Fear of being brainwashed?

Hot air balloons are held down by ballasts. An Obama presidency and a Democrat Congress led by Reid and Pelosi - is this really what our nation is prepared to subject itself to?

A billion here and a billion there. If you want more of something spend money on it it. If you want more government and the consequences of its generally failed policies raise taxes and you will get it. If you want more of anything just spend tax dollars on it and you will get it such as the war on poverty, welfare etc. (See 1 below.)

Has Obama replaced Rev Wright with Israel? (See 2 below.)

It is interesting that Obama has, to date, declined going to Iraq since things have begun to turn in our favor and yet stated he would, without pre-conditions, meet with leaders of radical nations. Could it be he sees the shadow of a previous presidential candidate who, said after going to Viet Nam, he had been brainwashed and then proceeded to lose the election?

NADA! (See 3 below.)

Some allege negotiations with the Palestinians and Syrians may simply be an effort to allay those in Israel who are pro peace at any cost, that Israel's government tried but the cost was beyond reach considering Palestinian/Arab demands and practical concerns regarding security.

Livni seems likely Kadima successor to Olmert. Can she beat Netanyahu? I believe she might. (See 4 below.)

John Bolton on Obama the naive. Fred Kaplan, Obama is not naive. You decide.(See 5 and 5a below.)

Thomas Sowell, though pained by our choices, still concludes the choice is a no-brainer. (See 5 below.)

Dick

1)Obama, Clinton, Pelosi et al. Insist we are not taxed enough. Whose money do they want to tax? Guess!

"Poor and Rich", Democratic demagogy. As long as there are rich enterprises, companies, small businesses, an people with money, there will be work for the poor.
When all those rich entities are taxed out of existence, there will be no work for the poor.

How sweet it is... when the poor are offered someone else's money, they immediately fall in the trap. Government takes criminality out of outright theft! But in the long run the poor will be out of work and money to live a decent life, and pursue the American Dream. The American Dream goes down the same tax funnel.

The two psychologists who invented and developed the Intelligence Test proposed that intelligence is not doing the best thing all the time ''at'' the time, rather doing the best thing today to get the best outcome in the future, both short and long term, for oneself.

So... are we going to be intelligent ? or allow ourselves to be taxed into oblivion of the poor. We need to think of the poor and help them to get not ''easy money'' today, but assure that there will always be plenty of people making plenty of money to have plenty of proud wage earners in this still Great Country.


Subject: How many zeros in a billion?

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.


A) A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B) A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C) A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D) A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E) A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government
is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain... let's take a look at New Orleans ...It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division. Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D),asked Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number... what does it mean?

A. Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.

B. Or... if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets$1,329,787.

C Or... if you are a family of four...your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington , D. C

< HELLO! >
Are all your calculators broken??

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax < BR>Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Fe deral, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in the world...

What happened? Can you spell 'politicians!'

2) Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest ‘best friend’
By David Lightman





At AIPAC parley Dem presidential candidate says all the right things



WASHINGTON — Barack Obama reassured the American Jewish community on Wednesday that he's a devoted friend of Israel, a view seconded enthusiastically by Hillary Clinton.

On his first full day as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Obama appeared before one of his toughest crowds, a community that's been skeptical about his intentions toward Israel.

Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama opened his remarks by noting that "I know some provocative e-mails have been circulating throughout Jewish communities across the country ... they're filled with tall tales and dire warnings about a certain candidate for president.

"And all I want to say is," he paused and smiled, "let me know if you see this guy named Barack Obama, because he sounds pretty frightening."

Don't worry, he said, because "I am among friends. Good friends."

Clinton, on the other hand, has long been a favorite of this crowd, and she assured them that they can trust her rival.

"I know Senator Obama knows what is at stake here," she said of the U.S.-Israel relationship. "I know Senator Obama will be a good friend to Israel."

Their appearance before AIPAC at the Washington Convention Center -- Obama spoke first, then Clinton -- was largely a polite affair, a reaffirmation by both senators that they'd do what was necessary to protect Israel's security.

Their speeches, each of which lasted about half an hour, came the day after Obama clinched the party's presidential nomination. Clinton made no mention of the race and didn't discuss her future at the conference.

Like Obama, she concentrated on promising the crowd that she was a strong backer of Israel and had long-standing ties to the Jewish community.

Both senators vowed to get tough with Iran if necessary.

"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything," Obama said.

He drew a sharp contrast between himself and his likely general election Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

McCain spoke to this gathering Monday, and tried to paint Obama as soft on Iran because of his emphasis on diplomacy.

Dialogue with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have little value, McCain said, "except an earful of anti-Semitic rants and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another."

Obama elaborately explained his view of diplomacy Wednesday, and charged that McCain "offers only an alternate reality, one where the war in Iraq has somehow put Iran on its heels.

"The truth is the opposite. Iran has strengthened its position. Iran is now enriching uranium ... its support for terrorism and threats toward Israel have increased."

He promised to "use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

While diplomacy would be his starting point, Obama noted: "I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking. But as president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing - if and only if it can advance the interest of the United States."

And if that diplomacy doesn't work, he said, "we will ratchet up the pressure."

After Obama's speech, two high-profile Jewish McCain supporters ripped the Illinois senator in a conference call, honing the McCain campaign theme that Obama is a smooth talker who's out of his depth on foreign policy.

"Senator Obama argued today that American foreign policy in recent years has essentially strengthened Iran ... and has made Israel less safe," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut.

"I just disagree with that. If Israel is in danger today, it's not because of American foreign policy, which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way. It's not because of what we've done in Iraq. It's because Iran is a fanatical terrorist expansionist state and has a leader and a leadership that constantly threatens to extinguish the state of Israel."

U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., called Obama's speech "nice. It had some good phrases and lines in it." But, Cantor said, "it's easy to talk about supporting Israel. It's hard to do it. ... John McCain doesn't need any on-the-job training. It's in his DNA."

3)Exclusive: Olmert comes out of White House talks empty-handed


The meeting between the Israeli prime minister and president George W. Bush lasted less than an hour. Ending Wednesday, June 4 without the usual joint communiqué, it was more a farewell between two leaders on their way out than a down-to-earth exchange. Olmert told reporters euphemistically after it was over: “I went in with more question marks than I came out with regarding ways and means, the pressures of time and the resolve required to deal with the [Iranian nuclear] problem.”

Washington sources report the prime minister was informed ahead of his visit that the White House is expecting fresh intelligence on Iran’s nuclear activities and will await evaluations from US experts before making decisions on how to act in the matter. Our sources discount the impression conveyed by the prime minister’s office that he would present the president with Israel’s findings and conclusions. These exchanges are in fact taking place at quite a different level between American and Israeli intelligence chiefs.

It was clear to both the president and the prime minister that Bush’s hopes of an Israel-Palestinian peace accord being concluded before he leaves the White House would be disappointed.

In any case, Palestinian leaders are fuming over the Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s statement of support for Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal, undivided capital. Their high expectations of US pressure on Israel for major concessions in peace talks have been set back; all three presidential candidates are pursuing the Jewish vote with ringing support for Israel.

John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will talk to Olmert by telephone before he leaves. All three were too caught up in their climactic contest to find time to meet him.

4) Poll: Kadima members: Livni 39.1% Mofaz 30.0% Shetreet 5.6% Dichter 11.1% Undecided 14.2%


Telephone poll of a representative sample of registered Kadima Party members
carried out by Shvakim Panorama for Israel Radio's Hakol
Diburim (It's All Talk) apparently on 4 June 2008 (size of survey not
indicated).

Who do you support in the Kadima Party primaries to take the place of Ehud
Olmert as the head of Kadima and its candidate for prime minister [AL:
Israel does not have direct elections for prime minister]
Livni 39.1% Mofaz 30.0% Shetreet 5.6% Dichter 11.1% Undecided 14.2%

And if a second round is held between Mofaz and Livni?
Livni 47.3% Mofaz 40.5% Undecided 12.2%

Who of the 4 candidates in Kadima can put together a new government already
in the current Knesset and prevent early elections?
Livni 22.6% Mofaz 29.5% Shetreet 1.7% Dichter 3.4% None of them 42.8%

5) Obama the naive
By John Bolton
His views on world affairs ignore history and imperil the U.S. and our allies.

Barack Obama's willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea "without preconditions" is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy's first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War's most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. ... Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

Let's dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union's threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in "tiny" countries.

In the Western Hemisphere, for example, the Soviets used Fidel Castro's Cuba to assist revolutionary activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In Western Europe, vigorous Moscow-directed communist parties challenged the democracies on their home turfs. In Africa, numerous regimes depended on Soviet military assistance to stay in power, threaten their neighbors or resist anti-communist opposition groups.

Both sides in the Cold War were anxious to keep these surrogate struggles from going nuclear, so the stakes were never "civilizational." But to say that these "asymmetric" threats were "tiny" would be news to those who struggled to maintain or extend freedom's reach during the Cold War.

Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An "asymmetric" threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, "tiny."

What is implicit in Obama's reference to "tiny" threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: "And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah."

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran's own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is an article of faith for Obama, and many others on the left in the U.S. and abroad, that it is the United States that is mostly responsible for the world's ills. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick labeled people with these views the "San Francisco Democrats," after the city where Walter Mondale was nominated for president.

Most famously, Kirkpatrick forever seared the San Francisco Democrats by saying that "they always blame America first" for the world's problems. In so doing, she turned the name of the pre-World War II isolationist America First movement into a stigma the Democratic Party has never shaken.

This is yet another piece of history that Obama has ignored or never learned. There may be one more piece of history worthy of attention: In 1984, Mondale went down to one of the worst electoral defeats in American political history. We will now see whether Obama follows that path as well.

5a)Is Barack Obama Too Naive To Be President?Not in the post-Cold War world.
By Fred Kaplan


The question of the moment: Is Barack Obama too naive to be commander in chief?

Now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic candidate, this is the line of attack that John McCain is aggressively pushing. In part, this is because he doesn't have much else to run on. In part, it's because there's video footage, from the Democratic primary contests, of Hillary Clinton making the same accusation.

So is there something to the charge!

The notion stems from the Democrats' CNN-YouTube Debate of July 23, 2007, when a viewer named Steve asked the candidates whether—in the spirit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's bold trip to Jerusalem—they would be willing to talk with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without preconditions" during their first year in office.

To the surprise of many, Obama answered, "I would." Clinton countered that she would not make such a "promise" (though Obama didn't either—the question was whether he would be "willing"). After the debate, she went further and called Obama's response "irresponsible and, frankly, naive." A presidential visit is special; it shouldn't be undertaken unless the outcome is all but known in advance.

Even some of Obama's own staff asked him after the debate whether he wanted to retract the remark. No, he told them, he meant what he said. He clarified later that there would have to be an agenda—he wasn't keen on talking for the sake of talking—but "preconditions," which means a great deal more, shouldn't be required.

On Tuesday, hours before Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, McCain, signaling the start of the general election, told a crowd in New Orleans, "Americans ought to be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who says he's ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang."

And so it's worth taking a look at what Obama actually said during that July 23 debate. Here is his full reply:

I would [be willing to meet with those leaders], and the reason is this: The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them—which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration—is ridiculous. … [Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy talked with Soviet leaders because] they understood that we may not trust them, and they may pose an extraordinary threat to us, but we have the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.

Obama added, referring to the countries that the questioner listed, "It is a disgrace that we have not spoken with them." For instance, he said, we need to talk with Iran and Syria, if only about Iraq, "because if Iraq collapses, they're going to have responsibilities."

I would submit there is nothing wrong with any of this. Obama might have done well to focus more intently, at the time, on the phrase "without preconditions"—to parse its meaning and to distinguish the lack of preconditions from the lack of preparations—but, taken in full, and in the context of the question, his reply was the acme of common sense.

The remark did violate an article in the playbook of Cold War diplomacy: that a presidential visit is special, something that the recipient of the visit values above all else and therefore needs to earn; that success must be virtually guaranteed before such a high-stakes trip is taken; and that, therefore, before such a hallowed event can be scheduled, the grunts need to complete all the "spade work," leaving little for the presidents to do beyond signing on the dotted line.

But here's a fact of our times (and Obama seems to have a grip on this, perhaps because he's not so immersed in the diplomatic subculture): A presidential visit is not the cherished commodity that it once was, because the United States is no longer the superpower that it used to be.

When the Soviet Union imploded, so did the Cold War system whose existence bolstered our power and influence. After a while, many leaders—who once turned to the United States to permit, enforce, and legitimize their dealings in the world—began to go their own way, pursue their own interests, build their own alliances, not necessarily against the United States (though sometimes it worked out that way) but, more to the point, without giving much thought to Washington's feelings about the matter.

The Bush administration's many failures have reinforced this tendency. For instance, its lack of success in Iraq and Afghanistan has made our enemies less fearful of our threats and our allies less trusting in our assurances. Its disinclination even to engage in serious Middle East diplomacy has made it politically harder for moderate Arab leaders to side openly with U.S. interests.

Look at the deals that foreign leaders are cutting on their own. Israel and Hamas are talking about a cease-fire, using Egypt as a mediator. Turkey is serving as middleman in talks between Israel and Syria. The political factions in Lebanon worked out an accord, under Qatar's supervision.

These local and regional arrangements are encouraging developments. But, as Robert Malley and Hussein Agha noted in a recent New York Times op-ed, the more these kinds of deals get struck without American involvement, the more marginalized we become. Our already-slackening influence all over the world diminishes still further.

But more than our own power is at stake. These regional peace deals often need a larger guarantor. In many parts of the world, the United States is the only country that has the potential to play that role. It is still the only country that has global reach—politically, economically, and militarily.

No matter who is elected this November, the next president will have to take extraordinary steps to translate this global reach into power and influence—to restore American leadership. One of the main challenges in this effort will be to prove to others that this leadership is desirable.

The new reality is that to a degree we haven't seen in our lifetimes, the United States is a normal country—a very powerful country, but normal nonetheless: not a superpower. A presidential visit, in this light, is not such a big deal. Or, to the extent that some countries might still regard it as a visitation from on high, it may be just the jolt to get things moving.

Either way, not only was Obama's remark not naive; it reflected a more instinctive understanding of the post-Cold War world than either of his opponents seem to possess.



6) Obama and McCain and Iran
By Thomas Sowell

Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are.

Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.

This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.

The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb-- and they can make 9/11 look like child's play.

All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand-- however outrageous those demands might be-- or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.

All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.

Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.

They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East.

They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden's threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.

The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s-- and our "leaders" and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the "leaders" and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.

We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River, oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.

What does this have to do with today's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.

One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.

There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.

But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.

Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.

At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.

Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.

On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.