Commonsense & Wonder

A sap for the America hating ACLU

2012-01-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

'Lawfare' Loses Big

The ACLU loses its nasty suit against former defense officials.

Do you know who Lysenko is and why he is important now? Read this.

2012-01-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Corbis

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

The utopians are at it again...

2012-01-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

California breaks rank again, demands over 15% of cars sold be non-polluting by 2025

Less than a year after everyone with any sort of say in the matter seemed to agree that 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025 was a properly attainable goal, the California Air Resources Board has decided to change things up a bit.

In addition to CAFE requirements of a 54.5-mpg fleet average (using the government's formula, not what you see on window stickers), at least 15.4 percent of all cars sold by any major automaker doing business in California will have to be either fully electric, a plug-in hybrid or be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell by 2025. There are questions about the "over-compliance" section of the bill, which we'll be investigating further.

According to Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, 15.4 percent is "actually a relatively modest goal, but that's all that we're mandating." Most automakers are on board, says Nichols. "Probably the most heartening aspect of this whole rulemaking was the level of cooperation that we received from the industry... Overall, the degree of support for the package was just extraordinary."

Even if automakers are on board, though, there's still a question of who will actually buy the vehicles. While everyone wants better fuel efficiency, not everyone is willing to pay for it, counters the California New Car Dealers Association, estimating that the plan would add about $3,200 to the average price of a new car or truck. Perhaps to help dissuade such fears, Nichols added that "direct incentives to people who buy these cars (like) rebates and credits" are also in the works.

At least 10 more states are likely to follow California's lead, reports Automotive News. That would put the total number of advanced green vehicles (either with a plug or powered by hydrogen) at around three million total units by 2025, 1.4 million of which would be in California.

Interesting...

2012-01-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Poll: Most Say High Court Should Reject Health Insurance Mandate

A little history about the sustainable development movement

2012-01-27T10:50:00.000-08:00

Green Lebensraum: The Nazi Roots of Sustainable Development

By Mark Musser

Much of the European Union's green sustainable development plans are largely based on government controlled land use planning theories rooted in the lebensraum tradition. Literally, lebensraum means "living space." Lebensraum was originally developed by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) and then greatly expanded under the banner of National Socialism (1933-1945).

Ratzel is the father of modern political geography which is commonly called geopolitics. He believed history was largely a natural evolutionary development of peoples looking for geographical living space. Ratzel also held that expanding borders reflected the biological health of a nation. The National Socialists adopted Ratzel's mixing of evolutionary theory, biology, and geopolitics in their own version of lebensraum.

Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), who was an early advisor to Hitler, was the link between Ratzel and National Socialism. Karl Haushofer's father was a friend of Ratzel. Karl was a member of the Thule Society before it was converted into the Nazi Party in 1920. Haushofer was also the mentor of Rudolf Hess, who was a green vegetarian mystic. Hess was Hitler's personal secretary up until 1941. Haushofer and Hess helped Hitler write Mein Kampf.

There was also a strong connection between lebensraum and the growing political empire of the Nazi SS under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler and Walther Darre. Himmler and Darre promoted a "back to the land" movement under the SS slogan of "blood and soil." In Darre's racist ideology, the economic catastrophe of the 1920's confirmed the decadence of the modern cosmopolitan city life. Darre believed that greedy foreign capitalism coupled with international Marxist class warfare divided the German race so that it was not allowed to sustain itself in the soil of its own homeland.

The hunger pangs of the 1920's were blamed on the international city, largely run by Jewish capitalists and communists. Darre and Himmler believed cosmopolitan cities arrogated themselves above the laws of life and nature. The answer to this crisis, therefore, was to get the German race out from under the yoke of dirty industrial cities and re-ruralize them "back to the land." In this way, the German race could recover its cultural and physical health based on a green socialistic agrarianism that was designed to compete against the cultural decadence of the cities.

There was not enough space in Germany itself to re-ruralize the population "back to the land." Without more living space there could be no proper marriage between German blood and soil. Additional lebensraum was required. It would therefore be sought in Eastern Europe and western Russia.

When the SS began to implement its "back to the land" campaign, it found itself in conflict with other powerful forces in Germany. However, by the mid to late 1930's the Office for Spatial Research and Space Planning was set up by the Nazi hierarchy to provide technocratic solutions on how to properly balance all the competing desires of the nation -- everything from the war economy, to industrial needs, housing, and even environmental protection. Sustainable development as a political ideal was thus pioneered under the auspices of Nazi spatial planning.

During the war, the SS had grandiose plans to use research garnered from the Office of Spatial Planning to create an eco-imperial empire in the conquered eastern territories. Inspired by SS planners Konrad Meyer (1901-1973), Emil Meynen(1902-1994), and Walter Christaller (1893-1969) , sustainable development as an applied political policy was to be implemented on the eastern front behind advancing German lines. Shockingly, under the SS, Ratzel's lebensraum came to mean living space for sustainable development.

The SS planned to use industry in the conquered eastern territories along with slave labor to pay for and build master planned communities. The eastern territories would also be filled with socialistic green garden villages and farms, together with national parks, forests, and many cockamamie renewable energy projects. Behind enemy lines, the living space of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia would be cleansed of unnatural Jews and Slavs who were unworthy of the soil they lived on. In particular, planning schemed based on Walter Christaller's Central Place Theory would be applied on a scale unachievable in Germany thanks to the fact that the Nazis were first going to cleanse the landscape. Christaller advocated a hierarchy of towns and villages wrapped around a central city that was to maximize economic and administrative efficiency for state planners.

Toward the end of the war, Nazi spatial and environmental planners destroyed massive quantities of records. They then re-organized themselves into the 'Academy for Area Research and Regional Planning" and the 'Institute for Spatial Planning.' In 1946, Karl Haushofer committed suicide. Konrad Meyer survived Nuremberg and later continued his work in spatial planning and sustainable development. Walter Christaller joined the Communist Party in 1951. His Central Place Theory is sometimes even considered a model for sustainable development and the so-called Green Economy. Emil Meynen, a leading geographer of the Third Reich, became an environmental spatial theorist after the war. He was also present at the infamous Wanssee Conference where the destruction of the Jews was discussed from a technocratic point of view.

After the war, social engineering based on Aryan biology was replaced with a blander form of socialism, but its ties to environmentalism and sustainable development continued unabated and grew exponentially in the decades to come. Environmental planners just exchanged brown paint with red paint -- all the while keeping the interior green. German spatial planners played an early critical role in the development of the EU's sustainable development policies.

Today, the EU is fond of using the concept of "territorial cohesion" and "supra-nationalism" in the place of lebensraum. Its stress on multiculturalism has converted the old Nazi nationalism into an EU Super State. Instead of promoting German supremacy, the EU is now promoting European supremacy. In fact, the EU is using environmental social engineering, i.e., sustainable development, to hasten the evaporation of national borders.

Yet in spite of this multicultural super-state emphasis, Germany has still become the heart of the EU from both a financial and an environmental point of view. EU's expansion has thus only served to strengthen Germany's influence, not weaken it. The global warming apocalypse was first popularized by Austrian Nazi Guenther Schwab in the 1960's, but it was the German green movement in the 1980's that helped convert the theory into the worldwide political issue it has since become.

Today, the EU even has sustainable development plans and ideas for the western Russian living space. Ironically, 65 years after the end of World War II, lebensraum has returned to the gates of Moscow, this time without panzers. The EU is also in North Africa. It wants to cover the Sahara with solar panels for the sake of renewable energy.

Lebensraum is not dead. Ratzel's geopolitics is still in vogue today under the guise of the EU's sustainable development plans. While the Nazi past has been completely ignored and willfully forgotten in the development of the EU's environmental sustainability policies, the geopolitical epicenter of the green movement has been and continues to be: Germany.

HR 3784 Windfall profits tax

2012-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

The class-warfare, economic illiterates in Congress have propose H.R. 3784, "the Gas Price Spike Act, which would place a "windfall" profits tax on gasoline to prevent oil companies from overcharging for gas"

Let's put aside, for now, the absurd idea that government has any business deciding what is and is not an appropriate profit of a private business and instead look at what those profits actually are:

From CA.gov's Energy Almanac, here is the breakdown of the cost of a gallon of gas:

	Branded
	Distribution Costs, Marketing Costs and Profits	Crude Oil Costs	Refinery Cost and Profit	State Underground Storage Tank Fee	State and Local Tax	State Excise Tax	Federal Excise Tax	Retail Price
Jan 16	$0.20	$2.65	$0.21	$0.02	$0.08	$0.36	$0.18	$3.70
Jan 09	$0.21	$2.64	$0.22	$0.02	$0.08	$0.36	$0.18	$3.71
Jan 02	$0.19	$2.62	$0.19	$0.02	$0.08	$0.36	$0.18	$3.64

Hmmm, let's see, they bundle profits in with distribution, marketing and refinery costs, but out of the total of $3.70, at most 41 cents is profit, if distribution, marketing and refinery costs are 0, but more likely south of 20 cents. Out of $3.70 sale price, that is about 6%. As a comparison, Apple's profit margin is on the order of 40%. On the other hand state, local and federal taxes add up to 62 cents. So various government entities make more than 3x what the oil and refinery companies do. And there is also no legislation pending to punish evil Apple for reaping such huge profits.

How federal welfare distorts economic decisions. Eleven studies and they need one more?

2012-01-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

$300,000 allocated for streetcar consultant

This is the definition of socialist style crony business

The OWS marching orders have been announced

2012-01-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

It’s Official: #OccupyChicago Feeble Pawns of the NATO/G8 Protests

While many laughed off Occupy Wall Street and predicted it would not last, the puppet masters have made their next move. We now have the evidence to prove that the early phase of the movement was nothing more than a staging period to build an infrastructure that will culminate in a massive occupation of Chicago this May. The strategy to descend upon Chicago’s NATO/G8 Summits has now been made loud and clear, as evidenced from a recent call to arms for revolutionaries around the world to flock to Chicago in May, as well as details regarding Occupy Chicago’s internal communications provided to RebelPundit.

Yesterday, Adbusters.org, the originators of the initial “Occupy Wall Street” call-to-action, just released its “Tactical Briefing #25,” an international call for radical revolutionaries from around the world to set up a month-long “occupation” (tent city) against the backdrop of the international NATO/G8 Summit.

Continue reading

How the left has destroyed the women's movement

2012-01-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Marxist Mission to Destroy Ayaan Hirsi Ali

by
PHYLLIS CHESLER

Bio

The feminism I once championed — and still do — was first taken over by Marxists and subsequently “Stalinized.” It was then conquered again by Islamists and “Palestinianized.” I and a handful of others maintained honorable minority positions on a host of issues. In time, women no longer mattered as much to many feminists — at least, not as much as Edward Said’s Arab men of color did. The Arab men were more fashionable victims who had not only been formerly “colonized” but who, to this day, are still being “occupied” by allegedly “apartheid”–intentioned Jews.

While most of my generation of feminists have long ago retired, died, fallen ill, or have continued to rest visibly on their own earliest laurels, I continue to champion universalist values and to resist the death-grip of multicultural relativism.

But my cohort have influenced the media. Thus, I am not at all surprised to see that Deborah Scroggins has just written a book titled Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafiya Siddiqui. Truly, she has got to be kidding. Alas, I am afraid that she is serious.

Recently, the New York Times gave a relatively glowing review to this new work. According to critic Dwight Garner, the two women are “such opposites that, as the author memorably observes, ‘Like the bikini and the burka or the virgin and the whore, you couldn’t quite understand one without understanding the other.’”

Garner continues: “If you are wondering who is the bikini (and thus the whore) in that formulation, Ms. Scroggins leaves little doubt that it is Ms. Hirsi Ali, whom her book relentlessly attacks.”

Hirsi Ali is indeed “wanted”— but by misogynist Islamists whom she exposes and opposes. Siddiqui, “Lady Al Qaeda,” was indeed “wanted” and is now in prison for attempting to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda. In 2003, the FBI “named her as the only known female operative of al-Qaeda.” In 2010, Siddiqui, a devout Muslim and a Brandeis-educated Pakistani, was sentenced to 86 years in jail.

Which of the two women do you think Scroggins prefers? The brave feminist freedom fighter Hirsi Ali, or the pro-Islamist and terrorist Siddiqui? Scroggins finds a “weird symmetry” between the two. Of all the false moral equivalents with which I am forced to live, this rankles quite a bit. But Scroggins sees them both as “rebels,” as sister-equivalents.

Siddiqui became a rabid antisemite. And a terrorist. This does not bother Scroggins as much as Hirsi Ali’s “imperiousness” and “egomania” does — that, and the fact that Hirsi Ali accepted a perch at the (conservative) American Enterprise Institute. From Scroggins’ point of view, the fact that Hirsi Ali has embraced universal human rights, outlined a pro-Western critique of political Islam, and supported the war in Iraq renders her something of a war criminal.

Maybe Scroggins even views Siddiqui as the true freedom fighter.

As a student in America, Siddiqui joined the infamous Muslim Students Association and fell under the spell of one of bin Laden’s own mentors who ran a Muslim charity in Brooklyn, New York. Siddiqui’s second husband’s uncle was none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who planned 9/11. Apparently, the kindly uncle-in-marriage gave up her name to interrogators. However, Siddiqui and her children had disappeared. She was not found until 2008, wandering around in Afghanistan with bomb-making formulas in her possession as well as plans for mass casualty attacks. Under questioning she picked up a gun and shot at her captors.

Scroggins and her supporters have argued that Siddiqui is both mentally ill and/or that she was brainwashed by al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups which, in turn, led to her mental illness. (Siddiqui could be mentally ill.) Nevertheless, Scroggins and her supporters absolutely refuse to criticize a terrorist group that routinely sacrifices their own women, children, and men without remorse or that exploits the mentally ill among them.

This 2012 book may be rooted in an earlier essay which appeared in the pages of The Nation magazine in 2005 (subscription required to read.) At the time, I could not believe what I was reading. Scroggins took off after the heroic and besieged Hirsi Ali. Her piece was funded by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. The essay was titled “The Dutch-Muslim Culture War: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Has Enraged Muslims with her Attacks on their Sexual Mores.” Scroggins did not view Hirsi Ali as a hero but rather as a reactionary and a traitor who left the Left Labor Party and became affiliated with the political “center right” in Holland.

Scroggins saw Hirsi Ali as part of an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, and anti-Islam faction that included the assassinated filmmaker Theo Von Gogh and politician Geert Wilders who dared argue that Muslims “assimilate” to the more “humane” and “higher level” European culture.

Obviously, Scroggins believes that Europe should return to the anti-infidel 7^th century instead.

Scroggins judges Hirsi Ali by the politically incorrect company she keeps rather than by whether she is telling the truth. Scroggins condemns Hirsi Ali for revealing that the prophet Mohammed was a pedophile because he married a six-year-old girl and then consummated the marriage when she was nine years old. (Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has recently been found criminally liable in Austria for telling this rather inconvenient truth.)

In classic left-feminist fashion, Scroggins attacks Hirsi Ali for “putting all the blame on Islam” instead of blaming “patriarchal customs”; for ignoring the work of Muslim feminists who have “shown that Islam’s sacred texts can be interpreted in more female-friendly ways”; and for failing to focus on the “role the West has played and continues to play in assisting the rise of the Islamist movements.”

Say what?

Thus, according to Scroggins, Hirsi Ali’s main thought crime is her refusal to blame the West for its history of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and racism. Obviously, Scroggins has not read the excellent works of Ibn Warraq (reviewed in these pages) and the work of Salim Mansur (which I will shortly review). Both are men of color, Muslims by birth, who understand the long history of Islamic imperialism, colonialism, racism, slavery, censorship, and real gender and religious apartheid. Like Hirsi Ali, both men understand the danger of “multicultural” societies in the West which encourage immigrants not to assimilate and which keep women, especially Muslim women, subordinate and enslaved.

However, contrary to all reason, Scroggins views Hirsi Ali’s passionate and feminist defense of both Muslim women and European and Western culture as “contributing” both to the rise of Islamism — and paradoxically, to anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment. Scroggins quotes an unnamed Muslim woman who sees Hirsi Ali as “nothing but an Uncle Tom.”

Scroggins then argues that “there have been many more attacks against Dutch Muslims than on non-Muslims.” She gives no sources, statistics, studies, or proof.

But “Islamophobia” is also a fashionable concept, far more so than is “Israelophobia” or “Judeophobia.” Scroggins does not care as much about the lethal sexism that Hirsi Ali decries as she does about the Muslim right to colonize the West, face-veil its women, censor, sue, even murder Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents, and convert infidels by the sword.

Am I am “alarmist”? You bet I am. But that’s because I know a thing or two. Clearly, Scroggins and her kind do not.

We have an anti Constitutional tyrant in the White House.

2012-01-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, January 26, 2012

White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

The STASI would be so proud.

2012-01-27T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hawaii may keep track of all Web sites visited

Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

The legislation appears to have been inspired by this Web site attacking Hawaii Rep. Kym Pine. It was created by her ex-Web designer after a billing dispute.

Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.

H.B. 2288, which was introduced Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. DemocraticRep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week.

Last summer, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas)managed to persuade a divided committee in the U.S. House of Representatives to approve his data retention proposal, which doesn't go nearly as far as Hawaii's. (Smith, currently Hollywood's favorite Republican, has become better known as the author of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.)

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate's majority whip, who introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate, told CNET that her legislation was intended to address concerns raised by Rep. Kymberly Pine, the first Republican elected to her Oahu district since statehood and the House minority floor leader.

"I was asked to introduce the Senate companions on these Internet security related bills by Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine after her own personal experience in this area," Tokuda said. "I would defer to her on the origins of these bills as she has done the research and outreach, and been the main champion of this effort."

Pine, who did not immediately respond to queries, has been targeted by a disgruntled Web designer, Eric Ryan, who launched KymPineIsACrook.com and claims she owes him money, according to an article last summer in the Hawaii Reporter. Her e-mail account was also reportedly hacked around the same time. The article said Pine would advocate for "tougher cyber laws at the Hawaii State Capitol" as a result.

John Mizuno, a Democratic state legislator in Hawaii and a sponsor of the bill, wants to require virtual dossiers to be compiled on state residents: two years' worth of their Internet browsing.

(Credit: Hawaii.gov)

"We must do everything we can to protect the people of Hawaii from these attacks and give prosecutors the tools to ensure justice is served for victims," Pine said at the time.

Whatever its sponsors' motivations, the bill isn't exactly being welcomed by Hawaiian Internet companies.

"This bill represents a radical violation of privacy and opens the door to rampant Fourth Amendment violations," says Daniel Leuck, chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo, who submitted testimony opposing the bill. He adds: "Even forcing telephone companies to record everyone's conversations, which is unthinkable, would be less of an intrusion."

Mizuno's proposal currently specifies no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent are security requirements such as mandating the use of encryption.

Because the wording is so broad and applies to any company that "provides access to the Internet," Mizuno's legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii's local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

"H.B. 2288 raises all of the traditional concerns associated with data retention, and then some," Kate Dean, head of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association in Washington, D.C., which counts Verizon and AT&T as members, told CNET. "And this may be the broadest mandate we've seen."

Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individuals--users' origin IP address, in other words. It hasn't publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.

In Washington, D.C., the fight over data retention requirements has been simmering since the Justice Department pushed the topic in 2005, a development that was first reported by CNET. Proposals publicly surfaced in the U.S. Congress the following year, and President Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said it's an issue that "must be addressed." So, eventually,did FBI director Robert Mueller.

Tax Rates

2012-01-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of buzz in recent days about Romney's 15% tax rate and Warren Buffett's secretary tax rate and how Buffett's 17% tax rate is less than hers.

Everytime I hear about the low tax rate of billionaire's I want to scream.

Let's make this clear, neither Romney nor Buffett has a 15-17% tax rate. They own businesses, the income of the businesses is theirs, the businesses pay tax at the corporate rate, which is one of the highest in the developed world (35% in the US), on that already taxed income they pay an additional 15% on dividends or capital gains they receive from those businesses.

A simple example:

Joe has a business structured as an LLC. The LLC earnings are $1M. These pass through to Joe as income on which he pays the top marginal tax rate of 35% over $379k. The total tax paid will be about $322k, leaving Joe with $688k.

Jack is a senior executive working for Zeta Industries. Jack's salary is $1m. He will pay the same taxes as Joe.

Jim owns 10% of public corporation Zeta Industries. Zeta earns $10m. %1m is Joes as a 10% owner. Zeta pays taxes on that $10m at the 35% corporate tax rate, leaving $6.5m. It pays it all out as dividends giving Jim $650,000. Jim then pays 15% dividend tax, leaving him $552k.

Joe's average tax rate is about 32%.
Jack's average tax rate is about 32%.
Jim's average tax rate is about 45%.

Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett are Jim. They do not have tax rates around 15%.

From a recently discovered blog site

2012-01-26T17:51:00.000-08:00

If it’s Wednesay, this must be Media Bias Against Israel Day

The brilliance of Harvey Korman and Mel Brooks

2012-01-26T17:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Km7WD8wkb1c#!

or is it a meeting with George Soros

Obama turns a blind eye. It's only Anti American and Jew hating

2012-01-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

Why Doesn’t Obama Ban Iranian Press TV?

Authorities in Britain revoked the license of the Iranian regime’s English-language global television channel known as Press TV because of evidence that it is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Iranian regime. But the Obama Administration permits the channel to operate on American soil without a license and in violation of U.S. sanctions regulations, which ban commercial transactions with Iran. It appears to be another example of Obama coddling the terrorist regime.

British authorities justified the move by citing the specific example of a Press TV 2009 interview with a Newsweek correspondent held in an Iranian jail. British telecom regulator Ofcom found that the interview by Press TV with Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the Iranian regime over his reporting of the disputed presidential elections in June 2009, was conducted under duress. It held that Press TV was in violation of its British broadcasting license because its content was dictated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcasting authority, and instructed the satellite carrier BSkyB to remove Press TV from its platform.

In the United States, the situation is even worse because although it operates openly in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, and regularly conducts interviews with such figures as Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, it does not have a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). So far, the Obama Administration has done nothing to shut it down.

What appears to be lacking is a determination from OFAC pointing out the obvious—that the Iranian state propaganda channel is operating illegally in the U.S. Because of this failure to enforce the law, Press TV is able to operate a propaganda facility in downtown Washington, D.C. with a prestigious K Street address and send its operatives to observe and survey U.S. Government offices, under the cover of “freedom of the press.”

“While other countries might not respect the right to a free press, this is something we take very seriously,” an administration official told this reporter. “We like to stay true to our values.”

But why do our values permit accommodating the actions of an illegal television entity devoted to propaganda and support for an outlaw regime that the Obama Administration itself says supports international terrorism?

In the case at issue in Britain, Bahari was picked up by the Iranian authorities at his parents’ home in Tehran on June 21, 2009, and jailed for four months in Iran. After an international campaign won his release and he returned home four months later that October, Bahari said that his captors had forced him to read a prepared script in front of Press TV cameras, just as American POWs were forced to do in Vietnam.

Press TV has scrubbed the interview from its website but it was widely reported at the time. In the script his captors gave him to read, Bahari accused Western reporters of working “as spies,” and “confessed” that he had been covering “illegal demonstrations” as part of a Western effort to promote a “color revolution” in Iran. His family and the media dismissed his “confession” as clearly coerced.

Clinton Excuses Tehran

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed Iran hard to release Bahari, but never made a statement condemning Press TV for airing the coerced interview. “We’ve been condemning the Iranian government writ large on this, not any specific agency,” a State Department spokesman said.

The Obama Administration has continued to allow Press TV to operate unhindered in the United States, despite clear evidence that it is operating as a propaganda arm of the Iranian regime. Indeed, the State Department regularly entertains questions from Press TV reporters, and allows bloggers on its “DipNote” website to plug rabid anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda with links to Press TV articles and interviews.

“If Press TV were to request a license to operate here in the U.S., the activities that led to having their license removed in the UK would certainly be reviewed by us,” a U.S. official said. “But for now, we cannot take a similar action because they have no license.”

So because it operates illegally in violation of the law, the U.S. will take no action. This might be enough for administration lawyers, but it defies common sense.

Other Propaganda Outlets

Press TV is not the only Iranian government media organization operating in the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) operates Aftab TV, which broadcasts in Persian and operates a prominent website.

On December 28, 2006, for example, Aftab featured an interview with prominent pro-Tehran advocate Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council, NIAC. In prefacing the interview, Aftab stressed the importance of the “Iranian American lobby on behalf of the Iranian regime” and described it as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.”

Last year, IRIB opened yet another 24-hour TV network they billed as “Iran’s CNN,” called Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, IRINN TV. They began broadcasting in the U.S. with an hour-long live program from a new Washington, D.C. studio on April 6, 2011. Their flagship U.S. show is called “Two half-hours (Dow Nim Saat) that airs from 11 a.m. to noon everyday.

While most programs are in Persian, IRINN also broadcasts news in English via satellite to the U.S.

The regime has also lavished money on the print media as a means of maintaining an intimidating presence within the Iranian-American community. The U.S. edition of the Tehran daily, Etelaat, was printed in New York and flown via Federal Express to a dozen distribution points around the country for over two decades, until it was shut down last year after an undercover FBI investigation determined it was being funded illegally out of the Iranian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a source involved in the investigation told me.

With the exception of Etelaat, the Obama Administration has continued to allow Iranian government media organizations to operate freely in the United States, mostly without licenses, despite nearly two decades of Iran sanctions that prohibit commercial exchanges between the U.S. and Iran.

Doubletalk from Obama

In a series of email and telephone exchanges, officials at the Department of the Treasury refused to acknowledge whether the administration or its predecessors had granted Press TV a license to operate in the United States.

“We are unable to comment publicly on organizations that may or may not have received licenses from OFAC. However, we note that as an official propaganda arm of the Iranian government, Press TV has a history of fabricating news and has faced lawsuits in the UK for airing forced confessions,” a Treasury Department official said.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls issues trade sanctions guidelines and maintains the list of “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDNs) banned from doing business with U.S. persons.

In the case where an organization subject to U.S. sanctions continues to operate in the United States by moving money under the radar, OFAC has often acted quickly and without warning to shut them down. But not in this case.

Spewing Filth

Press TV spews out unending streams of anti-American propaganda in a full-service program mix that includes talk shows, news reports, and TV magazines, aimed at an American audience via satellite.

Professionally-produced—often times by Americans—these shows trot out a congeries of conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and their apologists, masquerading as “analysts” and “political commentators” to give them a veneer of respectability.

In this case, Press TV appears to be emulating the old Soviet Union, which specialized in propaganda for the regime and against its enemies. The Soviet-led Comintern sent propaganda specialist Willi Muenzenberg to America to recruit propaganda agents.

The Iranian regime has invested heavily in Press TV because it understands the value of propagandists who speak unaccented English and who are not openly tied to the regime to spread its ideological “payload.”

Muenzenberg wrote the playbook that was later used by Press TV and much of the “politically-correct” left in the 1920s and 1930s, when he set up a vast web of cover influence operators stretching from media to academia to America’s newsrooms that continue to make their message felt way beyond the grave.

As former CIA propaganda expert Kent Clizbe explains in his book on Muenzenberg, “the goal of the operations was to make Americans feel that their country was bad.”

“You claim to be an independent-minded idealist,” said Muenzenberg’s widow, Babette Gross. “You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break… You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country… You believe in peace… You yearn for international understanding… You think the capitalist system is corrupt.”

The propaganda from Occupy Wall Street appears to be a modern-day example of the Muenzenberg approach.

Press TV takes the anti-American propaganda to a global level. Like the old Soviet propaganda networks, Press TV uses Americans to make the case against their own government and society.

Consider the case of James Fetzer, “a prominent philosopher” who went on Press TV to comment on the violent turn of the Occupy movement in Oakland last November.

He blamed the police. A professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Fetzer said, “We are seeing the increase in militarization of the police forces throughout the United States and that is a very bad tendency that has been taking place since 9/11. We see the rich getting richer and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has been widening since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fetzer said.

He went on: “What they are doing, the politicians are ignoring the needs of the average American and the working families. We have had increasing foreclosures, and unemployment is seen as the tip of an iceberg resistance to the corruption of politics in America… I believe this movement is not going to go away, and that what we are seeing is the real face of the police state of America has become.”

As it turns out, James H. Fetzer is indeed well-known—as a conspiracy theorist.

In a Wikipedia entry tagged by editors as “an autobiography,” Fetzer is described as “a well-known conspiracy theorist,” who has written extensively on the JFK assassination, 9/11, and the plane crash that killed U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

Fetzer claims, for example, that the film footage taken of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 was “video fakery” caused by “holographic projects,” because the high-speed crash was “in violation of Newton’s laws” of physics.

His own website highlights his book, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America. A YouTube videoshows Fetzer arguing that Senator Wellstone was assassinated, not killed by accident in a plane crash.

After a federal judge in District Court in New York issued a finding last December that Iran “shared responsibility with al Qaeda” for the 9/11 attacks, Press TV naturally turned to Fetzer for comment. Calling the ruling “preposterous,” he said he knew who was responsible for the attacks: Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.

“Multiple investigations by independent journalists have revealed that Israel—the Mossad—played a key role in 9/11,” Fetzer said. “Look up ‘the dancing Israelis.’ Look up ‘urban moving systems.’ Look up ‘CITS ‘and you’ll find ample indication that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.”

Another Press TV Propagandist

Another propagandist used by Press TV as an on-air commentator is Mark Dankof, whose support for the Ron Paul presidential campaign we highlighted in an earlier story.

In a May 2011 article aimed at discrediting the Ofcom case against Press TV in Britain, Dankof hauled out the big artillery. Why was the British government attempting to shut down Press TV? It was, of course, all because of the Jews.

“It may not be a coincidence that the British Ofcom case against Press TV Iran pops up against the backdrop of Netanyahu’s state visit to the United States to press his own case for ongoing Talmudic Death and Destruction in the Middle East,” Dankof wrote.

The “logic” of his case went like this: Press TV accuser Maziar Bahari was a contributor to Newsweek, whose late chairman, Sidney Harman, was married to Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Jewish Democrat. “Mrs. Harman, in turn…proves to be the very member of Congress wiretapped by the American National Security Agency (NSA) conveying promises to Israeli agents that the dogs would be called off from tailing and successfully prosecuting the espionage case involving key executives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” Dankof wrote.

In the article, “Empire continues to sweat over Press TV,” he went on, “This is the transparent connection in this case, as it is in other recent attacks on Press TV in the West involving media outlets and correspondents with provable connections to the American Jewish lobby; Israeli intelligence; and Neo-Conservatives thirsting for a War of Civilizations with Iran specifically, and the Islamic world generally.”

“If anyone wanted to run the traps and understand the connections, they should read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Dankof concluded. Press TV was being persecuted because it was “one of the few exceptions to The [Jewish] Lobby’s control of global print and electronically transmitted news and analysis.”

The Protocols was a Russian forgery designed to blame the Jews for the world’s problems. Muslim religious leaders and political leaders have touted its “accuracy” to me in interviews throughout the Middle East for decades.

More material of this sort can be found in the innumerable interviews Press TV conducts with “expert” Paul Sheldon Foote, whose favorite line is that “Crypto-Jews” have initiated a war between Christians and Muslims. Such arguments harken back to the ugliest forms of Western anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Press TV

When Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz announced the creation of the new English-language satellite broadcasting channel in June 2007, he stated at the get-go that the goal was to spread the propaganda payload of the Tehran regime.

“Since September 11, Western bias has divided the media into two camps: those that favor their policies make up one group and the rest of the media are attached to radical Islamic groups like Al-Qaeda. We want to show that there is a different view. Iran, and the Shi’ites in particular, have become a focal point of world propaganda. From the media point of view, we are trying to give a second eye to Western audiences,” Sarafraz said.

While Press TV made some effort in its U.S. programming to invite guests who weren’t always fans of the Iranian regime, all pretense of its propaganda aims disappeared in May 2009, just before the stolen elections that gave Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.

That was when a group of Ahmadinejad supporters raided the petty cash desk at Press TV’s Tehran headquarters and used the money to support Ahmadinejad’s election campaign, according to Press TV insiders who subsequently left or were forced to leave the network.

Since the June 2009 elections, opposition politicians, such as Mir Hossein and other challengers to Ahmadinejad, have been banned from the airwaves and Press TV has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness.

Skirting the Sanctions

Press TV has used a number of subterfuges to skirt the U.S. sanctions on commercial transactions with Iran.

From the start, Press TV has maintained close ties to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the Iranian regime’s only legal financial base in the United States. The UN mission may have paid some staff in cash brought in through the diplomatic bag. Press TV maintained an official presence at the Iranian Mission.

Because it could not incorporate directly in the United States, Press TV worked through production companies operating in the U.S., which in turn hired crew, correspondents, and producers.

Former Atlantic Television News (ATN) correspondent Colin Campbell questioned U.S. officials on Press TV’s behalf. ATN Productions Ltd. has seven reporters currently registered with the Senate Press Gallery: Nicholas Ewing, Affra Khallash, Taleb Khallash, Zina Khallash, Dirik Rice, Mohamed Said Ouafi, and Firas Tuma. The company is registered in Denmark and produces the weekly magazine show “American Dream,” hosted by an American, Nisa Islam.

ATN operates out of production studios located on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C. AIM Center for Investigative Journalism director Cliff Kincaid was invited and appeared on its “American Dream” program a couple of times, before realizing that ATN was operating as a front for the Iranians. When he criticized the Iranian regime on one of the programs, he was not invited back.

Press TV contacted Accuracy in Media on another occasion, looking for a guest for one of its programs to discuss why Republican Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul was not getting more favorable attention from the U.S. media. Paul has pleased the Iranian regime by defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. AIM declined the invitation but considered the request as more evidence of how foreign propaganda channels, such as Press TV and Russia Today, have embraced the foreign policy views of the Texas congressman.

The Press TV Media Universe

Press TV also contracts with American Press and TV Services (APTVS), an outfit run by Egyptian nationals Gamal Hassanein and Samir Ezeldin. Like ATN, they hire producers and camera crews to film events and conduct interviews at Press TV’s request.

“Gamal and Sam were running the operation, because Press TV was not allowed to incorporate here,” a former Press TV insider told me.

APTVS took over Press TV’s bureau at the United Nations in 2010. Like ATN, their correspondents and camera crews have all received press passes for the U.S. Capitol complex from the Senate Press Gallery. They hired Colin Campbell away from ATN, and have also registered the following staff with the Senate Press Gallery: Ibrahim Alshamrani, Moaz Attawia, Fahd Banhawy, Umut Colak, Samir Ezeldin, and Mike Kellerman.

The Senate press passes not only give the Press TV contractors access to the House and Senate chambers, but serve as accreditation for a much wider range of events reserved for members of the press corps, including White House, State Department, and Defense Department briefings. Although each of these three issues its own credentials to beat reporters (the “White House press corps,” etc.), the Senate press pass gets most reporters through the door for the occasional event.

Although APTVS and ATN are not part of Press TV, they produce “works for hire” for Press TV. Should OFAC decide to enforce the law, this could be construed to mean that they are engaging in unlicensed commercial transactions with Iran.

In an effort to forestall precisely such an investigation, APTVS for several years received payment from Press TV through a Palestinian production company in Ramallah run by silent partner Maher Shalabi, according to former Press TV insiders. On his Facebook page, Shalabi identifies himself as General Manager of that company, PMCC TV.

“Press TV used to contract Maher, and he then contracted with APTVS in Washington,” a former insider said. “APTVS then booked the guests and studios and conducted the interviews or satellite link-ups.” Shalabi also works for “Palestine TV,” and conducted a high-profile interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for that channel in 2010.

Do the activities of Press TV and these production companies fall within the “information” loop-hole of the Iran sanctions?

“If I am sending an academic journal, or some materials that actually will help the exchange of knowledge, that is allowed,” an Obama administration official told me. “But if I am actually conducting paid journalistic work, right now I still need a specific license to allow that to happen.”

Press TV does not have a license, this official hastened to add. “Therefore, they are operating illegally.”

Yet, the Obama Administration permits the channel to continue to operate in violation of the law. Congress should investigate.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is the New York Times best-selling author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, 2005), among other works

When the government chooses the taxpayer loses

2012-01-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Electric-Car Firm That Got Biden Visit, $118M in Stimulus, Files for Bankruptcy

By Fred Lucas

Vice President Joe Biden viewed an electric car that used Ener1 batteries as he toured the Ener1 battery factory in Greenfield, Ind., on Jan. 26, 2011. (White House photo/David Lienemann)

(CNSNews.com) - Ener1--a company that manufactures batteries for electric cars, and that received $118.5 million in federal stimulus money, and that Vice President Joe Biden visited last year the day after President Obama’s State of the Union Address—announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In last year’s State of the Union Address, delivered Jan. 25, 2011, President Obama set a national goal of having a million electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015—a goal that would be achieved, Obama said, by taking money out of the oil industry and “investing” it in new technology.

“With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” said Obama.

“We need to get behind this innovation,” he said. “And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.”

The next day, Biden visited the Ener1 plant in Greenfield, Ind.—which the White House said at the time had received a $118.5 million grant from the Department of Energy and was the type of investment the president was talking about in his State of the Union.

Brian Levine, deputy domestic policy adviser to Biden, wrote an article about Biden’s visit to Ener1 on the White House webpage for the White House Middle Class Task Force, which Biden leads. The article was headlined “Our Plan to Put One Million Advanced Technology Vehicles on America’s Roads.”

“Last night, President Obama set a goal of making the United States the first country in the world to put one million advanced technology vehicles on the road,” Levine wrote. “This goal is part of the President’s plan to rebuild our economy by investing in innovation to create the jobs and industries of the future.

Government has too much of our money

2012-01-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

USDA loan program 'creates' jobs for $2.5M each

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced his second bio-fuels loan guarantee in a week, revealing that the Agriculture Department (USDA) is slated to loan an Oregon biorefinery $232.5 million for a project expected to create 65 jobs and support 38 others.

"This project and others like it will help to establish a domestic advanced biofuels industry that will create jobs here at home and open new markets in the Pacific Northwest and across America," Vilsack said in a statement.

ZeaChem Boardman Biorefinery, LLC (ZBB), "must meet specific conditions before the 60 percent loan guarantee can be completed." Located in Boardman, Oregon, ZBB will devote 51 percent of its resources to producing "advanced biofuel, and the remainder will be high-value biobased chemicals, such as acetic acid and ethyl acetate."

USDA offered the loan guarantee as an example of President Obama fighting global warming while increasing energy security and helping the rural economy.

Last week, USDA appoved a conditional $25 million loan guarantee for an Iowa project expected to create 38 jobs. Combined, the two projects create 103 new jobs at a cost of $257.5 million -- or, $2.5 million per job.

TheState is the new G-d here. Just like it was in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany

2012-01-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

Obama’s Former Faith Adviser: ‘I, Frankly, Am Glad American Civil Religion is Dying’

By Penny Starr

Shaun Casey, former religious affairs adviser to Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, said on Jan. 24, 2012, that he was "glad American civil religion is dying." (Penny Starr/CNSNews.com)

(CNSNews.com) – Shaun Casey, the religious affairs adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008, said at a discussion on Tuesday about “God and Politics” that the demise of religious society in the United States is a good thing.

“I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” said Casey, who is an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.

Casey made the remarks at an event focusing on religion and the 2012 presidential election at the liberal Center for American Progress where he was a panelist along with Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Hispanic Evangelical Coalition.

Casey was responding to Salguero’s claim that civil religion is employed by politicians as an “iconic use of faith.”

“There is also a negative underside to that history with respect to slavery, manifest destiny, to war, you know, to empires, so I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” Casey said. “But it does raise the practical question, what does bind us together in some way as a country?

“We need some substitute for that and I don’t think we’ve found it yet,” Casey said.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss-French philosopher, is credited with coining the term “civil religion” in his 1762 book in his series “The Social Contract.” He described civil religion as the moral and spiritual foundation of modern society.

Panelist Robert Jones, founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, said that while two-thirds of Americans say it is important to them that the president has “strong religious beliefs,” that finding reflects more a “proxy for trustworthiness” than religious conviction.

Barack Obama, left, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (AP Photo)

In June 2008, Casey was hired by the Obama campaign to “focus on outreach to evangelical voters,” according to a June 27, 2008Washington Post article. The article also said that Casey, who was named senior adviser of religious affairs, had been informally advising the campaign for a year before his official appointment.

The Washington Post also reported that Casey was raised as an evangelical Christian and had earned degrees from Abilene Christian University and Harvard Divinity School.

Casey also informally advised Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean of Vermont in the past, the article said.

During Obama’s presidential campaign, Casey defended Obama’s affiliation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial and left-wing pastor of the United Church of Christ in Chicago and one-time “spiritual adviser” to Obama.

Obama attended Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years.

Obama distanced himself from Wright after his many controversial remarks and sermons were made public during the 2008 campaign.

On Mar. 18, 2008, Casey told The Washington Post, "The senator [Obama] is not naive, and what he's doing is very hard. He's trying to remain loyal to his pastor but also differentiate himself politically."

Unions: the enemy of excellence and change

2012-01-26T10:39:00.000-08:00

School kids catch a break

A remarkable study released yesterday is offering fresh hope for some of the city’s poorest students stuck in New York’s failing public schools.

It’s also providing a ringing indictment of the teachers unions that are fighting tooth and nail to keep the failure factories open.

When the city shutters large, bad schools and puts kids in smaller, specialized ones, graduation and college-readiness rates climb, and much of the racial-achievement gap vanishes.

Starting in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg closed 23 disastrous high schools. In their place, the city set up hundreds of “small schools of choice,” or SSCs.

These are specialized high schools with about 400 students each, where staff have closer contact with their charges.

The nonprofit research group MDRC studied thousands of students who applied to attend SSCs. Starting in 2005, it tracked kids who got into 105 SSCs and compared them with those who applied but wound up enrolled in traditional district schools.

The groups are basically identical; children of privilege they are not. About 93 percent are black and Hispanic, and most come from some of the poorest stretches of Brooklyn and The Bronx. Most read below their grade levels.

The upshot: Kids who went to SSCs have performedbrilliantly:

* Some 68 percent of students at SSCs graduated in four years — 8.6 points higher than their counterparts.

* Students at SSCs closed43 percentof the gap between whites and minorities.

*Far more students at the small schools passed their English Regents exams with “college-ready” scores of 75 or higher — 37.3 percent versus 30 percent.

The benefits accrued broadly: Black students, white students, boys, girls, poor kids and those far below grade level all did better when they attended SSCs.

These schools aren’t just smaller; they also create a culture of achievement by involving community partners like the Urban Assembly and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, giving each a distinct focus.

With this success so evident, you’d expect to see the teachers unions lining up to support the model. Not exactly.

Instead, the unions file suit every time the Department of Education tries to close or restructure a failing school. They don’t like being accused of failure, or when teachers get shifted around from school to school. The MDRC study is powerful ammunition against them.

Remaining challenges, of course, are considerable. After all, just 37.3 percent of SSC kids showed college readiness in English, and 23.3 percent showed it in math.

But again, these students scored notably better than their pals in traditional schools.

Which means there’s hope.

And never mind union obstructionism.

Democrat policy: raise taxes. lose jobs

2012-01-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

Wrong way, Illinois

Failed policies lead more Illinoisans down path of unemployment

As Gov. Pat Quinn prepares for the State of the State address on Feb. 1, he will find it difficult to defend the state’s economic policies that have resulted in more unemployed Illinoisans in 2011.

Almost a year after Illinois’ record income tax increase, the state’s unemployment woes contrast starkly with the slow but positive national economic recovery. Unemployment rates in 46 states dropped since January 2011, and some dramatically. Illinois’ unemployment rate, on the other hand, was 9.8 percent in December, up from 9 percent in January 2011. Simply put, Illinois placed more people on the unemployment rolls than any other state in the country.

Illinois leadership had substantive policy options when it began 2011 with major fiscal challenges. But rather than reduce spending, tackle its pension problems and reduce the cost of doing business in Illinois, officials chose to kick off the year with the largest tax hike in state history.

The results? More deficits, an estimated $7 billion in unpaid bills and a downgrade by Moody’s credit agency to the lowest rating in the country. The state had to pay companies to stay in Illinois, and, worst of all, more Illinoisans joined the ranks of the unemployed.

One in ten Illinoisans who wanted to go to work today could not. Skeptics can try to reason away Illinois’ failure in creating an environment where people can be put to work, but the graphic below says it all.

Illinois’ current leadership fails to recognize that Illinois is competing not only against other states for investment and jobs, but globally. Today, labor and capital flow freely, and without competitive policies, Illinois will continue to suffer.

Illinois leadership must be held accountable. The policies of increased spending, higher taxes and fiscal mismanagement have hurt the state. It’s time to reverse Illinois’ path from one of high unemployment and poor governance to one that focuses on reforms, puts the state on sound fiscal footing and gets Illinoisans back to work.

Coincidence or a way to make sure these folks don't say anything negative about Obama

2012-01-26T08:58:00.000-08:00

36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes

How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes.

Because how unfair -- indeed, un-American -- it is for an office worker like, say, Warren Buffet's secretary to dutifully pay her taxes, while some well-to-do people with better educations and higher incomes end up paying a much smaller tax rate.

Or, worse, skipping their taxes altogether.

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.

Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama's White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That's up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration's last year.

Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.

The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.

The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year.

That scale of delinquency could annoy voters, hard-pressed by their own costs, fears and stubbornly high unemployment despite Joe Biden's many promises.

The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.

The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million.

As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most -- almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.

The country's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too.

As with ordinary people, the IRS attempts to negotiate back-tax payment plans with all delinquents, whose names cannot be released. But according to current federal law, the only federal employees who can be fired for not paying taxes are IRS workers.

Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood buying friends. GE to profit.

2012-01-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

Obama set to speed aid to Egypt-official

25 Jan 2012 21:51

Source: Reuters // Reuters

* Obama considers redirecting aid to Egypt

* Congress concerned by raids on foreign aid groups (Adds details on history of U.S. aid to Egypt)

By Warren Strobel

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama plans to accelerate the pace of American aid to Egypt, a top State Department official said on Wednesday, as the most populous Arab nation reaches a critical stage in its uncertain transition away from autocratic rule.

Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats, part of a U.S. delegation that held unprecedented talks last week with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington wanted to provide "more immediate benefits" to Egyptians, who earlier this month conducted their first democratic elections in decades.

"During this period, we want to be as supportive as we can. This is an historic moment. Egypt's a country of enormous importance," Hormats said.

Under the plan, some non-urgent U.S. aid slated for other countries - he did not name them - would be redirected to Egypt. And funding in the pipeline for long-term programs in Egypt would be shifted to quick-impact projects, he said.

Hormats, speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum, emphasized that the White House had not made any final decisions, and that he was providing Washington's "broad thinking" on the subject.

It was unclear whether the total amount of U.S. aid to Egypt would be increased. "Whether it's an increase or whether it's reprioritizing existing assistance, we're still working this out," Hormats said.

Still, he made clear the United States wants to be seen as doing more to assist a hoped-for democratic evolution in Egypt, where the military still holds ultimate power on the first anniversary of protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt has long been among the top recipients of U.S. aid, which began flowing in substantial sums after it became the first Arab nation to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, regarding the money as an investment in regional security.

According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, the United States gave roughly $2 billion or more annually for 25 years after the peace agreement, most of it for the military.

That figure has drifted down to hold steady at around $1.55 billion in recent years.

Congress approved $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt for the current fiscal year, but with conditions attached. It also approved $250 million in economic aid, as well as an "enterprise fund" of up to $60 million.

For the money to flow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must certify that the Egyptian government is supporting the transition to a civilian government, including holding free and fair elections, and implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.

In addition, the law says that none of the aid, military or economic, can be spent unless Egypt is meeting its obligations under the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

U.S. lawmakers appear in no mood to approve more, at least for Egypt's military, which has earned U.S. criticism for cracking down on pro-democracy non-governmental organizations and for the way security forces have treated women protesters.

SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACIES

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama said the United States had a "huge stake in the outcome" of the revolutions that have swept the Arab world. He pledged to "support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies," but offered no concrete proposals for additional assistance.

Obama is to unveil his proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2013, including foreign assistance, on Feb. 13.

He has yet to announce major new aid packages following the overthrow of governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

U.S. officials have cited fiscal restraints at home, as well as resistance in the Congress.

"It's unfortunate the juxtaposition, that our budgetary constraints come at the same time that you have this enormously hopeful series of changes in the region," Hormats said.

When the Cold War ended in 1989 and it was clear which anti-Communist leaders would take power in former Soviet bloc states, Congress was quick to provide backing "without a lot of cajoling," Hormats noted.

Following the revolts of the "Arab Spring," and in Egypt particularly, "you have a much more fluid situation, and we don't know what the government's going to look like," he said.

Underscoring that point, Hormats last week held what he called the first-ever economic meetings between a senior U.S. official and the Muslim Brotherhood, a once-banned Islamist group that this month won the biggest share of seats in Egypt's lower house of parliament.

The delegation that met with the Brotherhood, which Washington had long kept at arm's length, was led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Hormats described the half-dozen Brotherhood officials he met with as "very pragmatic. They understand, they're the majority party now in the parliament. They are going to be the primary political party in Egypt. They need to deliver results."

"And their focus primarily is on small- and medium-enterprise" as generators of job creation, he said.

Earlier this month, Representative Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, wrote to Obama and Clinton, warning them that recent raids on foreign non-governmental organizations in Cairo could jeopardize U.S. military assistance.

While acknowledging lawmakers' concerns over trends in Egypt and other Middle East countries where dictators have been toppled, Hormats said, "democracy is not always a smooth or predictable process."

"We have to understand that and not expect miracles. ... We have to explain to the American people that patience is needed and support is needed," he said.

Along with formal government assistance to Egypt, the Obama administration is promoting expanded trade ties; supporting efforts by the International Monetary Fund to reach an agreement with Cairo; and encouraging U.S. firms to explore investment.

A U.S. business mission led by General Electric is headed to Egypt next month, Hormats said. (Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Jon Boyle and Sandra Maler)

Why doesn't he pay her in stock so she too can pay cap gains tax?

2012-01-25T18:15:00.000-08:00

Despite Unfair Tax Burden, Warren Buffett's Secretary Was Just Able To Buy A Second Home

Despite a heavy tax burden, Warren Buffett’s secretary last year was able to purchase a second home in Arizona, a residence complete with a swimming pool and a “professional PGA putting green,” according to real estate records.

Debra Bosanek, 55, and her husband Gerald bought the 2100-square-foot home in Surprise, a city outside Phoenix. The Bosaneks paid $144,000 for the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath property (the purchase was financed, in part, by a $115,200 mortgage).

The principal Bosanek residence is in Bellevue, Nebraska, several miles from Buffett’s corporate headquarters in Omaha. The couple’s 2568-square-foot home, built in 2000, also has four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. But the modest property, which Sarpy County assessors last year valued at $217,716, offers no outdoor amenities for swimmers or golfers.

Bosanek, who last night attended the State of the Union speech, has become the face of President Barack Obama’s so-called Buffett Rule, which contends that the secretary of a wealthy individual should not pay a higher tax rate than their boss.

Before Obama people were invited to sit in the family box at the SOTU speech because they were being honored for some heroic achievement. But, Obama has cheapened that for political gain. What a guy.

It was.

2012-01-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

KRAUTHAMMER: DANIELS‘ GOP RESPONSE ’ONE OF THE BEST’

The critics were right all along

2012-01-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

ELEVEN ‘STUNNING REVELATIONS’ FROM A CONFIDENTIAL ECONOMICS MEMO TO OBAMA

Tyranny

2012-01-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

NOW President: It’s ‘Poppycock’ to Say Catholic Institutions Have a Conscience

Women are not prevented from accessing birth control, etc. But, to demand that people who do not believe, because of conscience, to pay for that which they abhor is the essence of tyranny. NOW is a left wing organization and therefore by definition anti religion.

Obama: harming America at every turn

2012-01-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

U.S. 'Reset' Backfires As Brazil Turns To China

Diplomacy: President Obama earlier this year hailed a new era of energy cooperation with Brazil, vowing to make America Brazil's best customer. Brazil's response? To sell its oil to China. So much for the "reset" in relations.

Hailing Brazil as "a global leader" in a visit so important to him he refused to postpone it even though it happened on the same March day he was sending U.S. troops into harm's way in Libya, Obama put Brazil on a pedestal.

"It's time for the United States to treat our engagement with Brazil on economic issues as seriously as we do with nations like China and India," he declared on arrival in Brasilia. "The United States doesn't simply recognize Brazil's rise; we support it enthusiastically."

Around the same time, his U.S. Export-Import Bank announced $2 billion in U.S. trade credits to develop Brazil's oil, and an additional $1 billion for its infrastructure, declaring Brazil "a top priority." And an Ex-Im Bank source volunteered to IBD that that amount could go way higher — in the neighborhood of $20 billion.

"We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers," Obama told Brazil.

Ten months later, what does Obama have to show for this? A Brazil that has dismissed the U.S. as a lightweight and opted to sell its oil to China instead.

That's right, China has bought up a 40% stake in Repsol-YPF's Brazil unit, which has dibs on drilling the Santos Basin offshore, where the biggest deepwater discoveries are being made, as well as a 30% stake in Galp Energia, a Portuguese company also with rights to the same basin, according to the Washington Times.

It's signed two big energy cooperation agreements with China's state oil companies, while China has pledged $10 billion in development credits.

It's a stunning repudiation of President Obama that shows the U.S. has lost influence and desirability as a partner, something that until now had been an absolute given in foreign affairs. Naivete and domestic priorities have lots to do with this historic snub.

First, Brazil, unlike Canada, is not an ally, and as a matter of fact owes us nothing. One showy visit by a U.S. president does not an alliance make.

Obama has naively considered Brazil a natural ally out of solidarity for its democratic-left government. That doesn't translate into the same policies.

Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, fiercely favors Brazilian energy projects. Obama, by contrast, halts U.S. drilling. As leftists, both seek to cut America down.

Brazil does that by making itself bigger. Obama slavishly follows the green prescriptions of cutting energy development in the U.S., from the Gulf to the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada.

Obama offered a "green energy partnership" and to help Brazil develop "in an environmentally responsible manner." Brazil decided China was a better bet.

Second, Brazil sees its energy development as a logical course for a booming nation of 200 million people. As it doesn't have dibs on Saudi, Mexican or Canadian oil, it knows it's on its own for energy. Brazil saw how Obama snubbed our neighbor and ally to the north on the Keystone Pipeline. If Obama would snub a close and friendly energy supplier like Canada, why would he treat Brazil any better as a customer?

Third, Brazil sees that the U.S. has vast energy resources and technical expertise to develop it and may be betting America will get a new president who will open the U.S. gates to energy production — in which case, the U.S. may not need to be Brazil's "best customer."

China, by contrast, doesn't have such options. It's desperately snapping up whatever supplies it can lock in, across Africa, Asia and the Americas. A desperate customer may be a better one.

All of this underlines how Obama has failed in his aims to push the reset button on Brazil relations, which have always been friendly but distant.

Now that he's been taught a lesson by them, isn't it time for him to start thinking about energy security in serious terms — with local and Canadian sources?

Brazil might just respect him for it.

Simple words are best to be simplisitc

2012-01-25T10:14:00.000-08:00

"My Message is Simple": Obama's SOTU Written at 8th Grade Level for Third Straight Year

Insanity is doubling down on a failed policy

2012-01-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

First lady unveils tougher nutrition standards for school meals

By Julian Pecquet

First lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday unveiled tougher nutrition standards that school meals will have to meet starting this year.

The new standards were required by the 2010 school nutrition bill that increased funding for school meals. The new regulations, according to the Department of Agriculture, will:

• Ensure that students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;

• Substantially increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods;

• Offer only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties;

• Limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and

• Increase the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium.

Congress weakened proposed Department of Agriculture nutrition regulations in the spending bills approved last month following intense lobbying from the frozen pizza and potato industries. But consumer groups still praised the final rules unveiled Wednesday.

Thanks to the new guidelines, Jessica Donze Black of the Kids' Safe and Healthful Foods Project said, "children will see more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains on their cafeteria trays. Meals also will include more low-fat and nonfat dairy products, and less fat and sodium, and calorie levels will be appropriate for different age groups. Not only are these changes good for students, but they also give parents more assurance that schools support their efforts to provide healthy foods to their kids."

The American Academy of Pediatrics also approved.

"The finalized school meal standards are the strongest to date, and provide more fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and overall healthier meals for our children," Academy President Robert Block said in a statement. "These standards will undoubtedly make significant improvements in the health of all our nation's children."

The first lady announced the new rules alongside Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and celebrity chef Rachael Ray at an elementary school in Alexandria, Va.

LAUSD Students Roundly Reject Healthier School Lunch Menu

Good for her...

2012-01-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Daytona woman, 64, holds suspect in yard at gunpoint

Environmentalists never see the downside of anything they promote

2012-01-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Woman Claims Neighbor’s Energy Efficient Windows Are Melting Her Toyota Prius

The administration doesn't treat Toyota in the same way

2012-01-25T09:16:00.000-08:00

House panel challenges gov't response on Volt

How much of our lives are manipulated by do-gooder myths?

2012-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

Fried food heart risk 'a myth'

It is a "myth" that regularly eating fried foods causes heart attacks, researchers have found, as long as you use olive oil or sunflower

They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters.

The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain - where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used - and the incidence of serious heart disease.

However, the British Heart Foundation warned Britons not to "reach for the frying pan" yet, pointing out that the Mediterranean diet as a whole was healthier than ours.

Spanish researchers followed more than 40,000 people, two-thirds of whom were women, from the mid 1990s to 2004.

At the outset they asked them how often they ate fried foods, either at home or while out. They then looked to see whether eating fried foods regularly increased the likelihood of falling ill from having coronary heart disease, such as a heart attack or angina requiring surgery.

Dividing participants into four groups, from lowest fried food intake to highest, they found no significant difference in heart disease.

There were 606 incidents linked to heart disease in total, but they were split relatively evenly between the four groups.

The authors concluded: "In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death."

Commenting on the findings in the BMJ, Professor Michael Leitzmann of the University of Regensburg in Germany said two other studies - one from Costa Rica and another by an international team - had also failed to find strong evidence of a link.

He said: "Taken together, the myth that frying food is generally bad for the heart is not supported by available evidence.

"However, this does not mean that frequent meals of fish and chips will have no health consequences."

Fried food did contain more calories, he said, while it had also been linked to high blood pressure and obesity.

The authors of the Spanish study noted that the findings could only really be extrapolated to other Mediterranean countries with similar diets, whose people tended to fry 'fresh' with olive and sunflower oil.

Fried foods from modern American-style takeaways were different, they argued, because these tended to have been cooked in re-used oils, higher in transfats.

In addition, such takeaways tended to contain much more salt, known to increase blood pressure and heart disease risk.

However, more and more people in Britain are now frying with olive oil or sunflower oil. Britain now consumes around 28 million litres of olive oil a year – double that sold a decade ago.

Half British households now use it regularly in some way, although not necessarily for frying, compared to a third 10 years ago.

Victoria Taylor, senior heart health dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Before we all reach for the frying pan it’s important to remember that this was a study of a Mediterranean diet, rather than British fish and chips.

"Our diet in the UK will differ from Spain, so we cannot say that this result would be the same for us too.

“Participants in this study used unsaturated fats such as olive and sunflower oil to fry their food.

"We currently recommend swapping saturated fats like butter, lard or palm oil for unsaturated fats as a way of keeping your cholesterol down and this study gives further cause to make that switch.

“Regardless of the cooking methods used, consuming foods with high fat content means a high calorie intake. This can lead to weight gain and obesity, which is a risk factor for heart disease.

"A well-balanced diet, with plenty of fruit and veg and only a small amount of high fat foods, is best for a healthy heart.”

Crony capitalism?

2012-01-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

Buffett would profit from Keystone cancellation

Idiotic...

2012-01-24T12:44:00.000-08:00

Abortion safer than giving birth: study

It's not safer for the baby who dies every time.

Giving birth is the purest form of productivity while abortion is totally non productive.

Doctors and scientists have to make a living and getting a grant for stupid amoral studies seem to be the path of the day. The group that funded this study is hardly an uninvolved. Here's the Wiki entry:

The Guttmacher Institute in 1968 was founded as the "Center for Family Planning Program Development", a semi-autonomous division of The Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Center was renamed in memory of Alan Frank Guttmacher, an Ob/Gyn and former president of Planned Parenthood, and the Guttmacher Institute became an independent, not-for-profit corporation in 1977.^[3] Guttmacher's four decades of experience claims to demonstrate that scientific evidence — when reliably collected and analyzed, compellingly presented and systematically disseminated — can make a difference in policies, programs, and medical practice.

Can you say a lobbying group for abortionists?

Beginning to sound like the bureaucrats in any totalitarian nation

2012-01-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

Who Should Have Access to Student Records?

Education data can be useful, but privacy experts are concerned about data misuse.

When a dossier is held about you in secret with no chance to face your accuser you have a Constitutional issue of significant magnitude. But, for Marxists it's just normal business practice.

Would you risk your life under these insane rules of engagement.

2012-01-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

This is Obama's war now and his rules of engagement.

Marine's career threatened by controversial rules of engagement

By: Sara A. Carter
National Security Correspondent

Marine Corps 1st Lt. Joshua Waddell, 25, in Sangin, Afghanistan, is executive officer with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Corps Regiment, from Twentynine Palms, Calif. (Courtesy photo)

Joshua Waddell, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Marines, appeared on his way to a stellar career as an American military officer. The son of a retired Navy SEAL commander, Waddell had won a Bronze Star during his first tour of duty in Afghanistan and had returned for a second.

Then he made a decision in combat that military experts say has severely jeopardized his future in the corps.

But some military experts say the black mark on Waddell's record was undeserved, that he and other young American officers are being put in a difficult, if not impossible, situation by unreasonable rules of engagement foisted upon the military by politically sensitive commanders in the Pentagon.

The facts in Waddell's case are spelled out in Marine Corps documents. But how those facts should be interpreted is a matter of heated dispute.

On Nov. 1, Waddell, a 25-year-old executive officer with 3rd Battallion, 7th Marine Corps Regiment, was monitoring a surveillance camera in Sangin, Afghanistan, when he spotted a man who had been identified as a bomb maker working with area insurgents. Two days earlier, a sergeant from India Company had lost both legs and a hand when a bomb detonated in their area of operation. The man spotted on the camera was believed to be responsible.

After receiving permission from his battalion commanders, Waddell ordered Marine snipers to open fire on the man, and he was hit. A group of Afghans rushed to the man, put him on a tractor and attempted to flee. Waddell ordered the snipers to hit the engine block of the tractor, disabling it so the man believed to be a bomb maker would not escape. The tractor was hit but no civilians were injured.

Then, about three weeks later, the civilians who helped remove the wounded man from the area were found to be teenagers.

As a result, Waddell was demoted from executive officer, and the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Seth Folsom, determined he had violated rules of engagement that governed when Marines could fire, and at whom. Folsom said Wadell "is not recommended for promotion" and "in violation of [combat rules] during an engagement." The report stated that "noncombatant local nationals" were in the area of direct fire and that "the engagement resulted in a damaged local national vehicle."

A Marine brigadier general who reviewed the case was sympathetic to Waddell, whom he described as a "superb and heroic combat leader. But the general said the decision on whether Waddell should be promoted was "the commander's prerogative," noting that the battalion commander on the scene had lost "confidence in [Waddell's] abilities."

Marine Maj. Shawn Haney, spokesman for Marine Corps Manpower and Reserve Affairs, said Waddell's fitness report will go before a review board at the time of any promotion "and everything is under scrutiny, so Waddell will have a chance to defend himself against the accusations." Still, Haney conceded, Waddell's fitness reports play a "significant role in future promotions."

The upshot is that Waddell's career has been effectively blunted, his chance for promotion blocked.

Waddell is just one of hundreds of cases of troops who have suffered under stringent rules of engagement, said Jeff Addicott, a former senior legal adviser to U.S. Army Special Forces.

"We have hamstrung our military with unrealistic ROEs that do more harm to our soldiers than the enemy, and now a Marine's career is on the line because he disabled a tractor," Addicott said. "In many ways our military is frozen in fear of violating absurd self-imposed rules on the battlefield, How can you tell if it's a teenager or a man, a farmer or an enemy when you're fighting an insurgency?"

A Marine stationed in Afghanistan who does not know Waddell, but who has operated under the same rules, said, "The rules of engagement are meant to placate [President Hamid] Karzai's government at our expense. They say it's about winning the hearts and minds, but it's not working. We're not putting fear into the enemy, only our troops."

Waddell's father, Mark Waddell, who served more than 25 years in the military and retired as a commander of a Navy SEAL team, said his son and other Americans fighting in Afghanistan are being victimized by these rules.

"I feel what's happened to my son is a complete betrayal, and he isn't the only one," said Waddell, of Fort Worth, Texas. "Josh is a hero. We expect them to go out and make instantaneous combat decisions, then we Monday-morning quarterback their decisions. It's an outrage."

And, the Clintons were famous for giving used underwear.

2012-01-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

WHO'S GREEDY? Obama Gave 1% to Charity, Romney Gave 15%

Democrats are always charitable with other people's money.

The Bidens gave an average of $369 to charity a year for the decade before he moved to the Naval Observatory - about 0.3 percent of their income. Back in 1997, then veep Al Gore and his then wife Tipper gave $353.

Since becoming veep, Biden hasn't become much more generous. In 2010, he gave $5,350, about 1.4 percent of income. That same year, Romney gave some $3 million. The national average is about three percent.

http://harndenblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/01/much-ado-about-nothing-mitt-romney-is-very-rich-he-also-gave-millions-to-charity-and-the-taxman.html

It's okay with Obama because they didn't urinate on them

2012-01-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

Taliban’s snuff vid

15 Pakistanis executed in grim ‘warning’

Obama's America

2012-01-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

CURL: The truly dismal state of the union

There is one person — one American among the 300 million of us — who is not to blame for the state of the union. Everyone else, each of you, in some small or large way, bears some share of the blame, but not this guy. Not one little bit.

This guy is Barack Obama. He is not the least bit to blame for the dismal state of the U.S. economy. George W. Bush is, for sure, and that evil Dick Cheney, oh, no doubt. House Speaker John A. Boehner — evil, too — is, of course, to blame. But guess what? So is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and every Democrat in the House and Senate.

Now, President Truman made it very clear: The buck stops with him. No passing the buck for that guy. But Mr. Obama blames everyone but himself. Mr. Bush, he says, left the nation in a ditch, a deep ditch, and he's been digging out since he took office. And Congress? Those guys are just plain awful, he says. So mean. Wah, they won't do anything I want done! Mr. Obama feels so sure about it that he's basing his re-election campaign on bashing Capitol Hill.

But with the president delivering his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday night, let's pause here to take as hard look at the real state of America, by the numbers, using only cold, hard facts.

The unemployment rate when Mr. Obama was elected was 6.8 percent; today it is 8.5 percent — at least that's the official number. In reality, the Financial Times writes, "if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent."

In addition, there are now fewer payroll jobs in America than there were in 2000 — 12 years ago — and now, 40 percent of those jobs are considered "low paying," up 10 percent from when President Reagan took office. The number of self-employed has dropped 2 million to 14.5 million in just six years.

Regular gasoline per gallon cost $1.68 in January 2009. Today, it's $3.39 — that's a 102 percent increase in just three years. (By the way, if you're keeping score at home, gas was $1.40 a gallon when George W. Bush took office in 2001, $1.68 when he left office — a 20 percent increase.)

Electricity bills have also skyrocketed, with households now paying a record $1,420 annually on average, up some $300.

Some 48 percent of all Americans — 146.4 million — are considered by the Census Bureau either as "low-income" or living in poverty, up 4 million from when Mr. Obama took office; 57 percent of all children in America now live in such homes.

Since December 2008, a month before Mr. Obama took office, food-stamp use has increased 46 percent. Total spending has more than doubled in just four years to a record high of $75 billion. In 2011, more than 46 million people — about one in seven Americans — got food stamps. That's 14 million more than when Mr. Obama took office.

Median household income has dropped nearly 7 percent in the last six years, taking inflation into account. What's more, nearly 20 percent of males age 25 to 34 now live with their parents.

Low- and middle-income Americans 65 and older now hold more than $10,000 in credit card debt, up 26 percent since 2005. The average age of the American car is 10 years; in 1990, it was 6.5 years old (by the way, in 1985, Americans bought 11 million cars; in 2009, less than half that, 5.4 million).

On the macro side, America's annual budget has jumped to $3.8 trillion — and yet the United States brings in only about $2.1 trillion in revenue. The U.S. trade deficit for 2011 was $558 billion. America's total public debt stands at $15.23 trillion; in January 2009, the debt was $10.62 trillion. Mr. Obama is on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion in just one term — more debt than was amassed by all presidents from Washington through Bill Clinton combined. The debt is rising by $4.2 billion every day — $175 million per hour, nearly $3 million per minute.

So, America, that is the State of Your Union. But remember, Mr. Obama had not one thing to do with it. So don't blame him when you go to the polls. Blame everyone else, especially yourself.

Let's figure this out....

2012-01-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

Sun-Times To Quit Making Endorsements

They endorse Obama but can't say so out loud because of the miserable job he's done. They hate anybody to the right of Bill Ayers so they can't endorse a Republican or Conservative so voila they'll make no endorsement. Simple, no?