My computer guru, Paul LaFlamme, has arranged for my booklet to be available in book form in several weeks. It is currently available in PDF format (see below.)
Testimonials:
Dick, I read your book this weekend. I hardly know where to start. You did an excellent job of putting into one short book a compendium of the virtues which only a relatively short time ago all Americans believed. It’s a measure of how far we have fallen that many Americans, perhaps a majority of Americans, no longer believe in what we once considered truisms. I think your father would have agreed with every word, but the party he supported no longer has such beliefs.
I would like to buy multiple copies of your booklet..
You did a great job. I know your parents would have been proud and that your family today is proud.
Mike
You wrote a great book. The brevity is one of its strong points and I know it was hard to include that in and still keep it brief. Your father in haste once wrote an overly long letter to our client, then said in the last sentence, “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
"
Dick,
I indeed marvel at how much wisdom you have been able to share with so few words. Not too unlike the experience in reading the Bible. I feel that with each read of "A Conservative Capitalist Offers:…." one will gain additional knowledge and new insights…
Regards,
Larry"
"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's Youth Born and Yet To Be Born"
By Dick Berkowitz - Non Expert
I wrote this booklet because I believe a strong country must rest on a solid family unit.Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."
I hope this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.
Please Buy My Booklet - Half The Proceeds Go To "The Wounded Warrior Project!"
You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com/book that you can download and read on your computer, or even print out if you want.
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Biden reveals Obama's plan regarding raising taxes. See 1 below.)
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Barry Rubin speculates on what an Obama re election would mean for Israel.
With a friend like Obama who needs an enemy? Ah, but one need not be prejudice because the same would be true for America. (See 2 below.)
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Obama has become the modern day Moses . He made employment numbers recede. (See 3 below)
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A lair of lies: "Video: A 13 Minute Video Every Voter Should Watch
Oct 03, 2012 02:35 pm | Daniel Noe
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In a previous memo I made pretty much the same point. Media and press bias worked as a disservice both to Obama and to America but then that is what Affirmative Action is all about.
Ignore competency and focus on racial preference. To make up for past sins commit new ones!
(See 4 below.)
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Iran uprising having impact on Israel's tactical thinking? No one in their right mind would prefer war so when a positive development occurs it is not unnatural for it to cause even the more belligerent to pull back. The problem is at least two fold:
a) Does the triggering event have real legs and b) How long does one wait for the trigger event to play out while Iran pursuit of nuclear capability continues unabated. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Biden: Yes, We Want to Raise Taxes by $1 Trillion
Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged Thursday that he and President Barack Obama want to raise $1 trillion in taxes on the wealthy as part of a plan to let some Bush-era tax cuts expire, giving Republicans fresh fodder to criticize the Democratic ticket just days after the vice president said the middle class has been buried during the past four years.
“On top of the trillions of dollars in spending that we have already cut, we’re going to ask the wealthy to pay more. My heart breaks. Come on man,” Biden said, during a stop in the battleground state of Iowa.
Biden said Romney and other Republicans often say ‘Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.’ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.”
Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Romney, said Biden’s comment revealed an uncomfortable truth for Democrats.
“Fresh off admitting that America’s middle class has been ‘buried’ over the last four years, Vice President Biden went a step further today and fully embraced the president’s job-killing tax increases. The choice facing Americans in this election gets clearer every day,” Williams said.
Just Tuesday, Biden said that middle class has been “buried” during the past four years, a statement that Republicans immediately seized upon as an unwitting indictment of the Obama administration. It is all part of a pattern in which Republicans have characterized the former U.S. senator as a gaffe-prone liability for Obama on the campaign trail, trying to undermine his role as a vocal, effective surrogate.
But Biden is taking aim of his own, saying that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney renounced his own tax cut during Wednesday’s presidential debate.
At a campaign stop in Iowa, where early voting has already begun, Biden said Romney and running mate Paul Ryan have proposed a $5 trillion tax cut that is the “centerpiece” of their campaign.
During the debate, Romney denied he plans to cut taxes, saying an across-the-board cut in tax rates will be offset by the elimination of unspecified deductions and exemptions.
“Last night we found out (Romney) doesn’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I guess he outsourced that to China,” Biden quipped.
While reviewers generally said Romney scored more political points than Obama during the first presidential debate Wednesday night, Biden insisted the president had done well.
Obama “put forward a clear, specific plan” during the debate, Biden told about 650 people at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. But he said Obama had trouble figuring out Romney’s positions on issues.
“It’s hard to keep up” with Romney and Ryan, Biden said. “You never know what game Gov. Romney is going to come with.”
While many of his attacks were delivered with a smile, Biden said Romney’s flip-flops on taxes and failure to offer specifics raised questions about his character.
“Ultimately, presidential races, unlike any other race, get down to character. They get down to the character of the man or woman and the character of their convictions: Do they mean what they say and will they do what they say,” Biden said. “What I find fascinating, though, is that on nearly every issue, they don’t tell you what they are for anymore, and they deliberately misrepresent what they say we are for. You saw it again last night in the debate.”
Biden’s visit to Iowa was his sixth this year. Obama won Iowa in 2008, and polls show him with a narrow lead this year.
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2)
What Does Israel Do If Obama Is Reelected?
If Obama is reelected, for the first time in four decades, every Israeli leader would understand that the country could not depend on the United States as a protector. In fact, the Obama administration could be counted on to make things worse.
“Don’t Panic”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I’m going to try to analyze what Israeli strategy might look like if Obama were to be reelected. I don’t want to write a partisan piece — predicting every type of the most horrible disaster and open hatred from the White House — but a serious analytic effort. This involves speculation, but policymakers have to develop the most likely scenarios in order to plan ahead.
Let me start, though, with a joke. An asteroid hits the ocean, producing a giant tidal wave so powerful that within an hour all land will be covered by water. Television networks put on a variety of politicians, alleged wise people, and religious figures to speak with the doomed population. The rabbi among them explains: “All I can say is that you have one hour to learn to breathe underwater.”
That is Israel’s mission. To survive a second Obama term brought on it by the American — including a large majority of American Jewish — voters.
The first thing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does is send a warm message of congratulations to the reelected president. He is going to be president for four years, like it or not, and Israeli leaders will work hard to minimize any antagonism. At least with Netanyahu strongly entrenched, Obama will understand that he cannot subvert the Israeli government to get some other prime minister more to his liking (i.e., someone ready to make unilateral concessions in exchange for getting nothing in return).
So with that basis established, here’s Israel’s Obama problem divided into four issues:
1. Maintaining bilateral relations
Israel’s government needs to ensure the continuation of U.S. aid, including assistance for anti-missile systems, intelligence sharing and other forms of cooperation. Unless Obama decides to go all-out on an anti-Israel vendetta, he is likely to see this issue as a low-priority one. All he has to do is nothing.
Here, Israel’s contacts with Congress and the Defense Department will be critical. The Democrats in Congress will have to show whether they still do actually support Israel — and a majority of them do — by joining with the Republicans in backing continued aid and cooperation. The Defense Department has generally good relations with Israel and also benefits from Israel’s technological advances.
Here, Israel’s contacts with Congress and the Defense Department will be critical. The Democrats in Congress will have to show whether they still do actually support Israel — and a majority of them do — by joining with the Republicans in backing continued aid and cooperation. The Defense Department has generally good relations with Israel and also benefits from Israel’s technological advances.
There are real prospects for maintaining bilateral relations on their current level. Obama can be expected to mistreat Netanyahu and to say things that totally misunderstand Israel and insult its interests, but when you are a country of 7.5 million allied with a superpower, your leaders have to take such behavior, as long as it remains verbal.
2. Keep Obama from damaging Israel’s situation in regard to the Palestinians
Obama will have to decide whether to put an emphasis on the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” meaning pressure on Israel to make concessions while the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) doesn’t keep its commitments and makes no compromises. He might decide to do so based on his ideological predispositions.
Yet there is some evidence that Obama won’t behave this way. His failure on peacemaking is the only such defeat he has ever acknowledged. He knows it is hard and the administration almost certainly knows — though it will never admit it publicly — that what Mitt Romney said was right. The P.A. doesn’t want to make a peace deal with Israel.
Moreover, there have been interesting developments regarding the main strategic motive for the idea that a peace deal is necessary as soon as possible and requires pressure on Israel. This factor is called “linkage” — the concept that bashing Israel and getting the Palestinians a state as soon as possible will solve all of America’s other problems in the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, Muslims and Arabs will love the United States and — more importantly in one man’s mind — Obama.
What’s important here is not just that linkage doesn’t work, but that this reality has never before been so obvious. With anti-Americanism and crisis coming from all directions — Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and so on — will Obama see bashing Israel as a panacea?
There’s no question that during his first term, especially the first two years or so, Obama really believed this and tried very ineptly to institute such a strategy. Yet he knows it didn’t work. At any rate, if faced with such a situation, the Israeli government is quite capable of offering cooperation, giving in on relatively unimportant issues, stalling for time and essentially calling the P.A.’s bluff. In the end, nothing will happen.
The dangers of an Obama second term certainly exist regarding the first two points, but it is the second pair of issues that are really and truly dangerous.
3. How would Obama handle the regional Arab situation and threats from revolutionary Islamist forces that he has helped to unleash and even to put into power?
In my view, the number one danger Israel faces is not Iran, but Egypt.
In my view, the number one danger Israel faces is not Iran, but Egypt.
A radical regime now exists in Cairo that wants to wipe Israel off the map, is willing to help Hamas — which rules the Gaza Strip — on that project, and might get directly involved itself.
During Obama’s second term, Israel is likely to face sporadic attacks from the Gaza Strip that periodically it will have to retaliate against. Obama will remain aloof on this problem, which isn’t good but is manageable. The real difficulty is whether Hamas launches an all-out attack as it did in late 2008.
But this time it would have some level of Egyptian support. Such help could take many forms: Hamas headquarters, weapons storehouses and other facilities being moved onto Egyptian territory so that Israel cannot touch them; a massive flow of arms, weapons, and money across the border financed in part by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood; an influx of Egyptian volunteers to fight alongside Hamas, whose death would lead to howls of revenge in Egypt; and other such measures.
Beyond this, Egypt could escalate into allowing — even if denying responsibility — cross-border terrorist attacks on Israel. Attempted cross-border attacks are already routine and the Egyptian government does nothing to suppress the groups involved. It is not inconceivable that from the mass demands of Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood forces, by the revolutionary enthusiasm of the regime and by ideological hysteria, Egypt could end up in a war with Israel. That might happen if it proved necessary to send Israeli military forces into the Gaza Strip, as happened in 2009.
The Egyptian military is no longer a bulwark against this because its leadership has been dismantled, a collapse partly due to Obama’s policy.
Israel cannot depend on the United States to press sufficiently hard for enforcement of the treaty or to deter Egypt. As a result, Israel will have to be ready to fight such a smaller or bigger war by itself. If a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime were to be in power in Syria, it would join in. The only bright spot is that other Arab countries would stand aside. Perhaps even Hezbollah might content itself with the firing of some symbolic rockets rather than have Lebanon flattened in a “Sunni war.”
In fact, for the first time in almost forty years, under Obama Israel could not depend on U.S. support or protection against any Arab threat or aggression. Israel would just have to take care of itself. But the key issue: would Obama send arms — perhaps pressed by Congress and public opinion even if he didn’t face election — or would he play neutral and just do nothing while he pursued useless diplomatic efforts?
4. Iran
Briefly, there is no way that Obama would attack Iran or support an Israeli attack no matter what Tehran does. American sanction efforts would continue hand in hand with Iran going full speed ahead on obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel would still attack Iranian facilities if this were deemed necessary for national survival, but the bar on what constituted acceptable reasons for attacking would be raised.
Israel could also not depend on U.S. support in the aftermath. On the contrary, Obama could be outraged and blame Israel for terror attacks on Americans, the spiraling cost of oil, and other resulting problems. After all, he doesn’t face reelection — he can tame the pro-Israel Democrats with a few crumbs, and he wouldn’t care what the public opinion polls said.
If necessary, Israel would have to take that risk. But how does one define “necessary”?
So Obama’s reelection would be a serious problem for Israel, not a catastrophe or an end to the state. But for the first time in four decades, every Israeli leader would understand that the country could not depend on the United States as a protector. In fact, the Obama administration could be counted on to make things worse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Saint Obama Performs another Miracle by Making Unemployment Recede
Magically and providentially, Obama has enjoyed the largest one-month drop in unemployment since he got elected thanks to the greatest single month of job creation since 1983- all just weeks before ballots hit for his reelection bid.
“The U.S. unemployment rate dropped below 8 percent for the first time since the month President Barack Obama took office,” reports the Associated Press “a surprising lift for both the economy and his re-election hopes in the final weeks of the campaign.”
Yeah; we’re all REAL surprised by this.
According to the AP, Jack Welch, the retired former CEO of General Electric, said on Twitter: "Unbelievable jobs numbers ... these Chicago guys will do anything ... can't debate so change numbers."
For those of you who doubted Obama’s godly credentials, shame on you.
Obama is continuously making miracles happen, like the time he killed Osama bin Laden just by staring at him; or that other time he produced 7 whole, new states while on the campaign trail.
This latest miracle of miracles has Obama creating a precipitous rise in part-time workers suddenly finding employment. Talk about loaves and fishes!
Almost 600,000 more people found part-time work than one month ago, a stunning 7.25 percent increase in part-time work month-over-month.
And how do government economists provide this miracle data for Saint Obama?
By polling.
Yes, the same methodology that told us that Scott Walker would lose his recall bid; the same methodology that has Democrats showing up at the polls by 7-11 point advantages in turnout and have Obama up 7 points on Romney. Yes, this same methodology has produced stunning job creation results, just in the nick of time.
Math? No. A miracle.
You can almost feel Pharaoh’s Army closing in on him, and all Obama has to do his raise the staff from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the red sea of unemployment recedes.
Hey, maybe those 600,000 part-timers were just all extras for Obama’s movie Wag the Dog Part II- Out of Egypt.
It’s kind of getting embarrassing, though isn’t it?
The Fed throws the Hail Mary pass with QE4Ever! just a week ago because they are worried about the employment situation, and all the while we have been producing wonderfully robust, phantom jobs- in record numbers.
You’d have to go back to February of 2009 to see the number of part-time workers increase at higher rate than suddenly has been produced by our backwards economy in the last month. And the 2009 numbers were produced by hiring for the U.S. Census and the U.S. government.
Beyond February 2009, part-time jobs once posted a gain of 6.5 percent and once a gain of 5.5 percent under Obama. And U-6 -- total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force- is still unchanged at 14.7 percent.
This robust hiring activity seems to be leading to high gas prices too.
As Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge says, On This Day In History, Gas Prices Have Never Been Higher (Again)
While we are told to assume it is entirely transitory and speculation-driven, the price to drive your brand new GM Truck (leased for 30 years, interest-only via your EBT card) has never been higher. Do not worry though since this is only temporarily going to mean 'little Timmy' needs to go without food.
But the unemployment data sure makes for a good headline in any event.
A miracle of a headline.
So, Democrats can resume praying…now.
Obama was not ready last night, he has never been ready, and he will never be ready to be the leader this country needs, for he is the first president to have never been vetted.
My own mother observed that "it's the media's fault that Obama lost the debate. Watching the debate reminded me of a child set out on his own after being raised by parents who failed to teach him responsibility and accountability and let the child think that he was above being corrected or disciplined. This was the time that Chris Matthews could not jump in and tell the people what Obama meant to say." Indeed, Obama has been brought up by an adoring and overindulgent liberal media who have coddled him for the last eight years on everything from his appearance to Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and his caught-on-a-live-microphone secret handshake with Russian President Medvedev, where he promised that he will have "more flexibility after the election" to work with the Russians on missile defense. Additionally, we have the age-old public displays of media affection, including Dave Brooks' awe over the crease in Obama's pants and the "thrill up" Chris Matthews' leg. With a sycophantic media like this, who needs accountability?
Until Univision took Obama to task over his promise on immigration, Americans had rarely seen President Obama being held accountable by the media to match his word with his record. An unsteady, flustered, and out-of-gas Obama was bewildered as to how Univision's Jorge Ramos could have missed the "how to conduct an interview with President Obama" memo.
Wednesday's presidential debate revealed the same tight-lipped, flustered president -- unprepared for Jim Lehrer's reluctance to intervene and stop Romney from daring to question and attack his record.
This is not Romney's fault. It isn't even Obama's fault. It is the fault of America's leftist liberal media who have continually misled Obama into thinking he would never have to answer to his record.
And so the media is quickly back on task, as David Axelrod so aptly conveyed to CNN's Candy Crowley, saying, "I know you and others are going to be following this tomorrow and so are the American people." In other words, clean up this mess. Only the mess is Obama's record, and the media is right to cry. Americans' eyes are opening. They are no longer buying into the notion of hope, because hope now has a record: a record unemployment rate, a record thirty-two percent of Americans on food stamps, and record-high gas and commodities prices. Republicans have a candidate -- as evidenced by the debate -- who is not afraid to confront Obama on his record and who, most importantly, has the courage to run on his own good record and experience rather than good wishes.
This time is different. In 2008, the media was able to aid Obama in pulling the wool over America's eyes. This time, the media will not be able to take Obama out of the equation and make every pensive question about him the fault and flaw of the circumstances and people around him. In other words, the media was able to make 2008 race about electing Obama while at the same time never fully vetting or making known very much about him. The media made Hillary Clinton look whiny and weak when asking about the differences in the debate questions. They viciously attacked Sarah Palin, making the race about cults of personality and Saturday Night Live. They painted the Tea Party as bigoted racists who didn't approve of a black president.
But Obama is the president now, not the candidate, and the media will be unable to convince the millions of unemployed looking for work that their circumstances are just a coincidence in light of Obama's presidency. The media will be unable to mislead the many small business owners who have laid off employees for fear of rising taxes and insurance costs. The media cannot protect Obama against those Americans who have seen firsthand the devastation of Obama's last four years in office.
The media has given Obama a false sense of entitlement and has so glorified his very presence that what is being witnessed now is the total lack of humility and the unrefined intellect of a spoiled child. Obama simply has not thought through any of his platforms, because he has never needed to. He has never thought through the depths to which insanely expensive ObamaCare devastates the middle class, because he has not needed to. Obama has no answer for investing $90 billion in losers like Solyndra and green jobs, because Obama has not had to answer to anyone in the last eight years -- not as a candidate, and certainly not as president.
Now the same media who has spent four years coddling Obama is aghast at the dull and dejected child they have created. Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow want to know what happened to Obama. Where was the real Obama?
But the real Obama did show up. It was Obama in the flesh, without the benefit of media airbrushing and highlights. The true Obama and his A-game were revealed -- no teleprompter, and no softball questions pitched exactly to the left of the plate, where Obama likes them. Obama was unguarded and unprotected by the media, leaving him to face his kryptonite: accountability.
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5)Report: Israel's Iran policy shifting amid Tehran unrest
US media outlets say unrest in Tehran altering Israel's stance on Iran toward efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program by means other than military action
"Everything has changed" since the outbreak of the demonstrations on Wednesday, an Israeli official said. "You can't say now that the sanctions are having no impact at all. It is self-evident.''
According to a recent report published in the New York Times, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has criticized the West time and again over its lenient policies toward Iran, is planning to visit France and Germany in the near future in order to convince their leaders to toughen sanctions against Tehran.
The PM's plans appear to be another indication of a shifting Israeli emphasis, at least for now, toward efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program by means other than military action.
| Antigovernment protests in Teheran |
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that official sources have clarified that there has not been a significant shift in Israel's stance on Iran.
However, in Israel, some have said that recent developments in the political system, mainly the reported rift between Defense ministerEhud Barak and Netanyahu, are the main reason for a shift in Israel’s Iran policy.
Reliable sources have further said that the matter of an impending Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities is not an issue. According to official sources, the talk of a political rift between Barak and Netanyahu has replaced the public discussion of an Israeli strike on Iran.
Teheran riots
Iranian riot police clashed on Wednesday with demonstrators and foreign exchange dealers in the capital Tehran over the collapse of the country's currency, which has lost a third of its value against the dollar in a week, witnesses said.Police fired tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, angered by the plunge in the value of the Iranian rial. Protesters shouted slogans against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying his economic policies had fuelled the economic crisis.
According to the Fars news agency, Khamenei told a group of "young Iranian elites" in the capital that "during the last 33 years, Iran has been faced with a wide range of political, security, military and economic pressure and sanctions, but the Iranian nation has not only neutralized these pressures through resistance, it has grown more powerful through resistance."
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