Book sales and orders for the soft cover are approaching 100. Half the proceeds from the sale of my modestly priced book goes to The Wounded Warrior Project!
Dick Berkowitz, has written a booklet entitled:"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
Dick wrote this booklet because he believes a strong country must rest on a solid family unit and that Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."
He hopes this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.
You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com/book that you can download and read on your computer, or print out if you want. Cost is $5.99
In several weeks the book will be available in soft cover format at a cost of $10.99.
Booklet illustrations were by his oldest granddaughter, Emma Darvick, who lives and works in New York.
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"
Dick ,
Your book is outstanding! Due to illness, I've been unable to read it in entirety until today .Your background is often very similar to mine (e.g. Halliburton's influence was very important in my life), and your thoughts reflect very closely the the teachings that I received from my parents and granddad. I will write a more detailed statement in the near future!
All the best, Bob
Your book is outstanding! Due to illness, I've been unable to read it in entirety until today .Your background is often very similar to mine (e.g. Halliburton's influence was very important in my life), and your thoughts reflect very closely the the teachings that I received from my parents and granddad. I will write a more detailed statement in the near future!
All the best, Bob
Regarding your booklet, I have begun to read it and look forward to finishing it this weekend. Congrats on getting it published and on the great reviews. I know how much this booklet means to you and how important getting this message out to the public is.
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In my previous memo I referred to tonight's moderator as 'Monica' Crowley when in fact I meant 'Candy' Crowley. My error was brought to my attention by a friend, excellent editor and fellow memo reader. Thanks, Jack!
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Gimmick or correct policy. You decide. By Right Change| 1 video
Gimmick or correct policy. You decide. By Right Change| 1 video
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Tom Sowell offers some random thoughts. (See 1 below.)
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Believe I previously posted but well worth doing so again:
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Will it work? Netanyahu must walk fine line between keeping the sanctions moving up while fearing they will not work in time and then what? (See 2 below.)
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In a religious sense, Dennis Prager asks where is Biden coming from? (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.
Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama's claims about "creating jobs" with one plain and inescapable fact -- "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office." Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost.
How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?
The know-it-all smirks and condescending laughs of Vice President Joe Biden, when Congressman Paul Ryan was speaking during their debate, were a little much from an administration presiding over economic woes at home and disasters overseas -- and being caught in lies about both. Like Barack Obama, Joe Biden has all the clever tricks of a politician and none of the wisdom of a statesman.
If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are.
One of the most foolish, and most dangerous, things one can do is to take love for granted, instead of nurturing it and safeguarding it as the prize jewel of one's life.
Whenever you hear people talking about "a living Constitution," almost invariably they are people who are in the process of slowly killing it by "interpreting" its restrictions on government out of existence.
Do either Barack Obama or his followers have any idea how many countries during the 20th century set out to "spread the wealth" -- and ended up spreading poverty instead? At some point, you have to turn from rhetoric, theories and ideologies to facts.
I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal -- instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct.
Whatever happened to Julie Banderas of the Fox News Channel? She had brains, looks, wit and personality. Has she met with foul play? Or has some zillionaire married her and taken her off to his own private island?
The question to be asked of people in the media, and that they should ask themselves, should be: "Is your first loyalty to your audience or to your ideology?" The same question should be asked of educators, especially those who see themselves as "agents of social change," even though that is not the job description under which they have been hired and paid.
People who complain about "negative" campaign ads miss the point. It is perfectly legitimate to criticize your opponent. The question is whether the ads are about serious things that matter to the future of this country, and whether they are telling the truth or lying.
If you believe Barack Obama and others who oppose what they call "tax cuts for the rich," you might want to consider what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." If you want to see some documented facts about tax rates and tax revenues, there is a box titled "Tax Cuts" on my web site (www.tsowell.com). Click on it.
In baseball, switch hitters are said to have an advantage. But the highest lifetime batting average by a switch hitter (.319 by Frankie Frisch) is more than 30 points lower than the highest batting average for either left-handed hitters or right-handed hitters. The highest batting average in a season by a switch hitter (.365 by Mickey Mantle) is more than 50 points lower.
If there is ever a Hall of Fame for confidence men, Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff will have to take a back seat to Barack Obama. Obama is the gold standard -- or, perhaps more appropriately, the brass standard.
I have never known a word to become absolute dogma, without a speck of evidence, the way "diversity" has.
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| PM Netanyahu to EU Ambassadors: commends tougher sanctions - Iran has not yet rolled back program | ||
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks at the start of his meeting with European Union member state ambassadors: "I look forward to our annual meeting, it's always good to meet, but these are auspicious times. I first want to congratulate the EU for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Would that we could replicate in the Middle East what was achieved in Europe. That is, decades of stability and peace and tranquility. That is our goal and we'll discuss how we can advance that goal, that all Israelis share fervently. But especially today I want to commend the EU for the tough sanctions that were adopted yesterday against the greatest threat to peace in our time, and that is the tough sanctions against Iran. These sanctions are hitting the Iranian economy hard, they haven’t yet rolled back the Iranian program. We'll know that they're achieving their goal when the centrifuges stop spinning and when the Iranian nuclear program is rolled back. And I think that this is a goal that is shared by anyone who wants to guarantee the security and peace of the world, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world. So these are momentous issues, momentous times, and it's time to continue discussing them." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) |Joe Biden's Religion: Catholicism or Leftism?
By Dennis Prager
In the vice presidential debate, the two candidates, both Roman Catholics, were asked about their religious beliefs, how they impact the candidates' political positions and specifically about abortion. This was the response of Vice President Joe Biden:
"My religion defines who I am. And I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can't take care of themselves, people who need help.
"With regard to abortion, I accept my church's position on abortion as a — what we call de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life.
"But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and — I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.
"I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that women, they can't control their body. It's a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court — I'm not going to interfere with that."
Let's analyze this response.
1. "My religion defines who I am."
If a conservative, evangelical Christian candidate for national office said that he defined himself by his religious beliefs, liberals would be screaming that the wall between church and state was in danger of being taken down.
Here is the rule in American politics: When the left uses religion to promote liberal policies, it is a beautiful thing. When the right uses religion to promote conservative policies, it threatens the separation of church and state and may lead to the creation of a theocracy.
2. "It has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who can't take care of themselves, people who need help."
This illustrates my previous point. Biden's Catholicism leads him to promote liberal social policies, specifically an ever-expanding state to take care of "people who need help." What else could his statement mean? After all, what religion doesn't expect its adherents to take "care of those who can't take care of themselves"? Protestant Christianity? Judaism? Islam? Buddhism? Mitt Romney's Mormonism?
Since all religions do, what is the difference between Romney's religious call to help the less fortunate and Biden's religious call to help these people?
The difference, as seen in the enormous difference between Biden's charitable donations and Romney's, is the difference between conservatism and liberalism: Conservatism holds that we all have to take care of ourselves and our fellow citizens; liberalism holds that the state — funded by some of us — has to.
3. "I accept my church's position on abortion ... I just refuse to impose that on others."
This sounds beautiful to liberals. But it is as un-thought-through as it is un-Catholic.
Why is Mr. Biden completely comfortable with policies that "impose on others" what he understands as Catholic "social doctrine"? He will use the government to forcefully take people's money away and impose whatever policies he thinks Catholic social doctrine favors. Why, then, will he not impose on others his church's definition of the worth of human life from conception?
There are three possible answers. One is that he doesn't really believe in his church's position on abortion. A second is that he does believe in it but would have to leave the Democratic Party if he tried to implement that policy. The third is that he believes that the Church's views on abortion only pertain to Catholics — and even then, only on a "personal" basis.
If we are to take him at his word, that latter is what he believes: that his church's view on abortion only applies to him personally: "Life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life." But if that is his opinion, his religiosity is not morally meaningful. If an act is moral or immoral only for him, then it is not moral or immoral. Either something is immoral for everyone (in the same circumstance) or it is not immoral.
Which is why the Church's teaching is that abortion is morally wrong for everyone, just as neglecting the needy is morally wrong for everyone.
But Joe Biden would never say that the Catholic Church's social doctrine is only valid "in my personal life." So, what does Joe Biden, the Catholic, believe about abortion?
These statements by the vice-president of the United States provide one more example of the fact that leftism — not Christianity, not Catholicism, and not Islam — has been the most influential religion in the world for the last century.
Only when Catholicism agrees with leftism is Joe Biden prepared to impose it. When his Catholicism does not agree with leftism, it is reduced to being a matter of personal matter of faith, no more binding on non-Catholics than receiving the Eucharist.
And in this regard he is no different from many Jews and Protestant Christians. Their religious expression may be Judaism or Christianity, but their religion, like Biden's, is leftism. Which is why liberal Jews and liberal Christians have much more in common than liberal Jews have with conservative Jews or liberal Christians have with conservative Christians. They share what they deem truly important — leftism.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)A Presidency Squandered
In January 2009, the future seemed to be all Barack Obama’s.
The Obama narrative is that he inherited the worst mess in memory and has been stymied ever since by a partisan Congress — while everything from new ATM technology to the Japanese tsunami conspired against him. But how true are those claims?
Barack Obama entered office with an approval rating of over 70 percent. John McCain’s campaign had been anemic and almost at times seemed as if it was designed to lose nobly to the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee.
One-percenter magnates welcomed Obama. If Steve Wynn, Donald Trump, and Mort Zuckerman now blast Obama, just four years ago they seemed to have found him a relief from George W. Bush. Christopher Buckley and the late Christopher Hitchens openly endorsed him. Republicans like Colin Powell, Scott McClellan, and Doug Kmiec all went public with their support. One got the impression from what David Frum, David Brooks, and Peggy Noonan wrote that with a wink and a nod they had welcomed his election. Never has a president entered office with so much goodwill from so many diverse quarters.
Rarely does a president enter office with a majority in both the House and the Senate. Not only did Obama do so, but his soaring ratings put enormous pressure on the Republican minorities to join the Democratic majorities. Liberals were talking about a new era of Democratic political dominance.
No prior president had such a supportive media. Sometime in mid-2008, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, AP, Reuters, and hundreds of other mainstream voices had decided that Barack Obama was not just a liberal Democrat whom they would tilt toward, but a messianic figure for whom they gladly sacrificed the last ounce of disinterested coverage.
The financial collapse was four months in the past when Barack Obama took the oath of office, and its immediate aftershocks had been addressed with the October 3, 2008, TARP stabilization protocols. Obama’s chorus simply blamed the entire panic on George Bush; and the idea that government guarantees from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — which the Democrats had backed — had ensured huge loans for the unqualified to buy homes at inflated prices was mostly ignored. The recession was finishing its second year and would end five months into the Obama administration, in June 2009. The stock market had mostly stopped falling before Obama took office. In other words, Obama entered office with all the blame for the bad economy going to his predecessor and with the end of the deep recession in sight.
The president’s own racial heritage was said to be emblematic of the new racial healing. Indeed, it was promised that race itself would become incidental rather than essential to the nation’s persona. Advisers and Cabinet officers like Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder, Hilda Solis, Ken Salazar, Van Jones, Steven Chu, and Hillary Clinton were said to “look like America” far more than the old white guys of the past.
Abroad, the unpopular war in Iraq was quiet after the successful surge, and agreements were already concluded about the withdrawal of U.S. forces; in Joe Biden’s words, the war in Iraq had the potential to be “one of the great achievements of the administration.” Everyone had forgotten that Obama himself had urged a unilateral withdrawal as early as March 2008. Afghanistan was still the “good” war but the one where, as Representative Steny Hoyer put it, “We took our eye off the ball”; during the campaign Obama and other Democrats promised to win it.
Most Americans believed Obama when he made the argument that our current problems abroad had mostly started with George Bush and would end when he left. Iran and Syria were said to be hostile only because they had been gratuitously alienated by Bush. Ditto Putin’s Russia. Our battles with the U.N. were said to be over, as multilateralism was trumpeted as the new cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy — a loud boast sure to win even more goodwill both from allies and from neutrals that had been turned off by the twangy Texan Bush. Just as Obama had wowed thousands at Berlin’s Victory Column, so he would win over the world, as his first interview with Al-Arabiya presaged. Obama was shortly to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on the theory of what he represented rather than the facts of what he had done.
Many claimed that Obama was the “true conservative,” as he blasted Bush as unpatriotic for piling up $4 trillion in debt and promised to cut the annual deficit in half by the end of his first term. We heard all sorts of bring-us-together rhetoric: a new bipartisanship, a new civility, a new transparency, a new campaign ethos, a new everything — coupled with lots of “no mores”: no more earmarks, no more revolving doors, no more former lobbyists in government, no more serial fundraisers on the government dime.
Obama had the luxury of enjoying the security benefits that had accrued from George Bush’s controversial protocols like Guantanamo, renditions, military tribunals, preventive detention, intercepts, wiretaps, and drone hits, while not having his own signature upon them. The result was surreal, as Obama embraced or expanded all of what he had earlier blasted as unconstitutional or superfluous — to the sudden quiet of a once-raucous civil-libertarian Left. Somehow Obama managed to blame Bush for providing him with the vital measures that he damned even as he utilized them.
Even stranger was a revolution in oil and gas exploration that seemed to coincide with the Obama inauguration. Obama had the best of both worlds: He took office when gas was below $2 a gallon — saving the nation billions of dollars — and when the novel techniques of fracking and horizontal drilling had just tripled known U.S. reserves and promised to offer a godsend of new energy on federal lands.
In other words, the future seemed to be all Barack Obama’s. Bill Clinton’s second term offered an easy blueprint of what bipartisan centrism might achieve. Balance the budget and create jobs, and the nation will forgive anything, from lying under oath to romancing an intern in the Oval Office.
And what happened?
Barack Obama chose to ram down the nation’s throat a polarizing, statist agenda, energized by the sort of hardball politics he had learned in Chicago. Rather than bring the races, classes, and genders together, he gave us an us-versus-them crusade against the “1 percenters” and the job creators who had not “paid their fair share,” accusations of a Republican “war on women,” and the worst racial polarization in modern memory. Statesmanship degenerated into chronic blame-gaming and “Bush did it,” as he piled up over $5 trillion in new debt. Financial sobriety was abandoned in favor of creating new entitlement constituencies, and job creation was deemed far less important than nationalizing the health-care system.
And so here we are, three weeks before the election, with a squandered presidency and a president desperately seeking reelection not by defending his record, but by demonizing his predecessor, his opponent — and half of the country.
What, then, was Obama’s first term?
Jimmy Carter’s ends justifying Richard Nixon’s means.
—
NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institutionand the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Voters Equally Favorable to Romney, Obama
Favorable ratings among registered voters are 52% Romney, 51% Obama
PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will enter Tuesday's debate with similar favorable ratings from U.S. registered voters. In fact, among the electorate, the two presidential candidates' favorable ratings have been almost identical since May, after Romney clinched the Republican nomination.
 
The latest results are based on an Oct. 10-11 USA Today/Gallup poll. It was conducted after the first presidential debate in Denver on Oct. 3 but before the second in Hempstead, N.Y., on Oct. 16.
The data suggest, at best, minimal change in each candidate's favorable ratings after the first debate. The lack of change is notable particularly for Obama, whose debate performance was widely panned, suggesting little damage to his image among the electorate, even though the race has tightened a little since then. It is also notable that Romney's favorable ratings did not improve much among voters even though he was widely considered the winner of that debate.
Previously, Gallup had reported candidate favorable ratings on the basis of all national adults, rather than only those registered to vote. On that basis, Obama's favorable ratings were generally higher than Romney's. For example, in a Sept. 24-27 USA Today/Gallup poll, 55% of all Americans had a favorable opinion of Obama and 47% of Romney, compared with favorable ratings of 50% for each among registered voters in the same poll. The differences in favorable ratings between national adults and registered voters indicate that non-registered voters are generally more positive toward Obama and less positive toward Romney.
The current poll did not measure favorable ratings among the national adult population.
Obama's and Romney's favorable ratings are also similar in 12 key election 2012 swing states, according to a separate Oct. 5-11 USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In those states, 52% of registered voters have a favorable opinion of Obama and 46% an unfavorable opinion. For Romney, the figures are 49% and 46%, respectively.
Implications
The presidential race is about as close as it can be with three weeks to go before Election Day. Obama and Romney are closely matched in voter preferences among both registered and likely voters. The candidates have similar favorable ratings among registered voters, and Americans are about as likely to approve as to disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president.
The final days of the long campaign transform it from a marathon into a sprint, and the remaining two candidate debates and the final weeks of in-person and over-the-airwaves campaigning will be important in helping determine the winner.
Track every angle of the presidential race on Gallup.com's Election 2012 page.
Sign up to get Election 2012 news stories from Gallup as soon as they are published.
Survey Methods
Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 10-11, 2012, on the Gallup Daily election tracking survey, with a random sample of 891 registered voters, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
For results based on the total sample of registered voters, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 250 cell phone respondents and 250 landline respondents per 500 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, population density, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2011 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. non-institutionalized population. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.
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