fact, it is the PERFECT scam and heist – the more they can get you to feel guilty, the more money they earn. And the more control they get over society.
In short, it is very troubling to see a country on a path of economic and political self destruction. But if the present trend continues you are, to put it simple: toast.
It’s time for the people of America to take their country back. Otherwise the consequences for you as a country are going to be devastating. Especially for the common people.
Meanwhile, we STILL await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his ”historic” health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.
UD/RK Samhälls Debatt 