Democrat political corruption. Time for investigation. Conservative gamblers should find another place to gamble

Hans A. von Spakovsky: E-mail shows illegal activity in Reid's campaign

By: Hans A. von Spakovsky

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., may have beaten back challenger Sharron Angle and retained his post as the majority leader, but his campaign and one of his biggest supporters may have violated federal law to do so.

As National Review reported earlier this week, the Reid campaign sent a desperate e-mail to the senior vice president for government relations at Harrah's Casinos asking the company to pressure its employees to get out and vote for Reid. The campaign even offered to have Reid call Harrah's executives to help give "the backing" needed to get the company working on this.

The Reid staffer involved told Harrah's it needed to "put a headlock" on its supervisors "to get them to follow through."

This plea was distributed to senior executives throughout the company by a Harrah's vice president, Marybel Batjer. Batjer demanded that those executives "do whatever we need to do to get the supervisors to know that there is NOTHING more important than to get employees out to vote. Waking up to a defeat of Harry Reid Nov 3rd will be devastating for our industry's future."

Harrah's did just that, getting headcounts and insisting that supervisors explain why their employees had not yet voted. They also coordinated with employee unions to get buses and shuttles to take the employees to the polls.

None of this should be excused as just "politics as usual." Both the Reid campaign and Harrah's may have violated federal campaign finance law that prohibits in-kind corporate and union contributions to, and coordination with, political campaigns. Corporations and unions may spend money to run ads in support of or opposing a candidate, but they are not allowed to make direct or in-kind contributions to federal candidates.

Federal criminal law also prohibits intimidation and coercion of a person exercising his or her right to vote (or not to vote).

If a corporation or union spends money to support the election of a candidate in response to a request by that federal candidate (that is, if they make a coordinated expenditure), as clearly occurred in this case, then they are making an illegal contribution to the candidate.

This was not a situation where a corporation was simply encouraging its employees to go to the polls and vote for their candidate of choice -- Harrah's was telling its employees how important it was to elect Reid, setting up a whole system to coerce its employees to vote, even making records of who had not voted.

Both Harrah's and the unions spend money, in terms of supervisor and employee resources on company time, and the cost of shuttles, etc., not merely in a nonpartisan way to get out the vote, but to facilitate votes for Reid.

Moreover, 18 U.S.C. ¤ 594 makes it a federal crime to intimidate, threaten or coerce, "or attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for or not to vote for, any candidate for office of ... the Senate."

Harrah's executives were apparently threatening employees who had not voted, and were coercing them to vote for a particular senatorial candidate. The obvious implication for anyone receiving these Harrah's e-mails or having a "headlock" put on them was possible reprisals and adverse employment consequences if they did not cooperate in getting out the vote (and vote) for Reid.

The Justice Department's handbook on election crimes for prosecutors makes clear that it is criminal to engage in "conduct intended to force prospective voters to vote against their preferences, or refrain from voting, through activity reasonably calculated to instill some form of fear."

Campaign finance violations are generally investigated by the Federal Election Commission as civil matters. But intentional and knowing violations are criminal violations, which are prosecuted by the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department.

It is difficult to believe that neither Reid's staffer nor Harrah's senior vice president for government relations (its lobbyist), would not know that their coordination and in-kind contributions were highly illegal.

So the question is this -- will the Holder Justice Department open up an investigation into what seems to have been blatant violations of federal law? Or will the administration make the same type of political decision that it has made in numerous other cases, including the New Black Panther Party?

If it fails to investigate, it will be telling the country that as long as you are an important political ally of the president, you need have no worry about violating federal law.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org) and a former Federal Election Commission commissioner and Justice Department official.

Keeping their names alive

Terrorism’s Victims

How true

Radicalism means never having to say you're sorry

Islamists kill more Muslims then anyone else

Attack on mosque in north-west Pakistan 'kills 55'

Still hasn't paid his taxes...

John Kerry’s bucks stop where?

Funny

Earthquakes dog Clinton on overseas trips

By MATTHEW LEE

(AP) New Zealand Defense Minister Wayne Mapp, right, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,... Full Image

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) - What is it about Hillary Rodham Clinton and earthquakes? Seems the secretary of state rarely takes an overseas trip that is not in some way affected by a temblor.

She may not have felt the earth move under her feet, but as her plane landed Friday in Christchurch, the city was hit by an aftershock from a 7-magnitude quake that struck in September. Two days earlier, as she wrapped up a visit to Papua New Guinea, a 6.0-magnitude quake rattled villages there.

Those seismic events were at least the third and fourth to have hit countries while Clinton was visiting. On her first trip abroad as America's top diplomat in February 2009, Clinton was shaken awake by a minor quake in Japan. Four months later, she felt a 5.0 quake in Honduras. Then, in October 2009, tremors struck Pakistan while Clinton was there.

And those are just the ones she's been present for.

Days before Clinton was to visit Chile in March of this year, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake caused severe damage in the South American country, forcing her to cancel plans to spend a night in Santiago. But she still made a brief stop in Chile to get a look at relief efforts, much as she did in January after Haiti was devastated by a powerful quake.

Of course, the reason Clinton was in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand this week and will travel to Australia on Saturday is the Haiti quake. She was in Hawaii en route to the three countries when Haiti was struck on Jan. 12, causing her to return to Washington to oversee U.S. relief efforts.

It was promised to be cheaper wasn't it?

Citing health overhaul, AARP hikes employee costs

The government is incapable of picking winners and losers

Fremont solar panel maker Solyndra scales back expansion plans

Without government incentives, your tax dollars wasted, this kind of stuff would not even be attempted by anyone sound of financial mind. We live in a world where the eight years olds reign. Because the believe in tinker bell they will change the world. Check out the cost/benefit ratio of buying solar panels for your home. You'll be laughing your butt off.

Another benefit of the environmental nutter movement

Could you give up washing?

A growing number of people are cutting down on daily showering and hair-washing. So could you join the extreme soap-dodgers?

Well, that because QE1 and QE lite worked such wonders

Fed to Spend $600 Billion More To Help Boost US Economy

Jew hatred

Jihad By Vuvuzela

Superior, Arrogant, pretentious vengeful

Chris Matthews Refers To Current GOP Candidates As ‘Stray Cats And Dogs’

Weed them out one by one.

CONGRESSMAN WHO DIDN’T WORRY ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION LOSES SEAT

Another Obama policy failure

Iran Unlikely to Accept Nuclear Deal, Envoy Says

VIENNA (Reuters) — Iran’s envoy to the United Nations nuclear agency on Tuesday dismissed a suggestion by the United States that Iran should agree to tougher conditions than those it rejected last year for a possible compromise on its nuclear program.

Senior Obama administration officials said last week that the United States was prepared to revive an offer it made last year to ship Iran’s uranium to another country for enrichment, in a complex deal intended to ensure that Iran did not have access to enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb. Western diplomats said any new deal would have to be updated to take into account Iran’s increased holdings of low-enriched uranium, which can be used to build bombs if refined much further.

But Iran’s envoy to the United Nations nuclear agency, when asked about an article in The New York Times that reported that Iran would be asked to release about two tons of its uranium stockpile under a revised proposal, indicated that Tehran was unlikely to agree. “I’m afraid there is no logic for these kind of statements,” he said.

Rewarding government favorites destroys free markets

GM Could Be Free of Taxes for Years

By RANDALL SMITH and SHARON TERLEP

General Motors Co. will drive away from its U.S.-government-financed restructuring with a final gift in its trunk: a tax break that could be worth as much as $45 billion.

Use your own expletive

US to spend $200 mn a day on Obama's Mumbai visit

You are paying for revisionist anti American history

INVESTIGATE THIS

In a series of posts on Obama administration National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach, we have followed the descent of the NEH into political partisanship and rank buffoonery. Now we turn to problematic programming funded by the NEH.

In July 2010 the NEH sponsored a workshop for college professors at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii. The title of the conference was "History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War." As one of the 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, Professor Penelope Blake anticipated an opportunity to visit hallowed sites such as Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial and the Punchbowl Cemetery and engage with scholars who share her interest in studying this often neglected part of World War II history.

Instead, Professor Blake was treated to the most disturbing experience of her academic career, a conference which she found to be driven by an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda. Professor Blake has forwarded to us the following letter dated September 12, 2010, to Illinois Rep. Donald Manzullo, her congressman, documenting examples of what transpired at the conference. Copies of the letter were also sent to members of the NEH Council and to Leach. Professor Blake writes (all emphases are in the original):

Dear Congressman Manzullo:

As one of twenty-five American scholars chosen to participate in the recent National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Workshop, "History and Commemoration: Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII," at the University of Hawaii, East-West Center, I am writing to ask you to vote against approval of 2011 funding for future workshops until the NEH can account for the violation of its stated objective to foster "a mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups" (NEH Budget Request, 2011).

In my thirty years as a professor in upper education, I have never witnessed nor participated in a more extremist, agenda-driven, revisionist conference, nearly devoid of rhetorical balance and historical context for the arguments presented.

In both the required preparatory readings for the conference, as well as the scholarly presentations, I found the overriding messages to include the following:

1. The U.S. military and its veterans constitute an imperialistic, oppressive force which has created and perpetuated its own mythology of liberation and heroism, insisting on a "pristine collective memory" of the war. The authors/presenters equate this to Japan's almost total amnesia and denial about its own war atrocities (Fujitani, White, Yoneyama, 9, 23). One presenter specifically wrote about turning down a job offer when he realized that his office would overlook a fleet of U.S. Naval warships, "the symbol of American power and the symbol of our [Hawaiians'] dispossession...I decided they could not pay me enough" (Osorio 5). Later he claimed that electric and oil companies were at the root of WWII, and that the U.S. developed a naval base at Pearl Harbor to ensure that its own coasts would not be attacked (9, 13).

2. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should be seen from the perspective of Japan being a victim of western oppression (one speaker likened the attack to 9-11, saying that the U.S. could be seen as "both victim and aggressor" in both attacks); that American "imperial expansion" forced Japan's hand: "For the Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western Imperialism" (Yoneyama 335-336); and the Pearl Harbor attack could be seen as a "pre-emptive strike." (No mention of the main reason for the Pearl Harbor attack: the U.S. had cut off Japan's oil supply in order to stop the wholesale slaughter of Chinese civilians at the hands of the Japanese military.) Another author argued that the Japanese attack was no more "infamous" or "sneaky" than American actions in Korea or Vietnam (Rosenberg 31-32).

3. War memorials, such as the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery (where many WWII dead are buried, including those executed by the Japanese on Wake Island and the beloved American journalist Ernie Pyle), are symbols of military aggression and brutality "that pacify death, sanitize war and enable future wars to be fought" (Ferguson and Turnbull, 1). One author stated that the memorials represent American propaganda, "the right to alter a story" (Camacho 201).

4. The U.S. military has repeatedly committed rapes and other violent crimes throughout its past through the present day. Cited here was the handful of cases of attacks by Marines in Okinawa (Fujitani, et al, 13ff). (What was not cited were the mass-murders, rapes, mutilations of hundreds of thousands of Chinese at the hands of the Japanese throughout the 1930s and 40s. This issue is a perfect example of the numerous instances of assertions made without balance or historical context.) Another author stated that the segregation in place within our military and our "occupation" of Germany after the war was comparable to Nazism ('we were as capable of as much evil as the Germans") even though the author admits, with some incredulity, that he "saw no genuine torture, despite all the [American] arrogance, xenophobia and insensitivity." He attributes American kindness towards conquered Germans to our "wealth and power" which allowed us to "forego the extreme kinds of barbarism" (Davis 586). Another author/presenter compared the temporary relocation camps erected by Americans during the war to Nazi extermination camps (Camacho 206). (This is perhaps the most outrageous, offensive and blatantly false statement I have ever read in a supposedly scholarly work).

5. Those misguided members of the WWII generation on islands like Guam and Saipan who feel gratitude to the Americans for saving them from the Japanese are blinded by propaganda supporting "the image of a compassionate America" or by their own advanced age. One author/presenter questioned whether the Americans had saved anyone from anything (Camacho 177, 209), arguing that the Americans could be seen as easily and justifiably as "conquerors and invaders" (199).

6. It was "the practice" of the U.S. military in WWII to desecrate and disrespect the bodies of dead Japanese (Camacho 186). (Knowing this to be absolutely false, I challenged the speaker/author, who then admitted that this was not the "practice" of our military. Still, the word remains in his publication. As he obviously knew this to be false, I can only assume that his objective was not scholarship but anti-military propaganda.)

7. Conservatives and veterans in the U.S. have had an undue and corrupt influence on how WWII is remembered, for example, successfully lobbying to remove from the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit images of the destruction caused by the atom bomb and the revisionist portrayal of the Japanese as victims in the war (Yoneyama). (What the presenter and author, Ms. Yoneyama, failed to explain was why all representations of Japan's murderous rampages throughout China and the Philippines were removed from the exhibit as well...surely not at the request of American veterans or conservatives. When I challenged Ms. Yoneyama to explain this issue, a tense exchange ensued, but I finally established that Japanese influences had also played a role in "shaping" the exhibit. This never would have been mentioned had I not demanded the speaker address this distortion in her presentation. Ms. Yoneyama clearly intended to present a one-sided attack on those who wanted the exhibit to emphasize the many reasons why the atom bombs were necessary.) Ms. Yoneyama concluded her essay with a parting shot at the veterans, whom she mockingly labels "martyrs of their sacred war," and "conservative elites" who objected to the Smithsonian's revisionist history: "the Smithsonian debate ended in the defeat of those who sought critical rethinking, as well as the defeat of those who questioned the self-evident..., and the victory of those who felt threatened by obfuscation of the contours of conventional knowledge" (emphasis mine, 329,339). The author's elitist dismissal of those who questioned the Enola Gay exhibit is representative of the perspectives and tone of much of the conference, as illustrated by the following point.

8. Conservatives are reactionary nationalists (no distinction was made between nationalism and patriotism), pro-military "tea baggers" who are incapable of "critical thinking." Comments were made about "people who watch Fox News" not caring if the news "is accurate or not" (Yoneyama, Lecture). The end result of this deprecation within the conference room was to discourage debate and create an atmosphere of intolerance to opposing views, in direct violation of the stated objectives of the NEH. Several participants told me privately that they considered me "brave" for speaking up, thus begging the question: At a conference supposedly committed to openness and tolerance of all views, why should it take bravery to speak one's mind?

9. Relating to the above, even members of the NEH review board are not immune to "reactionary" pro-military views. One essay recounts how an earlier attempt to receive funding for a similar conference was denied because some NEH reviewers thought the "program lacked diversity and balance among points of view"....and that the organizers possessed "a very specific, 'politically correct' agenda," noting that "bias is dangerously threatening throughout." The authors of the essay dismissed and denigrated these NEH reviewers with the same elitist attitude they exhibited towards the "Fox News" viewers: "Clearly this reviewer was unable to comprehend our understanding" of the conference objectives (in other words, he/she is stupid), and "what he or she really desired was the inclusion of defenders of American nationalism and militarism" (Fujitani, et al, 24).

10. Veterans' memories of their own experiences in the war are suspect and influenced by media and their own self-delusion(Rosenberg, 18, 24). Therefore, it is the role of academics to "correct" their history. As one organizer commented, this will be more easily accomplished once the WWII generation has passed away. Another wrote, "America's nostalgic war memories are beginning to fray around the edges" (White, 267).

11. War memorials like the Arizona Memorial should be recast as "peace memorials," sensitive to all viewers from all countries, especially the many visitors from Japan. The conference dedicated significant time to the discussion of whether or not a Japanese memorial in honor of victims of the atom bombs should be erected at the Arizona Memorial site, in order to pacify Japanese visitors who may be offended by the "racism" [anti-Japanese] of the Arizona Memorial. To this end, the conference organizers discussed a revised film (1992) shown to visitors to the Arizona Memorial which removed some of the earlier (1980) film's "Japan-bashing" and warnings about the need for the American military to remain prepared in the future. The new film, which emphasizes the reasons (justifications?) for the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbor, includes fewer battle scenes and "transforms the triumphant feelings of victory with a more mournful reflection of losses inflicted by war" (White 285), thus sending a more pacifist, anti-war message and offering a perspective which makes people "less angry" after viewing the film (the author acknowledges that this has worked well, except for "older citizens" who are outraged by the "revisionist" sympathy towards the Japanese) (287). The new, more "inclusive" film features visual images of both American and Japanese dead, Japanese Buddhist monks visiting the memorial, and a culminating text which reads "Mourn the dead" as opposed to "Mourn American dead" or "Mourn our dead" so that "it represented the U.S. and Japanese" (emphasis mine, 288). The memorial's superintendent, Donald Magee, summed up the tone of the new film: "We don't take sides....here at Pearl Harbor we don't condemn the Japanese" (292). Based on the author's description, I refused to attend a viewing of the film, in protest of its appeasement of treachery and attempts to revise historical fact.

As overwhelming and pervasive as these politically-correct and revisionist messages were, the conference did feature a few presentations and articles which represented truly excellent examples of balanced, well-researched scholarship. One highpoint of the conference was a panel of WWII veterans who shared with us their personal experiences of the war. But, given the overall anti-military bias present at this conference, I could not help but shudder to think how these amazing men would feel if they knew the true focus of the conference. I honestly felt ashamed of my profession and my government for sponsoring this travesty.

I am aware that my comments may well have been dismissed by the conference organizers in the same manner they dismissed other opposing voices as "nationalistic" or simplistic. So be it. But I am no blind patriot, Congressman Manzullo, nor am I ignorant of the complexities inherent in the telling and re-telling of history. I also acknowledge, research and teach the many mistakes this country has made, and I am as suspect of the extreme right as I am of the extreme left. But I am also a historian who knows that despite all of their mistakes, this nation and its military have defended, protected and freed more people in their comparatively brief existence than all of the nations in Europe and Asia combined. Allied efforts, however imperfect, defended the world against two of the greatest forms of evil the world has ever known, European Fascism and Japanese Imperialism. This perspective was never, not once, offered at this conference except as a concept that will be well-buried with the WWII generation. If nothing else, I have shown that any imminent celebration of the demise of these concepts may be premature.

As a daughter of two WWII veterans and the niece of a man who gave his life to help defend his country in WWII, I simply will not stand by and allow their history to be usurped and corrupted by a revisionist and iconoclastic political agenda within academe.

The NEH is requesting an operating budget of 161 million dollars for 2011, including over 71 million to support conferences like the one I have described. I ask that you do everything in your power to delay approval of this request until the NEH does the following:

1. Reviews all NEH conference and workshop proposals and supporting materials to eliminate any overt political agenda;

2. Illustrates to Congress and the American people an ability to create programs which support sound and objective scholarship and provide forums for debate in which all sides are recognized and encouraged;

3. Eliminates all intolerance and pejorative language towards any group or viewpoint;

4. Commits itself to a fair and balanced view of our nation's history and humanities, acknowledging its mistakes but also honoring its achievements.

To demonstrate the above, any group or institution requesting a grant from the NEH should be required to submit its entire schedule of presenters and a complete list of the literature which will be discussed at the conference to ensure that varied sides of any issue will be represented and respected.

Until these actions are taken, I sincerely doubt that the majority of Americans would approve of their tax dollars supporting this academic attack on American history and culture. I plan to do everything in my power to inform American voters of this issue, and I trust our elected officials will take heed of their constituents' reactions.

Citations for the sources I have used are attached to this letter. Should you wish any further documentation on the issues I have raised or have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Penelope A. Blake, Ph.D.

What is to be done? The East-West Center has already been funded by NEH to conduct a similar workshop in the coming summer, plus one for high-school teachers that is likely to be similarly tendentious. These expenditures could be frozen pending a full investigation, or rescinded, or otherwise handled in a way that recognizes the seriousness of the problem.

Professor Blake makes reference in her letter to various parts of a book called Perilous Memories, coedited by Geoffrey White; White was the director of the workshop attended by Professor Blake. This book (or parts of it) was required preliminary reading for the participants in the workshop, and is something like the ur-text that reveals the intentions and worldview behind the workshop itself. It is an appalling if characteristic example of radical postmodernist gibberish complete with all the buzzwords about transnationality, the construction of public memory, and so on.

Professor Blake teaches Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, illinois. Readers desiring a copy of the sources cited in her letter can write me at powerlinefeedback@gmail.com with "Sources" in the Subject line. Thanks to Professor Blake for entrusting this story to us.

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The boondoggle of high speed rail

Robert J. Samuelson: Taken for a ride on 'Pork-Barrel Express'

Backers of high-speed trains are flunking fourth-grade math; they imagine public benefits that don't exist and ignore costs that do.

By Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post Writers Group

Somehow, it Has become fashionable to think that high-speed trains connecting major cities will help "save the planet." They won't. They're a perfect example of wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause. They would further burden already overburdened governments and drain dollars from worthier programs -- schools, defense, research.

Let's suppose the Obama administration gets its wish to build high-speed rail systems in 13 urban corridors. The administration has already committed $10.5 billion, and that's just a token down payment. California wants about $19 billion for an 800-mile track from Anaheim to San Francisco. Constructing all 13 corridors could approach $200 billion. Most (or all) of that would have to come from government at some level. What would we get for this huge investment?

Not much. Here's what we wouldn't get: any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, air travel, oil consumption or imports. If you can do fourth-grade math, you can understand why.

High-speed intercity trains (not commuter lines) travel at up to 250 miles per hour and are most competitive with planes and cars over distances of fewer than 500 miles. In a report on high-speed rail, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service examined the 12 corridors of 500 miles or fewer with the most daily air traffic in 2007. Los Angeles to San Francisco led the list with 13,838 passengers; altogether, daily air passengers in these 12 corridors totaled 52,934. If all of them hypothetically switched to trains, the total number of daily airline passengers, about 2 million, would drop only 2.5 percent. Any fuel savings would be less than that; even trains need energy.

Indeed, intercity trains -- at whatever speed -- target such a small part of total travel that the changes in oil use, congestion or greenhouse gases must be microscopic. Every day, about 140 million Americans go to work, with about 85 percent driving an average of 25 minutes (three-quarters drive alone, 10 percent carpool). Even assuming 250,000 high-speed rail passengers, there would be no visible effect on routine commuting, let alone personal driving. In the Northeast Corridor, with about 45 million people, Amtrak's daily ridership is 28,500. If its trains shut down tomorrow, no one except the affected passengers would notice.

We are prisoners of economic geography. Suburbanization after World War II made most rail travel impractical. From 1950 to 2000, the share of the metropolitan population living in central cities fell from 56 percent to 32 percent, report UCLA economists Leah Platt Boustan and Allison Shertzer in a new study. Jobs moved, too. Trip origins and destinations are too dispersed to support most rail service.

Only in places (Europe, Asia) with greater population densities is high-speed rail potentially attractive. Even there, most of the existing high-speed trains don't earn "enough revenue to cover both their construction and operating costs," the Congressional Research Service report said. The major exceptions seem to be the Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon lines.

President Barack Obama calls high-speed rail essential "infrastructure" when it's actually old-fashioned "pork barrel." The interesting question is why it retains its intellectual respectability. The answer, it seems, is willful ignorance. People prefer fashionable make-believe to distasteful realities. They imagine public benefits that don't exist and ignore costs that do.

Consider California. Its budget is a shambles. To save money, it furloughs state workers. Still, it clings to its high-speed rail project. No one knows the cost. In 2009, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimated $42.6 billion, up from $33.6 billion in 2008 -- a huge one-year increase. The CHSRA wants the federal government to pay almost half the cost. Even if it does and the state issues $9.95 billion in approved bonds, a financing gap of perhaps $15 billion would remain.

Somehow that is to be extracted from cities, towns and investors. The CHSRA says the completed system will generate annual operating profits, $3 billion by 2030. If private investors concurred, they'd be clamoring to commit funds; they aren't.

All this would further mortgage California's future with more debt and, conceivably, subsidies to keep the trains running. And for what? In 2030, high-speed rail trains would provide only about 4 percent of California's inter-regional trips, the CHSRA projects.

The absurdity is apparent. High-speed rail would subsidize a tiny group of travelers and do little else. If states want these projects, they should pay all costs because there are no meaningful national gains. The administration's championing and subsidies -- with money that worsens long-term budget deficits -- represent shortsighted, thoughtless government at its worst. It's a triumph of politically expedient fiction over logic and evidence.

A gift from the liberal left close Gitmo stupidity

U.S. concerned about former Guantanamo prisoners in Yemen

Some who were released to a Saudi rehabilitation program have become active in Al Qaeda.

A checklist for the voter

Thirty-six Reasons to Vote Democrat

By C. Edmund Wright

In the spirit of bipartisanship, I humbly offer this learning tool to help folks decide whether or not they really do want to vote Democrat in the 2010 midterms.

1. If you want the American government to be feared by the American people -- but laughed at by Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- vote Democrat.
2. If you want to agree with John Kerry that American voters are stupid and distracted and uninformed -- vote Democrat.
3. If you moved your 7-million-dollar yacht to Rhode Island to avoid taxes -- vote Democrat.
4. If you want a "dude" president -- and not the shining city on a hill -- vote Democrat.
5. If you want to pay through the nose in taxes until you are 70 so union thugs in purple shirts can retire in security at age 50 -- vote Democrat.
6. If you like the fact that people who actually know the Constitution get laughed at by people who are ignorant of it -- vote Democrat.
7. If you want the entire country to be like Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, Chicago -- vote Democrat.
8. If you fear the Chamber of Commerce more than you do the Ground Zero Mosque -- vote Democrat.
9. If you think liberalism and socialism have done a good job of managing the incredibly beautiful and rich state of California, vote Democrat.
10. If you want a government bureaucrat, who can no doubt access your voter registration records, to determine whether or not you get a hip replacement or a cancer treatment -- vote Democrat.
11. If you want to pay six dollars a gallon for gas -- vote Democrat.
12. If you want electricity bills to "necessarily skyrocket" -- vote Democrat.
13. If you think America deserved what it got on 9-11 -- and that we can handle another such attack -- vote Democrat.
14. If you think that Club Gitmo, which was not even operational on 9-11, is why "they hate us" -- vote Democrat.
15. If you think our economy will boom with government bureaucrats making twice what similar folks make in the private sector -- vote Democrat.
16. If you think there's nothing wrong with Jerry Brown admitting that the last time he ran for governor of California, he "had no plan" -- vote Democrat.
17. If you think anything has changed about Jerry Brown and his plans -- vote Democrat.
18. If you liked Richard Blumenthal's answer in the Connecticut debate on "how to create a job" -- vote Democrat.
19. Actually, if you can even decipher Blumenthal's answer about creating a job -- vote Democrat.
20. If you think Michelle Obama actually added value to the health care system with her no-show three-hundred-thousand-dollar job in Chicago -- vote Democrat.
21. If you think John Edwards is sexy -- regardless of your gender -- vote Democrat.
22. If you think civil rights means that all white Americans are by definition guilty and all African-Americans are by definition innocent, vote Democrat.
23. If you are stupid enough to think that being against a Federal Department of Education is the same as being against education -- vote Democrat.
24. If you want to vote the same way the dead are voting -- vote Democrat.
25. If you want to vote the same way the felons are voting -- vote Democrat.
26. If you like the fact that our military men and women are being disenfranchised -- vote Democrat.
27. If you think Cuba is a success story -- vote Democrat.
28. If you think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crashing the housing market is an example of "unfettered capitalism" and a failure of the free market, then vote Democrat.
29. If you think that smart businesspeople will sit around and let our government tax them out of existence before they move their operations overseas -- vote Democrat.
30. If you think it helps you if your boss gets hit with a huge tax bill -- vote Democrat.
31. If Chris Matthews gives you a tingle up your leg -- instead of an upset stomach - then vote Democrat.
32. If you think insurance companies can lower rates, pay for every small medical item -- and every preexisting condition -- and every illegal alien -- and stay in business -- vote Democrat.
33. If you agree with the French union protesters upset about having to delay retirement for two years to age 62 -- vote Democrat.
34. If you think a rally sponsored by Arianna Huffington, the SEIU, and the DNC is a non-political rally -- vote Democrat.
35. If you think electric cars are the answer because they don't use energy -- vote Democrat.
36. If you don't want Nancy Pelosi to retire -- vote Democrat.

I hope this has helped any undecided voters.

The next scam already in the works at the UN

Goodbye Global Warming, Hello Biodiversity

Posted By Alan Caruba

After three decades of trying to push the global warming scam to a point where billions could be made selling and trading bogus “carbon credits”, the global schemers have abandoned it in the wake of 2009 revelations that a handful of rogue climate scientists were literally inventing the data to support it.

If there is one lesson to be learned from and about environmentalists, it is that they are utterly relentless. The ultimate goal is one-world government directed from the United Nations by unelected bureaucrats who are soulless strangers to the truth, to morality, to humanity.

The United States supports this abomination to the tune of billions every year.

The United Nations is a place where some of the world’s dictatorships have delegates representing them on its Human Rights Council, where a vast Oil-for-Food scandal flourished while Saddam Hussein held power in Iraq, where a single agency’s sole purpose is to ensure that Palestinians remain refugees six decades after the rebirth of Israel.

It is an organization where all manner of international treaties are ginned up to extend its control over the entire land mass and all the waters of the earth.

It is where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) practiced its deceit, regularly documenting a rise in the earth’s average temperature even when a new natural cooling cycle began in 1998.

Everything that could be attributed to a phony global warming to keep the people of the world scared flowed from this enormous lie. It caused governments to invest billions into the worst forms of energy, wind and solar, along with endless other equally worthless “Green” programs.

So, now, permit me to introduce you to the NEXT Big Lie—biodiversity!

It is the claim that a “Global extinction crisis looms, new study says.” That’s the headline on an October 27 Washington Post article by Juliet Eilperin, the Post’s designated shameless scaremongering reporter.

In June, the delegates from 200 nations gathered in Busan, a South Korean port city, under the banner of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a platform just like the discredited IPCC, but with the goal of denying vast areas of the earth from the development needed to feed six billion people and provide the raw materials vital to the energy required for a modern technological society dependent on electricity and on transportation fuels.

The “reason” for this is the alleged extinction of “nearly 26,000 species across the globe.” The list was compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature that purports to count all the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish in the world to determine how “imperiled” there.

The very idea evokes incredulity. It is laughable and it is impossible. In the same fashion people were told that the global warmers could predict the temperature of the Earth fifty to a hundred years from now, we are expected to believe that all current species are imperiled. Just as humans were blamed for a non-existent rise in the Earth’s temperature, human are blamed on a massive and fictional extinction.

Consider that, from the earliest forms of life on earth to the existence of present species all have been engaged daily in the act of killing and eating one another. Ruminants that dine on grasses and other vegetation remain the prey for predator species.

Consider that of all the species that ever existed on Earth, 99% are extinct.

Nicholas K. Dulvy, a co-author of the list of alleged endangered species, complained that “We’ve transformed a third of the habitable land on earth for food production.” Oh, heaven forbid that humans should have enough food!

So, naturally, as reporter Eilperin noted, “Environmental groups are pushing for a goal of protecting 25 percent of all land on earth and 15 percent of the sea by 2020” even though, under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, roughly 14 percent of terrestrial areas and less than one percent of the ocean are already subject to so-called “environmental safeguards.”

Expect to begin hearing from yet a new group of “scientists” claiming that every creature from antelopes to zebras, from anteaters to weasels, albatrosses to vultures, crocodiles to vipers, and all the fish in the seas are doomed! Doomed! Doomed!

Billions of dollars that should go to feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and all manner of humanitarian needs will be siphoned off by this new group of United Nations grifters and charlatans for endless “research” grants and, of course, more international meetings to discuss this horrible new crisis.

This is how the cruel enviro-mafia works. We have all had a taste of it since the late 1980s when the global warming hoax was first perpetrated. The biodiversity lie needs a quicker death.

Will they?

Congressional Black Caucus mum on whether it will welcome black Republicans in 2011

What investors know that government doesn't

Sheffield wind project to go ahead despite IPO failure

This is how it works...

Union's 'funny money'

...the unions fund the Democrats. The Democrats do everything they can to protect the unions, especially bailing them out when the bill comes due. The taxpayer and the riders eventually foot the cost of this cozy arrangement.

Where the violence comes from...

Embassies targeted in wave of Athens parcel bombs

By Renee Maltezou

...Police linked the attacks to Greek leftist guerrillas. Small bomb and gas canister attacks have been frequent in Greece since 2008 when the police killing of a teenager sparked the country's worst riots in decades...

Election Day

An election day reminder from Doc Zero:

The 111^th Congress began by dropping a trillion dollars in debt on the American taxpayer.  The money disappeared in a wild spending spree, buying $2 million jobs in Los Angeles, and evaporating into nonexistent zip codes.  Billions of dollars remain clogged in the filthy pipes of government, producing nothing but more debt through accumulated interest payments.  Much of the “stimulus” money was used to pump lard into government payrolls, creating useless jobs that vanished as soon as the taxpayer subsidies ran dry.  The President recently admitted that the stated reason for appropriating this vast sum of money, the creation of “shovel-ready jobs,” was an outright lie.

Government payrolls, are the only thing that expanded during the past session of Congress.  Public sector jobs multiplied like a virus, and the number of six-figure government employees skyrocketed.  Meanwhile, real unemployment in the private sector – including seasonal adjustments, long-term discouraged workers, and the underemployed – hit 22% nationwide.  The lights burned bright and merry in the plush offices of K Street lobbying firms, while the rest of the economy slid into darkness.

This Congress demonstrated its economic wisdom with the Cash for Clunkers program, which wasted billions of your dollars in a futile attempt to shovel new car sales from one quarter to another, giving them a “success story” to tout for a while… until they realized nobody was gullible enough to consider it successful.  Meanwhile, it drained sales from healthy industries, destroyed the used-car market, and provided incentives for low-income buyers to rack up more debt they cannot afford to repay.

The 111^th congress stank with the corruption of Christopher Dodd, Jack Murtha, Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, and Harry Reid.  The ruling Party made it clear that it would go to any lengths to protect its worst members from investigation and punishment.  The agenda of this Congress was conducted behind closed doors, or slipped like poison into the legislative bloodstream, to escape the notice of the American people.  Fat bailouts for loyal union allies were hidden inside bills that were supposed to fund the military.  Nobody knew what this Congress was really voting on… including members of Congress, who didn’t bother to read the bills anyway.

The House of Representatives was presided over by a Speaker of astonishing arrogance, who recklessly abused her power for personal convenience.  Caught in a trap of her own making, after trying to score political points against terrorist interrogation techniques she had been fully briefed on, Nancy Pelosi tried to weasel her way out by claiming the CIA lied to her.  The disgraceful “leadership” of Pelosi and Reid will be studied by generations to come, in the kind of class future kids only have to take when they’re caught skipping more interesting classes to fool around on their hoverboards.

This was a Congress at war with American business, which is a war against American liberty, since business is the instrument through which we invest the hours of our lives.  The 111^th Congress spent its term menacing the private sector with disastrous, economy-killing ideas like cap-and-trade, Card Check, and value-added taxes… then wondered why nobody was creating any jobs.  There’s no point in taking risks and doing the hard work to be a winner, when the losers get taxpayer bailouts, provided they have employees from the right labor unions.

Of course, this is the Congress that shoved ObamaCare down our throats.  Drafted in secret, hidden behind fraudulent cost estimates, and understood by none of the people who voted on it, ObamaCare is the most shocking dereliction of Congressional duty in recent history.  Its architects flirted openly with violating the Constitution to inflict it upon us through reconciliation, before they managed to buy enough votes with our money.  It has already destroyed thousands of jobs, and inflicted painful new costs on hapless workers who thought their health insurance was supposed to get cheaper.

The passage of ObamaCare shattered the myth of the “moderate Democrat” for a generation.  Every one of them is an accomplice to this radical offense against the American people.  Private comments from Congressional representatives made it clear they knew exactly what they were doing to us.  They saddled us with a system designed to fail, and pave the way for something even worse: single-payer socialized medicine.

Faced with electoral destruction at the hands of an enraged populace, the Democrats of the 111^th Congress spent their last days calling the voters stupid and insane.  They scurried out of town without even passing a budget, leaving a recessionary economy tied to the ticking bomb of the expiring Bush tax cuts.
Remember the arrogance.  Remember the cowardice.  Remember the ugly hatred of middle-class America.  Remember the sheer blind stupidity of those who demand the power to write our destiny, when they’re not yelping in surprise at the latest piece of “unexpected” economic news.

Remember the 111^th Congress this Tuesday, and render your verdict in the voting booth.

Bet you won't see this on the evening news

A man gets on his knees next to a car carrying U.S. President Barack Obama as he pulls away from Valois restaurant in Chicago, October 31, 2010.

Goodbye

Finally Official: Pontiac is dead

Government tyranny

Mark Hemingway: Unions target your private retirement savings

By: Mark Hemingway

Will the government outlaw your 401(k) plan? It seems like an absurd possibility, yet earlier this month two Democratic senators, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., held a hearing on Capitol Hill exploring the possibility of doing exactly that.

On Oct. 8, the two senators from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on "Retirement (In)security in America." Among the proposals discussed was "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts," or GRAs.

The purpose of the GRA proposal is simple: To force Americans to stop putting their retirement savings money into private 401(k) accounts and send their money to the government instead.

GRAs would "eliminate the favorable tax treatment currently afforded to 401(k) plans, and instead use those dollars to fund government-invested GRAs into which all employees would be required to contribute a portion of their salary," according to a letter signed by House Minority Leader John Boehner and 12 other Republican representatives.

The letter urged opposition to the proposal and was sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in May. The Harkin-Sanders HELP committee hearing shows Democrats are ignoring critics of the GRA proposal.

Testifying at the hearing in favor of GRAs was Ross Eisbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal economic think tank located in the same building as the liberal Center for American Progress. (Both organizations have been funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros.)

In February, President Obama released the "Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class." GRAs are among the proposals recommended in the report "for further study." The task force's executive director is Jared Bernstein, EPI's former head.

EPI's work on retirement security issues also has some suspect backing. The think tank has teamed up with two of the most powerful unions in the country -- the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union -- to push a public campaign for a "Retirement USA" initiative (see Retirement-USA.org).

One of the proposals being touted on Retirement USA's Web site is, you guessed it, GRAs. At the hearing, Eisbrey noted that Retirement USA had not specifically endorsed GRAs, but did "affirm that it meets all of the 12 principles the coalition set out as essential to deliver retirement income that is universal, secure, and adequate."

But why are unions pushing this? The average union pension plan is only 62 percent funded, far below the point at which the government considers a pension plan "endangered." Estimates suggest unions' multi-employer pension plans are underfunded by $165 billion and could be on the verge of collapse.

Union leaders see these "retirement security" ideas like GRAs as vehicles to a back-door pension bailout, where union leaders will no longer have to worry about the fact they've underfunded their rank and file members' pension plans. Just let Uncle Sucker take care of it.

Labor is the biggest source of campaign cash for Democrats (Retirement USA backers AFL-CIO and SEIU are spending $88 million this election), and Harkin also wants to pass "card check" -- the proposal to do away with secret ballots in workplace representation elections -- during post-election lame duck session.

Regardless, forcing everybody into a government retirement system that pays out equally to Americans who have scrimped and saved and to those in organized labor who have grossly mismanaged their pension plans seems almost too crazy to contemplate.

But unions are desperate, and Democrats are in hock to Big Labor in a big way. And the lame duck could be their last chance for a very long time.

Jew hatred

Wow. This is who President Obama, CodePink, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Progressive Democrats of America, and the rest of the Progressive movement, consider equal partners in peace negotiations.

Iran: A perfect member of the UN

Iran ex-prisoners tell of secret executions

Iran’s secret mass executions stir alarm

How can you tell when you're in a religious war

Churches Set Ablaze in Russia's Muslim Caucasus

Will anybody notice?

Hamas Finally Admits Most Gaza Fatalities Were Combatants, Not Civilians

Posted By Evelyn Gordon

Here’s a news item ^[1] certain to be ignored by every human rights organization, every UN agency, and every country that backed the Goldstone Report: almost two years after the war in Gaza ended, no less a person than Hamas’s interior minister has finally admitted that Israel was right all along about the casualties — the vast majority were combatants, not civilians.

The first crucial admission in Fathi Hammad’s interview with the London-based Al-Hayat is that the 250 policemen Israel killed on the war’s first day by bombing their station were indeed combatants, just as Israel claimed. Human rights organizations have repeatedly labeled this raid a deliberate slaughter of civilian police tasked solely with preserving law and order, dismissing Israel’s contention that these policemen functioned as an auxiliary Hamas army unit. But here’s what Hamas’s own interior minister says:

On the first day of the war, Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs who were part of Hamas and the various factions fell.

In short, just as Israel claimed, many of these policemen belonged to Hamas, while the remainder belonged to other “factions” — the standard Palestinian euphemism for their various armed militias.

In addition, Hammad said, “about 200 to 300 were killed from the Qassam Brigades, as well as 150 security personnel.” The Qassam Brigades are Hamas’s main fighting force.

Combining the higher of Hammad’s estimates for the Qassam Brigades, 300, with the 150 “security personnel” and the 250 policemen brings the total number of combatants killed by Israel to 700. Add in the fact that Israel also killed combatants from other organizations, like Islamic Jihad, and you’re already above the 709 peoplethe Israel Defense Forces said ^[2] it had definitely identified as combatants — that is, some of the 162 whose status the IDF couldn’t determine were (as it suspected) also combatants. Based on the IDF’s total casualty figure of 1,166, that means at least 61 percent of the Palestinian fatalities were combatants, and quite possibly more.

Nor does taking the lower estimate, 200, alter the results significantly: that gives a total of 600 combatants, which, assuming some from other organizations as well, brings you quite close to the IDF’s figure of 709.

And of course, even the lower estimate gives you almost double the 349 combatants cited ^[3] by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

So why did Hamas lie about its casualties for almost two years? Because in Hammad’s world, that’s simply standard practice. That’s why he also insisted in the interview that Israel really suffered 50 wartime fatalities, though it “acknowledged only 12”: he can’t conceive of a party to a conflict actually reporting its losses accurately.

But however belatedly, Hamas has now confirmed that most of the war’s casualties were indeed combatants rather than civilians, just as Israel always claimed. So now all that’s needed is a humble apology from all the individuals and organizations that have spent the past two years slanderously accusing Israel of the wholesale slaughter of civilians.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Enough to make you puke

Despite 40-year sentence, Khadr likely to go home in a year

A link to the UPS plane crash

On Sunday, U.S. officials said Western intelligence agencies now suspect that a UPS 747 cargo plane that crashed in Dubai on Sept. 3, killing two crew members, was downed by an explosive package in its cargo bay and not by an onboard fire, as initially suspected. The crash is being re-evaluated in light of the two devices found on transport aircraft in Britain and Dubai … one a UPS jet, the other a FedEx transport.

What about the poor people who work at the golf courses?

Chavez Says Golf Courses Should Be Seized, Put to Other Uses

How do you describe a religious war?

Fifty-two killed in Iraq church raid