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Light up the sky!!
An innocent mistake costs lives of our brave troops and Obama apologizes. What an indictment and we just go about our daily lives when we should be enraged!!!!! (See 1 below.)
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Can you balance a budget without a plan and/or pain? Don't think so. You decide. (See 2 below.)
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George 'Wimp' Will and plan B. He throws in the towel and plans for the future. Apparently George is too senile to remember Truman and Yankee Yogi . (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Burn Books or Kill People?
By David Suissa
Imagine being the mother of one of the U.S. soldiers murdered last week in Afghanistan in retaliation for the burning of Korans on a U.S. military base there. First, you discover that the Korans had already been desecrated by the jihadist prisoners themselves, who purloined the holy books with what U.S. authorities described as "extremist inscriptions" meant for covert and violent purposes. In fact, that's why the Korans were seized in the first place - they were considered a security threat.
Next, you learn that although U.S. authorities had good reason to destroy these books, they did so inadvertently. As Andrew C. McCarthy reports in National Review Online: "The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention."
Then, after learning that your son was killed because of this American "mistake," you read about the reaction of President Barack Obama. The president didn't defend America's position or make a passionate appeal against murdering innocents in the name of religion. Instead, he offered an apology to the Afghan president: "I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. ... I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies."
No mention of the murder of your son. No public condolences to the families of those murdered.
Now, if you are the mother of one of those boys, how are you supposed to feel? The world shows its empathy for the followers of a burned holy book but seems utterly indifferent to those murdered by some of those very followers.
What am I missing here?
Can you imagine if religious Jews had gone on a murderous rampage after Palestinians destroyed Torah scrolls while desecrating Joseph's tomb a few years ago in Nablus? Can you imagine if Buddhist or Christian or Hindu groups murdered people every time someone desecrated their religion? Would anyone apologize to the offended religious groups even though they killed people in retaliation - as we are doing now with Muslims - or would they condemn the murderers, as well they should?
Why are we so silent at this blatant double standard?
Why do we patronize Muslims by treating them so differently, as if we can't expect the same behavior from them that we do of other religious groups? What are we saying, that they love their religion more than we love ours? That they're more fiercely protective of their holy books? That they're not as "civilized" as we are?
This is insulting to Muslims and to the very idea of religion. The beauty of religion is that it's supposed to add goodness to our lives and help us value the supremacy and divinity of human life. How is our cowardly reaction to the murder of God's children honoring Islam or any other religion?
Murder is not just a morally depraved act, it's also a serious crime. Why are human rights groups not up in arms over this double crime against humanity and religion?
And please don't tell me we can't speak up because it will "trigger" the Muslim street, as if Muslims are machines that get "triggered." How dehumanizing. Speaking the truth is a sign of respect, and in this case, the truth is this: Religious fanaticism that leads to murder is an insult to all religions, including Islam, and it must never be tolerated.
Of course, it is perfectly appropriate to protest offensive acts, whether those acts are cartoons that mock Muhammad, Moses or Jesus, or whether it's the burning of holy books. But protesting an act and murdering people are two completely different things. If we can't draw a big thick red line at the taking of human life, what kind of civilization are we?
In fact, I have this idea for a "performance art" exhibit that would dramatize this thick line between holy paper and human life. Let's set up a one-day "burning station" outside the White House and burn books - not holy books, just regular books - as expressions of extreme love for human life. The portable exhibit would be called "Life Is the Holiest Book" and would include pictures and stories of the four U.S. servicemen who were murdered in Afghanistan last week for "holy reasons."
Yes, the burning of books would be offensive to many people, myself included. But that's the point. We need to make a shocking statement to the world that being offended for any reason whatsoever can never justify murdering people, and that the very idea of murder is the ultimate desecration of religion.
Let's demonstrate to religious fanatics everywhere that the only thing worth being fanatic about is the defense of human life.
I can think of a few grieving mothers who wouldn't mind burning a few
holy books if it would help bring their sons back.
David Suissa is President of Tribe Media Corp and Jewish Journal.
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2)Can a Balanced Budget Be Achieved without a Plan?
By Jim Yardley
In the past few weeks, the candidates for the Republican nomination have spoken of the need for a "balanced budget." Conservative media outlets have editorialized about the need for a balanced budget. Neighbors speak of the need for balanced budgets among themselves.
But, really, is a balanced budget necessary? The answer will largely depend on who is being asked the question. Ask Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, and all of them will, in an almost Pavlovian reflex, respond with "No! We need government spending to stimulate the economy!" If you asked Harry Reid, his response probably would be "Budget? What's a budget?"
On the other hand, if you ask the same question of any of the Republican candidates during this primary season, all will unanimously agree that of course the nation needs a balanced budget. If any of them has described just how he is going to achieve a balanced budget, it hasn't been trumpeted with any great fanfare.
As our friends in the media would phrase it, a follow-up question is needed to clarify exactly what actually is each candidate's concept of a balanced budget. The simplistic answer is that a budget is balanced when the revenues that are generated fund all the spending that is planned. We need to know how Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul (and even Obama) think they will get revenues and expenditures to match each other.
As a financial controller in a manufacturing environment for nearly 35 years, I've prepared a lot of budgets, so I feel that I have enough knowledge of the subject to be objective -- and very, very critical.
Any budget, whether balanced or not, is nothing more than a numerical description of a plan of action. Period. There is nothing magical about a budget. It just uses numbers to describe the outcome, expressed in dollars, that results from planning what the organization wants to accomplish, and then deciding how it will achieve those goals. Nothing more.
There is nothing in any budget that will automatically correct for bad decisions. There is nothing in any budget that prevents those in authority from spending far in excess of the amounts that they said that they were planning to spend. The smallest mom-and-pop business works to a budget, even when it's only scribbled out on the back of an envelope while both mom and pop were sitting at their kitchen table.
Even then, mom and pop develop a plan. Not one as elaborate as what General Motors might create, but a plan nonetheless. How much do they think they will sell to generate revenue? What will it cost to provide the product or service that they are selling? Will they need employees? How many? Doing what? At what wage?
Mom and pop also, on a subconscious level -- almost an instinctive level -- use zero-based budgeting. They don't assume that because last year or quarter or even month was pretty good, the future will simply repeat what happened in the past.
So now we need to ask these five supposedly serious men (Obama, Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul), who all claim to be fully qualified to run the largest and most complex organization on the planet, how they plan on answering those questions. What is their plan to balance the budget? How will they successfully implement that plan?
The root-cause of any question about balancing the budget is, naturally, the staggering national debt that is approaching $16 trillion. Our total national economy is something on the order of $14 trillion, and taxes on our economy currently generate approximately $2.2 trillion in revenue to the federal government, and about another $1.1 to 1.3 trillion to the states. In round numbers, that means that the total government "take" from our economy is about 25% of every dollar that the economy generates. And yet, the federal government alone spends almost as much as the federal and state governments collect in total!
And the question for all five men still remains: how are you going to get revenues and expenditures to come close to the same amount?
There is always talk of raising taxes, usually from Liberal-Progressive-Democrats. There is always talk of cutting spending, usually from conservatives and libertarians. RINOs try to avoid discussing spending cuts. For their part, they prefer to speak of "growing the economy" to generate more revenues without raising tax rates while holding spending steady.
For some reason, simple math seems to escape RINOs. To generate enough revenue to pay for our current levels of spending through economic growth, while holding tax rates stable, would require our economy to grow from about $14 trillion annually to about $20.3 trillion. That extra $6.3 trillion means we would need to grow the economy by 45%. That's nearly half again as large as it is now. Yet even optimistic growth estimates are in the 2.5% to 3.5% range. At 2.5%, a 45% total increase would take 15 years. At 3.5%, it would take only 11 years. In either event, the total national debt would continue to grow inexorably to nearly double the current level before we achieved a balance between revenue and spending (or as Obama prefers to call it, investment).
If there are to be no cuts in spending, and we plan to "grow" our way out to solvency, then the planning process, upon which the budget is based, leads to more and more questions, such as:
Has anyone thought about just how much money would need to be invested in new plant and equipment to grow the economy by 45%?
Has anyone thought about how many new jobs would have to be created in order to reach that 45% growth number?
Regardless of the exact number of how many millions of new jobs might be created, where are those people who would fill those jobs going to be coming from?
Is everyone in America going to have to work 60 or 70 or even 80 hours a week, or will we open the immigration floodgates and have to deal with the social problems, the housing problems, the assimilation problems, the lack of schools, the lack of health care facilities that would result from a massive influx of foreign nationals?
How will we hold spending steady in the face of these new demands on social programs?
The Fearsome Five who are running for president will have to convince me that they actually have thought of all these questions. They will also have to absolutely convince me that they have some answers. If their answers turn out to be wrong, I won't be surprised. But if they don't have any answers, they certainly won't get my vote.
And for those of you who feel uncomfortable asking difficult questions of the candidates, I refer you to an article I wrote two years ago, here at American Thinker. It's titled "Whom are We Hiring?" I hope you read it, since it might change your attitude about asking questions that make the candidates uncomfortable.
Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller for manufacturing firms, a Vietnam veteran, and an independent voter.
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3)Plan B for stopping Obama
By George F. Will
“The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The next and most urgent counsel is to take stock of reality.”
— William F. Buckley,
On that evening 48 years ago — it was still summer, early in the presidential campaign — Buckley, whose National Review magazine had given vital assistance to Barry Goldwater’s improbable capture of the Republican nomination, addressed the national convention of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom. Buckley told his fervent acolytes that “when we permit ourselves to peek up over the euphoria” of Goldwater’s nomination, we see that it occurred “before we had time properly to prepare the ground.”
He then sobered his boisterous audience: “I speak of course about the impending defeat of Barry Goldwater.” He urged “the necessity of guarding against the utter disarray that sometimes follows a stunning defeat.” Goldwater’s doomed campaign should, Buckley said, be supported because it plants “seeds of hope, which will flower on a great November day in the future.” They did, 16 Novembers later.
Buckley understood the possibility of constructive defeat. He also understood the need to economize conservatism’s energies.
Today, conservatives dismayed about the Republican presidential spectacle may write a codicil to what is called the Buckley Rule. He said that in any election, conservatives should vote for the most electable conservative. The codicil might be: Unless the nomination or election of a particular conservative would mean a net long-term subtraction from conservatism’s strength.
If nominated, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum might not cause such subtraction. Both are conservatives, although of strikingly different stripes. Neither, however, seems likely to be elected. Neither has demonstrated, or seems likely to develop, an aptitude for energizing a national coalition that translates into 270 electoral votes.
If either is nominated, conservatives should vote for him. But suppose the accumulation of evidence eventually suggests that the nomination of either would subtract from the long-term project of making conservatism intellectually coherent and politically palatable. If so, there would come a point when, taking stock of reality, conservatives turn their energies to a goal much more attainable than, and not much less important than, electing Romney or Santorum president. It is the goal of retaining control of the House and winning control of the Senate.
Several possible Supreme Court nominations and the staffing of the regulatory state are among the important reasons conservatives should try to elect whomever the GOP nominates. But conservatives this year should have as their primary goal making sure Republicans wield all the gavels in Congress in 2013.
If Republicans do, their committee majorities will serve as fine-mesh filters, removing President Obama’s initiatives from the stream of legislation. Then Republicans can concentrate on what should be the essential conservative project of restoring something like constitutional equipoise between the legislative and executive branches.
Such a restoration would mean that a reelected Obama, a lame duck at noon Jan. 20, would have a substantially reduced capacity to do harm. Granted, he could veto any major conservative legislation. But such legislation will not even get to his desk because Republicans will not have 60 senators. In an undoubtedly bipartisan achievement, both parties have participated in institutionalizing an extra-constitutional Senate supermajority requirement for all but innocuous or uncontroversial legislation. This may be a dubious achievement, but it certainly enlarges the power of a congressional party to play defense against a president.
Three years ago, conservatives were particularly focused on stopping two of Obama’s principal goals — a cap-and-trade climate policy and “card check” to abolish secret ballots in unionization elections. He still speaks incessantly but no longer speaks about either. And were it not for grossly corrupt conduct by Justice Department prosecutors in the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), which cost him reelection, Obamacare would not have passed.
Beginning next January, 51 or more Republican senators, served by the canny Mitch McConnell’s legislative talents, could put sand in the gears of an overbearing and overreaching executive branch. This could restore something resembling the rule of law, as distinct from government by fiats issuing from unaccountable administrative agencies exercising excessive discretion.
From Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, Republicans have a rising generation of potential 2016 candidates. This does not mean conservatives should be indifferent to the fate of this year’s nominee, and it is perhaps premature to despair of Romney’s and Santorum’s political aptitudes. Still, the presidency is not everything, and there will be another election in the next year divisible by four.
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