* While prominent Western media continue to lead their viewers and readers astray with accounts of a non-existent “mass humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, fancy restaurants (video below) and an Olympic-size swimming pool open there
* Most Israeli towns don’t have Olympic-size swimming pools
* Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live a middle class (and in some cases an upper class) lifestyle that Western journalists refuse to report on because it doesn’t fit with the simplistic story they were sent to write
* If you drop into the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu” (video, photos below)
Check this out for the promised videos and photos.
And while this video was done for laughs, (make sure you watch the song parody that begins about half way through) there is truth in it. That's what makes good satire.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) — one of Israel's staunchest defenders in Congress — wants Americans who were aboard the Gaza flotilla ships prosecuted.
On a conference call organized by The Israel Project on Friday, Sherman said that any U.S. citizen aboard the ship should be considered aiding Hamas, an Islamic extremist organization that controls Gaza. The U.S. State Department considers Hamas a foreign terrorist organization.
The online foreign policy publication Lobelog reported:
On a press call hosted by a pro-Israel organization, Rep. Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, told reporters that he intends seek the prosecution of any U.S. citizens who were aboard or involved with the Freedom Flotilla.
“The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 [PDF] makes it absolutely illegal for any American to give food, money, school supplies, paper clips, concrete or weapons to Hamas or any of its officials,” Sherman said on the Israel Project call, conflating Hamas and Gaza’s civilian population. “And so I will be asking the Attorney General to prosecute any American involved in what was clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization.”
Sherman also said that he plans on working with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that any non-U.S. citizen involved with or aboard the Flotilla are excluded from entering the U.S.
The one from my district has been in Congress much too long and I have to wonder if he is supporting this stance.
My wife and I were in New York City over the weekend. We walked past an anti-Israel demonstration in Union Square. I was trying to be a good husband and walk right past these Hamas-supporting tools. My wife was a better wife than I was a husband as she let me stop and argue with them for a bit. I didn't press it. I cut my confrontations much shorter than I wanted to. But I appreciate the fact that she let me release some of my anger at these morally deluded fools who have no idea what freedom is, what it isn't, and what we need to do to keep it.
Yesterday, the Detroit Free Press ran this editorial decrying the latest Supreme Court decision, which essentially struck down McCain Feingold as unconstitutional. It is fearfully titled, "Government by the people, RIP."
Thursday's 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission gives corporations, labor unions and other wealthy agglomerations of narrow economic interest the green light to expand their already disproportionate influence over governmental policy in health care, nutrition, financial regulation and every other realm in which corporations stand to make a buck at the expense of the public interest.
Up until this Supreme Court decision, none of us had to worry about special interests influencing government policy. It just didn't happen. We were protected. But don't worry, the Free Press is calling on the government to save us, in spite of the Supreme Court, to save us.
But Congress must not abandon the fight to regulate corporate spending in candidate elections, and Michigan's congressional delegation and state legislators must push for tougher disclosure rules to assure that voters can at least observe the corrupting impact of corporate campaign cash in real time.
Yes, that's right folks, only Congress can protect us from corporate predators. And they will take care of our medical, energy, and financial needs . . . even though the only working experience most of these people have is in politics and government. They will get advice from smart people . . . who aren't considered special interests?
Today though, in this article, it seems there is a slightly different point of view to the effect of special interests in government.
Dozens of current and former corporate executives have a message for Congress: Quit hitting us up for campaign cash.
Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the Seagram’s liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men’s Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders today urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fund-raising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will get only worse after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling.
and
Congressional candidates who find themselves attacked by a flood of special-interest TV ads in the 2010 elections will likely reach out to their party’s biggest donors for money to help them counter the blitz.
“Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors,” the business executives’ letter says. “And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court’s decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase.”
So remind me, whose fault is again that deep-pocketed special interests are running roughshod over us regular Americans? Do members of Congress have some sort of disability that limits their ability to take responsibility for their actions and outrageous mistakes? Maybe Congress needs to pass laws protecting corporations from unscrupulous politicians.
The video is called, 4th Grader's Harsh Question for Obama. That title made me think, as I'm sure it would make others think, that a youngster was astute enough to ask the type of question of our president that our president is ignoring Fox News in order to avoid.
Wrong. This is merely another platform for our Nobel Prize winning president to engage in some of his shtick, playing to the audience, coming across as the best loved among all presidents, yet still being hounded by the unenlightened. I must admit that I did not watch the whole thing. I stopped when Mr. Personality - uh - I mean, our president went from "night club comic" mode to "serious big issues" mode.
In other news, the federal deficit hit a record 1.42 trillion dollars. That's $1,420,000,000,000. To me, that's a lot of money. And that's just this year's deficit. So it gets piled on to the debt the government already owes. This is before the Democrats in Congress finish saddling the nation with their health care plans.
On the plus side though (yeah, right),
President Barack Obama has pledged to reduce the deficit once the Great Recession ends and the unemployment rate starts falling, but economists worry that the government lacks the will to make the hard political choices to get control of the imbalances.
I say - when Obama promises, who cares what economists say! But then,
Without significant budget cuts, that would crowd out government spending in such areas as transportation, law enforcement and education. Already, interest on the debt is the third-largest category of government spending, after the government's popular entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and the military.
So no matter what happens economically, those popular wealth distribution programs will continue along, no matter how much our government has to borrow, or who has to be scapegoated in order to make it palatable to the American people for the government to tax the scapegoated ones into poverty. As long as our representatives can use our hard earned money to buy themselves votes, everything can hum along in Washington. And if something doesn't work as planned (like the health care plans) the only sure cure is more government, at the cost of a few more billion, which will add to the deficit. There isn't enough money in the world to pay for all of the government programs that Congress would like to shove down our collective throats.
Finally, the Detroit Free Press is helping the local Islamic community in its continuing attempt to lull Americans back to sleep and to return to accepting The Religion of Peace as a benign mode of worship, the same as Judaism and Christianity, but hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists.
Called "Meet your Muslim neighbor," open houses are to be held today at eight mosques in metro Detroit in an effort to help dispel stereotypes about Muslims. It's believed to be the first time that local mosques have coordinated together on a one-day event to educate non-Muslims about Islam.
"When people hear the word 'Islam,' they don't know what to think," said Rashid Taufiq, 57, of Rochester Hills, who is coordinating the open houses with the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan.
"They read about some terrorist activity in some other part of the world. They don't know what to make of a Muslim who might be a next door neighbor. ... A Muslim is no different from any other American in this country."
Other parts of the world, would that include New York City, Seattle Washington, Washington D.C.? Would it include the various terrorist plots that had been planned but broken up by various law enforcement agencies on American soil? How about vandalism in Chicago? Incitement in Ft. Lauderdale? The biggest joke within this event is that CAIR is involved.
The open houses happen to come after a controversial book, titled "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," was released this week. It alleges that a Muslim group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, supports extremism and terrorism.
Citing the book, four Republican U.S. representatives called on federal officials to investigate the group, which they said was trying to place interns in congressional committees and harm national security.
The book and the statements by the Republicans brought criticism from Democrats, including U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat.
In a statement Thursday, Conyers said that "patriotic Americans of all races, religions and beliefs have the right ... to participate in our political process."
In a statement, CAIR said it was troubling that "elected officials would serve as publicity agents for extremists who seek to bar an American minority from exercising its ... rights."
And the main "right", if I'm reading the news from the world of Islam correctly, would be the right for Islam to reign supreme.
We've all engaged in gallows humor recently, asking each other, "Hey, where's my bailout?" as we bemoan the fact that our elected dopes in Congress, who made a major contribution to the current economic mess, are claiming that only their tireless efforts can save us from financial ruin and another even greater depression.
Well, some people are serious. There are always those that, no matter how educated they are, or how smart they think they are, just don't get it and never will.
This is truly an historic victory for workers in the United States.
But this struggle is just the beginning! As the economic crisis deepens we need to launch a working class fight back. Rallies for a "People's Bailout" will continue today and throughout the rest of the week.
The People's Cube couldn't parody these idiots if they didn't really exist.
Corresponding with my Congressional Representative
My congressdope sends out a weekly email newsletter. It touts all of the accomplishments of our duly elected Democrat-controlled Congress for the week. So there are articles that demonize the oil companies for making a profit. There are self pats on the back for bailing out irresponsible, short-sighted home mortgage borrowers at the expense of the majority of home owners who have not foolishly over-extended themselves. The Congress is busy solving various crises, some that I bet you didn't even know existed, but that need more tax dollars thrown at them in order to be solved.
I shouldn't call him a dope. It's not nice, and it really does bother me when people use the anonymity of the Internet to insult people they don't know. I know that most of our differences are political. At one time I was on his side. I voted for him, and I thought he was a swell guy.
But lately I've been responding to his newsletters urging him to vote to allow drilling in ANWR and on the continental shelf, you know, the places where we know that there's oil, but the Democratic Congress won't allow drilling because - we can't drill our way out of this problem (but somehow we can release oil out of the Strategic Reserve to get us out of this problem) - it will take years for the oil to hit the market (and yet, all of the alternative "green" solutions will also take years and billions of dollars in government subsidies) - the oil companies already hold leases to billions of acres of public land (but that's not where the oil is) - we're addicted to oil - environmental concerns (we're all going to die from climate change) - speculators have driven up the price of oil, so we have to put a stop to speculators (they've since shut up about that since oil prices began dropping once Bush ended the presidential moratorium on drilling).
In his last newsletter, Congressman (not dope, that's not polite) Sander Levin once again railed against the huge profits the oil companies are raking in. So I sent him two links. This one is about how oil companies pay out three times as much in taxes as they take in as profit. There's more information here and here. This second link shows a simple graph comparing oil company's profits to taxes in 2006, and how they paid more in taxes than the bottom 75 percent of individual tax payers. There is also the national security issue. Not only are we sending billions of dollars to Middle Eastern oil ticks, but now that Russia has pretty much been allowed to reswallow Georgia, they control more of the world's oil supply. And much like the jihadists, they're not very nice to work with.
I thought the pictorial representation of all those tax dollars just begging to be wasted on pork, pet projects, and pandering would warm the heart of any congressperson. I haven't heard back from him yet. And I'm sure I will, because even though I never like his responses, he (or someone in his office most likely) always responds to my testy emails. I have to give him credit for that . . . even though I will be voting against him next time.
I couldn't help but notice that as soon as President Bush ended the presidential moratorium on drilling in the sacred, forbidden, offshore areas, oil prices went down. That was yesterday. They've gone down further today. I thought there could be a connection. The Detroit Free Press, wedded to a certain way of thinking, had other explanations for the fall of oil prices. But if there's one thing I've learned about the "progressive" mindset, it is that - for every true statement from the non-progressive side, they've got a barrel full of contrary explanations, very few of which can stand up to scrutiny, which is probably why they need so many arguments to convince us nonprogressives that we need to believe them over our own lying eyes.
Anyway, over at NRO Online, Larry Kudlow, who I assume knows a lot more about this than I do, says,
In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.
Now isn’t this interesting?
Democrats keep saying that it will take 10 years or longer to produce oil from the offshore areas. And they say that oil prices won’t decline for at least that long. And they, along with Obama and McCain, bash so-called oil speculators. And today we had a real-world example as to why they are wrong. All of them. Reid, Pelosi, Obama, McCain — all of them.
Traders took a look at a feisty and aggressive George Bush and started selling the market well before a single new drop of oil has been lifted. What does this tell us? Well, if Congress moves to seal the deal, oil prices will probably keep on falling. That’s the way traders work. They discount the future. Psychology and expectations can turn on a dime.
The congressional ban on offshore drilling expires September 30, so that becomes a key date. A new report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratorium were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium. They’re talking about 10 billion barrels worth off the coast of California.
There’s also a “gang of 10” in the Senate, five Republicans and five Democrats, that is trying to work a compromise deal on lifting the moratorium. So it’s possible a lot of action on this front could occur much sooner than people seem to think.
So I repeat: Drill, drill, drill. Deregulate, decontrol, and unleash the American energy industry. Those hated traders will then keep selling oil as the laws of supply and demand and free markets keep working.
Bravo for Bush. Bravo for the traders.
Democrats, though, will, according to Michelle Malkin, continue, along with environmentalists, to hold our economy hostage. How long will the American people allow this? I don't know, but I'm going to fire off another letter to my elected representatives. The other ones don't seem to have done much good, but if they turn out to be part of an avalanche of letters and phone calls, maybe we can see some change from these so-called servants of the people.
Top executives of the five biggest U.S. oil companies were pressed today to explain the soaring fuel prices amid huge industry profits and why they weren’t investing more to develop renewable energy source such as wind and solar.
and
“On April Fool’s Day, the biggest joke of all is being played on American families by Big Oil,” Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said as his committee began hearing from the oil company executives.
With motorists paying a national average of $3.29 a gallon at the pump and global oil prices remaining above $100 a barrel, the executives were hard pressed by lawmakers to defend their profits.
“The anger level is rising significantly,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., relating what he had heard in his district during the recent two-week congressional recess.
however
“I heard what you are hearing. Americans are very worried about the rising price of energy,” said John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., echoing remarks by the other four executives from Exxon Mobil Corp., BP America Inc., Chevron Corp., and ConocoPhillips.
But the executives rejected claims that their companies’ earnings are out of step with other industries and said that while they earn tens of billions of dollars, they also invest tens of billions in exploration and oil production activities.
“Our earnings, though high in absolute terms, need to be viewed in the context of the scale and cyclical, long-term nature of our industry as well as the huge investment requirements,” said J.S. Simon, Exxon Mobil’s senior vice president.
and remember
The prices are of concern, Hofmeister said at the time, adding a note of optimism: “Our industry is extremely cyclical and what goes up almost always comes down,” he told the skeptical senators on a day when oil cost $60 a barrel.
About six months later, when the cost of the same barrel reached $75, the executives were grilled again on Capitol Hill on their spending and investment priorities.
There have been no charges of wrong doing, no allegations of wrong doing, no suspicion of wrong doing, yet oil company executives are once again being hauled in front of Congress to be publicly humiliated in order to mollify the anger of the American public. What did they do that was so wrong? Oh yeah, they earned a lot of money. They did it honestly, but according to Congress and other witch hunters, they've earned too much. It's not fair. The oil companies must be punished for earning too much money by providing the product that keeps the world's economy afloat.
Due to rules passed by Congress, at the behest of their environmentalist friends, no oil company has been able to build a new refinery in the United States in almost thirty years. Oil has to be refined so some of our oil has to be refined outside of the U.S. Many areas in the U.S. with proven oil reserves are off limits to drilling thereby increasing our demand for foreign oil. All of this drives up the cost of oil, which leads to increased profits for the oil industry. Which causes the idiots in Congress to add insult to injury by scapegoating the oil industry and putting on glorious show trials in order to escape their responsibility for forcing the sickening, wallet-busting rise in oil prices.
Isn't this the exact tactic used by communist dictatorships throughout the last century in order to avoid blame for their own destructive economic policies? Blame the "kulaks" and other enemies of the people. It's a good bet that right now, government lawyers are looking for any kind of law or rule that they can twist to accuse oil executives of some kind of "crime against the people." Rather than cheer on this kind of sick charade, we the people should be up in arms that Congress can publicly abuse American citizens. We accept this because the oil executives like tobacco executives before them, are very wealthy, and throughout history the wealthy have garnered the jealousy of the middle class and poor. We are still trained today to hate the rich. We are supposed to enjoy seeing the rich and powerful knocked down a few notches, whether it's done honestly or not.
My advice is: don't gloat about the oil executives being dragged through the congressional mud. It begins with the rich, who are easy to scapegoat, but as we've seen Russia, China, N. Korea, Venezuela, and other "people's republics" eventually this kind of harassment works its way down to you and me and we are much worse off for it. And even if it doesn't go that far, punitive measures aimed at oil companies will reduce the gasoline supplies and raise costs for us all. We saw that under President Carter.
Our infrastructure is crumbling. The only reason any of us noticed this was due to a bridge collapsing in Minnesota. What should we, excuse me, I mean, what should our elected officials do? One of the standard answers to all that is ailing our country from the left side of the aisle is: Raise taxes! Those fool Republicans and their "tax cuts for the rich" are causing our country's roads, bridges, and power grid (remember the black out a couple of years ago?) to crumble into dust around us. It's all being held together by the cobwebs that remind us of the years of neglect.
Fortunately for us, there is Thomas Sowell. And Thomas Sowell says,
The real problem is that the political incentives are to spend the taxpayers' money on things that will enhance politicians' chances of getting re-elected.
There may be enough money available to maintain bridges and other infrastructure but that same money can have a bigger political pay-off if spent building something new instead of maintaining and repairing existing structures.
When money is spent building a new community center, a golf course, or anything that will be newsworthy, there will be ribbon-cutting ceremonies and the politicians who cut the ribbons can expect to see their pictures in the newspapers and on TV.
All that keeps their name before the public in a positive role and therefore enhances their prospects of being re-elected.
But there are no ribbon-cutting ceremonies when bridges are being repaired or pot-holes are being filled in. These latter activities may be more valuable than a community center or a golf course, but they are not nearly as photogenic.
The preference for showy projects that will enhance a politician's career prospects is not peculiar to current politicians. Adam Smith pointed out the same thing about politicians in 18th-century Europe.
We can vote the rascals out but the new rascals who replace them will face the same incentives and in all likelihood will respond in the same way.
A pattern that has persisted for more than two centuries is likely to continue unless something fundamental is changed.
Sowell also says,
Those who live by talking points now have a great one: "How can we fight an expensive war and repair our neglected infrastructure without raising taxes?"
Plausible as this might sound, tax rates are not tax revenues. The two things have moved in opposite directions too many times, over too many years, for us to take these clever talking points at face value.
This administration is not the first one in which a reduction in tax rates has been followed by an increase in tax revenues. The same thing happened during the Reagan administration, the Kennedy administration and the Coolidge administration.
Tax rates and tax revenues have moved in opposite directions many times, not only at the federal level, but also at state and local levels, as well as in foreign countries.
How many times does it have to happen before people stop equating tax rates with tax revenues? Do the tax-and-spend politicians and their media supporters not know any better — or are they counting on the rest of us not knowing any better?
Besides, we know how readily and how easily our government wastes our tax dollars. From the Citizens Against Government Waste website, we have this choice tidbit,
Members of the Senate Transportation/Treasury Appropriations subcommittee paved the way for another year of reckless spending by adding 874 pork projects totaling $1.28 billion in the fiscal 2006 Senate Transportation, Treasury, Judiciary, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act. Not satisfied with grabbing money for parochial projects, the appropriators also included $5 billion for 18 programs that the president suggested eliminating or reducing. Programs resurrected from the scrap pile of presidential cuts include $150 million for the Revitalization of Severely Distressed Public Housing account (the HOPE VI Program), $25 million for the National Defense Tank Vessel Construction Program, and $24 million for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Rural Housing and Economic Development.
That of course is only the beginning, and it's only one bill. They've been doing this for years . . . with our money.
Of course, there's more. There's always more. We taxpayers provide our elected representatives a bottomless well in which to dip from. According to John Stossel,
By now you've probably heard that a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states:
From 1999 through 2005, the USDA "paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. ... 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years." One dead farmer got more than $400,000 during those years.
But wait, it gets better,
An amendment that would have withheld subsidies from farmers with incomes of $250,000 or more was rejected by the House.
Hmm, maybe I didn't mean better. I'm sure there's another word for what I really meant, but I try to watch my language.
CONCLUSION: Congress already has the money. If they thought more about working for the country rather than pandering in order to get reelected, this wouldn't be an issue. If Progressives who hate Capitalism would take the time to learn a bit about real world economics, there wouldn't even be this stupid debate.
"No one can find a safe way out for himself if socety is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." -- Ludwig von Mises
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
