Sustaining victim hood does not come cheap when it comes free. It carries a high price and grows as those who wear their hearts on their sleeve dole out everyone's money.
Doling out dollars is always the progressive solution to every social ill, self inflicted or otherwise. Liberals never think that there should be a quid pro quo or that there are opportunities to teach self worth and independence.
They would rather enslave with printing currency and look in the mirror so they can feel good about themselves while they cripple spirits etc.
Conservatives are mean spirited because we reject such banality. (See 1 below.)
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Important movie this summer called "Rage."
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I sent a mssive to clients explaining why I thought the market could have a Romney Rally later in the year if his prospects brightened and a market reaction should Obama's chances look more promising.
I ended by saying I understod Obama's election the first thime, though I did not vote for him, but I would be mystified if voters did so again. A response from one of my dear friends and long time clients and memo reade:: " You can’t believe that Americans are stupid enough to reelect Obama.
Democracies only work with an educated, enlightened electorate. In 1780 only land owners could vote. Women were largely uneducated back then and could not vote. Slaves could not vote. With “One man, one vote” the 9 Supremes doomed American Democracy. We now have a vast uneducated, unenlightened electorate who have figured out that they can vote themselves “benefits” and use the government to take other people’s property for redistribution. We have politicians who line their own pockets while staying in power by catering to the unwashed majority.
YES. Obama could very easily get a second term. He will carry both the black and women’s vote. Add the New England and California liberals together with New York, and you have a good start to winning an election. Just wait until the anointed one begins to tell old people that the Republicans will destroy Social Security.
I loved America."
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Stealing elections is nothing new. It is simply more openly flagrant.
Would not be surprised if tomorrow's election in Wisconsin was full of fraudulent votes and other voting irregularities.(See 3 below.)
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Synchronized slow down coming according to PIMCO head. (See 3 below.)
More commentary on the market. (See 3a below.)
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These comments regarding the mood of The Supreme Court support my often stated view that Obama's dissing of Court Members attending his SOTU Address would , one day, come back to hunt him. Sunsequently, his haughty actions regarding operating outside the intent of the Constitution has not gone unnoticed as well. (See 4 below.)
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Today I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
When we lived in Atlanta we actively supported Saxby's first run for the Senate and our son worked on his campaign during his summer break. I have not seen Saxby since moving to Savannah, so it was good being with him again. I mentioned he has done a great job of remaining fit and promised I would ask my son to send him a package of Sweet Tammy treats.
I am going to post notes from a friend who also attended and then will make some comments and observations of my own.
My Friend's Comments: "Saxby Chambliss in savannah Monday June 4
Saxby Chambliss, U.S. Senator from Georgia, was at the Chatham County Republican Party Headquarters on Monday June 4 to get feedback on key issues of concern for Georgia Republicans from the Savannah area.
Key questions dealt with healthcare reform and fiscal issues.
If ObamaCare is struck down by the Supreme Court in June, does the Republican Party have a replacement system to articulate to the voters who are not really happy with the current system? Answer: Not right now, but they are working on programs to retain what’s good about the current system while meeting the public’s need for change. (And even some parts of Obamascare that make sense. My addition.)
Why do fiscal solutions, always talk about cutting the increase in Federal spending, instead of actual real cuts, e.g. like an across the board 10% cut in federal employees.
He said there is a freeze now on federal hiring, but as for actual cuts Republicans don’t cureently have the votes. The Senate actually is not doing much as the Democrats control the agenda.
He was optimistic on Republicans regaining the Senate, as they only need to get six of the 23 open Democratic seats. He didn’t think the Republicans could retain retiring Olympia Snow’s seat in Maine, so the Republicans will start out at 46 versus 54.
Massachusetts is still too liberal to count on retaining a Republican seat there, but Scott Brown was running a good campaign against the possible descendant of Pocahontas there, so it is a real possibility.
Chambliss, also believes we ultimately need to raise revenue because entitlements can’t realistically be cut too much, without losing the electorate. The real question is how. A balance budget amendment is too easy to thwart. One option is to designate any increased revenue due to economic expansion as only applicable to retiring the national debt or for tax reductions.
Tax reform is clearly the answer – a simplified flat tax – with eliminating almost all exemptions. Even the mortgage interest credit reform is possible, but not too radical, as the home building industry has clout.
Cutting the corporate tax to 25% would help, with eliminating almost all corporate welfare. However, he conceded that reducing it to 9% or even eliminating it, via the Fair Tax, would be even better. He conceded the FairTax was the best solution but hard to achieve, because the opposition can easily demagogue it to the average voter."
My Comments and observations:
1) I asked Saxby to express his thoughts about defense budgeting and cuts as well as his views pertaining to the residue of unresolved foreign policy issues Obama might leave, should he be defeated, for Romney to wrestle with, and the thrust of my question was because, though every president promises to do wonders domestically, he gets sidetracked and undercut handling foreign problems.
Saxby stated Pentagon spending was bloated, we needed to cut and $400 billion spread over ten years was doable. The $600 billion additional sequester would be devastating and he agreed with me that our current military status was deteriorating rapidly. We not only had the smallest number of naval ships since he has served in government but the amount of money to replenish was enormous.
As for unresolved foreign problems being deterrent hangovers he did not believe Obama would take any action against Iran and/or Syria. He sad he would not be surprised if he got a call one evening that Israel had attacked Iran and Obama would find out coincident when he would.
He agreed with me that an attack on Iran's electric grid as I believe will be part of Israel's strategy to darken, disrupt and impede the nation's nuclear program could set it back but not eliminate their ability.
Saxby is not a bomb thrower and, in fact, has been accused by partisans of being too cozy at times with Democrats. His view of Obama is that he went on vacation last November and nothing gets done in D.C. without the president being behind policy initiatives.
He started his comments by stating this election was truly a watershed one, though all elections are some times framed accordingly. This time because we could not continue along the current spending path. We were at the highest level of GDP - 25% - and the lowest of income from taxation 14%. This gap had to be closed and he said it would take three things - tax simplification and changes, actions which would restore confidence in economic growth, ie. reduction of regulatory restraints etc. which would result in greater revenue as business began to gear up and three, you would have to have actual cuts in spending and that meant pain. The latter, unless Republicans had the votes, would be impossible to achieve because when they were the majority, but did not have 60 votes, they had to invite Democrats to join and that usually meant more spending to bring them on board.
It was obvious the small audience were frustrated with the prospects of more spending, the prospect that even with Republicans in the majority the chance for real cuts was problematical at best unless Republicans had 60 or more Senate seats. Saxby acknowledged Republicans had been guilty but he did believe the mood change was more than just surface.
Saxby is a rational Senator, definitely conservative but practical and realistic. Overall I believe he serves our State well as does his co partner - Isaakson.
As i wrote in a previous memo Romney needs to tell voters he cannot accomplish the job unless he has a Congress he can work with and that means both a Senate and House controlled with enough of like mind the log jam will be broken.
Saxby emphasized that whatever pre-election strategy and plans were being devised by Republican members of Congress they must be in sync with Romney.
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1)
Where Did All the Billions of Dollars Given to the Palestinian Authority Go?
By Barry Rubin
Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad says that his regime is short of funds. And meanwhile a reader asks me:
"Can you please explain to me why 20 years after Oslo and billions in dollars in foreign aid, the Palestinian Authority (PA) still has not built modern hospitals? Or rather, why do the donor countries pour money down the PA drain without expecting even some face-saving results?"
Good question. Short answer: Swiss bank accounts. In other words, a huge amount of the money has been stolen. There is nothing more distasteful than rulers of a people--especially a poor people--who complain about their subjects' suffering at the same time that they profit from it. Of course, when some foreign observer sees Palestinians in poor conditions they blame Israel, thus furthering the cause of the same leaders who, -by their intransigent policies, ensure that the situation continues.
The personal wealth of PA "president" Mahmoud Abbas is estimated at $100 million. Add onto that millions of dollars for a large number of PA and Fatah senior officials along with the hundreds of millions of dollars that Yasir Arafat carried off and you get the idea. Remember, too, that this total of about a half-dozen billion dollars has gone to an entity ruling just over two million people over the last twenty years.
I have seen the villas of the PLO leaders in Tunis and the PA leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I have followed in detail the saga not only of Yasir Arafat's personal stash but also how he used corruption to sustain his political control. And his heirs mostly continue to run the Palestinian movement.
It is easy to forget that the PA has existed for 18 years and governed virtually every Palestinian there starting about 16 years ago. That's a long time. And while Israel can be accused of harassment and putting up various roadblocks, its part in this problem has been limited. Indeed, Israeli action that have hurt the PA's economy have arisen in direct response to episodes of terrorism, violent confrontation, and all-out wars started by the PA itself.
Foreign donors have learned that no matter how great the humanitarian benefit of any project it will only get done if they pay for it and supervise it directly. One notorious example was the effort to build a better sewer system in the Gaza Strip (before the Hamas takeover) which was delayed for years while the PA did nothing to help its own people.
PA leaders have received more aid money per person than anyone else in history and yet the results have been remarkably unimpressive. The leaders have looted the money and used it as political pay-offs to buy patronage. By patronage I mean paying off the proportionately huge security forces that guard the PA and provide jobs for its supporters and benefits for political supporters.
Note that in recent years the aid money has gone mostly to the West Bank only, though some of it is used to pay PA employees in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to keep them loyal even if these people just stay at home. In other words, the level of aid has stayed the same but the number of people being supported generally has been cut in half.
Yet the PA cannot provide jobs for most of its people or build good institutions. Luxury apartments are going up but not hospitals, schools, and infrastructure improvements. Even though the PA economy is doing well--how could it not do so given the tidal wave of aid?--the regime cannot even enforce its own law forbidding Palestinians from working on Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Thousands do.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is respected in the West as a relatively honest, professional, and moderate guy who tries to stop the thievery. He is totally powerless in political terms. The leaders of Fatah have been working endlessly to get rid of Fayyad so they can have unrestricted access to the loot again, while Hamas also wants to fire him. Only the demands of the Western money donors have kept him in office. But for how much longer will that be true?
Why does the world not pay attention to this massive theft, inefficiency, and misappropriation of funds?
Simple.
--The money is not being given for development purposes but for political purposes to keep the PA going and to make sure that Hamas doesn't take over the West Bank. That's why President Barack Obama, with Israeli government support, has just overridden Congress to release even more U.S. aid to the PA. He also has not objected to the PA using that money to pay its former bureaucrats in the Gaza Strip, thus indirectly benefitting Hamas, too.
--Giving money to the PA supposedly supports the cause of peace and therefore is considered sacrosanct in the West, even though the PA isn't negotiating for peace. From a cynical Western leadership standpoint it can be said that at least the funding keeps things relatively quiet in the face of lots of other troublesome issues in the region. Thus, they overlook the PA's partnership deal with Hamas--which is not working out so well anyway--and remained passive until the very end about the PA's violation of its own commitments to seek unilateral independence at the UN.
--The left-controlled media and academia don't like Israel and generally refuse to criticize the PA because it is allegedly the "moderate,' 'peace-loving," "good guy" and victim. The Palestinians, after all, are non-Christian, non-Western, and--in the bizarre parody of reality prevalent today, "non-white."
And so the Western taxpayers give the money, the PA leaders steal or use the money for political purposes, and the average Palestinian suffers more from this situation than from the largely extinct "Israeli occupation." Then their suffering--despite their leaders having received more aid money per capita than any entity in history and being far less than that of people in six dozen countries--is used to indict Israel. If, as seems to be true, Fatah has finally pried control over the money from the hands of Fayyad, whose sin has been that he was too honest, the situation would get much worse.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Here are some references on these issues:
Arafat Swiss Bank Account
In July 2002, Yediot Ahranot ran a piece on PA embezzlement, claimed Abbas had funneled 70 million of PA funds to European banks via his brother Ahmad's bank accounts. In July 2003, Ahmad was one of the primary suspects in $500 million fraud case, but he managed to talk himself out of it. http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/09/20084913375183716.html
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Feds order Florida to halt ongoing push to remove ineligible voters from rolls
By Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla – Federal authorities are demanding that Florida halt its push to remove ineligible voters from the voter rolls.
In a move that comes just months before the state could play a pivotal role in the 2012 presidential election, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that the state is violating federal law in its effort to identify and remove ineligible voters.
The state's effort has already come under fire from local election supervisors who belong to both political parties, as well as Democratic members of Congress and voting rights groups.
Chris Cate, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State, said state officials were still reviewing the letter, but hinted Florida may fight federal authorities.
"Bottom line is we are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot," Cate said.
Florida, at the urging of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, began looking for non-U.S. citizens on its voter rolls last year. An initial search turned up as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be U.S. citizens.
Earlier this year state officials sent to local election officials a much smaller list of more than 2,600 voters and asked supervisors to start the process to remove them from the rolls.
Supervisors, however, have loudly questioned the accuracy of the list, with one GOP supervisor going on Twitter to show the picture of a U.S. passport of one voter found on the list. Earlier this week two Democratic members of Congress held a press conference with a World War II veteran whose citizenship had been questioned.
Federal officials said that the procedures the state is using to identify non-U.S. citizens has not been reviewed to make sure they are not discriminatory. Florida must get approval for changes in voting procedures because five counties are still covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
T. Christian Herren, chief of the voting section of the civil rights division, also said that removing voters from the rolls less than 90 days before a federal election also appears to violate federal law. Florida's primary election is Aug. 14.
Herren's letter gives Florida until June 6 to tell federal authorities whether they plan to halt the purge.
Voting rights groups who had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene praised the decision.
"We commend the attorney general of the United States Eric Holder for ensuring that the right to vote, the fundamental pillar of our democracy is protected for all American citizens," said Advancement Project co-director Penda Hair in a statement.
The intervention of the U.S. Department of Justice came the same day that Florida officials were trying to get another federal agency to help the state verify the citizenship status of thousands of voters.
Secretary of State Kent Detzner wants the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to let Florida have access to an immigration database maintained by the federal government.
"I hope you will understand the importance of making sure the vote of an eligible voter is not diminished by the vote of ineligible voter and provide my department the access it needs," Detzner wrote to Secretary Janet Napolitano.
A Department of Homeland Security official said Thursday that the federal agency is aware of Florida's request but that there a "number of legal and operational challenges" to granting the state access.
Detzner in his letter said that while Florida's initial list was "credible and reliable" he acknowledged that his department's ability to "validate a person's legal status as up to date was limited." The first list was drawn by comparing driver's licenses to voter registration lists. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles initially planned to double-check its information with the federal database but has since been told that is not permitted.
Even without access to the federal database Cate had said the state is likely to circulate additional names to election supervisors in the weeks ahead.
But some election supervisors are already saying that they will ignore any additional names given to them by the Florida Department of State.
"It's illegal under federal law and I'm going to follow the law," said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/01/feds-order-florida-to-halt-ongoing-push-to-remove-thousands-voters-from-rolls/#ixzz1wq ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3)Pimco’s El-Erian: Global Economies Enter 'Synchronized Slowdown' By Forrest Jones May's dismal jobs report, which showed the U.S. economy picked up a net 69,000 jobs, serves as fresh evidence the world's major economies are slowing in tandem, says Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco, manager of the world's largest bond fund. The U.S., Europe and even once-hot emerging markets are cooling, while demand for safe-haven assets like U.S. and German government debt is soaring, meaning investors are parking their cash to ride out a pending downturn. "The numbers also speak to a synchronized slowdown that is now taking hold of the global economy — a phenomenon that is being signaled by virtually every other data release out of Europe, the U.S. and emerging countries," El-Erian writes in a CNBC guest blog. Europe is going from bad to worse, with the fate of Greece's political landscape unknown ahead of June 17 elections. Central banks, meanwhile, continue to keep interest rates low and monetary policy loose, while debts continue to worry in the U.S., where tax cuts will end at the end of this year at the same time as automatic spending cuts kick in, a combination that could siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy. Plus no one country appears willing to take the lead and try and push the global economy through to better times, and investors are likely to continue fleeing risk. "All this speaks to continued uncertainty and volatility — economic, financial, political and social. Since the world starts naturally long risk assets, we could well see more investors seeking less risky asset allocations, including cash in what they deem as 'safe jurisdictions,'" El-Erian writes. "In the process, valuations — for bonds, commodities, currencies, and equities — could well diverge for a while from what many deem to be historically fair valuations." "As Will Rogers is said to have observed decades ago, investors should be concerned with the return of their money and not just the return on their money." Other experts agree that the weak U.S. jobs numbers reflect a growing sentiment that the U.S. economy is not as insulated from the European debt crisis as once thought, especially considering the debt burns hampering U.S. recovery. "The U.S. is not an island. What happens abroad matters here," says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, according to Reuters. "It is difficult for anyone to commit to hire when growth remains subdued, and our fiscal problems both at home and abroad appear to be compounding.
3a)
Experts: Massive Summer Stock-Market Plunge Coming Again
Stocks are poised to tank this summer on growing fears the U.S. is headed for a recession amid the dismal employment data, experts say.
Even if the U.S. does avoid a downturn, the possibilities of such are growing, which will send equities plunging. "In the last two summers, the final nail in the equities coffin, the thing that pushed it was a double dip scare. We do think the market is going to increase expectations of that in the coming week,” Barry Knapp, head of U.S. equity portfolio strategy at Barclays, tells CNBC, referring to a double-dip recession, when the economy sinks into a downturn, recovers a bit and then contracts anew. Monetary stimulus, technically known as quantitative easing, sees the Federal Reserve taking unorthodox steps to spur growth such as buying bonds held by banks to flood the economy with liquidity to encourage hiring. "There’s no question the economy is still struggling and still struggling a lot … I’m starting to fear summer," says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, CNBC adds. "I remember a time when I was a kid and I liked summer. It’s now gotten to where in the last five years, summer is the time everybody falls apart, and we’ve gotten into the pattern, particularly in the last three years where we start out optimistic about the economy and then it falls apart." Other market watchers note the U.S. may repeat its 2010 and 2011 performance by growing well at first and stalling in the second half of the year, but will avoid a contraction. "I don't think the slowdown will be any more consequential than the past two years," said John Ryding, a former Federal Reserve researcher who is chief economist at RDQ Economics LLC in New York, according to Bloomberg. Household debts are down, banks are healthy and corporate earnings continue to weather the storm. "There are positives out there in the economy. We'll avoid a recession," Ryding says.
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According to sources who watch the inner workings of the federal government, a smack-down of Barack Obama by the US Supreme Court may be inevitable.
Ever since Obama assumed the office of President, critics have hammered him on a number of Constitutional issues. Critics have complained that much, if not all of Obama's major initiatives run headlong into Constitutional roadblocks on the power of the federal government. Obama certainly did not help himself in the eyes of the Court when he used the venue of the State of the Union address early in the year to publicly flog the Court over its ruling that the First Amendment grants the right to various organizations to run political ads during the time of an election. The tongue-lashing clearly did not sit well with the Court, as demonstrated by Justice Sam Alito, who publicly shook his head and stated under his breath, 'That's not true,' when Obama told a flat-out lie concerning the Court's ruling.
As it has turned out, this was a watershed moment in the relationship between the executive and the judicial branches of the federal government. Obama publicly declared war on the court, even as he blatantly continued to propose legislation that flies in the face of every known Constitutional principle upon which this nation has stood for over 200 years.
Obama has even identified Chief Justice John Roberts as his number one enemy, that is, apart from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and so on. And it is no accident that the one swing-vote on the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy, stated recently that he has no intention of retiring until 'Obama is gone.' Apparently, the Court has had enough. The Roberts Court has signaled, in a very subtle manner, of course, that it intends to address the issues about which Obama critics have been screaming to high heaven. A ruling against Obama on any one of these important issues could potentially cripple the Administration. Such a thing would be long overdue.
First, there is ObamaCare, which violates the Constitutional principle barring the federal government from forcing citizens to purchase something. And no, this is not the same thing as states requiring drivers to purchase car insurance, as some of the intellectually-impaired claim. The Constitution limits the FEDERAL government, not state governments, from such things, and further, not everyone has to drive, and thus, a citizen could opt not to purchase car insurance by simply deciding not to drive a vehicle. In the ObamaCare world, however, no citizen can 'opt out.'
Second, sources state that the Roberts court has quietly accepted information concerning discrepancies in Obama's history that raise serious questions about his eligibility for the office of President. The charge goes far beyond the birth certificate issue. This information involves possible fraudulent use of a Social Security number in Connecticut , while Obama was a high school student in Hawaii . ..
And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Third, several cases involving possible criminal activity, conflicts of interest, and pay-for-play cronyism could potentially land many Administration officials, if not Obama himself, in hot water with the Court. Frankly, in the years this writer has observed politics, nothing comes close to comparing with the rampant corruption of this Administration, not even during the Nixon years. Nixon and the Watergate conspirators look like choirboys compared to the jokers that populate this Administration.
In addition, the Court will eventually be forced to rule on the dreadful decision of the Obama DOJ suing the state of Arizona . That, too, could send the Obama doctrine of open borders to an early grave, given that the Administration refuses to enforce federal law on illegal aliens.
And finally, the biggie that could potentially send the entire house of cards tumbling in a free-fall is the latest revelation concerning the Obama-Holder Department of Justice and its refusal to pursue the New Black Panther Party. The group was caught on tape committing felonies by attempting to intimidate Caucasian voters into staying away from the polls. A whistle-blower who resigned from the DOJ is now charging Holder with the deliberate refusal to pursue cases against Blacks, particularly those who are involved in radical hate-groups, such as the New Black Panthers, who have been caught on tape calling for the murder of white people and their babies. This one is a biggie that could send the entire Administration crumbling--that is, if the Justices have the guts to draw a line in the sand at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
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