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Yes Virginia The Internet Does NOT Replace Old Fashioned Politics

December 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

When Howard Dean became a surprise front runner in the Democrat primary of 2004 doing so on the basis of a strong Internet-based campaign effort, tongues began to wag that the Internet might replace old fashioned retail politics. This time ’round Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich served to get people to question the old way of organizing a campaign.

But this week we’ve seen in Virginia why these airy claims of the Internet’s new dominance is a bit chimerical. We see that old fashioned, boots on the ground politics is still the best method to election.

By all methods of measure, Texas Governor Rick Perry is still a strong candidate in the 2012 GOP Primary race. He sometimes comes in second, third or fourth in polls, but is still considered a top contender for the nomination. Yet as the time came to file his petition signatures in Virginia, it turned out his campaign could not collect enough to get his name on the ballot. So, a reputed front running candidate for the nomination, Rick Perry, will not even appear on the Virginia primary ballot.

Perry isn’t the only one. Neither Bachmann, Huntsman, nor Santorum had the organization in the Commonwealth to gather enough signatures to make the ballot. Further, it was thought Newt Gingrich barely had enough to make it but as the final tally was made he didn’t have enough to make the ballot, either. And Newt is a resident of Virginia!

In the end, as the file date came and went only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul ended up clearly succeeding in turning in enough signatures to make the ballot.

So, what happened here? It all comes down to retail politics. Both Romney and Paul had the organizations with enough people right there in Virginia to pass around their candidate’s petitions and gather the requisite number of signatures. The others simply did not have the campaign staff or enough support in individual workers ready to hit the streets for them that Romney and Paul had.

This shows that the Internet really isn’t enough. It shows that organization still reigns supreme in the primary process. After all, if one can’t even get his name on a ballot, how does one take the next step toward becoming the nominee?

Since the beginning of this primary race there were only three candidates with a ground game. Mitt Romney who spent the last four years creating his organization, Ron Paul whose absurdly young army of acolytes will do anything for him — and which Paul spent six years assembling — and the first major candidate to quit the effort, Tim Pawlenty.

All the rest have been flying by the seat of their pants with little money and fewer numbers in their state-to-state organizations. They’ve been relying on good showings in the many debates — which has been a bigger factor than it has in the past, admittedly — and the Internet to make their dent.

Clearly it hasn’t been enough for the lower tier, however. Regardless of their suitability for the nomination, only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have the ground game to appear on every state’s primary ballots. It’s the old fashioned game of retail politics that has made the difference for them. Both spent years and tons of cash to make that happen, too.

Fair or not, until there is some major change in our primary system the ground game will make all the difference.

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Filed Under: 2012 Elections, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Liberals, Local Politics, Media, National, Politics
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Breitbart vs Beck, It’s 4th & Goal Truth Time

December 18, 2011 By 4 Comments

                      It’s a game of inches.  With the White House on the line, and less than a year to go, we are rounding 3rd base.  Any seasoned player rounding 3rd, knows to look to the 3rd base Coach.  Turning your head, to search for the location of the ball is an amateur move.  At 4th down and inches to goal, whether its a run, pass or an audible called at the line, the offensive linemen must move like a well oiled machine.  Teamwork is an overused, under applied term.  Its a call for players, co-workers or family members to know their role and know the role of every player on the team.   The team looks to a leader, and if there is no appointed leader, and the game is on the line,  each player assesses their own strength and weaknesses.  Its in these times, when our Nation is on the line,  Truth must begin to break through….even if it hurts.

 

Our Culture is sick. Its sick from the filth of an agenda that uses tricks and schemes, and lying is at the core of the illness.  Its not enough to out play them, its not enough to just “win” the White House.  We are sick, and Truth is our cure.  Andrew Breitbart has been thrown under the bus.  Glenn Beck, has made statements that need some explaining.  I know there is so much folly, so many felonies to pursue on Team Obama, why would we bring attention to our team, air it out in public? Because this goes to the very core, the very soul of America.  Americans lose heart, not at “losing”.  No, we lose heart if our own team is by word or deed, intentionally, or unintentionally, skirting the Truth.  It deflates the fight, many become cynical… again.  They go back into their houses, put down their Gadsden Flags, feeling foolish.  ”Duped again” they say.

The issue started with the Shirley Sherrod tapes. (Shirley Sherrod was the USDA Government Civil Servant, in a  speech in March 2010, Sherrod was taped saying possible racist remarks, see link at bottom)   Apparently, the NAACP leaked the tapes to Breitbart.  Breitbart’s sole goal and much known passion was proving the Main Stream Media’s bias at reporting and fomenting the Tea Party as racist.  Here Breitbart felt he had struck gold, he had the NAACP yelping and clapping for Sherrod’s seemingly blatant hate speech at a white farmer she was to “help”.  On July 19th, 2010, Breitbart ran the story, and posted the tapes.  Immediately, the White Hose gets wind of the story.  According to Sherrod, while she was driving on an interstate somewhere in Georgia, she is commanded to pull over her car and resign immediately.  Sherrod goes on to say, that the White House’s rush to her resignation was due in large part over Glenn Beck.  The White House told her, “You’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

Glenn Beck had no idea about the Shirley Sherrod story by his 5pm air time.  It wasn’t until the following morning (July 20th 2010) do we hear Glenn Beck’s first coverage of the Sherrod story on his morning radio show (please listen to link below).   Beck aired the tapes, commenting, and judging the content, alluding to “the gospel” and racism and race baiting.  So, something happens on the way to the 5pm show.  That something, as fairly educated Americans can deduce, is the “Show” found out about her resignation.  And probably that the whole tape was taken out of context.  You see, Sherrod was relating an incident from some 24 years prior.  Sherrod then goes on to explain that she had an epiphany that switching the “master/slave” roles with the white Farmer was wrong.  Brietbart realizes he has been “had”, probably set up by the NAACP.  But all along Brietbart’s main focus was not on Sherrod, it was on the audience of NAACPers, who were hooting and hollering at Sherrod’s racist and class warfare beginnings.  Beck had jumped the shark into the whole Sherrod as main focus, Sherrod as “collective  salvation” in theory.

What really is astonishing to me, is Beck on O’Reilly.  Beck claims he never ran any story on Sherrod.  Beck at his humblest, allows O’Reilly to lavish him with omnipotence, sharing that “he was in his office, and something just didn’t feel right..” as if Beck and that direct line to God gave him advanced knowledge to speaketh not on Sister Shirley, and with O’Reilly’s heartfelt admiration at once again, being ahead of the curve.   Beck’s face couldn’t hold back his pride in the O’Reilly glory.  And what about Beck’s “advance knowledge” of so many issues, such as the famous Soros Chalkboard, SEIU, and a number of stories he seems to have taken credit?  Matthew Boyle, of the Daily Caller wrote this in April 2011:

By any standard, Beck seems unusually reliant on the work of others, and unusually reluctant to credit it. In an interview with TheDC, Roger L. Simon, CEO of Pajamas Media, suggested that Beck has committed the journalistic equivalent of a notorious crime. “It is not a question of just doing it right the majority of the time. It is a question of doing it right always,” Simon said. “Doris Kearns Goodwin is forever a fraud in my estimation because she has been caught plagiarizing once. If you rob a bank once, you still robbed a bank.” (see full article link below)

The article is quite disturbing.  It goes on:

Mandy Nagy, a conservative blogger known online as Liberty Chick, spent untold hours last fall creating a chart that tracks left-wing billionaire George Soros’s influence over media organizations, only to see it appear, in its exact form and without any attribution, on Beck’s famous chalkboard. “We were laughing that he went to all the trouble of [recreating] the visual on the blackboard,” Nagy said, not sounding entirely amused.

 

And this is just plain wrong:

Cliff Kincaid, the director of Accuracy in Media’s Center for Investigative Journalism, had a similar experience. In the fall of 2009, Beck’s producers promised him a spot on Beck’s television show to talk about his investigation of the Soros-funded Free Press. After several long conversations with Beck’s producers, however, the invitation evaporated and Beck did the show alone, using Kincaid’s research as his own.

“It’s hard to get an explanation as to why these things happen except they [Beck’s producers] told me Glenn wanted to handle the issue himself, which means he wanted to appear to be the expert,” Kincaid told TheDC. “It’s his show, and he’s got a right to do that, but it is disconcerting that those of us who work hard on these issues and gather a lot of information expect to get some credit for what we’ve done.”

On the video link below, caution, I did not make the tape…but it is the most concise work of all the issues here.  Toward the end of the video it gets to be somewhat nauseating, Beck is at a Christian Business Meeting, (Kansas City) and he is preaching his Sherrod Miracle, yes, he is preaching loudly how the Lord hath spareth him the trap of the Sherrod.

 

On “the Victory Sessions” with Stephen K. Bannon, (Sunday Dec 18th 2011),  Breitbart is once again putting Beck back into the “hot seat” over Beck’s statement on Judge Napalitano’s show were he said that Obama and Newt were both “Progressives” and that Tea Party people voting for Newt must be for the only real difference, “Race”.   I found it to be more like a ploy, but regardless some Tea Party Patriots across the Country are more than miffed.

What a small world we live in, so small its hard to imagine the real sacrifice Journalists make in other Countries.  One report from today states that over two hundred Journalists have been murdered in Russia since KGBer Putin came into his reign.  How many Professional Journalists and Citizen Journalists would be willing to risk our lives daily, knowing when we tell the Truth, the consequence is probable death at some point.  The Truth is not an easy thing, and its not a tag line.   Russia knows how important the Press is, and the Press there is tantamount to any real chance they have at spreading the Truth.

Two hundred lives, willing to die, not for money, not for power.   Having their Countrymen armed with the Truth, people will stand up.   Banded together in knowledge that no matter what evil may come, they stand for Liberty against Tyranny.   This they know.   There is no weapon stronger, it sets you free.

 

Beck Video (from eyesonfox @YT)    Glenn Beck on Sherrod….

Matthew Boyle’s article  http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/18/thedc-exclusive-conservatives-hit-beck-for-taking-content-without-attribution/

 

 

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Filed Under: 2012 Elections, Big Government, Commentary, Corruption, Media, News Stories, Politics, Race Relations, Religion, Russia Tagged With: , , ,
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Occupy LA hosts rant on Anti-Capitalism from Anti-Israel Cop Killer Supporter

December 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Margaret Prescod

Say it isn’t so.  I wish I could.  Occupy Los Angeles is being co-opted by the likes of those who would make your hair curl, head spin, and lose your lunch all at the same time.  To be “fair” I do not think all “Occupiers” really know what message it sends to the millions of Americans who are watching.  That being said, Occupy LA has hosted Van Jones, who talked as if “they” (meaning Jones and the Occupiers) are on the same team, and Van seems to be talking as if he is in charge.

We all know of Jones being a member of the Communist Party, and as of late a one time “Czar” for the Green Agenda for the Obama Administration.  Van the Man is just one of the usual suspects though, no news there.  He announced his “American Dream” (Nightmare) coalition way back in February.  Which is on the internet under the “Move-On.Org” internet address.  No, its not surprising he also called for the “Occupy the Ports”.  He has been waiting for a good riot since his experience during the Rodney King riots, he is on record as being so disappointed that riot didn’t spread nationwide.  Jones, is a hard line Communist, wanting Revolution.  And he also doesn’t mind the possible violence which will have to come for their “transformation” to occur. Along with Occupy New York Frances Fox Piven attendee, Jones and Piven have both been calling for what they call “Revolution”, which really is a “Riot” for years.  I say this, because so many today romanticize “Revolution” as they yell “this is what democracy looks like”.  No, as Jones wrote after the Rodney King Riots:

 I cried because at that Moment — when some Great Revolutionary Leader was supposed to have emerged from the crowd, grabbed the megaphone, spoken to our hearts and hopes, set out our program to overthrow the old order and build a new one — nobody had anything to say.

Jones was in Oakland area, and he was marching around, he says, with people lighting fires, smashing car windows, you know, the usual pillaging.  That was the moment!  And it was good, exciting, the time had come! All they needed was a Great Revolutionary Leader, with a megaphone.  Never fear, Americans.  He got the mike at Occupy LA.  And he is “on fire”.

Margaret Presod, is a local Radio Host on KPFK Los Angeles.  She is also a part of Occupy LA, as she says.  Margaret as you will hear on the video (link below) is a big member of “Global Women’s Strike”.  Global Women’s Strike, supports the Anti-Israel agenda.  I was appalled to see what the Palestinian government has in its schools for education.  In a Math class, a word problem…”If you have 13 Jews and you kill 8, how many do you have?”  For more graphic reading of the system, go to this link here: http://www.palwatch.org.

Margaret has been a long time supporter and interviewed Cop Killer, Mumia Abu Jamal, who killed Officer Daniel Faulkner of the Philadelphia Police Department.   Prescod’s station even hosted Jamal allowing him to do “radio” from behind bars.   This case grabbed National headlines as the radical Left of Hollywood and the extremists saw Jamal, who was a known Black Panther Party associate, as a perfect poster boy for a new politically correct cop hating campaign.  There is also Margaret’s other “friend” Erika Huggins, who was jailed for 2 years, also a Black Panther Party member from the 1960′s.  She is teaching Women’s Studies back East now.

I don’t think its a stretch to say Ms. Prescod is a big time “Eco-feminist” her rant is religiously slanted to Gaia Worship  (the Earth is Mother Goddess and puts animals on the same level as humans, even trees.  This is their god, make no mistake, just look it up, kinda scary.  Global Warming hoax was proven (again) last week with Climategate 2.0)

She has been a professional activist as has Piven and Jones for years.  These three are prime examples of how the Radical Left is taking over the mind of the Occupiers, or maybe they are exactly what the Occupiers want, filing their heads with sugar plums of Revolution forgetting to mention how many die at the end of this whole movie. Yea, and I hope you all look good in gray, see the USSR fashion shows circa 1917.

I say “professional” activists because these people want the complete overthrow of the whole American Culture.  Yea, let’s call it what it is.  America was founded on the principle of freedom.  These people are well on the record of the radical Socialistic Maoist beliefs, where as Mao says “, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  This qoute comes from Mao’s “Little Red Book”, a book which Cop Killer Mumia Abu Jamal used to pass around.  Funny how small the “Barrel of a Gun” club gets.

Good luck Occupiers. (just call it “Anti-greed, kids, no propaganda or brainwashing going on, MIC CHECK!! or should I say “Reality Check?”)

Occupy LA Margaret Prescod rant:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hAWmCJbqwY

 

 

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Wikio
Filed Under: Big Government, Commentary, Corruption, Global Warming, Green Movement, Liberals, Middle East, Money, OWS, Race Relations, Socialism Tagged With: , , , ,
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Contrasting World Views

December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Thomas Jefferson outlined the philosophy of our nation’s government in the Declaration of Independence with the words,

“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Make no mistake; this is the philosophy on which our fundamental law is based. The goals for our government, which are listed in the preamble to our constitution, are intended to secure these unalienable rights.

“In Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”

If the electors and elected officials of our country do not honor our covenant

“We the People…[who] do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America…”

And if they choose not to uphold the blessings of liberty, then

“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government.”

What happens if the electorate and elected officials of our country do not understand the covenant, or what if they choose not to subscribe to the mission? What if the goals of our electorate are not aligned with the fundamental law set down by the Founders and Framers? What if the policy on which our representatives vote and implement is at odds with the philosophy on which our government was founded?

The sad truth is that not all those who (would) hold public office or vote for elected officials understand or respect the covenant that is made between the people and written into our nation’s Constitution. The average citizen, when not provided a thorough education in the philosophy and history that led to this country’s founding documents, may not recognize when the goals of a candidate for elected office are inconsistent with the covenant. On the other hand, a citizen well educated in this country’s fundamental law may very well comprehend that because this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is not to be changed lightly by those elected to power just because they believe they know better than the Founders and Framers and consider our fundamental law antiquated. However, the seemingly educated person may still advocate this idea of a living constitution. Why?

At the very least, the citizenry of this country should understand the framework of our government before playing a role in voting into office those who may be inadvertently or actively trying to dismantle it. Voters should recognize the opposing goals of the progressive movement, which advocate that our government should take on any and all social and economic ills and that our Constitution is a living document with no permanent guiding principles, malleable in order to change with the times.

Johnathan O’Neill, Associate Professor of History at Georgia Southern University and the author of Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History, writes,

“Progressives typically rejected the foundational American principles of natural rights and limited government for their own understanding of “progress,” defined as governmental experts’ management of social change toward an ever more just and essentially socialist future.”

Three well known progressives, John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Woodrow Wilson exemplify the progressive agenda.

John Dewey, the patriarch of education in this country, declared,

“Schools had a duty to condition children for life in the desired ‘social order.’ Teachers, said Dewey, must stress ‘mutually helpful living’ in order to indoctrinate youngsters in the philosophy of collectivism. Dewey called for a diminished emphasis on facts, knowledge, and real-world skills—and for replacing the ‘Whole conception of school discipline” with “a spirit of social cooperation and community life.’”

According to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,

“It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for the crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

President Woodrow Wilson believed,

“Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and practice, ‘meaning that they, like society itself, must develop’ over time. ‘[A]ll that progressives ask or desire,’ said Wilson ‘is permission’ – in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution’ is the scientific word – to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.’ To guide society along this path, said Wilson, society need a ‘true leader’ who could stir the passions of the masses and use them like ‘tools.’ ‘Men are as clay in the hand of the consummate leader,’ he said.”

President Obama is a Progressive, Hillary Clinton is a Progressive, and there is a Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives which…

“Abjures ‘economic inequality,’ ‘income and wealth disparities,’ and ‘the concentration of wealth.’ Conversely, it advocates socialized medicine, radical environmentalism, the redistribution of wealth, and higher rates of taxation to be borne chiefly by middle- to high- income households. Historically, the Progressive Caucus has had ties to the Democratic Socialists of America.”

Progressive ideals are manifested in direct primaries, initiative and referendum, the redistribution of “private property under the banner of social justice,” and evolution toward statism through the infiltration of “society’s power structure and its key institutions – the schools, the media, the churches, the entertainment industry, the labor unions, and the three branches of government.”

Again, citing Jonathan O’Neill,

“Progressives may be contrasted with Constitutional Conservatives, those who advocate natural rights, limited government, equal rights for all and special privileges for none, and republicanism, not democracy.”

What is lost when progressives implement their agenda? The notion that “all men are created equal” is now missing, replaced with a class system that divides the public into “the best and brightest” vs. “retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained.”

Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, writes,

“After Barack Obama described his opponents’ clinging to “God and guns” as a characteristic of inferior Americans, he justified himself by pointing out he had said “what everybody knows is true.”

Progressives do not align themselves with any one political party.

At the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference, the Keynote Speaker, Glenn Beck explained,

“Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution. And it was designed to eat the Constitution. To progress past the Constitution. It is in the Republicans and the Democrats.”

Clarifying the difference between a Progressive and a Communist, Beck states,

“Revolution or evolution, that’s the difference. Revolution or evolution. Well, there’s no difference except one requires a gun and the other does it slowly, piece by piece, eating away at it.”

Founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, The John Birch Society, one of the decade’s most controversial right-wing organizations (perhaps as controversial as Glenn Beck has been painted) charged,

“The Progressive era, which expanded the federal government’s role in curbing social and economic ills, was a dire period in our history, and Woodrow Wilson “more than any other one man started this nation on its present road to totalitarianism.”

Glenn Beck and the John Birch Society, both painted as extreme right wing, have influenced the Tea Party movement which is now being demonized as the same. But is this hyperbole or is there any legitimacy to the criticism and mudslinging they have had to endure?

Are “the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communication Commission’s fairness doctrine in editorial broadcasting, the federal government’s change of the gold standard in currency, all subsidies to farmers, all federal aid to education, all federal social welfare, foreign aid, social security, elimination of public school prayer and Bible reading, and (that familiar right-wing nemesis) the United Nations,” (IBID) legitimate targets of Constitutional Conservative criticism? If so, then is the word extreme an adjective that aptly describes the subjects of this accusation? Or is it easier to delegitimize the messenger than the message?

Political parties have come, evolved or gone in these United States, i.e., Federalist Party, Anti-Federalist Party, Democratic-Republican Party, Whig Party, and the list goes on. No longer can one accurately describe his or herself as a Republican or a Democrat. Both electors and elected officials must be defined as adhering more closely to constitutional conservative principles or progressive ideology. Candidates for office must be individually vetted for adherence to fundamental law or the progressive belief that ours is a “living constitution.” However, most important is that electors must understand what being a Constitutional Conservative or Progressive means and what it means for our country in the long term. Without this understanding, we may vote into the annals of history our republican form of government without truly understanding what we had or what there is to lose.

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Filed Under: 2012 Elections, Big Government, Corruption, Politics, Socialism, Socialism, United Nations Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Killing Energy, Killing Jobs, Killing America

October 30, 2011 By 2 Comments

By Alan Caruba

America has been under attack since Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009. The primary target has been the nation’s ability to generate energy for electricity and transportation, without which this nation will slide into Third World status and economic decline.

This appears to be the goal of this administration from the President to his Secretaries of Energy and Interior, to his Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no other rational explanation for what they are doing.

We are days away from the latest Environmental Protection Agency assault in the form of the “MACT” rule allegedly to reduce mercury and other emissions that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says will reduce electricity generation in America by about 81 gigawatts in the years ahead. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said “this could compromise the reliability of the electric system if as much as 8% of generating capacity is subtracted from the grid.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that eleven Governors have written the EPA to ask that it delay the final rule in November. Twenty-five state Attorneys Generals have filed suit “to lift a legal document known as a consent decree that the EPA is using as a fig leaf for its political goals.”

As but one example, in Illinois, Ameron announced the planned shutdown of its Meredosia and Hutsonville energy centers, The Meredosia center generates 369 megawatts. The Hutsonville center has a generating capacity of 151 megawatts.

The EPA, even before the Obama administration, has been using the 1970 Clean Air Act to bludgeon the nation’s ability to access the energy resources required to generate electricity, primarily coal that provides 50% of such generation, and oil that fuels our transportation capability.

In late October, James J. Mulva, the CEO of Conoco-Phillips, addressed the subject of the growing discoveries of natural gas being found throughout the nation. “More than 600,000 Americans already explore, produce, store and produce natural gas, according to consultancy IHS Global Insight.”

At least 15 states now produce shale gas and others may join them,” noting that the largest shale area, the Marcellus which covers much of the Northeast” “already supports 140,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.”

The Obama administration, beginning with the president’s admitted goal of shutting down as much of the coal industry as possible, has demonstrated his intention of deterring the provision of energy. When the BP Oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration imposed a moratorium on all drilling. The decreased production cost 360,000 barrels a day in addition to lost jobs related to oil drilling in the Gulf. Rigs that are needed to drill have since been moved to other sites around the world.

The U.S. is home to more than 150 billion barrels of conventional oil that has the capability of generating thousands of new jobs if access to it was permitted. The most immediate result has been the rise in the cost of gasoline at the pump. Two courts ordered that the moratorium be lifted.

Oil companies currently pay more than $30 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. Meanwhile the Obama administration has been wasting billions in loan guarantees to essentially useless solar and wind power companies, the latest of which, Solyandra, will cost taxpayers millions when the solar panel producer went belly-up. Others will follow.

Meanwhile, the President crisscrosses the nations demanding higher taxes on companies engaged in coal, oil and natural gas. When Jimmy Carter imposed a windfall tax on oil companies many ceased to explore for new sources here, moving their efforts to other nations. Today, by withholding the necessary permits to produce energy in Alaska, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System is operating at one third of its capacity.

A proposed pipeline from Canada still awaits approval and, on November 6th, led by the Sierra Club, the largest protest against its tar sands is expected to draw thousands to Washington, D.C. to join hands and circle the White House to ensure the Keystone XL pipeline is kept from providing the U.S. with the oil extracted. The proposed pipeline would reduce the U.S. dependence on Middle East oil. The U.S. already has more than 50,000 safely operating oil pipelines to support our transportation and other needs.

In January 2010, Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, warned that the Obama administration “continues to embrace Washington-dominated, command-and-control energy policies focused on mandates, subsidies, and political favors—not market forces.” He criticized “subsidizing one form of energy,” wind and solar, “while restricting the exploration of another,” warning that it “will lead to several measurable outcomes, increasing energy prices across the board, fewer jobs, and a weaker footing in the global economy..”

Nearly two years later, that warning has come true with a vengeance.

Oil, coal, or natural gas, it doesn’t matter to an administration and a president determined to restrict the amount of energy Americans need for their present and future needs. The result, in part, has been a stalled energy sector and a contributing factor in an economy with an estimated 20 million unemployed or under-employed.

The losses in income taxes and the taxes paid by this industry sector, in addition to the hideous borrowing and spending by the Obama administration is doing enormous harm to America and yet Barack Obama wants a second term in office.

Little wonder that Americans fear for the future of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Filed Under: Big Government, Commentary, Corruption, Economy, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Green Movement, Liberals Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Beloved Doctor Benched For Not Being Proficient with Electronic Medical Records System

October 26, 2011 By 5 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

A popular, longtime Doctor from central Illinois has been sidelined by employer Springfield-based Memorial Health System because he has not become proficient with the electronic medical records system, named EPIC Systems, that they purchased and implemented. Patients are so incensed that they’ve started a Facebook page as well as a blog to rally to his defense.

This situation brings into focus the problem of top-down medical solutions, calling into question the efficacy of healthcare by committee, not to mention Obmacare itself. Do we really want to sacrifice good doctors in favor of good followers of top-down rules? Do we want good users of computers or excellent doctors?

The doctor, Steven Kottemann, 63, was placed on paid administrative leave in September because they felt he was not properly utilizing the new electronic medical records system that his employer, Family Medical Center, instituted.

Kotteman initially tried to upload verbal recordings of his notes made when meeting with patients, but the system failed to accept the recordings. The only other option was to type in by hand all his patient notes. Kottemann tried to input the notes while actually with his patients but eventually came to feel that typing at a computer while trying to give care to his patients was not conducive to good care.

Dr. Kottemann then began staying late after office hours to type in all the notes but due to a stroke of his own the effort became too much for him.

“It got to the point where I was going in seven days a week to keep up,” Kottemann told the State-Register newspaper.

For its part, the employer says that Kottemann’s lack of proficiency with the computer system was not the only reason they fired him but Memorial Medical Center refused to comment further on this story when I contacted them.

Kottemann’s patients, though, are not as reluctant to comment. His patients have become incensed that their favorite doctor has been fired merely because he doesn’t meet administrator’s expectations for computer savvy.

They started a blog to come to his aid. There blog one patient praised Dr. Kottemann saying, “I don’t need a 15 min Dr, or a computer whiz… I need a doctor that cares about me and my family. I have that in Dr. Kottemann.”

There are other equally laudatory entries.

Kottemann is now afraid to say much about this incident because lawyers are involved, so he demurred fro offering a comment for this story.

But the upshot of this whole thing is that good care seems to be being sacrificed to push electronic medical records systems. This is happening across the country, too. We have hospital administrators driving hard to implement Obama’s medical records solution — such as the one called EPIC Systems being pushed by his medical records czar, Judith Faulkner. In an “epic” act of self-interest, Faulkner is also the CEO of EPIC Systems. And in so doing they are acing out excellent doctors whose only deficit is that they are not proficient with the new records technology.

Are we really willing to stand by as Obama’s representatives bully those good doctors that criticize these electronic medical records systems? Are we willing to sacrifice good doctors for merely competent computer jockeys?

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Filed Under: Corruption, Health Care, Politics
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It’s libel – except when Mike does it

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Paul Driessen

Lewis Carroll died too soon. Just imagine the fun he’d have with the cliquish clan of climate catastrophe researchers who seek to control science, debate and public policy on global warming and energy – and then get outraged when someone challenges their findings, methodologies or integrity.

On October 1, Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and “hockey stick” fame published an angry riposte in Colorado’s obscure Vail Daily Voices (circulation 15,000), expressing his umbrage over an article that had appeared in the free coffee shop newspaper a day earlier.

“An individual named Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues in his recent commentary in your paper,” Mann began. (Hertzberg is a research scientist and former US Navy meteorologist.)  The thin-skinned Penn State scientist then ranted:

“These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those whodo their bidding by lying to the public about the science.” [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, recipient of huge monetary awards for strident climate disaster claims, wants oil and coal company CEOs prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”

So Mann and Hansen are honest scientists, trying to do their jobs. But Hertzberg and anyone else who questions the “imminent manmade climate change catastrophe” thesis are dishonest crooks, liars, Holocaust deniers, hired guns for fossil fuel interests, criminals threatening all humanity.

Hertzberg’s views were defamatory, but Mann’s and Hansen’s accusations are mild, rational and truthful.

(Readers can find Mann’s letters and lively discussions about them and Hansen on Dr. Anthony Watts’ WattsUpWithThat.com climate change website. Hertzberg’s letter appeared, mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared in the Vail Voices online archives as the controversy raged and ebbed.)

The bizarre saga gets even stranger when viewed alongside Dr. Mann’s kneejerk lawsuit against Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian scientist, historical climatologistand retired professor who has frequently voiced his skepticism about claims that hydrocarbon use and carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of climate change and present an imminent risk of widespread planetary cataclysms. Dr. Ball has analyzed Canadian and global climate history, and does not regard computer models as much more than virtual reality scenarios that should never be the basis for real-world public policy.

Dr. Ball had poked fun at Dr. Mann, playing word games that suggest the computer guy should not be at Penn State, but in a similarly named state institution. Unfortunately, Mann is not easily amused, as Dr. Ball should have known from the PSU professor’s testy reaction to the “Hide the decline”animation and other spoofs that various AGW “deniers” posted online.

Mann insisted that Dr. Ball’s little joke was libelous and took him to court. Mann’s legal principal seems to be that libel is fine only when he and Hansen practice the craft, albeit with far less good humor than others display. More importantly, Dr. Ball does not live or work in the United States.

US libel cases are governed by the First Amendment, “public figure” rules and other safeguards that ensure open, robust debate, and make it difficult and expensive to sue people over slights, affronts, insults, disagreements and jokes.

Canada, unfortunately, has more limited free speech protections. So Dr. Mike sued Dr. Tim in Canada, assuming victory would be rapid and sweet. Surprise! Dr. Ball decided to slug it out.

In Canada, the principal defenses against libel claims are that the alleged defamation constitutes “fair comment” or was in fact “the truth.” Ball chose the latter defense.

Doing so means the penalty for losing could be higher than under “fair comment” rules. But arguing that his statement was based on truth allows Dr. Ball to seek “discovery” of evidence that Dr. Mann’s actions reflect a use of public funds to alter or falsify scientific data, present highly speculative results as solid facts, or otherwise engage in something that a reasonable person would conclude constitutes dishonest activity or criminal culpability, undertaken moreover through the use of taxpayer funds.

Proving that will not be easy, especially since Mann has steadfastly refused to provide such potential evidence to anyone, including Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. That evidence might include Climategate emails; computer codes and data used, misused or used selectively to generate global warming spikes in historical graphs; and questionable research or proposals used to secure additional government grants, misinform citizens or lawmakers, or promote costly or harmful public policies.

The US government alone spent an estimated $79 billion on climate, renewable energy and related research between 1989 and 2009 – and many billions more since then. Obviously, there is a lot at stake for scientists, universities, government agencies and other institutions engaged in trying to demonstrate a link between human greenhouse gas emissions and climate, weather, agricultural, sea level and other “disasters.” The reputations and credibility of researchers and their institutions are likewise at stake.

Keeping people alarmed, insisting that numerous disasters will soon result from carbon dioxide emissions and a few degrees of planetary warming – and silencing anyone who questions climate chaos claims – are essential if this money train is to be kept on the tracks.

Dr. Mann is likely aided by Penn State lawyers, largely paid for with climate research taxpayer dollars the university wants to safeguard, by preventing criticism or scientific disclosure and transparency.

A judge and jury will decide the Mann vs. Ball case, after carefully weighing all the evidence on whether Dr. Ball’s allegations and insinuations were factual, accurate and truthful.

Dr. Mann’s research was conducted primarily with public money. It is being presented as valid, peer-reviewed science. It is also being used to champion and justify major policy recommendations at state, national and international levels. And those recommendations call for carbon taxes and other penalties for using hydrocarbon energy; the replacement of affordable, dependable fossil fuel energy with expensive, unreliable wind and solar facilities; a roll-back of living standards in rich developed nations; and limited or minimal energy and economic development in poor countries.

Therefore, as I have argued previously, the public has a right to demand that Mann & Comrades show their work, not merely their answers and policy demands. Thus far, serious questions about Mann’s research remain unanswered. The public also has a right to require that Mann, Penn State & Company provide their source material, not just their results – along with anything else that may be relevant to gauging the validity, accuracy and honesty of the work and its conclusions and policy recommendations.

We the People have a further right, duty and obligation to protect free speech, robust debate, the integrity of the scientific method, our personal freedoms, and our access to the reliable, affordable energy that makes our jobs and living standards possible. One way you can do this is by supporting Dr. Tim Ball’s legal defense fund. Just click here or go to http://DrTimBall.com/

__________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

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Filed Under: Big Government, Climategate, Corruption, Global Warming, National, Political Corruption, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,
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Communists Involved in “Occupation” Movement, Nationwide

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Listen to Communist Party USA leaders Bobbie Wood, John Wojcik, Jim Lane (Texas), Elena Mora (New York), Arturo Cambron (Los Angeles),Juan Lopez (Northern California) , Gabe Falsetta (New York) and others, compare notes on their activities in the US “Occupation” movement.

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Treason? Senior Communist Lobbies “Super Committee” for Defense Cuts

October 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A senior Communist Party USA activist is leading a nationwide effort to lobby the Congressional Super Committee of 12 to propose deep cuts to US defense spending.

Judith LeBlanc is a leader of the Communist Party’s Peace and Solidarity Commission, the party body charged with directing the US peace movement and laising with foreign “preace’ and radical organizations.

LeBlanc is also national field organizer for Peace Action, the country’s largest grassroots peace organization with 100,000 members across the country.

Judith LeBlanc is using her Peace Action position to coordinate intense lobbying of the Super Committee by thousands of “peace” activists across the country.

In a country facing severe economic problems, LeBlanc and her comrades want to exploit the well-founded  fears  of middle and lower income America, to create overwhelming pressure for deep defense cuts – despite the fact the US, Israel and other allies are facing growing challenges from security threats from Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other hostile powers.

From the Peace Action blog:

The Congressional Super Committee of 12, established in the deficit/budget deal is charged with proposing over a trillion dollars in cuts to reduce the national debt before the end of 2011.

In a sense they are between the devil and the deep blue sea. Or are they? Is it a dilemma without a logical solution? We don’t think so.

The choice is clear. The Super Committee either cuts programs that help the oldest, the youngest and sickest in our society or the Pentagon, the only part of discretionary spending that continues to grow and consumes the biggest percentage of yearly spending.

In the last 10 years the Pentagon budget has nearly doubled while the State Department and foreign aid has been slashed. Not only are new weapons and wars draining scarce resources needed for jobs creation and community services, funding is also being slashed from efforts that support diplomacy when we need it most to end the war in Afghanistan.

The creation of a Super Committee to make decisions that will affect generations to come, without a way for the people to be heard, is unprecedented…

The Super Committee’s time line is short for when these decisions will be made and voted on. Between September and November 23, the Super Committee will negotiate a plan that will be sent to the Congress for an up or down vote by December 23.

Can we leverage the majority opinion, reflected in poll after poll, to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes, close corporate tax loop holes and end the wars to bring the tax dollars home? How do we build a grassroots roar for moving the money from wars and weapons back to our cities and towns?

We must organize, educate and mobilize for real cuts in Pentagon spending to protect community services.

Peace Action says cuts can be made, and it is important that our communities get the facts and bust the myths surrounding cutting Pentagon spending. Download our fact sheets and a deficit/budget deal myth buster to use in your organizing.

Targeting members of the Super Committee, members of subcommittees in both Houses who will weigh in on cuts in Pentagon spending, and the Congress as a whole is a big job, but the economic justice and peace movements have already begun.

Grassroots mobilizing for Congressional town hall meetings and public events in August and continuing into the Fall are creating a stir. People are raising their voices for “Jobs, not more weapon and wars!”

Peace Action is also on the move. We are organizing town hall meetings and bird-dogging the Super Committee members.

Last week we called on our supporters to use social media to send a message to the co-chairs. We Tweeted “Super Com co chairs @PattyMurray @RepHensarling. Start with cuts to Pentagon budget. Protect Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. “

We asked people to go to their Face Book pages: Senator Patty Murray and Representitive Jeb Hensarlingto raise our concerns. Let’s keep that up!

Peace Action Montgomery County, MD, helped to initiate the MD Coalition: Fund Our Communities, Bring the War Dollars Home which is sponsoring a town hall meeting September 20 in Silver Spring to “Take back the Budget Debate.” The gathering will map out a plan for action including pressing Representative Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Super Committee.

North Carolina Peace Action is organizing in Durham a Town Hall Meeting to
“Bring the War Dollars Home to Fund Our Communities” on Saturday, September 1. Their goal is to line up support from local elected officials who are faced with budget shortfalls, to press the North Carolina Congressional delegation to change Federal spending priorities.

Massachusetts Peace Action has begun to “bird dog” Senator Kerry, one of the members of the Super Committee, with a leaflet and petition making the links between Pentagon spending and meeting the needs of our communities.

When Cab Calloway recorded “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” in the 1930’s, and later Ella Fitzgerald and after that George Harrison, it was a song about a dilemma without a logical solution in matters of the heart. Let’s not let the Super Committee or Congress sing the same song in matters of the politics of the Federal budget!

The Communist Party USA owes its allegiance not to the United States, but to the international communist movement, currently led by the communist parties of China, Cuba and the Russian Federation.

Judith LeBlanc’s efforts have nothing to do with peace. They are a blatant attempt to exploit US economic problems to shift the balance of military power against the United States and in favor of America’s most dangerous enemies.

There is a word for such activity. It is treason.

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Muammar, Dead at Last

October 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

There were at last count at least 643 ways to spell Muammar Gaddafi and I for one am very happy he is dead for that reason alone. The fact that he was the dictator of Libya for over forty years, funded the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan Am airliner and other terrorist acts also contributes to the good news.

These are proving to be bad times for dictators and it is easy to suggest that Basher Assad, a second generation dictator of Syria, will likely come to an equally bad end. So far this year the former dictator of Tunisia had to flee. Egypt’s Mubarack had to step aside, and both Syria’s and Yemen’s presidents are under seige. Nobody knows who’s in charge of Somalia.

As I watched President Obama take a victory lap when he announced Gaddafi’s death, my thoughts turned to what Ted Belman, a widely-read blogger called the Israpundit, had to say. “Gaddafi wasn’t any worse than the barbarians that killed him and will replace him. There are no freedom-loving democrats in the entire Muslim world which consists of seventh century-minded brutes.”

The Israelis have had the misfortune of having had to fight off Muslims not only for the past sixty-plus years of statehood, but in the decades leading up to it. Unlike those of us in the West, they understand them in terms of the insane, fanatical hatred they have for Jews, Christians, and all other “infidels”, unbelievers.

“The way the jihadist-enabling mainstream media is reporting the death of Gaddafi,” observed Belman, “you would think that Libya will become some sort of western-style democracy rather than a sharia-ruled hell-hole that will become the latest haven for al Qaeda. So why are the same people who condemned Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein celebrating this?”

Good question.

Simply put, Muslims—particularly those in the Middle East—see the world in a way that is totally the reverse of how Westerners do. Ours is a pluralistic society. Theirs is a tribal society. We practice tolerance for other religions. They not only seek to drive out unbelievers, they regard apostasy as a death sentence for anyone who wants to leave Islam. Many have.

As Raymond Ibrahim, an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum, noted in a recent book review, “Last week Saudi Arabia’s religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid for casting a magic spell on a local family and turning its life upside down. The maid ‘confessed’ to using sorcery and commission experts took the magic items to their office and managed to dismantle and stop the spell.” In the West we celebrate Halloween once a year. In the Middle East, it’s every day.

The book by Robert Reilly, “The Closing of the Muslim Mind”, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, makes clear that such beliefs are common; magic spells, jins and genies. Reilly wrote of the different schools of Islam, showing how, by the 10th century, three hundred years after the death of Muhammad, the fatalistic schools had triumphed. The giants of Muslim philosphy, Ghazali and Ashari, “concluded that knowledge was unknowable, that moral truths can only be ascertained through revelation.”

This explains why so much of what occurs in the Middle East seems to defy logic to the Western mind. As Reilly noted about Islam, “All acts are in themselves morally neutral” and “Allah does not command certain behavior because it is good; it is good behavior because he commands it. Likewise, he does not forbid murder because it is bad; it is bad because he forbids it.”

The Ten Commandments forbid murder, adultery, and other acts because the acts themselves are bad, not simply because God instructed Moses that they were. The logic of good and evil is embedded in Judaism and its offshoot, Christianity. In Islam, any act can be justified if one can find a surah in the Koran and there is always one that will. Indeed, the Koran commands Muslims to kill for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to extend Islam and to punish “insults” to it..

Any negative reference to Muhammad is enough to cause riotiing in the streets and acts of retribution. It is very intimidating and the West is easily intimidated, unless, of course, you fly jet airliners into our skyscrapers and the Pentagon. Then, however, within a few years they begin to debate the probity of building a mosque within a block or two of where the Twin Towers once stood.

While the Western world is defined by the spirit of inquiry, Islam is indifferent to it. Reilly notes that, for Muslims, “the only thing worth knowing is whether a specific action is, according to Sharia: obligatory, recommended, permitted, discouraged, or forbidden. The rest is irrelevant.”

This suggests that the last ten years since 9/11 (and all that preceeded it) have had a brief saluatory effect on Middle Eastern and North African Muslims only because they know with some certainty that we shall kill them if we must.

When Arabs took hostages and demanded ransom during the administration of Thomas Jefferson he called on Congress to authorize a Marine Corps and warships. The first Barbary War (1801-5) was also known as the Tripolitan War, as in Tripoli, Libya; the same Libya that just rid itself of the most recent dictator after a long succession of comparable dictators stretching back forever.

At some point an American President is going to have to authorize a major, preemptive attack on Iran, a Shiite nation whose lunatic ayatollahs see themselves as preparing the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam, a mythical figure who lives at the bottom of a well. They will use nuclear weapons, i.e., weapons of mass destruction, to achieve this unless we stop them first.

As the Israelis keep telling us, these people are nuts.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Filed Under: Corruption, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Middle East, National, Obama, Politics, Socialism, Socialism Tagged With: , , ,
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