And it all leads to this: "The Candy Man"
► 3:09► 3:09
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u03KAcEbEo
Feb 11, 2011 - 3 min - Uploaded by Drummer5197
The Government Can- Tim Hawkins (Insanitized DVD) ... You need Adobe Flash Player to watch this ...
A dear friend, fellow tennis buddy and faithful memo reader jokingly said I need to be more emphatic and specific regarding my views on Obama. I will simply respond by posting the views of those I respect. (See 1 and 1a below.)
So watch this:The Democratic Party has produced a television ad claiming to show Rep Paul Ryan throwing grandma off the cliff, by opposing ObamaCare.
A couple of San Antonio doctors have responded with an effective ad to counter this injustice. See the ad produced by Drs Jane Hughes and Kris Held.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ-p29xEM0s&feature=share
And this:
My friend's take on Justice Roberts accords with my esteemed retired Professor and imminent scholar on The History of The Supreme Court.
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Muslim Brotherhood playing with fire. (See 3 below.)
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Byron Wien, another prominent investment guru, sees continued up market in 2012. (See 4 below.)
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Black on black commentary that lay the blame for the anger at the feet of Democrats. Now that is a novel idea. (See 5 below.)
And what about this crime? Just more double standards and hypocrisy.
Where are the three Black Stooges: Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Obama?
A week ago, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a black kid named Tyrone Woodfork severely beat an elderly couple, a Mr. & Mrs. Strait, who had been married for 65 years. Tyrone RAPED Mrs. Strait, and she died of injuries received at his hands. Mr. Strait served in the 101st Airborne during WWII. NO national media carried the story. Tyrone was arrested yesterday.
I supposed if Mr. Strait had shot Tyrone, the whole country would know about the story. As it is, only Mrs. Strait died, so it's not of interest to Brian Williams and the rest of the main stream media.
Think about it. After 65 years of marriage. After serving our country. After 90 years of life, Mr. Strait has lost his wife to a rapist/murderer. NO ONE in the national media gives a flip. They're interested in their wonderful hero, Trayvon Martin. (See 5a below.)
Then another attack, this time with a hammer. (See 5b below.)
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Geithner says we cannot continue to do what we are doing because it is unsustainable but then, we can't stop either.. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Henninger: The Supreme Court Lands in Oz
Like the original wizard, Barack Obama doesn't want anyone to look behind the curtain.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
'I am confident," announced the president of the United States, "that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." And so it was on Monday that Barack Obama, anticipating a loss before the Supreme Court, added the third branch of government to the list of villains he will run against in his re-election campaign.
Many are saying the president should know Marbury v. Madison. He does. It doesn't matter. If something gets in his way, Barack Obama hammers it—whether courts or Congress. The left likes that. It remains to find out if the rest of the country wants the judicial and legislative branches subordinated to a national leader.
Many schools of thought have emerged on the subject of why Barack Obama does some of the things he does, such as the job-killing Keystone XL pipeline decision or vilifying the Supreme Court justices seated before him at his State of the Union speech or inviting the GOP leadership to his speech on the deficit so he could insult them, and then hit them both again this week. Calculation? Intimidation? One school holds he acts out of personal belief (the school I subscribe to). Or that he polls it before he says it (also plausible).
It appears to be unprecedented, however, for a U.S. president to have attacked the Supreme Court before it handed down its decision. Some think Mr. Obama and his progressive infantry are trying to intimidate the Justices, specifically Justice Anthony Kennedy. But most legal commentary has said the president's attack is likely to anger the justices, perhaps including some of the court's liberals. Mr. Obama's notion of judicial review diminishes all the members of any court, not just its conservatives. It doesn't help the always difficult struggle for an independent judiciary in other countries if an American president is issuing Venezuela-like statements on U.S. courts.
Another possible explanation occurs. It's in one of the grandest moments in "The Wizard of Oz," when the Wizard, fumbling at the controls inside his throne room, shouts to Dorothy and the others: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." Barack Obama, a wizard of another kind, has been trying with fulminations and denunciations to keep anyone from attempting what a law professor might call discovery of what the president actually has done in the past three years. We already know, for instance, that the stimulus's $825 billion went up the chimney. What else?
It was the Supreme Court's great debunker, Justice Antonin Scalia, who came closest in the ObamaCare oral arguments to pulling the curtain back on the Affordable Care Act's inner machinery. That was the moment when Justice Scalia asked: "What happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?"
The point beneath Justice Scalia's jest is this: The 2,700-page Affordable Care Act, the Obama presidency's policy masterpiece, at best won't work very well. At worst, its house-of-cards complexity will damage nearly anything it touches—citizens, doctors, medical institutions. One only has to venture inside the law's text to discover why, and to see why Justice Scalia wanted to protect impressionable law clerks from the experience.
Where better to begin than at the mandate itself. The mandate is the probable cause of the law's demise and so the source of the president's rage. In fact, the word "mandate," as argued before the court, appears nowhere in the ACA. What they were litigating was Subtitle F, Part I. Rather than "mandate," its Orwellian title is the "Individual Responsibility Requirement."
We already know that 67% of polled people think the mandate, which compels individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, is unconstitutional. That number might go closer to 100% if people got a look at the law's language.
The ACA calls the act of purchasing insurance a "required contribution." Naturally, many will wonder if they can get out of this. That depends on the meaning of "required contribution," as defined in "Chapter 48—Maintenance of Minimum Essential Coverage, (e) Exemptions, (B) Required contributions:
"For purposes of this paragraph, the term 'required contribution' means . . .: (ii) in the case of an individual eligible only to purchase minimum essential coverage described in subsection (f)(1)(C), the annual premium for the lowest cost bronze plan available in the individual market through the Exchange in the State in the rating area in which the individual resides (without regard to whether the individual purchased a qualified health plan though the Exchange), reduced by the amount of the credit allowable under section 36B for the taxable year (determined as if the individual was covered by a qualified health plan offered through the Exchange for the entire taxable year)."
In the original "Oz," the wizard voluntarily abandons the yellow brick road, discovers humility and returns to earth. The ending in our version will require an election.
1a)Killing Coal
So much for an 'all of the above' energy strategy.
For three years the Environmental Protection Agency has imposed a de facto ban on new coal-fired power while doing everything it can to harm existing coal plants. But for once there's something good to say about the latest EPA carbon rule: At least the agency was less devious when it formalized the coal ban last week.
The EPA proposed what are known as "new source performance standards" for carbon under the Clean Air Act, which are part of the agency's "endangerment finding" to limit greenhouse gas emissions. To control CO2, utilities will need to install new technology, such as capture-and-sequestration systems that are among the world's most complex and expensive industrial equipment.
But great news: The EPA estimates that the total cost of this rule will be $0. It will have no major effect on the economy. Not a single job will be lost.
How can that be? In its cost estimates, the EPA assumes the U.S. will never complete another coal-fired project. Ever. The agency is conceding that coal development has been shut down as a result of its many new regulations, such as the recent mercury rule and the illegal permitting delays that a federal appeals court slapped down last week.
But there's also a problem. Because the putative "regulatory impact" is zero, there are also no benefits. So why is the environmental lobby applauding the EPA's new rule like a performing seal? Even the EPA itself says the performance standards will apply only to new plants, not the legacy fleet that generates almost half of U.S. electricity. The media were careful to repeat this claim too.
It isn't true. Just as the new rule's fine print reveals that the rules won't apply to the new plants because they'll never be built, it also shows that the rules will put old plants at risk because of another EPA program known as New Source Review.
Whenever a plant upgrades—whether installing a new fan blade or replacing the proverbial toilet seat—it must comply with every rule on the books. So as a utility obeys the mercury rule, say, it will also be caught in the pincer movement of these new carbon performance standards. The green lobby knows this will slowly kill even current coal plants over time.
The problem with carbon capture and storage—apart from costs—is that the technology is still speculative. Even with massive subsidies, not a plant in the world is diverting its CO2 on a commercial scale and injecting it into spent oil and gas reservoirs underground. The Energy Department says it will take 20 years or more to get to scale, and even that prediction has to be balanced against the bureaucracy's lousy track record. As for plants in areas where such geological formations do not exist, well, they could build pipelines, but the White House has a thing about pipelines.
Everyone in Washington including President Obama claims to favor an "all of the above" energy portfolio. As misguided as that is—far better to let markets decide which energy sources to develop—the EPA has now admitted that Mr. Obama doesn't really mean it. Coal is not part of his "all." Voters in swing coal states such as Ohio and West Virginia probably do care about that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin
The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
By SHELBY STEELE
Two tragedies are apparent in the Trayvon Martin case. The first is obvious: A teenager—unarmed and committing no crime—was shot dead. Dressed in a "hoodie," a costume of menace, he crossed paths with a man on the hunt for precisely such clichés of menace. Added to this—and here is the rub—was the fact of his dark skin.
Maybe it was more the hood than the dark skin, but who could argue that the skin did not enhance the menace of the hood at night and in the eyes of someone watching for crime. (Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black though we are only 12% of the population.) Would Trayvon be alive today had he been walking home—Skittles and ice tea in hand—wearing a polo shirt with an alligator logo? Possibly. And does this make the ugly point that dark skin late at night needs to have its menace softened by some show of Waspy Americana? Possibly.
What is fundamentally tragic here is that these two young males first encountered each other as provocations. Males are males, and threat often evokes a narcissistic anger that skips right past reason and into a will to annihilate: "I will take you out!" There was a terrible fight. Trayvon apparently got the drop on George Zimmerman, but ultimately the man with the gun prevailed. Annihilation was achieved.
If this was all there was to it, the Trayvon/Zimmerman story would be no more than a cautionary tale, yet another admonition against the hair-trigger male ego. But this story brought reaction from the White House: "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon," said the president. The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ubiquitous icons of black protest, virtually battled each other to stand at the bereaved family's side—Mr. Jackson, in a moment of inadvertent honesty, saying, "There is power in blood . . . we must turn a moment into a movement." And then there was the spectacle of black Democrats in Congress holding hearings on racial profiling with Trayvon's parents featured as celebrities.
In fact Trayvon's sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America's civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the "poetic truth" that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.
The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this "truth" has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites.
If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this—a call "to turn the moment into a movement"—it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today's Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America's racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life.
It was a time when standing on the side of the good required true selflessness and so it ennobled people. And this chance to ennoble oneself through a courageous moral stand is what so many blacks and white liberals miss today—now that white racism is such a defeated idea. There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled. So today even the hint of old-fashioned raw racism excites with its potential for ennoblement.
For the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, for the increasingly redundant civil rights establishment, for liberal blacks and the broader American left, the poetic truth that white racism is somehow the real culprit in this tragedy is redemption itself. The reason Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have become such disreputable figures on our cultural landscape is that they are such quick purveyors of poetic truth rather than literal truth.
The great trick of poetic truth is to pass itself off as the deep and essential truth so that hard facts that refute it must be dismissed in the name of truth. O.J. Simpson was innocent by the poetic truth that the justice system is stacked against blacks. Trayvon was a victim of racist stereotyping—though the shooter never mentioned his race until asked to do so.
There is now a long litany of racial dust-ups—from Tawana Brawley to the Duke University lacrosse players to the white Cambridge police officer who arrested Harvard professor Skip Gates a summer ago—in which the poetic truth of white racism and black victimization is invoked so that the actual truth becomes dismissible as yet more racism.
When the Cambridge cop or the Duke lacrosse players or the men accused of raping Tawana Brawley tried to defend themselves, they were already so stained by poetic truth as to never be entirely redeemed. No matter the facts—whether Trayvon Martin was his victim or his assailant—George Zimmerman will also never be entirely redeemed.
And this points to the second tragedy that Trayvon's sad demise highlights. Before the 1960s the black American identity (though no one ever used the word) was based on our common humanity, on the idea that race was always an artificial and exploitive division between people. After the '60s—in a society guilty for its long abuse of us—we took our historical victimization as the central theme of our group identity. We could not have made a worse mistake.
It has given us a generation of ambulance-chasing leaders, and the illusion that our greatest power lies in the manipulation of white guilt. The tragedy surrounding Trayvon's death is not in the possibility that it might have something to do with white racism; the tragedy is in the lustfulness with which so many black leaders, in conjunction with the media, have leapt to exploit his demise for their own power.
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3)Rocket fired from Egypt hits Israeli city of Eilat
A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.
District police chief Ron Gertner told Israeli radio the rocket had been fired from Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
He said it struck a construction site close to a residential area shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT).
The blast took place as thousands congregated in the resort town for the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Rocket attacks from Egyptian soil are uncommon. Attacks on Eilat and the nearby Jordanian town of Aqaba in 2010 killed one person and injured another four.
Sinai unrest
Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak-Halevy told the Jerusalem Post that the city would function as normal despite the attack.
A wave of unrest has hit the restive Sinai peninsula recently.
Israel says militants have become active in the region since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011.
In August 2011, an armed group crossed the border into Israel from the Sinai peninsula and killed eight Israelis.
Israel blamed Palestinian militants but five Egyptian policemen were killed as Israeli forces pursued the gunmen, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.
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4)Byron Wien: Stocks’ Bull Run Will Continue Through 2012
By Julie Crawshaw
Wall Street strategist Byron Wien says the bull market in stocks will run through the rest of the year as the economy improves and more companies follow Apple’s lead in paying a dividend, CNBC reports.
“I actually thought the S&P 500 could reach 1,500 based on the generally achieved (but not last year) multiple of 15 times and operating earnings of $100,” Wien wrote in a note to clients.
“Estimates have been trimmed somewhat, but, at this point, I still think 1,500 is likely.”
Editor's Note: Did Obama Betray America? Video Reveals Truth
“Over the past three months the pessimistic mood has changed to optimism,” says Wien. “Ordinarily, optimistic sentiment readings presage a market correction, but there are so many investors looking for an opportunity to increase their exposure that even a minor downdraft gets cut short by a flood of buyers," he said.
"This could continue for a while.”
“Over the past few years the work of the Economic Cycle Research Institute has gained some respect,” Wien says. “Its index peaked in April 2010 and April 2011, warning of slower economic activity to follow. The S&P 500 subsequently declined 15 percent in both of those years.”
“The index is currently rising and there are enough positive economic factors influencing it to believe that it won’t peak soon.”
But not all experts are so optimisitc.
Economist Gary Shilling says we're still headed for a recession this year despite the market's recent bullish behavior, the Globe and Mail reports.
"Despite the recent euphoria of investors over U.S. stocks, we believe the economy is likely to weaken as the year progresses, led by renewed consumer retrenchment," Shilling wrote in a note to investors.
Shilling points to a number of unusual indicators that suggest the U.S. economy may be weaker than most people believe. For example, electricity generation is falling rapidly, which this may be because this winter was unusually mild but could also indicate declining economic activity.
© 2012 Moneynews. All rights reserved.
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5)Democrats Responsible for Black Culture of Anger
By Lloyd Marcus
Black twenty-year-old male Danielle Simpson, with two black associates, was interrupted by 84-year-old Geraldine Davidson while in the process of burglarizing Davidson's home. The group duct-taped her mouth, bound her hands and legs, and threw the white former schoolteacher and church organist into the trunk of her own car. Ms. Davidson was severely brutalized before the trio eventually tied a rope attached to a cinderblock around her legs and threw her, still alive, into the river.
Brutal crimes are not unique.
But here is what makes this case remarkable. For seven hours, Simpson rode around in Ms. Davidson's car, stopping for fast food and opening the truck to show off his victim to his black friends. Due to fingerprints left on the car, detectives estimate that around ten people viewed Ms. Davidson in the trunk.
Incredibly, not one person called the police or lobbied to set the poor elderly woman free. What could possibly harden these black youths to such an extent?
Perhaps one of the detectives investigating the case nailed it when he described the black criminals and their friends as part of a "culture of anger."
For the murder of Ms. Davidson, in 2009, Danielle Simpson was executed by lethal injection in Texas.
Fast-forward to the Democrat-led Trayvon Martin rallies across America. If justice were their true motivation, they would allow the case to unfold. To demand that George Zimmerman be arrested without knowing the facts is absurd and irresponsible. The Democrats' obvious purpose for their race rallies is to fuel the eternal flames of their well-nurtured "culture of anger."
Sadly, Democrat efforts to cultivate black anger are bearing much fruit. Before the Trayvon Martin incident, black flash mobs were attacking white strangers across America. The horrific rape/murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom received scant publicity because it was seen as politically incorrect to publicize a beautiful white couple being brutalized by five black thugs.
Exploiting Trayvon Martin to fuel the Democrats' culture of anger, Democrat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush spoke to the House wearing a hoodie. Rush assumed that Martin was racially profiled and said that "just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum." Yet another example of a Democrat jumping the gun to further their storyline before all the facts are in.
Sixties radical Angela Davis faithfully contributed to the Democrats' culture of anger. Davis said Trayvon's story is not unique. According to Davis, blacks are physically attacked by whites all the time. Davis also accused white America of systematic racism against blacks. Will someone please inform Ms. Davis that a black man is leader of the free world solely because millions of white Americans voted for him? At only 12% of the U.S. population, black votes alone could not have put the Obamas in the White House.
The Trayvon Martin incident has afforded the Democrats a golden opportunity to build upon their culture of anger. Al Sharpton said, "Enough is enough!" Jessie Jackson said, "Blacks are under attack!"
So, according to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush; Angela Davis; Al Sharpton; Jessie Jackson; and the majority of Democrat leaders, pundits, and the Democrat-supportive mainstream media, black Americans are routinely physically attacked by whites. Is there any wonder why millions of black Americans are fuming in a culture of anger?
Well, allow me to crush the Democrats' perfect liberal paradigm with the truth. FBI and U.S. Justice Dept. statistics confirm that blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than whites are to commit violence against blacks. Ninety percent of the victims of race crimes are white.
What are the consequences of the Democratic Party keeping black Americans stewing in their well-crafted culture of anger? Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery. Blacks are three times more likely to use a handgun and twice as likely to use a knife. Forty-five percent of black crime is against whites, 43 percent against other blacks, and 10 percent against Hispanics. Who can deny that black criminals are angry at whites and fellow blacks? Blacks are seven times more likely to end up in prison.
Folks, I am not one for frivolous lawsuits. Still, I cannot help contemplating a lawsuit all the same: We the People vs. the Democratic Party for severe damages resulting from them creating and fueling for years a culture of anger in black America.
5a)Man charged with murder in deadly home invasion
Tyrone Woodfork, arrested on murder complaint for beating death of 85-year-old Nancy Strait. Her husband, Bob Strait, 90, was also severely beaten.
By JERRY WOFFORD World Staff Writer
A man accused of assaulting an elderly couple this month was formally charged Monday.
Tyrone Woodfork, 20, was charged in Tulsa County District Court with felony first-degree murder, two counts of robbery with a firearm and first-degree burglary.
Bob and Nancy Strait were assaulted March 14 in their home in the 3300 block of East Virgin Street. Nancy Strait died March 15 from injuries related to the assault. She was also raped. Bob Strait is still recovering from multiple injuries and has been re-admitted to a hospital.
Woodfork was arrested March 15 after witnesses reported seeing the couple’s stolen 2001 Dodge Neon in the 3500 block of East Fourth Street. He remains in the Tulsa Jail without bond.
By JERRY WOFFORD World Staff Writer
(By the way, If Obama had a son, would he look like Tyrone Woodfork? Just asking....)
5b)
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6)
My friend's take on Justice Roberts accords with my esteemed retired Professor and imminent scholar on The History of The Supreme Court.
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Muslim Brotherhood playing with fire. (See 3 below.)
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Byron Wien, another prominent investment guru, sees continued up market in 2012. (See 4 below.)
---
Black on black commentary that lay the blame for the anger at the feet of Democrats. Now that is a novel idea. (See 5 below.)
And what about this crime? Just more double standards and hypocrisy.
Where are the three Black Stooges: Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Obama?
A week ago, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a black kid named Tyrone Woodfork severely beat an elderly couple, a Mr. & Mrs. Strait, who had been married for 65 years. Tyrone RAPED Mrs. Strait, and she died of injuries received at his hands. Mr. Strait served in the 101st Airborne during WWII. NO national media carried the story. Tyrone was arrested yesterday.
I supposed if Mr. Strait had shot Tyrone, the whole country would know about the story. As it is, only Mrs. Strait died, so it's not of interest to Brian Williams and the rest of the main stream media.
Think about it. After 65 years of marriage. After serving our country. After 90 years of life, Mr. Strait has lost his wife to a rapist/murderer. NO ONE in the national media gives a flip. They're interested in their wonderful hero, Trayvon Martin. (See 5a below.)
Then another attack, this time with a hammer. (See 5b below.)
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Geithner says we cannot continue to do what we are doing because it is unsustainable but then, we can't stop either.. (See 6 below.)
---
Dick
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1)Henninger: The Supreme Court Lands in Oz
Like the original wizard, Barack Obama doesn't want anyone to look behind the curtain.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
'I am confident," announced the president of the United States, "that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." And so it was on Monday that Barack Obama, anticipating a loss before the Supreme Court, added the third branch of government to the list of villains he will run against in his re-election campaign.
Many are saying the president should know Marbury v. Madison. He does. It doesn't matter. If something gets in his way, Barack Obama hammers it—whether courts or Congress. The left likes that. It remains to find out if the rest of the country wants the judicial and legislative branches subordinated to a national leader.
Many schools of thought have emerged on the subject of why Barack Obama does some of the things he does, such as the job-killing Keystone XL pipeline decision or vilifying the Supreme Court justices seated before him at his State of the Union speech or inviting the GOP leadership to his speech on the deficit so he could insult them, and then hit them both again this week. Calculation? Intimidation? One school holds he acts out of personal belief (the school I subscribe to). Or that he polls it before he says it (also plausible).
It appears to be unprecedented, however, for a U.S. president to have attacked the Supreme Court before it handed down its decision. Some think Mr. Obama and his progressive infantry are trying to intimidate the Justices, specifically Justice Anthony Kennedy. But most legal commentary has said the president's attack is likely to anger the justices, perhaps including some of the court's liberals. Mr. Obama's notion of judicial review diminishes all the members of any court, not just its conservatives. It doesn't help the always difficult struggle for an independent judiciary in other countries if an American president is issuing Venezuela-like statements on U.S. courts.
Another possible explanation occurs. It's in one of the grandest moments in "The Wizard of Oz," when the Wizard, fumbling at the controls inside his throne room, shouts to Dorothy and the others: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." Barack Obama, a wizard of another kind, has been trying with fulminations and denunciations to keep anyone from attempting what a law professor might call discovery of what the president actually has done in the past three years. We already know, for instance, that the stimulus's $825 billion went up the chimney. What else?
It was the Supreme Court's great debunker, Justice Antonin Scalia, who came closest in the ObamaCare oral arguments to pulling the curtain back on the Affordable Care Act's inner machinery. That was the moment when Justice Scalia asked: "What happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?"
The point beneath Justice Scalia's jest is this: The 2,700-page Affordable Care Act, the Obama presidency's policy masterpiece, at best won't work very well. At worst, its house-of-cards complexity will damage nearly anything it touches—citizens, doctors, medical institutions. One only has to venture inside the law's text to discover why, and to see why Justice Scalia wanted to protect impressionable law clerks from the experience.
Where better to begin than at the mandate itself. The mandate is the probable cause of the law's demise and so the source of the president's rage. In fact, the word "mandate," as argued before the court, appears nowhere in the ACA. What they were litigating was Subtitle F, Part I. Rather than "mandate," its Orwellian title is the "Individual Responsibility Requirement."
We already know that 67% of polled people think the mandate, which compels individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, is unconstitutional. That number might go closer to 100% if people got a look at the law's language.
The ACA calls the act of purchasing insurance a "required contribution." Naturally, many will wonder if they can get out of this. That depends on the meaning of "required contribution," as defined in "Chapter 48—Maintenance of Minimum Essential Coverage, (e) Exemptions, (B) Required contributions:
"For purposes of this paragraph, the term 'required contribution' means . . .: (ii) in the case of an individual eligible only to purchase minimum essential coverage described in subsection (f)(1)(C), the annual premium for the lowest cost bronze plan available in the individual market through the Exchange in the State in the rating area in which the individual resides (without regard to whether the individual purchased a qualified health plan though the Exchange), reduced by the amount of the credit allowable under section 36B for the taxable year (determined as if the individual was covered by a qualified health plan offered through the Exchange for the entire taxable year)."
In the original "Oz," the wizard voluntarily abandons the yellow brick road, discovers humility and returns to earth. The ending in our version will require an election.
1a)Killing Coal
So much for an 'all of the above' energy strategy.
For three years the Environmental Protection Agency has imposed a de facto ban on new coal-fired power while doing everything it can to harm existing coal plants. But for once there's something good to say about the latest EPA carbon rule: At least the agency was less devious when it formalized the coal ban last week.
The EPA proposed what are known as "new source performance standards" for carbon under the Clean Air Act, which are part of the agency's "endangerment finding" to limit greenhouse gas emissions. To control CO2, utilities will need to install new technology, such as capture-and-sequestration systems that are among the world's most complex and expensive industrial equipment.
But great news: The EPA estimates that the total cost of this rule will be $0. It will have no major effect on the economy. Not a single job will be lost.
How can that be? In its cost estimates, the EPA assumes the U.S. will never complete another coal-fired project. Ever. The agency is conceding that coal development has been shut down as a result of its many new regulations, such as the recent mercury rule and the illegal permitting delays that a federal appeals court slapped down last week.
But there's also a problem. Because the putative "regulatory impact" is zero, there are also no benefits. So why is the environmental lobby applauding the EPA's new rule like a performing seal? Even the EPA itself says the performance standards will apply only to new plants, not the legacy fleet that generates almost half of U.S. electricity. The media were careful to repeat this claim too.
It isn't true. Just as the new rule's fine print reveals that the rules won't apply to the new plants because they'll never be built, it also shows that the rules will put old plants at risk because of another EPA program known as New Source Review.
Whenever a plant upgrades—whether installing a new fan blade or replacing the proverbial toilet seat—it must comply with every rule on the books. So as a utility obeys the mercury rule, say, it will also be caught in the pincer movement of these new carbon performance standards. The green lobby knows this will slowly kill even current coal plants over time.
The problem with carbon capture and storage—apart from costs—is that the technology is still speculative. Even with massive subsidies, not a plant in the world is diverting its CO2 on a commercial scale and injecting it into spent oil and gas reservoirs underground. The Energy Department says it will take 20 years or more to get to scale, and even that prediction has to be balanced against the bureaucracy's lousy track record. As for plants in areas where such geological formations do not exist, well, they could build pipelines, but the White House has a thing about pipelines.
Everyone in Washington including President Obama claims to favor an "all of the above" energy portfolio. As misguided as that is—far better to let markets decide which energy sources to develop—the EPA has now admitted that Mr. Obama doesn't really mean it. Coal is not part of his "all." Voters in swing coal states such as Ohio and West Virginia probably do care about that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin
The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
By SHELBY STEELE
Two tragedies are apparent in the Trayvon Martin case. The first is obvious: A teenager—unarmed and committing no crime—was shot dead. Dressed in a "hoodie," a costume of menace, he crossed paths with a man on the hunt for precisely such clichés of menace. Added to this—and here is the rub—was the fact of his dark skin.
Maybe it was more the hood than the dark skin, but who could argue that the skin did not enhance the menace of the hood at night and in the eyes of someone watching for crime. (Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black though we are only 12% of the population.) Would Trayvon be alive today had he been walking home—Skittles and ice tea in hand—wearing a polo shirt with an alligator logo? Possibly. And does this make the ugly point that dark skin late at night needs to have its menace softened by some show of Waspy Americana? Possibly.
What is fundamentally tragic here is that these two young males first encountered each other as provocations. Males are males, and threat often evokes a narcissistic anger that skips right past reason and into a will to annihilate: "I will take you out!" There was a terrible fight. Trayvon apparently got the drop on George Zimmerman, but ultimately the man with the gun prevailed. Annihilation was achieved.
If this was all there was to it, the Trayvon/Zimmerman story would be no more than a cautionary tale, yet another admonition against the hair-trigger male ego. But this story brought reaction from the White House: "If I had a son he would look like Trayvon," said the president. The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, ubiquitous icons of black protest, virtually battled each other to stand at the bereaved family's side—Mr. Jackson, in a moment of inadvertent honesty, saying, "There is power in blood . . . we must turn a moment into a movement." And then there was the spectacle of black Democrats in Congress holding hearings on racial profiling with Trayvon's parents featured as celebrities.
In fact Trayvon's sad fate clearly sent a quiver of perverse happiness all across America's civil rights establishment, and throughout the mainstream media as well. His death was vindication of the "poetic truth" that these establishments live by. Poetic truth is like poetic license where one breaks grammatical rules for effect. Better to break the rule than lose the effect. Poetic truth lies just a little; it bends the actual truth in order to highlight what it believes is a larger and more important truth.
The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this "truth" has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites.
If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this—a call "to turn the moment into a movement"—it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today's Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America's racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life.
It was a time when standing on the side of the good required true selflessness and so it ennobled people. And this chance to ennoble oneself through a courageous moral stand is what so many blacks and white liberals miss today—now that white racism is such a defeated idea. There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled. So today even the hint of old-fashioned raw racism excites with its potential for ennoblement.
For the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton, for the increasingly redundant civil rights establishment, for liberal blacks and the broader American left, the poetic truth that white racism is somehow the real culprit in this tragedy is redemption itself. The reason Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have become such disreputable figures on our cultural landscape is that they are such quick purveyors of poetic truth rather than literal truth.
The great trick of poetic truth is to pass itself off as the deep and essential truth so that hard facts that refute it must be dismissed in the name of truth. O.J. Simpson was innocent by the poetic truth that the justice system is stacked against blacks. Trayvon was a victim of racist stereotyping—though the shooter never mentioned his race until asked to do so.
There is now a long litany of racial dust-ups—from Tawana Brawley to the Duke University lacrosse players to the white Cambridge police officer who arrested Harvard professor Skip Gates a summer ago—in which the poetic truth of white racism and black victimization is invoked so that the actual truth becomes dismissible as yet more racism.
When the Cambridge cop or the Duke lacrosse players or the men accused of raping Tawana Brawley tried to defend themselves, they were already so stained by poetic truth as to never be entirely redeemed. No matter the facts—whether Trayvon Martin was his victim or his assailant—George Zimmerman will also never be entirely redeemed.
And this points to the second tragedy that Trayvon's sad demise highlights. Before the 1960s the black American identity (though no one ever used the word) was based on our common humanity, on the idea that race was always an artificial and exploitive division between people. After the '60s—in a society guilty for its long abuse of us—we took our historical victimization as the central theme of our group identity. We could not have made a worse mistake.
It has given us a generation of ambulance-chasing leaders, and the illusion that our greatest power lies in the manipulation of white guilt. The tragedy surrounding Trayvon's death is not in the possibility that it might have something to do with white racism; the tragedy is in the lustfulness with which so many black leaders, in conjunction with the media, have leapt to exploit his demise for their own power.
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3)Rocket fired from Egypt hits Israeli city of Eilat
A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.
District police chief Ron Gertner told Israeli radio the rocket had been fired from Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
He said it struck a construction site close to a residential area shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT).
The blast took place as thousands congregated in the resort town for the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Rocket attacks from Egyptian soil are uncommon. Attacks on Eilat and the nearby Jordanian town of Aqaba in 2010 killed one person and injured another four.
Sinai unrest
Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak-Halevy told the Jerusalem Post that the city would function as normal despite the attack.
A wave of unrest has hit the restive Sinai peninsula recently.
Israel says militants have become active in the region since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011.
In August 2011, an armed group crossed the border into Israel from the Sinai peninsula and killed eight Israelis.
Israel blamed Palestinian militants but five Egyptian policemen were killed as Israeli forces pursued the gunmen, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.
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4)Byron Wien: Stocks’ Bull Run Will Continue Through 2012
By Julie Crawshaw
Wall Street strategist Byron Wien says the bull market in stocks will run through the rest of the year as the economy improves and more companies follow Apple’s lead in paying a dividend, CNBC reports.
“I actually thought the S&P 500 could reach 1,500 based on the generally achieved (but not last year) multiple of 15 times and operating earnings of $100,” Wien wrote in a note to clients.
“Estimates have been trimmed somewhat, but, at this point, I still think 1,500 is likely.”
Editor's Note: Did Obama Betray America? Video Reveals Truth
“Over the past three months the pessimistic mood has changed to optimism,” says Wien. “Ordinarily, optimistic sentiment readings presage a market correction, but there are so many investors looking for an opportunity to increase their exposure that even a minor downdraft gets cut short by a flood of buyers," he said.
"This could continue for a while.”
“Over the past few years the work of the Economic Cycle Research Institute has gained some respect,” Wien says. “Its index peaked in April 2010 and April 2011, warning of slower economic activity to follow. The S&P 500 subsequently declined 15 percent in both of those years.”
“The index is currently rising and there are enough positive economic factors influencing it to believe that it won’t peak soon.”
But not all experts are so optimisitc.
Economist Gary Shilling says we're still headed for a recession this year despite the market's recent bullish behavior, the Globe and Mail reports.
"Despite the recent euphoria of investors over U.S. stocks, we believe the economy is likely to weaken as the year progresses, led by renewed consumer retrenchment," Shilling wrote in a note to investors.
Shilling points to a number of unusual indicators that suggest the U.S. economy may be weaker than most people believe. For example, electricity generation is falling rapidly, which this may be because this winter was unusually mild but could also indicate declining economic activity.
© 2012 Moneynews. All rights reserved.
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5)Democrats Responsible for Black Culture of Anger
By Lloyd Marcus
Black twenty-year-old male Danielle Simpson, with two black associates, was interrupted by 84-year-old Geraldine Davidson while in the process of burglarizing Davidson's home. The group duct-taped her mouth, bound her hands and legs, and threw the white former schoolteacher and church organist into the trunk of her own car. Ms. Davidson was severely brutalized before the trio eventually tied a rope attached to a cinderblock around her legs and threw her, still alive, into the river.
Brutal crimes are not unique.
But here is what makes this case remarkable. For seven hours, Simpson rode around in Ms. Davidson's car, stopping for fast food and opening the truck to show off his victim to his black friends. Due to fingerprints left on the car, detectives estimate that around ten people viewed Ms. Davidson in the trunk.
Incredibly, not one person called the police or lobbied to set the poor elderly woman free. What could possibly harden these black youths to such an extent?
Perhaps one of the detectives investigating the case nailed it when he described the black criminals and their friends as part of a "culture of anger."
For the murder of Ms. Davidson, in 2009, Danielle Simpson was executed by lethal injection in Texas.
Fast-forward to the Democrat-led Trayvon Martin rallies across America. If justice were their true motivation, they would allow the case to unfold. To demand that George Zimmerman be arrested without knowing the facts is absurd and irresponsible. The Democrats' obvious purpose for their race rallies is to fuel the eternal flames of their well-nurtured "culture of anger."
Sadly, Democrat efforts to cultivate black anger are bearing much fruit. Before the Trayvon Martin incident, black flash mobs were attacking white strangers across America. The horrific rape/murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom received scant publicity because it was seen as politically incorrect to publicize a beautiful white couple being brutalized by five black thugs.
Exploiting Trayvon Martin to fuel the Democrats' culture of anger, Democrat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush spoke to the House wearing a hoodie. Rush assumed that Martin was racially profiled and said that "just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum." Yet another example of a Democrat jumping the gun to further their storyline before all the facts are in.
Sixties radical Angela Davis faithfully contributed to the Democrats' culture of anger. Davis said Trayvon's story is not unique. According to Davis, blacks are physically attacked by whites all the time. Davis also accused white America of systematic racism against blacks. Will someone please inform Ms. Davis that a black man is leader of the free world solely because millions of white Americans voted for him? At only 12% of the U.S. population, black votes alone could not have put the Obamas in the White House.
The Trayvon Martin incident has afforded the Democrats a golden opportunity to build upon their culture of anger. Al Sharpton said, "Enough is enough!" Jessie Jackson said, "Blacks are under attack!"
So, according to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush; Angela Davis; Al Sharpton; Jessie Jackson; and the majority of Democrat leaders, pundits, and the Democrat-supportive mainstream media, black Americans are routinely physically attacked by whites. Is there any wonder why millions of black Americans are fuming in a culture of anger?
Well, allow me to crush the Democrats' perfect liberal paradigm with the truth. FBI and U.S. Justice Dept. statistics confirm that blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than whites are to commit violence against blacks. Ninety percent of the victims of race crimes are white.
What are the consequences of the Democratic Party keeping black Americans stewing in their well-crafted culture of anger? Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery. Blacks are three times more likely to use a handgun and twice as likely to use a knife. Forty-five percent of black crime is against whites, 43 percent against other blacks, and 10 percent against Hispanics. Who can deny that black criminals are angry at whites and fellow blacks? Blacks are seven times more likely to end up in prison.
Folks, I am not one for frivolous lawsuits. Still, I cannot help contemplating a lawsuit all the same: We the People vs. the Democratic Party for severe damages resulting from them creating and fueling for years a culture of anger in black America.
5a)Man charged with murder in deadly home invasion
Tyrone Woodfork, arrested on murder complaint for beating death of 85-year-old Nancy Strait. Her husband, Bob Strait, 90, was also severely beaten.
By JERRY WOFFORD World Staff Writer
A man accused of assaulting an elderly couple this month was formally charged Monday.
Tyrone Woodfork, 20, was charged in Tulsa County District Court with felony first-degree murder, two counts of robbery with a firearm and first-degree burglary.
Bob and Nancy Strait were assaulted March 14 in their home in the 3300 block of East Virgin Street. Nancy Strait died March 15 from injuries related to the assault. She was also raped. Bob Strait is still recovering from multiple injuries and has been re-admitted to a hospital.
Woodfork was arrested March 15 after witnesses reported seeing the couple’s stolen 2001 Dodge Neon in the 3500 block of East Fourth Street. He remains in the Tulsa Jail without bond.
By JERRY WOFFORD World Staff Writer
(By the way, If Obama had a son, would he look like Tyrone Woodfork? Just asking....)
5b)
White man on life support after hammer attack by two black teens near Sanford, FL
Suspects Julius Bender, and Yahaziel Israel. Do either look like they could be Obama's sons? Photo from Orlando Sentinel.
UPDATE: We have confirmed that the victim is white. A CofCC.org reader received an e-mail reply from the Orlando Sentinel admitting that the race of the victim was censored on purpose, and that it is the policy of the newspaper to censor race in crime stories. Also, shortly after CofCC.org wrote about this crime, the Orlando Sentinel removed the suspects’ mug shots from their online article. They eventual re-posted the mug shots probably because so many CofCC.org readers posted angry comments on their website. The Orlando Sentinel censored the race of the perpetrators in a previous article, even though they were still at large when it was published.
A fifty year old white old man is on life support after a near fatal beating. Police have arrested two black teens. The attack occurred near the community where the Trayvon Martin self-defense shooting took place.
Police say the man was initially attacked while sitting in his car. He was then drug into a wooded area and beaten in the head with a hammer. The suspects fled in the man’s car, which they abandoned a short distance from the crime scene.
The two suspects face charges of attempted first-degree murder, burglary with assault or battery and armed burglary. They are accused of beating the man in the head with a hammer. The suspects are 18 and 19.
The attack took place in Midway, FL, about six miles from where George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense
Think this story will receive 1/1,000th of 1% of the news coverage that Trayvon Martin received?
Even though the police put the race of the victim in the incident report, the media censored this information. A reporter for the Orlando Sentinel confirmed that the race of the victim was omitted on purpose. He says “We don’t generally use the race unless there is a reason.” The Orlando Sentinel removed the suspects’ mug shots shortly after CofCC.org wrote about the attack. Then when CofCC.org readers began posting angry comments on the Orlando Sentinel website, the mug shots went back up a few hours later.
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6)
Geithner: U.S. Fiscal Situation 'Unsustainable'--But We Can't 'Just Cut Things'
U.S. Treasury Sceretary Timothy Geithner (AP photo)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the U.S. government’s long-term fiscal commitments are “unsustainable,” but that they should not be the country’s top priority, because the government still needs to “do things.”
“Our fiscal commitments are unsustainable over the long run, but we cannot put our long-run fiscal challenges above all others,” Geithner told the Economic Club of Chicago on Wednesday. “We have to be willing to do things, not just cut things.”
Geithner has called the U.S. debt burden “unsustainable” many times before, warning that, as federal debt grows exponentially, the burden of sustaining that debt will cause federal spending to skyrocket.
In his speech, Geithner said that the government must take a balanced approach of raising taxes and cutting spending in order to preserve the president’s spending priorities.
“The president has a different strategy for economic growth. He believes that while our long-term fiscal problems are formidable, we can address them over time with a balanced package of reforms that preserve room for investments that will help us grow,” he said.
However, President Obama has produced no such plan, and his most recent budget does not include anything similar to what Geithner described. In fact, Geithner himself has admitted that the administration does not have a definitive plan, telling Congress in February that the administration had no “definitive solution” to the nation’s long-term debt crisis.
“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem,” Geithner told House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). “What we do know is we don't like yours.”
Geithner said that the government still needs to spend money on programs like the Export-Import Bank, transportation, and welfare programs, taking direct aim at Rep. Ryan’s latest budget proposal, calling it a “dark and pessimistic vision of America.”
“Cutting government investments in education and infrastructure and basic science is not a growth strategy. Cutting deeply into the safety net for low-income Americans is not financially necessary and cannot plausibly help strengthen economic growth. Repealing Wall Street reform will not make the economy grow faster -- it would just make us more vulnerable to another crisis.
“This strategy is a recipe to make us a declining power -- a less exceptional nation. It is a dark and pessimistic vision of America.”
Geithner said that “only” government could return the country to economic prosperity, saying that the problems facing the economy had nothing to do with business, but were centered in a lack of economic opportunity and income equality.
“The challenges facing the American economy today are not primarily about the vibrancy or efficiency of the business community. They are about the barriers to economic opportunity and economic security for many Americans and the political constraints that now stand in the way of better economic outcomes.
“These challenges can only be addressed by government action to help speed the recovery and repair the remaining damage from the crisis and reforms and investments to lay the foundation for stronger future growth.”
In order to remedy these problems, Geithner said that the government must take “action” – citing typical liberal refrains of government-led mortgage refinancing and infrastructure spending.
“This means taking action to support growth in the short-term -- such as helping Americans refinance their mortgages and investing in infrastructure projects -- so that we don’t jeopardize the gains our economy has made over the last three years,” he said.
However, the government has already created a veritable alphabet soup of mortgage refinancing programs, doing everything from paying mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance underwater mortgages to offering to cover the losses of private banks who help borrowers refinance into lower interest rates.
It has also spent billions on infrastructure spending, most famously on the so-called shovel ready projects funded by the 2009 stimulus spending package.
Nevertheless, Geithner said that the government would need to spend more money on these and other things -- not just cut taxes and spending.
“And it means making the investments and reforms necessary for a stronger economy in the future,” he said. “A growth strategy for the American economy requires more than promises to cut taxes and spending.”
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